Episode 728: Non-State Special Operations, with Craig Whiteside and Ian Rice

On today’s Midrats, we have returning guest Craig Whiteside and his co-author Ian C. Rice joining us to discuss one of the nightmares we all have in the new book coming out this month. He co-authored it with Ian Rice, Non-state Special Operations: Capabilities and Effects.

From the abstract:
Building on previous research on Islamic State special operations, the book develops a theoretical framework surrounding a typology of VNSA (militants, proxies, criminal/cults, and mercenaries) to explore variations of non-state special operations, with multiple cases for each category of actor. Understanding when and why VNSA use special operations provides insights into the inner workings of such groups and how they campaign, and also has implications for the proliferation of special operation forces around the globe and its influence on non-state behaviour. This volume contributes to research on the recent trend of non-state actors surprising, and in some cases humiliating, their state opponents.

Craig is Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College resident program at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He is the co-author of The ISIS Reader: Milestone Texts of the Islamic State Movement (2020). He has a PhD in Political Science from Washington State University and is a former U.S. Army infantry officer.

His coauthor Ian is an adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Department of Defense Analysis, Naval Postgraduate School, adjunct faculty member with the College of Distance Education, USMC University, and a guest lecturer with the Royal Danish Defence College. He is a retired U.S. Army officer who served with special operations forces.

Show Links

• Non-state Special Operations: Capabilities and Effects, by Craig Whiteside and Ian Rice.
• Operation Chariot
• Defeat Into Victory: Battling Japan in Burma and India, 1942-1945, Field-Marshal Viscount William Slim

Summary

In this episode of Midrats, hosts discuss the complexities of non-state special operations with authors Craig Whiteside and Ian Rice. They delve into the historical context, defining characteristics, and implications of special operations conducted by non-state actors. The conversation highlights the importance of understanding the motivations and strategies of these actors, as well as the challenges they pose to state actors. The authors share insights from their new book, exploring the evolution of non-state operations and the need for a nuanced approach to countering them.

Takeaways

• Special operations are defined as tactical actions designed to achieve outsized effects.
• Historical examples illustrate the long-standing use of special operations by non-state actors.
• Understanding the typology of non-state actors is crucial for effective analysis and response.
• Prison breakouts are a common tactic used by non-state actors to regain manpower.
• Cults and criminal groups can also engage in special operations, often driven by self-interest.
• Not all terrorist acts qualify as special operations; criteria must be applied to distinguish them.
• The opportunity cost of special operations can be significant for both state and non-state actors.
• Mercenaries have a unique role in conducting special operations, particularly in coups.

Chapters

00:00: Introduction to Non-State Special Operations
02:15: Genesis of the Book and Collaboration
05:49: Defining Special Operations
08:43: Historical Context of Non-State Actors
11:36: Analyzing Non-State Actors
18:13: Understanding the Typology of Non-State Actors
23:42: Criteria for Special Operations
28:45: Prison Breakouts as a Tactic
32:13: Cults and Criminal Groups in Special Operations
36:53: Distinguishing Terrorism from Special Operations
43:26: The Cost of Special Operations
49:13: Mercenaries and Coups
52:08: Mindset of Special Operations
58:47: Implications for Future Operations

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander, an
Eagle one from Eagle Speak at Seer Shore your home
for a discussion of national security issues and all things maritime.
Welcome a board to another edition of mid Rats. We
greatly appreciate you taking time to join us today, and
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(00:52):
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(01:13):
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for a time of your convenience. And today let's go
ahead and dive into our topic. We got a returning
guest and a new guest, which is always lots of fun.

(01:35):
We have Craig Whiteside and Ian Rice on board with
their new book that they've written together. It's coming out
this month titled Non State Special Operations, Capabilities and Effects.
And what we're going to talk about today is something
that a lot of times, well, that's just a terrorist
act or this isis terrorist did this. There's a lot

(01:57):
more to it than that. There's a longer history to that,
and as we'll talk about in the course of the
next hour, I think in understanding not just the history,
but the different goals, in the different aspects to why
non state actors act in similar ways to state actors
in some ways is an important way to understand the

(02:19):
challenges that we're looking at and the responses and we
may want to take at it. Craig he is a
professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War
College and he's also in the resident program at the
Naval Postgraduate School in wonderful Monterey, California, and that's how
he gets to spend quality time with Ian Rice, who
is an adjunct senior lecturer in the Department of Defense
Analysis at the Naval post Graduate School. Ian and Craig,

(02:42):
Welcome to.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Midrats great, great to be here. So, as they say,
a longtime listener, third time contributors, though thanks for having
me back.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Thank you sal for inviting us.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Really appreciate and I don't know an hour justifvies it.
First of all, congratulations on the book. Is I think
I didn't do the count, but I'll just make a
little thumb mark if people are looking at getting a
quick read when you take out the footnotes, and you
could spend a few months just looking at the footnotes
if you wanted to, and open in the beginning. It's

(03:14):
probably a nice digestible, one hundred and seventy page book
covering a real broad spectrum of what a lot of
us I think we've just been experiencing in the last
few decades. But it actually has a lot more meat
to it. But before we get to that, and Ian,
because you're the new kid on the block here, I
thought I'll roll the opening question to you and then

(03:36):
Craig can follow on as well. Is you know, talk
a little bit how the genesis of this book came
into being and you and Craig got together. It was like, hey,
here's a question that needs to be addressed. Let's go
dive into wells. I first started collaborating with Craig. I
think it was about twenty fourteen where we met at

(03:57):
a Islamic State intelligence focus talk and we noticed we're
seeing a lot of the same stuff. And we had
not realized that we had served in parallel on a
Command in General Staff College together at Levenworth, so we
were really very similar interests. So in about I think
it was twenty eighteen, Craig came up to me and said, hey,

(04:20):
I want to show you this video of what's called
the Hiditha raid by the Islamic State. It looks really
different from a lot of the other tacks the Islamic
State does.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
And so he shows it to me, and it was
very well documented. They show rehearsals, they show planning. They
even have one of those montage maps where you follow
like the arrow as they're conducting the operation. And I said, Craig,
this looks just this looks like the Islamic States version

(04:49):
of the newsreel of the nineteen forty two Dolittle raid.
And I said, this looks like a special operation to me.
I said, it has all the all like the key
characteristics of what we would see from something that's generating
a larger effect than just the tactical action. So that's

(05:12):
how it started.

