OSS Influence on Early US Special Forces

In 2018, The USASOC History Office published an article stating that a ‘grossly disproportionate share of the pioneering influence’ was incorrectly attributed to veterans of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) who joined early Special Forces. After comparing personnel lists, USASOC History Office concluded that only 14 members of the OSS actually served in Special Forces and that their contribution was not as great as has been described over the years. David Maxwell, who criticized this study, also noted that the list failed to include Robert McDowell, who served with the OSS in Yugoslavia. In 2019, Jelle Hooiveld published an article in Small Wars Journal about the legendary OSS, Special Forces and CIA Officer Lucien Conein, whose contribution to the build-up of early Special Forces wasn’t mentioned either. Now, yet another name has come up: Jack Sands Jr., who served as a lieutenant colonel in the OSS and became a senior adviser to the staff of the 10th Special Forces Group in the mid-fifties.

Oliver Jackson Sands Jr. was born on 9 October, 1905. He was educated at Princeton University and Harvard University and initially served with the Field Artillery (U.S. Army Reserve). Sands later became Assistant Deputy Director of the OSS and attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After the abolishment of the OSS, Sands joined the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) but also remained active as a reserve officer. During the early 1950s, Sands served as Chief, Operations Coordination Branch and Executive Officer of the Psychological Staff Division of the CIA. In the mid-fifties, Sands was transferred to the Western European theatre. By now, Sands was also a full Army Reserve colonel.

Between 1956 and 1959, while working for the CIA, he served as a so called ‘Military Staff Agent’ and was appointed Director, J-2 Division of the Headquarters of Support Operations Task Force Europe (SOTFE). HQ SOTFE was organized under the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a joint task force. It was composed of Army and CIA personnel for the conduct of Unconventional Warfare throughout the area of responsibility of the Commander in Chief in Europe.

During this period, Sands also acted as a senior adviser to the Commanding Officer, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) on all CIA matters pertaining to Operations, Intelligence and Support. According to his owns statements, Sands also held ‘numerous formal and informal conferences’ with officers of the 10th SFG on subjects of tradecraft and tactics and techniques developed or practiced by the CIA that were of interest to Special Forces. In addition, Sands reviewed and advised the 10th SFG in regard to the training programs of its personnel. Furthermore, Sands acted as a liaison between the CIA and 10th SFG regarding mutual areas of interest on the development of new techniques and new equipment. In acknowledgement of his contributions, Colonel Sands was made an honorary member of the 10th SFG.

Throughout his life, Sands remained proud of his OSS roots. During an eighties reunion, Sands referred to his former OSS colleagues as the ‘greatest collection of people […] in the history of the world’. Summing up: this article has shown that at least three OSS veterans who significantly impacted and influenced early Special Forces, weren’t included in USASOC History Office’s study. Who else is missing?

Article from the Small Wars Journal

Passing the Paramilitary Torch from the CIA to Special Operations Command

In the shadowy realm of international competition that falls below the threshold of traditional conflict, the United States continues to struggle to match near-peer competitors like Russia and China. The Russian-led paramilitary invasion of eastern Ukraine that began in mid-2014 has thus far prevented successive U.S.-backed Ukrainian governments from fully consolidating power or joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In Syria, Russian private paramilitary companies have been crucial in propping up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Over the last decade, China has built artificial islands and deployed paramilitary naval units to secure its illegal claim to the international waterways of the South China Sea – all without firing a single shot. These examples involved the use of paramilitary activities by America’s adversaries, a form of conflict to which the U.S. government has historically responded with the CIA. In this context, paramilitary activities involve the use of non-conventional or proxy forces to conduct sabotage, ambushes, or other low-visibility combat operations to undermine and contribute to the defeat of an adversary. Photo at right: U.S. Army Special Forces Soldiers with Hamid Karzai during their unconventional warfare campaign that toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, 2001

The CIA’s primacy in matters of paramilitary activities is well-established through existing Congressional legislation and presidential executive orders. However, today the United States faces serious threats from near-peer state adversaries, terrorist groups, and other sub-state actors that should lead its leaders to rethink its organizational and operational approaches to paramilitary activities to optimize both its capabilities and capacity to meet these threats. The U.S. Defense Department, specifically its subordinate U.S. Special Operations Command, is the organization best prepared to assume leadership of the U.S. government’s paramilitary efforts that are critical to supporting its national interests.

