European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - February 8, 1981, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Ordeal Fol continued from Page ii kept pointing the gun at and the last there was one Click to and he do you think ill pull the trigger and the Only thing i could think of i wonder what it would feel like to have bullets go through my i it cant Hurt for we stared at each and then he he put the gun he so you dont know the combi i just kind of Elizabeth Ann also was subjected to the torments of a gunman seeking the combination of a she knew the youve got five minutes to open the Safe or ill kill he told i didst think he she i lied and said i she waited five minutes and nothing i am very familiar with the kind of courage it takes to fight in said who served in Vietnam and won the Silver Star and the Bronze but i say there is a different kind of courage to face interrogators when you Are completely alone and dont know when you Are Ever going to see another american or whether you Are going to get out of the situation alive and in one the under questioning by the said his Mission was to help the iranian army obtain spare parts for nonlethal military but his captors did not believe As a he he was kept in prison throughout his including eight weeks in solitary i was never permitted to leave my cell except Blind even to go to the Scott in the entire other than the last 25 i had Only spent 11 Days in a cell where it was possible to see the rest of the i was in a cell that amounted to a closet no no circulation of Michael an embassy political also was accused of being a he said his captors had seized Many of his papers classified reports and address books that listed Many iranian friends he had made in three years of service there and regarded these As proof of he was amused rather than broken by their interrogation they evidently had been told that they could successfully break Down a suspect by Long periods of intensive Metrinko in grilled for six hours at a but the captors then made the mistake of letting him sleep Between the duration of the questioning varied Kenne Dys interrogation lasted Only a few minutes after his captors found that he was an economics they seemed to lose interest in Jones was questioned five they kept telling me i was Black and should help the oppressed people of the Jones i kept telling them that Iran was their and that i had nothing to do with their revolution that i was an american the economics was taken to a House in North Tehran and kept in Handcuffs on a cold floor for he repeatedly refused to Tell his captors where his apartment sure they wanted Only to loot he was beaten by a group that included a monstrous Little Dwarf with a pistol stuck in his Belt and two or three terrorist the interrogations became less frequent after about two and the first major development of the hostage crisis occurred on 19 and 13 of the hostages five female secretaries and eight Black men were released in what the militants evidently regarded As a propaganda Jones was the Only Black kept in custody he never Learned Why he was not or Why he was treated so Kathryn Koob and Elizabeth Ann Swift assumed that they were the Only women not released because of their relatively High positions on the the release raised Many false Hopes among other hos who had been kept with one of the said i could hear the guards discussing the release of the they kept discussing taking them out to the Airport and having reporters talk to them about their i was naturally the crushing truth i realized when the guards talked the next Day about the reception at the Airport that they had at 6 Oclock one morning in probably to Ward the end of the some of the captors went into the room where Richard Queen was being his hands still and took him and some of the others to a warehouse basement on the embassy it was the hostages introduction to the mushroom there were no Queen it was like living in a you didst hear the outside you didst see the outside you didst know what was going on at you were completely Cut As though you were living in a there were several rooms in the and Queen shared one with warrant officer Joseph Hall of the until the hostages in the mushroom were ordered not to speak to one and according to the Petty who spent some time it was frowned upon if you looked at the other Queen and Hall and some of the others managed to whisper to one especially on the infrequent Occa Sions on which they were allowed to go to the toilet unaccompanied by a As Gillette he was put in a room in the mushroom 8 feet by 12 feet with 16 and was restricted to one i was in a location where i had three of the militants in front of my bed with Uzi sub machine guns and he i could not get involved with the Clandestine communications that were going on notes being thrown Back and that was the worst of to not talk to any of the other Queen said he was Able to take a Shower every second or third Day in the mushroom and that once a week he was taken to a very Small courtyard near the ambassadors where we were allowed to exercise and see the Sun and hear the hear the for about 20 about Morefield was brought to the Mush room with about 20 other compared with the student dormitory where he had previously been Morefield at the mushroom the food was better and the hostages had More Contact with their he and eight or nine others shared a big room that had been divided into Small cubicles with temporary in his he was Able to walk two Steps in one three in was prohibited from speaking with the through Eye Contact and he he was Able to get some messages Back and one of those apparently moved to the mushroom at the same time As Morefield was John the Politi Cal who had served in the peace corps in been an instructor at Pahlavi married an iranian woman and was one of the most proficient speak ers of Farsi among the Limbert recalls being kept in a room subdivided with the program stayed very much the Limbert said of the experience in his new i asked some of the students to bring me books in persian and they brought me some books by a a kind