November 27, 2024 • 51 mins
Sean Corrigan was commissioned as a second lieutenant when he graduated from West Point in 1988. Within just a couple of years, he saw action in both Panama and Desert Storm. Soon after that he entered the world of special operations and served there for the remainder of his career, including combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and a harrowing assignment in Yemen.
In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Col. Horrigan recounts what he learned as a young officer in those early conflicts, what was required physically and academically to succeed in special operations, and how his world quickly changed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
He also takes into his missions to find and capture high-value enemy targets and rescue hostages during his time in Iraq, including the many considerations that factored into each of those daring missions.
Corrigan also shares details about his service in Yemen and the threat posed to him and others at the U.S. embassy there just days after terrorist attacks killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in Benghazi, Libya.
Finally, Col. Corrigan explains his role as Director of Special Activities at U.S. Special Operations Command and the work he is doing now to honor special operators through the Special Operators Warrior Foundation.
In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Col. Horrigan recounts what he learned as a young officer in those early conflicts, what was required physically and academically to succeed in special operations, and how his world quickly changed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
He also takes into his missions to find and capture high-value enemy targets and rescue hostages during his time in Iraq, including the many considerations that factored into each of those daring missions.
Corrigan also shares details about his service in Yemen and the threat posed to him and others at the U.S. embassy there just days after terrorist attacks killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in Benghazi, Libya.
Finally, Col. Corrigan explains his role as Director of Special Activities at U.S. Special Operations Command and the work he is doing now to honor special operators through the Special Operators Warrior Foundation.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas, and our guest
in this edition is retired US Army Colonel Sean Corrigan.
He served in uniform for more than thirty years and
saw action in Panama, Desert Storm, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
He is now executive vice president of the Special Operations
Warrior Foundation, and Colonel, it's a great pleasure to have
(00:34):
you with us. Thanks for your time today.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well, thanks for having me Greg, you appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Where were you born and raised, Sir?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I was born in Yankton, South Dakota, a small town
in southeast South Dakota, right on the Nebraska border.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Had there been a history of military service in your family.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I describe it this way. My great grandfather fought in
the Wisconsin Regiment in the Civil War. My grandfather was
drafted for World War One. My father served in the
Korean War. Out of my seven uncles, six of them
served in the military. But no, I'm not from a
(01:12):
military family. That's a typical American family.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
When did you join the service and why did you
join the Army?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I started West Point in July of nineteen eighty four,
so my service in the Active Duty Army started in
May of eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
What made you want to pursue West Point?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
The military option appealed to me, and I like the
idea of the discipline, and I liked the idea of
entering into the active duty Army straight away after college.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
And then how soon after you were commissioned did you
start pursuing special operations training as well?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I went to Special Forces selection right after a couple
months after we got back from Desert Shield and Storm,
and then I actually started the qualifacation course in nineteen
ninety two.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Well, in that case, let's back up a little bit
and talk about what happened right after commissioning, because that
happened in nineteen eighty eight. By the end of nineteen
eighty nine, you were taking part in Operation Just Cause
down in Panama. So tell us a little bit about
where you went after West Point and the unit you
were with as you prepared for service there.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Right, So, the basic schools that I went to as
an infantryman graduating out of West Point were Infantry Officer
Basic Course, Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and then
I stayed for a jump master course because I was
heading to the eighty second Airborne. So I got to
the eighty second in early nineteen eighty nine, and I
(02:44):
was assigned to a third of the five zero fourth
Parachute Infantry Regiment that's in first brigade in the eighty
second Airborne, and that's who I went to Panama with.
But we were the only battalion in our brigade that
did not jump into Panama. We were already there at
the jungle school when the US decided that it would
(03:06):
exercise its treaty rights, and so we quit practicing our
jungle skills and started rehearsing for our h hour objectives.
And that was the first combat mission that I saw
as a second lieutenant in rifle patuon leader in the
eighty second Airborn.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
How much time did you have to switch gears from
jungle training to the mission.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
We had about two weeks. We rehearsed and rehearsed and
did reconnaissance on our initial objectives, just kind of waiting
for the decision and h hour and sure enough decision came.
My company loaded helicopters and off we went down the
canal to secure our first objective.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
What was the objective? And how did you secure it?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, our objective was a logistics base called Sarah T.
Gray and we landed a chinook in some uh one H.
Hughey's on a golf course and moved across overland to
secure the objective. And of course the guards there as
soon as they heard the helicopters coming, went running for
(04:09):
the jungles. So it was uneventful, thankfully, but certainly could
have gone another direction.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
So not a lot of resistance. What happened once you
were there.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
We secured the objective, cleared it, made sure there were
no enemy there. About a day later we got picked up,
moved back Fort Sherman to Recock for our next objective.
I think we might have gone to Madden Dam after
that to cure Madden Dam a strategic objective because if
(04:40):
you released all the water from that it would flood
Lake Atoon in the locks and the whole canal system.
So we were there for a while and then we
went to the city of Cologne. My company did and
assisted in the clearing of the city of Cologne on
the Caribbean coasts, second largest city I believe in Panama.
(05:02):
So that took a while to work our way through that. Town.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
What did that consist of and how significant was the
resistance there?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Resistance was absolutely minimal. By this time, we were probably
a week into the operation and it really came down
to finding Noriega, and course nobody knew where he was
initially until he turned up at the Papal Nuincia, So
we were looking for Noriega, looking for anyone who might
be able to tell us where he went, all that
(05:32):
kind of thing, getting rid of the Panamanian forces who
could have resisted, disarming them, kind of collecting all the
weapons and that sort of thing. But the population absolutely
no resistance, in fact, very helpful. The main thing was
maintaining some semblance of order and not having looting in
the free zone, which was a problem. You know, people
(05:55):
were breaking into the containers off the ships and stealing everything,
so we had to gain some semblance of control of
that as well.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
As your first combat experience, and thankfully it wasn't met
with two fears of resistance. You're a young officer leading
enlisted men and sometimes obviously that can be a difficult relationship.
How did you build trust in relationships with your guys
so that when you got to being deployed in that situation,
(06:25):
everything was running smoothly.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Well, thankfully, I did have probably eight or nine months
of training time with my platoon and a lot of
time in the field and some long exercises where you
have to prove yourself every day, that's for certain, and
you have to set the example. And you know, of course,
everything I learned about leadership in ranger School in West
(06:49):
Point put to the test in real life. And then
when we got pulled out of the field in the
jungle and into the barracks and issued our warning orders
for our objectives, things got real serious in a hurry
because we didn't know how much resist since we would meet.
At that point, it becomes very real that decisions could
(07:11):
cost lives or be the difference between success and failure
on any given mission or objective. That stayed the same
all the way through into the two thousands and then
twenty teens in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. That never
changes in a command or leadership role. Your decisions, people's
(07:35):
lives depend on them, and there was a wake up
call for a twenty four and a half year old
It all became very very real.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, the Panamanian mission just Cause was in late nineteen
eighty nine. By the summer of nineteen ninety you're focused
on something completely different. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait's Operation Desert
Shield is put into motion, and then a few months
after that it's Operation Desert Storm and early nineteen ninety one.
So once the invasion of Kuwait happened, how did that
(08:04):
change what you were doing? How did you get ready
for deployment and what else you had to consider going
into the desert.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Our battalion was in a support phase of the training cycle,
and so we were actually my platoon, SCALP platoon by
then was supporting Special Forces training exercise called Robin Sage
and literally we got the word on the radio training
missions over return to base. That was right after the invasion,
(08:36):
and we were seven thout of nine infantry battalions to
leave Fort Bragg heading for Saudi Arabia, and so we're
responsible for pushing out all those other battalions until it
was our turn, and that means outloading on one one aircraft.
But we were still gone within I would say less
than two weeks. We were out of Fort Bragg, North
(08:59):
Carolina in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and we had
a long time, a lot of waiting, a lot of training,
probably more trained than any other time in my experience
in the army, because we had nothing else to do
but train. And then of course the war kicked off
and went a lot faster than anyone expected at the time,
(09:23):
and so that was intense and we didn't know what
to expect. Literally, there were battalion commanders ordering extra body
bags because they were convinced that we're going to take
a lot of casualties on that one. But obviously it
went another direction, in a good direction for the US.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, much better than expect did. There was concerns about
chemical weapons and all sorts of other things. What role
did your unit play once the ground portion of the
war kicked.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Off, So our battalion was in support of the French
Foreign Legion way out on the western flank the Big
Hook movement into Iraq, that's where we were in. French
Foreign Legion had some motorized armored vehicles, so we were
trailing along in our trucks in case they met resistance
(10:11):
and needed infantry support. But the Big Hook went really
really fast. We were moving and just kind of policing
up Iraqi prisoners, war. As we went it worked as planned.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
So you're still mid twenties at this point, you've been
in two conflicts. Thankfully they went well and quickly. What
did you learn about yourself and the process of preparing
for and executing those missions?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You know, the Panama mission just caused went so fast
that you know, people didn't have a lot of time
to think about it. We had a lot of time
to think about what was potentially coming in desert shield
sitting there for that waiting on a desert storm. So
you know, people had issues at home that had to
be resolved. And it was not just deployed, do the
(10:57):
mission and come back, it was we're going to be
here while so really got to know all the troops
at a different level, you know, all the concerns they had.