Speaker 5 (05:13):
Anything else, Craig, Well, let me let me throw a
question out there, which is, let's talk about what does
what makes and you've covered this in the book. Let's
talk about what makes something a special operation that's different
than other kinds of operations. That makes sense.

Speaker 4 (05:31):
You want to take this one first, greg Or, Okay,
I'll take that, well, Mark, So, special operations are we
have a chicken and egg thing with special operations. In
the US military, we have special operations forces and we
have special operations. The actual actions and a lot of

(05:52):
times we get these get convoluted and we use the
terms interchangeably. But really what we're talking about when we're
looking at the idea of a special operation is a
tactical action that has, by design, uses increased resources with
special training, maybe special people, to achieve a premeditated, outsized effect,

(06:17):
in other words, an effect that's larger than the tactical
action itself, something that can have an effect on a
campaign or end a crisis. That's typically we have forces
that are designed to conduct these actions, but it's not
necessarily the case. If say an actor, like a non

(06:38):
state actor, like a militant group, doesn't have a standing
capability to conduct these actions, they might have to use
an ad hoc force. And actually that's what the Doual
Little Rate is in nineteen forty two is an ad
hoc force that uses a very unique capability stripped down
B twenty five Mitchell bombers launching off of the USS Hornet.

(07:03):
And you don't get much more special than the one
way bombing of mainland Japan than that in terms of
the global informational effect that that raid had. Even though
the damage was nominal, the morale effect, both positive for
the Allies and negative for the Japanese, was.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Lasting.

Speaker 4 (07:27):
So that's kind of how we define those.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
I first started diving into this, and the first flush
that I had in my mind, I was like, we're gonna, like,
you know, dig into some of the history of non
state actors doing special operations. Hey, let's look at Munich
in nineteen seventy two. That was the first thing that
came to mind. But that what I thought was going back,

(07:53):
that's just a small sliver of what y'all put together
and y'all put some wonderful examples about how there's actually
a substantial history, and one that until I got to
this section, I was like, dumb man, why don't you
think of this? But you know, you can go back
to the late Bronze Age Siege of Troy and the
Trojan Horse everybody knows about. That meets a lot of

(08:14):
the criteria that y'all put in there, but also there
is and y'all had an extended quote from everybody's favorite
British officer of World War One, Lawrence of Arabia, and
some of his comments about working with the Bedouin armies
and what he was actually trying to accomplish. So when
you are diving into this, it's not just about what

(08:37):
we know since the events of nine to eleven. There
actually is a substantial At every conflict we've been in,
there is a substantial line that you can draw through history,
as other people have tried to not just use, but
to understand why other forces, are state and nonstate, are

(08:58):
diving into this. And you do have to, like I
described with the genesis of this book, you've got to
give a nod of respect to these you know, terrorist organizations, whatever,
their ideology may be contrary to what we perceive as correct. Uh,
they have learned from history and can be very professional

(09:18):
in what they do.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Yeah, I think that's that's one of the things that
that we were that we were trying to do. We
were trying to make make some sense of why these
actors would would try to do these out outsized create
these outsized effects, and we dug into it. Obviously, there's
there's plenty of h of history of non state actors

(09:41):
doing this to state actors, and UH, certainly you know
transcends the global warrant terror and our more recent experiences.
As you pointed out right, Uh, we use Lawrence's example,
but but try to recharacterize it in a different way
than people have remembered it. Many people have all they
understand Lawrence as an early special operator type. They don't

(10:05):
really think of his actions always as a special operation.
But when you look at how he integrated his campaign
UH to take Acoba using Araba regulars as part of
a larger conventional battle, you know, that's what That's what
interested us in in how different actors use UH or

(10:28):
develop a capability to using non state actors, whether it's
states using non state actors or militant groups like ISIS
or al Qaeda doing it on on their own. So
so one one thing we're trying to do is use
history to to to show that, you know, show examples,
but also to show that it's it's been around for

(10:50):
a while, but are our kind of hypothesis is that
with technology and it's the democratization of technology, uh throughout
the globe today thanks to globalization and many other factors,
is that you probably, uh, it's going to see an
increase and a trend in non state actors, you know,

(11:13):
using special operations to humiliate state opponents.

Speaker 5 (11:17):
Yeah. I was interested in the fact that in order
to do the work that you've done this in this book,
you first had to create a system for analyzing, uh,
the actors, their motives and the extent of their success
or what their intentions were. Talk a little bit about
how you you developed the grid that's in the book,

(11:39):
because I know this is uh, you know, this is
more my my social scientist background coming to the forehier.
But talk a little bit how you how you structure
your work so that you can analyze the various cases
you looked at and sort of sort the weight from
the chaff, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah, I'll let Ian take a crack at this. I
just wanted to say that, you know, we started with
these long state example that Ian you know described earlier,
which was really part of a project. You know. The
cool thing about being here at Naval post Graduate School
and you know, being being a war college guy here
is that you know, there's a lot of collaboration. And

(12:18):
Ian was working on a state centric special operations project
at the time, and I was I was, you know,
asking this stupid question like, hey, do the non states
do this thing? And and that's you know, as Ian
told the rest of that story. You know that that's uh,
that's kind of how that happened. But you know, Ian
pushed me to say, Okay, well then do other types

(12:40):
of groups beyond militant groups like the one that you
study ice is do you and and He's like, theoretically
the answer should be yes. I'll let I'll let Ian
talk to the rest of the of how that typology
gets developed.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
So in developing the typology, it all goes back to
their and again it's all research, so you're always there's
an ri in front of search. That's how I like
to think of it, so we're always refining it. So
where the initial stuff with the Islamic state was Okay,
let's just demonstrate this one case with these few examples,

(13:17):
that this one this one actor has the ability to
generate this kind of outsized effect. We started to look
at it in terms of, okay, if we're really looking
at what a premeditated In other words, the leadership of
the group is like, okay, how do we see if

(13:37):
it's got a premeditated outsized effect.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
So we're the two.

