January 28, 1982: The Rescue of General James Dozier

January 28, 1982: Brigadier General James Dozier, U.S. Army, is rescued by Italian police, 42 days after being kidnapped. He remains the only American flag officer ever taken prisoner by a violent non-state actor.

James Lee Dozier was born on April 10, 1931 in Fort Myers, Florida. A 1956 classmate of Norman Schwarzkopf at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, he became a U.S. Army Ranger, and was awarded a Silver Star and 3 Bronze Stars in the Vietnam War.

He held the rank of Brigadier General (1 star) and was stationed in Verona, Italy on December 17, 1981, when he was kidnapped by the Red Brigades. Founded in 1970, they were a Marxist terrorist group trying to establish a Communist state in Italy. In 1978, they kidnapped and murdered former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. Their hope in kidnapping Dozier was to upset the friendly relations between America and fellow NATO member Italy.

I remember seeing this story on the news every night, and it felt like a new version of the Iran Hostage Crisis of a year earlier. But it ended much faster: On January 28, 1982, Italy's Polizia di Stato sent its Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza (NOCS, or "Central Security Task Group") to rescue Dozier. They managed to arrest the entire terrorist cell holding him, without firing a shot.

He was welcomed to the White House by President Ronald Reagan, and retired in 1985 with the rank of Major General. As of January 28, 2022, he is still alive.

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January 28, 1982 was a Thursday. Baseball was out of season. Football season had ended 4 days earlier, with the San Francisco 49ers beating the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XVI. There were 8 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Washington Bullets, 102-98 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Cleveland Cavaliers,116-104 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio. Larry Bird scored 33 points.

* The Golden State Warriors beat the Chicago Bulls, 111-110 at the Chicago Stadium. Bernard King scored 32 points for the Warriors.

* The Houston Rockets beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 109-101 at The Summit in Houston. (It's now the Central Campus of televangelist Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church.) Moses Malone scored 31 points and grabbed 20 rebounds.

* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Kansas City Kings, 126-115 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio. George Gervin scored 37.

* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Utah Jazz, 119-101 at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah. Adrian Dantley scored 32.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Phoenix Suns, 97-87 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored 31.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the San Diego Clippers, 96-93 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.

There were 2 games in the NHL. In an "Original Six" matchup, the Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins, 6-3 at the Boston Garden. And the St. Louis Blues beat the Minnesota North Stars, 8-3 at the Checkerdome, as the St. Louis Arena was known at the time.