Part 1 Captured: One Marine's Fight to Survive the Iranian Revolution

What happens when the post you’re sworn to protect becomes the place you’re taken from?

In this first part of a two-part episode, former U.S. Marine Ken Kraus takes us inside the opening moments of the 1979 Iranian Revolution—from standing watch at the American Embassy in Tehran… to being wounded, captured, and dragged into a system he doesn’t understand.

This isn’t a typical interview. It’s a story—told as it happened.

You’ll hear the confusion, the silence, the questions with no answers… and the slow, chilling realization that he’s been taken somewhere far worse than he imagined.

Cut off from time, control, and certainty, Ken begins to understand one thing:

This is just the beginning.

Part 2 drops next Thursday… and that’s where the real test begins.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to Making Shooters Better. This podcast episode is going to be a little bit different. Normally we have Q ⁇ A, we cover some stories, we hopefully answer some questions, we provide nuggets of things that I think will help you improve either personal safety or shooting or some aspect of it. Today's different. Today you're going to be hearing from US Marine Ken Krauss who served on a security detail at the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 when it was overrun. His account is raw, it's unfiltered. Honestly, in some places it's even hard for us to comprehend what he went through, not just from the battle, but also from being kidnapped after the fight was over. I don't want to give away too much, but I did want to give you a bit of a heads up that this is not going to be in our usual format. It's powerful, it's moving, it makes us appreciate the luxury we live in and the people that are around us as our loved ones and friends. Because when you have heard how alone he was and the things that he went through in the circumstance that he went through them, it'll give you real pause. So without further ado, let's get into this account of one US Marines journey into hell. What he's going to talk us through is what it feels like when the siege is over and the real test begins. Captured, tortured, and yet somehow surviving. How do you think you would cope alone? Because being tough, in my opinion, isn't enough. You'd have to also know what else do you have that you think will sustain you when time stretches and there's no clear end. Is it your faith? Is it your training? Is it just pure bloody stubbornness? Whatever you think it is, Ken lived it. Years later, he wrote a book, A Marine Endures Hell, pulling back the curtain of what was really happening behind the scenes during one of the most volatile geopolitical moments of the 20th century. So today we're going to be finding out what it means to stand your ground during a crisis when the threat and the pain that you're going to have to endure isn't seconds or minutes, but hours and days. And what lessons about resilience, mindset, and duty still matter when you are alone in the fight. So, Ken, thank you for joining me and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Good morning, Terry. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure and honor to uh be on your show, sir. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

So it's a great icebreaker. Every show I asked the guests that first opening question is when was the first time you shot anything? When's the first time you actually started shooting?

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Oh, probably when I uh growing up as a kid, about 10 years old, I got my first 22 long rifle. Or I actually had a BB gun before then, and then it got stolen. So then they my dad upgraded me to a uh 22 long rifle. And it was uh when I went to any kind of competition, it's actually uh when I was at Valley Forge Military Academy, which was my high school in Wayne, Pennsylvania, they had a uh a uh rifle rifle club and rifle team that would shoot competitively, and I couldn't wait to get on there because I've been shooting for a few years. So I'd say probably from about the ten the age of ten.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Oh, that's fantastic. Did you did you do any hunting at that age as well?

SPEAKER_02 4:02

No, I never did really did hunting. Had an accident one time, as long story short, is we were out in the woods in the area of New Jersey and someone shot at us and actually hit me in the leg with a uh with a pellet. Uh I think it was a twenty-two. I don't know if whether today um it was I don't know if it was uh on purpose or not, but it went into my thigh and uh is minor minor surgery to take it out. But for a young kid at about the age of twelve, it traumatized me a lot. So uh and then I fully recovered. But ever since then, I've uh never been a big fan of hunting animals. I'm not against it. I'm very pro-hunter, you know, total pro-Second Amendment. Um, and through the years and the decades when I've had friends that we go uh up on a hunting uh expedition per se, up in the mountains where I've lived uh across country in the United States, Colorado, Texas, you know, what have you, um, Georgia, even here, um, I'd always go up and I'm the uh I'm the cook and I'm the bartender. So all the other guys would go up and freeze their asses off and and come back whining and crying if they didn't get anything, you know. And I said, Oh, I'm nice and warm. And I said, if you didn't bring us anything, what do you expect me to cook? So, you know, it's kind of like uh the same thing with golf. I had never had the uh the three most important things you need to play golf. You need patience, you need time, you need money, and you probably need some skill. I had none of that. So whenever people wanted to go play, I'm gonna go play golf, my wife would say, Well, you don't play golf. I said, No, but I drive the cart, I bring, I bartent for them, and I bring the cigars. So that's my golfing experience, very similar to being a a uh a hunter per se.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah, no, I've got absolutely no patience for golf. To me, it just it's a ruined walk out in the countryside. But it's funny because I lived in Wyoming for five and a half years and hunting there was very much a way of life. And I I'm not a big fan of hunting for sport. I I am a big believer that if you're going out hunting, it's to put food on the table and you don't waste an ounce of the animal. So while I was living out there, we did elk hunting and deer hunting and all that kind of stuff, but it was it was a hunt, and especially in the mountains there with in the Rockies, you are on foot. Well, I was. A lot of you guys are on horseback. You gotta hoof it up in there. I mean, you're earning that animal if you go out to get it, and then you there's no way when you brought that thing back you were gonna waste, waste an ounce of it.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

Absolutely. Now, fishing's a different thing. I'd like to go out on a boat, just put the uh rod over the side, get a cold one, kick back, and wait for a nibble. That's my idea of hunting on the ocean, they call fishing.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

That's funny. Yeah, I've never tried that. I've done uh you're sitting on the riverbank and fly fishing, actually, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I've never gone uh that's a lot of work to fish. It yeah, it is. Anyway, so okay, I want to take us back to the beginning. How did you even end up in the U.S. Marines?

