Days after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Pentagon quietly dispatched several dozen commandos to Israel to help advise on hostage recovery efforts, U.S. officials said.
Those troops from the Joint Special Operations Command were quickly joined by a group of intelligence officers, some working with the commandos in Israel and others back at the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va.
(13. September 2014)
Am Morgen des 11. Septembers 2001 sind im Zuge der in Teil I beschriebenen Militärmanöver eine große Anzahl von Kampfflugzeugen der US-Luftwaffe nach Kanada und Alaska verlegt. Zur Verteidigung des gesamten Nordostens der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika verbleiben vier Kampfflugzeuge. Während der Attentate bricht in NORAD Verwirrung darüber aus, ob eintreffende Meldungen tatsächliche Ereignisse oder die Manöver betreffen (“Is this real world or exercise?”). Kommunikation wird gejammed, “Phantom”-Flugzeuge tauchen auf den Bildschirmen auf, simulieren in bzw aus entgegengesetzten Richtungen fliegende Maschinen und verschwinden wieder (die Quelle dieser Simulationen wird nie öffentlich) und lenken die verbliebenen Verteidigungskräfte ab.
Wie in Teil III beschrieben, hatte die Luftfahrtbehörde FAA, in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Pentagon, den Kriegskonzern Raytheon in 1996 beauftragt zwecks der Modernisierung des Computersystems der Luftfahrtbehörde deren IT-Systeme auszutauschen. Das Luftraumkontrollsystem “Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System” (STARS) von Raytheon wurde nachfolgend auch vom US-Militär bzw der Air Force eingesetzt. Gleichzeitig war 1996 an Raytheon der Auftrag für ein stationäres Radarsystem zur Überwachung des Luftraums in der Nähe von Flughäfen namens “Digital Airport Surveillance Radars” (DASR) ergangen. In 2011 beschrieb der Kriegskonzern Raytheon in Werbeveröffentlichungen für sein von Militär und ziviler Luftfahrtbehörde verwendetes STARS Luftraumkontrollsystem die Möglichkeit “Geisterziele” (“ghost targets”) auf den Bildschirmen der Fluglotsen erscheinen zu lassen.
Am Morgen des 11. September 2001 werden nun lokale Militärkommandeure, die sich um Hilfe bemühen, von ihren Vorgesetzten hingehalten und von einem Luftwaffenstützpunkt an den nächsten verwiesen, bis hin zum Mittleren Westen. Zwei Militärjets, die schließlich von einem Stützpunkt in Langley aufsteigen (dort befindet sich auch das CIA Hauptquartier) um eine der als entführt gemeldete Passagiermaschine im Anflug auf Washington abzufangen, werden von einem Kommandoposten namens “Giant Killer” auf den Atlantischen Ozean hinaus gelotst.
Die Befehlskette und Abfolge der durch verantwortliche US-Stellen zu treffenden Maßnahmen im Falle im Falle einer Flugzeugentführung im Inland, die wie berichtet in den drei Jahren vor 9/11 im Rahmen der Flugzeugentführungs-Szenarien betreffenden 28 Militärmanöver sechsmal trainiert worden war, eingeschlossen die Simulation von Flugzeugabstürzen in “hochwertige Ziele” wie die New Yorker Freiheitsstatue und das Weiße Haus in Washington, lautete nun wie folgt:
1. eine Identifizierung des entsprechenden Vorgangs durch die Luftfahrtaufsichtsbehörde FAA (“Federal Aviation Administration”)
2. eine Meldung der FAA an NORAD
3. entsprechende Maßnahmen durch NORAD
Diese Kommandokette ist am 11. September während der Attentate durch eine ganze Reihe höchst ungewöhnlicher Umstände erschwert bzw. unterbrochen…
(today)
At least 12 people were killed when al Qaeda-linked militants attacked a hotel in Somalia‘s capital Mogadishu, seizing hostages who authorities were still battling to free 24 hours later, an intelligence officer said on Saturday.
(May 18, 2022)
A senior U.S. defense official has confirmed to Fox News on Monday that President Joe Biden has authorized the deployment of hundreds of Special Operations troops inside Somalia.
The decision comes alongside approval of a Pentagon request for standing authority to target about a dozen suspected leaders of the al-Shabab terrorist group that operates inside the east African country’s borders, the official said.
