Dear Benafsheh:
I admire you for writing your letter and most sincerely empathize with you and your mother in your noble efforts. Here are some personal recollections you might find interesting or at least amusing:
Just prior to the last weekend around the end of January 1979 (the last free weekend before the arrival in Tehran of the infamous ayatolah) I arrived at the Tehran Mehrabad airport as a navigator on a USAF C5A transport aircraft. It turned out to be the last of many such trips. Even before landing things were different:
We had descended to a designated pattern altitude and were flying directed headings. As you may know, some 20 or 30 miles south-east of Tehran there is an outcropping of rock that rises up from the flat plain. I had to scream into the microphone for the pilots to turn immediately when I saw on radar that we were headed straight for that rock at an altitude lower than it. I had to scream even louder when they responded that they were merely following ground control orders. Fortunately they did turn, just in time, in contradiction to those orders. We then landed uneventfully. To this day I feel that those ground control orders were no accident.
In a change from previous practice all of us on the crew were instructed to change into civilian clothes prior to landing. Then, in another change, we were met at the airport by a state department officer, from the US Embassy, with an armored mini-bus to take us to the International Hotel. He was a talkative nice guy who, after taking us to the hotel, offered to buy us dinner at the hotel restaurant. I thought that was pretty good inasmuch as the International was a truly top flight establishment in those days with a fabulous restaurant that sported, amongst other things a wide selection of excellent Iranian wines.
After sitting down to eat I quickly realized that I was there to enjoy the meal, and not to engage in political discussions with this loquatious state department exponent who was flat out enthusiastic about the imminent arrival of the ayatolah. I was much younger then, but old enough to know I wasn’t going to change anything by arguing with this nice guy moron who had to have been hand picked by Jimmy Carter himself. The same can be said, I’m sure, for virtually the entire embassy gang, with the notable exception of the young marine guards. These, in my opinion, did not deserve the poetic justice that the overwhelming majority of the rest of the famous hostages encountered.
The Jimmy Carter mentality is obviously still with us, now in the form of the great Obambi who is leading his kool-aid drinking minions to even greater disasters. Let’s hope, pray, and work towards having him fall flat on his face.
John R.
