forces in Iran from about ten thousand to a dozen or so, divided between the Defense Attaché’s Office (DAO) and the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG). It did not, however, generate any sentiment at the highest levels of the U.S. government for disrupting or breaking off diplomatic relations with Iran. In fact, it strengthened the Carter administration’s determination to reconcile with the Provisional Government of Iran (PGOI). Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (NEA) Harold Saunders explained that “following the 14 February takeover we made a basic decision that Iran was so important that we should maintain a presence there.”2 For the president’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the “central strategic objective” for the United States was to “help Iran preserve its national integrity and independence.”3 There were humanitarian concerns as well, as expressed by Undersecretary of State David D. Newsom: “We particularly wished to maintain a consular presence to be able to assist Jews, Bahais, and other minorities in danger to leave Iran.”4
Although the United States took the initiative with the PGOI to retain a U.S. diplomatic presence, the Iranian leadership did not object. In what must have been a difficult dilemma, they understood that many Iranians, especially the religious fundamentalists, no longer desired an American presence in Iran, but neither did they want the Americans completely gone. Numerous multi-billion-dollar military sales and assistance programs, as well as equally costly civilian construction projects, had been left hanging from the shah’s era, and there remained a range of issues to work out between the Americans and the new regime. Charles W. Naas, director of Iranian affairs at State between 1974 and 1978, and deputy chief of mission (DCM) in the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1978–79, witnessed the transition from the shah to the PGOI in early to mid-1979. As he saw it, Iran’s new leaders wanted to maintain a relationship with the United States, but only if it conformed with accepted diplomatic standards and eliminated the previous unique ties that had bound the United States more to the shah personally than to the country of Iran. One more factor impelled the Iranians to sustain the American presence in Iran: hostile neighbors to the north and west.5
Naas understood that Iran’s new prime minister, a secular politician named Mehdi Bazargan, and his key advisers (also secularists for the most part) recognized the potential threats posed by the USSR and Iraq and wanted to retain Iran’s traditional security arrangements with the United States. Of the two, the USSR was deemed the primary menace. Faced with potential aggression from these foes, Bazargan believed that an American presence would deter any adventurism. Naas held a series of discussions with Bazargan and his advisers in which the Iranians made this point “very clear.”6 And in fact, these fears were borne out more than once after the U.S. embassy was captured in November 1979 and the United States was no longer Iran’s ally.
Soon after the embassy takeover in November 1979 the CIA acquired indisputable intelligence that the Soviets were dusting off contingency plans for a military occupation of the northern third of Iran contingent on hostile action by the United States or any other perceived threat to Soviet interests. This was followed by equally convincing intelligence that the Red Army was conducting training maneuvers north of their joint border with Iran. By August 1980 intelligence assessments indicated that the Soviets were training for a large-scale invasion of Iran with the Persian Gulf a potential objective. In a report to the president examining the potential for a political “break-up of Iran,” Brzezinski noted that the United States “can’t really influence the outcome of an Iranian civil war [should one eventuate], while we do know the Soviets have started training for military operations directed at Iran.”7
Nor were U.S. government officials the only ones concerned about a possible Soviet move into Iran. A prominent scholar who had long followed U.S.-Iran relations met with presidential assistant Hedley Donavon in late January 1980 to discuss the same issue. In the meeting Professor James Bill appeared to Donavon to be “extremely apprehensive” regarding Soviet intentions vis-à-vis Iran. Bill expressed concern that the Soviets might use Iran’s support for Islamic resistance fighters in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan as a “provocation” to move into Iran. If the Soviets did move, Bill projected an airborne assault on Iran’s oilfields.8
Following the earlier short-lived embassy takeover in February 1979, the Carter administration had reduced the embassy staff to about sixty, including State officers, the CIA station, military attachés and the MAAG cadre, administrative personnel, and Marine security guards.9 The Marines were to serve in their traditional role of furnishing internal embassy security and protecting classified materials and U.S. government property. External security—the defense of the embassy grounds and compound from intrusion—was a different matter. The guardianship of every American embassy is vested in the host government, usually in police units, military forces, or, in some locales, contracted private security firms. But after 14 February, “security” at the American embassy in Tehran was courtesy of a ratty, unkempt, undisciplined group of Iranian “revolutionaries” who roamed the grounds at will with automatic weapons, making everyone uncomfortable.10 Only at the end of the summer was anything resembling a legitimate guard force placed at the embassy gates. When the demonstrators came to the gates on 4 November, these “guards,” to the surprise of no one in the embassy, melted away into the crowds.
By March 1979 the Tehran station consisted of case officers rotating in and out on a temporary duty (TDY) basis. But NE Division was looking ahead to the time when the station could again be staffed with permanently assigned personnel and functioning as a station should—recruiting agents and collecting intelligence. And that was the state of affairs when I met DC/NE in Langley on that spring day.
The deputy division chief’s decision to assign me to Tehran was, I suppose, a matter of balancing the plusses and minuses. On the positive side of the ledger, my special program had kept my cover clean: I had no visible affiliation with the U.S. government, much less with the Agency or any of its usual cover providers. I did have military service—eight years of active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps—but between those years and my entry on duty with the Agency I had spent five and a half years as a university student. Moreover, it was just eight years since the end of the draft and four years after the conclusion of the Vietnam War, and most male government employees at that time possessed a military background. So this was no reason for a hostile intelligence or security service to suspect automatically that a particular U.S. government official was an intelligence officer.
Second, the nature of my military experience and education weighed in my favor. The majority of my military service was in the aviation community, first as an air traffic controller, and then flying with Marine fighter-attack squadrons, including a Vietnam tour. On leaving active duty in 1974, I returned to academia, earning a B.S. in social sciences from the University of California-Irvine. Next it was off to Claremont for the Ph.D. Thus, at age thirty-two I was not the usual career trainee.
If the positive aspects of my assignment to Tehran were evident, the negatives were at least equally so: I had no actual operational experience in the espionage business; I spoke not a word of Farsi; I knew nothing about either modern Iran or Persian history and had no knowledge of the country’s culture and customs; and I had only limited knowledge about the organization that was sending me overseas. These shortcomings may make my assignment to Tehran seem like an act of madness, but in the weighing at that time, the scales apparently tipped to the positive side. My lack of Farsi was mitigated by my cover assignment as the embassy’s political-military affairs officer. In that position I would be meeting regularly with officials in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense, individuals who usually spoke excellent English. In any case, I was pleased with the assignment and confident that I would accomplish what was expected of me.
Near the end of the FTC, however, the offer of the Tehran assignment was withdrawn. When the acting chief of station (ACOS) was offered an inexperienced first-tour officer, he not unwisely rejected me. His position was that Tehran was a hostile operating environment for intelligence officers and their contacts. As most Iranians considered anyone in the U.S. embassy to be CIA, even innocuous encounters with
