Jocko Podcast - 290: Sea Stories and Tales of Terror, with Admiral William McRaven

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:04:53 - Admiral William McRaven3:52:21 - Final thoughts.3:55:09 - How to stay on THE PATH.4:16:01 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 290 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Within 24 hours, I had ordered the special operations units to assemble in North Carolina. On the seal side, all were senior enlisted from the same SEAL squadron. All were hand-picked by the SEAL commander. All had extensive combat experience. The aviation crews were equally experienced and also hand-picked.

But none of them knew why the SEALCEDs. they were being asked to come to North Carolina on such short notice. The following day, as we ushered the members of the raid team into the conference room at our North Carolina location, I could see a look of annoyance on their faces. By this time, I had briefed my boss, Admiral Eric Olson, on the Bin Laden mission. Olson, along with the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Mike Vickers, and several CIA senior officers were also present in the conference room. The operator's body language was unmistakable. Clearly, they thought they had been dragged out of Virginia Beach in Fort Campbell to participate in some kind of no-notice exercise just to impress the brass.

I offered some short welcoming remarks and then turned over the briefing to a briefing to a lot of. CIA officer he began by handing out non-disclosure forms I watched with some amusement as the body language began to change rarely were non-disclosure forms required for exercises even sensitive ones it took a few minutes before the forms were signed and collected then another CIA official stepped up on the small stage and began to brief the target The operators shifted in their chairs, sitting up to focus on the slides on the screen. The CIA officer began.

Gentlemen, for the past several months, the CIA has been tracking an individual we call the pacer. Embedded in the slide was a link. The CIA officer clicked on the link and a video played on the screen. Everyone watched as the pacer moved around the compound at AC1. We have reason to believe that the pacer is Osama bin Laden. At the sound of bin Laden's name, there was silence in the room. I could see a number of the seals glancing around at each other as if to ask, are they screwing with us or is this for real?

The briefing went on for another 30 minutes. After the CIA analyst finished, I pushed away from my table, stood up and made sure everyone was clear on why we were here. Gentlemen, I told them, the president has asked us to develop a raid option to capture or kill bin Laden. For the past several weeks, a small team has been planning the mission, but now we have to find out whether the plan is executable. We have less than three weeks to test and rehearse the plan. At the end of that time, I have to report back to the president on the viability of the mission. There was no emotion from the operators, no smiles, no acknowledgement of the magnitude of the operation. Now it was all business.

I continued. The agency has built a mock-up of the compound just a mile from here. You have two days to work through the movements on target. After that, we will move to another location out west to do the full dress rehearsals. I offered the other senior officers an opportunity to say a few words. but they recognized that this was about the operators, not a time to wax philosophically about the importance of the mission. I will turn you over to your boss,

and you guys can work out the details. Any questions? There were none. All right, I said. Let's get to work. And that right there is an excerpt of the book, C-Stories, which was written by Admiral William McCraven. Admiral McRaven served 37 years in the Navy and held just about every position of leadership there is from SEAL platoon commander all the way up to four-star commander of all United States Special Operations Forces.

He oversaw thousands and thousands of combat operations around the globe during his time in service, including some of the most important operations. and perhaps the most important operation in the history of U.S. special operations, the killing of Osama bin Laden. And all the while, even with that incredible burden of command, Admiral McRaven was always connected with the troops. As an example, he stopped by my little base in Baghdad and said hi to this common platoon commander as we geared up for a mission and asked earnest questions about what we were doing and how we were doing it. and then listened intently as I explained my little part of the war.

He was always present, thoughtful, respected, balanced, and as good of a representative of the SEAL community as we could have hoped for. And we have the honor of having him with us here tonight to share his vast experiences and lessons learned. Admiral, thank you for joining. Nice. Jack, great to be with you.

That's, um, that's from the book C stories. Now, you've written four bucks thus far. C stories, make your bed, your latest one,

which was called the hero code. And then spec ops, case studies in special operations, warfare and practice. I'll probably spend some time, uh, well,

I'm going a little bit, I'll go into the, we'll go the array of books that you've written at some point. at some point. And C-Stories is sort of, well, you were saying that's about as close of a memoir as we're going to get from you. That's about it. I guess this podcast is going to have to do that.

This will do it. I'm going to dive into C-Stories first because it relays some of your early experiences. Here's the deal. I'm going to just read little tiny chunks of this book because you read your own audio books, which is awesome. So people can go out and buy those. But in order to maybe trigger us into some other conversations, and some stuff that's not in the books.

I'll set it up. And I always like to start at the beginning and find out who these people are, where they came from, how they ended up the way they did. And you got a pretty good, pretty good, interesting background. And with that, I'm going to go to the book here.

Talk to your dad. When I asked him years later why he joined the military, he said that as a boy, he watched soldiers march through the streets of his hometown of Marston, Missouri, and board a train bound for the trenches of France. His father, an army surgeon, was one of those men. He knew then that he wanted to be a soldier.

After graduating from Aviation Officer School at Brookfield in San Antonio, Texas, he received orders to the 309th Fighter Squadron, 8th Air Force. The 309th was part of the first American contingent to be posted in the United Kingdom. At the time, the Americans were still working to build a fighter aircraft that could compete in aerial combat against the German Messerschmitt. So when Dad arrived in England, he and the other pilots of the 309th were given British spitfires. The spits equipped with the powerful Rolls-Royce engines, new guns, and sleek aerodynamics were good enough to go toe-to-toe with the Germans.

Dad flew the Spitfire throughout the war, going on to fight in the campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, and eventually at the Normandy invasion. He registered two confirmed kills during the war, but would himself, be shot down over France in 1943. The saga of his escape and evasion from France back to England was told many times during our posting in France, but not by dad, who rarely talked about his wartime service, but by the French resistance fighter who helped him back to freedom and now lived near us on the outskirts of Paris.

So your dad's a freaking war hero coming out of the game. Well, I think they were all heroes back then. I mean, you think about this greatest generation. And I was fortunate growing up as a kid in San Antonio, Texas, that all of my dad's friends, even back then, had served in the Air Force or the Army Air Corps or the Army, and they'd all fought in World War II. So, you know, you experience these kind of remarkable stories from these guys. But, of course, that generation, both my parents, my father and my mother, you know, they grow up during the Depression. They grow up as children of World War I. As I mentioned, my dad watched his father go off to serve in World War I.

And my grandfather also, he was young enough that he came back and served in World War II. So as a combat surgeon. And then, of course, all the men go off to World War II. So, yeah, they had these stories. And I think the stories helped him. One of the reasons that I wrote the book C stories was because the stories that my father told, I know helped him and that group deal with the challenges that they had in life. Stories help you do that, as you well know.

And frankly, writing the stories and the book C stories kind of helped me. It was cathartic. You know, you put these stories down on paper. You remember them. You remember the people. You remember your emotions. And it's, frankly, helpful to get those stories out sometimes. Yeah.

So did your dad stay in the Army? Was he a career Army guy? He joined the Army Air Corps, which became the Air Force. Got it. So, yeah, he spent 26 years in the Air Force, retired as a colonel, and flew until he had a heart attack, something about whiskey and cigarettes, and had a heart attack while we were over in France. And so that took him all flying status. They sent him back to Fort Sam Houston, actually, to Brook Air Force Base, or to Lackland Air Force Base,

to Brook Medical Center there, recovered and then retired out of Lackland. And you were growing up, you were, what was your behavior? Like I know you got a pretty good story in there that's, you know, you obviously had a mischievous side, which I guess is just what we're born with. But you were also a really good athlete. Yeah, mischievous is a good way to describe it. You know, and to your point, I think that was the nature of a lot of kids back then. You know, I grew up born in 1955, but kind of grew up in the 60s. And this was a time when, you know, the movies were about spies.

I mean, James Bond came out. There was I spy on TV and the man from uncle. And even though I grew up in Texas and it was about Cowboys and Indians sort of thing, the spy culture back then really kind of, I think, grabbed the young kid, certainly grabbed me. So, yeah, you know, we were always looking at missions to go on. And, you know, when I was preteen, of course, a couple of those got me in some serious trouble. And yeah, I was good athlete, but I was small. I didn't really start growing until late in high school.

So my dad happened to have been a professional athlete. He played football for the Cleveland Rams, running back for the Cleveland Rams. And that's where he made all of his money? Yeah. I think he told me they paid him $120 a week, which was good money back then. And then he would get $10 for doing Wheaties commercials. So he seemed like he was making pretty good money back then. But he and a bunch of buddies saw that in the late 30s, early 40s, that war was brewing.

And I think he told me one time, He and four of his friends on the football team just got up, drove to California and signed up for the Army Air Corps. So what about grades? Were you interested in school? Did you care about school? Yeah, of course I cared about school. I'm not sure school cared about me. You know, I was an average student. I was an average student in elementary school and junior high school and high school and in college. But I worked hard. I worked hard to get the grades. I didn't have to. have a lot of skills in math and science. And of course, when I look back on my college career, I mean, I changed majors four times. It wasn't until I got into journalism, which is what I ended

up graduating in, that I found out I had a little bit of a talent for writing. So, I mean, I couldn't do, I started off in pre-med in college. That didn't work out so well. I went to accounting. That worked out even worse. And then I went into news reporting and then finally in the broader arena of journalism. And so when you're going to college, did you have a military career in mind at that point? Yeah, I did. Again, I had watched my dad and his friends. And the one thing I loved about the military was just the camaraderie.

Even after my dad retired, we lived in a residential area in San Antonio called Wincrest. And Wincrest is where a lot of the retired military and a lot of the active duty military live. So it was almost like living on base housing. And so all the kids, you know, had some sort of connection to the military. And it was just a great environment to grow up in. And I remember the young age, I decided I kind of, my dad didn't push me. This wasn't the Great Santini sort of thing.

But I just, I enjoyed, you know, watching how my parents interacted with their friends. And I said, yeah, that's kind of what I want to do. And my dad wanted me to be a pilot. And my mom wanted me to be a doctor. the doctor was not going to work out, as she quickly found out. But she did get me an ROTC scholarship. She had to do all the work. You know, again, back then, I don't think I had the discipline to do all the paperwork.

My mom worked all the paperwork and said, you know, go to this interview, sign this, do this. And I got an ROTC scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin, and that kind of put me on the path. How did you heard about the SEAL teams at this point? So, interestingly enough, my sister was dating an Army Green Beret, and this was probably 19. 171, 72. And of course, the movie, the Green Beret with John Wayne had come out. And I love the movie. Never heard of Seals at that point in time.

And so this Army officer comes, a young captain comes to pick her up. And this was at a time when it was very unusual because the Vietnam War was still going on. You weren't supposed to wear your class age, your uniform out in public back then. But he comes to pick her up and he's in his uniform. And he's a green beret. And so my sister notoriously late, so I'm kind of interested. entertaining the guy. I'm about 16, 17 years old, I guess. And he says, well, what are you going to do? And I said, well, you know, I'm looking at going into the Navy in the ROTC. And he says, well, then you need

to be a Navy SEAL. I'd never heard of Navy SEALs. And he had just come back from a tour in Vietnam. He goes, let me tell you, seals are the best guys in the Navy. If you want to do something special, you go be a Navy SEAL. I'm thinking, this is an Army Green Beret telling me to go be a Navy SEAL. And that really is kind of what spurred me. And then there was one article. You know, back then, not like it is today, of course. Back then, you couldn't find out about seals, but I got on microfish in the library. I found one article called Men with Green Faces, kind of, it's a classic, but it was in some old men's magazine, you know, back then they used to have these men's magazines and adventure

magazine sort of thing. And I must have read that article a hundred times trying to find out what it was like. Of course, there was nothing on buds. It was all about the teams. Interestingly enough, about probably 10 years, 15 years later, I found that article, the microfish photocopy of it. And of course, I knew all the guys in the article. It was Ed Bowen, and it was Bob Mabry, and it was Bob Gormley.

I mean, guys that now I was kind of serving with that were actually in the article. So it was interesting. Now, you made, you talk about this and make your bed. You go to visit buds. Was this like your junior year in college? Yeah, it was between my. my junior and senior year. And, you know, we had some time off in the summer. And so I wanted to go see what Buds was all about. So I took a flight to San Diego and I show up at the compound,

which is, I guess they're demolishing it now. So this was 1976. And I show up and I go to the quarterdeck kind of unannounced and I tell them I'd like to see somebody talk about going through Bud's training. So the lieutenant who was running at the time is guy named Doug Heuth. Vietnam Vet, very distinguished, great officer. And so I'm waiting outside, and I look down the hallway, and I remember this very vidly, and I see this guy down the hallway, and of course, you remember how it's set up, you know, the offices are off to one side. And we, back then, there was these posters. And they were, you know, Vietnam-era posters, you know, manly men doing manly things, being guys with bandoliers on, guys in the mud with a stoner. And this guy is kind of

looking up at these posters, you know, kind of, you know, longingly and looking at, I'm thinking to myself, you have got to be kidding me. I mean, this guy, you know, he was thin, kind of frail, and had a little bit of a mop of long hair, and I thought he was a dependent, you know, but he's kind of looking up and I'm thinking, man, does this guy really think he could be a Navy SEAL? Doesn't he know? I mean, Navy SEAL is supposed to look like me, you know, six foot two eyes of blue, big brawny guys? And so as I'm watching this guy, you You know, I'm waiting and thinking, I feel sorry for this guy if he really thinks that he could make it through seal training. So a few minutes later, I get called into Huth's office, and I'm sitting there talking to Doug Huth.

And out of the corner of my eye, I can see this guy kind of walking across in front of the doorway. And finally, Doug Huth stops me. He goes, hey, Bill, hold on a say, I want to introduce you to somebody. He says, Tommy, Tommy, come in here. He says, Bill, this is Tommy Norris. He's the last seal medal of honor recipient from Vietnam. And, of course, as you well know, Jocko, Tommy, one of the toughest guys that ever went through seal training. And it just reinforced the fact.

And, of course, when you get in SEAL training, you realize this, it ain't about how big you are. It ain't about how fast you are. I mean, Tommy Norris, one of the toughest guys, because, you know, he had the heart big enough to make it through, the toughness, the determination, everything that we're looking for in SEALs. And so a lot of guys that go through that think it's all about, you know, how fast you can run and how much you can bench press,

and they're missing the point. The Tommy Norris is of this world, are the ones that rule the teams. Crazy how many guys with a big bench or a great run. time quit. It's nuts. Right. Saw it early on. We had two guys that looked like weightlifters. I don't think they made it through the first week. That's not what you're looking for, as you know. And Lieutenant Huth, who checked you in the first phase, he was the CEO of all of Buds when I went

through. Oh, is there? Yeah. He was the captain in charge of the second. That's a great guy. So you end up going back finishing your senior year and then you got orders. But was it hard to get to go to Budz then? It wasn't. Again, back then, Buds was actually. a course at the Naval Amphibia School. So it was not its own command. It was just a course that was run at the Naval Amphibia School. And when I got orders, I was at the University of Texas, I remember my orders came in and it didn't say basic underwater demolition seal training. It had a course number on it. And it said something about explosives training, but that was about it. And so I didn't even know whether these were the right orders to go to Buds. So I'm calling around. But again, back then,

nobody knew about seal training. So, you know, one of the officers had to call the detailer who back then our detailers, and for your audience, the detailers are the guys that send you, give you the orders where to go. Well, we didn't have a seal detailer back then. It was an EOD, an explosive ordinance disposal officer that managed the seal community. So, yeah, he said, I don't know, it's the course number. So, of course, I show up, turned out it was the right place to go.

Well, we just had Bill Posey on. Yeah. And he showed up to Buds, whatever, course number it was, same thing. And he thought it was a course. He asked like, hey, do I need a backpack for the books? And they're like, what do you think you need books for? He says for the course that I thought he had no idea what he was doing. He thought he was going to go to some kind of advanced dive,

like hard hat dive school or something like that. And I was also thinking about Dick Thompson. We had a guy named Dick Thompson on who was a Green Beret in Vietnam. So he joined the Army voluntarily. Then he volunteered for special forces. Then he volunteered for OCS when it became an officer. And I said, hey, was it hard to, you know, was it hard to get those billets? And he goes, no, because it was Vietnam.

They were like, oh, you want to be an officer? Cool. Go ahead. You want to be in special forces? Cool. Go ahead. Are you want to join the Army? Everything was easy.

Well, and I don't, I said it. All you had to do is pass the PT test. And, of course, you know, the PT test is not all that hard. You pass a PT test. You get orders to buds. I mean, I think it was that easy back. And now, again, I can't talk to the Naval Academy guys. But for those of us in ROTC, hey, if you raised your hand and you wanted to go, you were probably going to get a billet.

Did you have any idea what you were getting into? None. None whatsoever. Again, there were no books. There were no movies. There was nothing on seal training. I knew nothing about what we were going to do. I just knew that I wasn't going to quit.

They were going to have to kill me if they were going to stop me from getting through. How was your water competency? Yeah, good. I mean, I was good swimmer. Okay. And I'd been scuba diving since I was 13. So I learned to dive young. So the water, I mean, I thought we'd actually spend more time.

Of course, we did spend a lot of time swimming, but I was always good swimmer, so that was not an issue. Yeah, I think that's a big problem for guys that show up from Iowa that didn't. You know, they grew up wrestling and weightlifting or whatever, but they didn't swim, and that's a problem. Or particularly swimming in the surf. Yeah, I mean, there's differences, you know. I mean, you can get in the pool and make pretty good laps, but there were a lot of kids that came in with me that all of a sudden, you know, you see the surf, particularly in the wintertime off Coronado. And, you know, you get 10, 12 foot breakers, and they're like, whoa, never seen that before. So that was a bit of a shock for him.

And then your class leader was Danil Stewart. Danil Stewart, yep, one of the finest officers I ever served with. And Danil had been rolled back. He had, as you recall, and towards the end of the first phase of training, or maybe it was right before Hell Week, we did cast and recovery. So you take an inflatable boat small and you tied up along. What we had was called a PL, which is a little small. small boat back then and then you hook the old classic frogmen in World War II, you hook your arm through the sling. Well, in the course of hooking his arm through the sling, the guy

caught the arm too low, ripped out his bicep, and so Danle had to get rolled back. Fortunately for us, he ends up being a class leader. And he was Lieutenant J.G. The other officers in the class, we were all insents. And Danle had been in the fleet, so he was already a surface warfare officer, Naval Academy graduate, exactly the guy we needed to frankly get through training. Again, I knew nothing about what I was stepping into and neither did the other two officers that were with us. We were all, you know, kind of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but Daniel had already been through it and had some great, great ideas on how we were going to make it through. And he's the one that got us through, frankly. He was my first commanding officer at Steel Team One. And he was,

I guess in the modern term that we would say, we would say he was jacked. Yeah. He was like a still lose. Yeah. And because he was a gymnast. Wasn't he a gymnast? He was. So he was the first human being, because I didn't know anything about gymnastics, but he was out on the old pull-up bar behind Sail Team 1, and he was doing muscle-ups on the pull-up bar. I didn't even know what that was, and I remember thinking, damn, I got some work to do over here as a new guy.

The instructors, so you've got, I mean, this is, first of all, they're basically unchanged. There's no supervision. There was no adult supervision, right? Well, I think there was, but of course, as trainees, you don't think there is. and you think they have the latitude to do anything to you. So I think that was part of the psychological advantage they had

was if there was, in fact, adult supervision, which I think there was, and I think they had certain criteria, we didn't know it. So I think today, again, the students going through, because they have such a good understanding, they know the instructors aren't going to kill them. I can be honest with you. I'm not sure we knew that back then. And some of them seemed mean enough to do that.

But they were all Vietnam vets. these salty old, crusty old guys, and of course, as a young kid, I mean, you look up to these Vietnam vets, as we should. Great combat experience, great stories, and you wanted to be like these guys. And, of course, they wanted you to be tough enough, mentally tough enough, physically tough enough, to join them in the teams. And you knew that was a standard you were fighting for. So it was great to have those guys be your instructors because, you know, we looked up to

them so much and we just wanted to do the best by them. What was, was it like just the normal kind of 80, 75 or 80% attrition rate? Yeah, same thing. I went back and had to check the numbers. We started with 110 guys, at least that's what the roster shows. We ended up with 33. So right about the same attrition rate. And yet 33 back then was a large class.

The class before us, I think, had finished with 18 or 20, which was about normal back then. Again, I attribute a lot of our success to Daniel Stewart who managed to keep the class together during the tough times. And they were actually very impressed. Remember, the instructors watched us very closely because we got a lot of guys through Hell Week. I think we ended up getting almost 55 guys through Hell Week. And we lost a lot of guys after that. But still, ending up with 33 guys was a large class. And the instructors were trying to figure out, how did you guys do that?

Because we need to get more guys through. Well, the answer was you had great leadership. and that always helps when you're in challenging situations. I know you talk a little bit about in one of the books about instructor faculty, who ended up being my first master chief at SEAL Team 1. And he's a guy that really instilled, well, the professionalism. Because in the SEAL teams, especially I would say more so back then, but there was like a professional side.

and there was an equally strong sort of hell's angels sort of spirit that you could jump into it. And like great guys on both sides. I think that Mass Chief Academy for me sort of leaned me and kind of my group at least put some level of, hey, you got to be squared away. You got to present yourself. You know, this is the military. We're in the Navy. Like all those little things, which you go to some other, some other deeper, darker AOs in the SEAL teams. There was none of that going on.

And I just appreciated that fact. And like I said, it had a good influence on me because when you're young and impressionable, I just wanted to be a good seal. And if you told me a good seal was having a good haircut and wearing a squared away uniform, okay, that's what I'm doing. Luckily, people like that were around. Yeah, and I think he nailed it, Chaco. I mean, that was consistent with what I saw with faculty throughout his career.

And as we talked before the podcast, you know, Mike and I became very good friends. We were neighbors in Chula Vista, and he and Daniel Stewart stayed very, very good friends. So Mike was actually our proctor, again, for your listener. So the proctor was the senior enlisted that really was in charge of your phase. So he was our first phase proctor. And that was really important because it kind of sets the tone for the rest of the three phases. But faculty as the proctor and Daniel Stewart as the class leader, you know, they worked well together. And faculty would, you know, give us little tips on how to get through certain.

evolutions and events kind of passed through Daniel Stewart. So that team, that teamwork between faculty as the Proctor and Stewart as the as the class leader was helpful. But Mike was always professional. I mean he was profan and as you know the instructors loved to harass you. And you know some of them harass you with a little bit of a mean spirit. Some of them have a good sense of humor and of course faculty could always do it with a little bit of a twinkle in his eye. I mean you let's not say you you weren't suffering the pain, you were suffering the pain but there was always a little

smile, a little bit of a twinkle in his eye, and you knew that he was going to, you know, get you through this evolution, even though he was going to harass you to the max. Yeah, the thing I think I learned, well, again, never really broke it down like this, but this sort of professional side versus this kind of hell's angel side, I think what I, what, what I learned from faculty was that what we were there to do was do the, do the mission of the country, Right. And if you wanted to do the, if that's what you were there to do, to kill bad guys, to go out and execute operations, which look, this is the 90s when I showed up there was, I missed the first Gulf War. But as far as I could tell, if you wanted to do that, if you wanted to actually do the missions for the country, then you had to be professional. Right. And that was the connection that I kind of made. And, and, and by the way, you know, the idea of being a, a frog man, what could, what could possibly Trump doing? being a good operator for being a frogman. There's nothing that trumps that.

It's not any of that other stuff that you can, that there's plenty of in the SEAL teams, but there's nothing that trumps, hey, I'm a good, I want to be a good operator, I want to be able to do my job well, I want to go out and execute missions. And that professionalism, I think, is a, I mean, it was a key component for me and my career

and something that I think people like Master Chief Faculty embedded in enough people that it carries on. No, you know, you're exactly right. The fact of the matter is there was a little bit of the duality of, if you will, of the kind of the Hells Angels and the professionals. But even the Hells Angels understood that if you were going to do a complex seal mission, boy, you better have the highest standards possible, you better know your business, you better rehearse it to the end degree. You are not going to come in and be cavalier about people's lives or about making sure that we're going to be successful on a mission. So, I mean, again, I was fortunate.

I had a guy named Lieutenant John Wright. and John was a young, probably Ensign or Lieutenant J.G. in Vietnam. But when I got to underwater demolition Team 11, John kind of took me under his wing. And it was all about the professionalism. And at first was, okay, Ensign McRaven, you need to learn the basics. You need to know everything you can find out about demolition, about parachuting, about weapons. You better be able to break apart every single weapon because John Wright could do that. Now, you know, you had that expectation if you were one of these senior enlisted guys,

But his expectation was you can't lead the men under you if you don't know the skill set equally as well. At the end of the day, you never know it quite as good as the enlisted guys do. But you want to make sure you've put in the effort. And so John instilled in me, hey, you've got to work hard every single day. You've got to earn their respect every single day. The day you think you don't have to earn their respect that you've become so senior or you've become so entitled, then you're the wrong person to be leading. And that was instilled to me at a very young age.

