'YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE' - THE TERRORISTS WHO HIJACKED THE ACHILLE LAURO FALL INTO AN AUDACIOUS AIRBORNE TRAP.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000707060067-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 67
• Publication Date: October 21, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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`You Can Run
But You Can't Hide'
The terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro fall into an audacious airborne trap.
he mood in the White House base- munity plunged back to work trying tocon- cepted and shot down by American P-38
ment at 8 o'clock Thursday morning firm the report. Charles Allen, the C[A's fighters in the South Pacific during World
was despondent. The Reagan admin- I national intelligence officer for counterter- War [I. "God, we can't shoot them down,"
istration's counterterrorist team end- rorism, ordered the flow of information replied Poindexter. "No, but we have two
ed its first meeting of the day. Egyptian turned up again. Within an hour Allen re- choices," said North. "Our friends could
President Hosni Mubarak passed the word ported back that evidence suggested that shoot them down or we can force them
to U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Veliotes and the four hijackers were still in Egypt and down somewhere."
repeated it publicly: the hijackers of the that neither Egypt nor the PLO had figured "Where?" Poindexter asked. "Sigonel-
[talian cruise ship Achille Lauro had left out what to do with them. la," replied North. With Poindexter'sbless-
Egypt. The deal, Mubarak said, was struck Back at the White House, North had an ing, North called Vice Adm. Arthur Mo-
with the PLO before the murder of Leon idea. "Do you remember Yamamoto?" he reau, theJoint Chiefs of Staff representative
Klinghoffer had come to light. The news asked Poindexter, referring to the Japanese on the counterterrorism task force, and told
appeared to dash the Reagan administra- admiral whose military transport was inter- him his idea. Moreau said he would look
[ion's hope of catching the terrorists. Ve-
liotes had attempted to deliver a cable from
the president himself to Mubarak, and Sec-
retary of State George Shultz had tried to
telephone the Egyptian president. Mubarak
deflected all contact with the Americans to
his foreign minister, Esmat Abdel Meguid,
and to Defense Minister Abdel Halim Abu
Ghazala. As the meeting broke up, one
discouraged team member turned to the
group's chairman, National Security Coun-
cil Deputy Staff Director John Poindexter.
"[t luuks like it's all over," Poindexter said.
The American intelligence community,
which had kept a close eye on Egypt and the
southeastern Mediterranean for signs of the
hijackers, lowered the priority of its oper-
ations inthe area; raw intelligence no longer
was being processed immediately, analyzed
and fed to top policymakers. Some of the
Navy's elite SEAL Team Six were back in
Gibraltar, en route home from another
fruitless and frustrating wait at the Ameri-
canbase at Sigonella,Sicily. But before they
threw in the towel, U.S. officials decided to
make one more pass at their sources-and
just before 8:30 that morning, there was
startling news.
One source produced convincing evi-
dence that Mubarak was lying, that the
terrorists were still in Egypt and that they
probably would try to leave by air. Armed
with this information, the NSC's terrorism
expert, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a
veteran of countless covert operations and
the Reagan administration's controversial
liaison to the Nicaraguan contras, went to
Poindexter and said, "Maybe they really are
still there."
On that hope, the U.S. intelligence com-
F-14 Tomcats on the flight deck of the USS Saratoga: A Navy posse took to the skies
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into it. and within l0 minutes he was back
on the line. The Sixth Fleet, he said, could
do the job. North. Moreau and a team of
Pentagon officers went to work, outlining a
plan to intercept the terrorists if they tried
to leave Egypt by air. The administration
had never written a contingency plan for
snatching a civilian jet from the air. "This
was somewhat more improvisational than
usual." said one insider. "[t was just cre-
ative thinking."
Other officials grilled the Central Intelli-
gence A enc ? and National ecurity A -
cy un ow sure t ey were of the intelligence
they were feeding in a steady stream to the
White House Situation Room. At the State
Department. Under Secretary for Political
Affairs Michael Armacost. aided by Depu-
ty Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Af-
fairs Arnold Raphel, analyzed the political
pros and cons of such a daring move. By late.
morning. Adm. William J. Crowe, the new
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff> was
ready to telephone Defense Secretary Cas-
par Weinberger with the group's prelimi-
nary evaluation. "Our boys are good," he
reported. "I think they can do it. I think we
should let them try."
