GOOD EVENING: The show begins in 1980 with the rumored "October Surprise"conspiracy allegation...
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Based on the radio show schedule and book descriptions provided, this appears to be a four-hour episode of "CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor" focusing on two major historical books:
- First Half (Hours 1-2): Discussion of Craig Unger's "Den of Spies," which investigates the alleged "October Surprise" of 1980. Unger's book examines claims that Reagan's campaign, led by Bill Casey, made secret deals with Iran to delay the release of American hostages until after the 1980 election. The book draws on three decades of research, including Robert Parry's previously unseen archives.
- Second Half (Hours 3-4): Coverage of Robert Cwiklik's "Sheridan's Secret Mission," which explores a critical moment in post-Civil War history. The book focuses on General Philip Sheridan's 1874 covert mission to New Orleans, investigating violence against freedmen by the White League. It details how Southern Democrats and paramilitary groups worked to undermine Reconstruction-era protections for Black rights, despite President Grant's efforts to protect freedmen's voting rights.
1985 Nancy and Ronald Reagan
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good evening. The show begins tonight in President's Day. Three presidents to be celebrated and examined |
| 0:07.1 | the course of the evening. First up is President Reagan, President Reagan succeeding President Carter. |
| 0:15.2 | It was called the October Surprise. That language is 40 years out of date. A new book is Den of Spies, which is a |
| 0:22.8 | metaphorical reference by the Iranians to the American Embassy. You will recall in 1979, |
| 0:31.6 | the revolution in Iran ran into the American Embassy and took hostages and kept them all the way till |
| 0:38.9 | inauguration day, 1981. That was huge turmoil internationally, but also domestically, |
| 0:46.7 | for Jimmy Carter's re-election campaign. Ronald Reagan and his staff, according to the research |
| 0:53.8 | done by Craig Unger, |
| 0:55.8 | and Craig's been doing this for decades, always looking back in on this story, |
| 1:01.4 | is that they were aware that if Jimmy Carter freed the hostages, it would be a big plus for him. |
| 1:08.4 | The polls were running even at that point early in the campaign was Ronald Reagan |
| 1:12.6 | having won the nomination for the Republicans. So they called it the October surprise. Carter |
| 1:18.7 | will release the hostages. There'll be a great big event and they'll be re-elected. This came to them |
| 1:24.7 | acutely after the failure of so-called Desert 1, |
| 1:27.8 | the rescue effort that failed in the desert because of broken equipment, |
| 1:31.8 | losing the lives of many American soldiers because of a collision. |
| 1:37.9 | October surprise. |
| 1:39.0 | It was always a story during the campaign. |
| 1:42.5 | The story right up until the election and then because Ronald Reagan |
| 1:47.0 | went overwhelmingly, it didn't seem that they needed tricks. Anybody needed tricks. |
| 1:52.7 | Well, there was research at the time starting in the 1990s and Craig got involved in the research and eventually was, he's a freelancer, |
| 2:04.4 | but he was taken up by Newsweek magazine and they had a team working in. And Craig in his book |
... |
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