Once we arrived, the diminutive sergeant proceeded to smoke our asses. We bunked in barracks with no hot water, and were allotted one hot meal a day. The other two were cold sea rations. Sergeant Maxum would wake us at 3:30 A.M., line us up carrying fifty-pound rucksacks, and run us five miles through woods filled with chiggers.
When he returned, he’d close the gate, and anyone who hadn’t kept up was locked outside. The guys who didn’t make it would have to suffer through another rucksack march. The rest of us spent the rest of the day doing classroom work.
Land navigation was particularly difficult. Armed with a compass, we’d be dropped in the woods around Southern Pines, where we had to find three locations during the day and two at night with instructors watching us from behind trees.
Since I’d signed up to be a medic, I was sent to attend goat lab back at Fort Sam Houston. Each member of the class was assigned a goat, which was then shot with a .22 rifle. Our task was to keep the injured goat alive, which was nasty and stressful. What really screwed me up again was the classroom instruction and medical terms. My English still wasn’t good enough.
Determined to become a Green Beret, I went to the first sergeant in charge and told him about the problems I was having and asked him to change my MOS (military occupational specialty) from medic to 11 Bravo, or infantry. He kindly agreed, and I was sent back to Bragg for weapons training.
It was at this point, Phase Two training, that I ran into a couple of instructors who didn’t like the fact that I was from Iran and tried to get me kicked out. So far, all of the instructors had been great, but these two assholes deliberately messed with the elevation and traverse mechanisms when I was being tested on 60 and 81mm mortars. Knowing that I only had sixty seconds to set up each mortar and hit the target, and, therefore, no time to recalibrate the mechanisms, they figured out a sneaky way to get me to fail.
Angry and dejected, I went to see the sergeant major of 5th Group and told him what they’d done. He walked back with me to the range and said to the instructors, “Why are you fucking with this guy? He speaks Farsi and Arabic and we need him. He’s been in the Special Forces in Iran. Don’t do him any favors, but don’t fuck with him, either.”
Retested as the sergeant major watched, I passed and entered Phase Three. There we were taught guerrilla warfare, infiltration and exfiltration techniques, and covert operations. It included game playing with some guys as guerrillas and other guys trying to set them up in ambushes.
Out of 275 men who started SF training, only thirty-five of us graduated in September 1979. The pride I felt in reaching my goal of becoming a Green Beret—the first Iranian and Muslim Green Beret in history—was enormous. With the rank of Specialist 4 (or E-4, equivalent to a corporal in the regular Army), I was assigned to 5th Group Special Forces, 2nd Battalion, ODA (Operational Detachment Alpha) 561—one of ten enlisted men, one lieutenant, and one captain that made up each SF A-team. My team sergeant was Phil Quinn, and the team leader was First Lieutenant Mike Repass.
Three months later, I was the only member of ODA 561 selected to train for the Tehran operation. It turned out to be my first mission.
3
PAKISTAN
None of my teammates on ODA 561 knew about my participation in Operation Eagle Claw, or the activities I had pursued in Tehran. But soon after I returned to Fort Bragg in early June 1980 following an absence of three months, word started to leak out about where I’d been, and guys started peppering me with questions. Their curiosity was natural. The presidential campaign that pitted President Jimmy Carter against former California governor Ronald Reagan was heating up, and because the US hostages were still held in captivity in Tehran, the failed rescue mission was a big topic of discussion.
A large majority of Americans couldn’t understand why a group of radical religious students in Iran could be allowed to continue to hold and humiliate US diplomats and our government wouldn’t do anything about it. I was one of them.
It was a time of huge frustration. Without question President Carter’s prospects of reelection were badly damaged by his decision to abort the rescue mission. Meanwhile in Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini continued to denounce President Carter and the United States for admitting the deposed Shah into the country for cancer treatment. He credited the failure of Operation Eagle Claw to divine intervention. Much to the chagrin of my family and me, the Ayatollah’s popularity within Iran skyrocketed.
