TERROR ABROAD FLIGHT 847 - MUSLIM HIJACKERS HOLD AMERICANS HOSTAGE ON A MURDEROUS JOURNEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807580056-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: June 24, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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ARTICL1 4FDAM TIME
ON PAGE 24 June 1985
Nation
HLEUIIUj
Terror Aboard Flight 847
Muslim hijackers hold Americans hostage on a murderous journey
Millions around the world
watched their television sets or
listened to their radios as the
horrific drama unfolded. "He
has pulled a hand-grenade pin and is
ready to blow up the aircraft if he has to.
We must, I repeat. we must land at Beirut.
We must land at Beirut. No alternative."
After much delay. the curious, grudging
reply of the Beirut control tower: "Very
well. Land. Land quietly. Land quietly."
Then another desperate plea: "They are
beating the passengers. They are threat-
ening to kill the passengers. We want fuel
noW. Immediately. Five minutes at most,
or he is going to kill the passengers." After
that. another. more excited. more hostile
voice. in broken English "The plane is
booby-trapped. If anyone approaches, we
will blow it up. Either refueling the plane
or blowing it up. No alternative."
After airport authorities complied,
the stricken plane took off from Beirut.
where it had landed after having been hi-
jacked out of Athens. Hours later. it land-
ed in Algiers, then took off again and re-
turned late that night to Beirut, the
tension rising, the crew bone-weary. And
minutes after landing, the senseless slay-
ing of a hostage, and a harsh voice over
the plane's radio: "You see? You now be-
lieve it. There will be another in five min-
utes." and the nightmare rolled on.
In the beginning, the hijackers were
outnumbered by their captives 153 to 2.
and U.S. authorities tended to believe that
the terrorists would soon be overwhelmed
by exhaustion if nothing else. By Sunday
morning, however, with the plane on the
ground in Algiers, the ranks of the hijack-
i ers had swelled to between twelve and 15.
and all but 32 male American passengers
and crewmen had been released. The
gunmen set a 10 a.m. deadline (5 a.m.
E.D.T.) for their demands to be met. but
then inexplicably left Algiers more than
an hour ahead of time. Once again. their
destination was Beirut. On landing there.
they demanded the release of 50 fellow
Shi'ite Muslims currently detained in Is-
rael, such a gesture was justified. the hi-
jackers said. by their freeing of three
American men the night before in Al-
giers The terrorists had been seeking the
release of 700 Shi'ites from Israeli custo-
dy, and this appeared to be the first step in
realizing that goal. If Israel and presum-
ably the U.S. balked, declared the hijack-
ers, "our blood will be a witness."
Tension and deep fatigue had marked
the TWA jetliner's third arrival at Beirut.
Not only was the crew frazzled, but the
plane was thought to be in need of main-
tenance. Beirut authorities had again
tried to refuse permission to land, but had
been overruled by the hijackers and by a
desperate-sounding pilot who said he had
only five minutes' worth of fuel. Even as
he prepared to land, Shi'ite militiamen
around the airport fired their weapons out
to sea, at what they claimed was an Israeli
gunboat. The lives of remaining passen-
gers and crew were obviously still in dan-
ger. But particularly disturbing was the
news that on the plane's second stop in
Beirut the previous night. some six or
eight passengers with Jewish-sounding
surnames had been hastily removed from
the aircraft in the darkness. In effect, this
meant that the well-organized hijackers
had created a hostage crisis within a hos-
tage crisis, and there was no end in sight.
For the U.S.. it was no ordinary sky-
jacking, no incident involving some trou-
bled soul who needed to be jollied or sweet-
talked or strong-armed out of a free ride to
Havana or Timbuktu. It was an American
plane, Trans World Airlines' Flight 847 on
its leg from Athens to Rome, with 153 pas-
sengers and crew members aboard, at least
100 of whom were Americans. Most im-
portant, the hijackers were identified by an
accomplice as members of Islamic Jihad
(or Holy War). the shadowy Shi'ite Muslim
organization that is regarded as a sort of
umbrella for various fundamentalist terror
groups operating in Lebanon and other
Middle East countries. Loyal to Iran's rev-
olutionary ruler. the Ayatullah Ruhollah
Khomeini, and quite possibly subsidized
and directed by the Iranian leadership. Is-
lamic Jihad and its confederates are
blamed for many of the suicide bombing
missions that have afflicted American and
other Western military bases and diplo-
matic missions in the Middle East in the
past two years.
n a political level. the hijackers of
Flight 847 called for the release
not only of the Lebanese Shi'ites
still held by Israel, but of a few
others imprisoned in Cyprus and Kuwait.
