Talk:Intelligence Support Activity/Archive 1

Improving the page

Added a link to a GWU paper on the history of the ISA; an interested editor may use that to list credible sources for this article and remove that pesky "Needs sources" tag. --VAcharon 17:39, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I have improved the page. The references to the Foreign Operating Group have been removed (and the need sources tag), and now the page deals with USAISA history from the Field Operations Group until to operation Queens Hunter. I'll try to go further, but I need that a "true" English-speaker corrects what I have yet written.

Otherwise, I have got Richelson's Truth Conquers All Chains, and I have saved a copy at User:Rob1bureau/TCAC (with many errors of backspaces and lacking letters). In the Bibliography, I have only quoted the bibliography used until here (I'll add reference to Seymour Hersh articles, Richard Newman's Hunting war criminals, Bowden's Killing Pablo and others when I would have written page's parts refering to).

I have also ordered Steven Emerson's Secret Warriors and Michael Smith's Killer Elite and I'm waiting to receive them. Rob1bureau 22:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Merge suggested with GRAY FOX

Gray Fox and ISA is the same unit? They carry through the same mission... The two are extremely secret units, it less has more or the same amount of operators, and correspond to the Department of Defense... Yes or No?

It is strongly believed that is is the same unit :

• "USAISA" term was terminated in march 1989 along the SAP (Special Access Program) GRANTOR SHADOW [1], but there is no evidence that the unit was disbanded
• units similar to the ISA were repetidly reported since, using codenames :
  • CENTRA SPIKE around 1993 (Mark Bowden Killing Pablo)
  • TORN VICTOR in the mid-90s (US News & World Report 7/6/98 - "Hunting war criminals: The first account of secret U.S. missions in Bosnia" by Richard J. Newman [2])
  • GRAY FOX (or GREY FOX ?), reported in several Seymour Hersh articles (including Manhunt, Moving Targets, The Coming Wars), all available on the New Yorker website.

Otherwise, most authors agree that way :

1. Arkin's The secret War : Though its freelance tendencies were curbed, the ISA continued to operate under different guises through the ill-starred U.S. involvement in Somalia in 1992 and was reportedly active in the hunt for Bosnian Serbs suspected of war crimes. Today, the ISA operates under the code name Gray Fox.
2. Smith's online presentation of Killer Elite : a little known US special operations intelligence unit which had at one time gone by the name the Intelligence Support Activity but by then was said to be hiding under the covername Gray Fox.
3. Sean Naylor's Not a Good Day to Die : The unit was code-named Gray Fox, but it had also gone by a smattering of other bland code names, including the Intelligence Support Activity, the Army of Virginia (sometimes amended to the Army of Northern Virginia)
4. Bowden's Killing Pablo : It [the unit] had been called Torn Victory, Cemetery Wind, Capacity Gear and Robin Court. Lately, it was "Centra Spike."
5. on Gray Fox page : Gray Fox is a secretive special missions unit of the United States military, originally known as Intelligence Support Activity (ISA).

I suggest to give these details in the article, when the Activity's history will reach its "termination" in 1989. Rob1bureau 16:06, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Article merged

I would highly suggest reading the newest book about the subject, "Relentless Strike" by Sean Naylor.

I have yet to finish it, but will update the page when I am done.

One tidbit of interest I've already ran across - in 1989 the ISA changed its name to the Tactical Coordination Detachment, and then to the U.S. Army Office of Military Support. The book also touches on Delta's own aviation squadron - Echo Squadron - based at Pope Airfield in Ft. Bragg. It also suggest that the ISA and SEASPRAY were two entirely different entities.

Article merged: See old talk-page here --Skywolf ^talk/_contribs 07:01, 15 September 2007 (UTC)