Speaker 1: On one hand, it's about a type of mission that
Speaker 1: Jaysak has been training for since its inception, which is
Speaker 1: counter proliferation counter weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 2: But it also zeros in specifically on the.
Speaker 1: Case of Iran and the plans and the training exercises
Speaker 1: that Jaysak has conducted to potentially go into Iran by
Speaker 1: force and remove the highly enriched uranium, and this is
Speaker 1: an operation that would be incredibly complex and incredibly dangerous.
Speaker 1: Some people in the command began referring to it as
Speaker 1: Eagle Claw two point zero, which is a reference to
Speaker 1: Operation Eagle Claw in nineteen eighty in which Delta Force
Speaker 1: and the Rangers went to rescue hostages that were being
Speaker 1: held in Tehran. The whole thing ended in a fiasco
Speaker 1: at a desert stage in ground called Desert One, where
Speaker 1: a helicopter and aircraft were blown up. Other helicops were
Speaker 1: disabled by a sandstorm.
Speaker 2: The operation fell apart for a variety of different reasons.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were technical and mechanical, not because
Speaker 1: the guys didn't have the balls to do it. They
Speaker 1: certainly did.
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, Welcome to a new episode special episode of
Speaker 3: Eyes on Jill Politics. I'm joined with Jack Murphy, investigative journalist, podcaster,
Speaker 3: forty three year old. Happy birthday, Jack Jacksonday birthday. Today,
Speaker 3: you guys have a new article you and Sean Naylor
Speaker 3: on the High Side about basically detailing the entire raid
Speaker 3: that's been planned since the beginning of the war to
Speaker 3: go in and grab the highly enriched geranium out of
Speaker 3: a I guess if you once you dig into the article,
Speaker 3: it's two sites that they were really planning on hitting,
Speaker 3: but there's there's Intelli just suggesting maybe there it's at
Speaker 3: three sites, so obviously an incredibly complicated uh mission. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the article's great. Check it out at the high Side,
Speaker 3: The high Side. That link is down in the description. Uh,
Speaker 3: it's stuff that no other journalists I feel like get
Speaker 3: so really good shit. I'm sure that people are freaking
Speaker 3: out down and down in Where's Jaysuck based out of
Speaker 3: Tampa Brag. I'm sure they're not happy there today because
Speaker 3: you go into some good detail, like you name the
Speaker 3: squadrons and everything, but like, just give me the whole
Speaker 3: give us like the you know, quick pitch on what
Speaker 3: the article is about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the story is called Iran WMD rate inside
Speaker 1: Jaysock's most challenging mission yet. I wrote it with my
Speaker 1: colleague Sean Naylor at the high Side. Shawn's on vacation,
Speaker 1: so he's not here today, so I'm the best of yet.
Speaker 3: Sorry, guys, Sean's working on his tan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope so.
Speaker 1: I And so the story is about On one hand,
Speaker 1: it's about a type of mission that JAYSAK has been
Speaker 1: training for since its inception, which is counter proliferation counter
Speaker 1: weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 2: But it also zeros in specifically on the case of.
Speaker 1: Iran, and the plans and the training exercises that JAYSAK
Speaker 1: has conducted to potentially go into Iran by force and
Speaker 1: remove the highly enriched uranium, and this is an operation
Speaker 1: that would be incredibly complex and incredibly dangerous. Some people
Speaker 1: in the command began referring to it as Eagle Claw
Speaker 1: two point zero, which is a reference to Operation Eagle
Speaker 1: Claw in nineteen eighty in which Delta Force and the
Speaker 1: Rangers went to rescue hostages that were being held in Tehran.
Speaker 1: The whole thing ended in a fiasco at a desert
Speaker 1: stage in ground called Desert One, where a helicopter and
Speaker 1: aircraft were blown up. Other helicopters were disabled by a sandstorm.
Speaker 1: The operation fell apart for a variety of different reasons.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were technical and mechanical, not because
Speaker 1: the guys didn't have the balls to do it. They
Speaker 1: certainly did, but you ran into these insurmountable problems. And
Speaker 1: I think this operation, you know, I had a Delta
Speaker 1: Force veteran one time. Tell me he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: Operation Eagle Claw was so complex that even today, with
Speaker 1: all the fancy helicopters we have and great technology, we
Speaker 1: probably still couldn't pull something like that off. And I
Speaker 1: think that was a thought process that went, you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of carried forward into this operation. And again
Speaker 1: the guys, you know, the commands were certainly very eager
Speaker 1: to get in and do this mission. But there's also
Speaker 1: some trepidation in some corners about what the likely prospects
Speaker 1: are once the operators get on the ground. What I
Speaker 1: mean that is the movement into I ran into a
Speaker 1: denied area is difficult. You have to get there, You
Speaker 1: have to establish some sort of a stage and ground.
Speaker 1: This operation would require an improvised landing strip if nothing else.
Speaker 1: You'd have to land aircrafts. For two reasons, The first
Speaker 1: is that you would have to land all kinds of
Speaker 1: engineering equipment and bulldozers and excavators and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: because the tunnels that lead into these underground facilities have
Speaker 1: been collapsed and destroyed. Largely they were destroyed by Operation
Speaker 1: Midnight Hammer a few months prior to all of this
Speaker 1: kicking off, where we went in and bombed these sites,
Speaker 1: but there are also reports that the Iranians went in
Speaker 1: themselves and collapsed and booby trapped some of the tunnels.
Speaker 1: So you have to move in heavy excavating equipment. That's
Speaker 1: not a jastock mission per se. That's more of a
Speaker 1: just a conventional army or a Navy operation where you
Speaker 1: haven't bring these guys in.
Speaker 3: So it's not just like one hundred operators going in
Speaker 3: doing the thing getting out correct.
