Oppose Any Foe

by Mark Moyar

  Special operations forces received an early opportunity to showcase their new capabilities and interoperability with conventional forces in Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama. President George H. W. Bush authorized Just Cause in December 1989 to depose dictator Manuel Noriega, also known as “the Pineapple Face” because of his acne-pitted visage, for a series of offenses that had culminated in the killing of US Marine Lieutenant Robert Paz. Joint Task Force South, which was in charge of the invasion, assigned responsibility for all US special operations forces to a joint special operations task force.

  In preparation for the invasion’s conventional assaults, Special Forces from the 7th Group scouted Panamanian facilities. Once hostilities commenced, twenty-four Green Berets seized a critical bridge over the Pacora River and held it long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Several other Special Forces teams descended by fast rope onto the roofs of television and radio stations and blew up the transmission equipment, putting an end to pernicious Noriega propaganda.

  Replete with Spanish speakers, the 7th Group sent some of its personnel to help conventional forces goad enemy combatants into surrendering. Calling Panamanian commanders by phone, the Special Forces men told them to place their units’ weapons in the arms room, line up the men on the parade field, and surrender to the US forces that were about to arrive in overwhelming strength. Almost 2,000 Panamanian troops laid down their arms as a result of these conversations.

  In Panama City, Delta Force, the Rangers, and the Nightstalkers joined a conventional Army mechanized company in assaulting the headquarters of the Panama Defense Forces. Moving into blocking positions around the headquarters, M-113 armored personnel carriers pumped shells into the walls while AC-130 and AH-6 gunships, from what was now termed the 160th Special Operations Aviation Group, peppered the buildings from above. Once the main headquarters building had been beaten to a pulp, Rangers arrived to clear the facility. Nightstalker MH-6 Little Bird helicopters landed on the rooftop of the adjacent Carcel Modelo prison to drop off a Delta contingent, which blasted through the prison’s roof and walls to rescue American radio operator Kurt F. Muse, whom they found huddled in his cell’s bathroom.

  Ranger battalions parachuted onto the country’s two most important airfields to neutralize the Panamanian defenders and destroy the Panamanian Air Force on the ground. When confronted by the airborne Rangers, most Panamanian soldiers fled or surrendered. At the civilian terminal of the Omar Torrijos International Airport, however, recalcitrant Panamanian troops opened fire on the advancing Americans.

  A small group of Rangers, led by Sergeant David Reeves, charged two Panamanian gunmen who had been seen retreating into a large public restroom. Jumping into the lavatory with his M-16 assault rifle at the ready, Reeves was shot in the shoulder and collarbone by a Panamanian hiding in one of the stalls. Specialist Michael Eubanks and Private First Class William Kelly crawled to Reeves and pulled him out into the hallway, then rolled grenades into the restroom. Catching sight of the grenades before they exploded, the Panamanians jumped on toilet rims and closed the stall doors. Encased in the cocoons of the commode walls, the Panamanians suffered no ill effects from the spray of grenade shrapnel.

  Eubanks and Kelly then rushed into the bathroom with guns blazing. After they had shot the whole place up, Eubanks said in Spanish that it was time for the Panamanians to throw down their weapons. A man stuck his head around a corner and told Eubanks, “Fuck off!” In the ensuing scuffle, Eubanks and Kelly shot one Panamanian in the head and kicked the other out a window. The latter survived a fall of twenty-five feet, only to be shot dead by approaching Rangers when he pulled a gun on them.

  In another section of the civilian terminal, Panamanian forces were intermingled with four hundred civilians from two commercial jetliners that had touched down just minutes before. Ten Panamanian soldiers searched the crowd and were delighted to find two American girls, ideal candidates for human shields. Taking the girls with them, the soldiers attempted to escape the terminal as the Americans closed in, but a Ranger security perimeter got in their way. For the next several hours, the Panamanians traded fire with the Rangers. Finally, the Americans notified the Panamanians that if they did not surrender, the Rangers would make a frontal charge with weapons ablaze. The Panamanians capitulated.

