When the Achille Lauro arrived off the port of Tartus Tuesday afternoon, the JSOTF was still flying to Cyprus. Though aircraft from the U.S. 6th Fleet were crisscrossing the eastern Mediterranean searching for it, no one other than a few on board the vessel had any idea where the cruise liner was until the terrorists announced their presence near Tartus, where they broadcast a request to land and a demand for the release of the fifty Palestinian terrorists. Their hope was that Syrian President Hafez Assad would provide them a sanctuary and a platform for negotiations. Their hope was misplaced.
Though President Hafez Assad remained friendly to terrorists, he was not at that time friendly to Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Front terrorists. Assad had fallen out with Arafat, and since Assad had by then identified the Achille Lauro hijackers as members of the PLO, he saw an opportunity to undermine Arafat.
Assad, taking advantage of the opportunity, refused this request.
The terrorists were now in a desperate situation, knowing that they were no longer hidden and increasingly vulnerable to an attack. To deter that, they arranged twenty hostages in a circle out on an open upper deck, visible to aircraft. One of the twenty hostages was Leon Klinghoffer. His wheelchair prevented him from ascending the stairs to the deck and joining the others. "The terrorists ordered me to leave him," his wife Marilyn reported later. "I begged them to let me stay with him. They responded by putting a machine gun to my head and ordered me up the stairs. That was the last time I saw my husband."
Majed Molqi then broadcast threats. Passengers would be killed unless he saw movement on his demands by 3:00 P.M.
At three, Molqi went to where Leon Klinghoffer had been left, moved him near the starboard rail, and shot him in the head and chest. Two of the ship's crew were ordered to throw the body overboard.
Afterward, Captain de Rosa was told to call this information to Tartus.
This message may have been picked up by the Israelis, because I was informed later that we had reason to believe someone had been killed, even though by that time the hijackers were claiming that all of the hostages were safe.
Meanwhile, the hijackers had picked another victim, Mildred Hodes.
Though Majed Molqi continued to demand action from Tartus, the Syrians continued to stall.
By this time, the PLO leadership had realized that matters were getting out of hand and it was time to institute damage control. Using a codename, "Abu Khaled," Abu Abbas, who was one of Yasir Arafat's chief lieutenants and a member of his executive council, broadcast a message over an Arab-speaking radio station, directing the terrorists to return to Port Said without harming the hostages.
The Achille Lauro set sail from the vicinity of Tartus somewhere around 4:30 or 5:00 P.M., to take advantage of the coming darkness. The ship again went into radio silence.
When the Achille Lauro first broke radio silence near Tartus, the JSOTF was about midway into its flight to Cyprus, and I was being kept abreast of the intercepted communications between the terrorists and the Tartus port authorities by Vice Admiral Morcau at the Pentagon. At the same time, our liasion officer in Rome was keeping me up to date on developments within the Italian government.
What I learned was that Ambassador Rabb had met with Italian Prime Minister Craxi, Foreign Minister Andreotti, and Defense Minister Spadolini to explain that President Reagan was pleased at the Italian governments collaboration during the hostage crisis, but the U.S. government had learned authoritatively that an American citizen had been murdered and others had been threatened, and that this was "untenable." Rabb stated further that the U.S. government was absolutely unwilling to undertake negotiations, and had decided to attempt a military rescue operation some time Wednesday night.
Meanwhile, the Achille Lauro had vanished again; and again, 6th Fleet aircraft lost it.
CYPRUS
The arrival of darkness also meant that JSOTF aircraft had started landing on Cyprus. We instantly raced into action.
Based on an intelligence guess that the Achille Lauro might not be headed for Egypt but for Larnaca, in Cyprus, which was not far away, we clandestinely rushed forces into position for a takedown, just in case the ship did show up.
Things did not in fact work out that way.
At about daylight, Wednesday, October 9, an Israeli patrol boat spotted the Achille Lauro off the Israeli-Lebanese border heading south — for Egypt.
Even so, the ship was still in international waters and a good distance from Egypt. Earlier we had requested two Navy ships from the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) for platforms from which to launch our helicopters. Meanwhile, three U.S. Navy ships had arrived in the vicinity of the Achille Lauro and were shadowing it from over the horizon. Plans had already been made for positioning the SEAL assault forces onboard the two U.S. Navy platforms. The plan was to conduct a ship takedown just after darkness at 2100 hours, Wednesday night.
Back at Cyprus shortly after daylight, I was finalizing last-minute details for the assault with my commanders when a helicopter landed just outside our hangar. Colonel "Lou" quickly responded, "It's not one of ours; they were all back before daylight." Lou's helicopters had been conducting test flights after reassembly following offloading.
I said, "Sergeant Major, find out who that is. No one else around here has a helo that makes that sound."
The sergeant major rushed outside and quickly returned. "Sir," he said, "we have a couple of guests." Standing there with the sergeant major were two Italian officers, a lieutenant colonel and a major, in flight suits and wearing survival equipment and weapons.
"What are you two up to?" I asked them.
"We are here to recover our ship," the lieutenant colonel said.
"You gotta be shitting me," I said. "Where is the rest of your force?"
"Well, we've had a few maintenance problems on the way," he answered, "and some of my force is broken down on islands between here and our home base, and they will be coming in a little later."
Knowing that whatever he might eventually be able to gather up would be totally inadequate and untrained for ship takedown operations, I said, "We can't wait, we are up against a time crunch."
"I do have a diagram of the ship," he offered, "if that will help any."
Would it! Boy! this was welcome news. Up to that moment, we had had no clear idea of the layout of the Achille Lauro.
For this operation, we had drawn sketches for planning, using other ships as models, but we'd had to guess where the towers, antennas, masses, and the bridge were located on the Achille Lauro. Although we had the best pilots in the world, it is still risky business flying helicopters at night in an assault into the structures of a ship, placing shooters exactly where they ought to be — all under night-vision goggles — and especially on a ship that is likely to be blacked out.
"I'll make you an offer," I said. "You give us that diagram, and we'll take you along on this operation, but keep you out of harm's way. We'll recover your ship, and turn it over to you. No one will ever know that you didn't do it… unless you tell them. You can have all the credit."
He was ecstatic, thinking that he had made the best deal of his life, and he promptly handed me the diagram. What he didn't know was that should Captain de Rosa and his ship drivers be killed during the assault, he could have ended up driving the ship…. You can't just let one float by itself. Of course, we would not have let this actually happen before loaning him a trained ship driver. Yes, our SEALs had people trained for driving ships.