Operation Dark Heart

by Anthony Shaffer

  Guys like me who came out of the army, who understood the army and who were trained to lie, cheat, and steal for Uncle Sam, were the least popular within DIA. Its leaders didn’t like clandestine HUMINT—and tactical HUMINT missions they liked even less.

  All too often, the most important operations, in my view, were viewed by career bureaucrats as too dangerous for their careers—or dead ends, since you could be tied to them permanently with no potential to become a senior executive. I had no such fear. Often, I took on operations that nobody else wanted.

  I took risks, but I subscribed to the philosophy that all army officers learned when they went through basic training. We were taught to take “reasonable risks.” You didn’t play it safe. You played it so you could win, and that meant taking some gambles. Now, you didn’t take stupid risks and you didn’t do stupid things, but you understood the situation, and you tried to calculate what would get you what you needed to achieve success.

  Some people loved me, some people hated me. It’s still that way. There was really no middle ground. Some people liked the fact that I could go in and find a way to get things done in very complex situations. Some people didn’t. The truth was, I only did what I was permitted to do relating to the operation objectives that were approved at the highest level.

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  ****** ** ******* ** **** ***** ******* **** ** **** ******* ** ********* ** ***** ******* *** ******* ***** ** ****** We knew they contained significant information on individuals being trained in the terrorism camps—and, more importantly, their potential targets. My unit’s mission, within the context of a much larger operation known as Able Danger, *** ** *** ** **** * *** ** ****** *** ********* *** **** *** **** *** ******* ***** ********** We were making progress—and had a pathway in—when things were shut down; a decision that was terribly flawed in retrospect.

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  Nevertheless, we faced constant resistance from the risk-averse DIA bureaucracy. My immediate bosses, who were nervous about these operations, sat on requests for equipment and travel and held up funding, despite the high-level support they were getting. I constantly had to fight to go around them.

  At first, the unit did well—as did I—under DIA Director of Operations Maj. Gen. Robert (Bob) Harding and DIA Director Lt. Gen. Pat Hughes, who allowed me and my team to take “out of the box” ideas, and develop them into real intelligence operations. Their encouragement allowed for entrepreneurial concepts to develop. Although when General Harding left, his replacement, Maj. Gen. Rod Isler, seemed far more scared of risk. In fact, he opposed every sensitive operation that my unit, Stratus Ivy, was conducting. I battled constantly with bureaucrats like General Isler—at the same time winning awards for effectiveness. A commander once told me, “If you weren’t the best damned intelligence officer, I’d fire you.”

  For example, in May 2001, I had to fight attempts by my boss at the time, Colonel Susan Cane, to get me removed as chief of Stratus Ivy and transferred to the Latin American desk after I asked her if I could get Able Danger going again.

  A lot of folks at DIA felt that Tony Shaffer thought he could do whatever the hell he wanted. He was off the reservation. They never understood that I was doing things that were so secret that only a few knew about them. I was working in support of the most secret black operations run by DoD. They were operations that the most senior DIA leaders had no knowledge of. So, in the absence of direct knowledge, my co-workers’ fertile minds filled with their own mythology about me.

  After September 11, I was disgusted with the whole intelligence program. I believed—and still believe—that we had it within our means to prevent the 9/11 attacks. I volunteered for active duty and was assigned a position on DIA’s Operating Base Alpha, soon taking over as commander. ********* **** ***** ********* *********** ************* ********** ** *********** ************** **** ***** ** ***** ********** ***** *** ********** *** ****** ***** **** ************ We knew that some of the terrorists would be headed toward Africa—Somalia, Liberia, and other countries south of Egypt. The operation, which I supervised, was the first DIA covert action of the post–Cold War era, where my officers used an African national military proxy to hunt down and kill al Qaeda terrorists.

  I became an intelligence planner for the DIA team that was planning the agency’s support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. * *** ******* *********** ***** ******** ******* ** **** *********** ***** ********* **** *** **** ******* ********** ******* ******* **** ** ***** *** ***** ******* ****** ********* *** ******** **** ** **** ********* **** ***** ** *** ******** ******* They would catch the Iraqis off guard by sending in a small contingent via helicopter to capture these sites. Great idea. Well executed.

  Still, it yielded nothing. As we now know, no WMD were ever found.

  I saw the Bush administration lunacy up close and personal. At one point, Col. John Sadler, executive officer to DIA deputy HUMINT director Bill Huntington, announced to the intelligence planners in a meeting that we had to start planning to put a defense attaché in the American Embassy in Baghdad since it would be open in a month.

  Regardless of the fact that the invasion hadn’t even happened yet.

  We asked him to clarify his comment. Sadler glared at me (he was no Tony Shaffer fan) and said the Bush administration had information that divisions of Iraqi soldiers would surrender the moment hostilities started and that the U.S. armed forces would be “met with children throwing flowers at the feet of our soldiers.”

