The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (29 page)

Back in the United States, the FBI was roundly condemned for its attempt to disable the jet in Orlando. One of Florida’s senators termed the assault a “stupid blunder” that had nearly caused the deaths of
more than two dozen innocents. The FBI had erred not only by failing to cripple the plane, the critics charged, but also by firing on the DC-9 as it was connected to a fuel truck; a lethal conflagration would have ensued if one of the hijackers’ grenades had exploded near a pool of spilled gasoline. L. Patrick Gray, the FBI’s acting director, took personal responsibility for the fiasco, though he argued that his agents had at least prevented the hijackers from reaching a more distant
destination such as Algeria.

But the controversy over the Orlando shoot-out was only a sideshow. The far more troubling issue was the skyjacking epidemic’s new twist: the potential use of airplanes as weapons of mass destruction. In the face of such lunacy, the airlines could no longer claim that the crisis deserved anything less than the most extreme response possible.

|||

E
LEVEN YEARS HAD
passed since the August 4, 1961, Senate hearing at which the notion of universal physical screening had first been raised. On that day the head of the FAA had rejected the idea as so impractical that it didn’t merit even a moment’s consideration. The airlines had subsequently adopted that dismissive position as their own, defending it with a zealousness that bordered on the pathological. As the skyjacking epidemic’s outbreaks increased in both frequency and severity, the airlines went to great lengths to avoid having to check every passenger’s body and luggage. They narrowly escaped that fate in the summer of 1972 by derailing Senator Richard Schweiker’s Airline Passenger Screening Act. But after Southern Airways Flight 49 was nearly hurled into a nuclear reactor, the airlines realized that their campaign against universal physical screening was doomed. The risks of porous security had become too grave for even their closest political allies to ignore.

On December 5 the Nixon administration declared an emergency FAA rule: starting five days after the new year, airlines would be required to screen every single passenger with metal detectors, as well as inspect the contents of all carry-on bags. Furthermore, all of the nation’s 531 major commercial airports would have to post a local police officer or sheriff’s deputy at each boarding gate, to deal with any passengers who were found to be in possession of weapons.

“We are now encountering a new breed of hijackers,” said Lt. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., the nation’s skyjacking czar, at a press conference unveiling the sweeping new security regulations. “They are people unequaled in their ruthlessness and their wanton disregard for human life. Where a simple screening of passengers might have deterred hijackers in the earlier stages of this period of aerial piracy, we must now be ready to forcefully
stop them at the boarding gate.”

Ardent civil libertarians were outraged by the Nixon administration’s
unilateral move. They believed that universal physical screening ran afoul of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches, a view not wholly unsupported by a handful of court decisions. A federal judge in Los Angeles, Warren Ferguson, had recently ruled in favor of a drug defendant whose stash had been discovered after he was selected by the FAA’s behavioral profile. Ferguson’s passionate opinion made him a hero to those who feared that basic rights would be disregarded in the name of stopping skyjackers:

But dissenters were in the minority among legal scholars. Warrantless searches can be deemed reasonable if the government can demonstrate that it has a compelling enough interest at stake. Given that skyjackers had come close to turning greater Knoxville into a radioactive wasteland, it was easy to see how expanded airport screening
might meet that test.

The main controversy over universal physical screening was not its questionable legality but rather who would foot the mammoth bill, estimated to be as high as $300 million annually. Though airlines and airports grudgingly accepted that they would have to splash out millions for new metal detectors, they loudly protested the notion of paying for security personnel to operate the equipment. The airlines
lobbied hard for the creation of a Department of Transportation police force, whose officers would screen the half-million Americans
who flew each day. The Nixon administration, by contrast, was adamantly opposed to any government expansion: its officials argued that airports should be treated no differently than bus depots or train stations, which operated safely
without federal assistance.

As the January 5, 1973, start date for universal physical screening drew near, the Nixon administration also made progress on another significant antihijacking initiative, one that had been considered a pipe dream since the epidemic’s earliest days: an extradition pact with Cuba.

By pinging sporadic messages through the Swiss embassy in Havana, the Cuban and American governments had spent years secretly discussing the possibility of such an agreement. The stumbling block had always been the Castro regime’s insistence that the United States extradite Cuban refugees who had reached Florida on stolen boats, a political impossibility for any White House occupant. Though regular dialogue about the matter had continued throughout the 1960s, the discussion had ceased in December 1970, after the U.S. State Department unwisely chastised the Cubans for their relaxed negotiating pace. Like so many men who wield absolute power, Castro did not like to be criticized for operating on a schedule of his own choosing.

The State Department’s diplomatic faux pas shuttered the negotiations until October 30, 1972, when the Cubans abruptly notified the United States that they were ready to bend on the refugees issue. Castro had finally tired of receiving skyjackers from all over the Western Hemisphere; he had decided that the few thousand dollars he earned by returning each plane were outweighed by the risks of dealing with violent and deranged foreigners. According to Cuban diplomats, Castro had been particularly spooked by an incident involving a Nicaraguan plane that had been hijacked by four youths who hoped to attend the University of Havana. While taking over the jet, they had shot the son of a high-ranking Nicaraguan government minister, and they had
later wounded Costa Rica’s minister of security during an ill-fated refueling stop in San José.
^†

The State Department responded to the Cubans’ overture by asking Havana to submit a draft agreement. American officials suspected that this request would end the matter, for the Cubans had previously proven reluctant to take the initiative. But after the Southern Airways Flight 49 drama, the Castro government became convinced that time was of the essence: it submitted its proposal for the antihijacking pact to the Swiss embassy in Havana on November 25.

