By Richard J. Newman
The Pentagon has changed its command
structure so that President Bush can now
issue orders directly to the nation's highest-ranking special operations officer, U.S. News has learned.
In a sign of the key role for special ops
forces in Operation Enduring Freedom,
Gen. Charles Holland has been designated the top operational commander for parts of the action inside Afghanistan. The
unusual arrangement means that instead
of answering to Gen. Tommy Franks–the
commander of Central Command, who is
running the overall campaign–Holland
will report directly to Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush.
"We're talking about very narrow, surgical things," says a military official. "It's a direct conduit to the president."
Ordinarily, Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, is a "force provider" that handles all of the administrative details
for its forces but during a conflict dispatches them to four-star regional commanders such as Franks. The forces then
come under the command and control
of the regional commander, known as the
CINC. In military jargon, Franks, the Central Command boss, would be the "supported CINC" and would have operational
control of all forces dispatched to him.
Holland, the SOCOM commander, would
be the "supporting CINC." He would be
a prominent adviser to Franks but would
not be in the chain of command.
The Pentagon has reversed that command-and-control structure for some of the most sensitive operations inside
Afghanistan. Making Holland the third in
the chain of command, after the president
and the defense secretary, appears designed to ensure that SOCOM's plans and needs are communicated directly to the
White House, without being filtered
through other military channels, where
they could be watered down. "The snake-eaters would say how they want to do it and what they need, as opposed to somebody not as familiar with special ops saying it," says a senior congressional military aide. The streamlined chain of command might also speed the approval
needed for spur-of-the-moment raids
based on fleeting intelligence regarding
the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden or
other prime targets.
The SOCOM commander has functioned
as the supported CINC only rarely in the
past. Most of those cases have been very
limited classified operations in which
SOCOM was working with the CIA or other
government agencies to apprehend suspected terrorists, drug runners, or other fugitives. Operation Enduring Freedom
would apparently be the first major military campaign in which the SOCOM commander has operational control over some
specific missions. And it may reflect
lessons learned from recent failures. During secret efforts in 1993 to track down Mohammed Farah Aidid in Somalia, for
instance, the special operations commander on the ground reported to Central Command. One of the SOCOM requests
was for AC-130 gunships, which might
have helped turned the tide in the Battle
of Mogadishu, in which 18 U.S. soldiers
died. But Central Command downplayed
the request, and Washington never granted it. "I wish [SOCOM] would have been the supported CINC for Somalia," says the
congressional aide. "It would have given
greater voice to the need for AC-130s."
