142. Black Hawk Down: The True Story (Ep 1)

20:14Gordon:By May of 1993, the famine seems to be improving. Markets are reopening. Farming in Somalia begins to rebound. But you have this structural problem, which is that success creates its own kind of logic for continuing the intervention. Because, okay, starvation has been alleviated. The things that were causing the famine are no more or the sort of impacts are lessening. But what happens if all of those American troops of the U.A. mission just up and leave? Security will deteriorate again. You haven't resolved any of the political problems between these kind of rival militias and Klan leaders. And so the famine will just return.

21:01Gordon:And so you're faced with this decision of, do you continue to provide that security? Because you can't just up and leave.

21:09David:Yeah. And this is really where Mission Creek comes in, isn't it? Because having dealt with the immediate problem, the view becomes we now need to change the political context and create, if you like, a state structure which will provide long-term security so that the famine doesn't go back when we leave. It's not quite nation building, but it's got echoes of it, hasn't it? And it's got echoes of what people talk about in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9-11. As well, that issue is of creating a much more ambitious objective from your original objective while you went in. I mean, mission creep and nation building are two ways of seeing that.

21:50And I guess here in this 90s period, I mean, it's worth going back to the context a

21:55David:little bit, isn't it? Because it was a more optimistic era. The US was the undisputed global superpower after the fall of the Soviet Union that had disappeared in 1991. It had won that first Gulf War, there was this kind of era in which it was seen that the liberal democratic system was inevitably going to expand everywhere and had won the battle of ideas. This is the idea of Francis Fukuyama's book, The End of History. And I think American military power was at its peak and unchallenged. And I think those factors together lead to this confidence, actually, that they can do this and that this is a mission, a righteous mission, but also a possible mission to create the conditions in Somalia for kind of order and stability in the long run.

22:42Gordon:And as we'll see, as we get into the battle, the Americans who were there felt, you know, and I think rightly that they were there for a very noble purpose, which was, we are trying to put down bad guys who are causing this horrendous famine that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and left millions at risk. And so there's kind of these very noble ideas that now I think in 2026 seem so distant. It seems like, you know, it's just a different world. So in May of 1993, the original humanitarian force becomes UNISOM 2. So this is the UN operation in Somalia. And it has a dramatically expanded mandate.

23:28Gordon:So it's not just food distribution, but quote, rehabilitation of political institutions and the economy, and the restoration of peace, stability, law and order, which does sound quite close to nation building. In a country that does not have any functioning government, that doesn't have any national institutions, whose economy has been almost completely destroyed by the famine, and has these kind of deeply rooted clan divisions, you know, you just have to think this is, this feels like a stretch. The American component of UNISOM 2 is going to be much smaller than the original force from Operation Restore Hope.

24:07Gordon:These troops operate under UN command. They are part of the UN force. And on August the 8th of 1993, a Somali militia, and we'll come to these militia here in a minute, use a remote-controlled mine to destroy an American military vehicle it kills for. These are the first American combat deaths in Somalia. This is August of 1993. Two weeks later, another mine attack wounds seven, and you have political pressure building on President Clinton to either escalate or to withdraw. And the UN envoy to Somalia begins to argue for a special operations contingent to deal with the militia leader responsible for these attacks.

24:53Gordon:And so on August the 22nd, the U.S. Secretary of Defense authorizes the deployment of Task Force Ranger to combat the Somali militias. Task Force Ranger is an ad hoc collection of America's most elite special operations forces. It's only about 450 men in total. And really importantly, it is totally separate from the U.N. mission. This task force, Task Force Ranger, is commanded by a guy named Major General William F. Garrison, who is a special operations officer who's got loads of experience from Vietnam. He's very gruff. He's very highly respected by his men. And I think it's worth setting up that there are basically three major elements inside Task Force Ranger.

25:39Gordon:So the first, Delta Force. This is going to be roughly 130 operators who are going to conduct the actual assaults on militia targets in Mogadishu. I would also note, Gordon, I think Delta Force could be considered a friend of the pod because they feature prominently in our series on Pablo Escobar.