One of the major recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report, delivered in 2004, was that the Defense Department should assume primary responsibility for U.S. government paramilitary activities from the CIA. That commission found that the CIA “relied on operatives without the requisite military training,” resulting in unsatisfactory results. Additionally, the report advised that the United States “cannot afford to build two separate capabilities for carrying out secret military operations, secretly operating standoff missiles, and secretly training foreign military or paramilitary forces.” In response, the Defense Department contracted a study that ultimately determined in 2005 that assuming control of paramilitary operations was inadvisable at that time given the Defense Department’s lack of internal capability, discomfort with existing legal strictures on Title 50 authorities, and concern over potentially increased Congressional oversight that would come with responsibility for paramilitary activities. In the twelve years since that study delivered its findings and recommendations, the Defense Department has developed its own clandestine intelligence and operational paramilitary capabilities. It is now the appropriate time to reassess and appropriately re-task the Department of Defense’s own U.S. Special Operations Command with primary responsibility for paramilitary activities. Historically, the CIA has a very poor track record of success in organizing and leading paramilitary campaigns, often relying on military special operations support. Other forms of covert action include propaganda to undermine confidence in or adherence to hostile governments and political action designed to support domestic parties in opposition to U.S. adversaries. Only a small number of the declassified CIA-led paramilitary campaigns between 1948 and 2001 were deemed “successful”, though propaganda and political covert actions fared better. While the bravery of CIA paramilitary operatives should be lauded and honored, the American people must be ensured that their paramilitary capabilities are better organized to best defend their interests in the future.

Capability

From a capabilities standpoint, U.S. Special Operations Command demonstrates comparable and, in some cases, superior capabilities of immediate applicability to paramilitary activities. Unbeknownst to many is the fact that U.S. Special Operations Command is already trained, equipped, and enabled to execute paramilitary operations. A core mission of U.S. Special Operations Command is “unconventional warfare”, which the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2016 defines as “activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt or overthrow an occupying power or government by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary or guerrilla force in a denied area." Of critical importance, the Defense Department Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms defines a “guerrilla force” as “a group of irregular, predominantly indigenous personnel organized along military lines to conduct military and paramilitary operations in enemy-held, hostile, or denied territory.” Assuming primary responsibility for paramilitary activities will not place additional strain on U.S. Special Operations Command as all of the components of paramilitary operations are already “part and parcel” of their core mission. While the entirety of U.S. Special Operations Command is tasked to conduct unconventional warfare, much of that capability resides in a subordinate element - U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Within this element, the Office of Special Warfare serves as the focal point for U.S. government-sponsored unconventional warfare.

U.S. Special Operations Command regularly demonstrates its ability to conduct “operational preparation of the environment” activities to support counterterrorism and unconventional warfare that seemingly only differ from paramilitary activities in the authorities under which they are executed. Whereas paramilitary activities is conducted under Title 50 of U.S. Code (USC), Operational Preparation of the Environment and other military activities are executed under Title 10 USC. More practically speaking, the CIA conducts paramilitary activities with the intention to effect some sort of fundamental change against a foreign target without the U.S. government’s role ever being clearly evident, while the Defense Department conducts Operational Preparation of the Environment ostensibly in support of traditional military activities that might reasonably demonstrate a U.S. government role at some point. However, the Defense Department now arguably characterizes activities that could easily be described as paramilitary activities as Operational Preparation of the Environment “where the slightest nexus of a theoretical, distant military operation might one day exist.” Consolidation of the covert paramilitary responsibility with existing Operational Preparation of the Environment requirements would not create so much of an additional burden on U.S. Special Operations Command as it would reduce duplication of capability at both the CIA and Defense Department.

To many even within the U.S. government, most of U.S. Special Operations Command’s Operational Preparation of the Environment activities are already virtually indistinguishable from the CIA’s paramilitary activities, as they employ many of the same methodologies to establish and manage human and physical infrastructure in semi-permissive and denied areas to support U.S. strategic objectives. Further highlighting this confused perception, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has previously argued that, “in categorizing its clandestine activities, the Defense Department frequently labels them as ‘Operational Preparation of the Environment’ to distinguish particular operations as traditional military activities and not as intelligence functions. The committee observes, though, that overuse of the term has made the distinction all but meaningless.” Shifting primacy of responsibility for paramilitary activities from the CIA to U.S. Special Operations Command and consolidating it with the existing Operational Preparation of the Environment mission would serve the dual purpose of maximizing the effectiveness of paramilitary capabilities while also potentially addressing the growing tensions related to the oversight disparity between paramilitary and clandestine activities.

