Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 25, 1993 TAG: 9312250024
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: Boston Globe
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Citing national security considerations, the Defense Department has rejected requests by ABC News and the National Security News Agency to obtain the tapes under the Freedom of Information Act.
Military spokesmen said the technology used to make the film is too sensitive to reveal. Sources in the communications industry said the technology is widely known and easily available.
Some military men who have seen the film want it released.
The Somalia issue echoes a similar one from the 1991 Gulf War. Although the Pentagon selectively released video of air strikes by cruise missiles and smart bombs, military footage of the 100-hour ground war against Iraq never has been made public. In previous wars, the Defense Department generally cooperated with journalists and historians and turned over official, unclassified footage.
Military specialists who have seen the Somalia tape said it shows scenes of outstanding bravery and professionalism. They maintained it would show that the operation, in which 18 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of Somalis were killed, was a well-planned, successfully executed operation carried out under extremely difficult conditions.
Meanwhile, keeping the video classified leaves perhaps the most intriguing and sensitive question unanswered: Were senior U.S. military officers watching the battle live on television screens in Mogadishu, Washington or elsewhere? If so, why did it take so long for a relief column to reach the embattled Army Rangers?
Informed military sources held out the possibility that senior officers did watch the firefight as it happened. Civilian communications specialists said that was highly likely. The officers could have been watching at the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon or in Central Command Headquarters in Florida, which was in charge of the U.S. military operation in Somalia. The same sources cited a high possibility that the images also were monitored at military headquarters in Mogadishu.
A spokesman for the Special Operations Command in Florida, which has responsibility for the Rangers and Delta Force units involved in the battle, said the command had not received images of the battle while the fighting was taking place.
A Pentagon spokesman said he was "unaware" of anyone there seeing the images during the battle.
To transmit the video, the military is believed to have used helicopters capable of relaying images via a microwave downlink to a ground station at the city's U.S. military headquarters. The images could have been sent virtually instantaneously via a satellite back to the United States.
The battle lasted for more than 12 hours. A relief column took many hours to arrive.
The video is said to be very dramatic. Two Ranger helicopters go down. Two members of a Delta sniper team are dropped from a helicopter to protect survivors of one crash until they in turn run out of ammunition and are killed.
Another small helicopter makes a daring landing in the middle of a street to carry off wounded. A third helicopter fights for control in the air after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade as a Special Forces search-and-rescue team slides down ropes to the ground.
A spokesman for the Special Operations Command said the main reason for the tape's secrecy is the sophistication of the technology used in filming and transmitting the raid.
"It's not just a video hanging out of a camera," said George Grimes, a command spokesman.
Technology by which the video would be shot and transmitted long distances at high speed is, however, well known. Television networks and local stations have long used similar systems for covering events like the Los Angeles riots.
Because of its sensitivity, Grimes said, "the film cannot be edited at all. It cannot be sanitized."
The tape also shows Ranger and Delta tactics that the military is not willing to reveal to a broad audience, Grimes said.
John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists noted that the present generation of defense communications satellites has been in operation more than 10 years.
Pike and other specialists added, however, that the tape could reveal developments in one area the military still guards jealously: its capability to see at night or in very dusty, hazy conditions.
The operation started in the afternoon and stretched into the early hours of the next morning. Combat could have stirred up a lot of dust. A tape dramatically clearer than can be expected could be a sign that infrared imaging had taken a leap forward - an advance the military would not yet wish to discuss.
by CNB