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As Flight 847 zigzagged around the Mediterranean, the Administration faced the vexing question of what it should, or could, do to respond to the crisis. By 9 a.m. Friday, a working group chaired by Robert Oakley, chief of the State Department's office for combatting terrorism, had gathered next to Secretary of State George Shultz's office in the State Department's antiterrorism suite. The group set to work on a 24-hour watch, monitoring events, establishing communication lines, serving as liaison to the various foreign governments involved, soothing the families of hostages and working out options for U.S. action. That evening, the Administration dispatched antiterrorist Delta Force units from West Germany and Fort Bragg, N.C., to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean; the 40- to 50-man units are trained in such skills as counterintelligence and commando operations, but they have never been used to storm a pirated airliner.
When asked later in the day what the U.S. was doing to help, the President replied, "Everything that can be done." But when asked if it were true that Washington had threatened to retaliate against Iran if any U.S. hostages were harmed by Islamic fundamentalists, Reagan said flatly, "I can't answer that."
In fact, Shultz had warned Iran months ago that if any of the Americans kidnaped in Beirut were executed by its Lebanese surrogates, Iran would suffer the consequences. Precisely what that means would have to be carefully determined, but the U.S. has long since learned that it is difficult to retaliate against so amorphous an enemy as the Lebanese fanatics. Their headquarters and even their whereabouts are hard to pin down, and their precise links with Iran are not easy to define. As Friday turned to Saturday and the ordeal continued, the President remained in touch with the situation from his weekend retreat at Camp David, telling National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane: "Let's do all we can to support the Algerians. Our main objective is to get those people out safely." Shultz canceled a trip to Evanston, Ill., where he had planned to accept an honorary degree from Northwestern University, and Vice President George Bush returned early from a trip to Texas. The President cut short his stay at Camp David and late Sunday morning flew back to Washington, where he told reporters, "I think we're going to continue doing the things we're doing and just hope that they themselves (the hijackers) will see that, for their own safety, they'd better turn those people loose." He then attended an early afternoon meeting of the National Security Council. Presumably on the agenda were such subjects as a possible approach to Israel concerning the status of its Shi'ite Muslim prisoners, and a consideration of what if any military contingency plans should be made. Afterward, the White House issued a terse statement: "We do not make concessions to demands, and we do not encourage other governments to do so."