10.
CIA Safe House—Hunting for Aidid
Less than half a year after Casanova and I finished sniper school, we received a mission: Capture warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid and his lieutenants. Educated in Moscow and Rome, Aidid served in the Italian colonial police force before entering the military and becoming a general of the Somalian Army. Aidid’s clan (Habar Gidir), Ali Mahdi Muhammad’s clan (Abgaal), and other clans overthrew Somalia’s dictator. Then the two clans fought each other for control of Somalia. Twenty thousand Somalis were killed or injured, and agricultural production came to a halt. Although the international community sent food, particularly the UN under Operation Restore Hope, Aidid’s militia stole much of it—extorting or killing people who wouldn’t cooperate—and traded the food with other countries for weapons. Starvation deaths skyrocketed to hundreds of thousands of people, and the suffering rose higher still. Although other Somali leaders tried to reach a peace agreement, Aidid would have none of it.
JUNE 5, 1993
A Pakistani force, part of the UN humanitarian team, went to investigate an arms depot at a radio station. There Aidid’s people gathered outside in protest. The Pakistani troops went in and completed their inspection. When they came out of the building, the protesters attacked, killing twenty-four Pakistani soldiers. Aidid’s people, including women and children, celebrated by dismembering, disemboweling, and skinning the Pakistanis.
Admiral Jonathan Howe, Special Representative for Somalia to the United Nations, was horrified. He put a $25,000 warrant out on Aidid for information leading to his arrest. Howe also pushed hard for JSOC assistance.
AUGUST 8, 1993
Aidid’s people used a command-detonated mine to kill four American military policemen. Enough was enough. President Bill Clinton gave JSOC the green light. The task force would include four of us from SEAL Team Six, Delta Force, Rangers, Task Force 160, and others. Task Force 160, nicknamed the “Night Stalkers,” provided the helicopter support that usually operated at night, flying fast and low (to avoid radar detection). We would conduct Operation Gothic Serpent in three phases: First, deploy to Mogadishu and set up a base; Second, go after Aidid; and Third, if we didn’t succeed in apprehending Aidid, go after his lieutenants.
* * *
At the Team compound in Dam Neck, Virginia, Little Big Man, Sourpuss, Casanova, and I joined in getting ready to go to Somalia: training, prepping our gear, growing beards, and letting our hair grow out. Part of prepping our gear meant going to the encryption room and coding our radios for secure voice. It was time-consuming because we had to enter a lot of codes, and they had to be the same for every handheld radio. We decided what the common frequency would be. As a sniper, I had to communicate with Casanova, my partner, and the two of us had to communicate with the other sniper pair, Little Big Man and Sourpuss. Then we all had to be able to communicate with our forward operating base. I made sure my E&E kit was complete and I had bribe/survival cash. Then I test-fired my weapons one last time. Not knowing exactly what we’d be tasked to do, we prepared for everything.
After completing our preparations, we flew down to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where the Army Special Operations Command and others sit on more than 150,000 acres of hills and scattered evergreens near Fayetteville. There we received more specific information about our mission.
We brought stacked cases of food. “You won’t be needing that,” an army officer told us. “We’ll be bringing plenty of food.”
So we left the food at the Delta compound.
Instructors from the Defense Language Institute taught us important phrases in Somali: stop, get down, walk backward toward my voice, hurry, etc.
After a few days, we were told the op might be called off, so we flew back to Dam Neck.
Then a Delta officer phoned us. “The op is on, but you won’t need long hair and beards.”
So we got shaves and haircuts and flew back to Fort Bragg.
AUGUST 27, 1993
We boarded one of six C-5A Galaxy cargo planes carrying Task Force Ranger. After eighteen hours in the air, we landed at Mogadishu Airfield within the UN compound south of Mogadishu. Egyptian peacekeepers guarded the outer perimeter. Inside the compound were peacekeeping forces from Italy, New Zealand, Romania, and Russia. West of the landing strip stood an old aircraft hangar where we would stay. Beyond the hangar stood a two-story building with a lopsided roof—the Joint Operations Center (JOC). Antennas poked out of the roof like spines on a porcupine.
An army officer escorted Sourpuss, Little Big Man, Casanova, and me behind the JOC to General Garrison’s personal trailer. Inside, Garrison had no visible family photos or knickknacks; at a moment’s notice he could leave without a trace. His aide had just awakened him for our arrival. Garrison took one look at the four of us and said, “Hey, how come you all got your hair cut? I wanted it long, so you could go out in town and operate.”
“We were told that you wanted us to cut our hair, sir.” We suspected that Delta had tried to disqualify us from the op. Go Army, beat Navy.
General Garrison gave the op to us anyway. “The four of you are going to be the hinge pin of the operation,” he said, then filled us in.
After meeting with Garrison, we hooked up with Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), run by a CIA communications officer. Their team would gather information by intercepting signals between people (communications intelligence) and electronic signals emitted from enemy technology such as radios, radars, surface-to-air missile systems, aircraft, ships, etc. (electronic intelligence). SIGINT deciphered encrypted information in addition to conducting traffic analysis: studying who was signaling whom and how much. They could intercept cell phones and radio communications, as well as use directional microphones to pick up conversations from great distances. Most of our SIGINT team spoke two or three languages, and they had aircraft dedicated to their mission.
Next, we went up to the CIA trailer on top of the hill and met the CIA operations officer, a black Vietnam veteran code-named Condor. Senior to him was the deputy chief of station, an Italian American code-named Leopard. They answered to the thickly built, thick-mustached CIA chief of station, Garrett Jones, code-named Crescent. In the Teams, we often refer to the CIA as “Christians in Action,” and the CIA sometimes uses the same nickname when referring to themselves. In Somalia, the Christians in Action had their work cut out for them—it’s hard to steal a government’s secrets where there is no government.
Before our arrival, Washington hadn’t allowed the CIA to operate in town, considering it too dangerous. With us on the scene, the spooks could penetrate into downtown Mogadishu. The CIA gave us an excellent briefing about Mogadishu, including some culture and history. They also code-named us in order of rank: Sierra One, Sourpuss; Sierra Two, Little Big Man; Sierra Three, me; and Sierra Four, Casanova. Our safe house would be called Pasha, the title of a high-ranking person in the Ottoman Empire. Ahmed would serve as our interpreter. Behind his round-framed glasses, his eyes seldom looked directly at me when he talked—Ahmed always seemed nervous. Our main Somali operative was Mohammed. Constantly risking his life, he was always serious.
After meeting with the CIA up on the hill, we returned to the hangar and requisitioned four AT-4s, tear gas (CS) grenades, flashbangs, and fragmentation grenades. Also, we requested an SST-181 beacon so aircraft flying overhead could get a fix on our area if they needed to. We had to prepare to defend the safe house in case the enemy attacked—and prepare our escape in case they overran us.
