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UNCLASSIFIED Contemporary Operations Studies Team A project of the Combat Studies Institute, the Contemporary Operations Studies Team (COST) archives firsthand accounts from US Army military personnel who planned, participated in and supported Operation Iraqi Freedom from May 2003 through the Iraqi national elections in January 2005. Interview with COL J. Mike Murray Combat Studies Institute Fort Leavenworth, Kansas UNCLASSIFIED Abstract Colonel John “Mike” Murray served as commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq from March 2004 to March 2005. His area of responsibility began as the Green Zone (later called the International Zone) and included essentially Baghdad proper. Primary duties included the escort mission for the Coalition Provisional Authority/US Embassy. His proximity to the CPA allowed him ready access to various advisors and the opportunity to observe the CPA’s and the US Embassy’s operational behavior before and after the transfer of sovereignty on 28 June 2004. Predeployment training included cultural preparation trips to Jordan and realistic training at the Joint Readiness Training Center. Murray held a consistent focus on sustaining it in theater by forming and fostering a lot of personal relationships with the Iraqi people and requiring his soldiers to learn at least some Arabic prior to deployment. He acknowledges that there are almost no differences between a National Guard unit and an Active Duty unit … after six months. Various lessons learned evolved during the deployment. First, the Moqtada al-Sadr uprisings resulted in stocking extra quantities of fuel and water. Secondly, primary stakeholders were added to the reconstruction effort by allowing them to help design the scope of work, vote in the bid process and become part of the quality control. Reconstruction efforts focused less on “low-hanging fruit” and more on infrastructure. Murray recognizes certain areas of understanding need to be improved – e.g., the concept of honor and saving face – and that aspects of culture apply differently depending upon the religious and/or ethnic differences of the population. Cultural concepts and behaviors must be related to the soldier in a manner that allows him to appreciate it through force protection. He also had responsibility for the 302nd Iraqi National Guard Battalion which evolved from the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. His command set up a leadership academy and developed the concept and importance of an NCO corps. This, in-turn, became the first Iraqi unit for him to turn over terrain to. Above all, Murray stresses that Operation Iraqi Freedom is a marathon and not a sprint. UNCLASSIFIED Interview with Colonel J. Mike Murray 8 December 2005 DV: My name is Dennis Van Wey (DV) and I’m with the Combat Studies Institute (CSI) Contemporary Operations Studies Team from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. CSI COST is working on the sequel to On Point. Today is 8 December 2005. It is approximately 1305 hours and we are located at Fort Hood, Texas. This interview is with Colonel J. Mike Murray (MM) concerning his experiences in Iraq. This is an unclassified voluntary interview. Before we begin, please understand that only unclassified information should be shared. If a question cannot be answered in an unclassified manner, then simply state this is the situation and we will proceed to the next question to avoid revealing classified information. Let’s go ahead and begin. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself, your background, your education, formal or informal training for that matter, or anything that would help or benefit the interview? MM: I’m not sure how much of the training we will get to. My name is Colonel John Murray. My middle name is Michael and I go by Mike. During my time in Iraq, I was the commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team (BCT) of the 1st Cavalry (CAV) Division. Formal training is nothing that really relates to OIF outside of our preparation for OIF II. I have a master’s degree from the War College, which was prior to that experience, then a bachelor’s degree in business administration, so really there is no application to OIF. DV: From when to when were you deployed? MM: We deployed in March of 2004 and came back in March of 2005. DV: I understand that the division went through training at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) and the National Training Center (NTC)? MM: My brigade went to JRTC. We went down just before Thanksgiving. The reason I know that is because we came back for the Thanksgiving break for a couple of days and went back down to JRTC and finished up at the end of the first week of December. DV: So based on the training that you had prior to deployment, and this is for OIF II, how did you feel in terms of your comfort level on what you were expecting? What did you predict your greatest tasks or challenges would be? MM: When we went to JRTC, we really didn’t understand exactly what the mission was that my BCT would have. It kind of evolved over time. The division did their mission readiness exercise (MRX) in December so I came straight back from Fort Polk, Louisiana. As a matter of fact, I had to fly back to meet the division MRX. Even at that point, there was some question as to what exactly the brigade’s mission in Iraq would be. That really didn’t get sorted out until sometime after the first of the year in 2004. Now, the sectors have all changed. When 3rd ID came in to replace us the sectors and the boundaries kind of changed around, but what I had started off as the Green Zone and turned into the International Zone. That was kind of the center of my sector. Then I had north a little bit of ground that encompassed Haifa Street and Contemporary Operations Studies Team, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 3 UNCLASSIFIED Tallil Square, which the whole year we were there it was definitely the area where we had the most activity. Then to the south I had the Karadah Peninsula. DV: Could you show me on the map? MM: Absolutely. DV: We are looking at a map of Baghdad. MM: What started off being called the Green Zone, which was where the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was when I got there and turned out to be the US Embassy. So this area right in here, the Green Zone, became the International Zone. This is Haifa Street right here up to about this point right here where the brigade goes across the Tigris River. DV: The Al Ahrar Bridge? MM: Right. So basically all of this area, the Karadah Peninsula up to about that line right there which is Al Kahhal Street, then south down to the old Rasheed airport and down into the cities. This was Zaphariniya, that was Jisr Diyala, and then there were a couple of smaller villages out here, so it was basically Zaphariniya and Jisr Diyala. Actually even further south, when we first got there it included security at the Tuwaitha nuclear research site and then a little bit further south a place we called “yellow cake” which was where the radioactive material out of this research site was stored. It was basically non-lethal, low-yield waste products. DV: So it was pretty much the center of Baghdad basically, it sounds like. MM: Yes, exactly. This map is wrong; it’s above the Diyala River. DV: What mission surprises did you experience when you arrived in your area of operations (AO)? MM: That kind of ties into what I said before. We really didn’t know exactly what the ground looked like until post-MRX. Going back to JRTC, I think JRTC did a great job preparing the brigade, but in many cases I would have redesigned it knowing what I knew later in terms of what we were going to do. In terms of mission surprises, the mission we knew the unit before us was doing, I’ll say we wished it away but we were told that it was going to be contracted out, was the escort mission for the CPA, which followed on and turned into an escort mission for US Embassy personnel. That consumed my direct support (DS) artillery battalion. And that was escorts throughout the entire country of Iraq. DV: Okay, so that was something that was not planned for? MM: Correct. DV: So CPA did not utilize just contracted security then? Contemporary Operations Studies Team, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 4 UNCLASSIFIED MM: Their primary security escort was 2-82 Field Artillery (FA), which was my DS FA battalion. DV: How did the search for weapons for mass destruction (WMD) impact your mission, if it all? MM: Within my sector, I don’t think it impacted it at all. The Tuwaitha site had been cleared long before we got there. It was strictly a security mission for that site. I say within my sector, we got some leads on a potential site south of our boundary down at Salman Pak, which is an old unconventional warfare training site. It was through informants and tips, etc. We flew several unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) missions down there and did some overhead imagery of the area and found some potential sites and worked with … (unable to recollect) … the team that was in country focused on that. DV: The civilians from the State Department, the Iraq Survey Group? MM: Yes. I can’t remember exactly what they went by, but they turned out to show almost no interest and then it was actually 1st Infantry Division’s (ID) sector, they had a limited presence down there, and so we ended up just passing it to 1st ID.

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