OPERATION GOLDENROD

True Spies Episode 93: Operation Goldenrod

NARRATOR: Welcome to True Spies. Week by week, mission by mission, you’ll hear the true stories behind the world’s greatest espionage operations. You’ll meet the people who navigate this secret world. What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position? This is True Spies.

BUCK REVELL: I was watching through binoculars. They couldn't see us. We could see them. And he came on board very gleefully, shaking hands, patting people on the back, and just delighted to be there, where he was getting ready to make a major drug deal.

NARRATOR: This is True Spies Episode 93: Operation Goldenrod. It was the 11th of June, 1985. Seventy passengers and crew members had settled in for a flight from Beirut, Lebanon. Everything seemed normal - or, as normal as it could have been. Civil war had been raging in Lebanon for a decade after mounting insecurity in the region kicked off an era of extreme tumult. The conflict would ultimately claim some 120,000 lives. And Lebanon was in the midst of a so-called hostage crisis, as over 100 individuals from around the world were kidnapped in the country. Still, everything seemed normal enough. Except for one passenger who had planned an act of terror.

BUCK REVELL: Fawaz Younis was an officer in the Amal, a Shia organization operating in Lebanon and under the sway of Iran. Younis was wanting to influence the Arab League to put a stop to the movement of Palestinians and have them settle in areas of Lebanon. So all it was not even directed against the United States or Western countries, but it did involve US citizens as well as a number of Europeans.

NARRATOR: It involved them because they were about to become his victims. Three American citizens were on board the flight that day. And that’s an important fact. We’ll come back to it. As you might expect, Younis was not a peaceful protestor. That day on the Royal Jordanian airliner, Younis and several other men, armed with assault rifles and hand grenades, attacked the air marshals and threatened the lives of the other passengers. It was later reported that Younis convinced the passengers he had executed the marshals. Thirty hours of chaos ensued. 

BUCK REVELL: They flew all over the Mediterranean area landing on three different locations, but they couldn't get to where they wanted to go. So they came back to the airport in Lebanon, pulled everybody off the aircraft, and then they blew it up and destroyed it. And that was all on television. 

NARRATOR: And in the midst of the madness, Younis was able to slip away into the city of Beirut, seemingly unscathed. But there was something he didn’t know.

BUCK REVELL: The fact that Americans were on board violated a new law that had been passed in '84, [the Hostage-Taking Act], which gave the FBI international jurisdiction, irrespective of where the crime occurred. If there were Americans held hostage or if it was an American licensed aircraft, the FBI had jurisdiction and could pursue that internationally. Whereas, the vast majority of our jurisdiction stops at the borders and we have to work through police cooperation issues to go after people through Interpol and/or through their own national services. The Hostage Taking statute conveyed - by Congressional action and presidential approval - that the FBI could actually investigate and arrest any individual charged with taking Americans hostage anywhere in the world.

NARRATOR: Two years after the hijacking of Royal Jordanian Airlines Flight 402, Fawaz Younis would become the first terrorist to have to answer to the United States’ Hostage Taking Act. In other words, he’d have to answer to Buck Revell.

BUCK REVELL: My full name is Oliver Bergen Revell III. And that's the reason I go by Buck. 

NARRATOR: Buck is retired today, in the way that many former investigators and intelligence officials retire - off the payroll, maybe, but still maintaining a full plate, chairing on various boards, and giving his informed opinion on matters of international importance. And maybe that makes sense. You don’t go from working on some of the biggest cases in FBI history to playing golf and watching reruns. Buck’s action-packed career as an agent in the FBI began in the 1960s, during a historic moment of crisis in America.

BUCK REVELL: I was actually in the Marine Corps, I was an aviator and a group legal officer when John F. Kennedy was killed. I was very fond of Kennedy. I had been off the coast of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, ready to go in and invade the missile sites, which were manned by Soviet Spetsnaz. Special forces. And our estimated survival was about 10%. So when I heard President Kennedy come over the ship's phone on a broadcast, that the Russians had blinked and were turning away, I gave him all the credit for saving our lives. 

NARRATOR: The president’s assassination shook many Americans. Not least of all Buck.

BUCK REVELL: And what helped me through that was that I got to work on that case as a Marine officer making available all of the Marines who had ever known Oswald.

