These incidents clearly indicated that the United States was unprepared to deal with terrorist-created hostage situations.
To correct this shortfall, in the mid-70s, three farseeing people began lobbying for the creation of a special “elite” unit to deal with this unconventional threat: Lieutenant General Edward C. “Shy” Meyer, Director of Operations for the Army; Major General Robert “Bob” Kingston, Commander of the Army’s Special Forces; and Robert Kupperman, Chief Scientist for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, who was managing the government’s studies on terrorism.
The three initially made little headway. Scant support for the “elite” unit could be found among the services, and even within the Army, even though it was devastatingly clear that the technology in which the Army was investing so heavily—tanks, helicopters, air defense missiles, armored personnel carriers, and all the other machinery of the modern-day battlefield—was of little use against terrorists. The opposition stemmed primarily from two sources: a bias against elite units as such—elites have never been popular in the U.S. Army—and the perception that the unit would rob resources and available funds from the existing force structure.
On June 2, 1977, Lieutenant General Meyer presented the concept of this special mission unit to Army Chief of Staff General Bernard Rogers.
This unit was to be the premier counterterrorist force. Because it was expected to deal with the most complex crisis situations, it would have capabilities like no other military unit. It would be organized with three operational squadrons and a support squadron; and it was to be composed of handpicked men with demonstrated special maturity, courage, inner strength, and the physical and mental ability to react appropriately to resolve every kind of crisis situation—including imminent danger to themselves.
On November 19, 1977, the Army officially activated the unit, but it took another two years to develop the tactics and procedures required for the unit’s projected mission.
The unit’s final exam and validation exercise was held at Hunter Army Airfield at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and ended in the early-morning hours of Sunday, November 4. It was now certified for its special mission requirements.
IRONICALLY, just as the exercise was taking place, a mob was invading the American Embassy in Tehran. Moments later everyone inside—fifty-three people—became hostages to the new religious-led Iranian revolutionary government.
The crisis of the next 444 days challenged the United States as it had never been challenged before, and proved a horribly painful lesson in effective response to terrorist incidents. The nation was faced with risks, quandaries, contradictions, legal issues, other nations’ involvement, and sovereignty issues; and there were no easy solutions. We were presented with what was in fact an act of war, yet this “war” was on a scale that made the use of heavy weapons either impractical or overkill. And besides, there were hostages. We wanted to do something to turn the situation to our advantage.
But what?
In terms of shooters and operators, the unit was probably the most capable unit of its kind in the world, but it did not yet have the necessary infrastructure to go with it—no command organization, no staff, no combat support units. To make matters more frustratingly complex, the intelligence infrastructure necessary for support of rescue operations did not exist in Iran, either.
Meanwhile, President Jimmy Carter—sitting very uncomfortably between a rock and a hard place—decided that an operation to rescue the fifty-three hostages had to be attempted. Army Special Forces had to be the centerpiece of any rescue in Iran.
The obvious model was the Israeli raid on Entebbe. A brilliantly planned, led, and executed operation... yet only a marginally useful model. The difficulties of a raid into Tehran were incomparably larger. The Entebbe raid was made against an airfield. The raiders could land there quickly, and make their move against the terrorists almost before they themselves had been detected. Tehran was a major metropolis, with a population in the millions, and it was hundreds of miles inside a vast and hostile country. Getting inside Tehran and into the embassy undetected and with sufficient force to do any good presented many problems.
Major General James Vaught was picked to head the rescue operation. He had a capable Special Forces Unit, but that was all he had. He literally had to begin from scratch to create an effective headquarters for command, control, and intelligence support functions—to select and train a competent staff, develop a plan, select the support units, and train the force for the mission.
If Special Forces could get to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, they were certainly capable of conducting the rescue operation, but getting them there and back was the challenge. It meant the establishment of staging bases in countries willing to support American efforts and of a support infrastructure within Iran itself. This required, first, an airfield for transloading the rescue force from C-130s to helicopters, which would then take the force on to a landing site near Tehran and back; and second, trucks in waiting near the landing site.
Also required were C-130s and crews that were capable of flying “blacked-out missions” into sites in the desert at night, and a reliable helicopter unit that could take the rescue force from the transload site to Tehran and back.
No units capable of performing this mission existed in any of the services. Jim Vaught had to form, equip, and train them.
It was a daunting challenge to develop in very little time the individual-and unit-level proficiency required to accomplish the job—for example, flying with night-vision goggles had never been done before—and Jim Vaught was the right man for the mission, but the units, equipment, and crews available were at best only marginally capable of taking it on.
Even more difficult was the establishment of an intelligence and support mechanism inside Iran. Vaught did this partly with CIA support, but primarily by using his own assets, sending his own people into Iran to prepare the way. His plan called for establishing an intelligence support infrastructure in Tehran whose function was to verify that the hostages were being held in the Chancery, a ninety-room structure on the Embassy compound, and to arrange for trucks to be waiting near the helicopter landing site for transporting the unit, and later the hostages, back and forth between the landing site and the Embassy compound. This mission was accomplished by Major Dick Meadows, three Special Forces NCOs, and two agents provided by the CIA.
