The Rest Is Classified - 142. Black Hawk Down: The True Story (Ep 1)

Episode Date: March 29, 2026

What really happened at the Battle of Mogadishu? How did an operation that should have taken an hour end up taking almost twenty-four? And what brought US troops into the conflict in the first place? Listen as David and Gordon embark on telling the true story of one of the deadliest US operations since the Vietnam War. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026 at The Rest Is Fest: Buy your tickets ⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 4 September. ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ ⁠⁠https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified⁠⁠ Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠[e-mail] ⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books. Join the Declassified Club at the Rest is Classified.com. One of the most consequential battles fought by American forces since Vietnam. This is the true story of Black Hawk Down. Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McLaughie.

And today, David, we're beginning a full-part season. series on what is one of the most consequential, I guess, disasters in American military history, which is the Battle of Mogadishu, as it's properly known, October the 3rd and 4th, 1993. But everyone really knows it as Black Hawk Down, don't they? Well, that's right. I guess we'll come back throughout this series to the question of whether this really was a disaster or not and how we should think about it. but of course this is a military confrontation of battle that is memorialized in the very well-known Ridley Scott film Black Hawk Down, which is actually itself based on an absolutely exceptional book

written by the journalist Mark Bowden by the same name, and from which we will be drawing extensively throughout this series. Now, interestingly, Gordon, nobody in Mogadishu that day would have called it Black Hawk Down. The Americans who were there, We'll come to them in a moment. Would have called it simply being in Mogadishu or the Battle of the Black Sea. Again, we'll come back to what that means. Somalis called it Ma'Alinti Rangers, the day of the Rangers. So nobody there, of course, there are going to be several Black Hawk helicopters shot down.

But the incident has kind of come to be known Black Hawk down because of the book and the film of that same name. Now, it is one of the most consequential battles fought by American forces since Vietnam. It's 18 Americans are killed. 19 are actually killed over the course of the, if you include just the day after the battle ended. 73 wounded. It is 15 hours of continuous combat against an enemy, Somali militia, armed with basically just AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. And I guess it's probably a good point to say, Gordon, before we get too much further into this.

that for those who have made the decision to listen to this series with children, perhaps don't. We will be describing this battle using the recollections of many of the people who were there. So it is going to be at times a bit graphic. So warning for those who are squeamish about such things or have decided to listen to this with young children. That's right. And I mean, It is the story of, I mean, an amazing story of an individual battle, but I think what makes it more than just a kind of dramatic story is that it's a very consequential story, which actually tells us quite a lot about some bigger issues. I mean, one of them is this phrase mission creep, which I think really does come out of what happens in Somalia that day in October 1993, because as we'll see, it starts with a humanitarian operation. to feed starving people and it becomes a manhunt for a warlord and then ends up kind of escalating into this military confrontation in an environment the American commanders didn't really understand

and to something which becomes incredibly deadly for both sides. And it is a story of how an operation with relatively limited goals at the start can transform into something else over time. On that point, Gordon, it made me think, and I think we'll return to this, you know, as we get closer to the end of this series, but whether there are some lessons or insights for what is going on right now in Iran. Let's take, for example, the idea of going and conducting a raid to captured or destroy Iran's highly enriched uranium. You could see how something that in kind of a limited context could make some sense, but how that could then sort of sprawl toward a much wider engagement with a whole bunch of unforeseen consequences.

Yeah, I think one of the interesting aspects of this story to me is how, and again, the modern parallels are interesting. You can have the US military power be totally dominant when it comes to technology, when it comes to firepower, compared to the adversary. it's going up against. But still, it just takes small things to go wrong. And things do go wrong in conflict and wars, which can then go disastrously wrong because of the kind of highly unpredictable situation, the nature of conflict. And then suddenly, particularly when you're on the enemy's home turf, that can turn into something much more serious and much more disastrous.

So as you said, you could imagine how a discrete raid to do something in Iran, all you need is one or two things to go wrong. And suddenly, things escalate, get out of control. control and you're in something like Black Hawk Down. And I think that's one of the important, I think, you know, lessons or parallels from this story. And it is one of the aspects as well that, you know, the implications of what happens that day are really important because you hear this phrase, the Mogadissue effect, which shapes American foreign policy in the years to come. There's this sense that having seen how you can get embroiled in something and then the American military takes casualties and then they are shown on TV.

and paraded on the media, that it has this huge impact on American public opinion and on policymakers. And so there's this direct line which goes from, you know, Somalia into not intervening in other situations like Rwanda the following year in 1994. And you see America's adversaries, including, I think, al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, look at what happened to America in Somalia and take lessons from that and try and replicate it again because they come to believe that the American public and the American government won't be able to sustain the military taking casualties in a very public way. So it's an incident which does have enormous repercussions, doesn't it? That's right.

