Relentless Strike : The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command (9781466876224) (35 page)

The East European had his own case officer at Delta, an Army major, but the former Delta operator also had the authority to recruit and task agents himself. “Businessmen and people in the military were the people he was talking to,” a senior JSOC officer said. “He was trained sufficiently enough to make contact with folks, give them covert communications,” and teach them basic tradecraft such as how to perform dead drops and use the simple cameras he gave them. The East European never revealed his American background, even when recruiting his sources, the officer said. His agents never realized they had been recruited by an American.

After the September 11 attacks, intelligence and special operations officials wondered whether they were maximizing the opportunity the East European represented. “In late '01 … there was a lot of discussion about … leveraging him more and better,” said an intelligence officer. “He was an asset that everybody realized may not have been leveraged in the most opportune ways.”

Already in his fifties when the United States invaded Iraq, the East European had a cover his native country helped maintain, even giving him access to its Baghdad embassy. “This was a rare program in 2001–2002,” the senior JSOC officer said. Nonetheless, the East European was one of about seven or eight nonofficial cover operatives JSOC and its special mission units were running in the first years after the September 11 attacks. These included at least two agents who went to Iran, the officer said: the East European, whose missions “were mostly designed to … look for opportunities to recruit [sources] in the Iranian military,” and an Iranian-born U.S. citizen working for the Army of Northern Virginia.

Now the East European was on one of his most dangerous missions. He was not alone on the long drive from Amman to Baghdad, but his companions “were unwitting,” the senior JSOC officer said. In other words, they were unaware that the vehicle in which they were riding was no ordinary SUV. The National Security Agency had outfitted it with a variety of hidden receivers that the agency's technicians could remotely tune to survey cell phone and push-to-talk FM radio network traffic. This, in turn, enabled the NSA to focus on specific emitters. When they reached Baghdad, as directed, the East European parked it close to an Iraqi intelligence headquarters and left it there. Because the vehicle's hidden receivers could collect with a lot more sensitivity than satellites or airborne collection systems, the NSA used them to tip and cue those other sensors. In addition, the receivers could capture a large chunk of the radio frequency spectrum in Baghdad and transmit it back to be unraveled at the NSA's Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters. “We were desperate back in 2003” for information on the Iraqi leadership's thinking and intentions, the senior JSOC officer said. The hope was that, for instance, the receivers would enable the NSA to figure out which frequencies senior Iraqi government officials' personal security details were using. “If you were trying to establish every time that Saddam Hussein's PSD [personal security detail] drove around Baghdad, this was a way of doing that,” he said. “The Iraqis were notoriously poor at opsec [operational security],” often not changing their frequencies for years, he said. But although the East European successfully positioned the vehicle and the technical side of the mission worked, the JSOC officer didn't recall the effort producing “a lot of intel.”

“That was not really our op,” he said. “We were the delivery guys.”

After dropping the vehicle off, the East European's task in Baghdad was to figure out and transmit Saddam's location for targeting by U.S. air strikes. In several cases, he conducted what a former Pentagon special operations official called “a GPS walk-by,” strolling through Baghdad while wearing a Global Positioning System tracking device and pressing a button that transmitted his exact coordinates via satellite as he passed a potential target location. Such missions entailed enormous risk, not only from the Iraqi security services if the agent was compromised, but from the bombing campaign itself. Protecting him required careful, up-to-the-minute planning of the air strikes. One such strike was launched based on intelligence he provided, but Saddam was not at the targeted location.

The East European's efforts were largely in vain. “He had not recruited any sources that were giving him the whereabouts of Saddam,” the senior JSOC officer said. A Delta source said the agent's European background was not much help. “It would have been better if he had been an Arab American, because no matter what embassy you're with, if you're not an Iraqi, walking around in those days would be a death sentence,” he said, adding that the agent was able to provide JSOC task force leaders with little more than “environmentals”—general information about what they could expect in Baghdad. Once U.S. troops had occupied Baghdad, the East European drove back to Amman. “It's perhaps another opportunity that wasn't fully taken advantage of, but nothing really of substance came of it,” the Delta source said.

