Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces
“I never told them what to write. The suggestion would be that an article (or program, or conference, etc.) stating their beliefs would be useful. They would take it from there. One result was a book, written very quickly, by a noted Islamic scholar.
“Effective PSYOP is not always preparing the message; it is extremely effective when already available materials, programming, or information are properly directed.”
Another aspect of the PSYOP war saw the 4th Group working like a political campaign’s media advisers, suggesting talking points for U.S. officials and others who would counter Saddam’s propaganda. “We suggested four or five information points every few days for leaders of the United States, Egypt, and other allies, such as Great Britain, to use in public interviews, press conferences, and statements. This showed that the coalition force really spoke with one mind. Every day, ideas would float back and forth between governments and leaders. From these, we’d take four or five points for all to use.
“It was magic to watch all of this unfold. Following agreement on the points by the leaders, and their dissemination through the Ambassador and the CINC, we would watch them come back through the media over the course of a week.”
Very few people outside of military circles are aware of PSYOP campaigns. And even the military ...
“You have to be satisfied with accomplishment, because you sure as hell don’t get any recognition,” Devlin concludes.
BY the time the war got under way, Colonel Layton Dunbar had taken over as the 4th Psychological Group’s commander. The unit’s efforts varied:
In December, stickers began appearing on buildings in Kuwait City encouraging resistance to Saddam—a PSYOP project. two days after the first bombs fell in the air war, PSYOP troops—predominantly members of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard—launched the Voice of the Gulf, a radio program broadcast on both AM and FM bands from three ground stations and an airborne EC-130. Subtle PSYOP appeals played in rotation with music and news programs.
B-52s can carry a very large load of bombs, and when the load hits, it wastes a lot of territory and makes lots of noise. In other words, B-52s are not only strategic and tactical weapons, they are psychological weapons. Ground troops who have seen what they can do are not eager to repeat the experience—or be subjected to it.
Six Iraqi military units were targeted for treatment that combined PSYOP leaflets with B-52 strikes. The operations unfurled over several days. On day one, leaflets were dropped on the unit, warning that it would come under B-52 attack at a specific time. The soldiers were urged to flee. At the specified moment, the B-52s would arrive with their loads of bombs. Afterward, a fresh round of leaflets would arrive, reminding them of the strike and warning that a new one would soon follow. Neighboring units nearby would receive their own warnings. Mass defections often followed. Or as Carl Stiner put it, “They ran like hell.”
The Air Force was at first reluctant to sign on to this approach (who warns the people they’re going to bomb?), but they eventually became big boosters. These operations conveyed a sense of overwhelming superior force, while filling the enemy with dread.
You don’t have to kill the enemy to win a war. It’s enough that the enemy does not choose to fight.
Later, the Air Force adopted a PSYOP campaign that targeted SAM sites, warning them that they would be bombed if they turned on their radars. “It kept bad guys from shooting at Air Force aircraft,” Normand comments. “So they turned out to be among our strongest proponents.”
One feature of PSYOP leaflets was the positive portrayal of Iraqi soldiers. As a unit historian pointed out later: “I Ie was always portrayed as a decent, brave fellow who had been misled by his leaders, but who would be received by the coalition forces with the dignity he deserved.” Coalition soldiers were depicted in unthreatening ways.
This portrayal was not accidental. PSYOP planners market-tested their products. Among other things, they discovered that Iraqi soldiers responded better to simple leaflets with primitive illustrations and poor-quality paper; slicker efforts were too Western. They also discovered the kinds of content that worked and the kinds that didn’t.
“We had some Iraqi POWs who had surrendered,” said Normand. “We laughed and joked with them and found out that the thing they miss the most over there was bananas. Over and over, for some reason, that kept coming up.”
So PSYOP leaflets began to feature a fruit bowl with bananas.