By 11 o'clock U.S. sources had con-
firmed that the terror-
ists were still trying to
get out of Egypt. Intel-
ligence sources had lo-
cated the plane the ter-
rorists planned to use
for their getaway: an
EgyptAir Boeing 737
jetliner, drawn up on
the runway at AI Maza
Air Base northeast of
Cairo. The spotters re-
ported its identifi-
cation number and
the name of its pilot
to Washington. There
were signs that the ter-
rorists meant to fly to
Tunis. North present-
ed his plan for inter-
cepting them to Poin-
the launching of the
aircraft carrier Sarato-
ga's F-14 jets and radar planes to surprise
the terrorists over the Mediterranean,
calling the SEAL's back from Gibraltar
to Sigonella and forcing the Egyptian plane
to land in Sicily.
acking the hijackers as they left Cairo and bringing them to heel
At about 11:30 North sent the design to
national-security adviser Robert McFar-
lane, who was traveling aboard Air Force
One to Chicago with President Reagan.
North used a secure data communications
link (not a phone). The president and White
House chief of staff Don Regan had just
finished lunch at the Kitchens of Sara Lee
outside Chicago.Alfhough McFarlane pro-
vided only the broadest ~~utline. Reagan
agreed to the idea in principle. The presi-
dent insisted, however, that he wanted to
know more about the risk of casualties be-
fore giving his final approval.
cFarlane called Poindexter back and
M said the president had approved the
plan but wanted to see the specifics,
including the exact rules of engagement that
would govern the U.S. pilots. before he gave
thego-ahead. With that. Pentagon planners
set to work writing the actual plan for the
operation. North and Moreau went over the
proposed rules of engagement un a secure
tekphoneline:evenaftertheuperatiun. L'.S.
officials refused to discloses hat they were.
There wire a few doubts about the wis-
dom ufthe plan. At first some State Depart-
ment officials worried about the effect the
operation-if successful-would have un
Mubarak. walking a tightrope brtseen
moderation and a rising tide of Arab radical-
ism; on U.S. relations with Egypt. and un
America's standine in the Arab world.
Weinberger, offun a trip to Ottawaand to his
summer home in Bar Harbor. Maine, was
even more skittish, as was the Defense De-
partment's representative un the ~uunter-
terrorist task force. Deputy Secretary ~'il-
liam H. Taft IV. Weinberger called the
president repeatedly to express his reserva-
tions about the plan. at one point telling
Reagan: "This will destroy our relations
with Egypt."
In the end. the State Department argued
COt1iMU~
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McFarlane (leR) and Regan wits the president: Weighing the risks before ordering the attack
that the risks of hijacking the hijackers were
far outweighed by the benefits-especially ~
since the operation would relieve Mubarak
of the onus of turning the Arab terrorists
over to the West. Nearly all the U.S. plan-
ners agreed that if the mission were ap-
proved by the president, it would have to be
kept under the tightest wraps. The security
was so intense that the United States did not
alert Italy.
The president ordered Weinberger to
proceed, risking a major security breach in
the process. Ironically, while U.S. intelli-
gence was closely monitoring communica-
tionsfrom Egypt, the scrambler aboard Air
Force One was broken, and Reagan was
forced to make his call "in the clear." As a
result the conversation with Weinberger
was overheard by a ham radio operator who
reported that the defense secretary ex-
pressed reservations about an operation
that might require Navy pilots to fire across
the nose of an unarmed civilian plane.
Brushing those objections aside,
Reagan insisted that the mission
be carried out, so long as no inno-
cent lives were put at risk.
About 2 o'clock, or less than
two hours after the president had
given the green light, the plan had
come together. The word was
flashed to the Saratoga and the
first planes-E-2C Hawkeye ra-
dar aircraft, a flight of four
F-14 fighters and the Navy's
EA-fiB Prowler electronic war-
fare plane-took off and headed
south to wait. But the rules
of engagement had not final-
ly been settled, and the first
set the president had insisted that
no innocent lives were to be lost,
and U.S. intelligence knew that
the plane was being flown by
Egyptians who had no involve-
ment in the hijacking. Although
the fighters had been authorized
to fire missiles in front of the air-
craft's nose, just the intimidating
presence of the jets did the trick.
Aboard the plane a swaggering
crew of terrorists suddenly turned
into cornered airborne rats. "I
don't know if you ever saw aTom-
Vellotes (leR) and cat with all its lights on going like
Mubarak: Ambiguity hell," said a crewman from the
about Egypt's role Saratoga later. "It's an awesome
~Otlbflll84
Hight of F-14s returned to the carrier.
Shortly after 3 p.m., intelligence sources
received word that IO minutes earlier the
terrorists had arrived at Al Maza Air Base.
