Night Fighter

by Hamilton, William H. ; Sasser, Charles W. ;

  In late 1977 on a remote twenty-seven-acre site in North Carolina near Fort Bragg, the U.S. Army conducted a “coming out” exercise for a group of “special soldiers.” The mission/demonstration exercise that midnight for Delta Force under the command of Colonel Charles Alvin Beckwith was to rescue hostages simultaneously from a hangar and a commercial aircraft seized by “terrorists.”

  While government and military dignitaries watched, Delta soldiers blew hinges off doors, cleared rooms, took down the aircraft, “killed” or captured terrorists and rescued hostages—all within thirty seconds.

  The nation’s first specifically tasked counterterrorism unit was up and operational.

  Delta Force owed its origins to the jungles of Vietnam in 1965. Colonel Bill McKean, CO of 5th Special Forces Group, assigned Captain Charles Alvin Beckwith to form a special unit within the group called Project DELTA, or Detachment B-52. Its mission was to conduct long-range reconnaissance, venture out ahead of divisions or brigades to look the country over and test the water. It was also tasked with bomb damage assessments, hunter-killer missions, and special-purpose raids. The job was so hairy that Beckwith’s Detachment B-52 initially ended up with only seven volunteers.

  Beckwith distributed flyers to other SF teams in-country:

  Wanted: Volunteers for Project DELTA. Will guarantee you a medal, a body bag, or both.

  Colonel McKean scoffed. “You won’t get a swinging dick.”

  He underestimated the nature of men who gravitate toward special forces. Beckwith was inundated with replies within a week of stuffing flyers into mail sacks going out to the ninety or so Green Beret A-team detachments in-country.

  Three years previously, beginning in 1962, Beckwith pulled a year’s duty with Britain’s 22nd Special Air Service Regiment in an exchange program between SAS and the Green Berets. The SAS was organized in World War II to operate deep behind enemy lines—to disrupt, collect intel, sabotage, assassinate, and work with indigenous peoples. It required skills not expected of ordinary soldiers.

  After the war the SAS penetrated deeply into the Malaysian jungle to hunt down and defeat a large, well-armed communist guerrilla force known as MRLA, Malayan Races Liberation Army. Having been unable to gain power by political means, the MRLA turned to terrorism in accordance with Chinese general Sun-Tzu’s prescription to “kill one, frighten a thousand.”

  The guerrillas were trying to make a comeback in 1962 when Beckwith linked up with the SAS. Operating in Malayan jungles with the Brits, he contracted such a severe case of leptospirosis that he was not expected to survive—but eventually recuperated.

  Three years later, Project DELTA in Vietnam was a result of some of the skills he learned from SAS about counterterrorism and operating within the enemy’s own yard. A 50-cal slug from a North Vietnamese machine gun put him out of action before he had a chance to try out all his ideas in the field. Again he was not expected to survive—and again he beat the odds and recovered.

  He refused to give up what he learned from the SAS unit that had trained and dedicated itself primarily to combating terrorism. He even proposed a name for his unit—1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-DELTA (SFOD-DELTA).

  He envisioned highly adaptable and completely autonomous teams possessed of a broad array of special skills for direct action and counterterrorist missions, in some ways like the Jedburghs and OSS of World War II that went out into enemy land in small patrols to blow up bridges and dams and railroad lines, collect intel for air strikes or for attacks by conventional forces. They would be hand-picked volunteers thoroughly trained to battle terrorists on their own grounds and terms. Men who could break into buildings or planes besieged by terrorists, who were snipers and experts in weaponry and explosives, locksmiths, medics, electricians, men who hot-wired a Chevy or a Mercedes, soldiers with skills to climb mountains and buildings, fly airplanes, speak other languages, men with guts and purpose to operate decisively in absence of orders.

  Beckwith kept submitting his ideas for years after he healed from his gunshot wounds. But Vietnam was over, the American people were weary of fighting, and it seemed no one wanted to listen. His was a lone voice crying in the wilderness about the threat of terrorism.

