An Army Intelligence Warrant Officer, Volume III
I got an ass-chewing for failing to inform the USAF one-star that the former AG was in the house. It is indeed better to beg forgiveness than to request permission.
By this time, I had a reputation, and two Army CWOs approached me. They noted that a ROAD (Retired on Active Duty) CI W-4 had arrogated to himself the job of advising WO Selection Boards, and he would never recommend me because I had none of the four technically trained qualifications recognized by the Army. They suggested I apply for Interrogation of Prisoners of War as I already spoke several languages. Not long thereafter I arrived in Fort Hood a an IPW WO1. I made it my business to take charge of training and told the enlisted interrogators they would spend six weeks each shadowing an enlisted member of the same rank in an armored, infantry, Artillery and cavalry battalion. It was not enough to speak fluent Russian; they also had to be fluent in combat arms.
I revised the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training. After familiarizing myself with the makeup of III Corps, its two resident divisions and all the combat arms, engineering, and trains units, I began going from battalion to battalion after work each day to talk to the Second Lieutenants who had been graduated from Military Intelligence Basic Training then foisted off on battalions as S-2s, Security and Intelligence primary staff officers. None of them knew how to tie his shoes.
So, I coached them, offered suggestions, asked questions to lead them to answers. Most of the battalion commanders noticed this. Quite a few of the Brigade Commanders did as well. Despite its vast size, Fort Hood’s scarcest resource is land for training. I was able to get my men into the field three to four days a week by begging battalion commanders to let me use a tiny slice of land. Worked well.
One highlight of my time there was a large exercise in which we were attached to a Brigade Trains unit. That’s the support organizations. Doctrinally, that’s where Prisoner Interrogation is located. I knew the Brigade Commander; he had more faith in me than I realized. Something caused the Trains Commander, often a staff officer from the Brigade S-4 (Logistics) staff to leave the field. Then the next two in line for command were somehow knocked out. The S-4 called the Brigade Commander and said he’d get an officer out there as quickly as possible.
“Don’t bother. We’ve got a qualified officer on site, attached.” That was me. I took command of a combat arms unit, albeit a trains unit. We got food out to the troops, water, diesel, gasoline, repairmen and parts, ammunition and all the million things that an army uses. And still took care of the prisoners. My interrogators, under command of the Sergeant First Class, captured an enemy tank platoon. That was fun.
The other great memory was from an enormous Command Post Exercise, where one goes through all the motions as though the units were fighting. A Major on the General Staff of the Corps asked me what the place where the Prisoners of War were kept. I gave him the answer, the Corps PW Cage. He said that didn’t sound good enough.
I told him then that it can also be called the Corps Recruitment Operations Center of Special Human Intelligence Targeting, but it’s usually referred to by its acronym. He then proceeded to brief the Corps Commander that the prisoners were being kept in the
C.R.O.C.
Of
S.H.I.T.
When he saw what he had done, he returned and screamed at me. I told him it’s his own damned fault, I gave him the correct answer, but he didn’t like it.
I organized a battalion chorus and included enough instrumentation that we could call it chorus and band. I wrote a march for the battalion and arranged a bunch of songs/ instrumental pieces. That is where I learned the lesson that most of the Army consists of morning people. I wasn’t one of them. Beginning the day with a two-mile run was not a heavy smoker’s first choice.
Then I got a call from a program I’d never heard of. Did I want to be an operations officer in a Defense Attaché Office? Sure, why not. Quick training course in the Washington Navy Yard and off I went to Bogotå, Colombia. Worst two years of my life. The Defense Attaché, my boss, was literally insane. The Air Attaché when I got there was a Medal of Honor winner; he was bullet proof. And close to 200 proof. I had to order that no classified material go to his office in the afternoon.
I had taught my wife some basic phrases in Spanish before we arrived. We checked into a hotel when we got there, and one night the room next to ours was having a loud party. We had two small children, so after a couple of hours my wife had had enough. I was out for the evening doing God knows what. At midnight our neighboring room’s occupants responded to pounding on the door to find an irate red head yelling at them. What was she yelling? “Limpie el baño, por favor!” (Clean the bathroom, please!). She was quite insistent. Not wanting to be murdered by an obvious escaped lunatic, they quieted immediately.
I failed in my assignment. I had two non-commissioned officers, a secretary and two drivers under my supervision. I had become frustrated with the fact that the organization had a mission to “report back to the Government on conditions in the country.” Otherwise known as intelligence collection. Both Attaches were given monthly allowances for large homes and staff, suitable for entertaining. The Air Attache never bothered, except to hold a dinner occasionally and invite a token local. Or not.
I could not get the Defense Attaché to do much of anything on that front. He would host an occasionally soiree, but never bothered trying to cultivate relationships with anybody local. He had no idea how to conduct elicitation, collecting information without the target realizing that’s what he was doing. I eventually stepped in to cultivate sources and write intelligence reports. Not. My. Job.
This allowed an unofficial power center to develop in the office. That’s someone who arrogates to himself the authority to oversee affairs without ever being responsible for what he was doing. These are cancers, which eventually destroy an organization. It’s generally a slow process, and I got myself reassigned back to the U.S. using a loophole in my written assignment orders. I let it develop to the point where I failed, but not to the point where the organization was destroyed.
Second Kidnapping
There were some highlights. Shortly after arrival I journeyed to a port to pick up my car. It was an AMC (American Motors Company) Hornet. As a footnote, AMC was run by Mitt Romney’s father and was purchased by Chrysler sometime in the 1990s. The only remnant of the company today is the Jeep brand. On the way back I found myself in a small village for lunch and a small crowd gathered.
- Quê tipo Dodge es?
- No es Dodge, es Motores Americanos.
- Si, sabemos que es un coche Americano, per quê tipo Dodge es?
