Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis (93 page)

We gave up. We had taken still pictures on the first visit. As we left, crossing the sidewalk out on Taleghani Avenue to hail a cab, the three young Revolutionary Guards from the guardhouse came running out after us. We thought for a minute that the rules had changed again.

They all spoke to Ramin in Farsi, smiling and gesturing toward us, and then he relayed their comments.

“They want me to tell you that they are embarrassed. That they think this is silly. They want to apologize on behalf of their country.”

Ramin grinned as the soldiers kept pulling at him.

“They want me to tell you that they love America. And to tell you, ‘Yeah George Bush!’”

And right there in front of the “Death to the USA” sign, in front of the faded banners denouncing the Great Satan, one of the soldiers stuck his thumb into the air, and said in halting English:

“Okay for George W. Bush!”

Fifty-two Americans were held hostage in Iran for the full 444 days. They were:

Thomas L. Ahern, Jr., 48, McLean, VA. CIA station chief.

Clair Cortland Barnes, 35, Falls Church, VA. CIA communications specialist.

William E. Belk, 44, West Columbia, SC. State Department communications and records officer.

Robert O. Blucker, 54, North Little Rock, AR. Economics officer specializing in oil.

Donald J. Cooke, 26, Memphis, TN. Vice consul.

William J. Daugherty, 33, Tulsa, OK. CIA officer.

Lt. Cmdr. Robert Englemann, 34, Hurst, TX. Naval attaché.

Sgt. William Gallegos, 22, Pueblo, CO. Marine guard.

Bruce W. German, 44, Rockville, MD. Budget officer.

Sam Gillette, 24, Columbia, PA. Navy communications and intelligence specialist.

Alan B. Golancinksi, 30, Silver Spring, MD. Security officer.

John E. Graves, 53, Reston, VA. Public affairs officer.

Joseph M. Hall, 32, Elyria, OH. Military attaché with warrant officer rank.

Sgt. Kevin J. Hermening, 21, Oak Creek, WI. Marine guard.

Sgt. 1st Class Donald R. Hohman, 38, Frankfurt, West Germany. Army medic.

Col. Leland J. Holland, 53, Laurel, MD. Military attaché.

Michael Howland, 34, Alexandria, VA. Security aide; one of three held in Iranian Foreign Ministry.

Charles A. Jones, Jr., 40, Communications specialist and teletype operator.

Malcolm Kalp, 42, Fairfax, VA. CIA officer.

Morehead “Mike” C. Kennedy Jr., 50, Washington, D.C. Economics and commercial officer.

William F. Keough, Jr., 50, Brookline, MA. Superintendent of American School in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Cpl. Steven W. Kirtley, 22, Little Rock, AR. Marine guard.

Kathryn L. Koob, 42, Fairfax, VA. Embassy cultural officer.

Frederick Lee Kupke, 34, Francesville, IN. Communications officer and electronics specialist.

L. Bruce Laingen, 58, Bethesda, MD. Chargé d’affaires; one of three held in Iranian Foreign Ministry.

Steven Lauterbach, 29, North Dayton, OH. Administrative officer.

Gary E. Lee, 37, Falls Church, VA. Administrative officer.

Sgt. Paul Edward Lewis, 23, Homer, IL. Marine guard.

John W. Limbert, Jr., 37, Washington, D.C. Political officer.

Sgt. James M. Lopez, 22, Globe, AZ. Marine guard.

Sgt. John D. McKeel, Jr., 27, Balch Springs, TX. Marine guard.

Michael J. Metrinko, 34, Olyphant, PA. Political officer.

Jerry J. Miele, 42, Mount Pleasant, PA. CIA communications officer.

Staff Sgt. Michael E. Moeller, 31, Quantico, VA. Head of marine guard unit.

Bert C. Moore, 45, Mount Vernon, OH. Counselor for administration.

Richard H. Morefield, 51, San Diego, CA. U.S. consul general in Tehran.

Capt. Paul M. Needham, Jr., 30, Bellevue, NE. Air force logistics staff officer.

Robert C. Ode, 65, Sun City, AZ. Retired foreign service officer on temporary duty in Tehran.

Sgt. Gregory A. Persinger, 23, Seaford, DE. Marine guard.

Jerry Plotkin, 45, Sherman Oaks, CA. Private businessman visiting Tehran.

MSgt. Regis Regan, 38, Johnstown, PA. Army noncom, assigned to defense attaché’s officer.

Lt. Col. David M. Roeder, 41, Alexandria, VA. Deputy air force attaché.

Barry M. Rosen, 36, Brooklyn, NY. Press attaché.

William B. Royer, Jr., 49, Houston, TX. Assistant director of Iran-American Society.

Col. Thomas E. Schaefer, 50, Tacoma, WA. Air Force attaché.

Col. Charles W. Scott, 48, Stone Mountain, GA. Army officer, military liaison.

Cmdr. Donald A. Sharer, 40, Chesapeake, VA. Naval air attaché.

Sgt. Rodney V. (Rocky) Sickmann, 22, Krakow, MO. Marine guard.

