Special Ops: Four Accounts of the Military's Elite Forces

by Orr Kelly

  The surviving marines found themselves pinned down in a perilously thin defensive perimeter on the beach. Another hundred marines were flown in as reinforcements. But any hope of sweeping the island in search of the captives was abandoned. Instead, the marines had all they could do just to remain on the beach and stay alive.

  Before the landing, a softening-up bombardment had been ruled out for fear of harm to the captives. But the rules were changed when the marines’ precarious position became apparent. Not only did the marines call in naval gunfire to cover their withdrawal, but a lumbering C-130 cargo plane winged its way over the island and delivered the biggest piece of conventional ordnance in the U.S. inventory, a fifteen-thousand-pound bomb.

  Back in Washington, it was reported that one marine had been confirmed killed and that casualties were light. Officers aboard the Coral Sea didn’t have an accurate toll of the casualties, but they knew the operation had been a disaster. Not only had the marines been forced to withdraw, but they had left without recovering the captives and without retrieving the bodies of their dead comrades or the secret black boxes in the downed helicopters.

  An urgent call went out for the SEALs.

  Coulter, another officer, and twelve enlisted men loaded their boats and all their gear into two C-2 COD (carrier onboard delivery) planes at Subic and set off to hopscotch across the South China Sea. On the way, they landed on one carrier, refueled, flew on to a second carrier, refueled, and finally arrived on the Coral Sea. Coulter told his men they had completed their carrier qualifications that day.

  Aboard the Coral Sea, Coulter was hurried to Coogan’s cabin. He glanced around the room. There were about twenty-five officers there. He was the lowest ranking, by about four pay grades.

  Coogan told him what he wanted done. He wanted the SEALs to sail to the island in a boat carrying a white flag and then to retrieve the bodies of the marines and the helicopter crew members, along with the black boxes and the coding devices from the helicopters.

  The young SEAL officer was startled. “I told him we wouldn’t go. Nope, we’re not going on that one. We’re not going in unarmed with a white flag after thirty marines just got their ass blown off,” Coulter recalls.

  Coogan, who already had more problems than he needed, was furious. Coulter was on very thin ice. To refuse to carry out an order is a court-martial offense. Naval officers just don’t do that. But Coogan stopped short of issuing a specific order.

  The admiral and his staff argued that leaflets would be dropped to assure the Cambodians of the peaceful intentions of the SEALs. Coulter had had a brief chance to talk to marines just back from the beach. They reported there were 125 to 150 paramilitary troops on the island, some of them U.S.-trained and -equipped. They were armed with American M-16 rifles and M-60 machine guns, as well as Soviet or Chinese AK-47 rifles and grenade launchers. Coulter was not confident they would rely on what they read in the leaflets. And he knew some of them couldn’t read.

  “He didn’t order me to go. My option to him was, if he ordered us to do it, I had room on the front of the boat for him to come in with us. I said, ‘We have room on the front of the boat for you, Admiral, if you want to wave the flag. But I personally don’t think that’s a very good idea.’ He said, ‘Well, no one asked you your opinion.’ I said, ‘Well, we’re … not going. We’re not going in unarmed. That’s not what we do.’”

  Coulter proposed instead that he and his SEALs swim in at night, do a strategic reconnaissance of the situation, and recover the bodies and the secret devices from the helicopters. Although the SEAL officer had already put his career in jeopardy, the fact that he proposed a workable alternative to the admiral saved him from further trouble.

  While the officers aboard the Coral Sea pondered their next move on the island, other events had been moving swiftly. Air strikes had been made against a Cambodian airfield and an industrial target. They were designed to pressure the Cambodian government into releasing the ship’s crew members. Actually, the thirty-nine crew members had already been placed aboard a Thai fishing vessel that had been seized previously, and they were soon picked up by an American destroyer.

  Back in Washington, the rescue operation was hailed as a demonstration of American power. Defense secretary Schlesinger declared it “an eminently successful operation incorporating the judicious and effective use of American force for purposes that were necessary for the well-being of this society.”