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Well, it's a good one here. Uh in 1974, I graduated. Uh my high school was Valley Forge Military Academy, very prestigious military academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. And it was just a year after the 1973 Yom Kippur War with the Arabs and the Israelis. And that's where uh I guess they uh they they shut the OPEC, uh, the oil-producing export companies, uh, tightened the tightened the oil valves on us here in the United States and uh all our allies. Well, I remember going from about 60 cents a gallon to like $3 a gallon, and that was back in 1973, 74. So that really crippled the US economy. Um so uh when I graduated, I had a uh an appointment, congressional appointment, to Annapolis, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis. And I was really happy with that one. So I planned on you know going through and spending the next 30 years of my life, you know, uh I've always a kid wanted to be, you know, a warrior. I always had it in my blood, watching the movies, uh all everybody in my family, all the males, everybody was in uh either Korea, Vietnam, you know, or World War II, and including my dad. So, you know, I was just following their footsteps. If I could focus on one, you know, at the time I wanted to be a Navy SEAL. And new people didn't even know what Navy SEALs were, but I knew I knew about them from my dad was a UDT. He was not a SEAL, but he was uh he worked with the UDTs. And anyway, so um my focus was uh to be a team leader. You know, I wanted to graduate, you know, the one of the best uh academies in the country and be a combat leader. Uh what happened though is that I had a heart murmur once you go through uh the medical um portion of the uh um enlighten uh what do you call it uh uh inquiry portion to apply, I had to sit and wait for a uh medical board to turn around and you know get and authorize me. Well, you can sit all day and you sit for months like I did waiting for it to come through. Because it's uh they got they only have about you know uh 150 uh cadets and new every year, okay? And if they got 150 and that are already 100% healthy, 100 number 51 is me. I'm gonna sit out and wait. So barring that, waiting, uh, times got tough. I mean, we couldn't find jobs. Uh, they were laying people off, especially in in high-tech areas, uh, airline pilots and stuff were looking for jobs in car washes and gas stations. So with the economy being so bad, um I decided to uh go out and take a look at what's going on in the in the armed forces. Um Vietnam was winding down. They uh it wasn't over yet. It wasn't over until April of uh 75. But uh they were winding it down, pulling the troops out. So basically, when I sat down and talked with people in my family and people that have already been in the military, they said, now's a good time to go. I said, make sure that you know you want to pick an area uh uh of expertise that you want, not just go in and you know be uh a tank driver, because when you get out, what are you gonna do? You know, and we be a taxi driver, you know. They didn't have Ubers at the time, so it wasn't a concept. Um so basically it was by accident that I got in the Marine Corps is that um downtown Philadelphia, where you know, basically I lived in New Jersey at the time, but right across the river, you know, the big city is everything, it's Philadelphia. Um, I went down to the AFI station, the Armed Forces Enlistment Center, and I just happened, I think it was a Wednesday I'd go in there, and the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard all had an office in this building. Um uh once a day, once a week, I guess whatever day it was, everybody went out to lunch, but there was always somebody of one of those branches in there to mine the offices, okay? Watch it to answer questions. I just happened to pick the day that the Marine was in there, and I went in looking for, you know, to join the Navy and or see what options there were anyway. And yeah, he's uh, you know, of course, he started his spiel and everything. And uh, and I told him I really wasn't interested, you know, nothing wrong with you with you guys. But uh he ended up you know inviting me in. He opened up uh he opened up his uh half of his sandwich to me. We had a we had a hoagie together, and we had so we had a soft drink, we just started talking, and of course he's he's going on backdooring me here with the uh the history and the traditions of the Marine Corps and everything. I said, so I never knew that because I had we had never had a Marine in the family yet, Army, Navy, Air Force, but everybody, you know, uh it was unique. So anyway, long story short, he ended up he ended up getting me to sign up and enlisting in the Marine Corps right then and there. However, um I had already been told that you know to look forward and get a contract of some type. So uh I had gone into that out, I looked at what the opposite uh, he says, okay, set me up for the physical, which is fine. Uh again, the uh uh they found the uh the heart murmur, which is not not a not a disqualification at that point, but it is things that you can't do. You can't deep deep water dive, you can't jump out of airplanes. Not that I wanted to do that. Uh shit. You know, so I said, that's fine. I said, I want to look something you know, put in for maybe eight years and see how the economy goes and uh, you know, you know, if I can really hack what's going on here. Uh so I wanted to, you know, I went into air traffic control, combat air traffic control is what my first MOS, you know, military occupational service was. Went to boot camp in San Diego and then went to uh Paris Island and the Marine Corps Air Station, Beauford, South Carolina. I did my first tours there uh in the tour. Uh so we were looking to uh wind down at the time, and I said, well, you know, there's there's not a lot going on out here. It's now like 1977, and my first tour is almost up. So I had done very well. I had gotten uh all the way up to E4, E5, which was a sergeant's rank, meritoriously. I didn't have to stay in rank. So um I really was. I was a go-getter. Plus, my background at the time being in military academy made it a lot easier, you know, with uh the rank structure and and and how to you know how to work the attitudes and the uh and and the uh egos up there in the in the ranks ahead of me, which got me to a point where I could join, I uh put in an application for uh Marine Security Guard Battalion. When you say MSG, it's Marine Security Guard Battalion at the time. That's the uh battalion that that of the Marine Corps that's assigned to guard all the embassies and consulates all over the world. And very prestigious work. I mean, if you're gonna go may make a make a career of the Marine Corps, uh you either want to go to the drill field as a drill instructor, you want that in your record book, or you want MSG, Marine Security Guard, uh embassy duty. So uh I graduated for graduated fourth in my class um after getting a after getting a nomination to go, because you have to be nominated, you just can't, you know, sign up and go. And I graduated fourth, so my first embassy was uh stationed at Nicosia, Cyprus, a little uh Greek island in the uh southeastern corner of the Mediterranean, just south of Turkey and just west of Israel. And uh it's a beautiful Greek island, and that's uh usually for you get a 30-month tour uh on uh on embassy duty. And you'll have uh uh 15 months, 15 to 18 months on a hardship post, which is something back then when you're talking about uh I put it in perspective for you, you're talking about 1977, 78. We're still talking about the Warsaw Pact and the NATO versus each other. Uh Germany hasn't, I mean, not just Germany, Germany is still split down the middle. You have East and West Berlin, okay? You have an iron curtain that when you talk to people today and say Iron Curtain, they have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah, no idea. No, no. I mean, it was only like barely 45 years ago, Terry, is that you know, half of Europe was under I can, you know, and the the machine guns, you got shot trying to get out of there. Uh Yugoslavia, the uh Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, name them. They weren't Poland, all of them. They weren't thrown into individual countries at at the time, you know. So uh, I mean we were face to face with the Russians wherever we went. You know, it was just very unfriendly, literally a cold war, just to take anything to, you know, to start shooting it again. That's why all the spies, you know, came came in so handy after all those years. It kept us from going to going to war with each other. Anyway, so uh it was in 1978. Uh I was in uh Nicosia, Cyprus. And at the time, um the the Shah of Iran, Shah Reza Pahlavi, was having trouble uh with the uh the regime that wanted to come in, which was the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the grand imam. And his idea was to come in and he didn't like what happened, and uh, the standoff between the two of them was either the secular part of Iran that was Western and pro-American, and the uh Islamic fundamentalists that they wanted to uh turn the the whole Middle East into a caliphate, a religious caliphate, you know, run everything by uh as if it was the Holy Roman Empire run by the Pope, you know, very similar, but under Sharia Islamic law. And uh they had a lot of he had a lot of pushback against it. Um but uh after being uh he was tortured, he was beaten, and and uh for the most part, they just ostracized him and let him get out of the country. When he returned after all those months, um you now he put into power, went into play the regime that you have in there now, a fundal a fundalistic theocracy is what I'd call it, um, in Iran. And you had a lot of people that uh didn't have any any way to get around like they did today, get around um not having when you're not having your weapons, you don't have control of the government when only the only the people above you have the guns, like in a communist country, they make the rules and you just go along with it. I mean, you know, it's like us. Without the Second Amendment, what's what good's the other amendments? They just make a law and you're gonna go along with it, period. It don't matter what it looks like on a paper, and now their foot's on your neck. So as the Shah was having trouble with the uh with Iran, which at the time was one of our best, uh closest allies. And I'd been through it thick and thin with his dad, you know, during World War II, made sure that you know uh we got we had access to the oil. And at the time, you have the Russians over there. If you take a look at Iran, it's it's ancient Persia when you're looking at it. You know, they're not Arabic, because they are Muslim, but they're not Arabs. Don't call them Arabs, they kind of take offense to that. Anyway, uh then they do, they don't speak Arabic, they speak Pharisee. It's it's a little bit different language. But you can find the Persians back all through history, secular history wherever you look, and uh you can look back in you know, even in your Christian Bible, then your Hebrew uh you know uh book, the Torah, they're they're they're all over. Cyrus, you know, he was he's all through history. So Persia's been around for a long time. Tigris, Euphrates, right across the river over there in Iraq. But uh I thought anyway, the uh the uh trouble that we had is that a lot of the a lot of the Americans that were over there working for oil companies and working for high-tech industries in the 70s um were now in trouble like they would be now if you were over there working. Uh the Civil War is uh if anybody's ever seen a Civil War similar to the one in the United States that we had in the in the 19 in 1860s. It's horrible because it's family against family, it's brother against brother. Um it's it just splits people down the middle. And especially if it's a religious civil war, it's one of the the the worst kind, um, is that you know, my God is better than your God, you're talking about the same God, you know, you know what I mean? Um just look at what happens in England, you know, where you got the uh the Irish Catholics and the uh British Protestant. My Jesus is better than your Jesus, and you know, they go at it. That's uh no different over there in the Shiite or the uh Sharia uh type law, and they split it down the middle. So you had some of these people like Iraq and and a couple of the other ones, the Jordan, Syria, that were very pro-Soviet at the time. And of course, you know, they're linked right around the all the major oil fields in the world, and of course we have our friends and uh and allies in the in the West, which the Saudi family of Saudi Arabia and Iran at the time. So when the Shah started having trouble falling apart with his government, uh and very much similar to what you're seeing now, uh putting a heavy foot down, that new regime came in and took over, and they just say just cleaned house. Uh it was a total uh upheaval in the in the country. Uh Americans that were there, and not not just Americans, but foreign service locals, uh Brits, Australian uh people doing business over there, they uh they found themselves and their lives in jeopardy, and they're moving back onto the embassies and consulate to try to get out of there was uh was a need for additional security. So basically, uh we got called up and uh the call went out to what we call fat embassies, embassies that didn't have a specific terroristic or or security threat, uh big ones that had um, you know, uh a large detachment. For instance, Madrid, Spain had uh 25 uh Marines MSGs, Paris, I think, was the largest, what about 40. So they could pick one or two out of there and send them over what they call TAD, temporary additional duty to another country. But to most Marines, TAD is traveling around drunk, but I wouldn't say that at anybody. Um so when it came out, there was a volunteer list that came out and the NCOIC, non-commissioned officer in charge, uh he says, Hey Krause, you're uh you're a history buff, you like this kind of shit. Uh we uh we got a uh billet to fill over in uh Tehran, Iran. I said we were digging a we need to send one. I said, Are you interested? And I said, Well, what's it entail? After you told me what it entails, I said, Yeah, you're just gonna be gone 90 days, see ancient Persia, go over there in the Middle East, you know, and you know, take care of business, make sure all the Americans get, you know, out of there safe and sound. And, you know, at the time, um, when they started uh, shall we say, moving down in the in the in the amount of people that they have working at the embassy, going closer and closer to a skeleton crew as they were um as the security uh threats uh got more uh involved. It was it's easy though to set the the more people that you have that are left in the embassy, is that you know you're gonna be figuring out they all work for alphabet agencies. CIA, FBI, you know, and all all the alphabet agencies, they're they're all in there. And uh it makes it difficult then for them to do their job because all everybody spies on everybody over there. I mean, exactly where Iran was, you're looking at it's per you know perched in the middle between Asia and the Middle East, the sandbox with all the oil, just south, uh connecting in into Russia. And uh we actually use it. I mean, anybody doesn't think that there's uh you know intelligence agents that don't work inside an embassy. Every embassy in the world, bar, none, okay, none has intelligence agents in there. That's their job. They might not spy on the country they're in, but they're there to collect information, okay, and bring it back home. So that's what that's what it was. Is that we're there basically at that time to protect those folks because they were under a lot of stress, especially since uh the salt struggle. Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, one with the nukes and Russia was running out. And Congress, remember the old uh trust but verify motto? Um Congress at the time wanted to uh make sure that we could verify just what the Russians were doing, uh the same thing as we were, you know, downgrading and uh getting rid of the uh most of the nuclear weapons, the older ones. And now Tehran is is is uh the capital city of Iran. And Iran is a huge country. I mean, I'll give you perspective. It's two and a half times the size of Texas. So I mean, you know, you get a you picture how size Fibern through Texas, that's two and a half times that. I mean, it's huge. And it's uh it's very diverse in the in the mountains that are up there, the deserts, I don't know, it's got open, it's got open area to the ocean. So it's a very unique geographical uh type of country. So where we're sitting is that they're closing a couple of the uh consulates in other cities in there, and the everybody just has to, if you're gonna work it, work it out, if you had anything to do, you had to come to the embassy in downtown Tehran. So that makes it a pivot point for if anybody wants to target it, why for the most part, um, you know, they needed more security. So in uh I think it was uh September near my birthday in uh 1978, you know, I packed my bags and they said, uh you'll be going to Athens, Greece, spending a couple of days, get your paperwork done, and off to Tehran you go. And uh and that's you know, just wow. Halloween and my birthday in uh ancient Persia.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

But they sent just you. Was there a contingent of Marines already there and you were joining them, or it was literally just you go?

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Oh no, sir. No, there was 19. You have a uh T T b uh TO, table of organization, which is the standard amount. And they had not only just uh 19 Marines assigned to that station, actually 20, with the NCYC, non-commissioned officer in charge. Um, but then also you all you have uh other military that are there, uh Air Force and Army as uh as uh advisors um to the to the Shah's Army at the time. So there's probably over about I'd say about 40 U.S. military personnel, uh, most of them um in uniform, and you could tell that we're at Marine Security Guards. So they had 19 and the uh I'm sorry, they had 14, and they brought six more, which made nineteen. So uh the temporary ones that came from Madrid, uh Rome, uh the other cities, uh, we came in one by one by one or two, whatever it was, and we bolstered it to eventually, before the embassy was assaulted, uh 22 Marines total on deck.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

And what's it like day in and day out preceding the attack?

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Well, when we got there, it's it's weird because I got the wrong briefing going into Marabad Airport, the airport that serves uh Iran, uh Tehran. And of course, in normal circumstances, define normal over there, um, you would uh have a three-piece suit, they buy you nice three-piece suits, and you you really stand out with your haircut, like you know, you're not working at the embassy. I know, but the end, this is 1978, 79, put it in perspective for you time-wise, and the fashions and whatnot. So uh I get off at the uh at the airport and I'm waiting for my my my duffel bag and you know suitcase, and I get met by uh embassy personnel guy in a uniform, I know, in uh in a suit and tie. But what he did have with him was an was uh two other Marines that were in combat uniform, BDUs. They have camouflage stuff you see today, BDU battle dress uniform. And uh he walked up to me and I guess I stood out like a sore thumb, and he said, uh Sergeant Krauss. And I said, Yes, sir. Uh he introduced himself and uh he said uh I guess you didn't get the memo on what to wear over here, and I said, no, sir, not not at all. And he said, Well, he says, uh, here, and he hands me a flak jacket, an old, uh, I'd say old old type of a flak jacket that has uh the old little uh ceramic plates in it, heavy as hell. And he said, put this on. I thought he was joking. I know, really. I mean, you know, I said, uh what's this? He said, no, just put it on. So I'm putting this on over top of a three-piece, you know, suit. And he gave me a helmet. He says, Here, you'll need this. I said, Where the hell are we going? He said, You'll see in a minute. And he said, let's go. And uh the other two Marines we uh were armed and we went outside uh into a uh to get our taxi, our quote taxi. And I said, What about my stuff and you know, my my gear? I said, Don't worry, it says it'll be it'll be sent over to the embassy. He said, Okay. So the old M113, M113, uh half-tracked military vehicles that were I guess they were left over from World War II. That's what it looked like. Um it's completely enclosed the case, armor, armor plated, uh, up into, I guess, you know, uh a heavy, heavy machine gun, maybe, I don't know. But uh, you know, that's how they opened that door and it was like a vault inside. And I went, oh my god, this is my this is this is my Uber, this is my uh at the time, my taxi. I said, Yeah, get in. So they didn't have a weapon for me at the time, and uh, just felt completely out of place. Nobody was talking much, except that uh we could uh open up uh the reason that we had, they were giving me excuses of reason that we had a driver such an armored, you know, personnel carrier. The city was just in in shambles. It looked like what it's looking at today, if you go online and take a look at it. I mean, it was uh we we opened up the little gun slots that are uh were there so we could look out and see what was going on. And now I can see a cars are burning, there was dead bodies inside the uh in the cars, there was people hanging from the uh from the from the bridges, uh there was a sporadic fire from different directions, not directly at us, but you you know you could hear the pops for the rifles, and I say, damn, I mean you just don't know. He said there was so many different people here, so many different little different factions, uh that they a lot of little different basic factions or tribes even uh that didn't like the Shah that wanted to get away from him, but they didn't completely trust Kamini and his uh his group either, his Muheddin. So um you're talking about needing a damn scorecard to figure out who the hell is shooting at who at what day. So we drove back to the embassy there and uh went right through the gates. They stopped, they looked at the the Marines, looked inside, we panned them our our IDs and we went through the gate. But uh rolling through there is that I see buildings bombed out. Uh like I said, there was bodies still in cars that were burnt. Uh almost a lot of the buildings were uh on fire or spray painted in in Farsi, I guess some type of graffiti or something. But it was a typical revolutionary type city, you know, capital city that's uh undergoing you know a battle, uh battle zone environment.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

So what was your uh first briefing once you actually got on base? You're you're in there now and they go, okay, here's what's going on, or just threw you in the deep end.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

