December 16, 2024 • 53 mins
James Stejskal is a former U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) officer, seasoned intelligence operative, and author. With a career spanning over two decades, Stejskal has served in numerous high-risk environments around the world, specializing in covert operations, counterterrorism, and military intelligence. After his service, he turned to writing and consulting, sharing his vast expertise on special operations, military history, and the world of intelligence. Stejskal's insights offer a unique perspective on the intersection of military strategy, geopolitics, and the human element of warfare. He is the author of several books, including Special Forces Berlin: Clandestine Cold War Operations of the U.S. Army’s Elite, 1956-1990, which explores the covert operations of U.S. Special Forces in the heart of Cold War Europe.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Rude forms. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military Nails. I'm
straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hey, what's going on. It is a beautiful day and
another great episode of soft Rep Radio and I am
your delightful host rad Thank you for tuning in. If
you've listened before, thank you for tuning in again. And
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So please keep buying our merch and the branded items
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Second is our book club, and that is soft Rep
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(01:30):
at soft Rep with the guys behind the scenes from
the Special Operations community. Now speaking of Special Operations Community.
You guys already know who I have because you've clicked
on the link to listen to this episode. So without
further ado, I have retired Army Cia James stage cool.
So welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Thanks for inviting me, and it's great to be here
and I.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Love your intro. Oh thanks.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I should also give a shout out to our editor
guy who kind of hooked us up and said, rad
I want you to meet James and have him on
your show. We could talk about, you know, eagle Claw,
and I just want to kind of point out something
real quick. I had a friend of mine, Colonel Nightingale,
on the show. Familiar with Colonel Nightingale.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I do know Nightingale.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
He was working on the Joint staff when when this
whole thing went dumb.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, so tell me about eagle Claw. For someone who
doesn't know too much about Eagle Claw, let's just jump
into it and your role in that.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Well, as we have a tendency to do.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
The Americans are spread out all over the world. In
nineteen seventy eight seventy nine, Iran, which had been an
alias with the Shah of Iran, who we put in
the power in nineteen fifty three, decided that they wanted
to have a new form of government.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
A theocrasy.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
By an Islamic cleric by the name of comite Atola
pushed the shop out.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
The government changed and with the enthusiastic.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Non help of the government, the students that ran decided
that they were going to punish the United States and
they took over the American embassy in Tehran.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
That was the.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Fourth of November nineteen seventy nine, just forty five years ago,
at the beginning of last week. So when they took
over the embassy, they captured.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
About sixty Americans.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
They released all the local nationals who were working there,
but they held on to the Americans and basically they held.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Them hostage and would not release them.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
The government would not step in to help us out
because they were basically tacitly supporting the studio students. So
the president at the time said, well, hell we got
we have to get our brethren back. So we began
to plan a hostage rescue mission, which was initially called
(04:25):
Operation Rice Bowl. In the planning base, they said that
was to confuse the enemy, like it was supposed to
be in the Far East or something I'm not sure
it did. And then it was renamed later on something
a bit more aggressive, and it became Operation Eagle Claw.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
So I think we all know how the story of law,
at least part of it.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
A certain Normy unit downe Fort Bragg was involved. There
was a so called open force. The Army rangers were involved,
of course, maybe helicopters and Marine Corps pilots, which actually
turned out.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
To be.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Probably the weak point in the mission, the Navy helicopters
and Marine war bats, but I'll get into that. And
then a smaller unit in Germany was involved. It was
called Special Forces Forlin. It was a clandestine, a secret
special Forces unit. It's covered name was Detachment A Berlin.
(05:41):
It's real name was thirty nine Special Forces. And I
was part of that unit, and I was there at
this time, so it was a very formative part of
my career.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I've been in the Army for graphs six years when
I was into not too long working with a whole
bunch of you get.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Into really what was the I know you're telling us
about that, but how did you wind up getting into
Delta in just six years? You know, how old were
you when you enlisted?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Well, I was not in Delta. I was in Berlin.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Excuse me, yes, yeah, uh.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
That was a long That.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Was a long process because it was completely different from
all the other units. We did not wear uniforms. We
were stationed inside Berlin, inside East Germany.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
We had to speak a foreign language. I spoke German
and some Greek.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
And it was a unit there was given very specific tasks,
both intelligence collection and also the standard and Special forces
kind of direct action unconventional warfare missions. So it was
a hell of a place to be and I served
with probably some of the best people in the army.
(07:11):
There a number of Vietnam veterans, a number of former
members of Eastern European forces that joined the American military,
and some Lajack soldiers if you've heard about them. Just
a fantastic place to be. But because the unit had
(07:33):
such specialized skills, especially working undercover overseas, the unit was
chosen to help out on the Iran mission. So the
Iran Mession basically at two parts. One was to go
in and pick out and pick the hostages and bring
them out.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
But the first part was a bit more squarely.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
We had to go in and find out the indeligence
needed to pull off that rate, and so members of
Detachment they were chosen for that operation. A guy from
Delta Force joined them later on, a guy by the
name of Richard Meadows. He's quite well known in the
Special Forces community. He was also one of the plank
(08:18):
holders for Delta Force, underneath Charlie Beckwith And so these
guys were the precursor of the operation. And that's really
what I write about in my book Mission Iran, of which.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Right is your most recent book that you've written. Among
all of your books, you have Special Forces Berlin Special
operations in World War Two, you know Mission Iran, which
is going on right now. And like you said, you know,
everybody was kind of enjoying the discotheque of the seventies
in Iran. Everybody was having a good time and that
(08:54):
was happening right There's like video of what was before
the Iatola came in and uh forced the you know,
ideals of the what's going down there right now, which
is what we see today.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
A very strict theography, thank you, which just been yeah,
very much so. No, the people Iran, they have always been.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Very h beautiful.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Well, yeah, I mean with the Americans and the Arabians
have always gotten along pretty well, not so much with
the with the government nowadays.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Right, even back in the day in the eighties, I
remember my dad always not there was like this movie
with Charlie Sheen and they're driving through the town and
he shoots the machine guns called Navy seals and he
shoots the picture of aatolea comane down. Okay, like they
put that in the movie. And my Dad's like, yep,
that's about right. And my dad never really talked like
that as a Green Beret, but he had two people
that he just didn't like, and one was him and
(09:53):
uh And I was like, okay. And now that I'm older, though,
I understand because you know, he was full on in
the eighties and the s right, so as like you
and he was seventies, seventies, eighties, you know, nineties guy.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
So well that this this nineteen seventy nine was my
introduction to the Atola. Before that, my whole, my whole
army career was oriented on one thing, the warsaw pack
to the Soviet Union, right, and that's.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Why we were in Berlin.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Holy yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
The permission in Berlin was if there was a war,
we would be supposed to go out there and create
as much hammock as we possibly could slow the Russians.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Now then the bark Cliff for the Air Force. So
this this.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
New mission was very very a very quick switch. But
you know, the special forces are pretty adaptable. So we said, oh,
they moved a couple of doors over, but we know
where the target lives, so let's go get them.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Really, you know, Warsaw pack so true and it's still today.
I mean it's like it's never been given up on
their side, you know, Russia never gave up like He's
They're like, well, we don't really want to give up
that Warsaw.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Well, I think what moving moving on in nineteen eighty
or nineteen ninety, I should say, I think we made
a bit of a tactical error and believing that the
Russians were not interested in moving west.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Right by we're still doing it.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, by having the accord signed where they would get
rid of the nukes for Ukraine, and Ukraine said okay,
we want to be our own somber state. And at
the time Russia was like.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
All right, cool, yeah, cool cool.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
But that all changed, you know, someone got the lust
for the property lines, and uh, you know, we'll call
him Putin.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Well, I think the I think the Ukrainians might be
regretting the fact that they gave up their nukes.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I mean, they had the majority of them. But did they?
But did you know?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I lay in bed thinking did they?
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Though? Have you read my other book? Which one it's
called Dead Hand. It's a fiction novel, dead Hand.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
I'm gonna write that down. Dead Hand.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Yeah, it's it takes place oddly enough, it takes place
in twenty twenty four, and it's about what happens when
the Ukrainians nuke the Rotians.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Oh, I'm just you know, I mean, you can only
poke the bear so much, you know, and uh, supersonic
missile the kmart gets old. Okay, so you know, you know.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Yeah, no, yeah, but you know, there's Jiva, there's the
Geneva and Hague conventions, and then there's Putin's rules of combat.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
So they're kind of different.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Right, And now the he's integrating you know, their top
North Korea has been found to be now on the
on the lines with Russia fighting against but they're getting
slaughtered in from what I'm hearing, it's like, you know,
they're turning up bodies.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Well, depending on whose numbers you believe, we're talking as
far as the Russians, we're talking between five hundred and
seven hundred thousand casualties the Ukrainians have lost, with a
few also probably closer to two fifty three hundred.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
I mean, that's an amazing loss.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Of life for what they are doing with a small
state about the size of Texas. You know, they're fighting
is more than just.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Whacking the hell out of each other.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Yeah, I'm I'm concerned to see how this is going to.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Carry out, carry on through the next year.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Basically, I think we've been with the previous administration, well,
the current administration has basically been giving Ukraine a lifeline
but not pulling it in. We've given them enough that
they can hold off the Russians to prolong their defeat,
(14:07):
depending on how the Russians react. So now we'll see,
we'll see how and how our own government reacts in
the next year.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
But anyway, Yeah, your book's gonna you're gonna have to
have a new book.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, So with Mission Iran, that's very like kind of current,
that's very current today, you know, because what's going on
over in the Middle East, and you know how they
are at arms with each other, Israel and Palestine and
going into Iran and you know, getting into it with
you know, do we need to see regime change? Do
the people of Iran want this to happen? Is this
(14:48):
something that was a stepping stone to moving the Iatola
out of the situation and taking him out of the
you know what you said, the theocracy.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
I'm if we're talking about current day politics, I'm not
sure I can see it because the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
and all the members of the theocracy are no so
well established and so powerful.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
You know, They've got their secret services and their their
guns and everything else.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
It's going to be extremely difficult to get them out.
We are going to be able to do it.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
It's going to be the people around. We may give
them some consistence, but without there or without their efforts,
it will be it will end up being the same
way as it ended up in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Right, they need to take on the fight and stand
fast and hold the line and not just and we
can help that and support a positive outcome, but they
have to do the majority of all of that, is
that what you're kind of.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Getting at absolutely, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I think we're just gonna sit there and go yep, yep, yeah, agree.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
With what you said.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
This podcast is called YEP sponsored by YET and we
are just going to sit here agree to agree on things.
But you know the books that you have out there, Uh,
that's doing well for you being an author. Transitioning from
CIA from Special Forces to author. Did you ever think
that you'd be doing that.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I actually started to write when I was in the
Army and when I was stationed in Berlin, so I
was always going to doodle.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
In these things.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
And I decided after I got out and retired that
I could actually try it on for size and start
telling some of these stories.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
So I started out in nonfiction. My first will.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Probably the book that is doing the best is My
History of Special Forces. Let It's a thirty year history.
Was not very well known, so when I got it published,
I had to break some rules.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Actually I didn't. It was all.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
Reviewed by the Army and everything and it got cleared,
so that was sort of the start. It came off
with this, and then I told a bit of the
Rand story in that book, but not all of it
because some of my friends that some of my friends
(17:31):
were still serving and I could not tell their stories.
So about two thousand eighteen, twenty nineteen, it became clear
that they were all free and clear of everything, and
I can start telling their stories. So it's a result
of about interviews with about forty people that I undertook.
(17:56):
Some of the guys are from Delta, of course, but
most of them are guys I served with in Berlin.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I think that's so neat and so intriguing about what
your mission was and in Berlin, and you know, growing
up with my dad going over to Thailand and all
these different places, Cobra, gold and you know, all this
stuff in my as a young kid, I never put
two and two together, you know, I just always thought,
that's dad. You're so cool, bro, You're I mean, you
did such a crazy gig. You saw the Berlin Wall, Like.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Yeah. People, you know people they always say thank you
for your stars and oh god, you must.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Be some sort of the hero or something rock star.
I was lucky. I survived.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I was I was a witness to all the really
cold people. Some of the names I could drop some
of these guys are just.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
You know, alievable, but.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
For me, the cool part was being in Berlin, you know,
the Divine to Cety. After I had read you know,
a number of nonfics in the histories of World War
two and everything. My father was a soldier in World
War Two, and then also some of the movies or
some of the fiction I had read, you know, like
(19:11):
jehan Lecerrey, There's Fight who Came In from the Cold,
Lynn Dayton Funeral in Berlin, and some of these really.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Cool fiction books.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
So when when I got to Berlin, it was actually
on the street, wandering around in civilian clothes, talking to
people living with these people across the walking along the wall,
knowing across the wall in a completely different place, you know,
two completely antagonistic political systems, And there were guys with
(19:46):
guns that's what I call him. Gwg's all along the wall.
And I'm kind of looking at these guys and they're
looking at me, and I'm going, you probably don't know
what I'm here for. I'm not gonna tell you, but
I kind of look forward to the day when we meet.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Europe.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So yeah, no, no, So my father in law was serving
a religious mission in Germany Switzerland area, and somehow he
told a story of going through the wall east to
east to west to go meet somebody on the other
side of in East Germany. I'm like, it's got to
be a girl.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
And at the time, I was like, he just talks
about it. We're gonna see him at Thanksgiving coming up here,
and we're I'm gonna ask him and say, so, Elliott,
tell me more about how you went over East German's
Wall and whatnot. And I'm curious because back then man
in the sixty eight, sixty six, sixty eight, because then
he went after he got out of the religious mission
(20:43):
for his church, he joined the Marine Corps and went
to Vietnam as an older dude twenty five is twenty
four to twenty five. But yeah, he was going back
and forth the wall, sneaking across as a missionary.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
You could do that.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
They had between the East and West Berlin or about
nine I believe, I can't remember exactly crossing points, and
some points were designated for only Westperlinters to go in
the East Berlin or for Easter Litters.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
To go into West Berlin.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
There were a couple of slots places there were designated
only for foreigners and West Germans, you know, from further out,
and there.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Were other places you've go ahead.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
If you had an American passport, the civilian passport, you
could cross a couple.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Of rip places.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
But if you're in the military, we were supposed to
use checkpoints Charlotte, which is the most favorite, most famous
crossing point. So that was that was a bizarre thing
in itself. More bizarre was crossing end when you were
using your US passport or a different pashport going through
(21:57):
one of the other checkpoints there you saw the difference.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
You know, when you're going through Checkpoint Charlie, it's basically the.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
East Germans can't touch the Americans or any of the
breads of the French, especially the military.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
But when you're going through.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Any of the other checkpoints, you're a fair game. It's
like crossing the border between warhead and in the United States. Yeah,
it was a bizarre place.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
To live in.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Some people didn't like it at all because you're you're
in a city about the size of Manhattan.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Well New York City, but you're ringed by a wall.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
After nineteen sixty one, you know, the whole city is
closed in and some people got basically cabin fever from
being in that location. Some of the guys preferred to
be in southern Germany where they.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Could ski and go out into the woods.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
So for us to do that, we had to pick
up a move, you know, either by error or by trade,
and so a lot of the guys didn't like it.
For me, it was cool, but other people liking to
be like in the zoo, to be in the cage
in the zoo, and.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Other other folks said, well, you know.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
The war kicks off, this is gonna be the largest
pow camp in.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
The world immediately ye has to manage to get out
and cause trouble. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
No, really, they just because they're they're trapping. They're kind
of like they're just pacing like the lion at the zoo.
And they say that the zoo is the only jail
where everybody is innocent.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Yeah, well we weren't so in innocent.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
No, no, no operation of Berlin Man Warsaw packed. I
just grew up with a whole closet at the armory
that my dad worked at with warsaw pack cards. There
was like this monitor that he'd have me go sit
in the closet. He's like, just go sitting there and
look at the stuff. And I'd pull film off of
a shelf and I'd put it on and I just
there to scroll these dials and just see like T
(24:10):
ten tanks and RPG seven's, but then the rockets and
all the different rockets and all the different rockets rockets,
and then there'd be like these models, and I remembered
all these warsaw packed stuff, right. I think I even
have a pack of cards still somewhere that are a
full deck of cards for Warsaw packed equipment.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
That was one of the most boring classes. We had.
The models.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Somebody in the military or contracted through the military to
make these specific, perfect models and then photograph them, to
make them into films so that they could be scrolled
and be trained and uptrained to guys like yourself or
my dad or somehow. I saw it, you know, and
sat there. It was just like it was like the
iPad of the SF I's here, go use your iPad aaron.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
For us.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
That was part of the job because you had to
identify not only the vehicles, but you had to identify
how they were grouped, because you could tell by the
type of vehicle because there are variants that everyone there
was one type of truck, but they had thirty different
kinds of variants of that truck. You can tell what
unit it belonged to based on the extraneous equipment they had.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Unfortunately, we had to learn.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
All those so we could say, okay, that belongs to
a Russian Strategic Rocket Army, or that's part.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Of an armored division, or that's an engineer unit. And
you had to know which which tank blown where, which which.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Radar system below where, and what missile it went after,
so that we could tell the air force this is
where you want to come anyway.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
That's all the silhouettes, you know, all the different silhouettes
of the sideways of it or the front forward version
of it, like, oh, you're looking directly at it. Oh,
you're looking at the side of it. This is the same.
This is how it looks.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
The really different this was we actually got to go
out and seen it. Uh as part of as part
of the mission, you're going out looking at these things,
and the East Germans and the Russians weren't really keen
on that, but we sent teams out to find these things,
to locate them and be able to identify them one
(26:28):
by one.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah, that was another one part of the mission.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
What was your original MOS military occupation specialty on a
eight on the team? Were you like an eighteen echo
or Charlie.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Or I started out as the one to one problem
dionuh so I was an infantry one. I went to
one one hotel, which was a one O six recoil
less rifle uh crew one O six recoilers tell in
(27:00):
the eighties. Second, and then when I managed to escape
the eighty second, which is another long story, I went
to Special Forces and trained initially as a one to
one BROVO for Sierra, which was light weapon the leader
I see, and I cross trained in a number of
other MOS.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, that's very cool, very cool. And did you what
was your favorite MOS within the teams.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
What eventually became eighteen boxtrot the intel sergeant. And part
of that was because of my time in Berlin, just
the intelligence trade craft, the kind of things you.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Were doing, working on your own.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Cultivating assets, looking for people that can tell you the
information you wanted, looking for things, and I think that
the finding the best part. You're looking for it can
be boring, but when you actually find something that you're
looking for, That's always cool being able to talk to people,
finding the right one that's going to answer your questions.
(28:15):
The recruit assessment and recruitment process. Yeah, so that's that's
the part I enjoyed.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
You know what, I'm just sit here thinking you're talking about,
you know, the timeframe, and there's just no GPS. You know,
like there's no there's no you know, Google Maps for
you to get around, be like, we got to go
over here over there. You're literally using some type of
like you know, folding map from like a like a
tourist pamphlet or something from the area of that that
(28:43):
somebody's drawn, right, and like there's you're really just seriously
in it, like moving street to street house. No cell phones, right,
you have to go to a phone and be like, hey,
it's me she and I got the information over here,
you see, Okay, I'll talk to you at three o'clock.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Yeah, paper maps, magnetic compass or two.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
You generally carry two.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
A number two lead pencil with an eraser because bopoy
pins couldn't be trusted, you know, a cat very old
school I had the first time I saw GPS was
the Golf War, when we started feeling fielding the new garments,
(29:32):
and that was wow.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
We were using those things in the desert. And you know,
before you had to use the map, and.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
If you were lucky, if you're driving a vehicle, you're
driving with one over two hundred and fifty thousand map,
which is, you know, not too much detail.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
But with the garment you could use your map and
you could.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Use the GPS to tell you were where you were
on the map, which was which was real cool. I mean,
it was a very simple reado. It was all in
geographic Gorton's.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
No picture or anything like that. It was just telling
you where you were at and you could reference that
to the map.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Problem was and says you're driving along and the GPS
is saying this is how you get from here to
there straight line. You have to look at the ground
while you're drivings is not showing you a picture, and
all of a sudden you come up on a very
large hole in the ground, but the GPS does not
show you.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
But they're a lot better than that now.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Well, I still hear about people getting stuck on dirt
roads trying to get using their GPS, so you know,
not everything's still mapped out, so some old school ingenuity
is still probably needed in this day and age. I
think it's still good to learn how to drive a
stick shift that kind.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Of thing, absolutely, because a lot of places in the
world you can't get in automatic, or if you do
have an automatic, you'll get stuck in the heard.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
The Special Forces school stopped teaching map using regular maps
a while back, and they've only recently brought it back
in because they found out that exactly what you're saying,
the GPS is gonnot be trusted. They're gonna be bespoofed.
And then you have this issue of batteries. Right, half
(31:25):
the equipment we carry a required battery. We used to
complain about the radios because they had these bricks of
a battery and besides that, in your flashlight that was
the only batteries you had to carry. Nowadays you have
to carry one forever.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
You know, my dad was the eighteen echo and he
said that allowed him to be in charge of everybody
for five minutes when they had to crank the He's like,
everybody cranks, yeah, and if you and.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
They and they never carried the generator the lieutenant. The
lieutenantually had stuck with.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, he would be a crank crank away.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
I remember playing with his Morse code device. Did it
did that whole?
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Yeah, that's another thing we had to learn. Worse works
I work. So that's why the trendees are still uses,
but we're not.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
So it got the three Amigos to go down and
save Santa Poco and the three Amigos they used Amigos
please come.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Down and save us.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah, so really yeah, it's it's kind of like you know,
caveman technology, right, it's been around for so long. The
telegraph is Morse code.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
If I go back to where we were in nineteen
seventy nine, and we have been given.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
The mission for counter terrorism in.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Nineteen seventy five, and basically they said this was when
all the skyjackings, the aircraft hijackings were taking place in
Europe and became it was getting to be worries. So
the American commander in Europe, the four star, said what
do we have to handle this? And the bad the
(33:18):
guy said basically nothing, uh, And so they Special Operations Command,
which was down in stute Cart at the time, came
to our units, do you think you could work up
an operations plan of how you could do this uh
counter terrorism stuff, and that was not far off from.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
What we were doing anyway. I mean, basically, if you're
you have a terrorist, what you're dealing with is the
same thing as I'm gonna use this loosely a commando.
You know, a guy that's taught to go.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
Undercover and blows something up or kill someone. So what
better unit, it said, out against them than the exact
kind of unit that you are fighting. So they said,
your special Forces, you guys can figure this out.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
So we did.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
But we were starting out from basics, none of this
high speed black bel grow gortex stuff.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
You know. We were taking what we had had to
go from there.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
But you go back in history, you go back in
history also, and we were studying the manuals from the
OSS and World War two and the Special Operations.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
We had some guys that.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
Had trained with the sas the sis is probably the
first counter terrorism No, the first counter terrorism unit was
actually the Shangheim muniial place in nineteen twenties, basically an
anti riots one. But we took all that old information
and said this is what we need to do. And
(35:00):
then we looked at the what was happening? Aircraft jects, Well,
what do you do against? We found an airplane and
we started practicing a trade a building and that's.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
That's how we build up our skills.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
And everybody's going whateff, and then well then or what
about this?
Speaker 3 (35:21):
And it was.
Speaker 4 (35:21):
All you know, hunting Pack tried different things out. So
by nineteen seventy nine we are fully trained as a
counter terrorism for Europe. But back in the States, we
had decided the Army had decided they.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Needed a full time, big counter terrorism that only had counter.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Terrorism as its primary measurement, and that was this outfit
called Delta. So when it came down for the Iran thing,
they said, okay, Delta Force, you're going, but we need
the intelligence to figure out how to hit this target.
So the only people that can do that are people
(36:08):
that know how to work undercover, and then people who
know Special Forces operations so they know what information to
look for. And they said the only place we can
get that was Detachment A. So our guys were chosen
to go in the Tehran and collect that. This is
the only probably the only successful part of.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
That mission was the guy that went in and came
out with that interval, But then about a couple of
weeks into the operation, Charlie Beckworth.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Realized that he had to take down the US embassy
to get the hostages out of the hembasphere. It's about
a twenty three acre site, big site, and about I
can't remember how many buildings, but you know, like twenty
five different buildings on this site.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
So he had one.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Hundred guys to go do this. The problem was there
were three other hostings being held in the Foreign Ministry,
the Iranian Foreign Ministry, and.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
He said, I can't handle it. I'm fully occupied for this.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
So our commander who was in the in the planning
stages from the beginning, and we'll do it. And we
got the target, We got the mission to take down
the Foreign Ministry. So at Desert One, you've got all
those planes coming in, all eleicatters, there are delta forests
(37:35):
on the airplanes, there are rangers who secured Desert one,
and then there are our guys mixed in there. So
we've got our team in.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
There as well. And that's that's how things went down.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
That's how things went down, he says, that's how things
went down.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Like a cowboy.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Well, yeah, I think when the whole thing was concluded.
One of our guys, really a former officer who had
been rifted in the nineteen seventies and came back into
Special Forces as a sergeant, became a medic. When they
(38:19):
told us the whole thing was cut off. This was
December of nineteen eighty, after a Rigan had been lected.
He was just shaking his head. He was cleaning his
machine gun, and it goes, it would have been glorious.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
It would have been glorious, just clean.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
It would probably will be dead, but whatever.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yeah, well you just got the hindsights twenty twenty right.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Well anyway, but Desert one to knock him off, obviously,
primarily because the helicopters were.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
Well anyway, primarily because of the headquarters.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
But after that we began blending in a second mission,
and that if Carter had been re elected, we might
have done that one.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
But Reagan got elected, and for obscure reasons, probably left
in the New York Times, the.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Vision was canceled. So the second one would have been
much larger. The Air Force or the Marines in the
Navy were out. It would have been just the Air
Force and the Army Air Force flying airplanes, big aircraft
the Army with the ground wars is obviously, but then
(39:39):
also army helicopters.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Blackhawks eight six is. I talked about that at great
deal in the in the book, and it.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Was basically the origin of the Knights Talkers, a Special Operations,
the Asian Squad what was known then that day as
task Forces won't get Time, and then they cleverly changed
the name the Dash Force one six.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
That's right, that's right, that's right. And I and Colonel Nightingale,
you know, he just said that. I said, what's the
difference between you and you know? How come we saw
Oliver North get kind of put in front of Congress
and all this kind of stuff and how that went down?
