Call Sign Extortion 17 (27 page)

Chapter 48

British Press Reports: The Taliban Knew

It is worth taking a closer look at the reports in the British press, not only because of their revelation from the Afghan government that Taliban forces were tipped off, but also because they provided yet another source contradicting the official and false Pentagon reports of August 9, 2011, that no bodies were identifiable.

The first of the two British reports came in a
Telegraph
story on August 8, 2011, entitled “US Helicopter Shot Down in Taliban Trap.” An unnamed Afghan government official told the
Telegraph
that the Taliban had laid a trap for Extortion 17 to lure the chopper to the area where it was shot down.

The
Telegraph
quoted the Afghan government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, as saying, “Now it's confirmed that the helicopter was shot down, and it was a trap that was set by a Taliban commander.” The Afghan official went on to say that “the commander lured US forces to the scene by telling them there was a Taliban meeting taking place there,” and that the Karzai government, “thinks this was a retaliation attack for the killing of Osama bin Laden.”

Remarkably, the
Telegraph
report gave the name of the Taliban leader the SEALs were targeting, Qari Tahir, which up to that point, had been a guarded secret. The name Qari Tahir did not surface from the American side until later. Here's the exact wording from the
Telegraph
on that point: “Citing intelligence ‘gathered from the area,' the official blamed Qari Tahir, a Taliban commander, for masterminding the attack. He alleged that four Pakistani nationals helped Tahir carry out the strike.”

The
Telegraph
is a longstanding, credible paper in Britain, having been named National Newspaper of the Year by the British Press in 2010, and also having won journalistic awards for its coverage of the Iraq War in 2004. It is not a gossip-­laden tabloid.

But the
Telegraph
wasn't the only British newspaper to run this story. As a follow-­up to the
Telegraph
's report, on August 10, 2011, just four days after the shoot-­down, and just one day after the Pentagon claimed that no bodies were recognizable, the UK
Daily Mail
, also a reputable newspaper and one of the oldest in Britain, also quoted unnamed officials of the Afghan government as saying that the Taliban knew in advance the exact flight path of the Chinook.

Consider this stunning section from the UK
Daily Mail
article:

 

An Afghan official said on Monday that the Taliban lured US forces into an elaborate trap to shoot down their helicopter.

He said that Taliban commander Qari Tahir lured US forces to the scene by tipping them off that a Taliban meeting was taking place.

He also said four Pakistanis helped Tahir carry out the strike.

“Now it's confirmed that the helicopter was shot down and it was a trap that was set by a Taliban commander,” said the official, citing intelligence gathered from the area.

“The Taliban knew which route the helicopter would take,” he continued.

“That's the only route, so they took position on the either side of the valley on mountains and as the helicopter approached, they attacked it with rockets and other modern weapons. It was brought down by multiple shots.”

Another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the event while the investigation remains ongoing, said that the Rangers, special operations forces who work regularly with the SEALs, secured the crash site afterwards.

38 people—including 30 American Special Forces troops and eight Afghan soldiers—were killed when the blast brought down the helicopter early Saturday.

Of the 30, 22 Navy SEALs from the elite “Team Six” unit that killed Osama bin Laden lost their lives.

On Sunday, the names of the Americans aboard the chopper began to be released.

Aaron Carson Vaughn, from Tennessee, was a 30-year-­old Navy SEAL and the first special ops soldier to be identified in the devastating crash that killed 38 on Friday.

 

This report shows that Navy SEAL Aaron Vaughn's body was
immediately
identifiable, further proving the falsity of subsequent Pentagon reports that “there were no identifiable remains”—[the claim made by Pentagon spokesman Marine Col. David Lapan to reporters]—the narrative they needed to justify cremation—which would have destroyed DNA evidence of the identity of the unidentified Afghans.

Note that neither paper used the Taliban—which we would expect to push a propaganda-­laced narrative—as a source. Both attribute their information to the Afghan government. This is significant, because the Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai, was supposed to be a US ally.

So two major British newspapers reported essentially the same thing, with uncanny detail, specifically naming the terrorist who was the subject of the operation, weeks before the US government confirmed anything about Qari Tahir.

The British press accounts were ignored in the Colt Report, ignored by the National Security Subcommittee, and largely ignored by the American press, as if they had no relevance to a determination of what really happened.

Chapter 49

Afghan President Karzai: First to Announce the Shoot-­Down

Afghan president Hamid Karzai was the first public official to announce the shoot-­down of Extortion 17.

How would Karzai know about the shoot-­down of the SEAL team ahead of the US government? Why would he make the announcement rather than the US military? The fact that Karzai was on-­the-­spot with the announcement, in fact announcing it as soon as the sun rose in Afghanistan, showed that the Afghan government had their fingers on the pulse of this mission and were most likely tipped off either by their Afghan insiders at Base Shank or by the Taliban itself. Karzai's quick announcement gave credence to the UK
Daily Mail
report citing the Afghan government's claims that the Taliban was tipped off. Just how Johnny-­on-­the spot was the Afghan president in announcing this?

Karzai announced it the very same day. Not only that, but he announced specific details about the shoot-­down before the US government had released any details.

An Associated Press story published on August 6, 2011 made two telling references to Karzai.

Here's the first revelation from that article:

 

Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced the number of people killed in the crash and the presence of special operations troops before any other public figure. He also offered his condolences to the American and Afghan troops killed in the crash.

 

Why did Karzai announce the shoot-­down before the US government announced it? Second, how did Karzai know the specific number of people killed in the crash? Third, how did he know that Special Operations forces were on board? Who told him all this? Was he tipped off like the Taliban? Wouldn't it have been more appropriate for President Obama to have made the first announcement? After all, thirty of the thirty-­eight men aboard were Americans, and it was an American helicopter.

