thedrifter
05-17-06, 03:00 PM
05.16.2006
From The Editor
IMAD MUGHNIYAH -- MASTER BASTARD OF TERRORISTS
By Roger Charles
Hardly a day goes by that retired Marine Colonel John Garrett doesn't wonder if this is the day that Imad Mughniyah steps out of the shadows to take credit for latest deadly strike against the United States. For the past twenty-plus years, Mughniyah has plotted and then acted to murder Garrett's fellow Americans.
Garrett is certain of two things. Unless the US takes Mughniyah out, this cold, calculating killer will continue to murder Americans. And, if history is any guide, his successes will on occasion be spectacular.
Former Navy SEAL Platoon Commander, Tom Short goes through his day with similar concerns.
Ditto for former Marine sniper platoon commander Bill McSwain.
And these concerns are echoed and amplified by former member of the CIA's clandestine services, and best-selling author, Bob Baer. Baer spent much of his career in the bazaars and back alleys of the Mid-east and made a specialty of studying Imad Mughniyah.
"He is the most dangerous terrorist we've ever faced. He's a pathological murderer," says Baer. "Mughniyah is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we've ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door; exits by another. Changes his cars daily. Never makes appointments on a telephone; never is predictable. He only uses people that are related to him that he can trust. He doesn't just recruit people. He is the master terrorist, the grail that we have been after since 1983."
That year Mughniyah is credited with using a car bomb to destroy the US Embassy in April, killing several key members of the CIA's Near-east Division who were attending a regional meeting at the embassy. Mughniyah killed 63 in this attack.
Just six months later, Mughniyah made it personal for Colonel John Garrett when a suicide driver detonated a truck bomb inside the building serving as the barracks for Marines at the Beirut airport. Mughniyah's operation murdered 241 American servicemen, mostly Marines and Navy corpsmen. One of the murdered Marines was Capt. Mike Haskell who had been Garrett's first platoon sergeant in Viet Nam in 1969.
Garrett had stayed in contact with Haskell who rose through the ranks, making the rank of Captain by 1983. Haskell mailed Garrett from Beirut shortly before Mughniyah's attack on the Marine barracks. So for Colonel John Garrett, Imad Mughniyah was not just some abstract figure seen on slides in intelligence briefings.
Mughniyah had also kidnapped and murdered U.S. Marine Lt.Col. Rich Higgins, a Garrett contemporary, and William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, and according to several informed authorities, personally tortured Buckley until he died.
In 1985, Mughniyah added to his bag of terrorist tactics, orchestrating the hijacking a TWA flight in the eastern Mediterranean. This operation produced one of the most brutal images of pre-9/11 times when the body of 2d Class Petty Officer, Navy diver Robert Stethem, was dumped from the airliner onto the tarmac at the Beirut airport. Mughniyah and his band of thugs had beaten Stetham for hours before deciding to shoot him and dump his remains in front of the dozens of assembled cameras.
For the ensuing two decades, Mughniyah operated from the darkest shadows of Mid-east terrorism, using plastic surgery to alter his appearance so that the few photographs that did exist, were rendered useless to the US teams on constant alert to launch snatch & grab operations should "actionable intelligence" be obtained.
Until 9/11/01 and the rise to cosmic celebrity of Osama Bin Laden, Imad Mughniyah was America's number one terrorist target. He had killed more Americans by an order of magnitude than any other terrorist. Launching his attacks from the slums of South Beirut, or the terrorist training camps in the Bekka Valley of Lebanon, or the offices of the international branch of Iranian "wet" operations in Tehran, Mughniyah's success in producing lengthy lists of dead and wounded Americans was unequalled: no other terrorist was even close.
So how then did these two Marine infantry officers and a Navy SEAL platoon commander, cross paths with one of the world's most elusive terrorist?
EXERCISE RUGGED NAUTILUS
The summer of 1996 was a time fraught with fraught for the American counter-terrorist community. The Summer Olympics was to open in Atlanta on July 19. The presidential conventions for both the national parties would take place in August. Late June had seen the attack at Khobar Towers where Mughniyah added almost a score of new victims, this time members of the US Air Force.
Things really got tense when, on July 17, TWA Flight 800 fell from the sky in the waters south of Long Island, minutes after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport. For days there was little doubt that terrorists had killed the 230 ill-fated victims on the Boeing 747. (A year later, in a July 10, 1997, hearing, the Subcommittee on Aviation of the Transportation Committee of the House of Representatives, stated, "A missile, a bomb and a mechanical failure have emerged as possible causes.")
Even before the attack on Khobar Towers and the loss of TWA 800, the Clinton national security apparatus ordered US military commanders to pre-position additional Special Operations forces in the Persian Gulf as a contingency in case of a terrorist attack on the Atlanta Olympics. The cover and deception plan involved hiding the movement of additional forces under the guise of a routine training exercise, in this case EXERCISE RUGGED NAUTILUS.
Central Command (CENTCOM) already had a robust counter-terrorist capability in theater in the form of a US Navy Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) carrying the 13th MEU (SOC) [Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable)] with an attached SEAL platoon. (The ARG was generally referred to as the TARAWA ARG after the flagship, the USS TARARA (LHA-1)).
A second SEAL platoon and a detachment of Special Boat Squadron assets were quietly shipped into the Persian Gulf. By mid-July, nearly 4,000 Marines and sailors were loaded and locked (not counting the Navy Carrier Battle Group also on station in the Gulf).
GET READY
On July 21 the USS RUSHMORE (LSD-47), with the ARG SEAL platoon, had received a close-hold mission from the Commander Fifth Fleet involving a Kuwaiti merchant ship, the Ibn Tufail, and a possible High Value Target (HVT) that might be aboard. That possible HVT was Imad Mughniyah.
Just after hours after the other ships of the ARG pulled into Manama, Bahrain for a long-scheduled liberty call, national intelligence assets reported that Imad Mughniyah was aboard the Ibn Tufail, and that ship had just left port at Doha, Qatar, 85 statute miles to the southeast. Mughniyah was traveling under a false identity and with a very small security detachment, only about a half-dozen bodyguards. The tactical situation appeared to be near perfect for capturing or killing the number one terrorist on America's most-wanted list.
The operation was code-named GOLDEN OX RETURNS.
There was also a special bonus factor in the case of Mughniyah; he was currently under indictment. This was a hugely important point in the Clinton administration's counter-terrorism policy, a policy that emphasized the legalistic approach to dealing with terrorists (and one that was proven totally bankrupt and ineffectual on 9/11).
Garrett, received his warning order and immediately initiated the rapid-planning process that he and his staff had practiced until it seemed like second nature.
The initial focus of the Commander, 13th MEU (SOC), was not totally on Imad Mughniyah. First, the Marine colonel had to engage in some bureaucratic arm-wrestling with an on-scene SEAL commander, with a CIA Chief Of Station and even the head of an FBI detachment that was in place to escort back to the US any high-value captives. Each one of these individuals thought he should be the boss, and his agency should be the controlling activity for the operation to snatch or kill Mughniyah. And of course, each saw Garrett and his MEU (SOC) of 2000-plus trained killers as a great subordinate element that could be safely trusted with doing the required "manual labor" while they and their agency took the credit back in Washington.
(Years later, a retired senior FBI official familiar with the circumstances involving the detachment sent to the Persian Gulf, was asked about the capability of this group to have commanded the operation to kill or capture Mughniyah. He laughed, and said, "They were ****ing guards." But these Louie Freeh-trained Potomac Princelings cost time and effort from Garrett that he would have preferred to spend on other matters.)
After a down-to-brass-tacks conference call among all the various claimants, the Acting CINC at CENTCOM rightly gave Garrett primary responsibility for developing the tactical plan and commanding the forces that would kill or capture Mughniyah on board the Ibn Tufail. (The actual CINC, Army General J. Binford Peay III, was in Washington, DC, testifying before Congress on the Khobar Towers bombing. His Deputy CINC, Marine General Richard I. "Butch" Neal, was the Acting CINC at the Tampa, Florida, headquarters.)
GET SET
The newly assigned mission was one of eight Special Operations Missions that Garrett and his MEU (SOC) had practiced with the sailors of their ARG, and was called a VBSS (Visit, Board, Search and Seizure), or also, a MIO (Maritime Intercept Operation). Garrett was confident that his men would be up to the task, partly because they had successfully conducted such an operation on a previous deployment to the Persian Gulf.
