Operation Dark Heart

by Anthony Shaffer

  “I’d like us to combine intel for the effort,” said Dave.

  Whoa. This was radical. There are huge ownership issues over intel. Intelligence agencies like to keep their info in silos, send it in for analysis, and treat it as proprietary. In Washington ******** ** **** ****** ********** analysts normally do triage and give you back what they think you need—and you never get everything.

  “You want our raw source info?” I wanted to make sure I knew what he was requesting.

  “Well,” Dave said carefully, “it would be useful. We could infuse the data for any known terrorist, warlord, or enabler—anything you have.”

  I thought hard, putting my hand to my forehead. “I don’t think the people in my organization are gonna like that very much.” No kidding, I thought. They’ll go ballistic.

  Our reports were written without the exact source of the info to protect that source. We separated out the chaff and gave out just the kernel. However, the details related to sourcing were hugely important to understanding the big picture.

  “It would have to stay within the holdings of the LTC. No foreigners” I said. Foreign troops were providing ************* as well as combat support, as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops in the country.

  Dave nodded. “In exchange, I will make sure you get immediate coverage or answers we can pull directly from our data ***. We would use the combined data to put together a package on each guy. Then decisions could be made jointly.” For Dave, that meant details of what the bad guys were doing ****** *** ***** **** **** ******* ***** * ***** ******** *** ******* ******* *** *********** *** ***** ******* **** **** ****** **** ******** **** *** ****** ****, were hugely important to understanding the operational environment—the “spiderweb” of the terrorist infrastructure that we had to understand so we could act in a smart, cohesive fashion.

  For Dave to offer to distribute raw data intelligence even though it would remain within the top secret security network, was also a radical move. Normally, Washington ********** ***** *** **** **** gave people like Dave what they thought he needed in the form of finished or near finished reports, but Dave had cut a deal with them. He was getting everything so that his hybrid team of *** ******* *** **** ****** specialists could parse it and review it to establish their own intel. In promising me access to their data, Dave was stepping way, way, way out on a limb.

  In my mind, I could just hear the screaming in Washington ********** ******* ******* *** ** *** **** ***** ****** ********* *** *** if they knew about this level of information exchange.

  “Where do you propose to keep it?” I asked. The fact was, our computer systems were incompatible, so we had no way to create a shared database. We would literally have to print out everything.

  “I’m going to put them on my door,” Dave said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, that’s secure.”

  “We’re in a SCIF. We’re fine,” Dave said, “and we need to have one central location that has one hard copy of all the information on any single target. When we decide to take action, we pull the target package down and we start looking at it as a team. Together, we make a decision on a course of action: kill, capture, or do nothing.”

  Kill, capture, or spy: that was the accepted equation of the new math that we dealt with every day. The temptation was always to kill, but actually it’s better first to spy. **** ** ****** **** ****** ***** ******* ** *****, so you had to perform a gain-loss evaluation of potentially losing that intel. If you spy on a bad guy and he gives you good intel, the benefit of having him out there telling you what’s going on may be greater than the single victory of taking him out or bringing him in. So sometimes it’s better to leave him hanging out there until he outlives his usefulness or it becomes clear he’s planning some imminent action that could hurt somebody.

  We would have to hold nothing back. I would even have to tell him who DIA’s sources were, our subsources, how they were recruited, their tribal leanings—all the atmospherics in the ops traffic that often got scrubbed from reports. Then Washington could verify ******* *** ********* ****** *********** *** ******** **** **** ************* ** *** ******** **** ***** ****** *** *** ***** **** **** ******* *** **** **** **** *******

  “What do you think Colonel Negro, will think of this approach?” I asked Dave. We both looked at Tim Loudermilk.

  “We haven’t really come up with a methodology for the Tier 2 targets that will be of use in going after Tier 1,” he said. “He could go for it. I think it’ll help us on Tier 2 targets, which are mostly in Afghanistan and, when we focus on Tier 2, that will help us focus on operational objectives.”

