February 13, 2006
Special Operations to become three-star command
By Sean D. Naylor
Times staff writer

The Defense Department is accepting an independent report’s recommendation to raise the headquarters in charge of the military’s most secret units from a two-star to a three-star command and expand its array of flag officers.

The structural changes in the organization, the Joint Special Operations Command, will give its chief more authority and influence in dealing with other leaders and give his headquarters greater ability to simultaneously command and control multiple task forces in the field, said several sources familiar with the report.

The initiative was welcomed by some in the special operations community, but others saw it as a needless addition of another layer of bureaucracy.

The Pentagon rejected another recommendation in the report to temporarily pull JSOC out from under U.S. Special Operations Command and have it report directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

That recommendation was prompted by problems that the authors — and others — perceive USSOCOM to be experiencing as it shoulders new responsibilities in the war on terror.

JSOC, headquartered at Pope Air Force Base, N.C., commands and controls the military’s three special mission units — the Army’s Delta Force, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, and a joint unit based on the East Coast designed for clandestine operations and what the Pentagon calls “operational preparation of the environment.”

JSOC also controls the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment and 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, JSOC has been one of the busiest organizations in the military. Historically geared for short-notice hostage rescue operations, it now has the additional mission to hunt down and kill or capture terrorist leaders.

It has enjoyed some success in that regard, capturing Saddam Hussein and killing or capturing many members of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq organization. But it continues to be frustrated in its pursuit of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Zarqawi himself.

The decision to make the JSOC commander a three-star was based on a recommendation in a classified report written for the Pentagon last year by a three-man team headed by retired Gen. Wayne Downing, a former JSOC and USSOCOM commander.

The other team members were retired Army Maj. Gen. Bill Garrison, a former JSOC commander, and Michael Vickers, a former Special Forces officer and CIA operative who now works for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank.

The state of spec ops

The report was commissioned after an Oct. 5 meeting of senior Pentagon leaders during which Rumsfeld became angry when Vice Adm. Eric Olson, deputy USSOCOM commander, showed a slide that appeared to state his command’s capabilities had declined, according to two sources familiar with the briefing.

“It made it look like [special operations forces were] getting worse, rather than better, which really wasn’t true,” said a Washington source familiar with the Downing report. “That triggered the secretary to say, ‘Well, why the hell have we been adding all this money [to special operations] and we’re going down the tubes?’”

Afterward, the source said Rumsfeld issued a number of his trademark “snowflake” memos “that were highly critical, that continued with the tenor of, ‘I just don’t have confidence in what I’m being told, so I need an independent look at this.’ ”

Within about a week, the Pentagon commissioned Downing to produce an independent assessment of the state of special operations forces, the source said.

Over two to three weeks in late October and early November, Downing, Garrison and Vickers interviewed active and retired special operations officers, as well as officials from USSOCOM and the office of Thomas O’Connell, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

They turned in the report in the second week of November. Part of it focused on comparing special operations capabilities in 2001 and late 2005, the source said.

“The basic answer there was, we haven’t gone to hell in a hand basket, we’ve gotten better, but there are still things that need to be done,” the source said.

To that end, the report made several recommendations, to include making the JSOC commander a three-star, with a pair of two-star deputies and a pair of one-star officers beneath them. JSOC is now commanded by a two-star, with two one-star deputies.

Structural shakeup

That recommendation is being implemented, at least in part. On Feb. 6, the Defense Department announced JSOC Commander Army Maj. Gen. Stan McChrystal has been nominated for a third star and to continue in his present job. Special operations sources said McChrystal, who took over JSOC in September 2003, likely will serve for another year in the position.

According to several special operations sources, McChrystal will get a single two-star deputy, rather than the two called for by the Downing report — Army Brig. Gen. (P) Frank Kearney, chief of U.S. Central Command’s Special Operations Command, or SOCCENT, and a former JSOC J-3, or operations officer.

Under McChrystal and Kearney will be at least two one-star officers, one each from the Navy and the Air Force, as at present.

The Pentagon announced Jan. 13 that one of JSOC’s deputy commanders, Air Force Brig. Gen. David Scott, who has been selected for promotion to major general, will become director of USSOCOM’s Special Operations Center for Networks and Communications.

The same announcement said Scott would be replaced at JSOC by Air Force Col. Eric Fiel, who has been selected for promotion to brigadier general and is presently operations director at Air Force Special Operations Command, Hurlburt Field, Fla.

Special operations sources said JSOC’s other deputy commander, Rear Adm. (lower half) William McRaven, a former commander of SEAL Team 6 — sometimes known by its cover name of Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DevGru — will be replaced by another SEAL, Rear Adm. (Lower Half) Bob Harward.

McRaven, whose nomination for appointment to rear admiral was announced Feb. 3, will take the reins at European Command’s Special Operations Command, or SOCEUR, which has traditionally been led by an Army Special Forces officer, sources said.

SOCEUR’s current commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas Csrnko, will take over the Army’s Special Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., while the present chief of that command, Brig. Gen. John Mulholland, will replace Kearney at SOCCENT, they said.

The Pentagon might add a third one-star to the JSOC command roster, according to a retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel still actively involved in these issues. “You’re going to have a three-star, a two-star and three one-stars,” he said.

McChrystal’s reappointment coupled with the arrival of Kearney — both highly respected officers with strong Ranger backgrounds — will reinforce the Ranger community’s grip on JSOC. The moves also mean that despite its status as the premier special mission unit for most of JSOC’s operational scenarios, Delta Force remains absent from the resumes of JSOC’s senior commanders. Only two Delta operators have ever served as JSOC commander, with current Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, who left JSOC in August 1996, being the most recent, according to a former special mission unit operator.

Asked Feb. 3 about the coming JSOC changes, Ken McGraw, a USSOCOM spokesman, said in a prepared statement that he had no information to release on any aspect of that subject.

On Feb. 7, after McChrystal’s nomination for a third star had been announced, McGraw added: “The initiative to make the Joint Special Operations Command commander a three-star position has been under way for some time. Maj. Gen. McChrystal has been nominated for promotion to lieutenant general to fill that position.”

He referred all questions on the Downing report to the Pentagon, which declined to comment.

Downing, reached via e-mail, also declined to comment, citing the report’s classified nature.

Several sources said the decision to increase JSOC’s flag officer complement was a reaction to the command’s vastly increased operational tempo after Sept. 11, 2001.

“Before 9/11, JSOC was essentially seen as a hostage-rescue unit or a render-safe unit,” said the retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel, referring to JSOC’s mission to respond to a potential terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction.

“You sit at Bragg [home of Delta Force and adjacent to JSOC’s Pope Air Force Base headquarters] and you train, you train, you train, then all of a sudden you get on a plane and you go somewhere, do a mission, it’s over in 36 hours and you come back,” he said.

Now the command is deployed somewhere “24-7,” he said. Since the Iraq war began, JSOC has kept at least one task force, and sometimes two, deployed there, with another in Afghanistan.

The command has shifted to “continuous operations rather than a responsive force,” added the Washington source familiar with the Downing report.

More bureaucracy?

Until a couple of years ago, JSOC only had two flag officers — a two-star commander and a one-star deputy. But even after the addition of a second one-star deputy, the headquarters has found itself stretched trying to command and control multiple task forces in different combat theaters, while retaining enough capability at Pope to respond to a no-notice mission such as a hostage rescue in Colombia.

That’s why the Downing report argued for beefing up the top command structure, sources said.

“They have three now, and they’re overcommitted, they’re never together,” said the Washington source familiar with the report.

“It wasn’t really the lack of shooters that hampered JSOC, it was the command and control elements,” said the retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel. “JSOC had the shooters to handle three operations somewhere, but they only had the command and control to handle maybe two. You need a staff and a headquarters that can handle three independent operations.”

But some special ops officers worry that all the change will do is add an unneeded layer of bureaucracy over special-mission units, where short decision cycles are essential.

“JSOC forces have done an incredible job” in the U.S. Central Command theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan, a special operations officer said. “We have learned things and adjusted quickly.”

The biggest lesson learned, he said, is the “ability to flatten an organization. In the old days you had big headquarters that did everything. What we learned in the last couple of years is to push the enablers and assets down to the lowest levels.”

