by Scott McEwen
* * *
The Defense Department would spend months drawing hard lessons from this bitter tutorial.
One concerned training. Component training for the rescue operation took place in scattered locations across the United States, including Hurlburt Field, Florida, for the Air Force; Yuma, Arizona, and Twenty-Nine Palms, California, for the Marines; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for Delta Force.5 Rarely did participants see members from other services. They did not train together. There was no “full up” dress rehearsal. In fact, problems that surfaced during training tended to reappear during the actual mission. However, crewmen seemed satisfied that their individual parts would work as expected. They were confident of success. But no one saw the big picture.
While there would appear to have been many failures that contributed to the catastrophe called Eagle Claw, many blamed the real problem on the inability of the different branches of the military to communicate, particularly the inability to communicate between the Navy helicopters and the Army’s Delta Force. The planning process for this mission was deliberately kept compartmentalized and secretive. No outside group of senior officers could review the finished plan for a reality check.
The Special Operations community would never intentionally repeat this string of unforced errors.
The press dubbed the deadly disaster Desert One, and its name remains shorthand for bureaucratic disaster to this day. Something would have to change dramatically.
The hostages, when they were freed during President Ronald Reagan’s January 1981 inauguration after 444 days of captivity, would have agreed with Marcinko’s bold approach. At a U.S. military hospital, reporters asked one former hostage if he would ever like to return to Iran. “Yeah, in a B-52.”6
And that gave Marcinko an idea.
* * *
Across the military branches—Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force—senior officers realized that America could not suffer another Desert One. The military was still recovering from low public approval in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Congress, run by Democrats who had opposed the Vietnam War in its final years, had refused to raise military pay while inflation raged. As a result, nearly one-third of enlisted soldiers and Marines were receiving welfare checks to supplement their pay in 1979. Some senators talked about abolishing the Marine Corps or merging the U.S. Air Force back into the army. The military was in crisis.
Something had to be done. And, for senior officers, that something meant memos and plans. Phone-book-sized plans circulated. Most were proposals to create a cross-branch counterterrorism force, led by the U.S. Army.
In the wake of Eagle Claw, Marcinko was asked to review the U.S. Army’s white paper for the commander of naval operations.
* * *
In the early drafts of the proposal, the Army simply wanted a small group of Navy divers to work for them. Marcinko disagreed. “The Army paper asked for roughly thirty SEALs. They wanted ’em down at Fort Bragg, which is good, but you don’t get much maritime environment at Fort Bragg [it is landlocked]. They get a canteen on their hip and a couple of lakes and a river. But, so I upgraded [the SEAL unit] from a detachment to a command, then I explained it to the CNO [Chief of Naval Operations], and I said, ‘Look, we have no control of this. It’s theirs. We’re going to have to join forces [with the army], and they’ll turn green.’ Going back to that time frame, special operations was Army, and it was just a sheer force of numbers when you go into planning. Who had the most experience? Army generals. Not Navy admirals. We didn’t have admirals in the SEALs yet and so, you know you have that green machine that was going to get the gooder missions.”
Marcinko saw his chance. He spent nights and weeks drafting and redrafting a memo of his own. He wanted to ensure that the SEALs would be an important part of special operations. He even dreamed that the SEALs would fight terrorists and rescue hostages on their own. “I changed it into a command and I guess that’s where it started ruffling, really ruffling feathers.”
Marcinko’s new SEAL unit was code-named Mob-6; it later became SEAL Team Six. Now, Marcinko thought, if he could only find a way to command the new team he had created.
* * *
SEAL Team Six would have different equipment and a different mentality from anything else in the U.S. military.
For equipment, Marcinko said it was “trial and error.”
“We started in Boston whalers, moved to A1 rigid hulls to cigarette boats.”
It was the cultural difference that really set the SEALs apart.
