Benghazi 2012-Tehran 1979: Another big screwup

A U.S. administration is accused of not increasing security at a sensitive diplomatic outpost in the Middle East, despite warnings from its own intelligence agencies. The results are catastrophic.

We’re talking not just about Libya today---but Iran 30 years ago—when 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.

According to several top secret U.S. government documents, which we revealed on 60 Minutes on  March 2,1980, the administration of Jimmy Carter failed to heed warnings from top Iranian officials and its own diplomats about the dangers if the U.S. were to admit the deposed Shah of Iran to the United States.

On November 4, 1979, several hundred radical Iranians, outraged at the U.S. decision to admit the Shah they detested to New York for medical treatment, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, overwhelmed the security guards, and took the American diplomats hostage.

It looked as if the Carter administration was innocent, overwhelmed by events:  they had simply extended a humanitarian hand to a former ally who suddenly and desperately needed medical treatment.

It later turned out that the taking of the embassy was far from spontaneous. On the other hand, as we discovered, U.S. government planning for the Shah to come to the U.S. had begun months before, and had continued despite ample warning of looming disaster.

Ironically, chapter and verse of those warnings were provided by files seized during the embassy takeover. As the mobs surged through the gates, officials inside frantically shredded thousands of documents. The hostage-takers, however, turned over that supposedly illegible mountain of debris to an army of local Iranians—many of them supposedly skilled weavers. After months of effort, they painstakingly pieced hundreds of documents back together. They were then published and put on sale –outside the American Embassy itself, for instance, where we picked up a copy.   

Among that trove was a State Department document classified “secret sensitive.” written in August 1979 and titled “Planning for the Shah to come to the U.S.” That was three months before the Shah’s arrival in New York. It said that once Khomeini is firmly established “it seems appropriate to admit the Shah to the United States.”

The discussion between officials in Washington and Tehran continued. In September, 1979, the embassy’s charge d’affaires, warned that the Shah’s coming to the U.S. could spell trouble to the embassy.  “I doubt that the Shah being ill, would have much ameliorating effect on the degree of reaction here.”

About that reaction, a State Department report specifically warned of “the danger of hostages being taken” and advised “When the decision is made to admit the Shah, we should quietly assign additional American security guards to the embassy, to provide protection to key personnel until the danger period is considered over.”

Despite that warning, Henry Precht then head of the Iranian Desk at the State Department, admitted to us that, “those guards were never provided.”

The Carter administration attempted to defend itself by claiming that Iranian officials had assured them that, if the Shah were to come to the United States, the Iranians would still protect the embassy.  

But Ibrahim Yazdi, Iran’s former Foreign Minister, gave us a different story. He told us that he was officially informed by the U.S. only 24 hours before the arrival of the Shah in New York.

Yazdi said that he then warned the State Department, “You are playing with fire. There will be a very drastic reaction.”

When President Carter asked then Secretary of State Cyrus Vance if the embassy could be protected, Vance later told Mike Wallace, “We said that we could. But we didn’t.”

The Egyptian Army: The Unknown Factor

In attempting to convince Mubarak to leave the scene, Washington obviously wants  to temper any further radicalization on the streets of Egypt and, above all, to ensure that the Egyptian Army remains unscathed. That would enable the generals to remain the power behind the scenes in the coming weeks and months—ready to step in, if necessary, to veto any attempt by Islamic fundamentalists to come to power—even by free and open elections. 

But determining what the Egyptian Army will ultimately do requires weighing a host of factors.

The announcement, for instance, that the Egyptian Army would refuse to take up arms against the people played perfectly into Washington’s game plan. It undercut Mubarak and prevented him from attempting a bloody showdown that could have been disastrous. In fact, the Egyptian military made that same announcement in 1977 when they were called in to quell riots after President Sadat announced cuts in basic food subsidies. The Army refused to intervene unless the subsidies were reestablished. Sadat restored the subsidies.

But does that mean the Army would be willing to step aside for whatever the will of the people turns out to be?  For a government dominated by the Moslem Brotherhood, for instance? For a government hostile to the U.S.? to Israel?

Of course, the Army is not monolithic. Its lower ranks are very much of the people: filled with hundreds of thousands of conscripts, drawn from the most humble ranks of society. The army has traditionally been the most important means of socializing and educating the lower classes, in theory, inculcating them with a sense of pride and patriotism. Indeed the 1971 Constitution says that the Egyptian Army shall “belong to the people”" This sentiment was made dramatically clear by the iconic images of soldiers shaking hands and embracing the demonstrators, even allowing them to paint slogans on their battle tanks.

The top ranks of the army, however, have other concerns—beginning with personal survival.  They certainly will never forget the lurid spectacle of Iranian generals being publicly executed in the aftermath of Khomeini’s revolution in Iran. Iran also demonstrated that a radical revolution also means a radically transformed military. (Egypt’s generals have a constant reminder of that lesson nearby:  The Shah is buried in a Cairo mosque.).

Under Mubarak, the top ranks of the Egyptian army have also enjoyed a pampered existence, in sprawling developments such as Cairo’s Nasr City. There, as elsewhere in Egypt, officers are housed in spacious condominiums, at highly subsidized rents,  They enjoy other amenities the average Egyptian can only dream of, such as nurseries, schools and military consumer "cooperatives" selling a range of domestic and imported products at discount prices.

One of the most indulged units is the Egyptian Republican Guard, a heavily armored division, with the main responsibility of defending Cairo and key government institutions. They are under the control of the Minister of Defense. It is apparently the only significant military unit allowed in central Cairo, apart from the intelligence service’s military branch.  Its ranks are filled primarily by highly motivated volunteers rather than conscripts. They are rewarded with bonuses, new cars and subsidized housing and greater training than the regular army.

The Guard was created originally in 1952 as a kind of Praetorian Guard by Nasser to protect the presidency. Do they still view that as their mission today?

But we’re not just talking about subsidized apartments.  Many of Egypt’s military brass are notoriously corrupt. They have used their power to line their pockets, just as have their civilian government counterparts. It was military land, for instance, that was sold by the generals to finance some major urban developments near Cairo-with little if any accounting.

The military also presides over a sprawling network of 16 factories across the country, employing tens of thousands of Egyptians. These factories turn out not just weapons, but an incredible array of domestic products from dishwashers to computers to medical diagnostic equipment. The military’s farms produce enough food to feed their ranks with plenty left over to sell to civilians.

The military’s justification for all this non-military activity is that the army is just more efficient that civilians. But many civilian businessmen complain that competing with the military is like trying to compete with the Mafia. The army’s operations they say are riddled with cozy inside dealings. In any case, once again, there is no public accounting. No one is quite sure whether they are making or losing money or who is pocketing the profits. Their operations are all off the books.

Though unspoken, such considerations will certainly be in the minds of the generals calling the shots in Cairo.

The U.S. also has a 1.3 billion dollar carrot dangling in front of the Egyptian Army. That annual American military aid to Egypt has allowed the Egyptian officers to get their hands on some of the most sophisticated of modern weapons—as we’ve seen over the past few days in downtown Cairo.

The generals realize there is no way the U.S. will continue paying for those goodies if a new regime more hostile to Israel takes power in Cairo.

Will they be willing to let that go?

On the other hand, there has reportedly been a surge in Islamic militancy among the ranks of the military themselves—and their wives. 

A frightening new era opens for Israel and its American friends.