of Patron Saint of the you kind of made your own i dreamed about the past and my hands were tied together but pretty loosely and i was getting 13 to 14 hours of Queen busied himself in the mushroom by organizing a lending Library with embassy others were Able to Volunteer to work with him and sometimes they would Morefield said that some of the hostages seemed to a Michael Metrinko accused of being want to establish a dialogue with the but he Felt that i  and didst want and he limited his exchanges with them to requests for per Mission to go to the or to ask for More or less when he was being held in a Small apartment building in a Village about two hours North Northwest of Morefield said he got into a running political discussion with some of his captors that sometimes became quite one Day he he was returning from the bathroom when one of the captors started a conversation with him and i just blew he said he told the iranian that his people might have the right to have the Shah returned to their but that they were going about it the wrong i told him there were obvious ways to get him through our american Legal he adding that the iranians might not necessarily need to approach the but perhaps some judge some in the first week in Moorhead the third ranking Diplomat in the and his room mates were moved to the basement of the embassy from an elegant suburban Housa where they had spent nearly a As they were being ordered out of the captors told them not to bring any personal belong Ings for the first they were handcuffed instead of being bound with cloth and we still thought we faced death at that Ken Nedy we figured we were going to die the Way they went about the i went i guess that the Way you i what else do you do in the first Kennedy there were a num Ber of terrible scares and he brooded a great Deal about being after he we began to feel they had too much invested in us to kill us unless something was done to really endanger one of the Kennedy occurred one Day in december As he and others were being moved from one room to you could smell fear in the second he you have to smell it to know what its we thought it was the anteroom to suddenly we were taken Back to our original we got he just As they were putting away the vacuum another bad scare came a Day later when the students gave writing paper to Kennedy and some of the other we thought it was maybe for a last letter a last will and he it was one of those infrequent moments when the Stu dents were in a mood to move Christmas 1979 underscored the hostages dilemma and intensified their they had been in Captivity nearly two the initial terror had but Many were beginning to feel that they were in for a Long Morefield had been cheered to learn that the students were planning to permit american clergymen to conduct Christmas but his spirits he when i walked in and saw the obvious propaganda use that had been made of the William Sloane coffin of the United Church of who is the senior minister of the River Side Church in Manhattan the William How Ard a Baptist from who is president of the National Council of the churches of Christ in the Thomas an auxiliary Bishop of the roman Catholic archdiocese of and Cardinal Leon Etienne the archbishop of were brought to the heavily guarded embassy at on Christmas eve in a police escorted caravan of Mercedes before seeing the hostages they spent two hours negotiating with the the clergymen said later that they had told the militants that they wanted to conduct an ecumenical service for the entire group of and they said they had almost walked out before yielding to a demand that they meet the captives in Small Howard presided Over the session that Morefield at a table Laden with food and microphones attached to coca cola bottles dominated the on the along with traditional Christmas were revolutionary and ant american As the hos tages prayed with Howard and Sang iranian Tele vision cameras focused on beyond the View of the Morefield were about 40 of our captors who obviously were i to intimidate his that Christmas was absolute he he was so he that he worried later that he might have been rude to the minister Morefield said he believed that Howard had come to Iran because he Felt it was his Christian but others among the hostages questioned the motives of the clergy men who visited them at and some priests upset us said of co who was a clerk in they were More worried i creating turmoil in the Duane Gillette being welcomed some of the visiting priests upset us United rather than the condition of the hos James the Marine described the Christmas services As a dog and Pony and he expressed bitterness about the visit by clergymen the following he was he to learn that the clerics were saying conditions were Nice and everything was copacetic and we were having such a Good time in Camp we  believe they were actually buying that Gar Bage the iranians were putting for the political ramifications of the Christmas ceremonies had been made Early in he they started buttering us trying to get us to make statements and signing different Doc stuff like we knew what they were trying to and every time they asked us to make a wed just say things for which really upset William Keough the former head of the Ameri can school in said he recognized that the iranians had been trying to exploit the clergymen visits for propaganda but he said Many of us thought we should go along with this because every Opportunity we had to get our face on Cam Era was Assurance for people Back my feeling was your family needs to see you never say what the iranian students want you to there Are ways of not answering frustrating switching to the red you get off the the clergymen were obviously being exposed to artificial by Robert the economic had been moved Back to the ambassadors residence in the embassy compound and had shared two separate rooms there with various a studious Man who read refused to attend the religious services at but he took part in the Holiday dinner that the captors it was quite compared to what we had been Blucker i think there was Turkey and two or