Kidnapping and Hostages

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      Netanyahu’s Bind: Compromising in Gaza or Holding On to Power at Home

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      To end the war in Gaza and free the remaining Israeli hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have to cut deals that analysts say could end his government — and potentially his career.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is fighting two parallel battles, one in Gaza and another at home — and neither is going according to plan.In Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu is leading a military campaign to defeat Hamas and free the remaining Israeli hostages captured during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. At home, he is fighting to secure both his short-term political survival and his long-term legacy.On both fronts, he is struggling.In Gaza, more than 100 hostages remain captive despite months of war and protracted negotiations for their release. Hamas is battered but undefeated, and generals have privately said that the war, despite devastating Gaza and killing more than 26,000 people, according to officials there, is approaching a deadlock. In Israel, polls show the prime minister would easily lose an election if one were held tomorrow. And after Mr. Netanyahu presided over the defense failures on Oct. 7, the deadliest day in Israel’s history, his legacy has been ruined.His efforts to resolve these crises are at odds with each other, analysts said.To burnish his legacy, he is pushing for a landmark peace deal with Saudi Arabia, a long-term strategic goal for Israel. Saudi Arabia, however, will not normalize ties without an Israeli commitment to a two-state solution. And without greater cooperation from Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies, it will become harder for Israel to wind down its war in Gaza and plan for the territory’s future.But to retain power and preserve his right-wing coalition, he must reject the premise of a Palestinian state.An Israeli soldier, photographed during an escorted tour by the Israeli military for international journalists, taking up a position in the central Gaza Strip.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Negotiators Close In on Hostage Deal That Would Halt Fighting in Gaza for Weeks

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      A written draft agreement calls for the phased release of captives held by Hamas in exchange for a cessation in Israel’s military offensive for about two months.American-led negotiators are edging closer to an agreement in which Israel would suspend its war in Gaza for about two months in exchange for the release of more than 100 hostages still held by Hamas, a deal that could be sealed in the next two weeks and would transform the conflict consuming the region.Negotiators have developed a written draft agreement merging proposals offered by Israel and Hamas in the last 10 days into a basic framework that will be the subject of talks in Paris on Sunday. While there are still important disagreements to be worked out, negotiators are cautiously optimistic that a final accord is within reach, according to U.S. officials who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive talks.President Biden spoke by phone separately Friday with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, who have served as intermediaries with Hamas, to narrow the remaining differences. He is also sending his C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to Paris for Sunday’s talks with Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials. If Mr. Burns makes enough progress, Mr. Biden may then send his Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, who just returned to Washington, back to the region to help finalize the agreement.“Both leaders affirmed that a hostage deal is central to establishing a prolonged humanitarian pause in the fighting and ensure additional lifesaving humanitarian assistance reaches civilians in need throughout Gaza,” the White House said in a statement Friday night summarizing the president’s conversation with Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatar’s prime minister. “They underscored the urgency of the situation and welcomed the close cooperation among their teams to advance recent discussions.”In a statement in Israel on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed his commitment to securing the release of those hostages who were not freed as part of a more limited agreement in November. “As of today, we have returned 110 of our hostages and we are committed to returning all of them home,” he said. “We are dealing with this and we are doing so around the clock, including now.”The hostages have been in captivity since Oct. 7, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel and killed an estimated 1,200 people and seized about 240 more in the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history. Israel’s military retaliation since then has killed more than 25,000 people, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. It is not clear how many of those killed in Gaza were Hamas combatants.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      At Davos, War Is on the Agenda, but the Focus Is on A.I. and Elections

