All In

by Paula Broadwell

  PETRAEUS’S INTEREST in the CIA would not have surprised Andy Milani. It was summer 2001 in Sarajevo. Milani was a lieutenant colonel, a Delta Force aviator who was serving in Bosnia as the chief of staff of a Joint Special Operations Command task force hunting war criminals. It was the largest deployment of Special Mission Unit forces anywhere in the world. Petraeus and Milani had met at a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Bragg while Petraeus was in his final months there. Protective by nature in a highly classified world, Milani did not know exactly what to make of Petraeus, a newly minted brigadier general who’d started hanging around Milani’s operations center. Petraeus had arrived in late June 2001 as assistant chief of staff for operations for NATO’s Stabilization Force in Bosnia. He had convinced a young captain who had served in his brigade in the 82nd Airborne, David Fivecoat, to deploy to Bosnia and serve as his aide. He also recruited Lieutenant Colonel Mike Meese, a permanent professor at West Point’s Department of Social Sciences and the son of former attorney general Edwin Meese, to join his team. Meese would later join Petraeus in Iraq in 2003 and again during the surge in 2007 and 2008, and then deploy for a year to Afghanistan when Petraeus assumed command there in July 2010.

  Petraeus’s fascination with counterinsurgency made him curious about peacekeeping. In Bosnia, he would become immersed in the Multi-Year Road Map, a blueprint for managing civil-military, governance and development-oriented operations whose concepts and structure would prove useful for Petraeus when he found himself as a virtual potentate in Mosul for much of 2003. He worked closely with the EU, the Office of the High Representative and UN officials—his first in-depth exposure to such agencies.

  Petraeus also found himself drawn to Milani’s Special Mission Unit task force, the only one in the peacekeeping theater carrying out operations aimed at war criminals of the Bosnian civil war. Prior to each of the task force’s operations, Petraeus would sit in on Milani’s briefings, take notes on targeting and ask provocative questions, according to joint task force members. Even though he wasn’t in the Special Operations chain of command, Petraeus was responsible for ensuring the Stabilization Force’s support of the task force operations, as well as the operations of other nations’ special operations forces that were conducting war criminal–hunt operations. By the late summer, Petraeus was designated the deputy commander of the “forward” task force in Bosnia as well.

  Petraeus didn’t care that Milani was two grades below him. He saw that Milani’s Special Mission Unit operators—from multiple government agencies and military services—had capability, expertise and energy. “One day I put him on a helicopter and dressed him up [in civilian attire] and a ball cap,” Milani explained. The team flew over steep gorges, five-thousand-foot mountains and sheer cliffs and beautiful rivers to destinations unknown. “We jumped in a van with blacked-out windows and you could just tell he was like a kid in a candy store.” They met with intelligence collectors and sources and visited safe houses that enabled surveillance of war criminals. Petraeus started going on nighttime “house call” missions with the task force. He also asked Lieutenant Colonel Sean Mulholland, an Army Special Forces officer, if he could go out with his men on their night raids, which typically went down around 2:00 A.M. “It’s probably too dangerous,” Mulholland said. “I’d like to go anyway,” Petraeus insisted.

  Bosnia marked the first time Special Mission Units and Special Forces would share the high-value targeting mission. Petraeus would often wait outside in a vehicle as a house was surrounded and the area secured, then he would emerge wearing no body armor and deliver a letter from the Stabilization Force commander to the individual of interest. The night raids were designed to send a signal to or detain and interrogate those known to be aiding and abetting war criminals; the tactical intelligence often gathered in the wake of such operations would lead to the next target.

