[Team Sergeant]

POW Rescue at Son Tay

Meadows' best known mission had to be the Son Tay Raid, the November, 1970 attempted rescue of American POWs from a prison 23 miles west of Hanoi. Meadows didn't merely lead the assault element, but served as the primary trainer of the entire raiding force, teaching them everything he'd learned about close quarters combat and small unit tactics.

When the raiders landed at Son Tay, it was Meadows' voice on the megaphone that called, "We're Americans. Keep your heads down. This is a rescue.... We'll be in your cells in a minute."

But Son Tay was empty, its POWs moved while the camp was being refurbished. Though an intelligence failure, the raid boosted POW morale and compelled Hanoi, at last, to cease mistreating American prisoners.

Son Tay inspired the Israeli rescue mission six years later at Entebbe, right down to the megaphone instructions to captives.

Our Man in Tehran

Dick Meadows retired with 30 years service in 1977, but he couldn't stay away long, especially when Colonel 'Chargin' Charlie' Beckwith asked him to be the civilian trainer of his newly formed counter-terrorist unit, Delta Force.

The adaptable Meadows applied all he knew of long range raiding, recon and close combat, and modified it to fit the terrorism environment, resulting in the world's most respected counter- terrorist organization.

He retired again in 1980, then a few months later came back to assist Delta's hostage rescue in Iran. The Carter Administration had gutted the CIA of operatives capable of reconning the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, leaving Delta Force planners without the tactical details they needed.

A CIA bureaucrat initially rejected Meadows as a covert advance man, calling him, "An amateur with poor cover, poor backup and poor training." Meadows told the CIA he'd go into Tehran with or without their assistance. Given those options, CIA Director Stansfield Turner approved Meadows and had him issued a false Irish passport. Apparently, Iranian immigration couldn't tell the difference between an Irish brogue and West Virginia twang, because they waved Meadows -- posing as 'Richard Keith,' a European auto company executive -- right through customs.

Meadows surveilled the U.S. Embassy, reconned Delta Force's planned route into the city and watched for any hint of hostile counter-surveillance at the warehouse in which the CIA and a Green Beret advance team had hidden Delta's trucks and gear.

Meadows would guide the Delta raiders then join them in the assault -- but they never got to him.

Deep in the Iranian desert, Delta's mission was aborted, two aircraft collided and its helicopters had to be abandoned. But in their rush to escape, the chopper pilots haphazardly left behind documents that disclosed Meadows' warehouse location. Due to satellite communications problems, Meadows did not learn what had happened for 24 hours and barely escaped into Turkey.

Meadows also played a yet undisclosed role in the 1979 rescue of two H. Ross Perot employees from an Iranian prison, a mission led by his old boss, Colonel Arthur 'Bull' Simons, which was the basis of Ken Follett's 1983 bestseller, "On Wings of Eagles."

Meadows Last Patrol

Despite an affinity for bass fishing, Meadows still could not retire. In the mid-1980s he volunteered to operate an aircraft refueling front in the Caribbean to ensnare Columbian drug cartel smugglers.

Then he operated for a decade in Peru, helping plantation owners and businesses defend themselves from Sendero Luminosa terrorists who'd have liked nothing more than put a bullet through him -- they never got close.

Twice he told me he'd become frustrated by inadequacies in the War on Drugs, and doubted U.S. sincerity. Though he was not on the U.S. government payroll, many times over the past decade he helped 'the community' in ways which must remain unsaid. Several times he negotiated the release of kidnap victims in South America.

Within weeks of his death, Meadows was still active in Central America. During his career he'd been awarded every U.S. valor award except the Medal of Honor. "If he hadn't done so many things that are classified, he'd have been the most decorated soldier in the Army," Colonel Elliot 'Bud' Sydnor, the ground force commander at Son Tay, told Newsweek magazine for a 1982 cover story.

When H. Ross Perot learned of Meadows' imminent death, he reportedly phoned President Clinton to see that he was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal. It was presented posthumously to his family by the U.S. Special Operations Command commander, General Wayne Downing, who relayed the President's condolences and called Meadows, "one of America's finest unsung heroes."

Facing the certainty of death in his last week, he told me, "It's like I'm preparing for one last patrol." In those final days, Gen. Downing assured Meadows there would be a SOCOM award for young special operators to commemorate his name.

Having come so close at Son Tay and in Tehran, Dick once told me his only unfulfilled wish in life was, "To lead one that succeeded." That's the job now for younger men he and his record will inspire, perhaps a recipient of the award that bears his name.