Wow, NYTimes has been peddling conspiracy theories and fake news for a long time.

Sorry bro, all those sources you listed are hearsay and lame.

"The planned documentary with the Shamir interview never was aired, since the producers ran out of money before it could be completed." Really? Sad.

Thank you for listing those.

We know the NYT lies, is inexcusably biased to the left, and they HATED Reagan.

"One of the accounts is provided by Gary Sick, a Middle East specialist who helped handle the Iranian hostage crisis as a member of the White House staff in the Carter Administration. Mr. Sick, in an article published Monday on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, says he has heard what he considers to be reliable reports "

I don't think I would trust the second hand information of someone who was from the administration that lost to Reagan, and screwed the pooch on getting them back in the first place.

"In an interview, Mr. Sick, who now teaches at Columbia University, said other people with second-hand knowledge of the meetings were Ari Ben Menashi, a former Israeli intelligence official; Arif Durrani, a Pakistani arms dealer, and Ahmad Madani, a former Iranian Defense Minister. "

I wouldn't trust the Pakistani arm's dealer, for obvious reasons. The Iranian "Death to America" defense minister - would need some real corroboration before I believed him. As to whether Ben Menashi is reputable or not, we have the fact that he was arrested in 1989 in the United States on charges that he attempted to sell three military aircraft to the Iranian government. He was held for three years, before being released, He wrote his book slandering Reagan in 1992, after his release, so we can surmise that he was exceedingly biased against the United States.

The Consortium article sounds plausible at first glance for rationale. When you read it through again carefully - the article uses the same source (Menashe) and spends a good portion painting Israel as a horrible aggressor and terrorist nation.

The people who lived and were aware of what was happening in the Middle East know that from its inception to modern times, Israel has been beset by nations trying to bring it down by war and terrorist attack. Has Israel done some terrible things? Yes, they have - they are not blameless, but there was ample justification for what they did. BLM+Antifa is a very peaceful organization compared to what Israel endured for decade after decade.

Then the kicker - The author cites a 1993 interview with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir - but why did the author wait until 3 days after Shamir died in 2012 to publish this information? If he had published it before, Shamir could have refuted it or confirmed it. Seems suspicious to me. If the author feared reprisals from the Israeli government, those reprisals would still be likely. Did the author think that the nation that "Never Forgets" was going to forget his writing, just because the supposed subject was no longer alive?

The guy with the slashed wrists, Danny Casolaro, seems to have been neck deep "investigating" a lot of things that could have brought him trouble.

One of the key sources for this October Surprise theory was Barbara Honnegger - who did work under Reagan as a White House analyst. Let's take a closer look at her. She was Director of the Attorney General’s Gender Discrimination Law Review. "A Reagan appointee who had been working on the Administration's project to eliminate sex discrimination from Federal and state laws resigned today after assailing the project as ''a sham.' Barbara Honegger, a special assistant in the Justice Department's civil rights division who had worked in the 1980 Reagan campaign and in the White House, said in an article published Sunday that she had become convinced that President Reagan did not care about women's rights."

So, she had an obvious ax to grind against Reagan.

"Political historian Kevin Phillips has been a proponent of the idea. In his 2004 book American Dynasty, although Phillips concedes that many of the specific allegations were proven false, he also argues that in his opinion, Reagan campaign officials "probably" were involved in a scheme."

Probably isn't good enough - except for CNN fans.

"Newsweek magazine also ran an investigation, reporting in November 1991 that most, if not all, of the charges made were groundless."

"The New Republic also looked into the allegations and reported, in November 1991, that "the conspiracy as currently postulated is a total fabrication". They were unable to verify any of the evidence presented by Sick and supporters, finding them to be inconsistent and contradictory in nature. They also pointed out that nearly every witness of Sick's had either been indicted or was under investigation by the Department of Justice."

"Retired CIA analyst and counter-intelligence officer Frank Snepp of The Village Voice reviewed Sick's allegations, publishing an article in February 1992. Snepp alleged that Sick had only interviewed half of the sources used in his book, and supposedly relied on hearsay from unreliable sources for large amounts of critical material. Snepp also discovered that Sick had sold the rights to his book to Oliver Stone in 1989. After going through evidence presented by Richard Brenneke, Snepp asserted that Brenneke's credit card receipts showed him to be in Portland, Oregon, during the time he claimed to be in Paris observing the secret meeting"

Senate investigation The US Senate's November 1992 report concluded that "by any standard, the credible evidence now known falls far short of supporting the allegation of an agreement between the Reagan campaign and Iran to delay the release of the hostages." https://i.imgur.com/lLinVWx.png (see the Not for Ants version of the pages here): Page 114 https://i.imgur.com/G6kTyoL.png
Page 115 https://i.imgur.com/FAI6t5x.png
Source - https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000021071829&view=2up&seq=124

House of Representatives investigation "The House of Representatives' January 1993 report concluded "there is no credible evidence supporting any attempt by the Reagan presidential campaign—or persons associated with the campaign—to delay the release of the American hostages in Iran".[39] The task force Chairman Lee H. Hamilton also added that the vast majority of the sources and material reviewed by the committee were "wholesale fabricators or were impeached by documentary evidence". The report also expressed the belief that several witnesses had committed perjury during their sworn statements to the committee, among them Richard Brenneke,[40] who claimed to be a CIA agent."
https://i.imgur.com/p6kWQvL.png (see the Not for Ants version of the page here): https://i.imgur.com/31GQbIM.png
Source - https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015060776773&view=2up&seq=26

I'd say that what your theory about Reagan doesn't match up with the facts. Carter was a bungler. He wanted to end the hostage situation, but from everything I've seen written, he was convinced that the proposed solutions would go wrong or end up backfiring on him.

you do know that's all BS right? Jimmy Carter was on the phone trying to get the hostages freed right up to the hour of the inauguration. Iran didn't understand that Reagan didn't get power in a revolution but in an election. They didn't understand that he reason why he didn't immediately become president was because we change presidency hands in January. If this conspiracy theory was right, Iran would have handed up the hostages when Reagan got elected, not the day he was inaugurated.

You mean the one "they tortured to death"? Where will you find him?🤔

Of course there can be an audience present. Just don't broadcast them, either in video or audio.

Detailed and brief, thanks for the link!