Major Mark Woods
U.S. Army – Berlin Brigade
Germany, Iraq, Northern Macedonia
1987-2007
U.S. Army – Berlin Brigade
Germany, Iraq, Northern Macedonia
1987-2007
Mark Woods was born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, NY in 1969. In 1969 Joe Namath led the N.Y Jets to victory in Super Bowl III and later that October Tom Seaver led the Miracle Mets to the World Series Championship in 5 games. At the time Bensonhurst was an Italian enclave and bordered the Borough Park section of Brooklyn which was a Hassidic enclave. Marks’s Catholic high school, Holy Spirit, was in the middle of a Hassidic neighborhood.
While Mark was in high school, he joined the NY Army National Guard. At the end of his junior year, he attended basic training at Ft. Dix in New Jersey. Mark’s father was in the Army as a young man and now he was with the National Guard full time and ended up as Marks platoon Sergeant. Mark returned to complete his senior year in high school and was hoping to attend West Point but didn’t get in. Instead, he decided on The Citadel and loved it. “I needed that atmosphere. If I was given the freedom to just go to school, I wouldn’t. The freshman year was brutal. It was a basic training environment and then school on top of that.”
At the Citadel, all students were required to choose an ROTC. Mark spent one semester with the Navy ROTC and one semester with the Air Force ROTC and then went back to the Army ROTC. In the summers he attended classes for 9 weeks. Mark graduated in May ’92 and went directly to Ft. Bragg for further training and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in July. In November, Mark attended Infantry School followed by Airborne school at Ft. Benning. Mark received orders to Berlin where he served one year in mostly a ceremonial role including a lot of marching and parades. At the end of the year Mark was sent to the 3rdInfantry division in Schweinfurt, Germany. They did the typical infantry training, but it was 1994 and there were no wars and it started to get boring. Then Mark’s unit was assigned to be part of the UN Peace Keeping Forces in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. They spent 6 months patrolling the border with Serbia. In 1996 it came time to rotate back to the United States. It was time for Mark to re-enlist and there was nothing going on, so he decided to get out.
When Mark returned to the states he relocated to Kansas near Ft. Riley. Mark took a job with the Shawnee County Jail as a corrections officer. After a year of meeting some very interesting people, Mark was hired by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in San Antonio. Mark served as a criminal investigator for the INS. Most of his time was spent trying to find people who had previously been deported but were known to have re-entered the US. In 2000, after three years in San Antonio, Mark came home to New York and joined the New York City Police Department. He breezed through the Police Academy because of his previous training and began patrolling the streets of the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. He had a bicycle and patrolled the Brighton Beach section and the Russian communities.
It was the morning of September 11th, 2001 and Mark had the day off. He heard a lot of commotion and went outside to see what was going on. He had an unobstructed view of lower Manhattan and could see both towers of the World Trade Center had been hit and were billowing smoke. He called the Precinct and was told there was no need for additional policemen. Mark lived near the water, and he walk down to a local pier and began taking pictures of the trade centers and then the first tower fell. Mark hurried home, got dressed and headed into the precinct. Initially, Mark did his normal patrol in Coney Island, but at noon, he jumped in a police van with eight other officers and headed for Manhattan.
Once the van came through the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel the destruction was evident. It was 2pm and both towers were down. Mark recalls people standing around wondering what to do. Approaching ground zero was difficult because everything was still very hot and not all the fires had been extinguished. His job was to provide perimeter security and he was there for 24 hours before he was relieved.
As the months progressed the daily routine of neighborhood patrols resumed. Mark received a call from a Chief in the NYPD and he told Mark they wanted him in the Intelligence Division. Mark was hoping for a career track more in line with ‘NYPD Blue’, but the real NYPD had different plans that included a plain cloths role at a secret site with access to the immigration systems. After 4 years on the job Mark received a letter notifying him, he was being recalled to the Army. It had been nine years since he was discharged.
