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Before Reagan approved the mission, TIME has learned, Israel was asked to help back it up. Major General Uri Simhoni, the Israeli defense attache in Washington, promised that if the U.S. plan went awry, "we will intercept (the Egyptian pilot) and force him to land at one of our air force bases in the Negev."
The Egyptian pilot said that the four U.S. F-14 jet fighters had threatened to fire if he did not cooperate. Abul Abbas, in an interview with Yugoslav Journalist Dobrica Pivnicki last week, hinted that shots were fired. "Suddenly, we heard a series of unusual sounds, and we perceived the flashes of shots," he said. A senior U.S. official firmly countered, "We did not fire a shot." No warning shots, no tracers? "Nothing except some very unmistakable English."
When Italian controllers denied permission for the intercepted EgyptAir Boeing 737 to land at the Sigonella air base in Sicily, the American military escorts declared a "fuel emergency" and ordered the 737 down. The pilot aborted his first approach. But he swung around, came in again and soon found himself surrounded by Italian carabinieri and some 50 U.S. Delta Force commandos, who had piled out of U.S. C-141 transport planes that had landed within moments of the EgyptAir craft and were proceeding on orders from the White House to take custody of the terrorists.
The Italian and American armed forces both converged on the 737. When it ; became clear that the Italian paramilitary forces did not plan to surrender custody of the terrorists, Major General Carl W. Stiner and an Italian colonel got into a sharp debate. The U.S. commandos, said a Washington official, "were pulling back the bolts" on their rifles. Abbas, in his Yugoslav interview, concurred. "American and Italian soldiers were threatening each other with their weapons, ready to shoot," he said.
After the commandos were ordered by Washington to stand down, Stiner refused to give up entirely. When the 737 took off for Rome 17 hours later, carrying Abbas and another Palestinian official, Stiner hopped into a T-39 trainer jet. He took off from a taxiway without tower permission and shadowed the 737 to Rome, where he made an emergency landing. In his resignation speech last week, Prime Minister Bettino Craxi announced that Italy had filed a protest over both the T-39's landing and the pursuit of the 737 by an F-14 to within 25 miles of Rome. In any event, Abbas proved victorious in the game of cat and mouse. He soon headed for Belgrade, leaving a trail of diplomatic disputes in his wake.