Our Man in Tehran by Robert Wright

Our Man in Tehran by Robert Wright

Author:Robert Wright [Wright, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59051-414-6
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2011-01-10T16:00:00+00:00


In Ottawa, meanwhile, the opposition Liberals were doing everything in their power to confound the government’s efforts to keep a lid on Canada’s role in the hostage crisis. Day after day, Pierre Trudeau and his lieutenants attacked Prime Minister Joe Clark and External Affairs Minister Flora MacDonald for doing too little for the United States. And every day their top foreign-affairs advisers kept them abreast of Canada’s ever-deepening involvement. “The fact that we have given sanctuary to houseguests and represent Israel in Iran are two points of specifically Canadian vulnerability,” wrote Allan Gotlieb in a “Canadian Eyes Only” memo dated December 4, 1979. “The discovery of the first and recollection of the latter could lead to our premises and personnel becoming instant targets.”13 Joe Clark left much of the day-to-day handling of the crisis to MacDonald, and was thus spared at least some of his minister’s worry. MacDonald later recalled being acutely anxious throughout the hostage crisis because she feared that she might inadvertently betray the secrets she bore.

Ambassador Taylor, on the other hand, was insulated from the political fallout from the crisis by Michael Shenstone and Allan Gotlieb, and also, implicitly, by the prime minister. “I really didn’t have much to do with Joe Clark,” said the ambassador, “because everything was through Shenstone.”14 Asked recently whether he knew that Clark was making things easy for him in Tehran, Taylor was emphatic. “I never, at any time, had anything other than support for what I was doing from Joe Clark. There was never any second-guessing. They said, look, for better or worse we’ve got this guy in Tehran, and we hope that he can pull it off!”15

The Liberals’ attacks on the government were led by Marc Lalonde and Allan MacEachen, who demanded that Joe Clark take the lead in rallying Canada’s allies in a multilateral protest against Iran. Pierre Trudeau entered the fray on November 21, addressing himself to the prime minister in the House of Commons. “I hope he will … tell the world that in this case it is not a matter of supporting the United States alone,” said Trudeau, “but it is a matter of supporting the concept of civilized international law without which all order in the world would end.”16 Clark thanked the former prime minister for his wise counsel. “I can assure the House that the Government of Canada has acted on a wide range of fronts to make exactly that point known to the authorities of Iran,” he said.17

Trudeau kept up the attack, demanding repeatedly that the government be more aggressive in protesting the hostage-taking. On November 26, after one of Trudeau’s many speeches on the subject, Clark decided that he would simply take the former prime minister into his confidence. In the middle of Question Period, as the television cameras rolled, Clark got up from his seat, walked across the floor of the House of Commons, sat down beside Trudeau and told him that the Canadian government had authorized Ambassador Taylor to provide sanctuary to the fugitive Americans in Tehran.



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