The night I arrived, I met my mother-in-law in Shemiran, a Tehran wealthy suburb close to the Shah’s palace. That Thursday evening was a holiday, and all over the city, the throats of sheep were being cut. I remember the gamey smell of the blood trickling in the joube or street drain. The next day, I went to south Tehran to go to the mosque there. It was a big mosque and was supposed to be a center for resistance to the Shah. Since the Shah had required that I become a Shia in order to marry, and I had done so and had my name inscribed in the rolls at Iranian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. As a result, I felt I really needed to try out my religion, which I had studied, in order to move beyond the mere academic and gain a genuine knowledge. I was accompanied down to the south Tehran mosque by a dark-skinned gentleman from the Iranian Ministry of Information. He was in his forties. Courteous, smooth, polite.

I had learned from being in the first racial riot in Washington, D.C, that the way to get news is to go where no one wants you or expects you. In Iran, I planned to learn about Islam by going to the mosques. Everyone in America apparently saw the mosques as horrible and frightening. I suspected they had never visited one. But the mosques were the center of opposition to the Shah.

So I went off to Iran. It was like sending a six year old to build an intricate computer.

In November of 1976, after all kinds of intrigues to which I was no participant, The Washington Post gave me a $500 advance and sent me to Iran to do a series on that country. The editors gave me no guidance. I kept asking what I was to write about, and they would reply, “You’ll find something.” At that time, I was married to an Iranian woman who had never been to Iran. Her father was the Iranian Press Attaché in Washington, and I was very close to him, closer than to my real father. He taught me to love Iranian music, to learn passable Farsi, history and to love the Persian poets. My favorite was the poet Saadiq, from Shiraz.

The appearance of the mosque was odd and off-putting. I was raised in Connecticut where the congregational churches were quaint and lovely and surrounded by quiet beautiful lawns. I thought that in Iran a religious place would be set out well, but to my dismay, the grounds surrounding the mosque were ugly, sandy, with full of rough, sharp stones and small boulders. I remember seeing that an Iranian peasant go up to a narrow, glittering pond, and on one end, they had put a pail of water, and hung by its handle so believers would tip the pail to wash their feet before going inside to pray.

So my spirits were high, full of purpose, and I told my guide that we were going to pray in the mosque. He stood like marble. He didn’t respond. I said again, “We need to go to pray. I am a Shia by marriage, but I can’t make any mistakes or offend other worshippers,” and he stood as he was, staring. Not a shade of any suggestion or change came to his face. I told him we had to pray, and I told him that he had to help me to keep me from making mistakes and offending anyone. I told him this again, and he finally said, “I cannot.” His tone was stiff. I was mystified. He was, after all, my appointed guide. I insisted. He refused again. “Why will you not come inside and show me how to pray?” and he blurted out, “I cannot. I’m Israeli.”

So the great light broke on me at last. It was like the coverage of the race riot in DC. Its impact lay in what it didn’t say, what was not reported. I didn’t know what the Israeli had illuminated, but I knew that what the man had said was important. And I started to poke around. Everybody took me as another average American, a polite non-entity, which in certain ways I was, but I liked to provoke things to get an assessment of matters by means of what I had provoked. So when I went into some Iranian Ministry that dealt with reporters and showed by Washington Post credentials, and I was taken to a room and told to write out any questions I wanted to have answered, I kept them general. One question was, “Was the number of Savak (the Shah’s secret police) only a few hundred as the Shah had said?” And the next question I asked was “Is the Savak a democratic organization, in the sense that anyone could belong to it? When I took my list to an official, there were a lot of female secretaries in the room, typing, but when I read my question aloud to the official and said the word “Savak,” all the typing abruptly stopped, as if a switch had been thrown. Silence was total, as if all time had ceased to be. You could feel the fear in the room.

Any American journalist visiting Iran was almost certain to ask about the numbers of SAVAK, on the ridiculous premise that secret police was certain to tell the truth if asked. Every interview had had ever read about Savak was a waste of wind.

