Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis (29 page)

His guard made a gesture as if to say, Don’t worry about it.

From the first day Quarles, an African-American, had been treated slightly differently by his captors. He had been kept bound and confined to a mattress in one of the cottages, like everyone else, but his captors always made a point of acknowledging his blackness and conveying a sense of solidarity with his presumed second-class status. If he wanted more food they would always bring him extra portions. If he asked for a cigarette, someone would run out and bring him a full pack. Once, when a glass of water was placed on the table between him and one of the white hostages and the white hostage took it and drank from it, the guards confiscated the glass and lectured the offending white hostage about American oppression of black people. Quarles was startled, because he had assumed, as undoubtedly the white hostage had, that another glass was on its way. Instead, Quarles was presented with a full glass of ice water and the white hostage was denied anything more to drink.

From the beginning, a few of the student leaders visited him to explain at great length the reasons for their actions. They talked to him about their kinship with what they wrongly supposed to be millions of black American Muslims, and the special place for black people in Islam. They showed him albums of charred and tortured bodies and explained the horrors of life under the shah. One of the older ones, a round, bearded man, told Quarles of the torture and execution of his father and other family members under the shah and broke down crying.

Again and again they stressed that they identified with him as a member of the “oppressed” races of the world. They brought him documents they had seized during the takeover and explained that the memoranda, which Quarles didn’t read and couldn’t follow, proved that America had been interfering with Iranian society and was working to undermine their revolution. Quarles had little interest in the fine points of Islam, history, or international politics. He wanted to avoid being shot and, if at all possible, to go home. He knew that his captors were trying to indoctrinate him and, for the most part, he let what they told him travel in one ear and out the other. But some of the more moving things, some of the photos and heartfelt testimony of a few guards, touched him. He was inclined to believe that his country was responsible for much of the suffering in Iran, and found it easy to believe that the United States was working to undermine their revolution in hopes of maintaining control over the country’s oil. But when the captors circulated a petition asking for the shah’s return, the young marine had refused to sign it.

After breakfast on Thanksgiving morning the uncuffed Quarles was led into a room in the motor pool building. In an adjacent room he saw fellow marine Sergeant Ladel Maples, who was also untied. Quarles considered trying to bolt. The men guarding him were much smaller than him. But he thought better of it. Even if he got free of the compound, where would he go? His skin color meant there was no chance he could blend into a Tehran crowd.

Then, one after another, a procession of his captors came in the room to lecture him again in English about the rightness of their action, the sins of America—beginning with slavery and genocide against the American Indian—and the glory of Islam and Khomeini. Quarles began to suspect that he was going home. The lectures struck him as preparation; they were prepping him for the press attention he would get on his release. Later that evening he and Maples, also an African-American, were put together in the same room.

“Goddamn, man, you think we’re getting out of here?” Quarles asked.

“I don’t know,” said Maples. “We just might get out of here. I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

“You think anybody else is getting out?”

“I hope so.”

The lectures continued. They were served hamburgers, potato chips, and pickles for supper. Clearly, their captors were trying to make a good impression. When they were led outside, Quarles felt blinded by the television lights. He had trouble walking. He had been sitting for so many days that it was hard for him to keep his balance. He and Maples and an embassy secretary, Kathy Gross, were led into a large room next to the commissary before hundreds of reporters, American and Iranian. Quarles felt frightened. He needed help putting on a slight green jacket, and he was shaking; he didn’t know if it was from the cold outside or from fear.

“Nobody is going to hurt you,” one of the guards told him. “These are just some people who want to see you.”

Quarles realized that he was part of a publicity stunt. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew that the lectures he had been getting were to prepare him for this attention. He sat on a stage with the two others before a giant poster of Khomeini and some writing that he didn’t understand. The reporters had all been assigned numbers, and one of the Iranian students called off the numbers and allowed some of them to ask questions. In response to one, Quarles said:

“In the past, I had heard something about U.S. imperialism, but as an American marine I had always dismissed them out of hand. But after having heard the other side of the story I now believe these people might have some legitimate complaints…. I learned a lot from what I read and saw, and was very saddened by some of the things going on under the shah. I think the American people have to turn around and look at—and there are always two sides—and I saw the other side of the story. The other side of American imperialism.”

