Dawson's Field hijackings

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In the Dawson's Field hijackings (September 6, 1970) four jet aircraft bound for New York City were hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

• TWA Flight 741 from Frankfurt am Main and Swissair Flight 100 from Zürich-Kloten Airport landed at Zerqa, also known as Dawson's Field, a remote desert airstrip in Jordan formerly used as a British Royal Air Force base.^[1]
• The hijacking of El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam was foiled; hijacker Patrick Arguello was shot to death and his partner Leila Khaled was subdued and turned over to British authorities in London. Two hijackers prevented from joining the El Al flight instead hijacked Pan Am Flight 93, a Boeing 747, diverting the large plane to Beirut and then Cairo rather than the small Jordanian field.
• A fifth plane, BOAC Flight 775 from Bahrain, was hijacked on September 9 by a PFLP sympathizer and brought to Dawson's Field in order to pressure the British to free Khaled.

For many years, the incident was known as "the blackest day in aviation." ^[2] While the majority of the 310 hostages were transferred to Amman and freed on September 11, the PFLP segregated the flight crews and Jewish passengers, keeping 56 hostages in custody, ^[2] and on September 12 they used explosives to spectacularly destroy the empty planes in front of the international media.^[3]

The PFLP's exploitation of Jordanian territory in the drama was another instance amidst years of increasingly autonomous Palestinian activity within the Kingdom of Jordan — an existential challenge to the Hashemite monarchy of King Hussein. Hussein declared martial law on September 16, and from September 17 to 27, his forces deployed into Palestinian-controlled areas in what became known as Black September in Jordan, nearly triggering a regional war involving Syria, Iraq, and Israel with potentially global consequences. Swift Jordanian victory, however, enabled a September 30 deal in which the remaining PFLP hostages were released in exchange for Khaled and three PFLP members in a Swiss jail.^[3]

Contents 1 Background 1.1 The PFLP 1.2 Palestinian/Jordanian tensions 1.3 Airport security 2 The hijackings 2.1 El Al Flight 219 2.2 TWA Flight 741 2.3 Swissair Flight 100 2.4 Pan Am Flight 93 2.5 BOAC Flight 775 3 Days in the desert 4 Resolution and consequences 5 Documentary film 6 References 7 See also 8 External links 9 Further reading

[edit] Background

[edit] The PFLP

The hijackings occurred in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Arabic الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين - al-jabhah al-sha'biyyah li-tahrīr filastīn), a Marxist-Leninist, nationalist Palestinian political and military organization, was founded in 1967. Prior to the Dawson's Field hijackings, the PFLP had already achieved notoriety for several similar incidents, including the hijacking of an El Al flight from Rome to Lod airport, Israel, on July 23, 1968, in which 21 passengers and 11 crew members were held for 39 days; armed attacks on El Al jets in Athens (December 1968), killing one and wounding two, and Zürich (February 1969), killing the co-pilot and wounding the pilot; and the hijacking of a TWA flight from Los Angeles to Damascus on August 29, 1969, by a PFLP cell led by Leila Khaled, who became the PFLP's most famous recruit. Two Israeli passengers were held for 44 days.

Several months prior to the Dawson's Field hijackings, the PFLP bombed Swissair Flight 330 bound for Israel, killing 47 on February 21, 1970.

[edit] Palestinian/Jordanian tensions

Adding further tension to the ongoing conflict was civil strife within Jordan itself. After the 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel had captured the Jordanian-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River, thousands of Palestinians were displaced across the river into Jordan, where they became an increasingly autonomous challenge to the Hashemite monarchy of the young King Hussein.

Between mid-1968 and the end of 1969, no fewer than 500 violent clashes occurred between Palestinian guerrillas and Jordanian security forces. Cross-border attacks by the Palestine Liberation Organization against Israel were followed by heavy Israeli reprisals that caused high Jordanian civilian and military casualties. In June 1970, an Arab mediation committee intervened to halt two weeks of serious fighting between the two sides.^[4] Several days before the hijackings, King Hussein survived two Palestinian-sponsored assassination attempts.

