Subic then stepped around to the front of the table, holding the microphone in one hand and in the other displaying a “special” Christmas card that “the hostages” had made for Khomeini. Smiling, he read from the card: “A Christmas wish especially for you, Imam Khomeini. Merry Christmas. May Christmas bring you lasting joy and lovely memories. Merry Christmas, the American Hostages, 25 December 1979. Tehran, Iran.” If he was aware of how he would appear to his fellow Americans, seething at this prolonged international extortion, Subic showed no sign of it. He seemed proud of himself, cheerful, sincere, and entirely at ease.
In what the students regarded as a “major concession,” they allowed three American clergymen to visit and celebrate Christmas with the captives. All three were chosen, according to a spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Council, because of “their militant history against imperialism.” Most famous was the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, the celebrated senior minister of New York City’s Riverside Church. Coffin was a large man with sloped shoulders and long curly dark hair that was retreating fast toward the crown of his head but which still fell thickly over his ears. He did not seem ministerial, with his up-from-the-streets New York accent, earthy humor, and background as an officer in the army and then the CIA, but he had seen the light, left the agency, and entered the ministry, achieving prominence as the chaplain of Yale University and for his civil rights work long before he became nationally known for his often eloquent opposition to the Vietnam War. Accompanying Coffin were the Reverend William Howard, a tall, urbane, dignified African-American minister who headed the National Council of Churches and was a noted civil rights and anti-apartheid activist, and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, an activist Catholic leader from Detroit famous for his advocacy of liberal issues inside and outside the church. Coffin had defended the hostage takers in public statements in the United States, saying, “We scream about the hostages, but few Americans heard the screams of tortured Iranians.”
Together with the Catholic cardinal of Algiers, they presided over a series of holiday services for hostages who were brought to them in small groups throughout Christmas Day. In session after session, wearing flowing maroon-colored robes, Coffin warned against the vice of “self-pity,” and encouraged the captive Americans to sing along with him as he played the piano and led them in carols. The ceremonies were held in a back room of the warehouse, which Subic had helped decorate, along with the usual wall decorations of anti-American, prorevolutionary slogans. Cameras and lights recorded the event for Iranian TV as armed guards lined the walls looking on happily, convinced they were making the saintliest of gestures, allowing these infidels a Christian celebration. Khomeini, in response to President Carter’s call for Americans to ring church bells in remembrance of the hostages, called for his countrymen to “ring the bells in support of God.”
Many of the hostages were appalled by the event, at being made part of what they saw as a propaganda stunt, but Rick Kupke set aside his resentment when he spotted the treats laid out on the table—brownies, nuts, apples, and oranges. There was even a roasted turkey on a plate! Marine Paul Lewis was impressed enough with the goodies to go through the motions during his ceremony, but ignored Coffin’s exhortation to hold hands with his fellow hostages and sing. Many of the marines refused to sing, and a good number of the hostages showed little emotion or enthusiasm. Coffin hugged each one at the end of the ceremonies, and when he came to Lewis the young marine whispered to him, “It’s all bullshit.” In a brief conversation with Bill Keough, Coffin remarked, jokingly, that he had often longed for an extended period of quiet where he could read and think and contemplate. Keough smiled grimly. It was the remark of a man who had never been taken hostage in a foreign country and threatened daily with trial and execution. At the ceremony he attended, Golacinski leaned over to Reverend Howard and whispered, “Don’t believe what you are seeing. We’re being treated like animals.”
“So I gathered,” said Howard.
The Baptist pastor managed to convey to each group that all of America was intensely concerned with their fate, not just their own families and friends. At each of the sessions, hostages were allowed to write a brief note on a card to their families, which for many would be the first communications since the takeover.
Forbidden to talk about politics or their own situation, Colonel Scott asked Howard, “What’s the price of gasoline in America today?” Scott had thought long and hard about what question to ask if he got the chance, and decided that the current price of oil would help him gauge how events in Iran were playing around the world. Howard looked at the gallery of armed guards and asked them, “I don’t suppose I should answer that question, do you?” Scott was annoyed. Why couldn’t he just have blurted out an answer? Why was he bending over so hard to be helpful to these bastards?
Seeing Scott’s anger, Howard tried to lighten the mood. He said he noticed in looking over the lists of hostages that Scott was from Georgia and began a story about the difficulties he had faced as a young African-American traveling in that state. This further angered Scott, who felt as though the preacher was blaming him for the racism he had encountered.
For some of the hostages, however, the ceremonies were rich with feeling. The songs, no matter how off-key, and the decorations, no matter how impoverished, brought back memories of family and of past Christmases and gave them a fleeting sense of connection with home.
Kathryn Koob fought to hold back tears during her ceremony. She was profoundly sad to be cut off from her world, and yet somehow as a prisoner, isolated from her family and any community of Christians, from familiar Christmas music, the swirl of shopping, cards, parties, and gift giving, the holiday if anything became more meaningful to her, so that as she stood, reunited for the first time in a month with Ann Swift before Bishop Gumbleton, she felt herself trembling so violently that it took all her strength not to break down before the cameras. She balled her hands into fists so tight that her nails cut into her skin.
Several days after the Christmas celebrations, a nearly hourlong film was released and portions played on the big three American TV networks and in Iran. The film had been offered the week before, but the networks balked at paying $21,250 and promising to air the film in full. After a few days, the students dropped the demands and handed over the film. Their propaganda show was meaningless if no one saw it.
On the third floor of the Foreign Ministry, where the three trapped Americans Laingen, Tomseth, and Howland were allowed to watch television, the chargé was shocked. He wrote angrily in his diary that evening, “I think tonight I have learned to hate.”
Far and away the bulk of the film was of these hostages [Subic, Hermening, Plotkin, and Lauterbach] reading a prepared statement, praising the revolutionary zeal of their captors, reciting the misdeeds of the embassy in supporting the Shah, citing documents discovered in the embassy to suggest “espionage,” and calling on the US government to return the Shah to Iran. All this was done in what appeared to be a rehearsal reading, seriatim, by the hostages of their statement, the desk in front of them displaying “evidence” of one kind or another. Only one (Steve Lauterbach) of the four seemed in any way hesitant in what he was reading. The hostage who seemed to preside, Joe Subic, clearly was, or seemed to be, relishing his role. A young marine, Kevin Hermening, too, seemed relaxed and at ease. The fourth, the businessman Jerry Plotkin, read a separate statement, and he, too, seemed in control of himself.