I was reported uh directly when my orders were reported to the NCOIC of the uh of the detachment, uh gunnery sergeant Willie Sutton. And uh he was waiting for me. He knew that I was coming in, you know, sometime and you know, that that night. He he brought he brought me in and he again he made a comment about I guess you didn't get the memo about no, I already heard about the memo. You don't need to chew my ass anymore. I said, I'm gonna make note next time I come here. And he said, Okay, here you go. I said, uh we'll get you uh get you squared away. Here's what's gonna happen. Um he basically gave me uh what the rules were. Uh the 12 or 13 Marines that were stationed there, okay, that were the cadre of it, they were the ones who were standing posts and knew the people, knew the uh the nomenclature of of the different buildings. Now, see the embassy is about 27 acres. It's it's a huge one, it's one of the larger ones. And it had uh several different buildings and high-rise apartment complexes on it. It was very nice, very nice. Older, but I mean it was it was really nice. Um and he was saying that but with uh with the new ones that are coming over, like us, the temporary uh TDY or temporary duty Marines, we'd be standing posts um in and around the outsides of the building, not having that much to do with the people inside. Because they've been there for the reason they've been standing watching guards. They know the people, they know their badges, their IDs, they know where they're supposed to be, where they're not supposed to be. There's a lot of protocols on security in and around uh especially the chancery building where all the work is done. Um he said if there's any uh special bodyguard or something like that, you'll be escorting, you know, the uh ambassador uh Sullivan or the Charge Affairs, DCM, um, deputy chief of mission, whoever it is. And uh it's just you know, for the most part, he says, uh you'll be standing posts uh outside in and around, egress in or our uh ingress or egress in and out. So it's gonna be very important, you know, that you know, you pay attention to uh, you know, what's going on here. We have a lot of people that are playing games with us and trying to get in here. Um and lately we've been going through a lot of harassment. Um people that are supporting uh the Muhaydin and supporting Khamini, the revolution, which ended up now to be the regime you're dealing with, you know, presently. Um they would they would start riots um at the they would basically there was a uh soccer stadium, I remember, down by about two miles down the road, um, down the main avenue from the embassy. Uh hell it could hold 50,000 people, and they'd have it full um, you know, of protesters, and you'd get them all wound up, burning the American flag, etc., etc. And uh they'd go off and down the street, get what they call uh embassy road from all the uh Western embassies that were there, the Brits, the Canadians, you know, et cetera. And they'd throw Maltov cocktails, they'd shoot into the buildings sometimes, just general harassment, you know, drive-by shootings and and whatnot, um, standing out front. Now, the rule of thumb back then was that everything uh everything on the wall or the gate and inside is supposed to be sovereign territory, American sovereignty, like being in the U.S., okay? That's several that's U.S. sovereign territory. How we found out that was a fallacy was the hard way. Usually, though, from the gate to about the sidewalk or something like that, is kind of like a neutral area, uh similar like what we have embassies in in Washington, D.C. We'll have uh the uh what's it what is it called GSA uh police to it's a special uh federal type of police, but they're federal, and they'll guard the areas in and around just outside those embassies, but not they wouldn't have jurisdiction in America to stop or detain people that were uh for uh breaking regular civil laws, that would be up to the Washington, D.C. police. These guys are set up the you know the same way. So the small area that is between the embassy and the gates um was was uh to the streets were was great. We call them the Farsi police because that's what they looked like. They had different uniforms. Some were trained, some were you know, just retired, whatever. They they knew somebody, so they got a job. A lot of them were helpful because they they would they were go-betweens and they they spoke the language and that they could tell, you know, what who were standing in line and who wanted to get into the embassy, what they were doing, or what their basic desire of work for uh reason for coming to the embassy that day was. So our ingress and egress was was very important that, you know, who was coming in, check all the vehicles for bombs, check all the mail that comes in. I mean, it's just everything's scrutinized really close. Um and then of course the uh they didn't have the regular police uh out there on the streets. There was the Shah's uh army at the time. He had uh nationalized everything, uh National Guard, and uh basically they were under martial law. That was it. After about 10 o'clock at night, you know, stuff was you know shut down. If they if there was vehicles out there, there was either military responding to some type of uh um uh call or something or some type of event, or it was the terrorists that would, you know, that'd drive by and just shoot the shit out of the uh out of the building, throw the Moltoff cocktail over, and our response would be to go out there and you know put the fire out or you know, m make sure that there's no breaches actually in the in the security gate.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

So they're not using the Moltoff cocktails as some kind of distraction while they're coming in somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Quite possible. Yes, yes. That's the that's the least of our you know worries at the time, but uh certainly one that we had to look at all the time. Yeah. You know, look over there, and then you know, that's it's Elvis, and then it they backdoor you somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

It's very simple. And what were your rules of engagement? If people taking pot shots at the buildings, you've got Molotov cocktails, are you able to engage?

SPEAKER_02 34:30

At the time now, okay, you're you're talking over several months. Um no. Uh under no com uh no conditions whatsoever that we were allowed to be. We had to request permission to fire if it came to anything that would go over outside that embassy. If there's any chance of any one of our rounds or anything that we fired at them, no matter who it was, you know, you had a unless it was just immediate danger that somebody walked up to the gate, you know, and pointed a gun at your face, you know, yeah. If you had nowhere to cover concealment, no, you shoot first. You know, you're already behind the power, you know, power curve people. Oh, absolutely, yeah. So, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. But no matter what, uh, and times we saw people getting beat, we saw people getting shot. Uh, I saw a guy getting stabbed and beat up, and you know, and he wasn't more than, let's see, 12, 12, 40. He couldn't been more than 40 feet, uh, judging by the sidewalk on the street. And, you know, it's it's just uh you want to do something, you know, you have that the uh that mentality you just want to help someone, you're there to you know serve and protect you. Normally would jump in or help if I was in the United States. Not allowed there. Everything outside that wall is none of your business, and you can't of course we didn't have any internet. Remember, no internet wasn't around, no dot-com. Your cell phone wasn't even conceived of yet. So you're not gonna be pulling out your phone and and taking photographs or anything of it. Not that you're allowed to anyway in the embassy. That's a big no-no. But uh the uh it it's uh at first, yes, we it got uh September, October, November, but then after about November, it started to uh it started to escalate a bit. And in and around, uh let's say at the time, we were all uh we were carrying M16 uh uh.223 or 5.56, however you want to look at it. And uh we were uh loaded for bear, we had uh we had uh uh tear gas and we had side arms. Uh they didn't have enough side arms for everybody that was issued, so uh when we went to get our uh issue of side arms, you know, you had a pick of what was left. And since I got there that late, uh I had a 357, I think it was a Smith and Wesson. Um yeah, it was a Smith was a 357. Um 38 combat loads, and it's just normal, you know, kind of police police work and uh and M16s. And probably uh you had your minimum requirement for the table uh is that you had a a you stood post, you had a minimum of 200 rounds. I carried about 600 on me, you know, different magazines. So I just didn't want to get caught. Shorted at a time, you never do, you know?

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

The old faction is that you can never have too much ammo in a firefight, right? So um uh things started to change after they started to uh uh infiltrate and come through. Um we found out that they uh had stolen some uniforms and pretended they were Farsi police, and we busted them uh coming in through the gates. Uh it wasn't really an attack, but they uh I'm sure that it was uh intel uh to come through and and you know probe what was going on, get information and bring it back to a a future attack. There was a basically uh gotta be a recon, a quiet what they call quiet recon without you know without weapons. So that really your guys that pinged them in the fake uniforms? Yeah, we catch them.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

We we we go we caught them. And can you detain them?

SPEAKER_02 37:48

We get detained, but then we call the local police and you know how diplomats go, okay, fine, they'll take care of it later, and and they they they kick them out. So we just started we just had a uh crimp down on uh not allowing them to get around or or even in they the ones that used to be able to come into the outside posts and have coffee or chai, tea with you or something like that, and talking, you know, shoot the shit, that was fine, but now they you know it that was off. They just ruined it for everybody and now they almost became like adversaries. And it was terrible because everybody's eyeballing each other. You don't know who, you know, whose side these people are on. They all look alike and they all speak the same language, and you know, it was uh it was it was difficult at that time. But remember we heard that the Shah was uh was his his position was getting tenuous, you know, to stay right around Christmas, and uh that he was possibly ill and going to leave the country for uh medical uh medical reasons. Uh I think he had link lymphoma at the time. They weren't specific, but it came out later. And he talked about it, and it was uh we only had uh a c a couple uh television uh news is but the guy. Remember, no internet, you know, nothing like what you had today. Uh you had the BBC and you had you know a French station. If you didn't speak French, if you didn't speak uh Farsi, you better speak British. That was about I know that was about that's all it was. About as close to you know English as you're gonna get. Um and uh you know, so and then then again, that's the that's the media for you, so whatever twist they're putting on it. But uh we would see what was going on out there, then we see what was on the news, and they say, wait, how do you spin this? It's there's nothing like that. You know? And uh and then we get our intelligence briefs, you know, the CIA guys or FBI, Secret Service, everybody was there, all the F all the Alphabet agents all had a different mission. Um some were secret squirrels, you couldn't know. Uh we knew, but you couldn't you could never tell anybody what they were. They had dual or sometimes three three different uh IDs at times. Other ones are uh you know, like FBI agents, we always could tell who they were. They always need the suits and ties and things. And you know, if there was something, some type of federal investigation going on, you know, that's what they were there for. And I know so but uh far and few between right about I think it was January sixteenth, uh then we got notice, we got a uh uh we got called in for a uh briefing, and uh General Leyland Holland, he was the uh they called the Amish Mag, which was a uh a contingency of uh special forces and uh uh combat training uh uh advisors to the Shah's army at the time. And he was the uh he was the c he was the commander of it. Uh brought us in and gave us an intelligence briefing. And he had said us that the uh Shah's leaving and uh things could get very, very tenuous in here and that we're gonna start going to uh you know different types of posts, shutting down certain posts and putting two and three other Marines where they normally, you know, just have one. And uh we're changing call signs, we're changing radio traffic. So I thought those, you know, it was a good idea. And it for the most part it was uh it was tactically sound until we got, I think it was February 2nd, two weeks later. Once he shah left and and they found out that he had taken about 22 billion dollars with him, and that's a lot of money back then. It's like ten times that today. And uh he just you know transferred a lot of that money out, his wife and his uh and his son, his whole family gone. Um that's when he, I guess he went to uh Egypt and then Algeria, whatever. And that's when it it got out that he was going to be uh not coming back, and then he's been found with you know terminal cancer. And uh so the people went crazy. They they just thought that he had taken all their money from him, and plus you had the hard hard line agitators that are working for Khamenei and that he was you know evidently coming through. In the meantime, the government doesn't have anybody, you know, in charge, who's in charge of the government. Uh they waited till they waited for two weeks until uh the Hyatola uh Khomeini had come in and taken over. And when he did, the whole place changed dramatically, 180 degrees. I said uh um they went through and they became he just landed with the and uh where these troops came from is still uh uh part of a quandary for the most part, but the Air Force and the Navy both capitulated over to Kamini, and then when the Army didn't have anywhere to go, they were fighting it out for about two weeks. And uh it's very similar to what you got here is that some of them were uh following through and supporting the Shah and uh anti-Khamene, uh, but a lot of them were just throwing literally throwing their weapons down, walking away, take their hat, their their helmets off, lay it in dead down in the street and walk away and go home. Said, you know, I I I'm done with it. I'm not shooting at my brothers, I'm not shooting in any, I don't want to be you know responsible. And that left us completely, you know, vulnerable because now we don't have the Farsi police we can trust. And the ones that are in the street, um, the Army, which is the real police force over there, law enforcement, they weren't around at all. So, you know, that's kind of what the briefing was we got. So I said uh, you know, uh we went on a we went on an alert uh let's see, February 2nd was February 4th when we went on alert, which would be uh 12 hour 12 hours on, 12 hours off. Uh things were getting really dicey uh with with drive-by shootings and people take pot shots at us. Uh occasionally we'd have a uh the high-rise apartment complex in and around the uh and the business buildings around the rooftops look down into the embassy. And uh you could see uh uh every once in a while someone up there would uh you know take pot shots at us. You'd you'd hear it, but you'd be hoped that you know, if it didn't hit you, you were lucky it got by you. You know, so uh trying to travel from one part of the embassy to the other, you had to, you know, move quickly and you know, not just walk around like it like you were, you know, uh walking walking down uh a uh Sunday afternoon. It it it changed quite a bit.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Um and still the rules of engagement are the same. You've got people look shooting at you from the roofs, you got drive by shootings and you're Still not allowed to engage.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

Yeah. Wait for this one here. Now comes, yeah, I'm glad you asked that, because it's in my book, and uh till this day, um it still was uh up until the book was out, long story short, it was classified for uh who gave the order, but what I'm about to tell you um is out, it's common knowledge now. They call us in on the uh on the 12th of uh February, and that was a Monday. And uh normally uh they'd say, you know, report over to the armory and uh in the chancery building and uh you know see the uh NCO that's over there. I said, okay, that's all right, whatever. So we went over there for the duty and they took our M sixteens away. Uh-huh. They took the M sixteens away, uh the 223, and they armed us with Remington 870 P, the following police shotguns.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

I said, are you- What the hell was the logic with that?

