CIA-RDP96-00788R002100450005-6

The Washington Star Co.
Copyright 1881
* WASHINGTON, D.C., THURSDAY JANUARY 22, 1981
Phone (202) 484-6000 Classified 484-6000
Circulation 484-3000
20 Cents
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Hostages Tell of Abuses;
Carter Decries 'Barbarism'
Ex-President
Declares 52
True Heroes
Says Suffering Worse
Than He Had Known
-By Phil Galley
Washington Star Staff Writer
· WIESBADEN, West Germany -
Former President Jimmy Carter
held a tearful reunion yesterday
with the 52 freed American hostages,
embracing each and calling them
"true heroes" who had suffered
physical and mental torture far
worse than he had previously be-
lieved.
Carter, acting as President Rea-"
gan's emissary, came away from his
meeting with the Americans at the
U.S. Air Force hospital here "clearly
outraged," as an afde put It, by the
stories of mistreatment they told .:
1
"One very serious fact is becoming
evident," Carter told a news confer.
ence, "and that is that our
Americans in Iran were mistreated
much worse than has been pre
viously revealed. The acts of bar.
barism which were perpetrated on
our people by Iran can never be
condoned."
-
Some of the former U.S. officials
traveling with Carter said that
placing the hostages before mock
firing squads apparently had been
a more common occurrence than
they had realized from the reports
received through diplomatic chan-
nels. But beyond that, they refused
to provide specifics.
For Carter, who was deprived of
the opportunity of greeting the lib.
erated Americans as president by a
last-minute snag in the negotiations
with Iran, the meeting was the emo.
tional climax to the 444-day crisis
that haunted the last days of his
presidency.
Ironically, one of the first sights
Carter saw upon his arrival at the *
hospital was a quotation from the
inaugural address of Ronald Reagan,
who took the oath as president only
33 minutes before the first planeload
of hostages left Tehran for freedom.
A large banner draped from the
third-floor balcony read: "You're
free. After all - we are Americans."
Behind the banner some of the
former hostages -- now referred to
as "returnees" - stood in sub-
freezing weather to greet Carter
with waves and, In the case of one
Marine braving the night air in a
T-shirt, a sharp salute.
After a briefing from hospital of-
ficials, Carter went to a meeting
See CARTER, A-7
limited Press International
Returnee Bruce Laingen of Bethesda and former President Jimmy Carter embrace at Wiesbaden.
Reagan Holds Off on Pact
Until He Reads Fine Print
Rejection of Deal
Said to Be Unlikely".
By Walter Taylor
Washington Star Staff Writer
Officials said yesterday the Rea-
gan administration will review the
fine print on the hostage agreement
with Iran before deciding whether
to honor its provisions.
Spokesmen at both the White
House and the State Department
held out the option, of repudiating
one or more elements of the
agreement hammered out by U.S.
negotiators in the closing hours of
the Carter administration.
Privately, officials of the new ad-
ministration said it was unlikely
that President Reagan would abro-
See PRESIDENT, A-7
Last-Minute Iranian
Hitch Said Legitimate
Star Wire Services.
WIESBADEN, West Germany -
Former officials of the Carter admin-
istration yesterday said that they are
convinced Iran "had a legitimate
gripe" in raising last-minute ques-
tions that delayed release of the 52
'American hostages until after Jim-
my Carter was out of office.
And they publicly urged the Rea-
gan administration to honor terms
of the agreement with Iran.
On the flight here, where Carter
held an emotional meeting with the
released hostages, former U.S. offi-
cials traveling with him described
the last agonizing hours of the hos-
tage negotiations.
See CARTER, A-8
Haig Approved
For State Post
On 93-6 Vote
By a vote of 93 to 6, Alexander
M. Haig Jr. won confirmation from
the Senate yesterday as secretary of
state.
But there was political skirmish-
ing between Capitol Hill and the
White House on President Reagan's
first full day in office,
Even while they were welcoming
Vice President George Bush, the
new president of the Senate, sen-
Sen. Helms is blocking Carlucci's
nomination, A-3.
FBI unable to corroborate charges
against Donovan, A-3.
ators on both sides of the aisle were
warning they would keep their in-
dependence and exert pressure on
the White House when they felt it
. necessary.
Senate Minority Leader Robert C.
Byrd of West Virginia, who voted
against the nomination, complained
See GEN. HAIG, A-6
One Calls
His Captors
'Psychotic'
Torture Was Physical,
Mental, Families Told
$ :
By Maureen Dowd
and Suzanne Bilello
Washington Star Staff Writers
Some of the freed . American hos -.
tages yesterday told of physical and
psychological abuse at the hands of
their Iranian captors.
Life as a hostage was not full of
the "luxury hotels and medical spe-
cialists that Iranian officials
bragged about or the cordial guards
and overflowing bowls of fruit like
those seen in the Christmas films,
Ithe former hostages said in
transatlantic telephone calls from
West Germany to relatives and
friends in the United States.
It was full of physical abuse and
mental torture.
Instead of hotels there were
SAVAK (former Iranian secret po-
lice) prisons and isolation cells in
dank basements that prisoners nick-
named "Mushroom Inns."
There were guards who played
Russian roulette with female hos-
tages, held mock executions and
conducted midnight raids, wearing
white masks and fatigues and carry-
ting automatic rifles.
At the U.S. Air Force hospital in
Wiesbaden, West Germany, Freder-
ick "Rick" Kupke savored the feeling
of slipping between crisp white
sheets for the first time in 14 months
and remembered his hard cot in an
Iranian prison.
