At Least 14 U.S. Oil Workers Captured

Charles Amos was supposed to call home to Harmony, Tex., Thursday night. But the call never came. Instead, the 59-year-old oil-drilling supervisor working on a rig in the northern Kuwaiti desert was swept up by invading Iraqi troops as they poured across the Iraq border that morning.

Two days after the blitz, which has left Kuwait under Iraqi military occupation, Amos remains one of approximately 3,800 Americans in the country whose fate remains largely unknown.

Oil companies who employed some of the Americans are scrambling to locate them, and the State Department is pressing the Baghdad government for information, so far unsuccessfully. Officials said they understand that at least 14 American oil workers, including Amos, were captured by troops during the surge toward Kuwait city.

“We don’t really know who they are or what their condition is or where they are located,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

State Department officials said that the Iraqi government had assured them only that they would “safeguard the safety and welfare of American citizens in Kuwait.”

So far, said department spokesman Richard Boucher, there have been “no reports of injuries or deaths to Americans.”

Boucher added, “We cannot confirm that the missing Americans are in Iraqi control” but added, “We believe they are in Iraqi hands, and we want to get them back.”

Six of the Americans, including Amos, are employees of Santa Fe International Corp. of Alhambra, Calif., a drilling company owned by the Kuwaiti national petroleum company, Kuwait Oil. One Canadian and one British employee of the company are also missing.

“We are getting some information from the drilling company and some from the U.S. State Department,” said Amos’ son David, who said no definitive word on his father has come yet. The elder Amos had been expected to head home to attend a family reunion this weekend.

Marjorie Walterscheid, whose husband, Rainard, worked for Santa Fe’s Rig No. 6 near the Iraqi border, said the company called her home in Jacksboro, Tex., Thursday afternoon to tell her that her husband was also apparently captured by the invaders.

“They said he was on the phone with them when the soldiers got there,” Walterscheid said. “He told them, ‘I have to go now. The soldiers are here.’ ”

She said that when the company called back later, an Arab who answered the phone said that the soldiers had rounded up her husband and seven others and “taken them north.”

Walterscheid said she has been in frequent contact with the drilling company and the State Department but “they say they don’t know much.”

Dresser Industries of Dallas reported that three of its employees in Kuwait were missing. “We were in touch with our people three times yesterday, but then we lost contact,” said spokesman Herb Ryan.

Phone lines to Kuwait have been jammed since the invasion began, compounding fear and confusion among employers and family members.

“We haven’t been able to get back through to (to our employees) nor they to us since yesterday morning,” said Doug E. Oliver, a spokesman for Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. in Marietta, Ga. Three of his company’s workers are believed to be in a Kuwaiti hotel.

Some companies reported that they had managed to get their employees to safer locations. Texaco spokesman Anita Larson said the oil company, which operates a pumping and refining installation in the neutral zone between the Kuwaiti and Iraqi borders, evacuated about 800 American and non-American employees from the war zone.

“Everyone has been accounted for, and everyone is safe,” she said.

Times researcher Edith Stanley in Atlanta and special correspondent Bill Thompson in Gilmer, Tex., contributed to this story.