That night, we stayed in the hangar with the rest of the American military, about 160 men in all. Each soldier had a 4' × 8' place to call his own. On my cot, four wooden poles stood up, one in each corner, to drape a net on to keep the mosquitoes out. Hawks swooped down and caught rats the size of small dogs, flying them back up to the rafters for dinner. Sections of the tin walls had space between them, allowing Mother Nature in. The hangar doors were stuck open. Beyond the doors, helicopters sat quietly on the tarmac, filling the air with the smell of fuel. The elevation inland rose, and I could see lights and fires in Mogadishu. Behind us an American flag hung from the rafters. I could taste the salt in the air from the ocean behind our hangar. Despite the luxurious accommodations, our four-man team wouldn’t be staying long. Aidid sent three mortar rounds near the hangar to wish us good night. Someone wisely turned out the hangar lights.
AUGUST 28, 1993
Saturday, we encrypted our PRC-112 handheld survival radios before gearing up. Outside, the tarmac simmered under our feet as we walked to our helicopter. I put on my Oakley sunglasses. The best sunglasses tone down the sun’s glare and protect my eyes from debris, helping my sense of peace. They also make eye contact impossible. Sunglasses can disguise identity, be intimidating to others, project detachment, and hide emotions. Like a good friend, a good pair of sunglasses is hard to forget.
Some Delta boys were on board the chopper ready to take off on a training flight.
The Task Force 160 helicopter pilots, among the best in the world, told Delta, “Hey, sorry, we got a real-world op. You know, you need to let these guys on.”
Delta unassed the helicopter. They were not happy. “Heaven forbid; we wouldn’t want to stand in the way of a real-world op.”
We boarded the chopper. “Tell you about it when we get back.” The four of us, two sitting in the doorway on each side with our legs dangling out, buckled our gunner’s belts, and the helicopter lifted off. The Delta operators became smaller and smaller as we gained altitude.
The chopper flew us inland so we could look for routes and alternate routes to drive to and from our safe house. Sunshine and war had blasted much of the color out of Mogadishu. The only structures held sacred by both sides in the civil war had been the Islamic mosques—among the few buildings standing unmolested. Many of the other major buildings had been destroyed. People lived in mud huts with tin roofs in a maze of dirt roads. Hills of broken concrete, twisted metal, and trash rose from the landscape, with charred car frames scattered about. Militiamen wielding AK-47s rode in the back of a speeding pickup truck. Fires steadily burned from piles of rubbish, metal drums, and tires. It looked like flames from hell.
Turning back toward the ocean, we scouted out possible landing zones near our safe house—just in case we had to call in a helo to get out in a hurry. During our flyover, we also checked the seashore for possible locations where we could be extracted by boat. Light brown and white sand bordered the emerald sea. It would’ve been the perfect setting for a vacation resort.
After coming back down to earth from our reconnaissance, we drove a Humvee from the compound through a secret hole in the back fence and up the hill to a trailer where the CIA gave us a human intelligence (HUMINT) brief. Technological gizmos and doodads are useful in the spy game, but they mean little without brave human beings to infiltrate the enemy’s territory and ask the right questions—human beings who can see and hear what technology can’t, who can extract meaning from the surrounding context.
Using a diagram of Pasha, Little Big Man made plans for getting to the safe house and setting up. He delegated the patrol order to me and the course of action for battle stations to Casanova. Little Big Man also worked out the communications drills. Sourpuss loved the training aspect of SEAL Team Six, swimming and running, but when it came to actually operating, he fell behind us in talent and desire. Although he should’ve played a more central role in leading and planning, he limited his role to setting up who would stand watch on Pasha’s roof at what times. The four of us also began constructing a large mosaic map of the city.
Before we headed out, Crescent gave a brief. Even though my Teammates and I had just met the CIA, SIGINT, and our interpreter, we would be working with them in a district in northern Mogadishu called Lido, close to the heart of where the enemy gunslingers lived. At Pasha, we would add more strangers to our team: guards, a chef, and assets—locals providing us with intelligence. “If you aren’t comfortable with anyone on your team, they’re gone,” Crescent said. “This is your show. If your cover is compromised, General Garrison will get you out of there within fifteen minutes. Good luck.”
AUGUST 29, 1993
Under the black cloak of Sunday morning, we flew on a Black Hawk helicopter 3 miles northwest across town to the Mogadiscio Stadium—Somalia’s national stadium for soccer and other events, seating thirty-five thousand people. The trip only took five minutes. Because it housed the Pakistani UN troops’ compound, we called the bullet-riddled stadium the Pakistani Stadium. From there, we loaded onto three indigenous trucks. Only needing two trucks, we used a third as a decoy and also in the event that one broke down. Looking at the vehicles, it seemed a miracle they even ran. The Somalis used things until they were no longer mechanically viable. Then they used them some more. Someone did a pretty good job of keeping those pieces of crap running.
We drove out of the stadium and into the city. Mogadishu smelled like urine and human excrement mixed with that tangible smell of starvation, disease, and hopelessness. The odor hung in the air like a dark cloud. It made my heart feel heavy. The Somalis dumped raw sewage in the streets. It didn’t help that they used trash and animal dung to fuel the fires that constantly burned in rusted metal barrels. Elementary-school-age boys carried AK-47 rifles. We’d heard that cholera ran rampant because of a nasty water supply. Mogadishu seemed like the end of the world in I Am Legend—our mission was to stop the mobs of evil Darkseekers and save the good Somali humans. No problem, we’re SEALs. This is what we do.
After driving half a mile, we arrived at Pasha. Somali guards armed with AK-47s opened the iron gates for us. Earlier, we had sent one of our assets to give them a radio in preparation for our arrival. Altogether we had four guards protecting Pasha at one time. Four others would rotate with them in shifts. All of them looked alert. Their skinny arms weren’t much thicker than the width of three fingers, making the AK-47s appear huge in comparison. They wore T-shirts and macawis, a colorful kiltlike garment. We sped inside, and the guards closed the gate behind us.
Pasha stood two stories tall and was surrounded by an enormous concrete wall, the house of a wealthy doctor who left with his family when Somalia became too volatile for them. Somalia’s widespread poverty fueled robbery, so when the concrete was originally poured for the wall around the property, the builders stuck bottles in the holes of the blocks while the concrete was still wet. When the concrete dried, the builders broke the bottle tops off. Anyone trying to climb over the wall would have to climb over broken glass. Although effective, it looked butt-ugly. One evening, a shot was fired two houses down. Later, we found out that it came from a homeowner warding off a robber. The robbers liked to frequent our area, where the more affluent lived.
