Top Secret America: A look at the militarys Joint Special Operations Command

By Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, Published: Washington Post Sept. 2

The CIAs armed drones and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of al-Qaeda leaders and thousands of its foot soldiers. But there is another mysterious organization that has killed even more of Americas enemies in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. CIA operatives have imprisoned and interrogated nearly 100 suspected terrorists in their former secret prisons around the world, but troops from this other secret organization have imprisoned and interrogated 10 times as many, holding them in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan. Graphic

Since 9/11, this secretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level of obscurity that not even the CIA has managed. Were the dark matter. Were the force that orders the universe but cant be seen, a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit. The SEALs are just part of the U.S. militarys Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC, which has grown from a rarely used hostage rescue team into Americas secret army. When members of this elite force killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May, JSOC leaders celebrated not just the success of the mission but also how few people knew their command, based in Fayetteville, N.C., even existed.

This article, adapted from a chapter of the newly released Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State, by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, chronicles JSOCs spectacular rise, much of which has not been publicly disclosed before. Two presidents and three secretaries of defense routinely have asked JSOC to mount intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which the United States was not at war, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria. The CIA doesnt have the size or the authority to do some of the things we can do, said one JSOC operator. The president has given JSOC the rare authority to select individuals for its kill list and then to kill, rather than capture, them. Critics charge that this individual man-hunting mission amounts to assassination, a practice prohibited by U.S. law. JSOCs list is not usually coordinated with the CIA, which maintains a similar but shorter roster of names. Created in 1980 but reinvented in recent years, JSOC has grown from 1,800 troops prior to 9/11 to as many as 25,000, a number that fluctuates according to its mission. It has its own intelligence division, its own drones and reconnaissance planes, even its own dedicated satellites. It also has its own cyberwarriors, who, on Sept. 11, 2008, shut down every jihadist Web site they knew. Obscurity has been one of the units hallmarks. When JSOC officers are working in civilian government agencies or U.S. embassies abroad, which they do often, they dispense with uniforms, unlike their other military comrades. In combat, they wear no name or rank identifiers. They have hidden behind various nicknames: the Secret Army of Northern Virginia, Task Force Green, Task Force 11, Task Force 121. JSOC leaders almost never speak in public. They have no unclassified Web site.

El Comando Conjunto de Operaciones Especiales de EE.UU. (JSOC, segn sus siglas en ingls), un grupo militar de elite, ha pasado de tener unos 1.800 miembros antes de los atentados del 11S a un mximo de 25.000 con autoridad para hacer incursiones letales y misiones de inteligencia, publica hoy The Washington Post.

Desde los ataques del 11 de septiembre de 2001, ese grupo secreto de hombres y algunas mujeres se ha multiplicado por diez pero mantiene un nivel de oscuridad que ni siquiera la CIA ha logrado, segn un extenso informe del diario sobre el funcionamiento y actividades del comando.

La CIA no tiene el tamao o la autoridad para hacer algunas de las cosas que nosotros podemos hacer, revel al diario un miembro no identificado del comando, conocido con el acrnimo de JSOC.

De hecho, el JSOC tiene su divisin de inteligencia, aviones no tripulados y de reconocimiento, satlites propios y hasta sus ciberguerreros, de acuerdo con el informe.

En septiembre de 2003, el entonces secretario de Defensa de EE.UU., Donald Rumsfeld, firm una orden ejecutiva para consolidar al JSOC como el pilar de la lucha antiterrorista y se hizo una lista de actividades permitidas bajo distintos escenarios en 15 pases, entre ellos Iraq, Afganistn, Irn, Pakistn, Filipinas, Somalia y Siria.

Un comando el elitista Team 6 formado por Seals de la Marina, los mejor preparados dentro de las Fuerzas Armadas de EE.UU., fue el que dio muerte a Osama Bin Laden el pasado 1 de mayo en su escondite a las afueras de Islamabad, en Pakistn.

La letalidad del JSOC es evidente: en 2008, solo en Afganistn, golpe 550 objetivos y mat a alrededor de mil personas, segn las autoridades. En 2009 ejecut en ese mismo pas 464 operaciones y acab con entre 400 y 500 miembros de las fuerzas enemigas.

La enorme renovacin experimentada por el grupo en la ltima dcada se debe en gran parte al periodo en el que estuvo comandado por el general Stanley McChrystal, quien salt a la fama despus por su cese como mando de las tropas en Afganistn por falta de respeto a la autoridad civil.