Lawfare Archive: Lynzy Billing on Afghanistan's Zero Unit Night Raids

Summary

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The Lawfare Podcast: Lynzy Billing on Afghanistan's Zero Unit Night Raids

Episode Date: December 7, 2025 (originally January 24, 2023)
Host: Tyler McBrien (Lawfare Managing Editor)
Guest: Lynzy Billing (Investigative Journalist)

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Episode Overview

This episode revisits Lynzy Billing’s harrowing investigation into Afghanistan’s clandestine Zero Units—elite CIA-backed Afghan Special Forces—and their controversial night raids. Billing, whose personal family history intersects with these operations, spent four years collecting hundreds of testimonies, working alongside forensic experts, and uncovering the scale of civilian casualties from these raids. The conversation explores the shadowy relationship between the Zero Units and U.S. intelligence, the failures of accountability, and the enduring trauma for Afghan victims. Billing’s work, published in ProPublica, continues to challenge policymakers to reckon with the legacy and oversight of covert U.S. operations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Lynzy Billing’s Personal Connection and Investigative Journey

• Lynzy’s motivation was deeply personal: her mother and sister were killed in a night raid in Nangarhar Province nearly 30 years ago ([04:40]).
  • “I had gone back to Afghanistan ... to look into what had happened to them and their deaths. ... My mother and sister had been killed in a nighttime raid.” — Lynzy Billing [04:40]
• The investigation transitioned from exploring her family history to uncovering the operations and impact of Afghanistan’s Zero Units.

2. What Are Afghanistan’s Zero Units?

• Afghan Special Forces squadrons, trained, funded, and supported by the CIA since about 2008 ([05:51]).
• Operations involved U.S. Special Operations forces and sometimes CIA advisors.
• Main targets: Taliban and later ISIS-K.
• Different units operated regionally; O2 Unit operated out of Jalalabad in Nangarhar Province ([09:37]).

3. Human Cost: Victim Testimonies and the Ripple Effect

• First impetus came after hearing the story of Mazala, a widow who lost her only two sons in a raid and had nowhere to seek answers ([07:08]).
• More victims, like 22-year-old Batur, described the lifelong trauma following the raids, compounding the loss with persistent fear and lack of support:
  • “Trauma that doesn't go away after an operation ... fear comes every night afterwards of nightmares and flashbacks.” — Lynzy Billing [11:16]
• Women victims and witnesses were often omitted from official tallies ([14:09]).
• Many families, when seeking accountability with provincial or national officials, were told:
  • “These are the Zero units ... this is out of our hands,” and were sent away with no help ([14:09]).

4. Methodology: Uncovering the Scale of Civilian Harm

• Partnered with a government forensic pathologist, Mohammed, to document deaths and match with available records ([16:35]).
• Used lists from human rights organizations, news reports, and local accounts; visited more than 30 raid sites ([16:35]).
• Found evidence often missing from any official U.S. or Afghan government counts ([16:35–20:48]).
• Estimates (O2 Unit, 2017–2021): At least 452 civilians killed in 107 raids—a clear undercount
  • “There are hundreds of additional operations ... we just couldn't determine if those killed were civilians or militants. ... These people ... just seem to slip away into history.” — Lynzy Billing [21:25]

5. Intelligence Failures and Patterns

• Intelligence that was supposed to guide targeting was both technologically advanced and deeply flawed ([33:06]).
  • Misidentifications often stemmed from cultural misunderstandings—examples included assuming motorcycle riders were Haqqani or that gatherings in compounds were bomb-making rather than weddings ([33:06]).
• Chronic pattern: “There was no change throughout ... repeated patterns of getting it wrong” ([35:11]).

