A Founding Father of the Radical Islamic Terror War Visits the US, and Our UN Ambassador Can?t Make Time for Some of His American Victims

By Bill West

Today, the New York Sun ran an article about the soon-to-occur visit by recently �elected� Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the United Nations General Assembly. He has been granted a restricted entry US visa as a foreign head of state, notwithstanding what would normally be grounds for exclusion against an alien suspected of being involved in terrorism and terror support activities.

The article further describes the outrage at this by several of the former American hostages of the Iranian takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. A number of these former hostages have identified Ahmadinejad as having been directly involved in the takeover and also having personally taken part in their captive interrogations. The US Government claims its �investigation� of those allegations, so far, has not developed sufficient evidence to conclude that Ahmadinejad was directly involved in the embassy takeover. A number of the former hostages claim the Government�s investigation of the matter has not been properly conducted, and they cite a classified CIA report that has not been fully released as one example indicating the US Government�s bias in favor of the new Iranian president.

Former hostage David Roeder, a retired Air Force colonel, is quoted in the NY Sun article as saying a State Department official had just started interviewing him about the matter when information contained in the CIA report was leaked, noting that conclusions appeared to have been made by Government officials before all available information had been collected.

Attorneys representing the hostages are reported to be seeking a meeting with US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton on the matter. A response from a representative for Bolton, however, indicated �the ambassador's schedule is full and he regrets he won't have time for the former hostages.�

I lived the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) part of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 and 1980. It was conducted under something called Project 067. This ranged from rounding up thousands of out-of-status Iranian students and watching virtually all of them later apply for and receive political asylum (with very many being bogus claims) to being part of the Washington, DC Jail extrication of 100+ Iranian rioters in a five-hour knock down, drag out brawl within the jail wherein many INS agents were injured (including me). Those were Iranian �students� who were arrested by the US Park Police and Metropolitan PD after hundreds of them had rioted on the mall in DC protesting the decision by President Jimmy Carter to allow the fallen Shah to come into the US for medical treatment for his terminal cancer.

Afterward, we moved those criminal Iranians, all of whom had refused to identify themselves and who had been arrested for assaulting police officers (some with 2x4 boards spiked with large nails used as clubs�all perhaps part of demonstrating the �peaceful� side of Islam to those of us in American law enforcement not familiar with such things at the time), in two C-141s from Andrews AFB to an upstate NY BOP prison...only to have President Jimmy Carter�s White House order them all released a few weeks later. Virtually all of those rioting thugs eventually applied for and received asylum in the United States.

This was the beginning of the widespread abuse of the US political asylum system. Thousands of young Iranian �students,� many of whom were radical Islamists (US law enforcement and Intelligence agencies really didn�t know what that was then) were in violation of their immigration status and were caught by the INS. They had money, hired lawyers and decided they didn�t want to return to the Land of the Ayatollah, even if they might philosophically and religiously agree with the old bearded whack-job. They overwhelmed our asylum and immigration court systems, and for the most part won, and were allowed to stay. So much for the Government�s get-tough Project 067.

This was also arguably really the beginning of America's war with radical Islamic terrorism, even if we didn�t recognize it, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is quite arguably one of its founders. Solid American citizens, who were and are highly reliable witnesses, have come forward and have offered testimony about how Ahmadinejad terrorized them and other Americans. Now the US Government is kowtowing to this Islamic thug at the expense of his surviving American victims. I thought we might have learned some lessons since 1979.

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