Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis (36 page)

At the National Cathedral in Washington, bells tolled each day at noon, once for each day of the lengthening captivity. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, all of the churches around its city hall sounded their bells fifty times each day at noon to remember the American captives. In Columbus, Ohio, protesters marched to express their anger at Iran, chanting, “Nagasaki, Hiroshima, why not Iran!” A popular country tune of the radio, “Message to Khomeini,” predicted that Iran would be turned into “an oil slick.” A man from Flushing, New York, climbed to a dangerous perch atop a West Hollywood billboard to protest American inaction, and ten thousand cabdrivers in Manhattan drove for a day with their lights on to express their solidarity with their captive countrymen and -women.

It was not hard to see where all this anger was heading. Carter’s public support was still high but voices of criticism and blame were already being heard. A former CIA director, Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger, criticized the president for not immediately setting a deadline for the hostages’ release, although he was vague about what consequences there ought to be for failing to meet the deadline. Ronald Reagan, likely to be one of the leading Republican challengers in the 1980 election, had already blamed Carter’s “weakness and vacillation” for causing the crisis in the first place, and dropped larger and larger hints that if he were in power America would not be pushed around by a “demented dictator” and his “rabble.” In his own party, Carter was cruising high in the polls ever since Senator Kennedy had shot himself in the foot with his conciliatory remarks, and although the Massachusetts senator was in the race to stay he would never recover.

Carter was considering tough options. In an exchange of memos with Brzezinski on December 21, the president directed that the National Security Council “list everything that Khomeini would not want to see occur and which would not invite condemnation of the U.S. by other nations.”

By now the families of many hostage members were becoming regulars on nightly news programs around the country, and so far there was not a negative word to be heard from them about the administration’s actions. They knew nothing of a possible rescue mission, and most were reassured by the president’s promise to take no action that might jeopardize their loved ones. Penne Laingen, the chargé’s wife, was seen as an unofficial spokesman for the families, and her comments on TV were uniformly supportive and upbeat—she might as well have been working for State Department public relations. Dottie Morefield and her family were so conspicuous in San Diego that they were invited by the owners of the city’s pro football team to be special guests at a Monday Night Football game between the Chargers and the Miami Dolphins.

Mindful of the promise to those families, and his department’s responsibility to its employees, Vance continued to argue against applying any pressure on Iran. He consistently counseled patience, pointing out that Iran was a nation in turmoil, its future course still uncertain, and new opportunities arose nearly every day to reopen diplomatic channels.

“Cy, you always have another diplomatic channel,” said Brzezinski.

On the tenth of December, NBC-TV aired an eighteen-minute interview with marine hostage Billy Gallegos, the first with a hostage broadcast in the United States. Clean-shaven and wide-eyed, he looked like a frightened, big-eyed boy.

Before this, the only other hostage voice heard was that of Jerry Plotkin, the middle-aged Californian who had come to set up a personnel agency—matching American workers to jobs in Iran—and had made the mistake of stopping by the embassy on the morning of the takeover. He had been allowed to speak on the phone for seven minutes to a Los Angeles radio station in late November, delivering remarks that had obviously been written for him, right down to the standard Islamic preface, “In the name of God.” He had also called for the return of the shah, and went on to woodenly read, “Let the world know no tyrant or dictator can ever find safe harbor in the United States. I am well both mentally and physically. We have been treated humanely. The students treat us kindly and with respect. The quality of the food is adequate and we are given three meals a day. The hostages’ living area is clean and each of the hostages has a mattress, blanket, armchair, and table.”

