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The Wars Of Delta Force

For more than 25 years, Delta Force has quietly kept America’s deadliest enemies at bay. The unit’s movements are so secretive, in fact, that Army brass won’t officially acknowledge it even exists. So we went to founding member Eric Haney for the inside dope on a quarter century of shadow warfare.

Eric Haney has always been a soldier. After growing up poor in rural Georgia, he enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and began compiling an impressive service record. At just 22, Haney became platoon sergeant. Two years later, he joined the Army Rangers, where he continued to excel. As he came to the end of his successful hitch in the elite unit, he knew he was a prime candidate to become an instructor. But he wanted action. For the next eight years, action was exactly what he got.

The Beginning

1977: The world’s been plagued by a new wave of terrorism—and the U.S. hasn’t been immune. Sixteen American tourists were killed inside Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in 1972, the American ambassador to Sudan was murdered in 1973 by Yasir Arafat’s Black September group, and 10 airplane hijackings are attempted here every year. In response, the U.S. creates 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment: Delta in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

My battalion commander called me in for a meeting with a man I’d never met. He was dressed in civilian clothes and wouldn’t give me his name; he simply asked if I wanted to try out for a new unit. He promised dangerous work with no recognition. I signed up on the spot.

The initial weeding-out process at Fort Bragg consisted of weeks of long-distance running, hiking, swimming, and other drills. After one fast 18-mile march where we had to carry at least 40 pounds of equipment, one man got blisters…bad. When he finally removed his boots, the soles of his feet ripped right off.

That was before the worst part—days of tough tracking over high ridges, culminating in a one-day, 40-mile race through some of the hardest mountain country I’d ever seen. By the end I felt like someone had beaten my feet with a bat. Of the 163 soldiers who showed up the first day, only 12 of us made it in the end.

When we reported for training, a man named Charlie Beckwith briefed us. He’d served overseas with the British SAS, and he didn’t hide the fact that what we were doing would be dangerous. “You gotta kill,” he said. “We ain’t making cornflakes here.” We drilled for eight hours every day, firing thousands of rounds, shredding target after target. We practiced breaking into all kinds of rooms and airplane cabins; we even interviewed escape artists and thieves at high-security federal pens to learn their secrets.

None of that prepared us for the live-fire drills. We had rooms filled with dummies representing hostages and terrorists. But Beckwith had us take turns subbing in as live hostages. As bad as it was sitting in a chair waiting for the door to bang open and a storm of bullets to fly in, it was even worse to be on the other end, terrified of killing one of your friends. Believe it or not, no one died. It wasn’t that the test taught us accuracy—we already had that. The test gave us confidence. Once you can blow the heads off mannequins millimeters from a friend, you can charge into a room and do the same thing for a group of strangers.

Into Hostage Territory

1980: Iranian militants loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini have toppled the Shah’s pro-American government and stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, seizing 66 hostages. President Jimmy Carter secretly authorizes Delta Force to attempt a daring rescue. But a horrific refueling explosion kills five Air Force personnel and three marines before they even get to Tehran. The mission is scuttled, 52 hostages remain in captivity for 444 days, and Carter loses the election.

Military Ink Soldiers’ tattoos have meanings all their own. The Breakdown This soldier has earned his tats. First off, he successfully completed Special Forces training, hence the blue and yellow banner. The knife, crossed arrows, and sash are unique to the Army’s Special Forces Command and subordinate units. Its Latin motto means “Liberate from oppression.” Finally, the winged parachute signifies that he’s airborne certified.

My team was called to the Farm, a secret CIA base. We knew it would be a tough mission, and the intelligence was…well, I can’t even call it intelligence. The agency had wild stories about thousands of militants in the streets barricading the embassy. Our plan was to fly in on C-130 transport planes to Desert One, a transfer point in Iran about 100 miles from Tehran, where we’d switch to helicopters and fly to a spot 30 miles from the city. From there we’d take trucks to the embassy, sneak in a back entrance, kill the guards, and get the hostages. Then we’d blow a hole in the wall and run across the street to a soccer stadium. The helicopters would be waiting to take us back out, and everyone would go home.

But there were problems. The helos were always malfunctioning and had pilots who weren’t ready for this kind of mission. The Navy insisted we use them because they wanted a piece of the action. So we made a worst-case backup plan: Break into cars on the street, drive them out of town, and turn ourselves over to Soviet border guards. Sure, it sounds crazy, but being captured by the Soviets was a better option than being executed by the Iranians.

When we met the helicopters at Desert One, they’d just flown through a sandstorm, and the flight crews were disoriented and terrified. Some of them had already turned back. One of the helos had a cracked rotor, rendering it useless. We were ordered to abort the mission, so we got back on a C-130 while it was on the ground refueling helicopters. One helo detached from the C-130 and started to lift, but the pilot got disoriented in the swirling sand and drifted into the plane. When his rotor hit the plane’s fuselage, the helo flipped on top of the plane and exploded.

A shower of blue sparks and burning gasoline rushed down the cabin toward me. In a few seconds, the 20,000 pounds of fuel I was sitting on was going to explode. I was sure I’d never get out in time—but I decided to die trying. I scrambled to an open door and jumped, hitting the sand as twisted metal rained down around me and live ammunition and rockets fired into the air. The remaining C-130’s engines were already running, and it was low on fuel, so we had to move. We flew out, dumping supplies and getting ready for a water ditch in the Persian Gulf. Somehow we made it back to base on fumes.

If we’d had decent transportation, that mission had a 97 percent chance of succeeding. As it was, it didn’t take long for the debacle to get all over the news. We were told to take a vacation so that reporters couldn’t find us.

The Rescue that Never Came

1980: Spy satellites photograph what appears to be a prison camp in Laos, just across the border from Vietnam. The photos support rumors that some of the 1,800 American soldiers missing in action from the Vietnam War are still being held as POWs. While military intelligence gathers more info, Delta Force is mobilized for a rescue.

When our commander briefed us, he didn’t tell us much. But as we trained, a few things became clear: We’d insert near mountains, need to avoid satellite detection, and be flying low over the tree line. It became obvious that we were going after American POWs in Vietnam. And we knew we could get them out.

Eventually, we even made a training rescue of some Air Force pilots who were going through POW training. But one day, right after we finished our final drill, a retired lieutenant colonel named Bo Gritz appeared on television and told the world there were American POWs in Southeast Asia, and he was going to rescue them. His announcement put our mission on the shelf for 18 months. As we began training a second time, Gritz showed up again, this time at a press conference in Bangkok, saying he’d been getting ready in the jungle for the last 30 days. If you’ve been in the jungle that long, you’re yellow, bug-bitten, torn up, and sickly. Not him. He’d obviously been sitting in a bar the whole time. We were never able to bring the mission back after that. Due to the publicity, the POWs were probably executed.

I don’t think Gritz was deliberately sabotaging our mission, but I do believe he was manipulated to prevent us from going in. Someone wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having the world find out we’d left those guys behind. Years after the mission, I got to know a former high-ranking officer in the foreign service of the North Vietnamese government. He corroborated something I’d heard before: After the war we promised the North Vietnamese reconstruction funds in exchange for the return of our POWs. Only we never gave them the money. And they never gave us the POWs. When the mission was scuttled, everything changed. No one said it in public, but everyone in Delta thought, I know if I’m in an operation in Afghanistan and I get left behind, ain’t no one coming to get me.

Welcome to the Jungle

1981: Communist Sandinistas have seized power in Nicaragua and held control for two years; U.S. officials fear they will ally with Cuba and spread revolution to neighboring Honduras and beyond. President Ronald Reagan signs National Security Directive 17, authorizing secret financial and military support to anti-Sandinista forces in Nicaragua and Honduras. The money comes from the sale of weaponry to Iran. Six years later the U.S. Senate holds the Iran-Contra hearings to investigate.

I was in Honduras following an enemy guerrilla team through rugged scrub country. I was leading a team of Deltas, Honduran Special Forces, and Black Caribs—local tribesmen who were great trackers. “We want this unit obliterated,” my superiors told me at the briefing. “We want to make an example of them so they’ll never attempt this again.” There was an American within the guerrillas, but I wasn’t told who he was. I assumed he was a civilian, some shmuck playing revolutionary on his vacation. “Gentlemen leftists” often fought with the Sandinistas.

There was just one problem—the mission didn’t make any sense. First, how did the intelligence people know where the guerrillas were? Usually, you have to wait until guerrillas attack to spot them. Second, how did we know about the American? We’d need a source in the Sandinista government to get that kind of knowledge. Third, when a raiding party crosses the border, they usually jump in, do a mission, and jump out. These guys were driving deep into Honduras with no apparent aim.

After more than a week of hitting them at night and when they stopped to refill their canteens, we finally trapped them against the side of a mountain. We were weak and scorched by the sun, but they were worse; we listened in on their radio frequency as they desperately called for an airdrop of supplies. Their commanders responded with bullshit; the guerrillas were obviously being written off. The next day, at dawn, we closed in.

My team split up, one group advancing as the other pounded the enemy with gunfire. We cut up everything with the blasts, throwing in grenade after grenade. The guerrillas fought back, but they couldn’t break out. About 90 minutes into the fight, I spotted the leader 40 yards away next to his radioman. I put him in my scope and shot him through the neck. Resistance collapsed, but we kept firing for several more minutes just to be sure. As the Hondurans inspected the dead, I checked the guerrilla leader I’d shot. He was an American, all right—a Green Beret named David Arturo Baez. “Nicky” to his friends. I knew him.

My guess was the CIA had sent Nicky over as a spy to “join” the Sandinistas, then betrayed him in an attempt to start an all-out war. When I brought back the body, the CIA station chief was at the airfield. He was a real asshole. “Well done,” he said. “Who was he working for?” I yelled at him. “Was he one of yours?” The station chief gave me a wicked sneer but said nothing. So I hit him in the face. Hard. He went down, and I walked away. I never saw him again.

How to…Avoid an Ambush It’s called hostile territory for a reason, so don’t get caught in a trap. Beware of bottlenecks. If you see a stalled car, a dead animal, or any other kind of impromptu roadblock, it could be an ambush. If possible, turn the car around; if not, throw it in reverse and do some fancy driving. When stopped in traffic, make sure you can see the spot where the back wheels of the car in front of you touch the pavement. This will give you space to pull around in case another car tries to sandwich you from behind. If you do get caught in an ambush, your car is your best weapon. Keep it moving no matter what: Whatever your gut reaction is, it’s probably right—and better than being a sitting duck while you think it through. How to…be a Sniper The best way to shoot people is to make sure they never shoot back. Practice without a scope—all good snipers learn with “iron sights” to develop trigger control. Always try to shoot while lying on your belly; that way you can raise or lower your sight by inflating and deflating your lungs. Feel a slight tick jerking your aim? That’s your pulse, so shoot between heartbeats. Also, remember “lights low, sights low”—poor lighting makes targets appear higher and farther away than they are. Aim low to compensate. Draw in a breath and let half of it out before you shoot. This gives your body an extra oxygen boost, which actually improves your eyesight. Be sure to take the shot within eight seconds, or you’ll start to tremble from lack of air. How to…Shoot a Hidden Target Failure is not an option—so you’ll just have to play a little dirty. If an evildoer is hiding behind a car, take cover and look for his shadow or any sign of movement to determine where he’s crouching. The bad news: You won’t have a clear shot. The good news: You won’t need one. Aim at the pavement under the car so the bullet hits the ground as close to your opponent’s feet as possible. The idea is to skip the slug off the concrete into the guy’s ankle, shattering it and sending him sprawling. Use a Delta maneuver called the double tap: Wait a split second and fire a second shot at the same spot. It’ll hit your target in the torso or head as he crumples to the ground, killing him before he has a chance to sound the alarm.

Waiting to Kill

1982: Israeli forces move into Lebanon to drive out members of the PLO and the Syrian military. Chaos erupts as the Lebanese president-elect is assassinated and hundreds of Palestinians are killed in refugee camps. Beirut explodes with militia violence, and President Reagan sends in the Marines to stabilize the situation. During their occupation, U.S. forces come under constant attack, culminating in the October 23, 1983 terrorist bombing of the Marines barracks that kills 241 Americans.

Beirut was like Dodge City. Everything had shell holes. Syrian tanks and refugee villages were scattered around the airport, where the Marines had their barracks, and enemy snipers showed up to shoot at the soldiers. They hid themselves in crowds of children so the Marines could not fire back—if they’d drilled one of those guys, the bullet would have gone through him and hit a kid.

Delta Force came up with a new tactic. Instead of putting standard ammunition into the rifle, we loaded a very light bullet that flew with tremendous velocity. The thought was if we hit somebody with a light, high-speed bullet, it would dump all its energy into the body and stay there. We practiced by putting goats in front of sheets of whitewashed plywood, shooting them, and checking the wood for penetration.

One night my partner and I sneaked away from the barracks and burrowed into a pile of garbage and rubble in a field nearby. We stayed there for three days waiting for our chance. One of us was always watching everything through a spotting scope. That’s very fatiguing to the eye, so we rotated every half-hour. We couldn’t sleep, so whoever wasn’t on watch would lie in a trancelike state, forcing his muscles to relax while keeping his mind alert by mentally going over tasks. I would imagine assembling a rifle, part by part. We communicated by sign language.

We watched as people woke up, went to market, and fixed their cars. Kids played in the street and ran home for dinner. We even watched TV through someone’s living room window. There’s a problem called the Munich massacre syndrome, where you get so attached to the people you’re watching that you can’t take the shot. I always get uncomfortable seeing people’s private lives.

On the third day I spotted a crowd at just over 300 yards. In situations like these, we always made a range card—numbered locations with corresponding distances of where the enemy might show—so when something happened, we could tell each other quickly. “Action on four,” I said.

We picked up our rifles: two targets for two shooters, right in the crowd. We’d trained to shoot simultaneously. That way 10 men could fire at the same time and have it sound like one shot going off. “Snipers!” my partner said. “Ready…fire!” Both men went down before the sound of the shots even reached the crowd. Through my scope, for a split second, I could see a pink cloud of blood and tissue floating in the air where the person used to be. But there was no elation about it. It’s hard. It’s all hard.

Invading Paradise

1983: On the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard leads a radical Marxist coup. Citing the safety of 1,000 Americans on the island, President Reagan launches a 3,000-troop invasion less than two weeks later. After a brief firefight that claims the lives of 19 U.S. soldiers, the Marxists are defeated and a pro-American government eventually takes power.

We’d actually been training to invade Suriname. But after a CIA coup succeeded there, we used the same plan on Grenada. Our briefing revealed that there might be Grenadian political prisoners in an old penitentiary on the island, so we swept in at dawn. My team was packed into a Blackhawk helicopter, flying just over the tree line with the doors open. The bird was vibrating, and the wind was howling so loud you had to shout to make yourself heard. Then the gunfire hit.

It started out as short “Pow!” sounds until a big shell blasted our fire extinguisher to pieces, filling the bird with blinding white fog. People around me were getting hit by tracer fire, and parts of the helicopter were being shot off. I felt a sharp pain in my right leg, and my pants went wet. At first I thought I was bleeding to death. But it was only water—the bullet had shattered my canteen.

Up front the navigator got hit, and the wind whipped a fine, continuous spray of his blood into the cabin. The guy sitting next to me took a bullet that went right through the bottom of the helo and into his leg. He grimaced and reached down to feel the blood. When his hands came up, they were covered with a weird, gooey white substance. I’d never seen anything like that come out of a human body. “What the fuck is that?” I shouted.

He smelled it and looked relieved. “Toothpaste!”He’d had a tube in his pocket. The shell had gone into his leg, but he didn’t seem to be bleeding much. When we got right over the target, we could see it was abandoned. Someone shouted “Dry hole!” and we got the hell out of there. The helicopter got hit 150 times, and we had eight men wounded.

The toothpaste guy ended up doing fine. The bullet was a large Russian shell with a steel core. If it had hit him before punching through the helo, it would have taken his leg off. But its metal jacket peeled away, and the core that entered his leg was the size of a .22. It went through without hitting his femur or major arteries, making a black welt right under his skin. The guy borrowed a scalpel and cut the thing out himself. He didn’t even go to the hospital.

The Mission Continues

2004: Today U.S. forces are engaged in what is being called America’s first Special Operations war. CIA paramilitaries from the Special Activities Division lead the ground assault on Afghanistan. Delta operators on the ground use GPS-guided weapons to assure bombs are accurate to within three yards in Iraq. And Special Forces teams continue to train military allies and hunt terrorists in Georgia, Yemen, Pakistan, and the Philippines.

Maxim

At 51, I’m too old to be out in the field, but I hear from operators overseas pretty frequently. They don’t tell me anything that could get them in trouble, and I don’t ask. But I do know this: They’re happy. Their morale is good. We were upset after 9/11 because the senior leadership was still risk-averse. Delta operators were champing at the bit to go into Afghanistan, but the generals were holding back. Now the shackles are off. These guys don’t need pats on the back. They just need anonymity and someone with the cojones to let them do what they do best: hunt. Meanwhile, we’ve scored victories against Al Qaeda. The group made a huge leap in efficiency on 9/11—they took 19 people and killed thousands of us. Under our counterattack, they’ve become operationally ineffective, but the terrorists have gone through a winnowing process; the ones who’ve survived are more capable than ever.

I don’t understand why we haven’t done a thing about Iran. Until Al Qaeda, the Iranian regime was behind almost every act of terror directed at us. And there are other problems on the horizon. If the Pentagon forms its own intelligence corps, they may be able to conduct covert missions without reporting back to Congress. What happens if a rogue enters the picture? Here’s an example: Back in the ’80s, one of the staff officers told me, “We had some fucking colonel from the White House calling to deploy us on some crazy mission.” “Who was this guy?” I asked. “Some fruitcake named North. I told him, ‘Go piss up a rope. That’s not how it works.’”

There has to be a chain of command or things can get out of hand. As for me, I did kidnap rescues and protection jobs in the ’90s. I’ve also been working on the movie Spartan, about a Delta Force–like operator trying to rescue the president’s kidnapped daughter. I even have a bit role as the president. It comes out this spring.

People ask if I’m afraid some old enemy might come after me now that I’ve gone public. I don’t fear death. I’m not saying I won’t fight, though. If anyone ever tries to take me out, I can’t guarantee the outcome. But I do guarantee an exciting time.

As told to Paul Bibeau. The Wars Of Delta Force. Maxim. April 2004.

Weapons of Delta Force America's elite counter-terrorist organization, Delta Force, is a handpicked group of the U.S. Army's finest soldiers. The group specializes in hostage rescues and other difficult procedures to protect the lives of Americans throughout the world. Delta uses some of the most sophisticated weapons in the field today, and all are detailed in this book. Pistols, sniper rifles, special mission aircraft, fast attack vehicles, SCUBA and paratrooper gear, and more are presented in this fully illustrated account of our country's heroes and their tools of the trade.

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