The White House suppressed congressional investigations that could have freed the hostages

Evidence

What is more important is that Rouleau seemed to be able to grant in advance that personalities or currents of ideas at work in the crisis might have a potentially serious role. He did not judge things impetuously, did not prejudice something in advance, did not jump to conclusions encouraged by officials, did not leave stories uninvestigated. Representative Hansen’s visit emerges as a much more successful undertaking in what Rouleau tells us about it than one could have suspected; there is even substantial evidence given by Rouleau on November 24, 1979, that Hansen’s success with the Iranians was deliberately allowed to shrivel up by the White House (and the United States media), just as a possible congressional investigation into United States-Iranian banking procedures (sought by the Iranians, possibly as an exchange for the hostages’ release) was snuffed out by the White House. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 290

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal mentioned in passage 288, and to Christopher Hitchens’ writing about the ‘blowback’ thesis.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the congressional banking-procedures investigation sought by the Iranians — was it ever documented in US archives?