So far, the students seemed to see the American press as an ally. It made for a strange situation. The United States was, in effect, in a stalemated state of war with Iran, but while fifty-three of their countrymen were being held prisoner, dozens of American journalists moved freely in Tehran, scrambling to get access to the compound and the captives. ABC’s Peter Jennings was among them, wandering the streets to solicit the opinions of random Iranians and doing feature stories about post-revolutionary life. The other networks had their own regular correspondents on the scene, as did most major American newspapers, and it was clear from some of the footage shown on TV that they had established a rapport with the dapper foreign minister, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, who made himself available daily. Yet the United States government, by all appearances, was unable even to start a dialogue with the country’s rulers. Many of the TV correspondents would set up for their nightly broadcasts immediately outside the embassy gates, surrounded by Iranians chanting “Death to America!” and “Death to Carter.” Rarely was this rhetorical hostility directed at the American journalists personally. Thomas Fenton, a CBS correspondent, was confronted once outside the embassy by an Iranian who shouted at him accusingly, “CIA!”

“No, CBS!” Fenton retorted, which got a laugh.

No one had succeeded in getting access to the hostages, so when the major TV networks were approached with an offer to participate in the Gallegos interview, their executives were eager. But the students demanded that all questions be submitted in advance, that the interview be aired in prime time in its entirety with no editing, and that the students be allowed to ask questions and make statements on the film. None of the networks accepted the initial terms, but the big three, ABC, CBS, and NBC, were eager to bargain. Eventually NBC came to terms. They would be allowed to question the hostage with their own correspondents, Fred Francis and George Lewis, and they did not have to clear their questions in advance. A student would be allowed to make an opening and closing statement. Nilufar Ebtekar was chosen by the council, because of her fluent English and because the council liked the idea of having their arguments presented by a woman. At first, Ebtekar was reluctant to appear on camera, but she agreed when it was decided to identify her only as “Mary.”

She and the other hostage takers had been mystified by the lack of American support for their action, particularly the lack of sympathy from American blacks and other “oppressed minorities,” and had concluded that their problem was media censorship in the United States. The American government was blocking and distorting their message. One effort to break through this supposed censorship was a half-page ad in the New York Times (the Washington Post refused to run it) calling on Americans to “Rise Up Against Oppression,” referring to the hostages as “spies” and placing Carter in “the vanguard of the world’s oppressors.” The Gallegos interview was part of this publicity campaign. The students demanded that Ebtekar’s remarks be presented unedited and in their entirety. In fact, the justifications and complaints of Iranian hostage takers had become tiresomely familiar to Americans, but when NBC proposed trimming her harangue by about two minutes the students held fast. Ebtekar interpreted the request to edit her speech as proof that there existed a secret U.S. government rule prohibiting, as she would put it, the broadcast of any “anti-government declaration lasting longer than five minutes.”

Her chubby frame draped in dark robes and her head wrapped in a powder blue scarf, Ebtekar lectured the American people in her perfect American English about the evils of their government and accused the shah of “the largest thefts and exploitations of history.”

Gallegos sat in the chancery library beneath a portrait of Khomeini. He had agreed in advance not to describe where he was being kept on the embassy grounds or to describe the security procedures. The young marine was one the students’ favorites. He was chosen for the interview by their governing council because of his “honesty and simplicity,” which suggested he was not likely to be unpredictable, because his behavior had been docile, and because his background was “Latin.” In the interview the young marine spoke of his impatience and argued for handing over the shah.

“I think he’d get a fair trial and if he is guilty he is guilty,” Gallegos said. “If he is innocent, he is innocent. Nothing has been done for our release and it’s been over a month now. I think the shah should be returned and that is not only my feeling, that’s the feeling of all of the hostages…. I am in good shape but my mental condition is as good as expected in a situation like this, kind of on my nerves…. Before this I knew nothing of any spies, but it seems like the students have uncovered quite a few documents indicating people as being spies in Iran.”

