The Foreign Service Journal, March 2011

M A R C H 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 59 dents at bay with a riot shotgun — one that he did not fire, an event that would have played directly into the demonstra- tors’ hands. Laingen also praised the ac- tions Canada took to rescue a handful of the hostages. “We are a fortunate country in hav- ing a neighbor like that,”Laingen said, to great applause. The Iranian guards had also identi- fied key hostages early on, the panelists said,meaning that those diplomats were given much harsher treatment than the rest, facing beatings and worse. It didn’t always make sense — but it didn’t have to, either. “The first thing you learn as a pris- oner is that the situation you are in is the ultimate in unreason and illogic,” said Limbert. But the panelists all agreed that it did not matter who received what kind of treatment. “Being in prison for 444 days, wheth- er you are ‘treated well’ or treated badly is horrendous,” Rosen said. “No matter how you look at it, we were imprisoned and treated badly.” Back at Home The Iranian guards had kept their hostages in the dark when it came to American public opinion regarding their captivity. So the diplomats, remember- ing how quickly the 1968 North Korean seizure of the USS Pueblo had faded from the news cycle, assumed that they, too, had been forgotten. That, of course, was not the case. “Just as most Americans can tell you where they were when President Kennedy was shot or when the Twin Towers came down on 9/11, I think every diplomat of a certain age recalls what they were doing when our col- leagues were taken hostage in Tehran,” said Foreign Service Director General Nancy Powell in her opening remarks. And, indeed, a crowd waited inNew- burg, N.Y., to greet the hostages when they finally returned to the U.S. on Jan. 23, 1981. Limbert recalls peering out the airplane window at all of the cameras and bright lights, wondering if someone important had arrived at the airport at the same time. His wife had to tell him to wave — the crowd was there for him and his colleagues. “That was a very big dif- ference and a real surprise — clearly a very pleasant surprise — for us to know that really everybody in the United States really cared,” Cooke said. Amb. Laingen paid trib- ute to his family and those of the other hostages who had coordinated with (and sometimes fought against) the State Department as it worked to secure their release. His own wife, Penelope, had tied a yellow ribbon to the oak tree in their front yard in remembrance of the hostages. “We’re supposed to be heroes,” he said. “That’s the way we were seen. But all of us sitting here, we’ve always said the real heroes were our families back home. They were the ones who worked the hardest against unknown circum- stances.” Limbert joked, though, that one of the great aspects of FS life is that it always brings you back to earth. He recounted his first run-in with personnel upon re- turning to the U.S. When he stopped in to ask about onward assignments, the of- ficer merely replied,“Well, they really re- leased you at a very bad time.” A Lasting Impression Historians have missed the real sig- nificance of the hostage crisis, Cooke said, which is that it signaled the end of the Vietnam War period during which many Americans were embarrassed by their citizenship. The seizure of a U.S. embassy and mistreatment of scores of American diplomats was an outrageous act that bound the country together. “This was a chance for Americans to say, ‘No, we really are something differ- ent. We really are not what our enemies declare that we are,’”Cooke said. And as Director General Powell said, there were important lessons learned from the hostage crisis. One such lessonwas the need for bet- ter protection of U.S. diplomats working overseas. Cooke explained that back in 1979 there wasn’t much effort to track the actions of “irresponsible junior offi- cers” like himself at high-risk posts. He said he would go out at night or on hol- idays with Iranian friends without ques- tioning. But now in Iraq, fromwhich he recently returned from a one-year tour, nobody goes out the door without humvees and bodyguards. Still, as Amb. Limbert pointed out, it’s not easy to prepare for a crisis like 1979. “The one thing we still have great difficulty doing is thinking the un- thinkable.” Stronger security measures were not the only takeaway from the Iran hostage crisis, though. Indeed, one of the main lessons Americans learned was the courage and resilience of their diplo- matic corps. “May none of us ever have to endure what they did,”Powell said.“Andmay we all draw strength from their strength and their courage in facing and, indeed, over- coming the challenges and the dangers of our very unpredictable world.” Mitchell seconded the FS director general’s sentiments with a reference to the recent unrest in Cairo and Tunis. “It is simply another reminder that you are all on the front lines serving qui- etly and effectively in posts around the world,” she said, “often unheralded and underappreciated.” ❏ A F S A N E W S Iran Hostages • Continued from page 57 NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell (center) led five former hostages in a discussion about their time in captivity and its effect on diplomacy today. The panelists in- cluded (from left to right) Donald Cooke, Amb. Bruce Laingen, Amb. John Limbert, Alan Golacinski and Barry Rosen. ASGEIR SIGFUSSON