Ben Barnes' Other Secret

(Because people are chattering about the New York Times’ Ben Barnes story concerning Iran holding Americans hostage and Ronald Reagan’s candidacy, I am sending out my midweek dispatch a day early. This is about Ben’s other secret, which could have also changed a presidency, and the course of American history. He has never been held accountable, and never will be, for his self-serving behavior. But the damage done by George W. and Reagan, in many ways, is also the fault of the former Texas Lieutenant Governor.

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“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” - H.L. Mencken, 1880-1956, American columnist and cultural critic

Ben Barnes has been involved in changing the course of American history at least twice, and neither of those outcomes were for the better, except for him. His latest unveiled political intrigue involved helping Ronald Reagan become president by assisting a secret deal with Iran, but he also facilitated George W. Bush reaching the White House. In that instance, I was in the middle of what happened, and witnessed the display of cowardice from Barnes that saved Bush’s candidacy.

The former Texas Lieutenant Governor and House Speaker, who sometimes behaves like a Democrat, recently made headlines in the New York Times by revealing he had made a trip through the Mideast to influence the timing on the release of U.S. hostages held by Iran during that country’s 1979 revolution. Barnes said he traveled with his mentor, the late Texas Governor John Connally, to spread the word that Iran would be wise to delay release of the Americans held in Teheran until after the 1980 election. Connally’s offer was a “better deal” for the Iranians if Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter.

Ben Barnes, Former Texas Lieutenant Gov. and House Speaker

The arrangement Connally supposedly outlined was from the new Reagan administration and would send arms to Teheran through Israel if the hostages were held until the next president took office. The timing of the release, ultimately, transpired in a manner that was of great political and electoral value to Reagan, and the public knew nothing, though much was suspected. Reagan’s campaign manager, William Casey, who became the CIA Director, reportedly met in Madrid, Spain with Iran and finalized the arms deal in October, just before the election. House and Senate investigations later concluded no such agreement was constructed, though later an embassy cable was produced that indicated, “Casey was in town [Madrid] for purposes unknown.” The term “October Surprise” had, at that moment, been born for American presidential elections.  

Everyone knows what happened, though, and Barnes did, too, even during the time he was on the trip. He is acting, however, at age 85, as though he has been struck by a revelation and was prompted to share the story because President Carter has entered hospice. Barnes may have spent his youth on a peanut farm in Comanche County, but his professed naiveté about his trip with Connally is more than a tad disingenuous. Barnes knew what was developing and he was just as aware of what doors were certain to open for him as a political operative and businessman because of his involvement. Influence could be exercised on both sides of the political aisle, which would be lucrative, and his wealth has always been central to the calculus of Ben Barnes’ politics.

That’s also the rationale I am certain he used to protect George W. Bush.

In 1994 when Bush was running for governor against the incumbent Ann Richards, I was a TV correspondent on a debate panel between the two candidates in Dallas. I had decided one of my questions was going to be about Bush and the Texas National Guard. We were both in the generation that confronted the draft for military service in Vietnam, and I was curious how he managed to land a pilot’s slot to train at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston. Generally, wait lists for the guard in any state were multiple years. In my hometown, it was three years to enlist in the Guard’s infantry and five to train as a pilot. In both instances, though, you would have been drafted long before the Guard called you up.

Unless, of course, your daddy was a Texas congressman, and a rising Republican. Even though Houston had dozens of pilots that were home from Vietnam who wanted to fly weekends for the Texas Air National Guard and keep their flight certificates active, he managed to land a position to train as a pilot in a program that cost taxpayers just under a million dollars. I figured how that happened was an important question for him to answer because it spoke to privilege and character.  

“Mr. Bush,” I said, “a question about your military record. In 1968, there were 100 thousand young men on waiting lists around this country trying to get into the National Guard. Their motivation was not so much service of their country as it was avoiding potentially deadly combat in Vietnam. Despite these waiting lists, which in many cases were as long as three years, you were able to walk into a National Guard unit in the Houston area and sign up for an assignment flying F-102s. You, and your guard commander at that time, said that your father, who was then a congressman, had nothing to do with your getting beyond these waiting lists that existed around the country. Could you clarify for us how you managed to surmount the waiting lists, and the second part of that question, if avoiding combat was not your motivation, why did you not make yourself eligible for the draft?”

