“Why do you suppose these guys don’t go back to Tehran and rebuild the country?” he asked. “Why are they wasting their time here when their countrymen are mistreating our people over there?”
The Iranian deputy, whom Precht would later describe as “snake-like,” countered, “We are not mistreating the hostages. They are being very well taken care of in Tehran. They are our guests.”
“Bullshit,” said Precht.
Agah stood up and declared, “I’m not going to stay here and have my country, my government, insulted by you. We are leaving.”
The Iran desk chief bolted into the hallway after them. His job was to keep them occupied until they could be formally expelled.
“Ali, I apologize,” he said. “I retract my statement. Come back and let’s just chat a little more.”
“No,” said Agah.
Precht raced ahead to intercept them at the elevator door. He was now creating a scene in the fifth-floor hallway. The Iranians stepped around him into the elevator, but Precht wouldn’t let the doors shut.
“Ali, let’s sit,” he urged.
“You are holding us hostage in this elevator,” said Agah. “Get out of the way and let us out of here.”
Precht relented. The last thing he wanted was to make it appear the United States had gone into the business of reciprocal hostage taking. Outside the State Department building, Agah complained angrily to Marvin Kalb, the CBS reporter, that he had just been insulted by an American official. Kalb then phoned Precht.
“Henry, what did you say?” he asked. “What did you do to Ali?”
Precht explained, and that night’s lead news item became the flustered Iranian diplomats leaving the State Department in a huff. It could not have played out better in millions of impatient American living rooms. The formal message was delivered by a junior official who chased Agah’s car across the city. Within twenty-four hours, after the State Department rejected several last-minute appeals from some in the Iranian mission who were especially eager to stay (including one who requested political asylum), all but one of them boarded flights in Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. The stress of returning home had provoked chest pains in one, who stayed behind under observation at a D.C. hospital.
The expulsion and the way it had been carried out were warmly applauded. Precht, who felt he had mishandled the assignment, became an overnight hero to millions of Americans who relished the idea of hurling “bullshit!” into the face of an Iranian official before kicking him and his entire mission out the door. He received congratulatory mail from all over the country, including proposals of marriage.
Even Carter applauded Precht, expressing particular satisfaction with his choice of words.
2. A Beginning of the Dawn of Final Victory
Easter in Tehran brought another visit from concerned American clergy. The Reverend Jack Bremer was back under the auspices of the Committee for American-Iranian Crisis Resolution, the group headed by Kansas professor Norm Forer, which had so impressed the Iranian students with its sympathies on the February visit that it was invited back, at the students’ expense. Bremer brought along the activist priest Darrell Rupiper, who had visited earlier in the year. He and the others practiced what they called “moral patriotism,” which condemned America for falling short of universal ethical standards. While they condemned the kidnapping of diplomats, they also acknowledged that Iran had valid grievances against the United States, and though they claimed strict neutrality their sympathies clearly leaned toward Tehran. Rupiper had kicked off the trip with a press conference at which he urged President Carter to comply with Iranian demands, admit complicity in the crimes of the shah, agree not to obstruct efforts to extradite the shah (now from Egypt), and promise not to meddle further in Iranian affairs.
The visiting clergymen presented Kathryn Koob and Ann Swift each with a plastic bag filled with gifts: a shirt, some underwear, and soaps and other toiletries. Bremer told Koob that he had delivered similar gifts to Laingen, Tomseth, and Howland at the Foreign Ministry.
Bremer then led a prayer, which asked for God’s blessings on Americans and Iranians both, and for a renewed understanding and friendship between these nations. Koob was moved. She had been struggling in her prayer sessions for the right way to pray for her captors and heard in Bremer’s words an approach she hadn’t considered. After the service, the American women were positioned before the cameras, handed letters from their families, and told they could send messages home. Koob knew that her much-reduced frame was now so skinny and angular that her face seemed lost behind the wide plastic frames of her glasses. “The only reason I’m losing weight, Mother, is that I decided that was the only thing I could do over here.” Encouraged to keep talking, Koob and Swift described their daily routines and soon fell to giggling.
“Which one of you keeps the other in good spirits?” Bremer asked.
The two women pointed at each other.
When they were finished they added nuts, candy, and brownies to their plastic bags and listened as their guards told the cameras about how their hostages were provided an exercise room with a Ping-Pong table (Koob had been there twice) and showings of American movies (Koob had seen one).
Al Golacinski and Kevin Hermening had been told weeks earlier to expect the Easter visit, so each prepared a note on a foil wrapper from a stick of Wrigley’s spearmint gum. Golacinski’s note said that they were sick, that the sanitary conditions were terrible, that they couldn’t take it anymore, and that they were “losing it.” Hermening wrote that he believed the American people were unaware of how badly he and the others were being treated. He mentioned solitary confinement, beatings, the blindfolding and handcuffs, the lack of showers, and said they all just wanted to “get the hell out.”
Hermening had a tear in the cuff of his blue slacks, so he stuffed the note inside it for safekeeping.
A Mass was to be said by Rupiper. When the hostages arrived for the ceremony, Hermening, who was Catholic, asked if he could perform the ceremony’s lay readings. There were bright lights and cameras everywhere and the room was decorated with posters and festive ornaments made of construction paper. Dick Morefield and Billy Gallegos, two of the other Catholic hostages, looked on. As he waited for his chance to read, Hermening slid the note out of his cuff and cupped it in the palm of his right hand. He slipped the gum wrapper into the Bible during his reading, and when he handed it back to the priest he said, “There’s a note in there.” Rupiper was so startled he took a step back and nearly dropped the book. He said nothing, but Hermening thought the priest looked frightened.
Golacinski took advantage of the session to whisper to one of the other ministers that he wanted to get word to his fiancée that she should not wait for him.
“I’m going to be here for a long time,” he said.
Richard Queen and Joe Hall were in the last group to meet with the delegation. They sat at a table with the Reverend Nelson Thompson, an African-American Methodist preacher from Kansas City, and Rupiper. Queen was particularly grateful for the chance to receive communion. He was moved by Rupiper’s kindness.