Secret US anti-terror group reported to be active in Phl

WASHINGTON – A secret US military organization rivaling the CIA has mounted intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in countries including the Philippines with which the United States is not at war, The Washington Post reported.

Created in 1980, this secretive group known as the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has grown from 1,800 troops prior to 9/11 (Sept. 11, 2001) when al-Qaeda terrorists toppled New York’s Twin Towers with hijacked airplanes to as many as 25,000, a number that fluctuates according to its mission.

JSOC’s core includes the Army’s Delta Force, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron and the 75th Ranger Regiment, the Post said.

It said in an executive order on Sept. 16, 2003 that then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made the JSOC the center of the US counterterrorism universe.

The order listed 15 countries and the activities permitted under various scenarios and gave the JSOC the pre-approvals required to carry them out.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, lethal action against al-Qaeda was granted without additional approval.

In other countries – among them Algeria, Iran, Malaysia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia and Syria – JSOC forces needed the tacit approval from the country involved or at least a sign-off from higher up on the American chain of command, the Post said in an article on Sunday entitled “Top Secret America Stealth Missions“ by Dana Priest and William Arkin.

“In the Philippines, for example, JSOC could undertake psychological operations to confuse or trap al-Qaeda operatives, but it needed approval from the White House for lethal action,” the article said.

America’s largely quiet role in helping the Philippines battle terrorists became evident after US missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham were kidnapped in May 2001 and held for ransom for more than a year by the Abu Sayyaf Group.

The Atlantic monthly magazine in its cover story in March 2007 said the US played a crucial role in finding and killing ASG leader Abu Sabaya by supplying him with a bugged satellite telephone and tracking his movements with unmanned Predators.

Abu Sabaya was reportedly killed during an offshore clash with military Filipino commandos near Zamboanga in June 2002, just days after a botched rescue of the Burnhams. His body was never found.

Gracia Burnham was rescued after 377 days in captivity but her husband and another captive, Filipino nurse Edibora Yap, were killed during a bloody rescue by government soldiers. 

Gracia recounted her ordeal in a book, “In the Presence of My Enemies.”

In December 2007 a Filipino judge convicted and handed down life sentences to each of the 14 Abu Sayyaf terrorists accused of kidnapping the Burnhams and 18 others at the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan in May 2001.

The JSOC takes its orders directly from the president or the secretary of defense and is managed and overseen by a military-only chain of command, the Post article said.

It said the president has given JSOC the rare authority to select individuals for its kill list – and then to kill, rather than capture them.

Under President George W. Bush, JSOC’s operations were rarely briefed to Congress in advance – and usually not afterward – because government lawyers considered them to be “traditional military activities” not requiring such notification, the Post said.

President Barack Obama has taken the same legal view, but has insisted that JSOC’s sensitive missions be briefed to select congressional leaders.

JSOC routinely sends small teams in civilian clothes to US embassies to help with what it calls media and messaging campaigns, the Post said.