Of the carter presidency, an issue that consumed president carter and reshaped American Foreign approximate Foreign Policy. For the next hour and a half for those watching on cspan washington journal we look back at the event as they unfolded in 1979 and from a documentary, this look at how it all happened 40 years ago . Just before 11 00 a. Chlt m. , t attack began. They were over the walls and soon, the chain on the main gate was cut. This was filmed by a student. Here it showed them being overrun. The motor pool was behind the main gate to the embassy compound. To their right was the chancellor. The operational round of the sensitive communication systems. Inside were 45 americans plus iranian staff and some visitors. The marine guards fired tear gas to buy time. When it was realized help wasnt coming. One of the chancellor Security Officers went outside to try and per sway the the students to leave. He was immediately captured. The besieged staff retreated floor by floor. One american, john lindberg, who spoke farsi went out. He, too, was immediately blindfolded and bound and threatened with death. Just a positirtion of a cana documentary which will be seen later today. We want to welcome to the table stewart eisenstat, has new book, president cart e the white house years. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me . John lindberg, negotiating with iran, wrestling with the ghost of history. We saw portion of you in the documentary. Explain exactly what happened as you left the embassy, went outside and then taken hostage. First of all, thank you for having the program. As they mentioned in the documentary, those responsible for our safety that was the host government, and the iranian government was very clear they were not going to do it they were not going to do anything or could not do anything. When i called over there i reached the secretary, and i think the Prime Ministers office, and the first thing she said to me was what about those passwords we sent over for visas . Are our visas ready . They clearly were not going to help so we were on our own. Anything out to talk to the crowd in retrospect was not a smart things to do and its one of the least successful negotiates that i had. The priority was to make sure no one got hurt because if somebody did, if there had been bloodshed and i take my hat off to our marines here, to our Marine Security guard here, they had started shooting or someone had started shooting, things would have ended very differently and i probably wouldnt be here today. Stewart eisenstat, lets take a look back. The hostage crisis began in 1979, but the roots of it stem back many months and many years before that. You were inside the Carter White House as this all unfolded and how did we reach this point in november 1979. Steve, you had to go back to 1953 when a popularly elected Prime Minister of iran was deposed in a coup by the cia and British Intelligence mi6 because he was going to national as the oil industry, and this young shah was put back on his fathers throne, and from that time through 1979 the shah was our man in the middle east. He was our principal ally. Republican and democratic president s gave him an open shopping list. By the time we had come into office after almost 11. 5 billion of military aid around the world, half of it went to iran. He had some of the most sophisticated planes and arms and he was a bull work during the cold war. We had a major cia station that was there right at the board of the soviet union, so he was also israels principal supplier of oil. He was suave, debonair, beautiful wife, gorgeous palace. No one would have foreseen that what we saw occurring here in november 1979 would have happened except when the shah was forced to leave and there was earlier effort to get into the embassy in february of 79 which john will remember, and in that instance, ayatollah khamanei, the leader of the radical revolutions Prime Minister, and yazidi got the police to intervene and take the students out of the embassy. So this was a repeat later in that same year and the circumstances had dramatically changed by then, but you really have to go back to 1953 to understand the feeling in iran that the shah had been sort of imposed on their country. One last point. You cant say it was the typical autocrat. He was very autocrat it, and brutally went after any opposition, but he was a reformer in many ways. He had a white revolution, as he called it to compete with the red revolution of communists. He empowered women, didnt require them to wear the veil, stressed education and tried to reform the land system, and in the sense got in front of a very fundamentalist, conservative society. Of course, he was diagnosed in cancer in the late 1970s and in oral history that you put together in 2006, you wrote and said the following. I was not privy to the exchanges that went on before the shah was admitted here in the u. S. Before because of his cancer, but what ive seen since since made public, bruce said he was very clear, if you do this youre putting all of us in danger, when jimmy carter himself, again the his better judgment and turned to his secretary along press soektd joe did you paul. What are you going to advise me when our embassy is overrun and our people are taken hostage. President carry the, very smart man. He fore saw what was going to happen. He did not want to admit the shah. Hed warned him that this would have very serious consequences including the loss of the embassy. Somewhere around october 20th when they made the decision when the Administration Made the decision to admit him for medical treatment we were essentially informed and the message to us was you are expendable. Youre out there been do the best you can. Thats a very good question. When i used to teach at the naval academy, my students would ask the same question. It seemed so obvious to them. Ive asked people within the administration including ambassador eizenstat and others as i can piece events together, it was never discussed and perhaps the reason was cold war calculations, that it sounds strange saying this