This Day In 1970's History: Tuesday January 29, 1980
- The escape of six Americans from Iran was announced by United States and Canadian officials. They said that six embassy employees had received sanctuary for three months in the Canadian Embasssy in Teheran and fled from Iran last weekend, posing as Canadian diplomats and carrying forged Iranian visas. The dramatic feat was achieved under utmost secrecy. As a precautionary measure, the small Canadian Embassy staff in Iran left for home Monday.
Relatives of the embassy employees who had escaped from Iran said they had known that the six were in hiding, but had not been told details and had been warned by the State Department to keep silent for fear of word getting back to Iran, where a search would have started for the fugitives. The department speedily informed the families of the escape. [New York Times]
- Islamic foreign ministers rebuked Iran for continuing to hold the American hostages. The drive against their fellow Moslems in Iran was led by Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The ministers, meeting in Pakistan, inserted the hostage issue in a consensus resolution and diluted an Iranian resolution opposing American sanctions against Iran. [New York Times]
- A boycott of the Moscow Olympics by both American athletes and possible spectators, regardless of whether Moscow withdraws its troops from Afghanistan, was approved by an 88-to-4 vote in the Senate. The resolution goes further than the position taken by President Carter or a similar resolution approved by the House. [New York Times]
- Andrei Sakharov was championed by 19 Soviet writers and artists, including several who are not known as fellow dissidents. They protested that his banishment from Moscow signaled a return to Stalinism. [New York Times]
- The Coast Guard pressed a search in Tampa Bay, Fla., for 17 missing crew members of a Coast Guard buoy tender that collided with an oil tanker Monday evening. The bodies of six crewmen were recovered in what was feared to be the greatest loss of life in the peacetime history of the service. In the collision, the Coast Guard tender suffered a long gash and sank quickly in the main shipping channel. [New York Times]
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