Inside, the running water was fed to the faucets by gravity, rather than pressure. Opening a valve allowed the water to come down from a large holding tank on the roof—the weakest shower I’d ever taken. We couldn’t drink it, unless we ran the water through our Katadyn pump for filtering out dangerous microbes. Sometimes we boiled the water. For the most part, we brought in cases of bottled water. By Somali standards, we were well-off.
I’m sure that when the doctor left, he took all the nice furniture. We had a basic table to sit around at mealtime. I had a cotlike bed made out of 2 × 4s and a thin mattress. Compared to living in a shack and sleeping in the dirt like most people in the city did, we lived like kings.
As we quickly unpacked our gear, one of the skinny guards, probably no more than 110 pounds, bent over to pick up one of my bags that weighed at least as much as he did. I tried to take it, but he insisted I let him carry it. He put my bag on his shoulder and hiked upstairs.
Our Somali chef arrived on the same day as we did. He cooked halal food, permissible by Islamic law—no pork, no alcohol, etc. Somali food is a mix of cuisines—Somalian, Ethiopian, Yemeni, Persian, Turkish, Indian, and Italian—influenced by Somalia’s long trade history. For breakfast, we ate pancakes, thin and breadlike, called canjeero. Some days we ate Italian-style porridge (boorash) with butter and sugar.
At lunch, the chef made dishes from brown long-grain basmati rice. He spiced up the aroma and taste with cloves, cinnamon, cumin, and sage. We also ate pasta (baasto) served with stew and banana instead of pasta sauce.
The chef cooked azuki beans on low heat for more than half the day, then served them with butter and sugar, a dish called cambuulo, for dinner. He made amazing goat meatballs—amazing everything. Even the camel tasted excellent.
My favorite drink was red (rooibos) tea, which is naturally sweet and nutty. We never ate our MREs at Pasha. Had we known the food would be so good, we could’ve left the heavy, space-consuming packages of MREs at the army compound.
Even though the guards were obviously undernourished, they wouldn’t try to take our leftover food. We had to offer them food and coax them to take it. Except for the items containing pork, which they wouldn’t eat because they were Muslim, we gave them our MREs; they would only eat a small amount themselves and take the rest home for their families. Also, we gave them our empty water bottles, which they used as water storage containers. Often they’d shake our hands and touch their heart as a sign of appreciation and respect. Our interpreter told us that the guards were happy the Americans had arrived. They appreciated that we’d left our families and were risking our lives to help them. Maybe the media wanted to represent America as bullies, but they missed the rest of the story. I think most of the Somalis wanted us to help them end the civil war.
The SEALs’ cost of the chef’s meals came out of the money SEAL Team Six had given us for escape and evasion. I rolled mine up in hundred-dollar bills stuffed in the butt of my CAR-15. If I ever had to E&E on my own, I planned to find a Somali fisherman and hire him to take me down the coast to Mombasa, Kenya, where the United States had people I could reach out to and be well taken care of.
Condor briefed us on the actions of the assets, who would visit Pasha every day. For example, if an asset was supposed to come to Pasha from the southeast, but he came from the southwest, we knew he’d been made or was under duress, so we would shoot the person following him. Our asset might do something simple like pause for a second at a corner—then the person behind him would eat a bullet. If he paused twice, both people behind him would eat a bullet. Our procedures were covert enough that an enemy wouldn’t know a signal was being given, and although we kept the procedures simple enough for our assets to remember, we spent hours reviewing the procedures with them. A SEAL on the roof always covered each asset’s entrance and exit to keep him safe—and to keep impostors out. Usually, when an asset arrived in the dark, he wore an infrared chemlight or a firefly (an infrared strobe light).
The most common motivator for the assets was money—especially in such a poverty-stricken area. Some people had more noble reasons for helping us, but the most common reason was money. We didn’t even have to pay them very much.
On the same day, four SIGINT guys arrived separately from us, using a different infiltration method and route, then set up shop. Their room looked like the NASA control room for launching a rocket into outer space: monitors, control knobs, switches. They also set up their antennas and other gear on the roof. We looked like CNN.
Little Big Man gathered everyone together and briefed us on the E&E plan. As always, he carried his Randall knife in a sheath on his belt. “Little man, big knife.” I rebriefed the battle plan. Casanova split us up into patrol pairs: I’d be with him, and Little Big Man would partner with Sourpuss.
When our mosaic map of the city was complete, it covered the entire wall of the biggest room in the house. If an asset told us about a threat, we would stick a pin in the location and plan grid coordinates in case we needed to call in an attack on it.
In a separate brief, an asset came in and gave us possible locations of Mohamed Farrah Aidid, the Somali warlord. We stuck more pins in the map: Olympic Hotel, an officer’s barracks, etc. Then we sent the eight-digit coordinates to Crescent, back at the CIA trailer up on the hill.
That same day, twenty mortar rounds hit the airfield, tactical operations center, and CIA headquarters. A round hit so close to the CIA trailer that it blew out the windows. Aidid’s men had figured out that assets had been going to the trailer. The mortar round had just missed us by a day.
We doubled our watch at Pasha and explained the “grab-and-go” to everyone: grabbing the SIGINT encryption devices, loading them in a rucksack, destroying the other SIGINT gear with a thermite grenade, meeting up at a rendezvous point, then moving out to the extraction area.
That first night, Casanova and I kept watch from the roof. A horrible smell like the remains of a dead carcass filled the air. “What the hell is that?”
AUGUST 30, 1993
On Monday, I looked around the neighborhood for the source of the stench, but it had disappeared. Nothing. While I fixed tea downstairs, an asset arrived with some information. I brought him some tea.
He politely refused.
“No, it’s OK,” I said.
He only took half a cup, as though I had given him something of great value. These Somalis conducted themselves so as never to take away too much.
SIGINT told us they’d picked up a conversation between a fire controller and his firing positions. The mortarmen would fire from concealed positions while the fire controller watched where the rounds exploded in relation to the target. If the mortar round hit the target, the fire controller could assess how much damage had been done. The fire controller advised, “Don’t chew your khat until the adjustments and battle damage assessments are made.” Khat, a flowering plant native to Somalia, contains a stimulant in the leaves that causes excitement, loss of appetite, and euphoria. A user would stick a wad of leaves in his mouth and chew on it like chewing tobacco. Most of Aidid’s mortarmen were enticed to do their job for khat. They became dependent on Aidid’s people to continue feeding their addiction, similar to how a pimp strings out his prostitutes on drugs to control them. Because the drug suppressed appetite, Aidid didn’t need to feed them much. They were obviously not well disciplined. Although nothing happened this time, later SIGINT would vector in military strikes and succeed in destroying some of the mortar positions.
