The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (40 page)

Admiral Bernsen was in the wardroom of the Middle East Force’s flagship, the USS
La Salle
, hosting a farewell dinner for a departing officer, with the guest of honor being the U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, Sam Zackem. The watch officer came down to the wardroom and asked Bernsen to come to the command center. Soon other staff officers followed suit, leaving Ambassador Zackem wondering what could possibly be going on. About five minutes passed, and Zackem decided to go and see for himself.

There he met a visibly shaken Bernsen. “Mr. Ambassador, the
Stark
was hit.”
¹⁹
Zackem was stunned. Just the day before, he recalled, he had watched the
Stark
’s crew defeat the
La Salle
’s in volleyball, and Captain Brindel had given him a case of Coors beer.

Bernsen immediately ordered additional ships to come to the
Stark
’s assistance, and the
La Salle
made preparations to get under way and head north to take charge of the rescue effort. The crew dispatched one of their helicopters, named the “Desert Duck,” carrying additional oxygen tanks, firefighting equipment, and a corpsman. Meanwhile, Ambassador Zackem phoned the crown prince of Bahrain and received permission to use that country’s hospitals to treat the most seriously injured sailors. Bahrain emptied its main burn unit in anticipation of a large number of casualties, and two severely burned sailors arrived before being flown on with other sailors to the U.S. military’s own burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.
²⁰

Back on the
Stark
the fire spread quickly. Within an hour, it had burned through two decks, consuming the combat information center and the galley and threatening the forward missile magazine. Brindel ordered it flooded. The heat was intense, melting protective fire masks and even fusing two keys in the pocket of Lieutenant William Conklin. Fire parties on the forecastle, led by Lieutenants Moncrief and Conklin, directed their hoses on the fires coming increasingly close to the magazine, as the heat from the fire peeled the paint off the base of the missile launcher.
²¹

Their efforts, and the arrival of a civilian salvage tug with additional hoses, staved off disaster, but the large amount of water being poured on the fire caused a significant list that now threatened to capsize the ship. Brindel and Gajan conferred and agreed to punch holes in the side of the ship to allow the excess water to drain out.
²²
One more crisis was averted.

The next day, a Bahraini helicopter rescued four of the six men who had gone overboard, while a fifth and the severely burned body of the sixth sailor
were recovered by a U.S. warship. The five survivors had spent a taxing night in the open sea dodging sharks and sea snakes.

Even the Iranians tried to help. They sent two helicopters to assist in search and rescue. Although they were professionally competent, Bernsen gave them a search area well away from the
Stark
.

Word of the
Stark
disaster spread quickly through Washington. The National Military Command Center notified Armitage, who phoned Weinberger. “The USS
Stark
was hit by Iraqi missiles, probably an accident.” The defense secretary relayed the message to the national security adviser, Frank Carlucci. Within an hour after the first missile hit, the president knew of the tragedy half a world away. “A beautiful day,” Reagan penned in his diary, “until I got a call from Frank [Carlucci].”
²³

General Crist was in Pennsylvania to receive an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Villanova University. Crist had recently stopped smoking, and other than craving cigarettes, he enjoyed his visit, which included a speech before newly commissioned marine lieutenants from the school’s navy ROTC program. He arrived back in Tampa that evening to be met on the tarmac by a senior officer, Brigadier General Wayne Schramm, along with other staff.

“That’s nice,” he thought. “My staff has come out to welcome me back after receiving my honorarium.” But when he got into the car, he learned about the
Stark
. It would be another five years before Crist tried again to stop smoking.
²⁴

After twelve hours the crew had finally extinguished the fire. The grisly task to find and remove the dead began. The final toll: thirty-seven sailors dead.

Crist ordered Rear Admiral Grant Sharp to conduct an investigation. Arriving in the Gulf, Sharp and his party formally began the investigation on May 26 aboard the
La Salle
, with the hulk of the
Stark
nearby and with the distinct smell of the fire hanging in the air. While crediting Captain Brindel and his officers and crew (including Gajan and Moncrief) with heroism and skill in fighting the fire and saving their ship,
²⁵
Sharp’s report was a scathing indictment on the complete lack of preparedness aboard the
Stark
: “The Commanding officer failed to provide combat oriented leadership, allowing
Stark
’s anti–air warfare readiness to disintegrate to the point that his CIC [combat information center] team was unable to defend the ship.”
²⁶

Meanwhile, another investigative team arrived in Baghdad. Headed by a navy admiral, it included senior intelligence expert Pat Lang, who ran the Iraq operations for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flying into Baghdad, the Americans were greeted by two separate caravans of Iraqi officials, one from the intelligence service and the other from the foreign ministry, who ushered the delegation off to the al-Rashid Hotel in downtown Baghdad. Saddam Hussein was nervous about America’s response to the attack, worrying that the United States would turn against Iraq, cutting off the intelligence sharing or even pulling its support for the money and weapons flowing to his war machine. The next day, Lang and the other Americans met with the head of Iraqi air force intelligence, Sabur Abdul Aziz al-Douri. He had commanded a Republican Guard division and was known to Lang: “Al-Douri was one of these guys that light came in and none came out; he was a tough little bastard and not a guy to fool with.”