Fortunately, Mike Fackney and I ended up working together a number of times. And later, he became my command master chief. And to your point, Jocko, I mean, he was a guy that set the standards high and expected everybody to meet the standards or exceed the standards. And the standards were the standards. And I don't care whether you were his friend or somebody he didn't like. If you could meet the standards, then you were going to be a good teammate. Before we jump into UDT-11, it sounds like you almost had a damn helo crash at the end of Buds.

We did. Yeah, so it was the very last day of BUDS training. And this was the next day we were going to graduate back at the time. You know, when you finished BUDS training, that's when you had the big graduation. You didn't get your Triton in, but all the parents would come out. So this was the day before the graduation. And the last evolution was helicopter cast and recovery. And so the parents that had come out for the graduation the following day all showed up on Turner Field.

And Turner Field is an area here in Coronado where the helicopters would land. And they put some bleachers out there for all the parents to sit in. And of course, the instructor, who at the time was Lieutenant Moki Martin, you know, makes the parents think that, you know, your sons are about to be Navy Frogmen, you know. And this is a really tough evolution. It's a dangerous evolution. And so he kind of built up the hype a little bit for all the parents when, in fact, as you know, helicopter. Cast and Recovery is a pretty straightforward operation. So myself and Daniel Stewart actually were the first two sticks.

So we board the 46, the Navy 46. And so we go out, picked up off Turner Field. We fly out over the bay. And the idea is, you know, they drop each stick off. And the stick, I think we had seven or eight guys on the stick. And so Danil's the first stick out. And I'm the first guy in the second stick. So I get dropped off.

Well, the Heelel comes back around, picks up Danil's guys, picks up me. I'm the first guy on the stick. And as I get into the helicopter, I sit down on the bench seat and I'm thinking, yeah, this doesn't look quite right. I'm up to my waist in water. And I'm thinking, I don't think the helo is supposed to be doing. Of course, as I look in the cockpit, here are the pilots.

They are fighting the helo. The crew chief, we had actually landed. We lost power in one of the engines, so the helicopter had settled hard into the water. And one of the guys who was about to be picked up through the hellhole gets landed on. And so now the crew chief, he's running back trying to make sure this guy didn't get knocked out. but now as a helicopter slowly starting to sink, we were following instructions. And back then, the instructions were,

okay, gentlemen, if a helicopter lands in the water, everybody stays seated, the helicopter will sink, it will roll over, and you just swim out after that. And of course, we're not smart enough to realize that's a really bad idea. But, you know, it was about 30 feet deep where we were doing this, so we thought, no big deal.

If it sinks down, we'll swim out. Well, so finally, as the helo is kind of slowly starting to sink, the crew chief realizes got to get the weight out of the back. Well, we're looking out the side door, and of course that blade is like almost clipping the water. And it's like, I don't know about this, but he's giving us the go sign. So we all dive out. Well, the pilot's got no control of the helicopter. So now as we're all out trying to swim towards a safety boat, who is a ways going, I don't think I'm coming.

The helo starts to kind of follow us. And finally, you know, we all get out of harm's way. And the helo, I mean, the pilot, good pilot, I mean, I'm a good pilot. After about an hour and a half, he manages literally to drive the helo off to point golf, you know that point over there, and beach the helo. So he saves the helicopter and nobody got injured. But the funny part about it was, as I got told later. So the parents are all in the bleachers.

And Lieutenant Martin is telling this story about, you know, helicopter casket, he says, and then all of a sudden all the parents got up and they ran past me. I was like, what's going on? And of course, the helicopter landed in the water. And I remember fact that he, as we got back to the beach, he said, said something to the effect of, boy, I hope this is an indication of how the rest of your career is going to go. And of course, it was an indication of how the rest of the career would go. That's good times. Yeah. So now you go to UDT11 and check into UDT11. And look, like I said,

I didn't want to read. I don't want to read a ton of stuff from the books today because you did this stuff on audiobook. But you captured the check-in process at a seal. team and this was a UDT team which later became seal teams but I just I just had to go this is this is going to the book the hero code to your latest book and this is what I'd like checking into a team so you're the new guy one of my officers remarked yes sir I responded it's my first day in the teams first day in the teams well you're going to love it here he said the guys will welcome you with open arms the old Vietnam vets are really nice they love officers particularly new officers they'll treat you really well great I'm looking forward to it

So there we go. Out of the gate, you can see where this is going. A slide grin came across the officer's face. Dressed in khaki, swim trunks, blue and gold t-shirts, jungle boots. We headed out of the building and on the grinder. After a short daily briefing from the executive officer, we broke ranks and formed up into a circle, the PT circle. And then it began. So, Ensign, and you are an ensign at this time.

That's the lowest officer rank in the Navy. So, Enson, I understand you went to Texas A&M. No, chief, the University of Texas, not Texas A&M. So you couldn't get into a restaurant. real school, huh? Before I could answer, someone else offered a response. He's from Texas. There aren't any real schools in Texas. Ah, so you weren't smart enough to get into the academy. We, Frogman, expect our officers to be smart. What did you major in? I hesitated. Journalism, chief. Journalism, you're a damn reporter. Hey, XO, we don't need no damn reporter in our ranks.

The executive officer smiled but said nothing. What seal training class were you in? A man at the far under the circle shouted class 95 I yelled back you gotta be kidding me and older officer said spitting out a wad of tobacco I heard class 95 was the easiest class ever they had a summer hell week over the next 15 minutes all 50 men in the circle had something to say about my shortfalls in between repetitions of pushups flutter kicks sit-ups and burpees they questioned my parentage my athleticism my intellect my state of origin the quality of my seal training class and of course my love life you got a girlfriend one of the salty old chiefs asked I do chief what she

looked like oh she's pretty very petite brown hair hazel eyes about five foot four the chief smiled do you think she'd like a swarthy Italian with a mustache he said twirling the ends of his long handle bar I saw an opening no chief I said looking around the grinder she likes men that are taller than she is The circle went quiet. The chief, who stood no longer than five, no taller than five foot four, got up off the grinder and walked up to where I was standing. Inches from my face, he sneered at me and said, are you calling me short?

The men in the circle were shaking their heads. One mouth, don't go there, Ensign. Another said softly, he's very sensitive about his height. Well, Chief, you are looking up at me, I told him. Everyone on the grinder stopped exercising and turned my way. What? Do you think that's funny, Ensign? Do you think insulting a chief petty officer in the United States?

Navy is funny I am very very sensitive about my height and that hurts me I paused wondering whether I'd taken my my joke too far suddenly the chief burst out laughing and the rest of the men in the circle joined in welcome to the team Zenson when the physical training ended the chief and all the other members of the team came by to shake my hand and welcome me to UDT 11 I'd pass the test I had a sense of humor good way to check in. You've been there before. You know the deal. So I was, uh, I did the Seaman Admiral program and I got, I went straight from officer from seal team one as an E5, went to officer candidate school for 13 weeks, went to seal team two as an ensign. So I hadn't

been to college. It was a ridiculous program. I, I feel like maybe I can get arrested for it or something because it was such a good deal. Well, and then I did two deployments at seal team two. And then I went to college. So I was an officer in college. But it was the, I've been in the SEAL teams my whole adult life. And so now I'm going to college and I'm coming home. And, you know, I don't have anyone to banter with. So it ends up being my wife. And after about, yeah, after about two or three months, finally, you know, I said something about the meal she had made or the what she had prepared or something like this.

And she looked at me and she goes, hey, I'm not a team guy. And I was, and I kind of chuckled. But then I realized she was 100% right. You know, the lifestyle of being in a platoon where it's just constant attacks from everybody. It's an environment that you get so used to. You don't realize that that's just the way it is. And that may actually be the best part, as you know,

about being in the teams. And for your listeners, I mean, every morning back then, kind of pre-9-11, we had the PT circle. And come hell or high water, you were going to break out and you were going to do PT for probably an hour, hour and a half. And the PT circle was where, boy, if you were not on your toes, you know, somebody was going to rip you apart.

And back to the point, it was this sense of humor, this camaraderie that was built in the PT circle and in the locker room that then, of course, transitioned on to the missions. And you would see guys in, you know, very tough situations all of a sudden crack a joke. And that is, I think, the power of being in the team sometimes, is you build this, this level of teamwork with your swim buddies that is hard to replicate anywhere. And if there's one thing I miss after retiring, many things, but that's the thing I miss the most, is being around team guys, being harassed, harassing people back,

and realizing that, no harm, no foul. You know, just let's move on. It's fun. When you checked into UDT-11, what did you think you were going to be doing? So just as a little backdrop, when I checked into SEAL Team 1 in 1991, I thought I was going to NOM. Like in my mind, I was like, hey, look, man, I know we don't know about this stuff. There's top secret stuff going on.

I know I'm probably going to NOM or whatever, Cambodia. I'm going to do in SOG missions. That's what I was thinking because I was really young and really dumb. When you checked into UDT-11, what was it, 1977? 1978, early 19708, yeah. What did you think you were going to be doing? Same thing. I mean, I mean, you're going to go to know.

Well, back then, of course, we thought we were going to go back and rescue POWs out of Vietnam. Or this was the Cold War, kind of the height of the Cold War. So we thought we were going to be doing missions against the Soviet Union. And I don't think I mentioned the story in any of the books. But when I first got there, I was out doing a dive, training dive one day. And one of the chiefs comes grabs me and says, hey, sir, a commanding officer wants to see you. I mean, I'm an ensign, the commanding officer. I mean, he's an important guy.

And I thought, all right, this is it. I mean, the commanding officer, I mean, it's something important. So I get up and I said, well, let me go back and change. He goes, now, CEO said, just come as you are. I was in my shorthy wetsuit, so I go up, going to wait outside the CEO's office. And the CEO's assistant says, yeah, go in and see him. And I had met the CEO, but, yeah, I mean, I was in Ensign. He was the commanding officer.

So I come in and he says, Ensign McRaven, you know, good to see you again. Yes, sir. He says, I've been hearing good things about you. And I'm thinking, yeah, okay, this is it. He says, look, we got something important. coming up and and yeah I need one of my best incidents to kind of run this thing I'm like yeah this is this is what I'm waiting for you know this is there it comes and he says you know the fourth of July is coming up and we need somebody to be the frog float officer and of course I'm like I'm sorry sir

what he goes yeah you know every fourth of July we build a frog float to be in the corn out a parade and I want you to be the frog float officer and I was like you have got to be kidding me but I remember when I came out, I kind of had this kind of hound dog look on my face, and there was a, I don't even remember Herschel Davis. Yeah. So Herschel Davis was the command master of over at Seel Team, or over at underwater demolition Team 12, and he sees me walk and die, and I'm a little, you know, like his shoulders down, he goes, what's wrong, Hanson?

I said, ah, I thought it was going to do something important. I'm going to be the frog float officer. And Herschel said something. He said, well, then be the best damn frog float officer you can be. And I thought, no, that's it right there. Whatever it is, whether you're the frog float officer or planting eel grass, which was another one we had to do, do it the best you can. Plant it to eel grass. Plant an eel grass.

So the reason Coronado San Diego Bay looks as good as it does and as clean as it is is because back in 1978, UDT12, UD1 and Seal Team 1, we all got out and planted eelgrass underwater so that eel grass would grow to bring in the little fishies to clean out San Diego Bay. And it worked. but that was hours of diving at three feet under the water planting eagrass. Yeah, I never did do those missions to get the Soviet Union or to go back into Vietnam. I was on my first deployment, so we deployed to Guam, and we show up there, and they immediately have us do like a double duck insert. We go in, we hit a target, live fire. We come over the beach, hit a target live fire, we get done.

We're all, you know, pretty, it's pretty cool. And then we go out the next day, we clean our weapons. We go out, they say, hey, you know, get your weapons cited in. Okay. You know, and of course, same thing. In my mind, I'm thinking we're getting ready for the big mesh. So we go out, we cite in our weapons, clean them, cite them in, get back. And then a couple days goes by, and they give us pagers too, right?

Which back in the day, you know, you might as well just, you know, it was just as crazy as it gets. So I got the pager. Well, a couple days go by. three days, four days go by, and we're not getting the big recall. You know, I don't know if they're trying to negotiate with whoever the terrorists were

that we needed to die or whatever the case was, but also there was good waves. So I said, you know what? I told my roommate, like a couple of us are going to go surfing, so we went down the Spanish steps and we were surfing.

And all of a sudden, I'm looking up on the cliffs and there's the guy that we told is up there waving his arms frantically. And holy shit, right? We're getting recalled. This is it. So run in, run up the Spanish steps,

grout you know hey what's going he's got recalled shows me his pager he's got the 9-1-1 page damn it's on we get back we get down to the platoon space and uh you know the freaking senior chief comes in and he says uh hey you guys you didn't clean up your brass on the range after you said in your weapons you guys got to go clean up your breasts so that was when i realized it maybe wasn't gonna quite i wasn't going to nom after all um um how long were you how long did you UDT 11 then? Two years. And did you do a platoon there?

Were you like an assistant platoon commander? I was an assistant platoon commander. Dave Tash, Lieutenant Dave Tash was a platoon commander. I was in an SDV platoon. So when I first got there, of course, thinking I was going to do real frogman stuff and being a regular underwater demolition team platoon, which was, as you know, this was about kind of clearing beaches and that sort of thing. And then I find out there are these things called back then swimmer delivery vehicles,

now seal delivery vehicles. and at first I wasn't happy about being assigned to an SDV platoon. It turned out to be one of the best platoons I was ever in. It was just, it was real frogman stuff because we were doing, you know, six-hour dives. So, again, the listener in SDV is a, you know, think about a man torpedo with a bit of a cowling on it. So you had a, we started off what was called the Mark 7. So you had a pilot in the front and a navigator in the back. And you could squeeze two more guys in if you had to and you could put some demolition in there.

and then they would launch off the bigger submarines. And then later we got the Mark 8, which was a bigger steel delivery vehicle. But it was all about diving. I mean, you spent four days a week underwater. Yeah, and an important thing to note about this, when you say mini submarine, there's a key component that is not what you're thinking

if you're listening to this. And that is it's a wet submersible. So you're not in this thing dry. You're diving while you're in a... You're basically on a motorcycle. Right. Underwater. Underwater. Yeah, so I was one of the primary pilots, and I loved driving the SDV. And of course, you know, I'm back here in Coronado, California, and I had a chance to go back. I mean, you relive those days where you were going under the bridge. And back then you had what was called an obstacle avoidance sonar. And the OAS, as we referred to it, yeah, the underwater obstacles were not real clear. You really had to have a good eye to be able to read the obstacle avoid and sonar. So the navigator would read the OAS, as we referred to it. and it was this kind of green glow and you'd have to pick out the pylons and the and the ships coming at you underwater in this green glow they've gotten much better today but back then the technology just

wasn't very good so we tended to run into things every once in a while you know ships the coronado bay bridge you know and then you just it was fiberglass so you bring it back in and the master chief who was our fiberglass guru would you know give you that look like i can't believe you ran into of something again. He'd fix up a fiberglass. You'd get back in the water. Did you go on a deployment? I did. Yeah, did the first Westpac. So I went over to Subic Bay. That's where Naval Special Warfare Unit 1 was in Subic Bay at the time. And the USS Greyback, which was our special operation submarine. So the Greyback had these two big chambers on it that used to launch regular missiles. And they had converted these chambers to be able to launch the seal delivery vehicles.

So we went out there and again spent a lot of time underway on board the USS Grayback conducting training operations. Once again, thinking we were going to go run against Vladivostok or something like that. So there was always, and you remember the time, you know, when you were training, one of the things that always motivated you was this could become a real world mission sometime. If you ever got to the point where you were training and you didn't think that you were going to be able to take that training and apply it in wartime, then I think it demotivated you. But the fact of the matter is, every time we went out on a training op, there was always this idea that, well, we're going against the Soviets. Or, you know, we're going to go back in Vietnam and get the POWs that might still be there. Or we're going to go do some of the nation's bidding somewhere. And that always pushed you to do absolutely your very best on every single training mission.

No matter how hard it was, even though it was a training op, you wanted to push it to the limits because you wanted to be ready for the real world up. Yeah, and there was also this. I don't know if it's a specter, but this belief that this real world mission, whatever it was going to be, since it was a little bit unknown, you didn't, you didn't know it. You didn't know what it was going to be. So it was always like I need to prepare even more. Even more. Because we just don't even know how crazy it's going to be. Then how long, so you did one deployment to Subic Bay and then you got done with that.

And then you got, did you get stationed at Subic Bay right after that? Yeah. So I had my first set of orders to the Naval Postgraduate School. and I ended up having five sets of orders of which I didn't execute the first four of them because I got pulled out to go do something else. But yeah, as soon as I got back, I guess I had made an impression, a good impression, on the commanding officer out there in Subic. So I got back thinking I was going to go to a wonderful tour in Monterey, California.

And as soon as I got back, the commanding officer says, hey, good news. The commanding officer of Naval Special Warfare Unit 1 has asked for you by name, and you get to go to the Philippines for two years. and I thought, oh, this is going to be tough. And once again, it turned out to be an absolutely fabulous tour. My wife and I went out there, my first child was all of a couple of months old at that time. And, you know, we worked hard in the Philippines, supporting the platoons that would deploy over. So back then, Unit 1 in the Philippines, the platoons from San Diego would deploy out there.

That was kind of our home base, and then they would go from there to other places. But Unit 1 had the responsibility to supporting them. So I got there. I started off as the intelligence office. officer, and then since he kind of became the utility infield or the training officer and a lot of other things. But it was a great group of guys out there, good mission, and life in the Philippines back then was a good time. You relay one of these training operations in the book C stories that I would say left a mark

on you. You were basically running a training mission. You had a Marine colonel that was playing the role of a hostage. So he was being held out in a jungle camp somewhere, and he's out there for a few days. And then, you know, the SEAL team, the SEAL platoon gets the tasking to go out and rescue this guy. And it, well, it doesn't go well. You know, they get compromised. And it sort of falls on its face. But the Marine Colonel, you know, Colonel Brous, is that how you say his name?

Colonel Brous, he was like, hey, listen, we already, we already did this much. Let's continue to execute the rest of the. plan even though it wasn't great let's just continue doing it so they to finish the exercise they had to move the colonel to an extraction point where he was going to get picked up by by c130s and then the c130s we're going to take him on a low level flight and and you know you're in what are you lieutenant jg at this point i'm a jj right you've had this this colonel out in the field for three four days and you say hey sir you know you don't we can get you back to base and he's like no let's just get it done Let's do the whole thing.

And a little more time goes by and you say, hey, sir, you know, you don't really need to get in this plane. It's not going to be any training value for you. And he says, no, you know, we'll just do it. That's what a good leader does. Like they don't just, you know, bust out when things are going to get boring. But then there's another delay. The C-130s that are supposed to pick them up are, they're late. They're delayed.

And finally delayed multiple times. And finally, you say, You know, hey, sir, like, we don't know when this is going to happen. Why don't you just, you know, you and I will get out of here. You can go, and of course, he's a colonel. He's got stuff to do. He's got work to do. So he knows that too.

So finally, he says, look, you know what? You're right. I got to get back to work. And so he doesn't get on the C-130. You don't get on the C-130. C-130 takes off with a bunch of Americans, Australians, New Zealand, some Filipinos on there. And I'm just going to go to the book. here, Browse, that's the colonel, Browse and I returned to a waiting Jeep.

I shook his hand, thanked him for helping out with the exercise, and watched a young petty officer escort him back to Subic. Exhausted, I jumped in another Jeep and drove home. It had been a long couple of days. Half an hour later, aboard the MC-130, call signed Stray 59, the pilot checked his instruments. Like the rest of us, the preceding days for him and his crew had been long and tiring. adjusting his night vision goggles, he could see the water just a few feet below him. The water was closer than expected, too close to recover.

The tip of the left wing caught the top of a small wave, and in an instant, the plane tumbled forward, exploding in a fuel-injected ball of flame as it violently ripped apart from the impact of the aircraft and the sea. Of the 24 men aboard, eight crew members and 16 passengers from the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, all but one, Air Force First Lieutenant Jeffrey A. Blom died in the crash. Life in the SEAL teams always seems to revolve around fate or destiny or the hand of God. Why do some men live and others die?

Why were some men saved that day? Did God have a different plan for us? What about the crew and passengers of Stray 59? Surely their families would have wanted them longer in their lives. They were all brave and honorable men, all worthy of a full and prosperous life. I think about them often. 20 years later, as I rose to the rank of Admiral and Combat in Iraq and Afghanistan became a daily activity, I thought a lot about Stray 59.

The role of the MC-130s and their sister aircraft, the AC-130s, became more and more important to our special operations missions. With every plan I reviewed and every plan I approved, I asked myself silently whether the risk to the crew and the aircraft was worth the reward. I can only hope that the sacrifice of the men aboard Stray 59 saved lives, lives of men and women who have no idea that their destiny rested with a plane that took off from QB Airfield in 1981 and never return. May God rest at their souls. The world missions and regular missions in the military, there's always some level of risk. Yeah. And as you well know, there are times when you go left and set a right, and it makes the difference between life and death.

You make one decision, and it changes the lives of, you know, dozens of men and women. And this is the nature of life in the teams. And I think back over those 37 years, and I've written about a few of them in the book, but there were more of them. and you've been there where all the sudden, you know, you have this near-death experience. You know, the parachute doesn't work. You know, you almost get blown up by one of your colleagues, a hundred things, but it doesn't happen. You know, you manage to get through it. Or it happens and it's over and you've survived and you go, and you don't spend a lot of time thinking about. You're like, okay, well, the reserve opened, that's good.

Or the guy fired an inch from me instead of hit me, that's good. And that becomes almost a daily, weekly, monthly occurrence, and you just learn to compartmentalize you learn to live with it. But there was something about Stray 59. It was obviously the magnitude of the crash. And just the fact that, as you read it so beautifully there, I had asked the colonel three times because, again, he was an important guy.

He was in charge of the office of the provost, and he was a senior Marine there at Subic. He was a great guy. and I had kind of encouraged him to be this hostage. And so in the course of the day... Which was relationship building. Which was a relationship. Because you wanted to see, hey, you know, this is what we do.

We wanted to see how good we were and then things didn't go so well. But we were actually on the ramp of the C-130 as we were getting ready the third time. And I knew, you know, you've been on these flights, you know, the C-130, you know, the low-level terrain following is, I mean, it's a vomit rocket. I mean, you're just up and down and some guys don't handle it very well. And I thought, you know, we're going to do that for three and a half hours. Does he really need to do that? And it wasn't until we were actually standing on the ramp when he says, yeah, okay, let's go. And then, of course, I got the call about an hour or so later.

We had to remaster in the compound there at Naval Special War for Unit 1. Didn't know why. And, of course, they were trying to get a headcount to find out who was still alive. And you have a lot of those in the course of your career. And you hope you learn from them. And as I pointed out in the book, then when I was in a position of command, you know, from the time I was the commander of SEAL Team 3 or the Commodore or certainly my time after 9-11, you're reviewing these missions, and particularly with the MC-130s and the AC-130s,

because, you know, in combat the guy, they want to push the envelope. It's okay to push the envelope, but only if the reward is worth the risk, because, you know, I wanted to make, and it wasn't just the C-130s. I mean, the helicopter pilots, I remember at one point in time after, not my unit, but another unit had lost a helo and a couple of seals have been on board. But the mission they were running, I thought, was a little too high risk. I pulled all the warrant officers in that were flying for me and I said, we're not going to do that. Here's the deal. If I find out that you take off on a mission that is red, I'm going to fire your ass and send you back to the states.

