Former diplomat kept hostage during the Iran crisis remembers Jimmy Carter : NPR

Former President Jimmy Carter left Washington for the final time Thursday afternoon. The nation’s capital was never a comfortable place for the man from Plains, Georgia, and it’s generally believed that Carter was a better former president than president.

One reason for that perception is the Iranian hostage crisis for the last 444 days of Carter’s presidency.

52 Americans were held prisoner at the U.S. embassy in Iran, including Barry Rosen, who was the then-press attaché at the embassy.

“I sincerely believe that he saved our lives,” Rosen said. “He sacrificed his presidency and worked assiduously for those 444 days to make our freedom the uppermost in his mind.”

All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro spoke with Rosen about his interactions with Carter after his release and how he has reflected on Carter’s legacy in the years since.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Ari Shapiro: What leads you to say that it was the most important thing to him?

Barry Rosen: Well, I remember my wife, Barbara, meeting with President Carter during that time, and she showed photos of my young son, Alexander, who was about three at that time. And Ariana, my daughter, was one. And you could see the toll it was taking on him, and then he put that photograph in his suit pocket. And I knew for sure that he looked at that.

Shapiro: He carried the photo of your children while you were in captivity, being held hostage.

Rosen: Yes.

Shapiro: And do you give any credence to the criticism that if he had handled it differently, the crisis could have ended sooner, that you would not have had to have spent as many days being held hostage as you were?

Rosen: After all these years, I felt that there was no other alternative. I mean, yes, there could have been military action against Iran. But I think that would have been taken out on us. And I think it would have been severe. We were treated terribly during the hostage crisis. I was only outside for 15 minutes only one time during the entire situation.

Shapiro: Only outdoors once in 444 days for 15 minutes?

Rosen: Yes. I picked up a piece of grass that was on the ground [and] put it in my pocket. And, you know, it brought me back to my days as a young boy with my father and going to baseball games. Those moments of freedom, those minutes, were amazingly important for my survival.

Shapiro: Everything about the story of your captivity is extraordinary, not least of which is the events leading up to your release. President Carter personally negotiated many of the details of the release, including the unfreezing of billions in Iranian assets. But you and the other hostages were not freed until after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president. Your plane sat on the runway. What were those final moments like?

Rosen: Well, those final moments were unbelievably nerve-wracking. We were put on a bus, blindfolded, taken, I suspect, to Mehrabad [International] Airport at that time. It took over an hour. And as I stepped off the bus, I saw in the distance a light, a person pointing toward me.

Shapiro: Your blindfolds were removed at this point.

Rosen: Yes. Yes, they were. And then, a phalanx of student militants spat at me, and I then ran to the Air Algérie plane that was taking us to Algeria on our first leg to Wiesbaden [in Germany]. I couldn’t believe it. I think there’s a photo of me getting on the plane. I think I was absolutely astonished.

Shapiro: Yeah.

Rosen: And it was so amazing to just see the people that I hadn’t seen for all those months. We were never all together. We were always separated. And one would never know from one day to the next if you were moved, or whether a gun would be held to your head, or whether you’d be forced to sign some sort of statement of being a spy and a plotter.

Shapiro: So, you arrived in Wiesbaden in what was then West Germany, and Jimmy Carter, newly a former president, was there to meet you. What do you remember about that first meeting?

Rosen: It was tense. And he was with Vice President [Walter] Mondale and Secretary of State [Edmund] Muskie. But he had the courage, I thought, to come and see us knowing that many, many, many of us were very upset with him and couldn’t understand the decisions that were made in terms of permitting the Shah into the United States. I know those are the Cold War years and all of that, but the anger was present.

Shapiro: Were you personally angry?

Rosen: I was. I have to admit that I just couldn’t understand why all that time was spent. And we never really had a notion of what was going on during that entire time. The hostage takers gave us no information at all about anything. And so the isolation was so severe.

Shapiro: And now, with more than 40 years of hindsight, do you still feel that anger, or what are your feelings?

Rosen: No, I don’t have that anger. You know, I have a better understanding of the situation that he faced and that he brought us back alive, and anything could have happened during those 444 days. And I might not have seen my wife, Barbara, and my two children, Alexander [and] Ariana, and my grandchildren now. So, I credit him for taking the real pains of that situation and really trying to extricate us out of, I think, the first real big hostage situation, hostage crisis that America faced.