  In 1977, radicalized Muslims hijacked a commercial airliner and flew it to Mogadishu in Somalia. The West German counterterrorism unit called GSG-9 (Grenzschutzgruppe 9) stormed the plane, overwhelmed the terrorists, and released all the passengers safely. The incident exposed weaknesses in the U.S.’s own response plans for similar incidents.

  “Is the United States prepared to carry out a mission like this?” Beckwith wanted to know.

  The Pentagon went frantic trying to find an answer to the question. People running back and forth. Meetings and conferences in the JCS “think tank,” buzz sessions in the White House ready room, debates in Congress, hand-wringing at Langley, and a national counterterrorism forum at the Fort Benning Infantry Conference, during which Beckwith’s proposals were dusted off and discussed.

  Delta drew its first official breath on November 21, 1977 by order of Headquarters, Department of Army. “Chargin’ Charlie” Beckwith was given command of it.

  Beckwith sent out feelers for volunteers in much the same “medal or body bag” manner he did with Project DELTA in Vietnam. Requirements were so stiff that he retained only seven out of the first thirty who took part in the selection. The second selection was even worse, with only five out of sixty retained. Eventually, however, Delta drew in a thousand soldiers, of whom about three hundred trained to conduct direct operations against terrorists. The rest were highly specialized support elements.

  Delta set up its headquarters at Fort Bragg in an old stockade centered on about nine acres of fenced-in real estate. A long corridor bisected the concrete fortress-like building. Off the corridor extended a half-dozen major cell blocks, each converted to the unit’s needs in maintaining weapons, explosives, supplies, specialized equipment, and training. Instead of girlie pinups, walls displayed photos and clippings of recent terrorist activities.

  The shooting house—also called “Haunted House” and “House of Horrors”—allowed firing of live ammo in various scenarios against mannequin terrorists and hostages. Each room presented a different situation for operators to overcome—an aircraft passenger area, a private residence, offices, warehouses. … All were designed to provide Deltas practice and training in different kinds of gear while confronted with various restrictions of vision and movements.

  Operators were not only allowed but encouraged to appear other than as soldiers in order to blend into any environment. The headquarters stockade soon became known as “The Ranch” due to the propensity of some to wear cowboy boots and chew tobacco.

  Delta Force did not have too long to wait for its first mission.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  HISTORICAL EVENTS OCCUR IN a cause-and-effect sequence, one leading inexorably into the next. History has a way of taking events and applying to them unexpected consequences.

  As America continued to try to pull back into its shell, it elected in 1976 President Jimmy Carter, a pacifist president who exemplified America’s longing for isolationism and its eagerness to avoid confrontation by compromise.

  On his second day in office, Carter unconditionally pardoned all Vietnam War draft dodgers. He returned the Panama Canal Zone to Panama, and concluded Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) with the USSR by making concessions. Perceived U.S. weaknesses under President Carter emboldened terrorists and lent impetus to communist aspirations of expansion.

  In February 1979, the hard-line Iranian Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi fled to France while Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from France, where he had been exiled for the past fifteen years, to assume power in Iran. The Shah had been allied with the U.S. for decades. President Carter further angered anti-Shah Iranians with a televised toast to the Shah and a declaration of how beloved he was by his people.r />
  Days after the coup, on February 14, in an incident known as the “Valentine’s Day Open House,” Fedayeen militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and took U.S. Marine Kenneth Kraus hostage. Rocks and bullets shattered most of the embassy’s front windows. Upon Carter’s advice, Ambassador William Sullivan surrendered the embassy to the militants in order to save lives.

  Kraus, who had been injured during his kidnapping, was tortured, tried in a kangaroo Sharia court, convicted of murder, and ordered put to death. Only the intervention of Iranian foreign minister Ebrahim Yazdi saved the Marine’s life and returned him and the embassy to American control by the end of the week.

  For the next eight months the embassy remained on alert and under a state of near constant siege. On October 22, 1979, Carter permitted the Shah to come to New York to be treated for cancer. This intensified anti-American sentiment in Iran and spawned rumors of a U.S.-backed coup and reinstallation of the Shah. Khomeini heightened rhetoric against the “Great Satan” and spread talk that he possessed “evidence of American plotting.” He called for street demonstrations.

