Sunday, January 20, 2019

It Was 38 Years Ago... - Updated

I had been thinking about the 1979-81 Iran hostage crisis, and specifically the rescue of six Americans as shown in the movie Argo, because CIA exfiltrator Tony Mendez died yesterday at the age of 78:



Read CNN's coverage here. 

Then I saw another tweet from the secretary, on a related topic, and in the spirit of his boss's incompetence he just can't get the math right:




For the record, the Americans were taken hostage on November 4, 1979, the 40th anniversary of which is nine and a half months in the future.

They were released on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, January 20, 1981, which was 38 years ago today.

Monday morning update: Secretary Pompeo, or the staffer who runs his Twitter account, deleted the tweet above and sent out a correct version:


The mistake got so much attention the Washington Post has a story about it, titled "Pompeo flubs math on anniversary U.S. diplomatic hostages were freed from Iran":

There is no country Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasts more than Iran, by speech or by tweet. But his point got lost Sunday in a shower of blowback after he incorrectly calculated the date that American diplomats held hostage in Iran were released from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

“40 years ago today, extremists in Iran released 52 American hostages they held hostage for 44 days,” he tweeted on his official account, @SecPompeo. “Iran still holds innocent Americans hostage.”

Pompeo, 55, was in high school when Iranian revolutionaries stormed the embassy on Nov. 4, 1979, and the hostages were released 444 days later, on Jan 20, 1981 — 38 years ago. (Read the article here.)
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