The Team House - From Vietnam To Jumping Out Of Planes With Nukes | Bill Flavin | Ep. 258

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Mr. William Flavin is currently an independent consultant on peace and stabilization. For the past 19 years he was a department of defense civilian at the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute. Previous he was the Assistant Director at the US Army Peacekeeping Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Mr. Flavin assisted PKSOI with the implementation of its Joint Proponent responsibilities in peace and stability operations coordinating with Department of Defense, Department of State and USAID. Additionally, he assisted with advancing the US Governments United Nations initiatives by working with the key member states as well as NGOs and International Forums. Previously he was a senior foreign affairs analyst with Booz Allen and Hamilton on contract to assist the Peacekeeping Institute in doctrine development. Prior to this assignment, he was a Colonel in the US Army serving as the Deputy Director of Special Operations for the Supreme Allied Commander Europe at the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) from June 1995 to June 1999. Mr. Flavin served in the US Army for 31 years in Infantry and Special Forces where he has had extensive experience in planning and executing at the Strategic and Operational level. He has participated in many of the key operations from Viet Nam through the Balkans. He was the Special Operations Chair at the US Army War College from 1991 to 1995 and prior to that serve of the staffs of the Officer of the Secretary of Defense and Department of the Army.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Todays Sponsor:HIMShttps://FORHIMS.com/teamhouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#specialforces #greenberetsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Covert Ops. espionage, the team house, with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 258 at the team house. I'm Jack Murphy, here with Dave Park. And our guest on tonight's show is Bill Flavin. Bill did several conventional combat tours in Vietnam, went on to serve in 10th Special Forces Group.

He ended his career working with the SAS and the Balkans, after war criminals. And Bill is also a part of a recent article I wrote about the Greenlight Program. This is the guys who jumped in with backpack nukes. That was a real thing, believe it or not. The article is up now. It's called Red Menace, Black Ops, Green Light. And you can find it up there now. Bill is a big part of it amongst maybe 15 other members of the program that I was fortunate enough to speak to. Bill, thank you for joining us on the the show. Glad to be here. So Bill, just to kick it off, can you tell us a little bit about what your upbringing was like where you came from and how that kind of propelled you

towards your military service? Sure, I had a different upbringing. I was out there and born of two actors in Hollywood. And so my father and mother were both actors in old Hollywood. My father made 400 movies and numerous television shows. And my mother was, uh, uh, work with, uh, Rogers in a stair and did other things. So, I mean, they were movie people. And so I brought up in a very strange cocoon associated with all sorts of different people, ideas, talents, and others. And so my background was that.

Uh, how did I get into the, military. It was Vietnam War. My parents were concerned I was going to be drafted. So they said, why don't you go to a school that ensures you won't be drafted, at least until you get out of the school. And since my father had gone to West Point, I decided maybe I wanted to go there too, but I was too late and ended up going to the Virginia Military Institute. And I could go there because you mandatorily had to commission in the reserves, but if I didn't like the military, I could say, okay, that's it. So that's what I did. I went to VMI, graduated, and my military career started then, 55 years ago. And so that's how I got into the military, originally in conventional

forces, mechanized forces. I went to Germany. and a bomb holder, Germany. And there I saw the detrious of the U.S. Army. The U.S. Army had been hollowed out to fight in Vietnam. And what was left, by goodness, if the Soviets ever had a mind in their head, that was the time, because we probably couldn't find, you know, two tents to sew together in order to oppose them. So I looked at the military there, which was.

was cold days in Motipu's, race riots, lack of equipment in the brigade. The majority of the brigade were first and second lieutenants, except for the brigade commander and the battalion commanders. And the NCOs were, you know, most of the senior NCOs were East Sixes. So it was a very, very strange environment. And so I looked at that and I said, hmm, this doesn't look too good. I then went to Vietnam. And in Vietnam, I was, since I was airborne in Ranger, I was an advisor to the Vietnamese Rangers for a year.

And as the advisor to Vietnamese Rangers, I got to participate in several activities, most notably the invasion of Cambodia. And so that was a interesting experience also. I got notification that we're going to move out, pack for three days, and two months later, we came out of Cambodia. So that was always a little exciting. Bill, I'm sorry to interrupt. I just want to make sure we don't totally gloss over some things because there's some really interesting details that you brought up there. You know, the first thing I just wanted to ask you real quick is, I mean, did you have any, like, did you begrudge the military at all going? I'm just wondering if you saw yourself maybe following your parents' footsteps, and then you got sucked into the Army and to Vietnam.

Was that like a fork in the road for you, or were you comfortable with that? At the time, in the 60s, my parents decided that Hollywood was dead. you know all of the old creative figures had gone um the 1960s wasn't producing much you know we didn't get to Spielberg we didn't get to uh you know all of the new lights hadn't arrived yet um and my father you know he wasn't getting many jobs as he told me in the 1960s that's because he looks so bad in the dude. So, because, because that was kind of, you know, where we were. And so they were not encouraging me to get into show business.

I remember my father would go into the cupboard and take out the Screen Actors Guild book, which is a book of all the members of the Screen Actors Guild had their pictures, their agents, and everything else in it. Now, of course, you've got to have a computer bank to do it. But back then, it was actually a big, big book. And he would go in the book, put his fingers. in there, hold the book up by two or three pages and said, you know what that means? Those people on those two or three pages are the ones that have three meals a day.

So if you want to get in the business, you know, there it is. And so they were not encouraging me to go that way, even though, you know, I was a professional dancer, believe it or not. as a youth in Hollywood. But I said, well, you know, let's go in the military and see what it is like. And so that's where I stepped into the fray. That's incredible. And then when you land in Vietnam, tell us about the Vietnamese Rangers and kind of like what they were about,

what their mission was in your role there. Oh, yeah. The Vietnamese Rangers were kind of a strike force. You know, they would be thrown in in order to, you know, seal up some flank or do a special mission. They were better trained than the normal Arvin forces were and better officered. And, you know, therefore, we're a much more reliable organization. Joining the Rangers was an interesting event. I arrived at what was called

Trains Compounds. Trains Compound was the place near Tonsanote Airport in an old French officer's mess. I went there and they said oh, go next door to the field forces and we're going to do a

briefing of where you guys are going. So there's a bunch of guys myself go over there and get the briefing. They put up the big map. They say, okay, this unit's here, this unit's here, we're going to here, you're going to go to the data, blah, da, da, da, da. Thank you very much. Everybody leaves. Nobody said anything about the Rangers. So I said, hey, I'm here for the Vietnamese Rangers. Where are they? We don't know. What do you mean you don't know? I mean, you're at the operations center for second field force, right? Yeah. Well, when's the last time you heard from them? A couple of weeks ago. Really? Are you worried? Nah. They go out there and do things.

You know, once they do things, they come back and tell us what they did. Not a problem. really well how do I link up with them he said go go have a drink in the club until somebody calls your name so for a couple of days I laid around the club and suddenly this one guy walks in the front door and said Vietnamese Rangers I said put up my hand went out jumped in the jeet and we took off and we left civilization and drove to their compound on the edge of Benoit and he said okay your rucksack pack you're going in okay where am i going to where the rangers are where are the rangers don't worry you'll find out when the airplane lands um i got a map now i don't need a map don't worry about it everything's okay you can tell at this time i was not too bright

okay i didn't say i am not getting on that helicopter unless i got a map because i know where we're going. That's like I got, it wasn't too bright, you know. So I jumped on the helicopter. Away we went, Bucca, Baca, Bucca, Bacca, Bacca.

Out there toward the, toward the, near Nui Baudetan, which was the Black Virgin Mountain in, in, three core. A hot area. And so we chopper it out there.

And I'm coming in and there hills all around. and there's the landing field. I can see the landing field. I can see the hulks of a couple of U.S. aircraft smoldering on the landing field. And the pilot turns around and said, we ain't stopping. We get low, you just jump. I said, what?

No, no, no, no. We're not going to land. You just jump out. So not being bright. I said, okay. And so sure enough, it skidded right along the runway. I leaped out. And it left.