That evening, the smell came back. “What the hell is that?” I came down off the roof and covertly went next door. On the front porch, I saw a teenaged boy sleeping on a futon. At a distance of around 10 yards, it was obvious I’d found the source of the stench. Later, I found out the fourteen-year-old Somali boy had stepped on a land mine in his school playground. His right foot was blown completely off. Part of his left foot was missing. Gangrene had set in. Aidid’s people had planted explosives in the schoolyard to kill or maim children, preventing them from growing up to be effective fighters—turning them into liabilities. The infection in the boy’s leg stank so badly that his family couldn’t sleep at night with him in the house. So they made him sleep on the porch. During the day, they brought him back inside. I asked the CIA for permission to help the crippled boy next door. They denied my request, not wanting to compromise the safe house.
We noticed a lot of movement between 2200 and 0400 from the street in front of Pasha and surrounding buildings. Based on a tip that Aidid’s people hung out there, at 0300, Delta Force fast-roped down on the Lig Ligato house. They captured nine people, but they were only UN employees and their Somali guards. Delta had launched on a dry hole.
AUGUST 31, 1993
On Tuesday, an asset sighted Aidid in a vehicle. Crescent wanted the asset to deploy a mobile transmitter in the vehicle, but Condor, not wanting to sacrifice his asset, denied it as being too risky.
Aidid was slippery. Rather than stay home, he lived with relatives, staying in the same place only one or two nights. Sometimes he traveled in a motorcade. Sometimes he only used one vehicle. He would dress as a woman. Although he was popular within his own clan, people outside Aidid’s clan didn’t like him.
Casanova and I dressed up like locals and ran a vehicular route reconnaissance in a Jeep Cherokee that had been beaten more than once with an ugly stick. Secretly, our vehicle was armored. I wore a turban, a flowery Somali shirt, and BDU trousers under my macawi. With my beard starting to grow out and dark skin, I could pass for Arab. For weapons we each had a sound-suppressed CAR-15 down between the seats, partly concealed by our skirts. I carried a magazine of ammo in my CAR-15 and an extra in the cargo pocket of my BDU trousers. We also carried our SIG 226 9 mms in a breakaway butt pack turned around to the front under our shirts—making it look like we had pooch bellies. To get to my pistol, I could just lift my shirt, reach into the upper right corner, and pull down and away, separating the Velcro and readying my SIG. Besides the magazine of ammo in the pistol, an extra magazine sat in the top of the breakaway butt pack.
Clipped inside my pocket was a Microtech UDT tactical automatic knife, a switchblade—extremely sharp. In the cargo pocket on my right thigh, I carried a blowout kit.
By SEAL standards, we were lightly armed. It was a calculated risk. If a bear showed up in the woods, we couldn’t fight him off. However, traveling light allowed us to blend in better to collect intelligence. It was a trade-off. If we were compromised, we’d have to run and gun.
While Casanova drove, I took pictures with a 35 mm camera. We noted a location for a possible helicopter landing zone where Delta and their indigenous people could insert. Then we figured out routes where they could be inserted by truck.
We figured out something else, too. Previously, even though our people walking on foot, riding in Humvee motorcades, hovering in helos, and flying over in planes gathered information, we continued to wonder how Aidid’s people kept transporting mortar rounds to their crews. I took a picture of two women in colorful robes walking side by side, each carrying a baby in her arms. As I rotated the lens to zoom in, I could clearly see the first baby’s head, but the second woman was actually carrying two mortar rounds. The ruse had almost fooled me.
During our vehicle recon, we completed a concept of ops for inserting and extracting people from Pasha. For example, when the time came for turnover, we could drive to an abandoned camel slaughterhouse on the seashore, signal out to sea for a boat of replacement SEALs, and give them our vehicles while we took their boat out to rendezvous with a ship. The replacement SEALs could travel lighter than we had because we’d already stocked Pasha with the heavy SIGINT equipment and other supplies.
The slaughterhouse, huge as a city block, had been owned by the Russians, who abandoned it when the civil war began. They had used the camel meat and bones, but threw everything else out into the ocean. The water along one of the most beautiful beaches in the world became infested with sharks: hammerheads, great whites, and all kinds of bad-ass sharks. I’ve never been afraid to swim anywhere, but I did not want to swim in that water. Neither did the locals, which kept the location private for our needs. As a bonus, the beach was close to Pasha. The slaughterhouse could be seen easily from the water, covering and concealing a large area of the coast. Ideal for the guys to bring Zodiacs—black inflatable rubber boats with outboard motors—or RHIBs in to the shore.
We returned to Pasha, and that evening, the boy next door groaned like he was dying. I knew what it was like to be a child in pain. Screw this. Casanova, a SIGINT medic named Rick, and I did a hard entry on the boy’s house, blacked out with balaclavas and carrying MP-5 machine guns. We didn’t take any chances. Kicked in the door. Flexicuffed the boy’s mom, dad, and aunt. Put them on the floor next to the wall. Of course, they feared we would kill them. We brought the boy inside, so the parents could see what we were about to do. Rick broke out his supplies. We scrubbed the dead tissue out of the wounds with betadine, a cleaner and disinfectant. It hurt the kid so bad that we had to put our hands over his mouth to keep his screams from waking the neighborhood. He passed out from the pain and shock. We gave him intravenous antibiotics, bandaged his wounds, and injected each butt cheek to stop the infection. Then we vanished.
SEPTEMBER 1, 1993
Wednesday, while conducting observation from the rooftop, we saw an elderly man leading a donkey pulling a wooden cart mounted on an old vehicle axle. On top of the cart were stacks of bricks. During his return trip, he had the same load of bricks. What? We asked an asset to follow him. The asset found out the old man hid mortars in the stack of bricks. We reported it. Our superiors issued compromise authority—giving us permission to off the old man.
A sniper must be mentally strong, firmly anchored in a religion or philosophy that allows him to refrain from killing when unnecessary, and to kill when necessary. During the Beltway sniper attacks in 2002, John Allen Muhammad killed ten innocent people and critically injured three. Shooting can make a person feel powerful. Obviously, a good sniper must not give in to such impulses. On the other hand, if a sniper allows himself to be overcome by Stockholm syndrome, he cannot perform his job. (In 1973, robbers held bank employees hostage in Stockholm, Sweden. During their six-day ordeal, the hostages became emotionally attached to the robbers, even defending them after being released.) Through his scope, the sniper becomes intimately familiar with his target, often over a period of time, learning his lifestyle and habits. The target probably has done nothing to directly hurt the sniper. Yet, when the time comes, the sniper must be able to complete the mission.
On the roof of Pasha, a walkaround wall concealed Casanova and me. I aimed my Win Mag in the old man’s direction, 500 yards away.
