[News] America’s Black-Ops Blackout - Unraveling the Secrets of the Military’s Secret Military
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jan 7 10:31:43 EST 2014
*America’s Black-Ops Blackout*
*Unraveling the Secrets of the Military’s Secret Military*
By Nick Turse <http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse>
*http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175790/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_special_ops_goes_global/*
“Dude, I don’t need to play these stupid games. I know what you’re
trying to do.” With that, Major Matthew Robert Bockholt hung up on me.
More than a month before, I had called U.S. Special Operations
Command (SOCOM) with a series of basic questions: In how many
countries were U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed in 2013? Are
manpower levels set to expand to 72,000 in 2014? Is SOCOM still
aiming for growth rates of 3%-5% per year? How many training
exercises did the command carry out in 2013? Basic stuff.
And for more than a month, I waited for answers. I called. I left
messages. I emailed. I waited some more. I started to get the
feeling that Special Operations Command didn’t want me to know what
its Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs and Delta Force commandos
-- the men who operate in the hottest of hotspots and most remote
locales around the world -- were doing.
Then, at the last moment, just before my filing deadline, Special
Operations Command got back to me with an answer so incongruous,
confusing, and contradictory that I was glad I had given up on SOCOM
and tried to figure things out for myself.
*/Click here to see a larger version
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/socommap4_large.jpg>/*
/U.S. Special Operations Forces around the world, 2012-2013 (key
below article) ©2014 TomDispatch ©Google/
I started with a blank map that quickly turned into a global
pincushion. It didn’t take long before every continent but
Antarctica was bristling with markers indicating special operations
forces’ missions, deployments, and interactions with foreign
military forces in 2012-2013. With that, the true size and scope of
the U.S. military’s secret military began to come into focus. It
was, to say the least, vast.
A review of open source information reveals that in 2012 and 2013,
U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) were likely deployed to -- or
training, advising, or operating with the personnel of -- more than
100 foreign countries. And that’s probably an undercount. In
2011, then-SOCOM spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told TomDispatch
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175426/> that Special Operations
personnel were annually sent to 120 countries around the world. They
were in, that is, about 60% of the nations on the planet. “We’re
deployed in a number of locations,” was as specific as Bockholt
would ever get when I talked to him in the waning days of 2013. And
when SOCOM did finally get back to me with an eleventh hour answer,
the number offered made almost no sense.
Despite the lack of official cooperation, an analysis by TomDispatch
reveals SOCOM to be a command on the make with an already sprawling
reach. As Special Operations Command chief Admiral William McRaven
<http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio.asp?bioID=401> put it in
/SOCOM 2020/, his blueprint for the future, it has ambitious
aspirations to create “a Global SOF network of like-minded
interagency allies and partners.” In other words, in that future
now only six years off, it wants to be everywhere.
*The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military*
Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran (in
which eight U.S. service members died), U.S. Special Operations
Command was established in 1987. Made up of units from all the
service branches, SOCOM is tasked with carrying out Washington’s
most specialized and secret missions, including assassinations
<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle?currentPage=all>,
counterterrorist raids, special reconnaissance, unconventional
warfare, psychological operations, foreign troop training, and
weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.
In the post-9/11 era, the command has grown steadily. With about
33,000 personnel in 2001, it is reportedly
<http://www.defensenews.com/article/20131008/DEFREG02/310080014> on
track to reach 72,000 in 2014. (About half this number are called,
in the jargon of the trade, “badged operators” -- SEALs, Rangers,
Special Operations Aviators, Green Berets -- while the rest are
support personnel.) Funding for the command has also jumped
exponentially as SOCOM’s baseline budget tripled from $2.3 billion
to $6.9 billion between 2001 and 2013. If you add in supplemental
funding, it had actually* *more than* *quadrupled to $10.4 billion.
Not surprisingly, personnel deployments abroad skyrocketed from
4,900 “man-years” -- as the command puts it -- in 2001 to 11,500 in
2013. About 11,000
<http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/lists/posts/post.aspx?ID=1167>
special operators are now working abroad at any one time and on any
given day they are in 70
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/us/politics/admiral-mcraven-charts-a-new-path-for-special-operations-command.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&>
to 80 countries, though the /New York Times/ reported that,
according to statistics provided to them by SOCOM, during one week
in March 2013 that number reached 92
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/us/politics/admiral-mcraven-charts-a-new-path-for-special-operations-command.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&>.
