FROM BILL CASEY'S FILE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100050003-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: September 20, 1991
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/11: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100050003-4
STAT
STAT
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
From Bill Casey's File
Two days before Ronald Reagan's election
in 1980, campaign manager William J. Casey
predicted in a confidential memorandum that
President Jimmy Carter would "protect the
dignity and honor of the United States" by
rejecting Iran's "outrageous" demands for
freeing American hostages.
This prescient memorandum by Bill Casey,
who died in 1987 after a turbulent six years as
CIA chief, should end rampant speculation that
he conspired to block the release of 52 U.S.
Embassy workers from Iranian jails and thus
prevent an "October surprise" that might re-
elect Carter. Separate Democratic-controlled
investigations of these allegations are about to
start in the Senate and House.
It would have been difficult for Casey's Nov. 2
memorandum to Reagan and Edwin Meese III, a
key Reagan aide, to have used the language it
did if campaign operatives had made or were in
the process of making a secret deal with the
Ayatollah Khomeini to keep the hostages in jail
until after the election. A source who was a high
official in the Carter administration told us
privately he agreed with this conclusion.
Along with several other secret documents
made available to us by Sophia Casey, the widow
of the flamboyant spy master, the Casey memo-
randum was discovered only recently in an
overlooked government filing cabinet in Wash-
ington that had belonged to Casey. The papers
were immediately sent to Mrs. Casey.
The heart of Casey's missive to Reagan was
an authoritative study by Charles Brower, a
former State Department legal adviser, on the
complicated "costs and methods," legal and
otherwise, facing Carter if he decided to ac-
cept stiff Iranian conditions for preelection
release of the hostages. The negotiations were
being handled by Deputy Secretary of State
Warren Christopher.
"In a nutshell," Casey wrote Reagan, ".
Carter could assert legal authority to return
Iranian assets free of attachments and termi-
nate suits and claims against Iran." But if the
president chose to use his "constitutional pow-
er" in this way, "such a deal would amount to
the deferred payment of ransom of an undeter-
mined amount which would certainly run into
several billions."
Closing the lawyerly argument that ruled
out this result, Manhattan attorney Casey told
Reagan: "So, while this might be doable, the
political cost would be enormous. I therefore
expect Carter to project a show of strength
and protect the dignity and honor of the
United States by rejecting these [Iranian]
demands as outrageous."
For years, Reagan political and legal advisers
have been denying widespread rumors that they
secretly negotiated with undercover Iranian op-
eratives to block preelection release of the
hostages. An April 15, New York Times article
by Gary Sick, a respected Carter National
Security Council aide whose NSC specialty was
Iran, raised questions about alleged clandestine
negotiations by Reagan political aides that might
have delayed the hostages' release. The article
is now being lengthened into a book.
These allegations have aroused influential
Democrats, who believe they have substance
and who question whether Carter's inability to
get the hostages out until long after the
election-on Inauguration Day, 1981-was
the result of conspiracy between Republicans
and the ayatollah's regime.
Casey's memorandum concluded that Carter
would wind up his election campaign continuing
to talk about an imminent breakthrough, but
that this would not help him politically. "He will
be widely perceived as having engaged in a
desperate last attempt to manipulate the hos-
tages again for political benefit and to have once
more bungled it." He told Reagan that if his
analysis proved correct, "we should say very
little and leave it that way."
A second memo, this one dated Oct. 19,
1980, from campaign aide Stefan Halper to
Meese, laid out a Reagan strategy in the event
the hostages were released. That is another
sign that, at least up to that point, Reagan and
Casey had negotiated nothing to prevent it.
Halper proposed that Reagan's posture
should "emphasise" that there were "increasing
signs that the hostages' release may be immi-
nent" and should "express his hopes and prayers
that the hostages will be coming horse soon,
even if the day before the election." By generat-
ing "expectations" of the hostages' release, "we
could dull somewhat the outpouring of enthusi-
asm to be expected."
Those are scarcely the words of a campaign
conspiracy-irt-progress designed to keep the
hostages in jail until after Nov. 4.
The WaafIngton Post
The New York Times
The Washington Tim"
A.4.77
The Wait Street Journal _
The Christian Science Morntor
New York Cai y News
USA Today
The Chkapo Tribune
Page '?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/11: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100050003-4