Call Sign Extortion 17 (11 page)

The Choppers carried men from two Air Guard regiments back home. These units were the 7th Battalion (General Support), 158th Aviation Regiment Air National Guard Unit, headquartered out of Fort Hood, with a number of its members from the Kansas City area, and the 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment, out of Colorado. Bryan Nichols, Spencer Duncan, and Alex Bennett came from the 7th/158th, while David Carter came from the Colorado-­based 2nd/135th.

After the shoot-­down, General Colt, as part of his investigation, interviewed members of both units. Their testimony does not match with Mattis's assertion in the Colt Report that “the Army aviators flying this mission were fully qualified to perform all required tasks, that the aircraft was mission capable.”

On August 18, 2011, as part of his official investigation, Colt and his team took testimony from the crew of the other National Guard CH47-D Chinook helicopter flying alongside Extortion 17 that night, Extortion 16. This testimony appeared in its entirety in Exhibit 46 of the Colt Report, and reflects the startling lack of experience of the National Guard crews. The testimony below begins at page 2 of Exhibit 46.

 

BG Colt:
Okay. Can you tell us how many Team missions you have done up to this point approximately.

FLT AMC (Flight Air Missions Commander):
Yes, sir. That was my first one that night.

PC (Pilot in Command):
A handful, sir. I would have to go back to get—

BG Colt:
How long have you been on a mission doing this particular—

PC (Pilot in Command):
About four to six weeks.

BG Colt:
Four to six weeks?

PC:
Yes, sir.

BG Colt:
Okay. Doing about two missions ever [
sic
] three days or so?

PC:
For a while, it was every third day.

RAMP (Remote Access Missions Planner):
Roughly, the same amount, sir.

FLT AMC:
I think I've been doing it for about two weeks. And I've done about four to eight missions, something like that.

Right Door:
It was my second mission.

 

These units were not very experienced. One air missions commander was on his very first mission. A pilot had been flying every third day for four to six weeks. Another air missions commander responded that he'd “been doing it for about two weeks.” For the right door gunner, August 6, 2011 was only his “second mission.”

At page 49 of the interview, the National Guard subject matter expert, who is questioning the witnesses, asks the surviving pilot point-­blank if he expected to be flying direct support of Special Forces missions prior to his arrival in Afghanistan. The pilot's response is eye-­opening.

 

SME-­NGB:
Were you—did you have in mind that you would be direct support to special operations type support?

PC:
Not until we got here, sir.

 

Thus, the National Guard pilots were not even expecting to fly in support of Special Operations until they had arrived in Afghanistan. Clearly, and despite General Mattis's conclusions, these pilots were not qualified to fly this type of mission. These pilots were thrown into the lion's den, and not only were they not adequately trained for it, but they weren't expecting it.

Chapter 16

The Deadly Record of CH-47D in Afghanistan

One of the many things the report did not cover was the very deadly record of the CH-47D Chinook in Afghanistan. Recall that Extortion 17 was a CH-47D Chinook. Nearly half the shoot-­downs suffered by American choppers in the Afghan war prior to the Extortion 17 incident involved the CH-47D.

One such shoot-­down, oddly not disclosed in the Executive Summary of the Colt Report, occurred just
twelve days before the Extortion 17 shoot-­down.

National Guard Chinook

crash landing

twelve days before extortion 17

It was unfair to put these general aviation National Guard aircrews into the midst of a Special Forces operation. In fact, just twelve days before the Extortion 17 shoot-­down on July 25, 2011, a Chinook from the 7th Battalion (General Support), 158th Aviation Regiment, the National Guard regiment that supplied three out of five aircrew members of Extortion 17, was involved in a hard landing so severe that one of its crew members nearly died.

This incident was reported in the
Kansas City Star
on March 22, 2012, in an article by Lee Hill Kavanaugh entitled “After a Grim Year in Afghanistan, Chinook Unit Is Home at Last.” After recapping the
Extortion 17 shoot-­down, the article reveals a near-­death incident with a Chinook in the month prior to the shoot-­down:

 

The month before, a Chinook had a hard landing, injuring Ezekiel Crozier and Kirk Kuykendall. The men were told at one point Crozier probably wouldn't live. But both men were waiting in this crowd, too, to welcome home their buddies.

 

A guardsman named Staff Sergeant Ezekiel “Zeke” Crozier of Gardner, Kansas, a native of Spring Hill, Kansas, nearly died in the incident, which Congressman Yoder referred to in the congressional record as a “violent crash.”

Sergeant Crozier received a severe traumatic brain injury and miraculously dodged death, spending the next two and a half years rehabilitating in the United States. Incredibly, this brave young American, in a story that is shamefully repeated over and over again in America, was wrongly denied medical coverage by heartless bureaucrats from the Veterans Administration, despite receiving the Purple Heart for being injured in combat.