Ellie
From The Editor
IMAD MUGHNIYAH -- MASTER BASTARD OF TERRORISTS
By Roger Charles
Hardly a day goes by that retired Marine Colonel John Garrett doesn't wonder if this is the day that Imad Mughniyah steps out of the shadows to take credit for latest deadly strike against the United States. For the past twenty-plus years, Mughniyah has plotted and then acted to murder Garrett's fellow Americans.
Garrett is certain of two things. Unless the US takes Mughniyah out, this cold, calculating killer will continue to murder Americans. And, if history is any guide, his successes will on occasion be spectacular.
Former Navy SEAL Platoon Commander, Tom Short goes through his day with similar concerns.
Ditto for former Marine sniper platoon commander Bill McSwain.
And these concerns are echoed and amplified by former member of the CIA's clandestine services, and best-selling author, Bob Baer. Baer spent much of his career in the bazaars and back alleys of the Mid-east and made a specialty of studying Imad Mughniyah.
"He is the most dangerous terrorist we've ever faced. He's a pathological murderer," says Baer. "Mughniyah is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we've ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door; exits by another. Changes his cars daily. Never makes appointments on a telephone; never is predictable. He only uses people that are related to him that he can trust. He doesn't just recruit people. He is the master terrorist, the grail that we have been after since 1983."
That year Mughniyah is credited with using a car bomb to destroy the US Embassy in April, killing several key members of the CIA's Near-east Division who were attending a regional meeting at the embassy. Mughniyah killed 63 in this attack.
Just six months later, Mughniyah made it personal for Colonel John Garrett when a suicide driver detonated a truck bomb inside the building serving as the barracks for Marines at the Beirut airport. Mughniyah's operation murdered 241 American servicemen, mostly Marines and Navy corpsmen. One of the murdered Marines was Capt. Mike Haskell who had been Garrett's first platoon sergeant in Viet Nam in 1969.
Garrett had stayed in contact with Haskell who rose through the ranks, making the rank of Captain by 1983. Haskell mailed Garrett from Beirut shortly before Mughniyah's attack on the Marine barracks. So for Colonel John Garrett, Imad Mughniyah was not just some abstract figure seen on slides in intelligence briefings.
Mughniyah had also kidnapped and murdered U.S. Marine Lt.Col. Rich Higgins, a Garrett contemporary, and William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, and according to several informed authorities, personally tortured Buckley until he died.
In 1985, Mughniyah added to his bag of terrorist tactics, orchestrating the hijacking a TWA flight in the eastern Mediterranean. This operation produced one of the most brutal images of pre-9/11 times when the body of 2d Class Petty Officer, Navy diver Robert Stethem, was dumped from the airliner onto the tarmac at the Beirut airport. Mughniyah and his band of thugs had beaten Stetham for hours before deciding to shoot him and dump his remains in front of the dozens of assembled cameras.
For the ensuing two decades, Mughniyah operated from the darkest shadows of Mid-east terrorism, using plastic surgery to alter his appearance so that the few photographs that did exist, were rendered useless to the US teams on constant alert to launch snatch & grab operations should "actionable intelligence" be obtained.
Until 9/11/01 and the rise to cosmic celebrity of Osama Bin Laden, Imad Mughniyah was America's number one terrorist target. He had killed more Americans by an order of magnitude than any other terrorist. Launching his attacks from the slums of South Beirut, or the terrorist training camps in the Bekka Valley of Lebanon, or the offices of the international branch of Iranian "wet" operations in Tehran, Mughniyah's success in producing lengthy lists of dead and wounded Americans was unequalled: no other terrorist was even close.
So how then did these two Marine infantry officers and a Navy SEAL platoon commander, cross paths with one of the world's most elusive terrorist?
EXERCISE RUGGED NAUTILUS
The summer of 1996 was a time fraught with fraught for the American counter-terrorist community. The Summer Olympics was to open in Atlanta on July 19. The presidential conventions for both the national parties would take place in August. Late June had seen the attack at Khobar Towers where Mughniyah added almost a score of new victims, this time members of the US Air Force.
