\u201cNever Mind, We\u2019ll Do It Ourselves\u201d is the character-driven story behind the origins of the Predator drone program and the dawn of unmanned warfare. A firsthand account told by an Air Force team leader and a CIA team leader, \u201cNever Mind, We\u2019ll Do It Ourselves\u201d takes the reader into the back offices and secret government hangars where the robotic revolution went from a mad scientist idea to a pivotal part of global air power.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story will reveal the often conflicting perspectives between the defense and intelligence communities and put you inside places like the CIA\u2019s counterterrorism center on the morning of 9\/11. Through the eyes of the men and women who lived it, you will experience the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the evolution of a program from passive surveillance to the complex hunter-killers that hang above the battlespace like ghosts. Poised at the junction between \u201cThe Right Stuff\u201d and \u201cThe Bourne Identity,\u201d \u201cNever Mind, We\u2019ll Do It Ourselves\u201d will document the way a group of cowboys, rogues, and bandits broke rules and defied convention to change the shape of modern warfare.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This excerpt from Chapter 6 covers when the team put eyes on Bin Laden in September 2000.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Preparation for our eighth mission to clandestinely sneak into Afghanistan included a review of our best available intelligence for where we might find Bin Laden. Together with a hard shake of the Magic 8-Ball, we launched the mission which had us winging our way towards Kandahar. On the verge of entering the last thirty days of our nine-month window, success hung on the slim hope of catching up with Usama bin Laden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hal and I were managing the mission, and we settled into a lazy circuit in the sky high above Tarnak as the afternoon call to prayer began. More vehicles were in the compound than normal, situated in what looked like a security posture. People had been coming and going, some standing idle while others went about their respective tasks. We couldn\u2019t hear the call to prayer, a mournful sound typically piped from loudspeakers perched on poles and rooftops. But we knew when it started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had our eyes on a building known to be one of bin Laden\u2019s many homes when a man emerged. Looking through the soda straw, we could see that he was tall, dressed head to toe in white. He was greeted with great deference by a small group between the home and the adjacent mosque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I felt the buzz of adrenaline surge through me like voltage. We didn\u2019t need the imagery experts to measure the 6\u20322\u2033 figure to know what we had found. On my screen was Usama bin-freaking-Laden, not a photo from last week or a report from yesterday. From half a world away, we had eyes on the worst terrorist in the world, right here, right now. The most improbable, unlikely, unbelievable words flashed through my mind: Son of a bitch, we did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As directed by the national security advisor on behalf of the president of the United States, our team had actionable intelligence in less than nine months from receipt of tasking, in advance of the deadline\u2014mission accomplished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I picked up the secure line and started lighting fires up the food chain. We formally requested a strike package of submarine-launched cruise missiles. Springing up from beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean, the TLAMS should be here in under two hours. We had front-row seats, waiting for Uncle Sam to bring the hammer down on a deadly enemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Charlie Allen walked out of his planned meeting after the urgent call from Hal and came down the hall from his office. As soon as he saw the screen, he knew it was bin Laden and proclaimed it emphatically before getting on the secure phones himself to work the next steps to take action. We had notified our chain of command and prepared to support confirmation calls before strikes were launched\u2014or so I thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Setting aside all the Jedi mysticism that Hollywood wants to wrap around intelligence training, we really do learn a lot about reading people\u2014body language, how human eyes move when someone is using the left side of the brain versus the right. We\u2019re not mind-readers or walking lie detectors, but any intelligence officer worth his salt can tell when something is going wrong. It\u2019s tucked away in the little stammers, the funky excuses, the moments of uncertainty as somebody ducks and weaves when he or she should be swinging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fielding multiple calls and visits with my chain of command, my CIA \u201cspidey sense\u201d was activated. I had just delivered the report of the century\u2014the miracle Hail Mary pass had just been caught in the end zone with two seconds left on the clock. All we had to do now was kick the extra point to turn \u201cmission success\u201d into \u201ccrushing victory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the kicker was nowhere in sight. The special-teams squad wasn\u2019t running onto the field; we weren\u2019t shifting into a kick formation. The coaches on the sideline looked content to run out the clock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To say I felt sick was an understatement; the knot twisting my guts went way beyond nausea. My eyes were fixed on the screen, on the tall man moving slowly through the group of figures that bowed in his direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I walked past DJ, and said, \u201cGet Mark on the handset.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a click, and Mark\u2019s voice came on the line, his tone one of anticipation. \u201cBirds away?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I struggled to say it clearly. \u201cMark, I don\u2019t think they\u2019re gonna take the shot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNot gonna . . .\u201d half a heartbeat passed as Mark processed the most unlikely words he would hear this day or any other day. \u201cWhat the frick are you talking about?\u201d His volume doubled as the impact hit home. If anyone in the GCS had an inkling that things were amiss, the worst fears were now confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not official, Mark,\u201d I wanted to be clear if for some reason I was wrong, but with each passing moment I was growing more convinced. \u201cNobody\u2019s talking with the subs, nobody is double-checking with the shoot authorities. I swear to God, I don\u2019t think anybody was prepared for us to really do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell somebody better get prepared and right now\u201d Mark tore into an anger-fueled rant that to this day defies print. But his point, no matter how incendiary the delivery, was valid. We\u2019d been tasked with building a new capability and inventing a way to fly it around the world. Done. We\u2019d been told we had to do it in nine months and along the way lay eyes on the most dangerous man on the planet, hiding in a sandbox the size of Texas. Done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hal caught my eye, and I put my hand over the phone. \u201cWhat\u2019s up?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are being asked if we can guarantee that bin Laden will still be there in two hours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My inside voice channeled Mark: Two hours? We spec\u2019d a Wescam Versatron ball, not a crystal ball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But my outside voice remained quiet. \u201cCan we guarantee\u201d is not a question for somebody looking to act; it is a question from somebody looking for an excuse not to act. I could already hear the briefing in my head: No sir, we chose not to shoot because we couldn\u2019t guarantee he would still be there when the missiles arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hal came back, anger rising. \u201cAlec, they aren\u2019t going to pull the trigger. Can we kamikaze the plane?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I gave it a thought, a serious one. But as attractive as the idea seemed there was no way to make it work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DJ stepped into my line of vision as I refocused on my reply. \u201cNo, no sir. I cannot guarantee where he will be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DJ waved me off, the urgency in his eyes forcing me to silence. He plucked the phone from my hand, pressing the mouthpiece against his side as he pointed toward my computer. \u201cRoger\u2019s on the chat line,\u201d he said tersely. \u201cWe have a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey\u2019re talking about you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The words on the chat line had come from Roger at NSA. A brilliant linguist, Roger was a one-of-a-kind resource who could pluck a string of Pashto, Dari, or Urdu out of a garbled radio transmission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The intercept from Kandahar threw Roger into unfamiliar territory. His experience focused on extracting intelligence from subtleties of nuance and inflection, not tactical air and air defense. This course of events had just thrown him into a crash course on aerial combat and evasion. We had experts in air and air defense on our team at Ramstein. This was going to take a team effort. Colonel Boyle and the Lieutenant Colonel \u201cDash\u201d Jamieson, the 32nd AIS commander, gave us their best analysts. That group included a Mr. Brian \u201cFish\u201d Fishpaugh, USAFE\u2019s senior air analyst, along with Captain Shane H., as well as Master Sergeant Rich Keady\u2014all the best analysts. \u201cThey are trying to launch something.\u201d A tangible note of tension crept into his words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI want eyes on the airfield.\u201d Mark barked, knowing that an order to swing the camera off Tarnak and bin Laden would send the Agency guys off the rails, but he had to know what was about to join us in the sky. The Taliban had an early warning radar with ground-control intercept capability adjacent to the airfield. Just to the west sat another SA-3 surface-to-air missile battery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As expected, Hal was in the GRC and said no on giving up the camera, but Mark had the benefit of being the mission commander in the GCS. He punched the speakerphone button to get Captain Ty Peterson on the line and said, \u201cF this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark snapped his attention to Gunny. \u201cEyes on the airfield, now.\u201d Gunny didn\u2019t bat an eye. They could just imagine the cussing all the way back to Langley when the video feed smeared into a horizontal blur as the camera slewed about 140 degrees to the north, squaring up on the airfield. In the world of infrared, small grey specks swirled around a dart-shaped silhouette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFishbed,\u201d Mark muttered, the profile unmistakable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark stepped back, his mind processing the options. We had discussed the scenario, planned for it, even trained for it. But nobody in the history of flight had ever done it for real, with the weight of national security on our shoulders. The only thing that could possibly make the moment worse would be to have Mark\u2019s boss magically appear, so naturally Colonel Boyle walked in the back door. His eyes met Mark\u2019s across the GCS and I\u2019m quite certain he read \u201caww, damn\u201d in Mark\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
