desk drawer and hid it someplace else. Then he offered it to Limbert.
They arranged for a drop in the bathroom. Late at night Limbert would wait until Belk had gone to the bathroom, and then immediately ask to go himself. That way he was ushered in right behind the tall State Department communicator, who had left the radio tucked behind a radiator on the floor. Limbert returned with it bundled under the waist of his pants. He unzipped the sofa cushion he used as a pillow and hollowed out a small place in the foam. With the radio nestled there, he could lay with his ear close to the speaker and play it quietly enough so that the guards couldn’t hear. To preserve the batteries, he would switch it on for news reports only when he napped at two in the afternoon, at eight in the evening, and then again at midnight.
He wrote Belk a note, complimenting him on his “marvelous coup!”
6. A New and Mutually Beneficial Relationship
With a secret process in place to secure the hostages’ release, the Carter White House subtly changed its tone. There was no more talk of sanctions, blockades, and punitive strikes, and instead came reminders of shared interests, particularly of the danger posed by the Soviet armies just over the border. The threat of a Russian move toward Persian Gulf oil fields was of course a tremendous anxiety, not just in Iran but throughout the Western world. To reporters who knew nothing of the secret talks, the new strategy was, in the words of one pundit, “Talk softly and remind Iran of the Red Menace next door.”
Privately, the pieces seemed to be falling into place. Bani-Sadr was sworn in as president in late January by Khomeini and then named head of the Revolutionary Council. The odd-looking little Iranian with the pompadour, clipped mustache, and black glasses was now, at least on paper, the most powerful figure in the country next to Khomeini. In an early speech he referred to the hostage crisis as a “minor affair,” and suggested that a solution was within reach if the United States would only agree to cease meddling in Iranian affairs.
Patience was the message to the American people, who were still watching the days of captivity enumerated nightly on TV. For the time being, doing nothing was the best strategy, argued Carter’s press spokesman Jody Powell.
“Iran is on the verge of disintegration,” he said in a TV interview. “Nothing is the same from one day to the next. They are paying a terrible price for their fascination, their preoccupation with the hostages. The question arises of who in fact is determining the fate of Iran: Is it the Ayatollah Khomeini? Is it the Revolutionary Council? Is it this small group of terrorists who are holding the hostages? Meanwhile, the economy is in shambles. The military is in many ways nonexistent, and disorder and chaos increase every day.”
In his State of the Union address, President Carter emphasized that the United States was ready to be friends with Iran again, to form “a new and mutually beneficial relationship.”
“We have no basic quarrel with the nation, the revolution, or the people of Iran,” he said. “The threat to them comes not from American policy but from Soviet actions in that region.” Carter suggested that retribution was unlikely if the hostages were returned unharmed, but warned that “our patience is not unlimited.”
Although it now seemed happily less necessary, preparations for a rescue mission progressed. “Bob,” the CIA operative who had flown into Mehrabad Airport and breezed through customs a month earlier, had been in and out of the country several times in the previous month, shuttling from Tehran to Athens and Rome. Working with a wealthy Iranian exile who had volunteered to help, he had rented a warehouse and bought five Ford trucks and two Mazda vans to drive the assault force to the embassy from their hiding place south of the city on the second night of the mission. He had purchased material to form a wall of fake cargo at the back end of the truck in order to hide the force in case the vehicles were stopped and inspected at a checkpoint.
To solve the helicopter-refueling problem, Air Force Colonel James H. Kyle had arranged for three- thousand-gallon fuel blivits to be placed
Delta had been through several more full-dress rehearsals for the raid in the Utah, Nevada, and Arizona deserts. They were a mob of crusty, sunburned mountain men in blue jeans and T-shirts cadging supplies without explanation from every military unit in the region. All of the men assigned to the mission were given top priority but were not allowed to reveal what they were doing, which created confusing and sometimes very satisfying clashes with the regular military command. Major Jim Schaefer, one of the marine helicopter pilots, was told to report immediately with his crew to the
“I have to get the university baseball team on this airplane,” the officer said.
“No, I don’t think you’re going to do that,” said Schaefer.
“Sir, you don’t understand,” the navy man said firmly. “I am the navy liaison officer, and I’m in charge of this, and I have to bounce you off. We’ll get you on the next available flight.”
“
“Sir, the flight is closed. I’m going to have to do this.”
“This flight is not leaving without me,” said Schaefer.
On the airport wall was a poster with the photograph of the base’s commanding general. The poster welcomed all comers to Clark Air Force Base and invited anyone with a problem to call the commanding general directly. Schaefer called.
After a series of conversations, during which certain orders and their priority were clarified, Schaefer was connected to the general at home at three o’clock in the morning.
“This is Major Jim Schaefer,” he said. “I’ve got a little problem down here at the terminal and I saw your sign offering to help. General, would you help?”
The general drove directly to the terminal. He was wearing a flowery tropical shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. He looked, Schaefer thought, exactly as the commanding general of a Philippines air force base should look.
“Who’s Major Schaefer?” the general asked.
“I am, sir.”
Schaefer showed him the letter giving him his orders. The general, suddenly wide awake, told the naval liaison officer, “Lieutenant, release that airplane, now.”
Training sessions in the western American deserts created their own local stir. The region was sparsely populated, and the rescue force did its best to stay out of sight during the day, but there were bound to be run-ins with the locals. Just before the holiday break, one of the helicopters on a night training run had unknowingly tried to snatch a Christmas tree from some local’s roof. The pilots oriented their choppers at night with flashing infrared markers on the ground, and when the training exercise was over they were required to retrieve them. They had a pincer attached to a rope and would hover over the flashing light, grab it, and haul it back aboard without landing. One night, when a pilot searching for his last marker found a blinking light, he hovered and lowered the aircraft over it and, before he could drop the rope, the light moved.
Confused, he decided to set the chopper down for a closer look, and suddenly the landing area was flooded with light. He was about to land on a house. The light had been blinking on a rooftop Christmas tree decoration. The downdraft from the choppers created winds in the 150 miles per hour range, considerably more than any visit by Santa’s nimble-footed reindeer, and the decoration had taken flight and landed somewhere out on the highway. The shocked home owner, no doubt alarmed by the sudden violent storm, had turned on the lights to investigate. The chopper pulled up and flew away. The unit sent someone out to the house the next day with a hundred bucks and an apology.
The Delta “operators,” as they called themselves, were hardly timid souls, but they were terrified by the
