Delta Force (36 page)

FORTY-SIX

THE NEXT MORNING
was gray and cool. A morning that again promised rain. General Vaught was calling to tell me he had heard rumors that I intended to come to Washington on Tuesday to denounce the raid to the press. This was completely untrue. Hell, all I'd done after the President left was get a little rest and work on the After-Action Report. I told the general I'd spoken to no one and had no intention to do so. Why in blazes would I want to go up there and criticize the mission? It didn't make any sense.

The clouds lifted later in the day and the sky brightened. Later still, in the early evening, it must now have been around 1900, the secure telephone rang. Buckshot answered it. He came into my office. “Boss, the Secretary of Defense wants to talk to you.” I thought he was trying to play games with me to buck up my spirits. “Aw, don't bullshit me.” “No, Boss, it really is.”

After three or four minutes of this I picked up the phone and found it wasn't Dr. Brown, but that, indeed, someone from his office was calling. I was to come to Washington the next day and go before the press. I replied. “I'm not going up there and do any press conference. I'm just not going to do it.”

“We're not going to discuss it,” he said. “There'll be an aircraft at your location to pick you up in the morning. When you arrive, you are to report immediately to the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

In my living quarters, I tried to sort all this out. I felt that
if they were pushing me before the press they were looking for a fall guy, a victim. No one knew too much about Delta. Yes, there'd been a few odd articles that had leaked out but, by and large, our existence was a pretty well-kept secret. The average person in this country didn't know about Delta and maybe that's the way it should be left. I didn't sleep well that night.

I flew to Washington the next day and reported to General Jones. He told me I would be going before the national press that afternoon around 1400 hours. I begged him to change his mind, “Sir, you can't do this to me.” He didn't get angry and he didn't sympathize with me. He never raised his voice, “It has been decided you will do this and you will.” I finally asked his permission to go and see the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Meyer. I knew Moses would fix it.

I literally ran down the halls of the Pentagon to the Special Ops office of the JCS. These were the same halls where three years before I had walked looking for information and assistance I needed to organize Delta Force. Now I was again looking for help, but of a different type. I quickly explained to General Vaught what I'd been ordered to do. He became very angry and together we went over to see General Meyer. We asked permission to see the General and were immediately shown into his office. After he listened for a few minutes, General Meyer said, “You are not going before the press. I will get back to you around 1300 hours, but you are not going to talk to he press, Charlie.” He knew nothing about this. It made no sense to him either.

Later, while I waited in General Vaught's office, I calmed down. “Hell, the Army's not going to let these political guys do this to me.” There then appeared on the scene some Army public affairs officer. General Vaught said, “I know this officer, Charlie. Let him talk to you and tell you how to handle the press, just in case…”

This officer, a nice lieutenant colonel, sat with me for an hour outlining all the techniques I needed to get through a press conference. It went in one ear and out the other. His system was not Charlie Beckwith's. I'd talked to the press in
Vietnam several times, so that part wasn't bothering me. What kicked the wind out of me was losing my cover and having to answer questions about sensitive classified matters.

A little after 1300 hours, neither the Chief of Staff of the Army nor one of his representatives had gotten back to Charlie Beckwith. Instead a civilian from the Department of Defense Public Affairs Office, a Mr. Ross, stopped in to tell me I was expected at General Jones's office at 1330 hours. I wasn't angry any longer, just scared. “Somebody's trying to set me up.”

General Jones told me, “Charlie, you can talk out there about anything that happened up to Desert One. But, don't talk about anything beyond that affair.”

I said, “I'm prepared, if necessary, to lie about any CIA or other intelligence participation in the mission. It's no one's business. In my view, it could affect the national security.”

Dr. Brown, who was listening in the background, spoke right up and really bit into my ass. “We don't lie about anything up here. If you get a question you believe is sensitive and will in your view affect this country's security, all you will say is, ‘I can't answer that question and I suggest you ask my superiors about it.'” This impressed me. I felt I was dealing with honest brokers.

I was taken upstairs to a press briefing room. While I was being introduced I remembered what Buzz Miley had told me long ago: “After you're asked a question, before you open your mouth, think about it for forty-five seconds.” I answered every question I could to the best of my ability. The reporters took me chronologically, more or less, through the events at Desert One. I believe I was questioned for thirty or forty minutes.

Q: Did you have some colorful words for those choppers for being late? Like—

A: Yes, sir. I did say to the helicopter commander, “We're late; we are going to make up some time. I want to load my packs and get cracking.”

Q: Did you give them all hell for being late?

A: I usually give a lot of people hell, sir. My soldiers are on time and I expect all the other people to try and get on time, sir. I try to be punctual.

But you have to appreciate the ordeal these people had gone through. At that point, I myself didn't appreciate it. I had no idea—it wasn't until yesterday, in fact, that I realized—the ordeal the helicopter pilots had experienced.