Speaker 4 (13:42):
By two kind of schematic of organizing the different types
of actors that would do that. We looked at, okay,
why would these actors do it? And and that's really
kind of comes down to like what their goals are,
whether they have a general ideological goal or do they
have like a self interest or profit based goal. And

(14:03):
so this tells us, Okay, maybe this is why they're
trying to execute something that's larger than just a single effect,
like an assassination like El Choppa's Sineloa. The Chopo Disco
assassination back in the nineties is a great example of
power consolidation, right, So that was like one of the

(14:27):
dimensions we're looking at okay, so if they're either ideological
or self interested, and then we're like, hey, maybe actors
don't always do things for themselves. And this also goes
to who wants it done? So then we looked at
general like this concept of agency. Do they do it

(14:47):
for themselves an independent group like the Islamic state, or
do they have some kind of boss or sponsor like
a proxy or a patron or an employe. So we
started to we did this to try to put these
different types of groups into bins. And you know, Craig
and I have experience h during the recent unpleasantness in

(15:12):
uh in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a lot of the
groups were clumped together and so but what.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Wasn't but out over time.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
As the US led coalition in both cases did they
were trying to disaggregate what these what types of violence
these groups used, And that's really was kind of the
genesis for the two by two kind of organization of
the group type. Now they're not like completely discreet, there's
always going to be bleed over as you saw in
the book, But that's where it came from.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
I wanted to just do a follow on of that
grid and you know, for the listeners, I'll put a
link to the to the book on on the on
the show page, and I might, even with the author's permission,
do a screenshot of this grid and add it to
the show page after the show. But I think what
was really useful about it, and it's it's one of
those things that I offer to people who are trying

(16:06):
to get their head around is like, you know, control control, pee,
print it off, cut it off, put it up on
your on your corkboard there, because I know when the
when the Ahuiti attacks originally were going off, people would say,
you know, yiminy militants, and you can see in this
grid the fact that okay, well you're not really looking
at it right, because I really see they're they're ideological,

(16:28):
but they're also proxy clients. But if they are self
interested proxy clients. Another thing that's been broken above the
background noise in the last few years was a Wagner group.
They were you know, quasi national, but they were they
were mercenaries and professional military companies like that, and it
reminded me of you know, one of my podcasts I

(16:48):
listened to is History of the Germans podcast, and when
they were talking about the Holy Roman Empires wars in
Northern Italy. There's a story of the Mercenary Companies where
it literally in the middle of the battle that they
knew these people are not ideological, it's all self interest
and their client over here is paying them twenty thousand

(17:08):
du cats. Well, I want to pay them forty five
thousand do cats if after my starboard wing moves forward,
they switch sides? And they would. So if you had
decision makers and our planners who are looking at you,
how do you counter an organization like the Hoothies or
Wagner or pick whoever's out there. If you misidentify a

(17:30):
proxy as a militant or a militant as a proxy,
the actions and effects you would try to create to
counter them could if not only be ineffective, but could
be counterproductive. So this intellectual exercise, it does really form
a foundation for how we respond to these types of
nonstate violent acts that take place, which, by the way,

(17:52):
because words mean things, and another thing I really appreciated
academically is y'all have kind of created a word acronym.
Usually I make fun of acronyms, but I think this
works out really well. Part of I think our problem
with addressing the issues is we don't define things well,
like you know, the war on terror. Terror is the technique.

(18:13):
You can't really declare war on terror, that's the old cliche.
But you know, terror acts. I like the violent nonstate
actor defined because that lets you go, okay, this is
a violent non state actor, what flavor of it is it?
So going back to kind of my question if there
is one in my monologue here and I'll go ahead

(18:33):
throw it at in is you know, do you see
circumstances where there have been significant error simply because decision
makers and planners didn't quite know what type of adversary
they were looking at in this particle.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
Definitely say that is a as a fantastic question, and
that actually led us to kind of disaggregate the groups
this way.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
Across different periods.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
In Iraq, attacks would be have certain associated characteristics that
could be associated with certain types of groups, such as
suicide attacks were more prevalent around Sunni groups in Iraq,
and so especially working with the Iraqi partners, they would

(19:23):
ask questions of who did we know that was at
the attack site? What was the means used? They would
ask these things because they're in terms they're also trying
to figure out how it came to how the who
was sponsoring the attack, and why might they have done it.

(19:44):
In others, they're already thinking in terms of was this
just a normal disruption attack or was there somebody there
important that might have been the target. And so, yeah,
I think when we think think about one of the
key points of this study was as a mirror for

(20:07):
our own state sponsored special operation. Well, two things. One,
can we see non state actors campaign when we see
these unique events, and we'll talk I think a little
later about how we separate like a typical attack from
a special attack or a special tactical action as we
call them. We have the opportunity to see our opponent's campaign,

(20:29):
and then in turn, we can also use this study
as a mirror to look at ourselves to say, hey,
are what we are calling special operations really special operations
or are we just using special operations forces to perform
actions that just have a tactical effect. So this is
heavily laden with decision making criteria, both as we analyze

(20:53):
our opponents and as we look at ourselves.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Over Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
I was going to add that's right, Mark, Yeah, you
know that's Sale's got a great point about like the
who these are they militant group or are they proxies
and that's it's not And he also brought up Wagner,
which you know, they're a mercenary group obviously, but they
sometimes can be confused as a proxy for state actor conducting,

(21:21):
you know, the policy that that the director that that
actor is is directing. And so we've got some really
good questions as as we've as we've worked on the
concept for this book on you know, well, how do
you deal with this actor or that actor and which
actor are they? Which box are they in in this
particular time and place, And you know, our point is

(21:42):
that having a typology helps us think about just those
main questions about why these actors are doing it or
why has Ian just talked about how why are they
integrating it into you know, larger What it helps us
understand is variations in the type. And we focused so
for example, on the like trying to suss out whether

(22:04):
it's a militant group or a proxy group or a
group that's frequently confused for both. Is in this particular operation,
who told who what to do? And if the Iranians
are telling one of their many proxies to execute an
attack on their behalf, whether or not that whatever other
motive that group has for we consider that a proxy.

