Relentless Strike : The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command (9781466876224) (4 page)

The Air Force's initial contributions to JSOC were the 1st Special Operations Wing, based at Hurlburt Field in the Florida panhandle, and a secret unit of combat controllers—men whose job it was to act as battlefield air traffic controllers. The unit would go through many name changes. Until Eagle Claw it had been named BRAND X, but as JSOC stood up the Air Force renamed it “Det 1 MACOS,” which stood for Detachment One, Military Airlift Command Operations Staff.
12

Where capability gaps existed, units were created to fill them. Such was the case with the command's communications infrastructure, which the Pentagon told Scholtes the Joint Communications Support Element, a special ops communications outfit at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, would provide. Scholtes protested that JCSE was too “cumbersome” a unit for JSOC. After several months of arguing, he won permission to stand up the Joint Communications Unit at Bragg, with part of the unit assigned full time to JSOC.
13

The lack of a special operations rotary wing aviation unit was an even more glaring weakness, given that the inability to keep enough helicopters mission-ready played a key role in the events that resulted in the fiery debacle at Desert One. But efforts were under way to fill that yawning void. A new organization, based around helicopters and aircrew from the 101st Airborne Division's 158th and 159th Aviation Battalions and dubbed Task Force 158, was training in great secrecy at the 101st's home post of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, as well as at the military's vast training areas in the Southwest.

Task Force 158 used the brand-new UH-60A Black Hawk utility helicopters that were replacing the UH-1 Iroquois, better known as the “Huey,” in the 101st. To fulfill heavier lift requirements, the task force availed itself of some of the 159th's CH-47C Chinooks. Together these two airframes should have been able to perform any medium or long-haul lift or air assault requirements. But Vaught, who remained in command of the task force until Scholtes got JSOC off the ground, saw a need for a third type of airframe, one that could maneuver in Tehran's tight urban terrain, carrying small groups of operators or even functioning as a light attack helicopter. The active Army's inventory held no such aircraft. But Vietnam veterans were familiar with the OH-6 Cayuse, nicknamed the “Loach” (for light observation and command helicopter), a small, nimble airframe that still resided in a couple of National Guard units. Designed to carry just two pilots, the OH-6 was not armed. However, imaginative TF 158 aviators soon figured ways to fix small benchlike platforms called pods to allow assaulters to ride on either side of the helicopter and to equip the aircraft to fire miniguns and rockets. No longer “Loaches,” both versions of the reconfigured aircraft were called Little Birds. The assault version (the one with the pods) was designated the MH-6 and the attack variant the AH-6.
14
There would be many twists and turns in the development of JSOC's world-class special operations rotary wing capability, but the Chinook, the Black Hawk, and the Little Bird would remain the basic Army special ops airframes for more than thirty years.

In July 1980, in a move that would have significant consequences, the Army established another secrecy-cloaked special operations unit but did not initially assign it to JSOC. Led by Colonel Jerry King, Vaught's chief of staff for Eagle Claw, the Field Operations Group (sometimes called the Foreign Operating Group) comprised about fifty Special Forces and military intelligence soldiers. The new unit's mission was to operate undercover abroad to gain the sort of intelligence for the military that the CIA had been unable to deliver for Eagle Claw, and to sabotage key Iranian military infrastructure such as radar and communications facilities. In the summer and fall it successfully infiltrated several operatives into Iran to conduct surveillance and recruit agents.
15

Halloween came and went with no orders to launch. Uncomfortable with the CIA's intelligence on the hostages' locations, Scholtes had told his bosses he was unwilling to do the mission on the basis of the Agency's “we can't tell you exactly [but] we think they're here, here, and here” intelligence. “We may end up killing a lot of people and getting a lot of our people killed and not getting anybody out,” he said. Meanwhile, the lines of command between Scholtes's new organization and Vaught's headquarters, which was still in existence, were blurred. Each general seemed to think he would run the second rescue mission. The Pentagon officially transferred authority to JSOC on December 18, but Vaught continued to play a vague oversight role. “It was very ambiguous because both elements felt that they were in fact in command,” Nightingale said. A personality conflict between the two generals didn't help, but their staffs nevertheless expected to be integrated for the mission, which they anticipated tough-talking Republican president-elect Ronald Reagan would green-light as one of his first acts in office.
16

