Overseas Deployments
By 1980 he was the Delta Force operations officer on the April 24–25 Iranian hostage rescue attempt. Boykin called it "the greatest disappointment of my professional career because we didn't bring home 53 Americans." Despite this, his "faith was strengthened" believing he had witnessed "a miracle": "Not one man who stood with us in the desert and pleaded for God to go with us was killed or even injured that night."
In October 1983, Major Boykin worked as an operations officer during Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. During a dawn assault to free some Grenada government officials held by the Marxist People's Revolutionary Army, Boykin was shot in the arm with a .50 caliber round, splitting the bone completely in two. He was told he would never use it again, but his arm healed, which Boykin again believed God was responsible for.
In 1983 Major Boykin was in charge of a 'special' security detail consisting of OC Delta 9 and one OC CIA SA officer in South Korea to gain intelligence on the troop build up by North Korea on the DMZ and as additional security for President Reagan's visit.
In 1989, Boykin took part in the Panama as part of the mission to apprehend Manuel Noriega. He also oversaw the extraction of principal personal both prior to and during the engagement.
From 1990 to 1991 he was at the Army War College. In 1992 and early 1993, as a colonel, Boykin was in Colombia leading a mission to hunt for drug lord Pablo Escobar. Seymour Hersh later claimed in The New Yorker that there were suspicions within the Pentagon that Boykin's team was going to take part in the assassination of Pablo Escobar, and that US Embassy officials in Colombia were acting as support. Hersh refers to Mark Bowden's book Killing Pablo which made allegations that the Pentagon believed Boykin intended to break the law and exceed his authority in the operation. Mark Bowden states that “within the special ops community... Pablo's death was regarded as a successful mission for Delta, and legend has it that its operators were in on the kill.” Hersh quotes an anonymous retired army general as saying, “That's what those guys did. I've seen pictures of Escobar's body that you don’t get from a long-range telescope lens. They were taken by guys on the assault team.”
In April 1993, he helped advise Attorney General Janet Reno regarding the stand-off at Waco, Texas, between the Federal Government and the Branch Davidians.
In October 1993, Colonel Boykin was in command of the Delta Force team tracking down militia leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid in Somalia, during which time the infamous Battle of Mogadishu took place. Boykin recalled seeing a truck pull up to the US base near Mogadishu airport filled with bodies: "I watched that tailgate open and I watched the blood of my soldiers pour out of that truck like water." Shortly after, Boykin was wounded in a mortar attack on the compound. The film Black Hawk Down, which depicts the Battle of Mogadishu, omits Boykin's role as mission commander.
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