  “You mean Mountain Viper?” asked Dave. That was CJTF 180’s upcoming operation.

  “Precisely,” I said. I was ready to jump in.

  “You’ve got my buy-in,” I said. “We’ll give you information from our sources in real time as it comes in.”

  Dave smiled. “That’s great, shipmate. I really appreciate it. I think that will make us all more effective.”

  “We probably also need to get the buy-in of Colonel Boardman,” I said.

  We both looked at Tim.

  Col. Robert Boardman was the senior intelligence officer (J2) of CTJF 180. He believed that all intelligence should be coming to him—not to the LTC—and that too much of the three-letter agencies’ time and effort were going to support Colonel Negro and his folks rather than what Boardman thought was his job, which was to produce intelligence reports. Although we knew the intel would just sit on Boardman’s desk.

  There was a short silence.

  “Why don’t we just get Colonel Negro buy-in,” Dave finally said. We knew Boardman would just hoard the information.

  Later, after some raised eyebrows and a quick think, Negro did, indeed, buy in. So did my boss, Bill Wilson.

  A showdown was brewing. I did sincerely believe our fighting forces were the best in the world, but after years of training for the Cold War “Fulda Gap Scenario”—where Russian troops were expected to flood through the Fulda Gap in Germany—I had my doubts. The Army, and really the whole of DoD, had trained to anticipate the expected force-on-force conflagration in central Europe in which a large Soviet combined-arms army would invade West Germany and push toward the Atlantic. The whole of U.S. military doctrine was based on training to counter and defeat the Soviet monolith, and things like Vietnam, Korea, etc. were nothing more than “proxy warfare”—with Vietnam being the most notable counterinsurgency we had faced … and lost.

  In theory, small counterterrorism “mop-up” operations were all that would be needed to ensure favorable conditions for the Afghan people. This was an incorrect assumption by those rocket scientists at the Pentagon who would translate wishful thinking into policy.

  General Vines had made it clear in his morning meetings that the war was not over, and it was his intent to take the war to the enemy. My kind of guy.

  Despite that, the focus of the U.S. effort was 1,400 miles away in Iraq. Dave had even gotten a call from CENTCOM—U.S. Central Command that was responsible for Mideast and Central Asia. The essence of the message was: “Chill out. Why don’t you guys just hold the line and not engage?” The funny thing was, there was no panic, no sense of doom, no concept in the Pentagon of how dire things were about to get here. Yet there was every indication that something wicked this way comes. Time to make some changes.

  I got some pushback from my DIA staff, mostly from the reports officer, “Special Ed,” who didn’t see the benefit in sharing operational data.

  “We have no process for transmitting that type of info to outside organizations,” Special Ed said solemnly as we met in the SCIF to discuss the new arrangement. The source admin guy then chimed in to explain the proper procedure to report and forward source information.

  “Yeah, so?” I said.

  Ed added, “Well, Tony, it is a closed system—information goes in and we hold it.”

  I took a deep breath. As usual, process over
progress.

  “To quote a general I once worked for, ‘Don’t tell me how to suck eggs,’ ” I said. I looked over at Bill Wilson who was listening without emotion, propped up against the table next to the weapons locker.

  “We need to do it,” he snapped and got up and walked away.

  I looked over at Ed. “Give me hard copy on Ray’s net and speak to the Safe House about the sources they want to make sure do not get inadvertently whacked ***** ******* ** *** ******” **** *** *** ******** **** ******* and his “net” was his collection of Afghan agents and their informants.) *** **** ***** *** *** ***** ************** ****** ************ ** *** **** *** *** ********** **** ******** *** ****** **** **** ** ****** *********** ***** ****** **** ******** **** ***** ** *** ******

  Within the hour, Dave taped ten manila envelopes to his door, one for each of our top ten targets that we could stick our data in. He created unclassified code names for them, using the names of cities so we could refer to the targets on open lines and protect their true identity: OMAHA, MEDFORD, COLUMBUS, and so on. Then, if one of these guys was *********** ** *** ***** and tracked down by one of our informants or linked to an event—a raid, a cross-border operation, a planning meeting that we found out about—we could just pull his file off the door. We could have a full eyeball on him, maybe send a JSTAR in for a real-time look at him. We would get the LTC involved. Dave would talk to everyone, including the lawyers. Should we monitor? Disrupt? Capture? Kill? We were trying to make them uncomfortable, anticipate what they were doing, then degrade and disrupt their activities.