God love Colonel Boyle. He just nodded, gave some sage advice, and let Mark run with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turning back to the screen, Mark watched a single gray dot scuttle up the ladder and disappear into the jet fighter. The other ants scattered as the heart of the gray silhouette blossomed coal black as the engines roared to life. The Fishbed rolled from the tarmac and aligned itself on the runway. It turned out that Predator looked less like a flock of geese on radar than it did the broad side of a school bus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cruiser, another pilot from General Atomics, was at the stick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He saw Mark get target lock and said, \u201cWhat\u2019s the call, Cooter?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark looked him in the eye and said, \u201cYou have thirty minutes to live. Time to do some of that pilot stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The command may have sounded flip, but the reality on the screen was clear, and Mark was glad to have Cruiser in the pilot seat. If anyone had a shot at exploiting the outermost fringes of our flight capabilities to play cat-and-mouse with a Soviet-built jet, it was Cruiser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The jet fighter shot down the runway and blistered into the night sky, its pilot\u2019s every moment of training focused on hunting other jet-powered objects moving hot, high, and fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Fishbed had high rails, a design that put the pilot deep in a steel bathtub. He could see well enough ahead and above, but visibility below was terrible. The disparity of speed was a huge advantage to the jet in a fight, but it could be all but crippling in a search. With his foot to the floor in an adrenaline-fueled urgency to find us, the Fishbed could blow by in the night and never glimpse a small, slow speck crawling along the corner of its blind spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gunny once again brought his own special A game to the fight, using the sensor ball in ways for which it had never been designed. The Versatron could spot a dog in the desert or tell if a car\u2019s engine was running. The 1,200-degree exhaust from a jet fighter running full afterburner makes it by far the brightest star in the thermal sky. Back in Indian Springs, Gunny had utilized that to follow the Thunderbirds as they trained there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was little to see of a jet as it approached, but it shot by us with a Roman candle up its butt. Gunny expertly slewed the thermal camera like a bloodhound on a scent. The smear of heat banked to starboard and swept off to the south. Mark watched it race away for several seconds before remembering to breathe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we were lucky, we might catch a second break. Most of the Afghans flew under old Soviet protocols in which a highly experienced senior pilot on the ground micromanaged the mission via radio communication with the pilot. Ground control would say turn left, the pilot would execute and then describe where he was and what he saw. With that exchange going on, Roger was gold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey\u2019re climbing to twenty-five thousand,\u201d Roger reported, \u201cswinging to heading two-two-niner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark glanced at the map. The Fishbed was roaring up into the clouds to the northwest of the airfield. Our bird was below it, headed for the mountains that sloped up to the north.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our exit point was a dead spot in radar coverage, where the eyes of the enemy couldn\u2019t peer over a ridgeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we make that, Mark thought anxiously, we become a very small fish out in the open ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe\u2019s about to come around.\u201d Roger declared. \u201cHolding altitude, coming to zero-niner-zero.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDamn.\u201d The word came out under my breath. A dead-east heading would put the MiG on an intercept vector. But would he see us if he didn\u2019t know what he was looking at?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cStay below and point into him,\u201d Mark said, Cruiser nodding in confirmation. Mark and the other Weapons School grads on the team were using our \u201cpatches\u201d for all they were worth. If the Afghan kept his foot on the floor, his jet would rocket across our path at a right angle . . . about two minutes ahead of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c<\/i>Never Mind, We\u2019ll Do It Ourselves<\/i><\/a>\u201d is <\/i>available for purchase<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n Alec Bierbauer has spent a lifetime conducting counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations in venues ranging from Bosnia to Yemen and Afghanistan. With an emphasis on integrating emerging technologies into high-risk special programs, he was the CIA\u2019s point man in the development of the Predator program. Bierbauer resides in Huntsville, Alabama.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n Retired Air Force Col. Mark Cooter, a distinguished Air Force intelligence officer, has operational experience in DESERT STORM, the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya operations. As a Predator squadron operations officer, Mark led Predator programs from their near inception in Bosnia through joint Air Force\/CIA operations in Afghanistan and beyond. Col. Cooter lives in San Angelo, Texas.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Marks has worked around the world within the U.S intelligence and special operations community, a career that stretches from the jungles of Nicaragua to the mountains of Afghanistan. A bestselling author, his books have been adopted by venues such as the FBI Academy and the Army Asymmetric Warfare Group. Marks resides in New York City.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n