Q: Colonel, at this point, I know the book said that you had to go; and you being the good soldier, you said abort. But didn't you feel at that time that you could have gone—as a soldier you could have gone on with five?

A: All due respect, sir, you don't know where you're coming from.

Q: O.K., please explain.

A: I have been there before. I was not about to be a party to half-assed loading on a bunch of aircraft and going up and murdering a bunch of the finest soldiers in the world. I ain't going to do that. I have been in the Army twenty-seven years. I don't have to do that. I get paid for shouldering responsibility, and being a leader. I wanted to get the job done, but under those circumstances, it was a no-win situation.

Q: Could you tell us what went through your mind though? You had some sort of emotion at that point, didn't you?

A: The only things I had on my mind was we failed and I have got to get soldiers out of here.

Q: What did your soldiers say?

A: We didn't stop and talk, sir. We didn't have time, everybody was on the double, unloading helicopters, grabbing everything we could find and taking people up to start loading the 130s. Some of the people couldn't load on the 130s because refueling was going on with the helicopters. So we had to wait outside. At the same time the watch was ticking. I am getting worried about being caught somewhere in the desert of Iran at first light. I don't like that.

Q: Colonel, you mean the discipline was such that none of your men allowed themselves to express emotion—

A: Not at that time; they were too busy. When we got back
it was a different story. A lot of people were very unhappy. We were very disappointed.

Q: Sir, I wonder if you could give us your thoughts on, or your feelings about, having to leave the bodies and was there any effort at all to recover any of the bodies?

A: I had three years in Vietnam and I don't like to leave a body. But anyone who wastes additional human life, which is the most precious thing on the face of the earth, to go and get a body out, then I don't think that's very prudent when it's impossible.

Q: Why did the mission fail?

A: Sir, I don't know.

Q: Was it bad luck or—

A: That's all I can say, I don't know.

Q: Are you sort of reliving the whole thing at night?

A: Yes, ma'am. Hell, who wants to be part of something we worked so hard to do—only to have it end as it did?

Q: Colonel, you said you had never rehearsed aborting the mission?

A: With a 130 on fire and all that—no, we'd not done that, sir.

Q: Colonel, there are rumors that you are going to retire or resign in protest or something of that sort?

A: That's pure bullshit, sir.

Q: Have you testified before any committees today?

A: No, I haven't.

Q: You have not been on the Hill? Are you going today to the Hill?

A: Not to my knowledge. I'd like to go see my family.

Q: Have you not seen them yet?

A: No.

Immediately afterward I was taken downstairs to the Secretary of Defense's office, where I was turned over to a brigadier general who was wearing civilian clothes. We chatted for a short time. He said, “Do you know where we're off to now? No? Well, we're going over to the White House.”

I said to myself, Now what? I was tired of explaining.
I wanted to be left alone. In the car on the way over, I thought they were still looking for a patsy. They would have to come up with a very good scheme now, because the press conference had gone well.

Dr. Brown met me and accompanied me into the Oval Office. Dr. Brzezinski was with the President. There was a short pause. President Carter looked at me. “I have just read the wire service report about what you said to the press and I want to thank you for that. Colonel Beckwith, unfortunately, there were some people who felt you and I were at an impasse over the wisdom of conducting this mission. I did not want to put you in front of the press, but I really had no other alternative. I appreciate what you did and now, welcome to the kitchen.” I told him I'd been blown out of the water. I was finished. He said, “I'm sure, Colonel, you will be able to handle it.” We shook hands and Dr. Brown and I turned and left.

Dr. Brzezinski caught up to us. “Colonel, I have something on my conscience. May I speak to you for a moment?” He led the way to the Rose Garden. It reminded me of a little French cafe. There were these little metal chairs with fancy filigree backs. “Colonel, I was with the President the whole time he was monitoring the mission. When he received word there were five flyable helicopters and you recommended the mission be aborted, I almost asked the President to order you to continue. If I had, I feel, he would have done so. What would have been the consequences if you'd been told to go forward?”

The answer was simple. First, I gave him the reasons behind my recommendation, then I answered his question. “I wouldn't be here today to tell you about it. It would have been a disaster.”

Dr. Brzezinski said. “That's good enough for me.”

It's the answer to a hypothetical question I asked myself while I was being driven over to the Army airfield at Fort Belvoir. It was an honest one. If General Vaught had ordered me to leave Desert One for the hide-site with five helicopters, I would have experienced audio transmission problems. “I
can't read you, sir. Over. Say again. You're not coming in. Over! Over!”

I joined the troops that evening. Slowly we began to get back into gear. At first everyone was somewhat short-tempered. There wasn't much conversation. The support people who'd been left behind at Fort Bragg were very sympathetic. Of course, they wanted to know what had happened. They didn't need to know. We wished they weren't there. Delta needed to be left alone.

