WASHINGTON — Robert Carswell, a Treasury Department official who played a crucial role negotiating for the 1981 release of 52 Americans held hostage in Iran, died July 22 at his home in Great Barrington. He was 87.
He had dementia, said his wife, Mary.
Mr. Carswell, a lawyer, worked for more than 40 years at the New York-based firm of Shearman & Sterling and advised clients such as Citibank and Georgia-Pacific. He also served under three Democratic presidents — John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Jimmy Carter — and was known in Washington for his negotiating skills.
After President Carter appointed him deputy treasury secretary in 1977, Mr. Carswell helped pull New York City out of an ongoing fiscal crisis, securing $1.65 billion in federal loan guarantees two years after the city had been near bankruptcy. He also aided in engineering a $1.5 billion government bailout — among the largest in US history — that saved the automaker Chrysler from bankruptcy.
He added a diplomatic role to his portfolio after a group of armed Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, taking more than 60 Americans hostage in protest of friendly US treatment of the country’s deposed shah.
Following orders from Carter, he devised a series of regulations to freeze several billions of dollars in Iranian gold and bank assets. On travels to Europe and Asia, he had mixed success encouraging other countries to join the economic sanctions on Iran.
The sanctions and asset freeze did not immediately work. Several of the hostages were freed days after the embassy was taken, but negotiations dragged on for five months, with Iran at one point asking for a $24 billion sum that included the government’s frozen assets and the assets of the late shah, who had died in exile in Egypt.
A deal was finally struck after 444 anxious days that consumed the nation and, according to Carter’s advisers, was a major reason the president lost his reelection bid in 1980. The hostages were freed just as Ronald Reagan took office.
Pieced together by Mr. Carswell and other State and Treasury Department officials — and with the help of Algerian mediators — the $8 billion deal unfroze Iranian assets and created a legal path to resolve claims made against Iran by American banks, companies, and individuals. Undisputed claims made by US banks were paid immediately, and billions from the $8 billion package were earmarked for disputed claims awaiting arbitration.
Mr. Carswell, who negotiated directly with several US banks involved in the deal, told The New York Times that it was ‘‘probably the most complex financial transaction in history.’’
‘‘And boy,’’ he added, hours after the hostages left Iranian soil, ‘‘am I glad it’s over.’’
Robert Carswell was born in Brooklyn. His father, William, a Scottish immigrant, was an appellate division justice of the New York Supreme Court and dean of Brooklyn Law School.
Mr. Carswell played on Harvard’s varsity soccer team and edited the Harvard Crimson’s sports section. He earned a bachelor’s degree in government and economics in 1949. He graduated from Harvard Law School three years later.
With Shearman & Sterling, he oversaw the initial public offering for the Ford auto company in 1956 — ‘‘a crucial but not very glamorous job,’’ as he later put it. At the time, it was the largest IPO in US history.
He was named special assistant to Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon in 1962. After the assassination of President Kennedy one year later, he represented the Secret Service — then a Treasury agency — before the Warren Commission, which was charged with investigating Kennedy’s death. Mr. Carswell later advised the Clinton White House on presidential protection issues.
His wife of 59 years, the former Mary Wilde, was a past executive director of the MacDowell Colony, an artists’ haven in New Hampshire. He also leaves two children, Kate of Santa Fe and Carswell of Hadley; and two grandsons.