25:59David:Yeah, they do indeed. So we have met them before, Delta, but I guess maybe just a quick refresher on them, known as the unit, aren't they, is the other way that they're described. They have some British lineage as well, don't they, in terms of their background? I knew you were going to mention the British lineage. Yeah, I was going to mention that, derived to some extent from the SAS and from what they did.

26:19Gordon:Yeah, no, it's absolutely true. So Delta is, as you know, Gordon, essentially America's answer to the British Special Air Service, the SAS.

26:28David:SAS. Yes, yeah.

26:29Gordon:That's right. And the idea, again, borrowed from the SAS model, is essentially the army needed a unit that could penetrate deep into enemy territory, blend in with indigenous populations, sabotage enemy installations, gather intel, and if necessary, conduct assassinations. And the Delta operators are trained in everything from how do you manage hostage negotiations to barksmanship to lockpicking. And there's even some great examples of learning how to drive interesting vehicles like a diesel locomotive. Culturally, the unit is, I think, a bit different from most of the US Army. And we'll see that sort of cultural difference is going to come out in the way that the Delta guys interact with other members of Task Force Ranger.

27:13David:Yeah, they think they're the top dogs, don't they? And they're a little bit more, they're looser in their behavior. Would that be fair than the others? I mean, they have their own kind of way of doing things and they view themselves as a kind of a bit of a breed apart.

27:26Gordon:Yes. So they are the top dogs in Task Force Ranger. The other members of Task Force Ranger are, you know, under this kind of really strict form of army discipline. The Delta guys, not quite the same. There are cases, which is actually, this is shown in the early scenes of the film Black Hawk Down, where there's a helicopter taken out to go boar hunting, and it's brought back to the base, and then it's grilled on a spit. That actually happened, and it was Delta guys who convinced one of these helicopter pilots to take them out to do some hunting in the bush. So they would take these unauthorized hunting trips for baboon, gazelle, boar.

28:13Gordon:The Delta guys are the ones who can do that. The second group, the rangers. The Rangers are basically there to provide security and to cordon off an area while the Delta guys conduct raids on militia members in Mogadishu. The Rangers are younger and less experienced than the Delta operators, but kind of elite in their own right. Importantly, a lot of these guys are on their first deployment. They're young, aren't they? Some are like 18 years old. And again, you see this in the film, and I think the film does a good job with this. When you look at some of these guys in the movie, they look like teenagers because they are.

28:54Gordon:And then the third group, so we've got Delta, the Rangers, and then the third group are the pilots. And these are known as the Night Stalkers. It is a regiment formed directly out of the experience of the failed Eagle Claw mission to save American hostages in Iran. These are the best helicopter pilots in the world. And in fact, the helicopter pilot most recently awarded the Medal of Honor in the US for bravery and gallantry during the Maduro raid is a night stalker. Same for the pilots on the bin Laden raid who flew the Chinooks. They're all members of this elite unit of US Army helicopter pilots.

29:36David:So those are the three groups which are based there. And you can sense there's potential for some tension perhaps between them. And then from August onwards of 1993, they are starting to conduct these missions, aren't they, against the Somali militias. And it's interesting, you know, you're talking there about the Rangers role. The Night Stalkers fly in a team of Rangers and Delta. Delta are the ones who actually go after the leaders of these militia. The Rangers provide the security around it. And that seems to be their model. And they do six missions in that period between running up to October the 3rd.

30:14David:And I guess part of the thing is they go okay, don't they?

30:17Gordon:The missions are a success. And essentially what the Americans are doing is capturing different militia leaders, lieutenants, money men, armorers, and then taking them and putting them on this, essentially this prison facility on an island off of Mogadishu. This has gone, as you say, Gordon, relatively well in these six missions. But there are a couple, I think, just points to make to kind of set up the battle to come. one is that as a result of these missions or as these missions are ongoing general garrison has requested additional assets for his force specifically armored vehicles and ac-130 gun ships that could provide close air support at night both of those requests go to the u.s secretary of defense and they're rejected and it's not really a question of of the u.s military not you know having those resources or not but it's a question of the optics because this is all part of a humanitarian mission, remember?

