Mission Compromised (7 page)

Dubbed “Task Force Ranger” by the Pentagon, this extraordinary group of highly trained specialists had been secretly dispatched to war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, in August 1993. Their mission: to capture or kill the murderous Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, or, failing that, to disable his brutal Somalia National Alliance (SNA). In his bid for power, General Aidid had declared war on anyone and everyone and didn't care that he was now fighting the most powerful nation on earth.

When Captain Jim Newman and his Delta operators had deployed, he and all those with him were confident that they would deal with this petty, tinhorn despot in short order. It had all seemed so easy when they arrived at the sunbaked airport beside the Indian Ocean, less than 250 miles north of the equator. But when they landed and the airplane's door opened, the rush of hot air—literally like an oven—seemed to suck their breath away.

And from then on, it only got worse. Intelligence on Aidid's whereabouts and those of his key lieutenants was as scarce as a cold drink of water. The CIA and the Army's Intelligence Support Activity, called “ISA” by the Delta shooters, had a presence in Mogadishu, but they weren't located at the airport with Task Force Ranger. Instead, they were at the bombed-out, windowless, and vandalized former residence of the U.S. ambassador.

In his letters to his older brother back home, Jim Newman had written that there were other problems as well—the kind of problems that both Newman boys had learned to avoid at their respective service academies. In one of his early missives, shortly after arriving in Mogadishu, Jim had written,
“Get this. We're the only outfit on the ground in Somalia that reports directly to U. S. command authority. All the other military units here report to the UN. God help us if we ever need real backup. I wonder if anyone back there remembers those lessons from Clausewitz on unity of command!”
In the aftermath, Peter Newman would re-read his brother's words and wonder if anyone in Washington had had the same misgivings.

In his last note to his brother, written on September 20, Jim Newman had shared more of his concerns and uncertainties than ever before. Newman kept the letter in a folder in his desk.

 

Dear Pete
,

Greetings once again from the armpit of Africa. They are calling this mission “Operation Gothic Serpent.” It's appropriate because this guy Aidid really is a snake. He not only has the home-field advantage, but he's getting outside help. Our intel guys say that Aidid is getting a big boost from a Saudi exile named Osama bin Laden. It looks as though this guy bin Laden has used his own considerable bankroll to send in a bunch of his hired guns, who have been itching for a fight ever since the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. The ISA guys say that bin Laden's thugs are the ones who taught the Somalis how to tinker with the fuse on an RPG so that it can be used to shoot down helicopters. It has certainly made life very interesting for all of us.

Last week the blue bonnets at the UN really botched one up big-time. Somebody told 'em that Aidid was holding a big powwow downtown, so the UN
—
that's right, the UN
—
sent six gunships in to take the building apart with TOWs and Hellfire missiles. Killed about a dozen of Aidid's cronies, but the boss was a no-show.

Aidid and this Osama guy have now declared that it's payback time and they have their “technicals”
—
Somalis in Toyota pickup trucks with .50-cal machine guns in the back
—
racing around town shooting at anything with a UN or U.S. flag As if that wasn't bad enough, when the UN “peacekeepers” from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Malaysia aren't shooting at Somalis, they are holding intramural fire fights with each other. Our boss has asked for some armor to help get things back under control, and your Marines have some offshore, but apparently nobody at the Pentagon's puzzle palace wants to tell the folks at
1600 PA Ave. that this little nation-building exercise is coming unraveled.

That's it from the “war is hell” and the “disasters-in-progress” departments. Give Rachel my love. Tell Mom and Dad when you talk to them that little Jimmy is doing just fine and that, in exchange for two camels and a goat, I have purchased eleven beautiful Somali wives to look after me in my old age.

 

He had signed it
“Rangers lead the way. Love, Jim.
“And then at the very bottom of the page, he had penned:
“P.S. Tell Mom and our sister that I
am
saying my prayers!”

Less than two weeks after he sent that letter, forty-two days after he and his comrades arrived in Somalia, Jim Newman and seventeen of his fellow Delta Force operators, Rangers, and airmen were dead and seventy-three others were wounded. The next communication that Peter Newman read about his brother was the stark Mailgram that his parents had received on October 5, the day after a ritual visit by an Army colonel and a military chaplain to their home along the Hudson River in upstate New York. The Mailgram left them with more questions than answers:

 

DEAR BRIGADIER GEN. AND MRS. NEWMAN:

THIS CONFIRMS PERSONAL NOTIFICATION MADE TO YOU BY A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY THAT YOUR SON, CAPTAIN JAMES B. NEWMAN, DIED AT MOGADISHU SOMALIA ON 3 OCTOBER 1993. ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO YOUR CASUALTY ASSISTANCE OFFICER. PLEASE ACCEPT MY DEEPEST SYMPATHY IN YOUR BEREAVEMENT.

 

SINCERELY,
WILLIAM E. WILKES, COLONEL, U.S. ARMY

 

Peter Newman didn't have to turn to the casualty assistance officer for answers to his questions, for he knew much more about his brother's death than the terse official Army notification had revealed. At Headquarters Marine Corps—“HQMC” to Marines—Newman had been responsible for briefing the Marines' senior officers on all issues regarding “Special Operations,” the euphemism to describe activities conducted by units like Marine Force Reconnaissance, the Navy SEALs, and the supersecret Delta Force.

The military's Special Operations units are comprised of highly trained warriors, all volunteers, handpicked to do the most difficult and dangerous tasks in the U.S. armed forces. They are the ones called upon to conduct deep reconnaissance, collect covert intelligence, rescue hostages, operate “behind the lines,” “take out” terrorists, and succeed in real-life “impossible” missions.

