I can’t explain why Yale sent that fax halfway around the world when he did, but I felt it was exactly the message God wanted me to hear.
While trying to stay off my feet, I also wrote letters to each of the Delta families who lost sons, husbands, and fathers: Shughart, Gordon, Fillmore, Rierson, and Martin. I prayed and asked God to help me put into words how much each man meant to me personally, and to their Delta brothers. I explained their bravery, their commitment and their sacrifice. I paged through my Bible and tried to include Scripture I felt might comfort the families. As I penned each letter, I pictured each man in life and my heart broke again and again. Tears came, blurring the words as I wrote them.
16
ON OCTOBER 14, 1993, Aidid released Mike Durant. We got word one day in advance, which gave us time to prepare a little ceremony. After a thorough medical checkup at the UN compound, Durant would be coming to the airfield to board a C-141 for home.
The following day, a Black Hawk airlifted Durant and his medical team to the field. By then, the Pentagon had authorized reinforcements—another Ranger battalion and another Delta squadron—bringing our force strength to around six hundred. Under a blue sky, all of us formed two lines flanking the path from the Black Hawk to the Starlifter. Garrison, Tom Matthews and I stood at the end of the line, near the door of the big jet. Somebody got hold of a fifth of Jack Daniels, Durant’s favorite, mixed it with water in a five-gallon jug, and poured a tiny shot of the weak brew for every person in Durant’s receiving line.
The medical team lifted Durant’s litter off the helo and carried him through our welcome committee. On cue, we all toasted him, downed our highballs, and broke into a chorus of “God Bless America.” Then Durant got on the Starlifter and headed home.
By the time Durant flew out of Mogadishu, the Pentagon had supplied us with all the things we asked for before we went in. Now that these assets had rolled in, I wondered how many men would still be alive had we received what we’d asked for to begin with.
And the more I contemplated that question, the more my resentment grew.
I wasn’t blame-shifting. I’m not suggesting our Bakara operation was perfect. Still, I recognize that we executed a completely successful mission. We were outnumbered by thousands, yet completed our mission and achieved an overwhelming victory. But even today I wonder if we could have achieved that at considerably less cost if the Clinton administration had listened to the commanders on the ground.
A couple of days after Durant left I was standing in the JOC when Garrison walked in from the back room. I could tell by his face he wasn’t pleased with what he had to tell me. But his delivery was matter-of-fact, as was his style.
“Just got off the phone with the CINC,” he said around his cigar. “We’ve been directed to start wrapping it up and redeploy.”
Translation: Bill Clinton had caved.
“How quickly do they want us to leave?” I said.
“He didn’t say, but he did tell us to cease operations. The only thing we’re supposed to do at this point is force protection.”
“You know this is going to hit everybody pretty hard. We haven’t completed the mission here.”
“Yeah, I know. I tried to explain to the CINC how we felt, but I think this is coming from above him.”
Garrison and I both knew the men of Task Force Ranger would not want to appear to tuck tail and run. They had been bloodied but victorious in a battle that would now go down in history as a defeat. We knew the men would want to see the mission through, and make sure their brothers had not died for nothing.
Later that afternoon, I called a meeting of the element leaders, and Garrison delivered the news. Around the JOC, the reaction was the same: Resigned silence. I think everyone anticipated it, but they still resented it. Most of us knew the Clinton administration didn’t have the stomach for anything other than an antiseptic war. Our view was just the opposite: If you’re going to commit the military to combat, go all the way. Make the full commitment, and be prepared to accept the cost in human lives.
If the men doing the dying were prepared to accept it, then the men in air-conditioned meetings ought to accept it, too.
17
WE ARRIVED HOME ON OCTOBER 24TH, 1993. Ten days later, Rob Marsh walked into my office, leaning on a cane. The Task Force Delta medical team had medevaced him to the UN compound and then to Germany, where he’d undergone extensive surgeries. The doctors did a miraculous job on Rob: through them, God gave him a second chance at life.
