After 13 years, CIA honors Green Beret killed on secret Afghanistan mission, When Nathan Ross Chapman became the aboriginal aggressive blow to die by adversary blaze during the war in Afghanistan, the alone American banderole accessible for his casket was a application broken off the compatible of an airman loading his casket for the continued cruise home. He was active on Jan. 11, 2002, a anniversary afterwards his death, with abounding aggressive ceremoniousness in Tahoma Civic Cemetery, Wash.
It took accession 13 years for the CIA to admit on its Canonizing Bank that Chapman, an Army Green Beret, was aswell one of its own — the baker aboriginal chic had been clearly abundant to the bureau in the weeks afterwards the 9/11 attacks and died acting as a CIA paramilitary team’s communications specialist.
Chapman’s afterlife was a watershed accident for a country that didn’t apperceive it was headed into a acutely amaranthine war, breadth the account of those absent would about-face into a affectionate of white babble for abounding Americans. The aboriginal of its affectionate in Afghanistan, his afterlife drew civic attention, including a televised funeral.
Much of Chapman’s adventure and that of the abstruse bureau aggregation he was assigned to has never been told, and the bureau continues to say annihilation about him.
At a commemoration at CIA address on May 18, 2015, the bureau apparent an engraved marble brilliant to mark his afterlife in the band of service, but like abounding others in the wall’s accompanying Book of Honor, his name was larboard absent. The accession of that brilliant for account in 2002 prompted The Post to appraise the accomplishments to the honor, and why it had taken so continued to be conferred.
In the years afterwards Chapman died, the bureau accustomed at atomic one added account member, a Marine administrator dead in Iraq in 2007 while abundant to an bureau paramilitary unit. The Marine was afterwards memorialized with a star, yet it took added than a decade for Chapman to accept his abode on the acclaimed wall.
“We didn’t even apperceive annihilation was traveling on about to that star; we didn’t apprehend it and we didn’t apperceive annihilation about it,” Chapman’s father, Will, said during a contempo account in his home in Texas. He said the acceptance from the CIA was allotment of his son’s final chapter, and he was beholden for it. It aswell recognizes the cardinal role that Appropriate Operations armament played with the CIA in the aboriginal canicule of the Afghan war.
Following the canonizing commemoration in 2015, CIA Director John Brennan, forth with his deputies, abreast met with the Chapmans on the agency’s seventh floor. He apologized for the continued delay but gave no account for why it took added than 13 years for Chapman to get his abode on the wall, the ancestor said.
“He just said it should accept been done a continued time ago.”
The CIA beneath to comment.
Chapman, 31, larboard abaft a wife, Renae, and two children, Brandon and Amanda, who, at the time, were 1 and 2 years old. Renae Chapman was bare to animadversion for this story.
A adept who jumped into Panama as a Ranger and who served in Iraq and Haiti, Chapman was aswell a able activity scuba diver and sniper. Among his aeon he was accepted as a able able and as the activity of the affair with a affection for commendation Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
Chapman had transferred aback to Fort Lewis, Wash., from Okinawa just afore the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“America’s traveling to war over this,” he told his ancestor in the weeks that followed. “And they’re not traveling afterwards me.”
“And again he was gone,” the ancient Chapman recalled.
An anarchistic aggregation of elites
Built like a linebacker with a aboveboard jaw, attenuated eyes and a sly smile, Chapman went to war as a affiliate of what the CIA alleged Aggregation Hotel — a six-man assemblage composed of three Appropriate Armament soldiers, two CIA paramilitary admiral and a CIA contractor. Chapman and two added Green Berets were alleged from added than 1,300 soldiers in 1st Appropriate Armament Group. For their mission in Afghanistan, the CIA bare communications specialists and medics, and about anon afterward the 9/11 attacks it broke 1st Accumulation to advice ample that requirement, said Lt. Gen. David Fridovich, who was, at the time, the group’s administrator and a colonel.
Chapman’s appointment to Hotel reflected the agency’s rapidly accretion accord with the U.S. military, according to Henry Crumpton, the baton of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center assignment force that led the war in Afghanistan. It was a accord built-in out of call in adjustment to acreage an able anarchistic force in a new and absolutely anarchistic war.
After purchasing bags of dollars in alfresco food from breadth antic appurtenances food and requesting the weapons and accessories the aggregation would charge in Afghanistan, the six men spent the butt of October bouncing amid the CIA’s Camp Perry — bigger accepted as The Farm — in Williamsburg, Va., and the agency’s headquarters
Chapman was amenable for accumulating the team’s advice equipment. At the time, the activity of interfacing digital radios and computers was a new discipline, but it was something Chapman had already mastered. He was accepted throughout 1st Appropriate Armament accumulation as the best in his field, earning the acceptability during again deployments to places like Thailand and Malaysia with appropriate armament teams.
Aside from ambience up the radios, Chapman was aswell instructed on a computer affairs alleged ArcView — a section of software that accustomed CIA and aggressive units to see what was accident on the battlefield in absolute time.
“He never took himself too seriously, even with all the applesauce we were throwing at him,” said Ken Stiles, the CIA targeting administrator for all of the agency’s operations in Afghanistan.
In the countdown to Hotel’s departure, added CIA and Appropriate Armament teams had already been broadcast throughout Afghanistan. Aggregation Jawbreaker, the aboriginal aspect to go in, had affiliated up with locations of the Northern Alliance angry the Taliban, forth with teams Bravo and Charlie. Aggregation Echo had fabricated acquaintance with approaching Afghan admiral Hamid Karzai. In December, teams Juliet and Romeo would go into Tora Bora, acquisitive to bend Osama bin Laden in the broken abundance passes abreast the Pakistan border.
But afore Hotel would accompany its sister elements in Afghanistan, Chapman and the blow of the aggregation would aboriginal fly to Jacobabad, Pakistan. The aggregation anon began aggravating to plan a accord with the Pakistani aggressive to get to their ancillary of the bound south of the Afghan city-limits of Jalalabad in an attack to box in and acquisition bin Laden, according to Scott Satterlee, a appropriate armament medic abundant to Hotel with Chapman.
With the Pakistani aggressive ambitious added training and accessories than the baby aggregation was able to accommodate and alms little ability of the anarchic bound arena breadth Hotel was aggravating to go, the accord fell through. As things unraveled in Pakistan, U.S. and Afghan armament bedeviled Kabul and, just canicule afterwards Thanksgiving, Aggregation Hotel larboard Pakistan for Afghanistan’s capital.
Hotel would break in Kabul for almost a month, spending Christmas there. A disengagement of operators from Joint Appropriate Operations Command, or JSOC, would accompany the aggregation to 11 associates for an accessible mission in Khost, a asperous boondocks on Afghanistan’s eastern border.
Christmas was the endure time Chapman alleged home, his ancestor recalled. He didn’t acquaint them breadth he was, just that he was safe. He anesthetized the buzz about to his mother Lynn, and to Keith Chapman, his earlier brother who was afresh married. His grandmother and grandfathering aswell managed to get on the line.
“I said to him at the end of the conversation, I’m apologetic you’re not able to be with your family,” his ancestor said.
“I know, Dad,” he replied. “But I’m with my additional family, and they’re a abundant agglomeration of guys.”
Behind adversary lines
Roughly a anniversary later, Hotel loaded assimilate one of the CIA’s Russian-built Mi-17 helicopters and flew the 90 afar to Khost. According to Satterlee, the bureau had to pay its way into the town, alms ample sums of money to one of the tribes in barter for acceptance and some protection.
Hotel would go in and “plant the flag” for the CIA and abjure al-Qaeda a abject of operations, according to a CIA administrator present during the team’s operations who batten on the activity of anonymity to altercate a buried operation. They were the aboriginal Americans there aback the war began.
The aggregation set up, forth with some of their anew acquired Afghan escorts, a abecedarian abject of operations in an old Russian academy in the average of boondocks during the final canicule of the year. The night afore Chapman’s death, a baby four-man aspect from Hotel slipped into the black to conduct assay on an alone Soviet aerodrome a few afar away, abiding afterwards demography small-arms fire.
The aerodrome would afterwards be called afterwards Chapman and was the website of a suicide bombing that dead seven CIA advisers in 2009.
The next morning, algid and cloudless, Hotel’s aggregation baton forth with a chief CIA administrator who had been beatific to the breadth captivated a affair with some of the affiliated leaders at a adjacent alone government building. The affair started poorly, according to the CIA officer. The tribe’s assembly erupted into acrimonious argument, but afterwards tea and a agreement by the CIA to advice clean the town, the affair bankrupt on somewhat acceptable terms, said the officer.
That afternoon, Hotel loaded into four white Toyota Hillux auto trucks forth with a scattering of Afghan escorts and headed to what they anticipation was an al-Qaeda safe abode amid in town. The bureau had intercepted communications advancing from the building.
“Us accepting there wasn’t accomplishing anything, besides maybe accepting us into added trouble,” Satterlee said.
The aggregation got aback in their trucks and headed down one of the alone paved anchorage in Khost. As they came into town, the alley angry into a wash. The aboriginal three trucks went down and out and headed aback against the schoolhouse. As the fourth barter biconcave into the culvert, now almost a hundred yards abroad from the next car in the convoy, three men opened up with Kalashnikovs, anniversary auctioning their absolute magazines into the endure barter from almost 30 anxiety away.
In that truck’s bed was Chapman, a CIA paramilitary administrator and the team’s abandoned CIA contractor. An Afghan was driving. Two circuit airtight into the paramilitary officer’s chest, disturbing through his added armament magazines and his bendable physique armor. The ammo that dead Chapman burst his abdomen and burst his femoral artery. It was cryptic who alternate fire, said Satterlee, but if they inventoried Chapman’s accessory afterwards that day, the annual in his M4 carbine was abandoned with its bolt bound to the rear — affirmation that he had expended every annular he could afore annoyed from claret loss.
Chapman and the paramilitary administrator angled down, and the Afghan disciplinarian gunned it, authoritative it aback to the academy in just over a minute and half. By the time Satterlee and the blow of the aggregation got to the aback of the truck, it was ample in Chapman’s blood, and he was unconscious.
With the agency’s awkward Mi-17 carriage helicopter aerial from Kabul — a almost 45-minute flight from Khost — the aggregation formed angrily to accumulate Chapman alive. Satterlee did the best he could by capacity the anguish with cast while accession aggregation affiliate knelt on Chapman’s navel. But 5 account afore the Russian helicopter affected down in a aureate acreage next to the school, Chapman chock-full breathing.
The paramilitary officer, although acutely afflicted with assorted sucking chest wounds, would survive.
Satterlee helped accelerate Chapman into his sleeping bag and loaded him into the aback of the helicopter. It was 5 p.m. Jan. 4, 2002.
It is cryptic absolutely who attempt Chapman and why. According to Satterlee, the gunmen were allotment of one of the tribes aggravating to blackmail added money from the Americans for protection, while the CIA administrator interviewed for this commodity said they were possibly affiliated to the Haqqanis — a able band that had already affidavit to activity the United States and would abide to activity U.S. troops for years to come.
“He consistently knew how to acquisition his way into the action,” his ancestor said. “That’s why he went in the military, to do this stuff. … But he knew the accident involved.”
The Army awarded Chapman a Bronze Brilliant with a V for valor, and the CIA would posthumously accord him an intelligence star, according to his father. The U.S. Appropriate Armament Association in Thailand renamed itself afterwards Chapman, and a mural of the collapsed Green Beret adorns the bank of their headquarters.
“The attitude went away, and absoluteness showed up if Nate died,” said his above assistant Sgt. 1st Chic Jason Koehler.“It took the Superman T-shirt from anybody of us who anticipation we were invincible.”
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| After 13 years, CIA honors Green Beret killed on secret Afghanistan mission |
It took accession 13 years for the CIA to admit on its Canonizing Bank that Chapman, an Army Green Beret, was aswell one of its own — the baker aboriginal chic had been clearly abundant to the bureau in the weeks afterwards the 9/11 attacks and died acting as a CIA paramilitary team’s communications specialist.
Chapman’s afterlife was a watershed accident for a country that didn’t apperceive it was headed into a acutely amaranthine war, breadth the account of those absent would about-face into a affectionate of white babble for abounding Americans. The aboriginal of its affectionate in Afghanistan, his afterlife drew civic attention, including a televised funeral.
Much of Chapman’s adventure and that of the abstruse bureau aggregation he was assigned to has never been told, and the bureau continues to say annihilation about him.
At a commemoration at CIA address on May 18, 2015, the bureau apparent an engraved marble brilliant to mark his afterlife in the band of service, but like abounding others in the wall’s accompanying Book of Honor, his name was larboard absent. The accession of that brilliant for account in 2002 prompted The Post to appraise the accomplishments to the honor, and why it had taken so continued to be conferred.
In the years afterwards Chapman died, the bureau accustomed at atomic one added account member, a Marine administrator dead in Iraq in 2007 while abundant to an bureau paramilitary unit. The Marine was afterwards memorialized with a star, yet it took added than a decade for Chapman to accept his abode on the acclaimed wall.
“We didn’t even apperceive annihilation was traveling on about to that star; we didn’t apprehend it and we didn’t apperceive annihilation about it,” Chapman’s father, Will, said during a contempo account in his home in Texas. He said the acceptance from the CIA was allotment of his son’s final chapter, and he was beholden for it. It aswell recognizes the cardinal role that Appropriate Operations armament played with the CIA in the aboriginal canicule of the Afghan war.
Following the canonizing commemoration in 2015, CIA Director John Brennan, forth with his deputies, abreast met with the Chapmans on the agency’s seventh floor. He apologized for the continued delay but gave no account for why it took added than 13 years for Chapman to get his abode on the wall, the ancestor said.
“He just said it should accept been done a continued time ago.”
The CIA beneath to comment.
Chapman, 31, larboard abaft a wife, Renae, and two children, Brandon and Amanda, who, at the time, were 1 and 2 years old. Renae Chapman was bare to animadversion for this story.
A adept who jumped into Panama as a Ranger and who served in Iraq and Haiti, Chapman was aswell a able activity scuba diver and sniper. Among his aeon he was accepted as a able able and as the activity of the affair with a affection for commendation Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
Chapman had transferred aback to Fort Lewis, Wash., from Okinawa just afore the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“America’s traveling to war over this,” he told his ancestor in the weeks that followed. “And they’re not traveling afterwards me.”
“And again he was gone,” the ancient Chapman recalled.
An anarchistic aggregation of elites
Built like a linebacker with a aboveboard jaw, attenuated eyes and a sly smile, Chapman went to war as a affiliate of what the CIA alleged Aggregation Hotel — a six-man assemblage composed of three Appropriate Armament soldiers, two CIA paramilitary admiral and a CIA contractor. Chapman and two added Green Berets were alleged from added than 1,300 soldiers in 1st Appropriate Armament Group. For their mission in Afghanistan, the CIA bare communications specialists and medics, and about anon afterward the 9/11 attacks it broke 1st Accumulation to advice ample that requirement, said Lt. Gen. David Fridovich, who was, at the time, the group’s administrator and a colonel.
Chapman’s appointment to Hotel reflected the agency’s rapidly accretion accord with the U.S. military, according to Henry Crumpton, the baton of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center assignment force that led the war in Afghanistan. It was a accord built-in out of call in adjustment to acreage an able anarchistic force in a new and absolutely anarchistic war.
After purchasing bags of dollars in alfresco food from breadth antic appurtenances food and requesting the weapons and accessories the aggregation would charge in Afghanistan, the six men spent the butt of October bouncing amid the CIA’s Camp Perry — bigger accepted as The Farm — in Williamsburg, Va., and the agency’s headquarters
Chapman was amenable for accumulating the team’s advice equipment. At the time, the activity of interfacing digital radios and computers was a new discipline, but it was something Chapman had already mastered. He was accepted throughout 1st Appropriate Armament accumulation as the best in his field, earning the acceptability during again deployments to places like Thailand and Malaysia with appropriate armament teams.
Aside from ambience up the radios, Chapman was aswell instructed on a computer affairs alleged ArcView — a section of software that accustomed CIA and aggressive units to see what was accident on the battlefield in absolute time.
“He never took himself too seriously, even with all the applesauce we were throwing at him,” said Ken Stiles, the CIA targeting administrator for all of the agency’s operations in Afghanistan.
In the countdown to Hotel’s departure, added CIA and Appropriate Armament teams had already been broadcast throughout Afghanistan. Aggregation Jawbreaker, the aboriginal aspect to go in, had affiliated up with locations of the Northern Alliance angry the Taliban, forth with teams Bravo and Charlie. Aggregation Echo had fabricated acquaintance with approaching Afghan admiral Hamid Karzai. In December, teams Juliet and Romeo would go into Tora Bora, acquisitive to bend Osama bin Laden in the broken abundance passes abreast the Pakistan border.
But afore Hotel would accompany its sister elements in Afghanistan, Chapman and the blow of the aggregation would aboriginal fly to Jacobabad, Pakistan. The aggregation anon began aggravating to plan a accord with the Pakistani aggressive to get to their ancillary of the bound south of the Afghan city-limits of Jalalabad in an attack to box in and acquisition bin Laden, according to Scott Satterlee, a appropriate armament medic abundant to Hotel with Chapman.
With the Pakistani aggressive ambitious added training and accessories than the baby aggregation was able to accommodate and alms little ability of the anarchic bound arena breadth Hotel was aggravating to go, the accord fell through. As things unraveled in Pakistan, U.S. and Afghan armament bedeviled Kabul and, just canicule afterwards Thanksgiving, Aggregation Hotel larboard Pakistan for Afghanistan’s capital.
Hotel would break in Kabul for almost a month, spending Christmas there. A disengagement of operators from Joint Appropriate Operations Command, or JSOC, would accompany the aggregation to 11 associates for an accessible mission in Khost, a asperous boondocks on Afghanistan’s eastern border.
Christmas was the endure time Chapman alleged home, his ancestor recalled. He didn’t acquaint them breadth he was, just that he was safe. He anesthetized the buzz about to his mother Lynn, and to Keith Chapman, his earlier brother who was afresh married. His grandmother and grandfathering aswell managed to get on the line.
“I said to him at the end of the conversation, I’m apologetic you’re not able to be with your family,” his ancestor said.
“I know, Dad,” he replied. “But I’m with my additional family, and they’re a abundant agglomeration of guys.”
Behind adversary lines
Roughly a anniversary later, Hotel loaded assimilate one of the CIA’s Russian-built Mi-17 helicopters and flew the 90 afar to Khost. According to Satterlee, the bureau had to pay its way into the town, alms ample sums of money to one of the tribes in barter for acceptance and some protection.
Hotel would go in and “plant the flag” for the CIA and abjure al-Qaeda a abject of operations, according to a CIA administrator present during the team’s operations who batten on the activity of anonymity to altercate a buried operation. They were the aboriginal Americans there aback the war began.
The aggregation set up, forth with some of their anew acquired Afghan escorts, a abecedarian abject of operations in an old Russian academy in the average of boondocks during the final canicule of the year. The night afore Chapman’s death, a baby four-man aspect from Hotel slipped into the black to conduct assay on an alone Soviet aerodrome a few afar away, abiding afterwards demography small-arms fire.
The aerodrome would afterwards be called afterwards Chapman and was the website of a suicide bombing that dead seven CIA advisers in 2009.
The next morning, algid and cloudless, Hotel’s aggregation baton forth with a chief CIA administrator who had been beatific to the breadth captivated a affair with some of the affiliated leaders at a adjacent alone government building. The affair started poorly, according to the CIA officer. The tribe’s assembly erupted into acrimonious argument, but afterwards tea and a agreement by the CIA to advice clean the town, the affair bankrupt on somewhat acceptable terms, said the officer.
That afternoon, Hotel loaded into four white Toyota Hillux auto trucks forth with a scattering of Afghan escorts and headed to what they anticipation was an al-Qaeda safe abode amid in town. The bureau had intercepted communications advancing from the building.
“Us accepting there wasn’t accomplishing anything, besides maybe accepting us into added trouble,” Satterlee said.
The aggregation got aback in their trucks and headed down one of the alone paved anchorage in Khost. As they came into town, the alley angry into a wash. The aboriginal three trucks went down and out and headed aback against the schoolhouse. As the fourth barter biconcave into the culvert, now almost a hundred yards abroad from the next car in the convoy, three men opened up with Kalashnikovs, anniversary auctioning their absolute magazines into the endure barter from almost 30 anxiety away.
In that truck’s bed was Chapman, a CIA paramilitary administrator and the team’s abandoned CIA contractor. An Afghan was driving. Two circuit airtight into the paramilitary officer’s chest, disturbing through his added armament magazines and his bendable physique armor. The ammo that dead Chapman burst his abdomen and burst his femoral artery. It was cryptic who alternate fire, said Satterlee, but if they inventoried Chapman’s accessory afterwards that day, the annual in his M4 carbine was abandoned with its bolt bound to the rear — affirmation that he had expended every annular he could afore annoyed from claret loss.
Chapman and the paramilitary administrator angled down, and the Afghan disciplinarian gunned it, authoritative it aback to the academy in just over a minute and half. By the time Satterlee and the blow of the aggregation got to the aback of the truck, it was ample in Chapman’s blood, and he was unconscious.
With the agency’s awkward Mi-17 carriage helicopter aerial from Kabul — a almost 45-minute flight from Khost — the aggregation formed angrily to accumulate Chapman alive. Satterlee did the best he could by capacity the anguish with cast while accession aggregation affiliate knelt on Chapman’s navel. But 5 account afore the Russian helicopter affected down in a aureate acreage next to the school, Chapman chock-full breathing.
The paramilitary officer, although acutely afflicted with assorted sucking chest wounds, would survive.
Satterlee helped accelerate Chapman into his sleeping bag and loaded him into the aback of the helicopter. It was 5 p.m. Jan. 4, 2002.
It is cryptic absolutely who attempt Chapman and why. According to Satterlee, the gunmen were allotment of one of the tribes aggravating to blackmail added money from the Americans for protection, while the CIA administrator interviewed for this commodity said they were possibly affiliated to the Haqqanis — a able band that had already affidavit to activity the United States and would abide to activity U.S. troops for years to come.
“He consistently knew how to acquisition his way into the action,” his ancestor said. “That’s why he went in the military, to do this stuff. … But he knew the accident involved.”
The Army awarded Chapman a Bronze Brilliant with a V for valor, and the CIA would posthumously accord him an intelligence star, according to his father. The U.S. Appropriate Armament Association in Thailand renamed itself afterwards Chapman, and a mural of the collapsed Green Beret adorns the bank of their headquarters.
“The attitude went away, and absoluteness showed up if Nate died,” said his above assistant Sgt. 1st Chic Jason Koehler.“It took the Superman T-shirt from anybody of us who anticipation we were invincible.”
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