6. U.S.—Afghan Chain of Command, Accountability, and Loopholes

• Zero Units, set up by the CIA, were later nominally made to report to the Afghan intelligence agency (NDS), yet the CIA maintained significant influence ([30:12]–[32:22]).
• Result: Obscured lines of responsibility, enabling both U.S. and Afghan institutions to evade accountability:
  • “[A] very confusing world in terms of accountability when these operations go wrong and when they kill civilians.” — Lynzy Billing [32:32]
• The operations fell under “Title 50”—covert, classified CIA programs, out of reach of standard oversight mechanisms ([40:01]).
• Leahy Law Loophole: Prohibits training/equipping foreign forces that commit abuses but applies only to State and Defense Departments, not the CIA or units like Zero Units ([41:44]).
  • “Senator Patrick Leahy ... agreed there needed to be an amendment ... that these overseas military forces that work with any U.S. government agencies should really fall under the Leahy Law, which is not the case right now.” — Lynzy Billing [41:44]

7. The Night Raid/Kill-Capture Strategy—Historical Continuity and Failures

• Parallels drawn to CIA’s Phoenix Program in Vietnam and later operations in Iraq; repeated issues with misidentification and lack of accountability ([37:36]):
  • “Even in Vietnam ... they couldn’t differentiate between enemy insurgents and neutrals. ... [These strategies] keep getting repeated.” — Lynzy Billing [37:36]

8. Unique Difficulties in Reporting This Story

• Many areas and records are now inaccessible or destroyed post-U.S. withdrawal; some departments and archives literally burned ([44:51]).
• Survivors and family witnesses have relocated, making future investigations all but impossible ([44:51]):
  • “There was places ... that no longer exist ... some [statistical departments] were completely burnt ... many of the survivors ... have moved.” — Lynzy Billing [44:51]

9. What’s Next?

• Billing continues to press Congress for oversight and action, framing the issue as not only historical but urgent for future U.S. conflicts ([47:26]):
  • “This is a war that was fought in America’s name. ... This is something that could be used in a new country against a new threat. ... I really feel that this is going to be used in new countries and you’re going to see the same fallout ... if something doesn’t change.” — Lynzy Billing [47:26]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “I stumbled across the Zero units, which is what this investigation really focuses on.” — Lynzy Billing [04:40]
• “They were funded and trained and armed and then supported by the CIA ... going after targets that were perceived as threats to the United States.” — Lynzy Billing [05:51]
• “She was just in this, at that time, complete state of shock ... she told me that her two only children had been killed in a night raid ... and she didn’t know who to turn to.” — Lynzy Billing [07:08]
• “There is this feeling that there was no consequence for when these operations did go wrong.” — Lynzy Billing [14:09]
• “The [Leahy] law … doesn’t cover U.S. intelligence agencies. … So this is why units like the Zero Units who were supported by the CIA didn’t fall under it.” — Lynzy Billing [41:44]
• “We hope to do a follow-up ... I do hope that we ... get responses from Congress.” — Lynzy Billing [47:26]

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-----------|:---------------| | 04:40 | Billing's personal backstory and incitement to investigate | | 05:51 | What are Zero Units? Formation, structure, and U.S. backing | | 07:08 | The story of Mazala and the first victim testimony | | 09:37 | Testimony of Batur; trauma and aftermath of raids | | 14:09 | Systemic lack of accountability for victims’ families | | 16:35 | Methodology: Teaming with forensic expert, tracking evidence | | 21:25 | Reporting on civilian death count and limitations of data | | 30:12 | CIA–NDS/Afghan Intelligence handover—blurred lines of responsibility | | 33:06 | Intelligence failures and flawed targeting | | 37:36 | History of U.S. night raids and continuity with past programs | | 40:01 | Why Billing calls it a “classified war”; oversight limitations | | 41:44 | The Leahy Law’s loopholes and implications for oversight | | 44:51 | Challenges in data collection—destruction and displacement | | 47:26 | Next steps and the moral imperative for oversight |

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Tone and Style

Throughout the episode, the tone is grave, empathetic, and purposeful—reflecting Billing’s dedication to the subject, the pain of the victims, and the challenges inherent in reporting on covert military operations. Host Tyler McBrien’s queries are thoughtful and probing, aimed at drawing out both granular details and wider policy implications.

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Summary Takeaway

Lynzy Billing’s investigation into Afghanistan’s Zero Unit night raids exposes the deeply human cost of U.S.-backed covert operations—one often obscured by secrecy, legal loopholes, and deliberate obfuscation. Her reporting not only documents hundreds of civilian deaths but highlights major systemic failings in intelligence, oversight, and accountability. The story serves as both a record for Afghanistan’s past and a warning for the future conduct of U.S. paramilitary and intelligence operations. The call now, she argues, is for public and congressional reckoning with these policies—before they repeat elsewhere with the same tragic consequences.

