by Duane Evans
* * *
The Yemini captured turned out to be Salim Hamdan, the personal driver and bodyguard for Osama Bin Laden. He would be transferred to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo, Cuba, and his case was to be the first to be tried under the military tribunal system. Under appeal, the case known as Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Hamdan’s favor and forced the military to change the tribunal procedures. Hamdan was eventually convicted of terrorism charges but was given credit for time served. He was released a few months after his conviction and returned to Yemen in 2014.
28
Bad News
On THE FOLLOWING DAY Shirzai’s men killed four more al-Qa’ida members at the roadblocks. None were captured. It was apparent al-Qa’ida preferred martyrdom to surrendering. No surprise there.
Out of concern that the roadblocks and our command post could become targets of car bombs, we collectively agreed that no vehicles would be allowed to pass through Takhteh-Pol going in either direction. The implementation of this decision effectively stopped all traffic traveling between Kandahar and Spin Boldak on Highway 4. The roadblocks became just what their name implied and primitive signs were put out to warn drivers there was no passage, and if they approached they would be fired on.
Shirzai’s wounded cousin remained in critical condition and would die if we did not get him better care. The policy was that we could treat Afghans on site but could not medically evacuate them to U.S. facilities. We requested an exception to policy and crossed our fingers.
That afternoon I received a message on my satellite pager to call CTC/SO. I called the office using secure voice communications, wondering what was up. The answer was not anything I had anticipated. My Headquarters contact told me that Mike Spann, a CIA paramilitary officer operating up north in the Mazar-e-Sharif area was missing and presumed dead, which if true, meant he was the first American killed in Afghanistan. I didn’t know Mike, but the news stung me just the same.
“Everyone at Headquarters is shocked that this has happened,” she said.
Really? I was surprised that anyone at Headquarters, at least if they worked in CTC/SO, could be “shocked” by this tragic news. Upset, yes. Shocked, no. Didn’t they know what was going on here? Didn’t they understand?
“Don’t be shocked again if you get some more bad news before this is all over,” I said, somewhat angered and frustrated by what I perceived to be an inexplicable naiveté at Headquarters. “This is very much an uncontrolled environment out here and anything can happen at any time.”
I really wasn’t exactly sure why this exchange concerning the news of Mike’s death had riled me so. I guess I just thought they should have understood that something like this was going to happen.
Later that same day, I received the long-awaited word that the CIA paramilitary officers were on their way to join Foxtrot, bringing the much-needed communications gear with them. I was told there were five of them inbound, which I believed was too large a group. We were living in tight conditions and were not in the best tactical situation. To our west, many thousands of enemy forces were still in Kandahar and to our east thousands more were in Spin Boldak. Moreover, the real work for us would not start until we got into the city of Kandahar and began to hunt for al-Qa’ida members and any exploitable intelligence that could be found. Given those factors, I did not believe any more Agency lives than necessary should be put at risk.
The paramilitary team was coming through the U.S. base at Karsi Khanabad, Uzbekistan, so I called up to our flight operations center and told them to only send two of the paramilitary officers to Takhteh-Pol, and that if possible, the other three should remain in Karsi Khanabad until Foxtrot reached Kandahar, and they could join us then. The person on the other end of the line gave me a “roger,” and I thought it was a done deal.
Around midnight the following night as the paramilitary team was flying in on a helicopter, I found out that all five PM officers were onboard. I was not happy with this news.
Shortly before the helicopter’s arrival, Gary and I walked out to the landing zone just outside the village. Gary expertly marked the landing zone by attaching a small infrared light to a long piece of parachute cord, and when the helo came in range he began to swing the light over his head in a circle that grew larger and larger as he slowly fed out more of the cord. The pilots with their IR goggles spotted the light and brought the blacked-out helo down, creating a total brown-out on the ground. I had goggles on to protect my eyes from the blowing sand, but I did not have any night vision goggles. Gary did, however, and he grabbed me by the shoulder and we ran together toward the helo. It was a huge exercise in trust for me because I could not see anything, and I knew there were powerful rotors cutting through the darkness that we were running directly toward. Earlier in my career I had participated in team building exercises where you fell backwards into the arms of your colleagues trusting them to catch you. That exercise amounted to child’s play compared to this. Gary delivered me safely to the bird, and I climbed up the tail ramp. Inside the cabin there was some faint light so I was able to see. I grabbed the closest man I saw.
