Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis (54 page)

There was nothing for him up there except for the feeling of having put one over on his captors. Howland did these things as much for personal amusement as for any practical reason. He thought a lot about what might happen if the American military tried to rescue them and planned for that contingency in part by disabling the pistols carried by their interior guards. One afternoon, sitting with two of the guards in their small kitchen, Howland offered to show them how to field-strip their Spanish-made pistols. He broke them down and put them back together quickly, and then set about teaching them how to do it themselves. It got so they felt comfortable enough to leave him alone with them for brief periods when they were disassembled.

Howland borrowed Tomseth’s toenail clippers and cut the recoil springs on the weapons, which meant they could fire one round but then the pistol would fail to successfully chamber a second round.

They watched Iranian TV with Tomseth providing a running translation, listened to the Voice of America and BBC broadcasts, and devoured the local newspapers and magazines. Their hopes had soared when the UN panel arrived in Tehran and then were dashed when its mission came apart. They pored over every statement from Qom, Washington, and Tehran like runes, trying to divine what was taking place behind the scenes. Tomseth, who had met his wife during his first State Department assignment in Thailand, would speak with her in Oregon periodically on the phone in fluent Thai, a language he felt sure would not be understood by the Iranians who monitored their calls. So he had yet another unfiltered source of information about what was going on in the United States.

When Khomeini fell ill with a heart ailment in January, there were stories of Iranian zealots offering to give up their lives in order to provide the imam with a fresh heart. Tomseth wrote a letter to the editor of a Tehran newspaper endorsing the idea, but suggesting that the wrong organ was being offered. Khomeini already had demonstrated by his behavior after the embassy takeover that he could function perfectly well without a heart, but “he could do very nicely with a new brain.” He showed the letter to Laingen, and they thought better of it. Tomseth tore it up.

The ordeal was a special strain on the idealistic Laingen, who every day suffered a fresh outrage. Nothing angered him more than Americans like Thomas, the native American activist, or the Kansas activist group headed by Forer, people Laingen felt were lending sympathy to his kidnappers. In America they were free to criticize and oppose, but how could they travel to a foreign country where America itself was under attack and applaud its enemies? How long would their defiant free speech and oppositionist politics last in a country ruled by the imam? By the third month of the standoff, even Iranians were beginning to sour on the young radicals holding the embassy, with their nightly telecasts revealing “spy documents,” which gave them a national platform to denounce the nation’s highest officials on the basis of revealed “contacts” with the American embassy, usually casual and routine. The students were very selective in these denunciations. Laingen knew well that plenty of the top clerics in the country, heroes of the revolution, had precisely the same kinds of contacts with the embassy, some of them more than routine, but their names never surfaced in the press conference. Exposing those ties was not politically advantageous. The increasingly embittered chargé saw that the students, unable to find any evidence for the most outlandish of their theories, had found another more cynical use for their treasure of stolen paper. The documents and revelations were being used to cow and ruin moderate politicians who threatened their vision of a “pure” Islamist state.

He wrote in his diary:

It is so degrading to Iran. Surely an intelligent Iranian watching this kind of performance must be repelled…allowing a group of “students” to claim TV time to denigrate leaders in the present government. But beyond that, allowing “students” to continue defying all standards of conduct and decency—looting a foreign government’s files…It is so outrageous I could choke the first Iranian I see. A gang of thieves, condoned by another gang of thieves. Fie on them all…

Former prime minister Mehdi Bazargan was quoted in a newspaper complaining, “Now the country is run by a bunch of kids, and this is regrettable. It is not correct to devote the TV screen to the most shameful accusations against people without asking the other side to defend themselves. You jeopardize the honor and nobility of the people with this.”

Precisely at this moment, Forer’s group appeared in Tehran seeking “reconciliation,” and effectively endorsing the takeover. The Kansas professor’s words were gladly reproduced in Tehran newspapers.