Within weeks of our return, Aidid would attend new U.S.-brokered peace negotiations, and the UN would release every man Task Force Ranger captured. In June 1995, Aidid would declare himself President of Somalia, but continue to fight for control with rival clans. On August 2, 1996, he would die of gunshot wounds sustained a week earlier in a fight with competing factions. Word was, Osman Atto was involved in his death.
On December 2, 1993, my guys in Bogota called me on my secure telephone at Bragg. “Sir, we wanted to report to you that Pablo Escobar was killed this morning.” It had been just under seventeen months after his escape from “prison.”
Excitement surged through me. I needed some good news. “Tell me what happened,” I said.
“You know the SIGINT equipment we provided to the Colombians? They were out running a patrol in Escobar’s mother’s neighborhood, when Hugo Martinez’s son tracked a signal to Escobar’s safe house. Hugo, Jr. drove by and saw Escobar standing by a window. Saw him!”
Our trainers back at Medellin had helped the Colombians launch a quick op. A Search Bloc strike team went in, busted down Escobar’s door, chased him out onto a rooftop and killed him: one shot in the butt, and one in each temple.
I called Garrison. “They got Pablo this morning. It’s been a long haul, but it was worth it.”
“That’s good news,” Garrison said. “Congratulations on the good work.”
“Well, thank you, but the Colombians did it,” I said. “We helped them a lot, but they did it.”
Afterward, there was a lot of talk about the headshots. As with Waco, shadowy Delta rumors surfaced again. Even today, people still want to know whether Delta snipers were in on the kill.
I can answer that: no.
The official report from the Colombians was that Escobar was caught in a cross-fire. But that’s a fairly miraculous story given the straight-on nature of the headshot wounds. I’d say it’s more likely the Colombians downed him with a shot in the ass, then walked up and put a coup de grace bullet in each side of his head. There you go, Pablo, payback for two decades of murder.
War Criminals
Washington, D.C. and the Balkans 1995–1999
1
THE FALLOUT FROM SOMALIA provoked Bill Clinton to retreat even further into his philosophy of bloodless war. Because he feared another Mogadishu, Clinton kept American troops from intervening in the Rwandan genocide that resulted in the massacre of as many as a million men, women, and children. America’s commander-in-chief also decided the use of infantry was too dangerous, and as a result, U.S. forces would rely almost exclusively on air power during our activities in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, and later in Kosovo.
Mogadishu produced fallout for me personally, even beyond the pain of losing so many good men. In June 1994, I joined the Joint Chiefs staff as director of the Special Operations Division under General John Shalikashvili, the JCS chairman. I hadn’t been on the Beltway for more than two weeks when an anonymous letter arrived in the hands of every member of the Senate Armed Service Committee. The writer attacked me as incompetent. I had fostered a tense and unlivable atmosphere at Delta, the letter said, and my poor leadership was the reason so many men died in Somalia. The letter triggered an Inspector General investigation into the command climate at Delta.
For me, the aftermath of Mogadishu was already like an emotional grave, and now it was as if someone was standing up top, shoveling in the dirt.
To make matters even worse, the admiral I
worked for on the joint staff hated me. Not just me, but Special Operations types in general: He thought we were aloof and insubordinate, and that we thought we were better than everybody else. That doubled my misery.
Meanwhile, Lynne and I moved into a town home in Alexandria, a bedroom community for the D.C./Northern Virginia military-government complex. April, Randy, and Aaron had grown up and left the nest. Just prior to our move up from Bragg, I read a book, Tender Warrior, by an author named Stu Weber. Living out its principles, one in particular, changed my life.
Weber wrote that if you are a Christian man, and there’s a young man without a father living in your neighborhood, it’s your responsibility to mentor him.
We hadn’t been in Alexandria long when I noticed two kids, a little boy and a little girl, playing a couple of doors down. I often saw their mom, a petite, short-haired woman, but I never saw a dad. One day when the mom was out in the yard with the kids, I went over and introduced myself as the new neighbor.
