Iran Hostage Crisis (1979-1981)

Ben Affleck's Argo won Golden Globes for best director and best motion picture/drama. The film now has Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Affleck talks about his approach to the story of six diplomats who managed to escape a hostile Iran in 1979.

Fresh off Sunday's Golden Globe Awards, where he won for best director and his film won for best motion picture/drama, the actor and director talks about his approach to the story of six diplomats who managed to escape a hostile Iran — and the CIA operative who helped them do so.

This past week marked the 26th anniversary of the failed rescue attempt of hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days. We talks with journalist Mark Bowden, author of Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam.

Mark Bowden's article about the 25th anniversary of the Iranian Hostage crisis will be featured in the December issue The Atlantic Monthly. On Nov. 4, 1979 a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostage the entire American diplomatic team — which resulted in a 15-month international crisis that still has reverberations today. Bowden interviewed the former hostage-takers for his article.

Gary Sick was an aide to President Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis. Now Sick charges that in 1980, the Reagan campaign made a secret deal with the Iranians to hold the release of the American hostages until after the election. In his new book "October Surprise" (published by Random House), Sick tries to reconstruct the story.

Admiral Stansfield Turner. The former director of the CIA under Jimmy Carter, Turner has just come out with his second book, "Terrorism & Democracy."(Houghton Mifflin). Turner looks at the failed and successful policies of eight American presidents in dealing with terrorism.

In light of the Iran Hostage Crisis, the Department of Justice is considering requiring all Iranian students in the U.S. to report to the I.N.S. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit in response. A.C.L.U. executive director Ira Glasser explains how checks on government help protect constitutional rights.