eager to stay (including one who requested political asylum), all but one of them boarded flights in Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. The stress of returning home had provoked chest pains in one, who stayed behind under observation at a D.C. hospital.
The expulsion and the way it had been carried out were warmly applauded. Precht, who felt he had mishandled the assignment, became an overnight hero to millions of Americans who relished the idea of hurling “bullshit!” into the face of an Iranian official before kicking him and his entire mission out the door. He received congratulatory mail from all over the country, including proposals of marriage.
Even Carter applauded Precht, expressing particular satisfaction with his choice of words.
2. A Beginning of the Dawn of Final Victory
Easter in Tehran brought another visit from concerned American clergy. The Reverend Jack Bremer was back under the auspices of the Committee for American-Iranian Crisis Resolution, the group headed by Kansas professor Norm Forer, which had so impressed the Iranian students with its sympathies on the February visit that it was invited back, at the students’ expense. Bremer brought along the activist priest Darrell Rupiper, who had visited earlier in the year. He and the others practiced what they called “moral patriotism,” which condemned America for falling short of universal ethical standards. While they condemned the kidnapping of diplomats, they also acknowledged that Iran had valid grievances against the United States, and though they claimed strict neutrality their sympathies clearly leaned toward Tehran. Rupiper had kicked off the trip with a press conference at which he urged President Carter to comply with Iranian demands, admit complicity in the crimes of the shah, agree not to obstruct efforts to extradite the shah (now from Egypt), and promise not to meddle further in Iranian affairs.
The visiting clergymen presented Kathryn Koob and Ann Swift each with a plastic bag filled with gifts: a shirt, some underwear, and soaps and other toiletries. Bremer told Koob that he had delivered similar gifts to Laingen, Tomseth, and Howland at the Foreign Ministry.
Bremer then led a prayer, which asked for God’s blessings on Americans and Iranians both, and for a renewed understanding and friendship between these nations. Koob was moved. She had been struggling in her prayer sessions for the right way to pray for her captors and heard in Bremer’s words an approach she hadn’t considered. After the service, the American women were positioned before the cameras, handed letters from their families, and told they could send messages home. Koob knew that her much-reduced frame was now so skinny and angular that her face seemed lost behind the wide plastic frames of her glasses. “The only reason I’m losing weight, Mother, is that I decided that was the only thing I could do over here.” Encouraged to keep talking, Koob and Swift described their daily routines and soon fell to giggling.
“Which one of you keeps the other in good spirits?” Bremer asked.
The two women pointed at each other.
When they were finished they added nuts, candy, and brownies to their plastic bags and listened as their guards told the cameras about how their hostages were provided an exercise room with a Ping-Pong table (Koob had been there twice) and showings of American movies (Koob had seen one).
Al Golacinski and Kevin Hermening had been told weeks earlier to expect the Easter visit, so each prepared a note on a foil wrapper from a stick of Wrigley’s spearmint gum. Golacinski’s note said that they were sick, that the sanitary conditions were terrible, that they couldn’t take it anymore, and that they were “losing it.” Hermening wrote that he believed the American people were unaware of how badly he and the others were being treated. He mentioned solitary confinement, beatings, the blindfolding and handcuffs, the lack of showers, and said they all just wanted to “get the hell out.”
Hermening had a tear in the cuff of his blue slacks, so he stuffed the note inside it for safekeeping.
A Mass was to be said by Rupiper. When the hostages arrived for the ceremony, Hermening, who was Catholic, asked if he could perform the ceremony’s lay readings. There were bright lights and cameras everywhere and the room was decorated with posters and festive ornaments made of construction paper. Dick Morefield and Billy Gallegos, two of the other Catholic hostages, looked on. As he waited for his chance to read, Hermening slid the note out of his cuff and cupped it in the palm of his right hand. He slipped the gum wrapper into the Bible during his reading, and when he handed it back to the priest he said, “There’s a note in there.” Rupiper was so startled he took a step back and nearly dropped the book. He said nothing, but Hermening thought the priest looked frightened.
Golacinski took advantage of the session to whisper to one of the other ministers that he wanted to get word to his fiancee that she should not wait for him.
“I’m going to be here for a long time,” he said.
Richard Queen and Joe Hall were in the last group to meet with the delegation. They sat at a table with the Reverend Nelson Thompson, an African-American Methodist preacher from Kansas City, and Rupiper. Queen was particularly grateful for the chance to receive communion. He was moved by Rupiper’s kindness.
“I wish I had the strength to stay here with you,” the priest told Queen. “This is a real test, a test of one’s faith.”
The slender, longhaired priest had been so struck by the condition of Jerry Miele, the CIA communicator who had become increasingly disturbed, that he offered to stay in Tehran and take the man’s place.
“I would want no privileges the others do not have,” he told Hussein Sheikh-ol-eslam and several of the other student captors. Rupiper explained that the night before he had opened the Bible at random and found a passage in Galatians about Christ’s willingness to sacrifice himself to “set us free from the present age of evil.”
This was language that the students understood.
“We need not say that you are good,” Sheikh-ol-eslam told Rupiper. “God knows that. We have a similar way of opening the Koran and finding God’s will.” Nevertheless, they turned his offer down.
“We see you as a member of the American nation,” one of the other student leaders told him. “But we saw them [the hostages] not as members of the American nation but as individuals who were plotting against us.”
Another explained that substituting the priest for Miele would “confuse the identity of the American embassy as a center of evil activity.”
Despite his concern for Miele, the priest’s good impression of the hostage takers was reinforced during this visit, and he once again brought back a glowing report on their kindness and compassion.
“They [the hostages] have exercise bicycles, Ping-Pong, watch TV, see movies, videocassettes,” he said. “The food is fine. They say that the students are treating them correctly.”
Since they were the last to visit the clergymen, Queen, Hall, Lee, and Englemann were allowed to hoard whatever remained of the candy, cake, and fruit that had been placed out for the occasion. Queen piled a paper plate high and stuffed his shirt and pants pockets with candy. He worried as he was doing it that he might be caught on camera—how would that look, him greedily making off with a mountain of treats? Back in their room, he satisfied his urge to organize things by sorting the candies into Krackle bars, peanut butter cups, and almond bars, and stashed them in a drawer out of sight—otherwise the guards would pick at it. He and Hall ate the cake first and then portioned out the candy over days, debating every evening which kind of treat to have with their tea.
As they sorted through the goodies in their room, Koob and Swift began to second-guess their behavior at the televised session. On reflection, they felt they had behaved like schoolgirls at a sleepover. Swift felt worse about it than Koob, who figured any chance she had to communicate with her family was worth whatever downside, but they both agreed that if fate handed them another turn before the cameras they would try to maintain a more sober demeanor.
In their room, Hermening and Golacinski were congratulating themselves for slipping the note to Rupiper when a guard burst in with the note in his hand. They concluded that instead of taking it home Rupiper had handed it over.
Hermening admitted that he had passed it and braced himself for punishment.
The successful, stealthy incursions into Iran of John Carney and Dick Meadows had a big effect in Washington. Both men returned to brief their superiors on the readiness of the desert landing strip and the various
