This is some fascinating history. I will let the articles and stories below speak for themselves. But basically what we have here is a former special operations hero Col. Bull Simons and CEO Ross Perot, conducting a private rescue operation of Perot’s employees trapped in Iran back in 1978. And they got them home in one piece.
There has been a miniseries and book written about the rescue in the eighties, but below I found a current interview where Ross Perot actually talks about particulars of the rescue. He mentions a man in Iran named Rashid who was very instrumental to this operation, and if I can find any articles about his effort, I will make an edit and add this to the post.
What is also interesting is that Congressman Ron Paul actually mentioned this rescue when he was discussing the concept of using the Letter of Marque as a means for using private industry for today’s wars. I guess the point with this is that Col. Simons was able to plan and conduct a rescue mission through private means and with the help and support of a very rich and determined CEO of EDS, and accomplished the mission. (Hewlett-Packard is the new name of Electronic Data Systems now) In other words, it is another example of what private industry can do when it comes to conducting military-like operations.
The other point I wanted to make is that this rescue was in a way a chance for Col. Simons to conduct a rescue operation that he could make up for the Son Tay Raid during the Vietnam War. The Son Tay Raid (Operation Ivory Coast) was a famous rescue operation he commanded, and tactically speaking it was successful. But because of poor intelligence they had no idea that the prison camp did not have POW’s, and they came up empty handed. That would’ve sucked, but I still give them a lot of credit for pulling off what they did.
But I can bet you one thing that the Son Tay Raid was weighing heavily on the mind of Simons as he conducted his planning and preparations for this private EDS rescue. I am sure all the Vietnam veterans working for EDS at the time were highly supportive of this rescue as well, because of what it symbolized and what Ross Perot cared about at the time. And that is getting your men back home, whether they are POWs in Vietnam or EDS employees in Iran. That is what really made this cool and why it belongs here on FJ. –Matt
Buy the book On Wings of Eagles, the story about this rescue, here.
KEEPING FAITH: THE PEROT TOUCH
(From an interview in Year In Special Operations)
June 2010
For all the giving Perot has done over the years, there was one special occasion where it came back to him, when in 1978 two of his EDS executives were taken hostage by the Iranian government. When attempts to resolve the situation through diplomacy failed, Perot made the decision to act on his own. Remembering Col. Bull Simons, who had retired a few years earlier, Perot called him and asked him if he would organize and lead the rescue of his men in Iran. Within days, Simons was selecting and training a team of EDS employees (all highly decorated Vietnam veterans) into a hostage rescue team to rescue the two executives from the Tehran prison and bring them home.
*****
In what may be the ultimate act of employer loyalty – the Iran rescue – you go to Iran in 1979 to get your people out. Can you talk a bit about what happened?
Before I left for Iran, I visited with my mother who was dying of cancer. I explained the situation to her, and that two of my men had been falsely arrested and jailed. She looked me squarely in the eye and said, “Ross, these are your men. You sent them over there and it’s your obligation to get them out.” What does that say about her?
Days later I was with Simons and the team in our safe house, and he looked me in the eye one day and said, “Perot … see if the U.S. Embassy will allow these men to receive refuge at the embassy when we get them out of prison.” That was the biggest mistake we made, because when I talked to the American ambassador he said “No,” and two hours later, the Iranian security forces were tearing up the town looking for me. Simons then said, “Perot, I want you to go to the prison where the men are held. Visit with them, and tell them what our plan of action is, so that they know where the rendezvous point is, what they’re supposed to do, etc.”
I replied, “Colonel, the Iranians are still looking for me.”
He replied, “One branch of the Iranian government is looking for you, but another branch of the government runs the prison. They don’t talk to one another – they won’t know anything about you at the prison.”
If Bull Simons told you to do it, you did it. A rescue team member drove me to the prison where the two EDS executives were being held. It was a giant fortress, with everyone standing in front, and there were at least a hundred camera crews there. I thought, “Well, this is it.” I walked past them and they ignored me. I thought to myself, “There must be somebody else here.” I went in, walked up to the reception room and there was former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, sitting there talking to the general in charge of the prison. Ramsey leaned forward and pointed at me, and spoke to the general. The general politely arranged for me to meet with Paul Chiapparone and Bill Gaylord [the two detained EDS executives], and I then left. After I returned home, and the story of the rescue was in all the papers, Ramsey called me and said, “Ross, I thought you were Frank Borman,” [the retired U.S. Air Force colonel, NASA astronaut, commander of the Gemini VII and Apollo 8 missions and then-president of Eastern Airlines] and I said, “Thank God!”
The man who actually led the rescue at the prison was an Iranian systems engineer working in our company – we called him “Rashid.” Simons roamed the streets of Tehran and observed huge numbers of Iranian terrorist teams. Simons had the genius to have Rashid create an Iranian “terrorist” team so that Rashid, as a leader, could attend the morning meetings. There were lots of these teams all over Tehran, and they would meet each morning to plan their daily activities. Simons learned that the team leaders also attended, so this meant Rashid was able to go to the meetings. Simons asked Rashid to form a team to infiltrate the revolutionary movement. Before the jailbreak actually occurred, Simons told Rashid, “See if you can bribe the police chief to leave open the police armory, where all the weapons [are] stored.” Rashid paid them $100, less than the cost of a pistol, to leave the police armory open. Rashid and his team attended the next morning meeting with more weapons than you can imagine. Rashid, who by now was very well regarded by his fellow terrorist team leaders, distributed weapons around the room, and shouted “Gasre Prison is our Bastille. It is our responsibility to free the thousands of political prisoners.”
One hour later, 30,000 terrorists stormed the prison and the guards were stripped down to their long underwear [and they] never fired a shot. 12,000 prisoners were allowed to escape so that our two men could also escape.
Our team drove their vehicles over 500 miles to the Turkish border before they ran into trouble. They were within 30 miles of the border when a group of Islamic revolutionaries stopped the vehicles, pulled Simons out, and started hitting him with a rifle butt. Simons, with no comment, pulled a note out of his pocket and handed it to them. The note read, “These people are friends of the revolution; please show them courtesy and escort them safely to the border, signed, Commandant of the Tehran Islamic Revolutionary Committee,” and it had a big seal. If you were to read the seal closely, it said, “Rezaieh Religious School: Founded 1344.” Simons gave me the note when he arrived in Turkey. He translated the words on the seal to me. I can tell you that I carefully read all seals on documents now!
The point is, it could never have happened without Bull Simons. The team did it – and nobody was hurt. It was too good to be true. When we landed in Dallas, my mother was at the airport, sitting in her car just outside the exit door. She was determined to see my two men reunited with their families. Mother passed away a few weeks later.
Year In Special Operations link here.
Wiki for Arthur D. Simons here.
Wiki for the Son Tay Raid here.
——————————————————————
This is the real-life story of a Green Beret colonel, who came out of retirement to lead a secret raid, the computer executives, shaped into a crack commando team and the Texas industrialist, who would not abandon two Americans in an Iranian jail. After a hairbreadth escape, there is a desperate race for safety. Today the team is back home living normal lives. But for a while, they lived a legend.