State killers: American paramilitary
Written on the basis of Washington Post article which is written on the basis of book ”Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State”. In this book, reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin uncover the enormous size, shape, mission, and consequences of this invisible universe of over 1,300 government facilities in every state in America; nearly 2,000 outside companies used as contractors; and more than 850,000 people granted “Top Secret” security clearance. (Click below “Continue Reading …”)
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, ecretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level of obscurity that not even the CIA managed. The Navy SEALs are part of the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC, which has grown from a rarely used hostage rescue team into America’s secret army. They killed also Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May. Just a few people knew their command, based in Fayetteville, N.C., even existed. Sometime in 2007, JSOC started conducting cross-border operations into Iran from southern Iraq with the CIA. These operations included seizing members of Al-Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, as well as the pursuit, capture, and/or execution of high-value targets in the ”war on terror”. The Bush administration allegedly combined the CIA’s intelligence operations with JSOC covert military operations so that Congress would only partially see how the money was spent. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman Senator Joseph Biden (Delaware), informed United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the Bush Administration did not have the authority to send US troops on cross-border raids. Biden said, in his fight for power between president and congress, “I believe the present authorization granted the president to use force in Iraq does not cover that, and he does need congressional authority to do that. I just want to set that marker.” In any case, JSOC was established in 1980 on recommendation of Col. Charlie Beckwith, in the aftermath of the failure of Operation Eagle Claw. It is located at Pope Army Air Field and Fort Bragg in North Carolina, USA. JSOC also commands and controls the Special Mission Units (SMU) of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). The Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) is also under JSOC. The ISA collects specific target intelligence prior to SMU missions, and provides signals support, etc. during those missions. The ISA often operates under various cover names, the most recent one being Gray Fox. The army once maintained the ISA, but after the September 11 attacks the Pentagon shifted direct control to Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, NC. JSOC’s primary mission is believed to be identifying and destroying ”terrorists and terror cells” worldwide. JSOC has an excellent relationship with the CIA’s elite Special Activities Division (SAD) and the two forces often operate together.[12] The SAD’s Special Operations Group often selects their recruits from JSOC. According to a recent report in The Nation, JSOC, in tandem with Blackwater/Xe, has an ongoing drone program, along with snatch/grab/assassination operations, based in Karachi and conducted both in and outside of Pakistan. Joseph L. Votel is a Lieutenant General in the United States Army and the former Special Operations Command Chief of Staff. In June 2011, Votel succeeded Admiral William McRaven as the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command.
Two presidents and three secretaries of defense routinely have asked JSOC to mount intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which the United States was not at war, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria. “The CIA doesn’t have the size or the authority to do some of the things we can do,” said one JSOC operator. The president has also given JSOC the rare authority to select individuals for its kill list — and then to kill, rather than capture, them. Critics charge that this individual man-hunting mission amounts to assassination, a practice prohibited by U.S. law. JSOC’s list is not usually coordinated with the CIA, which maintains a similar, but shorter roster of names. Created in 1980 but reinvented in recent years, JSOC has grown from 1,800 troops prior to 9/11 to as many as 25,000, a number that fluctuates according to its mission. It has its own intelligence division, its own drones and reconnaissance planes, even its own dedicated satellites. It also has its own cyberwarriors. When JSOC officers are working in civilian government agencies or U.S. embassies abroad, which they do often, they dispense with uniforms, unlike their other military comrades. In combat, they wear no name or rank identifiers. They have hidden behind various nicknames: the Secret Army of Northern Virginia, Task Force Green, Task Force 11, Task Force 121. The unit takes its orders directly from the president or the secretary of defense and is managed and overseen by a military-only chain of command.
Under President George W. Bush, JSOC’s operations were rarely briefed to Congress in advance — and usually not afterward, either — because government lawyers considered them to be “traditional military activities” not requiring such notification. President Obama has taken the same legal view, but he has insisted that JSOC’s sensitive missions be briefed to select congressional leaders.
Although from 1980 JSOC showed that they are amateurs and they actions were not successful, they killed many civilians in Karakak, Afghanistan, on Sept. 16, 2003, Rumsfeld signed an executive order cementing JSOC as the center of the counterterrorism universe. It listed 15 countries and the activities permitted under various scenarios, and it gave the preapprovals required to carry them out. In Iraq and Afghanistan, JSOC action was granted without additional approval. In the other countries — among them Algeria, Iran, Malaysia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia and Syria — JSOC forces needed the tacit approval from the country involved or at least a sign-off from higher up on the American chain of command, for example attacks in Pakistan and Syria needed presidential sign-off. In the fall of 2003, JSOC got a new commander Brig. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. McChrystal believed he had “to slip out of the grip” of Washington’s suffocating bureaucracy, he told associates. He moved his headquarters to Balad Air Base, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, he coaxed the other intelligence agencies to help him out — the CIA presence grew to 100; the FBI and National Security Agency to a combined 80. He won their loyalty by exposing the guts of his operation to everyone involved. Then he gave access to it to JSOC’s bureaucratic rivals: the CIA, NSA, FBI and others. He also began salting every national security agency in Washington with his top commandos. In all, he deployed 75 officers to Washington agencies and 100 more around the world. They rotated every four months so none would become disconnected from combat. After he was promoted to commander of forces in Afghanistan. He and members of his inner circle made inappropriate comments about their civilian leaders in the presence of a Rolling Stone reporter. McChrystal offered to resign, and Obama quickly accepted. After McChrystal, William Harry McRaven became commander of JSOC, from March 2008 to August 2011. JSOC in Afghanistan 2008th performed 550 operations and executed about 1,000 people, and the following year, in 464 operations, killing 400 to 500 people. In Iraq, in the summer of 2005 they made 300 actions per month. There is confidential report, made before the famous incident with the footage from the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib, that warned that poorly trained interrogators JSOC beat and tortured detainees, and even imprisoned mothers, wives and daughters of those that are not found at home.
15 members of DEVGRU’s Gold Squadron (former name SEAL Team Six (ST6)) were among the 38 killed on Friday, August 6, 2011 in Maidan Wardak province, Afghanistan, when a Chinook helicopter flown by B Company, 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment, was shot down by a Taliban-fired Rocket-propelled grenade; the crash wiped out an entire troop of the squadron. The personnel killed in the helicopter crash are said to have belonged to an “immediate reaction force” that were on route to intercept a group of Taliban who were escaping the area following an operation by United States Army Rangers. No member of the Bin Laden raid team was among the dead. It was the largest single loss of U.S. life since the beginning of the 2001 Afghan War, and is the largest single loss ever suffered by the SEAL community.
A lot of information about secret network of the US government and its contractors you can find here (Check the Menu ”Featured Companies”): http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/network/#/overall/most-activity/
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