NARRATOR: That is, Lee Harvey Oswald, the former Marine who fired the fatal shot.

BUCK REVELL: And so, I worked with two FBI agents for several weeks to make sure that they had all the background information. And that put me in touch with these two agents and they one day dropped the suggestion I might want to consider the FBI. 

NARRATOR: It wasn’t an easy decision. Buck had just been promoted to Captain.

BUCK REVELL: But in the Marine Corps, I was gone afloat at least half the time and I had two little boys at the time. So I said: “Well, I'll look at the FBI.” And I looked into it, found out I was eligible, flew up to Charlotte, North Carolina, made my application, and two months later, I was being sworn in as a new FBI agent.

NARRATOR: It was 1964. Buck Revell would work for the FBI for the next three decades.

BUCK REVELL: Went from Special Agent up to associate deputy director, which was the number-two position in the FBI. So, I always said, for a farm boy from Muskogee, Oklahoma, that shows you that there are no limits in America in what you can do if you work hard.

NARRATOR: Buck has plenty of stories to tell from his 30 years with the Bureau. But this one takes place when he was the Associate Deputy Director in charge of all investigative operations worldwide - in other words, the second-highest-ranking person in the Bureau. Let’s go back to the Middle East in the mid-1980s. As Buck puts it…

BUCK REVELL: The Middle East was a cauldron of intrigue, espionage, sabotage, and kidnappings. From the time of the takeover of Iran by Ayatollah Khomeini and his minions, we had a situation where Iran was not only a hotbed of extremist activity itself but supporting a number of different groups, including two that were operating right on the border of Israel. They were taking and holding hostages in Beirut, in that area. And the entire Lebanese border with Israel was a hot spot. We had hostages being held at the time and were trying to get them out. That, of course, led to the rather infamous Iran-Contra affair, of which this had nothing to do. Goldenrod was totally separate and apart from anything to do with the Iran-Contra, which was essentially a political activity.

NARRATOR: The Hostage Taking Act had come into effect in 1984, a year before the hijacking of Royal Jordanian flight 402. And it wasn’t just a law the FBI could exercise. It was something the Bureau was actively seeking to exercise. 

BUCK REVELL: Although the statute had been passed in ‘84, it hadn't really become functional through Department of Justice regulations, State Department issues, and so forth. We wanted to demonstrate also the fact that we had such a law, we could exercise that law, and we could actually seize and bring people all the way back to the United States for trial and incarceration.

NARRATOR: All they were missing was a target. And the FBI wasn’t the only federal agency in on the effort.

BUCK REVELL: I had a working group immediately under the National Security Council at the White House and the relevant agencies, which in this case were the FBI, the Defense Department, the State Department, and we also included in the Department of Transportation because Coast Guard and FAA were in that department at the time. So we met virtually daily trying to come up with targets.

NARRATOR: A few lucky criminals had made their shortlist. But surprisingly, Fawaz Younis wasn’t at the top. 

BUCK REVELL: Our primary target was Hezbollah and a particular individual by the name of Hajj Mughniyeh, who was the head of the organization in Lebanon and had personally taken hostages and killed American hostages. And at that time, we had no information that that was true with Younis. He had been responsible for significant crimes, but not direct execution of hostages. 

NARRATOR: All right. He hadn’t killed anyone. But he did hand the Americans the evidence they needed on a silver platter.

BUCK REVELL: The evidence against him was fairly simple to assemble. We simply identified him from the television and his own statements. And so, you know, the difficulty of obtaining a warrant, if you don't know the identity and having seen what they're doing, you have to do it by other evidence. Here we had direct evidence on his part of both the hijacking and the destruction of the aircraft. So that's the reason we took the second-best target at the time and exercised the first implementation of the statute with this particular operation.

NARRATOR: It wasn’t purely for show. If they could successfully take Younis into custody, they might be able to gather intelligence about other hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon.

BUCK REVELL: Our mission was to extract him to be able to obtain information on the hostages - who was holding them, the makeup of the organizations, who was in power, who had authority and control, where they were located. All of that was what we were seeking. 

NARRATOR: So the FBI has set its sights on its hostage-taker of choice. Now, how to get their hooks in him?