Of course, I wasn't married, didn't have kids, and a
lot of my older NCOs did, so all those things
they were even magnified as we went past nine to
(11:17):
eleven into a twenty year war. All those personal issues
you have to deal with on a case by case basis.
Everyone's an individual and there's no cookie cutter solution for
dealing with any one of the myriad issues that pop up.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
That's retired US Army Colonel Sean Corrigan. He's a veteran
of Panama, Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan. He's now executive
vice president of the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Straight ahead,
we'll discuss his entry into Special Forces and his work
up to and through the nine to eleven terrorist attacks. Later,
(11:56):
we'll talk about his time in Iraq and Afghanistan, a
very ten assignment serving in Yemen, his work as a
critical officer at Special Operations Command, and what he's doing
now to honor our special operators. That's all still to come.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles sixty Seconds
of Service.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
This sixty Seconds of Service is presented by T Mobile.
T Mobile offers exclusive discounts for a veteran and military
families and are proud supporters of the National Defense Network.
Visit tmobile dot com slash military to learn more about
how they support our military community. Engaging with veteran communities
through your farm is not just socially responsible, it's a
strategic advantage that could supercharge your operations, marketing prowess, and
(12:40):
business growth. Veterans possess a unique set of skills and
experiences that align well with the demands of agriculture, making
them ideal partners for farms and businesses looking to foster
innovation and resilience. Eleven percent of farmers and ranchers in
the US or veterans, and this figure is expected to grow.
USDA is expected to continue offering substantial grants to private
(13:00):
and nonprofit stakeholders to support veterans in agriculture. Today's sixty
Seconds of Service is brought to you by Prevagen. Prevagen
is the number one pharmacist recommended memory support brand. You
can find Prevagen in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is retired US Army Colonel Sean Korrigan. He's
a veteran of Panama, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We
just heard Colonel Corrigan describe his service in Desert Storm.
Not long after returning, he started pursuing opportunities in special operations,
(13:36):
and Corrigan explains how that got started and then takes
us all the way to the nine to eleven terrorist attacks.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Fort Bragg at the time was home to third Special
Forces Group, which was just getting stood up, and seventh
Special Forces Group, and my interest was in seventh Special
Forces Group because of the Central and South American focus,
and at the time sort of the counter communism phase
(14:03):
was pretty much over an Al Salvador and other Central
American countries, but the counter narcotics mission was growing and
the training of counter narcotics forces in the Central and
South American countries, so that was sort of the hottest
thing going at the time, and that very much interested me. Thankfully,
(14:25):
I was assigned to seven Special Forces Group and got
a lot of great experience in that arena.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
What a Special Forces training or even qualifying look like.
What's at the next level that you have to be
able to achieve.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Intellectually, there's a language requirement. You have to be willing
to learn an additional language. For Central and South America.
Of course, Spanish is the predominant language, relatively easy compared
to some of the European languages, some of the Asian languages.
So you have to have a certain level of proficiency
to be able to learn and the dedication to able
(15:00):
to learn to at least be functional in another language.
In terms of physicality, look, I'm I'm five point five
one twenty five and there was nothing I couldn't do.
It comes down to in your head and in your heart.