While all-white airframes aren‘t supposed to attract much attention, that paint scheme is also synonymous with clandestine operations, including „whitewashed“ aircraft often used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) for low-profile operations abroad. With that reality in mind, keen observers keeping an eye on traffic at Hamid Karzai International rightfully started thinking this may be some CIA asset that was slipping in on a unique mission. It turns out, that wasn‘t necessarily the case.
Just after the September 11th attacks, the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) – that is top tier special operations forces – went to Somalia and started hiring the very warlords who had been America’s antagonists during the infamous „Black Hawk Down“ disaster of 1993.
Kohavi was initially set to meet with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, head of the US Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr., and head of the US Special Operations Command Gen. Richard D. Clark, according to The Jerusalem Post.
While CIA officers run the operations, most of the ground support during strike force unit missions, including the control of air power, is provided by fighters loaned out by Joint Special Operations Command. Variations on this arrangement have been used by the CIA since the Church Committee clamped down on agency excesses at home and abroad in 1975. Originally dubbed “Omega” in Afghanistan, the program temporarily strips special forces of their regular military designation — a process known as “sheep-dipping”— and places them under CIA command. This enables the CIA to circumvent the restrictions placed on fighters who ordinarily operate under regular wartime Title 10 authority, placing them instead under the agency’s Title 50 authority for covert actions.
(18.11.2020)
(18.11.2020)
(25.11.2020)
One measure in the House version of the NDAA would amend Section 127e of the U.S. Code — Support of Special Operations to Combat Terrorism — to include reporting on the entities with which foreign forces receiving U.S. support are in hostilities, whether those entities are covered under an existing authorization for the use of military force (AUMF), and steps taken to ensure that such support is consistent with U.S. objectives. It would also require a description of the steps taken to ensure that recipients of this support have not engaged in human rights violations or violations of the Geneva Conventions.
(05.03.2020)
Das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz arbeitet im „Berner Club“ mit den Auslandsgeheimdiensten Mossad und CIA zusammen. Mit weiteren Behörden tauscht der deutsche Inlandsgeheimdienst Informationen zu „nicht-islamistischem Terrorismus“ sowie „Rechts- und Linksextremismus“. Wegen des „Staatswohls“ hielt die Bundesregierung diese Details bislang geheim.
(14.08.2017)
In der Operation „Gallant Phoenix“ sammelt das US-Militär Informationen zu „ausländischen Kämpfern“ in Syrien und dem Irak. Die Personendaten sollen für europäische Polizeibehörden nutzbar gemacht werden. Aus einem ähnlichen Projekt zog sich das BKA wegen rechtlicher Bedenken zurück. Auch die Teilnahme des BND ist im Gespräch.
(10.08.2020)
The U.S. is not formally at war with an African nation, and the continent is barely discussed in reference to American exploits around the globe. Therefore, when U.S. operatives die in Africa, as happened in Niger, Mali, and Somalia in 2018, the response from the public, and even from the media is often “why are American soldiers there in the first place?”
Ein 55-seitiger Bericht, der ZDFheute vorliegt, sieht 60 Empfehlungen vor. Darunter:
– Internationale Kooperationen werden bis auf weiteres eingestellt und „soweit möglich, von anderen Einheiten übernommen“.
– Die Ausbildung von KSK-Soldaten soll künftig ins Heer eingegliedert werden. Damit soll wohl verhindert werden, dass angehende Elite-Soldaten zu sehr abgeschottet werden.
– Schlüsselpositionen für Offiziere und Feldwebel sollen zeitlich begrenzt werden.
PTSD symptoms are a psychological reaction to an experience of life-threatening physical danger or harm. Moral injury is the lasting mental and emotional result of an assault on the conscience — a memory, as one early formulation put it, of “perpetrating, failing to prevent, or bearing witness to acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.”
The idea remains controversial in the military world, but the wars that Americans have fought since 2001 — involving a very different experience of war fighting from that of past generations — have made it increasingly difficult for military culture to cling to its old manhood and warrior myths.
(6. Juni 2017)
Es ist wahrscheinlich, dass spätestens im Zuge dieses so „überraschenden“ Umzuges der Bundeswehr über Europol der Datentausch deutscher Polizeidienststellen mit den Todesschwadronen des Joint Special Operations Command und deren in Jordanien basierter Operation „Gallant Phoenix“ beginnt, von der die Bundesregierung im Mai noch sagte, sie würde sie „prüfen“ bzw gar nichts sagte. Der Datentauschring würde in Deutschland alle Landeskriminalämter, das Bundeskriminalamt, und damit über weitere Datentauschpraktiken praktisch alle Polizeibehörden und Regierungsbehörden in Deutschland umfassen, natürlich auch den Bundesnachrichtendienst, und sich über die weiteren Hierarchien wie Europol und das Pentagon mindestens über den Einflussbereich von U.S.-Europakommando (bzw „Europäischer Union“) und U.S.-Zentralkommando erstrecken.
