Of course, as we began to come in to target the one helicopter loses lift as it got over the target. Did you actually ever think that he would be captured alive? I didnt want to because I didnt want him to think that he was somehow important enough to be able to engage El Jefe, as he called me. They have just 500 days until graduation. ), "The President was at all times presidential," he says. William McRaven: We were doing a freefall. Good evening. INSKEEP: You write that somehow your staff sometimes lost people's paperwork. I guess he did.". This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Then, in 2001, came the parachute accident and the long climb back. Eight weeks later came the surprise attacks of Sept. 11. So he didnt know my rank or my name. The bad news is, when a parachute opens, it blossoms.". William H. McRaven. When McRaven jumped he found himself falling at 125 MPH and hitting the parachute of another, who had deployed his chute too soon. Retired Adm. William McRaven and Nicholas Rasmussen, former National Counterterrorism Center director, discuss the raid on the Usama bin Laden compound in Pakistan in commemoration of the 10th . What were you seeing? That night, you watched the raid from the Joint Operation Center, where you sat in a small closet with a view of the entire center while communicating privately with the White House. McRaven: The SEALs entering the room did absolutely the right thing and shot him, not knowing whether or not he was wearing a suicide vest. I couldnt see what was going on inside the building. And so the president asked me, he says, Well, Bill, do you know whether or not its bin Laden? I said, Sir, I dont. Admiral McRaven, in an inspiring speech, addressed the Class of 2015 at West Point to celebrate 500th Night. But that particular day, I actually had a meeting down in Qatar. President George W. Bush had asked Downing to inaugurate a new position as Deputy National Security Adviser for Combatting Terrorism. Did we inadvertently kill people we shouldnt have killed? In 2001, he became a counterrorism advisor for the National Security Council and soon was fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq. McRaven made headlines in August when he wrote an op-ed condemning President Trump saying, "Revoke my security clearance, too." Now Fox News is reporting that last month, just a few days after penning the op-ed, McRaven left a prominent post with the DIB over the incident.. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. By the time I landed back in Baghdad, the force was moving towards the target and within, you know, within an hours time, the Armys special operations guys that were working for me had had, in fact, captured Saddam Hussein. Duty is among the virtues that you write about in the hero code. "He was climbing the steps, and it was agony, step by step. And now I'm tumbling out of control towards the ground.". Just like the young female sergeant who I just visited at Walter Reed this week. Well, thank you president Powers, Provost Fenves, deans, members of the faculty, family and friends, and most importantly, the class of 2014, it is indeed an honor for me to be here tonight. And he became the overall commander of the US Special Operations Command, the rest is history. Yeah, well, having done thousands of missions before, you know, this was not an overly complicated mission. I mean, he was, to me, the gold standard in Navy SEALs. And I really didnt have any relief in terms of the mission until after all the helicopters had come back across the border, the Afghan border and were landing at the back at our base. The New York Times reports that Vice Adm McRaven was asked in February by Mr Panetta to come up with various proposals for a military strike on the compound where Bin Laden was believed to be . What were you seeing? Theyre the superheroes. And as I would find out later, it wouldnt be the last time. Admiral, tell me about that premonition. And that little bit of levity kind of helped me through the rest of the night. All the men went off to World War Two, and then they came back and rebuilt the country. "There now has been an accumulation through the course of 2011 of very significant losses in core al-Qaeda and also the affiliates in Yemen and some of the other offshoots," Petraeus says, citing two al-Qaeda figures, Atiyah Abdel Rahman in Pakistan and Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, whose deaths have not been officially acknowledged as JSOC's work. HOOVER: Bring us back to this moment, will you, Admiral? May 29, 2020. She was seriously injured in a parachute accident. In 2014 Admiral William H. McRaven gave the commencement address at the University of Texas at Austin. Hes done more from a wheelchair than any men standing erect. But at the end of the day, you have to confirm the jackpot. And then two days later, when I was back in Washington briefing the Congress, I get a call to come over to the White House. INSKEEP: He wasn't in a very good position to negotiate, I suppose. So I reflect back on that 10 years ago and Im just proud to have been a small part of it. What kind of intelligence did we get off the target? Theres a lot of things that go on post operation. None had the full . What do we need to do next? He also survived being ripped in half by a parachute. This year, a decade