TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/80/80capts.3

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                ╫                                                              May 12, 1980

NATION

Raging Debate over the Desert Raid


Critics ask the Pentagon:  Was it too little--or too much?


Three C-130 Hercules transport planes roared low across the
Florida panhandle last week, two flying tightly as a pair, one
trailing without its partner. This is the traditional "missing
buddy" formation of the U.S. Air Force, a symbol of mourning for
lost fliers. On the ground, in a green park just inside the
gates of Hurlburt Field, some of the toughest men in the armed
services could not suppress their tears.

The ceremony honored five of the eight servicemen who died two
weeks ago in Iran's Dasht-e-Kavir desert during the aborted raid
to rescue the Americans held hostage in Tehran. Some 5,000
people gathered at Hurlburt in memory of the five air commandos
who had been stationed there. One by one, the lost men were
eulogized. Said Lieut. Colonel Calvin Chasteen about his
comrade, Captain Richard L. Bakke, a 33- year-old navigator:
"He looked forward with enthusiasm and anticipation to this last
opportunity to serve, not for the glory it offered but for the
deep satisfaction of defending that which is good and decent."

While the American dead were being honored in Florida, more
than 7,000 miles away in Tehran something most indecent was
happening to their corpses. Iranian authorities tore open the
plastic bags that contained the charred remains, poked at them
with knives and held up pieces for government television crews.
"This is proof of Carter's crime," ranted the Ayatullah Sadegh
Khalkhali, formerly the Tehran's chief Islamic judge. Then,
switching hypocritically to mournful tones, he added:  "My heart
aches for the families of these victims."

At first Iranian President Abolhassan Banisadr promised that
the bodies would quickly be returned to the U.S. As middleman
he designated Ilarion Capucci, a Greek Melchite Catholic
archbishop and longtime ally of the Palestine Liberation
Organization. Then the Ayatullah Seyyed Mohammed Beheshti,
president of the National Supreme Court and a leading political
rival of Banisadr's, stepped in and insisted that only the
Revolutionary Council or the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini could
release the bodies. Beheshti ordered them transferred to the
Tehran morgue, which falls under his jurisdiction. The militants
who were guarding the U.S. embassy announced that an undisclosed
number of the American hostages had already been dispersed among
eight other cities in Iran, which, if true, would make a second
rescue attempt virtually impossible.

Reflecting the country's deep outrage at the display and
desecration of the American dead, President Carter at a
televised press conference assailed the Iranians' "ghoulish
action," which he called "a horrible exhibition of inhumanity."
He added:  "This indicates quite clearly the kinds of people
with whom we have been dealing. They did not bring shame and
dishonor on those fallen Americans. They brought shame and
dishonor on themselves."

Meanwhile, investigations were begun by Congress and the
Pentagon into what happened during the rescue and why it failed.
Carter firmly defended his decision to make the attempt. He
reaffirmed his confidence in the Pentagon's plan for the raid
as "a fine operation that everyone believed had a good chance
for success."  And, he argued, using one of the year's more
improbable euphemisms, "there is a deeper failure than that of
incomplete success, and that is the failure to attempt a worthy
effort, a failure to try."

Nonetheless, a worldwide debate was raging over the raid. A
Pentagon whose planes had not even been detected while flying
into Iran, much less shot at, now was barraged by bombs of
criticism. some were hurled wildly by armchair strategists,
others by more knowledgeable experts.

The main target was the rescue plan. Some critics charge that
it was too lean and spare, with far too few men and aircraft to
overwhelm the militants holding the embassy in crowded Tehran,
pick up the hostages and escape safely. On the other hand,
other critics argue that the plan was to sophisticated and
complex, with too many staging points and too many chances for
detection before the assault on the embassy.

