Rescue at Sea a Tough Task, U.S. Concedes

Pentagon officials said Tuesday that secretly boarding a moving ship on the high seas is a difficult task at best, but they expressed confidence that U.S. counterterrorist forces specially trained for such operations could perform the feat if a strike against the hijackers of the Achille Lauro were ordered.

Officials refused to discuss specific options available to U.S. military forces, but special operations units--including Navy Seals--are automatically deployed at the first sign of such a crisis. Such units are known to practice parachuting into the sea and boarding ships--and can drop into water, under cover of darkness, from silent gliders.

In addition, ships of the U.S. 6th Fleet, the Italian navy and other allied forces are in the midst of North Atlantic Treaty Organization maneuvers in the Mediterranean Sea and a high-speed U.S. guided missile destroyer, the Scott, departed ahead of schedule from the Israeli port of Haifa, not far from the cruise ship.

Destroyer’s Operations

Marine Corps Maj. Fred Lash, a Pentagon spokesman, said only that the Scott would “resume normal operations in the eastern Mediterranean,” after spending slightly less than 24 hours in port. No explanation for the early departure was disclosed.

The Italian cruise ship with more than 400 passengers and crew was seized Monday by hijackers demanding the release of about 50 Palestinians they said were being held in Israeli prisons or elsewhere.

In discussing the feasibility of a military rescue, Pentagon officials indicated that a variety of factors--including sea conditions, the number of hijackers, the hijackers’ weapons and the location of the passengers--would all be factors in assessing the chances for a successful raid.

And, with the ship at sea, they expressed frustration over the difficulty in obtaining the detailed information that could be crucial in planning such an operation.

Radio of Little Help

One Pentagon source said that U.S. forces are “monitoring maritime frequencies,” to listen to radio communications with the ship. But he said they had heard nothing more informative than the hijackers’ demands that aircraft and other ships keep their distance “or they’ll kill the hostages.”

In Israel, Aharon Yariv, a former head of Israeli military intelligence who is now director of the Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that with the ship at sea, “there should be a military option which was not there” when TWA Flight 847 was hijacked last June after leaving Athens and flown to Beirut at the start of a 16-day ordeal.

“In Beirut, it was very difficult to act because the whole environment was hostile, and then after a very brief time, the hostages were taken out and it wasn’t even sure where they were,” he said. “Here, the objective is very clear and it should not be beyond the means of a well-trained unit and a well-planned operation to take over the ship without undue losses to the hostages, it seems to me.”

“For example, under the cover of night, there are all kinds of technical possibilities,” he said.

Navy Man Cautious

Such optimism, and that expressed by some Pentagon officials about the abilities of counterterrorist groups to act against ships, was countered by a U.S. Navy source, who said, “At sea, there is very little you can do.”

He said that under most conditions, ships or aircraft could be seen approaching the vessel, immediately raising the level of the threat to the hostages.

“What are you going to do? Destroy the ship? That kills hostages, too,” the source said, speaking on the condition that he not be identified by name.

Even if counterterrorists could approach the vessel undetected, “it’s not an easy (step) to board a ship under way,” the source said.

“Maybe you can, maybe you can’t” use a grappling hook and rope to climb aboard, he said, adding: “It’s not as easy as an attack on a land base.”

At the Pentagon, officials pointed out that, because the Achille Lauro is an Italian vessel, any action taken by the United States should be at the request of the Italian government and would be coordinated with Italy.

Four Italian helicopters were reported to have landed at Akrotiri, a British military base in southern Cyprus, west of the ship’s reported position.

Italians ‘Very Effective’

Over the past three years, the Italian and U.S. governments have cooperated closely in a number of terrorist incidents and Italy has been “very tough and very effective” in some anti-terrorist operations, according to Geoffrey Kemp, a former member of the National Security Council staff and currently a senior fellow in international security studies at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Pentagon officials also spoke highly of the skills shown by Italian commandos, particularly in the raid that freed U.S. Army Brig. Gen. James L. Dozier, on Jan. 28, 1982, from Red Brigade captors. But Italy is not known to maintain a commando unit with the same capacity to board a moving ship at sea as that of the Navy Seals.

The Navy unit, in addition to being trained to drop silently from a dark sky into an ink-black sea at night and board a ship, could also emerge from a submarine near the sea’s surface and approach a vessel in inflatable rubber dinghies or aboard James Bond-like underwater sleds.

25 U.S. Ships in Region

Pentagon spokesman Robert B. Sims said that about 25 ships of the 6th Fleet are stationed in the Mediterranean.

The conventionally powered aircraft carrier Saratoga is in the midst of a NATO exercise, code-named Display Determination, along with seven other U.S. ships in the central Mediterranean.

Included in the exercise is an amphibious “ready group,” transporting 1,800 Marines and their helicopters. But officials indicated that any military action involving a full-scale assault by Marines would probably pose a great threat to the hostages.

Sims said that the NATO exercise, under way since Sept. 15, is “unrelated to real world events” and that there would be movements of ships between the exercise area, Italy, and other nations that are not connected to the hostage crisis.

Officials and others made it clear that they see benefits and drawbacks to a course in which the ship eventually tied up in a port friendly to the hijackers. Such a step could lead to the dispersal of the hostages, making a commando raid to free them all the more difficult. But it could also facilitate negotiations.

“It’s a huge ship to guard, and at sea, they can’t get reinforcements,” Kemp said. “Assuming there aren’t that many (hijackers), it’s a helluva job to guard it.”

On the other hand, he said, “because there is no communication with them, we can’t negotiate” and the lack of progress, communications, and access to the news media to publicize their cause may prove frustrating to the hijackers--thus increasing the chance that they would carry out their threats against the hostages.