FORTY-SEVEN

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SENATOR
Goldwater's compassionate and laudatory remarks and Senator Warner's persistent hammering of General Vaught, Senator Nunn asked me the question.

It was during a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee which, along with General Vaught, General Gast, Colonel Kyle, Lieutenant Colonel Seiffert, and other key personnel who had made up the JTF staff, I was asked to attend.

The senators conducted their business around a large, dark rectangular table. A passel of powerful legislators, among them Senators Stennis, Thurmond, Jackson, Goldwater, Nunn, and Hart, were there that day to ask the question—why?

When it became Senator Nunn's time, he turned toward me. “My first question will be directed at Colonel Beckwith. I'm not asking him because he is from my native state, but rather because he was the ground commander and because he happens to be on my right.

“You know that the people in this country are very concerned about what happened in Iran. We are not doing very well. The Son Tay raid was a dry hole. During the
Mayaguez
incident, fifteen of our people were killed. We are tired of rescue missions which fail. We need something to give us a lift. America needs a win.

“My question is in two parts. Colonel, what did you learn
from this mission and what can we do to preclude this kind of thing happening in the future?”

“Senator,” I replied, “what did I learn from this operation? I learned that Murphy is alive and well. He's in every drawer, under every rock, and on top of every hill. Sir, we purely had bad luck.

“I've known the answer to your second question since I was a captain. What do we need to do in the future? Sir, let me answer you this way…. If Coach Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama put his quarterback in Virginia, his backfield in North Carolina, his offensive line in Georgia, and his defense in Texas, and then got Delta Airlines to pick them up and fly them to Birmingham on game day, he wouldn't have his winning record. Coach Bryant's teams, the best he can recruit, practice together, live together, eat together, and play together. He has a team.

“In Iran we had an ad hoc affair. We went out, found bits and pieces, people and equipment, brought them together occasionally and then asked them to perform a highly complex mission. The parts all performed, but they didn't necessarily perform as a team. Nor did they have the same motivation.

“My recommendation is to put together an organization which contains everything it will ever need, an organization which would include Delta, the Rangers, Navy SEALS, Air Force pilots, its own staff, its own support people, its own aircraft and helicopters. Make this organization a permanent military unit. Give it a place to call home. Allocate sufficient funds to run it. And give it sufficient time to recruit, assess, and train its people. Otherwise, we are not serious about combating terrorism.”

Senator Nunn said, “Fine.” Then he asked General Gast a question and the hearings moved on.

That evening I returned to Bragg and continued to pick up the pieces of my life. A routine superimposed itself on Delta. Wounds closed and healed and the world began to turn more slowly. I became interested in things I hadn't thought about for several months—my younger daughter's grades, how the car was running, whether Katherine needed a new coat, what
kind of football team the Georgia Bulldogs would have that fall.

Some of the humorous incidents that occurred at Desert One began to make the rounds. For example, after the bus had been stopped and its passengers had been searched and gathered together, one of the guards left to watch them was a Ranger who was a black man. An Iranian who spoke broken English asked him who we were. Our soldier had replied. “We're African commandos.” The guys thought that was pretty funny.

Another of the operators received a real surprise. When he had debarked from the C-130, he went to what he thought was his assembly position. In the dark he walked to a group of people huddled by the road and asked, “Is this helo load number six?” When no one answered, he looked real hard and saw he was talking to the Iranian bus passengers.

But his surprise was nothing compared to that of the Blue Element operator who had dozed off on the C-130 just before the helicopter crashed into it. At the explosion, he had awakened and joined the line of guys exiting the plane through one of the hatches. There was smoke and fire. The engines were still running and the aircraft was shaking violently as the chopper continued to cut into it. The operator evidently thought that while he was dozing the 130 had taken off and was now airborne. When it was his turn to leave he automatically assumed a freefall parachute position and jumped. He landed spread-eagled on the ground. Afterward his mates asked, having jumped, what he was going to do next without a parachute? “I don't know,” he answered. “I was just taking one thing at a time.”

Most of the nightmares take place in the embassy compound.

The first one I had took place at Desert One. Delta loaded onto the helicopters and took off and no one ever heard from them again.

They're usually crazy things and they never repeat themselves.

Another dream has to do with the wall. We've climbed over
it and Fast Eddie has detonated his explosives. Glass is shattering everywhere. Katherine said I woke up shouting.

These dreams triggered nightmares I used to have after Vietnam. The old ones returned. Plei Me. I've dreamed Plei Me many a time. I've seen John Pioletti throwing up as he's loading the body bags into the helicopter—dreamed that at least fifteen times.

I've also seen Captain Pusser's body as it looked when it was brought through the wire after it had lain in the sun for several days—swollen, brown, unrecognizable. I think I was reminded of it by the photographs I saw in the newspaper of a crew member who had burned to death on the C-130.

