It sounds like a scene from a Chuck Norris thriller–and who knows, it may become one–but this was a real covert operation carried out by U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) and Delta Force commandos. While tanks, planes and smart bombs were the undisputed stars of Operation Desert Storm, highly trained commandos conducted a masterful–if unpublicized–sideshow. Navy SEALS swam up to Kuwait beaches, dismantling underwater mines. Commandos inside Iraq cut fiber-optic cables to military leaders in Kuwait, used laser beams to pinpoint air targets, even gathered soil samples to determine the best invasion routes. NEWSWEEK has learned that within weeks of Saddam Hussein’s invasion last August, an American special-operations team crossed the border into Kuwait to observe the Iraqi buildup and conduct “snatch operations,” stealing Iraqi electronic equipment and carrying it to Riyadh for analysis. Three days before the ground invasion, commandos slipped into Kuwait in helicopters painted with Iraqi Army markings to perform a final reconnaissance.
Initially, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf had little enthusiasm for “special ops.” A firm believer in conventional warfare, Schwarzkopf angered commando officers when he bumped them off military flights last August to rush tank forces to Saudi Arabia. He vetoed proposals to infiltrate agents into Iraq to organize dissidents. As the war progressed, however, Schwarzkopf gave the special forces more latitude, increased their numbers to 8,000–and singled them out for praise during his postwar news conference.
Special-operations airmen played a crucial–if inadvertent–role in suppressing Iraqi air defenses. Days before the start of the ground war, the forces began dropping 15,000-pound “Daily Cutter” bombs on Iraqi troops from the back of C-130 transport planes. The first struck a minefield near the Kuwaiti border. Terrified Iraqis were certain that the devastating explosion signaled the beginning of the ground war, and turned on their air-defense radars all along the border. American pilots pinpointed many air-defense installations they never knew existed. Says one Pentagon official: “We were able to “paint’ every radar electronically and knock them out.”
Some cover warriors paid the ultimate price. Eleven Green Berets engaged in reconnaissance and sabotage around Baghdad are still missing in action, though their names have never been listed on any public MIA reports. Intelligence sources told NEWSWEEK that in late February, three commandos were hunting Scuds in Iraq when their dune buggy overturned, breaking one man’s back. The Army dispatched a Black Hawk helicopter into Iraq, piloted by a four-man crew from Task Force 160, a secret Army unit. After retrieving the commandos, the crew crashed in a Saudi sand dune, killing all seven on board. The Pentagon informed the public that the Blackhawk had been on a routine medical evacuation mission. Even in death, the warriors of the Special Operations Command maintained their cover.
