It's amazing that over the span of two decades, America went from this...

[grahamhgreen]

111. Not really. They did this whole "Iranian Hostage Crisis" thing to smear Carter:

Some would call it treason:

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/15/world/new-reports-say-1980-reagan-campaign-tried-to-delay-hostage-release.html

The issue of back-channel negotiations for the hostages is the subject of a documentary in the "Frontline" series on PBS, to be broadcast on Tuesday night on most public television stations. The "Frontline" documentary, "The Election Held Hostage," deals with much of the same evidence Mr. Sick uses in his opinion piece and includes an interview with him.

Mr. Sick said he has become convinced that there were two meetings between Mr. Casey and Hojatolislam Karrubi in the Ritz Hotel in Madrid in late July 1980. Hojatolislam Karrubi is now the Speaker of the the Iranian Parliament. Mr. Casey died in 1987. The "Frontline" report said he never addressed the allegations.

Mr. Sick's principal source for the Madrid meetings is Jamshid Hashemi, an Iranian arms dealer who said that he and his brother, Cyrus, had helped arrange them. Attending, they said, were Mr. Casey, the Hashemi brothers and an unnamed American intelligence officer. Cyrus Hashemi has since died. Other Sources Named

In an interview, Mr. Sick, who now teaches at Columbia University, said other people with second-hand knowledge of the meetings were Ari Ben Menashi, a former Israeli intelligence official; Arif Durrani, a Pakistani arms dealer, and Ahmad Madani, a former Iranian Defense Minister. They could not be reached for comment.

The Parry article contains two interesting quotes which I’ll let speak for themselves..

“There is something I want to tell you,” [Yassir] Arafat said, addressing [Jimmy] Carter in the presence of historian Douglas Brinkley. “You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal [for the PLO] if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the [U.S. presidential] election,” Arafat said, according to Brinkley’s article in the fall 1996 issue of Diplomatic Quarterly.”

Also from the article:

“As recently as this past week, former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr reiterated his account of Republican overtures to Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis and how that secret initiative prevented release of the hostages.” http://jonathanturley.org/2013/04/06/none-dare-call-it-treason/

This is very similar to the back room deal that scuttled the paris peace talks before the 1968 elections.

In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.
The US delegation, left, and North Vietnamese delegation at Paris peace talks The Paris peace talks may have ended years earlier, if it had not been for Nixon's subterfuge

Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.

So on the eve of his planned announcement of a halt to the bombing, Johnson learned the South Vietnamese were pulling out.

He was also told why. The FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and a transcripts of Anna Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the ambassador to "just hang on through election".

Johnson was told by Defence Secretary Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace.
President Nixon in 1970 with a map of Vietnam Nixon went on to become president and eventually signed a Vietnam peace deal in 1973

In a series of remarkable White House recordings we can hear Johnson's reaction to the news. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668