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      The leaders and executives gathering at the World Economic Forum are obsessed with elections and artificial intelligence, not Ukraine or Gaza.Each day this week has brought a new and fleeting reminder to the executives and politicians at the annual World Economic Forum meeting of the two wars threatening global security and clouding the economy. Ukraine’s president spoke on Tuesday. Israel’s spoke on Thursday.Neither was able to hold the collective attention of a gathering that this year has focused overwhelmingly on artificial intelligence and populist politics.Gaza and Ukraine have made daily appearances on the public agenda in Davos, along with climate change and economic inequality. But in the warm halls and slushy streets around town, conversations almost inevitably turn to the two accelerating trends that are destabilizing business models and democracies.Everyone wants to talk about how A.I. and this year’s elections, especially in the United States, could shake up the world. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel led by Hamas or the ensuing Israeli bombing of Gaza? Drowned out in comparison.“No one is talking about Israel,” said Rachel Goldberg, who came to Davos to urge action to free the more than 100 hostages who were taken on Oct. 7 and continue to be held by Hamas, including her 23-year-old son, Hersh.In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Goldberg said she was not surprised the war had taken a back seat here. “I think it’s complicated,” she said. “And I think it’s very polarizing.”Davos is many things layered on top of one another. It is a font of wealthy idealism, where the phrase “committed to improving the state of the world” frequently adorns the walls of the main meeting center.The forum is a networking event where chief executives, world leaders, celebrities, philanthropists and journalists speed-date through half-hour coffee meetings. It is a trade show for big ideas, with overlapping panel discussions on topics including gender equity, media misinformation and the transition to green energy.It is also a venue for top government officials to speak on grave issues, including war. That is where much of the Gaza and Ukraine discussion played out this week.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, meeting on Tuesday.Laurent Gillieron/Keystone, via Associated PressPresident Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called for international aid — but not more weapons — in a packed-house address on Tuesday to hundreds of people. He also took questions from reporters afterward.Without more assistance from the United States and others, Mr. Zelensky said, “a huge crisis will happen.” He added: “We have a war now, and we will have a huge crisis — a crisis for the whole of Europe.”Several leaders spoke about Gaza and the broader conflict it has spawned in the Middle East, though typically to smaller crowds. In a room of about 60 attendees on Wednesday, Mohammad Mustafa, the chairman of Palestine Investment Fund and the former deputy prime minister of Palestine, called for additional international aid for the people in Gaza and for an end to the war.“The military action has got to stop very quickly,” Mr. Mustafa said. “There is no need for anyone to build their political careers at the expense of more Palestinian people.”Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the foreign minister of Iran, blamed Israel for raising tensions in the Middle East in the past several months. “If the genocide in Gaza stops, then it will lead to the end of the other crises and attacks in the region,” he said.In his Thursday speech, President Isaac Herzog of Israel called Iran the center of an “empire of evil” destabilizing the Middle East and displayed a photograph of Kfir Bibas, a 1-year-old hostage being held in Gaza. “We have a very cruel, sadistic enemy who has taken a decision to try to torture the Israeli national psyche as well as the hostages themselves,” Mr. Herzog said.But those speeches rarely dominated the conversations on the sidelines of the event, at the nightly private dinners after the day’s agenda concluded or in most of the storefronts that large corporations paid to transform into branded event spaces along the main promenade in town.President Isaac Herzog of Israel with a picture of Kfir Bibas, a child who was taken hostage by Hamas, on Thursday.Denis Balibouse/ReutersOne possible explanation: Attendees and leaders here do not view either war as a significant threat at the moment to the global economy. Neither Gaza nor Ukraine cracked the Top 10 near-term concerns in the Global Risk Report — a survey of 1,500 global leaders — that the forum released on the eve of the gathering. A World Economic Forum chief economists’ report released this week suggested that growth forecasts for the Middle East had “slightly weakened” amid uncertainties about the war between Israel and Hamas. It did not mention Ukraine.In private conversations around Davos this week, corporate leaders acknowledged the wars in Gaza and Ukraine as one of many concerns. But they grew much more animated about other topics that they said they expected to affect their businesses in the near term — potentially enormously, for good or ill.A.I. topped that list. In interviews, executives expounded, usually with significant enthusiasm, on the benefits and drawbacks of the technology. They also talked politics, exhaustively. Over dinner, they and other attendees debated whether former President Donald J. Trump would win back the White House in November — and how his populist, protectionist policy could roil markets and upend their business