  Beginning at 6:30 a.m. on November 4, Fedayeen ringleaders herded approximately five hundred Muslim students to the American embassy. A female student with metal cutters concealed beneath her chador snipped the chain locking the gate. Embassy guards brandished firearms, but it quickly became apparent they were ordered not to shoot.

  Occupiers ended up with fifty-two hostages, whom they bound, blindfolded, and paraded in front of photographers. Large, angry crowds congregated to jeer the Americans and cheer the occupiers. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a statement on Iran radio supporting the seizure and calling it “the second revolution.” The American embassy, he charged, had been an “American spy den in Teheran.”

  President Carter called the hostages “victims of terrorism and anarchy.” He vowed the United States “will not yield to blackmail.” However, the only direct action he took was to appeal to the ayatollah for the release of hostages on humanitarian grounds.

  Days dragged by with nothing done. CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite began ending each of his newscasts by noting the number of days the hostages remained in captivity.

  * * *

  Things were happening in the world. I simply could not stay out of the fray.

  “I’m not cut out for the civilian world,” I complained to Barbara.

  “Bill, you ninny. I knew that when I married you.”

  “But … but, Barb, I’ve lost three wives because of it. I couldn’t stand to lose you too.”

  “You’re not going to lose me, Bill. That I promise.”

  Barbara was a confident, independent, self-sufficient woman. We made a good team.

  The next day I walked into BUPERS (Bureau of Naval Personnel) at the Pentagon and filled out paperwork to return to active duty in the U.S. Navy. In short order, I was assigned to the CNO’s office in the Pentagon as a Special Warfare Officer in the Special Operations Division, refining proposed protocols for unconventional warfare.

  I was back in the game.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  NEWS ANCHOR WALTER CRONKITE closed his broadcast of April 24, 1980 with, “American citizens at our embassy in Teheran have today been held hostage for 171 days.” At this point he didn’t know about Operation Eagle Claw, which the president and National Command Authorities had ordered activated to rescue the hostages.

  That night passed long and tense for those of us at the Pentagon listening with mounting apprehension and anger to frantic satellite radio passages coming out of Iran in the early hours of April 25.

  About forty of us stuffed ourselves into a SCIF—Special Classified Intelligence Facility—across the corridor from the Big JCS situation “tank” with its wall-sized screens and state-of-the-art communications where the upper echelon of Washington politics and military gathered. The SCIF was a sixteen-by-thirty-foot room suspended within a larger room in order to preclude penetration by eavesdropping devices. Armed guards at three SOD—Special Operations Division—checkpoints cleared each person before he was allowed to proceed. The room’s low ceilings and fluorescent lights cast everything in a greenish light.

  Junior action officers, planners, spooks, and SpecOps warriors in the SCIF sat on molded plastic chairs around two long meeting tables in the center and worked ourselves into tension headaches compounded by caffeine overload. Moldy coffee cups, crumb-laden paper plates, and butt-filled ashtrays littered the tables. A half-dozen small, square loudspeakers attached to cables running across the floor to wall jacks carried intercepts from NSA, Wadi Kena, Masirah, Desert One, and from Teheran where an American agent on the ground had his own PRC-101 radio transmitter tied into the satellite network.

  The entire Eagle Claw mission operated on the same frequency, which allowed us to hear Delta’s transmissions, the aircraft pilots’ chatter, and the various commanders’ comments and orders all in real time as it happened. I would rather have been there with them, but by now I was at a point in my career when I had to be content with relegation to the planning stages.

  Under cover of darkness, eight RH-53D helicopters lifted off the carrier USS Nimitz on station in the Arabian Sea for the six-hundred-mile flight inland, while six C-130 tankers and troop planes departed Masirah Island at Oman. The plan was for them to assemble at a secured prearranged site in the wastelands of Iran, code-named Desert One. From there, Chargin’ Charlie Beckwith, on-ground commander, and 120 Delta Force operators would proceed in refueled helicopters to a hide site near Teheran where in-country operatives would then transport them surreptitiously to the American embassy in vehicles.

