Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces

At 1:00 A.M. on August 2, 1990, three divisions of the Iraqi Republican Guard, equipped with nearly a thousand tanks, streamed across Iraq's border with Kuwait. Within half an hour, helicopters dropped Iraqi commandos on rooftops in Kuwait City. By dawn, the massive invasion of the small Arab country at the top of the Persian Gulf was well under way. By nightfall, it was nearly complete, and Saddam Hussein could declare that Kuwait was now his country's "19th province." By week's end, eleven Iraqi divisions had backed up his claim.

Though early on American satellites had detected the massing of Iraqi troops along the border, there had been mixed interpretations of Saddam's intent, and the initial U.S. approach had been uncertain and at times muddled. In the early hours of the invasion itself, the Bush administration seemed unsure about what to do. All that quickly changed, however, and on August 5, President George Bush made his famous "line in the sand" speech, declaring that the invasion "will not stand." Within hours, Bush had put together a powerful multinational coalition, including leading Arab nations, and American troops were en route to the Gulf. The massive buildup that followed eventually brought half a million U.S. troops to the region.

Among them would be nearly 9,000 special operations soldiers—7,705 in Saudi Arabia and 1,049 in Turkey. Special Operations Forces (SOF) would perform a wide variety of tasks, ranging from simple language interpretation to strikes against targets more than a hundred miles behind enemy lines. During the early stages of the American buildup, small groups of SOF operators would be posted on the front lines, both to gather intelligence and to serve as trip wires, symbolic sacrifices in the event Saddam chose to invade Saudi Arabia.

The range of SOF missions in the Gulf amply demonstrated the potential of special operations in the post — Cold War era. It would have done so even more if their initiatives had not been blunted for several reasons — including command attitudes that would have been familiar to the earliest special operators.

When news of the invasion came in, General Stiner, now the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), was sitting in a room at CIA's headquarters in Langley Virginia. Unlike some of the career intelligence officers around him, Stiner was not surprised by the news. Months before, his intelligence people had pegged Kuwait as one of the next geopolitical hot spots, and SOCOM had been working on contingency plans for possible SOF involvement since July. Even after national intelligence agencies declared that the Iraqi pre-invasion buildup amounted to mere saber-rattling, Stiner had begun mentally drawing up a list of SOF personnel who would be needed to augment the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Headquarters in the event of war.

In order to better support the warfighting CINCs in planning for the employment of SOF forces, each CINC had been given his own Special Operations Command (SOC), resident in his own headquarters, and commanded by either a brigadier general or colonel, with thirty to forty officers and senior NCOs. In time of crisis, it was SOCOM's responsibility to augment the Special Operations Command as necessary to fulfill its warfighting responsibilities. Colonel Jesse Johnson, a very capable and experienced SF officer, was Schwarzkopf's SOC Commander. He required at least two hundred augmentees right off the bat — and more later as the need for SOF capabilities became more clearly identified.

Under the U.S. military's regional joint command organization, CENTCOM was responsible for all operations in Southwest Asia. In many ways, Stiner's SOCOM functioned as a service agency to the different regional commands. With the exception of individual operations directly ordered by the President, CENTCOM's four-star commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, would direct SOF personnel in Southwest Asia, as Thurman had in Panama.

Available forces included the potent, highly trained special mission units, Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, Army and Air Force special aviation units, Rangers, PSYOPs, and Civil Affairs units. At the time of the Iraqi invasion, selected SOCOM special mission units had just finished an exercise simulating a mission deep behind the lines of a Southwest Asian country. The training routine would prove an eerie prelude to what they would soon face in the Gulf.

When news of the Iraqi invasion came in, Stiner immediately placed SOCOM on alert, and SOF planning cells whipped into action.

Iraq's rapid invasion of Kuwait presented America with a number of immediate problems, not the least of which was the capture of the American Embassy in Kuwait City. Besides Embassy personnel, many Americans were caught by surprise by the invasion and were trapped in Kuwait and Iraq itself.

SOCOM was tasked by the National Command Authority to develop a plan for rescuing embassy personnel, should that become necessary.

Getting them out wasn't going to be easy, even though the Embassy in Kuwait City presented a classic target for hostage rescue; the building could be isolated and its layout was well-known. Major General Wayne Downing, the JSOTF commander, would later recall that the risks were great: "No one wanted to do this operation," he said later. There was a high potential for casualties and collateral damage. Just as important, the operation might provoke the Iraqis into attacking Saudi Arabia and the allied coalition forces still gathering there. General Schwarzkopf worried that it would precipitate war before he was ready to fight.

By mid-August the forces of nations joining the coalition began arriving in Saudi Arabia, and as they did so, Special Forces detachments from the 5th Special Forces Group (known as coalition support teams — CSTs) were assigned to each unit from division to company level. They spoke the language, advised on training and planning, facilitated the communications for command and control, prepared for effective combat operations, and would be the units' link to U.S. fire support. They lived with their coalition units, trained with them, and later went to war with them.

This was an unsung yet critical mission in the war, one made entirely possible by the evolution that had taken place in Special Operations since the days of Bill Yarborough. SF soldiers could speak the language both of the allies and the enemy, and this key ability would eventually be hailed by General Schwarzkopf as "the glue that held the coalition together."

In addition, special operators' cultural training had taught them not only how to secure a house without killing noncombatants — but also which fork to use at a diplomatic banquet at the Embassy Such assets made them invaluable as liaison troops.

To Carl Stiner, CSTs personified what made Special Forces special. It came down to a person "motivated by his inner strength, mature judgment, and technical competence. You put him out there maybe for four or five months or longer. And the image of the United States is resting on what he does. And you've got to know that he's going to do what's right when the time comes."

THE FIRST GULF WAR — EARNEST WILL

Stincr's proposals for a special operations war against Iraq drew on several past Special Operations missions, not least of which were a series of operations conducted in the Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War, called Operation EARNEST WILL As that war dragged on, a threat so complex and politically significant developed that it ultimately required capabilities that only SOF forces possessed.

By the fall of 1986, the ground war between those two nations had devolved into a stalemate. Iraq had devastated its adversary's economy with strikes on Iranian oil facilities, while Iran had struck back by initiating a tanker war and targeting neutral ships in the Persian Gulf. These attacks especially threatened Kuwait, who, while officially neutral, had been helping the Iraqis during the war.

Mining and attacks by small, swift patrol boats became so successful that by the winter of 1986—87, Japanese, Swedish, and Norwegian ships stopped traveling to Kuwait. This put pressure not merely on the Gulf states, but on the entire world, and oil prices began to rise to dangerous levels.

In March 1987, President Ronald Reagan took steps to end the problem. He agreed to register eleven Kuwaiti tankers as American ships, and provide them with Navy escorts. The U.S. ships would form protected convoys through the Gulf.

That portion of the mission received a great deal of media attention, and was generally successful, but it did not stop the Iranians from preying on individual ships. Contact mines were a special problem. Cheap, and hard to detect with the naked eye, such mines were easy to deploy covertly at night, and could easily cripple a tanker. Their presence alone disrupted commerce.

While the U.S. rushed minesweeping gear to the Gulf, the Navy realized that the problem had to be attacked at the source: The Iranians had to be intercepted before they released the weapons.

Two MH-6 and four AH-6 Little Bird helicopters from the Army's special aviation unit were assigned to do just that. They were placed directly under Middle East Force commander Rear Admiral Harold J. Bernsen and charged with nailing suspicious contacts identified by Navy patrols.

Their first challenge was to adapt the gear aboard the helicopters to sea duty. Just the act of landing and taking off from a rolling ship presented pilots with problems they had never encountered before. In addition, certain Army munitions, including the potent 2.75-inch rockets used by the Little Birds, could be ignited by radio bands common on Navy ships. After considerable testing, Navy experts found that special metal barrier plates, and the substitution of a Navy rocket motor, would allow the Army weapons to be safely stowed aboard ship.

By August 6, the helicopters were ready for action. Operating at night in elements of three — one MH-6 and two AH-6s — they flew with Navy LAMPS helicopters, which vectored them toward suspicious targets. Each helicopter in the operation had different capabilities. The LAMPS (special versions of the Kaman SH-2F Seasprite) were equipped with powerful surveillance radars, but were lightly armed (if at all) and not generally suited for nighttime attacks. The MH-6 and AH-6 were both variations of the Hughes/McDonnell Douglas MD500/530 series, extremely quick and agile scout helicopters. Both variants were armed. In general terms, the MH series were more optimized for transport and observation missions, and the AHs for firepower.

Meanwhile, Admiral Bernsen needed patrol craft to monitor and intercept the Iranian strike boats. Because of the mine danger, the patrols had to be made by fast, shallow-draft craft, but the Gulf's rough seas and frequent storms ruled out much of the Navy's light-craft inventory. Bernsen settled on Mark III patrol boats, sixty-five-foot fastmovers that could hit thirty knots and mounted both 40mm and 20mm cannons, as well as numerous lighter weapons. Six Mark IIIs, along with slightly smaller and less capable craft, were detailed to the operation.

SEALs began arriving in late August, giving the admiral a force he could use for several contingencies. SEAL Team Two and SEAL Team One, along with support units, were housed aboard the Guadalcanal, an assault ship whose helicopters were already supporting EARNEST WILL convoys. The aircraft elevator and hangar deck soon began echoing with live-fire exercises.

But there was another problem: For tactical and strategic reasons, the Guadalcanal had been ordered to operate in the southern Gulf, too far south for SEAL operations against the Iranians ranging in the northern Persian Gulf near Farsi Island. A land base seemed out of the question, and even if a site could be found on friendly soil, it would be far from the Iranian waters and an easy target for terrorists. Special Operations officers back in the States as well as Bernsen and the SEAL commander on the scene wanted a mobile sea base, but any American ship that far north would be an instant and obvious target for the Iranians. Not only would it be subject to mining, but it would draw considerable attention to U.S. involvement in the conflict. SOF commanders began searching for a low-profile floating home that could support the operations without drawing too much attention. In essence, they wanted a vessel with a crane, space to hoist patrol boats aboard for servicing, a helicopter landing pad, and room to house the special operators and support team.

The Military Sealift Command found two oil-rig-servicing barges, the Hercules and the Wimbrown VII, large craft previously used by civilian companies. The Hercules measured 400 feet, and came with a massive revolving crane designed for oil-rig construction, a helicopter pad, and plenty of space. It seemed tailor-made for the mission. Wimbrown VII, at about half the Hercules's size, was a tighter squeeze, but it, too, met the mission requirements.

The SEALs went to work converting the craft, adding hangars and skids for the boats as well as defenses and radar. With a Navy frigate providing escort, the Hercules set sail from Bahrain at the southern end of the Gulf on September 21. Wimbrown VII, in need of more work, followed in October, though for several reasons it was not actually deployed in hostile waters until November.

As the Hercules put out to sea, an Iranian cargo vessel that intelligence had tagged as a possible minelayer was sailing southward from Iran. The vessel was called the Iran Ajr

At about 1830 on September 21, the Iran Ajr veered from its normal course near Iran into international waters east-northeast of Ra'Rakan, a small island off the northern tip of Qatar. Meanwhile, the Navy frigate Jarrett was sailing about fifteen miles away, with three Special Ops helicopters aboard. The MH-6 and two AH-6s took off to monitor the Iran Ajr.

They found her forty-five minutes later. The MII-6, equipped with sophisticated night-flying and surveillance gear, took a quick pass. The Little Bird's pilot spotted "a bunch of fifty-five-gallon drums down the port side, a canvas-covered area in the middle, and a Zodiac-type boat." The Iranian vessel was apparently not carrying mines, but this was not standard cargo for a merchant ship, either. The pilot pulled back and joined the other helicopters, which shadowed the vessel for about an hour. There was no sign that the Iranians were aware of their presence.

At 2250, the Iran Ajr turned off its lights and reversed course. The MI I- 6 went in for another look. This time the pilot saw the cylindrical-shaped objects being pushed over the side and realized he was looking at mines. He radioed back for instructions.

"Take them under fire!" came the order from the frigate. The AH-6s closed in. "Inbound hot," warned the pilot, as the Little Bird's minigun opened up, spraying the deck near the mines with machine-gun fire. The attack helicopters launched 2.75-inch high-explosive rockets and raked the ship with gunfire. An exploding paint locker sent fireballs skyward. Soon, the engine room and the steering and electrical systems were disabled. The ship went dead in the water. The helicopters were ordered to cease fire.

Fifteen minutes later, the ship's crew managed to restore power; the ship began moving again. They also tried desperately to deploy the mines.

More rockets and machine-gun fire from the AI I-6s changed their minds. As the flames stoked up and the lights died again, the Iran Ajr's crew began to abandon ship. Their Zodiac pulled away, attempting a high-speed escape. An AH-6 pursued in the darkness. As the helicopter closed on the small boat, someone on the craft "jumped to his feet in a threatening manner," according to a SOF crew member. Unsure whether the Iranian had a man-portable antiair missile or some other weapon, the helicopter pilot fired his pistol out of the open door. Incredibly, he not only "neutralized" the Iranian but punctured the boat.

SEALs, meanwhile, were preparing to take the ship. Despite planning and communications snafus, a SEAL platoon approached it just after first light in a shallow-draft landing craft, chosen because it was unlikely to set off a contact mine. However, it exposed the assault team to other dangers.