“Who is the senior officer,” I shouted into his ear because of the noise.
“I am,” he shouted back.
“I only want two guys who know the commo system the best to stay. The other three will have to go back.”
It was a hard decision for me to send anyone back. I, of all people, understood how badly those men wanted to be there. Additionally, flying around in a helicopter in Afghanistan was risky in and of itself, and after just arriving and taking that risk, I’m sending them right back up in the air. They were going to hate me.
John, the senior officer, simply said, “OK,” and he relayed the word to the other team members. I saw the dismayed looks on their faces. Yep, they hated me.
John designated another PM officer named Pat to come with him. As the Helo sat on the ground with its engines running, the team quickly repacked the hard shell Pelican equipment boxes, being careful to make sure all the comms gear was transferred to the boxes that would remain in Takhteh-Pol. After a couple of minutes we offloaded the helicopter, and it immediately lifted off. Within an hour Foxtrot had full communications and our first written report was sent advising Headquarters of the arrival of John and Pat. Having the proper communications gear was a huge upgrade to Foxtrot team. It meant that for the first time we would be able to send and receive written CIA reporting.
Over the next few days I learned how fortunate Foxtrot was to have the two new officers on the team. John had spent an entire career in Delta Force before coming to the Agency. He was an imposing figure with a taciturn personality that conveyed the message that he did not put up with any bullshit. Even though there had been nothing from Headquarters on the subject, given John’s exceptional military background and paramilitary experience, I assumed he was supposed to take my place as Foxtrot team leader. When he said nothing about it, I asked him if this was the case. “No”, he replied, “you’re it.”
John’s partner, Pat, was an Air Force veteran. Smaller in stature than John, he was soft-spoken and generally low key, but there was an underlying toughness about him that reminded me of a Clint Eastwood character from a western. As I would learn, Pat did have some volatility in his personality if the wrong button was pushed, and he was not afraid to call a spade a spade.
With the commo gear and the two of them on board, I felt like Foxtrot was now a full-up team.
* * *
Approval for the medical evacuation of Shirzai’s wounded cousin did come through. He was flown to Germany and then eventually to the U.S., where after a year of medical treatment he recovered and then returned to Afghanistan.
29
Takhteh-Pol Days
The CONSOLIDATION OF THE Takhteh-Pol area and the blocking of Highway 4 had been our immediate preoccupation for the first two to three days since Foxtrot entered the village, but the capture of Kandah
ar remained our primary objective. This was true for Echo team as well, which was pushing southward with Hamid Karzai’s forces toward Kandahar from the Tarin Kowt area
Kandahar was not far from Takhteh-Pol, only a little over an hour’s drive, but standing in our way was an estimated 400 determined and dug-in al-Qa’ida and Taliban fighters who occupied the Kandahar airport that sat alongside Highway 4 east of the city. The capture of the airport would be an important key to the taking of the city. An immediate ground attack by Shirzai’s forces against the airport would likely be unacceptably costly in terms of casualties, and we ruled it out for the time being. Instead we decided to lay siege to the airport using ODA-directed airstrikes, providing time to soften up its defenses.
Toward this end, on December 1st, Shirzai’s forces, despite meeting some resistance, pushed out the western security perimeter around Takhteh-Pol and established a strongpoint at a concrete bridge on Highway 4 that spanned the dry riverbed of the Arghastan River. The bridge was only about two or three kilometers from the main airport complex and had line-of-sight across generally open terrain. The ODA set up an observation post at the bridge and began to call in air strikes, rotating ODA members back to Takhteh-Pol for rest purposes. Takhteh-Pol was about a 25-minute drive from the bridge, and our compound there continued to serve as the command post.
