1979. The Shah has been overthrown and flees Iran. In Tehran,
Iran. Islamic militants storm the U.S. Embassy and take more than 60 U.S.
diplomats and citizens hostage and for 444 days the American people are gripped
by the story that spawned what would become ABC News, Nightline.
The story of one Iranian hostage, not among those
famously taken at the embassy, slips away from the public scrutiny; as an
American, employed by Westinghouse Corporation to help liquidate possessions
and homes of their employees who quickly fled the country in the midst of the
turmoil. Under the guise of a Christmas vacation that saw the company hiring
private jetliners to ferry their employees and families home to U.S. soil,
leaving behind households and chaos.
In Off The Radar – A Father’s Secret, a
Mother’s Heroism, and a Son’s Quest, author Cyrus Copeland delivers and amazing
tale of his life as a child in Iran and his father being seized; accused of
being in the employ of the CIA, and his Mother, a U.S.
trained, Iranian lawyer’s legal intervention on her husband’s behalf. I think
at some point in our lives we all wonder about our parents and their lives
before we came along; some who have parents with interesting careers may raise
out right questions.
It is that niggling doubt and lingering questions like;
could my Father really have been a spy for the CIA that drove Copeland to delve
into and tell the story of his Dad’s incarceration and trial. While the story
of the embassy hostages was certainly engrossing, this is a story that clearly
needed to be told.
Given the current state of U.S. and Iranian relations
and the negotiations of nuclear deals Off
The Radar also serves as a useful reminder of who we are dealing with and
just how far off base Democrat leaders have been when it comes to Iran. Copeland
writes that “just a few months after President Carter pronounced Iran an island
of stability in the Middle East, the country descended into the maelstrom.”
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