Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

In September 1983, Lebanon began a rapid and uncontrollable descent into hell.

Carl Stiner was present during the worst days of it. "What came to pass in Lebanon defies logic and morality," he says, "but it clearly exemplifies what can happen when ethnic biases, religious differences, and security interests are used as a catalyst by outside powers for achieving political gain."

In August of that year, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Jack Vessey, sent Brigadier General Carl Stiner to Lebanon as his man on the scene and to help implement the U.S. military assistance program (Stiner's experience as a military adviser in Saudi Arabia and Yemen surely was a big factor in generating this assignment). In that capacity, Stiner worked with Lebanese authorities to try to stop the nation's descent. They did not succeed, but not for want of skill, intelligence, and goodwill. The forces of chaos simply overwhelmed everyone else.

Though Stiner's assignment to Lebanon was not specifically a Special Forces mission, it shared many characteristics of such missions — including military advice at the tactical level, political management (both military and diplomatic) at the strategic levels, and the need for cultural sensitivity.

ROOTS

The tragedy of Lebanon was the result of forces long at work:

Following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey's defeat in World War 1, the League of Nations put Lebanon under temporary French control. France promised Lebanon complete independence in 1941, but was not able to grant it until 1943, and French troops did not leave the country until 1946.

Lebanon has a complex ethnic mix. At the time of its independence, the country was more or less evenly divided between Muslims and Maronite Christians, and the Muslims were divided between Sunnis and Shiites — the Sunnis were more moderate and prosperous, while the Shiites tended to be more radical and politically volatile. There was also a large, similarly volatile sect called the Druze, whose beliefs combine Christian and Muslim teachings; about 400,000 Druze now inhabit the mountainous area of Lebanon and Syria. Add these all together, with long-simmering feuds of every kind, and it was a recipe for trouble.

In establishing the Lebanese government in 1943, the French tried to stave off ethnic conflict by setting up a power-sharing arrangement that favored the Sunnis and the Maronite Christians — the most conservative and "stable" of the Lebanese factions. The National Pact of 1943 used a 1932 census (probably the last census to reflect a near-even mix between Christians and Muslims) to determine the ethnic and religious makeup of the government. Key positions were filled by applying a formula derived from that census. The presidency was reserved for Maronite Christians, the prime minister position for the Sunni Muslims, and so on. The Shiite Muslims and Druze were left out of any position of meaningful responsibility.

By the time the government was established, the changing demographics — the sharp rise in Shiites, for instance — had already rendered the formula obsolete.

Despite the potentially unstable ethnic situation, Lebanon quickly flourished as a nation. With its two major seaports and its strategic location at the eastern end of the Mediterranean astride traditional trade routes, it soon became known as the gateway to the orient — and Beirut as "the Paris of the Middle East." Trading was the main engine of its economy. Major companies established offices, and Beirut soon became the banking center of the Middle East, with approximately eighty-five commercial banks.

In 1970, however, another chaotic element was added — the Palestinians.

In 1947, the United Nations divided Palestine in two: Part would become the home for the Jews displaced as a result of World War II; the other part would continue as the Palestinian homeland. The Jews accepted the UN decision; the Arabs rejected it.

On May 14, 1948, the Jews proclaimed the independent state of Israel, and the next day neighboring Arab nations invaded it. The invasion failed, and when the fighting ended, Israel held territory beyond the original UN boundaries, while Egypt and Jordan held the rest of Palestine. More than 600,000 Palestinians who had lived within Israel's new borders fled the Jewish state and became refugees in neighboring Arab countries, mainly Syria and Jordan.

The Palestinians, now a people without a homeland, continued their armed resistance from bases in those countries, but their presence and their military activities against Israel became a major political problem, particularly for Jordan. By 1970, the problem had gotten out of control, and the Jordanian government dealt with it violently, by forcibly expelling the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

The approximately 10,000 PLO fighters, the fedayeen, initially settled in the southern part of Lebanon, bringing thousands of Palestinian refugees with them, exacerbating a situation which had already been particularly volatile for over a decade. In 1958, Arab nationalists (mostly Shiites, though some Druze also participated) had rebelled against the pro-Western government of Christian President Camille Chamoun. Chamoun asked the United States for help, and about 10,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers landed on Lebanon's beaches. This show of force helped the government restore order, and the troops were withdrawn.

After the 1958 crisis, the next Lebanese president, Fouad Chehab, made a serious effort to mend fences with the Arabs: He gave Muslims more jobs in the government, established friendly relations with Egypt, and worked to raise living standards.

Although the Lebanese government had always sympathized with the Palestinian cause, their sympathy never translated into strong support; nor did they welcome the new Palestinian presence — they were simply too weak to keep them out. Soon the PLO began launching attacks against the settlements of northern Israel from their base in southern Lebanon. As the Israelis retaliated against PLO strikes, the Shiites in southern Lebanon suffered greatly, aggravating the hatred that already existed.

By 1975, much of the PLO had migrated to West Beirut, where they established their main base of operations, with its own system of law and order and its own taxes. This did not sit well with many Lebanese, but especially with the Christian militia (the Phalange), and soon a full-scale civil war broke out between the Palestinians and the Phalange.

An estimated 40,000 people, mostly civilians both Lebanese and Palestinian, perished during the bitter fighting, and the Lebanese Army fell apart. It virtually ceased being an effective fighting force.

At this point, the Syrians became involved.

The Syrians had had designs on Lebanon as far back as recorded history, and they entered the fray twice, first on the side of the Palestinians and then on the side of the Christian militias. Their switch was all in the interest of their larger aim — the control of Lebanon. Their participation resulted in the Syrian occupation of the Bekaa Valley, a strategic area located between Lebanon's mountain spine and the Syrian border; they have remained there ever since, orchestrating to their advantage the large number of Shiites who migrated to that area as a result of the civil war and subsequent conflicts.

By 1978, Lebanon had become the main base of operations for the PLO. In that year, the Israelis launched a large-scale sweep of southern Lebanon against the Palestinian bases. Approximately 100,000 refugees, mainly Palestinians and Shiites, were sent fleeing to civil-war-ravaged West Beirut. By now, most of Lebanon had become a battleground, but where before it had been primarily Christian militias against the PLO, now it was just about everybody against everybody else. Long-standing hatreds, feuds, memories of atrocities, as well as ethnic and religious differences, were unleashed; each faction had its own militia — well-armed and deadly; and the various factional militias and clans began fighting each other.

The Druze occupied the Chouf Mountain region, which dominated Beirut and the primary land routes leading from Beirut to Damascus. The Druze controlled the Peoples Socialist Party, or PSP, under its leader Walid Jumblatt, and operated the most heavily armed of the Lebanese factional militias (though their numbers were not great). The PSP's primary enemy were Christians, and their support and armament were provided by Syria, but included Soviet advisers at firing battery locations. By mid-1983, their armament consisted of approximately 420 tubes of modern Soviet artillery, including D-30 howitzers, BM-21 rocket launchers, numerous heavy mortars, air defense weapons, and thirty T- 54 Soviet-made tanks given to the PSP by Libya — all within range of Beirut and its suburbs.

The Syrian army controlled both the northeastern part of Lebanon and, more important, the Bekaa Valley and its population of Shiite Muslims.

Israel established a security zone in the south, where Christians, Palestinians, and Shiite Muslims lived together but hated each other.

Terrorism had meanwhile "advanced" to a stage of "state sponsorship." Sponsoring states included Syria, Libya, and Iran. The most dangerous of these, Iran, developed new forms of terrorist warfare — suicide bombings and hostage-taking — aimed at spreading the Islamic revolution through subversion and terrorism. The U.S.-educated Hosein Sheikholislam, a disciple of the Ayatollah Khomeini and a veteran of the U.S. Embassy siege in Tehran and later of the TWA 847 hijacking, was the chief architect of this campaign. The militant arm formed to carry it out was called Hezbollah, "Party of God," and consisted of fanatical fundamentalist Shiites drawn from all over the world. They were trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in camps, then sent back to their home countries to establish revolutionary cells. These were the most dangerous of all terrorists, willing to martyr themselves for the Islamic revolution. Because Westerners, and particularly Americans, were seen as the "Great Satan, " they became their primary targets. The main Lebanese base for Hezbollah operations (and terrorist training) was located at Baalbeckin Syrian-controlled territory in the Bekaa Valley, only an hour's driving time from Beirut. Hezbollah operating cells were established in West Beirut.

The "Movement of the Disinherited," known as the Amal, was headed by Nabih Berri, a lawyer, born in West Africa and educated in France, and whose family lived in the United States north of Detroit. Berri's goal was to reduce the power of the Christian minority, and to allow the Shiites, who now outnumbered the Christians, to use their numbers to dominate Lebanese politics. Amal was supported primarily by Syria, while its two primary enemies were the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Question: Were the Syrians and Amal friends?

Answer: When it was convenient.

Question: Were the Druze and Amal friends?

Answer: When it was convenient.

