THE MILITARIZATION OF THE FBI
From: DotHB@aol.com
Subject: The FBI's New HRT - - Soldiers or Policemen?
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1999
THE FBI'S NEW HRT - - SOLDIERS OR POLICEMEN? BLACK SUITS, BADGES AND BRADLEYS by James
L. Pate, Soldier of Fortune, August 1996, p. 56
[NOTE: This is an older article which I did post in the SAFAN Internet Newsletter.
At that time - little was understood about the IMPACT of these new HRT Teams - and
what they were capable of -- or how they would be used. KEEP for future reference
- because you will have MORE to add. Dot Bibee]
In the early weeks of the Freeman standoff in northeastern Montana, the question was
important: Had the Federal Bureau of Investigation deployed its Hostage Rescue Team
(HRT)? The answer was found in an otherwise minor technical detail: a scope seen
on a .308 caliber rifle at the FBI's command post, behind a fenced perimeter at the Garfield
County Fairgrounds in Jordan.
The FBI snipers initially deployed around the 960-acre Freeman homestead were armed
with rifles equipped with Leupold 3.5 x 10 variable-power scopes, witnesses told
Soldier Of Fortune. This meant the FBI snipers initially deployed outside Jordan
were not from the HRT, but from one of the FBI's regional Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT)
teams. Among other differences from their counterparts in precision target acquisition
on regional FBI SWAT teams, HRT snipers use different optics on their .308s - an
Unertl scope similar to that used by Marine Corps scout- snipers. A minor distinction,
one might think, but a significant clue in trying to anticipate the FBI's tactical
contingencies on its unseen, inner Freeman perimeter.
Of greater significance, though, was that the answer - a relatively minor technical
detail - led to a long-sought, third source confirmation about the role played in
the Waco atrocity by the Army's elite Special Forces Opera- tional Detachment-Delta
(SFOD-D). It also coincidentally offered a rare glimpse into the secrecy shrouded, but intimate
partnership between the Army's Delta antiterrorism detachment and the FBI's HRT unit.
The three sources for this story, who all require anonymity because of the sensitive nature of their jobs, include a Department of Defense (DoD) attorney, an FBI
training academy instructor at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., and an Army
Special Forces source at Fort Bragg, N.C. Among the recently confirmed revelations:
* On the final day at Waco, Army Delta operators were "forward deployed" on the inner
perimeter with FBI HRT agents, and may have entered the building's rear with FBI
agents, concealed in an armored vehicle and out of view of television cameras and
still photographers.
* Delta, known by other names, including the Combat Applications Group and the Combat
Development Branch, is exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act under a classified portion
of President Bill Clinton's controversial Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD-25). (This is according to a report in the most recent issue of The Resister, a clandestine,
but reliable publi- cation printed quarterly by active-duty Army Special Forces troops
opposed to military involvement in civilian law enforcement; see "Witch Hunt for The Resister," SOF, Feb. '96.)
* Attorney General Janet Reno initially rejected an attack plan, based on the use
of CS riot control chemical and an armored assault, proposed by FBI Special Agent
Dick Rogers, then head of the HRT. Rogers enlisted the help of Army Delta officers
to persuade Reno. That persuasion proved instrumental, Reno later said, in her final OK for
the plan that ultimately sparked Waco's fiery disaster, killing 81 people, mostly
women and children.
* The FBI is expanding HRT much faster - and to a far greater extent - than has been
publicly stated. In Waco's aftermath, public statements by several high-ranking officials,
including Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh, indicated that HRT's 50-man contingent was being doubled in size. The actual expansion, when complete, will give HRT
about 200-250 operators, possibly as many as 300. (An FBI spokesman declined to comment
when questioned about HRT activities discussed in this article, saying that all budgetary and manpower requirements for HRT are classified. The Army also refused to discuss
Delta.)
