Relentless Strike

Chapter 5: Manhunts, Motorboats, and Mogadishu

2 On a warm … “dissolved.” Three Team 6 officers; a senior JSOC officer; an Army of Northern Virginia source; One Perfect Op: An Insider’s Account of the Navy SEAL Special Warfare Teams, by Command Master Chief Dennis Chalker, USN (Ret.) with Kevin Dockery (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), pp. 1–11, 303–15; The Real Team, by Richard Marcinko (New York: Pocket Books, 1999), p. 113; a special mission unit source. Chalker’s accounts, which appear in his own book and The Real Team, differ substantially from the accounts of others involved with the mission. I have relied on the description in One Perfect Op for some of what occurred once the Zodiacs left the cruiser, but on other, more senior sources, for the rest of my account.… Major General Bill Garrison … Garrison was frocked to two-star when he took command of JSOC.… suspected SEALs of telling the press … It was a January 28, 1991, story by Bill Gertz in The Washington Times that had infuriated Powell, according to a Pentagon special operations source. The story said Schwarzkopf rejected a SEAL plan to attack the Sea Island oil complex to prevent Iraqi forces from spilling its oil into the Persian Gulf. Iraqi forces did indeed blow up the facility and pump oil into the Gulf to create a massive oil slick.

7 … disproportionately rose to positions of authority … Boykin would become a lieutenant general. Harrell became Delta commander before going on to head Army Special Forces Command. Captain Scott Miller, who led the Delta assault force, would eventually command Delta during the fiercest period of combat in the unit’s history, before becoming a general and commanding all special operations forces in Afghanistan. Lieutenant Tom DiTomasso, a Ranger platoon leader, was selected into Delta and became a squadron commander; Major Craig Nixon, 3rd Ranger Battalion’s executive officer, would rise to command the regiment. Navy Captain Eric Olson, a SEAL on the task force staff who received a Silver Star for his actions in the battle, would soon command Team 6 and ultimately U.S. Special Operations Command. Marine officer Gordon Nash, the Task Force Ranger director of operations, rose to become a two-star general, while Army Captain Mike Nagata, an Army of Northern Virginia officer seconded to the CIA chief of station in Mogadishu, went on to command that unit and become a general officer. On the enlisted side, Delta Sergeant First Class Chris Faris would become the command sergeant major of, first Delta, then Army Special Operations Command, before being assigned as the senior enlisted adviser at U.S. Special Operations Command, the top enlisted special operator in the U.S. military.