Oral History of Colonel Keith A Barlow USA Retired

FOREWORD
This oral history transcript has been produced from an interview with Colonel
Keith A. Barlow, USA, Retired, conducted by Colonel Thomas G. Fierke, edited by CDR
James R. Greenburg, USN (Ret) as part of the US Army War College/US Army Military
History Institutes AY 1999 Senior Officer Oral History Program.
Users of this transcript should note that the original verbatim transcription of the
recorded interview has been edited to improve coherence, continuity, and accuracy of
factual data. No statement of opinion or interpretation has been changed other than as
cited above. The views expressed in the final transcript are solely those of the
interviewee and interviewer. The US Army War College/US Army Military History
Institute assumes no responsibility for the opinions expressed, or for the general
historical accuracy of the contents of this transcript.
This transcript may be read, quoted, and cited in accordance with common
scholarly practices and the restrictions imposed by both the interviewee and interviewer.
It may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, without first
obtaining the written permission of the Director, US Army Military History Institute,
950 Soldiers Drive, Carlisle, Pennsylvania 17013-5021.
ii
Interview with COL Keith A. Barlow, USA Retired

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Tape 1, Side 1
The Early Years
West Point
Commissioned in Infantry
Carlisle, 1971
504th, Mainz
Teaching at West Point
Vietnam
Marine Corps Staff College
Headquarters DA
G-1 506th, Vietnam
Battalion Commander, 1-506th, Vietnam
U.S. Army War College
Deputy Coordinator of Army Studies, DA
Retraining Brigade, Ft. Riley
Tehran
Commander of United States Support Activity, Iran
1
3
5
6
7
7
8
9
9
10
11
11
11
12
12
17
Tape 1, Side 2
U.S. Support Activity, Iran
Deteriorating Events, Fall 1978
27
36
Tape 2, Side 1
The Revolution
Burning the Money
Being Arrested
The Last Plane Out
Paying the Last of the Contracts
Key Mistakes Made by the U.S. Government
43
44
51
53
54
56
Tape 2, Side 2
May Day Parade
Bunkers War
COL Barlows Father
Dating His Future Wife
64
68
69
70
iii
Tape 3, Side 1
Will You Marry Me
Azadi Square
Mrs. Barlows Commentary
Hard Time Dealing With the War
Mrs. Barlows Commentary, Again
71
71
72
76
78
Tape 3, Side 2
The Caspian
Before The Revolution, A Place to Live
The Kids
Skiing
The Iranian People
83
89
92
93
94
Tape 4, Side 1
Speech at the Army War College
96
Appendix A Access Agreement

Colonel Keith Barlow, USA Ret.
iv
U.S. Army Military History Institute

SENIOR OFFICER ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
INTERVIEWER: Colonel Thomas Fierke
INTERVIEWEE: Colonel Keith A. Barlow, USA Retired
[Tape 1, Side 1]
March 12, 1999, Im Colonel Thomas Fierke, student in the War College
Class of 1999, Distance Education Program. As part of my Strategic
Research Project [SRP], I am doing an interview today with Colonel Keith
A. Barlow at his home in Camden, South Carolina.
INTERVIEWER: Colonel Barlow, the first thing the War College was
interested in was some background information, so I just think I will just
read this quickly and let you nod. Where were you born?
COLONEL BARLOW: Honolulu, Hawaii, actually Scofield Barracks.
INTERVIEWER: So I would guess that your father was in the military

COLONEL BARLOW: Thats right.
INTERVIEWER: While Im thinking about it, tell me about your connection
to the Civil War.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, I had a great uncle, probably distant uncle,

who was a general, who fought at Gettysburg against my wifes great
grandfather, who was Joseph Kershaw.
INTERVIEWER: And who was your great uncle?
COLONEL BARLOW: Francis C. Barlow, Jr. But, my great grandfather

was captured. He was on the Southern side. He was captured and
imprisoned up in Elmira, New York, where he died in prison.
INTERVIEWER: So you had a grandfather and an uncle . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: Great grandfather and uncle.
INTERVIEWER: Great grandfather and uncle.
COLONEL BARLOW: Then I had another relative who was captured by

the South and he was released from Andersonville Prison. So it is quite
confused.
INTERVIEWER: Where did you grow up then, after being born in Hawaii?
COLONEL BARLOW: All over the world.
INTERVIEWER: Where did your father retire to? What was his most
distinctive assignment in the military?
COLONEL BARLOW: Probably being Brigadier General, Chief of Staff at

Fort McPherson, Georgia.
INTERVIEWER: That was before TRADOC [U.S. Army Training and

Doctrine Command] I assume.
COLONEL BARLOW: Youre right.

INTERVIEWER: So it was kind of de ja vu when you went back to Fort
Monroe?
INTERVIEWER: So, as you were growing up you were definitely a military

brat. I know that you went to the Military Academy. Was that always your
first choice? Or, did you come to that after a period of time?
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, I went to the University of Utah a couple of

years and thought I would go into the Forest Service. But I worked at
Yellowstone Park putting out fires one summer and decided I wanted to go
to West Point. So I got an appointment and went.
INTERVIEWER: What type of appointment did you get to West Point?
COLONEL BARLOW: It was from a lady Senator? The lady

Representative from Utah.
INTERVIEWER: Congressional?
COLONEL BARLOW: Congressional.
INTERVIEWER: In high school, what sports did you play?
COLONEL BARLOW: Mainly track and cross country. I ran the quarter,
the mile and cross country.
INTERVIEWER: Good for the Army PT [Physical Training] test.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right.
INTERVIEWER: What, OK, you mentioned your first forestry college.

What do you recall about West Point? This interview, of course, is not
focused at all on West Point, but is there anything noteworthy at West
Point? I know you went back to teach there later.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, it disciplined me considerably in my studies.

My grades vastly improved as I went through West Point.
INTERVIEWER: Your subject was, English?
COLONEL BARLOW: English.
INTERVIEWER: Because you later went to the University of Pennsylvania

and got a Masters in English.

INTERVIEWER: I would guess I was going to say that was probably
after Vietnam. By 1963 you had been to Vietnam?
COLONEL BARLOW: 1961. 1962 I think it was that I got the Masters.
That was a tough year.
INTERVIEWER: You graduated in 1963 from the University of

Pennsylvania. But, that could be when it was awarded rather when . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: No, then it was 1962, 1963.
INTERVIEWER: I have a list of your assignments, but I seem to, it was on

the back of one. I took one that was clear and would copy there. I

switched resumes on myself. Upon graduation from West Point, you were
commissioned in what branch?
COLONEL BARLOW: Infantry.
INTERVIEWER: And that was a RA [Regular Army] commission?

INTERVIEWER: While were on education, lets continue down through
your military education and then well come back and do your military
assignments. At some point, you undoubtedly went to the basic course.
INTERVIEWER: Fort Benning, Infantry.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. Right.
INTERVIEWER: And then you probably went back to Fort Benning to do

the Advanced Course.
INTERVIEWER: And you went to Quantico for . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: The Command
INTERVIEWER: And there you became an honorary Marine, you told me

once.

COLONEL BARLOW: Right. I played on their basketball team.
INTERVIEWER: And that was six months at Quantico?
COLONEL BARLOW: I thought it was a year.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Im just not familiar with the Marine course. And
then later in 1972 you went to Carlisle for the first time?
COLONEL BARLOW: Right, 1971, 1972.

.
INTERVIEWER: What do you remember about Carlisle, the first time?
COLONEL BARLOW: Beautiful area and I enjoyed the course,

particularly the foreign officers that were in the course with me.
INTERVIEWER: Did you know any Iranians during your time there?
COLONEL BARLOW: No.
INTERVIEWER: Resume, IMA in 1976. IMA is not Individual Mobilization

Augmentee. It is under school.
COLONEL BARLOW: I would have to see that.

INTERVIEWER: I dont know that one either, Keith.
COLONEL BARLOW: It probably is the . . . It was probably something at

Fort Bragg, where they send you before you go oversees to an advisory
type job.

INTERVIEWER: Right.
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah, whatever that means. I dont know.
INTERVIEWER: I just wanted to clarify that it is not the common acronym

that Im familiar with.
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah. During that period of time I took by tutor that
I hired, some courses.
INTERVIEWER: Lets go back and your assignments that get us to . . . I
think well go through all your assignments kind of quickly and then well
go back and start to focus on Tehran. Your first assignment was as the
XO [Executive Officer] and platoon leader in heavy weapons, the platoon
leader of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Fort Bragg.
COLONEL BARLOW: Uh, huh.
INTERVIEWER: And from there you went to a . . . Again, with the 504th
you went to Mainz, Germany.
INTERVIEWER: And now you were a company commander in addition to

other jobs.

INTERVIEWER: Theres a gap from 1961 to 1963, so you probably went
to the Advance Course before you got to go back to West Point to teach,

from 1963 to 1966. What do you remember about teaching? Better than
being a cadet?
COLONEL BARLOW: Id say so. I loved my job. In fact, when I got ready
to depart there they asked me if I would stay on as a permanent professor.
And, just about that time Vietnam was breaking loose and I felt I had to go
prove myself in combat. So, I negated that. I went to combat.
INTERVIEWER: As one of my mentors over the years, I am sure that you

truly enjoyed having the cadets around. By this time you were married?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah, I married just before I went to Mainz.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. So I imagine that you and Kay were active in

interactions with the cadets; things of that sort.
COLONEL BARLOW: Oh, yeah.
INTERVIEWER: You left West Point and went to be the G-2, G-3 advisor
to a Vietnamese Airborne Task Force.
COLONEL BARLOW: Uh, huh.
INTERVIEWER: Anything you would like to add to that?
COLONEL BARLOW: I was G-2, G-3 advisor for about three days and
they immediately had to have a replacement for somebody. I think this
was when I replaced Schwarzkopf (H. Norman Schwarzkopf) as the
advisor to this task force.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. This is big Norman as he has become known.
COLONEL BARLOW: Yes. He was a classmate of mine at West Point.

So, I became the advisor to a Vietnamese colonel and I didnt speak
Vietnamese and he didnt speak English. But, we both spoke French.
Thats how I got along with him.
INTERVIEWER: And you were a major by now?
COLONEL BARLOW: I think so. I think that is what I was then. What
year was that?
INTERVIEWER: Sixty seven.
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Then you left there and you went to headquarters DA.
INTERVIEWER: And that was your first assignment in the Pentagon?

COLONEL BARLOW: Right. Lets see something. I thought it was the
class of 1968 when I went to the Marine Corps Staff College.
INTERVIEWER: Class of 1968?
INTERVIEWER: Okay. You went from Vietnam to the Marine Corps Staff
College.

COLONEL BARLOW: Right. And then I went to the Pentagon.
INTERVIEWER: The copy is not too good. I thought it was July of 1968, I
thought it was July of 1966. It is July of 1968.
INTERVIEWER: So, then you went to the Pentagon and you were in the
personnel management office there?
COLONEL BARLOW: For a short time.
INTERVIEWER: And then you were in the support activity unit?
INTERVIEWER: What is that?
COLONEL BARLOW: Whatever they do for all of the general officers in

the Pentagon.
INTERVIEWER: This now is known as GOMO [General Officers
Management Office].
COLONEL BARLOW: Probably.
INTERVIEWER: And you left there to be the G-1 of the 101st. Excuse
me, G-1 of the 1st of the 506th Infantry in the 101st; back in Vietnam.
10

COLONEL BARLOW: Right. I didnt stay in that job very long. Then they
made be battalion commander.
INTERVIEWER: Battalion commander of what, Keith?

COLONEL BARLOW: In the 101st, I commanded the 1-506 (1st Battalion,
506th Infantry Regiment (Airborne).
INTERVIEWER: Okay. And upon completion of that battalion command

you were selected for the War College?
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. That was 1971-1972.

INTERVIEWER: Thats your first experience in wonderful Carlisle. And
you left Carlisle to be the Deputy Coordinator of Army Studies within the
office of the Chief of Staff of the Army?
INTERVIEWER: What was that job?
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, it coordinated all studies that were being

done in the Army to make sure that there was no duplication of effort and
that sort of thing. And at the same time I wrote some speeches for
general officers.
INTERVIEWER: So this was kind of an introduction to your later job as

the Director of Strategic Studies Institute, in a way.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right; in a way.
11

INTERVIEWER: And you left that to do some ROTC duty at Fort Riley as
the Deputy Commander of the Area?
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. Except, I didnt really get into that and went
into another job with the Retraining Brigade.
INTERVIEWER: Ah, Okay.
COLONEL BARLOW: Became the deputy of that.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, I . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: Is that in there?
INTERVIEWER: Yes, it is. Well, USARB [United States Army Retraining

Brigade] and Area Commander, Third ROTC Region.
INTERVIEWER: So you were an Area Commander in ROTC?
INTERVIEWER: Your next assignment is to Tehran. Your one resume

indicates that you had a brief period of time as the J-3, J-5, advisor to, I
would take it to the Iranian ground forces.
INTERVIEWER: And then you were selected for command. Did you
know you were going to command when you went over?
12
COLONEL BARLOW: No.
INTERVIEWER: That was a Command Board selection?

COLONEL BARLOW: I dont know what selected. It was a complete
surprise to me.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Now we have Command Boards. But, you dont
recall there being a Command Board back then, as such?
COLONEL BARLOW: Not then.
INTERVIEWER: So this is your O-6 command. Two tours in Vietnam as

an advisor and as a battalion commander. Okay, we are now in O-6
command in Iran. I think we probably skipped some schools. We
probably skipped some. I guess that we skipped probably the Airborne
School and Ranger School.
COLONEL BARLOW: All of that was in one year, down at Fort Benning,
as soon as I graduated from West Point. That was 1956.
INTERVIEWER: So you had . . ? And, you were awarded the CIB

[Combat Infantry Badge] for your first tour?
INTERVIEWER: Bronze star for each tour.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. But for valor too.
13

INTERVIEWER: Yes, there is a V. I need to find better glasses or need
to find a better copy of this; one of the two. I probably should be working
off your DD-214. Let me switch to that. Okay. I see a Bronze star medal
with VD [Valor Device] and oak leaf cluster; the air medal would be from
Vietnam; and a Vietnam Service Medal with three campaign stars. I think
that in addition to the other schools that we have already mentioned you
went to Jump Masters School right after Airborne School apparently?
INTERVIEWER: And you went to Mechanics and Maintenance Warrant

Officer Advanced Course?
COLONEL BARLOW: I dont recall that.
INTERVIEWER: I find that fascinating.

COLONEL BARLOW: I dont recall that. I would doubt that.
INTERVIEWER: On your DD214 it has you attended the

Mechanics/Maintenance Warrant Officers Advanced Course in 1976. This
is truly interesting because you were commissioned your entire career and
as far as I know you were infantry and English.
COLONEL BARLOW: That is hilarious. I must never have looked at that.

(Laughter) Wow. Is that Army language training? I think that is what that
is, isnt it? But thats . . .
INTERVIEWER: It must be an acronym someone deciphered incorrectly.
14
INTERVIEWER: Because a . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: I never . . . I dont . . I never went to that school.
INTERVIEWER: Despite what his DD-214 says, hes adamant. He did
not attend the Warrant Officers Mechanic School.

INTERVIEWER: We did find one other school of note. And, thats
reflected on the DD-214 as MATA Sector Unit. That is Military Advisor
Training Activity, or something of that sort, which was an indoctrination
course on how to be an advisor to the Vietnamese before one was sent to
Vietnam. Okay, so. . .
COLONEL BARLOW: What year was that?
INTERVIEWER: Sixty six. Seventy six is the warrant officer course that
we were wondering about.
COLONEL BARLOW: And I think that was probably the training I got at
Fort Bragg to go to Iran.
INTERVIEWER: Which has some acronym that some clerk has

misdecoded.
COLONEL BARLOW: Yes, exactly.
15

INTERVIEWER: Before we get to Tehran itself, you have several
children. Why dont you tell me briefly about the children and where they
were born.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, I had a son born in Mainz, Germany. I had a

daughter born at West Point and a daughter born at Fort Benning,
Georgia.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, lets go to Tehran. What do you recall of your first
assignment there when you were on the staff to the Iranian Army?
COLONEL BARLOW: I recall a lot of meetings with the highest levels of

staff; both with our Army and the Iranian Army.
INTERVIEWER: And you were on the . . . You were advisor assigned to

the Supreme Commanders Staff.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. It was their Joint Staff.
INTERVIEWER: So you were on the Joint Staff to the Iranian high

command.
COLONEL BARLOW: I met a lot of the key figures during that time.
INTERVIEWER: While Im thinking about it; did you ever meet the Shah?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yes I did, on one occasion.
INTERVIEWER: During this time or later?
16

COLONEL BARLOW: It was probably during that time. They had a
birthday celebration for him.
INTERVIEWER: Also, before I got there in June of 1978 I believe the

previous summer theyd had the twenty-five hundredth anniversary party
that some officers talked about because it was such a tremendous,
elaborate, extravagant celebration.
COLONEL BARLOW: It was. I went to that.
INTERVIEWER: You went to that too. Okay. You then took over as
Commander of United States Support Activity, Iran, [USSAI].
INTERVIEWER: Which was headquartered at, what everybody called the

Gulf District, what you preferred to call the Armys MAAG [Military
Advisory and Assistance Group] Community Center.
INTERVIEWER: AMCC. Tell us about your assumption of command.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, we had a very nice turnover of the command

at a formal event out in the parade . . . It was not on the parade field, but
on the football field. It was in the game area; inside the baseball stadium.
INTERVIEWER: I remember a baseball stadium, perhaps it was football

too, but . . .
17

COLONEL BARLOW: Yes, just a big grassy area. They could play all
sports; volleyball, whatever.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
COLONEL BARLOW: There were some stands there and people came
and watched. And, there were loudspeakers. It was quite a nice . . .
INTERVIEWER: Yes. When I got there in June and July there was
softball being played. By the time we got to football season, American
style, we werent doing sports anymore because it required too much
traveling. It was curtailed because of that; the commotion. Do you
remember whom you assumed command from?
COLONEL BARLOW: If you hadnt just asked me, I would have known. I
cant remember.
INTERVIEWER: Well come back to that. Who was the ranking official at
your assumption of command?
COLONEL BARLOW: I think it was General Gast.
INTERVIEWER: General Gast, was Phillip C. Gast, who was Chief of the
MAAG. He was an Air Force two-star at that time. He retired as a
Lieutenant General.
COLONEL BARLOW: I have a picture of all that upstairs.