*The Global SOF Network*
Last year, Admiral McRaven, who previously headed the Joint Special
Operations Command, or JSOC
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/02/jsoc-ambinder/> -- a
clandestine sub-command that specializes in tracking and killing
suspected terrorists -- touted his vision for special ops
globalization. In a statement to the House Armed Services
Committee, he said:
“USSOCOM is enhancing its global network of SOF to support our
interagency and international partners in order to gain expanded
situational awareness of emerging threats and opportunities. The
network enables small, persistent presence in critical locations,
and facilitates engagement where necessary or appropriate...”
In translation this means that SOCOM is weaving a complex web of
alliances with government agencies at home and militaries abroad to
ensure that it’s at the center of every conceivable global hotspot
and power center. In fact, Special Operations Command has turned
the planet into a giant battlefield, divided into many discrete
fronts: the self-explanatory SOCAFRICA; the sub-unified command of
U.S. Central Command in the Middle East SOCCENT; the European
contingent SOCEUR; SOCKOR, which is devoted strictly to Korea;
SOCPAC, which covers the rest of the Asia-Pacific region; and
SOCSOUTH, which conducts special ops missions in Central and South
America and the Caribbean, as well as the globe-trotting JSOC.
Since 2002, SOCOM has also been authorized to create its own Joint
Task Forces, a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant
commands like CENTCOM. These include Joint Special Operations Task
Force-Philippines, 500-600 personnel dedicated to supporting
<http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/has-operation-enduring-freedom-philippines-been-a-success>
counterterrorist operations by Filipino allies against insurgent
groups like Abu Sayyaf.
A similar mouthful of an entity is the NATO Special Operations
Component Command-Afghanistan/Special Operations Joint Task
Force-Afghanistan, which conducts operations, according to SOCOM,
“to enable the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the
Afghan National Security Force (ANSF), and the Government of the
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) to provide the Afghan people
a secure and stable environment and to prevent insurgent activities
from threatening the authority and sovereignty of GIRoA.” Last
year, U.S.-allied Afghan President Hamid Karzai had a different
assessment of the “U.S. special force stationed in Wardak province,”
which he accused <http://president.gov.af/en/news/17740> of
“harassing, annoying, torturing, and even murdering innocent people.”
According to the latest statistics made available by ISAF, from
October 2012 through March 2013, U.S. and allied forces were
involved in 1,464 special operations in Afghanistan, including 167
with U.S. or coalition forces in the lead and 85 that were
unilateral ISAF operations. U.S. Special Operations forces are also
involved in everything from mentoring lightly armed local security
forces under the Village Stability Operations initiative to the
training of heavily armed and well-equipped elite Afghan forces --
one of whose U.S.-trained officers defected
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/10393038/Afghan-special-forces-commando-defects-to-insurgents-taking-weapons-with-him.html>
to the insurgency in the fall.
In addition to task forces, there are also Special Operations
Command Forward (SOC FWD) elements which, according to the military,
“shape and coordinate special operations forces security cooperation
and engagement in support of theater special operations command,
geographic combatant command, and country team goals and
objectives.” These light footprint teams -- including SOC FWD
Pakistan, SOC FWD Yemen, and SOC FWD Lebanon -- offer training and
support to local elite troops in foreign hotspots. In Lebanon, for
instance, this has meant counterterrorism training for Lebanese
Special Ops forces, as well as assistance to the Lebanese Special
Forces School to develop indigenous trainers to mentor other
Lebanese military personnel.
*/Click here to see a larger version
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/soccent_large.jpg>/*
/Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) briefing slide by Col.
Joe Osborne, showing SOC FWD elements/
SOCOM’s reach and global ambitions go further still. TomDispatch’s
analysis of McRaven’s first two full years in command reveals a
tremendous number of overseas operations. In places like Somalia
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/06/us-special-forces-libya-somalia>
and Libya
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/06/us-special-forces-libya-somalia>,
elite troops have carried out clandestine commando raids
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24423943>. In others, they
have used airpower
<http://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-so-far-about-drone-strikes>
to hunt, target, and kill
<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304723304577366251852418174>
suspected militants. Elsewhere, they have waged an information war
using online propaganda
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/07/24/military-propaganda-information-operations-gao/2583837/>.
