Attacking America: 1979 Fury in Iran, Rescue in Pakistan

On Sunday, November 4, 1979, hundreds of Iranian students attacked the American Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. While 14 hostages escaped or were released, the remaining 52 were blindfolded and spirited from the Embassy without a trace until their release on January 20, 1981, 444 days later.

Three weeks after the attack in Tehran, the day before Thanksgiving, November 21, 1979, an estimated 10,000 Pakistani students and Iranian provocateurs attacked the American Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing a Marine, an Army Warrant Officer, and two Pakistani Embassy employees while pouring gasoline and lighting fires in all of the buildings except for two Embassy vaults where 90 American and Pakistani employees hovered, fearing for their lives. If not for the actions of four U.S. Marines and two DEA Agents trapped inside, the employees may have died.

Randy Sayles, one of the trapped DEA Agents, tells the horrifying story of fear, reaction, survival, and eventual escape (within 15 minutes of suffocation) of those involved.