American Heroes in Special Operations Page 19

  Unfortunately the good news quickly turned bad.

  While we were en route back to the base from which the raid was launched, the U.S. ground force commander received a report over the radio that pro-Taliban agitators were already asserting that “the Americans killed thirty civilians.” The claims and alleged number of civilian casualties quickly escalated.

  Shortly after we arrived back at the Special Operations base, an official in Kabul called the governor of Aziz Abad and assured him the families of any civilian casualties would receive reparations in the amount of $1,000 U.S. per person. Then things really got out of hand. Around noon 22 August, Iranian television reported, “A U.S. air strike south of Herat in western Afghanistan has killed more than fifty innocent civilians, including women and children.” This report was soon picked up by news agencies in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. The United Nations command in Kabul offered to transport Afghan and foreign reporters to the Special Operations base so they could see the confiscated weapons and other evidence for themselves. It didn’t help.

  That evening, as we filed our full story with videotape of the raid and an interview with a U.S. Special Forces officer, unnamed “sources” at the Ministry of the Interior in Kabul were telling reporters seventy-six civilians were killed. Little or no attention was paid to the Taliban arms and equipment seized as evidence, the material destroyed at the objective or to the care provided to the wounded woman and child. It was clear families were coming out of the woodwork to claim their $1,000 in reparation money.

  By the morning of 23 August, little more than twenty-four hours after the operation, the international press wires and mainstream news outlets were carrying photos of damaged buildings and an Afghan human rights organization was charging that eighty-eight civilians—among them twenty women and fifty children—were killed by U.S. forces. Later in the day, President Hamid Karzai first called for an investigation, then denounced the operation. Though fewer than fifteen new graves were evident in nearby cemeteries—and no local civilians sought medical treatment for wounds, the number of noncombatant casualties allegedly inflicted in the raid continued to rise.

  Hamid Karzai

  On 24 August, with several investigations under way but not yet complete, the Afghan Commando battalion commander was “suspended.” That evening, in a report on FOX News, I noted that neither cameraman Chris Jackson nor I saw any noncombatants killed and that “the Taliban and their supporters are running a very effective propaganda campaign to discredit coalition efforts. Exaggerated claims of damage often result in demands for more money in compensation.”

  The next day the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan concluded that ninety civilians were killed during the raid at Aziz Abad. Then, as we were departing for Herat, we were informed the government in Kabul was offering $200,000 to settle the claims and was planning new restrictions on Special Operations Commando missions. In fact, the Special Operations units with which we had been embedded, were ordered to “stand down” and did not perform another mission for more than forty-five days afterward.

  The mission accomplished one thing spectacularly well—highlighting the need for the Coalition to do a better job in the media battle space—something that, unfortunately, still has plenty of room for improvement. But for those who participated in the mission, there is no doubt—the raid at Aziz Abad was yet another instance of brave men doing a dangerous and thankless job in the shadows of the Hindu Kush to rid the world of the kind of men who would fly airplanes into buildings full of real, not imaginary, innocent people.

  In another sad development that highlights the level of corruption within the Afghan government, the informer who passed the information about the whereabouts of the Taliban safe house was reportedly arrested and sentenced to death by an Afghan court several months later. Proving once again that many times the most dangerous enemies our troops face may not be in the Taliban, but those who reside in the halls of power.

  Prisoners of the Taliban liberated by U.S. Special Operations forces

  “If not for such men, we would be at the mercy of every demon.”—MICHAEL YON

  THE HEART OF A HERO

  BEN KOPP

  Ben Kopp knew what a hero looked like. After all, his great grandfather was an infantryman in World War II and from an early age, he and Ben were buddies. The two were very close and Ben loved to try and pry a war story out of the man who, like most of his generation, preferred not to talk about it.

  When his great grandfather passed away in April of 2001, Ben was devastated. A few months later when terrorists attacked America, Ben decided the best way to honor the memory of his hero was to become one himself—at the age of thirteen, the Rosemount, New Mexico, native announced that he planned to become an Army Ranger.

  Ben Kopp in Afghanistan

  Ben was a scrappy kid—possessed of a kind of frenetic energy that makes parents pull their hair out and wonder how the boy will survive to finish high school. At fourteen he and his buddies decided to play army and soon got into a brutal firefight with each other—using BB guns. At the height of the battle, Ben was sounding the battle cry when he was hit by enemy fire—in the mouth. The small metal pellet miraculously missed his teeth and embedded itself under the skin. He somehow hid the injury from his mother for weeks and when he finally told her about it, the doctor she hired said it wasn’t worth taking it out. So from then on he lived with a metal pellet inside his tongue. True to form, he used the anomaly to his advantage with the ladies, claiming it made him a better kisser.

  His senior year of high school, Ben kept his oath and joined the Army under the delayed entry program. One month after graduation, he headed for basic training.