I thought nothing would come of the request, but I prepared for it with great deliberation. For years, there had been a running battle between the Western press and the Shah about the numbers of secret police in Iran. The Shah said the number was insignificant, 8,000 out of a nation of 30 million.

So I began to poke about, always going where I wasn’t wanted. I walked. In every city I have ever been in I would walk for hours and hours. Once I found a young male drug addict lying dead in the joube, the gutter by the main avenue. He was in his twenties, very skinny, extremely wan and extremely dead. On another occasion, walking near the joube, I saw two Iranian soldiers coming, and one spit at my feet. Since Iran and America were great allies, the hatred of the soldiers at the sight of me told me a great deal. Tea shops in Iran were where the news was. I took the two soldiers there and talked with them. They didn’t like America.

My father in law was an official in the Shah’s government, an official of the Ministry of Information, but in fact a brigadier general of the eighth department of SAVAK, the dreaded secret police of the Shah. The eighth department was not a bloodthirsty or violent. It dealt with foreign policy. The Third Department was infested with Israeli torturers and men who enjoyed the pleasure of murdering children males and females.

One day I was taken to the Russian steel mill as a tourist exercise. I started out in Isfahan, where drunken U.S. veterans were driving motorcycles through the great mosque there. (There is no lonelier, bereft, forlorn yet beautiful sound in the world than the Islamic call to prayer floating out in the dusk or the early mornings.) The trip went through marvelous desert country. I had a SAVAK driver whose job was to keep an eye on me. He was young, nervous but personable, and I liked him right away, and suddenly he was a friend. He liked and admired Americans. I loved his country. At one point during the long drive to the steel mill, when, out of the left side of the car. I spotted an odd-looking prison. It was alien, forbidding, and chilling and sat there in the desert. It looked like one box placed inside another smaller box, the whole thing surrounded with high walls, barbed wire and machine guns. It was set a bit back from the main road. I asked my driver about it. He became very nervous and talkative. He told me that the place held 1,200 mullahs and ayatollahs. This information was new and startling, and I wanted to gather more notes.

I went to visit the Iranian steel workers working at the Russian plant, but it was clear to me that the workers were all Savak agents disguised at workmen, put out for the stupid tourist like pails of waste. But as my driver and I were driving back, I saw the prison again. I had already taken down notes and sketched it, but I wanted to see more of it. My Savak driver, bless his heart, began to go pale and rapidly protested, but I kept stuffing him with money (tomans,) and begged him to fake a breakdown of the car so I could take better notes. It never occurred to me to have a camera. He did slow for a bit, and I continued to study the place, my pen racing over the page.

What he had told me was momentous. I had no idea what to do with the number of Islamic prisoners, but I felt it to be of enormous significance. The ordinary U.S. view of Iran saw the Shah as the modernizer of a backward society, a benevolent despot, like Frederic the Great. He was plagued by Communists, but he was ruthless in destroying them. He was America’s GREAT ALLY in the Middle East. No one in the U.S. press had ever contracted that view. But his real opposition was Islamic. And no one had ever said that.

You have to remember that in all of this, my father-in-law was not part of what I did. To me it was a requirement of tact and decency not to involve him in any way. I was staying in his house and the integrity of a house is as sacred in Iran as it used to be in Russia. Once he put me in touch with an Iranian doctor who was brilliant and spirited and who gave me a clear portrait of the Shah’s decadence and the primitive character of the country. Baba left me alone with him. He didn’t stay to hear. He clearly frequented interesting circles. One afternoon I had tea with Gen. Pakravan, the man who had saved Khomeini’s life in the 1963 and saw to it that the Iranian Islamic leader was sent to exile in Iraq instead of being killed. Pakravan was an intelligent man who loved his books, liked brandy and liked to quote Rousseau.

