Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis (58 page)

Sensing an advantage, the Iranian president once again had changed the rules at the last minute. He now sought various new assurances, among them official recognition by Washington that the appropriate venue for resolving the hostage question was Iran’s parliament, the as-yet unformed Majlis. Moving the hostages to the Foreign Ministry was understood to be a step toward their rapid release, but what Bani-Sadr now asked for was, in effect, American approval of a plan that would leave the hostages in Tehran for another month or two, until after the Majlis was elected and convened. He also wanted Carter to refrain from making “hostile statements.” In other words Iran, having kidnapped American diplomats, was entitled to imprison them until it decided upon the terms of their release, and the United States should agree not to publicly complain. Carter acquiesced to even these galling demands. A message essentially complying to them was drafted and sent to Iran but to no avail. Before it reached Bani-Sadr, the effort to move the hostages was again vetoed by Khomeini, and the slippery Iranian president gave up. He announced that he was henceforth “washing his hands” of the hostage mess. Disgusted and dismayed, Carter called Bani-Sadr “gutless.”

News stories in America speculated that the president had concocted the “hostage transfer” story to boost his chances in the Wisconsin and Kansas primaries.

Carter vented to Jordan.

“He had a chance to move the hostages and he didn’t do it,” the president said, tossing aside a news account of Bani-Sadr’s latest sidestep. “The council approved the transfer, the militants agreed to do it, and then nothing happens! I don’t know what we do now. I really don’t.” Jordan began to describe what his contacts Bourget and Villalon now suggested, and the president cut him off. “Ham, the only people in the world who think we’re going to get our people back soon are you and your French friends.”

Carter said again that he had been made to feel “foolish” and doubted any hope of a negotiated solution remained. He would take the expected beating for this latest bait and switch. The Iranians, in Reagan’s analogy, had sliced the salami yet again. A pattern had developed: Carter would latch on to a deal proffered by a top Iranian official and grant minor but humiliating concessions, only to have it scotched at the last minute by Khomeini. The White House was feeling pressure from both sides, from those who thought it hadn’t done enough to comply with Iran’s demands and those who felt the president had gone too far.

Helping to lead the charge for more conciliation were some of the hostages’ families. Several had become public figures over the previous four months and, as family members will in hostage situations, they urged the White House to meet the kidnappers’ demands. Bonnie Graves, the wife of hostage John Graves, and the parents of hostage Joe Hall joined former hostage William Quarles, one of the African-Americans released in November, and Congressman George Hansen at a press conference calling for a congressional investigation of America’s role in “the crimes of the shah.”

Such a probe would not be “appeasement,” said Hansen, although he acknowledged that a probe would meet one of the students’ demands.

“I think it would be very important in getting them out,” said Quarles, who since his release had effectively become a spokesman for the hostage takers.

The drumbeat for a more aggressive response was also growing louder, and not just from conservatives and Republicans. So far, Carter’s patience had seemed only to reward Iran for this outrage. Among other things, he had agreed to approve creation of the ill-fated UN commission, urged a judge in New York to postpone hearings on seizing Iran’s assets, postponed the imposition of economic sanctions, acquiesced in Khomeini’s decision to refer the hostage question to the Majlis, and agreed to refrain from making hostile statements about Iran…and what had come of it?

“There comes a time in negotiations with people of this kind that you have to say, ‘No, this is our last offer,’” said presidential candidate Reagan.

The Washington Post editorialized:

The United States, far from earning respect for its restraint and forbearance, is increasingly seen as a country that shrinks from asserting what even its enemies recognize as a legitimate interest in protecting its diplomats from a mob. The latest sequence of negotiations between Washington and Tehran puts the issue beyond argument. The United States has made concessions of the sort one might expect from a nation that had lost a war. Each concession has been met with a demand for another. The divisions and disputes within Iran that are responsible for the impasse seem almost self-perpetuating…. The only reasonable conclusion is that this string of diplomacy has been played out…. Fresh sanctions are being weighed by the administration. Good. They should be applied…. They should be direct and consequential.

