1 Year of Freedom : Former Hostage Agonizes Over Friends Still Captive in Lebanon

As David P. Jacobsen reaches a delicate point in the conversation, a babble rises from his feet, and the former hostage looks down at a cute toddler seeking the attention of his grandfather.

The little boy is hoisted onto his lap, and Jacobsen’s face creases into a wide smile. “Johnny Man, Johnny Man! He’s the bestest man. He’s the bestest man. Yeah!”

Born only 39 days after his grandfather was released by the Shiite Moslems who held him captive for 531 days, John David Duggan is a constant reminder to Jacobsen that “I’m a lucky guy” for having survived the ordeal and found the freedom that allowed him to be present for the birth of his first grandchild and another who was born last February.

Far From Terrorism

Here, in his one-bedroom Huntington Beach apartment, the world of international terrorism seems far away. And he no longer resembles the pale, gaunt man who was released last Nov. 2 after 17 months in captivity in Lebanon. A steady diet of cookies and vigorous weight training has bulked him up to almost 220 pounds, a gain of 40 pounds since his release.

The former hostage still is very much in demand for symposiums on terrorism. In the 365 days since his release, even as he has put his life back together, Jacobsen has logged a quarter of a million miles to speak to groups about his experiences as a hostage and to plead for help to gain the release of other Americans held in Beirut.

Jacobsen, 56, now says he has ambivalent feelings about what may have led to his release, which spurred the biggest scandal of the Reagan Administration. The same man who, on the steps of the White House, said, “In the name of God, would you please back off?” to reporters asking President Reagan if the United States had sold arms to Iran in exchange for releasing American hostages, now says he does not know all the reasons behind his release.

Terrible Plight

But perhaps most important, he said, is that his waking moments are filled with thoughts of the terrible plight of Terry Anderson and Tom Sutherland, who are still sequestered by terrorists. Another friend, Joseph Cicippio, is also among six other Americans being held in the Lebanese capital. In all, there are 22 foreigners currently held hostage in Beirut.

Eric, Jacobsen’s eldest son who devoted himself totally to efforts to free him, said his father is still haunted by the plight of the other American hostages. “He is consumed by his responsibility to those men. It still dominates his life,” Eric said.

The news media, for the most part, quit hounding Jacobsen long ago. For two months, his telephone shrieked almost constantly. The demand now is for public speaking, usually away from the watchful eye of reporters.

Just the other day, Jacobsen received a call from a secretary at UCLA requesting him to send her information needed for a conference on terrorism in which Jacobsen will participate in this month.

More important, Jacobsen in the past year has been made aware of some of the dealings the United States engaged in with Iran as a way to gain leverage against the terrorists holding Americans in Lebanon. The exhaustive Iran-Contra hearings, part of which Jacobsen witnessed in person, did reveal that Reagan’s underlings engaged in the sale of arms to Iran.

Jacobsen said that he has asked officials in Washington for the reasons he was released but that he has received no satisfactory answers. But he still feels that arms were not the key reason he was released.

“I have mixed feelings about perhaps how I got out,” he said. “I still maintain . . . there was no direct shipment of arms for me because I was held by Lebanese and not by Iranians. People who had me never got any cash or any missiles.”

Still, Jacobsen remains supportive of the President.

“I’m alive today not because of any covert act, but because of Ronnie Reagan, and I appreciate that,” he said.

What Jacobsen has come to embrace--and what he has advocated at every opportunity since his release--is the notion that the present hostages and any Americans who may be abducted in the future will not find freedom through political and diplomatic tactics. He maintains that it is time for the American government to realize that its response to terrorism should be the same as when it occurs in this country.

“We have to view the taking of hostages as a criminal act and not as a political statement,” he said. “We have to put law enforcement personnel in charge of the mission, rather than the diplomats.”

Jacobsen said the FBI should be the “lead agency quarterbacking the strategy to get the Americans out.”

“And if necessary, they should go in and bring the men out by force and capture the kidnapers and put them on trial. Give them a fair trial with all the privileges of democracy. And if they are guilty, sentence them and punish severely because what they did was a horrible act. I think it was worse than murder.”

With Four Others

Jacobsen spent most of his confinement with four other American men. The Rev. Benjamin Weir, a Presbyterian minister, and Father Martin Jenco, a Catholic priest, were let go before him, but controversy did not ignite after their release as it did for Jacobsen. Anderson, the Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, has now been in captivity for almost 32 months. Sutherland, an agriculture professor, has been with Anderson since June 9, 1985.

Terry Waite, a British citizen and the special envoy of Archbishop Robert Runcie of Canterbury, played an integral part in the release of Jacobsen, Jenco and Weir. He was in Beirut last Jan. 21, trying to secure the release of the rest of the Americans when he, too, was taken hostage.