The Cubans agreed to give the United States the option of granting political asylum to boat hijackers who had committed no other crimes while fleeing to Florida, an accommodation that the American government had been seeking for years. The State Department volleyed back a list of proposed revisions, mostly minor linguistic tweaks that stressed that while both nations could prosecute skyjackers themselves, rapid extradition was the preferred course of action. To the department’s surprise, the ordinarily obstinate Cubans were
receptive to that adjustment.

“The Cuban preliminary reaction to the possibility of returning guilty parties is interesting in that they inquired about procedures rather than reject the option,” one of the American negotiators wrote to Secretary of State William P. Rogers
on December 12. By the end of the month, the signing of the agreement—the first formal pact between the United States and Cuba since Castro’s revolution—seemed like a foregone conclusion. Once that happened, potential skyjackers would know for certain that nothing but misery awaited them in Havana. All fantasies of tasting true freedom in Castro’s “paradise” would disappear for good.

With the landmark Cuban agreement nearly complete, State Department officials began to wonder whether they could strike
a similar deal with the world’s second most notable hijacker haven: Algeria.

A
FTER
P
ETE
O’N
EAL
absconded to Cairo, leaving Roger Holder in charge of the International Section, the remaining Black Panthers began to flee Algiers en masse. Larry Mack and Sekou Odinga left for Egypt on September 23, though not before selling several cameras, tape recorders, and mimeographs that they had pilfered from the Rue Viviani headquarters. Donald Cox soon followed, leaving his bungalow
in Bab el-Oued vacant; Holder and the other hijackers moved in, seizing the opportunity to give themselves easy access to the beach
at Pointe Pescade.

Eldridge Cleaver put on a brave face when addressing the defections, telling anyone who would listen that the International Section was far from finished. “There are some good things cooking, politically speaking, that might jump off soon,” he wrote to a friend in Zambia. “If they do, a lot of
problems will be solved.” But in reality he felt powerless and adrift, as the Panthers became pariahs among their former allies in Algiers. Once a fixture at embassy cocktail parties, Cleaver no longer received invitations to meet with the North Korean and North Vietnamese diplomats who had been his
most avid supporters. Sovereign nations couldn’t risk offending President Houari Boumédiène, who had lost all affection for the Panthers after Cleaver’s insulting press conference.

Harassed by Algerian intelligence agents wherever he went, Cleaver was forced to become a homebody. He passed the time by immersing himself in Buwei Yang Chao’s 1949 best seller
How to Cook and Eat in Chinese
. “This marks the first time in my life that I have gotten down and related to cooking,” Cleaver wrote in his journal that October. “I like the rational, systematic way that the Chinese move on cooking. And the results are so rewarding!” Cathy Kerkow would sometimes come to Cleaver’s home on the Rue de Traité to help him whip up oily stir-fries; Cleaver, however, disapproved of her penchant for improvising rather than
sticking with the recipes.

Holder, meanwhile, was botching his job as the International Section’s new boss—perhaps just as Pete O’Neal had intended. As his comrades from Vietnam could attest, Holder’s intelligence was rivaled only by his eccentricity; he tended to strike people as an odd duck, a trait that did not serve him well in trying to forge relationships with conservative Algerian officials or humorless diplomats from the Soviet realm. Furthermore, Holder had no concrete plans for the International Section, just vague aspirations to change the world. Frustrated by the minutiae of the organization’s day-to-day affairs, he quickly
lost interest in his duties.

Holder did, however, become significantly more paranoid upon assuming the International Section’s top post. He began to speak of CIA agents who were following him through the streets of Bab el-Oued, or Panther rivals who were lying in wait at the Hotel St. George’s café. The nervous spells that had plagued him in Vietnam returned, and hashish now did little to combat his anxiety. The manic energy that had borne him through Operation Sisyphus and the early months in Algiers was replaced by
worry and gloom.

Holder’s mental state only worsened in December, when Eldridge Cleaver informed the International Section’s remaining members that they were in grave danger. After reading news reports about the Nixon administration’s antihijacking agreement with Cuba, Cleaver had heard rumors that a top State Department official was in Algiers to discuss a similar pact with the Boumédiène regime. He told everyone that it was time to close up shop in Algeria, before they were all arrested and shipped back to the United States to face prosecution.

Cleaver had already started to make preparations for his own exit, working with his friend Elaine Klein to orchestrate a circuitous trip to France. His wife, Kathleen, meanwhile, was attempting to get a fake passport and driver’s license from a Panther associate in California, a man code-named Comrade T who specialized
in such delicate tasks. The idea was for her to travel incognito to France with the children, then reunite with Eldridge and retreat into the underground. Once
they were established in France, the Cleavers would arrange for the escape of those
left behind in Algiers.

The three parents among the Hijacking Family, Melvin and Jean McNair and Joyce Tillerson, were faced with a difficult choice: take their young children on the run or send them back home. After much agonizing, they opted for the latter: they contacted an old acquaintance in North Carolina, who came to Algiers to gather Kenya, Johari, and Ayana. The McNairs and Tillerson were devastated to lose their children—as Melvin watched the car containing his son and daughter drive off to Maison Blanche Airport, he felt as if his heart had been sliced out of his chest. But he also knew he had made the right decision—he couldn’t subject his kids to any more madness
than he already had.

At seven a.m. on New Year’s Day, as most of Algiers slept, Eldridge Cleaver slipped out of the country in his Renault 16. Nine hours later, he arrived at the Tunisian border town of Nefta—the first stop on his clandestine journey to France. He had not told anyone at the International Section about his departure ahead of time, for fear of having word leak to Salah Hidjeb and
Algerian intelligence.

The once-celebrated International Section now consisted of seven American skyjackers who hadn’t even been Black Panthers before arriving in Algiers.