Defense Secretary Jim Mattis answers a question about the ambush of U.S. troops in Niger in Oct. 2017. To what extent the inaccurate information that Mattis and other top officials provided flowed from the inaccurate information the Pentagon now says the team itself provided to its superiors is not clear. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo Pentagon: Green Berets failed to report nature of mission before Niger ambush

The Army special operations team that came under lethal attack last October in the African nation of Niger was initially conducting a kill-or-capture mission whose true nature was unknown to higher headquarters because the team filed misleading paperwork, the Pentagon confirmed for the first time Thursday.

The findings of a six-month-long investigation by U.S. Africa Command highlight key inconsistencies with the public explanations at the time that it was a low-risk advising mission gone horribly wrong in the remote village of Tongo Tongo when four Americans were killed — and not a combat raid.


In it unclear to what extent the inaccurate information that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other top officials provided flowed from the inaccurate information the Pentagon now says the team itself provided to its superiors. Nor is it clear why the team did not reveal the true nature of its mission.

The sequence of events involving 12 American and 30 Nigerien soldiers is laid out in an eight-page summary of a classified, 180-page report Africa Command provided to Congress earlier this week that has prompted accusations that the Pentagon was deliberately misleading about what its troops were doing in Niger.

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The two Green Beret captains in charge of planning the mission “inaccurately characterized the nature of the mission” in the written plan they sent to their battalion headquarters in the nation of Chad, the summary states.

The mission was approved at a low level based on the understanding that it would be a "civil-military reconnaissance," or routine meet-and-greet with local leaders — a type of mission that was within the team’s charter to conduct without approval of its battalion commander.

Military officials repeatedly insisted in the aftermath of the Oct. 4 ambush that the mission was “meant to establish relations with the local leaders" — as Africa Command spokesman Col. Mark Cheadle put it two days later.

But according to the investigation, the Green Berets and other soldiers were actually “targeting a key member” of a local insurgent group affiliated with the Islamic State, a mission that would likely not have received approval because of the risks involved.

The target was reportedly Doundoun Cheffou, a former local cattle herder who had joined a West Africa affiliate of Al Qaeda and then later pledged allegiance to ISIS, although the Pentagon summary did not identify him.

Such a kill-or-capture raid would have required approval from the headquarters in Chad.

The team ultimately came up dry on its unauthorized mission and moved on to visit a nearby Nigerien military base.

Maj. Gen. Roger Cloutier, who led the investigation, told reporters Thursday that the written plan the team submitted was "identical to a previous" plan for a meet-and-greet mission. "It wasn't deliberate intent to deceive," he insisted. "It was a lack of attention to detail."

Some former Green Berets with experience in Africa take issue with the narrative the Pentagon released Thursday, particularly the allegation that the two unidentified captains filed a misleading mission plan.

“There are some findings that are correct and some findings that are unfair,” a former senior Green Beret officer with experience in West Africa said in an interview. “I highly doubt they filed a false [concept of operations],” as the mission plans are called. “You might fudge the level of the [concept of operations] to get different resources or depending on whether you expect contact, but I don’t believe there was any falsification or cowboy s---. These guys were out there trying to make things happen. I was in that unit for a long time, and they’re killers, but they’re not cowboys.”

Derek Gannon, another Green Beret combat veteran, acknowledged that “a lot of mistakes happened” during the mission. “This was a young team and they were not expecting contact, and once the bullets flew, that team fell apart.”

While they were still in the field, the special operations team received orders to proceed to another site to look for clues about where the militant leader might have gone.

Driving back from that site, which proved empty, the team was attacked by a heavily armed force of what the investigation concluded was over 100 militants from the local group affiliated with the Islamic State.

Gannon said it is unfair to emphasize the initial mission plan when the troops were ambushed during a later phase of the mission, one they had not planned and he said the team captain raised concerns about. “The captain on the ground voiced his concerns along with his Nigerien counterpart. They were overruled and they were ordered to go.”

The two missions ran together and the troops did not return to base between them.

The report also clarifies the fate of the Americans who were killed.

During the firefight, which lasted over an hour, some of the Nigerien soldiers accompanying the Americans fled, and the Americans repeatedly retreated to different positions under heavy fire. Four Americans became separated at two points along the way, and all four were later killed: Staff Sgts. Bryan Black, Dustin Wright, and Jeremiah Johnson, and, Sgt. La David Johnson.

When insurgents found the first three soldiers’ bodies, they “fired several additional bursts into” them, the summary says, adding that they were dead by the time the insurgents reached them. La David Johnson and two Nigerien soldiers with whom he attempted to escape on foot were all killed when the enemy found them.

“The enemy did not capture [Johnson] alive,” the summary states, contradicting some media reports. His “hands were not bound and he was not executed but was killed in action.”

He was found 48 hours after the other bodies. The summary does not explain why additional parts of Johnson’s body were found on the battlefield more than a month later, on Nov. 12.

Previously, the Pentagon had made the more expansive claims that no soldiers were “left behind” on the battlefield and that none of the bodies fell into enemy hands.

The investigation squarely contradicts that version. Although insurgents did not take any of the four American bodies away from the battlefield, "the evidence is pretty clear that our fallen heroes were stripped of any serviceable equipment," Cloutier said, and three of them were found in or near an insurgent pickup truck. He said the insurgents appeared to have been interrupted by arriving aircraft as they attempted to move the bodies.

The summary of the investigation answers few questions about what support the embattled team received from an American drone that was reportedly on the scene for part of the time, or French Mirage attack jets.

The report notes that a French Mirage did a low “show of force” pass over the battlefield “approximately 47 minutes after receiving notification,” but it does not say how long into the battle that notification was received.

And according to a Pentagon official speaking on condition of anonymity, references to the drone were edited out of the summary provided to the media.

“The investigation identifies individual, organizational, and institutional failures and deficiencies that contributed to the tragic events of 4 October 2017,” the summary states.

From left, Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, Sgt. La David Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright are pictured. | U.S. Army via AP

Cloutier and Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, head of Africa Command, said that the two captains and a third individual are named in the full report for the Army and Special Operations Command to consider taking "appropriate action" for their conduct.

Retired Maj. Gen. Jeff Schloesser, who left the Army after a similar investigation recommended charges of dereliction of duty against some of his subordinates over a bloody 2008 firefight in Afghanistan, warned that battlefield losses should not be viewed as solely the fault of the commanders or soldiers involved.

“All combat includes a foe, a thinking enemy who is doing everything they can to prevail,” Schloesser said. “The enemy gets a vote, and sometimes they fight fiercely.”

At Mattis's direction, Waldhauser has made adjustments to how special operations teams work in the field, Africa Command chief Waldhauser told reporters — including outfitting the teams with armored vehicles, reviewing the mission approval process to "eliminate possible confusion about approval authorities," and setting a higher bar for missions where advisers accompany local troops.

"We are now far more prudent in our missions," Waldhauser said. "The missions we actually accompany on have some sort of strategic value," such as pursuing targets who pose a serious threat to the United States. It is unclear whether the military sees Cheffou as meeting that bar.