And it's a battle, as we'll see, that I think you could argue nobody wins. And yet it's remarkably important on all sides. So a bit of a paradox there. But I think Gordon, it's probably worth setting up a bit of Somalia and Somalian history just to kind of cast the background for this conflict. This episode is sponsored by HP. Most people are not counter-espionage experts, but that won't stop them getting targeted by cyber criminals seeking to extract their secrets. HP understands that approximately four in 10 UK businesses have reported cyber breaches in the past 12 months alone. That's why HP business laptops, desktops, and workstations bought directly on HP store are secure straight out of the box with their endpoint security.

No more stressing about dodgy emails or unexplained pop-ups. HP's independently verified Wolf Pro Security works alongside your existing security tools to protect your business users and reputation from, malware and evolving cyber threats with your first click. You don't need an alias or a secret hideout to stay safe. Just WolfPro Security working tirelessly to protect your hard work. It's security that's built in, not bolted on. Find out more about how HP can protect your business at HP.com forward slash classified. Podcast listeners benefit from a 10% discount on all business PCs, printers and accessories

using the code T-R-I-C-10 terms and conditions supply. Okay, so Somalia, for those who are unawares, it sits on the northeastern quarter of the African continent, kind of up in the horn of Africa, facing Arabia. And I think, Gordon, there are probably five things that listeners should know about Somalian history before we get to the battle itself. So the first one is that on paper,

Somalia should have been one of Africa's easiest countries to build into a stable nation. Because unlike many other kind of modern African nation states, it is not a patchwork of different ethnic groups. There is a single ethnic group, the Somali. There's a single language, which is Somali. There's a single religion, which is Islam. And there is a single culture that is rooted in a kind of pastoral nomadic life. and the great historian of Somalia, I Am Lewis, in his book, A Modern History of Somalia, talks about this as the Somali paradox, which is this idea that you have an incredible amount

of kind of uniformity, and yet the state itself will end up collapsing fairly epically. So that's one. Two, the clan structure, the idea of clan as an organizing principle. So Somali society is organized around a kind of elaborate genealogical system, and there are these kind of clan families that then subdivide into clans, subclans, lineages, extended families. And the level at which you unite or divide really depends on context. And there's a phenomenally, I think, insightful Somali proverb, which goes like this. I in Somalia against the world, I in my clan against Somalia, I and my family against the clan, I and my brother against the family, I against my brother. And so you have kind of two things going on here. One is that the organizing principle for much of Somali political life is clan.

And yet at the same time, you have almost baked into that the possibility for an incredible amount of conflict. So that's two, the clan structure. And that's going to play a very important role, as we'll see in how the battle unfolds. So three, the colonial partition of Africa made a lot of things worse in Somalia. Now, what it did practically was that European colonialism essentially split the Somali people across five different territories. You had British Somaliland at the north, Italian Somalia in the South, French Somaliland, which becomes Djibout. and there are large Somali inhabited lands in an area called the Ogaden, which are handed to Ethiopia. Somali nationalists call these the five Somali lands, and there is a Somali kind of nationalist dream of uniting all of these lands into a kind of greater Somalia, which is going to drag the country into a catastrophic war.

And that is the fourth point in Somalia's history here, is that in 1977 there's a conflict called the Ogaden War. in which Somalia, armed by the Soviets, invades the Agadon. Initially, it's successful, but eventually the Soviets switch sides, decide that Ethiopia's new Marxist government is a better bet. And Somalia is decisively defeated. So this dream of kind of greater Somalia is finished. There are 800,000 refugees who flood back into Somalia from the Ogaden into a state that has no capacity to absorb them.

And the military dictator of Somalia at the time, a guy named Siyad Bahre never recovers from this, this war. And so the fifth point here in Somalian history is that his dictatorship, Ciyad Barre's dictatorship, collapses into civil war in the early 1990s. Cied Barre had seized power in 1969 in a coup. He had actually tried ostensibly to eliminate clan politics as an organizing principle in Somali society. but what he ends up doing is actually raising up his own clan and clans allied to his own and diminishing others.

And so you actually have them further sort of entrenched and enmeshed in Somali society. And what happens is a horrendous civil conflict in Somalia, in which Siedmaray bombs his own cities, in one instance killing maybe 50 to 100,000 of his own people in Somalia's second largest city, which is probably one of the worst atrocities in African post-colonital history, and that in 1991, amid street fighting in Mogadishu, Zedbaray flees into exile, and Somalia fragments essentially along clan lines into a horrendous civil war. So you've got a civil war here by the time you get to early 1990s, and then something else happens.

