Guests Of The Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis Read Online Free Page A

in the country and language skills, they were prized sources of information in the embassy, which even at its highest levels was filled with newcomers. Limbert, Tomseth, and Metrinko formed an especially sharp contrast to the three-man CIA station, which had no Farsi speakers and a combined experience in Iran of fewer than five months. This tour was a chance for all three to shine. Because they could read the local newspapers, listen to the radio and TV, and talk to a wide variety of Iranians, they were the only ones with a real feel for the place.
    The morning meeting was held around a long table in the “The Bubble,” a bizarre room with walls made of clear plastic, a complete enclosure inside a normal room on the second-floor front of the chancery that was designed to avoid electronic eavesdropping. The clear plastic walls insulated the space and prevented the hiding of listening devices in the walls, floor, or ceiling. At the head of the table, the compact, athletic, and tanned chargé d’affaires was feeling upbeat, as was his way. A Minnesota farm boy, Laingen had retained his youthful appearance well into middle age, with stray locks of dark hair that fell casually across his forehead. Laingen had been in Tehran since June, dispatched on short notice to fill in after the new regime had summarily rejected Walter Cutler, the man President Carter had appointed ambassador. No new ambassador had been named, so Laingen was the top American official in Tehran. He was no Iran expert, but he had served in the city more than a quarter century earlier as a young foreign officer in the heady days after Kermit Roosevelt’s legendary coup, when he had learned enough Farsi to hold simple conversations. Languages did not come as easily to Laingen as they did to some of those on his staff. His assignment now was to begin a dialogue with the country’s new rulers and convince them that the despised United States, despite its close ties to the toppled monarchy, was ready to accept the new Iran. He felt a big part of his job was to project confidence and cheer into this small American community, which was reduced to a fraction of its normal size, having sent home all nonessential personnel and family members of those who stayed. A more cautious leader might have spent more time preparing for the worst, destroying files and further paring down the staff, but Laingen had a constitutional bias toward hope; he believed things were getting better and heading back toward normal. He worked hard to improve morale, arranging a number of social outings for the staff, such as a tennis tournament against other embassies and softball games, and had even allowed a slight easing of security restrictions—he had approved, for instance, opening a new drinking club for the marines in their apartment building just off embassy grounds, which, given the revolution’s abhorrence of alcohol, might have been considered needlessly provocative. His efforts were working. The mood at the embassy had noticeably lifted since his arrival, and Laingen was popular with his coworkers and staff, and although some saw his chipper outlook as distinctly rose-tinted, even the skeptics had to admit there were encouraging signs. Despite daily torrents of rhetorical venom, the revolutionary powers had chased away the group that had invaded and briefly occupied the embassy in February, and had cooperated in the construction of the compound’s new consulate, a modern concrete structure designed to more efficiently handle the thousands of Iranian visa seekers who still lined up outside the embassy every day—voting with their feet. Khomeini had recently denounced such Western-yearning Iranians as “traitors,” and as “America-loving rotten brains who must be purged from the nation.” Vitriol like this and the imam’s recent encouragement of “attacks” on America were so commonplace now that they had ceased to cause alarm. It was just considered the climate. John