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Speaker 3: Slash The Teamhouse, Special Operations, COBT Spionage, The Team House
Speaker 3: with your host Jack Murphy David Park.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to episode three hundred and seventeen of
Speaker 2: The Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave and we're
Speaker 2: very pleased to have on the show tonight. Wade Ishi Moto.
Speaker 2: He's the author of the in Taku Code. I just
Speaker 2: finished reading this last night.
Speaker 1: The headline here.
Speaker 2: Is Delta Force's intelligence officer doing good in secret. Wade
Speaker 2: served in Vietnam with Special Forces, went on to become
Speaker 2: one of the original members of Delta Force, was a
Speaker 2: part of Operation Eagle Claw, the Desert One incident, and
Speaker 2: has gone on to do many other amazing things during
Speaker 2: his career.
Speaker 1: And we're excited to have you on the show. Wade.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us tonight.
Speaker 4: Well, I thank you for having me on excepch an honor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really, And so let's start off at the beginning.
Speaker 2: Wade, I want to hear about your upbringing and growing
Speaker 2: up in Hawaii and sort of what your childhood was
Speaker 2: like and how that began to sort of take you
Speaker 2: towards the military.
Speaker 5: Well, I was very fortunate to be born and raised
Speaker 5: in Hawaii, and in particular the kinds of neighborhoods I
Speaker 5: grew up in. Because the neighborhoods I grew up in
Speaker 5: were very diverse. We had people in many races. We
Speaker 5: all got along with each other. But what I learned
Speaker 5: was how to take care of others and how others
Speaker 5: took care of me, and that made a big impression
Speaker 5: on myself as far as the military was concerned.
Speaker 4: During the Korean War, a gentleman.
Speaker 5: By the name of Francis Takemoto, who had fought in
Speaker 5: World War Two with the four to forty second Regimental
Speaker 5: Combat Team. Was a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard,
Speaker 5: and he commanded a battalion and at the end of
Speaker 5: the valley I grew up in, it was a National
Speaker 5: Guard shooting range and he would drop by and pick
Speaker 5: me up when his battalion went up there for marshmanship training,
Speaker 5: and I got introduced into initially firing an one car
Speaker 5: being and then graduating to be able to fire an
Speaker 5: m one garand rifle. So the military was really sort
Speaker 5: of imbued in me even before that, being raised during.
Speaker 4: World War Two.
Speaker 5: But nonetheless that really made a difference in terms of
Speaker 5: my wanting some day to be in the military.
Speaker 2: You mentioned I think the term in your book is
Speaker 2: it hanai extended family hanai.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: I was very interesting to read about that in your
Speaker 2: book and all the people that were around you and
Speaker 2: your family, and it sounds like, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: an ideal childhood it was.
Speaker 4: It was a great place to grow up.
Speaker 5: It was semi rule when we moved into Koli Old Valley,
Speaker 5: which is on the eastern side of Oahu, and now
Speaker 5: it's all residential, but initially there was a truck farm
Speaker 5: as you started proceeding up.
Speaker 4: The valley on the main highway, and then.
Speaker 5: A dairy, two chicken farms, another dairy, and a small
Speaker 5: pig farm. It was very rural, and that set a
Speaker 5: different kind of tone in terms of crowing out.
Speaker 4: You learned how to work, you.
Speaker 5: Learned how to work around animals, You learned how to
Speaker 5: make a living for yourself.
Speaker 2: And how did the idea of joining the army come
Speaker 2: to you? As you know, as you've become a young
Speaker 2: man eighteen nineteen years old, how does that come up
Speaker 2: on your radar?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: When I was in high school, my intentions actually were
Speaker 5: to join the Air Force. After I graduated, along with
Speaker 5: one of my buddies in high school, and my parents
Speaker 5: pled with me to go on to college, and I
Speaker 5: did so, somewhat reluctantly, but nonetheless I did.
Speaker 4: And make a.
Speaker 5: Long story short, after two years, a professor of mine,
Speaker 5: Colin Kapra Johnson, confronted me one day and called me stupid,
Speaker 5: and I was about ready to knock his block off,
Speaker 5: but I said to myself, he's trying to tell me something.
Speaker 5: In short, what he was trying to tell me was
Speaker 5: that my grades were too low to get me into
Speaker 5: graduate school, and that for me to succeed in international relations,
Speaker 5: I needed to have a master's degree or hire. So
Speaker 5: what that turned out to be was I was working
Speaker 5: sixty to eighty hours a week trying to put myself
Speaker 5: to school. It was a private school called glus and
Speaker 5: Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and he said, you need
Speaker 5: to transfer, and I did, and then I got too
Speaker 5: smart for my own briches. I tried to invest my
Speaker 5: summers savings on the ponies at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, California,
Speaker 5: lost it all, shrugged my shoulders because I had learned
Speaker 5: resilience as a young man, and said, well, it's time
Speaker 5: to go in the military. I actually intended to go
Speaker 5: into the Marine Corps, but when I went in and
Speaker 5: found the Marine recruiting station, there was a sign out
Speaker 5: to lunch and it was mid afternoon, and I said,
Speaker 5: what the hell this is? So I said, okay, I'm
Speaker 5: going to go in the Air Force again. As I
Speaker 5: found the Air Force recruiter, they were co located with
Speaker 5: the Army recruiter and on the second story of a building.
Speaker 5: As I walked up the stairs, I felt this tamp
Speaker 5: on the shoulder and it was an Army Master sergeant
Speaker 5: and he said, well, the Air Force recruiter is busy,
Speaker 5: come on in, sit down, relax.
Speaker 4: He saw me a bill of goods.
Speaker 2: And I was in the Army and your first assignment,
Speaker 2: if I recall correctly, you were assigned to a military
Speaker 2: police company. And I guess this would have been in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties. It sounded like a very wild time
Speaker 2: to be in the United States Army.
Speaker 1: For you as a young man, it.
Speaker 5: Was sort of a crazy time because you know, we're
Speaker 5: still getting over the Korean conflict, if you will, and
Speaker 5: other things were happening with the Soviet Union in those
Speaker 5: days and in particularly in Cuba, so there were all
Speaker 5: kinds of different kinds of interesting things that were happening.
Speaker 5: But you know, one of the most interesting things that
Speaker 5: happened to me with that military police company is we
Speaker 5: were guarding Joe Volachi, who was the first mafia figure
Speaker 5: that was made to.
Speaker 1: Like witness protection for Congress.
Speaker 5: Not made too, he actually volunteered to testify before Congress,
Speaker 5: so we were guarding him.
Speaker 2: That's so he was like in the witness protection program
Speaker 2: on your base.
Speaker 5: Yes, And we never knew it in the MP company
Speaker 5: for about three months, but then two of our MPs
Speaker 5: found out they went to one of the well known
Speaker 5: publications at that time, the Saturday Evening Post, and spilled
Speaker 5: the beans and the promo. Marshal on Fort Mollins went
Speaker 5: sky order and he ordered us to build sandbag machine
Speaker 5: gun emplacements, have patrols and emplacements around the stockade where
Speaker 5: Volacchi was being held, and we went into a high
Speaker 5: degree of preparedness.
Speaker 4: If you will.
Speaker 2: And you know, I noticed from the book it seems
Speaker 2: like you always had some other ambitions for what you
Speaker 2: want to do with your army career, and the next
Speaker 2: stop for you is to become a counterintelligence agent.
Speaker 4: That's true, and it was a matter of Church Police Company.
Speaker 5: Commander initially was a gentleman by the name of Walt Jenkins.
Speaker 5: He had been a master sergeant during World War two
Speaker 5: in the Korean War and then somehow got commissioned and
Speaker 5: he was one of my mentors and took care of me.
Speaker 4: He wanted me to go to OSS.
Speaker 5: I refused to do so, so he came up with
Speaker 5: this idea, along with another one of my mentors, Bill Fitzpatrick,
Speaker 5: that I should go to and become an Army criminal
Speaker 5: investigative agent.
Speaker 4: And they found out that they thought that it was
Speaker 4: all Greece.
Speaker 5: They found out I was too young, but they also
Speaker 5: found out that I could get into Army intelligence school,
Speaker 5: and so they arranged for me to do so, and
Speaker 5: off I went without understanding what the hell I was getting.
Speaker 2: Well, tell us what you were getting into, because I
Speaker 2: think your first stop was Korea.
Speaker 1: As a CI guy.
Speaker 5: Yes, and that was the greatest because I got assigned
Speaker 5: to the one ninety first Military Intelligence Detachment, which was
Speaker 5: in support of the first Cavalry Division, and our commander
Speaker 5: was a major by the name of Tom Hondo, and
Speaker 5: Tom took a liking to me, but that also meant
Speaker 5: that he pushed me very hard, and so he asked
Speaker 5: me to be the covering counter intelligence agent for the
Speaker 5: three battalions we had north of the Imjin River, and
Speaker 5: those basically were sacrifice battalions because had the North Koreans invaded,
Speaker 5: they would have been cut off and never been able
Speaker 5: to get back across the Emgin River. But they were
Speaker 5: at a high readiness stage in terms of future combat
Speaker 5: and patrolled the military zone every day, and so it
Speaker 5: was a great place for me to be and amongst
Speaker 5: all the other things, Ondo made me the unit photographer,
Speaker 5: So I was doing counter intelligence and intelligence photography of
Speaker 5: different sorts, and so I was able to do every
Speaker 5: facet that a counter intelligence agent does, to include recruiting,
Speaker 5: recruiting sources.
Speaker 4: So it was just a phenomenal experience.
Speaker 2: I thought that was a really interesting part of your
Speaker 2: book that you mentioned. During this period, the DMZ wasn't
Speaker 2: quite as built up as it became in later years,
Speaker 2: and so you guys were able to send agents north,
Speaker 2: but the North was also sending infiltrators south.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 5: Yes, Normally what the North Koreans would do is they
Speaker 5: would come up with three man teams y three. It's
Speaker 5: one of the known facts in terms of commonist organization
Speaker 5: and insurgency that you have an odd number because then
Speaker 5: you never have a split vote, if you will have
Speaker 5: either unanimous or two against one.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: So in our case, what we were doing was basically
Speaker 5: sending individuals across.
Speaker 2: And I want to get into your service in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: But as we begin to talk about Vietnam and how
Speaker 2: you transition into special forces, I also need to ask
Speaker 2: you what is the Intaku code?
Speaker 1: If you can tell people what that is.
Speaker 4: Okay in toku.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the in toku code is something I picked up
Speaker 5: in my martial arts experience, and there was a little
Speaker 5: phrase written by a gentleman by the name of Koichi Tohe,
Speaker 5: who was one of the ranking aikito masters in the world,
Speaker 5: and so he created this thing called in toku doing
Speaker 5: good in secret. And basically what it says is so evil,
Speaker 5: reap evil, so good, and the harvest will be good.
