Captors: Leader Was Not Involved

TEHRAN, Iran -- Two Iranian leaders of the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran dismissed allegations on Thursday by former American hostages that Iran's president-elect had been one of their captors. The Bush administration, however, said it took the charge seriously and vowed to investigate.

"Obviously his involvement raises many questions," President Bush told reporters Thursday morning, referring to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president-elect. He added, "Knowing how active people are at finding answers to questions, I'm confident they'll be found."

In Tehran, Abbas Abdi, one of the former student leaders who was involved in the seizure, said Ahmadinejad had played no role -- although he had wanted to.

"He was a student at a different university," Abdi said, "and we kept the plan secret among our own members who we trusted. He called after the embassy was captured and wanted to join us, but we refused to let him come to the embassy or become a member of our group."

Mohammad Reza Khatami, the brother of the departing president, Mohammad Khatami, who was also involved in the hostage-taking, said he never saw Ahmadinejad at the embassy. "I don't think he was part of it," he said. "I cannot remember him at all."

A photograph of a blindfolded American hostage being led by a man with some resemblance to a young Ahmadinejad was posted on various Web sites in recent days.

But the office of the president-elect posted a photograph of him in that same era, seeking to demonstrate that there was little resemblance. A close aide to Ahmadinejad, Kaveh Ejtetehadi, called the claims of his involvement "absurd."

Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, said the White House is examining old photographs and looking "back to see what you have in the files. And that's the process that's going on now."

The former hostages who identified the president-elect as a leader among their captors did not waver. In separate interviews, four former military or intelligence officers at the embassy in Tehran said they had reached their conclusions independently.

One of them, William J. Daugherty, a former intelligence officer, said, "I recognized him right off. When you're in a situation where your life is in jeopardy, where you know your family is going through hell because of what you're in, and your country is being humiliated, you don't forget the people who cause it. I remember so much his hatred of Americans. It just emanated from every pore of his body."

Relations between Washington and Tehran remain bitter and brittle 26 years after the embassy was seized, particularly because of American and European efforts to close down Iran's nuclear production facilities. The two countries do not maintain diplomatic relations.

The Bush administration's emotional response to the allegations is likely to drive Tehran and Washington even farther apart.

Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said Thursday, "We, as a government, are working to establish the facts surrounding this story. But I do want to say one thing, and that is to underscore the fact that we have not forgotten -- we have not forgotten -- the fact that 51 of our diplomats were held for 444 days, that they were taken hostage."

Student militants stormed the American Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and seized the hostages, then held them until the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president in January 1981.

Ahmadinejad was a student activist before the 1979 Iranian revolution, according to his Web site. He supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and took part in meetings with Khomeini in 1980 as the representative of his university.

In an interview, another hostage, David M. Roeder, 66, the former deputy air force attache at the embassy, said he remembered Ahmadinejad working in a supervisory role in one-third or more of the 44 interrogations he underwent.

"The interrogator and the interpreter always deferred to him, so he was clearly in charge," Roeder said.

Charles Scott, a former hostage who was an Army military attache, said, "There's no doubt from the way the guy moves it's the same guy," identifying the president-elect as the man who cursed at guards who let Scott and another officer walk in a hallway outside the rooms in which they were confined.

Several other former hostages said that they did not recall Ahmadinejad but added that they did not find this surprising, because the hostages were held in separate, isolated rooms.

Paul M. Needham, 54, a professor at the National Defense University who lives in northern Virginia, was one of those who said he did not recognize Ahmadinejad.

"I remember four specific individuals," Needham said. "He is not one of them."

But, like others who said they did not recall Ahmadinejad, Needham added that those who did remember him should be believed.

"If they say that yes, they recognize him," he said, "there's about a 99.9 percent probability that it is right."

Speaking at a White House news briefing on the president's trip to the G-8 meeting in Scotland next week, Hadley, the national security adviser, emphasized, as Bush did, that the government has not yet determined whether the allegations are true. But he left no doubt that the administration took the accusations seriously.

McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said, "The Iranian government, with respect to this question, has an obligation to speak definitively concerning these questions."

He added, "It is an issue that we are looking into seriously."

One administration official said that State Department officials were hunting for old files but added that "the intelligence agencies are in this, too." Another senior administration official said Thursday evening that coming to reliable conclusions about Ahmadinejad's past, and particularly his possible involvement in the hostage-taking, would be a painstaking process.