The Book of Honor (46 page)

Trained in CQB, close-quarters battle, Freedman's superquick reflexes were refined and readied for overseas hostage rescue and extraction missions. With his medic's skills, his talents as a sniper, and his combat experience, he was a valued component of Delta Force. There are many in the military who are crack shots, but the perfect sniper, of which Freedman was one, is a rarer breed. It is said of Freedman that he could hike for two days through a jungle with a ninety-pound rucksack on his back, set up his scope and rifle without pause, and focus for three days on a window waiting for his target to show himself for a second only. His concentration was unflagging and lethal.

At training exercises he wowed even expert marksmen. At close range his weapon of choice was a Colt .45 that had undergone a “combat conversion,” meaning the magazine would load quicker and the trigger was “tuned” to release without unwanted “creep.” His body, too, was a finely tuned weapon. Each day he ran five miles, pumped iron, and practiced martial arts.

In Delta Force, Freedman was at last among peers, part of a warrior class, a full cut above the rest. But these soldiers exhibited none of the swagger of a John Wayne. They were content to be known as “the quiet professionals.” They strove for invisibility.

Within the subdued ranks of Delta, Freedman maintained a somewhat higher profile. Still known as Superjew, he would literally show up at parties and other affairs wearing a red cape emblazoned with a large Hebrew letter, a gift from sister Sylvia. Freedman's escapades could be counted on to provide welcomed comic relief.

But sometimes he would make a few too many waves. “He pulled some crap on me and I had to hammer his ass,” recalls one of his superiors from Delta. But Freedman was too talented to dismiss. Most of his offenses were peccadilloes that momentarily irritated the brass but cumulatively endeared him to them. His commanding officers remember him as a silent tiger in the field, a man ready at a moment's notice to go wherever asked and do whatever was required. “You knew he would always be there,” said retired general Richard Potter, who was three years with Delta. “You may not like how he got there but you knew he would be there.”

General Peter J. Schoomaker, commander in chief of the United States Special Operations Command, was in the field with Freedman and remembers him with affection and respect. In an otherwise low-key unit he was something of a firecracker. And he had a streak of vanity.

“I would say he was narcissistic,” recalls Schoomaker. “He's the kind of guy that always tries to stay pretty, like his fascination with his hair. He was always a lady's kind of guy and always upbeat.

“He was one of the guys you could count on being there and also one of the guys who would have a good time. You had to jerk him up every once in a while to get his attention. He was a confident kind of guy who needed to be led well. Otherwise he'd lead you.”

Freedman's missions, all of them still classified, took him to Africa, the Mideast, and the Far East. More than once he undertook covert operations in Ethiopia, a country that was said to be special to him. There was a sketchy story told of him helping a girl in Turkey to come to the United States. He promised to one day look her up in the States. He took out a dollar bill, tore it in half, and presented her with one of the halves. Five years later, in the United States, he presented her with the other half of the bill, redeeming his pledge.

He was even consulted in the design of the presidential limo and tested the armor plating on other vehicles used by ambassadors and visiting heads of state. Who better to test such defenses than a man who, given the order, would be the perfect assassin?

Freedman was extraordinarily closemouthed about his missions, but there was one instance in which a personal indiscretion identified his place of operation. Sometime in the mid-1980s he visited his sister, Sylvia, and called aside her husband, Ivan Doner, a physician. “You have to do me a favor,” he said somewhat sheepishly. “When I was in Ethiopia I performed a transgression over there.”

Doner understood instantly what Freedman was saying. He had had sexual intercourse with a local and now was worried about AIDS. Fearing both the personal and the security repercussions of his actions, Freedman asked that Doner do a blood test and assign him a pseudonym for purposes of the exam. The test came back negative and the usually steely Freedman exhaled a sigh of relief.

The major missions he and Delta Force undertook were often performed in conjunction with the CIA. It was an uneasy relationship between Delta and the Agency. Increasingly the Agency came to view Delta as its paramilitary arm, a role Delta did not relish.

