VOA Correspondent Kane Farabaugh conducted numerous interviews with Jimmy Carter on issues ranging from his time in the White House to his post-presidential career as a promoter of global health and democracy. Highlights of those interviews are contained in this report.
Former President Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer and Georgia state governor before becoming president, has died at the age of 100.
When Carter took the oath of office as president of the United States on January 20, 1977, he promised a “government as good as its people.”
He presided over four turbulent years. Rising inflation and growing unemployment marred the domestic priorities of his administration. He scored victories in foreign policy with a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel and the Panama Canal treaty. However, a hostage crisis in Iran dominated his final years in the White House and contributed to his defeat in the 1980 general election.
But Carter liked to say the end of his presidency in 1981 was the beginning of a new life, traveling the world “fighting disease, building hope, and waging peace.”
“It has turned out to open up for me and my wife, Rosalynn, a new arena of excitement and unpredictability and adventure and challenge and gratification,” he told VOA.
As the head of the Carter Center, the Carters traveled to more than 80 countries monitoring troubled elections, mediating disputes, and fighting diseases. This active post-White House life eventually led to the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
“I look upon the Carter Center work as an extension of what I tried to do as president. You know, we brought peace between Israel and Egypt. We opened up a humongous relationship with Latin America with the Panama Canal treaty,” he said. “So what I have done since then has been kind of an extension. But I do not think there is any doubt that when I won the Nobel Peace Prize, for instance, it was because of the work of the Carter Center. So, I would be perfectly satisfied to have a legacy based on peace and human rights. I mean, who would not?”
Carter’s journey to the White House began in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he was born October 1, 1924.
After serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy, where he helped develop the post-World War II nuclear submarine fleet, Carter returned to his hometown in 1953 to run the family peanut-farming business.
He entered politics in the 1960s, serving two terms as a Georgia legislator before becoming the state’s 76th governor from 1971 to 1975.
In the 1976 presidential election, Carter, a Democrat, ran against Republican incumbent Gerald Ford, who assumed the presidency after Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Carter narrowly defeated Ford to become president.
The high point of Carter’s presidency came in 1978. Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the Camp David presidential retreat in rural Maryland to negotiate a peace treaty.
“When I became president, there had been four wars between Arabs and Israelis in the previous 25 years, with the Egyptians in the leadership supported by the Soviet Union,” he said. “They were the only country that could really challenge Israel militarily. And we had success in getting a treaty between Israel and Egypt … not a word of which has ever been violated.”
Carter also negotiated a treaty turning control of the Panama Canal over to the Panamanian government and normalized diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
But in 1979 the primary focus for Carter’s administration turned to Iran, where a revolution led by religious clerics toppled the government of the U.S. backed shah, who eventually fled to the United States, where he received treatment for cancer.
On November 4, 1979, militants angry with the U.S. for harboring the deposed shah, stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage, 13 were released weeks later.
Five months into the crisis, in April 1980, Carter authorized a complex military operation to free the remaining hostages. Dubbed Operation Eagle Claw, the plan called for several helicopters and military aircraft to stage at a site in the Iranian desert. Carter, who approved the plan, explained to VOA that the helicopters carrying members of the U.S. military’s elite Delta Force, were to fly from there to the U.S. embassy in Tehran, free the hostages and return to the waiting aircraft that would fly them out of Iran.
“The minimum number of helicopters required would be six very large helicopters. So I decided to send eight. One of the helicopters, in an inexplicable way, turned around and went back to the aircraft carrier. Another one went down in a sandstorm in the Iranian desert. The third one developed a hydraulic leak and ran into one of the C-130 airplanes,” he said.
The aborted mission ended in failure. Eight U.S. military members and one Iranian civilian died as a result of the crash. Walter Mondale, Carter’s vice president, told VOA that day was the lowest point of their administration.
“When that rescue mission failed and lives were lost. I mean, that was just … we were just morose that day and for some time after that,” Mondale said. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned in protest of the operation.
The failure of the mission damaged Carter’s credibility with the American public. The incident occurred seven months before the 1980 presidential election and contributed to Carter’s defeat to challenger Ronald Reagan.
“The exact anniversary of the hostages being taken was Election Day,” Carter said. “Of course, the news media were completely obsessed with the anniversary of the hostages being taken and the fact that I had not been able to get them out. That was the number one issue that caused me to fail.”
The hostages were freed the day Reagan became president.
In 1981, Carter returned to Plains, unsure about the direction of his post-presidential life. His plans for a library and museum were initially modest.
“I envisioned it to be a tiny thing, where I would have an office and some nice buildings in Atlanta. And that anyone in the world that had an ongoing conflict or potential conflict could come to me and I would help them mediate the dispute and stop a war,” he said.
The Carter Center, under his direction, monitored more then 80 troubled elections and mediated disputes ranging from a nuclear standoff with North Korea in 1994, to a peace agreement between Uganda and Sudan in 1999. The center is also a leader in promoting health and fighting disease in the poorest parts of the planet.
In one of many interviews with Voice of America, Carter reflected on his life in and out of the White House. He said the greatest part of his legacy wasn’t his accomplishments as president or the Nobel Peace Prize, but the eradication of Guinea worm disease.
“There’s only been one disease in the history of humankind, ever eradicated, and that was smallpox,” he said, “So Guinea worm is going to soon be the second disease in history, to be wiped off the face of the earth.”
Thanks to Carter’s efforts, there were only 13 cases of Guinea worm recorded in 2022.
Carter led an active life until the age of 99, surviving brain cancer in 2015.
Declining health and the 2020 global coronavirus pandemic kept him confined to his hometown of Plains in his final years.
Jimmy Carter last appeared in public during funeral services for his wife, Rosalynn, in November 2023.
In one of his last public media appearances, Carter shared with VOA his hopes for the Carter Center’s future.
“I would like to see the United States in the future strive to be the number one champion in the world of peace and human rights and environmental quality, and I would say treating everyone equal,” he said. “If we could do that, we would have a real superpower in the country I love very much.”
Jimmy Carter lived the longest of any occupant of the White House, and his 76-year marriage to wife Rosalynn is the longest of any president and first lady.
Though his final resting place will be on the grounds of his home in Plains, Georgia, the work and the words of Carter live on in the pages of the dozens of books he authored throughout his life. It includes his memoirs, a fiction novel, controversial examinations of the Middle East, and a collection of his favorite poems.
