It was signed, “Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line.”
A few miles away from the embassy compound, a furious Bruce Laingen was finally allowed to see the foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi, a gentle, professorial man with a sparse, graying beard who had been out of sight—
Yazdi heard this out patiently. He seemed troubled, acknowledged his government’s responsibility to protect the embassy, and apologized for what had happened. He was surprised by how agitated Laingen seemed. After all, this sort of thing had happened before. The foreign minister spoke English fluently; his exile during the shah’s years had been spent primarily in Waco, Texas, where he had worked as a medical researcher and had been Khomeini’s man in America in the years leading up to the revolution.
“Calm down,” he told Laingen, and couldn’t keep from adding, “I told you so.”
Yazdi had warned weeks ago that there would be consequences he might not be able to control if the United States admitted the shah. In a meeting with the State Department’s top Iran hand Henry Precht, the foreign minister had likened welcoming the shah to “opening a Pandora’s box.” Yazdi was in a position that both Laingen and Vic Tomseth, the charge’s acting deputy, recognized as precarious. Tomseth thought now that he had not fully appreciated how precarious. The foreign minister was one of a group of primarily secular intellectuals who had formed a brain trust around Khomeini when he was in the last months of his exile in Paris. Along with Prime Minister Bazargan, he was part of a practical political faction that wanted to see the new Iran form a Western-style democracy. They wanted to show the world that postrevolutionary Iran was not some renegade nation of religious fanatics but a serious country, one that understood its obligations in the world, and one that was led by sober, practical, well-educated people. But he was increasingly under attack, as was Bazargan, by hard-line clerics who claimed the revolution for Allah alone and who wanted a radical Islamist state. These street demonstrations, and the rampant anti-Americanism, were tools in the mullahs’ arsenal. Any politician who dared step up to defend the need for continued ties with the Great Satan before the pious mob put not only his political goals and career in jeopardy but his freedom and quite possibly his life. Yazdi had warned that admitting the shah would play right into the hands of these powerful forces, who fully embraced the fantasy of devilish American omnipotence. They would tell the people that President Carter was plotting to restore the monarchy, and if that happened Yazdi and his government were in trouble. Yazdi had answered Precht, “The responsibility is yours if you let him in.” It was not a threat. He knew what the mullahs would make of such a gesture, and he suspected his fragile government would not survive the storm that followed.
When it happened, they had considered severing relations with America but had dismissed the idea as impractical. Even Khomeini and the Revolutionary Council had agreed. There were too many outstanding issues —military contracts, the shah’s vast bank accounts in the United States—that needed resolution. It was decidedly not in Iran’s interest, at least in any short-term sense, to completely shun America.
The foreign minister had earned some credibility with his American guests. He had personally defused the February takeover, when as deputy prime minister he had gone to the embassy as the invaders were chased off and the compound restored to the American mission. It had taken courage. But much had changed in nine months. Yazdi’s current position as foreign minister was a less powerful post, and Carter’s decision to admit the shah had badly eroded his authority. Just as he had predicted, the mullahs had been fanning fears of an American countercoup. Yazdi believed this was nonsense, but politics is based not on reality but on perception. Leaked reports of the private meeting with Brzezinski in Algiers days before had worsened matters. It had provoked wild speculation in Tehran. Now he and Bazargan were openly branded as sellouts and traitors. This was intensely serious business. Yazdi had a better appreciation of the dangers than did his American guests, who had not fully grasped the fury of suspicion in Iran.
Laingen brought up Yazdi’s contribution in February, as though nothing had changed. Yazdi was tactful. He tried to explain.
“Then, there was a risk of violence,” he said. This situation, from all accounts, was peaceful. It involved university students. It would take a little time, he said, but the situation was at least “under control.” To Yazdi, living in a world of firing squads, a sit-in at the American embassy was not a crisis.
He allowed the Americans to use the phones at a table in his own office. Laingen got on the line with the small group of his colleagues still holed up in the vault, and to his superiors in Washington. Yazdi was also working the phones, including a special red one, which was a direct line to Khomeini’s offices in Qom.
After some time at this, Yazdi said confidently, “We will solve this tonight. I have just had some good news.”
He explained that high-level discussions were under way between the provisional government, the Revolutionary Council, and the imam himself. None of the Americans had been harmed, he said. The embassy had not been seriously damaged and tomorrow, at the latest, Laingen’s staff would be released and the embassy returned.
10. I’m Going to Cut Out This Eye First
Inside the chancery vault, Rick Kupke continued to feed documents into the clamorous disintegrator. The other communicators set about destroying their communications equipment. This was not as simple as banging things with a hammer. They had a list instructing them step by step. First they had downloaded a program called “Terminal Equipment Replacement,” which would enable them to get most of their electronics back up and running quickly in case the invaders were chased off and the crisis suddenly ended. Then they began taking apart the machines in a selective, nondestructive way, but one that would make it exceedingly difficult for anyone unused to them to restart them. A telex machine in pieces that could not be readily reassembled by anyone but an expert was preferable to a broken telex machine. So it was very deliberate work, and because some of the machines, like the teletype, had been in use all day, they were hot. Barnes would read off the serial number of the selected piece and Regan would write it down. The list was prioritized, so that the last items to go were the secure teletypes that kept them connected to Washington. When it was decided to begin destroying them, selected parts were culled from the various bits and either smashed with a hammer or cut in half with a saw. Miele held the computer list and would cross off items one by one as they were destroyed. Some of the people in the vault didn’t work there and were unfamiliar with the equipment, but everyone pitched in. Those who knew what they were doing gave instructions to those who didn’t. The center of all this activity was the over-stressed disintegrator, which kept churning and banging away.
Tear gas came through the air-conditioning vent, so Phil Ward put on a gas mask. He wore it for only a few minutes and then took it off.
“I can’t breathe in this,” he said. Cort Barnes inspected the mask and saw that Ward, like the Iranian woman earlier, had not removed the tape at the bottom that covered the airholes. They got a laugh out of that. Barnes tried the gas mask for a few minutes but he had to remove his glasses to wear it and he couldn’t see well enough to do his work. So he also discarded it and just fought through the discomfort. They had earlier donned blue and yellow flak jackets, but took those off, too. Barnes thought the colors looked silly.
About two hours after Kupke closed the vault door they were finished. They performed a complete check of the master list, and then took a careful look around, pulling open drawers and safes, making sure that nothing had been accidentally left behind. They left open only the one or two phone lines to Washington. The vault was a mess; strewn across the floor were papers and broken equipment. When they were done they broke open some of the stock of C rations and snacked on peanut butter and chocolate.
Kupke then noticed the weapons. He had been stepping over them for hours but hadn’t looked down. Kevin Hermening had brought them into the vault and dumped them on the floor. There were long rifles, Uzis, handguns, and shotguns and boxes of ammo.
Tom Ahern was talking on the phone with Mike Howland, the assistant security chief, who was at the Foreign Ministry with Laingen and Tomseth. Howland was concerned about the weapons falling into the hands of
