Word: waldheim
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Nobody could be sure, and nobody would talk. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance slipped up to Manhattan for a secret meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, then slipped away again. At the U.N. and in West European capitals, normally accessible diplomats became uncharacteristically secretive. Washington buzzed with rumors, but the White House banned all official speculation, and Jimmy Carter urged the nation "to guard against excessive optimism." Though such caution was certainly warranted, there was mounting evidence from all quarters that the long, cruel ordeal might finally be coming to an end for the 50 Americans being held hostage...
...name-calling unusually bitter even for a presidential campaign. Unusually misleading, too. Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter fought over the credit for a promising idea for release of the U.S. hostages in Tehran, though actually the idea seems to have been mainly the brainchild of U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim...
...Press Secretary Jody Powell termed Kennedy's attack "cynical, self-serving, irresponsible and false." Secretary of State Cyrus Vance accused Kennedy of "misstatements ... both numerous and serious," and State Department Spokesman Hodding Carter III asserted that Kennedy had got the commission idea from confidential briefings that Vance and Waldheim had given him. Finally, Carter himself said at his press conference that Kennedy's remarks had been "very damaging to our country...
...germ of the idea actually first appeared in a letter to Waldheim from Abolhassan Banisadr, then Iran's Foreign Minister. It was published on Nov. 13, only nine days after the hostages were seized. Banisadr asserted that "the American Government should at least accept the investigation of the guilt of the former Shah." He did not say who should investigate, but, according to a U.N. spokesman, Waldheim privately broached the idea of an international inquiry commission to U.S. and Iranian officials on Nov. 17. He pursued it on a year-end trip to Iran and on a visit...
...true that the Administration long seemed dubious. Though Carter now stresses that the White House has been "discussing" the commission idea with Waldheim "since mid-November," he indicated serious reservations at a press conference Nov. 28. And after Carter's Jan. 6 talk with Waldheim, Powell told reporters that the White House had rejected what was even then being called a package deal-though he insisted the next day that it had not turned the proposal down flat but was still "exploring" it. What the White House objected to then, and still does, was any idea that Iran could...