title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: The KGB also sponsored a series of hostile books about Solzhenitsyn, most notably a "memoir published under the name of his first wife, Natalia Reshetovskaya, but probably mostly composed by Service", according to historian Christopher Andrew. Andropov also gave an order to create "an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion between Pauk and the people around him" by feeding him rumors that the people around him were KGB agents, and deceiving him at every opportunity. Among other things, he continually received envelopes with photographs of car crashes, brain surgery and other disturbing imagery. After the KGB harassment in Zürich, Solzhenitsyn settled in Cavendish, Vermont, reduced communications with others. His influence and moral authority for the West diminished as he became increasingly isolated and critical of Western individualism. KGB and CPSU experts finally concluded that he alienated American listeners by his "reactionary views and intransigent criticism of the US way of life", so no further active measures would be required.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Over the next 17 years, Solzhenitsyn worked on his dramatized history of the Russian Revolution of 1917, "The Red Wheel". By 1992, four sections had been completed and he had also written several shorter works.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn's warnings about the dangers of Communist aggression and the weakening of the moral fiber of the West were generally well received in Western conservative circles (e.g. Ford administration staffers Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld advocated on Solzhenitsyn's behalf for him to speak directly to President Gerald Ford about the Soviet threat), prior to and alongside the tougher foreign policy pursued by US President Ronald Reagan. At the same time, liberals and secularists became increasingly critical of what they perceived as his reactionary preference for Russian nationalism and the Russian Orthodox religion.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn also harshly criticised what he saw as the ugliness and spiritual vapidity of the dominant pop culture of the modern West, including television and much of popular music: "...the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits... by TV stupor and by intolerable music." Despite his criticism of the "weakness" of the West, Solzhenitsyn always made clear that he admired the political liberty which was one of the enduring strengths of Western democratic societies. In a major speech delivered to the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein on 14 September 1993, Solzhenitsyn implored the West not to "lose sight of its own values, its historically unique stability of civic life under the rule of law—a hard-won stability which grants independence and space to every private citizen."


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In a series of writings, speeches, and interviews after his return to his native Russia in 1994, Solzhenitsyn spoke about his admiration for the local self-government he had witnessed first hand in Switzerland and New England. He "praised 'the sensible and sure process of grassroots democracy, in which the local population solves most of its problems on its own, not waiting for the decisions of higher authorities.'" Solzhenitsyn's patriotism was inward-looking. He called for Russia to "renounce all mad fantasies of foreign conquest and begin the peaceful long, long long period of recuperation," as he put it in a 1979 BBC interview with Latvian-born BBC journalist Janis Sapiets.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In 1990, his Soviet citizenship was restored, and, in 1994, he returned to Russia with his wife, Natalia, who had become a United States citizen. Their sons stayed behind in the United States (later, his eldest son Yermolai returned to Russia). From then until his death, he lived with his wife in a dacha in Troitse-Lykovo in west Moscow between the dachas once occupied by Soviet leaders Mikhail Suslov and Konstantin Chernenko. A staunch believer in traditional Russian culture, Solzhenitsyn expressed his disillusionment with post-Soviet Russia in works such as "Rebuilding Russia", and called for the establishment of a strong presidential republic balanced by vigorous institutions of local self-government. The latter would remain his major political theme. Solzhenitsyn also published eight two-part short stories, a series of contemplative "miniatures" or prose poems, and a literary memoir on his years in the West "The Grain Between the Millstones", translated and released as two works by the University of Notre Dame as part of the Kennan Institute's Solzhenitsyn Initiative. The first, "Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile (1974–1978)", was translated by Peter Constantine and published in October 2018, the second, "Book 2: Exile in America (1978–1994)" translated by Clare Kitson and Melanie Moore and published in October 2020.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Once back in Russia Solzhenitsyn hosted a television talk show program. Its eventual format was Solzhenitsyn delivering a 15-minute monologue twice a month; it was discontinued in 1995. Solzhenitsyn became a supporter of Vladimir Putin, who said he shared Solzhenitsyn's critical view towards the Russian Revolution.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: All of Solzhenitsyn's sons became U.S. citizens. One, Ignat, is a pianist and conductor. Another Solzhenitsyn son, Yermolai, works for the Moscow office of McKinsey & Company, a management consultancy firm, where he is a senior partner.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn died of heart failure near Moscow on 3 August 2008, at the age of 89. A burial service was held at Donskoy Monastery, Moscow, on 6 August 2008. He was buried the same day in the monastery, in a spot he had chosen. Russian and world leaders paid tribute to Solzhenitsyn following his death.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: According to William Harrison, Solzhenitsyn was an "arch-reactionary", who argued that the Soviet State "suppressed" traditional Russian and Ukrainian culture, called for the creation of a united Slavic state encompassing Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and who was a fierce opponent of Ukrainian independence. It is well documented that his negative views on Ukrainian independence became more radical over the years. Harrison also alleged that Solzhenitsyn held Pan-Slavist and monarchist views. According to Harrison, "His historical writing is imbued with a hankering after an idealized Tsarist era when, seemingly, everything was rosy. He sought refuge in a dreamy past, where, he believed, a united Slavic state (the Russian empire) built on Orthodox foundations had provided an ideological alternative to western individualistic liberalism."


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In his writings and speeches, Solzhenitsyn, however, sharply criticized the policies of every Tsar from the House of Romanov. A persistent theme in his criticism is that the Romanovs preferred, like Nicholas I during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, to intervene in the internal affairs of foreign countries while governing badly at home.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn also repeatedly denounced Tsar Alexis of Russia and Patriarch Nikon of Moscow for causing the Great Schism of 1666, which Solzhenitsyn said both divided and weakened the Russian Orthodox Church at a time when unity was desperately needed. Solzhenitsyn also attacked both the Tsar and the Patriarch for using excommunication, Siberian exile, imprisonment, torture, and even burning at the stake against the Old Believers, who rejected the liturgical changes which caused the Schism.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn also argued that the Dechristianization of Russian culture, which he considered most responsible for the Bolshevik Revolution, began in 1666, became much worse during the Reign of Tsar Peter the Great, and accelerated into an epidemic during The Enlightenment, the Romantic era, and the Silver Age.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Expanding upon this theme, Solzhenitsyn once declared, "Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened. Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.'"


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In an interview with Joseph Pearce, however, Solzhenitsyn commented, "[The Old Believers were] treated amazingly unjustly, because some very insignificant, trifling differences in ritual which were promoted with poor judgment and without much sound basis. Because of these small differences, they were persecuted in very many cruel ways, they were suppressed, they were exiled. From the perspective of historical justice, I sympathise with them and I am on their side, but this in no way ties in with what I have just said about the fact that religion in order to keep up with mankind must adapt its forms toward modern culture. In other words, do I agree with the Old Believers that religion should freeze and not move at all? Not at all!"


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: When asked by Pearce for his opinions about the division within the Roman Catholic Church over the Second Vatican Council and the Mass of Paul VI, Solzhenitsyn replied, "A question peculiar to the Russian Orthodox Church is, should we continue to use Old Church Slavonic, or should we start to introduce more of the contemporary Russian language into the service? I understand the fears of both those in the Orthodox and in the Catholic Church, the wariness, the hesitation, and the fear that this is lowering the Church to the modern condition, the modern surroundings. I understand this, but alas, I fear that if religion does not allow itself to change, it will be impossible to return the world to religion because the world is incapable on its own of rising as high as the old demands of religion. Religion needs to come and meet it somewhat."


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Surprised to hear Solzhenitsyn, "so often perceived as an arch-traditionalist, apparently coming down on the side of the reformers", Pearce then asked Solzhenitsyn what he thought of the division caused within the Anglican Communion by the decision to ordain female priests.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn replied, "Certainly there are many firm boundaries that should not be changed. When I speak of some sort of correlation between the cultural norms of the present, it is really only a small part of the whole thing." Solzhenitsyn then added, "Certainly, I do not believe that women priests is the way to go!"


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: OGPU officer Naftaly Frenkel, whom Solzhenitsyn identified as "a Turkish Jew born in Constantinople", is represented as having played a major role in the organisation of work in the Gulag. Solzhenitsyn claimed that Frenkel was the "nerve of the Archipelago". This claim is discredited.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In his 1974 essay "Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations", Solzhenitsyn urged "Russian Gentiles" and Jews alike to take moral responsibility for the "renegades" from both communities who enthusiastically embraced atheism and Marxism–Leninism and participated in the Red Terror and many other acts of torture and mass murder following the October Revolution. Solzhenitsyn argued that both Russian Gentiles and Jews should be prepared to treat the atrocities committed by Jewish and Gentile Bolsheviks as though they were the acts of their own family members, before their consciences and before God. Solzhenitsyn said that if we deny all responsibility for the crimes of our national kin, "the very concept of a people loses all meaning."


