Operation Dark Heart

by Anthony Shaffer

  I did inform Colonel Boston before I called and told him I’d go through official channels to notify DIA that the commission wanted to talk to me. I wasn’t trying to hide it.

  One of Zelikow’s deputies answered the phone. * ********** ****** ** **** ******* *** **** *** *** *** *** ***** ** ****** **** ******* ***** * ********* ****** ****** **** ** *****—that Dr. Zelikow had asked me to call him after I returned from deployment.

  “I remember you,” he said. “I met you. I’ll talk to Dr. Zelikow and find out when he wants you to come in.”

  I told him they needed to formally request this through DIA. He said he understood and would get back to me after talking to Dr. Zelikow.

  I also told him I had copies of the Able Danger documents with me. I had tracked them down in Clarendon and put them at my desk: two boxes of material, a leather briefcase where I kept the most sensitive documents, three large charts—including the one with the photo of Mohamed Atta—and some smaller charts rolled up in a tube. Along with the cover plan (the documents that conceal the true purpose of the papers) and copies of legal documents, I had a complete copy of the essential papers on Able Danger.

  One of the most crucial documents was the operational plan signed by Gen. Hugh Shelton, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In it, the operational objectives of Able Danger and the operational techniques and the technologies and methodologies were laid out in significant detail. I also had records of our dealings with *** on its database and on the MIDB (military intelligence database).

  I’d been around long enough to know it was important to have a complete paper trail on the creation and implementation of a program. I also knew my set of documents would tell commission members everything they needed to know about Able Danger, short of getting the raw data. I told Zelikow’s assistant I was willing to bring it all over if he wanted it.

  “That would be great,” Zelikow’s assistant said. “Let me talk to Dr. Zelikow, and we’ll let you know when he wants you to come in.” And that was that.

  I had no way of knowing what I’d just unleashed.

  I jumped back into my duties, helping Chris Boston oversee the Kabul Safe House and support Task Force 1099, including mission analysis for what was designated Operation Shadow Matrix, the operational nickname of the spring surge, which was three times bigger than Mountain Viper. I got a copy of the Concept of Operations for the mission and started doing the same sort of analysis I had done for Mountain Viper—looking at the operational objectives and trying to match Defense HUMINT capability and resources to the mission requirements so we could completely integrate ourselves into the mission.

  Captain Anderson asked me to put together an Afghan operations center that would serve as a war room here in the States to support the surge. We were planning to send ****** *** **** ******** in country to serve in all forward areas supporting all combat operations, including the Rangers *** ***** ****** ******* ********** ******* They would manage our existing assets and work **** *** ******* ********** to develop new ones. The idea was to develop the Defense HUMINT footprint: Everywhere our forces were, we would be there to support combat operations. Our indigenous spies would supply us with information. We would also serve in leadership targeting as well—not the way it was done by the LTC, but some new format yet to be determined.

  My job stateside was to get this operation up and going before I headed back in country. I also saw this as my opportunity to resurrect Dark Heart at some point. I assumed senior leadership wasn’t dumb; they’d see the light and figure out sooner or later that they needed to pursue the bad guys into Pakistan. By working at the senior operations level back in Afghanistan, I’d be able to bring them around to a Dark Heart–type operation, maybe after the spring surge.

  Some trouble on the ground came up: My replacement in Afghanistan turned out to be a glory-seeking cowboy. He was a competent guy, but he decided he was going to personally hunt down bin Laden and the other HVTs by attaching himself to any combat team or element that was outside the wire rather than doing his job of being a leader and managing the planning processes with 180 and 1099.

  Sure, I’d gone outside the wire to run ***** convoys, but I’d stayed focused on my main responsibilities. I didn’t go galloping through the countryside looking for bad guys under every rock and pile of camel dung.

  Although Hank sure did. He was always gone from Bagram, so no one was running the shop. The complaints started to roll in. Also, Colonel Ritchie had been transferred to Kabul to work for General Barno, leaving a lieutenant colonel in charge who was more interested in running after bin Laden with Hank than in running the shop. The two egged each other on. It was like watching a great Steven Seagal movie—without the action, the plot, or the successes.

