Sarah McClendon 5133 Connecticut Ave. N.W. Washington D.C. 20008
McClendon News - Sarah McClendon's Washington Report

Sarah McClendon was the Senior White House correspondent. She has followed the Russbacher case from the beginning and written extensively on it. She was a personal friend of one of Russbacher's lawyers, the LATE Paul Wilcher. Ms. McClendon is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and is a frequent lecturer at that school.

The following is a fax written to another journalist verifying her (Ms McClendon's) belief that Gunther Russbacher is the October Surprise pilot, and giving her account of the death of Paul Wilcher and the investigation into his death.

From Sarah McClendon
To: Dr. Ede Koenig

Re: Gunther Russbacher

I do not know all the facts about his wife's (Rayelan Allan Russbacher) activities. I know of her and have talked with her but not recently.

I do not know Martin,(Harry Martin, Publisher of the Napa Sentinel and the one who broke the story of Gunther Russbacher as the October Surprise pilot) just "know of" him.

I had thought in the past that he and I were on the same side in uncovering October Surprise. Apparently not, from what you and Gunther said. Gunther was to fax me material about what Martin wrote recently but apparently did not do so. I have just been in the hospital for five days and have not yet had time to go through my mail.

I have been writing about October Surprise since 1986 when Barbara Honegger and I broke the first story on the telephone. Some one listening, broke in, and interrupted our first broadcast.

I have written numerous articles about Russbacher in my Washington column and newsletter over the years. It is impossible now, without staff help, for me to go back and tell you all.

Here is what I believe:

I do think that Vice President Candidate George Bush went to Paris in 1980 to seal a deal between the Iranian government's top officials, the Republican candidates, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and the Republican Party; to keep 52 Americans hostage 71 more days in Iran.

At least eight of these hostages have said they believe this to be true. A number of them do not talk as they work now for the government.

I do believe (although differing with my good friend and co-worker Barbara Honegger) that Gunther was the top skilled pilot of the CIA, who was brought to Andrews Air Force Base, Washington, to pilot Bush to Paris to seal the deal with the Iranians after they had demanded either Reagan or Bush come there. I do believe that Bani Sadr thought so, as did Aril Ben-Menash of Israel who was there and saw Bush go into the room in Paris for the conference.

Bush has always denied he was there. The Secret Service who tried valiantly to place Bush in the U.S. all the time he was in Paris, filed another report to that affect later. The conference was held somewhere in the Paris suburbs. Therefore, they could say it was not "in Paris."

After Russbacher had rested about an hour, he was summoned to fly Bush back to the U.S. This time in a different plane, the SR 71 Needle Nose observation plane. It took Russbacher 1 hour and 45 minutes to make the trip. There were plans to go back to Dover AFB in Delaware, I think, but an route the pilot got word some how that they might be spotted there, so they went instead to McGuire AFB in New Jersey. They were met there, according to Russbacher, by an Air Force colonel, but he cannot remember his name. But it was a man who was close to Bush in the Bush White House days.

I do believe that Russbacher is telling the truth although some persons do not believe him. He knows enough details.

Paul Wilcher, who spent about two months writing down, in Russbacher's cell, the latters experiences, had told much about this. He believed Russbacher implicitly.

Paul Wilcher, investigative attorney, was found dead in his apartment about June 23. He had been dead for several days. He was reported by Russbacher and others to have received a secret tape from the back seat camera of the SR 71 which would have proved that Bush was on the plane. If Wilcher received this tape it could have been the cause of death by unknown hands. The District of Columbia ruled that the death was due to unknown causes or "undetermined" causes. The DC examiner said death was not from natural causes.

Various people have tried to say Wilcher died a natural death, another that he was a suicide ard now this fellow Martin saying influenza. Wilcher, with whom I kept in close contact, had not been ill. His heart was taken out of he body and two specimens of body fluids, and sent to Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, but they, too, came back with "no cause determined.". Now the DC examiner's office will not talk to me any more about the case. Ths rest of Wilcher's body was requested to be sent to a more sophisticated lab, but so far as I know, DC officials have declined to that. The police officer who investigated Wilcher's death said he never told anyone Wilcher died a natural death. But two police officers in testifying in another case erroneously said he had died naturally.

I have been told by persons whom I think ought to know, that Russbacher was at one time a prisoner of war, that several of his fingernails were ripped out, that he was a hgh level operative of the CIA, that he can tell you the number of his office in the CIA building, that he has been a political prisoner all of these years, that he was tricked into being charged with mail fraud or some other reason after he had served as a proprietary front for the CIA in its varied attempts to raise money from private investors to be used in the "drug in/weapons out", of Bush's CIA Iran-Contra war. I think a number of others in the CIA who are friends of Russbacher's can attest to this.

The congressional investigations of October Surprise have all been "rigged" from the beginning. Rep. Lee Hamilton, D. Indiana said there was no proof of Bush's going to Paris but said this before he investigated the case, and later turned out a report clearing Bush. Hamilton was a close friend of VP Quayle.

Strange that, just as Russbacher gets a favorable decision from a judge in Missouri, that all the attempts to discredit this tale should break out again.

There is a new book that is probably one of the most credible of those written about October Surprise. It is Robert Parry's "Trick or Treason; the October Surprise Mystery," in which Parry does not pin down the story of October Surprise, but raises all the doubts about those who discredit it. Most journalists and U.S. newspapers spent more time denying the story than reporting about it. The Democratic National Committee, in 1993, started to investigate it by a team of amateurs and then backed off for some unknown reasons.

The Iranians sought spare parts for American-sourced weapons and money; and used the hostages for ransom money. Some of the hostages later told the Bush people that they did not appreciate being kept longer so that they would not be delivered to Carter, who, if he had liberated them might have won the presidency instead of Reagan-Bush.