{"id":50065,"date":"2026-09-08T21:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T04:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=50065"},"modified":"2026-09-08T21:21:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T04:21:16","slug":"book-den-of-spies-reagan-carter-and-the-secret-history-of-the-treason-that-stole-the-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/09\/08\/book-den-of-spies-reagan-carter-and-the-secret-history-of-the-treason-that-stole-the-white-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Book: “Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Craig Unger<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Argo<\/em> meets Spotlight<\/em>, as journalist Craig Unger, New York Times bestselling author of American Kompromat and House of Bush, House of Saud, reveals his thirty-year investigation into the secret collusion between Ronald Reagan\u2019s 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.<\/strong>

It was a tinderbox of an accusation. In April 1991, the New York Times<\/em> ran an op-ed alleging that Ronald Reagan\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2014planned and executed by Reagan\u2019s campaign manager Bill Casey\u2014amounted to a shadow foreign policy run by private citizens that ensured Reagan\u2019s victory.

Investigative journalist Craig Unger was one of the first reporters covering the October Surprise\u2014initially for Esquire<\/em> and then Newsweek<\/em>\u2014and 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 worked on late at night and between assignments.

In Den of Spies<\/em>, Unger reveals the definitive story of the October Surprise, going inside his three-decade reporting odyssey 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. Timely and provocative, with powerful echoes of our Trump-era political scandals, Den of Spies<\/em> demonstrates the stakes of allowing the politics of the moment to obscure the writing of our history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About the author<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cI don\u2019t like to be wrong,\u201d says Craig Unger, the author of a new book that sets out to prove the infamous October Surprise conspiracy. \u201cAnd worse, I don\u2019t like to be called wrong when I\u2019m right.\u201d\u00a0(Benedict Evans for The Atlantic)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Craig Unger<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Craig Unger is an American journalist and writer. His most recent book is\u00a0The Fall of the House of Bush<\/em>, about the internal feud in the Bush family and the rise and collusion of the neoconservative and Christian right in Republican party politics, viewing each group’s weltanschauung and efforts concerning present and potential future US policy through a distinctly negative prism. His previous work,\u00a0House of Bush, House of Saud<\/em>\u00a0explored the relationship between the Bush family and the House of Saud. Craig Unger’s work is featured in Michael Moore’s film\u00a0Fahrenheit 9\/11<\/strong>. Unger has served as deputy editor of the New York Observer and was editor-in-chief of Boston Magazine. He has written about George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush for The New Yorker, Esquire Magazine and Vanity Fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Goodreads.com)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Craig Unger Argo meets Spotlight, as journalist Craig Unger, New York Times bestselling author of American Kompromat and House of Bush, House of Saud, reveals his thirty-year investigation into the secret collusion between Ronald Reagan\u2019s 1980 presidential campaign and Iran, raising urgent questions about what happens when foreign meddling in our elections… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1945],"tags":[2475],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50065"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50067,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50065\/revisions\/50067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}