SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden (24 page)

Walter didn’t get the reference to
Sesame Street.
JSOC’s official handle for Osama was “Crankshaft.”

“Our technical people got a voiceprint,” Walter added quietly. “The recordings were a little sketchy, but the voiceprints are telling us at about sixty or seventy percent that this is probably our guy.”

“Technical” meant listening devices or communications intercepts. A voiceprint was a pretty good hook to hang an identification on.

“National Reconnaissance Office has parked a satellite over the place. They got a measurement on his shadow,” McRaven added. “He’s over six feet tall.”

For the first time in the meeting, Scott Kerr felt his pulse quicken. Putting a satellite over a target was not something that just happened. Reconnaissance satellites were national assets. They didn’t just get pointed over places of routine interest. This was beginning to look like the real deal.

McRaven was as good at reading expressions as he was at controlling his own.

“I’ve got another meeting with the president on March fourteenth. I am looking at three courses of action. One is a JDAM.” A JDAM was a smart bomb with a range of thirty or forty miles. They were relatively low tech, and had a better ability to penetrate hard targets than a cruise missile. Unlike cruise missiles, a JDAM couldn’t get shot down, and very seldom went off course. JDAMs were usually dispensed by Stealth bombers, and whatever they hit usually stayed dead. Really dead. There was the strong possibility that if a couple of JDAMs were used to take out Osama there wouldn’t be much left, of him, his house, or the neighborhood.

McRaven continued, “The second option is a combined operation with the host nation.”

The words “host nation” were another tripwire.

“Host” implied that this six-foot person was a “guest” somewhere. If Kerr were being tasked to conduct an operation in Iraq or Afghanistan, no one would have implied that a host-and-guest dynamic might be involved. As a rule, JSOC confined joint operations to trusted NATO allies. What SEAL Team Six did might be fairly well guessed at, but how they went around getting it done was a zealously guarded secret.

Kerr’s next question would narrow the possible locations for him considerably. “Is this a permissive or a nonpermissive environment?”

“Nonpermissive,” Walter said.

Nonpermissive environments were ones in which the governments were hostile to the United States. A special operations team entering a non-permissive environment could count on being shot at. At this point, Kerr’s possibilities for a host nation included Syria, Lebanon, and Iran—with Libya and Somalia as long shots. Semipermissive environments would have included Yemen and a couple of other places without zip codes.

At this point Scott Kerr was thinking Iran, but he kept his mind open. He didn’t expect to be told exactly where they thought Osama was. It was not at all unusual for SEALs to train for a mission, even extensively train, and not be told until the last minute where the target would be. Scott looked again at the thick folder in front of Admiral McRaven.

“How am I going to insert?” Kerr was not asking for advice. This was another question that would help him to both narrow down the target list and start to train his guys.

“TF-160,” McRaven said. “Range from doorknob to doorknob will be about two hundred miles.”

That meant helicopters. A hundred miles into the target and a hundred miles to get back out. Kerr’s operators would be limited in their time on target, and they would be in hostile territory. Helicopters need a lot of fuel to fly two hundred miles, plus whatever loitering time it took to wait for a SEAL Team to do its thing. A two-hundred-mile trip would involve refueling, a tricky process in a combat zone.

“Plan on inserting with Ghost Hawks,” McRaven said.

That clinched it for Kerr.

If he had any doubts whether this might be an elaborate sort of exercise, they vanished in this instant. The Ghost Hawk helicopters were among the most highly classified aircraft possessed by the U.S. military. SEAL Six used them routinely and they were only used by Six and Delta. They were Jedi rides, so secret they were only flown at night, and kept in locked, guarded hangars during the day. The Ghost Hawks were so low noise that the SEALs joked that they flew in “whisper mode.” The newest version of the Stealth helos, the GEN 3s, were even quieter than the previous editions called Stealth Hawks. The Ghost Hawks were invisible to radar and emitted zero electromagnetic radiation. They had shielded exhausts so they put off not much more heat than a Harley motorcyle. They were only used on the most important missions.

“Who’s standing down now?” McRaven asked.