They also demanded the immediate with-
drawal of Israeli forces from southern Leb-
anon (a pullout has been under way since
January and. except for patrols and forays
hack into the herder area. is now virtually
complete) and international condemnation
of the U.S. and Israel. In a broader sense,
the Shi'ites of Lebanon, newly radicalized
by the violence that has plagued their
country, particularly since the Israeli inva-
sion of June 1982, are seeking a fairer
shake after generations of neglect and dis-
crimination by Lebanon's wealthier and
more powerful Maronite Christians and
Sunni Muslims. Beyond all that, the Shi'ite
fanatical fringe, inspired by the example of
the Iranian revolution, wants to destroy the
last vestiges of Western "decadence" in the
Islamic world, particularly the presence of
the U.S., that "Great Satan." To accom-
plish this goal, these extremists have dem-
onstrated that they are willing and even ea-
ger to employ savagery and mass murder.
This was the first hijacking of an
American airliner in the Middle East
since Ronald Reagan took office in Janu-
ary 1981, and the Administration was
deeply disturbed. It was convinced that
the hijackers of Flight 847 were in the
same league as the ones who seized a Ku-
waiti airliner last December. took it to
Tehran and eventually killed two Ameri-
can passengers. That incident ended
when the Iranians sent a platoon of secu-
rity men aboard the plane dressed as
a maintenance crew. The hijackers
were arrested, but there is no evidence
that they were ever brought to justice.
As Flight 847 zigzagged around the
Mediterranean, the Administration faced
the vexing question of what it should, or
could, do to respond to the crisis. By 9 a.m.
Friday, a working group chaired by Robert
Oakley, chief of the State Department's of-
fice for combatting terrorism, had gathered
next to Secretary of State George Shultz's
office in the State Department's antiterror-
ism suite. The group set to work on a 24-
hour watch, monitoring events, establish-
ing communication lines, serving as liaison
Illttld
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to the various foreign governments in-
volved, soothing the families of hostages
and working out options for US. action.
That evening, the Administration dis-
patched antiterrorist Delta Force ? units
from West Germany and BrasL
to the Sixth t Elect in the ~terran ? t
to man units are trained in such
skills as counterintelligence and comman-
od~o r-at ons, t~~ have never been
used to storm a iratedaairliner
When as a -ter in the day what the
U.S. was doing to help, the President re-
plied, "Everything that can be done." But
when asked if it were true that Washing-
ton had threatened to retaliate against
Iran if any U.S. hostages were harmed by
Islamic fundamentalists, Reagan said
flatly, "I can't answer that."
n fact, Shultz had warned Iran months
ago that if any of the Americans kid-
naped in Beirut were executed by its
Lebanese surrogates, Iran would suf-
fer the consequences. Precisely what that
means would have to be carefully deter-
mined, but the U.S. has long since learned
that it is difficult to retaliate against so
amorphous an enemy as the Lebanese fa-
natics. Their headquarters and even their
whereabouts are hard to pin down, and
their precise links with Iran are not easy
to define. As Friday turned to Saturday
and the ordeal continued, the President
remained in touch with the situation from
his weekend retreat at Camp ,David, tell-
ing National Security Adviser Robert
McFarlane: "Let's do all we can to sup-
port the Algerians. Our main objective is
to get those people out safely." Shultz can-
celed a trip to Evanston, Ill., where
he had planned to accept an honorary
degree from Northwestern University.
On Sunday, Shultz and McFarlane were
back at their desks tracking the ominous
new trends in the crisis. The President
remained at Camp David, but was due
to return to the White House Sunday
afternoon.
The hijacking of Flight 847 had begun
Friday morning when the plane, a Boeing
727 that had taken off from Cairo two
hours earlier. landed at Athens and took
on additional passengers. Among them
were 24 members of three Roman Catho-
lic churches from towns in northeastern
Illinois, who had spent a fortnight visiting
the Holy Land. Also among them were
two well-dressed young Arabs carrying
shoulder bags who had arrived from Cai-
ro the day before. Along with a third man,
they spent the night in the airport lounge,
waiting to board the TWA plane. As it
turned out, only two of the men managed
to get seats on the crowded flight; the
third, after arguing with TWA officials,
was forced to stay behind. He was later
arrested at the airport by Greek police
and identified as All Atwa, 21, an air-
conditioning technician from southern
Lebanon. He identified his confederates
as Ahmed Gharbiyeh and All Youness,
both 20 and also Lebanese.