And almost everywhere they have been at work building up and forging
ever-tighter ties with foreign militaries through training missions
and exercises.
“A lot of what we will do as we go forward in this force is build
partner capacity,” McRaven said
<http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=121167> at the
Ronald Reagan Library in November, noting that NATO partners as well
as allies in the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America “are
absolutely essential to how we’re doing business.”
In March 2013, for example, Navy SEALs conducted joint training
exercises
<http://www.tni.mil.id/view-46735-kopaska-us-navy-seal-gelar-flash-iron-13-01-jcet.html>
with Indonesian frogmen. In April and May, U.S. Special Operations
personnel joined members of the Malawi Defense Forces for Exercise
Epic Guardian. Over three weeks, 1,000 troops engaged in
marksmanship, small unit tactics, close quarters combat training,
and other activities across three countries -- Djibouti, Malawi, and
the Seychelles.
In May, American special operators took part
<http://www.vm.ee/?q=en/node/17371> in Spring Storm, the Estonian
military’s largest annual training exercise. That same month,
members of the Peruvian and U.S. special operations forces engaged
in joint training missions aimed at trading tactics and improving
their ability to conduct joint operations. In July, Green Berets
from the Army’s 20th Special Forces Group spent several weeks in
Trinidad and Tobago working with members of that tiny nation’s
Special Naval Unit and Special Forces Operation Detachment. That
Joint Combined Exchange Training exercise, conducted as part of
SOCSOUTH’s Theater Security Cooperation program, saw the Americans
and their local counterparts take part in pistol and rifle
instruction and small unit tactical exercises.
In September, according
<http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130930/DEFREG03/309300033> to
media reports, U.S. Special Operations forces joined elite troops
from the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries
-- Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand,
Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and Cambodia -- as well as
their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea,
China, India, and Russia for a US-Indonesian joint-funded
counterterrorism exercise held at a training center in Sentul, West
Java.
Tactical training was, however, just part of the story. In March
2013, for example, experts from the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special
Warfare Center and School hosted a week-long working group with top
planners from the Centro de Adiestramiento de las Fuerzas Especiales
-- Mexico’s Special Warfare Center -- to aid them in developing
their own special forces doctrine.
In October, members of the Norwegian Special Operations Forces
traveled to SOCOM's state-of-the-art Wargame Center at its
headquarters on MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to refine crisis
response procedures for hostage rescue operations. “NORSOF and
Norwegian civilian leadership regularly participate in national
field training exercises focused on a scenario like this,” said
Norwegian Lieutenant Colonel Petter Hellesen. “What was unique about
this exercise was that we were able to gather so many of the
Norwegian senior leadership and action officers, civilian and
military, in one room with their U.S counterparts.”
MacDill is, in fact, fast becoming a worldwide special ops hub,
according
<http://tbo.com/list/military-news/tampa-to-become-epicenter-of-international-special-operations-coordination-20131018/>
to a report by the /Tampa Tribune/. This past fall, SOCOM quietly
started up an International Special Operations Forces Coordination
Center that provides long-term residencies for senior-level black
ops liaisons from around the world. Already, representatives from
10 nations had joined the command with around 24 more slated to come
on board in the next 12-18 months, per McRaven’s global vision.
In the coming years, more and more interactions between U.S. elite
forces and their foreign counterparts will undoubtedly take place in
Florida, but most will likely still occur -- as they do today --
overseas. TomDispatch’s analysis of official government documents
and news releases as well as press reports indicates that U.S.
Special Operations forces were reportedly deployed to or involved
with the militaries of 106 nations around the world during 2012-2013.
For years, the command has claimed that divulging the names of these
countries would upset foreign allies and endanger U.S. personnel.
SOCOM’s Bockholt insisted to me that merely offering the total
number would do the same. “You understand that there is information
about our military… that is contradictory to reporting,” he told
me. “There’s certain things we can’t release to the public for the
safety of our service members both at home and abroad. I’m not sure
why you’d be interested in reporting that.”