In preparation for interviewing Savak, I read everything about Iran’s internal security I could lay my eyes on, studying the military and security structures, using the books I had brought with me. The information was bewildering at first -- like parts of a kaleidoscope – just unrelated shapes and colors, but all of a sudden things began to assemble and make a sharp picture. I had just about given up interviewing Savak, the Shah’s secret police when they finally summoned me. I climbed into a car with two sullen, unsmiling men. They were so fearful, looked a sick white. I finally said, “You are not enjoying this, I don’t think,” and they shook their heads, nervous and drained pale. They were really ridden with fear.

When I got inside the Savak headquarters I .soon found myself in a room furnished with sofas, facing two seated men. One was handsome, dark browed, dapper and polished and the other looked like a street thug. The first was the Deputy Chief of Savak, a man named Parviz Sabeti, who was looking dapper in his $1000 suit and $100 tie that he had bought in at Saks in New York City. The dapper man was seated to a dark-skinned man who had heavy, hooded eyes, a rough character whose face had pitted skin, sporting a thick, brown toothbrush mustache. He also wore an expensive suit.

I began to interview slowly, doing really dumb and stupid things by design. I asked the deputy head of Savak about political stability of the country. I told him I read things in the papers of minor violence, but it was troubling because it seemed so frequent. I was told it meant nothing. This was said by the thug with passable English. Sabeti, by contrast, had been to school in Switzerland with former CIA Director Richard Helms, and he spoke better English than I did, but he needed a translator. It occurred to me that a translator’s function was to buy time for the subject of the interview to cobble his replies together. I asked the Sabeti about Sen. McCarthy and his importance to American history. It was stupid on purpose, but it helped to fortify the Deputy’s impression that I was another idiot American who could not find his ass with a mirror. Sabeti said he had no opinion about American politics.

Sabeti was in his mid-thirties with eyes that looked lazy and sleepy but which were in fact as sharp as needles. They missed nothing. Pale, lazy loops of smoke coil and twisted up from his cigarette. He had an air of extreme confidence. Of course, every word I said was being on slowly turning reels in a neighboring room for review later on.

Sabeti was a skilled, canny interviewer. He said that the American press would go to any lengths to embarrass the Shah, and Sabeti was vowed that he would prevent that at all cost. It was up to him to forestall slips and prevent misinterpretations, and, most of all, to ensure that the Iranian’s governments view was the one which would come to prevail in the reporters’ mind. Period.

At one point, I told Sabeti that some Western reporters allege that there were 80,000 secret police in Iran. He oozed hostile contempt and condescension. I said told him it was not my figure, but he said, “But yet you use it.”

“So it’s not correct.”

“It’s totally stupid -- I mean how would such a huge number of informers be paid? Housed? Deployed? It’s a stupid figure.” He then taunted me about the fact that all Western reporters had to hear was Savak, and their wits flew right out of their heads.

In the beginning, both men were very bored as if they viewed this nuisance with mild annoyance, wondering how long this tiresome fly would buzz about before it went away. But I was proceeding with nightmare slowness that it approached paralysis, because I wanted to appear to be miraculous dense. Knowing that Sabeti so skilled in countering reporters, I prayed he would get impatient and make a mistake. He did.

I suddenly asked them to give me an accurate number of Savaks since they didn’t like me. Sabeti looked more bored. “You want numbers, I will tell you. I can tell you the numbers. There are between 3,500 and 4,000 Savaks and this includes the drivers of cars and the man who brings you tea,” he spat and he settled back.

I screwed up my face in thought. “How are you organized?” I asked.

“How are we organized? How is what organized?” He repeated it impatiently.

“Well, help me here. For example, in the Second Directorate – “

Sabeti cut me off. “The Second Directorate? What Second Directorate?” His voice was harsh and savage.

I was very off balance.

“There are no directorates. You mean departments,” he said scornfully.

“No Directorates?” I said.

“No Directorates,” he said impatiently “In the KGB there are directorates. Here there are only departments. We are not the KGB.”

I just put my head down and went on. “Does the Eight Department, doesn’t it collect foreign intelligence?”

Sabeti grew hostile and cold. “It doesn’t collect foreign intelligence. It does counterintelligence not analysis. Analysis is done by the Seventh Department.”

“You said the Seventh Department.”