INTERVIEWER: Neat. Well wander up later. You were relatively young
at the time you assumed command. Did you have General officer
18

aspirations at that time? What were your career goals as you assumed
command?
COLONEL BARLOW: My career goals had always been to do the best

job I could do in the job that I had. Really, I didnt aspire. I knew that if I
did the best I could do I would go up.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. What, prior to assuming command . . . What

assignments had best prepared you for it, in retrospect?
COLONEL BARLOW: My command positions in the Army; in battalion

command, company command, and then high staff positions in the
Pentagon. I did write directly for the Chief of Staff of the Army. I was his
speechwriter in one of those jobs that we have already talked about.
INTERVIEWER: Where you were deconflicting studies and you said also
you were writing speeches.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. I wrote speeches for General

Westmoreland. I wrote all of his addresses.
INTERVIEWER: Thats when he was Chief of Staff. Okay. I was going to
ask if O-5 command was good preparation. You just told me it was. Ive
broken this down in a couple ways before we get to the more substantive
issues. I thought we might go through social, and things of that sort.
When did Kay arrive in Tehran? Same time you did?
COLONEL BARLOW: Same time I did.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did your children ever get to visit?
19

COLONEL BARLOW: They were there with me.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, in Detroit?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah, except for my son, who went back to attend
the Citadel. But my daughters went to school there in Tehran. They went
to the American school.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. And you had one of the position houses?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah, not initially. I had an apartment high up in a

building and it was kind of . . . It wasnt very good. And then, when I took
command, I got a position house which was absolutely lovely marble.
INTERVIEWER: Who had position houses?

COLONEL BARLOW: I guess anybody in command at that time. I dont
know. The Generals had position houses.
INTERVIEWER: The four Generals did. I know because I terminated the

leases. The four Generals did, you did, and the commander of the
hospital. I believe there were just six of them. And, the position houses
were based upon your position. You did not receive housing allowances
at all. You received the house instead.
INTERVIEWER: The rest of us received a rather large, by American

standards, housing allowance in addition to our BAQ. We had to go find a
place to live.
20

INTERVIEWER: Tell me about the social life. I guess primarily in 1977

and early 1978, before we started having demonstrations. Did you
entertain a lot?
COLONEL BARLOW: I entertained a lot at my home. We did a lot of unit

entertainment at the club.
INTERVIEWER: The Officers Club was at the Armys Command
Community Center?
INTERVIEWER: And there were monthly hail-and-farewells, for example.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right, exactly.
INTERVIEWER: I believe that actually there was usually steak night on

Friday nights and things of that sort.
COLONEL BARLOW: Things like that.
INTERVIEWER: The club, because of the isolated nature of that

assignment, it was very . . . You tried to do what you could.
COLONEL BARLOW: Tried to have a real Army post there.
INTERVIEWER: What interaction did you have socially with any of the
Iranian military as a commander?
21

COLONEL BARLOW: I had about a monthly luncheon with some of them.
INTERVIEWER: Was that social or professional?
COLONEL BARLOW: It was professional. But, it ended up social in the

eating together.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. This is a very specific question. What do you

remember about Christmas 1977 versus Christmas 1978? In 1978, to
refresh your memory, we were loading buses and sending dependents
home and we both received the Humanitarian Service Medal for waving
goodbye to our families.
COLONEL BARLOW: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: What do you remember about Christmas 1978? Do you

remember anything at all?
COLONEL BARLOW: How lonely it was.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. That was in 1978?
INTERVIEWER: What was Christmas like in Tehran in 1977?
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, it was a wintry Christmas, as it usually was.

The closest thing I can give as an example would be Salt Lake City, Utah;
high altitude, lots of snow.
INTERVIEWER: Im thinking more in terms of the culture.
22
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, as you know, in a Muslim country you are not
going to get high Christianity show that we do in America. It is going to be
somewhat subdued.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. I recall being advised, I was not there at Christmas

1977, I was there for Christmas 1978, and even as we were getting to
Thanksgiving we were advised to make sure that our Christmas trees
didnt show outside the house.
COLONEL BARLOW: And we could do it in 1977.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Thats the type of thing. You just mentioned the
climate and geography of Tehran. You said it was very high and dry like
Salt Lake City.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. It was very similar to it. The mountains

were right there.
INTERVIEWER: We could see . . . I think we could see snowcapped

mountains from the Armys Command Community Center compound.
COLONEL BARLOW: We sure could. We sure could.
INTERVIEWER: Looking north. What did . . . Getting a little bit into

family activities; what did Kay do, other than be the Commanders wife
and hostess?
COLONEL BARLOW: She ran the womens, Army wives club. But, she
was part of many groups and that sort of thing. That was very interesting.
She took the first group to Afghanistan. I had decided that we would have
23

some trips with wives and whoever else could go. During that time, she
got caught in that revolution.
INTERVIEWER: There were also trips to the Holy Land and to Russia, I
believe, also.
INTERVIEWER: And because of the proximity to what we consider to be

exotic locations, some of them were very, very cheap.
COLONEL BARLOW: Exactly.
INTERVIEWER: Compared to trying to get there from the United States?
COLONEL BARLOW: It was a wonderful place to live for travel.
INTERVIEWER: This brings back my first introduction to you.
[Tape 1, Side 2]
INTERVIEWER: This would be financially, probably the best assignment I
ever had because of the housing allowance and the cost of living
allowance were both very good. And, Colonel and Kay Barlow were great
people and he was taking over as Commander. They got a third of that
right; at least the part about the Barlows. From a social or family
standpoint, was there anything special? He had notes and he . . . Was
there anything unique about life that comes back that youd like to
comment on?
COLONEL BARLOW: The only thing that Id comment on would be what
we went through in the early stages of the revolution; as it got more and
24

more violent. Prior to that period we had a wonderful time there, going to
the Caspian, eating caviar; it was just magnificent. It was quite a learning
experience for our children.
INTERVIEWER: Colt, the two girls were in high school?
COLONEL BARLOW: One was in high school, one was in grade school.
And the high schooler became a runner and wed go to all of her athletic
events. My son was there for the first year, I guess it was. He was a
wrestler and he pinned the Iranian Olympic champ. That was quite a thing
to see.
INTERVIEWER: Later, in my Strategic Research Project I have a picture

of Marshala, the head of the committee that hung around the front gate of
the Embassy during the summer of 1979. He always claimed that his
brother was an Olympic wrestler. He never had made the connection in
two before. So your daughter competed against Iranians?
INTERVIEWER: There was only one American school.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. She competed against Iranians and they

competed among themselves in the school.
INTERVIEWER: Sure. Were there other high schools like French or

Russian, or anything?
COLONEL BARLOW: Seems to me there were other international

schools.
25

INTERVIEWER: Okay. So, it was a cosmopolitan, fascinating place to
live. [It was] hot and dusty in the summer but all in all, fascinating
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. And we took that trip to Kenya for

something like $800 for the two of us.
INTERVIEWER: We could go back and research what your pay was.

But, I know my housing allowance was in the neighborhood of $1,200.
So, just to give a ball park perspective to what $800 was. My wife and I
were looking to going to the Holy Land, during the Christmas of 1978. I
believe that trip was two weeks for $1,200. The airfare was almost
nothing and Iran Air was flying at that time to Tel Aviv with 747s. It was a
cheap trip. Lets go to the military. Lets do this before the revolution. I
believe as the commander, we talked about your change of command a
little bit. What was your staff like? Describe your staff and its mission.
COLONEL BARLOW: I had a full Army staff. Their mission was to

provide the total support for all American military and their families in
[Iran].
INTERVIEWER: And then you had some other activities assigned to you.
For example, the post office was an Air Force activity.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. But, we had to supervise them
INTERVIEWER: Criminal investigators, which organizationally remained

separate. But, they came under your care and feeding, I guess. And in a
way, things like the Air Force postal activity did also, I believe. Above you
there was an Army, a Navy and an Air Force section. Each had a onestar. Your rater, was your rater? Yes. And then your senior rater was the
____? Yes. How often did your senior rater come to Tehran, ever?
26
COLONEL BARLOW: He came on two occasions that I recall. But, but

that was during the entire tour that I was there. It wasnt an annual visit.
INTERVIEWER: What was the mission of USSAI [US Support Activity

Iran]?
COLONEL BARLOW: It was the US support Activity Iran and the military
support activity. We had cognizance over all of the housing; everything.
We finally even built a commissary. Unfortunately, that was just prior to
the revolution.
INTERVIEWER: The largest in Yucca?
INTERVIEWER: That support also included the down country teams,

didnt it?
INTERVIEWER: The Technical Assistance Field Teams [TAFTs] and the

SAAs. I think was the other name of the . . . There were two types of
teams down country; Technical Assistance Field Teams were one type.
But, didnt getting groceries to them, and administration and household
good claims and things of that sort all came back to your headquarters?
COLONEL BARLOW: Thats right.
INTERVIEWER: Do you recall if your predecessor had any words of

advice to you?
27
COLONEL BARLOW: Only in cautioning me about certain personalities.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
COLONEL BARLOW: And I wont go into those.
INTERVIEWER: No, we dont . . . There is a couple of different . . . I
think every command probably has some difficult or phony personnel
issues and USSAI had a couple of those. We also had some procurement
irregularities, which were solved basically before I got there. But,
procurement was being done, perhaps with more scrutiny because of the
recent past. We talked about the social aspect of being military and trying
to have a post life. Was the Army physical fitness test conducted? For
example, do you remember?
COLONEL BARLOW: I dont remember, but I think it was.
INTERVIEWER: I happen to recall two. We had one in the gym in the

weir. And, then we had one outside. I think we went to the track at the
American school, if I recall.
COLONEL BARLOW: I think we did too.
INTERVIEWER: And you beat me by about ten yards in the two-mile. I

happen to recall that and you and I were two of the faster runners, except
for a couple of skinny little E-5s that were in a different league than we
were. But we never did go to the range to qualify with weapons, did we?
COLONEL BARLOW: No.
28

INTERVIEWER: Did you have formations in the morning, or parade,
award ceremonies, or anything of that sort.
COLONEL BARLOW: We had award ceremonies out in that field. We

also had flag raising every morning and flag take down.
INTERVIEWER: I do not recall retreat. Of course, we were in the building

across the street, so we probably would never have heard it with all the
traffic on the highway. We talked about this earlier today before we
started the interview. Do you recall if there was an Assumption of
Command Inventory on your way into the job?
COLONEL BARLOW: No, there was not.

INTERVIEWER: So, there definitely wasnt one. We know there wasnt
one on the way out.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, we had one inventory that we burned. We

will get to that later I am sure.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Inventory of the . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: Money.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, an inventory of the money. Okay. This . . . It may

change after the revolution, but lets go down through a group of different
parties I think you may have had [a] relationship with. For example, what
was your relationship with General Gast and his staff?
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, as I said, he was my boss. I could go to him

directly. I didnt have to go through the staff or anything. We had a
29

special working relationship. His staff was very responsive to me; as if I
was, probably, his deputy.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. So his Chief of Staff was not an impediment?
COLONEL BARLOW: No.
INTERVIEWER: Some of the rest of us had problems getting to him.
COLONEL BARLOW: You may have. But, you see I circumvented those
obstacles. That part of it was worked out for me.
INTERVIEWER: In reading the today, and you have given me your OERs
[Officer Efficiency Reports] from that time. At the time, did you think that
you got good OERs from him?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah. I think they were deserved.
INTERVIEWER: Agreed. There was no doubt about that. But, what I

mean to ask is, were they career enhancing OERs given your
assignment?
INTERVIEWER: And did he nominate you for the Legion of Merit, or

another award?
COLONEL BARLOW: I think so. I think he nominated and I got it later.
INTERVIEWER: And that was for your command tenure; both before and
after the revolution?
30

COLONEL BARLOW: Yes. Thats right.
INTERVIEWER: What was your relationship, if any, with Brigadier

General at the time, Howard Stone, who was the Chief of the Army
section?
COLONEL BARLOW: I had a good working relationship.
INTERVIEWER: He was an interesting guy and a tremendous officer.

But, did the support activity really have much interaction with him and his
staff?
COLONEL BARLOW: Only as to their supply needs elsewhere. Many of

those supply needs came through their office.
INTERVIEWER: When the teams down country needed a new jeep or

something?
COLONEL BARLOW: Right, exactly.
INTERVIEWER: Our motor pool would try and get a jeep to him?
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. I really . . . I had very little to do with those

people because I dealt directly with Gast.
INTERVIEWER: And what about . . . The same with Collins, Admiral

Collins of the Navy section? And, I dont remember the name of the Chief
of the Air Force section.
COLONEL BARLOW: I dont know. This is twenty years later.
31
INTERVIEWER: Collins I happen to remember for reasons outside the . .

. (laughter), which we both recall. But, we wont go into those. Your
relationship with the DCSLOG [Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics] section
in particular was interesting?
COLONEL BARLOW: That worked very well, with DCSLOG. The reports,
as things got worse, from me to USAEUR [U.S. Army Europe], it seemed
to me, didnt connect as well as they should have.
INTERVIEWER: They didnt appreciate that the world was going to hell in
a handbag.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. I had some real problems with them.

INTERVIEWER: Why dont we go into that here so we dont forget to
come back to it? As things deteriorated, and they started deteriorating
July-August of 1978, martial law was declared early September of 1978.
What were you telling DCSLOG? Or, what was . . ?
COLONEL BARLOW: I was telling them that we better get our

dependents out.
INTERVIEWER: That would have been towards Thanksgiving?

COLONEL BARLOW: Thats right; all the way up until December.
INTERVIEWER: And into the fall.
32

INTERVIEWER: Weekly reports, monthly reports, special reports?
COLONEL BARLOW: No. These were all special reports. I had a regular
monthly report, I had to send, but I sent numerous special wires to them
telling them what was happening. And it just surprised me that nothing
was ever acted on really, until it really got disastrous.
INTERVIEWER: Did you have any relationship at all with EUCOM [U.S.
European Command]?
COLONEL BARLOW: Later on, when the lower elements didnt respond
as them should, I went over their heads. I even sent messages to the
Pentagon.
INTERVIEWER: Twixs, as we call them.

INTERVIEWER: I wonder how thats spelled.
COLONEL BARLOW: T W I X.
INTERVIEWER: Some transcriber will figure that out. There was a bunch
of other detachments floating around Tehran and in-country. Some were
classified and some were unclassified. Did you have any command
relationships or just support requirements?
COLONEL BARLOW: I had support requirements with them. I had no

command relationship with them. And, as a matter of fact, I was totally
surprised when I found out the CIA [Counter Intelligence Agency] was
operating at a gulf district . . .
33
INTERVIEWER: They were actually right down the hall, in between your
office and the teen club, I think.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. It befuddled me. It makes me feel like I

really didnt know what the hell was going on. Yet they were able to cover
it up.
INTERVIEWER: I mentioned in my paper that there was never a

detachment and thats a . . . They were masquerading as a member
detachment, werent they?
INTERVIEWER: Like an Air Force detachment or something of that sort.
COLONEL BARLOW: I think it was an Air Force detachment.
INTERVIEWER: At least in one case I found out the person I thought was
the commander was not the commander. He was not Air Force, etc., etc.
I was thinking thats all unclassified by this time.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, I thought, I really thought that I should have

been brought in
INTERVIEWER: You were, you had top secret clearance from previous
jobs. I guess being in the Pentagon I am sure would have been cleared
for all that. What were the . . . ? Before, the revolution, what, other than
the deteriorating situation, were the biggest issues that you faced? You
mentioned building the commissary. I dont mean issues necessarily good
or bad, but do you recall any special projects or events or anything of that
34

sort? Were you in command when the PAOs [Public Affairs Officer] son
was lost in the mountains?
COLONEL BARLOW: I think I was. Its a vague memory. Im suffering
from memory loss right now. I think I was.
INTERVIEWER: That was still a . . . He was a boy scout and had

wandered away from the group and ended up freezing to death in the
mountains north of Tehran. The body wasnt found for, I guess, several
weeks or several months even. That was a big event when I got there. I
think you probably would have been in command. I wondered how much
the command got involved in that.
COLONEL BARLOW: Im sure we were fully involved in it. Thats the sort
of thing we did get into.
INTERVIEWER: There was one. It was the start of one General Court
Martial involving the manager of the NCO club.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. That was the one which I followed up on

when the guy was transferred to the States to make sure he did get taken
care of. As you recall, when it did come back to the States, he was going
to get off until I stepped in.
INTERVIEWER: What accomplishments would you say . . . Do you recall

any specific accomplishments before the revolution? After the revolution
we had numerous ones. Getting dependents out I think, safely and
securely was a big accomplishment. Before that we opened the
commissary and your command had at least some supervision of that
construction project. Okay, we were talking about accomplishments. We
talked about evacuation, things of that sort, and building the commissary.
35

Early in your command were there any reorganizations, or did you add
any staff because of particular needs or anything of that sort?
COLONEL BARLOW: As a matter of fact I think I cut back on the staff,

because it was overstaffed. Yeah, we did do a lot of changes in
organization and in the way things were done.
INTERVIEWER: Lets talk about deteriorating events.
COLONEL BARLOW: Okay. There were lots of deteriorating events.