In response, I asked how a mere number could jeopardize the lives of
Special Ops personnel, and he responded, “When you work with the
partners we work with in the different countries, each country is
very particular.” He refused to elaborate further on what this
meant or how it pertained to a simple count of countries. Why SOCOM
eventually offered me a number, given these supposed dangers, was
never explained.
*Bringing the War Home*
This year, Special Operations Command has plans to make major
inroads into yet another country -- the United States. The
establishment of SOCNORTH in 2014, according to the command, is
intended to help “defend North America by outpacing all threats,
maintaining faith with our people, and supporting them in their
times of greatest need.” Under the auspices of U.S. Northern
Command, SOCNORTH will have responsibility for the U.S., Canada,
Mexico, and portions of the Caribbean.
While Congressional pushback
<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&sid=cp113ZRP6P&r_n=hr113.113&dbname=cp113&&sel=TOC_117731&>
has thus far thwarted
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/us/politics/admiral-mcraven-charts-a-new-path-for-special-operations-command.html?_r=0>
Admiral McRaven’s efforts to create a SOCOM satellite headquarters
for the more than 300 special operators working in Washington, D.C.
(at the cost of $10 million annually), the command has nonetheless
stationed support teams and liaisons all over the capital in a bid
to embed itself ever more deeply inside the Beltway. “I have folks
in every agency here in Washington, D.C. -- from the CIA, to the
FBI, to the National Security Agency, to the National Geospatial
Agency, to the Defense Intelligence Agency,” McRaven said
<http://www.wilsoncenter.org/dialogue-program/wilson-forum-us-special-operations-2020>
during a panel discussion at Washington’s Wilson Center in 2013.
Referring to the acronyms of the many agencies with which SOCOM has
forged ties, McRaven continued: “If there are three letters, and in
some cases four, I have a person there. And they have had a
reciprocal agreement with us. I have somebody in my headquarters at
Tampa.” Speaking at Ronald Reagan Library in November, he put the
number of agencies where SOCOM is currently embedded
<http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=121167> at 38.
“Given the importance of interagency collaboration, USSOCOM is
placing greater emphasis on its presence in the National Capital
Region to better support coordination and decision making with
interagency partners. Thus, USSOCOM began to consolidate its
presence in the NCR [National Capitol Region]* *in early 2012,”
McRaven told the House Armed Services Committee last year.
One unsung SOCOM partner is U.S. AID
<http://www.usaid.gov/who-we-are>, the government agency devoted to
providing civilian foreign aid to countries around the world whose
mandate includes the protection of human rights, the prevention of
armed conflicts, the provision of humanitarian assistance, and the
fostering of “good will abroad.” At a July 2013 conference
<http://ifpafletcherconference.com/2013/>, Beth Cole, the director
of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation at U.S. AID,
explained just how her agency was now quietly aiding the military’s
secret military.
“In Yemen, for example, our mission director has SVTCs [secure video
teleconferences] with SOCOM personnel on a regular basis now. That
didn’t occur two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, five
years ago,” Cole said, according to a transcript of the event. But
that was only the start. “My office at U.S. AID supports SOF
pre-deployment training in preparation for missions throughout the
globe... I’m proud that my office and U.S. AID have been providing
training support to several hundred Army, Navy, and Marine Special
Operations personnel who have been regularly deploying to
Afghanistan, and we will continue to do that.”
Cole noted that, in Afghanistan, U.S. AID personnel were sometimes
working hand-in-hand on the Village Stability Operation initiative
with Special Ops forces. In certain areas, she said, “we can
dual-hat some of our field program officers as LNOs [liaison
officers] in those Joint Special Operations task forces and be able
to execute the development work that we need to do alongside of the
Special Operations Forces.” She even suggested taking a close look
at whether this melding of her civilian agency and special ops might
prove to be a model for operations elsewhere in the world.
Cole also mentioned that her office would be training “a senior
person” working for McRaven, the man about to “head the SOF element
Lebanon” -- possibly a reference to the shadowy SOC FWD Lebanon.
