Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History Read Online Free Page A

the moderate Bazargan government by forcing it into a tough situation. If Bazargan came to the rescue of the Americans, then Iranians would see him and other moderates in the government for what they were: puppets of the West.
    Some of the militants carried makeshift weapons such as bike chains, boards, even hammers. At least a few carried pistols, contradicting later claims that the assault was completely nonviolent.
    After locking down the chancery, the marines quickly donned their riot gear. They loaded pistols and shotguns and took up positions throughout the embassy. The adrenaline was pumping and some seemed eager for a fight. One lay down in one of the offices on his belly with ammunition easily within reach, sighting down the barrel of his shotgun sniper-style as he scanned the window.
    Meanwhile Laingen, Tomseth, and Howland were in a car on their way back from their meeting at the foreign ministry. They had just pulled out into traffic when Al Golacinski called on the radio and told them to turn around. “There’s hundreds of people swarming all over the embassy grounds,” he said. The three realized that even if they reached the embassy, they probably wouldn’t be able to make it inside. They quickly decided that the best course of action would be to head back to the foreign ministry and try to organize help from there.
    The last thing Laingen told Golacinski before signing off was to make sure that the marines didn’t open fire. If even one of the marines fired, then they would likely have a bloodbath on their hands.
    “What about tear gas?” Golacinski asked him.
    “Only as a last resort,” Laingen responded.
    By this time, the staffers on the second floor of the chancery began to realize that the attack was more serious than they had at first thought. Some of the marines and other Americans, including John Graves, who’d been working in the outer buildings, had already been captured, and the Americans in the chancery watched from the second-floor windows as their colleagues were blindfolded, had their hands tied, and were marched toward the ambassador’s residence near the back of the compound.
    Don Hohman, an army medic who was at the Bijon apartments across the street from the back gate, radioed Golacinski to tell him that a group of Iranians had broken in over there as well. Up on the fourth floor, he could hear them kicking down doors and searching the apartments below. Golacinski realized there was little he could do; he told Hohman he was on his own. (Hohman would later be captured as he tried to scale down the outside of the building.)
    At the moment, Golacinski had bigger problems than Hohman; word had reached him on the radio that the chancery had just been breached. Despite the fact that several million dollars had recently been spent to fortify the building, the militants had found the structure’s one weak spot: a basement window that had been left unbarred as a fire escape. In fact, the intruders seemed to know beforehand exactly where it was.
    With the militants inside the chancery’s basement, Golacinski ordered everyone, including the Iranian staffers waiting on the firstfloor, up to the second floor. (The second floor was normally considered off-limits to the local employees.) In a fit of bravery or stupidity, depending on how you look at it, Golacinski then asked Laingen over the radio if he could go outside to “reason” with the crowd, which now numbered well over a thousand. Laingen told him he could do so only if he could guarantee his own safety, which he could not. Golacinski went anyway, and he was soon captured and marched back to the chancery at gunpoint.
    On the second floor of the chancery, marines and staffers began piling up furniture behind the steel door. The central hallway was crowded now and everyone shared worried glances. Some of the Iranian employees started crying. Marines walked among everyone handing out gas masks. Other marines cocked and recocked their