Shall we start in the fall of 1978?
INTERVIEWER: Fall of 1978, or somewhere in 1978.
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah, daily shooting; daily screaming at night; very

frightening. In fact, it worked its way up to such a pitch that I can recall
taking out in my own place, my guns, and saying we have got to figure out
an escape plan for the family. And, I figured this plan out where I would
get my shotgun and hold off anybody trying to break in and they (COL
Barlows family) would run across the rooftops to some Iranian house and
the Iranians would take care of them if that occurred. On one particular
night . . . I had been a big hunter so I had a gun. And, in my pockets I
had shotgun shells; you know. And, in the middle of the night there was a
power outage as was often the case and I went in and told the kids to get
in bed with us. The kids came in, pulled a cloak and got in bed with us.
We were all lying there. I got up and got my shotgun in the dark and
loaded it, came back and got in bed. All of a sudden, the noise was right
outside our house. I said, Oh, oh, get ready to go. I sat out right in the
hallway; a big hallway leading to the front door. I sat there with the kids
ready to go across the rooftops. Fortunately, the only thing that came in
was sunlight the next morning. As the sun rose, I opened up my shotgun
36

and it was loaded with two rolls of Life Savers. (Laughter.) It probably
was a good thing I did, or I would be dead now, probably.
INTERVIEWER: Going over the rooftops. This is a good place for a little
digression about buildings. These were . . . When we talked about the
house; the house was kind of like a row house. In Boston or New York
there would be a solid facade, then there was walled gardens usually in
front or in back. If you made it to the roof, the roofs were flat and tarred,
burlap and tar. Once they started to leak, you had a hell of a problem
because the bricks were not fired. Did you have the collapse in the living
room, or was that somebody else?
COLONEL BARLOW: No, that was somebody else.
INTERVIEWER: If the bricks got wet, the water would run down the Ibeam. And then, sooner or later, you would have a sudden collapse of a
floor or a ceiling, or something of that sort. I lived on the third (a corner)
lot and nobody had built on the lot next to me yet. So, I had nowhere to
go. I had one way in and one way out. I do remember buying some deer
slugs though for the shotgun. And there was a rod and gun club and there
was a very active playing club.
COLONEL BARLOW: At the height of the revolution as we were all there,

I guess all the families were sent home. I armed everybody. You may
recall, I got the truck to go up to the rod and gun club and loaded it with
ammo and guns and came back and armed them.
INTERVIEWER: We had weapons when the average Iranian couldnt
because of the long past assassination attempt on the Shah. We were
considered more trustworthy than his own people. Go to the objectives
that I laid out, and this is both pre-revolution and post-revolution.
37
INTERVIEWER: Colonel Barlow is looking at two pages out of my

strategic research project where I laid out objectives both prior to the
revolution and post-revolution. I characterized lowest level as tactical and,
of course, his was not a tactical headquarters, but I call it tactical just to
give a feeling for the level that we were trying to perform at. After the
revolution, the tactical mission became mop-up everything and go home,
which we did. Any thoughts on the objectives I laid out there, both before
and after the revolution?
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, none other than our objective in Iran was
really based on the strategic location of Iran and its relationship to the then
Soviet Union. We had a powerful mission. In total, it was to build as
strong a country as we could militarily. And we were getting state of the
art weapons and state of the art technology.
INTERVIEWER: And they (the Shahs Government) were paying for the
vast majority of that?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yes, exactly. That is where your salary came from.
INTERVIEWER: Thats right. They paid even the salaries and they paid
for the . . . Some of us were assigned vehicles and things of that sort.
COLONEL BARLOW: They paid for the driver. My driver was paid for;
and all of it.
INTERVIEWER: Right. I dont know if there was any aid to the Iranians at
that time or if it was all foreign military sales cases.
38

COLONEL BARLOW: I think that, as far as I knew, it was only foreign
military sales.
INTERVIEWER: They paid for it?
INTERVIEWER: Okay. I guess, going back a little, did you have any
special preparation before assuming command?
COLONEL BARLOW: The only special preparation I had was going to

this brief school up at Fort Bragg and then hiring a teacher to teach me the
language.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go to the Fort Bragg school before Vietnam or

before . . ?
COLONEL BARLOW: No. This was before Tehran.
INTERVIEWER: As commander, how much were you let into the

intelligence that the military or the CIA was coming up with?
COLONEL BARLOW: None.
INTERVIEWER: None.
COLONEL BARLOW: As I said before, I didnt even know the CIA was
there.
39

INTERVIEWER: I was thinking it might have gotten sanitized and come
back down. Did you ever talk to John Gast? Did he know the CIA was
there?
COLONEL BARLOW: You see, I didnt learn they were there until very
late.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, so you dont know if he knew.
COLONEL BARLOW: I have an idea he knew.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, but the intelligence that we got was a . . . I dont
remember getting daily or weekly intelligence summaries other than
reading the paper.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. Exactly.
INTERVIEWER: And sometimes Time magazine was as good as

anything.
INTERVIEWER: We were classic mushrooms. And there would always

be lots and lots of rumors about the rotating blackouts at night; about what
happened at this mosque; about what happened in Jalleh Square for
example. There was a huge massacre that we; that everybody had
firsthand accounts, but . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: I preached about firsthand accounts I had. Some

people, friends of mine took pictures and I personally counted a thousand
bodies.
40
INTERVIEWER: At Jalleh Square, probably Jalleh, was a demonstration

that got out of hand and the troops basically opened up machine guns on
the demonstrators. And, the stories that I heard from my landlord that
lived in my house was that he had sent a detail of police down to load
bodies into dump trucks. They filled multiple dump trucks with bodies and
hauled them off to mass burials. Both before and after the revolution,
what was your relationship, if any, with the Embassy.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, I had a good relationship with the Embassy.

A logistical basis.
INTERVIEWER: But when it came to intelligence . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: Very little. I would provide them with information.

As you know, things we saw as it (the situation) deteriorated; bad. And, I
would tell them often how bad it was. Thats when I started sending these
messages over the chain of command saying that heres whats really
going on here. I dont know if you are getting it or not.
INTERVIEWER: At the Embassy, the Embassy had like a chief

administrative officer and people like that. That would have been your
normal relationship as commander, but as far as the deteriorating
situation, you have been talking like to the economics section and other
people of that sort.
COLONEL BARLOW: Exactly. Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: What . . . ? Did you know the Ambassador before the

revolution?
41

COLONEL BARLOW: Yes, I had met him several times.
INTERVIEWER: Was he Gasts rater, since that was a MAAG? I wonder
what that command relationship between them was?
COLONEL BARLOW: I dont know. I would assume that he would have
had input to it.
INTERVIEWER: So at least a letter report or something?

COLONEL BARLOW: Right. Thats what I would assume.
INTERVIEWER: What briefings, if any, did you have officially in between

the time that Khomeini left Paris and when the Shah left Tehran? This is
backwards. Between the time the Shah left Iran and the time Khomeini
came back to Iran? I dont recall that there ever was an all-hands meeting
to tell everybody what was happening politically. I dont think that USSAI
ever had an Intel briefing that we could share.
COLONEL BARLOW: Not that I know of. But, I did have one meeting
with the interim Iranian government that took place in between.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Bazargan?

COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah, Bazargan. And, Id met him. And we talked.
He sort of guaranteed that . . .
[Tape 2, Side 1]
COLONEL BARLOW: Keep things in a normal manner. He had no
problem with us being there and that sort of thing.
42
INTERVIEWER: The Shah left about the 20th of January or so of 1979.

Khomeini came about the sixth and the revolution started about the ninth.
What do you recall? You had this meeting some place in there. Do you
recall what the atmosphere was within the command?
COLONEL BARLOW: Within the command, it was very scary and we

were on pins and needles. As far as the government of Iran goes, they
wanted us to feel secure and thats the way this business was carried on
with them the entire time that was going on. Now, I did bring up some of
the problems we were having as far as frightened people. And, they said
they would soon get that under control.
INTERVIEWER: If I were telling the truth that was their attempt. We were
having at this time a gasoline strike, if I remember. It was hard to get gas
in cars. There was a shortage of cooking gas. There were no electric
stoves, because there wasnt enough power into the houses. So, life
became difficult in addition to being scary. Some people would not come
to work because they were worried about demonstrations in the street.
Those of us who came were consumed by problems rather than trying to
do business as usual. Of course, the rumor mill was active twenty-four
hours a day. And we often, as I recall, got information from the States by
phone calls.
COLONEL BARLOW: Thats the odd thing. The phones worked the
entire time.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Sometimes our parents and families knew more

about what has happening in downtown Tehran than we did. When I say
downtown Tehran, the Embassy to me was always downtown. We were
in the northern suburbs; very built up, but it was still suburbs.
43
COLONEL BARLOW: Toward the taps.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, Navaronne; towards the taps. What did you do

during the revolution itself, the week from like February 9th to the 16th?
Where did you . . . ? Lets talk about the day the revolution started? We
were at work as I recall.
COLONEL BARLOW: It seems to me, we were at work.

INTERVIEWER: Your office called and said, Go home.
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah, I did.
INTERVIEWER: When the JAG office called, what did you do that day?
COLONEL BARLOW: That day? I think this is right. This is the final day
of work at the office, right?
INTERVIEWER: Yes, sir.

COLONEL BARLOW: So I said, Lets close up shop and get out of here.
And, all of a sudden my comptroller came running up to me and said, No,
we cant get out of here. I said, What do you mean, we cant get out of
here?
INTERVIEWER: That was Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Willis.

COLONEL BARLOW: Yes. He said, Sir, Ive got two and a half million
dollars in here. What will I do with it? And I said, Burn it. He said, I
44

cant do that without higher authoritys permission. I said, Im giving you
permission. He said, You cant do that.
INTERVIEWER: Typical bureaucrat.

COLONEL BARLOW: So, I said, Okay, Ill call. So, I got on the phone
and called the USAEUR Comptroller and said, Comptrollers office, we
need to burn some money here. The guy at the other end said, I cant
give you permission. You need a General officer to tell you that. With
that they got the General on the phone and he said, Go ahead and burn
it; as long as you keep track of it. So, we got a big barrel and dumped
two and a half million dollars into it. And, I must say we thought a great
deal about splitting it up and taking it. I remember the movie Treasure of
Sierra Madre where everybody killed everybody. So, we burned it. And,
with that brought down the American flag and closed up shop.
INTERVIEWER: All of this was American currency?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah, this was the pay for our people.
INTERVIEWER: And did we also burn the Iranian currency?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah. We burned everything.
INTERVIEWER: And 201 files and finance records were left there. And,
the files in your office were left there?
What about the files at the team
club? We were having special two hundred or five hundred mailing

programs. I think the team club was filled with boxes, right? And they
were all left there too, because we couldnt get to the APO [Army Post
Office] in front of the commissary. You said you struck the flag, did you
take it with you or did you burn the flag?
45
COLONEL BARLOW: We burned that too. We burned it with proper

ceremony, according to regulations.
INTERVIEWER: And then six or eight of you signed the certificate that
certified you (Laughter) burned it (the money) up. I remember that they . .
. When I got back they were eager to give me a copy of the affidavit. So
much money had been burned; because nobody was happy about it yet.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, whats interesting, I remember when I went
back up there, after it (the U.S. Embassy Compound) had been taken
over, and went in, the first thing one of the leaders of the revolution did
was come up to me with a fistful of twenty dollar burned bills, saying,
What did you do this for? I said, You know what I did it for. So you
wouldnt get it.
INTERVIEWER: This visit must have been shortly after the revolution;
Yeah before things got more organized by the committees. Because later
I remember we had a terrible time trying to get into the compound. This
was probably within a matter of days yet. As I recall, the only people who
ever got back on the compound were Embassy staff and I. And, that was
much later. This was like June. We got to go down and see the finance
building which, at that time, was empty. The library was gone; half of the
library was still there, but the file cabinets were gone, everything else was
gone. Your office had been emptied. Had your office been trashed during
this early visit within the week of the revolution?
COLONEL BARLOW: I didnt notice any trashing.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Staff, but no trashing.
46

COLONEL BARLOW: In fact, I had a rifle in there. The guy stepped out
of the office for a minute and I put it up above in the light fixtures so I
would have it. It was my hunting rifle.
INTERVIEWER: Is it still there?

COLONEL BARLOW: I hope. If it is, someday Ill go back.
INTERVIEWER: I wouldnt bet on it The Embassy was taken for the first
time about the 14th of February. About a week or so into the revolution,
where were you staying?
COLONEL BARLOW: I think I was in the Novine Hotel at that time.
INTERVIEWER: Which was the transit hotel.

INTERVIEWER: You had given up your position house?

COLONEL BARLOW: I think it had already been taken. Hadnt it? It
seems to me.
INTERVIEWER: Dont know.
COLONEL BARLOW: I think it had been.
INTERVIEWER: So, you abandoned your house and moved on.
47

INTERVIEWER: Of course your house was well known as being
American housing, because the guards and things of that sort.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. The guards ran away. My dog ran out into
the street. You know how they let dogs . . .
INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Do you . . . Were there other General officers

with you at that hotel?
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
COLONEL BARLOW: Now I may be off as far as timing is concerned. It

seems to me it was that. By the same token, when the Embassy got
overrun I was instrumental in getting it back open.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Thats what I was going to ask. Were you
involved in that?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yes, I was. In fact, I had an interpreter with me

and went down to the gate and talked to the revolutionaries who overran
it.
INTERVIEWER: The Daneshjouyan-e-Pishgam Avant-garde Students.
COLONEL BARLOW: Yes. And we got them to open up. I got to know,
you mentioned the name, Marshak. Yeah. And he is the guy who said,
Okay we are going to release it (the Embassy).
48

INTERVIEWER: He remained in position, at least until I left, as the toll
taker at the gate and security.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. Exactly.
INTERVIEWER: Of course he was not there on May Day when everybody

came over the fence and they tore down the flag, but the hostages, well,
or, Im talking about just when they, in May when they took down the flag.
Okay. That was when you and I were guards. Then, at some point, I think
you moved to the Tehran Hilton and helped to evacuate the military
members; including shaking my hand good-bye and putting me on an
airplane. Any recall of the activities at the Hilton, other than that they were
chaotic and we didnt control what was going on too much?
COLONEL BARLOW: No, I dont. It was chaos.
INTERVIEWER: Do you recall? I flew to Frankfurt on a 747 in first-class;

just luck of the draw. The only first-class with me were about 25 Israeli
diplomats. Did you have anything to do with getting them processed, do
you recall?
COLONEL BARLOW: I dont recall. I did a heck of a lot of getting people
out. There was so much going on that I dont recall. I did get involved . . .
Trying to think. It was at the same time Ross Perot was? Yes I got
involved with them quite heavily and the connection . . .
INTERVIEWER: There with whom? Kathy Gallagher?
49

INTERVIEWER: Kathy Gallagher was Colonel Barlows Executive
Secretary. Her husband was one of the senior persons in Ross Perots
firm Electronic Data Systems [EDS] in Iran. He and four of these EDS
people were captured and Ross Perot hired some retired Army Special
Forces guys to come rescue them. That is chronicled in a book, the two of
us dont remember the name of it as we sit here, I think, On Wings of
Eagles.1 Going back, what was your interaction with Lieutenant General
Hysen. He, I believe, was from the Pentagon. He was the Director of
DSA [Director of Strategic Assistance].
COLONEL BARLOW: It is now Agency.
INTERVIEWER: Agency. And he was the guru of foreign military sales, I

guess. And he was in Tehran to try and shore up the Shahs reign. I
know that was operating out of your office. Were you merely a caretaker?
COLONEL BARLOW: Caretaker? Yes.
INTERVIEWER: You were not involved in the meetings that he was

having?
COLONEL BARLOW: I went to a couple. But, it was much beyond me.

