Jimmy Carter: 444 Days Of Agony

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stream of his criticisms to foreign diplomats and others in the U.S. and in Europe had reached our ears. His remarks had particularly infuriated Vance, so I asked Kissinger to come by for a talk to work out our differences. Kissinger said that some of his published criticisms had been taken from interviews given prior to the hostage seizure, that he would avoid similar comments during the crisis. After this conversation, things were better for a few days—then reverted to their former state.

We had been successful in keeping secret the presence of six American diplomats who had found refuge in the Canadian embassy at the time our embassy was taken. (Some news organizations knew about these diplomats, but at my request did not reveal the information.) In January, with the streets of Tehran quiet, it was time to bring them out. This was a real cloak-and-dagger story, with American secret agents being sent into Iran to rehearse with the Canadians and Americans the plans for their departure. The agents and those being rescued would have to be furnished with disguises and false documents, and they needed training to convince Iranian officials that they were normal travelers from other countries.

One agent was sent in as a German—with a forged passport, of course. He adopted a false name, with the middle initial "H." At customs, an official stopped him to comment that it was strange for a German passport to use an initial rather than the entire name; he had never seen one like this before. He began to interrogate our man more closely, and the quick-witted messenger said, "Well, my parents named me Hitler as a baby. Ever since the war, I've been permitted to conceal my full name." The customs official winked and nodded knowingly, and waved him on.

On Jan. 28, I received word that the six Americans were free.

(On the same day, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was declared the newly elected President of Iran.) Until some of the Canadians and our intelligence agents were also out of Iran, we could not reveal that our first rescue mission had been successful, but when the news was finally released on Jan. 31, Ambassador Kenneth Taylor and the other courageous Canadians became instant heroes.

On March 22, after all our efforts to negotiate with Iranian officials had proved fruitless, Mondale, Vance and I had a full briefing from our military leaders about the latest plans for a rescue mission, which were much more feasible than those presented at the outset of the ordeal. But they still needed more work, and I was not yet convinced that we should proceed.

One of the possible staging areas for our rescue team was in an isolated desert region about 200 miles south of Tehran that seemed from aerial photographs to be smooth enough for night landings by transport planes. I authorized the flight of a small airplane for a close visual examination of the desert sand, to see how smooth and firm it was. I was not making a final commitment; at the same time, I wanted training operations and planning to continue.

On April 2, I received a report that our small plane had flown into Iran at a very low altitude, landed in the desert, examined the possible rescue staging site and returned without detection. The pilot reported that it was an ideal place—a smooth and firm surface, adequately isolated, with only a seldom-used country road