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Transcript

[Podcast Host]

Nearly every News alert in 2025 has raised questions, some old, some new, about the law and national security. And now you get the chance to ask Lawfare directly. It's time for our annual Ask Us Anything Mailbag podcast, an opportunity for you to ask Lawfare this year's most burning questions. You can submit your question by leaving a voicemail at 202-643-846, or by sending a recording of yourself asking your question to askusanythinglawfairmail.com by December 16th.

[Lindsay Billing]

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[Paige DeSorbo]

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[Lindsay Billing]

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[Isabella Royo]

I'm Isabella Royo, intern at Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare archive for December 7, 2025. Yesterday's archive episode opened with a review of the Trump administration's halt on visa processing for Afghan nationals, citing the need for further vetting after an Afghan asylee allegedly shot two national guard members in D.C. killing one and critically injuring the other. The suspected shooter, Rahmanullah Lakhanwal, had served in an elite CIA backed counterterrorism unit in Afghanistan during the Afghan war before arriving in the US in 2021. For today's archive, I chose an episode from January 24, 2023, in which Lindsey Billing spoke with Tyler McBrien about the relationship between Afghanistan's elite zero units and the CIA the difficulty of securing accountability for actions taken in a classified war. End quote why US Forces and Afghan partners relied heavily on night raids and more.

[Tyler McBrien]

I'm Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare, and this is The Lawfare Podcast. January 24, 2023. In 2019, investigative journalist and photographer Lindsey Billing went to Afghanistan to investigate a very personal story, her own past. In the process, she discovered what she came to call a classified war. One with lines of accountability so obscured that no one had to answer publicly for operations that went wrong. I sat down with Lindsay to talk through her sprawling four year investigation, published last month in ProPublica. We discussed Afghanistan's shady Zero units and their relationship with the CIA, the traumatic ripple effects caused by this lack of accountability, and why the US Continues to rely on a strategy of night raids, which Lindsey describes as quick, brutal operations that went wrong far more often than the US has acknowledged. We also discussed why Lindsay decided to tell this story when few others would. It's The Lawfare Podcast. January 24th. Lindsey Billing on Afghanistan's Zero Unit Night Raids.

[Interviewer]

Now, Lindsay, this is quite an extraordinary investigation that took several years, took you hundreds of miles across Afghanistan, speaking with hundreds of people, including a forensic investigator, a U.S. army Ranger, families of victims, Afghanistan's former spymaster. The list goes on. So first I wanted to start with actually your story. I think to understand the story you were telling about the Zero unit night raids, we have to start with you. So first, could you tell me a bit about yourself and what initially brought you to Afghanistan?

[Lindsay Billing]

Several years ago, I had gone back to Afghanistan while I was kind of researching and investigating my background and my past and my family. My father was Afghan and my mother was Pakistani and a refugee to Afghanistan. And I had gone back to Afghanistan during the course of this kind of personal investigation to look into what had happened to them and their deaths. And I found that they had been killed, you know, nearly 30 years earlier and that my mother and sister had been killed in a. In a nighttime raid in a district of Nangahar Province. And so it was while I was looking into that and meeting a distant relative and hearing what happened, you know, decades earlier that I kind of stumbled across the Zero units, which is what this investigation really focuses on.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, so we'll start there. What are the Zero units?

[Lindsay Billing]

So the Zero units were squadrons of Afghan Special Forces, and they were funded and trained and armed and then supported by the CIA. And they were joined on their operations by U.S. special Operations forces, soldiers also. And then depending on the operation or how big it was, also at times, CIA advisors were joining them and they were like, officially established around 2008. But after, after years of redesignation also. And they were going after targets that were perceived as threats to the United States. So these were counterterrorism operations. And they were kind of pointed at Taliban first and in later years, ISKP also.

[Interviewer]

And so you're in Nangarhar Province, you know, researching your own story, and you begin to hear about the zero units. What convinced you to pull at that thread and to embark on this investigative journey? Essentially, what convinced you to shift your focus while you were there?

