To the Hostages: ‘We Won’t Forget’

On Thursday, Nicholas Daniloff, a former U.S. News & World Report correspondent in Moscow, gave the Joe Alex Morris Jr. Memorial Lecture at Harvard University. Morris, a Times correspondent, was killed by a bullet while observing a demonstration in Tehran in 1979. Following are excerpts of Daniloff’s remarks.

People ask me how my brief experience changed my life, and I would have to say--and I say it here publicly for the first time--that I have survived for 54 years quite comfortably. Probably too comfortably. And now I realize I must stand up and take a stand on issues that matter.

For example:

--To stand up for the human and civil rights that the Western world takes for granted.

--To oppose, deplore, denounce the death sentence that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has announced against Salman Rushdie.

--To speak out against the injustice that is being done to our colleague Terry Anderson of the Associated Press in Beirut, and for all the other hostages in Lebanon--American, foreign, Lebanese. I don’t want Terry Anderson or the other hostages to be forgotten.

You can understand why if I describe to you the experience, keeping in mind that what I went through is nothing compared to what Terry has gone through, or what many Soviet dissidents have gone through.

Arrest: Terry Anderson was returning with Don Mell, a photographer, after an early morning tennis game. Suddenly three armed men drove up, pulled him out of the car, brandished revolvers, pointed revolvers at his head. Don Mell says Terry did not have time to speak, but his eyes cried out “Help me!” We often say he was arrested by (the pro-Iranian group) Hezbollah, but there is also strong evidence that he was arrested by relatives of individuals who want the release of 17 held in Kuwait.

My arrest: I was walking home for lunch after meeting with a friend. A white van drove up. Eight men. Said no word. Handcuffs. No witnesses. No explanation. No arrest warrant. Understood this was in retaliation for Zakharov. (Gennadi F. Zakharov, an employee of the Soviet mission to the United Nations, had been arrested in New York as a spy.) Soviet government wanted him back.

What happened next: Terry taken to a basement. Chained to radiators, beds. Blindfolded, told not to remove blindfold. Held in a small space. No fresh air. To the bathroom once a day for 10 minutes. Crushing boredom. Terry fashions chess set from tinfoil. Runs in place. In the following weeks would be bullied, occasionally beaten. Held in isolation. He resisted. Much later he would be brought together with other hostages, both American and French.

I was taken to a prison. Handcuffs taken off. Told I was being held on suspicion of espionage. Consigned to a cell. Fed three times a day. Time went on, visits with wife, and publisher. Had some inkling of what was going on in the outside world. Even so, when I was sent back down to the cell, that feeling of isolation was intense. Kicked myself for ever studying Russian.

During the long periods between interrogation, I took to reading Pravda very intensively. We were handed copies every day. I remember trying to read the signs. Mikhail Gorbachev interview in Rude Pravo, early September, 1986. Did Gorbachev still believe in a summit conference with Reagan? I thought the answer would be yes . If that was right, then the chances of my getting out were good.

I’ve got to believe that Terry and the others in Lebanon are also reading such kinds of signs. After the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus last July, I was very pessimistic; I feared for their lives. Then things began to turn for the better. The signs suggested that the situation might be changing.

Then Salman Rushdie’s novel. “The Satanic Verses” was published in the fall, and slowly the furor over it grew.

And once again, the situation of the hostages went out of our control. The situation today looks about as grim as it ever has.

What can be done?

--Should we launch a rescue raid? Most of the hostages have opposed a rescue raid as too dangerous. But, we now know as a result of the Iran-Contra investigation that President Reagan apparently did approve a military raid. Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, working with Israeli intelligence, explored the possibility, but abandoned it.

--Should we pay ransom? The national consensus is no . We also know that besides trading arms for hostages, Col. North explored a scheme for paying $10 million for the hostages’ freedom to Sheik Fadlallah, head of Hezbollah, and to Hussein Massawi, head of the Islamic Amal militia.

--Should we murder or kidnap kidnapers? One of the hostage families tells me that the idea was raised with North and roundly rejected, for the obvious reasons.

--Can we get Iran to intervene? I thought we were moving in that directing before the Rushdie affair. I had some inklings that the Bush Administration was following up on the trial balloon through diplomatic channel. That is over. At least for now.

We must never forget Terry. We must remind ourselves, and the American people, and the outside world: These are innocent victims and we demand their release. Such reminders are not going to worsen the hostage situation. They are terribly important. Word gets back to the hostages that they are not forgotten.

So today, on the fourth anniversary of Terry Anderson’s kidnaping, I have probed my mind as if I were in a cell, and I have tried to read the signs. And I hope against hope.