Call Sign Extortion 17 (4 page)

Still, in this day of GPS navigation, there was no logical reason for Extortion 17's seeming difficulty finding the landing zone. Nor was there any reason for it to be stalled in the air.

All parties involved seem to agree that Extortion 17 was only 100 to 150 feet above the ground when it was shot down.

The Colt Report: August 7, 2011–September 13, 2011

The thirty-­eight days or so immediately following the shoot-­down, from August 7, 2011 to September 13, 2011, were crucial because of what the Army did and did not do and said and did not say during this period.

As soon as Extortion 17 was shot down, the commander of US Central Command, Marine general James Mattis, ordered Army brigadier
general Jeffrey Colt to conduct an investigation of the shoot-­down. That investigation, which involved twenty-­three military investigators as part of the Air-­Crash investigating team, analyzing evidence collected from the site, interviewing witnesses, and reviewing photographs, resulted in a 1,250-page report, originally classified as Top Secret. For reasons that are still unclear, it was largely declassified and later turned over to certain surviving family members of the SEAL team.

For ease of reference, the investigative report will be referred to herein simply as the “Colt Report.”

The timing of the Colt Report's release in September 2011 was critical. That's because the initial report, which came in the form of an “Executive Summary” from Brigadier General Colt back to General Mattis, with numerous exhibits and recommendations, left out crucial information.

For starters, here are three relevant dates to keep in mind concerning the report itself, which raised grave suspicion of a cover-­up.

The first date is August 7, 2011, the day after the crash. On this date, four-­star US Marine general James Mattis, Commander of United States Central Command, sent a written directive to Brigadier General Jeffrey Colt to conduct a sweeping investigation as to the cause of the shoot-­down of Extortion 17. Mattis gave Colt thirty days to complete his investigation.

The second date is September 9, 2011. By this time, Brigadier General Colt had completed the investigation ordered by General Mattis. Colt had some twenty-­two military officers, mostly from the US Army, but a few from the Navy and Air Force, all subject-­matter experts in various relevant fields, assist him in his investigation.

In addition to the twenty-­two officers working directly on Colt's investigation team, a Joint Combat Assessment Team (JCAT) from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, using aviation crash experts, conducted a piece-­by-­piece, visual and forensics examination of the shot-­down helicopter. They supplied Colt's investigation team with their own JCAT report, and their own conclusions about what happened.

Colt and his team had taken all this into consideration, had interviewed dozens of witnesses under oath, and by September 9, 2011, Colt was ready to report back to General Mattis.

So on September 9, 2011, Colt signed his Executive Summary to General Mattis, attaching more than one hundred exhibits and enclosures, with his (Colt's) written thoughts on the reason for the shoot-­down.

Four days later, on September 13, 2011, General Colt issued his final report, hoping to close the chapter on any questions concerning the shoot-­down of Extortion 17.

General Mattis's final report, perhaps not surprisingly, summarily concluded that no one was at fault, that the military made all the correct decisions, and that the shoot-­down of Extortion 17 could not have been prevented.

Colt's summary and Mattis's report and conclusion will be contradicted by internal evidence on multiple fronts. It will be more than a year before all the report's glaring omissions come to light, in what can be explained only as an attempt by the military to sweep crucial and highly embarrassing information under the rug.

Aside from the report's failure to discuss the military's inexplicable inability to locate or otherwise account for the black box that was supposedly on board the helicopter, the reports ignore an even greater pink elephant in the room: On the night of the shoot-­down, just minutes before Extortion 17 lifted off for the final time, the chopper was boarded by seven unidentified Afghans, in blatant violation of US military procedure and protocol. The Afghans' names were not on the flight manifest for Extortion 17.

In an era of disconcerting “Green-­on-­Blue” violence in which Afghan soldiers and security forces, purporting to be US allies, had been shooting Americans in the back for nearly a decade, one would think that the
final
report on the shoot-­down of Extortion 17 would reveal and address such a big-­time security breach.

But the report contained no explanation of how the Afghans violated US security procedures to get on the aircraft. There was no mention of their names. There was no assurance that their intentions were not sinister. In fact, not one single word was even mentioned about the incident by either Colt or Mattis.

On January 11, 2013, some fifteen months after the shoot-­down, a brave and gutsy sergeant major in the US Army alerted Billy and Karen
Vaughn, parents of SOC Aaron Vaughn, that the Afghans were on the chopper, and that their security breach was a “very big deal.”

The military's omission of this crucial breach raised all kinds of unanswered questions, and the military almost got away with covering it up.

Almost.

Question Number Two: The Seven Unidentified Afghans

A second oddity, one of the biggest red flags of the entire mission, and one largely ignored by the press and even the US military itself, also occurred during the boarding process of Extortion 17.

This question, unless answered, will haunt the mission and will linger throughout the ages.

As the Navy SEAL team, which included Navy support personnel, rushed to the chopper along with the five-­man Air National Guard crew, seven unidentified members of the Afghan military also boarded the chopper.

That fact is worth repeating, because it is crucial. Seven unidentified Afghans boarded that chopper. Their names are not known. They have not been identified, and we don't know what they were up to.

The identity of the Afghans is one of the great, looming questions unanswered by the military, as if it is of peripheral unimportance. But their identities are vitally important in fully understanding what happened.

Yet, the fact that unidentified Afghans infiltrated this chopper at the last second has been largely brushed over by the official military investigation and virtually ignored by the US press. The military investigation headed up by Brigadier General Colt in August of 2011, producing the 1,250-page report with testimony, photographs, real-­time transcripts of air-­traffic control, and a plethora of other information, barely even mentions the huge pink elephant—the mysterious Afghans, except in one testimonial exchange on page 118 of Exhibit 1.

But understand this. That testimonial exchange at page 118 of Exhibit 1, was a needle-­in-­a-haystack buried in a thousand-­plus-­page report. As previously stated, nothing is mentioned about the Afghans in either Brigadier General Colt's Executive Summary of September 9, 2011, or
General Mattis's final report of September 13, 2011, showing a finding of no-­fault.

Yet, the questions remain constant, like an eerie, beating war-­drum, on each page of the 1,250 pages: Who were these Afghans, and why were they on board a United States Army helicopter without proper permission or authority? Why does nobody account for them and why did nobody stop them from boarding?

Yet the Colt Report brushed over the existence of the seven unidentified Afghans, and made no substantial effort, at least no effort that is reported, to identify them, or to even acknowledge the existence of the severe security breach that allowed them to infiltrate Extortion 17 before it took off.

And as will be seen later, the cremation of the unknown Afghans, if that indeed happened, looms large in suggesting a cover-­up, because cremating their bodies destroys DNA evidence, making it impossible to identify their remains.

In fact, their bodies were brought back to the United States and apparently cremated by the US military, thereby effectively destroying any chance to ever identify them. If this is truly the case, no one will ever know if they were terrorists. No one will ever know if they were Taliban collaborators.

The fact that Afghans boarded the US military transport helicopter was not in and of itself unusual, given the politically correct climate between the United States and Afghanistan in 2011. In fact, this Immediate Reaction Force of Navy SEALs had seven Afghan army personnel assigned to it.
But the oddity in this instance came when the seven Afghans who boarded were not the seven Afghans assigned to the team, but seven unidentified Afghans whose names were not on the flight manifest
.

There was a switch-­out.

The unexplained presence of the seven unidentified Afghans was a violation of flight protocol, procedure, and security.

The official military investigation of the shoot-­down of Extortion 17, conducted in the weeks following the shoot-­down and overseen by Brigadier General Jeffrey Colt, did not even make a credible effort to identify these seven unidentified Afghans, nor did it even peripherally raise
their non-­identity as a security concern. Nothing was said at all about the Afghans in the initial report following the military's investigation. Their presence would be discovered, by happenchance, well over a year after the shoot-­down.

It would seem reasonable to ask why. But only the military can answer that question, which they have failed to do to date. So these questions remain unanswered, looming like a mysterious fog over the graves of SEAL Team Six members of Extortion 17 at Arlington National Cemetery, and haunt the memory of this mission in perpetuity:

Who were these armed Afghans? And why were they allowed to board the helicopter in violation of US military protocol? And what did they do once the flight took off?

Before examining who these Afghans might have been, it is crucial to understand the backdrop of this mission—the international climate and instability in the ninety-­seven days leading up to this fateful mission, beginning with the killing of Osama Bin Laden by members of SEAL Team Six on May 1, 2011.

Chapter 5

Ninety-­Seven Days from Quintessential Glory to Unexplained Disaster

may 1, 2011–august 6, 2011

The announcement that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. The moment Germany surrendered. The Japanese surrender at Tokyo Bay. The assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The moment Armstrong stepped on the moon. The explosion of the Space Shuttle
Challenger
. The fall of the Berlin Wall. The day the twin towers fell to the ground.

Moments like these are burned into the consciousness of a nation.

Most Americans, alive and alert enough to understand the issues threatening the nation at the time of these events, can recall exactly where they were and what they were doing when news came of these compelling moments in US history.

For many Americans, Sunday evening, May 1, 2011, would become one of those moments. They would always remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news—when President Barack Obama announced the death of the world's most hated terrorist, Osama Bin Laden.

The massive manhunt unleashed by President George W. Bush a decade earlier, seeking revenge against the man blamed for the most bloody, painful, and humiliating act of terror and mass murder ever perpetrated against the United States, was ended by an announcement from President Obama on national television from the White House that Sunday evening at 11:30 p.m. Washington time.

The announcement set off celebration and jubilation, and rightly so. On the afternoon of August 9, 1974, moments after President Nixon had resigned and was in flight back to San Clemente, President Gerald Ford said that “our long national nightmare is over.” Though President Obama did not reference Ford's words in his address to the nation, there was a collective feeling that another long national nightmare had ended on May 1, 2011, one that had begun a decade earlier with horrific images of Manhattan's tallest buildings collapsing from a blaze of fire to a mountain of destroyed concrete and rubble, had finally come to an end.

All presidents are remembered by their greatest achievements, and many by their most profound failures, whether they fully deserve those achievements or whether they are fully responsible for those failures. Herbert Hoover is blamed for the Great Depression; Lyndon Johnson for the Vietnam War. John Kennedy is remembered for his bold vision of putting a man on the moon. Jimmy Carter gets credit for Camp David. Ronald Reagan is credited for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

For President Obama, politically beleaguered on many fronts, the death of Bin Laden is likely to go down in history as his crowning achievement, the one moment the nation was wholly unified by a grand decision he had made.

Yes, there would be some who would argue that President George W. Bush set the military apparatus in place for Bin Laden's final demise, and that it was SEAL Team Six, and not Obama, who actually killed Bin Laden.

All that is technically true. But it was Obama who gave the order to send the SEALs into Pakistan to kill Bin Laden, and the heroic mission occurred on his watch. And for that, he deserves credit.

But as history would have it, a mere ninety-­seven days would separate the most glorious achievement in all of Seal Team Six's history from its deadliest disaster. That disaster would not be the fault of the SEALs, but rather, would rest squarely on the shoulders of those above them in the chain of command who ordered them into battle in tenuous and questionable circumstances, on an old helicopter built before most of them were born, in a hot fire-­zone in the skies that would completely neutralize
their ability to do what they do better than anyone in the world—fight on the ground and in the sea.

For the families of thirty Americans, mostly US Navy SEALs, the glory of May Day, 2011, would within three months and one week fade into unimaginable pain, heartbreak, and personal loss. The loss and pain these families, and indeed the nation would soon suffer, in part because of a series of curious and foolish actions by certain members of the Obama Administration who would insist on reckless public blabbing, in violation of a vow of silence, and also because of certain inexplicable actions by the US military, who would execute a battle plan wholly lacking in common sense.

The Planning of Neptune Spear

On May 1, 2011, US Navy SEALs, attached to DEVGRU Red Squad, formerly known and still colloquially known as Seal Team Six, executed Operation Neptune Spear, slipping into Pakistan aboard Special Ops helicopters and killing Osama Bin Laden. Prior to execution of the mission, an internal debate had gone on inside the White House.

Among those in on the pre-­mission planning were President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, CIA director Leon Panetta, members of the National Security Council, and then–Vice Admiral William McRaven, the three-­star Navy SEAL who led the US Joint Special Operations Command. (Admiral McRaven, perhaps somewhat ironically, would later receive his fourth star on August 9, 2011, the same day that the bodies of the SEAL Team Six members who died on board Extortion 17 were brought back from Afghanistan and honored at Dover Air Force Base.)

Active planning for Neptune Spear had begun in March 2011, with the operational details in the planning phase masterminded by Vice Admiral McRaven, who briefed President Obama regularly.

The National Command Authority knew by this time that Bin Laden was holed up in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a highland town north of Islamabad. By all accounts, an internal debate ensued within the Administration on what to do about it. The execution of the plan would involve sending the SEAL team from Afghanistan across the border into neighboring
Pakistan, sending US forces into a foreign country, a country that on paper was a US ally, without first notifying the host government.

Various options were discussed, including striking the Bin Laden compound with drones. Vice President Biden was opposed to the mission altogether, concerned that it was too risky. But President Obama favored the option presented by Admiral McRaven that would send the SEAL team directly into Bin Laden's compound.

Obama wanted to make sure that they killed their man, and that they got the body. He overrode the vice president, and the order to execute Neptune Spear quickly moved down the chain of command to the SEAL team, waiting in eastern Afghanistan for presidential orders.

The next point is important. At the White House on the night of the raid, a group including the president, the vice president, and other senior Administration officials and military officers privy to the Top Secret plans accepted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's suggestion not to reveal the identity of the unit that would kill Bin Laden. There was collective agreement that revealing the specific unit that ultimately killed Bin Laden would endanger the unit's members, and possibly their families as well.

When President Obama announced to a national television audience that Bin Laden was dead, he was criticized in some corners for appearing to take too much personal credit for the operation. That sort of criticism happens in the rough-­and-­tumble world of politics.

All that aside, to his credit, President Obama was careful not to publicly announce the name of the unit that killed Bin Laden, honoring the commitment made in the White House Situation Room not to provide specific information on the unit carrying out the mission.

President Obama, in his initial comments, announces only that “a small team of Americans” had killed Bin Laden. The president made no other comments that could be used to identify the team. A “small team of Americans” could have been CIA, or Army Rangers, or Navy SEALs, or US Marines, or Delta Force, or regular military. The specific identity of the unit would be anybody's guess.

Immediately after the shoot-­down, other senior White House and military officials also declined to provide specific information on unit identity or numbers. Former national security advisor (now CIA director)
John Brennan, his former deputy Denis McDonough, and senior military spokesmen at the Pentagon all, when asked, specifically declined to divulge unit identity or unit numbers.

Despite the failure of US authorities to divulge the identities of the assassins, the Taliban did not take long to vow revenge.

On May 2, 2011, the day after Neptune Spear, a Taliban commander in Afghanistan, identified as “Qudos” and claiming to operate in the northern province of Baghlan, vowed that the Taliban would avenge Bin Laden's death. The commander said his fighters planned to launch an operation called “Operation Badrto to avenge the killing of Osama” and claimed many other similar operations would be launched to avenge Bin Laden.

May 3, 2011: The Vice President's Breach of Promise

On May 3, 2011, two days after Neptune Spear, and following a slew of Taliban retaliation vows, Vice President Biden, visibly giddy over the Administration's crowning achievement, appeared at Washington's Ritz-­Carlton Hotel to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Atlantic Council. For reasons that still cannot be explained, Biden violated the sacred Situation Room agreement not to identify the units involved, and twice mentioned the SEALs as the Special Forces unit responsible.