U.S. AID would, she said, serve as a facilitator in that country,
making “sure that he has those relationships that he needs to be
able to deal with what is a very, very, very serious problem for our
government and for the people of that region.”
U.S. AID is also serving as a facilitator closer to home. Cole
noted that her agency was sending advisors to SOCOM headquarters in
Florida and had “arranged meetings for [special operators] with
experts, done roundtables for them, immersed them in the environment
that we understand before they go out to the mission area and
connect them with people on the ground.” All of this points to
another emerging trend: SOCOM’s invasion of the civilian sphere.
In remarks before the House Armed Services Committee, Admiral
McRaven noted that his Washington operation, the SOCOM NCR,
“conducts outreach to academia, non-governmental organizations,
industry, and other private sector organizations to get their
perspective on complex issues affecting SOF.” Speaking at the
Wilson Center, he was even more blunt: “[W]e also have liaison
officers with industry and with academia... We put some of our best
and brightest in some of the academic institutions so we can
understand what academia is thinking about.”
*SOCOM’s Information Warfare*
Not content with a global presence in the physical world, SOCOM has
also taken to cyberspace where it operates
<http://www.thetimesherald.com/usatoday/article/3443537> the Trans
Regional Web Initiative
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/07/24/military-propaganda-information-operations-gao/2583837/>,
a network of 10 propaganda websites that are run by various
combatant commands and made to look like legitimate news outlets.
These shadowy sites -- including KhabarSouthAsia.com
<http://khabarsouthasia.com/bn?change_locale=true>, Magharebia
<http://magharebia.com/ar/resources/awi/resource_centre/countries/tunisia>
which targets North Africa, an effort aimed at the Middle East known
as Al-Shorfa.com <http://al-shorfa.com/ar?change_locale=true>, and
another targeting Latin America called Infosurhoy.com -- state only
in fine print that they are “sponsored by” the U.S. military.
Last June, the Senate Armed Services Committee called out
<http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&sid=cp113DzuqB&r_n=sr044.113&dbname=cp113&&sel=TOC_271971&>
the Trans Regional Web Initiative for “excessive” costs while
stating
<http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-113srpt44/pdf/CRPT-113srpt44.pdf>
that the “effectiveness of the websites is questionable and the
performance metrics do not justify the expense.” In November, SOCOM
announced that it was nonetheless seeking to identify industry
partners who, under the Initiative, could potentially “develop new
websites tailored to foreign audiences.”
Just as SOCOM is working to influence audiences abroad, it is also
engaged in stringent information control at home -- at least when it
comes to me. Major Bockholt made it clear that SOCOM objected to a
2011 article <http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175426/> of mine about
U.S. Special Operations forces. “Some of that stuff was
inconsistent with actual facts,” he told me. I asked what exactly
was inconsistent. “Some of the stuff you wrote about JSOC… I think
I read some information about indiscriminate killing or things like
that.”
I knew right away just the quote he was undoubtedly referring to --
a mention of the Joint Special Operations Command’s overseas
kill/capture campaign as “an almost industrial-scale
counterterrorism killing machine.” Bockholt said that it was indeed
“one quote of concern.” The only trouble: I didn’t say it. It was,
as I stated very plainly in the piece, the assessment given
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kill-capture/what-is-kill-capture/>
by John Nagl, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former
counterinsurgency adviser to now-retired general and former CIA
director David Petraeus.
Bockholt offered no further examples of inconsistencies. I asked if
he challenged my characterization of any information from an
interview I conducted with then-SOCOM spokesman Colonel Tim Nye. He
did not. Instead, he explained that SOCOM had issues with my work
in general. “As we look at the characterization of your writing,
overall, and I know you’ve had some stuff on Vietnam [an apparent
reference to my bestselling book, /Kill Anything That Moves: The
Real American War in Vietnam/
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250045061/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>]
and things like that -- because of your style, we have to be very
particular on how we answer your questions because of how you tend
to use that information.” Bockholt then asked if I was
anti-military. I responded that I hold all subjects that I cover to
a high standard.
