maroon-colored robes, Coffin warned against the vice of “self-pity,” and encouraged the captive Americans to sing along with him as he played the piano and led them in carols. The ceremonies were held in a back room of the warehouse, which Subic had helped decorate, along with the usual wall decorations of anti-American, prorevolutionary slogans. Cameras and lights recorded the event for Iranian TV as armed guards lined the walls looking on happily, convinced they were making the saintliest of gestures, allowing these infidels a Christian celebration. Khomeini, in response to President Carter’s call for Americans to ring church bells in remembrance of the hostages, called for his countrymen to “ring the bells in support of God.”
Many of the hostages were appalled by the event, at being made part of what they saw as a propaganda stunt, but Rick Kupke set aside his resentment when he spotted the treats laid out on the table—brownies, nuts, apples, and oranges. There was even a roasted turkey on a plate! Marine Paul Lewis was impressed enough with the goodies to go through the motions during his ceremony, but ignored Coffin’s exhortation to hold hands with his fellow hostages and sing. Many of the marines refused to sing, and a good number of the hostages showed little emotion or enthusiasm. Coffin hugged each one at the end of the ceremonies, and when he came to Lewis the young marine whispered to him, “It’s all bullshit.” In a brief conversation with Bill Keough, Coffin remarked, jokingly, that he had often longed for an extended period of quiet where he could read and think and contemplate. Keough smiled grimly. It was the remark of a man who had never been taken hostage in a foreign country and threatened daily with trial and execution. At the ceremony he attended, Golacinski leaned over to Reverend Howard and whispered, “Don’t believe what you are seeing. We’re being treated like animals.”
“So I gathered,” said Howard.
The Baptist pastor managed to convey to each group that all of America was intensely concerned with their fate, not just their own families and friends. At each of the sessions, hostages were allowed to write a brief note on a card to their families, which for many would be the first communications since the takeover.
Forbidden to talk about politics or their own situation, Colonel Scott asked Howard, “What’s the price of gasoline in America today?” Scott had thought long and hard about what question to ask if he got the chance, and decided that the current price of oil would help him gauge how events in Iran were playing around the world. Howard looked at the gallery of armed guards and asked them, “I don’t suppose I should answer that question, do you?” Scott was annoyed.
Seeing Scott’s anger, Howard tried to lighten the mood. He said he noticed in looking over the lists of hostages that Scott was from Georgia and began a story about the difficulties he had faced as a young African- American traveling in that state. This further angered Scott, who felt as though the preacher was blaming him for the racism he had encountered.
For some of the hostages, however, the ceremonies were rich with feeling. The songs, no matter how off- key, and the decorations, no matter how impoverished, brought back memories of family and of past Christmases and gave them a fleeting sense of connection with home.
Kathryn Koob fought to hold back tears during her ceremony. She was profoundly sad to be cut off from her world, and yet somehow as a prisoner, isolated from her family and any community of Christians, from familiar Christmas music, the swirl of shopping, cards, parties, and gift giving, the holiday if anything became more meaningful to her, so that as she stood, reunited for the first time in a month with Ann Swift before Bishop Gumbleton, she felt herself trembling so violently that it took all her strength not to break down before the cameras. She balled her hands into fists so tight that her nails cut into her skin.
Several days after the Christmas celebrations, a nearly hourlong film was released and portions played on the big three American TV networks and in Iran. The film had been offered the week before, but the networks balked at paying $21,250 and promising to air the film in full. After a few days, the students dropped the demands and handed over the film. Their propaganda show was meaningless if no one saw it.
On the third floor of the Foreign Ministry, where the three trapped Americans Laingen, Tomseth, and Howland were allowed to watch television, the charge was shocked. He wrote angrily in his diary that evening, “I think tonight I have learned to hate.”
Far and away the bulk of the film was of these hostages [Subic, Hermening, Plotkin, and Lauterbach] reading a prepared statement, praising the revolutionary zeal of their captors, reciting the misdeeds of the embassy in supporting the Shah, citing documents discovered in the embassy to suggest “espionage,” and calling on the US government to return the Shah to Iran. All this was done in what appeared to be a rehearsal reading, seriatim, by the hostages of their statement, the desk in front of them displaying “evidence” of one kind or another. Only one (Steve Lauterbach) of the four seemed in any way hesitant in what he was reading. The hostage who seemed to preside, Joe Subic, clearly was, or seemed to be, relishing his role. A young marine, Kevin Hermening, too, seemed relaxed and at ease. The fourth, the businessman Jerry Plotkin, read a separate statement, and he, too, seemed in control of himself.
All of this culminated in young Subic displaying a Christmas card from which he read a special greeting to Imam Khomeini on behalf of the hostages. All of this is incredible. I have heard of brainwashing and mind control. I have read of such and recognize that in all hostage situations this is commonplace. But here is an example involving people I know and whom I respect…Eight weeks of confinement and harassment by sound from the crowds in the streets brought the hostages to the point of servitude to their captors’ purposes. And all this in a setting of Christmas with the two priests sitting docilely, watching and listening to the entire charade.
If the students felt such images were going to affect public opinion in the United States, they were right. Americans were horrified. There was an outpouring of sympathy for the hostages. Bishop Gumbleton explained in press conferences at home that the four men had clearly been forced to make the statements. He told reporters that while the men were reading the statements, one of them [Hermening] had whispered to him, “This is just a put-up job. Don’t pay any attention to what you hear.”
Gumbleton said he had asked, “Aren’t you afraid of what might happen if I report that when I return?”
“Just tell the truth, sir,” the hostage told him. “That’s all we care about.”
Laingen didn’t need the bishop of Detroit to tell him that. He knew what kind of stress his colleagues were under and felt guilty that his own circumstances were so much more comfortable. On Christmas Eve they had been delivered a gift basket from the Spanish ambassador, a wicker basket stuffed with various kinds of Iranian candy, and a visit by the British ambassador, who brought sturdier fare, a basket with a variety of meats and snacks and a bottle of “cough syrup,” which contained a lovely red wine—all the more delicious with dinner that evening after such long deprivation. Coffin, Howard, and Gumbleton paid them a visit, and they talked with the clergymen for hours. Tomseth was impressed with Howard and Gumbleton, whom he found to be sincere and there purely for humanitarian reasons. He was suspicious of Coffin, who had the air of a grandstander about him. It seemed to the veteran diplomat that the famous leftist preacher was playing to his home audience. In one glib aside he had remarked, “This situation is much too serious to be left in the hands of professionals!”
The minister seemed not to appreciate that he had just insulted three foreign service professionals.
“You are being absolutely silly,” Laingen told him.
When they left, Laingen hoped that their visitors, whatever their motives, had been appropriately shocked by the zealotry of the students and the new strange political contours of this land. Islamic fundamentalism posed a threat that transcended the traditional liberal-conservative polarity that had defined Western politics for generations. There was a natural tendency of liberals like Coffin, Howard, and Gumbleton to seek dramatic change and to see any revolutionary as ideological kin, but they needed to be careful in this case about who they were cozying up to. The world was a more complicated place than they imagined. A new form of totalitarianism was taking shape, a religious variation on an ugly twentieth-century theme.
In the end, Coffin, Howard, and Gumbleton would fly home with their own sketchy notions of what was going on in Iran, while Laingen and the others were left behind as its captives.
Vice consul Bob Ode stewed over the Christmas party for days afterward. In the brief chance he had to speak to Coffin—the minister knew he was the eldest of the hostages and had sought him out to ask how he was doing—Ode had said, “If you are under the impression that the students are being kind to us, then you are mistaken.”
