The spy who never came in from the cold-William Buckley

[hist2004]

The spy who never came in from the cold
William Buckley

By Gordon Thomas

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

On Friday morning March 16, 1984, William Buckley, the CIA Station Chief in Lebanon, began his three hundred and forty-third day in Beirut. He was alone in his tenth floor apartment in the Al-Manara apartment building in the western suburb of the city. Beyond the windows of his living room were views of the Chouf Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. It was going to be one of those sublime days which compensated for what Lebanon had become for the few foreigners still living here: a dangerous and volatile hell hole.

Below, stretching into the distance, were a hundred and more spiralling mosque minarets. From them loudspeakers would soon summon the faithful to their first prayers.

Despite its size -- four bedrooms, dining room, living room, maid's cubicle -- Buckley had insisted on keeping house himself; he hated the idea of anyone snooping through his personal belongings. Evidence of his failure to be tidy was all around him: dishes scattered casually about the living area and the laundry bag over-flowing.

Undoubtedly he had much else to preoccupy him. His attempts to cultivate informants and gain information about Lebanon's disparate political factions had met with mixed success. Part of the reason, he believed, was he still found it difficult to communicate in Arabic.

Early on in Beirut, Buckley had made contact with the senior Mossad katsa, a field agent, in the city.

A few days before this March morning, the two men had met in the George Washington cafˆ© on Beirut seafront. They were developing plans to rescue the foreign hostages already held captive by the Hezbollah in Beirut. A team of Green Berets would be flown from the United States to Tel Aviv and sail with Israeli Special Forces on gunboats which would drop them off the coast of Beirut. The craft would wait off-shore while the team hid in the sand dunes waiting for the "go" signal.

That would come when other Mossad agents had infiltrated into the city to place bombs outside the homes of known Islamic terrorists. The ensuing panic would be the signal for the force in the dunes to make its way into the city and join Buckley.

Dangerous and daring though the plan was, Buckley believed its element of surprise would ensure success. Besides, he had carried out similar operations in Vietnam to snatch Vietcong leaders from their redoubts. The previous day, March 15, 1984, the plan had been green lighted in an "eyes only" coded signal to Buckley from CIA's William Casey.

That Friday morning of March 16, 1984, almost certainly Bill Buckley followed a routine which had become part of his life.

First he placed a classical album on the stereo at the side of his bed and carried one of the speakers on its extension flex to the door of the bathroom. Shaved and showered, he dressed, selecting a short-sleeved shirt, silk tie and a grey, light-weight suit.

The clothes were another of his unbreakable habits. For the past thirty years he had bought them from Brooks Brothers in New York. He bought four suits every year, two light-weight, two medium-worsted. He remained a size 38. His ties came from the classical range of plain or muted stripes.

Having a low tolerance for silence, he moved the speaker from the bedroom to the kitchen and prepared a breakfast of orange juice, cereal, toast and coffee. He had enjoyed an identical start to the day for as long as he could remember.

The meal over and the crockery stacked in the dishwasher, he replaced the classical record with one of Dean Martin singing.

He had met the crooner during one of his spells at Langley when he had spent a weekend at Las Vegas. One Martin's song also had a more personal memory for Buckley. It was a reminder of the one woman he had established a personal relationship with. Her name was Candace Hammond and she lived in the small hamlet of Farmer in North Carolina. He had spoken to her on the phone a few days ago. He'd ended the call by saying he hoped to be home soon and then she could cook him a "good old-fashioned Southern-fried chicken," Candace would recall.

Listening to Martin singing Return to Me, Buckley prepared sandwiches, something he had done every morning in Beirut. He disliked the food at the embassy canteen almost as much as the curious stares he attracted from other diplomatic staff. He suspected they regarded him as a dinosaur, an old work-horse heading for retirement. Let them think that. With his direct communication to William Casey he was only a step away from the Oval Office. Casey had said as much. "Anything you turn up, Bill, goes straight on to the President's desk," was how the Director had put it.

Sandwich-making over, Buckley returned to the living room. It contained the only clues to his personal life. On one wall was a framed copy of a French World War One victory poster. Candace had given it to him. They had met when he had returned from Vietnam and quickly became lovers. Over the years, she had written him scores of letters. Sunday was her day for writing. He had seldom written back, preferring to make phone calls from various parts of the world. Proof of her love was the inscription she had written across the framed portrait of her on a table in the living room: "To Bill. My fearless warrior and wonderful lover. Candace."

In a few months he would be fifty-eight years old. But Candace had been the only woman he had ever come close to loving. To demonstrate that, he insisted on taking with him everywhere the ever-growing bundle of letters Candace had written.

They went into the bottom of the briefcase he fetched from the safe in his bedroom. Known as a "burn bag", it was intended at a twist of the key clockwise, the usual way of opening or closing a bag, to incinerate the contents by triggering flames from a ring of gas jets built into the base. After the letters, Buckley placed a number of files marked "Top Secret", "Secret" or "Confidential" in the bag. The sandwiches went on top.

Buckley locked the case by turning the key anti-clockwise, then attached the bag to his wrist by a bracelet fixed to a steel chain secured to the bag's handle.

He dead-locked the apartment door behind him and walked across the hall to the elevator. It stopped at a floor below. A man entered. He was young, well dressed and carried a leather briefcase. A few floors further down the elevator paused again. This time a woman tenant whom Buckley knew joined them. He exchanged polite greetings with her. The man did not speak.

At the ground floor the woman stepped out, wishing Buckley to "have a nice day", no doubt proud of her grasp of American idiom. The two men rode down to the basement garage where Buckley kept his car. Normally his embassy driver would have been waiting but this morning Buckley had decided to drive himself to his appointments. He had told no one at the embassy of this violation of security; it was an unbreakable rule that no American official nowadays travelled alone in the city.

As he walked towards his car, Buckley's first inkling of trouble may well have been the fierce blow from the man's briefcase to the back of his head, powerful enough to leave traces of blood and hair on the hide. The attacker dropped his bag. When it was later recovered, it was found to contain several rocks. From somewhere inside the garage a white Renault drove up. There were two men in the car, the driver and his companion in the rear. He may well have assisted Buckley's assailant to get him and the burn bag into the back of the car. With Buckley half-sprawled on the floor and the other two men squatting on top, the Renault roared out of the garage, its rear door flapping open dangerously.

The woman who had exchanged pleasantries with the CIA station chief moments before was standing at a bus stop near the garage exit. She glimpsed what had happened and started to scream for help.

Bill Buckley was not only an important and totally reliable source for me in the intelligence world, but also became a good and trusted friend. The idea of having a friend who operates in the nether regions of our society does not always sit well with the purists of our world. They regard men like Bill Buckley as belonging to a world they want no part of.

Bill was highly educated and articulate and was a gifted host. He could easily have found himself a secure place on Wall Street or some other niche in the East Coast Establishment. Instead he chose to work for the Central Intelligence Agency. He saw it as a real opportunity to satisfy two powerful driving forces in his psyche, a need to serve his country in a way that would satisfy that second force by giving him a life of excitement and the essential sense of danger that permeated so much of what he did. He was an authentic man's man who regularly managed to seduce women with his old-fashioned charm and a style that the Great Gatsby would have admired.

Physically he was not exactly handsome. The angles of his face did not quite coalesce to provide a striking whole. His chin would jut at unexpected moments and his eyes were a little too close set, giving him a look of theatrical menace. To really appreciate his best physical side you had to catch him in motion, crumbling a roll for his soup or using his finger to make a point.