  Once the hostages were extracted, everything went into reverse: trucks to helicopters, helicopters to waiting C-130s, and then everybody the hell out of Dodge. It was a good plan and should have worked. Except for Murphy’s Law, which states that anything that could go wrong, would.

  Inside the Pentagon’s SCIF we heard the first chopper report “feet dry” as it crossed the Iranian coastline just west of Chah Babar on its way to the Desert One rendezvous. The rest of the eight made landfall shortly thereafter. That was when things started to fall apart.

  Two of the choppers had to abort and return to Nimitz because of mechanical failures. A third suffered a hydraulic leak. It auto-rotated down into the desert, where another RH-53D dropped in and picked up the stranded crew. The remaining choppers arrived late at Desert One due to a desert storm known as a haboob. That left five choppers, when Beckwith and other planners deemed a minimum of six were needed to complete the mission.

  About this time an Iranian bus appeared on its scheduled route. Guards detained the driver and about forty-five passengers.

  Shortly thereafter, a gasoline tanker truck drove up from the opposite direction. Seeing the bus and airplanes, the driver pounded pedal to the metal. A rocket from a LAW (Light Antitank Weapons System) stopped the truck. The driver leaped out as it burst into flames and fled down the road until another car picked him up, screeched into a U-turn, and headed back toward Teheran. Flames from the abandoned tanker truck leaped more than one hundred feet into the desert sky.

  In Washington, one of the spooks in the SCIF expressed the group’s common distress: “This is gonna be a goatfuck.”

  Our chins dropped onto our chests, and the room fell totally silent when Colonel Beckwith came up on the air to announce that he was calling the mission off.

  But Murphy and his law weren’t finished yet. A helicopter repositioning itself to refuel from a C-130 for the long flight back to Nimitz collided with the plane. Both aircraft exploded and became engulfed in flames. Sounds of explosions, screams, and total confusion erupted from SCIF speakers.

  “Oh, my God!” someone exhaled from the stricken room.

  Fires from the burning aircraft and the tanker truck could be seen for miles. Iranian air defenses were expected to arrive within a very short time. Beckwith loaded his team on the C-130s and fled Iran, evacuating five injured American
s and leaving eight dead behind. Operation Eagle Claw had turned into Operation Goat Fuck.

  Doom hovered like a dark cloud over official Washington, D.C. Failure in the attempted rescue proved a major embarrassment for the military and for Delta Force’s first major mission. Iranian TV showed the burned bodies of dead U.S. servicemen left behind. Footage of it rebroadcast on U.S. networks.

  “And tonight,” said Walter Cronkite, “our hostages remain in captivity for 172 days.”

  * * *

  Following the disaster, panels and committees throughout government rushed into session to determine what went wrong at Desert One and how problems with the nation’s special operations forces might be remedied. The Holloway Commission, the DOD (Department of Defense), the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Special Operations Rescue Group, and the Rescue Mission Report all came up with the same criticism—the lack of a central overall control. They also presented a common recommendation that a Joint Special Operations Command be created at Fort Bragg to place all special ops forces—SEALs, Green Berets, Delta, Marine Recon, Rangers—under their central commanding authority, which would coordinate and oversee, plan, train for, and conduct counterterrorism activities.

  I was appointed a member of the Special Operations Advisory Panel and of the Counterterrorism Joint Task Force charged to come up with specific recommendations. One of the most important of these was that SpecOps be provided dedicated aircraft rather than drawing whatever might be available from conventional assets. The suggestion was immediately implemented in the formation of the 160th Special Operations Air Regiment—160th SOAR.

  “All we need now,” I confided in Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, “is a president with balls instead of marbles.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  IRAN’S KIDNAPPING OF OUR embassy personnel and holding them month after month made America more aware of the rise of international terrorism. Growing turmoil around the globe, especially in the Middle East, made the planet a much more dangerous place. War and general bedlam formed a kind of backdrop for terrorism’s upward trend.