American Who Felt ‘Safe’ in Iraq Is Missing

Bob Vinton could not have been more relaxed as he spoke to a reporter while driving his rented car through Baghdad’s city streets Monday night.

Vinton, the resident business manager for Johnson Controls International of San Francisco, was well aware that he and the approximately 500 other Americans in Iraq were not permitted to leave the country, and he presumed they were under close watch.

But his 10 months here had given him great confidence in what he called the “wonderful Iraqi people.” And it was more important, he said, for the world to understand that there was little reason to fear for their fate.

“Yeah, we’re hostages, but it’s kind of a unique situation,” he said as he drove through the blistering evening heat. “They’ve left us alone.”

But when asked whether he agrees with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s description of the foreigners as “guests,” he replied, “No, not really. I feel safe. Why? Because they need us for their foreign policy. But I’m an American, there’s an embargo, and I want to leave. And, really, you never know when the rules are going to change around here.”

The next morning, they apparently did: Bob Vinton disappeared without a trace.

It happened soon after a group of friends and other witnesses saw an Iraqi security officer enter Vinton’s house behind him as Vinton returned from a shopping trip. On Wednesday, diplomatic sources confirmed that Vinton is among at least nine Americans believed to have been taken into Iraqi custody within the past two days.

News of the disappearance of more Americans in Baghdad came as a grim counterpoint to Tuesday night’s announcement by Hussein that all foreign women and children are now free to leave Iraq after nearly a month of what he called “forced hospitality.”

Indeed, amid the continuing propaganda war between Baghdad and Washington, the diplomatic confirmation that additional Americans have vanished here appeared timed to undermine any political gain that the announced hostage release will give Hussein.

Several foreigners here speculated that the most recent detentions may have been the result of “crossed signals” within the Iraqi government, which could have been planning the moves before the president’s announcement.

An Iraqi official on Wednesday said he had no knowledge of any detentions.

“What has happened this week was what everyone heard would happen last week,” one informed Westerner said. “Otherwise, it doesn’t make political sense.”

But for many in the American community in Baghdad, the news of Bob Vinton’s disappearance had nothing to do with the politics of international confrontation. To them, they said, the loss was personal and deep.

Throughout the past weeks of uncertainty, Vinton had emerged, in the words of one close friend, as “the primary advocate of how safe and sane everything here was.” Several friends stressed that they were certain that Vinton did not make a dash for the Iraqi border or go underground because it would totally contradict the role he played in the American community here.

One unidentified friend, who was interviewed Wednesday by Cable News Network at an undisclosed location in Baghdad, was among the group that dropped Vinton off at his home Tuesday morning.

“It was only after I was pulling away that I noticed a security car behind mine,” he said in the interview. “He did not stop us. He did not give us a hard time. One of the gentlemen followed Bob into the house.”

The friend, concerned, said he drove around the block several times and, realizing the security official had gone inside, went home and called Vinton.

“Bob told me that everything was OK, that he had gotten someone who speaks Arabic to talk to these gentlemen,” the friend said. “The question at that time was, was he a legal resident of the house he was going into?”--a plausible question in a nation that has announced it will execute any Iraqi caught harboring foreigners.

“He assured me that everything was aboveboard and he was quite safe and all right. That’s the last thing we’ve heard or seen of him, and I checked around with everybody. Bob has been taken.”

Asked whether the disappearance has sent shivers through the American community, the friend declared that he and other Americans still feel welcome and that they continue to move freely around Baghdad.

“This is just an odd situation where they’ve decided to pick up a couple of Americans, I guess,” he said.

Still, Vinton seemingly was the highest-profile American in Baghdad. He had been identified by name in interviews with The Times, ABC and CNN, and he had enthusiastically agreed to talk publicly.

At one point during the drive Monday night, The Times’ reporter asked Vinton why he was not afraid to assume such a visible a role during a time of crisis in a city where the security police are among the world’s most efficient.

“I can’t think about it,” he said, smiling. “People have to be reassured, and I honestly believe we are all safe here. Someone has to tell everyone that there’s no need for panic.”

Then Vinton, who said several times how much he had come to love Iraq after he arrived here to open a new line of control systems for commercial and petrochemical-processing facilities, fell silent for a few minutes, and soon the drive was over.

As his guest was leaving, Vinton added: “When I think about the situation we’re all in, I just remember the words of the astronaut Fred Haise when he was making his way back to Earth. He said, ‘Don’t panic early.’ And that’s what we can’t do.”