Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

By afternoon we had reached our window for reaching Cyprus at dusk. Before boarding the plane, I decided to check with Vice Admiral Moreau (whom Admiral Crowe had designated to work the details and to keep him informed) about what was going on in Washington, to find out if we were cleared into the military base on Cyprus, and to update him on our planning options for the takedown. I did this on the SATCOM, which my radio operator carried (he was always by my side).

Moreau had three messages: Efforts to locate the Achille Lauro were continuing, and the Israelis had been asked to help. The decision had been made to take the ship down; I would receive the 'Execute Order' soon. And approval had been granted by 'our friends to use Cyprus. [22] That had been expected, but it was good to know.

'We're launching now,' I told him, 'and are scheduled to arrive by dusk. If the ship can be found today, and it's within range of our helicopters, we might be able to do a takedown before daylight'

'Sounds good,' he replied. 'I'll pass it on.'

Next I decided to check with my liaison officer in Rome. 1 was glad to learn that he had established contact with Ambassador Rabb and was operating from the U.S. embassy. All the pieces were moving into place.

I boarded the plane and we launched. This involved staggering our launch times, which in turn allowed us to sequence our landing in order to accommodate the available ramp space at our destination. No more than four C- 141s and two C-5s could be on the ground off-loading at any one time.

ON BOARD THE ACHILLE LAURO

The Achille Lauro had set sail from its home port in Genoa, Italy, on October 3, 1985, with 750 passengers on board, for a seven-day voyage that would include a visit to Ashod, Israel. Most of the crew of 344 were Italian, while the passengers were an international mix of travelers.

On the morning of Monday, October 7, the 633-foot liner had docked at Alexandria, Egypt, to let off passengers who wanted to tour the Pyramids. The ship would loiter off the coast of Egypt and then come back that evening to pick up the passengers at Port Said before continuing the voyage to Israel.

Most of the ninety-seven passengers who had elected to stay behind were too elderly or infirm for a rigorous day among the antiquities. Among these was the sixty-nine-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, wheelchair-bound after two strokes. Klinghoffer was accompanied by his fifty-eight-year-old wife, Marilyn. There were ten other Americans.

During lunch, a pair of Arab-looking men burst into the dining room, firing machine guns in the air. Moments later, the passengers were all flat on the dining-room floor.

When they heard this commotion, the officers standing watch on the bridge were able to send the distress signal that the ship was being hijacked. This was the message received in Goteborg, Sweden, that had been monitored.

As all this was happening, two other Arab-looking terrorists were taking over the bridge. When the ship's captain, Gerardo de Rosa, arrived, the terrorist leader, Majed Molqi, ordered him to put the ship into radio silence and head for the Syrian port, Tartus, which was four-hundred miles away — punctuating his demand with a burst of machine-gun fire into the deck. Syria was a haven for terrorists, and Hafez Assad, the president, exercised considerable leverage over several terrorist organizations.

In all, there were four terrorists — not the twenty claimed by the terrorist leader. But they had the advantage of shock and surprise.

The terrorists, it was later learned, were PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) members. Their original plan had been to wait until the ship entered the Israeli harbor at Ashod, where they would take control of the ship. They would then hold the passengers hostage, while negotiating for the release of fifty other Palestinian terrorists who had been tried, convicted, and sentenced by Israeli courts. But things had not worked out according to plan. The four men had not behaved like normal cruise-liner passengers, a fact noted by an alert ship's steward, who figured lunchtime would give him an opportunity to check out the stateroom they occupied. What he found when he entered was the four men cleaning automatic weapons. Their only choice was to make their move.

When the Achille Lauro arrived off the port of Tartus Tuesday afternoon, the JSOTF was still flying to Cyprus. Though aircraft from the U.S. 6th Fleet were crisscrossing the eastern Mediterranean searching for it, no one other than a few on board the vessel had any idea where the cruise liner was until the terrorists announced their presence near Tartus, where they broadcast a request to land and a demand for the release of the fifty Palestinian terrorists. Their hope was that Syrian President Hafez Assad would provide them a sanctuary and a platform for negotiations. Their hope was misplaced.

Though President Hafez Assad remained friendly to terrorists, he was not at that time friendly to Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Front terrorists. Assad had fallen out with Arafat, and since Assad had by then identified the Achille Lauro hijackers as members of the PLO, he saw an opportunity to undermine Arafat.

Assad, taking advantage of the opportunity, refused this request.

The terrorists were now in a desperate situation, knowing that they were no longer hidden and increasingly vulnerable to an attack. To deter that, they arranged twenty hostages in a circle out on an open upper deck, visible to aircraft. One of the twenty hostages was Leon Klinghoffer. His wheelchair prevented him from ascending the stairs to the deck and joining the others. 'The terrorists ordered me to leave him,' his wife Marilyn reported later. 'I begged them to let me stay with him. They responded by putting a machine gun to my head and ordered me up the stairs. That was the last time I saw my husband.'

Majed Molqi then broadcast threats. Passengers would be killed unless he saw movement on his demands by 3:00 P.M.

At three, Molqi went to where Leon Klinghoffer had been left, moved him near the starboard rail, and shot him in the head and chest. Two of the ship's crew were ordered to throw the body overboard.

Afterward, Captain de Rosa was told to call this information to Tartus.

This message may have been picked up by the Israelis, because I was informed later that we had reason to believe someone had been killed, even though by that time the hijackers were claiming that all of the hostages were safe.

Meanwhile, the hijackers had picked another victim, Mildred Hodes.

Though Majed Molqi continued to demand action from Tartus, the Syrians continued to stall.

By this time, the PLO leadership had realized that matters were getting out of hand and it was time to institute damage control. Using a codename, 'Abu Khaled,' Abu Abbas, who was one of Yasir Arafat's chief lieutenants and a member of his executive council, broadcast a message over an Arab-speaking radio station, directing the terrorists to return to Port Said without harming the hostages.

The Achille Lauro set sail from the vicinity of Tartus somewhere around 4:30 or 5:00 P.M., to take advantage of the coming darkness. The ship again went into radio silence.

When the Achille Lauro first broke radio silence near Tartus, the JSOTF was about midway into its flight to Cyprus, and I was being kept abreast of the intercepted communications between the terrorists and the Tartus port authorities by Vice Admiral Morcau at the Pentagon. At the same time, our liasion officer in Rome was keeping me up to date on developments within the Italian government.

What I learned was that Ambassador Rabb had met with Italian Prime Minister Craxi, Foreign Minister Andreotti, and Defense Minister Spadolini to explain that President Reagan was pleased at the Italian governments collaboration during the hostage crisis, but the U.S. government had learned authoritatively that an American citizen had been murdered and others had been threatened, and that this was 'untenable.' Rabb stated further that the U.S. government was absolutely unwilling to undertake negotiations, and had decided to attempt a military rescue operation some time Wednesday night.

Meanwhile, the Achille Lauro had vanished again; and again, 6th Fleet aircraft lost it.