Angry Planet - Debunking Two Persistent Myths of the War in Afghanistan

Episode Date: September 27, 2017

On August 6, 2011, an American Chinook helicopter named Extortion 17 carried 38 people—including 15 members of SEAL Team Six—to an area 40 miles southwest of Kabul. As the helicopter made its final descent to land, a group of insurgents fired an RPG at it. The lucky shot destroyed the helicopter’s rear rotor and the subsequent crash killed everyone on board. It was the greatest loss of life from a single incident in the Afghan war.This week on War College, journalist Ed Darack walks us through the last moments of Extortion 17. It’s the subject of his new book The Final Mission of Extortion 17: Special Ops, Helicopter Support, SEAL Team Six, and the Deadliest Day of the U.S. War in Afghanistan. Darack’s meticulous reporting sets the record straight on a tragic accident that’s long been the subject of conspiracy theories.Pick up a copy of Darack’s book.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. You can reach us on our new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. If you're in a right position, you can throw a rock. You know, if you're in a cliff and a helicopter flies by and you throw a rock and it hits the right part of the helicopter, you're going to take it out. Technology is not always the answer.

You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Matthew Galt and Jason Fields. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Jason Field. Ed Derek is a writer and photographer who's been in and out of both Iraq and Afghanistan

for more than a decade. He's here today to talk about extortion 17, the call sign of a CH-47 Chinook. It's an aircraft dogged by controversy and conspiracy. But I'll let Derek tell us about it. It's the subject of his new book, The Final Mission of Extortion 17, Special ops, helicopter support, sealed Team 6, and the deadliest day of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Ed, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much. What is the story? What was extortion 17 and what happened to it? It was the call sign of a CH47D helicopter that was part of extortion company, which was an admixture of regular Army, Army Reserves, Army Reservists, and Army National Guards people. and there was part of Task Force Nighthawk. It was based out of Fort Operating Base Shank.

Extortion 1-7 was on what's called an immediate reaction force mission. They were supporting Joint Special Operations Command troops on the ground, 75th Ranger Regiment in the Tangy Valley, about 40 miles south east of Kabul, Afghanistan. And a lucky shot, a lucky RPG shot, hit one of the rear rotor blades. and it killed everybody on board almost instantly. 38 people died total, 30 of them are Americans,

and then also an American military working dog. The Chinook helicopters, are they the ones that have the rotors that are vertical, front, and back, or I should say, horizontal? Yeah, it's called a tandem rotor helicopter, and that helicopter has endured now since the early 60s.

It's very powerful, but you're right. It's, they called a tandem rotor helicopter, that's not a tail rotor helicopter. We've got the tail rotor in the back that's essentially 90 degrees from the main rotor system that you see on, you know, like news helicopters.

It has two equally sized rotor systems in the front and the back. Is it different than if you were just flying a regular helicopter and it got hit? If you were, if an RPG were to hit, say a Black Hawk helicopter in the tail rotor, it wouldn't be as immediate and catastrophic. It would just start speaking.

out of control and then crash to the ground. If it hit one of the rotor blades on the main rotor system of Black Hawk, probably it would also, it wouldn't be as quick, and this is just conjecture on my part, there's just so much power in the Chinook on each one of those rotor assemblies. And with the Black Hawk or other tailroar helicopters like that, it probably wouldn't be as immediate. It wouldn't generate as many as high at GEOC. force just because of the way the rotor systems are arranged.

But it will be catastrophic. Any rotor system that gets hit by an RPG, unless it just a little bit of the rotor gets knocked off, enough of it to rip the rotor system off completely, it's going to end everybody's life on board and the helicopter. All right. Well, who was on it specifically? And what was the mission that they were en route to? Their target objective was a series of buildings around the central tank.

Valley on the north side of it. They're looking for a guy named Objective Lefty Grove. That was the intel designation for him. And his name was Karay Tahrir. So he was sort of a mid-level Haqqani and Taliban-affiliated operative in that area. And then this night, the main ground element was Rangers. And then the immediate reaction force guys were Navy SEALs. So they were called in.

They were flown in all in one helicopter to map. all their forces on the ground and to minimize potential, to minimize, you know, danger from getting shot down. That sounds ironic because they were shot down. But, you know, when you have one helicopter come in and there's a second one, it gives people time to get in position to shoot that second one down. So put all the troops on one aircraft. And they came in from a different direction, a different route, and a couple insurgents

in the right place at the right time. like you shot off. As I was researching this book, I noticed that there's a lot of, or is reading the book and then researching the event, there's a lot of conspiracy theories that have kind of, that have swirled around it. Some of them seemingly led by the families, and I was wondering if you could speak to that and why this has become such a controversial topic. There's conspiracy theories, and there's also misinformation.