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In a review of Solzhenitsyn's novel "August 1914" in "The New York Times" on 13 November 1985, Jewish American historian Richard Pipes wrote: "Every culture has its own brand of anti-Semitism. In Solzhenitsyn's case, it's not racial. It has nothing to do with blood. He's certainly not a racist; the question is fundamentally religious and cultural. He bears some resemblance to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who was a fervent Christian and patriot and a rabid anti-Semite. Solzhenitsyn is unquestionably in the grip of the Russian extreme right's view of the Revolution, which is that it was the doing of the Jews". Award-winning Jewish novelist and the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel disagreed and wrote that Solzhenitsyn was "too intelligent, too honest, too courageous, too great a writer" to be an anti-Semite. In his 1998 book "Russia in Collapse", Solzhenitsyn criticized the Russian far-right's obsession with anti-Semitic and anti-Masonic conspiracy theories.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In 2001, Solzhenitsyn published a two-volume work on the history of Russian-Jewish relations ("Two Hundred Years Together" 2001, 2002). The book triggered renewed accusations of anti-Semitism. In the book, he repeated his call for Russian Gentiles and Jews to share responsibility for everything that happened in the Soviet Union. He also downplayed the number of victims of an 1882 pogrom despite current evidence, and failed to mention the infamous Beilis affair, a 1911 trial in Kiev where a Jew was accused of ritually murdering Christian children. He was also criticized for relying on outdated scholarship, ignoring current western scholarship, and for selectively quoting to strengthen his preconceptions, such as that the Jews were often treated better than non-Jewish Russians during the Soviet Union. Similarities between "Two Hundred Years Together" and an anti-Semitic essay titled "Jews in the USSR and in the Future Russia", attributed to Solzhenitsyn, have led to the inference that he stands behind the anti-Semitic passages. Solzhenitsyn himself explained that the essay consists of manuscripts stolen from him by the KGB, and then carefully edited to appear anti-Semitic, before being published, forty years before, without his consent. According to the historian Semyon Reznik, textological analyses have proven Solzhenitsyn's authorship.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn emphasized the significantly more oppressive character of the Soviet police state, in comparison to the Russian Empire of the House of Romanov. He asserted that Imperial Russia did not censor literature or the media to the extreme style of the Soviet Glavlit, that political prisoners typically were not forced into labor camps, and that the number of political prisoners and exiles was only one ten-thousandth of the numbers of prisoners and Exiles following the Bolshevik Revolution. He noted that the Tsar's secret police, the Okhrana, was only present in the three largest cities, and not at all in the Imperial Russian Army.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Shortly before his return to Russia, Solzhenitsyn delivered a speech in Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Vendée Uprising. During his speech, Solzhenitsyn compared Lenin's Bolsheviks with the Jacobin Club during the French Revolution. He also compared the Vendean rebels with the Russian, Ukrainian, and Cossack peasants who rebelled against the Bolsheviks, saying that both were destroyed mercilessly by revolutionary despotism. He commented that, while the French Reign of Terror ended with the Thermidorian reaction and the toppling of the Jacobins and the execution of Maximilien Robespierre, its Soviet equivalent continued to accelerate until the Khrushchev thaw of the 1950s.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: According to Solzhenitsyn, Russians were not the ruling nation in the Soviet Union. He believed that all the traditional culture of all ethnic groups were equally oppressed in favor of atheism and Marxist–Leninism. Russian culture was even more repressed than any other culture in the Soviet Union, since the regime was more afraid of ethnic uprisings among Russian Christians than among any other ethnicity. Therefore, Solzhenitsyn argued, Russian nationalism and the Russian Orthodox Church should not be regarded as a threat by the West but rather as allies.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn made a speaking tour after Francisco Franco's death, and "told liberals not to push too hard for changes because Spain had more freedoms now than the Soviet Union had ever known." As reported by "The New York Times", he "blamed Communism for the death of 110 million Russians and derided those in Spain who complained of dictatorship." Solzhenitsyn recalled: "I had to explain to the people of Spain in the most concise possible terms what it meant to have been subjugated by an ideology as we in the Soviet Union had been, and give the Spanish to understand what a terrible fate they escaped in 1939", a reference to the Spanish Civil War between the Nationalists and the Republicans, which was not a common view at that time among American diplomats. For Winston Lord, a protégé of the then United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Solzhenitsyn was "just about a fascist." According to Elisa Kriza, Solzhenitsyn held "benevolent views" on Franco's dictatorship and Francoist Spain because it was a Christian one, and his Christian worldview operated ideologically. In "The Little Grain Managed to Land Between Two Millstones", Franco's Spain is "held up as a model of a proper Christian response to the evil of Bolshevism." According to Peter Brooke, Solzhenitsyn approached the position argued by Christian Dmitri Panin, with whom he had a fall out in exile, namely that evil "must be confronted by force, and the centralised, spiritually independent Roman Catholic Church is better placed to do it than Orthodoxy with its otherworldliness and tradition of subservience to the state."


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In "Rebuilding Russia", an essay first published in 1990 in "Komsomolskaya Pravda", Solzhenitsyn urged the Soviet Union to grant independence to all the non-Slav republics, which he claimed were sapping the Russian nation and he called for the creation of a new Slavic state bringing together Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Kazakhstan that he considered to be Russified.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In some of his later political writings, such as "Rebuilding Russia" (1990) and "Russia in Collapse" (1998), Solzhenitsyn criticized the oligarchic excesses of the new Russian democracy, while opposing any nostalgia for Soviet Communism. He defended moderate and self-critical patriotism (as opposed to extreme nationalism). He also urged for local self-government similar to what he had seen in New England town meetings and in the cantons of Switzerland. He also expressed concern for the fate of the 25 million ethnic Russians in the "near abroad" of the former Soviet Union.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In an interview with Joseph Pearce, Solzhenitsyn was asked whether he felt that the socioeconomic theories of E.F. Schumacher were, "the key to society rediscovering its sanity". He replied, "I do believe that it would be the key, but I don't think this will happen, because people succumb to fashion, and they suffer from inertia and it is hard to them to come round to a different point of view."


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn refused to accept Russia's highest honor, the Order of St. Andrew, in 1998. Solzhenitsyn later said: "In 1998, it was the country's low point, with people in misery; ... Yeltsin decreed I be honored the highest state order. I replied that I was unable to receive an award from a government that had led Russia into such dire straits." In a 2003 interview with Joseph Pearce, Solzhenitsyn said: "We are exiting from communism in a most unfortunate and awkward way. It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed."


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In a 2007 interview with "Der Spiegel", Solzhenitsyn expressed disappointment that the "conflation of 'Soviet' and 'Russian'", against which he spoke so often in the 1970s, had not passed away in the West, in the ex-socialist countries, or in the former Soviet republics. He commented, "The elder political generation in communist countries is not ready for repentance, while the new generation is only too happy to voice grievances and level accusations, with present-day Moscow [as] a convenient target. They behave as if they heroically liberated themselves and lead a new life now, while Moscow has remained communist. Nevertheless, I dare [to] hope that this unhealthy phase will soon be over, that all the peoples who have lived through communism will understand that communism is to blame for the bitter pages of their history."


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In 2008, Solzhenitsyn praised Putin, saying Russia was rediscovering what it meant to be Russian. Solzhenitsyn also praised the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev as a "nice young man" who was capable of taking on the challenges Russia was facing.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn criticized the Allies for not opening a new front against Nazi Germany in the west earlier in World War II. This resulted in Soviet domination and control of the nations of Eastern Europe. Solzhenitsyn claimed the Western democracies apparently cared little about how many died in the East, as long as they could end the war quickly and painlessly for themselves in the West.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Delivering the commencement address at Harvard University in 1978, he called the United States "Dechristianized" and mired in boorish consumerism. The American people, he said, speaking in Russian through a translator, were also suffering from a "decline in courage" and a "lack of manliness." Few were willing to die for their ideals, he said. He also condemned the 1960s counterculture for forcing the United States federal government to accept a "hasty" capitulation in the Vietnam War.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In a reference to the Communist governments in Southeast Asia's use of re-education camps, politicide, human rights abuses, and genocide following the Fall of Saigon, Solzhenitsyn said: "But members of the U.S. antiwar movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there?"


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: He also accused the Western news media of left-wing bias, of violating the privacy of celebrities, and of filling up the "immortal souls" of their readers with celebrity gossip and other "vain talk". He also said that the West erred in thinking that the whole world should embrace this as model. While faulting Soviet society for rejecting basic human rights and the rule of law, he also critiqued the West for being too legalistic: "A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities." Solzhenitsyn also argued that the West erred in "denying [Russian culture's] autonomous character and therefore never understood it".


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn criticized the 2003 invasion of Iraq and accused the United States of the "occupation" of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn was critical of NATO's eastward expansion towards Russia's borders. In 2006, Solzhenitsyn accused NATO of trying to bring Russia under its control; he claimed this was visible because of its "ideological support for the 'colour revolutions' and the paradoxical forcing of North Atlantic interests on Central Asia". In a 2006 interview with "Der Spiegel" he stated "This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc."


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn gave a speech to AFL–CIO in Washington, D.C., on 30 June 1975 in which he mentioned how the system created by the Bolsheviks in 1917 caused dozens of problems in the Soviet Union. He described how this system was responsible for the Holodomor: "It was a system which, in time of peace, artificially created a famine, causing 6 million people to die in the Ukraine in 1932 and 1933." Solzhenitsyn added, "they died on the very edge of Europe. And Europe didn't even notice it. The world didn't even notice it—6 million people!"