- Rinse and repeat. Finally tell them it’s a Hornet.
- Ah, Coronet. OK.
The following day I was stopped by a group of terrorists who demanded my car, money and clothes. We chatted pleasantly for a while. These were part of the Autonomous Workers’ Movement (MAO in Spanish.” I took guesses about their specific goals and eventually remembered them. I told them that I completely agreed with them, that they were righteous. A six-pack of beer appeared from somewhere and we toasted the revolution while damning corruption. Eventually I donated $20 or so to the cause and was on my way.
His replacement was a Lieutenant Colonel. Pat became a good friend. One night in the middle of the biennial Conference of American Armies, we invited the whole crew On another day I was out and about the city and got a message over the radio that aAmbassadors except the Soviet and Warsaw Pact ones had been taken hostage at the Dominican Republic’s National Day Reception. I headed immediately toward the address (one digit off, meaning I had the wrong side of the street.)
Get the Damned Address Right
On arrival I found a very large tree and got behind it. For the next five minutes I couldn’t understand what was going on. It turned out I was on the wrong side of the tree, silhouetted for the terrorists as a perfect target. I quick switched sides of the tree. That’s when I saw the Ambassador’s driver frozen in the middle of the driveway, bullets overhead from two different directions. I low crawled out to the driver and pulled him back to the tree. Do not confuse that idiocy with bravery. It was stupid. By the time I had the man safe the real reporters for the Embassy showed up. I briefed them and took the driver to my armor-plated van. My job done, I headed at top speed to the Embassy. I radioed the Embassy physician to meet me at the back door of the van in the courtyard. Bring an injection for anxiety.
The Doc fixed him up and declared that it was medically necessary to give him a full examination before questioning could begin. That bought the fellow an hour before the hounds went at him,
Throughout my stay we received a lot of ship visits in Cartagena, a resort on the Caribbean coast. We had no Naval Attaché, so the Air Attaché, the Defense Attaché and I took turns. I learned that everything you’ve heard about drunken sailors is an understatement.
Oops, Big Time
It was Colombia’s year to host the Conference of American Armies, and we were over-run with VIPs. Before that night, we had to pick up every arriving General and escort him to the Defense Attaché’s house for a cocktail reception. My wife and I went out there and grabbed the Chief of Staff of the Army, went back with him to my boss’s house, turned around and went out to the airport to pick up the Commander of the Panama Canal Zone. Almost had him in the car when a Canadian ran up to me and said, “He’s mine.” On closer examination I found that we were kidnapping the head of the Canadian Armed Forces. Turned him over to his owner and found the right guy.
During the switch-off, when the Chiefs would leave and be replaced by their Deputies, we invited everyone to an informal gathering at our place The Colombian Army dug up our entire front yard and put in machine gun emplacements. We borrowed two maids from the Air Attaché to help serve, then discovered that our youngest had turned off the oven in the middle of cooking dinner. A fun time was had by all.
My boss was literally driving me nuts. I tried to talk him through how to do intel collection, his primary mission. No joy. He had a huge house paid for, a large staff paid for, and occasionally invited a few Americans over plus a lone Colombian, then charge the whole thing to the taxpayer. I gave up and started recruiting my own sources. Had a lot of luck with the Navy. They got into a shooting war with Nicaragua in the middle of my tour. I debriefed the XO from the flagship. Seems their radars all went out on the way back to Cartagena after sinking two row boats (no shit) and declaring victory. San Andres would remain theirs. Then they put an enlisted man at the front of the ship, tuned his radio to a pop station in Cartagena, and used signal strength to guide the ship. It worked.
I did get a tour of one of their secret submarines. Made friends with the commander of a small sub, they had a secret submarine force. Toured it. I think it was something really old from Spain or France, but they were proud of it. That then got me a visit to their super-secret naval aviation unit. You already know about the assault on the Embassy and saving the Ambassador’s driver. The next day, my boss’s car was stolen. Seems it was my fault he hadn’t over-insured it to make up for the 20% deductible. This was getting old quickly.
He'd call me into his office and upbraid me for some imagined slight. I’d go back perhaps an hour later to talk to him about it, and he would insist it had never happened. This became a daily occurrence. I talked to the Air Attaché, and he agreed. The Defense Attaché was driving me insane. He and his wife never spoke. I had to take messages and relay them to one another. His wife was a kook on her own. She complained about the drivers (Jose and Jorge) using her phone to make phone calls home to let their wives know when they were going to be late. She demanded that they pay her. The calls cost twenty centavos each. Two tenths of a Peso. 35 pesos to the dollar. I just started paying her out of my own pocket.
The head of the Attaché service, a joint organization, flew down and talked to me. He’d heard rumors I was ready to go off the deep end. He had heard right. He told me they had a replacement for me, Pete V*****, whom I had known at Fort Hood. His English was atrocious, he barely could speak Spanish. I didn’t care. He told me I was coming to work for him. Seems the guy they were replacing decided to stay, so he called the Army Personnel Command and asked if he would please freeze all WO assignments until I had picked one. Unbelievable. I picked Fort Meade and wound up there a month later. Never going back to Colombia again.
The next post will be in about a week. Then I have to go through all the series I've started but dropped to bring them up to date.
Is it possible to give the dates?
Can you, at the outset of the sections describe the military base. I am of your gen so I know the forts and where they are and what they do (pretty much). I was talking the other day with someone about Iron Mike at Fort Bragg and the person (US born in 1985) was blank. We can no longer assume much knowledge among younger people. I live near CENTCOM a long time and we could tell by the air traffic when something was happening tho no news to the general population.
Every once in a while there is coverage of military/secret service screwing up in another county never any of the kinds of things you are telling us about in Colombia.
Wonderful on the ground memoir.