Word: commands
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...days later authorities revealed that a farewell note in a trouser pocket had confirmed what many had already surmised: Rudolph Hess, the last surviving member of Nazi Germany's high command, had finally escaped his captors by taking his own life...
...control. One got involved in an unauthorized operation planned for Laos. Another became the target of investigations for alleged misuse of funds and other improprieties; three officers eventually went to prison. The Pentagon is now trying to reorganize all special operations units under the newly formed Special Operations Command, and has imposed stricter operational and financial controls on them...
...story of the secret army begins in late 1979, when the Pentagon set up a task force under the command of Army General James Vaught to plan a rescue of the hostages in Tehran. The CIA had no agents there, so the Army organized a Field Operations Group that slipped four intelligence officers into Tehran, where they gathered vital information on the situation at the embassy. Later, FOG members rented trucks in Tehran for the rescue team that was to be flown into Iran by helicopters supplied by the Navy. All for naught: the mission was scrubbed in April...
Nonetheless, the Army's top command -- particularly Chief of Staff General Edward Meyer and Vice Chief General John Vessey -- had become committed to secret operations. When the Reagan Administration took office, the generals made the new ad hoc groups permanent. In early 1981 Colonel James Longhofer, who had worked on Honey Badger, was assigned to head an expanded office of special operations to oversee various types of unconventional missions. One of its field units was Seaspray, jointly commanded by the Army and the CIA, which took over the special helicopters developed for the Iran rescue mission. The Pentagon dutifully briefed...
...Congress was not told that $20 million of that sum went to set up a supersecret intelligence unit, the ISA, under the command of Colonel Jerry , King. (The role of regular Army intelligence is to collect tactical military information, not to lay the ground for covert operations.) ISA initially was to act as a pathfinder for secret missions, but its functions quickly expanded. When General William Odom became assistant chief of staff for intelligence in late 1981, he argued persuasively that ISA was needed to fill gaps in the CIA's activities. Its personnel grew from about...