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 informed of 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 present government of Iran has declined to confirm, or
deny this contact, saying that "the Islamic Government of Iran sees no benefit to involve
itself in the matter."
Casey's whereabouts are officially unknown between July 26-27 and July 30. What is
known is that as soon as Casey surfaced again in Washington on July 30, he reported
back to vice presidential candidate George Bush in a dinner meeting held at the Alibi
Club. It is certain from the evidence that there were negotiations with the Mullahs by the
Reagan-Bush camp, and that Bush was heavily involved at every stage.
In early September, Bush's brother Prescott Bush became involved with a letter to James
Baker in which he described his contacts with a certain Herbert Cohen, a consultant to the
Carter Administration on Middle East matters. Cohen had promised to abort any possible
Carter moves to "politicize" the hostage issue by openly denouncing any machinations
that Carter might attempt. Prescott offered Baker a meeting with Cohen. Were it not fot
the power of the Brown Brothers, Harriman/Skull and Bones networks, George's brother
Prescott Bush might have become something likt the Billy Carter of the 1980's.
In September-October 1980 there was a meeting at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in
Washington among Richard Allen, Bud McFarlane, Laurence Silberman of the Reagan-
Bush campaign and a mysterious Iranian representative, thought to be an emissary of
Iranian asset Hashemi Rafsanjani, an asset of US intelligence who was becoming one of
the most powerful mullahs in Khomeini's entourage. The Iranian representative offered a
deal whereby "he could get the hostages released directly to our campaign before the
election," Silberman recalls. Allen has claimed that he cut this meeting short after twenty
minutes. Allen, McFarlane, and Silberman (later named a federal judge) all failed to
report this approach to the White House, the State Department, or other authorities.
On September 22, Iraq invaded Iran, starting a war that would last until the middle of
1988 and which would claim more than a million lives. The US intelligence estimate had
been that Khomeini and the mullahs were in danger of losing power by the end of 1980
because of their incompetence, corruption, and benighted stupidity. US and other western
intelligence agencies, especially the French, thereupon encouraged Iraq to attack Iran,
offering the prospect of an easy victory. The easy victory" analysis was incorporated into