And there was silence. Me, standing on the runway, somewhere in Vietnam, smoldering aircraft, no map. And I said, man, I wonder if this is stupid or not. And suddenly from the side of the airfield, this hand waved and said, quick, get over here. So I ran over there and jumped in a ditch right by the end of the airfield. And he said, welcome to the Rangers. Here, let's get in the Jeep and we'll go up to the top of that little hill over there before they start shelling the airfield, which they'll do it pretty soon. And we'll have a welcoming party.

So that was my welcome to the Vietnamese Rangers. And so it was an adventure. There was a on the invasion into Cambodia, well, I was advising a particular. and commander on that along with providing firepower, close air support, the integration between the mech forces and the ground forces. I did achieve one objective, though. I think I was hit by every piece of friendly fire that we owned before I got out of the Vietnamese Rangers.

I got hit by an airstrike. We had cleared a we had cleared a VC fortified area on the edge of a rice patty. The VC had gone. And we said, fine. And suddenly I saw a Willie Pete round, white phosphorus round, coming in from a forward air controller flying up there. And I said, anybody talked to those guys? and say they're friendlies in here? Oh, I don't think so.

Ha ha ha. And so I jumped in the bunker and we sustained an airstrike. And you know what? The VC build better bunkers than we do. Now, it was an A-frame affair and it withstood the air strike pretty well before I could get on the phone and call it off. And the other thing was artillery during the same Cambodian invasion. The U.S. would run artillery race. run the tubes up, 175s, 8 inch, and just, you know, shoot forward.

Well, unfortunately, there was no real coordination where the Vietnamese Rangers were because they weren't necessarily on the radar and where the artillery raid was going to take place. So I realized that we were in trouble when I heard this freight train coming in, and the next thing, middle of the night, I'm going to land down by this tree. The next thing I know I'm about five feet off the ground from the concussion of an eight-inch shell. B-boom. So I said, I guess I better call them. And of course, the CEOI, the book with all the codes and the cosigns in it for these people,

was about two inches thick because they had to have callsigns for the entire core area. I eventually called that off to. Anyway, there's more stories about being hit by American artillery. The incursion into... We survived it all. The incursion into Cambodia, was that in 1968? No, that was 69. 69.

Before or after Tet? After Tet. Okay. The whole key, because of Tet, the whole key was to cut... Ho Chi Minh Trail off. The Ho Chi Men Trails. Cut them all to pieces. which we succeeded in doing and brought some peace to South Vietnam as a result of cutting those trails.

But the conventional forces and the conventional mindset was a little bit of a problem. For example, we would go in and be a series of rice patties. You'd start at one end of the rice paddy. You'd roll across, and of course, they'd be defensive positions at the other end of the rice paddies. So you'd fight it all day long. Out in the open with the mech folks and the tank, shooting up the defensive positions, taking casualties. Then the sun would go down.

Next morning, get up, attack the positions. And, of course, they see, be gone. They boogeyed out at night and went to the next Rice Patty. So by mid-afternoon, moving to the next Rice Patty, you repeat this. Right. Defense and D. You know, and so I asked the armor advisor who was with me to see whether or not he wanted to channel his inner patent. I said, why are we doing this?

We got tanks, you know, we got APCs. They don't have any of this stuff. Why don't we just break through one part and keep going and get behind them? Don't you think that's an idea? He said, oh, no, no, no. Can't do that. I don't think the Vietnamese could handle it. Sure they can.

The Vietnamese soldiers that I saw, I was amazed because the commanders that say attack that position and they'd go taking lots of casualties. I mean, they were fearless, not too bright, but fearless in taking the fight to the enemy. Never happened. Could never convince my compatri over there on the calf side of the house to mount his deed and and try something. So I found that little disconcerting. This is all building to why special forces becomes important because I figured there's got to be a better way to do this

stuff other than what I'm seeing here. So I spent a year there running around in Cambodia coming back. And then after that year, I transferred to the 101st. Went up there and commanded a company with the 101st for eight, nine months. And then I tried to re-up again, but the infantry school wouldn't let me. They said, you need career development. And so I said, wait a second, now.

Here I am, company commander in combat. This is what I'm supposed to do. Is it not? You know, why don't you just let me stay here? no we can't do that it would be injurious to your career you must come back to fort benning at the time and do the advance course so you could advance your career so i said okay well well there it is orders were cut and i i left and the 101st was a a challenge though um this was toward the end of the war we're winding down this is moving toward 1970

here. And what is happening is that several of the units are contracting and leaving Vietnam. And the people who were still there are being redistributed among the other units. And many of these people were not quite willing to do that. So there were a lot of personnel problems. I have a person to report to me and said, I'm on drugs, I'm not going to the field. Oh, okay. Go over there and dry out. Once you dry out, you're going to the field.

You know, and so this was a constant issue. Not a very capable organization when I was there. At capable people, good capable NCOs, but, you know, we were at the end of the food chain toward that era in Vietnam. And then, of course, the U.S. military didn't want to take casualties. We don't want to take casualties. So, if you were out there and you wanted to call artillery on suspected enemy positions,

you had to say, I'm taking effective fire. If you didn't say that, you wouldn't get artillery. And I had that debate with them, too. Don't you think it's good to shoot the enemy before they shoot us? You know, that's what I like. You know, I would hate to have them shooting us and then we shoot them. Why don't we do the other thing? No, no, no, no, no.

You know, we got to watch out, you know. You never know. You know, we conserve the ammunition here. You know, we don't want to, you know, you guys out there in the field are just using artillery as a crutch. And the answer is, okay, yeah, well, okay, I'll do that. You know, but. I'm okay with it, yeah. So there were some real problems coming out there.

I'll just relate a small story. Sure. Brigade commander of the 101st. Wants to go out and visit the troops while they're in the field. Okay. And, of course, there I am in the field. Well, to do that, you've got to secure a landing zone for the guy. You know, something I don't want to do.

Because once you get out there, clear a landing zone, everybody in the world knows where you are, you know, and so this is never good. We want them to not know where I am, so we can sneak up on them and catch them. But there it is. So we cleared the landing zone. The brigade commander lands goes out there and speaks to the troops. Then he comes to me and said, Captain, you're not taking care of your troops. I said, I'm not. I said, absolutely not.

Do you realize you haven't ordered ice cream in the field for these troops? What? And I said, you're absolutely right. I have not ordered ice cream in the field for these troops. He said, well, that's changing now. You're going to stay and secure this landing zone, and we're sending ice cream into you, and you better take better carry your troops, and he leaves. So I get the field first, Sergeant.

And I said, who told him that? Field First Sergeant, sort this out. So sure enough, a couple of hours later, an airplane lands with ice cream. Of course, the ice cream is melted. I mean, this is Vietnam. It's hot, you know? And so they take the ice cream out, and the field first sergeant grabs the guy who told the commander that sat him down and said, eat it. But, I mean, how crazy is that?

Yeah, you know. That's like a... We had to establish a pizza hut on the Firebase, a red and white pizza hut. You know, if this is a firebase, this just helps the enemy. No way you are. Luckily, it didn't last too long because a typhoon came in from the South China Sea and took it away. But anyway, these wacky things, there are more wacky things than that. But anyway, I'm looking around, I said, you know, this is kind of,

nutsoid. Or the time when I coordinated with cords, the cords program, the great chords program, one of the problems was the U.S. field forces hated cords. And so the cords coordinator there in the area wanted to speak to me. Before I go, my commander told me, number one, don't listen to anything he says. Number two, don't do anything he wants you to do. Now, this is the guy, of course, who is in connection, connection with the local Vietnamese,

who supposedly knows the local intel, who supposedly knows what's happening there, you know, who's got a state rep with him, an aide rep with him, all that stuff. And I'm not supposed to listen to him, and I'm not supposed to do what he says. So it's interesting, interesting stuff with the 101st. Yeah.