Because I had been instructed not to discuss the role I played in Eagle Claw, I couldn’t tell my teammates much besides the fact that I’d been in Tehran and was forced to get out on my own. And I had very mixed feelings about the result.
First, I was appalled by the political and religious repression in Iran under the new regime, and concerned about my father, uncles, and other relatives who remained there. And it pissed me off that the most powerful country on earth allowed itself to be embarrassed by a group of radical students in Iran, directed by hypocritical mullahs who preached reform and social tolerance out of one side of their mouths and incited violence and demanded vengeance out of the other.
Personally, the positive thing that came out of the experience was that my SF teammates treated me with a new level of respect. I wanted to be accepted. Through the JAG (Judge Advocate General) office at Fort Bragg I had already filled out my paperwork to become a citizen—a process I was told could take as long as a year.
My mother and younger sisters, Lida and Mitra, had already moved to the States and were living with my brother in California. I helped support them by sending two-thirds of my salary every month. With my board, most of my food, and medical paid for by the military, I didn’t need much.
While I continued to worry about events in Iran, the outer reality of my life at Fort Bragg quickly returned to normal with daily training on PT and guerrilla warfare tactics and sessions at the firing range.
Because we were Special Forces and charged with unconventional warfare, reconnaissance, counterterrorism, and direct action, we held ourselves to higher standards of fitness, fighting skills, tactical training, and readiness. We considered ourselves badasses, wore mustaches, and carried ourselves with a certain swagger.
Our motto was De oppresso liber (Latin for “to free the oppressed”) and our distinguished predecessors included American Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion (the Swamp Fox), the World War II OSS Jedburgh Teams that worked with the French Resistance, OSS Detachment 101, which fought behind Japanese enemy lines in Burma, and the Alamo Scouts—the US 6th Army Special Reconnaissance Unit best known for liberating American POWs from the Japanese camps in New Guinea and the Philippines.
Formed in June 1952 by the US Army Psychological Warfare Center, we were given the distinction to wear the green beret, awarded by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 with the following:
The green beret is a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.
Today, Special Forces—which are part of the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM)—are organized into five active-duty Special Forces Groups (SFGs), each focused on a specific geographic area of responsibility (AOR):
1st Special Forces Group (Airborne)—Pacific
3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne)—sub-Sahara Africa
5th Special Forces Group—the Middle East, Persian Gulf, Central Asia, and Horn of Africa
7th Special Forces Group—Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean
10th Special Forces Group (Airborne)—Europe
Each Special Forces Group consists of:
Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC)
Group Support Battalion—supports the Special Forces Group HHC and provides logistical, intelligence, medical, and signals support.
Four Special Forces Battalions (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th), are each made up of:
Operational Detachment-Charlie (ODC)
The Special Forces Operational Detachment Charlie (SFOD-C) is responsible for command a
nd control of the Special Forces Battalion.
Three Special Forces Companies (A, B, C), comprising:
• 6 Operational Detachment-Alpha (ODA): 12-man units, led by a captain, and the primary fighting force of Special Forces.
• Operational Detachment-Bravo (ODB)
• A SF Company usually contains one ODB, which provides support to the SF Company’s ODAs in training, intelligence, and counterintelligence.
Battalion Support Company
The Battalion Support Company consists of signalers, mechanics, riggers, cooks, intelligence, personnel services, chaplain, legal, and others, who support the Special Forces Battalion.
• The Military Intelligence Detachment (MID)—provides intelligence to the Special Forces Battalion. Typically consists of:
Analysis and Control Team
Counter Intelligence/HUMINT Section
Signals Intelligence/SIGINT Section
Commander’s In-Extremis Force Company focused on Direct Action missions.
Back in 1980, I had the honor to serve in 5th Group Special Forces, 2nd Battalion, ODA 561. Anytime my commanders asked for a volunteer, I raised my hand.
