Glenn Jackson, driver
Pat Sculley, flank
Jim Schwebach, flank and explosives
THE IRANIANS
Abolhasan, Lloyd Briggs's deputy and the most senior Iranian employee
Majid, assistant to Jay Coburn; Fara, Majid's daughter
Gholam, personnel/purchasing officer under Jay Coburn
Hosain Dadgar, examining magistrate
AT THE U.S. EMBASSY
William Sullivan, Ambassador
Charles Naas, Minister Counselor, Sullivan's deputy
Lou Goelz, Consul General
Bob Sorenson, Embassy official
Ali Jordan, Iranian employed by the Embassy
Barry Rosen, press attache
ISTANBUL_______________________________
'Mr. Fish,' resourceful travel agent
Ilsman, employee of MIT, the Turkish intelligence agency
'Charlie Brown,' interpreter
WASHINGTON_____________________________
Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor
Cyrus Vance, Secretary of State
David Newsom, Undersecretary at the State Department
Henry Precht, head of the Iran Desk at the State Department
Mark Ginsberg, White House--State Department liaison
Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
PREFACE
This is a true story about a group of people who, accused of crimes they did not commit, decided to make their own justice.
When the adventure was over there was a court case, and they were cleared of all charges. The case is not part of my story, but because it established their innocence I have included details of the court's Findings and Judgment as an appendix to this book.
In telling the story I have taken two small liberties with the truth.
Several people are referred to by pseudonyms or nicknames, usually to protect them from the revenge of the government of Iran. The false names are: Majid, Fara, Abolhasan, Mr. Fish, Deep Throat, Rashid, the Cycle Man, Mehdi, Malek, Gholam, Seyyed, and Charlie Brown. All other names are real.
Secondly, in recalling conversations that took place three or four years ago, people rarely remember the exact words used; furthermore, real-life conversation, with its gestures and interruptions and unfinished sentences, often makes no sense when it is written down. So the dialogue in this book is both reconstructed and edited. However, every reconstructed conversation has been shown to at least one of the participants for correction or approval.
With those two qualifications, I believe every word of what follows is true. This is not a 'fictionalization' or a 'nonfiction novel.' I have not invented anything. What you are about to read is what really happened.
I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.
ONE
1______
It all started on December 5, 1978.
Jay Coburn, Director of Personnel for EDS Corporation Iran, sat in his office in uptown Tehran with a lot on his mind.
The office was in a three-story concrete building known as Bucharest (because it was in an alley off Bucharest Street). Coburn was on the second floor, in a room large by American standards. It had a parquet floor, a smart wood executive desk, and a picture of the Shah on the wall. He sat with his back to the window. Through the glass door he could see into the open-plan office where his staff sat at typewriters and telephones. The glass door had curtains, but Coburn never closed them.
It was cold. It was always cold: thousands of Iranians were on strike, the city's power supply was intermittent, and the heating was off for several hours most days.
Coburn was a tall, broad-shouldered man, five feet eleven inches and two hundred pounds. His red-brown hair was cut businessman-short and carefully combed, with a part. Although he was only thirty-two, he looked nearer to forty. On closer examination his youth showed in his attractive, open face and ready smile; but he had an air of early maturity, the look of a man who grew up too fast.
All his life he had shouldered responsibility: as a boy, working in his father's flower shop; at the age of twenty, as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam; as a young husband and father; and now, as Personnel Director, holding in his hands the safety of 131 American employees and their 220 dependents in a city where mob violence ruled the streets.
Today, like every day, he was making phone calls around Tehran trying to find out where the fighting was, where it would break out next, and what the prospects were for the next few days.
He called the U.S. Embassy at least once a day. The Embassy had an information room that was manned twenty-four hours a day. Americans would call in from different areas of the city to report demonstrations and riots, and the Embassy would spread the news that this district or that was to be avoided. But for advance information and advice Coburn found the Embassy close to useless. At weekly briefings, which he attended faithfully, he would always be told that Americans should stay indoors as much as possible and keep away from crowds at all costs, but that the Shah was in control and evacuation was not recommended at this time. Coburn understood their problem-- if the U.S. Embassy said the Shah was tottering, the Shah would surely fall--but they were so cautious they hardly gave out any information at all. Disenchanted with the Embassy, the American business community in Tehran had set up its own information network. The biggest U.S. corporation in town was Bell Helicopter, whose Iran operation was run by a retired major general, Robert N. Mackinnon. Mackinnon had a first-class intelligence service and he shared everything. Coburn also knew a couple of intelligence officers in the U.S. military and he called them.
Today the city was relatively quiet: There were no major demonstrations. The last outbreak of serious trouble had been three days earlier, on December 2, the first day of the general strike, when seven hundred people had been reported killed in street fighting. According to Coburn's sources the lull could be expected to continue until December 10, the Muslim holy day of Ashura.
Coburn was worried about Ashura. The Muslim winter holiday was not a bit like Christmas. A day of fasting and mourning for the death of the Prophet's grandson Husayn, its keynote was remorse. There would be massive