The subtle touches took time; a single leaflet could involve as many as seventy-five people and a week and a half to develop. The leaflets were then dropped by a variety of aircraft, including B-52s, F-16s, F/A-18s, and MC- 130 Combat Talons. The 8th SOS dropped approximately 19 million leaflets from MC-130s alone.
PSYOP troops also used specially prepared balloons, relying on carefully charted weather patterns to target specific areas with leaflet drops, and they paid smugglers in Jordan and off the Kuwaiti coast to distribute leaflets in Iraq.
A PSYOP survey of many of the 86,743 Iraqis prisoners found that 98 percent had seen a leaflet; 80 percent said they had been influenced by it; and 70 percent claimed it had helped them decide to give up. Radio messages were found to have reached 58 percent of the men; 46 percent had found these messages persuasive; and 34 percent said they had helped convince them to surrender. Loudspeaker broadcasts reached fewer, and affected fewer still: thirty-four percent had heard them; 18 percent had found them persuasive; and 16 percent claimed the messages had helped convince them to give up. These numbers, have to be considered with skepticism, since they were supplied by prisoners of war probably eager to please their captors, but even so, the vast number of Iraqi defections indicate the PSYOP campaign helped demoralize a large part of the Iraqi army.
Demoralizing the enemy was not, in fact, the main PSYOP goal.
“PSYOP basically has two functions,” Colonel Normand comments. “To persuade and to inform. Persuasion is important. But supplying information is most of what we did. A lot of times, it’s questionable whether you arc going to get an enemy soldier to surrender. So your main task may not necessarily be to persuade him, but to let him know what he has to do. If the situation reaches a point where you can’t go on, then here are the things you need to do to save yourself.”
Accordingly, the PSYOP warriors gave soldiers in Kuwait and Iraq very clear maps to allied lines, where they could go to surrender or wait to be repatriated.
Supplying maps to the enemy, and warning units that arc about to be attacked, seems an odd military tactic. Even more, an odd SOF tactic. These are shadow warriors. But in fact the goal is also a traditional one for the SOF: to affect people’s hearts and minds. Successful PSYOP operations share another SOF principle as well: Think creatively. For example, PSYOP planners recognized that the goal of a particular bombing raid is to make the targeted unit ineffective, as opposed to simply killing as many men as possible—which meant that a good propaganda campaign could actually accomplish much more than bombing alone. The leaflets helped make the allies seem overwhelmingly powerful.
No wonder so many Iraqis deserted as the war progressed.
PSYOP units also worked with ground troops near the front, in campaigns designed either to confuse the enemy or to trick him into revealing his position.
In one celebrated example, a Marine unit’s Light Armored Vehicles, or LAVs, were tape-recorded. The PSYOP team then used loudspeakers to convince an Iraqi unit that LAVs were maneuvering near the border. When the Iraqis began firing at them, Marine air and artillery zeroed in on the enemy positions.
Sixty-six loudspeaker-equipped teams accompanied advancing armies during the ground war to encourage surrender and direct enemy prisoners of war. The teams helped herd and control the large number of EPs (enemy prisoners) taken by coalition forces.
Some nine hundred PSYOP soldiers took part in various facets of the campaign; most were highly educated and many were language specialists. The 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) included nearly
fifty Ph.D.s. Normand had a B.A. in political science and two master’s degrees, one in international affairs and the other in strategic planning. Devlin earned a B.S. in history education, and two master’s degrees in national security affairs and international relations. Both were trained and experienced U.S. Army foreign area officers (FAOs), army strategists, and joint service officers (JSOs).
Interestingly, clinical psychologists play a very small role in PSYOPs. They’re too narrow. “Their focus is on an individual’s thinking processes, but they don’t go beyond that into the effects of that thinking. They don’t consider what that thinking causes to happen in a society and in a culture, explained Normand.
THE WAR AGAINST SCUDS
Saddam had his own psychological weapons, as well. After the air war began, Saddam struck back with “Scud” missiles.