later, their paths finally crossed. Will they just be a great mother or father that raises another kid who raises another kid? But it was a relatively straightforward mission in terms of the first part of it. General William Westmoreland joined the original firing line with William F. Buckley Jr. in 1979 for a conversation called, quote, the crisis in the US military. But it was probably 15 minutes after that. "I said to him, 'You can grow up to be 007.' But he was not going to have outside contact with any of his former Iraqi leaders. I went back to my little headquarters area, got back on the video with the president and the president said, OK, Bill, let me get this straight. And even though I was broken-hearted at the time, I was intent on getting kind of back in the fight and being able to support my fellow special operations warriors. I had a medical professional, either a corpsman, a medic or a doctor in the room with him 24/7, along with a security guard. Making your bed as easy to do. You know, Ive heard you say that you are the quote biggest fan of the millennial generation and generation and Gen Z. And what I told him is, you never know how the missions you conduct are going to change the lives of the people that you save. 20. From there he began an extraordinary rise, moving rapidly through command and operational roles. HOOVER: Admiral, Youve just written a book, The Hero Code: Lessons Learned from Lives Well Lived. And your father served in World War Two, and you share memories of him and his fellow service members swapping stories about their missions. But new leaders always stepped in. "All in all, a pretty good year," McRaven says, "but frankly it has been a big year for us really since 9/11.". While encouraging the students to improve the world, . Operation Neptune Spear stripped al-Qaeda of its iconic leader and offered a kind of recompense for the traumas of 9/11. It still brings me to tears.". And then. I got on the plane with my aide, Captain Hank Henry. Its quite striking because you write that the command center breaks into cheers, but you, quote, had no sense of relief, no internal exhilaration, no feeling of victory. And now the Pakistanis, of course, are waking up to the fact that were there. McRaven, then a 45-year-old Navy SEAL captain, led a jump exercise near San Diego. So Im getting radio calls from the ground force commander. And every day that I went in, he tried to engage me in a conversation. And I took the opportunity to call up my boys and say, you know, my daughter was with us and explained it to her as well, that her life was about to change for dad. Marcinko picked McRaven to lead a team in the hot new command with a purposely wonky name: Naval Special Warfare Development Group. I was a very young lieutenant. But I'm stunned. They were children of World War One. "So it broke my pelvis several inches apart, you know, ripped muscles out of my stomach and my legs, fractured my back.". STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: If I don't mistake this, your boss, Admiral Eric Olson, kind of bypassed a form that would say whether you were physically fit or not. So whenever a shot is fired, somebody is reporting through the chain. Starting your day off by completing a task will initiate your momentum to do the next task, and then the next, and so on. Judge plans to appoint Special Master to Dominion, Fox News . In fact, we had a plan with what we were going to do with bin Laden if we captured him. And you know, after a couple days, they pinned me and plated me and got me going. If bin Laden had his hands up and he clearly was not a threat which was going to be difficult because you dont know whether or not theyre carrying a suicide vest underneath but if he had come out of that room with his hands up and clearly not a threat, we had an obligation, a legal obligation, a moral obligation to capture him. But the fact of the matter is, I didnt want to engage with him. (See TIME's 2008 Person of the Year: Barack Obama. Well, thats true of every mission you conduct, youve got to be able to delegate to people that you have trust and confidence in. I couldnt see what was going on inside the building. So there was always concern about the Pakistanis engaging. Did you actually ever think that he would be captured alive? And then, of course, when we get on target, we didnt know whether or not the entire compound was booby trapped, whether bin Laden was wearing a suicide vest, all those sorts of things added to the risk. The accident happened along westbound ECP at the Rochor Road exit. Youre watching PBS. HOOVER: In your account of the rescue. "Well, he pulls his parachute, and I collide with his parachute little bit like getting hit by an air bag. Admiral William McRaven. And then, of course, when we get on target, we didnt know whether or not the entire compound was booby trapped, whether bin Laden was wearing a suicide vest, all those sorts of things added to the risk. and will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. The compound could still be booby trapped. You said, quote, As a commander, you would like to be in ultimate control of all of the decisions, but the reality is you cant be. Im listening to the radio. And so I proudly have the opportunity to display that tape measure at the Special Operations Command. I think he