Taken Hostage, on PBS

Why is our current administration so determined to buy more oil from Iran rather than expand drilling here? It has the same environmental impact, regardless of where it came from. In the case of Iran, it is coming from a state that denies women their basic rights and vigorously persecutes any deviation from its rigid fundamentalist orthodoxy. It should be a complete pariah state for its gross violations of international law, yet there are those in Washington who are perversely determined to normalize relations. PBS reminds us of the regime’s criminal origins in Robert Stone’s two-part Taken Hostage, an American Experience special presentation, which airs this Monday and Tuesday.

This is not a round-number anniversary year of the 1979 Hostage Crisis, yet Taken Hostage premieres about a month and a half after HBO’s Hostages. In some ways, they compliment each other, because both overlook important elements that are nicely covered in the competing production. For instance, Taken Hostage skips over the first storming of the American Embassy in Tehran, known as the “Valentine’s Day Open House,” which was de-escalated relatively quickly. Unfortunately, the Carter administration drew the exact wrong conclusion from the incident, assuming cooler heads would always prevail.

However, Hostages never mentions Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the moderate revolutionary, who served as the new government’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, until he was arrested (and ultimately executed) in 1980. Whereas, Stone makes his tragic arc and Ghotbzadeh’s relationship with journalist Carole Jerome (who escaped the country three hours before the Ayatollah’s secret police came looking for her) a major focus of Taken Hostage.

Perhaps for clarity’s sake, Stone (who also helmed the great doc, Pandora’s Promise) employs far less voices than Hostages. The hostages themselves and their families are solely represented by Barry and Barbara Rosen. There are no interviews with hostage-takers. Of course, the Shah’s human rights abuses are established in detail. Yet, Taken Hostage better explains the underlying reasons for America’s alliance with the authoritarian ruler. It was not just the Cold War. Also, it was the vacuum left when the UK pulled out of its traditional role maintaining order in the Persia Gulf, right while the U.S. was embroiled in the Vietnam War. We were a little busy at the time, so we turned to Iran and Saudi Arabia. This is important context often overlooked in critiques of U.S. foreign policy.

It is hard to think of a government appointee who failed more spectacularly than Gary Sick, Carter’s NSC specialist on the Middle East, but he was obviously very much in the middle of the government’s response. Wisely, Stone never gives him an opportunity to peddle his discredited “October Surprise” conspiracy theories. That alone would make Taken Hostage a cut above Hostages.

Desert One: The Delta Force’s Darkest Hour

The U.S. Army’s Delta Force is feared and respected around the world, yet their first mission that most people ever heard of was a tragic disaster. That was Operation Eagle Claw, the aborted attempt to rescue the American embassy personnel held hostage in Iran. The mission was briefly depicted in the opening of the 1980s action classic, The Delta Force, but it deserves a more serious film treatment. That can sometimes be found in Barbara Kopple’s documentary Desert One, which opens virtually and in select brick-and-mortar cinemas tomorrow.

The 444-day Hostage Crisis was a constant demoralizing drumbeat that surely contributed to Jimmy Carter’s loss. Clearly, it was an unprecedented act of state-endorsed aggression, but as Ted Koppel (whose career at Nightline was made by the Hostage Crisis) notes on-camera, Carter hamstrung himself by unilaterally removing most of his options from the table. Essentially, he almost exclusively pursued a diplomatic resolution with an extremist regime already engaging in illegal behavior, that did not want to talk to him or his surrogates. In retrospect, the hostages Kopple interviews agree it was a worthy attempt, as did candidate Reagan at the time. Unfortunately, it failed.

The surviving veterans of Operation Eagle Claw go through the timeline of what happened and how it went wrong. At least one of the former Special Operators admitted he was skeptical of the plan, right from the start, but he followed his orders anyway, to serve his country and support his brothers-in-arms. In a particularly frustrating turn of events, the casualties occurred during the withdrawal from the “Desert One” rendezvous point, after Carter had already aborted the mission. Clearly, flawed intelligence and insufficient preparations for the desert conditions were contributing factors, but the film largely ascribes the incident to the “fog of war.”

It is satisfying and frankly rather overdue to see the veterans of Operation Eagle Claw finally get recognition for their service and courage. Conversely, it is sickening to watch the Ayatollah’s student captors gleefully reveling in the deaths of American servicemen and the general success of their hostage taking. By any standard of international law, it was completely illegal act of terror, but Kopple’s Iranian colleagues passively let them chortle away, unchallenged. She would never interview someone in the Trump administration in such a manner, so shame on her.

Our Man in Tehran: The Unredacted True Story of Argo

The word “diplomatic” is often used as an adjective for cautious and noncommittal. That hardly describes Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor’s term of service in post-Revolutionary Iran. He was the one played by Alias’s Victor Garber in Argo. As Hollywood films go, it was pretty accurate, but there was considerably more to the story. Co-producer-directors Drew Taylor (son of Miracle Mets pitcher Ron Taylor) & Larry Weinstein tell the behind-the-scenes story of the ambassador, his wife Pat, and his diplomatic staff, as fully as it can now be told, in Our Man in Tehran (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

When the Islamist students occupied the American Embassy with the Ayatollah’s blessing, it constituted a direct act of war. It also sent a chill through every other western mission. Somehow, six consular officers managed to slip out the back alley, but they were cut off from the British Embassy, their designated emergency refuge. It would be Ken Taylor and his colleague John Sheardown who took in the Americans, literally hosting the six “Houseguests,” as they came to be known, in their private residences.