BUCK REVELL: I put out a call to all of the federal agencies who operated any type of discreet activities in foreign countries, particularly in the Middle East. And the head of DEA at the time, Jack Lawn, got in touch with me and said: "Hey, Buck, we've got an asset in that area and he knows the person you're looking for in Lebanon and says he can lure him out to Cyprus if you're interested in doing that."

NARRATOR: Was he interested? Absolutely. The asset in question was a man named Jamal Hamdan, who operated out of Cyprus. Hamdan believed he could lure Younis out of Lebanon for the Americans to seize him. Going in to conduct the operation within Lebanon was simply too dangerous.

BUCK REVELL: Hamdan had been involved in narcotics, and he and Younis knew each other, had drank, and done other things together. And Hamdan essentially volunteered that he could make sure that we were able to meet with him under false pretenses, in other words, a drug deal.

NARRATOR: Of course, people don’t typically cavort with hijackers unless they have colorful histories of their own.

BUCK REVELL: He had a very sticky issue. He had killed his sister-in-law because he had found her being indiscreet with other men. That's hard for us in America to appreciate and understand. And he had been actually found guilty and sentenced to prison, but he had only served six months. 

NARRATOR: Just six months for murder. After serving his time, he left Lebanon for Cyprus. But he had ambitions toward another, more comfortable, life in the United States.

BUCK REVELL: There was a concern, particularly with the State Department, because we had to agree to take him and his family into the United States, grant them immunity, and put them on a program similar to the witness protection program to ensure their safety.

NARRATOR: Hamdan wanted US protection, and he also wanted a financial reward. In exchange, he’d help the Americans arrest his old friend Fawaz Younis. But would you want to work with a convicted killer? It was a tough call for Buck to make.

BUCK REVELL: I was concerned about it. I discussed it with the attorney general and with the director, but we decided he had already met the law in the land, even though we disagreed with the way it was done. But we were talking about the lives of, literally, potentially hundreds of Americans and other Western countries in that area. And we had to get him out of the country because if we had gone in after him, there would have been dozens, perhaps hundreds of people killed in that process. So we had to weigh two disagreeable issues and decided that since he was not a fugitive and his sentence had been carried out, we would work with him. 

NARRATOR: How else would they get hold of Younis without Hamdan’s help? Buck’s team believed that exercising the new hostage law was for the greater good - it would send a clear message to terrorists around the world not to mess with American citizens. It would also show off the fact that they could carry out similarly large-scale international operations alone. So they decided to take Hamdan up on the offer to draw Younis out of Lebanon.

BUCK REVELL: We got his control transferred from the DEA to the CIA to operate overseas and decided to swallow it and to go ahead and do what we had to do because there were multiple other lives involved.

NARRATOR: The seed of the plan was planted: Use Hamdan to lure Younis to Cyprus under the pretense of a big, lucrative drug deal. Younis was short on cash, and Hamdan had a feeling that he’d leap on the opportunity to earn some drug money. From there, Younis would be ensnared in the Americans’ plot to get him out of Lebanon and bring him to US soil. 

BUCK REVELL: We wanted to do it in international waters. So that's when we came up with the scheme where Hamdan would take Younis out to meet the drug dealer Joseph, which was an undercover name for the FBI agent who spoke Arabic, and we would get them 12.1 miles offshore and we had them fixed from the USS radar exactly in that position.

NARRATOR: In order to execute the operation without violating the laws or territorial rights of any other country, it all needed to happen in international waters. So, the plan was this - lure Younis out of Lebanon, thinking he’s about to make a boatload of money. Then get him onto a yacht with the help of an undercover FBI agent posing as a drug dealer. Then arrest him and fly him to the United States. All without touching national soil. By this point, the operation had a name: Goldenrod. Why Goldenrod?

BUCK REVELL: I asked that question myself and they said: “Well, Dewey came up with that because he thought if we can get this done, it's going to be our gold link to intelligence in that area, so we ought to call it Goldenrod.” So this was the golden rod to reach between our ability and our knowledge and carrying out our mission.

NARRATOR: ‘Dewey’ is Dewey Clarridge, legendary CIA operative, then the chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center. He worked in tandem with Buck, who oversaw the operation on the FBI side.

