Guests of the Ayatollah

had shut it down.

It was precisely what the Delta commander had feared: These pilots are determined to scuttle this mission. It had not been lost on the other commanders working with him, most of whom outranked Beckwith, that the pugnacious colonel regarded them all as inferiors, as supporting players. The pilots, the navigators, the aircrews, the fuel equipment operators, the rangers, the combat controllers, the spies in Tehran, even the generals back at Wadi Kena…they were all ordinary mortals, squires, spear-carriers, water boys. Their job was to serve Delta, to get his magnificent men in place for their rendezvous with destiny. All along he had been impatient and suspicious of the other services and units involved; they lacked experience, nerve, and skill. They were screwups. He had little appreciation of the heroic difficulties they faced—indeed, most of the mission planners regarded getting Delta in and out of Tehran as the hardest piece of the job—so now, when things began to go sour, Beckwith felt not just disappointment and anger, but contempt. These piddling, gutless amateurs—the colonel was a master of the blunt, insulting adjective—were stepping on his glory. They weren’t getting him there! He oozed scorn.

When he found Kyle, he bellowed, “That goddamn number two helo has been shut down! We only have five good helicopters. You’ve got to talk to Seiffert and see what he says. You talk their language—I don’t.”

Beckwith didn’t see mechanical problems; he saw faltering courage in the pilots. He said as much to Kyle, grumbling that the flyers were looking for excuses not to go.

The comment burned the air force officer, who had been contending for months with Beckwith’s gruff hauteur. He knew better than to argue with him. The helo captains had the same kind of responsibilities as Beckwith, and Kyle better understood their concerns. They were responsible for getting their own crews in and out safely, not to mention themselves. No one knew their machines as well as they did, because they literally bet their lives on them every time they flew. Seiffert had made his decision. One of the hydraulic pumps on McGuire’s chopper was shot and they had no way to fix it. Kyle asked if it would be possible to fly with just the remaining one, and Seiffert had told him emphatically, “No! It’s unsafe! If the controls lock up, it becomes uncontrollable. It’s grounded!”

When Fitch returned from rounding up the rest of his men, he was surprised to find that his second in command, Captain E. K. Smith, was still waiting with his squadron in the dust. He told Smith to get the men on the choppers.

“The mission is an abort,” said Smith.

“What do you mean, it’s an abort?”

“Colonel Beckwith said it’s an abort,” said Smith. He explained that McGuire’s chopper was damaged and couldn’t fly. This contradicted what McGuire had told Fitch, that the chopper was damaged but flyable. Beckwith was such a hothead that it was entirely possible he had said something like that with only half the story.

“E.K., I’m not doubting your word, but I’m going to see Beckwith about this,” he said.

The abort scenario, which they had rehearsed, called for Fitch and his men to board not helicopters but one of the fuel birds. The choppers would fly back to the carrier and the planes would return to Masirah. He told Smith to prepare the men to get on the plane but said to wait until he returned.

It wasn’t easy finding the colonel in the noise and swirling dust. One of the things they had failed to build into the plan was some kind of clearly defined rallying point or command center. It took some wandering, but Fitch eventually found Beckwith, huddled with Burruss, Kyle, and the other mission commanders, outside one of the C- 130s with a satellite radio.

“What’s going on?” Fitch shouted over the din.

“Well, Seiffert said that helicopter can’t fly, that it’s not mission capable, and we’re down to five,” Beckwith said, disgusted.

Kyle and the chopper crews said they were ready to proceed with five helicopters, but that would require trimming the assault force down by twenty men. Beckwith refused. “We all go or nobody goes,” he said.

The decision was passed up the chain to Washington, where Secretary of Defense Brown relayed the bad news to Brzezinski in the White House. The national security adviser, who only minutes earlier had been told all six choppers were refueling and the mission was proceeding as planned, was stunned. He quickly assessed what he knew and engaged in a little wishful thinking. He imagined Beckwith, who had been so gung ho in his visit to the White House, fuming in the desert, eager to proceed but stymied by more cautious generals in the rear. He wanted Brown to ask the commanders on the ground if they were prepared to go ahead with fewer than six choppers. Brzezinski urged Carter to have Brown at least raise the question.

In the din of Desert One, Beckwith, Kyle, Burruss, and the other commanders received Brzezinski’s request and reconsidered. It angered the colonel even to be asked; he felt as if his judgment and commitment were being questioned. Nevertheless, he asked Fitch, Burruss, and the others, “Can we make it with fewer aircraft?”

“Sir, we have been through this in rehearsals,” said Fitch. “Who are we going to leave behind?”

Some felt that they could trim the package and proceed. The new, more specific intelligence about the location of the hostages in the compound had eliminated the need for some of the searching they had planned to do, so maybe they could do it with fewer men.

But Beckwith didn’t like the odds. If they left behind the translators, who would talk them past the roadblocks in the city? If they got five choppers to the hide site, how likely was it that all five would restart the next day? If one or two refused to start, and another got hit—all likely scenarios that they had built into the plan—how were they going to airlift out all the hostages and his men? His plan was too finely wrought, too carefully calibrated between risk and opportunity to risk leaving anything out. It meant shifting the odds too greatly against his men, his beautiful creation, which he was not prepared to do. That was the conclusion they had reached in advance after repeated, calm deliberation. They had predetermined these automatic abort scenarios precisely to avoid having to make life-and-death decisions on the spur of the moment. This was clearly an abort situation. On their written mission schedule, just after the line “less than six helos,” was the word ABORT, and it was the only word on the page written in capital letters. Still, so much was at stake it was tempting to disregard their own prior assessment. To quit now might mean giving up on their only chance to carry out the mission. That was what many of them thought.

“If we don’t go now, we’re fucked,” said Major Long. “This is the last chance.”

But that might not be true. If they loaded up and left now, destroying the broken chopper with an incendiary grenade and scattering diversionary material that would make it appear to be a crashed Soviet chopper—they had brought some along—it was possible that their presence in the desert would go unnoticed, or at least be misunderstood, which meant they might be able to come back and try again in a few days. They could take the bus passengers back with them and hold them until the second try. Their disappearance would just be an unsolved mystery for a few days. The prospect of coming back and trying again argued for caution. Both Beckwith and his deputy commander, Burruss, concurred.

“I need every man I’ve got and every piece of gear,” said Beckwith finally. “There’s no fat I can cut out.”

As the dusty soldiers were making this decision in the Iranian desert, Brzezinski was breaking the news of the setback to Carter. Standing in a corridor between the Oval Office and the president’s study, Brzezinski whispered the news. Carter muttered, “Damn. Damn.”

Behind his study desk, Carter called the defense secretary. Brzezinski debated what to say. Having come this far, he didn’t want the mission scratched out of bureaucratic timidity. He sensed a historic chance and was inclined to urge the president to push his generals to proceed with only five helicopters. Convinced that Beckwith, out in the desert, would be feeling the same way, Brzezinski leaned across the desk and looked squarely at the president.

“You should get the opinion of the commander in the field. His attitude should be taken into account.”

Moments later, Brown received Beckwith’s final decision.

“Let’s go with his recommendation,” the president said. Carter then lowered his head and rested it on his arms for a few long seconds. The failure was catastrophic.

He and Brzezinski were then joined by a larger group of advisers, including Mondale, Jordan, Christopher, and Powell. Standing behind his desk in his small study, his sleeves rolled up, hands on his hips, the president told them, “I’ve got some bad news…. I had to abort the rescue mission. Two of our helicopters never reached Desert One—that left us six. The Delta team was boarding the six helicopters when they found out that one of them had a mechanical problem and couldn’t go on.”