Artifact Details
In the days immediately following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, CIA deployed officers into Afghanistan. The first contingent arrived on 26 September to prepare the way for a U.S. invasion that would eliminate al-Qa‘ida’s safe haven and remove the Taliban from power. That initial Agency team worked with indigenous Northern Alliance (NA) forces in the Panjshir Valley. Additional CIA teams arrived in the following weeks. Coordinating with the NA, they prepared for a ground war, selecting bombing targets, securing the road between Mazar-e Sharif and Kabul, and forcing out the Taliban.
One of the Operation JAWBREAKER teams, Team Alpha, arrived in mid-October at its destination south of Mazar-e Sharif to join Uzbek General Dostam. Team member David wore these boots during the team’s deployment. Other team members arrived at the staging area in Uzbekistan having been outfitted for Afghanistan back at CIA Headquarters. David, however, came from a different location and did not have access to the top-of-the-line gear such as Gortex coats, gloves, boots, and other items his teammates had bought at REI just before deployment. Mike Spann, the first American killed in Afghanistan, and other Team Alpha members gave David some of their extra clothing and equipment, but no one had extra boots in his size, so he wore these old leather ones almost 24 hours a day for three months. Spann joked that the boots looked like those of his great-grandfather, a poor Alabama sharecropper.
Despite their humble appearance, these boots climbed Afghanistan’s high rocky mountains, forded Afghanistan’s rivers and streams, and fit into the small stirrups of the crude Afghan wooden-framed saddles. They also served David well on 25 November 2001 in the running gun fight with al-Qa‘ida prisoner-fighters in the Qali-Jangi fortress when Mike Spann was killed.
By the end of David’s deployment, the soles on both boots were falling off. He had them resoled by an Afghan shoemaker for the equivalent of 85 cents. After David returned to his family, his 8-year-old son, understanding that his father had survived some difficult times in Afghanistan, began calling them “Dad’s lucky boots.” The name stuck.
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