Mission Compromised

by Oliver North

  Headquarters, Joint Special Operations Command

  ________________________________________

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  Saturday, 24 December 1994

  0945 Hours, Local

  Lieutenant Colonel Peter Newman hadn't planned on spending Christmas Eve at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but when he accelerated the schedule at Harrod's urging, the training for the ISEG had started on Monday, December 5, rather than January 2, as Newman had originally planned. The team had been hard at it since they returned from Washington, but Harrod wanted them to be ready for deployment in thirty days, and that meant setting aside any thought of holidays. Newman knew that he could have simply taken a few days off for Christmas, but he'd never believed in asking his troops to do something he wouldn't do. So, if they had to train over the holidays, he would be with them. He had called his wife to tell her why he wouldn't be home with her for yet another Christmas. As he expected, she didn't understand and went to be with her parents in Culpepper, Virginia. The ISEG had begun their training using the Delta operators at Bragg as “aggressors.” Based on the assumption that the ISEG's first mission would be to capture or kill General Mohammed Farrah Aidid, they didn't want to make the same mistakes that had been made in '93 when Task Force Ranger descended on Mogadishu. Thus, the input from those who had already been there was invaluable.

  This time, ISET Echo would be inserted by parachute to establish an advanced operations base outside the city, somewhere in the Somali desert. Then ISET Bravo—the all-black unit and the one designated to carry out the hit on Aidid—would parachute in and join them. Once they had a secure base, ISET Bravo would don local garb and make its way into the city. According to the plan, the rest of the ISEG would proceed to Djibouti aboard the repainted MD-80, complete with an Aer Lingus tail number, ID markings, and a UN humanitarian relief logo. If all proceeded according to plan, the MD-80 would be pre-positioned at the airport in Djibouti, a field controlled by the French foreign legion. Newman, Coombs, and McDade planned to run the operation from there. Robertson, the Air Force officer detailed to the Special Projects Office, would stay in Washington and monitor the satellite phones at the OEOB and, at least theoretically, send help if needed.

  Newman had been planning the operation for several weeks and was still not satisfied. The team would be at a distinct disadvantage on the ground without mobility, and in particular, without armor. The vague and uneasy similarity to the situation that his brother faced in 1993 made him concentrate on all their options and to review them over and over. The last thing Newman wanted in the world was to have history repeat itself.

  His three assistants each contributed to the overall plan, but it was Newman who took responsibility for the details. He reviewed the known facts with each of the men and sought their input. Then each night, Newman, Weiskopf, Macklin, Coombs, McDade, Robertson, and Sergeant Major Gabbard worked late into the night, searching for vulnerabilities and ways to reduce them. “I don't want to go in there without every man knowing not only his job but the job of each of his fellow team members. If things fall apart in the field, I want you guys to be able to pick up and fill in for any of your team members who might become casualties,” Newman told them during training exercise one morning.

  No one groused about having to train over Christmas. The consensus of the team was clear—to get the job done and come home as soon as possible. Their holiday would have to wait.

  Earlier that morning, a CIA station chief from Africa had briefed them. “Things have gotten much worse since October of '93. When the President pulled out all American troops and closed the embassy, we had to go to deep cover operations,” he said. “Our intelligence is pretty skimpy these days. But we've put a priority on it and will give it some intense coverage over the next few weeks while your guys finish training. The last thing any of us wants is another Mogadishu bloodbath.”

  Newman nodded. “Do we have any locals on our side—guys we can trust?”

  The CIA man shrugged. “We like to think so, but in that part of the world, loyalty is a commodity often bought and sold. I wouldn't count on too much. Once you're there, and if a couple of these guys seem reliable, you can use 'em. If they stay with you, they won't be able to give you up to Aidid's mercenaries. If they buck at anything, you'll have to use your own judgment as to what to do. They might become ‘casualties of war’ if you feel they can't be trusted. Once they know you're there, you won't be able to let 'em out of your sight or your mission might be compromised. Remember that.”