You ought to start off every mission in the green. In other words, you ought to have planned it to reduce the risk as much as possible. If it's a really important mission, maybe I'll let you start. off in the amber, but we're going to have that conversation. But we are not going to start off a mission in the red. It ain't worth it. If you think the shadow governor of pickup province is worth it, he's not. We'll come back and get him tomorrow. And I didn't know how that would be received by the pilots because, you know, I mean, I was, you know, when you start losing guys and losing helicopters, you know, you really want to make sure you're doing things the right way because you don't want to

lose any more men if you don't have to. And afterwards, I had a couple of the old salty, you know, warrants come up to me and and they were appreciative of the fact that hey here's the line we are not going to do this now again missions may go in the red I got it but but let's not start off in the red let's not build you know risk into the mission and I think a lot of that goes back to straight 59 to realizing that you know lives are on the line particularly in these these aircraft by the aircraft and the heloes and everything else we fly around it but the interesting thing so when I when I wrote this I had no idea where Colonel Brous was didn't I assumed he had passed away

long since, and frankly, the last time I saw him was probably a few years after, so it's probably in the mid-80s. Well, I get an email from his son who had read the book, and he says, hey, sir, my father's still alive, and I'd like to send him a copy of this book. So I reach out to talk to Colonel Brous, he and his wife, I mean, he's in his 90s, sharp as he can be, and he remembered the story and you're always pleased you remember the story exactly as I as I presented in the book and but but he also remembered the fact that his life changed that day and and that had a had a big impact on him as well and he was a combat veteran from from Vietnam oh yeah yeah heavily decorated yeah I mean he was a a hard charge and this was this was not an admin Marine this was a

hell of a combat vet yeah well note if you're out there they're listening. Colonel Brous, open invite. If you want to come on here and talk about your experiences. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. I'm going to go to the book, Make Your Bed again, going to July 1983. Here we go. July 1983 was one of those tough moments. As I stood before the commanding officer, I thought my career as a Navy SEAL was over. I'd just been relieved of my seal squadron, fired for trying to change the way my squadron was organized, trained, and conducted missions. There were some magnificent officers and enlisted men in the organization, some of the most professional warriors I had ever been around. However, much of the culture was still

rooted in the Vietnam era, and I thought that it was time for a change. As I was to find out, change is never easy, particularly for the person in charge. Fortunately, even though I was fired, my commanding officer allowed me to transfer to another SEAL team, but my reputation as a SEAL officer was severely damaged. Everywhere I went, other officers and enlisted men knew I had failed, and every day there were whispers and subtle reminders that maybe I wasn't up to the task of being a SEAL. At that point in my career, I had two options, quit and move on to civilian life, which seemed like the logical choice in the light of my recent officer fitness report, or weather the storm and prove to others, and myself that I was a good seal officer. I chose the latter. So here you are wanting to be a good seal

and you tried to implement some changes. You, I guess, swam against the stream. When you look back at that, you know, this is a subject that I've talked about a lot because, well, there's a book called About Face by Colonel David Hackworth and, you know, at the end of the Vietnam War, he went on a TV program called Issues and Answers and said, we're going to lose this war if we don't change the way we're fighting it. And he was drummed out of the

army in another couple of months. And my debate is always, you know, he was a golden child in the army at that point and would have absolutely been up for brigade command and division command and he had been in charge of tens of thousands, if not more, and could have really influenced the way the war was fought. But he spoke up. up and you know that was it made made some enemies and because people you know I work with a lot of businesses and people this happens in business where people they want to speak up they see something that maybe could be done better different and of course there's always a particular line that I make look if someone's doing something that's illegal immoral or unethical okay we're not doing that we got it

but a lot of times and I wrote about this in leadership strategy and tactics I called it conformed to influence because when I was in my first seal platoon I was I wanted to be all hardcore and so it was me and I was wearing a rucksack on the O course and wearing a rucksack out on the runs and and and I was a new guy and I thought I was being cool and and hard and getting ready for war but my platoon was kind of looking at me like you know who do you think you are you're true are you're trying to prove hey Rambo and I realized oh I need to be a part of this team if I'm going to have influence over them do I want them to train harder yeah I do absolutely But if they don't like me, if I'm not part of the team, they're not going to listen to anything I say. As a matter of fact, I'm ostracizing myself. So I know this is a, it seems like you went through this situation where, you know, you held up your hand and made a call. I'm going to go in this direction or I think we should go in this direction and didn't work out. The other part of this is I always say if you're doing the right things for the right reasons, you'll win in the end.

but it sometimes can take a long time before you, you quote, win. And you might take some tactical losses along the way, but if you're doing the right things, the right reasons, eventually things should go your way. When you reflect on whatever went down at that command and the way it turned out, what did you learn from it? Yeah, I learned a lot from it, actually. And it all, I think, positively influenced me over the years.

First, I didn't make all the right calls. I mean, there's no question about it. I could have been a better officer. And, you know, at the end of the day, the commanding officer has the right to decide who he thinks is going to be, you know, leading his platoons, his squadrons. And I've never really faulted the CEO for making that decision. I realize I could have done things better. The command could have done things better. But to your point, part of what I learned was I didn't conform, I think, the way that they had hoped I would conform.

And part of it was it just wasn't me. It wasn't a good cultural fit for me at the time. But I think you nailed it when you said, you know, there are times if you're going to influence the people that work with you, better to do it from inside the wire than outside the wire sort of thing. Now, again, back to the, it's got to be more illegal and ethical. But what I also learned was, you know, you're going to have these rough times in the teams or anywhere you go. But that day I went home and I remember thinking, and I said, I don't know if I got a career left here. And I don't know how long my wife and I'd been married at that point in time. You know, five, six years, something like that.

And I came home and I said, hey, I'm not sure what I should do. And she said, look, you've never quitted anything in your life. Don't start now. And, you know, best advice I could have had. And, of course, you've got to weather the storm. Because fortunately, the commanding officer, I mean, my paper wasn't good, but it wasn't bad. I mean, he didn't crush me in my fitness report. I was picked up by another team right after that who the commandant officer kind of gave me a second chance.

I made the best of that second chance. But, you know, I go to a new team and, of course, the guys know. The reputation thing, if you don't know in the SEAL teams and in life, but in the SEAL teams, it's like multiplied and intensified. Your reputation is so powerful. And when, I mean, there's guys. that make a mistake when they show up as a new guy and 25 years later they retire and their nickname is still based on the fact that they did

something stupid as a new guy. Everybody knows it. That's when you meet them, that's their name is whatever dumb thing they did when they were a new guy when they were 18 or 19 years old. Well, and this was, you know, so there was kind of this CRISPR campaign when I got to the new team and you understand

that and you realize, hey, I've got to prove them wrong. I've got to prove that I'm a good officer and so fortunately, soon after I got to the command, I went on a deployment. It was a good deployment. I did well at the command. I went on to another command, and then, you know, you begin to rebuild your reputation,

and frankly, never looked back after that. But what it also helped me do was when I got into command and all of my command tours thereafter, when I saw somebody that made a mistake, when I saw somebody that screwed up, you want to find an opportunity if they're a good officer, a good enlisted, to give them that second chance so that they aren't branded, with a bad reputation. You put him in a position to be successful to get over whatever that fault

or that failure might have been. And I was fortunate to have an officer named John Sandos who picked me up at SEAL Team 4, took me under his wing and said, hey, I remember you from my time at the West Coast and let's get back to work. And again, that kind of quickly got me over the hump and then you never look back. So when you have the opportunity in a leadership position

to help somebody out, to give them that second chance to put them on the path to be better than what they were. You take that opportunity. How freaking crazy, obsessive were you to do a good job when you got the team for? I mean, I can't even imagine if I was in that situation, I was already crazy on trying to do a good job, you know? You must have been just full bore like your wife must have said after another three months. She must have said, maybe you should quit. There was a lot of that, but you also realized you can't overreact. And I think when I got in there at first, I would see things, people that I thought were sliding me. And initially, I'd kind of overreact to it because I was overly sensitive to it

when it was just team guys being team guys. You know, back to the PT circle, you know, you're thinking, was there something hidden in that? And there wasn't. And so you've got to kind of get over that and find that balance that goes, okay, look, you know, you're going to get harassed. That, you know, that's best part of being in the teams. Enjoy the good nature. harassment and don't take it so personal every time. But to your point, it probably took me a while to get over that. I think I had to get past the deployment. And then my next job was the office officer at SEAL delivery vehicle team too, and I had a great bunch of guys there. And again, everything went well, never looked back. What did you do for a deployment at Team

four? So I went down to South America, did a Unitas. Unitas. And had a great platoon. And the thing about it was, I mean, we just, you know, you kind of lived off the land back then. We weren't as sophisticated. We didn't kind of have the money. So we parachuted into Columbia, spent three weeks in some, you know, back part of Columbia, where most of the day we were foraging for food, literally. So, you know, we were looking for drinkable water. I had to send, you know, a couple of guys to go to the market to get food because we didn't back then, yes, you could have brought sea rats, as we referred to them, the MREs of today. But those were heavy. Those were in big boxes. We didn't want to be carrying.

that around. So, you know, a couple guys would be assigned Chow duty while the rest of the platoon went out and worked with the Buzzo Tacticos of the Colombians. And then we went from there to Ecuador, to Peru, to Chile, to Brazil. I mean, it was a great deployment. So then you did ops officer at SDV Team 2. Right. And then from there, 1989, you're the Exo at Seal Team 1. Yeah, so from SDV Team 2, I went up to the Pentagon for about two and a half years. Oh, okay. And, you know, every operator goes kicking the screen into an admin job. But this one actually probably set me up for success much more so than I would have thought,

because you get into the Pentagon, and this was at a time when, again, the seals, we worked for the surface warfare guys, the ship drivers. And we worked in what was called Op.3 in the Pentagon. But it was there where all the money that the seals got for beans, bullets, bodies, buildings, you name it, came through the Pentagon. So I learned, I was a lieutenant-made lieutenant commander there, I learned how to work the system, how to get manpower in a seal team, how to get buildings built, how to get money for more ammunition. None of my contemporaries had that experience. So when I left the Pentagon and then went off to be the executive officer at Seal Team One in 1988, I mean, as the XO, nobody could keep up because the CEO was saying, hey, can we get some more

bodies here? Yes, sir, I know how to do that. Can we get more money to the team? Yes, sir, I know how to do that, you know. And so understanding the resourcing end of it, you know, major good staff officer. Now, no seal wants to have that moniker on them. You know, you're a good staff officer. But at the end of the day, the good staff officers are what allow the team guys, the operators to have the equipment they need and the, you know, the money to go do the training and that sort of thing. Now, by that time, as the 80s and the Reagan years and the Reagan buildup starts, the money started to come. But before that, we in the seal team, we were living on a shoestring after Vietnam. I mean, you know, you would go out to Nilele in California, which was our desert,

our desert training area, it was our only training area. And I think they paid you like $8 a day. And you were like, who-hoo, $8 a day, that's great. Because a lot of other places you went, you went on permissive T-D-Y, meaning they didn't pay anything. You just went. We always had a lot of ammunition and demolition, but not much else. What was the billet that you were in up at the Pentagon? So I was the assistant to the director of what they called OP 37. So 337 was the designator for the Naval Special Warfuel. Actually, I'm not even sure we called it Naval Special Warfare back then.

That didn't come along until a little bit later. But, yeah, it was a seal component in the Pentagon that did all the resourcing. I know when I came in the military, I thought, like the whole idea that you had to pay for stuff just didn't even make sense to me. I thought everything was just free, right? Hey, you need gas. You go to the gas thing at the Navy base and they'll give you the gas you need.

Didn't even make sense to me that you had to pay for ammo and that human beings like, oh, you're going to assign people to a seal team. They're just people that show up there. So that the idea, that was real foreign to me when people started talking about how much this trip is going to cost.

I would be like, well, we're in the military. What are you talking about? So that gave you, yeah, for sure. some insight you must have had. You were like a black belt compared to the rest of these guys running around. Yeah, and nobody wanted to go to the Pentagon, of course, and nor had I wanted to go initially. But again, it turned out to be a great two and a half years because you learned the system well. And frankly, that served me throughout, as I became a commandant officer and a

Commodore, I understood how to walk the halls of the Pentagon and how to leverage those resources we needed to get the job done. Yeah, you mentioned so far a bunch of different relationships that you have had and built and I mean they they shine throughout everything that you write about it's all about who you're working with and oh I've worked with this guy in the past and knew this individual and we spent time together the the relationships that you build but not only in the seal teams but then you start talking about relationships that you have and in the Pentagon and who you work with there and who you know it's you can't there's no possible way to to overestimate the amount of ROI you get on having good relationships with people and treating them

good. All about relationships. You're right. It's all about relationships. And particularly after 9-11, you realized even more so because your relationships with the CIA, with the National Security Agency, with the National Geospatial Agency, with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, with the service chiefs when I became the SOCOM commander. I mean, you have to build these relationships with the combatant commanders with, you know,

up and down the chain of command because it's the relationships that are going to allow you to get the mission done. And if you have built good relationships, if you haven't burned the bridges, because you got hacked off about something. Those relationships really pay dividends in combat. I had my, when I was a task unit commander, my two platoon commanders come into me, and we're out at an island,

and we've got a bunch of paperwork due to the commanding officer, you know, the serialized inventory and the qualifications of the various guys and all this, and the guys come, we shouldn't have to do that all this paperwork right now. This is bullshit. Come on. We're training for war.

And, you know, they tried to capitalize on my warlikeness. by telling me, you know, we're training him for war. And I said, hey, guys, we're going to do all this paperwork. We need it turned in perfectly. And we're going to do it before anyone else does because we got to have a good relationship with the boss. And if the boss doesn't think I can get paperwork turned in on time, why is he going to trust me to go out and run operations?

Exactly right. From there, now you go to XO, Seal, Team One. Who is the CEO when you were there? Commander Tim Holden. Okay. Phenomal officer, Naval Academy graduate, MIT, a lot like Daniel Stewart. I mean, hard as nails. Tim would PT everybody into the ground.

Just a remarkable officer. Unfortunately, he was killed in a bicycle accident several years ago, but just a terrific, terrific guy. And you did one operation there, which was the recovery of a Navy aircraft that had crashed in 1948. Yeah, it was a P2V, so think of the P3 variant back then. And, yeah, Commander Holden, Tim Holden had been sent out, as you recall, This was during the kind of the tanker wars and been sent out to the wind brown. So I was the acting CO as the executive officer. And George Bush, who had been, I think initially the vice president,

and then, of course, became president, had been petitioned by the families of the naval aviators that have been killed in this crash. The plane had never been found. And they had been asking for the Navy to put on kind of a full court press to try to find the aircraft. There had been some speculation where it went down. and this had gone on for years. Eventually, somebody found the remains,

but because it was in such kind of a treacherous condition, they couldn't, or found what they thought was the remains of the airplane, but couldn't get to it. So eventually we get the letter, you know, the president wants us to go recover the aircraft because it's at about 10,000 feet. That's where they thought it was, and they figured we could do some high-altitude diving.

So as the executive officer, I get tagged to be the kind of mission commander, and it was a unique experience. I took a guy named George Parkhill, who was, I think George was probably a chief or senior chief at the time. He ran the dive locker when I got to Seattle Team 1. He was the dive master, and that's why I picked George and a couple of other great guys to go up there. And so we get up to this place called First Tofino, and then we have to take a helo out to the kind of the middle of nowhere on the outback. And the place where we think the plane has crashed is in what I believe to have been kind of an old volcanic, you know,

area. I mean, it looks like the inside of what you think of as a volcano, almost like Diamondhead. And there's a lake in the middle of it where the snow has melted off. And you could only get into this place, like for a month out of the year, because it would freeze over. And so this was, I think, September time frame. So we get on the ground and there's, I mean, the helo can't even land. So we had to kind of jump off the helo and kind of get set up. But we're looking around and there's clearly no airplane in this bowl we're in. But there's, we're going to, but there's is off to the area where the sun doesn't hit, so the sun would kind of make its way around, but never kind of quite got to this area. And as you look, there's this kind of, the only thing I can

think of to describe it is like a snow tunnel. And it goes up about a thousand plus feet. And it is, you know, I mean, it's just an area that's just completely covered with ice. And, but we're looking around thinking that the plane is probably in the water. That's why we were sent up to get it. Well, the next day after we get in there, Park Hill goes over and starts chipping into this kind of ice cave and goes in, and I'll be damned, there the plane is. It is hidden under this ice cave and has been there for 40, 50 years at that point in time. Of course, it is because the ice would melt and it would just crush the plane. So there's nothing left but tiny pieces, although actually the 50 cows survived. But so now we have found the remains of the plane.

And again, there was some, we eventually bring some of the family out that was fit enough to be there. We did manage to find some bone fragments and we buried those at the site. But in the book, I tell the story and I said, you can believe it or not, but it is true, and I'm not the only one to have seen it. As we are kind of burying the remains of this thing, and I say a little prayer over this cross we put up there. and as I get through saying it, all of a sudden one of the guys turns to me, he goes, hey sir, take a look up there. And again, if you can imagine we're in this bowl, and I think it goes up to about 8,000 feet or something like that.

And right above the ridge line, I see what looks like a parachute flare. I'm thinking, is somebody shooting parachute flares? I'm looking around thinking, well, maybe one of our guys is, you know, shooting parachute flares. Nobody's shooting perefully shoot flares. There's one, and there's two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And they're kind of hovering up there. And looking around thinking, what in the world? And the guy says, hey, sir, how many of those do you see?

And again, it's this kind of glowing orb, and it's just kind of floating up there. And there were nine of them. And there were nine victims on the plane. And it was up there for 10 or 15 minutes. They all kind of hovered up. Then one by one, they just kind of went up. So I said, look, you can believe the story or not, but I'm not the only one that saw it. And I've often thought, well, if somebody was firing parachute flares, please let me know.

Because it was kind of one of those surreal moments because you are out in the outback where there is nothing out there. But interestingly enough, another kind of story like the Barney Brow story, in that I get a call from a good friend who you would know, Jeremy Williams, and J.W. says, hey, sir, got an army, buddy. We were just having dinner, and I was telling him about your book. And he's going to call you when he gets to San Francisco. I said, okay. So he was flying back to Hawaii, and I got a call from this guy. He says, hey, sir, J.W. was telling me about your story and your book. and so I got a copy of it. That was my grandfather that died on that crash.

And, oh, by the way, my grandmother is still alive. So I got a hold of the grandmother and it was just a great conversation, a wonderful lady. And I told her, I said, ma'am, I don't know I'll tell you, the story I'm telling you in the book is exactly true. You know, my hope is, you know, that your husband is in the right place and this, and her husband had been a young petty officer in the Navy during World War II, gets out of the Navy after World War II, and then missed the Navy so much, comes back in, gets assigned up to Whidbey Island as a backender on this P2V

and unfortunately crashes in the P2V. And I think it was 23 years old or something like that. But it was just the connections have been interesting. I mean, the book gets out there and then somebody reads it and then makes a connection, you know, six degrees removed sort of thing. Yeah, that whole story is sounds, it's almost supernatural that story. There's some other things that you talk about in the book worth reading. You, you get done with that and you do, is that when you rolled into being a task unit commander?

Right. So then this was right before Desert Storm. So when I left the XO back then, the executive officers a lot of times would go do and be the task unit commander for a deployed, you know, seal platoon on an amphibious ready group. So it was, again, this was 1990, summer of 1990, and I'm with Comfibron 5, and so I go off as an 04 as the task unit commander. And no sooner we left in June, I guess, and then Saddam invades Iraq in August, I think. So we were already on deployment, and we were a full-up amphibious ready group. So we became kind of the go-to guys as the rest of the Navy was kind of building. the rest of the amphibious ready groups.

But we'd already been through the whole workup. So we kind of immediately got tasked to head out to the Gulf. I had a chance to interdict, do some maritime interdiction operations, which were a lot of fun, considering those were kind of the first of their kind back then. That was the big mesh back then. That's right. The Mio, the maritime interdiction operations. Those were, I did those in, what was it, 99.

Well, I guess I did some in the mid-90s. But yeah, those were real world that got to lock and load my weapon. What else did you guys do on that? Didn't you guys do some hit some islands or something as well? Yep. So we went out there first time in, I want to say, November, December, and then we didn't know whether or not we were actually going to, you know, come into Kuwait. so they sent us back to Subic Bay for about three weeks, not knowing, well, are we going to, you know,

we're going to send a large force into Kuwait to kick Saddam out. And so that was all still up in the air. So they said, look, you guys are the most experienced. Go back and wait. So I think we spent Christmas in Subic. And then we got the word, no, we think this thing's going to go. So they sailed us back out. We went through the Straits of Malacca and the Straits of Hormuz about half a dozen times.

So we get out there into the Gulf. And yeah, so first back in the November timeframe, we did the maritime interdiction operations on some Iraqi tankers. And then our job was going to be to prep for the amphibious landing. And so we, in addition to the Fibron 5, they brought what then later became the largest amphibious force, I think since Korea, 33 ships looking at doing an amphibious landing in, I think a place called Ashawiba in Kuwait,

with the idea that we would land the force and then begin to engage with the ground force and then push Saddam out of Kuwait. Well, it, of course, became one of the faints. The idea was we want to hold down Saddam's forces. So it kind of became known, I think, to the Iraqi army that we were going to land a large force at Ashawiba. So, of course, two divisions came,

set down in Kuwait to stop us from landing. Well, that allowed the ground forces to kind of sweep around. So we didn't do the amphibious. We did take a couple of islands. We took Falaka Island, which was actually very interesting. Again, a good lesson for me. So Falaka had been bombed for like 100 straight days. We're 1,200 Iraqi officers or officers enlisted on Falaka Island

because it was kind of a key position before you got up into the waterway. And Navy fighters, when they would come back, they'd have to dump their bombs. So for, again, like 90 days or something, they were dropping bombs. they were dropping bombs ordinance on Falak Island. Falak Island was only about two inches above the sea level, and it's just flat as it could be. So the Iraqis at night would, you know, they dig trenches and they'd hide in the trenches

as we're dropping bombs on. So finally, when the time came, the Iraqis surrendered in Falakia, and we go pick up these guys, 1,200 of them, and moved them from Falaka to the amphibs before we sent them back to Saudi Arabia and then back to Kuwait. But interestingly enough, with all that bombing, I think the bombs only killed about five Iraqis.

So it showed, you know, we wonder, you know, how do the Germans withstand the naval bombardment on Normandy and how did the Japanese survive it? Well, the answer is if you dig deep enough, even, you know, a thousand pound bombs, unless they land right on your head, which apparently what happened to a couple of these guys, you can survive this stuff.

But also the Iraqis, it was interesting to see as I was the colonel who accepted their surrender separated the officers from the enlisted. But now I'm on the island for several hours, and I started flying back with some of the Iraqis. And they were, hey, man, I'm from Detroit. I came back to Iraq to see my parents. I said, you know, I thought there were a lot of these guys

that were American Iraqis that had come back and kind of gotten secunded into the Iraqi army, and we're like, yeah, I really didn't want to be here. And do you have a cigarette, by the way? Don't smoke. That's pretty awesome experience, though, for you. and I know that I was a rare guy that volunteered to do ARG platoons because there was actually missions that happened.

You know, the guys that were in the SEAL teams that were in Somalia, a bunch of them came off ARG platoons. And I was like, okay, if that's where I got to go. And so I volunteered for ARG platoons, but where it really helped me out was then I was working with, I was working with the Marine Corps. And we were, you know, building relationships with the Marine Corps. But just to understanding, look, when you're in a SEAL platoon,

in the 90s, you didn't understand anything about the rest of the military. It was like, hey, I got a 16-man platoon, we'll take on the world. Then I learned, oh, this is a battalion. This is how this is going to work. This is the way we can work together with them. This is the support that we can give them.

So it was very useful and very helpful for me. I was very loud. I was a calm guy, so I made all the comms plan and learned how to communicate with all the different forces. It was very, very helpful for me to do those. I did two R deployments and learned a lot about the conventional forces, which was real lucky. You get done with that,

and now you finally get your time in Monterey. Right. Yeah, finally, I think the fifth set of orders, I finally got to Monterey, so I went up there for two years and set up the special operations, low-intensity conflict, the solar curriculum,

and then ended up graduating from that curriculum. But also it took the time, that's when I had an opportunity to write my thesis on the principles of special operations or the theory of special operations. And Monterey was great time, because one,

I've been deployed for 10 months on the Amphibious Ready Group and frankly been running hard for several years. And my wife, while I was deployed, my wife had our third child. So I came back. My oldest boy had been born when I was going on my first deployment. He was born in a week later. I go on a deployment. Number two, some was born in the Philippines and Jungle General. Literally, that's what we call it, Jungle General.

And in fact, a couple of years ago, when I was the... Socom commander. We went back out to Philippines, and I went down to Zamboanga. My wife got a driver from Manila to go back to the Subic Bay. She hadn't been there in 30 some odd years. So I'm down in Zamboanga for a couple days. I finally come back up to Manila to pick her up. I get into the hotel room. And she goes, do you know that John was born in a quonset hut? I said, yeah. She goes, I mean, it was a quonset hut. Yeah, I know. That's all we had was a quantitut. And so, I mean, Jungle General was a series of quonsiduts. And so, like I said, number two son was born there. And then we waited quite a while. And finally, for our third child,

we thought, hey, we got this all figured out. My wife got pregnant. I'm going to go on a six-month deployment. I'll come back, you know, I'll have time to, you know, get ready for the baby to be born. Of course, my six-month deployment turns into 10 months. I come back and my daughter's a month old. It's like, hey, I think that worked out okay. But, uh, worked okay. Out okay for one of you. Yeah, that's right. But then we did get up to Monterey and, and that was a good time.

So out there is where you, your thesis became a book. Right. And the book is called SpeckOps, case studies and special operations warfare theory and practice. I'm going to jump into this a little bit. Carl von Klauswitz, in his book on War, noted the defensive form of warfare is intrinsically stronger than the offense. It contributes resisting power, the ability to preserve and protect oneself.

