Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent (14 page)
All those problems meant any rescue attempt would have to begin in the air from a logistically nightmarish distance. What kind of aircraft could cover the kind of distances we were talking about? Long-range transport aircraft need long, weight-stressed runways. None of those were lying around in countries that would let us use them. And even if one would, where would we land them in Iran? It was a pretty good bet the Ayatollah wasn’t going to open Mehrabad International Airport for us. Meanwhile, short-range aircraft presented trouble of their own: where and how would they refuel?
Given the distances, any aircraft involved in the mission would either have to launch from friendly turf within flying range of Iran, or from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. We didn’t yet know how all that would come together, but those were our only options.
“We’re going to have to bring State into this,” Joint Chiefs vice chairman Jack Vessey said. “They’ll have to coordinate the staging bases.”
“All right, call State,” Brown said. “Start working the staging areas and overflight approvals.” Then he looked at Charlie, Chuck Whittle, and me. “You guys keep working the plan. We’ll get back together tomorrow.”
As the meeting broke up, Charlie began speaking in low tones about the critical lack of intel with an Army two-star I recognized as Jim Vaught, a staff officer with the Joint Chiefs. A rugged-looking combat veteran of three wars, Vaught wore a chest full of decorations. Listening in to his conversation with Charlie, I learned that Vaught had been named commander of the rescue mission.
As planning began, the knowledge that the Iranians could begin executing hostages at any moment haunted us. It meant we might have to launch any day, using an emergency mission plan slapped together with duct tape and chicken wire. Because procedure required it, we came up with a plan like that. It involved blasting our way into Mehrabad airport, blasting our way through Tehran, snatching the hostages, and blasting our way out. The chances of success were zero. Less than zero. But we were pretty sure we’d have time to come up with a better plan. Because unless the Iranians forced his hand by executing a hostage, none of us thought Jimmy Carter had the guts to order us in.
THE SECRET MEETINGS at the Pentagon went on. Room 2C840 became a hive of ringing telephones, clattering typewriters, and spirited debate. Somebody from on high officially dubbed the overall planning sessions “Rice Bowl.” Meanwhile, Delta had to plan and train for the rescue operation itself. But because of the Kremlin’s satellite surveillance on Bragg, there was no way Delta could plan and train there. After discarding several alternative sites as inadequate, we settled on the Farm. But any mass exit with a failure to return might raise suspicions that America’s new door-busters were en route to Iran. So Charlie and Bucky came up with an elaborate plan by which the operators left Bragg in rented vehicles at staggered times, and over the course of two days reassembled at the Farm. To fool the Russians into believing that Delta was percolating along normally, we left a good-sized support staff behind. For the benefit of the Kremlin, they went through the motions of our daily routine.
Meanwhile, planning continued. Just getting to the embassy remained a tall order: How would we get into Iran undetected? How would we cross the vast open country into Tehran—again, undetected? How would we breach the hardened portions of the embassy? Where were the terrorists holding the hostages inside the complex? How do we neutralize resistance? How do we get back out of the embassy? Out of Tehran? Out of the country?
If each of those questions seemed difficult, the answers to them opened up huge vacuums waiting to be filled with even more answers. Take the embassy problem, for example. The complex included fourteen buildings strewn across twenty-seven heavily wooded acres, surrounded by a high wall. Getting in and out was not a problem: Delta could simply slip over the walls and Fast Eddie could blow our way out. But regarding the actual rescue op inside the compound, a storm of questions swirled: Were the Iranians holding the hostages all in one place or in separate locations? What kind of doors were on the rooms where the hostages were held? Which way did they open? What kind of locks did they have on them? To breach the doors, would we need explosives, or would a shotgun do?
Each question was like a stack of Russian nesting dolls: one solved puzzle opened onto dozens of smaller puzzles each of which was frustrated by the lack of intelligence coming out of Tehran. But fuzzy details began to resolve themselves when we received an eight-by-twelve foot model of the embassy compound and the surrounding streets. Army engineers also constructed separate scale models of each embassy building. Inside the models, the floor plan of every story in each building was reproduced in detail. Delta memorized every one of them.