[Lindsay Billing]

It was one woman, actually, that really became the kind of like, driving force behind looking into these units and trying to take that on. And I met her. Her name is Mazala. And I met her in Rodat district of Nangar Province. And I was in Rodat because that's where my mother and sister had been killed. Her neighbors had taken me to meet her and to talk to her because she was just in this, at that time, complete state of shock, really, and really traumatized. And she told me that her two only children had been killed in a night raid just three months earlier. And she was a widow and she didn't have money and she didn't have resources to really look into what happened. And she didn't know who to turn to to get an explanation as to why her two sons had been shot that night. And so I just felt this kind of. It's hard to explain, like a. Like I felt this responsibility to try and go to government officials on. On her behalf and provincial officials and say what happened to her two sons and try get an explanation for her. And that's when I found out that the forces that had targeted her sons, that that night were the zero units. And that was really the beginning. That was the first story that I heard of a night raid from an eyewitness and from a family member who'd lost loved ones.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I think one thing your reporting really drove home for me was that in the US we often hear terms like collateral damage and blowback in the abstract, but these stories really drove them home in a very real way. So I was wondering if you could also tell the story about a young man named Batur, if I'm saying his name correctly, in your reporting, I believe you were speaking with someone and he got a call that one of his students or a student had just experienced an incident days before. Could you tell me about meeting Bator and his story and then, you know, maybe in the telling of that, describe how these night raids are conceived and then executed?

[Lindsay Billing]

Sure. Yeah, you are absolutely right. I was meeting. I was meeting a former University professor. And we were talking about these zero unit operations. And he had been kind of, in a way, like in his own way, cataloging zero unit operations that had. That his students had told him about when their family members had been targeted. And he was telling me about this and he had this notebook and he had been listing them all and trying to keep track of them all. And he got a call from a professor at the University of Nangarhar saying that Batur was. Hadn't come into classes recently or for a few days. And then when he had that, he was distracted and he felt like something was wrong or something was going on with him. And so I went to the university to meet him and Barto told me how his two brothers had been killed in a zero unit operation. And this was by the O2 unit, which is one of the four known zero unit squadrons. And the O2 is based out of Jalalabad in Nangarhar, and they operate in that region and all four of the units operating in different parts of the country. And he was just completely.

Like Mazala also and like all of the eyewitnesses I met, but just completely traumatized and confused. And it was a really difficult meeting in a way because I felt a lot of responsibility with, with how to conduct these interviews and conversations with people with a level of care to, to what had happened. Mostly because a lot of these families hadn't spoken to anyone about these raids and what had happened. And they were also. This had started in 2019 under the former government or the Republic government. And there was a lot of fear around these units. They were very secretive and people were scared to talk about them. They were fearing repercussions of being targeted. They. And yeah, I mean, Barto is this really young guy. He was 22. And he just was completely at a loss of how to move forward after what had happened with his brothers, because he felt like when they were alive that they had supported him and he could go to university. And now he was, you know, kind of alone. And he. He had told me that they were a poor family, they couldn't move away from the home that was targeted. And he was really telling of a kind of trauma that doesn't go away after an operation, which is this fear that comes every night afterwards of nightmares and flashbacks and this, this feeling that it's not over when the operation's over. And he also spoke to what some of the other eyewitnesses and survivors who I met spoke to, which is this, you know, feeling that these operations were really kind of turning people like him who had supported the republic government, turning them away, away from that government because their loved ones had been incorrectly.

Targeted in these operations.

[Interviewer]

Reading your story, you really get a sense of the scale of the trauma. You know, when you're speaking. I'm reminded of the one woman you spoke to who had lost her three sons and her son in law, I believe, who after they were killed, she simply washed them and shrouded them. And I think the quote that really drove this home for me was when she said, not once did I think I had any other options that any Afghan official, court or anyone would believe me. Could you talk a bit about what sense of accountability the families of the victims had, if any?

