Call Sign Extortion 17 Read online

  Call Sign Extortion 17

  The Shoot-­Down of SEAL Team Six

  Don Brown

  An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

  Copyright © 2015 by Don Brown

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

  Brown, Don, 1960-

  Call Sign Extortion 17 : the shoot-down of SEAL Team Six / Don Brown.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-4930-0746-2

  1. Afghan War, 2001—Aerial operations, American. 2. United States. Navy. SEALs—History—21st century. 3. United States. Naval Special Warfare Development Group—History. 4. Chinook (Military transport helicopter) 5. Special operations (Military science)—United States. 6. Afghan War, 2001—Campaigns. I. Title. II. Title: Shoot-down of SEAL Team Six.

  DS371.412.B74 2015

  958.104'745—dc23

  2015002084

  ISBN 978-1-4930-1732-4 (e-­book)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Forward Operating Base “Shank”

  Chapter 2: Aboard Extortion 17

  Chapter 3: Base Shank

  Chapter 4: SEALs Called to Action

  Chapter 5: Ninety-­Seven Days from Quintessential Glory to Unexplained Disaster

  Chapter 6: Background on the Colt Report

  Chapter 7: The Colt Report: A General Overview

  Chapter 8: The Colt Report 101: Points to Keep in Mind in Examining Evidence

  Chapter 9: The Pink Elephant Escapes

  Chapter 10: CENTCOM Handcuffs Colt’s Investigation

  Chapter 11: The Seven Missing Afghans Discovered by Happenchance

  Chapter 12: “Green-­on-­Blue” Violence: “Friendly” Afghans Killing Americans

  Chapter 13: An Ambassador’s Blunt Warnings

  Chapter 14: A Forced Suicide Mission

  Chapter 15: Extortion 17 Pilots: Underequipped and Untrained for Special Ops

  Chapter 16: The Deadly Record of CH-47D in Afghanistan

  Chapter 17: Task Force Commander Concerns: Conventinal Aviation with Special Forces

  Chapter 18: Pre-­Flight Intelligence: Taliban Targeting US Helicopters

  Chapter 19: Chaos in the Air: The Lost Minutes

  Chapter 20: The Chopper’s Last Call

  Chapter 21: The Odd Request for a “Sparkle”

  Chapter 22: The Final Seconds: Who Is “Them”?

  Chapter 23: Extortion 17’s Bizarre Behavior

  Chapter 24: The “Two-­Minute Burn” and the “One-­Minute Call” That Wasn’t

  Chapter 25: Was Bryan Nichols Trying to Tell Us Something?

  Chapter 26: A Three-Minute Burn? The Copper in the Spotlight?

  Chapter 27: Fallen Angel: The Final Seconds of Extortion 17

  Chapter 28: Taliban Access to NVGs and Other Weapons

  Chapter 29: A Point-­Blank Shot: Clues from Exhibit 60

  Chapter 30: Testimony of Apache Pilots and Pitch-­Black Conditions

  Chapter 31: Extortion 17 and the Earlier Ranger Mission

  Chapter 32: The Rules of Engagement: Groundwork for the Death of Thirty Americans

  Chapter 33: Enemy “Squirters” on the Ground Prior to Shoot-Down

  Chapter 34: Hypocrisies and Inconsistencies in the Rules of Engagement

  Chapter 35: Indefensible Inconsistency: Pathfinders Get Pre-­Assault Fire but SEALs Don’t

  Chapter 36: The Disappearing Black Box: Further Evidence of Inconsistencies and Cover-­Up

  Chapter 37: Disconnect: The Pathfinders vs. the Task Force

  Chapter 38: The Black Box Absent from the Executive Summary

  Chapter 39: The Crash Site: Before the Pathfinders’ Arrival

  Chapter 40: The Mystery Unit First on the Ground

  Chapter 41: The Executive Summary: Whitewashing the Real Chronology

  Chapter 42: The Little Creek Briefing and Other Reports: More Questions on the Box

  Chapter 43: February 27, 2014: The Congressional Hearing

  Chapter 44: The Military’s Changed Tune: “There Was No Black Box”

