I would like to thank my friends Max King and Bob Rosenthal at The Philadelphia Inquirer for their exceptional vision and support. Black Hawk Down began as a newspaper project and is the kind of story no other newspaper in America would have undertaken. Max and Rosey saw the potential for it early on, and enlarged my own ambitions for it. By helping to craft my first draft of this story into an episodic newspaper series, David Zucchino was its first editor and substantially contributed to this book’s final shape. I owe a great deal to photographer Peter Tobia, who made the very difficult trip to Mogadishu with me in the summer of 1997, and returned with a stunning collection of work documenting that blasted city.
I have made several friends for life reporting this story. Since I had no military experience of my own, the last two years have been a crash course in martial terminology, tactics, and ethics. I have learned a great deal from Lieutenant Colonel L. H. “Bucky” Burruss, U.S. Army (ret.), a great soldier and fine writer, who was kind enough to seek me out and act as a first reader and expert adviser. Master Sergeant Paul Howe and Dan Schilling, a former air force combat controller, were also early readers and made thoughtful and helpful suggestions. I would not have been able to get started on this story without the help of Jim Smith, a former Ranger captain whose son, Jamie, was killed in Mogadishu. Jim kindly introduced me to some of his son’s fellow Rangers. Walt Sokalski and Andy Lucas of the U.S. Special Operations Command public relations office set up the initial interviews with Rangers and 160th SOAR helicopter pilots that launched this project. Thanks to Jack Atwater of the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum for his quick course in Weaponry 101. These are just a few of the hundreds of military people who have generously shared their time and expertise, some of whom have asked me not to name them. I am grateful to Ibrahim Robles Farah for his help in getting Peter and me in and out of Somalia.
Thanks again to my very patient wife, Gail, and our family, Aaron, Anya, B. J., Danny, and Ben, who permit me to live and work in a way that often complicates their own lives. My agent, Rhoda Weyr, has proved her unerring judgment once more by steering me to Morgan Entrekin, whom I feel very lucky to have as an editor, publisher, and friend, and Assistant Editor Amy Hundley. Together with the rest of the very smart and successful team at Grove/Atlantic, they have created one of the finest care and feeding systems for writers currently in existence.