Speaker 1: It's not the bin laden raid where like fifteen guys
Speaker 1: are going to go in there and like save America
Speaker 1: and kick some ass. Right. This would require probably in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of a thousand of fifteen hundred boots on
Speaker 1: the ground. You would have rangers doing an outer court
Speaker 1: on and then you would have in this case it
Speaker 1: was a development group Sealed Team six had the lead
Speaker 1: on this one. They would be the assault squadron that
Speaker 1: goes in and if there's of course a security element,
Speaker 1: they're going to be eliminated by the operators. And then
Speaker 1: at some point the excavating excavating is going to have
Speaker 1: to take place that we talked about, and then there's
Speaker 1: an unit called the twenty first EOD Company, which would
Speaker 1: go in and actually secure the device. They're the ones
Speaker 1: that have the actual WMD training to do that, and
Speaker 1: then it becomes the whole process of getting it out
Speaker 1: of there. We're told it's something in the neighborhood, like
Speaker 1: three hundred to four hundred kilograms of highly enriched uranium
Speaker 1: that would need to be moved. There's a separate, yet
Speaker 1: another element that would handle that, called the Technical Escort Unit,
Speaker 1: and they are the guys that manage and move nuclear
Speaker 1: materials physsile materials from point A to point B. They're
Speaker 1: part of the US military. They didn't They've done operations
Speaker 1: in the past. For instance, they removed highly enriched uranium
Speaker 1: from Kazakhstan in the nineteen nineties, and even this one,
Speaker 1: this flew under the radar, but I mean, the US
Speaker 1: government reported this themselves in a press release. Just in
Speaker 1: the like maybe a month and a half ago, we
Speaker 1: removed highly enriched uranium from venezuela from a student like
Speaker 1: a academic student reactor or something like that that they
Speaker 1: had there. And again that would be the technical escort
Speaker 1: unit that would manage that and the Venezuela thing that's
Speaker 1: done in the Kazakhstan mission that I mentioned. These previous operations,
Speaker 1: they were done in cooperation with the local.
Speaker 4: Government, right yeah, environment, yeah, right, right, We're going to
Speaker 4: go in, We're going to take this dangerous material off
Speaker 4: of your hands, and in return, you know, you're going
Speaker 4: to get favorable economic deals or whatever whatever the case is.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, this would be by force. Now, the whole
Speaker 1: scheme of the operation that I just laid out, the
Speaker 1: technical escort unit brings the uranium out. It has to
Speaker 1: be flown out on fixed wing because of the static
Speaker 1: electricity created by rotor blades. That's a whole other thing. Now,
Speaker 1: everything I'm describing in this Iran mission would also be
Speaker 1: conducted in a CBRN environment you know, chemical, radiological, biological,
Speaker 1: and nuclear, and that would require wearing protective suits, you know,
Speaker 1: the protective masks the whole nine yards and while you're
Speaker 1: doing that, you're having to assault, excavate, secure, you know,
Speaker 1: render safe all sorts of different devices.
Speaker 3: And hold off the Iranian military from coming in be know,
Speaker 3: basically attacking you the whole day.
Speaker 1: While they're lobbing drones and ballistic missiles at you and
Speaker 1: all kinds of fun stuff. Right, So it's an incredibly
Speaker 1: complicated mission. It's Jaysak has trained extensively for this type
Speaker 1: of mission. However, as far as I've been able to ascertain,
Speaker 1: they never really trained for an operation where they first
Speaker 1: had to do the excavating of the site, where they
Speaker 1: had to like dig it up. There are some past
Speaker 1: examples where this was looked if something similar was looked
Speaker 1: into in the nineteen nineties, there's the Tarhuna facility in
Speaker 1: Libya where Gadaffi was running a underground chemical weapons facility,
Speaker 1: and this is really interesting. The plan to go and
Speaker 1: deal with that was for the Delta Force guys to
Speaker 1: goad vehicles onto these huge Marine corps hovercraft, drive them,
Speaker 1: you know, through the sea the Mediterranean up onto the beaches,
Speaker 1: and then go as far inland as they can stop,
Speaker 1: drop ramp, unload the vehicles. Then the vehicles drive to
Speaker 1: the facility and they would be taking with them, towing
Speaker 1: with them industrial mining equipment, industrial drills, you know these
Speaker 1: things that would you know, go vertical and you drill
Speaker 1: down into the earth. And what they were going to
Speaker 1: do was go on the top of the facility, drill
Speaker 1: down into it, and then using a cement mixer truck,
Speaker 1: they would pour an explosive slurry down the hole into
Speaker 1: the facility and detonate it and destroy the facility. But
Speaker 1: there's also again there's complications there. They carried out feasibility
Speaker 1: studies at the Nevada test site on this drilling into
Speaker 1: bedrock to see how fast it can be done, and
Speaker 1: even with the best equipment and the best professionals doing it,
Speaker 1: it could take weeks. Yeah, so all of these things
Speaker 1: are much more complicated, and you just run into these
Speaker 1: sort of insurmountable problems. But I think one of the
Speaker 1: other things that this article explores a little bit is
Speaker 1: that there are limitations on what small teams of special
Speaker 1: operators can realistically accomplish. You just run into these problems
Speaker 1: where you know, there's only so much that they can do, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, they basically how it read was essentially
Speaker 3: like you know, Silver Squadron ragor Battalion and maybe some
Speaker 3: elements from eighty second Airborne or whatever would shoot their
Speaker 3: way in to get to Isfahan and either four dour
Speaker 3: natons I don't know which, I know Isfahan was probably
Speaker 3: the main one, and then set up a perimeter, a
Speaker 3: security perimeter for weeks at a time so they could
Speaker 3: have a construction project going on. Right, Like that sounds insane,
Speaker 3: right because we al know that, like or at least
Speaker 3: we think that, like you know, Jaysack and special operations
Speaker 3: in general is usually used outside of like Iraq in
Speaker 3: Afghanistan where it was more long term, but like they're
Speaker 3: used for quick hits, like that's their whole, that's their
Speaker 3: bread and butter, that's where they make their money essentially,
Speaker 3: and then to send in a bunch of like the
Speaker 3: twenty first EOD guys and equit me. It's literally like
Speaker 3: set shooting everybody up, setting up a construction site for
Speaker 3: like a month probably yeah, and hopefully fingers crossed, we
Speaker 3: could get all the stuff out and bring it to Washington, right,
Speaker 3: is like the lab where they could do like the
Speaker 3: you know, the investigation on where it's from and all
Speaker 3: that stuff and just you know, securely retain it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's another aspect of this operation that has changed
Speaker 1: over the decades is that in the beginning, in the
Speaker 1: early years, the idea was interception or sabotage destruction, that
Speaker 1: you would go in and destroy the facilities, like we
Speaker 1: talked to Mountain Libya. What it evolved into over the
Speaker 1: years was that Jaysok would actually go in secure the
Speaker 1: physile material, secure the warhead, whatever it was, and actually
Speaker 1: take it out with them.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And from what I can tell this is this would
Speaker 1: be done for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2: You know, if it's uh, you.