I'll address the conspiracy theories first. One line of thought is that, and I'm almost embarrassed to say that, I mean, to even repeat this, but I have to repeat it because it's out there. But it's their line of thinking is that Obama is a Muslim and is aligned with anti-American Islamic fundamentalists. And as retribution for killing bin Laden, he identified that sealed. Team 6 was going to be on this helicopter so they could shoot it down so they could get even from Bin Laden. That is something that gets bandied about a lot. Another one of these conspiracy theories is that it's along those lines because there was eight Afghans on board that they somehow were able to overpower the seals and special operations personnel on the crew in the

helicopter and take control of the helicopter and fly it to get shot down. I mean, it's just nonsense. And then another one that you get isn't so much a conspiracy theory, but it's the claim of a cover-up by the government. And there was no cover-up. And the Cole report, which I looked at very closely, and I was also able to look at some of the source material that went into the cult report. And I also looked at the J-CAT report, which was focused more of a technical report, a metallurgical mass spectrometer analysis of exactly what kind of round hit the rotor blade. and knocked it out of the helicopter of the sky. You know, there was little tiny emissions in those reports, but the conclusions were absolutely accurate.

And, you know, I say this just as someone who looks at this, who's spoken with people who are experts in these fields, as well as from having flown around on CH47D Chinooks with Marines on board and Afghan personnel. There's no way, I'll tell you one thing, And there was no way any of that conspiracy nonsense that the Afghans are going to overtake the pilots and the people in the back. First combat operation I ever was embedded on. It loaded onto a CH-47D Chinook with a platoon of, well, there was two Chinooks.

And between the two Chinooks, it was a platoon of Marines, attached Navy hospital corpsmen, Afghan security forces and me. It's just silly, you know. It's good to address it to say that it's nonsensical, but it's really not worth much. The people pushing those conspiracy claims, they've really quieted down. I think even the most delusional people realize that there's just, there's nothing to it. So is that what drives your reporting trying to debunk theories like that that are around? No, no, absolutely not. What drives me is to tell the story with depth and also with Brett, trying to be very,

broad spectrum, so you get a full experience of this incident, as well as this incident using it as a lucid window for people to understand what war is all about, modern war is all about, from gathering intelligence, how they do it, and why they're going after this particular individual, who these people are flying a helicopter, who these people are going to be on the ground, and how it affects the people back home and what the people back home know, the mothers and the sons and daughters and the wives, they had no idea that these guys were flying Navy SEALs and Rangers around. They just didn't want to let their families worry about it. And so that's what drives me. Can you tell us a little bit about the kind of people who do these kinds of jobs? I mean,

it sounds like you've spent time with Marines and others. What's the atmosphere like on a helicopter like that? I've never flown. I've never been part of special operations missions. I've been on the ground and, you know, in the air, plenty of times with Marines doing various types of operations. And everybody's very professional. I know I can tell you that I had my, obviously, apprehensions. I've never been in the military. I kind of learned this the hard way, sort of thrown into the cauldron. And I looked around, I see all the Marines. Those guys are always very focused in their jobs. If they have trepidations, they sure don't show it. And they're very professional. We have an incredibly professional military the United States does. It's an amazing machine that works very, very well

and continues to improve. Everything is so well integrated from the way the pilots use their night vision and look at their gauges and fly the helicopters in a certain way and to meet other logistical entities of a combat operation within a few minutes or even a few seconds to the way the troops who are being transported, prepare and become ready to hit the ground and get out and do perimeter defense and then immediately start hunting down who they have to hunt down to the people who are logisticians back in what they call the rear at some of the forward operating bases to make sure everybody gets fed and gets water and communications maintained. And then people who are attached who are there to speak with.

tactical aircraft to control some of the attack elements, the aviation attack elements. I mean, it's such an incredible machine, and it works so well, and it continues to work better and better all different services and all different aspects of all different services. So that would be my takeaway. It was never, you know, like high-fiving, like the movies. People were very focused on the job. Let's put it that way. I know I was very focused on my job, which was not being a warfighter.

It was a documentarian of warfighters. But those guys were all extremely always 100%. Once you left the wire, once you got on the aircraft, once there's a moment of, you know, there could be an issue here, get shot at or whatever. Everybody who's always very focused and task-oriented, for sure, 100%. And I'll tell you, it's, I wouldn't do it again just because, you know, I kind of have. had too many close calls, but I sure am glad I did it because it's an amazing thing to be, I won't say be part of, but be embedded into. It's really, it was great. Was there one character, one person out of your research that really stood out to you?