Question: Were the Syrians and Iranians friends?

Answer: When it was convenient.

Within Beirut itself were also several other independent militias, such as the Maurabi Toon, who claimed to represent what was called the Peoples Worker Party, but whose raison d'etre was criminal: robbery, ambush, and kidnapping.

In June 1982, Israeli armed forces launched a full-scale invasion of Lebanon called Operation PEACE FOR GALILEE. Its aim was to clean out the PLO once and for all. In two weeks of fierce fighting, the Israelis drove the PLO from their strongholds near Israel's northern border, destroyed a major part of Syria's forces occupying the Bekaa Valley, including air defense batteries, tanks, and fighter aircraft, and pushed all the way to Beirut, where they linked up with the Christian Phalange militia and surrounded Muslim West Beirut, the center of militant Muslim activities in the capital. The PLO was now training their terrorists in West Beirut, as well as launching attacks against Israel and Jordan from there. It had also become the latest temporary refugee camp home for 175,000 Palestinians who had fled the earlier Israeli sweep in the south. Soon the Israelis were bombing West Beirut daily.

Israel's crushing blow to the Syrian military forces seriously humiliated the Syrian President, Hafez Assad. In the coming months, Assad turned to the Soviets for assistance in rebuilding his weakened forces, with payback against Israel a primary aim.

At this point, the U.S. State Department got involved, with a long-term goal to promote Lebanese stability — an impossibility as long as the PLO was there. The more immediate goal was to stop the fighting and to get the PLO, the Syrians, and eventually the Israeli forces out of the country. To that end, the State Department proposed sending in a multinational force to provide security for the withdrawal of the PLO to whatever Arab state was willing to take them.

Though the Joint Chiefs of Staff were opposed to committing U.S. forces to this venture, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger felt that other international partners would be reluctant to join the effort unless the United States took the lead. He also felt that a U.S. military presence in Beirut was the only way to stop the Israelis from destroying the city, and to obtain their eventual withdrawal from Lebanon.

On August 25, approximately eight hundred U.S. Marines, along with contingents from France and Italy, went ashore to position themselves between the Israelis, the Syrians, and the PLO.

Meanwhile, Tunisia agreed to accept Yasir Arafat and his PLO fighters. Their evacuation was completed by September 1. Ten days later, the Marines returned to their ships, and the French and Italians also withdrew.

Part of the PLO evacuation agreement included a promise by the American and Lebanese governments, with assurances from Israel and leaders from some (but not all) of the Lebanese factions, that law-abiding Palestinian noncombatants, including the families of evacuated PLO members, could remain in Lebanon and live in peace and security.

Two weeks later, Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel, whose daughter had already been killed in an ambush meant for him, was killed by a bomb placed on top of his house (it was thought) by a Syrian agent. Gemayel, a warrior who favored military solutions to internal problems, had been the leader of the Christian Phalange militia, whose chief supporter was Israel, and the man the Israelis had counted on for a peace treaty that would best serve the interest of their security. The death of Gemayel dashed all hopes for that. It was not in Syria's interest to see such a treaty come about, since by now Syria viewed Lebanon as a strategic buffer against Israel.

The next day, in violation of their guarantee to protect the Palestinian noncombatants who had elected to remain behind, the Israeli army entered West Beirut. Their stated justification was to protect the refugees and to clean out PLO infrastructure and supplies left behind by Arafat.

On the night of September 16, the Israeli army allowed the Phalange militia to enter the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut to search for the source of sporadic gunfire aimed at the Israelis. It's hard to say why (local hatreds being so deeply rooted), but the Phalange went on a rampage. When the shooting was over, more than 700 unarmed Palestinians had been slaughtered.

The Lebanese government immediately requested the return of the U.S. Marines to protect the people of West Beirut.

Again, the Joint Chiefs strongly opposed it, but this time Secretary Weinberger joined the opposition. The previous Marine intervention had been a limited, short-term operation. This one looked open-ended and fuzzy — and therefore risked disaster.

President Reagan overrode their objections. He obviously felt that he had to do everything he could to prevent another massacre of Palestinians.

This time the Marine unit was close to twice the size of the one before it — a Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) of approximately 1,500 men. The French and Italians also agreed to return. The mission the Joint Chiefs assigned the Marines was called PRESENCE — meaning they were expected to be present and visible, to keep hostiles separate by patrolling throughout the city, and to try to be friends to all factions alike. The JCS wanted the Marines to be as impartial as possible — and hoped the mission would last no longer than two months.

It was an unusual mission for a military unit, but a similar operation had worked before. The problem was that not every faction respected them or their presence. And there was another problem as well: The Marines would have liked to set up their operations on terrain that dominated the city, but all dominant terrain was already occupied by one or another of the warring factions. That meant the Marines had to settle for low, flat ground near the airport; there was nowhere else to go. The building they chose for their barracks, however, provided them with easy access to many of the locations associated with their mission, including the American Embassy; and it was one of the strongest buildings in Beirut. They felt they could defend themselves there….

On April 18, 1983, a suicide car-bomber — probably a Hezbollah fanatic operating from the Sheikh Abdullah Barracks at Baalbeck in the Bekaa Valley — destroyed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Sixty-three people were killed, seventeen of them Americans, including the CIA station chief and all but two of his officers. This was the first car-bomb attack against American facilities.

The bombing had serious consequences, and of these the loss of intelligence was most immediately critical. The entire U.S. HUMINT (human intelligence) mechanism (i.e., the links with local agents) was practically destroyed. For several months, gaping holes existed in the U.S. ability to know what was happening on the ground, either in Beirut or in the rest of the country. This failure later came back to haunt America.

The longer-term effects of the bombing were even more serious. There is no evidence that anyone in Washington understood the consequences in terms either of the threat to Americans abroad or of its implications to future policy. Terrorism became a form of war, which ultimately forced America out of Lebanon. The United States was not prepared to deal with it.

A month later, Secretary of State George Shultz attempted to broker an agreement (known as the 17 May Agreement) whereby all foreign forces would simultaneously withdraw from Lebanon. Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, brother of Bashir Gemayel, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, signed on to the agreement (on condition that the Syrians did also); but when Shultz went to Damascus to present the plan to Assad, Assad refused to withdraw from Lebanon under any circumstances. As far as Assad was concerned, he was orchestrating the situation from a position of strength.

Syria reinforced its refusal to cooperate by declaring Phillip Habib, the Presidents Mideast envoy, persona non grata.

Habib's replacement, Robert "Bud" MacFarlane, the President's Deputy National Security Adviser, believed that if the Syrians and the Israelis could be convinced to withdraw, then dealing directly with the leaders of the major factions might produce a solution to the Lebanese problem. Before going to Lebanon, MacFarlane met with Assad in Damascus, and left realizing that Assad was in control of the future of Lebanon — and that he was not about to relinquish that position.

MacFarlane arrived in Lebanon on August 1. Within the next couple of weeks, he recommended that Washington suspend its effort to broker a joint Syrian-Israeli withdrawal and instead concentrate on reconciling the various Lebanese factions. MacFarlane and U.S. Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew met several times with Nabih Berri and Walid Jumblatt to bring them into an accommodation with President Gemayel, but they made no progress. Both Berri and Jumblatt put the blame on Gemayel — claiming that he was more concerned with preserving the Christian presidency than with accommodating the factions. But the unspoken agenda here was that both Berri and Jumblatt were puppets of outside authority-and had little leeway to negotiate a peace agreement.

ASSIGNMENT TO LEBANON

In August 1983, then — Brigadier General Carl Stiner was the assistant division commander for operations for the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. One day in mid-August, at four in the afternoon, he was in the field, inspecting training for the ROTC Summer Camp, which the 82nd conducted annually, when he received a call on his radio to return to headquarters immediately.

Carl Stiner continues the story:

I thought the call related to a possible brigade-size mission I'd been designated to lead aimed at preventing several thousand "peacenik demonstrators" from breaking through security fences at the Seneca Army Depot in New York State (they wanted to disrupt the shipment of nuclear weapons to Europe). The brigade had been well trained for civil disturbance operations and was standing by while civil authorities were trying to defuse the situation.

Back at Division, I learned that I'd gotten a call from the Pentagon directing me to report to General Vessey, the JCS Chairman, by nine the next morning, with fatigues packed, prepared to take a trip. Since I would probably have launched from Fort Bragg with the brigade if I was going to Seneca, I now guessed that I was most likely being sent to someplace like Honduras, since the Nicaraguans had recently been intensifying their activities in that neck of the woods.

The next morning, I caught a ride to Washington with Lieutenant General Jack MacMull, the XVIII Airborne Corps Commander. At the Pentagon, General Vessey's people told me to go around the building for the rest of the day and learn everything I could about the U.S. program in Lebanon, because the Chairman and I would be leaving for there that night. Vessey would spend three days in the country, and then I'd remain "as the Chairman's and the SECDEF's man on the ground."