To Gallegos’s parents, who were watching before cameras in the studio of a network affiliate in Denver, he appeared thin and pale, with telling dark rings under his eyes, but otherwise healthy and unharmed. The cocky young man who had volunteered for the most dangerous postings, and whose eagerness for confrontation with America’s enemies was sometimes a concern to his fellow marines, had softened his outlook considerably in captivity. He said that he and the other hostages had not been mistreated by their captors, nor brainwashed, and were surprised by their country’s refusal to hand over the shah. He said they resented being held captive to protect a dictator who deserved to be put on trial and punished, and managed to imply that even his own role as an embassy guard might have had a clandestine side.

“I’d give my life for any American,” he said. “I can’t see it now. In some ways, I don’t see this as a good cause…. The students have been really good to us. It’s hard to believe, I know, but we haven’t been asked any questions about what really our job was.”

Yet the young marine was still loyal to his country.

“We’re relying on his [Carter’s] decision, no matter what,” he said. “I’m leaving it up to my country and my people. I have great faith in them.”

When Gallegos had answered the last question, one of the interviewers turned to Ebtekar and asked if he might direct a question to her.

“No you may not,” she said. Ebtekar regarded the question as a violation of the agreement.

The program aired in full, but the students still felt betrayed when NBC intercut images of Gallegos’s parents watching.

Carter was furious with the network for airing the interview. The flood of reporting from Iran during the crisis had been both aggravating and helpful; the nightly reports were being scrutinized carefully in the Pentagon for scraps of information about how the gates were guarded, what kinds of weapons the students carried, etc., but apart from this practical value, the constant network focus on the crisis played into the hands of the hostage takers. The more attention they got, the more convinced they were of their own importance, and the more pressure was put on the White House to react, either to give in to this infuriating extortion or to lash out at Iran in a way that would almost certainly make the situation worse for the hostages, if not kill them. There was no danger of “Mary’s” lecture finding sympathetic American ears. A small woman dressed like a nun hectoring the American people in their own living rooms about the sins of their government made for a unique national TV event that no doubt swelled the ranks of those who preferred to nuke Tehran and be done with it. What Carter needed most was for this story to fade off the front pages, so that the students could be isolated as a troublemaking fringe and sensible people in Iran would again dare to assert control.

House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill condemned the network for airing Iranian “propaganda.” Ford Rowan, NBC’s Pentagon correspondent, no doubt getting an earful from his military sources, resigned in protest.

Psychologists were enlisted by the networks to explore the concept of brainwashing, and military and intelligence analysts pored over Gallegos’s remarks for clues about where and how the hostages were being guarded. They were especially intrigued by one of the marine’s brief comments in passing. Near the end of the interview, Gallegos had been asked about which Americans he had been housed with.

“I was with a couple of political officers before we were up here in some of the houses,” he said. They understood that by “houses,” he meant the staff cottages on the embassy grounds. “I was with them and, after that, we were moved down to this other place, the mushroom…”

Mushroom? What had he meant by that?

Delta knew. They had learned of the nickname from the released hostages. It reminded the analysts of the old soldier’s lament, “I must be a mushroom because they keep me in the dark and feed me horseshit.”

Given the bewildering variety of news reports, it was impossible to sort out fact from fiction or, as intelligence analysts put it, information from noise. Every day there was a break in the saga from somewhere in the world, sometimes hopeful and sometimes alarming. The hostages were going to be released, or the hostages were going to be put on trial; the hostages were going to be tried by the students themselves and then executed, or the hostages were going to appear before a revolutionary tribunal and then be released. Some of the hostages were going to be released for Christmas, then none of the hostages would be. Iran’s terms for releasing them varied, depending on who was speaking. Iran was an enigma because no one appeared to be in charge. Everyone said Khomeini was, but the old prophet stayed aloof from the day-to-day workings of the state. He kept to his spiritual regimen in Qom and spoke only at intervals and rarely about specifics. Those known to be close to him, clerical figures and politicians who advised him and interpreted his words, were singing different songs, some of them confrontational and some of them conciliatory. The tune seemed to change daily. In a speech days before Christmas, Khomeini said the American captives convicted of spying “might not” be executed.