Prime-Time Terrorism

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Unwilling to bargain, unable to use force, the U.S. turned to indirect diplomacy. Late in the first day of the crisis Reagan secretly cabled Syrian President Hafez Assad and asked him to use his influence to free the hostages or at least keep them alive. Though the Damascus regime has harbored Shi'ite extremists in terrorist camps in Baalbek, a city in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Assad is known to want to contain Shi'ite terror, as he takes his turn at trying to pacify Lebanon. His response to the U.S. request, according to Administration aides, was "positive." Assad is believed to have encouraged Berri to take a public role in mediating the crisis. On the first day of the hijacking, Berri had put a dozen armed Amal militiamen aboard the plane to take control from the original hijackers, believed to be free- lancers related to Shi'ites languishing in the Israeli prison camps. With Berri's intercession, the atmosphere became calmer. His men were far more restrained than the original hijackers, who had roughed up a number of passengers and brutally beaten Navy Man Stethem before putting a bullet between his eyes.

To Administration officials searching for a solution to the stalemate, Berri seemed to offer hope. On the fourth day of the crisis, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane called the Amal leader and in effect told him that the burden was on him to resolve the crisis. Berri had it in his power, McFarlane said, to secure the release of both the American hostages and the Shi'ites held by the Israelis. But if the hostages were not freed, McFarlane warned, Berri would be held personally responsible. Said a White House official: "The thrust of our diplomatic effort became to convince Berri that he had a problem, not us." At his press conference a day later, Reagan drove home the point. The hijacking was a "stain on Lebanon," he said, and "we hold (its leaders) accountable."

Berri's position was precarious. Some U.S. officials feared a reprise of the Iranian experience, when efforts to negotiate with moderate leaders made the radicals inside the embassy more intransigent. As it turned out, the Iranian "students" used the hostages as pawns to consolidate Khomeini's power and to drive from government moderates like Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the Foreign Minister who had the temerity to bargain with "the Great Satan." Trying to avoid a similar fate, Berri threatened to "wash his hands" of the whole affair and turn the hostages over to their original hijackers unless the U.S. arranged a "swap" with the Israelis.