  Only later was the casualty toll revealed: fifteen killed, three missing and fifty wounded. In addition, a helicopter crash in Thailand killed twenty-three other men preparing to take part in the rescue effort.

  Coulter was not the first SEAL officer to balk at leading his men into a no-win situation. A precedent had been set a decade before, in the formative days of the SEALs.

  In April 1965, President Johnson sent a brigade of marines and part of the 82d Airborne Division to the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean island nation, to halt a civil war pitting leftist rebels against the government. Also involved were army Special Forces and a platoon of SEALs, who dressed in casual clothes and attempted to blend into the population. Larry Bailey was one of the SEAL officers.

  When I was in the Dominican Republic in 1965, we had a SEAL platoon that was going to be sacrificed along with a Special Forces A team or two to prove we were macho men, to prove we could do something really hairy and glorious. There was a radio station in downtown Santo Domingo owned by the leftist rebel group. The Special Forces group commander decided the radio station should be taken out by special operations people.

  We were going to cross the mouth of the Rio Ozama in rubber boats and seize a sea wall. Then other SEALs would ferry Special Forces across the river. Then we would go up over that sea wall and go down the street through a completely hostile area for a half mile to a mile and then blow up this radio station.

  That was really a John Wayne-type event. Had it gone off, it would have been a testimony to our masculinity and all sorts of stuff. The simple fact was, there were sixty ships offshore. Any one could have fired one spotting round and one for effect and blown that radio station to smithereens. They wanted it to be nonattributable, for God’s sake. My platoon commander [Lt. Jack Macione] raised bloody hell. He said, “We’re going to get killed over there, and there’s no reason for it.” He was absolutely right.

  Fortunately for everyone involved, a deal was made with the rebel leftists under which they would be permitted to go to Cuba. The mission was cancelled before the SEALs got themselves killed—or a SEAL officer got himself court-martialed.

  When a SEAL officer finds himself in a position where he knows his men will be endangered by trying to carry out an ill-advised operation, a strong sense of SEAL tradition tells him that he has an unwritten contract with his men to make sure they do not get killed or hurt needlessly.

  Steve Elson, a retired commander and one of the most outspoken SEALs, puts that philosophy this way: “Rules are fine. But unless it’s absolutely imperative to the welfare of this country to follow those rules, you don’t get anybody killed. When you get out in the field, you’ve got to let the guy take charge of his unit. These young people have been preached to: do what the boss says. When it comes to my men, my people, screw the boss. He’s not out there. You’ve got to keep your guys alive. You don’t want anybody getting killed.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  The March of the Jedi

  WHEN SIXTY-THREE AMERICANS WERE TAKEN HOSTAGE AT the American embassy in Teheran on 3 November 1979, the United States possessed the most powerful military force in the history of the world. Its nuclear arsenal bristled with weapons of incredible power. Its carrier battle fleets dominated the world’s seas. Its army and air force were a match for any other force they might face.

  And yet the Pentagon had nothing in its awesome arsenal suited to the task of extracting the hostages safely from Iran. A raggedy band of young men who styled themselves as “students” were able to sneer their h
ostility at the United States and get away with it, month after month.

  While the television anchormen counted off the days of the hostages’ captivity, and the political damage suffered by Jimmy Carter’s White House mounted, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acting in great secrecy, set in motion a military operation designed to pluck the hostages from downtown Teheran and whisk them away to safety.

  The problem faced by the chiefs was that they had no small, highly trained military force capable of such a feat. To be sure, the army had its antiterrorist Delta Force, but how were they to get in and out of Teheran? The rescue force had to be cobbled together out of bits and pieces from all the services. As the plan evolved, it called for marine helicopters to fly from a carrier in the Arabian Sea deep into Iran to an isolated spot code named Desert One. There they would meet a fleet of C-130 cargo planes carrying the Delta Force soldiers plus their equipment and fuel for the helicopters. From Desert One, the plan was for the soldiers to go on to the outskirts of Teheran by helicopter, hide out during the daylight hours, then sneak into the city, storm the embassy, and escort the hostages to the waiting helicopters and thus on out of the country.