“Uh, Jim, I joined the National Guard because, I mean, I got in the National Guard because people did not want to spend the amount of time necessary to become a pilot. It required a commitment to learn how to fly; it required another six and a half months to learn how to fly the F-102. As you may recall, most guard assignments were for six months and then people went on weekend duty once a month. I decided I wanted to learn how to fly a jet, and I did learn how to fly a jet. And I did fly a jet. It took a year and a half of training, something that most people did not want to do. We had five pilot slots open, and I was pilot number three of the five that got in, in my class. Putting an F-102 jet in afterburners in a single seat, single engine aircraft, was a thrill but it also wasn’t trying to avoid duty. Had that engine failed, I could have been killed, and so I was at risk. I enjoyed it, and I did my service to my country, but to answer your question, my father, just like my commanding officer said, had nothing to do with me getting into that unit.”

“You are confident,” I asked, “that no influence was exercised in your behalf?”

“I am, yeah.”

(Question occurs on video at 40:15.)

Bush’s campaign clearly wanted the issue dismissed. When I stepped away from my chair on the debate platform, I was immediately confronted by Karl Rove and Communications Director Karen Hughes.

“What kind of question was that?” she asked. “What’s his National Guard service got to do with being governor, Jim? I don’t see the point.”

“Well, if he’s evading the draft, it goes to character, Karen.”

“Oh, come on, Moore. That’s nonsense. And you know it. That’s a cheap shot.”

Rove, the world later discovered, had a modicum of expertise regarding “cheap shots.” Less than five years earlier, he had told a friend he could get Bush elected governor, which would set him up nicely for the White House. He knew the military service record was tainted and could be problematic if Bush ever ran. Follow up stories to my question, therefore, had to be eliminated as a possibility.

The Richards staff, though, was prepared, too. The next morning, I got a call from Chuck McDonald, who was the governor’s communications director on the campaign.

“You need to call Ben Barnes about the Guard stuff,” he said. “He set it up.”

“Will he talk to me?”

“Yeah, we’ve already let him know you will be calling.”

When I got the lobbyist, fund raiser, and failed office holder on the phone, he explained that he had gotten several sons of the wealthy and politically connected into the Guard to keep them out of the draft. Barnes said he kept a “political list,” and his office would take calls when he was lieutenant governor, asking for the favor. Dallas Cowboy football players, politicians’ sons, and the children of the rich and privileged were all protected from war by Barnes. He said the operation was run for him by a member of the Guard who had retired to the Texas Gulf Coast, a man who remembered putting Bush on the list, and he had agreed to go on camera and tell the story. Barnes said he’d provide me the contact information in a few days and to please call back.

After multiple attempts to contact him over the next week, Barnes finally got on the phone. He asked when I wanted to travel to visit the retired soldier. I told him a day when I could pull off the logistics and he asked me to call him that morning before I left, and he would provide the name, address, and phone number. The cloak and dagger nonsense began to make me think he was wavering, or he had simply shared a fanciful story with a Richards campaign staffer, and it came around to bite him back. Nonetheless, the morning we were to leave for the interview, I called Barnes for the information after we had packed our TV gear.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do it, Jim.”

“I don’t understand, governor. What’s the problem.”

“Well, my guy has had a change of heart.”

“What do you mean?”

“He just doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“I don’t get it. Why?”

“He said he became a widow in the last year, and he moved in with his daughter and son-in-law, and they are both big Bush supporters. He said he told them what he was going to do and their response was that if he did tape the interview with you, that he would no longer be welcome to live in their home. He’s got two grandkids there, too, Jim.”

“Surely, he knew all this before he agreed to talk.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. But I can’t make it happen. Thought I could.”

I concluded Barnes had concocted a fine tale that held not a shred of truth. There was no evidence the soldier or his family even existed, and none has ever been produced. There was a political list, though, and Barnes worked it to curry favor for his career and to fund raise for his campaigns with the established relationships. I had no doubt that the lieutenant governor had helped Bush escape the draft with his Guard assignment. That’s how things worked during the Vietnam Era. If, however, he had been forthright, and acknowledged that things are different for the rich and privileged, Bush might not have been elected governor, which would have made his presidency improbable, too. Texans were not likely to be fond of a kid from a rich connected family whose wealthy parents got him out of the war while their sons walked the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam.