Mark headed to Ft. Bragg where he was told he would not be in the infantry but instead would be heading a Civil Affairs team. Mark deployed to Iraq with a six member civil affairs team and six interpreters. Marks role was to interreact with the village leaders and ask them what the US could do to make their lives better. This could include building schools, roads, morgues, etc. Mark was the guy who carried big brief cases of money. These were not secured areas and when his team rolled out each day, they went with a minimum of 3 Humvees equipped with 50mm machine guns. Mark and his team lived in an old Ottoman castle in the town of Tall’ Afar. They received daily mortar fire which increased in frequency as his tour progressed. After an incident where one of Mark’s friends was kidnapped and killed, Mark moved his team to FOB Sikes which was more secure. FOB Sikes was in one of the most inhospitable regions of Iraq surrounded by vast deserts.
Mark had access to unlimited funds and was tasked with identifying projects with input from the village leaders. The amount of money that was being paid to the Iraqi’s was life changing and they knew that one day the money would be shut off. This led to corruption. Being a former NYPD officer, investigator and having experience dealing with NYC unions, Mark had seen this all before.
Mark was involved with building an underground pipeline from the city of Mozul to Tall’ Afar. Mark had to make a progress payment of $300,000 and he went to inspect the project. He saw the work and the next day when his contact came to get the money he told Mark, “We’re done. After you left, they came and killed all the workers.” They received the ultimate punishment for working with the United States.
Much of his time was devoted to forming city councils and trying to teach governance. On one typical 120 degree day the city was without power. The villagers were having a meeting and the discussion got heated to the point where it resembled a small riot. Eventually the situation settled down and one of the Iraqis said, “Major Woods, is this democracy?” Mark said, “This is democracy in its rawest form. You’re talking and working out.”
“Everyone who is an infantry officer wants to be a war fighter. That’s not what the Army had me do. I was the money guy. They needed people with the skill sets of police officers and teachers.”
Mark recalled that the everyday Iraqi just wanted to be left alone to live their life and have peace. There were roughly 100,000 people who lived in the village. Because there had been so much war, everything inside the city was destroyed and there were not many jobs for the Iraqi’s. One day Mark was on the phone, and he heard a big explosion followed by another big explosion. Two dump trucks had pulled into the town and one of the drivers said there was food and candy in the trucks. The truck was swarmed by little children and a suicide bomber detonated the bomb in the truck. When the adults came running to see what had happened, another suicide bomber detonated his bomb in the other truck. The blasts left a crater the size of four city blocks. The bombing was the result of Sunni-Shite argument. Mark had the unfortunate task of accompanying the parents as they tried to identify their children. His one year tour came to a close and Mark headed back to the States.
When Mark returned to the Police Department, he was given the option of what his next assignment would be. Mark really wanted narcotics but felt he needed time to decompress before he jumped into a high intensity, undercover assignment. Instead, he chose Vice. He was assigned to Chinatown and worked cases related to prostitution, gambling, illegal social clubs and underage sex trafficking. While working in Vice, he was promoted to Detective. Mark had a pool of undercover officers and informants that he could tap to get inside the clubs and rings.
Mark eventually specialized in the human trafficking of underage girls within the United States. In addition to investigating cases, he became an expert witness and testified at sex trafficking trials. Mark conducted a lot of surveillance of known areas of prostitution. He would build relationships with the girls to earn their trust. This could lead to tips that could lead to wire taps or obtaining text messages that could lead to arrests.
Mark was a wealth of information and would often get calls for other investigators looking for guidance. In one notable case Mark received a call from the Indiana State Police and the FBI. They had obtained text messages from a man who was coming to New York City and wanted a woman to help him get underage girls. They could not identify who the woman was. Mark immediately knew the women and called her to say she was being investigated and asked if she wanted to save herself and work with the investigators. She did and that led to the arrest of the former Subway spokesman “Jared”. This case was a great success because Mark’s informant and all the women Jared abused received significant monetary restitution from him. “That was one of my happiest days when those girls got paid.”
After 7 grueling years Mark was getting burned out. Lots of long night shifts and no weekends or holidays off. “I was becoming a night animal and I didn’t want to do that anymore.” Mark went to work with the FBI joint terrorism task force. He spent two years with the team that investigated terrorism in the New York tri-state area sponsored by the Iranian Republican Guard and Hezbollah. They were targeting critical infrastructure such as dams and electric grids. He also spent two years with the team that investigated ISIS backed operations. “Most of what they do you’ll never hear about because they stop it before it happens. The FBI and the CIA were able to do thing that I never knew were possible. They could remotely turn on someone’s phone and listen in”.