Speaker 1: Know, a Russian nuclear warhead or something like this, we
Speaker 1: would want to obviously study that and reverse engineer it.
Speaker 3: In detail, you know, see where they got their stuff from, right,
Speaker 3: obviously like.
Speaker 1: To see how we can defeat that kind of technology.
Speaker 1: But also yes, if you know, if we went into
Speaker 1: Iran and we secured physile materials, we would want to
Speaker 1: study those materials in the lab here in the United
Speaker 1: States and determine if another country gave that to them.
Speaker 2: You know, and again I do not know this for
Speaker 2: a fact.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you know, theoretically, if like Russia or
Speaker 1: China were to give them physile material, if like something
Speaker 1: like the aq con network were to like render that
Speaker 1: that sort of material to them, that's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a really interesting quote that you just posted
Speaker 3: when you reposted the article just now. I don't think
Speaker 3: this is an operation. I don't think this operation has
Speaker 3: been done before, even in a training environment, said the
Speaker 3: former defense contractor, adding that if the facility itself was
Speaker 3: buried in rubble jaysock would probably just completely destroy what
Speaker 3: remained with explosives rather than try and dig out the
Speaker 3: fissile material. That sounds insane too, Like, how is that
Speaker 3: you know it's already covered up, It's already for the
Speaker 3: most part buried anyway. Also in the article, you also
Speaker 3: mentioned about like the worry about even taking a couple
Speaker 3: of kilograms of enrich uranium and making a dirty bomb.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't that also, like, you know, there's probably environmental factors
Speaker 3: to be thinking about if you're blowing up fissile material
Speaker 3: in place, right. I mean, sure it's on the ground,
Speaker 3: so maybe it'll be a little bit less impact, you know,
Speaker 3: impact the environment, but still there's dangers there.
Speaker 2: If that course of action was taken.
Speaker 1: I think the idea would be that you'd fully collapse
Speaker 1: what remained of the tunnels and just entomb the material inside,
Speaker 1: which arguably is more of a delaying measure. It's not
Speaker 1: really a final resolution to the problem. The problem being
Speaker 1: that you can't really just leave highly enriched uranium under
Speaker 1: the deserts of Iran forever, because if some idiot were
Speaker 1: to go and dig that up, doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: the Iranian government. I mean, say some terrorist organization even
Speaker 1: went and digs that up and just a few milligrams
Speaker 1: of it could cause a serious issue. Like you said,
Speaker 1: if you blew up a dirty bomb, you know in
Speaker 1: you know, Eastern Europe or Western Europe or wherever, you know,
Speaker 1: you could cause a huge disaster. So you can't really
Speaker 1: just leave the material out there. Someone has to secure it. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe we reach a deal with the Iranians and they
Speaker 1: secure it. I know at one point there's even talk
Speaker 1: with the Chinese government that they might go in and
Speaker 1: secure it, or we could reach a deal with the
Speaker 1: Iranians where our forces go in there peacefully and secure it,
Speaker 1: like we did in Kazakhstan years ago. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: can't really just leave the material out there under the
Speaker 1: desert forever. But for the time being, it seems like
Speaker 1: that's kind of what's going to happen at least for
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future, that we're going to monitor these sites
Speaker 1: with satellites and if anyone started moving excavating equipment in there,
Speaker 1: we would be able to detect that and pick it
Speaker 1: up pretty quickly. Because, you know, the Chairman of the
Speaker 1: Joint Chiefs, Dan Cain, got briefed up on this and
Speaker 1: he went and briefed President Trump, and the President decided
Speaker 1: not to greenlight this operation, largely for the reasons that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about that it's high risk, there could
Speaker 1: be quite a few American casualties. And there are some
Speaker 1: other things to some opsect things that I think some
Speaker 1: people in the community are glad we're not going to
Speaker 1: have to use. There are things that relate to like
Speaker 1: electronic intelligence and things like this. Basically capabilities we would
Speaker 1: use that we would only be able to use once
Speaker 1: because our adversaries would afterwards understood what understand what we did,
Speaker 1: and they would adapt. So there are kind of high
Speaker 1: end capabilities are considered to be like one and done's
Speaker 1: you know, you're only going to get one shot at it,
Speaker 1: and so I think perhaps this is the administration coming
Speaker 1: to terms with what we were discussing that there's limitations
Speaker 1: on what you can accomplish, that Jaysak isn't just the
Speaker 1: easy button you can press to resolve tricky foreign policy issues.
Speaker 1: Throughout President Trump's two administrations, there have been a number
Speaker 1: of you know, lightning fast operations that were highly successful,
Speaker 1: the killing of al Baghdadi and Syria, the killing of
Speaker 1: cost Some Solimani in Iraq, then more recently the Maduro
Speaker 1: capture in Venezuela, and then even Operation Midnight Hammer was
Speaker 1: kind of you know, quick airstrikes. There wasn't really any
Speaker 1: downside for the United States per se. But with this
Speaker 1: particular operation, now you're coming up against that wall where
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, we're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: just helicopter, you know, twenty five operators in to kick
Speaker 1: some ass and come home. Like it's it's a little
Speaker 1: bit more complicated than that.