What he really wanted to say was, Hey, get me the hell out of here, I’m tired of this shit. But he felt obliged to get across the points that had been hammered into him for weeks. He knew if he played along he might get to go home.

Quarles told the reporters that he had been kept in the living room of one of the staff cottages for most of the time. As for the embassy being a “den of spies,” he said, “The Iranian people felt that it was not an embassy.” He said that he had no knowledge of any American spying, then added, obligingly, “Under their ideology, I’m sure they’re right.”

“Why didn’t you sign the petition?” a reporter asked.

“I didn’t want to put my signature on something that might be derogatory to my government,” he said.

The event seemed to last forever. Quarles felt like he was in a state of shock. He couldn’t wait to be taken out of the room. When he was, he was led into a small room to face an Iranian camera and a beautiful Iranian TV reporter.

“Do you have any regrets?” she asked.

Quarles said something about being glad to be going home, although he wasn’t sure yet that was happening.

As he was being led out of the room, still frightened and bewildered, one of the students whom he had come to know, a small man who had always treated him gently and as a friend, told him, “You know, you are going to be a very big man when you go back to America.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, you will be. Very, very famous.”

He and Maples and Gross were taken out to a Range Rover and driven to the airport. Quarles’s small Iranian friend hugged him.

“Come back to see me,” he said.

Behind Quarles in the van was a guard with an Uzi. Quarles didn’t trust the gun; he knew it had a hair trigger, and as their car darted erratically through traffic he and Maples worried that it would go off. He felt more frightened than at any point that day. His stomach felt fluttery and he was glad when they arrived at the airport that he was given a chance to sit alone for a few moments and collect himself.

As they were being led to the plane, an Iranian baggage handler went berserk. The man had to be restrained from coming after Quarles and the others.

“What’s the matter with him?” Quarles asked.

“The shah killed his family,” a guard said. “He’s very upset with Americans.”

It seemed to Quarles that every Iranian he met had lost someone to the shah. The image of the berserk baggage handler stayed with him a long time.

Quarles, Maples, and Gross were the first of thirteen black and female hostages Khomeini had ordered released as a gesture to oppressed African-Americans and as a demonstration of the “special status” accorded women under Islamic rule. The students had high hopes for this gesture. They had long believed that black Americans would identify with their struggle and take to the streets all over the United States in support; they felt sure this release would help spur such demonstrations. Ironically, among the blacks released was Air Force Captain Neil Robinson, one of the most important intelligence officers at the embassy. There was racism in the Iranian assumption that blacks and women would have held only menial jobs. Charles Jones, the only African-American hostage who was not released, had forfeited his status as an unimportant black man by having been caught inside the communications vault on the day of the takeover. There were only two women left behind: Ann Swift, who had announced her own importance, and Kathryn Koob, whose directorship of the Iran-America Society had marked her for certain as a spy.

Joan Walsh, the political section secretary, was among the ten released the next day. She was allowed to shower for the first time in two weeks and was given a clean pullover shirt and slacks. She and the others were seated in a row beneath a large, hand-lettered sign condemning the United States for sheltering the shah. It read, “America is supporting this nasty criminal under the pretext of sickness.” The hostages sat before a long, low row of tables set with microphones. Orchestrating was the wiry, bushy-haired Hussein Sheikh-ol-eslam, who instructed the gathered members of the press that while they were not allowed to ask any questions of an individual hostage; they could ask general questions. The microphone would be passed down the line, he said, and each question would be answered by the hostages in turn.

“And I will tell you the name of the hostage as the microphone gets passed along,” he said.

“Can they also tell us their name and hometown?” one of the reporters shouted. Walsh flushed with pleasure to hear an American voice. She felt more comfortable.

Walsh was led back with the other women to one of the cottages after the press conference, and the Iranian women there were suddenly bubbling with excitement and friendly, as though they were supervising a sleepover. Walsh did her best to stare right through them. She wasn’t inclined to forgive and forget.