  Chapter 45: Black Box Black Magic: The “Analog” Ruse

  Chapter 46: Chaffetz on Fox: The Pink Elephant Lives

  Chapter 47: Cremation and Destruction of DNA Evidence

  Chapter 48: British Press Reports: The Taliban Knew

  Chapter 49: Afghan President Karzai: First to Announce the Shoot-Down

  Chapter 50: NATO Special Operations Forces Kill President Karzai’s Cousin

  Chapter 51: Karzai and the Taliban Playing Footsie for Years

  Chapter 52: Another Dirty Secret: Afghans on Every American Mission

  Chapter 53: Shocking Discovery: Bullets in the Bodies

  Chapter 54: Autopsies Versus “No Identifiable Remains”

  Chapter 55: All Signs Point to a Cover-Up

  Chapter 56: Final Thoughts

  Index

  About the Author

  Prologue

  base shank

  logar province, afghanistan

  august 6, 2011

  Under the moonless sky in Logar Province, at just before two o’clock in the morning local time, thirty Americans, including seventeen members of the elite SEAL team that had killed Osama Bin Laden fourteen weeks earlier, were scrambled aboard a Vietnam-­era US Army National Guard Chinook helicopter, code name Extortion 17. Sixty-­six years earlier to the day, the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

  The old Chinook was not the type of helicopter typically used by the SEALs. Special Forces units typically attack with specially equipped, highly armed Special Operations helicopters with highly sophisticated electronic and jamming systems, flown by Special Operations pilots trained to insert the SEALs with swiftness, speed, and surprise.

  But the Chinook was not an assault helicopter. It did not have significant offensive capabilities, and it was not designed for high-­speed assaults carried out by US Special Forces. The Chinook was a transport chopper and was not designed to fly into a hot combat zone. Its crew was a National Guard crew, trained to transport troops and equipment, but not trained or equipped for Special Operations in hot battle zones.

  The Americans boarding the chopper ranged in age from the youngest, twenty-­one-­year-­old Specialist Spencer C. Duncan of Olathe, Kansas, to the oldest of the group, forty-­seven-­year-­old Chief Warrant Officer David Carter of Aurora, Colorado.

  Two of the men, Lieutenant Commander Jonas Kelsall, the SEAL commander, and Chief Petty Officer Robert Reeves, had been best friends since their high school days in Shreveport, Louisiana, and even played on the same high school football team.

  Sixteen of the men had wives back home in the United States, and thirty-­two American children called these men “Daddy.”

  Three of the men, Navy Senior Chief Craig Vickers of Hawaii, Navy Chief (SEAL) Matt Mason of Kansas City, and Senior Chief Tommy Ratzlaff of A
rkansas, had wives who were expecting their third child.

  Vickers was on his last tour with the Navy and planned to retire and return home to his family in May 2012. Like Craig Vickers, forty-­four-­year-­old Senior Chief Lou Langlais, one of the most highly decorated and experienced SEALs in the Navy, was also on his last combat deployment and planned to return to a stateside job as a trainer where he would reunite with his wife, Anya, and their two boys in Santa Monica.

  Seven mysterious Afghan commandos, along with one Afghan interpreter, joined these remarkable Americans on the helicopter that night. The presence of the unknown Afghans, whose names were not on the flight manifest, breached all semblances of military and aviation protocol.

  Within minutes of takeoff, every American on board Extortion 17 died a horrific, fiery death in a crash that would mark the deadliest single loss in the eleven-­year-­old Afghan war, and the single-­largest loss in the history of US Special Forces.

  Why did these men die?

  Their children and wives deserve to know. Their parents and their country deserve an answer.

  Powerful evidence now suggests there was a cover-­up to prevent the truth from ever getting out.

  What is being covered up?

  Several signs suggest that the Taliban were tipped off as to the Chinook’s flight path and were lying in wait with rocket-­propelled grenades as it approached the landing zone. Invaluable forensic evidence has been inexcusably lost, negligently or intentionally destroyed by the military, or conveniently glossed over to obfuscate the truth as to why these men died.