  There, Ben found the purpose for which he was created. The military fit him—he had a talent for it the way some have an aptitude for baseball or music. He loved the camaraderie, the constant challenge to be better than you were yesterday. Even the discipline it imposed was good for him, though submitting to authority went against his nature.

  He sailed through Airborne school and the Ranger indoctrination program. The day he earned his tan beret was one of the proudest moments of his life. It was a hard-won honor he’d wanted for years. After graduation, he reported to the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment at Fort Benning, Georgia.

  The Ranger Regiment on a war footing left no room for relationships, however, so Ben chose to stay unencumbered as he fought through two deployments to Iraq. Between deployments he attended the grueling sixty-one-day Ranger school. During the mountain phase of training, he had his first brush with failure and found himself being “recycled,” held back one cycle and given a second chance to make it with the following class. It sparked some deep reflection about the kind of man Ben wanted to be. With some time to kill before he could join the next class, a dog-eared book left behind by a previous student caught his eye. The book talked about leadership and the parallels between the life of an elite solider and the life of a Christian. It got him thinking about the things he loved most about the Rangers, being a part of something greater than himself, being a force for good in the world. He realized God’s plan for his life was even bigger than the Rangers, bigger than the Army. By the time he successfully graduated Ranger school and pinned on the black and gold Ranger tab, Ben was already on a new mission—one that would continue into eternity.

  He grew during his time in Ranger school. He matured physically, emotionally, and spiritually. He made a note in his journal that illustrated his new found purpose. It reads, “God is more concerned with who I am becoming than with what I am doing . . . there is something inherently noble in choosing to put oneself in the line of fire to save a brother.” The next line in the notebook indicates he’d found a new hero to emulate: “Christ put himself on the line for the very people who were against him.”

  Pages from the journal of Ben Kopp

  Ben Kopp in Afghanistan


  His next trip to the war zone would provide ample opportunity to put into practice those convictions.

  In 2009 Iraq was winding down and the war was heating up in the shadows of the Hindu Kush. Ben’s company deployed once again—this time to Afghanistan.

  Because of the nature of some of the Tier One units with which the Rangers work, an ongoing need for operational security makes it impossible to release most of the details regarding that deployment. It is known that Ben’s unit participated in dozens of important and high-risk missions, in which the newly tabbed Ranger demonstrated the leadership abilities he learned in Ranger school while acting as a gun team leader.

  Then two weeks before he was due to return stateside, a call for help came in from a Special Ops reconnaissance team that had been compromised and was taking heavy fire from a large number of Taliban fighters in the southern Helmand province. Ben was part of the Ranger Quick Reaction Force that scrambled to go to the aid of the beleaguered team. They rushed to the sound of the guns and plunged into the firefight, suppressing the enemy so the recon team could make it safely away. Ben was awarded a Bronze Star with Valor for his actions that day. According to the citation, he exposed himself to heavy, close range enemy fire in order to save his comrades. In the process, he took a bullet in the leg.

  The Rangers’ first-rate medical evacuation system swung into action. Ben was placed aboard a medevac helicopter and flown to a nearby hospital. He was rushed to FOB Dwyer, and doctors there performed two surgeries to try and repair the damage. From there he went to Bagram Airbase, and then Landstuhl, Germany. A day later he was flown to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The doctors kept him in an induced coma and performed more operations to try and save him, but in the end, Ben had simply lost too much blood. A week after he was wounded and with his mother, Jill Stephenson, now by his bedside, the terrible news came that Ben was not going to make it.

  But he wasn’t done being a hero. Not by a long shot.

  Every Ranger fills out a form before each trip to the war zone specifying his wishes in the event he is killed in combat. Ben indicated on his form that he would like his organs donated, if possible. Specifying which organs he would like to donate, he wrote simply, “any that are needed.”

  Judy Meikle was a fifty-seven-year-old woman from Winnetka, Illinois, who suffered from poor circulation all her adult life. An active lover of the outdoors, she woke up one morning in 2008 and couldn’t breathe. A trip to the hospital brought the bad news that her heart was failing. She needed a heart transplant.

  A year later, an acceptable match had yet to be found and Judy was running out of time.

  One of Judy’s friends happened to be a first cousin of Ben’s mother and made mention of her need on a post to an Internet guest book set up to honor Ben’s memory.

  Though she was wracked with grief at the loss of her son, Jill Stephenson saw that post, and in it a chance for Ben to live on in more than memory. On July 20, the day after they turned off the machine that was keeping his body alive, Ben Kopp saved Judy Meikle’s life.

  Judy Meikle, recipient of Ben Kopp’s heart

  Jill Stephenson with her son, Ben Kopp

  Now with the heart of a twenty-one-year-old Ranger beating in her chest, Judy’s circulation problems are a thing of the past. And while she might not be able to run a six-minute mile—yet—she feels a deep sense of gratitude and responsibility to live her life, like Ben did, according to that tenet of the Ranger creed that states “one-hundred percent, and then some.”