(22:27):
And what it does is it allows you to find
variation because for let's say, proxy groups, they can harness
the power of a state like Iran with or other
kind of capabilities that will really fast track a special
operation for non states because they're getting a lot of
outside assistances, they're getting a lot of resourcing and money,

(22:48):
and all of a sudden, something you didn't see a
militant group having the capability of doing it as a proxy,
all of a sudden, they can fast track a special
operation and create a lot of uh, you know, destruction
and humiliation in the process.

Speaker 5 (23:04):
Yeah. I was fascinated by the way you screen the
need first, the need to screen uh some of these
non state UH actors actions from their normal routine. So
you you you set up three criteria and you know
not it's not in the regular line of work, not

(23:26):
the djure. You know, we're just we usually blow up
cars next to buildings, but this time we did something different.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
There was as you just said, the specialized tactical action
and then then the outsized effect. And I looked, I
was confused until I kind of got to the to
the TET offensive and there's this this actually pre TET
offensive when there was an attack on the US embassy,
but it was part of a much larger action, uh,

(23:56):
in the whole TET business. So kind of kind of
discuss how that how you sort out in the middle
of all this other stuff, how you take that attack
on the US mb and embassy and say this is
a non state actor engaged in a special effort.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
I think one of the things we want to do
is start these kind of discussions with a vignette, And
the vignette for TET actually has my dad and my
dad's My dad at the time was a division commander's
aide in Vietnam, and he told me this story and
it really it really resonated. So I reinterviewed him for

(24:33):
this particular chapter looking at militant groups, specifically the TET
offense at which he was in, and he told me
a story about how he's taken the coret He's taken
his division commander to go see the core commander. The
core commander headquarters is almost wiped out by a Vietcong
attack that happens, you know, all night long. These attacks
are happening across the entire country. Tens of thousands of

(24:54):
militants are leading this offensive, and in the middle of
this carnage, you know, the general's are all sitting there
talking and all they can talk about is the Vietcong
sapper attack on the on the US embassy that earlier
that morning, and how they the rumors were that the
embassy had been sacked and that this was huge and

(25:15):
you know that just that discrepancy between uh, you know,
a large scale offensive across the board, but all the
focuses on a special operation and then you know the
consequences of that Viet Kong special operation and trying to
breach the embassy, you know, really has outsized political strategic
impacts as far as you know, people not believing, uh,

(25:39):
you know Westmoreland's ideas about you know, the victories around
the corner, but also you know the effect on Lyndon
Johnson's presidential campaign shortly thereafter. So uh, you know, we
we try to use that this one event within a larger,
you know, countrywide offense to highlight this point of what

(26:02):
a special operation, is right, it's a specialized tactic action. Yes,
it's different than what is going on everywhere else for
this particular group, but also it has this deliberate, predesigned
outside impact. And so we thought that vignette and the
larger story kind of tells that Ian, Did you have

(26:24):
anything you want to add to that?

Speaker 4 (26:25):
Yeah, it's you know, just to in nerd speak, and
we're researching this stuff. We're trying to generate variation, you know,
with different what we call in case variation. So for
any given group, we've got to kind of disaggregate what
they typically do from these more unique events. And they're

(26:49):
very expensive and they're rare events. And these groups aren't
exactly like advertising this stuff. It's they have to operate secretly.
They're small, they typically are militarily weak comparatively, so it's
a lot of private information that we're dealing with, and
unfortunately you typically only see it after the fact. So

(27:14):
in terms of like kind of separating the stuff, just
think of it as, uh, you know, we're looking at
a stack of needles and we're hoping to sift through
there and find the ones that release copper or gold
colored and those are the ones we really want to
examine because they're gonna qualitatively look different than what we
typically see. And the other key thing that that Craig

(27:37):
brings up, and this is really where people have scratched
their heads and we've talked to them about this, is
they're like, well, what about this group? What about that?
We're like, well, it's unique per group, and that's and
that's why this is important. You just can't say, well,
overall militants do this and this would be a special operation.
You have to look at the group individually and see

(28:00):
when do they make when do they make the decision
to commit these resources to do something qualitatively different than
what they typically do, and this could happen. And we
also use the word dajure specifically because we expect groups
that are militarily weak to adapt during conflict or over
the course of a terror campaign or an insurgency. We

(28:22):
expect that, so we expect their tactics day to day
to change because they're just trying to keep their you know,
they're playing Tom and Jerry uh with with their opponents.
So that's kind of how we organized that.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
One thing that kept coming to mind to me Craig
is is I y'all brought up more examples and more
examples that made me. I kept saying to myself, Man,
I really hope that people in charge of this are
are know their history and make appropriate actions, because there
are certain regardless of you know, where on the grid

(28:56):
somebody is, there are certain actions that you see throughout history,
different locations, different places that as you know, you and
Ian have mentioned a couple of times during the course
of the hour, outsize impact for their effects, and one
of those areas that we see is prison breakouts. Prison breakouts,

(29:18):
you know, whether you're going to the Palestini mandate in
the nineteen forties, to our failed efforts in Vietnam or
most recently that we had during the Iraq conflict is
and you know, we we probably don't put our enough
are our best people in these detention facilities. But a

(29:38):
this is a very common tactics it's used that has
big effects, not just at the tactical operational, but at
the strategic level. Something is as basic as a properly
secured prison, if it's vulnerable to a breakout, can have
huge second and third order effects.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah, that's you know again, having a typology helps us
understand variations, and we saw that now. Now criminal groups
are also interested in prison breakouts occasionally, so we did
have across group example of Chappo's infamous tunneling out of
a maximum security Mexican prison. But you know, the militant groups,

(30:22):
going back to Ian's comment about how this helps us
understand how nonstate actors campaign if you think about it
from the from the leadership of a militant group like
isis at the time, but it could be any of
the as you mentioned, many many groups have done this
prison breakout, to include the Urgun in the Palestinian Palestine

(30:46):
mandate in nineteen forty seven is a pretty spectacular well
executed special operation for that goes back, you know, obviously decades.
But you know, from a campaign perspective, these military groups,
particularly the ones with long term political objectives, they need
manpower and they need experienced manpower, and that experienced manpower

(31:08):
is sitting there in prisons often, as you pointed out,
poorly guarded. It's not your best people that you're putting
on on that detail. And you know they're they're really
motivated to getting these guys out, and when they're successful,
and we've seen again from a trend perspective, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq,

(31:32):
pretty recently, all throughout Africa. By the way, Nigeria there's
there's a big as long as state inspired one in
Nigeria that's really fueling the conflict there. And the ability
to get your mid level leaders, your high level leaders,
this human capital that's just sitting there in prison to
get them back out into the fight, you know, more

(31:54):
network more. You know, they're sitting there training themselves in
prison for another opportunity, and and when they get out,
it's just mayhem after that.