Thus, the defense generally has a negative aim, that of resisting the enemy's will. If we are to mount an offensive to impose our will, we must develop enough force to overcome the inherent superiority of the enemy's defense. Klauswitz theory of war states that to, quote, defeat the stronger form of warfare, an army's best weapon is superior numbers. In this sense, superiority of numbers, admittedly, is the most important. important factor in the outcome of an engagement so long as it is not so long as it is great enough to counterbalance all other contributing circumstances it thus follows that as many troops as possible should be brought into the engagement at the decisive point so you start off with that which people always ask me i've covered just about every well i've covered a lot of war theory and i never

cover clauswitz and one of the reasons i never cover clauswitz or haven't yet i've covered a little bit but is because I like Liddell Hart better. Of course. And so apparently you feel the same way. Continuing on with your book, no soldier would argue the benefit of superior numbers. But if they were the most important factor, how could 69 German commandos

have defeated a Belgian force of 650 soldiers protected by the largest, most extensive fortress of its time, the fort at Eben Imal, which is a special operations, paratroopers landed with gliders on this and and as you just said 69 German paratroopers took on this massive Belgian force and won how can special operations force that has inferior numbers and the disadvantage of attacking the stronger form of warfare gain

superiority over the enemy to understand this paradox is to understand special operations relative superiority relative superiority is a concept crucial to the theory of special operations simply stated relative superiority is a condition that exists when an attacking force generally smaller gains a decisive advantage over a larger or well-defended enemy the value of which the concept of relative superiority lies in its ability to illustrate which positive forces influences the success of a mission and to show how the frictions of war affect the achievement of the goal this section will define the three basic properties of

relative superiority and describe how those properties are revealed in combat. And then you talk about relative superiority is achieved at a pivotal moment in the engagement. Once relative superiority is achieved, it must be sustained in order to guarantee victory. And if relative superiority is lost, it is difficult to regain again. And then you go on to explain what you already mentioned, the six principles of special operations, simplicity, security, repetitions, surprise, speed, and purpose. And the book, what this book consists of is case studies that describe and show how all these things come into play. So that's, you made pretty good time of your, of your session up there in Monterey.

Yeah, you know, it was, to your point, you know, you take advantage of the opportunity as you get. I found studying at the postgraduate school was, yeah, I'd been an operator for 50s. 15 years, it was great actually now to kind of get an opportunity to get intellectually engaged, and there were some phenomenal faculty and professors up there. But when I decided to write a thesis, I'd read a lot of Klauswitz, and Klauswitz kind of talks about the principles of war, and everybody has these ideas of the various principles of war. And Klauswitz's point there is, look, the defense is always going to be stronger than the offense, because the defense just has to preserve and protect, while the offense has to impose its will upon the enemy.

So that was the, but then if that's true, then why does soft work? And so I went in there initially looking for the principles of special operations. So I went and visited all these places and talked to all these commandos. But I was visiting, I was in Germany meeting with Lieutenant Vitzig, who was the, at the time, he was the lieutenant that led the raid on Abenemail. and Colin Kilrain, who was a young lieutenant at the time, who is now a vice admiral, Colin Kilrain was stationed up in Eckinferti with the compsfemmers. So Colin was going to be my translator.

And so we linked up and went all over Europe interviewing these guys. It was great. But we get down to talk to Lieutenant Fitsy. And it was hard to find these guys. Because, again, there was some sense that because they had been in the German military, was there some Nazi overtones, et cetera, et cetera. Not the case with Lieutenant Vitzig because he had gone on to work in the West German Army and retired as a colonel. But nonetheless, I think there was always some concern about some of the wartime efforts.

But finally, Colin tracks him down. So we go to visit him, and I'm sitting there for three hours, and I have created this list of questions for him. And he's a very stern fellow and was very cautious early on. And so as we're talking, and I'm asking me these questions, Colin is translating them, and he's answering. them short, almost bluntly. It doesn't seem particularly happy that I'm there, but he's trying to be gracious. And finally, about three hours into it, I turned to Colin and I said, ask the colonel if he's the one that actually developed the plan for how the demolition was going to be used on the surface of a bin of mail. And in perfect English, he says, yes, I was. And we continue on in English

for the next hour or so. He'd been vetting me. He wanted to find out whether or not this was a serious, but it was the colonel. So he says, at one point in time, I'm kind of talking about this. He says, so you are trying to develop a theory here. At the time, I was not. I was just trying to identify principles.

And I thought, huh. He says, I think you are working on a theory. You need to flesh out the theory. And so I went back and spent the next year thinking, okay, how do you take not just the principles, but what is the theory of, special operations work when they shouldn't work based on kind of cloudswits and a lot of others and then again the case studies kind of bore out why they work in certain areas and why they

don't but the but the study of that paid dividends for me after 9-11 because every single time I reviewed a mission and I figured at one point in time that I had I had touched about 10,000 missions over the course of my time as the deputy commander J-Soc and the J-Soc commander where you're either commanding them, you're overseeing them, or you're reviewing them, because every concept of operation early on had to come to a general officer. So I would review every concept of operation as well. And I always ask myself, okay, we're making this too hard. Is it a simple plan, carefully concealed, repeatedly rehearsed, and executed with surprise, speed, and purpose?

I mean, that was the essence of this, recognizing that the frictions of war, chance and uncertainty, shit happens, is going to try to knock your plan off this kind of apex that it's on. And the only thing that's going to keep it upright is the courage and the boldness and the perseverance of the men that are fighting to keep this plan upright. And as I would think through all of these concepts, when I'd see it a con up, I'd say, we're making this too complicated, guys. make it easier, make it simpler. I mean, I was always trying to get to the simplest approach. You couldn't always get there, but you wanted to do that because you realized the simpler was, the less chance, the less risk you were going to have, the less chance that things could go wrong.

And that was just always, you know, in the back of my mind. And then, of course, the bin Laden raid comes along. And we adhered to the thesis, the theory as closely as we could. I said, look, we're going to flesh all of this out. We are going to keep this plan. We're going to go from point A to point B in a helicopter. Get on the ground, just like we do. We've done thousands of times before.

We're not going to make it complicated. We'll get the bad guy. We'll put him on a helicopter and take him home. That's it. Oh, by the way, now we're going to repeat this thing. We're going to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. We're going to keep it confidential, so nobody else knows about it. And then when the day comes through the mission, we will have surprise, speed,

and God knows we had purpose. So, you know, that was just the way I tended, after my time of Monterey, tended to look at every single mission we did. You get done with Monterey, and then what's next? So after Monterey, I went back down to Naval Special Warfare Command for about a year waiting to take command. And I was a training officer down there for a year, just an admin position, a holding position, if you will,

until I took command of SEAL Team 3. Is that when you did the project where you were kind of looking, at the next generation of warfare? So in between that, it was really when I was the chief of staff. So I left SEAL Team 3 and then became the chief of staff at Group 1, which, for your listeners, oversees all the SEAL teams on the West Coast. And that's when we really began to develop this idea of thinking back to Liddell Hart. I mean, it really was, why do we have to do things the way we have always done them?

Because even up till, you know, 1998, we were still doing the way things the way we had done in Vietnam. Even the guys on the elite East Coast SEAL teams hadn't developed too much beyond kind of the standard seal platoon size. And oh, by the way, nobody else gets in the platoon but a platoon guy. You've got to have gone through buds. And it was like, what if you're going to tap into some wire or something? Where is the pencil neck geek guy that you're going to bring along? Well, sorry, we can't bring him along because he doesn't know how to ride in the Zodiac. Put two life jackets on him, stick him in the Zodiac because you're bringing this guy along. And then, of course, Admiral Olson had taken over Warcom when I became the Commodore,

and he'd seen things work on the East Coast. And so he really wanted to take a look at Naval Special Warfare even more broadly. So how do we have sniper elements? Well, back in the day, when I came in, the sniper was in your platoon. You know, the radio man was in your platoon. Everything was inside the platoon organization. Well, then we began to say, hey, yeah, but you're breaches. Well, that's one of the guys in the platoon was a designated breacher.

One of the guys in the platoon was the automatic webster. One of the guy in the platoon was the sniper. Well, why don't we take guys that do a lot of sniper work and make them the world-class snipers and then world-class breaches? That evolved, then all of a sudden, 9-11 hits and it went on steroids. I jumped over a part when you were CEO of SEAL Team 3. One thing I used to tell guys all the time was if we were doing a water op,

I'd say, hey, if you're in the water, it's a real world op. Because if you're in the water, you can die, period. and you about died at SEAL Team 3 as the commanding officer up in, what was it, Moro Bay? Moro Bay. Capsized in a rib? Yeah, that was not a good day, except I came out of it alive, so maybe it was a good day. Yeah, we went up there. It was one of the platoon that was doing their final exercise before deploying.

And as you know, the commanding officer generally comes up for the FTX, the final training exercise. So we'd gone up to Moro Bay, myself, and the command of Mass Chief. And the platoon was still doing some training. They were going to do the FTX, I think, the following day. And there had been a storm off the coast. So Morrow Bay has got this thing that looks a little bit like the Rock of Gibraltar, kind of right in the middle of Morrow Bay. But what it does is it funnels the waves.

So the storm surge off the coast had created these huge waves breaking coming into Morrow Bay. Well, there was a place inside Mora Bay where the seals were training. So they were kind of in their zodiacs doing their regular training. But I noticed, as I was getting out to go with the pletons, tune that I saw two ribs out there. They didn't belong to me. They belonged to the special boat unit. But I'm kind of looking thinking, WTF, what are these guys playing on doing? Because I'm looking at 20-foot waves breaking here. And so I'm with one of the seals. I said, run me out to that

boat out there. So they zip me out there and I get on the rib and I'm talking to a young lieutenant surface warfare officer. I said, so what's playing here, son? And he says, I said, we're going to we're going to go out through the waves. I said, you're going to go out through those waves? Sir, we've got a plan. I got my senior chief. He's on the jetty. He's timing the waves. We're actually not going to go straight out through them. We're going to kind of cut around near the jetty just as it's breaking. And by the way, all my guys are trained in Kodiak. We can do this. Okay, well, give me a life jacket. I'll go with you. And of course, there are two seals in the back of the boat. Tom Rainville and Gino Paluso.

And so Gino, you may know, he's got quite the sense of humor. He's like, hey, sir, come on, let's go. And he said, you know, I didn't have a dry suit on. The water temperature was in the 50s. And he said, yeah, if we tip, you know, you're going to get awful cold. I said, well, then don't capsize the boat. So we're in the back. Three of us, three seals are kind of in the back of the boat and the bolster seats back there.

And, you know, we're all kind of time in the waves as team guys team to do. And, frankly, the waves are getting kind of bigger and bigger. and all of a sudden the coxswain guns it. Whoa! And he had straight for the wave. And, I mean, we hit this first wave. We go straight up the first wave at about 30 knots. And I literally am counting like you do when you jump out on a static line.

I go 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000. Bam! We hit in between the first and the second wave. Well, the bowman, he goes flying off. He's lost one of the engines. now he does the right thing. The coxswings the boat around because we've got no choice now.

So he guns it to try to beat the second wave. Well, the second wave, you know, his waves tend to get bigger and bigger. Second wave's probably 30-some odd feet. And he hits it again, and we hit it full speed, and we go up in the air. And this time, I literally count you 5,000,

1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000. We hit, and it's like, holy shit. Hit the boat cracks. Guys are thrown out, and now all of a sudden, the wave of the day comes, you know? So the boat is facing the said, but now we've got no power. And that third wave just lifts that boat up. And I can remember seeing it as the boat's getting lifted up. And, you know, there's water coming over. It's a 33-foot boat. And there's another, you know, eight-foot of water coming over the top of the thing. And it just, bang, throws us

right on the back. Well, I'm underneath the boat and I'm tangled up in Shotline. And, you know, shot line is this kind of very thin nylon line. It's wrapped around my neck. I've got some somebody's weapon is wrapped around me, and I am, I mean, I am completely tangled underneath this rib. And, again, much like, you know, times that you have in the teams, most of the times you can get your way out of these things. And so I'm under the boat, and I'm trying to extricate myself from this thing, but it's choking me, and I'm losing air. And I remember thinking to myself, so this is how it's going to end. I mean, all this time, and I'm going to die under this damn boat. And I remember saying to myself, well, I'm never going to see George Ann, Bill, John, or Kelly again, my wife and three kids.

And as I am struggling, again, to this day, and I actually, I use the word in the book, miraculously, I'm untangled. That should never have happened. I mean, I was so wrapped up in shot line, in somebody's sling, in the bolster seat things. and all of a sudden I'm loose, and I shoot to the surface, and, well, now I'm in the second set of waves coming again. And I'm thinking, oh, I'm not going to make this. And there's two seals who had seen this, seen the boat flip over. They're in a zodiac and their UDT swim trunks,

and they come hauling ass out of nowhere, and they're yelling at me, Skipper, skipper! And I can hear them, and I'm thinking, you better get here fast, because I'm not going to survive this next wave. And they come, I don't even get in the boat. the guy does a literal U-turn, you know, he'll slide and turn. I grabbed the side of the sponson there, hang on, and I can remember the prop is hitting my jungle boots that I've got on. And they pull me out of the wave just before it crashes over the top of me.

And they had pulled Tom Rain, another group had pulled Tom Rainville out. Those four guys ended up receiving the Navy Marine Corps life-saving medal for saving my ass and Tom's as well. But back to the second chances. I mean, it was once again, that could have been the end of my career. And, you know, there were people that thought highly enough, and they went back. I mean, they did the investigation. Everybody, we talked through everything. And the teams, to their credit, when they did the investigation, said, you know, this is what we expect of our operators.

The lieutenant who was the surface warfare officer, I mean, we expect them to push the envelope. You know, this is, and a lot of times you're going to have these expectations, guys going to push the envelope, and it's not always going to work out well. So to the credit of, you know, the Admiral and the Commodore, we all, from a career standpoint, survived it. Fast forward again, about 20-some-odd years, after the book comes out, I get an email. And a guy says, sir, you know, this is so-and-so, Lieutenant Jones. Of course, I didn't name the young lieutenant.

He said that I won't go into too much details, but he said, I love the story. It's exactly how I remembered it and just wanted to reconnect with you and say thanks for everything. And he had, again, because he had been the boat OIC. And, you know, by Navy Regs, the boat OIC actually is the guy responsible. But the thing that I admired about this young man is, so he loses the boat. And, you know, he's got to see, I mean, one, he does the right thing. He makes sure he's got a headcount on guys. he gets guys out, he gets a medevac to the hospital, and he takes immediate charge of the situation,

gets the boat off the bottom, does everything right after the disaster. And you've seen it before. Sometimes guys have a disaster like that, and they're crushed by it, and they can't think and they can't operate, and they can't take him in. This young lieutenant did exactly what he was supposed to do. I mean, sometimes bad things happen, and then you've got to kind of, you got a man up and get the job done, and he did. And I think the investigation board saw that and gave him another opportunity. You're, you know, like I look at your life and I think, you know, really had some good luck in his life.

But also reading your book, I think, damn. Because one of the next stories in your career was you basically got drawn and quartered by your parachutes, which you had a parachute ass. So you take over the, you take over the what's called. Naval Special Warfare Group 1, which is the person that's in charge of all the SEAL teams on the West Coast and all their training, manning and equipping and overseeing and giving them guidance. And you go out on a parachute jump for whatever reason, because that's what we do. And you about got drawn and quartered from the story. It sounds like you about got ripped in half.

That's about right. Yeah, so this was a routine parachute jump. And I'm not a good jumper. I'm not a good free faller, but, you know, something you got to do. So we go out, launched out of North Island on a C-130 and get up to about 13,000 feet, and it's going to be, again, a routine jump. Ramp comes down, and it's, I mean, it's one of these kind of Chamber of Commerce days here in Southern California, not a cloud in the sky.

I remember, I mean, you can see Mexico, you can see the Pacific Ocean, you can see the strand, and it's like, oh, that's a beautiful day. And I'm, I don't know, fourth in the line of March, so to speak. So the guys go out and jump matcher gives me the call. I go out behind these guys, and I'm falling flat and stable. I'm looking good. And there's two guys off to my left and one guy off to my right. And I'm watching this guy off to my right, and he's starting to kind of drift underneath me.

And I'm kind of watching him. But then he's stabilized. Next thing, I know the guy to my left is right underneath me. And I check my altimeter, it's too late. It's about 5,500 feet. He pulls his parachute. And in relative terms, of course, I'm moving at about 120 miles an hour, and he's stopped. I can't get out of the way.

and I hit his parachute. It's kind of like hitting an airbag, I would assume. And so it dazes me, and now I'm spinning out of control. As you know, what I should have done is gotten stable again, look, check my altimeter, pulled my rip cord. But, you know, things being what they were, I'm spinning, I'm dazed. I'm like, hey, I just know I got to reach for my rip cord,

or this isn't going to end well. So I reach for my rip cord, pull it. Well, I'm in a head-down attitude spinning. Pilot shoot comes out, wraps around one leg. The riser comes out, round. wraps around another leg. Now I'm completely tangled up in the parachute. I remember thinking myself, yeah, this doesn't look so good. So, you know, I'm sitting here trying to get my way out of the parachute or at least get the damn thing to open. Well, the good news is it opens. The bad news is

when a parachute opens, you know, it blossoms. So one riser went one way, one went the other way, and it snapped my pelvis and two, broke it by about four or five inches, fractured my back, ripped the muscles out of my stomach that's attached to the bony part of your pelvis and ripped the muscles out of the legs and I ended up about about two miles from the drop zone. Now, I'm always quick to point out, like this kind of injury pales in comparison to what we saw in Iraq and what we saw in Afghanistan. And the lessons from the jump were not so much about the accident, but it was really more about the fact that, you know, at the time, as you point out, I'm the Commodore. I mean, I'm one of the senior guys on the West Coast. I've been in the business

for 20-some-odd years. I'd had a lot of near-death experiences. I was pretty savvy. I thought I was invincible sort of thing. And the next thing you know, you're in the ER and the hospital and you're laid up and you realize it takes a whole lot of people to get you back up going again. My wife became my nurse because once I got out of the hospital, you know, you've got to get shots and make sure you don't, your blood doesn't clot. Admiral Erick Olson made sure I was able to stay in the Navy. And back then, that was touch and go because, you know, you're a pretty serious accident. Oh, by the way, you're a Navy SEAL. what good are you going to do if you can't walk and you can't run?

And team guys, being team guys, they came by, gave me the right amount of harassment, the right amount of encouragement. And it really did take a lot of people to kind of get me up and going again. And it really was about just this remarkable, you know, a group of folks that we are honored to be part of and how they took care of me right about the time I needed it. And, of course, that was what, July 2001? It was.

Yeah, so I was laid up about it. And then, of course, 9-11 happens. And I'm actually kind of recuperating in my house, and we'd wheel the hospital bed into my house there in Coronado at the naval base when 9-11 was happening. And about a month or so later, I got called to go to the White House. And Wayne Downing, for our listeners,

he was a retired four-star general who had run U.S. Special Operations Command. And he got asked by President Bush to be in charge of the office of combating terrorism, which had been newly established after 9-11. And down he gets a hold of me and says, hey, I'd like you to come work for me. And he knew I'd been in the accident. And, of course, at that point I mean, I can't go back to an operational team as much as I wanted to. And I thought, well, you know, this will maybe give me a chance to heal. And while I got up the White House, didn't have any time doing any rehab, you know, you just went right to work.

But I had to park on what was called the ellipse, which was outside the White House. and it was about, you know, 600, half a mile maybe into the White House every day. And that became my PT, was getting out of the car and going, man, that's a long way to walk, you know. But little by little your body heals and get back to work. So now you're, and this is a, he said something that reminded me. So I've worked for Admiral McGuire where I was his aide, not at this time, but one thing that he had gotten, when September 11th happened, he was working acquisitions at the Pentagon or something like that. And he told me, you know, his attitude was, okay, not hell. Well, I want to go to a team.

I want to deploy, which is what every team guy thinks. But he just said, you know, okay, well, this is my foxhole acquisitions. I'm going to get money for the teams. That's what I'm going to do. And that was sort of the same attitude that it looked like you had. It was like, okay, this is what I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. You do talk about there's a hostage situation. Was it Martin and Graeme?

Yeah, Martin and Grasier Barnum. Well, what was interesting and get the book, it's fascinating how you put that together. But one thing that I found interesting about it, it's a good lesson learned for people is it was something that was kind of on the back burner and people weren't focused on it. And here you had two Americans that were being held hostage. And like I said, it was on the back burner. And you sort of became a champion for, hey, we need to do something about this. And that had a huge impact. And eventually, you know, a rescue mission was undertaken.

Unfortunately, the husband was killed, but the wife survived. But one person can make a huge difference. And you can be a champion for a cause and have a real impact, which is, and you know, it's not like you were the senior guy there or anything like that, but you grabbed onto this cause. You knew it was the right thing to do and let it. I thought that was a, that's a powerful thing to think about. Well, particularly, you know, I was in the White House, so you're, you are close to the, you know, the decision makers on these things. And I realized I did have an opportunity.

Now, I'm a Navy captain, so I'm fairly senior at the time. But when the Barnums had been held hostage for six or seven months before I even arrived there, and I was stunned, frankly, that we, the United States, it's not that we weren't doing anything, but I didn't think we were doing enough. And, you know, having been in the kind of hostage rescue business, I knew what was the art of the possible. And so there was a thing called the hostage subcommittee, which by virtue of my position, I was in charge of it. And it was an interagency committee. But to your point, Jaco, yeah, you have an opportunity. No matter where you are in the chain of command, you can make a difference.

And I was fortunate enough to be able to get in a brief President Bush and to have the ear of Dr. Gandhi Rice, who was a national security advisor and ambassadors from that perch in the White House to be able to try to orchestrate something on behalf of the Burnham's. And so it was pretty fulfilling to, again, we were sorry we couldn't get Martin rescued, but I remember I'd never met Gracia, but it was several months after she had been rescued. I was just sitting in my cubicle there in the White House and the phone rang, and she was on the other end and, you know, thanking me. And it's like, you don't need to thank me.

I mean, this is, you know, I'm sorry we couldn't rescue your husband. She was just, she's a remarkable woman, you know, just her faith sustained her through, you know, that year and a half in the jungle. But, but, yeah, the best thing about working in the White House was almost like the issue with the Pentagon. And this really did serve me well because two years in the White House, now I knew how the White House worked. And so when I became a deputy J-Soc commander and then the J-Soc commander, now you know how to get decisions made. You know what the interagency process works, it looks like. You know who all the players are.

And in fact, most of the players, a lot of the players that I had served with on the National Security Council staff, then a couple of years later, there's somebody else important. And so you can, back to those relationships, you can leverage those relationships in a positive fashion. So understanding how the White House work and also the great relationship. I had built served me well in a number of my commands. In between being the deputy J-Soc commander and leaving the White House, did you go to Sockier

for? So you did a tour at Sok Year? Was that like your standard two-year tour? It was two-year tour. But I was fortunate at the time. I had a great Army colonel to work for me named Stu Braden. And Stu came to me with this idea that we needed to stand up a NATO Special Operations Force. Well, the folks in NATO, the bureaucrats, did not want to do that. But Stu understood how to make this happen. And once again, I was fortunate General Jim Jones was the U-com commander, the SAC-Yur commander at the time. We pitched the plan to him, and he supported it. And as a result, we were able to stand up in 2006, the NATO Special Operations Force,

that today has got 22, 24 countries that are part of NATO SOF. And, of course, they deployed with us overseas in Afghanistan and continue to be a great partner. And a lot of that credit goes right back to Stu Braidan and the great work he did. From there, you do, you go to J-Soc. You take over as the deputy commander. And I think you throw out in C-Stories. You give an example, which I think is a, well, it's a pretty important story. There's a mission going on.

You're in the talk. the TAC Cooperation Center, and here we go. I'm going to go to the book. This is from C-Stories. Unbeknownst to me, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Coltrip, the Sea Squadron Commander, and Colonel Jim Hickey from First Brigade, fourth infantry division,

had maneuvered farther up the dirt road from Wolverine 1, which was one target, to another small house designated Wolverine 2. As I watched the ISR feed from the West Cam and listened to the radios, the visual and verbal didn't match up. Wolverine 1 appeared reason,

Quiet but the radio calls from Coltrup sounded like they were moving rapidly on a target It sounds like they're on target Lee. I don't see any movement outside the house I motioned to the jock non-commissioned officer who sat at the end of the long wooden table that made a horseshoe around the ISR screen So you're sitting there watching this thing unfold. I SR is what's what's the feed that's coming from the aircraft overhead He was also on the headset seeing what I was seeing which was nothing I raised my hands in the universal sign of WTF and And he shrugged and called back. ISR is on the target.

I don't know where the squadron is, sir. I hated to call the squadron in the middle of an operation. And that's an important point, you know, from a, from my perspective, you know, I was a platoon commander and assault force commander in a platoon and then attaching a commander. And the fact that you weren't jumping on there, hey, where are you at? What's going on? What's going on? Is, is, I'd say if you've got a boss, you've got at least a 50% chance of a boss that

wants to know exactly where you are at all time, and it's not fun, and it doesn't help. And so here you are. You say, I hated to call the squadron in the middle of an operation. It's the last thing any tactical guy on the ground wants, a call from his boss, sitting warm and comfortable in a jock 50 miles away from the action. Still, it was our responsibility to manage the quick reaction force and the medical evacuation of something went wrong on target. That was hard to do if you didn't have good situational awareness of the mission.

And the truth was, I was curious as to whether this new lead was panning out so they were tracking a lead somewhat somewhat reluctantly I pushed the talk I pushed the talk button and reached out to Coltrip bill are you on target yes sir Coltrip responded somewhat excitedly we don't see you on ISR there was a pause on Coltrip's end sir we are on Wolverine 2 just down the road from the original target and we have jackpot jackpot jackpot jackpot was the code word meaning they had captured the objective at first I assumed Koltrip meant case. Is that who you were looking for?

