Everyone wanted Carter to do something, but there were few good ideas about what it should be. Public sentiment ran in favor of striking back at Iran, but ran just as strongly in favor of taking no action that might harm the hostages.
In a speech before Congress, Representative George Hansen, a Republican from Idaho, called for Carter to be impeached “if he doesn’t do something,” and referred contemptuously to the administration’s “weak-kneed nonpolicy.” He offered no suggestions.
Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from the same state, whose committee hearings had famously exposed CIA excesses just a few years before and prompted severe restrictions on intelligence-gathering methods, now complained about the dearth of intelligence. “It’s extremely frustrating and difficult to find the [Iranian] government or determine who speaks with authority.”
“Carter should get off his duff,” said one man stopped on the street in Dallas for a TV interview, expressing a widespread feeling.
“What do you think he can do?” the reporter asked.
“I don’t know,” said the man.
A woman stopped on the same sidewalk said, “Force should be used.”
“But what if responding militarily would mean that the hostages would be harmed?” she was asked.
“No, then we shouldn’t use force,” she said. “I don’t want them to be harmed.”
Americans had long enjoyed the luxury of neither knowing nor caring about the grievances of small foreign nations. Suddenly, the Third World had found a way to compel their attention. Where was Iran? Who were these “militant” students? What was an ayatollah? Why did they hate us so much?
ABC aired a long interview with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, chain-smoking and looking gloriously bored, whose insights were close to the mark.
“I believe the crowd is in control of Khomeini,” she said. “When I saw that Ahmad was going to the embassy, I was very surprised…. He is a little more open than his father. I was surprised.” Americans who called for a punitive military strike against Iran were, she said, “as irresponsible as the Iranian crowd.”
“What should the United States do?” she was asked.
“Don’t send the marines,” she said.
2. Forgive me, Oh Imam
On a chilly Thanksgiving morning in Tehran, Marine Sergeant William Quarles was taken to breakfast, as usual, and when he was finished the guards didn’t rebind his hands. That was a first.
“Hey, aren’t you going to cuff me?” asked the big marine, holding up his hands.
His guard made a gesture as if to say, Don’t worry about it.
From the first day Quarles, an African-American, had been treated slightly differently by his captors. He had been kept bound and confined to a mattress in one of the cottages, like everyone else, but his captors always made a point of acknowledging his blackness and conveying a sense of solidarity with his presumed second-class status. If he wanted more food they would always bring him extra portions. If he asked for a cigarette, someone would run out and bring him a full pack. Once, when a glass of water was placed on the table between him and one of the white hostages and the white hostage took it and drank from it, the guards confiscated the glass and lectured the offending white hostage about American oppression of black people. Quarles was startled, because he had assumed, as undoubtedly the white hostage had, that another glass was on its way. Instead, Quarles was presented with a full glass of ice water and the white hostage was denied anything more to drink.
From the beginning, a few of the student leaders visited him to explain at great length the reasons for their actions. They talked to him about their kinship with what they wrongly supposed to be millions of black American Muslims, and the special place for black people in Islam. They showed him albums of charred and tortured bodies and explained the horrors of life under the shah. One of the older ones, a round, bearded man, told Quarles of the torture and execution of his father and other family members under the shah and broke down crying.
Again and again they stressed that they identified with him as a member of the “oppressed” races of the world. They brought him documents they had seized during the takeover and explained that the memoranda, which Quarles didn’t read and couldn’t follow, proved that America had been interfering with Iranian society and was working to undermine their revolution. Quarles had little interest in the fine points of Islam, history, or international politics. He wanted to avoid being shot and, if at all possible, to go home. He knew that his captors were trying to indoctrinate him and, for the most part, he let what they told him travel in one ear and out the other. But some of the more moving things, some of the photos and heartfelt testimony of a few guards, touched him. He was inclined to believe that his country was responsible for much of the suffering in Iran, and found it easy to believe that the United States was working to undermine their revolution in hopes of maintaining control over the country’s oil. But when the captors circulated a petition asking for the shah’s return, the young marine had refused to sign it.
After breakfast on Thanksgiving morning the uncuffed Quarles was led into a room in the motor pool building. In an adjacent room he saw fellow marine Sergeant Ladel Maples, who was also untied. Quarles considered trying to bolt. The men guarding him were much smaller than him. But he thought better of it. Even if he got free of the compound, where would he go? His skin color meant there was no chance he could blend into a Tehran crowd.
Then, one after another, a procession of his captors came in the room to lecture him again in English about the rightness of their action, the sins of America—beginning with slavery and genocide against the American Indian—and the glory of Islam and Khomeini. Quarles began to suspect that he was going home. The lectures struck him as preparation; they were prepping him for the press attention he would get on his release. Later that evening he and Maples, also an African-American, were put together in the same room.
“Goddamn, man, you think we’re getting out of here?” Quarles asked.
“I don’t know,” said Maples. “We just might get out of here. I don’t know what the hell is going on.”
“You think anybody else is getting out?”
“I hope so.”
The lectures continued. They were served hamburgers, potato chips, and pickles for supper. Clearly, their captors were trying to make a good impression. When they were led outside, Quarles felt blinded by the television lights. He had trouble walking. He had been sitting for so many days that it was hard for him to keep his balance. He and Maples and an embassy secretary, Kathy Gross, were led into a large room next to the commissary before hundreds of reporters, American and Iranian. Quarles felt frightened. He needed help putting on a slight green jacket, and he was shaking; he didn’t know if it was from the cold outside or from fear.
“Nobody is going to hurt you,” one of the guards told him. “These are just some people who want to see you.”
Quarles realized that he was part of a publicity stunt. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew that the lectures he had been getting were to prepare him for this attention. He sat on a stage with the two others before a giant poster of Khomeini and some writing that he didn’t understand. The reporters had all been assigned numbers, and one of the Iranian students called off the numbers and allowed some of them to ask questions. In response to one, Quarles said: