for Fescado -

In the wake of a counter-terrorism training mission that brought terror into his city, shell-shocked Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory is calling for a cease-fire of sorts. A recent Special Forces exercise frightened many residents of this bustling business city in central North Carolina, and intensified national concerns over the already controversial "urban warfare" drills. The U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has staged similar operations in over twenty U.S. cities during the last few years, but the Charlotte exercise -- code-named "Cauldron Chariot" -- has sparked more media attention and city government protest than any previous incident.

"We were misled," charges McCrory, who bitterly recalls a visit by two USASOC representatives three months before the operation. According to McCrory, the Army officers attained his permission to simulate commando raids in downtown areas, with the understanding that the exercise would be a "low-key, in-and-out operation" using "possibly one helicopter."

The Special Forces team had something else in mind. As Cauldron Chariot was launched on the night of March 4, 1997, a dozen Black Hawk helicopters descended into the city. The craft disgorged the Special Forces troops, who laid siege to empty buildings, firing rifles and blasting out doors with explosives. "How they thought they could come in and out without any disturbance is beyond me," McCrory later said. "It was almost like a blitzkrieg operation. People went and got their guns. I feel fortunate no one was hurt."

While there were no injuries to Charlotte residents, the Defense Department´s credibility took a major beating over the exercises. As is the standard practice with the USASOC drills, the citizens of Charlotte were given no forewarning of the siege in their city. Alarmed and confused, many individuals contacted city officials for answers. Mayor McCrory fielded several calls at his home. "I could barely hear the callers because of the helicopter noise and the gunfire in the background," he reports.

Now McCrory is making some noise of his own about the incident, taking his complaints all the way to the Commander-in-Chief. On April 16, McCrory wrote to President Clinton to inform the White House just how unsettling the Cauldron Chariot ride had been for Charlotte. "The exercise," McCrory wrote, "was misrepresented to all parties involved," leaving city officials unprepared when the maneuvers began. "Had we known the scope of the operation, we would have never allowed it to take place."

The incident "caused fear and anger among our citizens," McCrory told Clinton. "It is also clear that had anything gone wrong, our citizens could have indeed been in danger, a fact that was never mentioned in the few and incomplete planning discussions for the exercise." The helicopters may have presented the greatest threat to public safety. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating whether the flights, for which the FAA received no notification, violated laws or caused potential danger.

The incident has led to a groundswell of media coverage of USASOC´s urban warfare training. On April 13, a front-page Washington Post article reviewed the controversy in Charlotte and other major cities that have served as combat zones for the exercises. (These include Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, Pittsburgh and Seattle.) A week later, National Public Radio devoted a lengthy news segment to the operations. In an interview with NPR, USASOC spokesman Lt. Col. Pete Pierce said that even in light of the recent complaints, "we are going to continue urban training."

The military argues that in order to effectively prepare for counter-terrorism operations, the Special Forces units must practice their tactics in actual cities, where they face many of the same obstacles they might encounter in an urban combat situation. It would be a bad idea to inform local residents in advance, the Defense Department says, because the secretive operations might then become surrounded by spectators. As one Army official told the Post: "They don´t want their equipment photographed. They don´t want their tactics, operations and procedures known."

Due to its extreme efforts to keep these exercises hush-hush, the Pentagon must now pay the price of alienating cities like Charlotte, which joins the growing list of cities where these operations will no longer be welcome. As Mayor McCrory concluded his letter to President Clinton, he wrote: "I can only hope the Department of Defense learned from this experience and that they will not subject other cities to the fear and confusion they created in Charlotte. Rest assured, we learned a valuable lesson and will be on our guard should we receive any other requests to stage training exercises in this city."

[link to www.parascope.com]