I was only ten years-old at the time, but I remember the flap that arose before the debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Someone inside Carter’s camp stole his briefing book and handed it over it to the Reagan campaign. It turns out that it was a Kennedy guy, as is revealed in a new book on the Reagan campaign. I knew there was some serious acrimony between Carter and Kennedy’s people, but I hadn’t considered that it would be deep enough to cause open sabotage.
President Carter is still said to be deeply upset about the incident and is quoted saying, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that it made some difference.”
I bet he is even more pissed now.
Update [2009-10-15 16:48:37 by BooMan]: Now there is more confirmation.
I’ll have to dig through all my books but I thought that someone else, someone who was working in national security, stole the briefing book. Is this book just a rewriting of history to drive a stake between sectors of the Democratic Party?
Also, in case anyone forgot, Colonel Ollie North was part of the failed hostage rescue plan. If you’ve got elements of the CIA working with Iranians to hold hostages until after the election why not sabotage the rescue too?
i thought it was george will.
Since both Corbin and Kennedy are dead, I hope no one expends a lot of emotion on this. Best revenge is living well, and all that.
So Ted Kennedy gave us Ronaldus Reganus Maximus?
Huh.
I don’t like that very much.
Carter was mislabeled as not liberal enough in part because he was from the South. People forget that in 1970 when Carter was elected governor of Georgia, he became the first Southern governor to publicly state that segregation was wrong. And he worked to end discrimination in state government jobs.
Carter was not liberal enough that Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed put together a coup in the Southern Baptist Convention. (Carter was then a practicing Southern Baptist who taught his Sunday School class in Plains whenever he was there.) And they mobilized church members who had voted for Carter to vote for Reagan. Why? Because Carter was unapologetically pro-choice, was moving forward in ending de facto desegregation in the rural South and doing it from a religious background.
Looking back at the way the press treated Carter and who those people were, it is now clear that Carter was sandbagged by the early Republican Wurlitzer as well as by George H. W. Bush use of former CIA agents’ dissatisfaction with the Church Commission to sandbag Carter’s diplomacy. Which became all the worse when the post-Vietnam military couldn’t put together a hostage rescue mission without their aircraft running into one another.
At least Paul Corbin got to see the historic consequences of his action.
It is sad, and the acrimony between the two wings of the Democratic party that resulted from Kennedy’s primarying of Carter is what more than anything else kept Kennedy from being the Democrats’ nominee for President. In that, it is doubly sad.
I think many republicans were banking on a similar Obama/Clinton fracture following the ’08 convention, which would have likely resulted in a McCain victory (and don’t think for a minute that they didn’t have operatives working from the inside and in the media to stir it up).
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New book pins ‘debategate’ on Dem
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I suspect Carter has long since stopped caring.
I’ve never understood the Kennedy People and their Carter-bashing. Never will. And I put a lot of the blame — not a majority by any stretch, but a fair bit — for Reagan on them.
I’ve never understood why people in our party refuse to stand behind Carter when he has the audacity to say something we all know is true, but that doesn’t jibe with Village Wisdom. We have a lot of cowards in our party, and it ain’t just the ones in office.
I don’t buy this account for one second. Show me the proof, not the allegation.
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Corbin first visited the Reagan-Bush headquarters in Arlington, Va., on Sept. 29, meeting with senior campaign adviser Jim Baker and then with Casey. He would make at least three more visits, signing in on Oct. 11, Oct. 25, and Nov. 3.
On Oct. 25, Corbin signed in at 9:35 a.m., gave his destination as “Casey” and picked up a check for $1,500. It was just three days before the big debate between Reagan and Carter.
On Nov. 3, the day before the election, Corbin picked up a second and final check from the Reagan campaign, this time in the amount of $1,360. He also spent nearly two hours meeting with Casey.
Carter’s debate briefing books had been assembled and copied in the White House starting the night of Oct. 23 and finishing around 11 o’clock the next morning. Copies of the briefing books arrived at the Reagan campaign’s headquarters not long thereafter. Reagan adviser David Gergen later recalled a package arriving at the Reagan-Bush campaign on a rainy Saturday, “probably Oct. 25” — the same day that Corbin met with Casey.
The “debategate” scandal didn’t explode until 1983, when Laurence Barrett of Time reported in his book “Gambling With History” that someone in the Reagan camp had “filched” Carter’s briefing material. A number of figures came under suspicion in the resulting investigations but were never charged. Paul Corbin was one. Congressman Albosta’s committee was unable to pin Corbin down. Frustrated, Albosta told The New York Times, “He denies everything, … doesn’t even know his own name. This leads people to suspect he had some effort and involvement.”
At the height of the Albosta investigation, Baker received a call from Congressman Dick Cheney (R-Wyo.). Cheney told Baker that a member of his staff who had long known Corbin, Tim Wyngaard, confided that Corbin had privately acknowledged orchestrating the theft of the Carter briefing books and giving them to Casey. Wyngaard, the executive director of the House Republican Policy Committee, confirmed to Albosta committee investigators and to The New York Times that Corbin had claimed credit for lifting the briefing books.
At various other times, Corbin admitted directly or at least hinted that he’d stolen the briefing books. A number of sources have confirmed various aspects of Corbin’s role in the caper, including Cheney, John Seigenthaler and Bill Schulz. What’s more, Gerald Rafshoon, who was in charge of Carter’s media, recalled seeing Corbin around the Carter White House late in the 1980 campaign and thought it odd that this Kennedy man and Carter hater would be there. He had no idea at the time that Corbin was covertly working for Reagan.
Corbin did deny in a sworn statement to the Albosta committee that he’d given the briefing books to the Reagan campaign. But lying to federal officials was old-hat for Corbin. As Time magazine politely said, his “reputation for veracity is uneven.” Likewise, the FBI observed in one of its many reports on Corbin that he seemed to be a “prevaricator.”
Regardless, Corbin, the old master, left no fingerprints — in this case, literally. Although the FBI found both Jim Baker’s and David Gergen’s fingerprints on the briefing books, they found none of Corbin’s.
Paul Corbin, a campaign worker in the Democratic National Committee was also a whistle blower. In late 1963, he collected evidence of the skimming of campaign funds by JFK’s friend and appointments secretary Kenny O’Donnell. This eventually reached the president who took no action. It might have been that at least some of the skimming was going for payoffs or to pay bribes for JFK.
House Committee on Un-American Activities – Paul Corbin
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Also, around the end of this month, RFK returns from a trip to the Far East. Since he has been sent there by LBJ, he enters the Oval Office to report. After a brief discussion on the trip, LBJ abruptly tells him, “I want you to get rid of that Paul Corbin (one of Kennedy’s political staff whose loyalties Johnson distrusts). “I don’t think I should,” RFK replies, “he was appointed by President Kennedy, who thought he was good.” “Do it,” LBJ snaps. “President Kennedy isn’t president anymore. I am.” RFK bristles: “I know you’re president, and don’t you ever talk to me like that again.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The party was irreparably fractured after the ’80 convention and many egos were bruised, so this type of “payback” thing shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise. From a practical standpoint, it’s also important to note that Carter’s energy independence push was completely gutted when Reagan got elected, which has had significant long-term consequences.