Casanova viewed him in the spotter scope. “Stand by, stand by. Three, two, one, execute, execute.”
Target in my sights, I squeezed the trigger on the first “execute.” Right between the eyes—I nailed the donkey.
Expecting to see the old man die, when the donkey dropped instead, Casanova couldn’t hold back a little throat chuckle—not very sniperlike.
The old man ran away.
Casanova’s throat chuckle sounded like he was gagging.
Old men were a dime a dozen, but the donkey would be hard to replace. No one ever came to get the dead donkey, still hitched to the wooden cart. They just left it there in the middle of the road.
Later, one of our assets informed us that the old man didn’t want to carry the mortars, but Aidid’s people threatened to kill his family if he didn’t. I felt pretty good about not shooting the old fart.
* * *
The same day, SIGINT guys intercepted communication about a planned mortar attack on the hangar at the army compound. SIGINT knew the mortar crews’ communication frequencies. Notifying the base gave the personnel there some time to find cover before seven or eight mortar rounds landed. No friendlies were injured. Just a few minutes’ warning is huge.
SIGINT routinely jammed communication between Aidid’s fire controllers and the mortarmen. SIGINT vectored in military strikes to destroy the mortar positions. Also, we made khat readily available to the mortar addicts. “You don’t need to become Aidid’s mortar men to get your fix. Here, go chew this.” They smiled like jack-o’-lanterns, their teeth stained black and orange. I know it’s a terrible thing to give an addict drugs, but it saved others from being blown to bits by mortar attacks. It probably saved the addicts from dying in one of our military counterstrikes, too. Aidid’s people started finding it more difficult to coordinate mortar attacks.
* * *
That night, we spotted a man with an AK-47 on the balcony of one of the houses out back and a couple of streets over. I flicked the safety off my sound-suppressed CAR-15 and held the red dot of my sight on his head—an easy shot. Over each of our CAR-15s, we had mounted Advanced Combat Optical Gunsights (ACOGs), a 1.5-power close-range point-and-shoot scope made by Trijicon. At night, it dilated ten times more than my pupil, giving me extra light. Its red dot appears in the scope, unlike a laser that actually appears on the target itself. The ACOG worked just as well in the night as it did in the day. I waited for the man to level his AK-47 in our direction. He never did. After consulting with our guards, we found out the man with the AK-47 was one of our young guards at his own house trying to mimic the SEALs’ tactics of defending from the roof. Of course, the idiot never told us of his plans, and he probably couldn’t conceive our capability to see him with night vision. We told him, “That was good thinking, but if you’re going to be on the rooftop with a weapon at night in this neighborhood, let us know. Because that was almost your ass.”
SEPTEMBER 2, 1993
Thursday morning, we held a meeting to discuss future plans and personnel. Pasha was doing well, so we needed to keep the machine running after we completed our stay and it came time for someone to relieve us.
Later in the day, we received the break we needed. Aidid was wealthy, and his college-age daughter had friends in Europe, Libya, Kenya, and other places. Someone slipped her a cell phone, and SIGINT tapped it. Although Aidid moved around a lot, his daughter made a mistake, mentioning on the phone where he was staying. An asset helped pinpoint the house. Our navy spy plane, a P-3 Orion, picked up Aidid’s convoy, but the convoy stopped, and we lost him in the maze of buildings.
In the evening, Casanova and I lay on Pasha’s roof, protecting the perimeter. During our time at Pasha, we had been playing a game of trying to trap rats, using peanut butter from our MREs as bait. We tied string to a stick and propped a box on it. Through our night-vision goggles, we saw the rat go in. Casanova pulled the string, but the rat escaped before the box fell down on top of it. Our technique evolved into a science. I took apart some ballpoint pens and used the springs to make a one-way door into a box. Inside the box sat the peanut butter. Soon the rat sniffed around the trap. It slipped inside the door. The springs slammed the door shut behind the rodent.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Casanova smiled.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“Kill it.”
“How?”
“What do you mean how?”
While we discussed how to dispatch the rat, it escaped.
The next time, we made the box smaller, so the rodent wouldn’t have wiggle room to escape. The rat crawled inside. Trapped. I stomped my boot down on top. Dead rat—but I had sacrificed the trap. One trap, one kill.
I felt proud to have the only confirmed rat kill. Now I was screwing around with another trap trying to get my second rat.
“Hey, come here,” Casanova whispered.
“What?” I slid over next to him.
He pointed to a house across the street where we had just placed two guards the day before. Three men were attempting to break in. They picked the wrong house in the wrong neighborhood. If they’d tried it before our guards were in there, we would’ve said, Screw it. None of our business. Now our guards were inside, and it was our business.
Casanova took the man on the left side, and I took the one on the right. Lining up the red dot on my first target, I squeezed the trigger. His legs buckled before he sank. Casanova’s ate the dirt, too. Although the man in the middle had a moment longer to live, both Casanova and I hit him at the same time. If the three would-be intruders were only burglars, they paid a heavy price for thievery.
Later, SIGINT heard chatter from the bar around the corner that Aidid’s people might gather. Maybe they were planning to do a hit on us. Pasha went to full alert. We staged AT-4 antitank rockets and took up perimeter positions. It turned out Aidid’s people were only having a recruiting rally.
An asset sighted Aidid but couldn’t pinpoint his building. This was our logistical nightmare. Even though our assets had spotted Aidid, they couldn’t relay to us his exact building.
A SIGINT aircraft, having flown in from Europe and now dedicated to us, arrived in the evening to help track and pinpoint Aidid. This tremendously increased our surveillance abilities. We could use transmitters and beacons more effectively. It also made us able to intercept communications better than from the rooftop of our building.
In the big house next to Pasha on the right was the Italian ambassador’s residence, where the ambassador threw a big party with many Italian officers in attendance. Italy had occupied Somalia from 1927 to 1941. In 1949, the UN gave Italy trusteeship of parts of Somalia. Then, in 1960, Somalia became independent. Now the Italians were real bastards, playing both sides of the fence. Whenever the Black Hawks spun up for an operation, the Italians flashed their lights to let the locals know the Americans were coming. Their soldiers employed electric shock on a Somali prisoner’s testicles, used the muzzle of a flare gun to rape a woman, and took pictures of their deeds.
The UN accused the Italians of paying bribes to Aidid and demanded that Italy’s General Bruno Loi be replaced. The Italian government told the UN to stop harassing Aidid.
One of Italy’s main players was Giancarlo Marocchino, who left Italy, following allegations of tax evasion and married a Somali woman in one of Aidid’s clans. When the UN confiscated weapons from the militia, the Italian military gave them to Giancarlo, who is suspected to have sold them to Aidid.