"As we got closer, we hunkered down behind the gunwales," a team member said later. "The coxswain was inexperienced, and it took him five minutes to get us in position before we could board. One grenade lobbed into the well deck… and we all would have been history."

As the SEALs scrambled aboard and secured the enemy ship, they realized that all the Iranians aboard had fled. In fact, they'd left so quickly, the teletypes and radios were still on.

The capture of the Iran Ajr stopped its minelaying operation, and saved ships and lives. Perhaps more important, the boarding team discovered a number of intelligence documents, including a chart showing where it had already laid mines.

The Iran Ajr was eventually sunk by SOF personnel — but not before U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, in the Gulf to inspect U.S. forces, had taken a personal tour.

The Hercules and its force of patrol boats and helicopters began operations in the area of Farsi Island on October 6. Within hours, they had discovered the Iranians' patrol pattern and devised a way to disrupt it.

Using a buoy navigational aid as a precise checkpoint in the open water, the SEALs and three Little Birds set up an ambush. Vectored toward a radar contact by a Navy LAMPS helicopter, an MH-6 pilot picked up an object on his FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared Receiver, for night vision). He pressed forward for the attack.

"We've got some vessels dead in the water at twelve o'clock," he told his flight. "Approximately one-half mile, no movement, no hostile intent at this time.

The helicopters closed in fast. The image in the FLIR sharpened. A 12.7mm machine gun and its telltale tripod sat on the deck of the largest vessel in the screen.

Not an American weapon. Not an American boat.

"We have Boghammers," shouted the pilot over the radio, alerting the others to the enemy. There were actually three boats — two smaller Boston Whaler types as well as the "Boghammer," a potent and fast patrol craft forty-one feet long and displacing about 6.4 tons. Boghammers were used for a variety of purposes by the Iranians, none of them benign. The sky lit up with tracers as the Iranians spotted the Americans. The MH-6 ducked left, and an AH-6 put two rockets and a barrage of machine-gun bullets into the cluster of boats. The Boston Whalers caught fire.

The Boghammer, however, had only just begun to fight. As he closed to attack, the AH-6 pilot saw the telltale flash and spiral of a shoulder-launched SAM spitting into the air; he immediately began defensive maneuvers.

"It went right by my door, off the right side of the aircraft," he recalled. The missile proved to be an American-made Stinger heat-seeker. Fortunately, it, and probably a second, were launched without definite locks on their targets. The Little Birds were unharmed.

Obscured by the smoke from the other two boats, the Boghammer took off. But it's hard for a boat to outrun a helicopter, and the second AH-6 took it out with a rocket from extremely close range. The craft sank within thirty seconds.

Meanwhile, two American patrol boats closed in at full speed. The SEALs got to the wrecked boats just as the flames were dying out, and began picking up survivors amid six-foot swells. But the danger had not completely passed.

"Several prisoners were pulled out of the water armed," said a SEAL team member later. "One petty officer actually wrestled a guy for his gun — I mean actually wrestled him on the deck for his gun. The gun went over the side."

Meanwhile, a force of twenty or so Iranian small boats massed in the distance. Had they come forward, they might have overpowered the patrol craft; the helicopters, low on ammunition and fuel, would have been hard-pressed in the attack. The SEAL commander nevertheless turned his two patrol boats in the Iraqis' direction. The bluff scattered them.

Only six of the thirteen survivors from the three Iranian boats lived. The wounded Iranians were treated by the Americans and eventually returned home.

The Special Forces operations demonstrated to the Iranians that further patrol boat operations would come at a heavy cost. So they turned to a new tactic — Silkworm missiles.

Essentially a Chinese copy of the Russian SS-N-2, Silkworms are relatively slow, sixties-era weapons with primitive guidance (though they use active radar on final approach), an explosive warhead of nearly nine hundred pounds, and a range of twenty-five to fifty miles. Despite their limitations, they remain a potent threat against unarmed or lightly armed ships. In 1967, the original Soviet version was used by Egyptian patrol boats to sink an Israeli destroyer, the first time in history that a ship was sunk by a surface missile.

On October 15, the Iranians launched an attack against tankers loading oil at Kuwait's Sea Island terminal. The British-owned Sungari suffered a direct hit, and an American-flagged Kuwaiti tanker named the Sea Isle City was struck the next day. Though seventeen crewmen and the American captain were injured in the attack, the vessel was not seriously damaged.

The Reagan administration ordered a retaliation. But the President, seeking to limit the conflict, ruled out a strike against Silkworm sites, which were on Iranian soil. He opted instead for the destruction of an Iranian oil platform known as the Rashadat GOSP (GOSP stands for gas and oil separation platform; this one had multiple structures). The Rashadat GOSP had two platforms 130 meters apart. At the north was an oil-drilling rig; at the south was a platform used as living quarters and equipment storage and repair. A third platform, supposedly abandoned, lay about two miles north of these structures.

Three destroyers, a frigate, and a cruiser were tagged to shell the platforms. A SEAL platoon would then board and search for prisoners before blowing them up.

The operation got under way at 1340 on October 19. Broadcasts from the destroyer Thach warned the Iranians to abandon the platforms; they quickly complied, and shelling began. Flames leapt up within minutes, and the fire soon spread.

Smoke and flames towered over the SEALs as their three rubber assault boats were lowered from the deck of the Thach. They could feel the heat as they approached the ravaged oil rig. "The surface of the water was on fire within a two-hundred- to three-hundred-foot radius around the burning platform," remembered the SEAL officer in charge.

Trying their best to ignore the heat, flames, and smoke, the SEALs set charges on the oil drilling platform, then searched the other platform, capturing cryptographic encoding devices and documents. All three platforms were eventually destroyed, with no American causalities and none known to the Iranians.

Though the Iranians did not immediately end their attacks, the U.S. Special Forces activities caused them to sharply reduce the tempo of their attacks and shift their focus to the central and southern Persian Gulf.

It was not until April of 1998, when the U.S. frigate Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine east of Bahrain, that another major operation was launched, this time primarily by regular Navy units. Initially targeting oil platforms, the engagement eventually included several Iranian patrol boats and aircraft, most of which were destroyed or heavily damaged.

PACIFIC WIND

That was the background when, in September, Stiner journeyed to the Gulf with Downing to get a firsthand view of the situation, brief Schwarzkopf, and finalize details on the embassy operation, which came to be called PACIFIC WIND. Before departing, Stiner checked with Powell to see if he had any special guidance.

"Saddam is making threats about waging a worldwide terrorist campaign," Powell told him, "and I don't want Norm worrying about this. You keep the terrorists off his back and tell him that we want his focus to be to the North."

In Saudi Arabia, Stiner linked up with Jesse Johnson, while Downing coordinated the details of PACIFIC WIND with Schwarzkopf's staff and component commanders.

For the next three days, Stiner and Johnson visited every coalition support team, as well as other SOF forces, including those involved in retraining and equipping the remnants of Kuwait's army that had ended up in Saudi Arabia, and the training of resistance teams for infiltration into Kuwait City.

In Stiner's mind, the contributions that SOF could make were limited only by what SOF would be allowed to do — and by Johnson's ability to effectively manage the myriad of complex mission profiles. Johnson's problem was his colonel's rank — every other component commander for Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine conventional forces carried three stars. This just wasn't going to work. The general officers would inevitably command more resources as well as respect. He was going to have to take it up with Schwarzhopf.

Meanwhile, Downing had settled on the details of PACIFIC WIND.

The plan for taking the embassy was deceptively simple: JSOTF special mission units, supported by USAF air strikes to neutralize air defenses and isolate the embassy compound, would land at night by helicopter in the compound, take out the Iraqi guards, and rescue the personnel being held there.

If the goal was straightforward, however, the chances of achieving surprise and neutralizing the Iraqis in the occupied city was not. The invaders had located their theater headquarters in the Hotel Safir next to the embassy. The nearby beachfront, as well as the local road network, gave the enemy easy access to the target. Even the act of positioning the assault group close enough to Kuwait to launch the attack was a complicated logistics matter.

Vice Admiral Stanley R. Arthur, commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and the Navy component of Central Command, solved part of the logistics problem by making a Navy LPH available for the mission. LPHs look like World War II-era escort carriers, and in fact, the first versions of the assault ships were converted from just such vessels. At about 600 feet long, LPHs are only half as long as attack carriers such as the Nimitz, and displace less than a fifth of a supercarrier's bulk; but they can carry a reinforced Marine battalion and its vehicles, as well as support them once an attack is under way. Optimized to get the assault troops on and off quickly via helicopter, LPHs typically carry two dozen helicopters, and can make about twenty-three knots. Though now overshadowed in the Navy by the newer Wasp and Tarawa LHA vessels, the LPHs nonetheless offered the Special Operations troops both a jumping-off point and floating headquarters.

At a meeting in the Gulf, Arthur assured Downing he could quickly off-load the Marines and replace them with the Special Operations package.

Downing and Stiner were well aware that the Iraqis had to be neutralized with overwhelming firepower at the start of the operation. The most practical method for that was to use the Air Force. Soon after their arrival, they met with Brigadier General Buster C. Glosson, a command pilot who oversaw all U.S. Air Force wings in the Gulf and directed planning for Lieutenant General Chuck Horner, the CENTCOM air commander. Downing and Colonel "Pete," one of his commanders, laid the plans out in Glosson's small command room in Riyadh, carefully going over the assault. When he finished, Glosson had a funny look on his face.

"Are you guys serious?" asked Glosson.

"Yeah," said Downing. "We're serious."

"You guys really think you can go in in downtown Kuwait City?"

"If we got your support the way we want it, we can do it."

Glosson looked at the map again. "You're goddamn right," he said finally. "You got my support."

Glosson's F-117As and F-15Es — the Air Force's front-line tactical bombers — were what they wanted. As eventually perfected, the plan called for a pair of F-117A Stealth Fighters to launch laser-guided missiles at the Iraqi headquarters in the Hotel Safir precisely sixty seconds before the helos landed. The 2,000-pound warheads would reduce the hotel's eight floors to rubble, wiping out the Iraqi headquarters, as well as depriving the enemy of a fire control center. Electrical power would be cut with another F-117 attack on a nearby electrical tower. The F-1 5E Strike Eagles would then drop cluster bombs around the embassy, neutralizing Iraqi troops and creating a minefield to isolate the building.

Cluster bombs were a common weapon during the war. Officially called CBUs (Cluster Bomb Units), they are actually a collection of smaller bomblets, and can be configured for different missions. CBU-87s spray more than two hundred antipersonnel and antiarmor bomblets over an area, killing unprotected personnel and destroying lightly armored vehicles. CBU-89 "Cators" lay down a mix of about a hundred antipersonnel and antiarmor mines, creating an instant minefield. The word Gator comes from the twenty-four BLU-92/B antitank mines the CBU launches; the image of snapping alligators provides an apt metaphor for these weapons' devastating effect on vehicles.

Glosson did more than commit Air Force support for the assault. He took the plan personally to General Schwarzkopf. Though the CINC was still not enamored of an attack that might precipitate a war he wasn't ready to fight, he gave his okay.

At a meeting with Schwarzkopf, Downing briefed PACIFIC WIND. Then, with Downing and Johnson present, Stincr summarized his visit for the CINC: "I have visited all SOF teams and units in your area of operations, and in my judgment they are doing an outstanding job. The coalition support teams (CSTs) will be worth their weight in gold — they'll give you 'truth in reporting' about what the coalition units are doing.

"You already have nine thousand SOF over here," Stiner continued, "and I'm prepared to give you whatever you need. I know you have the greatest confidence in Jesse Johnson — and 1 do, too. But, considering the complexity of his operation, together with what SOF can do for you in the broader context, I would like to give you one of my best two-stars — maybe even two general officers — to run our part of things." He had already told Johnson the same thing privately before the meeting.

"I'll think about it," Schwarzkopf responded.

At this point, Stiner delivered Colin Powell's message about keeping terrorists off Schwarzkopf's back so he could focus his attention on Kuwait and Iraq.

"I intend to move one-third of my special mission forces to Europe," Stiner said, "but here would be better, so they can respond quicker.

"I would also like to establish a small tactical command post in Saudi Arabia or Egypt, so I can be more responsive to your needs. I'll even wear a plain flight suit with no rank. Nobody will know that I'm here."

"I'll let you know," the CINC replied.

Back in the States a week later, Stiner learned from Powell that he could forget about his small command post. According to Schwarzkopf, the Saudis didn't want another four-star command in their country. The offer of a general officer to run Schwrarzkopf's special operations activities never received an answer.

Stiner thought he knew the reason. As we have often seen before, the "big" Army has traditionally been, at best, unfamiliar with special operations, and at worst, hostile. Such attitudes naturally derive from the normal machinery of internal politics, the sort of political infighting that springs up within any organization. Part of it comes from a distrust of unconventional warfare in general. In some cases, the image of Special Forces as "can-do" guys actually hurts them. Highly trained elites called on to operate clandestinely in hazardous situations risk a bad reputation. It's not a big jump from there to thinking SF guys can be evil.

One Special Forces general recalled meeting a Navy officer who told him that sitting down with Special Forces planners was like encountering "the princes of darkness." Despite the success of Earnest Will and a concerted effort by the Special Forces Command not only to increase SOF professionalism but to make others aware of it, as the Cold War wound down, such attitudes — and others even worse — were far too common.

The SOF approach to warfare called for a high degree of cooperation between different branches of service. But that cooperation wasn't always forthcoming.