Biden began by recognizing James Stavridis, a highly decorated four-­star admiral who had served as Commander of US European Command, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and Commander of US Southern Command. The vice president addressed Admiral Stavridis with these comments: “Let me briefly acknowledge tonight's distinguished honorees. Admiral James Stavridis is the real deal. He can tell you more about and understands the incredible, the phenomenal, the just almost unbelievable capacity of his Navy SEALs and what they did last Sunday.”

Those remarks, if that's all the vice president had said, were enough to immediately send a shockwave throughout the Administration and the SEAL community. But Biden was not finished with his remarks about the SEALs.

Later in his speech, he returned to the topic of the SEALs again. “Folks, I'd be remiss also if I didn't say an extra word about the incredible
events, extraordinary events of this past Sunday. As vice president of the United States, as an American, I was in absolute awe of the capacity and dedication of the entire team, both the intelligence community, the CIA, the SEALs. It just was extraordinary.”

Biden's inexplicable breach of trust would stun the SEAL community and cause SEAL families to fear for their safety. The SEALs, who pride themselves on operating in secrecy and shun the glory that the world thrusts on them, had been “outed” by the vice commander-­in-­chief.

Indeed, the concern and dismay over Biden's remarks spread swiftly. On May 4, 2011, the day after the vice president announced that Navy SEALs had taken out Bin Laden, and four days after Operation Neptune Spear, Aaron Vaughn, who would later be killed in Extortion 17, telephoned his parents and informed them that SEAL Team Six now had a “target” on its backs.

Vaughn instructed Billy and Karen Vaughn to remove all their presence from social media, for fear that they were now in danger. Aaron Vaughn reported that this fear was a pervasive concern throughout the unit. According to Karen Vaughn, Aaron said, “ ‘Mom, you need to wipe your social media clean . . . your life is in danger, our lives are in danger, so clean it up right now.' ”

On May 6, 2011, three days after the Biden speech, the Taliban again vowed public revenge against the unit that killed Bin Laden. For the first time, Al Qaeda also vowed revenge.

May 11, 2011: Taliban Positions Forces to Shoot Down US Helicopter in Tangi River Valley

It appeared that the Taliban was serious about carrying out retaliation, and was determined to do, specifically, by shooting down a US military helicopter carrying US Special Forces. On May 11, 2011, US military intelligence received information that more than one hundred Taliban fighters were being moved into the Tangi River Valley (where Extortion 17 was shot down) for the express purpose of “shooting down an American Helicopter.”

At this juncture it was known that the war against the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan was being largely and effectively prosecuted by US
Special Forces. President Obama had made a tactical decision to step up Special Forces Operations in 2009. It was also known that those US Special Forces fighting the war were primarily either US Navy SEALs or US Army Rangers.

On May 12, 2011, Defense Secretary Gates, speaking at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, expressed concern over Administration leaks identifying Navy SEALs as the Special Forces unit that killed Bin Laden. Gates indicated that he was dismayed that an agreement made in the Situation Room that officials would not talk about any operation details of the Bin Laden raid “lasted only fifteen hours.” In corroborating the veracity of Aaron Vaughn's call to his parents, Secretary Gates confirmed that Navy SEALs involved in the operation were concerned about the safety of their families.

Gates was about to step down and be replaced by Leon Panetta. In a response to a question from a Marine Corps medical logistics officer at a meeting with Marines at Camp Lejeune on May 12, 2011, Gates expressed frustration that the agreement to maintain secrecy for the protection of the SEALs had fallen apart. When asked in this open meeting with the press present, the Marine, obviously concerned about the safety of the SEALs' families, asked: “What measures are being taken to protect the identities and the lives of the SEAL team members, as well as the lives of military forces deployed that might have to face extreme retaliation from terrorist organizations that want to have those identities known?”

Here's how Secretary Gates responded: “Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out Bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday—the next day.” He went on to say that “there is an awareness that the threat of retaliation is increased because . . . of the action against Bin Laden.”