This civil conflict was another part of the background to the Dawson's Field hijackings, which drew the government of Jordan into an international incident precipitated by the PFLP, and eventually led to the events known as Black September in Jordan.

[edit] Airport security

Aircraft hijackings were a comparatively new development in Europe and the Middle East. Accordingly, airline security was in its infancy; metal detectors were not typically used to screen passengers, and though some of the hijackers' luggage was searched, in each case they boarded the aircraft carrying concealed weapons on their persons.

[edit] The hijackings

[edit] El Al Flight 219

El Al Flight 219 (type Boeing 707, serial 18071/216, registration 4X-ATB) originated in Tel Aviv, Israel, and was headed to New York City. It had 148 passengers and 10 crew members aboard. It stopped in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and was hijacked shortly after it took off from there by Patrick Arguello,^[5] a Nicaraguan American, and Leila Khaled, a Palestinian.

The original plan was to have four hijackers aboard this flight, but two were prevented from boarding in Amsterdam by Israeli security — these two conspirators, traveling under Senegalese passports with consecutive numbers,^[6] were prevented from flying on El Al on September 6. They purchased first-class tickets on Pan Am Flight 93 and hijacked this flight instead.

Posing as a married couple, Argüello and Khaled boarded the plane using Honduran passports — having passed through a security check of their luggage — and were seated in the second row of tourist-class. Once the plane was approaching the British coast, they drew their guns and approached the cockpit, demanding entrance. According to Khaled, in an interview in 2000,

"So half an hour (after take off) we had to move. We stood up. I had my two hand grenades and I showed everybody I was taking the pins out with my teeth. Patrick stood up. We heard shooting just the same minute and when we crossed the first class, people were shouting but I didn't see who was shooting because it was behind us. So Patrick told me 'go forward I protect your back.' So I went and then he found a hostess and she was going to catch me round the legs. So I rushed, reached to the cockpit, it was closed. So I was screaming 'open the door.' Then the hostess came; she said 'she has two hand grenades,' but they did not open (the cockpit door) and suddenly I was threatening to blow up the plane. I was saying 'I will count and if you don't open I will blow up the plane.'"^[7]

After being informed by intercom that a hijacking was in progress, Captain Uri Bar Lev decided not to accede to their demands:

"I decided that we were not going to be hijacked. The security guy was sitting here ready to jump. I told him that I was going to put the plane into negative-G mode. Everyone would fall. When you put the plane into negative, it's like being in a falling elevator. Instead of the plane flying this way, it dives and everyone who is standing falls down."^[5]

Bar Lev put the plane into a steep nosedive which threw the two hijackers off-balance. Argüello reportedly threw his sole grenade down the airliner aisle, but it failed to explode, and he was hit over the head with a bottle of whiskey by a passenger after he drew his pistol. Arguello shot steward Shlomo Vider and according to the Israeli account, was then shot by a sky marshal.^[6] Khaled was beaten up by security and passengers, while the plane made an emergency landing at London Heathrow Airport; she claimed that Arguello was shot four times in the back after being beaten and bound. Vider underwent emergency surgery and recovered from his wounds, while Argüello died in the ambulance taking both him and Khaled to Hillingdon Hospital. Khaled was then arrested by the British government.

[edit] TWA Flight 741

TWA Flight 741 (type Boeing 707, serial 18917/460, registration N8715T) was an around-the-world flight carrying 141 passengers and a crew of 10. It was hijacked shortly after taking off from Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to New York. In an interview for the film Hijacked, Flight 741's purser, Rudi Swinkles, recalled, "I saw a passenger running toward first class. I ran after him, and when he came to first class to the cockpit, he turned around, had a gun in his hand, and pointed the gun at me, and said, 'Get back, get back.' So right away, I dove behind the bulkhead first class divider, and I hid behind it, over here."^[8]

It landed at Dawson's Field in Jordan at 6:45 p.m. local time.^[9]

Hijackers gained control of the cockpit and stated, "This is your new captain speaking. This flight has been taken over by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP]."^[2]

[edit] Swissair Flight 100

Swissair Flight 100 (type Douglas DC-8, registration HB-IDD) was carrying 143 passengers and 12 crew from Zürich-Kloten Airport, Switzerland, to New York. It also landed at Dawson's Field.

