Terry Waite: Why was he kidnapped?
By Gavin Hewitt
Bloomsbury, 1991. 230 pp. $39.95
Reviewed by Sean Malloy
This book explores the activities of Oliver North in trading arms covertly with Iran in exchange for the release of US hostages kidnapped by Lebanese Shiites aligned with the Iranian government.
Terry Waite was used by North as cover for the arms deals. When a release was imminent, North would manoeuvre Waite onto the scene to create the illusion that he had negotiated it.
Writing from a conservative point of view, Gavin Hewitt portrays Waite and North as ordinary people with good and bad qualities while the kidnappers are emotionless fanatics driven by their religion.
Despite the reactionary presentation, the book is informative on the bizarre nature of North's covert actions, how the US government works and how hungry Terry Waite was for fame.
For example, Hewitt compares the leadership styles of Ronald Reagan and Ayatollah Khomeini:
"President Reagan's meetings were often imprecise — it was his style. Questions would be asked, comments dropped and asides made, but decisions could evaporate in the air of conviviality. Afterwards it would be up to the Chief of Staff to interpret the President's mind. His management style, ironically, mirrored that of Ayatollah Khomeini, his bete noire."
"During December [1985], Robert McFarlane, believing he was carrying out the President's instructions, went so far as to tell the Iranians that there could and would not be any further trading of arms for hostages. Oliver North, however, interpreted the President's wishes differently. He thought a missile deal remained an official option."
North had delusions of grandeur, developing extravagant plans for covert actions. But other, supposedly rational, members of the US establishment supported North's actions. This is Robert McFarlane writing to Oliver North about the covert operation:
"Ollie. Well done. If the world only knew how many times you have kept a semblance of integrity and gumption to US policy, they would make you secretary of state. But they can't know and they'd complain if they did — such is the state of democracy in the late twentieth century."
The exposure of the covert operations, the Iran-Contragate scandal, left Terry Waite with a damaged ego and somewhat embarrassed.
He decided that he would return to Beirut, without the backup of the US National Security Council and everything that comes with it, in an attempt to negotiate a hostage release. By this time the kidnappers saw Waite as an active agent of the US and kidnapped him.
The book is evenly paced except for the final chapter, which squeezes llapse of the Soviet Union and the release of Terry Waite and the other hostages.
It's an interesting read with some very bizarre twists.