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No shots were fired inside the chancellery, which may have disappointed the students. Said one: "If the Marines don't shoot, we take over. If they do, we have our martyr. Either way, we win." Any hopes that embassy officials had once had of preventing attackers from scaling the walls of the compound were abandoned after last February's assault, when Muslim guerrillas easily overpowered a handful of Iranian police guards and the embassy's Marines. The basic defense plan of the embassy was simply to have the Marines hold off any assault long enough for sensitive material to be destroyed.
While their comrades were seizing the chancellery, another group of students was breaking into the heavily secured consulate section, which had just been rebuilt (at a cost of $500,000) to speed up the issuance of visas for thousands of Iranians seeking to go to the U.S. One irony of the situation was that in recent weeks the crowds of Iranians around the embassy had been there to try and get visas to the U.S. Noted the English-language Tehran Times: "Despite the public denunciations, the U.S. embassy has often presented the spectacle of being mobbed one day by visa seekers and the next by demonstrators condemning the U.S."
By 4 p.m. the compound was completely in the hands of the students, who now numbered about 600. Soon afterward the group, which called itself the "Muslim Students of the Imam Khomeini Line," issued "Communique No. 1." It announced that the occupation of "this nest of intrigue" was a protest against "the U.S. offer of asylum to this criminal Shah who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iranians." By Monday the streets outside the embassy were jammed with thousands of people. Perhaps the lightest moment in a generally grim day was the arrival of Khomeini's only surviving son, Seyyed Ahmed Khomeini, 36. As he was hoisted over the high wall, Khomeini lost both his white turban and his sandals, causing his aides to plead to the crowd, "Where is the squire's turban?" Then the younger Khomeini announced that he, like his father, supported the embassy takeover. "This is not an occupation," he said. "We have thrown out the occupiers."
Fearful for the safety of the hostages, the State Department refused to release their names, but the identities of most of them gradually became known. Among them were political officers, Marines, code clerks, secretaries, the kinds of people who staff American embassies throughout the world. Tomseth, the second in command, was the ranking captive. Those held included Mike Holland, the burly security chief; Ann Swift, an efficient, Farsi-speaking officer who during the takeover tried over and over to reach the acting Defense Minister; Mike Matrinko, who was a consul in Tabriz last spring when the mission was overrun by revolutionaries; and John Graves, the bearded public affairs officer. Charge