[Aoresteen]

Though Duff insisted that the transfer was unrelated to the criticism, May saw the reassignment as "a career-ending thing," said one 20th Group colleague. "Mike was stressed about this," the colleague said. He "was devastated."

In an interview, Duff said he had intended to transfer May anyway to season him for promotion. May, who referred requests for an interview to the 20th Group public affairs office, was in fact promoted to major and given a company command after returning to the U.S.

May's removal heartened those on the team who wanted to conduct more "posse operations" in the manner of the Army's Delta Force and the Navy's SEALs.

"This was an aggressive, door-kicking bunch," said one 20th Group official, "and Mike May was the control rod."

Bamian Mutiny

More than 100 miles to the northwest, in Bamian, another Green Beret team was having its own leadership problems. For many in ODA 2015, Chief Warrant Officer Kenneth C. Waller, their team commander, was too hungry for a fight and had a habit of planning risky missions without their input.

Waller was not a weekend warrior but a full-time National Guardsman. He worked at 20th Group headquarters in Birmingham and was perceived by many to be Col. Champion's "golden child." He declined to be interviewed for this article.

Late in November 2002, Waller's team discovered a large cache of weapons in the nearby Kahmard Valley. They linked it to a warlord suspected of supporting Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Waller carried the news directly to Champion's command, bypassing his 1st Battalion superiors. He argued for a full assault on the area, peppering his entreaties with reminders of 9/11 and imploring commanders to "think war."

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His end runs, and his flamboyant prose, incensed Waller's superiors at headquarters. They were so annoyed by his tendency to act on his own that they marked his periodic sightings on a wall map, calling the exercise "Where's Waller?"

The team leader had trouble within his own ranks as well. The Bamian unit's senior noncommissioned officer, Master Sgt. Pasquale "Jim" Russo, sent a defiant note to battalion officials in December openly challenging Waller's proposal to raid an area that was thick with enemy fighters. "I can't think of many more principles of combat that we have not violated," Russo said of the plan.

The operation was temporarily scrubbed, redesigned and its planning assigned to a different team.

Not long after Russo's complaint, a sizable contingent of the 2015 team let battalion leaders know they preferred not to serve under Waller, several members said. It was an almost unthinkable act of mutiny.

After Maj. Tony Wheeler, a top 1st Battalion official, arrived in Bamian in early January to head the provincial reconstruction team there, he reported to Duff that the trust between Waller and his men had deteriorated beyond repair. "The team seems to see Ken as a loose canon [sic] who might get them killed for no reason," he wrote.

Duff relieved Waller of his command in Bamian and ordered him to Gardez as Capt. May's replacement. Champion signed off on the transfer. However, Duff acknowledged making the decision over the warnings of his own staff. His aides cautioned that Waller would be even less controllable in Gardez and that inserting him into the conflict with Pacha Khan might make things combustible.

"It was like throwing a match into gasoline," one Special Forces official said.

Chaotic Mission

Back in Gardez, ODA 2021 was between commanders on the night of Feb. 6, 2003, when the team set out on a "snatch mission." The plan was to swoop into the nearby village of Neknam and seize two men suspected of having ties to the Taliban.

The first was taken without incident. But before team members could grab the second, they came under intense fire that left two soldiers pinned against a wall. The team responded with small arms and hand grenades.

Because the leaderless team had failed to file proper operational plans, headquarters had no idea who was in command on the ground. To those monitoring radio communications from the scene, it appeared that U.S. forces might be attacking one another in the dark. That also made it unsafe to call in airstrikes to help end the battle.

Both suspects were finally captured, but almost immediately the team was blistered with high-level criticism.

"As you can imagine, this makes everyone in this unit look like amateurs and incompetent as well," Lt. Col. Robert E. Biller, a top Special Operations task force official, wrote to 20th Group counterparts. Biller characterized the chaotic mission as a "goatscrew."

Col. Champion promptly confined the team to its base. Then he and his staff set out to control the damage. Champion personally briefed Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, commander of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. Champion's aides later reported he had succeeded in stressing the intelligence value of the captured detainees rather than the team's blunders.

"Things have died down," Maj. Jeff Pounding, a Special Operations task force official, wrote to subordinates in the 1st Battalion the following day. "We turned the emphasis of operation of a 'rogue team' to a 'time-sensitive PUC operation.' " PUC, or "person under U.S. control," was shorthand for detainee.

But the missteps continued. Two days after the raid, the team in Gardez transferred two detainees to the Bagram Collection Point, a U.S. holding facility. The detainees arrived "bagged," their mouths taped and hoods secured around their necks, according to military documents.

"As you well know," Pounding wrote to battalion officials, "this is a significant violation of the PUC handling procedures. Bagram detention facility may be doing an investigation."

Red Cross Warnings

There should have been little confusion over detainee policy among members of the 20th Special Forces Group. Champion had distributed the Army's guidelines when the 20th deployed to Afghanistan, and they had been reissued when reports of abuse first made their way to headquarters.

Only detainees found to meet Pentagon criteria for prolonged imprisonment, such as those with clear ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, were to be transferred to Bagram. Fearing that innocents might wind up at Guantanamo, Gen. McNeill had stressed to subordinates that he wanted terrorists, not truck drivers and farmers, said a civilian military advisor.

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But it wasn't always easy for soldiers to tell the difference. Given the constant threat of ambush, their instinct often was to detain first and ask questions later. The Pentagon criteria provided plenty of latitude, allowing the detention of any suspects "who pose a threat" or "who may have intelligence value."

There was supposed to be a 96-hour limit on battlefield detentions. Sometimes prisoner transfers to Bagram were delayed because helicopters weren't available. But at other times, one 20th Group official said, Special Forces teams extended their prisoners' stays in hopes of extracting better intelligence.

State Department officials in Afghanistan said the teams seemed not to care that their door-kicking roundups and prolonged detentions might stoke local resentment even as the Army was trying to build bridges.

"They felt … there was carte blanche to carry out actions and there would be little repercussion if they made tactical mistakes," said a State Department official who asked not to be named.

By the end of 2002, the Red Cross had relayed early complaints of prisoner mistreatment to top U.S. military officials in Afghanistan. On Jan. 10, 2003, officials of the organization met with Gen. McNeill's staff, describing the 20th Group's firebases as some of the worst offenders.