  Our technique was a derivative of Information Operations known as Effects Based Operations (EBO). The idea behind EBO is to maximize your strengths and apply them directly to your adversary’s weaknesses, monitor the effects of your effort and adjust accordingly to make sure you maintain the advantage. The trend in the army had been to establish standards, train to those standards, and conduct operations to meet those standards. The problem had become that achieving victory had been lost in the process—measures of performance became the measure to which one’s military success was held. What got dropped was the focus on measures of effectiveness—or achieving victory. The military tends to worship mediocrity. Achieving and maintaining standards—even if those standards do not achieve victory—is the safest course of action. Follow process, no matter what.

  EBO became the last and best option to ensure that the very limited combat forces in country would be used effectively. With a determined enemy who was learning how to retake lost ground, every efficiency we could find was needed.

  Mountain Viper, the upcoming operation planned against the Taliban, would be a major test of the concept and its effectiveness. The limited number of 10th Mountain’s troops would be the subjects of this test—with their objective to stymie the Taliban offensive.

  Shortly after that meeting with Dave, our informants told us of a chilling development. Bearded men, riding on Honda motorcycles, carrying Kalashnikov rifles and satellite telephones, were driving along the trails of the deep, treeless valleys in Zabul province about 100 miles southwest of Bagram. They were on their way.

  6

  MOUNTAIN VIPER

  THE Taliban were reinfesting southeastern Afghanistan, from the border province of Khowst, down through Paktika, Zabul, Ghazni, and Oruzgan provinces, and into Kandahar province—the heartland of the Taliban before they were ousted in 2001.

  Armed with our intelligence and knowledge of HUMINT assets available to answer any intel gaps, I sat down with the 10th Mountain planners shortly after my meeting with Dave, in which we agreed to coordinate resources to conduct mission analysis and detailed planning. I wanted to interweave intelligence collected by our Afghan informants into the Mountain Viper Concept of Operations—the battle plan worked out by General Vines and his officers.

  Majors Grubbs and Reichert, the 10th Mountain planners, were a little wary. “We’ve never had the Defense HUMINT guy sit down and talk to us about how we can prosecute a battle,” Reichert said, eying me and my goatee skeptically.

  Ordinarily, DIA people didn’t play well with combat types. Somehow, DIA leadership—mostly the civilian executives—had come to feel that it was beneath them to conduct “field operations,” but I didn’t operate that way.

  “C’mon, I’m army, just like you,” I told them. “We’ve all gone through Huachuca. I just wear civilian clothes now.”

  They looked at me—then looked at each other—and with kind of a nod in each other’s direction, they laid out a map and gave me a draft copy of the Operations Order, laying out the villages of interest.

  The Taliban had done a good job of reconnaissance and preparation for their fall offensive. They appeared to have a firm understanding of where they would have to go and what they would have to do to regain control of Kandahar and the province. The fact is we were facing an elusive, lethal enemy that was readying itself to fight in a forbidding area of towering rocky mountains and steep valleys.

  Their tactic was comprehensive attack. They had started by getting control of the police stations, as we had seen on the video, as a way to disrupt the central order of the country. If that strategy was successful, it wouldn’t take long before they were aiming for Kandahar. We believed that Mullah Omar was making trips inside Pakistan to recruit fresh Taliban troops.

