A real killer elite

The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 had caused extensive damage to al-Qa’eda in Iraq. It changed its name to Islamic State in Iraq but the surge in US troops and the successful recruitment of Sunni sheikhs to help counter the insurgency resulted in the Activity, Delta and their British SAS allies hunting down and killing most of the group’s leadership. When Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi took over in 2010, he moved it to Syria to regroup and, after the civil war broke out in 2011, absorbed all of the Syrian al-Qa’eda affiliates, claiming to have the backing of new al-Qa’eda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

It was a lie, but with al-Zawahiri in hiding even the leaders of al-Nusra Front, the main al-Qa’eda group, believed it. Buoyed by its new recruits, ISIS gained substantial ground across northern Syria. But when al-Zawahiri discovered the deception behind the new Islamist alliance, he broke off all ties with ISIS. The response from al-Baghdadi was to declare himself the “Caliph” of a worldwide Islamic Caliphate and rename his group Islamic State, reflecting his new more global ambitions of replacing al-Qa’eda as the principle threat to the West.

By now his success in gaining ground and the simple but brutal pseudo-Islam terror imposed on any opponents, with the men murdered and the women forced into sexual slavery, had gained the group a substantial number of ruthless and battle-hardened followers. They swept into Iraq and, by June 2014, they controlled Mosul, Iraq’s second city, and more ominously the town of Fallujah just 40 miles west of the capital Baghdad.

President Obama sent US Army special forces in to help the Iraqi military but was adamant he would not put troops on the ground in Syria. Yet even as Obama spoke, the Activity was already back in its old hunting ground preparing the way for what was ultimately a failed attempt by Delta to rescue two U.S. journalists who were being held by Islamic State at its “capital” in Raqqa.

The result was their gruesome beheading on video by a masked British terrorist clad in black with only his eyes and his hands showing. He was known to the hostages simply as John because he was one of several Britons holding them captive, each of whom went by the first name of one of the Beatles, and he soon acquired the nickname “Jihadi John.” The beheading of a succession of western hostages by a British Islamic State volunteer reaped substantial publicity and a wave of new recruits from the West, many of them from European countries with large Muslim populations such as Britain, France, Belgium and Holland.

It was just nine minutes to midnight on 12 November 2015 when Jihadi John hurried out of a building close to the headquarters of Islamic State in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. He was getting out of the city, accompanied by a team of bodyguards. He knew he was a target for the U.S. special operations forces who were ripping the terrorist group apart and he’d been spooked by the constant presence of American drones, whirring overhead. Jihadi John had made himself a hate figure in the West with his ego-driven beheading of seven journalists and aid workers. Now he was in hiding, never using his phone or computer. Some said he had fled Syria for Libya. He hadn’t. It was disinformation to try to confuse the U.S. and British intelligence services who were tracking him down.

But even Jihadi John didn’t realize quite how much of a target he was. He had turned himself into the public face of Islamic State. U.S. and British forces were more focused on finding him than they were on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the organization’s leader. Even as he opened the door of the car, a Hellfire missile fired by an American Reaper drone several thousand feet above Raqqa was heading towards him at close to a thousand miles an hour. He had barely realized something was wrong before he was dead. The missile destroyed the car, leaving little evidence that Jihadi John and his friend had ever existed.

The Pentagon said he had been “evaporated.” The Joint Special Operations Command team tracking him preferred the term “smoked.” Ironically for a man who reveled in justifying the murder of his victims through a distorted interpretation of Sharia law, the series of missiles destroyed Jihadi John and his bodyguards on Clocktower Square, where Islamic State executed anyone who refused to bow to their brutal rule.

The brutal beheadings of foreign hostages had led to a manhunt involving virtually every U.S. and British intelligence team available. The Activity was just one player in the race to find Jihadi John. The National Security Agency and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters along with the FBI and Britain’s Security Service MI5 spent weeks trying to identify him, focusing primarily on voice recognition but also his skin colour, his height, physique, eyes and even the patterns of the veins on his hands. By September 2014, MI5 was confident that they had identified him. Jihadi John’s real name was Mohammed Emwazi. He was born in Kuwait but when he was six his family moved to London where the young Mohammed lived a comfortable middle-class life in an affluent area of west London. A diligent young man, he studied computing at Westminster College where he was radicalized by fellow students. After graduation, Emwazi attempted to get into Somalia to join al-Shabaab.

He and a friend flew via Tanzania, where they were arrested and deported to the Netherlands and interrogated by MI5. Emwazi was eventually released for lack of evidence but, at the end of 2012, he went to Syria, telling his parents he was going as an aid worker. In fact, he was joining ISIS as one of an increasing number of western Muslims attracted by the organization’s supposed idealism and success.

Identifying him was one thing. Finding him was another thing altogether. The CIA, Britain’s MI6 and the Activity needed a human source inside Islamic State who could lead them to him. There was a lot of hard work done among the foreign fighters who had returned to Europe but eventually one was found who knew Emwazi personally and, in return for being given a new life away from the brutality of Islamic State, was prepared to help find him. Once the agent confirmed that Emwazi was hiding out in Raqqa, Activity, Delta and Special Air Service commandos were put in place around the city to kill or capture him if he tried to leave.

Emwazi was a UK citizen. The British saw him as their problem and were determined to play a part in what was by any standards one of the most intensive manhunts in history, but the bulk of the work was carried out by the agent inside Islamic State and by the imagery satellites and drones. Emwazi was too well aware of the dangers involved in using a phone or a computer. Tracking him required the human source on the ground getting close to him and reporting his precise location so that from that point onwards he could be kept under a “persistent stare.”

That moment came early on November 12. The satellite homed in on a building sandwiched between the city’s Islamic Courts and the edge of Clocktower Square where Emwazi was spending the day and the drones — one of them British — took turns circling above Raqqa like hawks. Everyone in the city knew they were up there from very early on. You could hear them even when you couldn’t see them. Some said there were three of them, others put the figure at five. It was why Emwazi stayed hidden in the building all day, hoping that once it was dark he could sneak away without being recognized. There are those in JSOC who insist that the target always hears the missile a second or so before he dies. The drones’ cameras pick up a reaction, a sudden turn of the head or an attempt to run. For some of the families of Jihadi John’s victims that would have been a reassuring thought. They wanted him to know what was coming.

The secretive military unit that began back in 1980 as the Intelligence Support Activity has morphed through a series of titles and codenames in the intervening years and by late 2016 was hidden behind the deliberately bland U.S. Army Office of Military Support. Since being absorbed into JSOC, it has operated across the Middle-East, Africa and Asia, carrying out reconnaissance, renting safe houses, running agents into the areas controlled by Islamist terrorists and placing sophisticated remote-controlled signals intelligence equipment across the region on behalf of the NSA.

Increasingly known by its JSOC cover name of Task Force Orange, it has flown King Air signals intelligence aircraft along the Pakistan border and over the Sahara tracking the cellphones of al-Qa’eda, Taliban and Islamic State terrorists; carried out operations to track terrorist telephones under deep cover in countries as diverse and difficult as Mali and Iran and used bags stuffed full of dollars to buy the loyalty of warlords from Somalia to Afghanistan. The list of places it has operated in since 9/11 includes Afghanistan, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. If there is an Islamist terror group of any kind threatening U.S. interests anywhere else in the world, it is the job of Task Force Orange job to find and fix its leaders so they can be finished, either by Delta or DevGru, or increasingly by Hellfire missiles fired from Predator drones.

This pro-active use of special operations forces to prosecute the battle against the terrorists is arguably the only way forward, but it will remain controversial, particularly given the willingness of at least one of its key architects to compare it to the Phoenix program in Vietnam, which led to the deaths of more than 20,000 people. “I think we’re running that kind of program,” Jerry Boykin said, in comments made before his retirement. “We’re going after these people. Killing or capturing these people is a legitimate mission for the department. I think we’re doing what the Phoenix program was designed to do, without all of the secrecy.”

For much of its history the Activity has been about silent preparation of the battlefield, collecting intelligence and carrying out reconnaissance missions without having to kill anyone, since for the most part to do so would be counter-productive, alerting the target of an impending “direct action” strike by Delta or DevGru. But now the Activity finds itself at the forefront of a very pro-active U.S. counter-terrorist program that seeks out America’s enemies with the express intention of killing them.

Although it will normally be other Tier One special operations units like Delta or Dev­Gru that “finish” the target, the Activity’s lead role in finding them — and the increasing use of armed Predator UAVs to carry out the killings by remote control — has effectively turned it into the one constant element of a killing machine. Given the scale of the threat and the psychological effect of the 9/11 attacks, it is unsurprising that most Americans were extremely happy to have a U.S. special operations team “find, fix and finish” bin Laden.

But there are enormous risks inherent in what are to all intents and purposes extra-judicial executions. This new Phoenix program might have presidential authorization, but it needs to be carefully monitored to avoid the kind of “collateral damage” seen more than once in remote Predator strikes on targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, where innocents including children have been killed. The Activity will remain a lead force in the fight against terrorism, helping to defend America and its allies against what is likely to be the most dangerous threat they face for many years to come. But if the “find, fix and finish” missions are not carried out with due care and proper political oversight, America’s increasingly efficient killer elite could cause more problems than it solves.

Michael Smith is the award-winning journalist who broke the Downing Street Memos and the author of a number of best-selling books on espionage including Six: The Real James Bonds and Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.