HQ$History - United States Special Operations Command

Founding and Evolution of USSOCOM
Founding USSOCOM
“I think we have an abort situation,” Defense
Secretary Harold Brown informed President
Jimmy Carter on 24 April 1980. Carter simply
responded, “Let’s go with his [the ground commander’s]
recommendation.” The mission to rescue
53 American hostages had failed. At a desolate
site in Iran known as “Desert One,” tragedy
occurred minutes later when two aircraft collided
on the ground and eight men died. The failed
mission struck a blow to American prestige and
further eroded the public’s confidence in the U.S.
government.
The event culminated a period of Special
Operations Forces (SOF) decline in the 1970s.
SOF capabilities had deteriorated throughout
the post-Vietnam era, a time marked by considerable
distrust between SOF and the conventional
military and by significant funding cuts
for special operations. The Desert One disaster,
however, led the Defense Department to appoint
an investigative panel, chaired by former Chief
of Naval Operations, Admiral James L.
Holloway. The Holloway Commission’s findings
caused the Defense Department to create a
counterterrorist joint task force (CTJTF) and a
Special Operations Advisory Panel.
Desert One did serve to strengthen the
resolve of some within the Department of
Defense (DOD) to reform SOF. Army Chief of
Staff General Edward C. “Shy” Meyer called for
further restructuring of special operations capabilities.
Although unsuccessful at the joint level,
Meyer, nevertheless, went on to consolidate
Army SOF units under the newly-created 1st
Special Operations Command in 1982, a significant
step to improve Army SOF.
By 1983, there was a small but growing
sense in Congress of the need for military
reforms. In June, the Senate Armed Services
Committee (SASC), under the chairmanship of
Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), began a twoyear-long
study of the Defense Department,
which included an examination of SOF. Two
events in October 1983 further demonstrated
the need for change: the terrorist bombing
attack in Lebanon and the invasion of Grenada.
The loss of 237 Marines to terrorism, combined
Wreckage at Desert One, Iran (April 1980) where eight
Americans died.
with the command and control (C2) problems
that occurred during the Grenada invasion, refocused
congressional attention on the growing
threat of low-intensity conflict and on the issue
of joint interoperability.
With concern mounting on Capitol Hill, the
DOD created the Joint Special Operations
Agency (JSOA) on 1 January 1984; this agency,
however, had neither operational nor command
authority over any SOF. This JSOA was unable
to improve SOF readiness, capabilities, or policies—hardly
what Congress had in mind as a
systemic fix for SOF’s problems. Within the
Defense Department, there were a few staunch
SOF supporters. Noel Koch, Principal Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for International
Security Affairs; and his deputy, Lynn Rylander,
both advocated SOF reforms.
At the same time, a few visionaries on
Capitol Hill were determined to overhaul SOF.
They included Senators Sam Nunn (D-GA) and
William Cohen (R-ME), both members of the
SASC, and Congressman Dan Daniel (D-VA),
the chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee of
the House Armed Services Committee. Daniel
was convinced that the U.S. military was not
interested in special operations, that the country’s
capability in this area was second rate, and
that SOF operational command and control was
an endemic problem. Nunn and Cohen also felt
strongly that the DOD was not preparing adequately
for future threats. Nunn expressed a
growing frustration with the services’ practice of
reallocating monies appropriated for SOF modernization
to non-SOF programs. Senator
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