Dirty Wars

by Jeremy Scahill

  In March 2002, US federal agents conducted a series of sweeping raids against more than a dozen Muslim nonprofit organizations, businesses and private homes. The raids were conducted under the banner of an interagency task force and were part of a broad investigation into terror finances, code-named Operation Green Quest. Among the raided organizations were respected Islamic think tanks, such as the International Institute of Islamic Thought, as well as the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences at Cordoba University in Virginia. The homes of various leaders and staffers of the organizations were also searched and their property seized. The raids were allegedly conducted as part of a targeted operation against terrorism financing. The agents seized computer hard drives, confidential files and books. The raids filled five hundred boxes with files seized in the actions. No charges were ever filed against any leaders of these institutions or the organizations themselves in connection with the raids. Mainstream Muslim organizations and civil liberties groups condemned the raids as a witch hunt. Awlaki delivered a stinging sermon saying Operation Green Quest “was an attack on every one of us” in “the Muslim community,” warning, “If today this happened to these organizations, tomorrow you’re going to be next.” In another sermon, Awlaki declared, “Maybe the next day the Congress will pass a bill about Islam that it is illegal in America. Don’t think that this is a strange thing to happen; anything is probable in the world of today because there are no rights unless there’s a struggle for those rights.”

  Unbeknownst to Awlaki, he had been identified by the Green Quest task force as an active subject of its investigation, though it ultimately determined he had no connection to the targeted groups. At the same time, the FBI was actively trying to force him to cooperate in various investigations. Awlaki believed they were using the prostitution busts back in San Diego to try to flip him. Actually, his theory was not far-fetched. In fact, this was precisely what the feds were trying to do in the months after 9/11 when Awlaki was in Virginia. “FBI agents hoped al-Awlaki might cooperate with the 9/11 probe if they could nab him on similar charges in Virginia,” US News & World Report later reported. “FBI sources say agents observed the imam allegedly taking Washington-area prostitutes into Virginia and contemplated using a federal statute usually reserved for nabbing pimps who transport prostitutes across state lines.”

  Awlaki was being feted in the media and presented as a voice of moderate Islam; a man who spoke eloquently of the Muslim community’s struggle to navigate feelings of outrage at the 9/11 attacks and opposition to the wars the United States had launched in response. But privately, Awlaki was plotting his departure from America. Imam Johari Abdul Malik, who was the outreach director at Awlaki’s Virginia mosque, said that he tried to persuade Anwar to stay in the United States in 2002. “Why are you leaving?” Malik asked him. He recalled Awlaki saying, “Because the climate here, you can’t really do your work, because it’s always antiterrorism, investigating this. The FBI wants to talk to you. That’s not what I signed up for. I would rather go somewhere where I can preach, I can teach, I can have a discourse that’s not about 9/11 every day.” Awlaki also said he was considering running for parliament in Yemen and that he was interested in having his own TV show in the Gulf. Malik added that “Awlaki knew that he had been arrested for the solicitation of prostitutes, and that any revelation of this by US authorities would have ruined him.”

  Awlaki had also changed his tone about the United States. He was outraged over the crackdowns on Muslims and the wars abroad in Muslim countries. The raids, combined with the US war in Afghanistan and the threats of war against Iraq, spurred Awlaki to become sharper in his critique of the US government. “This is not now a war on terrorism. We need to all be clear about this. This is a war against Muslims. It is a war against Muslims and Islam. Not only is this happening worldwide but it is happening right here, in America, that is claiming to be fighting this war for the sake of freedom, while it is infringing on the freedom of its own citizens, just because they are Muslims,” Awlaki said during a sermon. It was one of the last he would deliver in the United States. The US government surveillance of Muslims and mosques and imams enraged Awlaki, according to Nasser. “So Anwar suddenly was finding himself in a very difficult position. The country which he was born in, the country which he loved, the country where he wanted to preach his religion,” in Anwar’s eyes, “became really against Muslims. And he was mad. And he could not really practice his religion freely in America. So he thought maybe Britain will be a good country to go to,” recalled Nasser. “And so he called me and said, ‘Father, I cannot finish my PhD.’” Nasser was devastated. His dream was for his son to finish his PhD in America and return to Yemen to teach at the university, as he had done.

