Boots on ground, now also the eyes

Leading a group of Navy SEALs on raids in Baghdad's maze of maze of neighborhoods, Lt. Cmdr. Jamie Cartwright turned up tatooed members of Saddam Fedayeen, Palestinian terrorists, and makers of fake passports.

Over 300 combat missions in six months, he also discovered something about his own men.

Specialized in raids to kill or capture most-wanted leaders, the SEALs proved very adept at a softer but equally essential skill: gathering intelligence.

Young SEALs would "jump in the back [of helicopters] ... to photograph the targets" and sleuth out street-level sources, he says. After a raid, they scoured houses for documents, cell- phones, and other tips that could lead to quick, follow-on action.

"The guys got really good at searching these homes," said LCDR Cartwright of SEAL Team 5, noting that his men had from two days to as little as 20 minutes to prepare a mission.

As the Pentagon's lead troops in the war on terrorism, elite US Special Operations Forces (SOF) are taking on a far more robust and independent role in intelligence and undercover operations as their numbers, deployments, and funding grow at an unprecedented rate.

Indeed, some senior military officers are calling for a transformation of the 49,000-strong force around the imperative for a new, secretive, and ethnically diverse intelligence cadre capable of tracking down sophisticated terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. "A robust cadre of humint [human intelligence] forces organic to SOF [Special Operations Forces] would give us perhaps the most important aspect of operations-intelligence fusion that one could get in the field, in direct support of counterterror," says Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Yet the shift is also stirring controversy over what some military analysts view as the potential pitfalls of blurring the traditional line between Special Operations and the CIA, especially in the realm of covert action.

Today, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is already exercising unprecedented authority under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to lead the US military's fight against terrorism. The war in Iraq has seen the largest Special Operations deployment since Vietnam, with more than 80 percent of its deployed forces now in the Central Command area (the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa.)

Given the biggest budget increase in its history, SOCOM's funding is projected to increase over the 2003 level by 20 percent per year for the next five years, as it adds 4,000 people to its ranks and dozens of new helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. The personnel increase will include Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces (also known as Green Berets) and Civil Affairs soldiers, and a new 85-man Marine Special Operations unit, Det 1, which is preparing to deploy to Iraq in April.

As part of this growth, the command, based in Tampa, Fla., is carving out a new niche by expanding its intelligence capabilities across the board. It is adding 700 people to its US and overseas regional headquarters to analyze intelligence - gathered by its own forces as well as by CIA agents, spy satellites, and other means - and to plan Special Operations-led missions with an emphasis on agile responses to short-term intelligence.

The nexus of the effort is a new Center for Special Operations, a "warfighting hub" with sole responsibility for "planning, supporting, and executing Special Operations in the war on terrorism," says SOCOM's commander, Gen. Bryan "Doug" Brown. If ordered by the president or Defense secretary, SOCOM's beefed-up headquarters now allows it to reverse roles and direct operations anywhere in the world supported by US regional commanders - instead of supplying forces to serve under them.

Another way Special Operations leaders are boosting their intelligence capabilities is by leveraging ties with foreign counterparts. For the first time, coalition partners from "several" countries are stationed at SOCOM headquarters, General Brown says.

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