Den of Spies
Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“A persuasive affirmation of a shocking conspiracy theory.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Unger has pursued the story of the October surprise for more than 30 years, often to his own cost. …peppered with amazing details… Den of Spies comes out in a world where dark machinations to win power no longer seem so unthinkable as in the days of Carter, Reagan and Bush."—The Guardian
The explosive inside story of the October Surprise conspiracy, a stunning act of treason that changed American history. New York Times bestselling author Craig Unger reveals his thirty-year investigation into the secret collusion between Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign and Iran, raising urgent questions about what happens when foreign meddling in our elections goes unpunished and what gets remembered when the political price for treason is victory.
It was a tinderbox of an accusation. In April 1991, the New York Times ran an op-ed alleging that Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign had conspired with the Iranian government to delay the release of 52 American hostages until after the 1980 election. The Iranian hostage crisis was President Jimmy Carter’s largest political vulnerability, and his lack of success freeing them ultimately sealed his fate at the ballot box. In return for keeping Americans in captivity until Reagan assumed the oath of office, the Republicans had secretly funneled arms to Iran. Treasonous and illegal, the operation—planned and executed by Reagan’s campaign manager Bill Casey—amounted to a shadow foreign policy run by private citizens that ensured Reagan’s victory.
Investigative journalist Craig Unger was one of the first reporters covering the October Surprise—initially for Esquire and then Newsweek—and while attempting to unravel the mystery, he was fired, sued, and ostracized by the Washington press corps, as a counter narrative took hold: The October Surprise was a hoax. Though Unger later recovered his name and became a bestselling author on Republican abuses of power, the October Surprise remained his white whale, the project he—as well as legendary investigative journalist, the late Robert Parry—worked on late at night and between assignments.
In Den of Spies, Unger reveals the definitive story of the October Surprise, going inside his three-decade reporting odyssey, along with Parry’s never-before-seen archives, and sharing startling truths about what really happened in 1980. The result is a real-life political thriller filled with double agents, CIA operatives, slippery politicians, KGB documents, wealthy Republicans, and dogged journalists. A timely and provocative history that presages our Trump-era political scandals, Den of Spies demonstrates the stakes of allowing the politics of the moment to obscure the writing of our history.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
What if the scariest political thriller you ever read were a true story? Veteran journalist Craig Unger makes the case that during the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan’s campaign helped to ensure victory over Jimmy Carter by promising arms to Iran, but only on one condition: Iran had to wait until after the election to release the American hostages so that Carter wouldn’t get credit for freeing them. Unger put his credibility and his career on the line to tell the tale—and nearly ruined both. But after decades of investigation, he’s finally collected all the receipts and laid them out for the world to see. He brings a stunning amount of research to the table, but he also constructs his narrative like an expert thriller. This perversion of justice will chill you, especially because it still resonates today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign really did make a deal with Iran to delay the release of 52 American hostages until after the election, according to this labyrinthine investigation. Journalist Unger (American Kompromat) revisits the theory of a 1980 "October Surprise" plot, bringing to light new evidence of its veracity. He relies on claims made by Iranian arms dealers and an Israeli intelligence operative who alleged that they participated in negotiations between Reagan's campaign—led by campaign manager William J. Casey and running mate George H.W. Bush—and Iranian officials in Madrid and Paris. Previous investigators debunked these witnesses' claims by offering alibis establishing that Casey and Bush were elsewhere, but Unger pokes holes in the alibis, uncovering a smoking-gun cable from the U.S. embassy in Madrid that indicates Casey was indeed there at the time. Unger's narrative paints a colorful panorama of a multinational private intelligence network run by the shambolic spymaster Casey, who later became CIA director; it's full of skullduggery, including another alleged Casey-led plot to sabotage helicopters on the ill-fated American hostage-rescue mission. The account doubles as a journalistic picaresque, as Unger's reporting is impeded by groundless libel lawsuits and gutless editors (Newsweek comes in for particular scorn). The result is a persuasive affirmation of a shocking conspiracy theory.
