Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis (73 page)

All this was accompanied by increasing talk of putting at least some of the hostages on trial. Ever since the failed rescue attempt, spy fever had seized the country. Dozens of military men were executed for their alleged role in aiding the planned American “invasion.” One woman turned in her husband, who she said had confessed to her that he worked for the CIA. There was new outrage in Iran in June when a young man walked into a Tehran police station and announced that he had just hung his twenty-three-year-old younger sister, Amaz, because his family had discovered that she was five months pregnant by Sergeant Mike Moeller, one of the embassy marines being held hostage. Moeller had been questioned in detail about the woman on Easter Sunday and admitted he had known her. Amaz was a regular at parties the marines had held in the small house Moeller was renting—they were not allowed to have alcohol on the embassy grounds, and the marines had not yet been moved to the Bijon apartments behind the complex. Moeller knew that several marines had engaged in sex with Amaz but denied that he was one of them. The authorities claimed that the unfortunate woman had specifically mentioned Moeller in her diary, and the marine suggested it was only because the parties had been held at his house. The brother who killed Amaz received an outpouring of public sympathy; Moeller faced charges for engaging in an “illegal sexual affair.”

The episode fed the predatory image of Americans, and thus served an important political purpose. Facing increasing opposition from ethnic minorities and secular factions, and having discovered an apparently well-organized military plot to overthrow the revolutionary government, Khomeini resorted to a familiar tactic. He blamed all opposition and betrayal on secret American meddling and whipped up anti-American displays. On July 4, hundreds of thousands of Iranians marched in Tehran to protest continued American efforts to undermine their revolution.

Countrywide celebrations marked the death of the shah three weeks later, but for the hostage takers his passing was irrelevant; indeed, for most of the students the demand for his return had been purely rhetorical from the beginning. “Larger issues have taken his place in the negotiations that have yet to begin,” Laingen wrote. More than a year after overthrowing the shah’s government because of its brutality, an even more brutal boss was on the throne, proclaiming his own version of divine right. Laingen wrote:

There is no doubt that the clergy are now in the saddle, and they are determined to exploit their current opportunity to entrench themselves as deeply and firmly as possible, all this out of that group’s genuine conviction that Iran’s problems stem from its failure to follow the precepts and practices of Shia Islam in all aspects of life. Hence the drive for “purity” and “cleansing” of the body politic of all contrary tendencies, not least the exterior manifestations of aping Western ways and the pernicious (in their view) penetration of Western cultural influences that have exposed Iran to weakness and that threaten the Islamic way of life.

It seemed clear to Laingen that this consolidation of power was not just happenstance, and because the embassy takeover had so strengthened the hands of the mullahs, it must have been engineered, or at least steered, by them.

The Tehran Times of the past two days has carried excerpts from an interview with the celebrated cleric Mousavi Khoeniha, the clerical link with the “students” at the embassy since the day of the seizure and, as it is now much clearer, the link before that, too, in the planning of the seizure. Khoeniha’s insistence that the ARK [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] had not been informed before the seizure of the students’ plans. Said he: “We knew it would have been incorrect for the leader of our revolution to know in advance what we were going to do.” That, he said, would have been “politically unwise.” Later, “We simply did not think that our action would have such grave international consequences.” (Obviously not. The gentleman is obviously too shallow to have any such comprehension.)It is old stuff, but it raises the question anew: Khoeniha was the link between these “students” planning the act, and who else? Who else among the clerics, and in the ARK’s entourage, knew about it in advance? It is too much to expect me to believe that there were not others.

Laingen still struggled to keep up appearances. He was, after all, the highest ranking American official in Iran. From time to time, in his official capacity, he hand-printed letters to Iran’s officials, if only to remind them that he and the other hostages were still there.

At the end of June he wrote Bani-Sadr.

