Dirty Wars

by Jeremy Scahill

  Fury recalled a conversation he had had with then-Colonel McChrystal in which they discussed the failed Eagle Claw operation in Iran, the Delta Force hostage rescue attempt in 1980 that remained a stain on the Special Ops community. “It was an interesting and enlightening conversation. The essence of the discussion centered on COL McChrystal’s reasoning that Beckwith should have continued the mission with fewer operators and lift helicopters. Even though the risk would have increased significantly, COL McChrystal felt the embarrassment in the eyes of the world of failing to try was exponentially more devastating to our nation’s reputation than executing a high risk mission that might have even an outside chance of success. McChrystal believed the American people would never accept such a decision like that again.”

  After establishing himself as an iconic figure in the Rangers, McChrystal burnished his credentials with stints at Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. In 1998 Dick Cheney, who then chaired the Military Fellowship Selection Board at the CFR, recommended McChrystal for the fellowship to “broaden” his “understanding of foreign relations.” At the CFR, McChrystal wrote an in-depth paper debating the merits of humanitarian intervention. In the paper, written before 9/11, McChrystal asserted, “It is military reality that the nation is incapable of unlimited action around the world. It is political reality that unconstrained or poorly justified US military intervention would be neither supported nor accepted, either by Congress or by other nations,” adding, “Our actions, particularly interventions, can upset regions, nations, cultures, economies, and peoples, however virtuous our purpose. We must ensure that the cure we offer through intervention is not worse than the disease.” McChrystal continued, “We must not put at risk our military capability to perform core missions crucial to national defense.... The cost of losing or significantly degrading the power of the United States,” he argued, “is a price the world can ill afford.” Ironically, McChrystal, who considered himself a political liberal, would ultimately owe his rise to fame to men who did everything he warned against in his CFR paper.

  When the 9/11 attacks occurred, McChrystal was the chief of staff of the 18th Airborne. He was soon deployed to Afghanistan to help establish Combined Joint Task Force 180, which would become the forward headquarters for Operation Enduring Freedom. In the early days of CJTF 180, McChrystal ran a “hybrid organization” made up of Special Operations Forces, as well as conventional and Special Forces units. Based at Bagram Air Base, the task force had a mission to coordinate the full-spectrum war effort, directing operations targeting al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, in addition to other counterterrorism operations. The task force would take the lead in detention operations and interrogating prisoners for “actionable intelligence” in Afghanistan. CJTF 180 commanded many of the units that initiated the widespread use of night raids on suspected houses of al Qaeda or Taliban figures. These raids were considered a “blueprint for the war against terrorism” that would later be replicated elsewhere.

  In July 2002, McChrystal was recalled to Washington, DC, for a promotion. Five months after he left Afghanistan, CJTF 180 became embroiled in a prisoner abuse scandal when it was revealed that in December 2002, two detainees in the task force’s custody had died from blunt trauma, exposing the “enhanced interrogation techniques” being used there. Whether it was the task force that was responsible or the Special Mission Unit that was using the task force’s facilities to conduct interrogations was never fully resolved. Two Military Police officers were tried in connection with the deaths. Although McChrystal’s time in Afghanistan was brief, it was there that he strengthened his close working relationship with a legend of the military intelligence world, Major General Michael T. Flynn.

  Flynn, who was McChrystal’s deputy at the 18th Airborne, deployed with him to Kabul, where he served as director of intelligence for CJTF 180. Known in his early years as a hard-partying surfer, Flynn was commissioned in 1981 as an army second lieutenant and became an intelligence officer, doing multiple tours at Fort Bragg. He participated in the 1983 invasion of Grenada and the invasion of Haiti in the early 1990s. He spent his career working on sensitive military intelligence programs and building up systems for developing intelligence collection in “denied” areas. As McChrystal rose, Flynn rose with him. When McChrystal returned to Washington, Flynn returned to command the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade, whose members would, among other activities, deploy, “equipped with low density systems” such as unmanned aerial vehicles “to contingency operations throughout the world.” This period marked a dramatic uptick in the use of a variety of drones that would later become central weapons in Washington’s wars. Flynn would be on the knife’s edge of the intelligence technology that would be at the center of the mounting, global kill/capture campaign.