On April 1, 1980, a one-legged CIA pilot in a small two-engine plane flew Major John Carney into Iran at night. Carney’s mission was to locate and lay out a 3,000-foot landing strip on a remote desert site in Iran called Desert One. This was to serve as the transload site for the shooters, as well as the refueling site for the helicopter force that would join them after they had been launched from the aircraft carrier Nimitz. The force was composed of eight Navy Sea Stallion helicopters—not the right aircraft for the job, but the best available in terms of range and payload.
Carney laid out the strip with the help of a small Honda dirt bike he brought on the plane. Once the field was established, he installed an airfield lighting system that could be turned on remotely from the cockpit of the lead C-130 (a duty he himself performed on the night of the landing).
On April 24, 1980, 132 members of the rescue force arrived at a forward staging base on Masirah Island near Oman. There they transloaded to C- 130s for the low-level flight to Desert One.
That night, the C-130s made it to the Desert One area with no unusual problems, but the helicopters did not arrive as scheduled. Of the eight Sea Stallions, six operational helicopters finally arrived at the desert landing strip an hour and a half late, after an encounter with a severe unforecasted sandstorm. The other two had had mechanical problems before reaching the sandstorm and had returned to the Nimitz. Six Sea Stallions were enough to carry out the mission—but only barely. If another was lost, then some part of the rescue force would have to be left behind, which was not a good idea. All of the force was essential.
Meanwhile, that hour-and-a-half de
lay made everybody nervous. The helicopters had to leave in time to reach the secluded landing site near Tehran before daylight.
The mission’s luck did not improve. During refueling, one of the six remaining helicopters burned out a hydraulic pump. And now there were five—not enough to complete the mission—and it was too late to reach the hide site.
At that point, the decision was made to abort the mission. It was a choice no one wanted to make, but no other choice was possible.
And then came tragedy.
After refueling, one of the helicopters was maneuvering in a hover in a cloud of desert dust, following a flashlight to a touchdown location. The helicopter pilot thought the man with the flashlight was a combat ground controller, when in fact he was not. He was simply a man with a flashlight—possibly a C-130 crew member checking out his aircraft. Meanwhile, the helicopter pilot expected the man with the flashlight to be holding still. In fact, he was moving, trying to get away from the dust storm thrown up by the helicopter’s blades. This combination of mistakes resulted in the helicopter veering so close to a C-130 that its blades clipped the C- 130’s wingtip and ignited the fuel stored there, instantly setting off a flaming inferno. In moments, five men on the C-130 and three men on the helicopter were killed.
The commander of the helicopters then elected to abandon all the helicopters rather than risk further disasters. Everyone who wasn’t then on a 130 scrambled aboard, and the best America could muster abandoned the Iranian desert site in shocked disarray.
THE nation suffered a devastating humiliation. Burned and abandoned American equipment littered the desert. Eight Americans had died. The American hostages remained locked up in Tehran. America’s enemies laughed.
This failure weighed heavily on the troops who had trained so hard and risked their lives in Iran, all of whom believed that if they could have gotten to Tehran, they could have done the job they’d been sent to do. The failure had in no way been their fault, but the fault of the men who had thrown them together so unprepared and underequipped.
The consequences of the Desert One failure included two key actions that would greatly transform the U.S. special missions capability in the future. First, two days after the failed mission, President Carter ordered the Pentagon to prepare a second rescue mission. Carter additionally ordered the Secretary of Defense to make sure that this time the mission had all the resources it needed. Second, the Secretary of Defense appointed an investigative panel, chaired by the former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral James L. Holloway, to examine the Iranian hostage rescue attempt, and to make appropriate suggestions for improving future capability. The panel would recommend that a standing joint task force be established as a national-level asset, with its own headquarters, forces, and necessary capabilities for effective and responsive operations.
In August, Major General Richard “Dick” Scholtes became commander of a new organization, the JSOTF, and was given the mission for the second attempt at rescuing the hostages, code-named HONEY BADGER. The planning and training were soon underway, and featured serious improvements over the previous attempt. For example, modified Army Blackhawks would now fly the mission, with much greater reliability and range than the Navy RH- 53 Sea Stallions that had been used before. Several operational options were worked on, though again with a scarcity of solid intelligence (it was later learned from released hostages that on the date planned for the rescue attempt less than five percent of the hostages were where the intelligence community thought they were).
On President Ronald Reagan’s Inauguration Day, January 20, 1981, the final rehearsal was being conducted at the training site in Texas when it all suddenly became moot. Word came in that the hostages had been released. The mission was no longer needed.
