Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi (15 page)

At half-past midnight, the Task Force commander issued a warning order for SEALs to deploy an IRF (Immediate Reaction Force) in support of the Rangers, to capture or kill Qari Tahir and his men. As the situation on the ground evolved, he decided to expand the mission from seventeen to thirty-two men, figuring there could be more Taliban, and because of the probability the SEALs would have to fight their way out of the valley during daylight hours. When
Extortion 17
took off, thirty-eight men were on board: seventeen Navy SEALs, five U.S. Navy special operations support personnel, three U.S. Air Force special tactics airmen, five U.S. Army Reserve airmen (who flew the aircraft), seven Afghan commandos, an Afghan civilian interpreter, and a working military dog. None of them would survive.

Instead of dropping the thirty-eight-man IRF at a known landing zone a mile or so from the fighting, the mission commander chose a hot site with a fifty-foot
qalat
(tower) at one end, and groups of Taliban on two sides. The shooters were waiting in the
qalat
. According to other pilots on the mission that night, they fired two, possibly three projectiles at the lumbering chopper when it was two hundred meters away. The second one hit
Extortion 17
in the aft rotor, just above the engine, bringing it crashing to the ground in five seconds from an altitude of approximately 150 feet. According to the report, the chopper burst into flames as soon as it hit the ground.

“They told us the bodies were so badly burned that they had to be cremated,” recalled Charlie Strange. “But in the pictures I was given later, the only visible sign of damage to my son was his left ankle. He was holding his sidearm as if he was just about to fire. He went down fighting—and no one told me.”

Aaron Vaughn was also found intact and unburned on the ground, although every bone in his body was crushed from the fall. And yet the military told the Vaughns the same story about having to cremate the bodies because they were burned beyond recognition.

“There were so many things that just weren’t right about that mission,” Billy Vaughn said. “We want answers.”

I accompanied Billy and Karen Vaughn; Charlie and Mary Ann Strange; attorney Larry Klayman and his assistant, Dina James, in June and July 2013 to take their story to Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Representative Jason Chaffetz, his National Security Subcommittee chairman. They pledged to help the families get answers to some of the disturbing anomalies of the mission that ended in the catastrophic shoot-down of
Extortion 17
.

The congressmen wanted to know why were the SEALs put on a CH-47D, a chopper with technology dating from the 1960s, flown by U.S. Army Reservists, and not the MH-47G Special Forces Chinook they normally used. The SpecOps version came with a Thunder package of twin fuselage-mounted Gatling guns, side-door M240 machine guns, integrated night vision (FLIR), and upgraded engines so it could fly in low, hot, and hard into a hostile landing zone.

Normally, Army Special Operations Aviation (ARSOA) flight crews drove the SEALs and other special operators into battle. But
Extortion 17
was flown by U.S. Army Reservists who didn’t train with the SEALs, were unfamiliar with the terrain, and who loitered over the landing zone for over six minutes as the Taliban lurked below. So lumbering was their approach that the AH64 Apache pilots flying backup behind them started to make fun of their flying skills just seconds before they were hit.

It wasn’t as if the Task Force commanders weren’t aware of the vulnerability of the older Chinooks. (Representative Issa called them “Sh-thooks,” a flashback to his time in the U.S. Army at the end of the Vietnam era.) Just forty-five days before the downing of
Extortion 17
, two CH-47Ds were forced to abort an insertion mission in the Tangi Valley when they were engaged by Taliban with RPGs. They were replaced by an ARSOA MH-47G Chinook a few hours later. Although the Taliban also fired RPGs at the MH-47G from multiple locations, the ARSOA pilots successfully inserted a Special Forces team. “[N
]o
damage was reported to the aircraft,” General Colt noted in his report.
12

“We were scared to death every time we had to go out in those choppers,” an Army Ranger who was present at the crash site that night told the Vaughns. “Everyone knows they’re not safe. They can’t avert attack like the MH-47Gs. We knew our lives were in danger every time we stepped into one.