They were put in vans and driven through the hostile mob at the gates. Cameras recorded them smiling and waving as they drove away from the embassy and to freedom.

The release of the thirteen black and female hostages was accompanied by a kind of media blitz within Iran. The same day that Quarles, Maples, and Gross were flown out, the imam himself granted interviews to all three major American TV networks. Robert MacNeil, of the PBS news program The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, flew to Tehran but returned home when he was informed that the three commercial networks would get to interview Khomeini first.

Mike Wallace of the CBS show 60 Minutes got to go first and spent an hour questioning Iran’s supreme leader. Sixty-five million American viewers saw the grim, white-bearded ayatollah easily parry the reporter’s extremely respectful questions—“He [Anwar Sadat] called you, forgive me, imam—his words, not mine—a ‘lunatic.’” The imam didn’t flinch. The hostages would be released when the shah was returned. The hostages were spies. They had been caught red-handed.

“As long as Mr. Carter does not respect international laws, these spies cannot be returned,” he said. Khomeini said that releasing the hostages after the shah’s return would be a kind gesture on his part, not a quid pro quo. “In reality, these spies should be tried.”

“Is Iran at war with the United States?” Wallace asked.

“What do you mean by war?” Khomeini answered. “If you mean our armies going against the United States armies, no. There is no such war. If you mean, it is a battle of nerves, it is Carter’s doing. We are against war. We are Muslims. We desire peace for all.”

Taking a stab at unofficial diplomacy, Wallace tried to extend the interview with a question that had not been submitted in advance.

“As one human being to another,” he asked. “Is there no room for compromise?”

The interpreter balked, but the correspondent prevailed on him to put the question to the imam. Khomeini refused to answer it.

The interview was watched at the White House with great interest. No matter how fruitless, the TV network had gotten a lot further in establishing a dialogue with Iran than had the administration. Jody Powell found Wallace’s deference to the ayatollah appalling. The press had become openly contemptuous in Washington; reporters were beating up the Carter administration daily and pitilessly for its handling of the crisis, yet the chief kidnapper was questioned with what sounded like obeisance: “Forgive me, Oh Imam, his words not mine” became a frustrated laugh line in the White House.

The release of the thirteen was accompanied by a chilling threat. Khomeini announced that the remaining Americans were going to be placed on trial “soon” as spies. It was precisely the scenario Carter most feared. He publicly ordered the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk to sail from waters near the Philippines to the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Iran. At a press conference in the East Room of the White House, an especially dour president said Iran had created an “unprecedented” situation. “For a government to applaud mob violence and terrorism,…to participate in the taking of hostages, ridicules the common ethical and religious heritage of humanity,” he said, and added that the United States would employ “every means available” to deal with it.

ABC reporter Sam Donaldson asked the president whether the United States would be willing to let such an outrage continue “indefinitely.”

“It would not be advisable for me to set a deadline,” said Carter, who added, “any excessive threat…might cause the deaths of the hostages, which we are determined to avoid.”

As winter settled over Tehran, a season of short days, rain, and occasional snow, the trappings of imprisonment began to feel more permanent. The students who had planned the takeover of the embassy receded from daily view, replaced by a rougher breed of guards, many from the ranks of Revolutionary Guards, who hadn’t been students since attending the shah’s secondary schools. Most of the male hostages were moved to a large rectangular room in the basement of the warehouse. It had once been used to house electronic equipment that analyzed data from the Tacksman sites but had been emptied months before. There was a row of pillars in the middle of the space, and because it was windowless and damp, perfect conditions for growing fungi, it was christened the Mushroom Inn. Its white acoustical ceiling tile was high, almost fifteen feet up, and the space was starkly lit day and night by recessed fluorescent bulbs. Diesel engines were used to generate power for electricity and the sickly sweet fumes hung perpetually in the air. Hostages were assigned places on the floor, and each had a thin foam mattress. In time the guards used empty bookshelves to divide the space into separate cubicles so that, unless he stood, a prisoner could see only the man directly opposite him.