31:18David:Why do you need gunships, helicopter gunships?

31:20Gordon:They're not exactly low profile, right? And so you have this tension between the kind of manhunting, let's take down members of these militias mission of Task Force Ranger and the broader UN humanitarian mission. Those tensions are never fully resolved.

31:37David:And so there, I think with Task Force Ranger deployed, confident perhaps from its successful missions, we approach this Sunday afternoon in October. Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll look at the intelligence that drove the decision to go in to Mogadishu on October the 3rd and how a mission planned to just last an hour became 15 hours of hell.

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32:36David:Welcome back. It's October the 3rd, 1993, and the men of Task Force Ranger, I guess, David, I mean, we see this in the film and you read it from the accounts from them, they're doing what they do between missions. It's a Sunday, so I think they think they're going to be hanging out. They're sleeping in the cots in which they're based in this hangar, They're lifting weights. They're watching football. They kind of go to the beach on the weekend. The decision is made that that day, on that Sunday, they're also going to go into Mogadishu. And it's a mission to snatch a couple of militia leaders, isn't it?

33:11Gordon:So they are after lieutenants of a guy, warlord, I think we could call him, called Mohamed Farah Aidid. Now, Idid is the leader of a militia group called the Somali National Alliance, and he is in control of much of the southern part of Mokadishu itself. And Idid is 59 in 1993, short, balding, charismatic guy, fancies himself a poet in the Somali oral tradition. I think yet another, Gordon, in a line of failed murderous poets that we have talked about on the rest of the last fight.

33:50David:Bidladen is another one, yeah.

33:51Gordon:Bidladen is another one. So Idid in that grand tradition. Now, importantly, he is a member of a clan called the Habargidur. And this clan dominates South Mogadishu. So who is Idid? He is the son of a camel herder from central Somalia. He is initially trained by the Italian colonial police force. He goes to infantry school in Rome, ends up at a staff college in the Soviet Union, rises through the National Army after Somalian independence. And when the dictator Siad Barre seizes power, Idid is sidelined, eventually imprisoned, apparently survives by eating soap, and then is released only when Barre needs generals for the Ogden War against the Ethiopians, which we discussed before the break.

34:39Gordon:Idid apparently serves with distinction. Here's the critical thing about him. is that, and I think Black Hawk Down also kind of falls prey to this, is there's a tendency to view the Somali militia as being disorganized rabble. And there is an element of that in this story. But Idid is a professional soldier, right? He is not a guy who picked up a gun in a refugee camp. The guy has elite training as a military leader and has served in combat before and led troops in combat. After the Ogden War, he serves as Siad Barre's ambassador to India. He's essentially diplomatically exiled. But as Barre's regime grows more brutal in the 1980s, Idid defects and begins organizing armed resistance, again, along clan lines.

35:28Gordon:And it is Idid that leads the coalition that will drive Siad Barre out of Mogadishu. But Idid has not won the peace, right? Because the coalition that toppled Barre fragments, and there's the bloody struggle for Mogadishu that is going to serve as the backdrop for the deployment of Task Force Ranger.

35:50David:So he has got his own militia, and they're called the Somali National Alliance. Not quite an army, but a militia kind of grown out of the population. But they're quite experienced fighters, I guess, some of them. And this is the complexity, I think, and you raised it there, about understanding what happens. Because I think it can often be portrayed as somehow, it's just the people in the city rise up against the Americans when this incident happens and this battle commences. But you've got, I guess, two things going on. You've got Aidid's militia, which is a relatively well-organised militia, even if it's not a traditional army.

36:29David:And then Then you've got a wider population where there's tons of weapons around, there's tons of AK-47s and things like that, who also can be mobilized against the Americans when things happen.

