SO YOU WANT TO BE A DIPLOMAT?
An American diplomat's progress from Vietnam to Iran, fun, warts and all.
by
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The first attack on the embassy developed on the morning of Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1979, shortly after Ayatollah Khomeini made his triumphant return from Paris, and the left-leaning but religious Mehdi Bazargan was still prime minister (with whom and his top assistant my deputy John Stempel, a Farsi speaker, had established contact). It started when a large number of armed young people, whom we later identified as left-wing fedayeen, broke into the embassy compound and gained entry into several of the buildings, including our main two-storey chancery where some fifty of us were working. They were covered by snipers from nearby rooftops and even turned traffic away on the large boulevard in front of the embassy compound.
The small number of US Marine guards were ordered by Ambassador Sullivan not to fire their shotguns except in self-defense and to surrender when they could, but they did release tear gas on the ground floor, which delayed the invaders long enough for embassy personnel to hide behind the heavy steel door of the communications room on the upper floor. We had gotten word out to a variety of government, army, and police offices, as well as to Ayatollah Taleghani, who was close to Khomeini and was friendly, before calling the British embassy to have them also make some local calls. I manned our telephone to the State Department in Washington. As my colleagues were telling me to duck down below a window through which bullets might come, the State people told me that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had been roused in Washington’s early morning hours and was on his way to the Department, along with other officials, and so was my friend Henry Precht, director of the office of Iranian affairs in NEA. I remember thinking a lot of good that would do us in the pickle we were in. (And we later learned that our ambassador in Afghanistan, Adolph “Spike” Dubs, had been kidnapped that same day and was killed in a clumsy Soviet effort to free him. Quite a plateful to greet Secretary Vance!)
A number of the staff were asking me whether I thought we would be killed, and my replies kept a stiff upper lip, though I thought to myself that the chances were fiftyfifty. It was Sullivan’s call to open the door and let the armed attackers in, presumably for fear that they might set fire to the building, as the American embassy in Pakistan had been set alight not long before. I did my silent prayers, as I am sure many others did. Some fifty of us were then packed into the anteroom between the ambassador’s office and that of his deputy, hands up, and searched, while eight nervous, sweating men trained their automatic weapons on us. They said they did not want to hurt us, as it was our government they were opposing. However, standing next to me, Barry Rosen, the young USIS press officer who spoke Farsi, told me later that they had argued whether or not to shoot some of us as an example. (Being in the second row from the front, I was happy not to have that bit of information at the time.)
Suddenly a bullet came through the window and lodged in the ceiling close to where the attackers were standing. One of them swung his gun at us, and we as one hit the floor (though I was slower than Barry and ended up squashing— or shielding—him below me). Then as we stood back up, a number of us started shouting at them that they were stupid and couldn’t they figure out that the bullet came from outside? Meanwhile a parlay started between them and the new arrivals, who had arrived earlier but had been prevented from entering our building and chose that way of announcing themselves. Soon we were told to march out of the room and down the stairs, hands still up in the air, though not knowing which group was now in charge. Several of us kept berating them for their stupidity. To my surprise, one armed man suddenly tapped me on the chest. “You very brave man,” he said—and I exhaled.
With Meloy’s assassination apparently by the Palestinians, who still controlled the airport and most of Beirut, Kissinger went into high gear. His plans and instructions were now usually passed to me over the secure phone by the new undersecretary for political affairs Philip Habib, of Lebanese background, who had occasionally befriended me socially in Washington. Kissinger decided on a further thinning down of the embassy’s American personnel (particularly the women) and evacuation of all nonofficial American citizens in Lebanon who wished to go, even though our embassy told him we doubted many of those still there, often married to Lebanese, would want to leave for an extended time. Since he had earlier promised the Israelis that he would never speak directly to the Palestinians without Israeli permission, Kissinger asked the friendly leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Jordan to threaten the Palestinians, warning that they must let the Americans go or else. The French and British also got into the act.
How Americans would be evacuated became crucial.
The British had run an evacuation overland to Syria mainly for their own people (with Ambassador Meloy’s and Waring’s bodies). But the Egyptians and French who were most active in advising us, as well as the Lebanese government officials who consulted with the PLO (whose snipers were not always in touch with headquarters), were pessimistic on security via that route. Same for overland into east Beirut and then by ship to Cyprus.
As we and the Department were discussing these options, the British charge d’affaires stormed into my office one afternoon. “What are you people doing?” he shouted.
“What do you mean?” I replied.
“What are you doing? We know what you’re doing,” he continued.
When he settled down and realized all this was news to me, he explained that we were preparing to land Marines in Lebanon (as we had, too late to be useful, at the end of the 1958 Civil War). So as soon as he left, I sent a “flash” message to Washington asking if this was true.
I received an immediate telephone call from NEA assistant secretary Roy Atherton on our secure line. “The president is about to make a decision,” he said. “How do you feel about it?”
Thanks a lot for asking, I thought. “I am against it, and so are the British,” I answered.
He was surprised that London knew of Washington’s plans. “Send me a cable. The president is about to make a decision,” he continued.
When I called a quick meeting of my top country team, all agreed this was unnecessary and would be opening a new can of worms with unpredictable consequences. Less than fifteen minutes later, as we were talking, Atherton called again. “Where is your cable? The president is about to make a decision.” So I sent another “flash” message arguing against any such invasion and adding that my defense attaché (a senior colonel) and the British, who knew about it, agreed. Happily, the president decided against a Marine landing.
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Book Details
Language :
English
Publication Date :
10/12/2019
Format :
Softcover
Dimensions :
6x9
Page Count :
354
ISBN :
9781796063905
Format :
Hardcover
Dimensions :
6x9
Page Count :
354
ISBN :
9781796063912
About the Book
This book of memoirs is not like most. George Lambrakis, an American Senior Foreign Service Officer with over three decades of service, and two decades of teaching international relations and diplomacy, tells it in detail exactly as it was – and still is, fun, warts and all. His vivid anecdotes take us through live and dangerous action interacting with world leaders and common folks as we visit Vietnam and Laos, West Africa’s pro-Communist Guinea, Middle Eastern hotspots like Israel and Lebanon during civil war (where he has policy disagreements with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Director of Personnel Ambassador Carol Laise), and on to Iran before and after its revolution, passing through Munich, Rome, London, the U.N. in New York and Geneva, Africa’s Guinea-Bissau and Swaziland. All this with assignments of great variety in Washington, culminating as director of an office that is trying to limit the political fall-out of the U.S. military build-up in the Middle East - a build-up which later reverses Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, but leads to the tragic invasion of Iraq and probably invites Osama Bin Laden’s attack on America.