BUCK REVELL: Dewey was somewhat the James Bond of the CIA. He had been involved in a vast number of international operations, was very debonair, and smoked his cigarette with a holder. I think that James Bond was modeled after Dewey. 

NARRATOR: The team didn’t want to put Dewey in danger, but he did travel to Cyprus for the operation, as did Buck. Remember: Buck was the second in command at the FBI at the time. But because this was such a high-stakes operation, it still made sense for him to get his hands dirty with the rest of the team.

BUCK REVELL: The attorney general was very pleased with me going over. Because it was the first of this type of operation, it was going to have political ramifications irrespective of where it occurred, and I had to end up going to court and justifying to Federal Court in Washington as to why we did it, the way we did, and how it comported with the new federal Anti-Hostage statute. So a person of lesser rank could have done it, but I did it probably with more ease. Let's just say I was able to do things that someone else might have had to go up the chain of command to get done.

NARRATOR: Buck would fly to Athens where he’d board the USS Butte. The Butte would serve as the operation headquarters and it would also pick up Younis after his arrest. En route to the airport in Washington, Buck got a phone call.

BUCK REVELL: From Ed Meese, the attorney general, and he said: “Hey Buck, I've got news for you.” And I said: “Yes, sir. What, are you calling us off?” “Absolutely not. I just briefed the president, and he's all for it and says: ‘Go get him.’” 

NARRATOR: A good word from President Reagan was a pat on the back Buck was happy to receive. But it also put the pressure on. The plan had better work. 

BUCK REVELL: And I said: “General, I'm not coming back without him.” 

NARRATOR: The tightly choreographed plan to arrest Lebanese hijacker Fawaz Younis was in motion. Buck was working from the operation headquarters on the USS Butte, which was making its way from Athens to Cyprus. 

BUCK REVELL: The Butte was an ammunition ship, ammunition supply, so it was full of all kinds of weapons. It had mounted on its deck a five-inch rapid-fire cannon, which was very effective out to about 25 miles. It had a number of mounts for anti-aircraft, which are 50 caliber machine guns. It had a deck on the back where you could land two helicopters. And we had both helicopters on board. 

NARRATOR: The FBI agent posing as a drug dealer named Joseph would be stationed on a yacht. He’d work alongside a small group of agents from the Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT. Hamdan would bring Younis to the yacht via motorboat, and that’s where the arrest would take place. 

BUCK REVELL: Part of our planning was that we were not going to try and hide a lot of agents on the yacht in case there were a lot of pirates that actually operated in that area. And we didn't want our yacht attacked by pirates by mistake, thinking they were going to shake down just a regular crew.

NARRATOR: In case anything went wrong, Buck’s team would be able to act fast. The Butte was outfitted with a helicopter that could reach the yacht in just three minutes, and a captain’s yacht attached to the ship to navigate the waters more quickly. In the days and hours leading up to the operation, Buck and CIA counterterrorism chief Dewey Clarridge remained in close communication.

BUCK REVELL: And he and I were in radio contact through a secure link that not even our headquarters could read, and we wanted it that way. So we were communicating back and forth to make sure that it stayed on schedule.

NARRATOR: But on the morning Younis was to be lured out to sea, things did not stay on schedule, although that was no fault of Buck’s.

BUCK REVELL: Younis was so happy about getting a big payout on his drug deal that he was out celebrating the night before, and our operation was delayed about two hours because Hamdan couldn't get him out of bed. So you never know what's going to interfere in these actual field operations.

NARRATOR: Hamdan was able to rouse hungover Younis out of bed at around 11 am. Finally, Buck got a call from Clarridge telling him that the men were on their way. Buck was monitoring the scene from a distance, but after a while, he began to worry.

BUCK REVELL: We had the yacht on the radar all the time, but he was coming out in a motorboat low to the water.

NARRATOR: The motorboat, in other words, couldn’t be picked up on radar. And it was taking an awfully long time for the men to arrive. How would you feel in Buck’s position? You’ve coordinated a massive operation with some of the highest-ranking officials in America’s law enforcement and intelligence services. You have a lot riding on this operation. And in order for it to be successful, a hungover terrorist has to be willing to follow through with his drug deal on the water, precisely the way you hoped he would. What if he changes his mind and the whole complicated scheme comes tumbling down like a house of cards? One hour and 15 minutes had passed, and still no sign of Hamdan and Younis. Buck was looking out at the water, sweating bullets.