We also memorized the names, faces, and biographies of every hostage. We tacked their photos to a wall in Beech Tree, a guest house at the Farm we converted into our planning center. Every operator and action officer learned to recognize and name each hostage on sight.
My heart ached for the hostages and their families, and I prayed for them daily, especially one, a Jewish CIA man. I was really concerned that the hostage takers had figured that out from his name. How long would his status as an American protect him? If they began killing hostages, would they kill him first?
ON NOVEMBER 18 AND 20, we caught a break. The terrorists released thirteen hostages, and with them, a treasure of intelligence, including details on the interior layout of the embassy and valuable details about the Iranian students: what they looked like, their routines, who seemed to be in charge, who seemed weak, strong, or just going along for the ride.
At the top of our list of planning priorities: transport. Getting to Iran then getting the hostages out. For the second job, we chose the Navy RH-53 Sea Stallion, a monster helicopter that could fly a long way and carry a fair number of people. The RH-53 had foldable tail booms, which meant we could stash these helos below the deck of an aircraft carrier and steam to within a reasonable distance from the Iranian coastline without alerting hostile intelligence agencies. More importantly, the RH-53 was the only helicopter in the inventory with not only the load and range capabilities we needed, but also the ability to inflight-refuel.
So we’d picked an aircraft—great. But we still didn’t have any pilots who knew how to fly the mission. Even working through the Chief of Naval Operations, Delta was able to find only one guy in the entire Navy who had both flown the RH-53 coast to coast,
and
completed aerial refueling along the way: Lieutenant Commander Jay Jacobson out of Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia.
But the mission planners couldn’t just call him up: “Hey Jay, wanna fly a super secret mission of global importance from which you may never return?” If he said no, or even if he said yes, then made a single compromising phone call, the operation, by now dubbed Eagle Claw, could be over before it began. So we had to use different methods.
The Pentagon contacted Jacobson’s squadron commander with orders for the pilot to report to a hotel in Richmond, Virginia. A man would approach Jacobson in the hotel lobby and say, “Are you here for the convention?”
Jacobson was to say, “No, I’m waiting for a buddy.” Then Jacobson was to go with the man who approached him.
Now most of the Navy pilots I know won’t take a leak without a flight plan. Jacobson, I was later told, grumbled and wanted to know why he had to do this. Of course, no one would tell him why. So his instructions were: “Just do what you’re asked to do.”
A CIA agent met Jacobson at the hotel, and they exchanged the bona fides. Jacobson got in the car and the agent drove him halfway to the Farm before pulling over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.
“Get out,” the agent said. “Wait here until someone picks you up.”
By now, Jacobson had had it with the cloak-and-dagger crap. “You’ve
got
to be kidding me!”
“No. I’m not kidding you,” the agent said, as serious as an undertaker. “Do it. And hold this newspaper under your arm while you’re doing it.”
Exasperated and rolling his eyes, Jacobson got out of the car. Within fifteen minutes, another spook picked him up and drove him the rest of the way. After two more hours, the two men rolled into the Farm and pulled up to Beech Tree.
“Go sit over there on those steps,” the CIA man told Jacobson.
Now the pilot was steaming. Still, he did what he was told. And when Pete and I happened to walk out on the porch at Beech Tree, there he sat, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. We didn’t know he was coming.
“Who are you?” Pete said.
He looked at us, seeming confused and frustrated. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Jay Jacobson.”
“What are you doing here?” I said.
Jacobson went off: “What am I doing here? I don’t have a clue. I go to a hotel. Somebody picks me up. He drops me off on the side of the road. Another guy picks me up. He drives me for four hours and won’t tell me a damn thing. Now I’m sitting here on these steps and some big fat guy just came and pissed over my shoulder!”
The pisser was Charlie Beckwith—just messing with Jacobson to amuse himself.
AS IT TURNED OUT, Jacobson eventually became part of the mission. We auditioned other Navy pilots, including one who quit in the middle of training (Charlie threatened to have him court-martialed). Eventually the bulk of the job fell to Marine Corps aviators who had more night-flying and tactical experience, including Major Jim Schaeffer, an experienced combat veteran who also had many hours in the RH-53, and a no-nonsense lieutenant colonel named Ed Sieffert, who would become the flight leader and pilot of the lead helo. This is how we assembled the rescue team—cobbling together expertise wherever we found it.