[Lindsay Billing]

Yeah, I mean, they really felt like everyone that I would meet and I would say, did you go to the provincial officials or who have you talked to about this? Or has anyone from the media come to talk with you after this operation? And there's just this feeling that kept coming up and this kind of pattern with all of the people that I was meeting, which was that when they would go to, like provincial centers to try and talk to officials about these zero unit operations, they would be told it was a mistake or their, their brothers or their family members had been incorrectly, you know, targeted or misidentified as terrorists. And they were told that these are the zero units and they have their own intelligence and they do their own operations. And this is out of our hands and sent away without an explanation. And there is this feeling that there was no consequence for when these operations did go wrong. And she was really just. I really felt for her because there's this aspect as well, which is that a lot of times it was the women who were eyewitnesses or women who were survivors of these operations that were the least talked to. And I went to, you know, more than 30 raid sites and we looked into hundreds of night raid operations. And it was always when I would be talking with people about who was injured or who had been killed on these operations that I would have to go back to them and say, were any women also injured or killed in these operations? And really highlight that, because often women were left out of the tallies and left out of a list of people who had been injured.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I'm actually very interested in some of these site visits. Can you tell me what, what that felt like, what it was like visiting the sites, how you found the sites? And then also I'm also curious about, you know, people's willingness to speak to you, especially after having gone through a traumatic experience and one that. Under which they still live in fear, perhaps.

[Lindsay Billing]

Yeah. I mean, when I started this story or this. In this investigation, I decided that this was what I was going to look into. The first person I called was a man I just met who was a forensic pathologist, and his name's Mohammed. And I said, I really, like, I really need your help on this because we're going to have to somehow work our way across Nangahar and collect as much evidence as we can and somehow verify the dead and verify those who had been killed. And he was a forensic pathologist at the time. He was a government employee, so he had access to a government database in terms of forensics and the statistical department that I didn't have. And he was originally from Nangarhar, and he was really ready to go on this with me, and he really wanted us to. To do this together. So we drove out and we started. We started first by collecting every report we could find of an O2 night raid that had, you know, allegedly resulted in civilian casualties. And then we went to human rights organizations and we said, like, are you. Are you collecting? Are you cataloging Zero unit operations? And then we got given a really comprehensive list in terms of the details in it of zero unit operations with the dates and the times and the locations. And that kind of became the place that we started working off. So we had these. We had that list, we had the human rights organizations, we had news reports, and then we had loads of people just coming in with individual accounts. And so then we decided to start driving out to these raid sites. And many of them, you know, had, you know, the properties and the compounds that had been targeted in these night raids, you know, still had bullet holes in the walls, and the structures were still damaged. And this is something that we were also able to see, you know, from satellite imagery as well, that we were working with, particularly operations that had an airstrike in tandem with them, because the zero units were able to call in US air power. And these were huge operations. They were 80 soldiers going out, you know, in huge convoys and with helicopters. And of the 80 soldiers, I learned that 10 to 12 of them were American as well. And so it was really people living in those areas, in different districts of Nangar Province and remote areas really knew who the Zero units were. And so there was a lot of talk about when an operation had happened. And so we just started by just visiting people and talking to as many people as we could and collecting as much evidence. And as we could, and verifying the deaths and going to coroners and also going to hospitals and health clinics who we'd heard that people who were injured had been taken to after a night raid. And then we heard that they had later died in these facilities. And doctors there were telling us no US or Afghan official ever came to the hospital to ask them who had died. And I think that's the point when I really realized that whatever count or tally that the US or Afghan government had was missing so many of these. Because even for me, everyone that I would meet would tell me about another night raid and, and it was, it really felt overwhelming at some points and almost like endless.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I was quite impressed with Mohammed the, the forensic pathologist with whom you worked in sort of how game he was or how keen he was to join. I think, you know, you mentioned a quote by him that he simply said we have to share the truth and, and then joined you, which I think speaks to, you know, how important this story is to be told. But I want to now turn to sort of, I guess your count or your tally that you were able to establish. And I understand that, you know, in accounting for the night raids, you know, it seemed like it's only really possible to establish a floor or a minimum. But what's the scale of the night raids that you uncovered?

[Lindsay Billing]

Yeah, I mean, it's a really good point when you talk about the scale and, and the minimum. You know, we were just looking at one of four known zero units. We're just looking at the O2 and we were only focused on a, a four year period. So we started in 2017 and we went until, we were counting until July 2021, which was the last night raid that I found by the O2 unit right before, right before the US exit in August. And in that four year period we found at least 452 civilians had been killed. And that was in 107 raids. And this is, you know, certainly an undercount. And there are, on top of this, there was other, there was hundreds of additional operations on, on our kind of self built data set that we'd put together. And in those hundreds of additional operations, we just couldn't determine if those killed were civilians or militants. And I think that's really an important thing to note too. And we wanted to be really transparent about that because that's also, you know, hundreds of other people in those that there's still questions around, you know, who were these people that no one was counting. And that just kind of seemed to slip away in, into.