“Yes’

“So want does the Seventh Department do?”

By now they are entirely convinced I was half baked and idiotic. “What does the Third Department do?” I knew that it did most of the horrible torture.

“It does internal security.” (Later, I would find out that Israel was training the thugs from the Third Department.)

“It’s like your FBI,” he said.

I took my time and then asked “Who gives the orders?”

Now they were convinced I was stupid beyond measure.

“The King gives the orders. SAVAK obeys the king. SAVAK is for the King to command. The Shah is the state.”

“But what is SAVAK made up of?”

They were bewildered.

“Can you clarify your question, please?”

“Well, you have the Imperial Gendarmerie…”

They waited

“The imperial gendarmerie has 85,000 men, is that not so?”

Sabeti nodded.

“And you have the National Police. That numbers around 70,000? Is that correct? Plus the Army has 8000, isn’t that correct?”

It was.

“And you have counter-insurgency forces, is that right?

“The army has 80,000, “Sabeti said. “True.”

“But don’t Savak's orders take precedence over all the rest?”

“Please clarify," he said with cold hatred. He’d been startled.

“Can these forces all be placed under Savak's orders?”

Sabeti stared at him. Sabeti sensed trouble. “All of them serve the state,”

This was perfect. Now as the time to relate the incident of the prison near Isfahan. I suddenly said that he had been to the Russian steel mill, and I saw a prison built four years ago, and it contains a 1200 prisoners, all mullahs and ayatollahs.

The effect was electric. Sabeti instantly lost his poise and superiority. “It is true,” my translator said. Sabeti, through the thug, said, “We have imprisoned them. We had to treat them very harshly.” But what had collapsed in an instant were the Shah’s assertions that his only opponents were communist, not Islamic clergy.

Sabeti recovered quickly though. He said that after the 1963 White Revolution meant to modernize the country, the Islamic clergy was against universal suffrage, land reform, the rights of women and he went on to say that Islam was in the forefront of every backward movement n Iran.

But I was excited. I exhibited nothing, but I my blood was racing. Sabeti had just told a Washington Post reporter that that there were 1,200 or more political prisoner in one prison when the Shah had said that there were only 400 in the whole county, plus, throughout Iran, every Iranian city had its own prison, sometimes several of them, and there was a prison in every province, and meant a lot of unreported numbers.

I verified that Savak’s orders took precedence over them all, even the army. That admission was key. It took away any pretense that the Shah was not simply a brutal dictator like Stalin.

Sabeti had lost a lot of his complacency, and his accompanying thug had a face implacable hatred, but I wanted to press on. I thought it would do best to back to being obvious. “What about torture?” I asked blandly.

Sabeti’s expression said, “Ah, We here we are at last,” and was preparing to predominate. “Torture is always deplorable. In Iran it is also illegal.”

I grew thoughtful. “Well, I heard something interesting,” I said. “As I was being driven to Dulles Airport, my cab driver told me of this one man who the police had in custody, they had had him in New York, but he was also in custody. The handcuffed the man to a radiator, which was very hot, and as the heat spread through the cuffs, they, the police, had left him handcuffed to the radiator for six hours. He screamed in agony the whole time.”

Sabeti was again complacent. “And your point would be?”

“The incident happened in America,” I said.

“And your point would be?

“It happened in New York. And wouldn’t be reasonable to assume that police forces all over the world will torture? It’s an inclination in their characters the world over.”

“Not in Iran” snapped Sabeti.

“Pardon?”

“Not in Iran. There is no torture in Iran. Here it is against the law.”

“Against what law?” I asked.

Sabeti was lethal and smooth. It is forbidden under Article 131 of our constitution. There is to be no torture, and the penalty for it is six years in prison; the constitution is quite definite.”

My pen was chasing over the notebook page.

“If the prisoner dies, the torturer dies,” said Sabeti, full of gloom and sullen menace.

I stopped. “The torturer is executed?”

“Immediately.”

“Immediately?” I was very startled. “Has anyone ever been found guilty of torture under Article 131?”

