Entebbe and the Genesis of U.S. National Counterterrorism

Appropriately, several fine articles have remembered this year’s 50th anniversary of the Israeli Defense Force’s successful rescue of more than one hundred Israeli hostages from the jaws of terrorists aided by Uganda’s reprehensible Idi Amin. But none have noted, to my knowledge, the connection between this worldwide attention-grabbing event and the awakening of official Washington to the need for a national counterterrorism (CT) capability.

In 1976, CT was in its infancy. There were a few elite counterterrorism units, notably the British Special Air Service (SAS), German GSG 9, and French GIGN—the latter two formed after the 1972 Munich Olympics terror attack.

But to the chagrin of U.S. Army COL Charlie Beckwith—who probably knew more about CT than almost any other American at the time—the U.S. Government was not yet engaged in developing such a capability. Entebbe changed that. Quickly.

Eleven days after the Entebbe rescue, on 15 July 1976, Air Force Gen. George S. Brown addressed the subject of rescue capabilities in a top secret memorandum. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff stated that “US military forces have the capability to conduct rescue operations similar to the Israeli raid on Entebbe Airport, Uganda.” Not all senior U.S. military leaders were as sanguine as the chairman. The next month, Army GEN William E. Dupuy hosted a conference held at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he asked, “How come we don’t have a unit like the British Special Air Service?”

When he heard Dupuy’s query, Charlie Beckwith nearly burst. As he wrote later, he felt, “I’d like to hug this beautiful general. He’s got it all in one sack.” COL Beckwith, who had served with and knew the SAS better than any other American, had been trying for years to spark interest in Army circles for this very initiative, but to no avail. Dupuy directed Beckwith and another colonel to work up a proposal for the Army chief of staff. After working tirelessly for months, in May 1977 Beckwith took their briefing to Washington.

Although Beckwith was frustrated with the slow progress he experienced at the Pentagon in mid-1977, by September he gained approval to begin working on the manpower and funding issues for what was to be the Delta Force. The following month, another major terrorist incident occurred, in “some place called Mogadishu. We looked it up. It was in Somalia,” recalled the future Delta commander. The German GSG-9 CT unit stormed the German commercial airliner, took down the terrorists, and rescued the hostages. Not long after, Beckwith found himself in the Army chief of staff’s office. The next month, November, Delta’s activation order was signed—but 24 months of hard training lay ahead before the U.S. counterterrorism unit was ready for operations.

In parallel with the Army’s development of Delta in the late 70s, a lesser known CT evolution within the Air Force was ongoing: an elite combat controller entity known initially as Brand X, later, as Special Tactics—the Air Force’s ground counterparts to the Army’s Special Forces and the Navy’s SEALs. In the event of a CT operational requirement to seize an airfield or operate from a behind-the-lines remote landing zone, Brand X controllers were responsible for controlling the airfield and local airspace, and providing the necessary lighting, communications, and other ground support for friendly aircraft.

Following its second validation exercise, on 4 November 1979 Delta was certified as operational. Unknown to Charlie Beckwith and his fellow Delta operators at the time, a few hours earlier the American embassy in Tehran had been overrun and its personnel taken hostage. But that is another story.

Suffice to say that, without a doubt, the Israelis’ successful rescue at Entebbe on 4 July 1976—in which current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s older brother, Yonatan (Yoni) was killed—facilitated and hastened the genesis of U.S. national counterterrorism capabilities with which we are so familiar today—and thankful.

Amidst the current mindless, perverted antisemitism that rages in many parts of the West and beyond, let the civilized recall the words of Israeli defense minister Shimon Peres fifty years ago: “If we don’t rescue the hostages from Entebbe, Zionism and the concept of a sovereign state of Israel become pointless.” Undeniably, that rescue held far-reaching consequences for Israelis and Americans alike, indeed, for all who much prefer civil, ordered liberty over chaos and tyranny.

Forrest L. Marion, Ph.D., is a retired military historian and author of four military histories.

[1] Forrest L. Marion, Brothers in Berets: The Evolution of Air Force Special Tactics, 1953-2003 (Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., 2018), 123. Other quotations taken from this chapter.