Headquarters of U.S. Special Operations
7701 Tampa Point Blvd.
MacDill AFB, FL 33621-5323
Public.Affairs@socom.mil
Phone 813-826-4600.

Air Force Special Operations Command
Hurlburt Field, FL 32544
Coml: 850-884-5382
DSN: 579-5382

Army Special Operations, U.S. Army Special Operations Command (Special Forces, Rangers, Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs)
Fort Bragg, NC  28310-9110
Phone 910-432-7443/6005
http://news.soc.mil
http://www.facebook.com/usasoc.mil

Marines Special Operations Forces public affairs office
Marine Corps Base, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
Phone 910-440-0705

Naval Special Warfare Command, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, San Diego, California
Phone 619-522-2824

Mark Benjamin / Gina Gray

Mark Benjamin, a former national correspondent for Salon, worked for the online magazine from January 2005 until November 2010.

How is reporting on Special Operations different from writing about other subjects?

From a reporting perspective, they’re a much more secretive bunch, and they’ll hide all kinds of things, including their own personal pain; in an army full of stigma about any sign of weaknesses, there’s even more stigma among the elite soldiers. They fake it, and they drink. They are also highly intelligent. I don’t mean that they’re quoting Shakespeare; I mean that they are very quick and insightful.

What are some of your experiences in writing about Special Forces?

Because they’re not rank-and-file, salute-the-flag type, there is a certain independence in their thinking, and you will get a rubber-meets-the-road sort of account when you talk to these guys and an unvarnished version of what the hell’s going on. I remember spending a few days with a former Special Operations Forces soldier at Fort Carson, Colorado in early 2009.  Everyone had decided that Gen. David H.] Petraeus had won the war, and this guy in Colorado was like, “We just paid off all the Sunnis to stop shooting us.”

What was it like dealing with Special Operations public-affairs people?

Rangers go beyond enemy lines – that’s what they do for a living. They are literally trained to go where you don’t have resources, and you have to get the mission done, and I think that these kind of people are different. I don’t mean they break the rules necessarily, but they’re much more willing to do what they need instead of sticking to the rulebook. That can bring you a lot of good and a lot of bad. They help you get what you need when they are public-affairs officers. But they’re not human-rights workers. You know what I mean.

What’s special about the people in Special Operations?

You have to qualify to become part of U.S. Special Operations, and it’s a grueling process. There was a study done by Andrew Morgan of Yale Medical School in which he looked at the neuropeptide-y from the saliva of people who were in Special Operations Forces (SOF) and found that those who were SOF-qualified were actually chemically different from the rest of us. Most of it is psychological toughness – they’re special people.

Have you done stories on black operations?

I have done stories on interrogations, intelligence and torture, and these activities were run by teams that involved all different types. There were CIA, contractors, CIA paramilitary, and Special Forces; some of them were on government payrolls as part of the CIA, and others were working as consultants or contractors, but they were all on the same team.

Where did these teams operate?

At the black sites, or the secret prisons  [see Salon’s “Torture Teachers.”]

What are the underreported issues in Special Operations?

Africa: Special Force are running all over the place, and I have no idea what they’re doing. There’s basically no oversight of the people there.

What is the most fun part of covering this subject?

The most fun part about writing is that you’re not supposed to be doing it.

What advice do you have for journalists who want to write about Special Operations?

Be patient. Meet people in person. A lot of these dudes are kind of paranoid, and I don’t know if it’s real or not, and you should be sensitive to that. They must be worried about something.

Alter, Jonathan. The Promise: President Obama: Year One. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.

Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion, to September 10, 2001. New York: Penguin, 2004.

Cook, Lt. Col. John L. The Advisor: The Phoenix Program in Vietnam. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, 2000.

Faddis, Charles S. Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA. Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, 2009.

Dalton, Fury (pseudonym). Kill Bin Laden. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2009.

Goldsmith. Jack. The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009.

Graham, Bradley. By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld. New York: Public Affairs, 2009.

Guttman, Roy, and David Rieff, editors. Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999.

Herrington, Stuart A. Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account. New York: Presidio Press, 2004.

Hoffman, Bruce. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Fair, Christine and Seth Jones. Counterinsurgency in Pakistani. Washington, D.C: RAND, 2010.

Kessler, Ronald. The Terrorist Watch. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008.

Knott, Stephen F. Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Lowenthal, Mark W. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy. Washington, D.C: CQ Press, 2008.

McRaven, William H.  Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare Theory and Practice. New York: Presidio Press, 1996.

Paddock, Jr., Alfred H. U.S. Army Special Warfare: Its Origins. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2002.

Pillar, Paul R. The Mythology of Intelligence: Iraq, 9/11, and America’s Misguided Quest to Understand the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Powers, Thomas. Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda New York: New York Review of Books, 2004.