  I looked over the plan. “Gentlemen, I’m going to take this to Randy, the head of our detachment * ***** ** ** **** ******** ***** *** ******** ***** ***** ** **** ******* ** *** ****** *** *** ** *** ******* **** ** *** ************ ************ *** ******

  Despite themselves, Grubbs and Reichert were won over. ****** ***** *** **** ***** ** ****** ** ***** ************ ****** ** **** ****** ** ****** ************ * **** **** * **** ** *** ******* ** ********** ******** ** **** *** **** *** ************* **** ******* ** ************* ** *** ** * *** ********** * ********** ****** *** ** ******** **** *** ** ********* * ****** ****

  I had first encountered Ray while working in my office and watching a Steven Seagal movie (all his movies are the same but I like them anyway) on my computer about eight o’clock one night. A ton of movies had been loaded onto the secret-level network, and I took advantage of them because I disliked the stuffy, gritty hooch; I preferred to stay in the SCIF, and work.

  An e-mail popped up.

  “Activity reported on the border.” It was the first I’d heard from Ray. Kandahar sat in between mountains and desert and was about a two-hour drive from the Pakistani border. Ray was referring to suspicious activity by the Taliban in an area I can’t reveal. “Any interest in follow-up?” his e-mail asked.

  I talked to Dave, who was eating tuna and crackers in his office with his headphones on.

  “I just got this note from our guy, Ray, in Kandahar,” I told Dave, holding out the printout. “He’s asking me if we’re interested in what’s going on on the border.” I named the location. “Are you guys?”

  Dave immediately took off his headphones and read the e-mail. “We’re very interested,” he said. They had received several reports relating to the possible sighting of ********* ** Mullah Omar. “Tell him we’d be interested in any observations of individuals or convoys of vehicles that match the profile of Omar and his entourage.”

  I got back to my office and back on the computer as fast as I could.

  “Absolutely,” I typed. “Our guys report this is a key location related to previously known Taliban activity possibly related to Mullah Omar. What do you have? V/R, Tony.”

  Almost immediately, my phone rang.

  “Tony, why the hell you working this late?” I guessed it was Ray. He had a gruff voice, a broad New York accent, and a no-nonsense style.

  “I’m always working,” I said. “I never go back to the tent. Too many people. Too damned hot.”

  “Usually you guys shut down after five,” he said.

  “Not now,” I said. “I’m usually here until eleven or twelve every night.”

  “That’s great f
or me,” Ray said. “I’m meetin’ with my guys tonight. I need some things checked out. Can you take care of it?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  An hour later, Ray sent me in a list of questions. “Can you see if there’s anything on these guys here?”

  “Are these guys the ones your assets are tracking?”

  “Yeah,” he said. There was a hesitation that I recognized as a half truth. “Sorta. I’m tryin’ to sort through which of these guys are real targets and which ain’t. Some of ’em come and go across the border a lot, and we can’t figure out what’s goin’ on. Can you check ’em out?”

  “You got it,” I said. “Get back to you tomorrow morning.”

  The next morning, I briefed the LTC on Ray’s report and gave them his questions. By the end of the morning, the two Marine Corps intelligence analysts had compiled the LTC’s holdings of information on and about Ray’s list of assets. They had provided new information and answers on 80 percent of the names. I e-mailed this info to Ray. For the most part, these names came up in relation to Mullah Omar. Some of them were known Taliban enablers, which I suggested to Ray should be our first focus for intelligence collection.

  About midnight, I got a short e-mail. “Info I have from source is that enabler is going to meet tonight with his Taliban contact.” Ray named the location coordinate. “Any interest?” Enablers were the dudes we kept a close eye on due to direct links to known bad guys. They were the arms dealers and the money men who kept the Taliban supplied with weapons and cash. Some were also emerging as significant players in the resurgent illegal drug trade. This enabler was a key part of the Taliban team we had detected preparing for combat operations, and Dave’s folks had been focused on him for a while.

  “Stand by, I’ll get back to you,” I wrote back.

  I went over to Dave. “Here’s what we got. What do you think?”

  “This is perfect,” said Dave. “This matches some of the intel we’ve got right now on this guy. Let’s go talk to the operations chief to see if they want to do something.”