Managing the Crisis

By Amy Wilentz

While the hostages suffered intense fear and loneliness in Beirut, officials in Washington endured another kind of ordeal as they struggled to work out a strategy for freeing the Americans. Although the 17-day drama had its moments of tension on this side of the Atlantic, there was little of the minute-by- minute crisis atmosphere, marked by heated meetings and sweaty palms, that is thought to accompany such showdowns. Instead, the President's top aides insist, the situation was handled in an orderly and subdued manner that seemed to come straight from the pages of an introductory textbook on crisis management, a style that reflected the methodical and unemotional approach of National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane. Solid principles, they say, were established early on, and all future decisions flowed from them. From Day One, when he was awakened before dawn by a phone call from McFarlane, President Reagan made one thing clear: the U.S. would make no concessions to terrorism, nor would it pressure other nations to do so.

During the first days, as Flight 847 crisscrossed the Mediterranean from Athens to Beirut to Algiers, Reagan's advisers sent messages to various world leaders -- including Syria's Hafez Assad, Algeria's Chadli Bendjedid and Lebanon's Amin Gemayel -- asking them to use their influence to end the crisis. Though a number of hostages were released at each stop, none of the leaders was able to effect a quick resolution. Washington moved military forces, including elements of the Army's elite Delta Force, into the region. "Our hope was that the plane would never leave Algeria," says a State Department official. Washington feared that in lawless Beirut, the hijackers would find reinforcements. The only time that a military operation was seriously considered was on Day Two, while the plane was in Algiers. But Chadli's government forbade the U.S. to use force in Algeria, preferring diplomatic means that got nowhere. Perhaps because the hijackers had heard reports that the Delta Force was dispatched, they again took off for Beirut.

On Day Three, Sunday, June 16, the President, cutting short his weekend stay, returned from Camp David for his first official meeting on the matter with the National Security Council at 1 p.m. A dozen or so NSC members and staff gathered in the Situation Room in the White House basement for what was to be a 73-minute session. The President asked for a full range of options. "From the beginning," says a senior adviser, "he approved of the concept of using everything on the menu." McFarlane briefed the group on the goals of various Lebanese Shi'ite factions, focusing his attention on the Amal's Nabih Berri as the U.S.'s best bet.

Reagan approved this approach and told McFarlane, who knew Berri from his % days as a special Middle East envoy in 1983, to use this relationship to put pressure on the Amal leader. In the middle of the night, from his suburban Maryland home, McFarlane spoke with Berri. During the 30-minute conversation, he passed along the message that had been worked out at the NSC meeting. Washington would not join in arrangements to free Israel's 776 Lebanese prisoners while Americans were being held, McFarlane told Berri. "The thrust was to get across to Berri that the Shi'ite prisoners were going to get released and that as a practical matter, he was delaying their release," said a State Department official.

Israel's policy was that it would not set a timetable for the prisoners' release unless the U.S. requested it, and a rift seemed to be developing when Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin went on ABC's Nightline to charge that the U.S. was playing cat and mouse with his government. He and other Israelis claimed that Washington was publicly asserting its opposition to any concessions while privately suggesting that Israel begin to free the Shi'ites. But Israel realized the crisis was a delicate matter for its closest ally. Worried by Rabin's remarks, Prime Minister Shimon Peres called Secretary of State George Shultz on the eighth day of the crisis to assure him of Israel's continued close cooperation. Peres called again two days later to let him know that Israel was planning to release 31 of the detainees as a good-faith sign to Berri that it would proceed with the release of the remaining 745 once the hostages were freed.

On the afternoon of Day Eleven, June 24, the NSC met again in the Situation Room. There, Reagan's advisers presented him with a three-color chart symbolizing avenues of response still open to him. The President decided to go beyond diplomacy. He asked Spokesman Larry Speakes to announce that Washington was now willing to apply economic pressures on Lebanon, including shutting down Beirut's airport. The President also threatened to call for an international boycott of Lebanon.

Said one adviser: "We hadn't threatened violence yet, but we were turning up the steam in a deliberate, thoughtful, careful way." Although many in the White House now feel that this was the turning point, some remain skeptical about the value of the hard line. Says one State Department official: "I can't imagine it was the threat of closing the Beirut airport" that brought Berri around.

Many think Berri's change of heart actually came on June 25, Day Twelve, when Syria's Assad first proposed to Amal and Washington that Berri release the hostages into Damascus' care in exchange for an assurance from the U.S. that Israel would then free its Lebanese prisoners. But getting Israel to give the U.S. the requisite "assurances" was still a problem. After speaking to Peres early the next day, Shultz cabled Assad, saying that the U.S. had no objections to his proposal. The Administration emphasized to Assad that it was offering no deal, only passing along the "expectations" it had received from Jerusalem.

But there was yet another catch, this one involving the hijackers' fears about retaliation. Hizballah (Party of God), an Iranian-backed militia thought to be responsible for the original hijacking, balked at the Syrian proposals, allegedly frightened by intimations from Reagan that the U.S. would retaliate. Though U.S. officials felt that Hizballah was using its purported fear as a face-saving "pretext" for demonstrating its clout with Amal, the group had to be appeased. Assad proposed a placating arrangement in which the U.S. issued an old policy statement about "its longstanding support for the preservation of Lebanon." When an aide called Reagan at the White House for his authorization, he replied, "It's a restatement of policy. If it helps, so be it." The next day the hostages were on their way to Damascus.

With reporting by Barrett Seaman/Washington