After Brock published a book-length assault on Hill, called The Real Anita Hill, the Silbermans and other prominent conservatives joined a celebration at the Embassy Row Ritz-Carlton, Brock wrote, noting that also in attendance was Judge Sentelle.
But Silberman's anything-goes approach to promoting " and protecting " right-wing control of the government dated back even further, to his key role as a foreign-policy and intelligence adviser to Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign.
During Campaign 1980, Silberman was a senior figure in what was then a fast-rising neoconservative faction that saw Reagan's victory " and the defeat of President Jimmy Carter " as vital to expand U.S. military power, to confront the Soviet Union aggressively and to relieve pressure on Israel for a peace deal with the Palestinians.
More than a decade later, congressional investigators discovered that Silberman was assigned to secretive Reagan campaign operations collecting intelligence on what President Carter was doing to secure the release of 52 American hostages then held in Iran.
On April 20, 1980, the Reagan campaign created a group of foreign policy experts known as the Iran Working Group. The operation was run by Richard Allen, Fred Ikle and Silberman, the congressional investigators discovered.
After Reagan's nomination in July, his campaign merged with that of his vice presidential running mate, George H.W. Bush, who had enlisted many ex-CIA officers who were loyal to Bush as a former CIA director.
October Surprise Obsession
The general election campaign assembled a strategy team, known as the "October Surprise Group, which was ordered to prepare for "any last-minute foreign policy or defense-related event, including the release of the hostages, that might favorably impact President Carter in the November election, according to a House Task Force that in 1992 investigated allegations of Republican interference in Carter's hostage negotiations.
"Originally referred to as the ˜Gang of Ten,' the task force report said the "October Surprise Group consisted of Allen, Ikle, Charles M. Kupperman, Thomas H. Moorer, Eugene V. Rostow, William R. Van Cleave, John R. Lehman Jr., Robert G. Neumann, Seymour Weiss " and Silberman.
While that reference made it into the Task Force's final report in January 1993, another part was deleted, which said: "According to members of the ˜October Surprise' group, the following individuals also participated in meetings although they were not considered ˜members' of the group: Michael Ledeen, Richard Stillwell, William Middendorf, Richard Perle, General Louis Walt and Admiral James Holloway.
Deleted from the final report also was a section of the draft describing how the ex-CIA personnel who had worked for Bush's campaign became the nucleus of the Republican intelligence operation that monitored Carter's Iran-hostage negotiations for the Reagan-Bush team.
"The Reagan-Bush campaign maintained a 24-hour Operations Center, which monitored press wires and reports, gave daily press briefings and maintained telephone and telefax contact with the candidate's plane, the draft report read. "Many of the staff members were former CIA employees who had previously worked on the Bush campaign or were otherwise loyal to George Bush. [I later discovered the unpublished portions of Task Force's report when I gain access to its files in late 1994.]
Another deletion involved a Sept. 16, 1980, meeting ordered by Reagan's campaign director William Casey, who had become obsessed over the possibility of Carter pulling off an October Surprise release of the hostages.
On that date, Casey met with senior campaign officials Edwin Meese, Bill Timmons and Richard Allen about the "Persian Gulf Project, according to an unpublished section of the House Task Force report and Allen's notes. Two other participants at the meeting, according to Allen's notes, were Michael Ledeen and Noel Koch.
That same day, Iran's acting foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was quoted as citing Republican interference on the hostages. "Reagan, supported by [former Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger and others, has no intention of resolving the problem, Ghotbzadeh said. "They will do everything in their power to block it.
Exactly what the Reagan-Bush "October Surprise team did remains something of a historical mystery.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
