Dirty Wars Page #7

to the American people

and to the world

that the United States has

conducted an operation

that killed Osama bin Laden,

the leader of al-Qaeda.

Again, for those

just joining us,

Osama bin Laden is dead,

and one confirmation

we're getting

indicates that this is a

special operations raid.

And I think an organization

we're gonna hear a lot

about in the coming days

is JSOC, the Joint Special

Operations Command.

So much for secrecy.

So much for cover-ups.

The forces I'd been trying

to unmask since Gardez

were suddenly national heroes.

The operation was

called Neptune Spear.

To capture or kill bin Laden.

It felt like the world

had turned upside down.

JSOC, long shrouded in secrecy,

was becoming a household name.

But what did it really mean?

The White House

circulated a photo

from the night of the raid,

perhaps as a picture

of transparency.

Everyone was in the room:

Secretary of State,

Secretary of Defense,

Vice President,

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,

the President himself.

But it was the

seating arrangement

that interested me.

The man at the head of the table

wasn't the commander in chief.

It was McRaven's

assistant at JSOC,

General Webb.

McRaven himself was running the

operation from Afghanistan.

USA! USA! USA! USA!

I wasn't mourning

bin Laden's death,

but I wasn't celebrating either.

After ten years, I understood

that people wanted closure.

But it didn't feel

like V-E Day to me.

Didn't feel like victory at all.

The leader of

al-Qaeda is dead,

but a new one has

taken his place.

Your mission will be to

ensure he meets the same end.

Hearing JSOC mentioned

on television

was jolting enough,

but when I saw the admiral

in front of the cameras,

it felt like I'd walked

through the looking glass.

I am deeply honored that the

President has nominated me

to serve as the next

SOCOM commander.

And if confirmed...

William McRaven was now

the toast of Washington.

Admiral McRaven,

by leading the mission that

killed Osama bin Laden,

you and your men won

an enduring place

in American military history.

Like all of my colleagues,

I salute you and

your colleagues'

and the SEALs'

extraordinary operations.

Thank you for your service.

Thank you, sir.

When the congratulations

subsided,

the senators turned to the

real purpose of the hearings.

Are you prepared and capable

to expand your operations

at a moment's notice worldwide?

As we look out from

Iraq, Afghanistan,

and, frankly, across the globe,

as we look at hot spots in Yemen

where you have al-Qaeda

in the Arabian Peninsula

or Somalia where you have

East African al-Qaeda

and al-Shabaab,

now, these are clearly

areas of concern...

People in the streets

may have hoped

the War on Terror

was finally over.

But in Washington,

in the corridors of power,

a new chapter had just begun.

Right now, it's kinetic.

Hard kill.

If it's not hard kill,

doesn't get played.

MALCOLM NANCE:

NAVAL INTELLIGENCE

Soon after the bin Laden strike,

I met Malcolm Nance,

a legend in the

world of covert ops

who'd trained

countless Navy SEALs

and other JSOC operators.

I'm a firm believer in

targeted assassination.

If they are too strong

for your ability

to negate their capacity

in the battlefield,

then you're just gonna

have to put a hellfire in.

If they're- if

they are dangerous

on a strategic scale

like Anwar al-Awlaki

from Yemen-

definitely has a

missile in his future.

No longer cloaked in secrecy,

special ops seemed

to be enjoying

their moment in the sun.

You know, we went in, we

did the drone strike,

and-or hellfire strike,

and we blasted the

individual car

of a known guy who was known

to be in that vehicle.

And we flew in, and

we snatched his body-

we confirmed it- got the

intelligence, went away.

That's the way we

should be doing it.

The first time we met,

he'd called me out of the blue.

This time, it was me who called.

JSOC may no longer

have been a secret,

but that didn't mean

we knew the truth.

But, in theory, Congress is

supposed to have oversight

of these operations.

Bin Laden's death had given

the War on Terror new life.

After 9/11, there were seven

people on the kill list.

In Iraq, 55 on the

deck of cards.

By Afghanistan, there

were thousands.

But now the list

itself was changing.

Signature strikes,

TADS,

crowd killing-

a target list was

no longer needed

to justify a strike

like al-Majalah.

All boys over the age of 15,

all men under the age of 70

were now fair game

in targeted areas.

Like a flywheel,

the global War on Terror was

spinning out of control.

When I began this story,

the U.S. was at war in

Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bombing in al-Majalah

brought me to Yemen.

But the list of countries

where U.S. Special Forces

were operating had grown,

just as the kill list had.

Algeria, Indonesia,

Thailand, Panama, Jordan-

the world was now a battlefield.

It was hard to know

where to go next.

In Pakistan, the U.S. was

launching weekly drone strikes.

In Mali, they were

hunting al-Qaeda.

In Latin America,

targeting drug cartels.

I decided to go to Somalia,

where an escalated

kill/capture program

was under way.

Just as McRaven had testified,

the war was erupting

in East Africa.

Drone strikes were increasing.

There were suicide bombings

in Kampala and Mogadishu.

And JSOC was on the ground,

snatching bodies and

flying them back to ships

in the Arabian Sea.

ADEN ADDE AIRPOR MOGADISHU, SOMALIA

Almost as soon as I arrived,

I sensed that things

weren't going to go well.

Mogadishu was seeing its

worst fighting in years,

and there were no foreign

journalists left in the city.

My local contact, Bashir Osman,

was worried about my safety.

Okay?

It's okay.

All right.

It was a strange feeling,

traveling with a dozen armed men

in a decoy car.

I still had my

reporter's notebook,

but what could I learn in

conditions like these?

Before arriving in Somalia,

I had read reports

that the U.S. was

outsourcing the kill lists

to local warlords.

Among the most

powerful in Mogadishu

was Yusuf Mohamed Siad,

known by everyone as Indha Adde,

"White Eyes. "

GEN. INDHA ADDE

US-BACKED SOMALI ARMY

In an earlier life, Indha Adde

had been America's enemy,

offering protection to people

on the U.S. kill list.

But the warlord had

since changed sides.

He was now on the U.S. payroll

and assumed the

title of general.

So he's saying that

the fiercest fighting

that they're doing right now

is happening right here.

Okay.

The men fired across

the rooftops,

but it didn't make sense to

me what we were doing here...

Or what the Americans were

doing here in Somalia,

arming this

warlord-turned-general

for what seemed like

a senseless war.

We got to move.

So these were Shabaab

fighters you buried here?

Yes, two, uh-huh.

If we capture foreign

fighters alive, we bury them.

We kill them

when we catch them.

If you capture a

foreigner alive,

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