I am sure that many of you are like me and well remember January 20, 1981. I
was picking up my mail at the Fayetteville, North Carolina U. S. Post Office,
when it was announced just after Ronald Wilson Reagan was sworn in as
President that the American hostages that had been held by Khomeni in Iran
were going to be released. Jimmy Carter had lost the Presidential election the
previous November in what had been a hotly contested election that had gone
down to the wire, but in the end, it would prove that this single issue would insure
his defeat. I thought to myself, "You know something does NOT smell right here?!"
Why would the hostages be released the day the Reagan is innaugurated President
and NOT before the general election little more than 2 months earlier?!

Subsequently, we would learn from the marvelous scholarship of both Barbara
Honeigger and Carter National Security aide Gary Sick that Republican Vice
Presidential candidate George Herbert Walker Bush would go to Paris, France,
in October 1980 and "cut a deal" with the Iranian government that would delay
the release of the American hostages. If you or I did that, we would be summarily
indicted and convicted of treason. Curiously, George Bush, who was a Navy pilot
in World War II and had served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency,
he was NOT part of the elected government of the United States, and both he
and Ronald Reagan SHOULD have been impeached, removed from office and
sent to Federal prison for having participated in such a heinous and illegal act.

Needless to say, George H. W. Bush has NEVER acknowledged his participation
in this mystery thriller event, but there is a fairly substantial body of evidence to
suggest that he did indeed do so. Yet, this past week, his son, our current President
(just 25 more months and 10 days till the 2005 innauguration), issued an executive
order that will prevent his father's papers and those of other Presidents from
becoming public record--even though this is contrary to the wishes of his
precedecessors. I guess like his "hothead" remarks over the People's Republic
of China during last year's election which put us precipitously close to World War III
earlier this year over the shooting down of our surveillance plane over their airspace,
I guess we should NOT be surprised when Mr. Bush takes a position that is contrary
to those of the "mainstream"--even those of other Republican Presidents.

Liberally yours,

David Southcomb
Greenville, NC