Under Phase 1 of the raid, three C-130s carrying some 90 air
commandos and three others transporting fuel, for helicopters
took off from an airfield in Egypt. Eight Sikorsky RH-53
helicopters, flying in pairs, left the nuclear carrier Nimitz
in the Arabian Sea. All were to meet at "Desert One," an
unimproved landing strip in the Great Salt Desert southeast of
Tehran.

Phase 2, never carried out, called for the C-130s to fly to Oman
and the helicopters to ferry the commandos to a mountain hideout
some 100 miles from Tehran. The raiding party would stay in
hiding there throughout the next day. As darkness fell, the men
would climb aboard trucks and buses, which would have been
supplied by an undisclosed number of CIA agents and U.S. Special
Forces men who had entered Iran earlier, some disguised as
European businessmen.

The vehicles would slip one by one into Tehran and rendezvous
at a warehouse that had been acquired by an American agent.
During the night the commandos would divide into two assault
teams. A small party would head for the Foreign Ministry
building, where U.S. Charge d'Affaires Bruce Laingen and two
other U.S. diplomats were held captive. The other commandos
would drive to the embassy compound, where 50 Americans were
imprisoned.

Surprise and speed were essential. The attackers, confident
that they knew where the hostages were within the compound,
planned to scale the embassy walls and shoot or capture the
guards. The assault team was armed with automatic weapons but,
contrary to some published reports, did not carry disabling gas,
which would have knocked out the captives and required them to
be carried to safety.

As the assault began, four of the choppers were to fly to the
embassy's soccer field. In the last stage of the assault, the
hostages (by now joined by the three from the Foreign Ministry)
and the 90 commandos would all leave in the four choppers. They
would join the C-130s, which would have flown from Oman, at yet
another airstrip, "Desert Two."  There the choppers would be
abandoned, and everyone would fly to safety in the transport
planes.

All during the rescue, Navy fighter aircraft from the carriers
Nimitz and Coral Sea would fly along the Iranian border, ready
to dart toward Tehran if the assault party got into trouble.
The U.S. planners did not fear Iran's once potent air force.
Of the country's 76 advanced F-14 fighters, no more than seven
can fly, and none can fire its Phoenix missiles, owing to the
lack of maintenance. Iran has 187 operational F-4 fighters, 50
of them near Tehran, but none is equipped for night combat.
Moreover, insists a Pentagon official, "we knew where all their
planes were," meaning that they could have been destroyed on the
ground if that had been deemed necessary.

American military experts not involved in the mission's planning
say that whether the scheme was sound depended on what kind of
help the rescuers expected once they reached Tehran. The
mission commanders, as well as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
David Jones and Defense Secretary Harold Brown, have refused to
comment on speculation that units in the Iranian military or
even defectors among the militants were guarding the embassy
were ready to support the operation.

One former U.S. official familiar with Iran finds the mountain
hideout scheme more practical than it might sound, noting that
there are several well-concealed plateaus in the remote
mountains. But few experts can understand the contention of
both Carter and Brown that the Tehran phase of the plan would
have been easier than getting the assault team into position in
the desert in the first place; both of them have refused to
explain why they think so. Even some of the military planners
concede that the complex mission violated an old Army rule
called KISS, meaning "Keep it simple, stupid."

Other questions about the raid and the answers insofar as they
were known last week:

Did the plan risk too many lives?

Pentagon officials have adamantly denied reports in Washington
of a CIA estimate that 60% of the 53 hostages would probably
have been killed in the rescue attempt. But TIME has learned
that initial casualty estimates once ran as high as 200
fatalities, including both hostages and rescuers. The final
plan did, indeed, envision the possibility of losing from 15 to
20 hostages.

Did the military planners want a bigger force?

Outsiders claiming firsthand information from the Special
Forces officers involved in the mission insist that earlier
plans called for at least 600 men and 30 helicopters in the
assault force. Some of these critics contend that the plan was
scaled down by President Carter and is National Security council
in the belief that a smaller strike would prove less bloody,
less provocative to Iran's Arab neighbors and more politically
acceptable at home.