Bereits im Frühjahr 2016 hatte die U.S.-Regierung das deutsche Militär zum Vorsprechen bei der Merkel-Gabriel-Regierung geschickt, um dieser anzubieten die Bundeswehr an „einer kleinen militärischen Einheit“ zu beteiligen“, zur „Beobachtung ausländischer Dschihadisten“.
Im November 2016 hatte die U.S.-Regierung unter Barack Obama über die „Washington Post“ verkündet, die „Eliteeinheit“ J.S.O.C. agiere nun offiziell global und werde vom Schlaginstrument regionaler Militärkommandos gegen „hochrangige Ziele“ dahingehend aufgewertet eine
„eine neue multibehördliche Geheimdienst- und Handlungsstreitmacht zu führen“.
23/04/2013 & 24/04/2013 | http://dirtywars.org/ | Jeremy Scahill, author of the new book, „Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield,“ charts the expanding covert wars operated by the CIA and JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command. The book is based on years of reporting on U.S. secret operations in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Obama administration‘s assassination of two U.S. citizens in 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old Denver-born son Abdulrahman, is a central part of Scahill‘s book. While the Obama administration has defended the killing of Anwar, it has never publicly explained why Abdulrahman was targeted in a separate drone strike two weeks later.
(04.03.2019)
Spanish agents in Syria are cooperating with Operation Gallant Phoenix, a U.S.-led effort to identify fighters from Western nations who have joined Islamic State (ISIS) and Al Qaeda-affiliated groups in the region, counter-terrorism sources told EL PAÍS.
(10.06.2019)
“New Zealand began participating in Operation Gallant Phoenix in late 2014 in support of our efforts to uncover information relating to the location of a New Zealander taken hostage by ISIS,” Jacinda Ardern said.
(10.06.2019)
(08.07.2013)
– Military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden‘s hideout have been purged from Pentagon computers
– Associated Press requested information on the raid some 20 times in 2011 but requests were rejected
– A line in an inspector general‘s draft report states the files were purged from the defense department to another government department to prevent certain information about the raid being made public
– The sentence was removed from the final report released weeks ago
(17.11.2013)
Auf dem U.S.-Luftwaffenstützpunkt McDill Air Force Base in Tampa in Florida residiert noch unangefochten der Herrscher über die grösste geheime internationale Schattenarmee – mächtiger als der U.S.-Präsident als Oberkommandierender der U.S.-Streitkräfte mitsamt seinem Verteidigungsminister – wo er seine Befugnisse unkontrollierbar immer weiter ausbaut.
(21.04.2017)
According to an EU Council document, the EU police agency Europol intends to process fingerprints and DNA traces in The Hague that are processed by the US military in war zones. This data is being exchanged in the context of Operation Gallant Phoenix, which is an intelligence project spearheaded by the US military that according to media reports, is based in Jordan. US intelligence services are also involved in this undertaking. Operation Gallant Phoenix is being coordinated by the United States Joint Special Operations Command, which commands the special units of all branches of the US military.
Alongside Operation Gallant Phoenix, the US Government has offered to set up a database on “foreign fighters” for a number of EU member states and to compare this information with the biometric data of incoming refugees.
Eine einzige Kennziffer soll dabei sicherstellen, dass alle Daten sofort verfügbar sind – was der Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts widerspricht. Im Ergebnis würden sogar Geheimdienste mit einem Klick Zugriff auf medizinische Atteste und Schulabschlüsse bekommen – selbst von Kindern, die zukünftig auch schon mit Fingerabdrücken erkennungsdienstlich erfasst werden sollen.
(06.06.2019)
(19.2.2019) In order to gauge potential interest in the idea of RED Teams, the study’s authors consulted with representatives from a variety of military and civilian agencies where development officers might be embedded — including the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group, also known as SEAL Team Six.
RED Team officers, the report explains, would carry out development activities, but they would also have training and expertise that are not typically included in USAID job requirements.
(6.2.2019) Auch einen übergeordneten „Speicher für Identitätsdaten“ haben die Gremien vereinbart, eingeschränkt zunächst auf Angehörige von Drittstaaten.