  It was a bold, imaginative, and very risky plan. Top Pentagon officials thought they had a chance for success. President Carter agreed and gave the go-ahead in mid-April.

  During the night of 24 April 1980, the whole venture came apart in an embarrassing disaster at Desert One. Several of the helicopters, lost in a dust storm, failed to arrive, and the decision was made to abort the mission. Then during refueling, the rotors of one of the helicopters slashed into a tanker plane, causing a fire that killed five men and injured eight others. The survivors clambered into their C-130 transport planes and fled Iran. Pictures of the wreckage were broadcast by the Iranians as vivid evidence of the humiliating failure of the rescue mission.

  In the backlash from the disaster at Desert One, Carter lost his bid for a second term to Ronald Reagan. The fifty-two hostages still in captivity were not released until moments after the inauguration of Reagan on 20 January 1981, 444 days after the takeover of the embassy.

  It was in this atmosphere of crisis and frustration that the Joint Chiefs determined to create a hostage-rescue force that would be trained and ready to respond instantly in any future emergency. Not only would it have the soldiers of Delta Force, but the air force and army would have specially equipped aircraft on call, ready to move rescue teams in and out of remote parts of the world. The navy would designate ships and submarines to carry the rescue teams. And the navy would create a force specially trained to carry out a rescue effort in a maritime environment.

  To form this special navy hostage rescue team, the chief of naval operations singled out thirty-nine-year-old Comdr. Richard Marcinko, gave him direct orders to create the force as rapidly as possible, and armed him with a “pri one”—priority one—that permitted him to take the men and equipment he needed from other commands.

  In those early days, the name, even the very existence, of his new unit, was highly classified. But this was the genesis of SEAL Team Six. To many SEAL officers, Marcinko’s new assignment was fraught with dangers. Hurrying to put together a team, he was sure to step on toes and make enemies. Everything Marcinko did would be watched carefully from the highest levels of the navy and the Joint Chiefs. And if SEAL Team Six were ever called upon for an actual hostage rescue, its performance would have to be perfect. There was no margin for error. The death or injury of even a few hostages was simply not acceptable.

  To Marcinko, the chance to form and lead Team Six was a marvelous opportunity to show what he could do—and to advance his career. He had become an officer to lead instead of follow, and that is what he intended to do.

  A product of a broken home, Marcinko dropped out of high school in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and joined the navy at seventeen. As an enlisted man, he became a second-class radioman, and acquaintances who knew him then recall that he used to boast that he would one day be chief of naval operations. His early career seemed to lead him in that direction. He was selected for officer candidate school and became an ensign. Attending night school and the Navy Postgraduate School, he earned a bachelor’s degree in government, and then qualified for a master’s degree in political science from Auburn University while attending the air force Air University.

  By the time Marcinko was tapped to lead SEAL Team Six, he was one of the best-known officers in the SEAL community. He was the most charismatic, the most flamboyant, and one of the most respected SEAL officers. Men who served with him in Vietnam say they would follow him anywhere. A man who served under him in Team Six recalls how, on their first free-fall jump from a C-130, flying at ten thousand feet, Marcinko, wearing a bright red jump suit, led the way out of the cavernous opening at the back of the plane. Whatever he asked his men to do, he was willing to do—and do it first.

  He had a way with people that permitted him to get away with behavior that, as one friend said, “would get me killed.” He casually called strangers by racial epithets, and got a smile in return. Rear Adm. George Worthington, who succeeded Marcinko as naval attaché in Cambodia in the mid-1970s, recalls a reception for Gen. Lon Non, brother of Lon Nol, who had been president of the country.

