“Thank you.”
Then, quietly, “The Shah’s health has deteriorated further. We have to face that. You need to handle this; no one else has the Shah’s confidence.”
* * *
—
WEISEMAN RETURNED TO MEXICO. A State Department doctor joined him to cross-examine the Shah’s doctors, to confirm that the illness was as grave as they claimed. It was.
It was time to take the Shah to New York.
The Mexicans, clearly relieved that the Shah was leaving, assured Weiseman with practiced smiles that they would, of course, be more than willing to take the Shah back, after New York, if the president asked them to do so.
Weiseman flew back to Washington for the showdown.
He headed directly into back-to-back meetings in the State Department and Pentagon, where officials argued against allowing the Shah into the United States. They warned that the mullahs would take revenge, putting American diplomats in Tehran at risk. Bobby Beauford thundered about political risks to the president just to save a reviled former dictator.
On October 21, Justin Trevor summoned Weiseman and asked for his recommendation.
“If we don’t let him in,” Weiseman said, “the president will be blamed for his death.”
“And the consequences of that?” Trevor asked.
“Justin, we ordered the embassy to draw down its personnel months ago, to burn most of the classified documents. We have aircraft at our Italian base in Aviano, ready to go in and bring out the rest of our people, if necessary.”
Trevor studied the medical report, an index finger moving across every word of every line. Lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system that resembles leukemia…the lymph nodes had become painful and swollen…
“Damn!” Trevor said, his icy anger seeping to the surface. Weiseman knew he hated the very idea of the Shah coming to America.
Then he said, “All right. Do it.”
* * *
—
THE NEXT DAY, October 22, 1979, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi arrived in New York and was taken directly to Sloan Kettering. Françoise had flown in and met Weiseman there to greet the Shah and the Empress. Farah appeared first, struggling to maintain control. She embraced Françoise. “Chère cousine.”
The Shah walked by, stiffly, wordlessly, as if desperate to guard some measure of his shredded dignity.
Weiseman watched the Shah disappear behind whitewashed doors that closed him off from the outside world, the way Sir Reader Bullard made the Shah’s father vanish to distant South Africa forty years earlier. This time, it was too late to do the one thing that might provide a measure of solace for the newly ousted shah: to place his son on the Peacock Throne.
Weiseman stared at the now locked antiseptic white doors. He had a premonition that the Iranian people were entering a dark room, and there was no way to predict how long before they would be let out.
30
RETRIBUTION
THE STATE DEPARTMENT Operations Center called exactly two weeks after the Shah arrived in New York. It was 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday, November 4, 1979, a working day in Tehran. Françoise was back in Paris.
Weiseman knew immediately that something was amiss. The Operations Center only called on weekends when there was a crisis.
They told him to switch on his TV, and it took him a moment to understand what he was looking at: American diplomats being led across the embassy courtyard in blindfolds, hands bound behind their backs. Screaming students—an announcer’s voice estimated the mob so far at three thousand—were still pouring over the outer walls of the embassy compound, shouting Death to America! and locking the gates from inside, forcing their way into the chancery. It was the nightmare scenario.
Weiseman dressed quickly.
An hour later he was in his office on the seventh floor of the State Department. Suddenly there was no news except the hostages. Nothing else mattered: not the Russians, not the Middle East, not the energy crisis, not the ravaged US economy and double-digit inflation.
The president would be fixated on this challenge, Weiseman knew. Both Carter’s Christian concern for the hostages and his political instincts would impel him to focus on bringing his diplomats home. Whenever there was a great national crisis—World War II, the Berlin airlift, the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War—presidential attention became completely gripped by the emergency.
Weiseman called Trevor, but the emergency number rang off the hook. He phoned the Iranian Foreign Ministry, and a nervous-sounding Amin picked up on the first ring. It would work out just like the Valentine Day episode, Amin assured him: the students were off on a lark; it was no more than a student sit-in at a US university. They’d be back to classes in a few days.
A White House secretary called to invite him to a noon meeting in the Situation Room. When he got there, he found himself surrounded by the entire National Security Council: the vice president; the secretary of state; the secretary of defense; the secretary of the treasury; the national security advisor; the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; and the director of central intelligence, Justin Trevor.
Weiseman took a seat along the wall behind them. There was an eerie hush in the room.
The president strode in and everyone rose. He was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and sober black tie, a miniature American flag pin newly affixed to his lapel. He took his seat at the head of the table and motioned for everyone to be seated, then caught Weiseman’s eye.
“Join us, David, we’re going to be depending on you.”
They proceeded to pick his brain clean, demanding to know everything he’d learned in dealing with the Iranians. Most urgently, they wanted his assessment of Khomeini. Was he crazy, an unguided missile? Would he do a deal? Would the army be with us if we intervene? What do we do if one of our people are killed?
These powerful men were angry, determined to do something. The agenda was formidable: military, economic, and financial sanctions; legal and political items; Congress and the UN. Assignments were made: contingency papers to be prepared, first drafts Friday.