Speaker 5 (32:04):
So yeah, uh, you know, I was fascinated by the
by your your grid, where you you put the under
self interest, you put the criminal, criminals and the cults together,
kind of talk about what why, why that's done that way,
and what they're what the what what you look for

(32:24):
to separate or to distinguish what these cults and the
criminal elements they're doing that makes them do special operations stuff.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
Mark the when we were trying to separate the that
little quadrant out, we're trying to figure out who does
things in because the mercenary group is really the one
that was like, okay, they're probably the ones that are
most self interested, but they may not have because we're

(32:56):
really looking at that professional military corporation angle.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
Uh and Wagner, of course, uh.

Speaker 4 (33:04):
Kind of came to light that we don't talk about
them in the same as conducting these operations, but for
criminal group. And then that led us to say, okay, well,
a criminal group. They we have evidence from the cartels
in Mexico that groups like Lozadas are made up of

(33:26):
Mexican former special operations people from from their military and
and they do conduct daring feats uh to demonstrate their
their acumen as they're trying to uh, you know, consolidate
market share.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
But cults, on the other hand, and this is the
one that Craig research. I'm going to turn it over
to him. But but cults are also this weird group
that may want to jump start something as part of
their belief system. So it's it's kind of uh, yes,
it may be ideological. But I'm gonna turn over to

(34:08):
Craig for for his specifics on the cult choice, because
this was a debate we had.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Yeah, it was originally we were we had made a
profit oriented instead of self interested, and you know, all
groups are self interested, but we're talking about the primary
motive of this particular group. But cults tend to, you know,
they're very self interested. They're they're very much about divorcing
themselves sometimes from the rest of societies they can live
in UH in the way that they want to. They're

(34:35):
often criminal groups as well, right, they're doing extortion or
just criminal activity to fund their kind of you know,
creation of a utopian lifestyle. But we have we had
we saw a lot of you know, in the research,
we saw a lot of examples of cults to say
ontrem Rico in Tokyo that that conducts a huge terror attack. Obviously,

(34:57):
they're apocalyptic in nature. They believe they're going to jump
start some kind of you know, large societal collapse. Some
people call them accelerationists, these types of groups. But we focused,
we we we said, what what makes them similar to
criminal groups, other than the criminal activities they often are
frequently doing, UH, is that they're very self interested. They're

(35:18):
just they're they're more for for the criminal groups and
cartels that are interested in just profit and not necessarily
you know, mandating political you know, you have to live
in this type of way, some kind of ideological or
political goals. Not to say that they aren't political actors, right,
but that that's not their motive. Their motive is to
make money, and for cults, it's really just to perpetuate

(35:42):
the lifestyle that they're living and whatever it is. So
we have examples in the book of you know, very
violent cults that try to and in an in Rock
example is try to do a leadership decapitation of the
entire Shia religious staffablishments. It would be like the equivalent
of killing the pope and then pretty much benefiting off

(36:06):
of the civil war that would follow. The irony is
that there's a massive civil war in the Rock between
She and Sunny at the time, and it's just almost
unimaginable what might have happened. And that did berail, you know,
a civil war slash insurgency that's that's quite robust in
two thousand and seven and going sideways for the United States,

(36:27):
probably lucky that that one did not happen.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
In Craig they you know, kind of circling back to
one of my opening questions, you know, words mean things
is and I had never really considered anything else because
it's almost become a verbal tick for a lot of people.
Is not Everything that we would normally define as a
terrorist attack probably was one or should be looked at

(36:52):
as simply being one. And an example, y'all use is
identified that there's a problem. The famous Bete airport bombing
is called an active terror a terror attack. Is that
actually a little more complicated than that when you look
at these types of operations inside the frame work that
you and I and developed.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yeah, that's a that's a good point. I mean a
lot of these things are terror attack and special operations
at the same time. When we were and that was
one of the hard parts of researching this, It's like, well,
because then you know, we'd have friends who'd be like,
well what about this? What about this? And a lot
of them are just terror attacked. And sometimes terrorism operates

(37:33):
off of a similar logic to special operations in the
sense that they might not be specialized tacked to action.
Usually they're not different from the normal du jour, you know,
suicide bombing. So let's say isis that's their pretty normal operation.
So a lot of those terrorist attacks, they're they're terror
attacks that they don't meet the criteria of a special operation.

(37:53):
And the three kind of tests that we developed to
to you know, to kind of identify what's this US
operation versus what is other things? But the bay root
by bombing, you know, it's uh, the target is a
military target, but it's there. It's being conducted by a
shadowy group that becomes HESBLA but is not quite HESBLA yet,

(38:17):
And so they have that advantage. There's no djor there's
there's no pattern of activity for them, so they can
come out with what we called an opening gambit and
just come out and punch you right in the nose.
Even though they had already bombed an embassy beforehand, and
you know they had they had done some activities, they
were still far enough off the radar for for the

(38:38):
US and and others, even the others in the region,
even the Israelis were surprised by, uh, by this particular
group before it you know, became what we know today
is HESBLA. So yeah, I mean that generally these kings
can be you know, terror attacks, but at the same time,
you know, if they if they meet the other criteria. Uh,

(39:01):
that one in particular, we argued as this was a
specialized tactical action because of the sophistication of the bomb,
which the I think the CIA or the FBI later
said not only was it the largest non nuclear detonation
on the history of the planet, but that it was
sufficient enough that it probably would have destroyed the embassy

(39:22):
even if it hadn't, even if the guards had stopped
it short of entering the entry control points, still would
have devastated that building and probably caused similar casualties. So
that's you know, that's pretty much not only did they
they brought their a game on on the type of
of UH, on the type of mission that that was

(39:43):
in addition to having this outside effect of having the
US say this is we're not sure exactly what just happened,
but we are not going to stick around.

