On the morning of April 21, two guards came to the room with Hermening’s shoes and a clean shirt.
“You better get cleaned up,” one said.
Excited, and afraid even to think that this might mean the end of this ordeal for him, he dressed. The guards returned and led him down the hall to the Ping-Pong room, where they told him that his mother had come to visit him. Hermening was flabbergasted.
His mom?
In an epic gesture of maternal devotion, Barbara Timm had traveled from the suburbs of Milwaukee to Tehran to see her captive son. Not even the fiercest revolutionary zealot could resist the story’s appeal. A few months earlier, Timm could not even have found Tehran on a map. She had her hands full raising five children and working as a telephone operator. Kevin was her son from her first marriage, which had ended in divorce. She had felt no particular fears about his posting. A tall, slender woman with big eyes whose short-cropped hair gave her a boyish look, she didn’t know enough about Iran to feel anything, except that it was far away and had not been her son’s first choice. She was a little disappointed for him, but figured the country’s embassy there was as good as any other. When she had started getting letters from him they were all upbeat and filled with assurances that he was happy and okay, so she hadn’t worried about him at all. Her own mother was the worrier. From the first day that Kevin left, his grandmother had phoned every few days with an alarming story about something bad that had happened in Iran.
When her mother had called again on Sunday morning, November 4, and told one of Hermening’s stepbrothers that the U.S. embassy in Tehran had been overrun by crazed Islamic radicals, Timm’s first reaction was annoyance. Why wouldn’t her mother just leave it alone? She figured it was something minor that would blow over. She hadn’t even bothered to turn on the radio. Then there was a news break during the Packers game, an autumn Sunday ritual in the Timm household, saying that the embassy had been seized but still, she refused to worry about her son. She wasn’t even sure if the embassy was the same one where he had been sent. She went bowling that night, as she usually did.
Then the media storm descended with the fury of a Wisconsin blizzard. It started the minute she walked in the door after bowling, with a phone call from a local newscaster, and her life had not been the same since. A representative from the marines called the following morning with official word that her son was among those who had been taken captive, which by then was old news. From that day forward the fate of her eldest son played out in public. Over the next three months, Timm got to know the various local TV producers and reporters and print journalists all too well, and she had agreed to be interviewed periodically. It was a curious new position to be in; suddenly the whole world seemed fascinated by every comment or insight from this working Milwaukee mom. In short order she regretted saying yes to that first interview, because it undermined her future ability to say no. Whenever a local news outlet would get a picture or an audio or videotape from the embassy they would use it to blackmail her.
As much as she hated being pursued by newsmen, though, she was addicted to their reports. The TV was on every minute in her house and her ears arched at any word from Iran. The sight of those marching, chanting, fist-and placard-waving crowds outside the embassy convinced her that the country was populated by maniacs. She feared she would never see her son again.
Timm had attended the regional and national briefings held by the State Department, even though the transportation costs were steep. Because the government would pay expenses only for Hermening’s mother and father, and Timm did not want to travel without her husband, Ken, she had had to foot his bill for two trips to Washington. At the first Washington session she met President Carter, who initially she blamed for the whole mess. She had disliked him before meeting him but left with her feelings somewhat mollified. She and the others had been assured that the administration was doing all it could to bring the hostages home, and that they would almost certainly be back before the end of the year. Carter had seemed genuinely concerned. But by the second Washington trip, in mid-February, Timm was completely fed up. She believed she’d been misled and manipulated.
She was not the only one. Barbara Rosen, whose husband, Barry, the embassy’s press attache, had been singled out by the students and publicly denounced as a top spy, felt that the State Department was treating her and the other families like children. They had been genuinely moved by the long standing ovation they were given when, as a group, they entered the auditorium at department headquarters for the February meeting, but in the question and answer sessions later, she and others complained about what little information they were being given. As a group, the hostages’ families felt they were being deliberately kept in the dark.
There was good reason for it. Rosen had seen other family members handing over recordings of the “private” sessions to reporters. Clearly, some of the families were enjoying their long moment in the spotlight. The department had grown increasingly circumspect as a result, which aggravated suspicion.
Timm was appalled by many of the families. She regarded the second family session, when they had all been extravagantly wined and dined, as nothing more than an effort to pacify them. She watched with disgust as these supposedly suffering fathers, mothers, spouses, and siblings milked the open bar at receptions and mobbed the buffet tables at mealtime. They seemed more interested in sampling the goodies than in finding out what was really going on. As the weeks progressed and her bitterness grew, Timm found herself losing interest completely in what happened to the other fifty-two hostages. Her one concern was Kevin. She wanted to see him.
So when State Department officials urged her to have nothing to do with Carl McAfee, a Virginia attorney who wanted to fly her and her husband to Tehran, she ignored their advice. McAfee was one of a breed of attention-seeking Washington attorneys who look for ways to inject themselves into the ongoing drama of national and world affairs. He had made a name for himself almost twenty years earlier negotiating a trade for Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot who served nearly two years in a Soviet prison after his spy plane was shot down. McAfee had attended the second hostage family briefing, introduced himself around, and said that he was interested in arranging personal visits to Tehran. After that session, twenty-four of the families signed up to make the trip. Timm’s husband and her ex-husband, Kevin’s father, were among them. Timm and the other mothers and wives were advised that because women were second-class citizens in Iran, the men would have a better chance of success. Those planning to make the trip were waiting in Washington for visas from the Iranian embassy when the six Americans who had been sheltered by the Canadian embassy escaped. That had killed the plan.
Then Timm got a call from a woman in Canada who had received one of the Christmas cards Hermening had mailed months earlier. The ones he sent to his family had not arrived, but for some reason this letter had gotten through. In the note he had mentioned his plan to escape (the attempt had ended badly months earlier). He had also noted that he expected to be dead by the time the card reached its recipient, if ever, and asked that the recipient contact his mother. So the Canadian woman had called.
Timm was alarmed. She knew right away that the card was authentic. It sounded like her son, and she knew he would be trying to get word to her in particular. She determined then and there that even if no one else was going to Tehran, she was. She had contacted McAfee and joined up with twelve other families who had enlisted for the lawyer’s second attempt at a trip. The government was reportedly cool to the idea, but the Timms had never heard anything from the State Department directly and didn’t ask permission. The marines were completely supportive but warned against letting the Iranians use Timm for propaganda purposes. For weeks McAfee kept setting dates and canceling them.
Then, in mid-April, Carter announced a ban on travel to Iran. Without putting it in so many words, the decision was meant primarily to encourage American news organizations to bring their reporters home, mindful of Vance’s worry about what might happen in the aftermath of a rescue attempt. Carter could not order reporters out of Iran without provoking a showdown over freedom of the press—Powell had speculated that such a direct move might actually prompt the networks and major newspapers to send
“I warned him that you people would get on a high horse,” Powell told CBS News executive producer Sandy