  McChrystal watched from the sidelines as the invasion of Iraq got under way. Before “Shock and Awe” began, an elite group of JSOC commandos, known as Task Force 20, deployed inside Iraq ahead of the larger invading force. Its mission was threefold: help invading forces develop targets for air strikes, uncover SCUD missiles and other weapons of mass destruction, and hunt down HVTs such as Saddam Hussein. The “super secret” Task Force 20 “had been operating in the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq for more than a decade, and in 2002 its forces infiltrated Iraq proper,” William Arkin reported in the Los Angeles Times in June 2003. “Commandos established ‘hide sites’ and listening posts, and they placed acoustic and seismic sensors on Iraqi roads to track activity. They penetrated Iraq’s fiber-optic network to eavesdrop on communications.” The task force, which numbered roughly one thousand personnel, included top-tier teams, each with a dozen commandos that would have free rein to travel throughout Iraq in pursuit of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party leadership and military command structure.

  Although TF-20 was given autonomy on the battlefield and coordinated its operations directly with Pentagon officials, at times its men attached themselves to conventional military units. “In 2003, JSOC soldiers were among the first troops in southern Iraq, riding in with the protection of an armored task force of the 3rd Infantry Division,” Arkin and Dana Priest reported in their book, Top Secret America. “According to three JSOC commanders, these troops helped the division kill upward of five thousand Iraqis in perhaps the bloodiest portion of the war, the march to Baghdad. ‘It sounded like World War II, there was so much noise,’ said a JSOC commander who was there. The gunners on the armored vehicles faced human waves of Iraqi army forces, fedayeen, and their ragtag civilian supporters. They were ordered to kill anyone who got up on the vehicles. ‘That’s the dirty little secret, the dark underbelly of the war,’ he said. ‘There were bodies everywhere.’” Armored “vehicles also delivered the JSOC commandos on their own missions to capture or kill senior Iraqi Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein and to find and secure weapons of mass destruction.” They would never find any to secure.

  McChrystal had returned from Afghanistan just as the Iraq War planning was kicking into full gear. His new position was as vice director of operations for the Joint Staff (J-2). Like many military and intelligence officials, he did not view Iraq as a terrorist threat and was not enthusiastic about the invasion. “There were a lot of us who didn’t think Iraq was a good idea,” McChrystal told journalist Michael Hastings. “We co-opted the media in the buildup to the Iraq War,” he said. “You could see it coming.”

  The US efforts to fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan, McChrystal asserted, were hindered by invading Iraq. He said:

  I think they were made more difficult in one sense from the military standpoint, but I really think they were made more difficult because they changed the Muslim world’s view of America’s effort. When we went after the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, there was a certain understanding that we had the ability and the right to defend ourselves. And the fact that al-Qaida had been harbored by the Taliban was legitimate. I think when we made the decision to go into Iraq, that was less legitimate w
ith many of the observers. And so while there was certainly a certain resource strain and reduction in the ability of just our attention to be in multiple places, I think it was more important that much of the Muslim world now questioned what we were doing, and we lost some of the support that I think would have been helpful longer term.

  Notwithstanding his misgivings, for the first month of the US invasion of Iraq, McChrystal would emerge from the shadows and become—at least for a month—one of the most public faces of the US military. At the Pentagon, he would address reporters and, behind closed doors, give classified briefings to Congress. In April 2003, Representative Jose Serrano, a Democrat from New York, dubbed the briefings “the daily lie.” Serrano’s sentiments were shared by other House Democrats. “I don’t benefit a great deal from [the briefings],” said Representative John Conyers. “I get more from other sources that don’t compromise my ability to speak” about the war, he said. “I thought it was not the best use of my time,” Representative Bobby Rush told the press of the briefings.