That's really what's being tested, and your your teamwork, your
(15:22):
ability to work within a twelve man team to problem
solve and if one person's got a weakness in one area,
how to compensate, and you know, all work together. So
the twelve is a functioning entity with all these various skills,
and you know, the commander kind of applying the skills
(15:43):
to solve the problems. That that was kind of the
beauty of the Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
A little bit later in the decade, you ended up
in the Balkans, if I'm reading correctly, in the Bosnania,
I heard Sigovina situation. What's your role there?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I had tried out for a different special mission unit,
and so while still being a Special Forces officer in
eighteen Alpha in Military Occupations Specialty Code, I went more
to a counter terrorism role. So we were in the
Balkans literally looking for personnel indicted for war crimes in
(16:23):
the Balkan Wars. And so that was the beginning of
working in the interagency realm with different entities of the
US government and fusing together intelligence and operations and reconnaissance
to hunt down individuals and capture them.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And how long were you there?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Those were short tours. There were only three month tours
and I think I did two or three, I can't remember.
But the mission was always ongoing, so you paid attention
to what your predecessor is doing. You're the person who
backfailed you're doing. And that theme kind of went on
after nine to eleven. You're never really out of it.
(17:06):
You're always keeping up with the intelligence operations, so when
you hit the ground, it's not a cold start at all.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
And one other thing that comes with special operations and
certainly rising in the ranks of the officers, is the
education that comes with it. So how did you continually
educate yourself not only about the situation in the world,
but just in improving yourself in terms of the higher
and higher levels that you were responsible for.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
We had a special course called it the Troop Commander's Course,
and it exposes us to a lot of different interagency entities,
primarily intel entities, but also law enforcement that we would
be working with different executive branch entities, state departments, justice
through the FBI. That really opened up my eyes to
(18:00):
all the different elements of national power and how if
applied together, is much stronger than any one entity all
by itself. And General McCrystal really put that all together
when he was commanding the task force in Iraq. He
really forced the issue, the inner agency issue, the transparency,
(18:23):
flatness of communications, and you know, really paid off. The
seeds were kind of planted in the Balkans, but until
after nine to eleven, and especially after two thousand and
three after we invaded Iraq, you really had to do that.
It was obviously it wasn't going to be quick. Probably
heard the whole of government approach, but it really is.
(18:47):
It has to be.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Where were you on nine to eleven and how did
you hear about the attacks?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
I was on a training mission exercise at an airfield
in Hungary and it was kind of I'm designed around
you hunting down the personnel and guide it for war
crimes in the Balkans. And I walked into the tent
that we had the tactical operations center in and I
(19:12):
think I saw in the news the second aircraft hitting
the second tower, and initially it's like, wow, what's this
got to do. I thought it was exercise play, like
somebody had made this up for the exercise, Like, what's
this got to do with what we're doing in And
it's like, oh no, this is real. Grab the AMMO,
off the deployment palette, and literally we had all our
(19:34):
m all our gear.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
We were ready to go.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Now. Of course, nobody knew where to send us. There's
just too much unknown. So we did end up flying
back to Fort Bragg. In our naivete, we thought, Okay,
we got everything we need. Who did it, We'll go
get them take care of this right now. Twenty years later,
nobody knew what we had in front of us, and
in our mindset was different at the time. It's like, Okay,
we've got a problem. We're going to go take care
(19:58):
of it, go back home, get ready for the next problem.
So it was definitely mindset change.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
That's retired US Army Colonel Sean Corrigan. When we return,
Corrigan is deployed to Afghanistan and then spends a lot
more time in Iraq. Plus we'll explore a very precarious
assignment in Yemen, his time at Special Operations Command, and
his work now with the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. I'm
(20:25):
Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is retired
US Army Colonel Sean Korrigan. He's a veteran of Panama,
Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as a harrowing
assignment in Yemen, which we'll hear about a little bit later.
(20:47):
In a moment. We'll learn all about the factors Corrigan
had to consider when pursuing high value targets or rescuing
hostages in Iraq. But we pick up the colonel's story
in the aftermath of nine to eleven and his immediate
role in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, it was definitely to hunt down Osama bin Laden
and other top al Qaeda operatives in countries where we
could get to them. We knew somewhere hiding in Iran,
and we weren't going to go to Iran to get them.
That was just that was obvious, even to a young
at that time major. But the places where we could
get them to include ZARKAUI, not exactly huge initial leader
(21:27):
in al Qaeda, but we knew it was operating in Iraq,
and we knew that it had had be captured or killed,
and that was the enduring mission. Initially in Iraq, mission
was to find Saddam and his other key leaders and
capture the former regime leadership. Once that was done, then
(21:47):
it quickly shifted over to fighting al Qaeda in Iraq
and tracking down their leadership and destroying their network.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
How quickly were you deployed to Afghanistan?
Speaker 2 (21:58):
The unit I was in was in there by October after,
you know, maybe a little more than a month after
the attacks on nine to eleven. I didn't get there
until April. My squadron I happened to be in at
the time was last in the rotations. So and of
(22:18):
course at the time, you know, we're pulling our hair
out thinking, oh, you know, bin Lan's going to get killed,
and you know we won't have our chance, and that
I know I'd be going back to Afghanistan a lot
more times. I think the last time I was there
was like twenty sixteen or something.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
So logistically, once you're there, are you following up on
intel leads? Are you responsible for a particular geographic area?
How did you orchestrate this?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
We were based and so we could go anywhere we
needed to, and we had the resources to get anywhere
we needed to get. So we literally had one job,
and that's to hunt down these leaders. We didn't have
to control terrain, or train any forces or anything like that,
(23:05):
so that that was our sole mission is to hunt
down the leadership and either capture or kill them.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
And then tactically, when you had a lead, how did
you execute that.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It definitely evolved over time. When we first started conducting missions,
we would send out a reconnaissance unit and they did
watch the target for up to a week before we
would even consider going in on a raid on the target.
After a while, that became untenable and we figured we've
got to move faster than this because they're just moving
(23:37):
around too much. We can't sit on an empty building
for a week when we know he's already left, hoping
that it'll come back. We had and this was all
before the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance platforms really had ramped up,
so we didn't have that overhead surveillance like we did later.
On the early days two thousand and two, it was
(23:59):
pretty rudimentary. We might do two or three raids in
a three month period, whereas in Iraq, by two thousand
and five, we're doing five or six missions day, you know,
day and night, all day long, all night long. The
tempo just ramped up. And part of that was General
mccrystal's fine, fixed, finish exploit analyze mantrope where the operations
(24:25):
feed on the intel which feeds into the next operation,
and you just keep you keep going, and you attack
the network in its breadth and depth along different lines
of operations might be logistics, might be money, might be leadership,
or the different departments within the terrorist organization, and you
just stay after it and after it and after it.
(24:47):
And that's why our deployments were three months instead of
one year, because you can sprint for three months. You
can't do that for a year straight will You will
break people.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
And so when you are executing this mission, what type
of resistance are you generally facing and how do you
position yourself to be in the best position to attack
and to repel?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It would literally vary, and you never well in some
areas were definitely worse than others. And you knew if
you're going into a certain area they're going to shoot
at you. You knew there we knew there was going
to be IEDs and when we needed to. Like the
task force that I commanded from two thousand and five
to seven, we had four tanks and four Bradley's, so
(25:31):
if we needed to lead with tanks, we would, and
you know, they got people's attention, they tended not to
mess around with us. Now, we always also coordinated with
the local battle space owner, the general purpose force units
that were responsible for that that terrain and maintaining the
(25:51):
peace and that terrain, so they always knew where we
were and where we were going and had airspace deconflicted
all that sort of thing. Now by then we'd also
come a long long way in terms of ISR platforms,
so we had overwatch watching our routes and the objective
(26:11):
and all sorts of things like that. A lot of
advantages we did not have in two thousand and two
when we started in Afghanistan, and then of course we
relied on the intel that we had drived, and most
of the time we had pretty good idea of whether
the person we were looking for was going to be there.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
So we had a lot of advantages working for you,
especially as time went on. The enemy had some as well,
they were more familiar with the terrain and they've been
fighting for a very long time. So what was the
biggest challenge in pushing them back or what was the
biggest challenge they presented to you?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I can speak more to Iraq down Afghanistan because I
spent a lot more time in Iraq on Afghanistan. And
really one of the big challenges we had was when
the Iranian back Shia insurgent groups started attacking US forces
as well, and making no mistake, they caused a lot
(27:06):
more US casualties than the Sunni extremist groups did toward
the end, you know, from about two thousand and seven
on the challenge there was the government of Iraq was
happy to have US hunt down the Sunni terrorists Al
Qaida in Iraq, Zarkawi's bunch and all the people that
followed him not so keen to have US hunting down
(27:29):
the Iranian backed groups. So that was the beginning of
some really politically challenging times because by then two thousand
and seven eight time frame, the Iraqis at a government
constitution and we were abiding by their laws. So began
this process of having to get Iraqi approvals for targets
(27:52):
using their legal system, and it became very very difficult.
More important the person in that Shia terris network, the
harder it was to get and arrest.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
More how did you deal with that because there's still
a threat to you but the government's not cooperating.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, it was very very difficult. We went through their system.
We had Iraqi judges embedded with us that went through
all the files and gave us a sanity check whether
it was good enough, for lack of a better term,
the functional equivalent of an arrest warrant, I can't remember
exactly what we called it. They were under intense pressure
(28:30):
as well, and for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard could force
officers who we knew were in country. That was a
really hard pull to get the approval to go after them,
because that's strategically, that's an entirely different animal there to
arrest an Iranian operative in Iraq. I gave a lot
(28:51):
of credit to the commanders that had the courage to
to authorize it. But those were challenging times, and that's
when it's seemingly very easy tactically and operationally strategically, Sometimes
it's not tennel, it's just within the risk calculus. As
you go from tactical operational, it's risk to force risk emission.
(29:16):
Is you get into the strategic realm, there's also strategic
risk or Franklin political risk. If we do this, do
we lose Jordan's support? If we do this, do we
lose Pakistan support? That's a very real thing, of course,
as they had subsequent positions at the six kernel level,
in different staffs working at the strategic level. And when
(29:42):
I say strategic level, it's tactical operations with strategic impacts,
be it a hostage rescue operation in Yemen or a
cross border operation into Syria or Pakistan, something like that,
that regardless of the tactical success or failure, it's going
to have ramifications and those are decisions made at the
(30:03):
inner agency level and ultimately, but when.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
You talk about risk, whether political or to your guys,
it also highlights the point that as we're going on here,
you're rising in rank and in your different positions of responsibility,
and so you're a little bit more removed in terms
of the chain of command from the enlisted guys on
the ground as opposed to where you were in Panama,
desert storm and that sort of thing. So what did
(30:27):
you do in order to make sure that you still
had a good connection, understood what they were seeing, thinking,
going through and so so you weren't detached, but really
understanding what they were experiencing.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Right, So, really, all the way through fall of twenty eleven,
two thousand and five to seven, I was a squadron commander,
and I was going out every day. Point being, I
wasn't going to ask my squadron to do anything I
wasn't willing to do myself and put myself in the
same harms way that I'm asking them to do. As
(31:00):
the six commander would go out maybe once or twice
a week on different missions with different entities, because by
then I had not only my own unit working for me,
but a lot of other subordinate units, so I would
I would go out with them as well and share
(31:23):
the risk.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So those are the best ways possible to stay in
touch with what your guys are going through, to be
shouldered shoulder with them as they do it. What are
some of the biggest leadership decisions you had to make.
You talked about some of the complicated aspects of dealing
with Sunni versus She and so forth, But in terms
of the missions themselves. What were some of the toughest
leadership decisions. You had to make a point to.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
One mission a hostage rescue mission, which was rare in Iraq.
Our job was to hunt down and destroy terrast networks.
The test force commander gave me three days to work
on this because anytime I was spending trying to find
and rescue this hostage, that was time away from hunting
down the network. Now I could do two things at once,
(32:07):
sometimes with the forces I had available. But yeah, we
did three days worth of operations to figure out where
we thought the hostage was. I really felt one. I
was definitely running out of time. You know, I pretty
much exhausted the time my commander gave me. And because
of these operations, my assessment of the risk to the
(32:29):
hostage was they got to no work getting close and
so I made the decision to do a daylight raid
to rescue him into called it the Triangle of death.
The Suni Triangle is really really bad area. And you know,
tactically that takes the helicopter fleet out of operation for
(32:50):
an extra day afterwards, because you got to keep the
pilots up fly him during the day. Then they have
to reset, so they're not gonna be any good for
that night. There's a resource call, but also huge amount
of risk difference because a lot of our technological and
training advantages rely on being better than the enemy at night. Well,
(33:10):
you take all that away when you come bombing in
in the in the middle of the day in your helicopters.
So that was that was a huge risk. Mission went well,
we found him, got him home. Yeah, he had been
in captivity for like nine months and he was literally
cemented into a jail cell under a building with just
(33:32):
a small pipe to breathe through and bare landing food
and water. So but I put myself in my squadron
at a huge amount of risk, and the helicopter pilots
at a huge amount of risk because you do that
on hostage rescue missions. The mission is rescue that person,
and you will do what it takes to do that,
(33:55):
to include putting yourself at a higher level of risk
than a normal killer capture mission.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
That mission was successful, thankfully. How much second guessing do
you do when you're forced to make a decision like that.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
They're really really hard decisions and I got to see
a lot more of that when I was chief staff
at Jaysuck because now I'm seeing all the units that
are doing this. Now I was involved in the ones
I was involved in personally or commanding on the ground,
but now in that job, I got to see all
the different units doing them, and you know that calculus.
(34:32):
The things you really have to have to beware of
the traps, the confirmation biased trap, looking at the intel
and seeing what you want it to be rather than
what it is, or even watching the ISR platforms and
that's the hostage. Well is it you want it to
be the hostage so you can go rescue them, But
(34:53):
is it some cost trap? Well, we've got this much
in it. We got to do it now. The information
silo trap and not everybody having the right information to say, wait, no,
I know something different that refutes that. So there's all
these traps, and for every failed mission, I can point
to at least two of those traps that we stepped in.
(35:14):
You have to red team every one of these big missions.
You have to have an honest red team attack your plan,
attack the intel, not attack, but give it a really
critical third person objective view, because it's really really easy
to get emotionally attached to these missions, Especially when it
(35:37):
comes to trying to rescue an American, you get emotionally
invested in it and that can lead to decisions that
you wouldn't otherwise make.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
That's retired to US Army Colonel Sean Krrigan, a veteran
of Panama, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In a moment,
you'll also learn about his very tense assignment in Yemen
just after the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. That and
much more is still ahead. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this
is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
(36:13):
Our guest in this edition is retired US Army Colonel
Sean Korrigan. He's a veteran of Panama, Desert Storm, Iraq,
and Afghanistan. In just a few moments, we'll hear about
his service at Special Operations Command and his current work
at the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. But first, there's more
to his story of service in the face of our enemies.
(36:36):
In addition to the difficult command decisions he faced in Iraq,
Corrigan also served an assignment in Yemen in late summer
and fall of twenty twelve, which was a very volatile
time in the Middle East and beyond, and that's where
we pick up his story.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
I think I got there in August, and in September
we had the incident in Benghazi where we lost Investador
Christopher Stevens. Two days later, again the Iranian backed Houthis
attacked the US embassy. It happened to be on a Thursday,
which in Yemen they took Thursday and Fridays their weekend days.
I was in the embassy with very few other people.
(37:14):
My Cultural advisor was there. I don't think any of
the Regional Security Office, the RSO staff was there. Of course,
the Marine guards were there, five to seven of them,
and the ambassador was there. And these Iranian back people
broke into the compounds, started burning all the vehicles, trying
(37:35):
to get in, you know, hammering away at the ballistic glass,
which is rated in a number of minutes. It's supposed
to be able to provide resistance. And nobody showed up
to help, none of them in many forces. And you know,
so in the back of my mind, I think myself,
my cultural advisor, and the Marines were the only ones
(37:56):
with guns in the embassy, and I'm like, okay, we're
not gonna I have two ambassadors burn up this week.
This is it, you know, I'm gonna make my stand
in that stairwell, and this is the way it's gonna
go down. Eventually, the UH I can't remember it was
Ministry of Defense or Ministry of Interior finally sent somebody
after hours and hours, especially after Bengazi, It's like, yeah, okay,
(38:20):
this this is it. This is this is the Alama.
That was the beginning of the realization that Okada in
an Arabian peninsula. Yes, bad, it's the hoothies that are
going to be the problem in Yemen. And sure enough,
about a year and a half after I left that assignment,
they overran the haughty government and.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Here we are. So what was the situation outside the
embassy when the relief finally came, How close and how
serious was the threat?
Speaker 2 (38:47):
They had almost gotten through into the chancery, and so
every vehicle that we had at the embassy destroyed. And
at the time, all the US embassy employees lived at
a hotel that a Shraton hotel that the embassy had
rented out right, so the US government had rented out right.
