Call Sign Extortion 17 (22 page)

Chapter 36

The Disappearing Black Box: Further Evidence of Inconsistencies and Cover-­Up

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Extortion 17 mission involved the disappearance of the flight data recorder, otherwise known colloquially as the “black box.” As previously pointed out, Exhibit 65 of the Colt Report, which contains testimony of US Army Pathfinders, was labeled by the military as the Black Box exhibit and outlined the efforts made by US Army Pathfinders to locate the helicopter's black box.

Exhibit 65 discussed the Pathfinder's attempt to find the black box in the midst of the wreckage of Extortion 17, a search that extended over a period of two days and resulted in “the first time,” per the Pathfinder commander's testimony, that the Pathfinders had been unable to recover a black box. If discovered, the black box could have provided clues, maybe even the absolute answer to what happened aboard Extortion 17.

The black box is the box (actually orange in color) which typically contains an aircraft's (1) flight data recorder and (2) cockpit voice recorder. In virtually every aircraft mishap in commercial or military aviation, the first question asked is, “what about the black box?”

Not only does the black box record crucial data concerning the function of the aircraft systems recorded in the flight data recorder, in real time, but often the pilots' voices are recorded and preserved, which can help investigators determine what happened to a flight.

What if, for example, the seven unidentified Afghans had attempted to either disrupt or sabotage the flight? Had that happened, there is a good chance that some clues would have been found on the cockpit voice recorder (one of the components of the black box). Or, if other problems had arisen, there is, again, a reasonable chance that the cockpit voice recorder would have recorded these problems.

The Army's Orders to the Pathfinders: “Find the Black Box!”

When the Pathfinders arrived on the ground to comb through the Extortion 17 wreckage, one of the first instructions given to the entire Pathfinder team was “Find the black box.”

However, it's important to realize that although the Pathfinders were on the scene within an hour-­and-­a-half after the shoot-­down, they were not first on the scene. A Special Operations group known as “Lima Bravo” had beaten them there, by well over an hour. The Chronology at Enclosure H showed that the first forces arrived at the crash site at 3:04 a.m. Also, an unidentified coalition group entered the crash zone, examined the area, “surveyed the aircraft,” and then left along an unidentified road.
All this occurred before the Pathfinders arrived, and all this is mysteriously and without explanation omitted from the Executive Summary of the Colt Report
. This crucial point will be examined in more detail later.

But first, look at the testimony of the Pathfinder Commander on the team's search for the black box.

At page 11 of Exhibit 65, a member of the Aviation Shoot-­Down Assessment Team (ASDAT3) was questioning the officer who was in charge of the Pathfinders on the ground, the Pathfinder Commander (PF CDR).

 

ASDAT3:
How about a play book for the [inaudible], the maintenance recorders in the aircraft, by different airframe w[h]ere those locations are so in the event you find a few slides you've got some pretty significant damage, you guys know a focal point on the aircraft what to get and what's classified, what's going to help us paint the picture? Do you guys have a book like that? Was that fed to you?

Pathfinder Commander:
We actually do have a standardized list with pictures for a CH-47 with the radar detection, ATIRCM, everything in the radio suite in the back, and how to get it out.

 

So in response to the questions about the recorders located on the helicopter, the Pathfinder commander said that the Pathfinders were equipped with photographs for the radar detection, ATIRCM (Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures) and the radio suite in the back.

Later the Pathfinder platoon leader testified directly about the efforts to locate the black box, at page 13 of Exhibit 65 [author's emphasis]:

 

ASDAT3:
Does anybody brief the follow-­on forces that come in behind you on what to look for on that site?

PF PLT LDR:
Sir, in this case the first night we went—
we looked for the flight recorder,
but because the way the fire had burned down
we were told to look for the flight recorder
—I think this is actually the only time we hadn't been successful in recovering that—by the cockpit near the pilot seat on the left hand side and we got as much as we could, but it was still smoldering at that point. And then, after the flood came in, we looked again and we also—we briefed the human remains team and the downed aircraft assessment team as well as everyone else who was working on the stretchers to look for the flight recorder in any of the wreckage, but to my knowledge no one—we had a couple, I guess, false alarms, but we could never actually find the actual flight recorder.