Speaker 5: So whatever you say can never be done away with.
Speaker 5: But the whole intention is to do good for other people.
Speaker 5: And that is something that I had lived with even
Speaker 5: before I began my study of aikuto.
Speaker 2: And that's something you took with you through your career,
Speaker 2: as it's really evident in the book.
Speaker 1: So talk to us about Vietnam.
Speaker 5: Well, initially, when I went into Vietnam, I went in essay.
Speaker 4: It was an interesting experience because.
Speaker 5: I came out of Hawaii and I was a staff
Speaker 5: chergeant at that time, and I had six young soldiers
Speaker 5: that had never seen combat or never been overseas other
Speaker 5: than Hawaii in their lives before.
Speaker 4: So I took care of them.
Speaker 5: And when we landed at Tomson Nut there was nobody
Speaker 5: to greet us, and it was on a president's birthday
Speaker 5: in February of nineteen sixty eight, after ted after the
Speaker 5: Tet offensive.
Speaker 4: So the young men with.
Speaker 5: Me were quite nervous, so I said, I gathered them
Speaker 5: around and I said, okay, you guys stayed right here,
Speaker 5: and they asked me, sorry, why right here?
Speaker 4: And I pointed to a hole in the ceiling and I.
Speaker 5: Said, that's probably where one twenty two millimeter rocket has
Speaker 5: come to, and the chances of another rocket coming through
Speaker 5: that same damn hole are about ten million to one.
Speaker 4: So you guys stay here.
Speaker 5: I'll find somebody to take care of us, and I
Speaker 5: went off. I finally found somebody and they transported us
Speaker 5: to Long Bin, which was the replacement depot for US
Speaker 5: Army Vietnam. And I requested assignment to either the fifth
Speaker 5: Special Forces Group or the twenty fifth Infant Infantry Division,
Speaker 5: and instead they were going to assign me to the
Speaker 5: US Army Vietnam GI Section Rear Echelon Organization right there
Speaker 5: at Long Ben, and.
Speaker 4: I protested, but they said you have to go.
Speaker 5: So I had very good fortune because I walked in
Speaker 5: and lo and behold, there was now a major who
Speaker 5: I had known as a captain in Korea that was
Speaker 5: in charge of the.
Speaker 4: Operation that I was supposed to be working in.
Speaker 5: And I pled with him and he looked at me
Speaker 5: and he said, okay, I'll let you go provided you
Speaker 5: do one thing. I said, what's that, sir? He said,
Speaker 5: you spend the day with me talking about old times.
Speaker 5: I said, you got so he lived up to his word.
Speaker 5: He released me again. I went back to the replacement
Speaker 5: depot and I said fifth SF Group for twenty fifth
Speaker 5: Infantry Division. They put two and two togethers and he
Speaker 5: sent me to the five twenty fifth and my brigade,
Speaker 5: which I ended up in what they called the counter
Speaker 5: intelligence Team the Train, which covered a five province area
Speaker 5: doing offensive counter intelligence. So we were recruiting agents and
Speaker 5: that was our stock in life and our mission.
Speaker 1: That was the B fifty seven program.
Speaker 5: No, this was second Battalion well CEI team the Train
Speaker 5: part of the second Battalion five. So I made and
Speaker 5: I had an agreement with the operations officer for the
Speaker 5: battalion that if I gave him six hard months, he
Speaker 5: would release me.
Speaker 4: And I had the privilege of working with.
Speaker 5: A very great warrant offerer by the name of Bill Miller,
Speaker 5: and Bill and I were out ranked. He as a
Speaker 5: warrant officer was outranked by other officers, and I, as
Speaker 5: a staff chergeant was out ranked a couple other enceals.
Speaker 5: But we were the ones that had the experience at
Speaker 5: human intelligence, and so the officer looked at us to
Speaker 5: be able to turn that whole thing around because it
Speaker 5: was candidly not quite productive before Bill Miller came in
Speaker 5: along with myself and took charge of it. So after
Speaker 5: six months, I went back to the battalion. The operations
Speaker 5: officer had changed and they were to I don't want
Speaker 5: to swear, but less than honorable person in charge, and
Speaker 5: he literally called me crazy. He literally forced me to
Speaker 5: go and get a psychiatric evaluation, which I did and
Speaker 5: of course got a clean bill of health, with a
Speaker 5: psychiatrist asking me, you need to tell that major to
Speaker 5: come in here and get consoled himself. I said, I
Speaker 5: can't do that, sir, you know, so I went back,
Speaker 5: showed my clean bill of hill and the son of
Speaker 5: a bitch still would have released me. And again, you know,
Speaker 5: sometimes your life runs in luck. So I protested and
Speaker 5: filed a complaint. They sent me to the brigade headquarters
Speaker 5: in Saigon, and there I was met by Colonel Mankin,
Speaker 5: the deputy commander, and again he professed that he did
Speaker 5: not want to release me, regardless of the gentleman's agreement
Speaker 5: that I had with the previous battalion operations officer. And
Speaker 5: then he asked me one question, which was very fortunate,
Speaker 5: and he said, so who are you going to work
Speaker 5: for in the fifth Special Forces Group? And I said, well,
Speaker 5: I'm not quite sure, but the one that arranged it
Speaker 5: was Chief Warren Afthor Clarence Kawaki Goshi and Colonel and
Speaker 5: got very silent, and then he looked at me and
Speaker 5: he said, you know, Chief Kawahigashi taught me everything I
Speaker 5: knew when I was a young lieutenant during the Korean War.
Speaker 5: He said, it's only because of him that I'm going
Speaker 5: to release you. And I said to myself, Hell lujah,
Speaker 5: you know lucked out again. So I was off to
Speaker 5: the fifth Special Forces Group, signed in in August in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty eight, and stayed there until March of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 5: and actually had intended to extend again, or had extended again,
Speaker 5: but my cousin, who was like a brother to me,
Speaker 5: was killed with the one zero first Airborne Division in Vietnam,
Speaker 5: and my startant Major made me come back on emergency
Speaker 5: permanent changes station orders. That in short was you know,
Speaker 5: the a little bit shy at three years that I
Speaker 5: spent in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Well, before we move on, I got to ask you
Speaker 2: if you can tell us about B fifty seven, what
Speaker 2: you guys were doing there and leading into the Green
Speaker 2: Beret case, which you know is pretty well known I
Speaker 2: think by a lot of people.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So B five to seven was started circle nineteen sixty
Speaker 5: five nineteen sixty six, and its whole mission in life
Speaker 5: was to gain intelligence on Cambodia, tactical intelligence. But the
Speaker 5: way we're going to do business was not to go
Speaker 5: in ourselves, but to recruit indigenous personnel Cambodian's, Montagnor's, Vietnamese,
Speaker 5: whatever that would cross into Cambodia and collect the intelligence
Speaker 5: for us. So initially there was another portion of B
Speaker 5: five seven called Project Cherry, which recruited units of Cambodians
Speaker 5: to go into Campbodia, but that, for whatever reason, was
Speaker 5: disbanded and we stuck with trying to recruit indigenous agents.
Speaker 5: We operated out of ten Special Forces camps strung out
Speaker 5: along the Cambodian border all the way from Hatien in
Speaker 5: southern four Core up to.
Speaker 4: Duco In or Douklap in three Cores in Vietnam.
Speaker 5: So normally we operated with three to four people on
Speaker 5: a team. One would be a radio operator and one
Speaker 5: would be a special forces person trained in intelligence, and
Speaker 5: the other probably would be a military intelligence person. And
Speaker 5: if we had another one, it could be either a
Speaker 5: special forces or an intelligence person. So we use interpret
Speaker 5: of principal agents which we recruited, and they became our
Speaker 5: way of finding indigenous sources and handling them.
Speaker 2: And it sounds like it was overall a really good program,
Speaker 2: but unfortunately it sounds like you also experienced where it
Speaker 2: started to come off the rails a little bit with
Speaker 2: Alvin Smith.
Speaker 5: Yes, in terms of success, what we were told later
Speaker 5: was that on any given day, B five seven would
Speaker 5: collect seventy five percent of a youthful tactical intelligence on
Speaker 5: Camp Odio, and on its worst day no less than.
Speaker 4: Twenty five percent.
Speaker 5: So we were quite a productive unit for being of
Speaker 5: such small size. So we had an operation co located
Speaker 5: at Mokua and Tantree in four Corps. Smith was supposed
Speaker 5: to be a case officer at one of them in
Speaker 5: mokuah He, after six months had been totally unsuccessful in
Speaker 5: terms of getting.
Speaker 4: Any agent operations started.
Speaker 5: He had an interpreter personable agent, so we brought him
Speaker 5: back to headquarters and we found out that this guy
Speaker 5: was lazy. He candidly was incompetent, and nonetheless he was
Speaker 5: looking for a way to justify his failure at mokuah
Speaker 5: And one day we had received a Cassetta film thirty
Speaker 5: five millimeter film out of our station in Lockdon, which
Speaker 5: is far away from mokwah Ok. It's located in three corps,
Speaker 5: and our photographer and myself developed the role of film
Speaker 5: and started printing the pictures out and Smith came by
Speaker 5: and started pointing at one and said, this is my man,
Speaker 5: This is my man.
Speaker 4: And I said, what the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 5: And he pointed to an indigenous Vietnamese that was seated
Speaker 5: in and amongst a number of Vietnamese, and I said,
Speaker 5: what the hell are you talking about? So I pulled
Speaker 5: out his interpreter of principal agents, Dozia, and I saw
Speaker 5: actually no likenings likeness of the person in the picture
Speaker 5: and the picture of his interpreter principal agent. So Smith
Speaker 5: then went to the operations officer of B five to
Speaker 5: seven and the commander and tried to get them to
Speaker 5: act on it, and they refused to Why they refused to, actually,
Speaker 5: I do not know, because of the fact that they
Speaker 5: were gone within a month, they were close to rotating
Speaker 5: back to the States and did so. The new commander
Speaker 5: came in with a new operations officer and they fell
Speaker 5: hookline and sinker for Smith's story, And there's a protracted
Speaker 5: number of events that happened after that. Basically, they lure
Speaker 5: the interpretive principal agent into Saigon, luring him telling him
Speaker 5: that they had a new job for him, and they
Speaker 5: started interrogating him. They drugged him, they brought him to
Speaker 5: the train, put him in a connic container in the
Speaker 5: heat of July and Vietnam, and again started interrogating him.