In 2017 Mark retired and left the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Mark took a position in 2018 with Rockland County in New York serving the veterans community. Now Mark is running a Peer to Peer veteran support program.
Mark, there are so many things to thank you for. From your efforts to try and help the Iraqi’s have a better life to helping at Ground Zero on 9/11 to helping young girls escape from the underworld of sex trafficking. Holy Spirit High School turned out a good one!
While Mark was in high school, he joined the NY Army National Guard. At the end of his junior year, he attended basic training at Ft. Dix in New Jersey. Mark’s father was in the Army as a young man and now he was with the National Guard full time and ended up as Marks platoon Sergeant. Mark returned to complete his senior year in high school and was hoping to attend West Point but didn’t get in. Instead, he decided on The Citadel and loved it. “I needed that atmosphere. If I was given the freedom to just go to school, I wouldn’t. The freshman year was brutal. It was a basic training environment and then school on top of that.”
At the Citadel, all students were required to choose an ROTC. Mark spent one semester with the Navy ROTC and one semester with the Air Force ROTC and then went back to the Army ROTC. In the summers he attended classes for 9 weeks. Mark graduated in May ’92 and went directly to Ft. Bragg for further training and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in July. In November, Mark attended Infantry School followed by Airborne school at Ft. Benning. Mark received orders to Berlin where he served one year in mostly a ceremonial role including a lot of marching and parades. At the end of the year Mark was sent to the 3rdInfantry division in Schweinfurt, Germany. They did the typical infantry training, but it was 1994 and there were no wars and it started to get boring. Then Mark’s unit was assigned to be part of the UN Peace Keeping Forces in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. They spent 6 months patrolling the border with Serbia. In 1996 it came time to rotate back to the United States. It was time for Mark to re-enlist and there was nothing going on, so he decided to get out.
When Mark returned to the states he relocated to Kansas near Ft. Riley. Mark took a job with the Shawnee County Jail as a corrections officer. After a year of meeting some very interesting people, Mark was hired by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in San Antonio. Mark served as a criminal investigator for the INS. Most of his time was spent trying to find people who had previously been deported but were known to have re-entered the US. In 2000, after three years in San Antonio, Mark came home to New York and joined the New York City Police Department. He breezed through the Police Academy because of his previous training and began patrolling the streets of the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. He had a bicycle and patrolled the Brighton Beach section and the Russian communities.
It was the morning of September 11th, 2001 and Mark had the day off. He heard a lot of commotion and went outside to see what was going on. He had an unobstructed view of lower Manhattan and could see both towers of the World Trade Center had been hit and were billowing smoke. He called the Precinct and was told there was no need for additional policemen. Mark lived near the water, and he walk down to a local pier and began taking pictures of the trade centers and then the first tower fell. Mark hurried home, got dressed and headed into the precinct. Initially, Mark did his normal patrol in Coney Island, but at noon, he jumped in a police van with eight other officers and headed for Manhattan.
Once the van came through the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel the destruction was evident. It was 2pm and both towers were down. Mark recalls people standing around wondering what to do. Approaching ground zero was difficult because everything was still very hot and not all the fires had been extinguished. His job was to provide perimeter security and he was there for 24 hours before he was relieved.
As the months progressed the daily routine of neighborhood patrols resumed. Mark received a call from a Chief in the NYPD and he told Mark they wanted him in the Intelligence Division. Mark was hoping for a career track more in line with ‘NYPD Blue’, but the real NYPD had different plans that included a plain cloths role at a secret site with access to the immigration systems. After 4 years on the job Mark received a letter notifying him, he was being recalled to the Army. It had been nine years since he was discharged.
Mark headed to Ft. Bragg where he was told he would not be in the infantry but instead would be heading a Civil Affairs team. Mark deployed to Iraq with a six member civil affairs team and six interpreters. Marks role was to interreact with the village leaders and ask them what the US could do to make their lives better. This could include building schools, roads, morgues, etc. Mark was the guy who carried big brief cases of money. These were not secured areas and when his team rolled out each day, they went with a minimum of 3 Humvees equipped with 50mm machine guns. Mark and his team lived in an old Ottoman castle in the town of Tall’ Afar. They received daily mortar fire which increased in frequency as his tour progressed. After an incident where one of Mark’s friends was kidnapped and killed, Mark moved his team to FOB Sikes which was more secure. FOB Sikes was in one of the most inhospitable regions of Iraq surrounded by vast deserts.