The one member of Congress who knew what was going on was Dick Cheney, a close friend and confidant of Bush’s from their days together in the Ford administration. In 1976, in the aftermath of the Church Committee’s inquiry into CIA abuses, standing intelligence committees had been set up in both the Senate and the House, charged with holding the CIA and other intelligence agencies to account. But it was understood by all those involved in the vice president’s secret team that these committees could be bypassed, even though the laws governing covert intelligence activities had been stiffened: there was now a legal requirement that all covert CIA and military intelligence operations had to be made known to the committees through a formal, written document known as a ‘finding’. But there was a big loophole in the legislation, in the view of the vice president’s men. ‘There was no requirement for a finding for merely asking questions,’ the officer said, ‘and so we’d make routine requests for intelligence assessments from the CIA through the Joint Chiefs and the National Security Council. Our basic philosophy was that we were running military’ – not intelligence – ‘operations and therefore did not have to brief Congress. So we could legally operate without a finding.’ He was describing an ingenious procedure for getting around the law: one that would be put into use again after 9/11, when Cheney, by then vice president, triggered the unending war on terror.
(2.1.2019)
(2.1.2019) Seit drei Jahren können SIS-Ausschreibungen zur „unverzüglichen Meldung“ genutzt werden. Die interessierte Behörde muss der Fahndung einen Hinweis anhängen und wird dann auf dem schnellsten Weg über einen Treffer unterrichtet. Eine Ausschreibung zur „gezielten Kontrolle“ kann außerdem als „Aktivität mit Terrorismusbezug“ gekennzeichnet werden. Damit werden etwa Polizeikräfte vor Gefahren bei einer Durchsuchung der Person oder ihres Fahrzeugs gewarnt.
Nicht alle Länder, die am SIS teilnehmen, erlauben „gezielte Kontrollen“, etwa wenn diese von Geheimdiensten angefordert werden.
(12.2.2018)
(6.11.2018) In Jordan, state intelligence officials said they had worked closely with the C.I.A. to thwart more than a dozen terrorist plots in the past several months in the Middle East and Europe.
A classified American military program in Jordan, called Operation Gallant Phoenix, is scooping up data collected in commando raids in Syria and Iraq and funneling it to law enforcement agencies in Europe and Southeast Asia, according to United States military and intelligence officials who described details of the initiative on condition of anonymity because of its secretive nature.
(8.11.2018)
(28.2.2018) Israeli military’s intelligence branch, known as “Unit 8200,” told the Australian authorities about a hidden explosive device destined for an Etihad Airways flight leaving Sydney for Abu Dhabi last July.
Earlier this month, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported on Israel’s role in helping Germany and European countries in combating Islamist terror. It revealed that Israel is part of a covert multinational counter-terrorism operation named “Gallant Phoenix” that gathers intelligence on Islamic State war criminals returning from the Middle East to Europe.
(5.2.2018) Israel is part of a secret counter- terrorism coalition that gathers intelligence on Islamic State combatants returning from the Syrian war to Europe, according to a Sunday report in Der Spiegel magazine.
The intelligence collection and anti-terror campaign is named “Gallant Phoenix” and includes a total of 21 states. Germany, the US and Jordan are part of the coalition that is based in Jordan at the US Joint Special Operations Command.
(3.2.2018) Insgesamt sollen 22 Länder an der Operation beteiligt sein. Sie wird dem Bericht zufolge vom US-amerikanischen Joint Special Operations Command von einer Militärbasis in Jordanien aus gesteuert. Aufgabe der Mission ist unter anderem die Auswertung von Dokumenten, Datenträgern, DNA-Spuren und Fingerabdrücken, die Spezialkräfte in ehemaligen IS-Gebieten sichergestellt haben.
Der BND und die Bundeswehr wollten laut Spiegel schon länger, dass sich Deutschland an diesem Informationsaustausch beteiligt.
(18.4.2017) Laut einem Ratsdokument der Europäischen Union will die EU-Polizeiagentur Europol in Den Haag Fingerabdrücke und DNA-Spuren verarbeiten, die das US-Militärs in Kriegsgebieten sammelt. Der Datentausch erfolgt im Rahmen der Operation „Gallant Phoenix“. Dabei handelt es sich um ein Aufklärungsprojekt des US-Militärs, das in Jordanien angesiedelt ist. Auch US-Geheimdienste nehmen daran teil. „Gallant Phoenix“ steht unter Leitung des Joint Special Operations Command, das die Spezialeinheiten aller Teilstreitkräfte befehligt.