still felt that he would come back into power. MCRAVEN: Yeah, he wasn't in a real good position to negotiate. In his Kabul headquarters as outgoing U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus pumped his fist. And in the case of the rescue of Captain Phillips, the guys on scene made all the right calls. "Everybody will try to fix all evils with a success, but that only lasts until you screw something up," Cartwright says. Suffice to say, I'm not sure whatever happened to that paperwork, but I continued on in the service, and some things are better left unasked. And the answer was, millions of men and women, and particularly after 9/11. . We'd had a lot of leads on him, but frankly, none of the leads had panned out. HOOVER: This past May marked 10 years since the historic and heroic mission that you orchestrated, Admiral, what is it like for you to watch President Obama say those words now, 10 years later? I mean, there were risks every time we came close to the Pakistani border or crossed the Pakistani border, the Pakistanis were not concerned at all about engaging us. And I think he was probably glad I didn't ask him. Im absolutely ok with that. You wrote in your book. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. From 2015 to 2018, he was the chancellor of The University of Texas System.. McRaven served from June 13, 2008 to August 2011 as commander of Joint Special Operations . An accident during a routine parachute jump in 2001 kind of snapped me in two, McRaven said in a 2019 interview. Olson was the first Navy SEAL ever to be appointed to three-star and four-star flag rank, as well . It was scuba diving that captured young Bill McRaven's imagination. Retired Adm. William McRaven is a lot of things. Credits. The Navy brass had established a secret counterterrorist unit under Commander Richard Marcinko, a creative, mercurial and extravagantly profane enthusiast of commando arts. And sure enough, by the time we got back, the great Army Special Operations unit had gotten the lead. I just didnt want that to occur. When after a bad parachute accident McRaven stoically refused pain medication, he writes that "the imposing face of . I dont know, as a young boy, whether I thought I would follow in my fathers footsteps, what I knew was I loved the camaraderie. We had a helicopter with an optical ball on it that was providing our ISR, our video coverage, if you will. Some folks believe that maybe it was possible. It became a dark joke in military and intelligence circles that the U.S. knocked off al-Qaeda's No. You were in the joint operation center and you heard the C squadron commander who was on the ground saying, we have Jackpot. Take us inside the Joint Operation Center at that moment. So I reached for my rip cord, pulled the rip cord, and the pilot chute comes out of the back of the parachute. Yeah, theres a lot of people out there that think that this was a kill only mission. Back then, he was worried about whether or not the youth would stand up and join the military. If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. Well, you know, there are people who I meet every day who have no idea I ever spent a day in uniform. While the rest of the Pentagon is scaling back spending, special-operations forces are asking for more. MCRAVEN: Yeah. Commentary. News Skydiving Death Australia. According to participants in the closely held Abbottabad debate, McRaven spoke thoughtfully about the risks but never expressed doubt that his men could dispatch bin Laden and return home safely. But having been through these missions before, what I always know is, you know, you really have to sit down with the operators. As the chief executive officer of the UT System, Chancellor McRaven oversees 14 institutions that educate 221,000 students and employ 20,000 faculty and more than 80,000 health care professionals, researchers and staff. I don't know whether I've been dazed. You had 60 million dollars for a helicopter, the one we had lost on the raid, and you didnt have ten dollars for a tape measure? And as Ive told folks, it was just the right amount of levity, just at the right time to kind of lower the stress in the room. We actually didnt have a drone. (0:01-1:46) Source. You wrote, quote, as long as I could wiggle my toes, I was going to stay a SEAL. You share the story of Moki Martin, the Vietnam era SEAL, who was partially paralyzed from a head-on bike accident. There was always an understanding that it was about doing what was right for the country. : Basic SEAL training was a lifetime of challenges crammed into six months. We know that theyre getting ready to launch aircraft to come intercept us. What happened was the down blast from the helicopter hit this 18 foot high wall, created a vortex, kind of a vacuum over the blades, caused the helicopter to lose lift. Theyre all kind of crammed into this small room with General Brad Webb, who was my liaison to the White House at the time. MCRAVEN: Well, thats true of every mission you conduct, youve got to be able to delegate to people that you have trust and confidence in. It was an ideal post for a cerebral commando whose body needed mending. Late in 2010, you know, we were getting ready to pull out of Iraq by early 2011, for the most part, and yet, my guys were still conducting operations in downtown Baghdad. No, I dont think that contributed to his decline. A decorated, veteran Navy SEAL died Sunday after a mishap during military free-fall training in Arizona, Navy officials told USNI News. Well, I think its interesting when you think about Westmorelands observation in context. But before all that, he had to recover from a terrible accident. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. I mean, who in the world is going to join the military for relatively low pay, to put your life at risk, et cetera, et cetera? You were in the joint operation center and you heard the C squadron commander who was on the ground saying, we have Jackpot. Take us inside the Joint Operation Center at that moment. "Special forces have taken greater measures in the last year and a half to reduce civilian casualties," says Erica Gaston, who wrote a report for the Open Society Foundations, "but one night raid in a village can be enough to turn [people] against international and Afghan government efforts. I said, hey, son, how tall are you? William McRaven retired from the US Navy as a four-star admiral, as the commander of the United States special operations command and as the longest serving Navy SEAL in the history of our country . But when we were in training, he did not hesitate to pick me out of a crowd and turn me into a sugar cookie, as we say, where you roll around in the sand, and that kind of good natured harassment on a routine basis. He has unique facial characteristics. Of course, as we began to come in to target the one helicopter loses lift as it got over the target. And as I was descending, I noticed that there was . McRaven says civilians die in fewer than 1% of the raids, a good record in close urban combat, but it still means U.S. commandos are killing noncombatants twice a month. I mean, hes just a remarkable, remarkable inspiration. There was something about the new intelligence, something about the confidence of the intelligence, something about everything. Steve Inskeep asked him about a routine parachute jump in San Diego in the year 2001. Then, in 2001, came the parachute accident and the long climb back. William McRaven: The Admiral. The Desert One hostage-rescue mission in Iran that day, aborted in a spectacle of flaming aircraft, left eight Americans dead and the nation's prestige badly burned. And so I proudly have the opportunity to display that tape measure at the Special Operations Command. "Part of the chute wrapped around one leg, the risers around the other, and the good news is that it opened. . He had leadership skills we'd expect from a guy who had 35 years in the military." Then: "We're going to push the QRF," the quick-reaction force. And, of course, that generation, you know, they were children of the Great Depression. MCRAVEN: Well, the mission wasnt over yet. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. On May 17, 2014, Admiral William H. McRaven addressed the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin on their Commencement day. He began the new job this summer. What were you feeling in those moments? Good to be with you. And you know what? If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. And so on Jan. 29, it was McRaven who began to plan "finish options" for bin Laden alongside his counterparts in a seventh-floor CIA conference room. Bin Laden was in American hands, status adjusted: "enemy killed in action." I was heading out of Iraq, heading to AL U.D.(?) As commander of Naval Special Warfare Group One, Captain McRaven was leading a 1,000-foot freefall exercise in the summer of 2001, when an accident occurred that could easily have cost him his life. One was to parachute in a SEAL . WESTMORELAND: The zeal and the desire to serve is not present to the extent that it was several years ago. He previously served as Deputy Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command from 2003 to July 2007. . You know, youve got to play four quarters of the game. I'm not exactly sure what's happened. I didnt want to because I didnt want him to think that he was somehow important enough to be able to engage El Jefe, as he called me. That was a day that I think motivated all of America to go forth and realize that we had to bring justice to bin Laden, to bring justice to Al-Qaeda and to do what we felt was right for the country. Yeah, well, obviously, like a lot of people who watched it on TV, it was a horrifying moment for all of us. And that was pretty evident. You know, we had a lot of kind of heated discussions in the meetings I was in, but there was never any rancor. Eric Thor Olson (born January 24, 1952) is a retired United States Navy admiral who last served as the eighth Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) from July 2, 2007 to August 8, 2011. And we had a plan to do that. The story of identifying the body is such a memorable one. And he pulls. I don't know whether I've been knocked unconscious. Naval Special Warfare Group 1 began the hunt for Osama bin Laden without its commodore, and he soon stepped down from command. With her father by her side, she laughed off the injury like it was a scratch. Be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the hot new Command with a wonky. Son, how tall are you side, she laughed off the injury like it was several years and... 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