More articles by Brian JosepherMan of the Year: America’s First Look at KhomeiniMan of the Year: America’s First Look at Khomeini
In this first of a four-part series, I take a close look at the tragedy of American-Iranian relations. This particular column serves as an introduction. At the end of December 1979 Mike Wallace interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini for 60 Minutes. This was America’s first look at the face of the revolution.
Millions of Americans looked into the unforgettable eyes of Ayatollah Khomeini. His face and turban filled the television screen. The rhythmic ticking of a clock provided background noise. Then, abruptly, came the voice of the iconic journalist Mike Wallace, “He is the spiritual leader of Iran. He is responsible for the revolution that deposed the Shah. He has just been named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. He is the man most reviled in America. Who is the Ayatollah Khomeini and what does he want? All of this and Andy Rooney too. Next on 60 Minutes.”
The president of the United States and his national security adviser were among the millions of Americans tuned into 60 Minutes. The date was December 22, 1979. The two men sat in the president’s study, the cozy office adjacent to the Oval Office. The interview began with Mike Wallace, sitting in front of a poster of Khomeini on a set in New York City. In his introduction he revealed that all of his questions had been submitted days beforehand. There would be no surprises. “With one exception,” Wallace said.
The camera then flashed to Ayatollah Khomeini. He sat on an individual carpet, just below a closed window. To his right, on an individual carpet, sat Ahmad Khomeini, the Ayatollah’s son. To Khomeini’s left, on their own carpets, sat Mike Wallace and the translator. To talk to Khomeini, Wallace had to periodically glance to his left, away from his subject.
Other than the men and the carpets, the room was bare. There wasn’t a chair in the room. There weren’t photographs up on the walls, no art of any kind, not even a picture of one of Khomeini’s spiritual guides. This was, of course, the house of Khomeini. An austere and solemn place.
Contrast Khomeini’s meeting room to the presidential study, a warm and intimate place. “When the president wanted to put a visitor at ease or convey a particularly sensitive thought or request,” Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s chief of staff, explained. “He would excuse himself from the others in the Oval Office and walk the guest into his private study. Deng Xiaoping, Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat, and the Shah of Iran all spent time there with the president.”
Unlike the Spartan walls of Khomeini’s meeting room, the walls of the presidential study were filled with Carter favorites. On one wall, there was a painting of Franklin Delano Roosevelt standing beside the brilliantly lit White House Christmas tree. The tree was double the height of the man. On another wall, there was a black and white photograph of Carter’s mother, Miss Lillian, with Senator Hubert Humphrey. The senator wore a fur hat and an adoring smile. On another wall, there was an oil painting of Rosalynn with the then 4-year-old Amy on her lap. Amy’s face displayed the remnants of a fudgesicle. So did Rosalynn’s.
In Khomeini’s meeting room, there wasn’t even a painting of wife Batul Khomeini with one of her seven offspring. “This is the house of an ascetic,” Khomeini told Mike Wallace during the 60 Minutes interview. “This is the house of belief. We are pure here. We believe in Allah.”
In the presidential study National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski glanced at his notes. He had an important agenda to tackle with the president this evening. “Mr. President,” Brzezinski began, turning his attention away from the 60 Minutes interview, “Khomeini is not our biggest problem. He’s a Third World dictator with a Third World intelligence.” And a Third World magnetism, apparently, for Jimmy Carter did not look away from the television screen.
“Mr. President,” Brzezinski continued, “according to our reports, the Soviets are massing on the Afghani border. Word is that a full-scale invasion is soon to begin.”
The mention of Soviet troop deployment redirected Jimmy Carter’s attention. In an instant he performed a ninety-degree turn in his leather swivel chair. To the president’s left, within arm’s reach, resided his favorite possession: a globe the size of a small dining room table. “I donated most everything from my White House years to the Carter Library,” Carter told me, during our interview of April 2007. “I didn’t donate the globe. I couldn’t part with it.”
