Guests of the Ayatollah

be flying in blacked-out conditions wearing night-vision goggles, which were a technological miracle but which sharply reduced range of vision and could be worn for only thirty minutes at a time before causing severe eye strain. The pilots had to take turns wearing them on a long flight. Entering Iran stealthily called for maneuvering in darkness through mountain ranges flying low enough to avoid radar, which was often hair-raising. Landing and taking off in the desert stirred up dust storms that often meant flying blind. After the first dry run, one of the pilots begged off the mission. Beckwith wanted him court-martialled, calling him a “quitter” and worse, and though the pilot was not punished, he was forced to remain in isolation, for fear of leaking information. Eventually the entire navy squadron was replaced by marine pilots who lacked experience with the Sea Stallions but who had more experience flying missions over land, and in combat. This did not completely placate Beckwith and his squadrons, who had worked with veteran air force special-ops pilots whom they trusted and greatly respected. But this was a “joint op,” and the air force already had its piece of the mission, flying the fixed-wing aircraft. Beckwith suspected, rightly, that the marines were given the choppers to fly to satisfy their need for a role. The marines believed their pilots were at least as good as the air force’s, if not better, but there was no convincing “Charging Charlie.” As far as he was concerned, he was getting second-string pilots because the brass was less interested in success than in keeping things collegial in the Pentagon dining halls. This suspicion, that Pentagon politics was being given a higher priority than excellence, would continue to influence morale. Delta believed the men recruited to deliver them and fly them out were not in their league.

The biggest problem remained intelligence, specifically what in tactical parlance was called EEI (Essential Elements of Information). There was no CIA presence in Iran—the three agency officers were being held hostage. In a message to General Vaught after the Yuma exercise, Beckwith produced an alphabetized list of concerns.

My most critical EEIs remain unanswered. These are the vital questions which must be answered to reduce the current risk and accomplish our rescue mission: A. Are all the hostages actually in the embassy compound during the hours of darkness? B. Where and in what strength are check points along major routes in Tehran which lead to the embassy compound? C. What assistance and support can be provided to Delta by in-place assets? D. Who will drive the trucks if and when [they are obtained]? E. Are there any safe houses in the vicinity of the compound Delta could use prior to the actual rescue? F. What is the night time MO [modus operandi] of roving patrols and sentry posts in and around the compound? G. What is the strength of the enemy inside the compound during the hours of darkness? Can the enemy reinforce the compound? If so, in what strength?

As problems were identified, the number of mission planners at the Pentagon kept growing. They were crammed into a relatively small space, along with tables, chairs, filing cabinets, maps, and displays. Room 2C840 was off the chairman’s corridor, a ceremonial stretch of hallway lined with portraits of the lengthening line of men who had served as chairman of the joint chiefs. There was a cipher lock on the door to enter the outer office, and a second steel door inside with another cipher lock that led to the inner sanctum. It was a classic boiler-room environment, windowless, crowded, and noisy with conversation and ringing phones. The space was so cramped that it resembled the inside of a submarine, with exposed wires and pipes in the ceiling and wall-to-wall desks, safes, files, maps, and people. The air-conditioning didn’t work well, and about half of those in the room smoked. Briefings were held every morning and every afternoon for the chairman of the joint chiefs and the secretary of defense, Harold Brown, and in the afternoons Brzezinski usually sat in. Sometimes Hamilton Jordan stopped by. Brzezinski dominated the meetings, going on often at sometimes infuriating length about theoretical things that the nuts-and-bolts men in the room found irrelevant. The chairman, General Jones, was so soft-spoken and deferential that even when he spoke the men in the room sometimes couldn’t make out what he was saying. Brown would fiddle with his glasses and sometimes look at Jones imploringly, as if to say, Tell me what to do here. The goal was always to reach a point where Jones and Brown felt comfortable that the mission had a reasonable chance of success, and day after day it was clear that they were still a long way from that goal.

The mission posed problems that seemed insoluble, but giving up was not an option. Early on, one of the officers involved tried to capture the improbability of the exercise with a list of “requirements” and “conditions,” all of them true.

Requirements

1. Fly 15,000 miles around the world—850 miles of it in Iran.

2. Enter into Tehran undetected.

3. Breach the embassy and rescue the hostages.

4. Return the hostages without harm.

5. Don’t hurt any civilians, Iranian or otherwise.

6. Rescue the three Americans at the Foreign Ministry simultaneously.

7. Do not permit the Iranian forces to be aware of or react to our presence.

Conditions

1. No country will help you.

2. You must invent the force to do the job. It does not now exist.

3. The operation could go in ten days and you must always be ready to execute in ten days.

4. The entire training program must be kept secret—not only from the public but from most of the services themselves.

5. There will be no money directly provided for the program.

6. Most service points of contact cannot be directly approached.

7. The entire operation must take place in darkness.

Beckwith did away with the fifth of the “requirements.” At one of the early briefing sessions, as he outlined the plan for assaulting one embassy gate, a high-ranking navy officer asked, “What about the guard?”

Beckwith was startled by the question and leaned his imposing mass across the table in the questioner’s direction, looking him squarely in the eyes.

“He will be taken out,” he said.

“You mean killed?” asked the officer, who seemed shocked.

Beckwith growled at him, “I’ll shoot him right between the eyes and then do it again just to make sure.”

The failure of the blivits meant that they would have to land large fixed-wing aircraft in the desert, which meant finding a location with hard enough soil and flat enough ground to serve as a makeshift runway. Some thought was given to simply seizing an airport outside Tehran, but that would have blown the surprise critical for Delta’s success.

By the end of the month a mission was taking shape. Sea Stallion helicopters would fly off the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the Arabian Sea. They would cross over into Iranian airspace at locations known to be uncovered by that country’s radar intercept system—Americans had designed it and built it, so they knew its weaknesses. Six choppers would fly to Desert One, an as yet unidentified rallying point in the desert. At the same time, six MC-130 transports equipped with sophisticated navigation and electronic countermeasure devices would fly from Wadi Kena, an airstrip in a remote corner of Egypt that had been built by the Russians a decade before. They would use the same secure flight path and land on a rudimentary strip that would have to be prepared by a clandestine mission in advance. The transports would carry Delta Force and the fuel bladders that had failed the drop test.

At Desert One, the spent choppers would be refueled from the bladders and boarded by Delta. The transports would take off and fly back out of Iran to prepare for return flights the following night, and the choppers would fly to secure locations outside of Tehran where they and the Delta assault force would be parked and hidden throughout the next day. Securing these hide sites was only one part of a mission that would be completed by Delta Force and CIA agents who would sneak into the country days before the rescue attempt.

On the second night, Delta would be driven to the embassy compound on trucks and carry out their assault. At the same time, a ranger company would take a little-used airport outside the city. A separate army special-