My Life as a Hostage

AT 10 MINUTES PAST 8 ON THE COOL, CLEAR MORNING OF MAY 28, 1985, DAVID P. Jacobsen of Huntington Beach was kidnaped at an intersection near the American University Hospital in Beirut. Jacobsen, the hospital’s administrator, was forced into a van by six gunmen after a brief scuffle. He had visited California just weeks earlier and was expected back again in less than a month for his son’s wedding. But it would be almost a year and a half before Jacobsen would see California again. In the meantime, he would live the ordeal of a Mideast hostage, held captive in turbulent West Beirut by Shia Muslims hoping to force the release of compatriots imprisoned in Kuwait. Today, dozens of foreigners are held hostage in Lebanon, pawns in the religious and political warfare that has torn that country apart. Among them are two Americans--Terry A. Anderson, a correspondent for the Associated Press, and Thomas Sutherland, acting dean of agriculture at the American University--whom Jacobsen befriended in captivity. Here, Jacobsen for the first time paints a detailed portrait of their world.

RABBITS IN A CAGE

OUR FIRST ROOM WAS ABOUT the size of the living room of a two-bedroom apartment. It had little wooden partitions to block the view. I was kept blindfolded, but I could tell there were other hostages. I didn’t know how many, but I could hear them being asked, “Are you hungry?” When I was taken to the toilet, I had to step over their bedding.

I was chained and put to the floor and told to remain silent. My clothes had been taken from me during interrogation, so I just had my underwear and a cotton tablecloth that served as a blanket. It had little fringes on the end. Fortunately, it wasn’t cold. (The weather in Beirut is some of the finest around, similar to Santa Monica’s.) Though I was chained by my right ankle and right hand, I was able to turn and to do push-ups and even leg lifts. I couldn’t do sit-ups, but sometimes after I was taken to the toilet, I’d say, “Hey, I need some exercise,” and would jog in place for a couple of minutes.

After five weeks, I was taken to another room, this one about 12 feet wide, with high ceilings. I had my blindfold on and was chained, but after the door was locked I lifted my blindfold to see where I was. A guy was sitting in the other corner, peeking through his blindfold. It was Terry Anderson.

We were alone for a month, and during the day, when the door was locked, we chatted very quietly. Anderson had 74 days’ seniority on me as a prisoner and had picked up a little information. We knew there were Americans next door, and Anderson--who had reported on their kidnapings for the Associated Press--had guessed that they were Father Lawrence Martin Jenco and the Rev. Benjamin Weir.

The guards brought us a Bible, but I didn’t have glasses so everything was just a fuzz. Anderson had his glasses, but they were broken. Even so, he would read the Bible to me an hour a day when we were permitted to have it.

Our third room brought us all together. We were moved there in July, 1985, when the shelling in Beirut got too close. Waiting for us was Tom Sutherland. I knew him from the university, but not all that well. The guards were going to put Jenco and Weir in another room, but we said, “Hey, stay with us. The more the merrier.”

So the five of us were finally together, and each of us had a chaise longue pad. The room was just big enough to fit four pads abreast, with one at the foot. Each day, we were allowed to go to the toilet one by one. We had 15 minutes to take a shower, wash our clothes, empty our urinals, get fresh water and clean our plastic bowls, spoons and cups. The guards got very unhappy if it was 16 minutes, because there were five of us, and the whole procedure took up at least an hour and 15 minutes of their time.

We were not permitted to see our captors. We had instructions to put on our blindfolds whenever they came in the room. When we heard them coming down the hall, we put on our masks. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. It was hell. But they weren’t pulling out our fingernails. They weren’t breaking our bones. They weren’t torturing us. We were just kept like rabbits in a cage, without any privileges. We lost all of our freedoms except two: the freedom to think and the freedom to pray.

The first time Anderson and I saw the sun, we weren’t even outside. We were taken to a window and permitted to look out for a few minutes. I saw bottle-brush trees and eucalyptuses and was reminded of California. There was a little breeze. Later, we were taken outside to exercise in an enclosed patio, but we were blindfolded most of that time.