The truth didn’t come out, though, until May of 2004, when John Kerry was running against Bush, who was seeking a second term. Barnes did a lot of business with Bush corporate supporters, and he was accused of keeping quiet about putting Bush on the Guard list in exchange for the new Texas governor’s administration getting him a multi-million dollar lobbying deal with the state’s lottery contractor.

I, in the meantime, spent the intervening years, almost a decade, filing Freedom of Information Requests on Bush’s Texas National Guard record. Documents required for service records were consistently missing. I wrote my second book using that research, though, and multiple interviews. Dan Rather and CBS News made claims I was unable to completely substantiate in my book, and they cost the veteran anchorman his job, even though he got the story right: Bush had gone AWOL after Barnes had done him the favor of protecting him with a Guard posting.

During a Kerry for President fund raiser in Austin in 2004, Ben Barnes finally spoke the truth about how he had helped the once and future president avoid the draft by getting him a slot in the Texas Air National Guard. A small video clip of his admission showed up online. I captured it and sent out a series of emails to journalists and political professionals and party activists to make certain they did not miss his mea maxima culpa.  

“I got a young man named George W. Bush into the National Guard, and I’m not necessarily proud of that, but I did it,” Barnes told a group of Kerry supporters. “I became more ashamed of myself than I’ve ever been because it was the worst thing I did — help a lot of wealthy supporters and a lot of people who had family names of importance get in the National Guard. I’m very sorry of that and I’m very ashamed of it, and I apologize to the voters of Texas for that.”

Barnes apparently had a flicker of conscience after walking along the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington and looking at the names of the almost 57,000 dead. His guilt, however, did not raise its tiny little head until he had made millions working in the Texas legislature as a lobbyist for the state lottery. Barnes’ decision not to let me try to interview the Guard soldier who handled the political list, assuming he even existed, was a calculated business move. He had seen polls moving in Bush’s direction and away from Ann Richards, and if he outed the future governor, getting clients and raising money in a Bush-friendly Texas capitol would be a challenge that he might not meet.

If Barnes had spoken up, though, Bush might not have become governor, which would have made president damned near impossible, too. We might not have had the War in Iraq, thousands of young Americans would still be alive and raising their families, establishing their careers, and an estimated million Iraqis would still be contributing to their country. Forty-five million Americans might not be without health insurance, the deficit would not have soared because he cut taxes while funding a war that ended up costing close to a trillion dollars, torture would not have become a practice by a nation that had never been guilty of such a horror, and the SEC would not have allowed banks to go unregulated.

Ronald Reagan was as bad, if not worse, than Bush the younger. Imagine if Barnes’ conscience had a pulse after he came back from his Mideast trip with John Connally, and thought, “Hell, I’m a Democrat. I can’t let this happen and betray an honorable president like Carter. I have to speak the truth to America.” I think it’s reasonable to conclude Reagan would have lost, and there is a long list of horrible events that would have never transpired.

Tens of thousands might not have died if their president would have considered AIDS a deadly disease instead of ignoring the virus. Hundreds of billions of dollars, which he borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay the national debt, have never been paid back and have much to do with the financial integrity of the entitlement in 2023. An uncountable number of Americans lost their homes after he deregulated the savings and loan industry and 750 of those institutions failed, which cost taxpayers $150 billion to bail them out.

But wait, kids, there’s more to the Reagan story.

He vetoed the Farm Credit Bill, which would have saved family farms. Instead, about a third of all farms in the U.S. went out of business. He tripled the national debt with his economic policies and unemployment reached 10.8 percent. His administration had more documented corruption than any president in U.S. history with 138 officials investigated or indicted. Of course, most of them were pardoned by either Reagan or his successor, Bush the elder, before they could ever go to trial. He gave aid to Iraq and Saddam Hussein and ignored his atrocities, and allowed a drugs for guns deal out of Nicaragua that became known as Iran-Contra, our lovely parting gift for Reagan’s administration illegally supporting an undeclared war in Central America. Let’s see, what else? Oh yea, he backed the racist apartheid government in South Africa.

There’s more but it’s book length. The important point is that none of the horrors of Reagan or George W. might have happened, if Ben Barnes, son of a cotton farmer in Comanche County, would have just opened his mouth and forced out the distasteful truths. But he didn’t. Instead, he made a lot of money while people died, unnecessarily.

Ain’t that America?