25 replies to this topic

[Dunph]

Please visit the main page for full information then post questions, thoughts or comments here!

Ooh, I've also noticed I'm (finally) a member of the FDC! Hooray for me!

[Tarl_Cabot]

Great article, Thanks CBN! the CIA's website has similar language...

The CIA does have a paramilitary branch called the 'Special Operations Group' and they are special forces veterans and who go to 'the farm' (like in The Recruit) and learn espionage techniques. They were in Afghanistan and Iraq...they're missions resemble the commando expoits of 007 in pretites of Goldeneye and TLD.There was a great article in Time about them. I have it if anyone is interested...I'll check back later. It's a long article...

[Dunph]

Thanks Tarl, I'm very interested, by all means post the article here!

The slight desensitising of the intelligence services is fascinating, yet slightly disheartening. One half of me wants to know more about what they do (though I know I'll never know what they really do and to what extent this affects modern society), and the other half of me doesn't want to know, and I want it to remain cloak-and-dagger.

[thuffner]

Cool article...

[Tarl_Cabot]

Am I at liberty to do so Dunphboy007? Copyright laws?

[Tarl_Cabot]

If so I'll create a new thread. I don't want Time breathing down your necks. The article I have I had to pay for, albiet only $2.50 but still, it was not *free* to the public.

[DLibrasnow]

This is precisely why Bond is a preposterous/fantasy character and the movies should treat him as such (instead of going for an obviously fake realism as they did with TWINE)...

[Tarl_Cabot]

Can I post the article???

[Dunph]

Just post it here, I don't think it will be too much of an issue. We'll delete it should there be any problems

[Tarl_Cabot]

OK. This article was written just before the Iraq war so it's a little dated:

[Tarl_Cabot]

TIME Magazine:February 03, 2003

The CIA's Secret Army


Because of past scandals, the agency had largely dropped its paramilitary operations. But the war on terrorism has brought it back into the business
BY DOUGLAS WALLER


The U.S. is not yet at war with Saddam Hussein. Not officially. But quietly, over the past few months, some of its savviest warriors have sneaked into his country. They have been secretly prowling the Kurdish-controlled enclave in northern Iraq, trying to organize a guerrilla force that could guide American soldiers invading from the north, hunting for targets that U.S. warplanes might bomb, setting up networks to hide U.S. pilots who might be shot down and mapping out escape routes to get them out. And they are doing the same in southern Iraq with dissident Shi'ites.

But the biggest surprise of all is that they are not even soldiers; they are spies, part of the CIA's rough and ready, supersecret Special Operations Group (SOG). Until fairly recently, the CIA, in an effort to clean up a reputation sullied by botched overseas coups and imperial assassination attempts, had shied away from getting its hands dirty. Until about five years ago, it focused instead on gathering intelligence that could be used by other parts of the government. Before that, traditional CIA officers, often working under cover as U.S. diplomats, got most of their secrets from the embassy cocktail circuit or by bribing foreign officials. Most did not even have weapons training, and they looked down on the few SOG commandos who remained out in the field as knuckle draggers, relics of a bygone era. Now the knuckle draggers are not just back; they are the new hard edge of the CIA, at the forefront of the war on terrorism. And, says a U.S. intelligence official, "they know which end the bullet comes out of."

It was George Tenet who began rebuilding the SOG five years ago when he took charge of the CIA, but the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, accelerated his efforts.

Confronted with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, an enemy that has no army, no fixed assets and no clearly defined territory, the Bush Administration needed an unconventional military force. It wanted combatants who could match al-Qaeda for wiliness, adaptability and, up to a point, ruthlessness. It wanted its own army of James Bonds. So in the past year, hundreds of millions of additional dollars have been pumped into the CIA budget by President George W. Bush, a man who may be predisposed to believe strongly in an agency his father once headed. He has ordered SOG operatives to join forces with foreign intelligence services. He has even authorized the CIA to kidnap terrorists in order to break their cells or kill them.

All of which could make for a more agile, effective intelligence agency. Or it could also mean a CIA that once again steps beyond the realm of collecting secrets to intervening forcibly in the affairs of foreign states. In that area, the agency's history has often been one of blunders and worse, from Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s through the Bay of Pigs fiasco under John F. Kennedy to the Nicaraguan war that led to the Iran-contra debacle in the '80s. Some longtime intelligence watchers are wondering whether a reinvigorated paramilitary wing of the CIA could be a mixed blessing for America once again. And the military itself is not too pleased. It believes its special-ops forces are perfectly equipped to handle these jobs. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has reacted in part by planning his own secret unit, which would function much like the SOG but would answer to him rather than Tenet.

Though tiny by Pentagon standards, the SOG has swelled to several hundred officers. They are planted in Pakistan, Central Asia, North Africa and East Asia. "These are people who are operating every day around the world," Jim Pavitt, the CIA's deputy director of operations, told TIME. "I can insert a team anywhere quickly and clandestinely." The future may bring even more ambitious missions. Last May, Bush signed a top-secret directive authorizing pre-emptive strikes by the Pentagon and the CIA against nations that are close to acquiring nuclear weapons. Administration sources tell TIME that the Department of Energy's nuclear-weapons experts are training SOG operatives on ways to attack enemy nuclear facilities. In the current crisis with North Korea, Washington so far is committed to diplomacy as a means of pressuring Pyongyang to give up its atomic-arms program, but it might well be a SOG team that gets called to action.

The latest debate over the wisdom of expanding CIA powers in this way has been confined mostly to a small group of professionals, escaping the public's notice. That's largely because the evolution of the CIA's mission has proceeded so quietly. Americans did get a glimpse into the world of the CIA paramilitary when American Johnny (Mike) Spann, 32, was killed in Afghanistan in November 2001 after being overpowered by Taliban prisoners he had been interrogating; uncharacteristically, the CIA confirmed that Spann was one of its own, a member of the sog. Another peek into the shadows came last November when it was revealed that the explosion that had carbonized a carful of alleged al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen was caused by a Hellfire missile let loose by a CIA Predator drone.

The outlines of this new mission are not new, but TIME has uncovered enough fresh details to construct the fullest picture yet of the CIA's secret army. It spoke to past and current intelligence officials, including an active member of the sog, as well as to detractors within the Pentagon. Our report:

INTO AFGHANISTAN
Officially, the war in Afghanistan began on Oct. 7, 2001, with the first round of U.S. air attacks. For the SOG, however, the battle opened on Sept. 26, just 15 days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That was how "John," one of the SOG's paramilitary officers, unexpectedly found himself peering out the open window of a Soviet-made Mi-17 helicopter that day as it soared over the Anjuman Pass and into the Panjshir Valley, northeast of Kabul. Just ahead on the ground, John spotted a patrol of bearded men in turbans toting AK-47 rifles.

John tugged the sleeve of the pilot from the rebel Northern Alliance, who was aboard to guide the aircraft through the treacherous mountains of northeastern Afghanistan. "They're not ours," the Afghan shouted, letting John know that the helicopter could be fired on from below. The Taliban fighters, however, were so stunned by the appearance of the beastly aircraft roaring above them that they did not have time to shoulder their weapons and shoot before it flew out of range. "Wonderful," the CIA officer shouted to his Afghan comrade. Just a week earlier, John (who talked to TIME on the condition that his real name not be used) had been studying at a language school in Virginia, preparing for an entirely different assignment overseas. (What language and what posting, he would not say.) The agency yanked him out to join the first U.S. team going into Afghanistan. That was typical for a CIA paramilitary officer, who at a moment's notice may be thrown into what John calls a pickup team. John's team included four CIA officers fluent in Farsi or Dari who for years had been sneaking into Afghanistan, recruiting spies for the agency. Their mission now was to hook up with those contacts, collect intelligence for the impending U.S. aerial attack and hunt for bin Laden. Along with the light arms, radios and rations they had packed into the Mi-17 were two suitcases stuffed with $3 million. It was used for bribing Afghan warlords to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

WHO JOINS UP?
Like all the SOG's other paramilitary operatives, John had spent years in the U.S. military before joining the cia; five years is the minimum requirement. CIA recruiters regularly prowl clubs like those at Fort Bragg, N.C., where the Army's Special Operations Command has its headquarters, looking for Green Berets interested in even more unconventional work and higher pay (a starting SOG officer can earn more than $50,000 a year; a sergeant in the Green Berets begins at about $41,000). Special-forces soldiers, Navy seals and Air Force commandos are routinely dispatched to the agency on a temporary basis to provide special military skills that the CIA needs for specific missions. If a soldier is assigned highly clandestine work, his records are changed to make it appear as if he resigned from the military or was given civilian status; the process is called sheep dipping, after the practice of bathing sheep before they are sheared.

