title: Special Activities Center

text: On May 22, 2016, the CIA honored three paramilitary officers with stars on the memorial wall 56 years after their deaths. They were David W. Bevan, Darrell A. Eubanks, and John S. Lewis, all young men, killed on a mission to resupply anti-Communist forces in Laos. They were all recruited from the famous smokejumpers from Montana. One former smokejumper and paramilitary officer, Mike Oehlerich, believed he should have been on that flight, but they accidentally missed their pickup to the airport. They got stuck in Bangkok and so another crew – Bevan, Eubanks, and Lewis – flew that mission on August 13, 1961. "We had no idea anything happened until we got back the next day, and that's when they told us that they went into a canyon and tried to turn around and got into bad air," he said. CIA officials told him days after the crash that Lewis had jumped out of the plane, rather than remain inside. "When they told me that, I teared up," Oehlerich recalled. "It was something John and I had talked about – 'Don't go down with the airplane, your chances are better if you get out.'"


title: Special Activities Center

text: In 1973, SAD and the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology built and deployed the USNS "Glomar Explorer" (T-AG-193), a large deep-sea salvage ship, on a secret operation. This operation was called Project Azorian (erroneously called Project Jennifer by the press). Her mission was to recover a sunken Soviet submarine, , which had been lost in April 1968. A mechanical failure caused two-thirds of the submarine to break off during recovery, but SAC recovered two nuclear-tipped torpedoes, cryptographic machines and the bodies of six Soviet submariners. An alternative theory claims that all of K-129 was recovered and that the official account was an "elaborate cover-up".


title: Special Activities Center

text: Also, in the 1970s, the U.S. Navy, the National Security Agency (NSA) and SAD conducted Operation Ivy Bells and a series of other missions to place wiretaps on Soviet underwater communications cables. These operations were covered in detail in the 1998 book "". In the 1985 edition of "Studies in Intelligence", the CIA's in-house journal that outsiders rarely get to see, the CIA describes the "staggering expense and improbable engineering feats" that culminated in the August 1974 mission.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In 1979, the U.S.-backed Anastasio Somoza Debayle dictatorship in Nicaragua fell to the socialist Sandinistas. Once in power, the Sandinistas disbanded the Nicaraguan National Guard, who had committed many human rights abuses, and arrested and executed some of its members. Other former National Guard members helped to form the backbone of the Nicaraguan Counterrevolution or Contra. CIA paramilitary teams from Special Activities Division were deployed to train and lead these rebel forces against the Sandinista government. These paramilitary activities were based in Honduras and Costa Rica. Direct military aid by the United States was eventually forbidden by the Boland Amendment of the Defense Appropriations Act of 1983. The Boland Amendment was extended in October 1984 to forbid action by not only the Defense Department but also to include the Central Intelligence Agency.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The Boland Amendment was a compromise because of the U.S. Democratic Party did not have enough votes for a comprehensive ban on military aid. It covered only appropriated funds spent by intelligence agencies. Some of Reagan's national security officials used non-appropriated money of the National Security Council (NSC) to circumvent the Amendment. NSC officials sought to arrange funding by third parties. These efforts resulted in the Iran-Contra Affair of 1987, which concerned Contra funding through the proceeds of arms sales to the Islamic Republic of Iran. No court ever made a determination whether Boland covered the NSC, and on the grounds that it was a prohibition rather than a criminal statute, no one was indicted for violating it. Congress later resumed aid to the Contras, totaling over $300 million. The Contra war ended when the Sandinistas were voted out of power by a war-weary populace in 1990. Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was re-elected as President of Nicaragua in 2006 and took office again on January 10, 2007.


title: Special Activities Center

text: CIA personnel were also involved in the Salvadoran civil war. Some allege that the techniques used to interrogate prisoners in El Salvador foreshadowed those later used in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, when a similar counter-insurgency program was proposed in Iraq, it was referred to as "the Salvador Option". Agency officers had strict instructions not to participate in interrogations of prisoners, and to avoid the area where prisoners were held.


title: Special Activities Center

text: CIA sent in teams of Paramilitary Operations Officers into Somalia prior to the U.S. intervention in 1992. On December 23, 1992, Paramilitary Operations Officer Larry Freedman became the first casualty of the conflict in Somalia. Freedman was a former Army Delta Force operator who had served in every conflict that the U.S. was involved in, both officially and unofficially, since Vietnam. Freedman was killed while conducting special reconnaissance in advance of the entry of U.S. military forces. His mission was completely voluntary, but it required entry into a very hostile area without any support. Freedman was posthumously awarded the Intelligence Star on January 5, 1993, for his "extraordinary heroism."


title: Special Activities Center

text: SAD/SOG teams were key in working with JSOC and tracking high-value targets (HVT), known as "Tier One Personalities". Their efforts, working under extremely dangerous conditions with little to no support, led to several very successful joint JSOC/CIA operations. In one specific operation, a CIA case officer, Michael Shanklin and codenamed "Condor", working with a CIA Technical Operations Officer from the Directorate of Science and Technology, managed to get a cane with a beacon in it to Osman Ato, a wealthy businessman, arms importer, and Mohammed Aideed, a money man whose name was right below Mohamed Farrah Aidid's on the Tier One list.


title: Special Activities Center

text: a Little Bird helicopter dropped out of the sky, and a sniper leaned out and fired three shots into the car's engine block. The car ground to a halt as commandos roped down from hovering Blackhawks , surrounded the car, and handcuffed Ato. It was the first known helicopter takedown of suspects in a moving car. The next time Jones saw the magic cane, an hour later, Garrison had it in his hand. "I like this cane," Jones remembers the general exclaiming, a big grin on his face. "Let's use this again." Finally, a tier-one personality was in custody.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In June 2006, the Islamic Courts Union seized control of southern Somalia, including the country's capital Mogadishu, prompting the Ethiopian government to send in troops to try to protect the transitional government. In December, the Islamic Courts warned Ethiopia they would declare war if Ethiopia did not remove all its troops from Somalia. Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, leader of the Islamic Courts, called for a jihad, or holy war, against Ethiopia and encouraged foreign Muslim fighters to come to Somalia. At that time, the United States accused the group of being controlled by al-Qaeda, but the Islamic Courts denied that charge.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In 2009, PBS reported that al-Qaeda had been training terrorists in Somalia for years. Until December 2006, Somalia's government had no power outside of the town of Baidoa, from the capital. The countryside and the capital were run by warlords and militia groups who could be paid to protect terrorist groups.


title: Special Activities Center

text: CIA officers kept close tabs on the country and paid a group of Somali warlords to help hunt down members of al-Qaeda according to "The New York Times". Meanwhile, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, issued a message calling for all Muslims to go to Somalia. On January 9, 2007, a U.S. official said that ten militants were killed in one airstrike.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On September 14, 2009, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a senior al-Qaeda leader in East Africa as well as a senior leader in Shabaab, al Qaeda's surrogate in Somalia, was killed by elements of U.S. Special Operations. According to a witness, at least two AH-6 Little Bird attack helicopters strafed a two-car convoy. Navy SEALs then seized the body of Nabhan and took two other wounded fighters captive. JSOC and the CIA had been trying to kill Nabhan for some time including back in January 2007, when an AC-130 Gunship was called in on one attempt. A U.S. intelligence source stated that CIA paramilitary teams are directly embedded with Ethiopian forces in Somalia, allowing for the tactical intelligence to launch these operations. Nabhan was wanted for his involvement in the 1998 United States embassy bombings, as well as leading the cell behind the 2002 Mombasa attacks. Nabhan's remains were given a burial at sea following the operation. On September 11, 2020, Admiral William McRaven revealed in an interview with the Michael Hayden Center that the decision to use burial at sea for the disposition of Osama Bin Laden's body following Operation Neptune Spear was a direct result of his experiences in the killing of Nabhan, citing a belief that the chances of operational success were greater if decisions and procedures were made "as routine as possible."


title: Special Activities Center

text: From 2010 to 2013, the CIA set up the Somalia National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) by providing training, funding, and diplomatic access. In the same time period, the EU and UN have spent millions of dollars on the military training of the Somali National Army (SNA). NISA is considered a professional Somali security force that can be relied upon to neutralize the terrorist threat. This force responded to the complex al-Shabaab attack on the Banadir Regional Courthouse in Mogadishu that killed 25 civilians. NISA's response, however, saved hundreds of people and resulted in the death of all the al-Shabaab guerrillas involved.


title: Special Activities Center

text: Significant events during this time frame included the targeted drone strikes against British al-Qaida operative Bilal el-Berjawi and Moroccan al-Qaida operative Abu Ibrahim. It also included the rescue of U.S. citizen Jessica Buchanan by U.S. Navy SEALs. All likely aided by intelligence collection efforts in Somalia.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In November 2020, Michael Goodboe, a senior CIA paramilitary officer, was killed in a terrorist attack in Mogadishu, Somalia. Goodboe was a member of SEAL Team 6 prior to serving with the Special Activities Center. He is the most recent star added to the memorial wall at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. At the time of the attack, the U.S. had around 700 troops in Somalia, assisting local forces to defeat al-Shabaab, the burgeoning al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group with an estimated 9,000 fighters throughout the region. The terrorist organization has vowed to overthrow the Somali government, which is supported by some 20,000 troops from the African Union.


title: Special Activities Center

text: During the Soviet–Afghan War in the 1980s, Paramilitary Operations Officers were instrumental in equipping Mujaheddin forces against the Soviet Army. Although the CIA in general, and a Texas congressman named Charlie Wilson in particular, have received most of the attention, the key architect of this strategy was Michael G. Vickers. Vickers was a young Paramilitary Operations Officer from SAD/SOG. The CIA's efforts have been given credit for assisting in ending the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan.


title: Special Activities Center

text: SAD paramilitary teams were active in Afghanistan in the 1990s in clandestine operations to locate and kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. These teams planned several operations but did not receive the order to execute from President Bill Clinton because the available intelligence did not guarantee a successful outcome weighed against the extraordinary risk to the SAD/SOG teams that would execute the mission. These efforts did, however, build many of the relationships that would prove essential in 2001 U.S. Invasion of Afghanistan.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On September 26, 2001, a CIA team code-named "Jawbreaker" led by Gary Schroen, a case officer, with several members from Special Activities Division including Schroen's deputy Philip Reilly, a paramilitary officer, were the first U.S. forces inserted into Afghanistan. The team entered Uzbekistan nine days after the 9/11 attack and linked up with the Northern Alliance in its safe haven of the Panjshir Valley as part of Task Force Dagger.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On October 17, 2001, the eight members of the CIA's Team Alpha became the first Americans behind enemy lines when they were inserted into the Darya Suf Valley in two Black Hawk helicopters. Four members of Team Alpha were paramilitary officers from SAD: Alex Hernandez, Scott Spellmeyer, Johnny Micheal Spann, and "Andy," who was still serving in the CIA in 2021. A fifth, Mark Rausenberger, later became a paramilitary officer; he died on CIA duty in the Philippines in 2016.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The CIA teams provided the Northern Alliance with resources including millions of dollars in cash to buy weapons and pay local fighters and prepared for the arrival of USSOCOM forces. The plan for the invasion of Afghanistan was developed by the CIA, the first time in United States history that such a large-scale military operation was planned by the CIA. SAD, U.S. Army Special Forces, and the Northern Alliance combined to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan with minimal loss of U.S. lives. They did this without the use of conventional U.S. military ground forces.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In a 2008 "New York Times" book review of "Horse Soldiers", a book by Doug Stanton about the invasion of Afghanistan, Bruce Barcott wrote:


title: Special Activities Center

text: Small and highly agile paramilitary mobile teams spread out over the countryside to meet with locals and gather information about the Taliban and al-Qa'ida. During that time, one of the teams was approached in a village and asked by a young man for help in retrieving his teenage sister. He explained that a senior Taliban official had taken her as a wife and had sharply restricted the time she could spend with her family. The team gave the man a small hand-held tracking device to pass along to his sister, with instructions for her to activate it when the Taliban leader returned home. As a result, the team captured the senior Taliban official and rescued the sister.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In December 2001, Special Activities Division and the Army's Delta Force tracked down Osama bin Laden in the rugged mountains near the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan. Former CIA station chief Gary Berntsen, as well as a subsequent Senate investigation, claimed that the combined American special operations task force was largely outnumbered by al-Qaeda forces and that they were denied additional U.S. troops by higher command. The task force also requested munitions to block the avenues of egress of bin Laden, but that request was also denied. The SAC team was unsuccessful, and "Bin Laden and bodyguards walked uncontested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area." At Bin Laden's abandoned encampment, the team uncovered evidence that bin Laden's ultimate aim was to obtain and detonate a nuclear device in the United States.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In September 2009, the CIA planned on "deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence 'surge' ordered by President Obama. This will make its station there among the largest in the agency's history." This presence was expected to surpass the size of the stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars. The station was located at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and was led "by a veteran with an extensive background in paramilitary operations". The majority of the CIA's workforce was located among secret bases and military special operations posts throughout the country.


title: Special Activities Center

text: Also, in 2009, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, planned to request an increase in teams of CIA operatives, including their elite paramilitary officers, to join with U.S. military special operations forces. This combination worked well in Iraq and is largely credited with the success of that surge. There have been basically three options described in the media: McChrystal's increased counterinsurgency campaign; a counter-terror campaign using special operations raids and drone strikes; and withdrawal. The most successful combination in both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been the linking up of SAD and military special forces to fight alongside highly trained indigenous units. One thing all of these options have in common is a requirement for greater CIA participation.


title: Special Activities Center

text: According to the current and former intelligence officials, General McChrystal also had his own preferred candidate for the Chief of Station (COS) job, a good friend and decorated CIA paramilitary officer. The officer had extensive experience in war zones, including two previous tours in Afghanistan with one as the Chief of Station, as well as tours in the Balkans, Baghdad and Yemen. He is well known in CIA lore as "the man who saved Hamid Karzai's life when the CIA led the effort to oust the Taliban from power in 2001". President Karzai is said to be greatly indebted to this officer and was pleased when the officer was named chief of station again. According to interviews with several senior officials, this officer "was uniformly well-liked and admired. A career paramilitary officer, he came to the CIA after several years in an elite Marine unit".


title: Special Activities Center

text: General McChrystal's strategy included the lash up of special operations forces from the U.S. Military and from SAC/SOG to duplicate the initial success and the defeat of the Taliban in 2001 and the success of the "Surge" in Iraq in 2007. This strategy proved highly successful and worked very well in Afghanistan with SAC/SOG and JSOC forces conducting raids nearly every night having "superb results" against the enemy.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In 2001, the CIA's SAD/SOG began creating what would come to be called Counter-terrorism Pursuit Teams (CTPT). These units grew to include over 3,000 operatives by 2010 and have been involved in sustained heavy fighting against the enemy. It is considered the "best Afghan fighting force."


title: Special Activities Center

text: Located at above sea level, Firebase Lilley in Shkin serves as a "nerve center for the covert war." This covert war includes being a hub for these CTPT operations, with Firebase Lilley being just one in a constellation of CIA bases across Afghanistan. These units have not only been highly effective in combat operations against the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces but have also been used to engage with the tribes in areas with no other official government presence.


title: Special Activities Center

text: This covert war also includes a large SOG/CTPT expansion into Pakistan to target senior al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). CTPT units are the main effort in both the "Counter-terrorism plus" and the full "Counterinsurgency" options being discussed by the Obama administration in the December 2010 review. SOG/CTPT are also key to any exit strategy for the U.S. government to leave Afghanistan, while still being able to deny al-Qaeda and other trans-national extremists groups a safe haven both in Afghanistan and in the FATA of Pakistan.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In January 2013, a CIA drone strike killed Mullah Nazir, a senior Taliban commander in the South Waziristan area of Pakistan believed responsible for carrying out the insurgent effort against the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Nazir's death degraded the Taliban.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The U.S. has decided to lean heavily on CIA in general, and SAC specifically in their efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan as it did in Iraq. There are plans being considered to have several U.S. Military special operations elements assigned to CIA after the withdrawal. If so, there would still be a chance to rebuild and assist and coordinate (with Afghan ANSF commandos) and continue to keep a small footprint while allowing free elections and pushing back the Taliban/AQ forces that have failed but continue to attempt their taking back parts of the country, as they have had between 2015 through 2016.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The Trump administration doubled down on the covert war in Afghanistan by increasing the number of paramilitary officers from SAD fighting alongside and leading the Afghan "CTPT's", supported by "Omega Teams" from JSOC. Combined they are considered the most effective units in Afghanistan and the linchpin of the counter insurgency and counter-terrorism effort. The war has been largely turned over to SAC. On October 21, 2016, two senior paramilitary officers, "Brian Hoke" and "Nate Delemarre", were killed during a CTPT operation in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. The two longtime friends were killed fighting side-by-side against the Taliban and buried next to each other at Arlington National Cemetery.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The "New York Times" reported in March 2020 that during the Trump Administration's negotiations with the Taliban on the peace agreement, several advocated for an increase in CIA paramilitary capability as the U.S. Military reduced its capability to compensate for that reduction.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The shift to a bigger role by the CIA was adamantly opposed by the Taliban, who threatened to withdraw from the talks. As a result, the idea was shelved. Many current and former officials believed finding a way for the CIA and its paramilitary forces to continue to work with a new Afghan government was critical to the long-term survival of the deal and the counter-terrorism efforts in the region.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On November 5, 2002, a missile launched from a CIA-controlled Predator drone killed al-Qaeda members traveling in a remote area in Yemen. SAD/SOG paramilitary teams had been on the ground tracking their movements for months and called in this air strike. One of those in the car was Ali Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, al-Qaeda's chief operative in Yemen and a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer . Five other people, believed to be low-level al-Qaeda members, were also killed including an American named Kamal Derwish. Former Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called it "a very successful tactical operation" and said "such strikes are useful not only in killing terrorists but in forcing al-Qaeda to change its tactics".


title: Special Activities Center

text: "It's an important step that has been taken in that it has eliminated another level of experienced leadership from al-Qaeda," said Vince Cannistraro, former head of counter-terrorism for the CIA and current ABC News consultant. "It will help weaken the organization and make it much less effective." Harithi was on the run, pursued by several security forces who were looking for him and Muhammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, another suspect in the USS "Cole" bombing case.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In 2009, the Obama administration authorized continued lethal operations in Yemen by the CIA. As a result, the SAD/SOG and JSOC joined together to aggressively target al-Qaeda operatives in that country, both through leading Yemenese special forces and intelligence driven drone strikes. A major target of these operations was Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen with ties to both Nidal Hasan, the convicted Fort Hood attacker, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas 2009 attempted bomber of Northwest Airline flight 253. Imam al-Awlaki was killed on September 30, 2011, by an air attack carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On January 31, 2020, "The New York Times" reported that three U.S. officials "expressed confidence" that Qasim al-Raymi, the emir of AQAP was killed by the CIA on January 25, in Al Abdiyah District, Ma'rib Governorate, Yemen. For more than five years, al-Raymi eluded U.S. forces as he led what experts referred to as al-Qaida's "most dangerous franchise." Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Mick Mulroy said, if confirmed, his death would be "very significant." Al-Raymi was the target of the January 29, 2017, special operations raid in which Navy SEAL Ryan Owens was killed. "The U.S. never forgets," Mulroy said. "The Wall Street Journal" also reported al-Raymi attempted to blow up a U.S. bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009. U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to confirm reports that the U.S. had killed al-Raymi, by retweeting reports claiming that the CIA had conducted the strike. Experts considered him a possible successor to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda overall.


title: Special Activities Center

text: SAD paramilitary teams entered Northern Iraq before the 2003 invasion. Once on the ground, they prepared the battlespace for the subsequent arrival of U.S. military forces. SAD teams then combined with U.S. Army special forces (on a team called the Northern Iraq Liaison Element or NILE). This team organized the Kurdish Peshmerga for the subsequent U.S. led invasion. This joint team combined in Operation Viking Hammer to defeat Ansar al-Islam, an Islamist group allied to al-Qaeda, which several battle-hardened fighters from Afghanistan had joined after the fall of the Taliban, in a battle for control over the northeast of Iraq – a battle that turned out being one of the "most intense battles of Special Forces since Vietnam." This battle was for an entire territory that was completely occupied by Ansar al-Islam and was executed prior to the invasion in February 2003. If this battle had not been as successful as it was, there would have been a considerable hostile force in the rear of the U.S./secular Kurdish force in the subsequent assault on the Iraqi Army to the south. The U.S. side was represented by paramilitary operations officers from SAD/SOG and the Army's 10th Special Forces Group (10th SFG). 10th SFG soldiers were awarded three Silver Stars and six Bronze Stars with V for valor for this battle alone and several paramilitary officers were awarded the Intelligence Star for valor in combat. This battle was a significant direct attack and victory on a key U.S. opponent. It resulted in the deaths of a substantial number of militants and the uncovering of a crude laboratory that had traces of poisons and information on chemical weapons at Sargat. The team found foreign identity cards, visas, and passports on the enemy bodies. They had come from a wide variety of Middle Eastern and North African countries, including Yemen, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Tunisia, Morocco, and Iran. Sargat was also the only facility that had traces of chemical weapons discovered in the Iraq war.


title: Special Activities Center

text: Viking Hammer would go down in the annals of Special Forces history – a battle fought on foot, under sustained fire from an enemy lodged in the mountains, and with minimal artillery and air support.


title: Special Activities Center

text: SAD/SOG teams also conducted high-risk special reconnaissance missions behind Iraqi lines to identify senior leadership targets. These missions led to the initial assassination attempts against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his key generals. Although the initial air strike against Hussein was unsuccessful in killing the dictator, it was successful in effectively ending his ability to command and control his forces. Other strikes against key generals were successful and significantly degraded the command's ability to react to and maneuver against the U.S.-led invasion force. SAD operations officers were also successful in convincing key Iraqi Army officers to surrender their units once the fighting started and/or not to oppose the invasion force.


title: Special Activities Center

text: NATO member Turkey refused to allow its territory to be used by the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division for the invasion. As a result, the SAD/SOG, U.S. Army special forces joint teams, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and the 173d Airborne Brigade were the entire northern force against the Iraqi Army during the invasion. Their efforts kept the 13 divisions of the Iraqi Army in place to defend against the Kurds rather than allowing them to contest the coalition force coming from the south. This combined U.S. special operations and Kurdish force defeated the Iraqi Army. Four members of the SAD/SOG team received CIA's rare Intelligence Star for "extraordinary heroism".


title: Special Activities Center

text: The mission that captured Saddam Hussein was called "Operation Red Dawn." It was planned and carried out by JSOC's Delta Force and SAD/SOG teams (together called Task Force 121). The operation eventually included around 600 soldiers from the 1st Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division. Special operations troops probably numbered around 40. Much of the publicity and credit for the capture went to the 4th Infantry Division soldiers, but CIA and JSOC were the driving force. "Task Force 121 were actually the ones who pulled Saddam out of the hole" said Robert Andrews, former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. "They can't be denied a role anymore."


title: Special Activities Center

text: CIA paramilitary teams continued to assist JSOC in Iraq and in 2007 the combination created a lethal force many credit with having a major impact in the success of "the Surge". They did this by killing or capturing many of the key al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq. In a CBS "60 Minutes" interview, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward described a new special operations capability that allowed for this success. This capability was developed by the joint teams of CIA and JSOC. Several senior U.S. officials stated that the "joint efforts of JSOC and CIA paramilitary units was the most significant contributor to the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq".


title: Special Activities Center

text: In May 2007, Marine Major Douglas A. Zembiec was serving in SAD/SOG Ground Branch in Iraq when he was killed by small arms fire while leading a raid with Iraq Special Forces. Reports from fellow paramilitary officers stated that the flash radio report sent was "five wounded and one martyred". Major Zembiec was killed while trying to protect his soldiers, who were members of the Iraqi Army. He was honored with an Intelligence Star for his valor in combat.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On October 26, 2008, SAD/SOG and JSOC conducted an operation in Syria targeting the "foreign fighter logistics network" bringing al-Qaeda operatives into Iraq (See 2008 Abu Kamal raid). A U.S. source told CBS News that "the leader of the foreign fighters, an al-Qaeda officer, was the target of Sunday's cross-border raid." He said the attack was successful, but did not say whether or not the al-Qaeda officer was killed. Fox News later reported that Abu Ghadiya, "al-Qa'ida's senior coordinator operating in Syria", was killed in the attack. "The New York Times" reported that during the raid U.S. forces killed several armed males who "posed a threat".


title: Special Activities Center

text: In September 2014, with the rise of the Islamic State, the U.S. government began aggressive military operations against them in both Iraq and Syria. SAD Ground Branch was placed in charge of the ground war. This is a testament to SAD being the preeminent force for unconventional warfare and their long-standing relationship with the most effective fighting force in the region, the Kurdish Peshmerga.


title: Special Activities Center

text: SAD/SOG has been very active "on the ground" inside Pakistan targeting al-Qaeda operatives for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Predator strikes and along with USSOCOM elements they have been training Pakistani paramilitary troops and regular Army troops, they have also done HVT target missions alongside Pakistani special forces. Before leaving office, President George W. Bush authorized SAD's successful killing of eight senior al-Qaeda operatives via targeted air strikes. Among those killed were the mastermind of a 2006 plot to detonate explosives aboard planes flying across the Atlantic Rashid Rauf and the man thought to have planned the Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing on September 20, 2008, that killed 53 people. The CIA Director authorized the continuation of these operations and on January 23, SAD/SOG performed killings of 20 individuals in northwestern Pakistan that were terrorists. Some experts assess that the CIA Director – at that time Leon Panetta – has been more aggressive in conducting paramilitary operations in Pakistan than his predecessor. A Pakistani security official stated that other strikes killed at least 10 insurgents, including five foreign nationals and possibly "a high-value target" such as a senior al-Qaeda or Taliban official. On February 14, the CIA drone killed 27 taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in a missile strike in south Waziristan, a militant stronghold near the Afghan border where al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri were believed to be hiding.


title: Special Activities Center

text: According to the documentary film "Drone", by Tonje Schei, since 2002 the U.S. Air Force 17th Reconnaissance Squadron has been working for the CIA as "customer", carrying out at least some of the armed missions in Pakistan.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In a National Public Radio (NPR) report dated February 3, 2008, a senior official stated that al-Qaeda has been "decimated" by SAD/SOG's air and ground operations. This senior U.S. counter-terrorism official goes on to say, "The enemy is really, really struggling. These attacks have produced the broadest, deepest, and most rapid reduction in al-Qaida senior leadership that we've seen in several years." President Obama's CIA Director Leon Panetta stated that SAD/SOG's efforts in Pakistan have been "the most effective weapon" against senior al-Qaeda leadership.


title: Special Activities Center

text: These covert attacks have increased significantly under President Obama, with as many at 50 al-Qaeda militants being killed in the month of May 2009 alone. In June 2009, sixty Taliban fighters were killed while at a funeral to bury fighters that had been killed in previous CIA attacks. On July 22, 2009, National Public Radio reported that U.S. officials believe Saad bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden, was killed by a CIA strike in Pakistan. Saad bin Laden spent years under house arrest in Iran before traveling last year to Pakistan, according to former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell. It's believed he was killed sometime in 2009. A senior U.S. counter-terrorism said U.S. intelligence agencies are "80 to 85 percent" certain that Saad bin Laden is dead.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On August 6, 2009, the CIA announced that Baitullah Mehsud was killed by a SAD/SOG drone strike in Pakistan. "The New York Times" said, "Although President Obama has distanced himself from many of the Bush administration's counter-terrorism policies, he has embraced and even expanded the C.I.A.'s covert campaign in Pakistan using Predator and Reaper drones." The biggest loss may be to "Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida." For the past eight years, al-Qaeda had depended on Mehsud for protection after Mullah Mohammed Omar fled Afghanistan in late 2001. "Mehsud's death means the tent sheltering Al Qaeda has collapsed," an Afghan Taliban intelligence officer who had met Mehsud many times told Newsweek. "Without a doubt he was Al Qaeda's No. 1 guy in Pakistan," adds Mahmood Shah, a retired Pakistani Army brigadier and a former chief of the Federally Administered Tribal Area, or FATA, Mehsud's base.


title: Special Activities Center

text: Airstrikes from CIA drones struck targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan on September 8, 2009. Reports stated that seven to ten militants were killed to include one top al-Qaida leader. He was Mustafa al-Jaziri, an Algerian national described as an "important and effective" leader and senior military commander for al-Qaida. The success of these operations is believed to have caused senior Taliban leaders to significantly alter their operations and cancel key planning meetings.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The CIA is also increasing its campaign using Predator missile strikes on al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The number of strikes in 2009 exceeded the 2008 total, according to data compiled by the Long War Journal, which tracks strikes in Pakistan. In December 2009, "The New York Times" reported that President Obama ordered an expansion of the drone program with senior officials describing the program as "a resounding success, eliminating key terrorists and throwing their operations into disarray". The article also cites a Pakistani official who stated that about 80 missile attacks in less than two years have killed "more than 400" enemy fighters, a number lower than most estimates but in the same range. His account of collateral damage was strikingly lower than many unofficial counts: "We believe the number of civilian casualties is just over 20, and those were people who were either at the side of major terrorists or were at facilities used by terrorists."


title: Special Activities Center

text: On December 6, 2009, a senior al-Qaeda operative, Saleh al-Somali, was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan. He was responsible for their operations outside of the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and formed part of the senior leadership. Al-Somali was engaged in plotting terrorist acts around the world and "given his central role, this probably included plotting attacks against the United States and Europe". On December 31, 2009, senior Taliban leader and strong Haqqani ally Haji Omar Khan, brother of Arif Khan, was killed in the strike along with the son of local tribal leader Karim Khan.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In January 2010, al-Qaeda in Pakistan announced that Lashkar al-Zil leader Abdullah Said al Libi was killed in a drone missile strike. Neither al-Qaeda nor the U.S. has revealed the date of the attack that killed Libi. On January 14, 2010, subsequent to the suicide attack at Camp Chapman, the CIA located and killed the senior Taliban leader in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud. Mehsud had claimed responsibility in a video he made with the suicide bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On February 5, 2010, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and CIA's SAD/SOG conducted a joint raid and apprehended Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Baradar was the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the beginning of the Afghan War more than eight years ago until that date. He ranked second to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban's founder and was known to be a close associate of Osama bin Laden. Mullah Baradar was interrogated by CIA and ISI officers for several days before news of his capture was released. This capture sent the message that the Taliban leadership is not safe in Afghanistan or Pakistan. "The seizure of the Afghan Taliban's top military leader in Pakistan represents a turning point in the U.S.-led war against the militants", U.S. officials and analysts said. Per Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, several raids in Karachi in early February netted dozens of suspected Afghan militants. In other joint raids that occurred around the same time, Afghan officials said that the Taliban "shadow governors" for two provinces in northern Afghanistan had also been detained. Mullah Abdul Salam, the Taliban's leader in Kunduz, and Mullah Mir Mohammed of Baghlan were captured in Akora Khattack.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On February 20, Muhammad Haqqani, son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, was one of four people killed in the drone strike in Pakistan's tribal region in North Waziristan, according to two Pakistani intelligence sources.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On May 31, 2010, "The New York Times" reported that Mustafa Abu al Yazid (AKA Saeed al Masri), a senior operational leader for Al Qaeda, was killed in an American missile strike in Pakistan's tribal areas.


title: Special Activities Center

text: From July to December 2010, predator strikes killed 535 suspected militants in the FATA to include Sheikh Fateh Al Misri, Al-Qaeda's new third in command on September 25. Al Misri was planning a major terrorist attack in Europe by recruiting British Muslims who would then go on a shooting rampage similar to what transpired in Mumbai in November 2008.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On May 1, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed earlier that day in Abbottabad, Pakistan by "a small team of Americans" acting under his direct orders during a CIA operation under Director Leon Panetta. The helicopter raid was executed from a CIA forward operating base in Afghanistan by the elements of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (assigned to the CIA) and CIA paramilitary operatives.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The operation in the Bilal military cantonment area in the city of Abbottabad resulted in the acquisition of extensive intelligence on the future attack plans of al-Qaeda. Bin Laden's body was flown to Afghanistan to be identified and then forwarded to the aircraft carrier for a burial at sea. Results from the DNA samples taken in Afghanistan were compared with those of a known relative of bin Laden's and confirmed the identity.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The operation was a result of years of intelligence work that included the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the CIA, the DSS, and the Delta Force's apprehension and interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammad (KSM), the discovery of the real name of the courier disclosed by KSM, the tracking, via signal intelligence, of the courier to the Abbottobad compound by paramilitary operatives and the establishment of a CIA safe house that provided critical advance intelligence for the operation.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The material discovered in the raid indicated that bin Laden was still in charge of his Al-Qaeda organization and was developing plans and issuing orders at the time of his death. There is considerable controversy over claims that elements of the Pakistani government, particularly the ISI, may have been concealing the presence of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Bin Laden's death has been labeled a "game changer" and a fatal blow to Al-Qaeda, by senior U.S. officials.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In the early 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's Secret Intelligence Service were ordered to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Iran, Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq, and re-install deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This event was called Operation Ajax. The senior CIA officer was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of American president Theodore Roosevelt. The operation utilized all of SAC's components to include political action, covert influence, and paramilitary operations. The paramilitary component included training anti-Communist guerrillas to fight the Tudeh Party if "they" seized power in the chaos of Operation Ajax. Although a significant tactical/operational success, Operation Ajax is considered very controversial with many critics.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In November 1979, a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American embassy in support of the Iranian Revolution. Operation Eagle Claw was the unsuccessful United States military operation that attempted to rescue the 52 hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran on April 24, 1980. Several SAC/SOG teams infiltrated into Tehran to support this operation.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On March 9, 2007, the alleged CIA officer Robert Levinson was kidnapped from Iran's Kish Island. On July 7, 2008, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author Seymour Hersh wrote an article in the "New Yorker" stating that the Bush Administration had signed a Presidential Finding authorizing the CIA to begin cross border paramilitary operations from Iraq and Afghanistan into Iran. These operations would be against Quds Force, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, public and private sector strategic targets, and "high-value targets" in the war on terror. Also enrolled to support CIA objectives were the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K., and the Baluchis insurgents. "The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change," a person familiar with its contents said, and involved "working with opposition groups and passing money." Any significant effort against Iran by the Obama Administration would likely come directly from SAC. and in July 2010, Director Panetta chose a former chief of SAC as the new NCS Director. Levinson reportedly died in 2020 (or before), while in Iranian custody.


title: Special Activities Center

text: After the Arab Spring movements overthrew the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, its neighbors to the west and east respectively, Libya had a major revolt beginning in February 2011. In response, the Obama administration sent in SAC paramilitary operatives to assess the situation and gather information on the opposition forces. Experts speculated that these teams could have been determining the capability of these forces to defeat the Muammar Gaddafi regime and whether Al-Qaeda had a presence in these rebel elements.


title: Special Activities Center

text: U.S. officials had made it clear that no U.S. troops would be "on the ground", making the use of covert paramilitary operatives the only alternative. During the early phases of the Libyan offensive of U.S.-led air strikes, paramilitary operatives assisted in the recovery of a U.S. Air Force pilot who had crashed due to mechanical problems. There was speculation that President Obama issued a covert action finding in March 2011 that authorizes the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and support to the Libyan opposition.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The 2008 Abu Kamal raid was a helicopter-borne raid conducted by paramilitary officers from Special Activities Division and United States Special Operations Command, Joint Special Operations Command inside Syrian territory on October 26, 2008. The Syrian government called the event a "criminal and terrorist" attack on its sovereignty, alleging all of the reported eight fatalities were civilians. An unnamed U.S. military source, however, alleges that the target was a network of foreign fighters who planned to travel through Syria to join the Iraqi insurgency against the United States-led Coalition in Iraq and the Iraqi government.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In early September 2013, President Obama told U.S. Senators that the CIA had trained the first 50-man insurgent element and that they had been inserted into Syria. The deployment of this unit and the supplying of weapons may be the first tangible measure of support since the U.S. stated they would begin providing assistance to the opposition. In October 2013, SAC was tasked with supporting moderate Syrian rebels to help engineer a stalemate and political settlement in the Syrian civil war. This program was considered too limited to have the desired outcome.


title: Special Activities Center

text: With the rise of the Islamic State, however, SAC was given the overall command and control of the ground fight against them. This fight crossed borders between Iraq and Syria.


title: Special Activities Center

text: Again in 2015, the combination of the U.S. Military's JSOC and the CIA's Special Activities Center became the force of choice for fighting this conflict. SAC stood up and ran a robust covert action program to overthrown the Assad regime. The program was successful, including in 2015 when rebels using tank-destroying missiles routed government forces in northern Syria. But by late 2015, the Russians came to Assad's aid, and their focus was focusing squarely on the C.I.A.-backed fighters battling Syrian government troops. Many of the fighters were killed, and the fortunes of the rebel army reversed. According to the Middle East Institute, the program was never given the level of political support that was necessary for it to succeed – "They never gave it the necessary resources or space to determine the dynamics of the battlefield. They were drip-feeding opposition groups just enough to survive but never enough to become dominant actors."


title: Special Activities Center

text: In December 2018, US President Donald Trump announced that US troops involved in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) in northeast Syria would be withdrawn imminently. Trump's surprise decision overturned Washington's policy in the Middle East. It has also fueled the ambitions and anxieties of local and regional actors vying over the future shape of Syria. Many experts proposed that President Trump could mitigate the damage of his withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Syria by using SAC. Many believe the president chose "to replace U.S. ground forces in Syria with personnel from the CIA's Special Activities Division and that the process has been underway for months. Already experienced in operations in Syria, the CIA has numerous paramilitary officers who have the skills to operate independently in harm's way. And while the CIA lacks the numbers to replace all 2,000 U.S. military personnel currently in Syria and work alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces (this CIA personnel are spread across the world), their model is based on fewer enablers and support.


title: Special Activities Center

text: On October 26, 2019, U.S. Joint Special Operations Command's (JSOC) Delta Force conducted a raid into the Idlib province of Syria on the border with Turkey that resulted in the death of Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai also known as Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi. The raid was launched based on a CIA Special Activities Division's intelligence collection and close target reconnaissance effort that located the leader of ISIS. Launched after midnight local time, the eight helicopters carrying the teams along with support aircraft crossed hundreds of miles of airspace controlled by Iraq, Turkey and Russia. Upon arrival, efforts were made for Baghdadi to surrender, with those efforts unsuccessful U.S. forces responded by blowing a large hole into the side of the compound. After entering, the compound was cleared, with people either surrendering or being shot and killed. The two-hour raid culminated with Baghdadi fleeing from U.S. forces into a dead-end tunnel and detonating a suicide vest, killing himself and two of his children. The complex operation was conducted during the withdrawal of U.S. forces from northeast Syria, adding to the complexity.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In 1967, the SAD was involved with the CIA's domestic espionage operation Project MERRIMAC in conjunction with the Office of Security. SAD reported approval of the project to the office and reported that the CIA had assets in the area that could be used to monitor and infiltrate Washington-based anti-war groups that might pose potential threats to the CIA. In addition, the SAD Chief provided reports of findings to the SRS. Many documents related to MERRIMAC were destroyed by the CIA in compliance with a recommendation from the Rockefeller Commission to destroy files, not in compliance with new rules.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The CIA has always had a Special Activities Center, which secretly carries out special operations missions. Since September 11, 2001, however, the U.S. government has relied much more on SAC/SOG because fighting terrorists does not usually involve fighting other armies. Rather, it involves secretly moving in and out of countries like Iran, Somalia, etc., where the American military is not legally allowed to operate. If there are missions in these countries that are denied to U.S. military special operations forces, SAC/SOG units are the primary national special missions units to execute those operations.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In the War on Terror, SAC has the lead in the covert war being waged against al Qaeda. SAC/SOG paramilitary teams have apprehended many of the senior leaders. These include: Abu Zubaydah, the chief of operations for al-Qaeda; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the so-called "20th hijacker"; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, alleged to be the mastermind of the USS "Cole" bombing and leader of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf prior to his capture in November 2002; Abu Faraj al-Libi, al Qaeda's "field general" believed to have taken the role of No. 3 in al Qaeda following the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan; and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the number two Taliban commander and the highest level Taliban commander apprehended in the Afghan War. Prior to the beginning of the "War on Terror", SAC/SOG located and captured many notable militants and international criminals, including Abimael Guzmán and Carlos the Jackal. These were just two of the over 50 caught by SAC/SOG just between 1983 and 1995.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In 2002, the George W. Bush Administration prepared a list of "terrorist leaders" the CIA is authorized to kill in a targeted killing if capture is impractical and civilian casualties can be kept to an acceptable number. The list includes key al-Qaeda leaders like Ayman al-Zawahiri and formerly included its deceased previous leader, Osama bin Laden. The list also includes principal leaders of groups affiliated with al-Qaeda. This list is called the "high value target list". The U.S. president is not legally required to approve each name added to the list, nor is the CIA required to obtain presidential approval for specific attacks, although the president is kept well informed about operations.


title: Special Activities Center

text: SAC/SOG teams have been dispatched to the country of Georgia, where dozens of al Qaeda fugitives from Afghanistan are believed to have taken refuge with Chechen separatists and thousands of refugees in the Pankisi Gorge. Their efforts have already resulted in 15 Arab militants linked to al Qaeda being captured.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The SAC/SOG teams have also been active in the Philippines, where 1,200 U.S. military advisers helped to train local soldiers in "counter-terrorist operations" against Abu Sayyaf, a radical Islamist group suspected of ties with al Qaeda. Little is known about this U.S. covert action program, but some analysts believe that "the CIA's paramilitary wing, the Special Activities Division (SAD) [referring to SAC's previous name], has been allowed to pursue terrorist suspects in the Philippines on the basis that its actions will never be acknowledged."


title: Special Activities Center

text: On July 14, 2009, several newspapers reported that DCIA Leon Panetta was briefed on a CIA program that had not been briefed to the oversight committees in Congress. Panetta canceled the initiative and reported its existence to Congress and the President. The program consisted of teams of SAC paramilitary officers organized to execute targeted killing operations against al Qaeda operatives around the world in any country. According to the "Los Angeles Times", DCIA Panetta "has not ruled out reviving the program." There is some question as to whether former Vice President Dick Cheney instructed the CIA not to inform Congress. Per senior intelligence officers, this program was an attempt to avoid the civilian casualties that can occur during Predator drone strikes using Hellfire missiles.


title: Special Activities Center

text: According to many experts, the Obama administration has relied on the CIA and their paramilitary capabilities, even more than they have on U.S. military forces, to maintain the fight against terrorists in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region, as well as places like Yemen, Somalia and North Africa. Ronald Kessler states in his book "The CIA at War: Inside the Secret War Against Terror", that although paramilitary operations are a strain on resources, they are winning the war against terrorism.


title: Special Activities Center

text: SAC/SOG paramilitary officers executed the clandestine evacuation of U.S. citizens and diplomatic personnel in Somalia, Iraq (during the Persian Gulf War) and Liberia during periods of hostility, as well as the insertion of Paramilitary Operations Officers prior to the entry of U.S. military forces in every conflict since World War II. SAC officers have operated covertly since 1947 in places such as North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Libya, Iraq, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Chile, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Pakistan.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In the Trump administration, SAC has begun deploying small units of paramilitary officers worldwide to track down terrorists, and they have been given the primary lead for CT operations in Afghanistan.


title: Special Activities Center

text: In 2019, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen's book, ""Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins"" was released. The author refers to CIA's Special Activities Division as "a highly-classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world." She further states that every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and assassination.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The Fulton surface-to-air recovery system (STARS) is a system developed in the early 1950s by CIA paramilitary officers for retrieving persons from the ground with a MC-130E Combat Talon I aircraft. It uses a harness and a self-inflating balloon that carries an attached lift line. An MC-130E engages the line with its V-shaped yoke, and the individual is reeled on board. Project COLDFEET was a very successful mission in 1962 in which two military officers parachuted into a remote abandoned Soviet site in the Arctic. The two were subsequently extracted by the Fulton sky hook. The team gathered evidence of advanced research on acoustical systems to detect under-ice U.S. submarines and efforts to develop Arctic anti-submarine warfare techniques.


title: Special Activities Center

text: Sergeant Major (SgtMaj) Billy Waugh was a Special Forces soldier attached to the CIA in the 1960s. During his time at MACV-SOG in Vietnam, he developed and conducted the first combat High Altitude-Low Opening (HALO) jump. A practice combat infiltration was conducted in October 1970 by Recon Team Florida into the North Vietnamese held "War Zone D", in South Vietnam, the first such drop into a combat zone. HALO is a method of delivering personnel, equipment, and supplies from a transport aircraft at a high altitude via free-fall parachute insertion. HALO and HAHO (High Altitude-High Opening) are also known as Military Free Fall (MFF). In the HALO technique, the parachutist opens his parachute at a low altitude after free-falling for a period of time to avoid detection by the enemy. Waugh also led the last combat special reconnaissance parachute insertion into enemy territory occupied by communist North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops on June 22, 1971.


title: Special Activities Center

text: The CIA Memorial Wall is located at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It honors CIA employees who died in the line of duty. There are 137 stars carved into the marble wall, each one representing an officer. A majority of these were paramilitary officers. A black book, called the "Book of Honor", lies beneath the stars and is encased in an inch-thick plate of glass. Inside this book are stars, arranged by year of death, and the names of 91 employees who died in CIA service alongside them. The other names remain secret, even in death.


title: Special Activities Center

text: Third Option Foundation (TOF) is a national non-profit organization set up to support the families of fallen paramilitary officers. The name refers to the motto of CIA's Special Activities Center: "Tertia Optio", the President's third option when military force is inappropriate and diplomacy is inadequate. TOF provides comprehensive family resiliency programs, financial support for the families of paramilitary officers killed in action, and it works behind the scenes to "quietly help those who quietly serve."


title: Carl Wilson

text: Carl Dean Wilson (December 21, 1946 – February 6, 1998) was an American musician, singer, and songwriter who co-founded the Beach Boys. He was their lead guitarist, the youngest sibling of bandmates Brian and Dennis, and the group's "de facto" leader in the early to mid-1970s. He was also the band's musical director on stage from 1965 until his death.


title: Carl Wilson

text: Influenced by the guitar playing of Chuck Berry and the Ventures, Wilson's initial role in the group was that of lead guitarist and backing vocals, but he performed lead vocals on several of their later hits, including "God Only Knows" (1966), "Good Vibrations" (1966), "I Can Hear Music" (1969), and "Kokomo" (1988). Unlike other members of the band, he often played alongside the studio musicians employed during the group's critical and commercial peak in the mid-1960s. After Brian's reduced involvement with the group, Carl produced the bulk of their albums between "20/20" (1969) and "Holland" (1973). Concurrently, he spent several years challenging his draft status as a conscientious objector.


title: Carl Wilson

text: During the 1980s, Wilson attempted to launch a solo career, releasing the albums "Carl Wilson" (1981) and "Youngblood" (1983). In the 1990s, he recorded material with Gerry Beckley and Robert Lamm, later released for the posthumous album "Like a Brother" (2000). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Beach Boys in 1988. Wilson was also a member of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, a religious corporation. He died in 1998, aged 51, of lung cancer.


title: Carl Wilson

text: Carl Dean Wilson was born the youngest of the three Wilson boys in Hawthorne, California, the youngest son of Audree Neva (née Korthof) and Murry Gage Wilson. From his pre-teens he practiced harmony vocals under the guidance of his brother Brian, who often sang in the family music room with his mother and brothers. Inspired by country star Spade Cooley, at the age of 12, Carl asked his parents to buy him a guitar, for which he took some lessons. In 1982, Carl remembered from this time: "The kid across the street, David Marks, was taking guitar lessons from John Maus, so I started, too. David and I were about 12 and John was only three years older, but we thought he was a shit-hot guitarist. John and his sister Judy did fraternity gigs together as a duo. Later John moved to England and became one of the Walker Brothers. ... He showed me some fingerpicking techniques and strumming stuff that I still use. When I play a solo, he's still there." While Brian perfected the band's vocal style and keyboard base, Carl's Chuck Berry-esque guitar became an early Beach Boys trademark. While in high school, Carl also studied saxophone.


title: Carl Wilson

text: Turning 15 as the group's first hit, "Surfin'", broke locally in Los Angeles, Carl's father and manager, Murry (who had sold his business to support his sons' band), bought him a Fender Jaguar guitar. Carl developed as a musician and singer through the band's early recordings, and the early "surf lick" sound shown in "Fun, Fun, Fun", recorded in 1964 when Carl was 17. Also in 1964, Carl contributed his first co-writing credit on a Beach Boys single with the guitar riff and solo in "Dance, Dance, Dance" co-written with Mike Love and Brian Wilson. By the end of 1964, he was diversifying, favoring the 12-string Rickenbacker that was also notably used by Roger McGuinn in establishing the sound of the Byrds and by George Harrison of The Beatles during this era. Dave Marsh, in "The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll" (1976), stated that Pete Townshend of The Who expanded on both R&B and rock "influenced heavily by Beach Boy Carl Wilson".


title: Carl Wilson

text: Carl's lead vocals in the band's first three years were infrequent. Although all members of the band played on their early recordings, Brian began to employ experienced session musicians to play on the group's instrumental tracks by 1965 to assist with the complex material, but the band was not eliminated from recording the instrumental tracks and still continued to play on certain songs on each album. Unlike the other members of the band, Carl often played alongside session musicians and also recorded his individual guitar leads during the Beach Boys' vocal sessions, with his guitar plugged directly into the soundboard. His playing can be heard on the introduction to "California Girls", 1966's "That's Not Me" and throughout 1965's "The Beach Boys Today!"


title: Carl Wilson

text: After Brian's retirement from touring in 1965, Carl became the musical director of the band onstage. Contracts at that time stipulated that promoters hire "Carl Wilson plus four other musicians". Following his lead vocal performance on "God Only Knows" in 1966, Carl was increasingly lead vocalist for the band, a role previously dominated by Mike Love and Brian. He sang leads on the singles "Good Vibrations", "Darlin'", and "Wild Honey". Starting with the album "Wild Honey", Brian requested that Carl become more involved in the Beach Boys' records.


title: Carl Wilson

text: In 1969, the Beach Boys' rendition of "I Can Hear Music" was the first track produced solely by Carl Wilson. By then, he had effectively become the band's in-studio leader, producing the bulk of the albums during the early 1970s. Though Carl had written surf instrumentals for the band in the early days, he did not hit his stride as a songwriter until the 1971 album "Surf's Up", for which he composed "Long Promised Road" and "Feel Flows", with lyrics by the band's then-manager Jack Rieley. Carl considered "Long Promised Road" his first real song. After producing the majority of "Carl and the Passions – "So Tough"" (1972) and "Holland" (1973), Carl's leadership role diminished somewhat, due to Brian's brief public reemergence and because of Carl's own substance abuse problems.


title: Carl Wilson

text: For "L.A. (Light Album)" (1979), Carl contributed four songs, among them "Good Timin'", co-written with Brian five years earlier, which became a Top 40 American hit. Carl's main writing partner in the late 1970s was Geoffrey Cushing-Murray, but for "Keepin' the Summer Alive" (1980) he wrote with Randy Bachman of the band Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Carl told Michael Feeney Callan, writer-director of the RTÉ 1993 documentary "The Beach Boys Today" (a celebration of the Beach Boys' 30th anniversary), that Bachman was his favorite writing partner, accordingly: "Basically because he rocked, and I love to rock".


title: Carl Wilson

text: As a producer and vocalist, Carl's work was not confined to the Beach Boys. During the 1970s, he also produced records for other artists, such as Ricci Martin (son of Dean Martin) and South African group the Flames, two members of which later temporarily joined the Beach Boys' line-up. He lent backing vocals to many works, including Chicago's hits "Baby, What a Big Surprise" and "Wishing You Were Here" (with Al Jardine and brother Dennis), Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" (with Bruce Johnston), David Lee Roth's hit cover of "California Girls", Warren Zevon's "Desperados Under the Eaves", and the Carnie/Wendy Wilson holiday track "Hey Santa!" Carl also recorded a duet with Olivia Newton-John, titled "You Were Great, How Was I?", for her studio album, "Soul Kiss" (1985). It was not released as a single.


title: Carl Wilson

text: Carl befriended and gave guitar lessons to Alex Chilton when The Box Tops toured with the Beach Boys.


title: Carl Wilson

text: By the early 1980s, the Beach Boys were in disarray; the band had split into camps. Frustrated with the band's sluggishness to record new material and reluctance to rehearse, Wilson took a leave of absence in 1981. He quickly recorded and released a solo album, "Carl Wilson", composed largely of rock n' roll songs co-written with Myrna Smith-Schilling, a former backing vocalist for Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin, and wife of Wilson's then-manager Jerry Schilling. The album briefly charted, and its second single, "Heaven", reached the top 20 on "Billboard"s Adult Contemporary chart. Wilson also undertook a solo tour to promote the album, becoming the first member of the Beach Boys to break ranks. Initially, Wilson and his band played clubs like The Bottom Line in New York City and the Roxy in Los Angeles. Thereafter, he joined the Doobie Brothers as the opening act for their 1981 summer tour.


title: Carl Wilson

text: Wilson recorded a second solo album, "Youngblood", in a similar vein, but by the time of its release in 1983 he had rejoined the Beach Boys. Although "Youngblood" did not chart, a single, the John Hall-penned "What You Do To Me", peaked at number 72, making Wilson the second Beach Boy to land a solo single on the "Billboard" Hot 100. Additionally, the song cracked the top 20 on "Billboard"s Adult Contemporary chart. Wilson frequently performed that song and "Rockin' All Over the World" (from the same album), as well as "Heaven" from the 1981 album, at Beach Boys' concerts in the 1980s. "Heaven" was always announced as a tribute to brother Dennis, who drowned in December 1983.


title: Carl Wilson

text: The Beach Boys' 1985 eponymous album prominently featured Wilson's lead vocals and songwriting, highlighted by his "It's Gettin' Late" (another top 20 Adult Contemporary hit) and the "Heaven"-like "Where I Belong".


title: Carl Wilson

text: In 1988, the Beach Boys scored their biggest chart success in more than 20 years with the US Number 1 song "Kokomo", co-written by Mike Love, John Phillips, Scott McKenzie, and Terry Melcher, on which Carl sang lead in the chorus. After this, Love increasingly dominated the band's recorded output and became the driving force behind the album "Summer in Paradise" (1992), the first and only Beach Boys album with no input from Brian in any form. In 1992, Carl told Michael Feeney Callan his hope was to record new material by Brian. "Speaking for myself", he told Callan, "I only want to record inspired music".


title: Carl Wilson

text: Carl continued recording through the 1990s and participated in the Don Was-led recordings of Brian's "Soul Searchin" and "You're Still a Mystery", songs conceived as the basis of a canceled Brian Wilson/Beach Boys album. He also recorded the album "Like a Brother" with Robert Lamm and Gerry Beckley, while continuing to tour with the Beach Boys until the last months of his life.


title: Carl Wilson

text: Wilson became ill at his vacation home in Hawaii in early 1997. He was diagnosed with lung cancer, and was started on chemotherapy. He had been smoking cigarettes since his early teens. Despite his illness and treatments, he continued to play and sing with the Beach Boys throughout their entire summer tour till its completion in the autumn of 1997.


title: Carl Wilson

text: Wilson died of lung cancer in Los Angeles, surrounded by his family, on February 6, 1998. His death occurred just two months after the death of his mother, Audree Wilson. He was interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.


title: Carl Wilson

text: The Beckley–Lamm–Wilson album, "Like a Brother", was finally released in 2000, and Carl's late recordings continue to appear. Brian's album "Gettin' in Over My Head" (2004) features Carl's vocal from the unreleased Beach Boys song "Soul Searchin'", with new backing vocals recorded by Brian. The original Beach Boys version, sourced from a canceled attempt at a new Beach Boys album in late 1995, was eventually released in the "Made in California" (2013) box set, along with another 1995 track titled "You're Still a Mystery", which features Carl in the vocal blend. In 2010, bandmate Al Jardine released his first solo album, "A Postcard From California", which includes a similarly reconstructed track, "Don't Fight The Sea", featuring one of the last vocals Carl recorded. Carl can also be heard on the continual stream of Beach Boys archival releases, most notably as a central voice in the November 2011 release of "The Smile Sessions".


title: Carl Wilson

text: It was announced that Wilson's voice would be heard on a track from the reunited Beach Boys, on the album "That's Why God Made the Radio" (2012), but this never materialized. Instead, the scheduled song, "Waves of Love", featured on the 2012 re-release of Jardine's "A Postcard From California". During The Beach Boys 50th Anniversary Reunion Tour, a segment of the show was dedicated to the memories of Dennis and Carl. The band harmonized with isolated vocal tracks of Carl performing "God Only Knows" and of Dennis singing "Forever", as the band's crew projected images of the individual Wilson brothers on a large screen behind the band onstage.


title: Carl Wilson

text: Wilson declared himself a conscientious objector and refused the draft to join the American military during the Vietnam War. By 1988, Wilson had become an ordained minister in the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.


title: Carl Wilson

text: Wilson was married twice: first to Annie Hinsche, sister of frequent Beach Boys sideman Billy Hinsche, then in 1987 to Dean Martin's daughter Gina (born December 20, 1956). With Annie, Wilson had two sons, Jonah (born 1969) and Justyn (born 1971). It was during the breakup of his and Annie's marriage that Carl wrote: "Angel Come Home" which, according to co-writer Geoffrey Cushing-Murray, was about Wilson's grief over separating from his wife during the incessant touring with the Beach Boys. His marriage to Gina lasted until his death, and she accompanied him during all subsequent tours.


title: Carl Wilson

text: Wilson had an Irish Setter named Shannon, whose death inspired the emotional 1976 hit song "Shannon" by Henry Gross.


title: Vowel

text: A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress.


title: Vowel

text: The word "vowel" comes from the Latin word , meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice). In English, the word "vowel" is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y).


title: Vowel

text: The phonetic definition of "vowel" (i.e. a sound produced with no constriction in the vocal tract) does not always match the phonological definition (i.e. a sound that forms the peak of a syllable). The approximants and illustrate this: both are without much of a constriction in the vocal tract (so phonetically they seem to be vowel-like), but they occur at the onset of syllables (e.g. in "yet" and "wet") which suggests that phonologically they are consonants. A similar debate arises over whether a word like "bird" in a rhotic dialect has an r-colored vowel or a syllabic consonant . The American linguist Kenneth Pike (1943) suggested the terms "vocoid" for a phonetic vowel and "vowel" for a phonological vowel, so using this terminology, and are classified as vocoids but not vowels. However, Maddieson and Emmory (1985) demonstrated from a range of languages that semivowels are produced with a narrower constriction of the vocal tract than vowels, and so may be considered consonants on that basis. Nonetheless, the phonetic and phonemic definitions would still conflict for the syllabic /l/ in "table" or the syllabic nasals in "button" and "rhythm".


title: Vowel

text: The traditional view of vowel production, reflected for example in the terminology and presentation of the International Phonetic Alphabet, is one of articulatory features that determine a vowel's "quality" as distinguishing it from other vowels. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongue "height" (vertical dimension), tongue "backness" (horizontal dimension) and "roundedness" (lip articulation). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPA vowel diagram on the right. There are additional features of vowel quality, such as the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position.


title: Vowel

text: This conception of vowel articulation has been known to be inaccurate since 1928. Peter Ladefoged has said that "early phoneticians... thought they were describing the highest point of the tongue, but they were not. They were actually describing formant frequencies." (See below.) The IPA "Handbook" concedes that "the vowel quadrilateral must be regarded as an abstraction and not a direct mapping of tongue position."


title: Vowel

text: Nonetheless, the concept that vowel qualities are determined primarily by tongue position and lip rounding continues to be used in pedagogy, as it provides an intuitive explanation of how vowels are distinguished.


title: Vowel

text: Theoretically, vowel height refers to the vertical position of either the tongue or the jaw (depending on the model) relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. In practice, however, it refers to the first formant (lowest resonance of the voice), abbreviated F1, which is associated with the height of the tongue. In close vowels, also known as high vowels, such as and , the first formant is consistent with the tongue being positioned close to the palate, high in the mouth, whereas in open vowels, also known as low vowels, such as , F1 is consistent with the jaw being open and the tongue being positioned low in the mouth. Height is defined by the inverse of the F1 value: the higher the frequency of the first formant, the lower (more open) the vowel. In John Elsing's usage, where fronted vowels are distinguished in height by the position of the jaw rather than the tongue, only the terms 'open' and 'close' are used, as 'high' and 'low' refer to the position of the tongue.


title: Vowel

text: The International Phonetic Alphabet defines seven degrees of vowel height, but no language is known to distinguish all of them without distinguishing another attribute:


title: Vowel

text: The letters are typically used for either close-mid or true-mid vowels. However, if more precision is required, true-mid vowels may be written with a lowering diacritic . The Kensiu language, spoken in Malaysia and Thailand, is highly unusual in that it contrasts true-mid with close-mid and open-mid vowels, without any difference in other parameters like backness or roundness.


title: Vowel

text: It appears that some varieties of German have five vowel heights that contrast independently of length or other parameters. The Bavarian dialect of Amstetten has thirteen long vowels, which can be analyzed as distinguishing five heights (close, close-mid, mid, open-mid and open) each among the front unrounded, front rounded, and back rounded vowels as well as an open central vowel, for a total of five vowel heights: . No other language is known to contrast more than four degrees of vowel height.


title: Vowel

text: The parameter of vowel height appears to be the primary cross-linguistic feature of vowels in that all spoken languages that have been researched till now use height as a contrastive feature. No other parameter, even backness or rounding (see below), is used in all languages. Some languages have vertical vowel systems in which at least at a phonemic level, only height is used to distinguish vowels.


title: Vowel

text: Vowel backness is named for the position of the tongue during the articulation of a vowel relative to the back of the mouth. As with vowel height, however, it is "defined" by a formant of the voice, in this case the second, F2, not by the position of the tongue. In front vowels, such as , the frequency of F2 is relatively high, which generally corresponds to a position of the tongue forward in the mouth, whereas in back vowels, such as , F2 is low, consistent with the tongue being positioned towards the back of the mouth.


title: Vowel

text: To them may be added front-central and back-central, corresponding to the vertical lines separating central from front and back vowel spaces in several IPA diagrams. However, "front-central" and "back-central" may also be used as terms synonymous with "near-front" and "near-back". No language is known to contrast more than three degrees of backness nor is there a language that contrasts front with near-front vowels nor back with near-back ones.


title: Vowel

text: Although some English dialects have vowels at five degrees of backness, there is no known language that distinguishes five degrees of backness without additional differences in height or rounding.


title: Vowel

text: Roundedness is named after the rounding of the lips in some vowels. Because lip rounding is easily visible, vowels may be commonly identified as rounded based on the articulation of the lips. Acoustically, rounded vowels are identified chiefly by a decrease in F2, although F1 is also slightly decreased.


title: Vowel

text: In most languages, roundedness is a reinforcing feature of mid to high back vowels rather than a distinctive feature. Usually, the higher a back vowel, the more intense is the rounding. However, in some languages, roundedness is independent from backness, such as French and German (with front rounded vowels), most Uralic languages (Estonian has a rounding contrast for and front vowels), Turkic languages (with a rounding distinction for front vowels and ), and Vietnamese with back unrounded vowels.


title: Vowel

text: Nonetheless, even in those languages there is usually some phonetic correlation between rounding and backness: front rounded vowels tend to be more front-central than front, and back unrounded vowels tend to be more back-central than back. Thus, the placement of unrounded vowels to the left of rounded vowels on the IPA vowel chart is reflective of their position in formant space.


title: Vowel

text: Different kinds of labialization are possible. In mid to high rounded back vowels the lips are generally protruded ("pursed") outward, a phenomenon known as "endolabial rounding" because the insides of the lips are visible, whereas in mid to high rounded front vowels the lips are generally "compressed" with the margins of the lips pulled in and drawn towards each other, a phenomenon known as "exolabial rounding." However, not all languages follow that pattern. Japanese , for example, is an exolabial (compressed) back vowel, and sounds quite different from an English endolabial . Swedish and Norwegian are the only two known languages in which the feature is contrastive; they have both exo- and endo-labial close front vowels and close central vowels, respectively. In many phonetic treatments, both are considered types of rounding, but some phoneticians do not believe that these are subsets of a single phenomenon and posit instead three independent features of "rounded" (endolabial) and "compressed" (exolabial) and unrounded. The lip position of unrounded vowels may also be classified separately as "spread" and "neutral" (neither rounded nor spread). Others distinguish compressed rounded vowels, in which the corners of the mouth are drawn together, from compressed unrounded vowels, in which the lips are compressed but the corners remain apart as in spread vowels.


title: Vowel

text: The conception of the tongue moving in two directions, high–low and front–back, is not supported by articulatory evidence and does not clarify how articulation affects vowel quality. Vowels may instead be characterized by the three directions of movement of the tongue from its neutral position: front (forward), raised (upward and back), and retracted (downward and back). Front vowels ( and, to a lesser extent , etc.), can be secondarily qualified as close or open, as in the traditional conception, but this refers to jaw rather than tongue position. In addition, rather than there being a unitary category of back vowels, the regrouping posits raised vowels, where the body of the tongue approaches the velum (], etc.), and retracted vowels, where the root of the tongue approaches the pharynx (, etc.):


title: Vowel

text: Membership in these categories is scalar, with the mid-central vowels being marginal to any category.


title: Vowel

text: Nasalization occurs when air escapes through the nose. Vowels are often nasalised under the influence of neighbouring nasal consonants, as in English "hand" . "Nasalised vowels", however, should not be confused with "nasal vowels". The latter refers to vowels that are distinct from their oral counterparts, as in French vs. .


title: Vowel

text: In nasal vowels, the velum is lowered, and some air travels through the nasal cavity as well as the mouth. An oral vowel is a vowel in which all air escapes through the mouth. Polish and Portuguese also contrast nasal and oral vowels.


title: Vowel

text: Voicing describes whether the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation of a vowel. Most languages have only voiced vowels, but several Native American languages, such as Cheyenne and Totonac, contrast voiced and devoiced vowels. Vowels are devoiced in whispered speech. In Japanese and in Quebec French, vowels that are between voiceless consonants are often devoiced.


title: Vowel

text: Modal voice, creaky voice, and breathy voice (murmured vowels) are phonation types that are used contrastively in some languages. Often, they co-occur with tone or stress distinctions; in the Mon language, vowels pronounced in the high tone are also produced with creaky voice. In such cases, it can be unclear whether it is the tone, the voicing type, or the pairing of the two that is being used for phonemic contrast. The combination of phonetic cues (phonation, tone, stress) is known as "register" or "register complex".


title: Vowel

text: Tenseness is used to describe the opposition of "tense vowels" vs. "lax vowels". This opposition has traditionally been thought to be a result of greater muscular tension, though phonetic experiments have repeatedly failed to show this.


title: Vowel

text: Unlike the other features of vowel quality, tenseness is only applicable to the few languages that have this opposition (mainly Germanic languages, e.g. English), whereas the vowels of the other languages (e.g. Spanish) cannot be described with respect to tenseness in any meaningful way.


title: Vowel

text: One may distinguish the English tense vs. lax vowels roughly, with its spelling. Tense vowels usually occur in words with the final silent e, as in "mate". Lax vowels occur in words without the silent e, such as "mat". In American English, lax vowels do not appear in stressed open syllables.


title: Vowel

text: In traditional grammar, "long vowels" vs. "short vowels" are more commonly used, compared to "tense" and "lax". The two sets of terms are used interchangeably by some because the features are concomitant in some varieties of English. In most Germanic languages, lax vowels can only occur in closed syllables. Therefore, they are also known as "checked vowels", whereas the tense vowels are called "free vowels" since they can occur in any kind of syllable.


title: Vowel

text: Advanced tongue root (ATR) is a feature common across much of Africa, the Pacific Northwest, and scattered other languages such as Modern Mongolian. The contrast between advanced and retracted tongue root resembles the tense-lax contrast acoustically, but they are articulated differently. Those vowels involve noticeable tension in the vocal tract.


title: Vowel

text: Pharyngealized vowels occur in some languages like Sedang and the Tungusic languages. Pharyngealisation is similar in articulation to retracted tongue root but is acoustically distinct.


title: Vowel

text: A stronger degree of pharyngealisation occurs in the Northeast Caucasian languages and the Khoisan languages. They might be called epiglottalized since the primary constriction is at the tip of the epiglottis.


title: Vowel

text: The greatest degree of pharyngealisation is found in the strident vowels of the Khoisan languages, where the larynx is raised, and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal cords.


title: Vowel

text: Note that the terms "pharyngealized", "epiglottalized", "strident", and "sphincteric" are sometimes used interchangeably.


title: Vowel

text: Some languages, such as English and Russian, have what are called 'reduced', 'weak' or 'obscure' vowels in some unstressed positions. These do not correspond one-to-one with the vowel sounds that occur in stressed position (so-called 'full' vowels), and they tend to be mid-centralized in comparison, as well as having reduced rounding or spreading. The IPA has long provided two letters for obscure vowels, mid and lower , neither of which are defined for rounding. Dialects of English may have up to four phonemic reduced vowels: , , and higher unrounded and rounded . (The non-IPA letters and may be used for the latter to avoid confusion with the clearly defined values of IPA letters like and , which are also seen, since the IPA only provides for two reduced vowels.)


title: Vowel

text: The acoustics of vowels are fairly well understood. The different vowel qualities are realized in acoustic analyses of vowels by the relative values of the formants, acoustic resonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on a spectrogram. The vocal tract acts as a resonant cavity, and the position of the jaw, lips, and tongue affect the parameters of the resonant cavity, resulting in different formant values. The acoustics of vowels can be visualized using spectrograms, which display the acoustic energy at each frequency, and how this changes with time.


title: Vowel

text: The first formant, abbreviated "F1", corresponds to vowel openness (vowel height). Open vowels have high F1 frequencies, while close vowels have low F1 frequencies, as can be seen in the accompanying spectrogram: The and have similar low first formants, whereas has a higher formant.


title: Vowel

text: The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness. Back vowels have low F2 frequencies, while front vowels have high F2 frequencies. This is very clear in the spectrogram, where the front vowel has a much higher F2 frequency than the other two vowels. However, in open vowels, the high F1 frequency forces a rise in the F2 frequency as well, so an alternative measure of frontness is the "difference" between the first and second formants. For this reason, some people prefer to plot as F1 vs. F2 – F1. (This dimension is usually called 'backness' rather than 'frontness', but the term 'backness' can be counterintuitive when discussing formants.)


title: Vowel

text: In the third edition of his textbook, Peter Ladefoged recommended using plots of F1 against F2 – F1 to represent vowel quality. However, in the fourth edition, he changed to adopt a simple plot of F1 against F2, and this simple plot of F1 against F2 was maintained for the fifth (and final) edition of the book. Katrina Hayward compares the two types of plots and concludes that plotting of F1 against F2 – F1 "is not very satisfactory because of its effect on the placing of the central vowels", so she also recommends use of a simple plot of F1 against F2. In fact, this kind of plot of F1 against F2 has been used by analysts to show the quality of the vowels in a wide range of languages, including RP, the Queen's English, American English, Singapore English, Brunei English, North Frisian, Turkish Kabardian, and various indigenous Australian languages.


title: Vowel

text: Rounding is generally realized by a decrease of F2 that tends to reinforce vowel backness. One effect of this is that back vowels are most commonly rounded while front vowels are most commonly unrounded; another is that rounded vowels tend to plot to the right of unrounded vowels in vowel charts. That is, there is a reason for plotting vowel pairs the way they are.


title: Vowel

text: In addition to variation in vowel quality as described above, vowels vary as a result of differences in prosody. The most important prosodic variables are pitch (fundamental frequency), loudness (intensity) and length (duration). However, the features of prosody are usually considered to apply not to the vowel itself, but to the syllable in which the vowel occurs. In other words, the "domain" of prosody is the syllable, not the segment (vowel or consonant). We can list briefly the effect of prosody on the vowel component of a syllable.


title: Vowel

text: A vowel sound whose quality does not change throughout the vowel is called a monophthong. Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel sound that glides from one quality to another is called a diphthong, and a vowel sound that glides successively through three qualities is a triphthong.


title: Vowel

text: All languages have monophthongs and many languages have diphthongs, but triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare cross-linguistically. English has all three types: the vowel sound in "hit" is a monophthong , the vowel sound in "boy" is in most dialects a diphthong , and the vowel sounds of "flower", , form a triphthong or disyllable, depending on the dialect.


title: Vowel

text: In phonology, diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether the vowel sound may be analyzed into distinct phonemes. For example, the vowel sounds in a two-syllable pronunciation of the word "flower" () phonetically form a disyllabic triphthong but are phonologically a sequence of a diphthong (represented by the letters ) and a monophthong (represented by the letters ). Some linguists use the terms "diphthong" and "triphthong" only in this phonemic sense.


title: Vowel

text: The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols that represent vowel sounds in a language's writing system, particularly if the language uses an alphabet. In writing systems based on the Latin alphabet, the letters "A", "E", "I", "O", "U", "Y", "W" and sometimes others can all be used to represent vowels. However, not all of these letters represent the vowels in all languages that use this writing, or even consistently within one language. Some of them, especially "W" and "Y", are also used to represent approximant consonants. Moreover, a vowel might be represented by a letter usually reserved for consonants, or a combination of letters, particularly where one letter represents several sounds at once, or vice versa; examples from English include "igh" in "thigh" and "x" in "x-ray". In addition, extensions of the Latin alphabet have such independent vowel letters as "Ä", "Ö", "Ü", "Å", "Æ", and "Ø".


title: Vowel

text: The phonetic values vary considerably by language, and some languages use "I" and "Y" for the consonant , e.g., initial "I" in Italian or Romanian and initial "Y" in English. In the original Latin alphabet, there was no written distinction between "V" and "U", and the letter represented the approximant and the vowels and . In Modern Welsh, the letter "W" represents these same sounds. Similarly, in Creek, the letter "V" stands for . There is not necessarily a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In English spelling, the five letters "A" "E" "I" "O" and "U" can represent a variety of vowel sounds, while the letter "Y" frequently represents vowels (as in e.g., "gym", "happy", or the diphthongs in "cry", "thyme"); "W" is used in representing some diphthongs (as in "cow") and to represent a monophthong in the borrowed words "" and "" (sometimes "cruth").


title: Vowel

text: Other languages cope with the limitation in the number of Latin vowel letters in similar ways. Many languages make extensive use of combinations of letters to represent various sounds. Other languages use vowel letters with modifications, such as "ä" in Swedish, or add diacritical marks, like umlauts, to vowels to represent the variety of possible vowel sounds. Some languages have also constructed additional vowel letters by modifying the standard Latin vowels in other ways, such as "æ" or "ø" that are found in some of the Scandinavian languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet has a set of 28 symbols representing the range of essential vowel qualities, and a further set of diacritics to denote variations from the basic vowel.