now, but iran was a key piece in the cold war in the cold war game with the soviets and the enter piece of our policy since the 1940s was to keep the soviets out of iran. So, in fact, the 1953 coup was mentioned as an anticommunist step that most would say would not be able to resist communist influence. So at that point the administration looked at it and said, well, if we leave, we are abandoning 30 years of american policy and resistance to the soviets and we are simply saying to the soviets, okay. Were gone. Here is iran for you. We are turning over iran to our enemies. So i think the problem was that the administration perhaps thought it could have its cake and eat it too, too. We can admit the shah and we can preserve this foothold with iraq with its antisoviet goals. Is it a Fair Assessment . It is. In my book im very candid about mistakes and this was the single worst intelligence failure before or since, in my opinion. The cia which had reinstalled the shah in 1953 and who was our key ally in the region did not know that for five years he was secretly getting Cancer Treatment for incurable lymphoma. They didnt realize that his Domestic Support rested on quicksand. They didnt appreciate that ayatollah khamanei, the leader of the radical revolution, exiled outside of paris that the cassettes he was sending back were stirring ape revolution. They didnt understand khamanei himself and they didnt know the unacceptable intelligence failure and the head of the cia apologized and it is we did not give them and the key answer is why didnt he allow them to weth draw, and the government was able to repulse it. There wasnt an appreciation for the conflict between the prodemocracy nationalists and the fundamentalists and what khamanei did, steve, is he used john and the hostages as political pawns to solidify his support and push out the democratic nationalists. Bazargan resigned after the hostage crisis and the opposition to breach all International Principles and again, why didnt we in february . Say okay, weve had one of these, lets take everybody out. Well, we did thin the embassy out. There were 1,000 people on the staff and bruce lang, the ambassador, got it down to 70. He reinforced the gates. He put more security in, but at the end of the day we had so many assets in iran, plane, spare parts, cia opposition to the soviet union and the cold war and since they had once repulsed students, the feeling was that would happen a second time, and in the cold war calculation we did not want to turn iran over to the soviet union. We by the way, have a poll on twitter. You can follow us on cspan cspan and cspan history and the question was the iran hostage crisis the main reason why president carry the was defeated in 1980. You can join in and participate in the poll and have your results later. Let me ask what it was like for you personally because you were held hostage for just over a year. Where were you held and what was it like . It was not pleasant. On the other hand, we all survived it. All of us came out ask and all s survived which was a great tribute to president carter and his patience. He was determined that we were going to stay alive. It didnt necessarily have to happen that way, and it could have gone very badly. The iranians, still, many of them have a repeated narrative that we were treated well, that we were guests in a hotel. This is absolute nonsense. In the 14 months that i was there and it was nine months since solitary, threatened and threatened many times and they arranged mock executions or as they isolated us and they cut us off from news and information and we were held incommunicado. They attempted to convince us that we had been forgotten. We had very little communication with family outside, and we were not well treated and we were part of the time in tehran and after the failed rescue mission in april and we were scattered around the country, and we were in a prison in downtown tehran and very easy to hear the iraqi planes at that point attacking tehran in that period and we were held in various places around the city until we were released in january and our plane, i would doubt took off 15 or 20 minutes after president carter left office and well get to that point later in the program and you met with khamanei, the current head of iran and what was that like . What was he like back then . That was a very strange meeting and he was, at the time a secondranked cleric. Who was about my age and he was a few years older than i was. He was a friday prayer leader of iran which is a major position, but we fell into a very iranian host of interaction. I didnt abuse him and i didnt use bad language. It was tempting to do so, but i didnt. Instead, my message to him was, sir, i know in your culture how to treat a guest. You treat a guest in a certain way, and i treated him as a guest in my space. I asked him to sit down. I offered him whatever i had, if i had anything to eat or drink. I offered him that and my message to him was i know how to treat a guest. You do not. Youre what has happened here is absolutely shameful, its disgraceful and violates every tenet, not just of religious law and not just of international law, but of the deepest principles rooted in your culture and the iranians have an expression and you cut off someones head with cotton and that was my purpose. If i may add something to johns very moving account and something he wouldnt have known at the time, president carter decided not to use military action at the beginning. I had recommended it along about our National Security adviser of blockading the harbors and chose instead diplomacy, but he passed a very clear message to the swiss, the germans and others that if one hair on the head of any of our hostages was harmed, if there was any torture, if there were show trials in which they were forced to, quote, unquote, admit some guilt there would be immediate military action and as a result, was there none. So while certainly job and his colleagues were mistreated, the absence of torture and show trials were very clear by the repeated message by president carter that military action would result if untoward actions would occur. 