Speaker 5: And twice they put him on a polygraph machine and
Speaker 5: twice he showed deception in the cator. Well, I contend
Speaker 5: who wouldn't under those kinds of circumstances. But nonetheless, the
Speaker 5: hierarchy in B five seven designs that they're going to
Speaker 5: do away with him, and initially they went to the
Speaker 5: CIA and tried to get the CIA to take Twin
Speaker 5: off of our hands, and basically the CIA said he's
Speaker 5: not our guy, it's your problem, and then they were correct,
Speaker 5: and so ostensibly our ops officer, Budge Williams asked them,
Speaker 5: well what would you do in our case? And ostensibly
Speaker 5: again the the base agent in the train at the
Speaker 5: train base where the CIA said well, we might consider
Speaker 5: doing away with him with extreme prejudice, but he never
Speaker 5: said they would, so that was in William's mind, and
Speaker 5: they concocted a way that they were going to get
Speaker 5: rid of Chin, which basically was to take him out
Speaker 5: in the train baying, shoot him in the head with
Speaker 5: a suppressed weapon and then dump his body overboard with
Speaker 5: chains and to weigh his body down in a mail bag,
Speaker 5: and they did so. Smith was part of that, and
Speaker 5: then a month later he started being anxious, having anxiety
Speaker 5: and thinking that he was next on the list to
Speaker 5: be assassinated, which was total mallarchy, but nonetheless he turned
Speaker 5: himself in to initially to the Army and then to
Speaker 5: the CIA, asking for asylum, and that opened up the case,
Speaker 5: and the case went on for several months and finally
Speaker 5: Coach Martiall charges were going to be placed against eight individuals,
Speaker 5: to include Colonel Barbara, who commanded the fifth Special Forces Group.
Speaker 4: In October.
Speaker 5: Thanks to President Nixon and the intercession of the Army
Speaker 5: Secretary Stanley resor General Abrams in Vietnam was shold to
Speaker 5: drop the charges, and they were dropped and the eight
Speaker 5: people were freed. They were also free to continue their
Speaker 5: military careers. The only one that didn't was Colonel Role
Speaker 5: because ostensibly what they asked him, where do you want
Speaker 5: to be a signed He said the fifth Special Forces
Speaker 5: Group and they, you know, the power to be said colonel,
Speaker 5: we can't do that.
Speaker 4: You know that.
Speaker 5: So he said, I retire. But everybody else did not
Speaker 5: have to leave the military story.
Speaker 2: It sounded like there were also some over zealous prosecutors
Speaker 2: that made a lot of mistakes and overstepped, and you
Speaker 2: know that they tried to coerce and intimidate you as well.
Speaker 4: It wasn't so well. What I was told by.
Speaker 5: An individual in the Judge Advocate General's office at in
Speaker 5: Long Ben was that beware of the chief Defense attorney,
Speaker 5: because he's working for the prosecution. Everything you tell him,
Speaker 5: he's going to tell the prosecution, I said, I got you, okay.
Speaker 4: So I asked this.
Speaker 5: Young gentleman who was a specialist Worths class from New York.
Speaker 5: He was a lawyer, but decided to get drafted rather
Speaker 5: than serve as a lawyer in the military because he
Speaker 5: knew he would be assigned as a legal clerk and
Speaker 5: would not have a long term payback to the military.
Speaker 5: So after two years you could get out. So I
Speaker 5: wrote a message to him, tell him how the two
Speaker 5: Criminal Investigation Division BOSOS had botched the investigation by making threats,
Speaker 5: false promises and tried to use coercion. And he got
Speaker 5: that to the defense attorneys. And so when I testified,
Speaker 5: they confronted the presiding officer in the Article fifteen investigation
Speaker 5: with that Shapman. And they also rate the CID guy
Speaker 5: over the cold and concerning his methodology.
Speaker 2: If you will, so, I mean, quite an adventure through
Speaker 2: Vietnam and your time there, and you know the next
Speaker 2: place you were at Special Action Force Asia over in
Speaker 2: Okinawa and bouncing around some other places in the region.
Speaker 2: I'd love to get you to tell us the story
Speaker 2: about how you met your wife in Korea.
Speaker 5: Well, out of the first Special Forces group we went
Speaker 5: up on an annual exercise called Full Eagle, and my
Speaker 5: shard major was a good friend by the name of
Speaker 5: Corned Beef Holiamau.
Speaker 4: He had a colorful nickname.
Speaker 5: So Julian Hollimam knew that I had been in Korea before,
Speaker 5: and he asked me, He said, do you know anybody
Speaker 5: that can help us out in terms of some services
Speaker 5: that we need? And I said yeah, And just by chance,
Speaker 5: a gentleman by the name of Kwan that I had
Speaker 5: known all the way back in nineteen sixty four was
Speaker 5: the area exchange manager out of Oaksan Airbase. So I
Speaker 5: went to see Kwan and I said, okay, con can
Speaker 5: you help us?
Speaker 4: He said, well, what do you need?
Speaker 5: He said, well, my start major wants a Roachi coach you,
Speaker 5: which is a rolling canteen if you will, that brings
Speaker 5: you little goodies to eat as well as toiletrees to sell.
Speaker 4: He wants that to come up at least once day.
Speaker 4: And he needs.
Speaker 5: A laundry because wait, we need to get our uniforms clean.
Speaker 5: He said okay, And so I joke with Kwanna and
Speaker 5: I said, whatever you do, send a good looking woman
Speaker 5: with you. So lo and behold, my wife shows up
Speaker 5: winning the laundry collection point.
Speaker 4: And that's how we met.
Speaker 5: And what really made me take a liking to her
Speaker 5: is one the evening I walked in to where she
Speaker 5: was working and there were another number of Korean Special
Speaker 5: Forces soldiers around her giving her a hard time, and
Speaker 5: she had a couple of hot tea in her in
Speaker 5: her hand and she immediately threw it at them, and
Speaker 5: I said, that's my kind of gal.
Speaker 2: And you guys, you know she she joined this adventure
Speaker 2: you were on through the rest of your military.
Speaker 4: Career, absolutely and has been my pillar for over fifty
Speaker 4: two years of marriage.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: So the next place you were at, assigned to the
Speaker 2: Special Warfare Center, start to tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about that. As I recalled you had you held both
Speaker 2: enlisted and officer ranks at the same time active in reserve.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about that period of your
Speaker 2: life and meeting Charlie beckwith and how that came onto
Speaker 2: your radar.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, I came back out of Okinawa not knowing
Speaker 5: if I could run or jump out of airplanes again,
Speaker 5: as I was in a camp for six months after civility,
Speaker 5: breaking my leg on a parachute jump on Okinawa. So
Speaker 5: I was assigned to the Special Forces School and the
Speaker 5: start major was named Henry's Gerniac. And I went to
Speaker 5: Zerniac and I said, turn Major, I don't no if
Speaker 5: I can jump. I don't know if I can run again.
Speaker 5: I am certainly going to give it everything I have.
Speaker 5: And he looked at me. He said, dumbass. I didn't
Speaker 5: hire you for your looks. I hired you for your brains.
Speaker 5: You assigned to the Opson Intel Committee. Yes, Major, So
Speaker 5: I struggled to get back into shape. I was selected
Speaker 5: as a Special Forces School Instructor.
Speaker 4: Of the Year for nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 5: And there's another long story, but I had been behind
Speaker 5: on promotions. And the reason why was the Army went
Speaker 5: to centralized records and in my centralized records for four
Speaker 5: pieces of paper with the most condemning one being my
Speaker 5: selection for the first Advanced Noncommissioned Officer Educational System class
Speaker 5: and no completion certificate. Well I didn't even know I
Speaker 5: had been selected because I was on Okinawa. Well, anyway,
Speaker 5: that was quickly rectified. I was quickly picked up to
Speaker 5: make Master Chargeant and then I found out that there
Speaker 5: were no slots available in Special Forces. For another, a
Speaker 5: new master chargeant. Special Forces had declined from a high
Speaker 5: of around twelve thousand in Vietnam to less than four
Speaker 5: thousand at that point in time in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 5: so there was no slots available. And two things happened.
Speaker 5: They told me you might as well caut on retiring
Speaker 5: out of the assignment you're going to, which was in
Speaker 5: a reserve officer training course assignment at the University of
Speaker 5: Santa Clara, because the guy before you spent six years there.
Speaker 4: And I said wow.
Speaker 5: So I went around Fort Burg at the time to
Speaker 5: say goodbye to some of my old friends, to include
Speaker 5: our Major Arab Zaki. And Zaki had been and took
Speaker 5: a direct commission in Vietnam at the same time. I
Speaker 5: had been offered a direct commission and I had refused.
Speaker 5: He took it, and so I went to say goodbye
Speaker 5: to Arab and then I teached him and I said, so,
Speaker 5: why did you lower yourself to become an officer?
Speaker 4: And he looked at me and he said seven hundred.
Speaker 4: And I said, what the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 4: Seven hundred?
Speaker 5: He said, dumbassd seven hundred dollars dollars a month I said,
Speaker 5: you was our major seven hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 4: I said, well, I'm a bitch. I guess I should
Speaker 4: have done it.
Speaker 5: He said, well, look here, there's a Reserve Commission board
Speaker 5: meeting right now. If you get your paper worked together tonight,
Speaker 5: I will get you before the board in the morning.
Speaker 4: But you got to get your paperwork together tonight. And
Speaker 4: I did. It.
Speaker 5: Took quite a lot of effort, but you know, my
Speaker 5: typing and writing skills came to the forefront. So I
Speaker 5: was ready passed the board with flying colors and received
Speaker 5: a reserve commission as a captain in infantry. There was
Speaker 5: no Special Forces branch at that time, and so off
Speaker 5: I went on the ROTC assignment. And later in nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy seven, when Delta was about to be started, I
Speaker 5: was selected to go to the Army Sergeant Major Academy,
Speaker 5: which I was. I called it extortion for a whole
Speaker 5: bunch of reasons, and I did not want to go,
Speaker 5: but nonetheless I was forced to go. The day I
Speaker 5: reported there, my old boss on the Opson Intel Committee
Speaker 5: for a foreman said call beck with and I said why.
Speaker 5: He said, because I told you to him. He said, okay, Forrest.
Speaker 5: I called beck With, and he, in typical Beckward fashion,
Speaker 5: said asked.
Speaker 4: Me, are you ready, boy? And I said, sure, I
Speaker 4: don't know what you're talking about. You goddamn know when
Speaker 4: I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: You the intel You long story short, when I had
Speaker 5: left the SF School on that ROTC assignment, I had
Speaker 5: prepared a three page letter for Colonel Beckwith pointing out
Speaker 5: some ways that the Opton Intel Committee could improve without
Speaker 5: bad mouthing anybody, but you know, coming up with some
Speaker 5: plans and rationale.
Speaker 4: In terms of changing around.
Speaker 5: And he took that too hard, and so I became
Speaker 5: his first choice to be the intelligence toward major for
Speaker 5: the Delta Force.