36:43Gordon:Indeed has a son, Gordon, who's a US Marine reservist. He has 14 children who live in the United States at the time where he has essentially declared war against the United States. I thought that was interesting. But you're right. Back to the militia, Gordon. Back to the militia. The Somali National Alliance, the way their sort of, I guess, capabilities are shown in Black Hawk Down, I think is not wrong. The weapons are primarily AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, the sort of machine guns mounted on pickup trucks, which they call technicals. Below that militia core, though, is something larger and way less organized, which is a population that believes it's under foreign attack by the Americans.

37:30Gordon:And Idid is pumping out propaganda over the radio daily to support that point. The other dynamic here that's going on on the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 that we need to be aware of is that the Habergiter, this clan in South Mogadishu, there's almost an honor obligation to fight when the clan's territory is attacked. Remember that Somali proverb, the sort of internal dynamics, the fighting between the clan or with other clans could almost be paused if there's, you know, a perceived invasion by the outsiders. And there are some really, I think, effective framings that ID and the other sort of warlords have been able to use to effectively mobilize the population against the Americans.

38:19Gordon:You have a religious framing, which is that this is a jihad against foreign infidels. And you have this reservoir of pent up grievance from American operations throughout the summer that has added additional energy and manpower. So by the time the Task Force Ranger is getting ready to go out for this seventh mission on Sunday, October the 3rd, 1993, you have a lot of people in the city who are primed to pick up a weapon and use it or to assist the militia in this fight against the Americans.

38:51David:And then you have a series of kind of incidents over the summer leading up to October, don't you, where there are going to be some, I mean, there's a particularly nasty one, I think, in June the 5th, 1993, where some Pakistani peacekeepers are inspecting a militia and they're ambushed and 24 Pakistani soldiers are killed. I mean, many of them are also mutilated. Single deadliest day of loss for the UN peacekeepers in Somalia. So you can see already things are escalating in terms of the violence over the summer. The UN responds with a resolution authorising all necessary measures. So again, you've got that slight element of mission creep and an arrest warrant for ID'd.

39:35David:$25 ,000 for information leading to his capture, which I have to be honest, is not very, doesn't seem very much. I mean, once you're into the kind of millions for the Bin Ladens later, 25 ,000 doesn't seem much. But it is that sense in which there's an escalating tension between Idid's militia and the UN as the summer goes on.

39:53Gordon:So Idid responds with a million dollar prize for the capture of the head of the UN mission.

39:59David:Yeah.

40:00Gordon:There are US strikes against suspected militia facilities throughout the summer in June and July. This is a watershed moment, Gordon. on July the 12th, 1993, there is an American attack on a house where dozens of clan leaders, dozens of Habergidder clan leaders are meeting to discuss peace proposals made by the UN. Now, the justification for this raid was a CIA informant had said that some of those involved in the massacre of the Pakistani peacekeepers would be present. This is technically true. But Idit himself had reportedly been tipped off hours before the strike, so he's not there. So it's not really, even though you do have people there who are responsible for the attack, the brutal attack on those Pakistani peacekeepers, it's not a war council.

40:48Gordon:And you have dozens of other Klan elders who are there, intellectuals, former judges, women's organization representatives, kind of moderate Klan figures. Many of them are actually the same people who had sat down with the UN's leadership just days earlier to discuss how there could be a negotiated end to the conflict. This strike by the Americans leaves maybe 54 dead and 161 wounded. And it is absolutely a turning point because what it does is it weakens the kind of internal Klan opposition to Idid. And it unites the Klan, which again is this vast social organization that dominates the southern part of Mogadishu.

41:33Gordon:It unites the clan against the Americans under this narrative of foreign occupation and predation.

41:38David:So as we head towards this day of October the 3rd, you can sense the tension growing between Idid and more broadly the city and the Americans. And they're looking for leaders of, I mean, they're looking for ID himself and those around him. And I mean, maybe we should just for a moment look at the intelligence that they are using to go after these people. Because I mean, we've just seen that there's been an intelligence failure on striking that group. But that intelligence is vital, isn't it, to be able to find these militia leaders, which is pretty hard when you're in this system. But the CIA is the one who are developing a network of assets, aren't they, on the ground, are kind of spying to try and find Aidid and his people.

