Excerpt: 'Guests of the Ayatollah' by Mark Bowden

ByABC News via logo
May 11, 2006, 8:49 AM

May 11, 2006 — -- Mark Bowden, who wrote "Black Hawk Down" about America's ill-fated military action in Somalia, has a new book about the 1979 Iran hostage crisis called "Guests of the Ayatollah."

During the crisis, 52 Americans were held captive in Iran for 444 days. Originally, there were 66, but women and African-Americans were let go.

Bowden says he was personally fascinated with the crisis because it began on the same day he started as a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. As a rookie, however, he was assigned that day to a small local story, but the hostage crisis has remained a personal interest ever since.

Below is an excerpt from the book

Scott was placed in a new room with different roommates, which he found a vast improvement, and soon afterwards was summoned to an unusual session with Ayatollah Ali Khameinei, one of the state's most powerful clerics (and the eventual successor to the Imam as Supreme Leader). In his capacity as military liaison, Scott had met Khamenei almost a year earlier. The ayatollah was in charge of Iran's military, and the colonel had sought him out to discuss outstanding defense contracts. As the colonel saw it, no matter how hateful its bluster, Iran had an overwhelming interest in opening such discussions because there were still billions of dollars of Iranian money deposited in trusts to pay off military purchases, money that was still earning interest in American banks. It was not unusual for payouts from these accounts to total $750 million per quarter. Evidently ignorant of the trust fund, Khamenei initially told Scott that he was wasting his time; Iran was not interested in doing business with the United States any more under any circumstances, and that any outstanding debts would not be paid.

"So, let me get this straight," Scott had said. "If after all the contracts are paid out the fund still has a few hundred million dollars in it, we should just donate it to the U.S. Treasury?"

At that point the Ayatollah got interested. This was the work Scott that had been doing when taken hostage. It turned out that if Iran wanted to keep its Air Force flying, they had to continue doing business with the United States. In the weeks before the takeover, Scott had arranged for the first official purchase by revolutionary Iran from the U.S. military, a ten million dollar order of tires for their fleet of F-14s and C-5A transports. All that now seemed like it had happened in a different world.