  During the first three days of the invasion, Delta Force and the Special Forces launched dozens of raids against Noriega’s known and suspected safe houses. Veiled by black hoods, the Americans broke into villas, houses, and huts, forcing the occupants down at gunpoint. Flex-cuffed and questioned, some of the detainees offered tips that led to raids on further sites where “the Pineapple Face” might be hiding. None of the raids bagged Noriega, though at one of his homes Delta operators did find $8 million in cash, a large collection of hardcore pornography, and an altar to Satan festooned with jars of human organs. Noriega eventually surrendered after ten days holed up in the Vatican embassy, a result that may have been influenced by the efforts of American psychological operators, who blared Van Halen, the Clash, and the Howard Stern Show from loudspeakers outside the embassy walls in an effort to unsettle him.

  Although Noriega’s banana republic had not subjected America’s special operators to a stern test of their mettle, the brief war did function as a valuable proving ground for reconnaissance, hostage rescue, airfield seizure, and surgical strike operations. The special operations forces executed their assigned tasks effectively and, with the exception of the raids on suspected Noriega hideouts, achieved the desired outcomes. JSOC had collaborated with the other special operators of SOCOM as never before, and the special operators as a whole had interacted effectively with conventional forces.

  One year later, the US military faced a far greater challenge in the sands of the Middle East, against the million-man army of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. On August 2, 1990, Saddam’s forces invaded the fantastically affluent Emirate of Kuwait, steamrolling its inconsequential military and hanging its officials from a gallows at Kuwait University. Declaring Kuwait to be Iraq’s nineteenth province, Saddam took possession of Kuwait’s oil fields. In response, the United States sent 425,000 troops and marshaled another 250,000 troops from allied countries to liberate Kuwait in what became Operation Desert Storm. Because Desert Storm dwarfed the invasion of Panama in magnitude, special operations forces hoped to receive a much larger number of missions. To their dismay, the US regional combatant command in charge of Desert Storm—Central Command—left them with considerably fewer tasks this time around.

  General “Stormin’” Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of Central Command, had never cared much for special operators. His headquarters were located down the street from SOCOM headquarters on MacDill Air Force Base, but they might as well have been based on opposite ends of the Earth. The special operators scoffed at the work habits of the Central Command staff, most of whom went home for the day by the middle of the afternoon. Around their coffee pots, SOCOM officers caricatured Schwarzkopf as a slow, unimaginative tactician, someone who might have been acceptable commanding a platoon of tanks, but not a joint and multinational force with a cornucopia of revolutionary technologies and hundreds of thousands of troops. In their view, Schwarzkopf disdained special operations out of sheer ignorance. Military officers closer to Schwarzkopf generally had a more favorable opinion of the general, noting that while he could be overbearing and thin-skinned, he was a sharp and inquisitive thinker with a deep interest in global politics.

  When the US military behemoth began its five-month mobilization for the Middle East deployment, Stormin’ Norman gave SOF low priority in resources and retarded their movements, allowing conventional units to snatch facilities and missions ahead of them. He permitted some latitude to special operators responsible for psychological operations and civil affairs, but he rebuffed pleas from the Special Forces, SEALs, and JSOC to participate in combat operations. According to Jim Guest, now the commander of the Army Special Forces Command, Schwarzkopf view
ed SOF as a coiled cobra in a cage, and did not want to let the cobra out for fear that it would cause trouble and embarrassment.

  General Carl Stiner, the SOCOM commander, flew to Riyadh on two occasions to charm Schwarzkopf into including his special operators in the offensive. In a disarming Tennessee drawl, Stiner explained that he would personally move his four-star headquarters from Tampa to Saudi Arabia to run counterterrorism operations and deep-strike missions into Iraq and Kuwait. Some of Stiner’s own staff thought the idea was a pipe dream, for no four-star commander, least of all one as prickly as Schwarzkopf, was likely to welcome another four-star headquarters in his theater. But Stiner would not be dissuaded.

