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Ben Barnes, a former Texas politician, claims he witnessed a conspiracy aimed at sabotaging President Jimmy Carter’s re-election in 1980 by delaying the release of US hostages in Iran. His amazing admission was reported by the New York Times on Saturday.
The Iran hostage crisis marred Carter’s presidency and re-election campaign, and with the hostages still not released by Election Day 1980, the incumbent lost heavily to Ronald Reagan. In the more than four decades since, many have argued that he would have fared much better had he secured the release of the 52 Americans held captive.
But Barnes told the Times that his mentor, former Texas Gov. John B. Connally Jr., was determined not to let it happen – and helped prevent the hostages’ release. Barnes says Connally took him to several Middle Eastern capitals this summer to persuade respective regional leaders to tell Iran they would get a better deal from Republican candidate Ronald Reagan if they held the hostages until after of the election would stick. That’s exactly what happened.
After they returned home from their trip, Barnes said Connally informed Reagan’s campaign chairman William J. Casey, who later became director of the Central Intelligence Agency. (Barnes’ account contains no indication that Reagan knew anything about their trip.)
Known as the “October Surprise,” many have suspected that someone close to Reagan’s camp was working against Carter’s efforts to free the hostages until after the election, but congressional investigations have not confirmed these theories, and Connally was not the subject of them Requests. Connally had sought the Republican nomination, which Reagan ultimately won. His help in thwarting Carter’s campaign, Barnes said, helped him campaign to become Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense with a new administration.
Barnes – who served as Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and Lieutenant Governor and also helped George W. Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard – said he wanted to set the record straight since Carter is in hospice care. “History needs to know what happened,” he said. “I think it’s so significant, and I think knowing that President Carter’s end is near has reminded me more and more of that. I just feel like we have to get it down somehow.”
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While some of the players who could corroborate Barnes’ account have died — including Connally and Casey — Barnes named four people he confided in about the meetings. All four – Mark K. Updegrove, President of the LBJ Foundation; Tom Johnson, a former adviser to Lyndon Johnson (no relation) who later became editor of the Los Angeles Times and president of CNN; Larry Temple, former aide to Mr. Connally and Lyndon Johnson; and HW Brands, a historian at the University of Texas – confirmed to The Times that Barnes had shared his story with them.
“As far as I know, Ben has never lied to me,” said Tom Johnson. There is also other evidence to support his account, including Brands, who wrote three paragraphs about Barnes’ account in a 2015 biography of Reagan, although it did not receive much attention, and records in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum show that Connally has completed a trip from Houston on July 18, 1980 to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel and returning on August 11 – Barnes was listed as companion.
Barnes told the Times he was certain the motivation for the trip was to send the message to Iran to hold the hostages until after the elections. “I’ll go to my grave and believe that was the purpose of the trip,” Barnes said. “It wasn’t freelance because Casey was so keen to hear once we got back to the United States.” Mr. Casey, he added, wanted to know if “they were going to hold the hostages.”
Barnes could not confirm whether the messages to regional leaders were actually being conveyed to Iran or whether they had any influence. Iran held the hostages until after the election. They were released just after noon on January 20, 1981, during the opening minutes of Reagan’s presidency.
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John B. Connally III, the former governor’s eldest son, contradicted Barnes’ account, telling the Times he remembered his father making the Middle East trip but that he was not aware of any embassies to Iran and that he accompanied his father to meet with Reagan to discuss the visit.
“In no meeting I attended was there any mention of a message being sent to the Iranians,” Connally said. “That doesn’t sound like my dad.” He added, “I can’t question Ben’s memory of it, but it doesn’t match my memory of the trip.”