Six months after Terry Waite had been taken hostage1 was<br > in Washington doing the roundsThe visit took in the State<br > Departmentcountless think tanks where former Adminis<br > tration officials reside in exile and those anonymous com<br > panies beyond the Beltway where erstwhile Pentagon and<br > Intelligence officials turn former access into profitThrough<br > these revolving doors of influence I sought information on<br > what had befallen the envoy of the Archbishop of<br > Canterbury<br > The intention was to make a film for BBC Panorama but<br > the omens were inauspiciousWaite had disappeared into the<br > black hole of BeirutBy I 9 8 7 most Western governments<br > had severed their links with the Western part of the Lebanese<br > capitalWhat fragments of information emerged amounted<br > to little more than rumour<br > The American Administrationlike its predecessorhad<br > nearly been brought down by the issue of hostagesBy the<br > summer after Waites capturehostages had been relegated<br > tO thetake fiotefileInitiatives were deadburied by the<br > revelation that the Reagan Administration had traded arms<br > for hostagesThe accepted wisdom was that hostages paid<br > few political dividendsA silence had fallen on official Wash<br >ingtonwith no one seeming to know whether Terry Waite<br > ws dead or alive һ <br > 1 was concluding yet another fruitless conversation with a<br > senior Administration officialwho had only seen me reluc<br >tantlywhen he saidOur treatment of Waite was shameful<br >Why}I asked with some surpriseGo ask Ollie Northhe<br > said with a rueful smile and without elaboration<br > Northat the timewas the star witness of the Con<br >gressional enquiry into what had become known as the Iran-<br >