Generals who rose from the ranks of the 14th Infantry

 

General Wayne A. Downing
   

The following was published November 20, 2001 by The Washington Post, which retains all rights to this story.  Wayne Downing served with the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry regiment as Alpha Company commander in late 1968 and early 1969, was promoted to Major and assigned to battalion S-3.  He died in July, 2007.

 

The Secret Warrior

Gen. Wayne Downing, From West Point to White House

By Richard Leiby
  
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; Page C01
  
The West Point pep rally is going full bore: band music, a bonfire, bellicose chants of "Beat Navy, Beat Navy." Helicopters swoop in ferrying Army Rangers, the lightning-fast troops famed for leaping into hostile territory.
  
   For this annual display of fighting spirit before the Army-Navy game, elite units often roll in to impress the wide-eyed cadets. Tonight the Rangers will show off their "fast rope training," dropping 80 feet from the sky like human smart bombs, amid simulated artillery blasts.
  
It's November 1995, and this rally will radiate in West Point legend. Wayne Allan Downing, Class of '62, is part of the camouflaged fast-rope squad. The crowd explodes when the four-star general later reveals himself in the spotlight. Though headed for retirement, the old warrior still has it. Rangers lead the way.
  
- - -
  
Wayne Downing is the most famous terrorism fighter you've never heard of. Less than a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, he shelved his semi-retirement to coordinate the nation's far-flung campaign "to detect, disrupt and destroy global terrorist organizations and those who support them," as the White House put it. He has the president's ear -- but whatever he's saying is not for public consumption. Even the size of his staff has been deemed a national security secret.
  
As a young Ranger, Downing, now 61, learned to stalk the enemy at night and capture rattlesnakes for food. In 34 years he rose through the ranks to command all special operations troops, including the clandestine Delta Force commandos whose close-quarter tactics are vital in places like Afghanistan. Battle-tested in Vietnam, Panama and the Persian Gulf, Downing is revered among the elite soldiers who call themselves "the quiet professionals."
  
He reports to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. He has more experience with terrorism than either of them. His unwieldy title is national director and deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism. Those who admire Downing would suggest a more concise one: the president's secret weapon.
  
"They brought him in because he knows how to get things done," says L. Paul Bremer, the State Department's ambassador at large for counterterrorism during the Reagan administration. "The bureaucracy very often needs a very good kick in the pants. He's going to have to crack some heads together."
   
"He has a tremendous network," says former Defense Intelligence Agency director James R. Clapper Jr. "I am kind of the president of the Wayne Downing Fan Club."
  
"He is an icon in the special operations world," says Andrew Levene, a former Ranger sergeant who served under Downing's command. "He is the consummate warrior. He is the guy who will say, 'We have to hunt these people down and kill 'em.' "
  
"If you called Central Casting you couldn't find a better person to fill this job," says Jim Kimsey, Downing's friend for more than 40 years. A fellow West Point grad and Ranger, Kimsey left the Army after eight years and went on to co-found America Online.
  
"Wayne stuck it out, thank God for us all," he says, "and went on to be our head snake eater."
  
A Prescient Warning

Downing would not grant an interview. "He doesn't want publicity and in fact he's trying to avoid it," says a spokesman for the National Security Council.
  
"He's been that way all his life," says his mother, Eileen Downing. "Very close-mouthed. He would say, 'To keep a secret you don't tell one other person, Mother.' "
  
But for brief periods he has ventured into the limelight, usually to sound the alarm about terrorism. Since leaving the Army in 1996, he has served on task forces investigating how terrorists operate and urging heightened security.
  
"They and their state sponsors have begun an undeclared war on the United States," he wrote in an August 1996 review of the truck-bombing of the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 and wounded hundreds more. "They must be seen as 'soldiers' employing different means of achieving their political and military goals. They wear uniforms we cannot recognize and use tactics that we find repugnant and cowardly . . . Fanatics will be prepared to sacrifice their lives to achieve their goals."
  
Downing also war-gamed a scenario that exposed America's vulnerability to chemical and biological attacks. It foresaw terrorists releasing chemical agents with crop-dusting planes. Carl Stiner, a fellow retired general, recalled that he and Downing delivered their findings to the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 1997.
  
On Sept. 12, 2001, Downing was on ABC, explaining to viewers of "Nightline" the notion of "asymmetric" warfare: These foes, though small in number, knew exactly how to exploit the weaknesses of the strongest nation on Earth. "The paradigm has changed," he said. "And this isn't going to be over in a month or two months or six months. But this may well take years."
  
ABC quickly signed him up as an on-air consultant. These days Downing wears his gray hair slightly longer than when he was a West Point plebe; on camera he looked a bit uncomfortable, his neck tightly cinched in a button-down shirt. But his authority was obvious.
  
"We're going to find out where they are," he said of the perpetrators. "And then we're going to go get them."
  
It was no saber-rattling act. He made it sound like his destiny.
  
Downing once was courted for the job of White House drug czar, but friends say he felt that was an unwinnable war. He later vowed he wouldn't return to the government unless there were a national emergency. He preferred to stay in Colorado, enjoying the fishing and skiing, the time with his wife and grandkids. He also had enough land for four hefty Labradors.
  
But on Oct. 9, he reenlisted for public service, leaving the army of TV talking heads and giving up his seat on the board of an Australian high-tech weapons firm, Metal Storm, which boasts of inventing a gun that can fire a million rounds a minute. And he put aside another of his passions: serving as military adviser to a group of Iraqi dissidents who have been hoping for years to depose dictator Saddam Hussein.
  
He was no longer interested in media attention. He spoke for a minute and a half at the news conference announcing his White House post before concluding, "It's going to be a tough fight, but we will prevail. Thank you very much."
  
Then he exited to the shadows.
  
Living History

As a boy in Peoria, Ill., Downing was steeped in tales of military heroism. His mother would read to him from the newspaper about the progress of the war against Germany and Japan. He listened to radio reports. "He knew where everybody was and who commanded them. He was totally fascinated by the military stuff," recalls Eileen Downing, now 80.
  
Though very young, Wayne had a compelling reason to pay attention: His father was fighting his way across Europe. Pfc. Francis Wayne "Bud" Downing served in the storied 9th Armored Division, which on March 7, 1945, crossed the Rhine via a railroad bridge at Remagen, ushering the American juggernaut into the heart of the German Reich.
  
In Peoria and elsewhere, the headlines surged with optimism: Hitler would soon be finished. "The war is over, I tell you," one general assured his colleagues. "The war is over."
  
On March 27, Wayne's father participated in a night attack to liberate a camp full of starving POWs near Limburg. The unit suffered heavy casualties -- including 25-year-old Pfc. Downing -- in what was its last major engagement of World War II.
  
He was buried in the Netherlands. His son was not yet 5.
  
Raising Wayne and his two younger sisters, Eileen Downing insisted on discipline and structure -- regular churchgoing and mealtimes. "We did all the same things just like when a father came home in the evening," she recalls. "Except there was no father."
  
Survivor benefits barely kept the family fed. "You had pennies in your hand at the end of the month," she says.
  
Across the street lived Joe Powers, sent home after being wounded in the 101st Airborne. "He'd be sitting on his swing on his porch, looking forlorn because there weren't any other young men around," says Eileen Downing. She sent her boy over to talk with Joe.
  
"They became best friends. He was Wayne's hero. He came home one day and said, 'I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to jump out of airplanes, just like Joe.' "
  
At 17, Wayne won automatic nomination to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as the son of a deceased veteran. He still had to meet the academic and physical qualifications for appointment, which he did.
  
As a young company commander in Vietnam, Downing distinguished himself in combat and was awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. "The word is hero. Sure he's a hero," says a friend who asked that his name not be used. "That was a bloody, bloody time frame. He basically could have won a lot of Purple Hearts -- he got shot at a lot."
  
But Downing never talked about his wounds. He'd rather tell jokes and remember the esprit de corps, and whatever passed for good times. Friends say he took his work very seriously but he never took himself too seriously.
  
"We were all immediately captivated by him," recalls Gen. William "Buck" Kernan, a company commander when Downing headed the 2nd Ranger Battalion at Fort Lewis, Wash., in the late 1970s. "He came in very young-looking, probably one of the youngest lieutenant colonels in the Army at the time."
  
But Bill Lind, a defense specialist on the staff of then-Sen. Gary Hart, wasn't impressed when he went to Fort Lewis to observe the Rangers. He told Downing the training was too rigid, as if combat unfolded according to a script. "That's training for an opera company, not for war," Lind declared.
  
He expected a fistfight. "Everybody who goes to visit the Rangers always says they're great. Here's a civilian who tells them they're full of crap," Lind says. But Downing was open-minded. "He says, 'Tell me more. What do you think we should be doing?' "
  
Downing was known for dispensing with formula. "Think like a bank robber" was his oft-quoted admonition.
  
"He recognized you had to harden yourself mentally and physically and use guile and cunning," says Buck Kernan. "You had to always be ahead of your adversary, you had to anticipate."
  
Rangers learn to endure hunger and sleep deprivation, to improvise and surprise their enemies. Even today they hew to the standing orders laid down by Maj. Robert Rogers in 1759, not long after he'd organized ragtag colonials to fight in the French and Indian War. Including this one:
  
"Let the enemy come till he's almost close enough to touch, then let him have it and jump out and finish him up with your hatchet."
  
Receiving Noriega

There's no shortage of PowerPoint soldiers at the Pentagon, but Downing preferred a hands-on approach. That, along with devotion to the troops, made him a legendary leader. He was based at Fort Bragg, N.C., and then at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where he gained the coveted job of commander in chief of the Special Operations Command.
  