Thoughtfully, the sources also produced
the terrorists' Hight number. Aboard Air
Force One, the president snapped, "Let's do
it." At 4:13 word came that the EgyptAir
plane had filed a Hight plan for Algiers and
taken off. Orders were instantly Hashed to
the Saratoga to launch its F-14s again. The
chase was on.
he F-14s and their support planes, in-
chiding the Hawkeyes and the Prowler
electronic-warfare plane, headed to
their station south of Crete and set up an
airborne gate, surveying every plane headed
out of Egypt until they found the EgyptAir
~ flight they were looking for. Meanwhile, the
United States set to work trying to make
sure the terrorists had no place to go except
into the arms of the law. President Reagan
fired off a flash cable to Tunisian
President Habib Bourguiba, tell-
inghim the United States had rea-
son tobelieve-despite the terror-
ists'flight plan-that the hijackers
of the Achille Lauro were aboard
an EgyptAir plane headed for Tu-
nis. The United States, Reagan
said, believed the terrorists should
not be allowed to land. According
to one knowledgeable Source,
some American officials also were
worried that the terrorists might
try to head for Athens or Beirut;
cables were sent to Greece and
Lebanon after the EgyptAir flight
took off, asking the governments
there not to let the hijackers land.
Some 45 minutes after the
EgyptAir flight took off into the
darkness, it flew into the Ameri-
cans'gate, 80 miles south of Crete.
The Egyptian plane was right on
course, flying at 34,000 feet and a
speed of 400 knots. Initially the
F-14s loitered behind the 737,
flying without lights and with
darkened cockpits. There is no evi-
dence that anyone aboard the
Egyptianjet was aware of their presence as
they trailed their prey to the ambush point.
j Then the Americans turned on their lights
i and closed in alongside both wings of the
airliner. "I imagine the plane informed the
Egyptians when they were intercepted,"
Weinberger said later. But there was no
evidence that the pilot had been ordered to
return home.
The Egyptian pilot began desperately ra-
dioing Cairo for instructions. He tried one
frequency after another, but he could not
get through and he could hear only garbled
sounds in his headset. The EA-6B was jam-
ming him, jumping up and down the radio
scale right along with him. Finally, reported
Weinberger, the pilot "accepted the inevita-
ble" and radioed that he would follow the
American orders. The EgyptAir plane fell
into place and reluctantly followed the pack
of American warplanes to Sicily.
There was almost no chance the 737
would have been shot down. From the out-
3,
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3. 12:10 a.m. Refused permission to land
in Tunis or Athens, the Egyptian plane
obeys the order, and the F-14s escort it to
the Sigonella Air Base. Italian authorities
take the hijackers Into custody.
sight. I guess we just scared them down."
Only when the little procession was about
to enter Italian airspace did the United
States inform the Italian government of its
plans. To have done so earlier, although it
would have been a little more diplomatic,
would have risked leaks that could have
killed the plan, one official said. But the
Italians were less than delighted at the news.
"They went crazy," says one American offi-
cial. In fact, Italian ground controllers re-
fused to grant the 737 permission to enter
their airspace and the Egyptian pilot had to
declare an in-Hight emergency, saying he
was low on fuel, in order to get clearance to
land at Sigonella. When he got there, the
terrorists found the commandos of SEAL
Team Six, who had returned to Sicily
from Gibraltar, waiting with the Italian
carabinieri.
There was a debate over which force-
the American or Italian-had jurisdiction.
Secretary of State Shultz, in a long tele-
4. 11:30 p.m. The F-14s intercept the 737
in international airspace south of Crete,
and a Hawkeye orders it by radio to
follow them to a U.S. air base in Sicily.
phone conversation with Italian Foreign
Minister Giulio Andreotti, yielded when
Andreotti assured him the pirates would
promptly be charged with murder. "We
really wanted them to come home with us,
but nobody is unhappy with this," said one
U.S. official.
When they boarded the 737, U.S. and
Italian officials found a bonus: not only had
they captured the four hijackers who would
be accused of seizing the Achille Lauro
and murdering Leon Klinghoffer, but they
found Abul Abbas, ahigh-ranking aide to
Palestine Liberation Organization chair-
man Yasir Arafat. Intelligence sources be-
lieve Abbas directed the hijacking. Sources
2.8:15 p.m. Four F-14 fighters, two KA-6D
air tankers and two E-2C radar planes-
plus back-up planes-take off from
the Saratoga and patrol north of Egypt.