Military commandos who join the CIA full time are sent to the "farm," the agency's Camp Peary training center, located on 9,000 heavily wooded acres surrounded by a barbed-wire-topped fence near Williamsburg, Va. There the soldiers go through the yearlong course that all new CIA case officers must take to learn such skills of the trade as infiltrating hostile countries, communicating in codes, retrieving messages from dead drops and recruiting foreign agents to spy for the U.S. The CIA wants its paramilitary officers to be able to steal secrets as well as blow up bridges. John proudly recalls overhearing an Afghan commander tell a comrade, "Yes, I have these Americans with me, and, yes, they have rifles, but I don't think they're soldiers. They spend all their time with laptops." Says John: "We wrote hundreds and hundreds of intelligence reports."

[Tarl_Cabot]

At Camp Peary, new SOG recruits also hone their paramilitary skills, like sharpshooting with various kinds of weapons, setting up landing zones in remote areas for agency aircraft and attacking enemy sites with a small force. Some are sent to Delta Force's secret compound at Fort Bragg to learn highly specialized counterterrorism techniques, such as how to rescue a fellow agent held hostage.

Over the years, the SOG has taken on some of the CIA's most dangerous work. Paramilitary officers account for almost half the 79 stars chiseled into the wall in the main foyer of the agency's Langley, Va., headquarters commemorating all the spies who have died since the cia was founded in 1947. The newest star is dedicated to Spann. But the CIA suffered additional casualties in Afghanistan and some injuries that the agency has not yet publicly acknowledged. A CIA officer was wounded by a bullet in the chest during a fire fight in southern Afghanistan, and one of the U.S. soldiers confirmed killed was working with a CIA team when he was hit in a separate skirmish.

IN, OUT AND IN AGAIN
The SOG traces its roots to the days of William (Wild Bill) Donovan, the general in charge of espionage and clandestine operations during World War II, whose Office of Strategic Services sent paramilitary commandos behind enemy lines. The CIA, since its founding after the war, has always had a paramilitary unit, which has carried various names. At the height of the cold war, the agency had hundreds of paramilitary operatives fomenting coups around the world. It was involved in assassination plots against the leaders of Congo, Cuba and Iraq and was linked by a 1976 Senate inquiry to ousters that resulted in the deaths of the leaders of the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and Chile. When Ronald Reagan wanted to roll back communism in the 1980s, the agency organized paramilitary operations in Central America. These adventures had checkered results. The governments that the CIA destabilized in Iran, Guatemala and Chile were replaced by repressive regimes that ended up doing more damage in the long run to U.S. foreign policy.

[Tarl_Cabot]

By 1990 the SOG had practically been disbanded, the victim of domestic and international outrage over the agency's lethal meddling in other countries. Congressional and CIA budget cutters slashed money for the clandestine force, believing that billion-dollar spy satellites collected intelligence more efficiently and without embarrassing the U.S. The pendulum soon began to swing back, however, as intelligence officials realized that technology has its limitations. Satellites, for instance, can't see inside buildings; phone taps can't capture an enemy's every move. When Tenet was installed as CIA director in 1997, he began fielding more human spies and rebuilding the SOG.

During the Balkan conflicts in the mid- and late 1990s, agency paramilitary officers slipped into Bosnia and Kosovo to collect intelligence and hunt for accused war criminals like Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic. But the newly formed teams did not have enough manpower for snatches even when they were able to pinpoint Serbian targets. "The CIA," complains a former senior Clinton aide, "didn't have the capability to take down a three- or four-car motorcade with bodyguards."

Today it does, and the sog's capacities are growing. Its maritime branch has speedboats to carry commandos to shore, and the agency can rent cargo ships through its front companies to transport larger equipment. The air arm, which Pentagon officials have nicknamed the Waffen CIA, has small passenger jets on alert to fly paramilitary operatives anywhere in the world on two hours' notice. Other cargo planes, reminiscent of the Air America fleet that the agency had in Vietnam, can drop supplies to replenish teams in remote locations. For areas like Afghanistan and Central Asia, where a Russian-made helicopter stands out less, the agency uses the large inventory of Soviet-era aircraft that the Pentagon captured in previous conflicts or bought on the black market.

The part of the air arm that has received the most publicity lately is the fleet of remote-controlled Predator drones, armed with 5-ft.-long Hellfire missiles, that the agency bought from the Air Force. In November 2001 the CIA deployed the drone to eliminate bin Laden's lieutenant, Mohammed Atef. Last November's Predator hit in Yemen killed an al-Qaeda commander and his entourage of five, though the strike was controversial: one of the dead men turned out to be a U.S. citizen.

[Tarl_Cabot]

There have possibly been other missteps as well. In February 2002 a cia Predator fired at a group of Afghan men gathered around a truck, killing at least three of them. U.S. intelligence insists the men were an al-Qaeda band, but locals say they were nothing more than scrap dealers or smugglers. And as the agency tries to pull together rival Iraqi Kurdish forces into a viable guerrilla force that could take on Saddam, it must confront its sorry history in that territory. In 1995 it attempted to organize a Kurdish rebellion against Saddam, but in the end CIA officers fled their base in northern Iraq, abandoning their Kurdish agents to Iraqi police, who rounded up and executed hundreds. The Clinton Administration, fearing the operation would end in disaster, had pulled the plug.

But perhaps the sog's most notable lapse in the field has been its failure to locate bin Laden. "They're still developing their capability," says a Bush Administration official who has worked with the unit. "It doesn't mean that they won't be a force to be reckoned with. But they're not there yet."

OPPOSITION AND RIVALS
The pentagon is not happy about the SOG's moving aggressively onto its turf. When aides told Rumsfeld in late September 2001 that his Army Green Beret A-Teams couldn't go into Afghanistan until the CIA contingent there had laid the groundwork with the local warlords, he erupted, "I have all these guys under arms, and we've got to wait like a little bird in a nest for the CIA to let us go in?" What's more, Rumsfeld, according to a Pentagon source, does not like the idea that the CIA's paramilitary operatives could start fights his forces might have to finish.

The resentment burns even more because the generals know that when it comes to special-operations soldiers, they have a deeper bench than the spooks at Langley. And in Afghanistan, the Pentagon was regularly asked to supply the CIA with people from that bench. The Defense Department already has 44,000 Army, Navy and Air Force commandos in its U.S. Special Operations Command, who are as skilled in covert guerrilla warfare as the CIA's operatives. In the basement vaults of the command's headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., sit secret contingency plans to send military special-ops teams to any trouble spot in the world, complete with infiltration routes, drop zones, intelligence contacts and assault points.

[Tarl_Cabot]

The CIA ended up having about 100 officers roaming in Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion. But the agency teams were still critically short of key operatives. "I kept signing more and more deployment orders for folks to go to the CIA," recalls Robert Andrews, who at the time was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations. "They were looking for any medics, operational soldiers and even intelligence specıalısts that we had."

Even some old agency hands think the CIA should stick to intelligence and leave the commando work to the military. "Agency operators lack the experience to be effective military operators," says Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and State Department counterterrorism expert. "They have just enough training to be dangerous to themselves and others." And there is the historic danger that CIA paramilitary operations, cloaked in layers of secrecy, can become rogues. "Everybody has seen this movie before where secret wars have developed into public disasters," warns John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and intelligence think tank. "We're going to wind up doing things that, when the American people hear of them, they will repudiate."

The CIA responds that its commandos take on the jobs the military can't or won't handle. The SOG prides itself on being small and agile, capable of sending teams of 10 operators or fewer anywhere in the world much faster than the Pentagon can. One reason the agency was the first into Afghanistan was that the Special Ops Command dragged its feet getting its soldiers ready for action. Intelligence sources tell Time that the CIA had requested that commandos from the U.S. Army's elite Delta Force join its first team going into Afghanistan but that the Pentagon refused to send them.

Once deployed, CIA operatives have fewer regulations to hamstring them than their military counterparts do. In Afghanistan, CIA cargo planes were dropping warm-weather clothing, saddles and bales of hay for allied Afghan foot soldiers and cavalry. One cable that officers in the field sent back to Langley read, "Please send boots. The Taliban can hear our flip-flops." Says Kent Harrington, a former CIA station chief in Asia: "If a military special-operations soldier parachuted in with $3 million to buy armies, he'd have to have a C-5 cargo plane flying behind him with all the paperwork he'd need to dispense the money."

[Tarl_Cabot]

The CIA also has far more contacts than the Pentagon among foreign intelligence services that can help with clandestine operations overseas, plus a global network of paid snitches on the ground. The agency "deals with everything from bottom feeders around the world to their governments on a routine basis," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "Name a country anywhere, and (the CIA) can identify with a couple of telephone calls four or five people who will have a variety of skills to go into that country if it becomes a difficult place." Green Berets can operate covertly in a combat zone, but they would stick out like sore thumbs if they tried to infiltrate a foreign city, because they don't have the intelligence network in place to conceal themselves. "We have the ability to hide in plain sight, get in and get out before anybody figures out who we are," asserts a CIA source.

CIA officials, leery of being sucked into new scandals, insist that their covert operations are now subject to layers of oversight. Before an agency paramilitary team can be launched, the President must sign an intelligence "finding" that broadly outlines the operation to be performed. That finding, along with a more detailed description of the mission, is sent to the congressional intelligence committees. If they object to an operation, they can cut off its funds the next time the agency's budget comes up.

After approving a covert operation, Bush leaves the details of when and how to Tenet and his senior aides. For example, Administration officials say Bush did not specifically order the Predator attack in Yemen. But after Sept. 11 he gave the CIA the green light to use lethal force against al-Qaeda.

Rumsfeld, nevertheless, is intent on building his own covert force. He recently ordered the Special Operations Command to draw up secret plans to launch attacks against al-Qaeda around the world, and he intends to put an extra $1 billion in its budget next year for the job. Elsewhere in the Defense Department, small, clandestine units, coordinating little with the CIA, are busy organizing their own future battles. Several hundred Army agents, with what was originally known as the intelligence support activity, train to infiltrate foreign countries to scout targets. With headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va., the unit is so secretive, it changes its cover name every six months. Delta Force has a platoon of about 100 intelligence operatives trained to sneak into a foreign country and radio back last-minute intelligence before the force's commandos swoop in for an attack.

The CIA isn't amused. "Don't replicate what you don't need to replicate," argues a senior U.S. intelligence officer. So who referees this dispute? In addition to running the CIA, Tenet, as director of Central Intelligence, is supposed to oversee all intelligence programs in the U.S. government. But the Pentagon, which controls more than 80% of the estimated $35 billion intelligence budget, doesn't want him meddling in its spying.

Ultimately, the man who chooses between them is the President. Both Tenet and Rumsfeld report directly to him. And thus far, Bush has been eager to give Tenet leeway to build up his commando force. With a major conflict looming in Iraq, units from all branches of the military are mobilizing to get a piece of the action. The CIA, at least, will have its own.

***

Ok that was long but interesting stuff...enjoy!

[Tarl_Cabot]

" It wanted its own army of James Bonds."- I thought that would get some attention.

[Turn]

I remember going to an FBI recruitment fair about 12 years ago when I was still in college. I was disappointed to find out the kind of people they wanted were people with accounting backgrounds. I guess they were trying to nail drug dealers and such on income tax evasion or something.

Anyway, the people who did the recruiting were not amused when I told them my strongest qualification was I had seen all the Bond films at least five times. "We're not looking for James Bonds; we're looking for people to analyze data" I was told. I had nothing to lose. My major was English.

[Tarl_Cabot]

Funny...

[Tarl_Cabot]

Yeah dull stuff....

More on the SOG's:

Ground Branch

"Ground Branch personnel are the most diversely trained group of all SAS personnel(SOG), receiving training at various civilian and military courses, with particular attention being given to the use of small arms. Training is known to include instruction in the following areas: assessing threat types; intelligence gathering; room entry techniques; tactical communications (covert radios, infrared, microwave transmitters, etc.); levels of force; use of the baton; armed and unarmed crowd control; edged weapons; unarmed combat techniques; team training and leadership; individual and team movements; structure penetration; boarding and securing vessels; prisoner search/ snatch and handling; hostage situation management; small unit tactics; long range reconnaissance and patrol; explosives; field medicine; extreme environment survival; and land, sea and airborne operations.

Small arms instruction is provided using a wide variety of weapons, ranging from pistols and shotguns, to rifles and carbines. CQB shooting skills, sniping, and countersniping are all considered vital skills and are emphasized thoughout operator training. Civilian training centers such as John Shaw's Mid South School, TEES, BSR, and Gunsite are known to frequently play host to SAS personnel.

Another important area of Ground Branch operator training is advanced automobile handling (evasive, high-speed emergency driving). Students learn how to drive virtually any type of vehicle under any condition, both during daylight and at night, with or without night observation devices (NODs). They also receive instruction on how to use the car as a weapon, should the need ever arise. These skills, along with related techniques, are known collectively as Tactical Vehicle Commandeering (TVC) and are learned both at civilian academies and by G8: Training Division.

All Ground Branch personnel are required to undertake every class offered by OTR that has anything to do with small arms, vehicles, terrorism, or covert fieldcraft. While such training obviously enhances the individual operator's personal skill level, a secondary reason for such training is the fact that Ground Branch personnel will, at some point in their career, have to serve as an instructor at a CIA or government run training facility.

[Tarl_Cabot]

"An important part of SAS training includes the operation of motor vehicles in both permissive and non-permissive environments. The basic driving course called CTTC (Countering Terrorist Tactics Course) or in Agency slang as the "Crash and Bang" course, is taught at CampPerry. This course is required for any CIA personnel being sent to a potentially hostile area. During the course the traineeis qualified in the use of the Browning 9mm, .38 Special revolver, and Winchester 1200 12-gauge shotgun. It also introduces the student to basic counterterror driving techniques, and counterterror awareness/counter surveillance techniques. For the highly trained Ground Branch personnel such techniques are elementary, however they are still required to attend the course due to the fact they will later return as course instructors.

SAS vehicle training is broken down into several categories:

TVC is a course designed for individuals who may have to escape from hostile territory by quickly acquiring a vehicle. The training focuses on vehicle types and selection, improvising tools, overcoming security devices, and driving away. This course is followed by the more advanced Tactical Vehicle Interception (TVI), which teaches how to stop a moving auto using one, two or more vehicles or firearms.

The Evasive Driving Module (EDM) is for operators who might come under attack while operating a motor vehicle. Whether the attack be an attempted carjacking, kidnapping, or terrorist assassination, the response is the same, to get out of the situation quickly. The goal is to train the driver how to use his vehicle as a means of escape or weapon for survival. The driver will learn what a car is capable of and most importantly, his own limits. He will be shown how hard it is to stop a moving vehicle, and he will conduct a series of exercises where instructors actually try to run the driver off the road. The driver will be taught evasive maneuvers such as forward and reverse spins and ramming. Training is brought together through realistic situational exercises where the student comes under different types of attack and is challenged to react. "

[Dunph]

Wow, that really is fascinating. A small group of marine-like spies. Makes SIS and MI5's websites who tell us that "they don't arrange assassinations" sound like a load of piffle. I'd put a lot of money on the fact that they will, especially now during all this Middle East business, have a small group of elite agents similar to the Double-0s or now as we know, the SOG that are multi-tasking agents capable of intel gathering and required force.

The EDM module sounds fun.... Tarl, the last sections confused me. Were you talking about the SOG or the SAS? Because you mentioned both of them.

[Xenobia]

Hey Duphy...how come it took you this long to break into the FDC?

Seriously, well done.

As for the CIA's new shadow army...let the intelligence agency do its job. It does know what it is doing...when it has the money to do it. Rumsfeld needs to shut-up and go away. The last thing we need now is redundancy. That is how mistakes happen.

-- Xenobia

[Tarl_Cabot]

Sorry about the confusion. The CIA's SAS and SOG are actually the same thing; not be be confused with the U.K.'s SAS(special air services). The CIA's SOG are also reffered to as S.A.S. Special activities staff. That was thier name before the SOG were revitalized by George Tennent in 1998. check out this website for more info:

http://www.specialop...AS/Default.html

[Dunph]

Aha, cheers for that explanation, Tarl.

Thanks Xen, I guess I'm just a quality not quantity guy!

[Tarl_Cabot]

No Problem.