A force of Shirzai’s fighters was still maintained to the east of the village to guard against an attack from the direction of Spin Boldak, while other security and observation elements were scattered around at key points of what had become a very large perimeter covering many miles. Shirzai’s force was not large enough to cover it completely, so unavoidably there were holes in the defensive line, if it could be called a line at all, and it was possible an enemy force could slip past to attack our command post at Takhteh-Pol. Despite these deficiencies, priority had to go to keeping the bulk of Shirzai’s fighters in the vicinity of the bridge to deter an attack against the ODA’S observation point which was calling in a rain of death on the enemy on a near continuous basis.
As strikes against the airport got underway, we settled into a routine at the compound. One of the constants was that there was always at least one American awake 24 hours a day. At night this took the form of a one-hour rotating shift. The ODA members were not included due to their own rotation schedule for calling airstrikes. This left the members of Foxtrot, and three or four military Special Ops personnel who joined Foxtrot a couple days after we moved into Takhteh-Pol, to keep watch. Everyone got at least one shift a night and usually one person had to pull two.
Reflective of the generally relaxed and democratic leadership style I used with this team of experienced professionals, any one of whom could have done as good of a job, maybe better, as team leader, I proposed our shifts be for two hours. A longer shift would mean everyone would get a full night’s sleep every other day. Unfortunately, my wisdom was lost on the team and I was voted down.
During the night watch, a fire was kept with a pot of coffee or tea gurgling over it. Each one of us, in turn, sat by the fire, usually wearing a black fleece jacket and baseball cap. We were kept company by the pilots’ chatter on the radio we monitored as air strikes were carried out, and we would listen to the corresponding deep rumbling of the ordnance detonating in the distance.
Another constant, at least for me, was that I was armed at all times. Even at the command post I always carried the Glock-19 on my belt. At night I slept with it by my side and with my AK-47 leaning against the wall an arm’s reach away. I, and most of the other Americans, took these precautions due to the constant threat of possible attack on Takhteh-Pol by al-Qa’ida or Taliban forces. But there was also a real concern of an insider attack against us by one or more of the Afghan fighters with whom we were working. We were not in a position to vet any of them and were completely relying on Shirzai’s assessment that we could trust our lives to the armed Afghans who were constantly around us.
One afternoon Mike, myself, and a couple of others were outside in the compound courtyard when a deafening barrage of AK-47 fire erupted a few feet away on the other side of the compound wall. Having no idea of what was happening, I ducked into the small building where I slept and grabbed my AK-47 and took a defensive position in the doorway, thinking the firing indicated we were under attack. Mike was still in the courtyard and had moved up against the wall opposite from where the firing was going on. Very bravely, he lifted his head momentarily above the wall to see what was happening and then lowered it, shaking it as he did. We weren’t under attack—the Afghans had just decided to test their weapons and hadn’t advised any one inside the compound of their plans. Although it was a false alarm, it reinforced for me that we always had to be ready for the unexpected, and that meant being armed at all times and places. The incident also highlighted the fact that the Afghan force we were with was not very disciplined and not well trained in the safe handling of weapons. On several occasions when there was no evident threat, I saw Afghans walking about with their fingers on the triggers of their AK’s. Muzzle control was an even bigger problem, with the barrels of their rifles often being carelessly slung about pointing in one unsafe direction or the other. I actually believed that the chances were as good or greater that I or another member of Foxtrot would be accidently wounded or killed by one of Shirzai’s men as by any deliberate attack by al-Qa’ida or the Taliban.
* * *
Every few nights a detail was formed to go out into the desert to receive a parachute resupply of guns, ammo, and other equipment. Though it was counter-intuitive, owing to the provisions of Title 50 authorities, CIA was responsible for the provision of lethal material, and the Special Forces team was responsible for non-lethal supplies.