Sign Of Dramatic Growth A few facts are confirmed, however: A new airstrip was opened
at Quantico in 1995, and it belongs to the FBI Academy, according to an academy source
and an Army Special Forces instructor who worked with the FBI at Quantico. The FBI's new Quantico airstrip provides for quick-response airlift requirements for HRT,
which, in the past, had to rely on other organizations, including the U.S. Coast
Guard, for large-scale airlift capability. The new FBI HRT airstrip can accommodate
C-141 Starlifter and other heavy-lift, high performance aircraft. In addition, the Army source
said he "observed indications" while at Quantico that the FBI's HRT "has access to
Task Force 160 aircraft." He declined to be more specific. TF 160, officially designated as Special Operations Aviation Regiment 160 is a classified Army aviation unit used
almost exclusively for covert missions.
"The word among HRT members is that manpower strength is not being doubled, but quadrupled,"
the Green Beret said. "They were talking about going radical as far as their size.
I heard complaints that they could not select, assess and train enough people fast enough to meet DOJ's [Dept of Justice] requirement."
The FBI's goal, according to the academy and Army sources, is to expand HRT so there
are complete teams identical to the existing HRT - one for each of six designated
geographical regions. The Army source said he heard HRT members routinely refer to
the regions as "war zones." Thus, by seeking infor- mation on a minor technical question
- what kind of rifle scopes are used by FBI SWAT snipers versus those used by HRT
- SOF finally has been able to confirm through a third source the virtual day- to-day
contact and cooperation between the Army's Delta unit and FBI's HRT.
The revelation - that Delta operators were in close proximity to the Branch Davidian
religious retreat in the hours leading up to the fire - raises questions on two levels,
one of practice and the other of policy. Was Delta's close involvement with HRT at
the Waco scene a one-time incident? Or was it a routine deployment? Our sources indicate
Delta's deployment with HRT to Waco was routine, at least at that time. And just
what is the Pentagon's policy about the allowable degree of involvement of Delta
operators - or any other active duty troops, for that matter - with civilian law enforcement
officials?
This debate has raged in Waco's wake (see "No Peace Without Justice" SOF, May '95).
Army witnesses vigorously denied in the congressional hearings any improper involvement
with civilian law enforcement at Waco. In joint hearings on the Waco fiasco by two
House of Representatives subcommittees, witnesses confirmed what numerous sources had
long claimed: the presence of Delta operators at Waco. (The hearings also revealed
but did not explain - the presence of British Army Special Air Service commandos
at Waco.) These congressional witnesses implied that the presence of Delta and SAS operatives
was at a distance, suggesting a rear-echelon, purely observatory role at the FBI
command post. Not so, at least forDelta, says a DoD attorney familiar with the follow
up investigation. Delta operators were "forward deployed" on the inner perimeter surrounding
the Branch Davidians, and their role was "much more advisory than observatory; active,
not passive."
The Posse Comitatus Act, passed after the Civil War to prohibit the involvement of
the U.S. military in civilian government - particularly law enforcement - has so
many loopholes and exceptions under current policy interpretations by the DoD and
Department of Justice that "it has become almost meaningless," the government lawyer said. Interpretive
Mission Gallop "What's said in public is different than what's actually trained,
and what's trained differs from what actually happens in a real-life tactical situation," the DoD source said. This interpretation is "based on the briefings I've
heard at the Pentagon by civilian policy-level personnel equivalent in rank to general
officers.
In those briefings. " DoD visualizes Posse Comitatus as [allowing military] involvement
all the way up to being at the site of an arrest, and doing everything short of actually
making an arrest," said the legal source. "Under the interpretation of the current administration, allowable military involvement includes everything up to and including
actually loading a weapon [at the site] and handing it to a civilian law enforcement
agent. "That's not what the written guidelines say, but the guidelines aren't that specific, either," the DoD source said. "And it is very important to remember:
the Posse Comitatus Act does not mention the United States Navy. It does not necessarily
preclude the use of SEAL or Marine Corps recon teams in conjunction with civilian
law enforcement. I would strongly suggest that this is a glaring problem that needs swift
legislative remedy."
Another source, a former FBI Academy instructor acquainted with the regular agent-training
program, as well as the training conducted there by HRT and Delta, described HRT
and Delta as having a "very deep and long- standing relationship." This source expressed "strong suspicion" - but acknowledged that he could not absolutely confirm -
that the Army Delta unit has a liaison office at the HRT's Quantico headquarters.
He said he is certain HRT has such an office at Fort Bragg.
The FBI's HRT and Army's Delta detachment regularly share facilities at the FBI Training
Academy at Quantico and Delta's super secret compound at Fort Bragg, North Carolina,
he said "The major beneficiary in this cross- training," the source said, "is the
HRT. Because the FBI gets access to Delta's shooting house."
Delta's heavily secured headquarters at Fort Bragg includes what's known as the Range
19 complex, a state-of-the art, live-fire facility that is actually a set of ranges,
designated A though D. They include specialized and highly advanced training facilities for combat pistol shooting, sniping, close quarters combat (CQB) and other specialized
gun-fighting skills. "They definitely train at each other's facilities on a very
regular basis," the academy source, himself a former member of a U.S. military special operations unit, told SOF. "There's an awful lot of 'cross pollination' going on
there."Asked to explain what was meant by "cross pollination," the source said that
"the people I saw going through HRT selection fit the same basic mold as a Delta
operator, as far as physique, attitude and young age."
This is contrary to the general public's widely held impression that members of HRT
and Delta are older, more seasoned veterans of their respective organi- zations,
the FBI and Army Special Forces. But that impression is wrong, said the academy source.
"When you think of HRT, you expect it to be more along the lines of experienced FBI agents,"
he said. "But these guys are young and, with very few exceptions, don't come from
backgrounds with much street experience."
Merely Changing Uniforms Instead, he said, the FBI's HRT goes out of its way "to recruit
military personnel. One guy from HRT told me they were actively looking for guys
with a military background. One guy [from HRT he knew] was ex-Special Forces [with
no prior FBI experience]. They go after the SEAL types. They like the Marines...." The
HRT's "selection and assess- ment [process] is very similar to that used by Delta,"
said the academy source, adding that some people going into HRT are spending very
little or no time in the field as street agents, and some may go straight from the training
academy to HRT. Personnel recruited from military special operations units for HRT
usually spend no time as street agents, but go straight to an HRT assignment, he
said.
"When I looked at them [HRT members] and remember the guys I knew from Delta, the
attitude was the same... real young, unseasoned guys with the... hard charging military
mindset that is inappropriate for law enforcement, considering what they are supposed
to do." The crux of the "cross- pollination" problem, the source said, stems from
Delta's top-secret standard operating procedures, or SOP. While Delta's SOP calls
for discriminatory, friend-or-foe shooting skills, it does not train for taking suspects
captive. The source's take-no prisoners claim was also touched upon in the recent Resister
article. Delta's SOP "stipulates that once a counterterror squadron is committed
to a take-down, there will be no prisoners," the article in The Resister states,
including the emphasis. "This is something they picked up from the Brits, who picked it
up from the Israelis.''
The take-no-prisoners doctrine, which may be appropriate in most counterterrorist
tactical contexts, presents a ticklish legal dilemma when considered in the arena
of a civilian law enforcement operation, especially when the suspect has no prior
criminal history. For instance, neither Randy Weaver nor David Koresh, against whom the HRT
was deployed, had ever been convicted of any crimes. This gets at the heart of the
debate over using the military - particularly units like Delta and other special
operations units - to train civilian law enforcement officers. It promotes a tactical perception
in which civilian cops see criminal suspects not as civilian criminal suspects, but
as terrorists. "In a legitimate counter-terror operation," The Resister reported,
a take-no prisoners doctrine "is both reasonable and tactically sound. But when some-
thing like that is taught to cops, you get things like Waco."And things like Ruby
Ridge, Idaho. In testimony to a Senate judiciary subcommittee investi- gating the
Randy Weaver tragedy, retired Army Colonel James "Bo" Gritz, himself a former Delta detachment
member, said that HRT functions essentially as "an American Delta force here in the
United States" (see "Amateurs and Assassins II"; SOF, Jan. '96.) Gritz was instrumental in convincing Weaver to surrender.