Laingen found Forer’s use of language from the New Testament especially galling, rhetorically linking the American government and diplomatic mission to the Pharisees and venal usurers of the ancient Jewish temple and, by implication, comparing the students to an angry Jesus Christ the Lord himself, chasing blasphemers from God’s house. And Forer was Jewish! Did he realize how anti-Semitic this new regime was? What could he be thinking? From his third-floor prison, Laingen wrote, “Good grief, if that is the way he interprets U.S. restraint on this issue, he isn’t fit to teach kindergarten.”

All pretense of keeping the three for their own protection was gone. They were now treated simply as hostages, with the doors to their living space chained and padlocked. They slept on the dining room floor and washed their socks and underclothes in the bathroom. Laingen discovered that the best way to clean his sheets was to soak them in the washbasin in soapy water and then, with the wet, soapy sheet draped over his shoulders in the shower, rinse it. The sheet could then be wrung out and hung up to dry, which didn’t take long in air so free of moisture. When the weather grew warmer they were allowed outside to exercise for an hour each day in the minister’s spacious garden. Laingen walked for ten minutes, jogged for thirty, and then did ten minutes of calisthenics. They were given a Ping-Pong table to help pass the time. Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, the Greek cleric, sent them a record player and a cassette player, along with some music—including the song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon,” which had become an anthem of sorts to the hostages thanks to Laingen’s wife Penne’s yellow ribbon campaign. That and the tunes of Elton John could be heard echoing in the cavernous chambers.

It was a strange existence. On the first day of March, looking out the window across the gray city toward the mountains, Howland spotted Laingen’s Italian cook and his Iranian driver on the sidewalk outside the ministry building looking up. They had evidently driven over hoping to catch a glimpse of their former employer, and when they caught Howland’s eye, and he brought Laingen and Tomseth to the window, they waved back and forth vigorously for a few moments until the Americans, worried that the ministry guards would see, gestured for their friends to get back in their car and leave.

They watched and listened as Bani-Sadr and Ghotbzadeh staged a vain last-ditch effort to salvage the previous month’s negotiated solution.

In a flurry of activity, the ministry staff had actually begun preparing the third floor to receive all of the hostages. President Bani-Sadr and his foreign minister Ghotbzadeh were such intense political rivals that they would not speak to each other, but in this effort they were together. They pressed to get formal custody of the hostages, realizing that so long as the captive Americans remained in the hands of the students at the occupied embassy, where they could rally public demonstrations of support that swayed Khomeini, there was no way the newly formed government could release them. It was a straightforward power struggle, and the new government was confident that Khomeini would not twice undercut them so blatantly. Ghotbzadeh told a reporter from the Washington Post on March 7 that “the hostages would be turned over to the Revolutionary Council in two days,” and added, “Maybe they [the students] will make little obstacles, but not major ones.”

Laingen watched with excitement when Ghotbzadeh, accompanied by the chief of the Revolutionary Guards and a security escort, conducted an inspection of the upper-floor rooms. It was clear they were evaluating the space as a holding area for all of the hostages. That surmise was confirmed later in the morning when Ghotbzadeh asked to see Laingen and explained what was going on. The Revolutionary Council had instructed the students to hand over the hostages. He said those Americans being held at the embassy would be sharing space with Laingen and the others within twenty-four hours. The foreign minister said that he would need Laingen’s help in managing the group and caring for them, which confirmed for the chargé the wisdom of the decision he, Tomseth, and Howland had made early on—that they would stay in the ministry in the hope that they might become useful to their colleagues. Laingen was ecstatic. Ghotbzadeh did not say how much longer they would all be held. The imam had stated that the hostages’ fate would be decided by the Majlis, which would not meet again until May, but prying the hostages from the hands of the students opened up all sorts of possibilities. Fifty cots and steel lockers were delivered to the large dining hall. The three longtime Foreign Ministry wards drew up a schedule for using the three bathrooms on their level.