models.Some executives explicitly ranked Gaza and Ukraine lower than the American elections on their list of geopolitical concerns. Many attendees lamented that there was not more energy behind war discussions, or recognition of the risks the wars pose to the economy and global security. Last year, concerns about Ukraine shared the spotlight at the gathering, along with a surge of A.I. interest.This year, “everyone is focusing on other subjects,” Pascal Cagni, France’s ambassador for international exports, said in an interview. Economically and politically, he added, Ukraine is “a critical issue.”There were a few exceptions. Supporters of Ukraine opened their own storefront space on the main promenade and staged several events each day to draw attention to the conflict. The technology company Palantir and its chief executive, Alex Karp, hosted Ms. Goldberg and other parents of hostages for events and interviews.Waiting for the arrival of Mr. Zelensky at the Ukraine House in Davos on Tuesday.Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA, via ShutterstockSeveral governments sent leaders to Davos in an attempt to quietly advance back-channel diplomacy in Ukraine or Gaza. That was true of the Biden administration, which sent Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the White House’s national security adviser, to Davos for a flurry of meetings centered on Gaza.In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Goldberg said she was grateful for all efforts to bring her son and the other hostages home. She wore “103” taped to her sweater, which represented the number of days since her son had been taken.In Davos, Ms. Goldberg was sharing a house with other parents of hostages. “I walked out this morning and here, you know, you have these, like, gorgeous views and beautiful mountains,” she said. She said she had turned to another mother and said: “It’s so beautiful. It’s perverse.”But, she added a moment later: “I’m very grateful that I’m here. Because I am having access to people that I would never have access to. And the goal is to save Hersh’s life, and everyone who is there, their lives. I can only do that if we have access to people who have power. And that’s people who are here.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      Death of Zimbabwe Opposition Activist Raises Fears of Political Crisis

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      Leaders of the main opposition party said a member had been abducted while campaigning, the latest in a string of political violence.An activist with Zimbabwe’s main opposition party was found dead on the side of a road in the capital, Harare, the police said on Tuesday. A party spokesman said he had been abducted while campaigning in a local election over the weekend.The death of the activist, Tapfumanei Masaya, is the latest in what opposition and civil society leaders say has been a string of violent episodes fueling a growing political crisis in the southern African nation since national elections were held in August.President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his governing ZANU-PF party maintained power in the August vote, despite doubts raised by regional and international observers about the election’s credibility.Mr. Masaya, 51, a pastor, was campaigning door to door on Saturday to promote a candidate along with other members of the political party Citizens Coalition for Change when multiple S.U.V.s pulled up and attackers jumped out and chased them, said Gift Ostallos Siziba, a spokesman for the party.When Mr. Masaya stopped to help a fellow activist who is disabled, the attackers pounced, beating them and taking them away in separate vehicles, Mr. Siziba said.The attackers eventually dropped off the disabled activist, still alive, on the road but kept Mr. Masaya, Mr. Siziba said. He was discovered dead on Sunday, his body disfigured by the slashes of a machete, the spokesman said.Mr. Masaya’s death has raised alarm in a nation where, officials with Citizens Coalition for Change say, at least four of their members have been killed since last year. Mr. Masaya was the fourth party member to have been abducted and tortured over the past two months — though the other three survived, according to a post on X, formerly Twitter, by David Coltart, a senator with the party.In one of those cases, Takudzwa Ngadziore, a member of Parliament, posted a video on Facebook of what he said was his own abduction. In the short, shaky clip, he is seen in a suit and tie, breathing heavily, and a man wearing a cap with a Mercedes logo and carrying a rifle rushes toward him. Then the footage ends.The police confirmed the identity of Mr. Masaya in a statement released on Tuesday, but said they were still investigating the circumstances surrounding his death.Farai Muroiwa Marapira, the director of information and publicity for the governing ZANU-PF party, said it was disrespectful and irresponsible of the opposition to jump to conclusions about the death before the police investigation had been completed.ZANU-PF had nothing to do with Mr. Masaya’s death, he said. The opposition, he said, “would rather seek political mileage on the loss of a family.”Several abductions and some of Zimbabwe’s worst post-colonial political violence occurred in the aftermath of the highly controversial 2008 elections, leading to a power-sharing agreement between ZANU-PF and the main opposition party at the time, the Movement for Democratic Change.The lack of police intervention or other