Safely Home, Hostage Urges Military Strike

A feisty San Diegan returned home Tuesday after spending 3 1/2 months in spy-thriller-like hiding in Kuwait--at times fearing for his life, at times venting his frustration and anger to a diary, and all the while tiptoeing in seclusion as Iraqi soldiers lived in downstairs apartments.

To a hero’s welcome at Lindbergh Field, Jack Hogan, 54, declared Saddam Hussein “a thug” and admonished President Bush to get tough with Iraq.

Hogan, a horticulturist who had lived in Kuwait for 1 1/2 years before he and his wife went into hiding Aug. 21, said fellow hostages he met in the Middle East would have welcomed a rescue attempt by American troops.

“I haven’t yet met a hostage who didn’t want the military to come in and take it to him,” Hogan said of Hussein. “He’s nothing but a thug. That’s all he is. Our time (in hiding) was going to be up, sooner or later. We knew that. They (Iraqis) were going to come in there after us. It was just a question of (when).

“They (U.S. officials) had to give it this amount of time, to make it look reputable. But now’s the time to get the fat on the fire.”

Jack Hogan’s wife, Roberta, was allowed to leave Kuwait Sept. 7--and the couple said they were unsure whether they would ever see each other alive again. Roberta Hogan returned to San Diego, where she lived with her daughter in Lakeside, and didn’t hear from her husband again until Sunday night, when he and other hostages landed in Germany.

Finally, at noon Tuesday, an exhausted Hogan arrived in San Diego and was met by his tearful wife, other family members and friends, including a woman who hoisted a sign reading, “Welcome Home, Jack! God Bless America.”

During his hiding with an American engineer in a Kuwait apartment, Hogan said, he ate so much chicken he felt he was “growing feathers,” got tired of rice and tiptoed around their darkened, fourth-floor quarters in stocking feet so they wouldn’t be heard by Iraqi soldiers living on the first floor.

Maybe a dozen times, he said, men pounded on their door--and left without breaking it down and searching it.

While holed up, Hogan listened to the radio, read James Michener’s epic novel “Alaska” four times, and wrote a diary that he believes will soon find its way into a quick turn-around paperback with the working title, “Captive in Kuwait.”

“One thing about writing that diary (was) that . . . it was like writing a letter in anger, and, once you got through writing it, you didn’t feel as angry as you were. It made staying there a little bit easier,” Hogan said.

Hogan worked for a private landscaping contractor and spent four years in Saudia Arabia before transferring to Kuwait in 1989, where he was assigned to the project known as “The Greening of Kuwait.”

The couple lived in their own home and, even after the Iraqi invasion Aug. 2, they remained public in the face of the Iraqi presence.

“Before they put out the arrest for the Americans, they’d stop me and hitchhike a ride. Hell, I took them all over the place. Of course, they had guns, you know,” he said.

But, on Aug. 27, the couple went into hiding--first, at the home of a friendly Kuwaiti man and then, after mounting pressures forced him to ask them to leave, into the apartment with their new roommate, Randall Warren, the engineer.

“We called the embassy, and the embassy fixed us up with a guy (Warren) who was hiding out,” Hogan said. “Every time somebody came to that door and started busting on it, you knew it was a soldier. You knew you were going to get arrested. And, of course, once you got sent to Baghdad, it reduced your chances of surviving by half or three-quarters. So nobody was anxious to get caught.”

Amazingly, though, Iraqi soldiers never forced their way in, he said.

Early during the captivity, he said, the sound of resistance fighting could be heard all around, and they hung on every word of news--or gossip--they collected by telephone. “Our sources (about the fighting) were by telephone and word of mouth. You didn’t know how much to believe, or not,” Hogan said. “I think it was pretty active, though, because the explosives and the blasts kept shaking the building we were in.

“I was pretty upset about it. I was outraged. I was ready to join the underground myself. If I was a younger man, I think I would have.

“I was mad, really mad, just being treated like that, as a hostage. What right does anybody get, to take somebody as a hostage? There are other hostages--in Beirut, for four or five years. What about those people? Doesn’t that make you mad?”

The couple heard on the radio several weeks later that the women would be allowed to leave, and Hogan sent his wife on her way Sept. 7.

The separation was difficult, he said, but there was little option but to get her to safety. “You just put her in the elevator and send her down, and go back in the house,” he said. He then added with a laugh, “She got to go home a little earlier than I did. She’s always going home before I do.”

Without her, Hogan said, he concentrated on getting by, day to day.

“There’s no past. You can’t think about the bills, or what’s going on, or if you have any property left, or anything,” he said. “You don’t know what your wife’s doing, on a small fixed income. You can’t think anything about that. And you can’t think about the future, because you don’t know when you’re going to do it. All you can think about is that one day at a time.”

His greatest fear, he said, was “whether they were going to kick that door in and drag us out. Any time, any minute. It was kicked a dozen times.”

It was through his roommates’ long-established connections in Kuwait that they were able to get food and other supplies from Palestinians and Filipinos, he said. They would arrive at the apartment after the Iraqis were believed to be elsewhere and walk upstairs to the fourth floor, avoiding the elevator.

“They helped us, at the risk of their own lives, because, if they got caught helping an American, they’d be shot right on the spot,” Hogan said.

Although he said he heard of horror stories of the Iraqi occupation and crimes against the Kuwaiti people, he saw little because he was closeted in the apartment with its windows covered by blankets. They never once stepped outside.

“The resistance was working in other areas, away from us, which was good for us, because, if the resistance was working in an area where you’re at, they (Iraqis) would go through, building by building, and kick everything in and pull everybody out.”

Hogan and Warren kept in contact the whole time with the American Embassy in Kuwait, or with other hostages who were part of that informal telephone tree of communications. “If one hostage was at the embassy, he’d call somebody who would call somebody else, and it would filter down to us.” By that time, he said, there was confusion between fact and fiction--and constant concern that the phones were tapped, anyway, so people were on guard as they spoke.

At first, Hogan said, he was in contact with about 40 Americans in Kuwait. By the end, he said, he only knew of about 20, and presumed the others had been captured and whisked to Baghdad.

Finally, last Thursday afternoon, while writing another diary entry, he heard on BBC radio that Hussein had agreed to free the foreigners. That freedom came on Sunday, and he said he had no fears stepping out into public for the first time since Aug. 21.

The Iraqis, he said, “were all smiles. The soldiers just grinned at you and waved ‘hi’ to you.”

By Sunday night, he had flown from Baghdad to Frankfurt, Germany, from where he called his wife in San Diego.

On Tuesday, Roberta discovered that her husband had shaved off his scraggly beard and mustache.

What are the couple’s plans, now that they’ll be alone? “Oh, I don’t think we’re going to be home by ourselves for a long time,” Roberta Hogan laughed. Later Tuesday, family and friends gathered over deli cold cuts--with no chicken or rice in sight.

Now, he said, “I’ve got to find a job. I’ve been without a paycheck for about four months.”

Hogan said he sees no peaceful resolution to the crisis. “This man isn’t going to give up anything,” he said of Hussein. “He isn’t going to give Kuwait up. As a matter of fact, you’d better watch out, because Saudia Arabia will be next, because that’s where he’s headed.”

His advice for President Bush: “Go take it to ‘em. Go take it to ‘em. You can’t let that thug get away with that.”

Eventually, Hogan said, he wants to return to Kuwait.

“I’m more of a vagabond. I like to see what’s over the mountain. I intend to go back, once this is all settled. The sooner, the better.”