Speaker 2: Those early days, I mean were very interesting both there
Speaker 2: are a lot of interesting people in the unit, but
Speaker 2: also interesting things happening as we're trying to develop this
Speaker 2: counter terrorism capability. Do you want to tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about, like who were the people in this unit,
Speaker 2: how did your training begin, what it was like standing
Speaker 2: up a unit from scratch essentially?
Speaker 5: Well, the good thing, the longest story is that you
Speaker 5: know Beckworth, when he relinquished command of the Special Forces
Speaker 5: School in late nineteen seventy six, was given authorization by
Speaker 5: then Major General Bob Kingston, who commended the JFK Center
Speaker 5: and in fact was the only general officer in all
Speaker 5: of what they call special operations today. But General Kingston
Speaker 5: authorized Beckwith to do a study to create a small
Speaker 5: British Special Air Service type organization within the US Special Forces,
Speaker 5: and so Beckwith was doing that. Then a couple of
Speaker 5: things happened. This was late seventy six when he was
Speaker 5: given that authorization, so he's working on this study. And
Speaker 5: then in March of nineteen seventy seven, so called Hanafi
Speaker 5: Muslim incident happened in Washington, d C. Where the Hanafia Muslims,
Speaker 5: a splinter group with the Nation of Islam, took over
Speaker 5: three buildings in downtown Wall, Washington, d C. And the
Speaker 5: federal government was paralyzed in a Washington Metropolitan Police Department
Speaker 5: had no capability to do surgical hostage rescue, so a
Speaker 5: call was made to General Kingston and asked if he
Speaker 5: could send his special forces up there to resolve the incident.
Speaker 5: And Kingston very honestly answered, only if you want the
Speaker 5: lives of all the hostages to be at risk, because
Speaker 5: he knew special forces and the US Army did not
Speaker 5: have a surgical hostage rescue capability. So but at that
Speaker 5: point Kingston then turned to back with and said change
Speaker 5: your focus and start working on counter terrorism.
Speaker 4: And Beckwi did.
Speaker 5: He formed four others around him, started Major William Country Crimes,
Speaker 5: then Major Lewis Burris and Marion lieuten Colonel Kurt Hurst
Speaker 5: and Chuck Odrizi who was a Captain of AJA at
Speaker 5: that time, and they formed a study group and they
Speaker 5: started putting together how they were going to start Delta,
Speaker 5: what kind of people they needed, how are they're going
Speaker 5: to do recruiting, how they were going to do operations,
Speaker 5: how they were going to do assessment and selection, because
Speaker 5: that was something Charlie Beckert adamantly insisted upon. So it
Speaker 5: was those five individuals that are most important in the
Speaker 5: formation of the Delta Force. And what happened then is
Speaker 5: in October of seventy seven, bequd happened to be in
Speaker 5: a Pentagon when Green shoots group of nine the German
Speaker 5: counter Terrorism Force took back to hijacked airliner in Mogadishu, Somalia,
Speaker 5: with the help of the British Special Air Service, and
Speaker 5: one of the questions that was floating around in the
Speaker 5: Pentagon and National Command authority was what is a flash bang?
Speaker 5: And the only guy in the building in the Pentagon
Speaker 5: that knew what a flash bank was was Charlie Beckworth.
Speaker 5: And that made a name not only for Charlie but
Speaker 5: for the organization that he was working on funding founding.
Speaker 5: So orders were cut and those orders were somewhere around
Speaker 5: nineteen November nineteen seventy seven to actually create the unit.
Speaker 5: But that unit was going to be created even before
Speaker 5: that because it had the support of the Army Deputy
Speaker 5: Chief of Staff or operations plans. But the name of
Speaker 5: then Lieutenant General Edward Meyer that knew he was going
Speaker 5: to be the next Army chief of Staff and did.
Speaker 2: And some of the interesting guys thought, I believe Charlie's
Speaker 2: first deputy Dick Potter.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely a superb person, officer, planner and the patriot.
Speaker 1: I've spoken to him on the phone before. He is
Speaker 1: a great guy.
Speaker 2: I did not know that he socked someone in the
Speaker 2: Cross Creek mall Invil.
Speaker 5: Dick Potter played football at at college in Michigan that
Speaker 5: no longer has a football program. But he's a character
Speaker 5: and hard hardest woodpecker lips, as they say in one
Speaker 5: of my best friends in life.
Speaker 2: Potter went on to command Tense Special Forces Group, of course,
Speaker 2: and another interesting character Herman Adler.
Speaker 4: Oh, Herman the German.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, Herman unfortunately passed away a few years ago,
Speaker 5: but you know, he.
Speaker 4: Emigrated from Germany.
Speaker 5: He had a Volkswagen koga Wagen, and so you know,
Speaker 5: we used to teach him about being a crowd and
Speaker 5: still wanting to be in the Nazi Army. He was
Speaker 5: originally from Munich and still had family there.
Speaker 4: But Herman was really another.
Speaker 5: You know, most of our people initially were very acquired,
Speaker 5: very humble, wanting to do a job, not seeking to
Speaker 5: make a name for themselves, but to do something interesting
Speaker 5: for the country. And Herm Dick Potter. I can name
Speaker 5: tons of others who were in the same boat.
Speaker 2: Another thing I'd like to ask you about, because you
Speaker 2: spend some time on this in your book. There was
Speaker 2: this question at the time can Delta operate domestically in
Speaker 2: the United States? And there was some back and forth
Speaker 2: about this topic. I just wonder if you could tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about that conversation and how that
Speaker 2: evolved over time.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, there were people, yeah, I.
Speaker 4: To be honest, I guess the people were split on
Speaker 4: whether we should have a domestic mission or no game.
Speaker 5: At the time, it was overseas terrorism that was dramming
Speaker 5: of the wall and you can't do everything. And in
Speaker 5: order to do things domestically, what you needed was to
Speaker 5: have the Posse Comitatis Act waived or the Insurgency Act
Speaker 5: implemented by the President of the United States. That was
Speaker 5: going to be very problematic, and you know, we simply well,
Speaker 5: we needed to concentrate our efforts overseas, and eventually that
Speaker 5: planned out. We had worked very closely with the FBI
Speaker 5: from day one, even before day one when Beckwett had
Speaker 5: the Special Forces School. Okay, so, but they could not
Speaker 5: get that warrewithal to start what it's called today the
Speaker 5: Hostage Rescue Team and their Critical Incident Response Group.
Speaker 4: It took them some years to gain that authority.
Speaker 5: And there's another story about how that happened. But one
Speaker 5: of the most two most influential ones were John Otto,
Speaker 5: who had been the Special Agent in charge in Chicago
Speaker 5: and in a year encountered two acts of Hubble Croatian
Speaker 5: terrorism in Chicago and later became the executive Assistant Director
Speaker 5: of the FBI.
Speaker 4: And the other one was Jim.
Speaker 5: Mackenzie, who was the assistant director for Chronicle and the
Speaker 5: training side of the FBI, and he later would become
Speaker 5: a special Agent in charge of a major field office.
Speaker 5: So those two were very influential in terms of bringing
Speaker 5: the FBI around to understanding that they needed a hostage
Speaker 5: rescue team and dedicated capability.
Speaker 2: I will just point out for our viewers out there,
Speaker 2: we've had Danny Colson on the show twice. That's right,
Speaker 2: if you guys want to go back and look at that,
Speaker 2: and also Mike Vining who was one of the original
Speaker 2: Delta members as well, so you could find those preview episodes.
Speaker 6: Danny Colson was one of the guys responsible standing up
Speaker 6: the hostage rescue team.
Speaker 1: The story is fantastic, Wade, You.
Speaker 2: Right about Danny doing an exchange with Delta at one point.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, well you know, Danny.
Speaker 5: Came in as I afterthought, I'm being blunt about it, okay,
Speaker 5: because the movement within Division six and Jim McKenzie was
Speaker 5: led by something called SORE his Special Operations. It was
Speaker 5: a unit anyway, and I forget what it was, but
Speaker 5: they had guys like John Simioni who became the first tipaty,
Speaker 5: but Jim was John was a former Saint Louis, comp
Speaker 5: rough and rugged guy and not you know, suitable too
Speaker 5: candidly command yah and Colton was. Colson was an up
Speaker 5: and comer in the FBI, and so he was picked
Speaker 5: particularly to leave the hostage Rescue team.
Speaker 1: Perfectly.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, I'm sorry, go ahead, I interrupted you please
Speaker 6: go ahead.
Speaker 5: Initially, what the FBI wanted to do was to do
Speaker 5: sort of a walk before you run things, So they
Speaker 5: sent five guys down to Delta to spend a couple
Speaker 5: of months with us, led by Danny Colson. Sammy Only
Speaker 5: was another Jamie Ashton who was their major briefer.
Speaker 4: Preacher for years, was another Tom.
Speaker 5: Nicoletty, and then who never became part of the hostage
Speaker 5: rescue team, but then Jeff mcwaymeyer. And Jeff had been
Speaker 5: the SWAT team leader for the Washington Field office and
Speaker 5: had been the league on a mutual exercise I said,
Speaker 5: we did called Operation Masquerade that proved the capability of
Speaker 5: Delta and the need for the FBI to do something
Speaker 5: different other than their regional call outs. And so those
Speaker 5: five people were to form the cadre, if you will,
Speaker 5: for the HRT and did with the exception of Tom Nicoletty.
Speaker 2: So while all this is going on, Delta is getting
Speaker 2: stood up and validated. And this was something interesting that
Speaker 2: I didn't know. The first mission that came across their
Speaker 2: desk was the kidnapping of Ambassador Dubs in Afghanistan, and
Speaker 2: then like a day later the embassy in Taran get seized.
Speaker 1: Tell us what that timeframe was like.
Speaker 4: Well, it wasn't quite that close, but.
Speaker 5: You know, we were alerted to the kidnapping of Ambassador
Speaker 5: Dubson in Afghanistan, and we started scrambling trying to get
Speaker 5: ourselves out of Fort Bragg and before we could even
Speaker 5: get off the ground, Dubs hid. Ambassador Doubbs had been
Speaker 5: killed in Afghanistan, so that canceled that mission a game.
Speaker 5: In February of nineteen seventy nine, you know, the US
Speaker 5: Embassy in Tehran was taken over for the first time.
Speaker 5: The Ayatola interceded and had it immediately turned back to
Speaker 5: the US government. But the only sticky wicket being they
Speaker 5: kept one Marine security guard, Kim Kraus, hostage for about
Speaker 5: a week and they finally released him. But nonetheless, we
Speaker 5: knew there was just a forerunner to what was going
Speaker 5: to happen in Iran later, and we had for permission
Speaker 5: to go in and do an extensive survey of the
Speaker 5: embassy and its surrounding areas and to be able to
Speaker 5: respond accordingly. The State Department approved giving us what they
Speaker 5: call country clearance, but believe it or not, the United
Speaker 5: States European Command that had overview of Iran at that
Speaker 5: point in time denied.
