Jamshid Hashemi, an Iranian businessman who had been recruited to assist the Carter administration on the hostage issue in 1980, alleged that he and his brother Cyrus Hashemi also helped Reagan's campaign chief William Casey arrange secret meetings with Iranian officials in Madrid in summer 1980.
Jamshid Hashemi's account of the Madrid meetings was publicized by ABC's "Nightline" program and later came under attack from journalists at The New Republic and Newsweek who apparently saw their role more as sweeping these troubling charges under the rug than getting at the truth.
In November 1991, both magazines splashed across their covers articles seeking to debunk Hashemi's claims of Madrid meetings by using an alibi for Casey that later turned out to be false. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Unmasking October Surprise Debunker."]
"The Fat Man"
When Jamshid Hashemi stuck to his account in sworn testimony before the task force in 1992, he said Leon tried to pressure him to recant his allegations. "I found this Mr. Leon -- who I knew as 'the fat man' -- every time we had a break and my lawyer would go to the washroom, he would rush into my room where I was sitting and say, 'come on, change the story,'" Jamshid Hashemi told me.
"I said I would not change my story at all. The last time he opened the door, I said, 'Get out of my office. If you have anything to say, say it in front of my lawyer.'" Hashemi said Leon, rather than task force chief counsel Barcella, appeared to be running the October Surprise investigation with the goal of protecting Republicans.
I received a similar account of Leon's behavior from former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe, who had testified that he and other Israelis helped arrange a Paris meeting in October 1980 involving Casey, George H.W. Bush and key Iranians. Ben-Menashe said Leon demanded that he alter his sworn testimony as well, calling Leon "a Bush crony."
Besides Hashemi and Ben-Menashe, more than a score of individuals described Republican guilt including: ex-Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr (who sent the task force a detailed account of the Iranian-Republican contacts from his view in Tehran); senior officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization who described overtures from Republicans seeking help in interfering in the hostage crisis; and French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches (who told his biographer about secret GOP-Iran hostage meetings in Paris, claims corroborated by other French intelligence officials).
Declassified documents from the George H.W. Bush presidential library also reveal how -- in 1992 -- then-President Bush and his team counted on Leon's help as the White House sought to restrict congressional access to key papers.
In a "top secret" memo dated June 26, 1992, to the State Department about cooperation with the October Surprise probe, National Security Council executive secretary William F. Sittmann demanded "special treatment" for NSC documents related to presidential deliberations.
Regarding the House task force, Sittmann recommended that only Republican counsel Leon and Democratic counsel Barcella be "permitted to read relevant portions of the documents and to take notes, but that the State Department retain custody of the documents and the notes at all times."
Though Republicans kept insisting that the October Surprise allegations were a myth, the Bush administration in 1992 was going to extraordinary lengths to control the evidence. [For details, see "Inside the October Surprise Cover-up."]
Mission Accomplished
Leon did his job well, constraining the investigation sufficiently to ensure that the task force fell in line with Republican demands that the October Surprise allegations be rejected.
Years later, Barcella told me that so much new evidence in support of the October Surprise allegations poured in late in the investigation -- in December 1992 -- that he urged task force chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, to extend the deadline for several months. Hamilton, however, refused and ordered the probe wrapped up with a finding of Republican innocence.
However, even after the finishing touches had been put on the task force report clearing the Republicans, complications for Leon, Hamilton and the other debunkers continued to emerge.
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