Congressman Jack Kingston
There are several points the reader should understand about this work. First, this volume tells mainly about one man’s experiences during one significant period. I have included just enough information about the relationship between the United States and Iran in the years following World War II to set the stage. There is much more, but it lies beyond the scope of this work. Virtually everyone who was kind enough to review drafts of the manuscript suggested that I include such-and-such an event or discuss so-and-so, or that I contact this or that source for additional insights. They were all wonderful ideas, and truly I wish I could have accommodated. In the end, though, it was necessary to limit the text to the needs of the publisher. This volume, then, in no way constitutes a complete treatment of any element of Iranian or U.S.-Iranian history.
Likewise, this is not the definitive history of the hostage crisis. Many of the principals in the Carter administration have already recorded their memories of the event, and historians and political scientists have written much more. The interested reader should look to the Bibliography as a guide to these resources. Nor is this the representative story of the hostages themselves. In the 1950s there was a television program about the New York Police Department titled The Naked City. Each episode ended with the voice-over: “There are eight million stories in the Naked City; this has been just one of them.” Well, fifty-two Americans have individual stories of their 444 days as captives of the Iranians, and this is just one of them.
I had hoped to accomplish three objectives in this work. First, I wanted to present new material (within the limitations allowed) that would add to the understanding of what occurred in 1979, particularly with respect to the decision-making process in the White House. To this end I was aided immeasurably by individuals who participated in the events described in the text and generously shared what they learned and experienced firsthand. This book reflects the detailed information, unvarnished criticisms, and alternative points of view they passed along.
A second goal was to place certain events in more accurate perspective. Much of America’s Cold War foreign policy was informed and founded on intelligence data and activities that, due to security classifications or limited accessibility in open sources, are absent from earlier writings. As more of this material has been declassified, our knowledge of many events that occurred during that era has been expanded. Although this text does not rely on any documentary material that was not already in the public domain when earlier works about the hostage crisis were written, a significant amount of that data had been overlooked, given short shrift, or simply ignored by authors for any number of reasons. I have attempted to collate relevant items in this material to display key events in a truer light. That said, much more remains to be declassified, and history’s judgments on some of the issues I have addressed may yet change.
My third goal was to relate the facts and events covered by this book, other than my personal experiences, as objectively as possible. I doubt that I have been completely successful, but I have tried—realizing, of course, that just the tasks of selecting what elements to discuss and what sources to rely on are in themselves a subjective decision. Where I have either deliberately or inadvertently revealed my own thoughts, the reader is welcome to disagree. Nor should the reader take my personal reactions to events of the moment as an attempt to portray the wider issues involved and factors that were beyond my ken. For example, the opinion I expressed on learning of the shah’s admission to the United States reflected my concern for my personal safety and that of my colleagues. But the situation looked very different in Washington, despite what I might have thought in Tehran, and I have endeavored to relate those two perspectives as fairly as I can. The reader will easily discern, in these instances, that what appeared simple and straightforward to me was a much more intricate problem for the policymakers.
A word of caution. The majority of the works that examine the actions and decisions of the Carter administration with regard to Iranian affairs seem to be more intent on criticizing the administration or individual participants than objectively reviewing the issues and options. But the hostage crisis was far more complicated than just choosing up sides or criticizing all that went wrong. Developing and executing a national security policy in which Iran played a major role was a complex endeavor for almost all post-1945 American presidents (LBJ being the exception). Iran’s geography made it a pivotal player in the Cold War and in Middle Eastern politics. Right or wrong, however, the internal political and social health of Iran were not of much interest or concern to any administration, Democratic or Republican, save John Kennedy’s. By the time Jimmy Carter was elected president, his options for dealing with Iran had been seriously limited by the decisions and policies of his predecessors. When the Iranian revolution began to unfold in 1978 he was presented with a continuing series of critical problems, none of which offered easy or clear choices for him.
As for the hostage crisis itself, trying to save fifty-two lives while also preserving America’s national interests and honor was an extraordinarily difficult endeavor, and President Carter deserves more credit than his critics have been willing to give. While there were at times serious disagreements within the administration over which of the options to choose, the reader should not assume or think that these differences were motivated by any reason or purpose other than what each participant believed to be the best interests of the country. None of those involved pressed a personal agenda or sought individual gain in deliberations on how to deal with the Iranian revolution, the admittance of the shah to the United States, or the hostage crisis. In a time of humiliation for the United States, the policymakers involved in dealing with the crisis distinguished themselves in their efforts to bring it to an honorable conclusion.
A final point: my occasionally harsh comments about Iranians in general, the Iranian character, and aspects of Iranian culture and history should not be taken as utter condemnation of all things Iranian or of the Iranian people. My personal dislikes of certain Iranians (which are, I admit, still strongly held) extend only to those particular individuals, and for good cause. The insults and criticisms I mention in the text were levied against people who were threatening our lives, arrantly and arrogantly violating long-accepted international norms and values, causing great distress to our families, and bringing about shame and humiliation to the United States. These remarks should not be interpreted in any broader sense.
Prior to publication, the final draft of this text was submitted to the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board, which I am required to do as a former Agency officer. I support this requirement. The sole purpose of the board’s review of the manuscript is to ensure that no currently classified material has found its way into the text. The board has no charge to censor the text by deleting or amending information or positions that may be unfavorable to the Agency or the U.S. government.
I received no assistance from the CIA in writing this book, with the exception of the provision of two documents (out of four I had requested) by the Information and Privacy branch in the CIA’s Office of Information Management; both documents had been declassified some years earlier through the Freedom of Information Act. I did, several times and through several channels both official and personal, ask the Agency for help in locating and providing previously unpublished materials. The Agency not only did not provide any of these materials, it lacked the courtesy even to reply to my requests. This despite the Agency’s recent statements asserting a new openness and my making it clear that the book would be favorable to the Agency. The reader can thus be assured that this work is strictly my own product with no substantive connection whatsoever to the CIA.
Gary Sick was the Iran action officer for the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration. The failure of the rescue mission and the resulting