  Newman nodded again. The CIA man gave him a CD. “There are some more up-to-date after-action reports, and stuff like that on here. I'm supposed to let you copy it onto your laptop and take it back with me.” He handed it to Newman, who slid it into the CD slot on his portable computer and transferred the information to his hard drive. After Sergeant Major Gabbard did the same thing, the CIA man took the silver-colored disk back.

  He then said, “When you're finished with the material, erase it right away. And remember, you won't be able to copy this to any other computer or e-mail it to another source. It's encrypted, but your EL-3 will open the file. Just remember, the computer files have a built-in destruct sequence that will do some nasty things to your computer if you forget and try to copy or even print out stuff. Then it destroys all the information that you imported from the CD, and after that it attacks your hard drive, just in case you tried to translate the material in some other form to disguise it.”

  “Yeah,” Newman replied, “I've worked with these CDs when I was in Ops and Plans at HQMC. I know the drill … I forgot once—it only takes once,” he smiled, “but thanks for the reminder.”

  “Uh-huh.” The CIA man nodded. “By the way, speaking of the Marines, what's the deal on this mission? My call to come and brief you came from the NSC and not the Marines.”

  Newman looked at him with a blank expression on his face. “How long have you been with the agency?” Without waiting for an answer, he added quickly, “You ought to know the drill by now. You don't ask questions. If you weren't told what we're doing, it's because of a ‘need to know’ protocol. Sorry, but that's all you need to know.”

  “Yeah, I know. But this seemed kinda out of the usual SOP for these kinds of things. I mean … you're a Marine, and the CIA and the Marines work together a lot. But I noticed that some of the guys on your team are from all branches of the services. Sounds important—like something I'd like to be in on.”

  Newman didn't tell him that he had seen only the tip of the iceberg—in addition to people from all branches of the U.S. military, the British and the United Nations were also involved. When the CIA man left, Newman once again had an uneasy feeling. Because of the way the NSC had contacted the CIA for the intelligence they needed, they had sparked more speculation—and a potential leak—than if they had simply stuck to the normal way of doing things.

  He called in Sergeant Major Gabbard and asked him to take care of several of the details relating to the team training and to send a vehicle to pick them up at noon for another daily briefing/planning session to be conducted after lunch.

  Newman then shut his door and began to review the CIA intelligence reports, committing important facts and secret information to memory so he could relate them to troops and then delete the files on his computer. Ordinarily, with the EncryptionLok-3, he'd feel secure, but for the past couple of weeks Newman had sensed that he was being watched. At first he dismissed the feeling as just a normal case of nerves before a mission—or perhaps the kind of paranoia that General Komulakov had said comes with a history of cynicism and suspicion. Yet, since the days following his trip to the UN, he sensed that he was being followed. He had even “made” one of those who had shadowed him—a young man in his twenties tailing him in Georgetown when he stopped into a restaurant and checked on the wait for a table. Looking at his watch, Newman had felt that the forty-five-minute wait was too much and decided to try another place up the street. As soon as
he left the restaurant and strode across Wisconsin Avenue, the man, who had been sitting on a park bench outside the restaurant, looked surprised and jumped up much too quickly. Tail suspected.

  When Newman noticed his “shadow,” he decided to cross M Street to a different restaurant to see if the man still followed. At first he kept walking on the same side of the street in the direction the two of them had been walking. But when Newman crossed back over to the north side of M Street, the shadow also turned and headed back in the direction from which he'd come. Tail confirmed. No doubt one of Harrod's stupid tests, he told himself. Well, I won't give him the benefit of keeping me off balance—I'll keep this to myself.

  But the surveillance hadn't stopped after Newman confronted Harrod. When he drove to and from home, he was sure he was being tailed, alternating between a bronze Odyssey van and a white Olds Aurora. His travels were unscheduled and at various hours. The odds of their mutual commute being coincidental were too astronomical to consider. He concluded that it was not a coincidence.