One night, among the supplies received, were two big bags of horse feed. Some teams up north did have horses, and I was a little jealous about that. Having grown up with horses, I had this romantic idea about using them in Foxtrot’s activities in the South. But the only steeds we had were the dual-cab, 4-wheel drive kind, and they didn’t eat grain. As was standard practice, we sent a routine message back listing the supplies received. Before I pushed the send button to release the report, unbeknownst to me, one of the team members had added a special parenthetical note next to the entry about the bags of feed to insure Headquarters understood Foxtrot was a non-equestrian team. It read: “We don’t have any fucking horses.” It was the first and only time in my entire career that I had ever seen the “F” word in a CIA cable, as profanity is strictly prohibited in official correspondence. So I was taken aback to see it as plain as day in a cable that I had just released to my Headquarters, though I couldn’t help but laugh.
Obscene cable or not, I was actually glad we had the horse feed. The sweet smell of the grain, and the sight and feel of the rough burlap bags provoked boyhood memories of feeding our horses using a red Folgers coffee can to scoop the grain out of a bag identical to the ones stacked against the compound wall. As the days passed, I sometimes found myself coming up with reasons to walk past them, just so I could inhale the nostalgic fragrance. In some ways the smell seemed more powerful in reminding me of my youth spent in New Mexico than the sight of the azure Afghan sky and the brown earth beneath it.
* * *
After John’s arrival he became Foxtrot team’s de facto commo officer. As with everything else he did, he was very organized and strict about how things were accomplished. One day I was trying to draft a cable to Headquarters on the team laptop and had trouble logging in with the password. After one too many attempts, the computer’s security feature kicked in and locked up the computer. John, who I had already learned did not take fools lightly, was perturbed by my technical ineptitude.
“From now on, I will log into the computer. You don’t touch it until I say it is ready.”
I felt like I was back in the Army as a brand new second lieutenant, and John was my platoon sergeant trying to protect me from myself. And just like I did with my platoon sergeant,
I followed John’s direction.
Pat also had a similar experience with John involving the computer, and he did not take it as well as I had. Pat came to me furious, complaining about the way John had talked down to him.
“I swear I will deck that asshole if he pulls that shit again,” he said.
Fortunately, it never came to fisticuffs between the two, but it could have, as I had no doubt that Pat would be true to his word. And John, well—John was John.
* * *
Late one afternoon a cable came in from Uzbekistan. I knew the chief there, and he was forwarding an intelligence report that was sent to his base but not to Foxtrot team. The report said that the Taliban’s II Corps based in Kandahar was planning to launch a surprise attack against Takhteh-Pol that very night.
I had to shake my head. Foxtrot team occupied Takhteh-Pol and yet no one had thought to put us down on the dissemination line of the report—this despite the fact that all the other CIA teams in Afghanistan, none even close to Takhteh-Pol, had received it. It was not the first time that something like this had happened, and at times it seemed to me that Foxtrot was the “forgotten team.” I had to believe that at least part of the reason for this mistake was that we had not been up on the communications net sending and receiving CIA traffic for very long, but still, given the importance of the report—possibly a life and death matter—failing to send the report to Foxtrot team was an egregious error.
We knew our security line was thin, and that a concerted enemy effort, if it was not detected early, could punch through, or depending on its location, just saunter through. We advised Shirzai of the threatened attack. With all his fighters already on the line, all he had left were his Hazara cooks, the only non-Pashtuns among his force, to send out and reinforce the lines.
The Hazaras were of special interest to me. They spoke Dari so when I first learned that there were some of them with Shirzai, I was hopeful I could speak to them using my Farsi, a closely related language. I spoke Farsi at a professional level, however, meaning it was proper Farsi and was intended for an educated audience. The Hazaras with us were illiterate, backcountry people and spoke Dari with a thick colloquial accent. They called my Farsi “Khatab-e-Farsi” (book Farsi). In my attempts to converse with them, they seemed to understand me, but I could understand scarcely a word they said. They enjoyed our conversations, however, if their outbursts of laughter were any gauge.