Free Black Ops: The Rise of Special Forces in the C.I.A., the S.A.S., and Mossad by Tony Geraghty

conflagration at Desert One prevented the on-scene commander from implementing the helicopter destruction plan because he perceived it to be too risky. As a result, five RH-53Ds [Sea Stallion helicopters] were abandoned intact.
    “As planning proceeded, an option to destroy the helicopters in Iran, should a contingency situation warrant, was considered. This contingency called for individuals to place thermite grenades in the helicopters if their destruction was called for and then to detonate them. This option was never implemented at Desert One because of the perceived danger of exploding helicopters and ammunition to personnel and aircraft evacuating the site and to Iranians aboard a nearby bus.”
    This was not the only choice, Holloway suggests. There is good reason to believe explosives, when properly installed, are no more dangerous to crew and passengers than the onboard fuel supply. Moreover, explosives for use in destroying the helicopters and breaching the Embassy walls had to be carried aboard several, if not all, helicopters. Therefore, it is a moot point as to what explosives were carried onboard and where they were placed. On the Son Tay mission, explosives for helicopter self-destruction were placed onboard at the outset. The helicopter to be abandoned was fitted with explosives and detonators. Electrical initiators were placed apart from the explosives, and the electrical leads left disconnected. Aircrew members destroyed the helicopter, when necessary, by simply connecting the initiator to the explosives and activating a built-in timing device. With regard to aircrew reluctance to have similar devices to the ones used in the Son Tay raid aboard their helicopters, Iranian-mission aircrews interviewed stated that this procedure was acceptable to them. Moreover, they admitted that most explosives were less of a danger than other hazardous material carried on-board mission helicopters—e.g., fuel.
    “Equipping rescue mission helicopters with easily removable, separated, and disconnected explosive devices and initiators should not have jeopardized safety and would have enhanced the ability to destroy helicopters at any point in the mission….”
    As the C-130s, rumbled away south from Desert One, a dawn sun caught their wings as if to remind the survivors of the fires they had left burning. By the time they touched down at the sanctuary of Masirah Island, part of friendly Oman, an Iranian army team was searching the site. It found eight American and one civilian Iranian dead. Much worse, it discovered documents that compromised an American agent on the ground in advance of Eagle Claw. This was retired Major Richard Meadows, one of the first Americans to serve with the SAS in 1960 and son-in-law of an SAS warrant officer. Born in 1931, Meadows enlisted at the age of sixteen and emerged from the Korean War three years later as the Army’s youngest master sergeant. He joined Special Forces in 1953 and in 1970 led the Son Tay rescue attempt. He extracted his team safely. The need for better intelligence in the future, and quicker reaction to what intelligence there was, was not lost on Meadows. By the time the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was occupied in 1979, Meadows had been in retirement for two years. The Pentagon invited him to act as the forward eyes and ears of Beckwith’s mission on the ground in Tehran, and he accepted. 66 After the mission was aborted, using an Irish passport in the name of Richard H. Keith supplied by the CIA, he kept his cool, checked in at Tehran airport, and flew out on a civil airliner, undetected.
    A final indignity awaited Beckwith back in the Pentagon’s press briefing room. He was to address a press conference. What gutted him was not the prospect of talking to journalists. He’d done that in Vietnam from time to time. But “what kicked the wind out of me was losing my cover and having to answer questions about sensitive classified matters.” 67
    The failure at Desert One