THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS-unless you`re a member of America`s special operations forces. Then details are death. Such as the time when four elite Navy commandos paid with their lives for a helicopter carrying the wrong man. It happened last December during Operation Just Cause, the top-secret plan to topple Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. The Navy`s sea-air-land commandos, called SEALs, were assigned to infiltrate the isthmus nation before the main invasion and prevent Noriega from making a getaway once the shooting started.
The mission was planned, the plans rehearsed, the SEALs were ready.
As H-hour approached, however, a last-minute intelligence report from Panama said a helicopter had been sighted lifting off from Colon, one of Noriega`s main military strongholds. Had the dictator been tipped off to the invasion? Was he rushing to his private jet and freedom? How could he be stopped?
Army Gen. James Lindsay, who is retiring as commander-in-chief of the recently created Special Operations Command based at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., said the commanders of the Panama operation thought the helicopter`s passenger might be Noriega.
”We had to speed up the mission,” Lindsay says, because there was no time to verify the intelligence report and the order was out to capture Noriega.
The SEALs hit Point Paitilla Airport, where Noriega`s private jet was stored. But coming in early exposed the Navy commandos to unexpectedly vicious enemy fire. In some of the bloodiest fighting of the entire invasion, four were killed and nine wounded, three seriously. But the jet was taken out of action.
It was not until later that U.S. forces confirmed that Noriega was not aboard that helicopter from Colon. Sadly, there was no need to have rushed the SEALs.
”Who would have thought, with all the warning that he had, that Noriega would decide to go to a motel and spend the evening with a whore?” Lindsay says. ”But that`s what he did.”
Lindsay argues that a surgical strike at Point Paitilla still averted civilian loss of life that would have been likely if Air Force bombers instead of SEALs had been sent to destroy the jet.
But the Monday-morning quarterbacks at the Pentagon continue to debate whether this mission, which became a set-piece firefight instead of an operation relying on stealth and speed, was the proper use of special forces. In the end it was units of the elite light infantry, called Rangers, who might have captured a fleeing Noriega on that first day . . . if their parachutes had been blown just a half mile off course. That`s how close they landed to Noriega, the general said.
The Rangers` only contact with the dictator was Noriega`s car bouncing off their roadblock; their only trophy was seizing his hastily discarded uniform.
The SEALs did score a perfect hit at the Panamanian port of Balboa, where they stealthily entered a heavily guarded harbor to disable Noriega`s high-speed patrol boats-another route of possible escape-the first time such a mission had been undertaken since World War II, Lindsay says.
For their efforts, American special operations forces ordered into the invasion of Panama suffered disproportionately high numbers of casualties compared to conventional troops. Of the 4,150 special forces involved, 11 were killed and more than 200 wounded, contrasted to 21 fatalities and more than 200 wounded of the 27,000 U.S. troops eventually assigned to Operation Just Cause.
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WHO ARE THESE SPECIAL FORCES? THEY ARE THE shadow warriors, the snake-eaters, the descendants of the World War II frogmen and Merrill`s
Marauders.
They serve in elite units such as Army Green Berets or Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force special-operations wings or the nation`s supersecret anti-terrorist squads, often but incorrectly lumped under the generic title Delta Force.
Although they are receiving increased attention under President Bush`s defense policy, their mission remains controversial, their history is checkered.
Special forces troops carried out assassination missions during Vietnam, an unpopular war whose legacy continues to shadow military policy in the U.S. And two high-profile post-Vietnam missions-the hostage rescue mission in Iran and deployment during the invasion of Grenada-ended in failure and loss of life respectively due to interservice rivalry and improper planning.
But they remain at the cutting edge of American planning. This was evidenced by the U.S. response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait when special forces were among the first front-line troops assigned to protect the interests of America and its allies.
The self-styled ”special-forces mafia” at the Pentagon argues with reasoned passion that the introduction of these warriors can protect America`s vital interests without provoking war and, if deployed properly, can even drive down the tension level to eliminate a hostile environment without bringing on greater conflict.
Opponents, though, argue with equal conviction that a democracy has no need for a class of professional hit-men and that a force designed for covert and clandestine operations is the Defense Department`s tool for sneaking the United States into war.
In fact, in Senate hearings early this summer, experts debated recent proposals that some fear would give the Special Operations Command too much autonomy in its foreign intelligence-gathering operations. Some senators said the plans would diminish governmental oversight by Congress and coordination efforts usually undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency.
In response, senior military officers complained that the CIA and other intelligence agencies neglect the needs of special operations, resulting in miscalculations such as those that led to the bungled attack on Noriega`s airplane in Panama.
America`s special forces receive the most grueling training in the U.S. armed forces and are supplied with weapons straight from James Bond. They joke that they even sandpaper their fingertips to sharpen the feel for battle.
BUT THEY RANKLE AT THE PERCEPTION OF a special operative as a Rambo-esque killing machine, brawny and brainless. They are trained to apply their craft both with firepower and nuance to a wide spectrum of military, political, economic, diplomatic and even psychological objectives. Sometimes when the wall won`t budge when you hit it, it`s best to talk it into crumbling;
sometimes, bravado works better than bullets.
As part of Operation Just Cause, for instance, Spanish-speaking members of the Green Berets were dispatched across Panama to open negotiations with Noriega`s commanders-some of whom had trained with the American special forces.
”We`d call the local military commanders on the phone, and say, `We would like for you to surrender,` ” says Army Col. Hugh Scruggs, commander of the 7th Special Forces Group at Ft. Bragg, N.C.