And this is, I guess, the thing which draws in the international community, and ultimately the Americans, is that you get a drought in the early 1990s and a famine. And that's going to be crucial, isn't it, in kind of internationalizing what's basically a failed state in the civil war? Well, and we should say that droughts are obviously, they're not uncommon in the Horn of Africa. The region, it runs on a cycle of wet and dry seasons, but they don't produce the kind of mass starvation that hits Somalia in 1991 and 1992. That is the result of the drought and the civil war. Exactly, because you get factions kind of weaponizing access to food and burning crops, slaughtering livestock of the other side in order to undermine them and trying to control access.

So it's a combination, isn't it, of famine and civil war, which is going to create this kind of catastrophe. And in the worst affected areas in 1991 and 1992, between a quarter and a third of children under five died. So you can get a sense from that number. of the scale of the horror. And that brings it, I guess, to international attention around 1992, where the international media start broadcasting these horrific images of skeletal children, of mass graves, of mothers, unable to feed babies as that famine really kicks in. And they're talking about, I mean, estimates of 300 to 500,000 Somalis dying of starvation

with one and a half million at immediate risk. So, I mean, really kind of dramatic. It's interesting. this is the phrase CNN effect, isn't it, which has talked about for this time, because CNN is a relatively new international news network. I guess it became really famous a couple of years earlier with the Gulf War. But it is that sense in which the international media is now bringing these conflicts into people's living rooms, into people's kitchens, into people's lives through these pictures. And I mean, we'd had a bit of that in the 80s in the UK famously with the Ethiopian famine, where you'd had these really horrific pictures about. about what famine looks like and starvation looks like. And I think everyone who remembers that can kind of recall those awful pictures of the kind of people who are suffering from famine where their bellies start bloating because, you know, their bodies are creating fluid.

And you can see the kind of flatness and the apathy of the children and, you know, who are just kind of floppy and, you know, waiting to die. And those pictures have become seared into our mind in the 80s. And that led to famously live aid and these other kind of movements to try and deal with famine. And then suddenly it looks like it's happening again. now in Somalia once again where you've got a famine and the question is what are people going to do about it? And the numbers you gave earlier, I mean, to put them in context, maybe five to 10 percent of the entire Somali population had died in the famine. And a third of the population was at risk of starvation. So the scale is horrific.

the images, to your point, that are being piped in to living rooms all over the Western world are horrific. And it's haunting in a way that I think is deeply emotionally affecting. And so when you combine it with television pictures and images and things like that and video, it becomes hard to ignore it. And Bush administration officials. So this is first George H.W. Bush, we should say. First President Bush who's in office until the end of 1992, yeah. and who is going to be the first one to kind of to intervene.

Bush administration, national security officials will later say, yeah, those images are, they were a direct factor in our decision to act. And, you know, as you said, the famine had been weaponized. So, you know, warlords are preventing food aid from reaching populations that are controlled by rival clans at Mogadishu's port, armed factions are kind of dividing the docking facilities into almost taxable zones so they can collect, you know, payment on trucks going in and out. Relief organizations were having to pay protection money to warlords to move food at all. So the sort of aid ecosystem is also funding the same militias that are perpetuating the conditions

that are driving or accelerating the famine. So, you know, you had this horrific situation in which international aid organizations could deliver food to the docs, but you're have people who are dying of starvation mere miles away. And so you have this issue of, it's not just the amount of food aid we pump in. We have to do something inside Somalia itself in order to deliver the aid. What do you need to fix the situation? You need to provide some level of security inside Somalia so that the aid can be delivered. So the UN attempts a peacekeeping mission in April of 1992. There's 500 Pakistani peacekeepers. It does not work. And so in December of 1992, in the final weeks of his presidency, George H.W. Bush

authorizes something called Operation Restore Hope. Restore Hope, which is, I guess, a contrast to current naming tendencies from the U.S. Because we have epic fury today in Iran compared to Restore Hope. It just says something about the different world we were living in, doesn't it? Slightly more optimistic days of the 90s. But this is, it's the tail end of the Bush administration. President Clinton's about to take office. But this is putting in American troops to support this UN humanitarian mission and a pretty big force to try and create that secure environment. I think 28,000 American troops. I mean,

it's, it's significant to try and help deal with the famine and get the food aid into the right people's hands. It works by May of 1993. The famine seems. to be improving. Markets are reopening. Farming in Somalia begins to rebound, but you have this structural problem, which is that success creates its own kind of logic, right, for continuing the intervention because, okay, starvation has been alleviated. The things that were causing the famine are no more or the sort of impacts are lessening. But what happens if all of those American troops or the UN mission just up and leave. Security will deteriorate again. You haven't resolved any of the political problems between these kind of rival militias and clan leaders.