  The quality and frequency of reports dropped dramatically, and we got only silence on every inquiry made on any issue relating to planning for the spring surge. I mean nada. So it soon became clear that, whatever problems DIA leadership had with me, there was no one else in the wings who could go back in and put the train back on the track.

  I had tasked Hank to do the ground mission analysis, figuring out staging areas for our people and material coming into country—weapons, ammo, radios, tactical gear for setting up camp, GPS systems, but I ended up doing it from a desk in Clarendon, and I was damned unhappy about it.

  I tried to stay on top of the 9/11 Commission. After about a week, when I hadn’t heard back from Zelikow, I called his office again, but his assistant’s tone was different this time. More distant.

  “We don’t need you to come in,” he told me. “We have all the information we need on Able Danger.”

  That was a shocker. Where had they gotten the documents? I thought I was the only one with a complete set. Oh well. I shrugged it off. Maybe they had what they needed from Eileen Preisser or Scott Phillpott.

  I found out later that wasn’t the case at all, but at the time, I took Zelikow’s assistant’s word for it. Frankly, I was kind of relieved. I wouldn’t have to deal with DIA leadership on this and end up getting accused of going outside the box again. Maybe somebody else had taken the burden off me and dropped the dime on the agencies and people who’d screwed Able Danger.

  So I focused on Afghanistan. I spent the next three weeks getting oriented and selecting a team to lay the groundwork for the surge on my next deployment. In all, I was figuring out beans to bullets, computers to tactics. For the first time, I was issued a top-secret cryptographic phone that allowed me to talk to anyone who had an STU II (secure phone) at the highest classification level. The technology had not been available during my first tour. I had to figure out how to plug the full spectrum of capabilities and resources that Defense intelligence had into the larger battle plan to support Special Operations and conventional forces.

  My stay would be open-ended; I also had to go in and fix what Hank the Cowboy had broken by getting the reports flowing and the HUMINT operations cell functioning properly again.

  By this time, Randy had moved on from his assignment to run the Safe House, and his replacement had made a clumsy attempt to clean up the atmosphere at the Safe House—no more French cable!—which pissed off the team there and accomplished nothing. But, what the hell. People come and people go. I still had to work with them.

  Captain Anderson called me in one day. The news wasn’t good.

  “I’m getting a huge amount of resistance from the fourteenth floor about sending you forward,” he said. The fourteenth floor was DIA’s senior leadership.

  I tried to shrug it off. “Let me go talk to them.”

  He shook his head. “Won’t do any good.”

  “So, sir, what do you want me to do?”

  “I need you to go lead the advance team,” said Anderson. “You are my scout. You are the only one who can do this, but I want to tell you that, this time, they are really pissed off at you.”

  I caught up with Bill Huntington, DIA deputy director of operations, in the elevator one day and
asked him for some DIA “challenge” coins—tokens of appreciation to be given out for a job well done—to take back with me. I’d given out the last fifteen to folks in country, and they had been effective awards. Huntington told me he’d get me some.

  “By the way,” I said casually, “I understand the Rangers have done a by-name request for me to go forward. Are you going to approve it?”

  Huntington was coy. He tried to smile, his chubby red cheeks reminding me of a mirthless Santa Claus. “Your name is one of several on the list.”

  “I understand that,” I said, “but I believe I’m at the top of the list.”

  He exited the elevator without a word.

  23

  SECOND VOYAGE

  I was finally given a green light in late January to go back to Bagram, and I returned in early February as OIC of an eight-member advanced operations (ADVON) team. Our job would be to prepare for the ******** ** **** ** *** *** ****** ********* ** ************* ****** ****** ** *********** ***** **** ***** ****** ** ****** ** ***** **** *** *** ****** ****** **** ***** ****** ******* I also had to fix the screwups that had occurred since I had left.