Although Scholtes had been assembling his staff since September, the Pentagon did not formally establish JSOC until December 15.
17
No ceremony marked the creation of what would become one of the U.S. government's most effective instruments of power. The command was completely focused on training for what everyone expected would be a second rescue attempt in Iran. On January 20, the day of Reagan's inauguration, the task force was at Hurlburt Field running what a senior JSOC staffer called “the final dress rehearsal” for the mission. “We were hoping to launch the next week,” he said. But within minutes of Reagan taking the oath of office, the Iranian regime released the hostages, who were immediately flown to Algeria and on to Rhein-Main Air Base in Germany. The Pentagon canceled the final rehearsal, frustrating JSOC officers, who saw it as a lost opportunity to put the task force through its paces.
18
But in the long run, that mattered little. The new command was up and running.

 

2

JSOC Gets Its Feet Wet

The peaceful resolution of the hostage drama gave Scholtes and JSOC time to draw breath and consider their role in the Reagan-era national security structure. A February 1981 memo from Caspar Weinberger, the new administration's defense secretary, directing each service to “maintain and continue to develop its own [counterterrorist] capabilities,”
1
not only helped solidify the position of JSOC and its constituent units, but more generally set the tone for the increased role the military's covert and clandestine actions would play in the 1980s.

In that context, it is important to note that JSOC still didn't have a monopoly over these actions. At the direction of “Shy” Meyer, the Army chief of staff, the Field Operations Group was renamed the Intelligence Support Activity, or ISA, and on March 3, 1981, became a permanent entity located in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. But because JSOC was considered a purely tactical counterterrorist organization and ISA was to have wide-ranging national-level clandestine intelligence-gathering missions, the Pentagon did not place “the Activity,” as it became known, under Scholtes's command. Instead King, who remained in charge, reported straight to the Army's assistant chief of staff for intelligence.
2

A day before ISA's official establishment, and in conjunction with the CIA, the Army stood up a covert aviation unit code-named Seaspray, with a mission to move men and matériel in civilian, or at least, civilian-looking, rotary and fixed wing aircraft. Such missions and units are referred to as “covered air.” Seaspray was the covered counterpart to Task Force 158, which had survived the hostage crisis denouement to earn a new name—Task Force 160—and a permanent home at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. But although TF 160 was also a secret unit, its function was purely military, while Seaspray could be used to clandestinely infiltrate CIA or military intelligence operatives. The covered air unit soon amassed a small fleet of nine Cessna and Beechcraft King Air planes, as well as several Hughes MD500 helicopters (the civilian version of the Little Birds), which could be rigged with weapons and/or pods for operators if need be. The unit also acquired an innocuous cover name—1st Rotary Wing Test Activity—and a home at Fort Eustis, Virginia, conveniently close to Camp Peary, the CIA's training center better known as “the Farm.” Like ISA, initially Seaspray did not report to JSOC.
3

As new covert units proliferated, the two special mission units dedicated to direct action—Delta and SEAL Team 6—continued to evolve. For Delta, that meant learning to cope without Beckwith, who left the unit in October 1980. Meyer, the Army chief of staff, called Scholtes and suggested that he make Beckwith his director of operations. Although not a career special operations officer, Scholtes had great respect for the out-of-left-field mind-set with which Beckwith was trying to imbue Delta, but he still regarded the colonel as something of a loose cannon. He told Meyer that he would keep Beckwith on his staff as a special assistant, but had no intention of making him his operations officer. Beckwith retired shortly thereafter.