With this book, I never got to meet anybody. I got to know them to their mothers, their fathers, the daughters, sons, fellow warfighters, friends. And that's, you know, you get to build this incredible caricature and understanding of people, but you still don't know him, but I'll tell you that he wasn't on extortion 117, but he was the commanding officer of extortion company, Justin Buddy Lee, and he's the one that really brought a lot of people. He deserves tremendous credit for introducing me to a lot of people who really made this book, what I consider to be a great work, not because of me, but because of him and other people like him who opened up and brought all this information out that really gives this great level of understanding of the incident, the war in

general, because he has an incredible story. I really wanted to use Buddy as sort of emblematic of what a lot of army aviators go through and their sort of demeanor, their characteristics, their calmness, and their devotion to infantry and the mission, because that's what they're there to do. They're there to support the ground element, their army, their soldiers. They just happen to fly helicopters and not, you know, trudge through deserts on the ground, although sometimes they do that too. So, but there's a lot of people, you know, of course, Dave Carter, even though I never met him, going to the, the hats, which is the high altitude Army National Guard aviation training

site where he was an instructor pilot, meeting the people that he worked with there and seeing and flying with them and, you know, actually sitting in the Chinook, one of the ones he actually piloted and learning about Brian Nichols from. his widow and learning about Patrick Hamburger from his mom and dad and friends and Spencer Duncan from his mom and dad and Alex Bennett from his friends and other soldiers that was that was incredible particularly one guy stands out Kirk Heikendahl who was senior not-commissioned officer in charge staff not-commissioned officer in charge I'm sorry my terms mixed up sometimes and what a wonderful guy

He and Buddy worked hand in hand. So Kirk really taught me a lot about the Chinook and about how things work and about flight engineers. Buddy taught me a lot about flying and, you know, gave me a lot of introductions. So it's hard to say. But in terms of the people that I work with directly, Buddy and Kirk, weren't really wonderful. This is not the only story that you've gotten involved in and done in-depth reporting on. I want to talk a little bit about now Operation Red Wings, if we can. And can you explain your relationship?

Well, first tell the audience what it is. They may know it by another name. It was Operation Red Wings to begin with, but then the Book Lone Survivor, the Ghost Rider, Patrick Robinson, misnamed it as Operation Red Wing. So it's, you know, etymologically, you know, from words, looking at the words, it's not that big of a difference. But it would be like calling Operation Desert Storm, Operation Stormy Desert. You know, it's the details like that that are important. My involvement in Red Wings began in March of 2005. Red Wings was undertaken beginning the night of 27 June 2005,

and it came to the first phase of it came to an unfortunate and disastrous end in the afternoon of June 28th, not even maybe a little more than 12 hours later. But anyway, Second Battalion, Third Marines, just by chance, I met them. they were training at the Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, California. I had gone out there as an independent photographer and writer, and I was just going to go visit the base for a couple weeks. And I did, and I happened to meet up with them, and I ran around the training rounds with them, and the senior battalion command invited me to go to Afghanistan with them.

And I said, sure, so I sold my house, and a girlfriend at the time and I were already on the way out and gave her the dog, and went back to California, and, and running around with the Marines in that training area. And then in September, I went to Afghanistan. Now, after I met the Marines, they obviously went over to Afghanistan. And they were, they just walked into, they were cycled into a series of operations that had begun before they were there by their sister battalion. And there was an operation called Stars. the focus of this shell of an operation, it was all intelligence driven.

So that was what their focus was on was looking at a number of guys, you know, same type of thing, same kind of operational evolution that I describe in the Extortion 17 book. But they had a guy, Ahmad Shah, is a pretty low-level guy in Kunar province and Nagar had some ties with the Haqqa, not Haqqana network, but Hig, Guberdin, Hikmadiur in Pakistan. And, but they never really were able to get a trigger where they go a trigger to go after them. And so they never, they never actually built stars into anything other than a model. And second time third Marines came in and they, they took it over and they worked the intel. And they went to, you know, develop an operation. And they needed nighttime air assault support. So they looked to task force 160, special operations aviation.

regiment, the night stalkers, and the task force 06 there, the Navy captain, said, no, you can't have it. He had just rolled into country at that point. And he said, you can't have it unless you task Navy SEALs for this. And so they sort of upended their operation. And it, you know, not necessarily because of that, but a series of events occurred where three of the four seals who went in initially to do the surveillance and reconnaissance. were ambushed and then the Turban 3-3, the MH-47D was shot down. And at that time, that was the greatest single incident loss of life for Americans in the Afghan War.

And then I ended up in that same area a few months after that, actually just a few miles away. And I actually got ambushed one valley over in a similar manner that those guys did. So that was sort of my introduction to Mount Warfare. You ended up writing an article in a book, kind of using the after-action reports that contradicts the Littrell's book. Yep. I wrote a book called Victory Point, about Operation Red Wings and the sequel Operation Whalers, where the Marines went in and actually broke up that cell that caused so much destruction and tragedy. Chase Damad Shah back in Pakistan, where he was killed some years later. The big point that people sort of trying to look at in my book was I didn't say that there was 400 Taliban.

