Hyde also cited an alibi placing the late Iranian financier/CIA operative Cyrus Hashemi in Connecticut on a weekend when Hashemi's brother, Jamshid, had testified under oath that Cyrus was with Casey and Iranian emissary Mehdi Karrubi in Madrid.
That "alibi rested on phone records showing two one-minute calls, one from a lawyer to Hashemi's home and one back to the lawyer. There was no evidence that Hashemi received or made the calls, and the pattern more likely fit a call asking a family member when Hashemi was due home and the second call giving the answer.
FBI Wiretaps
The second debunking cornerstone, Hyde said, was the absence of anything incriminating on FBI wiretaps of Cyrus Hashemi over five months in late 1980 and early 1981 when he was under suspicion for his secret dealings with Iran.
"There is not a single indication that William Casey had contact with Cyrus or Jamshid Hashemi," Hyde said. "Indeed, there is no indication on the tapes that Casey or any other individuals associated with the Reagan campaign had contact with any persons representing or associated with the Iranian government."
But Hyde was wrong about the absence of incriminating evidence on the Hashemi wiretaps, although they were still secret in 1993 so Hyde's argument was impossible to judge.
However, when I accessed the raw House task force documents in late 1994, I found a classified summary of the FBI bugging. According to that summary, the bugs revealed Cyrus Hashemi deeply enmeshed with Republicans on arms deals to Iran in fall 1980 as well as in financial schemes with Casey's close friend and business associate, John Shaheen.
And contrary to Hyde's claim of "not a single indication" of contact between Casey and Cyrus Hashemi, the Iranian banker was recorded as boasting that he and Casey had been "close friends" for years.
That claim was supported by a CIA memo which stated that Casey recruited Cyrus Hashemi into a sensitive business arrangement in 1979, a year before the October Surprise machinations.
Beyond that, the secret FBI summary showed Hashemi receiving a $3 million offshore deposit, arranged by a Houston lawyer who said he was a longtime associate of George H.W. Bush. The Houston lawyer, Harrel Tillman, told me in an interview that in 1980, he was doubling as a consultant to Iran's Islamic government.
After Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980, Tillman was back on the line promising Hashemi help from the "Bush people" for one of his foundering business deals. Then, the FBI wiretaps picked up Hashemi getting a cash payment, via a courier arriving on the Concorde, from the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
The House task force had concealed these documents, allowing Hamilton and Hyde to miswrite an important chapter of recent American history.
Another irony of the falsified October Surprise history was that Hamilton's wished-for bipartisanship never materialized. The Republicans pocketed the Democratic readiness to cover up for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush " and then launched a partisan war against Bill Clinton.
To this day, now 30 years after Iranian radicals seized the American hostages, the real story of what happened and how the Republicans manipulated the process remains mostly unknown.
[For more information on this enduring mystery, see Consortiumnews.com's "How Two Elections Changed America or Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]
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