Indeed, in the months of planning that began within days of the
seizure of the embassy last November, a wide range of rescue
options was considered. "in the initial stages," General Jones
said last week, "we did not see an option that had a reasonable
chance of success. We tried and we trained and we exercised,
and nothing was denied to us by anybody."  Some of the earlier
plans did envision a larger force but were discarded as
impractical. One reason:  the bigger the operation, the more
difficult it would be to keep secret. SO far, there is no
evidence that the more restrictive plan was forced on the
military by civilian officials.

What changed to make any plan at all seem feasible?

The planners are secretive about this. Yet it seems clear that
they had been more successful than expected in getting covert
agents into Iran, gaining support from people already in the
country and picking up precise intelligence on where the
hostages were and how they were guarded. Over the months, the
militants had decreased their numbers and vigilance. Also, the
U.S. had launched two secret military satellites in late
November, completing the Air Force's positioning of six command
and communications satellites around the world, including one
over the Indian Ocean. The system could send almost
instantaneous messages between the Pentagon and rescue
commanders in the field. It might even have helped covert
agents get information out of Tehran.

What went wrong with the helicopters?

The mission was canceled when three of the eight helicopters
heading toward Desert One broke down while flying through a
blinding sandstorm. An electrical power supply on one craft
overheated and failed, knocking out the gyrocompass, the horizon
indicator and the cockpit lights. The crew flew back to the
Nimitz, making a dangerous landing, with fuel tanks nearly
empty.

On the second helicopter, the crew set down in the desert
because a warning light signaled that the chopper's 34-ft.-long
rotor blade was in danger of failing. They discovered that it
was cracked. The crew and all classified material were picked
up by another helicopter.

The crew of the third damaged chopper pushed on to Desert One,
despite the failure of a pump that propels the craft's back-up
hydraulic system. It is essential, supplementing the primary
hydraulic system, which operates the helicopter's control.
Because the pump could not be repaired, the helicopter had to
be taken out of service, and the rescue mission had to be
scrubbed. Planners figured that the rescue required at least
six helicopters. There were no back-up helicopters on the
Nimitz; even if there had been, they could not have been flown
to Desert One before daylight.

Did the unusually severe storms cause the malfunctions?

Although the sandstorms were common to all three helicopter
failures, the mission leaders do not blame their problems on the
weather. Pentagon officials disclosed that the choppers' 150-lb
sand screens had been removed to increase the engines' thrust
by 3%, a possibly critical safety margin. But the screens are
designed only to protect the engines from long-term wear from
dirt, which apparently was not a factor in any of the
breakdowns.

Investigators suspect that the overheating in the first craft
resulted from a cooling vent having been blocked by a crewman's
flak jacket and bag. If so, that obviously was human error.
The swirling sand, investigators say, could not have cracked the
rotor blade in the second craft. The cause may never be known.
THe failure of the third chopper's pump also is a mystery and
presumably could not have been caused by sand because the
helicopters' hydraulic systems are well sealed.

Was maintenance of the helicopters faulty?

From President Carter down to mission officers, this suggestion
has been vehemently denied. To the contrary, they say, the
helicopters got unusually meticulous care, even though their
crews did not know of the impending mission. Fifteen
maintenance men were assigned to each of the eight helicopters
aboard the Nimitz. In addition, two civilian helicopter
technical experts, including one from Sikorsky, were sent to the
carrier. Almost daily, maintenance pilots flew the choppers to
make sure that they were in top condition. In fact, the crews
tending the RH-53s recently won Navy awards for their
exceptional maintenance record. The U.S. military may have a
general problem in retaining skilled maintenance men, the
mission planners concede, but the best were available on board
the Nimitz.

Just eleven hours before the start of the mission, a sailor
accidentally hit a fire control switch, dousing five of the
RH-53s with sea water and foam. The aircraft were rinsed with
fresh water and inspected. No visible damage was found.

