Word: sullivans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...State Department experts as members of the left-wing Cherikhaye Fedaye Khalq (People's Sacrifice Guerrillas). Shortly after 10 a.m., the attackers cut loose with machine guns, pistols and automatic rifles from roof tops across the street. As the first volleys of the surprise attack hit the building, Sullivan and Colonel Leland Holland, the defense attache, took up a position at a command post in Sullivan's second-floor office. The Marine guards, clad in flak jackets and under instructions from Sullivan to refrain from firing back with their shotguns, lay down a cloud of tear gas. Attackers...
Overwhelmed by the assault, 18 Americans trapped in the embassy compound fell hostage to the attackers. They were frisked and paraded around the compound. The Marines among them, who had obeyed Sullivan's order to surrender, were kicked and beaten. Inside the embassy, about 70 staffers and a few other people sought refuge in a corridor outside Sullivan's office while Marines covered their retreat. When the guerrillas burst into the embassy, the group fled to the building's east wing, where the communications equipment was housed. While some of the staffers crowded into the locked communications...
...quietly took over from the attackers. "You are our brothers. Don't worry," they told the Americans, before politely frisking them, escorting them down the stairs to the compound and eventually setting them free. But the rescuers, who had been dispatched to the embassy in response to Sullivan's repeated, desperate phone calls, were not able to fend off the mob that had gathered in the compound. Among others, Ambassador Sullivan was jostled, though not seriously injured, before the pro-Khomeini forces managed to clear the compound...
...American mission in Tehran is lined with photographs of the Shah posing with every U.S. President from F.D.R. to Jimmy Carter. In the ambassador's own living quarters, there hangs a lacquered painting of a peaceful Vietnamese peasant scene with a simple inscription: "To my friend Bill Sullivan." The signature is that of South Viet Nam's ex-President Nguyen Van Thieu...
William H. Sullivan, 56, who played a major role in shaping U.S. policy in Southeast Asia, has been Washington's man in Iran since 1977. Last week, as he was held hostage in his own embassy, the irony of those mementos was apparent. "They shot up my home, my office and the chancery−an interesting Valentine's Day," said the ambassador. "You win some, you lose some...