It has been 13,141 days since 53 American diplomats, military officers and civilians were captured in Tehran and tortured for 444 days near the end of the Carter administration.
And on Nov. 4, the 36th anniversary of the hostage taking, it will be 12,706 days since their release, an event that has been met with false promises from five administrations and 17 Congresses of justice and compensation to those who are still living and their families.
“Why can’t this be done? It’s not that hard,” said retired Air Force Col. Dave Roeder, the head of the “class” of hostages.
The promises have never been stronger. This year, said Roeder, as the administration worked through a sensitive deal with Iran to end its nuclear weapons program, the hostages were urged to “stand down” and in return the administration would push their cause for compensation.
Recalling a conference call from the State Department, Alan Madison, a spokesman for the hostages, said, “They said, ‘Let us get through this and then we’re going to take care of you.'”
After the call, Roeder said the former hostages “came away from that almost with an universal thought that something was going to happen and something was going to happen soon. Well, it hasn’t.”
At issue is their complicated bid for compensation. Because of the terms approved by former President Jimmy Carter in exchange for their release, the hostages were barred from suing Iran. And Washington has never offered anything like what’s been provided to Sept. 11 or Boston Marathon bombing victims.
The administration has indicated it would back a solution: Raising money from fines on U.S. companies that violate trade embargoes with Iran. It’s a bipartisan bill with more than 80 co-sponsors from Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Sean Duffy.
But now something has hung that support up, possibly the administration’s fight for the Iran deal or its negotiations to win the release of three other Americans held by Iran.
Tom Lankford, the lawyer for the hostages, said the case has urgency. He said 15 of the original hostages have died and five more are “just hanging in there.”
For Roeder, there is also another, maybe larger, issue at work.
“Now that the 4th of November is coming around again, it’s time for something to happen and someone to fulfill the promises that they were going to get something done this year,” he said.
“I want to be able to trust my government.”
GAO: School fundraisers undercut by healthy food demands
Requirements that federally supported school food be super healthy isn’t just prompting students to steer clear of the cafeteria line, but it also is crushing popular fundraising campaigns because favorites such as candy and popcorn aren’t allowed anymore, according to a new report.
The Government Accountability Office, in a report that said 1.4 million children have bailed from the school lunch program because they don’t like the low-salt, low-sugar chow, found that team fundraisers are failing too because outside, “competitive” food, is also covered by the new rules.
“An athletic director in one district we reviewed and a school store manager in another said that they had experienced reduced revenues from fundraising, which resulted in less money to subsidize athletic facilities, equipment, uniforms, field trips and travel for competition at regional and national events,” the report said.
Some schools have solved the problem by ignoring the rules and refusing to be what some call “the food police.” GAO snoops, for example, “observed a bake sale in a school cafeteria during the lunch period, and students told us about another bake sale held by a teacher in a classroom during the school day and sales of candy in the library during the school day.”
Team Reagan expands assault on Bill O’Reilly book
Best-selling author and Fox ratings king Bill O’Reilly may soon regret writing about a historical figure whose aides are still alive. Because in writing Killing Reagan, O’Reilly and co-author Martin Dugard have now drawn fire from 10 former White House biggies and Reagan biographers.
A.B. Culvahouse, counsel to Ronald Reagan, called the book “myth” and urged that it “be returned to the dustbin of fiction masquerading as history.”
Former Attorney General Edwin Meese, one of the Gipper’s closest friends, said Killing Reagan does “a real disservice to our 40th president and to history itself.”
The assault on the latest in the O’Reilly-Dugard “Killing” series isn’t going to end soon.
“The pushback has more legs than the Rockettes,” said Reagan biographer Craig Shirley who, like others, blasts the book’s claim that Reagan was often befuddled and that top aides were poised to throw him out of office by invoking the 25th Amendment.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