Freedman and the men of Delta knew they could rely on each other. The Agency, on the other hand, had demonstrated a propensity to distance itself from anything that could go awry and seemed to be planning escape routes from responsibility even before operations commenced. “They'll have you crawl way out on a limb and then saw off the branch,” said one former Delta Force leader. “They've done it many times.” Often, too, Agency intelligence was inadequate or flat-out wrong. Freedman and his teammates came to be deeply suspicious of the Agency—and yet, when called, they went without hesitation.

It is nearly impossible to judge the efficacy of Delta's missions, so shrouded are they even years later. Sadly the one most daring operation and the one for which Delta will long be associated would come to haunt Freedman as it did the others. The code name was Operation Eagle Claw.

It was the spring of 1980. For six months the nation watched with revulsion as fifty-three American civilians were paraded about as hostages, humiliated at the hands of their Iranian captors. With apparent impunity the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers taunted the United States as “the Great Satan.” President Jimmy Carter saw his political standing and authority dwindle with each passing day. The crisis would define his presidency, cast America as a kind of impotent giant, and embolden other fanatics to strike at U.S. targets.

But in the deepest, most secure recesses of the U.S. intelligence and defense communities an elaborate plan was afoot to liberate the hostages. It would soon be payback time, a chance to regain face and show that the United States would not abandon its citizens. Perhaps not since the Vietnam War had a covert mission of such daring been undertaken. Completely cloaked in secrecy, a key part of the operation was placed in the hands of the country's most select military unit, Delta Force.

And among those chosen from that crack unit was Larry Freedman.

It was to be Delta's first real mission, a chance to prove its mettle and demonstrate that two years of training had not been for naught. It was the moment that Delta Force had been waiting for. It was the moment Larry Freedman lived for.

On the night of April 24–25, 1980, Freedman was aboard an EC-130, part of a larger group of modified Hercules aircraft and RH-53D helicopters known as Sea Stallions. They were to rendezvous at a prearranged refueling site inside Iran, code-named Desert One.

Dressed in a black field jacket, Levi's, boots, and a naval watch cap, Freedman sat quietly as the massive plane droned on through the night toward its destination. On his right sleeve was a strip of tape concealing a small American flag that he was to peel off once in Teheran as a sign to the hostages that he was part of a rescue team. In his mind he went over and over the welter of intricate steps that lay ahead. He and the rest of the team were convinced that the plan would work. Just get them to Teheran and leave the rest to them.

Freedman had been assigned to the “Blue Element.” He was to be a “blocker,” making sure that the crowds that could be expected to assemble outside the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, where the fifty-three hostages were being held, did not make it past him. With his sniper's rifle and the support of a machine gunner, he was to provide a delay, if need be laying down deadly fire, while the hostages were removed and led to safety. Few in the operation would be more exposed to risk.

But of the eight Sea Stallions assigned to the mission, three either never made it to Desert One or were stricken with mechanical problems. It was decided that there were no longer enough choppers to make the operation work. The radical change in temperature from the cold of a desert night to the heat of daytime was deemed certain to ground another one or two choppers. That would leave just three to ferry to safety Delta, a Defense Department contingent, the fifty-three hostages, and the assault unit that was to storm the Foreign Ministry Building, which housed another three hostages. In all, 178 people would have to be carried out. It was cutting it too close.

The decision was made to abort.

On the ground at Desert One a Sea Stallion was repositioned for its return. Close by was the EC-130 with Freedman and his fellow Blue team members aboard. As the chopper moved to get into position, its rotors ripped through the cockpit of the EC-130 and instantly set off an explosion, igniting both aircraft. Suddenly the desert went from night to day, and the mission was transformed into a tragedy. Colonel Charles Beckwith would remember the Redeye missiles eerily “pinwheeling” through the desert night as on the Fourth of July.

