Why the Iran Rescue Failed

Report finds flaws, such as too few choppers, but no neglect

Ever since Americans awoke last April 25 to the shock of a rescue mission turned to ashes in the Iranian desert, they have demanded to know more about that failed attempt: Had the Soviets found out, forcing the President to call it off? Why were there not more helicopters? Was the whole operation too risky?

Pentagon officials had questions too, and so they commissioned two studies, one a classified internal report by the men who had planned and participated in the mission, the other a no-holds-barred assessment by an interservice team of five generals, some retired, some active, headed by former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral James L. Holloway III. The Holloway group's 64-page report, released at week's end, dismisses all thought that the mission was aborted for any reason but the lack of six helicopters, the acceptable minimum, in which to go on from Desert One, the refueling rendezvous.

Presenting his report in the Pentagon's briefing studio, Holloway said that the plan adopted had "the best chance of success under the circumstances, and the decision to execute it was justified." He added: "We encountered not a shred of evidence of culpable neglect or incompetence."

The Holloway group did, however, find several faults. The number of helicopters was kept to eight to reduce the risk of discovery. But the brass concluded that it would have been prudent to have used at least ten choppers. They also criticized the selection of Navy and Marine Corps crewmen who were familiar with the RH-53 aircraft but not with the kind of tough, assault flying they had to do.

The dust clouds that broke up the pilots' formation and forced one of them to turn back came as a surprise. The crews might have been able to handle the dust had they known about it, but security had kept the pilots from meeting their weather forecasters. Strict radio silence had kept them from learning that, despite the dust en route, the air was clear at Desert One. Later, the pilot who had aborted said he would have gone on had he known that.

The report also describes the scene at Desert One, even before the crash of an RH-53 into a C-130 transport plane, as one of confusion. The reason: lack of precise operating procedures, because there never had been a full dress rehearsal. The main reason for that, again, was the planners' understandable but overdrawn concern for security.

Secrecy also precluded any review of the mission by outside specialists. Moreover, the final plan was never committed to paper so that the Joint Chiefs could study it. Either or both of these steps, says the report, "would probably have contributed to a more thoroughly tested and carefully evaluated final plan."

TIME'S Pentagon correspondent Don Sider has also learned of an additional oversight, not mentioned in the Holloway report. Sider reports that two C-141 Medevac planes were standing by at Saudi Arabia's Dhahran Air Base with twelve doctors on board to treat casualties from the team that was to have assaulted the embassy and the foreign ministry in Tehran. But no one had reckoned on the crash at Desert One that took eight lives and left four others badly burned. Incredibly, the Medevac planes were equipped for every emergency but burns.

"No one action or lack of action caused the operation to fail," concluded Admiral Holloway. But fail it did, at the cost of those eight lives, seven RH-53 helicopters, one C-130 transport and $25 million in expenses. Even so, Holloway--like most of those who first learned of the rescue effort after it had already failed--was heartened that, as his report said, "America had the courage to try."

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