Speaker 4: What is called theater clearance.
Speaker 5: So we were incapable of going in and doing a
Speaker 5: detailed survey of the embassy grounds and the embassy itself,
Speaker 5: and that cost us.
Speaker 4: It cost us peak time.
Speaker 5: So when Delta was formed, General Meyer had made us
Speaker 5: do an initial assessment process in July ofineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 5: whereas what Beckett had asked for was two years in
Speaker 5: order to develop a so called full operational capability, which
Speaker 5: would have been nineteen seventy nine. So in nineteen seventy
Speaker 5: we passed that. By the way, in nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 5: and a so called operation called Operation Blue Light was
Speaker 5: forced to close. So in nineteen seventy nine, General Meyer,
Speaker 5: now the Chief of Staff of the Army, it comes
Speaker 5: up with a plan for us to do an international
Speaker 5: validation because he understood what it would bring to the
Speaker 5: United States of America if we had international personnel that
Speaker 5: voults for the organization.
Speaker 4: So we did a exercise at.
Speaker 5: In South Carolina, and the international validators included Ulrich Wegner,
Speaker 5: the first commander of the grensh Youth Group of nine,
Speaker 5: the German CT Force, Christian Pluteau, the leader of their
Speaker 5: John Darmay International.
Speaker 4: Connor Terrovison Team, and.
Speaker 5: Johnny Wance, Brigadier Johnny Wants, who had previously commanded the
Speaker 5: British twenty second Special Air Service and was ahead of
Speaker 5: their special forces at that time as a brigadier general.
Speaker 5: So those were our three key international validators, but it
Speaker 5: also included senior people from a whole range of US
Speaker 5: government organizations and we passed. Ironically, we passed on the
Speaker 5: fourth of November nineteen seventy nine, which was the day
Speaker 5: that our embassy was taken over again.
Speaker 2: Unreal anyone, So you are a intelligence officer in Delta,
Speaker 2: you guys are doing this real world mission. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is you know, you guys are really breaking ground here,
Speaker 2: doing something that no one's really done before.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us what it was?
Speaker 2: Like building the intelligence packet around this operation during the
Speaker 2: planning phase, how you went about, you know, putting all
Speaker 2: of this.
Speaker 4: Together, you mean initially.
Speaker 2: Or initially for when it was still riceful before Eagle Clack.
Speaker 5: Okay, so even before Eagle well, you know, you have
Speaker 5: to go back and look at when we started in
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy seven, the total number of dedicated terrorism analysts
Speaker 5: in the entire United States government with less than twenty
Speaker 5: one twenty one entire US government.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: When we created Delta, I brought in four analysts, so
Speaker 5: now the count became twenty five. So there was no
Speaker 5: extant terrorism database. The RAND Corporation had sold a bill
Speaker 5: of goods to the United States Air Force and the
Speaker 5: Defense Intelligence Agency, and what they taught it as a
Speaker 5: database was in fact just a compilation of events.
Speaker 4: That's not a database.
Speaker 5: So we worked with the Defense Advanced for Research Projects
Speaker 5: Agency on creating a true database that could be churched
Speaker 5: and with anal analysis in place within those search fields.
Speaker 5: So that was one of the major things we did.
Speaker 5: We also began very unique relationships with a number of
Speaker 5: intergovernmental agencies, to include the FBI, CIA, the Department of
Speaker 5: Energy because of their Nuclear Emergency Search Program and the
Speaker 5: Federal Aviation Administration because they are they're hijacking and they
Speaker 5: had principal responsibility in those days. So we had to
Speaker 5: work hard at establishing all of these relations to include
Speaker 5: with the Department of State, and so fast forwarding when
Speaker 5: the embassy gets taken down in November nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 5: very quickly we were told that we needed to break
Speaker 5: all our contact with the Department of State. And at
Speaker 5: that point in time nineteen seventy nine, the best analysts
Speaker 5: of terrorism in the United States government were found in
Speaker 5: the State Department Diplomatic Security Wants Center, and there were
Speaker 5: about six analysts here that absolutely were doing a superb job.
Speaker 5: They were led by Telford, a former regional security officer,
Speaker 5: former Marine, and he knew what the whole needed to
Speaker 5: be done and his people did too. So when they
Speaker 5: would analyze a terrorist event, they would have drawings, cheumatics,
Speaker 5: listing of weapons, you know, looking at their methodologies, et cetera,
Speaker 5: and so forth, so more than just a compilation of
Speaker 5: something that happened. So now we were told that we
Speaker 5: needed to break our relationship with them and then not
Speaker 5: contact them.
Speaker 4: The reason why was that.
Speaker 5: Irris Fans the Circtarian State and his deputy Warren Christopher,
Speaker 5: had declared that they were adamantly opposed to the use
Speaker 5: of any US military force to deal with the situation
Speaker 5: in Iran, Okay, and so.
Speaker 4: Whether it was.
Speaker 5: President Carter or whoever, but the hierarchy declared that we
Speaker 5: needed to break those relationships with State Department, and we did.
Speaker 2: Warren Christopher, well, I was just going to say, Warren
Speaker 2: Christopher went on to screw up in Bosnia, too, didn't they?
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you, yeah.
Speaker 5: But but anyway, when when when the embassy went down,
Speaker 5: we needed to know a whole until because of the
Speaker 5: lack of preparation, we found that there were no good
Speaker 5: blueprints on the embassy.
Speaker 4: What happened was CIA and NSA got together.
Speaker 5: They called some of their people that had served in
Speaker 5: that embassy before. They got pictures, they got sketches, they
Speaker 5: got all kinds of things, and they put together a
Speaker 5: marvelous model, skilled model within a month of the event game.
Speaker 5: And they also, even though we didn't have per se blueprints,
Speaker 5: we started having information on doors, door the way doors open,
Speaker 5: locks and so on and so forth, not as good
Speaker 5: as we would have liked.
Speaker 4: To have had, but far better than nothing. Okay. So
Speaker 4: then there was the issue of how many hostages are there?
Speaker 4: That took almost two weeks to determine.
Speaker 5: And in and amongst that time, it was also found
Speaker 5: out that in addition to the sixty six Americans that
Speaker 5: were taken hostage inside the embassy, and that the Ministry
Speaker 5: of Point Affairs on that day, that there were six
Speaker 5: others that the Canadians were hiding out.
Speaker 4: Joe.
Speaker 5: But then we needed to find out what are their
Speaker 5: medical conditions, and that took time. We needed to find
Speaker 5: out how can we get into.
Speaker 4: Iran and out of Iran?
Speaker 5: And that took time and time and time, and so
Speaker 5: it was a very tedious and it took a lot
Speaker 5: of hours to get our plans together.
Speaker 2: One fascinating detail that I, again was unaware of when
Speaker 2: I was reading your book.
Speaker 1: Could you tell us about.
Speaker 4: Bob Plan, Great American? Yes, Bob during World War Two
Speaker 4: was part of the Office of Strategic Services and served
Speaker 4: in Yugoslavia.
Speaker 5: Game He later became a what they call knock nonofficial
Speaker 5: cover operative for the CIA and had gone into retirement.
Speaker 5: And he was retired in Trieste, Italy, right on the
Speaker 5: border with the former Yugoslavia, and they literally brought him
Speaker 5: out of retirement. Now I don't know why they brought
Speaker 5: Bob Plan in particular out of retirement, but they.
Speaker 4: Chose the right guy.
Speaker 5: He had the skills, he had the courage, and he
Speaker 5: went into Tehran several times, with the first time being
Speaker 5: close to December of nineteen seventy nine. It took the
Speaker 5: agency that amount of time to find somebody suitable to
Speaker 5: send it to Tehran. And you know, I can't go
Speaker 5: into all the details as to what above try, but
Speaker 5: he tried to make contact with the hostages and had
Speaker 5: some success. He had a whole bunch of logistics things
Speaker 5: that he needed to do, like find a warehouse, fine trucks,
Speaker 5: fine fuel for the rescue attempt.
Speaker 4: He did that in a first class manner. He did reconnaissance.
Speaker 5: Just too much to expect from one person, but he
Speaker 5: did what he could.
Speaker 1: He was the embodiment of the in Toku code.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, you know, very quiet, uh I did you know
Speaker 5: describing the book how I first met him. You know, stupidly,
Speaker 5: I say stupidly, But we were allowed to fit any
Speaker 5: resource that the agency was going to put in direct
Speaker 5: support of US, and Bob Plan was one. So I
Speaker 5: came out of isolation and up to Washington, d C.
Speaker 5: To have given the name of a motel that still exists,
Speaker 5: and went there to meet Bob Planned. Knocked on the
Speaker 5: door and heard a gruff voice say come in. And
Speaker 5: I went in there and sitting in a dark corner
Speaker 5: is Bob Plan looking at him and he's got an
Speaker 5: our old face and you know, sun Tan And so
Speaker 5: I went up. I introduced him myself to him. He
Speaker 5: stood up and in his gravelly voice, he started talking
Speaker 5: to me. And I asked him. I said, I understand
Speaker 5: you were in retirement. Where were you in retirement? So
Speaker 5: rather than say tree, yes, he said in the Mediterranean.
Speaker 5: And for whatever stupid reason, the movie the Guns are
Speaker 5: Never all flashed in front of my mind and I'm saying,
Speaker 5: Bob Plan looking like Anthony Quinn, you know, the partisan
Speaker 5: that went in and helped destroy these German placements. In
Speaker 5: the movie guns are never And I said to myself,
Speaker 5: this is going to work.
Speaker 4: This is a gun. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Out of curiosity you were since you were in the
Speaker 6: intel shop, I'll ask you this.
Speaker 1: I know it's close hold.
Speaker 6: But were you aware of the efforts of grill flame
Speaker 6: while you were a grill flame project.
Speaker 5: The operation plan called for one MC one thirty combat talent.
Speaker 5: The operation plan called for one MC one thirty combat
Speaker 5: talent to lift off in our head of the other
Speaker 5: one thirties that we're going to leave Monster Island.
Speaker 4: And the reason why was that they would be able
Speaker 4: to go in.
Speaker 5: And if we crash landed on the surface, then the
Speaker 5: mission would be aborted. Okay, but if we landed safely,
Speaker 5: then the remotely triggered landing lights would be checked out
Speaker 5: and roadblocks. They went around in an oval and lined
Speaker 5: up to land again, and they did successfully. It was
Speaker 5: a rough landing, according to most I did not think
Speaker 5: it was a rough landing.
Speaker 4: I was standing on the.
Speaker 5: Rear of the aircraft at the ramp, so I don't
Speaker 5: know if my adrenaline was flowing so fast or whatever,
Speaker 5: but I did not experience a rough landing. But everybody
Speaker 5: else later told me, yeah, it was a.
