CLARK MISSION ASKS APOLOGY, COOLING OFF

Author: By Benjamin Taylor Globe Staff

Date: Monday, June 9, 1980
Page: ?????
Section: RUN OF PAPER

Nobel Prize-winning biologist George Wald, MIT economist Mary Anderson and Charles Kimball, a doctoral student in theology at Harvard Divinity School, all made that essential point during a press conference at Logan Airport. It was perhaps best put by Kimball when he said: "Americans have to understand that Iran is a nation that has been battered for a long, long time."

Wald, Anderson and Kimball were three of the 10 Americans who went to Iran last week to attend the four-day International Conference on US Intervention in Iran.

The American group was led by Clark, who served as Attorney General during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Clark, who is stopping off in Paris before returning to the US, said yesterday that the Carter Administration must "de-escalate the crisis" in order to successfully secure the release of the hostages who have been held since Nov. 4, when Iranian militants seized the US embassy in Tehran.

Clark, appearing on ABC's "Issues and Answers," said: "You've got to let things cool off; you've got to be patient."

The Carter Administration has been investigating the possibility of taking legal action against Clark and his delegation on the basis that they violated President Jimmy Carter's order banning Americans from traveling to Iran.

But Clark and the three Boston-area members of his group all defended their actions on the basis that it was important to establish a dialogue based on something other than what Kimball called "belligerent confrontation."

"We have broken no American laws," Wald said. "We have simply done something that does not comply with what are called executive orders."

Wald also said, "I have never felt as proud to be an American as on this occasion."

Kimball said that he and one other member of the group spent 2 1/2 hours visiting with the militants occupying the US embassy in Tehran, and that they delivered mail from relatives of the hostages.

He also said they had asked for mail to take back, but were told that would be impossible because postmarks on the letters would indicate where the hostages were being kept.

All of which led Kimball to conclude that the hostages were no longer being held at the embassy, but have been moved to smaller cities throughout Iran. After the unsuccessful US rescue attempt of the hostages in April, the militants said they would move their captives.

Wald, Kimball and Anderson all appeared tired after the long trip from Tehran. They were greeted at Logan Airport by about 50 friends and relatives, as well as several members of the media.

Lawyers representing the 10 Americans, including Boston attorney William Homans, were on hand to ensure that Wald, Anderson and Kimball made it through US Customs without incident. Homans said there were no problems.

(US Customs officials last night questioned for an hour two members of the American delegation returning from Iran to New York, Reuters news service reported.

(Cay Camp, president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and John Walsh, Protestant chaplain of Princeton University, told a press conference at Kennedy International Airport that their papers and passports were not confiscated. They were met at the airport by several lawyers, including activist William Kunstler.

(Three other delegation members, who returned to the United States on Friday night, also were questioned at length by customs officials.*

The 73-year-old Wald taught biology

at Harvard from 1934 to 1977 and won the

Nobel prize in physilogy in

1967. During the 1960s, he was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam war, and more recently he has been a vocal opponent of nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Mary Anderson, 41, is a lecturer in economics at MIT and has worked in Africa and Chicago for the American Friends Service Committee.

Charles Kimball, who was a member of a delegation that visited Iran last Christmas, is a 29-year-old theologian and doctoral candidate at Harvard Divinity School and is a specialist in Islam and Christianity.

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