Den of Spies

Argo meets Spotlight, as New York Times bestselling author Craig Unger reveals his thirty-year investigation into the secret collusion between Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign and Iran, raising urgent questions about what happens when foreign meddling in elections goes unpunished.

Argo meets Spotlight, as New York Times bestselling author Craig Unger reveals his thirty-year investigation into the secret collusion between Ronald Reagan’s 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.

In April 1991, the New York Times ran an op-ed alleging that Ronald Reagan’s 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’s 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—planned and executed by Reagan’s campaign manager Bill Casey—amounted to a shadow foreign policy run by private citizens that ensured Reagan’s victory.

Investigative journalist Craig Unger was one of the first reporters covering the October Surprise—initially for Esquire and then Newsweek—and 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. Now Unger finally reveals the definitive story and shares 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 Trump-era political scandals, Den of Spies demonstrates the stakes of allowing the politics of the moment to obscure the writing of our history.