“The carrier Midway is in the Indian Ocean en route to a port of call in Mombasa,” the JCS chairman said. “I sent the captain a signal: divert to the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz.”
Bobby Beauford piped up. “We need to send an emissary to Iran.”
It was Kabuki—a shadow play where all the actors dutifully played their parts.
Carter was running the national security apparatus like the engineer he was, but they were dealing with an ayatollah whose perspective might as well have been shaped on another planet. Khomeini didn’t want a compromise. America was the Great Satan, and God’s agent didn’t compromise with Satan.
Trevor had told Weiseman never to say anything important in a room with more than two people in it: you and the person that mattered. Here, however, it was different. He needed to get across every nuance of the situation so the president could make the right choices.
“And the Shah?” Carter asked.
“He’s still seriously ill, Mr. President.”
“And how do you see it?” one of the gray suits asked.
“Sir, the Ayatollah is afraid the revolution will be stillborn. The hostages are his foreign devils, a tool to unite the nation behind his regime, to deter us from sending in the Marines.”
“Go on,” Carter said, barely audibly.
“It’s not going to be fast. Khomeini won’t let them out till they’ve served his purpose. I think we need to stay cool and, above all, do no harm.” Weiseman paused.
“Or?”
“Or we go in and take our people out. We commit the necessary forces and do it right.”
Silence. “And the Shah?” Carter asked again.
“That’s what Khomeini kept asking when I saw him in Qom. I called New York an hour ago, sir. I spoke to his doctor and to Farah. He has tubes in his body now. His doctors think it will be four to five weeks before it’s safe for him to travel.”
“By that
time,” came the voice from the head of the table, “all our people could be dead, maybe one at a time, maybe all at once.”
The president allowed the discussion to go on for almost two hours, then asked two questions. “What do we do if the hostages are harmed? What do we do if Iran disintegrates into some kind of civil war?” He didn’t wait for answers. He told them to staff those questions, then rose from the table and, head down, deep in thought, strode out of the Sit-Room.
Weiseman heard the defense secretary say he wanted pinpoint military options prepared in case they killed any hostages, and then the secretary hurried after the president into the Oval Office. Weiseman was dumbstruck: “pinpoint military options” after they killed hostages!
* * *
—
ON MONDAY THE FIFTH, Weiseman snapped on his office TV, and the images plunged him into deep gloom. Nejab, the RG who had treated him so roughly on the car ride to Qom, was at the head of a line of Revolutionary Guards parading the hostages in blindfolds and manacles and pointy dunce caps in front of the cameras, letting the world know that the mighty United States was a paper tiger, helpless to free its diplomats. Students waved classified American cables before the international press and accused America of plotting a preemptive coup to stop the mullahs from seizing power.
Weiseman froze. Classified documents. They were supposed to have been returned to Washington months ago, he thought, with the few essential documents that remained to have been burned in a crisis. He bolted out of his seventh floor office and ran down two floors to the Iran desk officer. On the man’s wall was a framed photograph of Ayatollah Khomeini, and next to it a poster of the Shah with a bright diagonal red line through it.
“Yes, sir,” the official said. “We did recall the documents. So did DOD and CIA. But things were quiet after that, so we agreed to send them back. We couldn’t know…”
Weiseman left the desk officer in midsentence, cursing his incompetence, and hurried back to his office. He decided to try the obvious, most unlikely thing. He picked up the phone and dialed the embassy in Tehran, and amazingly, after two rings, someone picked up.
“Den of spies,” said a young, high-pitched voice, speaking in Farsi.
He asked for Chris Tyler, a young diplomat who had worked for him earlier before being sent to Tehran. “Tyler is unavailable,” the voice said. “He will be unavailable for some time. Don’t call back.”
Then the voice broke into peels of laughter, and the line went dead.
The embassy was under the control of the RGs and students ready to carry out the Ayatollah’s every wish. Weiseman turned back to the TV and saw RGs making provocative statements from their embassy command post, followed by dutiful reports of White House bulletins. Empty words flew back and forth across the earth.
His secretary buzzed him on the intercom and said the father of one of the hostages was on the phone. That meant the White House had given the families his name. He knew it would be the first of hundreds of calls. The press would be next.
He picked up the phone and heard Roger Tyler’s choked voice. “Mr. Weiseman, you were my son’s boss. When are you going to get Chris out?” In the background, he could hear a woman alternately weeping and telling her husband what else to ask. But Weiseman had no answer for them, saying only that he would do his best, and that they should feel free to call him again.
His secretary buzzed again. The French ambassador had arrived. He had forgotten the appointment and hurried out to welcome Jean Pascal. The ambassador wasted no time coming to the point. “Laurent Gramont has asked me to speak with you.”
Words direct from the spymaster, Weiseman thought, to be passed on to Trevor and Carter.
“Do something,” the ambassador said, “or do nothing.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Either send in the Marines, or show indifference until they get bored and let your people go. But don’t agonize in public. If you convince them they have a trump card with the hostages, they’ll hold on to them a long time.”