According to police, Atwa said he and
the others were members of Islamic Ji-
had, a claim later affirmed by an anony-
mous caller in Beirut and then disputed in
a statement delivered to news agencies
there. The confusion may stem from
Iran's recent efforts to play down its con-
nections with terrorists in hopes of win-
ning international support for its 4%-year
4.
said, '"here was some shooting, but I
didn't dare raise my head to see what was
happening. The huacken were beating
people on the ba&" Paasenaers were un.?
nerved by the behavior of the hjj leers,
"1W was bysWical, they were scream-
ing," said Patricia Weber of Albuquerque.
Next stop was Algiers, where local of-
The jet's stops, Eastern times: 1) lands In Beirut 4 a.m. Friday; 2j arrives Algiek s 10:30 a~.~,-
back In Bertut, 7:20 p.m.; 4) Algiers again, 2:45 a.m. Saturday. On Sunday, it returned to Beirut
struggle against Iraq. Atwa told police
that his friends had managed to smuggle
two grenades and a 9-mm pistol through
the airport's X-ray machines by wrapping
the weapons in fiber glass insulation.
Scarcely 20 minutes after the plane had
taken off for Rome's Leonardo da Vine
Airport, on a flight that was supposed to
continue via a Boeing 747 to Boston, Los
Angeles and San Diego, it was taken over
by the two terrorists, who wildly bran-
dished their grenades and pistol They gave
the pilot, Captain John Testrake of Rich-
mond, Mo., the first order fly to Beirut At
Beirut International Airport, the last thing
officials wanted was a skyjacking crisis on
their hands, and so they blocked the air-
port runway with buss and other obsta-
cles. But the terrorists and their captive pi-
lot were having none of it. Demanded the
pilot: "They are beating up passengers. We
must land in Beirut. He has pulled the pin
of the grenade. We must land. He is ready
to blow up the plane.,,
On the ground in Beirut, the plane was
refueled as the hijackers had ordered. The
terrorists also asked to speak to an official
of Amal, the mainstream Shi'ite Muslim
political and military force, but Amal lead-
ers refined the request. After announcing
their demands; the hijackers released 19
women and children via a yellow escape
chute lowered from the forward dos. One
freed hostage, Irma Gans of Laredo, Tex.
as, said that the te1roi fists had shot a pas-
senger in the neck. Another of the released
passengers, Frances Reynolds of Chicago,
ficials responded to the plane's landing
request by closing their airport. But they
changed their minds after the arrival of
an urgent plea from President Reagan to
Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid.
US. officials, who well remember the im-
portant role played by Algerian diplomats
in settling the Iranian hostage crisis al-
most five years ago, had hoped that the hi-
jacking could be resolved one way or an-
other in Algiers. But after remaining on
the runway there for five hours, during
which time they released another 21 pas-
sengers, the hijackers ordered the pilot to
take off again and head back to Beirut.
I t was well past midnight in the Middle
East when Flight 847 again landed in
Beirut. The airport-tower operator did
his bat to refuse permission, but Cap-
tain Testrake was adamant: he was run-
ning out of fuel, and the terrorists were
threatening to ? killl him. A hijacker may
have clinched the argument by shouting,
"We are suicide terrorists! If you don't let
%am
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us land, we will crash the plane into your
control tower, or fly it to Baabda and
crash into the Presidential Palace!" The
tower relented. The plane touched down
at 2:20 a.m. Saturday.
Once again, the hijackers asked to
speak to an Amal official. and when none
appeared, they responded by murdering an
American passenger and throwing his
body onto the tarmac. They claimed the
victim, a young man with a crew cut, was a
U.S. Marine who had taken part in "securi-
ty blowups in Lebanon." It was then, after
the pilot shouted over the radio, "He just
ger!" that a hijacker declared, "You see?
