Then the conversation turned a weird corner: “You know, you’re a controversial character,” Roston said.
Controversial? In nearly thirty-three years, I’d hardly poked my head into public view. How controversial could I be?
“Why am I controversial?” I asked Roston.
“They’ve chosen you to go after these high-profile Islamic figures, and you have a track record of hating Islam,” he said. “Are you suitable for this job?”
Hating Islam? What was he talking about? I had hunted down war criminals who tortured and murdered Muslims in Bosnia, and helped train Muslim Special Forces in Sudan. And hadn’t I just told him I wasn’t in charge of pursuing HVTs? Apparently this reporter considered himself so savvy he wasn’t going to let a simple thing like honest answers throw him off track.
“I respect the right of everyone including Muslims to worship as they choose,” I told Roston. “I’ve spent thirty-three years defending those rights.”
He went on, “You’ve made a statement to a Somali warlord that your God was bigger than his.”
He had to be talking about Osman Atto, chief financier and glorified henchman for the Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. Atto ran the profiteering end of Aidid’s theft of United Nations food shipments, brokering the sale of food taken from the mouths of starving people to make money for Aidid, who during the early 1990s brutalized and murdered the leaders of rival clans in order to consolidate his own power in the Somali capital.
As commander of Delta Force, on assignment with Task Force Ranger in the fall of 1993, I oversaw the hunt for Atto during the U.S. attempt to capture Aidid. Whenever news cameras were near, Atto mocked us.
“The Americans will never catch me,” he boasted on CNN. “Allah will protect me.”
So, when Allah failed to do so, and Atto was in our custody, sure—I confronted him with a message of my own. But it wasn’t the one the American media reported, the one Roston was now repeating.
“I didn’t say that to him,” I told Roston. “I made that statement in a church.”
I hadn’t run an op since 1998 (as a general, you fire off more memos than bullets), but my talks before churches and civic groups were my way of helping regular citizens join in an epic battle. I urged Christians to pray not only for our troops, but for the leadership in America. I sometimes ended my talks by saying, “Fight with me!” I didn’t mean through some kind of holy war. I meant spiritually, through prayer, interceding with God that He would keep our men and women safe, and help our leaders make just decisions.
At every event, people would come up after my talk and say something like, “I have a son serving in Afghanistan. I am so encouraged to know that there are Christian leaders in today’s military who believe in prayer. I’ll be praying for my son and praying for you, too.”
But I didn’t have a chance to explain all that to Roston, who then said, “You’ve made statements like, ‘God put George Bush in the White House.’ ”
“Yeah, I believe that.” I also believed He put Bill Clinton in the White House, Tony Blair at Number 10 Downing Street, and Pol Pot over Cambodia. I believe God is sovereign over the affairs of men. Generals from George Washington to Stonewall Jackson to Douglas MacArthur believed that, too. When did that become controversial? I thought.
Roston went on. “You’ve said that the majority of the people in America didn’t vote for Bush, but God put him in there.”
In my head, I’m thinking, Come on, Roston, the entire left wing of America believes that the majority of the people didn’t put George W. Bush in the White House. Bush “stole” the election, remember?
But I said, “Yes, sir, I believe that.”
Roston continued, “You’ve said that this is a Christian nation.”
“Well, that’s just a historical fact. It also happens to be an English-speaking nation. Those are just facts of our country’s history.”
“You’re an evangelical,” Roston said.
It was an accusation. His tone would have fit easily with “You’re a Nazi,” or “You’re a Klansman.”
“Yes, I’m an evangelical.”
“You’re a public official now. You’ve cast this war in religious terms. And you’re the man who is being held accountable for finding these high-value targets who are Islamic leaders.”
“That’s just not true. You’re just wrong on that.”
The truth was I would’ve been much happier if he had been right about the HVT part. I had chased HVTs all over the world, and I was good at it. I would’ve enjoyed hunting bad guys a lot more than pushing paper. But there was no way I would tell him that because it had become crystal clear that Aram Roston of NBC News was going to report the story he wanted to report, no matter what I said.
