TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/80/80capts.1

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                c╘╒                                                          February 11, 1980

WORLD

Canada to the Rescue


A wave of thanks to a neighbor for saving six diplomats from
Tehran


It had none of the lightning-flash finesses of Entebbe, none of
the bloody ferocity of Mayaguez. Yet once again, however
fleetingly, the frustration of dealing with the irrational acts
of militants had been lifted by a single daring and dramatic
deed. The cunning maneuver executed by Canadian diplomats in
secreting six Americans in hostile Tehran for almost three
months and then spiriting them to safety last week provided a
heartening interlude in Washington's still unsuccessful struggle
to free 50 hostages from their captors in chaotic Iran.

With a spontaneous gush of gratitude, Americans extended
congratulatory hands across the border. It was as though the
U.S. were almost surprised to find that it had a friend after
all. Where other allies had nervously shunned sanctions and
offered only rhetoric against Iran, Canada had literally come
to the rescue. In Detroit, billboards facing Canada suddenly
sprouted Canadian maple leaves and appreciative messages like
THANK YOU, CANADA. The Canadian embassy switchboard in
Washington was overwhelmed by Americans wishing to convey warm
sentiments:  "Brilliant move." "Courageous feat."  "Well done."
In Fergus Falls, Minn., Radio Station KBRF got an enthusiastic
response to its suggestion that listeners send I LOVE YOU
valentine messages to Flora MacDonald, Canada's Secretary of
State for External Affairs, who, as her nation's top diplomat,
had proudly confirmed the rescue story.

On an official level, the U.S. Congress unanimously rushed
through a resolution--the first ever of its kind--expressing
"its deep appreciation and thanks to the Government of Canada."
As reporters watched, Jimmy Carter picked up a telephone in his
Oval Office and told Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark of the
American people's appreciation for "a tremendous exhibition of
friendship and support and personal and political courage."  The
rescue had already given Clark a big boost in his uphill drive
to retain his office in the Canadian elections, Feb. 18.

Back in the U.S., the happy but professionally restrained
diplomats appeared one by one before a televised press
conference at the State Department. In an oddly stiff ceremony,
each gave name and title: Mark Lijek, 28, a consular officer;
his wife Cora, 26, a consular secretary (both from Falls Church,
Va.); Joseph D. Stafford, 29, a consular officer; his wife
Kathleen, 28, a consular secretary (both from Crossville,
Tenn.); Robert Anders, 54, a consulate officer (from Port
Charlotte, Fla.); and Henry Lee Schatz, 31, an agricultural
attache (from Post Falls, Idaho). Anders read a carefully
prepared statement thanking reporters for keeping their
sensitive secret for so long but saying of their colleagues
still held captive:  "We must not and will not forget them"
Then the six paid a solemn, low-key visit to the White House,
where the President termed them "six brave Americans" and
declared, "We all love you."

The escapees had been warned by the State Department not to
disclose details about how they had been hidden and how they had
escaped. This was to protect any foreigners, as well as
Iranians, who had been helpful but still remained in Iran.
Privately, some Canadian officials said they were "extremely
upset" that the story of the escape had been broken by Jean
Pelletier, a Washington correspondent for Montreal's La Presse
and son of Canada's ambassador to France. Like a number of
newsmen, including correspondents and editors of TIME, Pelletier
had long been aware that the six had been hidden in Tehran and
had kept the secret. When Pelletier learned that the Americans
were out of Tehran, he felt the news would quickly become
public, and his newspaper decided to break the story. This
destroyed a Canada-U.S. plan to hide the escapees in Europe
until the fate of the 50 U.S. hostages still held in the embassy
was resolved.

Despite the secrecy, the available facts provided a fascinating
tale of intrigue, involving CIA-doctored documents and bold
"rehearsals" in Tehran on how to slip the Americans past Iranian
airport inspectors. The plot's mastermind and instant hero was
Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor, 45, a gregarious diplomat whose
gravelly voice and hearty laugh had made him a popular
intermediary between visiting Westerners and Iran's
unpredictable government officials. His superiors, Prime
Minister Clark and Secretary MacDonald, let Taylor direct every
detail of the risky rescue.

The escape of the six began on the rainy day of the storming of
the U.S. embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4. While the assault
centered on the main embassy building, five of the six escapees
were working in an adjoining consular section within the
compound. Mark Lijek had been processing visas that morning.
Among his visitors was Kim King, 27, a tourist from Oregon who
had stayed on in Iran for six months to teach English to local
businessmen. He had both overstayed his visa and lost his
passport, with its date-of-entry stamp, and he sought Lijek's
help in acquiring new papers.

Then, as King tells it, a woman working in a front office
shouted, "They're coming over the wall!"  King peered through
the two windows, protected by a grillwork made of bricks, in
Lijek's second-floor office. He saw the men on the wall and
heard others moving on the roof. He did not see any weapons and
heard no shooting. "We weren't afraid," he recalled. "We
thought they probably were the police."

An Iranian attacker broke a window in a nearby men's room and
tried to enter through it. Said King:  "A Marine went in there
and knocked him out of the window and fired tear gas."