Dear Mr. President,Today’s press had reported you as deploring what you describe as the fundamental hostility of the United States toward you.With all respect, Mr. President, this can only reflect a complete misunderstanding of the American government and its people.There is no hostility toward Iran that one single act will not remove. That is the release of the American diplomats held hostage for the last eight months…. The United States has only one other interest in Iran, that is the maintenance of Iran’s independence and territorial integrity by a people and government pursuing policies of their own choosing and without outside interference.Sincerely,

L. Bruce Laingen

Chargé d’Affaires

For all his anti-American pronouncements, Bani-Sadr and his foreign minister, Ghotbzadeh, remained publicly opposed to further holding hostages. Laingen figured that in their position they saw every day the damage being done to Iran’s standing in the world and to its internal security. All the ambitious construction projects under way when the shah fled were still suspended—the great empty cranes on the city’s low skyline were rusting—and all forms of international credit had virtually dried up. The true believers didn’t care, of course; Allah would provide. The imam said he would rather see the country return to donkey transport than make the smallest concession to the Great Satan. And Allah was providing. The great dragon of anti-Americanism loose in the land was devouring all the enemies of the turbaned class. Practical men concerned about Iran’s place in the world, and who looked to more earthly solutions, ran the risk of being branded traitor or incompetent. Cherished Western ideals became subversive, and no one criticized the emerging regime without fear. Ghotbzadeh had been attacked in the government-controlled press and had been summoned to appear before the Majlis to explain his “mis-handling of the ministry.” Khomeini himself blasted Bani-Sadr for failing to adequately cope with the country’s mounting economic difficulties. The president, of course, blamed America, which, by refusing to resolve the hostage crisis, was trying to “sink me in trivial issues so that I fail to battle against U.S. economic pressure.” Still, the Iranian president reserved some ire for the student captors. At the end of August, he was quoted in the newspapers two days in a row speaking critically of the hostage takers. He said the Americans ought to be released, that the continuing standoff had, in effect, “made Iran a hostage of the United States,” because American influence around the world ensured that the new Islamic republic was seen as a pariah. Whatever their reasons, these two primarily secular men were taking a huge risk opposing the hard-liners.

Still, nothing changed. The death of the shah, the seating of the Majlis, the opposition of the president and his foreign minister…the hostage issue bobbed like a cork in a restless sea of change. Laingen had come to suspect that they might not see the end until after the coming American elections and what looked increasingly like Carter’s eventual defeat.

It makes one wonder sometimes…whether the objective is to hold the hostages through the elections in hopes of seeing Carter defeated. You will ask, ah yes, but surely [they] realize that Reagan would be more difficult? I don’t think that matters. The hatred of Jimmy Carter among some of the fundamentalists is so intense as to regard his defeat as an end in itself, an end or objective that if it can be achieved would be hailed as one more example of the justice of Iran’s cause—Allahuakbar. God is great, and He is on our side. That is not a very pleasant prognosis as to intentions here, but, among some of them, I do not exclude it at all.

After all these months of isolation in the ministry, the three Americans were still regarded as a threat. On the first day of July, one of the guards barged into their room with a soldier and the two men stood scrutinizing one of the windows overlooking the garden, apparently convinced that a coded message had been written there by the captives. What they had seen were just a few random splashes of bird droppings.

In mid-August, the ministry guards suddenly delivered a big plastic bag filled with Valentines that had been mailed almost six months earlier. Most were from schoolchildren.

One suggested, “I hope you can sneak out of Iran when the people go to bed. Then you can go back home.”

A girl wrote Laingen, “Hi, Dream Boat. I wish you a lot of luck. I am going to give you a plan to get out. Number one: Cry for food, then hit them in the face and run out. If this isn’t a good plan, hear [sic] is another one. If there is a key by there, all of you should each get a sock and try to throw the sock and get the key. Try your own [idea] if it doesn’t work.”

Others responded to the continuing ordeal of captivity very differently. The irrepressible CIA officer Malcolm Kalp had always been a man whose motor ran fast, and being confined to a small space made him increasingly desperate to escape. Confined to the same villa in Isfahan as John Limbert, with whom he regularly passed notes in their shared bathroom, he tried to enlist the gentle embassy political officer in his plans. His first involved overpowering a guard and taking his weapon.

“Then what are we going to do, shoot our way out?” Limbert wrote back, to which Kalp responded, “Is that something you are willing to do?”

