Will Cain Country - Revisiting “The Elite Warrior Series” w/ Green Beret Scott Mann

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

Will looks back at his 'Elite Warrior Series' where he spoke with the most elite members of the U.S. military to find out what motivates them, what makes them tick, and what drives them to the highest levels of human performance. On this episode, he spoke with U.S. Army Special Forces member Lt. Colonel Scott Mann.  Commonly known as the "Green Berets" in reference to their distinctive headgear, Mann tells Will the inside story of what it means to be a Green Beret, how they operate within the military and what their distinct contribution to the country is. Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. My conversation today is part of our elite. Warrior series. Today, I'm talking to Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, Army Special Forces, a Green Beret. I've gotten the chance to know Scott somewhat behind the scenes at Fox. And, you know, Scott is a guy who is capable of telling you because he lived it. In fact,

he didn't just live it. He strategized it. What is it to be a Green Beret? What is the role of Army Special Forces? How do we win and how does that elite warrior, contribute to a win in a place like Afghanistan. But what I came away from in my private conversations with Scott is he is an incredibly thoughtful human being. Honestly, he's an intellect. I don't know what we call that. The intellectual warrior, the warrior poet, whatever it may be.

And not only Scott, but his description, he's got a best-selling book called Game Changers, of what it is to be a green beret. for me, honestly, a guy who always probably put seals at the top of his glamour list has elevated Army Special Forces maybe to number one, 1A, tied with Navy SEALs perhaps, at number one. I am so curious about what it means to be an intellectual warrior, which I think is a decent description of Army Special Forces. Here is my interview with Scott Mann. Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now.

I get a free Tilly Dog. Not included. The Naked Gun. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca.com. Lieutenant Colonel Scott, man, I'm really excited to have you here on the podcast. We've spoken a few times in the green room behind the scenes at Fox News. And I told you that I am very interested in green berets. I'm doing a series now on America's biggest

badasses, Scott. I'm talking to Marine Raiders. I'm talking to Navy Seals. And I'm talking to Green Berets, which you are. So let's just start with this. If you're willing to contend that Green Berets are America's most badass warriors, why? I would say, well, one, I always try to come at that a little bit differently. And here's why. It's because every single one of our warriors in the special ops community and I've worked with all of them. They each have a very unique charter. And we rib each other and we have a lot of fun with, you know, who's the best and all that. But the reality is every single, every single group you just named has a very distinct charter in our national security. And Green Berets, what makes them very, very unique

more than any other group out there is that they are, they work by with and through indigenous people and they help them stand up on their own from the inside out you won't find another group in the inventory of u.s special ops command that does that like they do and they've literally been doing it since world war two so the ability to mobilize other people in low trust areas to take action in other words go in with 12 and come out with 12 000 um i'll put that up against any any outfit out there so it's interesting scott in talking to guys of various special operation forces, various branches. It's true what I've gathered, what you said, that everyone has a unique charter.

But one of the things I feel like I've started to gather is everyone's practical purpose seems to be somewhat melding. I used this analogy with a Marine Raider I was talking to. I said, you know, basketball used to be very specific. You had a center, a point guard, you had an off guard, and a small forward, and a power, forward. Basketball has evolved into everyone being a switchable six-six ball handler who can shoot. And when I talk to, for example, Marsok guys, they would describe their job very similar to what you described as the job of the Green Beret. With the acknowledgement that Green Berets have

been doing this throughout history, but training up indigenous forces, adopting a technique, a strategy, which I know you helped pioneer VSO, even Navy Seals to some extent, seem to have taken on some of this, some of this task. Is it, is it wrong? Am I wrong in saying a lot of special operations is becoming the switchable basketball player? You guys are all adopting a lot of the same skill sets and if not same charter, same practical purpose. I think there is some interoperability. I think if you look at how U.S. SOCOM was formed, U.S. Special Operations Command, in 1986 under the Goldwater-Nichols Act, it was out of failure. And a lot of folks don't know that, but SOCOM was actually formed. At one time, up until 86, you had the services were responsible for their own special operations.

So the Army had the Rangers and the Green Berets, Delta, Navy had SEALs and the Special Boat Units. Air Force had the pararescue and the commandos. but they all operate and then the Marines took the tact at least at that time that all Marines were elite right so everyone had this this service centric approach and then you had the Iranian hostage situation Operation Eagle Claw which was an unmitigated disaster where the services tried to come in and and there was no coherent joint interoperability and you had dead Americans and and you also had strategic failure at a time when our nation needed strategic success. And it was a real wake-up call for a lot of those junior Delta Force operators and pilots who said never again. And so the formation of U.S. Special Operations Command, out of those ashes, brought together a joint unified command under a four-star general with regional command-like authorities to put seals, Rangers, Delta Force, Green Berets, Air Force, Marine Raiders, all under the same. umbrella and then to leverage each other's strength and capabilities. So yes, there is a degree of interoperability will and it's good, but there's also a very unique value proposition that

each of these organizations brings to the table. And then it gives a level of choices to the National Security Council and senior leaders on what they apply. And I think that's probably the most compelling thing about soft is their joint interoperability to take care of hard problems for the nation. What would be an example, Scott, if, you know, they were sitting there at J-Soc and said, here's our situation, here's the real-world lay of the land. Who do we want to deploy? Which special operation force is best suited for this situation? What would this situation be where they said, let's go with the Green Berets? great one is post 9-11.

You know, a great example of the employment of U.S. Army Special Forces or the Green Berets was after the attack of 9-11, 2001, where we were looking at retribution and a strike inside Afghanistan, getting after Osama bin Laden, and dealing with that whole gambit in Afghanistan, which has been known as the graveyard of empires for centuries, how are you going to go in there and avoid the same pitfall that the United States or that other countries have made throughout history. And the answer that the country arrived at was a special forces centric approach where you dropped in a handful of special forces 12 man teams and they would mobilize the Northern Alliance to route the Taliban and Al Qaeda from the inside out. And if you

saw the movie horse soldiers or you read 12 strong, you see what was done. And now simultaneously, you also had J-Soc, the strike units, going after bin Laden and other high-value targets at the same time. And they're two very distinct missions, but they were complementary. But that would be another one that we unfortunately did not take advantage of, in my opinion, was Ukraine. Another great example would have been you had U.S. Army Green Berets work. in Ukraine for a decade or more. And they had really helped build a very, very deep capacity inside that country. And then the second the Russians overran Ukraine, we pulled our green berets out and put them in Poland. And I think that was a tremendously missed opportunity. I think it's

the reason right now that you see a ton of equipment and supplies. You and I talked about this going all over the place instead of to the end user is you don't have the combat advisors on the ground to manage this fight at a local level from an advisory capacity. And that's what Green Berets do really well. They combat advise. And so that would have been another incredible opportunity that I think was missed. The combat advise. And you gave the example in the movie starring Chris Hemsworth 12 Strong, where the first 12 men in helped. And I think I don't have all of my, Scott, I'm a, I'll put it this way in the most honest way possible. I'm a, I'm very, I'm very, ignorant when it comes to pretty much everything when it comes to the military, meaning

ranks, I think I use J-Soc, I should have said, so common moment ago. But the point is, you find a situation, you go in, you force multiply by leveraging indigenous forces to accomplish whatever it is your goal inside of some arena, combat arena. Now, I want to rewind the clock if we can to, as you mentioned, the charter. of special forces, Army Special Forces. And I think you and I talked about it, as it was originally, or close to its origination formed, you had regions, and it still exists. You have regions of specialization for various Green Beret detachments.

And I believe yours was South America, if I remember correctly. But tell me a little bit about that, how that works as far as dividing up the world for special forces. Yeah. So the way that Green Berets are trained, just like other commandos, they go through a rigorous selection process, and then you are selected for, you have a certain MOS or military occupational specialty. So in special forces, you have 12 person teams, and you have weapons, engineer, medical communications, and then your officers and your team sergeants. Each of those specialties is highly trained, like a weapon sergeant can assemble and disassemble any weapon in the world blindfolded, to include, you know, an early 1900s British infield. You know, our medics can do a battlefield appendectomy. You know, our commo guys can climb up in a cottonwood tree and send up Morris Code message halfway around the world.

And our engineers can build roads and blow them up. So they all have these immense skills. They can train them. They can cross-trained. And then, again, our job is to go in and build indigenous capacity. So what you want to be able to do with a 12-person team is to go into an area, either with irregular force like the Afghan commandos or an irregular force like Afghan farmers

with village stability. And you want to help them learn how to fight, stand up on their own and even address some of their other infrastructure problems and things like that. We're teachers, we're trainers, and then we advise alongside their shoulder in combat. Okay, all that to say that language and cultural immersion

are everything, because context in life is everything. If you look at the subtitle of my book, Game Changers, is going local to different. defeat violent extremists because that's really what I believe it takes in complex situations is a local approach. I learned that in U.S. Southern Command, where Seventh Group was apportioned to Central and South America. That's where we've been operating for decades. And what happens is, well, you go into these places and there's kind of a rule in special forces probably in life. You build trust when risk is low and you leverage it when risk is high. And I'll just give you a quick example.

U.S. Army Special Forces, third battalion, seventh group were stationed in Panama along the Panama Canal for obvious reasons, right, because they could train the Panamanian forces. They could launch and train other countries in Central and South America and help keep a level of stability as cadre. When just cause happened and we invaded Panama, all this big armada came down to invade. It was Rangers, Marines, 7th Infantry Division. And they routed. the Noriega, you know, hardcore elements within hours. But the Panamanian defense forces fled to the countryside, to their quartals in the outlying areas. And so what the United States decided to do was they were going to launch task forces to do search and destroy operations. Well, the Green Berets who lived in Panama, they're like, my God, we're going to be cleaning up this mess for the next 30 years if we mount search and destroy operations for these