You now believe it. There will be another
in five minutes" When the control-tower
operator remonstrated with him, saying,
"Isn't it a shame, killing an innocent pas-
senger?" the hijacker replied angrily, "Did
you forget the Bir al Abed massacre?" He
was referring to the March 8 car bombing
in the Bir al Abed suburb of Beirut that
killed more than 75 Shi'ite Muslims but
he body of the murdered Ameri- S.
can had been lying on the tarmac That evening, the terrorists an-
for about two hours when a hijack- pounced that if their demands were not
Ter told the tower. "The Red Cross met by the following morning, they would
can come and get the body." The hijacker
then called for fuel, food and water. say- fly to an unspecified destination. and Be-
ing. "I want 200 sandwiches. 150 apples stroy the plane and perhaps its remaining
and 88 lbs. of bananas. But the fuel first, passengers. By early Sunday afternoon.
and make it fast." As the food and fuel they had made good on only the first half
were taken on. the pilot said he wanted of their ultimatum. arriving in Beirut for
the runway cleared for takeoff at dawn, the third time. On the ground. the hijack-
He was asked for his destination. His re- ers called for food. fuel, newspapers and
ply: ' I don't know." videocassettes. They urged the Interna-
The next destination turned out once tional Red Cross to work for the release of
more to be Algiers. where the plane land- the 50 Shi'ites in Israel and "move fast be-
ed. for the second time. at 7:45 a.m. local fore it is too late so that all will achieve sat-
time (2:45 a.m. E.D.T.) Saturday. Algeri- isfactory results." The hijackers added
an officials authorized the landing on con-
dition that the hijackers not use violence.
Before leaving Beirut, it turned out. the
hijackers had demanded that Ali Atwa be
released by Greek authorities and brought
to Algiers. Otherwise. they said. they
would kill all eight Greeks on the plane,
including Singer Demis Roussos. Greek
authorities complied and sent Atwa to Al-
giers in an Olympic Airways plane.
^ Terrorist All Atwa in Algiers on his way to loin his comrades on Flight 847
failed to hurt Sheik Mohammed Hussein Soon after the TWA jetliner landed in
Fad
ll
h
'
a
a
one of Lb
.eanons pro-ranian
I
Shi'ite religious leaders. Shiites later
claimed that the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency had engineere t e ~m m . an an
attempt to fight mite terrorism with
counterterrorism: the CIA denied the
charge.
Moments after the killing of the pas-
senger. an Amal official and his body-
guard went aboard the plane. where they
remained for some time. As negotiations
continued. a hijacker asked that all airport
lights be turned off. and the demand was
met. At the time. it seemed that the hijack-
ers were fearful of an attack by the Israelis
or by one or another of their enemies with-
in Lebanon. In fact. however. it later be-
came clear that they wanted the darkness
for other reasons: to bring aboard about a
dozen additional terrorists as reinforce-
ments. as well as a supply of arms and am-
munition: and to remove the six or eight
passengers with Israeli- or Jewish-sound-
ing names. A day later. a released passen-
ger. Ken Lanham of San Francisco. re-
ported that the hijackers went up and
down the aisle calling out the names of
these people. and then led them away.
Algiers. two ranking Algerian officials
came aboard and began discussions with
the hijackers. The negotiations evidently
paid off. Having released three hostages
on arrival. the hijackers then released 58
others. That apparently left only Ameri-
can men on board. "We're begging them
to keep the plane in Algiers." said a State
Department official. "Keep talking, keep
I wearing them down, but for Christ's sake.
don't let that plane take off again."
Among the stunned and fatigued pas-
sengers released in Algiers was Dorothy
Sullivan of Chicago, who described the
tension during the seemingly endless or-
deal. One of the original hijackers had
been soft-spoken, the other brutal, she
said, and the latter liked to go up and
down the aisle thumping passengers on
the head. Several passengers recalled that
Stewardess Uli Derickson, of Newton.
N.J.. had stood up to the hijackers. Said
she. speaking of her passengers: "They're
doing what you tell them to do. Why do
you keep beating them up?" The released
passengers also noted that, before leaving
the plane, they were relieved of their cash
and valuables by the hijackers.
ominously that the next communique
would be their last, presumably meaning
that they planned to destroy the plane
afterward.
Back in the U.S.. some worried rela-
tives learned of the hijacking only hours
before they had intended to go to the air-
port to welcome travelers home. Against a
backdrop of yellow ribbons and flickering
candles, parishioners of three Catholic
churches in the Chicago area spent the day
praying, huddling around radios and ex-
changing bits of information. They were
cheered by the news that many of their 24
friends had been released in Beirut or Al-
giers.-We're waiting, we're praying, we're
hoping," said the Rev. Robert Garrity of
St. Margaret Mary Church in Algonquin
where parishioners maintained an all -
*
night vigil.