In the Panama invasion just before Christmas 1989, Downing oversaw the toppling of Manuel Noriega. The dictator, wanted in this country on drug charges, had holed up in the Papal Nunciature in Panama City for 11 days, then sent out a request: He wanted to surrender wearing his general's uniform. The Americans retrieved one, and Noriega surrendered in the middle of the street -- to Downing himself.
  
During the Gulf War, hundreds of commandos working for Downing infiltrated Iraq to find the Scud missiles that Saddam Hussein was lobbing at Israel. Rick Atkinson's book "Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War," reports that Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf had to warn Downing not to get carried away and go behind enemy lines himself.
  
"You work for me, you son of a bitch," Schwarzkopf told Downing. "If you personally go into Iraq, I'm going to relieve you."
  
"You don't have to tell me that," Downing shot back.
  
"I know you," said Schwarzkopf. "I don't want you going across that border and getting yourself captured or killed. One, because it's an embarrassment, and two, because you know too much."
  
How effective were Downing's secret Scud hunters? The CIA has never confirmed that any of the weapons were destroyed. But retired Gen. Carl Stiner credits the commandos with demobilizing the missiles, calling Downing the man who "shut down the Scuds. . . . He contributed immeasurably to the success of that war."
  
In October 1993, Downing was running the Special Operations Command in Tampa when 18 American soldiers died during the disastrous effort to capture warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed in Mogadishu, Somalia. The four-star general, as chronicled in Mark Bowden's book "Black Hawk Down," briefly spoke with the on-the-ground commander, Maj. Gen. William Garrison, but backed off, believing "the last thing his friend needed at that moment was some desk jockey 13,000 miles away looking over his shoulder."
  
Garrison took full responsibility for the outcome of the battle and it destroyed his career. Within days, Downing arrived in Mogadishu to check on the troops, "as any good commander would," says a friend. A Somali militia was still shelling. A mortar round hit the Rangers' airfield encampment, killing one soldier and seriously wounding a dozen others.
  
That mortar almost killed Downing. "It was really close," the friend says.
  
Basic Training

March 2001: A cadre of Iraqi rebels descend on a training camp in Texas. For five days they fire pistols, shotguns and Kalashnikov rifles, and otherwise hone their combat and self-defense skills.
  
They are bitter foes of Saddam Hussein. Members of the Iraqi National Congress, they dream of the day when they can march triumphantly into Baghdad as a liberation army.
  
Their mentor -- and biggest cheerleader -- is Wayne Downing.
  
"This is the first time they are being trained to do anything on this level," the former general tells a United Press International reporter. But to Downing the weapons course, paid for by the United States, is a "drop in the bucket." What the dissidents really need, he says, is training on "antitank weapons, machine guns, rockets, that sort of thing."
  
Downing has supported an insurrection in Iraq for several years, arguing that Hussein's regime could be toppled if only America had the guts to arm and support the Iraqi National Congress, a rebel coalition based in London. Calling on influential lawmakers, Downing helped win passage in 1998 of the Iraq Liberation Act, which set aside nearly $100 million for military weaponry and training for anti-Hussein warriors.
  
The idea of overthrowing Hussein had wide political support and endorsements from people like Donald Rumsfeld, but was never fully embraced by the Clinton White House. Some national security experts and military analysts consider Downing's military plan half-baked: a potential replay of the Bay of Pigs bloodbath in Cuba.
  
"I have had visits from the opposition groups, trying to convince me that 1,000 men, armed, placed into Iraq, would have the entire regime toppled; the regular army would fold," retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, told a Senate hearing last year. Zinni clearly didn't buy it.
  
"Be careful," he said. "Bay of Pigs could turn into Bay of Goats."
  
Plotting Payback

Classical music fills the posh office. Jim Kimsey speaks quietly, even when he's talking about killing.
  
White-haired and chiseled, Kimsey cuts a dashing figure at 62, much like Downing, the fellow Ranger he calls his kindred soul. A billionaire thanks to his business acumen, Kimsey today runs a philanthropic foundation within sight of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where his old buddy works.
  
He has offered Downing his views on hunting down Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network. The politicians and war planners need to act more like their enemy, Kimsey advised.
  
"I told Wayne, 'I'm going to send all these guys [in charge] a copy of 'The Godfather.' . . . You've got to think like the Mafia thinks. No, it isn't going to be fair. You're going to whack 'em at home. You're going to do stuff to their families. You've got to play dirty. You've got to get in bed with dirty people. . . . Wayne knows how to think like that."
  
Downing, at least publicly, hasn't used the word dirty. Aggressive, yes. Relentless, yes. "Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year," he vowed the day he took the job, "we intend to give these people and those who support them no place to hide."
  
Those who know Downing presume that he is gathering intelligence, drawing up options, targeting the nests of snakes. Kimsey recites a Ranger slogan: "The night belongs to us." Whatever happens, he promises with a smile, "You're never gonna hear about it."
  

 

Acknowledgements:
Generals who rose from the ranks of the 14th Infantry:  General Sydney C. Wooten
Copyright © 2008  14th Infantry Regiment Association
Last modified: January 23, 2020