(3 of 10)
But why take such action now? Carter said he had decided that "the Iranian authorities could not or would not resolve this crisis on their own initiative." He noted "the steady unraveling of authority in Iran and the mounting dangers that were posed to the safety of the hostages." Indeed, factional strife between leftist students who had occupied universities in Iran and Muslim authorities seeking to remove them had broken into violent rioting and bloodshed on a dozen campuses. When it finally subsided last week, the clashes with clubs, cleavers and daggers had left 60 students dead and nearly 2,000 wounded. Summed up Carter of the rescue mission: "This attempt became a necessity and a duty."
Both the President and Defense Secretary Harold Brown, who appeared haggard but resolutely amiable and relaxed when he held a large televised press briefing at the Pentagon, revealed an unsurprising but well-concealed fact: military training for a rescue had begun last November, shortly after militant students took over the embassy. Repeated claims by various security experts at the Pentagon, State Department and White House that a mission to free the hostages was virtually impossible were actually designed to lull the captors into believing that no such effort would be mounted. This attempt to protect the possibility of surprise was about the mission's only success.
The members of the rescue team, drawn from the four services, belonged to elite all-volunteer groups. Most were tough Army paratroopers. Their instructors reportedly included advisers from Britain's crack Special Air Services Regiment (S.A.S.), which has been effectively employed against Irish Republican Army terrorists in England and Northern Ireland. West Germany's Grenzschutzgruppe (G.S.G. 9), similar antiterrorist specialists, are also said to have helped in the training. With its diverse support forces, the team flew to undisclosed desert sites in the U.S. Southwest, where it conducted seven full rehearsals of the operation, some at night, to overcome the problem of operating in clouds of sand kicked up by high winds or the landing and take-offs of huge helicopters and cargo craft.
Aerial reconnaissance pictures were taken of likely landing sites in Iran. In November a group of the big Sikorsky choppers was placed aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier Nimitz. On Jan. 8 the President continued the deception, declaring at a press conference that a military rescue "would almost certainly end in failure and almost certainly end in the death of the hostages."