Guests of the Ayatollah

stairs. When the street was clear, the door would open and ten of the Iranians would be let down the stairs and out the door. They did this until all sixty or so of them, including the young American woman, had gotten away. Bob Ode came down the steps holding the arm of a terrified, elderly Iranian man who was nearly blind. “God bless you, my son,” the man kept saying, patting Ode on the wrist. “God bless you, God bless you.” Ode led him out the door into the side street alongside the embassy, which was fairly quiet. A car was waiting there to pick up the old man, and Ode helped him into the car and saw him safely off.

Then the first of the American workers walked out, accompanied by the Iranian staff.

Cora and Mark Lijek, Joe and Kathy Stafford, Bob Anders, and Kim King, a tourist who had stopped by the consulate that morning, walked across the street and proceeded at a brisk pace down a road that paralleled Takht-e-Jamshid. They went straight ahead for four blocks, then turned left toward the British embassy. Mark Lijek felt odd walking in a three-piece suit in the light rain with no coat or umbrella. He was getting soaked. King separated from them and headed for a local police station; he was trying to work out a passport problem prior to his scheduled departure. The Americans offered to bring the Iranian employees with them to the British embassy, still a few blocks away, but all but one of them decided to melt off on their own. So the Lijeks and Staffords proceeded with Anders and the remaining Iranian staffer, who said she would show them the way—they were not used to walking the streets in Tehran.

They came upon a square crowded with demonstrators, so the Iranian woman offered to take them to her house. They thanked her but decided it was a bad idea, that it might place her in a dangerous position. But they agreed that they needed to get off the street. People were beginning to stare at them. Anders suggested they go to his apartment. They turned around and headed back in the direction from which they’d come. They made their way circuitously, searching out streets that were relatively quiet, and crossing them in staggers, two at a time. About an hour after leaving the consulate they arrived safely. Anders cooked chicken curry for a late lunch.

After helping the old man, Ode had not followed the Lijek group but had gone back to the remaining staffers. He was carrying a briefcase that Mark Lijek had handed him for some reason, no doubt expecting him to come with them. As he made his way back toward the door, one of the armed pasdoran grabbed at the briefcase. Ode didn’t know what was in it but he wasn’t going to give it up that easily, and even though the Iranian was armed Ode shoved him backward and pulled the briefcase out of his grasp.

“Keep your hands off me!” Ode said. The startled gunman backed off.

Ode was joined then by Morefield, Lopez, Queen, and several other staffers. The marine pulled the door shut behind them, inserted keys in the locks, and broke them off. He had taken off his uniform shirt, torn the red stripes from his blue uniform trousers, and replaced his Marine Corps belt with its shiny buckle with Queen’s plain black one. He was wearing an old army fatigue jacket and still carrying his two-way radio. Queen grabbed his pipe, tobacco, lighter, briefcase, and a flashlight. They chose a direction at random and started walking fast. They could not have been more conspicuous. Morefield looked like an American businessman, a short, wide, balding pale man in a business suit who had turned fifty the month before. Lopez had the standard high-and-tight marine haircut, and the others were wearing ties and suits or sport jackets and carrying briefcases. The streets were crowded with excited demonstrators. Someone shot at them. Lopez heard the snap of a round close by, and then the loud report of the gun. They encountered some local police, who eyed them dubiously, and one demanded the radio. Lopez smashed it hard against the side of a building and then handed it over, broken. The police scowled at them and walked off.

Morefield proposed they go to his house, which was nearby. Others wanted to try the Swiss embassy, only a few blocks away. There was some question about whether the Swiss mission was open on Sunday. Lopez wished they’d stop arguing and make a decision.

“I’ve got a radio at my house,” said Morefield.

So the six of them started toward there, spreading out so that they would be less of a target. They made it a few blocks without being noticed, but then one young man began running alongside, shouting, “See-ah! See-ah! [CIA! CIA!]” His alarm summoned others, and soon a crowd had formed around them. Some were shouting in English, “Go back! Go back!” The Americans ignored the mob and tried to push on through, but then they heard another shot and suddenly Morefield was surrounded by armed men carrying pipes, clubs, pistols, and automatic rifles.

“Look, the embassy is yours, do what you want with it,” the consul said. “No, you are a hostage!” one of the armed men answered.

“What do you mean, hostage? Hostage to whom? For what?” Morefield asked.

All six of the Americans were roughly steered back to the embassy, and then were marched through the misty rain across the compound through mobs of jeering protesters. At first they were told to put their hands over their heads. Ode held up his, including the briefcase, and hung on to it even when one of his captors tried to pull it away. They walked for a while this way, then were ordered to put their hands down.

“Make up your minds,” complained Ode. He didn’t get far before the briefcase was finally wrested from him. It was opened on the spot, and Ode leaned in for a look, as curious about it as his captors. All that it held were some in-house newsletters and press releases. Why on earth had Lijek wanted me to carry that?

A cameraman filmed them as they made their way toward the ambassador’s residence.

7. Shoot Me, Don’t Burn Me!

On the top floor of the chancery, inside the thick metal walls of the communications vault, Rick Kupke had only a vague notion of what was happening outside. He was a State Department communicator and was busily feeding papers into the raucous disintegrator. The vault had a heavy steel door like the ones on bank safes. It had been open all morning and news of the excitement outside had been drifting in, reaching him secondhand. He knew they wouldn’t be destroying everything unless the circumstances were dire. This was confirmed when Bert Moore stepped in and told him to send Foggy Bottom a flash message.

“Tell them the demonstrators have entered the compound and the embassy,” he said.

Kupke didn’t usually write messages himself, he just copied them.

“Do you want me to write it?” he asked.

Moore nodded, hurrying away, so Kupke sat down before the teletype and composed his own short message. He began with five Zs, which would cause alarm bells to ring in the relay centers.

Kupke typed: “Demonstrators have entered embassy compound and have entered the building.”

Then he went back to destroying the piles of cables and messages that had been accumulating for months. Helping him were Bill Belk and Charles Jones, the other State Department communicators, Army Sergeant Regis Regan, and CIA communicators Phil Ward, Cort Barnes, and Jerry Miele. Air Force Captain Paul Needham had joined them.

All along Kupke had figured it was just a matter of time. A few weeks ago he had watched on a monitor at the guard station downstairs as one or two intrepid locals had scaled the front gate, and he and the guards had placed bets then on whether the whole mob was going to come over. Kupke was from rural Indiana and spoke with a slow country drawl. He was on temporary duty in Tehran, in part because he was ambitious and had made a point of accepting difficult assignments, and in part because of an act of kindness. His primary posting was to an isolated outpost in the Sinai Desert, where staffers were rotated out periodically on temporary jobs to give them a break. The temporary duty was usually in Athens or Rome, and when one of his married colleagues drew Tehran instead, a hardship post where he could not be reunited with his wife and children, Kupke offered to take it instead. He was single and, besides, he knew that hardship posts were a short path to promotion in the department. He had arrived two months ago and by now was accustomed to the low cloud of anxiety that hung over the embassy, the fear of being taken hostage or of being torn apart by one of the bombs that were occasionally lobbed over the walls. When he and his buddies played poker in one of the small cottages near the east wall, and gunfire outside grew close, they would just duck their heads under the table and keep playing. Kupke originally had been scheduled to leave in October but had extended his stay after discovering that, hidden