But suddenly it occurred to me that the tone of Kultriv's voice indicated something more significant. Jackpot? Do you mean little jackpot or big jackpot? Big jackpot, Koltrip answered. And going, as this goes forward, big jackpot was Saddam. Right. So these guys had just captured Saddam.

And I was actually, I was in Iraq at the time. And so we had found out. I think we had found out we found out really quickly. One of the guys that we were working, one of the OGA guys we were working out with was one of the early interrogators on him and come down,

we got him. So as much as I know you were trying to keep the secret, there was it didn't stay secret very well. That didn't stay secret long, no. That one didn't stay secret very long. I know there's a there's a, before we jump in a little bit about Saddam. So when you, when you were running that, that earlier I mentioned you were running this project of like looking at the future of warfare and what we could do.

And I was part of that. So I was and there was like five of us and you were basically taking us and sending us to all these very cool, probably some of the best schools I ever went to. I went to lock picking and car stealing and just all these really cool school schools to get us prepared to do, like you said, operations from a totally different perspective. And I remember I sat through your brief a couple times and you would brief. you know, some senior officers, and you'd say, hey, listen, in the SEAL teams, we do direct action, but we have TLAMs now. And so do we really need to do direct shot? Or are we really going to have to do direct action missions when we've got TLOMs?

And we've got another thing we do is special reconnaissance. Well, are we really going to do, need to do special reconnaissance when we've got satellites and we've got, you know, UAV capabilities that are coming on board? And, you know, I remember, like I said, I was a young guy and thinking, okay, well, I need I need to transfer to this new format. We're not going to do direct action anymore. I think the next time I saw you, I was in Baghdad. You came down to Camp Jenny Posey where we were.

We were, I was jocked up, literally about to go out of my whatever 50th or whatever direct action mission. And I thought it was funny. I kind of smiled to myself. Said, well, looks like we're still doing it. It looks like we're still doing it, sir. But this mission got Saddam. And then, man, you, you. do a, it's a very interesting perspective.

I mean, how, how crazy is it to sit here and talk to you? You were interacting with Saddam when he got captured and you detailed in the book. But I mean, just some, some high-level thoughts. What was that like detailing with this freaking horrible, horrible, sadistic person? Yeah, it was very interesting because the, you know, when he first captured him, I mean, he was pompous, he was arrogant. When Bill called back, when Bill Coltrop called back and said, hey, we got big jackpot, to your point you had asked about Case. So case was the guy we were the facilitator. So we were trying to get the facilitator who we thought was going to lead us to Saddam.

Well, they had gotten Case, and then Case had kind of pointed them towards Saddam, and they opened the spider hole. You've seen the picture. Saddam's in there. So they bring Saddam back to Critt, and I'm down in Baghdad. And so now we had a plan. Okay, what do you do if you get Saddam? Well, I had to call General Abbasid, who was a CENTCOM commander. I called General McChrystal, who was my boss back in Tampa. And I had to make plans. And I had to make plans. to, well, we want to verify that it's Saddam, so I needed to get DNA sent to the lab, the FBI lab, and all that sort of thing.

But as all this is happening, the JTF commander, General Rick Sanchez, I get the word, General Sanchez is outside the jock. I was like, what? I mean, he was the big guy in Iraq time, three star at the time. And so bring him on in. So Sanchez comes in, sits down beside. me and says, Bill, I understand you got Saddam.

I said, hey, sir. I do not know that yet. I'm not going to call Jackpot until I can see it, until we can verify it. You know how this goes. You know, there are a lot of times we had captured guys who we thought had the right name. The Cunias were different. The people were different.

You call Jack Pot, then you're embarrassed, you know, 24 hours later. It's not the right guy. And he says, hey, no, I mean, I heard through, you know, through OGA that you got him. I said, well, sir, he'll be down here in 30 minutes. you can see for yourself. I think we both just spotted the leak, huh? Well, so the, about 30 minutes later, the Hilo arrives. Well, I mean, I'm busy making phone calls,

so I turned to my chief of staff, who I call him, I think, Captain Lee at his request. And I said, hey, go over there. You've got to come back and I'm trusting you. Tell me whether you think it's Saddam or not. So he and General Sanchez go over there and he comes back a few months later and goes, sir, it's Saddam.

And said, okay, so now I'm calling Abisade and do it, my sort of thing. Well, about half an hour later, I go back over there. And I remember talking to Sanchez. It was kind of one of those funny moments. So Saddam has this big beard. And I realized we got to get him cleaned up because we're going to have this kind of press release and everything. And frankly, it looked like Saddam even with a big beard. I mean, he's got this boldest nose and everything.

But I figured, well, let's get him cleaned up. So no Iraqis can say it's not Saddam. So I turned to one of the guys that said, okay, let's get him shaved and get him cleaned up. and then we'll take a picture and then we'll be able to compare the, you know. So as I'm saying, Sanchez turns to me, he says, I don't know, Bill, do we have the authority to shave him? I said, sir, we had the authority to kill him if he was, you know, if he was trying to guess. I think we got the authority to shave him. We both kind of laughed.

I really liked Rick Sanchez. He was a good guy. So I go off, make some more phone calls, I come back, assuming that what had happened was some Ranger or somebody had gotten the shears and was kind of clean and said, I'm but why come back? Saddam's got a pair of scissors in his hand, and he's clipping his own beard. I'm like, no, let me have those scissors. Yeah, just, yeah, pull those away. And he's like, I was told to get cleaned up.

But the next day was the day when you recall the press conference where the ambassador and Joel Sanchez say, we got him. Well, they hadn't seen him yet. Sanchez had seen him, but the ambassador hadn't seen him yet. So they fly out to our place there in Baghdad and go to see Saddam, and they brought some of the Iraqi leaders with him. And again, Saddam, I've got him now in a jumpsuit and he's sitting on a cot. But when the Iraqi leaders came into the room, small room, about this size, actually,

I mean, they are yelling at him, they're spitting at him, and he's got this look on his face like, boys, I'm still in charge here. Sit down. And he kind of motions to him. He just sit down. Don't you know who I am? And I'm looking and thinking, wow, he is, he still thinks he's in charge. He's about to find out he's no longer in charge, you know.

I didn't really want to bring those guys in because I knew this would happen. It was just bolster his ego. So after they left, I talked to Sanchez and talked to the ambassador. I said, so that's it. I don't want anybody else visiting him. I am responsible for him now. I mean, and called General Labs Aid, he will tell you, I'm responsible for him. So here's what I'm telling you. Nobody else visits him. We will, you know, I will take good care of him, but I don't want him, you know, feeling like he's somebody important. So for the next 30 days, I held on to him. and in the room I had an officer and a security guy and a medic or a doctor at all times with him because he was six to seven years old and he had all sorts of health problems but it was interesting to watch as as the days and weeks went on and he no longer had his you know palaces and he no longer

had his generals and he no longer had his handmaidens he really just became a pathetic old man and and every time I'd come in every I'd go check on him every day he'd always stand up want to talk to me. I would say, no. And I wouldn't talk to him. And it made him mad. And he would talk to the Rangers and the doc. And I told him, I said, I don't want anybody saying a word to him. And he would always ask about El Hefe. And, of course, I came in. I made sure my stars weren't on and my name tag wasn't on. But he knew who I was. I mean, just by, you can end. So 30 days into it, it was signed and move him. And I was really hoping that, By this time, you know, the insurgency had really kind of blossomed.

He didn't know that, of course. And I thought, well, let's see if I can get him to tell the insurgents to stand down. So we had a plan, brought my translator in. And, of course, I knew what his answers would be, but I figured I got nothing to lose here. So I sat down with him and I said, look, you know, the war is over here. The Americans have come in. And he just kind of nodded. And I said, but your people are still dying.

and you know you can do one and two things you can become Benito Mussolini and be the petty dictator or you can do right by your country now it's not going to end well for you you got to know that but tell them to lay down their arms so we're not killing any more Iraqis

and I knew he'd asked me the question that I thought he would ask he said if it was you would you do it and I said look if it was for the best part of my country I'd do what it took to save my country And he looks at me, he goes, I don't think so. In Arabic, but it was trying, I knew what he meant.

And then I said to him, I said, okay, you're not going to see me again. We're moving you. And he was like, because we've been taking pretty good care of him. And he was like, uh-oh, this is not a good idea. And so then he starts to get a little talkative. I said, time's done. And so that night, we undercover darkness, we moved him to some military police, and they held on to him until the trial.

But watching his, again, watching him and his behavior and how it changed when he no longer felt he was in a position of power was, I think, important to realize, you know, that's what you do, you know, your book back on bullies. You know, at the end of the day, you stand up to the bullies. And if all they had was the trappings around them, they're not the kind of people that are going to be able to stand up to you for very long. And, you know, he was a function of the generals that supported him and all of the trappings. And when you took that away, he was just a bully. A sadistic, maniacal. Evil. Evil.

Just evil. Pure evil. So you get Saddam and did you think the war was going to be over at that point? No, because by that point, we'd seen the insurgency begin to build. As you recall, you know, I got there in October of 2003. And it was interesting. When I got there, the guy I was relieving, it was an Air Force One Star who was the deputy at J-Socat time. I'm getting there thinking, hot dang, you know, I finally got to get in the war. And he says, hey, look, you said, you know, there's some great restaurants in downtown Baghdad. You know, if you, you get a break, go down, there's this place to get some swarm. I'm like, I'm sorry, what? He goes, oh, yeah, I said, man, the war's over. And we just got to get Saddam. But, I mean, everything's kind of over now.

I was like, damn. And then a couple weeks later, Route Irish blows up, and as you know, Route Irish never changed after that. Then we started getting guys ambushed. And again, this was the transition period of the war.

So by the time we got Saddam in December, the insurgency was kind of, you know, it was moving pretty strong by then. So we knew that it wasn't going to be over anytime soon. But so I was there too at that time. The last op that I did, well, we did a couple more, but the last big op that I did was going after Yakubi,

which was Sotters, one of Sotters lieutenants, and that really made things bad really quickly. So you're the deputy at J-Soc and how are you just doing like a port and Starboard in Iraq? Yeah, and Afghanistan. So, of course, at this point in time, so this is 2003 for me. You know, we had gone into Afghanistan, kicked the Taliban out, put Karzai in, and then Afghanistan was kind of for a long time there. It was the other theater that we didn't have much presence there. The only soft presence was a kind of a half a seal squadron at the time and probably some reserve green berets from the 20th and 19th group. everybody else was in was in Iraq. And so we go to Iraq, but then in late 2003, General

Abzade says, hey, look, we need to pick up the pace in Afghanistan, a little concerned about Taliban resurgence, et cetera. So what we would do is I would go kind of over to theater and in a, you know, four or five, six months sort of pump, and I'd spend a couple of months in Iraq and then I'd go to Afghanistan. Then I'd come back to Iraq and then I'd go to Afghanistan. So I would bounce back and forth on the plane, you know, fly through LUD, stop there, and then go to Afghanistan, spend a couple of weeks there kind of managing that, pop back to Iraq, and so it was just kind of back and forth. And it was supposed to be generally three months on, three months off, rarely ended up being that when I was the deputy. It'd be, you know, four or five months back for a couple months, back out, and so we just kind of flip-flop back and forth. And at some point in time, Joe McChrystal kind of came over and really began to focus on Iraq and then moved me to Afghanistan.

And so myself and the other deputy then kind of began to rotate more and more in Afghanistan. But that took a while. When did you take over as commander, J-Soc? 2008. Then did you start spending more time in Iraq? Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I remember at the time we had devout. the capability to really be able to kind of command and control remotely at that point in time.

We built up the jock in Fort Bragg to be in a position where the ISR was good enough. And you could have stayed, as the commander, you could have stayed in Fort Bragg, let the colonels and maybe the one stars kind of run things. But there's no way that was going to happen. I mean, you've got to be forward if you're going to command. So, yeah, I mean, a week or so after I took command, I went out to Iraq and then settled down there for six months, seven months, I don't remember what it was. And then periodically, I'd bounce over to Afghanistan just to kind of keep things moving over there.

And then in 2009, by this time, Joel Petraeus had taken over CENTCOM, and he said, hey, look, we really need to have you, the J-Soc commander, shift your flag to Afghanistan. So then I would say prior to that, it was probably three-quarters of my time in Iraq, a quarter in Afghanistan. 2009 comes, just reversed. Then, you know, three quarters of my time in Afghanistan, about a quarter of my time in Iraq. You got a section in C stories that I think, I'm not going to say there's a typical mission, but, I mean, there's a little bit of a typical mission.

It's what you mentioned already. You know, you do something over and over again repetitively, and I thought this was a, this one, pretty concise little, quote, typical mission going to the book. In a cloud of dust, the helo's lifted off from an airfield in western Iraq and within minutes were in a tight formation screaming across the desert just 50 feet off the ground. Two minutes later, the next call came crossing the border. A drone flying high overhead captured the scene as the four helos crested a large berm separating Iraq from Syria. It was broad daylight and there was no hiding from view. If the Syrian air defense detected helos either visually or on radar, they would immediately open fire with surface to air missiles or anti-aircraft guns.

The Syrians were our allies, but not our friends. Friends. One minute's touchdown. From above, the two Black Hawk gunships took the lead and immediately began to separate one taking the north side of Gadda's compound, the other the south. They would provide gunfire support for the assaulters. The view from the drone shifted away from the approaching helos and onto the compound. In the large courtyard, seven men hearing the noise of the inbound helos began to run excitingly,

looking for cover, grabbing their guns, ready to fight. On screen, Roger Votel. responded watching as the helos came into view barely missing the outside wall the lead helo flared its nose arching upward tail rotor down as it stopped in midair and landed hard on the ground inside the courtyard shots fired shots fired came the familiar refrain the operators poured out of the first helo and immediately were engaged by gadia and his men the next helo was seconds behind executing the same aerial maneuver landing just feet from the first aircraft outside the wall the last two helo set down the soldiers rushing off the aircraft and taking up

security positions to ensure that none of Gidea's men escape the assault. Shots fired, shots fired. The operators inside the courtyard spread out, sweeping forward toward Gidea. The rounds flying both ways. There was no way out. One by one, Gidea's men fell and within minutes the fight was over. Cowering unarmed in the small tent in the middle of the compound were several young children and a woman.

The drone overhead watched as the operators went from dead man to dead man looking for their target. minutes later came the call jackpot i say again jackpot roger votel answered a smile coming across his face this mission had been a long time coming on target the chaos was subsiding the gunfire had stopped but the clock was ticking by now the syrians were aware the americans had crossed the border it was time to go picking up the body of abu gadia the assaters exited the compound boarded the helos and within three minutes were back in iraq the total time of the mission 17 minutes. But you're right. Typical mission. As you well know, this was, at one point in time, I think we were doing between 20 and 25 missions a night in Iraq with the whole force, not one entity, but the entire force. And they all followed pretty much the same sort of method of operation that you either went in by Helo or you went in by ground assault. And of course, the great thing about Iraq from a tactical standpoint, from a commander standpoint, is

you could drive to the objective. If you were in Baghdad or Mosul or pick a place, you know, you drive 500 feet from the objective, the guys get out, you know, the guys put up blocking positions, the assault force comes in, reaches the door and way they go. And, yeah, I would go out with the guys periodically, and we'd hit four or five targets a night, you know, just, up, not there, up, not there, you know, and eventually you get the bad guy. And then, of course, the Hilo ops we use mainly for getting out into, you know, Ramadi area

and a little further out. But that particular mission, Al-Guardia was probably one of the most notorious facilitators, and we just could never get to him. And he was the guy that was bringing in all the fighters, foreign fighters from outside Iraq, and he would funnel them in through across the border and into al-Qaeda and Iraq, we called him at the time. But he was elusive. And finally, when we finally got an opportunity to get him,

I was briefing President Bush on the video, and it was interesting to see. It was great because the president was very decisive, and I was fortunate in the course of my time as both the commander and the deputy. I had both President Bush and President Obama, and I will offer as different as they may have been from a personality standpoint. They were both very decisive when it came to giving you authority to go get the bad guys. and this one, you know, I remember President Bush going around the table with, you know, the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and they all said, thumbs up, and away we went. And, hey, again, from the, so I gave Votel, hey, you, you, you, your timeline, you go.

And he was in Iraq at the time. And next thing I know, you know, 17 minutes. I mean, 17 minutes from the time they launched, time across the border, get the objective and back. That was, I remember when I reported back to the White House, they're like, I'm sorry, what? It's done. It's done? That's freaking outstanding. That's building a good reputation for the troops, huh?

Holy mackerel. In the midst of all this stuff you got going on, you get hit with the Mersk, Alabama and Captain Phillips. And what's interesting, I remember I used to tell these young junior officers and platoon commanders and task unit commanders, if you think these operations are just going to show up on your door and like, okay, cool, we'll just go execute it. Every one of them is like a soap opera to try and get it to put together. And you have to kind of force these operations to happen. And so you've got all that going on. And then here comes this, the Marisk, Alabama. And it's great.

You've got to read the book. There's all these different assets. You've got people, guys moving from different theaters and guys from the states coming out. You got air assets. You got Navy assets, ships and logistics for all those pieces. This is a massive operation. And again, I love your tone of voice when you read it in the audiobook. You keep saying, it's a lifeboat.

Like, it's almost comical. And I just went to the UDT Seal Museum in Fort Pierce, Florida, where they have the lifeboat. Oh, do they really? They've got it there. I haven't seen it. I'll have to take a look. Yeah, no, it's great. And, of course, we got some connections there.

So you're not allowed to walk inside, but we got to walk inside and check it all out. You can see all the bullet holes are there and everything. But what I noticed about that, a couple things. Number one, the authority and trust that you had with the guys on the ground, which is the mark of the leader that you want to work for, the one that's not micromanaging, the one that trusts the guys on the ground.

General Patton said the, what do you say? The commander on the ground is always right. And that seemed to be your attitude all the time. The trust that you had with the guys on the ground and what was phenomenal. also as even when that op happened, I remember thinking of myself, man, if that happened in 1994,

how much different, do you think it would have been a lot different? Well, you know, the interesting thing about it, and you characterize it correctly. And the operators don't even understand this, and nor do they need to know this. But I talked about my time working in the White House for two years in the White House. So when I became the J-Soc commander,

I was in a position to, be able to understand how decisions were made in the White House and also in the Pentagon. And I had a great relationship with the Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, who was the chairman. And of course, we'd done a number of things for the White House at that point in time. But one of the things I used to always do, and I think it infuriated some folks in the White House in the Pentagon, was I would always say, let me preposition the guys. You don't have to make the decision. You don't have to give me the authority to do the assault, but what I don't want to do is for you to give me the authority and then not be in the window to do it. So let me go ahead and put

the guys off the coast of Somalia for whatever we were going to do. And then if you decide to go, go. And finally, of course, somebody said, you do this every time. And you know that there is this kind of predisposition that if the guys are already out there, why not just let him do it? I was like, really? No, I didn't know that. But that was always a little bit of the game, if you will, I played in terms of making sure that I wanted the guys always to be in a position that if we got the approval to go, that they weren't, we weren't now having to move and then miss the opportunity because I'd seen it happen before where we waited and waited and the decision was hard and finally people would say, okay, we're going to give you permission to go and you go, I'm sorry, man. It's going to take me three days to get there. It's going to take me three days to get there. And that's what they didn't understand a lot of it.

It's three days by the time, not just the guys from the states, but you've got to move ships down. And ships don't move very fast, you know. So, you know, 99% of the time, I think the White House and the Pentagon was happy that I pushed them to be in a position, but not always. But in the case with the Maris, Alabama, I mean, I get the call from the joint staff that this lifeboat's been taken. We've got a captain in there, and you may get called to.

to do this mission. Of course, I kept thinking, it's a lifeboat. But very quickly, I mean, it happened to be over Easter, and it's not that things changed much over Easter, as you know, but I just remember it happened to be that weekend. But, you know, immediately, hey, I know what to do. I'm going to get on the video with Admiral Mullen, and I'm going to get on the video with the White House, and we're going to begin to lay out a plan, and I'm going to make sure that the guys on the West Coast are ready to move because we've got to get boats. I've got to get boats. I've got to get the fleet moving. Interestingly enough for this, my one time that I was proud, I was a fleet commander for a couple of days because General Petraeus chopped the change of operational control,

chopped the fleet assets to me, even though I was actually in Afghanistan. And of course, what people, I think, have trouble understanding is my situational awareness, by the time this was go, my situational awareness in Afghanistan was almost as good in terms of the bigger picture of the guys who were on the ground because I'm looking at it from the closed circuit TV that's on board the ship. We've got a drone overhead. We've got a lot of these assets so you can kind of see what's happening. Of course, at the end of the day, Captain Scott Moore, who was the commander of the seal unit there, he's the guy that's running the show on the ground. But Scott and I are talking, you know, a couple times a day. But yeah, you can't be in a position as the three-star to be telling,

okay, like, I want the snipers in these positions. And I only want the snipers to do that. No, no, you've got to rely on the guys that have been doing this again for years at this point in time. You know they're going to make the best decision possible. That was one of the things that always gave me comfort as a commander was I knew the guys would make as good a decision as I would make. I needed to put them in a position to be successful. My job was to get them to the point where now they could take action if they needed to and then let them figure out how to take the best action. whether that was bin Laden raid, whether that was the Mariske, Alabama, whether it was a thousand other missions, hey, you're the commander, I'm not going on the op. I'm not going to be the guy that's in the line of

March. I'm not going to be breaching the door. I want to put you in a position to be successful. I want to make sure you got the right ISR. I want to make sure you got the right cap overhead. I want to make sure you got the right medevac. I want to make sure we're monitoring in a way that's going to make you successful. In the end of the day, hey, young sergeant, young petty officer, young captain, young lieutenant, whoever you happen to be, you take the tackle end of this, and you'll do just fine. Yeah, you'll screw it up every once in a while. Guess what we all do?

And when that does, we'll take a hard look at why we made the mistake. And we'll make the corrections. And if somebody screwed it up because they really did something bad, we're going to hold you accountable. But other than that, get out and do the very best you can. We weren't always successful. We had some ops that went south on us. But I wouldn't change anything about the way we had set up the organization

to empower the guys. at that level to make the decisions and take the actions. Yeah, I call that the iterative decision-making process. That was one thing that I, as I was in charge of things and some kind of an operation would come up, or even if it was like a totally tactical thing of what should we do right now, I would always make really small decisions really quickly. And it made people think I was very decisive because I would make decisions very quickly. They wouldn't recognize how small decisions I had made,

And then I would just adapt and adjust them as needed as we move forward. But I like the fact that you use the iterative decision-making process, taking small steps to actually put some, to make it easier for the boss to make a final decision. Because look, we're already. Just all you need to do is pull the trigger. The weapons there. The site is on.

We're ready to do this. Just say go and we'll go. Similar, similar one with Salah Ali Salah Nabon. Am I saying that right? Salih Nabahn, right? Salih Nabahan. So you talk about, you know, again, these, there's relationships. And here you had Van Hoosier on the ground who's, who's like the epic seal officer, right?

He was a, he was in Vietnam as a Marine and, you know, lost his leg due to a parachute accident and is just a badass. Right. Nothing stops Pete. That's right. And here you are. You have, so you've got him below you in the chain of command where you've got this awesome trust. and then up the chain of command, you've got Mullen and the chairman of the,

I mean, Mullen, Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the chairman of the chiefs of staff, and he trusts you. So this is how you run this thing is through these relationships. Yeah, and it went, fortunately by that time, by the time we were running for Sali Nabhan.

So Sali Nabhan was a guy in Somalia, but he had been responsible for two embassy bombings. And he was, at one point in time, he was like the number one guy on the FBI's top 10 list. And then after 9-11 happens, he kind of falls a little lower down the list. But nobody could find him. Again, a very elusive guy hiding in Somalia.

And then again, our focus had shifted to Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, all of a sudden we get this lead on Nabhan. But we didn't know whether or not it was him for certain. Again, we had an OGA source who said, hey, we think this is him. And if it is him, he's going to be in a blue sedan. He's going to move up and down the beach. So back to that process again, it was, okay, I'm going to put the guys in a position.

So we moved a couple of small boys, a couple of destroyers out there, put some little bird helicopters on them, and set the conditions so that if, in fact, we had a bead on Nabhan, then we were in a position to react. And to your point about Pete Van Hoosier, so again, interestingly enough, you talk about the distributed command. So I'm in Afghanistan. Pete is back in the States.

We are both looking at the same feed. so we had a predator overhead, an ISR platform. And now, I had briefed this because there had been a lot of concern in the White House that they didn't want to put heloes anywhere in Somalia because of the Black Hawk Down incident. And no matter how much I tried to convince them that really it would be okay, we know how to do this, we've been doing this a lot, there were still a lot of sensitivity to that, and I understood that. But we had developed this kind of special bomb at the time

that we could drop from a small airplane, but it was experimental, to say the least. And so I had been given approval to, okay, you can bring the helos in, but only to confirm that you've killed the bad guy. Don't want the helo's in until the bomb has been dropped, and you've gotten the bad guy, and then bring the heloes in, get the remains, bring him back. Yes, sir, got it.

Well, you know, not always that simple. So as the sedan starts to move, and we believe that to be Sali Nabhan, We've got, I mean, it's a long road, but there's only a small window of opportunity where that vehicle is not going to be in a crowded area, not a little village or something, because we didn't obviously want to hit any civilians. So the plane gets overhead. We're in the window, but the plane can't get a bead on the weather comes in.

Nothing's looking right. We can't get the targeting right. And now I'm losing my target. So Pete Van Hoosier's on the other end going, sir, come on. you know, we need to send the helos in. And I'm like, you know, I was really told kind of not to do that. But now my target is getting away. And, you know, you roll the dice and hope that this is the bad guy that you thought it was.

And so finally I said, okay, Pete, you got it. And, you know, the helos went in. And, of course, as soon as the bad guys saw the helos, they open up on us. Helos open up on them. That obviously doesn't go too well for them. These little word gunships, which you're familiar with. seals get off the helos, do a quick cord on. I mean, this was right before they were getting to a little village,

pull the bodies out, and all four of them turned out to be bad guys, and Sali Navon was one of them. And I remember the next day, or maybe later that day, Admiral Mullen comes on the video. And, yeah, he's very gracious. He goes, well, you know, Bill, congratulations. Please pass on my congratulations to Captain Van Hoosier and the guys. Really good job.

said, thank you, sir. And he goes, now William, and I knew I was in trouble when he called me William. He says, now, William, I recall you briefing the president of the United States that you were going to drop a bomb on this guy and there weren't, you know, no helos were going to come in. Yes, sir. Well, you know, every once in a while you've got to give the commander a little discretion. And the admiral kind of smiled. And again, he said, okay, William, I'll let you get away with it.

time and all as well it ends well sort of thing but the president never questioned it and i think mowlin appreciated the commander's decision yeah and those the amount of leadership capital i made sure that one might cost you a little bit of leadership capital but the amount of leadership i mean we just talk about the other op that we discussed there with abuadilla you know 17 minutes and and how many as you said thousands of operations were conducted that you know look we all we all know some of them go bad and sideways and that's awful. But the, I mean,

the batting average of success was overwhelmingly, it's actually incredible when you think about it. And so this, this, this opt tempo and this kind of being successful on a regular basis and building that leadership capital. And kind of, I mean,

I guess you, in my opinion, or the way it looks, the final operation that you, you cover, and C stories is is the first one that I started off with, which like I said is, I guess it's 10 years. Yeah, it's been 10 years.

And I mean, if that's not the most famous U.S. Special Operations Mission, I'm not sure what is, but it's Neptune Spear, the raid that killed bin Laden. And, I mean, you've got to, you know, the perspective that you give the intelligence gathered, the preparation, the secrecy. I mean, you got one part where you're talking about. I forget who it is. You're talking about maybe it's your ex-O or your deputy or maybe your ops officer, but you're not even telling your ops officer.

It's complete secrecy about what's going on, the professionalism in every department. You go through and kind of talk about the decision-making process and the discussion to get to these decision points and the conversations and the relationships between you and Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates and the CIA officials and then the president who's who, who has to understand and be comfortable with this. And the, I mean, this is a tough, this is a freaking hard choice to make. Massive amount of risk and some other much lower risk in terms of U.S. troops.

And, you know, like to say, oh, yeah, of all these options, we're going to take the one that puts the U.S. troops in the biggest risk. just do an incredible job of spelling that out in the book, the pilots, their skills, and then, of course, you know, you got the seals on the ground, the best guys in the world, the best of the best. What an incredible story. Well, there were so many people that had to make this happen.

And to your point, you know, great trust from, you know, the president on down. But I look back and I'm always quick to point out about this, and you can certainly appreciate this. You know, we were, we were honored to be the guys that got bin Laden. And I think what the reason we were honored was because we were representing, you know, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, you know, and thousands that were killed in combat and training for combat that had died as a result of 9-11. So, yeah, this was, I mean, this was the brass ring for us, but it was also an opportunity to represent everybody that had sacrificed so much from Iraq and Afghanistan. But on this particular mission, you know, back to my earlier discussion, my job, I knew my job was to put the operators in a position where they were going to be successful.

Unfortunately, early on, because we referred to it as the bigot list, which is a World War II term that says, you know, only those people that are all. authorized to know the intelligence. So when I was brought into this in late January, it was me. And of course, the White House is looking for a plan. And now, fortunately, you know, I had been in the teams at 34 years or something at that point in time and thousands and thousands of missions. And frankly, I did go back to my thesis at the postgraduate school. And I figured, okay, I'll present a shell of a plan to the president. And then we'll take it from there. but the plan was going to be pretty simply. We're going to get on a helicopter.

We're going to go from point A to point B. We're going to get the bad guy, put him back on a helicopter and come home. That's it. I had looked at a lot of other alternatives. Could we parachute in? Could we come in by vehicle? Could we, you know, was there other ways to get to the target? But every time I looked at that, I kind of came back to my thesis, which was this idea

of the point of vulnerability. At what point in time would you get tripped up? So if we parachute in, you walk into an LZ and the next thing you know, there's kids on the LZ and now you're still 15, 16 kilometers from the target. you just ain't going to make it. Same thing on if we come in by vehicles, what happens if we had stopped at a checkpoint and everything gets busted? So I decided early on that it was just going to be heloes from point A to point B. And that's what I briefed the president on. And early on, it was just me and I had another captain who was in D.C. that was kind of covering for me. But to your point, I couldn't

tell anybody. I couldn't tell my command sergeant major. I couldn't tell my ex-o. I mean, that was it. So my executive officer, a guy named Colonel Art Sellers, who was just magnificent, throughout this. I always say he's kind of the unsung hero. Early on, I had to tell Art, because in my world, I'm a three-star admiral, and your executive officer is the guy that, I mean, he's kind of like an aide-de-camp, but more so. He's the guy to make sure that every piece of paperwork comes in that you've got to take care of, you take care of. Anything that's happening, the Ex-O is orchestrating all this, and he becomes your kind of closest buddy along with your aid to camp. So I told Art earlier on, I said, Art, something's brewing. I don't want you to ask any

questions about it. You just need to do what I tell you and, and we'll be fine. It was like former ranger, sir, I got it. And Art kind of helped me through all this. We'd move from point A to point B and the staff would call up and go, where's the Admiral going? I would say, you just get him there. You will worry about where he's going. Now, the interesting thing was, I had been diagnosed with cancer in 2010. And so with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. So the staff was always a little reluctant to ask me where I was going. And when I kept going back and forth to Washington, D.C., they assumed I was going to Bethesda or Walter Reed for treatment. I didn't, again, I didn't want to necessarily play on my cancer diagnosis, but I also didn't want to disabuse him that idea because it gave me a little bit of cover for action.

I could move, and the staff would just say, he's in Washington, and people would say, what's you doing? And they would kind of go, we don't know. But they felt comfortable thinking it was kind of part of my cancer treatment. Finally, you know, the president at one point in time said, well, okay, you've briefed me on this. Can we do it? Sir, I don't know. I mean, I've got to bring in air planners. I've got to bring in the seals. I've got to bring in, you know, more people before I can really tell you whether or not we can do this. So the president gave me about three weeks, and that's when I brought the guys in to that undisclosed location in North Carolina where you read the excerpt at the beginning. And it was pretty funny. Because as you can appreciate, you know, these guys have just come back from deployment. I'm often asked, you know, why did you pick the seals over the Delta Force guys?

And they think it was because I was a seal. It was like, are you kidding me? You think I would risk this mission based on some parochial nature of who I thought was going to be wearing a Trident or not? So there were two commanders I trusted implicitly on the Army side and the Navy side. Unfortunately, for the Army guys, they had literally just deployed to Afghanistan. And the SEAL squadron had just come back. So they were all on leave. So that provided my kind of cover for action

because the team just assumed they were out, you know, skiing in Tahoe or doing something. So I called the squadron commander and I said, okay, and then of course Pete Van Hoosier, the CEO, and we move them all down to this undisclosed location. And, you know, we did these kind of sensitive training exercises every once in a while, and you could see when they walked into the room. They were like, you, SOB.

You called me off leave with my girlfriend to be, you know, kind of showcase something to the brass. And then all of a sudden when the CIA guy said, and we're going after Ben Laden, it was like, as you read, it was like, are they serious? And I can see the guys look at each other like, are they serious? And then, of course, after that, it all kind of unfolded. But again, my job was really to not to push it. One of the things I was careful about doing, because as we would meet with the president, we had a number of options. We had a kind of a massive bombing option.

Can we take out this thing we called AC1, the Abbottabad compound one? It was a big compound. You've probably seen pictures of a kind of trapezoid shape, three-store building, a couple of other. outer buildings. But that was going to take a massive amount of ordinance to level the place. Did I hear, was it something like 30? Yeah, I think it was more than that. It was 50, a 2,000 pound bombs in order to level the place. And of course, the CDE, the collateral damage assessment was going to actually hit some of the outer line houses. And we knew there were women and children on the target. So I knew from the get-go the president was, one, we didn't know it was

bin Laden. So the president was not going to, you know, kill innocent women and children at all. Then we had a second option, which was a more surgical bombing option to get the pacer, as you pointed out, the guy that would come out every day around noon and walk around the compound. Once again, even with the surgical bombing option, we were probably going to kill a couple of kids. And I think the president just, I know that was just not what we want to do. And oh, by the way, we weren't going to be sure if we did either one of those bombing options, how would we know whether it was bin Laden? The al-Qaeda could have said wasn't him unless we had physical evidence it was.

And of course, we weren't going to rely on the Pakistanis because we didn't know whether they had been compromised. So it didn't take long, I think, for the group, the president's small team to begin to focus in on the raid. And Admiral Mullen was always supportive of the raid. And Leon Panetta, who was director of the CIA, was always supportive. Interestingly enough, and I've told this story before, Secretary Gates, did not support the raid. And he didn't support the raid because he had been in the White House during Desert 1 when the helicopters crashed. And at one point in time after one of the meetings with the president, every time the president at the end of the meeting would kind of go around

the room, okay, where are we now? And they would say, well, I'm for it. I'm against it. And he would turn to Secretary Gates and say, as president, I don't support the raid. And so after the briefing was over, I came up a secretary, I said, sir, I work for you. If you don't support the raid, and you don't want me to do this, just say the word. I mean, you know, this is your call. And he said something I thought was just, you know, again, fabulous leadership. He said, Bill, he said, I don't agree with the raid, but we've got to give the president every option available. And if the raid is an option, then I want him to, I want you to do the best you can to plan for and prepare for it and give him that option. At the end of the day, the president will make the

decision. But just because I don't support it doesn't mean we're not going to put that option in front of the president. And again, I thought that was very classy of him and the kind of leader that you would hope to have in that chain of command. But I remember the second last meeting we had, the president, again, because we were struggling with determining whether it was bin Laden, he turned to Mike Leiter, who was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, which had been stood up after 9-11. And he asked Leiden to kind of red team CIA's intelligence to kind of check their homework. So the next meeting we were at, which was a couple weeks later, meeting starts, end of April, meeting starts off and the president turns to Lider and he says, well, Mike, you know, what did you find?

I could tell Lider was a little uncomfortable. He goes, well, Mr. President, we've reviewed CIA's intelligence, and we think the chance that has been Laden is anywhere between 60 percent and 40 percent. And when he said 40 percent, I'm thinking, well, I mean, this mission's over. Who in the hell is going to authorize a bunch of seals to fly 162 miles? into Pakistan to a compound that is about three miles from their west point, three miles from a major infantry battalion, you know, a mile from a police station. And oh, by the way, the Pakistanis have nuclear weapons. I mean, who would authorize that on a 40% chance that has been Laden?

So I told the president, I said, sir, I've got to head to Afghanistan. I'm going to command it from there. If you decide to go, great, I'll have the boys ready to go. If you decide not to go, not a problem. I got bad guys in Afghanistan. We'll just kind of get back to work. So that was on a Wednesday, I fly out to Afghanistan, got there sometime on Friday. I get a call from Leon Panetta, the director of CIA, and he says, the president's made the decision to go. And I thought, wow, that is a gutsy decision. I mean, in light of the fact that we just didn't know it was bin Laden, but this is back to the kind of discussion we've been having all throughout this, the podcast, is the president had seen, I think, over the time that, you know, we'd been conducting missions,

that we were mostly successful. He had faith in confidence in us in a way that every commander would hope that their bosses had confidence in him. And we hadn't gotten them all right. I mean, again, when I was J-SOT commander, we had a couple of notable disasters, frankly. But even at that, the president recognized

that the failures we had were understandable in light of some of the circumstances surrounding it and things don't always go perfect. But he had confidence that we could do this. And so the next day, Saturday the president calls me. And he says he called to really tell the guys, you know, good luck. And it was interesting because, you know, man to man you can tell, you know, even though he's the president of the United States, he had this empathy.

You could tell he understood these guys who are about to get on this helicopter and fly into Pakistan, didn't know whether they would come back. Because, of course, we didn't know whether or not was the compound rigged, because as you saw in Iraq quite a few times, you know, these guys would rig the entire compounds, was Bin Laden going to be wearing a suicide vest? You know, what were they going to be facing? And so as the President of the United States,

he understood those risks. And I could tell, you know, when he asked me to pass on, you know, his best of the guys, I mean, he seriously meant that. He understood the risk they were taking. And, you know, as a commander, that means a lot to you. And I did take the opportunity to pass that on. But then I remember he said, well, Bill, what do you think? I said, well, Mr. President, if he's there, we'll get him.

If not, we'll come home. The problem with the if not will come home scenario, which I had breathed the president on, I said, look, if the seals get on target and somebody comes out with a gun, it is not going to go too well for them. And as they begin to sweep through the target, which they will, and more people come out with guns, and, you know, Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan people have guns, it's not going to go well. And as they go from the first floor to the second floor to the third floor looking for bin Laden, and if they get to the third floor and the guy we thought was bin Laden

turns out to be nothing but a tall Pakistani this is going to be a disaster of epic proportions I didn't tell the president that but he understood that because we had talked about the fact that I told him early on I told everybody there if the seals get on target

somebody's going to die you just need to understand that right now nobody is going to walk away from this unscathed so understand those risks to the president and the other team so I understood that and again back to the fact that he had faith and confidence in us we kept it secret we kept it simple and then of course the day of the operations the guy has executed it exactly as you would hope they would

you got a story in I think it's in the hero code no actually it's in C stories it's the story about where you get in trouble you get kind of caught by your dad well not caught by your dad but you get caught you tried to infiltrate a military, what was it? An ammo storage thing. You know, you think you're James Bond or whoever. And you infiltrate, you got a cap gun on your, you know, you're a six-shooter cap-gun with you.

And you infiltrate a freaking military compound with your buddy. And then they chase you out of there. They've got dogs looking for you. It's like a serious operation. And at some point, you drop your pistol. you get back and you know no you get you get away with it get away with it your dad says hey your dad you know next day or whatever it is you know dad says hey there was someone tried to infiltrate you know anything about that and you lied to him yep and it seems like you could tell by the look

on his face that he knew that you lied to him you suspected you went to bed that night you pulled down your covers to get in bed and there's your there's your gun so you you're you He knew. You talk a lot about integrity and, you know, telling the truth. And I think, you know, when you're talking about discussing these things up the chain of command and it's, you know, I would, you've got to tell the truth about what's happening. But you develop that kind of trust with your whole chain of command from the Secretary of Defense to the president so that when you say something, they actually believe what you're saying. And that might, that might seem really like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, thing. But if you think about what's writing on this operation for America, for the world,

if they don't have that like legitimate, pure trust in what you're telling them, I can't imagine, I can't imagine making a decision giving the go ahead to someone that I don't deeply and truly trust 100%. Yeah. You know, you asked earlier on about my dad. And I think, you know, we're, kind of products of our experience and I was I was fortunate to be raised by two great parents but my mom stressed it a lot about you know the importance of truth and honesty and and she expected me to grow up to be a certain type of man a man that would open doors for for ladies that would you know take care of women and children I mean she had this this vision of me I was going to be a stand-up guy and honest

and true and all those sorts of things and you you always want to make your parents proud. And this particular day, and you're right, I was 11 years old, and we tried to get into this ammo storage point near Lackland Air Force Base. We got busted, and I dropped the cap gun. And it was a day or so later, my dad was the head of operations. So he was the number three guy at Lackland Air Force Base. So the security guys had reported to him that, and they knew some kids. They didn't know who it was, but they knew some kids that tried to break in. And when my dad confronted me, as I said in the book, it's the first and last time I ever lied to my father. And he, and he, he, never, until he died in 2007, he never raised the issue again. And the reason I thought that

was interesting parodying is because I carried that burden until he died in 2007. But there was another one. I mentioned my time in the Pentagon. And again, we all, to your point, Chacon, I mean, we all are raised with this idea that it is, of course you're going to be honest. You know, of course you're not going to lie to people. And you find, you know, that as you go through life, sometimes that's harder to do than it is to say. But when I was in the Pentagon, I worked for a guy named Captain Ted Grabowski. And Grabowski-Vietnam Air Seal was a little quirky for a seal. Didn't look like a seal.

He was kind of short in stature, a spectacle, had more glasses. He'd been in a glider accident, and he had a little bit of a limp. So it did not look like your typical seal. But I found him to be brilliant, hardworking, incredibly insightful, and he knew the Pentagon. But it was on like day one or the first week I was there. And at one point in time, we're talking about our budget with a three-star admiral. And I thought Grabowski had this opportunity. We were going to get a whole bunch of money for our ammunition and our sealed delivery vehicles.

And the admiral questioned Grabowski. And he said, do you really need all of this money? I mean, can't you take a little slice off the ammunition? Do you really need that many SDVs? And I thought Grabowski's going to stand until he's going to say, absolutely I need that. And much to my surprise, he goes, you know what, Admiral, you're right.

We can cut our ammunition allowance by this. We can reduce the number of SDVs from six to three. And I thought, what the hell just happened? Why did you do that? And afterwards, I'm talking to him. And he says, look, Bill, he says, I've got one rule when you're hearing the Pentagon. He says, never lie or misrepresent the truth.

Because if you lie or misrepresent the truth, somebody will find out and they will no longer trust you. And if they don't trust you, you are of no value to me. And it was a little bit of this kind of philosophical linkage between, it wasn't just about the moral application of being honest. There was a practical application as well, which is if you are honest, if you are trustworthy, people will trust you with their money.

They will trust you with their relationships. They will trust you with their lives. They will trust you with the big missions. And it isn't just about saying, well, you know, I'm just not going to lie. Sometimes people misrepresent the truth. They embellish things in a way that is, you know, to their benefit or in a way that will get them the mission. I mean, I knew on the bin Laden raid there was no way I was going to mislead the president of the United States. And I hope in my time in the military, I didn't mislead anybody, at least not willingly and not there or not intention.

So it is important not just because we know it's important to be honest, but because if you're not honest and you're not trustworthy, you can't build those relationships. If you can't build the relationships, you can't get the job done. How many times had you guys or you seen various units get spun up to go get bin Laden? Yeah, a lot of times. And that was part of it when I first was approached by Emerald in Afghanistan. He said, hey, CIA's got a lead on bin Laden. And I mean, I was respectful to Admiral Mullen, of course, but I'm thinking, yeah, I've seen this picture before. I mean, we'd had him in a Hindu Kush.

We'd had him in Toribora again. You know, we'd had him in Pakistan a number of times. I mean, you know, he was like trying to find Waldo. I mean, it seemed like Ben Laden was ever, I remember one point in time we had a lead on him up in the Hindu Kush. It was something like, you know, 12, 14,000 feet or something like that. Up in the middle of nowhere. And somebody said, he's hiding in a cave up there. So because the altitude was so high, I could only put two guys on the 47.

I put an Air Force STS guy and one other guy. And so the helicopter can barely make it up to altitude. And of course, I'm thinking, this is just a wild goose chase. But they came back and so the young, I think he was a captain or a major, comes to brief me. And he says, obviously, Ben Loz. He says, but there were footsteps up there in the snow. And I'm like, really? He said, out in the middle of nowhere, we followed these footsteps into this kind of little

cave area. I'm thinking, really? Of course, it was not Ben Laden. It was something, but it was, so yeah, we had a lot of leads like that. We had some leads in Pakistan that, I mean, I remember seeing, I'd be a little careful about this, but I remember seeing Intel, and I looked at it and said, well, that's him. There is no question in my mind, but it wasn't him, because in fact, he was in that compound in Abbottabad for probably five years and never left that compound. So yeah, there were a lot of leads out there, but this was the only one that panned out. What was the timeline from the first time you talked to Admiral Mons that he said he had a lead and execute?

Yeah, so he approached me in December of 2010. I didn't, I wasn't asked to come back to the States until January or February of 2011. So in the February timeframe, I spent a lot of time over to CIA, kind of looking at the Intel. And then I think I had my first meeting with the president sometime in March. And then we had a bunch of meetings between March and the end. of April. And so April 30th or somewhere around there is when I left for Afghanistan, maybe April 29th, and then got to Afghanistan, and then we launched two days later. And what was the timeline for the boys from that meeting when they signed the non-disclosures?

Yeah, so that was probably five weeks, four or five weeks. So that was, so we spent three weeks, you know, briefing up, doing all the rehearsals. And then at the end of that, three weeks when I went back and met with the president and said we can do this. Yeah, I think that was towards the end of April. So I had General Tony Thomas, who was my number two guy there at J-Soc. I had to stay in Washington. And I said, okay, Tony, let's get the guys from the states. Let's get moved out there now. So Tony, along with Pete Van Hoosier, and of course we had CIA and National Security Agency and National Security and Spatial Agency and a whole kind of interagency group that went with us. But Tony's got us set up in this little talk tackle operations center there in

in Jabed and Jalabad. And so when I came out, I mean, it was, the guys were set, everything was ready to go. I ended up rolling at about 20. We were going to launch on Saturday, but there was some fog in the area and the temperatures were a little high at the time. So I rolled it 24 hours and then we press forward on Sunday. Like I said, you got to get the book for the details and all leading up to this. There's one little part I wanted to cover. The mission's actually being executed, so you're in the operation center. And here we go. Inside the jock, I was getting updates from Van Hoosier and Thompson.

The seals were still clearing the three-story house, and the heloes were holding their position outside Abadab. I looked up at the clock. 15 minutes had passed since the assault began. Sir, the squadron commander is on the radio, Van Hoosier alerted me. the voice was unmistakable deep calm in control this is romeo six six he paused and you could hear a small shudder in his voice for god and country geronimo geronimo geronimo geronimo was over we had gotten bin laden the jock erupted in cheers immediately followed by van hoosier's booming voice shut the fuck up he yelled We still have to get these guys home.

The jock immediately quieted down. Van Hoosier was right. We still had a long way to go. I had no sense of relief, no internal exhilaration, no feeling of victory. The mission was not over. And when I read that, I just thought to myself, I mean, what a freaking professional Van Hoosier. And you could see, I mean, here it is, you know, the ultimate mission capturing the ultimate bad guy or killing the ultimate bad guy and and everyone's all excited and van hoosers just on point

just just no deviation which you always was yeah freaking outstanding and it's interesting too because you call back and say yep we got we got geronimo we got it done and then you realize wait is he dead or alive well i had to report back to panetta you know i think he'd heard the geronimo and i just said And then I thought, oh, shit, because everybody thinks that this was a kill-only mission. It was not. We had a plan to capture him if, in fact, he gave up, and there was clearly not a threat. And then I realized, I don't know whether he's dead or alive. So I had to call back down to the squadronompson commander and say, Geronimo, E-K-I-A, question mark,

E-K-I-A. So there was a few second pause. And I think the guys in the White House and they were like, I thought he already reported Geronimo. I said, no, he's dead. So let's make sure we understand that. I mean, like I said, you go into what happened after that. It's just an incredible story. I mean, obviously, it's incredible story.

Get the book to check that stuff out. Before I close out the book, C stories, there's one other little section I wanted to cover. It's from a chapter called the next greatest generation. And this section takes place in 2007. We mentioned that you were in Europe for a time. You're in charge of all special operations forces in Europe and Africa, but that means you're actually over in Germany most of the time. And in this part, you're visiting wounded soldiers on their way home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

So on the way home from Iraq and Afghanistan, oftentimes the soldiers, the wounded would be, would stop in Germany at lawnstool. And you would go there to visit these wounded guys. And you talk about one of these cases here. so you're going in to visit Going to the book The doctor nodded and I pushed the door open and entered Lying on the bed completely naked was a young soldier not more than 25 years old His body was swollen from the impact of the blast

Burns covered the upper half of his torso and below his waist he had lost half of one leg and much of the other His face was so badly damaged that his eyes were almost sealed shut and his lips burned clean off life-saving tubes extended from just about every orifice in his body and monitors around the room beeped continuously. Sir, he can't talk, but he can hear you. And he likes to engage people, the doctor said. I slowly walked up beside the bed. Hey, partner, my name's Admiral McRaven. I could see him acknowledge my presence.