[edit] Pan Am Flight 93

Pan American Flight 93 (type Boeing 747, serial 19656/34, registration N752PA) was carrying 153 passengers and 17 crew. The flight was from Brussels, Belgium, to New York, with a stop in Amsterdam. The two hijackers bumped from the El Al flight boarded and hijacked this flight as a target of opportunity.

Flight Director John Feruggio recalled,

"We were ready for take off in Amsterdam, and the aircraft came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the runway. And Captain Priddy called me up into the cockpit and says, 'I'd like to have a word with you.' I went up to the cockpit, and he says, 'We have two passengers by the name of Diop and Gueye.' He says, 'Go down and try to find them in the manifest, because I would like to have a word with them.' ... So Captain Priddy sat them down at these two seats over here. He gave them a pretty good pat. They had a Styrofoam container in their groin area where they carried the grenade, and the 25-mm pistols. But this we found out much later."^[8]

The plane first landed in Beirut, where it refueled and picked up several associates of the hijackers, along with enough explosives to destroy the entire plane. It then landed in Cairo after uncertainty whether the Dawson's Field airport could handle the size of the new Boeing 747 jumbo jet. The plane was blown up at Cairo seconds after everybody deplaned. An audio transcript of Feruggio's landing instructions to passengers was recorded by one of them and can be heard in a National Public Radio report.[2]

[edit] BOAC Flight 775

On September 9, a fifth plane, BOAC Flight 775, a VC-10 (registration G-ASGN), was hijacked on its voyage from Bahrain to London via Beirut and brought to Dawson's Field. This was the work of a PFLP sympathizer who wanted to influence the British government to free Leila Khaled.

[edit] Days in the desert

On September 7, 1970, the hijackers held a press conference for 60 members of the media who had made their way to what was being called "Revolution Airport." About 125 hostages were transferred to Amman, while the American, Israeli, Swiss, and West German citizens were held on the planes.^[10] Jewish passengers were also held. Passenger Rivke Berkowitz of New York, interviewed in 2006, recalled "the hijackers went around asking people their religion, and I said I was Jewish." Another Jewish hostage, 16-year-old Barbara Mensch, was told she was "a political prisoner."^[2]

As groups of the remaining passengers and crew were assembled on the sand in front of the media, members of the PFLP, among them Bassam Abu Sharif, made statements to the press. Sharif claimed that the goal of the hijackings was "to gain the release of all of our political prisoners jailed in Israel in exchange for the hostages."^[8][11]

In the United States, President Richard Nixon met with his advisors on September 8 and ordered United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to bomb the PFLP positions in Jordan. Laird refused on the pretext that the weather was unfavorable, and the idea was dropped. The 82nd Airborne Division was put on alert, the Sixth Fleet was put to sea, and military aircraft were sent to Turkey in preparation for a possible military strike.^[12] In contrast, British Prime Minister Edward Heath decided to negotiate with the hijackers, ultimately agreeing to release Khaled and others in exchange for hostages. This was bitterly opposed by the United States:

"Tensions between London and Washington are reflected in a bitterly acrimonious telephone conversation between top Foreign Office official Sir Denis Greenhill and senior White House aide Joseph Sisco... 'I think your government would want to weigh very, very carefully the kind of outcry that would occur in this country against your taking this kind of action.' Greenhill replied: 'Well, they do, Joe, but there is also an outcry in this country,' expressing concern that 'Israel won't lift a bloody finger and... our people get killed. You could imagine how bad that would look, and if it all comes out that we could have got our people out but for the obduracy of you and other people so to speak... I mean people say, why the bloody hell didn't you try?'"^[13]

On September 10, fighting between the PFLP and Jordanian forces erupted in Amman at the Intercontinental Hotel, where the 125 women and children were being kept by the PFLP, and the Kingdom appeared to be on the brink of full-scale civil war.^[8] The destruction of the aircraft on September 12 highlighted the impotence of the Jordanian government in Palestinian-controlled areas, and the Palestinians declared the city of Irbid to be "liberated territory," in a direct challenge to Hussein's rule.