Speaker 4: Very bad landing.
Speaker 5: So we started attaching the clamshell, rear doors start opening,
Speaker 5: and I had after the crew chief to signal beam
Speaker 5: when they were about to stop.
Speaker 4: And so when I got the signal from him, I.
Speaker 5: Had worked out a plan with staff chargeant Little John,
Speaker 5: my ranking ranger, that we would then exit the aircraft.
Speaker 5: He would move forward and I would go to the
Speaker 5: rear to establish initial security. And that was very fortunate
Speaker 5: because shortly afterwards I'm in the rear or to the
Speaker 5: rear of the aircraft and I hear Bob Rubio, one
Speaker 5: of my rangers, come up on me on a motorcyclone,
Speaker 5: and the next I get on the back of the
Speaker 5: motorcyclone and the next thing we see on the lights
Speaker 5: of a Mercedes bus coming down through down the road.
Speaker 5: Little John fired M two O three forty millimeter grenade wrong.
Speaker 4: It impacted in front of the bus.
Speaker 5: The bus came to a stop and I said to Ruby,
Speaker 5: I said, Rube, let's go. We can't wait on our
Speaker 5: other two, who were Kurt Massey and Mike mcgirham. They
Speaker 5: were airstircling a little slow getting off of the airplane,
Speaker 5: so we started taking off down this dirt track on
Speaker 5: a Yamaha motorcycle.
Speaker 4: He looks that back at me and he said, sir,
Speaker 4: and I said, I see him. Groupe.
Speaker 5: Well, we saw were the lights of a vehicle coming
Speaker 5: at us, So I said, go left, go south, lay
Speaker 5: your bike down, grab one of your light anti tag
Speaker 5: weapons that were strapped onto the handlebars of the motorcycle,
Speaker 5: and come up on me, which he did. I told
Speaker 5: him move forward to me. They cover behind the burm.
Speaker 5: The burm was where a road grader had put up
Speaker 5: about a one foot berm on the side of the road,
Speaker 5: and Rubio did so. I'm standing in the middle of
Speaker 5: the road shick thing where the vehicle to stop. I
Speaker 5: know it's a truck because of the height, its spread
Speaker 5: of the lights. I can't tell you, honestly how fast
Speaker 5: that truck is coming. I know I am illuminated by
Speaker 5: his headlights. He's still coming. I opened fire with my
Speaker 5: M sixteen, knowing in my heart I can't stop a
Speaker 5: damn truck with an M sixteen, And I had a
Speaker 5: flashback to Vietnam, which is another story that not pertinent.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 5: And the rules of engagement were minimal use of force.
Speaker 5: So I'm firing at the radiator in the headlights. And
Speaker 5: I finally said f this, and I raised my point.
Speaker 5: I aim, he's still coming. Room sure cockula ready, sure
Speaker 5: fire womb guys, whore A flame is going up the
Speaker 5: back of a three thousand gallon fuel tanker. The truck
Speaker 5: did not explode, mind you, okay, but what the hell
Speaker 5: else can go wrong? So I said, Rue, keep me covered.
Speaker 5: He's lying behind the berm and I try to do
Speaker 5: move in on a circle to keep from being directly
Speaker 5: illuminated as I instead of moving forward. And as I
Speaker 5: came in from the side, I saw another similar truck
Speaker 5: gasoline tanker come up behind him, and I ran back
Speaker 5: and to get Rubio, and I said, there's another truck
Speaker 5: behind her. He said, sir, if somebody just jumped out
Speaker 5: of the cab on the first one. I said, okay,
Speaker 5: let's go grab the motorcycle. It took a number of
Speaker 5: kicks before the damn thing kicked over. That Rubio is
Speaker 5: something with his night vision gorgos, and I said, what's
Speaker 5: the matter. He said, my mvgs aren't working, sir. And
Speaker 5: I went like this, and I said, son of a bitch,
Speaker 5: I had given up my mvjs because we were short
Speaker 5: of equipment. And I'm cussing myself, but I said, okay,
Speaker 5: we had infrared paper taped over the headlight.
Speaker 4: So I said, Rue, just give it your best.
Speaker 5: And take off, and if you go out ten minutes
Speaker 5: or ten miles and can't catch it, come on back,
Speaker 5: which he did, and he was not able to catch
Speaker 5: a second vehicle had too much of a head start
Speaker 5: on us.
Speaker 4: But I'm saying, what the hell else can go wrong?
Speaker 5: And in reality, the only other thing that well, only
Speaker 5: two other things went wrong were the helicopters.
Speaker 4: Were late coming in.
Speaker 5: And then one end corner had hydraulic problems and Ed Seffert,
Speaker 5: who was the helo squadron commander, declared that it was unfliable,
Speaker 5: that was imminent failure, and so we were down to
Speaker 5: five flable and the mission was aborted. Then the next
Speaker 5: thing that went wrong was when Jim Schaeffer was attempting
Speaker 5: to fly his helicopter back to the Nimitz, he collided
Speaker 5: with an Easy one thirty with Delta's Peace Quadron on board,
Speaker 5: and that led to the death of three Marines and
Speaker 5: five Air Force people.
Speaker 2: And it was a little bit dicey, as I recall
Speaker 2: for you during the exfiltration as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I you know, originally I was assigned three rangers
Speaker 5: for whatever reason they decided, I don't know who they
Speaker 5: were candidly, but I was reinforced with seven other people.
Speaker 5: So now I had including myself, a total of eleven
Speaker 5: and two motorcycles. So when the mission was supported, or
Speaker 5: even before it was supported, I started shuttling.
Speaker 4: My people back two at a time, one on the back.
Speaker 5: Of the two motorcycles I had, and so I was
Speaker 5: the odd guy out. I was walking backwards down the
Speaker 5: road to keep my eye out towards where vehicles might
Speaker 5: come from came, so I was unaware of the crash
Speaker 5: of the helicopter into the one thirty. There was a
Speaker 5: lot of noise out there, so more noise was meaningless
Speaker 5: to me in terms of a crash game, and I
Speaker 5: certainly did not see the fire that ensued because I'm
Speaker 5: walking backwards.
Speaker 4: Game, I might not have made it all if it weren't for.
Speaker 5: The good work of Carl Savory, who was our acting surgeon,
Speaker 5: who made a jerk by the name of Johnson come
Speaker 5: back on his cheap to look for me.
Speaker 4: One more time.
Speaker 5: Otherwise I'd have been left on my own.
Speaker 2: You guys evacuated back began planning a second attempt, honey Badger,
Speaker 2: but by that time the hostages had kind of been
Speaker 2: spread around, you suspected, and a hostage rescue effort would
Speaker 2: be not really possible.
Speaker 5: Correct, Yeah, you know, because they were scattered through the
Speaker 5: seven wins, And yeah, it would have been very problematic
Speaker 5: to go after three to five of them and to
Speaker 5: see the others undoubtedly be killed in the aftermath.
Speaker 2: There was one more army adventurer I'd like to ask
Speaker 2: you about, and that was I guess the next mission
Speaker 2: that the unit rolled into, which was potentially rescuing American
Speaker 2: POWs in Laos.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was a sad concoction, a lie ye feed
Speaker 5: by the retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel who I can
Speaker 5: only have despicable words to describe him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but he lied.
Speaker 5: He continued with his lies even after the mission was
Speaker 5: called off because of the lack of true intelligence and
Speaker 5: the fact that it was in fact known that he
Speaker 5: had lied about crossing into laws, but he continued to
Speaker 5: pursue what he wanted to do. And are the rumor
Speaker 5: mill had it that he got over a million dollars
Speaker 5: each from Clintwood, Clint Eastwood and Bill Shafter on.
Speaker 4: His lies.
Speaker 1: To fund his supposed rescue effort.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, and having supposedly seen live American POWs inside.
Speaker 2: You point out in the book that the intelligence was
Speaker 2: pretty shaky from the get go. I mean there was
Speaker 2: an imagery analyst who thought that the shadows of the
Speaker 2: people in this area were tall enough that they were Caucasian.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is kind of flaky.
Speaker 4: Right, absolutely. And the other one was.
Speaker 5: Suppose it be fifty two stamped in the grass around
Speaker 5: the compound. You know, first off, you had to strain
Speaker 5: yourself to believe that says B fifty two. And even
Speaker 5: if it did, what the hell's a meaning? It made
Speaker 5: no sense?
Speaker 1: And I mean.
Speaker 2: I gather from your opinion way that you don't put
Speaker 2: any stock in this idea that there were American POWs
Speaker 2: left behind after the war.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I tend to agree with you based I was a
Speaker 2: little bit too young for that, but based on everything
Speaker 2: I've read and everyone I've talked to.
Speaker 4: You know, we had some defectoris I forget how many?
Speaker 1: Garfield?
Speaker 5: Yeah, m but I you know real po ws well,
Speaker 5: you know, efforts ever since then have continued continually debunked
Speaker 5: live po ws, least in Vietnam, and after the Paris
Speaker 5: Accords and the return of our po ws.
Speaker 1: Talk to us then a little bit about retirement.
Speaker 2: How did how did you sort of end your career
Speaker 2: in the Army.
Speaker 5: Unfortunately, I retired very angry. I just couldn't described as
Speaker 5: Boso Johnson who had become the Delta Deputy commander without
Speaker 5: being either Delta qualified or Special Forces qualified.
Speaker 4: And and yeah, it was a lousy officer.
Speaker 5: He allegedly won the Defense Distinguished Service Cross in Vietnam.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he did or not. We all
Speaker 4: I know is he was a lossy officer.
Speaker 5: So General Doger was kidnapped in Italy, and normally I
Speaker 5: was one that would be.
Speaker 4: Selected to go on a so called advanced party.
Speaker 5: So I walked into Johnson's office and I see this
Speaker 5: black kit bag with a black uniform, a black suppress
Speaker 5: MP five, a black helman, and I said, what the
Speaker 5: hell is this? And he looked at me and said, well,
Speaker 5: you know, I said, no, I goddamn don't know.
Speaker 4: Well, we got to be ready for I said, go
Speaker 4: f yourself.
Speaker 5: You know you're not goddamn qualified, you know, And besides that,
Speaker 5: you don't understand what the hell we're going there for.
Speaker 5: We're going there to support the US embassy and the
Speaker 5: Italian government, and if the Italian Italian government wants us,
Speaker 5: then we would consider a hostage rescue.
Speaker 4: But you're not qualified, so why are you going with
Speaker 4: all this crap?
Speaker 5: And I walked out through my retirement papers and was
Speaker 5: based on another thing that was happening where the Joint
Speaker 5: Special Operations Command J two was accusing me of sabotaging
Speaker 5: a program that I had created. I was very angry.
