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Though the embassy compound fell to the mob quickly enough, the standoff that followed kept taking on new subplots, complications and even characters: the P.L.O., the Pope, the United Nations, Muhammad Ali. Said Senior Editor John Elson, who supervised the coverage: "It's a cover story with more imponderables and mysteries than any we've done in a long time...
...submit to such outrageous blackmail, the U.S. was all but powerless to free the victims. As the days passed, nerves became more frayed and the crisis deepened. So far as was known, the hostages had been humiliated but not harmed. Yet with demonstrators chanting "Death to America" outside the compound, there was no way to guarantee that the event would not have a violent ending...
...Sunday, Nov. 4, hundreds of protesters gathered in downtown Tehran outside the U.S. embassy, a 27-acre compound surrounded by ten-and twelve-foot brick walls and secured with metal gates. The students, most of whom were unarmed, chanted anti-American slogans and carried banners: DEATH TO AMERICA IS A BEAUTIFUL THOUGHT and GIVE us THE SHAH. At the very hour at which the demonstration was taking place in Tehran, the Ayatullah Khomeini was telling a student in the holy city of Qum, some 80 miles to the south, that foreign "enemies" were plotting against the Iranian revolution. Repeatedly...
That was all the inspiration the students needed. Just before 11 a.m., someone with a pair of powerful shears managed to break the chain that held together the gates on Taleghani Street, and the crowd surged through. Once inside the compound, some headed for the ambassador's residence, where the servants offered no resistance (there has been no U.S. ambassador in Tehran since William Sullivan left in April). Others tried to take over the chancellery but found it protected with armor plating and grillwork. Using bullhorns, they shouted at the occupants: "Give up and you won't be harmed...
...fired inside the chancellery, which may have disappointed the students. Said one: "If the Marines don't shoot, we take over. If they do, we have our martyr. Either way, we win." Any hopes that embassy officials had once had of preventing attackers from scaling the walls of the compound were abandoned after last February's assault, when Muslim guerrillas easily overpowered a handful of Iranian police guards and the embassy's Marines. The basic defense plan of the embassy was simply to have the Marines hold off any assault long enough for sensitive material to be destroyed...