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Shortly before his death, Solzhenitsyn opined in an interview published 2 April 2008 in "Izvestia" that, while the famine in Ukraine was both artificial and caused by the state, it was no different than the Russian famine of 1921. Solzhenitsyn expressed the belief that both famines were caused by systematic armed robbery of the harvests from both Russian and Ukrainian peasants by Bolshevik units, which were under orders from the Politburo to bring back food for the starving urban population centers while refusing for ideological reasons to permit any private sale of food supplies in the cities or to give any payment to the peasants in return for the food that was seized. Solzhenitsyn further alleged that the theory that the Holodomor was a genocide which only victimized the Ukrainian people was created decades later by believers in an anti-Russian form of extreme Ukrainian nationalism. Solzhenitsyn also cautioned that the ultranationalists' claims risked being accepted without question in the West due to widespread ignorance and misunderstanding there of both Russian and Ukrainian history.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: The Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Center in Worcester, Massachusetts promotes the author and hosts the official English-language website dedicated to him.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn is the subject of the song "Mother Russia" by British progressive rock group Renaissance.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: Solzhenitsyn's philosophy plays a key role in the 2012 film "Cloud Atlas", where a character previously kept ignorant and subservient is illegally educated, and is shown reading and quoting his works.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In a 2001 episode of the NBC drama The West Wing titled "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail", Toby Ziegler sarcastically refers to the leader of a WTO protest as Solzhenitsyn.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In October 1983, French literary journalist Bernard Pivot made an hour-long television interview with Solzhenitsyn at his rural home in Vermont, US. Solzhenitsyn discussed his writing, the evolution of his language and style, his family and his outlook on the future—and stated his wish to return to Russia in his lifetime, not just to see his books eventually printed there. Earlier the same year, Solzhenitsyn was interviewed on separate occasions by two British journalists, Bernard Levin and Malcolm Muggeridge.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In 1998, Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov made a four-part television documentary, "Besedy s Solzhenitsynym" ("The Dialogues with Solzhenitsyn"). The documentary was shot in Solzhenitsyn's home depicting his everyday life and his reflections on Russian history and literature.


title: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

text: In December 2009, the Russian channel "Rossiya K" broadcast the French television documentary "L'Histoire Secrète de l'Archipel du Goulag" ("The Secret History of the Gulag Archipelago") made by Jean Crépu and Nicolas Miletitch and translated into Russian under the title "Taynaya Istoriya "Arkhipelaga Gulag"" (Тайная история "Архипелага ГУЛАГ"). The documentary covers events related to creation and publication of "The Gulag Archipelago".


title: Don Knotts

text: Jesse Donald Knotts (July 21, 1924February 24, 2006) was an American actor and comedian. He is widely known for his role as Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show", a 1960s sitcom for which he earned five Emmy Awards. He also played Ralph Furley on the highly rated sitcom "Three's Company" from 1979 to 1984. He starred in multiple comedic films, including the leading roles in "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966) and "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" (1964). In 2004, "TV Guide" ranked him number 27 on its 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time list.


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts was born in West Virginia, the youngest of four children. In the 1940s, before earning a college degree, he served in the United States Army and in World War II. While enlisted, he chose to become a ventriloquist and comedian as part of a G.I. variety show called "Stars and Gripes".


title: Don Knotts

text: After the army, he got his first major break on television in the soap opera "Search for Tomorrow" where he appeared from 1953 to 1955. He then gained wide recognition as part of the repertory company on Steve Allen's variety show, where he played the "extremely nervous man" in Allen's mock "Man in the Street" interviews. In 1958, Knotts made his film debut in the adapted version of "No Time for Sergeants".


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts was cast as deputy Barney Fife on television's "The Andy Griffith Show," which ran from 1960 to 1968. He reprised the character in other shows, such as "The Joey Bishop Show" and "Return to Mayberry". Knotts won five Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Comedy. He also appeared in the films "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966) and "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" (1964).


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, the youngest of four sons of farmer William Jesse Knotts and his wife Elsie Luzetta Knotts (née Moore), who were married in Spraggs, Pennsylvania. His English paternal ancestors emigrated to America in the 17th century, originally settling in Queen Anne's County, Maryland. His brothers were named Willis, William, and Ralph (who was called "Sid").


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts' mother was 40 at his birth. His father, who had schizophrenia and alcoholism, sometimes terrorized him with a knife, causing him to turn inward at an early age. His father died of pneumonia when Knotts was 13. He and his brothers were then raised by their mother, who ran a boarding house in Morgantown. She died in 1969 at age 84. Her son William preceded her in death in 1941 at age 31. They are buried in the family plot at Beverly Hills Memorial Park in Morgantown.


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts graduated from Morgantown High School. After enlisting in the United States Army and serving in World War II, he earned a bachelor's degree in education with a minor in speech from West Virginia University in Morgantown, graduating in 1948. He was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity at WVU.


title: Don Knotts

text: Before he entered high school, Knotts began performing as a ventriloquist and comedian at various church and school functions. After high school, he traveled to New York City to try to make his way as a comedian, but when his career failed to take off, returned home to attend West Virginia University. After his freshman year, he joined the U.S. Army and spent most of his service entertaining troops. He toured the western Pacific Islands as a comedian, in a G.I. variety show called "Stars and Gripes". His ventriloquist act included a dummy named Danny, which Knotts grew to hate—and eventually threw overboard, according to friend and castmate Al Checco.


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts served in the army from June 21, 1943, to January 6, 1946, in the Army's 6817th Special Services Battalion. He was discharged at the rank of Technician Grade 5, then equivalent to a corporal. During his service, he was awarded the World War II Victory Medal, the Philippine Liberation Medal, the Asiatic–Pacific Campaign Medal (with four bronze service stars), the American Campaign Medal, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the Army Marksman Badge (with an M1 Carbine) and the Honorable Service Lapel Pin.


title: Don Knotts

text: After being demobilized, Knotts returned to West Virginia University and graduated in 1948. He married Kay Metz and moved back to New York, where connections he had made in the Special Services Branch helped him break into show business. In addition to doing stand-up comedy at clubs, he appeared on radio, eventually playing the wisecracking, know-it-all character "Windy Wales" on a radio Western called "Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders".


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts got his first break on television in the soap opera "Search for Tomorrow," where he appeared from 1953 to 1955. He came to fame in 1956 on Steve Allen's variety show, as part of Allen's repertory company, most notably in Allen's mock "Man in the Street" interviews, always playing an extremely nervous man. He remained Allen through the 1959–1960 season. From October 20, 1955, through September 14, 1957, he appeared in the Broadway stage version of "No Time for Sergeants", where he played two roles, listed on the playbill as a Corporal Manual Dexterity and A Preacher. In 1958, he made his movie debut with Andy Griffith in the film version of "No Time for Sergeants," where he reprised his Broadway role, and played a high-strung Air Force test administrator whose routine is disrupted by the hijinks of a provincial new recruit.


title: Don Knotts

text: In 1960, Andy Griffith was offered the opportunity to headline his own sitcom, "The Andy Griffith Show" (1960–1968). Knotts took the role of Barney Fife, the deputy—and originally cousin—of Sheriff Andy Taylor (portrayed by Griffith). Knotts' portrayal of the deputy on the popular show earned him five Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Comedy.


title: Don Knotts

text: A summary of the show from the website of the Museum of Broadcast Communications describes Deputy Barney Fife:


title: Don Knotts

text: When the show first aired, Griffith was intended to be the comedic lead with Knotts as his straight man, similar to their roles in "No Time for Sergeants". However, it was quickly discovered that the show was funnier with the roles reversed. As Griffith maintained in several interviews, "By the second episode, I knew that Don should be funny, and I should play straight."


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts believed remarks by Griffith that "The Andy Griffith Show" would end after five seasons, and he began to look for other work, signing a five-film contract with Universal Studios. In his autobiography, Knotts admitted that he had not yet signed the contract when Griffith announced his decision to continue the series; but he had made up his mind to move on, believing he would not get the chance again. Knotts left the series in 1965. His character's absence on the show was explained by Deputy Fife's having finally made the "big time," joining the Raleigh, North Carolina, police force.


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts went on to star in a series of film comedies that drew on his high-strung persona from the television series: he had a cameo appearance in United Artists' "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963), and starred in Warner Bros.' "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" (1964). Knotts then began his Universal five-film contract with "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966), "The Reluctant Astronaut" (1967), "The Shakiest Gun in the West" (1968), "The Love God?" (1969) and "How to Frame a Figg" (1971). After making "How to Frame a Figg", Knotts' five-film contract with Universal finished.