Jacobsen said that in recent months, he has learned the circumstances of Waite’s capture, but he refused to reveal his sources. He said that the Shiites who took Waite made an error but could not go back and admit that embarrassment, so they have kept him prisoner since then.

Jacobsen said he speculated that it could be as long as two years before they are released. The presidential elections next year, he said, are a big reason that sustained efforts are not being launched to free the hostages. Although Reagan is not running for reelection, Jacobsen said he feels that the President is reluctant to negotiate for the remaining hostages because “his prestige and place in history are running for re-election” in 1988.

In the year since his release, Jacobsen also has been concerned about the public perception about him and his friends still in captivity in Beirut. Not only has Jacobsen been perceived as abrasive because of his initial comments directed at the news media when he was released, but there are also those who believe that if he wanted to live and work in Lebanon, he should have been willing to accept the dangers associated with that assignment.

No Rambos

“We had a very honest and genuine reason for being in Lebanon,” he said. “We weren’t Rambos. We weren’t mercenaries. We all worked for responsible American institutions, not for profit. Our American government knew we were there and wanted us there.”

Although Jacobsen has been busy the past year, he said he will have to return to work after his contract with American University expires in a couple of months. He said he accepts money for his appearances if it is offered but often speaks for no fee.

He has also devoted much of his time to writing essays for newspapers and magazines, pleading for support for the other hostages. An open letter in which he petitioned one of the leaders of Islamic Jihad, the pro-Iran group that kidnaped him, to release the other American hostages was printed by a Beirut newspaper last Tuesday, Anderson’s 40th birthday.

“I am still in chains with my friends who remain as your hostages,” Jacobsen said in the letter addressed to Hajj, the Islamic Jihad leader he came to know during his captivity.

Between the writing and the traveling, Jacobsen tries to spend time with his family, which also includes daughter, Diane Duggan of Long Beach, and son Paul, of Upland.

Jacobsen also had the privilege of being with his father, Jacob, for six months before he died last April at age 92. He continues a long-distance relationship with an Australian woman who attends a seminary in Dallas, but he said marriage plans are not concrete.

Anguish for Americans

But whatever Jacobsen is--whether sweating through his daily gym workout or strolling the beach near the Huntington Beach pier--his conversation invariably returns to the anguish he feels for the American men in Beirut, especially for Anderson and Sutherland.

“I really haven’t had any trauma. Psychologically, I have been fine since the day of my release. I don’t have any nightmares about my confinement,” he said. “But I do share very deeply the agony that my very close friends are going through as hostages in Lebanon. There is not a moment of my life that I am not aware of what they are going through.

“Terry has never held his little girl. He doesn’t know that his father and brother are dead. And Tom Sutherland probably still does not know that he, too, is a grandfather of a beautiful little girl born last April (in Fort Collins, Colo.).”

For his family, the past year also has not been easy.

A few months ago, Eric moved to Lake Arrowhead to launch a small computer publishing firm and to finally escape the notoriety he never sought. He said the initial few months of his father’s freedom were tough.

“In some ways, it was more difficult after my dad was released. We thought he would be released and it would all be over and things would return to normal,” Eric said. “But it didn’t, and I know there was some tension, even between my dad and me.”

Eric also said that the Iran-Contra hearings foreshadowed public efforts to have the hostages released.

“The hearings had a negative effect on the support for the hostages. People just don’t want to get involved,” he said. “Nobody in government is going to get near it now for fear it will blow up in their face.”

Eric also is writing a religious book about his experience during his father’s 17 months in confinement that will by published by an English literary house.

Cognizant that his father is a direct, highly opinionated man, Eric said he has seen his father mellow in the year since his release.

“He doesn’t get bothered by the little things that bother most of us. And I think he is a lot more willing now to consider both sides of an issue. He is more circumspect, and I think he takes a much different tack now,” he said.

Dr. John Mohler, a physician who has known the former hostage for 15 years, said he has noticed quiet changes in Jacobsen since his return and the anguish his friend feels.

“He feels strongly about the other other hostages, but he is reluctant to say too much,” Mohler said. “He’s never said this to me, but I think he feels guilty that he’s free and his friends are not.”

On a warm Friday, Jacobsen took his grandson to the beach to feed bread to the sea gulls. He seemed a man at peace with himself. Then in a quiet whisper of emotion, his thoughts quickly returned to the friends held prisoner halfway across the world in a ravaged city most Americans have never seen and cannot understand.

“On the day of the anniversary of my release, I will come here and walk alone on the beach . . . and think of Terry and Tom,” he said.