And the reality was that there was seven. And there's some intel reports based off of what's called LLVI, low-level voice intercept, where they're listening in on their icon chatter, the attacker's icon chatter, plus human intelligence, plus two videos that they made of themselves ambushing each guys and it's the number of seven. I gave it maybe the benefit of that. I thought maybe there's someone else out there. When I wrote the book, I said eight to ten.

But since then I've gotten, you know, I've spoken with a few more sources and it's, you know, I'm saying seven. I think it was seven. So why do you think it became 400 in that book? Why do you think the ghostwriter just, decided to include that detail? I don't know.

I mean, I think it just sounds more heroic when these guys were up against 400 guys. Look, I mean, if you have the high ground and you have terrain familiarity, you know, and that Mujah Dean did this all the time in the Soviet invasion, I mean, three or four guys can hold up an entire column of armor, much less four Navy SEALs. You know, you get into position, you find your guys, you take aim. You start volley firing RPGs, you drop some mortars on them if you got a motor system, and you just start shooting at them. You know, control bursts, and that's what they did.

And I think a lot of people were upset about that because they don't want to feel that, you know, these insurgents can take on Navy SEALs, but, you know, they did. And, you know, they were in the right place at the right times. Not exactly similar, but kind of similar to the two guys that took out an extortion one-seven. I mean, they inserted them at night by helicopter within a mile of a populated area. And I know that the – because I interviewed the guy who was the commander of that insert helicopter, they hugged the terrain, but still, I mean, the Chinook is a loud helicopter. You know, it's got two big turboshaft engines that, in total, produced almost 9,000 horsepower,

and you've got these big rotor systems that are spinning 225 RPM each moves a lot of air around, makes a lot of noise. And so they were alerted. They dropped the fast rope because they were in a real tight LZ, a real tight insert point. And it got tangled on a stump. By the way, that's a night stalker, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, standard contingency practice. And they briefed to that, that if they're in a tight situation, they need to get out of there. They cut the rope and they drop it. And it's the ground guy's responsibility to do something with it.

So I don't know specifically what they did with it. I think they tried to bury it. But maybe the Amatian's guys found the rope. Maybe they didn't. But they certainly found their muddy footprints. And they can tell American service members' footprints. The boots are much different than what they're used to wearing. And so they tracked them that way.

And they came up on them. And they found them. And that's how the ambush happened. So it doesn't have to be very sophisticated in order to end up with people dead. No, no, it's, you know, it's, you know, you can defeat highly sophisticated mechanisms with really low-tech things. I mean, the RPG7 is a ballistic system. And for instance, if you have, if you have a high-tech seekerhead and they're launched and they seek in, they seek infrared radiation, what they call long IR, which is generated by heat.

And so that goes after engines or something like that. Now, the American military has all sorts of systems to feed that. But if you have a guy on the ground, just takes a pot shot with an RPG, which, by the way, they do all the time. I did a WikiLeaks search, and just in a few years I found what they call CAC, significant actions. 764, I think, was the number of RPG shots.

and the people came home to make those reports. So they weren't shot down. So you see how many are made. But every now and then they get lucky. You know, one of the incidents that I documented in the book was they shot down an H-1W super cobra, a Marine Corps cobra. It was 500 feet above the ground and they hit the boom.

Boom of a cobra is, I mean, it's not more than maybe 18 inches wide where they hit it. I mean, it's just such a dumb luck shot. But you'd never hit that with a. heat seeker because it would have been defeated with with flares. The systems on board would have detected a heat seeking missile and would have popped a bunch of flares. They would have taken evasive action. They would have been fine.

They would have gone home after their mission. But with the RPG, you can't stop it, you know. Ground vehicles have these cages that they use, but you can't put those on helicopters. So, yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, you can, if you're in a right position, you can throw a rock. You know, if you're in a cliff and a helicopter flies by and you throw a rock and it hits the right part of the helicopter, you're going to take it out. Technology is not always the answer. And sometimes the enemy gets lucky, you know, and they did in this case. And that's not the end

of the story. Like I say, it opens up a much bigger story, story of stories, which is what this book is. No, thank you so much for talking us through it. Yeah, thank you so much for telling us about the book and your experiences. Thank you very much. Yeah, it's the final mission of extortion 1-7 and it's coming out on Tuesday. Thank you guys, as always, for listening to War College. I've been your host, Matthew Galt. Jason Fields is my co-host and co-producer and co-creator of the show. If you liked this, you can find more episodes at facebook.com

forward slash war college podcast or follow us on Twitter at War underscore College, where we are not yet tweeting at 280 characters, but we hope too soon. next week it's going to be a very exciting episode about a long secret CIA mission that involves Soviet submarines and Howard Hughes. So look forward to that

and we'll see you next Monday.