I’m a big fan of Mark Bowden’s classic book Black Hawk Down, and also enjoyed his book Killing Pablo, about the criminal empire of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Power Line reports that Bowden has a book coming out in May about the Iranian hostage crisis.

Scott Johnson asked Bowden what role Iran’s current president played in the takeover, if any. John:

Bowden told me that his reporting establishes that [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad was one of the central figures in the student group that planned the seizure and took over the American embassy. Initially Ahmadinejad supported the takeover of the Soviet embassy, but he changed his view when Khomeni endorsed the takeover of the American embassy the evening of the takeover.

Given his position with the student group, Bowden surmises that Ahmadinejad was one of its ringleaders. Moreover, he was identified as one of the group’s ringleaders by every one of the dozen or so hostage takers Bowden interviewed in Tehran last year before Ahmadinejad became president. (Bowden disregards as ambiguous the photograph of the Ahmadinejad lookalike with a hostage.)

This is further confirmation of what we already pretty much knew, but it means a lot to me coming from a journalist as careful and thorough as Bowden.

I’m looking forward to the book. I’m not looking forward to our country’s having to deal with Ahmadinejad.