TWENTY-THREE

ONCE A VOLUNTEER passed the camp Dawson selection course, he entered at Fort Bragg an intensely demanding Operators Course that would, in nineteen weeks, teach him the skills required to handle any terrorist incident.

The new Delta operator was provided a unique curriculum, one he could not receive anywhere else.

During this nearly five-month-long Operators Course, each Delta operator had to demonstrate the ability to: hit a target; perform command and control functions; establish and maintain secure communications; move from position to position using appropriate techniques in support of assault operations; gain entry to a crisis point; manage hostages; stabilize an injured person for at least thirty minutes; properly employ and maintain optical equipment; operate selected machinery and wheeled and track vehicles; negotiate natural and man-made obstacles; navigate on the land from one point to another; protect hostages from the threat of explosive ordnance; perform selected airborne and airmobile techniques and tactics; conduct selected maritime techniques; disarm and disable a hostile opponent.

The training was mentally demanding, physically tough, complete, and unique. No one could afford to have a bad day. In an American college, if a student daydreams during an English Lit lecture he might receive a failing grade on the next exam. If one of Delta’s students daydreamed during a lecture on assault operations it might cost him his life. Operators had to be able to cope with any terrorist situation, in any environment, at any time. Some of the subjects taught seemed arcane—picking a pintumbler padlock, for example, or knowing how to drive an SSB1200 diesel locomotive—but each was necessary. Delta operators not only became jacks of all trades, but masters of them as well.

Climbing skills required each operator to perform various individual rappels; to climb and rapple from buildings, installations, and aircraft; to evacuate wounded personnel by means of rapelling; to perform unassisted balance climbs; to perform two-man climbs; to place and use all traversing systems; to place and use a fixed rope.

Delta snipers had to hit 100 percent on targets at 600 yards and 90 percent on targets at 1,000 yards. In combat marksmanship competition, which were conducted on an irregular basis, Delta always finished first. In head-to-head matches only the Secret Service ever beat Delta’s snipers. Most of these matches were fired with M14 7.62mm rifles using iron sights on standard NRA targets up to 500 yards.

Shooting was, obviously, a large part of each operator’s training. No matter what his specialty he was expected to shoot three to four hours a day, five days a week.

One of the first pieces of business to be tackled as soon as Delta had moved into the Stockade was the building of a shooting house. This $90,000 complex was built directly behind the Stockade. It became known as “the House of Horrors.” Each of the building’s four rooms included sophisticated target systems that were portable and interchangeable. Shooting was done nearly in the round. One of the systems utilized sound stop-motion picture projection. Seen from the Delta operator’s point of view, the film showed a room full of hostages and the terrorists holding them captive. The operator had to decide who was who and shoot the terrorists. At the precise instant he fired his weapon, the projector would freeze so the shooter could see on the screen exactly what he had hit.

The first room in the House of Horrors was a warm-up room where very simple shooting was done. As a switch was pushed, eight silhouette targets, both good and bad guys, would abruptly spring up. Training was geared to allow the shooter just seconds to enter the room, identify the targets, and fire.

The second room was used for this purpose: take the offense away from the terrorist. The principle is to put him on the defensive. As the door to the room explodes, in the split second that it takes for the terrorist to shift his attention from the hostage to the explosion, the good guys have to enter the room and kill the terrorist. Room clearing, as it is called, has to be done quickly and violently. Four men are the number you want to enter a room. They must each enter swiftly and go in different directions. The situation will dictate the weaponry. If it is a single room, with two or three terrorists, the 4-man team will attack with handguns; the last man could go in with a 12-gauge shotgun. If a large area with many interconnecting rooms is held by a sizable number of terrorists, a 6-man attacking team might be used and they’d carry submachine guns.

Delta operators were taught to put two head shots in each terrorist. And they must keep moving, never giving the opposition a chance to hit a stationary target. Training included clearing a jammed weapon on the run and while under fire.

The basis for formulating an assault plan is information from negotiators and from other people who have recently been in and around the crisis site. Knowing in detail what the team will face on the other side of a door will also push its confidence level up. Squatting outside, waiting for a door to be blown, it is important for the operator to feel acquainted with what he’ll face in the next few seconds. Conversely, the risk of failing successfully to clear a room in which the fire team has no idea where anything or anyone is, is very high—the wrong people can be shot.

Targets in the shooting house’s room-clearing space were usually pictures of known terrorists.

The third room in the complex was used for night shooting, with the operators using night vision goggles, and for blowing various types of doors. We spent a lot of money in this room replacing the fluorescent bulbs, which would shatter along with the doors.

The fourth room contained a detailed aircraft cabin mockup.

Since aircraft hijacking has become fashionable, Delta spent a lot of time studying the subject. In the event a United States owned or operated commercial airliner was hijacked and flown out of the country, Delta would be called upon—as West Germany had called upon GSG-9 in Mogadishu—to safely recover the passengers and, if possible, the aircraft. It was an area in which we felt we had a large responsibility.

The Federal Aviation Agency proved to be helpful. One of the first things they did was provide Delta with a Boeing 727. The airlines, obviously because it was in their own best interests, also cooperated fully. Many nights were spent, for example, in a TWA hangar at Kennedy International Airport.

At first we made mistakes. In an early training exercise an assault team carefully crawled along a wing in order to gain access to an emergency door. After Delta had gained control of the aircraft, the hostage actors in the cabin admitted they had known something was afoot when the plane began to rock very gently back and forth. The lesson we learned that night was to find out how much fuel was stored in the wings. Obviously, the plane would rock more if the wing tanks were empty and lighter.

There was a lot to learn about taking down an aircraft. By spending vast amounts of time on the subject, two of Delta’s operators became fountains of aircraft knowledge. They learned everything there was to know—how planes at O’Hare were refueled, how flight crews were changed at LaGuardia, how food was loaded at Dulles. They knew where each of the nine hatches on a stretch 727 was, whether a DC-9 could be entered through its wheel wells, which lights would blink on when certain hatches were opened on a wide-body DC-10. There was nothing that these two operators hadn’t learned about airplanes and how they could be entered.

Of course, shooting skills are critical in an aircraft takeover. It’s not unlike shooting fish in a barrel. The sharks have to be identified and separated from the guppies—the terrorists from passengers—and this art was practiced time and time again in the airplane cabin in the shooting house behind the Stockade.

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When the shooting starts—and this was a large part of what Delta was expected to do—and people begin to die, no matter how many hours of training are involved, it comes down to the man who is pulling the trigger. In this area Delta was unique.