Still later, we were kidding the guards: “Is there still a moon, are there still stars out there?” It had its effect. They got permission to take us outside, one at a time, on a beautiful evening. When it was my turn, one of the militias had fired a flare that lit up the sky. A purple ball of light was slowly coming down, and I could see the mountains of Lebanon. There were stars and the moon. It was like a religious experience.

ONE DAY AT A TIME

WE HAD BEEN TAKEN captive separately, and each of us dealt with his confinement on his own terms. But we also came to rely on one another for emotional and psychological support as the days stretched into weeks, and then months. Like all of us, I suppose, I never thought I’d be in as long as I was. In fact, I thought I’d be getting out within the first month, in time to return to Huntington Beach for my son Paul’s wedding. As it turned out, I spent that day chained to the floor.

To help myself through the hours, I spun an elaborate fantasy. I pretended I was with my family, getting ready to go to the wedding and doing all the things the father of the groom doesn’t have to do. In my mind I went to St. Bonaventure’s Church on Springdale Street and saw my future daughter-in-law coming in. In my mind I drove down to the Huntington Harbour Club for the reception. I spent the whole day lost in my fantasy of what was happening thousands of miles away. I did the same thing on my son Eric’s birthday, July 3. And on my dad’s birthday, July 9, I mentally drove up to see him and spent some time. For the hospital, I prepared budgets and construction plans, new programs and services. Always, I tried to think of the good things in my life, the people I loved.

Father Jenco and I played a game to keep ourselves going. At the beginning of a week, we’d agree that we were certain to be released that Saturday night. When it got to be Saturday night and we weren’t released, we’d snap our fingers and say: “We goofed. It’s not this Saturday, it’s next Saturday.” It was just a game, of course, but it gave us at least a little hope each week that the next weekend would be our last locked up.

Every morning we’d put our pads against the wall and do stretching exercises. Then we’d walk. We’d walk around and around, lost in our thoughts. Anderson made sets of beads by tying knots in string he pulled out of the plastic mat on the floor, and I think that he and Father Jenco used the beads to say the Rosary. I love musicals, so every day I’d sing a Broadway musical to myself--from “Evita” all the way back to “Oklahoma!”

We all had a good sense of humor, and one day we jokingly decided to put together a hostage kit that every American should carry in case they were kidnaped overseas. All of us literally had tears running down our cheeks from laughter.

As the rookie hostage, Tom Sutherland bore the brunt of most of our jokes. He is a very gentle man, but he was very meticulous. The guards would bring a big plastic bag of Kleenex, and as the supply got lower and lower, Sutherland--who has oily hair and an oily forehead--would fret that he would not get more when they were gone. He’d literally try to ration the Kleenex to us.

Occasionally I’d sneak some tissues out of the bag, fold them up and stick them under Sutherland’s pad. In the morning, when we’d lift up the pads to walk, the rest would look at Sutherland in a funny way as if to say: “Hey, Tom, are you like an alcoholic storing away your bottle? You’re storing away your Kleenex?”

But Sutherland is a great teacher, and made life bearable by instructing us in genetics and agro-economics. We also had church services, two a day. Ben Weir, a Presbyterian minister, conducted one, and Father Jenco, a Roman Catholic priest, the other. We named our church the Church of the Locked Door. Each service took 45 minutes to an hour. For a while we kept a calendar on paper, writing down anything significant that happened--when the leader of our captors, Haj, visited us, or when the guards said something would be brought to us.

Later, when I was put in isolation, I was afraid I’d lose track of time. So I took an medication vial and moved it along the floor tiles between the wall and door. Before I went to sleep, I’d move the container to the next square so that when I awoke I’d know which day it was. For the date, I saved olive pits. I put one pit in the corner each day, until I had accumulated enough for a month.

JUST FOUR YOUNG MUSLIM KIDS

THE PEOPLE WHO held me are Lebanese. They are not Syrians, they are not Iranians, they are not Iraqis, they are not Egyptians, and they are not Libyans. They are Lebanese and they are Shia Muslims. They take orders from no one.

