Title Card: Part Two: Hostage

Narrator: On May 22, 1977, before the graduating class of the University of Notre Dame, President Jimmy Carter unveiled a new foreign policy for the United States.

Carter: Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of Communism ...

Narrator: Carter had come to office with no experience in foreign affairs, but was determined to make his mark. In his first year alone, he met more than 40 heads of state. Resumed talks on diplomatic relations with China and with the Soviet Union on arms control. He launched a new peace process in the Middle East, and signed a new canal treaty with Panama, transferring, after 75 years, ownership of the canal to the Panamanians. But it was a principle straight from his heart that would redefine America's role in the world.

Carter: We have reaffirmed America's commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy.

Gaddis Smith, Diplomatic Historian: That was his greatest speech standing up for our own values, and expecting, that the world would appreciate that, and that we would be (he didn't used this phrase, but it's an old phrase in American history) like the beacon on the hill, the beacon of freedom and liberty and democracy.

Betty Glad: He will be remembered for putting on the agenda hereafter the whole issue of human rights. We now assume that the goal of a state is not only to protect its national security interests. It has an obligation to try to deal with human suffering where it has the ability to do that.

Carter: I feel very deeply that when people are put in prison without trials, and tortured and deprived of basic human rights that the president of the United States ought to have a right to express displeasure and to do something about it.

Walter Mondale: His idea is that every child is a child of God. And based on his faith entitled to the stature and respect and the rights of what that means.

Narrator: Initially, human rights was applied aggressively to friend and foe. Carter asked Congress to withhold military and economic assistance from Latin American dictators -- in Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua -- and decried their human rights violations. Cold warriors complained Carter was undermining American allies, paving the way for Soviet backed guerrilla movements to seize power. But they applauded when in an open letter to Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, Carter promised to seek the release of political prisoners held in Soviet jails.

Doug Brinkley: The human rights campaign was charging the Soviet Union with abuse of its own citizens. And they did not like that at all. And we now know, now that the Cold War archives are open, and from looking at Havel, in Czechoslovakia, or Lech Walesa in Poland, that it was the Carter's human rights policy that gave heart to the underground resistance movement.

Narrator: But the biggest challenge to Carter's human rights policy would come in the Middle East.

Carter: Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas in the world.

Narrator: Carter was aware of the brutality of Iran's secret police and of 2500 political prisoners held in Iran's jails. But the Shah, installed to the throne in a U.S. backed coup in 1953, had long been a trusted ally. New Years' Eve 1977, in Teheran, Carter reaffirmed America's support.

Gaddis Smith: Strategic considerations trumped human rights in Iran, because the perception of the United States was first that Iran was a secure source of oil (and it certainly was an important source of oil), that it had one of the most powerful military establishments in the world, which was nonsense, but the Shah was saying he was going to have the second most powerful Navy. Iran, of course, bordered on the Soviet Union.

Betty Glad: There are circumstances where you have to have a situational morality. You cannot go in with the notion this is an absolute value, we're going to push it all the time.

Carter : I would like to offer a toast at this time, to the great leaders of Iran, the Shah and the Shahvanu, and to the people of Iran, and to the world peace that we hope together we can help to bring ...

Narrator: One week after Carter's visit, anti-Shah demonstrations broke out. When Iranian secret police fired on the demonstrators and killed several students, religious leaders called the Shah's government anti-Islamic.

Elizabeth Drew: Iran was a very complicated situation. And the Shah was very useful to us. At the same time, something else was going on, something very powerful was going on in Iran. And as I recall, we kind of missed it.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor: We knew there was some resentment, and we knew somewhat of the history of the country, but we were not conscious, nor were we informed, of the intensity of the feelings.