  He never got a good look at any of the drivers, but he recognized the cars when they appeared regularly. He wrote down the license number of the van when he saw it on the way home from the White House one night. Using the computer and data access system in his office, he traced the tag and found that it was an “unissued” number—it didn't exist. The next time he saw the van, he was leaving home to run an errand to the hardware store about two miles from his house. The van had pulled out after he passed it, and he slowed to let it creep closer. Then when he got to the main intersection, he sped up and did a 180-degree turn and raced back toward the bronze van. It turned right at the next corner before Newman could get to it. He stopped to write down the license—this time it had New Jersey plates—but he got only the first two letters.

  By the time he flew from Andrews Air Force Base to Fort Bragg, Newman felt justified for his paranoia. There were people following him, watching him, and somehow they knew his schedule. If he left early, they were there. If he was late, they still appeared. It's likely that a less experienced person would not have noticed as many of the incidents as Newman did. The tails were good, but not good enough for Newman, who had spent most of his military career as a reconnaissance officer, trained to look for things that could get you killed. He knew the drill better than his hunters.

  It has to be someone from the White House, he thought as he sat in his temporary office at Fort Bragg. Or maybe somebody who has White House links—like Komulakov. He had begun to make notes of who, where, and when during these incidents when he discovered he'd been followed.

  He didn't know whether to confront Harrod. Newman reasoned that if he were wrong, then the National Security Advisor might take him off the mission, fearing that its leader had already been identified by unfriendly entities. If, on the other hand, it was Harrod or Komulakov, then the people who were shadowing him were likely countersurveillance or counterintelligence spooks—there to either protect Newman or finger him if he was disloyal.

  After weighing it all for several days, he decided to say nothing and simply keep his eyes open. But he also made a mental note to check for bugs at both his home and his office when he returned.

  HEATING UP

  CHAPTER TEN

  Office of the Special Projects Officer

  ________________________________________

  Washington, D.C.

  Monday, 16 January 1995

  0900 Hours, Local

  Newman entered his office on the third floor of the Old Executive Office Building with a headache and hoped it was just a lack of caffeine to help him start the day. He had returned late the night before on an Air Force jet from Pope Air Force Base, which is adjacent to Fort Bragg. He had gone home to an empty house—Rachel was on a flight somewhere—done his laundry caught a few hours of sleep, and headed back into Washington. On the way to his office, he had stopped in the GSA cafeteria on the first floor of the OEOB and picked up a cup of coffee. He pulled the plastic tab off the lid to the Styrofoam cup and took a long sip of the hot, black liquid. He sighed audibly. The coffee made him feel better.

  He took off his coat and hung it on the coatrack. As he did so a bright, cheery female voice said, “Good morning, Colonel Newman. There's a fax that you'll have to authorize decryption for.” The voice belonged to First Lieutenant Sonia Duvall, U.S. Army, Simon Harrod's handpicked choice for admin officer in the Special Projects Office. She had arrived while Newman was at Fort Bragg with the ISEG, and though Newman had talked to her on the phone, this was the first time he had met her in person.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant. What else is happening?” he asked.

  “Nothing much, sir,” said the bright-eyed, dark-haired, very attractive young officer. “The fax is for your eyes only. I'm going to the Pentagon to get those maps you requested. Anything you need before I leave?”

  Newman said, “No, but I'd like the maps before I leave today. And Lieutenant, I know that it's a nice view out there,” Newman pointed out the window, “but I want to make sure that the blinds on these windows are always kept closed—and the drapes as well—day and night so that someone outside doesn't know when we're here. It's just good OPSEC.”

  Lieutenant Duvall nodded, closed the blinds, pulled the drapes, and then put on her coat. She smiled, waved, and he heard her punching in the exit code to leave the offices. The security door closed with a quiet thud behind her, and he heard the lock snap closed with a loud click. After she was gone, Newman went to the fax machine and attached his EncryptionLok-3 and got the message to print out from the machine's buffer. It was from General Komulakov, asking him to fly to New York on Wednesday for another briefing at the UN command center. This was the second in ten days, and it was clear to Newman that things were beginning to heat up now that the ISEG was completing its training in Fort Bragg.

