The blind sheik story strangely was in the news at the time. There were rumors that Obama was negotiating his release. The WH denied that there were any negotiations. I thought it was very odd that he would even discuss this so close to the election, so this scenario does make sense. Trading a dying sheik for young American “hostages” would not have resulted in a landslide.
I didn’t know the sheik was terminally ill. But that sort of thing didn’t work out too well politically for the Brits when they let the PanAm bomber go back to Libya.