Word: compounds
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...time to move now seemed ripe. An International Red Cross visit had determined that all 50 hostages seized at the embassy were still being held in the compound. U.S. planners had learned that the number of militants guarding the captives had declined. Soon the protective darkness of the nights would shorten, and the desert temperatures would soar by day, making it even more difficult for the helicopters to operate in the hot, light air. The period for best operational conditions was narrowing fast. On Thursday, with the Common Market Foreign Ministers having just bowed to Carter's pleas for allied...
...Gradually, however, the outlines of the plan became clear. The helicopters were to have carried the commandos to a second staging site, named Mountain Hideout, just outside of Tehran, but concealed from Iranian radar and defense forces by mountains. Some of the rescuers were to slip into the embassy compound in trucks?although where the vehicles would come from remained a mystery. At a prearranged time, the rescuers were to disable the unsuspecting guards, presumably with gunfire and some kind of chemical weapon, just as the choppers landed on the embassy rooftops. The helicopters would then carry the hostages...
...worst emotions of the American public in an election year. To be sure, the mission was badly conceived and badly executed, even on a technical military level. If the helicopter had landed successfully in the desert, what would the soldiers have done in confronting a sprawling embassy compound in which the hostages are widely dispersed, and guarded by 150 armed Iranian militants? Harold Brown will not tell; we can only speculate that the plan involved a considerable amount of bloodshed, and that the safe return of the hostages was no more than tentative. Moreover, the operation can only further confuse...
...were withdrawing their guards from the embassy. Havana has had an ongoing dispute with Peru and other Latin American countries over their policy of granting political asylum to gatecrashing Cubans who manage to gain entrance to their embassies. There is some suspicion that in withdrawing guards from the Peruvian compound officials knew what would happen: thousands of unhappy Cubans from every walk of life began streaming into the 20-acre embassy grounds. Declared Radio Havana: "If the government of Peru wishes to receive in their country all the antisocials and bums, we will be glad to authorize them to leave...
...perfect human beings " But the Ayatullah's ruling, welcome as it was to the exiles and to 70 political prisoners who were immediately released, had no effect on the status of the 50 Americans who have been held hostage for almost five months in the U.S. embassy compound in Tehran...