Elsewhere, reactions were much the
same. "I just hope they're not beating peo-
ple, like they say they are." said Pete La-
zansky of Tulsa. whose parents were on
board. Other passengers included Kath-
ryn Davis and her fiance James Hoskins
Jr., both 22 and from Indianapolis, whose
parents had given them European vaca-
tions as college graduation presents. "I
was going to pick her up this evening."
said Stockbroker Stephen Davis of his
daughter. "We just sit here and wait."
Passenger Irma Garza of Laredo tele-
phoned her brother-in-law from Cyprus
to tell him that she and three relatives had
been released but that her husband, a
granddaughter and son-in-law were still
on board. Said the brother-in-law: "She
sounded real nervous. She was crying."
Tina Migos. of Revere. Mass., had been
preparing for the arrival of five relatives
from Greece who were to attend the chris-
tening of her year-old son. "We had a
party planned and everything." a cousin
reported. "Now we're just waiting to
hear what's going to happen."
In Florissant, Mo., Kath-
arine Ellerbrock tuned in a
morning TV show and real-
ized that she was listening to
the recorded voice of her
brother. Flight Engineer Ben-
jamin Zimmerman, talking to
the Beirut control tower. She
said her brother, who manages
to be both a full-time TWA pi-
lot and a Lutheran pastor with
a ministry in the mountains of
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uaiw. WdD 3UU1115, 3Icau7 auu "k t ? I.
ros
u
t
stable' and "has got to be a
comfort to the passengers." In
Richmond. Mo., a small town northeast of
Kansas City, friends and neighbors stayed
up to follow the ordeal of Captain Tes-
trake, who in his spare time raises horses,
restores small antique planes and nurtures
a recently planted vineyard on his nearby
farm. "He's been an airman for a long
time." said Howard Hill, editor of the
Richmond Daily News. "He won't panic."
One of the most troubling aspects of
the plight of Flight 847 was that it was the
third hijacking that occurred in the region
within three days last week, and the sec-
ond apparently engineered by Lebanese
Shi'ites. In earlier times. Arab skyjackers
tended to be Palestinians, from one or an-
other faction of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, attempting to advance or at
least dramatize the Palestinian cause. Shi-
ite Muslim terrorism, linked to Iran ideo-
logically if not logistically. is both more
puzzling and more frightening: drive out
the American Satan and all its influence.
The week's first hijacking had begun
on Tuesday. when half a dozen Shi'ites
stormed aboard a Jordanian-owned
Boeing 727 at Beirut airport. They over-
powered eight Jordanian security guards.
then ordered the Swedish pi-
lot to fly to Larnaca. Cyprus.
Over the next 28 hours, as
the plane bounced around the
eastern half of the Mediterra-
nean. the skyjackers had am-
ple time to air their com-
plaints. They were angry about
an Arab League statement
supporting the cause of the
Palestinians in the Beirut refu-
gee camps, which have been
under attack by Lebanese Shi-
ites for the past three weeks.
The Shi'ites want to drive out
the Palestinians to make sure
that the P.L.O. will never again be able to
set up a "state within a state" in Lebanon.
After several dire threats, the hijackers
freed the passengers, blew up the plane and
sped off in a Range Rover, disappearing
into the Shi'ite neighborhoods near the
airport.
Several of the released passengers then
boarded the first plane they could catch out
of Beirut. a Middle East Airlines flight to
nearby Cyprus. But as the Lebanese
Boeing 707 landed there, a young Palestin-
ian. producing a hand grenade, threatened
to blow up the plane as a protest against
the earlier Shi'ite hijacking. He soon sur-
rendered to the plane's captain. however,
after being granted his request to fly to
Amman aboard a Jordanian airliner.
On board both the hijacked Jordanian
plane and the hijacked Lebanese plane
were Professor Landry Slade, an American
who is serving as an acting dean of the
American University of Beirut, and his
teenage son William. "It wasn't bad." the
younger Slade remarked, after he and the
other passengers had been released in Cy-
p
, u
tsn
comet tng we want to talk
met ng we want to talk
about." Two days later, when he learned of
the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, Landry
Slade told reporters, "God help them all. I
know what it's like." Professor Slade was.
in fact, a good deal luckier than his col-
league. Thomas Sutherland, 54, dean of the
American University's agriculture and
food sciences faculty. Sutherland had been
kidnaped earlier in the week as he was rid-
ing in a six-car convoy from Beirut airport
to his campus home. He thus became the
seventh American and the twelfth West-
erner currently being held by various ex-
tremist groups in Lebanon.