For the rest of the day, I got briefings from principal staff officers of the Offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense, and learned the details about why I was going: It was taking too long for orders and information to be passed over the existing chain of command from Beirut to General Vessey and Secretary Weinberger, and the information they were receiving was so filtered through the various links in the chain that it was questionable whether it fully represented what was actually happening to the Lebanese government, the Lebanese Army, the Israeli Army, and the U.S. Marines at the airport.

The existing chain of command to Lebanon ran from Washington to NATO headquarters in Mons, Belgium, to the European command in Stuttgart, to the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe in Naples, to the deputy commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe in London, to the commander of the 6th Fleet in Gaeta, Italy, to the commander of the Amphibious Task Force off the coast of Lebanon, to the commander of the Landing Force also off the coast of Lebanon, and finally to the commander of the Marine Amphibious Unit at the Beirut airport. This chain was the normal arrangement for fighting the Cold War, and also for handling anything else that might occur in the European area of responsibility, but it was not an efficient arrangement for dealing with the fast-breaking and complex situation in Lebanon.

At 7:00 P.M. that evening, General Vessey and I departed from Andrews Air Force Base for Beirut. En route, we talked about the situation in Lebanon — the personalities involved, the U.S. assistance program, the impact of occupying powers, ongoing diplomatic initiatives, and so on — until about midnight, when we tried to get a little sleep before we hit Beirut and a full schedule of tough meetings on the U.S. military assistance program. If that had any serious shortfalls, we needed to find out about them.

We arrived in Beirut around midmorning, and went directly to the Ministry of Defense for a meeting with General Ibrahim Tannous, chief of staff of the Lebanese armed forces. Tannous was a soldiers soldier, revered by Lebanese lighting men for his bravery during a battle with the Syrians (he'd lost an eye in the process). Though the Lebanese army was then at best a marginal fighting force, he was doing everything possible to rebuild it sufficiently to take over security responsibilities for all Lebanon when the Syrian and Israeli occupying forces withdrew. Tannous was extremely pleased with U.S. military assistance, and specifically with the training and equipment Colonel Tim Fintel was providing. Fintel, an Armor officer, was chief of the Office for Military Cooperation. Most training for reraising the Lebanese armed forces was being conducted by U.S. Special Forces.

General Tannous had organized an ethnically balanced staff, which was functioning well together: Major General Hakim, a Druze, was his deputy commander; his director of personnel was a Sunni Muslim, Colonel Simon Quassis; a Maronite Christian was director of intelligence, Brigadier General Abbas Hamdan; a Shiite Muslim was director of operations; and his director of logistics was also a Sunni Muslim.

After eight years of atrophy while the civil war had raged in one form or another, the Lebanese army had done little but attempt to maintain order. Now Tannous was trying to build an army that represented the current ethnic mix of the population (Christian, Sunni Muslim, Shiite Muslim, and Druze), rather than the population at the time of the 1932 census. His cfforts were beginning to pay off. The army, with U.S. help, was rapidly becoming a cohesive and effective force.

Three brigades had already been formed and equipped, and a fourth brigade's training was well under way. When the Israeli army withdrew, Tannous planned to achieve stability in south Lebanon and security along Israel's northern border by employing a brigade of approximately 2,400 men. He would then provide internal security by employing two brigades in Beirut. Within a year and a half, the Lebanese army was expected to grow to seven brigades and be able to take responsibility for the security of all Lebanon.

Over the next three days, Vessey and I met with Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew; President Amin Gemayel; General Moshi Levy, commander of Israeli forces; the commanders of the French and Italian forces; Vice Admiral Jerry Tuttle, commander of the Sixth Fleet; Colonel Tim Geraghty, commander of the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit; and Colonel Tom Fintel. We also visited the training camp and observed the training the SF team was conducting. They were living in the Cadmos Hotel in West Beirut and the training site was in East Beirut.

It was a very productive time. All the key leaders—except Syria's and the factions'—had provided firsthand insights into the complexity of the situation (the exception was significant, though we had no idea then how complex and difficult the factional situation would very soon become). The multinational forces were particularly impressive; their presence was a stabilizing influence, and for the first time in many months, Beirut was calm. The airport, banks, and restaurants had reopened; people were taking leisurely evening strolls on the Cornice.

We were particularly impressed with Tannous's leadership and his plan for building an ethnically representative army. We were convinced that given sufficient time and the opportunity for an orderly relief of the Israeli forces, Tannous and his army could likely provide the stability necessary for the Lebanese government to regain control of the country.

As time passed, General Tannous and I became close professional friends. We worked well with each other.

On the way to the airport for his departure. General Vessey laid out what he expected me to do in Lebanon: "It's obvious," he told me, "that the Lebanese army is the only effective institution of government to which we can tic our assistance program. That means I want you to work closely with General Tannous in coordinating the timing of Israel's withdrawal with the development of Tannous's forces, so the Lebanese will be able to effectively relieve the Israeli forces. We want to eliminate the possibility of a void that will encourage renewed fighting by the factions.

"I want you to report to me daily over the SATCOM and the fax machine I'll leave with you. But also keep EUCOM [U.S. European Command] informed of what's going on here.

"One other thing: You're going to be the military adviser to the President's special envoy to Lebanon [at this time Robert MacFarlane], and you'll come back to Washington every two to three months to brief the Joint Chiefs."

MacFarlane and I soon developed a very close relationship. My primary function was to be his conduit both to Tannous and to the Israeli forces in Lebanon. But this brought an even more important benefit: Tannous knew personally most of the senior leadership of the Syrian cabinet and armed forces — their backgrounds, their motivation, and their "leanings." This was vital information.

When MacFarlane visited other Arab nations, I traveled with him as part of his team. In this capacity, I provided information about current military needs and U.S. military assistance. Specifically, I would tell him what each country might ask us for — as well as how the Defense Department would view that request.

Over the next couple of weeks, I lived, like the Special Forces trainers, at the Cadmos Hotel. Each morning I went to the British Embassy in West Beirut or the Ambassador's residence at Yarze, a Beirut neighborhood, where embassy activities were also conducted. After the 1983 bombing, the British had allowed the U.S. to use their embassy, but the heavy fighting and the terrorist threat sometimes made travel unsafe for Ambassador Bartholomew, forcing some operations to be conducted from his residence.

Wherever I was, Embassy or residence, I read the latest intelligence traffic received by the station chief, Bill Buckley. (Buckley was good at his job. He was successfully rebuilding the network of agents lost in the Embassy bombing, and we got along well, but — predictably — he was not always cooperative about sharing information with anyone outside his office.) From there, I went to the Ministry of Defense to get a rundown on the security situation from General Tannous. At some point, I'd also meet with Ambassador Bartholomew (an outstanding man in every respect — always open with me and I with him) to bring him up-to-date and receive instructions from him. Each evening I sent a detailed fax message to General Vessey (the same information went to the EUCOM staff-usually to the watch officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Wilhelm in the J-3 Operations Directorate).

I met frequently with Israeli intelligence officers; and at least once, but most times twice, each week, I visited the Marines at the airport to brief Colonel Tim Geraghty and his staff on these meetings and on what I'd learned from Tannous. The Marines were always eager to get intelligence and operational information about Beirut, but often complained about their vulnerable location, a situation made worse by the scarcity of accurate information about the areas around them.

After meeting the Marines, I would normally be picked up by Marine helo and flown out to Rear Admiral Jerry Tuttle's flagship, where I would brief Tuttle and his key officers. These meetings kept everybody up to speed operationally, but the truth of the matter was there was very little intelligence information available about the nature of threats to American forces.

As I went about assessing the senior leadership of the Lebanese armed forces, particularly the senior field-grade officers (lieutenant colonel and colonel), I came to realize that they were the most educated group of officers 1 had yet encountered. Each had recently attended practically every military course available in England and the United States, and most held master's degrees from American universities. All of this education came with a price, however: Most of them were content to be staff officers; they lacked the motivation to be troop leaders, and particularly the skills to be warfighters.

Of the senior officers, the one I came to respect most was the director of operations, Brigadier General Abbas Hamdan, a very intelligent and articulate Shiite, and a man of principle. He had been educated in France, where he had married a French woman, and had two fine children. He was loyal without question to the democratic government of Lebanon, and motivated to do everything possible to help his nation.

I was also extremely impressed with the younger officers, particularly the lieutenants and captains. Most were graduates of Sandhurst in England, and had received their commission there. They were energetic and dedicatcd, constantly present with their troops, and motivated toward making their units the best ones possible, regardless of their ethnic mix. The cohesion and esprit that seemed to exist there was a joy to behold.

Meanwhile, the Chairman's office and my daily meetings with Ambassador Bartholomew kept me informed about ongoing political initiativcs aimed at the withdrawal of Israeli and Syrian forces.