The newspaper mirrored Carter’s thoughts. His mood had changed. At another NSC meeting at the end of the first week of April, the president announced that negotiations were over, that he was going to act, and that it had been a mistake not to act sooner.

Bani-Sadr had become a joke, even to Secretary of State Vance, who continued to urge moderation. Henry Precht, the head of the State Department’s Iran desk who had worked closely with Jordan through all the secret negotiations, walked into the secretary’s office on Easter Sunday to find a large stuffed pink and yellow rabbit.

“Henry,” said Vance, “I’d like you to meet Bunny Sadr.”

It was the only time Precht had ever heard the earnest Vance make a joke. One of Carter’s “acts” was to finally expel Iran’s diplomatic mission and to break all formal ties, a step so unsurprising that many Americans were startled to learn it had not been done already. In fact, Carter had deliberately delayed closing Iran’s embassy because American eavesdroppers had broken Iran’s codes and considered the “secure” communications between the Iranians in Washington and their bosses in Tehran to be a useful source of intelligence. The task of formal eviction fell to Precht, who invited to his office Ali Agah, the Iranian chargé d’affaires. Agah arrived with his deputy, not knowing the purpose of the summons. Chatting with them while he waited for the formal note of expulsion to be drafted—Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher was supposed to arrive with it at any moment—Precht expressed irritation over a small group of Iranians who had mounted another pro-Khomeini demonstration outside the State Department building.

“Why do you suppose these guys don’t go back to Tehran and rebuild the country?” he asked. “Why are they wasting their time here when their countrymen are mistreating our people over there?”

The Iranian deputy, whom Precht would later describe as “snake-like,” countered, “We are not mistreating the hostages. They are being very well taken care of in Tehran. They are our guests.”

“Bullshit,” said Precht.

Agah stood up and declared, “I’m not going to stay here and have my country, my government, insulted by you. We are leaving.”

The Iran desk chief bolted into the hallway after them. His job was to keep them occupied until they could be formally expelled.

“Ali, I apologize,” he said. “I retract my statement. Come back and let’s just chat a little more.”

“No,” said Agah.

Precht raced ahead to intercept them at the elevator door. He was now creating a scene in the fifth-floor hallway. The Iranians stepped around him into the elevator, but Precht wouldn’t let the doors shut.

“Ali, let’s sit,” he urged.

“You are holding us hostage in this elevator,” said Agah. “Get out of the way and let us out of here.”

Precht relented. The last thing he wanted was to make it appear the United States had gone into the business of reciprocal hostage taking. Outside the State Department building, Agah complained angrily to Marvin Kalb, the CBS reporter, that he had just been insulted by an American official. Kalb then phoned Precht.

“Henry, what did you say?” he asked. “What did you do to Ali?”

Precht explained, and that night’s lead news item became the flustered Iranian diplomats leaving the State Department in a huff. It could not have played out better in millions of impatient American living rooms. The formal message was delivered by a junior official who chased Agah’s car across the city. Within twenty-four hours, after the State Department rejected several last-minute appeals from some in the Iranian mission who were especially eager to stay (including one who requested political asylum), all but one of them boarded flights in Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. The stress of returning home had provoked chest pains in one, who stayed behind under observation at a D.C. hospital.

The expulsion and the way it had been carried out were warmly applauded. Precht, who felt he had mishandled the assignment, became an overnight hero to millions of Americans who relished the idea of hurling “bullshit!” into the face of an Iranian official before kicking him and his entire mission out the door. He received congratulatory mail from all over the country, including proposals of marriage.

Even Carter applauded Precht, expressing particular satisfaction with his choice of words.