General Schwarzkopf himself apparently did not trust SOF units — or if he did, he did not want them inside Iraq before his conventional forces were in place and ready to fight.

Both General Schwarzkopf's CENTCOM and General Stiner's SOCOM were headquartered at the same base near Tampa, Florida. They were next-door neighbors. While the two men got along personally, there was plenty of friction between members of the two commands. "Schwarzkopf was a good example of a senior officer who did not understand Special Operations and was afraid of it," said Major General Jim Guest, looking back on the start of the Gulf War. "Schwarzkopf's mentality was, 'I have a coiled cobra in a cage and if I open that cage, that cobra is going to get out and possibly embarrass me."'

Many SOF officers understood Schwarzkopf's decision not to allow Stiner to move his command to the Middle East. Two four-stars in the same battle theater could cause unnecessary confusion, no matter how carefully they orchestrated their command structures. But the CENTCOM CINC's resistance to SOF went beyond that. In the opinion of Stiner, Downing, and others, Schwarzkopf handicapped the utility of Special Operations in the Gulf War by insisting that the command be represented and managed in the theater by the colonel — no matter how able — instead of a general officer. He also allotted insufficient resources and priorities for SOF units, thus hampering planning and intelligence.

Though SEALs were among the first units in the Gulf, Schwarzkopf changed deployment priorities in favor of more conventional forces, which delayed the arrival of most of the 5th Special Forces Group. This meant that, when most needed, he did not have available his main Special Forces asset, the Army Green Berets, with its broad range of special operations expertise and capabilities. That left only a few SEALs to work with Saudi forces to provide intelligence, coordinate air support, and form an American trip wire at the border at a most critical time. Combat air support (CAS) was not generally considered a SEAL mission, but the unit's inherent flexibility and its interface with different branches and services helped it do its job.

After the 5th SFG finally arrived in late August and early September, Special Forces personnel began branching out as CSTs, serving initially with Saudi, Egyptian, and Syrian units. Some 109 CST teams were eventually formed, working at all levels of command.

During September, Green Berets replaced SEALs at the border, working with Saudi paratroopers and border police along the Saudi side of the berms separating the countries. Nine reconnaissance detachments provided around-the-clock surveillance and "truth in reporting."

"You've got three missions up on the border," 5th SFG commander, Colonel James Kraus, told his men. "See, Scream, and Scoot." Special Forces units didn't always "scoot." Several snagged infiltrators and deserters during the early days of the buildup.

MEANWHILE, there was a justified fear of Iraqi-inspired terror attacks. National intelligence agencies had learned that as many as thirty Iraqi terrorist teams were positioning to conduct strikes against U.S. embassies and other allied facilities in other parts of the world. To counter this threat, SOF units provided security to vulnerable embassies and other facilities, and special mission teams were prepared to deploy instantly to handle unexpected situations.

As a result of these and other related efforts, no Iraqi terror attempts were successful — though at least two Iraqi operations, one in Jakarta and another in Manila, were foiled when terrorist bombs blew up while the terrorists were preparing or transporting them. "Iraqi bad luck," the JSOTF commander Major General Downing put it.

While all this was going on, Special Operations troops began practicing for PACIFIC WIND off the coast of Florida. They built a mock-up of the Embassy, and the Navy lent them an LPH. They worked out problems: For example, while the Army and Air Force people were used to working at night, the Navy wasn't. The assault ship's captain nearly freaked when Downing told him to turn off the deck lights.

"God, I can't do that," protested the captain.

"Yeah, we can do it," Downing responded. The lights were turned off.

Thirty helicopters, from Army Special Aviation, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel "Doug," crammed with Army special missions troops, peeled off from the deck in the dead of night without a hitch or scraped rotor blade. The Navy captain turned to Downing and said, "If I didn't know I was awake, I would think I was dreaming this."

A short time later, a pair of Air Force F-15 pilots flew in from the Gulf to help with a live-fire rehearsal at Fort Bragg. The Eagles came in low and hot; and windows broke in nearby Fayetteville. But a little broken glass seemed incidental.

Meanwhile, SOF planners were working up other missions. The most promising involved fomenting and supporting a guerrilla movement similar to the one that eventually kicked the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Intelligence analysts had noted that Kurds, in the north of Iraq, and Shiites, in the south, were displeased with Saddam's regime. Encouraging dissident movements there, as well as stoking guerrilla activity in Kuwait, would weaken and disrupt the Iraqi military, whose units would be tied down dealing with dissension. A pilot team of SOF ground and air personnel flew to Turkey soon after the invasion to examine the possibilities in northern Iraq. About half of the 10th Special Forces Group would be on the ground there by the end of September, ostensibly in Turkey to help provide search and rescue support for the U.S. Air Force pilots shot down over northern Iraq. The operation was headed by Brigadier General "Richard," himself a former commando.

At least four different dissident groups were active in Kuwait, estimated to consist of about 3,500 armed personnel. Though these could have been supported and encouraged in various ways, especially since SOF troops were already on the front line as "trip wires" and well-equipped SEAL units were in the Gulf, the plans for assisting resistance movements and general sabotage failed to receive support from Washington or from Schwarzkopf, who worried about the political ramifications of losing Americans behind the lines.

As an alternative, which would also provide a source of intelligence in Kuwait City, a Special Planning Group was organized under SOCCENT, consisting of an SF lieutenant colonel, two SF warrant officers, and five SF NCOs. This group conducted specialized unconventional warfare training for selected Kuwaiti personnel, who were eventually infiltrated into Kuwait. The Special Planning Group provided operational direction and intelligence-collection requirements to the Kuwaiti resistance throughout the conflict. Ninety-five percent of the HUMINT intelligence that came from occupied Kuwait resulted from this initiative.

By the end of October, however, a systematic campaign by the Iraqis had greatly diminished the effectiveness of the Kuwaiti resistance groups; photos smuggled out of the country showed dismembered bodies hanging from lampposts — a sign to others.

SOF planners also mapped operations against Saddam.

The Iraqi dictator's normal procedure was to disguise his movements, use doubles, and move constantly among temporary headquarters (i.e., converted recreation vehicles) and permanent ones, as well as sleeping quarters. The SOF plan was to strike him in one of his rec vehicles; or, as Stiner put it, "We'd hit him one night while he was laughing at us in one of his Winnebagos."

There were a few little problems with this plan: In addition to the massive operational difficulties of such a risky operation, U.S. law forbade assassination of heads of state. True, once combat had been initiated, Saddam would become a legitimate target, but as it was, the plan withered and died.

So did others. In December, Saddam released the American hostages, including those at the Embassy he called "guests." PACIFIC WIND and similar plans were quietly shelved.

THE AIR WAR

Other plans, however, moved forward. As the buildup of allied troops progressed, the United States shaped a strategy for driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait. The war would take place in two distinct stages:

• An aerial assault was designed to neutralize Iraqi units, deprive Saddam Hussein of command and control over his forces, and weaken the country's ability to resist attack.

• A ground attack would then physically confront Iraqi ground forces and drive them from Kuwait and positions threatening Saudi Arabia.

From the very beginning, the air campaign was seen as essential to the success of the mission. The coalition planners hoped to decimate and terrorize the Iraqis before launching ground troops. Not only would that increase the odds of quick success, but it would lessen the number of casualties, an important political consideration.

The air attack itself could be broken into distinct phases. The most critical would occur at the very beginning, when the Iraqis' vast network of integrated antiair defenses had to be neutralized. Based largely on a Soviet model and heavily reliant on Russian weapons, Iraqi air defenses included a sophisticated network of advance warning and localized radars, a wide range of surface-to-air missiles, front-line fighters like the MiG-29, and a large number of antiaircraft artillery batteries that, though primitive, remained deadly. The multilayered defenses had to be neutralized as quickly as possible to give coalition aircraft freedom to operate over Iraq at will.

The first strike had to be massive and quick, but it also had to be stealthy. That meant cruise missiles and the still largely untested F-117A Stealth Fighter would have key roles in the operation. But there were too few of these to cover the vast number of Iraqi air defense units, and the sheer size of the country made it difficult to orchestrate an effective attack everywhere at once.

As plans developed, it became clear that one of the keys to the first-day mission would be the destruction of two Iraqi early-warning radars guarding the country's southwestern frontier. While most of Iraq's early-warning radars were sited to cover one another (if one went out, others made up for the loss), eliminating these two sites would provide a "black" corridor for planes flving north.

The hole would be especially useful for F-15E Strike Eagles targeted to hit Scud missiles in the first hours of the air war. Destroying those missiles had become a top priority, since their launch against Israel might prompt retaliatory raids, which in turn could threaten the fragile allied coalition.

However, striking the radars, though obviously desirable, brought serious problems. An attack on these sites would take resources from other high-priority Iraqi assets. More important, it could also warn the rest of the defense network. To avoid such a result, the sites would have to be knocked out simultancously, but the large number of individual radars and support facilities at each site made it difficult to coordinate comprehensive, effective bombing raids that would achieve that end.

As General Glosson contemplated the plans, a Special Forces officer, Captain Randy O'Boyle, joined his staff to help coordinate Special Forces operations. An experienced flight examiner and planner, Captain O'Boyle had particular expertise with MH-53J Pave Low helicopters, which had come to the Gulf with the 20th Special Operations Squadron, part of the Air Force Special Operations Command. In September, he became the helicopter advisor in the planning cell for the air campaign.

After examining the developing plans, O'Boyle realized that the early-warning radars would be perfect targets for Special Operations ground forces. Glosson agreed. General Schwarzkopf did not. When this plan was presented to him, he exploded. The CINC was not prepared to commit ground forces across the border until he was ready. An alternative had to be found.

In the meantime, the radars were moved back about twenty miles from their original position a mile or so from the border. A ground assault became impractical.

Jesse Johnson then considered making the attack with his Pave Lows, but while the MH-53s were highly capable aircraft, they were optimized for clandestine insertion and extraction missions, not blowing things up. They were big and fast, and able to operate in bad weather and at night, but their heaviest weapons were only. 50-caliber machine guns. The helicopters' commander, Lieutenant Colonel Rich Comer, believed his machine guns could destroy the large dishes, but probably not before the Iraqis had time to call their headquarters.

There were helicopters in the Gulf that had more than enough firepower to eliminate the dishes quickly, however — Army Apaches. Decked out with I Iellfire missiles and 30mm chain guns, the AH-64s could make short work of the installations.

If they could find them. Though their pilots were well-versed in night fighting, the Apache helicopters were primarily designed for engagements with tanks and armored formations, which are easy to find, even at night. The desert in that part of the world is empty, landmarks arc virtually nonexistent, and Apaches did not come equipped with the sophisticated navigation and sensor equipment aboard the Air Force birds. The Apaches would have trouble finding the targets at night.

The obvious solution was to combine Pave Lows (for guidance) with Apaches (for firepower). And that was the solution chosen. The Pave Lows would lead the Apaches to the sites, then step aside as their smaller brethren went to work. A simple notion, yet one that had never been tried, even in training. And it wasn't simply a situation where Air Force guys would climb in their birds, take off, and let the Army guys hang on to their tails. Different service cultures had to be coordinated; likewise communications gear. There were other, even more practical, problems: The Apaches' limited range would have to be increased, and their weapons, optimized for armor attacks, would have to be tested for effectiveness against radars and their vans.

The Apache commander, Lieutenant Colonel Dick Cody, quickly came on board and adapted his unit's tactics and aircraft for the mission. He welded 1,500-gallon tanks to the bottom of his helos and conducted live-fire practice sessions with Hellfire antitank missiles to make sure they would explode when striking the comparatively soft targets.

They did. The plan — called EAGER ANVIL — proceeded.

It would be the first strike of the war.

General Schwarzkopf, suspicious as ever of special operations, somewhat reluctantly blessed it, but kept close tabs on the training. The story goes that he allowed the operation to proceed with one overriding order: "Do not screw this up."

The Saudi desert stretched out in endless darkness as White Team skittered toward Iraq during the early-morning hours of January 17, 1991. In the lead Pave Low, Pilot Captain Mike Kingsley and his copilot took turns scanning the green screen of the FLIR. They had been flying now for just over an hour at a relatively leisurely pace — no strain for the powerful helicopter; the same could not be said for the crew. The six men — two pilots, two flight engineers, two para-rescue men, or PJs — had been practicing this gig for weeks, but even the most realistic exercise was still simply an exercise. The standard "test guns" order shortly after takeoff had blown away only a portion of the jitters. They were going to start a war and they knew it.

A few hundred yards back, the pilot in the second Pave Low, Major Bob Leonik, rechecked his navigation set, which had gone flaky shortly after takeoff when the Enhanced Navigation System (ENS) had inexplicably "dumped." The crew had had to work feverishly to reset the system. At the same time, a glitch in their SATCOM coding had deprived them of a secure way to talk to Command. Both problems had been solved, the helicopter was precisely on course, and relatively unimportant transmissions were now coming over the radio. Mission Commander Comer, listening to the SATCOM from the left-hand seat of the Pave Low cockpit, resisted the impulse to tell them all to shut up.

Farther back, the Apaches flew in a four-ship, staggered-line formation. Each attack helicopter carried two crew members and was loaded with Hellfires, rockets, and 30mm machine-gun shells.

White Team pushed over the border, dropping to fifty feet over the shifting dunes. The pilot pulled right, ducking toward the dry bed of a large wadi that would hide the flight's approach toward its target. The crew doused the last lights in the cabin.