SPEAKER_02 44:58

Thank you for that question. It's the same thing that just came out of my mouth. I said, Are you out of your friggin' minds? Who but and I I actually, because of my uh my seniority as a sergeant, I was actually number three uh in the uh in the detachment, senior-wise as a sergeant, but because they had they had a staff sergeant above us and then the gunnery sergeant. But you know, I said, I'm going in, I'm gonna go see the gunny about this. This is bullshit. And went over there and he says, I already know it, I know already, and I want to know what he's saying. And I raised holy hell with him. He said, Are you out of your freaking mind? And he says, just this is the orders. Now we work for the State Department, okay? They have operational control of us. They tell us what to do and we do it. You do that or you get road up and you're you're out of there, you're home again. You don't want that on your on your blemish on your record. Administratively, we're controlled by our Marine Corps. They take care of you know our food and and uh our our our uniforms and everything else. That has to do with Marine Corps uh you know administration. But operational control, whatever embassy you're at, the ambassador or whoever's in charge at uh at that time, uh he's the boss. I mean, yeah, people don't understand ambassador is the uh the effigy, I mean the FG is the uh the enlightenment of being uh what the president of the United States would be there, you know, and uh like the vicar of the president, you know, i in charge. So and we gotta we treat him just as such. We've gone through several types of the same training that the Secret Service does, and we do a lot of the same type of diplomatic uh procedures to you know to protect our assets because they're all over the place in there, and you just can't have them, you know, getting whacked and getting. Anyway, uh I raised holy hell about that, and I said, This is absolutely useless. Now you look at it and you say, you know, you got an A70P shotgun. You know, the P is for the police thing, you got a pi you know, pistol grip on it, and it's got a folding stock. You know, it's fine. So it looks really kind of ominous, ominous when you look on it, uh when you fold it forward, and then you know, if you've never seen it before, you go, Well, what the hell kinda is that? A grenade launcher or you know, whatever it is. No, we're we're familiar with it, we train with it, we qualify with it. Um, and I said, This is crazy. I said, now what kind of rounds are you gonna give us for you know in this? You know, he said, Oh, you can have what you can have whatever rounds you want, they said. So at that time I had gotten uh after I uh stepped back to when we were talking about uh when I was talking with the gunnery sergeant, he uh he had called over another corporal and he'd taken me over to the Marine House where we were staying, and they had gotten me some uniforms that you know came came close to fitting. So I had my battle dress uniforms on, which cargo pockets and everything. We just fill these things. I'm opening boxes and I didn't care what it was. Number number two shot, slugs, whatever you whatever they had with the time, number nine ski, number six. I mean, I ever was on the whatever you get get your mitts on and just dumping them in your pockets. And I said, no bandoliers uh, you know, or nothing like this. You know, I said, this is crazy. So you got you got seven and you got eight rounds in that before you got to reload in that in that thing. Seven and one in the tube, and one in the chamber. I said, what the heck? This is crazy. I raised hell with him, especially in the tactical point of view. I said, look, you got people that the Amish Mag, which was uh like I said, uh a training uh uh joint training operation with the uh Shah's uh troops, they had just taken over the uh the Amish Mag armory that's about three blocks down the road from where we were. Uh they the regular army guys just capitulated, walked out, and could you know what had a a complete arsenal of a National Guard arsenal? What it'd be like to have? Now at that time, their long-range uh table organization uh weapons were the uh Belgian FN uh G3 rifles. They call them J Say, you know, in in Forest. Those the ones that we're doing 762. Exactly right. 762, which is gonna punch right through that vest you got. That vest ain't gonna ain't gonna do shit for you, let alone a you know, a headshot or anything like that. You get hit with that. I mean, 7.62, you can just I guess I'm not just just remember you talk about hunting. You can hunt just about anything on the North American continent with that if you if you're a decent shot, you know. Anyway, so I raised Hellwood and I said, look, I said, we're already taking pot shots from from from snipers up there. It's a good thing that they just have iron sights for the most part, because they had if if they had scopes, you know, uh we could we could we'd be taking uh you know a lot of casualties right here. And there's nothing nowhere we can shoot back. Even if we had M16s, I don't know if we could, you know, have to, you know, what kind of fire we'd have to, you know, use plunging fire of some type to try to you know get to them. And once they get one, two, three, four sniper shots and then move, you know, by the time you you zero in on them, they're gone. It's crazy. So uh now you're gonna give me a shotgun that at the best, if I got a rifled slug, at 50 yards I might hit something? Are you out of your mind?

SPEAKER_00 49:56

And then if you're not gonna be able to do that, this was the ambassador making this decision, or this was coming down the chain of command and he was having to tell you.