The president spun the globe. The globe spun precisely to central Asia. Jimmy Carter, wearing reading glasses perched upon the end of his nose, traced with his index finger the northern rim of Afghanistan. With his index finger, Carter touched the capital of Afghanistan. Kabul resided in the northeast quadrant. “Where are they massing,” Carter asked Brzezinski, “Uzbekistan?”
“Yes,” Brzezinski replied. “How did you know?”
“It’s a straight shot to Kabul,” Carter answered, tracing the straight shot with his index finger. Carter then glanced at Brzezinski over his reading glasses. “You predicted this, Zbig,” he said.
Brzezinski did not reply.
“Do you really think Afghanistan is a quagmire?” Carter said.
“Worse than Vietnam,” Brzezinski answered. “Anyone who decides to invade Afghanistan is a fool and an idiot. Believe me, Mr. President, this war will last a decade. The Kremlin won’t be able to sustain it financially. The Soviet Union will go bankrupt. And as for the citizens of Mother Russia, this war will demoralize them the way Vietnam demoralized us. My prediction, Mr. President? The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan will lead to the break up of the empire.”
“Brezhnev may be a lot of things, Zbig,” Carter responded, “but he is not an idiot and he is not a fool.”
“No,” Brzezinski replied, “but he took the bait, didn’t he?”
History records that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan two days after these events, on December 24, 1979. Ten years later, in a state of total demoralization, the Soviet Union withdrew the last of its troops. Two years after that, on December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved.
According to the official historical record, the Carter administration began aiding the Mujahedeen (Afghani forces fighting the Soviet Union) after the Soviet invasion. Nearly thirty years after the invasion began, the question must be asked: How accurate is the historical record?
In a recent interview with the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur Brzezinski revealed the actual history, “CIA aid to the Mujahedeen began on July 3, 1979 – six months before the Soviet invasion. On that day President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on that very day I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention… This was the whole point of our aid in the first place. A military invasion of Afghanistan would be the first step in the death of the Soviet Union.”
Back in the presidential study Brzezinski continued, “Mr. President, once the invasion begins, you can publicly call for aid to the Mujahedeen.”
“I understand,” Carter replied. “I just hope we won’t create an Islamic fundamentalist state. There’s one now in Iran and you can see where that’s gotten us. If the Mujahedeen succeeds, there will be one in Afghanistan.”
“Mr. President,” Brzezinski responded, “what is more important to the history of the world? Another fundamentalist state or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the cold war?”
In the world of 1979 the answer was obvious. In the post-9/11 world, with the American invasion of Iraq and the ever-expanding hatred of the United States, the answer isn’t so clear. Even a Russia-antagonist like Zbigniew Brzezinski recently acknowledged the “distinct possibility that Islamic militancy can and will strike the United States in ways the old Soviet Union never could.”
Jimmy Carter turned his attention from his national security adviser to the television screen and the Khomeini interview. “In the court of public opinion worldwide Iran is a pariah,” Mike Wallace said. “Listen to Anwar Sadat. He called you, forgive me Imam – his words, not mine – he called you a ‘lunatic.’”
In the White House both the president and the national security adviser flinched. Years later, Brzezinski explained the reaction. First, he quoted Wallace, “‘Forgive me Imam – his words, not mine.’” Brzezinski shook his head. The disgust, nearly thirty years after the interview, invaded every wrinkle of Brzezinski’s 79-year-old face.
He continued, “Imagine Wallace treating an American leader with that kind of reverence, so obsequious. It’s unimaginable. That’s not the Wallace way. But apparently treating the rogue leader of a rogue nation with a degree of servitude is the Wallace way.”
As for Khomeini’s reaction, he did not flinch at either Sadat’s characterization or Wallace’s veneration. Rather, Khomeini responded with calm hostility, “The American embassy was a den of spies. The hostages were caught red-handed. When America returns the Shah to us, we will return their spies to them. But as long as Mr. Carter does not respect international laws, these spies cannot be returned.”
Wallace turned pugnacious. “So,” he said, “America returns the Shah. You in response release the hostages. It sounds to me like a game.”