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts reprised his role as Barney Fife several times in the 1960s: he made five guest appearances on "The Andy Griffith Show" (gaining him another two Emmy Awards), and he later appeared once on the spin-off "Mayberry R.F.D.", where he was present as best man for the marriage of Andy Taylor and his longtime love, Helen Crump. He continued to work steadily, though he did not appear as a regular on any successful television series until in 1979 he got the part of landlord Ralph Furley on "Three's Company" for seasons 4 through 8, after the departure of Norman Fell, who had played the previous landlord.


title: Don Knotts

text: In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Knotts served as the spokesman for Dodge trucks and was featured prominently in a series of print ads and dealer brochures. On television, he went on to host a variety show/sitcom hybrid on NBC, "The Don Knotts Show", which aired Tuesdays during the fall of 1970, but the series was low-rated and short-lived, and Knotts was uncomfortable with the variety show format. He also made frequent guest appearances on other shows such as "The Bill Cosby Show" and "Here's Lucy". In 1970, he appeared as a Barney Fife-like police officer in the pilot of "The New Andy Griffith Show". In 1972, Knotts voiced an animated version of himself in two episodes of "The New Scooby Doo Movies": "The Spooky Fog of Juneberry", in which he played a lawman resembling Barney Fife, and "Guess Who's Knott Coming to Dinner". He appeared as Felix Unger in a stage version of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple", with Art Carney as Oscar Madison, and toured in the Neil Simon comedy "Last of the Red Hot Lovers".


title: Don Knotts

text: Beginning in 1975, Knotts was teamed with Tim Conway in a series of slapstick films aimed at children, including the Disney film "The Apple Dumpling Gang" (1975) and its sequel, "The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again" (1979). They also did two independent films, the boxing comedy "The Prize Fighter" (1979), and the mystery-comedy "The Private Eyes" (1980). Knotts co-starred in several other Disney films, including "Gus" (1976), "No Deposit, No Return" (1976), "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo" (1977) and "Hot Lead and Cold Feet" (1978).


title: Don Knotts

text: In 1979, Knotts returned to series television in his second most identifiable role, the wacky but lovable landlord Ralph Furley on "Three's Company". The series, which was already an established hit, added Knotts to the cast when the original landlords, Stanley and Helen Roper (a married couple played by Norman Fell and Audra Lindley, respectively) left to star in their own short-lived spin-off series "The Ropers".


title: Don Knotts

text: On set, Knotts easily integrated himself into the already established cast who were, as John Ritter put it, "so scared" of Knotts because of his star status. When Suzanne Somers left the show after a contract dispute in 1981, the writers started giving the material meant for Somers's Chrissy to Knotts' Furley. Knotts remained on the series until it ended in 1984. The "Three's Company" script supervisor, Carol Summers, became Knotts' agent and often accompanied him to personal appearances.


title: Don Knotts

text: In 1986, Knotts reunited with Andy Griffith in the made-for-television film "Return to Mayberry", reprising his Barney Fife role. In early 1987, he joined the cast of the first-run syndication comedy "What a Country!", as Principal Bud McPherson, for its remaining 13 episodes. It was produced by Martin Rips and Joseph Staretski, who had previously worked on "Three's Company".


title: Don Knotts

text: In 1988, Knotts joined Andy Griffith on TV's "Matlock", in the recurring role of pesky neighbor Les Calhoun, until 1992.


title: Don Knotts

text: After that, his roles were sporadic, including a cameo appearance in the film "Big Bully" (1996) as the high school principal. In 1998, he had a small but pivotal role as a mysterious TV repairman in "Pleasantville". That year, his hometown of Morgantown, West Virginia changed the name of the street formerly known as South University Avenue (U.S. Route 119) to Don Knotts Boulevard on "Don Knotts Day". Also that day, in honor of Knotts' role as Barney Fife, he was named an honorary deputy sheriff with the Monongalia County Sheriff's Department.


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts was recognized in 2000 with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He continued to act on stage, but much of his film and television work after 2000 was as voice talent. In 2002, he appeared again with Scooby-Doo in the video game "Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights". (He also spoofed his appearances on that show in various promotions for Cartoon Network, and in a parody on "Robot Chicken", where he was teamed with Phyllis Diller.) In 2003, he teamed up again with Tim Conway to provide voices for the direct-to-video children's series "Hermie and Friends", which continued until Knotts' death. In 2005, he was the voice of Mayor Turkey Lurkey in "Chicken Little" (2005), his first Disney movie since 1979. On September 12, 2003, he was in Kansas City, in a stage version of "On Golden Pond," when he received a call from John Ritter's family telling him that his former "Three's Company" co-star had died of an aortic dissection that day. He and his co-stars attended the funeral four days later. Knotts had appeared with Ritter one final time in a cameo on "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter," an episode that paid homage to their earlier television series. Knotts was the last "Three's Company" star to work with Ritter.


title: Don Knotts

text: During this period of time, macular degeneration in both eyes caused the otherwise robust Knotts to become virtually blind. His live appearances on television were few. In 2005, he parodied his Ralph Furley character while playing a Paul Young variation in a "Desperate Housewives" sketch on "The 3rd Annual TV Land Awards". He parodied that part one final time in "Stone Cold Crazy", an episode of the sitcom "That '70s Show," where he played the landlord. It was his last live-action television appearance. His final role was in "Air Buddies" (2006), a direct-to-video sequel to "Air Bud", voicing the sheriff's deputy dog Sniffer.


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts's friend Al Checco said, "Don was somewhat of a ladies' man. He fancied himself something of a Frank Sinatra. The ladies loved him and he dated quite a bit." Knotts was married three times. His marriage to Kathryn Metz lasted from 1947 until their divorce in 1964, and he raised his daughter as a single parent. He married Loralee Czuchna in 1974 and they divorced in 1983. His third marriage was to Frances Yarborough, from 2002 until his death in 2006. From his first marriage, Knotts had a son, Thomas Knotts, and a daughter, actress Karen Knotts (born April 2, 1954).


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts struggled with hypochondria and macular degeneration. Betty Lynn, one of his co-stars on "The Andy Griffith Show", described him as a "very quiet man. Very sweet. Nothing like Barney Fife." TV writer Mark Evanier called him "the most beloved person in all of show business".


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts died at age 81 on February 24, 2006, at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from pulmonary and respiratory complications of pneumonia related to lung cancer. He underwent treatment at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in the months before his death, but returned home after reportedly feeling better. He was buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.


title: Don Knotts

text: Knotts' obituaries cited him as a major influence on other entertainers. In early 2011, his grave's plain granite headstone was replaced with a bronze plaque depicting several of his movie and television roles. A statue honoring him, created by Jamie Lester, was unveiled on July 23, 2016, in front of The Metropolitan Theatre on High Street in his hometown of Morgantown, West Virginia.


title: Software as a service

text: Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software.


title: Software as a service

text: SaaS is considered to be part of cloud computing, along with infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), desktop as a service (DaaS), managed software as a service (MSaaS), mobile backend as a service (MBaaS), data center as a service (DCaaS), integration platform as a service (iPaaS), and information technology management as a service (ITMaaS).


title: Software as a service

text: SaaS apps are typically accessed by users of a web browser (a thin client). SaaS became a common delivery model for many business applications, including office software, messaging software, payroll processing software, DBMS software, management software, CAD software, development software, gamification, virtualization, accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM), management information systems (MIS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), invoicing, field service management, human resource management (HRM), talent acquisition, learning management systems, content management (CM), geographic information systems (GIS), and service desk management.


title: Software as a service

text: Centralized hosting of business applications dates back to the 1960s. Starting in that decade, IBM and other mainframe computer providers conducted a service bureau business, often referred to as time-sharing or utility computing. Such services included offering computing power and database storage to banks and other large organizations from their worldwide data centers.


title: Software as a service

text: The expansion of the Internet during the 1990s brought about a new class of centralized computing, called application service providers (ASP). ASPs provided businesses with the service of hosting and managing specialized business applications to reduce costs through central administration and the provider's specialization in a particular business application. Two of the largest ASPs were USI, which was headquartered in the Washington, DC area, and Futurelink Corporation, headquartered in Irvine, California.


title: Software as a service

text: Software as a service essentially extends the idea of the ASP model. The term "software as a service" (SaaS), however, is commonly used in more specific settings:


title: Software as a service

text: The acronym first appeared in the goods and services description of a USPTO trademark, filed on September 23, 1985. "DbaaS" (Database as a service) has emerged as a sub-variety of SaaS and is a type of cloud database.


title: Software as a service

text: The cloud (or SaaS) model has no physical need for indirect distribution because it is not distributed physically and is deployed almost instantaneously, thereby negating the need for traditional partners and middlemen. Unlike traditional software, which is conventionally sold as a perpetual license with an up-front cost (and an optional ongoing support fee), SaaS providers generally price applications using a subscription fee, most commonly a monthly fee or an annual fee. Consequently, the initial setup cost for SaaS is typically lower than the equivalent enterprise software. SaaS vendors typically price their applications based on some usage parameters, such as the number of users using the application. However, because in a SaaS environment customers' data reside with the SaaS vendor, opportunities also exist to charge per transaction, event, or other units of value, such as the number of processors required.


title: Software as a service

text: The relatively low cost for user provisioning (i.e., setting up a new customer) in a multi-tenant environment enables some SaaS vendors to offer applications using the freemium model. In this model, a free service is made available with limited functionality or scope, and fees are charged for enhanced functionality or larger scope.