He asked my thoughts on certain things. But, that was as far as it went.
INTERVIEWER: The reason I knew he was there was that I had come
across the street to see you about some matter and your office door was
closed. So, I, as it was common, perched on Kathys desk. Kathy
explained, as I recall, who was mentioned in the book On the Wings of
Eagles. And this guy comes out of your office and says, I dont know who
This book was turned into a 1986 TV miniseries starring Burt Lancaster. It chronicled the story
of the EDS employees and their escape from Iran during the 1979-1981 Hostage Crisis.
50

in the hell you are, but she needs to type my letter and I would guess I
outrank you. I said, Yes, sir, and left. About ten minutes later you
called. You said, Well, I could now say that I had my ass chewed by a
three-star general. And you told me who it was and I said, Oh, thats
nice. That was probably the last time I saw Kathy Gallagher; because I
think within a day or two we had a revolution. So you actually spent the
revolution, itself; that week or four or five days, at the Navine Hotel.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, I got picked up too, one time during the day.
INTERVIEWER: As in arrested?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yes. And, Im just trying to think of the first time.
The first time I had heard that they werent arresting school teachers,
things like that, through the grapevine. They arrested me saying, Youre
Colonel Barlow, arent you. I said, No, Im a school teacher. And they
took me into this place in Evin, that prison that was nearly a . . . I was in
there and I noticed that they were taking people down, mostly the Shahs
guys, and shooting them out in the alleyway. Then, I thought, So, they
finally got to me. And, I saw that prior to this they had taken them into a
room across the hall and then took them down and shot them. So, I said,
Why are you doing this to me, Im a school teacher. And they took me
into the room. I went into the room and here behind there was this
bearded guy. He stood up and he said, Colonel Barlow. And I said, oh,
oh. He said, I know you. Youre not a bad guy. Youre not a teacher
either.
INTERVIEWER: Who was it?

COLONEL BARLOW: Mossava. And he said, You can go.
51

INTERVIEWER: Who is this?
COLONEL BARLOW: The guy who was at the gate at the Embassy.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
COLONEL BARLOW: We may have two different people, because this

guy is a huge guy; huge, right, but relatively young. Well, he was younger
than I was. But, he said he knew me you see. I thought, Ive had it,
when he said, Colonel Barlow.
INTERVIEWER: So, he was perhaps higher up in the power structure

than we thought.
COLONEL BARLOW: I think so.
INTERVIEWER: I thought he just had a local COMINTERN [Communist

International]. But, the fact that he was at, you know this may be of true
academic importance of how the COMINTERNs were organized. I
thought he was localized and that was at the Embassy for his own
kickback purposes.
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah. Except, he was there at least, a long time

before this happened to me.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
COLONEL BARLOW: So maybe he got promoted in the system

somehow.
52

INTERVIEWER: Right. Thats what Im saying that there was. We knew
that there were separate committees in parts of Tehran.

INTERVIEWER: . . . and things of that sort. Im not sure anybodys ever .
. . Ive never seen anything in the readings Ive done.
COLONEL BARLOW: I knew there was a geographical area for each of

these committees.
INTERVIEWER: Right, agreed.
COLONEL BARLOW: And I got picked up in a bunch of them. I talked my

way out of it.
INTERVIEWER: I had the same experience, but . . .

COLONEL BARLOW: I didnt know that.
INTERVIEWER: The fact that he was also at the prison shows that he
had some stroke or influence some place other than at the Embassy.
When the last plane left from the airport and you were down to ten DOD
[Department of Defense] members or so, I think Larry Loward, who had
been your XO [Executive Officer], was still with you. What did you think?
COLONEL BARLOW: What am I doing here? Thats what I thought.
How did I get in here and how am I going to get out. I guess I was there
about a week. I ended up talking to you on the phone and you convinced
me I should volunteer to return and things of that sort that Ive chronicled.
53

INTERVIEWER: How did you go from sending everybody else home to
having a mission to terminate the contract and a mission to recover
government property? How did that come about?
COLONEL BARLOW: That came out of this meeting of the new

government people. Before the revolution, there was an agreement that
this is what needs to happen. And so, thats how we worked. But, there
was an understanding that we had to do that.
INTERVIEWER: After the revolution, the commissary compound was

gone; the health district; AMCC; were all gone, and things of that sort. All
of the contractors were out there with contracts. All had to be cleaned up.
Then you moved into the Embassy compound the only remaining real
estate the U.S. government had. The office was gone too, I would guess.
And then, slowly over time, we came up with the structure to go do what
had to be done in the missions that we assumed over time.
COLONEL BARLOW: We should have done this back in 1970 or 1980.

(Laughter)
INTERVIEWER: Post-revolution, we just talked about the duties of the

mission. And, that was to recover government property, terminate the
contracts, and pay off the employees. Under the Iranian law, we had
some obligations to pay severance pay, even for subcontractors. I
remember youre running around with cash, getting receipts from
individuals. As I was trying to deal with contractors, you were speaking
Farsi and dealing with employees. I remember one day when you came
and you were concerned because you were about $8,000 short and then
realized about four hours later you found a bunch of receipts in a coat
pocket. You came back, the happiest Colonel Id ever seen. It was
54

because you thought you were going to have to write a check for $8,000
there. And we were struggling with exactly what color of money
INTERVIEWER: And who we might report it to. And, who would have to
investigate it. What were your living arrangements? I guess at some
point you started working at the Embassy and living at the Hilton.
INTERVIEWER: You still had your white Cadillac. You had your Cadillac,
you were trying to sell.
INTERVIEWER: Was it white?
COLONEL BARLOW: It was. Got it sold prior to departure; minimum

amount.
INTERVIEWER: It will probably end up in my favor, but American cars

held their value real well because they came in duty free and we were
allowed to sell them for not more than [the] acquisition price. Many of the
Americans had figured out that you could also charge a . . . You could sell
packages, including the floor mats, for $500; things of that sort.
COLONEL BARLOW: I didnt learn that.
INTERVIEWER: I didnt have a car. Besides, the statute of limitations
had passed. Some people made good money when they left by selling
55

their cars and household goods. And you left in June of 1979. And you
received a Legion of Merit for your command tenure, or for your postrevolution actions. Do you recall what the duration of the award was?
COLONEL BARLOW: I do not. I think it was just for command. The

Humanitarian Service Medal was a surprise. That was very
complimentary.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. What were the key mistakes made by the

government? The key mistakes made by the U.S. Government in
Tehran?
COLONEL BARLOW: I think, not getting the people out sooner was one.
INTERVIEWER: That would be on the operational or tactical level. Do

you think there were any mistakes on the strategic level? With twenty
years of perspective, as the former director of SSI, where did American
foreign policy go amuck?
COLONEL BARLOW: I cant say. I think that we didnt listen to what was
occurring in the country and I think that intelligence was not as good as it
could have been. As soon as the Shah left we should have started putting
things together; knowing where things were going. I think that the visit of
Jimmy Carter in the summer of the year before then could have been,
done differently. He could have made certain promises, because there
were signs which ____ could have done.
INTERVIEWER: The conflict between Carters human rights policy and
the Shahs autocratic reign. There was a conflict there that we didnt
handle right. And then from the perspective of the commander of the
56

support activity not getting the dependents out quickly. And, that comes
...
COLONEL BARLOW: I really fought to get that done. But, they felt that
. . . Their idea was that if we do this, then it is saying that everything is
gone.
INTERVIEWER: And thats why, initially, the dependents went TDY
[Temporary Duty], because they were all coming back at Christmas; at
one time. But, this is the infantry commander in your blood, trying to take
care of his troops.
COLONEL BARLOW: Get them out of there. Even at the loss of

diplomatic leverage. But, not only that, there was the substance we lost.
Youre allowed to send one CONEX container home. Can you imagine
that?2
INTERVIEWER: Yea. In my SRP, I talked about when I was at the

meeting of General officers. I dont believe you were there when they
decided on shipping priority. This was a great example of Joint
Operational planning in those days. The Admiral said his would be first.
And, Howard Stone said that Army would do just the opposite. He would
ship last. So, I laugh about that now. And, I probably should send it in to
the Readers Digest and make a hundred bucks. The Air Force said they
would do theirs at random. And there you have the three different
services approaches to taking care of the troops. The Army commander
always eats last in the mess hall and the Admiral has his own mess. And
the Air Force goes off into the sunset. I thought that was a great
A CONEX is a standard sized intermodal container for transcontinental and transoceanic

shipping and storage.
57

introduction to joint thinking. What did we do well in our Iranian
experience during this year long period?
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, I think we did well in evacuation of people.
INTERVIEWER: We had no loss of life.

COLONEL BARLOW: No. Except, that one guy; we still dont know if he
committed suicide.
INTERVIEWER: I thought that we definitely knew that he . . . How did

they term it; self-inflicted accidental death or something of that sort? That
may still be classified as nothing more than for privacy reasons, so called.
Well move on. Well talk about it over a martini.
COLONEL BARLOW: You havent seen a picture of it?
INTERVIEWER: Yes. No, I never saw a picture.
COLONEL BARLOW: I think I still have it.
INTERVIEWER: I have never seen the pictures. I just read the report.
And, tonight Ill tell you more about how it manifested itself later in the
court system; the mechanism, not [the] individual. This will keep scholars
busy for years trying to figure out what these two old gophers were talking
about. And there were all these people. A lot of us were running around
with handguns in briefcases and things of that sort. We could have had
an incident at any time.
COLONEL BARLOW: We would have been better off.
58

INTERVIEWER: Even after the revolution some of us were carrying
loaded weapons. It is funny. I had a loaded 45 once when I was arrested
and they never opened my briefcase. I had the handgun along with my
passport and my airport ticket and my cash. Then, I had my getaway bag
in my hand. You know, one of those leather Army briefcases paid for by
the Shah. The chief legal clerk made me sign a hand receipt for it.
COLONEL BARLOW: I didnt have a passport when I left.
INTERVIEWER: I had a black passport when I left. They had switched us

from red to black by the time I left.
COLONEL BARLOW: I didnt even show one.
INTERVIEWER: In retrospect, what lessons learned, with 20 years of

perspective, do you think there are from this?
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, in any country that has autocratic rule, have
an evacuation plan for all your people and really have a good one. I know
that. Get the dependents out early. Dont worry about how thats going to
impact the status of the mission. Allow them to ship more than what
youre given.
INTERVIEWER: Right. As I recall they didnt want dependents to leave

because that would show a weakening of U.S. resolve.
COLONEL BARLOW: But, the question is, Do you put your dependents
in jeopardy because of that?
INTERVIEWER: Right. And it is one thing to put the troops lives in
harms way, but dependents are a different issue.
59
[Tape 2, Side 2]
INTERVIEWER: . . . the vast majority of them.
COLONEL BARLOW: The vast majority.
INTERVIEWER: I think you ended up filing a claim with the Iranian claims
tribunal for what was in excess of $15,000. At the time the Army would
only pay for $15,000, which didnt go that far when you had probably in
your case twelve or fifteen thousand pounds of household goods. I did
not ship a T-2. But, you said you did get a T-2 container.3
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. But when you put a piano in it, there is not
much room for anything else.
INTERVIEWER: It might be more than a thousand pounds. And then we

had the shipments after the revolution of stuff we bought. Then, of course,
these contained everybodys copper and carpets; all commingled to be
sorted out.
COLONEL BARLOW: One interesting thing was my dog. Remember,

dogs were hated by Iranians. If you got saliva on your hands from a dog,
you wouldnt go to heaven. My dog disappeared when then overran my
home. I was in the Navine Hotel and they called me. Some people had
found the dog and said, come and get him. The dog lived with me in the
hotel till just before my departure
INTERVIEWER: I dont remember your dog in your room. I remember
being in your room and drinking. I remember being in the hallway and
An environmentally protected intermodal shipping container used to ship household goods over
transcontinental and transoceanic distances during permanent change of station (PCS) moves.
60

people shot at your windows. Oh, thats right. I remember trying to keep
the dog from barking because they knew if this dog was barking up there,
it is not an Iranian. I do remember the dog. I remember being sick from
almost everything we ate in the hotel except caviar and, what does caviar
come from? Sturgeon steak was the other thing. For some reason, it
must have been cooked by somebody who remembered to wash their
hands. Lets go to some personal things. What do you recall as the
funniest thing that happened to you during your command? Was there
anything, other than the life savers? I guess its funny in some ways? I
had . . . This is just kind of a personal interest at the end of the interview.
I guess the scariest would also be finding life savers in the shot gun. [It
was the] funniest; at least today.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, it was funny when the guy came up to me

with all the charred bills. Why did you do this? (Laughter)
INTERVIEWER: I remember being amused by the fact that you and I

found the safe in the JAG office. It was secret material and we had to
sneak it out, including some things about the Shah. Requests he made of
the command and things of that sort.
INTERVIEWER: We took a short break and we are back. Just for

housekeeping, I have Colonel Barlows speech dated 22 January 1980.
Im going to include that as part of his appendage to my paper and also
there will be enclosure three to this interview. I want to talk a bit more
about the mission after the revolution of what we call USSAI forward.
There was also a USSAI rear in Frankfurt. There was also one in the
Pentagon. I guess that was actually Armys MAAG Rear. General Stone
ended up as the commander of the Armys MAAG Rear. He was trying to
get everybody to good assignments and things of that sort. The people in
Germany were doing the same thing, trying to assist the dependents with
61

their TDY vouchers and reunite families and things of that sort.
Meanwhile, the forward element, under Colonel Barlow, we reported to
Gast as we had before the revolution. The forward element, I will outline
the structure and let Colonel Barlow comment. Downstairs in the building
you could always see through the main gate of the Embassy was what
I referred to as the command section, which was Colonel Barlow and
Colonel Loward who had been exiled. He sort of became the G-1 and I
guess the senior commission gopher. Supporting them was Cheryl, who
was American. She is still there. Sergeant First Class Frank Kubiak, who
was upstairs was in the comptrollers section. The procurement section,
operations and legal section were also upstairs. We mentioned that
Colonel Barlow was out trying to pay severance pay to people. He was
also trying to keep General Gast and his staff off my back as I did my job.
What else do you recall that you were trying to do? Loward was working
hard on living arrangements, which he was very successful at and Ill
mention that more later. But, what else were you trying to do?
COLONEL BARLOW: Wasnt this the period that we were still trying to
get back into the district?
INTERVIEWER: Access. We were working with the committee. We were

working with the Minister of Defense. We were working with the Chief
Prosecutor of the Revolutionary Courts and we were working with
Marshak at the front gate. We were working through diplomatic channels.
We were trying to get into the Gulf District. We were trying to get into the
hospital. We were trying to get into the commissary compound. Wind
everything down properly and close that round. And, we wrote a contract
to try to sell the commissary goods, which was a horrible sight; like what
happens when refrigeration is off for a month or so. We did get the mail
out. The biggest thing going on upstairs . . . Two things we were wrapping
up all of the contracts, which was a procurement function. I did that as a
62

contracting officer and we put notices in the paper. We did that in fairly
rigorous style. The ones that came forward, it was a little bit troublesome
because we didnt have copies of the contracts, because we never got
back into the Gulf District to the procurement office. The thing I was
brought over for was to settle the personal leases, because we had to
settle leases to get household goods. And you got involved. As time went
on, we got six lieutenants and assigned them to six translators for them to
actually follow the maps and go out and do that. As I recall, you also were
involved. Because you knew the city and you knew some of the landlords.
You had contacts with the committees and things of that sort as well. A
kind of additional duty as assigned was to help us find household goods. I
mentioned Loward was trying to enhance our living arrangements and
some of us were there PCS [Permanent Change of Station]. He managed
to get us hotel rooms and food as if we were there on TDY [Temporary
Duty]. I still dont . . . Im sure that you had a part in that. But, I dont
know how that was ever negotiated for us when we were PCS. That had
to take somebody somewhere making decisions in our favor. That was
because none of us had apartments.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. There was a lot of talking going on, as it did
during the entire revolution. We had the telephone and we talked to
Europe and we talked to London. I think, werent all of the Iranian assets
seized at that time in the States. So, we had additional funds to . . .
INTERVIEWER: . . . spend. We were charging them. Of course that was

an issue that became a . . . I dont know who first raised the issue. It
became a big issue with Gast. He sent to EUCOM to work it and that was
recouping overpayments of housing allowances and other benefits.
People received housing allowances for several months while they were in
a TDY status going to the new assignments. But, they werent paying their
leases. He thought there were so many dollars that we, as honest allies of
63

the Iranians whatever Iranians we might be talking about we owed
them that money and he sent me with a package to EUCOM to make sure
that the J-3, J-1 and comptroller knew that, so that they could essentially
audit service members accounts. And thats how we found Cheryl, your
secretary. She came in to get paid on her lease. As I recall, I dont know
if there was household goods involved in that or not. But, we were paying
landlords with government checks so we could get the household goods.
It was a crazy situation. But, we were negotiating private leases and the
termination of private leases so we could get the household goods for the
soldiers and sailors and airmen. Then we had a secretary upstairs we
found the same way. Maybe it was Barbara. I dont know. I just recall
that we hired another secretary the same way. They wandered in and we
said, Can you type? She said, Yes. And we said, Youre hired. Then
Colonel Holland was always out with Marshak, working the front gate
access for the rest of us. As the Army attach, he was keeping his job. I
write in some detail about the May Day parade when we sent everybody
home and you and I ended up as fire guards inside the Embassy. Do you
recall that at all?
COLONEL BARLOW: Ive forgotten totally.
INTERVIEWER: I recall, I guess, because I was so upset that they tore

down the flag and stomped on it. I also recall it because I found a letter I
sent my mother about it. Its in my SRP. But, just to go back. For once
we had intelligence that there was going to be a big parade. It was to be a
big parade that would come by the Embassy. We figured the big parade
would yell protests and we sent everybody home. The Marines, of course,
had the security mission. I guess it was actually the third level the way the
Embassy works. The first level was the local police; the second level
being local military; the third level being Marines; and the fourth level
being DOS [Department of State] security for the Ambassador. Of course,
64

where that leaves two soldiers that happen to be there by themselves . . ?
But, we were there by ourselves. I guess it would have been Embassy
security; Department of State Security. The Department of State Security
asked that some of us be fire guards because they were worried about fire
bombs being tossed in a window. Colonel Barlow volunteered from his
section. So, I volunteered from upstairs. We got buckets, 45s and
shotguns. We were allowed to shoot only if we were shot at, because the
Marines were the real security. The sad part is that demonstrators came
over the wall. We were not allowed to shoot. They tore down the flag
finally. The Chief of the Marines was, I believe, a Chief Gunnery Sergeant
or a Master Gunnery Sergeant, and he wanted to un-barricade the steel
doors and go out and put the flag back. He had to be physically
restrained. It always bothered me that we did not save the flag. We have
been talking about what we did wrong, lets speculate for a second. If he
had opened the doors and you and I had each put five rounds of buckshot
in the crowd . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: We wouldnt be here talking right now.
INTERVIEWER: There wouldnt have been any hostages taken in
November.
COLONEL BARLOW: Thats true. And we wouldnt have had [unclear].
INTERVIEWER: You dont think the Marine guards with M-16s on the roof
would have . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: They couldnt have done it. The masses . . .
There were too many people. And to have died as one of them coming in,
they would have gone right to heaven.
65