  I took some ribbing from my team because I was coming back with two full sets of fleece and GORE-TEX, and I had made sure that everyone who was going with me was equally equipped, because I knew how harsh Afghanistan could get in the winter. The highs would barely break freezing during the day, and there would be plenty of freezing rain and snow.

  We brought two full pallets of weapons and gear, including dozens of M-4s and M-11s for the HUMINT teams, ammunition, top-secret crypto keys, and a computer system. We flew to Bagram on a C-17 from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware nonstop with two in-air refuelings. I sat across from a pallet of Alaskan King crab meant for the troops’ Friday night seafood feast, and a pallet of M-16 5.56 mm ammo. It was even more uncomfortable than my first trip into Bagram. Eighteen hours, and if you had to go, you basically pissed down a hole in the side of the plane.

  All of us managed to hold it.

  My plan was to get everything up and going, get the HUMINT team in place in late March, and then go forward with the Rangers, as they had requested.

  I had a strong suspicion I had been selected for promotion to lieutenant colonel by the army. DIA had no control over that because I was on active duty for the army—and the army has its own way of doing business. So while I had no way of knowing 100 percent for sure, I had “good paper”—a spotless record with high block evaluations—going into the selection board that was held the prior October. The promotion list would be out soon, and I had felt very confident that I was on the promotion list. So when the list came out in January I wasn’t all that surprised … but I knew it would take time for the actual promotion to be effective since I and everyone else on the list would require congressional approval before it took effect (all commissioned officers in the military require U.S. Senate confirmation).

  This passage was different. It was more than just a longer flight. The first time, I had gone over alone into the unknown and thought of it as an adventure. This time, I knew—or thought I knew—what I was getting into. I spent the long hours in flight sleeping, meditating, and thinking about my personal life. Rina and I had reconciled, and things were over between Kate and me—something we both had known before I had left. She had fed me helpful information about Hank while I was stateside. We were both pros, so I wasn’t worried about that, but we could have our awkward moments. I also thought about Alexander. He was past the juice box stage now, but he was still—naturally—worried about his dad going back into a combat zone. I had seen him every weekend while he was at home, and he was growing up quickly.

  I also contemplated the job ahead of me: In Mountain Viper last fall, we had broken the back of the Taliban in their attempt to retake ground in Afghanistan, but they’d learned from that and were adapting. They’d retreated into the mountains and into Pakistan. We had tried to go after them in the mountains with Winter Strike. We’d stirred up the hornet’s nest and shoved some of them out of their winter havens. It hadn’t killed them, but it had routed them and put them on the move. Now, Shadow Matrix was designed to hunt them down and kill them. Operations were going to be all along the border: Khowst, Asadabad, Kandahar, Jalalabad. The 25th Infantry Division was moving in to replace the 10th Mountain. Troop size was almost doubling, from 10,000 to about 20,000. The tide was turning.

  In the stiff seat of the C-17, I shifted uncomfortably. Suddenly I felt weary, bone tired. Headed back to a war zone to … what … do it all over again? Without access to Pakistan, we were going to play this game again and again. Push them back, only to see them surge forward again. Push them back. Surge forward. Push. Surge.

  Like playing Ping-Pong against a wall. The harder you slam the ball against the wall, the faster it comes back.

  We could end up doing this for years. Decades, maybe. Sometimes we got so caught up thinking about the enemy’s suicidal tendencies—their willingness to die on the battlefield for their cause—that we forgot what a shrewd and persistent adversary they were.

  Things were going downhill. I could see it. The Taliban could see it, too—and it was to their benefit.

  It wasn’t that we didn’t have the intelligence. We did, but our initiatives couldn’t seem to get off the ground enough to deliver a lethal blow to these guys. We kept making the same mistakes over and over again. Push them back. Trust the Paks. With that strategy, any tactical gains made by any commander would be short-lived and easily reversed.