title: Software as a service

text: A key driver of SaaS growth is SaaS vendors' ability to provide a price that is competitive with on-premises software. This is consistent with the traditional rationale for outsourcing IT systems, which involves applying economies of scale to application operation, i.e., an outside service provider may be able to offer better, cheaper, more reliable applications.


title: Software as a service

text: Most SaaS providers offer a multi-tenant architecture. With this model, a single version of the application, with a single configuration (hardware, network, operating system), is used for all customers ("tenants"). To support scalability, the application can be installed on multiple machines (called horizontal scaling). In some cases, a second version of the application is set up to offer a select group of customers access to pre-release versions of the applications (e.g., a beta version) for testing purposes. This is contrasted with traditional software, where multiple physical copies of the software — each potentially of a different version, with a potentially different configuration, and often customized — are installed across various customer sites.


title: Software as a service

text: Although an exception rather than the norm, some SaaS providers use mechanisms such as virtualization to manage a large number of customers in place of multitenancy. Whether multitenancy is a necessary component for software as a service is debatable.


title: Software as a service

text: Horizontal SaaS and vertical SaaS are different models of cloud computing services. Horizontal SaaS targets a broad variety of customers, generally without regard to their industry. Some popular examples of horizontal SaaS vendors are Salesforce and HubSpot. Vertical SaaS, on the other hand, refers to a niche market targeting a narrower variety of customers to meet their specific requirements.


title: Software as a service

text: Although not all software-as-a-service applications share all the following traits, the characteristics below are common among many of them:


title: Software as a service

text: SaaS applications are often updated more frequently than traditional software, in many cases on a weekly or monthly basis. This is enabled by several factors:


title: Software as a service

text: Accelerated feature delivery is further enabled by agile software development methodologies. Such methodologies, which have evolved in the mid-1990s, provide a set of software development tools and practices to support frequent software releases.


title: Software as a service

text: SaaS applications predominantly offer integration protocols and application programming interfaces (APIs) that operate over a wide area network.


title: Software as a service

text: The ubiquity of SaaS applications and other Internet services and the standardization of their API technology has spawned the development of mashups, which are lightweight applications that combine data, presentation, and functionality from multiple services, creating a compound service. Mashups further differentiate SaaS applications from on-premises software as the latter cannot be easily integrated outside a company's firewall.


title: Software as a service

text: Inspired by the development of the different internet networking services and the so-called "web 2.0" functionality, many SaaS applications offer features that let their users collaborate and share information.


title: Software as a service

text: For example, many project management applications delivered in the SaaS model offer—in addition to traditional project planning functionality—collaboration features letting users comment on tasks and plans and share documents within and outside an organization. Several other SaaS applications let users vote on and offer new feature ideas.


title: Software as a service

text: Although some collaboration-related functionality is also integrated into on-premises software, (implicit or explicit) collaboration between users or different customers is only possible with centrally hosted software.


title: Software as a service

text: OpenSaaS refers to software as a service (SaaS) based on open-source code. Like SaaS applications, Open SaaS is a web-based application hosted, supported, and maintained by a service provider. While the roadmap for Open SaaS applications is defined by its community of users, upgrades and product enhancements are managed by a central provider. The term was coined in 2011 by Dries Buytaert, creator of the Drupal content management framework.


title: Software as a service

text: Andrew Hoppin, a former Chief Information Officer for the New York State Senate, has been a vocal advocate of OpenSaaS for government, calling it "the future of government innovation." He points to WordPress and Why Unified as a successful example of an OpenSaaS software delivery model that gives customers "the best of both worlds, and more options. The fact that it is open source means that they can start building their websites by self-hosting WordPress and customizing their website to their heart’s content. Concurrently, the fact that WordPress is SaaS means that they don’t have to manage the website at all -- they can simply pay WordPress.com to host it."


title: Software as a service

text: Several important changes to the software market and technology landscape have facilitated the acceptance and growth of SaaS:


title: Software as a service

text: According to a survey by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, 83% of US IT healthcare organizations are now using cloud services, with 9.3% planning to, whereas 67% of IT healthcare organizations are currently running SaaS-based applications.


title: Software as a service

text: "Software as a service data escrow" is the process of keeping a copy of critical software-as-a-service application data with an independent third party. Similar to source code escrow, where critical software source code is stored with an independent third party, SaaS data escrow applies the same logic to the data within a SaaS application. It allows companies to protect and ensure all the data that resides within SaaS applications, protecting against data loss.


title: Software as a service

text: There are many and varied reasons for considering SaaS data escrow, including concerns about vendor bankruptcy, unplanned service outages, and potential data loss or corruption.


title: Software as a service

text: Many businesses either ensure that they are complying with their data governance standards or try to enhance their reporting and business analytics against their SaaS data.


title: Software as a service

text: One notable criticism of SaaS comes from Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, who refers to it as "Service as a Software Substitute" (SaaSS). He considers the use of SaaSS to be a violation of the principles of free software. According to Stallman:


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: On November 4, 1979, 52 United States diplomats and citizens were held hostage after a group of militarized Iranian college students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took them as hostages. A diplomatic standoff ensued. The hostages were held for 444 days, being released on January 20, 1981.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Western media described the crisis as an "entanglement" of "vengeance and mutual incomprehension." U.S. President Jimmy Carter called the hostage-taking an act of "blackmail" and the hostages "victims of terrorism and anarchy." In Iran, it was widely seen as an act against the U.S. and its influence in Iran, including its perceived attempts to undermine the Iranian Revolution and its longstanding support of the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in 1979. After Shah Pahlavi was overthrown, he was admitted to the U.S. for cancer treatment. Iran demanded his return in order to stand trial for crimes that he was accused of committing during his reign. Specifically, he was accused of committing crimes against Iranian citizens with the help of his secret police. Iran's demands were rejected by the United States, and Iran saw the decision to grant him asylum as American complicity in those atrocities. The Americans saw the hostage-taking as an egregious violation of the principles of international law, such as the Vienna Convention, which granted diplomats immunity from arrest and made diplomatic compounds inviolable. The Shah left the United States in December 1979 and was ultimately granted asylum in Egypt, where he died from complications of cancer at age 60 on July 27, 1980.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Six American diplomats who had evaded capture were rescued by a joint CIA–Canadian effort on January 27, 1980. The crisis reached a climax in early 1980 after diplomatic negotiations failed to win the release of the hostages. Carter ordered the U.S. military to attempt a rescue mission – Operation Eagle Claw – using warships that included and , which were patrolling the waters near Iran. The failed attempt on April 24, 1980, resulted in the death of one Iranian civilian and the accidental deaths of eight American servicemen after one of the helicopters crashed into a transport aircraft. U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned his position following the failure. In September 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, beginning the Iran–Iraq War. These events led the Iranian government to enter negotiations with the U.S., with Algeria acting as a mediator. The crisis is considered a pivotal episode in the history of Iran–United States relations.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Political analysts cited the standoff as a major factor in the continuing downfall of Carter's presidency and his landslide loss in the 1980 presidential election; the hostages were formally released into United States custody the day after the signing of the Algiers Accords, just minutes after American President Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. In Iran, the crisis strengthened the prestige of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the political power of theocrats who opposed any normalization of relations with the West. The crisis also led to American economic sanctions against Iran, which further weakened ties between the two countries.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: During the Second World War, the British and the Soviet governments invaded and occupied Iran, forcing the first Pahlavi monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi to abdicate in favor of his eldest son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The two nations claimed that they acted preemptively in order to stop Reza Shah from aligning his petroleum-rich country with Nazi Germany. However, the Shah's declaration of neutrality, and his refusal to allow Iranian territory to be used to train or supply Soviet troops, were probably the real reasons for the invasion of Iran.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The United States did not participate in the invasion but it secured Iran's independence after the war ended by applying intense diplomatic pressure on the Soviet Union which forced it to withdraw from Iran in 1946.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: By the 1950s, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was engaged in a power struggle with Iran's prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, an immediate descendant of the preceding Qajar dynasty. Mosaddegh led a general strike, demanding an increased share of the nation's petroleum revenue from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company which was operating in Iran. The UK retaliated by reducing the amount of revenue which the Iranian government received. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 helped Iranian royalists depose Mosaddegh in a military "coup d'état" codenamed Operation Ajax, allowing the Shah to extend his power. For the next two decades the Shah reigned as an absolute monarch, "disloyal" elements within the state were purged. The U.S. continued to support the Shah after the coup, with the CIA training the Iranian secret police. In the subsequent decades of the Cold War, various economic, cultural, and political issues united Iranian opposition against the Shah and led to his eventual overthrow.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Months before the Iranian Revolution, on New Year's Eve 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter further angered anti-Shah Iranians with a televised toast to Pahlavi, claiming that the Shah was "beloved" by his people. After the revolution commenced in February 1979 with the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the American Embassy was occupied and its staff held hostage briefly. Rocks and bullets had broken so many of the embassy's front-facing windows that they were replaced with bulletproof glass. The embassy's staff was reduced to just over 60 from a high of nearly one thousand earlier in the decade.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The Carter administration tried to mitigate anti-American feeling by promoting a new relationship with the "de facto" Iranian government and continuing military cooperation in hopes that the situation would stabilize. However, on October 22, 1979, the United States permitted the Shah, who had lymphoma, to enter New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center for medical treatment. The State Department had discouraged this decision, understanding the political delicacy. But in response to pressure from influential figures including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Council on Foreign Relations Chairman David Rockefeller, the Carter administration decided to grant it.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The Shah's admission to the United States intensified Iranian revolutionaries' anti-Americanism and spawned rumors of another U.S.–backed coup that would re-install him. Khomeini, who had been exiled by the shah for 15 years, heightened the rhetoric against the "Great Satan", as he called the U.S, talking of "evidence of American plotting." In addition to ending what they believed was American sabotage of the revolution, the hostage takers hoped to depose the provisional revolutionary government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, which they believed was plotting to normalize relations with the U.S. and extinguish Islamic revolutionary order in Iran. The occupation of the embassy on November 4, 1979, was also intended as leverage to demand the return of the Shah to stand trial in Iran in exchange for the hostages.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: A later study claimed that there had been no American plots to overthrow the revolutionaries, and that a CIA intelligence-gathering mission at the embassy had been "notably ineffectual, gathering little information and hampered by the fact that none of the three officers spoke the local language, Persian." Its work, the study said, was "routine, prudent espionage conducted at diplomatic missions everywhere."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: On the morning of February 14, 1979, the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took a Marine named Kenneth Kraus hostage. Ambassador William H. Sullivan surrendered the embassy to save lives, and with the assistance of Iranian Foreign Minister Ebrahim Yazdi, returned the embassy to U.S. hands within three hours. Kraus was injured in the attack, kidnapped by the militants, tortured, tried, and convicted of murder. He was to be executed, but President Carter and Sullivan secured his release within six days. This incident became known as the Valentine's Day Open House.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The next attempt to seize the American Embassy was planned for September 1979 by Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, a student at the time. He consulted with the heads of the Islamic associations of Tehran's main universities, including the University of Tehran, Sharif University of Technology, Amirkabir University of Technology (Polytechnic of Tehran), and Iran University of Science and Technology. They named their group Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Asgharzadeh later said there were five students at the first meeting, two of whom wanted to target the Soviet Embassy because the USSR was "a Marxist and anti-God regime". Two others, Mohsen Mirdamadi and Habibolah Bitaraf, supported Asgharzadeh's chosen target: the United States. "Our aim was to object against the American government by going to their embassy and occupying it for several hours," Asgharzadeh said. "Announcing our objections from within the occupied compound would carry our message to the world in a much more firm and effective way." Mirdamadi told an interviewer, "We intended to detain the diplomats for a few days, maybe one week, but no more." Masoumeh Ebtekar, the spokeswoman for the Iranian students during the crisis, said that those who rejected Asgharzadeh's plan did not participate in the subsequent events.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The students observed the procedures of the Marine Security Guards from nearby rooftops overlooking the embassy. They also drew on their experiences from the recent revolution, during which the U.S. Embassy grounds were briefly occupied. They enlisted the support of police officers in charge of guarding the embassy and of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: According to the group and other sources, Ayatollah Khomeini did not know of the plan beforehand. The students had wanted to inform him, but according to the author Mark Bowden, Ayatollah Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha persuaded them not to. Khoeiniha feared that the government would use the police to expel the students as they had the occupiers in February. The provisional government had been appointed by Khomeini, and so Khomeini was likely to go along with the government's request to restore order. On the other hand, Khoeiniha knew that if Khomeini first saw that the occupiers were faithful supporters of him (unlike the leftists in the first occupation) and that large numbers of pious Muslims had gathered outside the embassy to show their support for the takeover, it would be "very hard, perhaps even impossible," for him to oppose the takeover, and this would paralyze the Bazargan administration, which Khoeiniha and the students wanted to eliminate.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Supporters of the takeover stated that their motivation was fear of another American-backed coup against their popular revolution.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: On November 4, 1979, one of the demonstrations organized by Iranian student unions loyal to Khomeini erupted into an all-out conflict right outside the walled compound housing the U.S. Embassy.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: At about 6:30 a.m., the ringleaders gathered between three hundred and five hundred selected students and briefed them on the battle plan. A female student was given a pair of metal cutters to break the chains locking the embassy's gates and hid them beneath her chador.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: At first, the students planned a symbolic occupation, in which they would release statements to the press and leave when government security forces came to restore order. This was reflected in placards saying: "Don't be afraid. We just want to sit in." When the embassy guards brandished firearms, the protesters retreated, with one telling the Americans, "We don't mean any harm." But as it became clear that the guards would not use deadly force and that a large, angry crowd had gathered outside the compound to cheer the occupiers and jeer the hostages, the plan changed. According to one embassy staff member, buses full of demonstrators began to appear outside the embassy shortly after the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line broke through the gates.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: As Khomeini's followers had hoped, Khomeini supported the takeover. According to Foreign Minister Yazdi, when he went to Qom to tell Khomeini about it, Khomeini told him to "go and kick them out." But later that evening, back in Tehran, Yazdi heard on the radio that Khomeini had issued a statement supporting the seizure, calling it "the second revolution" and the embassy an "American spy den in Tehran."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The Marines and embassy staff were blindfolded by the occupiers, and then paraded in front of assembled photographers. In the first couple of days, many of the embassy workers who had sneaked out of the compound or had not been there at the time of the takeover were rounded up by Islamists and returned as hostages. Six American diplomats managed to avoid capture and took refuge in the British Embassy before being transferred to the Canadian Embassy. In a joint covert operation known as the Canadian caper, the Canadian government and the CIA managed to smuggle them out of Iran on January 28, 1980, using Canadian passports and a cover story that identified them as a film crew. Others went to the Swedish Embassy in Tehran for three months.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: A State Department diplomatic cable of November 8, 1979, details "A Tentative, Incomplete List of U.S. Personnel Being Held in the Embassy Compound."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line demanded that Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi return to Iran for trial and execution. The U.S. maintained that the Shah – who was to die less than a year later, in July 1980 – had come to America for medical attention. The group's other demands included that the U.S. government apologize for its interference in the internal affairs of Iran, including the overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh in 1953, and that Iran's frozen assets in the United States be released.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The initial plan was to hold the embassy for only a short time, but this changed after it became apparent how popular the takeover was and that Khomeini had given it his full support. Some attributed the decision not to release the hostages quickly to President Carter's failure to immediately deliver an ultimatum to Iran. His initial response was to appeal for the release of the hostages on humanitarian grounds and to share his hopes for a strategic anti-communist alliance with the Ayatollah. As some of the student leaders had hoped, Iran's moderate prime minister, Bazargan, and his cabinet resigned under pressure just days after the takeover.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The duration of the hostages' captivity has also been attributed to internal Iranian revolutionary politics. As Ayatollah Khomeini told Iran's president:


