Daugherty teased him about how much he must have enjoyed getting drunk and ogling the coeds in their bikinis.
The young man flew into such a rage that Sheikh-ol-eslam told him to leave the room. At one point his interrogators grew so frustrated that they beat him. His wrists were bound so tightly that the skin of his hands turned white and became extremely sensitive. Sheikh-ol-eslam ordered Daugherty to place them palms up on the desk and produced a length of heavy rubber hose. Demanding an answer once more, and dissatisfied with the response, he had the Kurd rap Daugherty’s tender palms with the hose.
It was the worst pain Daugherty had ever felt, a blinding shot that kept hurting well after the initial blow. He would have told them anything they wanted to know, but he genuinely did not know the answer to the question he was being asked.
“Believe me, if I knew I’d tell you!” he pleaded.
The students realized soon enough, of course, that their prize catch was Tom Ahern, the CIA station chief, who watched from an upstairs room at the ambassador’s residence as one after another of his colleagues was taken away. He assumed that they were being taken off for interrogation, and that they were saving him for last. Given his role in Tehran, he was clearly the person in the most jeopardy, and he knew his wife and daughter at home in Virginia would be terrified for him. The pattern seemed to confirm that they knew who he was. And as the number of colleagues around him dwindled, he grew more resigned. From time to time his guards would bring him graphic photographs of freshly severed human body parts, claiming it had been the handiwork of SAVAK. How could he willingly associate himself with an organization like that? Their tone was one more of reproach than accusation. He denied that he worked for the CIA, and denied that the agency had anything to do with such things. The language barrier constrained any serious dialogue.
When his turn came for interrogation he was walked across the compound to the chancery and taken up to the bubble, where he was placed in a chair before a table. Across from him was an unkempt synod of inquisitors, five students who were apparently the ringleaders of this fiasco. In the relatively soft light inside the bubble they were arrayed like the apostles in Leonardo’s
“What was your job?” Sheikh-ol-eslam asked.
Ahern stuck with his cover story. He was the embassy’s antinarcotics officer.
“What have you been doing?”
He went through the meetings he had held with Iranian police and government representatives in his “official” capacity. Ahern had always considered the cover story half-assed, but once he got into it he was moderately impressed at how flexible it could be. Sheikh-ol-eslam and the others asked a lot of questions, which he easily answered, and as he warmed to the exchange he grew more confident. Still, in the back of his mind he remained convinced that they knew perfectly well what his real job was, so the whole exercise had the feel of play-acting. It went on for about an hour.
He was then escorted back to his old office, where there was now a mattress on the floor, and brought back for a second round the next day. The same cast of characters was arrayed behind the desk.
Sheikh-ol-eslam began by telling him, “We know who you are. You are the CIA station chief.”
Ahern denied it. He was determined to tell them nothing, even if his denials angered them. It wasn’t only his own skin he was worried about, but that of his other officers, his agents and contacts. Like Daugherty, he figured any of his Iranian agents would have fled the country fast as soon as the embassy was seized, but he owed it to them to buy as much time as possible. Part of his stubbornness was simple pride. He was being tested, and he was determined to live up to his own high standards. He had no heroic illusions; he knew eventually they could force him to talk, but he was going to hold on as long as he could. They showed him documents they had found in Laingen’s safe that identified him as the CIA station chief, along with the one that mentioned the covert roles of Daugherty and Kalp. The exchanges grew more hostile. They had connected the name “Donald C. Paquin” to him. He denied it, clinging to his cover story, until his questioners were fed up with him. They produced the rubber hose, told him to place his hands palms up on the table, and smacked them hard.
It hurt, a blinding flash of pain every time they struck, but Ahern refused to alter his story. The pain was bad, especially after his hands became bruised and swollen, but it wasn’t, he decided, intolerable. He noticed that, once the beating began, one or two of his questioners disappeared and didn’t come back.
After two sessions using the rubber hose on his hands without effect, Sheikh-ol-eslam and the other interrogators ordered him to remove his shoes and socks and lie flat on the floor. He did so. Ahern knew that beating on the soles of the feet was particularly painful and wondered how much of it he could endure. He decided he had to accept at least one blow, to see if he could take it. Once he had felt the blow to the hands, for whatever reason he had quickly concluded that it was a pain he could endure. But as he lay prone waiting for the first blow to the soles of his feet, it never came. He heard his interrogators whispering urgently to one another, and then he was hauled back into the chair.
“Put your socks back on,” he was told.
PART TWO
Den of Spies
1. We Don’t Have The Shadow or Superman
Several weeks into the hostage crisis, American television networks broadcast film of hostage Jerry Miele (he was not identified by name) being led blindfolded to the front gate of the embassy, where the bloodthirsty crowd vented its rage from behind the tall iron gate. Miele was then paraded around to another location for more of the same. It was the first glimpse of a hostage since the day the embassy had been taken, and it galled millions of Miele’s countrymen who saw it. The film clip accompanied the first reports that some of the hostages were being mistreated—beaten and interrogated—and it fed a mounting national rage.
In a report from the State Department, CBS reporter Marvin Kalb described the mood at Foggy Bottom, but he might as well have been talking about the entire country: “There is a very deep, deep frustration,” he said, “a feeling that the United States is helpless to determine the outcome…that we have tried everything and most of our efforts have not borne fruit.” The United States of America was stymied. Kalb quoted an unnamed State Department official, who said, “We don’t have the Shadow or Superman in our employ.”
Walter Cronkite, the veteran, influential CBS anchor, delivered daily reports on the crisis with thinly