Speaker 3: I mean, you kind of see it a little bit.
Speaker 3: What happened with the F fifteen pilot that got the
Speaker 3: F fifteen that got shot down in the wizzow that
Speaker 3: was out there for I can't even remember what it
Speaker 3: was like almost a week, right he was out there
Speaker 3: and no, just like I'm sorry, yeah, two days. But
Speaker 3: like the operation that Jaysack went under, you undertook essentially,
Speaker 3: you know, it was not easy. It didn't seem you
Speaker 3: lost a lot of assets. Thankfully no one died on
Speaker 3: our side, but still, like think about that, do you
Speaker 3: know essentially doing the same thing, right, they wanted to
Speaker 3: land fixed wing airplanes, they did it got stuck. They
Speaker 3: got stuck in the sand essentially, so they had to improvise.
Speaker 3: Uh So, just thinking about the scale and the scope
Speaker 3: of what this would entail, it sounds crazy. It sounds
Speaker 3: like it's it also like kind of mirrors or parallels,
Speaker 3: Like everyone was talking about car Island and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: Like taking carg Island. It's like, okay, yeah, we'll send
Speaker 3: like five hundred one thousand marines in there, secure the island,
Speaker 3: take it. But then they're literally getting pounded until for
Speaker 3: what until when?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I also did like the sub little subplot drama
Speaker 3: in terms of like the JSOCK officers and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: who were like, yeah, no, we could totally do this,
Speaker 3: like this would easy, you know, And I also like,
Speaker 3: I want you to talk a little bit about the uh,
Speaker 3: the friction between like Jysock and sent Coom specifically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the issue was that, Yes, I mean the the
Speaker 1: JSOK headshed sounds by all accounts pretty eager to go
Speaker 1: ahead and do this. They wanted to get on with
Speaker 1: the mission and get it done. H They've been kind
Speaker 1: of on standby for this mission for about three months,
Speaker 1: which is kind of unusual to have Jasock ford deployed.
Speaker 2: For such a long period of time.
Speaker 1: I think they had to issue a bunch of waivers
Speaker 1: just to keep them forward deployed that long.
Speaker 3: The question Jack starta there is because like the Jaysak
Speaker 3: guys are supposed to like continue to rotate into like
Speaker 3: the hot like you know, into another job. You know,
Speaker 3: like is that it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have to maintain a high state of readiness
Speaker 1: and you can't. You have to rotate the guys on
Speaker 1: and off that high state of readiness so that they
Speaker 1: can do their training, they can go on leave, their
Speaker 1: professional development, et cetera. So there's this rotation schedule with
Speaker 1: the different squadrons and the different ranger battalions. You know,
Speaker 1: as we talked about, you know, Jaysak is kind of
Speaker 1: tailor designed for highly precise surgical operations that happen, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, during a period of darkness. They're not designed
Speaker 1: for like long duration operations. That's more of like a
Speaker 1: special forces mission, a conventional military mission.
Speaker 2: Even rangers, you know, bring.
Speaker 1: A lot more assets to the table for like a
Speaker 1: long duration mission. But so yeah, Jaysock was eager to
Speaker 1: get on with it, but Sentcom wanted to that is,
Speaker 1: Central Command, the overall combatant command over the Middle East,
Speaker 1: was more interested in prioritizing other targets. There's also a
Speaker 1: thought that all kinds of triggers would need to be
Speaker 1: met in the lead up to executing this operation, that
Speaker 1: we had to do more things to eliminate Iranian air
Speaker 1: defense and their various military capabilities before we even attempted
Speaker 1: this mission. So, just as an example, JAYSAK had two
Speaker 1: Reaper drones circling objectives that they wanted to hit that
Speaker 1: they were interested in in Iran and they wanted like
Speaker 1: that kind of like persistent twenty four hour eye in
Speaker 1: the sky over those targets. And two of those drones
Speaker 1: got shot down by the Iranians. And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: the precise number. I think since the war started, we've
Speaker 1: lost like fifteen reapers or something like that. So this
Speaker 1: is this is a different kind of war. This is
Speaker 1: not Afghanistan or Iraq, where we had uncontested airspace, and
Speaker 1: so this is kind of like where the friction kind
Speaker 1: of developed, I think a little bit between common Jaysock
Speaker 1: and uh. But now we're at this point where it
Speaker 1: seems increasingly clear this operation simply isn't going to be
Speaker 1: executed and it's simply on standby as like a deterrent
Speaker 1: to like rid your finger at a ram, Like, hey,
Speaker 1: you better cut a deal with that.
Speaker 3: We're ready to go.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, because I've been told that the forward deployed
Speaker 1: Jaysak guys and their attachments and abors and so forth
Speaker 1: are already starting to trickle back to the United States
Speaker 1: because this forward deployment was impacting mission readiness for so long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, like, I mean, I guess it hasn't changed much, right,
Speaker 3: But even during Afghanistan, in Iraq, like and Syria, you know,
Speaker 3: Jaysock and Ranger Battalion deployments were usually like three months
Speaker 3: give or take maybe four, So we're like coming up
Speaker 3: to that. So it's understandable why, like, you know, they
Speaker 3: want to bring people back and maybe rotate them out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some guys were afraid that this whole thing was
Speaker 1: going to turn into like their delay. I meant to
Speaker 1: Cyprus after Gaza happened, and they spent and I think
Speaker 1: they may have been.
Speaker 2: Spent something like.
Speaker 1: I don't have the number in front of me, but
Speaker 1: I think it was a couple of hundred.
Speaker 2: Days that they were so long, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and all that standing by to stand by, and
Speaker 1: the only people who got to play on the Gaza
Speaker 1: thing were the TFO guys. So, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: the you know, the upside is hard to see an upside,
Speaker 1: but you know, the F fifteen pilot getting shot down
Speaker 1: and the Wizzo, the Jaysok guys did go out there
Speaker 1: and get to you know, do their thing and rescue
Speaker 1: that guy.
Speaker 3: So there were elements from that Jaysock squadron that was
Speaker 3: waiting for the highly enriched mission that went in for
Speaker 3: for the fifteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were elements of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also just to remind everybody, when the Jaysock
Speaker 3: deployed after October seventh and the Gaza War started, that
Speaker 3: was for the potential of going into evacuate embassies right
Speaker 3: and and get hostages.
Speaker 1: And hostages out of Gaza.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's a huge article also on the high Side.
Speaker 1: About that Gaza deployment that I wrote a few years
Speaker 1: ago when it happened.
Speaker 3: When you mentioned the TFO guys, like TFO guys were on.
Speaker 1: The ground, Uh so, yeah in Israel, yes, And what
Speaker 1: was going on was that they were working with the Israelis,
Speaker 1: and the Israelis would in turn be sending they would
Speaker 1: be sending their you know, spies, their surrogates and so
Speaker 1: on into Gaza. And what the TFO guys were fielding
Speaker 1: where they were fielding to the Israelis highly classified technology,
Speaker 1: signals intercept technology that used like some sort of AI
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 2: It was like some it was the most sensitive stuff.
Speaker 1: We've had, I'm told, and we're giving that to them
Speaker 1: and like not even telling them what it was or
Speaker 1: how it worked. Just like here's the on button, like
Speaker 1: when you get where you're going, just flip it on
Speaker 1: and then flip it off and come back and we'll
Speaker 1: take it.
Speaker 3: And of course, yeah, the Israelis didn't, didn't and see
Speaker 3: what the fuck that was about?
Speaker 1: For sure, No, I'm sure, I mean they know the deal,
Speaker 1: of course. But yeah, so the TFO guys got to
Speaker 1: go out there and do some stuff. I mean, when
Speaker 1: it first happened, I was told there's a TFO bird
Speaker 1: that got diverted from the Black Sea over Ukraine stuff
Speaker 1: down to Gaza. Had to fly all the way down
Speaker 1: and start doing coverage on that. I mean, we sent
Speaker 1: so much air assets to Gaza. I mean the amount
Speaker 1: of drones were flying over were insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, funny you mentioned that, like that TFO team got
Speaker 3: diverted from Black Sea to Gaza. The Silver Squadron or
Speaker 3: Seal Team six and Jaysock their mission. They were prepping
Speaker 3: for something having to do with North Korea before the
Speaker 3: Iran stuff popped off. You have any idea what that
Speaker 3: was about.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there was a specific training scenario
Speaker 1: or like a specific real world scenario that they were
Speaker 1: training for. Usually the training scenarios are realistic, but maybe
Speaker 1: not necessarily for like an actual situation that we that's imminent, right,
Speaker 1: that you're going to have to execute on. That would
Speaker 1: be a mission rehearsal rather than a training exercise. But
Speaker 1: there are a number of underground North Korean nuclear facilities
Speaker 1: command and control bunkers, and that's that's a whole other
Speaker 1: can of worms. And so like when we're saying it's
Speaker 1: going to take you know, a thousand people to do
Speaker 1: this Iran mission, I mean to take one of these
Speaker 1: like underground North Korean facilities would probably take a division.
Speaker 3: Crazy. Yeah, yeah, man, that's so crazy. And the other
Speaker 3: interesting like little tidbit in the article was before nine
Speaker 3: to eleven, jaysocks like this was a big, big part
Speaker 3: of Jaysox's mission essentially, you know, like you wrote, like
Speaker 3: hundreds of millions of dollars when into like training them
Speaker 3: up and getting them ready for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from from the very beginning before Delta Force was
Speaker 1: even validated, when they were like doing the train up
Speaker 1: and getting their stuff together, they're training to intercept what
Speaker 1: we're called I in these improvised the nuclear devices. You know,
Speaker 1: what if a terrorist organization built a nuclear bomb, which
Speaker 1: is kind of hard for a terrorist organization to do,
Speaker 1: but this was a legitimate fear at the time, and
Speaker 1: exercises were run where you know, the Delta guys would
Speaker 1: go and secure you know, a tractor trailer that had
Speaker 1: a simulated weapon in the back, and then like the
Speaker 1: NEST guys, the Nuclear Emergency Search Team dudes would go
Speaker 1: in and secure it. There were all these different like
Speaker 1: nuclear teams that you know, people don't know about. You know,
Speaker 1: we mentioned the Technical Escort Team. There's another element called
Speaker 1: the Joint ember Immune Team, which like red teams nuclear
Speaker 1: facilities and nuclear convoys testing their security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: But so the JAYSK participated in a number of early
Speaker 1: exercises in the nineteen eighties, they had having their EOD
Speaker 1: guys go down and the Department of Energy would test
Speaker 1: them on like rendering safe devices, and they'd have exercises
Speaker 1: where they'd have to break through security to get to
Speaker 1: the device and then disarmam it. And you know, as
Speaker 1: that mission evolved over the years, you know, during the
Speaker 1: Obama administration, for example, there was well this is interesting
Speaker 1: during the this isn't in the article either, but during
Speaker 1: the Obama administration, the plan for Iran, the classified plan
Speaker 1: was called the nitro Zeus and some of it was
Speaker 1: done in conjunction with the Israelis, like we're developing some
Speaker 1: joint munitions like bunker buster type bombs, and nitro Zeus
Speaker 1: was sarcastically referred to by some in the community as
Speaker 1: New Zion and and interestingly too Obama also decided not
Speaker 1: to green light that whole Iran plan. He was like, no,
Speaker 1: like that's crazy, and he went with Jappoah instead and
Speaker 1: negotiated the Iran deal. And you know, it seems like
Speaker 1: President Trump is getting to the same place, but only
Speaker 1: after this prolonged period of back and forth bombings and
Speaker 1: other nonsense, probably one hundred billion dollars wasted and thirteen
Speaker 1: servicemen died. Yeah, but at that time, back during the
Speaker 1: Obama years, you know, and not just then, but subsequent
Speaker 1: afterwards as well, Jaysck was doing these exercises where like
Speaker 1: a squadron would free fall into the Nevada test site,
Speaker 1: heavy drop all of their vehicles.
