Word: week
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With so many lives in danger, an obvious first step was to adopt a policy of coolness and flexibility. Toward that end, the White House asked both Congressmen and presidential hopefuls to refrain from inflaming the situation. For the most part the candidates agreed. Early in the week, Republicans Ronald Reagan and John Connally criticized the Administration's handling of the affair, only to draw a rebuke from a third G.O.P. contender, Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee. After a briefing session for congressional leaders at the White House, Democratic Senator Scoop Jackson of Washington declared: "Restraint is the order...
Late in the week, Carter postponed a scheduled trip to Canada because he wanted to stay in close touch with his foreign policy advisers...
...frustration was almost palpable. There was the U.S., long a superpower, being nakedly blackmailed last week by a mob of fanatical Iranian students. The whole world, so it seemed, was witnessing Washington's humiliation as the Carter Administration desperately struggled to find an acceptable solution...
...most military actions of this kind, surprise is essential. But in a case like Iran's, it would be very difficult to achieve. Without surprise, hostages could be killed once their captors discovered that a rescue was under way. One major problem last week was that no U.S. combat units were near Iran. The 51,000-ton carrier Midway, with its 75 warplanes, was about 2,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean, and the closest Marine Amphibious Force was in the Mediterranean...
...fact, through most of last week, U.S. officials were not even sure exactly where all the hostages were, although it was assumed that they were inside the sprawling, 27-acre embassy compound. Because Washington had no direct communication with the embassy, U.S. knowledge of the situation in Iran depended mostly on secondhand information, relayed by other diplomatic missions in Tehran or monitored from Iranian radio broadcasts. There thus was the chilling possibility that a daring rescue operation, after enormous risk, might reach the embassy only to find it empty...