WARNING! COULD CONTAIN TRACES OF PEANUTS!

Here’s a bit of political history that amounts to more than peanuts.  It’s the tale of the son of a peanut farmer, an actual peanut farmer, and the ending of a presidency.

First up is Ben Barnes (above left), the son of a peanut farmer who paid for his college tuition by selling vacuum cleaners door to door.  Barnes, a Democrat, was elected to the Texas State Legislature at age 21, became Speaker at age 26, and was later elected Lieutenant Governor. He achieved these positions with the help of John Connally (above right), another powerful Texas politician who ran Lyndon Johnson’s unsuccessful presidential campaign and was himself elected Governor of Texas.  Connally and was in the limo the day Kennedy was shot.  He later switched parties but he and Barnes remained close friends for years.

Next up is Jimmy Carter (above), an actual peanut farmer and the former one-term President of the United States.  His presidency was plagued by high gas prices but most of all, by the “Iran hostage crisis,” the ordeal of 52 Americans held in Iran as payback for Carter’s allowing the former Shah to enter the U.S. for medical treatment---proving once again, no good deed goes unpunished.

Everyone of course has heard of Jimmy Carter, and by now everyone will also have heard of Ben Barnes.  That’s because Barnes confirmed earlier this month some rather ugly and persistent rumors that Carter’s re-election campaign in 1980 had been sabotaged by the Reagan campaign.  Barnes claimed to Peter Baker of the New York Times that he was an unwitting participant in this effort, but he also admitted to having sat on his story for over 40 years because he didn’t want to sully his own reputation. 

The sabotage effort and Barnes’ confession are detailed in the Times story and many of those details were corroborated years ago by political leaders outside the U.S.  What makes the Barnes confession interesting now is that he is the first American with first-hand knowledge to have confirmed that in the summer of 1980, Barnes (above left) and Connally (above middle) met with leaders in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt (Sadat left), and Israel to deliver a message to Iran:

Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

Connally wasn’t acting on his own.  Per the Times story:

Records at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum confirm part of Mr. Barnes’s story. An itinerary found this past week in Mr. Connally’s files indicated that he did, in fact, leave Houston on July 18, 1980, for a trip that would take him to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel before returning to Houston on Aug. 11. Mr. Barnes was listed as accompanying him.

Brief news accounts at the time reported on some of Mr. Connally’s stops with scant detail, describing the trip as “strictly private.” An intriguing note in Mr. Connally’s file confirms Mr. Barnes’s memory that there was contact with the Reagan camp early in the trip. Under the heading “Governor Reagan,” a note from an assistant reported to Mr. Connally on July 21: “Nancy Reagan called — they are at Ranch he wants to talk to you about being in on strategy meetings.” There was no record of his response.

Mr. Barnes recalled joining Mr. Connally in early September to sit down with Mr. Casey [Reagan's campaign manager] to report on their trip during a three-hour meeting in the American Airlines lounge at what was then called the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport. An entry in Mr. Connally’s calendar found this past week showed that he traveled to Dallas on Sept. 10. A search of Mr. Casey’s archives at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University turned up no documents indicating whether he was in Dallas then or not.

Mr. Barnes said he was certain the point of Mr. Connally’s trip was to get a message to the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. “I’ll go to my grave believing that it was the purpose of the trip,” he said. “It wasn’t freelancing because Casey was so interested in hearing as soon as we got back to the United States.” Mr. Casey, he added, wanted to know whether “they were going to hold the hostages.”

Mr. Casey, of course, was William J. Casey (above left), the chairman of Reagan’s (above right) campaign and later his director of the C.I.A.

And, so it came to be.  Reagan won.  Casey got his job.  Carter was humiliated.  Barnes and Connally left politics and went into business together.  The hostages were freed within minutes after Reagan’s inauguration on January 20, 1981.  And everyone lived happily ever after, but what did Iran get out of it?  What was the "better deal" Reagan offered? 

Although it hasn’t been confirmed and is unlikely ever to be confirmed, my best guess is that Iran got weapons.  That's the deal Reagan struck with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in his second term, a deal that resulted in the Iran-Contra scandal.  Why not agree to sell Iran weapons during your first term, just to repay a favor?  Here is how that 1980 arms sale agreement might have been a dress rehearsal for Iran-Contra in 1985.  From Wiki:

As reported in The New York Times in 1991, "continuing allegations that Reagan campaign officials made a deal with the Iranian Government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the fall of 1980" led to "limited investigations." However "limited," those investigations established that "Soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy." Secret Israeli arms sales and shipments to Iran began in that year, even as, in public, "the Reagan Administration" presented a different face, and "aggressively promoted a public campaign... to stop worldwide transfers of military goods to Iran." The New York Times explains: "Iran at that time was in dire need of arms and spare parts for its American-made arsenal to defend itself against Iraq, which had attacked it in September 1980," while "Israel [a U.S. ally] was interested in keeping the war between Iran and Iraq going to ensure that these two potential enemies remained preoccupied with each other." Maj. Gen. Avraham Tamir, a high-ranking Israeli Defense Ministry official in 1981, said there was an "oral agreement" to allow the sale of "spare parts" to Iran. This was based on an "understanding" with Secretary Alexander Haig (which a Haig adviser denied). This account was confirmed by a former senior American diplomat with a few modifications. The diplomat claimed that "[Ariel] Sharon violated it, and Haig backed away...". A former "high-level" CIA official who saw reports of arms sales to Iran by Israel in the early 1980s estimated that the total was about $2 billion a year – but also said, "The degree to which it was sanctioned I don't know."

Makes sense to me.  Big money.  Big egos.  Small minds.  Same story.

But what I find really troubling about all of this is the total disregard for human beings in the story. Fifty-two American lives on the line.  Did anyone give a damn?  Apparently not the Reagan campaign.  The hostages were pawns and just potential collateral damage.  They simply didn’t enter into the real power equation:  win at all costs. 

And what about Carter?  Not satisfied that he was politically castrated internationally and at home, Barnes and the others allowed Carter's character to be assassinated and his legacy eviscerated by sitting on the truth for over 40 years.  Barnes’ mea culpa as Carter lies in hospice is peanuts.  It can never make up for what Barnes did to the hostages, their families, to Carter, and to our faith that, given the opportunity, people will do the right thing. 

Keep it real!

Marilyn