Freedman and others of his team escaped the flames and leaped to safety, rolling in the sand to put out the flames that licked at their clothes. Freedman returned to the aircraft to help carry away one of the crew who was badly injured and screaming for help. But trapped inside the inferno, now fed by hundreds of gallons of fuel, were eight members of the rescue mission.

Four hours and fifty-six minutes after landing at Desert One, Freedman and the others were forced to abandon the site and head for the safety of the Indian Ocean. The flight back was nearly silent. Freedman and his fellow team members sat sullenly, some with tears sliding down their cheeks. They had come to rescue Americans and show that the United States would not abandon its citizens. But behind, on the desert floor, amid the twisted and burned-out wreckage of Sea Stallion and Hercules, were eight charred corpses. It was the most dramatic defeat since Vietnam. The enemy had been sand and night and, perhaps too, a lack of fundamental coordination. America's humiliation was now compounded by horror.

Such was the legacy of Operation Eagle Claw. But while it was an unambiguous fiasco, it also made Delta even more determined to play a frontline role in any future covert rescue and extraction operation. Freedman was convinced that had Delta been in control of the operation, they could have pulled it off. In this he was not alone.

In time, his grief gave way to rage. The aborted rescue mission was a subject he disciplined himself not to dwell on. Rarely would he speak of it and only to those who had played a role in the operation. The pain, the injury to pride and profession, the loss of friends, dogged him as nothing else would.

In October 1982 Freedman left Delta Force. His subsequent military record grows more murky with each passing year as he descended into increasingly sensitive and compartmented operations. On November 5, 1982, only weeks after leaving Delta, Pentagon records note he was an “infantry man (special project).” A year later he became a “special projects team member.” None of those operations have come to light.

By December 1, 1984, his record clarifies somewhat with the notation that he had been made noncommissioned officer in charge of the Interdiction Branch, a position he held until 1986. In those years he trained Delta and other Special Forces units at Fort Bragg in many of the arcane arts he had mastered. In the “interdiction” course he taught advanced marksmanship, judging distances, camouflage and concealment techniques, observation skills, and how to “deliver precise rifle fire in support of special operations.” It was the Special Forces version of Sniper School.

That same year he attended a birthday party for his old Philadelphia friend Petey Altman, who was turning forty-four. Altman had been smoking pot and was stoned. Freedman avoided him throughout the evening until Altman finally cornered him. Freedman glowered, and it was clear to Altman it was over drugs. “It occurred to me that here he was literally risking his life to stop this stuff and here I was at the other end of the pipeline being the retail consumer,” recalls Altman. “That summer I gave it up altogether.”

As Freedman approached his forty-fifth birthday, his career took a turn. He temporarily left the field for a classroom at the U.S. Army Sergeant Major's Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas. There, for the first time, he got a great report card. His transcript declared: “He is a true professional of the highest caliber and has exhibited the potential to succeed in any position at any organizational level within the Department of Defense.” In August 1986 he returned to Fort Bragg as a sergeant major.

He continued to train Special Forces at Fort Bragg's John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, passing along to the next generation his skills and knowledge acquired over two decades of combat and covert missions.

But he was hardly the professorial type. He ached to get back into the fray. Talking about it was fine but no substitute for the real thing. Still running five miles a day and pumping iron, he was fit and trim and ready for action. But who would deploy a forty-nine-year-old grandfather?

He thought for a time of becoming a mercenary, perhaps working for Israel and the Mossad, the counterpart to the CIA. “You're Jewish, but you're not Israeli,” one of his senior officers cautioned him. Freedman next decided to make a run at the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). He had had experience in the field fighting drug operations. It seemed a perfect fit. But the DEA was not interested in someone of Freedman's age for field assignments. Freedman was crushed.

So it was by default that he turned to the CIA. A friend of his from Delta had recently joined the Agency and knew firsthand Freedman's capabilities. On February 31, 1990, Freedman retired from the military after twenty-five years in Special Forces.