And so the famine will just return. And so you're faced with this decision of do you continue to provide that security? Because you can't just up and leave. Yeah. And this is really where Mission Creek comes in, isn't it? Because having dealt with the immediate problem, the view becomes we now need to change the political context and create, if you like, a state structure which will provide long-term security so that the famine doesn't go back when we leave. It's not quite nation-building, but it's got echoes of it, hasn't it? And it's got echoes of what people talk about in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9-11. As well, that issue is of creating a much more ambitious objective from your original objective

of why you went in. I mean, mission creep and nation building are two ways of seeing that. And I guess here in this 90s period, I mean, it's worth going back to the context a little bit, isn't it? Because it was a more optimistic era. The US was the undisputed global superpower after the fall of the Soviet Union that had disappeared in 1991. It had won that first Gulf War. There was this kind of era in which it was seen that the liberal democratic system was inevitably going to expand everywhere and had won the Battle of Ideas. This is the idea of Francis Fukuyama's book, The End of History, and I think American military power was at its peak and unchallenged.

And I think those factors together lead to this confidence, actually, that they can do this and that this is a mission, a righteous mission, but also a possible mission, to create the conditions in Somalia for kind of order and stability in the long run. And as we'll see, as we get into the battle, The Americans who were there felt, you know, and I think rightly, that they were there for a very noble purpose, which was we are trying to put down bad guys who are causing this horrendous famine that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and left millions at risk. And so there's kind of these very noble ideas that now, I think, in 2026, seem so distant. It seems like, you know, it's just a different world.

So in May of 1993, the original humanitarian force becomes unisom two. So this is the UN operation in Somalia. And it has a dramatically expanded mandate. So it's not just food distribution, but, quote, rehabilitation of political institutions and the economy and the restoration of peace, stability, law, and order, which does sound quite close to nation building. in a country that does not have any functioning government, that doesn't have any national institutions, whose economy has been almost completely destroyed by the famine, and has these kind of deeply rooted

clan divisions. You know, you just have to think this is, this feels like a stretch. The American component of UNISOM 2 is going to be much smaller than the original force from Operation or Store Hope. These troops operate under UN command. They are part of the of the UN force. And on August the 8th of 1993, a Somali militia, and we'll come to these militia here in a minute, use a remote-controlled mine to destroy an American military vehicle. It kills four. These are the first American combat deaths in Somalia. This is August of 93. Two weeks later, another mine attack wound seven, and you have political pressure building on President Clinton, to either escalate or to withdraw.

And the UN envoy to Somalia begins to argue for a special operations contingent to deal with the militia leader responsible for these attacks. And so on August the 22nd, the U.S. Secretary of Defense authorizes the deployment of Task Force Ranger to combat the Somali militias. Task Force Ranger is an ad hoc collection of America's most elite special operations forces. It will be about 450 men in total. And really importantly, it is totally separate from the UN mission. This task force, Task Force Ranger, is commanded by a guy named Major General William F. Garrison,

who is a special operations officer who's got loads of experience from Vietnam. It's very gruff. He's very highly respected by his men. And I think it's worth setting up that there are basically three major elements inside Task Force Ranger. So the first, Delta Force. This is going to be roughly 130 operators who are going to conduct the actual assaults on militia targets in Mogadishu. I would also note, Gordon, I think Delta Force could be considered a friend of the pod because they feature prominently in our series on Pablo Escobar. Yeah, they do indeed.

So we have met them before, Delta, but I guess maybe just a quick refresher on them known as the unit, aren't they, is the other way that they're described. Do they have some British lineage as well, don't they, in terms of their background? You were going to mention the British lineage. Derived to some extent from the SAS and from what they did. Yeah, no, it's absolutely true. So Delta is, as you know, Gordon, essentially America's answer to the British Special Air Service, the SAS. SAS, yeah. That's right.

And the idea, again, borrowed from the SAS model is essentially the army needed a unit that could penetrate deep into enemy territory, blend in with indigenous population, sabotage, enemy installation, installations, gather intel, and if necessary, conduct assassinations. And the Delta operators are trained in everything from how do you manage hostage negotiations to barksmanship to lockpicking. And there's even some great examples of learning how to drive interesting vehicles like a diesel locomotive. Culturally, the unit is, I think, a bit different from most of the U.S. Army. And as we'll see, that sort of cultural difference is going to come out.

in the way that the Delta guys interact with other members of Task Force Ranger. Yeah, they think they're the top dogs, don't they? And they're a little bit more, they're looser in their behavior. Would that be fair than the others? I mean, they have their own kind of way of doing things, and they view themselves as a kind of a bit of a breed apart. Yes. So they are the top dogs in Task Force Ranger.

