Delta Force (18 page)

TWENTY-THREE

ONCE A VOLUNTEER
passed the camp Dawson selection course, he entered at Fort Bragg an intensely demanding Operators Course that would, in nineteen weeks, teach him the skills required to handle any terrorist incident.

The new Delta operator was provided a unique curriculum, one he could not receive anywhere else.

During this nearly five-month-long Operators Course, each Delta operator had to demonstrate the ability to: hit a target; perform command and control functions; establish and maintain secure communications; move from position to position using appropriate techniques in support of assault operations; gain entry to a crisis point; manage hostages; stabilize an injured person for at least thirty minutes; properly employ and maintain optical equipment; operate selected machinery and wheeled and track vehicles; negotiate natural and man-made obstacles; navigate on the land from one point to another; protect hostages from the threat of explosive ordnance; perform selected airborne and airmobile techniques and tactics; conduct selected maritime techniques; disarm and disable a hostile opponent.

The training was mentally demanding, physically tough, complete, and unique. No one could afford to have a bad day. In an American college, if a student daydreams during an English Lit lecture he might receive a failing grade on the next exam. If one of Delta's students daydreamed during a lecture on assault operations it might cost him his life. Operators had
to be able to cope with any terrorist situation, in any environment, at any time. Some of the subjects taught seemed arcane—picking a pintumbler padlock, for example, or knowing how to drive an SSB1200 diesel locomotive—but each was necessary. Delta operators not only became jacks of all trades, but masters of them as well.

Climbing skills required each operator to perform various individual rappels; to climb and rapple from buildings, installations, and aircraft; to evacuate wounded personnel by means of rapelling; to perform unassisted balance climbs; to perform two-man climbs; to place and use all traversing systems; to place and use a fixed rope.

Delta snipers had to hit 100 percent on targets at 600 yards and 90 percent on targets at 1,000 yards. In combat marksmanship competition, which were conducted on an irregular basis, Delta always finished first. In head-to-head matches only the Secret Service ever beat Delta's snipers. Most of these matches were fired with M14 7.62mm rifles using iron sights on standard NRA targets up to 500 yards.

Shooting was, obviously, a large part of each operator's training. No matter what his specialty he was expected to shoot three to four hours a day, five days a week.

One of the first pieces of business to be tackled as soon as Delta had moved into the Stockade was the building of a shooting house. This $90,000 complex was built directly behind the Stockade. It became known as “the House of Horrors.” Each of the building's four rooms included sophisticated target systems that were portable and interchangeable. Shooting was done nearly in the round. One of the systems utilized sound stop-motion picture projection. Seen from the Delta operator's point of view, the film showed a room full of hostages and the terrorists holding them captive. The operator had to decide who was who and shoot the terrorists. At the precise instant he fired his weapon, the projector would freeze so the shooter could see on the screen exactly what he had hit.

The first room in the House of Horrors was a warm-up room where very simple shooting was done. As a switch was pushed, eight silhouette targets, both good and bad guys,
would abruptly spring up. Training was geared to allow the shooter just seconds to enter the room, identify the targets, and fire.

The second room was used for this purpose: take the offense away from the terrorist. The principle is to put him on the defensive. As the door to the room explodes, in the split second that it takes for the terrorist to shift his attention from the hostage to the explosion, the good guys have to enter the room and kill the terrorist. Room clearing, as it is called, has to be done quickly and violently. Four men are the number you want to enter a room. They must each enter swiftly and go in different directions. The situation will dictate the weaponry. If it is a single room, with two or three terrorists, the 4-man team will attack with handguns; the last man could go in with a 12-gauge shotgun. If a large area with many interconnecting rooms is held by a sizable number of terrorists, a 6-man attacking team might be used and they'd carry submachine guns.

Delta operators were taught to put two head shots in each terrorist. And they must keep moving, never giving the opposition a chance to hit a stationary target. Training included clearing a jammed weapon on the run and while under fire.

The basis for formulating an assault plan is information from negotiators and from other people who have recently been in and around the crisis site. Knowing in detail what the team will face on the other side of a door will also push its confidence level up. Squatting outside, waiting for a door to be blown, it is important for the operator to feel acquainted with what he'll face in the next few seconds. Conversely, the risk of failing successfully to clear a room in which the fire team has no idea where anything or anyone is, is very high—the wrong people can be shot.