Why were the helicopters not destroyed at Desert One?

So far, the mission leaders have not provided a satisfactory
explanation. Failure to destroy the choppers enabled Iranian
officials to obtain mission maps and other secret papers.
WHether the documents revealed the identity of some U.S. agents
or collaborators in Tehran is not known but seems improbable.
The mission leaders suggested that after one helicopter
collided with a parked C-130 at the landing strip and both
erupted into flames, the resulting shrapnel and flying debris
from exploding ammunition threatened to damage four other C-130s
and strand the entire party. When asked about this last week,
Colonel Charlie Beckwith, who was in charge of the 90-man
assault force, said tersely:  "That wasn't my job. I can't talk
to that. I got all my stuff out of there." Perhaps
protectively, the navy has not revealed the name of the Marine
colonel who commanded the helicopter crews once they left the
Nimitz.

Did the commandoes want to continue the mission?

Friends of Beckwith, 51, a true, if little-publicized, hero of
Special Forces missions in Viet Nam, insist that he returned
crestfallen from the failure in the desert, angry at being
ordered to end the effort and on the verge of resigning his
commission. But last week he appeared at a select Pentagon
press conference at which photos were banned to protect his
potential future usefulness in covert operations. He brusquely
denied all allegations that he had opposed the decision to
abort.

From the start, Beckwith said, everyone had agreed that if the
rescue team could not fly out of Desert One with at least six
helicopters, the mission could not go forward. After two of
the eight helicopters had failed to reach the landing strip,
Beckwith had been relieved at the arrival, although late, of the
sixty. But then the pilot of third damaged chopper told
Beckwith that it could not fly. THe colonel's one-word reply:
"Bullshit."

Beckwith went to the overall on-site commander, Air Force
Colonel James Kyle, and asked him to take a look at the ailing
chopper. "Let's confirm this," Beckwith said. "I want to make
sure."  When Kyle climbed down from the critical craft to report
that it was indeed useless, Beckwith said last week, his own
reaction was immediate:  "Sir, my recommendation is that we
abort."  The commander gave Beckwith a chance to change his
mind, asking "Would you consider taking five and going ahead?
Think about it before you answer me. You're the guy that's got
to shoulder this."  After only a few seconds of reconsideration,
Beckwith said sadly, "There's just no way."

When a reporter persisted, asking again if Beckwith had not
argued in favor of continuing the mission, the rugged six-footer
bristled and replied in a soft Southern accent:  "With all due
respect, sir, you don't know where you're coming from. I've
been there before, and I'm not about to be a party of 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 gonna do
that. It was a no-win situation."

After the order to abort had been confirmed from both the White
House and the Pentagon, Beckwith recalled, his first thought was
"My God, I'm gonna fail."  He ordered his men into the C-130s
to take off, then rushed to gather up all classified papers and
gear. He was aboard a C-130 when he looked out a window. He
recalled:  "A 130 all of a sudden exploded. It was one hell of
a fire. On that 130 were 39 of my people."  Beckwith said there
was no way to get the bodies out of the fire "unless you wanted
to burn up everybody who's going in there."  Said the much
decorated and fearless officer:  "I sat there and cried."

Vienna Waltz

In another part of the world, U.S. Marines were almost too
successful at raiding an embassy last week. It was 8:50 p.m.,
and the lone Austrian policeman at the gate of the American
embassy in Vienna was yawning with boredom. Suddenly three cars
squealed to a stop near by. Fifteen tough-looking men in
civilian clothes leaped out and clambered over the embassy's
garden wall. Instead of drawing his pistol and shooting at the
intruders, the outnumbered policeman flashed headquarters for
help. Lots of it. Within minutes, police surrounded the
embassy. The squad leader then made contact with the American
duty officer to see if he could get a situation report from
inside. "Oh, sorry," the startled American replied. "We called
our Marines out for a special security exercise. We forgot to
notify you."