  Leadership—the White House, Rumsfeld, top brass at the Pentagon—just didn’t get it. They were focused on Iraq. They weren’t listening. You could see that: Rumsfeld was showing up in Kabul every few months and declaring that combat was over. I had to believe that people were passing the right information up the chain. Whether he got it, I don’t know. His deputies sure didn’t get it. The Taliban didn’t recognize international borders. The Paks were in bed with the Taliban. The intelligence was irrefutable. Believing otherwise was a failure of leadership at the highest level. For any educated human being to somehow ignore the intelligence and battle facts was almost criminally negligent.

  People like me wanted to fix it. Good commanders like General McChrystal wanted to fix it. Without leadership at the highest level, however, we were doomed to keep repeating our mistakes, like in the movie Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray is doomed to keep repeating the same day until he learns. Only this time, there were no laughs—and people died.

  I had put the issues in Clarendon in the back of my mind, but it was clear that it had followed me to Bagram. My first night back, I had dinner in the mess hall with Jack Foster, a former deputy of mine on other missions who now held the job I had held during Winter Strike as HUMINT chief Task Force 1099. “Listen, Tony,” he said bluntly. “Something’s going on and I don’t know what the hell it is.”

  Oh, wonderful, I thought. The creepy stuff continues.

  Clarendon had gotten a by-name request for me signed by Colonel Keller, Jack told me. Jack knew that because he was the one who had drafted the request. Regardless of that the fourteenth floor had delayed and hemmed and hawed and finally said that Task Force 1099 couldn’t use me through the spring. They could rely on me only while I was running the ADVON, and I could only stay through April. No reason was given. That had made Jack suspicious. Usually the ***** ******* ********** ******* ****** got whatever they wanted. **** ** *** element that has been tasked consistently to be on the cutting edge of war. It wasn’t a security issue because DIA would have taken me off duty immediately. That’s what made it even more suspicious. Jack couldn’t get to the bottom of it.

  So while Jack and I recognized the strangeness coming from Clarendon to be important, we were halfway around the world from them and we had to deal with the war in Bagram.

  The first thing I did was track down Hank the Cowboy and give him hell. I’m not sure it helped much. I do not, as a rule, yell. Also I hardly ever use rank to “l
ock people’s heels”—but in the case of Hank, I did both.

  He insisted he was doing the right thing by going out to track down HVTs. I pointed out that he’d been doing such a lousy job that I was going to have to essentially take over his shop just to get everything back on track. He said that was fine by him. He wanted to keep running around hunting bad guys.

  So I had to reconstitute the ***** ********** program, which Hank had singlehandedly shut down, pissing off **** *** **** *** *** in one boneheaded move.

  At the Safe House, Randy’s replacement was putting up a fight about sending his case officers out into the field. *** **** *** *** ******* ********** ******* ** *** *** **** ******** *** ****** ******* *** ** ****** ** ****** ******* ** *** ******** *** ***** ******* He didn’t want them to be anyplace dangerous. It got ugly. He lost and the case officers went forward.

  In the meantime, Jack was trying to get to the bottom of the situation with Clarendon. He kept telling them what a great job I was doing. I wasn’t sure that was helping matters a hell of a lot.

  One day Jack came to my computer grinning.

  “I really pissed them off this time,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. That was usually my job. I felt jealous.

  He gestured toward his computer. “C’mon over and look at this.”

  He showed me an e-mail he’d sent back to Clarendon. It was a photo of me getting the Bronze Star.

  “Oh my God, Jack,” I said. “You must have spun them right out of the room.”

  Jack laughed. “Oh yeah, I did. I won’t show you the responses. They were pretty pointed.”

  A bigger issue at the time, though, was getting ready for Shadow Matrix. General Barno was adamant about the issue of American troops crossing the border in Pakistan for any operations. He said that American and Pakistani forces were cooperating to create a “hammer and anvil” strategy, in which forces on one side of the border would drive al Qaeda members across the border to troops waiting on the other side, a tactic that was supposed to crush the al Qaeda elements between the Pakistani and the coalition forces. He now restricted everyone from even going into Pakistan in hot pursuit. To do it, you had to get approval from top Afghani and Pakistani leaders. Well, a hell of a lot of good that did when you were closing in on bad guys. We knew they would disappear as soon as they hit Pakistan.