“The MH-47 flies low and fast, like a roller-coaster ride, due to its quick, agile abilities in air,” he explained. “The conventional CH-47Ds fly really high and slow with no evasive maneuvers. They’re a huge target up there; like a train coming in for landing. They do six to eight pushups before landing, while the MH-47 burns straight in.”

Even more disturbing: As
Extortion 17
was preparing to take off, the seven Afghan commandos were removed from the aircraft and replaced with seven other Afghans, without any explanation. So abruptly were they replaced that no one changed the flight manifest, so that when the Afghan commander sent out condolences after the crash, he notified the wrong families and had to call them a second time to tell them their sons were still alive. “A SEAL commander told me later this was a ‘big, big deal,’ ” Billy Vaughn said.

A special operations officer who had been on the base that night told the Vaughns that the first seven Afghans had refused to board the aircraft, as if they had known something was about to happen. Why were unvetted Afghan commandos even allowed on the same aircraft as our Navy SEALs? With the rise of green-on-blue attacks carried out by Afghans against NATO troops, the SEALs were always on guard around them. As Aaron once told his parents, the Afghans were “loyal only to the highest bidder.”

Brigadier General Colt and his team never interviewed any of the Afghan commanders when compiling their 1,300-page report. While no reason for this appeared in the report, the families were told by General Colt and others it was to protect the “sensitivities” of the Afghan government.

Few Americans realize that, since 2009, the Afghan high command has had veto power over coalition military operations, to the point of being able to choose targets and cancel specific operations ahead of time. Before any combat mission could get approved, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) briefed the Operational Coordination Group (OCG), which was made up of the leaders of the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police Force, and the Afghan National Director for Security. Under a special agreement between President Obama and President Hamid Karzai, no member of the OCG could be vetted by the United States. “Our intel men fear this group more than any other,” Karen Vaughn said. “Specifically, they fear Pakistani infiltration.”

Was it really a lucky hit with an RPG that brought down
Extortion 17
? The threat of shoulder-fired missiles was on every commander’s mind in Afghanistan. The WikiLeaks release of the Afghan war logs showed that NATO spokesmen did their best to bury field reports of MANPADS use, claiming falsely that NATO aircraft were being downed by RPGs and automatic weapons fire, not missiles.

Brigadier General Colt spent a considerable amount of time interviewing intelligence officers (J2, or S2, depending on the unit) who were tracking Taliban arms-smuggling routes from Iran and elsewhere, to determine whether a Stinger or other MANPADS had brought down
Extortion 17
. The S2 and his assistant at Bagram Airfield, just north of Kabul, had the lead for conducting threat assessments for NATO aircraft in Afghanistan. They told Colt there was little likelihood of a shoulder-fired missile being present in the Tangi Valley, because the weapons were “very expensive” and difficult to move because o
f
the terrain. “[F]or an insurgent leader to have a MANPADS, usually there’s a lot of [redacted] reporting that goes along with it, because, for lack of a better analogy, a forty-year-old guy in America buys a Viper, his neighbors are going to know about it. That’s kind of what a MANPADS is in [redacted]. It is a status symbol. It is significant. It is expensive, and it means that you are the leader of that valley.”
13

Of course, the high-value target the Navy SEALs were supposed to engage that night, Qari Tahir,
was
the leader of the Tangi Valley Taliban. If anyone was going to have a MANPADS—the Afghan equivalent of the Dodge Viper—it would be him. However, that went unmentioned by the S2 or by Colt in the interview.

Heat-seeking missiles have a different signature than unguided RPGs. With MANPADS “you see a different kind of sparkle, smoke trails, corkscrews,” the S2 said. Because of this, “we believe the event for EXTORTION was not a MANPADS. It just—it doesn’t fit the MANPADS profile,” he said.

Perhaps. But the pilots of the chase chopper and the gunship both reported seeing a very different type of signature, a blinding flash, which was consistent with a heat-seeking missile, not an RPG. It was possible that because of the very close range at which the missile was fired and the slow speed of
Extortion 17
(58 mph), the missile had no time or need to change direction to hit its target. It could have missed the engine intake by inches and hit the aft rotor blade.

I asked a senior Special Forces officer who has decades of combat experience to review the after-action report with me. He came away convinced that
Extortion 17
was hit by a Stinger or possibly a Russian-made SA-24.