Again, Khomeini did not flinch. He betrayed not the slightest irritation. His response, however, resonated with calm hostility. “Releasing the hostages, once the Shah returns to face his crimes, would be a kind gesture on my part, not a State negotiated bargain. In reality, these spies should be tried like the Shah.”
In the presidential study Carter fumed, “What is he talking about? His people have illegally entered our embassy. They hold our people hostage. And he has the nerve to accuse me of not respecting international law?”
“Mr. President,” Brzezinski replied, “if I may be blunt…”
“Please,” Carter said.
“You’re concentrating too much on the hostage crisis. You’ve got to get it off the front pages. You have to resume a full presidential agenda. Announcing your re-election bid was a start [Carter did so on December 4, 1979]. But you cancelled a state visit to Canada and you cancelled other travel plans to Pennsylvania and Florida. Other than Camp David, you haven’t left presidential grounds. Now you’re about to have the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Use it to your advantage.”
“Zbig,” Carter replied, gently, “I went to see the family members of the hostages the other day. I came out of there feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders. It is an awesome burden.”
Brzezinski did not respond. Years later he explained his silence, “Politics is not about the heart. Music is about the heart. Dancing is about the heart. Politics is about force of will. And the country isn’t served when the president’s heart gets in the way.”
Carter continued, quietly, “These people, the family members, I knew that some of them must blame me. It’s understandable. I might in their situation. But they were very generous and supportive. They don’t expect miracles and they want their loved ones home…”
An interruption stopped the president in mid-sentence. Juan King, Carter’s favorite White House waiter, appeared with a tray of refreshments. “Hola, Juan,” Carter said. “Por favor, come in.”
As King unpacked his tray, tea and a plate of bite-sized sandwiches, the president focused his attention on the television screen. Mike Wallace, looking at the translator to his left, asked, “Is Iran at war with the United States?”
“What do you mean by war?” Khomeini answered. “If you mean are our armies going against the armies of the United States, then no, there is no such war. We are against war. We are Muslims. We desire peace for all.”
At that moment Juan King left the presidential study with an empty tray in hand. According to his previous testimony, he returned to the White House kitchen. In fact, he remained in the hallway, beside the study, unseen. In his eavesdropping, appearing in these pages for the first time, we have a third version of the conversation in the presidential study, in addition to Carter’s and Brzezinski’s.
According to all three versions, Brzezinski turned to a new subject. “Mr. President,” he said, “we must talk about the rescue mission.”
“Only as a last resort,” Carter immediately answered.
“Mr. President,” Brzezinski replied, “Christmas is in two days. Aren’t we nearing a final resort?”
“Zbig,” Carter responded, “the answer is no. There are options on the table. We’re considering an embargo. We can break relations. We can call for punitive air strikes, hitting Abadan for instance [Iran’s largest oil refinery]. We can mine the harbors. We can attempt a total blockade. Many of these ideas are yours, Zbig, including Kharg.”
The island of Kharg, in the Persian Gulf some sixteen miles off the Iranian coast, contained the world’s largest offshore crude oil plant. Brzezinski, frustrated by Iran’s “diddling along,” had proposed taking the island by force. “The military strike would be limited,” Brzezinski had written to Carter in a memo. “The bloodshed would be negligible. Holding the island would essentially shut down the export of Iran’s oil industry. Once they release the hostages, we release Kharg.” Brzezinski had ended the memo by labeling his proposal, “Zero risk.”
“I’m reminded of Israel,” Brzezinski responded to Carter in the presidential study. “I’m reminded of Entebbe. Their leaders sat in a room such as this. Prime Minister Rabin, Defense Minister Shimon Peres, Shromron [Dan, Brigadier General]. They had their intelligence and they certainly must have considered some of the same kinds of options we’ve developed here. But they struck. Decisively. And we now consider Entebbe one of the greatest rescues of the modern era.”
