receives a $7 million commission. Casey is said to use an aide named Tom Carter in the negotiations. September 22, 1980: Iraq invades Iran. Late September 1980: An expatriate Iranian arms dealer named Hushang Lavi claims he met with Richard V. Allen, the Reagan campaign's national security expert, Robert "Bud" McFarlane, and Lawrence Silberman, co-chairman of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy advisors during the campaign, and discussed the possible exchange of F-4 parts for American hostages, but Lavi says they asserted they "were already in touch with the Iranians themselves". October 15–20: Meetings are held in Paris between emissaries of the Reagan/Bush campaign, with Casey as "key participant", and "high-level Iranian and Israeli representatives". October 21: Iran, for reasons not explained, abruptly shifts its position in secret negotiations with the Carter administration and disclaims "further interest in receiving military equipment". October 21–23: Israel secretly ships F-4 fighter-aircraft tires to Iran, in violation of the U.S. arms embargo, and Iran disperses the hostages to different locations. January 20, 1981: Hostages are formally released into United States custody after spending 444 days in captivity. The release takes place just minutes after Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president. Investigations Frontline The investigative journalism TV series Frontline produced a 1991 documentary which "investigate[d] startling new evidence about how both the Carter and Reagan camps may have tried to forge secret deals for [the Iranian] hostages during the 1980 presidential campaign. Gary Sick Gary Sick wrote an editorial for The New York Times in April 1991, and a book (October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan), published in November 1991, on the subject. Sick's credibility was boosted by the fact that he was a retired naval captain, served on Ford's, Carter's, and Reagan's National Security Council, and held high positions with many prominent organizations; moreover, he had authored a book recently on US-Iran relations (All Fall Down). Sick wrote that in October 1980, officials in Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign, including future CIA Director William Casey, made a secret deal with Iran to delay the release of the American hostages until after the election; in return for this, the United States purportedly arranged for Israel to ship weapons to Iran. Sick admitted that "The story is tangled and murky, and it may never be fully unraveled." He was unable to prove his claims, including that, in the days before the presidential