History without, you know, without. Without us really understanding who they were and what happened to them.

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[Lindsay Billing]

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[Paige DeSorbo]

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[Lindsay Billing]

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[Lindsay Billing]

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[Interviewer]

And before we get into more explicit questions of accountability, I think I'd like to take a step back and talk a bit about the relationship between CIA, the United States and then these Afghan soldiers. And I'd like to turn to your interview that you had with Ramtola Nabil, the former director of the National Director of Security in Afghanistan, who sort of described to you maybe a quid pro quo or what I think in his estimation, a mutually beneficial relationship between the CIA and the Zero Units. Could you talk a bit about, you know, these intelligence sharing relationships and a bit about, you know, who goes on the raids, as you mentioned before. So to get at culpability, you know, this relationship, I guess, between the CIA.

[Lindsay Billing]

And Zero Units, the Zero units were Afghan Special Forces soldiers, but they were initially established and set up by the CIA, and they were funded and trained and equipped by them, and the CIA went on to support them. The Afghan Intelligence agency, or the NDS comes in because there was a point at around 2012 when the ownership or there was a transition where it was passed from the CIA that they would then fall under the NDS umbrella. And so I wanted to meet the former director of the Afghan Intelligence agency because he was there at the time that these units went through this transition and then were fell nominally under the NDS or under the Afghan Intelligence Agency. But that said, even as he notes that the, the U.S. and the CIA still had a role in these units in terms of intelligence and in terms of targeting packages. And they, they still were supporting the units, but they just had an Afghan face, essentially. And so there's this kind of relationship where, I mean, I would go to Afghan officials who would say the, this is US Intelligence and, and they are funding these units and they are supporting the units. And then from a US Side, they, they look like they fall under the nds, and these are Afghan Special Forces. So there's this kind of split between the two, but where responsibility really came down to them both, because even after this transition, there was this agreement that the operations and intelligence would be shared between the two, that the Afghan Intelligence Agency would be made aware if there was operations and that they would be brought in on those conversations.

So it became this really kind of complicated setup and structure which really left.

It was a very confusing world in terms of accountability when these operations go wrong and when they kill civilians.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And speaking of the intelligence, I think, as you mentioned, some of these night raids, I guess, were a success in, in the sense of the, you know, apprehended or killed their intended target. But, you know, that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the collateral damage and the civilian deaths, which seem to happen almost more often than not. So why was the intelligence so flawed from your sense?

[Lindsay Billing]

I mean, one of the, one of the biggest questions that I had like over the last few years while I'm looking into it is exactly that how can you have this, the CIA and the US Intelligence get it wrong? Like, how can the, you know, self proclaimed, most cutting edge, you know, equipment in the world or, or just, you know, that had huge advantages with technical intelligence. How can it get it wrong? And so I went to, I started looking for people to talk to who were part of the US side of processing that intelligence. And just super fascinating and quite, you know, damning conversations, much of which didn't actually make it into the story in the end, but really kind of came down to this lack of understanding of Afghanistan and, and a kind of lack of cultural awareness or understanding of who the militants that the US was looking for, who they were. And so I would hear, I started hearing like, you know, stories of, of what these people were being told to look out for from, you know, overhead image and footage. For example, one would be, one was that, you know, if a guy was right, driving a motorbike, that he was Haqqani, or if he had a certain turban, that he was Taliban, or they would see, you know, 50 people inside a compound and think that that was a terrorist or bomb making factory and it turned out to be a wedding. I mean, I just kept hearing all of these kind of personal memories from, from people who.