This Iraqi general explained how they divided the Iranian exclusion zone into hunting boxes. Their pilots would be assigned a box, and their orders were to attack the first maritime target they detected. General al-Douri denied that they had targeted the American ship and accused the
Stark
of having strayed inside the Iranian exclusion zone.
²⁷
The navy officers with Lang strongly denied this and accused the Iraqi pilot of being trigger-happy. Iraq refused to allow the Americans to interview the actual pilot. But Lang, fluent in Arabic, noticed a young major in the room who seemed to be answering queries about the attack from his fellow Iraqis. “They brought the pilot, but just did not want
us
to know about him.” The Americans impressed on al-Douri that it was in their interest to be apologetic, especially with the United States providing them intelligence.
²⁸
The Iraqi government agreed to pay $27 million in compensation to those killed.

When the Americans left, Saddam Hussein’s anxious mood transformed into mocking contempt. “If someone had attacked my ship, I would have bombed the airfield the plane came from!” the Iraqi dictator told senior aides in a meeting.

T
he
Stark
attack ignited another firestorm in Washington over the Reagan administration’s Persian Gulf policies. The Reagan administration believed it was now even more imperative to continue with the reflagging.
The consequences of an American pullout after the
Stark
would have been disastrous to U.S. interests, especially following on the heels of Beirut.
²⁹

Before the
Stark
, few within Congress showed any interest in attending Pentagon briefings about the Kuwaiti tanker operation. Now with the photographs of thirty-seven coffins in a hangar in Dover, Delaware, on the cover of every major newsmagazine, they suddenly held a flurry of contentious hearings divided largely along partisan lines supporting or opposing the idea of U.S. protection for shipping in the Gulf.
³⁰
It did not help the Reagan administration that the political waters were already churned with the concurrent Iran-Contra hearings. Detractors denounced the undertaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, fearing it would draw the United States into another Vietnam, and insisted on the applicability of the War Powers Act, which required the president to get congressional approval for continuing any operation over sixty days.

T
he United States pressed forward with the reflagging operation in the wake of the attack on the
Stark
and despite congressional skepticism. Reagan resolutely defended his decision. “Mark this point well: the use of the vital sea-lanes of the Persian Gulf will not be dictated by the Iranians. These lanes will not be allowed to come under the control of the Soviet Union.”
³¹

Outside the public view, the entire national security apparatus focused on the ability of Crist and Bernsen to avoid another such debacle. Six days after the
Stark
tragedy, on May 22, Crist flew to Washington for a series of meetings capped off by a meeting at the White House. An emotional Ronald Reagan had flown down to Jacksonville, Florida, for a memorial service for those killed on the
Stark
, but before leaving he’d given Carlucci instructions to make sure that the rules of engagement were broad enough and that the U.S. military had all the forces it needed to protect the Kuwaiti ships. General Robert Herres relayed this to Crist in a message for his eyes only and reported that the commander in chief had privately told the secretary that he wanted a “much more proactive stance.”
³²
With presidential interest, keeping the status quo was not an acceptable course of action. In a meeting in his office before driving over to the White House, Weinberger asked Crist point-blank if he had the forces to conduct the mission; if not, the secretary said, “you should ask for it.”

In the National Security Council meeting that afternoon, Crowe cautioned that he could not guarantee that there would be no further casualties, but that Iran’s actions had been very circumspect. Iran knew we could hit its military or economic targets at will from our carrier. It is unlikely that Iran would try to challenge the U.S. convoys, Crowe told Carlucci.
³³
Both Weinberger and Crowe pressed to liberalize the rules of engagement to avoid another such incident. Carlucci agreed, and said the president wanted to make sure that U.S. forces had everything they needed to complete their mission. He told Weinberger and Crowe to come back “urgent basis” on whether Crist needed more forces to carry out the escort operation.
³⁴

In a message that evening back-briefing Bernsen, Crist relayed the tone of the afternoon meeting in the White House Situation Room: “The heat is very hot in the kitchen.”
³⁵

Bernsen did not think any modifications were needed to the rules governing use of force. The problem was the
Stark
, not the document. But the political realities in Washington demanded change. “We are on notice,” Crist responded to Bernsen. “We can’t afford a second hit. We shoot first. The captain is authorized, in fact required, to shoot if it is clear to the commanding officer that his ship has been placed at risk.”
³⁶

The following day, Bernsen responded with some new rules. Any aircraft would be warned off at fifty nautical miles from any warship. Captains would be prepared to engage at twenty-five miles, or just outside the effective range of an Exocet missile.

On June 8, Weinberger approved these changes. The new rules stressed the captain’s ultimate responsibility for defending his ship against an attack or a threat that demonstrated hostile intent, such as laying mines or using its weapons radar.
³⁷
U.S. ships or planes were still prohibited from entering into Iranian or Iraqi territorial waters or airspace, including the declared exclusion zones. The only exception was that if U.S. forces were attacked from these areas, they could pursue into them, but only if the hostile force continued to pose an imminent threat to the safety of the American plane or ship. The minute the threat ended, they had to withdraw immediately unless approved by the Joint Chiefs.
³⁸

Meanwhile, the operational name for the convoys, Private Jewels, struck some as dirty, and with the operation being reexamined in a new light, the Pentagon changed the operational name to one that had a better ring to it: Earnest Will.