efforts by the state to curb the violence “creates a culture of impunity in the country, and those behind the abductions and rights abuses would continue doing it, knowing that nothing would happen to them,” said Rawlings Magede, spokesman for Heal Zimbabwe Trust, a nonprofit peace-building organization.Mr. Magede said that “the human rights situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate” after this year’s elections.An observer mission from the Southern African Development Community criticized this year’s vote, saying there had been several irregularities, an almost unprecedented rebuke from a regional body that tends to avoid openly criticizing member nations.The election, Mr. Siziba said, had created “a crisis of illegitimacy where the state is turning against its own citizens.”Mr. Marapira rejected that assertion, saying that the Citizens Coalition for Change had not challenged the election result in court within the time frame allowed by Zimbabwean law.“In the media, anyone given attention can say what they want whether there is truth, fiction or absence of reality,” he said. “The crisis is only in the imagination of the opposition.”Jeffrey Moyo More

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      DeSantis and Haley Diverge on Help for Gaza Refugees

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      The two Republican candidates appeared to diverge on attitudes toward civilians in the Gaza Strip who are bracing for an invasion by Israel.The deepening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is driving a wedge between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, two of the leading Republican presidential candidates, who deviated sharply on Sunday over whether the United States should help Palestinian refugees from the region ahead of an expected Israeli invasion.In an appearance on the CBS morning show “Face the Nation,” Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, doubled down on remarks he had made one day earlier in Iowa, espousing a hard-line opposition toward helping civilians who have been thrust into the middle of the conflict.“They teach kids to hate Jews,” he said. “The textbooks do not have Israel even on the map. They prepare very young kids to commit terrorist attacks. So I think it’s a toxic culture.”Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador under President Donald J. Trump, pushed back against that view during a CNN interview on Sunday with Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”“America has always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists,” she said after being shown a clip of Mr. DeSantis’s initial comments on Saturday.Nearly one million people are grappling with shortages of food, clean water and shelter in Gaza, which is bracing for a land invasion by Israel in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks and the taking of hostages by Hamas, an Iran-backed militant group.Mr. DeSantis argued on Sunday that it would be detrimental to the United States to “import” large numbers of refugees and would fuel antisemitism, echoing comments he made about people in Gaza the day before that drew scrutiny.At a campaign event on Saturday, Mr. DeSantis said, “If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.”He added: “The Arab states should be taking them. If you have refugees, you don’t fly people in and take them into the United States of America.”When the CBS anchor Margaret Brennan pointed out to Mr. DeSantis that Arabs are Semites and replayed his remarks, he stood by his words.Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor at the First in the Nation Leadersip Summit in Nashua, New Hampshire on Friday.John Tully for The New York TimesGovernor Ron DeSantis of Florida at the First in the Nation Leadership Summit in Nashua, New Hampshire on Friday.John Tully for The New York Times“There was a lot of celebrating of those attacks in the Gaza Strip by a lot of those folks who were not Hamas,” he said.Ms. Brennan suggested that it was a remote possibility that refugees from Gaza could resettle in the United States, saying that they could not even evacuate from their immediate area. Still, Republicans have used the broader conflict to frame their postures on military action and humanitarian aid.In the House, Representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin and Andy Ogles of Tennessee, both Republicans, have announced that they plan to introduce a bill they say would block the Biden administration from issuing visas to Palestinian passport holders.Mr. DeSantis, who served in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps in Iraq, was also asked whether he would advise the Israeli military to stop their attacks on the infrastructure that provides water and electricity to Gaza.“I don’t think they’re under an obligation to be providing water and these utilities while the hostages are being held,” he said.Ms. Haley struck a more sympathetic chord earlier on Sunday, saying that large percentages of Palestinians and Iranians did not support the violence being perpetrated against one another.“There are so many of these people who want to be free from this terrorist rule,” she said.While the Republican candidates have expressed solidarity with Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks, they have also clashed with each other over who is most loyal to Israel, America’s closest Middle East ally, and what the role of the United States should be in conflicts overseas.Ms. Haley on Sunday continued to condemn Mr. Trump, her former boss and the Republican front-runner, for referring to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart” while criticizing Israel’s prime minister and Israeli intelligence. She accused Mr. Trump of emboldening U.S. adversaries and drawing attention to himself.