Speaker 5: And you know, the term PTSD did not exist in
Speaker 5: those days, but I had it. And in my case,
Speaker 5: as I found out later, the manifestation that I have
Speaker 5: in terms of PTSD is called anger. And my anger
Speaker 5: was ready to literally knock the block off or kill
Speaker 5: this J two or Johnson. And I said, I can't
Speaker 5: do that for my wife. It's time to go.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I guess it's somewhat ironic.
Speaker 2: After retirement, you found yourself working for Charlie back with again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it it was. It was tough, very honestly.
Speaker 5: Charlie tried to pull the wool over my eyes on
Speaker 5: several things. I never told him, you know, go pound
Speaker 5: sand because I know what you're doing.
Speaker 4: But I did know what he was doing, like lowering
Speaker 4: my salary and so on and so forth. But you
Speaker 4: know the bottom line is I still wanted he to succeed.
Speaker 4: And the business to succeed.
Speaker 5: But it came down to the point that there was
Speaker 5: no way in Hill that it was going to succeed.
Speaker 5: Charlie just simply was not a good business man, you know.
Speaker 5: And the kinds of things that we had intended to do,
Speaker 5: we're not doable unless we had a base upon which
Speaker 5: to lean on to pay the light bills, the salaries,
Speaker 5: et cetera. And instead of seed money, what we literally
Speaker 5: had was a desktop loan, which when the First National
Speaker 5: Bank of Midland went under, the government investigators literally found
Speaker 5: that desktop loan in the president's desk of the First
Speaker 5: National Bank, a milan and they were going to call
Speaker 5: our company on that loan and have us pay attack
Speaker 5: and we're not able to do so, so shrug get
Speaker 5: my shoulders. It was on to something else.
Speaker 2: And you found some work with the Department of Energy
Speaker 2: and a number of other different contract and positions, and
Speaker 2: I mean one of the things that came out through
Speaker 2: your book. And not all of these contractor jobs you had,
Speaker 2: but many of them. You sound very frustrated with petty bureaucrats,
Speaker 2: nepotism in the ranks, how people are being promoted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as well as ethics immorality.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, and that continues to bother me, you know,
Speaker 5: because I see people that get positions of authority without
Speaker 5: any decent qualifications. And it happens in every administration. So
Speaker 5: I'm not picking on Republicans who have Democrats. I'm not
Speaker 5: picking on Biden or Trump or anybody.
Speaker 4: But it happens.
Speaker 5: But it is frustrating, okay, because there are ways where
Speaker 5: the system can work, where you do legitimate election based
Speaker 5: on qualifications, but a lot of times that those times happened,
Speaker 5: and that's just the way the world goes wrong.
Speaker 1: I guess we can get a little bit more into it.
Speaker 2: But you know, you did continue to do some good
Speaker 2: and secret But one thing I wanted to point out
Speaker 2: and ask you about was after nine to eleven, you
Speaker 2: started going on Fox News as a sort of military analyst,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to ask you what it was like
Speaker 2: to be this person that had lived your life sort
Speaker 2: of in the shadow as an intelligence professional and now
Speaker 2: being on television in front of a camera telling talking
Speaker 2: about this stuff.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, my motivation to go on Fox was because
Speaker 5: there were too many talking hits that absolutely had no
Speaker 5: concept of what they were talking about. Yeah, and they
Speaker 5: were lying, they were embellishing things, they were trying to
Speaker 5: make themselves look good. You know, my intent was to
Speaker 5: counter what they were doing without revealing classified information.
Speaker 4: And you know.
Speaker 5: Some people may disagree with me, but I think I
Speaker 5: did that very well.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: We saw, you know, like Wayne Simmons and others that
Speaker 6: might gain national notoriety on these shows who were completely
Speaker 6: had completely falsified backgrounds.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 5: There was a guy named Custer, former ranger, you know Custer.
Speaker 5: Later under his company Custer Battles, was brought under chargers
Speaker 5: for contract fraud in Iran for providing something like two
Speaker 5: hundred vehicles without engines, with his claim being this contract
Speaker 5: did not specify working engines.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I remember for his security company in Iraq. I
Speaker 6: heard that like guys would show up and they'd handle
Speaker 6: like these old ratty beat up a k's with a
Speaker 6: couple of like rusted out magazines, and it's like and
Speaker 6: like this is their security contract.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, and yeah, there were there were other people that.
Speaker 5: To include some high ranking offers, Tom Lieutenant General retired
Speaker 5: Air Force Tom McInnerny, Oh my gosh, then the Director
Speaker 5: of the Joint Staff. He didn't have a clue in
Speaker 5: terms of what he was talking about. And so, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know it was, like I say, my motivation was
Speaker 5: to counqure these talking heads that at no basis in
Speaker 5: fact for what they were talking about, but without revealing
Speaker 5: classified information.
Speaker 4: I was pushed hard several times on Fox.
Speaker 5: Oh, tell us about this, tell us about that, and
Speaker 5: you know I would just smile and see, sorry.
Speaker 2: But you did go on to do some I mean,
Speaker 2: some frustrations, but also it sounds like some good work
Speaker 2: at ASD. Solik, the Assistant Secretary of Defense Special Operations
Speaker 2: of Low Intensity Conflict for our listeners out there in
Speaker 2: office in the Pentagon.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a mixed bag because you know, the
Speaker 5: Assistant Secretary was someone that I had hired to replace
Speaker 5: me in Delta, and I had nurtured him through all
Speaker 5: these years and when he got the call asking him
Speaker 5: if he was prepared to be nominated, allegedly, he called
Speaker 5: me and said, you're the first guy I have talked with. Okay,
Speaker 5: not allegedly, that's what he to me. When he called me,
Speaker 5: he said what do I do? I said, you take
Speaker 5: that damn job? Well, are you going to come in
Speaker 5: and help me. I said, I will come in and
Speaker 5: help you, provided you allow me to do one thing.
Speaker 4: And that has to build you a strategic plan.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, God bless Tom O'Connell. He renemed on that,
Speaker 5: and he renemed on a number of other things.
Speaker 4: That I wanted to do.
Speaker 5: But regardless, I still was able to do a lot
Speaker 5: in hasty sould. And so when I walked away from
Speaker 5: that organization, I held my head hyh.
Speaker 4: But there were things.
Speaker 5: That still required fixing that I could have fixed along
Speaker 5: with the hope of others, all the way back in
Speaker 5: two thousand and four, five, six and seven.
Speaker 1: Why do you think there's this bureaucratic resistance to that effort.
Speaker 5: With I'll describe a phenomena that I've seen so many
Speaker 5: bureaucrats come in, whether it's in the private sector or
Speaker 5: in government, if they get handed something that they don't
Speaker 5: know anything about. Instead of trying to learn, they try
Speaker 5: to hide their inabilities and their lack of knowledge.
Speaker 4: And one of the ways they do.
Speaker 5: That is to create different ways of describing something where
Speaker 5: there's no need to change the terminology.
Speaker 4: So the best example I can give you is in
Speaker 4: the Pentagon there was a retired Navy camp and who
Speaker 4: only became the principal Deputy under Secretary of Defense for
Speaker 4: policy because his wife worked for Donald Rumso and said
Speaker 4: she would have to terminate because her husband was being moved,
Speaker 4: and Rumsho said, I can't have you leaving and made
Speaker 4: him hire as retired navy captain who had never done
Speaker 4: policy in his life, as a principal the number two
Speaker 4: in defense policy. It's so he could not comprehend what
Speaker 4: unconventional warfare was, so he created a term called irregular warfare,
Speaker 4: and all his psycho fans ran around kissing his you
Speaker 4: know what, saying, oh irregular, I said, you know, describe
Speaker 4: for me what the hell irregular warfare is. Well, you know, no,
Speaker 4: I don't know. You know.
Speaker 5: It's the difference between irregular and regular warfare. Well, and
Speaker 5: I get all this tap dancing. And for seven years
Speaker 5: there was a one paragraph definition and JCS publication one,
Speaker 5: the deal d Dictionary. And now you've got people trying
Speaker 5: to say whatever the warfare is.
Speaker 4: It was a waste of.
Speaker 5: Time as well what I call forcing others to learn, okay,
Speaker 5: and you try not to show your stupidity by creating
Speaker 5: new terminology and causing people to run off and try
Speaker 5: to deal with your terminology because you're in a position
Speaker 5: of authority and power, and that, as you can tell,
Speaker 5: greatly angers me. And it's one of the reasons that
Speaker 5: of government is non effective when they put the wrong
Speaker 5: people in George.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you point out a few examples in the book
Speaker 2: where like people are getting hired because like this person's
Speaker 2: having an affair with this person and so they're hiring.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh my god, really.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And you know, I tried not to name names
Speaker 5: for the most part, because you know, my intent would
Speaker 5: to talk more about.
Speaker 4: The good people. Yeah, yeah, I get it, and I
Speaker 4: hope I did that.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think we're going to have some questions from
Speaker 2: our viewers and listeners. But my last question tonight, Wade
Speaker 2: for you is I'd like to ask what inspired you
Speaker 2: to write the in Toku Code, After you know, again
Speaker 2: spending your life in the shadows, what made you decide
Speaker 2: to come forward and tell your story?
Speaker 4: The long story was, I made an agreement.
Speaker 5: On March first, two thousand and seven, over seventeen years ago, okay,
Speaker 5: and it was with a friend by the name of
Speaker 5: Mizuho Bobrowski. Mizuho had been adopted by a Navy sailor,
Speaker 5: was of Japanese ethnicity, became a naturalized citizen, came in
Speaker 5: to ask Special Forces, and recharge with Special Forces as
Speaker 5: a sergeant first class.
Speaker 4: He had ten percent disability from the Veterans Administration, which
Speaker 4: means he was not getting anything. Okay.
Speaker 5: His wife was fighting breast cancer and his daughter was
Speaker 5: enrolled in an expensive East Coast university, and.
Speaker 4: He needed to make some more money.
Speaker 5: So what Mizuho was doing to make money was he
Speaker 5: was a photo journalist going back to Japan, and so
Speaker 5: he had this idea, if I write the book, he'll
Speaker 5: get it translated, he'll get it published, and he'll make well.
Speaker 5: He wanted me to make the money, but I was
Speaker 5: more concerned with him getting the money to take care
Speaker 5: of his family, and so we made that agreement. When
Speaker 5: March the first, two thousand and seven, clearly remember the
Speaker 5: day he went home to Los Angeles in early April,
Speaker 5: started having stomach pains and by mid late April was
Speaker 5: dead of rampant pancreatic and liver cancer that had ecstaticized
Speaker 5: throughout his body. So I lost the interests to write
Speaker 5: the book. But over the years, I've had so many
Speaker 5: of the people I've done to.
Speaker 4: People, I felp.