Likewise, the FBI Training Academy source found the cross-pollination" troubling because
"HRT is essentially a Delta clone. So you have a law enforcement team that is organized,
trained and deployed as a clone of a military anti-terrorism unit. And the Army is not, and cannot be, concerned with the niceties and legalities of civilian law
enforcement where the proper use of deadly force is concerned."
The most recent and egregious example of this doctrinal conflict would be that of
the deliberate shooting of Vicki Weaver by FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi. The public
stance of the FBI - and all civilian law enforcement agencies - has been that deadly
force is only authorized when the life or safety of a law enforcement officer or another
person is in immediate and unmistakable danger.
According to testimony by Gritz and others at the Senate Weaver hearings, a pre-deployment
briefing in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, by former HRT leader Dick Rogers strongly suggested
that any armed adult - including Vicki Weaver - "could and should" be "neutralized" if an opportunity presented itself.
Rogers' illegal rules of engagement in Idaho match the Delta tactical take-down SOP
- but were in blatant contradiction to all civilian law enforce- ment rules of engagement
on the use of deadly force in the United States. And, according to their Senate testimony, the HRT snipers except Horiuchi recognized Rogers' illegal order as such
and chose to ignore it. While Horiuchi has never been punished for his murder of
Vicki Weaver, he is no longer deployed with HRT as a sniper, the FBI academy source
said - and Horiuchi has expressed anger at his removal from his job as a shooter. On an HRT
deployment to Puerto Rico in the spring of 1995, Horiuchi became so agitated and
emotional when told he was not being given a shooting assignment, FBI leadership
was forced to recall him to Quantico. Horiuchi continues to show "no remorse whatsoever" for
his killing of Vicki Weaver, said the FBI academy source, who, on occasion, has shared
a lunch table with Horiuchi and has worked with him on the range. "Some HRT members
obviously shun him. One HRT member told me that Lon exhibited extremely questionable
judgment' in his actions at the Weaver cabin. "The only thing I've ever heard [Horiuchi]
express concern about, as far as what happened in Idaho," the source said, "was what
kind of long- term impact it was going to have on his FBI career. He was obviously
worried that he may not be backed up in future incidents. But overall, his attitude
is that he followed orders and did his job correctly."
The cross-pollination between Army's Delta and the FBI's HRT has resulted in other
activities that the academy source described as "scary." One such development is
the HRT's training for the possible use of the Barrett .50- caliber rifle against
suspects.
"One HRT operator told me they could use Barretts against people... to shoot someone
hiding behind something. I pointed out that if a person was hiding behind something,
the shooter could not positively identify the target. "The HRT's training with Barretts was confirmed by the Army Special Forces source who had worked at Quantico. Furthermore,
he said he had observed HRT snipers using Barretts to train to shoot people with
Norwegian Raufus armor-piercing, incendiary, high-explosive ammunition (API HE) at
ranges as close as 500 meters - for all intents and purposes, point blank. (By comparison,
the Barrett is routinely used to destroy enemy equipment out to 1,800 meters. This
is in contrast to conventional FBI SWAT teams, using .308-caliber rounds 300-meter
targets.)