In early August, General Tannous began to confide his concerns that a concurrent Syrian-Israeli withdrawal would be very difficult to arrange. Assad had no reason to withdraw from the Bekaa Valley, even if the Israelis withdrew from the parts of Lebanon they occupied. On the other hand, the Israelis had every reason to leave. They had suffered heavy losses during the invasion, and pressure for a withdrawal was mounting in Israel. The problem was that it would be some time before the Lebanese army was in good enough shape to replace them. If the Israelis proved unwilling to remain in place until the Lebanese army forces were ready to conduct an orderly relief, the situation in Lebanon could become perilous.

That gave Tannous only one viable option: With President Gemayel's permission, he wanted to negotiate directly with Israel to obtain an agreement for Israeli forces to remain in place until his own forces were ready to take over from them. To that end, he asked if I would be willing to take Brigadier General Abbas Hamdan and Colonel Simon Quassis, Tannous's director of intelligence, to Israel for talks with Uri Labron, the Israeli Minister for Lebanese Affairs.

General Vessey and Ambassador Bartholomew agreed to this plan, and Bartholomew offered to provide an officer from the Embassy to accompany us.

The meetings were to be kept close-hold and conducted at night.

In fact, though I agreed with Tannous's analysis of the situation, I was never optimistic about his plan's chances for success. A relief in place was unquestionably imperative for the security and stability of Lebanon, but there was no doubt that the Israelis would do whatever they perceived was in their best interests, and the Lebanese army had better be prepared to react to the results — ready or not.

I arranged for a Marine helicopter to fly us out to Tel Aviv on the next night; it would then wait until the meetings were over and return us to Beirut before daylight. The meetings were held in Uri Labron's office, usually from nine in the evening until midnight, and were always cordial, frank, and direct.

At the first mecting, Abbas Hamdan detailed his government's concerns about the timing of the Israeli withdrawal, but indicated that three brigades were almost ready to relieve Israeli forces in place. Tannous's hoped-for plan: He would first relieve the Israeli forces in the Chouf Mountains overlooking Beirut, while keeping a brigade employed in the vicinity of Beirut. When all Israeli forces had withdrawn, he would station a brigade in southern Lebanon to provide a security zone for Israel's northern border.

Labron's reply was vague. In essence: (1) The Israeli forces had pretty well achieved their objectives in Lebanon by driving the PLO out. (2) He had no indication from his government of a timetable for withdrawal of Israeli forces. (3) We should continue the meetings next week. (4) The group should meet the commanders of the Israeli units in Lebanon in order to get to know them better and work out a plan for relief of forces in place.

The next afternoon, Hamdan, Quassis, and I met with the Israeli Defense Force director of operations and the chief of intelligence for the Israeli forces in Lebanon to discuss plans for the relief. Like Labron, they were not aware of a timetable for withdrawal, but would be willing to work with Lebanese army officials.

The message from General Tannous indicated a slight change of position: Though he desired more time to ready his units, he was now willing to risk an earlier employment in order to prevent a dangerous void that would likely occur after an Israeli pullout.

During the next meeting in Tel Aviv, Labroni seemed pleased that we were working with the Israeli officers to develop a plan for relief, but he was still not aware of a timetable. He did have something new to present, however: The Israeli government had decided to provide its own security force to man the buffer zone on the Lebanese side or the border. A mainly Jewish and Christian militia was already in the process of being formed, and it was headed by a former lieutenant colonel of the Israeli Defense Forces.

This was not exactly the news the Lebanese wanted to hear, but I could understand Israel's position relative to its own security. The Lebanese army was untested at this particular point. I communicated all this to my superiors.

Back in Beirut, Tannous was disappointed that Israel would not trust the Lebanese army to guard its northern border, but the news was not all bad. The Israeli decision would now free up another brigade for Beirut.

Around August 20, meetings with Israeli officers produced a detailed plan to position Lebanese army units to support the Israeli withdrawal. These meetings took place in the field along the route that most of the Israeli forces would be using in their withdrawal from the Chouf Mountains, and they concluded with an understanding that the plan was acceptable. Again, no definite timetable had been established for the withdrawal, but Lebanese army officials were to be notified when a date was set.

On September 2, 1983, General Tannous hosted a dinner for General Levy, the Israeli chief of staff, and General Ehud Barak, Israel's chief of military intelligence, to request more time to ready his forces and get his troops into position before a pullout by the Israelis.

It was at this meeting that Tannous learned that the Israeli government had reached a final decision on a pullout timetable: The withdrawal was to begin immediately, starting the night of September 3. According to Levy, the decision was a political one, and there would be no delay. Tannous himself was shocked and deeply humiliated. He felt he had been let down by the Israelis.

The following morning, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens met with Richard Fairbanks, a senior member of the U.S. national security staff. Fairbanks requested a delay, but Arens indicated that the decision had already been made, and the withdrawal would begin as scheduled.

Around midnight, the rumble of tanks and heavy vehicles could be heard from Beirut and the Chouf Mountains. The Israelis were pulling back to Israel.

They had left the dangerous void that Tannous feared.

Chaos soon followed.

Because Lebanon had become a high-threat situation, Tannous became concerned about my personal security. I reluctantly mentioned this to General Vessey in one of my daily situation reports and was given an intelligence major to help me with my duties. He was a godsend; I already had about as much as I could handle — and besides, two have a better chance of surviving than one. Every two or three days, we moved, always at night, to a different sleeping location. And during the periods of heaviest fighting and shelling, we stayed with Tannous in the underground operations center at the Ministry of Defense — not just for safety. I could best fulfill my responsibility there. Twice, my major and I were caught in ambushes, and both times his driving skills and ability to do bootlegger spins saved us.

ESCALATION

Even before the Israelis withdrew, the Marines at the airport had come under fire from Druze positions on the ridge above the city. The Druze apparently hoped that the provocation would leverage the Lebanese government into greater power-sharing.

In late July, several mortar rounds had landed inside the Marine defensive perimeter; and again, late in August, heavier shelling resulted in the death of a Marine sergeant and a lieutenant. Though the Marines had considerable firepower available to them—155mm howitzers, five M-60 tanks, and all the firepower in the fleet — they had so far refrained from using it. But this time the provocation was too great, and the Marines returned fire, using their 155mm howitzers.

We also suspected that the Christian militia took occasional shots at the Marines, in order to trick them into using their massive firepower against the Druze and the Shiites — and to draw them into the fray.

Three days before the Israeli withdrawal, the leaders of the two main Muslim militias had issued separate statements, claiming that the Marines had turned against the Muslims — a situation made far worse, they added, because of the training assistance the Marines were providing the Lebanese army (actually practically nil). Though the Marines were trying to adhere to the tenets of their mission, and were firing only in self-defense, without taking sides, it was now obvious that the factions and their militias were not following the same rules of engagement, and were trying to link the Marines to the Christian-dominated Lebanese government in the eyes of the people.

The Israeli invasion had succeeded in ridding Lebanon of the PLO, but had done little to neutralize the Muslim armed factions, which were simply biding their time and strengthening their ranks until the Israeli withdrawal allowed them to rush in, fill the void, and resume their war against the Christian-dominated government.

Within twenty-four hours of the withdrawal, the militias began rushing to stake out their territories: The Amal Shiites controlled West Beirut (large numbers of Shiites migrated to West Beirut, taking over hotels and apartment buildings at will); the Druze PSP controlled the Chouf Mountain region; the Syrians controlled the Baalbeck Valley region and the large number of Shiites in that area; the Christian Phalange controlled East Beirut and attempted to take from the Druze the ridgeline above the airport and hold it until a Lebanese army brigade could reach it; and, in the south, Israel was establishing its own uniformed militia, designed to prevent Shiite and Palestinian raids against Israel's northern region. The Sunnis, who tended to be moderate and more affluent, opted to stay out of the militia business.

After the Israeli withdrawal, Beirut was an armed camp — totally unsafe. Soon, heavy artillery and mortar fire began raining down on Christian East Beirut and the Marines at the airport. Death constantly threatened everyone — from snipers, crossfires between factions, ambushes, and indiscriminate shellings by heavy artillery and rocket fire. This sometimes involved thousands of rounds that reduced sections of the city to rubble in less than half an hour.

And in general, all hell broke loose — assassinations, hostage-taking, factional fighting, and massive shellings — designed to bring down the government, drive out the U.S., French, and Italian forces, and allow each outside sponsor (Syria and Iran) to obtain its own political and religious objectives.

Assad and the Iranians were sitting in the "catbird seats." No one had any control over them, and it was impossible to influence them — but their aims were not the same.

Syria's objective was to control Lebanon through its support of the Amal and PSP militias and of Iranian-sponsored terrorist activities, but to prevent the spread of the Islamic revolution in Syria and Lebanon.

Iran's objective was to use terrorist activities to drive Americans out of the region, while at the same time spreading in the region their brand of fundamentalist Islam.

Shortly after midnight, September 3, the night the Israeli withdrawal started, the Marines at the airport, now obvious targets, were hit once again by heavy Druze artillery and a rocket barrage of more than a hundred rounds, killing two more Marines. Colonel Tim Geraghty immediately dispatched a situation report through his chain of command: "The stakes are becoming very high," he wrote. "Our contribution to peace in Lebanon since 22 July stands at 4 killed and 28 wounded."

