WASHINGTON,
D.C., THURSDAY JANUARY
22,
1981
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CknriithM *M 3000
20 Cents
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Hostages Tell of
Carter Decries
Ex-President
Declares 52
True Heroes
Says Suffering Worse
Than He Had Known
By Phil Galley
;
s
Washington Star Staff Writer
WIESBADEN, West Germany —
Former
President Jimmy
Carter
held
a
tearful
reunion
yesterday
;;
with the 52 freed American hostages,
;
embracing each and
calling them
“true
heroes" who had
suffered
v
physical
and
mental
torture, far,.,;
worse than he had previously be*,
lieved.
Carter, acting as President Rea-
gan's emissary, came away from his
meeting with the Americans at the
U.S, Air Force hospital here “clearly
outraged,” as an aide put It, by the
stories of mistreatment they Told.'
M0ne"very serious fact is becoming
evident," Carter told a news confer-
ence, “and
that
is that bur
Americans in Iran WrYktstreMed
much worse than
has been pre-
viously revealed. The acts
of .bar-
barism which were perpetrated on
our people by
Iran can never- be
condoned."
•' v
Some of the former U.S- officials
traveling
with
Carter
said
that
placing the hostages before mock
firing squads apparently had been
a more common
occurrence than
they had realized from the reports
received through diplomatic chan-
nels. But beyond that, they refused
to provide specifics.
For Carter, who was deprived of
the opportunity of greeting the lib-
erated Americans as president by a
last-minute snag in the negotiations
with Iran, the meeting was the emo-
tional climax
to the 444-day
crisis
that haunted
the
last days of
his
presidency.
Ironically, one of the first sights
Carter saw upon his arrival at the
hospital was
a quotation from the
inaugural address of Ronald Reagan,
who took the oath as president only
33 minutes before the first planeload
of hostages left Tehran for freedom.
A large banner draped from the
third-floor
balcony
read:
"You’re
free. After all — we are Americans."
Behind the banner some of the
former' hostages — now referred to
as
“returnees” —
stood
in
sub-
freezing weather
to
greet
Carter
with waves and, tn the case. of one
Marine braving the night air in a
T-shirt, a sharp salute.
After a briefing from hospital of*
ficiols,
Carter went
to
a
meeting
See CARTER, A-7
Returnee Bruce Laingen of Bethesda and former President Jimmy G
Reagan Holds Off on Pact
Until He Reads Fine Print
arter embrace at Wiesbaden.
Rejection of Deal
Said to Be Unlikely
By Walter Taylor
Washington Star Staff Writer
Officials
said yesterday the Rea-
gan administration will review the
fine print on the hostage agreement
with Iran before deciding whether
to honor its provisions.
Spokesmen
at
both
the White
House
and
the
State
Department
held out the option, of repudiating
one
or more elements
of the
agreement hammered
out by
U.S.
negotiators in the dosing hours of
the Carter administration.
Privately, officials of the new ad-
ministration
said
it
was
unlikely
that President Reagan would abro*
See PRESIDENT, A-7‘
Last-Minute Iranian
Hitch Said Legitimate
Star Wire Services.
WIESBADEN, West Germany —
Former officials of the Carter admin-
istration yesterday said that they are
convinced
Iran
“had
a
legitimate
gripe"
in
raising last-minute
ques-
tions that delayed release of the 52
‘American hostages until after Jim-
my Carter was out of office.
And they publicly urged the Rea-
gan administration
to honor terms
of the agreement with Iran.
On the flight here, where Carter
held an emotional meeting with the
released hostages, former U,S.
offi-
cials traveling with him described
the last agonizing hours of the hos-
tage negotiations.
See CARTER, A-8
Haig Approved
For State Post
On 93-6 Vote
By a vote of 93
to
6, Alexander
M, Haig Jr. won confirmation; from
the Senate yesterday as secretary of
state.
But there was political skirmish-
ing between
Capitol
Hill and
the
White House on President Reagan’s
first
full day
in office,
Even while they were welcoming
Vice
President George Bush,
the
new president of the Senate, sen-
Sen. Helms is blocking Carlucci’s
nomination, A-3.