You look like shit. He managed to smile and reached out his hand toward the nightstand. The doctor grabbed a clipboard and handed it to the soldier. He likes to write out his responses, the doctor said. Pulling the attached pen from its holder, he scribbled on the notepad. You should see the other guy. I laughed and he chuckled with me. Looks like they're taking good care of you.

Is there anything you need? Once again, he grabbed the clipboard and wrote a beer. The doctor looked at me and reluctantly shook his head. Well, I'll tell you what. When you get back to the States, get well, and the beer's on me. He just nodded. I was struggling with what to say. I had been in these situations hundreds of times before, and all you could do is make small talk.

Normally, I knew the soldier was unit, and I had something more significant to offer. I walked around to the doctor's side of the bed. Is he a Marine or a soldier? I whispered to the doctor. Sir, I don't know. I'm just the attending physician. I can find out for you, though. No, not necessarily.

Not necessary. Walking back around to my side of the bed, I leaned over to the young man and asked, Are you a Marine or a soldier? He seemed agitated by the question. He pointed to a tattoo that was etched on his thigh. He must have assumed that the tattoo is fully visible, but the blast had burned the leg so badly that only a smudged outline appeared. I looked closely and could see the image of a big red one, the first infantry division.

You're a soldier, I commented. He grabbed the clipboard. Infantry, he wrote. Infantry. The toughest occupation in the army, I thought. The soldiers are always marching, always carrying a rucksack, always in the line of fire. You have to be strong and fit to last in any infantry unit, particularly during war. As I glanced at the young man's battered body, I wondered if he fully understood the degree of his injuries.

He noticed me assessing his physical condition, and suddenly a look of defiance came across his swollen face. He rolled in my direction and then wrote slowly in capital letters, I will be infantry again. So that's You know Like you said It's something that you witnessed hundreds of times And and one thing that you write in the books And I've heard you talk about it as well

Is With all these Wounded soldiers that you've You know soldiers sailors, airmen and Marines That you've gone and talked to Every single one of them Every single one of them Has just wanted to get back their unit

And get back in the fight Yeah, and you've been there, you know that, and it is remarkable to me. I think of the, to your point, you know, hundreds of these guys that I've met, never once did I hear anybody complain. I mean, guys had lost arms and legs and blast victims, and they didn't complain. It's just amazing to me. I don't know if I tell the story in that book, but I've told the story before. When I was so calm commander, I went up to Walter Rueh.

read and I used to do it periodically same thing when the guys would get back and I know I had before you jump into that I had one of my guys Ryan Jobb who was shot in the face he was blinded and I'm talking to him you know he's back he's at I think he's at Bethesda and I'm talking to him from Ramadi and you know he's begging me to come back and he says you know he's you know sir I'll get my pig you know he's a pig gunner he's a 60 gunner he goes sir give me my pig don't worry I might not be able to see him but I can smell him I'll get him and and you know there's just the the attitude and same thing with the first guy that I had that got badly wounded guy named Cowie Cowie and Cowie was you

know if he's gonna keep his leg but he was shot up bad he's on Moraphina whatever he's on and we'd have been in Ramadi for a very short period of time at this point and I get to the to the to the to the Charlie med the field medical area and I roll in there and he's you know he holds out his hand and and I grab his hand and he like pulls me in close and he just whispers he's you know sir let me stay I'll sweep up just please let me stay don't send me home and you know here's a guy that's a freaking incredible athlete incredible guy and we don't know if he's going to keep his leg and the only thing he can cares about is, you know, can I stay?

Right. Yeah, and this, again, it seemed like, and it was, of course, just the soft guys. You saw it again and again with all the guys that we encounter. But this one particular visit I had up to Walter Reed, I'd come up to see some of our kind of soft guys, Rangers, and others who'd been wounded. And, of course, Walter Reed was where we sent, frankly, the most seriously injured, certainly the blast victims and the amputees. The burn victims generally went down to Fort Sam.

But I'm up there visiting a couple of guys and talking to them and their wives and everything. And you know, you know how to talk to these guys. I mean, they're guys that are Rangers or Delta operators or seals. And that particular day, there were three or four of them there. And then afterwards, Sergeant Major who's escort me around, so they say, so there's somebody else who like you to meet. He's not a soft guy. He's with a 25th Infantry Division. And he was in a rack in a vehicle.

A vehicle got hit by an explicitly formed projectile. He is a quadruple amputee. and I said, absolutely, I'd love to go meet him. So I go up to the second floor of the rehab center there. I see the young man standing off to the side, and he's kind of leaning up against the rail, and of course, he's only about yea big because he's got no legs. And so I come over to talk to him, and I kneel down so I can kind of get eye-to-eye with him, and I just didn't know what to say.

I mean, what do you tell a young kid who's lost both his legs, all of one arm and most of the other arm? And so I'm trying to make some small talk. I mean, he obviously saw some in my eyes, you know, the pity or remorse or something. And he turns to me, he says, sir, I'm 24 years old. I'm going to be just fine. I never forgot that. I'm 24 years old and I'm going to be just fine. And all he wanted to do was his unit was still in Iraq.

And he said, can you get me back to Hawaii so I can be there when the 25th MF3 Division comes back? So I think we can manage that. And we did. And he was able to get there and meet his year. unit when they came back. Outstanding. And that's, you know, again, a lot of the book is obviously focuses around special operations. And as you point out, as we both know, the, the sacrifices made by the entire, the entirety of the U.S. military is just, it's, it's incredible. It's incredible. And the bravery doesn't, the bravery doesn't stay in one unit. It's in all these units. And

incredible to see. You end up as the bullfrog in the SEAL teams, which means that you, however many, maybe you had it for a year or two, I'm not sure, but that means you had more time in the SEAL teams than anybody else in the SEAL teams at that time on active duty. How long did you, how long were you the bullfrog for?

So a bullfog for three years. So I shared, so I was made the bullfrog at 34, years into the teams, and I shared it with a guy named Brian Siebenaller, who was probably a captain at the time, but Brian and I'd gone through training together. So, and Brian was young enlisted trooper when we went through training. Then, of course, he went, I think he made Senior Chief, and then went to OCS and has a long career as an officer, absolutely fabulous officer, a great friend, hope to run into him while I'm here. So Brian and I, because we had been in the same class, we shared the bullfrog for a couple of years, then Brian retired, and I think I ended up

flying solo for about the last year of my... at the time as the Socom commander, but yeah, for the last three years, you know, I mean, part of this is just longevity. You just, you keep swinging away. And, yeah, 37 years. But it goes by fast. You know, I was, I had a chance to talk to one of the SEAL classes yesterday. And I said, let me, let me tell you a little story.

I said, you know, when I retired in 2014 and I had a chance to be the chancellor of the University of Texas system. So 230,000 kids, 100,000 employees. great, great opportunity. But I would meet these, you know, these very successful captains of industry that were billionaires, you know, and everywhere you went. And they were great, they were actually very, very good people. I really enjoyed the folks that I had a chance to meet. But they were all envious of me. And all the money in the world could not get them the opportunity to lock out of a submarine or fast rope out of a helo or jump out of a plane from 30,000 feet at night on

2002. And as successful as they had been, they didn't have the experiences. They didn't have 37 years of being in a locker room, being with the guys, getting harassed every day in a good-natured manner, and being with guys that were sacrificing and their families that were sacrificed. They didn't have that experience. So I told these young students going through buds, I said, guys, let me tell you something. You still got there in second phase, so they still got a long ways to go. I said, you know, you're going to have those days still left in training where you're going to want to quit. Don't do it.

Don't do it. Because once you pin that trident on, your life changes forever. And you'll have hard days in the teams. I mean, you're absolutely going to have hard days. And like I said, I was fired. I had missions that didn't go well. But when you look back over your time in the teams, whether you spent four years or 40 years, you'll never regret moment of it because you're going to have friends and stories and adventures that your,

you know, your friends from high school and college and will never have had. And when you're old and gray like I am and you're sitting in your rocking chair and you'll be able to look back of that and say, you know what, that was a pretty good run. I wouldn't trade it for anything. The person that you shared the, the bullfrog with. Yeah. He was my, he was my platoon commander. There you go. You mentioned, you know, earlier today we were talking, and you mentioned something else about the Trident. And who owns that Trident?

Yeah. Yeah, same thing talking to the guys going through training. I said, look, you know, if you get your Trident, you need to understand it's not your Trident. It's not Joe's Trident. It's not John's Trident. It's all of our Tritons. You represent everybody that ever wore a Trident

and everybody that's ever going to wear a Trident. and everybody that's ever going to wear a trident. So you have a responsibility as a member of this community to wear that trident with honor, with dignity every single day. And I also told him another story about, you mentioned the parachute accident. And after my parachute accident, about a year and a half afterwards,

I'm still in the White House, and I go down to Naval Special Warfare Group 2. and the Commodore was having a commander's conference, so all the officers had kind of assembled there. And I'm still, I'm barely walking well by now, but we're going to do what team guys do. We're going to have a PT in the morning. We're going to do a 10-mile run.

So we kind of break out in the PT circle, and, of course, it's push-ups, sit-ups, all that sort of stuff. And I'm struggling to get through the basics because I've got my abs are not back. The pelvis is still hurting. But I fake my way through the PT. Now we're going to go for the run.

And I think we went out to, whatever the Salt Point State Point Hunt. point, whatever. The state park. Yeah, yeah. But we're going to do two five-mile loops or something like that. So we start off on the run and I hang for all about 100 yards and then anybody just leaves me. So, but hey, I'm going to do what I can. So I'm kind of walking, jogging, trying to finish the run. Well, a few minutes later, the guy that's the lead runner, you know, he comes around on the first loop of the two-mile run and he sees me. And of course, at this time, I'm a Navy captain. I've been in for 20-some-odd years. And he kind of pulls up beside me.

And he says, sir, what are you doing? I said, what do you mean? He goes, what are you doing? I mean, you're coming off a bad parachute accident? He said, you got nothing left to prove. And I remember, I thought about that for a long time, and he was absolutely wrong. And I told these young guys, I said, every single day that you wake up and you wear that Trident, you've got something to prove.

And if the time comes that you think you're too senior or too entitled, or that you've done it long enough that you don't have anything left to prove, you're the wrong guy for the job and you need to leave because I don't care whether you're an insin or a seaman or a four-star admiral. Every single day,

you wake up, you've got something to prove. And if you don't take that attitude, then you're probably not the right person for the job. Something I wanted to ask you about because you mentioned it real quick. You know, you were talking about, hey, we had a lot of success and we sat here and, you know, you and I nodded in her head talking about how great, you know,

we had been and the special operations community. And I talked about, I talked about this incredible batting average, right? And all that. And then, you know, you were saying, things always didn't go well. When things went bad, you know, and I've had things go horribly, horribly wrong.

And, you know, it's one of those things that really stings. what do you have any advice or any stories where you remember where something went wrong and you had to own it yeah unfortunately probably way too many stories but the one consistent part of when things go wrong is you got to own it I mean you have to you're the person responsible and what you don't want to do is you don't want to say well look I know I'm in charge but but it was really the young captain of the major or the seal lieutenant commander. I mean, it's really, no, no, I'm sorry, you're the guy in charge, you're responsible. Now, that doesn't mean you've got to get fired every time, but that means that you have got to take ownership of the problem. You've

got to figure out how to make sure that problem doesn't happen again. You have to hold the people accountable if the mistakes they made were mistakes of laziness or of not being more illegal and ethical, then you have to hold them accountable. And even when they did everything right and they screwed up, you still have to hold them accountable. It doesn't mean you have to fire them, but you have to hold them accountable so that everybody understands, look, we've got a standard. This is the standard we have to maintain, and if you don't live up to the standard, you are going to be held accountable because lives are at risk. But the first person you have to hold accountable is yourself. And so, you know, most of the time, certainly over in combat, when things would go wrong, I had to go see the four star and say, this is on me.

Because, you know, and again, this gets back to the Navy mentality, as you all know. I mean, in the Navy, because the Navy has always had this kind of shipboard mentality. And for your listeners, you know, when you are the commanding officer of a ship, you are responsible for everything that happens on that ship. And when you pull away from the pier, the commanding officer is king. I mean, he or she now is responsible for everything that happens. And the Navy understands that, look, if you were the commanding officer and your ship runs aground, and you were asleep in your state room, and the young junior officer who was on the helm,

or was the officer of the deck, failed to wake you up. Even though you had told them to wake you up, I'm sorry, that's still on you. Because you created an atmosphere of fear or something where that junior officer didn't feel like he had the latitude to wake you up in the middle of a crisis. So you see it happen a lot, and people say, well, why would you hold the commanding officer responsible when he left orders for that junior officer to wake him up before things got bad. And the point of the Navy is, this idea, this tradition in the Navy, that the commandant officer's responsible is because then you didn't train them well, then you didn't create the culture

for them to do the right thing. Something was wrong when you were the commanding officer. So frankly, throughout my time in the Navy and certainly in the special operations community, at the end of the day, it's about me. Now, fortunately, your bosses know that, hey, when things go south, your job is also to correct the problem. Sometimes the problem is with you. I mean, I think back on a hostage rescue that we had, and I'm always careful about telling this story, but we had a hostage rescue that did not go well, and the hostage ended up getting killed. And unfortunately, the guys didn't tell me the truth about the situation.

But I also look back on this and realize that. Some of this was on me. Because at the time, as I mentioned, I was kind of bouncing back and forth between Iraq and Afghanistan, and this mission had come up. And normally in a hostage rescue situation, I mean, we treat it like it is a no-kitting national mission, and we are going to do everything possible. But because we were running so many missions sometimes in Afghanistan, it's not that the guys didn't take it seriously, but we probably didn't follow all the steps that we normally would have taken if this had been a national mission.

And I think some of that played into why we didn't do the detail planning that would have helped. Again, would it have changed the outcome? I don't know. But I remember thinking afterwards, yeah, the guys on the ground kind of failed to do what they probably should have done, and we held them accountable. I personally held them accountable. But I also kind of had to look myself in the mirror and say, hey, you know, at the end of the day, maybe you should have provided better oversight and asked harder questions rather than to. deferring to somebody else to do it. So, but here's one other thing I would offer to you.

You know, you're going to make mistakes. And the one thing I tell folks that are learning to be leaders is, particularly in combat, you're going to make mistakes, but you've got to be ready to make the next tough decision. Because if you are afraid to make the next tough decision when the last mission went bad, then you're not the leader we need you to be, particularly in combat. Again, every once in a while I would have a mission that would go south. and I knew we could have done things better. And I realized now the next mission comes along and you say,

shit, I mean, I don't know, should I do this, should I not do this? And if you start to doubt yourself, if you start to question too much, if you're afraid to make the tough decisions, then you're putting guys' lives at greater risk. So, again, you've got to learn from those mistakes. You've got to do the best you can. But as the leader, you've got to be prepared to make the next tough decision. And if you're not, for fear of failing again,

it's time to move on. And I always found that when things went south, invariably another opportunity, particularly in combat, another opportunity is not far around the corner. Okay, now let's put our A game on, and you talked about when I got fired. Same thing. When a mission goes south, and now you have another opportunity, man, you double down on everything. You want to make sure you are doing everything you can to be successful and get beyond that bad mission. And that's how people progress. But yeah, yeah, unfortunately, yeah, too many times

that things didn't go well. But I'd like to think that the ledger shows we had more successes than we had failures. But I do remember one time on a particular target in a country not Iraq in Afghanistan that I needed permission to take a strike. The intelligence said, hey, I had a matter of minutes before the bad guy moved off target. So without state in too many names, I get to the four-star and I said, I need permission from the president to take this strike. In two minutes, I get permission back from President Obama to take the strike. So I take the strike and it's not the right guy. Now, the good news is it was a bad guy. The bad news is it was not the guy I thought it was. And so now the White House comes back and says, hey, you know, the president made this

decision and it didn't pan out the way you'd hope. I got it. It was a bad guy, but, you know, you were getting the president's permission because you said it was this guy. So I said, yeah, me a couple. And let me explain to you how I came to that decision. A long story between, you know, certain, you know, handheld radios don't have the same fidelity, et cetera, et cetera. but it forced me to go back and say, okay, I just put the chain of command in a difficult position. They trusted me, and I let them down. I let them down because maybe I rushed it too much,

trying to get a win, and you have to go back and reassess. But the last thing you want to do is put your boss in a situation where they trusted you and you let them down. I mean, I had one mission that went south, and I remember my boss, you know, you don't mind getting wire brushed. You know, when you're, you know, wirebrush me, you know, when somebody calls you up and just rips you apart, you know, I got used to that. I mean, combat, that happens.

But I remember one point in time I had a mission kind of goes south and the four-star. When I had him on the phone, I was explaining things. He goes, Bill, I am really disappointed in you and your men. And, man, yeah, that's a knife in the heart sort of thing. And he had a right to be, but we cleaned it up, got back to business. And then I remember a couple years later, he and I were having lunch, and he said, do you remember that incident? Oh, yes, sir.

I do remember that incident. He goes, you recovered really, you recovered very well, and you did a great job. And, you know, again, that's what you want your boss is to say, you know, that they appreciate the work you do. Well, at the bullfrog for three years and in, what was it, you actually did the commencement speech at the University of Texas before you retired. I did. Yeah. I was about to say, you're a shining example of the fact that the zero defect attitude is wrong, right?

You know, you have that zero defect attitude of, hey, if someone fails one time, get rid of them or if someone. makes a mistake or if they're not perfect, get rid of them. With all due respects, sir, you are an outstanding example of, you know, someone that's, you know, I don't want to say you had plenty of defects along the way. A few mistakes. But there certainly are, I mean, just so people understand, you know, when you get fired from a position as a naval officer, that can be, that oftentimes the end of your career. You can hang on for a couple more years, but that can be the end of your career.

Yeah. I mean, I was blessed with, again, great people who gave me a second chance. And, you know, as I said earlier, I think, you know, every once in a while, we all need second chances. And again, I was fortunate in my career a number of times. I remember we had one particular mission where I went across the border into Pakistan. It was my first mission, actually, was a J-Soc commander. And without going to too much detail, bad guys, we'd been looking at this target for a long time. And my first mission as the commander, and I have, I mean, I've rolled the dice. I've always been a bit of a risk taker. So we wanted to go get this target. So we go in and guys kind of get compromised just as they're coming onto the target. Gun battle ensues. Bad guys get killed, but we wanted to capture them because we knew they had intel. And anyway, the mission does not go well.

So I come back and so now I've got a report back to my boss, who was General Marty Dempsey, who was the sentcom commander at the time. So I called him up, and I said, hey, sir, here's what happened. And obviously, I'm not too happy about it. I kind of went through. And he says, okay, Bill, okay, fine. So hang up with the phone. A few minutes later, phone rings.

There's General Dempsey on the phone. He says, hey, Bill, you sounded a little down. So, yes, sir. So, you know, the mission didn't go as planned. He goes, it's okay, man. I mean, missions are not always going to go as planned. and, you know, you made all the right decisions, but as we all know, the enemy gets a vote sometimes.

He said, don't let this shake you. You know, you just keep doing what you're doing. And I tell you, that, my first mission is the J-Soc commander, and when the CENTCOM commander has your back, like General Dempsey did, and I mean, that's when you, like I said, you need people up the chain of command that believe in you, even when things don't go well. And I always hope that when I was in command and officers below me struggled sometimes,

I would take the officers analyst. I'd take the time to go down and say, it's okay. You know, things don't always go well. Get back up on the horse and let's keep moving. I mean, if you've got confidence in these guys, now again, there's some guys, you just got to say, you know what, you weren't meant to be in this position. And I had to fire a few people, too.

And some of them, you know, as good as they might have been in training, when it came time for combat, it just, it wasn't, they weren't right for it. And you had to move them on as graciously as you could, if they weren't the right guy for the job. But again, I was blessed throughout my career to have people that had confidence in me and continue to give me second chances

and put me in a position to be successful. Early on in my last deployment to Ramadi had a blue-on-blue, had a fractureside take place, and it's a freaking complete another nightmare. And a friendly Iraqi soldier got killed. One of my guys got wounded. Several other friendly Iraqis got wounded. and the army, the army working in Ramadi was kind of like, hey, you know, like it happens almost.

But that's not a very special operations attitude, you know, at all. Van Hoosier happened to be coming through country at the time. And he happened to stop by Shark Base at the time, which was my little base. and, you know, he was a Marine in Vietnam. And he said, hey, Jocko, I was in Way City. And he goes, and I wasn't, he goes, I didn't fight in Way City, but I was there afterwards. And it's urban combat, and this shit is hard. And I forget the percentage, but it was a massive.

A third of the casualties in Way City were friendly fire. You know, it's going to happen. Square your shit away, fix what you can, and you move on. Um, that was to me, okay, okay, this is, uh, I'm not the worst loser in the world, which I absolutely felt like. Yeah, of course. It's freaking horrible. And then, you know, uh, a few months later, Mark Lee is a first deal killed in Iraq.

And, you know, I'm again, just heartbroken and, and crushed. And Admiral McGuire, who I, you know, was his aide for 13 months and called me up, you know, and said, hey, you got to get back out there. You're doing the right thing. And that kind of support from these senior leaders at that time. You know, it's a very similar situation for me. But, you know, it's real easy to pile on, right? To say, oh, you had a blue on blue.

What the hell is wrong with you? Real easy to do that. It's really easy, oh, you lost a guy. What are you guys doing? Real easy to take that approach. and both those guys, you know, just took the approach of actually understanding what we were going through. Hey, man, there's, we're, we're getting in firefights every single day here. You think we're going to make it through a six-month deployment and not take any casualties?

Like, that's, I don't even know, I don't even know why I would think that. Like, it's a crazy thought. But another good leadership lesson, and it's just, you know, hey, people are going to have things happen. People are going to make mistakes. Things are going to go wrong. What are you going to do? You're going to pile on, especially someone. that's already freaking tearing themselves up you're gonna pile on and and I had to do the same

thing you know with with platoon commanders you know Leif Babin I mean he's he's calling me up You know it's another he's calling me up hey we just you know guy got shot Ryan Job shot he's hit bad I don't know if he's gonna live The army's in a gun fight right now jocco we need to go help him and I'm like execute You know don't didn't run it up the chain the armies we're side by side with these guys and he ends up losing mark you know, it's like, are we going to pile on these guys? Are we going to support? They're making a freaking hard decision. They're making the best possible decision they can make at the time.

And that's what we have to do. Yep. Yeah, and your point about decision making is a good one because the nature of combat, and to some degree of the nature, even prior to combat and training, you see it, but more so in combat. Because to your point, you're having to make hard decisions all day long. You're just not going to get all those decisions right. When I became the Chancellor of the University of Texas system, I'm in charge of 14 institutions, very large institutions, University of Texas at Austin, M.D. Anderson Cancer Clinic. And I've often said, you know, in the states today, some of the hardest jobs in the world are being the presidents of institutions like that because they've got students, they've got faculty, they've got donors, they've got, you know, all these sorts of things. But every once in a while there were people outside the system that, well, why did the president make that decision? Why would he do something like that? Why would she do that? and I'd have to say

you know they make a thousand decisions a day 999 of them you don't see because they were good decisions and now you're going to get on them because they made one bad decision I got this you thank you very much for your input

but you know and I would tell the president look I've got it I haven't been the president of university before but I've been in charge of things it's okay do the best you can you're going to make mistakes I got you back and but you know if you make a serious mistake I'm also going to hold you accountable yeah and if you if you're a repeat offender right that means you're probably not capable

doing the job and we're going to fire you and that's the way it works so you you end up retiring after 37 years um I guess there was nowhere really else for you to go I mean the career worked out okay and and then you you'd given that commencement speech which is I guess it's I have to check with echo Charles my my kind of a what is it pop culture guy. Is it safe to say that's a viral speech? Viral. Okay.

Might be even iconic. Oh, iconic. You give the iconic make your bed speech. Did you know, at what point did you figure out you're going to be the chancellor there? Yeah, so they had approached me in April about the job. And frankly, initially, I said I wasn't interested. I mean, I was coming off, you know, 37 years. I was really kind of ready for a break.

and I knew being the chancellor was another, you know, stepping into a, you know, 365 to a year sort of job. But, I mean, my wife and I would talk about it, and she said, okay, look, if you could do anything else, because I got asked to be CEOs of this and that. And if you could do anything else, what would you rather do? And I thought, I don't know, this actually sounds like a pretty good gig. So I'm going to have a, you know, I'm going to have great students that kind of like my troops. I'm going to have a football team and a baseball team and a basketball team. and I'll get to travel around.

I mean, it was essentially the same sort of leadership dynamics of being the SOCOM commander or the J-Soc commander. I mean, again, you had faculty and students and issues you had to deal with, and I had subordinate commanders, and so it turned out to be a great job. But that was in April, and then I give the speech in May. But it wasn't until, so the speech, to your point,

I mean, it gets a lot of traction. And then I think it was about June, I decided, You know, I think this is going to be a good job for me. So we agreed to do it. And I think sometime in July, they kind of anointed me, and then I took over in January. You, like, brushed over the fact earlier that you got diagnosed with cancer, you know,

and in the book you talk about kind of what that, or one of the books, you talk about what that experience was like. And it seemed like it was something that you could kind of suppress for a while, but it ended up, what, in 2017 kind of catching up with you a bit? Yeah, it did. So chronic lymphocytic leukemia, I mean, the good news is it's a chronic cancer, so it is manageable to a degree. But, you know, for years prior to 2010, every time I'd get a physical, the doctors would say, well, you know, you're anemic. I would say, yeah, well, I'm sorry about that. And, you know, I've got a job to do. What do I do? And they say, well, eat more protein, take these iron tablets or something. And then in 2010, doctor diagnosed, they did a bone marrow biopsy and they came back told me I had CLL. But I remember the doctors were more concerned about the anemia. They said, how do you get up in the morning?

