<

Al Qaeda-Somalia Link Falls Flat
Thursday, March 21, 2002
(1:00 AM)
By Bradley Graham & Vernon Loeb
Special to The Star

A total of three global positioning devices were found in the cave, officials said. Two had names on them. One was "G. Gordon," and the pilot who lost it survived the fight. The other, labelled "Svitak," belonged to Army Sgt. Philip Svitak, also a member of the 160th Special Operations Aviation
Regiment, who was among those killed.

WASHINGTON -- Source
For a brief time this week, Pentagon officials thought they had found fresh evidence linking Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan to the Somalia firefight in 1993 that killed 18 U.S. Army soldiers.

The Pentagon's main military spokesperson for the war in Afghanistan, Brig.-Gen. John Rosa Jr., told reporters at noon yesterday that a U.S. search team, scouring a onetime Al Qaeda cave above the Shah-e-Kot Valley in eastern Afghanistan, had found a global positioning receiver Monday that appeared to have belonged to a U.S. soldier who died in the Somalia battle, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honour.

Both the small portable device and its pouch bore the letters "G. Gordon," which U.S. defence officials initially believed referred to Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, who died after saving the life of a downed Blackhawk helicopter pilot. So close to certain were officials at Special Forces Command, under which Gordon had served, that Gordon's family was notified of the discovery.

But within hours of Rosa's briefing, defence officials said the device had been traced through its serial number to a helicopter pilot in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment who had served in Afghanistan. Before leaving the country, he had passed it to another pilot involved in the offensive this month that cleared Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters out of the Shah-e-Kot area.

The original owner goes by the nickname "G. Gordon" because of his apparent resemblance to G. Gordon Liddy, a leader of the 1972 Watergate break-in team.
(More: The Toronto Star News Source)
2002 © Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.

Dan