Things really got tense when, on July 17, TWA Flight 800 fell from the sky in the waters south of Long Island, minutes after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport. For days there was little doubt that terrorists had killed the 230 ill-fated victims on the Boeing 747. (A year later, in a July 10, 1997, hearing, the Subcommittee on Aviation of the Transportation Committee of the House of Representatives, stated, "A missile, a bomb and a mechanical failure have emerged as possible causes.")
Even before the attack on Khobar Towers and the loss of TWA 800, the Clinton national security apparatus ordered US military commanders to pre-position additional Special Operations forces in the Persian Gulf as a contingency in case of a terrorist attack on the Atlanta Olympics. The cover and deception plan involved hiding the movement of additional forces under the guise of a routine training exercise, in this case EXERCISE RUGGED NAUTILUS.
Central Command (CENTCOM) already had a robust counter-terrorist capability in theater in the form of a US Navy Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) carrying the 13th MEU (SOC) [Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable)] with an attached SEAL platoon. (The ARG was generally referred to as the TARAWA ARG after the flagship, the USS TARARA (LHA-1)).
A second SEAL platoon and a detachment of Special Boat Squadron assets were quietly shipped into the Persian Gulf. By mid-July, nearly 4,000 Marines and sailors were loaded and locked (not counting the Navy Carrier Battle Group also on station in the Gulf).
GET READY
On July 21 the USS RUSHMORE (LSD-47), with the ARG SEAL platoon, had received a close-hold mission from the Commander Fifth Fleet involving a Kuwaiti merchant ship, the Ibn Tufail, and a possible High Value Target (HVT) that might be aboard. That possible HVT was Imad Mughniyah.
Just after hours after the other ships of the ARG pulled into Manama, Bahrain for a long-scheduled liberty call, national intelligence assets reported that Imad Mughniyah was aboard the Ibn Tufail, and that ship had just left port at Doha, Qatar, 85 statute miles to the southeast. Mughniyah was traveling under a false identity and with a very small security detachment, only about a half-dozen bodyguards. The tactical situation appeared to be near perfect for capturing or killing the number one terrorist on America's most-wanted list.
The operation was code-named GOLDEN OX RETURNS.
There was also a special bonus factor in the case of Mughniyah; he was currently under indictment. This was a hugely important point in the Clinton administration's counter-terrorism policy, a policy that emphasized the legalistic approach to dealing with terrorists (and one that was proven totally bankrupt and ineffectual on 9/11).
Garrett, received his warning order and immediately initiated the rapid-planning process that he and his staff had practiced until it seemed like second nature.
The initial focus of the Commander, 13th MEU (SOC), was not totally on Imad Mughniyah. First, the Marine colonel had to engage in some bureaucratic arm-wrestling with an on-scene SEAL commander, with a CIA Chief Of Station and even the head of an FBI detachment that was in place to escort back to the US any high-value captives. Each one of these individuals thought he should be the boss, and his agency should be the controlling activity for the operation to snatch or kill Mughniyah. And of course, each saw Garrett and his MEU (SOC) of 2000-plus trained killers as a great subordinate element that could be safely trusted with doing the required "manual labor" while they and their agency took the credit back in Washington.
(Years later, a retired senior FBI official familiar with the circumstances involving the detachment sent to the Persian Gulf, was asked about the capability of this group to have commanded the operation to kill or capture Mughniyah. He laughed, and said, "They were ****ing guards." But these Louie Freeh-trained Potomac Princelings cost time and effort from Garrett that he would have preferred to spend on other matters.)
After a down-to-brass-tacks conference call among all the various claimants, the Acting CINC at CENTCOM rightly gave Garrett primary responsibility for developing the tactical plan and commanding the forces that would kill or capture Mughniyah on board the Ibn Tufail. (The actual CINC, Army General J. Binford Peay III, was in Washington, DC, testifying before Congress on the Khobar Towers bombing. His Deputy CINC, Marine General Richard I. "Butch" Neal, was the Acting CINC at the Tampa, Florida, headquarters.)
GET SET
The newly assigned mission was one of eight Special Operations Missions that Garrett and his MEU (SOC) had practiced with the sailors of their ARG, and was called a VBSS (Visit, Board, Search and Seizure), or also, a MIO (Maritime Intercept Operation). Garrett was confident that his men would be up to the task, partly because they had successfully conducted such an operation on a previous deployment to the Persian Gulf.
Ellie