The National Guard Chinook that Staff Sergeant Crozier was in did not just suffer from a “hard landing” as was later spun. Staff sergeants in the US Army do not receive the Purple Heart for injuries suffered in a “hard landing.” The Purple Heart is awarded for injuries in battle, in times of combat. In fact Staff Sergeant Crozier's Purple Heart was awarded because his National Guard Chinook was actually
shot down
by Taliban RPGs.

Although no deaths occurred from this July attack, this shoot-­down was reported in at least two sources at the time, yet was conveniently omitted from the Colt Report.

The military press covered the July 25th shoot-­down of the other Chinook from the same squadron, so it is not as if the military commanders were unaware of the earlier incident when they sent Extortion 17 into harm's way. Consider, for example, the article in Defense-­Update.com, written by Tamir Eshel on July 26, 2011, entitled “
Chinook Downed by Taliban RPG Fire in Eastern Afghanistan
.” The exact wording of the opening of that article was as follows:

 

A
CH-47
Chinook
helicopter [was] downed by Taliban
RPG
fire in Eastern
Afghanistan
on Monday. The helicopter was hit by an
RPG
fired by Taliban, as it was descending, approaching to land at ‘Camp Joyce' Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Eastern
Afghanistan
. According to the
Stars and Stripes
,
The [
sic
] helicopter was carrying about 20 US and Afghan troops, two suffered minor injuries from shrapnel. The helicopter was hit shortly after midnight, when the rocket hit the rear of the helicopter on its descent into Nangalam Base in the Pech River Valley of Kunar province.

 

The report of the July 25th shoot-­down also appeared in other publications, including the respected
Long War Journal,
which published an article by reporter Bill Roggio on July 26, 2011, the day after the shoot-­down.

 

The US military confirmed that the Taliban shot down a helicopter in the contested province of Kunar in eastern Afghanistan.

The International Security Assistance Force Chinook helicopter was shot down by the Taliban yesterday and “crashed about 100 yards outside” of a military base in Kunar, a spokesman for Regional Command East
told
The New York Times
. The attack took place just outside of the Nangalam Base in the Pech River Valley,
according to
Stars & Stripes
. Nangalam is an Afghan Army base that used to be known as Camp Blessing.

ISAF reported the crash of the Chinook yesterday, but did not indicate it crashed due to enemy fire. No US military deaths were reported; two soldiers were lightly wounded in the attack.

The Taliban ambushed a rescue force that moved to the crash site, ISAF reported yesterday. “As coalition rescue forces approached the crash site, they came under enemy fire,”
ISAF stated in a press release
on the incident. “Coalition forces returned fire, with small arms, while working to secure the site of the crash. All passengers
and crew members have been secured and safely transported to a nearby base.”

In a statement released on their website, Voice of Jihad, the Taliban claimed credit for the shoot down, and said two of their fighters were killed during the operation. The Taliban fighters “shot off rocket propelled grenades from a close distance to bring down the enemy helicopter last night at approximately 1:00 am local time,” the statement on Voice of Jihad said.

 

On the day of the shoot-­down, the principal newspaper for the US Armed Forces,
Stars and Stripes,
reported the incident as follows:

 

FORWARD OPERATING BASE JOYCE, Afghanistan—Minor casualties were reported after a rocket-­propelled grenade downed a Chinook helicopter carrying US and Afghanistan soldiers as it attempted to land at a coalition forces base in eastern Afghanistan early Monday.

The crash happened shortly after midnight when the rocket hit the rear of the helicopter on its descent into Nangalam Base in the Pech River Valley of Kunar province.

At least two soldiers suffered non-­life-­threatening shrapnel wounds. Some 20 people were on board, including soldiers and crew.

A rescue team that responded to the crash came under small-­arms fire, drawing return fire from US and Afghan soldiers. No further coalition casualties were reported.

 

Then, on August 4, 2011, less than forty-­eight hours before the Extortion 17 mission, the
Stars and Stripes
published yet another article about the July 25th shoot-­down, which was eerily prophetic and bone-­chilling considering what was about to happen to Extortion 17. In fact, the approach, the time of day, and the danger from the ground in the July 25th attack were all similar to what Extortion 17 was about to face.

To understand the similarities in their missions and degrees of danger, it is first important to understand the mission of the National Guard Chinook on July 25, 2011.

It should be noted that many of the injuries to US forces referenced in these articles were minor, although Crozier's were not minor at all.

The point, however, is not so much about the severity of the injuries in these missions leading up to Extortion 17, but rather to show that (a) the military was on notice that the antiquated CH-47D was a dangerous platform in which to fly these special forces missions, and it should have used modified Special Forces aviation helicopters like the MH-47, and (b) the Colt Report did not reveal these pre-­Extortion 17 mission shoot-­downs, making it tougher for the reader to realize that the military knew, or should have known, of the unnecessary fatal danger it placed upon Extortion 17 by ordering the SEALs to board the old Chinook, unless someone bothered to do the research on similar missions with the CH-47D.

In the Vietnam era, American forces would spill blood to take a hill, then abandon a hill, and then spill blood to take the hill all over again. US forces were employing a similar tactic in July of 2011 in Kunar Province on the Pakistani border, approximately 80 miles northeast of Kabul.

The Kunar Province, in the northeastern corner of the country, had been a US stronghold against the Taliban since the beginning of the war. But by February 15, 2011, six months before the Extortion 17 shoot-­down, US forces had begun the process of withdrawing from the once-­strategic Pech Valley in Kunar Province that was central to the American campaign against the Taliban.

The
New York Times
reported on the pullback in an article published on February 24, 2011, by C. J. Chivers, Alissa J. Rubin, and Wesley Morgan, entitled “US Pulling Back in Afghan Valley It Called Vital to War.” The
Times
article revealed the military's intent to fully withdraw from the region within a period of two months to turn the area over to the Afghan military and police forces to fight the Taliban on their own.

US forces did substantially withdraw from the province, leaving the region under Afghan control. The problem arose, however, when Afghan military and security forces proved so inept and hapless in fighting against the Taliban that the United States was forced, at least temporarily, to re-­enforce the area.

The mission flown by the National Guard Chinook on July 25, 2011, was part of the effort to temporarily re-­insert American forces into the area after the Afghans had made such a mess of it.

The article published in
Stars and Stripes
two days prior to the Extortion 17 shoot-­down vividly describes that Chinook's approach into the Taliban-­infested Kunar Province.

 

FORWARD OPERATING BASE JOYCE, Afghanistan—Minor casualties were reported after a rocket-­propelled grenade downed a Chinook helicopter carrying US and Afghanistan soldiers as it attempted to land at a coalition forces base in eastern Afghanistan early Monday.

The crash happened shortly after midnight when the rocket hit the rear of the helicopter on its descent into Nangalam Base in the Pech River Valley of Kunar province.

At least two soldiers suffered non-­life-­threatening shrapnel wounds. Some 20 people were on board, including soldiers and crew.

A rescue team that responded to the crash came under small-­arms fire, drawing return fire from US and Afghan soldiers. No further coalition casualties were reported.

There was no immediate word on who was responsible for the attack.

The Pech River Valley and several adjoining valleys, including the Korengal and Shuryak, are considered Taliban strongholds, and attacks on coalition forces remain a regular occurrence as the Afghanistan war approaches the 10-year mark.

A battalion of the Afghanistan National Army is stationed at Nangalam Base, formerly known as Forward Operating Base Blessing. The US military handed over control of the base to Afghan forces earlier this year.

 

All three of these articles, and others like them, are significant, because they prove that another Chinook from the same National Guard unit was shot down just twelve days prior to Extortion 17, flying a mission that was
not nearly as dangerous as the deadly mission the Extortion 17 Chinook was ordered to undertake.

Moreover, the July 25th shoot-­down, it turned out, was flown in circumstances similar to the Extortion 17 shoot-­down—into a Taliban-­infested region, on a high, slow, loping approach to landing in the dark, after midnight, by a National Guard flight crew not trained for special air operations.

Despite knowing about this shoot-­down, which fortunately did not result in any loss of life, but which occurred only twelve days prior to August 6, 2011, someone ordered the SEAL team on board the Chinook for a highly dangerous mission to the Tangi Valley.

As will be shown below in more detail, the Colt Report revealed three separate Taliban attacks on helicopters in the Tangi Valley area in the ninety days prior to August 6, 2011. The Colt Report claimed that the last known helicopter attack was purported to be against a Special Forces MH-47, seventeen days before August 6, 2011. Nothing was mentioned in the Colt Report about the shoot-­down of the National Guard Chinook on July 25, 2011, in eastern Afghanistan, the shoot-­down that nearly killed Staff Sergeant Zeke Crozier.

Why was the report of the July 25th shoot-­down involving the same type of chopper piloted by a National Guard crew from the same unit left out of the Colt Report? Could it be because revealing the information in the Colt Report might have made the decision to send the SEALs on an even more dangerous mission aboard Extortion 17 indefensible?

In an ironic twist of fate, it may be that the near-­death experience suffered by Staff Sergeant Crozier may have eventually saved his life. After the July 25th shoot-­down, Sergeant Crozier was sent back home to begin his long and arduous journey toward rehabilitation. Were it not for his near-­death experience that day, he might very well have been aboard Extortion 17 in the fateful dark hours of the morning of August 6, 2011.

Again, the question here has nothing to do with the bravery or professionalism of our Chinook crews. Given the designed limitations of those crews and those aircraft, why were they forced to fly what in effect were suicide missions?

CH-47D Chinook: Documented Death Trap

A review of the section of the Colt Report that discussed the use of the CH-47D Chinook shows that General Mattis whitewashed the real danger and ignored real data showing that these choppers had been the principal deathtraps among all Coalition aircraft in Afghanistan.

As of February of 2014, more CH-47D Chinooks had been shot down in Afghanistan than any other Coalition aircraft, not to mention that the total shoot-­down numbers for the CH-47D Chinooks accounted for almost half of all aircraft shot down! Colt and Mattis did not reveal any of these shoot-­down statistics in the Colt Report.