documents. The documents included numerous references to a monitoring effort for any such October Surprise. The Subcommittee, chaired by former U.S. Rep. Donald Albosta (D–MI), issued a comprehensive report on May 17, 1984, describing each type of information that was detected and its possible source. A section of the report was dedicated to the October Surprise issue. Origins The first printed instance of the October Surprise conspiracy theory has been attributed to a story in the December 2, 1980, issue of Executive Intelligence Review, a periodical published by followers of Lyndon LaRouche. Written by Robert Dreyfuss, the article cited "Iranian sources" in Paris as well as "Top level intelligence sources in Reagan's inner circle" as saying that Henry Kissinger met with representatives of Mohammad Beheshti during the week of November 12, 1980. The story claimed that "pro-Reagan British intelligence circles and the Kissinger faction" meeting with the Iranians six to eight weeks prior had interfered with "President Carter's efforts to secure an arms-for-hostage deal with Teheran". The LaRouche movement returned to the story in the September 2, 1983, issue of New Solidarity, stating "The deal ... fell through when the hard-line mullahs boycotted the Majlis in late October." The conspiracy theory garnered little attention until news of the Iran Contra affair broke in November 1986. John M. Barry of Newsweek has said that Iran-Contra "created fertile ground for the October Surprise theory". Scott D'Amico in Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History wrote that "[t]he arms-deal arrangement provided credence to those who believed Reagan was fulfilling his end of the October surprise pact with Khomeni." In the November 24, 1986, issue of The New York Times, William Safire charged: "The geopolitical excuse offered now - that the ransom was a plan to influence post-Khomeini Iran - is a feeble cover-up. Robert McFarlane first approached the Reagan campaign in the summer of 1980 with an Iranian in tow who proposed to deliver our hostages to Mr. Reagan rather than President Carter, thereby swinging the U.S. election. The Reagan representatives properly recoiled, but Mr. McFarlane has had Iranian held hostages on the brain ever since." Safire's piece was based upon information he solicited from Laurence Silberman in 1984 regarding a brief meeting four years earlier between Silberman, McFarlane, and Richard V. Allen with a Malaysian man who proposed a plan to contact someone who could influence Iran to delay the release of