After the June 5 massacre of the Pakistanis the head of UNOSOM II, retired U.S. Admiral Jonathan Howe, declared Muhammad Farah Aideed “a menace to public safety” and a “killer.” President Bill Clinton and his advisors agreed with Howe that the ambush demanded a strong response lest UNOSOM II lose all credibility.
On June 9, Howe requested a team of 50 Delta Force operators to snatch Aideed. (This was ironic, given that when Howe was a deputy to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Crowe, he had vigorously opposed proposals for a similar operation against Manuel Noriega). UNOSOM II’s Commander, Turkish Lieutenant General Cervik Bir, and its Deputy Commander, U.S. Army Major General Thomas Montgomery, both supported the request, and Howe advised the Clinton administration that the probability of U.S. special operations forces capturing Aideed at 90 percent. (A CENTCOM intelligence assessment team traveled to Mogadishu in June 1993 and reported the capture of Aideed was “viable and feasible.” In private, however, team members described the task as “extremely ugly . . . with numerous potential points of failure.”)
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell resisted Powell’s request, and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin rejected the idea. Even if Aideed could be found, Aspin thought an already skeptical public would consider Delta’s deployment to be a dangerous escalation. Consequently, Howe would have to try to catch Aideed with the conventional forces already in place.
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| Retired Admiral Jonathan Howe, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for Somalia |
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