Limbert wasn’t. He didn’t think he could. Besides, there were many armed guards, not just one or two. If they knocked down a guard and took his weapon, they would soon have to use it. On reflection, Kalp agreed that trying to shoot their way out would be suicidal, but he continued to scheme. Perhaps they could sneak out. Limbert noted that even if they were able to slip outside the villa, the area immediately surrounding it was patrolled by a guard dog and encircled by a wall. Beyond the wall were floodlights that turned night into day. Assuming they made it over the wall and across the floodlit area beyond, what would they do then, without money, ID, or proper clothing? Kalp suggested looking for a foreign consulate, or perhaps finding someone sympathetic on the street. Limbert wondered how many people like that there were in Isfahan, Iranians so sympathetic they would risk their lives to help them. None of these entirely sensible obtacles deterred Kalp in the least. He was going, Limbert was not. The political officer admired his colleague’s determination and ingenuity but wondered at his sanity.

Kalp had a nine-inch-long hacksaw blade he had scrounged from the chancery basement and kept hidden in his shoe, and he had been using it to saw through the iron bars over his window. Whenever there was a loud demonstration or the lawn mower started outside, Kalp sawed furiously.

It took some time, but eventually he cut completely through one of the bars before his guards, inspecting his room, noticed. Then they bricked over his window.

“No more windows for you,” the guard told him.

A lesser man would have given up.

One morning in June, Kalp was led out and placed in the back of a station wagon with Bill Belk and Joe Subic, who had been kept in another part of the same villa. He knew Belk was sitting in front of him because the State Department communicator had asthma and wheezed. Kalp recognized the sound. He didn’t learn until later that the other American was Subic. There were three Iranians in the front.

All he could think about, sitting in the back, was that this was the perfect time to escape. There were just three Iranians and three Americans, and Kalp liked the odds. He didn’t know if the guards had weapons but he felt that, if the three of them moved fast, it wouldn’t matter. Without the cooperation of his colleagues it wouldn’t work, and he had no way to enlist them without alerting the guards. As soon as they got to the new place, again with a shared bathroom, this one painted and decorated totally in pink, Kalp wrote a note saying that, if they were moved like that again, he would cough and that would be the signal to attack.

On the way, the guards had promised them that the new place would be cooler, but it wasn’t true. The air-conditioning units were shot. The days were brutal. Kalp immediately went to work on the locks on his room’s windows. He might have been a spy, but he had never learned to pick a lock. It was something he had always wanted to know how to do but he’d never gotten instruction, and whenever he had tried as a boy he had failed. Now, with nothing but time on his hands, he spent hour after hour probing the mechanism with a pin until, much to his delight and surprise, he popped it open. He eased the window up and looked out. They were three stories up in what looked like a middle-class neighborhood. There were no guards in sight, but chained beneath the window again was a big dog. Beyond the dog was a wall that he could easily climb.

Kalp placed a note in the pink bathroom announcing his intention to break out.

“We have to be careful not to hurt any of the guards, because if we hurt them they are going to shoot us for sure,” Kalp wrote.

Belk’s previous escape attempt in the first days of the takeover had ended badly. He remembered the beating and punishment he’d suffered after he was caught, and he had determined that if he ever saw the chance to run again he would not be taken alive. He had stolen a heavy metal drain stop, which, wrapped in his fist, could do serious damage. Kalp, however, had taken Limbert’s caution to heart and had reverted to his earlier position, he had ruled out attacking any of the guards. So Belk told him no. If attacking the guards was not part of the plan, he would stay put and wait for an opening that suited him.

Belk’s roommate Joe Subic, on the other hand, whose days of cozying up to his captors had long since stopped paying dividends, told Kalp he was game. The CIA officer now had the knack of picking locks, so when he was allowed to visit Belk and Subic he unlocked their window. To prepare for his break, Kalp kept careful watch out of his own window through the night. One problem was a floodlight that illuminated the yard outside all night. Kalp pulled out a wall socket in his room and played with the wires, crossing this one and that, until all the lights in the house suddenly went black. This was not unusual. There were frequent blackouts in Isfahan so the guards weren’t surprised. When they realized the short had occurred only at their location they reset the circuits. That, Kalp noted, was a trick that would come in handy.