The Team House - We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History | Jack Murphy | Ep. 315

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/Support the show here:⬇��https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnPodcast/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:____________________________________Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To 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]0:00 start #specialforcesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House. channel and podcast if you'd like to and we really appreciate that so go it and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house special operations covert ops espionage the team house with your host jack murphy and david park to uh episode 315 of the team house i'm dave park here with the co-host Capi. Tonight's guest is Jack Murphy, who you may recognize. I may not remember. Yeah.

Tonight, we are talking to Jack about his new book, We Defy, the Lost Chapters of Special Forces History. And We Defy covers a lot of really cool stuff that is not often talked about. Debt A, DetK, Blue Light, Green Light, SIF, Commanders, and Extreme Forces. and also we'd like to welcome Cap back from his harrowing trip to the Ukraine, to the Ukraine. It's great to be back, yeah. I wasn't certain if I was going to, it was kind of a roll of the dice, but it's good to be back.

So, Jack, let's get started. I mean, anybody who knows you knows that you're kind of a history nerd, you know, and you love military and your special operations history, when did this idea first come to you? you? It first came to me, well, I mean, it had to do with like some nagging questions in the back of my mind that go all the way back to when I was in the military myself and you would hear like just little bits and pieces from guys like, oh yeah, we used to have people undercover in Berlin or, you know, there are these guys that jumped in with backpack nukes. And that's it. They didn't know

anything more about it. And there's no way, there's no books written about that stuff. There was nothing you could look up on the internet. There's no way to find it. And even to the stay until this was written, there's no place to go and find out more really about these programs. And so that was kind of nagging at me. And it first started, I wrote an article. It was actually published by the Special Forces Association about blue light.

And it took me quite a while to track some of those guys down. And when I finally did, a gentleman named Taffy Carlin, it was like, okay, I'll talk to you about it. But you've got to fly down here to Fayetteville and meet me. So that was it, you know, going down and meeting Taffy and having a beer with him at O'Connell's S.F bar down in Southern Pines. And that was sort of the beginning of that. And I got to meet a few of the officers and NCOs who served in Blue Light.

And that started on the path. And I, but I always had friends and colleagues who always told me like, this needs to be like actually written in a book somewhere. And I was like, okay, I'll keep that in mind. And there were these other facets of SF history that I felt were like lost chapters that hadn't been written about before. And the next article I wrote was about Detachment A and then Detachment K. And then the last one that was always in the back of my mind for many years was green light. And I just wrote that in the last year.

And I had also written stuff about the SIF and about some of the special, forces direct action training on Fort Bragg, and that came together into a chapter as well. So I'd been working on this for like a long period of time, and it was just like in this last year where I was like, you know, with green light published or with that part done, it's like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And so I put all the material I had into like a word document to see like, could this actually be a book now and realized, yeah, actually this could be a book. And so then it's just going through all the formatting and getting it ready to actually go to press.

So it's been more of a passion project over like a decade. Yeah, yeah, like on and off for like 10 years. That just kind of became a book at one point. Right. And so this book differs from some of the others out there that it doesn't strictly go in chronological order. Each chapter is sort of its own vignette. There's significant crossover, both between the programs and also between the personalities

who some of them served on more, you know, they'll pop up in more than one chapter. But, you know, unlike a lot of history books, I think like a lot of publishers look for, like a big set piece battle that they can write around, whether it's like Way City or, like Black Hawk Down or something like that. Like they want this big, the big battle that changed everything. And, you know, sorry, this book doesn't have, you know, some big battle that changed the course of the war. it's about these clandestine programs that, for the most part, didn't have to be used. Right, right.

You had started reading some of it, right? Yeah, for me, that's exactly what stuck out to me. I was reading the first two chapters, and I kept thinking, like, when's the battle going to happen? And then I realized, someone like myself who loves military history and loves knowing, like, how the sausage gets made, you're learning about how these units are evolving, how they're changing. You see Detachment A go from something that looks like a James Bond CIA unit where they have these like cover stories and they have to really immerse themselves. And it's talking about them like being, him being a coach in Germany. And that actually helps him with his special forces work, his cover.

So to me, that type of stuff is fascinating. And it doesn't need there doesn't need to be the shootout. the fascinating part is learning about like the trade craft yeah i you know i think you that you put your thumb on it you know pretty well there it's about the evolution of special forces throughout the years and these different programs and how they in some cases um were no longer necessary in other cases they evolved into something else um the chapters about blue light and then that leads kind of into the chapter about the sif i mean there is this progression uh of special forces going into counterterrorism and all this training that they do

and standing up these units. But it's not strictly linear. There's some ups and downs. Right. And there was also, I mean, I know we'll get more into it as we get to each program. But blue light, like there was a lot of contention with blue light and the standing up of Delta, right?

That there were people in blue light. It's like, why do we need Delta? We have blue light. We just need to formalize it. And there was a bit of a competition there for a while. That will probably be the most controversial part of this book is the tension between blue light and Delta. But more specifically, it was a tension between the blue light NCOs who had served in Vietnam with Charlie Beckwith personally. That's what the real tension was.

And that had to do with B from Vietnam for the most part. That was the majority of it. And then some aspect of it was, you know, hey, we served in SOG on the special projects. Like, you know who we are. Why do you want to put us through this whole selection? thing again. Like what's what's the point behind that? Right. So that turned some people off too. And Charlie also was not incredibly diplomatic in how he handled that situation, which turns some people off. But I would point out that I think that the notion that Delta and Blue Light were in competition

with one another is really like a myth. Okay. That has perpetuated itself for a long time. That blue light was always stood up with the intention that it was a stopgap. It was going to be the interim counterterrorism unit until Delta actually got stood up because Beckwith was like, I need two years to assess, train, and select my men. And the Pentagon, of course, was like, well, what if something happens in the next two years? So that's why blue light came around. But I mean, unless that like a document comes to light or some other source comes to light. I mean, all the guys I spoke to said

like, no, we were never in competition like that. Now, there was one period where they put blue light and Delta through the same training evolution, which is very interesting. And I can't say that I know for sure why they did that. But there's some speculation that

because counterterrorism was brand new. And ideas of like drawing from the holster and shooting or doing like, like a combat reload. Like those were kind of alien concepts, like drawing from concealment. No one did that really at that time. We picked it up from mostly the SAS and the Israelis who are a little further ahead than we were. But I bring that up because what I'm saying is that it was so new to the American military

that like the standards had not yet been developed. Like no one really knew like how fast is fast enough, how accurate is accurate enough. And so there's some speculation that they were putting all these counterterrorism operators through a similar training evolution to sort of figure out, like, what should our baseline be? Fascinating. Really interesting. So let's, I don't want to get too much into blue light because we'll do it sort of in the order you have it in the book, which starts out with debt A, correct? Yeah.

So can you tell us what debt A was how it was conceived? and executed initially. Yeah, so Dead A was a clandestine unit that was stationed in Berlin during the Cold War. They were an American Special Forces unit but were under a cover. They had some cover as like, you know, a military police unit or something like this. But the real mission, it was the stay behind mission. And that is some people would say the fourth form of infiltration that some people forget about. you know there's sea air and land you know parachuting going in on boats or dive gear or just

walking or going on jeeps right um the fourth would be stay behind that sitting on your ass while the enemy forces right roll over that you're you're a sleeper cell essentially you are you are in place already right waiting for hostilities to begin um and so if that happened if uh if the soviet union had invaded these guys would have gone to ground they would have started living their cover full-time. And once the Soviet front lines came over their positions, they would activate and start conducting acts of sabotage. And they had targets like power stations, rail lines were a big one, basically wreaking

havoc in the Soviets' rear areas. And then as time went on, that mission evolved into a bunch of other things, too. So they really were drawing on a lot of the lessons of like the Jedbergs or the OSS, the these very small elements behind enemy lines. I mean, obviously the OSS, Jagger, people like that were going in, but they would link up with partisans and conduct these operations, these sabotage operations, where these guys were already in place, already knew their target sets.

Yeah, I think you're right that there's some inspiration drawn from that. And the interesting thing about the Jedbergs is they were composed of French, American, and British. Some teams had all three on them, but that was rare. But the point is you're infiltrating French people back into France. And obviously they can blend in pretty well, this is their home. How we did that with Dead A is a little different. So the Americans had to be fluent in German, or they had to be fluent in another language like Greek.

And they could pose as they were called guestarbiters. They're like German guest workers. So you had to have some fluency. so that you're at least non-American, right? You can pose as someone who's not American. But the other way that, you know, the cover was maintained was through the Lodge Act. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, it's named after.

And what the Lodge Act did was after World War II is it brought in all these Eastern Europeans, Hungarians, Ukrainians, and Germans themselves into the U.S. Army. And it was like the fast track to U.S. citizenship, you know, by serving in the United States military. and those guys were invaluable to Dead A. Like in the early years, the unit was like maybe 80, 90% log act guys. And some former Nazis in the ranks as well.

But these guys, like, they literally were born in East Germany. Like, that is their home turf. Like, who's going to be able to do this job better than that? So what was, so their early mission was the stay behind. the army does not like paying for things that it doesn't see results from. How did these guys, is this when we started seeing their mission expand or like what was the mission expansion for these guys? Yeah, well the expansion comes when you start getting into the 1970s and aircraft hijackings become a thing. And they became like sort of an international phenomenon.

Johnny Carson used to tell jokes about it on the late show. show. And the issue with Berlin was, I believe the only American civilian airline that was allowed to fly into Berlin was Pan Am. And so this started specifically because of concerns about Pan Am flights into and out of Berlin being hijacked. And so Dead A received a counterterrorism mission. And now they had to know how to do tubular assaults, how to infiltrate onto a parked aircraft and how to assault it. kill the terrorists without, you know, hopefully hurting too many of the good guys. And so that's how that mission first came around for them. But as time goes on, they get sucked into other things, too. So, like, they were on standby when General Dozier was kidnapped.

And then they got brought into Operation Eagle Claw to rescue the hostages in Iran. And that was a whole thing in of itself where Delta at the time only had two squadrons. this is 1980, so A and B. And that American embassy compound was so big. It would have taken the entire unit couldn't cover it by themselves. There was this one other outbuilding, the chancellery or the, I think, Ministry of Foreign Affairs building. And eventually Beckwith had to accept that Delta can't do it alone.

So they had to bring in a small element of Dead A of these guys who had counterterrorism training to take down that one building. and they were present out at Desert One. And that's also what led to the exposure of Detachment A after so many years of secrecy. It's this notion that you have a unit that is clandestine in secret, but also conducting kinetic counterterrorism operations. And these two things don't really jell together, right? Right.

So how would they do this, though, because being successful in counterterrorism, You can't just do a training course, right? It doesn't matter how long it is and then not do any more training. But you have this group of guys who are arguably civilians or MPs or whatever they are living in Berlin. How do they sneak out or how do they conduct this training and this maintenance while still? Well, they could train on like U.S. Army training facility. these allied training facilities that were there. But also they did training with the Germans.

And we put guys through the GSG9 training course. And they'd go and they'd do high speed driving, all kinds of stuff like that with them. So that was the other area. And then I imagine they must have, in the 70s, started sending guys to SOT also. Right. And so was debt A, were they known to the Germans?

The German government, yes. Okay. Yeah, they were declared, so to speak. Okay. Were there concerns? Because obviously with a very hot Cold War, an espionage being a thing, where there are concerns about leaks within the German government? There definitely were concerns,

and there was always concerns that the dead A guys were being surveilled, and at some points they probably were, it sounds like. whenever the U.S. Army would do large-scale training exercises, any large-scale training exercise, there's going to be some sort of level of espionage taking place around it as, you know, they're trying to build out your order of battle and things like that. So there were concerns, but then it's also this interesting thing you get into, like, yeah, it's a secret, but you also kind of do want to telegraph some information to the Soviets. and, you know, as a, you know, they did know about Detachment A

and had some idea of what their mission was. And I was told that when the wall came down, they learned that the Soviets thought there were 10 times more Dead A members than there actually were. It was like five teams. Yeah. And they thought there was like hundreds of these guys crawling around Germany.

Were they technically operating legally, or was this something that the U.S. government It wasn't supposed to be doing it. I mean, under the Four Powers Act, I believe paratroopers are technically illegal in Berlin at this time. Although, I mean, I guess the workaround was that they weren't serving as paratroopers at that very moment. They weren't paratrooping at the time. It's a gray area. It's a very gray area, I think.

And that's a really good question. Were they working under Title 50, Title 10? Do things like that matter at the time? They do matter, but I don't, I have never seen or heard any indication that they were using CIA authorities or that they were operating under like the auspices of the CIA or, you know, the Army definitely had commanding control over them. And so as far as I know, it was just an Army show. However, there was an office called Dixie. and that office was sort of the coordination office between the army, Detachment A specifically, with CIA, FBI, and then later on DEA also.

So there was deconfliction taking place. And then were there any like hotspots between debt A, the larger SF command and or big army, whether it's Germany or the United States? Not really. There were some issues that came up within Germany itself. Like there was one point of time, because their covers that they're a conventional army unit. So their commander is a conventional army commander. And there's like one point where he called the whole unit in, made them all get haircuts, get in the uniforms and like train infantrymen. Like they're training some 18 year old infantrymen how to like use a machine gun. So obviously this completely nullified their their mission. mission in so many ways and undermine their mission. And the sergeant major of the unit had to go and build rapport with that unit's sergeant major and convince him that, you know, what you're doing using our guys like this is undermining the credibility of your NCOs, you know, who are supposed to be training the men. And so, you know, that was Sergeant Major Jeff Raker who told

that story. And so they had problems like that. But for the most part, I mean, the dead A guys always tell you is like the best job they ever had. Yeah. I thought it's awesome. They're like skiing, doing tradecraft around Berlin. And then all the counterterrorism training that they got. I mean, they, and living off the local economy, you know, it sounded like pretty cool. They were doing, working with rebreathers.

I think they were the first unit to ever get rebreathers. And they were using them to like swim up into canals looking for like ingress and egress. points into East Germany. So there's so much different stuff that they did. Yeah. And then, so when did the unit stand up? It was a few years before the wall went up. So it was in the 1950s.

I want to say it was like 58. I'm sorry, it's in the book. I can't remember the exact year. And it went on into the early 90s. That's quite a history. It transitioned at one point from Detachment A to another unit called PSSC. and that was primarily because of the exposure during Desert 1 that Dead A was ostensibly blown.

It's fascinating. And so what, how did the unit wind down? And actually, have we, Chris, do you have any other questions I missed about Dead A? There's just certain things that stood out to me, like that rings true where that you were saying that they had the exchange rate was just great for them. So no surprise that they loved, like, that mission

because he said they were having, like, gourmet meals for, like, $2 and just, like, enjoying. That, to me, is interesting how you can, like, kind of be on the front line there. And you got the Soviets right, you know, where stones were away. They were literally eating at restaurants with, like, the Stasi. Yeah. And there's one story, a gentleman recently passed away. Colonel and also doctor, he's an MD, Colonel Rocky Farr, served in Detachment A, and I interviewed him, and unfortunately he passed away just a few weeks ago.

But incredible guy, and he told me some great stories. His team leader was this guy named Herman Adler, and they called him Schwarza Adler, the Black Eagle. And he had apparently served in the Eastern Front with the Woffin SS and fought his way back across Russia to German lines. This is the story around him. He was a former Nazi. I think that much is confirmed at least. Adler also served in Vietnam. I have a picture of him in Vietnam, which is pretty interesting. And, you know, Rocky told me these kind of like great stories about, you know, like they're in a restaurant eating with the Stasi police. And they hear them complaining in German, like all the Americans come here with their American dollars and they drink all the good wine.

And one of the Lodge Act guys, one of the Germans, stands up and like cooks his heels together. He's like, gentlemen, allow me to introduce myself and tells him, he's like, I was born two blocks from here. So the stories like that, or the one that I opened the chapter with, which is great, is they're having their unit formation in the hallway. They don't do it outside for secrecy purposes. So it's in the hallway. They're doing their morning accountability formation. And the Sergeant Major is like, okay, so the D-Day reunion is coming up. Did any of you guys serve at D-Day and want to go?

So this would have been like the early 70s. So there might be a couple. And there were a few dudes who raised their hand like, yeah, yeah. And then Sergeant Major gets the one guy, and he's writing his name down, Coonert. And he's like, wait a second, Cooner. You weren't in the American Army in 1944. And Cooner clicks his heels together. and is like, yes, Sergeant, I was in Seventh Panzer.

I was at Normandy. I want to go to the reunion. They're like, no, Cooner. No. That's something that's really unique about, like, the Special Force and Forces missions in Europe compared to, I feel like kind of almost any other, you talk about Africa, Middle East. Yes. It's very, very different.

And I hope readers pick up on that a little bit that, like, we as Americans, can blend and do successfully conduct clandestine operations in a European theater. We did this with the Jedbergs. We did this with the OSS. Dead A did this quite well. I think we can still do it today. But when you start trying to take that template and then move it over to East Asia, you run in all kinds of problems. We did it. The French did it. There's a great paper, a declassified paper that was written by the CIA. I think it's called the way we do things, black entry operations in Southeast Asia or Indochina. You can find it out there.

And it talks about how we took those World War II Jedberg-type tactics and both the French and to some extent the United States tried to implement them to total disaster. Same thing. We did it in Korea too during the Korean War. And I think in the chapter with Det K, that kind of comes out that like the way their mission is very different. than Dead A. And I think part of the reason why they don't have like a clandestine trade craft or intel or sabotage mission is because we're just hopeless in blending in the Korean Peninsula.

Right. And it brings up a lot of, you know, brings up like when we did our interview with Adam Gamal, you know. And why you need these. Why you need people, you know, why, especially units like special forces like TFO, these, these, you know, maybe for, you know, Cag, it's not so important. If you're a ranger, it's not so important. But for these other elements that, you know, rely on a clandestine or covert nature that

you have to have. They're invaluable. Yeah. Yeah. Or to counter the sabotage as well. You need to have the friendly assets that know how to spot the sabotage units. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's fascinating. And what, like, you know, and it's, and even though I'm sure that they did real-world stuff, you know, and a lot of reconnaissance type things. Counter-surveillance, surveillance, towards the end, they even got involved in, like, counter-narcotics operations with the German police. Yeah. You know, and their primary mission, obviously, thankfully, you know, never went off. But it is, it is.

It is like the Hollywood story. Yeah, it is. You know. So did DetK start around the same time? So DeTK would have started in the early 60s. So Korea happens in like 53. And then we get to KMAG, which is like Korea Military Assistance Group. You guys, we're all familiar with this, like MacV,

military assistance commanding. Vietnam or MNCI, multinational coalition Iraq. So, okay, back, back after the Korean War, we had KMAG. That was the thing. And that was sort of the liaison and special forces would go in there and work, work through that relationship. But DETK would have been formalized in the early 60s. Okay. And originally were they envisioned of doing the same mission, even though, you know, they found out they couldn't? No, they were always envisioned it as, um, being a liaison partner force, that they were going to partner directly with South Korean brigades, special forces and conventional, and help get them ready and help them with mentoring.

And so the unique thing about DETK is that it is the resident special forces team in South Korea, where normally the way special forces works is that you have teams rotating in and out every six months or they're doing maybe just a few months and then coming home. Those are called J-Sets joint combined exercise training, I believe. And, you know, they've been criticized as being episodic. Like you go in there for a few months, you teach basic rifle marksmanship and then you leave so you can come back a year or two later and do the same thing all over again. Right. Right. That has not been the case with DetK. They have been the sustained engagement for decades. And it's paid great dividends.

I mean, South Korea is an amazing success story in of itself, even though some of the troubles they've had in the last week. But nonetheless, it is an amazing country. And the South Korean military is also a huge success story, which mostly needs to be credited to the South Koreans, of course. But that sustained engagement with U.S. special forces, I think there's a lot of value added there, that you get the most bang for your business.

buck that way. And yeah, and it really is value added for the U.S. taxpayer. I mean, Debt K's budget is something like 200 to maybe 250,000 a year, depending on what training exercises are being run. I mean, this is, that money, what is that, like, 0.5% of an F-35? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The military sneezes at that. Yeah.

Now, for both that A and debt K, when they're these sustained efforts, do they, Do they avoid, like, the Army's two-year, can people like homestead in these places? Is that encouraged? Over the years, yeah, some of them were able to kind of camp out in debt K or go back and serve their multiple times. But there's always that, like, 12-to-15-man element. It's not like, and they stay there. Right. You know, guys will rotate back home and go to other assignments as needed, but that team is always there.

Right, right. But could a guy have, like, 10 years? consistent in those units. I don't know if I ever spoke to someone who did 10 years straight, but I definitely know guys who spent significant amounts of time. And guys who found, in Dead A and DetK, found ways, like, found jobs for themselves. Sure. You know, like, oh, like, yeah, Dixie is a perfect example.

Like, yeah, I can't be, there's no space for me in Dead A anymore, but I'll go hang out as the liaison in Dixie and get another couple years in Germany. Right. You know, stuff like that happened. and there were definitely guys who wanted to stay in debt K and loved it out there. Yeah. You know, quite a few of them, they end up marrying local women and they've become a part of the culture. Yeah.

So did debt K have the same sort of clandestine nature that debt A did? No, no. And that's an interesting thing. Like, debt K is like 99% non-classified. It's like open, liaison, partner force stuff. They might do some intelligence training with the Korean side. sometimes and the content of that would be classified. But otherwise, it's pretty out in the open.

Yeah. How different is there rules of engagement? Because their situations are very similar, kind of. They're both on debt A and debt K. We're on like a DMZ, right? It's kind of like a cold area to be in. Is it the same amount, is the ROE similar? Like, are they, their engagement with the enemy forces?

So, it's like a cat and mousing? So DETK is definitely not supposed to be getting shooty up on the DMZ. That's not their job. If war ever broke out, their job would be the receiving party. So if war broke out in the Korean Peninsula, the United States would be rushing all our military units and military hardware to Korea. What DETK would do is receive those units as they arrive in South Korea and guide them up to the front lines to where they need to be. So that would be like that's their wartime mission. Now, there is an exception to this.

And this really is a lost chapter of special forces history. In the 60s and 70s, the North Koreans would send like really death squads south of the DMZ, just like kill the whole village, just like wipe them out, do the whole ville. And it literally a campaign of terror against the South Korean population. And whenever those incursions happened, sometimes it was like a dead. dozen North Koreans. One of them was like 112 guys. And so whenever that happened, the South Koreans and South Koreans special forces specifically would mobilize very quickly to get out there and hunt these guys down. And on a few occasions, the DETK guys went along with them to advise.

To advise and assist. I think I heard of a mission of like, didn't the North Koreans make it to like a palace? Oh, that's the Blue House raid. That's a whole other thing. Yeah. That's a whole other thing. That was the kind of shenanigans that they were getting up to. Yeah, yeah. They got damn close to the president. That's all. DETK, I don't believe. It's in the book. I don't, I'm not sure how, I don't think that K was particularly involved in the old.

I think there was a conventional U.S. Army unit. The South Koreans were definitely hunting those guys down and trying to even track their spore back to the DMZ. That was, yeah, that's kind of nightmarish. There were, you know, but some of these other incursions, there were events, where like, yeah, the Dek-K guys would be at like the, you know, last covered and concealed position. And, you know, the South Koreans would sweep up the hill.

And they were here, da-d-da-d-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And they go up there and the North Koreans have like a shot group like that in their chest. It's like, okay, dude. You know? Yeah, they weren't fucking around. One guy I spoke to actually saw them interrogating a North Korean prisoner they took. And he said the South Korean went up and kicked them as hard as he could in his shins. And the North Korean didn't blow him.

Yeah, I remember hearing stories about the rock Marines in Vietnam getting hold of, getting hold of like Vietnamese. They were war crime. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The thing, you know, South Korea in the 60s, 50s, 60s, 70s, the guys told me that there was, it was kind of a brutal culture. and they told me that, you know, it wasn't uncommon to see police officers take someone, pull somebody over for a minor traffic violation and, like, beat the shit out of them with a stick.

Yeah. Back in the old days, again, it's just incredible how much it changed. I mean, I think when debt case started, I don't think there was even a paved road between Busan and Seoul. One guy sent me pictures of, like, the farmer, they'd get their pigs drunk on soju to, like, make them docile. and like tie them to a back of a bicycle, like riding down the road. Yeah, and now you go to, I mean, I went to South Korea a few years ago, and I mean, I'd describe it as like the Switzerland of East Asia. Yeah.

It's an amazing place. Yeah. Now, were the DET K guys doing outside of, you know, the liaison and training, were they doing any type of S-R? Were they doing sort of the forward-looking, you know, Were they intelligence collection? Not really, no. They would have been training the South Koreans to do those types of missions, if at all.

And there is, I do have one anecdote in that story about a South Korean, we think, being sent under commercial cover into the North and disappeared without a trace. Yeah. Yeah, I can't imagine that sneaking into North Korea in such a surveillance state and lockdown society is, has a, you know, an incredible lifespan to it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Is there anything that we've left out about debt K that...

I mean, it's a huge chapter, and it starts in the Korean War, and debt K exists to this day. Unlike that A, debt K is still around. So, yeah, I hope people enjoy it. Well, I was wondering how much, did their mission change a ton between, like, when they were stood up to today? or like different than Dead A? Are they more the same? No, it hasn't changed a whole lot.

I mean, they still provide that like kind of one-on-one mentorship. And as I understand it, the DetK guy's office is right next to the brigade commander's office. The South Koreans are very adamant about having their American advisors around. I guess that speaks to probably the fact that, like, the enemy that they're facing there has not really changed since. And so, I mean, you have to contend with. the nuclear weapons, that's the one thing that maybe has changed in that conflict. You have to worry about that. But, you know, like, just maybe one more anecdote about that.

There was a time when, well, first group had been inactivated. And so DET K was kind of stranded out there without a mommy or daddy. But they got to do their own thing. But then Mother Army decided they wanted to shut down Dett K. and it took like massive intervention from the special forces community and but the bulk of it came from the South Korean military who said hell no we want these guys here yeah and that's what helped that case survive that's fascinating yeah um so blue light blue light is fascinating yeah and we had talked a little bit about them in in the beginning.

And they were this, you know, counterterrorist force when we were first dealing with it. And like you said, a lot of those guys came from Mac v. Saug, came from Vietnam. All the NCOs were, yeah, named veterans. And one of the biggest things was they were going to Beckwith saying, why do we have to go through this Delta selection when we are like proven, right? Well, yeah, okay. So there's a story there. what happened when blue light was being stood down and it was going fully over to Delta, Charlie calls in all the blue light guys for a recruitment brief.

And Colonel Beckwith was not super diplomatic, and neither were these Vietnam veteran NCOs. They're pretty tough dudes, you know. And one of them stands up during the briefing and says, excuse me, Colonel, you call this outfit First Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta. Does that mean this is a special forces unit like the one you destroyed in Vietnam? And things just went downhill from there. So what's the history on that? How did Charging Charlie Beckwith destroy it?

Beckwith was the commander of Project Delta. This is one of those things that confuses the hell out of civilians. I apologize. The Army is very confusing. Project Delta was a recon element that existed in South Vietnam during the war. It really has no relation to Delta Force other than maybe some guys from that unit making their way over there and later. I think aren't the insignia sort of similar? Didn't he kind of?

The triangle. The triangle. And that was Jim Morris who told us about that because the logistics guys that were sending out the pallets to Project Delta, the guy, depending on where the pallets were going, he'd draw a shape on it. And the Project Delta ones were a triangle. Dimitri informs me the triangle is Delta in the Greek Alpha that. And that's where, yeah, Project Delta came from. And is that where Charlie got it? I don't, maybe.

Yeah. But there's also at that time there's the precedence of operational detachment Alpha, operational detachment Bravo, the B team, and then C up at the battalion level. So maybe D was just like the most natural thing. Yeah. And maybe they thought it would act as a cover. Yeah.

But that's a good question because I'm not sure exactly why Beckwith and why the Army settled on Delta Force. Yeah. Yeah. So I interrupted you. You were telling us about Delta in Vietnam. Yeah. So, I mean, there were, Colonel Beckwith was at that time Major Beckwith, I believe,

or either Captain or Major. Yeah, he was a hard charger, and he led the guys into this one mission in a valley where a lot of dudes got killed. And people blamed Charlie personally for it. And that, so that kind of like persisted and carried over to years forward when we get to 1980. Yeah. So, you know, it's like you said, terrorism, at the time terrorism was mostly like aircraft hijackings. It was something new.

It was a new tool that was being, you know, used by these groups. And the U.S. government said, do we have an answer to this? Right, right. So Charlie wrote a thesis paper when he went to a war college, I think down in Leavenworth, and I would love to try to FOIA this thing or get a hold of it, because I think it would be fascinating. I believe he wrote his paper on this topic. He had done a exchange with the SAS.

And he came back from that experience feeling like we do not have an American SAS. We have special forces that are trainers. They do partner force work, but we need like highly trained guys who can conduct operations unilaterally. I know one part of the inspiration for it was the Santee raid failed POW rescue mission in North Vietnam during the war. And for that mission, we had to identify people we wanted on the team, then train them, put them through rehearsals, and then execute the mission. So that's a long process right there.

Charlie's concept is let's have them selected, assessed, and trained and ready to go so that when something happens, they're ready to be rapidly deployed. Wasn't that the problem with the Suntay rate is that we were late? They did move the POWs before we got there. Yeah. So that played into it. But then I think Charlie's original concept and original idea,

really, I don't think terrorism was on his mind or anyone's mind so much at that time. I think it was more like they were thinking about POW rescue. Right. And if we went to war with the Soviet Union, presumably there would be a lot of American POWs held behind enemy lines. But he points out, Beckwith points out himself in his memoirs. Counterterrorism was what finally sold the Pentagon on the creation of Delta Force. And there was a series of events that I talk about in the book, these sort of escalating

events. There's Munich, the Munich massacre happened. The Israeli raid on Ntebe happened. And then the GSG-9 flew down to Somalia. and took down a aircraft that had been hijacked by Red Army faction. And for each of these sorts of events, the Pentagon or in the White House are asking this question, can we just do what the Germans did? Can we just do what the Israelis did?

And the answer was, fuck, no. Right. No, he can't. And so Charlie got what he wanted. Yeah, yeah. And rightly so. And so where did Blue Light fall in with all of this? So Blue Light was General MacBowell.

was talking to Beckwith, and Beckwith was asserting that he needed two years to assess and select and train his men. And the Pentagon was like, no, Charlie, you're not listening. Like if something happens, we're going to call you tomorrow. Right. And he's like, well, we won't be ready. And so shit rolls downhill, as it were. The mission, the interim counterterrorism mission goes over to Colonel Montel at Fifth Special Forces Group. And he brings in a sergeant major named Earl Bleacher and says, hey, we need to start up a counterterrorism unit.

How fast can you get these guys out of the range shooting? And the sergeant major said within a week, and Colonel Montel didn't believe him, but he made it happen. They selected some really talented guys. I mean, these were guys who served in the special projects, SOG, Mike Force. Like, these were hardcore dudes. Right. battle tested. Oh, yeah, yeah.

The only ones who weren't Vietnam veterans were probably the officers. Yeah. Taffy Carlin was one of the lieutenants. He was, I believe he started off as an intelligence officer and then came over to special forces. Incredibly cerebral guy. I'm so glad that I got to meet him before he passed away. And then Mark Boyat was another one of the officers on Blue Light. I believe he started off in conventional infantry before coming over to special forces.

Mark went on to become the commander of third group and Taffy became the commander of fifth group in later years. But I mean, they could pick the best guys. I mean, Jake Jakavenko, one of the legendary Special Forces guy, he was on Blue Light. His family is from Dunbos. From what he told me, his family went through hell during the war. and he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and he was definitely a no bullshit kind of guy and still is.

Some of the other, I mean, Tiny Young, Tiny is facetious, he was like 6'5. As I understand, he's a huge dude. I have heard stories about Tiny Young, like somebody told me in Panama, he got hit in the back of the head with a two by four and he didn't even blink. And when this guy would fight people in the bar,

he wouldn't punch them, he'd like pick them up. Like, he was so big, he'd like pick them up by their collar and hit him with his palm, like, like he's trying to kill a rabbit. And he'd knock him out and then like throw him across the bar and go to the next guy. Like, these were some tough dudes. Yeah. Oh, and I should mention Katie, Katie McBriar, Katie Bradford today. She's married now to a Grenada raider who is featured, James Bradford.

He is featured in Cry Havoc and Joe Mussel. his book about Grenada that came out this year, about the Rangers. Yeah. Yeah. So reading that, and I'm reading about James Bradford, I'm like, oh, I know, Katie. Yeah. I know who this dude is. So Katie McBryor was a young intelligence analyst in fifth group.

And Colonel Montel had the foresight of like, we need females in these outfits. We need women who can, you know, in this case, because the primary focus was, aircraft hijackings. We need somebody who can like, this girl can dress up like a nurse or like a flight attendant and get closer to gather intelligence for us than some of the guys would be able to do.

And so she was put on blue light and, you know, Montel, one of the NCOs was like, man, you're going to put a woman on the team? How's that going to go over? And Colonel Montel's like, well, that's your job to figure that out. And there was some tension there.

There was some tension. but to the man, all of the blue light guys I spoke to came to respect Katie. And really, they looked after her and took care of her. And Katie had so many nice things to say about Colonel Montel. Like he was like, she said like a father figure to him in some ways. You know, such a good guy. And Katie's story in the military unfortunately ends because during that briefing that we mentioned earlier where all the blue light people went to Delta,

Charlie apparently pointed straight to Katie and said, I have no place for you in this unit. Which is wild considering where Delta is now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And Katie felt like she had peaked in the military. She was like, she was parachuting. She was like shooting 1911s. I mean, she was like, I'm never going to get to do this again.

Right. And she got out of the military. Yeah. Yeah, it's unfortunate. it. But first woman ever on a special forces team, 1977. That's amazing. Yeah. So what happens with Blue Light?

Because like you mentioned, they were an interim. So it was not a competition between them and Delta. They were an interim. But during this time, do they get called up or anything? Does the Blue never go up for them? No, they never got called up. That was one of the things I definitely asked about. Never got there.

There was an incident right before Blue Light got stood up, which again, these escalating counterterrorism scenarios. I get pretty deep into this in the book, the Hanafi siege of Washington, D.C., which is like one of these things that's almost forgotten about now. And there's a whole backstory there. There was a split between the Hanafi Sunni Muslims and Islam Nation. There were some murders between these organized things got really ugly. and the leader of the Hanafi sect was not happy with how the trial,

I mean, they murdered his whole family, basically. He was not happy with how the trial was going. And so he laid siege to like three federal buildings in Washington, D.C. The call goes to fifth special forces group. They're like, guys, like, if we need someone to go in, like, this is like 75, I guess, 76. And HRT had not been fully. Hell no. Yeah.

No, HRT was not even a glimmer in. in Danny Colson's eyes yet. Because that was like 80. Yeah, yeah. So the word goes to fifth group. And so Mark Boyat was going to be a part of that. I mean, they started to like do some planning for it. They figured they'd like kind of like fast rope or repel down onto the rooftops and then go

inside and the plan was to shoot the bad guys and hopefully not too many of the good guys get killed in the crossfire. Right. Like, it was so rudimentary at this point. And again, it was another one of these moments where we're like, we're not ready for this. Right. Like, we're not prepared for this. Wait, I'm so, I'm sorry.

I have no idea. There was like, they were going to deploy U.S. Special Forces as like a SWAT team. Yes. Domestically, yeah. Domestically? Have they done things like that before? I don't know a ton about. So, I mean, think SWAT probably wasn't even.

much of a thing at this time. The idea of barricade hostage rescues and counterterrorism, like you know, a lot of these ideas are, they weren't doing around. As an emerging problem.

As an emerging technology. As I understand it, posse comitatis does not necessarily preclude the deployment of American soldier, active duty federal soldiers on American soil. There are exceptions.

The local government can request federal support from the military. This gets into some weird stuff. I mean, it could potentially get waived by the president. Yeah. There are other titles, too. Like there's Title 38. Like the National Guard can do all sorts of things. Yeah, there are other titles.

That the active military can't. There was another incident. This is not in the book, but in the early 1980s there was a prison riot in actually several prisons rioted down south. I think Georgia and Louisiana or Alabama, it had to do with the Cuban boat lift. It was the Muriel boat lift. And Castro used this as an opportunity to empty his prisons. And so several of these prisons revolted at the same time.

And as I recall, HRT only had enough guys to handle one prison. They had a couple of HRT guys and they brought in a bunch of Delta operators to help with the other prison. and the Delta guys were going to do like the explosive breaching, like breaching the walls and stuff like that. But in the case of the prison and also the siege, the Hanofi siege, that was ended through negotiations. Actually on our Patreon, Mike Vining talks about that. Yes, yes, he does.

Mike was there. Patreon.com slash a team. Yeah, Mike Vining is a great source, a great resource in the book about the early years of Delta Force. He's in there quoted fairly extensively. Yeah. So with this and with blue light, and how many of, what percentage would you say of the blue light guys went over to Delta once it stood up? Four guys total?

Four guys. Of that initial recruiting brief, nobody volunteered. Down the line, four dudes. At least four guys I know of ended up in Delta. Yeah. And did they not go because of the hostility? Yeah. Yeah, there's just a lot of anger there.

Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I understand both sides also. I understand Beckwith saying there's a standard and everybody has to meet this standard. And then the, you know, the blue light guy's going, what's like our standard is our scars. And, you know, Beckwith was right on this. He was in the beginning phases of developing a sort of scientific method. of doing assessment and selection. Right.

He was on the right track. And, you know, Beckwith sometimes blew off his own methodology, which I think was a mistake. But he was getting towards the right answer. And I think that's to his credit in a lot of ways. He was, by many accounts, a difficult guy to work with. He could be a little hard-headed, a little, he had a temper. but he was also very patriotic and I think he does deserve credit

for seeing something before everyone else did it. And I mean a lot of his methodology went into like the HRT selection like Deb group selection well I mean Deb group selection is a little bit different because it's more of a board but but the idea of

well you can have a medal of honor you can have you know silver stars out the kazoo you can have all this experience but this is our standard. Right. And this is the standard you have to meet. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

You know? No, it's fascinating. So what eventually happened? How did they wind blue light down? And was there like a response to that? No, not really. I mean, and this is, you know, the sad thing about how do you, you know, and I think why there's, there are some broken hearts about, about this within the special forces community.

Because you do all this work. Yeah. You know, you really put blood, sweat, and tears into something, and then to just be told one day, we don't need you anymore. Right. That's not a good feeling. Right. You know, nobody likes that.

And you'll see that repeated a few times through the book. With the Siff and Greenlight? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's, I mean, did, was there anything that I missed? To me, it's fascinating. It sounds like they were, like, right before Delta Force.

Yeah. And then, yeah, it would suck to, to get closed down. like that. And especially for the caliber of men. Oh, yeah. And women, but the caliber of people that they had associated with that, that it's either, now it's either Delta or bust. Yeah.

I mean, there was still a lot going on in SF. You know, Greenlight was still going on at that time. And Dead A was still going on at that time. Yeah. All these other programs were still going on. The interesting thing, I mean, We can get into it more when you want to, but Blue Lights legacy kind of was carried forward. It was directly carried forward into SOT.

Okay. Because they stayed at Mott Lake and they retained some of those Blue Light guys to run special operations training out at Mott Lake on Fort Bragg. And for people who don't know what SOT was, again, we're going way back in time, like 1980, 1981 around this time. when the idea of like, you know, kill houses, you know, doing like close quarter battles, doing very dynamic entries, lobbing hand grenades in, and having snipers shoot over the assaulters' heads, no one was really doing that at that time except out at Montlake and out at the Delta compound maybe. And so SOT tried to retain those blue light counterterrorism skills and train the force, the special forces guys on that.

And that training, as time goes on, the SIFs starts to come about, Sephardic starts to come about, and then Sephalic starts to come about. So again, there is this like lineage, but it's quite irregular. It doesn't happen in a straight line. So SOT was the original CQB, like, course, which is something I learned from you. I didn't, like,

I went through SOT, but I didn't know at the time, and I guess I went through one of the last classes. I think you did. Yeah, but I didn't know at the time that that's what that was. You know, I was just some Ranger thrown into this you know, like

thing. Didn't know why all these like tab B4s and E5s were pissed at me, you know? You know what I mean? but so so t is this this thing that becomes sephartic and sephalic sort of it's sort of it's sort of like that cadre and that skill set that percolates between blue light and delta and uh and then into the siff yeah um they they are interrelated to one another um uh rubin garcia was the first the company commander of sot out at mot lake um

I got to talk to him for this. And Phil Hanson, who was a Delta Force operator who was on Operation Eagle Claw, and he was a big part of standing up Sephardic. Yeah. So there's this crossover. So tell us about the SIF, the commanders and extremist force. What is this? And with Delta, what's the concept behind the SIF? So as I understand it, in the 1980s, the U.S.

European theater commander wanted an in-extremist force. And essentially, he wanted a quick reaction force in Europe to respond to counterterrorism or emergency events inside Europe. So he wanted a Delta force squadron in Europe all the time. At the time, Delta had two squadrons, A and B. It's not possible. You can't have your guys on alert 100% all the time. When do they go on leave? when do they do their professional development training,

all this other kind of stuff, right? So not possible. So the counter, again, this is an irregular sort of path. You have Dead A's counterterrorism mission turns into PSSE's counterterrorism mission. When PSSE is shut down and the European command wants their own QRF, it gets rolled into the 10th group now SIF,

commanders in extremist force. That's the next generation of it. And so how did that come about? Like how did they designate these guys? Oh, how did they designate these guys? And what was the training standard for them? Well, they transferred the equipment over from PSSE to the SIF as I understand it. And that was the, you know, what was it?

C-110 was the first SIF team. And, yeah, so they built it out from there. And then what happened, you know, so the idea, of course, being that you have them in Germany to respond to stuff in Europe. But the other combatant commanders also want that. So you have a SIF stand up in Okinawa and another one down in Panama to respond to that. And there's about five pages in there about how B23 down in Panama was stood up, which is very... What's B23?

I feel like there's a lot that I'm learning about the Special Force guy. I didn't even know... So, yeah, it's going... You know, Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion. I'm sorry, second battalion, third, or seventh special forces, Jesus Christ. B23 is Bravo Company, second battalion, third special forces group. That's third group, SIF team. A15 is fifth groups, SIF team, Alpha Company, First Battalion, Fifth Special Forces Group.

So they go like that, like first groups was C-1-1 out in Okinawa. So what was the intent, obviously, was. this on-site QRF, what were the issues with it? In terms maybe not with those guys in particular with the unit, but in terms of like the big army picture and things like that.

I mean, there were all kinds of issues that went on over the years. I mean, the SIFs they went on from yeah, the 19, early 80s I guess they started up and then eventually they were stood down during the Trump administration. They became the C-Tax.

At least that's the last name I know them by the critical threat advisory companies. So, I mean, but there are all kinds of issues. The combatant commanders love having, I mean, they all want more resources. Right. They love having a QRF. But the real scenario, and there was this connective tissue between special forces in J-Soc, in fact, it was really the only connective tissue between them, is that the SIF is there

as the inextremist force to quickly respond before Delta gets there and takes over the job and does it. So the way that would work in practice is that if an embassy gets taken over somewhere in the world, the SIF immediately responds from a forward-deployed location. They hit the ground. They're able to surround the premises, start gathering intelligence, they put out their snipers, they're doing all of that. Then at a certain point, you know, the big boys, Delta, rolls in from Fort Bragg, they land, and they come in, and then there's a handoff that's going to take place. The snipers would stay in place since they've already been there for so long, observing the target, but the Delta guys would come in and do the assault. The SIF would have an

emergency assault plan if they were called up to do that. That's like if the terrorists just starts shooting everyone, you're going in at that point. Now, the problem was that the SIF never once executed that mission. I mean, I asked high and low, someone feel free to come out there and tell me if I'm mistaken. The SIF responded to all sorts of things over the years. They did embassy evacuations. They even did like recon for humanitarian efforts. I mean, they did some good work. And I'm not a SIF hater. I was a hater when I was in the Army. I'm not a SIF hater anymore because my perspective has widened a little bit. And I feel like I know more about it. So yeah, I'm not I'm not trying to hate on them. They did do a lot, but they didn't do that mission that they were commissioned

and trained to do. And I think that's a big part of what led to, you know, at the time when they were disbanded, the Special Forces Command commander, the Usa Sok Commander and the Socom commander were all Special Forces guys who had no SIF background. Right. So and SIF sometimes did not do themselves a lot of favors, right, in terms of their relations. and the relationships with other SF elements. Yeah, well, yeah, you're alluding to, you know, why, you know, myself and maybe some other people had run-ins with them that you kind of get a bad impression.

Yeah. I have a wide enough perspective now. I can see that's like an anecdotal, singular, just bad impression I had. It doesn't mean that the SIF is bad. Right. The issue. So there was, there could be at sometimes some arrogance,

some people who think they're a little bit better, than everyone else. But there is also this issue that within the battalion and within the Special Forces Battalion where the SIF exists is that that battalion commander doesn't have three companies. He has two companies and he has another that's tasked out to J-Soc and he can't use them for anything.

Right. And any time he would or the group would want to use them for anything, they would pull the whole, we have a J-Soc mission guys, we're not doing that. And so, yeah, it created tension within the special forces, you know, chain of command. Right. And so there were certainly officers out there who are happy to get rid of it. And that's why that memo comes across Chris Miller's desk one day when he's the Secretary of Defense.

And Chris wrote the forward of the book, and he's also quoted about how this came about. Yeah. And so you said they never actually did, and they did great stuff with the Neo-Eau. and things like that, but they never actually did that mission. Was that due to like a lack of opportunity or a lack of resources? I think that, well, we haven't had so many embassy hostage crises.

And also the issue, even with Delta's mission, this gets a little janky, like the concept behind it. Like a sovereign country isn't going to let you just come in and surround the fucking embassy. and with a bunch of armed gunmen, like it's going to be their guys, they're going to want to send their locals in to go do that. So are they kind of redundant?

I mean, maybe for that mission, they might be, right? So it's hard to see these units working in a permissive environment, you know, maybe a semi-permissive environment or a non-permissive environment. But, yeah, there are some issues there. So some people speculated that the only time you'd see this happen is if there's a hostage crisis on a U.S. military base overseas. Right. But then the counter argument is, you know, you let your guard down.

Right. The next time, you know, this happens and we don't know how to respond to it. So that's part of it. I think another part of it is that when an emergency situation does arise, J-Soc wants to do J-Soc and they don't want to work with the pores. Right. I mean, yeah, I'm sorry to be so crass, but there's some truth to that. so they're going to want to go in and take that mission for themselves.

I've been told that the reason why Delta liked having the SIF around was because the SIF could be used to be deployed overseas to train Indage counterterrorism units, which is a mission Delta doesn't really want. Right. And did the SIF ever do that? Oh yeah, they did. They did. Yeah, absolutely.

Now, I've heard, and you can tell me if this is right or wrong, but I've also heard that one of the issues was with J-Soc, with Delta or even the Rangers or whomever, like they have air assets. They have like if Delta gets called, they're not putting a request through, you know, Army Air Commander, whoever it is to say, hey, can we get some aircraft to get us to this target

where, like they have dedicated assets where the SIF, they might kind of sit around for a minute waiting for somebody to break off some air for them. That was a huge stumbling block in the whole in extremist concept, right? There were some exceptions. So, for instance, the guys out in Okinawa, the first group SIF team, they did have dedicated air assets to get them around Asia if they needed it. But the others did not.

So the air rating that like, you know, like, so this is pretty out in the open, Rangers had this 18-hour sequence they go through to rapidly deploy. and the error rating they have, I think it's B2, is it 1B1 or 2B2? But there's an alpha-numeric code that's the air rating for like, what priorities does that unit have? And presidential is the highest. And then like below that is like Delta and the other guys that are rapidly deploying. But the SIF did not have that for the most part. And then you have other things.

I mean, so we've talked about Panama, Okinawa, Germany. A15, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. What are you the extremist force in extremist force to? Explain this to me. Right. They did during the war on terror. There's a GCC mission where they were forward deployed for some stuff. But for the most part, like, are they getting anywhere before guys in Brager getting anymore?

Exactly. Right. Same B23 and Fort Bragg also. So, yeah, you have this question. Like, you're the in extremist force for what exactly? That's kind of an issue. Right. No, it makes sense.

It makes sense when they are in Europe or in Panama or in Okinawa. But if they're in the States, are they getting anywhere before Delta is getting there? No, they're not. Yeah. Yeah. So what was the progression of? like the SIF, because it was around for quite a while, right? And, you know, and it was used successfully in evacuations and neo stuff.

I mean, you know, well-trained guys. In the 90s, yep. Yeah. And then it just kind of at one point, well, during the Trump administration. Yeah, well, I mean, during the war on terror, they were very active, of course. Right. And they got folded into the Special Operations Task Force in Iraq and Afghanistan. and that's an untold story really.

I mean, I touch upon it in the book, but that's like a three-volume set of books in of itself, probably what those guys did during the War on Terror. And I don't want to sell them short at all. That is an unwritten chapter of Special Forces history for now. So were they doing things that other A-teams were not doing? I guess that's going to depend on who you ask. They did do a few hostage rescue missions.

I think they would probably argue that they did DA much better than the ODAs did. But I mean, the point is they were a part of the special operations task force and they did do a lot of operations. And then, yeah, as things are winding down and this memo shows up on Chris Miller's desk and he's like, holy shit, is this for real? We're disbanding the SIFs. And it kind of was like a stroke of the pen. they're shut down. So they weren't operating, like, under their own command when they were in Iraq and Afghanistan? They were folded into other...

The SOTIF. Okay. So they, yes. For the most part, they would be working for J-Soc under the Special Operations Task Force during that kind of deployment. They definitely were in Iraq. In Afghanistan, I'd have to ask about that. I'm not entirely sure. But, yeah, they were probably under a SOTF.

And, yeah, so they got stood down. And, again, just like when blue light got stood down, SF is trying to sort of maintain the nucleus of this capability within its ranks. By shifting the SIF to the C-Tax, the critical threat advisory companies, my understanding is they work a lot underground, doing subsurface, you know, deep underground counter WMD stuff and they see that as being like their niche that they're going to fill.

So the O-300 mission? Well, this could be nation-state. Yeah. This could be nation-state stuff. And, but yeah, it does feel like perhaps they're trying to hold on to this thing in hopes that the J-Soc mission comes back one day. Right.

And I don't know if it will or not. So what happens to all those guys, though? Do they are just like, okay, we're disbanding your unit, see you later by? or where they get, they get, like, what happens? I'm sure some of them got reassigned, but I mean, they did shift into the Sifts became the C-Tax. Okay.

So it wasn't like. Well, it wasn't like you're fired to go home anymore. No, not quite that bad. Pick up your check. Pick up your last check on the way out. Yeah. But it probably felt that way for a lot of guys, you know. And this is an emotional issue for a lot of deeds.

Sure. Put all the, like, hard work into it. And again, to just come into work one day and be told, yeah, we don't need you anymore. It's not a great feeling. Sure. And the thing is, is that, you know, you don't want that capability to go away, right? You don't want, whether it's SOT or Sephardic, Falk, whatever it is, you don't want these guys to not be trained or to not have that training capability. You don't want to, you know, reinvent the wheel if it ever comes up again.

Here's the thing I would point out about this. So there's this, like, quintessential. argument within special forces about direct action versus unconventional warfare. And which are we doing here? Which are we focusing on? And the SIF, C-TAC, J-Soc mission, that could go away. It could just go away entirely. I don't think it would be the end of the world.

Special forces would focus on UW and FID. However, even then, we cannot do away with direct action training for the ODAs. Sure. So the course that exists today called Cephalic, that job is to train ODAs as a whole, the entire 12 men, to conduct direct action operations. And it's a good, like, three or four week course that they put guys through to continue to make sure we're sustaining those skills, those skill sets with at the ODA level.

Right. And that's important because even if we get rid of all the unilateral DA, SFC.S. guys are still going to have to go abroad and train local forces how to conduct what direct action and in some cases accompany them on combat operations right so we got to maintain for sure we need to maintain sephalic and maintain that DA capability in SF for that purpose sure maybe not a unilateral capability though and I mean even the nature of DA though it has changed and probably will change you know, where it went from the hostage rescue model, that this is what CQB is, to callouts, right,

to going in quietly, you know, and making that decision point of the bad guy, like, taking, like, shortening that decision point. Like, if I can wake him up with a muzzle in his face, where that decision point never happens, like. And if you're doing deep underground missions, going after WMD facilities or command and control centers, that's a whole other can of work.

Right, absolutely. Yeah. So it's interesting because DA means so many different things now, as opposed to the 80s and the 90s where it was all hostage rescue. The counter WMD mission, just to touch on that a bit more, the SIF has had that mission or they trained for it for a long time. And I got some pretty cool stories in the book where they would do these training exercises in like Guam or Australia.

They had to do it in places like that because they would use, radiological material for the nerds to like home in on. And so they're training like, what if the bad guys build an improvised nuclear device? You know, it's like, you know, the fizzile material with like a kicker charge on it. And we're going to have to like rapidly deploy somewhere, you know, find where this device is. And then the assault team's going to have to go in.

And, you know, the bad guys would have a security element around it for sure. And the sifters wear all their mop gear and everything. going to have to go in there and smoke those guys and disable the weapon. So were they working with Nest quite a bit during stuff like that? DITRA. With DITRA? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So we'll talk about it with Greenlight. It was the Defense Nuclear Agency, merged with another organization and became the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, DITRA, which exists to this day. And DITRA works with the SIFs, works with Ranger Regiment and others to help them with this counter WMD. So are they sort of the AWG of

Of WMD? I believe they are the technicians. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So, yeah, so it's fascinating. So, so green light then. Yeah.

Geez, where to start with green light. So layout, basically, give us the elevator pitch of what green light is. The concept was that if World War III broke out that we would parachute small special forces teams behind enemy lines with backpack nuclear weapons, like something the size of a beer keg, essentially. And they would move to strategic choke points, bridges, dams, rail junctions, warm water ports, even enemy troop formations, set in the device and then hopefully D.D. Mao before it blows up and then somehow escape an evasive. back to friendly lines. That's the gist of it. How fast does one have to run to outrun a tactical nuclear weapon? So the minimum safe distance was something like 783 meters or something like that. Nobody I spoke to believes that's the real minimum safe distance for that thing.

How do you draw the short straw being the guy that has to jump with the backpack nuke? No thanks. Well, I mean, it gets, yeah, I mean, jumping with it is one thing. And everyone told me, you don't jump the device, it jumps you. You're just like holding on. Same thing with the guys who had it. They did scuba operations with it. They said the same thing, you don't dive the device. It's diving you.

Or the guys who skied with it. And that sounded like quite an adventure to ski with that thing on your back. And how much did it weigh? About 50 pounds. About 50 pounds. Yeah. So why did this concept, I mean, I guess I can see, you know, Scooba, Scubaian, but why did this concept evolve when we can either launch them or drop them?

Yeah, so you have to go back in time to the dawn of the atomic age and, you know, the fallout guy and all that, you know, yeah. And there was a concept after World War II of, like, atomic warfare. that like we're just going to use atomic weapons like as a thing you know the davy crockett recoilish rifle we're just going to like fire a recoiless rifle round that has a nuclear warhead on it you know there's these ideas like today we see nuclear weapons as like a deterrent right and that's all it is it's not something we would ever actually use like that's crazy back in the 50s they were like oh this is the future of war we're going to have the atomic hand grenade that's a joke but uh they were serious who's like uh called Or something like that?

There are all these crazy concepts. And at the time, we had atomic weapons, but what we didn't have was precision-guided munitions or smart bombs like we have today. They really came into their own during the Gulf War, of course. We didn't have those back in the 60s or the 50s. So the 18 Bravo was the smart bomb. Was the precision-guided? Yeah, the A-team is doing the terminal guidance for the weapon. Yes, exactly.

So that's how that concept came about that, you know, today these are targets that we would hit with cruise missiles. But back in those days, you would have sent in, you know, a four, six, maybe a whole 12-man A team to emplace the device and destroy the target. And how long was that school for those guys to learn what they needed to know? There were some basic courses that they could go to down at Fort Belvoir. then they did a lot of unit training. Most of it was unit training. And then there were the technical inspections, which were halacious and nerve-wracking, where testers from the Defense Nuclear Agency and others would come down.

And you had to walk through arming the device, rendering it safe, like doing like a functions check on the device. Yeah. On the device. and if you screwed one screw an eighth of an inch further than it's supposed to go, you fail and your entire chain of command was getting fired. Wow. Done. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. So how much time did those, so how did Greenlight fall into the normal like SF Company or SF Battalion? There would be in, as I can tell, in each group, there would be a couple Greenlight team. Okay. And usually it would be the Scuba teams or the Halo teams or, you know, in some cases you had guys who were both Halo and Scuba. Did they have, did they, was it a collateral duty or was it a dedicated mission? It was a dedicated mission that they did.

And it was, it had some status behind it. It was kind of, it was a cool elite thing, you know, it was a job for seasoned guys who were proficient at their job. And it, I mean, it was also high stress. Sure. I mean, like, we look at it today and we can, like, joke and laugh about it. But one of the things that, one of the takeaways for me from the book was when you talk to these guys, they were deadly serious about this mission. Like, they were totally serious.

And if they were told to go, they would have gone. Yeah. Yeah. It's the ultimate sensitive item. Yeah, no shit. You do not lose that. Can you imagine that online? Like, there are some, man, there are some funny stories.

So I don't know for a fact that I have ever spoken to a green beret who, handled a live device. During the training, I mean, you're having guys doing these crazy training exercises where they're jumping in and stuff like that. It's an inert trainer that they're going. There's no fizzile material in it. The company or the group commander would have to go to the nuclear bunker and inspect the devices like every six months or whatever to make sure they're actually there. It's like some accountability thing. But I can't say for a fact that I know a green beret that actually handled a live device. But there are some pretty, you know, funny stories. I mean, even the inert trainer, they were authorized deadly force to prevent it from

being lost to enemy or otherwise. So whoever jumped it had a loaded 45 with them. So they had actual like demo or what do you call it, like dummy devices? Yes. I can't, I'm assuming that the Soviets also had bizarre plans like this. We call them bizarre now, but like, yes, there were all sorts of like questions about that. And there's also some people who served on these teams feel that they were more of a psychological operation than anything. It was a way to get inside the minds of the Soviet military planners. As I just said, these guys were totally serious about going to do it. But like one person I know who's a 10th group, he was in Europe looking at their greenlight plans and when he became like a company or maybe he was like a battalion s3 he got access to all the

targeting packets and was able to see all of them you know in detail and he was like looking at them and he's like they are very um interesting uh that was what was bill blevins we had him on the show okay yeah yeah uh and um but his point was that those targeting packets to him looked like they were not written by anybody who had any clue as to what a special forces team can and can't do and what's realistically feasible. Right. And so his hypothesis was that this was mostly a sci-op. But I'll tell you what, I mean, this is a hell of a lot of time and money to put into something that's just a sci-op.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's fascinating. So was there, with the guys that you spoke with, was there ever, Was this also an in extremist, like, measure? Was there ever a time when they actually thought the balloon was going up for them? Oh, hell yeah.

So there were all kinds of weird things that happened, where these guys would get called in in the middle of the night, like their pagers go off at 2 a.m. And they come into work and they're told, okay, start working on, you know, targeting packet X, get ready for airborne insertion. And like, no one's telling them, this is real or not.

Right. And in some cases, these guys were, like, they're getting issued live ammunition. They're like, holy shit. And, like, they'll, like, attach it to some stuff like they adhere on, like, CNN or whatever. Like, you know, something's popping off somewhere. They're like, oh, shit. Like, this is for real. Yeah.

And then all of a sudden, you know, the, you know, XO would come in and be like, everyone go home. And X. Yep. Am I the only one that feels like this, it's just maybe, like, not a good idea to have nuclear weapons at that level that occurred that definitely occurred to people um the um did did were i guess were they the ones that had they're the debt they have the debt they would be programming into the timer um the time now there are conspiracy theories on the teams that they

would like just go off the second you like programmed that it's just going to go off in your face i feel like even submarines and other of the triad this is we have the nuclear triad and this is like the nuclear, there's like another leg now. Yeah, well, I think, yeah, there probably was some consternation about the idea of having, you know, a 23-year-old E-5 or E-6 running around with a low-yield nuclear weapon. Well, not only that, but from the time that they deploy,

let's say they fly over somewhere, they jump, they're probably not jumping right on the X, right? So they're moving to the X. It's like have, have has the situation calm down? Do they have communication with the rear

to say hey, index? It's like, we're behind, like, we're in a hostile country now with a nuclear device and you don't want us to set it off. Yeah, and when they went in the, can you, what do you call it? You can't destroy the device.

Right. Yeah. They would have to get a thermite grenade on it. They would have to get, like a burst encrypted message with a fire code or they armed it. Right.

And, you know, but that's a great point and you're totally on target there that, again, so we work from the assumption as Americans like we're not going to initiate nuclear World War III, right? So what does that mean? We're waiting until the Soviets do something.

Okay, so they do something. Now we have to recall our guys, get them in, get them issued their equipment out. then they have to get on a vehicle, they have to go out to a bunker, they have to draw the weapon, and then they have to go out to an airfield and get on an airplane. Sometimes we're talking about crossing international borders just in this part, you know, between NATO countries, get on an airplane, fly somewhere, get inserted. By the time they get there, is their target even valid anymore?

Right, right. So these are the kind of questions that come up, like, why this seems like kind of a Dr. Strangelove sort of mission. Sure. I mean, think about the deployment of somebody like that during the Bay of Pigs, right? Like, how close were we to launching an attack on Cuba during the Bay of Pigs? So those guys would have been launched way before the decision was ever made. Yeah.

And then now what? You've got a scuba team who just crawled up on the shore of Cuba. You know how comms are, you know? Yeah, how you get recalled. Yeah. So it's like, so what are they, now they're, you know, and I don't know if those guys were ever, you know, were in existence or even thought of, you know, during the Bay of Pigs. Not during the Bay of Pigs, no. But this was an interesting thing that came out in my research is that the presumption is that the targets are in Eastern Europe, right?

Well, I found out that we had targets in Panama, Cuba, North Korea. Like, this was a global thing. The Trans-Caucas Mountains. Like anywhere, like, if World War III broke out, we were looking at turning off parts of the world. Right. Like, we're, like, potentially blowing up the Panama Canal, blowing up the largest dam in Cuba. Like, yeah, there were contingency plans for all of that. That's crazy.

That's legitimately, like, shooting yourself in the foot. So you want to hear a crazy story about, like, how close did we get? there's one incident it was ODA 745 in 1983 they got called up like they get called up a lot for these like coming to work you know alert or you know so they come in like they have it many other times this time they're getting issued live ammunition oh what the fuck's going on here a truck a jeep comes out this is on Pope Army Airfield out of Breg a Jeep comes out onto the tarmac armed guard guards issue them a device, the saddam. It's called a special atomic demolition munition is what

we've been talking about here, the saddam. And this doesn't have any of the inert training stickers on it or anything. And they'll like prep it for airborne insertion. So they got to rig it up and everything. A C-130 comes in and lands, the ramp drops and two literal MIBs, guys wearing black coveralls with no rank, no insignia, no names, step off the plane they announce. We now have operational control. They get the team rigged up, ready for a combat jump. They get on the airplane. The team's like, where are we going?

And it wasn't until they were in the air for a few hours that the MIBs informed them what their target was. They were very familiar with the target because they had been working on the intelligence packet and trained for this many, many times. It was a dam in Cuba. And they flew Napa the Earth. popped up. The entire team exits off the back of the ramp with the device. They land, they come down. And just as they're coming down and landing, their parachutes are collapsing behind

them, like these headlights light up in front of them. And someone yells, index, index, and they're all like looking at each other. And all of a sudden there's like Americans around them from like Warren's Livimore Labs and Ditra and stuff like this. And they're asking them like, so like, how's your mental state right now, Bill? Like, how do you feel about this mission? And, you know, like, they were like, I really think from many different people I've talked to through this program's history, there are all these tests being done. Like, will these guys really carry out this mission? Yeah. Will they really do it?

Yeah. And I think that the, the mandarin's up at the Pentagon just did not really understand how crazy special forces guys are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, they would have done it. Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating.

So how, when did this program start and when, to your knowledge, did it end? So the, the saddam starts getting developed in the early 60s. Before that, there was a device called the Maidum, which was like it had to be driven on a truck. The Saddam was, you know, the idea that this is manned portable. So that was the early 60s. And then the program went on to about 86, 87. Okay. So before the fall of the Soviet.

Union. Yes. Largely because, yes, the Cold War was winding down, because we were coming to see nuclear weapons as a deterrent rather than, you know, something we're going to use. And then the advent of precision guided munitions was a big one. That made this program not so important anymore. Right. Although some people feel that the Greenlight program is what kept special forces alive. You know, after Vietnam, the army didn't really want anything to do with these like counterinsurgency warfare. Like, what the fuck? No, we're going to like Bradleys and we're going to fight in the fold of gap. Right.

They didn't want anything to do with special forces. So some people think it was the nuclear mission that kept SF alive through some of those difficult years. But it was also, I think, a bit of a relief for the battalion and group commanders to have this taken off their plate because these inspections were really hollacious and really stressful for everyone. Yeah. There's a lot of work went into this. And so with the mission being stood down, they were able to use those ODAs to, you know, do the more traditional ODA stuff.

It's interesting, though, because now when you look at what technology is, and if you were to look at like a low, medium yield, well, not low, but maybe a medium to high yield EMP device instead of a nuclear weapon, that we're talking about, you know, the same type of, tactical or even strategic capability. Yeah, potentially. In a non-lethal format that would need to be delivered by hand sometimes. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, depending on where you put that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, to shut down an entire comm center or, you know, internet center or supply chain. Yeah, yeah. Server farm or supply chain or whatever else. I wonder, you know, I wonder

I wonder what the programs are now that are out there that will that podcasters in 100 years will be talking well I can tell you and we talked a little bit about it before the show so I think the

satem is off the table those devices are decommissioned and I don't think that's coming back but I mean it's very interesting that the sabotage mission still exists. Destroying linear targets like a railroad or a bridge is relatively the same that it was 100 years ago when Lawrence of Arabia was doing this.

And these operations, you know, largely or in many cases, still rely on guerrillas or insurgents going out there and by hand placing explosives on them. And we've seen that take place in Russia. Yeah. And, you know, even in occupied Ukraine. you've seen that just in recent years that bear out that this sabotage mission is still very much a real thing.

I mean, you know, we could look at Nord Stream at the pipeline and whether it was effective or not, whether it really heard anybody more than Germany. Someone did that. Somebody did it. Right. Right.

And, you know, and we've seen other operations in Russia, you know, with, of course, we've seen other operations in Russia with, you know, rail attacks or things like that. So these are still very valuable missions. Do you know if SF is still involved with missions like that? Or now are there so many Saps and SMUs and all these things farmed out?

Do you feel that SF has been relegated? And I don't mean to minimize them, but relegated to the FID, and coin and things like I don't to my knowledge SF doesn't have the sabotage mission I think you will see that

in J-Soc and a lot of it interestingly comes to sabotaging enemy WMD facilities and so there's extensive research into how we would get in there and either take something and take it out with us

or destroyed in place. Chemical weapons factories and things like that. There's extensive training on how to destroy the vats, the percolators where chemical weapons are made. There's all kinds of, yeah, there are all kinds of saps around how we would go about doing that. And a lot of the sabotage now is done through cyber, you know,

if we look at... That's a thing too. I'm trying to think of the virus that was... Stuxnet. Stuxnet and Iran and whatnot. Thanks. You know, that there are so many ways to reach, you know, the enemy now.

Israel, they're the ones that Mossad is doing the, like, behind enemy lines, sabotage deep in Iran. They took out the, just recently. They did the assassination. And people were wondering if they, were they firing, where they could, not javelins. They were firing some other kind of, like, shoulder launched, or was it a drone that they fired? Right. But Israel is, yeah. The Patriot attack, of course.

That, I'm going to say that, that. historically, that is one of the most brilliant uses of supply chain. Yeah. It is the most brilliant use of supply chains. But you think of that as like a special force submission and then... Here's what I would point out with that Patriot attack that I think speaks to this point. That was not a cyber attack. Right.

All these people were like, oh, they heated up the battery. Exploding malware. It's like, no, you don't... That's not how that works. Yeah. And that was old school. We're putting explosives, and there are a couple of different ways to do that. But you're secreting explosives in one manner or another using some sort of tradecraft into those devices.

You're hand-placing them in there and then putting them out through the enemy's supply chain. So, yeah, these old techniques, they're not obsolete. And they were using this, I mean, they were using this during World War II when they were trying to, get into like the, like the munitions factory and change, like, change, uh, um, just the tolerances. Like, you know. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, in Vietnam, they were using it in, you know, seeding enemy. That was, uh, eldest, eldest son.

And, uh, and then there was my dumb ass during the war on terror in Iraq where I was, uh, shooting SVDs and I found a box of ammunition. It's a 762 by 54 light ball. It has the silver tip to it. And I welded. I fired the gun and the round some smoke comes out of the chamber. And I have never experienced a stoppage or malfunction like that in my life. That thing was jammed. And I did every, I did 18 Bravo, big rubber mallet on it. I did everything trying to clear it. And I did that to not one but two rifles before I realized something is really fucked here. Yeah. So, yeah, those programs continue to exist.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that they didn't use lethal means. Well, yeah, exactly, right? And I bet that's what they were thinking of. Like, this is eventually going to find its way back to friendly forces. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Would the ammo have been messed with? The ammo was spiked, yeah, 100%. Yeah. So, any last thoughts? I know that there's a lot in the book that we did not cover, but I also, but I want people to read the book also. We covered a lot and I appreciate it.

Thank you guys for, you know, paying so much attention to it and having these kinds of questions. Like, I get really excited talking about this stuff. I love this type of stories. Yeah, really cool. So We Defy came out today. Get it. It's available on Kindle, like, you know, Kindle and Amazon.

You can order softback or... The paperback's going to be out in a couple days. Okay. So this is Monday. It should be out by the end of the week. Okay. But we defy the Lost Chapters of Special Forests History. Really fascinating.

I mean, it's such a great nerd project. Yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean? It's such a great sort of like, it would take somebody like you who has an interest in these areas that are rarely talked about and not really known to go in and really. And I hope that it really is like value added. I'm not rewriting some other work or doing stuff that's redundant.

Like I think and I hope this like actually adds to the history. It 100% does. I mean it 100% does. It's mostly, you know, most of it is primary source research. I probably did like close to 100 interviews. Yeah. you know, over the course of that. No, it's fantastic.

And, you know, if I have my email address is in the book, like, if there are any gents out there who feel like there are some other lost chapters of history that I didn't quite cover or, and you would like to see me, you know, spend some time on, there could certainly be a volume two to that book. I mean, I know there's lots of other stuff out there. Yeah. The link is in the description. Links are, yeah, links are in the description.

Any last thoughts? Yeah. Anyone? From M. Corbyn. Jack, what's my worst question this year? Chris, how do you feel, how does it feel to get hunted by the Ruski's? I felt like I was going to throw up at several points. I was very, very, there was a couple of moments where I was like, I made a mistake. I've made a mistake.

I made an awful, terrible. I wasn't used to riding around in unarmored trucks. I'm usually in the striker and you're, you know, you feel. feel safe because you're supported by this giant, you don't realize how big the U.S. backing is until it's not there. And you're three kilometers from Russian infantry positions and they're shelling us with one-five-five rounds. And I'm like, that's not fair.

We're the ones that are supposed to have the one-five. They fired an air-launched, like one of the glide bombs, went over our position. And you could hear it sound like a jet flying low. And I was like, that's not, we're supposed to have the air power. They're not allowed to call the Air Force. Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating, isn't it?

Like, dealing with, you know, both in Vietnam and, you know, in the GWAT, like, we've had the air superiority. We've had the assets. And now. Well, if we were in there, we would have the air superiority. Right, right, right. The Ukrainians, you know, unfortunately. don't have all that. Right.

Yeah, and check out Chris, obviously, on Task and Purposes YouTube. Yeah, you're going to have your videos from your trip to Ukraine are going to be up there pretty soon. Yes, tomorrow's the first one, the mission into Kursk. Awesome. You guys want to check that out. Question for Jack from Bjorn. Question for Jack, difficult to say, but among the SIF slash C-Tax, which was is considered

the premier SIF. Oh, man, that's a spicy question. I don't know that any one of them could be considered or like ranked head and shoulders above the other. I think that A15 and B23 probably are in pretty tight competition with one another during the war because they were the ones that were mostly rotating in and out of active combat theaters. So you talk to those guys, they'd probably tell you like, where the war, siff. But which is better? I mean, let me put it this way.

they were all trained identically and trained and equipped identically to be interoperable with J-Soc. So for one of them to claim that they're like head and shoulders above one of the others, I don't know if I wouldn't believe that. Bjorn again, without violating obsequit, how does the C-TAC SIF stay relevant in the next war? We have CAG, SEAL Team 6, 24th, SDS, assault troops, and three ranger bats for DA. Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think it speaks to, again, S.F. wanting to keep a foot in the door as far as having their hand in this unilateral DA mission. And, you know, I'm sure they would like to get back into a counterterrorism mission or a J-Soc mission.

In my opinion, I can't speak for the command, of course. But I think, you know, SF's future, I think it really is as a partner force in doing unconventional warfare. and I think any sort of like unilateral DA mission is like a contingency. It's interesting too because like counterterrorism, I mean a lot of time that counterterrorism is a drone strike, right? You know, when we look at what these special units are for, they're for a hostage rescue. CT, like counterterrorism, if there are a bunch of terrorists in that building and there's not a hostage,

we can stand off and call an airstrike. So at the end of the day, like we think of CT as direct action. And I think that in the latter parts of the GWAT, people are like, why? You know, why is their direct action or why is their hostage rescue techniques being used when there's no hostage.

And so CT becomes... I think that's why the C-Tax see their niche as being the deep underground and camera WMD. Yeah. That they're going after something that's super high-end. Like, I've heard that like A-1-5 is just underground all the time.

So they're the new tunnel rats, basically. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Born again? Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, I mean, I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but I've heard that, like, close-quarters combat training and room clearing is sort of, like, becoming obsolete in a way.

And that in this new... The discussion everyone's having is like, okay, we're transitioning towards near peer. So this kind of, like, pying the corner and clearing the rooms thing is... Because I made a video about, like, urban warfare. Right. And I caught a bunch of flak from the Twitter community. And then there were basically... Some experts were saying, like, because I said, oh, you don't just throw a grenade in the room for it.

You go when you clear it because that's what we did when we did raids in Iraq. But what I've been learning is that like that's no longer the perspective. The change now is like you go in, you throw a grenade or you just, that's even defunct. You level it with a C4. In combat, you're just going to J-DM. Yeah, even pying the corners, like that was. that was an evolution because clearing through windows, pying, you know, pying doorways, like that was an evolution because initially it was

don't expose any part until you're all going into the room. Because, again, don't give the bad guys time to kill the hostage until you have four guns, you know, until you have at least two guns in that room. right and so um so even pine in the corner and clearing through windows you know clearing with a saw clearing with the frag all these things it's like it took us a long time to learn there's no hostage in there right why are we doing hostage rescue techniques i was just a lowly national guard 11 bravo guy so the things that i learned would filter down from the s f high speed guys was like it was the fatal funnel

It was violence of action Speed surprise violence of action Yeah those were all And I'm curious if that's still What it looks like You know the we did like tape rooms Yeah yeah I'm curious if what it looks like today If you enter a room

There still needs to be the speed surprise And violence of action But don't enter that room Until you've cleared as much of that room From the outside That room should be like leveled before you're in it. I think your point there is, you know,

when you're waging counterterrorism or counterinsurgency, we're talking about entering and clearing the room, if you're in war, you're in combat. Right. Now you're doing something totally different. That's like we're talking like Stalingrad. We're talking about World War II style, you know. It's like the place has been evacuated.

Right. But as Americans, I think we tend to be very like techno-optimist that we think there's a technological solution for everything. So, like, I'm fairly techno-sceptical about these ideas that, like, AI and drones and this sort of stuff is going to, like, nullify the need for some of these tactics that we've seen in past wars that were really brutal and, you know, had high casualties involved. You know, I think some of these technologies, if anything, will speed all of that up and we'll have higher body counts than we had in the past. Yeah, I think, you know, and it's sort of like talking about, like, call-outs. Like after a while we went to call us like, why are you going in, call them out? And if they send their women and children off target,

if those women and children come off target and know, like, guys come off target, they're inviting you into fight. Don't play fair. Step back, call in an airstrike. They've signaled their intent. Why are we going in? Just step back and call in an air strike. So I...

It's a mind. It's a mindset shift. Yes. And it's an ego shift, too, because there's that idea of, you know, I don't want to say fair combat, but there's the idea of, you know, going in, going in hard, you know, black, you know, shwacking the dudes. Yeah, my handguns are in effect now. But swack and the dudes, you know.

But the thing is, like, there's no hostage. Why go in? You know who talks a lot about that is, uh, you know. Paul Howe. And like he has this story about in Mogadishu. And as I recall what happened was as the birds are going down and the situations devolving in the city. And he's he was saying that some of the officers and some of the leadership they're experiencing vapor lock. Yeah. That they did not realize we just moved from like a SWAT team mission. Right. Right. And like the enemy was sending scouts up to scout their position and I think it was Paul himself who was like, pow, killed the guy and one of the

officers was like, you just shot that guy. Yeah. Yeah, we're in combat now, dude. Yeah. And especially if they're sending up unarmed guys or whatever. Yeah. Again, in these situations, there are no squatters. They're only maneuver elements. You know, there aren't people who, anyway, but yeah, it's, it's been, you know, so CT is, is an odd, like, there's, there's, There's hostage rescue, which is very specific. Yeah. Right. And you need to be somebody like Cag or somebody, you know, like H.R.T because it, there's, there's,

there's a precision needed. Yeah, the doctrinal terms are, you know, a hostage rescue would be a surgical raid. Right. And what like Rangers do would be a precision raid. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's C.T., which I think a lot of us in our minds still think of C.T. as HR because because it was all built on HR methodology,

but CT is like, drop a JDM on them if, like, if you know there are bad guys in there. I would love to pick you guys' brain sometime about, like, how you think the future of the special forces is headed, because you've talked several times about how you feel like nuclear weapons might have saved special forces during this transition period, and I kind of feel like Special Forces is again sort of in a transition period. I got to plug another book.

I'm probably not supposed to plug other authors' books. But since you brought this up, there's an Army officer, Tom Gaines. He wrote a book called Quantum Dagger. And it's about an ODA and maybe like a J-Soc dude. And it's about how they react to a future war where China is invading. Vietnam and it's very cool it's a very you know I think you'd be interested in it definitely yeah that's right up that's right up my alley we have we have them scheduled to come on the team house in a couple months uh D anything else uh most interesting SIF anecdote you've

learned learned about how about talking about that I didn't know that you that you dealt with or is that too spicy oh no it's not spicy he's just stupid um SIF anecdote okay here's here's a great story about Sif It was a SIF team from, I believe it was the guys from Okinawa. So one of the scenarios they had at Sephardic was they trained to do a bus take down. That was like very real, very dynamic. They'd have the bus going down the road, two little birds come in behind. I think the TTP at the time was like to set off a demo charge in front of it or something like that.

And then the birds come in and land. The guys come off the birds and like they're smashing windows, throwing bangers in, going in there and clear. in the bus. So at Sephardic, the students, these guys from Okinawa, they went and did that. They, they were, you know, the little birds come in and the whole thing goes down like clockwork. Like they did exactly what they were supposed to do. And then they come to realize that this isn't the bus they were supposed to hit. The bus they were supposed to hit was off down another road. And this was like a group of like MPs or something that were just on the way to the range. That's hilarious.

Yeah, they bawled these dudes up and everything. Oh, my God. Oh, shit. That's hilarious. I love it. We need to get one of those MPs on the show. That's, yeah, there's a bunch of, like, little anecdotes, SIF anecdotes. Like I said, there's so much there that it can't really be contained just in this book.

But some of the anecdotes about doing, like, embassy evacuations in West Africa. There's one in Central Asia that they did with Russian paratroopers. They were doing stuff in Kurdistan in the 90s. And then there's like five pages in there about the whole creation of C-3-7 down in Panama. And Mike Vickers was down there with that. Colonel Chuck Fry was the battalion commander at the time. And someone provided to me, Colonel Fry has passed on, unfortunately, but he gave an oral presentation about the creation of the 7th Group SIF to the special

Forces Association and transcript was provided to me and that was like a last minute addition to the book it's like five pages about how some very very entrepreneurial NCOs down in Panama got that unit up and running and they did some stuff that I'm like oh my god that was that was definitely against the law but yeah but it's one of these things where they were given a job to do and SF guys don't like to fail Right. So they're bending the rules to accomplish the commander's intent. It's that sort of thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And those are the types of things if you succeed. You're a hero. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think the future of the ODAs themselves should and will implement information in psychological warfare into the larger UWF and FID mission? It has to. it has to be like a holistic effort where you know counterintelligence and psychological operations and cyber and direct action and you know the the advise assist a company mission like all of that needs to be blended together like we can no longer have these like silos or these ideas that

like a unit is just going to be able to do one thing throughout the war we experimented with like they were called blended teams where you would have like a Delta operator and a TFO guy and you know you'd have like a SIG-ink guy and a human guy or whatever and these guys would be able to collect intelligence, analyze it, do their own mission planning and execute the mission.

I think something like that is kind of where we're heading and I've heard stories about more and more where you're having a guy who is a operator but he's also a CIA trained case officer So I think the merging of these capabilities is something you're going to have happen, which is going to, there's difficulties that, too, because the guy who is an operator is not necessarily a cyber warfare guy. Like, those are different personalities, you know.

The kind of guy that wants to do clandestine human is different than the guy to do hostage rescue. They're different kinds of people. I mean, just a guy who wants to be on the line versus a guy, and a guy who wants to be an assault or versus, a guy who wants to be a sniper. Yeah, yeah. They're two very different personality. Absolutely. And so they're going to run into that.

But I think right now special forces is conducting these experiments like experimenting with the composition of the ODA. Are we going to have more people on the ODA? The 12-man ODA is the ride or die for a lot of people. Could that potentially expand debates on that? They are looking at, is there going to be like a robotics expert on the ODA? like somebody who deals with the drones. Right. Which I think the SEALs have done that actually.

And I think Marsok has too, right? Have they? Yeah, I think so. But I'm not one of certain, but I think Marsok has gone a long way with the drones. Are we going to have cyber in there? What will an echo look like in five years? Yeah.

You know, what will an echo be capable? Well, they already have all the IT and they already have the tactical comms, which is a lot. Right, a lot on the plate. Dave, what's an echo for people that don't know? The 18 Echo, the SF's Kamo guy. So, yeah, in my opinion, yeah, the future is in blending these capabilities together

and getting them to work together in a holistic manner. That's kind of the direction I think they need to head in. All righty. Bjorn, thanks again. Does 19th, 20th group have any ties to the SIF? No. easy uh do you feel that counter wmd mission should be cag dg and siff should focus on ct especially with africa and mid-east being the way it is yeah i mean you could you could offer like the the flip

side to that you could say well shouldn't dev group and delta focus on their hostage rescue counterterrorism stuff and let someone else focus on the counter wmd mission and that's when you start getting into like unfortunately this becomes like about funding and rice and like what's the sexiest mission right now? And what mission is like during the war on drugs when counter narcotics was getting all... When counter narcotics was getting all the funding, everybody wanted a piece of counter narcotics.

Yeah, it's always going to be a matter of like... And that's... I find that frustrating personally because I think you need to choose the right tool for the right job. And the J-Soc guys do something, they're great at it. I think SF is awesome for that like long duration partner force stuff. And sometimes you see units trying to steal missions from each other. And it's like, yeah, this is kind of dumb. Yeah.

It's short. That was a point I make at the end of the book that, you know, some people may disagree with me on. But in the very last part of the book, I offer a few opinions and conclusions. I try to keep the book balanced overall. but I say at the end that special forces would be best suited by choosing a lane

rather than chasing a budget. Yeah. And I stand by that but I know reality may not agree. And it's not just chasing a budget. It's like if you look at the GWAT, like I met an SF guy over in theater who basically said, yeah, we don't do it anymore.

We're direct action. I'm like, you're 12 guys. Like you're not doing direct action in a non-permissive or semi-permiss environment without indage. You know, so choose your level of participation here, but 12 guys aren't going to go out and do a raid with nobody backing them up. You know. Yeah.

But DA was the sexy thing. Still is. Yeah. Yeah. Lewis Vaskis, thank you. And Bobby, thank you for that question. What's the best, way to buy signed copy.

Right now there's... Five likes on that too, just FYI. I guess the best way is to come to our Christmas party next year and get me to sign it. Right now, I mean, I haven't even ordered these books myself yet, so I don't have them. But maybe at some point I'll figure that out. Yeah, we can get it done.

We'll figure it out. Once it's out on paperback and Jeff Bezos stops fucking around. Jack sitting over a desk like Steve Martin and the jerk. I did that once at a warehouse signing like 400 copies of one of our novels. $2.12. It was so crazy. From Patreon, Jack, this is from Roadwork. Jack, congratulations on the new book.

I look forward to reading it. Thank you. And from Michael Felmy. When do you get to write about aviation and support SMUs? That's a great question. question. And I love that stuff. Like soft logistics is a whole thing in of itself. And there are like some OGs in that field too. And I don't know if I do know some people in there, but I don't know if any of them would talk publicly. Almost all the sources in this are on the record. Very few are off the record.

Or anonymous. I mean, when you start talking about soft logistic, you want to talk about people that are able to kick in a door and jump up and down on a desk to like make things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a really cool subject. And then the aviation stuff is interesting too. There's all kinds of weird stuff going on there. Hey man, who knows? I mean, there could be more books around this theme in the future.

We'll see. Surprisingly, that's like the most, for some reason, it's the most like opsec-y thing that they don't like to talk about is the logistics. of how they get it done. That's like the part that I've found when I interview people and talk to different, they love, they'll tell you everything about how they make things go boom, but when you ask about...

Where does the boom come from? Yes. They will not tell you. Big Army logistics is not really classified per se, but in soft, the term you will hear is discrete logistics, and yeah, they get a little sensitive about that. No more questions. Cool.

Wait until you do some research on some venture capital firms out there owned by shady characters, right? What do you mean? In terms of like, oh, we're investing in, you know, innovative technology, emerging technology. It's like, yeah, where's your money come from? Investors. Yeah, no, that actually, it's funny that you bring that up because there are like actually our concerns. like, no, really, where is your money from? Yeah.

Yeah. Are we developing this for another country? Like, what's going on here? Yeah. Yeah, so thanks, thanks guys for all of these questions. And, yeah, like I said, I love talking about this stuff, and I'll talk your head off all night. And if people are interested, they can go pick up the book.

Available digital copy right now. It's on Amazon. You can go get the digital copy right now, and you don't need a Kindle to read it. You just need the Kindle e-reader app on whatever. whatever device you prefer. And you can read the book. That's how I got it.

I got it on Amazon. There you go. The Kindle. And the paperback will be out in a couple days. Hopefully by the time most of you hear this podcast, it'll be out already. And Chris, welcome back. Mega star YouTube. Thanks for having me, guys.

Thank you so much. And we appreciate it. And you're going to start laying out your adventure to Ukraine tomorrow? Yes. Tomorrow's the first episode, the Kursk going in Russia. And then the week after that is we're following an FPV drone team and then Foreign Legion team. Very, very excited to post that stuff.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing it myself. Sounds cool for sure. And thanks for coming all the way down. Of course, no, I love coming here. To help with this interview. And on Friday we'll be back. We have actually, this is kind of unique. We have a couple academics coming in studio.

and they did a big study about partner force operations, and one of them's coming back from Ukraine today. So he's coming right out of the field. So we'll have those two guys in studio. Fantastic. A plug here too. Eyes on podcast. It's got its own channel.

Hit to subscribe there. Tomorrow we have a South Korean general coming on to talk about what went down with the martial law. Yeah, check it out. Link is in the description. Subscribe to our Patreon to get all these episodes ad-free. And early, too. Yep.

Is there anything else? Buy Jack's book. Do it. It's 10 years of work, for God's sakes. He's made us read it multiple times and tell him how good he is. Please buy the book. Mark, I was on Mark's podcast, Mark Palmereropoulos, and he described me as something like a typical warrior poet or something.

I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? Isn't that what everyone all sounds so postmodern warrior? Thank you. But, no. And we will have Jack on to read some of his poetry. I have done a few book events in the past, and, like, I refuse to do book readings. Like, I will not read from the book. I'm just not doing it.

It's so lame. I'll talk about it all day, but yeah, yeah, exactly. Speak to me, Daddy-o. Get a little bongo in back. The Sith. All right. Later. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, guys.