Inside SEAL Team Six(61)

Any information missing from the PLO was requested in an essential elements of information form (EEI) that was sent up the chain of command.

Sometimes the patrol leader would answer our questions. Other times the questions were handled by intel officers, the commanding officer, or even the task force commander.

The PLO was then briefed again by the senior officers—sometimes an admiral or a general. We’d do our final inspections, and the mission was launched.

Once the mission was over, the senior officer on the mission prepared a post-operations report.

The phases of a mission are:



Pre-mission

Insertion

Infiltration

Actions at the objective

Exfiltration

Post-mission



We went through many middle-of-the-night recalls, warning orders, and PLOs at ST-6 in the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, sometimes getting as far as loading up the aircraft, only to have the mission aborted at the last minute for reasons that were out of our control. A lot of my fellow operators at the team grew increasingly frustrated.

Some guys actually left for other teams in search of real-world action. We called it chasing the rainbow. ST-2 had the European theater, which was busy with counterterrorism. ST-4 was doing counter-narcotics work in Colombia and Central America.

Despite the lack of real-world missions at ST-6, we continued to train nonstop. Because I was the lead climber on ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ I was given the opportunity to work with some of the world’s top climbers, guys like Jay Smith and Charlie Fowler.

Jay and I, along with other climbers in ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ were the first to ascend a new route at Devils Tower in Wyoming—the monolithic volcanic thrust of rock that rises 1,267 feet and was used as a location for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Charlie Fowler and I completed a first-route climb together in Red Rock, Nevada. Days later, he did a climb with ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ and fell to his death during a rappel.

Charlie had told me that if he ever died while climbing, it would happen during a rappel. He was one of the greatest climbers I’ve ever known.

Working with experts like Charlie and Jay, I became increasingly proficient. I climbed ships and oil rigs and scaled the faces of some of the tallest buildings in downtown Los Angeles at night.

During the late eighties, ST-6 did live-fire ops in U.S. cities all the time, which was pretty remarkable. We fired live rounds into targets in front of bullet traps in various buildings in heavily populated areas. If someone had happened to miss the target, the rounds could easily have passed through a wall and into a home. But we were surgical shooters, and a miss usually constituted nothing more than a four-inch group at center mass.

During training ops, we took down buildings at night. One team fast-roped from helicopters on the roof while the ground assault team fought its way up from the ground floor. Once, we caused so much commotion that the L.A. Times actually wrote an article reporting that men from mysterious black helicopters were invading the city at night.

Another time, when we were training on an oil rig off the California coast, the helicopter we were in hit a crane on the rig as it started to ascend. With the rear rotor damaged, the helo fell forty feet off the rig, skimmed the ocean, and eventually made a hard landing on a public beach. Fortunately, we all got out safe. But the looks on the bathers’ faces when they saw a dozen longhaired guys emerge from a downed helo, wearing flight suits and carrying weapons were priceless.

As we ran across the sand, one stunned woman asked, “Who are you guys, and what happened?”

I couldn’t tell her that we were SEALs who had been assaulting an oil rig, so I said, “Our helicopter was hit by a seagull.”

Next day, the headline in the L.A. Times read: “Black Op Helo Hit by Seagull Crash Lands on Beach.”



The officers on the assault teams—■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​—were in constant competition to see who could work their guys harder and make them more war ready. ■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​■​ were run by the officers. But at ■​■​■​■​■​ where I served, the enlisted men were in charge.

Maybe that’s why we had a reputation for being the rowdiest. We worked like beasts and partied hard.

Most of us, including myself, found it hard to shift down during the little time off we had with our wives and families. Instead of enjoying home life, I wanted to be in high gear, living for the moment, feeling that tomorrow could be my last day. I wasn’t emotionally equipped to settle down with my wife, Kim, the sixty or so days a year I wasn’t away from home.