Scholtes also quickly became disenchanted with the hard-drinking, free-spending ways of “Demo Dick” Marcinko, Beckwith's Team 6 counterpart.
4
Marcinko had built his unit into a tightly bonded 175-man organization that pioneered new tactics to take down a variety of maritime targets, from oil rigs to cruise ships. Initially based at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Virginia Beach, Virginia, before moving to nearby Fleet Training Center, Dam Neck, where it would remain, Team 6 trained hard—and expensively. The unit's annual small arms ammunition allotment was larger than that of the entire Marine Corps. But the resources lavished on the team and the sheer pleasure Marcinko took in flouting authority combined to antagonize just about every other officer in the Naval Special Warfare community and many beyond.
5

So long as the largesse seemed focused on mission-essential training and equipment, Marcinko was on reasonably solid ground with Scholtes. But it wasn't long before the straight-arrow infantry general began to think things had gotten seriously off-kilter at Dam Neck. Events came to a head when Marcinko invited Scholtes to an evening function at the team headquarters at which several men were to be promoted. When Scholtes arrived, Marcinko told him Maine lobsters were on the menu. Scholtes inquired as to how the team came by the lobsters. “I flew them down,” Marcinko replied.

“The evening progressed and they got so shitfaced they couldn't stand up,” said a senior JSOC official. Scholtes waited until the SEALs had had a chance to sober up the next day and then told Marcinko he was writing a letter of reprimand and sending it to the chief of naval operations, “because last night was an absolute disgrace.” The CNO invited the JSOC commander to his office in Washington to talk. The admiral told Scholtes that Marcinko was the “best man” to lead Team 6. “He was outstanding to get this unit started, because he had to fight your system, he had to fight the Navy system,” Scholtes replied. However, the general added, Marcinko was not the best choice to lead Team 6 into the future.
6

By early 1981, JSOC's staff had grown to about eighty personnel. The command had already moved out of Delta's compound and into three World War II–era barracks that had a twelve-foot fence and round-the-clock civilian guard force, but just one secure phone line to Washington between them. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger agreed with Scholtes that JSOC needed new facilities and arranged a meeting between the general and some Pentagon bureaucrats he'd ordered to make it happen. In the meeting, Scholtes listed everything that he needed in his new headquarters. A Pentagon officially dutifully wrote it all down. But Scholtes overlooked one item: windows. As a result, his new headquarters was built on Pope Air Force Base (adjacent to Bragg) in record time, but with no windows.
7

Within six months of Reagan's inauguration, Scholtes's Pentagon bosses gave JSOC a new mission that would come to dominate much of the command's training for the next two decades: countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction. They told the general to talk with Energy Department experts to determine the threat that terrorists might pose by gaining access to nuclear material, and to figure out ways to counter that threat.

JSOC's interest in weapons of mass destruction would grow, but during the early 1980s its focus was on the threat of nuclear-armed terrorists, rather than attacking enemy countries' facilities. “We never got into those [nation-state] types of scenarios,” said a senior JSOC official. “Ours were small nuclear weapons held by terrorists in a hostage situation against one of our cities or against a U.S. facility.” The command worked closely with the Energy Department and its national laboratories, running exercises everywhere from downtown Los Angeles to the Nevada desert to ensure they could all work together if terrorists ever gained access to a nuclear device. The exercises were invaluable for uncovering small flaws that could derail an operation. The L.A. exercise, for instance, which featured Delta operators working with a team from the national labs trying to secure and disarm a “nuclear” device held by “terrorists” played by FBI agents, revealed that “scientists with big beards have a hell of a time wearing a protective mask,” the senior JSOC official said. This was a problem because Delta was using “a lot of tear gas in there.” (The exercise was part of JSOC's three-year mission to help with security preparations for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. During the games themselves, JSOC positioned its joint operations center at Los Alamitos Army Airfield in Orange County, with a Team 6 element down the coast at Coronado. Team 6 also placed undercover operators with satellite communications on a cruise ship that was going to be at harbor in L.A. during the day but sail offshore to become a casino at night. JSOC wanted the SEALs, who had signed on as crew, on the ship so that they could communicate back to the JSOC in case terrorists took it over.)