I get up, I drink a couple of rippets, you know, energy drinks, I go to work. Because what was happening was my body was storing the iron and the bone marrow, but it wasn't moving the iron. So long runs, you know, you just weren't getting the oxygen into the system. but hey sorry you got a job to do you know you get up and do and so and then when I became chancellor I could tell that it was it was starting to get more problematic I was just fine in days I had trouble getting up off the couch you know and but again you had a job to do so you get up and you go do it and you power through it finally in 2017 it just kind of perfect storm I'd had a little bit of a virus the anemia was at its peak and and my doctor's

who had diagnosed me in 2010, great guy named Michael Keating, who really kind of, I talk about it in the hero code. You know, you go in there, you're scared, you know, thinking that my career is over, maybe my life's over in the not too distant future. And he said, hey, don't you worry about it. We got this. You're going to be fine. And, of course, first question I asked is, can I go back to Afghanistan?

My wife was like, really? That's your first question? But so, you know, I was able to kind of continue on. But finally in 2017, it caught up. Yeah, I got some therapy at MD Anderson. They pumped me full of chemicals. And, I mean, a month later, all my numbers were good. And I've been, you know, knock on wood, been feeling good ever since then.

When did you retire from the chancellor job? 2018, summer of 2018. And when did C-Stories come out? Oh, yeah, I'll check. Yeah, I better check. I'm not sure. 2019, maybe. So.

Oh, so it's after you retired? After our time. Yeah, okay. So make your bed was the first one. And that was, I think, when I was still the chancellor. Yeah, C-Storys was maybe 2019. And then Hero Code just came out. And so Hero Code, the latest one, before we close out, what brought about the Hero Code?

You know, I think it really kind of came back to Make Your Bed. I mean, I'm always just like you are, Jocker. You know, people are always asking me, you know, kind of give us more lessons, that sort of thing. But people were asking me, okay, tell me. who your heroes are. And the hero code, it's not about me. I mean, it's through my eyes, but it's about people that I met or encountered along the way, and it is about the qualities that they had. And I actually, when I first started it, I thought, what is a hero? I mean, we kind of intuitively know what a hero is, but I pulled up the textbook definition, and it was actually pretty good.

The textbook definition says a hero is someone we admire for their noble, qualities. And I like this idea of their noble qualities. Doesn't mean they're perfect, but they have noble qualities certainly at a point in time when they need them. So the first story is about courage. And Winston Churchill said something like, you know, courage is the most important of all qualities because it guarantees all the rest. So, you know, you're not going to have anything else unless you first have courage. And the first story is about Ashley White, who was unfortunately killed in Afghanistan and her remarkable courage. But I go through the book with these stories of these people that I think had the right qualities, the courage and

humility and sacrifice and perseverance and this sense of duty. And you read a little bit on the sense of humor. I mean, frankly, and I tell the story about being at UDT11, but of course, I saw that sense of humor in the hospitals, and this is when it really resonated with me. Back to the infantryman who said, you know, you should have seen the other guy. I mean, How many times did I give some guy, you know, the kind of good-natured banner? You said, man, you look like shit. That was always the standard comeback. You should see the other guy.

And, of course, that was their way of saying, hey, I may have lost an arm or a leg, but they haven't beaten me. I can still laugh about this. And then the last one is on forgiveness. And you talk about, you know, what missions went south. Well, this is one that went really south on us. And it was a – we were going after a bad guy in Gardez, had some soldiers on target. We thought the bad guy was in the compound. Guys got up on the walls.

Snipers looking down in. Somebody comes out with an AK-47, he gets shot. Another guy in a doorway picks up an AK-47. The soldier automatic weapon shoots him. But in shooting him, rounds go through him, and unbeknownst killed a number of women on the other side. And so when the action dies down, they get on target. They can't figure out why the women, by the time we get in there,

They are bound. And so frankly, initially we thought maybe it was honor killing. But of course, we didn't, it sounds crazy, but we just didn't understand at the time that, you know, they bound them up so that they, the jaws didn't open and other things. And so it took us a while to really understand what's going on. But then what we realized is we did the investigation was, one, the two guys with the AK-47s turned out to be Afghan policemen. And the women were innocent bystanders that we had unfortunately killed. I mean, it was the, of all my time, it was the worst, you know, kind of, you know, kind of, civilian casualty incident that I'd seen.

And we'd had some bad ones, but none quite as bad as that. And I realized, at the end of the day, I mean, it's back on me. So I went down to apologize to the father. And I remember I linked up with some Afghan soldiers and one of their army guy. And we went into this town in Gardez, and of course, there are hundreds of angry Afghans. but you got an obligation you know so I sat down in this kind of city hall for lack of a better term

with about 200 Afghans seated there and I apologize to the father and I remember before I did it I had talked to my Afghan counterpart General Salim and I said what do I say to this guy I mean we killed his sons and a daughter

what do you say to a guy like that and Salim looked at me and he kind of cocked his head And he said, oh, he will forgive you. I said, I don't know. He goes, oh, no, he will forgive you. I said, well, with all due respect, Salam, and he said, he's a good Muslim, he will forgive you. And he said, look, he said, the thing about forgiveness is it not only relieves your burden,

it will relieve his burden as well. It will take away his anger and it will, if he forgives you. And I thought, man, that's a stretch. got there and sat down with the father and I apologize to him and I could see the look in his eye and they forgave me. And this idea of forgiveness, particularly today, you know, it seems like everybody today gets easily offended. You know, everybody gets slighted and they want to hold on to that anger. They don't want to forgive people for whatever that slight was because the anger empowers them to be mad. It empowers them to fight back.

And they feel like if they let that anger go, if they forgive that individual, then they don't get to be the person that holds the power. And I think that's just absolutely the wrong way to approach it. I mean, the whole thing about forgiveness, and I tell the story about the white supremacist, Dylan Roof, that killed all the people at the Baptist Church. And the families went up one by one and said, I forgive you. I forgive you. And the point was they were not going to hold on to that anger. They were not going to kind of bear that burden. So today, as we look at society and we wonder why everybody gets so offended, I mean, I would offer, take the opportunity to try to forgive the people that offend you.

I mean, some of them are big offenses. Some of them are little ones. But I think as a society, we can do a little better than every single slight, every single, you know, missteps somebody takes. You don't have to hold on to that anger. You don't have to fight back. You can forgive people. Oh, it takes a lot more strength to forgive someone than it does to hold a grudge. It absolutely does.

I often worry to worry because, you know, sometimes we have whole sections of society or countries or peoples that have a grudge. And, you know, I look at it as two parts. Like, you need one side needs to say, I'm sorry and the other side needs to forgive. Right. And it's very difficult to get two human beings, just two human beings. just two human beings to do that. And when you have a collective lot of grievances from two different opposing sides,

we have a hard time making that progress. That's the latest book, The Hero Code. And as you and I were talking, as we started off, I've written these kids books and the kids' books have a code, the Warrior Kid Code. And I mean, it's just the similarities are awesome.

It's awesome to see. I know you didn't read this, but, you know, talks about humility and staying calm and treating people with respect and trying to help and protect people. And it's just these are the things that we need to do. And, yeah, I appreciate the fact that you put this latest book out to give people a little guidance, a little something to strive for. with that it's only been about four hours um echo you got anything oddly no i don't i think we covered it he usually throws a curveball question at the end so you're getting off easy anything else before we close out yeah i want to thank you jaco you know you have represented the community with such dignity such honor i love what you're

doing. I love what you're doing with a podcast. I love what you're doing with your life. I love how you are engaging with the community around you. It is important for us, particularly at this time. You know, the community has had its ups and downs. We're in a little bit of a troth now, but we need great folks like you to continue to be the sort of representatives that people can look up to. And so frankly, I want to take time to thank you for the great work you've done, the great example you have set for, you know, not just the new young kids that are going to be a seal someday, but frankly, for everybody you come in contact with, that's incredibly valuable nowadays. So thanks.

Well, I certainly appreciate that. I can guarantee you that there's the only reason I'm here is because of what the community gave to me and the people that I was able to follow and emulate. And it's just, it's an honor to be sitting here talking to you. and thanks for coming on today. My pleasure. And more important, thank you for your service, to the Navy, to special operations,

and first and foremost to our great nation. And then somewhat selfishly, thank you for what you did for the teams. Thank you for leading me and my fellow Frogmen and for setting an example that will forever guide our conduct, our character, and our ethos. It was my honor, thanks.

And with that, Admiral McRaven has left the building. So, Echo, you were, you had no questions, which is kind of surprising. It was crazy. Did you start connecting the dots on who was in the room? Yeah, more so the thing is already new. Okay. Well, one, it depends on what you mean, but new, right? But yeah, I knew and I heard.

And, you know, I am familiar with Admiral McCrave. Okay. So you had connected the dots. Oh, yeah, but not all of them, though. Okay. And it's crazy to just hear them all like the Saddam Hussein one. I didn't connect those dots before. The Captain Phillips one I did not know either.

But, but. So you'd connected one out of three dots? Yeah, one dot. As far as, as far as, you know, some of the most important special operations. So awesome to have him on here and to be able to hear some of those stories and thoughts. So Admiral Craven, thank you so much for coming on. And what does this mean for us? Well, it means we can do a little bit more.

It means we can certainly, we have work to do. The work that we have to do starts with us in order to get better. They were to move in the right direction. Echo Charles. Yes, sir. He said something that I feel like I'm going to kind of take this with a lot of things, obviously, but one that really stood out is, and he said it twice, maybe three times, where he's like, my job is to put you, set you up for success, right?

Put you in a position where you can succeed, right? That was his deal. It's like, man, that's a good way to put it right there because, you know how you always talk about, hey, don't micromanage, don't, you know, you want to let your team lead, you know, how you put it. And it's like, yeah, if you, because you can apply that to yourself as well. Like, bro, set yourself up for some success, man.

Sounds like a good plan. You know, go learn some stuff. Yeah. Go work out. 100%. That's a great analogy. And I thought you were going to say, when he was talking about the guy's like,

hey, sir, you got nothing to prove. Oh, yeah, both. He says, no, you're wrong, actually. You got something to prove every day. And it's interesting. Something I used to talk about to the young SEAL officers is I would say, you have nothing to prove but everything to prove

because sometimes they think they got to prove that they're in charge so they start barking orders of people and you know we're going to use my plan and all that other stuff and you don't have to prove that you're in charge we know you're in charge you're the officer you're literally called the officer in charge you don't need to prove that but you do need to prove you got a lot to prove yeah it's like that always struck me as a um

like don't like beware of complacency or resting on your laurels, you know how like, you know, someone who has the overstated attitude of, I don't have anything to prove when it's like too much of that, right? Little off balance of the dichotomy kind of thing. It's kind of like they did something awesome and then they sort of ride it out and then they still think they should get kind of the cred for it like a hundred years later or whatever. And it's like, hey, like that's cool that you did that, but by recently you've been kind of doing nothing, kind of an added, you know.

So that, that's what that always struck me. as where it's like you always have something to prove like don't be like oh yeah you should like keep respecting me this much for like one thing I did yesterday yeah well you know 37 years for him in the SEAL teams in the in the military and again what's I think is important is as he said look there's so many people that did so much have done so much work so much work to to protect America and everybody from you know obviously the SEAL teams, but just, you know, we talked about the infantrymen. We talk about everybody.

There's so much people that work so hard to protect freedom. So I feel like, you know, you have a guy that's a four-star Admiral on. And of course, you're going to talk about what his experiences were. And, you know, he's going to give you his perspective. But, you know, I tried to point out in the beginning, you know, Admiral Craven was always connected to the guys on the front lines and the people that are out there making it happen. So,

awesome. So we need to set ourselves up for success, is what you were saying before I went on a little. Yes, sir. What do we got? How can we set ourselves up for success? Well, big things and small things. And a lot of us, you know,

we're not going to be admirals straight up. I'm not going to be admiral. It's very unlikely. We'll just say that. Okay. So I'm going to do maybe, my small little part to set myself up for success. Just my small little part.

In your world. In my world, exactly right. So what does that look like for me? And I think others too. So the good news about this kind of stuff is that it's achievable by anyone. Let's take a few little steps, set yourself up for success. So what are we doing? We're reading more.

We're working out more, keeping ourselves physically and mentally capable. That's what it is. an opportunity presents itself. You want to be physically and mentally capable or you want to be physically and mentally incapable? That's the question. Is this a question for me?

We want to be capable. Kind of rhetorical, right? Very rhetorical. Kind of obvious question. So we do that through working out. We do that through reading, paying attention and listening. That's a big one.

A lot of us don't do that that much anymore. Pay attention and listen. Trust me. Kind of like you're not really listening to me right now. Barely. You see what I'm saying. So you see what I'm saying. Anyway, on this path that we're doing all this, we do need supplementation.

So good news. We're going to start with energy drinks. I'm calling it energy drinks. It's a new wave of energy drinks. Do you think that these energy drinks that we have created are going to make all other energy drinks obsolete? It has the potential to do that. As of right now, this is kind of a new thing technically, you know. But it seems like it seems like,

That's a pretty obvious course. That seems like the true. People are looking at the old, the dinosaurs, we'll say. I'm thinking, oh, this dinosaur, it tastes okay and it gives me energy for an hour. But then I ruined my health and I feel like crap. Yeah. And then they look over at this can of discipline go, oh, this makes me feel really good. And it's actually good for me.

Yeah. This is how the old energy drink dinosaurs are going to go extinct. Yes. They're going extinct. That looks. It seems like the current trajectory is. The freaking big comet just hit or whatever it was. It would kill the dinosaurs.

Was it a volcano? No, I think it was asteroid. Oh, you know, that's the current thing. The asteroid, the asteroid just hit the other energy drinks in the form of jaco discipline. Go. Oh, yeah. So they're going down. Just anticipating fallout on that one.

Fall out. They're starving. They're dying. So, yeah, so that's what's going on. Boom. New energy drink. No stigma on this one. No.

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this thing is good for you straight out. All upside, no downside. Short term and long term benefits. Boom. Strategic and tactical. Discipline go.

There's also discipline go in powder and capsule format. Don't forget about that one. Also, we got stuff for your joints. Keep your joints in the game. Don't have to worry about that anymore. Yesterday I did squats.

You did squats win. Monday. right or something like this yeah I think it was so I always think about this where I'm older than I was before and so I incorporated the deep squats right yeah from your influence and I thank you for it and you think with a deep squats especially when you go hard it's like okay you know my knees because that's a lot of times that's the that's what you get like it's like oh yeah dude so if you suggest deep squats to someone like oh my knees or you know and I get it's true so every time I think about this like this joint

stuff like my joints, I think about the squats. Got it. By the way, yesterday, I started warming up doing squats. My brother came over, Jade. We start to talk, you know, you get into conversations, whatever. And then, not when you're squatting. So I'm, well, you know, in my, I'm doing the warmups. Okay.

First of when we get in this conversation while I'm warming up. I do one preset I was explained to Kerry. I do one preset. Kay Dog. K dog. Hell of yeah, all day. And it's basically one set. It's like a half work.

It's like the weight that I'm gonna use for my first working set. I do that, but not as many reps as so much. I'll just you know, it's like a priming kind of thing. So I do that right? Boom. Right at that point the conversation goes deep. So like we're just talking two hours two and a half almost hours before my first set by the way. So now you so you're saying you there's a two hour lag time like time between my prime set and my first excuse. I know so. So. So. So it's so. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So So. So. So. So. So So So. So So. So. In my normal course of action, that kind of stuff happens. This happened before where it's like, hey, my conversation came and, hey, sorry, I skipped the workout, you know. The sun went down straight up. It's dark nighttime ready. I don't know, 8.30 maybe. And it's like, well, you know, I'm all cold.

I've been sitting down talking for two and a half hours. I'm not warm anymore. And let's face it, but it's almost bedtime. Why are people kind of coming around your gym to talk to you? Like that right there is enough to make. Because my gym is on the side of my house outside. Yeah. And, you know, hey, that's a conversation for another time for sure.

but it's significant. Nonetheless, so I go inside, I'm like, okay, cool. I'll do the squats tomorrow, whatever. All good. So I go inside, I take off my shoes and I'm like, drink some water or whatever. And Jade's leaving and they're leaving. I'm like, I was like, no, man, no. It's not going to get me this time.

Conversation, no conversation. I go back out, finish the whole squat. Actually, I added one more set too. Like it. By the way. There you go. The world right now collectively is celebrating your personal victory. Rejoicing. Oh, yeah.

So might I add? Joint warfare joy I was not worried about my joints any at any moment my knee joints in this pretty worried about your mouth I know where I got to curve that little bit you got joy warfare on your jawbone anyway success all around joint warfare super cruel oil all day also we got some immunity stuff this is important as well you don't get sleep you know you were kind of talking about not getting yeah I had a couple I had a messed up a sleep schedule past not last night, two nights before that. Yeah, I had one last night.

Anyway, lack of sleep, lack of this, lack of that, Ken, kind of jam up your immune system. Don't worry about that and stuff too. Got supplements for that. Cold War. Vitamin D3, boom. Don't worry about your immune system either. Joint immune system, no factor right there.

Also, milk. Supplemental protein in the form of dessert. That's some good. stuff as well. A whole other story, but good stuff nonetheless. Yeah, you don't, you want, let's face it, you want ice cream. Ice cream has a lot of downside to it. Yes, it does. You can have milk all upside, no downside. Yeah. Upside, legit upside. Protein. So to put that into perspective, and I just heard this, I don't even know where I was listening to something, but, and it

reminded me, some people eat like a thing of ice cream every single day. It's like a thing, you know, Like, oh, at night after dinner. For a while. Every single day. Every single day. I remember I was running so much. I was running so much. I think I was out at team two.

And every day was like, okay, Monday PT was like PT and a run. Tuesday PT was O course and a run. Wednesday was swim and a run. Thursday was PT and a run again. And then Friday was a run. What kind of run? The Friday run. which Admiral talked about was like a 10-mile or 12-miler.

Sorry. Can't do 10 miles, bro. I would come back from that. I would do my 20-rept squat routine too. So I was eating ice cream with a total abandon. Yeah. I can dig it. Yeah.

So the situation I was hearing about reminded that remind, it reminded me of the concept that some people don't do these crazy runs or workouts or whatever. It's just part of their normal everyday routine. Like, hey, let me just eat some ice cream every single day. some obvious detriment when you do that kind of stuff. You replace the ice cream with the milk. You got the same front side or front end payoff.

But a way different back-end payoff. Actually, you get a back-end payoff unlike the back-end of price cost. Hey, you can get this stuff, joccofuel.com. If you subscribe to it, it's free shipping, which is a legit thing. Because right now there's, let's face it,

there's large, rather large, extremely large companies that are trying to lure you in to their little realm. Yeah. By giving you free shipping. And we understand that. We got to compete with them. So if you subscribe free shipping, you can do double support. Much appreciated.

Also, we got origin USA.com. If you need a jiu jitigy, if you need jeans, if you need boots, if you need a t-shirt, if you need a belt, you can get it all. OriginUSA.com. The USA part is. Not some sort of thrown on branding. No, because this stuff is freaking made in America 100% without compromise. Think about that.

We're talking about fighting for America. Cool. That's awesome. We love it. Guess what else we're going to do? We got to support the economy here. Because without the American economy, nothing else matters. You don't have a military unless you have a good economy.

So support the American economy. Stuff that's made in America with raw materials that were. made or grown or produced in America. That's what we're doing. Origin USA.com. Get it. Yep, it's true. Also,

Jocco has store called Jocco store. This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom. Good. Get after it. All the, all the representative ideas of the path on your apparel. This is where you can get it. Also, we have a subscription as well.

Free shipping on this one. Only in the USA, though, as of right now. Oh, okay. We're working on the international. scenario, but only in the USA, it's called shirt locker. This is where you can get shirts with a little bit different, more creative, say more fun designs

for like a better way of maybe putting it. Anyway, they're more interesting. You get one every month. It's kind of cool people seem to like it. Because once I get a hold a couple of designs, it's going to be not fun. It's going to be dark. It's going to be more cool. Well, there you go. They're cool right now, but they're lighthearted, some of them. Yes. People seem to be enjoying them. Yeah, so yeah, free shipping on that one.

And yeah, every month is a good one. Check it out. If you like it, hey, get that. Subscribe to this podcast to wherever you listen to podcasts. Don't forget we also have Jocko unraveling podcast with my man, D.C., D.C. D.R. Cooper putting out Word, grounded podcast. We have the Warrior Kid podcast. We also have Jocko Underground.com.

If you want to get a little additional podcast scenario, you can check that out. You have to subscribe to it. It costs $8.18 a month. What are we doing with that? We're creating a platform of our own that if things go sideways, we got a contingency plan. We'll meet you in the underground, underground,

jaco underground.com. Come and check that. We have a YouTube channel, by the way. And we make videos. We make videos. We do. We have,

obviously, you all know, Echo's got some technical skills that he can put to use. He can do the editing and some of that other sort of, sort of, just technical skills. Sure. And then obviously I come in with the assistant director and I kind of creative and the creative side the creative element the vision and the talent by the way you're the talent, you know.

But I do appreciate your being able to edit properly. Thanks. If you want to see Echo's edits and my vision. Yeah. Check out. Speaking of Jocko's vision and my lack of vision from time to time, Psychologic Warfare is an album with tracks of Jocco's vision. Oh. And my lack of vision from time to time.

Psychological warfare is an album with tracks of Jocko telling you how to skip, not skip. Not skip. Not skip. Okay. Workouts if you're in the mood to skip a workout. Like basically to achieve what I achieved last night, let's say you don't have that fortitude that day. Don't worry, Jock got you on this one. This goes for a lot of other weaknesses as well.

So check that one out. Psychological warfare. If you want a little spot, psychological. spot getting over the hesitation check out flipside canvas dot com decodemeyer my brother he's making cool stuff to hang on your wall also made in america we got some books you heard about some of them today speck ops these are from these are from admiral william h mcraven we got spec ops we got make your bed we got see stories and we got the latest the hero code those are available on our website if you go to jocco podcast dot com and you click on books from the podcast they'll all be there

that's also a way to support too by the way we got final spin this is my book that's coming out and you're going to want that first a dish you're going to want the first dish so order that right now the publisher's like you're not really a fiction writer and we don't know people are probably not going to appreciate your work

they're more looking for what you know that's what they're saying so like okay we'll print you know a limited number of copies. Technically, aren't you a fictional writer? Because I've written a bunch of fiction kids books. You are correct. I made that point as well. And then they said,

that's different. Okay, got it. Got it. So, look, the book comes out. We got to let them know at least a print enough. So if you want to pre-order that one and get that first a dish. Go ahead and make that happen. So that's final spin.

Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. The Code, the Evaluation, the Protocol. which also yeah that's another code I forgot to mention that one today the code the evaluation protocol discipline equals freedom field manual way the warrior kid one two three and four micing the dragons about faced by hackworth extreme ownership and dichotomy leadership which I wrote with my brother Laif Babin Laif Babin also have a leadership consultancy and we solve problems through leadership go to ashlandfront.com if you need us to come and help you in your

organization we have we have extreme ownership academy Online Leadership Training. Get to the leadership gym. Get to the, hey, you don't go to a gym one-time workout and then you're good. No, you got to stay healthy. You've got to maintain that strength. It's true.

So go to extreme ownership.com. Join our online. We're doing, by the way, you got questions. Come and ask me the question. I will be on a Zoom call, literally asking, answering your question. Come and check it out. We have a live event called the muster.

Next one up is Phoenix. August 17th and 18th and then Las Vegas October 28th and 29th check extreme ownership dot com for that as well all those are sold out by the way and this one will too these will too we have a couple other events you can check out Battlefield we go Battlefield walks we have FTX and if you want to help service members active and retired their families gold star family check out Mark Lee's mom mama Lee She's got a charity organization. Helps out our warriors.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you want, look, if you want more of my over-elaborated estimations or you need more of Echo's disoriented discourse, you can find us on the interwebs. On Twitter, on Instagram, which Echo only refers to as the gram. And on Facebook, Echo's ad, Ack, AQUAR. Charles and I am at jockel Willink and thanks once again to Admiral McRaven for for everything too much to

sum up but thanks to all the soldiers sailors and Marines who have been on the battlefield well for hundreds of years and who allow America and freedom and democracy to exist And the same goes to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. Thank you for your protection here at home. And to everyone else out there, you know, I didn't quite get into it to this book, The Hero Code. And Admiral McCraven gives some guidance on how a hero should live. but another thing that he indicates is that you

are the hero we need it's you so go out there and get after it and until next time this is Echo and Jocko out