Lightning Rod
10-25-2004, 11:48 AM
U.S. captives in Tehran got first taste of terror
Mon Oct 25, 7:12 AM ET
Top Stories - USATODAY.com
By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY
On a Sunday morning 25 years ago, U.S. diplomats in Tehran looked out the window to see hundreds of young Iranians, fired by a love of Islam and a hatred of America, spilling over the walls and through the gate of the embassy compound.
The Americans did not know it, but they were staring at the future - a militant Muslim fundamentalism that would one day replace communism as the greatest threat to their nation.
That was Nov. 4, 1979, the beginning of the Iran hostage crisis, and a date on a timeline that would stretch to Sept. 11, 2001, and beyond.
Fifty-two Americans were held captive for 444 days. Although none was seriously hurt, many were beaten, blindfolded, isolated and lined up for mock firing squads. Never had so many representatives of so powerful a nation been abused so flagrantly.
"We were Terrorism 101," says Col. Charles Scott, 72, who was an embassy military attaché.
Day after day, huge crowds outside the embassy vilified Uncle Sam as "The Great Satan" and chanted "Death to America!" America watched on TV - horrified, mystified, fascinated.
What was shocking in 1979 has now become routine. A new group of extremists - this time in Iraq (news - web sites) - almost daily takes hostages, makes threats and demands concessions. And though the circumstances are vastly different than in Iran 25 years ago, the plan is the same: Invoke Islam to crush America.
Today, 42 of the 52 hostages are still living. They reside in 16 states, and about a third live in the Washington metropolitan area. They are writers, lecturers, teachers, financial planners, salesmen. Many are retired; only a few are still diplomats. Almost all share a sense that history has caught up with them - that the Islamic terrorism they left in Tehran now threatens their homeland.
And like much of America, they remain split on how to best fight that terrorism.
To better understand the impact of the crisis on the hostages and the nation, reporters from USA TODAY and Gannett newspapers around the nation interviewed more than half of the surviving hostages. (Related story: Those affected have differing views)
Although they don't agree on everything, most have reached these conclusions:
•The Iran crisis taught Americans little about Muslim extremists. "We don't understand how they think," says Dave Roeder, 65, who was an embassy Air Force attaché. Several hostages recall that when they came home, people were more curious about what they ate than what the crisis said about the use of Islam to compel terror.
"The very people today that are standing up and saying, 'We've got to do something about this terrorism,' are people that did not listen to those of us that had actually been out there fighting terrorists for the past 30 years," says Alan Golacinski, 54, the embassy security chief.
•The crisis taught the extremists that terrorism works. When the crisis ended with the captors unrepentant and unpunished, "we were teaching the Middle East what could be gained through an act of terrorism," says Rick Kupke, 57, who was an embassy communications staffer. The lesson was simple, says John Limbert, 61, an embassy political officer who later became ambassador to Mauritania: "You can break the rules and get away with it."
As a result, many hostages say they expected a disaster like 9/11. Bill Daughtery, a CIA (news - web sites) agent in the embassy and now a college political science professor, describes his reaction to the 2001 attacks this way: " 'What took them so long?' "
For many former hostages, Sept. 11 was particularly difficult. "It made me physically sick," says Paul Lewis, 47, a former embassy Marine guard. "I thought, 'They finally found a way to get here.' "
These days, the hostages are reminded of their 444 days in captivity by every new kidnapping, ambush or bombing. Some of the Marine guards wonder whether they should have fired into the crowd that November morning. If they had, would it have stopped the takeover? Others wrestle with guilt; did the deal that freed them encourage more terrorism?
When Lewis looks at photos of hostages in Iraq, he says he knows exactly what they're thinking. What it's like to be blindfolded, to feel steel on the side of your head and think your time has come. To prepare to die, over and over.
"I'd like to give you this feeling in the pit of my stomach," he says to those who doubt a hostage's suffering, "and let you carry it around for a week."
Nation changed forever
In the Cold War, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran was one of America's staunchest allies. But his regime was corrupt and tyrannical. In early 1979, revolution forced the shah to flee the country.
A coalition of his opponents took over. But the nation's most influential individual was a fundamentalist cleric, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The revolutionaries blamed Americans for putting and keeping the shah in power; two weeks after he was admitted into the United States for cancer treatment, student followers of Khomeini invaded the embassy and demanded the shah's return.
The students planned to hold the embassy for a few days, but Khomeini, seeing a way to undercut the secular politicians who nominally controlled the government, announced his support for the occupation. It was an outrage not even the Nazis attempted: a foreign embassy staff officially held ransom.
In America, the hostages became a national obsession. Yellow ribbons, inspired by a 1973 pop song, Tie a Yellow Ribbon, were everywhere; one encircled the stadium that hosted the Super Bowl in 1980.