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: This has united our people. Our opponents do not dare act against us. We can put the constitution to the people's vote without difficulty, and carry out presidential and parliamentary elections.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Leftist People's Mujahedin of Iran supported the taking of hostages at the US embassy. According to scholar Daniel Pipes, writing in 1980, the Marxist-leaning leftists and the Islamists shared a common antipathy toward market-based reforms under the late Shah, and both subsumed individualism, including the unique identity of women, under conservative, though contrasting, visions of collectivism. Accordingly, both groups favored the Soviet Union over the United States in the early months of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets, and possibly their allies Cuba, Libya, and East Germany, were suspected of providing indirect assistance to the participants in the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The PLO under Yasser Arafat provided personnel, intelligence liaisons, funding, and training for Khomeini's forces before and after the revolution, and was suspected of playing a role in the embassy crisis. Fidel Castro reportedly praised Khomeini as a revolutionary anti-imperialist who could find common cause between revolutionary leftists and anti-American Islamists. Both expressed disdain for modern capitalism and a preference for authoritarian collectivism. Cuba and its socialist ally Venezuela, under Hugo Chávez, would later form ALBA in alliance with the Islamic Republic as a counter to neoliberal American influence.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Revolutionary teams displayed secret documents purportedly taken from the embassy, sometimes painstakingly reconstructed after shredding, to buttress their claim that the U.S. was trying to destabilize the new regime.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: By embracing the hostage-taking under the slogan "America can't do a thing," Khomeini rallied support and deflected criticism of his controversial theocratic constitution, which was scheduled for a referendum vote in less than one month. The referendum was successful, and after the vote, both leftists and theocrats continued to use allegations of pro-Americanism to suppress their opponents: relatively moderate political forces that included the Iranian Freedom Movement, the National Front, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari, and later President Abolhassan Banisadr. In particular, carefully selected diplomatic dispatches and reports discovered at the embassy and released by the hostage-takers led to the disempowerment and resignation of moderate figures such as Bazargan. The failed rescue attempt and the political danger of any move seen as accommodating America delayed a negotiated release of the hostages. After the crisis ended, leftists and theocrats turned on each other, with the stronger theocratic group annihilating the left.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Supporters of the takeover claimed that in 1953, the American Embassy had been used as a "den of spies" from which the coup was organized. Later, documents which suggested that some of the members of the embassy's staff had been working with the Central Intelligence Agency were found Inside the embassy. Later, the CIA confirmed its role and that of MI6 in "Operation Ajax". After the Shah entered the United States, Ayatollah Khomeini called for street demonstrations.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Revolutionary teams displayed secret documents purportedly taken from the embassy, sometimes painstakingly reconstructed after shredding, in order to buttress their claim that "the Great Satan" (the U.S.) was trying to destabilize the new regime with the assistance of Iranian moderates who were in league with the U.S. The documents – including telegrams, correspondence, and reports from the U.S. State Department and the CIA – were published in a series of books which were titled "Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den" (). According to a 1997 Federation of American Scientists bulletin, by 1995, 77 volumes of "Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den" had been published. Many of these volumes are now available online.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The hostage-takers, declaring their solidarity with other "oppressed minorities" and declaring their respect for "the special place of women in Islam," released one woman and two African Americans on November 19. Before release, these hostages were required by their captors to hold a press conference in which Kathy Gross and William Quarles praised the revolution's aims, but four further women and six African-Americans were released the following day. According to the then United States Ambassador to Lebanon, John Gunther Dean, the 13 hostages were released with the assistance of the Palestine Liberation Organization, after Yassir Arafat and Abu Jihad personally traveled to Tehran to secure a concession. The only African-American hostage not released that month was Charles A. Jones, Jr. One more hostage, a white man named Richard Queen, was released in July 1980 after he became seriously ill with what was later diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. The remaining 52 hostages were held until January 1981, up to 444 days of captivity.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The hostages were initially held at the embassy, but after the takers took the cue from the failed rescue mission, the detainees were scattered around Iran in order to make a single rescue attempt impossible. Three high-level officials – Bruce Laingen, Victor L. Tomseth, and Mike Howland – were at the Foreign Ministry at the time of the takeover. They stayed there for several months, sleeping in the ministry's formal dining room and washing their socks and underwear in the bathroom. At first, they were treated as diplomats, but after the provisional government fell, the treatment of them deteriorated. By March, the doors to their living space were kept "chained and padlocked."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: By midsummer 1980, the Iranians had moved the hostages to prisons in Tehran to prevent escapes or rescue attempts and to improve the logistics of guard shifts and food deliveries. The final holding area, from November 1980 until their release, was the Teymur Bakhtiar mansion in Tehran, where the hostages were finally given tubs, showers, and hot and cold running water. Several foreign diplomats and ambassadors – including the former Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor – visited the hostages over the course of the crisis and relayed information back to the U.S. government, including dispatches from Laingen.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Iranian propaganda stated that the hostages were "guests" and it also stated that they were being treated with respect. Asgharzadeh, the leader of the students, described the original plan as a nonviolent and symbolic action in which the students would use their "gentle and respectful treatment" of the hostages to dramatize the offended sovereignty and dignity of Iran to the entire world. In America, an Iranian chargé d'affaires, Ali Agha, stormed out of a meeting with an American official, exclaiming: "We are not mistreating the hostages. They are being very well taken care of in Tehran. They are our guests."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The actual treatment of the hostages was far different. They described beatings, theft, and fear of bodily harm. Two of them, William Belk and Kathryn Koob, recalled being paraded blindfolded before an angry, chanting crowd outside the embassy. Others reported having their hands bound "day and night" for days or even weeks, long periods of solitary confinement, and months of being forbidden to speak to one another or to stand, walk, or leave their space unless they were going to the bathroom. All of the hostages "were threatened repeatedly with execution, and took it seriously." The hostage-takers played Russian roulette with their victims.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: One hostage, Michael Metrinko, was kept in solitary confinement for several months. On two occasions, when he expressed his opinion of Ayatollah Khomeini, he was severely punished. The first time, he was kept in handcuffs for two weeks, and the second time, he was beaten and kept alone in a freezing cell for two weeks.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Another hostage, U.S. Army medic Donald Hohman, went on a hunger strike for several weeks, and two hostages attempted suicide. Steve Lauterbach broke a water glass and slashed his wrists after being locked in a dark basement room with his hands tightly bound. He was found and rushed to the hospital by guards. Jerry Miele, a CIA communications technician, smashed his head into the corner of a door, knocking himself unconscious and cutting a deep gash. "Naturally withdrawn" and looking "ill, old, tired, and vulnerable," Miele had become the butt of his guards' jokes, and they had rigged up a mock electric chair to emphasize the fate that awaited him. His fellow hostages applied first aid and raised the alarm, and he was taken to a hospital after a long delay which was caused by the guards.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Other hostages described threats to boil their feet in oil (Alan B. Golacinski), cut their eyes out (Rick Kupke), or kidnap and kill a disabled son in America and "start sending pieces of him to your wife" (David Roeder).


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Four hostages tried to escape, and all of them were punished with stretches of solitary confinement when their escape attempts were discovered.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Queen, the hostage who was sent home because of his multiple sclerosis, first developed dizziness and numbness in his left arm six months before his release. At first, the Iranians misdiagnosed his symptoms as a reaction to drafts of cold air. When warmer confinement did not help, he was told that it was "nothing" because the symptoms would disappear soon. Over the months, the numbness spread to his right side, and the dizziness worsened until he "was literally flat on his back, unable to move without growing dizzy and throwing up."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The cruelty of the Iranian prison guards became "a form of slow torture." The guards often withheld mail – telling one hostage, Charles W. Scott, "I don't see anything for you, Mr. Scott. Are you sure your wife has not found another man?" – and the hostages' possessions went missing.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: As the hostages were taken to the aircraft that would fly them out of Tehran, they were led through a gauntlet of students forming parallel lines and shouting, "Marg bar Amrika" ("death to America"). When the pilot announced that they were out of Iran, the "freed hostages went wild with happiness. Shouting, cheering, crying, clapping, falling into one another's arms."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: In the United States, the hostage crisis created "a surge of patriotism" and left "the American people more united than they have been on any issue in two decades." The hostage-taking was seen "not just as a diplomatic affront," but as a "declaration of war on diplomacy itself." Television news gave daily updates. In January 1980, the "CBS Evening News" anchor Walter Cronkite began ending each show by saying how many days the hostages had been captive. President Carter applied economic and diplomatic pressure: Oil imports from Iran were ended on November 12, 1979, and with Executive Order 12170, around US$8 billion of Iranian assets in the United States were frozen by the Office of Foreign Assets Control on November 14.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: During the weeks leading up to Christmas in 1979, high school students made cards that were delivered to the hostages. Community groups across the country did the same, resulting in bales of Christmas cards. The National Christmas Tree was left dark except for the top star.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: At the time, two Trenton, N.J., newspapers – "The Trenton Times" and "the Trentonian" and perhaps others around the country – printed full-page color American flags in their newspapers for readers to cut out and place in the front windows of their homes as support for the hostages until they were brought home safely.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: A severe backlash against Iranians in the United States developed. One Iranian American later complained, "I had to hide my Iranian identity not to get beaten up, even at university."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: According to Bowden, a pattern emerged in President Carter's attempts to negotiate the hostages' release: "Carter would latch on to a deal proffered by a top Iranian official and grant minor but humiliating concessions, only to have it scotched at the last minute by Khomeini."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: On the day the hostages were seized, six American diplomats evaded capture and remained in hiding at the home of the Canadian diplomat John Sheardown, under the protection of the Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor. In late 1979, the government of Prime Minister Joe Clark secretly issued an Order in Council allowing Canadian passports to be issued to some American citizens so that they could escape. In cooperation with the CIA, which used the cover story of a film project, two CIA agents and the six American diplomats boarded a Swissair flight to Zurich, Switzerland, on January 28, 1980. Their rescue from Iran, known as the Canadian Caper, was fictionalized in the 1981 film "" and the 2012 film "Argo".


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Cyrus Vance, the United States Secretary of State, had argued against the push by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor, for a military solution to the crisis. Vance, struggling with gout, went to Florida on Thursday, April 10, 1980, for a long weekend. On Friday Brzezinski held a newly scheduled meeting of the National Security Council where the president authorized Operation Eagle Claw, a military expedition into Tehran to rescue the hostages. Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher, who attended the meeting in Vance's place, did not inform Vance. Furious, Vance handed in his resignation on principle, calling Brzezinski "evil."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Late in the afternoon of April 24, 1980, eight RH‑53D helicopters flew from the aircraft carrier USS "Nimitz" to a remote road serving as an airstrip in the Great Salt Desert of Eastern Iran, near Tabas. They encountered severe dust storms that disabled two of the helicopters, which were traveling in complete radio silence. Early the next morning, the remaining six helicopters met up with several waiting Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft at a landing site and refueling area designated "Desert One".


