Anderson, Terry (1949–)

Enduring 2,454 days of captivity, journalist Terry A. Anderson was the longest-held American during the Lebanon hostage crisis.

Anderson, a former combat correspondent in Vietnam, became the Middle East Bureau Chief for the Associated Press (AP) in 1982, covering the civil war in Lebanon and the Israeli invasion of that country from the Beirut office. By the-mid 1980s, Westerners, including several journalists, had been “disappearing” throughout Beirut, seized by anti-Western Shiite Muslim fundamentalist groups. When four Lebanese AP employees were abducted in October 1984, Anderson worked military contacts to secure their release. Colleagues of Anderson believe his fate was sealed when he appeared on Lebanese television, celebrating the return of his coworkers.

Shortly after 8 A.M. on March 16, 1985, Hezbollah claimed responsibility, stating that Anderson's kidnapping was part of a campaign to rid Muslim regions of Lebanon of “spies” masquerading as “journalists, industrialists, scientists, and men of religion.” (Anderson's fellow hostages included American University professors David Jacobsen and Thomas Sutherland, Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, and Rev. Benjamin Weir.) Aside from purging Lebanon of alleged spies, Hezbollah also wanted to use the hostages as bargaining chips for the release of 17 Lebanese and Iraqi prisoners held in Kuwait. These 17 were suspects in the 1983 bombings of the French and American embassies. One of them was the brother-in-law of Imad Mughniyah, a senior Hezbollah official believed to have masterminded Anderson's abduction.

For the next six and a half years, Anderson languished in dank basements and windowless rooms throughout Beirut and southern Lebanon, blindfolded, chained to the floor, and eating meals of stale bread and cheese or cold rice. With the help of his fellow inmates, Anderson endeavored to keep his mind sharp. The captives argued politics, played chess with a set Anderson fashioned from salvaged tinfoil, and, enchained, ran in circles for exercise. For a time, Anderson, Sutherland, Weir, and Jenco read the Bible aloud, praying in what they called the “Church of the Locked Door.”

Negotiations for the freedom of the hostages were caught up in the tangled web of international politics that defined the late 1980s, most notably the Iran-Contra affair. The Reagan administration, publicly committed to “no negotiation” with terrorists, orchestrated an arms-for-hostages deal with Iran—initially to rescue CIA Station Chief William Buckley, who, unbeknownst to them, had died while captive. Weir, Jenco, and Jacobsen were released under this arrangement. However, by 1987, after the Iran-Contra scandal broke, hope for freedom for Anderson and the remaining hostages dwindled.

In the end, a confluence of world events worked to secure the release of Anderson and the others. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died, to be replaced by the more pragmatic Hashemi Rafsanjani. Communism fell. Israel's security concerns turned from its borders to its occupied territories. Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the 17 prisoners were freed, leaving the hostage-holders without a clear demand. The United States then crushed Iraq during the Gulf War. When Anderson was released, on December 4, 1991, at age 44, his captors apologized for what they called a mistake and gave him a half-dozen carnations to give to Madeline Bassil, his soon-to-be wife and mother of his daughter.

Back in the United States, Anderson married Bassil in 1993 and began a career teaching journalism, first at Columbia University, and currently at Ohio University. In March 2000, Anderson and his family were awarded $341 million in a lawsuit against the country of Iran, which backed Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, the groups responsible for his incarceration.

One of the first Americans to be abducted in Beirut, and the last to be set free, Anderson's nearly seven years in captivity mark the era of hostage taking in Lebanon.

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