January 22, 2021
. . . back home with his mother
American Michael White went to Iran to pursue a woman he loved. She had lost interest, however. But Iran’s security authorities had developed an interest in him. And so, they arrested him—very dramatically.
On what was to be his final day in Iran, the car he and his tour guide were in was abruptly cut off by another vehicle with a passenger frantically waving his hands at them. He recalls three men getting out, one with a video camera, forcing him into their car and driving him to an office for questioning. From there, it was on to the jail in Gorgan in Golestan province, where orange-tinted water spewed from the water tap in his cell and prison-issued sandals proved useful to shove roaches into the toilet.
A copy of the handwritten journal he kept behind bars has been provided exclusively to The Associated Press, which reported extensively on it January 15.
White, who is American-born and bred with no connections with Iran apart from the woman he fell in love with over the Internet, was freed last June when the State Department traded him for an Iranian in a US prison.
In the journal, White catalogues physical abuse from his jailers and taunts from fellow inmates. He writes tenderly of the woman he visited even while likening himself to a mouse lured into a trap. And he brands himself a “political hostage,” held on invented charges to secure concessions from the US.
Seven months after his release, White is now trying to reassemble his life in Mexico, unsure what comes next but eager to share his story.
“I don’t want the government of Iran to think that, ‘Oh, Mike White’s out of here, he’s going away, he’s going to be quiet,’” he said in a recent interview with the AP. “That’s not going to happen. Believe me, if only you understood the fear and anger inside of me as a result of what they did.”
The peculiar saga began in July 2018 when White flew to Iran to visit a woman he’d met years earlier in a Yahoo chat room and with whom he hoped to rekindle an on-off relationship that included two prior visits to the country. But the bond turned sour on the most recent trip when the woman stopped seeing him and encouraged him to return home earlier than he’d planned.
His 156-page manuscript says the men who arrested him drove him, blindfolded and handcuffed, to a building for questioning. His interrogator asked about his relationship with the woman, seeming to know details of her family, and telling White, vaguely, that some in Iran were concerned about his intentions there.
He was taken to what he calls the “intel jail,” where he says he was given no food for days, nor blanket or pillow even as the vent blew frigid air. The conditions were compounded, he says, by his cancer diagnosis that had resulted in chemotherapy treatment and hospital stays in the months before he left for Iran.
He was repeatedly interrogated over several months about why he’d come to Iran, as officials suspicious that he might be a spy handed him questionnaires focused on his military background—her served more than a decade as a Navy enlisted sailor—and any intelligence service connections. At one point, he writes, he fabricated a tale about being tasked to gather intelligence by an acquaintance he said was with the National Security Agency, figuring that interrogators wanted to hear something like that before setting him free.
“I was just saying something out of desperation, doing whatever to hopefully get them to just cut me loose,” he said in the interview. ”It turned out it wasn’t really helpful at all.”
The truth was more mundane, he says, albeit more difficult to comprehend: He was a “dumb American” pursuing love.
White, now 48, says he’s long been drawn to Iran’s culture and people and had felt safe there, connecting through social media to a network of acquaintances. He’d once thought of law school or entering politics, but at the time of his 2018 trip he hoped would recharge his life, he was working as a Job Corps resident adviser.
White struggles to reconcile his affection for the woman he perceived as his girlfriend — “Her voice melts me with its softness and tenderness. My heart flutters when I see her,” he writes — with the suspicion that he was somehow set up during his visit. His Instagram page reflects that ambivalence, with photos posted this year of them together.
“Sadly, I was lured into a trap, like a mouse trap. I was the mouse,” he writes. “I followed my heart instead of my head and missed signs.”
In jail, he writes, he was once awakened by a guard dumping a bucket of cold water on him. Another time, an interrogator snapped a whip on his toes as he completed a questionnaire. After White tossed water on a surveillance camera to get the guards’ attention, they pummeled him in the ribs and threw him to the floor, he writes.
He was relocated to another prison where some inmates tauntingly referred to him as “The Great Satan.” One placed a cockroach inside his pants pocket as a prank.
At the suggestion of a prisoner he befriended, he began the handwritten journal, writing it under the cover of playing Sudoku to hide it from the guards. He gave the pages to the prisoner who he says was able to smuggle them out through a cousin.
White ultimately faced various charges, including posting private images (the photos with his girlfriend), collaborating with the US against Iran and disrespecting Iran’s Supreme Leader. He was sentenced to 10 years, but calls the charges a pretext to “extort” concessions.
He insists he’s not a spy and never posted any inappropriate photos of his girlfriend. He writes in his manuscript that he has indeed made social media posts about Iran but denies having disparaged Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi.
An unexpected development came last spring as the coronavirus ravaged Iran. White, who was himself infected, was among thousands of prisoners released on medical furlough, permitted to live freely his last few months in Tehran in the Swiss Embassy’s custody while required to remain in Iran.
White isn’t sure what comes next. He had contemplated opening a Persian restaurant, but isn’t sure he’ll do that now. He likens his life to the aftermath of a city-flattening hurricane. “I’m just picking up the pieces, regrouping and trying to figure out how I’m going to move forward and stuff.”