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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - May 5, 2011
"Sort of like Murder, Inc.": Behind the Forces Who Took
Down bin Laden
by: Jeremy Scahill
The Nation
The team of US Special Operations Forces who killed Osama
bin Laden in a pre-dawn raid on a compound in Abbottabad,
Pakistan, were led by elite Navy SEALS from the Joint
Special Operations Command. Operators from SEAL Team Six,
also known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group,
or just DevGru, are widely considered to be the most elite
warriors in the US national security apparatus.
Col. W. Patrick Lang, a retired Special Forces officer
with extensive operational experience throughout the
Muslim world, described JSOC's forces as "sort of like
Murder, Incorporated." He told The Nation: "Their business
is killing Al Qaeda personnel. That's their business.
They're not in the business of converting anybody to our
goals or anything like that." Shortly after the operation
was made public, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey called
JSOC's operators the "most dangerous people on the face
of the earth."
"They're the ace in the hole. If you were a card player,
that's your ace that you've got tucked away," said Gen.
Hugh Shelton, who was the Chair of the Joint Chiefs on
9/11, in an interview with The Nation. Shelton, who also
headed the Special Operations Command during his career,
described JSOC as "a surgical type of unit," adding "if
you need someone that can sky dive from thirty miles
away, and go down the chimney of the castle, and blow it
up from the inside?those are the guys you want to call
on." Shelton added, "They are the quiet professionals.
They do it, and do it well, but they don't brag about it.
Someone has to toot their horn for them, because they
won't, normally."
JSOC, which is headquartered at Pope Air Force Base and
Fort Bragg in North Carolina, is an all-star team made
up of the Army's Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, Army Rangers
and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, also
known as the "Night Stalkers." JSOC performs strike
operations, reconnaissance in denied areas and special
intelligence missions. More recently, JSOC added a Target-
ing and Analysis Center in Rosslyn, Virginia, to its list
of key facilities. For much of the Bush administration,
JSOC was headed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Its job was to
hunt down and kill individuals designated as "High Value
Targets." McChrystal's successor at JSOC, Vice Admiral
William McRaven, is himself a former SEAL. The current
commander of SOCOM, Admiral Eric Olson, is a former SEAL
Team Six commander. McRaven was recently been tapped
to replace Olson as SOCOM commander. Several Special
Operations sources have described for The Nation a very
close relationship between President Obama and JSOC. Some
allege Obama has used them to "hit harder" than President
Bush.
Marc Ambinder described the bin Laden raid in his
excellent report on National Journal: "From Ghazi Air Base
in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way
to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from
the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown
across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical
signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using
highly classified hyperspectral imagers. After bursts of
fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured.
One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double
tap?boom, boom?to the left side of his face. His body was
aboard the choppers that made the trip back. One had
experienced mechanical failure and was destroyed by US
forces."
It remains unclear what, if any, role Pakistan's military
or intelligence forces played in the operation to kill bin
Laden. US officials have said only that Pakistani intel
aided the eventual operation. "We shared our intelligence
on this bin Laden compound with no other country, including
Pakistan," said an unnamed senior administration official.
"That was for one reason and one reason alone: We believed
it was essential to the security of the operation and our
personnel." The fact that bin Laden's compound was a
stone's throw from a Pakistani military installation in
an urban area raises disturbing questions about how
Pakistan's military or intelligence services would not be
aware of his location. As of this writing, the White House
has not commented on this fact.
The United States has a lengthy history of US Special
Operations Forces conducting targeted kill or capture
operations inside Pakistan. "I would like to point out
one sensitivity of Pakistan and its people and that it's
a violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan," former
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told NDTV after bin
Laden's killing was announced. "American troops coming
across the border and taking action in one of our towns,
that is Abbotabad, is not acceptable to the people of
Pakistan." Musharraf's comments are ironic given that he
personally made a deal with General McChrystal to allow US
Special Ops Forces to cross into Pakistan from Afghanistan
to target bin Laden or other Al Qaeda leaders. The so-
called "hot pursuit" agreement was predicated on Pakistan's
ability to deny it had given the US forces permission to
enter Pakistan.