  I don’t know about anybody else, but I never saw any friggin’ flowers. Just a lot of grenades.

  After only eighteen months, in early July 2003, I was forced to shut down Operating Base Alpha so that its resources could be used for the Iraq invasion. I was asked to take an overseas tour, so I volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan, where I figured the real war was being fought.

  Just before my scheduled departure date, I took some leave and went down to Goshen Scout Reservation in southwestern Virginia as a parent assistant with my son Alexander, who would be spending two weeks at camp there with his Webelo troop.

  This was a big transition for Alexander, a wonderful, hazel-eyed, nine-year-old, sandy brown-haired kid with a frame that was developing toward that of a football player. His mom, Karen, and I had gotten divorced back in 2001, and he had come through the transition fairly well. Karen and I were able to be adults about the whole thing—no lawyers. She and I decided to work things out with an eye on what was best for Alexander, and so it was as amicable a divorce as you could expect. Low on drama, high on cooperation.

  Alexander had recently been promoted from Cub Scout to Webelo, and this was his first time at a camp—anywhere, really, by himself. I would be with him for three days, but then I had to leave for Afghanistan. I would be gone when he got home from camp.

  The timing could not have been worse; he was not happy about my deployment, and no matter how much I assured him about how safe I’d be, he never seemed to believe me.

  There were about five other parents along with me who were assistants to the troop, and we would go around doing the daily activities with the kids. Fun stuff: archery, pellet gun marksmanship, canoeing, rope tying, etc. Great character-building stuff … but the nights were going to be rough. I knew it just from Alexander’s reaction the first two nights when he went off to his tent for bed.

  The last night that I was at Goshen came. The kids knew I was an army guy so I took them on a night time patrol around the area and taught them some basic movement tactics. They ate it up and had a great time.

  We all sat round the campfire that evening—Alex never l
eft my side—and I knew it was time to talk.

  I asked him to come sit with me on the hillside facing the north, away from the campfire glare; in an area where you could see the black sky and the bright stars very clearly.

  He picked up a Capri Sun juice box from the cooler near the fire, walked with me to the overlook, and sat down beside me.

  The air was still warm from the summer heat of the July day. The breeze didn’t refresh, but it still felt good. I looked up into the sky and tried to contemplate what I could say to make the fear less and the pain go away. It was going to be tough.

  I looked over at him and could only, barely, make out his silhouette and the slight sliver of the Mylar juice box he had close to his lips.

  “Are you going to be OK?” I asked.

  “No, Dad, I want to go back with you.”

  “Alex … you can’t. I’m sorry. You have to stay.”

  “I don’t want to … I want to be home with you.”

  I took a breath. I could tell by his voice that the tears were starting to well up.

  “I’m not going to be home. I leave Monday for Afghanistan. So you need to help me.…”

  His head turned to face me, and I could make out the flicker in his eyes from the ambient starlight.

  “Help you—how?”

  “Look, I need you to help your mom.”

  There was silence I interpreted as contemplation.

  “How can I help by staying here?” he asked. Good question … I needed to think fast.

  “You can show her you are growing up.” I paused. “And, Alex, you are. I’ve been watching you. You are doing well here and having fun. You need to stay.”

  I got the sense that Alex was starting to understand that his role in life was changing—becoming bigger—and that was what I wanted.

  “Will you be able to write me while you are gone?” he asked.

  “Yep, I’m told that I will also be able to e-mail you often.” I just left off the part, for now, that I’d be using the name Tony in my notes … did not want to add more stress at this point.

  “And I can write back?” he asked with a bit more spirit in his tone.

  “Yes.”

  I could sense he wanted to say something more and then, all of a sudden, the winds started to blow. First at the treetops and, quickly, down to ground level. I sat and looked up. The sky was still clear. What the heck was going on?

  The wind had now become a gale, and I almost thought that there was a tornado; then I saw the first clouds begin to cover the stars as a violent summer thunderstorm came rolling in. I had never experienced anything like it—going from clear and calm conditions to a full-blown storm in less than five minutes. Just as my mind finished processing what had happened, the rain came whipping in like small bullets. Alexander and I ran for the tents—as did everyone else.

  Alex was very frightened of thunder, and the booming sound started to roll over the hillside in waves. He climbed onto his cot as I sealed up his tent. He was still clutching the long empty Capri Sun container, holding it in his shaking hands just outside of his sleeping bag.

  I took it from him.

  “Dad … please don’t go.” His words came through chattering teeth just as a flash briefly brought daylight to the mountain, soon to be followed by a thunderclap.

  I lay down next to his sleeping bag on the cot with him.

  “It is going to be all right. I promise.” It was the first thing I said all evening that I knew might not have been entirely correct. I was confident that, even through the now-torrential rains coming down on the outside of the tent, he and the camp would be fine. I didn’t have the same confidence about the tour to Afghanistan.