  Other lawmakers, however, viewed the McChrystal briefings as more candid and worthwhile than the blustery sessions given by Rumsfeld. “My staff goes to the ones in the morning,” said then-Senator Joseph Biden, who supported the invasion of Iraq. “They are considerably more valuable than the celebrated ones when the secretary comes up.” Senator John McCain said, “They simply give us the facts without embellishment.... I don’t think [Rumsfeld] gives us the kind of pure military picture that these guys do.”

  During one press briefing, McChrystal opened a window into the prominence of Special Operations Forces in the Iraq War. “They are more extensive in this campaign than any I have seen. Probably, as a percentage of effort, they are unprecedented for a war that also has a conventional part to it,” he declared. “It’s probably the most effective and the widest use of Special Operations forces in recent history, clearly.” The US military, McChrystal said, was using “a very precise and very focused targeting process against the regime.” By April 14, McChrystal had practically declared the war a victory. “I would anticipate that the major combat engagements are over because the major Iraqi units on the ground cease to show coherence,” he said. In reality the war was just beginning, and whether he thought invading Iraq was a “good idea” or not, McChrystal was about to taste the war firsthand, on the ground. Even as Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq, McChrystal was being tapped by Cheney and Rumsfeld to run the most empowered kill/capture team in US history. In September 2003, he became the commander of JSOC.

  THERE ARE DUELING MYTHOLOGIES that have developed around Stanley McChrystal. The dominant one, repeated breathlessly in various media profiles, is of the “warrior scholar” who is in better physical shape than any of the younger men under his command. He ate just one meal a day and ran twelve miles to and from the office every day in the 1990s when he was at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was well versed in the classics, yet enjoyed the Will Ferrell “dude” comedy Talladega Nights, and would quote it, and would cite Monty Python films frequently. His beer of choice was Bud Lite Lime. There is no doubt that men who served under McChrystal revered and adored him. “He’s a unique warrior in American history. I obviously have an intense personal admiration for the guy,” said Andrew Exum, a former Ranger who served under McChrystal in Iraq. “When you are a young Ranger platoon leader, and Stan McChrystal steps on the podium in front of you, then you are seeing everything you want to be in life: just a remarkable individual, a fantastic soldier, somebody who is just a tremendously capable individual and somebody who is widely admired. There’s a reason why folks in the community call him ‘the Pope.’ He’s the man above whom is no one else.”

  Actually, McChrystal was not the first JSOC commander to be called “the Pope.” It was a reference dating back to the Clinton administration, when then-Attorney General Janet Reno complained that prying information from JSOC was like attempting to access the secret vaults of the Vatican. But, more than any commander before or after, to the JSOC community McChrystal was “the Pope.” Although he thought the Iraq War was a bit of a fool’s errand, McChrystal also saw it as an opportunity to revolutionize JSOC and push it to a more powerful position than ever before. “Stan was the epitome of a warrior. Stan is a man that, when he’s given a directive from the commander in chief, he moves out smartly and executes an order,” a former member of McChrystal’s team told me. “What Stan came to realize is that with the proper political backing in the White House he would be able to accomplish things with his force that had never been done before.”

  Stanley “McChrystal is stubborn,” observed Fury, who served as a staff officer under him, “and no one can argue that he isn’t a man of extraordinary stamina, advanced intellect, and uncompromising dedication to his warriors, the American people, and our way of life. Personally, I don’t know a man with more stamina and stomach for the fight than...McChrystal. He sets an incredible pace, expects excellence, demands results, but most importantly he listens to the men on the ground.”

