How Trump gabbed too much about the ISIS raid
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How Trump gabbed too much about the ISIS raid
โI always get a little bit nervous when people without knowledge of operations start describing operations,โ said Michael Nagata, a retired Army lieutenant general who was the senior special operations commander in the Middle East during the early stages of the anti-ISIS campaign. โItโs a good story, and I can understand the impulse to tell a good story. Telling it can have positive benefits. But the benefits are unpredictable and marginal, whereas the harm could be more substantial.โ
Taken together, some of the details Trump revealed could help terrorist groups piece together new information about how U.S. counterterrorism forces gather intelligence and execute such dangerous missions, said veterans of previous operations.
โIโm surprised that he went into that level of granularity,โ said a former senior military officer who has commanded troops in the region and like some others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.
Nagata stressed that Trump is not alone in the practice. He cited the 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, which was recounted in significant detail at the time by Obama administration officials.
โThis tradition two administrations have established of talking about the details of missions like these may actually make them more dangerous and more difficult in the future,โ said Nagata, who was also the senior U.S. military officer in Pakistan at the time of the Bin Laden mission.
Here are a few examples of things Trump shared on Sunday that have been raising eyebrows.
Trump didnโt offer specifics about how the U.S. located Baghdadi. But he keyed in on the highly sensitive discipline of signals intelligence โ or the remote monitoring of enemy communications โ that struck several with deep experience as better left alone.
โThese people are very smart, theyโre not into cell phones anymore,โ Trump said. โTheyโre not โ theyโre very technically brilliant. You know, they use the internet better than almost anybody in the world, perhaps other than Donald Trump. But they use the internet incredibly well.โ
โWhy mention it?โ asked Nagata. โIt could contribute to a reverse engineering of our intelligence methods by the adversary, and if thereโs any possibility of that, why do it?โ
Trump also described the layout of the compound. โThe tunnels were dead end for the most part,โ he recounted. โThere was one we think that wasnโt but we had that covered too,โ he said, seemingly suggesting the U.S. mapped the tunnel network ahead of time.
โThatโs a bit sensitive,โ said a former special operations commander who also asked that he not be identified. โThe enemy knows to some degree that we have technology that can detect that. But they donโt know how itโs done or how good we are at, and we donโt want them to.โ
โThis is something the president should not have said about the target development,โ added Eric Robinson, a former Army officer who held positions in intelligence and special operations forces until last year. โItโs reckless. But itโs not as bad as hanging the satellite image of the Iranian space launch site two months ago. That was bad.โ
Trump also specified the number of helicopters the commandos used โ eight โ and reported that, upon landing, the commandos โblew holes into the side of the building, not wanting to go through the main door because that was booby-trapped.โ
โAircraft counts and means of conducting a breach are [tactics, techniques and procedures] that special operations forces have developed and learned the hard way,โ said Robinson. โThat wasnโt helpful to talk about.โ
โThe enemy sees the scene after, theyโre on the ground, they see the breaching holes in building โ but come on, let them figure it out on their own, donโt tell them,โ one of the former special operations commanders remarked.
Trump also said the commandos were in the compound for two hours.
โThereโs no reason to reveal that,โ the former special operations commander added. โYouโre giving them another way to think about how long forces on the ground are vulnerable. Timing on an objective is something where you never want the bad guys to know what your procedure was or how long it took.โ
Before departing, the American commandos gathered intelligence, Trump said, noting some of the seized files included information on โISISโ origins, future plans, things that we very much want.โ
Itโs well known that U.S. troops are trained to gather whatever new information they can from such operations; a treasure trove of intelligence was pilfered from the bin Laden raid, much of it declassified in the decade since.
โBut they donโt need to know what we took out of there,โ said the former special operations commander.
Finally, when the helicopters carrying the commandos and their haul took off, they โtook an identical routeโ back to friendly territory, Trump revealed.
That detail bothered the former military officials more than any of the others. โThatโs the most worrisome,โ said Nagata. โThe force is vulnerable throughout the operation, but arrival and departure by helicopter are very dangerous. For me, the idea that anyone would talk publicly about how we did the most dangerous part of the operation โ the risks far outweigh the storytelling value.โ
โI donโt know why the fโ he would say that, honestly,โ fumed the other former special operations commander. โIf weโre doing the same approaches and egresses, that can get helicopters shot down. Itโs happened in Afghanistan.โ