  At the top of the task force’s list was Dr. Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb politician wanted for war crimes against Bosnian Muslims and Croats, in his infamous pink house in the town of Pale, cradled in the Bosnian mountains in a Bosnian Serb area within the French sector. But the French were initially resistant to U.S. activity in their area. General John B. Sylvester, the NATO Stabilization Force commander and now also the commander of the forward Joint Special Operations Task Force, cleared Petraeus and Milani to work with the French to coordinate their activities. At one point, the task force’s intelligence analysts tried to recruit Karadzic’s driver and had a pitch letter delivered to his home. But the driver thought he was being set up and immediately contacted the Serbian government, which in turn contacted the U.S. Embassy. The operation had been blown, and the task force suffered a major embarrassment. The setback strained relations between task force officers and CIA operatives, who told the agency’s director, George Tenet, that they had opposed the operation, even though the CIA had participated. Petraeus understood that the Special Operations–CIA relationship had a long way to go. Still, he found the hunt for war criminals an intellectually challenging and exciting mission.

  But the Special Mission Unit focus in Bosnia would soon shift to counterterrorism after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, which ultimately led to vastly improved cooperation and intelligence sharing. Within two weeks, a Joint Interagency Task Force–Counterterrorism was created, combining military, law enforcement, intelligence and diplomatic resources in Bosnia for the first time. In addition to his other peacekeeping duties, Petraeus became its deputy commander, again reporting to Sylvester, who was designated commander of this task force as well.

  Bosnia had long been a transit area for foreign Islamist fighters, in part because the Bosnian Muslims had been desperate for assistance to counter the Serb nationalists who were conducting ethnic cleansing during the civil war in the early 1990s. Some of them continued to facilitate extremist activities through Bosnia in support of former fighters for al-Qaeda. From its inception, the Joint Interagency Task Force included Special Operations personnel and representatives from the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency and analysts and interpreters from the National Security Agency. Two weeks after 9/11, the Joint Interagency Task Force used CIA intelligence to plan a raid on an Egyptian and a Jordanian hiding out in the Hollywood Hotel in Sarajevo. “We flipped the switch and went from hunting war criminals to looking for al-Qaeda,” explained Milani.

  During a pre-brief on the operation, Petraeus leaned over, raised his brow and asked Milani, “So, could this be a career moment?” Milani responded, “What does that mean, sir? A high-risk moment where we might lose our careers?” Milani laughed. “I’d say ‘Roger,’ sir; that’s the world I live in.” Petraeus liked his attitude. The operation began at the hotel with Special Operations soldiers carrying suitcases as part of their cover—empty suitcases, which they could use to conduct tactical exploitation of materials in the room. They captured their targets, but not without a fight. They eventually threw the two men, Al-Halim Hassam Khafagi and Hamed Abdel Rahim al-Jamal, into the back of a van, wrapped in sheets. Petraeus and Milani came out to meet the soldiers upon their return, opened the doors and saw the sheets were covered with blood. Petraeus was concerned. One of the two had sustained a concussion. But neither was seriously injured. Interrogations and computers seized in the raid ultimately helped lead them to three Egyptians, one Jordanian and five Pakistanis.

  The operation marked a turning point for joint interagency operations, especially relations between the Special Operations community and the CIA. After the Hollywood Hotel raid, the combined team conducted operations that led to the arrest of terrorists and individuals linked to nongovernmental organizations suspected of links to terrorist organizations. One of them, Benevolence International Foundation, a Chicago-based religious organization, was using its tax-exempt status as a charity to raise funds for transnational terrorists. At its offices in Bosnia, the Joint Interagency Task Force uncovered documents that established direct communication between Benevolence
and an al-Qaeda lieutenant, which the FBI used to put Benevolence International Foundation’s leader behind bars in Chicago on perjury charges. By August 2002, according to one of its analysts, Captain Jeanne Hull, “intelligence and open-source reporting indicated that some armed groups were looking to avoid Bosnia rather than use it.”