"We're in Iraq," said the copilot laconically. It was just past 0213. Their attack was to begin at 0238. H-hour for the war was 0300.

The west and east radar sites — called "California" and "Nevada" — were very similar. Each contained a number of Soviet-made radars and support vans. Each radar sat on its own van or truck, either buried in the sand or placed in a revetment. Antennas were either the familiar rotating dishes or else something more like fixed radio masts. Together, they scanned a wide area and covered both high and low altitudes. An assortment of support trailers or vans were arrayed around for communications and other functions, and there were also troop quarters.

Neutralizing the sites meant hitting not just radars but their control and communications facilities.

One big problem with launching a surprise attack on an early-warning site is that it is itself designed to keep such attacks from being a surprise. But no radar will give one hundred percent coverage. EAGER ANVIL'S tactics had been drawn up to take advantage of known holes in California's and Nevada's capabilities. Different radars have different capabilities, but in general they have trouble picking out objects very close to the ground. Even radars designed to detect low-flying airplanes — such as the P-15M Squat Eyes at each of the target sites — have limited detection envelopes because of ground clutter and physical limitations in the equipment. In this case, the helicopters would be essentially invisible at fifty feet off the ground even at close range. If they got higher than that, however, they could be easily spotted.

They could also be heard, no matter what altitude they flew, and so the routes of both attack groups carefully avoided known Iraqi installations. When the Pave Lows in Red Team detected an unexpected Iraqi formation in their path, they doglegged around them, hoping to prevent the troops from hearing the very loud rotors of the MH-53s and AH-64s.

The Pave Lows in White Team drove up the wadi to a point about ten miles southeast of the radar sites, then swung left, the pilot pushing the throttle for more speed as White Team whipped over a road. He listened intently, hoping that the PJs in the back wouldn't see anything on the highway.

Nothing. They were ghosts, wandering across the desert undetected.

2:36. They reached the IP 7.5 miles southeast of their target — the "no-shit point," they called it. One of the crew members ignited chemical glow sticks in the back of the helicopter, waving his arm through the open doorway and dropping the bundle on the desert floor, a literal "X" marking the navigation spot. All the high-tech equipment aboard the Pave Lows notwithstanding, the success of the mission came down to a PJ's steady hand.

The Apaches sped forward at sixty knots, using the glowing sticks to orient themselves for the attack. They updated their guidance systems, then kicked on their target-acquisition computers and continued in toward the targets. A dozen buildings, clusters of command vans, radar dishes, a troposcatter radar antenna — the site began to reveal itself in their night goggles. One by one, the interphones in the helos buzzed: "I've got the target." Lasers beamed.

Lights popped on in the buildings as they closed to 5,000 meters.

"Party in ten," commanded the Apache fire team leader, Lieutenant Tom Drew.

Figures began running toward the three antiaircraft pits guarding the base.

"Five… four… three…," said Drew calmly.

Before he reached "one," Thomas "Tip" O'Neal pickled a Hellfire. "This one's for you, Saddam," said Dave Jones, O'Neal's copilot, as the Hellfire whisked off the left rail of the Apache. It was the first shot of the war.

Twenty seconds later, the missile hit home, incinerating a set of generators providing power for the radars. By then, a host of missiles were under way. Hellfires, then Hydra-70 rockets, then 30mm chain guns gouged a gaping hole in the Iraqi air defense systems. Less than five minutes after the attacks began, both Iraqi sites had been damaged beyond repair—"Condition Alpha," as the coded message back to base put it.

The Special Forces crews in the Pave Lows watched the destruction with fascination and some trepidation; they'd be called on if the sporadic answering fire managed to bring down any helicopters.

As the Red Team Pave Lows waited for their Apaches, Iraqi ground forces fired two SA-7 heat-seekers at one of the MH-53s. The pilot managed to duck the shoulder-launched SAMs with the help of decoy flares and some quick jinking across the sand. "We were too busy trying to dodge the missiles to see where they went," said Captain Corby Martin, one of the pilots.

Before the early-morning strike had knocked out the radars, an operator at one of the sites had apparently managed to get off part of a message indicating that they were under attack. Relayed to Baghdad, the warning seems to have caused antiaircraft units in the enemy capital to begin firing into the air willy-nilly. That turned out to be a good thing. By the time the first F-117 attack on the city actually began about fifteen minutes later, they had expended their ammunition and overheated much of their gear.

Crossing the border behind the EAGER ANVIL helos, SOF troops in Chinook CH-47s touched down to plant beacons to help guide American raiders.

American bombers were soon streaming through the hole poked by the SOF and Apache units….

MH — 5 3 J Pave Lows played an important role throughout the war, inserting SOF units and flying combat and search-and-rescue (CSAR) missions.

The CSAR missions were controversial, since combat rescue was not a traditional SOF task, and the Air Force and Navy were never convinced either that it was a high enough priority or that SOF was devoting enough resources to it.

Schwarzkopf tasked Special Operations with combat rescue partly because of the hazardous conditions inside Iraq, partly because Special Forces had the deep infiltration and exfiltration capability required, and partly because the Air Force's own rescue capability had been allowed to atrophy after the Vietnam War, and there was no other alternative but to task SOCOM for assets.

Seven bases, five in Saudi Arabia and two in Turkey, were used to stage the missions. At the very beginning of the air war, the helos loitered over Iraq at night in case they were needed. But this was obviously hazardous, and Johnson soon ordered the units to scramble over the line only if they had a "reasonable confirmation" of a pilot's location. During the early stages of the war, rescues were also restricted to nighttime.

While there was no denying the capability of the SOF crews or the helicopters, some Air Force and Navy officers bristled that their service was not directly responsible for its own search and rescue. (Though they were Air Force aircraft, the Pave Lows were SOCOM assets.) Johnson's restrictions, while protecting the helicopter crews, lessened the odds of recovering pilots, especially since U.S. air crews were equipped with obsolete emergency radios, whose limited range and frequencies exposed them to the enemy. The other services also felt that not enough resources were devoted to the CSAR mission.

Nonetheless, Pave Low crews accounted for one of the most daring operations of the war, a full daylight rescue of a downed Navy pilot under fire. And they did it with help from a number of Air Force units, including a pair of A-10A attack planes (called Warthogs, because that's what they look and act like), flying far behind the lines.

On January 21, several days after the start of the air war, Lieutenant Devon Jones and Lieutenant Lawrence R. Slade were flying "Slate 46," an F-14A escorting a Navy EA-6B Prowler on a strike against a radar installation protecting the Al Asad airfield in northern Iraq, roughly fifty miles west of Baghdad. After the Prowler had completed its mission, Jones banked his plane and began heading back toward the USS Saratoga, his squadron's floating home in the Red Sea. As he turned, he saw a missile coming up for him. He started evasive maneuvers, but the SAM managed to detonate close enough to his Tomcat to rip its tail apart and render the plane uncontrollable.

Both Jones and Slade, his radar intercept officer, bailed out. Separated as they left the plane, the men quickly lost track of each other in the dim light of early dawn. After they reached the ground, they unwittingly headed in different directions.

Meanwhile, Captain Tom Trask was sitting with his crew in an Air Force Pave Low at Ar-Ar, a tiny base near the Iraqi border. Tired from a succession of missions, Trask's squadron had been slotted "last in line" behind some Air Force and Navy Blackhawks; their priority today was supposed to be some well-deserved rest.

But neither Saddam nor the weather cooperated. Heavy fog soched in the airfield. When the call came at about 7:15 A.M. that American fliers were down, the Blackhawk pilots couldn't see to take off. Two Pave Lows, including Trask's, took over the job.

The initial information about the shootdown came in muddled, and at first the Special Operations airmen thought they were trying to rescue crews from the A-6 as well as the F-14. Breaking with their usual tactics, the helicopters "chopped" their flight in half, each focusing on a separate crew. Though they were flying a preplanned route that snaked across Iraq and avoided the most potent defenses, Trask's helicopter was sighted by an Iraqi border unit. They escaped easily, and their luck continued when the fog lifted, allowing them to nick down to fifteen feet above the ground.

Then two Iraqi fighters took off from an Iraqi air base dead ahead.

"Snap south, snap south!" yelled an AWACS controller monitoring the area. Meaning: "Turn south and run like hell."

This would have worked fine for a fighter. But no helicopter was going to outrun a MiG. Trask hunkered his helo into a dry wadi as one of the enemy planes whipped toward him.

"We actually saw him fly over," he said later. Fortunately, the helicopter was too low to be picked up by radar and was hidden from the Iraqi by a broken cloud deck. The AWACS had meanwhile vectored in F-15C Eagles. As soon as the MiC realized he was being hunted, he turned tail and landed back at his air base.

Trask pushed northward toward the area where the F-14A had gone down. Deep in Iraq without escort or even another Pave Low to back him up, he was starting to feel pretty lonely.

There was another problem: No one had heard from the F-14 crew. Downed pilots follow very specific schedules, or "spins," which dictate when they try to contact SAR assets and what frequencies to use. The rescuers know this and follow procedures designed to minimize the chance that the enemy will find the downed pilot first. Though no one then knew this, slight but significant differences in Air Force and Navy spins made it difficult for the Air Force searchers and the Navy searchee to connect. The effort was also hampered by the survival radio Jones carried. Not only was its range limited, but the enemy could easily home in on it.

In short, the planes looking for the Navy pilot came up empty. After several hours of standing by deep in enemy territory, Trask turned his helo back toward the border to refuel.

As all this was going on above him, Lieutenant Jones had been hiking for over two hours, which brought him to a clump of low bushes and vegetation near a muddy wadi. He dug a hole with his survival knife. An hour and a half later, his bloodied and blistered hands had managed to clear a hole three feet deep and four feet long. The hole soon came in handy; a farm vehicle with some business at a water tank a thousand yards away inspired him to cover up in it.

Since air crews had been briefed that rescues would take place at night, he didn't expect to be picked up anytime soon. He passed the time by making calls for help on his survival radio — and keeping his hole clear of scorpions.

By coincidence, a flight of Air Force A-10s flying search and rescue deep in Iraq had been given a backup frequency that coincided with the Navy pilot's rescue frequency. Jones, meanwhile, had decided to transmit and then listen at times that were slightly off his normal schedule, hoping he might find his lost backseater on the air.

What he found instead were unexpected but enthusiastic American voices.

"Slate 46, this is Sandy 57. Do you copy?" said one of the A-10A Sandy (for search and rescue) pilots.

"Sandy 57, Slate 46. How do you read?" Jones answered.

His voice was so calm, the A-10A pilot thought for a moment he was dealing with an Iraqi impersonator.

As the A-10s worked to get a fix on the downed airman, Trask saddled up again for the flight north. Joined by the other MH-53J, he alerted the AWACS and sped over the desert.

"The SAMs are kind of coming up and going down, coming up and going down," recalled Trask, who did his best to follow the AWACS' directions and steer clear of the defenses.

Meanwhile, the A-10A pilot kicked out a flare so Jones could spot him and vector him toward the spot where he was hiding. The Warthog passed over the pilot's hole about a hundred feet off the deck.

Communicating this location to the approaching Pave Low proved more difficult. Unlike the helicopter, the A-10A was equipped with an ancient navigational system that tended to drift; his coordinates were as likely to send the Pave Low in the wrong direction as lead him to the pilot. Worse, there was no secure way for the two aircraft to communicate. Running out of fuel, the A-10A pilot resorted to a primitive voice code to pass the location to Trask and then took off to refuel.

Jones waited. And waited. Every minute dragged. Unknown to him or the Special Ops rescue crew, the Warthog pilot's coded coordinates had been confused; the Pave Lows were heading twenty miles south of him. Meanwhile, a fresh pair of A-10As came north to help. Jones made contact, then directed them toward the water tank and held down his mike button so the Hog "drivers" (as the pilots call themselves) could use their radios as direction-finders.

At about the time Jones heard the throaty hush of the planes' twin turbofans, he heard a closer and more ominous noise. A pair of Iraqi troop trucks were approaching in the distance, kicking dust behind them. The Iraqis had homed in on his radio signal.

Trask clicked his mike switch to alert the A-10s.

"Roger, we got 'em," said the Warthog driver. "We're in."

A few seconds later, the attack planes rolled onto the trucks. A thick stream of 30mm uranium-depleted shells smashed the lead truck to bits. Its companion turned and fled.

"Okay, where's he at?" Trask asked the A-10s from the Pave Low.

"He's right next to the truck."

By now, the truck was simply a big black hole, smoking in the desert. Trask whipped the Pave Low down between the hulk and the pilot. Within seconds, the PJs were helping one very happy Navy lieutenant aboard for the ride home.

When Lieutenant Jones had pulled the handle, he'd been flying somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000 feet; the ejection and landing had bruised him some and left him sore. But otherwise he was uninjured — and went on to fly thirty more missions in the war. His backseater, unfortunately, had been captured. He would spend the rest of the war as a POW.

Special Operations forces continued to fly combat search-and-rescue missions for the duration of the conflict.

There were other successes: A Navy SH-60B launched from the USS Nicholas picked up an Air Force F-16 pilot in Gulf waters two days after the Slate 46 incident; two SEALs made the actual rescue, jumping into the water to help the pilot.

After the start of the ground war, the pilot of an F-16 shot down in southern Iraq was picked up by aircraft from the Army special aviation unit. The MH-60 helicopters that made the rescue were equipped with weapons and an avionics set roughly comparable to those in the larger MH-53J.