But then a student spokesman announced that before handing over the hostages to the government, the hostage takers demanded a “hearing” before the Iranian people. Crowds formed outside the embassy walls, as thousands of religious hard-liners expressed their opposition to the move. As the number of demonstrators swelled, so did the students’ defiance. Scrambling to save face, the Revolutionary Council agreed to give them another twenty-four hours to comply. Another day went by, and the students still refused. Then the imam spoke again.

Laingen, Tomseth, and Howland listened to the radio on March 10, as Khomeini, in his cryptic way, doused the last embers of hope for an early solution.

“The crimes of the shah and America need no proof. We fight against America until death,” he said. “We shall not stop fighting until we defeat it and cut its hands in the area and lead weak people to victory…. We are sure of victory because right always is victorious. Be careful. There are long years of struggle ahead because the big powers scheme daily to pounce on you.”

Ghotbzadeh was crushed and went on television to denounce the students for sabotaging an agreement that he said was clearly in Iran’s best interests. Laingen was disappointed and angry and guessed that the same mood prevailed in Washington. The chargé’s mood was darkened further by new televised propaganda statements from Joe Subic, the renegade sergeant who, by all appearances, had gone fully native in captivity. On a day when the students threatened to kill all the hostages if America took any military action, Subic appeared on a late-night Iranian TV show to confirm that the embassy had, indeed, been a den of spies. Laingen wrote in his journal:

Why? Someday we may know, but someday, as a result, what charges face him? What burden will he carry in his own heart and mind for the rest of his life? It was a cold and chilling performance, to see a young American so clearly used by his militant captors to further their cause, whatever the cost to this man’s future.

Ministry officials from time to time made a show of treating Laingen and the others as official emissaries, despite their de facto hostage status. Observing from the windows on the evening of March 22, Laingen saw a steady stream of limousines arriving at the ministry flying flags from various nations, and watched as formally dressed diplomats filed into the building. There was obviously a formal diplomatic event that evening. How could Iran and other nations maintain the pretense of diplomatic normalcy with the U.S. embassy forcibly occupied, its staff imprisoned, and the head of the mission held hostage upstairs?

Later that evening, however, Ghotbzadeh sent for the three, and they were escorted, with shaggy hair and rumpled clothes, before eight of their dapper colleagues and allowed to sit and talk about their predicament for more than an hour. Laingen later wrote in his journal:

The whole affair is incongruous—the magnificent hall, now empty save for us and the eight, the [Iranian] chief of protocol staying discreetly out of earshot (he is a professional, too), our colleagues sympathetic but powerless to help. Diplomats in the ministry of the country to which they are accredited, “allowed” by a possibly embarrassed foreign minister to meet with fellow diplomats held hostage, in total violation of international law and practice…. Yet we conduct ourselves as if nothing had happened, sharing impressions and keeping our emotions under full control, despite our anger and frustration. After an hour or so, we bid our visitors goodbye under the enormous chandelier in the mirrored reception rotunda, acting almost as if we were the hosts of the glittering affair rather than the hostages generously allowed briefly to resume our diplomatic careers!

America’s highest-ranking diplomat in Iran, still washing his socks and underwear in the Foreign Ministry bathroom every morning, assembling jigsaw puzzles, reading books, and walking up and down a closed staircase for exercise, composed yet another futile, angry letter to the president after seeing news reports of Bani-Sadr giving a speech from the outer wall of the occupied embassy.

Dear Mr. President,As you know, it is the view of my government, a view overwhelmingly supported by world legal and public opinion, that the seizure of the Embassy in Tehran and the holding of all its personnel hostage for political purposes was and is a flagrant violation of all precepts of international law and practice.I must therefore record my deep sense of regret that by the use of the walls of that Embassy as a podium for yesterday’s National Mobilization Week march-past, the dignity of your office was so directly and graphically linked to the situation affecting the Embassy and the personnel still held there as hostages.

He was repeating himself and he knew it. Laingen sent off the letter, signed “Chargé D’Affaires ad Interregnum,” feeling like the one sane person in a world gone mad.