Speaker 5 (39:52):
Yeah, I love your vignettes. I had never before, even
though I looked in California for a long time, I
had never before heard of the the Art of choke
King of King of the Art where we called him
that the mobster running the Art of choke job in
New York City. Talk a little bit about how that

(40:14):
fell into your into yours. I know it's a criminal thing,
but talk about how that fell into your into your.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, I'll start, but I'll let I'll let Ian Ian's
the one who pushed means. I think Ian pushed us
a lot on, you know, trying to find different violent
nonstate actors that do special operations. And I'll tell you
when I started doing the he was like, but you
got to do the criminal groups and the and the cult.
And I found it much more interesting once we we

(40:44):
put cults into this group. But originally I was very
very suspect about, you know, or circumspect about, like two
criminal groups do special operations? Like what's a special operation?
Look like criminal groups? I mean, they're they're very much
interested in making money. I thought the leadership targeting, you know,
that's a common that's a common special operation for non
state groups across the spectrum, right taking out your rival's leadership,

(41:06):
you know, can apply to any kind of violent group,
for sure, if it's sophisticated enough and meets the other
tiest the one that someone else said, you know, what's
your case selection is like, and like, well, a lot
of this is just stuff that we know because Ian
teaches the history special operations at MPs, and you know,
I do the research into a group that's been very

(41:28):
prolific or whatever, but one that's really local to US
is the Artichoke Wars which happened here in the Central
Coast one hundred years ago. They still talk about it.
There's still Italian farms that run out here that were
victimized by the mafia and the Artichoke Wars. When when
I stumbled upon it, trying to understand, like what would
a criminal special operation look like other than leadership to capitation,

(41:49):
and it was the establishment of a monopoly over you know,
listid or illicit goods, but in this case artichokes. And
you know, these Italian early Italian monsters from what becomes
one of the Five Families of New York creates a
monopoly chain from their own grocery stores that they used
really as a money laundering front in New York City.

(42:12):
But they they were they kind of cornered the artichoke
market which were growing on the West Coast in California
by Italian farmers and you know, bought by Italians in
New York City, Italian Americans in New York City, and
they monopolized every aspect of the trade from growing to
transportation to you know, selling it in the grocery stores

(42:33):
in New York City. And they were making ninety five
percent profit on artichokes of all things, which which kind
of reminds you of you know, avocados from Mexico nowadays
with the cartels. But the cartels had nothing on the
you know, the mafia and their ability to really control
every aspect of the trade, to the point where if

(42:54):
farmers in California realized they were getting fleeced, you know,
they could make a lot more money selling the other
growth other sellers, and the mafia would send guys out
here at night in the in the fog of coastal
California and you know, cut down people's artichokes or even
firebomb artichoke fields. And you know, I think two or
three years into it there there was an an acknowledgement

(43:17):
that ninety five percent of artichokes sold here in California
were to this turn Nova mafia family, which is it's
just an incredible kind of thing for a group like
that to establish that kind of monopoly in a country
like the United States. Of course it's one hundred years ago,
but it takes the Nasan FBI and the Mayor of

(43:40):
the Gordia to to kind of shut down this monopoly.
But that's what it took.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
You know I and it's easy sometimes when you read
all these vignettes too. And there have been some people,
and we had some of them that I worked with
in Afghanistan who they get the mindset special operations all
the time everywhere for everything, and that's not always true.
And an interesting note, and I have an unread volume

(44:09):
of this in my library. I've been kind of incentivized
to go grab. It is the memoir of a British
Field Marshall Williams Slim, and he had under him Major
General wind Gate in his special operations and I definitely
need to dig it out and read it in first person.
But you outline where William Slim he was not that

(44:32):
big of a fan of the special operations that they
were doing, because there is an opportunity cost whether you
are a state actor like the British Army is, or
you are a non state actor. I just want to
do a little bit of a quote here from the book.
Let's see here here we go. Quote. Slim argued that
win Gate's passion for special operations as a game changer

(44:53):
might have worked in Palestine or East Africa, but not
in Burma. Special operations must be integrated into ca campaigns
in a way that it achieves operational strategic effects, or
it is a waste of resources that states waging large
scale conventional operations cannot afford. And two paragraphs down opening sentence,

(45:14):
quote militant groups for the most part self fund their
activities without the benefit of proxy groups, mercenaries and criminal
groups and either external support or expertise, and focus on
resource extraction from population unquote. So these these operations, they
are they are small, small units, big effects, but they

(45:35):
do come with a big opportunity cost. And I definitely
appreciated Field Marshall Slim's comment about how you and we've
seen this in our own recent history that when you
have too much of your quote special forces unquote, it
leaves your regular forces without its top players that you

(45:57):
really need for the general operation.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
Yeah, that's sorry about that.

Speaker 4 (46:01):
A plane is going overhead sound of Freedom, Yeah, Freedom
and the Monterey Airport. But that is uh, this is
actually a big that's that's a very nice springboard too.
What's going on right now in the US Department of
Defense and how the special operations community is ensuring they're

(46:25):
reoriented appropriately to support what we perceive as large scale
combat operations. Against near peer adversaries. And because there there
is this I would say misperception, but just say a
perception that the campaigns during the recent unpleasantness uh in

(46:48):
Iraq and Afghanistan were predominantly executed by special operations forces.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
The reality is they weren't.

Speaker 4 (46:54):
Just some of the most prominent operations were, and so
the vast majority of those operations were conducted by conventional
forces conducting what we call counterinsurgency. So when General Slim
is talking about, hey, I I don't need the chindits
are a valuable asset, I I don't know if I

(47:16):
can afford them.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
I can't.

Speaker 4 (47:18):
I can't afford the manpower, and I can't afford not
controlling the effects on the ground. That's like a two
pronged issue, right, the fact that you might have a
resource constraint, but also you don't know if you can
con if the effects are going to be if you're
going to be able to control the effects of these
long range penetration groups. So that that is that's something

(47:42):
that is being debated right now in terms of how
soft can be reimagined to support large scale combat operations.
Uh So, it's a it's a real thing it's a
because special operations forces, uh, not the operations themselves, it's
a it's an issue of haves and have nots for

(48:04):
a lot of actors. Because they are resourced better per person,
they're generally considered elite in terms of not better, but
privileged and how do things or things travel with privilege
such as more money per person, more training, better selection criteria,
different pays. So yeah, it's when you're looking at hey,

(48:29):
how do I win this larger campaign? And am I
putting too much into this one specialized unit? What are
the what are the costs that I'm sinking into that?
Are they worth? Are they going to be worth the outcome?

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (48:42):
I would just add that, you know, non state actors
feel this more than conventional actors because they're so resource
challenge And I think the best examples in the book
are of these kind of you know, really well thought
out special operations is that their economy of forces that
there have in on the peripheral of a conventional campaign,

(49:03):
much like Lawrence is an Akaba example where they make
a large but also in Iraq early on with US
special forces pairing up with Kurds to tie down ten
Iraqi divisions, or whatever it was like that those any
any kind of proxy or our use of partner forces
to to really uh impact a conventional campaign is ideal

(49:28):
for for the for an idea of special or concept
of special operations, Let's.

Speaker 5 (49:32):
Talk a little bit about the mercenaries engaged in these,
either either coups or preventing government changes. We've got, we've got,
You've got a couple of examples in the book mercenaries.
I guess if you put them through your grid, there
are only certain operations there engaged in that would be

(49:53):
special operations, particularly like the coups in the in the
was it Comoros, tomorrows wherever that country's name is?

Speaker 4 (50:01):
Yeah, so the specialize. So this goes right to Seal's
question before, and it actually ties nicely together. Mercenaries come
ready made. Unlike the other groups the mercenaries are. They
have a lower opportunity cost for an employer because the
expectation is that they're hired to perform a task, even

(50:26):
though that task may appear comical or rudimentary and execution.
The expectation is, yeah, I'm going to hire a group
of men or fighters to perform something I don't have
the capability of So when you look at it in
terms of our theoretical construct, the djore is literally the

(50:47):
absence of any military capability in the case of the Camorras,
the coup attempt in the Camorras and uh Or it's
actually a successful coup. But incidentally, the interesting thing about
that coup is it is built off of a blueprint
from a fictional book called The Dogs of War, where

(51:08):
Bob Denard, the mercenary leader, conducts the operation pretty much
step by step as Frederick Forsyth describes in his fictional
book about seizing Ace a small African country, so that
parallels are are pretty obvious. Uh but but yeah, a

(51:32):
lot of mercenary groups, that's what they're That's why we
put them in there, because we also wanted to examine
this new phenomenon about whether groups like Wagner are really
conducting special operations. Now we don't have a lot of
evidence yet on whether they're military assistance activities during resource

(51:54):
extraction are actually destabilizing areas, but that's probably of the
next step in this research.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Y'all kind of kicked off the book with one of
my favorite stories and for two army guys, I'll give
you credit, you know, the naval, the naval part of
the Naval War College and the Naval postgraduate schools. We're
an off with you a little bit. This is good
to see, but it's it's the mindset that.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
People.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
People are people, and whether you're a non state actor
or you're a state actor, it's a mindset. It's how
you look at a challenge. You know, where is there
a problem, how can we address that? Having the mindset
of that you have with the special operators, it can

(52:43):
really create even in a large established traditional or maybe
two traditional sometimes militaries, really impactful events. And one thing
you'll started off with was Operation Chariot the Campbellton who
took out the dry dock in Nazir in France, which

(53:03):
I can't pronounce so but that's close enough to begin
with an end and ends with the Z sound. But
it's one of those high profile but also high sacrifice
we look at sometimes with these quote terrorists, non state actors,
how are you going to refer to them? Well, they
did this operation, but all but two of them were killed.
Even traditional forces who want to do these high impact,

(53:26):
high sacrifices also have a when you look at a
casualty rate, just something that's that's really hard to understand
from just traditionally trained people. A lot of the sailors
were you talk a little bit about about that decision
Craig that y'all made. Hey, let's start off with telling
a naval story to kind of outline some of the

(53:46):
larger foundation topics that we want to address.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yeah, I appreciate it. You know, been a teaching naval
work hallge for Tivia, So I think a lot of
my a lot of you Navy. You guys are rubbed
off on me, So we have many many you know,
the Midway U the Doolittle raid, you know, off of
the Hornet is obviously another example of that. But I'll

(54:11):
let uh, I'll let Ian Ian teaches this as a
case study here at NPS. Uh about the Campbellton I was.
I was actually just in Scotland last week and I
was not far from Cambelton. Uh So, but I'll let
I'll let Ian talk a little bit about that, and
then I'll jump in to the rest of your question,
which is a good one.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
So we're looking.

Speaker 4 (54:31):
What we want to do is set the stage for
for the reader to say, what is a specialt can
we really see these outsized effects? And there are three
from World War two, Operation Chariot being the one that
sant is there that hit all these criterias where it's

(54:52):
really obvious so the reader can see it easily.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
And yeah, it's it's a state sponsor to that.

Speaker 4 (55:00):
It is the British Commando Force under Lord Louis Mountbatten
who devises this scheme to ram a lend lease by
the way US lend lease World War One destroyer into
a dry dock, basically turning it into a ship boarn

(55:21):
ied to defeat this dry dock. And the whole reason
they want to defeat this dry dock is if they
can prevent the Turpets, the German fast moving pocket battleship
from a returning to Saint Nazir to be refitted, it's
basically going to keep it out of the war. And
at that stage in nineteen forty two, German U boat

(55:44):
wolf packs are dominating and basically pushing Britain to starve.
So this raid was instrumental with a strategic impact of
preventing the Germans to maintain that pressure on US or
Allied convoys crossing the Atlantic and the cost. The cost

(56:07):
is two thirds casualties is really about a six hundred
man force. Two thirds are either wounded, killed, or captured,
only about one hundred, but only about two but only
about two hundred and fifty actually returned to Britain. So
what we really wanted to do there is show the

(56:30):
differences as to what really makes action a special operation.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
Over to you, Craig, Yeah, I'm just getting to Sala's
point about mindset. You know, if if we can put
ourselves in our opponents, you know, being violent on state
actors often but you know they have the same kind
of strategic dilemmas that that Ian just described, and sometimes
even more daunting from there, you know, from the asymmetry

(56:57):
between them taken on states. And so you know, we're
trying to use the logic of these kind of ad
hoc special operations that were executed by you know, large
states in uh in large scale you know, conventional warfare,
and then and then kind of show how nonstate you know,

(57:18):
operational planners would would also use special operations to kind
of to surmount these these same challenges.