The other members of Task Force Ranger are, you know, under this kind of really strict form of army discipline. The Delta guys, not quite the same. There are cases, which is actually, this is shown in the early scenes of the film Black Hawk Down, where there's a helicopter taken out to go boar hunting, and it's brought back to the base, and then it's, you know, grilled on a spit. That actually happened, and it was Delta guys who convinced one of these helicopter pilots, to take them out to do some hunting in the bush.

So they would take these unauthorized hunting trips, you know, for baboon, gazelle, boar. The Delta guys are the ones who can do that. The second group, the Rangers. The Rangers are basically there to provide security and to cordon off an area while the Delta guys conduct raids on militia members in Mogadishu. the Rangers are younger and less experienced than the Delta operators, but kind of elite in their own right. Importantly, a lot of these guys are on their first deployment. Some are like 18 years old.

And again, you see this in the film, and I think the film does a good job with this. When you look at some of these guys in the movie, they look like teenagers because they are. And then the third group, so we've got Delta, the Rangers, and the third group of the pilots. and these are known as the nightstalkers. It is a regiment formed directly out of the experience of the failed Eagle Claw mission to save American hostages in Iran. These are the best helicopter pilots in the world. And in fact, the helicopter pilot most recently awarded the Medal of Honor in the U.S.

for bravery and gallantry during the Maduro raid is a night stalker. Same for the pilots on the bin Laden raid who flew the Chinooks. They're all members of this elite unit of U.S. Army helicopter pilots. So those are the three groups which are based there, and you can sense there's potential for some tension perhaps between them. And then from August onwards of 1993, they are starting to conduct these missions, aren't they against the Somali militias? And it's interesting, you know, you're talking there about the Rangers' role. The night stalkers fly in a team of Rangers and Delta, Delta the ones who actually go after the leaders of these militia. The Rangers provide the security around it.

And that seems to be their model. And they do six missions in that period between running up to October 3rd. And I guess part of the thing is they go okay, don't they? The missions are a success. And essentially what the Americans are doing is capturing different militia leaders, lieutenants, money men. armorers and then taking them and putting them on this, essentially this prison facility on an island off of Mogadishu. This has gone, as you say, Gordon, relatively well in these six missions. But there are a couple, I think, just points to make to kind of set up the battle to come.

One is that as a result of these missions, or as these missions are ongoing, General Garrison has requested additional assets for his force, specifically armed. armored vehicles and AC 130 gunships that could provide close air support at night. Both of those requests go to the U.S. Secretary of Defense and they're rejected. And it's not really a question of the U.S. military, not, you know, having those resources or not, but it's a question of the optics because this is all part of a humanitarian mission, remember? Why do you need gunships, helicopter gunships? They're not exactly low profile, right? And so you have this tension between the kind of manhunting

let's take down members of these militias mission of Task Force Ranger and the broader UN humanitarian mission. Those tensions are never fully resolved. And so there, I think with Task Force Ranger deployed, confident perhaps from its successful missions, we approach this Sunday afternoon in October. Let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll look at the intelligence that drove the decision to go in to Mogadishia on October 3rd and how a mission plan to just last an hour became 15 hours of hell. At Desjardin, our business is helping yours. We are here to support your business through every stage of growth,

from your first pitch to your first acquisition. Whether it's improving cash flow or exploring investment banking solutions, with Desjardin business, it's all under one roof. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk. Business. When West Jet first took flight in 1996,

the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96.

Travel back in time with us, and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca.

Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. Welcome back. It's October 3, 1993. And the men of Task Force Ranger, I guess, David, I mean, we see this in the film and you read it from the accounts from them. They're doing what they do between missions. It's a Sunday. So I think they think they're going to be hanging out. They're sleeping in the cots in which they're based in this hangar. They're lifting weights.

They're watching football. You know, they kind of go to the beach on the weekend. The decision is made that that day, on that Sunday, they're also going to go into Mogadishu. And it's a mission to snatch a couple of militia leaders, isn't it? So they are after lieutenants of a guy, warlord, I think we could call him, called Muhammad Farah Adid. Now, Adid is the leader of a militia group called the Somali National Alliance. And he is in control of much of the southern part of Mogadishu itself. and IDD is 59 in 1993, short, balding, charismatic guy, fancies himself a poet in the Somali oral tradition. I think yet another Gordon in a line of failed murderous poets that we have talked about on the rest of classified.

Bidlod is another one, yeah. Bidlod and another one. So Ideed in that grand tradition. Now, importantly, he is a member of a clan called the Habar Gieder. and this clan dominates South Mogadishu. So who is IDD? He is the son of a camel herder from central Somalia. He is initially trained by the Italian colonial police force.

He goes to infantry school in Rome. Ends up at a staff college in the Soviet Union, rises through the National Army after Somaliant independence. And when the dictator, Ciyadhara sees his power, ID is sidelined, eventually imprisoned. apparently survives by eating soap and then is released only when Baré needs generals for the Ogaden war against the Ethiopians, which we discussed before the break. IDID apparently serves with distinction.

Here's the critical thing about him is that, and I think Blackhawk down also kind of falls prey to this is there's a tendency to view the Somali militia as being disorganized rabble, and there is an element of that in this story. But IDD is a professional soldier, right? is not a guy who picked up a gun in a refugee camp. The guy has elite training as a military leader and has served in combat before and led troops in combat. After the Ogaden War, he serves as CIA Barre's ambassador to India.

He's essentially diplomatically exiled. But as Barre's regime grows more brutal in the 1980s, ID defects and begins organizing armed resistance, again, along clan lines. and it is IDD that leads the coalition that will drive Siyadh out of Mogadishu. But IDD has not won the piece, right? Because the coalition that toppled Barre fragments, and there's the bloody struggle for Mogadishu that is going to serve as the backdrop for the deployment of Task Force Ranger.

So he has got his own militia, and they're called the Somali National Alliance. not quite an army, but a militia kind of grown out of the population. But they're quite experienced fighters, I guess, some of them. And this is the complexity, I think. And you raised it there about understanding what happens. Because I think it can often be portrayed as somehow, it's just the people in the city rise up against the Americans when this incident happens and this battle commences. But you've got, I guess, two things going on.

You've got IDID's militia, which is a relatively, well-organized militia, even if it's not a traditional army. And then you've got a kind of wider population where there's tons of weapons around, there's tons of AK-47s and things like that, who are also can be mobilized against the Americans when things happen. Ideed has a son, Gordon, who's a U.S. Marine reservist. He has 14 children who live in the United States at the time where he is actually essentially declared war against the United States. So I just, I thought that was, I thought that was interesting. But you're right.

Back to the militia, Gordon. Back to the militia. So the Somali National Alliance, the way they're sort of, I guess, capabilities are, are shown in Blockhawk Down. I think it is not wrong. The weapons are primarily AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, you know, the sort of machine guns mounted on pickup trucks, which they call technicals. Below that militia core, though, is something larger and way less organized, which

a population that believes it's under foreign attack by the Americans. And IDD is pumping out propaganda over the radio daily to support that point. The other dynamic here that's going on on the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 that we need to be aware of is that the Haberg eater, this clan in South Mogadishu, there's almost an honor obligation to fight when the clan's territory is attacked. to that Somali proverb, the sort of internal dynamics, the fighting between the clan or with other clans could almost be paused if there's a perceived invasion by the outsiders. And there are some really, I think, effective framings that ID'd and the other sort of warlords have been able to use

to effectively mobilize the population against the Americans. You have a religious framing, which is that this is a jihad against foreign infidels. And you have the, this reservoir of pent-up grievance from American operations throughout the summer that has added additional energy and manpower. So by the time, you know, the Task Force Ranger is getting ready to go out for this seventh mission on Sunday, October the 3rd, 1993, you have a lot of people in the city who are primed to pick up a weapon and use it or to assist the militia in this fight against the Americans. And then you have a series of kind of incidents over the summer leading up to October, don't you, where there are going to be some,

I mean, there's a particular nasty one, I think, in June the 5th, 1993, where some Pakistani peacekeepers are inspecting a militia and they're ambushed and 24 Pakistani soldiers are killed. I mean, many of them are also mutilated, single deadliest day of loss for the UN peacekeepers in Somalia. So you can see already things are escalating in terms of the violence over the the summer, the UN responds with a resolution authorising all necessary measures. So again, you've got that slight element of mission creep and an arrest warrant for IDD, $25,000 for information leading to his capture, which I have to be honest, is not very, doesn't seem very much. I mean, once you're into the kind of millions for the bin Laden's later, 25,000 doesn't seem much.

