Walking point
The commandos taking the lead in the war on terrorism suddenly have some new rules
Seven years after American combat helicopters collided in a fiery crash in the Iranian desert, the Pentagon's elite Special Operations Command was born. Desert One, the failed effort to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, cast a harsh light on the Pentagon's unreadiness to deal with a new kind of enemy. Ever since it was born in 1987, SOCOM, as the headquarters responsible for America's commando units is known, has been developing new weapons and tactics to deal with a wide variety of fast, fleeting foes. So it came as little surprise to anyone familiar with SOCOM's can-do corps of warriors when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced last year that he wanted them to take a lead role in America's global war on terrorism.
The man Rumsfeld turned to was Gen. Bryan "Doug" Brown. In Grenada in 1983 and then again in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Brown, a pilot of the blacked-out, souped-up choppers in the fabled "Night Stalkers" regiment, developed cutting-edge new combat tactics still in use today. Beginning as an enlisted Green Beret, he rose quickly to commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, the SOCOM unit that conducts the Pentagon's most highly classified missions. While his children have taken his place on the front lines (a son-in-law was seriously wounded in Afghanistan), Brown still jumps out of planes with his fellow high-altitude parachutists every chance he gets. In a rare visit to SOCOM headquarters in Tampa, U.S. News was given a detailed briefing on SOCOM's new structure and missions, as Brown prepares to make his special operators the point of the spear in the terrorism war.
New rules. Despite all his efforts, however, Brown and SOCOM have been ensnared in a grinding Pentagon turf war. Several of the powerful four-star officers who lead the Pentagon's five geographic commands have raised questions about SOCOM's new global mandate. The State Department and the CIA have also raised objections, officials say. Thomas O'Connell, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict--and a former comrade in arms of Brown--argues that the U.S. decision-making system must adapt to cope with a wholly new kind of enemy. "We are operating under rules written in the cold war," O'Connell says. "The rules need to be changed because the game has changed."
But refining the new rules is proving to be no easy matter. SOCOM's special operators are multifaceted warriors, trained to apply a mix of discrete force, intelligence, and nonlethal measures. They have performed superbly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they have largely operated at the behest of conventional commanders in both places. In countries where the United States is not at war, SOCOM forces have operated under the watchful eyes of ambassadors and CIA station chiefs. Rumsfeld's decision to give SOCOM a wider brief has raised several critical issues. Among them:
Should SOCOM or the geographic combatant commanders be in charge of counterterrorism operations?
Should special operations forces have funding authority to pay local allies for help, as the CIA does?
Should the Pentagon or the CIA lead covert operations of a military nature?
Has the focus on "capture and kill" of terrorists shouldered aside a broader strategy encompassing more instruments of power and influence?
By law, the Pentagon's regional combatant commanders answer directly to the president through the secretary of defense. These commanders can argue (and several have, loudly) that giving SOCOM a lead role in the war on terrorism would interrupt the chain of command. An amendment to the same law that outlines that chain of command, however, says that the president may order SOCOM to execute certain missions directly. In fact, this has occurred on a number of occasions in which the president has authorized SOCOM's Joint Special Operations Command to deploy classified "special mission units" to hunt down targets like Osama bin Laden and Somalia's Mohammed Farah Aidid.
U.S. News has learned that Rumsfeld is set to sign a memorandum that will spell out SOCOM's purview and specify how it will coordinate with the regional commanders. The language of the memo would be incorporated into the commands' official orders, a document known as the Unified Command Plan. A Pentagon official explains how the new system might work: Soldiers from the Pentagon's Central Command might capture a terrorist in Afghanistan that triggers a manhunt in Yemen or Somalia; Brown's SOCOM commandos would lead the manhunt. Seeking to allay regional commanders' concerns, a senior Pentagon official emphasizes that they will be kept informed of any SOCOM missions occurring in their areas of responsibility.