When the East European's case officer moved to a job at the Defense Humint Service in the summer of 2004, and was not replaced, the East European followed him, according to an intelligence source. This represented a loss to Delta—“the guy was irreplaceable,” said a Delta source—and played into the larger issue over whether special mission units should run nonofficial cover agents. By the end of the decade, the CIA was spending between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion a year to maintain its officers' cover, and senior Pentagon leaders were hugely frustrated at the Agency's inability to deliver actionable intelligence in places like Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

Even in the 1990s, putting operators undercover was “difficult … unless you're lucky enough to have been born and raised in another country and have a credible missing part of your life,” a Delta source said. Because soldiers go on the Department of the Army Special Roster when they join Delta, essentially hiding them from the public, the East European fulfilled both requirements. “Then you need an ally who's going to cover for you” and create a history for that missing part of the operator's life, “which they did.” In the twenty-first century, creating that sort of deep “cover for status”—i.e., a plausible reason for an intelligence operative to repeatedly visit or live in certain countries—for JSOC personnel had become almost impossible “because it requires immersion and time,” the source said.
“
It's just impossible to make that happen without all that other stuff in place.”

As for the vehicle packed with top secret antennae? “I want to say the vehicle was destroyed,” the senior JSOC officer said, but added that he could not be sure. “That vehicle was not exfil'd and we didn't target it” for an air strike, he said.
10

*   *   *

As per Dailey's orders, Task Force Green's first task was to check out a number of possible weapons of mass destruction and Scud sites in the west, before moving on to the Haditha Dam, a vast Soviet-designed structure on the Euphrates River 130 miles northwest of Baghdad that U.S. generals viewed as another potential WMD hiding place. Unlike his bosses, Blaber, who remained at Arar, was skeptical Saddam had stashed any WMD in remote sites in the western desert. The Delta officer thought it more likely the Iraqi strongman would keep such weapons, if he had them, closer to the seat of power in Baghdad. Another mission beckoned. In the weeks prior to the invasion, U.S. signals intelligence had intercepted an Iraqi general's phone calls as he drove along Highway 12 to and from the Syrian border, raising the possibility that the general was reconnoitering an escape route for the regime's leaders. Blaber ordered Coultrup to block the routes to Jordan and Syria in an effort to prevent Saddam, his sons, and other senior leaders from escaping the noose that the Coalition would soon tighten around Baghdad.
11

For several days Task Force Green raised havoc in western Iraq, ambushing Iraqi military convoys and clearing suspected weapons of mass destruction sites, none of which held anything remotely suspicious.
12
In the meantime, as the 3rd Infantry and 1st Marine Divisions raced toward Baghdad in the fastest military advance in history, it was becoming increasingly clear in Arar that the armored columns could take the airport without JSOC's help. Despite Dailey's desperate attempts to hold on to it, Task Force 20's set-piece mission to seize the Iraqi capital's airport was evaporating before his eyes. “He was jamming a marshmallow in a piggy bank there trying to get an airfield seizure mission,” said a Delta source. On March 23 the Rangers learned that the mission, which had been scheduled for the next day, was canceled. Attention now focused on Task Force Green, whose foray into Iraq Dailey had only grudgingly approved. “Suddenly it's like this is
the
JSOC mission,” the Delta source said. Colonel Joe Votel, still in charge of the Ranger Regiment, which would have been the main force seizing the airport, found himself looking for a new mission. “Pete, I don't have a mission. Is there anything my guys could do for you?” he asked Blaber. “How many guys are you talking about?” the Delta officer replied. “A whole regiment,” Votel said. “Yeah, we can use it!” was Blaber's reply. Dailey quickly attached Votel's 1st Battalion to Task Force Green.
13

The Rangers were soon in the thick of the action, much of which involved seizing desert landing strips and military airfields. On the evening of March 24, 3rd Ranger Battalion's C Company seized Objective Roadrunner, a desert landing strip near Al Qaim close to the Syrian border, in a parachute assault.
14
The Rangers secured the strip while a small Delta element, supported by a pair each of MH-6s and AH-6s, operated from there, interdicting lines of communication. (Task Force Brown's DAPs had finished their portion of the mission to destroy the visual observation posts on March 20, while the Black Swarm teams continued through March 23, pushing a little deeper into Iraq every night. From then on, Brown focused on supporting the Task Force 20 ground forces.)
15

