The onetime aide to the imperious General Douglas MacArthur had learned the battlefields of Washington as well as those of East Asia. The modern American military has produced few generals as political as Al Haig. Now, with a popular revolution sweeping the country and the monarchy unraveling, Washington wanted a high-level military envoy to travel to Iran to work with the Iranian military, although to do exactly what remained unclear. Over the previous three years, Huyser had developed a cordial acquaintance with the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, one of America’s most important allies in the Middle East. The week prior to his early morning phone call, Huyser had exchanged numerous calls with his boss, General Alexander Haig, and the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a longtime acquaintance, General David Jones, about traveling to Iran on a secret mission. He flew B-52 missions over North Vietnam and assumed his current job as the deputy commander of American forces in Europe in September 1975. As American aircraft technology advanced, so too did Huyser’s career. During the Second World War, he flew four-engine B-29s over Japan, and in the early days of the Cold War, he piloted the same plane, only now loaded with an atomic bomb earmarked for the Soviet Union.
Slightly overweight and with a round, rugose face, Dutch Huyser was a product of the air force’s bomber community. As the workday ended on the East Coast, it was common to receive a flurry of last-minute inquiries from the Pentagon, depriving you of sound sleep even if you did wear four stars. During a crisis, you worked Washington hours. The early-hour call did not come as a surprise to the fifty-four-year-old Huyser. Air Force General Robert “Dutch” Huyser awake and out of his warm bed in Stuttgart, Germany. on January 4, 1979, the loud ringing of the secure telephone jolted U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, he served in the first gulf war and made two tours with elite special operations forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. David Crist is currently a historian for the federal government.
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