Special Ops: Four Accounts of the Military's Elite Forces

by Orr Kelly

  Mason was indicted on thirty-seven counts alleging he had obtained some $15,000 by use of false travel claims. He pleaded guilty to four counts and agreed to cooperate with the government investigation and repay more than $11,000. He received a five-year suspended sentence.

  The false travel claims and other hanky-panky involving SEAL Team Six paled in comparison to another scheme the investigators stumbled across involving Mason and Marcinko. As outlined in court papers, the two SEALs made a deal with a Phoenix, Arizona, grenade maker to provide the seed money to set themselves up in business after they left the navy.

  This is the way the scheme was described: Marcinko, Mason, and a former SEAL created a company known as RAMCO. Then Marcinko and Mason arranged for the navy to buy forty-three hundred grenades from Accuracy Systems of Phoenix for use by SEAL Team Six for $310,500. Then Charles Byers, the owner of Accuracy Systems, allegedly kicked back more than $100,000 to RAMCO.

  Byers is a brilliant inventor, whose catalog offered for sale a dazzling variety of low-lethality antiterrorist munitions. They are designed for use in a hostage situation, where the purpose is to shock and disorient the terrorists, but not to cause permanent injury to the hostages. Among the items in the catalog are these:

  • Thunder-Flash Stun Grenade. “A non-fragmenting submunition container that explodes with a deafening blast and dazzling flash to temporarily blind and stun terrorists.”

  • Sting Ball Stun Grenade. “Blasts out a large number of marble-size soft rubber sting balls which are designed to further disorient the terrorists and disperse rioting mobs.”

  • Combo Sting Ball Grenade. “In addition to the rubber sting balls, the M-452C Sting Grenade is filled with CS tear gas.”

  • Star Flash Stun Grenade. “This highly effective munition not only provides the blast and flash of a regular stun grenade, but also explodes in a terrifying shower of white hot sparklets to insure thorough disorientation of the target suspects.”

  • Multi-Flash Grenade. “The difference between this grenade and the above listed stun grenades is that the Multi-Flash Grenade ejects seven smaller sub munitions that are fuzed to explode over a period of one to two seconds. Each individual blast is less than a stun grenade but it provides a significantly enhanced period of disorientation.”

  • Multi-Star Flash Grenade. The seven sub munitions of the M-470 are loaded with a special explosive “for the occasional situation that requires a much more powerful stun grenade. It contains over four times the explosive power of the standard stun grenade. Aircraft hangars or other large rooms are typical applications.”

  • Magnum Star Flash Grenade. “The M-471 is truly awesome, producing the increased blast of the M-470 and up to a 50-meter shower of very intimidating white hot sparks.”

  The grenades come twenty-four to the case, with prices ranging from $840 to $1,080 a case.

  The item that particularly attracted the attention of Marcinko and Mason was an all-plastic supersafe grenade that was not yet in production. Byers had designed it for a variety of purposes: as a burn or burst tear-gas grenade, or as a smoke, concussion, or fragmentation grenade. One of its special features was that it could be cocked and then uncocked if the user decided not to throw it.

  Mason arranged for friends at SEAL Team Six to sign a document indicating the team needed the grenades. When Gormly heard what had happened, he was not amused. He figured he might be interested in testing fifty to seventy-five of the grenades, but forty-three hundred seemed like an awful lot of them. When Marcinko called to try to get his approval for the purchase, they ended up shouting at each other.

  “I think he was a little angry, and I was, too, from being blindsided by this whole thing,” Gormly later testified.

  Officials in Washington, under pressure to prove they could acquire munitions and other equipment quickly when it was needed by the various antiterrorist units, approved the deal. RAMCO received more than $100,000 from Byers. Mason, nearing the end of his navy career, moved to Phoenix and set up the company. By the time the others involved became aware of what was happening, he had gone through all the money, spending it on fancy cars and lavish office furnishings.