I decided I’d better at least make it official.
“Tell you what you need to do,” I said. “You need to call the public affairs office.”
Again, he appeared not to have heard me. “I’d like to come interview you.”
“You need to call public affairs, and if they clear it, I’ll sit down and have a talk with you.”
He would keep agreeing to talk to public affairs, but would then ask another question.
Again and again, I repeated, “Look, you need to call public affairs. You need to get them involved in this, and then I’ll talk to you.”
We hung up. But the next day, Cambone’s military assistant walked into my office and sat down across from me. “Aram Roston called again,” she said. “He still wants to come and interview you. He says the story is going to air tonight on NBC.”
“Has he talked with public affairs?”
“I asked him if he had. He said no.”
Of course he said no, I thought. I wondered if Roston was playing an old reporter’s game: put in a couple of calls, but don’t take the steps that would actually result in a real interview.
“Tell him to call public affairs and I’ll be glad to talk to him,” I told Cambone’s assistant.
But, of course, Roston never did call public affairs. That would’ve ruined the story—which, I would learn by sundown, had already been written.
4
SINCE MOVING into the E Ring, I’d kept pretty late hours, so it wasn’t unusual that I was still at the office when the NBC Nightly News aired. My office opened off an administrative area where the deputy undersecretaries’ secretaries had their desks. They had a television bolted to the wall out there that was usually tuned to the news. At six-thirty, I stepped out of my office to see what Aram Roston had managed to cobble together. Tish Long, the civilian deputy undersecretary for policy and resources, was already standing there, looking up at the set.
In a segue from international coverage, Tom Brokaw said, “Back in this country, there’s a strange new development in the war on terror involving one of the leaders of a secretive new Pentagon unit formed to coordinate intelligence on terrorists and help hunt down Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and other high-profile targets.”
Secretive new Pentagon unit? I rolled my eyes at Tish. Calling the new undersecretary job a “secretive new Pentagon unit” was like calling a new variety of apple a “mysterious new red fruit.” My job wasn’t a secret, I wasn’t coordinating intelligence, and I wasn’t leading a “unit.” They didn’t even get the “new” part right: the Senate confirmed Steve Cambone eight months prior, in March. Apparently, Aram Roston hadn’t listened to a word I’d said.
As these thoughts flashed through my mind, Brokaw finished his segue: “NBC News has learned that a highly decorated general has a history of outspoken and divisive views on religion, Islam in particular.”
NBC’s Lisa Myers began her report: “He’s a highly decorated officer, twice wounded in battle, a warrior’s warrior. The former commander of Army Special Forces, Lieutenant General William Jerry Boykin has led or been part of almost every recent U.S. military operation from the ill-fated attempt to rescue hostages in Iran to Grenada, Panama, Colombia, and Somalia . . . But
[his] new assignment may be complicated by controversial views General Boykin, an evangelical Christian, has expressed in dozens of speeches and prayer breakfasts around the country. In a half dozen video and audio tapes obtained by NBC News, Boykin says America’s true enemy is not Osama Bin Laden . . . NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin, who’s been investigating Boykin for the Los Angeles Times, says the general casts the war on terror as a religious war.”
NBC then began to air audio and video clips from talks I had given at churches, interspersing them with commentary from Myers.
Myers: “Boykin recalls a Muslim fighter in Somalia who bragged on television the Americans would never get him because his God, Allah, would protect him.”
Then, audio only of me, speaking at First Baptist Church in Daytona, Florida: “Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.”
Inwardly, I groaned. Lifted out of context, it sounded terrible.
Myers: “In a phone conversation, Boykin tells NBC he respects Muslims and believes the radicals who attack America are ‘not true followers of Islam.’ ”
When did I say that?