“Zbig,” Carter quickly answered, “those hostages were at an airport. They were accessible to rescuers. What are we going to do here? The hostages are miles from an airport, smack down in a city of five million people. At any one time, it seems to me, there are hundreds of people gathered around the embassy. Our rescuers will have to cut through that wall of humanity just to get to the walls of the embassy.”
According to Juan King, an awkward silence followed the president’s statement. King peaked through the open doorway. Brzezinski turned his attention to the television and the Khomeini interview. Carter picked up a bite-sized sandwich from a pyramid of sandwiches stacked on a plate. The sandwiches were Carter favorites. “Ham and brie on wheat bread,” according to Juan King, “with all of the ends cut off. The president didn’t like crusts.”
Meanwhile, the Mike Wallace interview of Khomeini had reached the only unscripted part. “As one human being to another,” Wallace asked Khomeini through the translator, “is there no room for compromise?”
The translator, with the CBS camera directly in his face, froze. Joel Bernstein, the 60 Minutes producer present during the interview, remembered, “He refused to submit the question to Khomeini. He was under specific instructions not to ask unscripted questions. But Mike Wallace pressed. He used the classic Mike Wallace glare.”
Bernstein described the glare, “All cold blue eyes, all consternated brow, an attitude that shouted: Who the hell do you think you are? In most cases, the Mike Wallace glare did the trick.”
In this case the Mike Wallace glare succeeded. The translator translated. Khomeini however did not answer the question. Rather, he responded with the Khomeini glare. For a moment on 60 Minutes, before cutting to a commercial, the Wallace glare met the Khomeini glare. “And if there was one glare that outperformed Wallace’s,” Joel Bernstein told me, “it was Khomeini’s.”
In the presidential study Zbigniew Brzezinski was beginning to feel antsy. “You must understand,” he explained years later, “I’d secured the ultimate tennis date. I’d worked months on arranging it. Finding a mutually acceptable time was nearly impossible. A professional tennis player’s life is much like a national security adviser’s: things come up – events, meetings, injuries.”
Brzezinski wondered how to push the meeting along. Jimmy Carter actually did it for him. The president asked for an update on the rescue mission.
Brzezinski launched into his briefing. “Mr. President, there are actually two rescue missions on the table. The first, under your authorization, concerns Colonel Beckwith and his Delta Force. As I understand it, Sea Stallion helicopters will fly from the Kitty Hawk [moved into the Persian Gulf by presidential decree during the first week of December 1979] to a spot in the Iranian desert, some 200 miles southeast of Tehran. There, they will unite with the Delta Force, flown in on MC-130 transport planes. Delta Force will then fly the helicopters to a location outside of Tehran, unknown as this point in time. That evening, under darkness, the units will be driven to the embassy. After the attack, the freed hostages will be brought to the soccer stadium just up the street. The helicopters will transport the hostages and the Delta Force from the soccer stadium to a location outside of Tehran. There, the hostages will be met by the MC-130 transport planes and brought to freedom.”
Jimmy Carter, according to both Brzezinski and Juan King, said nothing about the mission plans. He did not ask one question. He did not take one note. Carter’s sympathetic biographer, Douglas Brinkley, called that “peculiar. Here’s an intellectually tactile man, very much a micro-manager, the ultimate presidential note-taker, and he doesn’t respond to the most important rescue mission in the history of the United States. Why?”
I asked former President Carter this very question. He remembered the moment in the presidential study but he replied enigmatically, “My favorite part of 60 Minutes was Andy Rooney and I remember that the Rooney segment was just beginning.”
Juan King corroborated that the Rooney segment was just beginning.
“Mr. President,” Zbigniew Brzezinski continued, despite the president’s attention on the television set, “there is a second rescue proposal floating about.” Brzezinski then spoke the words that he knew would draw Carter’s ire. “It’s known as the Kissinger plan.”