Rashid, Ahmed. Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. New York: Viking, 2008.

Riedel, Bruce. The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future. Washington, D.C: Bookings Institution Press, 2010.

Robinson, Linda. Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq. New York: Public Affairs., 2008.

Rothstein, Hy S. Afghanistan and the Troubled Future of Unconventional Warfare. Anapolis, Maryland: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2006.

Thiessen, Marc. Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack. Washington, D.C: Regnery Press, 2010.

Tierney, John J. Chasing Ghosts: Unconventional Warfare in American History. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2007.

Wittes, Benjamin. Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror. New York: Penguin, 2008.

Wittes, Benjamin. Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2009.

Woodward, Bob. The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009.

Zenko, Micah. Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press, 2010.

By TARA McKELVEY
Carnegie Fellow

In the fall of 2004, I started writing a series of investigative articles about crimes that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; these articles were eventually turned into a book entitled Monstering: Inside America’s Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War.

Here are some of the things that I learned about reporting on Special Operations and other aspects of the military:

How to Find Sources.

Before I start reporting on a story, I spend hours on the computer, looking for articles, websites, blogs, and anything that will provide information about the subject. I compile a database with the names and background information of people that I would like to talk to – dozens usually, and sometimes hundreds. Then I start making phone calls or just get in my car. After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2004, one of the Military Police who were implicated in the scandal – Lynndie England – became notorious for her role in the abuse of prisoners and was sentenced to prison. I had been investigating the scandal for months and wanted very much to meet her, but her family refused to speak with journalists.

On a hot August afternoon, I drove to the trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, where her parents lived and knocked on the door. I brought along some of my magazine articles, including one about female soldiers in Iraq, and smoked cigarettes with her mother in the kitchen. Four days later, I got an exclusive, jailhouse interview with Lynndie England in a naval brig in San Diego. I got the interview because I went to visit her mom. Too often, journalists rely on only their laptop and a cell phone to do reporting. Sometimes, it is better to go and talk to people.

How to Interview People about Special Operations.

Talking to people involved in this type of conflict is not always easy. People who have been part of U.S. Special Operations are reluctant to say anything about what they have done; if they are currently part of the unit, they can’t say anything – by law. I look for people who have left the service. They are more open about describing their experiences, and some of them are angry about what they have seen. They are often the best sources.

How to Find Documents.

File a Freedom of Information Act request. It’s easy, and the government is required to assist you in getting the documents that you ask for. One organization, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, has drawn up a sample letter that you can use when you file a request.

Keep in mind, though, that when you are writing about Special Operations, the bar is higher. In truth, I never got hold of anything through the Freedom of Information Act, because most of the stories I was writing involved aspects of the military that were protected by the government’s state secrets’ defense. In other words, the government does not have to give you information about an agency, or anything at all, if state secrets might be revealed.

I relied extensively on documents for my reporting, however. I just received them in different ways; a former military officer e-mailed me Power Point slides and CDs that contained images from inside the Abu Ghraib prison, for example. Other times, lawyers gave me documents that were related to cases that they had filed against the government. In addition, I found documents in a database that had been compiled by lawyers working for the American Civil Liberties Union. Recently, WikiLeaks has also been an excellent source of government documents.

How to Verify the Information.

I double- and triple-source material before I publish it. That means I hear things from a source and then look for documentation that backs up their story. In one section of my book, for example, I wrote about a Baghdad man who was held at the notorious Camp Nama, which was run by a covert unit of U.S. Special Operations.

After he told me about his experiences at Camp Nama, I checked with the U.S. military to verify that he had been held as a detainee and confirmed the details of his story – as best I could – with documents such as a Human Rights Watch report entitled “No Blood, No Foul” that provided extensive details about the place, and also with New York Times stories about the prison.

Through a variety of sources, I determined that the way he had described the room where he was held, the dimensions of the prison, and the abuse that he and the other prisoners had undergone were consistent with other accounts that had been published.

How to Keep You and Other People Safe While Doing the Reporting.
I try to use people’s names when I write my articles because that adds credibility to the story and moreover does not allow sources to settle scores or get back at people through anonymous quotes. When I write about certain aspects of the military, though, I do interviews on background to protect my sources. Unfortunately, I know what the stakes are. Two people were killed after I interviewed them in Amman, Jordan, in 2005, and I think about them every day of my life.

I also try to protect my own safety while doing stories. I never go to someone’s house for an interview, for example, or ride with them in a car. And when I am traveling, whether in Moscow or in Murray, Kentucky, I tell a friend when I am leaving for an interview and where the interview will take place and afterwards let them know I’ve returned. I’d rather be the kind of person who later says, “What was I worried about?” then to be the kind of person who finds herself in a situation that she wishes she weren’t.

