The clerics of Iran never forgot the affront caused to them by America, who supported the stridently secular Shah. When they overthrew the Shah and took over, they used every opportunity to demonstrate their displeasure with the U.S. The Iranian state had just been placed on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, after a 1979 storming of the American embassy in Tehran and the 444-day hostage crisis that followed, when it executed its most daring attack on the United States.

On this day, March 16, in 1984, William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, left his waterfront apartment home to meet with a new agent he thought he recruited. He approached the man with the briefcase at the designated spot, when the man suddenly swing the bag and knocked Buckley out with a blow to the back of the head.

Several hours later the CIA confirmed Buckley was kidnapped, and word went out to Western intelligence agencies to turn the Middle East “inside out” and find Buckley. Despite the top psychologists, consultants, experts and the best minds in the intelligence business, and despite the reception and minute scrutinizing of two tapes of Buckley from his captors, he was unfortunately not found alive.