As I came to know him, I realized that Bill cultivated his little eccentricities and displayed them like badges of honour. He liked ties whose patterns never seemed to match his shirt or jacket. There was the long leather topcoat he wore for a while so that he looked like an extra in a wartime movie. His greatest concern was to ensure his shoes always gleamed. He could not pass a shoeshine stand without stopping for an application of further gloss.

We began to meet on a regular basis. Usually Bill would turn up with two or three staff from the embassy. The conversation was as good as the food. One night he arrived with William Colby, a quiet and self-contained man with the inquisitorial manner of a foot soldier in the Society of Jesus. He asked few questions but listened a great deal. Later Bill told me that Colby had parachuted into German-occupied France in 1944. After the war he had gone on fighting the Fascists in Italy as an early member of the CIA.

Bill had a waspish way with words. He once said the only real way to write about intelligence matters was to listen for "the murmurs in the mush". It was his shorthand for learning about a deadly skirmish in an alley with no name; the collective hold-your-breath when an agent or network is blown; a covert operation that could have undone years of overt political bridge building; a snippet of mundane information that completed a particular intelligence jigsaw. Later, as we came to know one another better, he convinced me that secret intelligence is the key to fully understanding international relations, global politics and terrorism.

Eventually I came to know a great deal about Bill and his own life and times.

William Buckley was kidnapped shortly after eight o'clock in the morning, Beirut time, on March 16, 1984. Several hours passed before senior Embassy officials concluded he had been abducted.

A priority signal was sent to the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. It was still early morning in Washington.

At State, news of what had happened was given to Chip Beck who had served with Buckley in Beirut. He was "too stunned to take it in. I was having a hard time emotionally," he said later.

At Langley the signal had been delivered to CIA Director William Casey's office on the seventh floor. Years later he would recall how: "I just sat there and read the thing two, three times. Bill had been a prime asset. For three decades, on three continents, he had served the CIA and this nation with unfailing loyalty and without question. He was one of the bravest men I ever met. He was can-do, go-anywhere. He was street savvy in a way few agents were. So how the hell had this happened?"

An ashen-faced Casey asked that question of anyone who could possibly provide the answer. Receiving none, he shouted in frustration, "Find him! I want him found. I don't care what it takes, I want him found!"

So began an operation like no other the CIA had organised. Claire George, the Agency's deputy director, was ordered to "turn the Middle East upside down". A special in-agency committee chaired by Casey was set up to monitor the search. The National Security Agency, NSA, was ordered to provide high-resolution satellite photos of known terrorist hideouts in Beirut and the Beka'a Valley.

The intelligence services of Israel, Germany, France and the United Kingdom were asked to help. Every CIA station in the Middle East was ordered to treat the hunt for Buckley as a top priority. A joint FBI/CIA team flew to Beirut. Shortly afterwards they were joined by NSA technicians, each a specialist in ground communications. They were to use their equipment to probe deep beneath the rubble of West Beirut where satellites could not penetrate.

In Langley, psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioural scientists and analysts were mobilised to try and assess how Buckley would withstand being kidnapped and to get a fix on the mindset of his captors. The task was put in charge of Dr Jerrold Post. The fastidious, soberly-dressed psychiatrist also held a senior teaching post at the capital's George Washington University.

The joint CIA/FBI team sent to Beirut established that embassy security had not been compromised. In their first reports back to Langley, the team painted a picture of the missing agent as idiosyncratic. He had spent time cleaning mud from the inside of his car's mudguards with a toothbrush. He kept his apartment untidy. He brought his own food to work.

The judgement infuriated Casey. He knew Buckley; they had travelled together widely through the CIA's global fiefdom. He said later, "Buckley may have had unusual traits, but he was not a has-been."

Yet, despite the Director's support, the feeling grew in Langley that Buckley was an "oddball", someone who had "goofed up".

Reconstructing what had happened, the CIA/FBI team concluded that the white Renault, with maximum acceleration, roared through the Muslim quarter and was waved past several Hezbollah checkpoints before reaching a well-prepared safe house.

Buckley was manhandled out of the car and into the house. The team was equally certain one of the kidnappers had unclipped the briefcase from Buckley's wrist and found the key in his pocket. They could only guess if the terrorist had been able to open the burn bag correctly.

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[hist2004]

The team was quickly satisfied the Hezbollah had kidnapped Buckley, and that most likely he remained somewhere in the sprawl of West Beirut, between what remained of the heavily-shelled port in the north and the Hotel Sands to the south, near the international airport. There were simply not enough Green Berets to go in to rescue Buckley from probably the most hostile area on earth.

Former State Department employee, Chip Beck, recalled that within the CIA there was also a "mood that Buckley knew too much and that he could blow away a lot of people if he was forced to talk. A lot of agents were watching to see what the Agency would do to get him back. There was a feeling that if Casey couldn't rescue Buckley, then no agent was safe."

In Langley, some of those agents remembered what had happened to Tucker Gouglemann, one of Buckley's closest friends in the CIA. They had served together in Vietnam. When the Vietcong had swept into Saigon, Gouglemann had stayed behind in the hope of bringing out his Vietnamese wife and their small child. Within days he had been arrested. Within a month he was dead from torture. It was eighteen months before the Vietcong had turned over his body to the American Red Cross.

Within the agency, Buckley had never tired of saying that more should have been done to rescue Gouglemann. His claim had won him no friends within the CIA hierarchy.

Doctors at Langley continued to assess how Buckley would react to captivity. The CIA specialists concluded Buckley's reactions would follow an almost immutable pattern.

"Even while Buckley was reeling under the blow from the briefcase, he would experience a feeling of disbelief, an instinctive denial that what was happening was actually occurring to him. That may have remained until his arrival at the hiding place his captors had prepared," said Dr Jerrold Post.

Desperate denial -- the only immediate psychological defence response open to Buckley -- would be replaced by a sudden and shattering reality. Dr Post told me Buckley's reactions could have included "frozen fright" and, most disturbing of all a need to talk to his kidnappers -- if only to try and convince them he should be freed.

For Buckley's captors that period was also one of critical importance. They would begin to feed back to him information they had earlier gleaned from Buckley, creating a feeling his captors were all-knowing and therefore all-powerful and that to resist them would be pointless.

The CIA doctors suggested of Buckley: a man bowed down by despair, suddenly aged, his face haggard, slowed up physically and mentally, his voice monotonous and every word and movement a fearful burden. He would feel constantly exhausted and any sleep would leave him unrefreshed. He would become most depressed in the small hours -- and then be at his most vulnerable, when his ability to resist every slight pressure would be at its lowest. Self-accusation would be at its most destructive and his lack of hope at its peak.

Buckley's mental agony could be accompanied by other symptoms: loss of appetite and constipation, followed by a growing feeling the only solution for him was suicide. No one could guess how long that feeling would last but at some point would come another shattering self-discovery. Not only was resistance manifestly impossible, but so was escape. That would be the point when he might regard cooperating with his captors.

The doctors continued to make their first cautious predictions. If his captors were sufficiently clever, they would recognise that Buckley's mood changes were part of a continuously carving-out and refilling of that inner void created by his kidnapping. Under their manipulation, his guilt could be re-directed away from himself so that he would come to believe that what was important was not so much what he had done -- failed to avoid being kidnapped -- but what he had been: a hated "Western Imperialist".