Italy dumped trillions of lire into Somalia for “aid.” With help from people like Aidid, even before he became an infamous warlord, most of the money went into the pockets of Italy’s government officials and their cronies. The Italians constructed a highway that connected Bosasso and Mogadishu—from which Giancarlo Marocchino, in the trucking business, is reputed to have received kickbacks. Marocchino also cultivated a close relationship with news correspondents by wining and dining them during their stay in Mogadishu.
Also living in our neighborhood and playing both sides of the fence was a Russian military veteran with some intelligence background, now a mercenary operating out of a building two houses down from Pasha. He would work for either side as long as they paid. We suspected he helped both sides with finding safe houses and recruiting. He and the Italians seemed to be working together. The Sicilian family that taught me how to cook loved America; in contrast, the behavior of the Italians in Somalia came as a huge punch in my gut.
We received a report that Aidid might have acquired portable infrared homing surface-to-air missiles—Stinger missiles—which can be used by someone on the ground to shoot down aircraft.
Casanova, the SIGINT medic, and I did another hard entry on the house of the boy with wounded legs. The family wasn’t as scared the second time, but they weren’t relaxed, either—a hard entry is a hard entry. We cuffed them again, then held security as we tended to the boy. He looked a lot better and didn’t need to scream or pass out as we cleaned him up.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1993
The following morning, we prepared for a trip to the army compound. Our Somali guards did an advance, making a recon of the route before we headed out. During the actual trip, the guards used a decoy that split from us to a different route. Anyone trying to follow would’ve had to split their forces to follow both vehicles or flip a coin and hope they followed the correct vehicle. Although I received formal training for such tactics, our guards figured this out on their own. Their experiences fighting in the civil war taught them to adapt out of necessity. They were highly intelligent.
The inside of the army compound was fortified with sniper hides, guard towers, and fighting positions. We picked up some infrared chemlights and fireflies in preparation for upgrading Pasha’s perimeter security. While there, we also held a meeting with Delta, telling them about the mortar attack details and suspected firing points. They climbed up onto the roof of the hangar and did a recon by fire: Snipers shot into suspected areas of mortars and hoped our SIGINT would pick up communication of near hits, verifying locations. When General Garrison found out, he whacked our pee-pees. He didn’t like the recon-by-fire action.
That night, back at Pasha, in order to help our guards have a better understanding of what we were doing and how we were doing it, Casanova attached an infrared chemlight to himself and walked around the perimeter of the house. To the naked eye, the chemlight was invisible. I let the other guards look through our KN-250 night-vision scopes, so they could see the glowing light on Casanova. The guards gasped, their faces looking like they’d just seen their first UFO land. They lowered the scopes and looked with their naked eyes. Then they looked through the scopes at Casanova again. Their speech became rapid and their bodies animated, as if they were now riding on the UFO that had just landed. Casanova and I chuckled at their reaction.
Later in the evening, we went with Stingray, working under Condor, to do a dog and pony show with the chemlights and other gear for the chief of police, one of our major assets and responsible for recruiting a number of others, giving him a taste of how we operated. As a result, the chief of police felt more secure about putting his people at risk working for us. Fifty thousand dollars made him financially secure. Maybe he only used a thousand dollars of that to pay his twenty or thirty assets and pocketed the rest of the money.
Casanova and I hit the house of the wounded teenager again. Mom and Dad obediently took their positions on the floor next to the wall before we put them there. The aunt went down on a knee and held up a tray of tea for us.
I took a drink and offered the family some.
They refused.
We had brought our interpreter with us this time to direct the family as to the boy’s care. The family had gone to great lengths to get the tea, and it was all they had. It was the only way they knew to say thank you. They’d been using a witch doctor, but he obviously hadn’t been much help in curing the boy.
By now, the stink of the boy’s wounds had almost gone. Some of his fever remained. Still, we did another surgical scrub. We gave the family some amoxicillin, an antibiotic for infections. “Give this to the boy three times a day for the next ten days.”
I noticed his gums were bleeding. The inside of his mouth was a bloody mess.
“He’s got scurvy,” our medic said. Scurvy is caused by vitamin C deficiency. Sailors of old used to get this disease before Scottish surgeon James Lind, of the British Royal Navy, figured out that sailors who ate citrus fruits had fewer problems with scurvy. With limes readily available from British Caribbean colonies, the Royal Navy supplied men with lime juice. This is how British sailors got the nickname “limey.”
SEPTEMBER 4, 1993
Casanova and I went out for a drive to recon alternate E&E routes, find out about mortar attack locations, and get a better feel for the area. Later, an asset told us that two mines had been placed on a road and were to be detonated on American vehicles—the same road I’d traveled the day before to meet with Delta at the army compound. They must’ve found out about our trip and just missed us.
In our neighborhood, little girls walked a mile a day just to get drinking water and carry it back home. A four-year-old washed her two-year-old sister in the front courtyard by pouring water over the top of her. Most Americans don’t realize how blessed we are—we need to be more thankful.
By this time, we had become celebrities, controlling a two- to three-block area. When Casanova saw schoolkids, he’d flex and kiss his huge biceps. They imitated him. A small group of kids would gather, and we’d hand out parts of our MREs: candy, chocolate cookies, Tootsie Rolls, and Charms chewing gum. Yes, we gave up our cover, but Condor thought this was good for winning the hearts and minds of the locals. I agreed.
I took a bag of oranges to the crippled boy next door, but he couldn’t eat because the citric acid stung his bleeding gums. Casanova held his body down while I put him in a headlock and squirted the liquid into his mouth. After two or three more visits, the oranges didn’t sting. Eventually the scurvy would go away. To help the boy, Condor told the CIA that the boy was related to one of our assets even though he wasn’t. We had an asset take him some crutches, and I requested a wheelchair.
Later, the boy next door stayed on the porch to spot us when we made our rounds up on the roof of Pasha. He gave us a wave and a smile. It was my most successful op in Somalia, and I had to disobey direct orders to get it done. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Aidid ran his own hearts-and-minds campaign. He made public announcements against Americans and started recruiting in our area: anyone from children to the elderly.
Our assets informed us of a trail to be used to supply Aidid with Stinger missiles: Afghanistan to Sudan to Ethiopia to Somalia. The missiles were leftovers from those that the United States gave Afghanistan to fight the Russians. Years later, the United States offered to buy the Stingers back: $100,000 for each one returned with no questions asked.