Marcinko then explained how it was that the SEALs became the “pirates” who would end up characterizing SEAL Team Six by the end of his command. Marcinko took advantage of the foresight of Adm. Elmo Zumwalt. The SEALs needed an antiterrorist team that did not fit the mold or the look of the military; they needed to look like civilians in order to blend in and maintain covert identities. “When he [Admiral Zumwalt] became commander of naval operations [CNO], a series of messages came out that were called Z-grams, but they went to the fleet and he had authorized longer hair,” Marcinko said. “It was just an upheaval of traditional Navy blue and gold.” Marcinko used these “Z-grams” to allow the SEALs to grow long hair and wear earrings.
Explaining why he believed the spec ops were looked down upon by Big Navy, Marcinko said, “In 1980 you’re still talking about division warfare. You know, special operations were expendables. There’s that riffraff that’s out there that does whatever the hell they do, drag their knuckles in the dirt, you know, chew on betel nut, or whatever it is, and basically a pain in the ass.” In short, Big Navy and Big Army dismissed the U.S. Navy SEALs as exotic expendables.
The prejudice against the SEALs by larger, traditional military commanders soon shifted, Marcinko observed. “You know that the philosophical change since Desert One, and the formulation of J-SOC [ Joint Special Operations Command] and SOCOM [Special Operations Command], created an immense difference. If you look at the deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan for examples, and now you have the old mentality and the old way the plans were written was that the special operations were in support of the divisions.” Now large divisions support small special operations.
Beyond beards and earrings, Marcinko forged a unique SEAL Team Six culture: officers were required to learn every skill mastered by the men under their command. Ideas from below were welcomed, not dismissed. He required every man to be able to perform every task, including the most physically demanding jobs. Marcinko outlined his unique selection criteria for men who wanted to join SEAL Team Six: “Their level of responsibility and criticality of what they perform requires a certain, a higher degree of maturity and experience. In my language, everybody had to go over the rail—that means everybody had to board ships, and that’s how it started and there wasn’t the dog team and there wasn’t the DoD team, we all go over the rail and the other is just the sideshow.”
In the end Marcinko had done his job. He had formed and trained a unique, hardened group of war fighters. They did not look like your typical military types, with tightly shaved hair and polished boots. They looked like surfers and bikers, with machine guns. Instead, he had put together a team of pirates who were each willing, in all conditions, to take the knife in his teeth and go over the rail.
CHAPTER 3
From Pirates to Professionals
Lt. Ryan Zinke drove through the security checkpoint at the secretive base of SEAL Team Six, near Virginia Beach, in the spring of 1990. Not knowing what to expect, he appeared in his starched Navy dress whites. That was a mistake.
He had been selected to join SEAL Team Six—the team within the teams. It has a demanding selection process, both formal and informal. At six foot two and 220 pounds, Zinke had proven himself as an athlete, a scholar, and a SEAL. He lettered all four years in a Pacific 10 football program, graduated from the University of Oregon (Eugene) with honors and passed BUD/S on his first attempt, class 136. After earning his trident, he was assigned to SEAL Team One in Coronado, Cal
ifornia, where he led counterinsurgency and contingency operations in the Persian Gulf and the Pacific theater of operations. He had jumped from airplanes and dived into cold oceans far from home. He was about to learn that all of that meant little to SEAL Team Six.
At first, he couldn’t even find the office of the commanding officer. Unlike other naval bases, there were no signs pointing the way. He stopped in at a few buildings, but the sailors inside couldn’t tell him exactly where the command was. They simply didn’t know. That was strange.
As a SEAL, he knew that he could never give up. He had to keep hunting. He would stop at every building and question every uniform, if necessary.
Finally, he spotted what looked like an ammunition bunker. The door opened and two men emerged, in a hurry. They looked like outlaw bikers. Beards, long hair, earrings, tattoos. He wondered how the pair got past base security. Then, he noticed the second man was carrying a belt-fed M-60 machine gun. Before Zinke could decide whether he should report the men to the shore patrol, the two Vikings mounted a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and rode off toward a gun range on the horizon. If they were Navy men, why weren’t they using official naval bunker trucks?
He had never seen that before on a U.S. Navy base.