  Even if the Taliban had no inside information, which appears unlikely, the decision to order a platoon of US Navy SEALs and supporting troops onto a highly vulnerable and largely defenseless Vietnam-­era National Guard helicopter, a CH-47 Chinook piloted by a noble crew of National Guard aviators who were ill equipped and untrained in the Special Forces aviation techniques necessary to prosecute this mission, effectively sealed the death warrants for each and every American on board that night.

  For the sake of the thirty-­two children who lost their fathers, for the sixteen wives who lost their husbands, for the sake of sixty parents who lost their sons, and for the sake of a nation that deserves better from its leadership in protecting its treasured sons in times of war, hard questions need to be asked.

  This is the story of the last flight of Extortion 17 and the cover-­up that followed.

  Chapter 1

  Forward Operating Base “Shank”

  logar province, eastern afghanistan

  august 5, 2011

  late evening hours

  The crescent moon hung low over the horizon, dipping below the mountains off in the distance to the west.

  It was 10:00 p.m. local time, and the night was not yet half gone. But soon, the moonless sky would yield to the faint blinking of the stars against the jet-­black canopy of space, a placid contrast to the bloody jihad raging in the dark hills and valleys and riverbeds beyond the mountains.

  Down below the starry firmament, in this forward-­deployed military base occupied by Western forces in the ten-­year-­old “War on Terror,” a buzz of activity arose from units of several US Special Forces, namely from US Army Rangers and the elite US Navy SEALs.

  Here, in the midst of the Afghan night, they called this place “Base Shank,” or officially, “Forward Operating Base Shank.” And at first glance, with its wooden buildings and Quonset tents, concrete barriers and big green and sand-­colored jeeps and dirt graders, FOB Shank could pass for 1950s-­vintage from the Korean War—perhaps even the backstage of a Hollywood set constructed in the foothills of snow-­capped mountains.

  But technologically, and militarily, there was nothing Fifties-­vintage about this place, nor was there anything about it that was Hollywood.

  At this remote outpost 46 miles south of the Afghan capital at Kabul, and 100 miles west of the Pakistani border, the SEALs and the Rangers were deployed to the tip of the American military spear, poised to use their superior training and weaponry to take the fight straight to the Taliban in rugged and treacherous mountain peaks, in crags, and in rocks and valleys and remote riverbeds. Much of the SEAL unit was from the prestigious SEAL Team Six, the unit that ninety days earlier had killed the world’s most notorious terrorist, Osama Bin Laden.

  Their mission was to kill Taliban, and they were deadly effective at it.

  On this night, as the SEALs and Rangers prepared their weapons of war, two US Army National Guard Chinook helicopters, call signs Extortion 16 and Extortion 17, prepared to transport two platoons of Army Rangers to the edge of the battle front, in this case in the Tangi River Valley in the mountainous Wardak Province a few miles to the west. Their job —to engage Taliban forces and hunt down a Taliban terrorist leader named Qari Tahir, whose code name was Lefty Grove.

  Between ten and eleven o’clock, two platoons of Army Rangers, weapons loaded and in full combat gear, moved single-­file toward the giant helicopters, their running lights blinking on the heliport, their twin engines shrieking loudly into the night.

  As they boarded the choppers, the Rangers ducked their heads under twin rotary blades whirling in a wind-­filled roar. Some probably covered their ears to block the noise and the wind. Within minutes, they had strapped themselves into their jump seats, and they were cleared for takeoff.

  Like two giant locusts, with twin-­engines spinning, the lumbering war birds lifted into the dark skies, dipped their noses, and set a course for the northwest.

  Their destination—an area approximately 2 kilometers outside the battle zone in the Tangi River Valley in neighboring Wardak Province. The Tangi Valley cut across the border between Wardak and Logar Provinces and was an area where security had deteriorated over the past two years, bringing the insurgency closer to the capital, Kabul. It was a largely inaccessible area that had become a haven for insurgents.

  In command of Extortion 17 was thirty-­year-­old CW2 Bryan J. Nichols, a member of the Kansas Air National Guard.

