The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. still struggles with Niger deaths
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was livid last month when he summoned top military officials to a video conference at the Pentagon to press them about an investigation into a 2017 ambush in Niger that killed four Americans on a Green Beret team. His anger, Pentagon officials said, came from seeing news reports that junior officers were being reprimanded for the botched Niger mission while the officers directly above them were not.
Days later, a senior officer who had largely escaped punishment was told he would be reprimanded. Another senior officer’s actions before and around the time of the mission were also under new scrutiny.
And this week, Capt. Michael Perozeni, a more junior officer who had received much of the public blame for the mission received word from the Army: His reprimand was rescinded.
The turnaround is evidence of the troubled search for accountability in an incident that left a small team of underequipped and poorly supported U.S. soldiers in the African scrub to be overrun by fighters loyal to the Islamic State group. More than a year after the ambush — the U.S. military’s largest loss of life in Africa since the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia — top military leaders continue to battle over how to apportion blame and who should be held accountable.
The Pentagon still has not issued a final summation laying out who bears responsibility for the events leading up to the ambush. An initial Defense Department investigation, begun 14 months ago and partially released in May, found widespread problems across all levels of the military counterterrorism operation, but focused in particular on the actions of junior officers leading up to the ambush.
Punishments are in legal limbo, as are, apparently, commendations for bravery. An unredacted version of the investigation, promised in May, has yet to be delivered.
And unlike two naval collisions last year in the Pacific that led within weeks to the removal of the commander of the Navy’s largest operational battle force, no top generals have been ushered out the door in the Niger case — an example officials say that Mattis has been quick to point out.
Cmdr. Candice Tresch, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement Thursday that the Defense Department has “made improvements at all levels” after the ambush. But she offered no further details, citing the ongoing investigation.
The slow pace of accountability has infuriated Mattis, who officials say is dissatisfied with the punishments doled out largely to junior officers. The reprimands were first reported by The Times after a longer Times investigation into the ambush. The only senior officer to receive a letter of reprimand so far is Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks, the head of Special Operations forces in Africa, who was already planning to retire.
The delays have led to recriminations within the military’s individual fiefs. Army Gen. Tony Thomas, the leader of Special Operations Command — which includes Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other U.S. commandos around the world — has complained that his troops have been singled out for fault. He has also leveled criticism that Pentagon leaders are protecting U.S. Africa Command, which oversees missions across the continent.
In a memo to Mattis on Oct. 1, Thomas blamed bad relations between Africa Command and the last commander of U.S. commandos in Africa, Brig. Gen. Donald C. Bolduc, as one reason for the failed mission. The memo, obtained by The Times, said the internal tensions had “hindered the ability of commanders, at both levels, to understand, communicate, assess and mitigate risk as events transpired” in October 2017.
The blowback from the video conference was almost immediate. Maj. Gen. Edwin J. Deedrick Jr., the officer in charge of administering internal punishments, was quickly told by Army leaders to re-examine some of the reprimands from the investigation.
Included in the initial batch of reprimands was one for Perozeni, the leader of the team in Niger that came under attack. Africa Command leaders singled out Perozeni and another junior officer in the early public accounting of the ambush for having “mischaracterized” the mission in a preliminary planning document sent to superiors as a trip to meet with tribal leaders — not a counterterrorism effort.
But in a classified version of the report, investigators found that Perozeni had pushed back on orders to continue the mission as a capture-or-kill raid on a local militant. Perozeni said he did not have the necessary equipment or intelligence and asked that the Green Beret team be allowed to return to base.
Instead, a battalion commander based in Chad, Lt. Col. David Painter, ordered the team to continue on. They did and were attacked by dozens of Islamic State militants.
During the ambush, which lasted more than five hours, there were multiple acts of heroism, according to the May report and video from cameras mounted on the men’s helmets.
Perozeni tried to hold together a unit that had communications problems, lightly armored vehicles and unreliable Nigerien forces as allies. At one point, Perozeni was shot and thrown from the bed of his truck. Its driver, Sgt. 1st Class Brent Bartels, was shot in the arm but kept going. Wounded, he turned around and went back to get Perozeni.
The initial reprimands, which also singled out other junior officers and enlisted men, skipped Painter and Col. Brad Moses, who was the commander of the Green Beret group in Western Africa at the time.
After the video conference at the Pentagon, Deedrick informed Painter that he would be receiving a letter of reprimand. Moses, a rising star in the Special Operations community, has not been reprimanded, although officials said the Army is now taking a harder look at his actions.
Maj. Alan Van Saun, Perozeni’s company commander, who was home on paternity leave during the ambush but had been reprimanded for what the investigation cited as insufficient training of his unit, this week received a permanent letter of reprimand — a document that essentially ended his career.