Bill, I'm going to ask Dave just do an ad read real quick, and then we'll get back into it and hear about the next step in your career. Sounds good. Okay, sorry, Bill. We'll get right back to Real Talk. 52% of men over 40 experience some form of erectile dysfunction between the ages of 40 and 70, but it's always been a taboo topic. Thankfully, HIMS is changing that by providing affordable access to ED treatment. all online. Hey, if your flag is at half mass and the guy isn't standing at attention when you want

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After your experience with 101st, what was the next stop for you? The next stop after advanced course and a master's degree. I became a tactical officer at the Virginia Military Institute and a history instructor, military history instructor. And so I did that for a while. And then I got a phone call from the military personnel center that says, congratulations, you have volunteered for special operations forces. We're so glad you have volunteered report to the qualification course. At the time, Shai Meyer was trying to pump up special operations because they were being disassembled

at the end of the Vietnam War. And therefore, he tried to reverse that and went out, looked at the personnel records and says, that one, that one, that one, that one, that one. I was one of that ones. So I said, okay, sure, let's do it. So I went there and went through Charlie Beckwith's magical assessment course there at Fortress Bragg and went directly to Germany,

Bodtotts, Germany, the first of the tenth Special Forces Battalion in Badththold's Germany, the home of the old SS-G. Choulet in Batos, in Bavaria, which again was a unique experience because it was a completely self-contained unit, the only Special Forces unit left in Europe. And so we had an airfield, aircraft rigors the whole, the whole shebang. It was a slice of the Tenth Special Forces group, who was back at Fort Devons. And there was a commander forward there. And so it was kind of a unique special unit.

And that's where I became the team leader of the Satum Greenlight team, which was the direct action team in order to employ a nuclear weapon, wherever they would think it needed to be employed. And so I did that and then stayed there because I was a senior captain. I was a captain for over 10 years at the time because all the promotions froze, became major there and went on to do staff work at that location. And we did some interesting, some interesting stuff there. The more interesting stuff would come a little bit later as we're supporting other agencies of the U.S. as the wall was about to come down. But it was a very mature organization. My team was a very special team.

Everyone on the team had multiple tours in Vietnam. It was a very senior team. Matter of fact, two members of the team were lieutenant colonels. How did that happen? Well, these folks were commissioners. in Vietnam. Field commissioned in Vietnam. When the war came back,

they were decommissioned. But they retained their reserve rank. Right. And they've advanced through the reserves. So in essence, they were Lieutenant Colonel in the reserves and E7s in the regular force.

So you could see that the team was more than competent. A great deal was learned and with that team. Matter of fact, two members of the team became the sergeant majors of SF. You know,

a couple of members of the team became senior officers. I mean, it was an amazing group that I just happened to fall into. A lot of learning there because you could say, okay, here's the target.

Here's the target folder. I'll see you tomorrow morning. Walk into tomorrow morning and everything would be laid out. The briefings would be ready to go. All the intel would be done. So in that regards, it was a pleasure. The other problem was we had significant ego individuals there.

And so the challenge there was to balance all these egos, you know, so you could have a smooth running operation. But the fact that they were very proficient meant that if the team, a couple of times it would go in, if it got broken up, I would be sure that one of those individuals would finally find his way to the target and accomplish the task. And while we were there, of course, they were the old folks that were there. By the old folks, I mean people who had actually served in World War II that were still around Batos, because many of those folks came and made a home in the area, several of them, one of them who wrote the demolition manual for SF was there. I think he was a poll. And of course, the Sergeant Major

Julius Reimlenser, who was another one of the legends of special forces because he was a Czechoslovakian youth, you know, who participated in the assassination of Heinrich in the Czech Republic. Operation Emperor pod. Yep, that was it. He escaped, of course, where others were caught. And then he went on from that to fight the Nazis, then fights to Soviets, then, you know, do cross-border operations, trying to evacuate people from the iron curtain. And then he was there in special forces, and he was a fountain. of knowledge, found of abilities to evade, escape, and make himself into something that nobody

could notice because he had Slavic features. And when you talk to him, you thought, you would think that he wasn't too bright. That was his trick. He spoke five or six languages. And he was very savvy on being to read people. And so all of these individuals that happened to to be at Bottoz at the time, added to, you know, the lore and the flavor of the special forces community. So it was a pleasure to be there at that time. Bill, can I ask you, so around what year was it that you went on to your grad school and then taught before going into Special Forces? Let's see, I went into Special Forces in 76.

Okay. So that time. And so, you know, you mentioned this, you know, you guys mentioned the Sodom's and the Statham. And, you know, can you give us, and I know everybody's going to read Jack's article, but can you give us sort of your introduction, how they laid it out for you and how they prepared you for it? And what did you think when they said, hey, we have nuclear bombs that we want you and your team to jump in behind enemy lines? My thought was, okay, I mean, how wasn't to, you know, yeah, you got a nuclear bomb, I'll jump it behind the lines. I mean, so.

The preparation was that that team was the key team to prepare itself. We did a lot of self preparation on the device. and there was an officer at the higher headquarters who oversaw that preparation. Actually, learning how to use the device and everything was pretty simple. So that didn't take much effort at all. The effort that we put into it was to determine the targeting of it all. What's the best way to employ it and against what to employ it? There are a lot of obstacles in employing the weapon.

I always thought it was a psychological weapon, just so the Soviets knew we had special force of teams running around with a nuke in their pocket. You know, that would make them give them some pause. But there were lots of coordination issues in actually getting the real device and actually getting to the departure airfield and getting out of the departure. airfield and going to where you've got to go wherever that was. And so we always had this running debate with the folks who were saying, you know, here's a likely target. Here's a likely target. Here's a likely target.

The problem with that was, of course, that we were not going to initiate World War III. So we were going to jump in before the Soviets attacked. You know, and once the Soviet gets attacked, the whole shape of things changed. dramatically. All of those target folders and everything were, you know, probably not valid at that moment. Right. And so now what's the plan? And of course, I never got to now what's the plan? Because everybody says, when the time comes, we'll tell you. Well, right. You know, I mean, to run a good mission, you've got to prepare significantly for that mission, as you well know. You know, like the Sante raid, like any of the missions after Osama or anything else,

you've got to really prepare to run that direct action mission if you hope it's going to be successful. But they were kind of blasé about it. That's why I said this has got to be a psychological weapon because these folks are too blasé about it. They don't think it's ever going to be used, I don't think, the higher ups. And Bill, you told me that when you got promoted to, become, I believe the executive officer and you had access to all of the targeting packets. There were like some revelations or like some conclusions that you came to from having access to more of the program.

But the key is that one would think it would be put against a high value target, you know, or psychological value. But the targets that were presented were not high value targets. You know, they were part of air defense systems that had redundant built into it. And so the question is, why? You know, I mean, you blow up this tower and, you know, 15 minutes later, it's now covered by the redundancy of the other towers. What have I just done? And so, you know, there was some real questions about that. And so what I planned to do, what I started to do as the executive officer and later is the commander of the unit when I went back

and commanded it was to begin to emphasize unconventional warfare with the folks because we had been swept into direct action and lirps long-range reconnaissance patrols because they wanted to find out where the Soviet second echelon was going to deploy and so you're going to go hide in hidey holes which I thought was dumb but anyway that was me and so I said why don't we get back to the basics of forces, which is unconventional warfare, and train on all the unconventional tasks that are in the books. And so that's eventually where I went to with the union. And as the folks later told me in the Balkans when they were there, that they thought that that training helped prepare them for what they would face in the Balkans several years later. So I was not a fan of, you know, direct action as part of unconventional warfare, yes.

Direct action for direct action itself is a waste of special forces, in my opinion. It's got to be part of a larger, unconventional, irregular scheme. And, of course, that's a tension that's been going on in special forces for years in soft, you know, the doorbanger versus the, you know, let's ride on the horses and help the Northern Alliance, folks. Bill, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you told me that you spent like 10 years as a captain because of how the Army was structured and the changes that things were going through, which is, I mean, you must have gotten a lot of time, team time in special forces, which is amazing. What was sort of like your career progression as you went to executive officer and then battalion commander?

