FORTY-SIX

THE NEXT MORNING was gray and cool. A morning that again promised rain. General Vaught was calling to tell me he had heard rumors that I intended to come to Washington on Tuesday to denounce the raid to the press. This was completely untrue. Hell, all I’d done after the President left was get a little rest and work on the After-Action Report. I told the general I’d spoken to no one and had no intention to do so. Why in blazes would I want to go up there and criticize the mission? It didn’t make any sense.

The clouds lifted later in the day and the sky brightened. Later still, in the early evening, it must now have been around 1900, the secure telephone rang. Buckshot answered it. He came into my office. “Boss, the Secretary of Defense wants to talk to you.” I thought he was trying to play games with me to buck up my spirits. “Aw, don’t bullshit me.” “No, Boss, it really is.”

After three or four minutes of this I picked up the phone and found it wasn’t Dr. Brown, but that, indeed, someone from his office was calling. I was to come to Washington the next day and go before the press. I replied. “I’m not going up there and do any press conference. I’m just not going to do it.”

“We’re not going to discuss it,” he said. “There’ll be an aircraft at your location to pick you up in the morning. When you arrive, you are to report immediately to the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

In my living quarters, I tried to sort all this out. I felt that if they were pushing me before the press they were looking for a fall guy, a victim. No one knew too much about Delta. Yes, there’d been a few odd articles that had leaked out but, by and large, our existence was a pretty well-kept secret. The average person in this country didn’t know about Delta and maybe that’s the way it should be left. I didn’t sleep well that night.

I flew to Washington the next day and reported to General Jones. He told me I would be going before the national press that afternoon around 1400 hours. I begged him to change his mind, “Sir, you can’t do this to me.” He didn’t get angry and he didn’t sympathize with me. He never raised his voice, “It has been decided you will do this and you will.” I finally asked his permission to go and see the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Meyer. I knew Moses would fix it.

I literally ran down the halls of the Pentagon to the Special Ops office of the JCS. These were the same halls where three years before I had walked looking for information and assistance I needed to organize Delta Force. Now I was again looking for help, but of a different type. I quickly explained to General Vaught what I’d been ordered to do. He became very angry and together we went over to see General Meyer. We asked permission to see the General and were immediately shown into his office. After he listened for a few minutes, General Meyer said, “You are not going before the press. I will get back to you around 1300 hours, but you are not going to talk to he press, Charlie.” He knew nothing about this. It made no sense to him either.

Later, while I waited in General Vaught’s office, I calmed down. “Hell, the Army’s not going to let these political guys do this to me.” There then appeared on the scene some Army public affairs officer. General Vaught said, “I know this officer, Charlie. Let him talk to you and tell you how to handle the press, just in case…”

This officer, a nice lieutenant colonel, sat with me for an hour outlining all the techniques I needed to get through a press conference. It went in one ear and out the other. His system was not Charlie Beckwith’s. I’d talked to the press in Vietnam several times, so that part wasn’t bothering me. What kicked the wind out of me was losing my cover and having to answer questions about sensitive classified matters.

A little after 1300 hours, neither the Chief of Staff of the Army nor one of his representatives had gotten back to Charlie Beckwith. Instead a civilian from the Department of Defense Public Affairs Office, a Mr. Ross, stopped in to tell me I was expected at General Jones’s office at 1330 hours. I wasn’t angry any longer, just scared. “Somebody’s trying to set me up.”

General Jones told me, “Charlie, you can talk out there about anything that happened up to Desert One. But, don’t talk about anything beyond that affair.”

I said, “I’m prepared, if necessary, to lie about any CIA or other intelligence participation in the mission. It’s no one’s business. In my view, it could affect the national security.”

Dr. Brown, who was listening in the background, spoke right up and really bit into my ass. “We don’t lie about anything up here. If you get a question you believe is sensitive and will in your view affect this country’s security, all you will say is, ‘I can’t answer that question and I suggest you ask my superiors about it.’” This impressed me. I felt I was dealing with honest brokers.

I was taken upstairs to a press briefing room. While I was being introduced I remembered what Buzz Miley had told me long ago: “After you’re asked a question, before you open your mouth, think about it for forty-five seconds.” I answered every question I could to the best of my ability. The reporters took me chronologically, more or less, through the events at Desert One. I believe I was questioned for thirty or forty minutes.

Q: Did you have some colorful words for those choppers for being late? Like—

A: Yes, sir. I did say to the helicopter commander, “We’re late; we are going to make up some time. I want to load my packs and get cracking.”

Q: Did you give them all hell for being late?

A: I usually give a lot of people hell, sir. My soldiers are on time and I expect all the other people to try and get on time, sir. I try to be punctual.

But you have to appreciate the ordeal these people had gone through. At that point, I myself didn’t appreciate it. I had no idea—it wasn’t until yesterday, in fact, that I realized—the ordeal the helicopter pilots had experienced.

