'He saved our lives.' A former US hostage reflects on Carter's legacy
11:54 Share

Jimmy Carter's four years in the White House were largely defined by an event that took place halfway through his term. The U.S. Embassy in Tehran has been invaded and occupied by Iranian students. The Americans inside have been taken prisoner and, according to a student spokesman, will be held as hostages...

until the deposed Shah is returned from the United States, where he's receiving medical treatment for cancer. On November 4th, 1979, Iranian college students took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took 52 Americans hostage.

For the next 444 days, the Carter administration tried to secure the hostages' release. In April of 1980, they even commissioned a rescue mission that ended in failure. There has been the startling new development in the Iran hostage crisis. That U.S. attempt to launch a military rescue of the American hostages in Tehran has been, as you have now heard several times, aborted. There was no fighting. There was no combat. But to my deep regret...

Eight of the crewmen of the two aircraft which collided were killed, and several other Americans were hurt in the accident. While Carter was trying to end the hostage crisis, he was also campaigning for a second term.

A year to the day after the Americans were taken hostage, Ronald Reagan beat Carter in a landslide. The time has come. You've seen the map. We've looked at the figures and NBC News now makes its projection for the presidency. Reagan is our projected winner. Ronald Wilson Reagan wins.

of California, a sports announcer, a film actor, a governor of California. The hostage crisis played a key role in Carter's defeat. But even after he lost re-election, with the clock ticking on his presidency, Carter kept working to bring the 52 Americans home, negotiating with the Iranians until there were just hours left in his presidency.

Those final moments narrated here by then White House Press Secretary Jody Powell in an ABC News special on the hostages' release. At this point, the president had last been asleep.

about midnight, not that night, but the night before, Sunday night. So he had been up virtually since Sunday morning with only about an hour's rest. Here was President Carter confirming the deal that he had struck. Right on, man. That's great. That's great. Okay, now, the next step in... Now, the bank...

Okay, so the Bank of England has certified their depository. But even though the deal was done before Reagan took the oath of office, the plane carrying the hostages sat on a runway in Iran until Reagan's inauguration. UPI has just gone with a flash, which is in effect the highest, the most important notification and news that they can give. The last time they did it was with the Kennedy assassination. It's two words. It says, hostages freed.

So Jimmy Carter was no longer president when the hostages were freed. Consider this. The Iranian hostage crisis helped doom Jimmy Carter's presidency, but for some of the people he helped free, he was a hero. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.

This message comes from NPR sponsor, Sattva. Founder and CEO, Ron Rutzen, shares the experience they hope to create in their viewing rooms. We want our customers to feel like they've walked into a luxury hotel. That's what Sattva has been inspired by from the day that we started. We take sleep very seriously. We believe it unlocks a superpower if you get the right sleep on the right mattress. We believe we can provide that. To

To learn more, go to s-double-a-t-v-a-dot-com-slash-N-P-R. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Energia, where everyone can invest in the world's top renewable energy markets. Explore renewable energy projects, shop investments, and get started with as little as $100. Make your money do more at Energia-dot-com-slash-N-P-R.

This message comes from Bluehost. Got great ideas, but no idea how to build a website? Get Bluehost. Their AI builds your WordPress site in minutes, and their built-in tools optimize your growth. Don't wait. Visit Bluehost.com now. ♪

It's Consider This from NPR. Former President Jimmy Carter left Washington for the final time Thursday afternoon. Washington was never a comfortable place for the man from Plains, Georgia, and it's generally believed that Carter was a better former president than president.

One reason for that perception is the Iranian hostage crisis. For the last 444 days of Carter's presidency, 52 Americans were held prisoner at the U.S. Embassy in Iran, including Barry Rosen, who was then the press attaché at the embassy. Welcome. Thank you. You have said that if it weren't for President Carter, you wouldn't be here today. What do you mean by that? Well, I sincerely believe that

he saved our lives. I mean, he sacrificed his presidency and worked assiduously for those 444 days to make our freedom the uppermost in his mind. Can you tell us more about that? What leads you to say that it was the most important thing to him? Well, I remember my wife Barbara meeting with President Carter during that time, and

She showed photos of my young son, Alexander, who was about three at that time, and Ariana, my daughter, was one. And you could see the toll it was taking on him and that he put that photograph in his suit pocket. And I knew for sure that he looked at that. He carried the photo of your children while you were in captivity being held hostage. Yes.

And do you give any credence to the criticism that if he had handled it differently, the crisis could have ended sooner, that you would not have had to have spent as many days being held hostage as you were? After all these years, I felt that there was no other alternative. I mean, yes, there could have been military action against Iran.

But I think that might have, would have been taken out on us. And I think it would have been, it would have been severe. We were treated terribly during the hostage crisis. I was only outside.

for 15 minutes only one time during the entire situation. You were only outdoors once in 444 days for 15 minutes. Yes. I picked up a piece of grass that was on the ground, put it in my pocket, and, you know, that was, it brought me back to...

my days as a young boy with my father and going to baseball games. Those moments of freedom, those minutes were amazingly important for my survival.

Everything about the story of your captivity is extraordinary, not least of which is the events leading up to your release. President Carter personally negotiated many of the details of the release, including the unfreezing of billions in Iranian assets. But you and the other hostages were not freed until after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president. Your plane sat on the runway. What were those final moments like? Well, those final moments were...

unbelievably nerve-wracking. We were put on a bus, blindfolded, taken, I suspect, to Meribot Airport at that time. It took over an hour. And as I stepped off the bus, I saw in a distance a light person pointing toward me. Your blindfolds were removed at this point? Yes, they were.

And then a phalanx of the student militants spat at me. And I then ran to the Air Algiers plane that was taking us to Algeria on our first leg to the trip to Wiesbaden. I couldn't believe it. I think that there's a photo of me getting on the plane. I think I was absolutely stunned.

Yeah.

whether you would be forced to sign some sort of statement of being a spy and a plotter. So you arrived in Wiesbaden in what was then West Germany, and Jimmy Carter, newly a former president, was there to meet you. What do you remember about that first meeting? It was tense. And he was with Vice President Mondale and Secretary of State Muskie. But he had the courage, I thought,

to come and see us knowing that many, many, many of us were very upset with him and couldn't understand the decisions that were made in terms of permitting the Shah into the United States. I know those were the Cold War years and all of that, but the anger was present. Were you personally angry?

I was. I have to admit that. I just couldn't understand why all that time was spent, and we never, never really had a notion of what was going on during that entire time. The hostage takers gave us no information at all about anything, and so the isolation was so severe.

And now with more than 40 years of hindsight, do you still feel that anger or what are your feelings? No, I don't have that anger. You know, I have a better understanding of the situation that he faced and that he...

He brought us back alive and anything could have happened during those 444 days. And I might not have seen my wife, Barbara, and my two children, Alexander and Ariana, and my grandchildren now. So I credit him for taking the real pains of that situation seriously.

and really trying to extricate us out of, I think, the first real big hostage situation, hostage crisis that America faced.

Barry Rosen was one of 52 Americans held hostage in Iran from November 1979 until January 1981. Thank you for sharing some of your story with us. Thank you. This episode was produced by Elena Burnett and edited by Courtney Dornan. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.

Support for NPR and the following message come from Washington Wise. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. Washington Wise is an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise.

This message comes from Warby Parker. Prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Glasses designed in-house from premium materials starting at just $95, including prescription lenses. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you.

This message comes from Warby Parker. What makes a great pair of glasses? At Warby Parker, it's all the invisible extras without the extra cost, like free adjustments for life. Find your pair at warbyparker.com or visit one of their hundreds of stores around the country.