student. In the second interrogation of Golacinski, Sheikh-ol-eslam presented the embassy security officer with evidence of his “secret counterrevolutionary activity.” In a search of his office and home they had found grenades and other weapons and a number of other suspicious items, including counterfeit twenty-dollar bills. They had also learned some things about him from Joe Subic, the unusually cooperative army sergeant whom the hostage takers had dubbed “Brother Subic.” The helpful sergeant had told them about a project Golacinski had undertaken with the U.S. Secret Service. He didn’t know much about it, just that Golacinski had been working on the project, and that it involved fake twenty-dollar bills. In fact, it was an investigation into an Iranian counterfeiting ring. Golacinski had a big file on the case that contained a stack of counterfeit notes; he had been excited by the opportunity to work on the case. His interrogators, however, surmised from the suspicious title “Secret Service” and the counterfeit bills a vague plot to somehow undermine the Iranian economy by flooding the country with fake American currency. It wasn’t clear exactly how this was supposed to have worked, which is one of the things Sheikh-ol-eslam wanted Golacinski to explain. The files revealed that Golacinski had helped question some of the suspected Iranians, so to the other allegations against him was added the label “torturer.”
“Where are the rest of your weapons?” Sheikh-ol-eslam asked him.
“I don’t have any more weapons.”
“Why were you torturing Iranians?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have never tortured anyone.”
He told Sheikh-ol-eslam about guard shifts and talks with the local police about problems at the gates, and whenever he got the chance he asked a question. Sheikh-ol-eslam, in particular, could not resist the chance to hold forth on his theories. He explained to the security chief how in the United States oppressed minorities and politically enlightened Americans were rallying behind Khomeini and assured him that the revolution in Iran was just the beginning. Eventually the whole world would embrace the perfection of Islamic heaven on earth. “The American people will revolute!” he said.
Golacinski listened happily. So long as Gaptooth was holding forth, he didn’t have to say anything, which suited him fine.
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Dave Roeder was privy to national secrets in his defense attache job; he held one of the most important and sensitive positions at the embassy so as he awaited his interrogation, he plotted an opening gambit.
Seated on a chair in a room he thought was the chancery basement, blindfolded, he heard male voices speaking in Farsi and was then addressed by a woman who spoke flawless, American-accented English.
“Who are you?” was the question. The voice belonged to Nilufar Ebtekar.
She was a round-faced young woman with doe eyes and a pretty smile who was among several fluent English-speakers recruited by the students after the takeover. She had spent part of her childhood in Philadelphia while her father had worked on his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, and she had fully absorbed the language. In fact, when she had returned to Iran as a young girl, her English had been better than her Farsi. At Amir Kabir University, she was formally a second-year chemical engineering student, but she had long since grown more interested in the turbulent postrevolutionary politics playing out on campus. She had been raised in a Western-style home but had embraced the distinctively political Islam taught by Ali Shariati and others, who subscribed to the traditional leftist belief that capitalism was, at its core, the systematic exploitation of the weak. In the years prior to the revolution, she had come to see the popularity of American culture and consumerism among her peers as evidence of a Western plot to undermine Iranian culture and traditional morality and to further the imperialist designs of the United States. She had embraced
She knew Mohammad Hashemi and several of the other leaders of the protest, and three days after the takeover she was approached on campus and asked to help out with interpretation and “public relations.”
The next morning Ebtekar had presented herself at the front gate and was immediately introduced to the “Central Committee.” Despite some hostility from male students who disliked the idea of a female spokesman, she would soon become the public face of the hostage takers. She was thrilled in every way by the action, which she saw as a great victory of righteousness over evil, an historic and world-altering event that she was privileged to join. Thrust before the cameras to answer questions from the press, local and international, she became famous overnight in Iran and infamous in the United States. The day after she started, she was visited at the front gate by a starstruck delegation from a shoe factory where she had taught for several months as a volunteer in a literacy program. Her former students were delighted that their teacher had become one of the “conquerors of the embassy.” They carried a banner that read, “All Our Sufferings Are from America.” Ebtekar was moved; the encounter convinced her that she and the other students were the true representatives of the people.
Inside the compound she worked as an interpreter.
“I am Lieutenant Colonel Dave Roeder,” was the answer to the question she had posed to the former fighter pilot. “I’m the assistant air force attache of the United States.”
“No, you’re not,” she said.
The interrogator spoke in Farsi again, and Ebtekar said, “We have found evidence in your embassy here that you are a member of the CIA.”
Roeder said nothing.
In fact, they said they had found a copy of a recent memo from CIA station chief Ahern to Laingen asking what classified operations Roeder had been briefed about prior to his arrival. This they said, confirmed that he was secretly “See-ah.” Roeder ignored them. It was the approach he had decided on. In the first session he would tell them his name and rank…period. They could do whatever they wanted with him, it was all he was going to say. So he sat silently, which he found easier to do blindfolded. He was asked a few more questions but he continued to pretend he hadn’t heard. Years before, in his survival school training class, Roeder had gotten the instructors angry using this tactic. They told him that the only reason he had the nerve to pull the silent act was because he knew he was taking part in a training exercise, but in a true war experience, where the fear was real and the threat of punishment, torture, and execution was real, nobody had the guts to play that game for long. By holding his tongue, Roeder had decided to prove an old point to himself.
He heard chairs move and then people leaving the room. He sat alone for about ten minutes but sensed the whole time that someone was standing right behind him. Then his questioners returned and his blindfold was removed. His questioner was a young man with a beard, and beside him sat Ebtekar.
She translated a series of questions and Roeder pretended he didn’t hear her. He found her manner particularly grating. Because her English sounded like the girl next door in America, there was something that seemed traitorous about her, even though Ebtekar was Iranian through and through. She had the smug self- righteousness of her cause; that was what truly burned Roeder and would so annoy the other Americans who dealt with her in the coming months. Her familiarity with America added profound emphasis to her rejection of it.
Ebtekar translated a few more questions and Roeder continued to stare off into space. They left him again, tying the blindfold back on. He sat alone for a long time, until he could see under his blindfold what looked to be the first glimmer of morning light from a basement window. When his questioners returned, the interrogator was angry.
“You had better start talking to him,” advised Ebtekar, “because I can’t protect you anymore.”
Roeder was amused by the idea of this woman “protecting” him. He said nothing. Then Ebtekar said something to the man in Farsi and he heard her get up and leave the room.
The air force officer tensed for whatever was going to happen next. He was hit in the head from behind by