All in all, a total of 238 rescue sorties were flown by Special Operations aircraft, accounting for about a third of their overall mission flights. By comparison, the Air Force flew ninety-six rescue sorties; the Navy and Marines, a total of four.

The allied air forces lost thirty-eight aircraft to hostile action over Iraq and Kuwait. While that is a staggeringly low percentage of casualties compared to the total number of combat sorties—64,990 by all allies — the majority of the downed airmen who survived their crashes were captured by the Iraqis. This was caused in great part because they had bailed out into hostile territory many miles from American forces.

After the war, emergency equipment and procedures were upgraded. A radio with better range and security was introduced (which, ironically, ground SOF units already carried). Efforts were also made to improve procedures and information-sharing between the services, so locating a downed pilot wouldn't again depend on a lucky frequency assignment.

Special Operations aircraft performed a variety of missions beyond combat rescue. Within a few days of their arrival in the Gulf, they were supporting SEAL reconnaissance teams, and Air Force AC-130 Special Operations "Spectre" gunships were to play a critical role when ground action began — as they had in Panama.

Two slightly different versions operated in the Gulf during the war, the AC-130A and the AC-130H. While most of the basic armament and equipment sets in the planes are similar, the H models feature more-powerful engines — and a howitzer. The gunships make terrific high ground for firing artillery, but they are vulnerable. Typical operations call for night-fighting over extremely hostile territory.

Depending on the model, Spectre weapons include a 105mm howitzer, two 40mm cannons, and miniguns. The weapons are controlled by an array of radar and targeting systems, and are very accurate.

AC-130Hs from the Air Force Special Operations Squadron arrived at King Fahd International Airport on September 8, 1990.

Some months later, on January 29, after the start of the air phase of the war, the gunships were called out to help Marines repel a raid by Traqi forces on Khafji, a small desert village in northeastern Saudi Arabia. The raid, conducted by several mechanized brigades (its aims were unclear — possibly to provoke Schwarzkopf into starting ground action before he was ready), caught the Americans off guard. As the small Marine unit in the village dropped back to a more defensible position, two six-man teams found themselves isolated on rooftops amid a sudden flood of enemy troops. The Marines stayed in the city, quietly directing artillery and air strikes via radio.

Next day and during the following night, more Iraqis streamed forward to reinforce the town.

U.S. Marine and Saudi units struck back. Three AC-130Hs provided firepower in what turned out to be one of the hottest engagements of the war. The Spectres blasted Iraqi positions and tank columns in and around Khafji. As daylight on January 31 approached, the planes were ordered to return home. The black wings and fuselages of the slow and relatively low-flying planes made them easy targets against the brightening sky.

One of the gunships—69-6567, called Spirit 03—was backing a Marine unit that had come under fire from an Iraqi missile battery when the call came to go home.

They stayed on station to help the Marines.

Another order to break off came in.

"Roger, roger," acknowledged the copilot.

A few seconds later, an Iraqi shoulder-launched SAM slammed into the wing and sheared it off. The Spectre spiraled into the Gulf; all fourteen crew members died.

This was the worst SOF loss of the war.

A SPECTRE'S firepower is awesome, but that pales in comparison with the weapon a C-130 deployed a few days after the Khafji battle.

The plane was an MC-130E Combat Talon, designed for low-level missions behind enemy lines. Typically, Combat Talons insert and supply Special Forces troops with long-range clandestine parachute drops. Some are also equipped with Fulton STAR recovery systems and can literally snag commandos from the ground in areas too dangerous for helicopter pickups.

The MC-130E's unique ability to carry a large cargo and deliver it at a very specific time and place also allows the propeller-driven craft to drop skid-mounted BLU-82s, or "Daisy Cutters" (because they work like very destructive lawn mowers). Consisting of 15,000 pounds of high explosive, the "Blues" are about the size of a Honda Civic hatchback. A long sticklike fuse in the squat nose triggers the explosion before the bomb buries itself in the ground, maximizing the explosion's force.

BLU-82s were used during the Vietnam War to flatten jungle areas for use as helicopter landing zones.

After that war wound down, the BLU-82s were largely forgotten until Major General Stiner — in his days as commander of the JSOTF — remembered his experience with the bomb in Vietnam as he was searching for a weapon that might be used effectively against terrorist-training camps. What he needed, he realized, were BLU-82s. But when he went looking for any that still remained, he found only four BLU-82 shells in a bunker at Tuello Army Depot. He also managed to locate a couple of Vietnam-era Air Force sergeants who still knew how to mix the slurry (explosive). None of his air crews had ever dropped one.

With his own funds, he brought the number of the weapons to eight, and had two crews trained. The investment paid off big-time in the Gulf War.

While nowhere near as accurate as laser-guided or other "smart" bombs, they don't need to be: The Blues' sheer size makes a considerable impact. (For comparison's sake, the most common iron bombs dropped from B-52s and other aircraft are five hundred pounds.)

Minefields posed a problem for the Marines scheduled to invade Kuwait. MC-130 crews — aware of this — suggested that the Blues could be used to clear them: Pressure from the explosion would set off the mines.

At least, they thought they would. The tactic had never been tried with the BLU-82. After some debate, the allied commander approved the mission. A pair of MC-130s, escorted by SAM killers and Air Force Raven EB-11 Is to help fend off radars, lumbered over the target area at about 16,000 feet. As the bombs slid out the back of the planes, the pilots had to work hard to hold the suddenly unbalanced MC-130s steady.

The first explosions were so massive (the story goes) that a British commando operating in Iraq more than a hundred miles away grabbed his radio. "The blokes have just nuked Kuwait!" he is said to have told his commander.

Whether the story is apocryphal or not, the bombs devastated the minefields. They also killed anyone within 4,000 yards of the explosion who wasn't in a protected position. Eleven were dropped during the conflict.

The Blues were also potent psychological weapons. When an Iraqi unit was told they were due for a BLU-82 bombing, most of its men promptly came across the lines and surrendered.

PSYOPs

Surely the least publicized major effort of the war was the Psychological Operations (PSYOPs) campaign. This was a comprehensive effort with several aims: to build coalition support for the war, counter Iraqi propaganda, unnerve Saddam's troops, and loosen the Iraqi resolve to fight.

Planning for the campaign began very early in the American buildup. The head of the 4th Psychological Operations Group, Colonel Tony Normand, prepared for General Schwarzkopf a comprehensive PSYOPs campaign with strategic (aimed primarily at populations) as well as tactical (aimed primarily at enemy military forces) operations. Normand, who had shaped the highly successful PSYOPs campaign in Panama, drew up a broad plan with the help of his staff, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Daniel D. Devlin, who had just relinquished command of a 4th Group battalion. By contrast with his attitude toward SOF operations, Schwarzkopf turned out to be a big PSYOP booster from the start.

"PSYOP is not really a difficult subject to understand, but many try to make it overly complex, and in the end, fail to understand it at all," noted Devlin, who served as deputy commander of the 4th PSYOPs Group after it deployed to the Gulf. "First, any political, military, legal, informational, or economic action can be psychological in nature, and therefore part of a strategic PSYOP plan at the national level. Second, any military or informational action in the combatant Commander's (CINC's) sphere of influence can be psychological in nature as a part of the CINC's operational PSYOP plan. Third, any military action on the battlefield can be a part of the tactical PSYOP plan. Really good military minds understand the psychological nature of the battlefield."

After the plan was completed, Normand waited for two days to get in to brief the CINC. Called away before he could make the presentation, he told Devlin to give the briefing.

Devlin recounts:

"He said not to be concerned if I had to give the briefing before he returned. He told me, 'The success of the briefing will only determine whether we take part in this operation, or return home to Fort Bragg to rake pine needles.' That kind of the essence of our relationship. We were always direct with each other, but with a great deal of friendship and humor. He was my boss. He knew he could count on me."

The CINC's office called for Devlin twice, but then sent him back when more pressing matters delayed the meeting. "The numerous overlapping demands on the CINCs time were amazing," Devlin recalls. Finally, General Schwarzkopf had time for the briefing.

"I went in and gave General Schwarzkopf a personal, one-on-one briefing from a three-ring binder," Devlin continues. "About a half-dozen staffers followed me in and stood in the corner waiting to see me dismembered, because the majority of the CINC's staff didn't think much of us being there. At the conclusion of my briefing, General Schwarzkopf pounded his right fist on the table and said, 'This is exactly what we need. There's an information war going on right now and we're losing it! What do I need to do to make this happen?' The staff's acceptance of us changed amazingly following the briefing.

Schwarzkopf personally edited a draft message, making it much stronger, and then authorized its transmission to Colin Powell. The message requested PSYOP assistance, and, as a result, the 4th PSYOP Group began deploying to the Gulf on August 25. The first group to deploy included Normand, Devlin and the planning staff, and a few others. Once there, as additional PSYOP assets came in from Fort Bragg, Normand and his immediate staff prepared more detailed operational plans covering a wide range of strategic, operational, and tactical missions. But even with the CINC's backing, most of Normand PSYOP plans sat for months at the Defense Department, apparently stymied because of geopolitical sensitivities in Washington.

"We're afraid of cross-border operations," explained Colonel Normand later. Cross-border operations — Irom Saudi Arabia, say, over the border into Iraq — were in many cases inherently dangerous and always carried a potential to backfire and cause embarrassment. Thus they were likely to be sidetracked by Washington. This meant that a strategic campaign aimed at telling Iraqi citizens why the war was evil couldn't be launched. But it also hamstrung the tactical operations aimed at Iraqi soldiers.

"A leaflet is a cross-border operation," said Normand. "You're told to start targeting the Iraqi soldiers. Well, you can't do that because they're not on your side of the border. You can't do cross-border operations."

The official resistance led Normand to shuttle between Washington and Riyadh with one plan after another, seeking approval from the Joint Chiefs and a myriad of other military brass, as well as Defense and State Department officials. After several weeks of this, he finally received approval to proceed.

After a fashion: Washington had split the plan into two halves — overt and covert. "Overt" PSYOP actions were okay, but covert actions were put on hold. The catch-22: Nearly everything Normand wanted to do was considered "covert," much of it simply because it required cooperation from another organization or country. With the exception of a film called Line in the Sand—which had to be reedited because the delays made parts of it out of date — the major PSYOP initiatives against Iraq were put on hold. The film would later be smuggled into Iraq and distributed freely around the rest of the world; but little else in the way of a "strategic" PSYOP campaign — targeting common Iraqi citizens and telling them why their country was being attacked — would ever be implemented.

Carl Stiner has views about this kind of thing: "Certain lawyers get in the act, and you've got certain people that don't want their thumbprint on anything that might have risks associated with it. That's the way they've survived; they limit their exposure. And when you run into that, you've got to get the Chairman or the CINC to override all these birds and get their asses out of the process or they'll delay it to eternity."

Finally, Normand went to Schwarzkopf in mid-December, shortly before he was scheduled to relinquish command of the 4th PSYOP Group for another assignment. Standing in front of the CINC in disgust, he told him, "We need to send a message back to Washington that if we don't get approval soon we can't execute." He handed the general a piece of paper. "I recommend you send this message."

Normand had carefully prepared a "Let's Go" message, a masterwork of diplomatic language, politely requesting Washington to "relook" the issue.

"Bullshit," said Schwarzkopf. He ripped up the paper and began writing his own message. It began with the words "Bungling bureaucrats in Washington," and then got really nasty.

"What do you think about that?" the CINC asked, handing it back to Normand.

"If you'll sign it, I—"

"It's signed," Schwarzkopf broke in.

The PSYOP tactical campaign aimed at Iraqi troops suddenly hit the fast track. The campaign took off with the start of the air war a few weeks later.

MUCH of the DESERT SHIELD/STORM PSYOP mission was aimed simply at countering the propaganda Saddam was spreading. The PSYOP warriors were trying to set the record straight. Arab countries were a vital part of President Bush's carefully constructed coalition, and so it was vital that their citizens, and in fact the Islamic world in general, know the truth about why the coalition was fighting Saddam.

Cairo is the Arab media center, the Arab "Hollywood." The highly regarded Radio Cairo is there, many Arab and international news organizations have offices in the city, and Arab intellectuals tend to congregate there. If you want to get the word out to the Arab world — and to the entire Islamic world — you want to work through these facilities. At the same time, Egypt was an ally in the coalition. Government officials as well as media members were receptive to American-inspired suggestions and information.

Normand sent Devlin to Cairo at the end of October.

Here are Devlin's thoughts on the experience:

"The extensive Iraqi propaganda machine required countering with factual information that Saddam was in every way a despicable human being — a horrific leader who did not care about his people, an unjust Muslim, a terrible neighbor, an untrustworthy Arab and Muslim, and a liar in everything he said." The PSYOP operation, therefore, aimed to point out these truths and strip him of support from the Islamic world and elsewhere, while eliciting increased Islamic and world support for the coalition forces. With strong backing by the American ambassador, who provided entry to the Egyptian government and military, and by American embassy officials, Devlin organized a cooperative effort out of Cairo to counter the continuous Iraqi propaganda.

"Because the invasion was literally a television news event, it was important to point out to the entire world exactly what a brutal dictator he was. But we wanted to point out specifically to the Islamic world that Saddam had attacked his Islamic brothers without justification, or the support of the rest of the Islamic world.

