Adam Howard

speaker

179 appearances 10 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2024 last heard 7 Jul

Adam Howard’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The New Yorker Radio Hour · Christmas in Tehran During the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis · 24 Dec 2024 podcast

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Adam Howard, and I have a personal sort of unusual holiday story to share with you today. It starts back in 1979.

That's the Reverend M. William Howard, Jr. He received that telegram as the Iran hostage crisis was unfolding. Reverend Howard was a prominent minister at the time, the president of the National Council of Churches. He also happens to be my father.

So when this came across your mail and you're reading it with mom, I mean, did you even hesitate for a minute or did she raise any concerns or reservations about you going?

During the hostage crisis, revolutionaries in Iran invaded the embassy because of America's ties to the Shah. The Shah was the country's corrupt last monarch, and he'd been propped up largely by the CIA. Now by that point, the Shah was in the United States, receiving treatment for terminal cancer. The revolutionaries had vowed to occupy the embassy until the U.S.

sent him back, something that the United States was refusing to do.

They had taken more than 50 hostages, and my father got his invitation seven weeks into the crisis. Now, I wasn't even born yet. My older brother Matthew was two.

My father and the other clergymen were asked to be there because of their reputations within their religious communities, but they were also known to be progressive-minded people, which didn't hurt. And we agreed to meet the following day.

What was his perspective on what he thought was happening here?

I was going to ask, I mean, was that a genuine fear that you had?

I do want to touch back on Matthew because he was about...

what you know my daughter's age almost at that time i'm assuming he was far too young to understand any of what was happening but i mean did you explain to him that you were going away were you concerned about you know his well-being while you were in this pretty scary situation well yes of course and and i'm not recalling the exact thing that mom and i said together but

How concerned were you about the fact that this was probably as much a PR move as it was sort of a genuine act of kindness?

And there was a lot of T-shirts with the Ayatollah on it. Yes, yes, yes. Mocking his name.

My dad, the Reverend M. William Howard Jr., recalling his visit to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. Our story continues in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.

We're hearing a story today about the Christmas of 1979, when a young pastor traveled to Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis. At the time, the diplomatic staff of this U.S. embassy had been held by revolutionaries for about seven weeks. Their captivity would ultimately last 444 days.

My father, Reverend M. William Howard, Jr., received an invitation to Iran by telegram, along with another Protestant minister and the Catholic bishop of Detroit. That was December 22nd. Just two days later, Christmas Eve, the three clergymen were ushered into the embassy to meet the hostages.

How did they take that?

That's a test if you're really an American.

Now, when he said this, had he given you and your colleagues any warning that he was going to do this? Did you think this is completely crazy what he's doing and dangerous?

Did you get a sense that anybody was trying to, I hate to use the word indoctrinate because that's so loaded, but trying to get you to be persuaded as to either the message of the captors or some other alternative perspective about what was going on to bring back to the United States?

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