“You don’t go and compliment any of them because what that does is that makes America look weak,” she said on CNN, adding: “This isn’t about Trump. It’s not about him.”A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.Ms. Haley also leveled fresh criticism toward President Biden, saying that he should never have agreed to free up $6 billion in frozen oil revenue money for Iran for humanitarian purposes as part of a hostage release deal that was announced in August.Facing blowback over the money’s release, the Biden administration and Qatar agreed last week to deny Iran access to the funds, which White House officials had said had not been spent.“You empowered Iran to go and strengthen Hamas, strengthen Hezbollah, strengthen the Houthis to spread their terrorist activity,” Ms. Haley said.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.Haley Johnson More

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      Israel Orders Gaza ‘Siege,’ Hamas Threatens to Kill Hostages, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.Israel has continued to strike Gaza and its northern border in the wake of Hamas’s large-scale surprise attack.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:Israel Orders “Siege” of Gaza; Hamas Threatens to Kill Hostages, with Patrick KingsleyAcross the Middle East, a Surge of Support for Palestinians as War Erupts in Gaza, with Vivian NereimRobert F. Kennedy Jr. to Run for President as Independent, Leaving Democratic Primary, with Rebecca Davis O’BrienEli Cohen More

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      Trial Opens for Men Accused of Aiding Plot to Kidnap Michigan’s Governor

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      Three men accused of helping to surveil Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s vacation home could face more than 20 years in prison if convicted.Nearly three years ago, amid the tumult of Covid-19 and a presidential campaign, federal and state prosecutors outlined a sprawling right-wing terror plot to kidnap and possibly kill Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, at her vacation home.Since then, in courtrooms across Michigan, that investigation has led to guilty pleas, convictions at trial and two acquittals, as well as introspection about what the plot says about the country’s political discourse.This week, as another presidential election approaches, what is likely the final chapter in that case is unfolding in the same rural county as the governor’s vacation home. Three men — Michael Null and William Null, who are twin brothers, and Eric Molitor — are on trial on a charge of providing material support for a terrorist act. Prosecutors said the plot had been fueled by anti-government sentiment, militia activity and anger over pandemic lockdowns.“For the average person, it’s almost impossible to fathom how brazen and how bold and how dangerous these individuals were,” William Rollstin, a prosecutor, told jurors in state court on Wednesday. “These defendants decided to use force and violence to solve their problems.”Prosecutors have accused the Null brothers and Mr. Molitor of traveling to Antrim County, about 250 miles northwest of Detroit, to scout out the governor’s vacation home and help prepare for an attack. If convicted, they could each face more than 20 years in prison. Unlike the men convicted in federal court, they are not charged with planning to participate in the kidnapping itself.Opening arguments on Wednesday echoed many of the themes aired in two prior federal trials in Grand Rapids, as well as another in state court in Jackson, Mich.Defense lawyers tried to downplay their clients’ actions. They suggested the men were minor players who did not know much about the plans to harm Ms. Whitmer, were egged on by F.B.I. informants and were caught up in overheated pandemic-era politics.“We have police protests — I mean, cities are burning,” Kristyna Nunzio, a lawyer for William Null, said in court, describing national events in 2020. “People are scared during this time period. And it’s fair to keep that in your mind when you review all of the evidence.”But prosecutors said the defendants were aiding the leaders of the plot, Barry Croft and Adam Fox. Federal jurors found that Mr. Croft and Mr. Fox had planned to kidnap Ms. Whitmer and blow up a bridge leading to her home in order to disrupt the police response. Mr. Croft is serving a nearly 20-year prison sentence, and Mr. Fox is serving a 16-year sentence.This trial is playing out in politically conservative Antrim County, where Donald J. Trump received more than 60 percent of the vote in 2020 even as Joseph R. Biden Jr. clinched Michigan. When Ms. Whitmer won re-election in convincing fashion last year, her opponent carried Antrim County by a 14-point margin.In opening arguments, Mr. Rollstin emphasized that the underlying terror plot sought not just to harm Ms. Whitmer but also to attack members of her security detail and other law enforcement officers who might respond to the scene.“It’s much more than just the governor, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Rollstin said. William Barnett, a lawyer for Mr. Molitor, noted for the jury that Ms. Whitmer had blamed Mr. Trump’s rhetoric for the plot.“It’s all politics, folks,” Mr. Barnett said. “There’s something going on here. I don’t know what’s going on. But it looks like weaponization of the government.” More