"According to Islamic law, you can be a bad Muslim and an evil man who does not follow the law. But then you can have a change of heart and convert to a follower of the law. Once you have done that, you can proclaim the right to call a Jihad." Saddam claimed he was a good Muslim in calling for a justified Jihad. "But also according to Islamic law, Muslims don't attack other Muslims. So Saddam's claim had this fundamental flaw."

Both the Arab world and the Islamic world as a whole had to pay attention to this truth, but it obviously could not come directly from Americans.

"We wanted to get word out to the Islamic world that noted Islamic clerics faulted his reasoning and justification, according to the Koran and Islamic law. Our goal was not to get them to say what we wanted; we wanted them to say, print, and transmit what they were already saying as Islamic experts, recognized as such by the Islamic world: Saddam's claims were not true, according to Islamic custom and law."

This message went out: Devlin's team and their Egyptian colleagues found ways to insert it into plays, radio and TV shows, soap operas, and magazines and newspapers. Islamic conferences held for world Islamic leaders condemned Saddam. The end result was a chorus of voices in all media denouncing Saddam from recognized Islamic sources.

"I never told them what to write. The suggestion would be that an article (or program, or conference, etc.) stating their beliefs would be useful. They would take it from there. One result was a book, written very quickly, by a noted Islamic scholar.

"Effective PSYOP is not always preparing the message; it is extremely effective when already available materials, programming, or information are properly directed."

Another aspect of the PSYOP war saw the 4th Group working like a political campaign's media advisers, suggesting talking points for U.S. officials and others who would counter Saddam's propaganda. "We suggested four or five information points every few days for leaders of the United States, Egypt, and other allies, such as Great Britain, to use in public interviews, press conferences, and statements. This showed that the coalition force really spoke with one mind. Every day, ideas would float back and forth between governments and leaders. From these, we'd take four or five points for all to use.

"It was magic to watch all of this unfold. Following agreement on the points by the leaders, and their dissemination through the Ambassador and the CINC, we would watch them come back through the media over the course of a week."

Very few people outside of military circles are aware of PSYOP campaigns. And even the military…

"You have to be satisfied with accomplishment, because you sure as hell don't get any recognition," Devlin concludes.

By the time the war got under way, Colonel Layton Dunbar had taken over as the 4th Psychological Group's commander. The unit's efforts varied:

In December, stickers began appearing on buildings in Kuwait City encouraging resistance to Saddam — a PSYOP project. two days after the first bombs fell in the air war, PSYOP troops — predominantly members of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard — launched the Voice of the Gulf, a radio program broadcast on both AM and FM bands from three ground stations and an airborne EC-130. Subtle PSYOP appeals played in rotation with music and news programs.

B-52s can carry a very large load of bombs, and when the load hits, it wastes a lot of territory and makes lots of noise. In other words, B-52s are not only strategic and tactical weapons, they are psychological weapons. Ground troops who have seen what they can do are not eager to repeat the experience — or be subjected to it.

Six Iraqi military units were targeted for treatment that combined PSYOP leaflets with B-52 strikes. The operations unfurled over several days. On day one, leaflets were dropped on the unit, warning that it would come under B-52 attack at a specific time. The soldiers were urged to flee. At the specified moment, the B-52s would arrive with their loads of bombs. Afterward, a fresh round of leaflets would arrive, reminding them of the strike and warning that a new one would soon follow. Neighboring units nearby would receive their own warnings. Mass defections often followed. Or as Carl Stiner put it, "They ran like hell."

The Air Force was at first reluctant to sign on to this approach (who warns the people they're going to bomb?), but they eventually became big boosters. These operations conveyed a sense of overwhelming superior force, while filling the enemy with dread.

You don't have to kill the enemy to win a war. It's enough that the enemy does not choose to fight.

Later, the Air Force adopted a PSYOP campaign that targeted SAM sites, warning them that they would be bombed if they turned on their radars. "It kept bad guys from shooting at Air Force aircraft," Normand comments. "So they turned out to be among our strongest proponents."

One feature of PSYOP leaflets was the positive portrayal of Iraqi soldiers. As a unit historian pointed out later: "I Ie was always portrayed as a decent, brave fellow who had been misled by his leaders, but who would be received by the coalition forces with the dignity he deserved." Coalition soldiers were depicted in unthreatening ways.

This portrayal was not accidental. PSYOP planners market-tested their products. Among other things, they discovered that Iraqi soldiers responded better to simple leaflets with primitive illustrations and poor-quality paper; slicker efforts were too Western. They also discovered the kinds of content that worked and the kinds that didn't.

"We had some Iraqi POWs who had surrendered," said Normand. "We laughed and joked with them and found out that the thing they miss the most over there was bananas. Over and over, for some reason, that kept coming up."

So PSYOP leaflets began to feature a fruit bowl with bananas.

The subtle touches took time; a single leaflet could involve as many as seventy-five people and a week and a half to develop. The leaflets were then dropped by a variety of aircraft, including B-52s, F-16s, F/A-18s, and MC- 13 °Combat Talons. The 8th SOS dropped approximately 19 million leaflets from MC-130s alone.

PSYOP troops also used specially prepared balloons, relying on carefully charted weather patterns to target specific areas with leaflet drops, and they paid smugglers in Jordan and off the Kuwaiti coast to distribute leaflets in Iraq.

A PSYOP survey of many of the 86,743 Iraqis prisoners found that 98 percent had seen a leaflet; 80 percent said they had been influenced by it; and 70 percent claimed it had helped them decide to give up. Radio messages were found to have reached 58 percent of the men; 46 percent had found these messages persuasive; and 34 percent said they had helped convince them to surrender. Loudspeaker broadcasts reached fewer, and affected fewer still: thirty-four percent had heard them; 18 percent had found them persuasive; and 16 percent claimed the messages had helped convince them to give up. These numbers, have to be considered with skepticism, since they were supplied by prisoners of war probably eager to please their captors, but even so, the vast number of Iraqi defections indicate the PSYOP campaign helped demoralize a large part of the Iraqi army.

Demoralizing the enemy was not, in fact, the main PSYOP goal.

"PSYOP basically has two functions," Colonel Normand comments. "To persuade and to inform. Persuasion is important. But supplying information is most of what we did. A lot of times, it's questionable whether you arc going to get an enemy soldier to surrender. So your main task may not necessarily be to persuade him, but to let him know what he has to do. If the situation reaches a point where you can't go on, then here are the things you need to do to save yourself."

Accordingly, the PSYOP warriors gave soldiers in Kuwait and Iraq very clear maps to allied lines, where they could go to surrender or wait to be repatriated.

Supplying maps to the enemy, and warning units that arc about to be attacked, seems an odd military tactic. Even more, an odd SOF tactic. These are shadow warriors. But in fact the goal is also a traditional one for the SOF: to affect people's hearts and minds. Successful PSYOP operations share another SOF principle as well: Think creatively. For example, PSYOP planners recognized that the goal of a particular bombing raid is to make the targeted unit ineffective, as opposed to simply killing as many men as possible — which meant that a good propaganda campaign could actually accomplish much more than bombing alone. The leaflets helped make the allies seem overwhelmingly powerful.

No wonder so many Iraqis deserted as the war progressed.

Psyop units also worked with ground troops near the front, in campaigns designed either to confuse the enemy or to trick him into revealing his position.

In one celebrated example, a Marine unit's Light Armored Vehicles, or LAVs, were tape-recorded. The PSYOP team then used loudspeakers to convince an Iraqi unit that LAVs were maneuvering near the border. When the Iraqis began firing at them, Marine air and artillery zeroed in on the enemy positions.

Sixty-six loudspeaker-equipped teams accompanied advancing armies during the ground war to encourage surrender and direct enemy prisoners of war. The teams helped herd and control the large number of EPs (enemy prisoners) taken by coalition forces.

Some nine hundred PSYOP soldiers took part in various facets of the campaign; most were highly educated and many were language specialists. The 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) included nearly fifty Ph.D.s. Normand had a B.A. in political science and two master's degrees, one in international affairs and the other in strategic planning. Devlin earned a B.S. in history education, and two master's degrees in national security affairs and international relations. Both were trained and experienced U.S. Army foreign area officers (FAOs), army strategists, and joint service officers (JSOs).

Interestingly, clinical psychologists play a very small role in PSYOPs. They're too narrow. "Their focus is on an individual's thinking processes, but they don't go beyond that into the effects of that thinking. They don't consider what that thinking causes to happen in a society and in a culture, explained Normand.

THE WAR AGAINST SCUDS

Saddam had his own psychological weapons, as well. After the air war began, Saddam struck back with "Scud" missiles.

Scuds were not an effective tactical weapon. They were obsolete and inaccurate. The original Scud design had been introduced in 1957, but even then it looked back more than it looked forward: It was a near-descendant of the Nazi V-2s that had terrorized London in the latter part of World War II. A modern military commander actually had little to fear.

Stock versions of the Soviet SS-1 mobile missiles (as they were officially designated) could send a 1,000-kg warhead of conventional high explosives just under 300 kilometers. The Iraqis had increased their range by welding additional fuel sections to some of the rockets. Two lraqi variants used during the war had ranges of just over 400 and 550 miles. Achieving this, however, came at a considerable price. Payloads had to be reduced, and worse, shoddy welding often meant that the missiles ruptured as they flew, decreasing their already poor accuracy. This defect actually made it harder for antimissile systems, like Patriot MIM-104 missiles, to target them effectively.

There was considerable concern that the Scuds might carry nuclear, biological, and chemical warheads. While Iraq had chemical — and probably biological — weapons, there was debate over whether they could be used on the missiles, and though the Iraqis had a program to develop nuclear weapons, they were years away from a working warhead in 1991.

In the end, no chemical, nuclear, or biological agents were launched on Scuds during the war.

Because the Scuds were not seen as a serious tactical threat to American forces, they were mostly ignored by the early Air Force war plan (except to knock out known Scud sites during the first moments of the war). But the Air Force made a serious error in estimating their strategic importance: Like the German V-2s, they had a potent psychological effect.

Saddam's targeting during his first salvo of the war, January 18, made his strategy obvious. Eight Scuds were launched toward Israel that night; the most serious strike injured a dozen people. The injuries were light — mostly cuts and bruises from shattered windows. In all, about sixty people in Tel Aviv and Haifa were hurt. But Saddam's goal wasn't so much to kill Jews as to provoke Israel into a military response. Israeli action, he believed (probably correctly), would drive the Arab nations arrayed against him from the allied coalition.

A switch from support to opposition by the leading Arab nations would have subjected American forces to innumerable difficulties, encouraged terrorist attacks, and greatly complicated logistics.

Saddam did very nearly get his wish: A flight of Israeli air force jets were reportedly scrambled for a retaliatory raid but were called back. The Israeli government tottered for weeks on the brink of ordering a revenge raid, yet the go-ahead blessedly never came. President Bush and his administration worked feverishly to calm the Israelis with assurances that stopping the Scuds was a top priority. It was a top priority. But stopping them wasn't easy. The attacks continued. By the end of the first week of the war, more than thirty Scuds had been launched against Israel. Another eighteen were fired at Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force changed targeting priorities to concentrate on the missiles, but the Iraqis had put enormous effort and ingenuity into making the Scuds mobile, and into deception and camouflage. They had adapted transport vehicles to use as primitive launchers, drastically cut the arduous launch preparation procedure, and produced convincing decoys. Hitting such missile units at night from 15,000 feet in the air was problematic. Even with well over fifty sorties a night, the United States failed to stem the Scud attacks.

In September, and again in late December, Carl Stiner had recommended deploying a Joint Special Operations Task Force to Saudi Arabia, consisting of more than one-third of his special mission forces, to be readily available for counterterrorist operations as well as deep-strike missions, but he had been turned down. Even so, his planning continued.

When Scuds became a critical political issue in Israel, Stiner and Downing quickly developed a plan for dealing with the threat by putting special missions forces deep inside Iraq.

On January 22, while Stiner lobbied Powell by phone, Downing met with Lieutenant General Thomas W. Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, to present the plan. Intelligence had narrowed the launching positions against Israel to three areas, or "kill boxes, in western Iraq. The Amman-Baghdad highway ran through one; the other two were on the Syrian border near Shab al Hiri and Al Qaim. Downing outlined a force that would stalk the kill boxes and locate the Scuds so they could be destroyed by air, or attacked by the patrols themselves if air was not available. Augmented by Rangers and other special operators and supported by special mission aircraft, teams could spend several days north of the border accomplishing their mission.

Ground forces, Downing argued, had a much better chance of locating the Scuds than the fighter-bombers, which had to fly at relatively high altitude (to avoid antiaircraft defenses), often in bad weather. Kelly liked the plan enough to take it to Colin Powell.

"Interesting, but not yet," Powell said.

The same day, a Scud landed in a Tel Aviv suburb. Ninety-six people were injured. While none of the direct injuries was fatal, three Israelis died of heart attacks, possibly caused by the raid.

Israel continued to pressure the Bush administration, which in turn pressured the SECDEF and the Chairman. On January 30, Powell called Stiner and Downing to his office. Downing briefed essentially the same plan he had given Kelly. He proposed three possible force packages — small, medium, or large.

"All right," said Powell, when the briefing ended. "I'll go up and get the Secretary of Defense. Give me those slides."

Powell disappeared with the briefing slides. A few minutes later, he returned with Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.

Downing and Stiner hit the key points again.