Support came three days later.

On September 7, aircraft from the carrier Eisenhower began flying reconnaissance missions over the Chouf Mountains in an attempt to locate the Druze artillery positions. On September 8, the destroyer Bowen fired its 5-inch guns at targets located by the reconnaissance flights, but achieved only minor results, due to the low apogee (flat trajectory) of the rounds, and especially since the fires were not observed and adjusted by U.S. forward observers.

On the same day, the Druze militia, backed by Syrian artillery fire, drove off the last of the Christian militia who'd tried to take the ridgeline south of the airport. Meanwhile, fighting among the militias within Beirut intensified.

Tannous was faced with a dilemma. Something had to be done to ease the situation in Beirut itself, but he also needed to take the Druze-occupied ridgeline, which was only five kilometers away from the Presidential Palace and the Ministry of Defense (MOD). He immediately ordered one of his brigades into West Beirut to "clean it out." He also sent the 8th Brigade, with approximately 2,400 men, to take the town of Souk al Gharb, located near the center of the ridgeline, to clear the Druze militia off the ridge, and then to hold it. Lebanese intelligence estimated that a force of approximately 3,000 Druze militiamen, reinforced by about 300 Palestinians and 100 Iranian Revolutionary Guards, now held the ridge; they were supported by about thirty Soviet-made T-54 tanks, and backed by Syrian heavy artillery.

During the next three days, some of the heaviest fighting of the war took place. For most of those days, the artillery falling on the 8th Brigade attacking Souk al Gharb and on the city — mainly on East (Christian) Beirut — was coming at a rate of about 1,200 rounds per hour.

The brigade that entered West Beirut successfully accomplished its mission with very few casualties. In a couple of days, it had captured approximately 250 militia fighters and supporters and collected eight two-and-a-half-ton-truck-loads of ammunition, weapons, and Soviet communications gear, including complete radio stations with fifty-foot antenna towers.

The 8th Brigade fighting for the ridgeline had a much tougher go. Pounded constantly by heavy artillery fire, the brigade suffered many casualties but performed well. The only way that it could advance under the artillery fire was by hugging buildings as it went up the ridgeline (parts of the area were urbanized). After two days of continuous fighting, it finally succeeded in driving the Druze militiamen from the town.

Tannous and I immediately went to Souk al Gharb to check the brigade and to ensure that its commander, Michel Aoun, was setting up his defenses across the entire ridgeline — which had to be held if Beirut was to be protected — not just in the town itself. Tannous wanted to see firsthand rather than trust Aoun's radio reports.

For some time, Tannous had had concerns about Aoun's ability to effectively lead the brigade. Although it had so far performed well, the brigade commander tended to be indecisive and panicky, and he was prone to "cry wolf." His panic did not indicate solid and daring leadership.

When we got up there, I was stunned. I have never in my military career seen such devastation from artillery fire. Even heavy power lines on steel towers were down — cut by shrapnel. The steel fragments were so thick on the ground you could rake it up in piles. Every one of the brigade's rubber-tired vehicles had shrapnel-caused flat tires, and virtually every soldier in the brigade had some kind of bandaged wound.

And yet, despite more than 200 casualties, the brigade was in good spirits. They had fought well together as a cohesive unit.

After we left, Michel Aoun began to report concerns about the brigade's ability to hold the ridge. He requested reinforcements and more artillery ammo.

On the night of September 10, he reported convoys approaching from Druze territory, and then unloading troops forward of his position.

Shortly thereafter, one of his companies was attacked. It suffered seven dead, forty-three wounded, and several missing, and its commander was hacked to pieces with axes. The attackers, who did not speak Arabic, were probably Iranian Revolutionary Guards from Baalbeck. Aoun was frantic.

Though the heavy fighting on the ridgeline slacked off over the next week, the Druze, with Syrian support, began targeting the officers with long-barreled sniper rifles. For obvious reasons, leadership suffered greatly, and the troops, losing confidence, hunkered down in their holes. This in turn greatly increased their vulnerability to Druze infiltration of their lines at night, which could eventually open an approach to the Presidential Palace and Ambassador Bartholomew's residence in the Yarze neighborhood of Beirut, only about four kilometers from the front. If the Druze forces could actually take the Presidential Palace and Yarze, that would likely mean the end of the Lebanese government — as well as the U.S. assistance program.

As the days passed, the Druze began to increase the pressure. Their main attacks came at night on the forward, southern slope, where the attackers were mostly protected from Lebanese artillery fire supporting the defending brigade. With each attack, Aoun became more panicky.

During this period, I was with Tannous day and night, making recommendations about tactical options and encouraging more aggressive operations.

We visited the brigade at least twice weekly — and once, as we checked frontline defensive positions, narrowly missed getting hit by sniper fire ourselves.

Meanwhile, pressure from the Lebanese government was daily growing more intense to get the Marines and the naval task force offshore to fire in support of the Lebanese army. Gemayel was becoming panicky himself. Any night now, he saw imagined hordes of Iranian Revolutionary Guards attacking the Palace and hacking everyone to pieces.

One night — I don't recall the date — Ambassador Bartholomew asked me to accompany him to a meeting with Gemayel. When we arrived at the Palace, Tannous was already there. Gemayel was in quite a state.

"How much longer do you think we can hold out?" he asked me, visibly alarmed.

"As long as your troops are willing to fight," I told him. "Except for the Syrian artillery, you've got the advantage. But you have to be more aggressive — you' ve got to have your units do more patrolling, and doing to them what they're doing to you. Even if you don't have a lot of artillery, you've got an Air Force and you've got bombs — but you haven't used them."

"Our pilots don't have experience dropping bombs," he answered. "And besides, we don't have the equipment that hooks the bombs to the planes."

"We just might be able to help with that problem," I told him.

By the time the meeting was over, he had calmed down.

Afterward, Tannous thanked me. "Gemayel just wanted to hear the truth from someone other than me, he told me.

I got together with Jerry Tuttle, and with the assistance of a couple of Navy machinists, bomb mounts were made and bombing sights were fabricated (for daylight use only).

Within the next couple of days, the Lebanese Air Force bombed suspected assembly areas and buildings used by the Druze for fighting locations. Although the bombings were not greatly effective, they gave a great psychological boost to the army.

Meanwhile, Robert MacFarlane requested a change in the Marines' rules of engagement, to allow fire support for the Lebanese army on the ridgeline at Souk al Gharb. Washington okayed the change but reemphasized that the Marines' mission remained the same. The order left the actual authority to fire on Souk al Gharb to Tim Geraghty, who proved very reluctant to exercisc it. Once this was done, he knew, the Marines would be drawn deeper into the conflict. Because they were supporting the Lebanese army (though by this time it was nearly sixty percent Muslim), they would seem to be supporting the Christian government, and would therefore no longer be "impartial."

On September 19, the usual daily assault on the 8th Brigade at Souk al Gharb began at two in the morning with an artillery barrage. An hour and a half later, Simon Quassis, Lebanon's chief of military intelligence, amakened U.S. Colonel Gatanas, a member of MacFarlane's staff, in a panic: "Without American help," he told him, "Souk al Gharb will fill in half an hour." Gatanas called me with this report, and indicated that he was going to the 8th Brigade command post to check with Anoun personally.

This was a good idea, I told him, because I wouldn't put it past Quassis and Aoun to cook up something like this in order to get U.S. fire support.

Catanas reached Aoun five hours later. By then, Anoun was totally confused and distraught, and all but out of artillery shells. "Where is the main threat coming from?" Gatanas asked him.

"Everywhere."

Gatanas was later able to sort through Aoun's confusion enough to determine that hand-to-hand fighting was occurring on the brigade's southern flank, but the main threat was probably coming from the north. The Lebanese soldiers seemed to be holding, but the same could not be said for leadership at the brigade level, which was likely to come apart. It was clear they were ultimately going to require fire support. Without it, the leadership would surely break down, at which point the brigade would no longer be a capable force and could not defend the ridge.

At the MOD, where I'd been staying ever since the heavy fighting had started, Tannous confirmed all this: In his view, Aoun was unstable. Without fire support, the 8th Brigade risked being routed.

I relayed this information to Geraghty, and at 9:45 A.M., Gatanas, who was still on the ridge, received permission to call in naval gunfire. Shortly thereafter, the cruiser Virginia opened fire. During the course of the day, the Virginia and other naval ships fired a total of 360 rounds on the Souk al Gharb ridgeline. Though the psychological effect of all this firepower was probably greater than any tactical results, the brigade held and was able to resupply.

In retaliation for the American intervention, shells started falling on the Ambassador's residence at Yarze later that day, forcing its evacuation. Only the Marine guard force and the radio operators remained.

On September 23, Robert MacFarlane went to Damascus for another meeting with Assad. He was once again about to come away empty-handed when he dropped news on Assad that caught the Syrian president's attention: "President Reagan wants you to know," MacFarlane told Assad, "that the battleship New Jersey will be arriving off the coast of Lebanon in two days."