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: At this point, a third helicopter was found to be unserviceable, bringing the total below the six deemed vital for the mission. The commander of the operation, Col. Charles Alvin Beckwith, recommended that the mission be aborted, and his recommendation was approved by President Carter. As the helicopters repositioned themselves for refueling, one ran into a C‑130 tanker aircraft and crashed, killing eight U.S. servicemen and injuring several more.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Two hours into the flight, the crew of helicopter No. 6 saw a warning light indicating that a main rotor might be cracked. They landed in the desert, confirmed visually that a crack had started to develop, and stopped flying in accordance with normal operating procedure. Helicopter No. 8 landed to pick up the crew of No. 6, and abandoned No. 6 in the desert without destroying it. The report by Holloway's group pointed out that a cracked helicopter blade could have been used to continue the mission and that its likelihood of catastrophic failure would have been low for many hours, especially at lower flying speeds. The report found that the pilot of No. 6 would have continued the mission if instructed to do so.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: When the helicopters encountered two dust storms along the way to the refueling point, the second more severe than the first, the pilot of No. 5 turned back because the mine-laying helicopters were not equipped with terrain-following radar. The report found that the pilot could have continued to the refueling point if he had been told that better weather awaited him there, but because of the command for radio silence, he did not ask about the conditions ahead. The report also concluded that "there were ways to pass the information" between the refueling station and the helicopter force "that would have small likelihood of compromising the mission" – in other words, that the ban on communication had not been necessary at this stage.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Helicopter No. 2 experienced a partial hydraulic system failure but was able to fly on for four hours to the refueling location. There, an inspection showed that a hydraulic fluid leak had damaged a pump and that the helicopter could not be flown safely, nor repaired in time to continue the mission. Six helicopters was thought to be the absolute minimum required for the rescue mission, so with the force reduced to five, the local commander radioed his intention to abort. This request was passed through military channels to President Carter, who agreed.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: In May 1980, the Joint Chiefs of Staff commissioned a Special Operations review group of six senior military officers, led by Adm. James L. Holloway III, to thoroughly examine all aspects of the rescue attempt. The group identified 23 issues that were significant in the failure of the mission, 11 of which it deemed major. The overriding issue was operational security – that is, keeping the mission secret so that the arrival of the rescue team at the embassy would be a complete surprise. This severed the usual relationship between pilots and weather forecasters; the pilots were not informed about the local dust storms. Another security requirement was that the helicopter pilots come from the same unit. The unit picked for the mission was a U.S. Navy mine-laying unit flying CH-53D Sea Stallions; these helicopters were considered the best suited for the mission because of their long range, large capacity, and compatibility with shipboard operations.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: After the mission and its failure were made known publicly, Khomeini credited divine intervention on behalf of Islam, and his prestige skyrocketed in Iran. Iranian officials who favored release of the hostages, such as President Bani Sadr, were weakened. In America, President Carter's political popularity and prospects for being re-elected in 1980 were further damaged after a television address on April 25 in which he explained the rescue operation and accepted responsibility for its failure.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: A second rescue attempt, planned but never carried out, would have used highly modified YMC-130H Hercules aircraft. Three aircraft, outfitted with rocket thrusters to allow an extremely short landing and takeoff in the Shahid Shiroudi football stadium near the embassy, were modified under a rushed, top-secret program known as Operation Credible Sport. One crashed during a demonstration at Eglin Air Force Base on October 29, 1980, when its braking rockets were fired too soon. The misfire caused a hard touchdown that tore off the starboard wing and started a fire, but all on board survived. After Carter lost the presidential election in November, the project was abandoned.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The failed rescue attempt led to the creation of the 160th SOAR, a helicopter aviation Special Operations group.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: With the completion of negotiations signified by the signing of the Algiers Accords on January 19, 1981, the hostages were released on January 20, 1981. That day, minutes after President Reagan completed his 20‑minute inaugural address after being sworn in, the 52 American hostages were released to U.S. personnel. There are theories and conspiracy theories regarding why Iran postponed the release until that moment. "(See also: October Surprise conspiracy theory)" The hostages were flown on an Air Algeria Boeing 727-200 commercial airliner (registration 7T-VEM) from Tehran, Iran to Algiers, Algeria, where they were formally transferred to Warren M. Christopher, the representative of the United States, as a symbolic gesture of appreciation for the Algerian government's help in resolving the crisis. The flight continued to Rhein-Main Air Base in West Germany and on to an Air Force hospital in Wiesbaden, where former President Carter, acting as emissary, received them. After medical check-ups and debriefings, the hostages made a second flight to a refueling stop in Shannon, Ireland, where they were greeted by a large crowd. The released hostages were then flown to Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York. From Newburgh, they traveled by bus to the United States Military Academy at West Point and stayed at the Thayer Hotel for three days, receiving a heroes' welcome all along the route. Ten days after their release, they were given a ticker tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes in New York City.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The Iraqi invasion of Iran occurred less than a year after the embassy employees were taken hostage. The journalist Stephen Kinzer argues that the dramatic change in American–Iranian relations, from allies to enemies, helped embolden the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, and that the United States' anger with Iran led it to aid the Iraqis after the war turned against them. The United States supplied Iraq with, among other things, "helicopters and satellite intelligence that was used in selecting bombing targets." This assistance "deepened and widened anti-American feeling in Iran."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The hostage-taking is considered largely unsuccessful for Iran, as the negotiated settlement with the U.S. did not meet any of Iran's original demands. Iran lost international support for its war against Iraq. However, anti-Americanism intensified and the crisis served to benefit those Iranians who had supported it. Politicians such as Khoeiniha and Behzad Nabavi were left in a stronger position, while those associated with – or accused of association with – the U.S. were removed from the political picture. Khomeini biographer, Baqer Moin, described the crisis as "a watershed in Khomeini's life" that transformed him from "a cautious, pragmatic politician" into "a modern revolutionary single-mindedly pursuing a dogma." In Khomeini's statements, "imperialism" and "liberalism" were "negative words," while "revolution" "became a sacred word, sometimes more important than "Islam"."


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The Iranian government commemorates the event every year with a demonstration at the embassy and the burning of an American flag. However, on November 4, 2009, pro-democracy protesters and reformists demonstrated in the streets of Tehran. When the authorities encouraged them to chant "death to America," the protesters instead chanted "death to the dictator" (referring to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) and other anti-government slogans.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Gifts, including lifetime passes to any minor league or Major League Baseball game, were showered on the hostages upon their return to the United States.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: In 2000, the hostages and their families tried unsuccessfully to sue Iran under the Antiterrorism Act of 1996. They originally won the case when Iran failed to provide a defense, but the State Department then tried to end the lawsuit, fearing that it would make international relations difficult. As a result, a federal judge ruled that no damages could be awarded to the hostages because of the agreement the United States had made when the hostages were freed.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The former U.S. Embassy building is now used by Iran's government and affiliated groups. Since 2001 it has served as a museum to the revolution. Outside the door, there is a bronze model based on the Statue of Liberty on one side and a statue portraying one of the hostages on the other.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: "The Guardian" reported in 2006 that a group called the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign had used the embassy to recruit "martyrdom seekers": volunteers to carry out operations against Western and Israeli targets. Mohammad Samadi, a spokesman for the group, signed up several hundred volunteers in a few days.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The United States and Iran broke off formal diplomatic relations over the hostage crisis. Iran selected Algeria as its protecting power in the United States, transferring the mandate to Pakistan in 1992. The United States selected Switzerland as its protecting power in Iran. Relations are maintained through the Iranian Interests Section of the Pakistani Embassy and the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: There were 66 original captives: 63 of them were taken at the embassy and three of them were captured and held at the Foreign Ministry offices. Three of the hostages were operatives of the CIA. One of them was a chemical engineering student from URI.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: Thirteen hostages were released on November 19–20, 1979, and one hostage was released on July 11, 1980.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: A small number of hostages, not captured at the embassy, were taken in Iran during the same time period. All were released by late 1982.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: All State Department and CIA employees who were taken hostage received the State Department Award for Valor. Political Officer Michael J. Metrinko received two: one for his time as a hostage and another for his daring rescue of Americans who had been jailed in Tabriz months before the embassy takeover.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The U.S. military later awarded the 20 servicemen among the hostages the Defense Meritorious Service Medal. The only hostage serviceman not issued the medal was Staff Sgt Joseph Subic, Jr., who "did not behave under stress the way noncommissioned officers are expected to act" – that is, he cooperated with the hostage-takers, according to other hostages.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The Humanitarian Service Medal was awarded to the servicemen of Joint Task Force 1–79, the planning authority for Operation Rice Bowl/Eagle Claw, who participated in the rescue attempt.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The Air Force Special Operations component of the mission was given the Air Force Outstanding Unit award for performing their part of the mission flawlessly, including evacuating the Desert One refueling site under extreme conditions.


title: Iran hostage crisis

text: The Tehran hostages received $50 for each day in captivity after their release. This was paid by the US Government. The deal that freed them reached between the United States and Iran and brokered by Algeria in January 1981 prevented the hostages from claiming any restitution from Iran due to foreign sovereign immunity and an executive agreement known as the "Algiers Accords", which barred such lawsuits. After failing in the courts, the former hostages turned to Congress and won support from both Democrats and Republicans, resulting in Congress passing a bill (2015 United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Act [USVSST]) in December 2015 that afforded the hostages compensation from a fund to be financed from fines imposed on companies found guilty of breaking American sanctions against Iran. The bill authorised a payment of US$10,000 for each day in captivity (per hostage) as well as a lump sum of $600,000 in compensation for each of the spouses and children of the Iran hostages. This meant that each hostage would be paid up to US$4.4 million. The first funds into the trust account from which the compensation would be paid came from a part of the $9 billion penalty paid by the Paris-based bank BNP Paribas for violating sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan.