U.S. Soldiers Killed In Niger Sent On High-Risk Mission To Get Terror Leader With No Backup, Report Says
Four United States soldiers killed October 4 in the West African country of Niger were part of a secret, poorly planned mission to kill or capture a top terrorist leader who had supposedly been spotted in the region. However, the team was sent on the high-risk assignment with no backup or air support in place and was ordered to go ahead with the mission even though a second team of U.S. special forces soldiers that was supposed to join them could not get there — according to a new report by ABC News on Tuesday.
The ABC News revelations come from a survivor of the tragically failed mission and a “senior U.S. intelligence official,” both of whom spoke anonymously to the network’s reporters because neither was authorized to discuss the previously secret mission.
Though the team of 12 U.S. troops and about 30 soldiers in the Nigerien military had set out on what was originally intended as an unremarkable, low-risk fact-finding mission, similar to more than two-dozen previous such missions, midway through the routine patrol they received orders to pursue a “high-value target” code-named Naylor Road, a top terrorist with links to Al Qaeda as well as ISIS. Both terror groups have become highly active in the West Africa region.
The new mission left the troops exposed in hostile territory much longer than was originally planned, and without the support generally required for a highly dangerous mission to take out a top terrorist. As a result, ISIS militants had plenty of time to organize an ambush that ultimately overwhelmed the vastly outnumbered American soldiers, leaving half of the U.S. force either dead or wounded.
On Monday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford publicly outlined some details of the ambush but said only that military intelligence believed that the soldiers were “unlikely” to face enemy fighters during their mission.
But Dunford did not mention the second, much more dangerous mission tacked onto the troops’ original patrol, as reported by ABC News.
“They should have been up and back in a day. Because they were up there so f****** long on a mission that morphed, they were spotted, surveilled and ultimately hit,” the anonymous U.S. intelligence official told ABC News, as quoted in the Tuesday morning report.
The survivor of the ambush specifically mentioned Sergeant La David Johnson, whose body was not discovered for two days after the ISIS attack, describing Johnson holding off the ISIS attack by firing a machine gun mounted on the back of pickup truck — and then continuing to fire at the attackers with a sniper rifle after that.
“He was the best kid you could ask for,” the survivor said. “The guy is a true war hero. I really want his wife and kids to know that.”
Details of how the soldiers actually died in Niger have been scarce while public discussion over the last week has focused on insensitive remarks made by Donald Trump to Myeshia Johnson, widow of the slain sergeant.
But the new report detailing the last-minute changes made to the otherwise routine mission that killed Johnson along with Staff Sergeant. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sergeant Jeremiah W. Johnson, and Staff Sergeant Dustin M. Wright is likely to raise new questions over whether Trump knew about and authorized the “morphed” mission that ended with the soldiers losing their lives.
[Featured Image by Jerome Delay/AP Images]