INTERVIEWER: They would become a martyr. And thats something that
we havent talked about today and it is not mentioned in my paper. The
thousands of people that were killed all became martyrs. It was very
interesting to me. They kept celebrating the anniversary of previous
things that happened. So every time something happened we had a
month-ago anniversary or annual anniversary. So once we had a few
events, then every day became a reason to celebrate or commemorate
another demonstration. So it was an exponential function of
demonstrations in the street. It became crazy after a while.
COLONEL BARLOW: And during the hottest part of all of that, there were
martyrs made every day.
INTERVIEWER: Thats what I mean. A month later, we commemorated
that fact. Colonel Barlow, you were just telling me about the winning . . .
You were telling me about winning the International Tennis Tournament
after the Shah left the country.
COLONEL BARLOW: Right. We had the International Tennis Federation

among all the Embassies and we played for the championship. This was
done annually. That was the last time the U.S. won. I was a member of
that International Tennis Tournament.
INTERVIEWER: And that was played on Armys MAAG community center
tennis courts. Was it always played there?
COLONEL BARLOW: No, it rotated. The country sponsoring it had to

arrange the location. Sometimes, it was on Iranian tennis courts.
INTERVIEWER: That brings to mind that we had a going away party.

When you . . . I guess that might have been your . . . It wasnt your
66

change of command, because your successor was there. Hes the one
that, in my paper buys the $200 Russian samovar. He specifically was not
invited. This was a Master Sergeant Stump and Sergeant First Class
Kubiak project. Colonel Miller and I got everybody a brass plate, a copper
plate with the map of Iran on it. Mine says something like, Chief Landlord
Appeaser, and I just looked at yours and it says, Commander USSI
Forward.
COLONEL BARLOW: Okay. You gave me a wonderful gift, a tennis

calendar, which I still have.
INTERVIEWER: I had forgotten the tennis part of that. I also remember

the night we went to dinner with . . . After we got done with all the
household goods, we went to dinner, didnt we, with the owner of the
movie company?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yeah, we did.
INTERVIEWER: His name was Oman. I had his business card for years.
But, he was British, I think I found it. Well stop the tape and go to dinner
and maybe well come back and talk some more.
COLONEL BARLOW: Okay. That sounds good.

INTERVIEWER: We have now had supper and were back. I would like
to take care of some housekeeping details here. We will end up having
five enclosures, one is chapter four from my draft SRP; next is Colonel
Barlows DD-214; next is the current form for speech and the speech
relating to Iran dated 22 January 1980; and next are his next two OERs
from his command time in Tehran. We havent located the third one yet.
67

Hopefully, we will. If we do Ill add it as enclosure six. Colonel Barlow, I
have three last questions for you. Tell me about Bunkers War.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, its young Cadet Barlow at West Point. I was
doing some work on my dads capture of General Yamashita in World War
II. He was the Tiger of Malaya. And I just happened to be browsing
through World War II in the Pacific Ocean, looking up this business, and I
came across a diary that measured about two inches across and about
three inches in length. I couldnt even read it, it was so tightly written. I
took it down to the librarian and they didnt even know theyd had it. It had
been donated right after World War II, to the library. So they said this
would be a wonderful thing to be written about. So, they blew this thing up
(enlarged it) and then had it available for people. Meanwhile, I forgot
about it and then went back to West Point to teach later on and came
across the diary again and said you know, Im going to take that diary and
write about it.
INTERVIEWER: So, what did you do with it?
COLONEL BARLOW: They gave me the sample copy that had been
blown up a hundred times. Over the next thirty years, thought Id write
about it. Thirty years later, 1972 on, I thought about writing about it. And
then, I just wrote it a couple years ago.
INTERVIEWER: What is it that you wrote?
COLONEL BARLOW: I took the diary of this man who brought the flag
down on Corregidor. He was General MacArthurs classmate at West
Point, class of 1903. And I traced it. He kept it under his shirt the entire
time, writing in it every day. It talks about life in a Japanese prison camp.
He finally dies of starvation, with General Wainwright holding his hand as
68

he dies. He never loses hope, but just dies in the prison camp General
Wainwright gave the diary to West Point. What I do is, I just write his
business and then divide it up into chapters. Between each chapter there
is an introduction describing the characters in the book and whats going
on actually in the war. I trade-off what hes thinking about to what is
reality.
INTERVIEWER: Whats the name of the book?
COLONEL BARLOW: Bunkers War.
INTERVIEWER: And who published it
COLONEL BARLOW: Presidio Press.
INTERVIEWER: Thank you for the autographed copy I got, what, three
years ago. Tell us about the novel youre writing.
COLONEL BARLOW: Well, Im writing a novel about us in Iran.
INTERVIEWER: Does it have a title yet?

COLONEL BARLOW: No title yet. But its got to be a novel because of
the people I talk about. If I used their real names somebody would
probably be executed. Perhaps it was the author. You know of Salmon
Rushdie?
INTERVIEWER: Yes. Back to Bunkers War. Who was your father? We
talked about your great uncle. We didnt talk about your father except that
he was in the military.
69

COLONEL BARLOW: My dad was Class 25 out of West Point. He
became the Chief of Staff of the 32nd Infantry Division, the Red Arrow
Division, all the way through its fighting in the Pacific; New Guinea all the
way up into the Philippines.
INTERVIEWER: And his full name?
COLONEL BARLOW: Ernest Andrew Barlow.
INTERVIEWER: Brigadier General?
COLONEL BARLOW: Yes, when he retired.

INTERVIEWER: Weve had a lovely evening including drinks at your
mother-in-laws home and then dinner out. During that time your motherin-law told me about your first date with your wife.
COLONEL BARLOW: Oh, yes. Earlier on, before I met my wife and as a
Lieutenant at Fort Benning in the Basic Course, I sang in my future wifes
mothers choir. She was the choir director.
INTERVIEWER: And she was married to an Army Colonel herself?
COLONEL BARLOW: Lieutenant Colonel.
INTERVIEWER: And his name?
COLONEL BARLOW: Serie Deloach. So, I left Benning after the

Airborne and Ranger Schools and the Basic Course and went up to Fort
Bragg for my first duty assignment. But, I had to come back TDY to
Benning. When I got there I remembered, Im going to be here a week,
70

why not date one of my choir directors daughters? She had three
daughters. So I went over and saw her and said, How about fixing me
up? She said, Well, one, the oldest is married, you cant date her. The
youngest is too young for you. So if you want a date with the other one,
the middle daughter, you have to go across the street and ask her
yourself.
INTERVIEWER: What was across the street?

COLONEL BARLOW: The Officers Club, she worked there. Some sort of
bookkeeper or something. So I asked her out. We went out and I fell in
love with her on the first date. In the rose garden at the Officers Club, I
picked her a rose and said, A rose by any other name would smell as
sweet. And, I asked her to marry me.
INTERVIEWER: On the first date? When did you get married?
COLONEL BARLOW: Three months later. Is that right? And, then we

went to Germany together on a troopship. That is quite a story in itself.
INTERVIEWER: For another night. That concludes the interview with

Colonel Barlow on March 12, 1999. This is the second cassette tape and
this is the second side of this tape.
[Tape 3, Side 1]
INTERVIEWER: She said that shes actually seen pictures of Azadi
Square and estimated that several thousand were killed there.4 I thought
that Azadi Square happened in September at the time of martial law.
Azadi Square is the largest public square in Tehran and the second largest in Iran. During the
1979 Iranian Revolution it was the site of many of demonstrations leading up to the events of 12
December. Most recently, the square was the site of mass opposition demonstrations against the
clerical government during the 2009-2010 Iranian election protests.
71
MRS. BARLOW: Azadi Square occurred and so did the theater that was .
..
INTERVIEWER: The Rex Theater.

MRS. BARLOW: Yes, the Rex Theater.5 They kept . . . They locked
everybody in. But our experience, the ones that Ive never been able to
overcome. If you like, Id like to share it. The more I talk about it . . .
Actually, it doesnt get any easier. It seems like it should. Someday it
should get better. Up until then, the children were in school. The
electricity was turned off every night at eight oclock and was not turned on
until the next morning. We knew not to open the refrigerators, because
everything would last longer if we kept them closed.
INTERVIEWER: Yep, you had to unplug them before the voltage surge
came back on.
MRS. BARLOW: We never did unplug them.
INTERVIEWER: I did that to avoid the voltage surge.
MRS. BARLOW: No, we never did that. Anyhow, one woman I knew,
whose car had been blown up in front of her house. Terrorism was very
much an active issue and was discussed in the familys homes. The men
did not know this. If they knew, they did not let it out. We got phone calls
about how our childrens school buses were going to be bombed. I mean,
Id get a phone call and this voice would say something about a school
On August 19, 1978 the Cinema Rex in Abadan, Iran was set ablaze, killing 470 persons. The
Shahs Government blamed Islamic militants for setting the fire, while the anti-government
protesters blamed the government security services.
72

bus being blown up. They were out in the streets. And, yeah, the upper
quality of people was up on the end. The people were coming to the lower
part of town. In the valley, we just went shopping.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Who were keeping the people from purchasing

the ballots?
MRS. BARLOW: So that was that night. We got the kids, brought them
and put them in bed. And that was when we sat up all night with a gun.
INTERVIEWER: With a shotgun loaded with Life Savers.
MRS. BARLOW: With Life Savers, yeah.
COLONEL BARLOW: Unknown to me.
INTERVIEWER: Unknown to you until the next morning, right?
MRS. BARLOW: But anyway, he had said, you know, if anything . . .

And, we kept thinking this isnt directed at us. And yet, because of the
terrorism that was directed at us, we felt very much in dander. Ill never
speak to you again. I got to the hospital and I went in and I didnt know. I
knew that my brain felt like it was going to explode over thinking about
what I had just heard. But later in the evening . . .
INTERVIEWER: Seeing pictures of the deaths at this one or at Azadi

Square?
COLONEL BARLOW: Azadi Square.
73

INTERVIEWER: At Azadi Square, okay. I think, I guess Kay with your
permission; Ill go ahead and see if the War College wont transcribe this,
because Keith has been here the whole time, nodding as you relate these
experiences. So, this is all relevant to the interview. Hes nodding now. It
has also been an interview of him, so I hope weve captured it. Azadi
Square happened on the 8th of September, so we had a lot of death
before then. Rex Theater happened in late summer, sometime before
September 4th. I didnt copy down the dates.
MRS. BARLOW: Well, the first time people took to the streets was
December 1st. That was the night . . .
INTERVIEWER: Well, Azadi Square though there was a hundred

thousand estimated out at Azadi Square, of which 5,000 were killed.
MRS. BARLOW: They were students, werent they?
INTERVIEWER: Im not sure you could get a hundred thousand students
...
COLONEL BARLOW: A hundred thousand? No.

MRS. BARLOW: I cant imagine. But I know that up until this night, when
this thing occurred, every evening after like ten or eleven the chanting
would begin. The whole city would just be chanting.
COLONEL BARLOW: This did make it inconvenient for people to go

outside.
INTERVIEWER: At one time I thought it was so there would be no

amplifiers at the mosque. But, they very quickly fixed that by using car
74

batteries and street lights. You still could drive. I guess it would be dark
inside the mosque. So, you would have to light candles inside. Some of
the mosques were very, very big, so you would have to use kerosene
lanterns. But, they had kerosene lanterns. We did. I still have extra
chimneys in my attic.
MRS. BARLOW: You know there was no way of having any idea of why
of any of it, because there was no communication whatsoever. I think
thats very important to know other than having heard it firsthand that this
was going on.
INTERVIEWER: And Kay you werent here. But, one of the questions
that, one of the topics the War College had me address to Keith was, what
he was privy to during this time as far as intelligence on what was going
on. His response basically was that he wasnt. I came back and asked
again. We were, in my prospective at least, mushrooms. Keith concurred
that as commander he was too. And, you know, . . .
MRS. BARLOW: Did anybody know?
INTERVIEWER: Well, somebody did. If the CIA or somebody knew, they

were not telling us. It would be fascinating to get the classified Intel
summaries that were due over to Carter every morning, to know what
terrorist activity, what demonstrations Carter knew about when he was
telling the Shah to continue with the reforms rather than crack down. You
know, whatever.
COLONEL BARLOW: When I was sending my messages to . . .

INTERVIEWER: To use as far as EUCOM, because you werent getting
any response any place else.
75
MRS. BARLOW: And every morning, after we would have these

experiences every night. After this particular night, then I dont know when
he would try to find out that way.
INTERVIEWER: You see, I was twenty-four blocks above Navaronne.