Bockholt next took a verbal swipe at the website where I’m managing
editor, TomDispatch.com <http://www.tomdispatch.com/>. Given
Special Operations Command’s penchant for dabbling in dubious new
sites, I was struck when he said that TomDispatch -- which has
published original news, analysis, and commentary for more than a
decade and won
<http://www.utne.com/media/2013-utne-media-awards-winners.aspx#axzz2Vd2uaOHD>
the 2013 Utne Media Award for “best political coverage” -- was not a
“real outlet.” It was, to me, a daring position to take when
SOCOM’s shadowy Middle Eastern /news /site Al-Shorfa.com
<http://al-shorfa.com/ar?change_locale=true> actually carries a
disclaimer that it “cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information
provided.”
With my deadline looming, I was putting the finishing touches on
this article when an email arrived from Mike Janssen of SOCOM Public
Affairs. It was -- finally -- a seemingly simple answer to what
seemed like an astonishingly straightforward question asked a more
than a month before: What was the total number of countries in which
Special Operations forces were deployed in 2013? Janssen was
concise. His answer: 80.
How, I wondered, could that be? In the midst of McRaven’s Global
SOF network initiative, could SOCOM have scaled back their
deployments from 120 in 2011 to just 80 last year? And if Special
Operations forces were deployed in 92 nations during just one week
in 2013, according to official statistics provided
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/us/politics/admiral-mcraven-charts-a-new-path-for-special-operations-command.html?_r=2&&pagewanted=all>
to the /New York Times/, how could they have been present in 12
fewer countries for the entire year? And why, in his March 2013
posture statement to the House Armed Services Committee, would
Admiral McRaven mention "annual deployments to over 100 countries?"
With minutes to spare, I called Mike Janssen for a clarification.
“I don’t have any information on that,” he told me and asked me to
submit my question in writing -- precisely what I had done more than
a month before in an effort to get a timely response to this
straightforward and essential question.
Today, Special Operations Command finds itself at a crossroads. It
is attempting to influence populations overseas, while at home
trying to keep Americans in the dark about its activities; expanding
its reach, impact, and influence, while working to remain deep in
the shadows; conducting operations all over the globe, while
professing only to be operating in “a number of locations”; claiming
worldwide deployments have markedly dropped in the last year, when
evidence
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/us/politics/admiral-mcraven-charts-a-new-path-for-special-operations-command.html?_r=2&&pagewanted=all>
suggests otherwise
<http://aerospace-defense.frost-multimedia-wire.com/brad-curran/dod-socom>.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Bockholt said cryptically before
he hung up on me -- as if the continuing questions of a reporter
trying to get answers to basic information after a month of waiting
were beyond the pale. In the meantime, whatever Special Operations
Command is trying to do globally and at home, Bockholt and others at
SOCOM are working to keep it as secret as possible.
/Nick Turse is the managing editor of //TomDispatch.com/
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/>/ and a fellow at the Nation
Institute. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in
the /New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/opinion/for-america-life-was-cheap-in-vietnam.html?_r=0>/,
/Los Angeles Times
<http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/24/opinion/la-oe-turse-afghanistan-and-vietnam-20120424>,
/the/ Nation <http://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-book-club>,
/on the/ /BBC/ <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23427726>, /and
//regularly/
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175635/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_a_war_victim%27s_question_only_you_can_answer/>/
at //TomDispatch.// He is the author most recently of the /New York
Times /bestseller /Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War
in Vietnam
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250045061/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>/
(just out in paperback). You can catch his conversation with Bill
Moyers about that book by //clicking here/
<http://billmoyers.com/segment/nick-turse-describes-the-real-vietnam-war/>/.
/
*Key to the Map of **U.S. Special Operations Forces around the
world, 2012-2013*
*Red markers: *U.S. Special Operations Forces deployment in 2013.
*Blue markers: *U.S. Special Operations Forces working
with/training/advising/conducting operations with indigenous troops
in the U.S. or a third country during 2013.
*Purple markers: *U.S. Special Operations Forces deployment in 2012.
*Yellow markers: *U.S. Special Operations Forces working
with/training/advising/conducting operations with indigenous troops
in the U.S. or a third country during 2012.
/Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch> or Tumblr
<http://tomdispatch.tumblr.com/>. Check out the newest Dispatch
Book, Ann Jones’s /They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From
America’s Wars -- The Untold Story
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>/./
Copyright 2013 Nick Turse
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
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