If you were to ask Jimmy Carter today who was the more disruptive force back in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini or Henry Kissinger, he might have taken a few moments to consider. When I asked Doug Brinkley this question, he responded instantly. “Certainly Carter detested the very public tirades of both men. But unlike the Ayatollah, Kissinger appealed to the American intelligentsia. Kissinger couldn’t have been any more of an obstructionist. He was the embolism to Carter’s arterial foreign policy.”
To prove his point, Brinkley sent me the transcript from one of Kissinger’s many rants on Meet the Press. The date of the rant was fascinating: December 22, 1979. In fact, just hours before Khomeini appeared on 60 Minutes. “The Carter administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War,” Kissinger bellowed.
In the presidential study Zbigniew Brzezinski continued unabated, “Mr. President, Kissinger isn’t the mastermind of the rescue plan; he’s the mouthpiece.”
“Well, there’s a surprise,” Carter answered sarcastically. Carter then tried a joke. “There’s a psychiatrist here in Washington who has a patient named Superman, but he thinks his name is Henry Kissinger.”
In the hallway Juan King laughed. “I had to cover my mouth,” he told me, “to stifle the noise.” Covering his mouth didn’t prove effective. On the verge of uncontrollable laughter, Juan King walked away.
Brzezinski didn’t laugh. He claimed that the joke wasn’t funny. Of course Brzezinski might not have been the most receptive audience. For Zbigniew Brzezinski owed his position to Henry Kissinger. That is to say, he followed Henry Kissinger both in chronology and credentials. Here was another foreign-born academic with a heavy European accent and a great deal of panache and self-promotion dominating the foreign policy scene. Where would Brzezinski have been if not for Kissinger? “Still at Harvard,” Brzezinski admitted, “teaching Russian totalitarianism.”
If not for Kissinger, Brzezinski would never have become a national security adviser, a statesman, a best-selling author, or a famous foreign policy commentator. Brzezinski, to his credit, conceded the point. “We all have our guides,” he told me. “The press dubbed me ‘the Democratic Kissinger’ and there was truth in that label. I warmly accepted Kissinger’s friendship and direction. Henry certainly paved the way.”
Back in the presidential study, Zbigniew Brzezinski continued unabated, “Mr. President, the mastermind of the Kissinger plan is Miles Copeland.”
“The CIA spook?” Carter responded with disdain. “My God, this is the man we’re going to trust with a rescue operation? He’s a rogue agent. He supported Nasser [Egyptian president] and his pan-Arab movement. He hates Israel…”
“Mr. President,” Brzezinski interrupted, “he’s the foremost expert we have on the Middle East.”
“Shit!” Carter responded. He picked up a bite-sized sandwich off the plate and then, without thinking about it, returned it to its previous spot. “Well,” Carter said, through gritted teeth, “what’s the plan?”_ “It’s simple,” Brzezinski answered. “It’s old-school CIA, like the coup in ’53. Iranians loyal to us will dress in military uniforms. Then they’ll present themselves to the students at the embassy…”
“The militants,” Carter corrected.
“Yes, sorry,” Brzezinski replied. “The militants. They’ll convince the militants to turn over the hostages to them.”
“How?” Carter asked, caustically.
“These men will look like the Iranian army,” Brzezinski replied.
“It sounds crazy to me,” Carter responded. “It sounds doomed.”
“Perhaps,” Brzezinski responded, “but I’m sure you know Finagle’s Law: What can go wrong will go wrong. Colonel Beckwith’s plan is incredibly complicated, with many contingencies and possibilities. The Kissinger plan is simplicity at its finest.”
Carter responded, “It’s ironic that Kissinger, the man of extreme and absurd complexities, would advocate simplicity.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski didn’t answer. Again, he might not have been the best audience to agree with Carter’s statement. As for Jimmy Carter, he looked at his watch. “Zbig,” he said, “don’t you have a tennis date?”
“Yes,” Brzezinski said. “How did you know?”
“You’ve been bragging about it for weeks,” Carter replied.
“Oh?” Brzezinski responded. But not with “the kind of astonishment you might think,” Jimmy Carter told me. “His ‘oh?’ was more like an ‘aah.’” Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL spam free email
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