The date is 1 APR 2016. The Agents are in a sensitive compartmentalized information facility (SCIF), an extremely secure meeting room, at Panzer Kaserne, a U.S. Marine Corps and special forces base in southern Germany.
The Agents have just finished watching a video that showed the events of the Rassam incident.
Their Program liaison and case officer is U.S. Army Col. Sterret Gwin of INSCOM’s Army Operations Group, attached to Joint Special Operations Command. He oversees human intelligence collection by Army intelligence officers in support of JSOC’s counterterrorism operations in Central Command.
Gwin gives the Agents papers from the Department of Defense that grant them freedom of movement within territory controlled by U.S. forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and the Iraqi Army. Then he begins the mission briefing.
SLIDE 1
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Background
On 27 MAR 2016, the digital video file you just viewed was passed to the Program from a freelance operative. Intelligence assets have determined that the video-recorded incident occurred on the evening of 23 MAR 2016, in territory occupied by ISIL.
SLIDE 2
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Background
The site is a home south of Mosul, Iraq, and north of the Tigris River. The home belonged to Tariq Mohammed Rassam.
The event at the home of Tariq Rassam appears to have begun as a propaganda action.
The ISIL fighters meant to record themselves finding and destroying Rassam’s collection of forbidden antiquities.
SLIDE 3
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Background
Tariq Mohammed Rassam: Background
• Born in 1923
• Inherited and managed a family-owned marble quarry outside Mosul
• Advanced degrees in Mesopotamian archeology from Cambridge University in the UK and Freie Universität Berlin in Germany
• Patron of Iraq Museum in Baghdad from its founding in 1966
• Professor at the University of Mosul from its founding in 1967 until his retirement in 1997
• Married in 1972 to Anja al-Khalili, a university of Mosul librarian; she died of a heart attack in 1983; they had no children
• Nominal member of Iraq’s Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party from 1982 until its banning in 2003
SLIDE 4
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Orders
• Cover
• Investigation
• Neutralization
• OPSEC
• Timetable
SLIDE 5
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Orders
COVER. The CIA and Pentagon regard TF01132 as a compartmentalized JSOC task force tasked with tracking down and eliminating a high-echelon ISIL actor whose identity is classified. Anyone who presses for details is to be referred to TF01132’s case officer.
SLIDE 6
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Orders
INVESTIGATION.
TF01132 will proceed to the USAF Logistical Hub at Kirkuk Airport in northern Iraq and establish a base of operations. Considering the lack of substantive data as to the nature of the incursion, it is highly recommended that TF01132 gather intelligence and assets and make detailed preparations before they attempt to infiltrate ISIL-held Mosul.
TIMETABLE. TF00132 will act with all due haste while preserving OPSEC. OPSEC can be sacrificed only if the immediacy of the threat would compromise OPSEC in any event.
SLIDE 7
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Orders
INVESTIGATION.
TF01132 will go to the Rassam house outside Mosul, retrieve all documents and artifacts that are relevant to Operation BONE BOX, and bring them to the Kirkuk base of operations for study or destruction according to the orders of TF01132’s command element.
SLIDE 8
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Orders
INVESTIGATION. TF01132 will make contact with U.S. and allied services in order to generate operational intelligence. It will ascertain what happened in the immediate aftermath of the Rassam incident. It will determine details of the incursion and assess whether it remains a threat: its nature, capacities, and vulnerabilities. TF01132 must prioritize intelligence that indicates the threat may be developing towards a public, mass-casualty event.
SLIDE 9
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Orders
NEUTRALIZATION.
TF01132 will locate the incursion and neutralize it. TF01132 is authorized to infiltrate the territory of ISIL under the cover of pursuit of a high-value ISIL target if that is required to the threat. Cover identities as members of Al-Hisbah will be provided, with female agents identified as officers of the all-women Al-Khansaa Brigade.
SLIDE 10
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Orders
OPERATIONAL SECURITY (OPSEC). Of even greater importance than neutralizing the incursion is ensuring that no actor in the current Mesopotamia crisis gains access to or understanding of this phenomenon. Russian forces are very active in Syria. Iranian Quds Force units operate openly in Syria and covertly in Iraq. No allied forces can be trusted with details about the incursion under any circumstances. TF01132 will guard that information with extreme prejudice.
SLIDE 10
Briefing: OPERATION BONE BOX
Orders
OPERATIONAL SECURITY (OPSEC). Of even greater importance than neutralizing the incursion is ensuring that no actor in the current Mesopotamia crisis gains access to or understanding of this phenomenon. Russian forces are very active in Syria. Iranian Quds Force units operate openly in Syria and covertly in Iraq. No allied forces can be trusted with details about the incursion under any circumstances. TF01132 will
guard that information with extreme prejudice.
RASSAM DOSSIER:
CLASSIFIED BACKGROUND
Beginning in 1940, Tariq Mohammed Rassam and his father, Mohammed Younis Rassam, worked as intelligence assets for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service or MI6. They aided the overthrow of the fascist coup that threatened to deliver the Kingdom of Iraq into the hands of the Axis.
MI6 records show that Tariq Rassam came into contact with the OSS during this period,
but no OSS records exist to confirm this.
CIA records from the 1950s and 1960s indicate that Rassam acted as an intelligence
asset for both the CIA and MI6. The intelligence he delivered was low priority, related
to internal Iraqi and, later, Ba’ath Party politics as they intersected the black market in Mesopotamian antiquities.
After the First Gulf War in 1991, Rassam terminated his relationship with western
intelligence services. Nothing more is known about him. He did not have contact with U.S.
forces during the occupation of Mosul beginning in 2003.
Some of his extended family members acted as U.S. intelligence assets, local
translators, and liaisons from the 1950s to the 1990s. A large number of them used this
relationship to immigrate to Western countries. Other teams are running down those family members and will deliver any actionable intelligence should it arise.
AL-FATAH, OPERATION CONQUEST
The Iraqi Army and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched Al-Fatah, or Operation
CONQUEST, on 24 MAR 2016. The resulting surge in radio traffic made it more difficult to
monitor ISIL communications.
Operation CONQUEST intends to position allied forces to encircle Mosul and test
the city’s defenses for full assault. Allied forces include 36,000 troops, including
200 U.S. Marines and 500 military advisors, supported by U.S. airstrikes. Intelligence
reports estimate that ISIL is defending Mosul and its suburbs with between 12,000 and
20,000 combatants.
Fighting is currently confined to areas to the south and east of Mosul. The situation
is extremely fluid and IS forces in the region are on high alert.
