NONFICTION - June 28, 1987

HOSTAGE BOUND, HOSTAGE FREE by Ben and Carol Weir with Dennis Benson (Westminster: $12.95; 182 pp., illustrated). The Rev. Benjamin M. Weir says he survived the 495 days of his ordeal as a hostage in Lebanon by clinging firmly to his religious convictions, which enabled him to confront each hardship with equanimity.

But there is also bitterness and anger in this book, though they are not directed against the Shia fundamentalists who kept him in chains amid filth and the threat of death.

To Weir and his wife Carol, the real villains are the U.S. government and the American people who refuse to recognize the Arab frustrations that grow out of Washington’s “misguided” Middle East policy and find expression in kidnaping and terrorism.

Weir--the “Hostage Bound”-- and his wife--the “Hostage Free”-- present their experiences in alternate chapters, he offering the details of his captivity, she relating the family’s efforts to secure his release.

Weir’s abduction comes as a specially severe shock in view of the 31 years the couple spent in Lebanon engaged in Protestant religious and charitable work. Then came the struggle to maintain sanity and health under the terrors of confinement. There was the yearning for human contact, even if only with the guards, and the feelings of gratitude that sprang from small kindnesses, such as being given a toothbrush.

Carol Weir vents the frustrations she says she endured in her efforts to secure help from the Reagan Administration and prod it into entering into negotiations with her husband’s captors who sought the release of prisoners held in Kuwait for terrorist bombings. She was told repeatedly that the United States does not deal with terrorists, this at a time when Robert McFarlane and Oliver North were engaged in the Iran- contra affair.

The book offers only a clue as to the real reason for Weir’s release. It comes when McFarlane tells Mrs. Weir that “the government had spent millions” to secure Weir’s freedom on Sept. 15, 1985. Although no mention is made of this, that was just two weeks after the first planeload of U.S. arms were flown to Tehran under the secret deal engineered by McFarlane and his associates.