“The Red Men,” Kerr answered. During “stand down,” a squadron went for a month performing weapons and equipment refurbishment and sent operators to various schools to keep their skills sharp.

“All right,” McRaven said. “Start bringing them back from their trips. I’m looking at a ninety-day planning and ranging window.” McRaven pushed one of his folders across the table, and Walter added one of his to McRaven’s.

“Read yourself into the target. Who’s the Red squadron leader?”

“Frank Leslie.”

“Okay, send him up, with his master chief, and we’ll give them some offices…” McRaven broke off. “Walter will give them some offices, up in Langley.

“I am going to want a tentative full-mission profile. Be ready to brief it back to me in forty-eight hours. The object of the mission is close hold. Nobody knows about who you’re going after or where it might be. No speculation.”

“Check.”

“You can have your Seabees build a mockup to these specifications and then we’ll run a cycle of rehearsals at Tall Pines.”

Tall Pines was a sprawling, secret Army training facility tucked in Camp Pickett, which was itself put off into the far corner of a national forest in an eastern state. Lots of spooky things happened in Pickett, and the SEAL Teams have trained there for years. Far from the prying eyes of the public, surrounded by tens of thousands of acres of woodland, dozens of target mockups dot Tall Pines’ rolling hills. Some nights, strange, silent lights are seen over the forest and UFO calls are made to the sheriff. Camp Pickett is SEAL Six’s playground.

“What’s the time frame on this?” Scott asked.

“If you mean when will this go down, that’s up to the president,” McRaven said. “Get your guys up to Langley, and start in on a detailed plan.”

It was a pretty tall order to prepare the full battle plan in two days, but Scott knew his guys could do it. Their entire career had been full of planning, intense, complicated work often done at the last minute because when orders come down from on high, the suits usually want it done ten minutes ago. The full mission plan would take weeks to craft and would be informed by more intelligence as it came to light.

Scott lifted the files and stood. “Easy day,” he said.

He shook McRaven’s hand and thanked him, nodded to Walter and walked back out into the low-ceilinged corridor. Walking back toward the stairwell was a bit like passing down the passageways belowdecks on a ship. There were no windows.

At the stairwell Scott ran into Colonel Jim Overall, a friend, and his opposite number from TF-160, the “Night Stalker” helicopter squadron. Jim Overall commanded the Ghost Hawk squadron as well as the rest of TF-160. They’d worked together on hundreds of operations, and hosted each other at barbecues and the family birthdays. Now they passed each other with only a nod.

Jim Overall looked down and saw the files in Scott’s hand, and heard Admiral McRaven’s deep bass voice welcoming him from the door of the conference room. Kerr knew that it was Jim Overall’s turn next—they were going to brief the pilots separately.

Scott and Jim exchanged a look that meant
Good luck and I’ll talk to you later
. Nonverbal communication skills are vital in special operations.

Scott started up the stairs as the vault door closed behind him. The red
BRIEFING IN PROGRESS
light again switched on. Scott knew that Jim Overall would be getting pretty much the same brief, but with a little more geographic information. Jim would have to plan flight operations, and one of the first things a pilot needs to know is where he is going. Keeping the information in separate pipelines was called compartmentalization.

The wires of this operation would be kept apart until the last minute.

At the top of the stairs Scott Kerr pushed open the door and emerged into daylight. The sunshine made him blink his eyes.
Jesus Christ,
Kerr thought,
this might really happen
.

*   *   *

First in the manner of planning are the five Ws: Who, What, Where, When and Why. In an intelligence package called a “target folder,” the SEALs are told who and where. Based on those parameters, they plan how and when. But the most important part of any SEAL tasking order is a paragraph called “Commander’s Intent.” Most of the time, it includes the why, the reason behind the operation, but not always. The why of an operation is sometimes too obvious to mention, and occasionally the real reason why is too highly classified to put out on the operator level. The reason why is sometimes only known by one person.

A mission being undertaken for purposes of deception isn’t always told to the men sent forward to perform the operation. The Rosetta Stone of the operational plan comes under the heading “Commander’s Intent,” a clear sentence that sets forward exactly what it is that higher authority wants accomplished.