Navaronne went north to the palace and then it turned to the base of the
mountains and went west. I lived a couple of miles on west and I lived
twenty-four blocks up, because people would park at the house and walk
a block up and walk on to the halfway house. Thats how far up the hill I
was.
MRS. BARLOW: Oh, youre kidding. My Lord, you were all the way up to
the south of the mountain. You were completely gone from all of this.
INTERVIEWER: I could watch rectangular sections of the city go out,

sequentially, especially from the view on the roof. And it sloped. My
neighborhood sloped real steeply. I could see in the backyards, two or
three blocks down, because I was on the third floor. The firing that I heard
. . . They had the tremendous battle during the revolution over the
Navaronne police station, which was . . . I would have been 24 blocks
down and about four blocks over. That firing went on and on and on.
Apparently, the police were inside the building shooting at whoever was
outside of the building. It went on and on and on. My landlord was a
police major. His father-in-law was a major general. Thats why we had a
houseboy who was an NCO. The landlady had a driver who was an NCO,
because her father had extras. He survived the revolution. I dont know
how long he survived after that.
MRS. BARLOW: When I got up to the doctor and I went in, here is this
major sitting there, and he said, Well what can I do for you? And I said,
76

Im having a very hard time dealing with the war. He looked up at me,
incredulously, as if I had lost my mind. He had no idea what I was talking
about. He didnt know that wed been hearing all of these shenanigans.
So the next . . . So, he gave me valium, of course, and that night I gave it
to my child. I couldnt take it, because I didnt know who would have to
run and jump and hide. But the young one was pinging off the wall, so I
gave her a half of a valium and she crapped out on the floor of the den
and went sound asleep, because nobody had slept the night before. The
morning of the third day the kids didnt have school. The first of December
. . . Let me just back up. Mary Ann was a senior in high school. This was
her senior year in high school and she came home from school and said,
Well, there are only two of us left in my senior class. Now this was a
gigantic international school. The other one was an Iranian girl and she.
It was Mary Ann and this Iranian girl, and that was it. She had to leave her
locker, her books, everything in her locker and she never went back. She
never cleaned it out.
INTERVIEWER: The Armys command community center manned the
account, while the JAG office was approving . . . We were told to go home
about one oclock. We went home and we werent back there until mid
April. We did get back in there. I was about to say, well, did she get to be
valedictorian, because she was the only one left?
MRS. BARLOW: She graduated here in Kansas. Poor, little old thing, she
was the kid who wasnt there and we had extended over there so that she
would finish school; in order to finish her senior year, and then she had to
leave in the middle of her senior year. She did OK. She got out all right.
COLONEL BARLOW: What class are you in now?
INTERVIEWER: Probably about 62nd.
77

MRS. BARLOW: Im going to tell the rest of my story, because this part is
really freaky too. This one really was. Well, the creepiest was hearing all
those people die. Then this one was the second day. The kids were in
their pajamas, they couldnt get dressed. They were drugged and I was
too. We were kind of wandering around. It was in the afternoon. The
radio station was off. We didnt have any communication with anything.
So were very isolated. Keith is at work. They have torn up our entire
street. Dont ask me why. Im sure it was for some subversive reason.
But, there was no way you could get in and out of our little street, because
they had torn it all up. So were really pretty isolated and alone there, but
we have our guards who are guarding our house. These are Iranian
guards. And it is supposed to be the beginning of their religious holiday
time. So were supposed to be respectful of that. It was almost. Is
Ramadan the big one that starts in December?
INTERVIEWER: No, I think Ramadan starts. . .
MRS. BARLOW: Movaron. This was Movaron. Thank you. So anyway,

its late afternoon of the second day and the kids are sitting in the living
room and I decided I was going to make them as secure as I possibly
could, as a dutiful mother. So, Im frying chicken and Ive got the little tape
thing on and Im playing pretty music and singing and trying to give them a
sense of security, because we had just experienced some pretty traumatic
stuff. So, Im in the kitchen cooking and their sitting in the living room and,
all of a sudden, their hollering to me. They said, Momma, did you hear
that? I said, Did I hear what? They said, It sounded like gunshot.
And I went and stood in the doorway and I could hear all this pop, pop,
pop. I said, Oh, its fireworks. Its the beginning of their religious
holidays; fireworks. Then, all of a sudden, I heard brrruk! It was right
outside our house. So I grabbed the kids and I took them to an inside wall
78

and we all crouched down along this inside wall as all this shooting was
going on around our house. Finally, I said . . . I mean it went on and on,
and were sitting in here. Its right outside. Finally I said, This is
ridiculous. I got the telephone and brought the telephone and brought it
over to the thing and I called Keith. This man answered. I said, Could I
please speak to Colonel Barlow? He said, Maam, hes in a meeting
right now. I said, Oh, all right. Like a good Army wife, I got off the
telephone and went back to my corner. I sat in the corner with the kids.
We were listening to some more of this shooting. Then I said, Dah.
Then I went and called again and the man said, Maam, I said he is in a
meeting, is it important? And I said, Well, were not dead yet. I guess
its not important. So, then I thought, oh God, the way the place has been
torn up Im sure it has been torn up because were on an alley. It didnt
make sense the way the place had been dug up. I mean it was a
nonsensical dig-up of the area. So I called back and I said, Tell Colonel
Barlow that there is shooting around our house and he must not come
home the normal way that he comes home. Keith got the word that they
were shooting around the house. I said to the kids, Now watch, when he
gets here there will be no shooting. He will think its a figment of our
imagination. We have been sitting here in the corner. It will be business
as usual and he wont believe us. A little while later, here comes this
jeep. [It] comes up the back way, the backwards way. Its a one-way alley
and the jeep came backwards with Keith and about 16 Iranian soldiers,
with their guns. I said, He would do it that way. He would do it that say.
He said that he got the word that there was shooting around our house, so
he headed out with the driver. Our beloved Nersaltani said, Oh, I have to
go take care of my old mother and [he] hightailed it out the gate. So Keith
started out on foot to come to the house and as he got to the gate of Gulf
District, here came a bunch of the guards; the changing of the guards.
They said, Colonel Barlow, what are you . . .? And he said, Well, there
is trouble down around my house. Come, we will take you. So this
79

whole jeep full of soldiers came and brought Keith home. Of course, by
the time he got home, it was business as usual. You must be out of your
mind. That was the last time we got shot up around the house. That was
after the other. By then, I said, OK, we got to get the hell out of here.
INTERVIEWER: Where could you evacuate to?
MRS. BARLOW: Well, let me tell you how we got the hell out of there,
because you dont know. But, this is the story. This is the great truth. I
said, Keith, I dont care whose war this is, Im getting my kids out of here.
I dont need to be in this. He said, Kay, they wont evacuate. Bitch,
bitch. Mrs. Gast, the bitch without children. We had this coffee and all of
the wives are asking are we getting out? I said, I dont know. We have to
get out of here. And she said, This is not policy. Were not to go. Were
to stay. I thought, Weve got to get out of here. Keith comes in finally
and says, Kay, theyre not going to get you out. Well, in three days its
going to be Ramadan. Once that starts, for one month were going to be
stuck in our house and we cant get out. We have to get out before
Moharan. So I said, Honey, can I do what I can do to get us out of here?
He said, You can do anything you want. My brother-in-law is an
extremely powerful Democrat. My other brother-in-law was an extremely
powerful Republican. Called a connection in Washington and I said, Call
Fritz and call Joe. He knew both of them. And I said, Tell them to call
Strom and Fritz and let them know whats happening to us. He said, I
will. And they did and the planes flew at five oclock.
COLONEL BARLOW: Strom Thurmond.
INTERVIEWER: I understand, and Fritz Hollings.
80

MRS. BARLOW: And they flew to ____. Otherwise, guess what, those
children and I would have sat through that damned revolution.
INTERVIEWER: Where did you evacuate to first, to Germany?
MRS. BARLOW: The round robin. He put us on the final plane. This is
interesting; there were three planes in three days, one plane a day. He
got us on the last damned plane going out. Thank you, very much. Thank
you. I want to get all of my people out and you will be on the last plane.
He did this to teach us; or, for whatever reason. Anyway, because they
had all of this stuff going on, we went through Greece and then we went to
Germany. And then we flew into Dover. And as we were flying over the
U.S. on the ninth of December, coming into Dover, and were looking
down, were seeing all the Christmas. The Captain comes on the speaker
and he said, I just want you all to know that this means an awful lot to me
to have been part of getting you all safely out of Iran. Air traffic control,
zero, zero, there was no air traffic control in the towers and they had a fog
that you have never seen in Tehran. It settled in the day we left, a fog, a
fog, Ive never heard of a fog in Tehran. There was never a fog in Tehran
ever and that day there was a fog that was so thick you could not see
anything and they said that weve got to fly totally blind.
INTERVIEWER: Were you in a C-5?

MRS. BARLOW: Yeah. No. It wasnt a C-5. It was a 130; a C-130. Or, it
may have been a C-141; a tank thing. Yeah. It wasnt C-5. But anyway,
they told us saying that if we dont get out right now, were not going to be
able to go. We only had a flight three more hours and then the curfew
would be total for thirty days. I mean, were talking about getting under
the wire. So we got out. As we flew over, coming into Dover the pilot was
saying how heart-felt it has been to him. And he said, Two months ago,
81

today, I was flying another group of people out from Jonestown on this
plane. That was the kind of work he was doing.
INTERVIEWER: I was trying to think of the . . .
MRS. BARLOW: There were guards around our house. Then they upped
them to something like eighteen. And then they insisted on putting them
inside our backyard. We didnt have anything on our windows. So we
have eighteen (Iranian) soldiers in our yard, with guns; Iranians, please.
So, one day I went over and I opened the back gate. We had a little maid
and they had been agitating her, and I called the backyard guards over to
the gate. I got him to the back gate. Then I slammed the door and locked
them out. I wouldnt let them in. The majors and the colonels all came to
the house. They were all irate that the guards werent let back into the
yard. But, we didnt let them back in again. They were wrecking havoc on
it. I think it is interesting. We had been in Germany the year before, when
Carter came. You mean somebody acknowledged that there was
shooting going on?
COLONEL BARLOW: Three months.
INTERVIEWER: In December, January and February, and then they

stopped doing it on 23 February.
MRS. BARLOW: Thats when the Shah left.
INTERVIEWER: The Embassy, I think, was taken for the first time on the
14th of February. The 23rd would have been . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: Thats when we didnt get any sleep
82

MRS. BARLOW: I dont want it to. The memories. The memories.
COLONEL BARLOW: We did get four hours.
INTERVIEWER: About, look . . . This concludes the second side of Tape

3. Keith Barlow has been here the whole time as has his wife, Kay, and
your full name Kay is?
MRS. BARLOW: Josephine Kershaw Barlow.
INTERVIEWER: Thank you very much. Goodnight everybody.
REPLIER: Yeah, I got it now.
[Tape 3, Side 2]
INTERVIEWER: Up on the Caspian. The Shahs father came from Rost?
Right?
MRS. BARLOW: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And they were building these little
cabins for the families to go to. A friend and I were to go up for a couple
of days and Keith said well go and see what kind of job theyre doing and
stay up there a couple of days. So Nersaltani, the driver . . . .
INTERVIEWER: The West Point major I was talking about was the
engineer for the support activity. He was a West Point major; an engineer.
I went with him up to the Caspian. He had to go up and check on the
construction. [His name was] John Dodson.
MRS. BARLOW: Thats who you were talking about earlier?
INTERVIEWER: I said Hotson. Its Dodson. Im sorry, go ahead Kay.
83

MRS. BARLOW: Thats all right.
INTERVIEWER: Im not sure you remember him yet.
MRS. BARLOW: What was the name of the gal who was a soothsayer?
You know; Betty Shaley? Betty Shaley and I were going up to . . .
Anyway, she and I for a couple of days and theres Nersaltani, the driver,
whos driving us in that little white Cadillac. So, he took us up to the
Caspian to see one of these cottages. As we drove up to get up there . . .
Well, eventually we came to a rest stop. So, we pull into one of these
places. Then, hed go in and rally all of these people and they would have
to go out to this little outhouse kind of thing and clean it up real well.
Then, we would step out of the Cadillac in our blue jeans. They expected
the princess. But, we would come in. Well anyway, we got up there and
they were sort of built. None of the things had drains in them. Anyway,
we stayed up there for a couple of days. We went out, there was the
highest Omar Khayyam. We were going out on the evening. So, its no
fun having this Cadillac in the driveway, which is something so far from
anything we have ever known in our lives. So, Betty and I got all dolled
up. We both had on long dresses, had our little furs and all this and
Nersaltani was to take us to the highest Omar Khayyam for the evening.
We drove up to the front door and the car itself was so funny. I mean,
everybody assumed it was the Shahs family. We loved playing this role
of being so big. So, we drove up and Betty said, What will we do? I
said, Just follow me.
INTERVIEWER: This is the same lady who five minutes ago was talking
about cleaning up the transient motel.
84

MRS. BARLOW: Totally, with Nersaltani and the maid. The maid and I
cleaned the motel so I could live in this palace. Anyway, we go.
Nersaltani holds up and he is wonderful to help us. He jumps out of the
car and he comes around and he opens my side. Ive got this little box so
and I get out and I walk in the door. Of course, everyone looks at who this
is. And, I take my stole. I remember the movie. I throw it back behind me
and drag it on the floor. Then we go in. Betty follows. Shes doing the
same. She does quite well. Shes already had a couple of jobs; food jobs;
safe jobs. She looked pretty good. And, then we had, you know, a feast
prepared. And, these men come and they bought us drinks and then take
us in. We never gambled in our lives. We didnt know casinos from
[anything else]. They take us in and they show us how to do all of this
gambling and all this stuff. We go back afterwards and Nersaltani takes
us back to our military rest place where, I have to take a key to him. Hes
over in this place . . .
COLONEL BARLOW: He has a place to stay.

MRS. BARLOW: Yeah, hes got his little place to stay and I have to go
and make a key and take it over to Nersaltani because he was just kind of
. . . He was over in his little place. You know; to take care of us. So, I
take care of the driver who is taking care of me. But I loved that memory.
Every time the car would stop hed jump out in his suit to go and prepare a
place for us. And, wed get out in our jeans. I knew he thought we were
princesses [voice fades again]
INTERVIEWER: Are those restrooms alongside the road?
MRS. BARLOW: They really were not restrooms. They were just kind of
holes in the ground.
85

INTERVIEWER: Oh God. Man they were bad though.
MRS. BARLOW: The other thing I did was: I took horseback riding
lessons. Well, I looked so good in my jodhpurs. So, what you do over
there is . . . So, I solved part of the image problem. On a certain morning,
he (the riding instructor) called me the little mother. Little mother, you
take horse riding today? And I said, Oh yes, I would take horse riding
today. So, today he drives up, he cleans up the car and I come out in my
jodhpurs. We lived in a trailer out in camp, you know. And, I went out to
the palace stables.
INTERVIEWER: Who wore the white miniskirts and go-go boots, the
Chief of Staffs wife?
MRS. BARLOW: That was the latest one. Yes, we had no social
interaction with them. They were . . . They looked like they came out from
under a rock, both of them. They were unbelievable. When they arrived,
they arrived at the end, right before everything started deteriorating.
INTERVIEWER: Also, he hadnt been there very long when she was
found dead?
MRS BARLOW: No, no. But, they were unbelievable. They were
phenomenal. Well, theyd been shipped off from somewhere. Obviously
somebody didnt want them around.
COLONEL BARLOW: Exactly, we were the dead end.
INTERVIEWER: Dodson, Dodson. You know; it comes back now. As I

said, there were suburbs. He knew absolutely everything about
everything. So, wed sit and laugh at him and Charlie. So, they would try
86

and top each other about mundane facts. They could tell you how much
excrement came out of an elephant at the Tehran zoo. If they had an
elephant, they would know.
MRS. BARLOW: I will tell you. You know how modest the women were
and how they were in their Chadors? I apologize. I have gotten you all
confused because you introduced Charlie. They were in that same realm.
Anyway, there was a . . .
INTERVIEWER: Charlies out now . . .
MRS. BARLOW: There was a wife. We . . . I think I picked her up for

something. But, it wasnt with Nersaltani, but somebody else. She had
her baby. She was nursing her baby in her arms. This was right after
shed gotten in contrary to the Generals wife. She was a very modern
woman. You know, this was the new generation. Were all freewheeling
and all that. It was extremely embarrassing.
INTERVIEWER: The hotel where Larry and I were staying at that time.
One weekend we went to the swimming pool and we see this, you know,
the penguins go into the change room; the ladies in their Chadors. They
came out wearing bikinis, because they are inside. The military transient
hotel is not ice cream if its made into a private club. I mean, if you are
staying at the hotel you could use the pool there next to it. And we were
going to use it. This was absolutely amazing. So, there in French bikinis
and, of course, they speak no English and we speak no Farsi. It was like
watching a movie in Libyan. It was just a bizarre thing.
MRS. BARLOW: You know youd walk down the street and you would
see them all enshrouded in their Chadors. Then, I remember this one
woman. She got a bramble caught in the end, at the bottom of it, and it
87

kind of pulled open a little bit. She has on a slip. She doesnt have on
clothes underneath. Shes got on just regular things. It was just normal.
The chador is just something that . . .
INTERVIEWER: A little upholding proverb. You know, she had blonde

hair and got into an argument with a guy. The police came to put her back
in her vehicle. They took her back up two blocks because she was not
dressed appropriately
MRS. BARLOW: Thats tough. Is she there now?
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I didnt hear from her this year. So I think . . . You
know; I assume they are still there. I found this one. Kay, this has been
an appendage called antidotes. But, here is the one about one landlady. I
had forgotten that custom where the people who live on the roof get to
sleep on the roof. But, they also had to shovel it?
MRS. BARLOW: Bahf (snow). That was what they came and called
around to men who came to shovel off your roof.
INTERVIEWER: Thats right. It happened once. The guy came home
and the landlord said that he had shoveled the roof and I said, Thank
you. I think he was looking for money.
MRS. BARLOW: Ill tell you something. The other night, it was so
precious. Two nights ago there was a special on TV about the Bee Gees.
They were popular during the time we were in Iran. I sat there listening
and I will tell you the pizza parlor on Calconacavon came back as I
watched the Bee Gees. I mean, I think they take you to a place. I said to
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Keith, he was at choir practice, he came home, and I said, Amazing, but
Im listening.
INTERVIEWER: I got the tape for Debby and Ill replay it in the car. The
thing that both of you said and the thing that shes never captured is that
if, both of you that I did, so please chime in. It was such a live, vibrant.
You both said it better than that. It is something that every day, well you
think of it too, because, you know, were sitting here, there are twenty or
thirty Persian carpets on the floor. We have just several here and there
and we have more in the attic. I didnt buy the ones I should have. But,
you know, we have a couple of big firlons and ...
MRS. BARLOW: My pair was . . .
INTERVIEWER: Very real or something.
MRS. BARLOW: Well, it was a challenge. It was such a total challenge,