 

The testimony revealed several things about the search for the flight recorder. First, it implied that the Pathfinder team might actually have seen the flight recorder, were unable to initially recover it, and when they came back, it was gone:
“We were told to look for the flight recorder
—by the cockpit near the pilot seat on the left hand side and we got as much as we could, but it was still smoldering at that point.”

Second, it appears that the Pathfinders got part of the recorder (“we got as much as we could”) but could not get all of it because it was still smoldering. However, there is enough ambiguity in this portion of the
testimony that “we got as much as we could” could be referring to something other than the flight recorder.

Third, after a flooding rain, they came back to look for the rest of the flight recorder, but couldn't find it: “And then, after the flood came in, we looked again and we also—we had a couple, I guess, false alarms, but we could never actually find the actual flight recorder.”

Fourth, the search for the flight recorder expanded beyond just the Pathfinders, and included the human remains team.

So there was an all-­out effort committing considerable military resources to looking for the now-­lost flight data recorder after the “flood.” But all the manpower dedicated to the search turned up nothing.

Fifth, and this point will become crucial later, the Pathfinder platoon leader testified that this was the first time they had never recovered the flight recorder from a crashed helicopter.

Keep in mind most downed helicopters in Afghanistan, in fact, half of the helicopters shot down, were CH-47 Chinooks. But the Pathfinder platoon leader said this was the first time ever they had failed to recover the voice recorder from a downed helicopter.

So there is evidence suggesting that the recorder was possibly spotted, that part of it might have been recovered, that they came back, after the “flood,” and it was gone. Again, the Pathfinders had always been successful in recovering black boxes before, many from the exact same model of helicopter, the Chinook CH-47D that as noted earlier had been involved in roughly half the helicopter shoot-­downs in Afghanistan. So what went wrong there? And how did the recorder mysteriously disappear between the time the Pathfinders apparently spotted it and apparently, retrieved part of it? Or, could it have been removed earlier, before the Pathfinders arrived on the scene? Could the flight recorder have somehow disappeared during the “flood” mentioned in the testimony?

When Extortion 17 hit the ground, it broke into three main pieces, scattered into a triangular debris field with each part of the destroyed helicopter separated by just over 100 meters . The three parts included the forward pylon (containing the forward rotor blade), the aft pylon (containing the aft rotor blade), and the fuselage.

The fuselage itself, including the cockpit and the main body of the helicopter, fell into a small, shallow muddy creek known as a wadi. This wadi is also known as the “Logar River bed.” In the hours after Extortion 17 was shot down, heavy rains moved into the area, apparently causing a rise in the level of the wadi (referred to as “flooding” in the testimony). When the Pathfinder team returned after the initial rain and was unable to locate the black box, there was speculation that it might have washed downstream with other debris—realistically an unlikely scenario because of its weight and because it would have been bolted into place (assuming that it did not become displaced in the crash).

At page 17 of Exhibit 65, a third Pathfinder team member testified to the problems created by the flooding of the wadi: “Once the rain and the flash flood came in, we had to go searching the Wadi looking for the pieces that had floated down with the current.”

But the wadi, in reality, is nothing more than a narrow, shallow, muddy creek, as shown in photographs in Exhibit 60 of the Colt Report.

Which raises the question again, where is the black box?

The notion that the black box just disappeared in the wadi is a fantasy. As is commonly known, black boxes emit low-­frequency electronic pings, which make them immediately traceable. Black boxes, because of the pings, are often pulled off the bottom of the ocean floor.

