One of his first steps was bureaucratic: to shift control of an undercover unit, known then as the Gray Fox (it has recently been given a new code name), from the Army to the Special Operations Command (socom), in Tampa.
Gray Fox was formally assigned to socom in July , 2002 at the instigation of Rumsfeld's office, which meant that the undercover unit would have a single commander for administration and operational deployment.
As reported by Nick Turse in TomDispatch, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesman Ken McGraw says that US special operations soldiers have been dispatched to 135 countries in 2015, or around 69 per cent of all the countries in the world.
The Quantum Leap report concludes, "We are currently in a 'window' of opportunity for exploitation of social media sources for application to CTF Counter-Threat Financence — "or other SOCOM NCR missions.
A spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, told me, "To the best of anyone's knowledge at SOCOM, there were no West Coast SEALs deployed to Katrina".
But only the first phase of Quantum Leap — the money-laundering scenario — was completed before the project was defunded, a spokesperson for SOCOM, Kenneth McGraw, told me, although he did not specify when the project was shut down.
Personable, gregarious and altogether down to earth, he lighted up as he told me how much he enjoyed the Socom special forces games because his father had been a soldier.
But the raid was also a thrilling, clear-cut and efficient operation, the kind of kill that most people know only from shows like "The Unit" and "24" or, in the case of younger audiences, combat video games like Socom 4. For a long time and particularly since Sept. 11, 2001, viewers have become accustomed to watching disasters unfold as they do in apocalyptic movies like "Independence Day".
"I worked on Socom 4," a military shooter, "but it made me uncomfortable every time I played my own levels," she said.
"Right now, anything Socom wants they pretty much get — they're hot," said one senior Congressional aide involved in the deliberations, using the command's nickname.