because it was such a different world. It took me about four months there
to be able to close my mouth, because I was absolutely traumatized. We
got there and we had to go look for our place to live. We had three
children and a dog. And we go to look for a place to live. Todd Graham,
he was probably gone before you got there, they were our sponsors. He
sent us his car to take us, Keith and me, to look for a place to live. So,
Keith and I go out to his car and here is this driver who looks like Bevi
Zapata. And, here is his gunner in the right-hand seat. And here is this
man that looked like another Zapata, with a sawed-off submachine gun.
And were going house hunting.
INTERVIEWER: And this had been the good times. This is before things
got ____
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MRS. BARLOW: Oh, yeah. This was two years before, 1977.
INTERVIEWER: This is when I was going to have the assignment of my

life.
MRS. BARLOW: So, we go out to look. The way you find your house is,
you drive around. If it looks like there arent any curtains on the windows
over the wall, you climb up the wall, you scale the wall, which is about
eight feet high and then you look over there. Then you ring a buzzer,
because there is always somebody in every house. And thats the only
way you can find a place to live. There is no realtor.
INTERVIEWER: I went to a realtor. I had a realtor. God knows how

much the realtor got. But, Im sure the realtor got bashish from every bay
and valve.
MRS. BARLOW: Gosh, we didnt have a realtor.
INTERVIEWER: Well, the JAG office maintained a list. So I went to this

one lady who had . . . No, it was a man. Im sure it was a man; who had a
real estate agent. And I didnt have to pay him anything. He got paid by
the owner.
MRS. BARLOW: We didnt have anything like that. But, every time the
car would stop, Joe, the gunner, would jump out and he kind of slewed his
gun all around to look in the whole area to see whether or not there was
any . . . This is the first week we were there. That very same week, three
Americans were killed. They were shot in their little Volkswagen going to
work. They said they were mail couriers. But, it turned out that they were
really agents (CIA). They got it the week we got there. Another thing that
occurred [occurred to me] that was very [interesting was] our kids; they
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had a ball. Because we were so ignorant, we didnt know what was safe.
The kids just had the run of the school and they all learned how to
describe the juke box. Theyd go out and stand on the street, put their
hands up and this little car would stop and the driver would say, Get in;
two girls and a boy. And theyd pay a quarter to ride a couple miles. They
would be in with eight people. But, nothing ever happened to them. They
always went to wherever they needed to go and they learned their way
around. You realize we had two choices. We could cloister them or, we
could give them their freedom. So, we just chanced it. Betsy, our
youngest, who was eleven, had one experience where a man exposed
himself to her. She was slightly traumatized by that, but she got over it.
COLONEL BARLOW: That isnt limited to Iran.
INTERVIEWER: No, but think about having your eleven year old running
around Chicago, taking cabs. We wouldnt think of it. But you know, we
did it and you were not unreasonable parents because other families did it
too.
MRS. BARLOW: They all did it. Everybody did that. That was like I told
you about Mary Ann Clifford. When these kids came by on this thing and
the guy felt her and she just reached over grabbed him and jerked him
right off the motorcycle. The whole motorcycle fell over and he fell. Her
mother said, Great God Almighty, you could have created an international
incident. She said, I just didnt like having that guy feeling me up. I
mean, kids learned how to take stock over there.
INTERVIEWER: The guy that got pulled off said, Well, it didnt work on
that one. The troublesome thing is that you have to. There were so
many traffic accidents. I saw two different people killed right there in front
of the JAG office. That was the traffic was terrible the night coming
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back from that party, when the car was going the wrong way with no
headlights on. The Cadillac wouldnt have helped us that night, because
this car was screaming down the hill at us.
COLONEL BARLOW: What happened? You obviously didnt get killed.
INTERVIEWER: We swerved and we didnt get killed.
COLONEL BARLOW: He probably got killed later on.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember the back roads to the cargo site at the
airport. Thats were Stump did most of his good work. There were
potholes that were three feet deep. Honest to God. I couldnt believe it
until went out there and, you know, there was a dead beak on the side, the
frame was bent, the axle was bent. So, you see that hole? I hit it at 40
miles an hour.
MRS. BARLOW: Ill tell you another phenomenal thing. Our son, who
was a senior in high school, was a wrestler. We moved there in his senior
year. Unfortunately, just because of the way the Army did it, he ended up
wrestling against the Iranian Olympics team and he was the only one who
did. It was the International School. But, it was . . . They had the
graduation on the Embassy grounds.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, I didnt know that.
MRS. BARLOW: Yes, we got a film of the graduation ceremony and Andy
getting his diploma at the Embassy. And then there was Mary Ann, who
was two years behind, who was a junior in high school. She was a runner.
Her running team ran a marathon around the pyramids in Egypt. Then
Betsy, our youngest, who was eleven, discovered skiing. I would take her
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on a four-day run, down to a Gulf district where there was a bus. Eleven
years old, before daylight, and I would drop her off there. Id pray to Allah
and she would go up to the skiing and she would ski all day. All the kids
would be there. Anyway, thats what our kids did.
INTERVIEWER: When I got there they said, if you want skis you can go
sign for them. Id skied some in New England, so I wandered down and
they said, What length do you want, sir? I signed for new skis and new
bindings and never got to ski in Iran, as much as I like to ski now. The,
there was the gasoline shortage. You know, all the turmoil and then the
gasoline shortage and I only knew one person that got to go while I was
there. He was an air force pilot. I dont know what he was doing. His
name was Baldy. I knew his brother. He was in Special Forces with me.
I knew the brother, so we had the guy over and we went hiking on a
Sunday. He and another guy; he must have been in the Air Force Section
I guess. He must have been a staff guy of some sort. They saved their
gas and then bought extra gas and they took off and went skiing.
Apparently the lifts were open. There was nobody up there because of
the gas shortage.
MRS. BARLOW: I wasnt a skier but the runs were 45 minutes long. How
can you ski 45 minutes down? They were so high and they were so wild.
Thats where they all learned how to ski. Isnt that something? We just
kind of went off. Keith came in one day and said, Well, were getting
exiled, you want to go to Iran? I said, Where in the hell is Iran? We got
out the globe and looked and it was on the opposite side of the world. I
said, Why not. We were in Kansas.
INTERVIEWER: My story was that, after I got orders on home, and I with
my, in Des Moines, Iowa, they have West Des Moines Antique District.
My mother and I are antiquating. Mothers very proud of her son with the
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Green Beret. Mother said when hes finished in the green berets and now
hes going to Iran. One lady in the antique shop asked, Well, are those
people black or white over there? I said, Jeez, I think actually theyre
kind of brown; if you had to choose a color. I got to thinking, Ive read all
this welcome to Iran stuff, and nowhere has it said the color [of the
people]. You know, it was like, well, theyre not blonde, theyre not
Swedish and theyre not African. So, it kind of leaves you with a tanned
middle. It was so funny, you know. The first encounter, like Kansas. I
mean its anomalous; it aint black, it aint white.
MRS.BARLOW: You know what, I thought they were so beautiful, the

men, the children. They were so trim. You never saw any fat men.
INTERVIEWER: In the bazaar, there were some chubby men. I dont
think . . .
MRS. BARLOW: They were middle-aged. They werent young.
INTERVIEWER: I dont think I ever saw a fat woman. And they all had
belts that went around one and a half times. Remember that? I never
understood that. If they have a thirty-inch waist, they have a fifty-inch belt.
Why? I dont know. And they never had a watch band that fit either.
MRS. BARLOW: I have another memory. I cant remember the name of
the city right to the south. Was that Isfahan? We went down there and
saw the Koshki.
INTERVIEWER: Whats the Koshki?
MRS. BARLOW: The Koshki is the tribe. Thats the tribal people. Thats
the nomad. I saw the Koshki and where the Koshki were living. They look
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just like gypsies that we can remember from stories. They had beautiful
skirts that went way out and lots of underskirts. They looked phenomenal
and they had gold all the way up their arms. [It seemed like] they carried
their bank on their arms - solid gold. Uh, huh, oh no, it was seven [that]
meant you were loved. Count, one two, Ill get there someday.
INTERVIEWER: You sold them all Kay; come on.
MRS. BARLOW: Right. I think that was the last tribe that was truly tribal,
at least in our area. Im sure over in Tuber East and all those other areas.
But, we have a number of the Koshki rugs, because that was such a
unique pattern. And then there were the women. But, the women . . . I
mean, they were dressed exotically. There were no Chadors. Who knows
what they worshipped. They probably were primitive worshippers. They
said that the more crinolines they wore, the more loved they were.
INTERVIEWER: No, just tell about the Persian experience. Tell all about
the Jews. Id forgotten about the Jews and the peoples relationship with
them. Okay, what did you say?
MRS. BARLOW: I said it is so unreal that there is this understanding with

anyone.
INTERVIEWER: Look that up; where the Shahs probably from. That is
why Im writing this paper. I hope youll get a kick out of it. Ill send it to
you when its done and the appendix. One is entitled Anecdotes. This is
the graduate paper that has an appendix called Anecdotes. I thought
that they would shred this thing and tear it apart and theyre not. So, I
guess they are cutting me a lot slack. We would take her out of the house
and take her down to the Academy. She and a Pakistan guy were the last
English teachers. They were trying to teach the cadets English. She said,
95

you know once upon a time she felt perfectly safe. At times she wished
she didnt have the guards in the car, because she thought that they
attracted more attention than any good they might do.
[Tape 4, Side 1]
INTERVIEWER: Keith Barlow is with the Army War College. His topic
Political and Economic Development without Cultural Basis: The Story of
Iran, was recorded for the Center for Constructive Alternatives at Hillsdale
College, Hillsdale, Michigan, Tuesday, November 13, 1984.
COLONEL BARLOW: I was somewhat hesitant to come here to speak

tonight. After all of these disasters that have occurred to me and my
family, I feel like the individual who walks around with a little black cloud
floating over his head. Hopefully, we wont have a disaster. Those are
the first two lines of one of the great lyric mystical poems of Iranian
literature. Its the story of a young woman, who, in about the twelfth
century, goes down to her pool in the morning to take a bath. In those
days, pools were clay-lined and surrounded by rose bushes, if you will,
which is the national flower of Iran. Iran is where flowers such as roses
originated. She gets into the water and reaches out for her bar of
ambergris and accidentally grabs a handful of clay and she puts it to her
face. In so doing is astonished when she finds that the clay smells just
like roses. Then a dialogue ensues between her and the roses and she
says, Why is it two things smell alike? They respond to her and say,
You know when two things live together for a very long time they become
like one another. And so, the American beauty Rose lived in Iranian
clay for a very, very long time; until a gardener by the name of Khomeini
came along and ripped that Rose out by the roots. And so tonight, what
Id like to do is talk about the political and economic development in Iran
and how it really was dichotomous with the basic cultural values of that
country. The poet happened to be the mystic, the great mystic artist by
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the name of Saud. Ill talk a little bit about the strategic milieu and then
well talk about the politics of the country and the personality of the Shah
and how he really stomped on the cultural values of the country, or
probably misinterpreted them. Well talk something about foreign interests
and this mainly business and military. Well talk about the seeds of
destruction which were laden or floating in oil. Well then talk about the
evacuation of American business and Americans from Iran, and a little bit
about what has happened since then. Finally, I will try to be somewhat
prescient and look at the future. As we listened this afternoon we and
discovered the rugged nature of Mexico. So too Iran is an extremely
rugged country and very much like Mexico in topography. Iran is a land of
tremendous contrasts and ruggedness. The highest mountains between
the Hindu Kush and the Andes occur there. The mountain at the top of
that slide is Mount Damavand, 18,500 feet. The land, or 90 percent of it,
is totally devoid of all vegetable and animal life. The people eke out their
living on some ten percent of the land. This also contributes to the
breakup of the country over the years as far as living in isolated pockets;
and causes sectionalism and tribal feuding and antagonisms. The country
is indeed a land of contrasts along the Caspian Coast. Much similar to
Southern Mexico, [it] is a land of tropical rain forests, where everything
grows and its very fecund. The rice paddies in the Rosht area along the
Caspian remind one of South Vietnam. Iran is a very large country
according to Middle Eastern standards. If you superimpose this map on
the United States, it would cover the entire United States east of the
Mississippi River. Its a rugged land, as I said. It shares a twelve hundred
mile border with the Soviet Union; a border that has been violated many
times by the Soviets. This is deep in the Iranian ethos. It shares borders,
as you can see up there, with numerous other countries in the Middle
East. It is a land that is fortunate in having mountains along all of its
borders. If you take a look at it, it is somewhat like a triangle with
mountains across the northern area. The Elburz, have been able to keep
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out most invaders except the Huns and except the Russians. The
mountains along the western border, the Zagros, have kept everyone out
except for the Turks and Alexander the Great, if you will. The other
mountains slowed up the Huns on the eastern border and allowed the
Iranians and the great Persian Empire to move easily into Afghanistan and
all the way over to the Indus and Oxus Rivers. Now, key to Iran, as we all
know, is their vast supply of oil. If you take a look at the Strait of Hormuz,
this is the economic jugular vein of the Western World. And, indeed,
during the Shahs period of time it was. Ninety percent of the oil bound for
Japan went through those Straits. Seventy-five percent of the oil bound
for Europe went through those Straits. Twenty-five percent of our oil went
through those Straits. So, whoever controlled the Straits really controlled
the economies of the West. When I went through those Straits, or [rather]
flew over them in 1978, there was the equivalent of a tanker going through
there every minute and a half. That shows you something about the oil
flow through there in those days. This happens to show you the
narrowness of that channel. This is a satellite shot of the Straits of
Hormuz at sixty miles across, only twelve [miles] of which are navigable.
They are very easy to interdict; very easy to control. Thats Oman to the
south. In any discussion of the cultural background of Iran, we have to
talk about the uniqueness of the Shia branch of Islam. The Shia branch of
Islam differs from what most people confuse with Arab Sunni religion in
that the Shia has a tradition of martyrdom while the Shia has a tradition of
a fixed clergy. I think, probably the easiest way to show the difference
between the Sunni and the Shia is to describe the difference between
Catholicism and Protestantism. The Shia truly believe that they have to
have a clergyman interpret the Koran for him. And the head clergyman is
truly infallible to the word of God. This is not unlike the infallibility, at
certain periods of time, of the Pope in interpreting the word of God.
Whereas, the Sunni is able to interpret the Koran on his own, as an
individual. The Iranian population is ninety some percent Shia Muslim. As
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I said, its a religion that is steeped in martyrdom. Islam, as a whole, is a
very devout religion. I prefer to say that it is a way of life; and it is. When
one sees it practiced in a totality, you cant help but be inspired by it or
mesmerized by it. Five times a day the people will get down like this and
pray to Mecca. Their holy city of Isfahan is where they make their
pilgrimages. They make their pilgrimages to Mecca and when they return
theyre called a Hajji. Or, theyre called Hajji Baba, if thats their name. If
you go to some of the other holy cities, you can go to Mashhad and be
called Mashhadi. In discussing Iran and its culture and its economy and
its politics, we have to talk about the Rasa, the Shahs sun. Here shown,
the Shahs area mirror is the light of the world. His problem was that he
decided he would usurp the religious clerics infrastructure in Iran.
Traditionally, since the invasions of Islam in 642 AD, the Mullahs, the
clergy, have had a tremendous role in shaping Iran; in running its politics
and in running its economy even. What the Shah did was that he claimed
that he had the same power as the ayatollahs. In other words, he was
infallible in understanding the word of God. He said that he had been
visited by the Archangel Gabriel and that the angel had given him a
mission for his country, which he even wrote a book about. Therefore, we
see a direct affront to the established order of things in the church by the
secular leader who said he was the head. He could interpret the Koran.
Now, in so doing he established a government in which he literally stood
astride the government as some modern Colossus of Rhodes, if you will.
He made literally every major decision in that country. Talk about Mexico
having pulled the centralization of power into the Mexican government.
He pulled it into one man. Here, he was making the decisions to buy the
F-16 fighter plane; he was making the decisions to pave the roads in
Tabriz. Thats the way he was. He would not delegate that authority very
far. In so doing, he became the head of the government, standing astride
each of the departments of government, from the military to the
Department of the Interior to the department of their economic ministries.
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He made those decisions, particularly in the military aspect. He said, you
people who head the navy, the army and the air force, may never, ever
meet together unless Im present. Why? It was because he was afraid of
a coup. So, he demanded that he be there every time they spoke and if
he wasnt there, those people disappeared and left their jobs. He also
was afraid of a coup in that he created what he called his Javidan; sorry,
his immortals. Javidan means immortal. Again, an affront to the
established religion, because these are the people who were, back in the
Akkadian days, the immortal guards of Cyrus the Great and of Xerxes.
The term Javidan means immortal and they literally believed that bullets
couldnt pierce their hides. Look at the ostentatious uniforms; ceremonial
uniforms, somewhat smacking of ancient Rome. Behind all of this were
the crown jewels and the crown jewels were the backing for the currency
of Iran. If I were to estimate the size of the crown jewels, I would say they
would fill ten rooms the size of this one filled with tables about the size of
that covered with jewels. Theyre the most fabulous collection of crown
jewels in the world and this globe happens to be a solid gold globe
measuring that far across with some fifty-nine thousand precious gems in
it. And truly, such a treasure could back the currency of the country.
What was the Shah trying to do? He was trying to take sixty nomadic
tribes and pull them together into a modern nation state. He had vowed in
his book that he would make Iran have the same gross national product as
Western Germany by the year 2000. And he was well on his way to doing
that when he fell. He was modernizing the country. But, he had some
opposition. Weve talked about the clergy and I think this is a unique slide,
because it really shows the three major groups that brought the Shah to
his knees once they were pulled together. On the right side of the picture
you can see a mullah with his white turban, the religious cleric. Were
standing in the midst of a bazaar, which is the traditional economy of any
middle-eastern country; small shop holders. And then we have the
students in the foreground; who have just been to the United States and
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who have been educated in the American democratic ideal. Keep those
three groups in mind as we go along and bring out more of the culture as
we follow this. The symbol of the Shahs run for modernization and
attaining that gross national product that I talked about was the Shayad
monument. Ironically, it became the symbol of Khomeinis revolution,
later. The Shah in his headlong run for modernization brought in
technology; brought in big business. But, he forgot one thing. That was
the gentleman at the bottom of the screen who prayed to Allah five times a
day. He bypassed Islam. He went back to the great Persian Empire of
the year 300 BC. He went back to Cyrus the Great and Xerxes and
patterned his entire way of life and government on something totally alien
to Islam. The Zoroastrian Persian Empire. There were numerous foreign
interests in Iran, as there are in any Middle Eastern country. There is a
portion of the Koran, it is Surat 143, and it says, We are the people, the
distinction between the East and the West. Truly, the Shah was
attempting to do this. Note the balance between East and West that he
brought in, not only in the military, but in business. He knew that oil would
run out in Iran and so he said we have to tap the natural resources of Iran
and build that with petrol dollars and once the oil runs out well have a
stabilized economy based on indigenous industry. The Russians brought
in one of the largest steel mills in the Middle East. It cost $385 million. By
the time it was completed it cost one billion dollars, but it was working. It
worked very well. There was one thing lacking, middle management. If
you will recall, the other night when we had the gentleman from Dow
Chemical, it was the need to bring in skilled technicians, skilled managers,
from the indigenous tribes. He was unable to do that, because he was
moving so fast. The education was not keeping up with the
modernization. The Soviet Union brought that in. The U.S. brought in all
sorts of industry, to include DuPont. They had plastic extrusion mills
going. Eastern Europe, Rumania along with Czechoslovakia set up one of
the largest tractor fabricating plants in the Middle East, in Tabriz. Great
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Britain was there. Japan was there building a subway system in the midst
of Tehran. Israel was there in communications. Korea was there building
gas lines, natural gas lines. Germany was there with electronics, as far as
the business goes. All of them had to bring in Third country nationals to
run it. The Iranians had not yet reached that stage of development where
they could supply the manpower to run middle management. As far as the
military goes, the Russians were there. Every bit of the rolling stock of the
military was Russian vehicles. The U.S. supplied aircraft and ships.
Great Britain was there with weapon systems and ships. Israel was there
with small arms. Germany was there with electronic gear. France was
there with ships and other things. One of the very interesting things to
note is the trouble that a developing nation gets into by playing across the
board with multiple nations. The French provided the La Combattante,
which is a small patrol and fast attack craft, probably 164 feet in length.
Its a French hull, a British engine system, a Belgian guidance system and
a U.S. missile system on it. Now can you imagine an individual, coming
off of a camel, being very hastily schooled in technology trying to keep up
with that. Its typical of the problems that arise in a country like that. Side
by side with all this modernization were the old coke mills, old coke fires of
the ancient world, where they cut down the great forests of the Middle
East and made charcoal. This one you see here was 6,000 years old, still
working on the tops of the Elburz Mountains. It stripped the mountains of
all their foliage. Yet the Shah came back and said, Lets make Iran green
once more. He had tremendous reforestation projects. The only problem
with this one was that it had to be irrigated by hand; labor intensive. He
rejuvenated the carpet industry. He even made plants with weavers sitting
out in front of big things of wool and silk, mass producing carpets. He
brought roads and highways, building a communications infrastructure that
was second to none in the Middle East. He brought in automobiles. He
had his own automobile, called the Peykan, which happened to be, if any
of you recall, the British automobile the Hillman. This was the 1967
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Hillman that he bought the patent for and started producing in Iran. The
only problem was that seventy percent of that automobile had been
fabricated outside of Iran, so it was really a put-together type thing he had
developed. He also brought in Chevrolet and Cadillac and, I believe,
Ford. If I remember my economics from college days, the healthiest sign
of a booming economy is construction. Well, Iran was booming then.
Everywhere you looked, construction was taking place. They built highrise apartments for some thirty thousand workers at that steel mill I told
you about. The Germans were there with these types of cranes. In fact,
at one time Westerners were saying, lets change the name of the Iranian
national bird to the construction crane. Existing side by side with the old
culture; wearing chadors and veils were girls in bikini bathing suits. He
was attempting to raise the literacy rate. He made coeducation in a
country that had never educated its women. But what did he do, he took
the veil off of the women and there you had young men and young women
sitting next together for the first time in their live-in cultural antipathy with
one another. They were not used to sitting next to somebody who was
unveiled. Not only psychological problems, but sociological problems
developed. The Peykan, there is one there on the left; the taxi systems
and traffic jams -- all of this attendant modernization. He put in twelve
hydroelectric dams throughout the country and brought water, fresh water,
for the first time to every part of that country. He had electricity in every
village in that country. He alleges that he raised the literacy rate from
some 12 percent to 75 percent in a period of about 15 years. I doubt that.
But, it did increase and it was becoming better. I would say it was
probably about thirty-five to forty percent. Some of the finest skiing in the
world, he brought in French ski resorts and literally transported them and
set them up on the tops of those 14,000-foot mountains. The sturgeon
industry, the caviar flowed out of Iran at some $35 an ounce, quite an
industry. That whole story of the caviar industry in Iran is quite a story. It
started because the Volga River became polluted and drove the sturgeon
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from the Russian side of the Caspian to the Iranian side and then the
Iranian industry boomed. The steel mill outside of Isfahan was a great
example. And, here is the key in my opinion, his going back to the years of
Persepolis the capital of that first Persian Empire. Again, a direct affront
to Islam; picking up those cultural values that came out of Persepolis,
came out of that first Persian Empire. He imitated the ancient Persian
Shahs. He abrogated the constitution of 1906, which said, we will have a
Yulama, which is a group of three Ayatollahs, or high priests of Islam, who
would sit in judgment over the laws passed in the country. He never
allowed them to meet. This was yet another direct affront to the church, if
you want to call it a church. Now this is what I am going to call the
Barlovian theory of intellectual development. This is the first time this
has ever been told; except, I told it to Eric the other night. Does anybody
know what that word is Boustrophedon. Okay. In ancient Persian they
wrote from left to right. When you write from left to right, you look with
your left eye predominantly to the right. If you think about it, the
preponderance of your eyesight is moving to the right always, which says
that youre thinking with the left side of your brain; if you believe the theory
of left lobe and right lobe thinking. The left lobe is the analytical side of
the brain. In ancient Pahlavi, the Iranians were fine mathematicians. They
were fine astronomers. They were analytical. With the Islamic invasions
in 642 AD, there was a time, a period, in which their language, the written
language, became boustrophedon, which means as the ox kills the field.
This is the same thing that occurred at the height of Greece; at the
beginning of the height of intellectual Greece. It is the same thing that
occurred with the Etruscans at the height of their art forms. And here is
what happens. When you write in that fashion, you either start right to left,
but you drop down a line and go left to right and you drop down another
line and go right to left. So what are you thinking? Youre thinking
holistically with both sides of the brain. Now if any of you are
psychologists, please see me afterwards. Dont fight me now. What Im
104

