"What if?" A phrase that lingers

Reagan's 1980 hostage deal, author Craig Unger calls it treason

Two words. Six letters. Applicable in many situations. What if John F. Kennedy hadn’t gone to Dallas in November of 1963? What if Dr. King hadn’t stopped off at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in April of 1968? What if the Iranian hostages had been released before the 1980 election between President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan? Might it have changed the election, a Reagan landslide win, had Carter been the one to free them? What if it had been him, not Reagan, who brought them back to our shores?

Following up on the death of Jimmy Carter, author Craig Unger, an investigative journalist of some repute, was on C-Span last night, talking about that time, the topic for his new book, “Den Of Spies: Reagan, Carter and The Secret History of the Treason That Stole The White House.” It’s an in-depth look at the curious hostage negotiations that preceded the 1980 election, the famous (or infamous) “October Surprise.”

These were negotiations that allowed the Iranian hostages, held for a much-publicized 444 days, to amazingly walk off a plane literally just minutes after Ronald Reagan had been sworn in as our 40th President. It was SHOW-BIZ, wasn’t it?

How could a brand-new, seconds-old President pull off a negotiations with a foreign adversary while he was giving us his Inaugural Address? You remember, the one where he said “Government is not the solution to your problems, Government IS the problem.”

When the hostages walked off the plane, minutes after Reagan's Inaugural...I wrote about it in "Nashua"

Like perhaps, some of you, I watched Reagan’s Inaugural live. He had been in our Telegraph newsroom just a few months earlier. And now he was our President? As I watched in the newsroom that January day, someone had brought a TV in, seeing the hostages suddenly freed, I asked out loud, “How in the hell are these hostages, that President Carter had tried so valiantly to rescue, now suddenly free?” Was Reagan telepathic?

I got a dirty look across the newsroom from our Executive Editor Jon Breen, who was the one who screwed up the Nashua High debate in February. But it was a valid question. One that, evidently, escaped the mind of every single American journalist present.

How did a brand new President, one who hadn’t even set a toe in the Oval Office yet, bring back all these hostages ON HIS INAUGURATION DAY? He wasn’t IN POWER until a few minutes ago? Should he have had his people working with the Iranians BEFORE he was even voted in? What the hell is going on here?

Hearing Unger call it “one of the great disgraces of our national media in covering this up. It was a great scandal and they twisted it and turned it on its ass,” why, you bet I kept on listening. And wondering what else we don’t know?

We are deluged with conspiracy theories these days. Some people, not even Marjorie Taylor Greene, are claiming the government is controlling our weather. Others claim COVID-19 was manufactured by our own government, the moon landing was staged, The Orange One’s attempted assassination was also staged and on and on. There might be a conspiracy theory about me writing this column.

Yet, since I’d already written about the events of Reagan’s Inaugural in my “Nashua: How Ronald Reagan led us to Donald Trump,” a book that came out in May (and is still available on Amazon), I wanted to hear Unger talk even more about what Reagan’s people apparently pulled off BEFORE he was even in office, likely before he was even elected.

To go back, my book “Nashua” took a look at the New Hampshire Republican Presidential Primary in 1980 and an infamous debate that my then-newspaper, the Nashua Telegraph, sponsored between Reagan and who they deemed the leading Republican contender George Herbert Walker Bush at Nashua High School. I had a ringside seat. And I had noticed that the Hollywood tactics Reagan established in upending the debate that night, showing up the not-very-moderate-moderator— It was all about Performance NOT Policy — this approach led us directly to The Orange One.

Is Unger’s book pertinent now? Hell, yes. Is “Nashua” pertinent now? Hell, yes! You wanna find out where this all started, check it out. Though he’s hard to find these days, Joe Biden is still our President for 20 days. What IS the President-elect up to? What deals is he making before he’s even sworn in? The Orange One is going to be at 1600 Pennsylvania, we know that. But does he and his crew have the right to conduct business already? Don’t you have to be sworn in FIRST?

In Reagan’s case, Unger’s point in calling it “treason” is that what Reagan’s people did in working things out with Iran BEFORE Reagan even won the election, may well have shifted the 1980 election. There’s even a theory that Unger shared that President Carter’s foiled attempt at a rescue, Operation Eagle Claw was sabotaged. Which, of course, is yet another conspiracy theory. We won’t go there.

But one other point Unger made that I hadn’t connected with before. I followed Watergate closely, taught “All The President’s Men” religiously every year to my Journalism class, even met Bob Woodward. And I always wondered why President Nixon, who was clearly going to win vs. George McGovern, took the risk of breaking into Democratic Headquarters. To beat McGovern? It made no sense.

Unger’s theory was that upon learning that President Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey had set up peace talks in Paris to bring an end to the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon got involved, maybe through intermediaries, to slow the process down so that he could get to the next election. This, apparently, is documented.

Nixon figured, correctly, as it turned out, that the unpopularity of the war might make Johnson drop out (which he did), setting up Nixon and the Republicans to likely get to run against a weak opponent (Humphrey) and regain the White House. Conspiracy theory or not, that’s exactly what happened. The Nixon-endorsed Watergate break-in, according to Unger, was because he was afraid his involvement in stalling the war was going to come out. Makes more sense than him worrying about McGovern, doesn’t it?

Was what Reagan’s men did before he was actually even elected treason? What else would you call it? If Unger’s investigations and theories are correct, what else don’t we know? Do we want to know what we don’t know? I wish I knew.

John Nogowski’s book: “Nashua: How Ronald Reagan led us to Donald Trump” is available on Amazon in three formats, if you’re interested.

Here’s a brief interview with Craig Unger on the Thom Hartmann Show