Speaker 5 (57:28):
Ask before we let you guys go, how do you
see this this book being used by by the intended audience.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
And you want to talk this about the flip side,
about how we can see our own.

Speaker 4 (57:44):
Yeah, sure, Uh, you know, it's kind of funny. We
we've had a very long set of campaigns in the
Middle East that did prominently use a lot of special
operations forces, and but we're a lot of those operations
and tactical actions across those two decades of unpleasantness? Were

(58:08):
they Were they really special operations just because special operations
forces conducted them well? From personal experience on doing it,
a few times I'd say no, And that's because we
weren't really thinking about the premeditated effects of certain tactical
actions and whether they're actually part of a larger campaign.

(58:30):
Very few events were. And and so if anything, our
hope is is this book is an appetite suppressant for
seeing ourselves and understanding, Hey, if we've created these standing forces,
are we are we using them in ways that isn't

(58:51):
just going to protect them. They're not a toy that
we're setting on the shelf. But when we use them,
we have to be prepared to lose them, and when
we do. When we do use them, we need to
make sure that we're achieving these outsized effects. I mean,
that's really what Operation Chariot is all about. Uh, That's
what the dual Little Rate is all about. Uh, in

(59:14):
terms of, hey, we are sending a very we are
making a very deliberate choice to commit these resources.

Speaker 3 (59:21):
So you've want to follow up on that.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Craig, Yeah, I think you know the other half. In addition,
you know, this is not just about us, although I
think you know, Ian's point is obviously something that that
animated the book as well as you know, some other
questions that we had we talked about earlier. But just
you know, these not these violent non state actors are

(59:45):
still going to be part of our you know, strategic environment.
The technology is really enabling them to do more sophisticated stuff.
But what we saw in October seventh, we call it
a special operation within you know, the larger offense or
or murders rampage, right that happens on October seventh, But
it's it's it's facilitated by what we would consider a

(01:00:08):
special operation as far as breaching a highly technical wall.
And so these are things that we have to look
out for, you know, in the future, these these very
what's what's a special operation by non state actors is
going to look like in the cyber domain, that's not
just hacking, it's you know, something more kin to like
stucks neet or space, which we have you know, lots

(01:00:29):
of violent non state actors. I mean, we have lots
of non state actors in space right now. Space X
is a non state actor, right But what is a
violent non state actor that activities or special operations in
space domain? What? What? What? What might that look like
and how that impact the military capabilities we rely on
in space. But for me, it's it's about you know,

(01:00:53):
continuing or trying to defeat this continuum, this kind of
habit we have of underestimating violent non state actors and
not just how dedicated they are, but but how clever
they can be.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
The I think the IRA kind of messed it up
because the IRA came up with this famous phrase that
terrorism studies folks really love, which is uh, you know,
I think when they missed Margaret Thatcher once, it's like, well,
you you know, you guys have to be good all
the time. We just have to be lucky once. And
that's and that's that's almost a paradigm for how we
see violent non state actors and both terrorist acts and

(01:01:27):
also special operations, is like, oh, it's luck or you know,
they got lucky, or we weren't paying attention and this happened,
and you know we're we show that. Look, there's a
lot of planning that went into this, there's a lot
of preparation, there's a lot of resourcing, there's a lot
of risk taking, and all of this is not luck. Right,
that's it's a fallacy to think that they got lucky.

(01:01:50):
They just need to get lucky once, as the IRA said,
And that's that's another kind of agenda.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
I think if you will, I think, I think you
and you and I and outline very well that a
lot of these non state actors they're not lucky. They're
good and they've learned all the lessons. And now now
you've given me nightmares violent non state actors in space. Well,

(01:02:15):
here's what you and Ian can do. Because y'all set
it here on mid rats, when the inevitable happens one day,
we're going to see that maybe in our lifetime, maybe not.
You can come just like, hey, we coined that, we
coined that concern. You can claim credit. It was on
mid rats, but Craig and Ann really appreciate y'all taking
time for the next hour to discuss this. And again,

(01:02:37):
the book has just come out. You can find a
link to it the listeners on the show page, and
I wish you the best of luck with it. And
it definitely was a fresh and informative look at a
topic I think some of us have talked to superficially
and maybe a little lazily about in the last twenty
five years. So Bravo Zulu won that and I wish

(01:02:58):
all the best of luck there in modern and the
Newport I don't know, Craig, are you going to make
it back to Newport? Are you trying to find a
way to stay in the better weather in California?

Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
I love my students out here because we get a
different mix out here than they do at Newport. And
but you know, the Mothership's always calling me back for
this and that, and I'll be there before you know it.
And that's not a bad place to be either. So
thanks for the Bravo Zulu. I know what that means.
After twelve years.

Speaker 5 (01:03:25):
Thank you, thank you, Thank you gentlemen for joining us today.
It's been very, very interesting and again wish you the
best of luck on your on your book.

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
Thanks for having us, Thank you again.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
For having us, welcome in. Thank you everybody for joining
us for another edition in mid Rats until next time,
hope you have a great Navy day.

Speaker 3 (01:03:43):
Cheers, pay.

Speaker 6 (01:03:57):
Mike, marry me and all leave a friend of becondily
for you being to blame more lovely love me silly
faulting your the tame.

Speaker 7 (01:04:15):
It's a long way to Dipperary. It's a long way.
It's a long way to Dipperary, to between.

Speaker 6 (01:04:32):
Gorb becdi farewell left dwell.

Speaker 7 (01:04:40):
It's a long long way to differate. But my life,
my na