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Ex-Nebraskan Backs Iran Hostages' Claims

Posted on: Thursday, 30 June 2005, 21:00 CDT

A former Nebraskan who was among the American hostages in Iran during the late 1970s said Thursday that he doesn't recognize Iran's president-elect as one of his captors, but he trusts fellow hostages who do.

"Part of me says, 'Yeah, I recognize the face and the facial expression,' but I wouldn't be able to walk into court and say that's him," said Paul Needham, a 54-year-old who now lives in Oakton, Va., and works as a professor teaching military strategy and logistics.

Former hostages Chuck Scott, David Roeder, William Daugherty and Don Sharer said that after seeing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on television, they have no doubt that he was one of the hostage-takers.

A fifth ex-hostage, Kevin Hermening, said he reached the same conclusion after looking at photos. A close aide to Ahmadinejad denied that the presidentelect took part in the seizure of the embassy or in holding Americans hostage.

The hostage-taking, which came in reprisal for Washington's refusal to surrender ousted Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi for trial there, contributed substantially to President Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.

Militant students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The shah had fled from Iran earlier that year after he was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution.

Another former hostage, retired Air Force Col. Thomas Schaefer, said he doesn't recognize Ahmadinejad as one of his captors. Several former students among the hostage-takers also said that they did not believe that Ahmadinejad had taken part in it.

Needham said the 52 hostages were kept in 30 to 40 different locations, with different sets of guards. While Needham may not have had much contact with Ahmadinejad, he said that he believes that other hostages could have -- and he trusts their memories.

Over the years, he said he has seen photos of other Iranian governmental leaders whom he's recognized as captors.

Needham was a 28-year-old Air Force captain from Bellevue, selling spare parts for jet fighters to the Iranian government, when the U.S. Embassy was overrun by Iranian protesters.

"All I have to do is close my eyes and I can go back to the fourth of November, 1979, and I start rolling the tapes forward," he said. "I don't have any trouble with remembering this. There's some times you remember things very, very well."

The White House said Thursday that it was taking seriously the allegations from former hostages.

"I think the news reports and statements from several former American hostages raise many questions about his past," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of Ahmadinejad. "We take them very seriously and we are looking into them to better understand the facts."

President Bush was asked about the allegation in an interview with The Times of London conducted Wednesday and published Thursday. A transcript on the newspaper's Web site shows that Bush did not comment directly on any role that Ahmadinejad may have played in the hostage-taking, but said "time will tell" whether the United States and its allies will be able to work with him.

Several of the former hostages insisted that they were certain that the president-elect was among their captors. William Daugherty, a former hostage, said it's further evidence that the State Department should stop defending Iran's immunity from lawsuits filed by the former hostages seeking reparations.

In April 2002, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit by the hostages seeking $33 billion in damages. The State Department intervened, arguing that the lawsuit would violate the U.S.Iranian agreements that freed the hostages and would damage U.S. credibility.

"This puts the Bush administration in an interesting position," Daugherty said. "You know how he (Bush) said, 'You're either for us or you're for the terrorists.' Well, now the leader of Iran is a terrorist.''

Needham, the former Nebraskan, said that the United States must recognize that Iran's leader is not a moderate and be wary.

"I believe at times we have a little bit of wishful thinking that we can identify moderates and those who might be amenable to diplomatic persuasion, failing to remember these are some pretty radical individuals," he said.

Ahmadinejad was a member of the Office of Strengthening Unity, the student organization that planned the embassy takeover, but he was opposed to taking the U.S. Embassy, several of his associates said.

An aide, Meisan Rowhani, said that Ahmadinejad was asked during recent private meetings if he had a role in the hostage taking. Rowhani said he replied, "No. I believed that if we do that the world will swallow us.''

Mohammad Ali Sayed Nejad, a longtime friend of the president- elect, said that in 1979, "Ahmadinejad had focused his fight against communism and Marxism and he was one of the opponents of seizing the U.S. Embassy. He was a constant opponent.''

Some former hostages couldn't be sure about their captors. Former Marine embassy guard Paul Lewis of Sidney, Ill., said he thought Ahmadinejad looked vaguely familiar when he saw a picture of him on the news last week, but "my memories were more of the gun barrel, not the people behind it.''

Daugherty, who worked for the CIA in Iran and now lives in Savannah, said a man he's convinced was Ahmadinejad was among a group of ringleaders escorting a Vatican representative during a visit in the early days of the hostage crisis.

"It's impossible to forget a guy like that,'' Daugherty said. "Clearly the way he acted, the fact he gave orders, that he was older, most certainly he was one of the ringleaders.''

Ahmadinejad, the hard-line mayor of Tehran, was declared winner Wednesday of Iran's presidential runoff election, defeating one of Iran's best-known statesmen, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. The stunning upset put conservatives firmly in control of all branches of power in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In a first-person account on the British Broadcasting Corp. Web site, world affairs editor John Simpson said he, too, recognized Ahmadinejad, saying there was something "faintly familiar'' about him. "I realized where I must have seen him: in the former American embassy in Tehran,'' Simpson wrote.

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

Source: Omaha World - Herald

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