During the Rice Bowl planning sessions, it became very clear we had no chance of rescuing the hostages without human intelligence and advance ground preparations inside Iran. Dick Meadows, a retired Special Ops legend, volunteered for the job. Dick joined the army out of West Virginia at age sixteen, lying about how old he was so he could go fight the North Koreans. Later, in Vietnam, he did some sleuthing on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and brought back the breech of a Russian artillery piece, proving once and for all the Soviets were supplying weapons to the North Vietnamese. He was also a leader in the Son Tay raid.
Two others, DoD men with Special Forces backgrounds, also were selected. And there was a fourth man, who struck us all as one of the bravest young patriots we’d ever met.
At the Farm, we began to realize we needed a native Iranian who knew Tehran and spoke Farsi. We weren’t yet sure about the exact ways we would use such a person. But we needed hands and feet on the ground, someone who would blend in with the local population, collect intelligence, and probably arrange logistics. Immediately, we began canvassing all the services for anyone Iranian born. This was tricky since only a relative handful of people knew what we were up to.
The Air Force got back to us with the name of a young E-4 who was stationed at Shaw AFB, South Carolina. A CIA background check showed him to be as clean as a nun. This young man showed up the next day at the Pentagon for a meeting with me and Bucky. We introduced ourselves simply as officers from Fort Bragg. Without our having said a word, I could see in his eyes that he knew what we wanted with him. The question was whether he was willing to do what needed to be done.
“Tell us about yourself,” I said.
“I was born in Iran,” he began. “When I was about twelve, my mother and father divorced. I came to America with my father.”
He finished high school here and joined the Air Force, the young man said. Now, he was married and had two children. Bucky and I exchanged a look:
It would’ve been better if he had been single
.
I plunged ahead. “We are planning a rescue of the Americans being held in Tehran,” I explained. “We’re going to ask you to do something that’s very dangerous. It’s important to this nation and it’s important to those Americans who are being held. We can’t give you a lot of details right now and you’re under no obligation to do this. The worst case scenario is, you might not come home.”
The sergeant sat there for a minute, and I watched wheels turn behind his eyes. He looked over at Bucky, then back at me.
Finally, he gave us his answer. “I’ll do whatever you ask of me. The only thing I ask is that if anything happens to me, you take care of my family.”
“You have my word,” I said. “If anything happens, we’ll do that.”
“Then I’m your man. Tell me what I need to do.”
Up to that moment, this young man’s life consisted of a safe and routine stateside Air Force assignment—going to work in the morning and home to his family at night. He could have said no, in which case we’d have kept him in isolation until the mission was over. But with little hesitation and no fanfare, this young airman agreed to lay his life on the line for his adopted country. I was astonished and impressed.
Just like that, we had our Iranian infiltrator. CIA codenamed him “Fred” and began preparing him for the impossible mission that lay ahead.
BEFORE GOING INTO ISOLATION, no man in Delta had been able to notify his family. From the perspective of our loved ones, we left one day for our final eval, came home for a single night, then left again for parts unknown. Because of security considerations, we weren’t allowed to call home and tell them where we were. Our frequent disappearances, each as sudden as if we’d been kidnapped by aliens, would eventually stretch from November 1979 through the spring of 1980. I thought about Lynne and the kids, worried about her worrying, and prayed that God would give her the strength to manage three small children on her own.
For married guys like me, the timing of the hostage crisis explained our absence to some extent. Though I didn’t talk with Lynne about the details of my job, she knew Delta’s general mission. But other guys had girlfriends who had no idea what they did for a living. For some of them, relationships fell apart. Pete Schoomaker was engaged to be married, but when his fiancée, Cindy, didn’t hear from him for weeks, she cancelled the wedding. When Charlie finally let him call, Pete begged her forgiveness and they were married in a small, private ceremony. Lynne and I were the only guests.