Kupke, 34, a communications spe-
cialist, is one of the 52 former hos-
tages who are recuperating from
their long Iranian ordeal at the Air
Force hospital in Wiesbaden.
."Rick had it real bad, but he's so
proud to be free that he says he's
feeling no pain now," said his father,
Arthur Kupke of Francesville, Ind.,
who talked with his son three times
yesterday in a transatlantic reunion.
Other former hostages found dif-
ferent pleasures. After a diet of
beans and rice in captivity, Bert
Moore delighted in ordering out for
an ice cold beer. And for Jimmy
Lopez, who had been forced to sleep
In a closet for several months, happi-
ness was a haircut and shave.
Keeping the phone lines buzzing
all through the night and all day
yesterday, the hostages.turned-
heroes were bright and cheery with
their relatives, chatting mostly
about the euphoria of freedom and
the family milestones they had
: missed.
But the stick surface of the chit-
See HOSTAGES, A-7
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1
Hostages
Describe
Dark Side
Continued From A-1
chat soon began to chip away, show-
ing the pain and shock beneath.
"Those guards were psychotic."
one hostage, his voice edged with
bitterness, confided in his brother.
. "They were SOBs," said Col.
Leland Holland, who told his 79-year-
old mother Clara he had spent a
month in a "dungeon."
A State Department spokesman
put it slightly more diplomatically
yesterday, accusing the militants of
"serious mistreatment" of some of
; the Americans.
The "students" stole the hostages'
personal effects and raided Hol-
fand's house in Tehran, taking
everything they could carry, from
furniture to frozen meat.
"Most of us lost everything, " Rich-
ard H. Morefield, consul general at
the embassy, told his wife in San
Diego. "I walked out with my wed-
ding ring, and i had to fight for that."
. The militants Hed constantly,
their captives soon learned, telling
the hostages innumerable tall tales
about their families and about why
"the Great Satan," as they dubbed
America, was letting them languish
in. Iran. ...
-
After a few months, the hostages
were so confused by a cat's cradle 1 ..
of lies and propoganda that they
"ended up believing nothing," politi-
cal officer Michael J. Metrinko, 34,
of Olyphant, Pa., told his brother,
Peter, who lives in Arlington.
Each prisoner was treated differ-
ently, according to their relative im-
portance in the embassy, their
alleged spying activities and their
comportment.
- Marine Sgt. Johnny McKeel Jr.
told his parents in: Balch Springs,
Texas, that he had assumed until
yesterday that his mother was dead,
something Interrogators had told
him in a vain effort to extract in-
formation.
:
When the Marine gave only his
name, rank and serial number, a
guard knocked out one of his teeth.
-
Another hostage, 49-year-old Mal-
colm Kalp of Fairfax County, told
his brother he was beaten, put in
solitary confinement for months
and cut off from any communication
with his family because he tried to
escape several times.
"They knocked me around a cou-
ple of times in the beginning," Rob-
ert O. Blucker of North Little Rock,
Ark., told his mother Hazel Albin.
"But toward the end, I don't think
they wanted to beat anyone up un-
less they could help it." ..
Lopez, who lost 50 pounds during
the ordeal, was forced with several
others to sleep in a closet for several
months, and Metrinko, Kupke and
several others spent long solitary
stretches in jail.
After the first few months, how-
ever, the torture was more mental
than physical.
.
The guards would bring in the
baskets of mail from families, open
it and hold up snapshots and letters,
and then, before the hostages' bitter
gazes, burn the coveted stacks of
mail from home.
Richard Queen, who was released
after nine months because he con-
tracted multiple sclerosis, yesterday
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they were forced to line up against
the wall and were stripped and
searched.

:
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Queen also described a mock ex-
"ecution the hostages were subjected
to when the militants pulled the
triggers of empty guns.
Another hostage who was released
early, Elizabeth Montagne, now an
assistant on the China desk at the
State Department, talked of "threats
with guns," including an Incident
when the militants played Russian'
roulette with her and another em-
bassy secretary to try to get informa-
tion.
William Quarles, one of the 13
hostages released earlier, visited his
former colleagues at the hospital
yesterday afternoon. Quarles said
that one of them told him "they
. had been kept separated and were
moved all over the country, some
"Tlown to different parts, some taken
by car."
Nearly all of the hostages were
reported to have been moved out
of the U.S. Embassy :compound
shortly after the abortive rescue at-
tempt in April,
Most hostages reported being
blindfolded and moved at least four
times; Rick Kupke told his family
he was moved 19 times.
The hostages tried to find ways
to communicate with secret codes. (
Col. Thomas Schaeffer, a military
attache, said the hostages used a
Russian tapping code with each oth-
er to pass messages ..
John W. Limbert, a former State
Department official from Washing-
ton whose son was a' hostage, said
that John Jr., alone in a cell for
nine months, wrote camouflaged let-
ters home. "When he told me he
was working on knotty chess prob-
lems, I: understood that he was in
solitary confinement."
Bruce Laingen, the charge d'af-
1 faires who remained with two other
hostages in the relative comfort of
" the Foreign Ministry, was able to
I call home the first few months. De-
o spite the fact that the Iranians mon-
" itored the line, Laingen and his wife
A Penne in Bethesda were able to pass
u surreptitious messages - that were
later passed on to the State Depart-
u
ment - by speaking in Thai.
Washington Star Staff Writers
Lindsay Gruson, Christopher P. Win-
ner, Patrice Gaines-Carter and
Diane Brockett also contributed to
this article.
P
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A-7
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