He decided to go inside the bunker, if only to ask for directions.
Inside, he found a team room, a meeting and staging area for SEAL teams. The dirty white drop-ceiling tiles had collapsed from the weight of empty beer cans secreted up there. He had never seen that before in the U.S. Navy, either.
He had found SEAL Team Six.
The men and even the officers were wearing civilian clothes. Many looked like bikers. Their appearance was designed to allow them to blend in among civilians during covert operations in the most dangerous parts of the world. Still Zinke was shocked. In his bright whites and short hair, he was a typical squared-away naval officer—and his appearance made him an oddball. The very thing that made him normal in the Navy made him abnormal in the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six. It was the first of many shocks. He had joined the pirates, and the swashbuckling was about to begin.
* * *
Zinke quickly realized that the culture of the SEAL Team Six was unique. It was daring and bold but also wild and raw. It was a lion, ruthlessly effective at hunting and killing, but also a beast that answered only to itself.
The typical military hierarchy was upside down. The senior enlisted guys had come in under Lt. Cmdr. Richard Marcinko and, to an extent far greater than in any other corner of the U.S. Navy, the senior enlisted men ran the day-to-day operations. Zinke soon realized it would be unwise for an officer to buck the senior enlisted men who were technically under him. Zinke knew he must win the respect of the enlisted men under him or he would be sidelined as an officer. In the rest of the Navy, the reverse was true.
“The ship was run by Fred Fritsch, the senior enlisted man, and, if you crossed Fred, you were out. That was it. And in that organization, a master chief versus a lieutenant, the young Lieutenant Zinke would lose. It was part of the process. I knew my limit, and made sure I knew how to run a mission.”
The facilities were unusual by U.S. Navy standards. In Big Navy, a ruthless campaign was underway to eliminate alcohol on base. Among the SEALs, alcohol was as common as diving masks or spare magazines. Every team room had a bar. The men didn’t drink on duty, but they drank enthusiastically on base as soon as the “beer lamp” was lit. “You never drank and shot, but you certainly drank.… I mean these guys were hard men. They would train hard, they would go out and they would drink hard, they would play hard, everything they did was hard.”
Even though Marcinko was no longer there, SEAL Team Six was still basically an operation living under rules he laid down. “Things were pretty wild. And wild, I mean that guys were hard, we’re moving fast, there probably wasn’t as much accountability,” Zinke said. “You know, it was called a ‘porthole to Hell’ for officers.”
Even the officer corps at SEAL Team Six was different. Most of the officers were “mustangs,” meaning that they were enlisted men who had worked their way up through the ranks, as opposed to officers who received Commissions straight out of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. In Big Navy, the SEALs’ dismissive term for the regular navy, officers were rarely mustangs. SEAL Team Six seemed like a world turned upside down.
There were two major reasons for the high concentration of mustangs among the SEALs. Marcinko, the founder of SEAL Team Six, was a mustang, and he preferred other mustangs. That preference cut a cultural groove that took decades to overcome.
Also, many officers actively avoided being sent to the SEAL teams. Being an officer in the SEALs wasn’t considered a solid career move at the time. Few SEAL officers rose to captain and, at this point, none had become an admiral. And the SEALs were seen as a hard bunch to command. Why kill your career to take on a thankless command that would inevitably take you into cold waters, parachute jumps, and shoot-outs with terrorists? Wasn’t drinking coffee on the warm bridge of a Navy cruiser a better move?
The transition was hard on Zinke. He wasn’t a mustang. Plus, he was a college man and therefore suspect. He had to earn his men’s respect in a way that simply wouldn’t apply in Big Navy. His rank and his uniform meant little. He had to impress the pirates of SEAL Team Six with his work ethic and his ability to get the job done, or he wasn’t going to make it.
* * *
Zinke worked overtime to acclimate to SEAL Team Six. He had to become a pirate like the rest of the men. He spent nights on inflatable boats, bouncing over the waves while the radio antenna whipped him in the back. He excelled at physical exercise. He never complained. And he started ignoring naval regulations on grooming and haircuts.