FBI unable to corroborate charges
against Donovan,
A-3.
ators on. both sides of the aisle were
warning they would keep their in-
dependence and exert pressure on
the White House when they felt it
necessary.
Senate Minority Leader Robert C.
Byrd of West Virginia, who voted
against the nomination, complained
See GEN. HAJG, A-6
One Calls
His Captors
'Psycfiotic'
TortureWas Physical,
Mental, families Told
By Maureen Dowd
-
-s
u and Suzanne Bllello
j
a:
; Washington Star Staff Writers
Some of the freed American hos-
tages yesterday told ofphysical and
psychological abuse at the hands of
their Iranian captors/
Life as a hostage was not full of
the “luxury hotels" and medical spe-
cialists
that Jranian
officials
'bragged about, or the cordial guards
and overflowing bowls of fruit like
those seen in the Christmas films,
Tthe former
host-ages
said
in
transatlantic telephone
calls from
West Germany
to
relatives and
friends in the Uptted. States.
It was full ;of physical abuse and
‘ ‘mental torturd.
/
r
V
instead
of
hotejs.
there were
SAVAK (former Iranian secret
po-
lice) prisons and/solation cells in
named “Mushroom Inns."
,
There were guards
wh'o played
Russian roulette with female
hos-
tages, held mock
executions and
conducted midnight raids, wearing
White masks and fatigues and carry-
/Jhg automatic
rifles.
At The U.S. Air Force hospital in
Wiesbaden, West Germany, Freder-
ick “Rick'
1 Kupke savored the feeling
of slipping between
crisp
white
sheets for the first time in 14 months
and remembered his hard cot in an
Iranian prison.
Kupke, 34, a communications spe-
cialist,
is one of the 52 former hos-
tages who
are
recuperating from
their long Iranian ordeal at the Air
Force hospital in Wiesbaden.
“Rick had
it real bad, but he’s so
proud to be free that he says he’s
feeling no pain now," said his father,
Arthur Kupke of Francesville, Ind.,
who talked with his son three times
yesterday in a transatlantic reunion.
Other former hostages found dif-
ferent
pleasures.
After
a
diet
of
beans and
rice
in
captivity,
Bert
Moore delighted in ordering out for
an
ice cold
beer. And
for Jimmy
Lopez, who had been forced to sleep
In a closet for several months, happi-
ness was a haircut and shave.
Keeping the phone lines buzzing
all through the night and
all day
yesterday,
the
hostages-turned-
heroes were bright and cheery with
their
relatives,
chatting
mostly
about the- euphoria of freedom and
the
family
milestones
they had
-
missed.
„
,
But the slick surface of the chit-
See HOSTAGES, A 7
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Hostages
Describe
Dark Side
Continued From A- 1
chat soon began to chip away, show-
ing the pain and shock beneath,
“Those
guards were
psychotic,"
one hostage, his voice edged with
bitterness, confided in his brother,
~T; “Ttey'wfire SOBsvT
said, Col.
LetandTtolland, who told his 79-year-
old mother Clara he had spent a
month
in a “dungeon,"
A
State Department spokesman
put
it slightly more diplomatically
yesterday, accusing the militants of
"serious mistreatment" of some of
the Americans.
* ^
.
The “students" stole the hostages’
‘
personal
effects and
raided
Hol-
land’s house
in Tehran,
taking
^everything they could carry, from
furniture to frozen meat
*
“Most of us lost everything," Rich-
ard H. Morefield, consul general at
the embassy,
told
his wife in San
Diego.
“I walked out with my wed-
ding ring, and 1 had to fight for that."
'
The
militants
lied
constantly,
their captives soon learned, telling
the hostages innuiperable tall tales
about their families and about why
.
\ “the Great Satan," as they dubbed
America, was letting them languish
in- Iran.
j ? •%.
r
*i? •=
:? \> ;
i
:
.