Yes, there was a CIA agent named Tony Mendez who developed and implemented a daring plan to extract the Houseguests. Perhaps you have heard about it. The cover story involved a phony science fiction film titled Argo. If you haven’t, Mendez himself takes viewers through the operation step-by-step. However, one of the greatest revelations in OMIT is the extent to which the Ambassador and embassy personnel were gathering and relaying intel for the tragically ill-fated rescue attempt.

As much as former “October Surprise” conspiracy theorist Gary Sick tries to cover for his former boss, Jimmy Carter comes off looking like a bumbler out of his depth dealing with the Iranian crisis. Yet, in retrospect, nobody looks worse than Canadian opposition leader Pierre Trudeau, who tried to exploit the situation asking combative questions he knew from confidential briefings with PM Joe Clark that External Minister Flora MacDonald could not safely answer.

The access to primary sources in OMIT is rather remarkable, with (Drew) Taylor & Weinstein scoring extensive on-camera interviews with both Ken and Pat Taylor, as well as Clark, MacDonald, Mendez, Sheardown’s widow Zena, the Houseguests, and former Iranian hostage and CIA station officer William Daughtery. Indeed, it is quite valuable to have the perspective of Daughtery, who probably endured the worst torture meted out by the Revolutionary Guard during the hostage crisis. However, it is a little awkward seeing the discredited Sick pop up periodically, even though he avoids making unsupported accusations this time around.

The accounts surrounding Argo and the Houseguests are absolutely fascinating and inspire warm feelings of fellowship for all Canadians (except Trudeau). With co-writer Robert Wright (author of the eponymous book on which OMIT is based), Taylor & Weinstein give the audience a detailed understanding of the rituals of diplomacy and the secret inner workings of the intelligence services. There are also real lessons to be learned from the incidents it documents. First and foremost, wishful thinking is not a strategy. Highly recommended, Our Man in Tehran opens this Friday (5/15) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Argo: In Iran, There Are No Second Takes

It was a time of malaise.  In 1979, the iconic Hollywood sign had fallen into a state of disrepair, but there was still a patriotic old guard willing to invest their time and reputations in a film that would never be made, for the sake of their country.  Recruited by CIA “exfiltration” specialist Tony Mendez, two movie industry veterans provided the cover for a long classified rescue operation.  During the Iranian hostage crisis, the Canadian ambassador furtively sheltered six U.S. embassy employees, at considerable personal risk.  Mendez devised a plan to fly them out in broad daylight, posing as crew members of a Star Wars knock-off.  Their stranger-than-fiction mission has become Ben Affleck’s Oscar contending Argo (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

In its opening voiceover narration, Argo makes it clear everything that happened in Iran was the fault of America and Great Britain, because we supported the Shah.  After we are properly chastised, Argo then admits the early days of the Islamic Revolutionary regime were little more than a reign of terror, culminating with the seizure of the American embassy, in gross violation of international law.  Carefully modeled on actual news footage, these occupation sequences are a harrowing depiction of mass fanaticism at its most savage, but also highly cinematic.

Caught flat-footed, the Carter Administration (which had pressured the Shah to abdicate, assuming the Ayatollah would mellow once entrusted with power) is at a total loss.  The Canadian Ambassador simply cannot shelter his “house guests” indefinitely and it is only a matter of time before the hostage takers realize they are short six Foreign Service Officers.  Most of the proposed action plans bear little or no relation to the on-the-ground realities.  Of course, Mendez does not have any better ideas, until he thinks of make-up artist John Chambers, the man who created Spock’s ears, who secretly volunteers his “transformative” services to the CIA.

The plan is daring in its conception.  Mendez will enter Iran via Canada on the pretext that he is scouting locations for a sci-fi epic set on a rather Persian looking alien world.  A few days later, he simply flies out again with six of his crew members.  Of course, it is rather more complicated than that.  To be credible, Argo, as the non-film within the film is titled, must have legit names attached to it and generate some trade press.  Old school producer Lester Siegel can take care of that.

Argo really packs a punch when conveying the overwhelming oppressiveness and paranoia of Revolutionary Iran.  The atmosphere is truly overpowering and profoundly scary.  Yet, Affleck effectively breaks up the mood with the Sorkinesque absurdities of the Carter Administration and the outright comic relief provided by Siegel and Chambers.  However, their “kvetching for freedom” never feels overly silly or forced.  Instead, viewers clearly understand these old cats are used to dealing with serious situations through humor.

As Mendez, Ben Affleck broods and bluffs convincingly enough, but his work on the other side of the camera far more distinctive.  John Goodman and Alan Arkin are absolutely perfect as the real life Chambers and the composite-figure Siegel.  They both deliver zingers like the old pros they are, while still projecting an unabashed love of country that is quite endearing.  Yet, Bryan Cranston gets some of the film’s sharpest lines as Jack O’Donnell, Mendez’s superior at the Agency.

Aside from the audio from a ridiculously self-serving interview with Jimmy Carter heard during the closing credits, the sure-footed Affleck avoids politicizing his tight narrative.  He keeps the tension cranked up, but has the good sense to unleash his colorful supporting cast.  Given the presumed field of Oscar candidates, it probably deserves to be in the mix.  Recommended for those fascinated with the history of espionage, Argo opens today (10/12) in theaters throughout the City, including the AMC Loews Lincoln Square.