40 years after the iran hostage crisis and cspan3s American History tv. Joining us for the conversation is stewart eizenstat. He served as domestic policy adviser to jimmy carter during the entire four years of his administration and hes author of the book president carter, the white house years and john lindberg, his book, negotiating with iran. He served as political officer in iran and he was, of course, held hostage during those 444 days and welcome to our listeners. Mickey joining us from milwaukee. Good morning. Good morning to mr. Lindberg. Im very sorry about what you went through in iran. Im iranian, and its a very sad part of iranian history and u. S. Iran relations. Its widely known amongst iranians that jimmy carters presidency was responsible for the downfall of the shahs regime. The ideas of bresen ski of wanting to have the belt around the union and the stance of turner, william sullivan, the last ambassador in iran and his message to the shah that president carter wants you to leave iran. So i wanted your opinion on the mistakes of the carter presidency and the price we have been paying for the last 40 years. Thank you for the call and the questions, ill have you take that question first and then get your response. I am very candid in the book about the mistakes the administration had, terrible intelligence and muddled messages because of secretary of state vance and National Security adviser brzezinski, and ambassador sullivan and much else, but it is totally unfair to suggest that jimmy carter lost iran. The shah lost iran by losing the support of his own people and as a result we have the situation that we have today. Its no more fair to say that jimmy carter lost iran than it would be safe and i would say this to the viewer that Dwight Eisenhower as president we had the communist 90 miles from the certain things a superpower 7000 miles away cannot do. The only way the shah could have saved would have been massive use of military force, which he himself in his own memoirs said a monarch cannot shed the blood of his own countrymen to save his throne or a very clear message from the Carter Administration that the shah should use such force. There was a muddled message that respect. The bottom line is the shah lost iran, not jimmy carter. There is a picture in your book from september 1977 in the white house. There is teargas that was in the air. You can see the shah is wiping his eyes. Explain this photograph. The first state visit the shah made in the Carter Administration was in november of 1977. In the outdoor welcoming ceremony, there were demonstrations across the south lawn of the white house in the park by iranian students. They were radical students. To disperse the crowd, the National Park service used teargas. The wind blew it into the face of the shah and the president , causing them to tear up. It was the first sign that anybody had that the shah might be in trouble. , time and time again, time and time again, when the immigrations occurred, the president demonstrations occurred, the president supported the shah. He wanted to fire our abbasid or for suggesting we should reach out to khamenei. Carter ordered teargas and other supplies to be given to the shah to put down demonstrations. He constantly and consistently back to the shah but the shah lost support and lost support of much of the military, which was his real all work bulwark. What your viewer said is a common and powerful narrative. Many of my iranian friends believe that the shahs fall was arranged by president carter. I agree with i dont agree with that. I would say to your iranian viewer we did it to ourselves. What you had was middleclass people, middleclass secular people, teachers, doctors, professionals, lawyers all out there marching and calling for an Islamic Republic without knowing what an Islamic Republic would bring them. President carter had gone to iran in late december, early january of 1978 1977, 1978 and made a speech, a toast, and a dinner in which he spoke about iran being an island of stability in a turbulent region. A year later, the shah was gone and iran was in chaos. If i might make one last comment on this from the shahs point of view, and the shah believed what our viewer said. He believed president carter and other western leaders had decided to get rid of him for reasons that he did not know. They were superpowers. They could do what they want. They did not have to tell him. From his point of view, looking at it from his point of view, when he got in trouble in 1978, president carter would not as he went to president carter and said what should i do, president carter said it is his country. He is the king. I cannot tell him what to do. Which is quite correct. From the shahs point of view, for 30 years american president s had told him what to do. Looking at it from his point of view, he said president carter has abandoned me and thrown me under the bus. Joining us from damascus, maryland. I have a quick question because i have to leave for church in about three minutes. I was wondering how the gentleman feels because iran and russia are aligned. This is been historic since khameni came to power. How do they feel about the fact that President Trump has given away syria to russia and iran . Iran is a factor here as well because iran is not only the worlds worst supporter of terrorism but in syria as well iran is trying to build a Permanent Military base with missiles that would be able to attack israel. Interestingly, the administration, with all of its chest puffing, is pulling out of the middle east and sending the signal to the russians in particular that we do not want these endless wars so we step back from supporting the kurds, who have done so much for us. We are reducing our footprint in iraq and afghanistan. It sends a clear signal to iran and russia, who are filling that vacuum, that it is fair game and the u. S. Is not going to block them. That is what is happening in syria now. Instead of having a proamerican the proamerican kurds, we have the russians a