Sea Of Lies

Captain Rogers insisted to "Nightline" last week that he had made the "proper decision." He opened fire only to protect his ship and crew, he said. But drawing on declassified documents, video and audiotape from the ships involved in the incident, and well over 100 interviews, NEWSWEEK has pieced together an account that belies the skipper's stoic defense. It is almost a parable for an era of "limited" warfare, with its blurry rules of engagement and its lethal technology in frightened young hands. It is as well an age-old story of hubris, of a warrior who wanted war too much.

A MURKY MORNING

At 6:33 local time on the Vincennes, on the morning of July 3, the phone buzzed in Will Rogers's cramped sleeping quarters. The captain was shaving. Already, just two hours after sunrise, the 100-degree heat of the sun was overwhelming the ship's air-conditioning system. Fine-grained sand whipped across the gulf from the Arabian Desert, creating a yellowish haze. Rogers picked up the phone. It was the duty officer in the ship's combat information center, the nerve center two decks below Rogers's sea cabin: "Skipper, you better come down. It sounds like the Montgomery has her nose in a beehive."

Some 50 miles to the northeast, the U.S. Navy frigate Montgomery was coming through the western entrance of the Strait of Hormuz. Every day, tankers bearing half the world's imported oil wend their way through the strait, only 32 miles wide at its choke point. The Iran-Iraq War had turned the strait into a gantlet. Gunboats of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, based on the islands of Hengam and Abu Musa, had been attacking tankers and merchantmen bound to and from Kuwait, Iraq's main ally in the war. Anxious to keep Kuwait's oil flowing, the United States had agreed to provide escort to Kuwaiti tankers registered under the U.S. flag.

On this July morning, the Montgomery spotted a half-dozen Revolutionary Guard launches venturing out from their island hideouts. On his own, Rogers decided to enter the fray. At 6:33, the Vincennes log records, he ordered "all ahead flank." The cruiser's four massive gas-turbine engines cranked up 80,000 horsepower and sent the warship smashing through the waves at 30 knots.

By 6:50-according to the official version of events later offered by the navy-the Montgomery had spotted 13 Iranian gunboats in the strait. Several were said to be milling about near a Liberian tanker called the Stoval. At 7:11, the Montgomery reported hearing "five to seven" explosions coming from the vicinity of the tanker. It was only when the radio crackled with the report of these mysterious explosions that fleet headquarters in Bahrain thought to call the Vincennes. Rear Adm. Anthony Less, the commander of the Joint Task Force-Middle East, ordered the cruiser northeast to support the Montgomery. The Bahrain command wasn't interested in drawing the Vincennes into action, however. Admiral Less merely wanted to dispatch the Vincennes's helicopter on a reconnaissance mission. So Capt. Richard McKenna, Less's chief of surface warfare, relayed what he thought were clear orders to Rogers: send your helo north to investigate, but keep your ship farther south, in case more boats emerge from the Revolutionary Guard base on Abu Musa.