By TARA McKELVEY
Carnegie Fellow

On February 12, 2010, U.S. Special Operations helped to conduct a nighttime raid in Paktia Province, Afghanistan, and five civilians ended up dead — three women, including two who were pregnant; a district prosecutor; and a local police chief. Soldiers claimed that the men were insurgents, and that the women had been found dead, bound and gagged in the house, when the soldiers arrived. The soldiers made it seem as though the women had been victims of Taliban-organized honor killings.

NATO issued a press release entitled, “Joint Force Operating in Gardez Makes Gruesome Discovery,” with details about the deaths of the men and women at the house, and a CNN report, with contributions by reporter Barbara Starr, repeated the claims from soldiers; the story was entitled, “Bodies found gagged, bound after Afghan ‘honor killing.’” The military’s account, along with the report by CNN, made the incident in the village appear to be yet another disturbing account of Taliban brutality towards women.

Nevertheless, there were hints that the story of the raid was more complicated than the NATO public-affairs office and CNN had indicated. The New York Times reported on the day after the raid that there were discrepancies in the accounts of the raid. In addition, an Associated Press reporter named Amir Shah was even more skeptical about the NATO characterization of the raid, filing a video segment about the incident that was headlined, “NATO says insurgents killed; family says civilians.” Shah’s report, which contradicted both the NATO report and the CNN segment, appeared on an NBC affiliate, CW56, in Boston. Meanwhile, a RAWA News article that was posted on February 12 was even more direct: It was entitled, “Villagers accuse US Special Forces for killing five civilians.” The grammar was clumsy, but nevertheless the headline and accompanying article made it clear that there was another side to the story.

As it turned out, the Special Forces’ claims were untrue. The Pentagon admitted several weeks later that Special Forces had killed the men and women and had in fact dug bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide facts of the crimes. The press release that NATO had originally issued about the raid, and that the CNN reporter had cited in their segment, currently appears as a blank page with the following sentence: “This document has been rescinded.”

Many of the facts about the deaths of the Afghan men and women on that night remain in dispute. But it is clear that something went terribly wrong that night – and moreover that botched nighttime raids had become commonplace. In the same month that the incident occurred, the campaign of nighttime raids became a controversial aspect of the efforts by U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, with the publication a report that was issued by Open Society Institute (Available as a PDF), a New York-based organization headed up by financier George Soros. “While attacking homes at night, rather than daytime, may add an element of surprise and reduce the risk to pro-government forces, it dramatically increases the chances of indiscriminate use of force against innocent women, children, and men in the house,” wrote the authors of the report.

For a variety of reasons, the Special Forces raid on the house in Gardez ended in five needless deaths. The incident could have immediately prompted U.S. Special Operations to re-evaluate the policy of nighttime raids that were being conducted in Afghanistan and to determine whether the benefits of these actions outweighed the costs. One analyst at the United States Army Military History Institute, which is located at United States Army War College, told me that Special Forces have been the “worst perpetrators” of civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan. Yet it took several weeks for the U.S. media to accurately assess the original statements from the military about the February raid and to report on what had happened that night. This was an unfortunate, and avoidable, lapse in the media coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

Left-leaning journalists such as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, was harsh in his criticism of the American journalists for their failure to report on the incident, even harsher than he was in his writing about the U.S. soldiers who had committed the murder. “What is clear — yet again — is how completely misinformed and propagandized Americans continue to be by the American media, which constantly ‘reports’ on crucial events in Afghanistan by doing nothing more than mindlessly and unquestioningly passing along U.S. government claims as though they are fact,” he wrote in an April 5, 2010, article.

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald was not the only one who was angry about the media coverage. Journalist Jerome Starkey, who was based in Afghanistan and wrote for The Times of London, accused both the American and British media of pulling their punches and refusing to investigate stories in Afghanistan. “This self-censorship is compounded by the ‘embed culture,’ which encourages journalists to visit the frontlines with NATO soldiers, who provide them food, shelter, security and ultimately with stories,” he wrote in a piece for Nieman Watchdog.

The worst offenses were committed that night by soldiers who decided to kill Afghan civilians – not by the journalists who were lax in their efforts to investigate the incident. Nevertheless, journalists should not have relied so heavily on the press releases issued by NATO’s public-affairs office; instead, journalists could have made a concerted effort to speak with people who had seen what happened during the raid, which would have allowed the journalists to write more complete and nuanced articles. If the stories about the raid had included more sources and additional reporting, the American public would have learned about a raid that had gone horribly wrong and perhaps the practice of these nighttime operations would have been re-evaluated. Unfortunately, the practice of these raids continued unabated.

Military officials expressed regret for crimes; a U.S. Special Operations commander, Vice Admiral William McRaven, visited the village where the men and women had been killed and apologized. “I am the commander of the soldiers who accidentally killed your loved ones,” he told the family, as reported by ABC News. That was the end of the story.