  Doctors said Ben’s other organs and tissues could end up saving as many as seventy lives. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. His mother made sure Ben received his other last request—a flyover of U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters at his funeral.

  Five months after his death, the wife of one of Ben’s Ranger buddies was going through his digital camera and found this photo of Ben, smiling in the back of a Humvee in Afghanistan. Because she had never seen it before, Jill Stephenson likes to imagine the photo came from heaven and Ben sent it to let her know how happy he is there.

  Jill Stephenson at Ben’s memorial service, holding his journal

  Ben Kopp in the back of a Humvee, taken in Afghanistan

  Col North with DEA FAST Alpha

  DEA FAST “ALPHA”

  KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN

  Hulking outlines of four Mi-17 helicopters were all that occupied the “Green Ramp” in front of Kandahar International Airport when we arrived in a convoy of Toyota pickups packed to the gunnels with heavily armed Special Operators. All was dark except for the muted reds and greens of their penlights as they hopped out onto the cool tarmac and began final checks of their gear. They spoke in hushed tones, standing in small groups until the American pilots arrived and fired up auxiliary power units to perform their pre-flight checks.

  Most of the Americans wore full, bushy beards, though their athletic bulk would certainly keep the average operator from being mistaken for an Afghan. The dozen or so Afghan Commandos present wore no facial hair. At least a half-dozen different uniforms could be seen: Green Berets who worked as trainers for the commandos wore the same uniforms as their Afghan counterparts, while the American Special Ops unit that made up the bulk of the force, wore Marine MARPAT uniforms. Others wore specially modified multicam and everyone customized their kit to fit their own needs.

  For the past two weeks, our FOX News crew wasn’t actually embedded with the military. Instead, we’d been following the exploits of what is arguably the most highly specialized group of federal law enforcement officers on the U.S. payroll—agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s FAST units.

  FAST—Foreign-deployed Assistance and Support Team. It sounds innocuous, even harmless. It isn’t. All FAST members are experienced DEA special agents who volunteer for the program. FAST teams deploy around the world in support of counter-drug efforts by friendly host nations, with a mission set very similar to that of the Green Berets—a team of ten men advising their host-nation counterparts, gathering intelligence, and assisting with direct action when necessary.

  FAST Alpha patch

  It’s no surprise the DEA is very active in Afghanistan, considering the country produces ninety percent of the world’s illegal supply of opium. The Taliban movement, cynically preaching a purer brand of Islam is actually a narco-insurgency, little different from the FARC in Colombia or a Mexican drug cartel. The DEA is in Afghanistan to break the Taliban’s opium-money-corruption-terror link.

  DEA FAST units of eight agents, a team leader, and an Intel specialist rotate through Afghanistan on one-hundred-twenty-day deployments and bring to the fight their own air wing as well as an intelligence-gathering capability second to none. This makes them very valuable to the Special-Ops community.

  We launched on the mission eight years to the day since terrorists trained in Afghanistan killed nearly three thousand innocent people back at home. The thirty-five Special Operators who climbed aboard three Soviet-era Mi-17 helicopters just before first light could think of no better way to mark the anniversary. It was something these men would never forget and if they had anything to say about it, neither would the Taliban.

  It was a capture-kill mission on the compound of a Taliban kingpin southwest of Kandahar. Experience told them wherever drugs were present, usually there would be arms and explosives for supporting the insurgency. It was something they called “the nexus” and FAST units have targeted these drug-terror kingpins with good success. Every kilo of heroin they confiscated and destroyed is money out of the Taliban’s war chest. And they are getting very good at finding the drugs.

  But the Taliban and their supporters are getting smarter, too. The insurgents have learned to plant IEDs and mines around potential landing zones. Lieutenant Dan Cnossen, a Navy SEAL, on his fourth combat deployment stepped on a mi
ne as he disembarked from a helicopter during a night insertion.

  The explosion nearly tore him in half, traumatically amputating both his legs. Braving more hidden mines all around, the SEAL corpsmen rushed to his aid and was able to stop the bleeding and save his life. Though every young person going into a fight wants to believe, “that won’t happen to me”—the wise warrior knows it can happen to anyone.

  We sped down the runway at Kandahar and took off into the first hint of morning and soon the Mi-17 pilots were flying so low and so fast it seemed as though we were driving to the target. Looking out the open rear door of the helicopter, I could see the helo behind us skimming along a field of poppies low enough to harvest it, then pull up to clear the mud wall of the farmer’s compound. There could be no question they are incredibly skilled and more than a little crazy.

  Poppy fields in Afghanistan where opium is grown

  With FAST Alpha team leader Carson Ulrich

  Twelve minutes later we got the signal. One minute out. Every man passed it to the man behind him and all began final preparations, checking weapons and adjusting gear one last time. I made sure my camera was on standby and said a quick prayer for the safety of the team.