  He wondered why Komulakov just didn't call him—he could use the EL-3 for the phone as well as the fax. As far as Newman was concerned, flying to New York was a waste of time and money. What's with this guy? he thought. What's so all-fired important that it requires ‘eyeball to eyeball’ contact? But he faxed back his agreement and shredded the general's message.

  Newman returned to his desk and sat down with his coffee. But instead of picking up another revision to the ISEG training schedule that Coombs had placed there for approval, he leaned back and reflected on his nagging sense that something was wrong. He knew that this feeling was normal in combat, but in all his years in the Corps, he'd never experienced it on garrison duty. But then again, this isn't really garrison duty, is it? Nope. It's duty in the snake pit. Maybe even my office is bugged, Newman thought.

  He made a mental note to give the office a thorough going-over after Lieutenant Duvall left for lunch. Then he edited that thought. Maybe I'd better think about video and audio surveillance, he mused. Taking another sip of coffee, he thought, If I go rummaging around looking for a microphone, the cameras might see me and if there are any cameras, they will probably be wise to me.

  Newman looked around for where a camera might be hidden. He knew from the clandestine work he'd done in Panama when the U.S. military went after Noriega that the CIA had tiny fiber-optic lenses that were as small as a pinhole and could be installed virtually anywhere, but he intuitively decided that if such work was being done at the White House, it would have to be done by people with less field experience, and that they would perhaps be more obvious.

  He looked at the cold air return in the other room. Maybe it's in the register. In his own office, there was not a register high enough where a camera would do any good. But there was such a register in the adjoining office. Then he saw the smoke alarm. It could be there too. Or maybe in both places.

  There was a picture of George Washington on the far wall that he had inherited with the office—It could be built into the frame, he thought. As he drank his coffee, he saw three other spots that might have a camera hidden.

  Even the fireplace, he thought. Then New
man remembered the discovery of the safe weeks earlier. He had not gone back into it since he first found the mysterious files. A sense of dread suddenly swept over him. Those files! They were marked TOP SECRET, and some of them were intended only for the former president. Even though he had the top security clearances, he could still get in trouble for having these files. It occurred to him that they had his fingerprints all over them. And if he were under surveillance, they'd be sure to question why he had looked at the files and done nothing to resolve the matter of their ultimate possession, control, and disposition.

  It was truly a dilemma. As one Marine to another, Newman would like to have Oliver North's take on what the files in his old office safe meant and what he should do with them. If the National Security Advisor or the administration took possession of them, there was no telling what might be done with and to them.

  Newman went about his business and waited awhile before doing anything. Then he surreptitiously took a paper clip and a new number-two wooden pencil from his desk. He held the items in his left hand under the desk while he used his right hand to pick up a copy of Newsweek, pretending to browse through it. He spread the magazine open on the desktop and slowly dropped his right hand underneath by the other one. Under the desk, his hands worked quickly and skillfully. First he spread the paper clip apart and jammed one end of it through the eraser on the pencil. When he could feel equal lengths of the paper clip on either side of the eraser, he bent the wire in half, into a V shape, so that it looked almost like a divining rod, with the pencil eraser holding the two prongs of the paper clip. As he bent over the magazine, he slipped the strange item into his shirtsleeve.

  He sat there another few minutes, in case his movements had attracted attention. Then he got up and walked toward the photocopier. Its power source was plugged into a duplex socket next to the counter where the paper was stacked. He took his magazine and put it in the carrier, ostensibly to make a copy of an article. When the copier light went on and the top carrier moved forward to make the copy, Newman slipped the little “tool” out of his sleeve and down into his left hand. Feeling for the outlet behind him, he turned the pencil so that the twin metal prongs were spread toward the openings for the AC plug. When he was sure that his fingers were not touching anything grounded, Newman used the wooden pencil to push the paper clip ends into the twin holes. There was a zzz-ttt sound as the paper clip shorted the circuit. The copier made a clunk sound and stopped. In the same instant, all the lights and appliances were disabled with the resulting short circuit. In the panel down the hall in the service room, a circuit breaker popped.