  “He [Marcinko] was well loved, if not revered, by the Cambodian officer corps and the troops, too. He had a sort of Lawrence of Arabia-esque leadership quality about him.…” Worthington says. “Marcinko had never laid an eye on Lon Non. But he walks up behind him and grabs him with a big bear hug. This guy is a general, the brother of Lon Nol. Marcinko did that to him, and the guy loved it.”

  But there was another side to Dick Marcinko. By mid-career he could also qualify as the most-hated, most-despised, most-envied SEAL officer. His own attorney, who later represented him in a serious brush with the law, acknowledges that he was regarded by some of the other SEALs as “a boastful braggart.”

  One high-ranking navy officer was startled, when Marcinko visited him at the Pentagon, to notice a pistol tucked in his sock. Another officer invited Marcinko to present a briefing at the Pentagon and then called the session off because he was so embarrassed by Marcinko’s flamboyant profanity.

  Marcinko served in Vietnam as a member of SEAL Team Two in 1966, 1967, and 1968, earning Silver and Bronze Star awards and picking up a new nickname. As a child he was known as “Dick.” When he was an enlisted man, friends called him “Rick.” And in Vietnam, he became known as “Demo Dick,” later embellished into “Demo Dick the Assassin” by a magazine writer.

  When Marcinko received his marching orders from the CNO, he found that SEAL Team Two, on its own, had foreseen the need for a special new SEAL antiterrorist unit and was already well along in creating such an outfit.

  More than two years earlier, in February of 1978, Lt. Norman J. (“Norm”) Carley, operations officer of Team Two, had formed what they called Mob Six. Since the team had five platoons, this implied the mobilization of a sixth platoon. Carley and about twenty of the senior enlisted men in the team devoted about half their time to planning for what turned out to be a new kind of SEAL team.

  They had a chance to practice some of their theories that same year when a major NATO symposium, called Sealink 78, was held at Annapolis. Terrorism was on the rise. There had been threats, taken very seriously, against top NATO commanders. Carley was tapped to form a platoon from Mob Six and provide waterfront security at Annapolis during the conference.

  Whether or not it was due to the presence of the SEALs, the symposium went off without a terrorist attack. Top navy officials were impressed with what they had seen of Mob Six.

  In March 1980, Carley was transferred to the West Coast. It was a short tour of duty. Shortly after Desert One, he was called back to the East Coast to become Marcinko’s executive officer in SEAL Team Six.

  Many of the prospective members of the new team were not even aware of its existence when they were recruited. Lt. Theodore (“Ted”) Macklin, one of the original members of
the team, recalls how he was flown back from an assignment in the Arabian Sea and reported in to SEAL Team Two, of which he was a member, at Little Creek. Both the commander and the executive officer were overseas. In charge was the operations officer, Comdr. Bill Shepherd, who had put Macklin through his SEAL basic indoctrination and who later became an astronaut.

  “I said, ‘Bill, why am I here?’” Macklin recalls.

  Shepherd pointed to the door leading out to a small physical-training area: “See that door? Go out that door, take a right, cross the parking lot, and don’t look back.”

  “I said, ‘What is it?’”

  Shepherd told him, “Ted, if I had the opportunity, I’d do it.”

  “I trusted Bill. I said, ‘Okay, Bill.’” Macklin went out the door, turned right, didn’t look back, and found himself one of the first members of Team Six.

  Marcinko personally visited SEAL units to interview men being considered for membership in the team. In many cases, he was able to pinpoint men he had operated with in Vietnam. A number of the officers were, like Marcinko himself, mustangs who had entered the navy as enlisted men and later earned their commissions.

  That early recruiting relied largely on the old-boy network. The SEAL community was small enough that almost everyone knew everyone else, although there was a tendency to feel that you didn’t really know another SEAL unless you had operated with him.

  Later a more formal method of screening was set up. In 1983, Marcinko brought on board Comdr. Thomas Mountz, a clinical psychologist who has spent his entire career in operational commands.