Newman's job at the HQMC had required that he pore over highly classified after-action reports and back-channel cables between the commanders of these units and their home bases, extract “lessons learned,” and incorporate them into Marine Corps doctrine. Many of the reports he had sent in from the field years before, when he had commanded the Second Force Reconnaissance Company, were still in the locked files of his office at HQMC.

Now, thirteen months after his brother's horrible death, here he was sitting in the White House Situation Room while his new boss prattled on over the phone. Newman could still vividly recall how he had learned the terrible news.

 

 

At 6:55 A.M. on Sunday, October 3, 1993, the Marine Headquarters Command Center duty officer had called Newman at his
home in Falls Church. Newman was already up, and as was his practice when his wife was out of town, he'd already been out for an early morning three-mile run in the crisp, early autumn dawn.

“Major Newman? Warrant Officer Davidson, here at the command center. Sorry to bother you on the weekend, but NMCC has advised us that a hostile-fire event is going down in Mogadishu. There's a lot of secure traffic coming across, and CMC is going to want a brief on this in the morning.”

“Roger that, Gunner. I'll be there in about forty minutes.” Newman knew that's how long it would take him to shower, change into his uniform, and drive to the Navy Annex, the official name for the five-story World War II—era, faded yellow brick row of warehouses that the Marines called HQMC.

Rachel was due into Dulles that afternoon, inbound on a flight from London, so Newman left a note for her before heading into town. He turned his radio to 1500 AM, Washington's all-news station. There was a report on rumors of a coup being plotted against Boris Yeltsin in Moscow, a story about the President's travel itinerary for a trip to the West Coast, and a sports piece hyping Monday evening's Washington Redskins game in Miami. There was nothing at all in the newscast about events happening a third of the way around the world in Somalia.

It was shortly before 7:45 A.M. when Newman arrived at the HQMC security gate, and it was immediately obvious to him that he wasn't the only one to have gotten a call from the command center. On a Sunday morning in peacetime the headquarters parking lot should be nearly empty. Instead, several dozen cars were parked inside the fence surrounding the building. He noticed that his boss, Lieutenant General George Grisham, the deputy chief of staff for
Operations and Plans, was already there. Clearly, something big affecting the U.S. military was happening. Newman recognized the feeling that was growing in his gut. It wasn't hunger from not eating breakfast. It was dread.

Newman bounded up two flights of stairs to what everyone else in the world would have called the third floor. But not the Marines. In keeping with the tradition of the naval service, the ground floor was known as “zero deck,” the second floor was first deck, the third floor was known as the second deck, and so on.

Most of the “heavies,” or the general officers, had their offices on the second deck, as did the commandant, the top Marine. Because the corps was so very small, they all knew Newman, and even though the assignment was highly classified, they also knew he had a brother serving with Delta who had been dispatched with Task Force Ranger to Mogadishu. Newman went immediately to the command center and presented his ID card to the sentry, a Marine corporal.

After checking the ID card against a list of names on a clipboard and making sure that the photo on the card matched the officer standing in front of him, the corporal hit a button beneath the counter. There was a buzzing sound as the electronic lock on the door opened and Newman stepped into the command center.

Inside, he was greeted by a quiet hum of activity and a dozen people—five more than the usual contingent of watch officers, noncommissioned officers, and communicators. Two technicians were bent over one of the secure video receivers. The screen was mostly a mass of visual static, but occasionally it would shimmer with the aerial view of a sunbaked city and its streets and buildings. Even from the intermittent images, Newman knew what he was seeing: the city of Mogadishu from several thousand feet in the air, captured by
high-powered video cameras mounted on a Navy EP-3 Orion surveillance aircraft. The images flickering on the screen were beamed from the plane flying at ten thousand feet over eastern Africa, up to a satellite, and back down to U.S. military commanders and intelligence centers at the airport in Mogadishu, and to intelligence and command centers in Florida, North Carolina, Washington, and other sensitive military installations.

As Newman leaned over the monitor in hopes that the adjustments made by the two techs would bring up a steady picture, his boss hung up one of the secure phones—the direct link to the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon.

“Pete, I'm glad you're here,” said General Grisham. “I'm not going to beat around the bush. About two hours ago your brother's Delta team was sent into the Black Sea in Mog to snatch a couple of Aidid's thugs. His D-boys got to their objective and took the target subjects into custody, but two Black Hawks have gone down and now ninety-nine Delta operators and Rangers are stranded in a really bad part of town.”

“Bad part of town” was putting it mildly. The Marines, first sent to Somalia in 1992 and then pulled out in May of 1993, had irreverently started calling the area around Mogadishu's Bakara Market the “Black Sea.” It was a stronghold for Mohammed Farrah Aidid and his Habr Gidr clan, and the place where he recruited thousands of young fighters for his so-called Somali National Alliance. The “Black Sea” handle stuck, and it was now commonplace to refer to the neighborhood by its racially tinged nickname. It was not the place for a gunfight.

Newman listened as General Grisham continued. “I've reminded the Joint Staff that in addition to help from the Tenth Mountain
Division Quick Reaction Force, they also have a Marine Expeditionary Unit with tanks, light armored vehicles, helos, gunships, and Harriers aboard the amphibious ready group offshore. It's almost 1600 hours out there now. They think that they will be able to get everyone out before dark, but I'm not so sure.”

Newman wasn't so sure either. He had been to Mogadishu twice with his Force Recon Teams—but that was before the new commander in chief had rolled into town with his team of “nation builders.” Since then, things had gone from bad to worse in Somalia, and now, of all things, the UN was in charge!

The general looked down at his notes, then back at Newman. “The chairman has called for a planners' meeting in the Tank at 1300. I want you and Colonel Weeks to work up some options for us, and let's see if we can help them figure a way to get your brother out of this mess without getting him or any more Americans hurt.”