Myers: “Boykin also routinely tells audiences that God, not the voters, chose President Bush.”
Now there’s some red meat for the anti-religion Left.
Then NBC trotted out a “military analyst,” Bill Arkin, the reporter who had apparently been investigating me for a month but who hadn’t bothered to interview me.
Arkin: “I think that it is not only at odds with what the president believes, but it is a dangerous, extreme, and pernicious view that really has no place.”
Based on what? I thought. Your extensive conversations with me?
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The report concluded. Stunned, I walked back to my office and flipped off my light. Tish walked out into the main corridor beside me. “I’m really sorry,” she told me. “That’s exactly one of the reasons it’s hard to get good people to serve in Washington.”
“Thanks, Tish,” I said. I struggled to find something to add, but it seemed as if a great weight was pressing down on my soul, and I couldn’t find any words. “I don’t know what else to say.”
That night at home, my wife, Ashley, was my comforter. She had seen the report. When I walked through the door, she hugged me. “How are you doing?”
I looked at her and shook my head. “I just can’t believe it.”
I skipped dinner and slumped on the couch in my living room. My mind raced. I most certainly had not been out on an anti-Islam campaign. In fact, I was on the record in print, saying the war on terror was specifically not a war between Christianity and Islam. I had never contradicted that, but only discussed my personal faith and tried to encourage other Christians—many of whom had sons and daughters in harm’s way—with this message: they had the weapon they needed to affect the outcome of a war between good and evil—prayer. They were not powerless.
But now I felt completely powerless. My first instinct should have been prayer, but it wasn’t. I wanted to charge in. I wanted to fight back. But I immediately realized that despite my more than two decades in special warfare, I had no idea how to fight in this situation. In my career, I had faced down warlords and drug lords, dictators and terrorists, kidnappers, guerillas, and murderers. Them, I knew how to deal with.
Osman Atto flashed into my mind. He seemed to be exhibit A in NBC’s “case” against me—and yet the man was corruption in human skin. In addition to helping Mohamed Farrah Aidid starve his own people, Atto built “technicals,” half-ton pickups with gun mounts in the beds Aidid and his Habr Gidr clan used to intimidate and murder members of rival clans. The warring factions often spilled each other’s blood in Mogadishu’s narrow, dusty streets, with Aidid’s more heavily armed clan mowing down men, women, and, if they got in the way, children.
Also, Atto was a major dealer in khat, a narcotic weed that transformed so many otherwise strong and able Somali men into walking zombies.
A medium-sized man with eyes like onyx, Atto spoke nearly perfect English, which made him a good PR man for Aidid when news cameras rolled through the area. Despite his dark profession, Atto, whenever possible—and especially whenever a camera was in range—invoked Allah, trying to create the impression he was a devout, practicing Muslim. In fact, Osman Atto’s gods were the oldest idols of all: money and power.
In the summer of 1993, Joint Chiefs chairman General Colin Powell signed off on a plan to send an American unit, Task Force Ranger, to capture Aidid and restore peace to Mogadishu. The task force was under the command of General Bill Garrison, a cool-headed Texan who, it is rumored, has never been seen without an unlit cigar poking out of his mouth. Composed of an Army Special Operations unit, about three hundred Rangers, the task force also included 150 men from Delta Force, of which I was in command. But we’d named the entire operation Task Force Ranger to obscure that fact. In August, we set up a joint operations center (JOC) on the ragged edge of Mogadishu, and commenced operations.
As Aidid’s chief of finance, Atto topped our list of high-value targets. In September, we received a snippet of intel on his location. Within thirty minutes, we launched a helo assault, dodging rocket-propelled grenade fire to land a H-6 Little Bird gunship with four black-clad Delta Force operators riding shotgun on the pods on top of one of Atto’s garages.