They honestly didn’t realize the harm they were doing to our lives. “We’ve been good to you. We’ve taken good care of you. We haven’t hurt you,” they told us. They were just four young Muslim kids earning $25 to $50 a month to support their families. It was a job to them.

The squad leader could be very calm, but he was a volcano ready to explode. He was short--a little kid--and he wore these little tennies. He used to make good Arabic coffee for us.

Once he bought a new gun. It was the size of a Magnum, the kind only Clint Eastwood could carry. He showed it to Terry Anderson because Anderson had been in the Marine Corps six years. “That gun is too big for you,” Anderson said. “You’ve got to get a gun your size.” That upset the guard--but he got rid of the gun. He needed both arms just to lift it. It was too big for the kid.

When Anderson and I were together, Haj once philosophized with us (through an interpreter) about liberty, peace, justice and democracy. He was upset because the U. S. government would not talk with him about his group’s demand for the release of 17 Muslims held in Kuwait. “Nobody will talk. We want to solve this,” he said. So we suggested that he release one of us. “One way you can do it, Haj, is just let us go,” we said. “We’ll tell them.” We talked about the impact that would have. We argued that one of us could go out and tell the world that the Shias weren’t really evil people--that we weren’t being tortured and abused. Then Haj left.

When the five of us were together, Haj came in again and asked, “Is there anything you want?” We asked for a transistor radio, and he sent it. We were supposed to have it all the time, but the guards only gave it to us twice a day for about an hour. We would pick up the Voice of America, the BBC and the local English-language station, and Ben Weir translated some Arabic.

Haj came back again after we had been moved to the third room. “You know, we’re going to let one of you go,” he said. “You decide who it should be.” We did, but Haj rejected our recommendation. (Until the others are released, I don’t want to say who that was.) Instead, he spoke to Ben Weir in Arabic. Weir got very upset and kept saying, “Oh, no, no. Oh, no, no.”

Weir was told that he would be released, even though he felt that others should go instead. On Sept. 14, 1985, he left. It gave Anderson and me some hope. “Well, you know, Haj is reasonable,” we said. “We told him to let somebody go, and he did.”

We were put into a news isolation in February, 1986. Our radio was taken away, and we were denied newspapers and magazines. When we asked why, we were told, “You’re just asking too many questions and you know more than we do. We don’t have time to do our work if you are always asking questions.”

I believe the real reason was that Anderson’s father had died that month. To this moment, I suspect, Anderson still doesn’t know about his dad or that his brother, Glenn, died of cancer a week after making an emotional, videotaped plea for Anderson’s release. He had not been told when I was with him, and I have no reason to believe that the Shias would tell him now. It could well be that they imposed the news embargo so they would not hurt him. They did have some compassion.

A BOND THAT OVERCOMES

I KNOW MORE ABOUT TERRY ANDERSON,and he knows more about me, I think, than any other human being. Anderson is an extremely liberal Democrat; I am a conservative Republican. Anderson is a journalist who believes that everyone has a right to know; I’m a hospital administrator and believe firmly in the rights of privacy. I enjoy sports; Anderson couldn’t care less about athletics. We differed on virtually everything--from philosophy to foreign policy--and we’d get into tremendous arguments. But he is still my brother and I still care for the man. On the outside, as free men, I don’t think either of us would have selected the other as a friend. But there’s a bond that overcomes our differences.

We were a diverse group. Ben Weir is a Presbyterian minister who has taught more than he has preached. Tom Sutherland is a Presbyterian layman. Marty Jenco is a Servite priest, and Terry Anderson a Catholic layman. I was born a Lutheran, though now I consider myself simply a good, solid Christian.

When one of us was depressed or discouraged, we always knew how to bring him up. Some needed kindness and cheering up. I learned that when Sutherland was down, I had to make him mad. When he got mad, you’d know he was over his depression. Sometimes Sutherland would have disagreements with Anderson and Father Jenco. Then I would side with Sutherland.

