First In Goes Behind the Scenes of the War on Terrorism

By DAVID W. MUNNS, Assistant Editor

FIRST IN: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
by Gary C. Schroen, New York: Ballantine Books, May 2005.
379 pp. $25.95
ISBN: 0-89141-872-5

“Time is on the side of the enemy,” Ahmad Shah Masood, leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance, told Masood Khalili in the early morning of Sept. 9, 2001. Masood was known as the best military tactical leader in Afghanistan and had been key in CIA operations there for well over two decades.

Khalili, Masood’s senior political advisor, was eager “as a civilized man” to take a shower prior to meeting two Arab journalists who had been waiting for weeks to interview Masood. But Masood instructed him to hold off on showering and be with him during the interview.

The two men were seated in a large, Western-style conference room in the Panjshir valley of Afghanistan, complete with a small sofa, several chairs and a square wooden coffee table, when the Arab journalists entered.

Suspicious of their lack of professionalism, Masood asked Khalili jokingly, “Are they going to wrestle us? Neither looks much like a reporter to me.”

As one reporter bellied up to Masood, the other turned on the camera, and Masood and Khalili watched the red light illuminate as the cameraman backed slowly away.

Then the world went black. Khalili gained consciousness briefly and knew that he had been victim to a suicide bomb from the smell of gunpowder, but then returned to darkness only to be awakened hours later on a metal stretcher aboard a plane.

Alerted with vague details about the attack, Gary C. Schroen was hurrying to get in to work at the CIA on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Schroen was close friends with Khalili, and had been a longtime political colleague of Masood.

Schroen was rounding out his 90-day Retirement Transition Program with the agency when he received this news, and was completely stunned later that morning as he witnessed, with the rest of world, the World Trade Center towers fall and the brutal blow to the Pentagon’s walls.

Two days later, Schroen’s impending retirement ended. He was told he was to lead a small group of men into Afghanistan to partner with the Northern Alliance and convince them to help U.S. forces defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda forces there.

As a 30-year veteran and expert in Middle Eastern affairs, Schroen felt qualified to lead this team. But this was no small task.

He departed less than a week later and found himself at the forefront of U.S. efforts in the retaliation against terrorism.

First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan is a timely account of the preliminary intelligence collection to combat al Qaeda. The book was touted by the CIA’s Publications Review Board as “the most detailed account of a CIA field operation told by an officer directly involved that has ever been cleared” for publication.

Schroen provides a personal history of U.S. relations with Afghanistan. Having served as bureau chief in Kabul and a senior member of the team in Islamabad, Pakistan, his story is told in extremely intimate terms that only Schroen, who had been at the heart of the action, could tell.

As a pinnacle country in America’s previous fight against communism, Afghanistan’s history is not only relevant to its current war against terrorism but also is a microcosm of strife in the Middle East and an example of just how tenuous American foreign policy can be.

Schroen provides subtle observations of the CIA’s impact in shaping foreign policy. Remembering his insistence that the United States continue funding the mujahedeen to combat Pakistani-funded fighters who seized control in Afghanistan after the Soviets were defeated, Schroen was outranked as his superiors maintained that the U.S. had little to worry about the tribal factions that might rise to power within the Afghani government.

Factionalism ultimately led to nearly two-thirds of the country being controlled by the Taliban half a decade later, who harbored Osama bin Ladin and allowed his al Qaeda network to flourish.

Schroen assembled “Jawbreaker,” a group of seven CIA operatives with diverse specialties, ranging from tactical communications to medicine, in the aftermath of Sept. 11. The group’s purpose was to kill bin Ladin and his senior lieutenants.

Cofer Black, the CIA’s coordinator for counterterrorism, was clear: “They must be killed. I want to see photos of their heads on pikes. I want bin Ladin’s head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice. I want to be able to show bin Ladin’s head to the president. I promised him I would do that.”

Schroen joked at the time that the hardest part of the assignment would be finding dry ice in the middle of Afghanistan’s barren mountain landscape.

The book details Jawbreaker’s great successes in identifying targets for U.S. bombs and coordinating U.S. forces with the Northern Alliance. It takes the reader into the action of this covert group of men and shows how a small group can accomplish so much as it spearheaded the effort to liberate the Afghani people.

On Oct. 9, 2004, Schroen was in the office of the director of the Afghan intelligence organization discussing the national presidential election in Afghanistan while “more than eight million men and women were braving threats of violence by the Taliban and al Qaeda, long lines and foul weather … to cast their ballots in the first ever, free, democratic election to choose who would be their national leader.”

Despite the dramatic changes taking place in Afghanistan, Schroen cautions that such “progress rests on a shaky foundation.” He encourages continuing the reconstruction of Afghanistan and supporting other antiterrorism efforts in the Middle East, which he argues are being hindered by operations in other parts of the world, particularly Iraq.

Schroen points out that although military funding and efforts are drastically tilted in favor of military operations present in other parts of the world, including Iraq, U.S. funding in South Asia is desperately needed to “capture Osama bin Ladin and defeat al Qaeda.”

Ultimately, for the democratic experiment being conducted in Afghanistan to be successful, the money needed to fund these changes for one year would amount to less than the cost of one week of U.S. military operations now taking place in Iraq, Schroen asserts.

Seapower does not review works of fiction or self-published books.