42:24Gordon:The CIA has a network of human assets on the ground in Mogadishu. This is a group of kind of support assets that have been recruited by the CIA station in Mogadishu. We don't know the cryptid they were using to describe them, but it's essentially Somali assets that are run and recruited by CIA case officers. And it is their intelligence that is driving the timing and

42:44David:location of these task force ranger raids and they're basically asking somalis offering sightings of aidid all the people around him and then the u.s has a level of technical surveillance i guess it's got these i mean a p3 orion spy planes flying over who can then check what's happening and try and confirm the intelligence so it's this mixture isn't it of um individual informers on the ground and then live video feeds which are coming from the air, whether it's from these spy planes or helicopters, which are offering a kind of confirmation or an additional source to those trying to plan raids or look for ID'd.

43:25Gordon:And I think this is a case where you can see that Humint is sometimes great for actionable targeting intel, right? But it has its limitations. And one of the problems that General Garrison and Task Force Ranger have had with the intelligence has been that the reliability has frankly been hit or miss in the months leading up to October the 3rd. There's an incident where CIA assets have reported that Idid has left a compound in a three-vehicle convoy with its lights out heading toward this landmark hotel in Mogadishu called the Olympic Hotel. Observation helicopters who have night vision cameras on them go out and they say, okay, there's no convoy here.

44:04Gordon:So are the informants, are they lying? Are they mistaken? or is the intelligence just out of date, right? And keep in mind here that unlike the kind of strategic human that gets at the kind of high-level plans and intentions of an adversary, when you're trying to feed intelligence to the special operations community to conduct a raid, if the information's out of date by an hour...

44:29David:It's useless.

44:30Gordon:It's useless. Another raid that had been conducted based on this spy ring's intelligence resulted in Task Force Ranger arresting nine UN employees. So, you know, oops. Another resulted in Task Force Ranger arresting a Somali general who was in fact a close UN ally because the informants had confused him with ID, even though this guy was 10 inches taller than ID and didn't look anything like him. There's also an interesting story here about a cane. So before Task Force Ranger had even launched its first mission, one of the first plans concocted by the agency to actually track Idid was for one of the CIA sources in Mogadishu to present him with this kind of wonderfully intricately carved wooden cane, which would contain a homing beacon so that Idid could be tracked in real time.

45:19Gordon:But just as Task Force Ranger is arriving in Somalia, the man who was supposed to deliver the cane reportedly shot himself in the head while playing Russian roulette. What?

45:30David:I mean, not a joke.

45:32Gordon:Like this actually, this actually happened. The guy shot himself in the head. So he survives, the asset survives, but obviously after that was in no condition to participate in the operation.

45:41David:Rather a stupid asset, you could say, if you're playing Russian roulette. I mean, anyway, so that mission doesn't work. All of that means that they've got some forms of intelligence, but they're not always perfect. And then we come to the 3rd of October. And crucially, the CIA thinks it has a lead, a bead on a couple of Idid's key lieutenants. So not Idid himself, but they think they know where those lieutenants might be meeting.

46:11Gordon:Yeah. And here at this point in October, I mean, Idid has effectively gone to ground. Nobody knows where he is. And so the raids have focused on members of his organization. So guys in this case is two lieutenants of ID and that is going to be the tripwire for the raid. So one of the spy rings assets who believes he knows where they will be is instructed to drive his silver sedan. He's got red stripes on the doors, go to the Olympic hotel, open the hood as if he's experiencing some kind of engine trouble and then drive to the target building and repeat the performance. So basically opening the hood will allow the spy planes and helicopters to see him.

46:53Gordon:They'll pump that feed into the joint operations center, and that'll provide kind of the visual marker then for them to lock onto. They'll follow the sedan to the target location, and then they'll have the spot where these two militia lieutenants are going to meet. So the asset, though, performs the check at the hotel so quickly that the cameras miss him, and he's told to do it again. And I think, Gordon, this actually is fairly well reconstructed in the film Block Hawk Down, when you see this kind of, you know, he's got tape that he's put on top of his sedan, and he's driving to try to, you know, allow the Americans to get a lock on where this meeting will happen.