BUCK REVELL: That's the reason I was getting ready to deploy the yacht inside of the territorial waters of Cyprus, but not to let him make the arrests there. They were to lead the motorboat back out into international waters before they allowed them to come aboard the yacht.

NARRATOR: One more tricky bit of choreography for an already complicated plan. They could send the yacht out to pursue the motorboat, but then they’d have to lure Hamdan and Younis back into international waters before bringing them onboard. But just as Buck was ordering a change of plan, someone spotted the motorboat. With his own eyes, Buck was able to watch their carefully orchestrated operation unfold.

BUCK REVELL: I was watching through binoculars. They couldn't see us. We could see them. And he came on board very gleefully, shaking hands, patting people on the back, and just delighted to be there, where he was getting ready to make a major drug deal.

NARRATOR: Exactly as planned. 

BUCK REVELL: As the boat came up to the yacht, the women were visible and it made it look very natural as far as a drug scene in that part of the world.

NARRATOR: Oh yes. Did I forget to mention the women?

BUCK REVELL: Dewey Clarridge, the old fox, said: “It's not going to look like a drug deal if there's not a couple of women on board.” And he wanted them in bikinis. I said: “Dewey, I'm not putting FBI agents in bikinis.” But we did agree to shorts and halters so they would look natural on the yacht.

NARRATOR: Make no mistake. These women were anything but window dressing.

BUCK REVELL: They were fully briefed on all parts of it, and if it had come down to a firefight, they would have been involved in that. They were there as FBI agents. It just happened they were females and just happened they were appropriately attired for that part of the world.

NARRATOR: Right. So, Younis approaches the yacht, now comfortably situated in international waters, ready to make a lucrative deal. From his perspective, the situation is looking bright. And then…

BUCK REVELL: After everything was settled, two HRT agents went up to him, grabbed him, put him down on the deck, and handcuffed him.

NARRATOR: Not quite what Younis had hoped for. But bang on target for Buck. 

BUCK REVELL: At that point, his day went very dark. And as soon as he was on board, I jumped in the captain's yacht and went over. I, along with the case agent and a couple of other HRT agents, went over to the yacht. And I first saw him there, which was probably five minutes after he had been arrested. 

NARRATOR: Younis had just become the first suspected terrorist to be arrested by Americans overseas.

BUCK REVELL: He had been given - even though it wasn't legally required, we wanted to touch all bases - he had been given Miranda warnings in Arabic by our agent, who was portraying Joseph, the drug dealer. I asked him a couple of questions, which Joseph translated, and I said: “Are you doing all right?: And he gave me a shrug. And I said: “Are you sick?” And he said: “No.” And I said: “Do you know who we are?” And he said: “Yes, you're not the Israelis.” So he was very concerned that we were Israelis and that his life was going to be very, very difficult under those circumstances.

NARRATOR: Younis had been engaged in a number of firefights on the Lebanese-Israeli border. The Israelis might not have been nearly as kind as our friend Buck. As Younis was hoisted onto the Butte, he received a warm, patriotic welcome.

BUCK REVELL: The captain had put on a number of different patriotic songs being piped over the ship's system. “I'm Proud to Be an American”, “America the Beautiful”, and so forth, those kinds of songs. And that made us feel good and, probably Younis, not so much.

NARRATOR: For Younis, things went from bad to worse.

BUCK REVELL: When we got him back on the ship, the first thing we did was have him examined by the ship's doctors. Unfortunately, he got very sick when the boat was being hoisted aboard the ship and was just swaying in the air as the ship rolled with the water.

NARRATOR: You almost feel bad for the guy.

BUCK REVELL: The second day we were on board the Butte, the doctor said: “Well, he's got fractures across both of his wrists.” And I tried to go back and figure, and then I remembered his actually putting all of his weight on his hands as he leaned over to barf in the ocean.

NARRATOR: Bound in handcuffs, Younis was leaning over the ship’s railing, no doubt thinking this day had gone much differently than he’d expected.