Task Force Green conducted raids on two airfields, H-2 and H-3, in western Iraq's Anbar province, and 1st Ranger Battalion seized another pair of airfields, Sidewinder South and Sidewinder North. The latter missions began the night of March 23 when the battalion's A Company plus a small battalion command element crossed into Iraq in newly fielded ground mobility vehicles (GMVs), driving twelve hours to a desert landing strip called Objective Coyote. The Rangers were fortunate to arrive in daylight, because the objective was strewn with unexploded ordnance. The company and battalion commanders were deep in the planning for the assault on Sidewinder South, which included the village of Nukhayb and a small military garrison as well as the airfield, when the dust storm that slowed the entire invasion hit on March 24. The Rangers at Coyote could do little other than seek shelter for two days. When the storm abated on the evening of March 26, the Rangers mounted up and drove thirty-five miles to the objective, which they cleared over the course of twelve hours, encountering little resistance.

Leaving a small element at Nukhayb, A Company returned to Coyote, where a C-17 landed on the night of March 27, disgorging 1st Battalion's C Company and a Humvee-mounted 82nd Airborne Division antitank company. With one platoon remaining at Coyote, C Company moved to Nukhayb to relieve the remaining A Company elements, who then assaulted Sidewinder North, at the village of Mudaysis on the night of March 29, supported by a 120mm mortar section, AH-6 gunships, and A-10 ground attack jets. They again encountered little resistance and after destroying weapons and munitions caches returned to Arar via Coyote.
16

Task Force Brown, 2nd Ranger Battalion, and Team 6's Gold Team got a much hotter reception when they raided the Al Qadisiyah Research Center, otherwise known as Objective Beaver, on the night of March 26. Located on the southern shore of the man-made lake north of the Haditha Dam, the research center was a suspected biological and chemical weapons facility. The raid was a classic JSOC set-piece operation: Rangers from 2nd Battalion's B Company landed in four MH-60K Black Hawks and established four blocking positions, isolating the facility. Two MH-47E Chinooks delivered the Gold Team assaulters next to the target building, while a pair each of DAPs and AH-6s provided fire support, as did two MH-6s used as Gold Team sniper platforms. Another two Chinooks would be close by, prepared to infil an immediate reaction force.

After refueling and picking up four Gold Team snipers, the Little Birds launched from Roadrunner, which was only thirty-five miles from Al Qadisiyah. The larger Task Force Brown aircraft flew straight from Arar, refueling in midair, before dividing into two groups. The Chinooks and Black Hawks flew through a hail of bullets as they converged on the target, while the DAPs attacked the town's power station two and a half miles away, in the process setting the oil in the transformers aflame. “It looked like a nuclear bomb went off,” said an MH-6 pilot.

Fierce resistance, including armor-piercing rounds, met the assault force at the research center. The Chinook and Black Hawk door gunners responded with devastating minigun fire, and AH-6 pilot CW4 John Meehan expertly put a rocket through the front door of the government building from which much of the firing was emanating, suppressing the threat instantly. The Rangers' luck held until the fourth Black Hawk landed at its assigned blocking position. A bullet flew into the cabin and hit a Ranger in the back, passing through his chest before getting stuck in his body armor. With a crew chief and a Gold Team SEAL fighting to keep the Ranger alive, the pilots took off and made a beeline back to Roadrunner, where a C-130 equipped as a flying operating theater was waiting with a surgical team.

As the second of the two Chinooks carrying the main assault force landed, gunfire peppered the aircraft, striking a crew chief above his jaw. The Chinook crew dropped the ramp and the assaulters stormed off. The pilots took off immediately with two soldiers working furiously on their critically wounded colleague stretched out on the floor. In the middle of the flight the crew chief stopped breathing, necessitating five minutes of CPR before he recovered. The helicopter landed beside the flying operating theater at Roadrunner and the crew chief joined the wounded Ranger in surgery. Both soldiers survived, thanks to the calmness and lifesaving skills of their colleagues.