Word: laingen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...begins a letter, poignant in retrospect, written by Charge d'Affaires L. Bruce Laingen of the U.S. embassy in Tehran to his wife in Bethesda, Md. The deposed Shah of Iran had been admitted to the U.S. for medical treatment less than two weeks earlier, and Laingen was describing an anti-American demonstration outside the embassy. Laingen left the letter on his office desk. Three days later-on Nov. 4, 1979-the embassy was overrun by Iranian militants and America's 444-day hostage ordeal began...
...Laingen letter is among hundreds of classified embassy cables, Government documents and personal papers seized by the militants and published in a set of 13 paperback books in Iran last spring. Though the volumes have been sold in Tehran for months, for about $8 a set, the contents became widely known only as the books began to be distributed in Europe in recent weeks. Many documents were found intact by the embassy attackers but others had been shredded by frantic U.S. personnel. These have been painstakingly pasted back together by the militants. The papers were of different colors-blue, pink...
Meanwhile, the Shah wanted to come to the U.S., but embassy officials in Tehran were wary. "For us now to give refuge to the Shah would almost certainly trigger massive demonstrations against our embassy," Laingen cabled to Washington in July. "With luck, they may stop at that, without a physical assault. But there could be no assurance of that...
Many of the returned Americans have already resumed their diplomatic or military careers. Of the nine Marines released in January, only one, Sergeant Rodney Sickmann of Washington, Mo., has accepted the offer of an early discharge. Embassy Chargé d' Affaires L. Bruce Laingen rebuffs reports that he will run for public office. "He'd be good at it," said his wife Penelope. "But how could I leave the foreign service?" he countered. Richard Queen, of Lincolnville, Me., whose multiple sclerosis is in indefinite remission, is back at a State Department desk in Washington while awaiting a prized...
...commercial or cultural business. U.S. officials believe that many of these people were arrested, interrogated by the revolutionary komitehs and, in some cases, executed. Indeed, some U.S. officials are surprised that the Iranian militants did not make more use of the sensitive information that was known to be in Laingen's safe...