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      Donald Trump, and the Tradition of Suppressing October Surprises

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      Secretive talks in the waning days of a campaign. Furtive phone calls. Ardent public denials.American history is full of October surprises — late revelations, sometimes engineered by an opponent, that shock the trajectory of a presidential election and that candidates dread. In 1880, a forged letter ostensibly written by James A. Garfield claimed he wanted more immigration from China, a position so unpopular it nearly cost him the election. Weeks before the 1940 election, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s press secretary kneed a Black police officer in the groin, just as the president was trying to woo skeptical Black voters. (Roosevelt’s response made history: He appointed the first Black general and created the Tuskegee Airmen.)But the scandal that has ensnared Donald J. Trump, the paying of hush money to a pornographic film star in 2016, is in a rare class: an attempt not to bring to light an election-altering event, but to suppress one.The payoff to Stormy Daniels that has a Manhattan grand jury weighing criminal charges against Mr. Trump can trace its lineage to at least two other episodes foiling an October surprise. The first was in 1968, when aides to Richard M. Nixon pressed the South Vietnamese government to thwart peace talks in the closing days of that election. The second was in 1980. Fresh revelations have emerged that allies of Ronald Reagan may well have labored to delay the release of American hostages from Iran until after the defeat of Jimmy Carter.Richard M. Nixon at the end of his presidential campaign in 1968.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe tortured debate over precisely which election law might have been violated in 2016 is missing the broader point — all three events might have changed the course of history.“There have been three cases at a minimum,” said Gary Sick, a former national security aide to President Carter who for more than two decades has been pursuing his case that the Reagan campaign in 1980 delayed the release of the hostages from Iran. “And if you had the stomach for it, you’d have to say it worked.”The potential criminal charges against Mr. Trump for his role in the passing of hush money to Ms. Daniels — falsifying business records to cover up the payment and a possible election law violation — may seem trivial when compared to the prior efforts to fend off a history-altering October surprise.This month, a former lieutenant governor of Texas came forward to say that he accompanied a Reagan ally to the Middle East to try to delay the release of American hostages from Iran until after the 1980 election. And notes discovered in 2016 appeared to confirm that senior aides to Mr. Nixon worked through back channels in 1968 to hinder the commencement of peace talks to end the war in Vietnam — and secure Mr. Nixon’s victory over Hubert H. Humphrey.“Hold on,” Anna Chennault, Mr. Nixon’s emissary to the South Vietnamese, told Saigon government officials, as she pressed them to boycott the Paris peace talks. “We are gonna win.”But the chicaneries of 1968 and 1980 were left to historians and partisans to sort out and debate decades later. What separates the allegations against Mr. Trump is that they could make him the first former president to be indicted by a grand jury, forcing him to answer for charges in a court of law.President Lyndon B. Johnson announced a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam shortly before the presidential election in 1968.Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe concept of an October surprise has been around American politics since at least 1838, when federal prosecutors announced plans to charge top Whig Party officials with “most stupendous and atrocious fraud” for paying Pennsylvanians to vote in New York for their candidates.Two weeks before the 1888 election, Republicans published a letter from the British ambassador to the United States suggesting that the English favored Grover Cleveland, the Democratic candidate. It galvanized Irish American voters, and Mr. Cleveland lost the presidency to Benjamin Harrison.Just days before the 2000 election, Thomas J. Connolly, a defense lawyer and former Democratic candidate for governor in Maine, confirmed that George W. Bush had been arrested for driving while intoxicated in the state in 1976. Some have said it cost Mr. Bush just enough votes to turn a narrow popular-vote victory into one of the most contested presidential elections in American history.What links the allegations of 1968, 1980 and 2016 is the fear that such a surprise would happen. In all three cases, those accused of perpetrating the skulduggery palpably worried that it would..