SPEAKER_02 50:03

There you go. You got to get into that book and get to the point that I didn't know at that time. Later on, yes, it it's basically the the ambassador makes the decision, whoever he's talking to in Washington, and he did it through uh Colonel Lil and Holland, who came down, he's an army colonel, so he goes into the NCYC and says, Here's what's gonna happen. The Marines are gonna, you know, they're gonna surrender their their M16s, and they said, What, what, why? They couldn't give us a reason why. And if you the more you asked, the more you got your ass chewed. Okay. You just uh you can't ask why. You just to do or die. Do or die. Oh my god. And uh later on, when I tell you in a book, if if it we found out exactly what had happened. Um, but that was that was that's later, you know, in the in in the in the week for the most part. So uh Yeah, the rules are engaged for me so I said well, they stand the same. Well, how the hell can they change? Uh you know, you know. So that was we went on uh I guess we got a uh television alert that uh there was uh on uh on the embassy after they gave us a shot. Because if they I don't know when it came out, but if they had told us an attack was imminent, I wouldn't have gotten my shot. You wouldn't have gotten no shotgun to me. That's that's crazy. 12 on, 12 off. And I remember it in February it was uh it was cold as hell, and it was February 14th. And since uh Tehran's about eight hours ahead and uh in in time zone wise, so you know I'm uh I'm doing on the the midnight watch back in the there's a gated area in the back of the embassy that is a double gate. It goes out to the outside and it allows non non-cleared non-employees allowed to come into the restaurant, the Caravan Sway restaurant to eat, but it also allows them to go into a little PX uh you know stop and rob shore uh store that they have there. Um kind of like one of your 7-Elevens or you know, whatever you got here, Magic Marts. But on a on a larger scale. And they like being able to buy American food or you know, their their stuff, but they weren't allowed on the embassy the second the second gate that's through. And uh at night it's locked up and secure, so it was that that was my post until the morning of the February the 14th. And I was relieved that morning at about eight o'clock and it was ice cold. And I remember something, Terry, that something just didn't seem right when the when the uh other two Marines, Henry Lochek and uh uh Jackie Nojos, uh Sergeant Corporal uh came and relieved me in the morning and he says, Hey, hey, how gave him the gave him the brief. There is no brief. I said nothing happened. It was un eerily quiet for what was going on. I said, normally there was no drive-by's, no shootings, no noise, no nothing. It was just extremely quiet. I said, for once, I said, yeah, it's uh it's also quiet this morning. Suspiciously quiet. Exactly right, suspiciously quiet. And I said, What's what is conspicuous by its absence? What's missing here? Activity. I know and I said, nah. I and normally we would uh we would have the uh the p uh couple of the Far C police come through the gate, they get I checked, I said, I let them in through that gate, but they weren't there at all, they never showed up. I didn't realize that at first. So anyway, I gave my brief to the other two Marines, and I I was hungry, I was I was tired, I was cold. So I went into the Caravanas Ray restaurant, and I had a little uh friend that that was in there, he's a little older than me, but a nice guy. His name was Menachie. And uh it'll break your heart the story when you read when you read it in the book about him. Anyway, so he's a really nice guy, couldn't one of the most friendliest people in the world you ever wanted to meet. Had two beautiful daughters that were studying that wanted to move to the United States when they graduate here. And I I told him, he said, you stay in touch with me. I said, I got sisters, and I said, you know, you know, the we'll be able to help you over here if you need any, you know, contacts or something. We're in the uh, you know, Philadelphia type area. So it's always nice to have a contact in in a foreign country, trust me. And uh, so you know, I I bid him good morning, and he would I would I speak by Farsi to him and he would he would he would he'd correct me in times and I know it's good because later on the the some of the words that he had taught me came in came in handy when I was in prison. And so Menachi and uh saying, hey uh he said, uh Sergeant, he called me Sergeant Ken. He said, Sergeant Ken, I said, it's very quiet this morning and the Farsi police are not here. And I said, That's it. I said, I knew there was something wrong. No Farsi police outside. So I went outside and I checked, I looked over the wall. But now when you walk on the outside, it's the outer wall, and you're looking at uh the the name of that street is a it's a side street, it's a Kuchibijan. And we looked out there and said, nobody's at their post. A little guard shack, another thing, nobody's there. I said, that's weird. It's the middle of the week, Wednesday, 8 30, 9 o'clock. People should be starting to be coming to work back and forth. The traffic, no, it doesn't seem to be around. Again, conspicuous bias absence kind of weird. So I called up uh I got on the radio, called Post One and told the Post One that is the command center at the Chancery Building, you know, are you aware that uh, you know, Farsi Police, etc., etc. Yeah, they've gotten reports about that at the main gate at the motor pool gate also. And I said, okay, just as long as you know, I said, uh, you know, I've been relieved and uh I'll be over at the restaurant. Well, anyway, I end up having breakfast, and uh it's about 10 o'clock or so. I went back to the uh the marine house and I'm dead tired, freezing my ass off. And uh I just remember laying down on my rack and I said, Man, I just took my helmet off my radio, put it in the put uh in the charger, and looking to see where my we kept our weapons with us now since we were on an alert call. And uh I laying back and I said couldn't even ha I haven't even taken my flag jacket off yet. And next thing I heard is a uh small arms fire, and it's really close. You know, you could tell how far away you know small arms is. I said, Oh damn, man, I'm I'm gonna I'm trying to get some sleep, and these guys are having a you know drive-by shooting like that. Then I heard a crack of a rifle, and and it again and again and again, I said, wait a minute. I said, you could tell, especially in your background, if you've been around weapons, the difference between a a rifle, a rifle, the the report of a rifle and that of a uh of a of a pistol. It's a pop and a crack, actually, and then more cracks and more cracks. And then all of a sudden I heard the radio uh squawk, and it was uh Corporal Downey, and he said, They're coming over the wall, they're coming over the wall. I'm taking hits, I'm taking hits, I'm hit, I'm hit. And he wasn't hit at the time, but they shot up the uh windows of the of the of the post where he was at, and the glass just you know sprayed him, but let him know. I what's it's close enough? I mean, I'd probably say the same thing. So just said when you're trying to get, you know, what's going on with the radio, and there's the old Motorola bricks, you know, they're about four pounds, and they're oh my god, they're they're crazy. And what's bad about them is when you hold down the push to talk, you you you clear the channel and you lock that channel out until you let go of it. See, so when everybody's and his brother's dog is jumping on uh jumping on the radio back and forth, you're just getting you know chopped up communications. And next thing, this is all happening in seconds, okay, 30 seconds. It's going from regular rifle fire to automatic rifle fire. And I said, holy shit, we're we we we don't have weapons. They took ours away. So who the hell is shooting at us? And that's when again, I come over to the wall, I'm taking rounds and request promotion of fire, and there's no command coming back. Not from not from the the uh post one, not from the ambassador, not from anybody. They didn't not listening or what? You didn't know. You just weren't getting anything back. So you make a decision on your own. So I grabbed hold of my round, I grabbed hold of my gear and I and went, I went running back to uh uh try to get get to the chancery. Our number one response uh that's uh protocols uh would probably be to get back to the chancery building, lock it down, make it an Alamo, and defend it floor by floor, you know, uh as as we needed. We had a we had a we had protocols in put in place. When I tried across, I could went through the Marine House and I tried to get across this open field, it's a soccer field now, had a swimming pool to one end and a soccer field, and I said, man, that's about 150 yards, man. And I could actually see uh bullets coming down from the high-rise apartment complexes, and in in the book I show you, you it's got a bird's eye view of that. They had the high ground, and and you can see snippets of the of the of their uh coming off the branches. You can see the uh windshield of the cars that are in the motor pool, you know, they're getting hit and they're popping. And I said, I said, there's absolutely no cover there. I don't care how fast you are, especially with all this gear and all these bullets and everything. I said, that's gonna be the slowest 150-yard dash I ever did. I said it'd be suicide. There's no way to get across over there. I said, they have the uh they got the height, they got us, you know, pinned down in an elevated position, they have the range of fire, the rate of fire, they everything. They had the uh surprise, they have everything in the in their favor. So I made a decision to get the second the second protocol is get back to the post that you just left. So I went back to the same post, and I'm here and now I'm hearing Farsi on the radio, and I said, Oh shit, they got the radios. Yeah, I hear Farsi on the radio. And it was it was wasn't the kind of Farsi where you're saying good morning or hello. It wasn't any of the Marines being friendly. I know it was very fr uh, very frantic. And I get back and the other two Marines were standing there, they had taken cover. And I got there and I said, Okay, what's up? I said, I don't know. I mean, we're getting attacked from from several different areas on the on the post. They're c they're shooting into the embassy from the high-rise department complex, keeping our heads down, you know, cover and fire, cover fire. And as they kept us down, people would climb over the walls, and you know, it was basic infantry tactics, is what it was. And they were they were good at it. I mean, they it wasn't that it wasn't that hard to figure that out. So they're pouring over the wall. Even if we wanted to engage them, they were more than 50 yards away, it'd be a useless shot, you know. And then you'd be giving yourself away, and then you you know, you in turn, you know, uh draw fire that which would they could, you know, light you up. Yeah. And uh so it's uh so I got back with the uh with the other two Marines. I said, okay. I said, uh I said they the outer gates bar the barricaded. I said, I guess we're now we know why the Farsee police aren't there, you know. Nice of them to let us not know what's going on this morning, you bastards, you know. And they uh I said, uh I said, uh we can't defend this position. We can't let this gate you know fall fall open. We can't let this gate here into the embassy compound be breached. I said, that's our orders, and that's where we stand. He says, okay, we can't make a stand out here. I said, and they have a bunch of civilians, what they call Foreign Service local employees, FSLEs. They're people that work at the embassy but aren't cleared to go anywhere. They have to have a red badge, they're cleared. Uh Filipinos, Pakistanis, I mean, people from all over, you know, Koreans, you know, local local Iranians, just, you know, workers, uh, secretaries, people in a motor pool, whatever they are. And I said, well, how many of them there? I said, I don't know. So I sent I sent Henry over to Corporal Lowchak over. I said, So you go in there, you round them all up, you get everybody over here, we're going into Karen Vance Fry restaurant. Jack, let's go get in the restaurant. I said, we'll bunker, we'll hunker down in there. It's the only ballistically defendable place. The other place is all windows, shopping windows and everything. You there's nowhere to hide, there's no cover and concealment whatsoever, no way to barricade it. The uh the restaurant was uh was a lot better off. And the only drawback was that once we got inside, we herded everybody inside, we looked at it, we barricaded the windows and the doors, we went, uh damn man, uh this place is made out of wood. And if they light this place on fire, we're gonna cook like a barbecue. Very uneasy feeling, you know. I said, but it's better than being in an area that you know you just be shot up. And uh by now, it's you could hear uh sustained fire over at radio. We try to call up on the on the hard line to post one, it was dead, it's either cut or they've been taken over. We don't know. And uh we're uh took a head count and let the people know what was going on and uh what we planned on doing. And at that time, we didn't know. We didn't had no idea. That's uh so you had you had little firefights going on in all different pockets of the embassy. Ambassador's house, uh, the motor pool, uh, the uh front gate, the chancery building, an area that at the time we could never talk about. It was called uh, you know, it got out now, but it's unclassified. It was called the mushroom. It was up underneath the uh the the swimming pool area, and it was a uh highly sophisticated sequel scroll place. And uh now so the it was uh uh it was several different little firefights going on all over. Um but they however had not we had not been breached yet. We didn't they didn't nobody even knew we we had no no contact whatsoever. We were just waiting for it, hopefully, you know, the three of us. And we did the head count, we had two 22 Americans along with uh the the the us three Marines. So, you know, you look at it and say, uh, you know, max of twenty-five. Um so uh waiting, you could hear the uh you could hear it with somebody had pulled up a 50 cal on a Jeep or on a vehicle near the on the compound. It wasn't at us, but later on we found out that did they they opened up we could we got blast doors that would come and close over the shutters if we if we got locked down. Um and they couldn't get in at that, you know, at that point. So they they took a 50 and it came in there and I don't know what the hell they got it from, but they opened up uh you know they opened up a couple of windows there and just blasted right through them. And so I said they're they're using a 50, because if you've ever been around a 50 caliber versus a uh a 7.62 versus a handgun, you know the difference. I mean it's just uh you know, I don't know how to explain it to you. Just it's louder, it's harder, and especially when it's only about 500 yards away. It's it's it's it's awesome. I said, what would they be using a 50 for? And then it comes to, you know, I said, well, that's how they're gonna get through the doors to get in the or the windows to get in the embassy with the the the chancery building itself. So it's uh just about that time a uh a vehicle, semi-ar semi-armor plated, I guess, but it looked like it was uh homemade for the for the most part. It was a really weird looking thing. Never seen anything like it. It wasn't American made, but it was heavy duty, kind of like a deuce and a half, and uh it blasted right through the outer gate and into our little compound area that we got. And I said, Oh shit, they're here. And I I said, Okay, get the uh and then this this uh they were uh you could call them terrorists, but we know in in the book I got pictures of what they looked like. And some of them had military gear on, some of them had mixed military and civilian clothes, wannabes, you know, with the with the helmets and stuff, but every one of them had a had a FN rifle. I said, these are probably the uh Fedin, which as opposed to the Muhey Dean, and under so many deans over there, you know, figuring out who the hell's what. These are the communist-backed guerrillas, and call them what you want back then. Okay, they weren't they're not students, they know that they're not students, okay. And so they had they were the ones that are the recipients of the arms that came out of the Armish Mag, you know, armory. And I said, uh, oh man, we got we got trouble. I said, shit, there must be uh about fifty of them. Now the little windows that are in the that form the the uh barrier uh are what they call their casement windows. They're about six inches square and they're three layers and they're opaque. You can't see completely through them, but you can see any shadows. Uh you've seen them all over. They're they're not popular nowadays, but in older buildings uh they're uh they they were very popular. Uh that's really what we could see through, but we they couldn't see us. And so as soon as they busted in, there was about fifty or sixty of 'em. And they just went running right away into the uh into the other store over there and just started looting that place. And