(30. März 2015) Also in Jordan is a U.S.-led multinational effort named Operation Gallant Phoenix, aimed at tracking the foreign fighter flow into Iraq and Syria. Begun as an initiative under Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which controls the military’s most elite special operations units, and JSOC’s higher administrative headquarters, U.S. Special Operations Command, it has expanded to include participation by U.S. Central Command and U.S. European Command, said the senior special operations officer. Although sometimes referred to as the “foreign fighter task force,” Gallant Phoenix doesn’t have troops of its own to send out on raids or direct assaults and instead passes on the information it receives to allied countries.
(7. Januar 2014) As Special Operations Command chief Admiral William McRaven put it in SOCOM 2020, his blueprint for the future, it has ambitious aspirations to create “a Global SOF network of like-minded interagency allies and partners.” In other words, in that future now only six years off, it wants to be everywhere.
(…)
While Congressional pushback has thus far thwarted Admiral McRaven’s efforts to create a SOCOM satellite headquarters for the more than 300 special operators working in Washington, D.C. (at the cost of $10 million annually), the command has nonetheless stationed support teams and liaisons all over the capital in a bid to embed itself ever more deeply inside the Beltway. “I have folks in every agency here in Washington, D.C. — from the CIA, to the FBI, to the National Security Agency, to the National Geospatial Agency, to the Defense Intelligence Agency,” McRaven said during a panel discussion at Washington’s Wilson Center in 2013. Referring to the acronyms of the many agencies with which SOCOM has forged ties, McRaven continued: “If there are three letters, and in some cases four, I have a person there.“
(25. Mai 2010) Gen. Stanley McChrystal, at the time the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised President Obama to allow combatant commanders more latitude to combat terrorism using task forces. Coming from McChrystal, it was a surprising endorsement of a policy that would shift responsibility for unconventional warfare from JSOC, which he had commanded, to the combatant commanders.
(24. Mai 2010) The order, which an official said was drafted in close coordination with Adm. Eric T. Olson, the officer in charge of the United States Special Operations Command, calls for clandestine activities that “cannot or will not be accomplished” by conventional military operations or “interagency activities,” a reference to American spy agencies.
While the C.I.A. and the Pentagon have often been at odds over expansion of clandestine military activity, most recently over intelligence gathering by Pentagon contractors in Pakistan and Afghanistan, there does not appear to have been a significant dispute over the September order.
A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to confirm the existence of General Petraeus’s order, but said that the spy agency and the Pentagon had a “close relationship” and generally coordinate operations in the field.
(1. Dezember 2009) The military at large has also felt the growing influence of JSOC. Indeed, General Stanley McChrystal, now the top military commander in Afghanistan, led JSOC from 2003 to 2008. McChrystal‘s extensive special operations in Iraq, credited as crucial in the country‘s stabilization, earned both him and JSOC wide support in the military and in Washington. In his high-powered role in Afghanistan, McChrystal is increasingly turning to his old command. Spencer Ackerman reports that JSOC‘s current leadership is „playing a large and previously unreported role in shaping the Obama administration‘s Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy.“ That new influence includes strategic decision-making and direct involvement in the more traditional warfare conducted by the conventional military. Ackerman writes:
„In his Afghanistan review, McChrystal said that a key goal for him would be to increase coordination between his NATO command and the independent command of JSOC, which suggested that the dichotomy between using Special Operations Forces for counterterrorism and conventional forces for counterinsurgency was eroding.“
(16. November 2009) An American former senior intelligence official said that a team that has trained for years to remove or dismantle parts of the Pakistani arsenal has now been augmented by a unit of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the élite counterterrorism group. He added that the unit, which had earlier focussed on the warheads’ cores, has begun to concentrate on evacuating the triggers, which have no radioactive material and are thus much easier to handle.
“The Pakistanis gave us a virtual look at the number of warheads, some of their locations, and their command-and-control system,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “We saw their target list and their mobilization plans. We got their security plans, so we could augment them in case of a breach of security,” he said. “We’re there to help the Pakistanis, but we’re also there to extend our own axis of security to their nuclear stockpile.” The detailed American planning even includes an estimate of how many nuclear triggers could be placed inside a C-17 cargo plane, the former official said, and where the triggers could be sequestered.