In early November 1979, a group of students and militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking everyone inside hostage, including the chargé d’affaires, a career diplomat named Bruce Laingen.
The militants were demanding the return of the exiled Shah of Iran, who was undergoing medical treatment in the U.S.
But diplomatic and even military efforts to free the hostages failed, and they ended up being held in Iran for 444 days. It was only on Inauguration Day 1981 that the hostages were ultimately freed.
Years later, Bruce Laingen wrote a book, based on a journal he’d kept while in captivity. And that’s when I met him.
So here now, from 1992, Bruce Langan.
Bruce Laingen died in 2019, at age 96.
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