Speaker 5: To say, write your book because there are plenty of
Speaker 5: lessons to be learned from your life. And so I
Speaker 5: finally said, Okay, I need to get off my butt
Speaker 5: and get it done.
Speaker 2: And I did, and I you know, throughout this interview
Speaker 2: we really just covered the wavetips. There's much more in
Speaker 2: this book in the in Toku code. I hope you
Speaker 2: guys will go and pick it up.
Speaker 1: It's out.
Speaker 2: Now, what kind of questions do we have from our listeners?
Speaker 6: So what is the pass rate for getting into Delta?
Speaker 6: And the question is more about like Green Beret and
Speaker 6: Delta and then if they fail, is there like shame
Speaker 6: when they go back to their units?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 5: From early on, you know, And I can't tell you
Speaker 5: exactly what the or.
Speaker 6: A Green more Rangers, Yeah, Green Bray and Rangers. I'm sorry,
Speaker 6: I don't know if I said that, goohead.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, I can't tell you exactly what the past
Speaker 5: rate is for for Delta. In the early days, it
Speaker 5: was somewhere between ten and twenty percent, with every class
Speaker 5: being different. Okay, but sell them if ever over twenty percent.
Speaker 5: It's a grueling process in terms of Special Forces. Thanks
Speaker 5: to Dick Potter when he was in the deputy to
Speaker 5: Jim Guess at the Special Forces Command, he came up
Speaker 5: with the idea that SF needed an assessment and selection course,
Speaker 5: which they came up with and stick to to today.
Speaker 5: I understand their pass rate is significantly better, but I
Speaker 5: don't know again what the exact percentages are, but it
Speaker 5: is significantly better than the Delta assessment and selection process.
Speaker 6: And then outside of just the initial selection, you would
Speaker 6: also like OTC itself was very challenging, and so guys
Speaker 6: would would wash out of that for marksmanship or whatever else.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, absolutely, So the whole idea was, you know,
Speaker 5: just because you passed the assessment and selection, you were
Speaker 5: still not a full fledged member of the unit until
Speaker 5: you successfully completed OTC.
Speaker 1: Solly, thank you.
Speaker 6: Would a better quality of soldier be produced by the
Speaker 6: Delta selection if they incorporated jungle training like the SAS
Speaker 6: into their selection.
Speaker 5: Well that that was a a hard thing to contend
Speaker 5: with because you know, as we looked at the SAS selection,
Speaker 5: there are different phases to include a jungle phase and
Speaker 5: other phases. So we decided, Charlie Beckworth decided we did
Speaker 5: not need that in Delta because our mission was not to.
Speaker 4: Be as broad as the SAS mission is.
Speaker 5: Even though we might have to operate in the jungle
Speaker 5: or whatever, but our basic mission was counter terrorism and
Speaker 5: the basic premise was that for the most part, we're
Speaker 5: going to do.
Speaker 4: That in urban areas.
Speaker 5: And even with what the events in Afghanistan and Iraq
Speaker 5: in Suria, when they're doing their operations, for the most part,
Speaker 5: they're still conducting them in urban areas. So why then
Speaker 5: did we need those jungle skills? Not to question anything
Speaker 5: SAS was doing, but their purview is totally different.
Speaker 1: M Corbyn, thank you.
Speaker 6: What did discovering the in TACU code impress upon you?
Speaker 5: Well, when I came across it, it verified It's something
Speaker 5: that I had already believed in for years, that is
Speaker 5: being humble, helping others and understanding that once you open
Speaker 5: your mouth, those words never go away. So you better
Speaker 5: watch what the hell you say, you better stand behind
Speaker 5: what you say, and you better mean what you say.
Speaker 5: And so I've lived by that code for a long
Speaker 5: period of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Zachary mccoyth, thank you very much. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Let's raise a glass to those who aren't here.
Speaker 6: But paid the ultimate sacrice so we could be Thank
Speaker 6: you guys. Great episode of great show USMC. So thanks,
Speaker 6: Thanks Zachary, Joe's got you. Is it true that Dick
Speaker 6: Metali has played a big part in helping back with
Speaker 6: train and shape the first Helta operators.
Speaker 5: With all due respect to Dick, who was a great friend,
Speaker 5: he did not, okay. He was brought in basically as
Speaker 5: a consultant into the off section of Dilton.
Speaker 4: The way he was used, for the most part.
Speaker 5: Was because of his charisma to do a lot of
Speaker 5: briefings to senior officers and two different organizations. Because he would,
Speaker 5: you know, walk into a room and because of his
Speaker 5: charisma and because of what had been written about him previously,
Speaker 5: everybody would just nod their head in agreement. And I
Speaker 5: used to tease him, I said, you know, you're like
Speaker 5: Miss America walking into a room, you know, and giving
Speaker 5: a briefing. All the males are going like this, not
Speaker 5: because they agree with her, but they're scanning her up
Speaker 5: and out, you know.
Speaker 4: And he laughed, and it was a standing joke.
Speaker 1: Was there.
Speaker 6: We've just recently heard you know sort of about the
Speaker 6: tension between back With and the Blue Light guys. Were
Speaker 6: you kind of involved? Were you around that when it happened?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And you know, to be blunt and candid about it.
Speaker 5: What the Blue Light people were made to do was
Speaker 5: once they were told that they had to disband, is
Speaker 5: they were forced to come to a briefing where Beckwith
Speaker 5: was going to try and recruit them for Delta Game.
Speaker 5: So they came in with a chip on their shoulder
Speaker 5: because they had believed that they had an opportunity to
Speaker 5: gain the CT mission. Frankly, that was not true, okay,
Speaker 5: And I can give you all kinds of evidence to
Speaker 5: prove what I'm saying, but that's not the point. The
Speaker 5: point is they came in with a chip on their shoulder.
Speaker 5: The second point is that Beckwith blew the damn briefing.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: He could not answer their questions. One of their basic
Speaker 5: questions was, why should would we go through your assessment
Speaker 5: and selection. We're Vietnam veterans, We've done this. Some of
Speaker 5: us went into the Santi raid, We've done that, and
Speaker 5: on and on and beck we just could not answer
Speaker 5: their questions in an understandable fashion.
Speaker 6: So it's kind of a two way issue, absolutely, you know.
Speaker 4: And you know, unfortunately.
Speaker 5: I lost some lifelong friends who were on blue light
Speaker 5: that would never talk to me after that.
Speaker 1: That's terrible. Yeah, it's unfortunate that, Adam, thank you very much.
Speaker 6: My first time seeing Wade was seeing him testify to
Speaker 6: Congress about the ATS raid on Waco. Can I ask
Speaker 6: how cooperative the ATF were with it with his work?
Speaker 4: Frankly, after we did the report.
Speaker 5: I'll tell a story and I'll name a name, Okay,
Speaker 5: Jerry Petrelli was one of the leaders of that operation.
Speaker 4: He was the.
Speaker 5: Resident agent in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the time the
Speaker 5: raid occurred, and because I lived in Albuquerque, I was
Speaker 5: able to meet Petrelli later on, and you know when
Speaker 5: we met, he called me a whole bunch of names,
Speaker 5: and he said, you son of a bitch. You know,
Speaker 5: I read your report well with a microscope, and he said,
Speaker 5: you son of a bitch. You were right, and we
Speaker 5: became good friends after that. The unfortunate thing with AHTF
Speaker 5: was that the two leaders, Winoski out of Houston and
Speaker 5: Sara bend his ashach to Houston.
Speaker 4: Were not good leaders.
Speaker 5: Very inexperienced, and then in the aftermath they should have
Speaker 5: been taken to court because they altered evidence for no
Speaker 5: good reason whatsoever. What they did was they altered the
Speaker 5: operations plan again for no good reason, because that operations
Speaker 5: plan was not going to make what they said, what
Speaker 5: they tried to.
Speaker 4: Do fail or do better, you know.
Speaker 5: But anyway, So, but everybody else on that ATF effort
Speaker 5: gave it their best.
Speaker 4: And I mean there were some true heroes there. You know.
Speaker 5: There's a video which shows a female agent with an
Speaker 5: arm in her her hand and the army is raised,
Speaker 5: and she's compressing a wound that were the other the
Speaker 5: wounded agent would have bled to death, and she held
Speaker 5: it on him, couldn't find a tourniquet for almost an hour.
Speaker 4: Wow. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 5: And there was a former Loraine Kenny, who was a
Speaker 5: lieutenant and who had fallen between the two buildings and
Speaker 5: lay there with broken bon bones and wounds for the
Speaker 5: number of hours it took to call the truth. And
Speaker 5: I mean Kenny King, I believe it was his name.
Speaker 5: But you know, I had nothing but good thing to
Speaker 5: say about the ATF agents.
Speaker 4: It was their leadership that I have questions about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh.
Speaker 6: And then last one here Green, thank you very much. Hey, Way,
Speaker 6: just curious, despite Delta not having a jungle phase, does
Speaker 6: that mean they don't train for jungle SR patrol skills
Speaker 6: during or after uh, during or after OTC?
Speaker 5: I don't, you know, candidly, I don't know what they're
Speaker 5: doing or not doing today.
Speaker 4: I don't have a need to know.
Speaker 5: All I know is that in preparation for that lotion thing,
Speaker 5: we did do some jungle training.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it seems like and again I don't know
Speaker 6: what they do either, but it seems like it could
Speaker 6: be one of those more uh, you know, mission based
Speaker 6: type training efforts. Uh. Yeah, you know they're they're they're
Speaker 6: good at what they do, and you know, you take
Speaker 6: what they do and apply it to different environments. You know,
Speaker 6: it's the environmental challenges that they need to learn to overcome. Right, Gee,
Speaker 6: was there anything on Patreon?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 2: Okay, so Waite, thank you so much for spending your
Speaker 2: evening with us and telling us your story and telling
Speaker 2: us about the in Toku code.
Speaker 5: Well, I hope you've enjoyed it, and more so, I
Speaker 5: hope your audience enjoyed at all.
Speaker 2: It was terrific any final thoughts you want to leave
Speaker 2: us with before we get going, anything that you wish
Speaker 2: I had asked that I didn't.
Speaker 5: No, Well, the only thing I hope is that the
Speaker 5: readers will walk away saying we need to do better
Speaker 5: as individuals in terms of providing military, national, or public
Speaker 5: service to our nation. This is a great nation, God
Speaker 5: bless America. We need to get with the program and
Speaker 5: not be about ourselves.
Speaker 2: I hope people will go and pick up the INTKU
Speaker 2: codes out now and we will be back on Friday
Speaker 2: with I believe Andrew Bragg, eighty second airborne veteran who
Speaker 2: served overseas in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: And that's it.
Speaker 2: That's for it for tonight, Wade, thank you very much
Speaker 2: for joining us.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you, gentlemen.
Speaker 1: Have a great night, such a pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Okay, bye bye