  During the first trip, in October 1990, Schwarzkopf told Stiner that he wasn’t interested in permitting commando operations in Iraq or Kuwait. They were too risky and could trigger a war prematurely. The special operators, Schwarzkopf continued, could contribute by supporting the conventional forces in such areas as reconnaissance and mine clearing. When the deflated Stiner returned to the United States, he attempted to go over’s Schwarzkopf’s head, pitching Joint Chiefs chairman General Colin Powell and heavy hitters at the State Department and the Defense Department on his plans for deep raids. But no one was willing to go to bat for him.

  Stiner made his second trip to Riyadh in January 1991, shortly before Desert Storm was scheduled to swirl into Kuwait. Schwarzkopf was none too pleased to receive another visit from Stiner, whose four-star status was probably the only reason why he was even able to obtain an audience. Stiner’s Tennessee airs and his flamboyance may have soothed some interlocutors, but they were only irritants to the CENTCOM commander. When Stiner entered Schwarzkopf’s office, the general dispensed with the usual glad-handing that occurs when two four-star commanders meet. “You’ve got forty-five minutes,” Schwarzkopf uttered coldly.

  Stiner explained how he would deploy a JSOC “package” consisting of Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, Rangers, and special operations helicopters to Saudi Arabia. A second package would deploy to Europe. He spelled out concepts for counterterrorism and deep-strike operations into the heart of the enemy in what was essentially a rehash of the proposals he had presented three months earlier.

  Schwarzkopf listened impassively. He was no more inclined than before to accept Stiner’s offers of assistance, and he was peeved at Stiner for wasting his time by going over the same things that had been rejected before. But rather than divulge his true views to Stiner, he resorted to evasion.

  “Carl, that is a really good idea,” Schwarzkopf said when Stiner was through with his briefing. “I’m going to need time to look at it.”

  To give Stiner some forewarning that his plan was headed nowhere, and to distance himself from that outcome, Schwarzkopf added, “I’m not sure the Saudis want another American four-star in the theater.”

  The 5th Special Forces Group obtained permission for the relatively innocuous mission of training Kuwaiti forces-in-exile. Schwarzkopf gave the Kuwaiti forces little to do in Desert Storm, aside from a highly publicized entrance into Kuwait City after American arms had evicted the Iraqis, for the purpose of showing that Kuwaitis had helped retake the country. Other Special Forces paired up with coalition forces to provide brief training courses and coordinate their operations with US units. Years of concentration on irregular warfare had left many of the Green Berets short on the knowledge of conventional operations that those foreign conventional forces needed.

  On opening day of the American air campaign, January 17, 1991, JSOC was sitting on the end of the American bench, with nothing to do and no promise from the coach of playing time later in the season. The outlook began to change, however, when Saddam Hussein responded to American bombing raids by firing Scud ballistic missiles at Israel. Several of the Soviet-built Scuds crashed into apartment complexes in Tel Aviv and Haifa, wounding dozens and causing the Israeli government to prepare for retaliation, possibly with nuclear weapons. Israeli military action against Iraq would be certain to topple the coalition of Arab nations that the United States had carefully erected in opposition to the Iraqi regime, and it could lead to a larger conflagration.

  Lieutenant General Wayne Downing, the JSOC commander, knew that Stiner had alienated Schwarzkopf, so he appealed directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for permission to unleash Delta Force on the Scud launchers. The chiefs proceeded to ask Schwarzkopf if he would consent to Downing’s proposal. Schwarzkopf refused, insisting that he could destroy the launchers with air strikes. At JSOC, indignation at this response was amplified by the news that Schwarzkopf had authorized British Special Air Service commandos to operate behind Iraqi lines against the Scuds.

  President George H. W. Bush promised the Israelis that US airpower would eliminate the Scud threat within a few days. When, however, a week of American air strikes failed to halt the Scud launches, with Israeli casualties mounting and the prospect of Israeli retaliation against Iraq looming large, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney decided to call JSOC off the bench. He asked General Powell to send word to Schwarzkopf that JSOC was to join the chase for the Scuds.

