Iconoclasts: A Delta Green Briefing (Patreon)

Excerpted from Delta Green: Iconoclasts by Adam Scott Glancy. Coming soon.

The date is 1 APR 2016, some 7 days after the event at the Rassam estate. The Agents are in a SCIF or secure meeting room at Panzer Kaserne, "Tank Barracks", a U.S. Marine Corps and special forces facility in southern Germany, originally built by the Nazis back in 1938 as "Ludendorff Barracks."

The Agents have just finished watching a video that showed the final events of the Rassam incident. The digital recording was uploaded to a Jihadist website and quickly taken down just two days ago. Watching the tape costs 0/1 SAN from the unnatural from each viewer. 

A JSOC officer, U.S. Marine Corps Col. Sterret Gwin, serves as their Program case officer. Gwin gives them papers from the Department of Defense, authorizing their freedom of movement within territory controlled by U.S. forces, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and the Iraqi Army, and the mission briefing.

BRIEFING

On 28 MAR 2016, this digital video file was passed to the Program from a freelance operative with past experience in Delta Green classified operations. 

Intelligence assets have determined that the video-recorded incident occurred just south of Mosul, Iraq, on the evening of 23 MAR 2016, in territory currently under occupation by the so-called Islamic State. 

The  location is the home of a man named Tariq Mohammed Rassam. The home is south of the Sumer neighborhood and North of the Tigris River. He owns a marble quarry outside of Mosul and has been a patron of the National Museum in Baghdad since its founding in 1966. He was a member of the Ba'ath Party until its dissolution in 2003.

The event at the home of Tariq Rassam appears to have begun as a propaganda action to find and destroy Tariq Rassam’s antiquities collection.

ABOUT RASSAM

As far back as 1940, Tariq Mohammad Rassam and his father, Mohammed Younis Rassam, worked as intelligence assets for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service or MI6, beginning with 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. Rassam shares this lack of bureaucratic footprint with other OSS assets who may have participated in wartime operations with Delta Green clearance. No confirmation of Rassam's participation in any Delta Green operations exists at this time.

CIA records from the 1950s and 1960s demonstrate that Rassam worked in Iraqi academia in the field of archeology while sometimes acting as an intelligence asset for both the CIA and MI6. The intelligence he delivered was low priority, related to internal Ba'ath Party politics as it intersected the black market in Mesopotamian antiquities.

After the First Gulf War in 1991, at age 68, Rassam terminated his relationship with western intelligence services. Nothing more is known about him since then. 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.  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.

RELATED INCIDENTS

The forces of the Islamic State responded to the scene of the incursion on the morning of 24 MAR 2016. The status of their investigation is ongoing. SIGINT assets have determined that killings similar to the ones at the incursion have occurred. 

0134 24 MAR 2016: Three ISIL fighters at a checkpoint in the Al-Bath neighborhood of Mosul were found dead and skinned.

0946 24 MAR 2016: The incident at the Rassam home was reported to ISIL counter-intelligence by the ISIL religious police.

2116 24 MAR 2016: The skinned bodies of two ISIL fighters on night patrol were found in the streets of the As Sina'iya district.

2357 24 MAR 24: An ISIL night patrol raised an alarm upon finding an ISIL fighter skinned in the As Sihhah district.

0148 25 MAR 2016: An ISIL fighter was found skinned in the An Nabi Yunus district. The fighter who discovered the body was unable to give a statement.

0641 25 MAR 2016: An ISIL fighter was found alive but catatonic in the Al Bath district.

0800 25 MAR 2016: City-wide patrols after curfew are to be doubled. No ISIL fighters shall move about after curfew in groups of fewer than four.

0832 25 MAR 2016: Seven members of the Ramal family were found flayed alive in their house in the Muthanna neighborhood. Two sons could not be located. A search of the neighborhood was initiated.

0319 26 MAR 2016: An ISIL fighter was found skinned in the Al Nuhminiyah district. The other three members of his patrol appear to have deserted.

0907 26 MAR 2016: The Halim family was found skinned in their home in the Al Masarif District. Six dead and one son missing.

2032 26 MAR 2016 to 0319 27 MAR 2016: Eight ISIL fighters were found skinned in the streets of the Al Baladiyat district. Two went AWOL and three escaped with injures and were transported to El khansa'a Hospital. 

2101 27 MAR 2016 to 0439 28 MAR 2016: Seven ISIL fighters were found skinned on the Campus of Mosul University. Two vanished. Two were injured and are transported to El khansa'a Hospital.

0919 29 MAR 2016: Eight members of the Nasser family were found flayed in their home in the Al Wasser district . The eldest son is missing.

1856 30 MAR 2016: An intense firefight took place east of the As Sina'iya district, in the demolished ruins of Nineveh. Police and military units were ordered out of the area by the head of Amn Al-Dawla (Islamic State counter-intelligence) in Mosul, Ahmed Al-Jabiri.

No pertinent incidents have been reported since 30 MAR 2016.

No similar incidents have been reported outside Mosul.

OPERATION CONQUEST

The Iraqi Army and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched 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 a possible assault.  Allied forces include some 36,000 troops, including 200 U.S. Marines and 500 military advisors, supported by U.S. airstrikes. Intelligence reports estimate that the Islamic State is defending Mosul and its suburbs with between 12,000 and 20,000 combatants.

Fighting is intense but 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. Operation CONQUEST may serve as both a complication and as cover for this operation.

ORDERS

1. INVESTIGATION. Your team will proceed to the USAF Logistical Hub at  Kirkuk Airport in northern Iraq. There you will coordinate with national and allied intelligence assets to determine the location of whatever incursion has transpired and assess whether it still remains a threat. As much intelligence as possible must be gathered related to its nature, capacity, vulnerabilities, and location before the team can begin neutralization operations.

2. INFILTRATION AND NEUTRALIZATION. Once the team has sufficient intelligence on the nature of the incursion, you will locate the incursion and neutralize it. Your team is authorized to infiltrate the territory of the Islamic State if that is required to neutralize the threat.

3. DENIAL. Of even greater importance than the neutralization of the incursion is ensuring that no actor in the current Mesopotamia crisis gains access to, or an understanding of, this phenomenon. Russian forces are very active on the Syrian side of the border. Iranian Quds Force units are operating openly in Syria and covertly on the Iraqi side of the border. Even allied forces such as the Peshmerga from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, or the Republic of Iraq, cannot be trusted with this material under any circumstances. You will guard this information with extreme prejudice. Cooperation and coordination with allied forces will be necessary, but under no circumstances should they learn the nature of the target.

4. TIMETABLE. We are currently operating in the dark in regards to the nature and threat level posed by this incursion. Your team will act with all due haste in making these determinations while preserving operational security. OpeSec can only be sacrificed if the immediacy of the threat rises to the point where OpSec would be nevertheless compromised. You must prioritize any intelligence that indicates this threat may be developing towards a public mass-casualty event.

ASSETS

The CIA and Pentagon will regard your mission as a compartmentalized JSOC task force assigned to track down and eliminate a high-echelon Islamic State actor.

Cover identities have been prepared to cover many contingencies for your team. None of these cover identities will withstand detailed scrutiny. Use them only to prevent such scrutiny in the first place.

Your team will have access to resources available via CENTCOM as they become available.

Use of the resources of the Iraqi Army or Kurdish Peshmerga will have to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis with local commanders.

THE SOURCE

If questioned about how the tape came into the Program's hands, Gwin scowls and has the team follow him out of the briefing hall and to the base stockade, where servicemen accused of crimes are detained by the military police. 

In an interrogation room in the stockade, they find a 65-year-old, bearded white man, well tanned and with white hair, dressed in civilian cargo pants and a t-shirt. The man is handcuffed to a table. They can observe him through a two-way mirror, but all he does is sit and hum songs by the band Three Dog Night. 

Gwin collects any phones or other devices that might be used to record the conversation, then brings the team in to meet the man he introduces as "Sloan." He does not tell Sloan the Agents' names. He cuts off anyone who offers even a code name to the handcuffed man.

Sloan sizes up the team before speaking to them, giving the impression that he’s assessing whether they’re worth his time. He begins by saying, "So? You all the cast for this Night at the Opera?" If they don't know what he means by that, he turns to Gwin and says, "You people have gotten deadly dull since 9/11."