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Unaware of what was going on in niger is not true. let's bring in retired brigadier general, donald bollack. he was commander of u.s. special operation forces in africa until june of this year. it's good to have you on the show, sir, and of course, thank you for your service. >> well, chris, thank you very much, and please let me express my sincere condolences to the families of our lost heros. >> and let's show them some respect by telling the truth about this situation. the idea, to your ears, when you hear senator saying, had no idea, had no idea we had these kind of people in niger. we nee...

They recovered that body and that the u.s. troops were involved in that search. i think he was very clear and adamant that was an ongoing operation from the 3rd all the way to the 6th when they got his body. finally, for me, he put a fork in the whole issue of authorities. both the authority of them to be conductth that mission, but also the authorities for them to defend themselves, including the aircraft in the air. there were conflicting reports whether they could or couldn't drop bombs. he made really clear while there weren't any ordinances dropped, they certainly had the authority to eng...

Do an internal look at it ourselves and find out what is it that we did, what could we do better and make changes based on what i would consider an after-action review. so i think that's fair. >> the other issue, there's some in african command and some here in the pentagon that think the special forces are taking too many risks over there. >> yeah that would be speculation. here's what i'm clear on. i'm clear on the frame work within which this operation took place. in other words, what do their orders say. i don't have any indication right now to believe or to know that they did anything oth...

>> i don't have the details of that. you know, i don't know whether it was intended that they -- how long it would take or if they planned to stay overnight. just to be clear, a more accurate description than stayed overnight, they caught a couple hours of sleep after the 3rd and before they completed their mission on the 4th. >> is there an investigation into the troop deaths and what is the significance of the fbi being -- >> sure. on the first case, no. there's an investigation being conducted by a general officer at the united states africa command into the incident itself. so that's the o...

Did the mirages play any role in disrupting the firefight? >> anything i would tell you about the mirages -- i've seen some of it -- will be speculation. we'll get from the guys on the ground employing the mirages before i make a conclusion about what effect they had. >> the time of the firefight, do you have a general sense of how long it took place? >> only that it took several hours. well into the evening on october 3. >> one last -- >> october 4. thank you. >> could you let us know how many u.s. forces are serving in africom and east africa right now? maybe up in the break down. >> sure, i...