Many naysayers of this proposal will argue that only the CIA has the means to safeguard the secrecy of such paramilitary activity and accomplish the mission with discrete U.S. government presence. This argument is less compelling given the CIA’s demonstrably poor track record in keeping U.S. government participation in paramilitary operations discrete, from the “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba in 1961 to the recent paramilitary operation revealed in the Middle East. By comparison, U.S. Special Operations Command already has forces deployed around the world, accomplishing sensitive missions that largely go unnoticed. Additionally, the Defense Department already executes Special Access Programs that are waived and unacknowledged. Much like CIA paramilitary operations conducted under Presidential Findings, waived and unacknowledged Special Access Programs are “considered to be so sensitive that they are exempt from standard reporting requirements to the Congress” and are only briefed to highly-cleared members of the relevant Congressional committees. The Defense Department already has a well-established track record of ensuring the confidentiality of incredibly sensitive programs, requirements with which the CIA has shown some difficulty.

Capacity

Not surprisingly, the CIA has always relied extensively on Defense Department special operations forces to support its paramilitary activities ever since the National Security Act of 1947 first created the CIA. Every paramilitary operation from Tibet (1953-1972) to the modern era saw large numbers of the Defense Department special operations service members employed by the CIA using its authorities to execute the mission. While the CIA’s actual end strength of paramilitary skills officers is classified, most open-source estimates place its numbers at no more than a couple hundred exemplary Americans whose attentions are split between overseas assignments and headquarters duty at Langley. By comparison, U.S. Special Operations Command has nearly 70,000 total personnel assigned, of which the command already has 13,000 deployed around the world at any given time. As previously discussed, the Office of Special Warfare coordinates the unconventional warfare capabilities of five battalions’ (over 2,000 soldiers) worth of the U.S.’s finest practitioners of the paramilitary arts in support of every geographic combatant command (Africa, Europe, Central and South America, North America, Middle East, and Pacific). These numbers do not account for the tens of thousands of special operations members in other units trained in unconventional warfare. By outright assuming responsibility for all U.S. paramilitary operations, U.S. Special Operations Command will be able to leverage its full capacity to conduct the preparatory undertakings for and execution of successful paramilitary activities, thereby increasing options for U.S. policymakers. Clearly, U.S. Special Operations Command now has a much greater capacity to fulfill current and future paramilitary requirements that will only continue to grow in scale.

Moreover, CIA recruits many of its paramilitary operatives directly from U.S. Special Operations Command, thanks largely to the previously discussed and well-established operational relationship between the CIA and Defense Department special operations forces. Most national security experts believe that there is no way that the U.S. government could even come close to meeting its current capacity needs for paramilitary activities without U.S. Special Operations Command support. As the evolving global security environment will clearly require additional paramilitary capacity, the CIA will find itself further unable to meet those requirements through its own internal mechanisms and become more reliant on U.S. Special Operations Command. As such, transferring primary responsibility for paramilitary activities from the CIA to Defense Department would simply be a recognition that the majority interest in and capacity for paramilitary activities resides in the Defense Department. In turn, U.S. Special Operations Command, with its larger personnel reserves and budgetary appropriations, will provide the U.S. government and American people with a more robust and efficient paramilitary activities capacity when and where it is most needed.

Legality and Oversight

Legally speaking, the Defense Department possesses both the legislative and executive authorities and permissions to assume primary responsibility for paramilitary activities consistent with the recommendations of this article. Legislatively, the National Security Act of 1947, 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act, and Title 50 of USC all previously designated the CIA as the office of primary responsibility for paramilitary activities. However, the Secretary of Defense also possesses Title 50 authorities which are regularly applied to support paramilitary activities and other intelligence activities. President Ronald Reagan’s Executive Order 12333, which President George W. Bush amended with Executive Order 13470, similarly reinforced CIA primacy for paramilitary activities. However, Executive Order 13470 importantly established a specific exceptions for transferring that responsibility to other agencies. The language of Executive Order 13470 clearly states that the President may direct other agencies to lead paramilitary efforts if he or she “determines that another agency is more likely to achieve a particular objective.” Given the arguments previously presented in this article, it is clear that the Defense Department is now the most appropriate agency to lead U.S. government paramilitary activities efforts moving forward.