holdouts. So what they did was they proposed an operation called Operation Mawks, Bell. And what they basically did, I'll give you one example, a guy named Colonel Major Higgins, who was stationed in Panama, flew in with his company at Green Berets on like three helicopters, landed at a nearby school. This is in the 80s. So he picked up a pay phone, put a quarter in the pay phone, and called the commander of the local quartel and said, hey, look out your window. About that time, a stealth bomber dropped a bomb. And he goes, that's what's going to happen if you don't surrender in the next 30 minutes. So like 25 Green Berets, loaded up on their helicopters,

flew over to the soccer field, and the entire brigade was lined up at Stack Arms. They affected the entire surrender of the Panamanian Defense Force over 8,000 without firing a single shots called Operation Ma Bell. And to me, as a young captain, man, when I heard that story in the Q-course, I thought, my God, that is the essence of what we should do. And these were all NCOs and junior officers that came up with this plan. And it worked brilliantly, and it's been done time and time again. It's not as sexy as a lot of the first-end J-Sox strike kind of things, but as a combat multiplier.

And you think about now we're able to go to Panama. I took my kids there a couple of years ago for spring break, drove all through the countryside. You know, no way we would have been able to do that if we'd have done search and destroy missions, you know, just a couple decades ago. You know, it's interesting. You said it's not as sexy. And again, so my exposure to most of this probably is through the world of Hollywood,

but also having talked to some of you guys. And it does seem like, for example, in comparison to the seals, there is an appetite for search and destroy, as you said, rock eaters or whatever it might be. Let's go ahead, direct action. And it seems that that's really a cultural or personality type now that is either attracted or. or created within that special operations force. Is it for Green Brace, for you? Like, you get excited about the fact that you, that story is 8,000 surrendering without a single shot fired,

where, as you just said, it might not be as sexy for a seal who's like, whoa, then there was no action. Is that your personality being attracted to the Green Brays? Or is that a culture that you joined and then came to appreciate? Well, that's a great question. And I think it's a, it kind of has to be unpacked. I think it's at a couple of different, that exists at a couple of different levels. We are, Green Berets are kind of a house divided.

One of the things that the global war on terror created was a 20-year war where we kind of lost our identity. In fact, there's a, there's a paper by a guy named Colonel Ed Crute called the soft, the SF identity crisis. And what happened was, well, after 9-11, the U.S. Army Special forces really did a phenomenal job of mobilizing the Northern Alliance and other Pashtun tribes to stand up against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It was a textbook unconventional warfare mission. And then we completely snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by reverting

back to a conventional war plan of occupying the same Soviet-style, you know, Soviet bases that the Russians had had and basically doing the same coin strategy counterinsurgency that we had done in Vietnam. And we did it for the next 20 years. And as a result of that, special forces had a hand in that. We, you know, we made a mistake in that we went, we went to what we felt was short-term, effective operations, which was direct action, surgical strike. We became kind of a J-Soc Jr. We started walking the Taliban down in the rural areas. We, we, we, We were very kinetic focused. And yes, we did the buy with and through thing, but it was usually to get on top of a target.

And I was guilty of that as well. And there were a whole lot of reasons for it to include being extremely pissed off after 9-11 and looking for payback. But the reality is we created a culture in special forces that split right down the middle and is still a problem to this day, where a good chunk of the Warriors and SF, the younger ones especially, feel that we should be more surgically. strike direct action oriented. And then you have the old timers like me and then others who are just more traditionalists who believe we are more of a by with through Lorentzian, T.E. Lawrence, kind of. And we're a house divided. And we still are. And I think it showed up, if you want my opinion, it showed up in the abandonment of Afghanistan. And the way that went down, there wasn't a single

special forces team on the ground in Afghanistan when the collapse happened. And that to me is unforgivable. Like it should never have happened that we didn't have a green beret team on the ground dealing with our partners and preparing for the future. Instead, we just phoned it in. And so long answer to your question, but we are a house divided and we've got to figure it out because as a result of this, we are not as effective as we could be as a regiment. Well, that's pretty interesting because that's a little bit where we started this conversation is everybody starting to look the same. The seals, the barrette, Marsok. And, you know, I have it right here, and I've read it. You sent it to me,

which I appreciate. Game Changers, your best-selling book right here. You described the perfect Green Beret. You just mentioned a Laurentian, Lawrence of Arabia, famously, who immersed himself in Middle Eastern culture. You described the perfect Green Beret as a combination between Lawrence of Arabia, Jason Bourne, and the Verizon guy. Can you hear me now? Connecting people together. But not everybody within special forces believes that's the perfect Green Beret. Correct.

There's a lot of people who would say, and I've upped my game a little bit, and I've evolved from Jason Bourne to John Wick. But just read that as the surgical strike, you know, the kinetic mindset. And no, not everybody agrees with that. But what I would say, and I've taught this at the Green Beret Q course,

to captains who are candidates there, as I say that being kinetic or being direct action-minded is your baseline. Like, that's where you start. And there's, U.S. Army Special Forces have taken a high amount of KIAs killed in action since 9-11, 2001, and it's because of our proximity to the enemy and our persistent presence in remote, low-trust areas. So we have to be highly kinetic, highly surgically coercive and very adept at that. But that's our baseline.

