Colonel David Hunt - They Just Dont Get It: How the Washington Political Machine Is Still Compromising Your Safety--and What You Can Do About It

CONTENTS

THEY JUST DONT GET IT

How Washington Is Still Compromising Your Safetyand What You Can Do About It

Colonel David Hunt (U.S. Army, Ret.)

With humility and respect, this book is dedicated to all those great Americans who are putting their lives on the line every day in this War on Terror.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is my first book, and it wouldnt have been possible without the efforts of many people besides myself. First, I would like to thank Roger Ailes and the Fox News Channel for offering me the opportunity to voice my opinions and insights on the War on Terror. I also thank my friend Bill OReilly, who encouraged me to write this book. My agent, Eric Simonoff, did a masterful job of guiding a first-time author through the process of developing a book idea and presenting it to publishers. Im pleased that he led me to Crown Forum and editor Jed Donahue, who made chicken soup out of chicken s---.

In addition, I am grateful to Christine Hunsinger and Kathie Hackett for all their time spent reviewing the manuscript and making corrections when necessary. This is a better book for their input. Of course, any mistakes that remain are my own fault, not anyone elses.

Perhaps most important, I want to thank my family for making me the person I am. Some of these people, sadly, are no longer with me, but they shaped my life from the beginning. My dad was a soldier, athlete, altar boy, bouncer, political operative, and overall hero to his sons. My mother was a beautiful, sensitive, complicated, and loving woman. My two brothers were great guys who died too youngone killed in Vietnam at age twenty-one, the other killed in a car accident at twenty-three.

Every day I am grateful for the family I do have with me. I am father to three amazing guys: Jason, a micro-geneticist in Alaska who has a great mind and is a world-class outdoorsman, mountain rescue member, and skier; Evan, an athlete and writer; and Ryan, the youngest, who is fourteen going on forty, an accomplished student and athlete, and a chick magnet. All three are the best of what I am; the worst I kept for myself. I am also fortunate to have such a terrific sister in Kathleen. And of course, I count my blessings that I am married to the most beautiful, talented woman on the planet. Angela is a five-foot-ten-inch dark-eyed Italian beauty who, for whatever reason, has stayed with me for twenty years.

Finally, I want to thank all the brave men and women whom I served with in my twenty-nine years of service to this country. I am a soldier and proud of it. And I am just as proud of all the men and women who continue to protect us in the War on Terror. It is for them that I have written this book.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COLONEL DAVID HUNT, U.S. Army (Ret.), has extensive operational experience in counterterrorism, special operations, and intelligence operations. He is a designated terrorism expert in federal court, testifying at many major terrorist trials, and has lectured at the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and Harvard University. A military analyst for the Fox News Channel, he frequently provides commentary on radio programs hosted by Bill OReilly, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, Michael Savage, Monica Crowley, and others. Colonel Hunt, a senior research fellow at Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government, lives in Maine with his family.

Copyright 2005 by Colonel David Hunt

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Forum, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York

www.crownpublishing.com

Crown Forum and the Crown Forum colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hunt, David, Colonel. They just dont get it : how Washington is still compromising your safetyand what you can do about it / David Hunt. Includes index. 1. TerrorismGovernment policyUnited States. 2. National securityUnited States. 3. War on Terrorism, 2001 I. Title. HV6432.H85 2005 363.32'0973dc22 2004027168

eISBN: 978-0-307-23776-7

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Chapter 1

Terror in Your Living Room

They came in low over the mountains doing about 190 miles per hour, two Task Force 160 UH 1 60 Black Hawk helicopters carrying an assault force of sixteen French Foreign Legion reconnaissance soldiers led by a British colonel. It was broad daylight. Not the best time for a tactical military operation, but we had little choice.

A NATO force of sixty thousand soldiers had just taken over the Bosnian peace mission from the United Nations. Now we were confronted with one of the most serious threats to peace in the bloody Balkans: a terrorist training camp was in full operation in Fojnica in northwest Bosnia.

The president of Bosnia claimed the terrorist camp did not exist, but we had all the evidence: satellite imagery, technical communications intercepts, and information that was being fed to us by the four two-man teams we had positioned in hidden observation postsholes that were just yards from the terrorist compound. We knew that an Iranian branch of the terrorist organization Hezbollah had built the camp. And we knew Hezbollah means business; just to give you an idea, the number two man in the U.S. State Department later said publicly that Hezbollah may be the A-team of terrorists and maybe al Qaeda is actually the B-teamand he said this after the 9/11 attacks. During this long war in the Balkans, much of the Muslim world had rallied to the support of the Bosnian Muslims, who were outgunned and outmanned by the Serbs. But when youre dealing with Hezbollah and a terrorist campand with Hezbollahs main supporter, Iran, which the State Department puts on its list of state sponsors of terrorism for a reasonyou know that helping people defend themselves isnt the only priority.

I was the tactical adviser to the commander in chief of NATO forces in Bosnia, Admiral Leighton Snuffy Smith, U.S. Navy. My job was to facilitate all U.S. national intelligence matters for him and to perform any other tasks he deemed necessary. Taking care of this terrorist training camp had become one of those other tasks. The mission became urgent when we learned that the Iranians were using hunters and dogs to guard the perimeter of the camp. They might soon discover our guys in the observation posts. We had to go innow.

I had been in the Army for more than a quarter-century doing tours from Southeast Asia to South America. I had gone to every school the Army would let me go to, from Airborne to Ranger to Special Forces, and I had more years commanding soldiers than almost anyone still in uniform. But I still felt lucky to have been picked for this mission. Sure, I had years of experience, but I was a colonel. Colonels dont do raids. Now here I was, hanging and banging with the best Special Operations forces in the world. We were going to take down some very bad men and make Bosnia, and possibly the world, a safer place. I loved every minute of it.

My mission was twofold: link up with the assault force and establish an intelligence link to arrange for the Bosnian president to be shown the camp he said did not exist. As the Black Hawks carried the assault force to the terrorist camp, we made our way in an unarmored Chevrolet Suburban truck through Serb and Muslim territory that was known to be hostile to NATO forces.

We knew we would have to deal with roadblocks, which were everywhere, even though they had been illegal ever since NATO began its occupation in 1996. In this case, though, we werent going to stop at any of the roadblocks. If need be, wed shoot our way through. I would take all targets from the center of the car window to my right, while my colleague, Fran the Navy SEAL, would take all targets from the center to his left. The first shot would shatter the window and make our visibility difficult, but oh wellnothing was going to stop us from linking up with the assault force.