There was one hostage none of us was able to help. He was William Buckley, the CIA’s station chief in Beirut, who Vice President George Bush, in January, said had died in captivity. Although I never saw him, I think I heard him die on June 3, probably of congestive heart failure.

That night, I heard a prisoner hallucinating and throwing up. He was coughing severely and sounded as if he had pneumonia. The guard came to me because I was associated with hospitals. I urged him to take the man to a doctor immediately. He said that was impossible, that it just couldn’t be done, so I suggested that they at least get fluids into him and give him a wide-spectrum antibiotic--things I’d overheard doctors say over the years.

They didn’t do anything for him. There was continued coughing, delirious talking, then a kind of gurgling, followed by silence. Then there was a rush of commotion and noise, somebody being carried out--all the attending sounds of death.

DAYS OF EMOTION

BEFORE THE NEWS EMBARGO BEGAN,Anderson and I were able to learn bits and pieces about how our captivity was being handled back home. Occasionally, the guards wouldn’t turn their television down quickly enough, and we would catch a tantalizing phrase or comment. (For a couple of weeks, they’d bring the TV set into our room so we could watch “Three’s Company.” The frustration then was that we couldn’t turn it off.)

One night, we heard former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger on the radio. He said: “Well, there are several things I could advise the President to secure the release of the American hostages, but in the last resort they are going to have to use their own resources to get out.”

I was sitting in my underwear on a pad. The room had no windows. There was a double lock on the door. An armed guard was outside the door, and another armed guard was watching him down the hall. I said: “My God, Henry, what resources do I have? What resources do you think I have?” The others reacted the same way. Other than the day I was kidnaped, that was the low point.

After Weir was released, the four of us remaining had occasional access to the radio. We heard very little about our situation, and we knew that we’d been forgotten. It wasn’t like the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in June, 1985. There weren’t any TV cameras zooming in on our hell, with everybody watching the high drama.

I suggested that we use an old political technique: Write an open letter and print it in the newspaper. We debated for days and days and finally decided to write to President Reagan and to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert A. K. Runcie. We had heard on the BBC a hint that Runcie would be interested in helping resolve the hostage problem. (We also had a chance to write to our families. I wrote a total of seven letters to my children; they received three.)

We were trying to light a fire, to create a sense of urgency. We realized that the President of the United States had more things to do than deal with four hostages. But we wanted to be higher on the list of priorities.

When Weir was released, we had some optimism. It will be difficult to convince me that Anderson’s and my hours of philosophizing with Haj did not play a major role in Weir’s release. Anderson and I did that. We also had hints from the guards that Terry Waite, who had been sent to Lebanon by the archbishop, was making progress. Within hours after he arrived in Beirut, he got confirmation that we were alive and well. He obviously was talking to the right people.

Surprisingly, the four of us--Father Jenco, Terry Anderson, Tom Sutherland and I--didn’t just collapse when Waite’s negotiations fell through. We merely shrugged our shoulders. In fact, we had hope--at least we knew that a major effort, a sustained effort, had been made. We never once lost faith that we were going to be free. Never once.

Ten months later, on July 26, 1986, Father Jenco was freed. I rejoiced for him, but his release became the catalyst for a series of events that brought some of my darkest days in captivity.

With this release, though, there was no discussion. Our captors just came in and made us think we were all leaving. “You have to be quiet. Get ready,” they said. “You’ll go out one at a time into the bus.” We assumed that they were taking us to a Red Cross exchange. In fact, they had brought us each shoes, trousers and a shirt. “You’re all going to go, so if you have a beard, shave it off,” they said. “If you don’t have a beard, grow one.” They didn’t want us to be identified leaving the building.

I went first. But I wasn’t taken out of the building; I was simply marched into another room. Then Anderson and Sutherland came in, and I knew Father Jenco was going home.

I was taken out of the room and asked to make a videotape that would be released to Lebanese television. Anderson and Sutherland learned that Father Jenco had been released when they heard me say it while I was making the tape. They were blindfolded, sitting in the same room against the wall.

