The 1980 October Surprise theory refers to the claim that members of Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign covertly negotiated with Iranian leaders to undermine incumbent President Jimmy Carter by delaying the release of 66 American hostages detained in Iran.

[1][2] Nevertheless, several individuals—most notably, former Iranian President Abulhassan Banisadr,[3][4] former Lieutenant Governor of Texas Ben Barnes, former naval intelligence officer and U.S. National Security Council member Gary Sick,[5] and Barbara Honegger,[6] a former campaign staffer and White House analyst for Reagan and his successor, George H. W. Bush—have stood by the allegation.

[9] The first printed instance of the October Surprise theory has been attributed to a story in the December 2, 1980, issue of Executive Intelligence Review, a periodical published by followers of Lyndon LaRouche, prior to the release of the hostages.

[10] The story claimed that "pro-Reagan British intelligence circles and the Kissinger faction" meeting with the Iranians six to eight weeks prior had interfered with "President Carter's efforts to secure an arms-for-hostage deal with Teheran".

[17] The Miami Herald published an article by Alfonso Chardy on April 12, 1987, that McFarlane, Silberman, and Allen had met with a man claiming to represent the Iranian government and offering the release of the hostages.

"[29][31] Sick wrote that members of the Reagan-Bush campaign had met with high-level representatives of Iran and Israel in a series of meeting in Paris between October 15–20, 1980, and that there were 15 sources who had direct or indirect knowledge of the event.

Sick's credibility was boosted by the fact that he was a retired naval captain, served on Ford's, Carter's, and Reagan's National Security Council, and held high positions with many prominent organizations; moreover, he had authored a book recently on US-Iran relations (All Fall Down).

[31] In the Frontline episode released on April 16, 1991, Robert Parry "investigate[d] startling new evidence about how both the Carter and Reagan camps may have tried to forge secret deals for [the Iranian] hostages during the 1980 presidential campaign.

"[33] The program presented allegations 1) that Cyrus Hashemi and William Casey met in Madrid to delay the release of the hostages, 2) that there was a meeting in Paris to finalize the deal, and 3) that there were shipments of American-made arms from Israel to Iran.

[36] In August 1991, freelance writer Danny Casolaro (among others)[37] claimed to be almost ready to expose the alleged October surprise conspiracy, when he suddenly died a violent death in a hotel bathtub in Martinsburg, West Virginia, raising suspicions.

[42] The task force Chairman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Indiana) also added that the vast majority of the sources and material reviewed by the committee were "wholesale fabricators or were impeached by documentary evidence".

Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the "October Surprise", which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place.

[47] Barbara Honegger was a campaign staffer[48] and policy analyst for Reagan[49] who resigned her post as a special assistant in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division in 1983 after publicly criticizing what she claimed was the administration's lack of commitment to gender equality.

[6][non-primary source needed] In 1987, in the context of the Iran–Contra investigations, Honegger was reported as saying that shortly after October 22, 1980, when Iran abruptly changed the terms of its deal with Carter, a member of the Reagan campaign told her "We don't have to worry about an 'October surprise.'

[53] In a memoir by Joseph V. Reed Jr. it is revealed that the "team" around David Rockefeller "collaborated closely with the Reagan campaign in its efforts to pre-empt and discourage what it derisively labeled an "October surprise" — a pre-election release of the American hostages, the papers show.

The Chase team helped the Reagan campaign gather and spread rumors about possible payoffs to win the release, a propaganda effort that Carter administration officials have said impeded talks to free the captives.

[55] In 2017, a declassified CIA 1980 memo was released in which the agency concluded "Iranian hardliners – especially Ayatollah Khomeini" were "determined to exploit the hostage issue to bring about President Carter's defeat in the November elections.

"[56] In March 2023, Peter Baker reported in The New York Times that former Texas governor John Connally, who had sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, travelled to several Arab countries and Israel between July 1980 and August 1980.

Barnes avoided scrutiny during the congressional "October Surprise" investigations, but his anecdote about Connally had been previously published in H. W. Brands's 2015 biography of Reagan, albeit "generat[ing] little public notice at the time" according to Baker.