Scuds were not an effective tactical weapon. They were obsolete and inaccurate. The original Scud design had been introduced in 1957, but even then it looked back more than it looked forward: It was a near-descendant of the Nazi V-2s that had terrorized London in the latter part of World War II. A modern military commander actually had little to fear.
Stock versions of the Soviet SS-1 mobile missiles (as they were officially designated) could send a 1,000-kg warhead of conventional high explosives just under 300 kilometers. The Iraqis had increased their range by welding additional fuel sections to some of the rockets. Two lraqi variants used during the war had ranges of just over 400 and 550 miles. Achieving this, however, came at a considerable price. Payloads had to be reduced, and worse, shoddy welding often meant that the missiles ruptured as they flew, decreasing their already poor accuracy. This defect actually made it harder for antimissile systems, like Patriot MIM-104 missiles, to target them effectively.
There was considerable concern that the Scuds might carry nuclear, biological, and chemical warheads. While Iraq had chemical—and probably biological—weapons, there was debate over whether they could be used on the missiles, and though the Iraqis had a program to develop nuclear weapons, they were years away from a working warhead in 1991.
In the end, no chemical, nuclear, or biological agents were launched on Scuds during the war.
Because the Scuds were not seen as a serious tactical threat to American forces, they were mostly ignored by the early Air Force war plan (except to knock out known Scud sites during the first moments of the war). But the Air Force made a serious error in estimating their strategic importance: Like the German V-2s, they had a potent psychological effect.
Saddam’s targeting during his first salvo of the war, January 18, made his strategy obvious. Eight Scuds were launched toward Israel that night; the most serious strike injured a dozen people. The injuries were light—mostly cuts and bruises from shattered windows. In all, about sixty people in Tel Aviv and Haifa were hurt. But Saddam’s goal wasn’t so much to kill Jews as to provoke Israel into a military response. Israeli action, he believed (probably correctly), would drive the Arab nations arrayed against him from the allied coalition.
A switch from support to opposition by the leading Arab nations would have subjected American forces to innumerable difficulties, encouraged terrorist attacks, and greatly complicated logistics.
Saddam did very nearly get his wish: A flight of Israeli air force jets were reportedly scrambled for a retaliatory raid but were called back. The Israeli government tottered for weeks on the brink of ordering a revenge raid, yet the go-ahead blessedly never came. President Bush and his administration worked feverishly to calm the Israelis with assurances that stopping the Scuds was a top priority. It was a top priority. But stopping them wasn’t easy. The attacks continued. By the end of the first week of the war, more than thirty Scuds had been launched against Israel. Another eighteen were fired at Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force changed targeting priorities to concentrate on the missiles, but the Iraqis had put enormous effort and ingenuity into making the Scuds mobile, and into deception and camouflage. They had adapted transport vehicles to use as primitive launchers, drastically cut the arduous launch preparation procedure, and produced convincing decoys. Hitting such missile units at night from 15,000 feet in the air was problematic. Even with well over fifty sorties a night, the United States failed to stem the Scud attacks.
In September, and again in late December, Carl Stiner had recommended deploying a Joint Special Operations Task Force to Saudi Arabia, consisting of more than one-third of his special mission forces, to be readily available for counterterrorist operations as well as deep-strike missions, but he had been turned down. Even so, his planning continued.
When Scuds became a critical political issue in Israel, Stiner and Downing quickly developed a plan for dealing with the threat by putting special missions forces deep inside Iraq.
On January 22, while Stiner lobbied Powell by phone, Downing met with Lieutenant General Thomas W. Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, to present the plan. Intelligence had narrowed the launching positions against Israel to three areas, or “kill boxes, in western Iraq. The Amman-Baghdad highway ran through one; the other two were on the Syrian border near Shab al Hiri and Al Qaim. Downing outlined a force that would stalk the kill boxes and locate the Scuds so they could be destroyed by air, or attacked by the patrols themselves if air was not available. Augmented by Rangers and other special operators and supported by special mission aircraft, teams could spend several days north of the border accomplishing their mission.