As the Marine guards radioed other Marines to help gather all
the office occupants together for protection, the lights
suddenly went out and the radio equipment was silenced. "It got
very dark in the room, because of the grillwork on the windows,"
King said. "We realized then that we had to get out."

The Americans grouped together in a back room on the building's
ground floor. Among them, according to King, were Lijek, Anders
and kathy Stafford. The Marine managed to jimmy a back door,
which had been bolted automatically as a security precaution.
The door opened onto an alley. "Mark and I looked out the
window upstairs," said King, "and it was clear as far as we
could see. We went back down. I opened the door and we walked
out."

The fugitives split up after walking about four blocks. They
agreed to meet later at the British embassy. But by the next
day the student militants had taken control of that embassy,
too, holding it for about five hours. As King was not a U.S.
diplomat, his problems were more financial than political.
Equipped with new documents, he managed to borrow money for air
passage home and flew out on Nov. 9.

For the American diplomats, however, there was no such easy way
out. One of the carefully guarded secrets is just where they
stayed in the days between fleeing their offices and Nov. 8,
when one of them called the Canadian embassy to seek refuge.
By then KAthy Stafford and MArk Lijek had somehow been reunited
with their spouses. Ambassador Taylor later said his staff had
been "unanimous" in wanting "to do everything we could to help."
On Nov. 10 the five Americans who had worked in the consular
section showed up at the Canadian embassy. it was not until
No.v 22 that the sixth American, Schatz, also joined the group.
He had escaped the siege because his office was outside the
embassy compound. He had since been staying with "friends."

The six Americans spent more than two tedious months in the home
of Canadian diplomats, reading whatever they could get their
hands on. They played so much Scrabble, as Anders later
explained, that "some of us could identify the letter on the
front by the shape of the grain on the back of the tile."  Said
Taylor at a press conference in Ottawa:  "I'd nominate any one
of them for the world Scrabble championship. They are also
probably the six best-read Foreign Service officers."  Some of
the six spent the time at Taylor's residence, others at the home
of Roger Lucy, 31, the embassy's first secretary. A few also
stayed temporarily in a safe house--until the landlord decided
to show it to the prospective buyers.

While the U.S. State Department kept close relatives of the six
informed that the missing diplomats were safe, the relatives
were not told who was harboring them. But as more reporters
picked up bits of the story, Taylor worried about a leak that
would send Iranians hunting down the missing, and endanger his
own embassy staff as well.

Taylor devised a plan. On the pretext of keeping in tough with
the three U.S. diplomats being held under house arrest at the
Iranian Foreign Ministry, Taylor ingratiated himself with local
officials as a friendly and neutral diplomat. he learned just
what documents and procedures would be needed in the processing
of embassy personnel in and out of Tehran under the erratic
Ayatullah Khomeini government. He began sending some of his own
staff on unnecessary flights to establish a travel pattern and
to study the clearance procedures.

The Canadian Cabinet met on Jan. 4 and approved a rare secret
directive to issue Canadian passports to the six
Americans--although not in their own names. The Americans were
given the names of fictitious Canadian businessmen or
technicians who would have valid reasons to travel to Tehran.
U.S. sources have conceded that the CIA provided "technical
assistance."  This apparently consisted of helping to fabricate
the necessary Iranian visa stamps.

On Jan. 19, Taylor got a scare. Someone called his home and
asked to speak to "Mr. or Mrs. Stafford."  Taylor's wife
Patricia replied that no one by that name was there. But the
caller insisted that he knew they were. With that, the escape
plan was speed up. The Americans, safe for so long in their
hideaway, were not sure they wanted to run the risk of trying
to board a plane. Taylor convinced them that the danger of
staying was growing ever greater.

Taylor gradually reduced the size of his embassy staff. From
a total of 20, it was dropped to 11 and finally to 4. Taylor
chose last Monday, in the uncertain aftermath of Iran's
presidential election, to make his move. The six Americans
nervously but successfully showed their false papers to Iranian
airport officials and boarded regularly scheduled flights to
Frankfurt. Then they went into two days of rest and debriefing
at a U.S. Air Force hospital near Wiesbaden in West Germany,
before flying to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. There they
were reunited with their relatives. Then it was on to
Washington and back to heroes' welcomes in their home towns.
On Monday Taylor and three staffers flew quietly to Europe and
the Canadian embassy was closed.

Back in Tehran, the outwitted captors of the U.S. hostages and
government officials were apoplectic. "This is illegal, it's
illegal!" raged one of the militants guarding the U.S. embassy.
Iranian Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, just defeated in
his quest for the presidency, vowed:  "Sooner or later,
somewhere in the world, Canada will pay."  Whatever "hardness
or harshness" now befalls the American hostages, he threatened,
"it's only the Canadian government that will be responsible for
it."

Regardless of the understandable elation in Canada and the U.S.,
the fight to free the hostages remains one of the Carter
Administration's most nettlesome difficulties. So far, the U.S.
has been deliberately delaying the imposition of its planned
economic sanctions against Iran in the hope that its new
President, Abolhassan Banisadr, may yet help resolve the hostage
problem. But as the hostages start their fourth month of
captivity, there is no real cause for optimism.