Speaker 3: Once they get on the drop all their vehicles, I would.
Speaker 1: Like like push the vehicles out of the back of
Speaker 1: an airplane with parachutes, and then once they get on
Speaker 1: the ground, do like you know, thirty kilometer overland movement
Speaker 1: to a simulated underground nuclear bunkler. There are a bunch
Speaker 1: of tunnels at the Nevada test site. I think one
Speaker 1: might be called like j tunnel. And these missions, these
Speaker 1: training missions were not done administratively like they went underground
Speaker 1: and were explosively breaching like heavy vault bunker doors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty hardcore stuff. So yeah, they trained extensively. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's another case that I talk about in the article
Speaker 1: just prior to nine to eleven. Also in Kazakhstan, there
Speaker 1: is a biological weapons lab and the lab was kind
Speaker 1: of set up and run by this guy named ken Alabek,
Speaker 1: who was a Kazakh but obviously also a member of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union because of what was going on when
Speaker 1: he was born there. Yeah, and he wrote a book
Speaker 1: that I read called Biohazard, which is fascinating. He eventually defected,
Speaker 1: But in the nineteen nineties we were looking at that
Speaker 1: facility and they were going to use it as a
Speaker 1: takedown target for Delta to come in and do as
Speaker 1: a training exercise in conjunction with with the cooperation of
Speaker 1: the Kazakh government, and it would be this great experience
Speaker 1: for the unit to go and actually sees a live
Speaker 1: It wasn't currently producing biological weapons, but it had everything
Speaker 1: there that.
Speaker 3: You would need to do that. Yeah, there's pictures in
Speaker 3: the article.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's about as realistic a scenario as you're
Speaker 1: possibly gonna get. Yeah, and they were all jocked up
Speaker 1: to do that there were Jasok guys that would come
Speaker 1: to Kazakhstan undercover with the Ditra guys and like and
Speaker 1: so again it's a way for like Delta to get
Speaker 1: to certain places and like measure vault doors and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Like, oh, this is how the Russians build this,
Speaker 1: you know, right, this is how they they the chemical
Speaker 1: weapons vats are made, and there's all this stuff involved
Speaker 1: in producing biological weapons and like how they're aerosolized or
Speaker 1: how they're deployed even from ICBMs like this, this stuff
Speaker 1: just gets increasingly technical as you dive deeper and deeper
Speaker 1: into it. And that training operation got pushed to the
Speaker 1: right because of the nine to eleven attacks and eventually
Speaker 1: just went away, got taken off the board because the
Speaker 1: guys were so busy, you know, fighting in actual war.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Do you think that the capability over the twenty
Speaker 3: years of the g WATT kind of have eroded on
Speaker 3: that side or no? Do you think they still trained
Speaker 3: pretty hard?
Speaker 1: Is? I think they trained pretty hard for this one.
Speaker 1: This this is the you know, all the terms you
Speaker 1: want to throw out, the No Fail mission, you know,
Speaker 1: the National Command Authority, you know, it's actually it's known
Speaker 1: as the zero four hundred mission, the counter WND mission,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the zero three hundred the counter terrorism mission.
Speaker 1: I think they train extensively for this, not just the operators,
Speaker 1: but all of the enablers, all these other guys I've
Speaker 1: been mentioning DITRA Technical Escort Unit and so on. I
Speaker 1: think it's taken quite seriously. And the Special Forces commanders
Speaker 1: and Extremist forces also had this mission and a component
Speaker 1: of this mission. And even though the SITH no longer exists,
Speaker 1: those companies in Special Forces I think continue in Special
Speaker 1: Forces does have a counter proliferation mission, so I think
Speaker 1: they continue along these lines. But it's like everyone kind
Speaker 1: of has a hand in it, you know, the Seals,
Speaker 1: the rangers and so on.
Speaker 3: All. The interesting one is after nine to eleven and
Speaker 3: when we went into Afghanistan and smoked the Taliban, Pakistan
Speaker 3: got so fucking uh so like paranoid that we were
Speaker 3: gonna come in and snatch their nuclear weapons. They started
Speaker 3: putting them on like trucks and stuff, making them mobile
Speaker 3: to make it as hard as possible for us to
Speaker 3: come in and like interdict and that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So a funny story about that. There's a picture
Speaker 1: of that that I put in the article. And the
Speaker 1: picture is something I found on the internet. It's not
Speaker 1: something that was like provided to me, so other people
Speaker 1: have seen it for sure. And the picture depicts what
Speaker 1: appears to be a movie tractor trailer, a non standard
Speaker 1: you know, non military helicopter dropping what appears to be
Speaker 1: for operators and helmets and plate carriers on top of
Speaker 1: this tracking.
Speaker 3: And like jeans too. They're wearing like jeans and shit, yeah, with.
Speaker 1: A huge saw, you know, for sawing through the top
Speaker 1: of the vehicle. And I was looking at that picture
Speaker 1: for a long time trying to figure out, like, what
Speaker 1: the hell are they training for here? And I remember
Speaker 1: I woke up one morning and I must have been
Speaker 1: having dreams or something, and it occurred to me. I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, wait a second, and I went and
Speaker 1: found it. And there was an article in The Atlantic
Speaker 1: written years ago about how the Pakistanis were so afraid
Speaker 1: of the United States coming in and stealing their nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons that they started loading them on the tractor trailers
Speaker 1: and driving them around the country to make them harder
Speaker 1: to intercept.
Speaker 2: And that article in the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: I'm sure was the United States government waking that information
Speaker 1: to try to tell the pakistanis.
Speaker 3: Like knock it off, like we're not going to do this.