Well, it went faster because then the promotions picked up. And so went from the executive officer. Then I went down and served on Central Command, Soxcent, down in Tampa. And in that, I was able to visit the Middle East and go in there and begin to design, help, train, and prepare for operations. in the Middle East, as well as participating in some, say, clandestine operations, which will say that that's all I'll say. And I imagine this is early 1980s, so Lebanon was hot and heavy at the time. Yeah. Now, before that, one thing I did do at,

at Bottoast before I left as the executive officer was support Desert One. And so prior to Desert 1, the CIA was supposed to go in and lay in the airfield, as you know, and put in the beacons that would be activated by the planes coming in. But they had no escape plan. And so they asked us at Todd's to put together a team and go rescue them if they needed to be rescued. So I commanded that team. And we deployed. Here's this great story of why J-Soc,

is needed. We got to the secret frog site in somewhere in Egypt to launch from there to thumb right and launch from there onward. And my contact to hire headquarters was this, you know, Air Force Major, which is fine. He had a satellite phone. And I said, okay, you know, here we are. ready to go fine okay so where's my evasion and escape map ain't got one hmm okay where's my evasion and escape plan ain't got one hmm we got any blood chips here you know we got any little belts of gold and I can bribe the locals we got any little pointy talkies so I can dig big to the locals no no no no no no no just just go in if something happens you can pick them out and bring them out. They said, what if something ams to us? And we're in there too. What do I do? And then

came the revelation. Just move south and we'll find you. And I said, you ever seen a map of a of Moran? Just moving south is putting me in the most arid desert on the face of the planet. What do you mean? Just move south and you'll find me. There it is. Thank you very much. Have a good day. So, luckily that J-Sock got put together as a result of this, so that they could have some real planning, real oversight, and real focus on these operations, because it was kind of a loosey, to say the least. But anyway, that's another story. Can I ask you, like, who was, because we know that Delta and the Rangers, you know, that they had their sort of chain of command. And I don't know who, they had their mission commander, but who was telling you guys to go forward and do this? Was it the same people running them?

The Pentagon. The Pentagon. Okay. Squirrel shop in the bows of the Pentagon, who is the one who is orchestrating the whole thing. But, you know, the Pentagon's an organization that does policy, buys things, coordinates equipment. I mean, the Pentagon is not really an operational headquarters. Yet the squirrel shops in there grew up because there wasn't any other overarching place for that. You know?

And so, you know, this was kind of an ad hoc adventure, which, of course, is the results after the problems and everything. They said, we need some organization here. We need a special operations command, you know, we need a joint special operations entity. We need all this other stuff. And that's when special forces begin to come into its own because of disaster, which always seems to be the thing that spurs innovation here. And then it sounds like you spent some time bouncing around the Middle East after that. Yeah. And then I end up in.

headquarters department of the army, in the force development section, headquarters department of the army, where I get introduced to the low-intensity conflict folks and help with Nordy Schwartz, who was a lieutenant colonel with me up there, who, as you know, went on to command the Air Force arm of Special Operations Forces, then went on to finally become the, you know, the deputy chief of staff of the Air Force, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So he and I put together the charter for the low-intensity conflict center that was established down at Fort Monroe, alongside of the Air Force folks at Langley,

to take a look at all of these low-intensity conflict activities and bring them some doctrine, bring them some lessons learned, bring them this, that, and the other. And so I didn't know where that was going to head, but that was the beginning of something that would later morph into my later life as the in the peacekeeping and stability operations institute up here in Carlisle. But anyway, initially, that was us putting that thing together with the chief of staff of the Army and chief of staff of the Air Force

and launching it and starting its progress that lasted for several years. And then I got tagged for Battalion Command, went back, to Batotas as the battalion commander and commanded there for a couple of years in in Battoz

and that was you know when we began to emphasize unconventional warfare began to I actually did a lot of terrorism in Europe at the time too

yeah a complete unconventional exercise that included actually putting together a clandestine hospital and according to the things.

And got the Germans playing too. They love to play. And afterwards, we would have some of the German farmers and everyone come and critique the teams as to whether or not they were successfully hiding or whether or not they were, you know, out there smoking when they shouldn't be smoking, you know. So it was interesting because we had the partisan eyes on them as well as the you know, special forces eyes on them. We, in fact, went to Luxembourg and organized the whole country of Luxembourg to hunt down

our team with the Luxembourg Army. And the word went out on the radio and everything else to Luxembourg that if anyone sees parachutes call this number. I didn't think Luxembourg even had an army. Yep, it has one battalion size. The battalion-sized army. It indeed is. Well, maybe a little larger than a battalion, but about that size.

Nice bunch of folks, but they organized this thing for me. You've sent the teams in. And as soon as they hit the ground, the heat was on them, of course, because they called the police and everything else. And, you know, to the team's credit, a couple of folks did escape and actually accomplish the mission. All the teams hated me for this. course. They said, oh, no, no, no. This is unrealistic. And I said, wait a second now. So you're going to jump into Russia and you don't think people are going to be looking for you. You know, I mean, you know, if you train very hard, then when the real thing comes, maybe you're going to

survive, you know. So anyway, you have some idea of how difficult it is. That was some of the innovative things that we put together with the help of Julius Ryan. and others who would sick the entire 66 MI group upon the teams as well. And so and teach them how to fool the 66 MI. And we did tradecraft training in downtown Munich, you know, trying to lose tails, you know, leaving message. The whole tradecraft deal, we would run through Munich. So it was a lot of activity that we did in the battalion.

And then I graduated from that battalion. And that's when I went on to the war college. Took the war college by correspondence and then went to the war college and became an instructor. It had the soft chair in the war college for several years. where I sat down there and helped train folks that I had later see again. Like General Jeffrey Lambert, who later was the commander in the Balkans, went through there. Later commander in Afghanistan, now in the Atlantic Council and everything came through the course. I can't even think of his name right now.

He was there in 2004 in Afghanistan. Barnhill. Barnhill. Yes. So those folks were all the students that I processed through my time at the Army War College. And then I got the call to go to Shea, Supreme Allied Command, Europe, and be the senior U.S. Special. operations advisor along with a senior SAS special operations advisor two colonels and one warrant officer and one clerk that's it okay to arrange like I

mean you tell me Bill but I mean that job entails like arranging these like massive NATO training exercises doesn't it for the time there was no NATO Special Forces this was pre-Balkans And so each of the countries trained their own. But lo and behold, when we got there, we realized that we're going to have to go in the Balkans, we're going to have to put together a NATO special forces of NATO countries, of the French and the Germans and everybody. And there was no template for how to do that. So we began to putter away trying to figure out how to pull this together.

it took a lot of travel going to all the countries and convincing everybody that this was a good thing to do because the abilities of the various countries who wanted to play were vastly different at the time. I mean, today there's a whole general officer and staff at NATO that does this stuff. Here it was two semi-broken colonels and a warrant officer trying to do this stuff. and also write the plans for the Balkans, monitor the Balkans, monitor the, you know, the war criminal, you know, catch and sent to the Hague operation. And so it was a little bit, a little bit hectic.

Eventually we asked and received some help. They sent us a U.S. submariner. a nuke boat guy which is the best person who ever arrived because the nuke boat guy was a genius really and so he we have had to be you know he went through the nuke stuff so you've got to be able to

roll with the punches and so he was excellent putting stuff together but you know this was very much putting things together and operating in an unconventional manner in the Balkans in order to, you know, find out what was going on,

understand where all the power brokers were, understand who was doing what to whom, getting the intelligence back to the commanders, preparing to do whatever little missions needed to be done. You know, it was a very much an intensive affair. And it was difficult because when the balloon wound up, we're going to the Balkans, that was the first operations order.

that NATO ever wrote. I mean, it was their first operation ever. And so rather than going back to, you know, the WinTech Cimex, which were the exercises that are supposed to exercise NATO, everybody forgot everything. And so the U.S. was communicating with the U.S. They weren't using the NATO formats

and sending the words to us. For example, the Special Forces the U.S. Special Forces movements were being understood at the Log Command back in D.C., but we weren't given where they were going. So this took a couple of weeks of moaning and groaning to say, hey, you guys, now that you're in NATO, you're going to report to NATO. You know, that's who's your operational boss is. That took a while to unsort that.

There was a lot of unsorting going on. They had the big nuclear bunker there at Shape Headport, which is where the Special Forces team was at the very bottom of this bunker in the most secure place possible. And the coldest place possible on the face of the earth. Because under the bunker was this great big lake, under the idea of when the nuclear weapon hit at the top of the bunker, the lake would absorb a lot of the impact. well the lake was right under the cement floor and the cold went right through the floor through the balls of your feet and up through your head you know it was terrible down there i had to wear mucklops down there anyway the idea was go to the bunker and we'll run everything out of the bunker that lasted about four days when sack yore general jawan said this ain't working you know, we're not at war. I still got to run peacetime NATO, and I can't do it in this damn bunker.

So put an operations room across the hallway from me. Let's get on with it. Well, unfortunately, all the comms were going in the bunker. So when you came and saw it, you had these huge comp cables coming out of the bunker, snaking up over trees, going in windows, you know, in order to establish this command center and briefing center that were now hewn out of the, you know, the office space right across from SACYOR. So, I mean, the whole thing was a real adventure for many times. And so, but eventually what happened? Yeah.

I just wanted to ask, you know, what year was this and what was the, when that operations order was put together at NATO, like, what was the mission that we were deploying the, the troops to? That was in 95, and the idea was that we were supporting the Dayton Accords. The Dayton Accords were signed, and therefore it allowed NATO to cross the Sava River, come in and provide the overall security force in accordance with Annex 1 Alpha of NATO, of Dayton, rather, of the Dayton Agreement. And that was, you know, to provide safe and secure environments, demobilize the armies, you know, take the weapons away from the armies and start the process of securing the area so that the other actors could come in and provide what they needed to do. You've got to clear the minefields, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay.

Okay. Funny story of that. First units cross the Saba River come up to a checkpoint, a Serb checkpoint. And the Serb checkpoint says, what are you doing? And of course, it says, hey, we're Dayton, NX1A, we're supposed to be here. And you've got to take the checkpoint down. Okay? And they said, wait a second. Have you had a copy of the Dayton? Accords and the military said well no we don't said wait a second I think we do so they went there this is a little checkpoint two Serbs they take out this fax paper and there's the date in accord it was faxed to him they say let's look at it they sat down and looked at it and said oh yeah yeah that's right we've got to take down the check point okay two guys two guys said fine walked away

so these two Serbs were able to get a fax of the date and of course you get our leading tank units had no idea what they said anyway just you know just bizarre stuff in coordination and putting things together but you know eventually it it got better the special forces there of course were joint commission teams safe houses would go to the communities and listen to them, gathering intelligence, provide, you know, immediate response to various crises and the like.

But they were very much in the civil military world and did quite well in doing that. That included the SAS, the Italians, and others. Eventually, we were able to build a NATO special operations group of the Italians, the Norwegians. And some of these folks had to go to their parliaments and get laws changed in order to participate. The Norwegians did. And so, you know, it was a learning experience over a couple of years, 95, 96, 97, 98, you know, over a couple of years to get this thing oiled and get this thing. on track and then Kosovo comes. Yep.

And by then we had oiled the wheels or not that it wasn't as big a crisis in Kosovo as it was in Bosnia. In Bosnia, because, you know, we had kind of oiled the machinery here. And then, of course, it grew to where it is today, which is a three-star command, you know, a whole staff and all of these units therefore, you know, have a training regime, have policies, you know, and they deployed to Afghanistan. So, I mean, we started the, we lit the candle between the two of us and, you know, and of course, you had to go to the field all the time and see what was happening. I'd visit Kosovo.

I'd visit the Bosnia, you know, walk around with the various, you know, folks, see what was going on, see what the problems were. We also had a CO team sitting there and quick response there in Bosnia, who was getting totally bored because there wasn't much quick response they were going on. So anyone who's a

quick response team who doesn't have quick response gets in trouble usually. So they were always, we had to watch our quick response forces at times. They were always trying to convince people send me in coach let's go

do something they actually did something I mean I don't even want to mention this day decided to go in and blow one rail off a yes I've heard this story

you have I was there for the whole adventure oh please tell us I said I was said this is really stupid you know but the but the sea was wanted

to do it you know and I said okay why are they doing doing this. Well, they're going to go in and they're going to blow this rail. And I said, you're going to blow the rail while the train is coming and it's going to be stuck in the tunnel, right? Well, we really don't know the schedule of the train, you know, and that's going to blow the rail. Someone's just going to come and put new rail in. You know, that's stupid.

Oh, no, no, no. We got to do this, you know. And so they convinced people to go do it. and lo and behold, they didn't realize there were some guards there. And a long story short, they, they in fact blew the rail. It meant nothing. Everybody who was cheering. Everybody thought this was a great deal. I was the black sheep in that family. But anyway, you know.

What was the intent behind blowing the rail? What were they hoping? Well, the intent was the rail went in and out. of Kosovo. And so the rail line would snake through Bosnia. And so since we own Bosnia, it would be good to interdict the train. Why were they interdicting the train? Why don't you just take an airplane and blow the train up? Sure. Right there at the tunnel. You know, nobody gets hurt. Bomb drops on the on the engine. There we are. But no. No, I don't know. It was one of a number of odd and strange missions.

Out of curiosity, you know, you mentioned that some of these special forces or special operations units had to go to their government to get it changed. Is that because some of them were law enforcement, or because they were like a mixed post-World War II? No, for example, in Norway, they were designed to defend Norway. Right. And so, okay. Defending Norway did not necessarily mean leaving Norway.

Right. and so that was part of the deal there that the idea of defending Norway also included going and supporting NATO at a distance and so there were various types of those laws on various countries' books that had to be massaged. So the job was just not, you know,

my job was political as well. You know, going to the countries trying to massage them and say, hey, you know, He really ought to do that. There was an SAS guy in Norway that actually pulled it off because he was married to a Norwegian who happened to be the daughter of some parliamentarian. Anyway, it was confusing. But he was able to pull the thing off, and Norway jumped in the game.

So, yeah. What was it like working with the Brits with the Special Air Service? No, it was great. That was not a problem working with the Brits. The Brits and the Americans were the ones who actually could run the command and control. They had the ability to command and control. None of the other nations had developed that ability. And so to really, you know, do a multiple command of control headquarters.

And so the Brits in the U.S. were the backbone. And some of the nations, we told them, you know, you can be the backbone too, but you've got to, you know, develop, get more equipment, get more stuff. And they use the Balkans as a lever in order to improve their capacity and capability. But working with the SAS was a pleasure, as far as I could see. There are a lot of folks with Northern Ireland experience, which came in very handy in some of the operations that was done. and because the D. SACYOR was a Brit, that was an advantage. Because the S.A.S. could talk to the D. SACUR, who was either Randall McKenzie or later Smith, and get the word to the sacrior, to tell the sacure what was possible and what was not possible in certain ways.

And the Brits were very much in the unconventional mode on how to, you know, how to do things along with my thoughts. And so we met it and worked fairly well together. Remember, the first unit that goes in is the ARC, the Allied Reaction Corps, run by the Brits. So the first unit that runs in is Brit. And so the Brits pretty much take the bag from there because they have been engaged before from 92. in the Balkans in doing various sundry things. So they had more on the ground experience than we did. And so we had to depend upon them and some of their expertise when we started.

And, you know, one of the things about special operations people, whether, you know, whatever unit is, is they're generally, I would say they're generally highly adaptable. And, you know, you look at the SF mission and it's, you know, A to Z, you know, focused on asymmetrical or on conventional warfare, but, you know, does a lot of stuff. With these other countries, particularly the smaller countries, did you have to set up a sort of like a standardization for them?