Ashley Steele was a 39-year-old single mom who operated a daycare in her home to support Grant, 9, and Mimi, 8.
Well, I thought, maybe this is my chance to mentor.
One day a couple of months after Lynne and I got settled in, I asked Ashley if she would allow me to take Grant fishing. She said yes, and suddenly, I had a new little buddy. Grant and I went on several fishing trips then when hunting season rolled around, we took off for the woods. He was a quiet, contemplative boy who still spoke of his dad fairly frequently even though Ashley told me he hadn’t seen him for years.
“My dad has a truck like that,” he’d say, pointing out the window. I could tell Grant missed him. I hoped I could be a comfort to him, a friend.
2
THE IG INVESTIGATION triggered by the anonymous letter lasted from August 1994 until February 1995. When the final IG report came out, I was completely exonerated. The investigators found not only that the letter writer’s views did not reflect the attitude of Delta, but also that the writer hadn’t even been in Mogadishu. He had his facts all wrong.
In September, I was nominated for brigadier general. Two months later, I moved from the Pentagon to CIA, where I became deputy chief of the special activities division. In December, the Dayton Accords brought about an uneasy peace between Muslims and Orthodox Serbs in war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and General Wesley Clark helped negotiate the settlement. Part of the agreement was that PIFWCs (People Indicted for War Crimes) would be turned over to a tribunal at The Hague, Holland, where they would stand trial. The warring factions themselves were supposed to turn in the PIFWCs (pronounced “piffwicks”). But a large group remained at large, operating in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and Macedonia.
Goran Jelisic, for example. During the war, the Serbian side systematically imprisoned, tortured and murdered Muslims, all under the euphemism “ethnic cleansing.” Jelisic, a slim, sharp-featured man with a strange little mouth, took particular pleasure in cutting Muslim prisoners with broken glass and beating them with clubs and truncheons. He didn’t care whether they were men or women, old or injured. And when he was finished torturing them, he forced them to kneel over a grate, then executed them with two shots to the back of the head. Jelisic once told detainees in a camp called Luka that before he could enjoy his morning coffee, he needed to execute twenty to thirty people. The little monster called himself the “Serb Adolf.”
One of my jobs at CIA was coordinating the collection and analysis of intel on people like Jelisic so the CIA and military units keeping peace in the Balkans could go after them.
A year had passed since Mogadishu nearly ripped away my faith in God. I was still healing slowly, day by day. With the anonymous letter, IG investigation, and the unpleasant admiral behind me, I felt as if I was beginning to contribute again, doing what I did best: hunting bad guys. Things seemed to be looking up. That is until Christmastime.
Lynne took a trip home to see friends in Fayetteville, North Carolina. When she returned she told me she wanted a divorce.
After she informed me of her plans to leave, I lay across my bed, and plunged back into despair.
I had had a great military career, but at what cost? Lynne’s leaving was my fault, I felt. I had failed as a husband. I’d been a part-time father. The years of separation, years of stress from the secrecy associated with my assignments—my going away and not being able to tell her where I was going or when I was coming back—for her all of that had finally come to a head.
As I stared up at the ceiling, I prayed what Isaiah prayed: Lord, just take me. I am a total failure.
3
LYNNE AND I KEPT OUR SEPARATION CIVIL. She moved to Fayetteville and I stayed in Alexandria. We didn’t play tug-of-war with the kids, and April, Randy, and Aaron were tender with both of us and tried not to take sides. It seemed that since Mogadishu, I’d claw my way up out of that emotional grave, getting to where I could just stick my head out, then something would happen to send me tumbling back to the bottom again.
Now, on the brink of what I considered to be the lowest point of personal failure, I prayed to God for comfort. And the comforter He sent was only four feet tall.