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Both President Bush and President Obama have reserved the
right for US forces to operate lethally and unilaterally
in any country across the globe in pursuit of alleged high
value terrorists. The Obama administration's expansion of
US Special Operations activities globally has been author-
ized under a classified order dating back to the Bush
administration. Originally signed in early 2004 by then?
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, it is known as the
"AQN ExOrd," or Al Qaeda Network Execute Order. The AQN
ExOrd was intended to cut through bureaucratic and legal
processes, allowing US special forces to move into denied
areas or countries beyond the official battle zones of
Iraq and Afghanistan. Gen. David Petraeus, who is poised
to become director of the CIA, expanded and updated that
order in late 2009. "JSOC has been more empowered more
under this administration than any other in recent
history," a Special Ops source told The Nation. "No
question."
SEAL Team Six also carried out the operation that killed
the Somali pirates that hijacked the Maersk Alabama in
April 2009. They flew from a discreet US base in Manda
Bay, Kenya. "If it comes down to putting sharpshooters
up on the deck of an aircraft, and making sure that first
shot doesn't miss, who do you want to do it?," asks
General Shelton. Referring to Team Six, he adds: "They're
deadly accurate."
The vast majority of JSOC's missions are highly classified
and compartmentalized. In some cases, JSOC operators have
conducted operations without informing the combatant
commanders of their presence. "Only a very small group of
people inside our own government knew of this operation
in advance," a senior Obama administration official said
shortly after bin Laden's killing was announced.
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State
Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, has
alleged that then?Vice President Dick Cheney and former
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld often circumvented the
traditional military command structure in how they used
JSOC. "What I was seeing was the development of what I
would later see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special
Operations forces would operate in both theaters without
the conventional commander even knowing what they were
doing," Colonel Wilkerson told me in late 2009 for a
story about JSOC in Pakistan. "That's dangerous, that's
very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess when you don't
tell the theater commander what you're doing."
Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his
role at the State Department under Colin Powell, he saw
JSOC being politicized and developing a close relationship
with the executive branch. He saw this begin, he said,
after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort Bragg. "I
think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think
they went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently,
without the SOCOM [Special Operations] commander at the
time even knowing it. The receptivity in JSOC was quite
good," said Wilkerson. "I think Cheney was actually
giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was asking
him for instructions.? He said the relationship between
JSOC and Cheney and Rumsfeld "built up initially because
Rumsfeld didn't get the responsiveness. He didn't get the
can-do kind of attitude out of the SOCOM commander, and
so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him out and went
straight to the horse's mouth. At that point you had JSOC
operating as an extension of the [administration] doing
things the executive branch?read: Cheney and Rumsfeld?
wanted it to do. This would be more or less carte blanche.
You need to do it, do it. It was very alarming for me as a
conventional soldier."
While JSOC?and the Navy SEALs in particular?will become
legendary in a much broader circle as a result of the
bin Laden killing, the secretive unit has had its share
of controversy. JSOC forces were responsible for the
botched rescue that ended up killing British aid worker
Linda Norgrove in Afghanistan on October 8, 2010. JSOC
also carried out a raid in Gardez, Afghanistan, in
February 2010 during which two pregnant women and a US-
trained Afghan police commander were killed. In that
case, senior Afghan security officials and eyewitnesses
claimed that US forces dug the bullets out of the dead
women's bodies. Initially, JSOC's forces tried to cover
up the incident by blaming the killings on a Taliban
"honor killing." Eventually, Admiral McRaven took
responsibility for the botched raid and apologized to
the family.
Several Special Ops sources say that President Obama has
taken concrete steps to once again integrate JSOC more
fully into the broader US military strategy globally. The
bin Laden operation, which was done in concert with the
CIA, seems to be evidence of that. The primacy of JSOC
within the Obama administration's foreign policy?from
Yemen and Somalia to Afghanistan and Pakistan?indicates
that he has doubled down on the Bush-era policy of target-
ed assassination as a staple of US foreign policy.
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