saying is that the reason Westerners dont communicate, or have such an
inability to communicate, with Middle Easterners is because of the Islamic
intrusion when they said we will now write right to left and we will think
with the right side of our brain, which is conceptual. If you study Arabic,
you will find that Arabic is truly a conceptual, intuitive language. It misses
all sorts of words which you have to think conceptually about. Similarly, it
misses all its vowels. You have to have a total picture of what youre
thinking and talking about to be able to understand written Arabic. For a
while what we had going on in Persia for some six to eight hundred years,
was people doing the official language, left to right. Then comes Islamic
intrusion, which forced upon the Persians the Islamic, or the Arabic,
alphabet and they were writing their own language right to left, which they
do today, and therefore, thinking with the right side of the brain. Whether
thats true or not, all I can say is that there is an old Arabic saying, Ive
told you part of it and that might not be all of it. The seeds of destruction
really are listed here. Oil literally greased the skids that the Shah was
ridden out of town on. In 1973, when the OPEC price hike kept many of
the people in this room in gasoline lines, it gave the Shah five times the
spending power that he had the year before; five times! At that very time,
he said, No more grant aid to Iran. Im going to pay my way in the world.
And he did. The economy started to boom. He invited businesses from all
over the world, as I have already said. What happened? These
businesses settled in the big cities and the traditional home of the Iranian
Peasant was broken up, because everybody wanted a share of the petrol
dollar. The city of Tehran, Iran, which until 1973 had been about two
million people, in about three years, burgeoned to almost six million
people; just by the influx of people trying to get into business and get the
petrol dollar. The farms collapsed. Iran had been totally self-sufficient in
food up to that time. In the year 1976, Iran imported over fifty percent of
its food.
105

[Tape 4, Side 2]
I said, Why are you so unhappy? I know your countrys fallen but youre
particularly remorseful. He said, My father, who is 86, who has had
several heart attacks is a prisoner over here in this big prison. I said,
What did he do? He said, I dont know. About three weeks later I saw
him again and he was happy. He said, They finally released him. I said,
What was that all about? He said, The new government wanted my
father, who had been the obstetrician at the princes birth, to sign a
statement that he had mixed up the babies. This statement said they
were afraid of the legitimacy of the throne and they wanted him to deny
that there was a legal heir to the throne. The man didnt, but they finally
let him go. I can go on and tell you a thousand stories about what
happened. One of them happened in the Caspian. One of the first things
the new Islamic Air Force did was to bomb the sturgeon schools, because
they were symbolic of Westernization; the eating of caviar. The Iran-Iraqi
war took place. It is still going on. The latest estimates are that they have
had over a million casualties in Iran alone. There were children going out
to martyr themselves. I have a friend who just left Iran. He came back
and he said, They go through the streets with loudspeakers saying
Ladies, let your children go fight for Allah. Fight against Iraqis. Young
kids come out into the streets and they take them off to war. The
Zoroastrian fire towers are still there. They have been there for thousands
of years. Theyre going to stand there for a long time as a sentinel to
Irans past. Right after the revolution this came out. This is actually,
literally true. The people were shouting, Khomeini, Khomeini, Khomeini,
come, come, save us from the Shah. Khomeini arrives and he says,
Allah be praised, Ill turn our country away from impure food, drink and
evils of the Western World. The Koran, the law, shall be kept to its
smallest letter. Everybody stops and thinks about that for moment and
yells, The Shah, the Shah, the Shah. There may be a lot of truth to that.
The history of the Iranian Empire has been one of Shahs and autocrats
106

and I say, someday youll see another Shah. What does it all mean? It
truly means that political power does flow out of the barrel of a gun, even if
that power is held by a religious cleric. I think thats a classic slide. Thats
what it was about. Meanwhile the peasant of Iran, who lives at a
subsistence level, sits and prays, wonders what the next day will bring,
and he says, Enshallah, what God wills will be done. Thats what he
cares about, Gods will -- he sees this in a big scheme of things. He
requires very little, because Allah will provide for him. The future, I cant
predict the future, but I can show you a few quick things. Take a look at
the far right in Pakistan. Zia proclaimed an Islamic republic after a coup.
He saw the writing on the wall. Afghanistan declared a jihad against the
infidel, trying to oust the Soviet Union in a holy war. Iran became an
Islamic republic; successful maybe, through revolution. Iraq, a minority
Sunni government dominating a predominantly Shia population was bound
to have internal problems. This is what Khomeini is keying on in his war
with Iraq. Syria has had dissident problems, religious problems within
their own country. They had to wipe out an entire city because it was
religiously dissident. Saudi Arabia, you know the incidents at Medina and
Mecca, both resurgent type things. Jordan, something we really dont
hear much about, but Jordan has a real feud with Saudi Arabia and its a
religious feud. It has to do with the holy cities. Jordan also has a
population that is predominantly Palestinian and who are very, very
unhappy. Most of the countries in the Middle East have large third nation
populations that are a threat to themselves. The countries on the Gulf
side, Bahrain and Kuwait, have extremely large Palestinian populations.
Palestinians are the people that can perform the middle management and
the technological things that need to be done in those countries. That is
why they are there; except for having been ousted from Israel. Then, we
have the problems in Lebanon. When I left Iran, I had to sneak out of Iran.
I had received a summons from the revolutionary court during the summer
of 1979. My friends put me on a Kuwaiti airline, which flew me to Kuwait
107

and then to Egypt. When I got off the plan in Egypt, I got a taxi into the
heart of Cairo and driving down this main boulevard there was a sign on
the side of the road. It was written in Arabic and also in English; a green
and white sign, the colors of Islam. It said, If Iran can do it, so can we.
The summer of 1979 in Iran was a tragic foreshadowing of what eventually
happened to Sadat. Im sure that sign wasnt up very long. You go across
the North African littoral, what do you hit first? You come to Libya. There
you find tremendous religious problems and a messianic figure; a
madman. You go all the way across to Morocco. Every one of these
countries is having religious problems; a religious resurgence of some
sort. Thrust your hand down into the heart of black Africa into the Muslim
countries there. They are all having this same sort of problem. I cant
predict the future, but I do read history and if you read Toynbee, I think he
made a very prophetic prediction. He said, You know the next great state
of man will be one of religious resurgence. I see that not only in Islam,
but I see it in Christianity too today. Thank you very much.
108

Oral History of Colonel Keith A Barlow USA Retired

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Oral History of Colonel Keith A Barlow USA Retired

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FOREWORD

Interview with COL Keith A. Barlow, USA Retired

Appendix A Access Agreement

U.S. Army Military History Institute

COLONEL BARLOW: Honolulu, Hawaii, actually Scofield Barracks.

INTERVIEWER: So I would guess that your father was in the military

COLONEL BARLOW: Well, I had a great uncle, probably distant uncle,

INTERVIEWER: And who was your great uncle?

U.S. Army Military History Institute

COLONEL BARLOW: Francis C. Barlow, Jr. But, my great grandfather

INTERVIEWER: So you had a grandfather and an uncle . . .

COLONEL BARLOW: Great grandfather and uncle.

INTERVIEWER: Great grandfather and uncle.

COLONEL BARLOW: Then I had another relative who was captured by

COLONEL BARLOW: All over the world.

COLONEL BARLOW: Probably being Brigadier General, Chief of Staff at

INTERVIEWER: That was before TRADOC [U.S. Army Training and

U.S. Army Military History Institute

INTERVIEWER: So, as you were growing up you were definitely a military

COLONEL BARLOW: Well, I went to the University of Utah a couple of

INTERVIEWER: What type of appointment did you get to West Point?

COLONEL BARLOW: It was from a lady Senator? The lady

COLONEL BARLOW: Congressional.

INTERVIEWER: In high school, what sports did you play?

INTERVIEWER: Good for the Army PT [Physical Training] test.

COLONEL BARLOW: Right.

U.S. Army Military History Institute

INTERVIEWER: What, OK, you mentioned your first forestry college.

COLONEL BARLOW: Well, it disciplined me considerably in my studies.

INTERVIEWER: Your subject was, English?

COLONEL BARLOW: English.

INTERVIEWER: Because you later went to the University of Pennsylvania

COLONEL BARLOW: Right.

INTERVIEWER: You graduated in 1963 from the University of

COLONEL BARLOW: No, then it was 1962, 1963.

INTERVIEWER: I have a list of your assignments, but I seem to, it was on

U.S. Army Military History Institute

COLONEL BARLOW: Infantry.

INTERVIEWER: And that was a RA [Regular Army] commission?

COLONEL BARLOW: Right.

COLONEL BARLOW: Right.

INTERVIEWER: Fort Benning, Infantry.

COLONEL BARLOW: Right. Right.

INTERVIEWER: And then you probably went back to Fort Benning to do

COLONEL BARLOW: Right.

INTERVIEWER: And you went to Quantico for . . .

COLONEL BARLOW: The Command

INTERVIEWER: And there you became an honorary Marine, you told me

U.S. Army Military History Institute

INTERVIEWER: And that was six months at Quantico?

COLONEL BARLOW: I thought it was a year.

COLONEL BARLOW: Right, 1971, 1972.

COLONEL BARLOW: Beautiful area and I enjoyed the course,

COLONEL BARLOW: No.

INTERVIEWER: Resume, IMA in 1976. IMA is not Individual Mobilization

COLONEL BARLOW: I would have to see that.

COLONEL BARLOW: It probably is the . . . It was probably something at

U.S. Army Military History Institute

INTERVIEWER: I just wanted to clarify that it is not the common acronym

COLONEL BARLOW: Uh, huh.

COLONEL BARLOW: Right.

INTERVIEWER: And now you were a company commander in addition to

COLONEL BARLOW: Right.