  Marcinko and Byers were indicted for conspiracy, even though investigators could not establish that they had ever met. On 20 October 1989, Byers was found guilty of one count of conspiracy and one count of conflict of interest. Marcinko was acquitted on one count of making a false statement. The jury failed to reach an agreement on two other counts, including conspiracy.

  Marcinko was tried again in January 1990. This time, he was convicted of conspiracy, bribery, conflict of interest, and making false claims against the government. He was acquitted on another count of conflict of interest. Marcinko did not testify in his own behalf in either trial. His attorney, Yale Goldberg, advised him that, if he testified and the jury didn’t believe him, he could be denied his pension on the grounds that he had made a false statement under oath.

  Whether the outcome of the trial might have been different if the jury had been exposed to Marcinko’s strong personality remains an unanswered question. Still, Goldberg insists, after two trials, Marcinko came “within a pimple” of winning the case.

  In a statement to the court, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Klein urged a stiff sentence. Marcinko, he said, had enjoyed the privileges of a navy commander, “but he did not fulfill the responsibilities which accompany that respected office. Rather, he sold his office for personal gain. He participated in a scheme to loot the U.S. Treasury of over $100,000 in order to establish a business venture for himself following his naval retirement. He was motivated by greed and greed alone.”

  On 9 March 1990, Marcinko was sentenced to twenty-one months in prison and fined $10,000. He began serving his sentence at the federal penitentiary at Petersburg, Virginia, on 16 April 1990 and was released the following spring. Byers was sentenced to twenty-one months in prison and to pay restitution of $50,000.

  Three years earlier, Marcinko’s promotion to the rank of captain had been reviewed by the secretary of the navy, and the decision was reversed. By that time, Admiral Lyons, Marcinko’s “sea daddy,” had been relieved of his command in a policy dispute and had retired from the navy.

  Lyons, who continues to believe that Marcinko was set up, says, “I’m sure there were people who didn’t agree with the vice chief’s decision who were later on in a position to do something about that. You wonder at times who the real enemy is.”

  In the end, Marcinko didn’t win promotion, didn’t get the money that was supposedly the object of the grenade scheme, and lost his freedom. The government also kept the pistol with his likeness scrimshawed on the handle.

  Although Team Six has had a succession of highly regarded commanders in recent years, and its name has been changed, members are still troubled by the damage done to the unit’s reputation during the Marcinko years.

  The positive legacy he left to the navy was the special hostage-rescue team he created in such a remarkably short period of time. One former member of SEAL Team Six who often found himself at odds with Marcinko credits him with spurring a significant improvement in the entire SEAL organization, with more money and an expanded force. “It took men like him to put us where we are today,” he says.

  CHAPTER

  12

  A Tiny Little Island

  WHEN YOU GO TO WAR IN A HURRY, YOU CAN’T THINK OF everything. And what you don’t think of can get you killed.

  Lt. Johnny Koenig was leading a unit from SEAL Team Six as they crept through the early morning darkness on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada. It was 25 October 1983, and their task was to seize Government House and protect Governor-general Paul Scoon as U.S. forces launched a hastily arranged invasion.

  Suddenly, the stillness was pierced by the beep … beep… beep of Koenig’s wristwatch alarm. It was 6:15 A.M., the time he normally arose, and he had forgotten to turn off his alarm in the haste to prepare for the operation.

  Moment
s later, the SEALs heard the sound of bullets whistling over their heads. The normal reaction would be to shoot back. But Koenig remembered his training. Perhaps this was reconnaissance by fire. The SEALs remained silent, and the shooting stopped. Under the original plan, the SEALs would have carried out their assignment well before the invasion. But due to a series of mishaps, the schedule had slipped badly. By the time they approached the mansion, it was obvious to everyone that a full-scale military operation was underway.

  The assignment to protect the governor was one of four given to the SEALs during the Grenada operation.