3. 10:10 p.m. An Egyptian Boeing 737 carrying
the hijackers takes off from AI Maza Air Base
near Cairo. The E-2C Hawkeyes monitor it.
told Newswet=x that Abbas, a member of
the PLO Executive Committee, had been in
constant radio contact with the hijackers
from his base in Beirut, beginning immedi-
atelyafter they seized the cruise ship. After
the hijackers announced that they had
killed one of their American hostages, the
sources said, Abbas radioed them and be-
rated them for botching their mission.
which was to infiltrate Israel to carry out a
terrorist operation at a military target near
the port city of Ashdod. Late Friday night
Abbas and an aide also on the plane were
flown to Rome aboard the EgyptAir jetliner
by Italian authorities.
On Saturday afternoon came the only
discouraging news since the operation was
launched. The United States had started
extradition proceedings against Abbas but
the Italians rebuffed the effort, despite a
new legal-assistance treaty between the
two countries. The issue was a delicate one.
The Italians depend heavily on the Middle
East for oil. They have close relations with
the Arab world and with the PLO. And at
least until recently, they have had less
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headquarters in Tunis, sharp
enough to put a strain on rela-
tions between Jerusalem and
Rome. And as the Achille
Lauro plowed up and down the
eastern Mediterranean, the pi-
rates seemed a good deal more
interested in getting away
than in pressing their original
demands.
The administration conclud-
ed that Italy and Egypt should
take the lead in handling the
deterioratingsituation. Besides
having relatively good relations
with the Palestinians, Italy had
N a proven counterterrorist unit
~ ofatleast300men.Amongoth-
er tasks, it had rescued U.S.
Brig. Gen. James Dozier from
the Red Brigades. To isolate the
~ pirates, Washington persuaded
~ governments in the eastern
m Mediterranean not to allow the
~ hijacked cruise ship to dock.
_ . _ ~~
_ I~ The State Department also
F ~. .+
On the Achille Lauro, former hostages inspect the spot where KlinghoBer died. Cold blood mentstto the Inononethatthere
trouble than others from Arab terrorism. antiterrorist computer network, code- .should be no knuckling under to terrorism
On Saturday President Reagan sent a named Flashboard, signaled the White 'and that the Israelis should hang on to their
strongly worded letter to Italian Prime House, Pentagon, State Department. CIA prisoners.
Minister Bettino Craxi in which Reagan and National Security Agency. State De- The administration succeeded in keeping
said he was "surprised" that Italian partment officials set up a crisis command anyone from offering the terrorists refuge.
authorities had "summarily rejected" the centertotrytodeterminehowmanyAmeri- and its diplomacy ultimately led to the re-
U.S. extradition request for Abbas. whom cans were on the ship. They converted the lease of the hostages. But it did not produce
Reagan said had been "criminally implicat- emergency telephone lines that had just the terrorists. The main problem was Mu-
ed" in the hijacking of the Achille Lauro. been used for the Mexican earthquake to Barak, who had to secure the release of the
He promised that Washington would soon handle calls from worried relatives. hostages while protecting himself against
deliver "overwhelming evidence" of Ab- Not until early Tuesday afternoon. when the certain fury of Arab fanatics who con-
bas's guilt. The mutual-assistance treaty, Syrian authorities were turning the ship sidered the terrorists heroes. The Ameri-
Reagan argued, requires the Italians to ar- away from the port of Tartus, did the full cans and Israelis objected violently to the
rest Abbas and to give the United States 45 gravity of the hijacking become clear. Using man Mubarak selected as his intermediary
days to make its case against him. But U.S. highly classified eavesdropping methods, to the terrorists: Abbas. leader of the same
intelligence sources reported that while an American RC-135 spy plane learned that Palestinian splinter group to which the hi-
American officials were trying to serve a one of the terrorists had killed Leon Kling- jackers claimed to belong. Abbas arrived in
warrant on Abbas, he apparently slipped hoffer, 69, a New Yorker who was confined Egypt Wednesday morning and quickly
out of Italy, dressed in an EgyptAir uni- to a wheelchair. The got in touch byradtowith
form. Leaving Rome's Fiumicino Airport ship's radio transmitted the hijackers aboard
on a chartered Yugoslav plane, he headed agnslyboasttotheshore. the Achille Lauro that
for Yugoslavia, apparently with the conniv- "We threw the first body was then anchored off
ante ot-Italian, Egyptian and Yugoslav au- into the water after Port Said. The terrorists
thorities. If the Italians collaborated in shooting him in the greeted him enthusiastt-
.4bbas's release, they may come to regret it. head," one of the pirates tally. Givingorders rath-
"Abul Abbas has a long history of taking said. "Minutes from now er than negotiating, Ab-
hostages inorder Cowin the release of people we will follow up with the bas instructed the pirates
of his who are in jail," said one U.S. official. second one. Do not wor- to await a boat bearing a
"Now that this has happened, I'm glad the ry, Tartus, we have s lot ;~. Palestinian "with a dts-
Italians are holding the terrorists, not us." ofthemhere." tinguishingmark"andto
The four terrorists accompany the man to
hat the terrorists would ever see the seemed more mysterious the shore. His order was
inside of a jail did not seem possible in than most. It was difli- '+ followed,andtheAchille
T the first hours of the hijacking of the cult toestablishwhothey~ Lauro was free. While
Achille Lauro. The four terrorists who were and what they were ~ the U.S. government
seized the ship demanded that Israel release really after. Their tar- ~ '~~. could not quarrel with
50 Palestinian prisoners, including at least get-an Italian ship- that result, it could cer-
oneconvicted murderer; they threatened to was puzzling. Italy had tainly dispute the means.