  Once he took over at JSOC, McChrystal’s Ranger roots provided the inspiration for him to Ranger-ize the command. When he had run the 75th Rangers, “Terms like ‘kit’, often used by Delta and Seal Team 6 operators to collectively describe the gear, weapons, and equipment an assaulter carries was banned from the Ranger lexicon,” said Fury. “The term ‘assaulter’ or ‘operator’ was also verboten speak within the Regiment. The men wearing the red, black, and white scroll were Rangers, not assaulters and not operators. They also didn’t carry kit. They carried standard military issue equipment.” When he took command of JSOC, McChrystal believed that the various entities that made up the command should operate as a fluid team, with a “cross fertilization plan of skill sets and team building,” rather than reserving the most sensitive operations to Delta and SEAL Team 6, the Special Mission Units. “From the very beginning” of his time as JSOC Commander, “McChrystal tried to shake up the status quo of the Tier I outfits. He now owned those assaulters and snipers from the Army and Navy, and even though he completely supported creative risk taking and out of the box thinking, he quickly moved to fit their actions into an easily managed color coded box. It didn’t always work the way the General wanted though.” McChrystal believed that the Delta and Team 6 guys should work in tandem, but Fury said McChrystal quickly understood that it might not be the best approach. “It took a little while, but the General eventually recognized that the two units were apples and oranges and squaring them in that color coded box resulted in a fruit salad of conflicting skill sets, SOPs [standard operating procedures], and even mindset.” This ability to adapt became part of the McChrystal legend while he presided over the premier US counterterrorism units as the fight was increasingly going global.

  But nearly invisible in the breathless media narrative of the warrior-leader’s ascent is another McChrystal—a man who in reality had seen very little action before ascending to the post of JSOC commander after the Iraq invasion. This McChrystal was a climber who had cozied up to the right people politically, whether Democrats or Republicans, as well as key figures within the military bureaucracy. In essence, he was one of the chosen few. “A third generation soldier, [McChrystal] missed the end of Vietnam while attending West Point. Graduating in 1976, he entered an Army hollowed out after the unpopular conflict in Southeast Asia,” asserted Carl Prine, the veteran military reporter. “With few wars to fight for nearly two decades, he advanced in a largely uncompetitive world, it all made perhaps even easier for him because his father—retired major general Herbert McChrystal—had been the Pentagon’s director of planning before his son took a commission.”

  According to career military officers who knew McChrystal going back to West Point, he had been groomed for years to rise through the army ranks. “I like Stan very much, as a person,” said Colonel Macgregor, who was McChrystal’s roommate at West Point. But Macgregor charged that after 9/11, McChrystal had ingratiated himself with the neoco
nservatives, particularly Rumsfeld and Cheney. “He was someone that had made his reputation, in the Pentagon with Rumsfeld. He was someone who saw this ‘global’ Caliphate as a tremendous enemy, and kept beating the drum for that. And that endeared him to all of the key people.” The military, Macgregor said, is run under a “system that rests ultimately on a foundation that is cronyism. In other words, are you one of the boys? If they judge you to be culturally reliable, amenable, then you’re considered someone that should be advanced to the senior ranks. It’s a kind of brotherhood selection: ‘Is this man going to stay the course with us? Is he going to say whatever we tell him to say, do whatever we tell him to do?’” McChrystal, he told me, realized early on “that if he is going to advance, he’s going to have to ingratiate himself. And he does this in the Pentagon.”

  Despite his stated concern about the way US military policy was alienating Muslims, McChrystal shared the political view that the United States was indeed in a war against Islam, according to a retired military officer who had known him from the beginning of his military career and went through Ranger training with him. “Boykin and Cambone and McChrystal were fellow travelers in the great crusade against Islam,” the officer told me. “They ran what was for all practical purposes an assassination program.” Macgregor said that when McChrystal was named JSOC commander, he was “given a mission under Mr. Cambone, who is Rumsfeld’s intelligence director, and General Boykin, who was Cambone’s right-hand man, to essentially go after the ‘terrorists.’ And of course we’re defining terrorist very, very broadly.” McChrystal, he said, “presided over this black world where any actions were justified against Muslims because you were fighting against the Caliphate.”