JSOC is a black program. Deception is involved in every JSOC mission and the SEALs know that wheels turn within wheels, and the civilian portion of the chain of command is a hall of mirrors designed to deflect the stigma of failure, and maximize the rewards of success.

Functioning as a “national asset,” JSOC and SEAL Six have a direct chain of command. Scott Kerr, commander of SEAL Team Six, answers only to one person, Admiral Bill McRaven, the commander of JSOC. And Bill McRaven answers to only two people: the secretary of defense and the president of the United States.

So what was it that SEAL Team Six was being ordered to do? What exactly did the commander in chief want to happen when the SEALs made it to their objective? Admiral McRaven and Captain Scott Kerr both understood that this assignment had not only military requirements but political ramifications as well.

When a man decides to accept a position above the rank of commander in the SEAL Teams, he makes a compromise. Above the rank the Navy calls “0-5,” SEAL officers lead Teams and Groups and it becomes rare for officers above the rank of commander to “loot and shoot” with the SEALs under their control. It happens sometimes that a commander will suit up and go out, but not often. By the time a SEAL makes the rank of commander (after fifteen years of service) he is still physically capable of undertaking missions—almost all of the operators at SEAL Team Six are in their mid-thirties or older—but the days of piloting mini-subs, kicking in doors, and rescuing hostages are usually over. Commanders are eased into desk jobs, off the frontlines, and into staff and planning work. They have distinguished themselves leading SEALs in combat—that is how they became commanders—but above this rank, they assume more of a managerial role. In any organization, the skills of a manager are increasingly those of a politician.

SEAL Team admirals, if they are not themselves politicians, are certainly able to translate between politicians and the men who wear the trident. When the mission came down from the White House to interdict a high-value target who was a member of Al Qaeda, Scott Kerr knew, as Bill McRaven did, that not only would the lives of their men be placed in jeopardy, their own lives and careers might possibly hang on the precise legal definition of a term used in their orders.

If they are ordered to “interdict” a target, SEALs may apply the amount of violence necessary to destroy it, as stipulated in the operation’s written “Rules of Engagement.” If SEALs are assigned to “neutralize” an individual, they are wise to ask, and receive, precise clarification as to what that means. Do they unplug his phone or kill him? If they are told to “take someone out,” do they capture that person or apply lethal force?

At the top of the military food chain, admirals and generals consult attorneys. Orders to tactical subordinates are passed through the hands of JAG lawyers who check to make sure that the orders do not contravene the rules of war, the rules of engagement, the Geneva Convention, and a host of other directives including, incredibly, environmental impact. Increasingly, politicians are on hand to second- and third-guess the decisions made by SEALs under fire.

Scott Kerr flew back to the Death Star and his orders slid hot out of a laser printer. They stated that he was to plan to “interdict a high-value individual in a nonpermissive environment” and that he was to detach two officers for “TAD, temporary additional duty” at CIA headquarters to begin the planning cycle. As the operation began to come together, Scott Kerr and the officers of Red Squadron had several cautionary examples to guide them.

On March 31, 2004, three military contractors guarding a food convoy were ambushed in Fallujah, Iraq. One of them was a former Navy SEAL. After the contractors were shot dead, their bodies were dragged from their vehicle, stripped naked, dismembered, and set on fire. Fourteen months later, a SEAL Team captured the man responsible, Ahmed Hashim Abed.

After he was taken into custody, Abed claimed that he had been punched during his capture by one of the SEALs.
Punched
. Major General Charles Cleveland, the commander of the Army’s Special Operations Command Central, a politician if ever there was one, insisted that charges of abuse and assault be brought against all the SEALs who captured Ahmed Hashim Abed. The Obama administration concurred, and allowed the matter to proceed to trial.

The SEALs who captured Ahmed Abed were court-martialed in San Diego. They were acquitted and returned to duty. But the White House had no comment and issued no apologies. It was a gratuitous slap in the face that the SEAL community would not forget.