The Team House - SEAL Turned Maritime Branch Officer | James Hawes | Ep. 177

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

We originally recorded this episode for Christmas, but we had a late cancelation. So here it is for Thanksgiving!! Enjoy! ——————————————————————— James M. Hawes completed BUD/S in 1963 and received orders to the newly formed SEAL Team 2. Hawes subsequently volunteered for duty in Vietnam and became one of the first SEAL officers permanently assigned there as part of CIA's OpPlan 34-A, governing covert operations into North Vietnam. That led to his clandestine CIA mission to build and command a mercenary navy in the Congo in 1965-66. After several years working for the Agency, he attended Harvard, receiving his MBA in 1971. He finally settled in Asia, living there for 34 years and pioneering a variety of business enterprises, including specialized shipping and commercial real estate. Hawes currently lives near San Antonio, Texas, and is a consultant for a variety of new venture companies. Grab James’ book here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-Navy-SEAL-Communist/dp/151073418X/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=d4d57d07-691b-46e0-98a7-9729a607a9e4 To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests -Ad Free audio feed -Ad free video  Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch:  https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media:  The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: 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/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇 [e-mail] #navyseal #maritimebranch #coldwarBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Teamhouse know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our team house. bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to our Christmas episode of The Team House. This is pre-recorded rather than live. Today we are interviewing the author of Cold War Navy SEAL, James Hawes.

James served as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam, actually served with MacB. Sog. And then he went on to serve in the CIA's Maritime Branch and went on a secret mission to the Congo, setting up a secret Navy to interdict a communist insurgency in the Congo. It's about as incredible an adventure as you can possibly imagine. I really hope that people will go and pick up the book. James, thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

It was quiet for so long. I just got used to not ever tell in the story. Yeah, and I mean, this remained an obscure secret war for so long and hidden behind layers of classification for so long that it's only, you know, in recent years that you've been able to come forward and write this book and tell this story. And I'm so glad that you did. This is an important part of history,

an important part of Navy SEAL history, an important part of American history, really. It is, and I wanted it recorded, because I didn't want anyone, any historians with attitudes to tell the tale. At least they'll have a first-hand account to contend with, And hopefully that'll minimize prejudices. Because in writing the story, I find out I had to do some research and some things I thought I knew because I'd seen it and heard it.

So I gave away with a new appreciation for the challenges of good history. James, tell us a little bit about your upbringing and entry into the Navy SEALs. Well, I'd always had in the back. of my mind that I wanted to do something like that. Remember in those days, everybody, everybody went into the military. So it was a, it was a foregone conclusion that that's what you would, you did. And I always had my mind that that's what I'd like to do. But I always had the problem with my, with my vision.

And so when I went into the Navy, I had to get a, a waiver to be an under what's called an unrestricted line. officer, a regular ship going officer, because I was 2,200, but I was correctable to 2020. And so that made it possible for me to do that. So I went to OCS with my first paycheck. I bought a set of contact lenses. And I finished OCS, was assigned to a business. border ship out of Oakland, California. And during the, the, the cruise to Westpac, we spent

fair bit of time in Yaku, Japan, which has a big naval hospital, big Navy base. And I thought, well, got nothing to lose. I'm going to go ahead and fly for UDT. And so I waited to I got, of course, everything that was taken care of, and I waited until the lunch hour to get my eye exam. And I went in and said, there was a Corman striker, which is a sailor being trained to be a Corman on duty during the lunch hour. I said, sailor, let me read this, Corman, let me read this chart so I can get back to ship. Ah, sir, boom. I read it 2015, 2015. of course I had my contact lenses in.

There was nothing in the form, a medical form, that said anything about was he wearing on glasses, was wearing contact lenses, did he have binoculars? Nothing was just read the chart. So I just read the chart. And of course, they're always looking for UTT officers. And so I got a quick set of orders telling me as soon as the ship got back to Oakland to detach and report for the class of January 2,

2000, 1963. And so I did that. And we got back to Oakland and it was time to detach and I got my medical jacket. Officers, at least in those days, carried their own medical records. So I leave through the file and sure enough, last page in the file is my waivers and I'm 2200 correctable to 2020. So that was a, that was an ethical dilemma because it would have been easy to care that sheet out of the record.

But I thought now that's going too far. It's one thing to stretch the limitations of forms that don't keep up with the technology. another thing to actually mess around with your with your record with the written record so I thought well we'll just see what happens so I'm headed for Little Creek Virginia reported into training the there was a first-class diving first-class diving medical corpsman on duty reading the files as you checked in and he started going through my file and I'm holding my breath. And he goes page, page, page, and finally he flips the pages.

And he flips at the last page stuck to the page preceding it. And he never saw the wave. So, you know, that was divine intervention for the first time in this whole saga. So I'm in training. And I'm wearing my contact lenses. And I had taken my pressure test test. down to 200 feet in a chamber so I knew I could do anything that had to be done with contact one and diving with contact lenses without hurting myself or any of my colleagues,

my teammates. So I was in the training and halfway through training and we're down to the hardcore people. Most people won't lose anybody at beyond this point unless they get hurt. And so I get called the instructor set one day. And one of the instructors is standing there with holding his fingers up and saying, how many fingers of them, all the Mr. Hawes? And I thought, uh-oh. He said they want to see you back there in officers' country. So I go back to talk to the man whose job I will subsequently have,

unbeknownst to both of us. And he said, okay, Hawes, what did you do? So I told him, told him the absolute truth. Tell him a story. He's shaking his head. and he said, well, I don't know, he said, you know, you might be eligible for a court marshal? And I said, well, I don't think so, sir.

I didn't say anything and I didn't sign anything. He said, well, get over to the hospital. You're supposed to see an ophthalmologist right now. So I go over to see the ophthalmologist. He says, Mr. Roj, you're a medical phenomenon. Uper's is curious how you can go from 2,200 to 25, 15 in less than a year. And I said, well, doc, I really didn't.

And so I told him the story. He's shaking his head and he said, oh, I've told to give you an exam. That's what I got to do? So he gives an exam, sure enough. What is it, 2,200? So he said, well, I'm sorry. Ensign, you're 2200. And you're 2200.