Q: Colonel, at this point, I know the book said that you had to go; and you being the good soldier, you said abort. But didn’t you feel at that time that you could have gone—as a soldier you could have gone on with five?

A: All due respect, sir, you don’t know where you’re coming from.

Q: O.K., please explain.

A: I have been there before. I was not about to be a party to half-assed loading on a bunch of aircraft and going up and murdering a bunch of the finest soldiers in the world. I ain’t going to do that. I have been in the Army twenty-seven years. I don’t have to do that. I get paid for shouldering responsibility, and being a leader. I wanted to get the job done, but under those circumstances, it was a no-win situation.

Q: Could you tell us what went through your mind though? You had some sort of emotion at that point, didn’t you?

A: The only things I had on my mind was we failed and I have got to get soldiers out of here.

Q: What did your soldiers say?

A: We didn’t stop and talk, sir. We didn’t have time, everybody was on the double, unloading helicopters, grabbing everything we could find and taking people up to start loading the 130s. Some of the people couldn’t load on the 130s because refueling was going on with the helicopters. So we had to wait outside. At the same time the watch was ticking. I am getting worried about being caught somewhere in the desert of Iran at first light. I don’t like that.

Q: Colonel, you mean the discipline was such that none of your men allowed themselves to express emotion—

A: Not at that time; they were too busy. When we got back it was a different story. A lot of people were very unhappy. We were very disappointed.

Q: Sir, I wonder if you could give us your thoughts on, or your feelings about, having to leave the bodies and was there any effort at all to recover any of the bodies?

A: I had three years in Vietnam and I don’t like to leave a body. But anyone who wastes additional human life, which is the most precious thing on the face of the earth, to go and get a body out, then I don’t think that’s very prudent when it’s impossible.

Q: Why did the mission fail?

A: Sir, I don’t know.

Q: Was it bad luck or—

A: That’s all I can say, I don’t know.

Q: Are you sort of reliving the whole thing at night?

A: Yes, ma’am. Hell, who wants to be part of something we worked so hard to do—only to have it end as it did?

Q: Colonel, you said you had never rehearsed aborting the mission?

A: With a 130 on fire and all that—no, we’d not done that, sir.

Q: Colonel, there are rumors that you are going to retire or resign in protest or something of that sort?

A: That’s pure bullshit, sir.

Q: Have you testified before any committees today?

A: No, I haven’t.

Q: You have not been on the Hill? Are you going today to the Hill?

A: Not to my knowledge. I’d like to go see my family.

Q: Have you not seen them yet?

A: No.

Immediately afterward I was taken downstairs to the Secretary of Defense’s office, where I was turned over to a brigadier general who was wearing civilian clothes. We chatted for a short time. He said, “Do you know where we’re off to now? No? Well, we’re going over to the White House.”

I said to myself, Now what? I was tired of explaining. I wanted to be left alone. In the car on the way over, I thought they were still looking for a patsy. They would have to come up with a very good scheme now, because the press conference had gone well.

Dr. Brown met me and accompanied me into the Oval Office. Dr. Brzezinski was with the President. There was a short pause. President Carter looked at me. “I have just read the wire service report about what you said to the press and I want to thank you for that. Colonel Beckwith, unfortunately, there were some people who felt you and I were at an impasse over the wisdom of conducting this mission. I did not want to put you in front of the press, but I really had no other alternative. I appreciate what you did and now, welcome to the kitchen.” I told him I’d been blown out of the water. I was finished. He said, “I’m sure, Colonel, you will be able to handle it.” We shook hands and Dr. Brown and I turned and left.

Dr. Brzezinski caught up to us. “Colonel, I have something on my conscience. May I speak to you for a moment?” He led the way to the Rose Garden. It reminded me of a little French cafe. There were these little metal chairs with fancy filigree backs. “Colonel, I was with the President the whole time he was monitoring the mission. When he received word there were five flyable helicopters and you recommended the mission be aborted, I almost asked the President to order you to continue. If I had, I feel, he would have done so. What would have been the consequences if you’d been told to go forward?”

The answer was simple. First, I gave him the reasons behind my recommendation, then I answered his question. “I wouldn’t be here today to tell you about it. It would have been a disaster.”

Dr. Brzezinski said. “That’s good enough for me.”

It’s the answer to a hypothetical question I asked myself while I was being driven over to the Army airfield at Fort Belvoir. It was an honest one. If General Vaught had ordered me to leave Desert One for the hide-site with five helicopters, I would have experienced audio transmission problems. “I can’t read you, sir. Over. Say again. You’re not coming in. Over! Over!”

I joined the troops that evening. Slowly we began to get back into gear. At first everyone was somewhat short-tempered. There wasn’t much conversation. The support people who’d been left behind at Fort Bragg were very sympathetic. Of course, they wanted to know what had happened. They didn’t need to know. We wished they weren’t there. Delta needed to be left alone.