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“It is probably as old as campaigning itself,” said John Dean, the Nixon White House lawyer whose testimony before the congressional Watergate committees helped bring to light perhaps the most famous campaign dirty trick of all time. “I’m sure that when campaigns learn of negative stories, they do all they can to suppress them.”The accusations against Mr. Trump are of a different scale than 1968 or 1980. No Americans were left to languish in captivity. No armies remained on the battlefield longer than necessary. No civilians died in napalm conflagrations. Indeed, the passing of hush money to Ms. Daniels is hardly the worst accusation leveled against a president who was impeached for withholding military aid to Ukraine to extract a political favor, and impeached again for inciting a riot designed to overturn a lawful election that he lost.But because the 2016 election was so close, the suppression of a late-breaking sex scandal just may have delivered the White House to one of American history’s most divisive leaders. Mr. Trump lost the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points, and won the presidency by securing victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by a combined 78,652 votes, a smaller total than a sellout crowd at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.The plane carrying freed American hostages arriving at the Frankfurt airport. The hostages had been held in Iran for 444 days.Jean-Louis Atlan/Sygma, via Getty ImagesMr. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, suffered her own surprise when just days before the 2016 election, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, reopened a closed investigation into emails she sent on a private server when she was secretary of state. Given the margin, that alone may have cost Mrs. Clinton the White House.Ms. Daniels’s claim that she had sex with Mr. Trump in 2006 while his wife, Melania, was nursing their only baby had been floating around since 2011, seemingly raising few fears in Trump world. But in early October 2016, that changed when The Washington Post published the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump described in lewd terms how he groped women.Amid the ensuing furor and defections from some Republican leaders, the effort to buy Ms. Daniels’s silence went into overdrive. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, and others feared that a second punch, landing just after the “Access Hollywood” outrage was dissipating, could knock their pugilistic boss out of the presidential race and expose them to legal action.“It could look awfully bad for everyone,” Dylan Howard, the editor of The National Enquirer, wrote in a text to Mr. Cohen, noting that if Ms. Daniels went public, their work to cover up her account of a sexual encounter might also become known.The 1980 election is remembered as a landslide victory, hardly one that seemed vulnerable to a late-breaking course change. But in fact, aides and allies of Mr. Reagan openly feared the release of the hostages in the campaign’s final weeks could re-elect Mr. Carter, so much so that the term “October surprise” is often attributed to the Reagan camp’s trepidations.“All I know is there’s concern, not just with us but I think generally amongst the electorate, well, this Carter’s a politically tough fellow, he’ll do anything to get re-elected, and let’s be prepared for some October surprise,” Mr. Reagan’s running mate, George H.W. Bush, said at the time.Ronald Reagan and his campaign feared an October surprise from President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGerald Rafshoon, who was Mr. Carter’s White House communications director and campaign media adviser, said in an interview that he was confident the release of the hostages would have secured the president’s re-election. The polls had been tightening that fall amid rising optimism about the captives’ release. Then Mr. Carter’s position collapsed.“If the little farmer can’t handle a two-bit ayatollah,” Mr. Rafshoon recalled one woman telling him, “I’ll take my chances on the cowboy.”He added: “It’s not that I hold any grudges about those sons of bitches. I’ve gotten on with my life, and so has Jimmy.”Mr. Sick is not so sure a hostage release would have had much impact. “It would certainly have changed some votes, but would Carter have won? He only won one state,” he said. “People who run campaigns get very paranoid and talk themselves into these things.”The election of 1968 is a closer call.Ken Hughes, a researcher at the Miller Center of the University of Virginia, whose book “Chasing Shadows” chronicled the Nixon campaign’s efforts to impede peace talks, said Mr. Nixon had a strong lead in the polls over Mr. Humphrey in mid-September. By mid-October, Mr. Nixon’s lead was down to eight percentage points. Then, days before the election, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, and the news media began reporting chatter of looming talks to end the war.Again, the candidate who went on to win showed his fears, which were based on Mr. Nixon’s conviction that Democratic dirty tricks in 1960 had denied him the presidency. “Keep Anna Chennault working on SVN,” or South Vietnam, Mr. Nixon implored, according to the notes of a top aide, H.R. Haldeman.On the eve of the election, The Christian Science Monitor was preparing an article on the efforts of the Nixon campaign to thwart the peace talks. Mr. Johnson convened a conference call with his security cabinet to seek advice on whether to confirm the story, which he knew to be true from F.B.I. and C.I.A. wiretaps.“Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual elected,” his secretary of defense, Clark Clifford, said of Mr. Nixon on a recorded call. “It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I would think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”White House officials said nothing. More