Every day, a cemetery in Hermitage, Pa., put up another flag in honor of the hostages. Every evening, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite counted off the days of captivity.
Every night, a new ABC News program called Nightline asked, What next? The program, which had started as a special called America Held Hostage, almost immediately became an institution. Now, television began to shape the crisis.
President Jimmy Carter made the safety of the hostages his top priority. He cut back on campaigning, and even refused to fully light the White House Christmas tree until they were free.
By arousing patriotism, the crisis at first boosted the president and doomed Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record)'s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. But the nation became increasingly frustrated, especially after the failure of a rescue operation in the desert outside Tehran in April 1980.
In November, Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) won in a landslide.
After the election, negotiators began to make progress, and the United States agreed to release $7.9 billion in frozen Iranian assets in return for freeing the hostages.
When the 50 men and two women finally were freed minutes after Reagan's inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981, Americans treated the episode not as a humiliation but as a triumph.
After Watergate and Vietnam, "People wanted to feel better about the country. They took this (crisis) and used it," says Bruce Laingen, the embassy's chief diplomat.
An episode that underscored America's weakness came to be credited for its regeneration. In a few years, Reagan would declare it "morning in America." If so, the hostage crisis was the hour before the dawn.
"When we got back I saw a tremendous transformation in America," recalls Paul Needham, who was an Air Force attaché and now teaches at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. "The attitude had been, 'We're terrible!' but these people were proud to be Americans. They were waving the flag. It was amazing! The introverted examination of ourselves stopped."
'Waited for 444 days'
None of the hostages has returned to Tehran. Most say they never will. "But I'll give you the grid coordinates," says Needham, who faced a mock firing squad. "I'll do the targeting." He's only half joking: "It's personal."
Today, relations between Iran and the United States aren't much better than when the hostages were released.
President Bush (news - web sites) has called Iran part of an "axis of evil," and Iran's nuclear program is a source of constant friction. Some of the students who seized the embassy are in power; others are in the opposition; a few are in prison.
Although the hostages generally believe lessons from the crisis have been ignored, they don't agree what those lessons are: that we must try to understand militants who fight in the name of Islam? Or that we must intimidate them? Or kill them? The issue divides some of the diplomats and soldiers who were once so close in captivity.
Moorhead Kennedy, now retired from the Foreign Service, says Americans should try to understand terrorists' goals - "walk in their shoes" - and if necessary, negotiate and compromise.
Former Marine guard Kevin Hermening calls negotiation and compromise "the answers of the uninformed," and equates them with capitulation.
After the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Hermening advocated the immediate destruction of seven Middle Eastern capitals unless leaders there agreed "unequivocally to support our efforts to kill Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)."
The crisis marked the hostages in different ways. Marriages were ruined and revived, careers ended and begun, virtues lost and found. Virtues such as patience.
Sometimes, if a flight is delayed and his fellow passengers are complaining, Chuck Scott will tell them, "I once waited for a plane for 444 days."
Scott and Kennedy left the military and the Foreign Service, respectively, to take up writing and lecturing. Army Warrant Officer Joe Hall made contacts that allowed him to become a Washington lobbyist. Steve Kirtley, who enlisted in the Marines before finishing high school, rose to major and went into private business in 2002.
They were the lucky ones. At least one former hostage has attempted suicide. One was murdered. Two died in accidents - one in a car and one on horseback.
For most, captivity has provided a new perspective on freedom.
"I will never again be taken captive. It's that simple," says Lewis, the Marine guard. "If someone comes on a flight with a box cutter, one of us isn't getting off."
After those 444 days, Scott says, "every day is a good day."
Lewis, a financial planner, says a plunge in the stock market doesn't compare to a mock firing squad or 45 days in handcuffs.
People who were once the focus of a nation are now confused with hostages held in other countries or other decades.
They're a footnote in their kids' history books. Or simply forgotten. "I have to buy my own beer again," Needham says.
Also forgotten is an old oak that stands in front of Laingen's split-level house outside Washington.
Once, it was the most photographed tree in America. In 1979, Laingen's wife, Penne, bought yards of yellow oilcloth, tied it around the tree, and created an enduring folkway. Yellow, traditionally the color of cowardice, had come to stand for caring.
Now the oilcloth is in the Library of Congress (news - web sites). A few years after her husband's return, Penne Laingen presented it to the nation with these words: "From my attic to your attic, the mother of all yellow ribbons."
I don’t know if it is the case or not but, I certainly hope that from that day forward all of the guards have been ordered to react to a mob scaling one of our embassy walls as an invasion of our soil and shoot to kill. If that is not the standing order someone is criminally negligent and needs the nut-hooks!
Mon Oct 25, 7:12 AM ET
Top Stories - USATODAY.com
By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY
On a Sunday morning 25 years ago, U.S. diplomats in Tehran looked out the window to see hundreds of young Iranians, fired by a love of Islam and a hatred of America, spilling over the walls and through the gate of the embassy compound.
The Americans did not know it, but they were staring at the future - a militant Muslim fundamentalism that would one day replace communism as the greatest threat to their nation.
That was Nov. 4, 1979, the beginning of the Iran hostage crisis, and a date on a timeline that would stretch to Sept. 11, 2001, and beyond.
Fifty-two Americans were held captive for 444 days. Although none was seriously hurt, many were beaten, blindfolded, isolated and lined up for mock firing squads. Never had so many representatives of so powerful a nation been abused so flagrantly.
"We were Terrorism 101," says Col. Charles Scott, 72, who was an embassy military attaché.
Day after day, huge crowds outside the embassy vilified Uncle Sam as "The Great Satan" and chanted "Death to America!" America watched on TV - horrified, mystified, fascinated.
What was shocking in 1979 has now become routine. A new group of extremists - this time in Iraq (news - web sites) - almost daily takes hostages, makes threats and demands concessions. And though the circumstances are vastly different than in Iran 25 years ago, the plan is the same: Invoke Islam to crush America.
Today, 42 of the 52 hostages are still living. They reside in 16 states, and about a third live in the Washington metropolitan area. They are writers, lecturers, teachers, financial planners, salesmen. Many are retired; only a few are still diplomats. Almost all share a sense that history has caught up with them - that the Islamic terrorism they left in Tehran now threatens their homeland.
And like much of America, they remain split on how to best fight that terrorism.
To better understand the impact of the crisis on the hostages and the nation, reporters from USA TODAY and Gannett newspapers around the nation interviewed more than half of the surviving hostages. (Related story: Those affected have differing views)
Although they don't agree on everything, most have reached these conclusions:
•The Iran crisis taught Americans little about Muslim extremists. "We don't understand how they think," says Dave Roeder, 65, who was an embassy Air Force attaché. Several hostages recall that when they came home, people were more curious about what they ate than what the crisis said about the use of Islam to compel terror.
"The very people today that are standing up and saying, 'We've got to do something about this terrorism,' are people that did not listen to those of us that had actually been out there fighting terrorists for the past 30 years," says Alan Golacinski, 54, the embassy security chief.
•The crisis taught the extremists that terrorism works. When the crisis ended with the captors unrepentant and unpunished, "we were teaching the Middle East what could be gained through an act of terrorism," says Rick Kupke, 57, who was an embassy communications staffer. The lesson was simple, says John Limbert, 61, an embassy political officer who later became ambassador to Mauritania: "You can break the rules and get away with it."
As a result, many hostages say they expected a disaster like 9/11. Bill Daughtery, a CIA (news - web sites) agent in the embassy and now a college political science professor, describes his reaction to the 2001 attacks this way: " 'What took them so long?' "
For many former hostages, Sept. 11 was particularly difficult. "It made me physically sick," says Paul Lewis, 47, a former embassy Marine guard. "I thought, 'They finally found a way to get here.' "
These days, the hostages are reminded of their 444 days in captivity by every new kidnapping, ambush or bombing. Some of the Marine guards wonder whether they should have fired into the crowd that November morning. If they had, would it have stopped the takeover? Others wrestle with guilt; did the deal that freed them encourage more terrorism?
When Lewis looks at photos of hostages in Iraq, he says he knows exactly what they're thinking. What it's like to be blindfolded, to feel steel on the side of your head and think your time has come. To prepare to die, over and over.
"I'd like to give you this feeling in the pit of my stomach," he says to those who doubt a hostage's suffering, "and let you carry it around for a week."
Nation changed forever
In the Cold War, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran was one of America's staunchest allies. But his regime was corrupt and tyrannical. In early 1979, revolution forced the shah to flee the country.
A coalition of his opponents took over. But the nation's most influential individual was a fundamentalist cleric, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The revolutionaries blamed Americans for putting and keeping the shah in power; two weeks after he was admitted into the United States for cancer treatment, student followers of Khomeini invaded the embassy and demanded the shah's return.
The students planned to hold the embassy for a few days, but Khomeini, seeing a way to undercut the secular politicians who nominally controlled the government, announced his support for the occupation. It was an outrage not even the Nazis attempted: a foreign embassy staff officially held ransom.
In America, the hostages became a national obsession. Yellow ribbons, inspired by a 1973 pop song, Tie a Yellow Ribbon, were everywhere; one encircled the stadium that hosted the Super Bowl in 1980.
