Politics

As most any American who lived through the 1979-81 Iranian hostage crisis is likely to recall, 52 American embassy staffers were held prisoner by the Iranian government for a total of 444 days. It was a catastrophic foreign-policy failure that ultimately ended Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

What is not at all well known is that during much of that 14-month ordeal, the American government could find no trace of one of the hostages — and believed him to be dead. His name was Michael Metrinko.

“Not dead,” Metrinko quipped recently, “although there were times when maybe I wished I was.”

Now in his late 70s, the gregarious, acid-tongued Metrinko spent much of his decades-long Foreign Service career bouncing from one Middle East hotspot to another. Until the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, he’d spent much of the preceding 15 years advising American military officials there. “I think I worked with 19 different generals,” Metrinko said, “but at this point I’d be hard-pressed to tell you which one was the stupidest.”