  Bryan Nichols enlisted in the Army in 1996 as a ground soldier. He was deployed as an infantryman twice in Iraq, once in 2002 and again in 2003, and once in Kosovo in 2004, all of which occurred before he became an Army pilot.

  Following his dream to become a US Army aviator, Bryan graduated from flight school in 2008; most of his flight training had taken place back in the United States.

  But tonight marked a first for Bryan.

  Base Shank, Afghanistan, marked his very first tour as a pilot in combat. For although he was experienced as a combat soldier, he had no experience as a combat pilot. Not yet, anyway. The dark, deadly skies of Afghanistan were about to change all that.

  Bryan was on his second marriage when he deployed to Afghanistan, and left behind a ten-­year-­old son named Braydon. Braydon lived with his mother, Jessica Nichols, in Kansas City.

  He had arrived in Afghanistan less than a week earlier, and as his chopper thundered to the northwest, full of elite US Army Rangers, perhaps his mind returned for a moment to Braydon. Bryan and Braydon were close, and though Bryan remarried, he and Braydon remained thick as thieves. When Bryan remarried and exchanged his vows with Mary in his service dress blue Army uniform, he had a miniature version of the uniform tailored for Braydon, who stood proudly beside his father during the ceremony. In the days since Bryan left Kansas, he and Braydon had frequently communicated by Skype and could not wait to see each other again.

  In a few weeks, when he returned home, he planned to fulfill a promise to Braydon to take him to a Royals game. As his chopper sliced through the dark of the deadly night, perhaps his thoughts, for a flickering moment, turned to home, and to baseball, and to his boy.

  Theirs was a reunion that would never take place.

  As Extortions 16 and 17 flew over the rugged, snow-­capped Hindu-­Kush mountain ranges, jagged peaks stretching from central A
fghanistan to northern Pakistan, the American pilots charted their route to the initial drop-­off point.

  The battle for military control of these mountains, and the crags and valleys and riverbeds around them, had been wrapped in a long and ancient history of warfare. Darius the Great, the great king of Persia, once maintained an army here. Later, Alexander the Great explored these mountains.

  But the exploits of Darius and the explorations of Alexander had come hundreds of years before the birth of a man named Muhammad, whose life and death would mark a geopolitical shift in the world. In the hundred years following Muhammad’s death in AD 632, Islam would sweep by military conquest from the Arabian Peninsula to the west, all the way across the rim of North Africa and crossing Gibraltar into all of Spain. At the same time, the meteoric expansion of the Muslim empire stretched to the north and east, with Islamic warriors from Arabia capturing the cities of Damascus, Baghdad, and Kabul, and all the lands around them.

  By the end of the Umayyad Caliphate in AD 750, the great Muslim empire had grown by military conquest into the largest empire in the history of the world. The land and mountains below these helicopters had been under Islamic control for twelve hundred years.

  The ghosts of ten thousand fallen sons of a former superpower haunted the frozen snowcaps, crags, and cliffs of the harsh mountain terrain. Some had been shot. Others had been chopped apart or brutally decapitated. All spilled their blood for the lost cause of Soviet communism the last time a great power tried invading Afghanistan.

  The Russians had defeated Napoleon, and the Soviets defeated the Nazis. But at the zenith of their strength as a nuclear superpower, with missiles and MIG jets and arsenals of sophisticated weaponry, the great Red Bear of the uttermost north could not defeat the Islamic mujahideen lurking behind the rocks of these unforgiving mountains. Afghanistan became the most humiliating defeat in the history of the Soviet Union.

  Now, as two American helicopters closed in on their landing zone just two clicks (kilometers) from the battle zone, the sons of another superpower would try their hands at war in this harsh terrain that belonged to Islam. Perhaps if the ghosts of the Russians could speak, they would cry loudly into the night to warn the Rangers and the pilots of the danger lurking ahead. Perhaps that warning would have come out of respect for an old ally, a former ally that once joined Mother Russia in her fight against Nazism. Or perhaps their voices would have remained silent, content to hope that radical Islam would bring down their bitter-­rival superpower, the Americans, just as their defeat in Afghanistan had jumpstarted the downward spiral of the Soviet Union.