  The storm subsided after nearly a full hour of battering Goshen. I stayed close to Alex for another half hour to make sure he was asleep.

  I sat across from him on the other cot in the tent and looked at him for a long time and wondered. What would he be like as a man … and would I be there to see him? I started to tear up thinking about how fortunate I had been, how by so many miracles God had somehow blessed me with continued existence and the gift of this wonderful young man. I said a small prayer, thanking Him for Alexander and asked Him to protect and preserve me to see my son again.

  3

  INTO AFGHANISTAN

  JULY 11, 2003: I’ve ridden in a lot of C-130s before—and they never get any easier. The stiff nylon mesh seats are pressed up against the aluminum membrane of the plane; after five minutes of sitting upright, there is just no way to get comfortable. The constant vibration sinks into your bones. The earplugs expand to the size of marshmallows in your ears. The dry air also seems always either too hot or too cold. Nope. It never gets any better.

  I was headed into my first war zone, so I wasn’t exactly expecting an in-flight movie and a hot meal.

  I was now *********** ******* ******** ****** **** ***** and I was packed in along with eighty others going forward into Afghanistan, headed to my new duties to run the Defense Intelligence Agency’s operations on the ground. I had several titles, but in sum, my job involved overseeing human intelligence, case officers, interrogators, polygraphists, planners, the Document Exploitation (DOCEX) Detachment (document recovery team), and DIA’s secret intelligence aviation equipment—among other responsibilities. Sort of a jack-of-all-trades. Master of some.

  I would work as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, supporting the two primary U.S. fighting forces in Afghanistan at the time: Combined Joint Task Force 180 (the conventional forces) and Joint Task Force * **** ******* ******** All told, the United States was operating in a country larger than Iraq with fewer than about 10,500 men on the ground—and fewer than 2,000 were actual combat forces.

  The mission of the two task forces was: First, to conduct operations to destroy remaining al Qaeda and Taliban and its leadership; second, to provide command control and train the Afghan army; and third, to conduct civil/military operations and humanitarian assistance operations to stabilize Afghanistan and to establish conditions for economic success that would deter the reemergence of terrorism.

  The stateside intro to my new job was minimal. No PowerPoint presentations or thick briefing books. Sure, I’d gotten training on off-road and high-speed driving—shooting out of cars and in shoot houses—and reaction drills in a live-fire environment. But DoD was just a little preoccupied with that other war underway, and the Afghanistan operation had seen a steady leakage of resources, personnel, and equipment over to Iraq.

  In fact, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld had already declared in May 2003 that major combat activity in Afghanistan was over. He said during a visit to Kabul with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai that we’d moved to “a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction activities.” Most of the country, he said, “is secure.”

  ** ********** ** *********** *** **** ** *********** ***** *********** **** ** ****** ** ******* ** **** ***** ******* *** ****** *** **** ******* **** ** **** ******* ** ********* ** ***** ********* ** ****** Even so, working on a clandestine computerized operation is different from actually being there. While I had done dangerous things my entire professional life, going into a war zone was a new experience for me.

  I wasn’t really scared. There was more of a feeling of emptiness. I was working to be very Zen about the whole thing; I had opened my mind to the new possibilities. No preconceived notions. Whatever was going to happen, would happen.

  On the flight into Kabul, I ran back the tapes of my exit. I was still pissed off that Operating Base Alpha had been shut down because of the Iraq war, and I was sure my closing speech at the ceremony to case the colors of the unit did not win me any points with DIA leadership.

  Then there was the sad and strange departure from Baltimore-Washington International Airport. My now ex-fiancée Rina and I had broken up just before we were supposed to get married—and I mean just before. Her family was driving up from Virginia Beach for the ceremony, and my best man, Lt. Col. Jim Brady
, was at the house Rina and I owned when things came undone. Despite the drama and the stress, Rina had agreed to maintain my power of attorney and to take care of my bills while I was gone. She’d driven me to BWI for the flight out and actually came into the terminal with me. No matter what, we had started out as friends, and we were both determined to remain friends.

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  Rina helped me move my gear into the Military Airlift Command (MAC) terminal. We had agreed to sell the house when I got back, and we were clearly going in different directions, but we weren’t bitter or even particularly angry at each other. We’d been through that. There was real sadness in our last kiss.

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  After a charter flight to the U.S. base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, I boarded the C-130 headed to Bagram Air Base after what felt like thirty nanoseconds on the ground. It was actually twelve hours, but there wasn’t much in Manas to hang around for anyway.

  I did run into spooks going elsewhere. I could tell by their bags. We all had exactly the same blue baggage, issued by DIA. Here we are, supposed to be undercover, and the DIA gives us all the same bags. Dumb. I made a note to myself: Never accept “official government issue” clandestine gear.