“But now that things are slowing down, we’re reverting to our old ways,” he said. “Everything that was pushed down is being brought back up and centralized — not what we want to do” in fighting al-Qaida around the world.

“The other issue is we’re raising the bar on who can do things. Before, majors and lieutenant colonels ran the show. Today, you cannot even make coffee unless you’re an O-6 or above.”

A field-grade Special Forces officer in the Washington area said his peers agreed with this view. “They’re all convinced that all this does is move everybody one step lower on the pecking order,” he said.

But not everyone agrees. “I don’t think it’s adding a layer, like adding a corps or division,” said the Washington source familiar with the Downing report.

“What it’s doing is providing a more global capability to have multiple joint task forces — a flatter organization spread in different places.”

In other words, although on paper there will be another senior officer layer between a special-mission squadron and the JSOC commander, in practice the extra senior officer(s) will probably be in another combat zone leading another JSOC task force, not slowing down the decision cycle for that squadron’s operations. Making JSOC a three-star command also will give its commander more weight in dealing with other U.S. and foreign leaders, special operations sources said. But another factor in the decision appeared to be senior leaders’ desire to keep McChrystal in command at JSOC while rewarding him with a third star for the job he has done so far.

Sources said McChrystal is highly regarded by both Rumsfeld and Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command.

“He [Rumsfeld] has a very close relationship with McChrystal and trusts McChrystal,” said the retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel.

“There is a very strong feeling that Stan in fact deserves his third star, but there is a need to have continuity of command [at JSOC],” said another special operations source. “So to achieve both, the simple solution is to give Stan his third star.” A former special mission unit operator said McChrystal is a popular commander who “has come a long way towards ‘getting it’ and letting the guys run the show on the ground.”

But, he added, “customizing the headquarters based on one or two individuals” is a risky proposition that has disappointed some in the special operations community.

“People are looking at it like, why are we customizing a solution based on the people?” he said “Everyone knows once you set into place a [flag officer] organizational structure change, that thing is set in granite.”

In addition, the former operator said, raising JSOC to a three-star level will greatly limit the number of officers eligible to command it in the future.

No direct line to Rumsfeld

While the Defense Department has moved ahead with Downing’s recommendation to give JSOC a three-star billet, the Pentagon has declined to implement another: that JSOC be removed temporarily from USSOCOM’s command and control and instead report directly to Rumsfeld.

“SOCOM is transitioning from a force provider to a force provider and warfighter at a time of SOF expansion, so that’s a major, major challenge,” the Washington source familiar with the report said. “So one recommendation was to not only elevate JSOC but have it be a direct report [to Rumsfeld] for a period for time while SOCOM got its birthing pains over.”

A special operations source said Downing’s point “was that you have put SOCOM in a tough situation in terms of the [Unified Command Plan] and the inability to get the geographic combatant commands to, in fact, get with the program and allow SOCOM to have certain authorities within their area of operations.”

“In order to make the UCP work, you need to take a slice of SOCOM temporarily and convince, to say it in the nicest way — ‘force,’ to say it in a not-so-nice way — the geographic commands to learn how to deal with at least one portion of SOCOM in … the global war on terrorism,” the source said.

The former special mission unit operator said the idea of JSOC reporting directly to the defense secretary was not new, but was popular with his peers.

“That’s been the recommendation du jour from the bottom up since Bosnia … [and] it intensified after Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said.

Having JSOC work for the defense secretary would allow for more streamlined communication between JSOC and the National Command Authority, as the president and defense secretary are collectively known, he said.

“Getting the orders direct from the president or the NCA would be a huge improvement over the current system,” he said, but would mean “neutering of four different commands” with flag officers in them.

“I heard that’s why they … put the kibosh on it, even though it was recommended over and over to Downing when he did his assessment,” he said. “SOCOM fought it vehemently.”

Reporting directly to Rumsfeld would give the JSOC commander “enormous additional status,” the Washington source said.

“But my understanding is that recommendation was shot down [by] the Joint Staff,” including Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

“I don’t even think Rumsfeld liked it,” the source said.

Ellie