“We’re not interested in what you did in the United States!” Sheikh-ol-eslam would complain. “We are only interested in what you have been doing here in Iran.”
Daugherty frequently asked to use the toilet and would be given a break. He would splash water on his face, do deep breathing exercises, and collect his thoughts. There were further breaks for tea, during which the conversation would proceed informally. Eventually his questioners dispensed with the blindfold. Daugherty felt that he had the process so well in hand he began looking forward to the sessions. It was better than sitting alone in his room and listening to the mob outside.
In the third interrogation the tone changed. Sheikh-ol-eslam seemed to have very specific information about him, things he had either just learned or been deliberately holding back during the first two sessions. He asked where Daugherty had been on certain nights, who he had been with, what they had been doing. Not long before the takeover, the CIA officer had accompanied a group from several other embassies on an overnight pleasure trip to Isfahan. These were the dates Sheikh-ol-eslam harped on. Isfahan was regarded as a center for American spying because it had been a helicopter air base for the shah’s army and air force and had employed a fairly large number of American military technicians. Sheikh-ol-eslam and the others scoffed at Daugherty’s story that this had been an informal sightseeing trip. He wanted to know everything Daugherty had done in Isfahan.
The American was happy to oblige. It had been a pleasure trip. He told them of his visit to the city’s beautiful mosque and its bazaar. He described each of his companions, their conversations in transit, where they dined, and what they ate. It grew tedious, so Daugherty decided to have some fun. He had spent much of his time with a woman from the Austrian embassy, just a friend, but as Sheikh-ol-eslam pressed for more and more detail, Daugherty began to spice up the story by fabricating a romantic relationship—to liven things up and to bruise his questioners’ delicate Islamic sensibilities. He had himself tearing off the woman’s clothes in a hotel room when his questioners shouted, “Shut up! Shut up!”
Daugherty got another bathroom break, and then the four men sat together around the table in the bubble sipping tea and chatting as though the previous unpleasantness hadn’t happened. Then Sheikh-ol-eslam stood.
“You are telling us that you are not CIA?” he asked.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” said Daugherty, feeling cocksure.
Sheikh-ol-eslam picked up a slip of paper, walked around the desk, and handed it to Daugherty.
“Read this,” he said.
Daugherty read with mounting shock and disappointment. It was a cable, something that had apparently come from Bruce Laingen’s safe, written some weeks before he and Kalp had arrived in Tehran. It began:
1. S.[secret]—Entire text.
2. I concur in assignments Malcolm Kalp and William Daugherty as described Reftels [in reference to prior telecoms].
3. With opportunity available to us in the sense that we are starting from a clean slate in SRF [Special Reporting Facilities, a euphemism for the CIA] coverage at this mission, but with regard also for the great sensitivity locally to any hint of CIA activity, it is of the highest importance that cover be the best we can come up with. Hence there is no question as to the need for second and third secretary titles for these two officers. We must have it.
4. I believe cover arrangements in terms of assignments within embassy are appropriate to present overall staffing pattern. We should however hold to the present total of four SRF officer assignments for the foreseeable future, keeping supporting staff as sparse as possible as well, until we see how things go here.
5. We are making effort to limit knowledge within embassy of all SRF assignments; that effort applies particularly to Daugherty, pursuant to new program of which he is a product and about which I have been informed.
6. I suppose I need not remind the Department that the old and apparently insoluble problem of R designation [“R” stood for “reserve” foreign service officer, the traditional way of designating CIA officers with a State Department cover] will inevitably complicate and to some degree weaken our cover efforts locally, no matter how much we work at it.
Daugherty’s mouth went dry. There was no doubt the cable was authentic; he had seen a copy of it in Washington before he left. Laingen was giving his nod to bringing him and Kalp on as CIA officers in the embassy and worrying about their cover status. Daugherty had no idea why such a thing had been put to paper and was flabbergasted, since it had been, that no one had destroyed it months ago! There was no reason to keep it. For God’s sake, it concerned the extreme importance of protecting their spy status even within the embassy! He sat there in disbelief with the cable in his hands and read it again, and then looked up. Sheikh-ol-eslam was sporting a wide, gap-toothed grin. The others clearly shared his delight. They had him red-handed. The language in the cable was only slightly obscure—they wouldn’t know what “Reftels” were or “SRF,” but the thrust of it could not have been more clear.
“Well?” said Sheikh-ol-eslam.
“Okay, I’m CIA, so what?” Daugherty said, handing the cable back to him. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Now it was their turn to be shocked. The last thing they expected, even after showing Daugherty the document, was for him to admit it. At that time and place such an admission almost certainly meant death. Daugherty’s flat acknowledgment left them momentarily speechless. They looked at one another, and then back at Daugherty, who smiled at them.
Then they erupted. All three of them shouted at him at once, venting their anger about the United States, the shah, SAVAK, all the primary sources of evil in their world. Here sat the personification of all they feared and despised. He would be the first one of the hostages executed, promised Sheikh-ol-eslam. No need for a trial. He admitted it!
“You’ve lied to us all along,” said Sheikh-ol-eslam. “You’ve wasted our time. You really are CIA. You’re an enemy of our country.”
Then Daugherty lost his temper and began shouting back at them, cursing them, calling them lousy Muslims and idiots. The four men sat in the strange little plastic room bellowing at one another.
“You guys don’t know jack shit about the world,” said Daugherty. “This is going to be terrible for your country in the long run.”
He felt hopelessly trapped in the web of their vicious mythmaking. The idea that his job with the CIA, in reality fairly minor and posing no threat whatsoever to the emerging government of Iran, made him the devil incarnate in their breathless cockeyed worldview, and that their ignorance might well cost him his life, made him suddenly both furious and fearless. Out spilled weeks of outrage. He had watched and listened as this un-washed, arrogant young rabble had insulted and humiliated his country and his colleagues. He was madder than he had ever been in his life and with nothing to lose he unloaded on them, resurrecting an awful extravagance of obscenity collected in military school and eight years as a marine, insulting their intelligence, their cause, their leaders, their parents, their sisters…and their culture.
“You think you’re civilized because you had civilization here three thousand years ago! Well, there’s no fucking trace of it anymore. You guys are nothing but animals!”
They were too busy with their own insults and accusations to even hear. All this anger roiled and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it subsided. Daugherty leaned back in his chair, exhausted. They had more tea.