The consolidation within the Defense Department of covert paramilitary activities and unconventional warfare efforts will ensure better oversight, as all such activities would then require Presidential Findings and the associated reporting to all of the interested Congressional committees. This approach will resolve a long-standing tension between the Congressional defense committees related to the oversight of covert and clandestine activities. The recommendation to consolidate paramilitary activities in the Defense Department previously met resistance from both the Pentagon and CIA for very different reasons that both stemmed from bureaucratic interests. In the case of the Defense Department, there was reluctance to delve deeper into Title 50 missions that brought additional approval and oversight requirements. For the CIA, the prospect of ceding a very important, and suddenly prestigious, mission was also very unattractive. These perspectives resistant to the transfer of paramilitary activity responsibility to the Defense Department appear rooted in arguments that, while maybe valid when the 2005 Defense Department study presented its finding, are no longer the case. What has not changed are the reasons for the 9/11 Commission’s original findings: that CIA has consistently faltered in its execution of paramilitary operations and that the country can ill afford to fund two identical capabilities at the CIA and Defense Department. It is high time to consolidate paramilitary activities at the Defense Department.

To affect the seamless transfer of primacy for paramilitary activities responsibility from the CIA to Defense Department, there are several recommendations that can and should be implemented. The Executive Branch should draft and issue an executive order amending Executive Order 12333 further to transfer primary responsibility for planning and conducting paramilitary activities from the CIA to the Defense Department. Consistent with the existing Executive Order 13470 language, paramilitary activities will still require a Presidential Finding and reserve for the President the authority to designate other agencies to lead paramilitary activities if the conditions warrant. As paramilitary activities already require coordination through the National Security Council and interagency cooperation, this process will remain under the new construct. Except now, the Defense Department will brief the properly-cleared members of the National Security Council and Congressional defense and intelligence committees. The CIA will remain a critical supporting agency for paramilitary activities, but will respond to Defense Department direction on such campaigns.

Congress, for its part, would need to pass the requisite legislation to enable the Defense Department to assume this responsibility through appropriate reorganization, appropriations, and oversight mechanisms. Currently, Title 10 of USC does not specify paramilitary activities as a primary mission for U.S. Special Operations Command, which will require an amendment to Title 10, the invocation of Title 50 by the Secretary of Defense, or the creation of an entirely new legislative authority for U.S. Special Operations Command to exercise its authority as lead department for paramilitary activities. The next NDAA should direct U.S. Special Operations Command, through the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, to reorganize to facilitate paramilitary activities within the Defense Department. This reorganization might be affected through amendment of the existing reorganization requirements levied in Section 922 of the FY17 NDAA. Section 922 previously directed this office to assume “service-like” responsibility for U.S. Special Operations Command.

Next, the appropriations committees should explore additional funding lines to allow U.S. Special Operations Command to assume its new paramilitary activities leadership role and draft required legislative language into the next NDAA. An amendment to Section 1202 of the FY18 NDAA, which authorized funding for “the irregular warfare tools and resources required to impede the progress of near peer advances in the competitive space short of war”, would provide a good starting point from which to expand U.S. Special Operations Command’s paramilitary capabilities. Unfortunately, this line of effort was only funded for $10 million dollars in the FY18 NDAA, far beneath the amount needed given the scale of the challenge posed by these competitors. A considerable increase in funding under Section 1202 would enable U.S. Special Operations Command personnel, who are already on the front lines alongside our international allies and partners in the “shadow war” against China, Russia, and Iran, to better counter these competitors’ destabilizing activities in the South China Sea, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

Conclusions

Perhaps the most important change that will be required for U.S. Special Operations Command to assume full responsibility for U.S. government-sponsored paramilitary activities will be one of mindset. After almost two decades of mostly overt and highly kinetic counterterrorism activities conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan, an argument has been made that U.S. Special Operations Command, as an organization, lacks the mindset necessary for successfully executing irregular activities under politically sensitive conditions. In recognition of this criticism, U.S. Army Special Operations Command established its Office of Special Warfare, organized battalions of troops specifically trained to conduct unconventional warfare, and is assuming its role as U.S. Special Operations Command’s focal point for related activities. Similarly, U.S. Special Operations Command’s Joint Special Operations University, which is based at the command’s headquarters on MacDill Air Force Base, now offers a myriad of courses for U.S. Special Operations Command operators, support personnel, and senior leaders that address these shortcomings. The Joint Special Operations University’s most applicable offering, “Special Operations Forces Sensitive Activities in the Contemporary Operational Environment” (previously called “Covert Action and Special Operations Forces Sensitive Activities”), provides instruction that “explores covert action and sensitive military activities as important options for national security practitioners and decision makers”.