We missed him by sixty seconds. But CNN gave Atto more time than that to crow to the world about how we would never catch him. Less than a week passed before we had an opportunity to put Atto’s prophecy to the test. A CIA informant offered to lead us to Atto in exchange for a position in the new, legitimate government he hoped would be restored after Task Force Ranger booted Aidid out of Somalia. Hours later, five H-60 Black Hawks lifted skyward, their massive rotors drumming the air like thunder. Four carried the assault element—Rangers and Delta operators, including six Delta snipers. One carried a combat search-and-rescue (CSAR) package—Delta operators and Air Force PJ’s, or parajumpers, medics who parachute in to tend wounded friendlies.
To that point in Mogadishu, the Rangers had been an untouchable force. With an average age of twenty-two or twenty-three years old, each had completed the Army’s physically and psychologically punishing Ranger School, where they trained in air assault, close quarters combat, demolitions, and marksmanship. They were well prepared, but young and untested in the field. Still, they were ready to mix it up, kick some warlord ass. I remembered the feeling from my first Huey flights over the jungles of Vietnam.
The Delta operators weren’t built quite the same way. With an average age of thirty-two, they were more circumspect. They had seen combat and knew its gritty horror. I had worked with some of them for as long as fifteen years. For them, an op wasn’t a chance to test themselves in a real firefight. It was more of a craft. They were professional soldiers. Swift. Efficient. Lethal. When they rode shotgun in the Black Hawks, they surveyed the city streets as cold-eyed analysts, tabulating targets, enemy firing positions, and exfiltration routes as they went.
Back in the JOC with Garrison and our action officers, I directed the assault, watching the op unfold via a helo-mounted camera. On wall-mounted video screens, we spotted the target: Atto’s two-vehicle motorcade.
I keyed my mike and gave the order: “Execute.”
As all eyes in the JOC focused on the screens, a Black Hawk swooped into the picture over the top of the two vehicles. With no audio feed, its sudden appearance was silent, but I knew its beating rotors sounded like hellfire to Atto and his men. In only seconds, the big helo squared off facing the Mercedes, flared and dropped to the street, sending up thick tornadoes of dust.
The car braked to an abrupt halt and in the same instant, I knew the Delta snipers snapped off warning shots. Two more Black Hawks roared in behind the motorcade. The car’s doors flew open. Two men spilled out of the Mercedes and darted for the nearest building. Another man exited the rear vehicle and spri
nted toward the adjacent structure. Both were office buildings, about three stories high.
On the JOC monitors, I saw a man from the Mercedes fall in the street. A sniper’s bullet had ripped into his right thigh, a potentially mortal wound. The man clutched his leg, rolling back and forth, but the camera was too far away to see his face.
I hope that’s not Atto, I thought. I want him alive.
The other men disappeared into the buildings, one in each, just as the three Black Hawks touched down in the street, disgorging an assault force of twenty men. Black-clad Delta operators and green-clad Rangers surrounded the vehicles and poured into the buildings, now hunting just two targets.
The assault force radio crackled: “Sir, we’ve got somebody. We’re not sure it’s Atto.”
The assault commander radioed back. “I’m in the other building. Take him up to the roof.”
Within moments I saw two Delta operators burst onto the roof of the left-most building, holding a docile captive. Then the assault commander, a Delta officer, emerged from a stairwell door atop the other building. He jogged to the edge of the roof, and on the other roof, the young Rangers hustled their captive over to meet him.
Two seconds passed, then: “We got him,” the commander radioed. “It’s Atto.”
A character named Osman Atto appears in the movie Black Hawk Down. There is a scene in which Atto, captured by Task Force Ranger, has a brief confrontation with Garrison, played by actor Sam Shepherd. That scene, with an erudite and condescending Atto puffing on a Cuban cigar while sneering at Garrison’s cheaper Miami brand, is pure Hollywood fiction. When that confrontation really happened, there were three people in the room—not two, as the film depicts—and Garrison was not one of them.
Instead there was only Osman Atto, Captain Mike Steele, and me.
Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent Page 2