After a heavy conversation, maybe with Buckshot, and we've talked for three or four hours about Desert One, then that night I'll have a nightmare or a dream.

I've awakened as the hostages are being removed from a building I've never seen before and as one of the helicopters is crashing in the stadium.

In some dreams I awaken before Delta ever gets to Manzariyeh. In none have I ever dreamed whether the mission would have been successful or not.

In the weeks following my return from Iran, I spent many solitary hours examining and reexamining the lessons we had learned from the effort put forth to rescue the hostages. If we could find in the mission basic principles on which future missions could be based, then everything that had happened might not be wasted. It was possible, if we were smart, to come out of Desert One stronger than when we went in. I had appeared before the Congress on three separate occasions and came away hopeful that both the legislative and executive branches of government were willing to act on what had been learned. The question was just how far they—and for that matter the Defense Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff—would be willing to go.

Would a system be devised that fairly and accurately recruited, assessed, and trained the necessary personnel to make up a permanent joint organization tailored to perform the tasks
Delta had recently undertaken? Or would the JCS get hung up on a force that for public relations and other reasons consisted of all the services?

Had our government truly learned the importance of strong intelligence agencies and the need for stay-behind agents? Could it be expected that we'd raise the priority of information collected by the Department of State and the CIA regarding terrorists and their activities?

The command and control mechanism that the mission used had proved to be viable and responsive. During the time at Desert One, it had been able to act rapidly. Future administrations could use it as a model.

Have the bureaucrats in DOD and other governmental agencies by now learned to accept help from our free world allies? Would we again reject vitally needed assistance from the British and West Germans—as we had during the Iranian crisis? I wondered.

Basing rights around the world for Delta had been a problem since day one. Maybe now State or DOD will have staging sites in hand. Next time speed might be critical. There may not be time for diplomatic negotiations.

Early on in the planning of the mission I was embarrassed to learn that Delta could not coordinate with our State Department those contact points we had taken a lot of time and effort to establish. Because of State's notorious reputation for not being able to keep a secret, DOD ordered Delta not to talk to State. Somehow this problem with the State Department must be overcome. In the future, every appropriate agency in our government must be used.

I recall staff officers in the JCS, on the JTF, and in one instance on my own staff, who became obsessed with the rescue plans. It's very easy to be swept up in something and then to lose sight of everything else. This is a mistake. Clear thinking and sound decisions are the result of balance and perspective.

Delta was ready to undertake the mission in mid-January when the weather favored us. Political considerations delayed it until mid-April. National resolve is weakened by many
forces. The longer the crisis is allowed to run, the more such forces come into play. The longer a government waits to respond to a terrorist incident, the harder is the rescue by military means.

It's important to be able to predict a terrorist incident before it occurs. People in government, I remember, laughed when the subject of predictive intelligence first surfaced. If the terrorists can be cut off at the pass, it might not be necessary to circle the wagons.

Since the decision to respond to terrorist acts is a political one, it is critical the President of the United States have firsthand knowledge of the existing military capabilities for dealing with terrorism. President Carter's first visit to Delta occurred the Sunday following the return from Desert One.

The lack of psychological operations applied skillfully against the Iranian government removed a valuable weapon from our arsenal. The purpose of psychological operations is to maneuver and manipulate the enemy in the most subtle ways. We didn't use them in Iran and we didn't use them well in Vietnam—yet our adversaries are very successful in using them against us.

I lost many hours of sleep on the most imponderable of all the lessons I had learned—how to harness up Murphy. Without luck playing its role. Murphy will surely surface.

Finally, I wondered if the system would draw upon the experience I had gained and use me again.

I hadn't seen General Meyer from the time I'd gone to him in the Pentagon about appearing before the press until he visited Delta at Fort Bragg in mid-May.

I went out to Simmons Army Airfield to pick him up, and on the way back he said to me. “Oh, by the way, Charlie, you know the work you did for me about forming a joint military organization to combat terrorism, I'd like to see it again.”

I couldn't remember anything formal like a written brief, but it was something we'd talked a lot about.

At the Stockade, he met and talked to the troops and their wives. He was particularly generous in his praise for the
women. He appreciated the support they'd given to their men and to Delta and to their country. The women understood.

After General Meyer mingled with the families for a while, he and I went into my office and spoke of the future.

He was going to move me out of Delta. I'd had the command longer than was usual. He also felt I might be more valuable to the Army in the United States and not with Special Operations Task Force Europe. Katherine, I felt, would be particularly pleased with this news. We talked some more about a new joint unit and I was very pleased to know he wanted me to help form some of the basic principles that would lay at its foundation.

In the staff car driving back to Simmons, General Meyer said, “Charlie, I'd like you in Washington tomorrow at noon. I want to see then what this new joint organization should look like.”