And there's nothing I can do about it. And I said, yes, there is, Doc. You've got to do something. And he said, well, all I can say is, you're extremely well adapted to contact lenses. So I said, okay, say it. So he said it. And I go back to the training unit and the instructors don't know whether I'm going to be there

and they're busting my butt because I'm missing a few sessions. And so I get called over to the for a few days, not knowing what's going to happen. And a few days I get called over the senior medical officer, on the Atlantic Fleet, Admiral. And so I walked in and snapped to attention as smart as I could. And Nansen was reporting his directed Admiral. And he just stared at me and stared and stared.

And of course the intensity was building up, as this was the court of last resort for me. This was it. I'm either going to get, I'm either in or out at this point. And with all the intensity, I could muster, from the bottom my toenails. I said, Admiral, I'm standing first in my class right now. So don't tell me I'm not physically qualified.

And he looked at me. He just stared. And he didn't see anything. Finally said, okay, I'll recommend a waiver. I hadn't been done before. I said, thank you, Admiral. I'll make you glad you did it. Slurited and all that's.

Went back to the training unit. Went back to the training unit, but I still wasn't in because a few, you know, a few days later, I get a call from the captain of the Naval Amphelia School. In those days, you know, the, the frogmen and seals were the unwanted stepchildren of the Navy. They sort of tolerated this. And so they certainly wouldn't let us train ourselves like they do today. and so it was all came under the Naval Amphibia School. So I go to report to the captain, Forstriper, the Naval Amphibia School. It says, okay, Hawes, what do you do?

And so I told him, he's shaking his head. Everybody's shaking their heads. I told him exactly. And he said, well, I have a request here for a waiver that I can forward either approved or disapproved. How would you like to come back as an instructor? I said, Captain, I'd love that after I've operated for a few years. And he said, I don't think you understood me, Ensign. I've got a request for a waiver here that I can forward either approve or disapprove.

How would you like to come back as an instructor? I said, Captain, I'd love it. So the waiver came through. So we were just hidden for advanced underwater training down in part of our basic training down in Rosie Rhodes, Puerto Rico, and the enlisted instructors whose boss I was going to become, I was going to be soon going to be their boss. Of course, they found out about this. And I'll never get that, you may have heard of Master Chief Tom Blaze. He was a, he was a wonderful man. I loved him. Boy, he was tough. And he never took, took me aside, said, Mr. Hawes, I'm going to make it my personal, mission to make sure you deserve to be my boss. So I got Master Chief Tom Blaze's personal

attention for the last five or six weeks of that training program. Then we went to, then we went to jump school. You don't have to be able to see to go to jump school. And then we went to underwater swim school and the guy was going to watch the diving medical officer, not foreman medical officer, was going to not let me do training. You can't, you can't do this stuff with contact. And he said, yes, sir, I can. And he said, well, I don't think so. So go to see the executive officer, ex-executive is an old frog.

And I said, sir, this guy's trying to can me here. And this is nonsense. He said, don't worry. We'll request a waiver. By the time they act on it, you'll be through the training. Anyway, they came right back and said, no problem. This guy's already, we already acted on this.

So I get it all completed. We go to graduation. I go right from graduation to the training unit, to the instructors who have, have just just been breaking my butt for six months. And I'm their boss. They treat me like I'm a, like I was a medal of honor winner. Been there for 50 years.

And it was, they were so professional, the best year of my life, that year of training. So then I'm, so I'm in the, I'm in the training unit, but I want to operate. So I go over to the, I go over to the teams. I go see Ken Wolf, who was the guy who went with, who we went together to Vietnam, to to stand up the Naval advisory detachment subsequently. And whenever to see me with Skipper of UDT-21. I said, commander, you want operators? I want to operate.

Get me a waiver because there was a whole separate channel, a chain of command, separate. So he goes through, he gets a set orders. I get a, I get a call for, I get a set orders saying report to UDT21. I get a call from the captain of the naval amphibia school. It says, get your ass over here right now.

And I go over to report and you said, you frogs are always pulling this stuff. He said, I'm going to get these orders canceled right now. And so he picked up the phone, got the orders canceled. Because he was a four striper and the UD21 captain, his skipper was just two and a half. But the waiver was on the books. So there was nothing to keep me from going to the teams.

So then again, I do my work as a citizen training officer in the training unit for one whole class and most of another class. And then I get a call from Tom Tarbox, who is the executive officer of Steel Team 2. He said, Jim, you want to go to Vietnam? How do you feel about, you want to go to Vietnam? If so, how soon can you be ready? He said, I can't tell you what it is because I don't know. It comes straight out of McNamara's office. I said, yeah, Tom sounds great.

I'll be ready in 24 hours. So I go over and I go over and check into Seal Team 2. I have a cup of coffee with the executive officer, check out a Seal Team 2 with permits change the station orders to go to Danang, Vietnam to establish the naval advisory attachment of MACV SOG. And I was in SEAL team two for such a short time. I went to the 25th reunion. One of the most famous of all Navy SEALs, Eagle Gallagher,

damn near kicked my butt because he didn't know what the hell I was doing there. Jim, how? I said, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, Bob, I belong here. I can prove it. Jim, how was it set up at that time? Because the SEAL teams were relatively new, right? So how can you tell us because we know we everybody these days I think knows about buds like we hear all about buds. But can you tell us sort of what the UDT training was like at that time?

Same thing. Exactly the same. Okay. Exactly the same. You know, basically what they did was take the, take the secondary mission of the UDT and make it the primary mission of the seals. That's roughly what what occurred. As same people, same training, same everything. In the early days, the seal team, when I went in to the seals there were 10 officers 10 officers on each coast 50 enlisted guys yeah and we didn't we didn't get these these wonderful schools that these guys are going like these guys go to now that makes them much much better much more prepared you know we just got the orders and got what's called on the job training so jim i i think a lot of people

a lot of people now are aware of MacB. Sagan understand what it is, but I think a lot of folks only understand it as being a Green Beret mission, that they were Special Forces soldiers who were deployed behind enemy lines in Laos and Cambodia. And a lot of people don't realize that there were Navy SEALs in SAG. And I was wondering if you could tell us about that and about your role in it in Vietnam. Sure. Well, what happened was this was all a CIA operation before January in 1964. When McNamara went up and made it, may, when Mac, well, I don't know, it was getting too big for the CIA. It was more, most appropriate to be a Department of Defense command. And so it was, it became an army command. So when I got there in April in 1964, SOG was only a couple of months old. And it was, it was, it was, a guy, the chief at the time I think his name

was Barbier, Ciaega was replaced by Colonel Clyde Russell who was, he came from the 10th Mountain Division and I don't think he was a special ops guy

but he was an army colonel and so he came over and took over basically come over Sog sog was an army command in the Navy when McNamara came out there and whenever, I can't remember now, was it 60, 63 or early 64, whatever it was, and came back and lied to us, said, don't worry, folks, it'll all be over in 65. He saw what the agency was doing with the junks and the Swifts and to North Vietnam,

and he liked it, and, you know, he took the typical McNamara approach, sure that's good, small, it must be better big, better, bigger. So it had to become a department or defense operation. And so the first five of us, two seals, an admin guy, an injuring guy, and then a ship driver to be in charge because the Navy in those days would never let a seal be in charge of anything. And so that was it. That was the first five that went out to integrate in.

with the CIA and take it over and make it a Department of Defense operation in U.S. Navy and increase the tempo and the frequency of the operations into the north. What were those operations? Well, they were, we had, we had about six teams of Nungs, you know, the Chinese that reside in Vietnam and are always very, treated very badly by the Vietnamese and Vietnamese themselves. And we had six commando teams that we trained for commando-type operations into the north. And then because the Navy had no boats when Vietnam got started, literally, no small boats, that we took the first three Swifts, which the CIA had brought out and used those until the Navy brought in fabulous boats, the Norwegian

PT boats nasty called nasties and boy they were great votes and they would they would go we would go up and do harassment to the radars and various installations along the coast and also to take the teams up for commando operations into the north and bring them back

you know it's well it was So it was, we were an irritant to the North Vietnamese. And allegedly, we tied up a lot of North Vietnamese troops who would otherwise be in the South because of the harassment we were doing in the North. I don't know how to judge that. You write in the book that, you know, on a few of these raids you did, the North Vietnamese like chased you all the way back across the South. Oh, yeah.

One of those nasties were so well built. that one of those swifts came back with, with hold from the, from the tip of the bow to the bridge on the port side. It was smashed in completely and the boat made it all the way back. I mean, they were fabulous boats. And that was, that were, those were, it was those harassment raids that we did. And that it was irritating the fact, it was. Vietnamese and then the ones we did on Han Matt and Han May, which were at sort of leading into the entrance of High Fong Harbor, that allegedly provoked the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident. So when when that occurred, the folks in all our operations were approved out of it, were came out of McGeorge Bundy's office, the national security staff.

we made the recommendations. They approved them and Westmoreland, Saigon got copies of the information, but they weren't involved in it and any of the decisions, at least none that we were ever aware of. And so right after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the geniuses and the National Security Council

who was concerned with this stuff, we're afraid there's going to be retaliation. So they wanted to get the nasties out of Danang. So I took the nasties and all the Vietnamese, I was the only American, took some bags of rice, some nuklam and a 1903 French chart. That's all we had for the Cam Ran Bay. Took a 1903 French chart and head down to Cameron Bay. Nobody knew what was there. there was a junk force, the Vietnamese junk force training base. And on the peninsula that they eventually leveled to make the 101st airborne resupply depot,

the captain, the Daiwi, the Vietnamese captain of that junk force base was hunting big cats. I mean, it was pristine. It was so beautiful. We can't believe it. Anyway, so we pulled in there because at the same time we were having to dodge the International Control Commission, which was supposed to be trying to expose the things that we were doing and Secretary of State Dean Rusk was denying the next day every time. Yeah, so I mean, I could go on about that one alone for a long time. Anyway, so I think to get back to answering your question, sorry. It was an Army command, and so the Army, we didn't have much to do with those guys.

When we needed helicopter help, we just went and found an army guy that flew helicopters. Those army helicopter guys were so helpful and so cooperative, I can't tell you. Because we were walking around, we had no insignias. We weren't supposed to tell anybody what we were doing. And I remember when we were there in Cameron and I had to get some fuel for the boats. And I got a junk and went across Cameron Bay to the village and got a taxi in the village to take. to take me to, I knew there was a special forces base halfway between there and the trunk. We went up there, I walked in, I said to them, special forces captain, I said,

Gap, believe it or not, I'm a U.S. Navy officer. I just don't look like it, and I'm certainly not dressed like it, and I damage you don't smell like it. But I got to get to, I got some boats down in Cameron Bay, and I got to get to Cameron to get some arranged for some fuel. Can you help me? He said, sure, here's a Jeep, here's a driver, just make sure you're off the road by dark. That was the kind of attitude. When I had to come back, when I had to come back, I went to the Army guys that flowed, flew those little, those little observer planes, spotter planes, whatever, and said, hey, can you, can you give me a lift down to, to Cameron Bay? I got some boats tied up down there.

I got to get some fuel for. Sure, up in, boom, down. I mean, these guys were great. Other than that, we didn't have anything to do with the Army. And they didn't have anything to do with us. So something is just happening as we're speaking. I never bought, you know, where the, the, the Magvi-Sogged you got a presidential unit citation.

And I never bothered to put in the paperwork because I never believed much in metals. They just saw too many of the guys who deserved them, didn't get them, because there was nobody around to write them up or too lazy to write them up and guys got them that didn't deserve them. I will not mention the name of a well-known American, former senator and secretary of state who is an example of that. And you were then slated to go to be deployed to the Mekon Delta where the seals became very active later in the war. but because

yes you kind of you kind of you quit the Navy sort of on an impulse because of a bureaucratic slight yeah I would I was I was I was I'd extend I'd agree to extend and take the first

attachment back to to the Delta and it made some sense because I'd had this I would have had this whole year in country which was I think at that time longer than anybody else had on the teams because the guys came out from the West Coast Yelting 1

on six months detachments for the training and the operations into the north. And I'd had this the entire year. But I said, look, I'd like to cut my tour here short by a month or so, so I can get back and go through a complete training cycle with the guys that will we go into the Delta with because it's a whole different, a whole different kind of operating. And the guy said, oh, geez, I'm sorry we can't do that. It just can't get, can't make those changes.

right now. And I said, okay, fine. So I thought, so I'll get a half of training cycle. And so when my relief showed up, the guy I'd gone through training with, the two guys were leaving, because by now the Navy was really in charge. So it was, uh, he had two people for every single job. And, um, so I, uh, I, uh, I, uh, I said, were you, I, I sure we should. you'd come sooner. Kurt, I need to get back and work with the guys that you're going to the Delta with. He said, oh, I could have done that easy. He said, I've just been sitting around waiting for the, waiting for this date. And I thought, you know, who was too lazy or too careless or too negligent to do this? The hell with you. And I was on a voluntary extension anyway, because I'd, you know,

I extended voluntarily extending my time in the Navy in order to go to Vietnam. So I picked up the phone and it's one of those things I got right straight through to the detailer in Washington. I said, my name's always. My file's 6539-59. I'm on a voluntary extension. I went out of this Navy right now. And the guy, you had no choice. He sent me,

he sent the orders out. And I separated when it went down when San Francisco and got out. And you write the book that you missed the Navy quite a bit. But then how did this other opportunity come around? Well, by the time I got back to San Francisco and it cooled off, why the hell did you do that? So I headed back to Little Creek figuring, well, I'll just sign on again and go with the next detachment or another detachment, whatever. Because I couldn't think, I mean, I loved what I was doing.

And so I stopped on the way to see my folks, and then I went on to Little Creek. And not long after I got to Little Creek, and before I'd signed back on, I get a call from this seal who had been in Vietnam with me. But he was a plank owner of Seal Team One, and he had been in the very first group of SEALs that went there in light, like 1962 or 1960, yeah, 62 or 63. I can't know which. Anyway, and he had decided, and we were in the year that I was in Vietnam, he was there, but he was, what's called sheep dip.

He was actually working within the agency. And so he had gone, he had gotten out and he had gone back, and he was going to, he was going to go into the career training program at the agency. And plus his wife was pregnant and about the pop. And so he called me. Because we were the only two guys that had Swift experience. And of any naval officers, we were the only two. And he called me and said, Jim, I'm up here in Langley.

And I'm about to go into the career training program. And Barbara's about the pop. But they want me to go to the Congo. And I don't want to say no, but I don't want to go. Are you interested? And I said, well, you mean I'll get paid? And so he put me in touch with the head of the branch, who was Bill Hamilton, who had been commanding officer of UDU underwater management unit. And so he knew everybody and everybody knew him.

He was a remarkable man. He was a Naval Academy graduate. He had been a Navy carrier pilot in Korea. And then he decided he wouldn't be a frog man. and did that. So he was a hell of a guy. And he was head of the maritime branch. So he gave me a call and said,

Phil, it's giving me your name here. Why don't you come on up and let's talk? So I went up there and met with him. And he asked me the questions that you would ask if you really wanted to verify somebody, knew something about the SWIFs and so forth. And he, he didn't have, of course, didn't have any trouble checking me out in the community.

So that was basically it. and so I signed on and started getting ready to go to the Congo. And there was also another circumstance that came about was, wasn't there one of the agency personnel in the Congo had recently been relieved because of his cardinal sin of getting directly involved in combat? Well, yeah, I mean, he saved the day. He saved the day into the credit of the agency. they didn't the guys in the special operations division and his and friends within africa division

they didn't uh they saved him and he went on had a very long and very successful career uh but he you know he yeah it if he hadn't done what he did the operation would have failed and the whole situation over there might have taken a completely different turn He RPGed some sharpshooters, right, from a boat? Yeah, we had a 75-millimeter recoilus down on the stern of this big old lake cargo vessel that had commandeered to turn into like a mother's ship, heavily armed with captured Russian weapons, plus the 75-millimeter recoilus. So when they did an amphibious assault at Fizi Baraka, there was a machine gun nest that was located such that it could have probably kill the invasion, the assault. and he put a 75 millimeter around right between their eyes basically

and it saves the day. So the salt was a success. Not a complete success, but a really good success. It made a huge difference in the whole progress of the attempt to bring all this to a halt. And then,

What was your role as you got brought into the program and headed off to the Congo? Well, he was there. He was there basically the 303 committee, which was the guys that handled all these special operations in the president's office, the national security officer, had not made a real commitment to solving the problem in the Congo. This was just sort of, you know, send a guy out there and see what he can do to help this situation. They hadn't really made a commitment to bringing it to a halt. And after the after the, after the, after the atrocities in Stanleyville, they had to act.

I mean, they just couldn't keep killing mercenary, you haven't seen mercenaries they'd killed in those brutal savage sort of way and so forth. And so they made a commit, and everybody by this time, knew all about the simas. They knew that they were being resupplied, ammo, medicines, food, everything coming across like Tanganyika from the port of Kagoma and Tanganyika. And so they said, look, we gotta make a commitment.

We gotta interdictive stuff. So we gotta set up a little Navy. And so that was how it happened. They were gonna finally go about it the right way and make the right kind of commitments. And then, of course, we had Hamilton there at the Maritime Branch and his deputy, Tom Claims, and the Lord must have put him there because they were the two perfect guys. And, yeah, so that's how that happened.

And so, but what was, you were ostensibly the program manager, right, that got brought into the Congo. Correct. Yeah. And so tell us a situation when you hit the ground, what, what you inherited when you got there and what you had to build after you arrived. Well, when I got there, there were some shot up, some little boats that were shot up and not running up, not operating.

That was it. The mother, the mother ship was around that one I just described to you. It was like a ferry boat, right? Yeah. And, but they, and these guys, they had a couple of the small boats, I remember now, they had a couple of small boats operating. and Hoar was kind of using him. He didn't know how to use them, really,

but he was using the way he thought would be helpful to him. And so it wasn't organized. It wasn't manned with people who knew what they were doing. And just to elaborate for the... There was nothing there. For the viewers out there, you're referencing Mike Horr,

the notorious Five Commando Congo mercenary, We had his son on this show to speak, talk about his father a ways back. And I mean, that's a, that's an incredible story in of itself that you intersected with. I remember that guy was. I think that guy was born in the Congo when we were there. Oh, he may have been. I'm pretty sure. Yeah.