One morning in July—two months after my return to Bragg—my team captain told me to go over to the JFK Special Operations Center on base and see the intel officer stationed there. I thought that maybe the officer wanted to ask me some follow-up questions.
Instead, the pale intelligence officer simply said, “We have another mission for you, Changiz, but you have to go to Washington, DC, first. Are you game?”
Eager to prove my worth to my newly adopted country and earn the further respect of SF officers and colleagues, I answered, “Yes, sir. I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
He instructed me to take a commercial flight from Charlotte to National Airport (later renamed Reagan Airport), where I was met by a young man who identified himself as “Chandler from the Agency.”
Chandler drove me to a hotel in nearby Crystal City. The next day he returned with an attractive middle-aged intelligence officer named Anne.
She immediately got down to business. “Specialist Lahidji,” she said, “we’ve read your DD 214 [military personnel file] and know you were born and raised in Iran. We’re here to ask you to do something for us.”
“Yes, ma’am. How can I help?”
“You’re probably aware that fundamentalist students have taken over our embassy in Tehran.”
“Yes, I am.”
She made no mention of the fact that I had recently returned from Tehran as part of Operation Eagle Claw, and I didn’t say anything about it, either, because I figured she already knew.
She continued: “We also have a number of Americans who have been working in Tehran as civilians and are stuck there now. We’d like to get them out, but we need your help.”
“Of course.”
She and Chandler briefed me over the next day and a half. I learned that Texas billionaire Ross Perot owned a company called Electronic Data Systems (EDS) that had maintained a branch in Tehran since the mid-1970s. EDS had been hired by the Shah to set up a computerized social security database to keep track of Iranian citizens.
The two intel officers explained that in December 1978 as protests against the Shah escalated into violence in Tehran and other Iranian cities, two employees of EDS, Paul Chiapparone and Bill Gaylord, were arrested by the Shah’s government and thrown into prison. Within four days of their arrest, Perot assembled a team of EDS employees with military experience, headed by retired US Army Special Forces Colonel Arthur D. “Bull” Simons, to plan and execute a commando raid on Gasr Prison to free his two employees.
According to Perot’s version of events, recounted in the bestselling book On Wings of Eagles by British author Ken Follett (which later became a popular TV miniseries), Colonel Simons’s team incited anti-Shah dissidents to storm Gasr Prison, and while the riot was under way entered the prison and spirited away the two EDS employees. But eyewitnesses and State Department officials reported a different story.
According to them, the EDS rescue team simply waited for the return of opposition leader Ayatollah Khomeini and the overthrow of the Shah’s government during the first week of February 1979. When pro-Khomeini mobs opened the doors of Gasr Prison on February 11 as part of a coordinated assault on Shah government prisons and police headquarters, Chiapparone and Gaylord simply ran out with the rest of the 10,000 or more people being held there. The two Americans then went directly to the Hyatt Hotel, where they met Colonel Simons and his team, who engineered their escape through Turkey.
Whatever really happened, the fact was that a dozen of Perot’s data service company employees had remained behind in Tehran. According to the intelligence officers who briefed me, these individuals were now holed up in EDS’s downtown second-story office and were afraid to leave.
The Agency wanted me to return to Tehran and pay off local officials to secure the EDS employees’ safe passage out of Iran.
“Are you willing to execute the mission?” Anne asked.
“Sure,” I answered. “No problem.”
Even as I agreed, fears and doubts played in my mind. What if when I arrive in Tehran I run into the same Iranian Customs officials at the airport? How will I explain why I’ve returned to Tehran, and had slipped out of the country without being cleared by Customs four months ago? Where will I find a local Iranian official who’ll be willing to help me? Will I be able to trust this person?
I thought about my friend Massoud who had helped me last time I was in Tehran, and wondered how I could contact him.