three kinds of cake and it was a hangup said Moorhead our morale was very High for the first on Christmas Koob sat alone in the chancery Library overlooking the main Entrance to the embassy and Takht Jamshid hundreds of iranians were sounding their rhythmic death chants for president Carter and the hour after the crowd like the Koob was thousands of Miles from without family or but the message of she said was the a deeply religious she had always she that Christmas is its not its not the that her beliefs were being and she remembers saying to herself if you really mean what you Here s your at 11 Koob heard what she took to be a Church Bell she in the Church directly across the it was the catalyst she had i had a worship she and it was in the Blucker had found that if he climbed up on the Radiator in the bathroom he could catch a glimpse of the sky and the Trees and could even watch the dozens of Green parrots and the Gray and Black Ravens waging their daily Battles for sovereignty of the embassy Nice to he it was Nice to see the out but on 30 he was moved to a room in the base ment of the chancery that he was to share with three others Barry the 36yearold press attache Robert the 65yearold retired foreign service officer who been recalled to temporary duty in and Bruce the 44yearold embassy budget offi there had been an attempted escape at the embassy a few Days whether that persuaded them that the ambassadors residence was not a Good place to keep a Bunch of i dont Blucker i had heard one night an unusual amount of gunfire and won dered what in the world was going i found out later that was the night of the escape when they fired on Bill life in the basement was there were no windows and the guards seemed More after a one of blockers roommates was moved he would not say we were known As the bad people in that he next door to us were the Good they had no guard sitting in their they had Tennis balls to picture puzzles to play Access to a tape recorder with some at a certain Point they decided one of ours was a Good a Good so they moved him into the room with the Good i cant prove anything about the Good Blucker i am satisfied i know who they but i cant prove it so id better not they were Young with no High position in the Zembas i suspect that what they did was that they just didst that they were politically on the other Blucker a bad Guy was somebody who followed my kind of they passed a petition around calling on the government to re turn the i refused to sign it want a Propri i refused to write any letters to senators or newspapers demanding that actions be taken to get us i was generally i made no remarks against the or against David Rockefeller or Henry in i didst try to be anything but the the reaction and i fussed at i snarled at at one Blucker referred to those who had collaborated with the iranian then he corrected himself and said in their initial Days neither he nor any of the other hostages reported any instances in which they Felt their colleagues had behaved disloyalty to the United pressed to differentiate Between cooperation and col Blucker i dont i dont the words Are hard to where does one Stop and the other Start cooperation includes collaboration and other its just too complicated to go one of the former who asked that he not be said i know that a lot of people did things that i  do and i didst approve of and i wish they haunt but i dont want to Label there were several i  say a in television footage arranged by the some of the hostages were shown making statements that were in varying of the Shah and and to some extent portraying better conditions than actually existed for the in one 34minute videotape made by the but rejected for broadcast by the american Joseph Subic of the talked of surveillance flights and showed where computer equip ment had been concealed in the floor and ceiling of the embassy since Subic has not commented on this but another William Gal said that he had been forced in various ways to be interviewed by two Abc news television reporters under the supervision of the iranians five weeks after the i was not he i did it for my military in sorry the Public didst 1 was saying that the treatment was Good for my fellow colleagues so that they would not be he but also i was trying to say that we were not being treated several of the hostages said that in the final Days of Captivity they Felt obliged to make statements before iranian i was not said Gregory he it was on the View you either do it or youre not going to be on Limbert was moved from the mushroom to solitary confinement in the basement of the embassy in a windowless 10by12foot illuminated with fluorescent lights and furnished with a Bare a Small typewriting table and two Limbert discovered that his room was next to one occupied by William the 44yearold communications and records and Donald the army the rooms were Sepa rated by a thin partition that came about an Inch Short of meeting the permanent leaving a Gap like a mail we could slide notes through Limbert wed Trade sort what did you see what did you hear it could be whatever the students might have let one of my neighbors was Able to smuggle a radio to he left it in the it was about the size of a cigarette we had news for about a month broadcast in they were never Able to discover the of i  take it with me when i on the six embassy employees who had been hiding with the canadians five members of the con sular staff and an agricultural attache flew out of Iran on a commercial the Canadian government had issued them diplomatic passports and the Central Intelli gence Agency had helped forge iranian exit it was not until months later that the hostages Learned of the in less than a they were subjected to a new episode of the hostages say they still do not know exactly what brought it More Field said he thought it might have been in retaliation for an escape Kennedy said he thought it had to do with a suicide in any the first assault came at 1 on there would be several to be concluded Page 12 the stars and stripes february Marine Gregory the stars and stripes Page 13