Delta Force Read Free

and beliefs shoot to the death. We were prepared to help him reach his maker.
    Mr. Jordan asked, “In your shooting exercises, Colonel, did your men ever hit the American targets and not the Iranian ones?”
    â€œSir,” I said, “Delta’s playing in the Rose Bowl, not the Toilet Bowl!” I explained that Delta expected to find roughly70 to 125 people on the embassy grounds—not including the hostages. Twenty or 25 would be guards on duty, the others sleeping in a barracks. That building would be covered by machine guns. The only real threat was with the guards holding the hostages. They were all to be taken out.
    I sat down.
    General Gast was introduced and he covered the airlift portion of the operation: how we would fly to Egypt and to Oman and to Desert One, would be flown by helicopter to the hideaway and out of Teheran, and finally be air evac’d out at Manzariyeh.
    General Gast was very thorough, but one aspect of the air operation, which he had not mentioned, still bothered me. Delta was going on this operation without tac air. I was confused. I had been told in briefings many, many times—and had been given call signs—that if something truly bad happened I could call in fighter support. But, I’d also been told, because of flying distances, not to expect such support for at least an hour. An hour to get on station was one hell of a long time. That was a hard bone to swallow. There was also no tac air support tasked to follow us out of Manzariyeh. It didn’t make any sense to go through the entire raid only to get wiped out at the end by an Iranian jet jockey who happened to get lucky and knock down a C-141 carrying hostages and rescuers. General Vaught and I had had several discussions about this. The issue never seemed to get resolved. In the White House, it was.
    The President spoke out: “There will be air cover from Manzariyeh all the way out of Iran.”
    Whew!
    Someone said, “Mr. President, my agency now needs to know what your decision will be. Should we move forward and pre-position?”
    The President answered in a direct way. “It’s time for me to summarize. I do not want to undertake this operation, but we have no other recourse. The only way I will call it off now is if the International Red Cross hands back our Americans.There’s not going to be just pre-positioning forward. We’re going to do this operation.”
    Charlie Beckwith almost fell out of his chair. I just didn’t believe Jimmy Carter had the guts to do it.
    A date to go over the wall was agreed upon. April 24th we would enter Iran, 25th we’d hide out and go over the wall, and early in the morning of the 26th we’d leave Iran.
    The President said to General Jones, “David, this is a military operation. You will run it. By law you will keep the Secretary of Defense Dr. Brown informed; and I’d appreciate it if you’d do the same with me. I don’t want anyone else in this room involved,” and he gestured toward the table with his arm. At this point I was full of wonderment. The President had carved some important history. I was proud to be an American and to have a President do what he’d just done.
    When the meeting ended, everyone stood up. President Carter looked at me. “I’d like to see you, Colonel Beckwith, before you leave.” It was quiet in the room. He walked over and stood in front of me. “I want to ask you to do two things for me.”
    â€œSir, all you gotta do is name them.”
    â€œI want you, before you leave for Iran, to assemble all of your force and when you think it’s appropriate give them a message from me. Tell them that in the event this operation fails, for whatever reason, the fault will not be theirs, it will be mine.”
    â€œSir, I give you my word I will do that.”
    â€œThe second thing is, if any American is killed, hostage or Delta Force, and if it is possible,