Bush's family friend Casey had also been in touch with Iranian representatives. Jamshid Hashemi,the brother of Cyrus Hashemi (who died under suspicious circumstances during 1986), has told
Gary Sick that he met with William Casey at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC in March of
1980 to talk about the hostages. According to Jamshid Hashemi, "Casey quickly made clear that he
wanted to prevent Jimmy Carter from gaining any political advantage from the hostage crisis. The
Hashemis agreed to cooperate with Casey without the knowledge of the Carter Administration." [fn37]
Casey's "intelligence operation" included the spying on the opposing candidate that has been routine
in US political campaigns for decades, but went far beyond it. As journalists like Witcover and
Germond kne"Debategate" investigation showed, Casey set up at least two October Surprise espionage groups. w during the course of the campaign, and as the 1984 Albosta committee
The first of these watched the Carter White House, the Washington bureaucracy, and diplomatic
and intelligence posts overseas. This group was headed by Reagan's principal foreign policy advisor
and later NSC chairman Richard Allen. Allen was assisted by Fred Ickle and John Lehman, wholater got top jobs in the Pentagon, and by Admiral Thomas Moorer. This group also included Robert (^)
McFarlane. Allen was in touch with some 120 foreign policy and national security experts
sympathetic to the Reagan campaign. Casey helped Allen to interface with the Bush campaign
network of retired and active duty assets in the intelligence community. This network reached into
the Carter NSC, where Bush crony Don Gregg worked as the CIA liaison man, and into Carter'stop-secret White House situation room.
During these very months there was a further influx of retired intelligence officers into the Reagan-
Bush machine. According to Colonel Charlie Beckwith, who had led the abortive "Desert One"
attempt to rescue the hostages during the spring of 1980, "Tmistake. A lot of the old whores--guys with lots of street smarts and experience--left the agency."he Carter Administration made a serious
According to another CIA man, "Stan Turner fired the best CIA operatives over the hostage crisis.
The firees agreed among themselves that they would remain in touch with one another and with
their contacts and continue to operate more or less as independents." [fn 38]
Another October Surprise monitoring group was headed by Admiral Robert Garrick, who was
assisted by Stephan Halper, Ray Cline's son in law. The task of this group was the physical
surveillance of US military bases by on-the-ground observers, often retired and sometimes active
duty military officers. Lookouts were posted to watch Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma,
Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey (where weaponsalready bought and paid for by the Shah were stockpiled), and Norton and March Air Force bases in
California.
Garrick, Casey, Meese, Wirthlin and other campaign offocials met each morning in Falls Church.
Virginia, just outside of Washington, to review intelligence gathered. Bush was certainly informedof these meetings. Did he also attend them?
This group soon became operational. It was clear that Khomeini was keeping the hostages to sell
them to the highest bidder. Bush and Casey were not reticent about putting their own offer on the
table.
Shortly after the GOP convention, Casey appears to have travelled to Europe for a meeting in
Madrid in late July with Mehdi Karrubi, a leading Khomeini supporter, now the speaker of the
Iranan Parliament. Jamshid Hashemi said that he and his late brother Cyrus were present at this
meeting and at another one in Madrid during August which they say Casey also attended. The