On Monday morning, May 7, 1984, the United States embassy in Athens received a video posted in the city. The wrapping, with its boldly printed name and address, was carefully undone and placed to one side. The VHS tape was a cheap German make commonly available throughout the Middle East. One of the mail room staff inserted the cassette in a video player. When the ambassador reviewed the tape, it was couriered to Langley.

In Casey's office, the director and senior staff began to view the video. It showed William Buckley undergoing torture. The absence of sound made it all the more shocking. The camera zoomed in and out of Buckley's **** and damaged body. He held before his genitalia a document marked "MOST SECRET". It was proof the burn-bag had failed.

Casey later remembered how "I was close to tears. It was the most obscene thing I had ever witnessed. Bill was barely recognisable as the man I had known for years. They had done more than ruin his body. His eyes made it clear his mind had been played with. It was horrific, mediaeval and barbarous".

The tape was handed over to technicians. They enlarged frames to try and establish the background against which Buckley had been filmed. They decided it was rough-plastered stone, suggesting the filming had taken place in a cellar. The wrapping paper was the kind Mediterranean shopkeepers used to wrap groceries. The handwriting suggested the writer was semi-literate.

The Agency's pharmacologists took over. They concluded Buckley showed symptoms of being drugged; his eyes were dull and his lips slack. His gaze was of a person deprived of daylight for some time. He continuously blinked as if he had great difficulty in adjusting to what appeared to be not a very powerful photo-flood used to illuminate him for filming. They were certain Buckley had spent long periods being hooded. Buckley bore chafe marks on his wrists and neck suggesting he had been tethered with a rope or chain. A careful study of every inch of visible skin revealed puncture marks indicating he had been injected at various points.

The second video arrived twenty-three days later. This time it was posted to the United States Embassy on Via Veneto in Rome. The tape was air-couriered to Washington.

The video had been shot against a similar background as the first one. It revealed Buckley continued to be horrifically treated. There was sound on the tape. Buckley's voice was slurred and his manner noticeably more egocentric as if not only the world beyond the camera, but his immediate surroundings, held increasingly less interest for him.

The pharmacologists found it impossible to decide which drugs had been used. Any of a dozen of those powerful agents could have made him appear sedated and stupefied. His voice was fuzzy and he appeared often unable to shape words. His hands shook and his legs beat a tattoo on the floor as he mumbled pathetic pleas to be exchanged under a guarantee the United States would remove "all of its influences" from Lebanon and would persuade Israel to do the same.

Specialists tried to decide how long Buckley could survive. His last Agency medical records showed he was physically fit. But no one could say how his defence mechanisms would respond to anxiety attacks, nightmares, and the overwhelming sense of helplessness. While drugs would have an enormous impact on Buckley's mood and behaviour, they might leave no permanent damage if he was recovered soon enough. The possibility gave added impetus to the plans beginning to take shape elsewhere within the CIA, in the Pentagon, the State Department and, ultimately, the White House. Casey repeatedly told colleagues they should see Buckley's release as the Agency's personal crusade. "It is partly a matter of esprit de corps -- we look after our own," was the Director's constant refrain.

During his first weeks in captivity, William Buckley was hidden in a succession of cellars in West Beirut, each soon filled with the stench of his body waste, misery and, no doubt, fear.

On Friday, October 26, 1984, two hundred and twenty-four days since Buckley was kidnapped, a third video arrived at the CIA. The tape was even more harrowing than its predecessors. Buckley was close to a gibbering wretch. His words were often incoherent; he slobbered and drooled and, most unnerving of all, he would suddenly scream in terror, his eyes rolling helplessly and his body shaking. From time to time he held up documents, which had been in his burn-bag, to the camera. Then delivered a pathetic defence of his captor's right to self-determination in Lebanon.

Specialists reviewed the tape to try and decide whether he was already resigned to inevitable death. The specialists wondered if he had put aside the normal Christian abhorrence to suicide and overcome the memory of his formative years when, as a devout Catholic boy, he had listened to his priest speak of the Hell which faced those who took their own lives. Would he remember he had been told his work permitted suicide as the ultimate means to protect the CIA's secrets?

There was no indication the ruined figure on the video remembered that as he pleaded to live in exchange for the patently impossible demands of his captors.

The specialists tried to estimate the level of anxiety in Buckley's voice. It was clear he could no longer confront the sheer terror of his situation. Its magnitude had overwhelmed him. For hours the specialists considered whether his words showed "true guilt" or "neurotic guilt". They used a language no outsider could readily comprehend as they tried to make distinctions over how much in his case "the human order of being is disturbed", and how far he might have experienced "existential guilt arising from a specific act", in his case revealing secrets to his captors. They returned to consider whether Buckley not only accepted but yearned for the inevitability of death.

William Buckley's kidnapping was into its second year by the spring of 1985.

The CIA consensus was that he would be blindfolded and chained at the ankles and wrists and kept in a cell little bigger than a coffin.

He would, if he was lucky, be fed twice a day: early in the morning and some time after dark. He would not know the time because his watch, like all his personal belongings, would have been taken from him.

From close study of the video other clues had emerged. His loss of weight was marked between the first and last tape, perhaps as much as thirty pounds. His drugging was evident.

How had he spent those long, dreadful hours in isolation? One way could have been to try and remember some of his training exercises, designed to help him if captured. There was the one where he had to try and recall as many passages as possible from the Bible, from his favourite books, or dialogue from a film. Anything at all to link him with the past, to remind him there was a world to return to, his psychologist/instructor had said.

Had Buckley managed to do this? Had he been able to decipher time, the passing of an hour, a half day, a day, a week, a month even?

In training he had shown himself able to calculate the hours. But a week? A month? Had he learned to cope with silence in the stifling darkness of his cell-coffin? Again, there was a way. He had been taught to recall conversations and play back in his mind both sides, his and the person he had spoken to. Again he had shown a certain aptitude for that in training. But no matter how realistic that was, it would still not match the reality of captivity.

Over the past two years, speculation had died -- just as some people in Langley thought it would be best if Buckley was dead rather than he should have to go on enduring.

When his name was mentioned and his fate speculated upon, colleagues reminded each other that everything possible had been done to retrieve him. "Short of sending in the Marines to fight their way street-by-street through West Beirut, there was nothing else we could have done," was a commonly-held view.

Only in William Casey's suite on the seventh floor of Langley had hope refused to be extinguished. He had rejected the proposal made a year after Buckley had been kidnapped that his name should be officially added to the list of CIA agents killed or missing on duty. Their fate was commemorated by small stars carved into the marble walls in the CIA main lobby. Before Buckley had vanished, there had been over fifty such stars, each representing an officer who had lost his or her life in the service of the Agency. Since then a further half dozen had been added. But Casey had mumbled it was too soon to include Buckley among the display.

The director stubbornly clung to the hope Buckley was being kept alive for a trade off. The idea had taken root in his mind when the Israeli Ambassador in Washington had told Casey that a number of Israel's own prisoners, who had been captured in various wars with its Arab neighbours, were being kept alive in Syria and Iran as barter for future exchanges.

Encouraged Casey had sat, often late into the night, at his desk going over all the reports on the hunt for Buckley. Reading the files, it had not been hard for Casey to imaging Buckley chained in some dungeon deep beneath the rubble of West Beirut. No satellite camera, however powerful, would be able to penetrate that far down. By now Buckley would be emaciated and probably kept in total darkness.

The focus of the search had remained on Lebanon. But in Friday prayers the priests in the mosques had given up referring to Buck-lee. His name, once on the lips of almost everyone in West Beirut, was now rarely heard.