Our real skill set, if you think about it, if we're going to truly mobilize indigenous populations to stand up on their own, it has to be this Laurentian skill set. And then it also has to be this Verizon guy, you know, this strategic communicator, this catalyst who can take a plan like in Panama. you know, a major and a senior NCO took this plan to a four star and said, hey, I think we can do this differently, but you got to trust me. I mean, the ability to do that as an operator, as a junior officer or an NCO, to put forward a plan that is that strategic, you've got to be able to connect across vast divides. And that's not normal. That's not common. So we do have to be these three avatars and we have to toggle between them all the time. And it's a very, very complex role that we play as combat advisors.

But, you know, it's going to be the way of the future, I think, in terms of near peer and violent extremism, because we're going to be working with surrogates for the long haul. Well, I'm attracted to what makes Green Berets unique. And kinetic action, direct action, doesn't make them unique when it comes to the world of SOCOM. And so I want to go back to the regional assignments of Green Berets. And you can walk, in fact, I would love for you to walk us through. I know you were assigned to South America. How is it broken up? And I know you said, by the way, all special operations are broken up, but you add in the component of cultural immersion and language to your assignments of dividing

up the world. Right. Yeah. So here's the way to think about it is they've got five active duty special forces groups. There's only 6,500 green berets in the inventory and on the active duty rules. And there's five groups, first, third, fifth, seventh, and tenth. Each one of those groups will, has a regional orientation. So they have a chunk of the world that they are apportioned to that is written into that theater's combat plans and are part of the four star geographic commander's war plan. Right. So, um, and I think it, they may have changed us. but I believe we're the only unit that is mentioned by name or by designation. So like on the war plans for Southcom, you would have an airborne division, an air mobile division, seventh special forces group.

Like it is specifically apportioned to that group, which means there's an inherent responsibility on that special forces group to be proficient in the language, to understand the culture, and probably more importantly, to develop. social capital and long-standing relationships in these areas with with key units like that is that is a very very important thing right so what for example when i was in seventh group you know you would you would deploy down to you would have a primary country you would have a secondary country you would deploy down to those locations and you would train with the columbian lanceros and by the time you reach lieutenant colonel or master sergeant you've you've actually worked with this unit so many times that the guy that's like the chairman of the joint chiefs and staff in Columbia, he was a lieutenant when you first started training him. So the depth of the

relationships are enormous. And that social capital is really what we as a community offer to the National Command Authority when things go south, because we can pick up the phone. We can jump in and make a connection that could alter the outcome of a strategic situation through a relationship. And that gets lost a lot. What's the training like, Scott? So you get assigned, I think you said it's Seventh Command, South America. You therefore have to learn Spanish.

I mean, did you go into Special Forces already with a base of knowledge of Spanish? Did you get taught that from the ground up? And on top of that, how do you go about learning the culture? Is it all on first deployment? Is there a way within your original training, your beginning here in the United States, that you start to learn about the cultures of South America? So it's a mix. I had some Spanish because I wanted to go seventh group.

I'd been assigned to Panama as a lieutenant, fell in love with the area of responsibility. So I wanted to go to that group. So I started studying Spanish on my own. That's not uncommon. The group also draws a lot of Latin American officers and of Latin American heritage. You know, we have a lot of folks that want to work

in that part of the world. because it's part of their heritage, part of their origins. But me, I grew up in Arkansas, you know, but I loved that part of the world, and I was fascinated with it. So a lot of people do the pre-work, but the normal journey that you go on is you come in, you go to special forces selection, which is three weeks. Then you go to the Q-course, which could be as much as, you know, by time, it's all said, done anywhere from a year to 18 months. And then on the back end of that, you go to survival, escape, resistance, evasion training, or Sear, which every commander goes to. And then you go to language school. And the language school can range from four months to six months to longer, depending on the language.

And you apply for, you take an aptitude battery early on in the Q course. And depending on what you score on that aptitude battery, you're placed in a language unless you already have a language capability. And you've tested on the defense language proficiency test, in which case you can get, you can straight track right into a group, which is what I did. Once you're in the group and then going through the language training, you start to learn about the culture, but it's really the cultural part will is when you are placed on a special forces operational detachment alpha or a team. That's when the real learning begins. That's when your team, your 12-person team, really starts to take you through the paces and inculcates you in this cultural awareness, cultural immersion. You have subject matter

experts that come in and work with you. You have subject matter experts that are in the language lab. You have role players that are accessible at Fort Bragg and other places. And most of all, you deploy into the, into the area over and over and over again. And it's just drilled into your head of building relationships, building social capital, and this old school by with and through approach of just building strong friendships, strong relationships by NCOs. Is it fair to say Army Special Forces, active duty, are spending more time on deployment and other special operation forces, you know, because even during peacetime, it sounds like you're on deployment on a consistent basis building those relationships and, you know,

beginning cultural immersion. Yeah, there's a, there's a thing called a theater security cooperation plan or a T-Scap, which is basically, it's an engagement plan that every four-star general, who is a geographic commander, has for her or his area of responsibility, right? And so there are these engagements that happen at that level, mill to mill, military to military. For decades, U.S. Army Special Forces has been at the forefront of that within U.S. Special Ops Command. The Marines do it, the SEALs do it, they all do it. But because, so let me back up just real quick.

You've heard me talk about unconventional warfare, where you basically work by with and through local people to help them overthrow a government like we did in Afghanistan. The opposite of that, we also do, and it's called FID, foreign internal defense. And FID is where you work with an existing friendly government to help them put down insurgency, criminal activity, and lawlessness. So you basically take your knowledge of insurgencies, and you flip it, and you go work with the government that's trying to keep the insurgency down. So think Colombia, Ecuador, even Afghanistan in the latter years. and you see a ton of green berets in that capacity because we understand insurgent warfare. So we can either be the insurgent or we can help put down the insurgents. And that's what we spend the propensity of our time in peacetime doing is working with governments in high risk, low trust areas to deal with insurgencies and lawlessness.

And we combat advised their forces to do that. Okay. Now I want to back up to selection process for a moment. When I saw you in the green room at Fox, I said, what's the one characteristic for a green beret? And you did not hesitate. You said, we want entrepreneurs. I said, when you're identifying for selection, someone who could be Army Special Forces, what are you looking for? And you said, I'm looking for entrepreneurs. How does the selection process work?

Do Army soldiers apply? Are you pulled from the ranks? Walk me through how one goes about becoming a Green Beret. There are selection processes for every commando unit in U.S. OECOM. Every single, every single commando unit has a selection process. And honestly, the selection process at the surface would not look that different. You know, if you were to just like go and look at each one, it would look very similar. And because, you know, at our core, there are baseline capabilities that we look for in commandos.

We look for resilience. We look for a no-quit attitude. We look for teamwork. There are these just baseline. We look for warrior ethos, self-starter. There are these baseline qualities that I think define a soft operator across the board. But then there's another, like everything else, there's different layers that each of those units, this is why it's so important that we know who we are, right? that each of these units are looking for when they select and when they assess.

And I have to be careful here because the assessment and selection process is classified and for a reason because of who we look at. But it is safe to say that what they are looking for is someone who has like an entrepreneurial mindset, who is a creative thinker who is going to be presented with a problem. And they give them all these different like three wheeled jeeps. I wrote a play about the special forces community called Last Out that I perform with other veterans. And one of the things we do is we actually take the audience through selection in the Q-course

and we show them some of the crazy events and things that happened. But like a three-wheeled Jeep with a couple of poles and some lashing, and your 12-person team has to figure out how to make that thing roll for 12 kilometers through the Fort Bragg Sand. And, you know, what the instructors are looking at is not so much whether you make the Jeep work, But how do you interact with your team and what levels of innovation and creativity are you coming up with? But we also look for guys and girls that can operate alone and independently at the same time. And then finally, it is this, and this is when you get into the Q-course, when you go to Rob and Sage and some of these role player scenarios, Will, we look really closely at how you deal with others.

How do you deal with indigenous people? How do you deal with guerrillas? How do you deal with illiterate farmers? You know, do you call them bugger eaters and tell them to get on the truck, right? Or do you treat them with respect that you would treat your own teammate? We're looking very closely at that, and we're assessing on that. And you could be the best warrior on the planet and the best gunslinger on the planet. And if you can't treat a host nation partner with respect and credibility,

we're going to tell you to go to that other unit down the street. you know because because that's not that's not what we do it our bread and butter is our relationships with others so we we select on that on a range of levels to include role-playing scenarios and we get rid of a lot of people based on their inability to just connect with other humans okay i'm going to ask you a couple more questions and you just alluded to this maybe you can answer them and maybe you cannot the good thing about me is i don't even know if i'm brushing up against something that might be classified so i'll ask you it's up to you of whether or not you want to answer.

You said something earlier that I found fascinating. So, you know, say for example, you're an American Latino of some descent. Then operating in the southern hemisphere, South America, is attractive because you said of origin stories and also language. So if I took a demographic overview of Army Special Forces assigned to different theaters, and I think you have Asia, which might not be one, right? I think is Korea one region of theater and China and South Pacific another

you had it one time you told me over the last 20 years everybody's been Afghanistan in the Middle East but there was one specifically designated to that area if I took a demographic overview of each of those theaters would the Army Special Forces

ethnically look like that theater? I'm just curious is that a big advantage in selection so are more Asian Army soldiers serving not in South America, but in Asia. So I'm going to make it, like this is probably an anecdotal swag, and I don't have data backing me up,

and I spent most of my time in Seventh Group. So I would say if you stepped back, it probably would, there would be a large representation of that ethnicity from that area of responsibility. I think you would see that there's a draw there. I think it would be undeniable that you would see that. However, I think you would also be. surprised at the number of people in the group who are not from that region or have anything

like backstory to do with it except an immense interest in it. And it could be that, for example, they were in the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii when they were a private. Or like me, I was in Panama as a lieutenant and I fell in love with the region and a couple of really influential NGOs. But or it could just be that this person has a really high aptitude for Arabic. And as such, is going to fifth group, even though they really wanted to go to seventh, you know, because their language aptitude for Arabic is so high, that's where they're going. And that was vetted out in Q school. That aptitude was vetted out in Q school?

I assume they changed it so much. But typically, Will, what happens is you take your, you take your D-Lab, which is the aptitude battery before you go to selection, I believe, and then you go to selection, and then you go, how's it work? Yeah, then you go into the Q course and based on your aptitude and some other scores, you are assigned at the end of the Q course to a group. And then at the group, towards the end of that, you go to language school and then you take your aptitude test for your target language.

And then you have to take that aptitude test for the rest of your career. Like you have to stay proficient. You get paid for language proficiency. And you get paid whether you're a one, one, one, two, two, three, three. And it's highly encouraged to be a 2-2 example in 7th group, which is pretty darn proficient in reading, writing, and speaking. You know, the ideal thing is you want to be able to in 7th group to go into any country in Latin America and not have an interpret. And to be able to do everything you do, direct language to the host nation. Not so easy in Afghanistan or Turkmenistan because there's so many different dialects.

But in Central and South America, you have Portuguese and Spanish, and that's it. But like in, you know, Eurasia, you have, my goodness, you have so many languages. So, but you are paid for proficiency in language, and you are expected to maintain your language score for the rest of your career. You have to take it every six months. All right, Scott, now, this is another thing I wanted to ask. I don't know if you can answer this. Tell me the relationship between Rangers, Green Berets, and Delta. You mentioned Delta earlier when you're talking about the Iranian hostage crisis, and this is only anecdotally for me, just observational.

I was at West Point. It was last weekend, Scott. And I was around a Major, who was a Green Beret. I think he also had a Ranger stripe on his shoulder as well. And I know there's some crossover. And then there's Delta as well, which I don't know if Delta is made up primarily of special forces or they're pulling from somewhere else within the Army. But tell me about the relationship between those three units.

Yeah. So first of all, let's just start with Special Forces. You kind of have to know kind of the origin of each one and then how they come together. But so special forces really started with the Office of Strategic Services in World War II. You had these small teams called Jedberg teams, mostly doctor, excuse me, mostly school teachers and lawyers who jumped into occupied Europe and other places in Indochina and they stayed the entire war. And their job was to work with partisans to create subversion, sabotage, and basically, chaos in the Nazi and in Japan battle area, the rear battle area. Very good at it. And after World War II, the Office of Strategic Services split. One half became the CIA. The other

half became U.S. Army Special Forces, starting with 10 Special Forces Group. All of our SF founders were Jedbergs, were OSS. That's why the agency and SF have such a close lineage. is that. The Rangers have been around, for sure, since World War II, their high-speed strike infantry. They operate, you know, the Tom Cruise movie, Saving Private Ryan, you know, that was a ranger unit. But they're infamous throughout modern history of their high-speed light infantry strike capability. They were very, very instrumental in just cause. just about every recent modern war, they've been there,

and they are a great strike unit. They're really well known for seizing airfields. And then after Socom stood up, and I hope I'm doing justice to my Ranger brethren here, is after Socom stood up, they started to develop a pretty close relationship with the Tier 1 unit known as Delta. Delta has its origins in SF, in Vietnam.

It was a counterterrorism unit that was stood up under Charlie Beckwith and a couple others who were SF guys. But then over time, it became a standalone kind of unit. It became a standalone focused mostly on hostage rescue, counterterrorism. And then when the Goldwater Nichols Act kicked in and Socom was formed, they formed JSOC as one component under U.S. Special Ops Command. And it includes these what they call Tier 1 units that answer directly to the National Command Authority, the seal seal team six delta a couple other units that i'm not going to go into here but they are

very very high tier units and they have working relationships with other soft units delta and rangers in particular you see a very very close relationship you see it if you saw the movie black hawk down or you read the book by mark bowden he does a pretty good job of articulating what you what you see as a relationship between those two organizations in a sense You know, the global war on terror, man, if I'm being honest, that 20-year war, I believe really enhanced the interoperability of all these organizations, like what was once kind of a habitual relationship between Delta and Rangers. I think you could make a strong argument that there are lots of other different relationships out there as well. But that one really does stand out. I think they still enjoy kind of a close relationship with each other, whereas a lot of times the Rangers will form an outer cordon.

and Delta will go in and do a surgical hit or a surgical strike. What is Green Berets? What is Army Special Forces relationship with those two units? Is it not as cozy as those two with each other? And when I say that if I took a survey, and I'm going to ask you again questions that I don't know if you can answer. But if I took a survey, first of all, if I took a survey of Green Berets, would many of them be Rangers? And if I took a survey of Delta, would many of them be special forces? Great questions.

So there is a fairly sizable number of Green Berets who were in Ranger Regiment. And then remember, there's also Ranger qualified and there's Ranger Regiment. Yes. So, like, I'm Ranger qualified. I went to Ranger School. I never served in a Ranger unit. So I wear the Ranger tab on my left shoulder under my Special Forces tab. Right.

There's a high expectation in Special Forces that you better have that Ranger tab. Like, that is something that is, you know, expected. It's not required. But then there's also, if you serve in a Ranger, unit like the first second or third ranger battalion you wear a scroll a ranger scroll and that means that you served in that unit it's not uncommon at all to see quite a few guys in s f who wear the ranger scroll who were in one of those battalions before they went s f now um there is also because of s f's relationship to delta over the years there's a good number of s f guys

who do their team time and they do what's called the long walk and they go and they try out for Delta and they become operators in the Delta Squadron. There's a good number of guys who do that.

What you don't see really is Delta guys coming over to SF. Right. Because of the it just doesn't really happen. There are guys who go SF, Delta back to SF,

but you don't see it go the other way. And as far as our relationship, I would say it's okay. It's okay. I've seen it very strained. I've seen it very strained. But it's all right. And, you know, we get the job done together when we need to.

But there's a lot of baggage there as well. Interesting. Do you want something to what that baggage is about? Yeah, sure. I mean, some of it's just the natural operating parameters of those organizations. And there's the rivalry. piece. But then there's also just the charters that each of them have and the authorities that each of them have. For example, um, you take a, any, any tier one unit has authorities

direct, you know, much higher. So they, they come in and, and when they go, when they go hit a target, man, it's, you know, get out of the way. Whereas SF are a bit more, um, not as high tier and are typically operating in an area in a persistent fashion. So they're in there for longer. It's not the in and out kind of thing. So, you can imagine when you start to have that kind of operating construct that there's going to be tension just bumping up you got guys that live there you got guys that come in and out and strike answering to a different authority and a lot of ego a lot of ego on both sides who think that their mission is you know the mission and you add all that in with the with the with the stress of

combat and frankly you know the fact that the guys living there have to clean up whatever's done it's it it it has its tension i'll tell you that and and i don't know that we'll ever get past it but it's gotten a lot better over the last the 20-year-war i think has helped you know make us more interoperable for sure hey and is the tension the other way and i think and to the extent that i've gotten to know you you're you're a self-aware guy is the tension the other way and i would say it's probably not not exclusively from delta because once you're an after Afghanistan, you had seals and all types of forces employing your strategy, you know, village stability operations, those type of things. Was it, was it, would their tension towards you guys be, okay, we're doing the hearts and minds thing instead of let's just go kill bad guys?

Yes. And we have our share of prima donnas who a couple, a couple of different levels of prima donnas. One is that we look with a jaundiced eye at any organization that's not SF. And I say we, I mean, if we do it at any degree, then it's too much. And we also have ticked off a lot of conventional forces. We have by going into what they call a battle space owner. Like in Afghanistan, you would have a brigade commander of the 101st Airborne, and he would be given a battle space, right? And it might be, I don't know, a couple of provinces.

He owns that battle space. And then there's SF in there doing their thing who don't answer to him. but they're in his battle space. They rely on his logistics. They rely on his resupply. They rely on his quick reaction forces in many cases. And so we do it ourselves. Like we,

we, and we look at those conventional guys. And we raise our, you know, we, you know, kind of look at a skewed glance at him and stuff like that. So we do it too.

But with the, when the seals and the other guys started trying to do and Marines, VSO, I personally saw a lot of, of animosity around that. Why are these guys doing that? This is not their charter. You know, they're screwing it up.

And the honest truth is some of them did very well with it. Some of them took a while to get their head around it. Some of them never got it. But we had plenty of SF guys that thought they were above it and should be kicking doors. You know, so it's, there's just a lot of egos, man, and a lot of division in how we see the world. And it's not as coherent as it should be. you know and we got a lot of work to do on that one last thing on the relationships um let's go back to

the os s um founding of of the green beret so i'm curious then as oss divides goes cia and special forces does that original you know tie that binds exist today and so other words what i'm asking you is if I were to take not a survey of Delta or of Rangers, but if I were to take a survey of CIA direct action agents, would a lot of those guys be special forces? No, there's a few. But what's really striking, what's really striking to me is we developed post-9-11 as a special ops community,

we developed an infatuation with surgical strike. as a community, you know, if you look at Socom, let me give you a case in point. There has never been a U.S. Socom commander, four star, since 1986, who has commanded special forces at the battalion level or higher. They're all J-S.-Soc guys. Every commander that has ever commanded U.S. Socom, since 86, has not been a green braid. Now, there's Green Beret qualified guys that have commanded, but they were all like captains who are team leaders. And then they went on to some unit in J-Soc. And I give that as an example because there is a huge focus on direct action.

And post-9-11, post-9-11, we became enamored as a community with surgical strike. It became the end-all be-all to dealing with the threat in Iraq, dealing with the threat in Afghanistan. is how you walk these enemies down and take them out. And the CIA developed a relationship with J-Soc. That was and is, in my opinion, still very, very focused on, you know, on targeting. And I think we've got a long way to go on the by with and through piece with the intelligence community. We need to do some work with. I would have guessed with the linguistic and cultural skills of the special forces.

it would be a more intertwined relationship with the CIA. I would have guessed that. No, you would, but I can tell you, that was not my experience. And I had a lot of exposure in that world, not as much as some. But I just, I think that it is, it is not as, not as, not as focused on that as it used to be. And it could be better. It's one of those areas. I think we need to, we need to close the gap.

Okay, last question, Scott, so, you know, young soldier, even, you know, young high school student, college student, looking to serve, why go, and I know you don't just get to become a green beret, but why aspire to be a green beret? That's a great question. And I talk to a lot of young folks who are thinking about going that route. I believe if, you know, I decided to do it when I was 14, and if you want to achieve strategic outcomes while working at a local level with people different than yourself, then it's definitely something you should do. If you're interested in foreign cultures, if you're interested in human connection, if you're interested in, if you read T.E. Lawrence, You know, Lawrence of Arabia, if you read the 27 articles and that speaks to you, then SF is definitely a route to go. In other words, being able to work with people shoulder to shoulder down in the trenches,

down in the level where everyday life happens and helping them stand up on their own and being a part of something like that, if that resonates with you in any way, special forces is is a great way of life. I looked at my boys when I retired about 10 years ago, and I actually was able to tell them, you know, this ride that I was on for nearly two decades was even greater than I thought it would be as a 14-year-old kid. When I heard a Green Beret tell me what he did for a living in a soda shop in Mounted, Arkansas, it was better than I thought it would be. And the reason was because of working in all those amazing places with these people that most of the world is forgotten about, you know? And if you want to see, like, why, um, you look at how

Green Berets reacted to Afghanistan and, and what it did to them is because, like, we just value the relationship so much. And the last thing I'll say on it is this. If you love working or, you know, the NCOs, the sergeants in all of the special ops units are phenomenal, right? But to me, the sergeants in special forces, the Green Beret sergeants, man, they are iconic. They are iconic. They are the most amazing, coolest game-changing individuals on the planet. And my life is 100x better because I got to stand on the shoulders of some of those guys. And that experience alone. So whether you want to lead them as an officer or be one of them, Green Beret NCOs are the coolest damn things on the planet. And for me, that's the part I miss more than anything,

is I miss those guys. Well, I'll tell you this, Scott. You're a great representative. I'm not saying you're a great salesman, but you're a great representative of the Green Beret community. I will tell you, you know, I have no idea. I'm too old now, but I have no idea if I ever would have had what it takes. But when I used to ask myself that question, Scott, I thought in the world of Navy Seals. And the reason why is I was a competitive swimmer from, you know, the age of six and played water polo in college. So I thought, well, maybe I have some skill set that's applicable.

But as I've gotten older, and I've gotten to know guys like you, and I've read game changers, I really think in the end, if there was a path that I could have been successful and fulfilled, it would have been this that challenged not just my physical resilience and ability, but my mind. And look, I like walking through neighborhoods and immersing myself in American cities, international cities, in every culture. And I think this would have been the one that challenged my curiosity, my mind, and my physical ability. So you has been a great representative in probably bumping it up to number one for me. me. Well, I appreciate that, my friend. And you are absolutely right to call out. I mean, I had the opportunity to work with all of the other special ops units. I love them dearly. Any of them

that have ever worked with me know that. I have nothing but respect for them. And I think that it's when you bring them all together in a joint fashion that you really see the power of our special ops community. It is so cool. And I'll leave you with this, is, And this is what I try to tell young Green Berets is General Sokolik, who was a really, really great officer in our regiment. He went to see his doctor shortly after the bin Laden raid. And the doctor was ribbing him about, hey, I bet you're kind of feeling it that the Navy SEALs got him and you guys didn't. And General Segalic said, I left there feeling really agitated, you know. And he goes, but here's the thing.

He goes, I wasn't agitated because the doctor was ribbing me about the SEALs getting bin Laden and us not. What I was agitated about was that he didn't know that that was never our job in the first place. And, you know, that that really struck me. And I think for our community and our nation is we've got to get to a point as we evolve that everybody knows what their job is and we play to each other's strengths. And when necessary, there's that interoperability. But, but those unique capabilities are the beauty of soft. And I appreciate. you bringing them all out, man, because I think the more Americans understand that in this time of complexity and significant danger in the world, the more everyday citizens need to understand

what their special operators are about. There's secrets that we have to keep behind the curtain. But who, like our overt capabilities and things like that, an understanding of that is necessary. Scott Mann, Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, thank you so much. This is Jason Chaffetz from the Jason. and in the house podcast. Join me every Monday to dive deeper into the latest political headlines and chat with remarkable guests. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com or wherever you download podcasts.

All right, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Scott Mann. Check out his book, Game Changer. And if you think it might be something that applies to you, go check them out. Go check out Green Berets. Go check out Army Special Forces. Maybe that's the elite warrior. If it's you, I'll see you. next time. It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes. We ask people

on the streets of New York City to play along. Let's see how you do. Take the quiz every day at thequiz.com. Then come back here to see how you did. Thank you for taking the quiz.