Staff Sgt. Joseph Subic, Jr., 23, Redford Township, MI. Military policeman (army) on defense attaché’s staff.

Elizabeth Ann Swift, 40, Washington, D.C. Chief of embassy’s political section.

Victor L. Tomseth, 39, Springfield, OR. Senior political officer; one of three held in Iranian Foreign Ministry.

Phillip R. Ward, 40, Culpeper, VA. CIA communications officer.

Freed on July 11, 1980, because of an illness later diagnosed as multiple sclerosis, was:

Richard I. Queen, 28, New York, NY. Vice consul.

Six Americans escaped the embassy and were hidden and ultimately smuggled out of Iran by the Canadian and Swedish embassies. They were:

Robert Anders, 34, Port Charlotte, FL. Consular officer.

Mark J. Lijek, 29, Falls Church, VA. Consular officer.

Cora A. Lijek, 25, Falls Church, VA. Consular assistant.

Henry L. Schatz, 31, Coeur d’Alene, ID. Agriculture attaché.

Joseph D. Stafford, 29, Crossville, TN. Consular officer.

Kathleen F. Stafford, 28, Crossville, TN. Consular assistant.

Thirteen women and African-Americans were released November 19 and 20, 1979. They were:

Kathy Gross, 22, Cambridge Springs, PA. Secretary.

Sgt. James Hughes, 30, Langley Air Force Base, VA. Air force administrative manager.

Lillian Johnson, 32, Elmont, NY. Secretary.

Sgt. Ladel Maples, 23, Earle, AR. Marine guard.

Elizabeth Montagne, 42, Calumet City, IL. Secretary.

Sgt. William Quarles, 23, Washington, D.C. Marine guard.

Lloyd Rollins, 40, Alexandria, VA. Administrative officer.

Capt. Neil (Terry) Robinson, 30, Houston, TX. Air force intelligence officer.

Terri Tedford, 24, South San Francisco, CA. Secretary.

Sgt. Joseph Vincent, 42, New Orleans, LA. Air force administrative manager.

Sgt. David Walker, 25, Prairie View, TX. Marine guard.

Joan Walsh, 33, Ogden, UT. CIA secretary.

Cpl. Wesley Williams, 24, Albany, NY. Marine guard.

Eight U.S. servicemen lost their lives in the attempt to free the hostages. They were:

Capt. Richard L. Bakke, 34, Long Beach, CA. Air force.

Sgt. John D. Harvey, 21, Roanoke, VA. Marine corps.

Cpl. George N. Holmes, Jr., 22, Pine Bluff, AR. Marine corps.

Staff Sgt. Dewey L. Johnson, 32, Jacksonville, NC. Marine corps.

Capt. Harold L. Lewis, 35, Mansfield, CT. Air force.

Tech. Sgt. Joel C. Mayo, 34, Bonifay, FL. Air force.

Capt. Lynn D. McIntosh, 33, Valdosta, GA. Air force.

Capt. Charles T. McMillan II, 28, Corrytown, TN. Air force.

Although I have drawn from a large collection of work about the Iranian hostage crisis, most of the information in this book is based on interviews with the participants. I owe a great debt to the many in-depth hostage interviews conducted by Tim Wells in preparation for his book 444 Days, material that Wells donated to the Duke University library and graciously allowed me to pillage. In the case of some of the hostages who have died, Wells’s interview was my only source for that person’s experience. Included in his collection was the unpublished diary of the late Bob Ode. I reinterviewed most of the hostages, but even in those cases the Wells interviews, which were conducted so soon after the events, were invaluable.

In the notes that follow, the reference to “news reports” refers to a fifteen-volume collection of newspaper articles printed out, collated, and bound for me by Terrence Henry, my tenacious researcher. The articles consisted of reports from the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, Associated Press, and United Press International and abstracts from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. I have not noted in every case the exact date and title of each article, because often the stories on given days were very similar and, frankly, I drew on so many that sorting it all out at this point would be tedious and (I think) unnecessary, especially with the easy search capabilities of electronic databases.

The Carter Center in Atlanta provided me with copies of dozens of videotapes, almost forty hours of news programming (local and national) through the fifteen-month standoff. Again, I have not in each instance referred to the exact date, time, and source of each report, because the timing of the report in the context of the larger story is obvious, and the same material was broadcast on all of the networks and local stations. In certain instances, where the report or comment was particularly noteworthy, I have indicated the reporter and network in the text of the story. Some of the interviews for this book were done on my behalf by Terrence Henry, Aaron Bowden, David Keane, Arcadia Keane, Kaveh Ehsani, and the intrepid Christina Asquith, who tracked down former hostage Joe Subic in Baghdad.

INTERVIEWS

Hostages: Tom Ahern, Bill Belk, Don Cooke, Bill Daugherty, Billy Gallegos, Al Golacinski, Joe Hall, Kevin Hermening, Don Hohman, Joan (Walsh) Howland, Mike Howland, Charles Jones, Morehead “Mike” Kennedy, Kathryn Koob, Rick Kupke, Bruce Laingen, Steve Lauterbach, John Limbert, James Lopez, Michael Metrinko, Mike Moeller, Dick Morefield, Greg Persinger, Dave Roeder, Bill Royer, Chuck Scott, Don Sharer, Rocky Sickmann, Joe Subic. Tim Wellsinterviews: Cort Barnes, Belk, Cooke, Bob Englemann, Gallegos, Bruce German, Golacinski, John Graves, Hall, Hermening, Hohman, Lee Holland, Charles Jones, Malcolm Kalp, William Keough, Steven Kirtley, Bruce Laingen, Gary Lee, Paul Lewis, Mark Lijek, Limbert, Lopez, Metrinko, Morefield, Paul Needham, Bob Ode, Richard Queen, Barry Rosen, Royer, Thomas Schaefer, Scott, Sickmann, Victor Tomseth.

Rescue mission: Ken Bancroft, Joseph Byers, Bob Brenci, Fred Brooks, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bucky Burruss, John Carney, Dave Cheney, Dave Doroski, Ray Doyle, Logan Fitch, Eric Haney, Jim Hughes, Reed Hughes, Wade Ishimoto, Rod Lenahan, Wayne Long, Bob Mingo, Keith Nightengale, Chuck Pittman, Jody Powell, Tim Prater, Frank Rotundo, Jesse Rowe, Taco Sanchez, Carl Savory, Jim Schaefer, Jim Scurria, Pete Schoomaker, E. K. Smith, Gerald Uttaro, Jim Vaught, Lyle Walton.

Iran interviews: Abbas Abdi, Alizera Alavitabar, Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr (in Paris), Massoud Dehnamaki, Nilufar (Massoumeh) Ebtekar, Reza Golpour, Mohammad Hashemi, Taha Hashemi, Morteza Kavakebian, Mousavi Khoeniha, Mohsen Mirdamadi, Mohammad Naimipoor, Farouz Rajaeefar, Saeed Razavi-Faqih, Hossein Shariatmadari, Sadegh Tabatabai, Mostafa Tajzadeh, Hossein Valeh, Ibrahim Yazdi.

Other: Cynthia Dwyer, Hershel Jaffe, Stephen Kinzer, Penne Laingen, Darrell Rupiper, Behrooz Sharsar, Zena Sheardown, Stansfield Turner, Richard Valeriani. Tim Wells interview: Cheri Lee, Parvaneh Limbert, Dorothea Morefield, Rita Ode, Barbara Timm.

Official State Department interviews: John Graves, Bruce Laingen, Richard Morefield, Henry Precht, Harold Saunders, Ann Swift.

BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS

Hostages

In the Shadow of the Ayatollah: A CIA Hostage in Iran, William Daugherty. Naval Institute Press, 2001.

The Ayatollah in the Cathedral: Reflections of a Hostage, Morehead Kennedy. Hill and Wang, 1986.

Guest of the Revolution, Kathryn Koob. Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982.

Yellow Ribbon: The Secret Journal of Bruce Laingen, Bruce Laingen. Brassey’s, 1992.

Iran, At War with History, John W. Limbert. Westview Press, 1987.

Inside and Out: Hostage to Iran, Hostage to Myself, Richard Queen, with Patricia Haas. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981.

The Destined Hour, Barbara and Barry Rosen, with George Feifer. Doubleday, 1982.

Iranian Hostage: A Personal Diary, Rocky Sickmann. Crawford Press, 1982.

Diplomacy

Day-by-day chronology of the U.S. hostages crisis in Iran, The Associated Press, January 8, 1981.

The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations, James Bill. Yale University Press, 1988.

Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983.

Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President, Jimmy Carter. Bantam, 1982.

Chances of a Lifetime: A Memoir, Warren Christopher. Scribner, 2001.

American Hostages in Iran: The Conduct of a Crisis, Warren Christopher et al. Council on Foreign Relations, 1985.

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Iran Hostage Crisis: Cambridge Studies in International Relations, David Patrick Houghton. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

The Iran Hostage Crisis, a Chronology of Daily Developments: Report, U.S. Congress, House Committee on Foreign Affairs and Library of Congress. Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division. Government Printing Office, 1981.

Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency, Hamilton Jordan. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982.

No Hiding Place: The New York Times Inside Report on the Hostage Crisis, Robert D. McFadden et al. Times Books, 1981.

Freeing the Hostages: Reexamining U.S.-Iranian Negotiations and Soviet Policy, 1979–1981, Russell Leigh Moses. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.

Microfiche Collection: Iran, the Making of U.S. Policy, 1977–1980 (Spy Den Documents), National Security Archive. George Washington University, 1990.

The Other Side of History, Jody Powell. William Morrow, 1984.

America Held Hostage: The Secret Negotiations, Pierre Salinger. Doubleday, 1981.

All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter with Iran, Gary Sick. Random House, 1986.

Inside the Iranian Revolution, John Stempel. Indiana University Press, 1981.

Embassies Under Siege: Personal Accounts by Diplomats on the Front Line, Joseph G. Sullivan, ed. Brassey’s, 1995.