It's possible, of course, that the regional commanders may resist Rumsfeld's proposed changes and hope to outlast him. And Congress is certain to scrutinize the new language to make sure there are requirements for SOCOM to notify the regional commands and the relevant congressional committees of its operations. In another long negotiation that concluded last week, SOCOM sought funding authority to carry out missions using foreign partners like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and the Kurds in northern Iraq. The House authorized $25 million a year for three years to equip allies in the ongoing war on terrorism. The Senate, however, opposed the measure. Finally, the Senate relented when the Pentagon agreed to notify Congress within 48 hours of invoking such authority. This was a top priority for SOCOM, which now for the first time has the ability to fund a mission it is legally charged with conducting. "Unlike the broader military assistance funding, which is primarily designed for the benefit of the foreign nation," Brown says, "the authority is strictly for the benefit of the U.S. special operator in the conduct of his combat mission. This authority should not be confused with authorities granted to the intelligence community for covert action." Instead, Brown explains, it will be used early on in an operation in working with local forces to obtain things like guides, guards, transport, and information.
Brown faces still another turf war as a result of the 9/11 commission's proposal to shift the lead role for covert paramilitary operations from the CIA to SOCOM. The panel cited the CIA's 1998 plan to capture bin Laden at Tarnak Farms in Afghanistan as an example of a mission that would have been more appropriately carried out by military commandos. Speaking to a group of retired intelligence officers recently, former director of CIA operations James Pavitt criticized the Tarnak Farms scheme as "the wrong tool for the problem." Still, he called the 9/11 commission's proposal "a terrible idea." Brown, unsurprisingly, believes the commission's proposal merits further study. "The capability to conduct paramilitary operations is already inherent in SOCOM," he says, "and no one is better trained and equipped to work through, by, and with indigenous forces."
Side by side. Bigger operations may be better handled by SOCOM, with its 49,848 elite special operations forces. The CIA's Special Activities Division, by contrast, fields just a few hundred paramilitary officers. The law governing covert operations, Title 50, permits the president to choose any entity he wants to conduct them, although they have traditionally been under the purview of the CIA. Several Pentagon officials agree that when the premium is on deniability, the CIA may be best suited to covert operations. Mike Vickers, a former Green Beret who helped lead the CIA's efforts to arm the mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, calls it the agency's most successful covert op ever. "It is inconceivable to me," Vickers says, "that the president would have sent the U.S. military into Afghanistan and risked a major confrontation with the Soviet Union."
Since the 9/11 attacks, the CIA and SOCOM have worked side by side on many missions, with the agency using its authorization for covert operations under Title 50 and the Pentagon's special operators performing their traditional military duties under their own legal code, known as Title 10. These "blended" operations tap the strengths of each side, government officials say, though the intelligence-collection mandate has sometimes come into conflict with the objectives of the war fighters.
O'Connell's predecessor, Robert Andrews, appreciates the complexity of the issues he and Brown are wrestling with. But the former Green Beret and CIA official urges them not to lose sight of the bigger strategic questions. At a gathering of special operations commandos at Fort Bragg, N.C., last month, Andrews agreed that American forces "still have to kill or capture terrorist leaders." But he emphasized that no such efforts would bring success without America "demolishing the radical ideology that is the mainspring of this war" being waged by the terrorists. "Today," Andrews said, "I'm concerned . . . that we have a potentially fatal misperception of the threat that we face." Correcting that misperception, he suggests, is even more important than all the bureaucratic warfare being waged by his friends Doug Brown and Tom O'Connell.
EVERYWHERE AT ONCE
In a given week, roughly 7,500 special operations forces are deployed in various countries across the globe. Here's a snapshot of their organization:
PRESIDENT
SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND
Center for Special Operations
ARMY
SPECIAL OPS
PERSONNEL: 29,414
Special Forces
Rangers
Aviation Regiment
Psychological Operations
Civil Affairs
NAVY
SPECIAL OPS
PERSONNEL: 6,304
SEALs (Sea-Air-Land)
SEAL Delivery Vehicle Teams
Special Boat Teams
AIR FORCE SPECIAL OPS
PERSONNEL: 11,574
SQUADRONS:
Fixed Wing
Rotary Wing
Special Tactics
JOINT SPECIAL OPS COMMAND
PERSONNEL: 719
JSOC is a classified command with a battle staff that leads special mission units.
REGIONAL U.S. COMMANDERS' AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY
Special operations forces work in the following regions in conjunction with the regional U.S. military commanders.
[map labels]
NORTHERN COMMAND
SOUTHERN COMMAND
EUROPE COMMAND
CENTRAL COMMAND
PACIFIC COMMAND
Source: United States Special Operations Command
Stephen Rountree--USN&WR
This story appears in the October 18, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.