47:36Gordon:Now, Garrison and his staff are watching all this on screens. They watch the asset drive to a building near the Olympic Hotel in the Bakara Market, which is in South Mogadishu. As we said earlier, this is the turf of the Habergieter clan. It is nicknamed the Black Sea by the Americans, and the spy rigs asset opens the hood of his car at this new location, and that confirms, that is the sign that Idid's lieutenants are meeting inside. And that intelligence from this asset triggers the order to initiate the raid. And it is a code word, Irene.

48:18David:So the code word's given, Irene. At 3.32, that's Sunday afternoon, October the 3rd, the helicopter assault force lifts off from the airfield. Let's explain a little bit what's in this assault force though, David, because I think that's going to be an important part of the story, isn't it?

48:35Gordon:It is. It is. and it is a bit varied. So there are four what are known as Little Bird attack helicopters. Those helicopters are not Blackhawks, but they will play a significant role in the battle to come. There are four additional Little Birds that have the Delta operators that are perched on these external benches. There are nine Blackhawk helicopters carrying the contingent of rangers. There's a command and control Blackhawk that has essentially the head of the ground mission, which is going to be the most senior Delta operator in Mogadishu, and then the head of the air mission who's responsible for coordinating all of the helicopters, right?

49:20Gordon:So you have those two guys in the command and control Blackhawk. There is also departing pretty much simultaneously from the sort of the Ranger base is a convoy of 12 vehicles that are going to go to the actual target site. And the plan is essentially that it's an air insertion. They're going to load up all of the prisoners, all of the Delta operators, all of the Rangers onto the trucks, onto the vehicles at that target site and then go back. So it's an air insertion ground extraction.

49:54David:Helicopters drop Delta and Rangers. Convoy comes in and brings out Delta Rangers and the prisoners, basically. So that's a total force of about 160 Americans.

50:05Gordon:What the intelligence picture doesn't show is that the Somali National Alliance ID's militia, they've spent weeks studying the previous raids. Because remember, this has been done six times already in sort of various forms. And all of them have followed the same basic pattern, which is helicopter insertion. It's kind of generally the same tactical formation. It's the same ground convoy extraction procedure. The SNA has watched these, right? So they've seen the orbit patterns of the Blackhawks, right? Because as the convoys going in, as the sort of snatch and grab is happening, the Blackhawks are going in these kind of orbits to provide air cover and overwatch.

50:45Gordon:So the SNA has noted the altitudes and the speeds. We'll come to this in the next episode, but the Somali militias have noted a particular vulnerability to the tail rotor of the Blackhawk. The militias have positioned weapons caches and RPG, rocket-propelled grenade teams, in the Barkhara market specifically to cover the approach corridors the Americans have used. And the militia have developed a signaling system using burning tires and mobile phones to alert the city the moment that American helicopters are heard. on the previous six raids, the Americans had arrived before these militia could really fully mobilize.

51:26Gordon:And by the time, as we'll see, by the time we get to the 7th, that mobilization time has significantly been compressed. So as soon as that formation lifts off, the Night Stalker pilots report that the Somalis are burning tires in the streets below, just sending up the signal that the Americans are coming. And that signal is traveling faster than the aircraft.

51:49David:So there, David, I think with the helicopters and the convoy en route to the destination, but not realizing that this time the Somalians have mobilized and prepared for this, let's stop. And next time we'll see how this mission unfolds and goes wrong almost immediately. Well, that's right.

52:10Gordon:But of course, if you don't want to wait for those thrilling final three episodes in this series, you don't have to, you can go and join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com, get early access to this series and get access to the bonus episodes where we'll be doing a kind of a look at Somalian history since the Black Hawk Down raid to understand what's happened in the country. and we'll also be doing a kind of review of the Black Hawk Down film. Also, a reminder that we are doing a live show. Isn't that right, Gordon? That's right. On Friday, the 4th of September.

52:49David:And tickets are available now. And there's a link for tickets in the episode description box. And you can also go to the South Bank Center website and search for The Rest is Classified. So do sign up for those tickets and we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.

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