In an earlier posting about “operators” (special forces/CIA) in Libya,[stderr] I posted a picture that I had saved from early in the rebellion there.

It made me wonder whether there were any newer/better pictures that had leaked since then. And, of course, there are. I love these little voyages of discovery; before I started blogging regularly I’d just dig a bit, go “yeah” and forget about it once I had confirmed my first impression. Now, I look for multiple sources and sometimes I find more interesting stories.

Back before Libya became kind of embarrassing, the New York Times was up front about CIA involvement in the ‘rebellion’; that sort of coverage stopped once things got ugly there. I would bet a dollar against a dozen donuts that they were asked to “forget that angle, national security reasons, don’t you know?” The NYT has a depressing history of posing as journalism, but really serving as a mouth-piece for the establishment.

While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.

In addition to the C.I.A. presence, composed of an unknown number of Americans who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and others who arrived more recently, current and former British officials said that dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces and missile installations, the officials said.

Remember, when they say special forces are in an “advisory capacity” that usually means they are shooting people in their heads from a long distance. British special forces probably mean Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS) commandos – some of the most highly-trained killers in the world. I am not sure how to say this except flat-out: they were probably having a lot of fun. Because running around killing people and blowing stuff up: that’s good fun for those fellows; they are so good at it because it’s what they love to do.

Because the publicly stated goal of the Libyan campaign is not explicitly to overthrow Colonel Qaddafi’s government, the clandestine war now going on is significantly different from the Afghan campaign to drive the Taliban from power in 2001.

Yeah, LOL. The NYT was printing “talking points” given to them by the DoD. What a bunch of liars. In the same article NYT reports:

American officials hope that similar information gathered by American intelligence officers — including the location of Colonel Qaddafi’s munitions depots and the clusters of government troops inside towns — might help weaken Libya’s military enough to encourage defections within its ranks.

In other words, the goal of the Libyan campaign is to secretly overthrow Ghaddafi’s government. “We came, we saw, he died.” goes right next to “Mission accomplished.”

It was a few months into the Libyan rebellion when rebel forces shot Khalifa Haftar, on the grounds that he was a CIA spy. Haftar probably was. He had spent 20 years living within an easy commute of CIA headquarters in Virginia, then spent a few more years building a mysteriously-funded militia right across the Libyan border in Chad (Chad is run by a CIA-emplaced puppet) [cia-chad]  As CNN reported regarding Haftar: [cnn]

So for the next two years, Haftar and several hundred former Libyan soldiers trained at a base outside the Chadian capital, N’djamena, as the Libyan National Army — the military wing of the opposition Libyan National Salvation Front.

Just who funded them remains shrouded in mystery, but several Libyan exiles and a former CIA officer say the United States was involved. Former Libyan envoy Aujali would not be drawn out on whether the CIA was the paymaster, but said, “The Americans knew him very, very well.”

And he added: “I think working for the CIA for the sake of your national interest is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Um, yeah, and who “spirited in secrecy to the United States when things went bad”? Air America never shut down.

His story reads like a political thriller. Once a confidant of Moammar Gadhafi and then his sworn enemy, he led a band of Libyan exiles trying to overthrow the Libyan regime before being spirited in secrecy to the United States when things went bad. His name is Khalifa Haftar.

He has lived in Virginia for 20 years but now he’s back in Libya, trying to knock the rebel force into some kind of shape.

The US is pretty good at building up a would-be dictator, then helping shuffle them into power. Haftar shows all the signs: he’s been a political nihilist his entire adult life, seeking power from the barrel of a gun. Just the kind of fellow spirit the folks in Langley want; a sharp tool they can put in place as dictator in place of an unreliable one. [aljazeera] Also, a murderous motherfucker. The Libyans are better off without him.

Libya sounds like it was chock-a-block with the International Grand Tournee of Operators – even the Swiss supposedly had units in there. “What?” I hear you say, “The Swiss are Neutral!” Well, they probably sent a few of their guys over to kill a few Libyans so they could get blooded, or something.

It’s pretty easy to find out where the special forces have been, and who they have been killing, because: they like to brag. It seems that “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you” followed by a dick-measuring “no shit there I was” sotto voce story is the standard “Operator’s mating call.”

DRA-10 was stood up in 2003, under the command of Major Daniel Stoll, to recover Swiss nationals like those in Libya being held under duress. Initially, the unit had as few as 30 soldiers, but DRA-10 is now suspected to number at about 40 operators. The unit is said to be structured along the same lines as 22SAS and to have received initial training from other foreign SOF units. Because of Switzerland’s policy of neutrality, they have not benefited from the war time learning experiences that neighboring NATO nations have had in Afghanistan, but exchanges are conducted with France and Belgium to help Swiss soldiers understand what Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures are working in combat.

Discussing some hostage-rescue plans where Swiss DRA were going to try to collect some citizens being held in Libya:

The second plan would be similar to the first but would use Niger as an intermediary rather than Algeria. Negotiations were conducted with the Tuaregs. On January 9th, DRA-10 was ready to execute the operation when it was discovered that they had already been compromised. The Swiss signals intercept program known as Onyx picked up Libyan communications indicating that they were aware of DRA-10’s exfiltration plan since at least December 18th. Needless to say, this mission had to be scrubbed as well.

From late May to early June of 2009, the planning for the third attempt was underway. This time DRA-10 engaged in some unconventional thinking to engineer a very unique method of extracting the Swiss hostages from Libya. Through clandestine means, Max and Rachid were instructed to begin going for a daily swim at the beach about an hour outside of Tripoli. The reason for this was to desensitize the guards watching over the hostages and inoculate them to a daily routine which would play into the hands of the DRA-10 operation.

Wearing civilian clothes, the Swiss operators would rent a yacht and sail down the Libyan coast. When the two Swiss citizens were taking their daily swim, they would meet with an unfortunate accident, drowning in the Mediterranean ocean, or at least this is what the guards would be led to believe. In reality, the two hostages would be recovered underwater by DRA-10 combat divers. The hostages would be provided with SCUBA equipment and then would conduct a sub-surface swim back to the yacht.

I do support the idea of rescuing hostages. But in this case it would have been a lot less risky and a lot cheaper if they had just offered the Libyans a few bars of nazi gold, or something, and not bothered with all the sekrit skwirrel.

The US, of course, is the unsubtlest 900-lb gorilla of sekrit skwirrels. And when the US’ operators move, they leave big tracks. Apparently, a planeload of Special Forces/CIA operators landed in Libya and were told their invitation had been rescinded. So they grumpily loaded all their guns and stuff back on their plane, and left.

I found an article about this incident, on Russia Times [rt] which is a bit more willing to report on embarrassing screwups than the New York Times.

 

Libya’s air force said in a Facebook post that 20 US commandoes arrived at Wattiya airbase and disembarked “in combat readiness,” only to be told to leave. Pentagon sources confirmed the US had sent a special forces unit to Libya as part of a mission.

By the way, I do similar voyages of discovery about art; I just don’t bother putting research together to defend it, because it’s not a very contentious topic. I remember back when Ed Brayton’s blog used to be on FtB, I got into arguments a few times in which I said “I bet there are US/CIA troops down in Libya causing trouble” and was told I needed a new tinfoil hat, etc. Yeah, well.

“While President Obama has insisted that no American military ground troops participate in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks as part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help bleed Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.” – if Donald Trump had said that, the  NYT would call him a liar. And, he would be. The NYT probably also knew about Obama’s completely illegal invasion of Syria. I have to say, the NYT appears to be playing sides – which makes sense because Trump has been a hateful asshole toward the media – but, eh, so much for journalism.