Targets in the shooting house's room-clearing space were usually pictures of known terrorists.

The third room in the complex was used for night shooting, with the operators using night vision goggles, and for blowing various types of doors. We spent a lot of money in this room replacing the fluorescent bulbs, which would shatter along with the doors.

The fourth room contained a detailed aircraft cabin mockup.

Since aircraft hijacking has become fashionable, Delta spent a lot of time studying the subject. In the event a United States owned or operated commercial airliner was hijacked and flown out of the country, Delta would be called upon—as West Germany had called upon GSG-9 in Mogadishu—to safely recover the passengers and, if possible, the aircraft. It was an area in which we felt we had a large responsibility.

The Federal Aviation Agency proved to be helpful. One of the first things they did was provide Delta with a Boeing 727. The airlines, obviously because it was in their own best interests, also cooperated fully. Many nights were spent, for example, in a TWA hangar at Kennedy International Airport.

At first we made mistakes. In an early training exercise an assault team carefully crawled along a wing in order to gain access to an emergency door. After Delta had gained control of the aircraft, the hostage actors in the cabin admitted they had known something was afoot when the plane began to rock very gently back and forth. The lesson we learned that night was to find out how much fuel was stored in the wings. Obviously, the plane would rock more if the wing tanks were empty and lighter.

There was a lot to learn about taking down an aircraft. By spending vast amounts of time on the subject, two of Delta's operators became fountains of aircraft knowledge. They learned everything there was to know—how planes at O'Hare were refueled, how flight crews were changed at LaGuardia, how food was loaded at Dulles. They knew where each of the nine hatches on a stretch 727 was, whether a DC-9 could be entered through its wheel wells, which lights would blink on when certain hatches were opened on a wide-body DC-10. There was nothing that these two operators hadn't learned about airplanes and how they could be entered.

Of course, shooting skills are critical in an aircraft takeover. It's not unlike shooting fish in a barrel. The sharks have to be identified and separated from the guppies—the terrorists from passengers—and this art was practiced time and time again in the airplane cabin in the shooting house behind the Stockade.

* * *

When the shooting starts—and this was a large part of what Delta was expected to do—and people begin to die, no matter how many hours of training are involved, it comes down to the man who is pulling the trigger. In this area Delta was unique.

TWENTY-FOUR

IT WAS DURING
the early selection courses that Delta began accepting some of the men who eventually shaped the unit's character, colored its personality, defined its style, and gave it class.

One was Edward Westfall, but that's like knowing the Lone Ranger's real name—it's unimportant. In Delta he was known as Fast Eddie. This was sometimes shortened to Fast. And he was.

He had been one of the seven recruits chosen from the very first selection course. It was during the psychological boards when we recognized that in Sergeant Westfall we had someone different. During the hours of grueling interrogation he went through, he always managed to answer our questions with candor, honesty, and sincerity.

An E-6 (staff sergeant), he was a big, very fit man who was topped off with a mop of wavy red hair. Fast wasn't the type to wear a three-piece suit. He'd have felt he should fasten all the buttons on the vest.

Fast owned a skill Delta prized—demolitions. Hardworking and creative, he was like all first-class demolition experts—he had a passion for disintegration done finely and he loved loud noises.

Because it wasn't unusual for him to get carried away, I always felt that someone should watch Fast Eddie. Fort Bragg has certain regulations on its ranges, limiting the size of the explosives that can be used. On one range, for example, you
can't use a charge in excess of ten pounds, on another the limit is twenty. I sort of felt that Fast Eddie never really cared about those rules and didn't feel obligated to follow them.

One day he came in to see me. “Boss, I'd like to go up to the Navy shipyard in Norfolk and see if I can scrounge up some targets.”

Being what I thought it to be, a reasonable request, I sent him on his way with my blessings.

It was during the time when we wanted to see what certain types of explosives would do to cars, trucks, steel doors, and the like.

A day or two after Fast had left, I received a phone call from some admiral asking me to confirm a Sergeant Westfall's credentials. I should have suspected then that Fast was living up to his name.

Within the week, six flatbed semis arrived at the Stockade's front gate, all piled high with Navy surplus. The point to be made is that some of this so-called “junk” looked to be in pretty good shape. In the shipment, Fast had managed to include several nearly new cars; a dock crane; a variety of 8-inch, 6-inch, and 5-inch naval gun barrels; a couple of perfectly good propeller shafts, and as the pièce de résistance, a mint D-8 bulldozer.

I got a little nervous, especially when I found I had to sign for all this stuff. All the objects, except the bulldozer, were taken out to the range where, during the next few weeks, they were blown up. The dozer was kept at the Stockade, hidden in the back, until we could think of something constructive to do with it.

Fast made several more trips to Norfolk to obtain targets. As fast as they arrived they were blown up. I remember during one of his interviews he wanted to be assured that Delta, once it got off the ground, would not relent on its selection or training requirements. This appeared to be very important to him. I learned how important it was several months later.

We had on board for a while an officer who was in Delta's communications division. One night, when he was duty officer, and Sergeant Westfall was the duty NCO, the officer accidentally
discharged his side arm. The punishment for this mistake was simple and direct—instant dismissal—and warnings of the consequence were posted in two places within the Stockade. The next morning as I walked through the gate, Fast Eddie was waiting to see exactly how I would react. The choice was direct. I either sacked the officer or took down the signs. The officer was out of the unit in less than twenty-four hours. Fast Eddie returned to the range satisfied that Delta had lived up to its standards.

Another redhead was one of the most proficient operators Delta ever had. An E-8 (master sergeant), Allen (pseudonym) was a total professional in everything he did and he came from the old school. He was one of Delta's best shots, but then he did everything well. Unless you were watching carefully and knew what to look for, it could have been easy to overlook Allen. He was very quiet and a loner who verged on being an introvert.

This was a man who always gave more to the unit than he took. After an exercise had been run, he was the first to want to critique it, then improve it, then run it again. In 4-man patrol concepts he was constantly improving on the tactics and techniques used in taking down an aircraft or a building.

When Delta eventually grew in strength and was about to form a second squadron, I remember that its new commander, Logan Fitch, felt strongly about moving Allen over from A Squadron. There was never any argument about it. In the following months, to no one's surprise, Allen's troop became one of the best in either squadron.

Because I never remember Allen making a bad call, when he became angry with me in Egypt, after we'd returned from the Iranian desert, I took the time to reevaluate some of the things I'd said.

Ish really came to my attention for the first time when I took command of the Special Forces School. On my first day in the job, before I even learned where the washroom was and where I could hang my cap, I noticed a letter addressed to me sitting on the desk. I shoved it into one of my pockets and forgot about it until that evening when I rediscovered it. On
my back porch I learned it had been written by the senior noncom representative to the School's operations and intelligence committee, who had just left Bragg to take up a new post somewhere else.

The five-page, well-written letter, which I carefully read, expressed the writer's thoughts about the School's curriculum and the committee he had sat upon. I realized this sergeant knew what he was talking about and that he had taken a lot of time to express his thoughts. The letter was signed. “Very respectfully, M/Sgt Wade Ishimoto.”

The letter and its writer were soon forgotten in a flood of work. Sometime later, as Delta began to smoke, I talked to an old NCO friend, Forrest Foreman. I wanted him to come to Delta as my senior operations sergeant. I also asked him to keep a sharp lookout for other NCOs he knew of who were the right cuts of cloth for Delta.

At that time Forrest was out in El Paso, attending the Army's NCO Academy at Fort Bliss. As it so happened, enrolled at the same time was one of Sergeant Foreman's dearest friends, a master sergeant named Wade Ishimoto.

Soon, both sergeants began working for Delta, Forrest Foreman in Operations and Wade Ishimoto in Intelligence. They also both completed their schooling at Fort Bliss through the U.S. mail.

Wade was born in Hawaii. He worked very hard to put himself through the University of Hawaii. He was a hand-to-hand combat, judo fanatic who spent a lot of time taking various martial arts courses. I'm not sure how good he was, but he devoted a lot of time to it.

One day, several months after Sergeant Ishimoto had joined the unit, I was visiting the State Department, trying to get them to give us a communications link that would instantly notify Delta whenever terrorist incidents occurred anywhere in the world. While in the EOC (Emergency Operations Center) two high-ranking officials buttonholed me. “This Ishimoto you've got working for you, Charlie, is a very impressive guy. He's bright and does what he says he'll do. It's a damn shame he's
only a sergeant. If he were an officer he'd walk through these halls with a lot more clout.”