I said, Well, that's great. I said, you know, hope they they stay over there and we don't have to deal with them. And Jack had said that I told Jack, he says, I said, What do you want to do? I said, Well, let's get these non combatants. I call them the Americans, they're not all Americans. Uh I said, get them back into the freezer area. I said, It's probably the most ballistically sound place we got. It's in the walls are the thickest and whatever. Because if the shooting starts, I said, you know, we're gonna have to face it and they don't need to be here. And so he he moved them at back out into back there. And I and I I remember talking to uh Corporal Low Chak and he saying, uh you realize it's just a matter of time before they uh come over here and start knocking on these doors and windows. I said, Yeah. And he said, Then what happens? And I looked at him and I said, Corporal, that's a very good question. We're gonna have to face that one when we get here. And uh so Jack came back out and uh sure shit, there it is. It took like two minutes later, they come start rocking the doors and and trying to look in the windows, and you know, they're screaming, uh, they're they're talking in Farsee. I don't know if they were talking to us or not, but I called Menace over, my little waiter friend. I said, Okay, who are these people and and and uh I don't know what do they want, what are they saying, you know. I'm trying to get some intel on them. And he tell you that uh he said, Oh, Sergeant Ken, they they are very bad people. He said, they fede ying. They said they're communists, they work with the Russians. And I said, they're they're they're bloodthirsty, they're hired guns is what they are. And uh he said, uh they d they you gotta be quiet. They can't know that we're in here. They know we're in here, they're gonna want to attack us. They said they will kill us. I said, they will definitely kill you being military. And he said, they will not go very go very go not go very well for the rest of the Americans that are in here and especially the women. Now, at the time, if you backtrack when I had just gotten off a post in the book I had the com uh I had the conversation two um uh young ladies that work for uh Callum Sequence Girls work for the uh intelligence uh community had uh come over to uh have breakfast that morning. They walk by me, show me their badge, say good morning ladies, whatever, whatever. And the uh they were having breakfast in there. So I mean I can't tell you if they're CIA, DIA, NRO, uh NSA, they were all in there. Minocci was telling me about who the uh who these who's who these attackers were. Yeah. And I said, man, that that's not good news at all. So the the uh uh Jack came back and the three of us sat back and said, okay, I said uh they're trying to get in through the doors. And I guess our movement inside gave it away that uh you know there was there was people inside they could hear us. So it it wasn't long before they started banging on the door and screaming in Farsi. And uh no, I I told Bonacci not to uh not to resp not not to respond. And they weren't gonna they're getting uh a little anxious and uh they started banging on the doors and and the windows looking in, peeking in, and then all of a sudden um one of them just uh went full automatic on his weapon and shot it up, shot up the door, and shot up the lock that was on the door. Now the door still barricaded, but uh the lock was was shot out, and then he beat he beat it with his uh it looked like an AK-47, but the same type of round, so you know what difference to Big 30 cal. And as he uh as he kicked the the lock through, he he stuck his hand through and and started to uh feel for the for the the latch or whatever. I mean I just instinctively, I mean my my weapon, my shotgun was slung on my side, I just instinctively pulled my right hand out and sh and and just shot, boom. And it's like 20 feet away. I c I can't miss. I I mean I was a very good shot, I'm a distinguished uh expert. So I mean at that range it was, you know, nothing. I could have I could have hit him with a with a BB gun. But anyway, the uh the round hit his hand and it exploded. I mean, his hand was just uh it was a red mist all over the door. He bullet back, and you could hear even over top of the screaming and the yelling, over you could hear him screaming and yelling over top of the the weapons and the 50 caliber going on. And I said, holy Toledo. I said, Oh my god. And I remember in my book, I rem I remember saying, uh responding, uh Corporal Lochek Henry looks over and goes, damn Sarge, holy shit. You know, and I was like, oh, what did I just do? So anyway, I holster my weapon, I say, get down, and we move up against the against the windows, and sure shit, that's when it started. The uh whatever happened, I mean, I could have liked to see the look on those other people's faces when that guy pulled that bloody nub back out and said, Oh my god, what was that? You know, what was left of it? And you know, so you know, their response was they all stood back. Oh, there's about 10, 15 of them, and they just started laying into us with automatic weapons. They shot the shit out of all them windows. I said the glass and everything was exploding. I mean, there something looked like out of a Hollywood movie. I mean, something like in a John Wick movie. I'm not kidding you, man. And the noise, how loud it was, you couldn't even hear yourself think. All you could do is hunker down and wait for a ricochet to hit you in the ass or something. Because all the bullets, we we were up against the wall. All the bullets were coming in through and over our heads for the most part. We were under their rate of fire, thank God for the most part. But they shot the shit out of the windows, and just there was a there was a lull in the action uh for the reloading. So they're just you know shooting automatic like crazy. Uh, I gave the command, I came up and I said, okay, let them have it. And we stuck our wind, our shotguns out the window, and then we we unloaded on them. The ones that are not combat trained, when they just stood there, you know, fumbling, farting around with their weapon, trying to, you know, put their magazine in, they were, they were, they were they were toast. We we hit them hard, we dropped about six or eight of them right then and there. And the other ones that were smart either ran or you know went for cover. They went behind that building, they went behind a uh dumpster, they they went behind that uh vehicle they brought in, whatever the hell they uh they were looking for, they found that you know, so back and forth we went with it. We fire a volley at them, they fire a volley at us. They try to move up, we we shoot them back. So this went back and on for about oh three, four, five times. And you know, we there'd be two of us, two of us firing at them, then then as we reload, the uh the third one third one would come up. I mean, it was just it was just like clockwork. It was you didn't even think about it. It was just it was just perfect timing, clockwork. And you could see dead and dying laying out there all over. And so there came a lull that we couldn't hear. There was no more shooting at the embassy. There's nothing. The only people that were shooting were these guys here. The 50 had gotten quiet, and now the uh we were wondering what was uh what was gonna be next. Excuse me. And I'm saying, uh, okay, the sit situation, sit rep. I said, ammo check. They check your ammo. We were down, each down it was uh maybe eight, ten rounds. I mean, one more round, one more, one more get-go, and then we were in in pistol range. I said, after pistol range, I said, uh, you know, we're gonna be able to go, you know, hold them out one more time. I said, uh, once we lose the uh uh the ability to uh interlock and fire with the uh shotguns, I said it's gonna be individual, you know, have at it Alamo T style with the with the pistols. I said you'll probably get six, eight rounds off, and I said, that's about it. I said, then you will probably won't even get the your reload. And I said, uh you know what comes after that, right? And with the the two of us, we looked looked at each other and I have my K bar and um my fighting knife and I said, uh it'll be hand to hand, gentlemen. And I'm telling you, buddy, that's you start to think about that, even though in all your training, I mean I was an air traffic controller, I w I I sit around up there and in an in a uh you know, drinking coffee, talking to pilots on the on the phone. I you know, says boot camping every once in a while, once once a year in training, and uh you go back through that. But saying they actually, you know, take a knife and stick it into another human being and twist it, you know, cut the, you know, when you you go after them and and you're going you're you're you're trying to remember where the biological points are, in the into the spleen, into the throat, you know, up under the arm. What are the quick kills? And uh I look over at I look over at uh at Jack and uh I said uh say you got a you got a fighting knife? And here's the the the funny thing, even in the book I say it is that uh uh the tension and the pressures is everything, you still get this sick sense of levity, you know, the situation. So I said, You got a fighting knife? And because I held mine up, I I had mine on my jacket. I said, Did you get a fighting knife? And and he goes, I'm Mexican, man. What do you think? So I laugh. So he's he's from Texas, Brownsville, Texas area, got a heavy Spanish accent. And Henry, he's from Boston. So he parks the car in the yard up there. So and I'm from the Philadelphia area. So the three of us aren't even speaking proper English. It's a wonder we even get along, you know, in a situation like that. It's funny as hell. Uh so it's uh so I looked at uh I said, uh I I giggle at what at what Jack said, and I look at Henry, and then Henry says, uh, no man, I ain't got no knife. But I bet you there's one in the kitchen. I said, Yeah, good idea. So he went in there and came back, and a few minutes later he had this big long nine-inch butcher knife. I said, Holy shit. I said, now the one thing is that our knives are in our sheaths, we can get them out. Where the hell are you gonna stick that thing? And he stuck it down inside his gun belt. And now he h he holds his hands up like this. I said, Oh my god, this is this is almost comical if it wasn't so terrorizing it it would have been. You know? So they says, uh, Jack's looking out the window, he says, They're moving up on us. And I said, God damn. I said, uh, I said, You realize that when they they're eventually gonna get through that door and it's gonna be hand to hand, and then Jack says, What about them in the back? Meaning the Americans that are and non-combatants, and I said, Yeah. Women and a couple secrets girls. I said, if they get their hands on them, that's really bad news. I mean, God knows what you know, what kind of bargaining chip or whatever, how abused they're gonna be. I know we got women there, we got you know, I said, it's a nightmare. It's an absolute friggin' nightmare. Uh so we uh we we had we we had uh one small little short round of uh of fire back and forth, and then it got real quiet. And that little in between there, it seemed like there was some steam pipes that were come up over top of the ground, but we had uh the combat engineers had putting all types of uh Constantina wire and block thing up there, but somehow somebody got up over top of that, got around behind us on our on our blind side. And he says, uh he says, uh, we got somebody over here because we can see that shadow through the through the uh glass. And I said, Okay. Uh I said, I put the other two marines back to the post where they were inside. One was over top of the door, the other one was uh over top. There's a second story up in a banquet area, and uh you could look down on on top through the transom light. So we had the best you know possibility, but with this guy coming in on our blind side now, it takes me off of the front post. So he's walking around, he's snooping trying to trying doors and things like that to try to get in. And just as he walks around the corner, I stick my shotgun out the window, out to one of the busted up windows that were all shot out. And this guy's goofy looking. I did I got don't have a picture of him, but I wear one that's similar of it, and I describe him in in the book. And it's a rotund little guy, and he's got a he's got a three-piece suit on with the uh necktie and a bandolier of 7.62 wrapped around him, but he's carrying a nine millimeter Uzi. I said, Denton, what the heck? Because it's comical, it's goofy. And I said, A fashion show of some type. You want to talk about a wannabe? Oh my God. But anyway, my shut my shotgun out there, and I noticed right away, and I just said, Don't move, don't even freaking move. And he he stopped and he you could see the body language right away. He wanted to reach for his Uzi that was by the side. And I said, Don't do it. Don't do it. Now we're 10 feet away. 10 feet. I can't miss him if if I was blind, I couldn't miss this guy. And I don't know what kind of rounds I got in there, you know, because during the fight, you're shooting, you know, number nine shit, number number six, and boom. And he said, Whoa, that's a slug. You didn't know Demor, you were loading them things, firing her off and loading there, you never know what the hell was coming to that, too. So we uh I said, uh, you speak English, and he said, Yeah, a little bit. I said, Well, I said, uh, I don't know who you are, what you are. I know, but basically the conversation went this way is that uh I said, I don't know what you want, but we have non-combatants in here. Your people, my people, people that have nothing to do with whatever you want. I said, but I said, so I'm gonna tell you right here, right now, I said, here's what's gonna happen. I said, we're gonna negotiate. And I got you a gunpoint. I said, we need to get rid of these people out of here. They don't need to have any part. They don't need to be terrorized, they don't need to be tortured, they don't need to be shot or killed. I said, You got Pakistanis, you got Filipinos, you got your people, my people, everything. He says, We can't let we cannot let you leave. And so the argument went back and forth, and I said, Look, man, this shotgun's getting mighty damn heavy. I said, I'm gonna give you one last shot. I said, These people come out go out the embassy door, the back service gate, right there, under our cover. You can look at them, you can frisk them for any weapons, but I said, no funny business. I said, You you even slightly, inappropriately touch one of them women, you're gonna get shot in the face. You understand that? And then as we went back and forth, I said, Man, that shotgun's getting so damn heavy. Terry, I'm telling you. And I'm just saying the whole time, Lord, please, please, Lord, let him take the deal. Let him take the deal. Because if he says no and wants to be stupid, well, then I gotta blow his head off. And then I'll no now with guarantee they're gonna they're gonna slaughter us. So so uh he makes the deal and he calls another guy over, and he's uh I got I got a beat on him with a shotgun, and the other guy's walking over here, and I go, what the fuck? And now there's two of them standing in front of me. And the book I called a BOGO, B O G O, Blast One, Get One, you know, and I said, This doesn't this day just doesn't sometimes it gets better and sometimes it gets worse. And it's a been a miracle so far. I mean, when you read in my book, uh, I said in the back pages, this book is a book of miracles. Pick them out. And one of them, one of them I'll give you away, is that that we're standing up toe to toe and we're firing, firing at the end, and I can see rifle fire less than 50 yards away. I can see the flash. I can see them just holding it in unorthodox positions and just spraying and shooting like crazy. It looked like the uh tombstone. It really did. The gunfight, the OK Corral. It's unbelievable. I see the flash and I'm waiting, I'm waiting to get the bull, you know, hit me. And uh, Terry, not a single one of us got a scratch on us. Nothing. We're dropping them like it was a video game. You just look at the bead, boom, you're coming down, boom. I mean, it was like crazy. And you switch over and you're saying, out, reload, you know, coming up with your handgun. It was it was crazy. And the noise was just uh you're talking about firing a rifle, two or three of them, shotguns inside a room. Inside a room. Oh my oh my god. You know, try that, you know. You you've been at the right, you've been at the range before and just said not have your ears on and you get popped. Try a couple hundred rounds like that. It's bizarre. So anyway, Jack comes walking over and he says, What do you got? Because he sees me holding my shotgun on this guy, and I said, Okay, we're gonna make a deal. Uh, I think we got a way out of here. And he's looking at me saying, What's that guy still doing still alive? I said, Don't kill him, don't touch him. I said, He's our meal to get out of here. I said, I just negotiated, here's the way the plan's gonna be. I said, You said you're gonna cover the door. Uh Stanley's gonna cover the uh Henry's Henry's gonna cover the uh the Lansum uh upstairs. He said, they're gonna go one by one, gonna open a door, and they're