Pentagon Falters in Evidence of Possible Al Qaeda Link to Somalia

It sounded sinister at first. The Pentagon announced new evidence of a possible link between the Al Qaeda terrorist network and Somalia. But soon the story began to unravel.

The Pentagon’s military spokesman for the war in Afghanistan, Air Force Brig. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr., announced Wednesday that U.S. forces searching caves abandoned by Al Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan had recovered a hand-held navigation device Monday with the name “G. Gordon” on it.

Rosa said the Pentagon believed that it once belonged to Master Sgt. Gary I. Gordon, an Army Ranger killed in Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, in October 1993.

“This piece we currently think originated from Somalia will obviously tie--could obviously tie--Al Qaeda to Somalia,” Rosa said.

An alternative explanation, he said, was that the device might have been stolen and sold on the black market.

But the Pentagon said later that the receiver bearing the name of “G. Gordon” belonged to another U.S. soldier and had nothing to do with Gary I. Gordon or Somalia.

“Initial indications that the GPS unit potentially belonged to a U.S. service member killed in Somalia several years ago have now been determined to be inaccurate,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

In fact, the unit was left on an Afghan battlefield March 4 by a U.S. soldier who was caught in a firefight with Al Qaeda forces at the outset of Operation Anaconda.

The Global Positioning System device was brought to Afghanistan earlier in the war by a U.S. Army aviator, who handed it off to the second soldier and then left the country. The device and its pouch had “G. Gordon” written on them because the soldier who originally brought it to Afghanistan uses that as his nickname--people say he resembles G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate figure.

An Army Times reporter, Sean Naylor, was with the U.S. forces who recovered the GPS device Monday. Naylor recorded the model and serial number. His newspaper checked that information with the manufacturer, Garmin International, which said that the model, GPS III Pilot, was made no earlier than 1997 and that the item was sold Dec. 21, 1998, to Ft. Campbell, the Army post in Kentucky that is home to the 101st Airborne Division, the 5th Special Forces Group and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

“That product didn’t exist in 1993,” Garmin spokesman Pete Brumbaugh said by telephone.

The Army Times’ managing editor, Robert Hodierne, said Naylor reported that the soldiers who found the GPS unit also found two others at the same location. Two of the three had names on them. One was “G. Gordon.” The other was “Svitak.” Army Sgt. Philip J. Svitak was among seven U.S. servicemen killed March 4 when hostile fire brought down one Chinook helicopter and damaged another. Svitak was a member of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment from Ft. Campbell.

The soldier who lost the “G. Gordon” device survived the battle, a defense official said Wednesday.

Before making its announcement Wednesday, the Pentagon notified Gary I. Gordon’s family of the GPS discovery. Gordon, a native of Lincoln, Maine, was a sniper team leader when he was killed in a Mogadishu firefight Oct. 3, 1993.