Sabeti looked him smugly. “Not yet,” he said. He insolently mashed out his cigarette in the ash tray and settled back.

Vadei, the brush mustachioed thug leaned forward. “There are too afraid of us to torture. In his heavy growling English. He laughed heartily showing his bad, uneven, ugly teeth. It was a gloating, sinister laugh from a coarse and brutal creature and he was frightening. I felt a cold prickled spread over my skin, and even though I was in no danger.

“Has anyone ever been accused of torture under Article 131?”

“Why ask the same question? There is no torture in Iran.”

The interview was winding down.

“Is there any fear of SAVAK among the people?” I was thinking of the white-faced, fearful faces of my drivers.

Sabeti was sarcastic and offended. “Fear? Fear? I think they are thankful for the extra security,” and his thug nodded. “Of course if there is any fear, it is perhaps that Iranians are being influenced by the accounts of foreign journalists. They see Savak behind every tree.”

I was writing when he said, "You must understand that in Iran, the rights of individuals are not absolute. They are subordinated for the good of the state.”

“But you do have opposition? The Shah does?”

“There is dislike of authority in all people under rule everywhere. Even in your country.”

I said, “People do dislike authority but in my country than are allowed to express their dislike. But, as you said, our countries are different. In Iran, what makes a citizen a suspect? What does he have to do against the interests of the State?”

“Anything that is not for the good of the Shah,’ said Sabeti. “We start a file on that prison. Even if the person only spreads ideas that are against the shah because thoughts and attitudes are incipient acts. What a person things he will come to act out. Besides, our protestors are not innocent. They were not like yours. Here dissenters are differently. We know for a fact that all of those who give trouble get their orders directly from the Soviet Embassy here in Tehran.”

It could not have been more untruthful, perverse and insolent if they had tried.

I was writing away.

“But there is no torture. We kill terrorists because they re in warfare with us," Sabeti said. “We killed about 200 terrorists but there is no torture here. If you don’t believe me, I will allow you to visit one of our prisons. Surely that would be enough for the great Washington Post. Surely and he gave me a smile of distant affability. Vadei smiled at me.

But I was quite bowled over

“I can visit a prison?”

“You are free too, of course.”

“I would like to see Evin,” he said. “Please.” It was the worst of the prisons, a slaughterhouse, and a house of torture.

“You will be called said Sabeti, giving me a handshake like a wilted petunia. Vadei a grip like pliers but I exerted enough to strength to surprise him.

But please, reader, don’t think that the interview went well because I was polished, intelligent, engaging or full of charm. I had none of those things. I was shy to the point of disease. I hated and feared new things. No, I got the interview because I didn’t think of my strengths but of my weaknesses. In Iran, I had no strengths. I had to live from hand to mouth. I had to fashion solutions on the spot. Much of the time I was panicked, which is unmanly emotion, yet I also had the confidence that I could outwit them. They were pros; Pretending that I was a bumbling amateur that gave me the advantage. When you attack a group where it feels strongest, it opens up weak points that you can take advantage of.

But the aftermath was interesting. My articles were published in The Washington Post as a six-part front-page series, prompting the former Assistant Secretary of State George Ball to state they were “tragic and prophetic.”

The Shah, of course, fell, and Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to set up a new reign of terror. One of its victims was Vadei. He was shot. Deputy Sabeti, almost lost his job because of the articles, and after Khomeini returned, he fled the country. After numerous plastic surgeries, he went to live in LA. He told my father-in-law that he never really knew what had hit him in the course of the interview. He felt blindsided.

Much sadder case was the fate of Pakravan. The wonderfully intelligent, well-read man met with a tragic end. I was sitting at my desk at The Washington Post when someone handed me an envelope. Its stamp said it was from Tehran, and I opened it. There was no letter. Just a black and white photo of Pakravan lying dead on a slab, a bullet hole in his forehead.

It turned out that my father-in-law was working for the CIA, and after careful preparations, he escaped. His first job was doing classified translations from Farsi for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.