Ground forces, Downing argued, had a much better chance of locating the Scuds than the fighter-bombers, which had to fly at relatively high altitude (to avoid antiaircraft defenses), often in bad weather. Kelly liked the plan enough to take it to Colin Powell.
“Interesting, but not yet,” Powell said.
The same day, a Scud landed in a Tel Aviv suburb. Ninety-six people were injured. While none of the direct injuries was fatal, three Israelis died of heart attacks, possibly caused by the raid.
Israel continued to pressure the Bush administration, which in turn pressured the SECDEF and the Chairman. On January 30, Powell called Stiner and Downing to his office. Downing briefed essentially the same plan he had given Kelly. He proposed three possible force packages—small, medium, or large.
“All right,” said Powell, when the briefing ended. “I’ll go up and get the Secretary of Defense. Give me those slides.”
Powell disappeared with the briefing slides. A few minutes later, he returned with Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
Downing and Stiner hit the key points again.
“Every night you see Saddam Hussein sitting in his doggone Winnebagos with his war council, laughing at the United States,” Stiner said to the Secretary of Defense. “The air war has been ongoing for a week, and he is still very much in control. The Scuds arc continuing to fall on Israel, and we can do something about it, if we’re allowed to get in theater and do our thing.”
Cheney looked at Downing.
“General, when can you depart for Saudi Arabia?” the Secretary asked.
“We can go tonight,” said Downing.
“Why don’t you do that?”
“You know Norm doesn’t want these guys over there,” Powell told Cheney.
“I don’t care what Norm wants,” replied the Secretary of Defense. “He’s had seven days to shut this thing off and he hasn’t done it. They’re going.”
Downing left immediately with a force package of about four hundred personnel, especially tailored for the mission. Operating out of Ar-Ar in western Saudi Arabia near the border, the package was the middle-size of the three attack options he had outlined.
When the general arrived in Riyadh the next day, Schwarzkopf was trying to catch a quick nap. Downing, who’d known the CINC for almost his entire time in the Army, went down to meet him in his bedroom.
“You work for me, not Carl Stiner,” Schwarzkopf barked in greeting. “I don’t care if you talk to General Stiner, but I don’t want
you reporting to him.”
“I won’t do that,” Downing answered.
“I don’t want you going into Iraq and getting captured, you understand that?” Schwarzkopf added. “The last thing I want is a damn general paraded on Iraqi television.”
“Okay,” said Downing.
Schwarzkopf had nothing to worry about on either count. Downing wasn’t a cowboy, and in any event he was well aware of the devastating effect a captured general might have on both morale and public opinion. Likewise, Stiner never interfered with Schwarzkopf or his chain of command.
Before leaving for his new base, Downing went to see British Special Air Service Colonel Andy Massey, whose 22nd SAS Regiment commandos were already conducting anti-Scud operations north of the border. During the course of the Scud war, about 250 SAS men would work in the southernmost kill box along the Amman-Baghdad highway
“Currently, we have twenty-seven guys unaccounted for—they arc missing in action,” Massey told Downing. “I want to tell you everything we’ve done right, and everything we’ve done wrong.”
The extreme cold and the openness of the desert had caused major problems. two British commandos had already died of hypothermia. And there was simply nowhere to hide during the day.
“The place is covered with Bedouins,” Massey said. “You meet a Bedouin and you’ve got a fifty percent chance he is going to turn you in.”
Though some of his own troops were on foot, Massey also made it clear that the patrols needed to be mounted. Without vehicles they were easy prey.
It was an important lesson.
EVEN before they left the States, Downing and his planners realized the critical mission wasn’t to destroy Scuds; it was to stop Scud missiles from shooting into Israel. That realization meant they didn’t have to find the missiles themselves; any of the facilities necessary for launching them would do just as well.