FORT BRAGG, N.C. – A scene of stomach-clenching gore confronted the special operations troops: the shredded remains of a suicide bomber, scattered around the checkpoint.
But the blood and body are fake, like the Hollywood-style explosion that began a classroom exercise designed to teach these students to look past the grisly mess for the evidence that could lead to those who built the bomb.
Fort Bragg’s Special Warfare Center shows how the U.S. has turned hunting terror networks into half-science, half-art-form since the al-Qaida attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Forging lessons painfully learned in the decade since into a formal curriculum, the training is intended to help elite military units track militants across international boundaries and work alongside sometimes competing U.S. agencies.
The coursework is similar to the CIA’s legendary spycraft training center called The Farm, and is at the brainchild of Green Beret Maj. Gen. Bennet Sacolick, a veteran of elite special operations units, and a long stint on loan to the CIA.
Among the students at the CIA-approved Fort Bragg course are U.S. Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and Marine Corps special operators. As in the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, everything from computers to fingerprints can be retrieved
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