Multiple failures led to ambush
Military summary assigns no direct blame for deaths of 4 soldiers
WASHINGTON — A Defense Department investigation of a Special Forces mission in Niger released Thursday found widespread problems across all levels of the military operation but concluded that “no single failure or deficiency” led to the deaths of four U.S. soldiers who were among a team of Green Berets ambushed last fall by fighters aligned with the Islamic State group.
The unclassified executive summary of the investigation offered only a glimpse of the decisions and actions that led to the firefight on Oct. 4 after the 11-man team searched, unsuccessfully, for a local militant leader in western Niger.
Senior military officials at the Pentagon on Thursday outlined the gun battle in painful detail, carefully explaining how the four American soldiers — Sgt. 1st Class Jeremiah W. Johnson, Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright and Sgt. La David Johnson — had died.
Even as it found “individual, organizational and institutional” mistakes, the investigation also revealed heroic efforts by a small group of soldiers who were battered and outnumbered as they braced to take a last stand against a barrage of heavy machine-gun fire and mortar rounds.
Were it not for the arrival of French Mirage aircraft that made low, roaring passes in a show of force that scattered the extremists, far more Americans and their Nigerien partners likely would have been killed.
The full report of the investigation, which was headed by the U.S. Africa Command and is more than 6,000 pages, remains classified. The Pentagon plans to release a redacted version of the full report some months from now.
The executive summary of the investigation said no U.S. soldiers were captured alive and all four had died quickly, if not immediately.
It did not recommend specific corrective action to avoid the confusion and lax oversight that contributed to the deaths.
Instead, senior officials in the Army and at the Special Operations Command have 120 days to review and adjust training for Special Forces soldiers, and reexamine U.S. troops’ role in joint counterterror missions with local forces.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also has shared the investigation’s findings with the Navy and Air Force so those services could take similar steps, the summary said, “to ensure this type of incident does not happen again.”