This escalation of resolve and firepower caught the attention of the Lebanese factions as well.

The next day, all sides agreed to a cease-fire.

Soon the airport and the Port of Beirut were reopened. Although much of the city had been reduced to rubble, it began to come alive again. Crews were out cleaning up the streets and restoring power and water. The banks began to reopen, and people began to go about their business. The city remained divided along factional lines, however. It wasn't safe for people to leave their own areas.

Still, the resiliency of the Lebanese people was amazing.

MacFarlane returned to Washington in early October, hoping the cease-fire would hold.

It lasted only a couple of weeks.

During this lull, I left Beirut and traveled first to Stuttgart to brief General Lawson, the Deputy CINC for Europe, and then on to Washington to brief the Joint Chiefs.

In the meantime, the training of the Lebanese army continued. A supply ship carrying military equipment, supplies, and ammunition, bought and paid for by the Lebanese government as part of the military assistance program, finally showed up after a two-week delay (it had crashed into a pier in Italy). It was very welcome.

Later in October, the shelling of the 8th Brigade resumed from Druze militia batteries located ten to fifteen kilometers west of the ridgeline. The firing this time was much less intense than in September, and now had a discernible pattern: There was firing in the morning, and then again later in the afternoon. This turned out to be a convenient modus operandi for the Druze, many of whom kept a mortar in their backyard or in their houses (they'd drag it out and quickly set it up to fire). They dropped a few rounds in the tube before going to work and again in the afternoon as they returned.

The 8th Brigade continued to hold the ridgeline. But ominously, almost every night they could see headlights of convoys resupplying Syrian artillery positions in the Chouf.

The shelling of the Ambassador's residence at Yarze and the Ministry of Defense also resumed, but also at a reduced rate, which meant that people were more or less able to conduct business as usual. You couldn't say that people were leading "normal" lives, but chances of immediate, violent death were much lessened.

Soon the Shiites in West Beirut began ambushing people traveling the coastal road — an ironic setting, since it was hardly more than rock-throwing distance from the fleet of twenty-eight American warships, including a battleship and two aircraft carriers. People were killing each other and burning the bodies in clear view of many of the ships, and nothing could be done about it.

Though I encouraged Tannous to have the Lebanese army brigade responsible for the area put a stop to it, little was done, because the brigade commander and most of the brigade were Shiites.

Meanwhile, the Navy continued its daily reconnaissance flights over the Chouf Mountains and the Bekaa Valley. Soon they were drawing antiaircraft fire from SA-7 missiles and 37mm twin-barrel antiaircraft guns.

THE NEW THREAT

As October dragged on, we began to receive credible intelligence reports of possible car bomb attacks, sometimes even giving the make and the color of the car. One of these messages indicated that a spectacular act now being planned would make the ground shake underneath the foreign forces.

A Lebanese intelligence official believed that this act could be perpetrated in one of the many sea caves that snaked underneath Beirut. Some of these caves were large enough for passage by small boats, and the PLO had already used them as ammunition storage areas during their occupation of West Beirut.

A meeting held between Tannous and the commanders of the multinational forces (who were, understandably, deeply concerned) decided to search the tunnels and use well-drilling and seismic detection equipment to determine if any of the caves ran under the multinational force positions. The seismic detection equipment was brought in from the United States and Europe; the well-drilling equipment was already present in Lebanon.

A Lebanese navy search found nothing suspicious within the known caves, while seismic detection and well-drilling failed to locate any previously unknown caverns.

During all this activity, of course, everybody was doing everything possible to determine the nature of the target, and the method and timing of the attack.

At 6:30 Sunday morning, October 23, 1983, Tannous and I were sitting over coffee in his MOD office, discussing the training activities of the Lebanese army and future employment plans. The office had a large plateglass window, providing a panoramic view of Beirut.

WHAM!

We heard a tremendous explosion. Shortly afterward, the shock wave rocked the building. A huge black column of smoke topped by a white, rapidly spinning smoke ring — like an atomic explosion — was rapidly rising from an area approximately two miles away, near the airport.

"God willing," Tannous said, part in exclamation, part in prayer — he was a devout Christian, "I hope it's not the Marines!"

He jumped up from his desk. "Let's go," he said. "We've got to get there. We'll take my car" — instead of a military vehicle—"and go straight through West Beirut to the airport. That's the shortest route."

Before we reached the car — WHAM! — another huge explosion. And we could see a similar cloud rising over the area where the French compound was located.

The explosions had shocked West Beirut to life. As we went through town, making at least seventy miles an hour, people were already on balconies and the tops of buildings trying to see what was going on.

As Tannous had feared, the Marines' compound had been truck-bombed. When we arrived, there was almost indescribable devastation. I have never seen anything like it. Fires were burning everywhere, people were torn apart, and the building had just collapsed on top of itself. The survivors were all in a daze.

When the blast occurred, Colonel Geraghty had been working in his office about a hundred yards away. He was now doing everything possible to bring order.

"Whatever you need, you've got," Tannous told him. "We'll bring every emergency crew in Lebanon to bear on this, and I'll get you heavy construction equipment in here immediately to lift some of these layers off these people."

One of Beirut's largest construction companies, with a contract to clean up rubble from previous fighting, was quickly ordered in to help. Tannous also immediately ordered one of his army brigades to move into the airport area to provide security for the Marines.

Tannous and I spent no more than ten minutes at what was left of the Marine compound before heading to the French compound only a couple of miles away, where we found similar, but somewhat lesser, devastation. "It was a truck bomb," the French commander reported. "We have at least twenty-five dead." The number would eventually reach fifty-nine.

Tannous offered the French the same assistance he'd given the Marines, and ordered in a Lebanese army battalion to secure their area.

We returned to the Marine compound. By this time, two guards who had witnessed the bombing reported that a yellow Mercedes-Benz stake bed truck, about the size of a dump truck, had rammed through the gates and the concertina wire, smashed over the guard shack, and plunged straight into the lobby of the four-story building, where some 350 Marines were sleeping. Once inside, the driver had detonated the bomb, killing himself and 241 Marines.

It was obvious that both the Marine and the French bombs had been planned to go off simultaneously, but for some reason there had been a two-to three-minute delay. Forensic experts from the FBI later concluded that the bomb under the Marine barracks contained the equivalent of 12,000 pounds of TNT. It dug an eight-foot crater through a seven-inch floor of reinforced concrete. One of the strongest buildings in Beirut was now reduced to a pile of pancaked rubble; the heavy reinforcing steel rods in the concrete had all been sheared like straws.

Within minutes, the intelligence community intercepted this unattributed message: "We were able to perform the spectacular act, making the ground shake underneath the feet of the infidels. We also got that Army brigadier general and the CIA station chief [Bill Buckley] in the process."

It was not so, thank God, but it was the first indication that Buckley and I were on the "hit list."

Later that afternoon, a previously unknown group called "Islamic Jihad" (meaning "Islamic Holy War," a group of fanatics supported, we learned later, by Hezbollah) telephoned the following to the Beirut newspaper: "We are soldiers of God and we crave death. Violence will remain our only path if the foreigners do not leave our country. We are ready to turn Lebanon into another Vietnam. We are not Iranians or Syrians or Palestinians. We are Lebanese Muslims who follow the dicta of the Koran."

The next day, picture-posters of both "martyred" truck drivers were pasted up throughout the Shiite south suburbs of Beirut.

Soon the Hezbollah connection began to come clear: According to Lebanese intelligence, the suicide drivers had been blessed by Sheikh Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, before they launched their suicide missions. And a couple of days later, we learned that messages had been intercepted from the Iranian Foreign Ministry to Mohammed Mohtashamipur, the Iranian ambassador in Damascus, urging a major attack against the Americans. We also learned that Hosein Sheikholislam, the chief Iranian terrorist, had checked into the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus. He checked out on October 22, the day before the bombing. And Lebanese intelligence officials reported that the Iranian embassy in Damascus had been evacuated early on Sunday morning, just before the bombing.

Two weeks later, a young woman on an explosive-laden mule rode into an Israeli outpost at the edge of the southern buffer zone and detonated herself, killing fifteen Israelis. Shortly thereafter, her picture-poster went up in Beirut, Damascus, and Tehran alongside those of the two suicide truck bombers.

The four bombings — the U.S. Embassy, the U.S. Marine unit, the French unit, and the mule incident — gave clear evidence that the United States was not prepared to deal with this form of terrorist warfare. Nor did our intelligence community have the capability to penetrate fanatical religious-based organizations in order to provide adequate warning to U.S. forces and agencies around the world. Thus appropriate defensive measures or preemptive action could not be taken.

Both the U.S. and the French began planning to retaliate for the truck bombings by sending air strikes against Hezbollah headquarters in Lebanon at the Sheikh Abdullah barracks in Baalbeck. Both nations attempted to coordinate the strikes to occur on the sixteenth of November, but it did not happen that way.