  President Reagan had ordered American forces to seize the island after a leftist coup attempt led to the execution of the island’s prime minister. The turmoil seemed to threaten the lives, or at least the freedom, of hundreds of American medical students attending classes on the island. The safety of the students was a high priority at the White House. No one had forgotten the political damage President Jimmy Carter had suffered because of the long Iranian hostage crisis. But the administration had other motives as well. The United States had watched with apprehension the construction of a long runway, long enough to handle high-performance jets and bombers. This was an opportunity to remove the potential threat of a strategically located Soviet air base in the Caribbean. It was also an opportunity to send a message of the United States’ willingness to use force to advance its interests.

  For SEAL Team Six, Grenada was the first opportunity to show what it could do. It was also a test of the Joint Special Operations Command, to which Team Six belonged, and of how well the top commanders could use these highly trained, antiterrorist, hostage-rescue forces.

  In addition to the seizure of Government House, members of SEAL Team Six were also assigned two other tasks. One was to place beacons at the Point Salines airfield, on the southwestern tip of the island, to guide troop-carrying air force transport planes. The other was to disable a large radio transmitter at Beausejour on the island’s eastern shore.

  SEAL Team Four, a conventional team, was given a basic old-fashioned UDT mission: to scout beaches on the northeastern coast in advance of a marine landing.

  Of the four assignments, the protection of Scoon most closely fit the antiterrorist, hostage-rescue specialty of SEAL Team Six. That was why the team had been created, blessed with money and equipment, and why it had trained so intensively. This was also the most politically sensitive assignment. Grenada was a member of the British Commonwealth, and Scoon, as the Queen’s representative, was the sole remaining symbol of legitimate government. The United States wanted him in a position to reestablish a government. It also needed his blessing for the invasion although, under the circumstances, that might be a while in coming.

  Koenig and his men successfully entered Government House and found Scoon, his wife, and nine staff members safe and hiding in the basement. But they almost immediately found themselves in danger. Outside were several armored personnel carriers which significantly outgunned them.

  In the midst of a war, there is a tendency to think that everything suddenly stops working. Actually, many things continue to work including, in this case, the telephones. Lt. Bill Davis calmly picked up the phone, called the airfield where American forces were already in control, and asked for gunship protection to hold the APCs at bay. This incident is probably the basis for one of the most persistent myths of the Grenada invasion: that an officer, frustrated by the failure of communications, had used his credit card to make a call back to the States to request assistance.

  A short time after Davis had determined that the phones still worked, the phone rang and someone asked for Scoon. The SEALs heard the governor-general answer questions about the situation in the house. He assured the caller there were many Americans with big guns. Actually, there were a few Americans with little guns. But the caller apparently chose to believe the exaggerated report of the party holding the mansion. The personnel carriers patrolled past the gate but came no closer.

  By the time the sun was up, Government House had become a little backwater of the war. While the governor-general and the SEALs were still potentially threatened, the area around the house was relatively calm. That was not the case at Fort Frederick, headquarters of the local defense force, below the hill on which the house stood. Koenig and John Mason, the corpsman who was later to be at the center of the illegal activities in Team Six, climbed a hill behind the house to watch as helicopters came under furious antiaircraft fire from the fort. Looking through the powerful telescope of a sniper rifle, they had a ringside seat.

  But as they watched the scene in fascination, Mason noticed a man in a clearing down below looking back up at them with a telescope and then disappearing into the jungle. It seemed just a curious coincidence until an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) was fired from the point where the man had entered the jungle. The round ricocheted off the peak of the roof of Government House and tumbled through the air just above the heads of the two men. If the man’s aim had been a fraction of an inch higher, their sightseeing would have cost them their lives. Sitting out on the hillside to watch the show down below was a dumb thing to have done.

  The small contingent of SEALs was able to hold Government House and protect Scoon, but they weren’t strong enough to fight their way out of the house and down the hill to the American lines. It was not until the following morning that a marine company made its way to the mansion, bringing sufficient force that Scoon and the SEALs could leave. The admiral acting as the on-scene commander later complained that he had to delay the war until he had rescued the SEALs.