Did they need to get up the speed on, like, the, please? Yeah, that was one of the things we did. We established a standardization policy. Okay. As to what it meant to be a NATO special operations. Okay. person. And some of these countries were more than anxious, more than adaptable, but, you know, they needed, here's what we need to be a NATO special operator. That didn't exist. And so each of the

countries kind of envision themselves what they thought, you know, would be the right mix fit. So yeah, we had to put together a policy, win coordination with all these countries to go ahead and say, okay, and then when we played around with a certificate, too, certify the countries that they are NATO special operations. That was a little dodgy because NATO doesn't like to do that, really, because the country's complaining. But anyway, And the special operators themselves were pretty good.

Their governments, on the other hand, had agendas. And so a lot of times you ran into the government agenda, which you have to maneuver around. And the government declaring that, by goodness, my country ought to be the command and control for this operation because we're good. And then the special operator from the country had come to us and said, we're not that good. Don't do this. But we have to tell you this because our country told me that we have to tell you this. Okay.

So there are just a lot of, you know, hamming and honing and heeing and hoeing, which has been sorted out today with the way things happened. Are there any, I'm just interested in the actual arrest operations where we detained some of the, war criminals on. I wonder if there are anything stand out in your mind. Well, the first one stands off your mind when we shot the guy. You know, that stood out.

Matter of fact, I was on the radio monitoring the whole thing when it went down. Which is an interesting story, by the way. We had a special radio net set up approved by NATO

in order to monitor the special operations. separate compartmented radio in order to figure out what was going on. And we used one of the NATO frequencies in the bird flying up in the sky. And when we got on the frequency, which was supposed to be nobody on it,

guess who was using it? A Romanian taxi company. You know? I mean, it didn't last long because all we did is just powered up and blew them off. But there was a Romanian taxi company who had captured that frequency on the satellite and having a very good day with it. Anyway, we established the link so we could find out what was going on and see what was what. But the first killing of the

first criminal sent reverberations through the community. And by the code of the day, there must be retaliation against the special forces. And so the special forces were retaliated against a jeep vehicle in front of one of my, the safe houses was blown up. And some of the conventional folks said, okay, we're going to have to respond in kind here because this is not right. Luckily, the SAS and ourselves taught the conventional commanders out of it because we said, look, they have solved their bloodlust. They have solved their cultural issue.

They blew up the G. Right, right. That's good. Forget about it. No one died. And they'll forget about it. They didn't take out any of us because they didn't want to go that much higher because they didn't want to see what was going to happen then. but if we now go after them, this will never stop.

And so we talked them down from that, which was good. But, yeah, and of course, the transporting others to the Hague was always an adventure. Because first of all, you used a special ops aircraft to transport them to the Hague. But, of course, you had to have a, you couldn't arrest them. You know, this is just like, you know, the drug operations, you know, in the Caribbean, you know, where the Navy can arrest, you know, you've got to have the Coast Guard there and you've got to have, you know, the whole thing to actually do the formal arresting.

Same thing with the Piffwarks, the person's identified for war criminals. You have to have a prosecutor there at the plane side who would formally arrest this person, you know, and then get on the plane and then fly to the hay. deposit them in the Hague, fly back, and it worked pretty good. Every now and then we get somebody stranded in the Hague. We have to figure out how to get them back because we escorted them as well on the airplane. But yeah, we had to work out the whole legal dance so that there could be no complaints, you know, that the military without any authorities swept this person off the street,

abused him and therefore he gets acquitted because he was abused by, you know. So it's very similar to the drug operations going on down, you know, in the Caribbean for years, what you've got to do the same deal. But yeah. And so after that, I went back and became a professor at the war college for a while and then became the, actually I retired right out of shape. And I went back to Washington, D.C., to figure out, you know, if I had enough money to, you know, get a cardboard box on 14th Street and panhandle. But instead got a contract with Booz Allen and Hamilton, mainly because some of my seal friends were in Booz Allen and Hamilton, knew I was around.

And so I got a contract to go to the Army War College and join the Peacekeeping Institute at the Army War College. peace doctrine. They asked me, you know anything about peace operations? I said, well, I was in the Balkans. He said, that qualifies. Go up. Go up there and write this stuff. So I did.

And from there, the organization has several mutations, and I finally ended up at the end of my career as the Deputy Director of the Peacekeeping Stability Operations Institute, which allowed me to go to Afghanistan. Afghanistan, Haiti, all of the places the UN and other ones operate and survey that whole side of the story. Interesting enough, some of my SAS friends ended up in the UN too. As the situation chief in the UN Peacekeeping Situation Center was one of the guys who hunted the PIFWicks with me. So it's interesting how the special ops get into these other jobs.

And of course, this job, you know, talks about conflict prevention, conflict resolution, talks about, you know, how do you understand and assess folks? How do you, you know, insert smart power with diplomacy and with force? You know, how do you do, you know, all the things that special forces? knows about. So how did you take to all the doctrine writing? Well, I wrote it. I sat down and wrote the thing. Eventually, I wrote several of them, you know, not only the Army's doctrine, but also the joint doctrine, and then the cutting into mass atrocity prevention, got into women in peace building, women, peace and security,

got into, you know, then got into lessons learned from Afghanistan, taking a look at the human terrain teams, taking a look at the female engagement teams, the agra teams, try to assess if they were worth anything or not. Did our ad hoc approach work? And so a lot of lessons learned. We were into and beginning to extract that before all those lessons were lost. As they would come me out of this thing, just like after Vietnam, you know, where all of those lessons were just dumped and thrown in the basket somewhere.

And we had to go relearn them, rewrite the counterinsurgency manual, which I helped do, with Con Crane here at the Army War College. on behalf of Petraeus. So the old time when I established a low-intensity conflict center, it now died and was replaced by the Peacekeeping Stability Institute. So it's interesting. I created that thing with Nordy Schwartz, and lo and behold, I ended up in something very similar to that at the end of my career. And so, so, yeah, in about 2018, I graduated from the Peacekeeping Stability Operations

Institute. They needed new blood and took up teaching distance learning at the Army War College with my current course that I'm going to start teaching, which is post-conflict Ukraine, can we win the victory? And so there we are, kind of a quick thumbnail. that. Bill, I'd be really interested to ask, based on, you know, sort of the academic aspect of your career after the military, and you talk about these lessons learned, if you have, you know, what your conclusions were, what you came away, I mean, it can be big picture, small picture, tactical, strategic, I'd be really interested to sort of like plumb your expertise on this topic. Well, we aren't real good in learning some lessons. Um, yeah. Okay, 2002, 2003, Afghanistan. I went in to do a civil military operations assessment. Traveled the place, uh, was able to get access to all the headquarters, the UN, everything else. Um, and what I found out was there were some problem.

I didn't discover the problems. The people on the ground told me what the problems were. Uh, the problems in coordination, the problems in paying attention to what the Gans wanted, the problems to not having it up this, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, okay? And so what I found out is that for the most part,

many of the folks engaged in these operations at the tactical and operational level kind of know what the issues are. The problem is how do you get an institution to respond to that? And when I reviewed my report that I did

finally publish in 2004, the problems 20 years later were the same. Yeah. You know, it was like the old bus to Abilene deal, you know, where everybody gets on the bus to Abilene, nobody wants to go to Abilene. Everybody thinks everybody else wants to go to Abilene. The bus heads to Abilene. When it gets there, everybody has an argument.

Why do we go to Abilene? We didn't want to go to Abilene. And so the great bus to Abilene story was that everybody was there and said, we shouldn't be doing this, we shouldn't be doing this, yet we continue to do it, which is kind of interesting and frustrating. One thing I've learned is there is no whole of government after action process. Right. Does not exist. They're trying to do one in Congress right now for Afghanistan, aren't that? Yeah, but I mean, that's, you know, I have no hope for that.

