Iranians, crying and choking from the gas, all with the Khomeini placards, some hand-lettered in English, “Don’t be afraid. We just want to set-in.” Those in the back were pushing and those in front were shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” and inching forward.
Sickmann and Gallegos had donned gas masks. The blood was pounding in their ears and they heard only the whoosh of their own breathing inside the masks, misting up the glass visors. The marines would pump their shotguns and the crowd would jump back. That was the scene Golacinski encountered as he descended the stairs with his Browning 9mm pistol drawn. He joined the protesters in shouting at the marines, “Don’t shoot!”
“No, no, no,” coaxed a woman in the crowd. “We don’t mean any harm.”
More armed marines appeared behind Golacinski on the steps.
One of the young men seemed to be the leader, so Golacinski grabbed him by the arm and asked if he spoke English. When he nodded, Golacinski told him that they all had to get out.
“We are not going to stand for this,” he said, angrily. “Maybe you didn’t realize it but we are prepared to defend this place.”
“Yes, yes,” the young man said. “We don’t want problems. We just want a peaceful demonstration. That’s all we want.”
“You can’t do a peaceful demonstration
The young man nodded. He told the others in Farsi to go back out the window, and the crowd complied. Golacinski directed Gallegos and the other marines to head upstairs.
Golacinski watched until all of the trespassers except the ringleader were out the window. He then took the young Iranian up the stairs, leading him by the arm. Perhaps he could be useful.
On the radio, Howland reported that Laingen and Tomseth had obtained assurances from officials in the Foreign Ministry that help was on the way.
“Just hold out as long as you can,” Howland said. “We are trying to contact the chief of police.”
“That’s fine,” Golacinski said, “but we have a force of police over by the motor pool and they’re not doing anything!”
Upstairs, the hallway was crowded now with American and Iranian staffers. Marines were handing out gas masks and the mood was still calm, although some of the Iranian workers were crying. They knew how ugly these revolutionary confrontations could get. The sting of tear gas was in the air. Joan Walsh walked up and down the hall with a wooden box offering to take any valuables the staffers wanted to secure—during the February takeover, people had been robbed. Up and down the hall staffers dropped jewelry, watches, and wallets into the box, which Walsh then locked in her safe.
Limbert found his boss Ann Swift in the anteroom outside Laingen’s empty office standing before a bank of phones. She was supposed to have gone with Laingen that morning to the Foreign Ministry, but she had been out late the night before and been delayed getting in that morning, so she had asked Tomseth to take her place. Now, with the two ranking diplomats across town, she was in charge. She seemed calm and decisive.
She asked Limbert to call Washington and talk to the State Department watch officer—it was about three o’clock in the morning there. He waited as a secretary placed the call, and when it got through he learned that the department had already received word of what was happening. He handed the phone to Swift and listened to one end of a conversation about what the marines should do, how far they should go in trying to fend off the protesters. In the February episode there had been a lot of shooting before the provisional government provided a local thug, Mashallah Khashani, to drive out the invaders. Khashani had then camped with his gang at the embassy for months, collecting protection fees and running it like his own private concession. That was what they wanted to avoid. Limbert started phoning local Iranian authorities to plead for official assistance.
Both he and Metrinko had done a lot of favors for officials in the provisional government, mostly helping them to obtain visas. It was pay-back time. Limbert tried to reach a friend at the prime minister’s office. He got a secretary on the phone, introduced himself hurriedly, and began to explain to her what was going on.
“Oh, Mr. Metrinko!” the woman said, mistaking him for his colleague. “It’s so nice to hear from you! Tell me, are those visas we sent over ready?”
Limbert explained that he was not Mr. Metrinko, and that if she didn’t find him some help soon she could kiss her visa applications good-bye. He explained what was going on at the embassy.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” the woman said dismissively. “We have a relief force of Revolutionary Guards and police on the way over. You have nothing to worry about. In twenty minutes or so they should be there.”
“I’m happy to hear it,” Limbert told her. “I hope what you say is true.”
“All the students want to do is read a declaration that they have, and leave.”
“Fine,” said Limbert. “We have no problem with their reading a declaration. Our concern is that there be no blood shed. We’re glad you have a group on the way. They should get these people off the embassy grounds as soon as possible or something might happen for which we feel your government would be responsible.”
Limbert hung up the phone, and when Swift took a break he got on the phone to Washington and explained to Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders what had been promised.
Downstairs, Golacinski was preoccupied with the radio. He knew that the marines he had told to stay at the Bijon Apartments had been captured there, and that those in the small office building off the motor pool, most notably ICA staffers John Graves and Barry Rosen and their staffs, had also been taken. The only hope of restoring order was for the provisional government to act, so his hopes rested with Laingen and Tomseth at the Foreign Ministry. He requested permission from the charge to send Washington a “flash” message, the highest emergency protocol, and the charge authorized it.
The wiry young Iranian Golacinski had taken by the arm kept insisting that all he and the others wanted was to stage a sit-in, and that he wanted to speak directly to Laingen. Golacinski relayed this to Howland, but they all agreed that the charge d’affaires shouldn’t get on the phone with an Iranian protester. Golacinski asked for permission to go outside with the guy and face the crowd himself, acting as a go-between on the radio for Laingen.
“This can’t go on,” he told the young Iranian. “If somebody breaks through these doors we’re going to have to defend ourselves, and people are going to get hurt.”
“We must stop this,” the young man agreed.
“Yes,” said Golacinski.
Laingen told the security chief that he could go out so long as his personal security was assured. There wasn’t much chance of that. Golacinski felt responsible for the embassy staffers who had already fallen into the hands of the demonstrators. He believed somebody had to do something to turn this around, and he wasn’t nicknamed “Bulldog” for nothing. He loped up the staircase to the top floor and told Bert Moore, an administrative consul, about the authorization to send a flash message, and that Laingen had authorized him to go outside. That meant that decisions regarding security inside the embassy, including supervising the marines, were now Moore’s responsibility.
As he went back downstairs, Golacinski got a radio call from Sergeant Lopez at the consulate.
“Sit tight,” he told Lopez. “You have a very secure building. I’m going outside to try and get this thing resolved.”
Upstairs in the chancery’s communications vault monitoring events on the radio, State Department communicator Bill Belk thought Golacinski was nuts. The vault was the embassy’s most sensitive and secure spot, and Belk had been at work since early that morning, downloading messages from the satellite and sorting through them. Being in the vault gave him a sense of distance from the events just downstairs, which were increasingly compelling. He had stepped out to look out a window at the demonstrators, and back in the vault later he heard someone gasp into the radio, “My God, they are in the basement!” Then he heard people shouting, evidently at a marine downstairs, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”; and then “Don’t throw any more tear gas!” It sounded pretty hairy. When he heard that Golacinski was going out he thought,
Golacinski handed his weapon to Gallegos and removed his flak jacket. He wanted to appear nonthreatening.
“I’ve got to talk to these people,” he said. “I know what’s going on.”
“Al, don’t go out there,” Gallegos said.
“I’ll be all right,” he said.
