The morning of November 4th,
I'm in my office.
It started to rain a little bit.
We heard the crowds in front of the embassy.
I looked up and saw someone
climbing over the gate.
Some young woman cut the chain
and several hundred protesters,
some with weapons, started moving
all over the embassy.
Before I knew it,
15 to 20 people are pounding on my door.
Just barged through.
And there I am facing these people.
And I said, "who are you?" He says, "I'm
a part of the Students Following the Line of the imam.
You're in the nest of spies.
You are part of U.S.
imperialism, and you're the corruptors of the earth.
You are our prisoner.
The hostages are apparently in the main building.
The embassy is occupied by about 400 students and Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Good evening.
In Tehran tonight, the American embassy is in the hands of several hundred
Iranian students who took control after a three hour skirmish with U.S.
Marines.
They are holding hostages and are demanding that the exiled
Shah of Iran, now undergoing cancer treatment at a New York hospital,
be returned to stand trial.
On November 4th, when the hostages were taken,
I was at home in bed
and I got a call from Brzezinski.
He said ,they took our people
at the embassy.
I got in my VW
and drove over to the State Department.
We were getting reports
directly from inside the embassy.
so please open the door. They didn't accept.
So here we were with all these open phones.
They get angry and shout to them,
if you don't open the door, we will open it ourselves.
After that, a student has gone up
and arrest all of them, ok?
And tied their hands.
And then one by one,
as the day went on, the phones were shut down.
So we lost contact.
The action against the embassy may or may not have been ordered by Iran's
religious leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, which adds to Washington's
difficulty in trying to resolve this dangerous situation.
The State Department is doing what it can.
But for the moment, at least, that doesn't appear to be much.
From my
position in the White House, I'm not a decision maker.
But I'm watching everything and I'm relaying what I learned to the president.
So I have a straight line to him.
One of the things that was discussed was possibly imposing
a blockade against Iranian ports or cutting off their oil exports.
But it was very likely that it would bring the Soviets in.
And it could, in fact, lead to World War Three.
Washington is tremendously concerned about Iran's oil supplies
and our need for them and, of course, concerned
about the safety of those Americans still at the embassy.
The demonstrators burned the American flag,
blindfolded and handcuffed at least some of their American hostages
and paraded them in front of the embassy building.
Here I had in my mind, okay,
it's over, we're out of here.
They'll just put us on a plane
and take us out of here by tomorrow.
Diplomatic immunity.
Well,
I was tied up
and they start beating me up, there
I started to really think about
what the hell is going on now.
It was an early Sunday morning
and the phone rang downstairs.
It was my mother in law and she was
very, very upset.
Something's happened at the embassy.
She had heard it on the news.
U.S. Embassy say his name is Barry Rosen.
He is the embassy's press attache.
Because of the blindfold, Rosen could not see...
The Iranians were saying they had a certain number of people being held,
and the Carter administration would neither confirm or deny.
Then I got on the phone to Washington and started
making phone calls trying to find out what was going on.
The Iran crisis.
America held hostage tonight at eleven thirty, ten thirty Central Time.
This was the first American foreign policy crisis
that had been televised live from start to stop.
We will not rest or deviate from our efforts until all have been freed
from...
The reality is that every American was sitting in their homes
talking to other Americans about this situation.
Radio broadcasts by Khomeini and his supporters
have now become ugly and violently anti-American.
I've just gotten a report that there are maybe 80,000 Iranians
demonstrating outside our embassy in a highly emotional state
and we are trying as best we can to protect the honor of our country
and to protect the lives of the hostages who deserve every protection
that we can give them.
The hostages are in our hands,
and we are
ready so that in the case of any military intervention,
we will destroy them.
I first came to Iran
in August of 1967 as a Peace Corps volunteer.
I knew nothing about Iran.
I had to run over to the map and find it.
This is the Middle East where three continents join.
At the hub of this junction is Iran, formerly known as Persia.
Iran is a country of contrasts.
It is actually a land of great wealth and of great interest.
In biblical times, a great civilization thrived here
and left the marks of its splendor.
I looked forward to going to the Peace Corps.
It was something about actually finding yourself
more than knowing the culture you're going into.
I was religious
as a young child, I went to a Hebrew Day School, Yeshiva.
Kind of traditional.
Maybe two years of
excitement out there somewhere doing something might make
some difference in people's lives, but maybe most of all my own.
I think I was seeking that more than anything else.