Aidid received help from al Qaeda and the PLO. Al Qaeda had snuck in advisers from Sudan. Not too many people knew about al Qaeda then, but they supplied Aidid with weapons and trained his militia in urban warfare tactics like setting up burning barricades and fighting street to street. If Aidid didn’t have the Stingers yet, they’d be arriving soon. In the meantime, al Qaeda taught Aidid’s militia to change the detonators on their RPGs from impact detonators to timed detonators. Rather than having to make a direct hit on a helicopter, the RPG could detonate near the tail rotor, the helo’s Achilles’ heel. Firing an RPG from a rooftop invited death by back blast or the helicopter guns. So al Qaeda taught Aidid’s men to dig a deep hole in the street—a militiaman could lie down while the back of the RPG tube blasted harmlessly into the hole. They also camouflaged themselves, so the helos couldn’t spot them. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the al Qaeda advisers in Somalia probably included Osama Bin Laden’s military chief, Mohammed Atef. Similarly, the PLO helped Aidid with advice and supplies. Now Aidid wanted to hit high-profile American targets.
Our SIGINT intercepted communication about a plot to launch a mortar attack on the American Embassy. Furthermore, assets informed us that the Italians continued to allow Aidid’s armed militia to cross UN military checkpoints responsible for safeguarding the city. His militia merely had to find out where the Italians had their checkpoints in order to move freely—right into the backyard of the United States and everyone else.
Two of Aidid’s bodyguards wanted to give up their master’s location for the $25,000 reward. Leopard wanted to meet them at Pasha. To get to Pasha, Leopard planned to travel through the Italian checkpoint near an old pasta factory—Checkpoint Pasta.
However, Leopard didn’t know that the Italians had secretly turned Checkpoint Pasta over to the Nigerians. Minutes after the turnover, Aidid’s militia ambushed and killed the seven Nigerians.
That evening, I heard a firefight close to Pasha, and the closest mortar yet. Obviously, the bad guys had started to figure out what was going on and where. Our days at Pasha were numbered.
SEPTEMBER 5, 1993
Sunday morning, before 0800, Leopard and four bodyguards rode two Isuzu Troopers out of the UN compound. When the vehicles reached Checkpoint Pasta, a crowd swarmed around them. A couple of hundred yards ahead, burning tires and concrete blocked the road. Leopard’s driver floored the accelerator, crashing through the ambush. Forty-nine bullets struck their vehicle. One shot passed through a space in Leopard’s flak jacket, striking him in the neck. The driver raced them out of the ambush and helped Leopard to a hospital in the UN compound. After twenty-five pints of blood and one hundred stitches, General Garrison flew Leopard to a hospital in Germany. Leopard survived.
Later that day, I heard .50 caliber shots, the kind that can penetrate bricks, fired in the northwest 300 to 500 yards from our location.
With shooting nearby and a recent ambush, we knew our ticket was about to get punched. On full alert now, we took up battle stations. I called in an AC-130 Spectre to fly overhead in case we needed help. Capable of spending long periods of time in the air, the air force plane carried two 20 mm M-61 Vulcan cannons, one 40 mm L/60 Bofors cannon, and one 105 mm M-102 howitzer. Sophisticated sensors and radar helped it detect enemy on the ground. You could let loose a rabbit on a soccer field, and the AC-130 Spectre would make rabbit stew. I had trained in Florida at Hurlburt Field on the plane’s capabilities and how to call for its fire to rain down on the enemy. It aroused me to know we were getting ready to light up some of Aidid’s people. Instead, fortune smiled on them as they chose to fight another day.
That same day, we found out that one of our primary assets had been made, so we had to fly him out of the country.
At 2000, an asset told us that Aidid was at his aunt’s house. Condor called in a helo to fly Stingray and the asset to the army base and brief General Garrison. All of us in Pasha were ecstatic. Everything we had done at Pasha—running the assets, SIGINT, everything—had led to this moment. We had good intel and the cloak of darkness to protect our assault team. The asset even had a diagram for the house—ideal for special operators doing room entries. Aidid was ours.
The request was denied. I still don’t know why. Condor and Stingray were outraged. “We will not get another chance this good!”
The rest of us couldn’t believe it either. “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!” In the military phonetic alphabet, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” is WTF—“What the f***?”
I was angry that we had worked so hard for such an important mission only to be ignored. It seemed that military politics were to blame. I also felt embarrassed at how my own military had treated the CIA. “Condor, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what the hell … I don’t know why we didn’t do this…”
Condor wasn’t mad at us SEALs, but he was mad at General Garrison. “If Garrison isn’t going to do it, why did he even send us out here?! Why do all this work, spend all this money, put ourselves at risk, put our assets at risk…”
“If we aren’t going to pull the trigger,” I finished his sentence. “We had Aidid.”
“You’re damn right we had him!”
At the time, I was mad at Garrison, too. Delta launched on the dry hole at the Lig Ligato house, but they couldn’t launch when we really had Aidid. It wasn’t going to do any good to punch anything or yell at anybody. When I become ultrafurious, I become ultraquiet. After Condor and I shared our misery, I went mute. The others let me have my space. We all mourned the loss of that mission.
SEPTEMBER 6, 1993
At 0400, on the roof of Pasha, Casanova and I heard a tank make a wide circle. We didn’t even know Aidid had a tank. We readied our AT-4s.
Hours later, Casanova and I told Little Big Man and Sourpuss.
“There can’t be a tank here,” Sourpuss argued. “We’d have seen a tank by now.”
“We know what we heard,” I said.
“I’m not impressed,” Sourpuss said. “You might impress the CIA with your nonsense, but I’m not impressed.”
“Whatever.”
That same morning, one of our assets was shot stepping out of his vehicle.
Before long, a second asset, our maid’s brother, was killed—shot in the head. He was one of the good guys. He wasn’t in it for the money as much as he was in it to help his clan end the civil war. She couldn’t hide the sadness in her eyes.
As if things weren’t bad enough for us, a third asset was beaten almost to death. By the Italians.
A report came in that Aidid possessed antiaircraft guns. Aidid continued to grow stronger and more sophisticated thanks to help from al Qaeda, the PLO, and the Italians turning a blind eye. The locals recognized the growth, too, and were encouraged to join Aidid.
Delta had intelligence that Aidid was in the old Russian compound. So Delta went after him and took seventeen prisoners—but no Aidid. Only two of the seventeen were considered to be of interest. They were detained, interrogated, and then freed. Delta had given Aidid’s people another exhibition of how they operate: fly in, fast-rope down, and use a Humvee blocking force of Rangers to protect the operators as they take down the house. This would come back to bite us in the ass.
SEPTEMBER 7, 1993
One of our primary assets, Abe, called in four hours late. We feared him dead.
Finally, he showed. “I do tonight’s mission.”
“Sorry, you’ve already been scratched.”
“Scratched?”
“Mission canceled. No mission for you tonight.”
