Bierbauer Alec - Never Mind, Well Do It Ourselves

Copyright 2021 by Alec Bierbauer, Mark Cooter, and Michael Marks

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the Central Intelligence Agency {CIA} or any other US Government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or CIA endorsement of the authors views.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Cover photo credit: Greg DeSantis

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-2091-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2092-3

Printed in the United States of America

To the group of dedicated Patriots who came together from all corners of the US Government to form an exceptional team and spark a technological revolution.

CONTENTS

BY CHARLIE ALLEN

BY LIEUTENANT GENERAL JOHN CAMPBELL, USAF (RET.)

BY LIEUTENANT COLONEL GABE BROWN

PREFACE

W e set out to write our story as a firsthand narrative, presented in alternating chapters as seen at the time through the eyes of two participants. Even shoulder to shoulder on a shared mission, an Air Force guy and an Agency guy can sometimes see the world very differently. In much the same way, the distinguished authors of our foreword, introduction, and afterword all speak about the accuracy of our story from their own unique, firsthand vantage points spanning multiple perspectives.

Charlie Allen served as the assistant director of central intelligence throughout the span of this narrative. With more than four decades of exceptional service at the CIA under fifteen different directors, Charlie knew the organization, authorities, and personalities.

Additionally, as the chair of the National Intelligence Collection Board, his leadership, guidance, and blunt talk were critical to overcoming internal and external challenges. We could imagine no one better suited to comment on this book from the CIAs perspective.

Air Force Lieutenant General John Soup Campbell was indispensable to the evolution of the Predator drone program. He provided vision, leadership and crucial top cover to a team that lived on the frayed edge of the rulebook. With the unique distinction of holding senior leadership positions within the USAF and CIA, General Campbell was both on the field and watching from the box seats at the same time. His perspective on the Predator program encompasses the strategic and the tactical.

United States Air Force Staff Sergeant Gabe Brown (now a lieutenant colonel) entered this story facing unsurmountable odds on the top of a desolate mountain in Afghanistan, standing shoulder to shoulder with a valiant team of fellow Special Operations warriors. What happened on the windswept rocks of Takur Ghar was a testament to unbreakable American heroism and tenacity. It was our great honor to help support that band of brothers in its darkest moment. If anyone can speak of the Predator story straight from the foxhole, its Gabe.

FOREWORD

CHARLIE ALLEN

N ineteen years ago the world stood still on September 11, 2001. Islamic extremists had hijacked four United States civilian airliners, filled with hundreds of innocent Americans, and used them as weapons of mass destruction. Nearly three thousand people, mostly Americans, died. As the director of central intelligence for collection at the Central Intelligence Agency, I felt nothing but abject failure on September, 11, 2001, a failure that haunts me today, but I also felt another emotioncold anger and the determination to destroy those who perpetrated the attack: Usama bin Laden and his inner circle of al-Qaeda supporters, the evil terrorist organization that bin Laden headed. But I have intimate knowledge of one development that was tightly held in CIA and DOD on September 11, which gave me hope in hours of despairan ungainly aircraft called the Predator.

Never Mind, Well Do It Ourselves is quite different from other books or articles written about the joint effort of CIA and the US Air Force to radically change operations against al-Qaeda and bin Laden. It is not a story about senior policy and intelligence officials driving decisions and making courageous decisions about the employment of the Predator to change the collection dynamic against an evil terrorist organization. Rather, it is a vivid story of midlevel men and women of the intelligence community and the Department of Defense putting aside their personal career ambitions to bring together at the working level technology, science, and true grit to create a revolution in warfighting. It is the story of how over a dozen intelligence and military organizations engaged in constant collaboration at the program management level to overcome entrenched bureaucracies and the not here syndrome prevalent among certain agencies. The stellar effort was unprecedented. Many of the heroes here were GS-9/11s, O-3/4s, and E-5 noncommissioned officers.

The leading protagonist in this effort was an officer named Alec Bierbauer. A former Army warrant officer associated with intelligence support to Special Operations, Alec was always like magic, appearing when you urgently needed advice and ideas on how to bring justice to al-Qaeda. When he showed up at my office at CIA headquarters in early February 2000, he seemed to know that I was responding to an urgent request from Special Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism Richard Dick Clarke. Clarke, hard-driving, impatient, and often short on diplomacy, had sent me a memorandum, giving me thirty days to come up with new innovative ideas for locating bin Laden. It was a typical Clarke memobrusque and to the point. I told Alec that I had prepared a list of technical operations that, if implemented, would help achieve Clarkes objective. I told him that I had appointments to see the J3 and J39 in the Joint Chiefs of Staffnamely, Vice Admiral Scott Fry and Brigadier General (USAF) Scott Gration, respectively. Alec immediately launched into a long, passionate briefing on how the Predator could be used to change the collection dynamic against al-Qaeda and urged it be given top priority in my report to Clarke.

When I got to the Pentagon, I was royally received by Admiral Fry and General Gration. Both raised the topic of using the Predator against bin Laden, and the spiel was the same as that given by Alec. Why keep submarines in the basket off Pakistan if a few Predators could be seconded with US Air Force crews to CIA to be operated under CIAs special authorities? Gration, in particular, stated that two or three Predators, located at Indian Springs, Nevada, could be loaned to CIA to change the collection dynamic. Admiral Fry stated that he was frustrated with the Agencys current lack of access and noted that Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) would fly from the submarines off the coast of Pakistan if we obtained solid evidence of bin Ladens precise location; the TLAMs would destroy bin Laden and al-Qaedas central core. I drove back to Langley knowing that employing the Predator would be by far atop the list of the report I would send to Clarke.