BUCK REVELL: We treated him well. I've got a couple of photographs of me sitting there having donuts and coffee with him on the deck where he was getting sun.

NARRATOR: That might seem like a pretty friendly way of relating to a terrorist and sometimes hostage-taker. But Buck’s cozy behavior with Younis was nothing abnormal.

BUCK REVELL: We treated him well. One reason is that's what we do with prisoners. We don't abuse them. But in this case, his arrest was almost incidental to our mission.

NARRATOR: A key part of that mission: To gather intelligence on terrorists taking Americans hostage. And Buck and his team were able to do that with great success.

BUCK REVELL: We learned about not only the Amal but also Hezbollah, which was controlled entirely by Iran. And we also learned what elements in the Lebanese government were cooperating with these militant groups. We also learned what elements were opposing and might benefit from American support. We were able to get personality profiles on the top leadership locations where they frequented.

NARRATOR: And the second key part of the mission - to exercise the Hostage-Taking Act for the very first time - had also gone as planned. Goldenrod opened a lot of doors for the FBI, and it set a precedent for other terrorists around the world.

BUCK REVELL: We learned a great deal and we also, by taking it through court and getting it sanctified as a legitimate exercise of US jurisdiction, were able to go after many, many other terrorists, and that has occurred over the years. It was so much more important than just Younis. It was to show the world, particularly in the Middle East, that they could run, but they couldn't hide, at least for a long time. Everyone at least knew now that you were not immune from being prosecuted by the United States. And we were able to convey to the public that we weren't just sitting around and letting things roll without trying to intervene. We were looking for every legal means that we could to get Americans back and to keep them out of harm's way. And then when we weren't, the American military and intelligence services were ready to react quickly to execute whatever level of force was necessary to carry out our responsibilities.

NARRATOR: Younis was criminally arraigned within hours of landing on US soil. His fate was now in the hands of a court, which would have to set its own precedents for dealing with foreign hostage-takers arrested abroad. Buck recalls that the unpredictability of the situation was unsettling, but he also knew that the decks were stacked against Younis. After all…

BUCK REVELL: We already had the evidence on him with the videotapes of his blowing up the airliner.

NARRATOR: True to his word to Attorney General Ed Meese, Buck had returned victorious. He’d fulfilled his promise to the president.

BUCK REVELL: I did get invited along with the key members of the team from the CIA and US to the vice-president's home. At that time it was George Bush Sr. And we went in for a brunch and had a good time sitting and telling the funny sides of the story, as well as discussing the policy implications of the circumstances.

NARRATOR: Younis was sent to prison and served a full 20-year sentence. He was later released and returned to Lebanon. 

BUCK REVELL: And, as far as we know, he's behaving himself. 

NARRATOR: And remember Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah leader who had killed American hostages? He’d been the team’s first choice for the operation.

BUCK REVELL: Mughniyeh didn't make it. He had an accident, his car blew up in Beirut sometime later. But we did not have anything to do with it. Of course, Lebanon is still a very, very dangerous place and the Iranians have even increased their influence, and Hezbollah is the most powerful element in, not only Beirut, but in all of the areas there.

NARRATOR: And that’s the harsh reality. Even a watershed operation like this one has limits. Terrorism and hostage taking, even against Americans, couldn’t be stopped entirely. Goldenrod became one of the standout episodes in Buck’s long career, helped almost certainly by its cinematic features: the hijacker who nearly got away with it, the fake drug dealer, the female FBI agents dressed for a day on a yacht. But looking back, Buck is of two minds about the value of the operation, for his country and for the Middle East.

BUCK REVELL: There were a couple of documentaries done, and it was mentioned in some books. But actually, you know, it's not considered that big a deal now. And that's fine. It was part of what we needed to do to implement a new statute and to send a message. And we were able to do that. So all of us involved feel very satisfied by that. But it did not stop terrorism in the Middle East. It did not save other Americans from being taken hostage. But it did prove that we could exercise jurisdiction to bring those people to the United States.

NARRATOR: I’m Vanessa Kirby. Join me next week for another edition of Tradecraft Secrets with True Spies. We all have valuable spy skills, and our experts are here to help you discover yours. Get an authentic assessment of your spy skills, created by a former Head of Training at British Intelligence, now at SPYSCAPE.com