Every day, a cemetery in Hermitage, Pa., put up another flag in honor of the hostages. Every evening, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite counted off the days of captivity.
Every night, a new ABC News program called Nightline asked, What next? The program, which had started as a special called America Held Hostage, almost immediately became an institution. Now, television began to shape the crisis.
President Jimmy Carter made the safety of the hostages his top priority. He cut back on campaigning, and even refused to fully light the White House Christmas tree until they were free.
By arousing patriotism, the crisis at first boosted the president and doomed Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record)'s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. But the nation became increasingly frustrated, especially after the failure of a rescue operation in the desert outside Tehran in April 1980.
In November, Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) won in a landslide.
After the election, negotiators began to make progress, and the United States agreed to release $7.9 billion in frozen Iranian assets in return for freeing the hostages.
When the 50 men and two women finally were freed minutes after Reagan's inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981, Americans treated the episode not as a humiliation but as a triumph.
After Watergate and Vietnam, "People wanted to feel better about the country. They took this (crisis) and used it," says Bruce Laingen, the embassy's chief diplomat.
An episode that underscored America's weakness came to be credited for its regeneration. In a few years, Reagan would declare it "morning in America." If so, the hostage crisis was the hour before the dawn.
"When we got back I saw a tremendous transformation in America," recalls Paul Needham, who was an Air Force attaché and now teaches at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. "The attitude had been, 'We're terrible!' but these people were proud to be Americans. They were waving the flag. It was amazing! The introverted examination of ourselves stopped."
'Waited for 444 days'
None of the hostages has returned to Tehran. Most say they never will. "But I'll give you the grid coordinates," says Needham, who faced a mock firing squad. "I'll do the targeting." He's only half joking: "It's personal."
Today, relations between Iran and the United States aren't much better than when the hostages were released.
President Bush (news - web sites) has called Iran part of an "axis of evil," and Iran's nuclear program is a source of constant friction. Some of the students who seized the embassy are in power; others are in the opposition; a few are in prison.
Although the hostages generally believe lessons from the crisis have been ignored, they don't agree what those lessons are: that we must try to understand militants who fight in the name of Islam? Or that we must intimidate them? Or kill them? The issue divides some of the diplomats and soldiers who were once so close in captivity.
Moorhead Kennedy, now retired from the Foreign Service, says Americans should try to understand terrorists' goals - "walk in their shoes" - and if necessary, negotiate and compromise.
Former Marine guard Kevin Hermening calls negotiation and compromise "the answers of the uninformed," and equates them with capitulation.
After the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Hermening advocated the immediate destruction of seven Middle Eastern capitals unless leaders there agreed "unequivocally to support our efforts to kill Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)."
The crisis marked the hostages in different ways. Marriages were ruined and revived, careers ended and begun, virtues lost and found. Virtues such as patience.
Sometimes, if a flight is delayed and his fellow passengers are complaining, Chuck Scott will tell them, "I once waited for a plane for 444 days."
Scott and Kennedy left the military and the Foreign Service, respectively, to take up writing and lecturing. Army Warrant Officer Joe Hall made contacts that allowed him to become a Washington lobbyist. Steve Kirtley, who enlisted in the Marines before finishing high school, rose to major and went into private business in 2002.
They were the lucky ones. At least one former hostage has attempted suicide. One was murdered. Two died in accidents - one in a car and one on horseback.
For most, captivity has provided a new perspective on freedom.
"I will never again be taken captive. It's that simple," says Lewis, the Marine guard. "If someone comes on a flight with a box cutter, one of us isn't getting off."
After those 444 days, Scott says, "every day is a good day."
Lewis, a financial planner, says a plunge in the stock market doesn't compare to a mock firing squad or 45 days in handcuffs.
People who were once the focus of a nation are now confused with hostages held in other countries or other decades.
They're a footnote in their kids' history books. Or simply forgotten. "I have to buy my own beer again," Needham says.
Also forgotten is an old oak that stands in front of Laingen's split-level house outside Washington.
Once, it was the most photographed tree in America. In 1979, Laingen's wife, Penne, bought yards of yellow oilcloth, tied it around the tree, and created an enduring folkway. Yellow, traditionally the color of cowardice, had come to stand for caring.
Now the oilcloth is in the Library of Congress (news - web sites). A few years after her husband's return, Penne Laingen presented it to the nation with these words: "From my attic to your attic, the mother of all yellow ribbons."
I don’t know if it is the case or not but, I certainly hope that from that day forward all of the guards have been ordered to react to a mob scaling one of our embassy walls as an invasion of our soil and shoot to kill. If that is not the standing order someone is criminally negligent and needs the nut-hooks!