Some days later, we were allowed to see my tape as it had appeared on TV. The clip included footage of Father Jenco after he had reached Syria. As I spoke, lettering flashed on the screen. Jacobsen, it said, apparently was trying to send a coded message when he made the tape. I thought, “Oh, boy, trouble’s coming.”

The guards were very unhappy. They yelled and screamed and threatened. I was angry with the news media’s irresponsible speculation. So was Terry Anderson. When he got out, Anderson said of his colleagues in the press, “Skin is coming off.”

One day in September, one of the Shias who spoke English said to me, “I want you to write a letter,” which they would use to pressure the Reagan Administration to negotiate. He gave me an outline of points I was to cover, and I wrote it. In it, I complained that the Administration was working to free U. S. journalist Nicholas Daniloff from the Soviet Union but was ignoring our plight. The Shia was back within an hour. He said: “It’s no good. We don’t trust you. We are going to rewrite it. You are going to write it down exactly as dictated. You are going to spell it like we tell you. You are going to punctuate it like we tell you.”

I did as they said. One of them checked it word for word, sentence for sentence. It was exactly as they dictated, but I warned them that the outside world would know the words weren’t mine.

Sure enough, when the letter made its way into print, the news media circled all the grammatical mistakes, and my captors accused me of deliberately inserting them. The guard who spoke English did not speak up and tell his superiors that it had been written exactly as he dictated it. They were angry because they thought I had sent out another coded message and embarrassed them before the entire Arab world.

So they took me to another room and beat my feet with a rubber hose. They were giving me a pretty good working over. I thought, “They are just going to do more until they get some emotion out of me,” I didn’t want them to think I was a G. Gordon Liddy type, so I started to say, “Ouch, it hurts,” and “Hey, stop it” and “Why are you doing this?”

Eventually they stopped. I was put in isolation on Sept. 19, 1986, in a little room six feet square. It was dark except for light coming through the transom, but I had nothing to read anyway. I did a tremendous amount of exercise.

When I awoke early one morning in October, I had the overpowering feeling that I was going to be released. It wasn’t a dream--just a tremendous, powerful feeling that I was going to get out on Saturday, Nov. 1, or Sunday, Nov. 2, 1986. It was so powerful that when I went to bed on Saturday night, I knew that I was going to be going home in several hours.

I had just fallen asleep when I heard a noise in the guards’ room, followed by the shuffling of feet. A stranger came in my room and said, “Mr. David, we’re happy you’re going home. You’ll be going home in a couple of hours. But first we have to move everyone.” They were always concerned that their location--and their identities--would be discovered. They think the United States has photographs of them all, that there is a CIA agent lurking behind every Shia.

I had always known that the day of my release would be the most dangerous time of my captivity, because I would be exposed in a very violent city. There is metal in the air in Beirut. There are stray bullets. I could fall right in the middle of a gun battle or be kidnaped again upon release.

I was released in the area of the old, bombed-out American Embassy in West Beirut, which is not occupied except by a security force. I walked too far, overshooting the embassy by about 200 meters. One of the Shias tapped me on the shoulder and told me that I’d walked too far, to turn and walk back. For a moment I thought, “Oh no, I’m being kidnaped again.”

The ambassador had to organize a convoy to get me out of West Beirut. On duty at the new embassy in East Beirut were 23 Lebanese of the same religious factions that have been warring for years--Sunni, Shia, Druze and Christian. The embassy asked for volunteers to go from East to West Beirut, through the shelling and sniper fire, to bring out an American. There were 23 on duty, and all 23 came.

That was a day of emotion, a day of excitement. After 17 months, I finally was walking along the corniche, seeing that gorgeous Mediterranean and smelling that air, seeing the ships at sea and the people jogging along the street or drinking coffee at the cafes.

I was happy, but I wasn’t doing cartwheels. I’m still in chains until Sutherland and Anderson are out. I don’t have nightmares now. I sleep well and exercise hard. I lead a constructive life. But those guys are still heavy on my mind, and I can’t forget their situation. It was my situation for 17 months, and I pray that it won’t be theirs much longer.