On this mission I remained in constant radio contact with Major General Robert Weigand, who was stationed in Egypt and was accompanying the Egyptian 777 Force on an Egyptian C-130 to Malta to undertake a rescue operation for the hostages on the Egypt airliner. Bob had told me that the Egyptians had requested our assistance in breaching the airliner.
While we were readying our helicopters for assisting the Egyptians, Captain Bill Spearman showed up and said, 'Your friends want to see you down at the airfield VIP lounge.'
'What friends?' I said.
'Your Italian friends.'
'Bill,' 1 told him, 'I don't have time to fool with them. We've got a hijacking to contend with, and the Egyptians need our assistance.'
'You've got to go meet with them,' he insisted.
We went back and forth for a few more minutes, until I finally consented to go with him, but only for ten minutes.
And since I was uncertain about their mood, 1 decided to take along a couple Special Forces escorts for company.
When I walked into the lounge, four or five Italian senior officers (though not my three-star friend) jumped up and said, 'Welcome back! We knew you were coming!'
'How did you know that?'
'Because your plane used the same call sign as last time,' they said, smiling.
My concerns turned out to be far misplaced. The get-together was very jovial.
And then, as I was leaving, the Italians announced, 'We thought the operation with the ship went well; it was the politicians that screwed things up.'
Unfortunately, after readying a Blackhawk and two of our best breachers for the flight to Malta, it turned out we were not able to assist the Egyptians.
We learned later that a Libyan employee in the control tower at Malta had convinced the Maltese to stipulate that assistance could only be flown in by an Italian helicopter, knowing full well the time it would take to get clearance for such a mission from Rome. The Egyptians, meanwhile, went ahead with the operation. In the process, they used far more explosives than were necessary, resulting in the death of sixty passengers, making it the bloodiest hijacking up to that time.
CONSEQUENCES
My earlier fears about the capacity and responsiveness of the Italian judicial system proved to be misplaced. The Italian judicial authorities not only quickly brought the hijackers to trial, they widened their investigation, and were able to identify many others involved in the conspiracy that led to the hijacking of the
The following received sentences as indicated.
PLO officials deemed ultimately responsible:
• Abu Abbas: life in absentia
• Ozzudin Badrakham (a PLO accomplice): life in absentia
• Ziad el-Omar (a PLO accomplice): life in absentia
HIJACKERS
• Magied al-Molqi: thirty years
• Ibrahim Abdel Atif: twenty-four years
• Ahmed al-Hassan: fifteen years
• Abdullah Ali-Hammad: charges dropped; he was a minor at the time
ACCOMPLICES
• Youssef Saad: six years (for furnishing funds and weapons)
• Abdul Rahim Khalid: seven years (for furnishing funds and weapons)
• Mohammed Issa Abbas: six months, added to an existing seven years (for possession of weapons and explosives)
• Said Candura: eight months (for possession of forged passports)
Some years later, before I left active duty as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command, my wife, Sue, and I were invited to Egypt by the Egyptian Minister of Defense on behalf of President Mubarak. They invited me to review Egyptian special-operations capabilities and the assistance the United States could provide Egyptian forces in dealing with the terrorist threat then causing internal problems — terrorist attacks on tourist buses, bombings, and the like.
We could not have been treated better, and the follow-up to that visit has been beneficial to both countries.
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PANAMA: OPERATION BLUE SPOON
From JSOTF, Carl Stiner moved on to command the 82d Airborne Division, and from there, now a lieutenant general, he moved up to command the XVIII Airborne Corps — the Army's quick response force: Its lead elements could be 'wheels-up' within eighteen hours to go anywhere in the world. At the time, the Corps contained four divisions, two separate combat brigades, and an armored cavalry regiment: The 82nd Airborne Division, 101st Air Assault Division, 10th Mountain Division, 24th Mechanized Division, the 194th Armor Brigade, the 197th Infantry Brigade, and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
On August 5, 1989, while evaluating the 28th Infantry Division at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, during the division's annual summer training, Stiner took an afternoon off to fly to Fort Monroe, Virginia, for General Max Thurman's change-of-command and retirement ceremony. High-ranking officers from every service would be there, as well as key people from the Department of Defense and Congress.
Thurman, the TRADOC commander, was known as a man who got things done — who could successfully take on the toughest jobs. Some years earlier, when Thurman had been a two-star, the Army's recruiting program had been on the rocks, and a number of recruiters were facing courts-martial for untoward activities. General Shy Meyer, the Army Chief of Staff, had picked Thurman to straighten the mess out, and he had, in spades.
Since Stiner had to rush directly from the field to the aircraft, he had no chance to change out of his fatigues. This was just as well; he had to be back in Pennsylvania later that evening to supervise live-fire activities, which would prevent him from attending the evening reception; but he did not want to miss the ceremony itself, and the chance to celebrate his old friend's accomplishments. The two men had known each other since 1973, when Thurman had been the Commander of Division Artillery and Stiner the G-3 Operations Officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. They had served together again from August 1979 to March 1980, this time in the Pentagon, working for General Meyer (Thurman had been the Director for Program Analysis and Evaluation for the Army, while Stiner was the Exec for Staff Action Control).
After the ceremony ended, Stiner stood at the rear of the reviewing stand to greet General Thurman and apologize for missing the reception. 'Let's step over here for a minute,' Thurman replied. 'I have something I want to tell you. But let me get rid of these people.' He turned to other well-wishers waiting to shake his hand. 'I'll see you all over at the reception,' he told them, shooing them off. 'I have to talk to Carl Stiner for a couple of minutes.