The Panamanian officers were told of the overwhelming U.S. forces committed to the invasion, and many surrendered on the spot. An untold number of Panamanian and American lives were saved, Scruggs says.
In the aftermath of Operation Just Cause, the most important role played by special forces fell to the Army`s civil-affairs battalions, who engaged in ”nation building,” the process of repairing roads and hospitals and sewers, creating an indigenous police force and assisting municipal officials. For the first six weeks after the invasion, the task of maintaining law and order west of the Panama Canal all the way to Costa Rica fell to Lt. Col. David Borresen, a Green Beret commander usually stationed at Ft. Bragg.
”Our initial responsibility was to show continued U.S. presence,” he says. ”Then we oversaw the transition to local government. We gave medical assistance. We started up a security force acceptable to the local populace.
”Through nation-building,” Borresen says, ”we tried to work ourselves out of a job.”
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IT IS THE WELL-REASONED IF UNEXPECTED ASSESSment of Green Beret Capt. Al Kendris of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg, N.C., that the good folks of the nearby farming communities of Candor, Ether and Carthage really know how to run a guerrilla underground. If America ever is invaded by its enemies, Kendris said, the bad guys would be best advised to stay clear of this neck of the woods.
The people here are already a finely honed resistance force. For example, the truck-stop waitress will know that an order for mustard sandwiches means an American pilot is down; the pot-bellied farmer will use his basement as a safe house; and the stealthy carpenter-he was never even spotted-will leave a rusted tool box at N.C. Hwy. 27 as a dead-letter drop containing rendezvous coordinates for the Green Beret rescue team.
Although it`s not the muggy Central Highlands of Vietnam, the mountainside coca fields of Colombia or the foggy plains of Middle Europe, the Uwharrie National Forest of North Carolina is crawling with special forces. They are practicing the art of unconventional warfare, which includes building a resistance force from scratch, molding guerrillas from office workers-like a recent bunch from the Ft. Bragg print shop-and transforming the local populace into a sympathetic, indigenous underground. Locals take great pride in their volunteer support of the Green Beret training, just as the dozen or so Army office workers who comprise the resistance force said they enjoy taking a week off from their routine to camp in the wilderness and play an adult version of capture the flag.
”We do a lot more than throw grenades, bust down doors and shoot anything that moves,” Kendris explains. ”We are trained for unconventional or clandestine operations. Sabotage and deep, long-range reconnaissance. Direct-action missions-that`s the fighting aspect. Propaganda, as well as civil, military or humanitarian aid. And there is also the mission of foreign internal defense, where we train an ally`s armed forces as a preventive measure with the goal being to stop trouble before it even starts.”
The basic Green Beret detachment is a 12-man A-Team whose duties divide among ”destructive, constructive and instructive,” Kendris says. There is a captain who serves as team leader, a warrant officer who serves as executive, a senior sergeant in charge of operations and a sergeant who deals with intelligence. The other eight team members are divided into pairs and assigned to work with weapons, engineering and communications and function as medics.
Language training is a requirement, and A-Team members study French, Spanish, Farsi, Tagalog, Arabic, German, Czech, Russian, Vietnamese, Korean and Portuguese. Green Berets are supposed to be able to be dropped anywhere in the world to take down an enemy or build up a friendly government, but senior officers at the Kennedy Special Warfare Center admit that the need remains to improve foreign-language skills.
At the end of a 44-week training cycle, candidates for the Army special-forces insignia report to Capt. Juan Orama, who tells them that the 3,000 square miles of North Carolina forest in which they will operate has been conquered and renamed Occupied Pineland.
Acting as an A-Team detachment from a neutral nation responding to a request of the Pineland government in exile, the troops must secretly infiltrate the area to train, assist and advise a local guerrilla and resistance force.
About 150 combat troops and scouts from the esteemed 82nd Airborne Division, also based at Ft. Bragg, serve as occupying forces instructed to seek, harry and, if possible, capture the Green Beret trainees. This is the kind of intraservice rivalry the Airborne lives for, and the trainees the A-Team parachutes into Occupied Pineland, they embark upon a 17-hour forced march through Airborne patrols to rendezvous with the local guerrillas. The 12 troopers have weapons-with safety plugs in the muzzles-field gear and an ample supply of don, the local currency, for bribes. Other than that, they must live undercover and off the land.
But no matter how much training these future special-forces troops already have endured, and whatever tricks their survival instructors have thrown at them so far, none of these green Green Berets could have anticipated Dr. O.O. Gabooga.
At the guerrilla`s base camp, the forest hootch of Gabooga is scrap wood, tarps and chicken wire topped by a sign that reads, in its own native lingo:
Dr. O.O. Gabooga. Healer. Channelar. Pharmasist. Celestial Merchant. Bloodletting, Castration, Leech Farmer.
”This is our cross-cultural training,” Orama explains. As if being chased across rural North Carolina by 150 crack paratroopers from the rival 82nd Airborne isn`t enough, the Army print-shop workers drafted to play the role of a primitive guerrilla band have been told to be as cultural as they wanted.
Pfc. Kevin Antheunisse takes Orama at his word. With a shredded uniform, worn sneakers, face paint and a magic cane topped by a snake head, he is transformed into the mad witch doctor Gabooga and sets up a frustrating set of rituals and rites that, if violated, demand death to the Green Berets.
The mission almost is scrapped when the guerrillas, believe it or not, call for executing a Green Beret for a verbal faux pas that offends the gods. Nobody will say how many don changed hands before the mission continues and the careers of these 12 Green Beret candidates are back on track.
