Emerson, Steven. Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations
of the Reagan Era. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1988. 256 pages.
The CIA's operations in Nicaragua and Afghanistan were getting all
the attention during the Reagan years, and this suited the U.S. military
just fine. Because by 1981 they had set up their own covert capability --
a collection of units with names like Delta, Yellow Fruit, Seaspray, Quick
Reaction Team, Task Force 160, Intelligence Support Activity, and Special
Operations Division. From the basement of the Pentagon, secret missions
were staged in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Italy, Iraq, Laos, Israel,
Lebanon, Panama, West Germany, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, complete with
front companies and proprietaries. Since Congressional oversight did not
apply to the military, Reagan's people were eager to encourage an
"off-the-shelf" capability through the National Security Council.
But in 1983 Yellow Fruit was scandalized by financial improprieties.
Army investigators discovered that top brass didn't even know the unit
existed, as officers with CIA ties had developed a need-to-know Army
within the Army. Heads began to roll in a series of secret courts-martial.
Author Steven Emerson became interested during the military's massive
three-year investigation. For this book he conducted 250 interviews and
collected 100,000 pages of documents.
ISBN 0-399-13360-7
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