Two other targets assigned to the SEALs were the governor general's mansion and the radio station approximately seven miles away. Even though they had trained to operate at night, in order to take advantage of the darkness, both SEAL teams were inserted in daylight. The SEAL team tasked with securing the governor general's mansion had the added complication of bringing in a three-man State Department radio team, which carried a portable broadcast radio with them to allow the governor general to broadcast to the nation that he was okay and still in charge.
As soon as they hit the ground, the SEAL team that was supposed to secure the radio station became involved in heavy fighting with an armed guard force. They were outmanned and outgunned. After the team leader and one of his men were wounded, the team was forced to withdraw back to the coast until they could be picked up at night.
The team securing the governor general's mansion fared better, but their operation was not without problems, either.
As their helicopters approached the mansion, they found no place to land, a consequence of poor intelligence preparation; the terrain was too steep and covered with large trees. That meant the assault team had to slide down a seventy-five-foot rope in order to get on the ground and clear a landing zone for the helicopter carrying the State Department radio team.
As the helicopter moved around the mansion's grounds, it began taking heavy antiaircraft fire from a nearby hill. Though the helicopter was hit several times and the copilot was severely wounded, the pilot did a magnificent job of keeping the helicopter from crashing (he later made it back to the operation's flagship, Guam, which had hospital facilities onboard).
Meanwhile, the SEALs had secured the facility, and had the governor and his wife well in hand, and in good spirits, when suddenly three armored personnel carriers appeared at the mansion's gate. The SEALs quickly got control of the situation, however, by calling in an AC-130 gunship. The gunship blasted the APCs just as they were swinging their turrets toward the mansion.
The SEALs did very well, considering what they had to work with. But there were failures above them.
During Operation URGENT FURY, Carl Stiner was in Beirut. Even so, he was able to monitor the battle on a SATCOM radio connection he shared with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Jack Vessey. Vessey had given Stiner the frequency of his private channel, so he could communicate directly with the Chairman, but it also allowed him to listen to all the reports coming in during URGENT FURY.
Because Stiner and Scholtes had been friends and neighbors at Fort Bragg, where Stiner had been Assistant Division Commander for Operations of the 82nd Airborne Division before he was sent to Lebanon in August 1983, listening to the SATCOM reports was a disheartening experience. "I could really feel how Dick Scholtes must have suffered," he observes. "All caused by factors over which he had no control."
For the next ten months, Dick Scholtes worked day and night to make sure such things would never happen again, and to develop the best capability possible for counterterrorism and other unanticipated special mission requirements. In August 1984, when Stiner himself assumed command of JSOTF, he received from Dick Scholtes the best trained and most competent joint headquarters and the finest special missions units in the world.
Stiner's mission "was to make it even better by making sure the United States was never so caught by surprise that it had no forces appropriately prepared to deal with the situation. When a Joint Special Operations Task Force is committed, all other options for solving the problem have either proved inappropriate or inadequate. Thus the stakes are high."
But no matter how superbly trained and prepared you are, operations can fail, even when you make all the right moves. Sometimes the terrorists operate within secure sanctuaries, such as Beirut, where they can't be hit. Sometimes delay and indecision from above prevent you from taking timely action to seize the best opportunities.
Both elements would haunt the command in June 1985, just four months before the events aboard the Achille Lauro.
TWA 847
On Friday, June 14, 1985, at 10:00 A.M. local time, TWA Flight 847 took off from Athens Airport headed for Rome, with 153 passengers and crew on board, 135 of whom were American. The plane, a relatively short-range Boeing 727, was piloted by Captain John Testrake; its copilot was First Officer Phillip Marsca; and Christian Zimmerman was the flight engineer.
According to information later provided by Greek authorities, the day before three young men in their twenties had traveled from Beirut to Athens, spent the night in the Athens terminal, and then tried to make reservations on the Athens-to-Rome leg of Flight 847. Their intent: to hijack the aircraft. It was a full flight, however, and only two of them, traveling under the code names Castro and Said (and later identified as Mohamed Ali Hamadi and Hassan Izz-al-din), were able to get seats. The one who had to stay behind in Athens would later be identified as Ali Atwa, and held by Greek authorities, as soon as his part in the hijack became known. The three of them, as it now seems, belonged to Hezbollah, a radical, revolutionary, terrorist faction with ties to Iran. The hijack was a Hezbollah operation, though other factions active in Lebanon would also make their presence felt as the event played out.
Once they were on board, Castro and Said took seats in the rear of the plane near the lavatory, where the weapons used in the hijacking had been stashed, most likely by airport employees. One of them took a small carry-on bag into the lavatory and secured the weapons — two pistols and hand grenades.
As soon as the plane reached flight altitude, the two terrorists went into action. They leapt from their seats and ran to the front of the plane. When they got there, they pushed the flight attendant, Uli Derickson, to the floor, screaming all the while in Arabic and broken English, "Come to die. Americans die." They then tried to make their presence known to the cockpit crew by knocking Uli Derickson's head against the cockpit door. After they'd shoved a grenade in her face and a gun in her car, she somehow managed to get to the intercom and inform Christian Zimmerman that a hijacking was taking place.
Captain Testrake immediately ordered the door of the cabin to be opened, and the two hijackers shouted their first demand: They wanted to go to Algeria.
This was not possible. The 727 didn't have enough fuel on board, so the Captain recommended Cairo instead. This suggestion made the already jumpy terrorists even more upset. "If not Algeria, then Beirut, they shouted. "Fuel only."
Captain Testrake changed course and headed toward Beirut, which was seven hundred miles away and only just barely within range.
Meanwhile, Castro ordered all the passengers in the first-class section to move to the rear of the airplane. Since there were not enough seats available, some of them were forced to sit with other passengers. He then directed Uli Derickson to gather all the passports so he could tell which passengers were American and/or Jewish. Once the passports had been collected, Castro ordered Uli to pick out the Israelis, but it turned out that no Israelis were aboard. He then told her to select the Jews, but that also proved impossible, since American passports do not show religion. Growing more impatient, he had her read the passenger list for him. When she came to what sounded like a Jewish name, he ordered her to find that passenger's passport. Seven people fit this category.