“And France,” Weiseman asked. “What will your government do to help?”
The ambassador rolled his eyes. “Monsieur Weiseman, the issue is not the hostages. They’ll be sent back to you in due course, once Khomeini consolidates his authority. The issue is, well, you know my language, l’absence des États-Unis dans le monde. The absence of the United States in the world. That’s dangerous. The Kremlin sees you are distracted and will exploit that. They can do a lot of damage while you dither over your precious diplomats.”
Your precious diplomats. Weiseman forced himself to remain calm.
But wasn’t he right? For Khomeini, the hostages were strictly an instrument of leverage. And yet, Nejab and the RGs were in there with the hostages, with no one restraining them
His secretary came in and handed him an urgent cable. One of the hostages had signed a confession confirming that the embassy was a “den of spies.” The text was written in poor English, obviously by one of the RGs; the signature was a nearly illegible scrawl. God alone only knew what had been done to the poor bastard before he dragged his pen across the page.
* * *
—
IN TREVOR’S L-SHAPED office, an aide inserted a videotape into the player and then slipped out of the office. Images of students climbing over the barriers around the US embassy appeared on the large screen. A young mullah followed them over, and his turban fell off. Following images showed him speaking to the students, who pumped their fists in the air.
“It’s Ahmed Khomeini,” Trevor said. “The Ayatollah’s son. Get it?”
Of course. The Ayatollah may not have ordered the hostage taking, but later, when he considered it useful, he had tendered his blessings to the invaders. Now everything would play out according to his script. The Shah, the diplomats, the students are pawns in his revolution.
Trevor got up and refilled his teacup. “For you, David? With sugar and lemon, I recall.”
Weiseman nodded. Trevor said, “We’ve double-checked the embassy roster; there are fifty-four hostages in all, best we can tell.” He passed Weiseman his tea, then took his seat behind the big desk. “This won’t be over until we inaugurate a new president fourteen months from now.”
So much for Justin’s loyalty to Carter, Weiseman thought.
“Jean Pascal came by this morning,” he said. “He said we should do nothing or—”
“Yes, yes, the French would say that, wouldn’t they? But this is America. Jimmy Carter is a lay Baptist minister, not a Cartesian philosopher. Americans expect their leaders to act.”
Of course, Weiseman thought. This was about more than just the hostages.
“Let me tell you what will happen,” Trevor said. “The president will get bogged down in the weeds instead of deferring the detail work like he should. He’ll become desk officer for Iran. He’ll review every proposal. There’ll be daily meetings. It will waste untold hours—”
“Justin, our people are in custody—”
Trevor held up his right hand, like a traffic cop. “Secret interagency committees will be formed. There will be leaks, proposals for punitive measures, rescue missions, carrots and sticks. The Navy will want to send warships to the Persian Gulf. The networks will make the hostages their lead story every night on TV. Khomeini will issue a religious fatwa against the United States.”
Despite himself, Weiseman knew that Trevor’s appraisal was accurate. He could be a coldhearted bastard, but the old pro usually assessed things spot-on.
“The good Iranians will disappear,” Trevor continued. “They’ll be herded into Evin and shot. Or hanged.”
He paused to sip his tea. “The opportunists will swarm about like locusts. They’ll do whatever Khomeini commands, and they’ll feather their nests.”
“And then?”
“Once Khomeini feels he’s achieved his purpose, there will be diplomatic meetings in Europe. But the hostages won’t come home until we have a different president.”
“And we do nothing in the meantime? You can’t mean that.”
“Oh, no, David. Of course not. We’ll try everything.”
Trevor sipped his tea again. “It’s not hot, this tea.” He furrowed his brow. “My colleagues will talk big about what they’ll do to Iran. Members of Congress will be worse; after all, they’re just politicians. Our experts will tell us all the reasons we can do nothing. Our allies will agree; they’ll give us words of solidarity, and hold our coat.”
Trevor picked an imaginary spot of dust from his suit lapel. “You’re going back in, David. CIA will give you an unaudited budget. You’ll make sure we know what’s going on in Iran. You’ll be our channel to all those bandits and thieves in their mullahs’ robes and European suits. Of course, you won’t be working for us.”
Deniability, Weiseman thought. David Weiseman, who’s he? We don’t know him.
“Of course, Justin, but you said nothing will happen until there’s a new president.”
Trevor stared intently at him, then said, “I want to know in advance if they’re going to hang or shoot any of our people. I want to know if there are still Iranians we can talk to, or put to work for us. I want to know whether there are any governments or any adventurers with armies and cash who might help us.”
“Help us do what?”
“You told me you wanted to frustrate them, put a spanner in the works everywhere they turn, find ways to make them crash, or at least let our people go.”
“That’s all?” Weiseman said.
“That’s all, unless you can think of anything else. If you and I know the truth, we can prevent Bobby Beauford and the fools around the president from making a worse hash of it than they have already.”
Trevor paused and stared off, as if deciding how to say what came next. It was a habit Weiseman knew meant that something important was coming.
Night in Tehran Page 24