Boykin and Black Hawk Down

Lt. Gen. William G.  "Jerry" Boykin

Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski, writing for Big Peace, have published an article about Lieutenant General William G. (“Jerry”) Boykin.  The purpose of their piece was to counter some of the prevailing media bias against General Boykin because of his religious beliefs.  General Boykin is in the news because he has declined, under pressure from the controversial organization known as CAIR, or the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an invitation from West Point to speak at a prayer breakfast.

Ken Blackwell is a conservative writer.  Ken Klukowski is an attorney.  Neither man served in the military and their bios show nothing that would qualify either of them as military historians.

This is relevant because, in their Big Peace article, attempting to burnish the image of General Boykin, they write that Boykin was "the commanding officer of the mission in the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia forever memorialized in the movie Black Hawk Down."

Author Mark Bowden, author of the book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, never mentions Boykin.  Neither does retired colonel David H. Hackworth in his book, Hazardous Duty.  Hackworth covered U.S. operations in Somalia during the time of the Black Hawk Down incident as a correspondent for Newsweek.  Both of these men name Major General William F. Garrison as the commanding officer during the Battle of Mogadishu. [1]

Blackwell and Klukowski may have gotten their information from Wikipedia. On the Battle of Mogadishu, Wikipedia has this account:  

"In October 1993, Colonel Boykin was in command of the Delta Force tracking down militia leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid in Somalia, during which time the infamous Battle of Mogadishu took place.^{[citation needed]}

Mark Bowden asserts that there were two Delta Force mission commanders and that neither of them was Boykin.  They were Lieutenant Colonel Tom Matthews, from the Special Operations Aviation Regiment out of Fort Campbell, who ran the air component of the operation, and Lieutenant Colonel Gary Harrell, who had responsibility on the ground. [2]

A press bio on Boykin says that --

"LTG Boykin has served a total of thirteen years in the Special Forces Operational Detachment -- Delta, as a Detachment Commander, Staff Officer, Squadron Commander (twice), the Deputy Commander and finally as the Commander.."

That bio goes on to say that --

"LTG Boykin is a combat veteran who has participated in numerous operations some of which include the Iranian Hostage Rescue Mission, Granada, Panama and with Task Force Ranger in Mogadishu, Somalia."

Boykin may have been a part of Task Force Ranger, but the task force was commanded by Major General Garrison. [3]

The report by Blackwell and Klukowski is unreliable.  I think Lt. Gen. Boykin is a good man, from things that I have read, and was an outstanding soldiers.  He doesn't need "help" from people like the authors of the Big Peace article who clearly, though probably unintentionally, embellished the general's record.

Notes.

1.  David Hackworth, Hazardous Duty (New York: W'm Morrow and Co., 1996), 159.
2.  Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 5.
3.  Ibid.