HOOVER: Saddam Hussein became your prisoner when he remained at your camp longer than originally expected, about 30 days. Oh, absolutely. Making your bed as easy to do. 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. "He walked again, which was amazing," sister Nan recalls. And the answer was, millions of men and women, and particularly after 9/11. The New American Commandos commander under the obama administration. "Frankly, I wasn't sure whether I had been knocked unconscious, so when I had the chance, I pulled my rip cord," McRaven told TIME. We fly in by helicopters, we assault compounds, we, you know, we grab the bad guy or whatever is required, and we get out. And as I would find out later, it wouldnt be the last time. Admiral, tell me about that premonition. MCRAVEN: Yeah. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. And fortunately, you know, the guys found me, took me to the hospital. HOOVER: Duty is among the virtues that you write about in the hero code. And to this day, Moki oversees the triathlon that we run every year as part of our underwater demolition team and our SEAL fraternity. Moki, to me was this kind of quintessential Navy SEAL. So there was always concern about the Pakistanis engaging. Unsure of his altitude or even where he was, he still had the frame of mind to reach for his ripcord, and pulled it. McRaven says it is just one part of a broader offensive against America's foes. So whenever a shot is fired, somebody is reporting through the chain. In fact, we had a plan with what we were going to do with bin Laden if we captured him. MCRAVEN: You know, I think the military guys - what I know is, you know, we go where the nation asks us to go, and we do what the nation requires us to do. And then. Did you actually ever think that he would be captured alive? Ill lie down next to the body just to see whether or not the remains are a little longer. NEW YORK (Reuters) - Retired Navy Admiral and former U.S. special operations chief William McRaven has no regrets about criticizing President Donald Trump, though he said on Wednesday . The Commander in Chief staked his presidency on a military plan with risks that daunted his Secretary of Defense. You know, there are people out there, Admiral, who. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made. But it was a relatively straightforward mission in terms of the first part of it. 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. It's a lesson Admiral William H. McRaven (retired) learned after a parachute accident that left him bedridden for months. By the time U.S. intelligence pinpointed its quarry, McRaven was a three-star admiral atop the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the U.S. military's clandestine strike force. 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. I mean, if thats not service, I dont know what is. You know, when we first captured Saddam, he was pompous. 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 dont know, as a young boy, whether I thought I would follow in my fathers footsteps, what I knew was I loved the camaraderie. (See TIME's 2008 Person of the Year: Barack Obama. About Obama, without a question to prompt him, he waxes lyrical and at length. 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. It still brings me to tears.". 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.. 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. He went right into Naval Special Warfare, serving in SEAL Team Six under its creator, Richard Marchinko who fired McRaven for being too rigid. I need to go personally identify the remains before I can kind of come back and tell you for certain its bin Laden. We put the body bag on the hangar floor and its a rubberized body bag. In a new book from TIME, Special Ops: The Hidden World of America's Toughest Warriors, international editor Jim Frederick reports on the secret world of the U.S. military units. 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. Do you mind recounting it? And now the Pakistanis, of course, are waking up to the fact that were there. So Im getting radio calls from the ground force commander. Based on a Navy SEAL's inspiring graduation speech, this #1 New York Times bestseller of powerful life lessons "should be read by every leader in America" (Wall Street Journal). The general theme of his speech is that anyone can change the world; all you need is the courage to do it. 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. You wrote in your book. You know, he ate as well if not better than a lot of the soldiers that we had. Distance?. I don't know whether I've been dazed. On that mission, they were representing a tribe that had trained and bled and hungered for 31 years to redeem itself as sensationally as it had failed in its public debut. He said, well sir Im six two. But, you know, I think leaders know how to recognize other leaders. It absolutely was not. As the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, he led a force of 69,000 men and women and was responsible for conducting counter-terrorism operations worldwide. I unzip the body bag and without getting too graphic he obviously didnt look too good, he had a couple of rounds in his head the beard was a little smaller, I think, than what we usually anticipate. But after SEAL training, we were stationed at the same team and we became very close friends. With otherwise outstanding efficiency reports, however, McRaven won a chance at platoon command in SEAL Team 4. Take us inside that closet as you watched your SEALS enter Pakistan and clear the compound floor by floor. In fact, he pushed two young girls, his daughters, in front of him, which created some chaos. Every particular of his missions remains classified. 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. McRaven grew up with war stories. I said, good, come here and. What were you feeling in those moments? And the reason that I am so impressed with this generation, because the 9/11 generation, these young men and women that signed up after September 11th, that raised their hand and said, Im going to join the military, knew that they were taking on the risks, knew that they would probably go to war. He was a Vietnam vet. But he was not going to have outside contact with any of his former Iraqi leaders. Image: MIT News Office. Like most promising midcareer officers, the 36-year-old McRaven was dispatched to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. All the men went off to World War Two, and then they came back and rebuilt the country. Will one of those hundred people be the person that cures cancer? 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. . Updated at 5:38 p.m. "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. This is a disturbing phenomenon to me because I dont believe our democracy long range is going to work unless theres an attitude in our society and particularly among our young, that they have an obligation of service. Television, film and video games have infused popular culture, and the political debate, with the power of special warfare to get the job done on the cheap. Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, // A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. This Week on a special, Independence Day Firing Line. Duty is among the virtues that you write about in the hero code. ", Does killing high-value targets make sense as a recipe to defeat al-Qaeda? 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. MCRAVEN: I had a moment of relief, you bet. You know, Ive heard you say that you are the quote biggest fan of the millennial generation and generation and Gen Z. It will give you a sense of accomplishment that you will want to continue to feel throughout the day. During a routine exercise, while serving as a Navy captain with decades of command of SEALs around the world, Admiral William H. McRaven was involved in a parachute accident: he fell more than 1,200 metres before the parachute deployed! But it was probably 15 minutes after that. I loved the sense of patriotism. And as we're taking off from the C-130 and we're kind of getting out of Baghdad, all of a sudden it hits me - this is going to be the day we're getting him. William McRaven was tumbling from the sky, and there wasn't much sky left. There was always an understanding that it was about doing what was right for the country. The sentiments appear to be mutual, for McRaven and his special-operations units. to meet with the CENTCOM commander. Rescued Captain Phillips from Somali pirates, Phillips: The first people I want to thank are the SEALs. And if its any indication from the people that have talked to me since that speech, I think its of some value to getting your day started right. And youve probably seen the iconic photo from Pete Souza. I didnt want to engage with him because, frankly, I didnt want him to, at least psychologically, think that he was a VIP, that he was somebody important enough to be able to engage me in conversation. 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. Yeah, well, he knew that I was in charge. And now I'm tumbling out of control towards the ground. Four-star Admiral Bill McRaven, former commander of the U.S. Special Operations and Navy SEAL, has led a high-profile careerincluding facing Somali pirates, Osama Bin Laden, and his own commander in chief. I don't know whether I've been knocked unconscious. 2. McRaven: He went from being pompous and arrogant to frankly, just being, you know, a tired, corrupt old man. For most of the past decade, McRaven hunted down high-value targets overseas. "I would contend he was the smartest guy in the room. Why is that, Admiral? And you think that contributed to his decline in custody? But I also knew at that moment that life was about to change. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. And on the plaque is a Home Depot tape measure. Im ok with that. So admittedly that particular operation was a lot sportier, a lot further, a lot more political ramifications, a lot riskier for a lot of reasons, but basically similar to things that we do every night. MCRAVEN: Yeah, well, having done thousands of missions before, you know, this was not an overly complicated mission. He took the special out of special warfare.". Will they be the next president or prime minister of Iraq? (0:01-1:46) Source. And then. So I think all of those kind of clicked in my mind. The commandos dropped into 10,000 feet of free fall, reserving their parachutes for the last moment. They had doubled their size and tripled their budget since 9/11, and 10 years of high-tempo combat missions had honed their skills in Iraq, Afghanistan and theaters of war they did not usually acknowledge: Somalia, Yemen, Tanzania, Kenya, Indonesia, the Philippines and Pakistan, where bin Laden's compound was not the first to receive callers from JSOC. "There is nobody in the U.S. government that thinks we can kill our way to victory, certainly not the special-operations guys," he says, "but what happens is, by capturing and killing some of these high-value targets, we buy space and time for the rest of the government to work.". MCRAVEN: Thank you, Margaret. On Sept. 11, 2001, McRaven was recovering at home in Southern California from a freak parachute accident that had nearly killed him four months earlier, crushing his back and pelvis. He was arrogant. The compound could still be booby trapped. Adm. William McRaven shares anecdotes from his life and military career. MCRAVEN: Yeah, it was interesting. "He was almost like the voice of Walter Cronkite, completely calm," says Michael Leiter, who was present as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Stay up to date with what you want to know. And Ive seen it in this current generation, the millennials and the Gen Z. McRaven signed up for Navy ROTC at the University of Texas, wooed Georgeann Brady at Alpha Delta Pi and majored in journalism at the peak of the profession's post-Watergate lan. The second helicopter, which was supposed to come in and land on the roof, lands outside. Operation Neptune Spear stripped al-Qaeda of its iconic leader and offered a kind of recompense for the traumas of 9/11. In 2014 Admiral William H. McRaven gave the commencement address at the University of Texas at Austin. It was going to be a staff job at . McRaven, then a 45-year-old Navy SEAL captain, led a jump exercise near San Diego. 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