gonna frisk them, they're gonna get out just through that gate to the motor pool gate that they busted through. I said, they're gonna get through, and I said they're gonna be running down the alley and they're gonna be gone. I said, when all those are gone, when all the non combatants are gone, it's just us three left, I said, we're gonna surrender our gears. I said, uh, I know we don't have any orders to surrender. I said, but uh at this point we're not gonna be able to hold them off again. I said they come through that door again, you know what it's gonna be. They'll overwhelm us, and then they got these people, and I I can't live with that. I I just can't. And he goes, Yeah. Okay, amigo, let's let's do the dance. And uh I said, Okay, uh get Henry up here and we'll talk about it. So the three of us agreed. I said, Yeah, that's what we're gonna do. So I explained to this a guy, and that's that's exactly what happened. One by one, they uh we we covered him uh uh above him and a crossfire, and they they they frisked him and out they went. And I felt so relieved, Terry. I said, I mean, all right, dear God. I said, uh here's here's miracle number two. I said, a few minutes ago we were down to nothing, and there was no chance of us getting out of here, no communication. I said, one more round one more round of firefight and it's over. And I said it was a miracle that he let him, the good Lord let him come in front and and be basically captured by me, negotiate, and I'll tell you what, that's the longest time I had is holding that shotgun and then resting it on that on what that windowsill, watching him. And he I I had him sit down and I told him, I said, You move your cheek of your ass one inch, and I'm gonna decorate that wall behind you with your brains. And I wasn't joking. I mean, I just staring at that bead the whole time, the whole time your fingers on the trigger, and you're just watching his hands, and you're saying, Am I really going to be able to blow this guy's brains out by looking at him? It's one thing when they're shooting back at you, you know, 50 yards away, you're shooting, you're shooting, you're shooting like that, but just saying, I mean, this is like cold-blooded murder. But no, no, it's not. Because I there's no hate in my heart. I don't know this guy, I don't hate the guy, I don't have any vengeance on him. I just want him, if he doesn't, if he does what I say and he doesn't go for his weapon, he's gonna live to the day. I don't know how my day's gonna go after that, but I mean, this is just the way it's gonna be. So they got them all out that they got them all out the end of the day. I said, okay, give us five minutes. I said, we'll um barricade the door and you come in. I said, all my gear and our Marines, and you can have us. No more of your people die, no more of my people die. You're the hero, you look big, and you know, you know, you're you're the winner. I said, uh said, you know what happens if you uh if you if you don't. So basically, we um barricaded the doors, we took all our equipment, we we smashed our shotguns, bent them up, broke them, we took all any any more ammo that we had, we shoved them in the we went into the refrigerator, we put them in the toilet bowls, we put them in the in the toilet tank, we stuck them down inside the the big containers of ice cream, anything we could do, take the radios, bust them, anything we could use, it was gear to deny them, and put it in the floor, right in the middle of it, the floor. And we screamed outside to them, so they said, okay, you know, we will barricade the door, come on through. And just then they they uh they busted through, they kicked the door open, and this big burly guy had a had a little subgun. I don't remember if it's some it's 47 years ago. I don't remember it be seen if it was an Uzi or not. It's just a short, well, it could have been a Mac 10, it could have been an Ingram, I don't know. He busted through and he looked at me and we're standing up there with our hands behind our heads, and we're saying, Taslim, Taslim, Taslim Tony, you know, surrender, surrender, don't shoot. We surrender. And just at that moment, miracle number three, and I hate to even think called this a miracle, but it is from my perspective, I see him, I see a flash, I see, I see a movement to my to my right. And it's Menachi, my waiter friend. He'd been hiding in the linen closet right to the side. And as he as they busted through the door, he moved right in front of him. I don't know why. Maybe he was just startled. I don't know whether he was scared, I mean, but he stepped right in front of me and took the blast full in the chest. He hit he took the blast. And I'm standing there saying, Minacci, no, no. Oh my God, oh my god. And he fell, his he fell. I caught him in my arms and he fell down, and I just looked at him, and his chest is all bloody. And I see his eyes glass over. It's just like uh you know they just become milky, they just glass away. You can see the spirit, the the energy in the man just just dissipates. Just I it's like it just went right through me. I said, uh they moved in and they went, they ran it everywhere, they ran upstairs, they ran, they checked out the whole place, and while I'm sitting there holding him, I look up and here's this asshole that you know I had just sort of been negotiating with. And uh I I nicknamed him later on the Frito Bandito. If you ever seen that that show back in the 60s and 70s, it was the Frito the guy, he was such a big rotten guy, and he looked uh he looked Hispanic for what this guy did with a big mustache, and I don't know, I was it's just goofy looking guys, what he reminded me of uh under stress. And he walks in and man, I'm telling you what, he was pissed. He looks in there, he looks at me, he looks at Menace, he looks at me holding him, he's uh he looks at the pile of all the junk out there, and he was saying, This is what you Americans, this is how you Americans make deals, this is how you negotiate. No wonder everybody wants you dead, no wonder they hate you so much. And I told him, I said at the time, I said, uh, the uh I told you that you could have me in my Marines, you could you could have all the equipment. I didn't say what what shape it'd be in. And he said something to some guy that was too on my blind side, and I caught a boot right above and cut my eye open. Hit me so hard it rolled me backwards away from Minochi. They picked me up and they took Jack and and Henry and they started slapping them around, poking them with bayonets. They had a a bayonet on a on a uh on a couple of the rifles, poked them with the bayonets and took them outside. Now mind you, it's it's it's it's blow freezing out there, even for this time of the uh you know in the morning, and it's uh the wind's blowing, it's free and freezing cold. And we don't have any cold weather gear on now. We've taken it off. And it's all piled up there. You know, we ripped it open with our knives, you know, made everything useless. So I'm standing there and he's he's got my got my hands above my head, and he says something to this as soon as I had told him that, and it got kicked and I opened up my eye, he stood me up and he was screaming and yelling at me. And I guess some of the guys looked at what the deal was and seen the all the shit that was there and the condition it was in, and just kind of laughed at him. So that didn't help me much. So he said something to the guy in Farsi, and the guy in the Farsi had an AK-47, and he just he he rammed it into my into my rib cage and broke a couple of ribs. So that put me down on the ground right there. As I'm laying there, he's he's sifting through the stuff, and uh he's picking up, he picks up one of the one of the shotguns, and he's finagling it with it, and I'm I'm kind of saying, Oh yeah, good luck with that, you know, uh, because we had busted him up pretty well and uh bent the barrels and you know uh the chamber, bank bank something in the chamber so that the slide will not go back and forth. Well, to my friggin' amazement, this guy finds the slide release and opens up the chamber. And out of his pocket, I believe, I can remember just 47 years ago, but somewhere he produces a uh a round and he puts it in the he puts it in the chamber and he jacks it home. Now everybody says, you know, according to uh the action you see on movies and stuff like that, they always grab a shotgun and they're they're out there looking around with a shotgun, and just before they shoot, they have the rack one in the round. That's so Hollywood set of bullshit. The only thing that's real about it is that sound. When you're in that room and it's coming your way, that's a very distinct sound. Let me let me tell you, it gets your attention. And anyway, so the uh he racks that round in the chamber and he's looking out. This this this this odd, this you're gonna laugh at me for this. The uh the the shoulder the shoulder stock is folded forward, and now all he's got is a pistol grip. He's holding it and he's looking at me, and I see his finger going down and around near the trigger guard. I'm looking at the front at the front of the barrel, Terry, and it's it's bent all to hell. And I remember when uh when I beat mine down, I knocked the uh the bead off the top of it. So I'm looking at this thing and I'm I'm holding my wrist, I'm trying to breathe, and my one eye's you know closed up and all swelled up, and I'm looking at it and I said, Oh my god, he's gonna shoot me. He's gonna fucking shoot me. And I heard a voice that is saying, You're gonna get shot. You're gonna get shot, you know that. You're gonna get shot. That's a stupid voice, bam! That's all I remember hearing. He's looking down that bead, and I've seen this figure go towards the trigger, and then I've never felt the shot. I might have at the time, but in the last 47 years, I don't remember. I've lost it. I don't remember feeling the shot, but I remember a a pressure wave going over me. And I remember putting my hands up in my face because I felt some a stinging in my face, and I felt a burning in my stomach after after a shot. And I I put my hands up in my face and my hands were covered with blood. Now I didn't know if he hit me in the face or if that was the blood from Menace, you know? And I just rolled over unconscious. I was I passed out. I said, Is this what it's like to die? And I went out. I remember it being so cold and and I don't know how long it took your your time deprivation when you're unconscious. I'm being carried, I mean, not on a stretcher, but there was somebody holding each arm and each leg, so I'm assuming there's four. And as I'm as I'm being carried out of the restaurant, uh it's it's bright sunny out. I remember distinctly seeing, looking up and seeing that the American flag was no longer in the flagpole. I don't know where that went. And then uh there's smoke coming from the transfer building, so that black smoke coming from the inside, so they probably got that. I seen Henry and Jack standing up on the wall. Um they had stripped them, they had stripped them down to to their uh basic BDUs and just their their camouflage shirts. Their hands were behind their head up against the wall and it like they were gonna be executed. I just remember saying, God, please, please, Lord, don't let them don't let them get shot. Don't let them get shot. And I passed out again. I woke up in a hospital, uh, hospital room. I don't know how long. I don't know how long I was out. That was Wednesday, uh, gotta be about noon. Wednesday, February the 14th, 1979, about noon. I don't know what time it was. I woke up in a hospital and then I went to sit up and I had this excruciating pain, and I looked around and I said, Where the hell am I? I looked down and I got this blanket on me, and I pulled this blanket down, and all I have now is uh my t-shirt. I do I have a different type of shirt on. It's like a t-shirt, but it's not mine. I was wondering my t-shirt went. I looked down and my stomach is bulging like crazy, and I try to move my ribs. I mean, my ribs were just horrible, man, horrible pain. And I couldn't even take a full breath. I went to try to move my cheeks and my butt, and they they had stomped on me and broken or fractured my sacrum and coccix bone in the restaurant, the beating that I took there, and they fractured the sacred coccix bone. It numbed my legs so I couldn't walk anyway, but I wasn't I wasn't trying to walk to begin with. So I can't move my legs and everything. I'm sitting here and said, What the hell? Where the hell am I? I got inner venous and and in both arms, and I'm looking around and I said, My bet uh all I got on is is uh is the uh little gown there, you know, where your ass hangs out the back. You know, and I managed to pull this back. I look at this this big giant uh uh I said the best part of it, it looked like a beehive the way it wrapped my stomach and my chest. Basically, I'd taken a shot right through the chest, but with part of my flak jacket on, it stopped a lot of the a lot of the rounds, a lot of the whatever the thing. And then we'll go back to that if you want, but I mean in the in the interim, that's a that's an another miracle there is why at that range you're talking 10, 15 feet and you get a blast from a shotgun. We've gone over that several times with uh ballistic experts, people like you in your in your field that you know you're looking at how many times have you fired, all the different types of experiments, you know, and we figured out later on down the road after you know this is all finished, that he had he didn't have the rifle in his shoulder tight. So he's just holding a pistol grip. Two is that we don't know what rounds were in there, but some of the pellets that they pulled out later on when my second and third surgeries, when I got back to the United States, they pulled out and he says it looked like number six, you know, pellets, number six shot, you know, somewhere in between that. Uh, they pulled a couple more out. But uh, you know, at that point, plus when it hit, you got it's not a nice wrong smooth tube now. Yeah, you got things is you know, so when that thing there, I don't know if it just blew the end of the barrel off or not. I mean, look at that didn't hit me in the head, you know, or wipe me out. But all those, plus holding just a pistol grip when he when he pulled it, he pulled the trigger, you know, he's not in tight. So, and uh all those things play into it, you're gonna miss a target. And people say, I we don't tell me you haven't been within 10 feet of a target missed. You know, you're a liar. Somewhere, somehow you have missed. And uh thank God that you know that was that that was another miracle right there in itself. All those things that had to come into one play at one at one particular second. So I went to sit up in the hospital bed and I went, Oh, I can't move. I said, but I'm cleaned up, my hands don't aren't aren't all blood that much bloody. And I said, you know, where am I? And and I hear pharesate and I see people in uh in in the um, what do you call them, scrubs or smocks or whatever, moving. I'm trying to get their attention and trying to move, and uh no one's talking to me everybody, and I'm in by myself, and it's it's not a complete, it's not a real hospital because it's it's it's like a makeshift hospital. It does not have uh the the tubes and the connections and electronics and everything else that you normally have, you know, no no other buzzer buttons or nothing. It looks like a you know a secondary hotel old hill hotel room that they made into a uh a hospital bed. I said, I don't care, I'm still alive. So this uh this this one nurse came by and I tried I got her attention. And she was saying, Shh, shh, you know talk, you know talk. And I said, Well, I'm I want to know I wanna shh you know talk. And she she moved on. She, I'd be back, I'd be back. Just just be quiet. I said, okay, broken English, but I understood what she meant. Sure, shoot. She comes back. Now there's no windows in this place. So I don't know if it's day, light, or or daytime, nighttime, whatever time it is. Just the there's the one light in the in the in the in the above. Now she came back a few minutes and I asked her a couple questions. I said, I said, Where am I? And she said, shh. And she goes, they think you're a Cia. I said, What's a Ciah? You know, you know, C I A. I went, Who's they? And I am not C I A. She says, You come from embassy, the Sepharaat. And I said, Yeah, yeah, I come from the embassy. I said, uh, where's all my clothes? Where's my gear? Where's my boots? Where's where's my dog tags? Where's you know, she was she goes, you don't talk, you don't talk. She comes over, she's checking the the uh the inner Venus. And her name was Susa because her name was written in English, but it's also written in Script Farsi and Susa. And the weird thing is that she went to Valley Ford, she went to uh Brynmarr School of Nursing up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. It's just down the road from vet from uh Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. And when we had that little conversation there uh while she was checking, checking uh the the uh the medical stuff out, I saying, you know, how your your English is good? And she said, where she went to school, I said, I went to Valley Forge Military Academy just up the road. And she had gone whatever year it was, uh they have dances. Everybody wants to go see