“I called them ‘Last of the Mohicans.’ At my wedding, I had a ponytail. So did everyone around me.”
He knew that when he had earned a nickname (they called him “Z”), he was in. He bonded with enlisted men. “You know, I was very tight with the SEAL teams, and the guys, and one could probably argue too tight, but also, I defended them. I was extremely loyal to the guys, and they were very loyal to me.”
The unusual culture had its advantages. It was more flexible and more forgiving than Big Navy. “The SEAL culture was fundamentally different in the 1980s and 1990s. As far as the bond between the officer and the enlisted, it was a little tighter. I think that mistakes were made, you were held accountable, but your career could recover. The commander would look at you and punish you, but the punishment wasn’t a shot-in-the-head dismissal.”
Long before the bloodletting of constant combat began in 2001, an internal bloodletting began in the SEAL teams. A triumphant training exercise had an unexpected traumatic effect. Zinke would be an eyewitness to a turning point in SEAL history.
* * *
Zinke was on the scene when the world changed for the SEALs.
In 1991, SEAL Team Six was divided into Red Team, Gold Team, and Blue Team, which was the most piratical of the pirates. Blue Team was called upon to demonstrate its ability to board fast-moving ships from small inflatable boats. Until they demonstrated it, the feat was considered impossible.
Using small inflatable boats with big outboard engines, the SEALs banged over the waves and approached a wall of metal several stories high—the smooth side of a U.S. Navy cruiser. Using grappling hooks and cables, they quickly scaled the slippery side of the ship. It was hard work. The inflatable boats were moving and so was the cruiser. And waves washed the hull of the ship, trying to pry off the SEALs climbing up the wet walls. Then they bounded onto the pitching deck and fanned out to dominate the crew hatches.
Through the glass of the bridge windows, senior officers watched the SEALs through binoculars. Next to Navy captains and admirals stood Zinke, the SEAL officer serving as liaison to the brass.
At first, the officers were impressed by the prowess of the SEALs—the quick and silent boarding of the ship, the rapid domination of control points of the vessel.
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p; Then one SEAL removed his diving mask. His earring flashed in the sunlight. They watched as he shook wet hair free, exposing his long ponytail.
The officers sucked in their breath through their teeth and put down their binoculars.
Admiral Lopez, a three-star, was the senior officer on the bridge. Zinke heard Lopez say: “My Navy, these guys are in my Navy?”
“That was, I think, the last straw,” Zinke said. “Right after that, came what I called the ‘great bloodletting.’ ”
Big Navy didn’t want Naval Special Warfare to be too special. It wanted the SEALs to look and act more like sailors. It wasn’t just long hair, shaggy beards, and diamond earrings that would go. It was a degree of the informality and the power of the senior enlisted. The pirates would have to become professionals.
* * *
The housecleaning began with Adm. Eric Thor Olson, who took command of Seal Team Six in 1994.
Before his retirement, Admiral Olson would not only be credited with the re-creation of the world’s ultimate fighting force, but he would rise higher in the ranks than any other SEAL—all the way to four-star admiral, the Navy’s highest rank. He would also earn the title “Bullfrog” as the longest-serving Navy SEAL still on duty. Before retirement, he served thirty-eight years.
The admiral had impeccable SEAL credentials, making him the ideal agent of cultural change. Olson graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1973 and qualified as a SEAL in 1974, graduating in BUD/S in class 76. He served in several operational capacities with the SEALs, ultimately commanding at every level, including the Underwater Demolition Team, Seal Delivery Vehicle Team, Seal Special Boat Squadron, and SEAL Team Six. He also served as a SEAL instructor, strategy and development officer, and joint special operations officer. Olson won the Silver Star for his bravery during the Battle of Mogadishu, where the Navy found that he “demonstrated a complete disregard for his own personal safety in the accomplishment of his mission.” Known as both a gentleman and a frogman, Olson was arguably the perfect choice to accomplish the task he was given: to reinvent the SEALs as sailors, not buccaneers.