Based on his conversations with FBI and Delta personnel, the Green Beret source who
has worked with the FBI said he believes HRT personnel were inside Mount Carmel "in
the time frame leading up to the fire." Asked if he thinks Delta operators were actively involved with the HRT at Waco, he said it would be virtually impossible to tell with
any certainty "unless someone breaks the code of silence, and that would mean being
banished from the brotherhood. You'd be instantly ostracized..." One Animal, Two
Heads Besides, he said, when HRT is described as a "clone" of Delta, "there's a lot of
literal meaning here. They literally look the same. They wear the same Nomex jump
suits. They use the same equipment, the same types of weapons in the same types of
situations. The Delta guys wear the clever little pins and other not-so-subtle signs of status.
But you'd never be able to tell the two groups apart in a fluid tactical situation.
"There's a lot of rumors within the community," he said. "This was not the first
time that Delta has been involved in a situation of this nature."
The DoD legal source, who had access to classified after-action investi- gative information
on Waco and the military's involvement, said it is Delta - not HRT - that finally
tipped the Department of Justice scales in favor of the chemical and armor attack
at Mount Carmel.
"Delta's counter-terrorism advisers were pushing Reno and the FBI command to take
action, arguing that to wait would make HRT lose their edge," the lawyer said. "Dick
Rogers went to Washington to get the FBI and Reno to sign off on the [chemical and
armor] assault plan, and Reno refused. So Rogers went to see his buddies at Delta. They
flew back to Waco, did a final tactical assessment, then flew back to Washington
and did another briefing. And this time, with the Delta guys pushing, Reno went for
it." At one point Reno said she made her final decision on the assault plan based on consultation
with "military advisers." The Pentagon issued a swift denial. "The Pentagon had plausible
deniability," the DoD source said. "And the public heard it, in so many words, in congressional testimony. But they are just as dirty in the final outcome [at
Waco] as the FBI and the HRT." The Special Forces source said he was confronted with
questions by students and agents while at the FBI Training Academy about his opinions,
particularly Waco and the Weaver case, but also about pending legislation pertaining
to crime, anti-terrorism and the abridgment of individual and constitutional liberties.
He said he felt he was being sounded out as a member of the active-duty special operations military community.
"The younger agents, especially, seemed very concerned about how active duty military
troops view the way things are going," he said, "...about how the agencies are conducting
themselves and where we [the military] stood on the issues. They were hinting around the edges on a lot of things, like the gun control issue and Waco and Ruby Ridge."
He said he immediately sensed that his response did not find favor with a lot of
agents. It caused "obvious concern," he said. "There's a lot of people in this room
who are ex-military," he said he told them. "Just because you got out [of the military]
does not absolve you from that oath [to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution].
And if you feel any other way, you're wrong."It will come to a point where you have
choose," he said he told the agents and students. "Either protect and defend the Constitution,
or the politicians in power. There is no such thing as blindly following orders.
That was proved at Nuremberg" [at the Nazi war crimes trials].
"But, What Sort Of Animal?" The response did not go unchallenged. A few days later,
witnesses told SOF, the Army instructor was on the range with a group of agents and
academy students. "Some 300-pound piece of shit in a thousand-dollar suit from Freeh's
office made a big scene," one of the witnesses said. "He confronted the Army instructor
on the range, in front of everyone, and began poking this Green Beret in the chest
with his pale, fat finger. "'What worries us,' the 300 pound piece of shit told the
Green Beret, is people like you, with your background, getting out. And we don't know
where you are and what you're doing.'"
Reprinted from: Soldier of Fortune, August 1996, P. 56; Subscriptions: $28/yr, PO
Box 693, Mt. Morris, IL 61054; 1-800-877-5207.
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NOTE: This is JUST the tip of the iceberg. These "forces" (both military and FBI train
with and are being trained by the former officers of the Soviet Union's SPETSNAZ
forces....and many other foreign troops - at Fort Bragg and other bases in the U.S.
Dot Bibee
CONNECT THE DOTS Dot Bibee (DotHB@aol.com) Knoxville, TN Ph/FAX (423) 577-7011 "To
Deny the Constitution is to Provoke Revolution"
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