kill the passengers they had taken captive if issued one of the sharp- The available evidence
they didn't get their way. In the United est criticisms of Isra- indicatedthatAbbashad
States, the government's special worldwide el's attack against PLO De Rosa: Unanswered questions ordered the terrorists
5.
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WNabsrprs>rowa lrow it was doaa'I'ha dtiwa ~7 worried about Arab rsaatiaat
on board the ship in the first place.
Mubarak and Foreign Minister Meguid
argued that whrn they agreed to grant the
terrorists safe conduct out of Egypt they
were convinced that none of the Achille
Laura captives had been injured. Although
the terrorists had been overheard gloating
about the murder of Klinghoffer, Meguid
claimed to be convinced when the ship's still
captive skipper reported "Everybody is
OK."The Egyptians had plrnty of opportu-
nity to learn the truth after the pirates had
left the ship. But when security officials
boarded the Achille Lauro at Port Said,
they claimed that they were too busy look-
ing for bombs to ask whether anyone had
been killed.
eguid said that he had learned of the
M murder only after he had been
phoned by Italian Prime Minister
Craxi, three hours after the ship had been
released. By that time, Meguid said, it was
too late to act upon the information: the
terrorists were already out of the country.
The following day Mubarak chose to blame
the lapse on the Achille Laura's skipper. "If
the captain had told us that a passenger had
been killed," he said, "we would have
changed our position toward the whole op-
eration." He added that the terrorists had
been whisked out of the country to preserve
Egypt's credibility. "We took it upon our-
selves roger them out of here so that people
would believe ua afterwards should there be
a similar operation." That, of course, was an
outright lie.
Ironically, the haggling over the terror-
ists gave American intelligrnce operatives
more time to discover when they wen.
Among other things, the operatives moni-
toned a running debate betwern Egyptian
and Ps[estinian officials over how to dispose
of the hijackers. Mubarak was willing to let
them go, provided chat Arafat could find a
country willing to accept thtm. From those
overheard conversations, U.S. ofliciab ulti-
mately were able to pinpoint the location
of the terrorists and to predict their
movements.
Meguid had agreed that the hijackers
would be givrn safe passage out of the coun-
try. The decision enraged U.S. Ambassador
Veliotes, who on an oprn radio transmia-
sioo from the Achille Lauro instructed a
subordinate to "tell the foreign minister
that we demand that they prosecute these
som of bitches." Instead, Meguid an-
nouncedthattheterrorists had been permit-
ted to flee Egypt.
U.S. intelligrnce agtncies keeping watch
on the Tunisian coast reported that despite
the Egyptian claims, the terrorists had not
turned up st the PLO's refuge. The Ameri-
canfury at Mubarak grew. His aides argued
with Veliotes that a small country like
Egypt should not be forced to go out on a
limb to tight terrorism when the major pow-
ers bad refused to confront the problem.
"The Egyptians were no help at all," said
one srnior U.S. official.
Convinced that the terrorists were still in
Egyptian jurisdiction, Veliotes declared:
"These are murderers, and there should be
an investigation and they should be pros-
ecuted according to the laws of Egypt like
any other crirninala." According to in-
formed sources, the terrorists were seen
with Abbas in Cairo's Sheraton Heliopolis
Hotel many hours after they were said.to
have fled. The transparent conclusion was
that even after the murder was established.
the Egyptians meant to sneak the terrorists
out of the country in the company of the
very man who may have ordered their pi-
ratical act.