Reports from foreign diplomats in the city all said the same thing: while the other Beirut hostages still clung to life in the bowels of the infamous "Beirut Hilton" -- a series of cells scooped out deep beneath the rubble of West Beirut -- of Buckley there was not even a whisper.

There had been a rumour that Buckley had been transferred to a Hezbollah redoubt out in the Beka'a Valley. Another rumour said he had been secretly flown to Tehran for interrogation.

Finally there were no more rumours to track down. Even the newspapers, which had once routinely recycled old stories about the kidnapping, had no new spin to put on it.

Yet William Casey still would not allow himself to give up. Everything that made him what he was -- his quality of mind, his healthy scepticism and detachment -- convinced him that Buckley was better off alive than dead for his captors. As long as he lived, Buckley had a value for them.

By April 1985, Casey became increasingly attracted to the idea of using Israel to recover William Buckley. It had been done before, notably after the 1965 Suez War. Mossad's chief, Meir Amit, had written to Egypt's then president, Gamal Abdul Nasser, asking him to exchange two Israeli spies in return for hundreds of Egyptian prisoners-of-war captured in the Six Day War. Initially Nasser had refused. Finally he had asked that the POWs be freed first. Amit had agreed. The Egyptians were taken by trucks to the edge of the Sinai Desert where they were transferred to Egyptian buses. Two days later the two Israeli spies were back in Tel Aviv.

Casey knew there had been other occasions when similar swaps had been organized by Mossad chiefs. And none of them was more astute than Mossad's present Director General, Nahum Admoni.

While Casey knew that Admoni had a deep-seated suspicion of US intentions in the Middle East, his own personal relationship with the Mossad chief was cordial.

Late in April 1985, Casey flew to Tel Aviv. Admoni had been at the airport to meet him.

Once Casey had settled into his Tel Aviv seafront hotel, he told Admoni the purpose of his visit: to see if Israel would go along with a deal to swap Buckley for Arab prisoners held in Israeli prisons.

Casey was to recall Admoni said it was a "no go area". With that avenue firmly closed, Casey had asked if it was possible for Mossad to find out if Buckley was dead?

Over the next few days, Admoni had introduced Casey to some of the key Mossad operatives with up-to-date knowledge of Lebanon. They had included David Kimche who until recently had been in charge of Mossad's ‘Lebanese account'. He had no doubt: Buckley was dead. Rafi Eitan, a former Director of Operations for Mossad, held a similar view. So did Admoni.

"Buckley's over and done with," Admoni said as he drove Casey back to the airport to fly back to Washington.

The news Casey had gone on what had turned out to be a fruitless mission had brought to the surface questions which had been simmering for some time in Langley.

The impression had gotten around that Casey regarded Buckley as more important than just an agent gone missing. People started to ask more pointedly what was so special about Buckley that the Director, beset with a hundred and more urgent and important matters, appeared to be making Buckley his special case?

There were those who recalled it had been the same when Dulles ran the CIA. In those days Buckley, gung-ho from the Korean War, had been treated like a favourite son by Dulles, given access that at the time even senior men had envied.

Others remembered the way Buckley had been allowed to operate in Vietnam. He had come and gone more or less as he pleased and set his own agenda. In the end others in the CIA had been badly burned over what America had done in that war. But Buckley had come out without so much as a stain on his character. In the closed world of Langley, that alone was enough to raise eyebrows.

A CIA officer agreed to talk to me on the understanding he would not be identified, said: "The blunt truth is that Buckley wasn't liked, not liked at all. There were people who hated him at the CIA, who were glad that he went to Beirut. Now that he has vanished in that sink hole, why the hell should they go looking for him?"

More certain, a number of factors had come together to settle Buckley's fate. He understood, better than anyone, that to survive within the Agency you had to cope with the office politics, the battles for turf, the back-stabbing. His way of dealing with any of that was to fight back -- hard. It had not made him popular but then, as he used to say: "I'm not running for Miss Langley Pageant Queen." He had also acquired a record of success that was almost unmatched by any agent in the history of the Agency. That had led some people to envy him.

Difficult, ruthless, short-tempered, yes, Buckley was all those things, and he made no apology for being so. Shortly before going to Beirut he had expressed his attitude to me: "I try and do my work well, but I also understand that gratitude is not part of doing it."

By late May 1985, William Casey had finally given up hope of getting Buckley back. Oliver North, the former Marine, was the lynchpin of a plan to recover all the US hostages held in Lebanon. He was working closely with Amiram Nir, an Israeli counter-terrorism expert. Nir's sources had told him the decision over Buckley's fate had been made at a meeting of the Hezbollah leadership. Nir had told North that his contacts had no other information to offer, except they were certain Buckley was now dead.

No one knows for certain when William Buckley did die. The likeliest date is sometime during the night of June 3, 1985, the 444th day of his captivity.

David Jacobson, who had been the director of the Beirut University Hospital and had been kidnapped some months before and incarcerated in the "Beirut Hilton", believed Buckley was in a nearby cell on that night. When he was released some 17 months later, Jacobson had tried to recall what he had heard in the stifling darkness of that June night.

"The man was an American. Of that I have no doubt. But he was in a very bad way, delirious and coughing. It was hard for me to make out what he was saying because I myself was hooded. Then, in the end there was just this long silence. After a while I heard the guards shouting in Arabic and then what sounded like a body being dragged away," Jacobson told me.

In October 1985, confirmation that Buckley was dead came in an announcement by the Hezbollah. Accompanying it was a photograph of his corpse, together with copies of some of the once secret documents from Buckley's burn bag. The announcement added that the body would not be handed over to the United States for burial.

Casey went to the White House to break the news to President Reagan. Afterwards the two men had sat for a while in silence in the Oval Office. Finally the President said: "The sooner we get all those other hostages out of Beirut, the better. Do whatever it has to take, Bill."

The arms-sales-for-hostages deal which became known as Irangate had gone into overdrive. But what followed was for another day.

Bill Buckley had served the CIA for thirty years, joining at a time when the agency had been part of the American dream of creating a new world. He had died at a time when the Agency had become increasingly a bureaucracy that was driven by a belief that technocracy and qualitative analysis were the twin gods who ruled over Langley. In that world Buckley had become an outsider. Buckley's vision of America was that its strength was in being deliberately separate from the world. The America he wanted was one of Midwestern virtues that had largely gone and the all-embracing Christianity of his youth no longer was there.

Despite being a through-and-through professional, his ideals were no longer those of his paymasters. To them there was something of a past long gone about Bill Buckley; he was like a mediaeval knight left alone on a battlefield that had moved on. Ari Ben-Menashe, the former Israeli intelligence officer who had briefly known Buckley, saw him "as someone who still clung to his sword while the rest of us were using laser guns, but he was a decent man who was a faithful servant of the Agency and his country."

In the intervening years since the Hezbollah announcement, there were conflicting reports that Buckley's body had been burnt or had been buried under the foundations of one of the new hotels going up along Beirut's seafront to once more attract tourists to a city which still styled itself as the Paris of the Near Orient. When none of these reports could be verified, whispers ran through the alleys of West Beirut that the Americans would pay big money for the Buck-lee corpse.

Early in October 2002, two young Arabs drove a battered van out of West Beirut heading for the Beka'a Valley. They reached the spot they were looking for some hours later. It was marked on a piece of paper for which they had paid a substantial sum. The man who had sold them the paper had boasted he had been one of the guards who had watched Buck-lee die and had brought him to this spot for burial.