But the Center for Complex Operations was established by Special Operations. corporations, ASD, in order to solve this problem. And it was established around 2015, 11 to 15, somewhere on there. It was supposed to be the marketplace, have support of Congress. It was supposed to establish an overall lesson to learn for the interagency. Never got there from here, and it is folded. The only thing it did do was publish a glossy magazine. But it never got there from here.

And so it's difficult to address these problems because there are more than a military problem. The SF problems in counterinsurgency, UW and all that stuff are more than just a military problem. They're a whole of government type of problem and international folks as well. You've got to include the folks together and get after that because there's skill sets that you don't own and there's access to certain individuals and power brokers that you don't have. How do you do that? And so there's some examples out there of marginal successes, but there's no lessons learned process and therefore there's no educational process. other agencies come to the war college National Defense University but there's no

place where there's a whole of government process to actually get education now the stability assessment review that was completed in 2017 recommended such a thing I'm still awaiting it was a whole of government process sponsored by McMaster

run by the State Department. I participated in the process. It made some useful suggestions. It wasn't earth-shattering, but it did propel Congress to adopt it and became the basis of the Global Fragility Act, which was passed, which then puts the State Department,

the Conflict Stabilization Office, run by Anne Wittkowski, assistant secretary, in charge of the aid and defense pieces of the process in order to prevent conflict and, you know, to build stability in five countries in the world. And that is ongoing now in order to see what that is. That's the latest iteration of an attempt at taking a look at a whole of the government

approach to try to get these things done. But it's been a very checkered, very checkered approach. Because, of course, our government is not designed that way. Our government is designed to divide power up among the various pieces of our executive and Congress and others. It's just not designed to come together unless there's a true, absolute, no, you know, no kidding crisis. But most of these things that we're talking about never raised up high enough to be a crisis. Afghanistan never got high enough to be a real, you know, crisis. And then you have the old volunteer force.

I think the old volunteer force can only handle one problem at a time, as evidenced by Afghanistan and Iraq simultaneously. Couldn't handle them both. So we got a problem here In that regard How are you going to fill the problem? Well You know, some folks say They will fill it with special forces

Oh, it's easy You know, they get themselves up on some mules And go out there and find a local And, you know, solve the problems They tried that after Vietnam, you know Just let the special forces go handle the dirty The dirty trash on the mean streets of the world you know, and everything will be okay.

Just give them some money and let them do that. And, you know, at times that does work. But, you know, it's sort of like they're over there, you know, let them do that. Hopefully they do something good. Meanwhile, we're going to take a look at what, China. Yeah. You know, and the question is, you know, guys, come on now. Yeah.

I remember way back when it says never fight on land war in China. But anyway, you know, if you concentrate on, you know, stamping out the fires before they get going, you're probably going to be better off. But, you know, there it is. And to, you know, kind of wrap things up, I guess, you said you're starting a class at the War College now about kind of the end game in Ukraine. I mean, you're a cold warrior. So you've been around the block a few times. You've seen both the politics and the conflict in Europe.

What did you see happening in Ukraine in the next couple of years? I have no idea. What I'm postulating here is that there's a ceasefire, no peace, and that Ukraine retains the Dumbos. That's the postulation for the end game that we're dealing with. That doesn't mean that Russia has quit. That means that Russia is using other methods to reach their goals by subversion, information warfare, and other things inside the Ukraine.

And that, you know, therefore, how do you deal with that, you know, which is a more insidious way of, you know, undermining the Ukraine than what they're trying to do now. Right. And they have lots of allies inside the Ukraine right now, you know, that can, that are supporting their efforts. And so how do you deal with that problem? How do you, who do you use?

You know, is this the special operations guys? How can you use them to understand subversion, insurgency? It's their playbook. you know, special forces are supposed to be able to take down a country. And so they can mirror image, what would they do, you know, in order to take down a country from the inside and, you know, and bring it over into Russia's circle and make it unstable? So that's kind of what they're looking at. how do you deal with the oligarchs, you know, the clandish oligarchs who have reached out and got political contacts in the United States in Europe and are now reaching out to China

and the Gulf states, you know, and are quite sophisticated in survival. And are we going to do the same thing there like we did in Afghanistan? We're going to go ahead and, you know, just support those warlords as long as they give us stability. And we're going to pump some money into the oligarchs to help them rebuild Ukraine, where in fact the money will immediately go offshore. You know, all these questions. So the course is merely going to say, what are the planning issues? Yeah. What are the planning considerations that you need to think about if that's the situation in the Ukraine?

Because Putin isn't going to stop. Right. No, he is not going to give up unless he's no longer there. And there's a big change over in the Kremlin, which I don't see on the horizon now because he's, you know, bunkered himself in. Yeah. And he can't stop. You know, he has been embarrassed when they first rode into Kiev. the Russians were told to bring their dress uniforms with them.

Right. Because there was going to be a parade. You know, a parade. And according to the economist desk officer in Moscow, he witnessed them gathering fireworks at Red Square, you know, so that in about two weeks they were going to have a celebration. Well, that didn't happen. That didn't happen.

you know and so from that point on Putin is hanging in the wind he can't lose this it's emotional there's no way he's going to lose this he's going to try whatever he thinks is going to win now in order to keep going and so we have to be

wary of what's going on inside the Ukraine from various agents interesting I attended the webinar of religious leaders inside Kiev. And the head rabbi, which happens to be an American, been there about 20 years, said that the two FSB officers visited him

and said that they would provide him all sorts of money to help the Jewish community. If the Jewish community would start, you know, supporting Putin, well, that's a real. which story based upon the programs that Russia has put on against the Jews, that's a, that's, naturally the rabbi said, get out of here. Bums. And I thought that was an interesting tale.

So, I mean, there's more, more to the story. Yeah. Bill, out of curiosity, and again, this might be asking you to, you know, prognisticate. But the Soviet Union is dead. Russia is nominally, it's not a communist country. It's, but we saw in Africa, in Latin America, in Vietnam, we saw the effectiveness of communist propaganda and how they're able to spread that. Are those lessons, even though the KGB's gone, you know, you have the FSB and the SVBR now, but are those, lessons still lessons that we need to be worried about? Are they, is that knowledge still there?

Yeah. Yeah, certainly. I mean, Putin plays by the old book. Yeah. You know, he's the old time KGB. He plays by the old book by wet works and everything else. I mean, we've seen that lots. And so, you know, a lot of people, you know, fail to secure their windows in Russia and keep falling out of them, you know. And so, yeah, our problem is, I think we've forgotten it. We've forgotten what they used to do and how they used to do it. Now they've been enhanced by cyber, but it's the same game, as far as I can see. And so we need to go back and review the game of the Cold War that they put together

and their previous game and see how that has. as, you know, mutated in the current area, but their objectives and their approach and everything else I see is, you know, same old stuff, you know? I mean, Putin throwing just human beings at a problem, you know. Right. It's very Russian. And, you know, he's channeled the great patriotic war. Yeah. He's channeled it to the, you know, to the people with the heartland of Russia, supported by the Orthodox Church. And so by channeling the great patriotic war, we need to go back, I think, and see, you know, how, you know, what the mindset is, because I think the mindset is in another century.

I think Putin is in another century. Yeah. So even if Ukraine achieves a ceasefire and regains, you know, certain areas, do you foresee or how would you foresee a lasting internal peace for Ukraine without Russian influence? Is that possible with Putin still alive? That's going to be difficult. But what I see is that all of the friends of the U.S. Ukraine need to be smart in how they approach this problem and not in fact exacerbate it. And so, you know, getting a good plan and a good idea of all of these various moving pieces is important, which is what we're thinking about here. Well, how do you do that? Rand Corporation just put out a handbook on how you reconstruct the Ukraine.

which is good, but they don't go into the potential of Putin undermining the whole thing. And remember, the CIA had a big program in post-World War II to ensure that the Marshall Plan wasn't undermined. And so the CIA linkage to the Marshall Plan was part and parcel of the program. Built-in counterintelligence. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, I think you've got to think along those lines. And the problem is to be difficult, very difficult, because everybody's going to be dealing. I mean, how do you unify something like that? You know, I have no idea.

