BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, 1985) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has pulled a hand grenade pin, and he is ready to blow up the aircraft if he has to. We must, I repeat, we must land at Beirut.</s>JIM CLANCY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the hostage crisis began with the hijacking of an airliner. It eventually landed in Beirut, and people -- the hostages were taken off the plane. This had become now a very serious situation, because already you had Westerners being held hostage in Beirut. The fear was that nearly 200 people were going to be taken hostage and held in Beirut. The U.S. government was already in a nightmare over all of this. (</s>BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, 1985) UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Are you doing anything to recover safely the hijacked TWA airplane?</s>RONALD REAGAN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Everything that can be done...</s>CLANCY: There were more then one radical group in Beirut. You had one group had taken off some of the hostages for themselves. And they were going to continue to hold them to try to get their relatives out of prison, to try to get people released from Israeli jails. Broadly, yes, it resulted in the release of hundreds, if not thousands of Lebanese prisoners from Israeli jails, but there was a sense that a disaster had been averted, a real disaster. U.S. foreign policy was being held hostage by the hostage situation in Lebanon. Add 200 souls to that, and you create a nightmare.
CNN 20: TWA Hijacking to Beirut