*
After a few months, the hostages
were so confused by a c£|’s cradle
of
lies and propoganda. that they
"ended up believing nothin geopoliti-
cal officer Michael J. Metrinko, 34
of Olyphant,
Pa.,
told
his brother,
Peter, who lives in Arlington.
Each prisoner was treated differ-
ently, according to their relative im-
portance
in
the embassy,
their
alleged spying activities and their
comportment.
Marine
Sgt. Johnny McKeel
Jr,
told his parents in Balch Springs,
Texas, that he had assumed
until
yesterday that his mother was dead,
something
interrogators
had
told
him
in a vain effort to extract in-
formation.
When the Marine gave only his
name, rank and
serial number,
a
, guard knocked out one of his teeth.
Another hostage, 49-year-old Mai-
:
colm Kalp of Fairfax County,
told
his brother he was beaten, put in
solitary confinement
for months
ai^d cutoff from any communication
with his family because he tried to
v escape several times.
“They knocked me around a cou-
ple of times in the beginning," Rob-
ert O. Blucker of North Little Rock,
Ark.,
told
his mother Hazel
Albin.
“But toward the end,
I don’t think
they wanted to beat anyone up un-
less they could help
it."
•
Lopez, who lost SO pounds during
the ordeal, was forced with several
others to sleep in a closet for several
months, and Metrinko, Kupke and
several
others spent long
solitary
stretches in Jail,
After the first few months, how-
ever, the torture was more mental
than physical.
The guards would bring
in
the
baskets of mail from families, open
it and hold up snapshots and letters,
and then, before the hostages’ bitter
gazes, burn
the
coveted
stacks
of
mail from home.
Richard Queen, who was released
after nine months because he con-
tracted multiple sclerosis, yesterday
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they were forced to line up against
^
the
wall and
were
stripped
and
senrchfd
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Queen also described a mock ex-
' ecution the hostages were subjected
to when
the
militants pulled the
triggers of empty guns.
-
-•
Another hostage who was released
early, Elizabeth Montague, now an
assistant on the China desk
at the
State Department, talked of "threats
with guns," including an incident
when the militants played Russiaa
>
roulette-J^iih her and another em-
bassy secretary"
informa-
tion.
,
•
;
William
Quarles, one. of the
hostages released earlier, visited his
j
former
colleagues
at
the
hospital
!
yesterday
afternoon.
Quarles
said
J
that one
of them
told him ^they
i
. had been kept separated and were
|
moved
all over the country, some
\
flown to differeht 'parts, some taken
by car."
....
•
.
Nearly
all of the hostages were
reported
to have been moved out
of the
U.S. Embassy compound
J
shortly after the abortive rescue at-
|
tempt it
April,
.
..
.
Most hostages
reported being
blindfolded and moved at least four
I
times; Jhck Kupke told his /amtiy
I he was moved 19 times.
^
>
The hostages tried ta find ways
to communicate with secret codes, f
Col
Thomas
Schaeffer,
a
military
.
] attache,
said
the
hostages
' used
a
J Russian tapping code with each Qth-
m er to pass messages.
-V
*
/
. *
-
John W. Limbert, a former Stati
' Department official from Washing-.
• ton whose son was
a' hostage, said
{
/
that John
Jr., alone
in
a cell for
nine months, wrote camouflaged let-
ters home. “When he
told me he
was working on knotty chess prob-
lems,
1 understood that he was in
solitary confinement."
Bruce Laingen, the charge
d’af-
I
faires who remained with two other
/
hostages in the relative comfort of
c
the foreign
Ministry, was able to
I
call home the first few months. De-
o
spite the fact that the Iranians mon-
*i
itored the line, Laingen and his wife
A Penne in Bethesda were able to pass
n
surreptitious messages — that were
later passed on to the State Depart-
u ment — by speaking in Thai.
*J
Washington
Star
Staff
Writers
P
Lindsay Gruson, Christopher P Win*
p
ner
Patrice
Gaines-Carter and
Diane Brockett also contributed to
p
this article.
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