  In leaving America for Britain in 2002, Anwar would also leave behind the “moderate” reputation he had built in the US media after 9/11. Was Anwar Awlaki a sleeper supporter of al Qaeda? A spiritual adviser to 9/11 hijackers, as the government would later allege? Or was he an American Muslim radicalized by his experiences in the United States after 9/11? Whether Awlaki was putting on a public show after 9/11 and hiding his true militant views on the United States or trying to escape the US government’s investigations and interrogations, when he left Virginia he was on a collision course with history.

  Find, Fix, Finish: The Rise of JSOC

  WASHINGTON, DC, 1979–2001 —On November 21, 2001, as the Global War on Terror was kicking into gear, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Fort Bragg, the headquarters of the Green Berets. “This is a worldwide war on terrorism, and every one of you, and each one of the organizations you represent are needed. And I know—I know of certain knowledge that when the call comes, you will be ready,” Rumsfeld declared at the base. “At the start of the campaign, President George W. Bush said, ‘We are at the beginning of our efforts in Afghanistan, but Afghanistan is only the beginning of our efforts in the world. This war will not end until terrorists with global reach have been found and stopped and defeated.’ You are the men and women who will hand-carry that message to America’s enemies, sealed with the muscle and might of the greatest warrior force on Earth.” In his public appearance, Rumsfeld publicly thanked the “vanilla” Special Forces, the Green Berets, for their central role in Afghanistan, but when he spoke of those who would “hand-carry” America’s message, he was referring to a particular group of warriors whom he viewed as his best and most secret weapon.

  Although part of Rumsfeld’s visit to Fort Bragg was public, he was also there for a secret meeting—with the forces whose units were seldom mentioned in the press and whose operations were entirely shrouded in secrecy: the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. On paper, JSOC appeared to be an almost academic entity, and its official mission was described in bland, bureaucratic terms. Officially, JSOC was the “joint headquarters designed to study special operations requirements and techniques; ensure interoperability and equipment standardization; plan and conduct joint special operations exercises and training; and develop joint special operations tactics.” In reality, JSOC was the most closely guarded secret force in the US national security apparatus. Its members were known within the covert ops community as ninjas, “snake eaters,” or, simply, operators. Of all of the military forces available to the president of the United States, none was as elite as JSOC. When a president of the United States wanted to conduct an operation in total secrecy, away from the prying eyes of Congress, the best bet was not the CIA, but rather JSOC. “Who’s getting ready to deploy?” Rumsfeld asked when he addressed the special operators. The generals pointed to the men on standby. “Good for you. Where you off to? Ahh, you’d have to shoot me if you told me, right?” Rumsfeld joked. “Just checking.”

  JSOC was formed out of the ashes of the failed mission to rescue fifty-three American hostages held in the US Embassy in Tehran, Iran, following the Islamic revolution of 1979. Code-named Operation Eagle Claw, the action involved an insertion of elite Delta Force operatives co
mmanded by one of its famed founders, Colonel Charlie Beckwith, to secure an airstrip that could be used to launch an assault on the embassy. But when two of the helicopters went down in a sandstorm and a third was grounded, Beckwith and other commanders began fighting over whether to abort the mission. The loss of several crucial aircraft resulted in a standoff in the Iranian desert on whether to go forward with the mission. Beckwith fought with the air force commanders, naval officers and marine commanders. Eventually, President Carter issued an abort-mission order. Eight US service members died in the failed operation, when a helicopter crashed into a C-130 during the evacuation from Iran. It was a disaster. The Iranians scattered the American hostages around the country to prevent another rescue attempt. After 444 days in captivity, after a behind-the-scenes deal was brokered to swap the hostages for weapons, the Americans were eventually released—just minutes after President Reagan was sworn into office.

