Today in Manhunting History -- June 9, 1993: Admiral Howe Requests Delta Force

Although 23 nations contributed troops to UNOSOM II, its decision makers remained primarily American. The Clinton administration, which inherited the Somalia operation in January, insisted that retired Admiral Jonathan Howe be named to head UNOSOM II as the Secretary General's special representative. Howe had served as Deputy National Security Advisor at the end of the Bush administration. He was a slender man who always wore a Columbia-blue UN baseball cap over his graying, close-cropped hair and white short-sleeved shirt that revealed a pale complexion that not even seven months in the Somali sun could color in the slightest. "Polite and articulate," Howe directed UNOSOM II to engage in aggressive action to force the Somali militias to disarm and seemed particularly focused on marginalizing Mohammed Farah Aideed.

After the June 5 massacre of the Pakistanis the head of UNOSOM II, Howe declared 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, for the time being, Howe would have to try to catch Aideed with the conventional forces already in place. 



Retired Admiral Jonathan Howe, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for Somalia. Note this picture was taken in April 1993, before Howe began targeting Muhamad Farah Aideed, and is in the southern city of Baidoa rather than Aideed's stronghold in Mogadishu.