The American people deserve the most effective, efficient, and robust paramilitary capabilities that the nation can muster, and the U.S. government should compel the CIA and Defense Department to execute this recommended restructuring. Close collaboration, coordination, and synchronization of efforts will reinforce the importance of interagency integration and demonstrate the wisdom of this undertaking. This logical effort will, ultimately, better enable the U.S. government to fulfill its most sacred duty to the American people – protecting their vital national interests and way of life from those adversaries and competitors who would endeavor to do them harm.

This article was written by Douglas Livermore who works as a contracted government advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, while also serving as a Special Forces officer in the U.S. Army National Guard. In addition to multiple combat deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan, Doug led special operations elements during contingency operations around the world. He holds a master’s degree from Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program and a bachelor's degree from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The views expressed in his articles are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.

Article from the Small Wars Journal, 2 September 2019

Lucien Conein, Legendary OSS, Special Forces and CIA Officer - Forgotten by the USASOC History Office?

The USASOC History Office caused quite a stir in the US Special Forces and Intelligence community with its eyebrow-raising article about OSS influence on Special Forces, published in Veritas in 2018. Troy Sacquety, author of this article, concluded that “a grossly disproportionate share of the pioneering influence” was incorrectly attributed to the OSS veterans who joined early Special Forces. Sacquety also noted - in no uncertain terms - that this erroneous conferment was the result of “disinformation and exaggeration by the active force and veteran associations”.

Sacquety’s research methodology was simple: by-name comparisons between the list of OSS personnel, against the rosters of personnel assigned between 1952 and 1954 to the SF Department at the Psychological Warfare Center and School (PWCS), the 10th Special Forces Group (SFG); officers assigned to the 77th SFG; and 99 SF-trained personnel sent to serve in Korea. The data revealed that only fourteen former OSS members were part of the early Special Forces (SF). Sacquety subsequently remarks that “the total number of former OSS veterans in SF was less than one percent of the total of 1,169 SF soldiers”.

David S. Maxwell, a retired US Army Special Forces Colonel, responded in Small Wars Journal by noting that rather than only assess the numbers of OSS members in early SF, USASOC History Office would “do a great service by reminding readers that today’s SF assessment and selection, organization (especially the ODA), training, doctrine, and most important the foundational mission of SF, unconventional warfare, are directly related to and descended from the OSS”. Maxwell was also right in remarking that USASOC History Office undermined its own argument by emphasizing that the five former OSS instructors (identified in the Veritas’ article), were the ones “who provided the most influence from their OSS experiences on the developing force”. Finally, Maxwell adds that there were at least fifteen - not fourteen - former OSS who served in SF from 1952 to 1954: USASOC History Office's list failed to include Robert McDowell, who served with the OSS in Yugoslavia.

One could argue about Sacquety’s conclusion whether OSS influence on SF is exaggerated or not, his quantitative analysis of the number of OSS veterans in early SF is interesting. However, what exactly constitutes “early SF”? Why did Sacquety’s limit the time period to 1952-1954? What if he had included 1955, 1956, or the late fifties - when SF was still in its “pioneering” phase? Would this have led to different research findings? The answer is “yes”.

One example of an OSS veteran who joined SF in 1956 - and is thus not included in the Veritas’ article - is the legendary CIA officer Lucien Conein (see photo at right). When Conein passed in 1998, major newspapers, worldwide, devoted obituaries. The Washington Post even included a photo of Conein - wearing a beret with an SF flash. Who was this Conein and what was his contribution to early SF?

Lucien Emile Conein was born on 29 November 1919 in Paris. He grew up in Kansas city, having been sent there at age five by his widowed mother to be raised by his World War I-bride aunt. He joined the U.S. army in 1939 but transferred to the French army - Conein had retained his French citizenship - at the outbreak of WW2. After the fall of France, he returned to the US and became part of the 143rd Field Artillery Regiment. In the spring and summer of 1943, Conein went through Officer Candidate School at Ft. Benning. In October that year, he volunteered for service with the OSS. Conein became a Jedburgh officer and was parachuted in occupied France in the late summer of 1944. After VE-Day, Conein was sent to French Indochina by the OSS and fought with guerrillas against Japanese forces.