  While Special Mission Unit teams continued to pursue war criminals, their main mission became counterterrorism. It was a formative period for Petraeus that built on his peacekeeping experiences in Haiti and his time on General Shelton’s staff, where he had first been exposed to the mission in Bosnia and the Special Mission Units there. Because of his time in Bosnia, he better understood the importance of “unity of effort,” working at both the strategic and tactical levels with U.S. and coalition military and civilian partners, international organizations, foreign embassies and host-nation officials. He worked to merge the combined efforts of Special Mission Units and Special Forces teams on the war-criminal and counterterrorism missions, and he learned from the intelligence-gathering techniques the Special Mission Units used to locate high-value targets. The interagency task force that he helped establish to pursue terrorist suspects would be a blueprint he would again use in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Perhaps most important, he carried with him a blueprint for a Multi-Year Road Map for the comprehensive nation building he had first experienced in Haiti and now implemented in war-torn Bosnia. He left Bosnia in 2002 after learning that he would be promoted to major general and given the job of his dreams, commander of the 101st Airborne Division. Word at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was that the Screaming Eagles were ticketed for Iraq.

  IN AFGHANISTAN, Petraeus cherished his time in the field with units from the 101st Airborne. On December 20, he flew to Kandahar to visit Flynn’s battalion, touching down in a Black Hawk helicopter in a barren brown field near the site where the Battle of Bakersfield had been fought in July. Flynn led the general to a bridge where his men had fought the days-long battle. Flynn asked Petraeus to pin a Silver Star on the chest of Sergeant First Class Kyle Lyon, an Army meteorologist by training who had led a platoon through the Battle of Bakersfield. Petraeus promised he would look into Lyon’s request to reclassify as an infantryman. He awarded medals to seven other soldiers as well, noting that the opportunities to recognize heroic troopers were among his greatest pleasures. Flynn had given Petraeus the basic facts of the fighting that had taken place as they walked to the bridge from the landing zone, and Petraeus repeated them verbatim in his remarks to the troops. Flynn was impressed by his memory and thought the personal remarks he had made to each soldier were eloquent.

  After the ceremony, Flynn led Petraeus and the members of his traveling party inside Combat Outpost Stout, where he briefed them on his battalion’s tactical operations and reconstruction efforts. Flynn explained that they measured success by counting the number of farmers working in fields, the willingness of potential informants to be recruited, and the number of villagers willing to take part in “cash for work” programs and various other indicators. Flynn’s converted artillerymen were conducting the kind of intensive counterinsurgency operations normally performed by the infantry and Special Forces. Petraeus later told Major General James Terry, commander of the Regional Command South in Afghanistan, that he wanted a similar approach followed in the south.

  Flynn shared other insights as well. He understood Petraeus’s intent—the Afghan Local Police were intended to promote local security and supplement the growing Afghan security forces, including uniformed and border police. Adding the Afghan Local Police to the mix would help achieve something closer to the 1-to-20 troop-to-population ratio prescribed in U.S. Army counterinsurgency doctrine, when both ISAF and Afghan forces were included. A similar bottom-up defense initiative in Iraq, the Sons of Iraq, had been one of the tipping points for greatly improved security. Could it work in Afghanistan? Could conventional forces assume part of this training mission? Special Operations forces promoting the Village Stability Operations were spread thin as it was. Petraeus had asked his Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team (CAAT) to study whether conventional forces were up to the task. Flynn clearly thought that they were.

  Petraeus listened intently to Flynn’s briefing, which gave him a snapshot of what his unit had achieved in their seven months in country and an analysis of the enemy. Flynn described his current lines of effort, including efforts to promote local governance and development. Petraeus said the Taliban senior leadership was concerned by the expansion and effectiveness of the ALP, which he felt would have real impact on the Taliban’s popular support, communications and safe havens. He still hoped that the ALP would spread like a chain-link fence across key terrain districts that lacked sufficient numbers of soldiers and police.