Mark had access to unlimited funds and was tasked with identifying projects with input from the village leaders. The amount of money that was being paid to the Iraqi’s was life changing and they knew that one day the money would be shut off. This led to corruption. Being a former NYPD officer, investigator and having experience dealing with NYC unions, Mark had seen this all before.
Mark was involved with building an underground pipeline from the city of Mozul to Tall’ Afar. Mark had to make a progress payment of $300,000 and he went to inspect the project. He saw the work and the next day when his contact came to get the money he told Mark, “We’re done. After you left, they came and killed all the workers.” They received the ultimate punishment for working with the United States.
Much of his time was devoted to forming city councils and trying to teach governance. On one typical 120 degree day the city was without power. The villagers were having a meeting and the discussion got heated to the point where it resembled a small riot. Eventually the situation settled down and one of the Iraqis said, “Major Woods, is this democracy?” Mark said, “This is democracy in its rawest form. You’re talking and working out.”
“Everyone who is an infantry officer wants to be a war fighter. That’s not what the Army had me do. I was the money guy. They needed people with the skill sets of police officers and teachers.”
Mark recalled that the everyday Iraqi just wanted to be left alone to live their life and have peace. There were roughly 100,000 people who lived in the village. Because there had been so much war, everything inside the city was destroyed and there were not many jobs for the Iraqi’s. One day Mark was on the phone, and he heard a big explosion followed by another big explosion. Two dump trucks had pulled into the town and one of the drivers said there was food and candy in the trucks. The truck was swarmed by little children and a suicide bomber detonated the bomb in the truck. When the adults came running to see what had happened, another suicide bomber detonated his bomb in the other truck. The blasts left a crater the size of four city blocks. The bombing was the result of Sunni-Shite argument. Mark had the unfortunate task of accompanying the parents as they tried to identify their children. His one year tour came to a close and Mark headed back to the States.
When Mark returned to the Police Department, he was given the option of what his next assignment would be. Mark really wanted narcotics but felt he needed time to decompress before he jumped into a high intensity, undercover assignment. Instead, he chose Vice. He was assigned to Chinatown and worked cases related to prostitution, gambling, illegal social clubs and underage sex trafficking. While working in Vice, he was promoted to Detective. Mark had a pool of undercover officers and informants that he could tap to get inside the clubs and rings.
Mark eventually specialized in the human trafficking of underage girls within the United States. In addition to investigating cases, he became an expert witness and testified at sex trafficking trials. Mark conducted a lot of surveillance of known areas of prostitution. He would build relationships with the girls to earn their trust. This could lead to tips that could lead to wire taps or obtaining text messages that could lead to arrests.
Mark was a wealth of information and would often get calls for other investigators looking for guidance. In one notable case Mark received a call from the Indiana State Police and the FBI. They had obtained text messages from a man who was coming to New York City and wanted a woman to help him get underage girls. They could not identify who the woman was. Mark immediately knew the women and called her to say she was being investigated and asked if she wanted to save herself and work with the investigators. She did and that led to the arrest of the former Subway spokesman “Jared”. This case was a great success because Mark’s informant and all the women Jared abused received significant monetary restitution from him. “That was one of my happiest days when those girls got paid.”
After 7 grueling years Mark was getting burned out. Lots of long night shifts and no weekends or holidays off. “I was becoming a night animal and I didn’t want to do that anymore.” Mark went to work with the FBI joint terrorism task force. He spent two years with the team that investigated terrorism in the New York tri-state area sponsored by the Iranian Republican Guard and Hezbollah. They were targeting critical infrastructure such as dams and electric grids. He also spent two years with the team that investigated ISIS backed operations. “Most of what they do you’ll never hear about because they stop it before it happens. The FBI and the CIA were able to do thing that I never knew were possible. They could remotely turn on someone’s phone and listen in”.
In 2017 Mark retired and left the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Mark took a position in 2018 with Rockland County in New York serving the veterans community. Now Mark is running a Peer to Peer veteran support program.
Mark, there are so many things to thank you for. From your efforts to try and help the Iraqi’s have a better life to helping at Ground Zero on 9/11 to helping young girls escape from the underworld of sex trafficking. Holy Spirit High School turned out a good one!