The mastermind of the coup had been Vice Adm. John Poindexter, the national security advisor to President Reagan. At that time, I was also attached to the White House staff as executive director of the President’s Task Force on Combating Terrorism. John and I had discussed in very general terms the feasibility of such an operation just several days earlier. The essence of the plan was to conduct the entire mission in international waters and airspace to eliminate any requirement to obtain permission from a host nation to preclude a turndown or a leak that would have alerted the airliner.
The Tomcats were from Fighter Squadrons VF-74 and VF-103 assigned to the USS Saratoga, which was on a routine forward deployment to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. The intercept of the airliner had been run by an E-2C radar aircraft also launched from the Saratoga, as were the two A-6 tankers that refueled the flights during their seven-hour mission. As a footnote, Poindexter’s son Alan, a naval aviator and now an astronaut in Houston, won the all-Navy award as best F-14 pilot in the fleet as a lieutenant (j.g.).
This extremely complicated operation, conducted on short notice, with assets available in the fleet on a routine forward deployment, and using regular fleet pilots — as opposed to special operations specialists — was the perfect example of the broad capabilities of the Navy. It illustrated how effective naval forces can be at all levels of conflict from general war to the twilight campaigns of terrorism.
This would be an important lesson for the President’s Task Force on Combating Terrorism. The task force had been created in the summer of 1985 by President Reagan, largely as the result of the frustrations growing out of our efforts to respond to the hijacking of TWA Flight 847. To be certain that all appropriate government resources were properly focused on combating the threat of terrorism, President Reagan had appointed Vice President George H. W. Bush to chair a government-wide task force to review and evaluate the effectiveness of U.S. policies and programs in this area. Terrorism was a relatively new threat to Americans, and until this time our response had largely been one of reacting on a step-by-step basis as incidents occurred. The creation of the task force provided the opportunity to review and shake down the system in an orderly and controlled fashion, without in any way interfering with ongoing capabilities to deal with the threat strategically or tactically.
The task force was made up entirely of officials actively serving within the administration with responsibilities for terrorism programs — with one exception, and that was myself. The task force proper — I refer to these members as the principals — was chaired by the Vice President Bush and included the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and transportation; the attorney general; the director of the FBI; the director of the CIA; the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); the assistant to the president for national security affairs; the chairman of the JCS; the chief of staff to the president; and myself as the executive director.
Policy statements, recommendations to the president, and the final written report would be deliberated upon, reviewed, and ultimately approved by the principals. The investigative work was largely carried out by a staff working group made up of eight or nine middle-grade officers from the State Department, the CIA, and the military services.
The task force submitted its report to President Reagan before the end of calendar year 1985, as required by the president’s instructions, and from it an unclassified report was subsequently published for public distribution. The original report to the president was classified top secret and had a very limited distribution.
Terrorism at that time was not out of control, at least insofar as the United States was concerned. However, even then, the threat of terrorism was of very deep concern to the president. We had to take steps then to develop the programs, forces, and intelligence systems that could prevent or eliminate the threat. If we wanted to keep terrorism under control, we had to stay ahead of the threat, which we saw as growing in both sophistication and intensity. Even at that time, trends indicated that Americans, both in this country and abroad, would be increasingly targeted in the future. There were several reasons for this, the most important of which is that terrorism is really warfare on the cheap. Ideological groups that want to do harm to the United States and its friends but cannot afford a formal war realize that they can hurt and embarrass the United States through terrorist acts.
The task force, early on, concluded that the best solution to the problem lay in having such good intelligence, and such effective reaction forces, that potential terrorist actions could be preempted before they could occur in such a quick and effective fashion that the damage is limited. We needed to improve our capabilities for dealing with terrorists to minimize the effectiveness of terrorism. There could be problems, however, in reacting to intelligence. To make public the fact that a terrorist plot had been discovered and preempted would, at best, expose our intelligence apparatus and, at worst, cause the loss of agents or capability. Intelligence sources need to be protected if success is to be sustained.
The task force also concluded that the new breed of terrorist was totally dedicated, absolutely ruthless, possessed of great animal cunning, and in many cases received the technical and financial support of a sovereign government. We decided that it should be the nation’s objective to prevent terrorist acts and eliminate terrorism. But we also had to be realistic. We had to expect that regardless of how proficient we might become in a technical sense, the other side was going to score an occasional success. When this happened, we wanted to ensure that the American public knew the facts — that we had an effective system, that it worked most of the time, and that it was the best this country could have while still preserving our individual freedoms.
The task force felt very strongly that America had to work continually toward an international environment that largely eliminated — or at least reduced — the root causes of terrorism: intense hatred of the United States and its allies. Then we had to develop a reliable intelligence system that could penetrate the milieu of the terrorists to give us forewarning of their activities. Third, we had to have a command and control system that would enable us to take advantage of our intelligence to preempt or abort planned terrorist actions. And we had to have the trained reaction forces that could respond immediately and effectively to an incident after it occurred. Finally, we needed the international agreements and cooperation that would permit this country to use its assets and those of our friends for the preemption or the resolution of an international terrorist incident.
The interception of the Egyptian airliner was one of the most spectacular and effective counterterrorist measures in this ongoing contest with terrorism. The ability of carrier-based F-14s to single out and identify the target airliner from a stream of air traffic crossing the black Mediterranean skies borders on the unbelievable. It took enormous skill and discipline to accomplish it.
It is apparent that U.S. naval forces will continue to have a major role in reacting to terrorist incidents of the international category. The main reason is that the U.S. Navy can operate in, and over, international waters. The U.S. can intercept and seize both ships and aircraft in international waters without getting anyone’s permission. The problem of getting permission of a third party, even a friendly government, has been a repeated stumbling block in attempting to react to international terrorist incidents with our own forces. Sovereign governments in general are simply not going to permit the use of U.S. armed forces or paramilitary forces on their soil. They are going to try to resolve the issue with their own units. Quite often these units are far less proficient than our own. In the case of the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, which precipitated the terrorism task force, there were several locations where the hijacked aircraft was vulnerable to a take-down, but the United States was unable to get permission from the airfield’s host government to inject our own forces for that purpose. The same would apply for a port in which a hijacked ship was located. However, when ships or aircraft are on or over the high seas, the United States may employ its forces without having to get permission from any third party. Similarly, rescue or assault forces operating from afloat bases such as an aircraft carrier in international waters are much more liable to be committed by the U.S. government than those forced to base from foreign soil. It is very doubtful that any other nation, friendly or unfriendly, would agree to allow the U.S. military to fly from that other nation’s military bases to conduct a punitive strike against a nation that had indulged in state-sponsored terrorism against the United States. On the other hand, a carrier-based strike from U.S. vessels located in international waters or a helicopter assault with Marines or commandos from floating bases in international waters is quite thinkable.