  Behind the scenes, the White House and Pentagon reviewed what had gone wrong with the mission. It was determined that a unified, fully capable special operations all-star team was needed for such operations, one that would have its own aircraft, soldiers, SEALs and intelligence. Soon after Eagle Claw failed, the Pentagon established the Joint Test Directorate to begin preparing for another rescue operation, code-named Operation Honey Badger. The mission never launched, but a secret program would begin drawing up plans for a special ops team that would have full-spectrum capabilities to ensure that disasters like Eagle Claw would never happen again. Thus, in 1980, JSOC was officially formed, though the White House and the military would not publicly acknowledge its existence. JSOC was unique among all military and intelligence assets in that it reported directly to the president and was intended to be his small, private army. At least that was how the force was viewed in theory.

  Colonel Walter Patrick Lang spent much of his military career in dark ops. Early in his army service, he helped coordinate the operation that led to the capture and killing of Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. He was a member of the Studies and Observation Group, SOG, which ran the targeted killing campaign for the United States during the Vietnam War, and eventually became the head of the secret Defense Intelligence Agency global human intelligence program. He was posted in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other hot spots around the globe. Lang also started the Arabic-language program at the West Point Military Academy. Throughout his career, he watched closely as the United States created this new special ops capability. The principal role of the “vanilla” Special Forces, like the Green Berets, was “training and leading indigenous forces, usually irregular forces against either regular forces or guerrilla forces. That’s what they do, so they’re attuned to foreigners. They seek to find people who are empathic, who work well with foreigners. Who like to sit around and eat with their right hand out of a common bowl bits of stringy old goat. And listen to somebody’s gramma talk about the baloney, fictional ancestry of the tribe. They like to do that.” Lang likened Green Berets to “armed anthropologists.” JSOC, he said, was envisioned as “a counterterrorist commando outfit modeled on the British SAS [Special Air Service]. And the SAS does not do ‘let’s get happy with the natives’ stuff. They don’t do that. They’re commandos, they kill the natives. These people are not very well educated about the larger picture of the effect that [their operations] have on the position of the United States in the world.”

  In the beginning, JSOC was a bit like an afterthought within the military bureaucracy. It did not have its own budget and was largely used as a force multiplier for hot conflicts under the command of the conventional military’s Areas of Responsibility, the Pentagon’s global system for organizing which forces oversee operations in specific regions. Delta Force had formed in the 1970s as a result of a series of terrorist attacks that spurred calls for the United States to expand the capacity of its unconventional warriors and special operations forces. “A lot of the military officers who had been brought up through this kind of, ‘Charlie-Beckwith-counterterrorism-commando’ thing, these are technicians of war, basically,” Lang told me.

  After the disaster of Eagle Claw in Iran, JSOC would be created as a highly compartmentalized organization with Special Mission Units (SMU) that would train and prepare for what were called “F3” operations: Find, Fix, Finish. In plain English, that meant tracking a target, fixing his location and finishing him off. The now world-famous Navy SEAL Team 6 that killed Osama bin Laden was created to support and conduct these missions. Its founding commander, Richard Marcinko, had served on the task force, known as the Terrorist Action Team, that planned Eagle Claw. Originally called Mobility 6, this elite unit of seventy-five Navy SEALs would develop into the leading counterterrorist unit available to the US government. Its name was itself propaganda. At the time of Team 6’s founding, there were only two other SEAL teams, but Marcinko wanted the Soviets to think there were other teams of which they were unaware.

  In the beginning, there were growing pains within JSOC, given that it was drawing its forces from a variety of elite units, including Delta Force, the SEALs and the 75th Army Rangers, that all believed in their own superiority. JSOC trained for operating in denied areas, conducting small-scale kinetic operations or direct actions, that is, lethal ops. A temporary military intelligence unit called the FOG, Field Operations Group, was formed. It would later become the in-house intelligence wing of JSOC and be known as “the Activity.” Among its early highlights was providing signals intelligence for an operation to free Brigadier General James Dozier, who had been kidnapped by the Marxist Red Brigades in December 1981 from his home in Verona, Italy. Dozier was the only US flag officer to have ever been kidnapped. The Activity traced his location after several weeks of hunting, leading to a successful rescue operation by Italian antiterror forces.

