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But the new units were hampered from the start by bureaucratic feuding between supporters of the secret units and military traditionalists, and between the intelligence and operations sections within this secret army. Operating under loose guidelines, the secret units also proved difficult to control. One got involved in an unauthorized operation planned for Laos. Another became the target of investigations for alleged misuse of funds and other improprieties; three officers eventually went to prison. The Pentagon is now trying to reorganize all special operations units under the newly formed Special Operations Command, and has imposed stricter operational and financial controls on them.
The Army did avoid one of the worst blunders of the Iran-contra affair. Though some of its clandestine activities were initially kept from legislators, to their displeasure, most were properly described to congressional oversight committees. Partly as a consequence, and somewhat paradoxically, the Army escaped the intense spotlight that the many Iran- contra investigations have cast on covert operations in general.
But sources have outlined to TIME a wide range of activities that give a picture of the secret army in action. Among their revelations:
-- After the Desert One debacle in 1980, the Pentagon planned in considerable detail a second operation, code-named Honey Badger, to rescue the Americans held in the Tehran embassy; it was never carried out because of inadequate intelligence.
-- The Army supplied to the CIA cannons and helicopters that the intelligence agency used to attack the Sandinistas in Nicaragua -- before the Boland amendment forbade CIA involvement in "military or paramilitary operations" there.
-- Operatives from ISA and Seaspray gathered intelligence in El Salvador that greatly helped counter a leftist guerrilla insurrection.
-- ISA in late 1981 or early 1982 worked out a deal, which later fell through, to obtain a top-of-the-line T-72 Soviet battle tank from Iraq, a Soviet client, in return for American self-propelled artillery weapons for the Iraqi army.
-- ISA became involved in an unauthorized plan for a 1981 raid into Laos to find Americans thought to be missing in action since the Viet Nam War. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was so incensed that he ordered the Army's secret intelligence unit disbanded, but it survived to collect information on terrorists in Lebanon, among other activities.
The story of the secret army begins in late 1979, when the Pentagon set up a task force under the command of Army General James Vaught to plan a rescue of the hostages in Tehran. The CIA had no agents there, so the Army organized a Field Operations Group that slipped four intelligence officers into Tehran, where they gathered vital information on the situation at the embassy. Later, FOG members rented trucks in Tehran for the rescue team that was to be flown into Iran by helicopters supplied by the Navy. All for naught: the mission was scrubbed in April 1980 because of a helicopter malfunction at the landing site, and one chopper crashed into a cargo plane.