Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

By this time, Carl Stiner had reached the conclusion that the two Combat Talons and the TWA 727 were no longer useful, and with Pentagon approval, released them. IIe then loaded up the rest of the force and headed to Cyprus, where he was later joined by David Long and his emergency support team. Stiner still had sufficient capability to conduct a rescue operation — and he still hoped that as this thing played out, an opportunity might present itself.

This was going to be far from casy. Beirut was a much tougher nut to crack than Algeria. Thirty passengers remained on the plane. Their location, at least, was known, but the nineteen taken off the plane earlier were almost impossible to locate. The armed militias that controlled south Beirut were now holding them in separate locations there (mostly in basements).

They might as well have been at the bottom of the sea.

Reliable intelligence information was scarce in Beirut in those days: U.S. national overhead systems (satellites) could not, for example, intercept militia communications, since they communicated by handheld, low- level frequency radios or by messenger. Far worse, the American intelligence network had been tragically blown after the recent kidnapping and torture of the CIA station chief, William Buckley. The U.S. had no choice but to assume that Buckley had revealed his network of agents and that they had all been 'neutralized.'

As soon as Stiner reached Cyprus, he called Reggie Bartholomew, the American ambassador in Lebanon, brought him up to date, and asked how JSOTF could help.

Though the two men had not seen each other in over a year, they knew each other well, having been together in 1983 and carly 1984 when the heaviest fighting had taken place in Beirut. The two men had been on the receiving end of many shellings and had met many times with the factional leaders now holding at least nineteen of the TWA 847 hostages. These experiences had built up considerable mutual respect.

'What I'd like you to do,' Bartholomew told Stiner, 'is fly over here with a couple of your people and a couple of people from the EST. Once you're in Beirut, we'll decide the best course of action. Then you can go back to Cypress and set things up.'

Stiner immediately loaded Lieutenant Colonel 'Pete,' the two ranking members of the EST team (one from the State Department and one from the CIA), and a SATCOM radio and its operators onto a helicopter and set off for Beirut. TWA 847 was clearly visible on the Beirut International Airport tarmac as they made their final approach to the landing pad near the Ambassador's residence.

Bartholomew's first priority, not surprisingly, was to keep TWA 847 under surveillance.

'We have a superb surveillance capability with us,' Stiner told him. 'As soon as I get back to Cyprus, I'll send it to you.'

Meanwhile, the rest of the team Stiner had brought with him from Cyprus, including the SATCOM and operators, stayed in Beirut with the Ambassador, so there'd be constant communication.

The surveillance team Stiner sent back to Ambassador Bartholomew consisted of four people, bringing with them day and night long-range surveillance capability. An hour after their arrival in Beirut, he had them positioned in a house on a ridge overlooking Beirut International Airport.

For the next several hours, this team was the sole source of intelligence on what was happening on TWA 847. But that night, the Amal militia downloaded the remaining hostages and crew and dispersed them within the south suburbs. There was no longer any way to know where any of the hostages were.

At this point, though they waited on Cyprus for an additional two weeks, Carl Stiner and JSOTF's role in the TWA 847 affair ended. Now it was up to negotiations between Syria, Iran, and the factional leaders (Washington also produced a number of diplomatic initiatives, but these also seem to have had little effect on the final outcome). Finally, Hafez Assad struck a deal, and the hostages were released to travel to Damascus, where they would be passed over into the hands of the American Ambassador.

It was a prestigious victory for Assad — at least in the Arab world — and a humiliating experience for Stiner and his companions.

In his words:

Watching the Red Cross vans carry the hostages out of Beirut towards Damascus was a bitter experience. We could not get out of our minds the certainty that we'd had the capability to do a rescue operation that would have been a piece of cake. But we failed to bring it off. We just never had the opportunity.If only three factors, all beyond our control, could have been changed, this situation might well have been different: One, we needed dedicated aircraft maintained at the same alert standard that we were.Two, we should have been launched as soon as we'd learned of the hijacking.Three, we needed the Algerian government to hold TWA 847 on the ground… and then to allow us to conduct a rescue operation.With all that in mind, as we flew back home, I decided to speak straight in the debriefing I'd very soon be giving to the Chairman and Joint Chiefs of Staff.The next day in the Pentagon I gave my debriefing. After going through the story in detail (which they were all pretty much aware of from my constant communications), I concluded with something like the following: 'Gentlemen, we should all be embarrassed by the failure we have just struggled through. In my mind, the consequences of failure of this nature are just as devastating as losing a major battle, especially politically.'We ought to be able to figure out that the terrorists understand better than we do the timing of the decision-making process here in Washington and the time required for launching and getting to where they have perpetrated their action — and that they are operating within that cycle. Consequently, we are always chasing our tail — and we always will be unless we do something about this situation.'We are the most powerful nation in the world, and if we cannot give this mission the appropriate priority — with dedicated lift assets — then we ought to get out of this business and quit wasting the taxpayers' money.'I realized that these were mighty big words for a person of my rank to be saying in this situation, but I felt I owed it to them and to my people in the Task Force.I also felt that General Vessey, the Chairman; General Shy Meyer, Chief of Staff of the Army; and General P. X. Kelley, commandant of the Marine Corps (whom I had worked for as his Chief of Staff of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, and whose Marines in Beirut had not long ago been killed by a terrorist with a truck bomb) understood clearly what I was recommending. I felt certain that they would, with the support of the other service chiefs, make it happen.And they did.Within the next months, C-141s, double-crewed, were placed on the same alert string as we were (though too late to affect the outcome of the events of October).This initiative, together with the latitude and authority already given to the Command to establish relationships and provide assistance to friendly nations who desired them, have proved very beneficial in the war against terrorism.

THE MEETING IN THE JOC

October 7, 1985: It was time to test the new initiatives.

Soon after Stiner arrived at the JOC, he learned the identity of the hijacked ship. It was the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro. The information came by way of a tantalizingly brief emergency message from the ship, which had been received by a radio station in Goteborg, Sweden. According to the message, a group of armed men had taken control of the liner off the coast of Egypt. And that was it. It was very little to go on, but enough to be able to figure out what forces would be required to 'take the ship down' — and to know that they needed to launch instantly.

Because this was a complex target, and because no one knew whether the takedown would be in a port or somewhere on the high seas, Stiner instructed J-3 (Operations Officer) Colonel Frank Akers to notify the commanders to prepare the following units for immediate deployment (Akers had already given them a heads- up):

• SEALs: Required assault teams, sniper teams, and special boat detachments. Since this was to be primarily a maritime operation, the Navy SEALs would play the leading role.

• Other selected personnel and special units: leaders, planners, and intelligence operators. Approximately twenty-five personnel.

• The Army special helicopter package: ten Blackhawks, six Little Bird gunships, and four Little Bird lift ships