Hor had to have his wife and his baby. Boy, they were, she's that woman was some. She was, not only, she great looking, she was, she was strong. he was tough wow I remember that yeah and I remember him I never really I never really thought of that till right now

yeah he wrote he wrote a biography about his dad yeah that we talked to him I need to get that and he he seems to be I mean obviously adores his father and for a lot of good reasons but he also seems to be fairly realistic

I mean he was a hell of a guy he wasn't a perfect man but he was the hell of a guy and he was the right guy for that job So what did you, you said that it was a pretty slapdash sort of situation that you walked into. What was, what did you do to start build up this, this covert capability to start interdicting Simba supply lines across the lake? Well, the first thing we had to do is, you know, sort of establish a base. Then we had to, we had to form a Navy, which means we had to get people. and I didn't know anybody.

I didn't have any idea how when I arrived, nobody there was no, is my boss said, look, you're on your own. I'll help you as best I can, but you got to figure it out. So when he got there, all we had was five commandos, and that was my core. My core, I wasn't going to let my core be my boss because he would have always subordinated the interdiction mission, which was my mission.

He would have always subordinate that to his needs for the five commando army needs. And so I had to go through the little tug of war that that took to make poor understand that who was going to run the Navy without severing the relationship, the working relationship. and part of that was making sure that I could, the Navy, he would, he could understand that the Navy could really support him better than he could do it on his own and make, make him convince him and then make him believe that. So the first thing I did was basically say, okay, we're going to set up, we're going to set up our base. I found that out, and that's described in the book. Then I got lucky and I've heard about this regimental to Hors regimental sergeant major. You know in the British system, the regimental sergeant major, he's the man.

He's the guy responsible for all the, he's a senior enlisted man. He is responsible for the training and the conduct of the troops. And in this case, or all the, trusted him as much as hoar trusted anybody and so he he had been he had been away on sick I heard about him and he had a horrible reputation as a murderous thug but a good soldiering capability and but the important thing is the regimental sergeant major I knew he knew everybody they knew I knew he had the file in his head on every single mercenary. So I heard that he was coming back where he had been a way on sick leave.

And I heard he was coming back and I asked him to, I got word to him to please come over and see me. And I was trying to figure out what this guy really wanted because I didn't, I couldn't, I didn't pay anybody. I'm supposed to be in charge this guy. I'm supposed to give an orders, but they're mercenaries and I don't pay them. I'm not in their chain of command. I'm not even in their unit. in it. He were five command them. So I had to figure out what this guy really wanted. What I, what I, what I since early on, it turned out to be absolutely true is my Corps would never let him be an officer because he was too valuable to horror as a regimental sergeant major. He wanted to be an officer. He had British trained, been in Rhodesia military. He wanted to be an officer.

And so I said to him, by the way, and I treated him like he was a UDT trainee. And by this time, everybody was calling me commander, so I just let him. Commander made me an equal rank with my core. You know, it worked. I didn't initiate that. It just happened. And then I used it. So I treated him like, you know, like I was the commander and he was the unity trainee.

And I basically said, look, I hear you're hell of a guy. And I want to set up this Navy and need to do it fast and we need to be really good. And I know you're going to know who are the best guys in five command who are that we can recruit into the Navy. So if you're up for the, and I said, I can't bid for your services because I don't pay. But I said, I can make you start you out as lieutenant. If you're as good as you say you are, and I think you are, make you captain in no time. You run the Navy, you run the men.

I run the operations. That's the deal. You got, you got a decision, right? Do it. So he's quiet for a second. He said, okay, fine. And sometime later, he said, you know, nobody ever talked to me like that, like you did. Not my core, not anybody.

I didn't know whether to join you or kill you. You actually will. I'm glad you made the right choice. You're right in the book that the Chief of Station, Larry Delvin, describes Jock Cassidy, the regimental sergeant major, as a gentleman adventurer, which you... No, no, that was whore. That was Mike Orr who said that? Yeah.

Yeah, oh. There's nothing gentleman about Jock Cazin. You said you took that to encompass a number of different traits, including that of a bandit. because Jock was known to be the guy that would loot every bank and safe in every town that Five Commando hit. That's right. And Cassidy told me, so I, you know, take it for what it was. Cassie told me that he and John Peters were responsible for taking care of horse share of all that loot so that Hort could remain the British gentleman.

not get his hands dirty. So the next step in your secret Navy that you were building, talk to us about the Cubans. I can't, once I start, I can't stop. Those guys were, they were just, I can't say enough good about them. Can't say enough good about them. They, you take, not, they were professional. They had great pride in their professionalism.

never had one incident of problem with any one of them. They didn't get sucked into any of the boozing and the bad stuff with the mercenaries. They conducted themselves as real professionals, and their dedication to killing communists was fierce. And that was all good things. And they were smart. Chavez and Pacharo were the two guys, you know, number one, number two and a bunch. They were smart.

They were all smart. But Chavez and Pacharo had a lot of experience. And they ran their teams really well. I never had a thing to worry about. I thought it was interesting that they were running covert operations down in Nicaragua at the time. And that went kind of south. So they had to get those guys and both the crew and the, crew and the boats out of that A.O.

And that was kind of fortuitous for you and your mission. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that was, again, that was Hamilton and Klein's. And these guys had so much trust in Tom Klein's that it made all the difference in the world, all the difference in the world. They believe Tom Klein's 100%. And so Tom Clines basically just turned that over to me. And I don't know if I say it on here, what time client said to me as he got on the plane and left. But, yeah, he bestowed all that on me. And it saved a lot of time. And getting the Cubans in sounded like it was relatively easy.

They could come in on tourist visas with the agency kind of maybe greasing some palms in a place or two. But tell us about getting the boats in because that had to be done in secret. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, interesting, interesting read. You would enjoy reading a book called Mimi and Tutu. And it's about what the British did in the First World War to take the, take the German boats off of Lake Tag and Yika. On the same lake you were on. Yeah, on the same lake. And they brought their, they brought boats in through South Africa overland. And they put it and they put it. It's, it was the basis of the movie the Africa Queen. And they put in, they, they put their base of operations with just, you know, 10, 50 miles, whatever, just north of where we were. So I didn't know any of that until I thought we were, you know, had this genius idea. Nobody ever thought of before. But actually the Brits did the First World War successfully.

Anyway, the Hamilton and Klein's, of course, had were involved with the with the swifts and the Nicaragua operation and so forth. And so they quickly identified as the boats and they went to, to, to, Fred Seward to Seacraft who had built as Swifts and, um, said, look, we got this, we got this challenge and he brought in, uh, brought in his, his, his, his, the gaugian guys and who had built the boats and they sat down and figure out how to do it. And it had, and it had, had to be done, of course, you couldn't, it had to be flowing because the only way you do it

clandestinely was to fly them over. And so they figured out how to have with the designer of the boats, the guy named Hidalgo, they figured out where and how to slice them up and how to put them in proper, you know, jigs and put them on C-124 globe masters and fly them into the fly them into the end of the Congo, fly them into this air strip, 24s, there's a narrow gauge railway running beside it, getting the pieces, and they cut the bow,

cut the superstructure, cut them longitudinally, put them to C-124s with all the engines and spares, et cetera, et cetera. And then put all of that on these narrow-gauge railroads, take them to the port of Albertville, which is very well deserted, but fortunately I had some cranes,

cranes that still operated and then brought in the Cajuns black and they reassemble those things. Wow. Much faster than anyone thought was possible. They were terrific. Cajuns, they worked hard from the dawn till dusk and had a cold beer and a laugh and up and at them the next day. They were just terrific.

And they didn't have to be there. They were volunteers. They were just doing their bit for the country. And then we brought in a couple other guys from the Maritime Unit, who were an engine, who got him Joe Gresh, who was a superstar engine. And I got them all fixed up and put back on the lake. And they went on the, got, flew him out black. No one ever knew they were there.

In fact, I tried to call, after this book came out, I tried to, Stewart Seacraft no longer exists, but there's another company down there doing the same thing, making I think basically the same boats. I'm just under, I don't know how the ownership changed. And I thought, geez, you know, this would be a really good thing for you to play up. It's basically your boats, they are you inherited.

It's your people that manufacture your boats. You could really, you'd really do some good, at least local good will stuff. with this. Never got an answer. Never got an answer. Anyway, maybe they'll watch the podcast. But anyways, so they're and put them on and that was this is it. And boy, I tell you, I think I said in the book, there was a Belgian general came through and a British Army colonel who was attached to the embassy, British embassy in Kinshasa. They couldn't believe their eyes. They saw what we were doing, flying those suckers in.

bringing these guys into stitch them back together and putting them on the lake. They were dazzled. Just dazzled. It was dazzling. It was impressive. At this point, you have a couple American CIA Maritime Branch guys running the program. Yourself, you brought your friend Guchin. You got Cuban crews, exiled Cubans, crew in the boat.

And then the guys actually manning the guns are five commandos. No, the the humans came out to commence the interdiction operation while training five commandos to take over the interdiction operation. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. The good thing was that and because the state department was very nervous about the humans being there and they wanted them out as fast as possible. Fortunately, we were doing so well that the urgency of that became a little less, although it didn't go away. and by the time they did go away, we had achieved more than everyone thought was possible faster than they would ever imagine. So we didn't really have to do without the services of the Cubans for very long. Certainly not during the heavy lifting. So talk to us then about the actual operations doing these interdictions out on the water and a close pass with one Che Guevara.

Well, here you set the stage. It's like patrolling from Miami, Florida to Savannah, Georgia. That was what they had to patrol in a 50-foot boat. Plus, we had the mother ship and we had the five or six little boats. We had radar and line of sight radios on a mother ship. So you could use it for surveillance. the radars for surveillance, and then they could direct the small boats to the targets identified on the radars. Then we had the swifts for the heavy work and to roam.

And we sell them used both swifts simultaneously, always one and the other. They would take turns going out. Now, Armans could go out all the time because they could, you know, they could stay out. They could truce could sleep on the boats and eat on the mother vessel and so forth. And basically we would, and I had this guy, this Greek guy who would be friended with, who ran all the fishing operations on the lake. Most of the fishing operations on the lake were done by Greeks and he was there in Greek. And by having him as a friend, I knew everything was going on, basically everything that was going on in any of the ports on the lake, but

because the Greek fishermen were in and out of all of them. So we had a hell of an intelligence net. And then when we would, we would, and then we had the five commandos who were always stirring things up and getting documents and interrogating people and so forth to give us indications of where people might be. And then we began to identify where the camps were

along the coast of the Eastern Congo, where the supplies from Tanganyika would typically go. So we've been at home. them in on the areas that really need to be looked at more closely. So it became, it became number one, identifying the most likely areas and then using the assets that we had as we thought they needed to be employed. So does that answer you? Yeah, it begins.

How did that go when they started actually interdicting communist supply lines? Well, I think the best source for that is Che Guevara. If you read his book in Congo Diary, the first line in the book is this is a history of a failure. Because in his book, the Congo Diary, he starts talking about the impact that he's feeling from the interdiction in terms of getting food, ammunition, medicines, anything. And it didn't take long. It didn't take long at all. Before, when they got, my predecessor was there,

and before he even had this, they got lucky one time, and they got, they got a, Simba who was coming back from China. He was a minister of information or something for the Simba's. So, but that was, you know, that was luck. I mean, obviously it was, he was doing the best with what he had available.

We had a lot more available that we could make this more systemized, more regularized, and yeah, more systematic, I guess is the best way to say it. And in your book, you and your co-authors spent some time doing some research and putting together your ship logs and records from that time, Declassified Records with Guevara's book. and you guys had like a pretty close call, you think, where like you almost clipped him. Oh, I think we got almost got him at least once.

And then we damn sure almost got him when he was leaving the Congo on the 25th of November. But that one, that one, the first one I think you're referring to was, you know, in the lake, the rivers that fade into Lake Tanganyika are powerful, powerful and they and with the rain and so but they're always breaking there there's always pieces of terrain breaking off I mean there'll be like islands out there floating until the till the surface action of the lake finally breaks them all up uh but until that time it's like islands out there and if you're and it's pitch dark remember it's pitch dark there's not a not a light anywhere

uh so you get these you get these images coming out of the dark when you're patrolling and you don't know whether it's a boat if you don't have a radar you don't know whether it's a boat or an island if it's a wooden boat or an island that makes it kind of hard to distinguish but in case they detected these five whatever they were at the time they thought so they started kind of easing up on it and it turns out it's a covey of five boats and four of them were very, very keen on protecting the fifth. That was obvious. The fifth got away.

We subsequently found out not long after that. It was when we absolutely established that Che Guevara was in the Congo, which nobody in the world knew for sure until that was done. And as much as we can triangulate the information, the timing, the dates, and so forth, that fifth boat, that boat that got away, that was Jay. So we can't say for absolute certain, but as I said, if you triangulate all the information, it appears that. And also this interesting scenario in which you have CIA-sponsored Cuban exiles

fighting communist Cubans that have been sent there by Fidel and part of Guevara's revolutionary warfare over there. Yeah. And what was- When the agency recognized or the government recognized that we needed to have the Cubans, they didn't realize there were any Cubans in the Congo. So it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't intent. It just happened. What was the second incident?

You said you almost clipped him coming out of the country. Oh, well, that was when he finally gave up. They were giving up and they were trying to get back. get back to Kigoma, trying to get across the lake and trying to arrange transportation. And there I have had our time ranging transportation because of what we were doing to them. And we also, we got the intelligence from Five Commando and we had planes overhead. And it looked like we were going to, we were about ready to get them. And one of the planes crashed.

So we went, you know, the guys, of course, went to see if they could help the pilot or any thing. And the only thing we can figure is during that brief period is when he made, Jay and made his move and got off of the peninsula there and it, Baraka and got away. I mean, that's the only thing that could have happened because he was there. We knew he was there. The Fifth Amendment knew he was there. We had airplanes overhead, you know, for the boats were ready. And then that crazy. crash and everybody of course turned to go to see if there was any chance of doing anything for the pilot and during that during that period it seems that's when he when he made his escape and the only thing that makes sense and the process of all of this managing this covert operation you're also having quite an interesting time trying to manage personnel particularly the mercenaries jack jack

almost killed a case officer. You had to diffuse that situation. I was wondering if you could tell us a little, the story about what ultimately became of Jock as far as his departure with your Navy. Well, you know, he threatened to kill the case officer. He had threatened to kill the, first of all, this wouldn't have been his first killing.

That was plenty of evidence of that. But you threatened to steal the case officer, and we managed to dissipate that. And but it was a signal of what happens under certain circumstances when he had too much to drink, which was most of the time, but never on duty. And he was, he was at one of the mercenaries watering holes. Or no, the air guys, the air support guys. And pilots had a place that they stayed, had their own watering hole.

And he was there and he got into an altercation with one of the, one of the air support guys, mechanic or something. And I witness, I mean, we have American witness to this. And so he got into, and they're both had too much to drink. And Cassie had a lot too much to drink. And plus he had terrible liver for both tropical disease and booze. So it didn't take much to bring him to get into difficulty. And anyway, so he got angry at this guy. I thought the guy insulted in front of his people.

So he got his pistol and he stuck it in the guy's nose and shot him. And so he went back to his quarters, gave up his pistol to one of the Americans involved in the air operation. said he said something about wish he hadn't, wish he hadn't killed that guy, we should kill the other guy. And by the morning when he had sobered up,

he stole a boat, one of the little PTs, stole a boat to head and was going to try to make it to Rhodesia through Zambia. Well, of course, he was easy to track because, you know, the pilots, the air guys, the Makassis were angry. They killed one of theirs.

And so they were able to track him. all the way down to the border. And Larry Devlin correctly predicted that that's exactly where he would go. So Devlin got in touch with the, for his own channels, got in touch with his ambience. So they captured Cassidy as soon as he landed and turned him over to the Congolese. The Congolese tried him and sentenced him to death. But he bought his way out of that with some of that gold that he had gotten up in the northern Congo and what's I can't remember the name of the town right now. But where all the gold is produced.

Near Goma is the biggest town, but that wasn't the town near Goma. And he had a stash of gold and he had, and he had some connections. And there were some people who liked him. And I'm sure he crossed their road. poems as well. In any case, he got out and he ended up in South Africa. And when we were writing this book, somehow we get a email from a young lady named Cassidy who said she's his daughter and she would appreciate it. We didn't say whatever it was that we had in the draft. otherwise she was going to try to kick up a stink

and it didn't matter to us because what she wanted to race wasn't that important and so we did it but that's what happened to guess he said he died in he's died in south Africa oh so there was there was some other improprieties that mr cassidy was involved in oh well i i i can't remember what you're referring to now but i'm not well whatever you Whatever you had to delete out of the book. Oh, no. I can't. Hell, I could probably look at Mary Ann would know what it was.

So I could get that for you if you really wanted it. But it wasn't of any consequence. Right, right, right. You just, you know, some guys just can't help themselves. They just, they just got to find trouble. Yeah. He was one of those guys. You know, he and John Peters were a hell of them.

hell of a pair. If anything, Peters was more ruthless than than jacity. Yeah, they, didn't Peters, you think, murder his commanding officer or his superior? So that... Well, they went in the, when

when horror decided not to extend his contract and wanted to leave. And I think his wife and son were, had enough. The war was essentially over by then. It was essentially one, by then. And so they, but there was still mopping up and stuff to do. And so they came over,

who's going to be in charge? Well, the logical guy in terms of just warrior, uh, was, was Peters. Peter's hell of a warrior. I mean, and, uh, and then there was this guy Hugh Van Oppen, who was, I mean, he walked out of a Sandhurst poster. You know, he was tall and he was lanky and had a handlebar mustache and he had the bearing and the demeanor he'd actually had a tinted sandhurst for some time before he got uh got kicked out uh so he knew uh he knew how to he knew how to act he had a polish that peters didn't have and uh peters hated him comparing the two of them would be like comparing little lord fauntleroy to jack the ripper uh and most of the mercenaries didn't want to be led by the

little Lord Fauntleroy. So everybody was sympathetic to Peters. So when Van Oppen accidentally killed himself with a burst from his automatic weapon, everybody said, oh, well, bad luck. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what are they going to do? There's no, no legal recourse, no, no judicial stuff. and all the remaining five commando guys wanted peters anyway so and by that time the five commando guys the quality of the five commandos pretty shabby and uh they would have been very receptive to uh to peters so and there is uh lots lots else uh going on in your book excuse me uh sorry my allergies are bothering me today um Lots else going on.

You got deathly sick at one point, fell into the arms of a lovely young woman, all kinds of cool stuff. But I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how your mission in the Congo began to wind down. Well, when, when Che, there are several things that led to Che finally giving up. Rwanda was there, which you never read about. Rwanda was there, the colonel in charge of Rwanda contingent, which was supporting the Simba's. He said, you know, we're done. We can't do anymore. These Simba's, they don't care.

They only want to rape, plunder, and pillage. So I'm taking my guys home. Tanganyika, or maybe I was Tanzania by this time, they withdrew their financial support. That was really important. And even Sudan was involved. And they withdrew their support. So there was no money for and that meant there was no weapons, no food, no medicine, no nothing.

And allegedly, Jay's guys said, look, Jay, we'll stay with you here forever, but we're just going to die. And Jay wouldn't kill it cared about how many other people he killed, but he did, he did have some concern for his own guys. and so that was it. But everything, everything it just, everything that it took to perpetuate it cratered about the same time. And because it was inevitable that they were, that they were going to lose. The interdiction was really working.

The five commandos had done, done their job. The Simbas could go back to, who just said rape. and plundering. They didn't have any ideological commitment to this at all. Another reason that Jay Gavira was such a fool. He, you know, he came in thinking somehow rather he was a communist missionary. He was going to, he was going in sight and and motivate these guys who didn't give a damn. And so he never did get the support. And he talks about all the time in his diary. And he even gets on to even gets on to Fidel, say,

but del don't send these guys money if you're going to give them any money if you're going to send money send it to me so i can use it these guys they'll they'll say what you want to hear and then as soon as they get the money they go they don't do anything so um you know it was uh it was uh it all just finally created all at once basically and then there was nothing left but the mopping up had to do with just the remnants of the simbas that were trying to continue, not for any ideological reason, just trying to continue because they wanted to steal the rape and blunder. James, this was a really incredible book. I loved reading it. It's about as fun adventure as you possibly imagine. It's got CIA secret missions. It's got mercenaries.

There's a little bit of romance. There's some tragedy, unfortunately. Well, there was the reason there was only a little bit of romance is they're damaged wasn't much romance during all that time. Yeah, you had to go back to the embassy for that, that interlude. Yeah, that's right. I had to go back with the T-Zippers. Yeah. I know you and your co-author did a tremendous amount of research for this book as well.

Do you have any final thoughts, anything's concluding remarks that you'd like to get out there about the book or this experience? Vietnam and the Congo and a couple other things have. taught me a lesson that I don't think the government has still learned or ever, maybe ever will learn. And that is that there is a headquarters mentality and there's a field mentality and they will never meet. Yeah. The headquarters people seem to think they're headquarters because they're smarter. And the field people feel like they're in the field because they're tougher and are capable of doing the things that they're, that the guys back at headquarters can't do.

And the, you know, everything's starting from the coup at the M, where the guys on the ground said to Lodge and Kennedy and all those guys said, don't do it now. There's nobody to replace him. He can't, there's nobody replace him. We can get rid of them anytime, but let's get a suitable replacement. Of course, they ignored him. There was the coup.

and what we had, five or six new different governments over the course of the next year. In the Congo, Devlin was, even today, the memories of Devlin in Central Africa are admiring of him and his knowledge and his abilities. Even the guys that didn't like him acknowledged how capable he was. And he had a constant battle with headquarters. And that's an agency, and that's a lot easier to deal with the National Security Council and the State Department.

I think that somehow rather, they've got to get guys up there that have spent some time at the tip of the spear. Because you can't, our understanding of cultures, our understanding of cultures is, embassy based. So people in the embassy, who do they meet? They meet the educated

one or two or three percent of the population. And these are guys who were educated probably in the West. So they're the jargon, they have the language, they know, you know, what to say and how to handle these guys. And there's

this whole 95 to 98 percent representing a culture that that our official community never really gets, never really gets into. So why do we make mistakes? Because we're ignorant. We're ignorant.

You just don't, you don't, and we don't reward the people. There's a, there's a great book by Roger Kepler called the country officer. And you know, they'd send these scots out into the, out into the territories and these guys spend their whole lives. And this guy had been in Afghanistan for 26 years. when he finally went home. At the end of 26 years, he reckoned that he had learned a little bit. And I read that periodically because it's so true. And now that I'm messing around in the Congo and Africa,

then I just see it and see it and see it. It's just, it's so hard to get into these cultures. cultures and you've got to you got to make a career for people who are willing to do it you know you go back and spend your time at headquarters you're not really learning thing about the country that you the countries and the peoples that you're trying to influence yeah we have a real a problem with cultural fluency yeah exactly that's exactly the right expression yeah but so you got to make a career path for people that'll go out and do that He can't, I know a guy who just to resign because he spent his 15 or 16 years in the field,

and he was going to have to go back to headquarters to get promoted. And he didn't want to do that. So all that is going. Yeah. The institutions, whether, I mean, I can't speak for the CIA, but I think it's true with the military for sure. they don't necessarily like Lawrence of Arabia types. Like you're kind of

out there on your own outside the chain of command for too long and they get a little cautious I guess about those types of characters. Here's a prediction for you. There will never be a non, never again be a non

army commander of SOCOM. Why do you think that is? Because as much as you hear about green berets et cetera right now and Delta etc. The real army can't tolerate them. You can't tolerate. Big army can't tolerate them.

And that's why if you read, if you read Milligan's book by water beneath the wall, you see, I mean, it really, it really brings it home because you see how somehow rather, all the predecessors of the seals led to the seals and all the other special operations, operations units of the other services. got absorbed into the regular units because the regular, the regular, the hardcore regulars can't tolerate the, what is the

special operations, the anomalies. Yeah, we had, we had, we had, we had, we had, we had been on the show to talk about his book, a terrific, terrific book. Yeah, I would highly recommend that book as well to our, our viewers would definitely enjoy it. And, of course, that interview is very good. Well, that's a real book. This is a story, but Ben's is a real book. Well, it's a really good story, though.

So I hope all of you out there will go and pick this book up, Cold War Navy Seal by James Hawes, our guest and his co-author, Mary Ann Kodig. James, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you. Yeah, thanks so much, James. I really appreciate it. Good. Take care, guys. Everyone, have a good Christmas and happy New Year's.

Yep. Bye-bye. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, too.