The plan, which Anne and Chandler laid out the end of our second day together, called for me to fly to Tehran as I had months before. To my mind that seemed very unimaginative and way too risky. So I sat up that night and devised a scenario of my own, whereby I would fly to Turkey, then take a train to nearby Azerbaijan. From Azerbaijan, I would pass through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan before entering Afghanistan. From the western Afghan city of Herat, I would cross the border into Iran, and from the Iranian city of Mashhad board a bus to Tehran.
When I presented my idea to Anne and Chandler the next day at lunch, they seemed surprised. Anne asked, “How in the world did you come up with that?”
“I know the region and tried to design something that would be hard for the Iranian revolutionary government to trace.”
“You certainly accomplished that,” opined Chandler over burgers and fries in the hotel restaurant. “You think it will work?”
“I hope so. Once I’m in Tehran, I’ll go downtown and visit the EDS employees, and then figure out a way to get them out of the country.”
“Okay. We’ll get back to you tonight.”
I waited nervously, once again imagining my imprisonment in Iran and execution before a firing squad by angry Islamic extremists.
The two intel officers returned in the evening to announce that the mission to Tehran had been canceled.
“Really?” I asked, wondering whether I had heard correctly.
“Yes,” Anne answered.
I was so relieved, I almost fainted, and was instructed to return to Bragg and report to their CIA colleague at the JFK Center. I later learned that the EDS employees had gotten up the nerve to leave their offices, drive to the airport, and depart the country without incident. Kind of like the movie Argo, but without the subterfuge and drama.
* * *
In 1980, at the start of my career, I had no idea that my time in SF and later as a military contractor would involve me in just about every major US conflict over the next thirty-five years.
Ironically, both my first deployment after Tehran and my final assignment involved the same country: Afghanistan. On the night of December 24, 1979, while I was at Fort Bragg fretting about the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, Soviet troops from the 40th Army were airlifted into the Afghan capital of Kabul, starting an occupation that would last nine years. Three nights later, as part of Operation Stor
m-333, 700 Soviet troops and KGB agents dressed in Afghan military uniforms staged an assault on Afghanistan’s presidential palace that resulted in the death of President Hafizullah Amin and his replacement with pro-Soviet socialist Babrak Karmal.
As Western nations watched and wondered what Moscow would do next, the Soviet 40th Army under the command of Marshal Sergei Sokolov entered the country from the north and the 103rd Guards’ Vitebsk Airborne Division 103rd landed at Kabul’s Bagram Air Base. Within days, an estimated 1,800 Russian tanks, 80,000 soldiers, and 2,000 armored fighting vehicles had moved into Afghanistan.
With the arrival of the two additional divisions over subsequent weeks, the total Soviet force rose to over 100,000 military personnel. This wasn’t just a show of support for the newly installed Afghan president, it was a full-blown invasion aimed at extending Soviet influence throughout the region and protecting their interests in Afghanistan from the West and the revolutionary regime in Iran.
The Soviets’ bold move further embarrassed the Carter administration, which was reeling from the US Embassy takeover in Tehran. Worldwide condemnation of the occupation of Afghanistan was vehement, with the West, China, and thirty-four Islamic nations demanding an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Soviet troops. In one of the most lopsided votes in its history, the UN Security Council by a margin of 104–18 passed a resolution against the Soviet intervention. President Carter upped the economic ante by placing a trade embargo on the Soviet Union and boycotting the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics.
As had happened with other foreign occupiers of Afghanistan, including the British during the nineteenth century, things didn’t go as easily as the Soviets expected. Even with the backing of the Russian army, new Afghan president Karmal was unable to muster much popular support. Soviet forces soon found themselves drawn into putting down urban uprisings, fighting tribal armies, and quelling mutinies of units of the Afghan army.
Whenever Soviet troops left strongholds in major cities, they were attacked by small units of insurgents and tribal groups—collectively known as mujahedeen—who viewed the Soviets as foreigners imposing their views and destroying local culture. Joining them were local and Arab jihadists who declared holy war against the atheist invaders they believed were bent on defiling Islam.
Full Battle Rattle Page 4