"Every night you see Saddam Hussein sitting in his doggone Winnebagos with his war council, laughing at the United States," Stiner said to the Secretary of Defense. "The air war has been ongoing for a week, and he is still very much in control. The Scuds arc continuing to fall on Israel, and we can do something about it, if we're allowed to get in theater and do our thing."

Cheney looked at Downing.

"General, when can you depart for Saudi Arabia?" the Secretary asked.

"We can go tonight," said Downing.

"Why don't you do that?"

"You know Norm doesn't want these guys over there," Powell told Cheney.

"I don't care what Norm wants," replied the Secretary of Defense. "He's had seven days to shut this thing off and he hasn't done it. They're going."

Downing left immediately with a force package of about four hundred personnel, especially tailored for the mission. Operating out of Ar-Ar in western Saudi Arabia near the border, the package was the middle-size of the three attack options he had outlined.

When the general arrived in Riyadh the next day, Schwarzkopf was trying to catch a quick nap. Downing, who'd known the CINC for almost his entire time in the Army, went down to meet him in his bedroom.

"You work for me, not Carl Stiner," Schwarzkopf barked in greeting. "I don't care if you talk to General Stiner, but I don't want you reporting to him."

"I won't do that," Downing answered.

"I don't want you going into Iraq and getting captured, you understand that?" Schwarzkopf added. "The last thing I want is a damn general paraded on Iraqi television."

"Okay," said Downing.

Schwarzkopf had nothing to worry about on either count. Downing wasn't a cowboy, and in any event he was well aware of the devastating effect a captured general might have on both morale and public opinion. Likewise, Stiner never interfered with Schwarzkopf or his chain of command.

Before leaving for his new base, Downing went to see British Special Air Service Colonel Andy Massey, whose 22nd SAS Regiment commandos were already conducting anti-Scud operations north of the border. During the course of the Scud war, about 250 SAS men would work in the southernmost kill box along the Amman-Baghdad highway

"Currently, we have twenty-seven guys unaccounted for — they arc missing in action," Massey told Downing. "I want to tell you everything we've done right, and everything we've done wrong."

The extreme cold and the openness of the desert had caused major problems. two British commandos had already died of hypothermia. And there was simply nowhere to hide during the day.

"The place is covered with Bedouins," Massey said. "You meet a Bedouin and you've got a fifty percent chance he is going to turn you in."

Though some of his own troops were on foot, Massey also made it clear that the patrols needed to be mounted. Without vehicles they were easy prey.

It was an important lesson.

Even before they left the States, Downing and his planners realized the critical mission wasn't to destroy Scuds; it was to stop Scud missiles from shooting into Israel. That realization meant they didn't have to find the missiles themselves; any of the facilities necessary for launching them would do just as well.

"When you focus on that as a mission, a whole bunch of other things open up to you," Downing explains. "All of a sudden, you start after things like the logistic system, the fuel system, the communications systems, people, barracks, roads. I mean, it's not just the missiles.

"A target list that was very, very small and very, very vague became an enormous target list that let us be very, very smart."

Field-level troops and commanders formulated the specific tactics, not the generals. Downing and Stiner saw their jobs as primarily answering the question "How do we support this?"

"The guys who arc going to do the mission plan it," said Downing. "Generals don't plan it."

The Special Forces Scud missions began February 7, when sixteen SOF troopers and two vehicles were helicoptered into Iraq by MI I-53J Pave Low and CH-47 Chinook helos. They were supported by armed Blackhawk helicopters, called defensive armed penetrators, as well as regular Air Force and Navy airplanes, including F-15Es, F-18s, and A-10As. A week after the operation began, the original anti-Scud forces were augmented with additional special missions units, a reinforced Ranger company, and additional special operations helicopters.

About fifteen anti-Scud SOF missions were undertaken during the course of the war. More would surely have been launched if the war had not ended. The mission lengths and sizes varied; at one point, at least four different American SOF units were looking for Scuds inside Iraq.

The insertions were made by helicopters, whose movements were coordinated with large packages of bombers heading across the border to attack Iraqi installations. Personal, up-front leadership was exercised by commanders at every level, a trademark of special operations. "Doug" and "Rich" personally flew the lead on every critical air insertion; "Eldon," "Ike," and "John," and their troop commanders and sergeant majors, led every ground patrol. The Ranger raid against a command-and-control node near the Jordanian border was led by "Kurt," the Ranger company commander. While the Iraqi defenders concentrated on the high-flying bombers, the helicopters zipped undetected across the open desert at sand-dune level.

While specific procedures varied according to the situation, in general, the ground units would hide during the day, while reconnaissance and attacks took place at night. Fighter-bombers and attack planes detailed to Scud-hunting would be vectored to their targets by the SOF teams. The Strike Eagles worked mostly at night, the A-1 OAs mostly during the day.

One of the keys to the Scud operations were special all-terrain vehicles and humvees, which could be carried inside special operations helicopters. Machine guns, grenade launchers, and antitank missiles gave the vehicles considerable firepower. Besides the driver and up to ten passengers, gunners could sit on elevated swivel-seats at the rear.

Transporting the vehicles and combat teams across sometimes two hundred miles of hostile territory presented a problem, however. The fuel required for the long-range missions also weighed the helos down. All that weight meant they couldn't hover: They had to literally land on the fly. Twenty-knot rolling touchdowns on a smooth landing surface arc one thing — and they are quite another in sand dunes at night. The uneven terrain — not to mention rocks — could easily destroy the fuel-laden helos.

As soon as the operations began, the special operators realized that their aerial and satellite intelligence photos — used by the Air Force for their earlier attacks — in many cases missed the desert roads the Scud transports were actually using. And even when the targets were pointed out, hitting individual missile launchers from 15,000 feet and above was a difficult proposition.

Back behind the lines, Downing met with Buster Glosson to discuss the possibility of using CBU minefields on the newly discovered Scud routes and rear staging areas. Glosson liked the idea. So Downing asked him to come along to discuss the plan with Schwarzkopf, who still insisted on signing off on every covert mission. The CINC tended to trust the Air Force general more than he did SOF officers. After hearing the plan, the always skeptical Schwarzkopf turned to Glosson, who of course gave it his thumbs-up. The boss was convinced.

"Once we figured out what the logistics flow was, we went in and put these minefields in," said Downing. "And they were devastating."

Cooperation between SOF and Air Force units was very high, and probably saved the lives of a number of operators behind the lines. On at least two occasions, Air Force F-15Es intervened when Iraqis attacked the special operations teams. In one case, a Strike Eagle pilot switched on his landing lights and plunged toward a patrol of nine armored vehicles, scattering them so a SOF helo could rescue a four-man SOF contingent. In another, an Eagle weapons officer used a smart bomb as an antiaircraft weapon, wiping out an Iraqi helicopter.

As part of the SOF Scud campaign, Blackhawk helicopters conducted armed reconnaissance missions, flying their specially equipped MII-60s at night with the aid of night-vision goggles. On their first night out, they nailed a Scud.

When they reported this to Downing, he was skeptical. Downing was a Vietnam veteran with two tours as a junior infantry officer; he knew better than to trust the first reports back from the field.

"Yeah, right," he told them. "Let's see the videos."

Like most U.S. military aircraft, the sophisticated helicopters included equipment that recorded attacks. His men dutifully brought the tape in, and set it unseen in the viewer. Downing frowned through the fast forward with obvious disbelief.

Then the pilot slowed the tape just as a Scud missile came into focus on the screen. A few puffs appeared; an Iraqi soldier ran past the camera.

"Holy shit!" said Downing, as the Scud exploded.

He grabbed the phone and called General Schwarzkopf. "They got some Scud missiles," he told the general when he came on the line.

"Yeah, right."

"No, we really did."

"Okay, that's good," said Schwarzkopf, hanging up, still clearly unconvinced.

Downing turned to his staff. "Get me an airplane," he said. The general grabbed "Dave," one of the warrant officers who had flown the mission. Three and a half hours later, the two men walked into General Schwarzkopf's war room in Riyadh.

"What are you doing here?" demanded Schwarzkopf.

"Sir, I want to talk to you about these Scud missiles," Downing told him.

"Yeah, right."

"We've got a video I'd like to show you," said Downing.

Glosson was standing nearby. "I'd like to see it," said the Air Force general, who was himself taking a lot of the heat for the Scud launches.

Sweeney set up the video. Schwarzkopf hunched over the monitor — then began dancing like a kid as the screen lit up with flames.

"Holy shit! That's a Scud missile. Hey, where'd you get this?" he asked Downing. "Can we transmit this back to the States?"

For Downing, it was a particularly sweet moment. Several years before, Schwarzkopf had cornered him in a Pentagon hallway, and lambasted him for pushing a proposal to outfit Special Operations helicopters with rockets, miniguns, and cannons. The helicopters Schwarzkopf had scorned had just scored a big kill.

Downing didn't bother mentioning it.

Iraqi Scud launches peaked on January 21, when fourteen were fired; ten were launched on January 25 and another six on January 26. By then, the missiles had become a priority for the Air Force. The British SAS, and then American Special Forces units, took up the operation soon afterward. Firings dropped off precipitously during the second, third, and fourth weeks of the war, dwindling off to nothing by war's end.

U.S. and British efforts to stop them had had an effect, but the Iraqis were clever and resourceful, and going after the missiles was something like trying to figure out a shell game.

The Scud campaign didn't achieve its intended aim of breaking up the allied coalition — but it did tie up considerable American resources. And though Scuds were tactically negligible, they could hurt, and hurt bad. An attack on Dhahran in late February, for example, killed twenty-eight U.S. soldiers and injured ninety-seven others.

Assessments after the war concluded that attacks on the missiles by fixed-wing aircraft were only very marginally effective. Most searches and attacks from the air took place at night (to protect the aircraft), but at night, even when an attacking aircraft flew directly on top of a missile site, the limits of airborne sensors and the vagaries of weapons made the site hard to hit. The ability of the Iraqis to modify the missiles and their tactics added further problems.

It might have made a difference if SOF had made a concerted effort against the Scuds from the beginning of the war, but that is speculation. The Iraqis were operating a small number of highly mobile launchers across a vast area.

The Scud campaign was probably the most successful Iraqi effort of the war.

GOING DEEP

As the Allied Command prepared for the ground war, Special Forces units prepared special reconnaissance (SR) missions to coincide with the attack. These were classic SF operations, providing mission commanders with information about enemy movements and capabilities.

And in at least one case, enemy dirt.

Two teams went into Iraq in the area through which Lieutenant General Fred Franks, the VII Corps commander, intended to sweep, testing soil conditions and analyzing the terrain in order to determine whether the desert soil would be able to support tanks and other heavy vehicles.

Inserted by Pave Lows, the teams included engineers who tested the soil with penetrometers. They also used still and video cameras to give commanders a visual record of what they'd be facing once they crossed into Iraq.

The overall thrust of the allied plan depended on a wide maneuver, or "left hook" — the famous "Hail Mary" that sent American troops racing north into Iraq before turning back east in the direction of Kuwait. While the strike would hit the Iraqis on their flank, the maneuvering American troops would themselves be vulnerable on their flanks. Real-time intelligence on the ground beyond the flanks was critical for both the XVIII Airborne Corps and VII Corps, the two allied groups charged with the forming the hook.

The XVIII Airborne Corps, which included the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, started farther west and would charge to the Euphrates before turning cast. The VII Corps would head roughly toward Al Busayyah and then swing right for Kuwait.

SF teams were assigned to each Corps to provide intelligence. Team members spent roughly a month prior to their jump-off occupied with training and developing techniques for the mission. The general game plan for each team was similar. They'd be inserted by helicopter at night, then hand-dig large holes, called "hide sites," where they would stay during the day. The missions usually broke down to six or eight men, split into two hide sites. The two elements might locate several miles from each other, or they might be close together, depending on the particular circumstances. (There were at least six teams.) The teams were equipped with a variety of communications gear and armed with MP-5 submachine guns, grenade launchers, a variety of other light weapons, and a variety of communications gear.

The sites themselves, in areas as much as 165 miles inside enemy territory, were to be located near highways the Iraqis were expected to use to move troops, and the plan called for the SF teams to observe and radio back information day and night. Teams spotting armored concentrations and Scud missiles were to call in immediately: otherwise they would call at regular intervals. Generally the plans called for the units to stay in place until "picked up" by approaching ground troops.

The SF SR teams were sent out on the evening of February 23.

It turned out that many were plagued by bad luck — and far worse, lousy intelligence. Information provided to the teams indicated that most of the areas into which they were to be dropped were sparsely populated; several teams found this wasn't the case. Additional snafus, including delays that upset mission timing, caused severe complications.

Two of the SR missions supporting the VII Corps remained undetected and provided important intelligence until they were joined by elements of the I st Cavalry Division on February 27. A third team had to be exfiltrated early because of the presence of Iraqi forces.

But things proved to be much more difficult in the XVIII Airborne area, where three missions ran into problems.

On one, the operators discovered their target site was a Bedouin camp. As they scouted for another site in their helicopter, they came under attack from antiaircraft artillery and SAMs and had to abort the mission.

SR 008B, a three-man team drawn from 5th SFG A-Detachment 523 and led by Master Sergeant Jeffrey Sims, was infiltrated by Blackhawk to a location near Qawam am Hamzal, where they would monitor vehicles for the XVIII Airborne Corps. Though the approach of the helicopters set local dogs barking, Sims and his men, Sergeant First Class Ronald Torbett and Staff Sergeant Roy Tabron, ignored them, and moved quickly to their hide site four kilometers away. Each man packed about 175 pounds; besides food, ammunition, weapons, communication gear, and equipment to construct their hide site, the Green Berets carried ten quarts of water apiece. Though they were armed with a variety of weapons, their ammunition stocks were relatively light. Their job was to stay out of sight, not shoot people.