In a sense, the hijackings were a micro-
cosm of the horrors rampant in the two
countries that formed the backdrop of the
case. Iran and Lebanon. In Iran. 78 people
were killed and 332 others injured one
night last week in a series of bombing raids
by Iraqi aircraft against the Khomeini re-
gime. After a series of antiwar protests, the
Tehran government sponsored a huge
demonstration at which thousands of
marchers chanted, "War, war till victory!"
Iran has serious internal problems, but
none so critical as to constitute an immi-
nent threat to Khomeini's authority.
In Lebanon, as usual, superlatives
were insufficient to describe the scene.
The fighting in the refugee camps be-
tween Palestinians and Shi'ites spread to
other parts of West Beirut. On Friday
morning, a shell struck a vegetable mar-
ket there. killing or wounding 50 people
Two suicide bombers crashed an explo-
sives-laden car into a Lebanese Army po-
sition. killing 23 and wounding 36. Since
the victims were mostly from the predom-
inantly Shi'ite Sixth Brigade, reports had
it that the bombers were Sunni Muslims,
who have sided with the Palestinians in
the current struggle and view with appre-
hension the Shi'ites' lust for a greater
share of political power. The Shi'ites and ,
the Druze were allies until about a month
ago, but last week they were shooting at
each other after a group of Amal militia- American University Hospital in Muslim
men tried to stop a car loaded with Druze. West Beirut. U.S. officials, based on the
Druze Leader Walid Jumblatt agreed to a
cease-fire but later, when asked how long
it would last, replied. "Only God and Syr-
ia know." Given all these circumstances,
Syrian President Hafez Assad was con-
tent to let the rival factions in Lebanon
fight on for a while before he risks his own
troops to try to restore order.
In Lebanon. the Israeli forces were
largely gone, but the impasse continued
between the United Nations peacekeep-
ing forces and the Israeli-backed, pre-
dominantly Christian militia known as
the South Lebanon Army. Two weeks
ago, the S.L.A. had seized 25 Finnish sol-
diers of the U.N. force, released three of
them and taken the others to the Chris-
tian town of Marjayoun. It refused to let
them go until eleven of its own members
had been handed over by the Shiite Amal
militia. The S.L.A. accused the U.N. force,
which does not recognize the S.L.A. as an
independent militia and customarily dis-
arms its members whenever they try to
pass through U.N. lines, of having cap-
tured the eleven S.L.A. members and
turned them over to Amal. The Shiite mi-
litia, in turn, claimed that the eleven S.L.A.
members had defected to their side.
At midweek, Israel arranged for West-
ern newsmen to visit Marjayoun The trip
demonstrated not only that the Finns were
in gird condition. but that the Israelis. if
they chose to do so. could have ended the
incident quickly by putting pressure on the
S.L.A. The situation took a comic turn late
in the week when the eleven S.L.A. men.
all of whom happened to be Shi'ites in an
overwhelmingly Christian militia, told
U.N. and Red Cross officials that they had
no desire to return to the S.L.A. Confront-
ed with this information, the S.L.A. com-
mander, General Antoine Lahd, released
the Finnish soldiers the next day.
This was the world that had produced
the nightmare of Flight 847. an ordeal
that continued without resolution as the
new week began. There were hints that
Israel might be willing to release its Shi'ite
detainees if the U.S. asked it to do so; after
all, only a month ago, the Israelis had ex-
changed 1,150 prisoners, including some
world-class terrorists, for three of their
own servicemen. At the same time, there
were reports that the U.S. Sixth Fleet in
the Mediterranean had invoked a "radio
silence" on its movements-a possible
sign of action to come.
Perhaps nothing so aptly epitomized
the chaos of Lebanon for Americans last
week as the fate of the body of the young
man, said by the hijackers to be a U.S. Ma-
rine. who had been murdered on Flight
847. After lying on the tarmac for two
hours, the body, with a bullet wound in the
head, had been taken by an International
Red Cross ambulance to a morgue at the
other side of the "green line" in Christian-
dominated East Beirut, were unable to re-
trieve it for 24 hours. Not until Sunday
morning did a State Department spokes-
man announce that the body was at last on
its way to a U.S. air base in Spain for iden-
tification. Used first as proof of the hijack-
ers' resolve, the stranded corpse had
thus become a symbol of the obstacles and
divisions that afflict the terrorists'
homeland. -By W7 i,LSmftm at by
MO BmnWl/MS/ars, Dian F1. '/Gbo and
JOhAMra McGary/W&W%Wton
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/23: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807580056-6