  Headquartered at Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, JSOC would eventually command the army’s Delta Force and 75th Ranger Regiment and SEAL Team 6, which was renamed the Naval Warfare Development Group, DEVGRU. Its air assets were drawn from the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the “Night Stalkers,” as well as from the air force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron. JSOC’s founders conceived of it as an antiterrorist force. But for much of its early history, it would be used for other types of missions. These teams would be deployed in secret and attach themselves to allied military forces or paramilitaries seeking to bring down governments perceived as hostile to US interests. At times the lines between training and combat were blurred, particularly in the dirty wars in Latin America in the 1980s. JSOC was used in Grenada in 1983 when President Reagan ordered a US invasion and throughout the 1980s in Honduras, where the United States was coordinating support for the Contras in Nicaragua and battling a guerrilla insurgency inside of Honduras. During his first term, President Reagan seemed eager to label terrorism a national security threat to be tackled by targeted kinetic force. Around the time of the 1983 Beirut bombing, Reagan publicly espoused “swift and effective retribution” against terrorists and signed a classified National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) and a subsequent secret finding authorizing “the use of sabotage, killing, [and] preemptive retaliatory strikes” against terrorist groups. The NSDD and the finding referred to a plan to form lethal CIA “action teams,” but they reportedly authorized cooperation with JSOC forces.

  JSOC operators liaised with foreign military forces throughout Latin America and the Middle East to combat hostage takers. They were also involved in the operation that led to the killing of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar in Medellín in 1993. Such operations led to the rise of a force of American fighters with a unique set of skills in counterinsurgency warfare. By the end stages of the Cold War, JSOC operators had become the most elite, seasoned combat veterans in the US military arsenal. In the 1990s, they went on to play central, but secret, roles in the wars in the Balkans, Somalia, Chechnya, Iran, Syria and throughout Africa and Asia. In the former Yugoslavia, JSOC helped lead the hunt for accused
war criminals, though it failed to capture its two main targets, Bosnian Serb leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. Under a secret presidential directive issued by President Clinton, JSOC was authorized to operate on US soil in counterterror operations and to confront any WMD threats, circumventing the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from conducting law enforcement domestically.

  In fact, some of JSOC’s most sensitive missions were conducted at home. In 1993, Delta Force members participated in the disastrous raid against the Branch Davidian cult’s compound in Waco, Texas. Some seventy-five people died in the raid, including more than twenty children and two pregnant women. JSOC also conducted security operations within America’s borders when the 1994 World Cup and 1996 Summer Olympics were hosted by the United States.

  By the end of the 1990s, the Department of Defense had officially acknowledged that teams such as JSOC existed, though its name was not made public. “We have designated Special Mission Units that are specifically manned, equipped and trained to deal with a wide variety of transnational threats,” said Walter Slocombe, the undersecretary of defense for policy. An estimated 80 percent of JSOC’s missions prior to 2000 remain classified.

  “I would say they’re the ace in the hole. If you were a card player, that’s your ace that you’ve got tucked away.” That’s how General Hugh Shelton described JSOC to me. Shelton served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Clinton and had spent most of his military career in Special Operations. Before Clinton named him chairman, Shelton had commanded the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which was technically the parent organization for JSOC’s operations. “They are a surgical type of unit. They are not to be used to assault a fortress or anything—that’s what the army and the marine corps does. But 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.” They’re “the quiet professionals. They do it, and do it well, but they don’t brag about it,” he added. “You would not want to commit them to anything that required a mass force—and I guarded against that, when I was the chairman.” On 9/11, Shelton was chairman. And Rumsfeld loathed him and his reservations.