Nick Turse, Alice Speri, The Intercept, Jul 1 2022

Small teams of US SOF are involved in a low-profile proxy war program on a far greater scale than previously known, according to exclusive documents and interviews with more than a dozen current and former government officials. While The Intercept and other outlets have previously reported on the Pentagon’s use of the secretive 127e authority in multiple African countries, a new document obtained through the FoIA offers the first official confirmation that at least 14 127e programs were also active in the greater Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region as recently as 2020. In total, between 2017 and 2020, US commandos conducted at least 23 separate 127e programs across the world. Separately, Joseph Votel, a retired four-star Army general who headed both SOCOM & CENTCOM, which oversees US military efforts in the Middle East, confirmed the existence of previously unrevealed 127e…