ANOTHER REASON TO GIVE THANKS FOR RONALD REAGAN

Secret US plot to steal Moscow's Olympic flame (Chris Hastings, The Telegraph, August 29th, 2004)

Britain and America tried to bolster support for an international boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics by proposing a rival event in the West African state of Ivory Coast, according to newly declassified documents.

The papers, from the United States State Department, show that American diplomats lobbied the former French colony about holding "Olympic-type events" on its soil.

President Jimmy Carter, who called for a boycott of the 1980 games in protest at Russia's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, believed that a sporting competition in Africa would solve two problems.

He hoped that it would encourage developing countries that were not aligned to either superpower to join the boycott of the Moscow games and offer Western athletes - who were largely sceptical of a ban - the chance to compete in an alternative event.

A memo from the US State Department to the American embassy in Ivory Coast dated February 1980 said: "Action requested: At your discretion, embassy should seek earliest opportunity to approach the government of Ivory Coast at high level to review results of February 12 meeting in Washington.

"You might also broach subject of getting Ivory Coast to serve as a site for some Olympic-type sporting events in late 1980. Request embassy report on its approach to government of the Ivory Coast by immediate cable, as department wishes to call in Ivorian ambassador for parallel discussions with department's Olympic boycott co-ordinator."[...]

The documents do not address the issue of what sort of games could be staged in a country where the primary exports were cocoa, coffee, and mangoes, or how they would compare with the Moscow Olympics, which were held in July and August 1980 and which cost an unprecedented £100 million.