One using a pick, the other a shovel, the youths began to dig. By late afternoon they had excavated a sizeable hole but had not come across even a bone. When darkness came, they dug on using the headlights of the van. Finally they gave up, realising they had been the victims of a con-man.

Almost certainly, if he had been alive, that would have brought a smile to the lips of William Buckley.

[KB]

Glad someone remembers Buckley, but one glaring flaw in the article makes me wonder what else might be inaccurate. Gamal Adbul Nasser died in 1970.

[hist2004]

Glad someone remembers Buckley, but one glaring flaw in the article makes me wonder what else might be inaccurate. Gamal Adbul Nasser died in 1970.


By April 1985, Casey became increasingly attracted to the idea of using Israel to recover William Buckley. It had been done before, notably after the 1965 Suez War. Mossad's chief, Meir Amit, had written to Egypt's then president, Gamal Abdul Nasser, asking him to exchange two Israeli spies in return for hundreds of Egyptian prisoners-of-war captured in the Six Day War. Initially Nasser had refused. Finally he had asked that the POWs be freed first. Amit had agreed. The Egyptians were taken by trucks to the edge of the Sinai Desert where they were transferred to Egyptian buses. Two days later the two Israeli spies were back in Tel Aviv. KB,

Perhaps a misread….the paragraph in question is referring to an event post 1965, but before Nasser died.

Hist2004

[Rob1bureau]

It had been done before, notably after the 1965 Suez War. Mossad's chief, Meir Amit, had written to Egypt's then president, Gamal Abdul Nasser, asking him to exchange two Israeli spies in return for hundreds of Egyptian prisoners-of-war captured in the Six Day War

But the Suez Canal war took place in 1956, not 65 !

[renegade]

The National Security Agency, NSA, was ordered to provide high-resolution satellite photos of known terrorist hideouts in Beirut and the Beka'a Valley.

NSA has never controlled HA imaging systems. In 1984, that request would have been sent to NPIC.

[KB]

KB,

Perhaps a misread….the paragraph in question is referring to an event post 1965, but before Nasser died.

Hist2004

You're right. I didn't read closely enough.

Robert Baer's book "See No Evil" has some interesting info on the events surrounding the abduction of Buckley and the aftermath, if you haven't already read it.

[krasnayaarmiya]

Interesting article. Hopefully, he didn't not die painfully...er hopefully he did not die painlessly...er hope he is in a place hotter than the Levant.

[Gman3ID]

Good read. Terrible ordeal. Bob Baer's book does give some good insight to his kidnapping.

Casey said it best, in Freedomag.org

The videos communicated far more than any words ever could, moving then CIA Director William Casey to say, “I just want that motherf – – - doctor. Dead or alive. I want him.”2 (http://www.freedommag.org/english/vol34i1/words.htm#2)

Aziz al-Abub is his name, I'll bet he doesn't sleep to well.

[Beer Monster]

According to the Arlington Cemetary Website his remains were returned to the US on 28th December 1991 haveing being found in Beirut. He was laid to rest in section 59 of the Arlington National Cemetary

So not sure about that last bit about the search for his body in 2002.

Some guy from the sounds of things. See here http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/wbuckley.htm for details.

[Stormz_STA]

Interesting article. Hopefully, he didn't not die painfully...er hopefully he did not die painlessly...er hope he is in a place hotter than the Levant.

Nice comment, you fvcking idiot.

[hist2004]

Tehran's Terror Master

By Patrick Devenny

FrontPageMagazine.com | May 26, 2005

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the next 15 months of William Buckley’s life remain mysterious to this day. Hints of his plight were provided in disturbing video tapes, in which he appeared worn down and brutalized. It was later revealed that additional tapes were shot showing the CIA station chief being viciously tortured and beaten by Islamic Jihad members. Finally, sometime in October of 1985, Buckley died of pneumonia, no doubt stemming from the lengthy torture sessions. His main interrogator and tormentor was a 21 year old Lebanese terrorist named Imad Mugniyah.

Twenty years later, the butcher of William Buckley still plagues the free world. Imad Mugniyah is the current military commander of the terrorist group Hezbollah, overseeing an international organization which some American officials have dubbed “the A-team of terrorism.” Far less well known than his compatriot and sometimes partner Osama Bin Laden, Mugniyah is arguably more dangerous. Indeed, before the 9-11 attacks, Mugniyah was the prime focus of American anti-terror efforts, not Bin Laden. Comfortable in his anonymity, Mugniyah has successfully carried out some of the most professional terrorist attacks of the last two decades against a wide array of international targets. With Hezbollah currently flexing its muscle as a political force inside Lebanon, it would behoove Americans to remember that the leadership of this so-called “political” organization remains in the hands of dangerous extremists who think nothing of slaughtering hundreds of people at the behest of their masters in Tehran. Mugniyah’s very existence casts doubt on the idea that Hezbollah could ever be an honest participant in a future Lebanese democracy.

Origins

While the face of Bin Laden has been prominently featured in every world publication of note and is almost instantly recognizable, the real face of Imad Mugniyah is elusive. Only two or three photographs of the Hezbollah operative are known to exist. Further accentuating the mystery around Mugniyah is the fact that the picture that currently serves as the U.S. Government’s official wanted poster is almost 20 years old. This lack of information stems from the designs of Mugniyah himself, who has methodically erased all records of his existence, including his high school transcripts. What we do know is that Mugniyah was born to a prominent Shiite religious family in southern Lebanon in 1962. Some years later, his family moved to the suburbs of southern Beirut, a region long associated with Shiite radicalism. With the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, Mugniyah joined Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization, which operated numerous terror training camps throughout Lebanon. Mugniyah, still a teenager, rose through the ranks of the PLO quickly, soon becoming a member of its elite commando wing, Force 17, which carried out assassinations at the personal behest of Arafat. This kind of specialized training represented expertise unavailable to most young Islamic militants at the time.

In 1982, an Israeli military offensive expelled most of the PLO infrastructure from Lebanon. Mugniyah chose to stay, serving as a bodyguard to Sayyid Muhammad Fadlallah, the spiritual head of Hezbollah and a key ally of Iran. Then, together with fellow terrorist Hassan Nasrallah, Mugniyah formed the group Islamic Jihad, which served as a convenient cover for the greater Hezbollah organization. That close personal relationship would continue to the present day, as Nasrallah is the current secretary general of Hezbollah. One of the few existing photographs of Mugniyah shows him walking alongside Nasrallah ten years ago in Lebanon. The two fellow terrorists and their group would quickly gain the attention of the West.

Lebanon

The first shot fired in Mugniyah’s war against the West was fired on April 18th, 1983, in Beirut. On that day, a van packed with 2,000 pounds of explosives slammed into the front of the U.S. embassy and exploded with such tremendous force that the front of the building collapsed. The attack killed 63 people, including most of the CIA’s Middle East leadership. Within hours of the attack, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. A clue concerning the real perpetrators of the suicide bombing was picked up by U.S. intelligence a month later, when it was revealed that a pre-attack cable from the Iranian foreign ministry had been sent to the Iranian embassy in Syria approving funding for a terrorist attack in Beirut.

The suicide attack against the Beirut embassy was followed up later that year by an even more devastating assault. On the morning of October 23rd, most of the 300 Marines stationed in a compound near Beirut’s airport were sleeping in their barracks, having been deployed to the country to serve as a stabilization force. Then, at 6:33 am, the driver of a Mercedes truck drove straight through the front gate of the compound, past Marine sentries with unloaded weapons, and smashed into the four story concrete barracks. The driver, who reportedly was smiling, then detonated the explosive, estimated to equal the force of 12,000 pounds of TNT. The effects of the massive truck bombing were horrific, killing 220 Marines and 21 other U.S. service members. Again, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

In one day, the entire situation in Lebanon had been drastically altered. The foreign forces would soon leave, wary of further terrorist attacks. With the abandonment of Lebanon by the international community, Islamic Jihad had carried out a virtual terrorist coup d’etat. Over the next ten years, Mugniyah and Hezbollah went on a rampage, taking dozens of Westerners hostage and murdering several others. Major operations included the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, where Mugniyah’s men shot a US Navy diver in the head and threw his body on the tarmac of Beirut International Airport. In a case that recalled the horrors of William Buckley, US Marine Lt. Colonel William Higgins was abducted in 1988 by a Hezbollah linked group known to be under the direct command of Mugniyah. Two years later, a ghastly video was released showing a man, thought to be Colonel Higgins, hanging from a ceiling after being tortured. Shortly thereafter, the dead body of Colonel Higgins was dumped on the side of the road in front of the US embassy in Beirut.

Numerous hostages, such as American Kurt Carlson, recall seeing Mugniyah supervise their imprisonment and brutal interrogations. He spoke fluent English, and commanded slavish devotion from his agents. At the same time, the CIA believes Mugniyah was in frequent contact with Iranian intelligence officials, who were directly involved in the murders and the hostage takings. It is a relationship that blossomed in Lebanon and continues to this day.

Hezbollah International

While Imad Mugniyah’s attacks had concentrated on foreigners, his campaign of terror had stayed geographically constrained to Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East. The American authorities could still regard him and his group as “over there”, limited to the perennially tumultuous region. Unfortunately, they were missing a critical development. Imad Mugniyah was about to defy the oceans that security officials naively assumed held him back. The impetus for this new strategy of offensive terrorism was the 1992 Israeli assassination of Sheik Abbas Musawi, a Hezbollah leader and close associate of Mugniyah.

The Israeli embassy in Argentina was located in a bustling downtown neighborhood of Buenos Aires. On March 17th, 1992, a pickup truck loaded with plastic explosive drove up to the front of the embassy and exploded. The embassy building was destroyed, along with the nearby retirement home and Catholic Church. 28 people were killed, and over 220 wounded. The next target was a seven story building in Buenos Aires that housed two Jewish business organizations. On the morning of July 18th, 1994, a white Renault van pulled up in front of the building and detonated. The building collapsed, killing 85 people. While confusion marred the initial investigations, it became clear to all parties involved that Hezbollah was the culprit, through its subsidiary Islamic Jihad, headed of course by Mugniyah. The smoking gun may have been delivered by an Iranian defector named Abdolghassem Mesbahi, a former senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Council. In testimony to Argentinean authorities, the defector claimed that Mugniyah had been one of the senior planners behind the attack in Buenos Aires, along with Iranian intelligence.

The twin bombings in Argentina highlighted Mugniyah’s campaign to develop an infrastructure within South America. In 1994, the Hezbollah leader personally visited the “Triple Frontiers”, an area forming the border nexus of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil that has historically sheltered smugglers and criminals. As many as 30,000 Arab Muslims, who celebrate the anniversary of September 11th, inhabit the small region. Nearby, Hezbollah holds weekend training camps, indoctrinating Arab youth in the extremist literature of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The main mosque in the area was blessed by none other than Imad Mugniyah’s old boss, Sayyid Muhammad Fadlallah. Hezbollah agents regularly extort money and “donations” from various businesses and Muslim organizations, sending the substantial funds back to Lebanon. Mugniyah personally operates a powerful network of operatives inside the region, who help facilitate Hezbollah’s drug smuggling operations throughout South America. In addition, the bombing of Jewish targets inside Argentina were almost certainly connected to the Hezbollah presence in the Triple Frontiers. Telephone records show increased call traffic from Iranian officials to the frontiers region around the time of the bombing.

Mugniyah has also sought to extend Hezbollah’s reach to North America. In 2000, federal authorities arrested 18 men in North Carolina for smuggling cigarettes and other financial crimes. The FBI later revealed that the smuggling ring, led by Lebanese immigrant Mohamad Hammoud, had made 7.9 million dollars, profit which was then sent to Hezbollah. Through a series of associates, Hammoud worked for a man named Mohamad Dbouk, a senior Hezbollah asset who helped run Hezbollah’s extensive criminal operations in Canada. Testifying before the U.S. Senate, U.S. Attorney Robert J. Conrad confirmed that Mugniyah directly oversees the Canadian operations and, by extension, the American division. This reasoning stems from the fact that Dbouk was in direct contact with Hassan Hilu Laqis, a Hezbollah agent operating out of Lebanon who managed many of the procurement projects in North America. In a fax intercepted by Canadian intelligence, Dbouk assures Laqis that he is doing all he possibly can to help Hezbollah. In addition, Dbouk says he will do “anything”, and “he means anything”, to help the “father”. The Canadian prosecutor involved in the case, Kenneth Bell, stated that the father is in fact a codename for Imad Mugniyah. In addition, a recent report in the Washington Times suggested Hezbollah currently runs active cells in at least 10 U.S. cities. Mugniyah has never attacked a target in North America, but with tensions rising between the United States and Iran over the issue of nuclear proliferation, his terrorist network could rapidly become Iran’s weapon of choice against American targets. It would be a familiar role for the veteran terrorist, who, lest we forget, has the blood of over 250 Americans on his hands.

Mugniyah and Al-Qaeda

In 1998, American authorities captured former Green Beret advisor Ali A. Mohamed for his role in the twin terror attacks against U.S. embassies in Africa. Having been a relatively close associate of Bin Laden himself, Mohamed proved to be a treasure trove of information for American investigators. One of his statements, however, proved particularly troubling. In testimony delivered during his court case, Mohamed admitted that in 1994, he had arranged security for a momentous meeting in Sudan. There, Osama Bin Laden met Imad Mugniyah. He also stated that Hezbollah provided training for Al-Qaeda operatives in exchange for weapons and explosives. Indeed, this testimony corresponded with statements made by other Al-Qaeda officials, who told American investigators that the two had met several times in the mid 1990s, where they had discussed a greater degree of cooperation.

The two terrorist leaders may have also coordinated the attack on the Khobar Towers barracks complex in 1996. American investigators have long suspected Iran’s involvement in the bombing that killed 19 American servicemen in Saudi Arabia. The group that supposedly carried out the attacks, Saudi Hezbollah, was led in the 1990s by a close lieutenant of Mugniyah and was trained in Mugniyah run camps in Lebanon. Additionally, the explosives used in the barracks bombing originated in Lebanon. The 9-11 Commission, however, recently suggested that Al-Qaeda may have also played a role in the bombing, suggesting some degree of operational cooperation between the two groups.

The influence of Imad Mugniyah with regards to the Al-Qaeda network has continued, and has strengthened as of late. It appears that at least part of the formal leadership of Al-Qaeda has shifted to Iran, where they stay in close contact with the group’s disparate assets. Men such as Saad Bin Laden and Saif al-Adel continue to plan attacks from Iranian territory, such as the massive Casablanca bombings in 2003. Other Al-Qaeda leaders and fighters have escaped through Iran following the war in Afghanistan. Hamid Zakiri, a former member of the Iranian terrorist coordination command, stated that Mugniyah was the liaison officer to Dr. Ayman Zawahiri and various other international terrorist groups. In addition to this relationship, Mugniyah personally oversaw the escape of dozens of Al-Qaeda figures to Iran, including one of Bin Laden’s wives and her infant child. Apparently, Al-Qaeda leaders have enough trust in Mugniyah’s abilities and intentions as to place their family members into his care.

“The Master Terrorist”

“He is the most dangerous terrorist we've ever faced. He's a--he's a pathological murderer. Mugniyah is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we've ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door, exits by another, changes his cars daily, never makes appointments on a telephone, never is predictable, will show up--he only uses people that are related to him that he can trust. He doesn't just recruit people. He is the master terrorist, the grail, we are after since 1983.”

No small praise coming from Robert Baer, a 20 year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine services who once constructed a plan to kill Mugniyah in Lebanon. Imad Mugniyah, unrecognizable and relatively unknown, poses a serious asymmetrical threat to the United States and its allies. He has successfully avoided numerous American and Israeli attempts to capture or kill him. He has access to the massive amount of funding, estimated at 100 million dollars, that Iran annually provides Hezbollah annually. The secrecy surrounding Mugniyah allows him to travel relatively freely, especially in friendly nations such as Iran and Syria. His role in Hezbollah should chasten the Bush administration’s hopes that Hezbollah could eventually transform itself into a purely political organization. With terrorists such as Imad Mugniyah in charge, the idea that Hezbollah could accept a democratic Middle East is dubious to say the least. It should also be made clear to Lebanon’s Shiite population that national democratic reform cannot be sustained over the long term if an armed group like Hezbollah is involved. Instead of awaiting reform that will never come, the American government, with the help of our allies in the region, should seek to isolate this dangerous and inherently anti-democratic terrorist organization.

[Gman3ID]

I remember reading about this guy in Bob Baer's book "See No Evil". It's disturbing how many lethal attacks against the west this guy was involved in.

I can't help but question the Hezz/AQ relationship mentioned in the article, Are the they not lopping each others heads right now in Iraq, Why would they trust their family members with an infidel? I guess maybe they can push their differences aside for now as long as it's for a greater cause( fighting Satan).

And I was surprised in the specific role he played in Bill Buckley's kidnapping, I don't know why, but I was under the impression he was directly involved in the kidnapping and not the actual vicious interrogation. Why I don't know, I would presume an experienced interrogation official would apply the beating, but I guess it doesn't take much to beat a tied up, drugged 50 yr. old man. I am surprised this guy is still alive, really I am. And how about his buddy al-hamandi (who was convicted of hijacking and the death of a navy diver) just got released from a german jail to find his way back to lebanon. Maybe he'll lead us to Imad? Or some other HVT's?

Is it me or has the IJO been at war with the west for 30 yrs backed by the Iranians, And what effective measures have we put in place to eradicate these *** holes? I mean have we or have we not been in a proxy war with Iran since the 1979 revolution?

[Horizon]

Interesting article. Hopefully, he didn't not die painfully...er hopefully he did not die painlessly...er hope he is in a place hotter than the Levant.

What a looser online can understand on such matters?; and if you are American you should be stripped of your nationality, for mocking the tragic and slow death of a C.I.A agent.

[jeffe]

A horrific account of Buckley's end. Unfortunately, many Americans know nothing about him and, if they did, simply would not care. It is quite easy to take freedom and everything we have for granted. The brave men and women who perform in the shadows should not be forgotten and, neither should we forget William Buckley.

[SOG]

thanks for the post. damn tragic story. good man.

[Breakfast in Vegas]

Interesting story... I, like many others, never knew much about him.

[BPEL]

According to the Arlington Cemetary Website his remains were returned to the US on 28th December 1991 haveing being found in Beirut. He was laid to rest in section 59 of the Arlington National Cemetary

So not sure about that last bit about the search for his body in 2002.

Some guy from the sounds of things. See here http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/wbuckley.htm for details.

According to the link, Buckley was killed by an organization calling itself the Islamic Holy War. The article that Hist2004 also pointed out that Islamic Jihad was behind the Embassy and the Barracks bombing.

ok, so be it, with all the evidence pointing towards Iran, while Syria occupied the Beqaa valley where these "terrorists" were training, why did the U.S. continue to "be friend" the Syrians in the 80s and 90s? Why the U.S. not attack Iran?

I mean seriously, if all the evidence is concrete, why the U.S. did not break ties with Syria then, or attack Syria, or even try to attack Iran? Its the same repeat of July 2006 when EVERYONE said Iran and Syria are directly responsible and nothing happened? Instead, the Iranians got themselves some really "cool" weapons.

And in 89, the U.S. gave the Syrians the green light to take full control of Lebanon.

I just don't get it Hist2004...we are all under the impression that the U.S. does not negotiate with terrorists yet they make these great deals behind the backs and reward them.

Can someone explain this to me?

BPEL

[SOG]

from what i gather there is politics, money involved and the whatever administration happens to occupy the white house. all 3 can effect our aggression, retaliation and diplomacy in any situation. i still dont understand our lack of involvement in these areas such as hunting terrorists in the 1980-90's or total lack of middle east intervention with multiple incidents ie american embassy iran, marine barrak bombings and much more.

[Gman3ID]

from what i gather there is politics, money involved and the whatever administration happens to occupy the white house. all 3 can effect our aggression, retaliation and diplomacy in any situation. i still dont understand our lack of involvement in these areas such as hunting terrorists in the 1980-90's or total lack of middle east intervention with multiple incidents ie american embassy iran, marine barrak bombings and much more.

I totally agree with you. The Iranians have really been phucking things up for the last 25 yr's or so in the middle east, The embassy bombings, marine baracks bombings, the 1979 hostage crisis I mean the list goes on and on. And we haven't confronted them until now ( declaring them a terrorist entity).

Imad mugdaniyah has been responsible for a majority of these attacks and reports directly to Iranian leadership. Why is he still alive? And what role is he playing now with the ongoing conflicts? He has to be directly responsible for the EFP's in Iraq, as well as supplying fighters for the eastern side of his country, With 200,000 or more coalition troops surrounding his country I don't see how these terrorists are surviving, not an easy task by no means, but this has been going on for 20 + years.

I know the cold war was ongoing, but what if it was RUSSIANS blowing up our embassies in the early eighties instead of Lebanese shia militias? You cant tell me we wouldn't have acted with force. Why? Cant be oil they export it. I dont know it seems we werent focused on them or it was policy to ignore these attacks.

Maybe I am wrong though, Is there any info. out there suggesting military action against Iran for their roles in the Lebanon bombings, Hijackings, KIDNAPPINGS etc...

[Trogdor]

An interesting but chilling tale.

Thanks for his sacrifice, we owe his legacy eternal memory.

[Rob1bureau]

ok, so be it, with all the evidence pointing towards Iran, while Syria occupied the Beqaa valley where these "terrorists" were training, why did the U.S. continue to "be friend" the Syrians in the 80s and 90s? Why the U.S. not attack Iran?

The raison d'être or purpose of state terrorisme is to allow a light state to attack a strong one with concealing its identity to avoid retaliation. When the Iran-sponsored acts of terror did occur, the US weren't sure how deep the Iran was implied. The 1979 hostage crisis was officially the facts of "students", but I think that more recent information prove that the Ayatollah was in the know.

