China Mention In The Command: Deep Inside the President’s Secret Army

Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady recently published an interesting ebook on the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)–The Command: Deep Inside the President’s Secret Army.

It is a timely book, especially given that just yesterday the New York Times reported that the head of JSOC is “pushing for a larger role for his elite units who have traditionally operated in the dark corners of American foreign policy. The plan would give him more autonomy to position his forces and their war-fighting equipment where intelligence and global events indicate they are most needed.”

I read the book and there was one mention of China that stood out. According to the authors:

Operators from Delta Force and SEAL Team Six infiltrated China with the CIA and mapped the locations of Chinese satellite transmission facilities in the even that the United States ever needed to disable them.

No date is given, and since Delta Force was created in 1979 and Seal Team Six a year later, it could have happened anytime in the last thirty years. Still, it was a bold move for the U.S. given the history of detained CIA operatives in China (see Two CIA Prisoners in China, 1952–73).

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