the cadets and all that stuff, and you know, the the the ball dances and stuff. She had gone to a couple of dances back then. And I said, Oh, that's amazing. I said, how how nice now? What the hell am I doing here? And they're getting made the hell out. Well, she says, uh, she says, Quiet, they come for you. I said, Who's they? Where am I? Whatever. She couldn't answer, she couldn't answer the question. While she was talking to me, and these two big goons come in and they're armed and uh they they they they're strapped, and they come in, they look at me, and I look at them, and I know this ain't good. Uh they looked in dressed kind of very similar to what to the guys that were and they just attacked at the uh the embassy. And I don't know how long ago it was, a couple hours, a couple days, I don't know. I've been out. So uh they they speak to her in Farsi and the uh then uh they just pushed her to the side, shoved her to the side, walked over and jerked the uh the uh inner venous out of my arm, you know, and they started backflowing and squirting the other way. And she uh they they tried lifting me up and they could see that you know the the bandage and everything that was there, and I don't think they give a shit about it. So the uh the Susa come back over, she pushed them kind of out of the way, forced her way in, and she pulled the needle out that was had not broken off but detached, and uh, you know, put the put the bandage on the arm. That's when they sat me up, and I was wondering what you know, what are they gonna do? Start beating me again? I mean, I got broken ribs, I got fractured safety and coccyc bone. I said, I can't even tell what's wrong with my stomach. When I looked down before, it literally looked like they took some type of adhesive tape that was uh on a uh commercial grade of uh duct tape, you know, and it patched me up. I said, I don't care, I'm you know, I'm not bleeding, so I'm all right. My eyes cut and I said, Man, I'm I'm I'm just completely freaking exhausted. So she when they set me up in the bed, I realized, I said, uh, okay, we're going for a ride somewhere, right? On comes the handcuffs. And these are weird because they cuffed me up front. Uh, they weren't gonna be able to get my hands behind my back, I think, with my broken ribs. And they they cuffed me up front. Uh this weird shape D-shaped. Uh, I got a picture in my book of uh the type of uh weird handcuffs. I've never seen it. They had a pin that that turned down and then it locked. It was weird, but a letter shaped D. Kind of like prison handcuffs, kinds they don't use on the street, but whatever, different country. And that's when uh the blindfold comes out. They handcuff me and then the blindfold comes out. Now you say, okay, they're taking me somewhere they don't want me to see, naturally. I mean, you learned this in survival escape school, you know, they put the blindfold on because they don't want you, they want to put a they want to put a feeling an atmosphere of control over you. And they got it, okay? They want to take away your sight and your depth of vision so you can't see where you're going, so they don't want to see where they're taken. But then they put the hood on top. Now the hood's bad news. When they put a hood on top, you that means you're being kidnapped. That's when I realized, fuck, I'm being kidnapped. You know, they put a hood on you to furthermore control you and humiliate you, you know, okay. But it also is that so when it disorients you too, because you know you don't know now. You can't see anything, you can't look down through the little uh uh part of the light that would come in through the uh blindfold. But what happens is that it messes with your uh auditory, you know, sound that I'm half deaf anyway from being in the in the shotgun, you know, being in that goddamn firefight inside the building. I'm still my ears are still ringing from that. But they tell you, you know, when they hood you up, then they could take me out of the hospital, blindfold me, that's fine. But people will see me leaving. They put a hood over you, anybody seeing you leaving don't know it's you. So if they come looking for you or whatever, no one could literally say, if it come down to a court of law or they wanted to know, hey, did you see the Marine? Did you see this guy? No, I didn't. I see the little guy, you know, being taken out of here in handcuffs and a hood on his head, but I can't tell you who it was. So as soon as I got the hood on my head, I said, nah, man, it's bad news. Yeah, and then they grabbed me. I couldn't walk, I couldn't hold up my my between my breath of not getting a breath and and moving my my ribs and my my legs wouldn't work there normally because of the uh the sacred coccyc bone, there's a there's a a fracture in it. So they had to basically just drag me out to the uh to a vehicle that's waiting and uh throw me in the back of that. They put me face down and they put me put their foot on my neck and to hold me from you know rolling around, and now I'm you know, butt naked here, my ass hanging out. I said, I wonder what they got in mind for me. You know what I mean? I go, oh God, you know, if they were gonna do me, you know, do me in here in the bed, at least where it's comfortable for what the hell. But that's the kind that's that's again the kind of uh when your mind is so stressed out, you come through with uh weird warped, you know, thought so it didn't it wasn't long, I guess. I I again 47 years ago, uh I'm thinking back, 15, 20 minute drive in the back of this vehicle, and uh we stop and I can I can hear the uh the gates. Some of these gates are closing and opening and more closing and opening. And I said, I'm in some kind of compound because I can smell diesel fuel and I can smell you know, you know, kind of you know, equipment or something like that. And uh they uh they moved me over and uh you know to try to get me out of the j the back of the of the vehicle, and I I kind of tell them, you know, I'm hurt, I'm wounded. I don't know if they they never spoke anything to me. Not as far uh not far sea or not, not English. And they can see that I probably couldn't move. Uh I'm barefoot, it's freezing outside. I mean, those guys were dressed in, you know, nice warm clothes. I'm freezing so bad, I'm convulsing. I'm I mean, I'm shaking like like a jackhammer. And they helped me out and uh put uh helped me out, they pushed me out and basically had to drag me through a bunch of damn uh rock and and some and I remember walking through and hearing some more gates, gates close. But anyway, uh got inside this building and and tried to warm up when they took the hood, they took the blindfold off. And uh for the first time I could realize um you know we're I'm in a different building, I don't know where I'm at, and I don't what I don't know what it is, but it's a room that they they shoved me in and uh they take the handcuffs off. I said, Okay, handcuffs, blindfolds are off. I said, No, I don't know, I'm just I just laid there and I said, Man, I'm freezing, I'm still freezing to death. And the guy came in and gave me a uh he gave me a shirt. It was a it was a light blue shirt, kind of like a smock but heavier, and it already had bullet holes in it. It had blood and bullet holes in it. And I wanted to put it on, but I didn't care. It was it was something additionally warm that I had. And a pair of like these black pajama bottoms and the uh these two sand and these sandals, which is, you know, which is a great save. And a piece of rug. There's a piece of rug that's about four foot long, three foot wide. I said, What am I supposed to do with a piece of rug? You know, I mean I I didn't know. But uh shortly in the future, you know, I I realized uh, you know, that what was gonna happen. I said, uh, you know, where the hell am I? I sat there for it seemed like hours. I don't know. I mean I I I was so tired, I was so exhausted. Um and I I just laid back and and I guess I just passed out, Terry. I hadn't I had no idea. I come to with these guys were helping me up and taking me down the hallway to a uh a place that had a table and a and a room in it, sat me down in a chair, and that's where interrogation started. They wanted to know who I was, name, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But just shooting questions at me, and then I couldn't get answer one question, not that I intended to, but by the time I know I even thought about an answer for a question, and another one come firing in. So basically what they're gonna get now is you've reduced to uh you know prisoner war treatment, you know, of some type or a hostage. I said, well, you know, they already got my ID, my wallet, and they got everything over. I mean, why isn't somebody telling somebody who's telling somebody who the hell I am? And at that time I didn't realize it, but later on is that uh we realized that the people the the Fed alin that had attacked the uh that were paid or you know, uh subscripted by the Russians to actually attack the embassy had uh had turned me over to uh the hospital to save my life or whatever. I don't know for what reason they didn't want me dead. Okay. And the people that came to get me out were not the same group that had come over and attacked the embassy. They took the they took me out, and now they get me and I and now I'm in a uh a lockdown area. And I could I could sense that it wasn't a regular building, that was some type of warehouse or some type of commercial building. Little did I know that they had taken me to Avin Prison. E V-I-N, A VIN Prison. You might want to Google that and tan and read about it. It's a historical uh uh torture chamber left over from the Shah and it's uh it's a barbaric place and it's uh half of it's underground and it's it's a horrible place and the worst place in the world. I didn't know I was that in there at the time, and I wouldn't know what A VIN was if even at the time I was, um, you know, per se. But I just knew that it was a different type of building. So uh basically what they're gonna get from you know survival escape schools, you know, name, rank. You say serial number, but we don't have serial numbers. We're doing our we use our social security numbers, and uh name rank, uh, and uh uh they could have my date of birth and they could have what uh what unit I was with. It's obvious. They could let me, you know, and went over and over it again, and you know, what was I doing there? Uh just general questions, you know, per se. Um no torture, anything of problems like that, a lot of intimidation, and they weren't armed. So when I looked at it, I'm saying, you know, these guys got uniforms on uh and but not they're but not armed. And I said no military rank, but they're they're kind of like a jumpsuit of of some type. So I'm trying to figure out what's going on with it. My eye is still swollen, you know, kind of closed. And they were saying is that uh, you know, I asked them where I was and they they smiled and they smirked, they wouldn't tell me, they would never answer any any of my questions. So after a couple rounds of uh he said, she said they weren't gonna get much more out of me. They uh they grabbed hold of me and and uh dragged me down down the hallway, down some steps, through some iron doors. And after the second set of big doors, I could realize I started seeing interior bars. And I knew that uh I said, oh man, I couldn't even hardly even walk, Terry. I mean, they had to hold me up. I said, when they let go of me, I collapsed down. I couldn't I couldn't stand. I said now I said my stomach is is you know is it's coming undone. They I don't even know if they had they had stitched me or not, man. They might have just put staples or super glue in there. For all I know, I couldn't get that bandage, you know, off of there. Is that they took me downstairs to a uh uh just several levels, I could tell that I was going down the down the steps, downstairs. And you could tell by the way the walls were being a normal commercial building, that these now, these walls were stone. And I said, Man, I'm going underground. And we went down a couple flights of steps and the smell, I tell you, I in my book, I I go over the smell several times. I've never smelled anything so horrible in my life. Never have, and I I don't think I ever will. And after fast forward, I mean after I got out of the Marine Corps, I spent 22 years as a as a uh police officer, and uh a good deal of my time was a forensic detective, uh CSI. And I've seen bodies in every way, shape, and form that you can imagine. I'm not Kenya, and I'm a graduate of the uh forensic uh academy uh at the University of Tennessee, the the body farm. So I mean I if I if if there's a way for a body to be used, I've seen it, I'm telling you, and smelled it. I've enough to smell it like this. The air that's down there is so stagnant, it's it doesn't move it smells like death and then something it it really smelled evil it was it was horrifying one you didn't want to take a full breath it was just something that was felt nasty on your on your tongue two you couldn't because of a cracked rib I mean you can't even get a you had to hold your rib at one time push it in just to just just get a full breath. So you know you're dizzy you're you you're you're exhausted and they got me down this hallway and they there's this guy sitting at the end of the uh hallway at a desk and again he's got the uh jumpsuit on but he's he's nobody's armed here that I can see. So why not? Where are you gonna go? You know you don't even know where you're atnel how to get out of this place. And they opened a gate and just shoved me down the hallway. Now there's a bunch down this hallway is is uh the gated community I call it there's a bunch of other cells and the cell doors are open and uh the one guy came with me and they I remember we well talking with uh Menaci how to read numbers uh on license plates and things like that for in in Farsi so there's you know yek yaksa char chun ponge alf oct just one through ten and I'm counting it down and you know there's there's the number it looks like a backwards seven and it's actually Ponge number five and the guy brings me over there and he pushes me in to this uh into this cell and it's uh there's no windows in it there's just one little light bulb so I still don't know the difference of day and night. I have no clue what's going on and uh I realize that you know there's about another dozen of them in this room and betcha there's there's it's not as big as the living room. It's not 15 by 20 and there's just got to be a dozen of them in there. And there there's bunks that are chained you know to the wall and everybody's got the little same piece of rug that I got and they really paid me no time no no mind or attention until I got up in the corner and uh I didn't look Iranian. I didn't have the color I didn't have the the beard or or anything had the the uh the facial uh features that you know a normal Persian guy would have so that kind of little curiosity you know and they're checking me out I'm checking them out and uh when I try to move to uh get a comfortable position I guess I was speaking English or whatever you know in pain and that's what alerted these guys you know he said oh oh you're English you're English you're American and I don't want to say anything I don't know who the hell these guys are you know I don't want to give my shit away and I told him I said uh he said uh one guy walks up and he introduced himself his his name is Abdal and we have a lot he the in the in the book there's a there's a lot of conversations with him and I and uh he explains to me I said uh you're from the embassy and I said yeah I guess you can tell by a haircut whatever um he said yeah I'm a Marine I was uh wounded uh at the at the takeover and he said yeah we heard about the embassy takeover I said how did you hear anything I mean this is like a dungeon down here as the others and even in even in a place like that a godforsaken place the the word gets around I don't know if they talk to the guards or whatever and he was saying uh that uh I said where the hell am I and his answer was in my book I quote him he says you are in a place that Allah has forgotten all right enough with the shenanigans where the hell am I and he says this is a Vin prison I said again I didn't know spell it for me it doesn't mean nothing to me I've never heard of a place before he says an old Savak prison S-A-V-A-K that was the Shah secret police and uh he says uh it is a place of torture and death I said great what am I doing here? He says we don't know we have no idea what you were doing here or who brought you I said well I said uh the guys at the embassy handed me you know handed me over to a guy they handed me over to a guy and they hand me here like a hot potato nobody wants me and he says this is uh he says this is not good for you if they bring you here he says it it's not good.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:56

So there he is trapped in a cell surrounded by even other prisoners who think he's already dead and what you've just heard is merely the tip of the iceberg a literal glimpse into the darkness that's only just beginning to tighten its grip. Next Thursday you'll hear how Ken's interrogators and the prison guards go about trying to break him so I'll see you next week for part two because what is ahead in the conclusion is something I think you'll probably never forget. Cheers