In 1946 and 1947, Conein served in several (counter-)intelligence units but was eventually transferred to the CIA in 1948. Conein retained his military rank and position as a cover. In the early fifties, Conein was assigned to the Saigon Military Mission, which was headed by the renowned CIA officer Edward Lansdale - another former OSS officer. Among other things, Conein formed stay-behind groups that were to become operational when the Viet Minh would take over. In 1955, Conein returned stateside and served briefly in Washington. On 6 November 1956, the CIA officer was suddenly transferred to the 77th Special Forces, where he would stay until May 1959.

How did Conein, as a fulltime CIA officer, suddenly wind up with the 77th Special Forces Group? Conein himself clarified:

“I had been on detail to the OSS and the SSU, CIG [sic], and CIA since 1943, and there it was 1956. I had not had troop duty in the proper sense, so the Army informed me that if I wanted to get promoted from a major that I had to go back to school and I had to go and take troop duty. So in typical Army fashion they wanted me to get away from everything that has to do with the CIA or anything like a special operations or anything like that. I’ll be darned. My orders came up, I had to go to down and take the advanced course at Fort Benning, which I had not taken. Then I was assigned to the 77th Special Forces Group. I said “What?”. They got me out of what I’m doing so that I wouldn’t do this anymore and do strictly military and here I’m going to play hide the weinie with troops with green beanies on their heads”.

According to the Veritas’ article ‘Training the Trainers’ (2009) Conein was one of four senior officers who was recruited by SF in the second half of the fifties “to get the 77th SFG up to the standard”. Experienced officers were needed because the Special Forces “could not perform their primary wartime mission”. Conein, together with his new colleagues, was to “add impetus to a soon to be established accelerated training program”.

Major Conein soon acted as project officer of the Basic Free Fall Parachuting Course and became the first officer in charge of Military Free Fall training within the Special Warfare Center. In 1958, Conein became Commanding Officer of Detachment FC-2. Later that year, he commanded Detachment FC-1. Conein’s last duty in Fort Bragg was Assistant Group Executive Officer for HQ Company 77th Special Forces Group. Later, Conein returned to Vietnam for the CIA - now in the rank of lieutenant colonel - and was appointed by Henry Cabot Lodge (President Kennedy's ambassador to Vietnam) as liaison with the generals that plotted the coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem. Conein retired from the CIA in 1968 and ended his career with the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The above has shown that Lucien Conein - former OSS officer - was a senior figure within early SF. His contribution to SF should not have been overlooked by USASOC History Office. When OSS veterans such as Conein and McDowell have been omitted by USASOC History Office, the following question arises: who else is not included? Let’s hope this article “adds impetus” to a more thorough analysis of former OSS personnel that served with the Special Forces.

This article was written by Jelle Hooiveld, who is a PhD Candidate of Military History at Leiden University (The Netherlands), a Security & Intelligence Lecturer/Adviser, and the author of two books about Dutch Jedburgh teams.

Posted on the Small Wars Journal

SF and CIA, First In, Last Out

From an Associated Press article by by Kimberly Dozier. They were the first Americans into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks and will probably be the last U.S. forces to leave. As most American troops prepare to withdraw in 2014, the CIA
and military special operations forces to be left behind are girding for the next great pivot of the campaign, one that could stretch their war up to another decade.

The war's 10th anniversary Friday recalled the beginnings of a conflict that drove the Taliban from power and lasted far longer than was imagined. "We put the CIA guys in first," scant weeks after the towers in New York fell, said Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, then a colonel with U.S. special operations forces, in charge of the military side of the operation. U.S. Special Forces Green Berets, together with
CIA officers, helped coordinate anti-Taliban forces on the ground with U.S. firepower from the air, to topple the Taliban and close in on al-Qaida.

Recent remarks from the White House suggest the CIA and special operations forces will be hunting al-Qaida and working with local forces long after most U.S. troops have left. When Afghan troops take the lead in 2014, "the U.S. remaining force will be basically an enduring presence force focused on counterterrorism," said National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, in remarks in Washington in mid-September. That will be augmented by teams that will continue to train Afghan forces, added White House spokesman Tommy Vietor.

The White House insists this does not mean abandoning the strategy of counter insurgency, in which large numbers of troops are needed to keep the population safe. It simply means replacing the surge of 33,000 U.S. troops, as it withdraws over the next year, with newly trained Afghan ones, according to senior White House Afghan war adviser Doug Lute. It also means U.S. special operators and CIA officers will be there for the next turn in the campaign. That's the moment when Afghans will either prove themselves able to withstand a promised Taliban resurgence, or find themselves overwhelmed by seasoned Taliban fighters. "We're moving toward an increased special operations role," together with U.S. intelligence, Mulholland said, "whether it's counterterrorism-centric, or counterterrorism blended with counterinsurgency."

As out-going head of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Mulholland has been in charge of feeding a steady stream of troops to commanders in the field. He knows they need as many special operations troops as he can produce and send. Those special operations forces under his command include U.S. Army Rangers, known for their raiding operations against militant targets, and U.S. Special Forces Green Berets, whose stock in trade is teaching local forces to fight a common enemy so the U.S. doesn't have to.

A foundation for special-operations-style counterinsurgency is already under way - staffed primarily by the Green Berets - with the establishment of hundreds of sites in remote Afghan villages where the U.S. troops are paired with Afghan local tribesmen trained by the Americans, Mulholland explained. The program has been so successful in the eyes of NATO commanders that they've assigned other special operators like Navy SEALs to the mission, and even paired elite troops with conventional forces to stretch the numbers and cover more territory.

Senior U.S. officials have spoken of keeping a mix of 10,000 of both raiding and training special operations forces in Afghanistan, and drawing down to between 20,000 and 30,000 conventional forces to provide logistics and support. But at this point, the figures are as fuzzy as the future strategy.

Whatever happens with U.S. troops, intelligence officers know they will be a key component. A senior U.S. official tasked with mapping out their role envisioned a possible future in which Afghan forces are able to hold Kabul and other urban areas, but the Taliban comes back in remote valleys or even whole provinces.

In that event, the official said, CIA and special operations forces would continue to hunt al-Qaida in Taliban areas the Afghan forces can't secure. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss planning for sensitive operations. "If the CIA built an intelligence network that could provide special operations forces with targets, we could do the job," said Maj. Gen. Bennet S. Sacolick, who runs the U.S. Army's Special Warfare Center and School.

The only question will be which organization is in charge, and that will depend on the Afghan government, the senior U.S. official said. If Afghan authorities are comfortable with U.S. raiders continuing to operate openly, the special operations forces can lead, the official said. If they want a more covert presence, the CIA would lead, with special operation raiders working through them.

The other branch of special operations - the Green Berets and others Mulholland mentioned who specialize in training - would continue to support the Afghans in remote locations, trying to keep the Taliban from spreading. The notion of a pared down U.S. fighting force, consisting of a latticework of intelligence and special
operators, plus the far-flung units in the field, has spurred some criticism on Capitol Hill. "You cannot protect the United States' safety with counterterrorism waged from afar," said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's emerging threats panel. His concern is that the White House has paid too little attention to how special operations and intelligence will keep the Taliban from overwhelming Afghanistan 's remote terrain.

"I would like to know how many special operations forces they need, and how many conventional troops they propose to support them," he said, "and a rough time line." The smaller special operations footprint could work, if it's part of a larger tapestry of counterinsurgency efforts, said retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former commander of the Afghan campaign. "I believe direct action operations are only effective when part of a holistic strategy," McChrystal said in an interview. "That does not necessarily imply large U.S. forces or responsibility, but it must include a spectrum of efforts that addresses root causes, partners with indigenous governments and efforts, and approaches the causes as well as the symptoms on extremism and-or terrorism." In other words, diplomats and aid groups would have to replace the current military efforts at building Afghan government and services - and do it without a large footprint of U.S. forces to provide them security. The smaller numbers would also put the U.S. troops left behind at greater risk, officials concede, with fewer support troops to rush to the rescue.

That's the mission a group of elite special operators was on in August, flying into a remote valley to aid another group of U.S. raiders on the ground, when the Taliban shot down their Chinook helicopter, killing 38 U.S. and Afghan forces on board. Asked if it could happen again, Mulholland stopped and bowed his head, taking a long pause to think back to how it started. "From the beginning, we accepted that risk," Mulholland said, remembering the early days when he sent load after load of special
operations forces into Afghanistan, with no sure way to get them out. He paused again. "We still do."