* * *
In the evening, Casanova and I escorted Condor to deliver $50,000 to an asset. The high-level assets were wealthy and influential and had a number of people working under them. Condor went to the high-level assets rather than making them come to him: checking the number of new recruits, collecting their pictures, finding out how they would divvy up the money with their own assets, briefing them about procedures. The whole meeting took about an hour and a half. While Casanova and I stood guard outside, we heard a firefight approximately 200 yards north.
Little Big Man and Sourpuss saw the tracers from the firefight in our direction. “Do you guys need assistance?” they radioed us.
“No, we weren’t involved.” If we fired a green flare, Little Big Man and Sourpuss would call in a helo extract, then fight their way to our position to assist until the helo arrived.
Later that night, back at Pasha, I got my second confirmed rat kill.
SEPTEMBER 8, 1993
The Rangers reported that they spotted an old Russian tank a couple miles out of town and destroyed it. I reminded Sourpuss about the tank Casanova and I had heard several nights earlier, “See? It’s called a tank. You know—they make a certain sound while moving.”
Sourpuss walked away.
That day, Abe became our main asset. We gave him an infrared strobe light and a beacon with a magnet attached. He seemed confident he could get close to Aidid, so we put Delta on alert.
“Aidid is moving,” Abe called. As the night grew old, Abe couldn’t pinpoint Aidid’s position.
Although no communication traffic reached SIGINT, several large explosions came from the direction of the airport. Aidid’s mortar crews had figured out how to communicate their fire and control without being intercepted by us. Damn, they are resilient.
SEPTEMBER 9, 1993
General Garrison received permission to go to Phase Three—going after Aidid’s lieutenants. Delta flew over Mogadishu as a show of force with the entire package: ten to twelve Little Birds and twenty to thirty Black Hawks. Delta snipers rode in the light Little Bird helicopters, which could carry guns, rockets, and missiles. In the medium-sized Black Hawk helicopters, also armed with guns, rockets, and missiles, the Delta entry teams and Rangers had fast ropes ready in the doorway to make an assault at any moment. The idea was to show Aidid that ours was bigger than his—making him less attractive to the local population and, hopefully, hurting his ability to recruit.
On the same day, near the pasta factory, two kilometers away from the Pakistani Stadium, the Army’s 362nd Engineers worked to clear a Mogadishu roadway. A Pakistani armored platoon protected them while the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) stood by in case they needed emergency reinforcements. The QRF was made up of men from the conventional army’s 10th Mountain Division, 101st Aviation Regiment, and 25th Aviation Regiment, their base located at the abandoned university and old American Embassy.
The engineers bulldozed an obstacle from the road when a crowd of Somalis gathered. One Somali fired a shot, then sped away in a white truck. The engineers cleared a second obstacle. Then the third: burning tires, scrap metal, and a trailer. Someone on a second-story balcony fired at them. Engineers and Pakistanis returned fire. The enemy fire increased, coming at them from multiple directions. The crowd moved obstacles to block the soldiers in. The engineers called in the QRF helos. In three minutes, armed OH-58 Kiowa and AH-1 Cobra helicopters arrived. Hundreds of armed Somalis moved in from the north and south. Enemy RPGs came in from multiple directions.
The Cobra opened up on the enemy with 20 mm cannons and 2.75-inch rockets. More QRF helos were called in for help while the engineers tried to escape, heading for the Pakistani Stadium. Aidid’s militia fired a 106 mm recoilless rifle, blasting the lead Pakistani tank into flames. A bulldozer stopped dead, so the engineers abandoned it. As thirty Somalis tried to take the abandoned bulldozer, two TOW missiles destroyed them and the bulldozer. The engineers, two wounded, and the Pakistanis, three wounded, fought on until they reached the stadium. One Pakistani died. It had been the largest battle in Somalia to that point.
Our intelligence sources told us that Aidid had commanded the ambush from the nearby cigarette factory. More than one hundred Somalis died, and hundreds more were wounded, but Aidid had succeeded in keeping the road closed, restricting the UN forces’ movement. In addition, the media assisted Aidid by reporting the many “innocent” Somali deaths. I hate our liberal media. Must be easy to sit back and point fingers when you’re not involved. President Clinton also helped Aidid, halting combat operations in Mogadishu until an investigation could be completed. Political popularity trumps American lives.
Aidid launched artillery over Pasha. Machine-gun fire and firefights reached closer to us. We remained on full alert and high pucker factor. Aidid’s militia also launched mortars on the Nigerian checkpoint at the Port of Mogadishu—turned over by the Italians.
Condor’s assets infiltrated a rally held in a vehicle repair garage where Aidid tried to pump up his troops. If Aidid was actually there at the rally, we wanted to know. He wasn’t.
SEPTEMBER 10, 1993
At 0500 the next day, Aidid’s militia fired more artillery at the Port of Mogadishu checkpoint. That same day, an asset told us that Aidid’s people knew about Pasha. They described our guns and vehicles, and they knew Condor from before we set up Pasha.
Aidid ambushed CNN’s Somali crew. Their interpreter and four guards were killed. Aidid’s militia had mistaken the CNN’s crew for us.
We also found out that an Italian journalist had arranged to do an interview with Aidid. One of our assets put a beacon on the journalist’s car, so we could track him. The journalist must’ve suspected something was wrong, because he went to the house of one of the good guys instead, probably hoping we’d launch an attack there. Fortunately, we had an asset on the ground verifying the location.
Even so, the CIA was screwed. So were we. We had good intel that Aidid’s people were going to ambush us. Instead of two SEALs on watch and two resting, we went to three SEALs on watch and one resting.
SEPTEMBER 11, 1993
I finally got to bed at 0700 the next morning—no ambush. Sourpuss woke me up at 1100 to tell me that our assets were reporting that Aidid’s militia was closing in on us.
Another asset told us that the bad guys had targeted our head guard, Abdi, because they knew he was working for the CIA. One of the guards in his employ was his own son. The head guard took responsibility for paying the guards; moreover, he had responsibility for their lives. He held an important status in his clan. The head guard put his family and clan at risk to help the CIA. Part of his motivation was money, but the greater motivation seemed to be a better future for his family. Now he was made. Later we would find out who ratted him out: the Italians.
Condor called General Garrison. “We’ve been compromised, and we need to get the f*** out of here.”
At 1500, leaving nonessential equipment such as MREs, everyone in Pasha packed up, and we drove to the Pakistani Stadium. Helicopters extracted us at 1935, taking us back to the hangar on the military compound.
In retrospect, on the first day at Pasha, we should’ve flexicuffed the Italians and taken them out of the area, and we should’ve assassinated the Russian mercenary. Then we would’ve had a better chance of running our safe house and capturing Aidid. Of course, it would’ve helped if our own military had let us capture Aidid when we had him at his aunt’s house.
Although we had lost Pasha, we still had targets to act on.