Secret Armies Of The Night

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For all the worry about moving human targets, few objectives received as much attention from military planners as the giant Faw facility, stretching out several miles along the Shatt al Arab waterway. Several U.S. military planners told TIME that Central Command regarded Faw as so important to the future of Iraq--and so likely to be subject to an act of sabotage by those loyal to the Saddam regime--that many believed it should be seized before the decapitating attacks on Saddam and his inner circle began. "We felt this was a strategic target to begin the war," said Navy Captain Bob Harward, who planned and commanded the operation.

In the end, it didn't happen that way. President Bush jump-started the war when his intelligence chief told him that informants had details on Saddam's whereabouts. That attack failed, but the planning for the raid on Faw began long before the shooting started. Weeks earlier, the U.S. sent Predator drones aloft to map the refinery from above. Working in neighboring countries, the SEALs divided into five teams to study the information, learning about the refinery, where the Iraqi army had built fortified positions and how to avoid parts of the facility where gunfire could start larger explosions. Minimizing collateral damage was vital: a secret Navy estimate predicted that if Iraqis sabotaged just one of the two offshore oil terminals, 12 times as much oil could pollute the gulf as the Exxon Valdez spilled into Alaskan waters in 1989. "There was a huge interest in maintaining oil infrastructure from Day One," said an Air Force major. The SEALs rehearsed the entire operation twice.

The GOPLATs (Gas And Oil Platforms) mission, as the military called it, began at dusk on March 20. All the practice paid off: the Pave Low choppers had no trouble finding their drop points; one chopper lowered its SEAL squad right on top of a fortified Iraqi bunker. The commandos hardly went in alone: 20 different types of aircraft circled overhead helping out. Navy jammers stir-fried Iraqi radio communications from upstairs; A-10 Warthogs--twin-engine jets armed with 30-mm machine guns--bore down on military vehicles; British jets fired specialized precision-guided bombs at Iraqi antiaircraft guns, as reconnaissance planes identified enemy troop concentrations and relayed coordinates to AC-130 Spectre gunships. While the entire operation took six hours from start to finish, the vital valves, metering stations and manifolds were seized just minutes after the operation began. The U.S. suffered no casualties. Central Command refused to quantify the Iraqi toll, but a U.S. officer told TIME that 40 Iraqis were killed in one fire fight alone. There was general agreement that most of the Iraqis either working at or defending the complex gave up or fled. "They didn't know we were there until we were on top of them," said a Navy officer involved in the operation, "and many of them were very happy for us to arrive."