WASHINGTON \u2013 For 444 days, Iranian militants held 52 Americans hostage in Tehran, leaving emotional scars for them and their loved ones \u2014 and dooming Jimmy Carter\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n
The revelation that five months before their release, former Texas Gov. John Connally encouraged Iran to prolong the ordeal left hostages bitter.<\/p>\n
\u201c444 days,\u201d Rocky Sickmann, a 22-year-old Marine guard when the U.S. Embassy fell, said Monday. \u201cI will never regain those lost days. … Each day you didn\u2019t know if you were going to live or die.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Barnes, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Connally who served beside him as lieutenant governor, told The New York Times about a three-week trip they took to Middle East capitals during the crisis.<\/p>\n
Connally, angling to impress Republican nominee Ronald Reagan in hopes he\u2019d be named secretary of state or defense, asked leaders to send word to Iran not to release hostages before Election Day.<\/p>\n
With Carter, 98, receiving end of life hospice care, Barnes told The Times, he needed to unburden himself of the secret.<\/p>\n
\u201cHistory needs to know this happened,\u201d Barnes, now 84, said. \u201cCarter \u2026 didn\u2019t have a fighting chance with those hostages still in the embassy in Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n
To survivors, the revelation was more appalling than stunning. Democrats and hostages suspected the Reagan camp had a hand in prolonging the ordeal, given the obvious political benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just typical. Politicians do all sorts of things to achieve whatever political agenda they have in mind,\u201d said William Royer Jr., now 91 and a resident of Katy in suburban Houston.<\/p>\n
On Nov. 4, 1979, when militant college students overran the embassy after the fall of the U.S.-backed shah, Royer was an English teacher at the U.S. Information Agency.<\/p>\n
Over the years he\u2019s recounted the torture \u2014 being stripped naked and forced against a wall in front of a firing squad, testing his faith that he was more valuable alive than dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of respect for Reagan and his policies. And I thought he was a great president,\u201d Royer said, calling Carter \u201cone of the few relatively honest men\u201d to hold the job. \u201cI have a great deal of appreciation for President Carter. He had a bad deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Roeder, a 41-year-old deputy Air Force attach\u00e9 when the ordeal began, said Tuesday he was \u201cbaffled\u201d that anyone went out of their way to make him and his colleagues suffer longer than necessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to understand how any American can do that to any other American,\u201d Roeder, now 83 and a retired Air Force Colonel, said from his home in Pinehurst, North Carolina.<\/p>\n
He still has the utmost respect for Reagan, whose knowledge or involvement in Connally\u2019s moves may never be proved or disproved, given that most of those involved died long ago.<\/p>\n
His regard for Carter has grown in light of Barnes\u2019 revelations. As for Reagan, he said, \u201dI can\u2019t accept the fact that he would be involved in something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crisis spawned ABC\u2019s Nightline, providing a nightly update on Carter\u2019s inability to end the humiliation.<\/p>\n
Politically, Election Day \u2014 Nov. 4, 1980 \u2014 was the deadline to save his presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we had gotten the hostages home, we\u2019d have won,\u201d Carter\u2019s White House communications director, Gerald Rafshoon, told The Times in response to Barnes\u2019 account. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty damn outrageous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas Lankford, a lawyer for the hostages and their families since 1999, said Monday that delaying the release could only have inflicted harm.<\/p>\n
In the last four to six months as captives, many \u201cdeteriorated physically and mentally,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to add even a day to that kind of treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first 30 days, Sickmann was tied to a chair and forbidden to speak outside of interrogations. He spent more than a year in a room with two others, often subjected to physical and mental abuse. Until his release, he only went outside seven times.<\/p>\n
Rumors circulated among the hostages that they\u2019d become victims not only of the militants but of domestic U.S. politics. Sickmann refused to believe that anyone could do such a thing to fellow Americans \u2014 diplomats, military personnel and civilians \u2014 no matter the prize.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it did happen, we must make sure that this never happens again,\u201d said Sickmann, now 66 and a resident of St. Louis, where he works for Folds of Honor, a group that provides scholarships to families of fallen and disabled service members.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was traumatic for a hostage, but it was traumatic for my poor family and everybody else involved,\u201d he said. \u201cWe as America, we\u2019re much better than this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barnes did not respond to a message left at his office by The Dallas Morning News.<\/p>\n
Records dug out by The Times showed that he and Connally left Houston on July 18, 1980, on an oil company jet. The trip included stops in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. They returned on August 11.<\/p>\n
The Times report included a photo provided by Barnes of a meeting with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt. It\u2019s unclear who else they met with, or whether the message reached Tehran.<\/p>\n
The hostages remained captive another five months and nine days \u2014 until Reagan took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981.<\/p>\n
Barnes said he only realized the purpose of the trip after the first meeting with an Arab leader.<\/p>\n
Connally\u2019s message to each, he recounted to The Times, was: \u201cLook, Ronald Reagan\u2019s going to be elected president. And you need to get the word to Iran that they\u2019re going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter. It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Connally, who died in 1993, served two terms as Texas\u2019 chief executive. He ran Lyndon Johnson\u2019s campaigns in Texas and served briefly as secretary of the Navy under John F. Kennedy before running for governor. He\u2019d held the job for 10 months when Kennedy was assassinated in downtown Dallas. Connally, in the front seat, was badly wounded.<\/p>\n
In 1971, President Richard Nixon named him treasury secretary. Two years later he switched parties and as a Republican, sought the nomination for president in 1980. When he dropped out that March, he threw himself into helping Reagan.<\/p>\n
Barnes told The Times that he\u2019s certain Reagan\u2019s campaign chair William Casey, later CIA director, knew about the mission to undermine Carter\u2019s efforts to free the hostages, because they met just after the trip, at an American Airlines lounge at what was then known as Dallas\/Fort Worth Regional Airport.<\/p>\n
Casey, who died in 1987, wanted to know whether \u201cthey were going to hold the hostages,\u201d Barnes recalled.<\/p>\n
Kathryn Koob, one of two women among the hostages and a 42-year-old embassy cultural officer at the time, said Monday that \u201cif someone felt that that was important for them to do at that time, I feel sorry for them, that they would use other people\u2019s lives in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
By phone from her home in Iowa, Koob \u2014 who penned an account titled Guest of the Revolution \u2014 said she\u2019s not interested in recriminations against Connally or anyone else.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re home safe and that\u2019s the important thing,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen you\u2019ve been through something like that \u2026 you realize what people are capable of doing, and you move forward with your life. \u2026 It happened and it\u2019s over and anything we say today is not going to change what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n
\u00a92023 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/p>\n
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