This started me thinking. I knew that Ishimoto held a reserve commission, and if this country ever went to war, the next day he would be commanding a battalion. In the afternoon I drove over to Arlington to vist my friends in Personnel.

“What's the possibility,” I asked, “of making one of my senior NCOs an officer, of bringing him on active duty as a captain?”

Within two months the promotion came through and Captain Ishimoto became the number-two man in Delta's intelligence division.

The fence around the Stockade required strengthening, and a card-activated electrical gate needed to be installed. In these early days everyone did whatever was necessary, regardless of his military occupation specialty; and on this occasion I asked Wade Ishimoto to deal with the fence problem. An estimate to repair the gate and install an electrical locking system appeared on my desk shortly afterward. The figure was $18,000. There was no way Delta could cough up that kind of money. I scribbled a note back to Captain Ishimoto informing him of this and that he should find cheaper methods.

The next evening my door was slammed closed, and looking up I saw I had a very angry captain on my hands. “You know, Boss, I gotta talk to you. You don't understand. If we repair this fence it's going to cost money.”

“Captain, what you don't understand is that you don't know what you're talking about. You guys haven't done your homework. Eighteen thousand dollars! Give me a break!”

At this point he dropped on my desk all the facts and figures, and how they had been arrived at. The work was thorough and the numbers didn't lie. He then advised me I was a nickel nose. Other miserly expletives, many of which I'd never heard before, filled the room.

We spent a half hour talking through the situation. He finally convinced me he had been right. I suggested that we might be able to hold the cost down somewhat if we did some of the work ourselves instead of contracting it out. It was the
first time I ever saw him compromise, but he agreed that this might be done. Within several weeks the fence had been hardened and a new locking system put in place. It ended up costing $15,000.

In Delta a “yes” man would have felt ill at ease.

The Remington Arms Company was kind enough to build for Delta some 40XB sniper rifles. When they began arriving, one of the first ones was given to a sniper we'll call Boris. He had been born of Polish parents and he spoke Polish and a little Russian. A small man, probably 5'6”, weighing about 165 pounds, he had the build of a middleweight. Blond, with blue eyes, he exuded confidence. Our psychologist identified in him all the traits required of an outstanding sniper: poise, patience, concentration, stability, calmness, and meticulousness about details.

In June of '78, Delta ran an exercise in the desolate high country out beyond El Paso. The scenario called for a mountain cabin to be occupied by some terrorists and their hostages. One of the sniper's primary responsibilities is to get into position early and then gather all the information he can about the target.

It had gotten dark quickly, as it does in west Texas, and Boris had been in position close to the cabin for several hours, hidden in a rock fall. A terrorist role-player, unaware that a sniper team was in position, left the cabin and, walking over to where Boris lay hidden, urinated on him.

Any other sniper probably would have jumped up yelling, “Hey, man, what the hell do you think you're doing!” Boris was not
any
sniper. He never moved, and the role-player returned to the cabin unaware of what he had done. Later, after the target had been taken down, Boris let off some steam. When we learned of the incident, we were very proud of Boris's stoicism!

During the second selection course, which we were still running in the Uwharrie National Forest, Buckshot and I went up there in the evening so we could watch the recruits come into an RV the next morning. During the night the weather turned real bad and it began to snow heavily. Around 6:30, just as it
was getting daylight, I saw Walt Shumate walk into the rendezvous to get his next set of instructions. I almost didn't recognize him. His beard, mustache, eyebrows, and cap were painted in ice. The rest of him was wringing wet from having, an hour earlier, stepped into a creek. He was cold and miserable. When he saw me he didn't smile. His endurance was being stretched, and his sense of humor had deserted him.

A few weeks earlier at Bragg, Sergeant Major Shumate had come over to see me and wanted to know, as an old friend, how he could join up. I told him. He said, “I'm not getting any younger, Colonel, and I'm not sure I'm fit enough to get through that selection course.” “You better start working then,” I'd said. Walter was about forty-four at that time. Anyway, he'd gotten in shape and had come over and volunteered to go through selection. It was in February.