Speaker 1: Well, well, more to the point, stop driving these vehicles
Speaker 1: all around your country in an unsecured, you know, relatively
Speaker 1: unsecured manner where something terrible could happen. Right, So, uh
Speaker 1: that's where that you know, when when I saw that picture,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, okay, that's the scenario that they
Speaker 1: were training for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, insane, man. I'm just trying to think of like
Speaker 3: what the JSK guys, especially during the gy Man right,
Speaker 3: like the you know, brutal deployments training training for this
Speaker 3: mission as well. I mean, it's understandable why a lot
Speaker 3: of guys come back I kind of really burnt out, yes.
Speaker 1: But I've also had guys tell me that they found
Speaker 1: this particular mission set to be very professionally fulfilling and gratifying. Okay,
Speaker 1: that you know it's it's not it's not a hazy
Speaker 1: counterinsurgency mission. It's something very direct and something of immediate
Speaker 1: national importance.
Speaker 2: That you know, it's it's again.
Speaker 1: Unlikely that a terrorist organization would ever develop an actual
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb without a state sponsor. But you know, if
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, Russia lost control of a
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon. If you know, some terrorist organization did develop
Speaker 1: a chemical or biological weapon, which is a lot more plausible.
Speaker 2: This is a realistic scenario.
Speaker 1: That could actually happen, unfortunately, And I mean it's a
Speaker 1: good thing that we have all of these guys that
Speaker 1: are are ready to go and deal with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I could see it particularly being like a big worry,
Speaker 3: uh after the fall of Soviet Union, when all those
Speaker 3: Soviet republics were breaking up and stuff like that, and
Speaker 3: like they had nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: And it's it's honestly, in my opinion, you know, take
Speaker 1: it for what it's worth. It's it's this is a
Speaker 1: low percentage sort of thing, like it's not likely to happen.
Speaker 1: We've never not, not with an nuclear We've never had
Speaker 1: this happen with ken bio. I guess we have, but
Speaker 1: we've never had an actual incident. You know that that
Speaker 1: these guys are training for that they would.
Speaker 3: Have to respond to God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, thankfully.
Speaker 1: But if it did happen, the consequences are so dire.
Speaker 1: If somebody got one of these devices into a port
Speaker 1: in the United States or one of our allied countries,
Speaker 1: you know, in in South Korea or wherever else the
Speaker 1: results would be catastrophic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean because once it's out of the bag,
Speaker 3: like getting it into America in a port is probably
Speaker 3: relatively easy, right because we're not checking everything.
Speaker 1: Maritime is not and has never really been watched as
Speaker 1: carefully as like you know, commercial air. But since nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, there have been all kinds of efforts made
Speaker 1: on the detection side my federal law enforcement. There are
Speaker 1: some ways to spoof the machines, as I've learned, some
Speaker 1: of them are relatively simple. Yeah, but but they have
Speaker 1: made some tremendous progress. I think on that.
Speaker 3: I had a question. I lost it. Fuck, what are
Speaker 3: you working on now?
Speaker 1: For high there's I mean, there's a handful of stories
Speaker 1: that are that we're thinking about. I know, Sean is
Speaker 1: back to working on Willie Murkerson's story, and the next
Speaker 1: piece is about his actions in Sudan and with the
Speaker 1: when the this was in the eighties, when the Libyans
Speaker 1: were crawling all over Sudan and the c i A
Speaker 1: did some very very interesting stuff to get them out
Speaker 1: of there. And so that's that's, you know, probably the
Speaker 1: next piece this summer. Uh, there's also something with the
Speaker 1: Rangers that I'm going to look at that probably will
Speaker 1: go out this summer. And then there's some other like long,
Speaker 1: longer term things over the horizon that I probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: really get into yet.
Speaker 3: Okay, cool, I'm trying to remember the fucking question I have,
Speaker 3: but I can't. Anyway, I want people to do me
Speaker 3: a favor. I want them to go and check out
Speaker 3: the high Side. Obviously, that link is in description. And
Speaker 3: Jack is also a writer of novels. He's got a
Speaker 3: new novel out that came out in June, June ninth. Yeh,
Speaker 3: The Most Dangerous Man. That link is in the description
Speaker 3: as well. Oh my question is this? I just remembered
Speaker 3: for this whole like Isfahan ford Ow and Natan's like,
Speaker 3: you know, like gathering of intelligence. We didn't send like
Speaker 3: r RC guys. And that's how I remember it, because
Speaker 3: there's an r RC ranger in Jack's book. That's why
Speaker 3: I remember my question.
Speaker 2: No Interestingly, in the during the planning.
Speaker 1: For the Gaza hostage rescue, there was talk about sending
Speaker 1: r RC in to do that to get eyes on
Speaker 1: for the Jaysak mission. I haven't heard anything about that
Speaker 1: kind of thing in regards to Iran though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the facilities are pretty fucking deep into Iran, right,
Speaker 3: so it's gonna be pretty tricky to have an RRC guy.
Speaker 3: How do you infill them? Right? Like?
Speaker 2: I mean you could, like that is the risk worth
Speaker 2: the game?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: I think if anyone were to do.
Speaker 1: That, you would probably have the Israelis using their proxy
Speaker 1: networks on the ground. And we have proxy networks on
Speaker 1: the ground too. Not as good as having a ranger,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's still something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we're heavily relying on Israeli humid right, I'm
Speaker 3: you know, you mentioned it in the article slightly that
Speaker 3: we are pretty much like not totally relying on them.
Speaker 3: Obviously we have like the geo stuff and the singing stuff,
Speaker 3: but I think from what I've read and what you've
Speaker 3: written in the article is like we're pretty heavily relying
Speaker 3: on Israeli intelligence as well.
Speaker 1: Definitely working in close cooperation with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, anything else, Jack, anything on your mind.
Speaker 1: It's always something on my mind. But today is just today.