  Politically, the SEALs’ effort had been successful. Scoon agreed to sign a letter, back-dated to 24 October, requesting help from the United States and a group of Caribbean nations.

  At about the same time that the SEALs set out to take Government House, another group from SEAL Team Six, headed by Lt. Donald K. [“Kim”] Erskine, was moving into position at the large radio transmitter at Beausejour. Their task was to seize the transmitter to prevent its use. But they were not to destroy it. The Americans wanted to use it for their own broadcasts. This was not a mission that required the special training or equipment of SEAL Team Six. And it was not a mission that was essential to the success of the occupation of the island. The Beausejour transmitter had been built with Soviet assistance for long-distance transmission to allow the island’s leftist government to be heard throughout the Caribbean. Broadcasts from a smaller transmitter, at another location, could be heard in Grenada itself, and the Grenadan forces continued to use it and a mobile transmitter for hours after the invasion began.

  Erskine and his men soon found themselves in a furious gun battle with superior Grenadan forces backed up by armored personnel carriers. They did what every SEAL does naturally when facing overwhelming force: they fought their way to the sea. Erskine was hit several times and knocked down, but continued to lead his men despite a severe wound to his elbow. After hiding out near the shore, the SEALs slipped into the ocean and swam for several hours, far out to sea, until they were finally picked up by a destroyer, the USS Caron. It was an episode reminiscent of Thornton’s rescue of Tom Norris after he had been wounded in Vietnam.

  One writer, trying to pierce the secrecy surrounding the operation, concluded that none of the SEALs at Beausejour had been seriously wounded. Otherwise, he reasoned, they could not have made the long swim to the Caron. Actually, Erskine’s wound was so severe he almost lost his arm. He eventually recovered and continued his navy career. A fellow SEAL who thinks he is doing well in the weight room when he can press 200 pounds, says of Erskine, “He used to be able to press 420 pounds. Now he can only do 380.”

  Because of the secrecy that still surrounds SEAL Team Six’s involvement in Grenada and the fact that Erskine immediately entered a lengthy period of hospitalization, his feat was almost forgotten until some of his men proposed him for a medal. He later received the Silver Star in a citation that does not mention Grenada or the Beausejour transmitter by
name. But it gives a vivid account of the action:

  During early morning hours, Lt. Erskine successfully secured a target within an environment of dense enemy concentration. Determined to hold his position, he twice engaged the enemy and eliminated their combat effectiveness, taking 10 wounded prisoners of war without casualty to his assault element. Administering to the enemy wounded, Lt. Erskine again established a defensive perimeter. Engaged a third time by a numerically superior force, his position came under heavy automatic weapons, RPG-7, and 20mm cannon fire. With complete disregard for his personal safety, Lt. Erskine directed fire and maneuver tactics which allowed his force to take up new positions. Although painfully wounded himself and closely pursued by a large enemy force, he courageously directed his men in evasion and escape maneuvers which resulted in the safe extraction of his entire force.

  After the SEALs had been driven off, planes from the USS Independence and gunners aboard the Caron attempted, unsuccessfully, to topple the tower.

  According to the original plan, the SEALs and the other special operations forces would have been in and out of the island, their very involvement a closely guarded secret, by the time anyone outside Grenada knew the operation was underway. But word about the involvement of the special operations forces soon began to leak out because of an operation involving SEAL Team Six in which four men were lost at sea.

  This incident occurred on the night of 23 October, a day and a half before the invasion, which included the assaults by the other two units from SEAL Team Six. The plan was for a mixed group of a dozen SEALs and four air force combat control team members to parachute into the sea off the south coast of the island, join up with small boats launched from a nearby destroyer, and then go ashore to plant radio beacons near the airfield to guide transport planes carrying army Rangers in the first wave of the invasion.