Feelings became harder when the Egyp-
tians detained the ship even as they ap-
peared to be letting the terrorists escape.
But all along there was enough ambiguity to
Cairo's moves to convince some that Mu-
barak did not mean for the terrorists to get
off scot free. According to swell-placed
congressional source, ofRcials of the Egyp-
tian intellrgrnce service quietly passed on
precise information about the EgyptAir
flight. Others including Reagan said the
United States had acted alone.
artier, New York Republican Sen. Al-
E fosse D'Amato expressed the view of
many of his congressional colleagues
when he called for taking a harder look at
Egypt's more than S2 billion a year in U.S.
military and economic aid. But such talk
was considerably muted once it was
learned that Egypt may have supplied
Washington with covert intelligrnoe. Ao-
cording to one Senate source, it's easy to
understand why Mubarak acted a, he did:
he clearly understood the risk to Egypt's
relations with the United States. Egypt is
second only to Israel in the amount of U.S.
foreign aid it receives. But he was also
aware of the danger he faced from Egyp-
tian and other Arab radicals. The Egyp-
tians remember all too well what happened
to the late Anwar Sadat. Now, however,
Mubarak can claim he never gave in to
American pressure and still maintain cor-
rect relations with Washington.
The success of the ambush helped ease
earlier frictions. And the administration
clearly had no intention of breaking with a
vital strategic partner. "As of this morn-
ing," said a congressional source after the
interception. "you're not going to find any
American official attacking Egypt in pub-
lic the way they did yesterday." How
much sportsmanship Egypt would show
remained an open question. Initially at
least, Mubarak accused the United States
of piracy in seizing the Egyptian air-
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liner. And Cairo rumbled with anti-Amer-
ican bitterness.
At one point NEWSWEEK'S Rod Nord-
land was surrounded by a crowd of angry
students. "Are you American'?"they shout-
ed, pressing in close, shaking their fists,
pulling at his clothes and tearing pages from
his notebook. "I thought it wise to lie," he
reported. "I'm French," he said, and the
mood immediately cooled. Then other
voices shouted, "He looks like an Ameri-
can," and "He's probably an Israeli spy."
"You'd better get out of here fast," coun-
seled the single sympathetic voice in the
mob, Suddenly, however, a triple line of
police began to charge. To Nordland's re-
lief, the anti-American mob broke up and
fled. An armored car charged through the
scattering ranks firing dozens of tear-gas
canisters into the crowd. One student ran up
to him and shook a hot canister in his face.
"See what your country is doing to us," he
said, pointing to the inscription that read
"Made in U,S.A."
ith feelings souring, the released
American hostages flew from Cairo
to Sicily on a U.S. military jet. At the
Italian section of the Sigonella Air Base, the
four hijackers were mustered for a lineup.
Four of the passengers were led in separate-
ly to identify them, "There was positive,
unequivocal identification," said Frank
Hodes, one of the released Americans. "[
saw them as they came out [of the lineups"
said his wife, !Mildred. "And there was no
doubt that it was the same men." The for-
mer hostages. added Hodes. "were elated,
euphoric that they had theguys whocreated
this world incident and caused thedeath ofa
very dear friend of ours."
Back home the sense of jubilation was
also stronger than anxiety over what might
happen next in the ongoing war against
terrorism. "Thank God," exclaimed New
York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
"We've finally won one." Ronald Reagan
placed a phone call to Marilyn Klinghoffer,
the widow of Achille Lauro's helpless. inno-
cent martyr. According to her son-in-law,
she thanked the president for his condo-
lences,saying: "I just want you to know how
much the terrorists hate you." "I appreciate
that," Reagan responded, "but I hope
they'll have more reason to hate me in the
future as we continue to try to stop these
people from committing these terrible
acts." "These people don't deserve to live,"
said Mrs. Klinghoffer with rising bitterness.
"They are despicable! Late last night in
Italy I had the opportunity to face every one
of them. [spat in their faces and [told them
what I thought of them,"
"You did?" exclaimed the president.
"God bless you."
JOHN WALCOTT with ROD NORDLAND in Cairo.
THEODORE STANGER in Rome, y~11LAN 1. KL'BIC
in Jerusalem, .ANDREW' NAGORSKI ht Bunn.
JOHN BARRt" in w'ashington and
SUSAN AGREST m Naw Murk
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/10 :CIA-RDP90-009658000707060067-2