I continued to take Grant hunting and fishing, but now Ashley’s daughter, Mimi, took a shine to me. She began going with me to do simple things like grocery shopping. She was just charming and would ride along, chattering away about ten-year-old things. After a few weeks, when we’d run an errand, she’d reach up and put her little hand in my big one, and all the heavy baggage in my life was stripped away. I wasn’t the failed husband, the part-time father, the suspect commander, the tough-guy manhunter. I was just Jerry—a guy who, it seemed, was at least still decent enough that a little girl would consider me her friend.
On a Sunday night in February 1996, I went to church to be baptized. Ashley, Grant, and Mimi were there. Standing in the baptismal pool, I looked out at the three of them sitting together on a pew and realized that I loved them all. Still, I kept my distance from Ashley, not wanting to create the appearance that Lynne and I had separated because of her. But as weeks passed, I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I called my mother.
“I know divorce is wrong,” I told her over the phone. “But I think I have feelings for Ashley.”
“Look, your wife has left you,” my mother said. “It’s not something you wanted and she’s not coming back. I think you have to follow your heart.” As always, she told me she’d be praying for me.
In early spring, I decided to ask Ashley out to dinner. I was as nervous as a school boy. I was forty-nine years old and hadn’t asked a girl for a first date since I was seventeen.
So I was amazed when she said yes.
4
IN APRIL 1997, I drove down to Fayetteville to meet my attorney, Debra Radtke, who accompanied me to family court. The judge called me to the stand, reviewed the dates I had been married, and said, “Is it your desire that this marriage be terminated by divorce?”
My desire had never been divorce. But by now I knew for sure that Lynne wasn’t coming back. “Yes,” I said quietly.
I signed a set of papers and walked back to a table with Debra.
“That’s it?” I said.
“That’s it.”
“You mean after all these years, that’s all it takes?”
“Yes,” she said.
I drove back to Alexandria wrestling with my emotions. It was hard for me to believe that so many years of your life could end with just five minutes in court.
5
WHEN I LEFT CIA IN JUNE 1997 FOR A JOB with the Army staff, I thought I had left Goran Jelisic behind. But two months after moving into my office at the Pentagon, Lieutenant General Tom Burnett, the Army operations director, called me into his office.
I had been promoted to brigadier general by then, but I wasn’t in uniform. I had just come out of the gym and was still sweating from my workout when I showed up in his office.
“Today
is Monday,” Burnett said. “By Friday, you are to be in the Balkans to head up a new task force assigned to chase war criminals.”
I had done this before—Noriega, Escobar, and others. But my mind flashed instantly to Mohamed Aidid. Would this be another Mogadishu? Given the way Bill Clinton cut and run from Somalia, I was not confident he’d have the stomach to actually go after these people if we located them.
“Yes, sir,” I said, and got the rest of the brief.
Not long later, I boarded a plane for SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) in Mons, Belgium, for a meeting with General Wesley Clark. I had served with Clark in the Pentagon when he was on the joint staff, and I also worked with him after he relieved George Joulwan at SouthCom. I saw him as a deep thinker who had an idea a minute, and thought through most of them out loud. He was aggressive, and also politically astute. Now Clark was serving as NATO commander. As a broker of the Dayton Accords, he had the Balkan war criminals in his sights and wasn’t about to let them walk free.
The story on the Balkans operation was that Clark had originally appointed a retired Marine Corps general to head up the PIFWC task force there. But with a multinational military coalition, plus CIA, that marine decided after several weeks of treading water, his status as a civilian was hurting the operation. He just wasn’t perceived as having the firepower to get things done. So Clark asked for a general officer and when my name came up, he decided I was the right man for the job.
“It is essential to the implementation of the Dayton Accords that we bring these war criminals to justice,” he told me after we’d settled into his office at SHAPE. “We have five nations who have agreed to work together on it—the U.S., the UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Your job is to provide leadership to this task force. You work for me. You’ll coordinate your activities with Rick Shinseki.”
Jerry Boykin & Lynn Vincent Page 27