The diagram was a godsend. It was about four feet by eight feet and showed in detail where all the structures were that could cause us problems in darkness. Within an hour, with its help, all our assault forces were able to tweak their plans and brief their troops.
CAIRO
In Cairo, Egypt's Foreign Minister Abdel Meguid was asking the ambassadors of the various countries involved for advice: Would it be best to negotiate or refuse to negotiate? Meanwhile, Yasir Arafat sent Abu Abbas to Cairo to deal with the hijackers.
Yasir Arafat already had a working relationship with the Italian prime minister, as he did with the Egyptian government. In those days, the PLO leader had developed several "under the table agreements — especially with governments that lay within what might be called the PLO area of influence. These governments were afraid that the PLO could bring down their governments if they did not cooperate. These agreements permitted the PLO to operate within those countries.
By Wednesday morning, Arafat claimed to have everything under control. "We have succeeded in bringing the ship back into the waters off Egypt," he announced. "1 can reveal to you that we have a high degree of confidence regarding a positive conclusion to the affair."
Meanwhile, neither the Egyptians nor the Italians were eager to pursue the terrorists once they had arrived in Egypt. For various diplomatic and internal political reasons, they hoped the terrorists on Achille Lauro would simply disappear and the whole affair would go away unnoticed.
As far as the United States was concerned, this was not an option. To the United States, like Israel, a terrorist attack was no different from any other military attack. It could not be met by appeasement. The only option was military action.
Neither position was, strictly speaking, unreasonable, given the needs and premises from which each side started. But compromise and appeasement are not a wise long-term approach to terrorism.
By late Wednesday afternoon, actions were well under way for positioning the assault force of Navy SEALs aboard a Navy ship just out of sight of the Achille Lauro. Four hijackers were not enough to guard hostages, control the crew and the bridge, and maintain a watch over the entire ship. There was every likelihood the SEALs would reach the ship without detection by the terrorists. Come night, they would launch their strike. Once they were aboard, they had no doubt of the outcome.
As the rescue force prepared to strike, events were taking place in Cairo that would make the attack unnecessary.
That evening the Egyptian government announced: "At four-twenty P.M., the hijackers, whose number is four, agreed to surrender without preconditions. They surrendered at five P.M." The statement was soon amplified by the Egyptian Foreign Minister: "The four hijackers have left the ship and are heading out of Egypt." These statements had a subtext: that no harm had been done to any of the passengers. Up until this point, the murder of Leon Klinghoffer had been concealed, based on statements Captain de Rosa had been forced to make over the radio as the liner neared Egypt. "I am the captain," he had said. "I am speaking from my office; and everybody [aboard] is in good health."
As it happened, each of those statements was false. First, the Egyptian government had agreed to preconditions. They had promised the terrorists safe passage out of Egypt. Second, the hijackers were not yet heading out of Egypt, and would not do so until the next day. Finally, the terrorists had blood very much on their hands.
Even before these facts emerged, the Reagan administration was furious. As far as they were concerned, it was a lousy deal. It's not acceptable for terrorists to take Americans hostage and get away with it. In the words of White House spokesman Larry Speakes: "We believe those responsible should be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible."
On Wednesday evening, after the terrorists had left the ship, the truth about the Klinghoffer murder came out when a distraught Captain de Rosa announced to Marilyn Klinghoffer that her husband had been shot and his body dropped overboard. The rickety structure of Egyptian and Italian whitewash and deception was tumbling down.
When Nicholas Veliotes, the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, learned of the murder, he immediately contacted Meguid to insist "that they prosecute those sons of bitches."
Meguid dodged, claiming — once again — that the terrorists were already out of the country, a claim confirmed by President Hosni Mubarak the next day. "The terrorists have already left Egypt," he announced. "1 don't know where they went, but they possibly went to Tunis.
"When we accepted the hijackers' surrender," he continued, "we did not have this information. This information emerged five hours after the surrender. In the meantime, the hijackers had left the country."
This was a lie. The terrorists were then sitting in an Egypt Air 737 at Al Maza air base near Cairo waiting for a place to fly to. Nobody wanted them.
American intelligence was on the ball, however, and had the tail number of the plane—2843.
Late in the evening of October 9, Vice Admiral Moreau informed me that the terrorists had surrendered and left the Achille Lauro. That meant there was no longer a requirement for an assault on the ship, he concluded, and I could begin my redeployment to home bases.
Shortly after that, I ordered Captain "Bob" to prepare for redeployment. Meanwhile, our airlift, which had remained at their dispersal bases since our arrival, began arriving at the Cyprus base; and starting at around 2200 hours, we began a phased redeployment back to home bases.
Standard operating procedure was to deploy and redeploy as combat-configured entities (task forces) should any requirement for our services develop while en route. The planes all stopped in Sigonella to refuel and then proceeded on back to the States.
By the time daylight Thursday was approaching Cyprus, only three aircraft were left — a C-5 and two C-141s. The C-5, loaded with UH-60 Blackhawks, had developed a bad hydraulic leak from a busted hose. It could not retract its main landing gear and was losing an alarming amount of fluid.
The problem was not the leak itself, but the continued presence of the aircraft at "our friends' " base in daylight, where it would be visible to Soviet spy satellites. Two colonels from our host nation were really getting nervous. They could accept a couple C-141s, but the C-5 would attract too much attention and cause political problems. They wanted it gone.
It was a touchy situation.
The only thing I could think to do was to take a look myself to see if I could come up with something that might help. I crawled up into the C-5's wheel well to look at the broken hose, and as soon as I did, I realized that the "Docs" had some surgical tubing that might work. Sure enough, they had a hose that looked about the right diameter, and the pilot, an experienced older Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel, agreed to fly the plane if we could stop the leak.
He shut the engines down to take the pressure off the hydraulic system. Then he, a mechanic, and I climbed up in the wheel well, and with hydraulic fluid spraying all over us, repaired the hose well enough so the plane could fly with its wheels down.
They took off just at the break of day and flew at low level to Sigonella, where the plane was fixed properly.
WASHINGTON
For all of Thursday, the four hijackers remained at the air base northeast of Cairo, but now they had a destination. They were to be flown to Tunisia (the new location of the PLO headquarters after they'd been forced out of Beirut by the Israelis).