Whose job it was to, to look at overhead imagery and take the intelligence gathered by local informants on the ground and make a determination if that was someone that should be targeted. And you know, they say multiple sources of intelligence, whether that's a informant on the ground and overhead imagery or a voice recording, but you know, these people that I was talking to were telling me that even with all of these different sources of intelligence or different pieces of information they were getting that there was still this lack of understanding on who they were targeting and they were getting it wrong. And then on the other side, you have soldiers on the ground that were saying, we weren't going after hvts or high value targets at one point, we were just going after sympathizers or people who were deemed associated with terrorist groups and by whatever determination that associated men. And so there was, it was going wrong for like several reasons. And, and there was these failures of intelligence that were happening. But, but something that was really troubling is that the, when I was hearing about this, it wasn't only just from 2019. Over the last few years, some of these accounts that I was hearing of when it was going wrong were going way back. And there was no change throughout. There was no change to these patterns of failure where they were like, oh, well, maybe we need to change how we're judging who we're looking for. You know, there was this repeated pattern of getting it wrong along the way.

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[Interviewer]

Speaking of way back, I think listeners who are familiar with the history of U.S. special forces operations going back to Vietnam, the Vietnam War, I think this may sound like an echo or they may be having a sense of deja vu. Your story gets into a bit of the history of the night raid as a strategy or the kill capture strategy. Could you talk a bit about that history and the continued justifications the United States uses for pursuing this strategy in terms of the trade offs between air raids versus night raids, for example?

[Lindsay Billing]

Yeah, I mean, we talk a little bit about it in the piece. This, this kind, like you say, this pattern going way back. And we, we started by looking at kill capture operations used against the Viet Cong in South Vietnam back in 1967, where the CIA had the Phoenix program. Even at that time, the CIA Executive Director William Colby noted to Congress that even then they couldn't differentiate between enemy insurgents and neutrals. And this is something that like went on. You know, then the night raids or killer capture raids were used in, in Iraq and they were met with the same kind of claims of successes from a, from a US side or from a US Military side that these operations were going well and that they were successfully targeting the insurgency, but they were also getting a blowback from the local population. And then the same in Afghanistan. When the night raids came to Afghanistan and again, the US claimed that they were getting major successes in targeting terrorists. And in our reporting, we note that that wasn't what was happening. And it was coming out that actually, you know, huge numbers of people who were being detained as terrorists were then being released because it was found out that there wasn't enough evidence to say that they were terrorists. And so I think that throughout history, this idea of using this night raid strategy and this idea of partnering with local forces to do it with you has had like repeated Failures and repeated failures of intelligence. And yet it's something that the US and that the CIA keeps using as one of the tools in their toolbox, in their counterterrorism toolbox.

[Interviewer]

Even throughout your story, you call these night raids a classified war. I wanted to get into a bit of what you meant by that term.

[Lindsay Billing]

Yeah, I think it's because I just felt like we, what these were were this really kind of murky area where they were not US Military counterterrorism operations. These were covert operations, and these were title 50. And there's this whole. These were the CIA. And it is a really, really difficult world to kind of penetrate and.

Really investigate precisely because they are classified. They're classified operations. So any kind of investigations or anything related to these operations, the oversight of those would only really be available to the U.S. intelligence Committees on the Senate and House. And so even though they were Afghan Special Forces, and even though they nominally fell under the nds, they were set up under the CIA umbrella. And with that came this complete, like, secrecy and difficulty for anyone to really penetrate.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And Speaking of title 50, I think much of what you're describing here is not illegal under US Law, but rather may fall into a legal gray area or slip through a loophole of a law that was intended to protect against abuses like these. Could you talk a bit about the so called Lehi Law and why these night raids may not be covered by the Lehi Law?

[Lindsay Billing]

Yeah, so the LAHI law, like, prohibits the US Military from providing training and equipment to foreign security forces that commit human rights abuses, but it doesn't cover U.S. intelligence agencies. So it, it also, I found, doesn't cover units like the 0 units, and it applies only to congressional appropriations that fund the State and Defense Departments. And so I reached out to Senator Patrick Leahy, who the law was named after, to ask him why it was that these units could kind of circumvent or kind of fell outside of this law. And he agreed that there needed to be an amendment to the law, just as a matter of policy or of U.S. policy, that these overseas military forces that work with any US Government agencies should really fall under the Leahy Law, which is not the case right now. And so this is why units like the Zero Units who were supported by the CIA didn't fall under it. And just there's this huge, like, legal loophole in what was covering them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, and you mentioned throughout the story that, you know, this is an effort that you felt that no one had done before at this scale at least, and that no one would ever be able to do again. And I'm curious why you think no one has been able to tell this story before.