  Petraeus continually reiterated the value of, and his aspirations for, the ALP initiative at his morning stand-up briefings. He had asked Brigadier General Scott Miller, the commanding general of Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan, to update him weekly on its expansion as the initiative was being implemented by Miller’s Special Forces detachments. Miller’s command was cautious about other efforts to train and equip local police, in part because of the importance of maintaining ties to the Ministry of the Interior and control over the dispersal of weapons—tasks that his teams explicitly oversaw. Miller, however, recognized that conventional forces had to take part in order to achieve the desired ratio of troops to villagers. There simply weren’t enough Special Forces detachments to do the job at the pace that was necessary to halt the insurgency’s momentum.

  After Flynn’s briefing, the entourage set off on foot to Tarok Kolache so that Petraeus could see the development there for himself. Flynn was worried that he wouldn’t see anyone he knew, after emphasizing his close relations with villagers during the briefing. But the first man they ran into was Abdul Baqi, a homeowner eager to see his house rebuilt. He greeted Flynn warmly. Soon there were others, including village maliks who told Petraeus that they didn’t want Flynn to leave. At one point, as a small crowd gathered at the site of the demolished Tarok Kolache mosque, Petraeus discussed the need for reconstruction so that villagers could once again live in peace and prosperity. Mark Howell, the security chief who accompanied Petraeus, knew how much Petraeus enjoyed visiting these onetime Taliban strongholds. “I saw a light in the boss’s eyes I saw in Baghdad after the Battle of Sadr City in March ’08,” Howell recalled. “The light that said, ‘I’ve got you now, and there’s more where that came from.’ Joe Taliban has an interesting winter ahead of him, and those that are left standing come April may be a little more open-minded.” Major General Terry later passed a quote from Petraeus to Flynn: “Best day that I’ve had since I’ve been in Afghanistan.”

  That night, after Petraeus returned to ISAF headquarters in Kabul, Major Fernando Lujan briefed the commanding general. Lujan had seen Flynn’s battalion during their initial operations back in July, when he and his colleagues from the Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team embedded with Flynn’s unit. But tonight’s topic wasn’t Flynn or his troops. It was the future of the CAAT itself. At the start of his tour back in July, Lujan had been assigned by the CAAT’s commander, Colonel Joe Felter, to build a team that could take the CAAT concept inside the Afghan military, which would at some point be inheriting the war from the Americans and their NATO partners. Lujan was well suited to create an Afghan CAAT, or A-CAAT. In addition to being a Special Forces officer, he was in a special program created by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called the “Afghan Hands.” Those in it trained in either Dari or Pashto and spent three years rotating back and forth between Afghan-related billets in Afghanistan and the United States. All of this was designed to build language fluency, cultural expertise and country knowledge. The A-CAAT took shape almost coincidentally, when Lujan was joined in Kandahar by two other Afghan Hands who also spoke Dari, an infantry officer and a Defense Department contractor. They spent the fa
ll on eight combat embeds advising Afghan forces on best counterinsurgency practices.

  In a conference room at ISAF headquarters filled with Petraeus aides and three Special Forces colonels, Lujan said the vision he and Felter shared was for the A-CAAT, over time, to essentially supersede the CAAT and become an increasingly important contribution to the campaign as ISAF forces thinned out and turned the war over to the Afghan troops. But the only way to expand the A-CAAT so that it had three separate regional teams, in the south, southwest and east regional commands, Lujan argued, was for the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to assume responsibility and provide staffing. Only with SOCOM support could enough Afghan Hands be assigned to carry on the mission. By the summer of 2011—when the drawdown of U.S. forces would begin—Lujan envisioned having five A-CAATs—one for each regional command. While Lujan and Felter had heard that the Special Forces colonels were there to try to keep the Afghan Hands out of the A-CAAT expansion, they kept their mouths shut after Petraeus responded enthusiastically to the A-CAAT expansion. “‘We need command-track guys for these Afghan Hands billets, not guys who didn’t have any career options,’” Lujan later quoted Petraeus as saying. “You need the best.”