http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/2/jeremy_scahill_on_killing_of_bin
Jeremy Scahill on Killing of Bin
Laden: Obama Has “Doubled Down on Bush Administration Policy of Targeted
Assassination”
http://www.thenation.com/blog/160332/jsoc-black-ops-force-took-down-bin-laden
JSOC: The Black Ops Force That Took
Down Bin Laden
Jeremy Scahill | May 2, 2011
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 Targeting 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.
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 authorized 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 targeted assassination as a staple of US foreign policy.
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