The French launched from their battle group flotilla on the afternoon of November 16, as planned, but to no effect. Reconnaissance photos revealed they had missed the barracks complex completely. The U.S. attack did not take place until December 4.

Jerry Tuttle, the commander of the U.S. naval forces, preferred the time of the attack to be at midday so the sun would be directly overhead and his pilots would be better able to see more clearly the Syrian radar sites and artillery gun positions, which he had targeted (and the Joint Chiefs had approved). But for political reasons, the Joint Chiefs preferred an early-morning attack time, around 7:30 A.M. on December 4. Either there was a screwup in the conversion between Washington time and Lebanese time, and/or the order was garbled as it passed over the convoluted chain of command between Washington and Tuttle, but General Lawson, now the new deputy commander of the U.S. European Command, received a call at 5:33 A.M. on December 4, ordering the strike to occur at 7:30 A.M.

When Tuttle was wakened, he was already five hours behind the curve. Planes had not been loaded with bombs, and the pilots would be flying directly into the rising early-morning sun.

Twenty-three planes — Navy A-6s and A-7s — were launched. As soon as they entered the Chouf Mountain area headed for Baalbeck, they began to draw surface-to-air missile fire. Two planes were lost, with one pilot killed and his bombardier captured by the Syrians. As with the French strike, the raid had little effect: Two Syrian gun emplacements were knocked out and a radar site was damaged. All were back in operation within a week.

EFFORTS TO FIND A SOLUTION

Meanwhile, efforts continued on two fronts to find a solution to the disaster in Lebanon:

Inside Lebanon, General Tannous continued his heroic efforts to rebuild the army and provide stability to government-controlled areas — at that time only parts of Beirut and the ridgeline to the south that dominated the capital were considered stable. Concurrently, Ambassador Bartholomew was working with the factional leaders to reach a power-sharing agreement that would be acceptable to President Gemayel and everyone else concerned.

Outside Lebanon, President Reagan's new special envoy, Ambassador Donald Rumsfeld, was visiting the leaders of the modern Arab nations in southwest Asia, looking both for support and for suggestions that might lead to peace in Lebanon. He visited, at least monthly: Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and even Iraq (the United States was supporting Iraq in its then-ongoing war with Iran). These efforts forged a consensus for peace among all but one of these nations. Tragically, the one exception, Syria, could exercise an effective veto. It was obvious that Assad wanted the multinational forces out of Beirut in order to secure his own political objectives in Lebanon.

"Lebanon has always been a part of Syria," he once commented. "Read your Bible."

I have never seen a man more dedicated to his mission than Ambassador Rumsfeld, but success was just not in the cards. There were too many factors he could not influence — especially Syria, the two of three major factions that Syria controlled, and the Iran-influenced Hezbollah and its new form of terrorist warfare.

The time I spent with Ambassador Rumsfeld, like my time with Bud MacFarlane, proved very beneficial to me. It gave me a chance to get to know the key leadership of the modern Arab nations, and I was able to put this experience to effective use in my next assignment as the Commander of the Joint Special Operations Command.

Meanwhile, support in the United States for the administration's policy in Lebanon was eroding rapidly, both in Congress and at the Pentagon.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff had never favored the Marines' reentry into Lebanon in 1982. To them it was a "no-win" situation, though they did not want to give the appearance of abandoning an ally by "cutting and running." During the decision-making process, they gave this advice to the civilian leadership. As always, once the decision was made, they saluted and complied.

Even before the Marines were bombed in October, Congress had only very reluctantly authorized a continued Marine presence in Beirut for another eighteen months, but only if the administration did not try to expand their role, relocate them, or otherwise change the mission without congressional approval. As Congress returned to work in January 1984, the majority Democrats pressed for resolutions to withdraw the Marines. But, for the sake of our allies and our own self-esteem, President Reagan rejected that course. In his weekly radio address on February 4, 1984, he maintained (hopefully) that "our efforts to strengthen the Lebanese army are making sure and steady progress."

AT the same time — January 1984—the Shiite mullahs and Nabih Berri, no doubt prompted by Assad, devised a plan to bring about the disintegration of the Lebanese army, now sixty percent Muslim. In the eyes of Berri and the mullahs, the army had been used by Gemayel to keep the Christian minority in power. They now called on the Shiites in the army to stop acting as pawns of the Christians and lay down their arms and return to their barracks.

The commander of the predominantly Shiite Lebanese 6th Brigade, which had been keeping the peace in West Beirut, immediately complied by pulling his forces out of the city and back to their barracks. The Muslim militia quickly took over the streets. At the same time, the mullahs began broadcasting from the mosques that the Shiite soldiers should return to their barracks and no longer fight for a government that did not represent their interests.

Soon afterward, the Druze deputy commander, Major General Hakim, defected to the Druze PSP in the Chouf Mountains.

The evening after his defection, a Lebanese army battalion commander operating south of Beirut took three of his Christian lieutenants out on a reconnaissance. They didn't return. The next morning, a patrol sent out to locate the battalion commander found the three lieutenants with their throats cut — and no battalion commander; he had defected. Two other Christian soldiers were later found in their foxholes, also with their throats cut.

The same day, the Shiite militia began raking the family home of the Shiite but loyal Brigadier General Abbas Hamdan with machine-gun fire. Hamdan, who had been staying at the Ministry of Defense, sent his family back to safety in his wife's native France, but he remained in Beirut until Tannous persuaded him to join his family, his chances of survival in Lebanon being effectively zero.

In a matter of days, Lebanese army units, which had fought so well and so cohesively for months, lost trust in one another and began to fission; the pieces flew off to the various factional militias. Beirut's old "Green Line" — a street that served as a demarcation line between Christians and Muslims — once again became a battle line. Daily killings returned.

Early in February, the Embassy began evacuating nonessential Americans.

Meanwhile, a big question remained: What to do about the Marines in Beirut? After the bombing, they'd brought in replacements and continued to perform their mission.

A week after the Embassy started its own evacuation, the National Security Planning Group, presided over by Vice President George Bush, concluded that it was time to withdraw the Marines. President Reagan reluctantly accepted the recommendation.

The task of informing Amin Gemayel about this decision fell to Ambassador Rumsfeld, who just a week earlier had assured him that the United States would continue to stand behind the Lebanese government.

Rumsfeld later told me it was probably the toughest thing he ever had to do.

Ambassadors Rumsfeld and Bartholomew broke the news to Gemayel in his operations center in the basement of the Presidential Palace — the upstairs having been long since destroyed by artillery fire.

The news shattered Gemayel. Though he was assured that the assistance program to the Lebanese army would continue for the foreseeable future, he understandably felt seduced, abandoned, and powerless to do anything about it.

Later, an equally crushed General Tannous told me, putting on a brave front, "1 will gather together what remains of the Lebanese army and continue to fight for what 1 believe is right for Lebanon. We may have to make some concessions with Syria, but as long as I am in this job I will continue to do everything in my power to bring peace to Lebanon."

The next day, as the New Jersey blasted away with its 16-inch guns at Syrian artillery positions in the Chouf Mountains, the Marines began withdrawing to their ships. In a nine-hour period, the battleship fired 288 2,000-pound, 16-inch rounds.

The last element of the Marines left the beach at noon on February 26. At a brief ceremony to turn the airport over to the Lebanese army, as the Marines struck the American flag, the presiding Lebanese officer grabbed his country's flag and presented it to the Marines: "Well, you might as well take our flag, too," he said. He then asked the Marines to drop him off by helicopter back at the Ministry of Defense; he was a Christian and could not pass through the Muslim checkpoints. After they dropped him off, the last Marine sortie proceeded on to the ships.

Within minutes, the Shiite Amal Militia began occupying their vacant positions and taking control of the airport.

The fighting between the factions continued, making the situation for the Americans who still remained even more dangerous. The only halfway-safe place for Americans was now on the Christian side of the "Green Line" in East Beirut. Because they could no longer cross the Line, the airport had become off-limits, which meant that an Army helicopter detachment had to be brought in to Cyprus to shuttle Ambassador Bartholomew and the remaining military to Cyprus for connections elsewhere.

The remaining Muslim officers on Tannous's staff soon found themselves targets of their own factions. Though most soon paid for their loyalty with their lives, a few, like Hakim, managed to escape to other countries.

As word of the throat-cutting spread, mistrust among the remaining soldiers grew even more, and within days the army that had fought so well began to split along factional lines.

They did not fight each other during the breakup. They just slipped away with their weapons and returned to their own ethnic enclaves. The Shiites went to West Beirut and the Bekaa Valley, the Druze back to the mountains, and the Christians to East Beirut.

The 8th Brigade's losses were quickly filled by Christians, and it continued to hold the ridgeline at Souk Al Gharb. Tannous, having no other choice, quickly reorganized the army to compensate for the losses, but it was now a "Christian force," with far less capability, operating mainly from East Beirut and defending the Christian enclaves, the ridgeline at Souk Al Gharb, Yarze, and the seat of government.