One flight recorder, the one on
South African Airways
Flight 295, a Boeing 747 that went down in the Indian Ocean in 1987, was recovered off the ocean floor from a depth of over 16,000 feet. Likewise, the black box for Air France 447, an Airbus 330 that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009, was also recovered, this time in over 13,000 feet of water. In August of 2013, a British company recovered the black box of a Super Puma helicopter that went down in the North Sea off the Shetland Islands.

A black box submerged in water in a muddy wadi with depths ranging from knee-­deep to a little over waist-­deep should present no serious challenges. Yet, in spite of the fact that the Army committed a team of soldiers specializing in aircraft recovery to searching for the black box, who fanned out and walked in and along the wadi, they came up with nothing.

Moreover, it's significant that not one question was asked, anywhere in the Colt Report, about the low-­frequency signals that the black box emits. Instead, the Pathfinders testified about their unsuccessful efforts to find the black box, and not one investigator asked, “Did you try and find it in the water by homing in on its electronic pinging signal?”

It's as if the black box was being intentionally ignored by the investigators, and questions that were asked weren't followed up on to determine the whereabouts of this, the most crucial piece of evidence, nor was there any clarification placed on the record about its absence or presence at the wreck scene.

It's clear that the Pathfinders committed considerable assets to finding it, and the Pathfinder platoon leader said this was the first time they hadn't recovered one in a crash in Afghanistan.

So what happened to the black box?

That cannot fully be determined from the record, except it appears to have gotten lost between the Pathfinder's first approach to the smoldering wreckage, and sometime later that day, after a heavy rain “flooded” the wadi. At least that was the narrative first pushed by the military.

However, there is additional evidence to be considered.

First, while the Pathfinders have provided most of the information about the search for the black box, it's crucial to understand that the Pathfinders were not the first unit on the ground to secure the chopper, nor were they the only unit on the ground.

Unidentified Joint Special Ops Task Force Unit on Ground before US Army Pathfinders

It's important to know that another unidentified unit, whose identity is blocked in the Colt Report, but a unit attached to the Joint Special Operations Task Force, was also on the ground along with the US Army Pathfinders.

We see this in testimony at page 115 of Exhibit 1, given by the J3 (operations) officer from the Joint Special Operations Task Force:

 

Based on our assessment of the time it was taking, you know, the decision was made to infill the Task Force element into an HLZ, you can
see reflected there at item Number 10. But, really, what had ended up happening was our guys, ended up getting there prior to the path finder element.

 

Who was this unit? And how much sooner were they on the ground?

There is no way to know for sure. But remember, the Pathfinders were on the ground at 4:15 a.m. That means that the unidentified task force had to have arrived on the ground prior to 4:15 a.m. (with the shoot-­down having occurred at 2:39:40 a.m.). In fact, the official chronology, which was attached to Enclosure H, states that the unidentified Task Force arrived at 3:04 a.m., over an hour before the Pathfinders arrived.

 

ENCLOSURE “H” Chronology

0239:48 P states “There's an explosion, there's another . . . explosion.” Further states: “Extortion is down.” (3/4)

0240:17 makes “Fallen Angel” NET call to all elements in the Objective area indicating EXTORTION 17 has been shot down (4)

0240:18 [Apache Helicopter . . . Gun 1] suppresses suspected enemy positions IVO the suspected point of origin (POO) (3)

0240:18 [AC-130] establishes security orbit over crash site (3)

0240:36 notifies TOC that EXTORTION 17 has been shot down (4)

0242:59 [Gun 1] P 5 relays to (AC-130) suspected POO of RPG attack (3)

0243 TOC initiates downed aircraft procedures (7)

0243 TF [unidentified unit] element notified of downed aircraft (15)

0245 PB reports secondary explosions at crash site (1)

0245 TF [unidentified unit] duty log reports crash site IVO (2/7)

0245 10th CAB (Combat Air Battalion) Duty Officer notifies Division of downed aircraft (10)

0248 EXTORTION [16] remains in a holding pattern 3 miles from crash site (1/7)