On September 13, the BBC World Service broadcast a government announcement in Arabic saying that the UK would release Khaled in exchange for the hostages.^[14]

According to United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, "At this point, whether because [American] readiness measures had given [King Hussein] a psychological lift or because he was reaching the point of desperation, Hussein resolved on an all-out confrontation with the fedayeen."^[15]

Complicating the international crisis was the fact that Syria and Iraq, client states of the USSR, had already threatened to intervene on behalf of Palestinian groups in any confrontation with the Kingdom of Jordan. In an astounding turn of events, according to British documents declassified under the "thirty year rule," an anxious King Hussein asked the U.S. and UK to pass a request to Israel to bomb Syrian troops if they entered Jordan in support of the Palestinians.^[14] When a Syrian tank crossed the border, Israeli aircraft overflew the area in warning.

[edit] Resolution and consequences

King Hussein declared martial law on September 16 and initiated the military actions later known as the Black September conflict. Hostage David Raab described the Jordanian military actions:

"We were in the middle of the shelling since Ashrafiyeh was among the Jordanian Army's primary targets. Electricity was cut off, and again we had little food or water. Friday afternoon, we heard the metal tracks of a tank clanking on the pavement. We were quickly herded into one room, and the guerrillas threw open the doors to make the building appear abandoned so it wouldn't attract fire. Suddenly, the shelling stopped."^[10]

About two weeks after the start of the crisis, the remaining hostages were recovered from locations around Amman and exchanged for Leila Khaled and several other PFLP prisoners. The hostages were flown to Cyprus and then to Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport, where on September 28 they met President Nixon, who was conducting a State visit to Italy and the Vatican.^[16] Speaking to reporters that day, Nixon noted he had told the released captives that

"[A]s a result of what they had been through... the possibility of reducing hijackings in the future had been substantially increased, because the international community was outraged by these incidents. Now we have not only mobilized guards on our planes, but we are developing facilities... for the purpose of seeing that people who might be potential hijackers do not get on planes with weapons or explosive material."^[17]

During the crisis, on September 11, President Nixon initiated a program to address the problem of "air piracy," including the immediate launch of a group of 100 federal agents to begin serving as armed air marshals on U.S. flights.^[6] Nixon's statement further indicated the U.S. departments of Defense and Transportation would determine whether X-ray devices then available to the military could be moved into civilian service.^[18]

The PFLP officially disavowed the tactic of airline hijackings several years later, although several of its members and subgroups continued to hijack aircraft and commit other violent operations.^[19]

[edit] Documentary film

In 2006, Ilan Ziv described the Dawson's Field hijackings in Hijacked, an hour-long episode of PBS's program The American Experience, which he wrote and directed and which originally aired on February 26, 2006. Ziv included archival footage of the events and interviewed hijackers, hostages, members of the media, and politicians.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Black September in Jordan
• Patrick Arguello
• Leila Khaled
• PFLP
• Sky marshal

[edit] External links

• Website of Hijacked, Ilan Ziv's hour-long episode of PBS's The American Experience, originally aired February 26, 2006.
• Hijacked at the Internet Movie Database
• BBC story on secret documents on this affair released after 30 years
• Aviation Security interview with Leila Khaled
• Bassam Abu Sharif's website with pictures of hijacked planes
• Time Magazine Cover, September 21, 1970 "Pirates in the Sky"
• BBC report from Amman, September 1970
• Walter Cronkite's recollections, audio program at NPR

[edit] Further reading

• Arey, James A. The Sky Pirates. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972.
• Carlton, David. The West's Road to 9/11. Resisting, Appeasing and Encouraging Terrorism since 1970. Palgrave Macmillan. April 3, 2006. ISBN 1-4039-9608-3 Cites the Western capitulation to the Dawson's field hijackings as the rise of modern terrorism.
• Phillips, David. Skyjack: The Story of Air Piracy. London: George G. Harrap, 1973.
• Snow, Peter, and David Phillips. The Arab Hijack War: The True Story of 25 Days in September, 1970. New York: Ballantine Books, 1971.