But it's, it is that sense in which there's an escalating tension between ID's militia and the UN as the summer goes on. So IDID responds with. with a million dollar prize for the capture of the head of the UN mission. Yeah. There are U.S. strikes against suspected militia facilities throughout the summer in June and July. This is a watershed moment, Gordon, on July the 12th, 1993, there is an American attack on a house where dozens of clan leaders, dozens of Haberg-eater clan leaders are meeting

to discuss peace proposals made by the UN. Now, the justification for this raid was a CIA informant had said that some of those involved in the massacre of the Pakistani peacekeepers would be present. This is technically true. But ID'd himself had reportedly been tipped off hours before the strike, so he's not there. So it's not really, even though you do have people there who are responsible for the attack, the brutal attack on those Pakistani peacekeepers, it's not a war council. and you have dozens of other clan elders who were there, intellectuals, former judges, women's organization representatives, kind of moderate clan figures. Many of them are actually the same people who had sat down with the UN's leadership just days

earlier to discuss how there could be a negotiated end to the conflict. This strike by the Americans leaves maybe 54 dead and 161 wounded. And it is absolutely a turning point because what it does is it weakens the kind of internal clan opposition to ID'd. And it unites the clan, which again is this vast social organization that dominates the southern part of Mogadishu. It unites the clan against the Americans under this narrative of kind of foreign occupation and predation. So as we head towards this day of October 3rd, you can sense the 10th, and growing between IDD and more broadly, the city and the Americans, and they're looking for leaders of, I mean, they're looking for IDD himself and those around him. And I mean,

maybe we should just for a moment look at the intelligence that they are using to go after these people, because I mean, we've just seen that there's been an intelligence failure on striking that group. But that intelligence is vital, isn't it, to be able to find these militia leaders, which is pretty hard when you're in this. in this system. But the CIA is the one who are developing a network of assets, aren't they, on the ground, are kind of spiring to try and find IDD and his people. The CIA has a network of human assets on the ground in Mogadishu. This is a group of kind of support assets that have been recruited by the CIA station in Mogadishu. We don't know the cryptonym they were using

to describe them. But it's essentially Somali assets that are run and recruited by CIA case officers, and it is their intelligence that is driving the timing and location of these task force ranger raids. And they're basically asking Somalis offering sightings of ID, all the people around him. And then the US has a level of technical surveillance, I guess. It's got these, I mean, a P3 Orion spy planes flying over who can then check what's happening and try and confirm the intelligence. So it's this mixture, isn't it, of individual enforcement.

on the ground and then live video feeds which are coming from the air, whether it's from these spy planes or helicopters, which are offering a kind of confirmation or an additional source to those trying to plan raids or look for IDD. And I think this is a case where you can see that Humint is sometimes great for actionable targeting intel, right? But it has its limitations. And one of the problems that General Garrison and Task Force Ranger have had with the intelligence has been the reliability has frankly been hit or miss in the months leading up to October the 3rd.

There's an incident where CIA assets have reported that ID has left a compound in a three-veh vehicle convoy with its lights out heading toward this landmark hotel in Mogadishu called the Olympic Hotel. Observation helicopters who have night vision cameras on them go out and they say, well, okay, there's no convoy here. So are the informants, are they lying, are they mistaken, or is the intelligence just out of date, right? And keep in mind here that unlike the kind of strategic human that gets at the kind of high-level plans and intentions of an adversary, when you're trying to feed intelligence to, you know, the special operations community to conduct a raid, if the information's out of date by an hour. It's useless. It's useless. Another raid that had been

conducted based on, you know, this spy rings intelligence resulted in task force, Ranger arrested nine UN employees. So, you know, oops. Another, another resulted in Task Force Ranger arresting a Somali general who was in fact a close UN ally because the informants had confused him with ID, even though this guy was 10 inches taller than ID didn't look anything like him. There's also an interesting story here about a cane. So before Task Force Ranger had even launched its first mission, one of the, one of the first plans concocted by the agency to actually track ID'd. was for one of the CIA sources in Mogadishu to present him with this kind of wonderfully, intricately carved wooden cane, which would contain a homing beacon so that ID could be tracked in real time.

But just as Task Force Rangers arriving in Somalia, the man who was supposed to deliver the cane reportedly shot himself in the head while playing Russian roulette. What? I mean, not a joke. Like this actually happened. The guy shot himself in the head. So he survives. The asset survives.

but obviously after that was in no condition to participate in the operation. Rather a stupid asset, you could say, if you're playing Russian roulette. I mean, anyway, so that mission doesn't work. All of that means that they've got some forms of intelligence, but they're not always perfect. And then we come to the 3rd of October. And crucially, the CIA thinks it has a lead, a bead on a couple of ID's key lieutenant. So not IDD himself, but they think they know where those lieutenants might be meeting. Yeah.

