For 28 hours, the drama played out on the world's television screens, and for a while it seemed as if it would provoke direct U.S. military intervention in El Salvador's ugly, decade-old civil war. Twelve Green Berets from Fort Bragg, N.C., part of a U.S. advisory team in El Salvador, were holed up on the fourth floor of the Sheraton Hotel in San Salvador's wealthy Escalon district, while about 20 heavily armed young guerrillas, who had seemingly blundered into the hotel, roamed the floors above and below them.
But there was no shoot-out. Instead, as part of an agreement brokered by...