Hostages in Tehran

Over the Walls

For decades, Iran had been ruled by a king, the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He was a close American ally. To many Iranians, he was also a dictator, backed by a feared secret police.

In early 1979, a revolution swept him from power. A Muslim cleric, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, came home from exile and took control. His new government called the United States the Great Satan.

That October, the Shah, sick with cancer, was allowed into the United States for treatment in New York. In Tehran, that lit a fuse. Many Iranians believed America was getting ready to put him back on the throne, the way it had helped him hold on to power once before, in 1953.

On the morning of November 4th, 1979, several hundred Iranian students gathered outside the American embassy compound. Then they came over the gates.

The Marines guarding the embassy were badly outnumbered, and they held their fire. Inside, staff locked the doors and destroyed classified papers as fast as they could. But it wasn't enough.

In all, sixty-six Americans were taken hostage. Sixty-three were seized at the embassy. Three more happened to be at Iran's Foreign Ministry that day, and they were held there. One of those three was the senior American diplomat in the country, Bruce Laingen.

The students demanded that the Shah be sent back to Iran to stand trial. Seizing an embassy broke international law. Khomeini's government backed the takeover anyway.

Day one had begun. Nobody knew how high the count would go.

Days Become Months

Two weeks in, the hostage takers released thirteen of the hostages, women and African American members of the staff.

Six more Americans had slipped out of a side building on the first day. They hid in the homes of Canadian diplomats, including the ambassador, Ken Taylor. In January 1980, they flew out of Tehran on Canadian passports, with help from a CIA officer named Tony Mendez and a cover story about a film crew scouting locations.

But fifty-three Americans were still in Iranian hands. Some were kept in solitary confinement. Some faced mock executions. They were moved from place to place, often blindfolded. For long stretches, many families didn't know whether their loved ones were alive.

Back home, Penne Laingen's ribbon found company. The hostage families banded together and chose the yellow ribbon as their symbol. Soon ribbons were on trees, porches and car antennas from coast to coast. ABC News started a late night program about the crisis that opened every broadcast by counting the days. It later became Nightline. Day one hundred. Day two hundred.

President Jimmy Carter froze Iranian government money in American banks, stopped buying Iranian oil, and broke off diplomatic relations. Diplomats worked every channel they could find. Nothing moved the men holding the embassy.

So the President turned to the military.

Desert One

The plan was called Operation Eagle Claw, and it was one of the most complicated rescue missions the American military had ever tried.

Eight Navy helicopters, flown mostly by Marine pilots, would launch from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in the Arabian Sea. Air Force transport planes would fly in from the other direction, carrying fuel and the assault force, including the Army's new Delta Force under Colonel Charlie Beckwith. They'd all meet at a remote patch of Iranian desert, code-named Desert One. The helicopters would refuel there, then carry the rescue team on toward Tehran.

On the night of April 24th, 1980, the mission began.

As a Navy veteran, I think about the sailors on the Nimitz who launched those helicopters and then waited for them to come back.

But almost right away, things went wrong. The helicopters ran into huge clouds of fine dust that blinded the pilots. One had to be abandoned after a warning light. Another turned back to the carrier. A third reached Desert One with a hydraulic problem that made it unsafe to go on.

And Desert One wasn't as empty as planners had hoped. A dirt road ran right through it. A bus full of Iranian civilians came down that road and had to be stopped and held. Then a fuel truck came along. A rocket set it ablaze, and the fire lit up the desert for miles.

Planners had set a firm rule before the mission ever started. They needed at least six working helicopters to go on. Now they had five.

The mission was called off. And the worst part of the night was still ahead.

Eight Men

As the force got ready to leave in the dark, one of the helicopters moved to clear the area. In the blowing dust, it struck one of the transport planes, loaded with fuel and troops.

Both aircraft burst into flames. Ammunition cooked off in the fire. Men scrambled out of the burning plane.

Eight American servicemen were killed. Five were Air Force aircrew on the plane. Three were Marines on the helicopter.

I want to say their names.

From the Air Force: Richard Bakke. Harold Lewis Junior. Lyn McIntosh. Charles McMillan the Second. And Technical Sergeant Joel Mayo.

From the Marine Corps: Staff Sergeant Dewey Johnson. Sergeant John Harvey. And Corporal George Holmes Junior.

The survivors had to fly out and leave the wreckage, and the fallen, behind in the desert. Their remains were later returned home, and today a memorial at Arlington National Cemetery honors the eight men of Desert One.

At seven o'clock the next morning, President Carter went on television from the Oval Office. "They were all volunteers," he said of the rescue team. And then, "It was my decision to attempt the rescue operation." A moment later, "The responsibility is fully my own."

In Tehran, the hostages were scattered to different places, so nobody could try it again the same way.

Four Hundred Forty-Four Days

In July, one more hostage, a young diplomat named Richard Queen, was released after he became seriously ill. That left fifty-two. The crisis dragged through the summer and the fall, and it hung over the 1980 presidential election.

What finally moved things was diplomacy. Algeria acted as the go-between. Iran was now at war with Iraq and under heavy pressure. After months of hard bargaining, the two sides signed the Algiers Accords on January 19th, 1981. The deal included the release of frozen Iranian money.

The next day, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President. Minutes later, the fifty-two Americans were freed, and their plane took off from Tehran. They'd been held for four hundred forty-four days.

They flew to Algeria, then on to an American military hospital in West Germany, where former President Carter came to greet them. On January 25th, they landed at Stewart Air National Guard Base in New York, and their families were waiting.

Then they rode buses toward West Point. Yellow ribbons hung from tree trunks, stop signs and car antennas. Along one stretch of road stood sixty American flags. Eight of them flew at half-staff, for the eight men of Desert One.

Which brings us back to that oak tree in Maryland, and what Penne Laingen told the Washington Post, back in December of 1979.

"One of these days Bruce is going to untie that yellow ribbon. It's going to be out there until he does."

Two days later, on the South Lawn of the White House, Bruce Laingen spoke for all of them. He kept it simple. "It is good to be back."

Why It Matters

The crisis reshaped America's relationship with Iran for generations. The two countries broke off relations in April 1980, and they have never restored them.

It changed the American military, too. A review led by retired Admiral James Holloway the Third, a former Chief of Naval Operations, found that the mission had been pieced together from units of different services that had never trained as one team. The Army soon built a helicopter unit trained to fly at night, low and fast, known today as the Night Stalkers. And in 1987, the United States Special Operations Command was created, so the next time, America's special operators would train, plan and fight together.

As a Navy veteran, I'll say it plainly. Eight men volunteered to fly into the dark to bring their fellow Americans home. The mission failed. Their courage did not.

In the Library of Congress today, there's a yellow ribbon that once hung around an oak tree in a Maryland front yard.

Tomorrow: a woman walks into a polling place in Rochester, New York, in 1872, and casts a ballot. What will that one vote cost her? The Daily Muster is supported by Parcaut Supply Co. Subscribe, and the next story will be waiting for you. Muster's done. Fair winds. I'm Ed Parcaut, and I'll see you tomorrow.