After the october 23, 1983 attacks against the US Marines barracks (and French paras ones, some minutes later, 58 killed), the US wanted to retaliate. A US Army Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) team was send in intel and recon mission. It identified Iranian Pasdarans/Islamic groups and Syrian military targets, but while the French made a air raid on a Pasdaran barracks on 17 november, the US didn't retaliate, mainly because the administration had just had a military success by the invasion of Grenada, it was probably too risky to take another military risk just after that. Moreover, the area was full of Syrian SAMs who had turned a US Navy air raid to disaster on 4 december, shooting down an A-7 Corsair II and an A-6 Intruder (see more about these raids on : http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_278.shtml). I suppose it was not to advocate for a air reprisals raid...

See Steven Emerson Secret Warriors, Michael Smith Killer Elite and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/interviews/cowan.html for more about ISA on Lebanon in 1983.

[BPEL]

@Rob1bureau,

granted by your response, the more reason why to go after Syria. They had the evidence then and still do till today.

I have read that report before and we even went to take pix of the downed corsair before the Navy personel came.

But my question still remains, politics or not, Syria was rewarded for what it did in Lebanon from the 80s and 90s. In fact it was given the green light to "swallow" Lebanon in 89 under this thing called the "Taef" agreement which the U.S. pushed.

Buckley died for a reason, but the country who played the game was Syria, they occupied the country, they occupied the Beqaa where the Iranians were hanging out, they shot down U.S. warplanes. I still don't get it when in return, Syria is the winner, and Lebanon, buckley, the hostages, the French and U.S marines who died are the ones who paid the most.

[KB]

According to the link, Buckley was killed by an organization calling itself the Islamic Holy War. The article that Hist2004 also pointed out that Islamic Jihad was behind the Embassy and the Barracks bombing.

ok, so be it, with all the evidence pointing towards Iran, while Syria occupied the Beqaa valley where these "terrorists" were training, why did the U.S. continue to "be friend" the Syrians in the 80s and 90s? Why the U.S. not attack Iran?

I mean seriously, if all the evidence is concrete, why the U.S. did not break ties with Syria then, or attack Syria, or even try to attack Iran? Its the same repeat of July 2006 when EVERYONE said Iran and Syria are directly responsible and nothing happened? Instead, the Iranians got themselves some really "cool" weapons.

And in 89, the U.S. gave the Syrians the green light to take full control of Lebanon.

I just don't get it Hist2004...we are all under the impression that the U.S. does not negotiate with terrorists yet they make these great deals behind the backs and reward them.

Can someone explain this to me?

BPEL

Have a hard time understanding that? How about this one...while LtCol Rich Higgins was being tortured to death by the IJO, his fellow Marine Ollie North was happily peddling arms to the IJO's puppeteers in Tehran.

Not one of Ronald Reagan's finest hours.

[KB]

I totally agree with you. The Iranians have really been phucking things up for the last 25 yr's or so in the middle east, The embassy bombings, marine baracks bombings, the 1979 hostage crisis I mean the list goes on and on. And we haven't confronted them until now ( declaring them a terrorist entity).

Imad mugdaniyah has been responsible for a majority of these attacks and reports directly to Iranian leadership. Why is he still alive? And what role is he playing now with the ongoing conflicts? He has to be directly responsible for the EFP's in Iraq, as well as supplying fighters for the eastern side of his country, With 200,000 or more coalition troops surrounding his country I don't see how these terrorists are surviving, not an easy task by no means, but this has been going on for 20 + years.

I know the cold war was ongoing, but what if it was RUSSIANS blowing up our embassies in the early eighties instead of Lebanese shia militias? You cant tell me we wouldn't have acted with force. Why? Cant be oil they export it. I dont know it seems we werent focused on them or it was policy to ignore these attacks.

Maybe I am wrong though, Is there any info. out there suggesting military action against Iran for their roles in the Lebanon bombings, Hijackings, KIDNAPPINGS etc...

The best publicly available information I've been able to find is Baer's book. "The Killer Elite" would be second.

[jeffe]

Just reread "SEAL" by LCDR(Ret) Michael Walsh. He claims that Buckleys body was buried in an unmarked grave in Iran and that it was eventually "recovered".

[Gman3ID]

The best publicly available information I've been able to find is Baer's book. "The Killer Elite" would be second.

Finally, a start.

Iran fined $2.65 billion for terrorism
Federal judge declares Islamic republic must compensate families of 241 US service members killed in 1983 bombing of US Marine barracks in Beirut

Associated Press Published: 09.08.07, 16:50 / Israel (http://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-3082,00.html)Iran (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3447240,00.html#n) must pay $2.65 billion to the families of the 241 US service members killed in the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, a federal judge declared Friday in a ruling that left survivors and families shedding tears of joy.

US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth described his ruling as the largest-ever such judgment by an American court against another country. "These individuals, whose hearts and souls were forever broken, waited patiently for nearly a quarter century for justice to be done," he said.

Iran has been blamed for supporting the terror group Hizbullah (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3447240,00.html#n), which carried out the suicide bombing in Beirut. It was the worst terrorist act against US targets until the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Hundreds of people crowded into a federal courtroom to hear Friday's ruling. Parents have grown old since their children were killed. Siblings have grown into middle-age. Children have married and started families of their own.

Weeping spectators stood and erupted in applause and hugs as Lamberth left the bench.

The ruling allows nearly 1,000 family members and a handful of survivors to try to collect Iranian assets from various sources around the world. Finding and seizing that money will be difficult, however, and the families are backing a law in Congress that would make it easier for terrorism victims and their families to do so.

Families were encouraged by Libya's decision to ultimately accept responsibility for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland. The country, once a pariah by Washington's view, agreed to compensate the families of the 270 victims. Part of the $2.7 billion has been paid. A final $2 million installment to each family is outstanding.

"This is a sense of victory, of winning a battle," said Paul Rivers, who was a 20-year-old enlisted Marine on the second floor of the barracks when it exploded. "When we win the war is when we collect, when we make them pay for what they did."

'Foreign governments must not sponsor terrorism'
Iran has denied responsibility for the attack. The nation did not respond to the 6-year-old lawsuit and was represented only by an empty table.

Family members said they hoped Friday's ruling would pressure foreign governments not to sponsor terrorism. Lynn Smith Derbyshire, whose brother, Vincent Smith, was killed in the attack, said countries won't stop until "it begins to actually cost them money to kill Americans."

Some disagreed about whether that will happen. Roxanne Garcia-Bates, who was 16 when her brother, Randy Garcia, was killed, said she was surprised to find a sense of comfort being with the other families in court. She said she was pleased that Lamberth had made such a strong statement, but doubted that Iran would change anytime soon.

"You can't take enough money away to get them to stop what they're doing," she said.

All agreed that emotions remain raw to this day.

Rivers described being one of the second floor's five survivors. All but him lost arms or legs, he said. He was buried in the rubble for two hours, he said. Debris had punctured his eardrum and "I literally had rocks inside my head."


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Shirley Murry of Baltimore, who was 16 years old at the time, described the tense days of waiting around the television for word of her brother, Ulysses Parker. Today, every time the news carries a story about a fallen soldier or an explosion overseas, she said it's like that first day all over again.

Lamberth said the law "offers a meager attempt to make the surviving members whole." He said he hoped the judgment would alert Iran that terrorism has consequences and help in the families' healing process. Pausing, he added:

"That's all I can do."