Easter in Tehran brought another visit from concerned American clergy. The Reverend Jack Bremer was back under the auspices of the Committee for American-Iranian Crisis Resolution, the group headed by Kansas professor Norm Forer, which had so impressed the Iranian students with its sympathies on the February visit that it was invited back, at the students’ expense. Bremer brought along the activist priest Darrell Rupiper, who had visited earlier in the year. He and the others practiced what they called “moral patriotism,” which condemned America for falling short of universal ethical standards. While they condemned the kidnapping of diplomats, they also acknowledged that Iran had valid grievances against the United States, and though they claimed strict neutrality their sympathies clearly leaned toward Tehran. Rupiper had kicked off the trip with a press conference at which he urged President Carter to comply with Iranian demands, admit complicity in the crimes of the shah, agree not to obstruct efforts to extradite the shah (now from Egypt), and promise not to meddle further in Iranian affairs.

The visiting clergymen presented Kathryn Koob and Ann Swift each with a plastic bag filled with gifts: a shirt, some underwear, and soaps and other toiletries. Bremer told Koob that he had delivered similar gifts to Laingen, Tomseth, and Howland at the Foreign Ministry.

Bremer then led a prayer, which asked for God’s blessings on Americans and Iranians both, and for a renewed understanding and friendship between these nations. Koob was moved. She had been struggling in her prayer sessions for the right way to pray for her captors and heard in Bremer’s words an approach she hadn’t considered. After the service, the American women were positioned before the cameras, handed letters from their families, and told they could send messages home. Koob knew that her much-reduced frame was now so skinny and angular that her face seemed lost behind the wide plastic frames of her glasses. “The only reason I’m losing weight, Mother, is that I decided that was the only thing I could do over here.” Encouraged to keep talking, Koob and Swift described their daily routines and soon fell to giggling.

“Which one of you keeps the other in good spirits?” Bremer asked.

The two women pointed at each other.

When they were finished they added nuts, candy, and brownies to their plastic bags and listened as their guards told the cameras about how their hostages were provided an exercise room with a Ping-Pong table (Koob had been there twice) and showings of American movies (Koob had seen one).

Al Golacinski and Kevin Hermening had been told weeks earlier to expect the Easter visit, so each prepared a note on a foil wrapper from a stick of Wrigley’s spearmint gum. Golacinski’s note said that they were sick, that the sanitary conditions were terrible, that they couldn’t take it anymore, and that they were “losing it.” Hermening wrote that he believed the American people were unaware of how badly he and the others were being treated. He mentioned solitary confinement, beatings, the blindfolding and handcuffs, the lack of showers, and said they all just wanted to “get the hell out.”

Hermening had a tear in the cuff of his blue slacks, so he stuffed the note inside it for safekeeping.

A Mass was to be said by Rupiper. When the hostages arrived for the ceremony, Hermening, who was Catholic, asked if he could perform the ceremony’s lay readings. There were bright lights and cameras everywhere and the room was decorated with posters and festive ornaments made of construction paper. Dick Morefield and Billy Gallegos, two of the other Catholic hostages, looked on. As he waited for his chance to read, Hermening slid the note out of his cuff and cupped it in the palm of his right hand. He slipped the gum wrapper into the Bible during his reading, and when he handed it back to the priest he said, “There’s a note in there.” Rupiper was so startled he took a step back and nearly dropped the book. He said nothing, but Hermening thought the priest looked frightened.

Golacinski took advantage of the session to whisper to one of the other ministers that he wanted to get word to his fiancée that she should not wait for him.

“I’m going to be here for a long time,” he said.

Richard Queen and Joe Hall were in the last group to meet with the delegation. They sat at a table with the Reverend Nelson Thompson, an African-American Methodist preacher from Kansas City, and Rupiper. Queen was particularly grateful for the chance to receive communion. He was moved by Rupiper’s kindness.

“I wish I had the strength to stay here with you,” the priest told Queen. “This is a real test, a test of one’s faith.”

The slender, longhaired priest had been so struck by the condition of Jerry Miele, the CIA communicator who had become increasingly disturbed, that he offered to stay in Tehran and take the man’s place.

“I would want no privileges the others do not have,” he told Hussein Sheikh-ol-eslam and several of the other student captors. Rupiper explained that the night before he had opened the Bible at random and found a passage in Galatians about Christ’s willingness to sacrifice himself to “set us free from the present age of evil.”