Yeah. But it needs to be in order to give Ukraine a chance, provide it with some resiliency. against the continuing onslaught of, you know, other methods. Bill, I mean, you've had a really impressive, wide-ranging career. Any, like, final thoughts? Anything that I fail to ask? Anything that you really want to talk about or put out there before we get going tonight? No, I think the only thing that, after all of this, is that the individual is important.

in special ops and everywhere else. A well-prepared individual, educated, and experienced, can begin to fight institutional drag and begin to innovate in order to address some of these problems. And individuals who are networked and who have its experience is probably one of the ways ahead in order to, you know, to address some of the issues.

That's all I would say. Thank you so much, Bill. We have a couple questions on YouTube, and then I'm not sure about Patreon. I'll check. One on Patreon. Okay. And Corbyn, thank you very much. Do you think the Greenlight Teams is how the Soviets claim of having briefcase nukes and

GRU units to deploy them against the government to preempt U.S. first strikes was cooked up as propaganda. They might have. They might have used that as a propaganda tool. Yep. I don't know for sure. Never saw any intelligence on it. But it makes sense. Global Media, Inc., thank you very much. Support the emails via donations and likes. Hey, thanks, Global Media. We appreciate you, like, you know, cheerleading for us. John Ramsey, thank you very much. This is one of the best military channels on YouTube. You two guys are so good at this,

and you let the guests talk and know one to ask questions. Well, thank you. But it's really our guests who are the stars of the show. So, Bill, we deeply appreciate it. Dee? Yep, one Patreon question from Sean. Was there ever a mission you were not entirely skeptical of? also

where where can you absolutely absolutely not you're going to be skeptical of the missions right from the get-go

and try to you know deconstruct them to make sure that it's a valid right mission that can be accomplished

because a lot of times missions get created at some higher, less shrily on of headquarters. By the time they get down to the people who actually have to do it, you know, they see cracks in the thing. So there's got to be iterative process of the folks who are on the team planning the mission going back up to say, who's the Yehu thought this thing up.

Don't you think we ought to do X rather than Y? And so, yeah, you've got to be skeptical of every mission and you've got to sort it out as much as you can knowing full well that as soon as you hit the ground everything may change you know i mean i mean i remember going to the os s get-togethers that happen about every year around here um several years ago uh two folks from the oss uh two old guys of course naturally who were going in there said hey you know only 30% of the missions actually were heard from again, you know, and when we got on the ground and began to do something, in order to guide us, they had developed a code back at headquarters that we couldn't figure out. And so we were responding to them in the code that they didn't

understand. So eventually we decided, okay, let's look around and see what we can blow up. And so that's what they did. You know, because they couldn't get any instructions because the communications had broken down. And oh, by the way, what they saw on the ground didn't relate to what they were telling them in the UK and the like. So especially in the special operations world, when you get on the ground and begin to operate, things are not as they seem. Things are not like, well, classic example is Iraq. Iraq the first, when the special operations team is going to go on the ground and the photo experts take a look at this and said, you know, everything looks okay. There's nobody around there, but there's these strange geological formation.

here on the ground that look kind of funny. Don't know what they are, but that's okay. Special ops teams hit the ground, look around, and you know what those special geological formations were? A Bedouin camp. So they had to go in and get them out and extract them immediately. So you know, you just never know what's there. So being skeptical is what I like to do and try to sort the things out beforehand.

so you can reduce the risk as much as possible and then innovate, you know, when you, you know, get on the ground and realize, well, maybe the intel really wasn't that good. You know, maybe there's some things that aren't this way or that way or the other. I mean, they had to innovate at both Osama bin Laden and in, you know, Sante and all the other things. You know, they had to innovate on the ground in both places. That's why the special operations forces are trained and thoughtful and begin to think outside the box because usually you end up outside the box a lot of times. There you go.

One more question. Is airborne covert insertion still possible in the face of modern air defenses? Interesting question. The answer is, no. Come on now. You've got to get there. If you don't get there, it doesn't count. And so we shouldn't be locked into leaping out of an airplane.

If there's a better way to get there, let's use it. I mean, Julius Riemnitzer infiltrated into the Czech Republic on a railroad train. You know, that's the way you get in with fake papers on a railroad train. And there were 10th group teams that infiltrated Iraq in 2003 in the back of a high-lux pickup truck, as I recall. Yeah. I mean, getting there, you know, at times we get fascinated jumping out of airplanes. Yeah. Halo out of airplanes.

Laylo, Ullo, whatever, scuba. You get fascinated by the process of infiltration. I always said that this is not where the emphasis needs to be. The emphasis needs to be on the mission itself when you get there and you get there the easiest way possible with the least threat. You know, if that includes riding a donkey, then so be it. You know, if that includes, you know, just becoming a truck driver on a truck and driving in, so be it. You got to get there. You don't get there.

Nothing happens. And so, but, you know, people love jumping out of airplanes. and know they love flying in the sky. You know, that's okay. We could do that. But for an actual mission, that would be the last thing I would do unless there was no other possible way of getting there.

Bill, you know what the answer, though, is for the Army to designate a donkey truck and railway badge and then give mustard stains. Then people would be fine with those needs of infiltration. I didn't tell you I was a donkey man. did I? No. Okay, when I was in Department of the Army, we got a request

that the Army ought to adopt the mules again. Develop a mule core. This was from our Senator Dole. This was from Senator Dole, who was in the 10th Mountain,

and the Navy was just bringing up its battleship again, and it was getting a lot of good press for the battleship. And they say, if the army brings back the mules, it'll get good press. So here I am, staff officers, sitting in the Department of the Army,

and they come to me and said, you are sink mule. Do it. Okay? Oh, my goodness. What have I gotten into here? That was only one of the crazy things I got. So sure enough, you know,

I investigate the mules. We've got to write doctrine for the mules. you've got to write an equipment plan for the mules, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, eventually this gets passed off to special forces, you know, where they got their mule manual and everything else, but I unfortunately was mule man who had to do this. And I got, you know, all of the equipment developers

and everything that you assemble in the Department of the Army and got them together in a room. And I said, you know, we got to have an acquitment. him for this thing. You know, you can't develop anything without an acronym. Because, uh, um, so I said, how about bicep? Bicep. Yeah. Biologically integrated self-fapeled system. You know, you guys laugh. Nobody in that room laughed. They said, ain't funny, McGee. Well, you know, there was a captain or two figuring out how to put it all on a PowerPoint. Yeah, a bunch of humorless sticks.

Yep, yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I get invited to Mule Days out there, you know, in California where, you know, have Mews drag outhouses around. I could ride an outhouse. You know, I got invited everything. Well, I hope they used all that stuff in Afghanistan when they needed it. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was. They used it.

The manual on how to pack a mule, the manual on how to tend the mule, that was the manual they used in Afghanistan. So, see, I was out of the box and ahead of the game. Yeah. Bill, thank you so much for doing this interview and shared all of your experiences with us, man. Is there anything you want to plug anywhere, like people should come to find you or where they should come to sign up for your class if they're in the work college? now it's internal in the war college so it's a reservist sign-up so there's no outside sign-up possible but you can visit me on lincoln if you want to and all my writings and everything are there on

lincoln uh if you want to look at what i've been scribbling over the years of all this podcast yeah i just put a link to your page at the peacekeeping and stability operations institute uh for those of you listening it's uh P-K-S-O-I, that's Papa Kilo, Sierra, October, India. Dot Armywarcollege.edu. And then you can find, just searched by his last name, F-L-A-V-I-N. But, yeah. Yeah, there's not much there.

The LinkedIn site's probably better. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, people can go find you there. Bill, again, thank you so much for doing this. well i appreciate it hopefully i met your expectations you exceeded yeah absolutely this is awesome yeah um and folks out there listening uh we'll be back on monday with a uh dude who served as a j-tack in the ranger regiment so hope to see all of you then bill again thank you and uh yeah we'll

see all of you soon thank you bill okay thanks