And here at this point in October, I mean, ID is effectively gone to ground. Nobody knows where he is. And so the raids have focused on members of his organization. So money man, arms dealers. The guys in this case are two lieutenants of IDD. And that is going to be the tripwire for the raid. So one of the spy rings assets who believes he knows where they will be is in to drive his silver sedan. He's got red stripes on the doors. Go to the Olympic

Hotel, open the hood as if he's experiencing some kind of engine trouble, and then drive to the target building and repeat the performance. So basically, opening the hood will allow the spy planes and helicopters to see him. They'll pump that feed into the joint operations center, and that'll provide kind of the visual marker then for them to lock on to. they'll follow the sedan to the target location, and then they'll have the spot where these two militia lieutenants are going to meet. So the asset, though, performs the check at the hotel so quickly

that the cameras miss him, and he's told to do it again. And I think, Gordon, this actually is fairly well reconstructed in the film Blockhock down when you see this kind of, you know, he's got tape that he's put on top of his sedan, and he's driving to try to, you know, allow the Americans to get a lock on where this meeting will happen. Now, Garrison and his staff are watching all of this on screens. They watch the asset drive to a building near the Olympic Hotel in the Bakara Market, which is in South Mogadishu.

As we said earlier, this is the turf of the Haber Gieter clan. It is nicknamed the Black Sea by the Americans. And the spy rigs asset opens the hood of his car at this new location. And that confirms that is the sign that ID's lieutenants are meeting inside. And that intelligence from this asset triggers the order to initiate the rate. And it is a code word Irene. So the code words given Irene at 332 that Sunday after in October the 3rd, the helicopter assault force lifts off from the airfield. Let's explain a little bit what's in this assault force, though, David, because I think that's going to be an important part of the story, isn't it? It is. It is. And it is a bit varied. So there are four what are known as Little Bird attack helicopters.

Those helicopters are not Blackhawks, but they will play a significant role in the battle to come. There are four additional little birds that have the Delta operators that are perched on these external benches. There are nine Black Hawk helicopters carrying the contingent of rangers. There's a command and control Blackhawk that has essentially the head of the ground mission, which is going to be the most senior Delta operator in Mogadishu, and then the head of the air mission who's responsible for coordinating all of the helicopters, right? So you have those two guys in the command and control Blackhawk. There is also departing pretty much simultaneously from the sort of the ranger base is a convoy of 12 vehicles that are going to go

to the actual target site. And the plan is essentially that it's an air insertion. They're going to load up all of the prisoners, all of the Delta operators, all of the rangers onto the trucks, onto the vehicles at that target site and then go back. So it's an air insertion ground extraction. Helicopters drop Delta and Rangers, convoy comes in and brings out Delta Rangers and the prisoners, basically. So that's a total force of about 160 Americans. What the intelligence picture doesn't show is that the Somali National Alliance, ID's militia, they've spent weeks studying the previous raids.

Because remember, this has been done six times already in sort of various forms. And all of them have followed the same basic pattern, which is helicopter insertion, it's kind of generally the same tactical formation, it's the same ground convoy extraction procedure. The SNA has watched these, right? So they've seen the orbit patterns of the Blackhawks, right? Because as the convoy is going in, as the, you know, sort of snatch and grab is happening, the Blackhawks are going in these kind of orbits to provide air cover and overwatch. So the SNA has noted the altitudes and speeds. We'll come to this in the next episode, but the Somali, you know, militias have noted a particular vulnerability to the tailroader of the Blackhawk.

The militias have positioned weapons, caches and RPG rocket-propelled grenade teams in the Barcarra market, specifically to cover the approach corridors the Americans have used. And the militia have developed a signaling system using burning tires and mobile phones to alert the city the moment that American helicopters are heard. on the previous six raids, the Americans had arrived before these militia could really fully mobilize. And by the time, as we'll see, by the time we get to the seventh, that mobilization time has significantly been compressed. So as soon as that formation lifts off, the nightstock pilots report that the Somalis are burning tires in the streets below, just sending up the signal, you know, that the Americans are coming. and that signal is traveling faster than the aircraft. So there, David, I think with the helicopters and the convoy, on route to the destination,

but not realizing that this time the Somalians have mobilized and prepared for this, let's stop, and next time we'll see how this mission unfolds and goes wrong almost immediately. Well, that's right, but of course, if you don't want to wait for those, thrilling final three episodes in the series. You don't have to. You can go and join the Declassified club at the rest is classified.com, get early access to this series and get access to the bonus episodes where we'll be doing a kind of a look at Somalian history since the Black Hawkdown rate to understand what's happened in the country and we'll also be doing a kind of review of the Black Hawkdown film. Also, a reminder that we are doing a live show.

Isn't that right, Gordon? That's right. On Friday the 4th of September. And tickets are available now. And there's a link for tickets in the episode description box. And you can also go to the South Bank Center website and search for the rest is classified. So do sign up for those tickets and we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.

Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada.