In many ways the battle for Marawi has been a curious event which has seen bandits belonging to the allegedly ISIS affiliated Maute Group attacking a Muslim city in order to raise their public profile and demonstrate their power to the Philippine government. Philippine SOF units and Marines worked hard to cordon the enemy into a small neighborhood […]
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Tawi-Tawi: a nexus on the guns and terrorist underground railroad
Following my late night attendance of General Sabban‘s birthday party in Zamboanga, I met the general the following morning at the airport to catch a plane to Tawi-Tawi. I was pretty exhausted, but Sabban looked none of the worse for wear. I had been invited down to Tawi-Tawi for the activation anniversary of 2nd Marine […]
The CIA’s Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) network system
When Senator Dianne Feinstein took to the senate floor last year and accused the Central Intelligence Agency of spying on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), the very committee charged with oversight of the CIA, it marked the beginning of a scandal that could have brought down the CIA like nothing the American public […]
Canadian JTF2 sniper smashes world record for longest sniper kill in Mosul
The Canadian snipers had carefully chosen their hide site. From an elevated position, the Special Operations sniper looked through his scope at a stationary human target leaning against a cement wall over two miles away. The four-man sniper team had been pushing their shots out further and further into Mosul over the course of several […]
The Light Reaction Regiment’s Trojan Horse mission in Sulu
I sat across from a Light Reaction Regiment operator at a restaurant where we tried in vain to escape some of the humidity. He’s smoking a cigarette while we discuss his unit and their operations. He is a quiet man, quick to tell me that his job is to execute the mission rather than complain […]
The birth of American counter-terrorism: the untold story of Blue Light and Delta Force
On a dark night in 1977, a dozen Green Berets exited a C-130 aircraft, parachuting into a very different type of war. Aircraft hijackings had become almost commonplace, to the point that Johnny Carson would tell jokes about the phenomena on television. But it was no laughing matter for the Department of Defense, who realized […]