The next morning, Bedouins appeared in the field where the Green Berets were hidden. The team lay low, hoping they might somehow be overlooked. No such luck: Around midday a little girl and her father stuck their heads into the rear exit hole of the hide site. The shocked Iraqis quickly backed away. As a pair of team members moved to grab them. they saw about twenty other Bedouins nearby. Loath to harm the civilians, the three SF operators grabbed their essential gear and moved down the drainage ditch.

The Bedouins closed in, perhaps believing they might earn the reward the Iraqi government had posted for captured pilots. Several began firing small arms. The SF team called in air support and asked to be extracted.

A long firefight followed. At one point, an F-16 pilot had to back the Iraqis off by dropping a thousand-pound bomb and CBUs. But such measures proved temporary; the team was trapped in the relatively open terrain. Buildings near the highway provided Iraqis a vantage to pin them down, while others tried to flank them. Despite efforts to conserve their ammunition, their small stock quickly dwindled.

About an hour and a half after the firefight began, another F-16 managed to hold off the attackers with another bomb strike, then circled above while a Special Forces Blackhawk rushed in to try a broad daylight rescue. Enemy troops were now closing in. Disregarding his flight plan, Warrant Officer "James" blew right over an Iraqi division, leaving the startled Iraqis un-shouldering their rifles.

On the ground, Sims and his men grimly thought about the grenades they'd clipped to their belts as last-resort weapons. The grenades were meant for themselves.

Suddenly, Sims heard a helicopter approaching. "He was screaming down the road, going around 140 knots, on one side of the power line, six feet off the deck," Sims remembers. The team popped a small white flare to mark their position. The helicopter pitched its nose up, swung around in a circle, and then slapped down nearly on top of them.

Team member Sergeant First Class Ronald Torbett's mouth dropped. He thought the helicopter had been hit by the fusillade of rifle fire from the Iraqis — not an unreasonable assumption, given the hail of bullets from the enemy troops nearby. But he was wrong. The difficult maneuver had been controlled, a piece of master aircraft driving between power lines and Iraqi gunfire. As the helo's door gunner laid down suppressing fire, the three Green Berets jumped inside. The Iraqis continued to rake the helicopter; miraculously, no one inside was seriously hurt, and the pilot managed to repeat his aerobatics, dodging bullets and power lines to get away. Flying at top speed no more than twenty feet off the ground, the Blackhawk barreled back toward coalition lines.

It made it home safely, but was so badly damaged it didn't fly again during the war.

DECEPTION ON KUWAIT BEACHES

Even though the main allied ground attack came from the west, General Schwarzkopf's plan included a direct attack on southern Kuwait, a mission tasked to the Marine Corps 1st and 2nd Divisions, along with Kuwaiti and Arab units. This attack would tie down Iraqis as the "hook" was launched; it would also aim to eventually capture Japer airfield, Kuwait International Airport, and Kuwait City, all strategically and symbolically important.

One option that was also seriously considered was a Marine amphibious landing on Kuwait.

However, reconnaissance of the beaches during the fall and winter months by SEALs, as well as by Marine and Navy units, made it clear that an amphibious landing would be bloody, and result in the destruction of a considerable amount of Kuwait's infrastructure. Reluetantly, the Marines settled on a land assault from the south, itself no picnic. To make it work, the Iraqis had to be convinced the Marines were coming from the sea.

Special Forces SEALs played an important role in the deception. Lieutenant General Walter E. Boomer, the Marine Corps CENTCOM commander, asked Navy Special Warfare Task Group commander Captain Ray Smith to develop a plan to help divert Iraqi armor in the Kuwait area. Boomer wanted to draw the Iraqis tanks and guns away from his own units and tie them down near the coast. The general suggested a diversionary landing operation; the SEAL leader quickly accepted.

After the air war began, the SEALs began looking for a beach where they could stage their mock invasion. Fifteen reconnaissance missions were undertaken in the area between the Saudi border and Ra's al Qulay'ah on the Kuwaiti coast. Pave Lows supported some of these missions, inserting the SEALs on "soft duck" operations; the others were made from patrol boats. On at least one occasion, the Iraqis fired at the Special Forces troops, but no casualties were sustained. But neither could the SEALs find the right kind of beach.

One night, on patrol, Lieutenant Tom Dietz and his men spotted three Iraqi patrol boats near the naval base at Ra's al Qulay'ah. Excited, they called for air support. But the controller informed them that no airplanes were available. While no doubt tempted to take them out themselves, that would have potentially compromised their own mission. So they turned their patrol craft southward toward Mina Su'ud. Looking out toward the dark Kuwaiti shore, Dietz saw something he'd been hoping to spot for days — a long, empty beach. He made a note to come back as soon as possible. They did so a few nights later.

The winter water off the Gulf was cold, but the SEAL swimmers were used to dealing with considerably worse. They slipped off their rigid-hull inflatable boats quickly, pulling themselves quietly through the water to the Kuwaiti shore. Lieutenant Dietz saw a low-slung shadow as he paddled; he kicked for it, then made his way out of the water onto a boat ramp.

For an hour, he lay at the waterline, watching in the darkness. There were buildings nearby, and the beach was littered with obstacles and other Iraqi defenses. But there were no patrols.

"I have a good feeling," he told himself when he slipped back into the water. Mina Su'ud would be the perfect beach to hit.

The plan was approved on February 19, and the SEALs conducted a dress rehearsal on February 22. Time was of the essence: The ground war, and thus the SEALs' mission, was set to begin on the night of February 23 and 24.

Leaving Ra's al Mish'ab in four small, fast Special Operation Crafts (powered by twin 1,000-hp Mer-Cruiser engines), the SEAL platoon sped through the mine-filled sea on the evening of February 23. Mines and the Iraqi shore defenses weren't the only hazard; the Special Operations boat crews were going to be extremely exposed to potential "blue on blue," or friendly-fire incidents. For that reason, they'd been supplemented with communicators who were assigned to help fend off their friends who might bomb them by mistake.

Twelve and a half miles off the target areas, the crews cut their engines. Four abreast, they drifted toward their launch point, while the SEALs broke out and inflated their rubber Zodiacs. At 2100, a six-man SEAL demolition team boarded its Zodiac. The coxswain then fired up the small, quiet motor. Trailed by two of the patrol boats, the rubberized assault craft headed toward the beach.

Precisely forty minutes later, Lieutenant Dietz and five of his men slipped into the water. Each swimmer's weight had been augmented by twenty pounds of C-4, the charges already prepared. Their emergency gear included bottles of air for use in escaping underwater, pistols at their belts — and MP- 5Ns and M-16s in case things got truly hairy. The six SEALs paddled steadily toward the beach, then crawled up on the sand in the shallow water. The timers were affected by the water temperature, and so Dietz had to consult a chart to work out when to set them. They pulled the pins at exactly 2247 for the planned 0100 detonation. The charges were set to go off in the shallow water as the tide rolled out, maximizing the effect of the explosions.

The swimmers were back aboard their rubber boats by midnight. The speedboats came forward and placed orange buoys, as if marking the boundaries of a landing area. Then they dashed toward shore, machine guns blazing at a building on the left bank of the target area. Intelligence believed that it was used for weapons storage.

Soon Navy ships and airplanes were delivering bombs and shells to the general area, heating up the show. As they turned away from the beach, boat crew members tossed off four-pound floating charges timed to go off at various intervals. The planted C-4 packets went off at 0100.

As far as the Iraqis knew, the Marines were on their way

Elements of two Iraqi divisions rushed to man defensive positions near the beach. While the Iraqis waited for an attack that would never come, the Marines and their Arab allies blasted into Iraq and Kuwait.

The SEAL deception was part of an overall disinformation campaign that drew attention away from the main areas of attack. The campaign included everything from PSYOP leaflets in bottles supposedly dropped from ships offshore to commanders' "leaks" to news media. All this helped convince the Iraqis that the "real" invasion would come from the sea.

SEAL teams were involved in several other actions during the war, including the boarding and capture of seven oil platforms in the Durrah oil field after U.S. helicopters had come under fire there on January 18.

Eight special boats supported a contingent of thirty-two Kuwaiti Marines during an operation on February 8—14, when the Kuwaitis seized Qaruh, Maradim, and Kubbar Islands. These were nonetheless the first reclamations of Kuwaiti territory by coalition forces, and therefore symbolically important. FROM January 30 to February 15, SEALs used their Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs — wet submergibles) to conduct six major mine-hunting missions in hostile Iraqi waters, ten-hour dives using the vehicles' onboard sonar. Because the vehicles are literally full of water, SOVs require SEALs to wear scuba gear. Though they cleared twenty-seven square miles of water, the Iraqi mining operations were so pervasive that amphibious operations in those waters were still considered high risk.

Throughout the campaign, explosive- and detonator-equipped Navy SEALs also conducted mine countermeasures by helicopter — flying on a total of ninety-two helo sorties. They were dropped into the water to place charges directly on the mines. Twenty-five Iraqi mines were destroyed in this manner.

On the night of February 22–23, a SEAL team landed a group of CIA-TRAINED Kuwaiti guerrillas near Kuwait City in preparation for the start of the ground war.

SEALs, working with Marines and British forces, also helped enforce United Nations trade sanctions in the Gulf. A total of eleven "takedowns" — forced boardings of ships that refused to submit to inspections — were initiated during the war; all were successful.

Captain Smith's men also helped restore and train crews for three Kuwaiti navy ships that had escaped the invasion. All told, the Navy Special Warfare Task Croup brought two hundred and sixty people to the Gulf, the largest SEAL deployment since the Vietnam War.

ON TO THE END

As U.S. and coalition forces closed on Kuwait from the west, the reconstituted Kuwaiti forces that the 5th Special Forces had helped train and equip (four brigades) were entering Kuwait City from the south. For political and symbolic reasons, the Kuwaitis and other Arab units formed the liberating spearhead designated to take Kuwait City, their maneuver and air support being coordinated by the accompanying SF personnel that had trained them.

By the time the Kuwaiti troops roared into the city on pickup trucks with.50-caliber machine guns mounted on the back, the Iraqi units guarding Kuwait's capital had already fled.

The ground war quickly turned into a rout, as the battered and hopelessly outclassed Iraqi army fell back toward Basrah. Pounded from the air and in many cases cut off from retreat, vast numbers of Iraqis surrendered or were captured. The Republican Guard and other Iraqi units had been decimated and suffered heavily as they fled in disarray toward Baghdad.

The allied objective of freeing Kuwait had been achieved, with relatively little loss of American life.

Acting on the recommendation of the Chairman, the SECDEF, and others, President Bush ordered American troops to halt the attack one hundred hours after the ground war had begun.

At the time of the cease-fire, somewhere between two and three hundred Special Operations personnel were behind the lines, with at least one patrol north of the Euphrates. Some SOF units had to drive out on their own; others were picked up by helicopter at night.

DESERT STORM had been a resounding success and a complete victory over a formidable foe. But no one had anticipated the end would come as abruptly as it did.

As with all conflicts, many things still needed to be done after the last shot had been fired. Unfortunately, the Civil Affairs units that would play the major role in helping Kuwait get back on its feet had not begun arriving in Saudi Arabia until after the start of the air war. Despite their inadequate planning time, CA did play an important role in post-liberation Kuwait. Working as part of the combined Civil Affair Task Force, CA personnel provided relief operations in the city and throughout the liberated country. Within two months, the task force distributed 12.8 million liters of water, 125,000 tons of food, and 1,250 tons of medicine.

Though after the war senior CA leadership came under criticism for a lack of initiative and "ill-coordinated" initial planning, CA's problems resulted from its late arrival and the unanticipated early end of the war — both beyond its control.

POSTWAR OBSERVATIONS

Carl Stiner will conclude:

Desert Storm was a brilliantly conceived and executed military operation frorn beginning to end that achieved the desired result — the liberation of Kuwait. There is no question that the President — after considering all the involved factors and consulting with all the concerned allies — made the right decision. He was right to stop the war when he did.

Monday-morning quarterbacks will always question decisions — particularly people with neither resportsibility nor accountability.

With regard to Special Operations support to the operation, I offer the following observations:

• Special Operations forces performed all missions outstandingly and contributed significantly to the victory. When SOF capabilities are integrated appropriately with those of conventional units, the result is a capability not otherwise achievable.

• CINCs need the best available advice and experience for most effectively employing and supporting Special Operations forces. All CINCs now have flag rank officers as commanders of their Special Operations Commands (SOCs). This was not possible during DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM, because USSOCOM was not authorized to have a flag rank officer at CENTCOM headquarters.

• Better intelligence support is needed for reconnaissance teams operating deep in hostile territory — particularly current maps and overhead photo coverage. The Grenada invasion produced a similar finding.

• SOF units need to be "flowed," so as to arrive in sufficient time to prepare appropriately for mission assignments; otherwise their potential is proportionately limited.

• Could SOF have done more? The answer is yes! But the CINC is the one who is responsible and accountable. He calls the shots as he sees them. Once he has made up his mind, all other CINCs fall in line to support. That's the way it is according to Goldwater-Nichols. And the way it should remain.