The story behind ‘Task Force Violence’

[CommunityEditor]

They were supposed to be the fewest of the Few and Proud, quiet professionals trained for sticky covert missions. So when Marine Special Operations Company-Fox, the first of the Corps’ new spec ops units to deploy for combat operations, left for Afghanistan in early 2007, the Corps expected nothing less than total success.

Then the unit bent every rule that wouldn’t break, ticked off every commander in the theater and local population, violated direct orders, caused an international incident, allegedly killed as many as 19 Afghan civilians and wounded dozens more. “They were just acting like a bunch of cowboys,” said one source inside Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, which became Fox Company’s higher command when the unit arrived in Afghanistan in late February 2007. So the Army sent the whole unit packing.

The story so far
Much of what is known about the failure of Fox Company, and of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command that sent them abroad, centers around a March 4, 2007, attack on a Marine convoy in Nangarhar province. Hit with a car bomb while returning from a mission, the Marines say they were trapped in a complex ambush by attacking insurgents and had to shoot their way out.

Others, including witnesses and an independent review commission, dispute that account. They accuse the Marines of shooting at nearly everything that moved, killing and wounding dozens over 10 miles in an attempt to get away from the attack site. When the Marines were kicked out of Afghanistan on April 3 by Army Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney, the top special operations commander in the theater, the Army apologized for the Marines’ behavior, paid compensation to the victims’ families and tried to put the events behind them.

Marine supporters cried foul, however. Interservice rivalry and mistrust rushed Army leaders to judgment, they said. But at a special court of inquiry, a rarely used military investigative proceeding conducted over three weeks in January at Camp Lejeune, N.C., it became apparent that Fox Company’s failure was not limited to a single incident. The inquiry was designed to determine whether Fox Company’s commander, Maj. Fred Galvin, and one of his platoon commanders, Capt. Vincent Noble, should be charged criminally for lying, conspiring to lie, dereliction of duty and failure to obey lawful orders. About a third of the three-week hearing was classified and conducted behind closed doors. But interviews with sources familiar with the details paint the classified portions of the hearing as the most damning for the Marines involved.

The full story of the deployment — pieced together from media reports, official statements, public testimony and interviews with troops who witnessed the meltdown — depicts Fox Company as a fledgling unit suffering from an identity crisis, gung-ho to make a name for itself, trigger-happy and even careless.

MarSOC commanders have had little to say about the issue, citing the ongoing investigations. They did not respond to requests for interviews. Now, a panel of three senior Marine officers — two colonels and a lieutenant colonel — must decide what’s next for Galvin and Noble. They will make their recommendation to Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command, who will decide what happens next.

Getting there
To some, it was a miracle that Task Force Violence, the nickname Galvin gave to his unit, made it to Afghanistan at all. As ships carrying Fox Company and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit steamed into the theater, it was clear the spec ops company had been sent out on its maiden deployment with little support.

Catching a ride into theater with the MEU, Fox Company didn’t have everything — or everyone — it needed. The 26th MEU commander, Col. Greg Sturdevant, recognized the deficiencies, but the problems were not his to fix. He told the court, for example, that the unit had vehicles, but no wrench turners; radios, but no repairmen. In his testimony, Sturdevant said Galvin made repeated pleas for more support from MarSOC, but with no luck. Sturdevant said Galvin eventually asked if he could spare support Marines to go with Fox Company when the units separated in Djibouti. Sturdevant said the MEU could not help.

Army Maj. Derik Erickson, a logistician with Army Special Operations Command, was tasked to Fox Company after the unit arrived in Afghanistan in early February. “They hit country with no support,” he told the court. Fox Company was assigned to a camp that hadn’t been occupied for some time and was plagued with electrical problems, such as generators that sometimes did not work. It was Erickson’s job to get Fox Company supplies — everything from food to tools for its one mechanic. Erickson said CJSOTF-A, U.S. Special Operations Command and MarSOC all let Fox Company down. The unit was set up for failure, he said.

Task force leaders hadn’t asked for the Marines and believed the untested Fox Company had been pushed onto them. That the company showed up without a support element, Erickson said, only “enhanced the animosity.” The Marines could tell they were in hostile territory. Fox Company executive officer Capt. Robert Olson was part of the company’s advance party to Afghanistan to talk with CJSOTF-A leaders. He didn’t feel welcome. Fox Company was greeted like it was “a bit of a nuisance,” he said. He asked questions, but “didn’t get a clear answer on a lot of things that I considered fairly critical.”

‘Outside of their battle space’
Showing up unprepared, unwanted and inexperienced didn’t stop Fox Company from being ambitious. “They needed to prove themselves, and they weren’t going to let anyone get in their way,” Maj. Phillip Sanchez, one of the Marine lawyers prosecuting the case, said during closing arguments. “Their boots don’t even have the dust of Afghanistan on them, and they’re already worried about whether they had time to kill somebody,” Sanchez said. “They had trained too hard not to be able to prove themselves.”

Sanchez said Galvin had dubbed Fox Company “Task Force Violence” because it fit his personal philosophy of war. “War is violence, and if you are not doing violence, you are not fighting the war,” Sanchez said during the hearing, characterizing Galvin’s ideology. MarSOC commanders didn’t like the nickname and twice told Galvin to change it. It is unclear if he ever obeyed that command. Indeed, instead of heeding commands by CJSOTF-A leaders to get familiar with his area of operations, Galvin “shopped for missions” immediately, Sanchez told the court. One field-grade Army officer present in eastern Afghanistan at the time said the Marines were undone on two counts: “the issue of competence and the issue of integrity. ... The trust and confidence in these guys eroded.” At first, he said, U.S. commanders gave Galvin the benefit of the doubt. Soon after, however, they concluded he was “intentionally deceiving” them.

A big issue was that the Marines seemed to be dissatisfied with the reconnaissance missions that the Army commanders envisioned for them, even though the Marines, with their heavy Force Recon background, were supposed to be reconnaissance experts. “They resisted it and kept wanting to go do the direct [action] missions,” he said. They strayed from their area, looking for bad guys. “They never went in their assigned battle space,” the field-grade Army officer said. “They were always looking for missions outside of their battle space.”

Another source assigned to CJSOTF-A at the time said Fox Company infuriated the CJSOTF-A commander, Army Col. Chris Haas, with an apparent disregard for task force rules and procedures. “What really started all this was the Marines trying to circumvent proper procedure for their actions,” the source said. “They wouldn’t call in when there was a ‘troops in contact.’”

The Marines took to leaving their base near Jalalabad “disguised as Afghans,” the source said. “This was in direct violation of Colonel Haas’ instructions not to do so unless he cleared them, and he was not about to clear anybody to go outside the post not in military uniform.”

Another issue that riled Haas, according to the CJSOTF-A source, was that the Marines filed battle plans with the CJSOTF-A headquarters, “and then they were doing something completely different from what their plans said.” The source said it appeared that when the Marines filed their op orders, they already intended to conduct the operations differently from their stated plans.

Testifying before the court of inquiry, Col. John Nicholson, commander of 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, at the time, said Galvin’s company also strayed into his battle space without notice, violating standard courtesies between units in Afghanistan. Nicholson said he briefed Galvin that the standard protocol was for special operators to inform him of their plans to conduct missions within his battle space. Instead, he told the court, Galvin classified his operations so his requests would go directly to CJSOTF-A, skirting Nicholson.

“There had been potentially 25 operations in my AO that I, as a commander, was not aware of,” Nicholson said during testimony. So when he heard about a bloody shootout March 4 in Nangarhar province, Nicholson was surprised to hear that a platoon from Fox Company was involved. “My initial reaction was, ‘What are they doing out there?’” he said.

March 4
See the full article for the remainder of the story [/size][/color][/b](http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news...marsoc_080215/)

March 9
Five days after the shootout, on March 9, things again fell apart for Fox Company.
See the full article for the remainder of the story (http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news...arsoc_080215/)

[The Universal Curmudgeon_guest]

Originally Posted by CommunityEditor

They were supposed to be the fewest of the Few and Proud, quiet professionals trained for sticky covert missions. So when Marine Special Operations Company-Fox, the first of the Corps’ new spec ops units to deploy for combat operations, left for Afghanistan in early 2007, the Corps expected nothing less than total success.

Fear not, some E-5 will end up carrying the can for all the failings.

[jaymarine1775]

[quote=CommunityEditor;77843][i]Marine supporters cried foul, however. Interservice rivalry and mistrust rushed Army leaders to judgment, they said. But at a special court of inquiry, a rarely used military investigative proceeding conducted over three weeks in January at Camp Lejeune, N.C., it became apparent that Fox Company’s failure was not limited to a single incident. The inquiry was designed to determine whether Fox Company’s commander, Maj. Fred Galvin, and one of his platoon commanders, Capt. Vincent Noble, should be charged criminally for lying, conspiring to lie, dereliction of duty and failure to obey lawful orders. About a third of the three-week hearing was classified and conducted behind closed doors. But interviews with sources familiar with the details paint the classified portions of the hearing as the most damning for the Marines involved.







So that gives a commander the right to talk about an investigation on the news before it is even complete. I guess that gives another commander not part of MARSOCs chain the right to apologize about the incident and put it on world news. Yet the Marine Supporters are being accused of crying inter-service rivalry and mistrust. Their not crying their telling it like it is. Fox Company didn't fail the chain of command above them failed. Fox Company is simple paying the price for others incompetence. Despite the lack of support, thy made do with what thy had and still conducted missions and didn't complain about the conditions at their FOB.

[The Universal Curmudgeon_guest]

Originally Posted by jaymarine1775

So that gives a commander the right to talk about an investigation on the news before it is even complete.

If "a highly placed White House source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter" can reveal OPSEC matters (and they do it on a regular basis) why not?

Originally Posted by jaymarine1775

I guess that gives another commander not part of MARSOCs chain the right to apologize about the incident and put it on world news.

It probably does if the MARSOC unit has been placed "under command" and in the chain that the seniour officer inhabits.

Originally Posted by jaymarine1775

Yet the Marine Supporters are being accused of crying inter-service rivalry and mistrust.

Are they now? Or are "the Marine Supporters" simply having the fact that they are in absolute denial pointed out to them?

Originally Posted by jaymarine1775

Their not crying their telling it like it is.

If you mean by "as it is" that Fox Company was - according to the evidence so far - ill trained, improperly motivated, poorly led, and (generally speaking) about as close to being out of control as a unit can get without actually engaging in a mutiny, yes. If, on the other hand, you mean by "as it is" that Fox Company didn't do anything wrong and that the whole thing is a pack of lies concocted by left=wing, socialist, commie, unAmerican, traitors, no.

Originally Posted by jaymarine1775

Fox Company didn't fail the chain of command above them failed.

I hate to tell you this, but "the chain of command" doesn't stop at battalion level. The "chain of command" includes the Company Commander, the Company 2ic, the CSM, the Platoon commanders, the Platoon 2ics, the Platoon Sergeants, the Sergeants, the Corporals, the Lance Corporals, and the Privates. There were - according to the evidence so far - failings at the Private level, failings at the Lance Corporal level, failings at the Sergeant level, failings at the Platoon Sergeant level, failings at the Platoon 2ic level, failings at the Platoon Command level, failings at the CSM level, failings at the Company 2ic level, and failings at the Company command level.

True there were failings at the Battalion and higher level, but don't forget whose fingers were actually on the triggers and who was supposed to have a grip on their troops.

Originally Posted by jaymarine1775

Fox Company is simple paying the price for others incompetence.

Boo Hoo. Fox Company is also paying the price for the incompetence at the Company command level, the Company 2ic level, the CSM level, the Platoon command level, the Platoon 2ic level, the Platoon Sergeant level, the Sergeant level, the Corporal level, the Lance Corporal level, and the Private level.

There wasn't a single one who hadn't taken LOAC classes and been certified as knowing what the Laws of War were.

Originally Posted by jaymarine1775

Despite the lack of support, thy made do with what thy had and still conducted missions and didn't complain about the conditions at their FOB.

I hate to tell you this, but the purpose of going to war is to win the war and not simply to kill everyone in sight. If you piss off "the locals" because they see you as a bunch of murderous jackasses, you don't help to win the war - regardless of how many of "the locals" you kill.

The question is NOT "Did they conduct missions?" the question IS "Did they conduct the right missions in the right way so that they achieved the right results?".

If the Company command doesn't know what "the right results" are, then they shouldn't be conducting ANY missions until they do.

[technomage1]

Originally Posted by The Universal Curmudgeon_guest

Fear not, some E-5 will end up carrying the can for all the failings.

I don't know, this is pretty serious. I'm thinking they're going to fry an E-6 to set the example on this one.

[jaymarine1775]

Originally Posted by The Universal Curmudgeon_guest

If "a highly placed White House source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter" can reveal OPSEC matters (and they do it on a regular basis) why not?

So your trying to tell me that commander didn't get on the news and make comments about the civilians killed when it was commander who spoke to the news. It wasn't a highly placed white house source who put it on the news. It was a commander speaking before the investigation was complete.

Originally Posted by The Universal Curmudgeon_guest

It probably does if the MARSOC unit has been placed "under command" and in the chain that the senior officer inhabits.

And the officer who made the apology wasn't in their chain of command. He owned the battle space thy were in when the civilians got killed, so no it doesn't give him the right to go on the news with an apology. By the way that wasn't a highly placed source who spoke to the news it was the brigade commander.

Originally Posted by The Universal Curmudgeon_guest

Are they now? Or are "the Marine Supporters" simply having the fact that they are in absolute denial pointed out to them?
If you mean by "as it is" that Fox Company was - according to the evidence so far - ill trained, improperly motivated, poorly led, and (generally speaking) about as close to being out of control as a unit can get without actually engaging in a mutiny, yes. If, on the other hand, you mean by "as it is" that Fox Company didn't do anything wrong and that the whole thing is a pack of lies concocted by left=wing, socialist, commie, unAmerican, traitors, no.

Now your getting off the point, I never said Fox Company didn't do anything thy weren't suppose to out do out their. But when other incidents, and their were major incidents involving other spec ops units out their don't reach the news and the Fox Company one does, which also drew out the other spec ops units incidents. That does smell of inter-service rivalry and mistrust, to put it simply it smells of unprofessionalism, including CJSOTF-A wanting to be vague with information and not give answers to Fox Company's advance party. Another thing, you don't have the after action report of all their missions to say weather thy were ill-trained or not. You have assumptions from a single convoy which you still don't know what all happened.

Originally Posted by The Universal Curmudgeon_guest

I hate to tell you this, but "the chain of command" doesn't stop at battalion level. The "chain of command" includes the Company Commander, the Company 2ic, the CSM, the Platoon commanders, the Platoon 2ics, the Platoon Sergeants, the Sergeants, the Corporals, the Lance Corporals, and the Privates. There were - according to the evidence so far - failings at the Private level, failings at the Lance Corporal level, failings at the Sergeant level, failings at the Platoon Sergeant level, failings at the Platoon 2ic level, failings at the Platoon Command level, failings at the CSM level, failings at the Company 2ic level, and failings at the Company command level. True there were failings at the Battalion and higher level, but don't forget whose fingers were actually on the triggers and who was supposed to have a grip on their troops.

Please tell me what evidence says thy were failing at the Sgt, Cpl, and LCpl level. All you know is that CJSOTF-A regulations and rules weren't being followed. Orders come down not up. You don't have a leg to stand on to say anything about the platoons when you don't know what was going on at their level or how their mission performance was. So, you were on the highway to know what the trigger pullers did or didn't do, please tell me. And don't try tot tell me thy didn't stand up to their Company commander when CJSOTF-A rules and reg were broken because you don't know if the Platoon and lower levels were informed of all the rules and regs.

Originally Posted by The Universal Curmudgeon_guest

Boo Hoo. Fox Company is also paying the price for the incompetence at the Company command level, the Company 2ic level, the CSM level, the Platoon command level, the Platoon 2ic level, the Platoon Sergeant level, the Sergeant level, the Corporal level, the Lance Corporal level, and the Private level.

So you were out their to tell what thy did or didn't do at the platoon and lower level. Go ahead enlighten me.

Originally Posted by The Universal Curmudgeon_guest

There wasn't a single one who hadn't taken LOAC classes and been certified as knowing what the Laws of War were.
I hate to tell you this, but the purpose of going to war is to win the war and not simply to kill everyone in sight. If you piss off "the locals" because they see you as a bunch of murderous jackasses, you don't help to win the war - regardless of how many of "the locals" you kill. The question is NOT "Did they conduct missions?" the question IS "Did they conduct the right missions in the right way so that they achieved the right results?"If the Company command doesn't know what "the right results" are, then they shouldn't be conducting ANY missions until they do.

Once again you seem to know something about all the missions thy performed. So tell me what missions did thy perform out their and what were the results? I don't question what CJSOTF-A rules and regulations Fox company didn't follow, I question the professionalism and tact of the CJSOTF-A commander and handling of the investigation. Some leader he was to talk about ongoing investigations on the news and then to not even equip Fox Company with the information thy needed when their advance party got their. Even you know this was a vindictive move by the CJSOTF-A commander because thy weren't wanted in the first place. You were an officer, did you sell your soldiers out on the news if thy did something did you not give them information thy needed for the job? So at those levels of platoon and lower you mention so much the mistakes started above them and went down.

Good to see unbiased reporting. This is good reading.

It is also evidence of the results of misusing the military for police work. The infantry is trained to kill people and destroy their property in defense of the nation. It is abuse of the men to send them into situations where they can neither be trained to succeed, nor can they react properly to enforce the law in a lawless nation.

The civilian leadership of our nation has made a major error putting good men into these situations.

Ex-sergeant Nelson
1-506 Inf. 101st Airborne Div. Vietnam

Guys, before you read this post, if this does not apply let it fly. But seriously alot of you guys have legitimate posts and arguments. But I would ask you to be a little more educated about the subject before passing judgement like everyone else is. COmments like these men were "scared", "inexperienced", "untested"? These are ignorant and the writer of the article should be corrected for this. We are talking about operators that have been conducting direct action and recon operations for years. These are E-6's and E-7's as team leaders. They come from units made up of strictly alpha males who are trained and built to complete the mission. (see recon creed) They were put together to form an allstar team. Things happen out there and now everybody wants to blame them and initiate stereo-types that will only hinder the further standing up of Marsoc and the work they will be asked to do in the future.

Exactly. It's unbelievable to me that the editors of the Marine Corps Times allowed this biased tabloid-esque (see cover with melting Marine Corps Eagle Globe and Anchor symbol) piece to be published. I don't know what happened out there. But I suppose the editors of the Marine Corps Times determined, maybe over snacks, that Trista Talton and Sean Naylor had better access to the facts than the on-going Court on Inquiry (which has first-hand access to all witnesses, testimony, investigators and evidence), which was put in place to inquire and determine if further proceedings are even warranted. I wonder what the fall out will be if these Marines, who according to the tabloid cover "shamed the Marine Corps," are clearly vindicated by the Court of Inquiry or any further proceedings. Regardless, I'll never spend another cent on the "Marine Corps Times," and am deeply offended and troubled by the prominent display of this publication in military exchanges. Put it next to the National Enquirer at Safeway.

[The Universal Curmudgeon_guest]

Originally Posted by technomage1

I don't know, this is pretty serious. I'm thinking they're going to fry an E-6 to set the example on this one.

No, it's MUCH more serious than that. They'll fry at least TWO E-6s and and E-5.