Speaker 1: I'm just taking it easy. It's a birthday, boy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's my birthday. So yeah, I'm just chilling and The
Speaker 1: next episode of the Team House We're Gonna Do is
Speaker 1: with Wayne Barnes. I just finished his book. I believe
Speaker 1: the title is a Trader in the FBI, And it's
Speaker 1: this whole aspect of ident of how the FBI identified
Speaker 1: Robert Hanson as a trader that I've never heard of
Speaker 1: before that I knew nothing about. And the book was
Speaker 1: so good. It's like one of my favorite espionage books.
Speaker 1: Now wow, okay, Yeah, so we're we'll have Wayne on
Speaker 1: the show this Wednesday. People will see that episode later
Speaker 1: this week, I guess Friday, Saturday, Saturday. Yeah, so I'm
Speaker 1: really looking forward to that.
Speaker 3: It's we should probably make a compilation video like we
Speaker 3: did about roberts Ridge. Not roberts Ridge, but Red with
Speaker 3: Eric Red Wings, Red Wings, Yeah, with Eric O'Neill. And
Speaker 3: then we'll have Wayne on. And you know, we've had
Speaker 3: Jim Olsen too, that was talking about spies and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. So I feel like the compilation video for that.
Speaker 3: I'm excited about this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love the counter and Tell stuff so much like
Speaker 3: my favorite ship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll really like this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, listen, guys, Wish Jack a happy birthday.
Speaker 3: In the comments number one like and subscribe. Also, if
Speaker 3: you're listening on audio, you could subscribe their rated five
Speaker 3: stars as well. The High Side, which is Jack and
Speaker 3: Sean Naylor's news outlet that lakers. In the description, they
Speaker 3: literally write the stories that The New York Times, Washington
Speaker 3: Post and no one writes they have better sources than
Speaker 3: they do. They don't take They're not stenographers for the
Speaker 3: d D or intelligence agencies. They actually get you the
Speaker 3: story and The Most Dangerous Man, Jack's new novel. It's
Speaker 3: an awesome book. I read it. I actually read it
Speaker 3: one of the only three books I've read in my life.
Speaker 3: I read it like one of the first drafts too. Yeah,
Speaker 3: really good, cool story. Uh, tell me a little bit
Speaker 3: about The Most Dangerous Man because I think there's like
Speaker 3: a great pitch for it too, Like yeah.
Speaker 1: So the book, of course, is a modernized take on
Speaker 1: the classic short story The Most Dangerous Game, which was
Speaker 1: the first you know, uh, fictional work that dealt with
Speaker 1: the idea of man hunting man for sport, which is
Speaker 1: a premise that has been used over and over in
Speaker 1: this book. My book is about a R R C
Speaker 1: ranger who gets kidnapped in West Africa and is hunted
Speaker 1: for sport by a group of finance tech bros. And
Speaker 1: they're led by a South African safari guide who's a
Speaker 1: pretty hardcore customer customer. Yeah, yeah, And so the book
Speaker 1: is about them hunting this ranger for sport and how
Speaker 1: he turns the tables on them. I really had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun writing it. I'm halfway through writing the
Speaker 1: draft for the sequel and really appreciate everyone who's taking
Speaker 1: the time to read the book, review it on Amazon,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really good too. It's like a commentary on
Speaker 3: like life too, what's going on now, like society now.
Speaker 3: It's very funny, like the stuff with like the the
Speaker 3: billionaire people, like the billionaire tech guys and like their
Speaker 3: their they're like thought gurus, their thought leaders, the guys
Speaker 3: that they like really kind of you know, take really seriously.
Speaker 3: It's so fucking funny some parts, and it's awesome. Also,
Speaker 3: Like Jeremy Lopez, his own his one kryptonite is like
Speaker 3: hot chicks, that's his one kryptonite.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean he's a ranger, and I
Speaker 1: tried to make him an actual character.
Speaker 2: He's not some.
Speaker 1: Stoic operator guy, you know, ground branch guy out down
Speaker 1: on his luck, you know, dishonored and disgraced.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Now this a young ranger guy who has a lot
Speaker 1: of personality.
Speaker 3: Nah. Yeah, it's an awesome book. Guys. Check it out.
Speaker 3: That links in the description. And if you have bought
Speaker 3: the book, review it on Amazon or wherever you bought
Speaker 3: it on the good Reads or wherever. Uh, that's important
Speaker 3: as well. Jack, I love you Happy birthday.
Speaker 2: Thanks Dee. Appreciate it, man.
Speaker 3: Y'all for the audience. He never says I love you
Speaker 3: back to me. I'm gonna get it from him one day,
Speaker 3: one day. One day, I drop I love you on
Speaker 3: you a lot, like in our chat.
Speaker 2: Ironically, Yeah I do.
Speaker 3: It is ironic. I like making men feel uncomfortable. I
Speaker 3: don't know why it's fun.
Speaker 1: Anyway, kicking champion over here.
Speaker 3: Thanks bro.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I want to take a moment to tell
Speaker 1: you about the Team House podcast newsletter. If you go
Speaker 1: and subscribe, it's totally free, and what it will do
Speaker 1: is aggregate all of our data, all of our content
Speaker 1: that we put out, the things that are on the
Speaker 1: Teamhouse on our geopolitics podcast, eyes on things that I
Speaker 1: write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high side, anything
Speaker 1: else that we have going on, books, we recommend upcoming
Speaker 1: guests that we have coming on the show, and also
Speaker 1: you know, filtering in some fun stuff in there as well.
Speaker 1: If you go and check it out. We send it
Speaker 1: out just once a week. We don't want to spam
Speaker 1: you guys. It's just a kind of roll up of
Speaker 1: all of our content.
Speaker 2: On a weekly basis.
Speaker 5: You can find our newsletter at teamhouse podcast dot kit
Speaker 5: dot com slash join again. The website for that is
Speaker 5: teamhouse podcast dot kit dot com slash join so we
Speaker 5: hope to see you there.
Speaker 2: The link will be down the description