Almost since the guns of World War II fell silent, the U.S. Army has focused most of its efforts on finding ways to counter the Soviet Union on the potential battlefields of Europe. Increasingly, however, America's real military challenges have been of a less conventional sort. A string of hostage crises in Iran and Lebanon, instability throughout the Persian Gulf, guerrilla wars that threatened El Salvador and other Third World allies, and the emergence of Soviet-aligned regimes in places like Nicaragua and Grenada have hammered home the need for ways to handle some very different military tasks: snatching hostages from the grip of terrorists, perhaps, or helping U.S.-allied governments fight Communist-led guerrillas.
The Iran-contra debacle clearly showed the dangers of relying on semiprivate operators to handle such tricky covert missions. The CIA's legal authority and practical capacity to operate in the gray area between intelligence activity and paramilitary action have come under grave question. The business of conducting covert wars in an open and democratic society has never come easily to the Pentagon either. America's armed forces traditionally resemble a sheriff prepared for a shootout on Main Street at high noon but not for a back-alley brawl.
In fact, though, the U.S. military has very secretly been developing an unconventional capability for eight years. In the wake of the disastrous 1980 hostage rescue attempt in Iran, the Pentagon established the closest thing the nation has ever had to a secret army. These clandestine operations and intelligence units are still around. But their history has largely been a sorry tale of bureaucratic bungling and infighting. Says one special operations officer: "The units still exist, but their morale and our ability to use them are in shambles."
From interviews with military, intelligence, Administration and congressional officials, TIME has pieced together how the secret army was organized, some of the operations it conducted and the troubles it encountered. Its small, specially trained units are designed to operate far more covertly than older elite paramilitary units, such as the Army's Rangers and the Navy's Seals. They have been given exotic code names, such as Yellow Fruit, Task Force 160 and Seaspray. New types of equipment have been developed for them, including small, high-tech helicopters and one-man satellite- & communications radios and dishes. In addition, a far-ranging intelligence organization known as Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) gave the Army for the first time the ability to conduct full-fledged espionage using field agents. And all was done in such deep secrecy that to this day the very existence of some of the special units has never been officially admitted.