And he's like, rad I kept my receipts. Yeah, And
that's on a soft reap episode. So if you go back,
(40:28):
if you want to go find me interviewing Colonel Nightingale
from the same thing that you know, a living Ranger
founder I think the Second Rangers or the First Rangers.
He's like a living member of that, the sixtieth, the
one sixtieth, and they made numbers, so you think there
was more. I love that part of the group I
(40:48):
love you Special Forces guys. You know, it's like Dad
all over.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
I just want you to know, from me to you,
I know you got so much that you're going to
take with you, and that you've been a part of
that well ever ever know, and you've kept that oath
and I just want to commend you on the oath
keeping for our nation. Uh And I want to say
thank you for me to you to that thing.
Speaker 4 (41:10):
Well, I appreciate that a lot, Rad, But what you
really have to know is that you have no idea
how much fun we had to all this stuff. So
it's really probly for us. And like I said, I
didn't do.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Anything radical when I was in the military, but I.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
Got I had the chance to work with some of
the like I said, the greatest guys I've never had
the optunity to work with, and they're all over the military.
But yeah, so being a being a witness to this,
and that's part of the reason why I became a writer.
(41:49):
I'm also was a historian. I actually went to school,
and now that I'm officially certified, I can write books
and say I'm historicorian.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Congratulations on that. That's a big deal to go to
school yes.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
But but part of the reason I wrote the first
book about Berlin was we were at a reunion, and
this was about twenty twelve or so, and so Berlin
had been closed down since the Berlin Wall. The unit
was shut down and you know, the benefits of peace,
(42:27):
which we may.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Be regretting here before too long.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
But anyway, we were sitting around and saying, well, you know,
we had to get somebody to write this stuff down
because we're all going to be.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Gone before too long. And my thought was, well, you're
certainly not.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
Going to get the army to do it, because A
they don't have anybody that knows what the unit was
up to, and B they're going to write when they
want the bad birds, well the good bards. And I
had already written one soul history about World War.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
One in Africa, and somebody from across the room goes, hey,
he wrote a book, And so that's how I was volunteer.
Speaker 4 (43:14):
Anyway, So the next three and a half years I
spent interviewing guys.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
From the union. In other places.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
I think I managed to interview about sixty five people
as inbut from others. No more than eight hundred people
served in Berlin. From nineteen fifty six to nineteen ninety,
so those eight hundred people was my pool. Some of
the guys had passed on, and some of the guys
(43:42):
didn't want to talk to me. I respect that, and
some of the guys told me the stories that I
had to get cross checked and write. Some of those
went out the window. But and it was quite a
revelation for me to be able to write this. I
talked to some of the very first guys that have
been in the Union nineteen fifty six and onwards, and
(44:03):
being able to do that, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Brought gave me a new appreciation for the unit over
the years.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
And then then I called up the Pentagon and said, hey,
I got this book, and I understand I'm supposed to
have it checked out by you folks.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
And they said, well, normally you go to your proponent,
and in my case it would have been the Army.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
But the lady must have figured out something and she goes, well,
first tell me what it's about. And I told her,
I said, it's about a classified it's apecial forces unit
that existed in Berlin, and she goes, you better send
me the magistript.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
So sixteen months later I got the clearance to write it.
I told the Army about this and so the guys said, no,
you can't write this, it's classified.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
And I said, that's how this publication clearance brought us works.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
The Army told me what's good to go and what's not.
So that's what we did.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
So that did they redact things that you did put
in there that you thought you wanted out there?
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Ashley? Surprisingly, not very much.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
They talk about you've burned the special atomic demolition ammunition,
the device to the suitcase nuke.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Yes, I talked about that some and I had a specific.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
Number in there, and it went off to the Defense
Nuclear Agency and they said, well, don't put that in
and put this in. So and a few other small
details like that, you know, really mid noise stuff.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
But whatever, I forgot all about the suitcase. I keep
thinking about submarines. Jez it's gonna left that one off there.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
Yeah, but it was, it was. It was part of
the job.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
So yeah, yeah, that's great, And that's Special Forces Berlin
and my listener, our viewer can go and find that
anywhere that books are being sold online, and if you
do buy his book, you should leave a review on
the site. That you bought it from. Help bring that
up for James so that it could rise into searches
(46:17):
and you know, he can just have more opportunity to
tell these stories, because I mean, really, you're telling like
espionage like cool. I love it. I think it should
be Have you had a movie made.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
I wish. I think my fiction series, which is called
The Snake.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
Eater Chronicles Love Love It.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
A new one was coming out, which is actually the
origin story before I had started about nineteen seventy nine
so that I could write about the time I was there.
So this is going to carry the unit from the
very beginning till the end of some further bits. Because
so your your point about reviews is very much appreciated.
(47:07):
You don't even have to buy the book from Amazon
to right read to review on it now, so that's
that's key. But you know, being being able to put
down the nonfiction history is one thing. But then some
of the stories I have to adapt to protect the
(47:28):
guilties of the speech because like I said, I served
as very interesting people and being able to tell their stories.
Some of these stories are coupled together. When I write
my fiction, I will take an incident that happen there,
when it happened over here. Put them all together and
tell the story. So if I told it as nonfiction,
(47:54):
I'd have to get it well, I have to get
them cleared anyway.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
But if I told it as non fiction, then people
can out assuming. But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you're trying to just get it
out there, like you know now, without any issues. You're
just like, Okay, if this is how it's supposed to
go out there, then this is what can go out there.
I'm not trying to make anybody else mad. You're respecting
your guys and gals that you worked with, and if
they don't want to tell you something, there's they're they're cool.
That and the guys that you said you cross checked, Hey,
you're in it for it seems like the right reasons.
(48:24):
And and again I like that, that's cool.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
You're cool. Yeah, and it's fun for me too. It
keeps keeps me busy and it gets me out of
my wife's there, So that's that's good.
Speaker 4 (48:37):
The only r part about looking for my name on
Amazon or anywhere is being able to get some spelly right.
So you know, if my my name was Jack Carr.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
It would be easy. C A R C A R R.
But anyway you're out.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
It's like your last name is maybe Norwegian or something
along those lines.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Your last name.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
It's check, Check's lockey in.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Check because it's that's.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
And the basic translation comes up from something like which
I think is very appropriate.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Grumpy old man, grumpy old.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
Only if you say so. Well, listen, you've been wonderful
on the show, and you've really been telling us some
insightful things. I've really been just kind of captivated by
you and just haven't even really spoken. This will probably
be my best episode ever because you just take it.
You just take the cake for your stories about Berlin
and about what you've done and who you've served with. Uh,
(49:45):
so many things I could probably go into with you.
And with that said, I'd like to open up an
invitation to have you back on the show if there's
ever another book or anything that you want to talk about.
You're like, hey Erin or hey Rad. Yes my name
is Erin, but I also go by Rad.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Now I'm confused, but I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Aaron Raddred, It's.
Speaker 4 (50:14):
Yeah, we we did not talk about a lot of things,
and I could ramb along for a lot longer.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
But yeah, But like.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
I said, I've got my next fiction book is coming
out in the spring, and that's the origin story of
Special Parsons in Berlin. I'm also doing a guide book
to Berlin, a guide to Golden War Berlin, and that's
going to be done in pictures and words.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
The story is about things that happened there, both fiction
and not fiction. Oh yeah, that'd be real.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
That's really cool. Do you go back and visit Germany
since you speak it and you.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Know it, well, I went.
Speaker 4 (50:53):
I went back there in June, spent about ten days
recounting old sites. I'm going back in two weeks. I'm
actually going over and talk to the German schedule operations around.
Oh yeah, about stay behind forces and Russians.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
I don't know what I wonder. I wonder, you know, Uh, yeah,
I wonder. I got some friends over there right now
in the army, just you know, training.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
So that's what you do. Train.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
Yeah, they're just training.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
Boredom punctuated by moments.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Of sure terror, yes exactly. And so you know, blessings
to them over there and their safety and yours as well.
When you go to travel, you know, et cetera, to
go over there and thanks for still being you. And again,
I know there's a lot more to talk about, like
your years in the CIA and everything, and so like
I would love to have you back on the show,
(51:51):
uh you know, and we can get that out and
talk about it and talk about your new book, et cetera.
So I just want to.
Speaker 3 (51:57):
Say, make it happen.
Speaker 2 (51:59):
I will make it well man, Kay, So it's in
my core. I got you, I got you, I got it.
It's not a few album. The fire is always on
for you. As long as you buy our merch. People
out there, buy the merch, keep it going.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Can I send you a bubble of gas for you? Please? Please? Please?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Well, thank you so much for being on the show, James.
You've been a pleasure and just a very cool, entertaining,
captivating guest. And I'm sure my listener out there would
love to have you back on and listen some more. Again.
Go check out his books Special Forces, Berlin Special Operations,
World War Two Mission A Run, which is his latest
book for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
You heard him.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
He's a historian, a novelist, a human US American Special Forces.
So let's just keep it real and say on behalf
of everybody here at soft REP. And James, I'm gonna
say peace.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
You've been listening to self repla
Rude forms. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military Nails. I'm
straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hey, what's going on. It is a beautiful day and
another great episode of soft Rep Radio and I am
your delightful host rad Thank you for tuning in. If
you've listened before, thank you for tuning in again. And
to those of you who are new, welcome, Welcome to
the show. But first let me introduce you to Software
dot Com Forward slash Merch. So we have a merch store.
(01:03):
It helps to keep the fireplace going. That's a real thing.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
That is gas.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I know you want to know I'm hardcore mountain man
and I am, but that's gas and that's got a run.
So please keep buying our merch and the branded items
like the shirts and the hats and things. We appreciate it.
Second is our book club, and that is soft Rep
dot Com Forward slash book hyphen Club, and we have
a curated library of books for you to read through
and enjoy. And that's put together by the team here
(01:30):
at soft Rep with the guys behind the scenes from
the Special Operations community. Now speaking of Special Operations Community.
You guys already know who I have because you've clicked
on the link to listen to this episode. So without
further ado, I have retired Army Cia James stage cool.
So welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Thanks for inviting me, and it's great to be here
and I.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Love your intro. Oh thanks.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I should also give a shout out to our editor
guy who kind of hooked us up and said, rad
I want you to meet James and have him on
your show. We could talk about, you know, eagle Claw,
and I just want to kind of point out something
real quick. I had a friend of mine, Colonel Nightingale,
on the show. Familiar with Colonel Nightingale.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I do know Nightingale.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
He was working on the Joint staff when when this
whole thing went dumb.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, so tell me about eagle Claw. For someone who
doesn't know too much about Eagle Claw, let's just jump
into it and your role in that.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Well, as we have a tendency to do.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
The Americans are spread out all over the world. In
nineteen seventy eight seventy nine, Iran, which had been an
alias with the Shah of Iran, who we put in
the power in nineteen fifty three, decided that they wanted
to have a new form of government.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
A theocrasy.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
By an Islamic cleric by the name of comite Atola
pushed the shop out.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
The government changed and with the enthusiastic.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Non help of the government, the students that ran decided
that they were going to punish the United States and
they took over the American embassy in Tehran.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
That was the.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Fourth of November nineteen seventy nine, just forty five years ago,
at the beginning of last week. So when they took
over the embassy, they captured.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
About sixty Americans.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
They released all the local nationals who were working there,
but they held on to the Americans and basically they held.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Them hostage and would not release them.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
The government would not step in to help us out
because they were basically tacitly supporting the studio students. So
the president at the time said, well, hell we got
we have to get our brethren back. So we began
to plan a hostage rescue mission, which was initially called
(04:25):
Operation Rice Bowl. In the planning base, they said that
was to confuse the enemy, like it was supposed to
be in the Far East or something I'm not sure
it did. And then it was renamed later on something
a bit more aggressive, and it became Operation Eagle Claw.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
So I think we all know how the story of law,
at least part of it.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
A certain Normy unit downe Fort Bragg was involved. There
was a so called open force. The Army rangers were involved,
of course, maybe helicopters and Marine Corps pilots, which actually
turned out.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
To be.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Probably the weak point in the mission, the Navy helicopters
and Marine war bats, but I'll get into that. And
then a smaller unit in Germany was involved. It was
called Special Forces Forlin. It was a clandestine, a secret
special Forces unit. It's covered name was Detachment A Berlin.
(05:41):
It's real name was thirty nine Special Forces. And I
was part of that unit, and I was there at
this time, so it was a very formative part of
my career.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I've been in the Army for graphs six years when
I was into not too long working with a whole
bunch of you get.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Into really what was the I know you're telling us
about that, but how did you wind up getting into
Delta in just six years? You know, how old were
you when you enlisted?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Well, I was not in Delta. I was in Berlin.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Excuse me, yes, yeah, uh.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
That was a long That.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Was a long process because it was completely different from
all the other units. We did not wear uniforms. We
were stationed inside Berlin, inside East Germany.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
We had to speak a foreign language. I spoke German
and some Greek.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
And it was a unit there was given very specific tasks,
both intelligence collection and also the standard and Special forces
kind of direct action unconventional warfare missions. So it was
a hell of a place to be and I served
with probably some of the best people in the army.
(07:11):
There a number of Vietnam veterans, a number of former
members of Eastern European forces that joined the American military,
and some Lajack soldiers if you've heard about them. Just
a fantastic place to be. But because the unit had
(07:33):
such specialized skills, especially working undercover overseas, the unit was
chosen to help out on the Iran mission. So the
Iran Mession basically at two parts. One was to go
in and pick out and pick the hostages and bring
them out.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
But the first part was a bit more squarely.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
We had to go in and find out the indeligence
needed to pull off that rate, and so members of
Detachment they were chosen for that operation. A guy from
Delta Force joined them later on, a guy by the
name of Richard Meadows. He's quite well known in the
Special Forces community. He was also one of the plank
(08:18):
holders for Delta Force, underneath Charlie Beckwith And so these
guys were the precursor of the operation. And that's really
what I write about in my book Mission Iran, of which.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Right is your most recent book that you've written. Among
all of your books, you have Special Forces Berlin Special
operations in World War Two, you know Mission Iran, which
is going on right now. And like you said, you know,
everybody was kind of enjoying the discotheque of the seventies
in Iran. Everybody was having a good time and that
(08:54):
was happening right There's like video of what was before
the Iatola came in and uh forced the you know,
ideals of the what's going down there right now, which
is what we see today.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
A very strict theography, thank you, which just been yeah,
very much so. No, the people Iran, they have always been.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Very h beautiful.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Well, yeah, I mean with the Americans and the Arabians
have always gotten along pretty well, not so much with
the with the government nowadays.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Right, even back in the day in the eighties, I
remember my dad always not there was like this movie
with Charlie Sheen and they're driving through the town and
he shoots the machine guns called Navy seals and he
shoots the picture of aatolea comane down. Okay, like they
put that in the movie. And my Dad's like, yep,
that's about right. And my dad never really talked like
that as a Green Beret, but he had two people
that he just didn't like, and one was him and
(09:53):
uh And I was like, okay. And now that I'm older, though,
I understand because you know, he was full on in
the eighties and the s right, so as like you
and he was seventies, seventies, eighties, you know, nineties guy.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
So well that this this nineteen seventy nine was my
introduction to the Atola. Before that, my whole, my whole
army career was oriented on one thing, the warsaw pack
to the Soviet Union, right, and that's.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Why we were in Berlin.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Holy yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
The permission in Berlin was if there was a war,
we would be supposed to go out there and create
as much hammock as we possibly could slow the Russians.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Now then the bark Cliff for the Air Force. So
this this.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
New mission was very very a very quick switch. But
you know, the special forces are pretty adaptable. So we said, oh,
they moved a couple of doors over, but we know
where the target lives, so let's go get them.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Really, you know, Warsaw pack so true and it's still today.
I mean it's like it's never been given up on
their side, you know, Russia never gave up like He's
They're like, well, we don't really want to give up
that Warsaw.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Well, I think what moving moving on in nineteen eighty
or nineteen ninety, I should say, I think we made
a bit of a tactical error and believing that the
Russians were not interested in moving west.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Right by we're still doing it.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, by having the accord signed where they would get
rid of the nukes for Ukraine, and Ukraine said okay,
we want to be our own somber state. And at
the time Russia was like.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
All right, cool, yeah, cool cool.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
But that all changed, you know, someone got the lust
for the property lines, and uh, you know, we'll call
him Putin.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
Well, I think the I think the Ukrainians might be
regretting the fact that they gave up their nukes.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I mean, they had the majority of them. But did they?
But did you know?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I lay in bed thinking did they?
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Though? Have you read my other book? Which one it's
called Dead Hand. It's a fiction novel, dead Hand.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
I'm gonna write that down. Dead Hand.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
Yeah, it's it takes place oddly enough, it takes place
in twenty twenty four, and it's about what happens when
the Ukrainians nuke the Rotians.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Oh, I'm just you know, I mean, you can only
poke the bear so much, you know, and uh, supersonic
missile the kmart gets old. Okay, so you know, you know.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Yeah, no, yeah, but you know, there's Jiva, there's the
Geneva and Hague conventions, and then there's Putin's rules of combat.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
So they're kind of different.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Right, And now the he's integrating you know, their top
North Korea has been found to be now on the
on the lines with Russia fighting against but they're getting
slaughtered in from what I'm hearing, it's like, you know,
they're turning up bodies.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
Well, depending on whose numbers you believe, we're talking as
far as the Russians, we're talking between five hundred and
seven hundred thousand casualties the Ukrainians have lost, with a
few also probably closer to two fifty three hundred.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
I mean, that's an amazing loss.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Of life for what they are doing with a small
state about the size of Texas. You know, they're fighting
is more than just.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Whacking the hell out of each other.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Yeah, I'm I'm concerned to see how this is going to.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Carry out, carry on through the next year.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
Basically, I think we've been with the previous administration, well,
the current administration has basically been giving Ukraine a lifeline
but not pulling it in. We've given them enough that
they can hold off the Russians to prolong their defeat,
(14:07):
depending on how the Russians react. So now we'll see,
we'll see how and how our own government reacts in
the next year.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
But anyway, Yeah, your book's gonna you're gonna have to
have a new book.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, So with Mission Iran, that's very like kind of current,
that's very current today, you know, because what's going on
over in the Middle East, and you know how they
are at arms with each other, Israel and Palestine and
going into Iran and you know, getting into it with
you know, do we need to see regime change? Do
the people of Iran want this to happen? Is this
(14:48):
something that was a stepping stone to moving the Iatola
out of the situation and taking him out of the
you know what you said, the theocracy.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
I'm if we're talking about current day politics, I'm not
sure I can see it because the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
and all the members of the theocracy are no so
well established and so powerful.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
You know, They've got their secret services and their their
guns and everything else.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
It's going to be extremely difficult to get them out.
We are going to be able to do it.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
It's going to be the people around. We may give
them some consistence, but without there or without their efforts,
it will be it will end up being the same
way as it ended up in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Right, they need to take on the fight and stand
fast and hold the line and not just and we
can help that and support a positive outcome, but they
have to do the majority of all of that, is
that what you're kind of.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Getting at absolutely, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I think we're just gonna sit there and go yep, yep, yeah, agree.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
With what you said.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
This podcast is called YEP sponsored by YET and we
are just going to sit here agree to agree on things.
But you know the books that you have out there, Uh,
that's doing well for you being an author. Transitioning from
CIA from Special Forces to author. Did you ever think
that you'd be doing that.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I actually started to write when I was in the
Army and when I was stationed in Berlin, so I
was always going to doodle.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
In these things.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
And I decided after I got out and retired that
I could actually try it on for size and start
telling some of these stories.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
So I started out in nonfiction. My first will.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Probably the book that is doing the best is My
History of Special Forces. Let It's a thirty year history.
Was not very well known, so when I got it published,
I had to break some rules.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Actually I didn't. It was all.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
Reviewed by the Army and everything and it got cleared,
so that was sort of the start. It came off
with this, and then I told a bit of the
Rand story in that book, but not all of it
because some of my friends that some of my friends
(17:31):
were still serving and I could not tell their stories.
So about two thousand eighteen, twenty nineteen, it became clear
that they were all free and clear of everything, and
I can start telling their stories. So it's a result
of about interviews with about forty people that I undertook.
(17:56):
Some of the guys are from Delta, of course, but
most of them are guys I served with in Berlin.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I think that's so neat and so intriguing about what
your mission was and in Berlin, and you know, growing
up with my dad going over to Thailand and all
these different places, Cobra, gold and you know, all this
stuff in my as a young kid, I never put
two and two together, you know, I just always thought,
that's dad. You're so cool, bro, You're I mean, you
did such a crazy gig. You saw the Berlin Wall, Like.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Yeah. People, you know people they always say thank you
for your stars and oh god, you must.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Be some sort of the hero or something rock star.
I was lucky. I survived.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I was I was a witness to all the really
cold people. Some of the names I could drop some
of these guys are just.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
You know, alievable, but.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
For me, the cool part was being in Berlin, you know,
the Divine to Cety. After I had read you know,
a number of nonfics in the histories of World War
two and everything. My father was a soldier in World
War Two, and then also some of the movies or
some of the fiction I had read, you know, like
(19:11):
jehan Lecerrey, There's Fight who Came In from the Cold,
Lynn Dayton Funeral in Berlin, and some of these really.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Cool fiction books.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
So when when I got to Berlin, it was actually
on the street, wandering around in civilian clothes, talking to
people living with these people across the walking along the wall,
knowing across the wall in a completely different place, you know,
two completely antagonistic political systems, And there were guys with
(19:46):
guns that's what I call him. Gwg's all along the wall.
And I'm kind of looking at these guys and they're
looking at me, and I'm going, you probably don't know
what I'm here for. I'm not gonna tell you, but
I kind of look forward to the day when we meet.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Europe.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So yeah, no, no, So my father in law was serving
a religious mission in Germany Switzerland area, and somehow he
told a story of going through the wall east to
east to west to go meet somebody on the other
side of in East Germany. I'm like, it's got to
be a girl.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
And at the time, I was like, he just talks
about it. We're gonna see him at Thanksgiving coming up here,
and we're I'm gonna ask him and say, so, Elliott,
tell me more about how you went over East German's
Wall and whatnot. And I'm curious because back then man
in the sixty eight, sixty six, sixty eight, because then
he went after he got out of the religious mission
(20:43):
for his church, he joined the Marine Corps and went
to Vietnam as an older dude twenty five is twenty
four to twenty five. But yeah, he was going back
and forth the wall, sneaking across as a missionary.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
You could do that.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
They had between the East and West Berlin or about
nine I believe, I can't remember exactly crossing points, and
some points were designated for only Westperlinters to go in
the East Berlin or for Easter Litters.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
To go into West Berlin.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
There were a couple of slots places there were designated
only for foreigners and West Germans, you know, from further out,
and there.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Were other places you've go ahead.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
If you had an American passport, the civilian passport, you
could cross a couple.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Of rip places.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
But if you're in the military, we were supposed to
use checkpoints Charlotte, which is the most favorite, most famous
crossing point. So that was that was a bizarre thing
in itself. More bizarre was crossing end when you were
using your US passport or a different pashport going through
(21:57):
one of the other checkpoints there you saw the difference.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
You know, when you're going through Checkpoint Charlie, it's basically the.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
East Germans can't touch the Americans or any of the
breads of the French, especially the military.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
But when you're going through.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Any of the other checkpoints, you're a fair game. It's
like crossing the border between warhead and in the United States. Yeah,
it was a bizarre place.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
To live in.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Some people didn't like it at all because you're you're
in a city about the size of Manhattan.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Well New York City, but you're ringed by a wall.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
After nineteen sixty one, you know, the whole city is
closed in and some people got basically cabin fever from
being in that location. Some of the guys preferred to
be in southern Germany where they.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Could ski and go out into the woods.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
So for us to do that, we had to pick
up a move, you know, either by error or by trade,
and so a lot of the guys didn't like it.
For me, it was cool, but other people liking to
be like in the zoo, to be in the cage
in the zoo, and.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Other other folks said, well, you know.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
The war kicks off, this is gonna be the largest
pow camp in.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
The world immediately ye has to manage to get out
and cause trouble. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
No, really, they just because they're they're trapping. They're kind
of like they're just pacing like the lion at the zoo.
And they say that the zoo is the only jail
where everybody is innocent.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Yeah, well we weren't so in innocent.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
No, no, no operation of Berlin Man Warsaw packed. I
just grew up with a whole closet at the armory
that my dad worked at with warsaw pack cards. There
was like this monitor that he'd have me go sit
in the closet. He's like, just go sitting there and
look at the stuff. And I'd pull film off of
a shelf and I'd put it on and I just
there to scroll these dials and just see like T
(24:10):
ten tanks and RPG seven's, but then the rockets and
all the different rockets and all the different rockets rockets,
and then there'd be like these models, and I remembered
all these warsaw packed stuff, right. I think I even
have a pack of cards still somewhere that are a
full deck of cards for Warsaw packed equipment.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
That was one of the most boring classes. We had.
The models.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Somebody in the military or contracted through the military to
make these specific, perfect models and then photograph them, to
make them into films so that they could be scrolled
and be trained and uptrained to guys like yourself or
my dad or somehow. I saw it, you know, and
sat there. It was just like it was like the
iPad of the SF I's here, go use your iPad aaron.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
For us.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
That was part of the job because you had to
identify not only the vehicles, but you had to identify
how they were grouped, because you could tell by the
type of vehicle because there are variants that everyone there
was one type of truck, but they had thirty different
kinds of variants of that truck. You can tell what
unit it belonged to based on the extraneous equipment they had.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Unfortunately, we had to learn.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
All those so we could say, okay, that belongs to
a Russian Strategic Rocket Army, or that's part.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Of an armored division, or that's an engineer unit. And
you had to know which which tank blown where, which which.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Radar system below where, and what missile it went after,
so that we could tell the air force this is
where you want to come anyway.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
That's all the silhouettes, you know, all the different silhouettes
of the sideways of it or the front forward version
of it, like, oh, you're looking directly at it. Oh,
you're looking at the side of it. This is the same.
This is how it looks.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
The really different this was we actually got to go
out and seen it. Uh as part of as part
of the mission, you're going out looking at these things,
and the East Germans and the Russians weren't really keen
on that, but we sent teams out to find these things,
to locate them and be able to identify them one
(26:28):
by one.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah, that was another one part of the mission.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
What was your original MOS military occupation specialty on a
eight on the team? Were you like an eighteen echo
or Charlie.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Or I started out as the one to one problem
dionuh so I was an infantry one. I went to
one one hotel, which was a one O six recoil
less rifle uh crew one O six recoilers tell in
(27:00):
the eighties. Second, and then when I managed to escape
the eighty second, which is another long story, I went
to Special Forces and trained initially as a one to
one BROVO for Sierra, which was light weapon the leader
I see, and I cross trained in a number of
other MOS.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, that's very cool, very cool. And did you what
was your favorite MOS within the teams.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
What eventually became eighteen boxtrot the intel sergeant. And part
of that was because of my time in Berlin, just
the intelligence trade craft, the kind of things you.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Were doing, working on your own.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Cultivating assets, looking for people that can tell you the
information you wanted, looking for things, and I think that
the finding the best part. You're looking for it can
be boring, but when you actually find something that you're
looking for, That's always cool being able to talk to people,
finding the right one that's going to answer your questions.
(28:15):
The recruit assessment and recruitment process. Yeah, so that's that's
the part I enjoyed.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
You know what, I'm just sit here thinking you're talking about,
you know, the timeframe, and there's just no GPS. You know,
like there's no there's no you know, Google Maps for
you to get around, be like, we got to go
over here over there. You're literally using some type of
like you know, folding map from like a like a
tourist pamphlet or something from the area of that that
(28:43):
somebody's drawn, right, and like there's you're really just seriously
in it, like moving street to street house. No cell phones, right,
you have to go to a phone and be like, hey,
it's me she and I got the information over here,
you see, Okay, I'll talk to you at three o'clock.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Yeah, paper maps, magnetic compass or two.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
You generally carry two.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
A number two lead pencil with an eraser because bopoy
pins couldn't be trusted, you know, a cat very old
school I had the first time I saw GPS was
the Golf War, when we started feeling fielding the new garments,
(29:32):
and that was wow.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
We were using those things in the desert. And you know,
before you had to use the map, and.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
If you were lucky, if you're driving a vehicle, you're
driving with one over two hundred and fifty thousand map,
which is, you know, not too much detail.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
But with the garment you could use your map and
you could.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Use the GPS to tell you were where you were
on the map, which was which was real cool. I mean,
it was a very simple reado. It was all in
geographic Gorton's.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
No picture or anything like that. It was just telling
you where you were at and you could reference that
to the map.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Problem was and says you're driving along and the GPS
is saying this is how you get from here to
there straight line. You have to look at the ground
while you're drivings is not showing you a picture, and
all of a sudden you come up on a very
large hole in the ground, but the GPS does not
show you.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
But they're a lot better than that now.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Well, I still hear about people getting stuck on dirt
roads trying to get using their GPS, so you know,
not everything's still mapped out, so some old school ingenuity
is still probably needed in this day and age. I
think it's still good to learn how to drive a
stick shift that kind.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Of thing, absolutely, because a lot of places in the
world you can't get in automatic, or if you do
have an automatic, you'll get stuck in the heard.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
The Special Forces school stopped teaching map using regular maps
a while back, and they've only recently brought it back
in because they found out that exactly what you're saying,
the GPS is gonnot be trusted. They're gonna be bespoofed.
And then you have this issue of batteries. Right, half
(31:25):
the equipment we carry a required battery. We used to
complain about the radios because they had these bricks of
a battery and besides that, in your flashlight that was
the only batteries you had to carry. Nowadays you have
to carry one forever.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
It's true.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
You know, my dad was the eighteen echo and he
said that allowed him to be in charge of everybody
for five minutes when they had to crank the He's like,
everybody cranks, yeah, and if you and.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
They and they never carried the generator the lieutenant. The
lieutenantually had stuck with.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, he would be a crank crank away.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
I remember playing with his Morse code device. Did it
did that whole?
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Yeah, that's another thing we had to learn. Worse works
I work. So that's why the trendees are still uses,
but we're not.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
So it got the three Amigos to go down and
save Santa Poco and the three Amigos they used Amigos
please come.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Down and save us.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah, so really yeah, it's it's kind of like you know,
caveman technology, right, it's been around for so long. The
telegraph is Morse code.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
If I go back to where we were in nineteen
seventy nine, and we have been given.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
The mission for counter terrorism in.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Nineteen seventy five, and basically they said this was when
all the skyjackings, the aircraft hijackings were taking place in
Europe and became it was getting to be worries. So
the American commander in Europe, the four star, said what
do we have to handle this? And the bad the
(33:18):
guy said basically nothing, uh, And so they Special Operations Command,
which was down in stute Cart at the time, came
to our units, do you think you could work up
an operations plan of how you could do this uh
counter terrorism stuff, and that was not far off from.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
What we were doing anyway. I mean, basically, if you're
you have a terrorist, what you're dealing with is the
same thing as I'm gonna use this loosely a commando.
You know, a guy that's taught to go.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
Undercover and blows something up or kill someone. So what
better unit, it said, out against them than the exact
kind of unit that you are fighting. So they said,
your special Forces, you guys can figure this out.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
So we did.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
But we were starting out from basics, none of this
high speed black bel grow gortex stuff.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
You know. We were taking what we had had to
go from there.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
But you go back in history, you go back in
history also, and we were studying the manuals from the
OSS and World War two and the Special Operations.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
We had some guys that.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
Had trained with the sas the sis is probably the
first counter terrorism No, the first counter terrorism unit was
actually the Shangheim muniial place in nineteen twenties, basically an
anti riots one. But we took all that old information
and said this is what we need to do. And
(35:00):
then we looked at the what was happening? Aircraft jects, Well,
what do you do against? We found an airplane and
we started practicing a trade a building and that's.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
That's how we build up our skills.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
And everybody's going whateff, and then well then or what
about this?
Speaker 3 (35:21):
And it was.
Speaker 4 (35:21):
All you know, hunting Pack tried different things out. So
by nineteen seventy nine we are fully trained as a
counter terrorism for Europe. But back in the States, we
had decided the Army had decided they.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Needed a full time, big counter terrorism that only had counter.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Terrorism as its primary measurement, and that was this outfit
called Delta. So when it came down for the Iran thing,
they said, okay, Delta Force, you're going, but we need
the intelligence to figure out how to hit this target.
So the only people that can do that are people
(36:08):
that know how to work undercover, and then people who
know Special Forces operations so they know what information to
look for. And they said the only place we can
get that was Detachment A. So our guys were chosen
to go in the Tehran and collect that. This is
the only probably the only successful part of.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
That mission was the guy that went in and came
out with that interval, But then about a couple of
weeks into the operation, Charlie Beckworth.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Realized that he had to take down the US embassy
to get the hostages out of the hembasphere. It's about
a twenty three acre site, big site, and about I
can't remember how many buildings, but you know, like twenty
five different buildings on this site.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
So he had one.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Hundred guys to go do this. The problem was there
were three other hostings being held in the Foreign Ministry,
the Iranian Foreign Ministry, and.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
He said, I can't handle it. I'm fully occupied for this.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
So our commander who was in the in the planning
stages from the beginning, and we'll do it. And we
got the target, We got the mission to take down
the Foreign Ministry. So at Desert One, you've got all
those planes coming in, all eleicatters, there are delta forests
(37:35):
on the airplanes, there are rangers who secured Desert one,
and then there are our guys mixed in there. So
we've got our team in.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
There as well. And that's that's how things went down.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
That's how things went down, he says, that's how things
went down.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Like a cowboy.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Well, yeah, I think when the whole thing was concluded.
One of our guys, really a former officer who had
been rifted in the nineteen seventies and came back into
Special Forces as a sergeant, became a medic. When they
(38:19):
told us the whole thing was cut off. This was
December of nineteen eighty, after a Rigan had been lected.
He was just shaking his head. He was cleaning his
machine gun, and it goes, it would have been glorious.
Speaker 2 (38:33):
It would have been glorious, just clean.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
It would probably will be dead, but whatever.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yeah, well you just got the hindsights twenty twenty right.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Well anyway, but Desert one to knock him off, obviously,
primarily because the helicopters were.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
Well anyway, primarily because of the headquarters.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
But after that we began blending in a second mission,
and that if Carter had been re elected, we might
have done that one.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
But Reagan got elected, and for obscure reasons, probably left
in the New York Times, the.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Vision was canceled. So the second one would have been
much larger. The Air Force or the Marines in the
Navy were out. It would have been just the Air
Force and the Army Air Force flying airplanes, big aircraft
the Army with the ground wars is obviously, but then
(39:39):
also army helicopters.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Blackhawks eight six is. I talked about that at great
deal in the in the book, and it.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Was basically the origin of the Knights Talkers, a Special Operations,
the Asian Squad what was known then that day as
task Forces won't get Time, and then they cleverly changed
the name the Dash Force one six.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
That's right, that's right, that's right. And I and Colonel Nightingale,
you know, he just said that. I said, what's the
difference between you and you know? How come we saw
Oliver North get kind of put in front of Congress
and all this kind of stuff and how that went down?
And he's like, rad I kept my receipts. Yeah, And
that's on a soft reap episode. So if you go back,
(40:28):
if you want to go find me interviewing Colonel Nightingale
from the same thing that you know, a living Ranger
founder I think the Second Rangers or the First Rangers.
He's like a living member of that, the sixtieth, the
one sixtieth, and they made numbers, so you think there
was more. I love that part of the group I
(40:48):
love you Special Forces guys. You know, it's like Dad
all over.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
I just want you to know, from me to you,
I know you got so much that you're going to
take with you, and that you've been a part of
that well ever ever know, and you've kept that oath
and I just want to commend you on the oath
keeping for our nation. Uh And I want to say
thank you for me to you to that thing.
Speaker 4 (41:10):
Well, I appreciate that a lot, Rad, But what you
really have to know is that you have no idea
how much fun we had to all this stuff. So
it's really probly for us. And like I said, I
didn't do.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Anything radical when I was in the military, but I.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
Got I had the chance to work with some of
the like I said, the greatest guys I've never had
the optunity to work with, and they're all over the military.
But yeah, so being a being a witness to this,
and that's part of the reason why I became a writer.
(41:49):
I'm also was a historian. I actually went to school,
and now that I'm officially certified, I can write books
and say I'm historicorian.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Congratulations on that. That's a big deal to go to
school yes.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
But but part of the reason I wrote the first
book about Berlin was we were at a reunion, and
this was about twenty twelve or so, and so Berlin
had been closed down since the Berlin Wall. The unit
was shut down and you know, the benefits of peace,
(42:27):
which we may.
Speaker 3 (42:29):
Be regretting here before too long.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
But anyway, we were sitting around and saying, well, you know,
we had to get somebody to write this stuff down
because we're all going to be.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Gone before too long. And my thought was, well, you're
certainly not.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
Going to get the army to do it, because A
they don't have anybody that knows what the unit was
up to, and B they're going to write when they
want the bad birds, well the good bards. And I
had already written one soul history about World War.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
One in Africa, and somebody from across the room goes, hey,
he wrote a book, And so that's how I was volunteer.
Speaker 4 (43:14):
Anyway, So the next three and a half years I
spent interviewing guys.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
From the union. In other places.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
I think I managed to interview about sixty five people
as inbut from others. No more than eight hundred people
served in Berlin. From nineteen fifty six to nineteen ninety,
so those eight hundred people was my pool. Some of
the guys had passed on, and some of the guys
(43:42):
didn't want to talk to me. I respect that, and
some of the guys told me the stories that I
had to get cross checked and write. Some of those
went out the window. But and it was quite a
revelation for me to be able to write this. I
talked to some of the very first guys that have
been in the Union nineteen fifty six and onwards, and
(44:03):
being able to do that, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Brought gave me a new appreciation for the unit over
the years.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
And then then I called up the Pentagon and said, hey,
I got this book, and I understand I'm supposed to
have it checked out by you folks.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
And they said, well, normally you go to your proponent,
and in my case it would have been the Army.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
But the lady must have figured out something and she goes, well,
first tell me what it's about. And I told her,
I said, it's about a classified it's apecial forces unit
that existed in Berlin, and she goes, you better send
me the magistript.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
So sixteen months later I got the clearance to write it.
I told the Army about this and so the guys said, no,
you can't write this, it's classified.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
And I said, that's how this publication clearance brought us works.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
The Army told me what's good to go and what's not.
So that's what we did.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
So that did they redact things that you did put
in there that you thought you wanted out there?
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Ashley? Surprisingly, not very much.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
They talk about you've burned the special atomic demolition ammunition,
the device to the suitcase nuke.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Yes, I talked about that some and I had a specific.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
Number in there, and it went off to the Defense
Nuclear Agency and they said, well, don't put that in
and put this in. So and a few other small
details like that, you know, really mid noise stuff.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
But whatever, I forgot all about the suitcase. I keep
thinking about submarines. Jez it's gonna left that one off there.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
Yeah, but it was, it was. It was part of
the job.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
So yeah, yeah, that's great, And that's Special Forces Berlin
and my listener, our viewer can go and find that
anywhere that books are being sold online, and if you
do buy his book, you should leave a review on
the site. That you bought it from. Help bring that
up for James so that it could rise into searches
(46:17):
and you know, he can just have more opportunity to
tell these stories, because I mean, really, you're telling like
espionage like cool. I love it. I think it should
be Have you had a movie made.
Speaker 4 (46:34):
I wish. I think my fiction series, which is called
The Snake.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
Eater Chronicles Love Love It.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
A new one was coming out, which is actually the
origin story before I had started about nineteen seventy nine
so that I could write about the time I was there.
So this is going to carry the unit from the
very beginning till the end of some further bits. Because
so your your point about reviews is very much appreciated.
(47:07):
You don't even have to buy the book from Amazon
to right read to review on it now, so that's
that's key. But you know, being being able to put
down the nonfiction history is one thing. But then some
of the stories I have to adapt to protect the
(47:28):
guilties of the speech because like I said, I served
as very interesting people and being able to tell their stories.
Some of these stories are coupled together. When I write
my fiction, I will take an incident that happen there,
when it happened over here. Put them all together and
tell the story. So if I told it as nonfiction,
(47:54):
I'd have to get it well, I have to get
them cleared anyway.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
But if I told it as non fiction, then people
can out assuming. But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you're trying to just get it
out there, like you know now, without any issues. You're
just like, Okay, if this is how it's supposed to
go out there, then this is what can go out there.
I'm not trying to make anybody else mad. You're respecting
your guys and gals that you worked with, and if
they don't want to tell you something, there's they're they're cool.
That and the guys that you said you cross checked, Hey,
you're in it for it seems like the right reasons.
(48:24):
And and again I like that, that's cool.
Speaker 3 (48:27):
You're cool. Yeah, and it's fun for me too. It
keeps keeps me busy and it gets me out of
my wife's there, So that's that's good.
Speaker 4 (48:37):
The only r part about looking for my name on
Amazon or anywhere is being able to get some spelly right.
So you know, if my my name was Jack Carr.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
It would be easy. C A R C A R R.
But anyway you're out.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
It's like your last name is maybe Norwegian or something
along those lines.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Your last name.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
It's check, Check's lockey in.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Check because it's that's.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
And the basic translation comes up from something like which
I think is very appropriate.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Grumpy old man, grumpy old.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
Only if you say so. Well, listen, you've been wonderful
on the show, and you've really been telling us some
insightful things. I've really been just kind of captivated by
you and just haven't even really spoken. This will probably
be my best episode ever because you just take it.
You just take the cake for your stories about Berlin
and about what you've done and who you've served with. Uh,
(49:45):
so many things I could probably go into with you.
And with that said, I'd like to open up an
invitation to have you back on the show if there's
ever another book or anything that you want to talk about.
You're like, hey Erin or hey Rad. Yes my name
is Erin, but I also go by Rad.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Now I'm confused, but I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Aaron Raddred, It's.
Speaker 4 (50:14):
Yeah, we we did not talk about a lot of things,
and I could ramb along for a lot longer.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
But yeah, But like.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
I said, I've got my next fiction book is coming
out in the spring, and that's the origin story of
Special Parsons in Berlin. I'm also doing a guide book
to Berlin, a guide to Golden War Berlin, and that's
going to be done in pictures and words.
Speaker 3 (50:43):
The story is about things that happened there, both fiction
and not fiction. Oh yeah, that'd be real.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
That's really cool. Do you go back and visit Germany
since you speak it and you.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Know it, well, I went.
Speaker 4 (50:53):
I went back there in June, spent about ten days
recounting old sites. I'm going back in two weeks. I'm
actually going over and talk to the German schedule operations around.
Oh yeah, about stay behind forces and Russians.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
I don't know what I wonder. I wonder, you know, Uh, yeah,
I wonder. I got some friends over there right now
in the army, just you know, training.
Speaker 3 (51:22):
So that's what you do. Train.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
Yeah, they're just training.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
Boredom punctuated by moments.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
Of sure terror, yes exactly. And so you know, blessings
to them over there and their safety and yours as well.
When you go to travel, you know, et cetera, to
go over there and thanks for still being you. And again,
I know there's a lot more to talk about, like
your years in the CIA and everything, and so like
I would love to have you back on the show,
(51:51):
uh you know, and we can get that out and
talk about it and talk about your new book, et cetera.
So I just want to.
Speaker 3 (51:57):
Say, make it happen.
Speaker 2 (51:59):
I will make it well man, Kay, So it's in
my core. I got you, I got you, I got it.
It's not a few album. The fire is always on
for you. As long as you buy our merch. People
out there, buy the merch, keep it going.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Can I send you a bubble of gas for you? Please? Please? Please?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Well, thank you so much for being on the show, James.
You've been a pleasure and just a very cool, entertaining,
captivating guest. And I'm sure my listener out there would
love to have you back on and listen some more. Again.
Go check out his books Special Forces, Berlin Special Operations,
World War Two Mission A Run, which is his latest
book for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
You heard him.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
He's a historian, a novelist, a human US American Special Forces.
So let's just keep it real and say on behalf
of everybody here at soft REP. And James, I'm gonna
say peace.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
You've been listening to self repla
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