[Lindsay Billing]

I think that there's definitely media has. Has spoken up about and reported on the zero units in the past. But when I started this investigation in early 2019, a few months earlier, the New York Times had published a story looking at these strike forces. And as I continued this investigation, other other stories came out and local media had also at times, reported on them, although there was also, at that time, I'll note, a lot of areas that were really inaccessible for reporters and media to go to just because of the increase in fighting that was going on. And there were parts that were never visited, you know, by reporters and raids that were never looked into. But the reason that I say that is because.

Part of the story was really trying attempting to catalog a kind of tally of just how many civilians had been killed by just one of the units. And that's something that even the human rights organizations I went to said was nearly an impossible task. And their numbers were.

At times, there would be months that they weren't even recording operations by the zero units. And there was no consistent or comprehensive tally of how many people had been killed by the oto. So that was really one of the things that I was taking on. And then I say that it is something that can't be done again, just because there was places that I visited during the reporting that no longer exist. Like some of the statistical departments that I went to who were recording, who had been recording the operations and the deaths. It was all analog. So this was like boxes of paperwork that Muhammad and I had spent hours and hours and hours sifting through. And I remember in August 14, right before the Taliban moved into Kabul, Muhammad had gone back to Jalalabad because he'd called me and he said, the Taliban, they're going to be in Kabul tomorrow. And we have, like, we have to get all these documents from the statistical department, because when the Taliban come in, they're going to be. They're going to be destroyed. And in the end, he was right, because the Jalalabad statistical department documents were completely burnt, like, within a week. And lots of the news sites and news reports that I'd once looked at and to try and find corroborating accounts of these operations as well were deleted. And the Afghan news agencies who had written up these reports were no longer operating. And so there was this. That's why, in terms of gathering a lot of this information is just not possible right now. Another reason is that many of the survivors or families of those killed that I had visited have moved home and are no longer in the same locations where the raids happened. So just so many changes have really happened within the last year and a half. Basically.

[Interviewer]

I'm curious what's next for you with this investigation and I apologize in advance for asking after, you know, four year investigation, asking you already what's next. But I'm curious, you know, where, where you're headed with any follow up investigations and, and then also what you hope may come from, from this reporting.

[Lindsay Billing]

Yeah, it's a good question. It's right now is it might sound a bit strange, but I feel like I have the hardest job is, is now that the story is finished because I am going to members of Congress and basically saying to them the response to this story has been immense. But everyone keeps asking me what is Congress going to do? Are they going to make amendments to the law? Are they going to investigate these units to ensure that these types of failures don't happen again? So I'm basically going, I mean initially I'd gone to, to 42 members of Congress and asked them a lot of questions about the 0 units. I reached out to them a while back. So now I'm going back to them and I'm essentially saying, do you care? And in a way when we put out the story, we're asking the American public, do you care as well? Because this is a war that was fought in America's name. So while we have published, I have a lot more work to do and I'm getting responses from people and so I do hope that we, we, we hope to do a follow up with these responses from Congress. I think one of the important things that I want people to take away from the story is that this is, you know, the US has left Afghanistan now and for many people they'll say, well that's, you know, Afghanistan's finished, but this is something that, you know, could be used in a new country against a new threat. This night raid strategy and these failed tactics and there really wasn't like a true reckoning of what happened in Afghanistan. And I really feel that this is going to be used in new countries and you're going to see the same fallout that you have in Afghanistan if something doesn't change and if there isn't a change to the oversight of these kinds of operations and what the human rights implications of them are.

[Interviewer]

Lindsay, thank you so much for taking the time.

[Lindsay Billing]

Thank you for having me, Tyler.

[Tyler McBrien]

The Lawfare podcast is produced in cooperation.

[Interviewer]

With the Brookings Institution.

[Tyler McBrien]

You can get ad free versions of this and other law firm podcast by becoming a Lawfare material [e-mail] lawfair. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for our other shows, including Rational Security, Chatter, Allies and the Aftermath. Our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series on the government's response to January 6th. Check out our written [e-mail] the podcast is edited by Jen Patia Howell and your audio engineer. This episode was Karis Schillen of Goat Rodeo. Our music is performed by Sophia Yan. As always, thanks for listening.

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