He also was made suspicious by the cremation of Aaron Vaughn, Michael Strange, and the other SEALs, who apparently survived the initial impact and were found dead in defensive positions. “Now, perhaps I am behind the times, but we have
never
cremated the remains of the dead,” this officer said. “We always put them in a coffin with a seal that said ‘Remains NOT viewable’ and sent an officer along to make sure they did not open the coffin. When there were not enough remains we added lead bars to the coffin. I know this because I participated in several burials like this.”
14

Billy Vaughn still burned with anger when he recalled the visit he and his wife received from Admiral William McRaven, the recently appointed commander of U.S. Special Forces Command. “He spent three hours with us, and repeatedly stood up for Obama. At one point, when we were saying something he didn’t like, he pounded his fist on the table. ‘President Obama is not just a good commander-in-chief. I know this man. He’s a good
man
. He got us out of Iraq and is getting us out of Afghanistan, whereas Bush got us into both wars.’

“He also tried to tell us that the CH-47D was ‘just as capable’ as the MH-47. We already knew that was bullsh-t,” Billy told me. “I told him in the end to get out of my house.”

The families didn’t learn of the ultimate insult from their government until later, and that’s what convinced some of them to retain attorney Larry Klayman to bring a lawsuit against Vice President Biden and CIA Director Panetta for the illegal disclosures of classified information that they believe cost the lives of their sons.

“When they greeted us at Dover, they gave us a DVD of the ramp ceremony back at Bagram,” Karen recalls. “It took me a while before I was able to watch it. But when I did, I couldn’t believe what I saw.”

In the video, a Muslim cleric is invited to speak over the dead bodies, American and Afghan, whose remains were commingled. “I wanted to know why there was a Muslim cleric at my son’s funeral. I wanted to know what he said.”

Karen told me she sent the DVD out to a professional translator, then had the translation checked by seven other Arabic-language experts, including people in government, because she couldn’t believe what the cleric had said. “He damned my son to eternal hellfire in the name of Allah,” Karen said.

Every time the Vaughns visited with members of Congress, they insisted that they watch the two-minute video of the cleric’s remarks, which included standard Koranic verses used at Muslim funerals.

Amen, I shelter in Allah from the devil who has been cast with stones. [During the Haj in Mecca, one of the rituals is to cast stones against a pillar representing the devil.] In the name of Allah, the merciful forgiver. The companions of the fire [the sinners and the infidels who are fodder for hell fire] are not equal with the companions of heaven. The companions of heaven [Muslims] are the winners. Had we sent this Koran to a mountain, you would have seen the mountain prostrated in fear of Allah. [Mocking the God of Moses as being weak.] Such examples are what we present to the people, to the people so that they would think. [Repent and convert to Islam.] Blessing are to Allah, the God of glory. And peace be upon the messengers [prophets] and thanks be to Allah the Lord of both universes [mankind and Jinn].
15

There it was, right out in the open. The U.S. military invited a Muslim preacher to damn the souls of U.S. troops killed in battle, and to mock them. That has got to be a first.

“When I met Barack Obama at the ramp ceremony at Dover Air Force Base, he came up to me and put his hands on my shoulders,” Strange said. “And he said, ‘Michael changed the way America lived.’ So I grabbed the president of the United States by the shoulders and said, ‘I don’t need to know about my son. I need to know what
happened
to my son.’ ”

There is often tension between the parents of SpecOps warriors and the widows of their sons, who are worried about survivor benefits. Despite that, Karen Vaughn and Michael Strange said they had received phone calls from both active-duty and retired members of SEAL Team 6, “thanking us for what we were doing.”

The downing of
Extortion 17
showed just how dangerously misguided was the Obama policy of giving the Afghan government advance notice of U.S. Special Forces operations, without vetting the recipients of that intelligence or restricting it to a need-to-know standard. More U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan during the first two years of the Obama administration than during the entire eight years of George W. Bush. The rules of engagement in Afghanistan—changed twice under Obama to make it more difficult for U.S. troops to defend themselves—were getting American soldiers killed.