  Before passing the message on, Powell warned Cheney that such a decision was liable to send Stormin’ Norman into one of his tempests of rage. “You know Norm doesn’t want these guys over there,” Powell said.

  “I don’t care what Norm wants,” Cheney snarled. “He’s had seven days to shut this thing off and he hasn’t done it. They’re going.”

  JSOC deployed a task force of four hundred men to Saudi Arabia, the staging ground for the Scud-hunting mission. Driving into the Iraqi desert on four-wheel-drive vehicles, the ground operators roamed in enemy territory for up to three weeks at a time. By day, they camouflaged their vehicles and slept, and by night, they looked for Scud missiles and their facilities, using laser designators to direct air strikes onto suspected targets. The number of Scuds that JSOC actually helped destroy was frequently disputed and never determined, but the damage that it inflicted, together with the fear it created in the enemy, did much to diminish the threat. Scud launches fell from five per day to one per day after the uncaging of JSOC in the desert.

  NEITHER JIMMY CARTER, nor Ronald Reagan, nor George H. W. Bush had a particular interest in special operations forces, but each would come to commit SOF into perilous enterprises and battles. In Carter’s case, the special operators were invited to solve the nation’s most pressing crisis. During the late Cold War period, in marked contrast to earlier times, the Congress, rather than the executive branch, was the most critical actor in the development of special operations forces. Members of Congress led the offensive that broke through the Pentagon’s entrenchments to create SOCOM and the Major Force Program 11 funding line.

  The rise in hostage taking by Islamic terrorists in the post-Vietnam era turned hostage rescue into a critical SOF mission and precipitated the revival of the Rangers and the creation of Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, and JSOC. Preoccupation with hostage rescue encouraged a focus on superlative marksmanship and meticulous planning for lightning-quick raids, skills of important but intermittent value. Because of dissatisfaction with CIA risk aversion during the Iran hostage crisis, Delta Force entered the business of intelligence collection in dangerous environments, initiating a prolonged rivalry between the nation’s premier special operations force and its premier intelligence agency.

  With the passage of the Nunn-Cohen Amendment, Congress codified the missions of special operations forces for the first time. The official listing of a mission set, however, did not remove the necessity of showing others in the military how SOF could contribute to larger US objectives. The special operators still had to search for new types of missions if they wished to remain near the front of the bureaucratic pack in a world of rapid change. In Panama and Desert Storm, the top US military commander employed special operations forces based on what he perceived to be his own tactical and strategic requirements. If SOF could not fulfill those requirements, then they missed out on the action and the la
urels.

  The most conspicuous special operation of the 1980s, Eagle Claw, ended as a national debacle. The failure of the Iran hostage rescue undermined the prestige of all SOF, even though it was merely the result of poor air planning and operations on the part of an ad hoc task force, in which special operations and conventional air personnel had been hastily patched together. In Grenada, special operators succeeded in some tactical tasks and failed in others. They helped rescue the American medical students and faculty, a task for which their speed and marksmanship made them better suited than regular forces. Hostage rescue was also the foremost achievement of the special operators in Panama. In the case of Desert Storm, where General Schwarzkopf rejected most proposals for the employment of special operations forces, the hunt for Scud missiles served as the chief special operations contribution to attainment of America’s strategic objectives, helping to avert an Israeli military intervention that would have alienated America’s Muslim allies.

  The conventional US military leadership in Grenada made effective use of SOF capabilities, but on occasion used them for tasks that plainly were better suited to conventional infantry, thus strengthening the case for greater SOF independence that led eventually to the Nunn-Cohen Amendment. While the advent of SOCOM and Major Force Program 11 afforded the special operators new protection from conventional military commanders and Pentagon budget cutters, it also sharpened resentments among the rest of the military. Those resentments, moreover, still mattered. Any hopes that Congress had completely liberated SOF from dependence on conventional commanders for resources and missions were dashed in the Kuwaiti Desert by the miserly dispensations of Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf.