The Pentagon Has A Long History Of Organizing Manhunts To Snare Top Enemy Leaders And Terrorists

Sean Naylor, Defense One/The Atlantic: Inside the Pentagon’s Manhunting Machine

A brief history of Joint Special Operations Command, from Panama to the war on terror

At the cutting edge of the U.S. military’s campaigns against al-Qaeda and its offshoots over the past 14 years has been an organization still unused to the spotlight. Born from the wreckage of the United States’s failed attempt to rescue its hostages in Iran in 1980, Joint Special Operations Command was created to provide a standing headquarters that could run similar operations in the future. But although JSOC (pronounced “jay-sock”) had grown significantly in its first two decades, on September 11, 2001, it remained a fringe presence on the U.S. military scene, with a narrowly circumscribed set of responsibilities that included short-term counterterrorist missions, operations to secure weapons of mass destruction, and very little else.

WNU Editor: An excellent summary/analysis on how the Pentagon successfully developed its ability to conduct manhunts to track and capture/kill specific targets.