Of course no one on the congressional subcommittee asked any of these questions on February 27, 2014.

Karzai clearly had an inside line of communication not only with the Taliban (he had been negotiating with them for months), but also with someone with specific details on the mission, and was eager to announce his knowledge of such, even before President Obama could announce the deaths of the SEALs.

Here's the second revelation from that article:

 

Night raids have drawn criticism from human rights activists and infuriated Karzai, who says they anger and alienate the Afghan population. But NATO commanders have said the raids are safer for civilians than relatively imprecise airstrikes.

 

Karzai, who had been negotiating with the Taliban for months and reaching out to them for years, was furious about the presence of US Special Forces. Why? Because US Special Forces, unlike the Russian forces who came in 1970, were highly effective in killing Taliban.

Karzai was furious that the SEALs and Rangers were so effective against the Taliban and wanted them gone. He needed the Taliban to keep alive his political fortunes at the time, and it was hard to achieve that when he was playing host to the government whose Special Forces were killing Taliban.

The increase in US Special Operations was reaching a boiling point, as documented by
New York Times
reporters Thom Shanker, Elizabeth Mumiller, and Rod Norland, in an article published November 15, 2010.

In “Despite Gains, Night Raids Split US and Karzai,” the
Times
reported that, “For the United States, a recent tripling in the number of
night raids by Special Operations forces to capture or kill Afghan insurgents has begun to put heavy pressure on the
Taliban
and change the momentum in the war in Afghanistan. For President
Hamid Karzai
of Afghanistan, the raids cause civilian casualties and are a rising political liability, so much so that he is now loudly insisting that the Americans stop the practice.”

The
Times
went on to say that “The difference—and a flare-­up over the raids between Mr. Karzai and Gen.
David H. Petraeus
, the top American commander in Afghanistan—is likely to be a central focus at a
NATO
summit this week in Lisbon, where the United States and NATO are to present a plan that seeks to end the combat mission in Afghanistan by 2014.”

The day before, Sunday, November 14, 2010, Karzai had told
Washington Post
editors in Kabul that it was time to reduce the US military presence in Afghanistan. Reporter Doug Mataconis wrote that Karzai said, “The time has come to reduce military operations. The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan . . . to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life.”

The
Post
goes on to report that “Karzai has long been publicly critical of civilian casualties at the hands of US and NATO troops and has repeatedly called for curtailing night raids into Afghan homes.”

So over a year before the shoot-­down, Karzai was becoming increasingly hostile about US forces, and especially US Special Forces conducting night missions.

Then, to make matters worse, in March 2011, five months before the Extortion 17 shoot-­down, US Special Forces killed Karzai's cousin.

Chapter 50

NATO Special Operations Forces Kill President Karzai's Cousin

By March 2011, President Hamid Karzai's frustration with US Special Forces operating in his country was festering. He was furious because US Special Forces were killing Taliban, eroding and undermining his attempted negotiations and peace talks.

The American war in Afghanistan, even though there may not have been an end game, was quite different from the Russian war some thirty years before. In ten years in Afghanistan, the Soviets had over fourteen thousand killed and nearly fifty-­five thousand wounded. By contrast, in the first years of the American War, from 2001 to 2009, only 569 US military personnel were killed. That number would increase in 2010 and 2011, when President Obama stepped up the war effort, adding 497 killed in 2010. So by the time 2011 rolled around, 1,066 Americans had been killed, versus over fourteen thousand Soviets in nearly the same period of time.

Afghan guerrilla tactics against American Special Operators were not nearly as effective as they had been against the more primitive Soviets, and the Americans were getting the best of the Taliban. And the Taliban didn't like it.

Remember, Karzai was cozying up to the Taliban because he needed their support once the US left. But instead of slowing the tempo of Special Operations missions, US policy was to ratchet up those missions, and Karzai's anger grew.

Then the Special Forces operations became up-­close and personal for Karzai. On March 9, 2011, NATO forces mistakenly killed an elderly cousin of President Karzai in a botched night raid in the village of Karz, near the southern city of Kandahar.

According to the UK
Daily Mail,
“Haji Yar Muhammad Khan, 65, a second cousin of the president, was accidentally shot in Mr. Karzai's home village of Karz, near the southern city of Kandahar.”

President Karzai's own brother, head of the provincial council, was quoted in the article as saying, “While the operation was going on, Khan walked out of his house and was shot by mistake. He was not the target.”

Here's how David Williams of the
Daily Mail
described the effect of Khan's death:

 

The shooting of such a high-­profile figure will fuel the furious row between Mr. Karzai and ISAF, the NATO-­led International Security Assistance Force over repeated civilian deaths. The US offered a rare apology this month after nine Afghan boys were gunned down by helicopters as they collected firewood.

 

When President Karzai was the first to announce the shoot-­down of Extortion 17 on August 6, 2011, and when he offered his “condolences” for the lives of the Americans killed, he was offering condolences over a mission that he was furious about to begin with, after Special Forces had accidentally killed his cousin, after he had been complaining for months about the presence of US Special Forces in Afghanistan.

So would it be surprising if the Taliban had been tipped off about this mission? Remember, the unidentified Afghans who boarded Extortion 17 were loyal to President Karzai, who now, after the death of his own flesh and blood, had a special and personal grudge against US Special Forces. And like it or not, martyrdom is a badge of honor for Islamic militants.

Under these circumstances, neither the Colt team nor the National Security subcommittee asked any questions about it? Were they afraid of the answer they might get? Or did they already know the answer and were trying to keep the public from learning the truth?