The United States military had had nothing to do with it. Rather, Iraq’s invasion of Iran on September 22, 1980, had persuaded Iran that its national survival was at stake—and that it needed the $12 billion in assets frozen by the Carter administration (including major weapons systems purchased by the Shah) more than it needed the hostages. Iran made the initial moves to free the hostages—timing it to become a political issue in the upcoming election, because they expected a better deal from a Reagan administration. It worked. Though they did not get all $12 billion, the $8 billion they did get was not milk money.
Meanwhile, the training and preparation for Operation HONEY BADGER had greatly improved the readiness and capability of the units involved. Its cancellation would now allow Dick Scholtes to devote his full time and attention to future readiness.
In the days ahead, readiness and capabilities would grow enough for them to begin responding effectively to mission taskings from Washington. For example, an intelligence report that a prison camp in Laos still contained a number of American POWs from the Vietnam war sparked preparations for a covert rescue operation that would require the development of specific tactics, techniques, procedures, and special equipment.
These were developed and rehearsed as part of a very complex plan, involving the seizure of an airfield in a friendly country, from which the rescue would be launched. Before the launch, however, Dick Scholtes, a cautious man and a realist, asked for “U.S. eyes on the target” to validate the intelligence report. Not only did he want U.S. eyes, he wanted his own people to accompany the CIA’s people. This did not happen. Instead, the Agency sent a bunch of their guys (none of them American) into Laos. Though they came back with hundreds of pictures, none showed anyone who could be verified as American. Scholtes continued to insist on sending his own people in to recon the site, but permission for this could not be obtained, and the mission eventually went away.
Even so, efforts were not wasted. Once again, not only was the training useful, but the tactics, techniques, and equipment that had been developed specifically for the mission would remain useful.
Later, unwittingly looking forward to October 1985, the Norwegian government, concerned about the emerging terrorist threat and the possible vulnerability of its cruise liner industry, wondered if the United States had the expertise to “take down” a large luxury liner at sea. To find out, they provided the cruise liner Norwegian Princess as a training aid.
JSOTF expertly demonstrated they knew how to perform the task with panache—and in darkness.
ON October 25, 1983, JSOTF took part in Operation URGENT FURY—the invasion of Grenada—in association with a larger force under the command of CINCLANT (Commander in Chief, Atlantic). URGENT FURY’S overall mission had three goals: to rescue American students at Grenada’s Medical University just outside the capital, St. George’s; to rescue the former governor general, who was being held under house arrest by the new Cuba-backed leftist regime; and to prevent the use of the island by the Cuban or Soviet military. The mission included taking over the entire island. It was not a well-run operation.
Though JSOTF was committed to URGENT FURY, the commitment came very late—too late to plan, prepare, and train appropriately. This problem was compounded by intelligence foulups.
As Dick Scholtes recalls: “Changes in command and control and in missions over the course of the days immediately before H-hour (the time of the attack) drove us very close to a major catastrophe on that island.
“At the start, on Thursday the twentieth, we were to run the mission unilaterally. Then, on Friday, CINCLANT was put in charge, with only a JSOTF involvement. Then, on Sunday, the Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up, a giant blow to the spirit of the Marine Corps, and this led again to major changes: During a command briefing at the Pentagon, the Commandant of the Marines announced to the Chairman (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) that unless the Marines joined the attack on the island, the Corps would never recover.
“Less than forty-eight hours before H-hour, the Marines had become involved in URGENT FURY, which meant that a totally new overall commander had to be appointed, Admiral Metcalfe. Three major command-and-control changes had been made in as many days.
“Mission changes
came just as fast and furious.
“On Monday, at the final briefing for Metcalfe, the Department of State (DOS) reps present announced that it was critical to seize the Richmond Hill Prison at H-hour—even though the DOS could not tell us who was in the prison, who we were to secure, and whether the guards were the good guys or the bad guys. ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ I told them. ‘Since we can’t ascertain who is in the prison and who are the good guys and the bad guys, we will make it a follow-up target.’ They insisted, so I asked for a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour delay to give us time to gather better information. The delay was disapproved. (We had also been asking for an 0200 nighttime H-hour, but with little success. Everyone would be landing in daylight rather than darkness.) We now had a major change in mission for one of our major assault units—and without adequate intelligence. This meant, among other things, that we had to change the Blackhawk loading on the C-5s that were already at Pope Air Force Base—not easy to do in the time we had.
“Later, we learned why no one would accept our request for an 0200 H-hour or for a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour delay. The DOS and the CIA had written a detailed plan for the seizure of the island. This plan included a seven-nation assisting force, which was to land at H+3 and then come under JSOTF control. These nations knew nine days before JSOTF was informed of the mission that the island would be invaded at 0500 on Tuesday, the twenty-fifth. There was no way we could have changed that.
“There were other intelligence mix-ups.
“For example, the intelligence community told us that all the medical students were located at the University’s True Blue Campus, which we targeted. They were not. More than half were at Grand Anse, about two miles away on the other side of the island. And to top it off, the president of the university had been visiting the DOS two days before we started the planning, and no one thought to ask him where to find the students.