Assad took advantage of the opportunity by moving Syrian regular units to take control of the northeastern sector of Lebanon and all major roads leading to the north and east. Now, with the Israelis controlling the buffer zone in the south, all that remained under Lebanese government control was the enclave of Beirut, but even that was mostly controlled by the Amal, which danced to Assad's tune.

Once his generals were in charge of all the trade routes — and lining their pockets — Assad began to stipulate conditions for reorganizing the government.

Of course, Tannous had to be replaced. When that time came, he relinquished command of the armed forces with respect, dignity, and pride, and quietly returned to his cement factory in East Beirut. However, his loyalty remained to Lebanon and its armed forces. The last I heard, he was still conducting advanced officer's classes on tactics in a training area/classroom that he'd established in the garden behind his house — an initiative he'd begun during the early phases of rebuilding the army in order to improve the tactical proficiency of midlevel combat arms officers.

A NEW FORM OF TERRORISM

Flushed with their bombing successes, the Islamic Jihad raised the stakes even more by introducing a new form of terrorism—"hostage-taking."

The first American was taken hostage on February 10, 1984. By the time TWA 847 was hijacked, some fourteen months later, seven Americans had been kidnapped.

Kidnapping is not a new idea, of course, and had long been commonplace in Lebanon: In the early '80s, more than 5,000 people from all sides had been kidnapped for ransom. Islamic Jihad's new tactics, however, were aimed solely at achieving political leverage — a big difference.

Their initial motivation was to capture a stable of Americans who could be used as bargaining material with the Kuwaiti government after the Kuwaitis had rounded up the seventeen Iranian-backed terrorists responsible for a December 1983 suicide bombing spree against six targets in Kuwait, in which five people had been killed and eighty-six wounded. One of those held in Kuwait was the brother-in-law of Lebanon's most feared Shiite terrorist, Imad Mugniyah, known as the "enforcer." Mugniyah was the thug responsible for the Islamic Jihad hostage-taking spree.

On February 10, 1984, the day before the trial for the seventeen terrorists was to begin in Kuwait, the first American was kidnapped, Frank Regier, a professor at the American University of Beirut. The second was Jeremy Levin, a reporter for the Cable News Network, kidnapped on March 7. The third was William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, kidnapped on March 16.

I should add a personal note here: The message claiming that Buckley and I had also been killed with the Marines should have been a warning to Buckley. I had talked to him about his vulnerability as soon as we learned of it. Though I had been in the survival mode since day one in Lebanon, and advised him to do the same, he played down the danger. "I have a pretty good intelligence network," he told me. "I think I'm secure." He remained in his apartment, and traveled the same route to work every day. As for me, I checked my car for bombs before I drove, varied my routes when possible, and when 1 wasn't in the MOD with Tannous, 1 was moving every second or third night to a different location.

Sometimes bad guys commit good acts. Thus the Shiite militia, who were not especially friendly to us, but even less friendly to Islamic Jihad, found and rescued Frank Regier on April 15, 1984. The whereabouts of the remaining hostages remained unknown, however, and it was ten months later, February 14, 1985, before another emerged from captivity, when Jeremy Levin escaped from the Sheikh Abdullah Barracks at Baalbeck and made his way to a Syrian checkpoint about a mile away. He was taken to Damascus and released to the American Ambassador.

During these months of captivity, Mugniyah would from time to time force the hostages to read statements aimed at the release of the seventeen terrorists imprisoned in Kuwait. The statements were videotaped and then shown over television.

When this failed to produce results, Mugniyah and his Hezbollah terrorist friends hijacked a Kuwaiti airliner flying to Iran. This also failed to budge the Kuwaitis.

Meanwhile, Buckley's kidnapping had become a major CIA concern. Not long after his capture, his agents either vanished or were killed. It was clear that his captors had tortured him into revealing the network of agents he had established — the source for most of our intelligence on the various factions in Beirut. It's thought that the Jihad eventually killed him. The United States had once again lost its primary intelligence sources in Beirut, making it even more dangerous for the Americans remaining behind.

I left Beirut in late May 1984 and returned to an assignment in the Pentagon. Saying goodbye to General Tannous, Ambassador Bartholomew, and Ambassador Rumsfeld[21] was one of the toughest challenges I have faced. 1 respected them for their tireless work to bring peace to Beirut — but it was just not to be. For my part, I hated to leave. Though it had been a professionally rewarding experience, and I had learned much that would stay with me, it was the first challenge in my military career that I had failed to complete to my satisfaction.

As I stood on top of the hill at the helipad waiting for the Blackhawk from Cyprus, my thoughts and prayers were for those I was leaving behind.

By October 1985, when the hostages from the hijacking of TWA 847 were released in Damascus, nine Americans had been kidnapped and held hostage by Mugniyah. But of these, only six remained: Bill Buckley was dead; Regier had been set free by the Shiite militia; and Jeremy Levin had escaped to the Syrians. The six remaining hostages had been in captivity for better than a year and a hall — a very long time.

We wanted them back, very badly.

When I left Beirut, never did I imagine that I would return again. But in September 1985, I found myself with a Special Operations Task Force at a location in the eastern Mediterranean, prepared for a hostage rescue attempt. We had intelligence information indicating there might be a release of all the hostages. My orders were to set up a mechanism for their pickup and covert return to the United States. We were also prepared for a rescue operation, in case something went wrong.

We did not know the actual release point, except that it would be somewhere in the vicinity of the American University in West Beirut.

At midnight on September 14, 1985, the streets were vacant near the American University. A car pulled up, the back door opened, and a man got out dressed in a running suit. The car sped away. The man was picked up by one of our operators, brought to a predesignated point on the beach, the proper code signal was sent by the operator, and a helicopter picked the two of them up and brought them back to an aircraft carrier over the horizon. When the helicopter landed, the Special Forces operator announced, "This is the Reverend Weir."

Reverend Benjamin Weir, an American missionary, had been held captive for sixteen months by the Shiite Muslims. Weir was fed a hot meal in the Admirals' Mess, then taken to the hospital bay in the belly of the ship, where he was given a complete physical examination (he was in remarkably good shape considering what he had been through) and held for the next three days while we waited for the release of more hostages.

When he was picked up, he had with him notes from other hostages for their families and a message from his captors for personal delivery to President Reagan. We did not look at any of these messages.

Three days later, the deal for the release of the other hostages had failed to materialize, and we were told to return Reverend Weir to the United States. Reverend Weir, dressed in a flight suit, was flown to a location elsewhere, where a C-141 was waiting to return him to Andrews Air Force Base.

Some months after that, the intelligence community located the building in West Beirut where the hostages were being held, and described it in sufficient detail to allow us to locate a similar building in the western United States. We modified this building to mirror the Beirut buildings interior, a rescue force rehearsed the mission, and an infrastructure was established in West Beirut to support the operation.

Then disaster hit.

Two weeks before the planned launch of the rescue attempt, the Hezbollah uncovered one of the agents with access to the building; he was tortured and killed. Before he died, he revealed the names of the other agents involved, who were also killed. It was assumed then that the hostages would be split up in various locations, and so the rescue attempt was scratched. There was never again sufficient credible intelligence to support a rescue attempt, but eventually the hostages were released.

Because such anarchic violence is blessedly beyond most Americans' experience, my countrymen seem to have had a hard time grasping the complexities that led to the factional fighting and ultimately to the destruction of Beirut. Maybe this story will bring additional insight:

In December 1983, as Colonel Tom Fintel was nearing the end of his tour as chief of office of military cooperation, General Tannous arranged a going-away ceremony, complete to the presentation of a Lebanese medal on behalf of President Gemayel.

Sporadic artillery fire made an outside ceremony unsafe, so Tannous decided to hold the ceremony in an officers' club on the top floor of the Ministry of Defense, overlooking the city. Only principal staff officers and brigade commanders were invited, along with wives, but wives were not expected to show up, because of the risk.

To my surprise, two wives — Christians — actually braved the shelling to attend.

I'd never met them before, but as soon as they entered the room, they came straight to me. Without even introducing themselves, one brought her face close to mine: "Why don't you do something about this shelling that's killing our children?" she practically cried. "You've got all those ships sitting out there, with aircraft carriers. Bomb the heathens that are destroying us."

"We can't do that," I said. "The people who are shooting and shelling arc also Lebanese citizens. This is a Lebanese problem, and it has to be worked out by Lebanese."

They came back at me with fire in their eyes. "They arc not Lebanese citizens!" one said. "They are nothing! They don't even have a soul."

"We teach our children that they are born with a little black tail," the other said. "And it is their duty to kill them, pull their pants down and hack it off!"

Lebanon's wounds are cut deep. Healing that agony may require as many generations as it took to create it.

Two days after this ceremony, the Ministry of Defense was hit by an artillery barrage that destroyed the officers' club.

AND less than two years later, I was on my way to Sicily to deal with another hostage-taking, this time aboard the Achille Lauro….