(39:09):
So there are only people there and the marines guarding
that were in a fight there too, so it was
simultaneous attack on the two facilities. Yeah, it was pretty
tense for the rest of my year there, very very
tense and you know, of course finger pointing between the
Ministry of Defense and Ministry and Interior, who why this happened,
(39:31):
all that kind of thing. It highlighted the fragility of
the government and sort of the tribal nature of all
things Yemen. Very very complex. No entity that's tried to
establish law and order there has been able to the Soviets,
(39:53):
the Turks, the Egyptians, the British, the US. It's I
can't say ungovernable because that pretty absolute term, but as
it stands right now, it's not governable in a traditional
Western sense.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Last question about your active duty service, your final assignment
at the end of your career, the Director of Special
Activities at Special Operations Command, tell us what responsibilities came
along with that job and what challenges arose during that time.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Right, So that was managing a lot of the sensitive,
highly classified programs that were literally very shortlisted on who
had the need to know about them and kind of
unique niche capabilities in all the policy work that goes
with those And when I talk about strategic risk using
(40:43):
any of these capabilities, one you threaten to compromise it
and you get a one use out of it, and
then after that everybody knows about it and it's no
good anymore or use it, and if the operation doesn't
go right, you know, it's a huge black eye to
the US government. That kind of thing so very deep
in policy and again interagency when you have a capability
(41:08):
that you intend to use, but it could have all
these other ramifications. It could you could have literally ten
to twelve different departments in the US government that it
could impact, and they all have a say and most
think they have a veto and functionally that's not necessarily inaccurate.
(41:30):
So you get to see a lot of that. So
probably less sexy than it sounds, but it's a lot
of policy work and making sure that the capabilities, the
ones that need to be protected for operational security reasons
are protected and advising on when they can be used
(41:51):
and whether they weather they should be used. Just because
you can use it doesn't mean you necessarily should use it.
So that's kind of them gist of that function.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
What year did you retire Colonel.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
I retired on one June twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Twenty eighteen. How soon did you get connected with the
Special Operations Warrior Foundation and how did you get connected?
Speaker 2 (42:13):
About eleven months after that, I started with Special Operations
Warrior Foundation. My last boss in US SOCOM was Major
General Clay Huttmacher. He was the Director of Operations. I
was one of his division chiefs, and so my predecessor
here at Special Operations Warrior Foundation decided to retire. He
(42:34):
had done twenty plus years in the Air Force and
then twenty years here and he decided to retire, retire
and get really good at golf. So General Hutmacher called
me up and asked me if I was interested, And
I jumped right at it, because you know, it's a
chance to give back, to stay connected to the community
(42:55):
and do something for the families who lost their loved one.
You can probably see pictures of the kids in the
wall behind me. You know, I served with some of
their fathers, and I commanded some of their fathers. So
the last time I saw some of these kids was
when we were putting a gold star on a wall
at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and their little kids and off,
(43:18):
I head back to Iraq, and next time I see
them is when we bring them here to Tampa for
college prep course or or when we bring them back
to Tampa for a college career course. But this gives
me a chance to give back to them.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Tell us a little bit more about the focus and
the mission of the foundation.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
The foundation has two missions. One is immediate financial assistance
to severely wounded, ill and injured special operations personnel, and
that's we write a six thousand dollars check and send
it overnight to that person who's hospitalized away from home,
and it's their discretionary money. They spend it on whatever
(43:57):
they need to to get through this extended period of hospitalization.
That's very very small mission compared to our primary mission
is paying for education of children who lose their special
operations parent in the line of duty. We also do
that for all the children of all Medal Hoonder winners,
(44:18):
whether there are special operations or not, and whether they
perished in the process of earning the Medal of Bonner.
That mission has expanded over time. In nineteen eighty it
was one at a time taking care of kids' college
expenses right after Operation Eagle Claw, where we lost eight
(44:40):
service members and seventeen kids became followless. The people who
attempted that mission got together and said, we're going to
take care of those kids, and that kind of grew
into Special Operations Warrior Foundation and eligibility criteria expanded over
time to include not just combat related deaths, but training
related deaths, and then to all line of duty deaths,
(45:03):
which line of duty includes a lot like almost everything
fits within lineup duty. So our eligibility criteria increased, our
number of students increased, and then we expanded the academic programs,
and now we start with kids as early as two
years old, funding preschool education for them up to eight
(45:26):
thousand dollars per year per student for two through five
year olds. Then when they enter kindergarten, if mom wants
to send them to private school, we'll give up to
five thousand dollars per student per year for private school
tuition assistance. If mom wants the whole homeschool, we'll pay
all those expenses for books and computer programs. That kind
(45:47):
of thing. Unlimited tutoring from the time they enter our
programs until they graduate college any subject, any amount, unlimited
support with students with learning disabilities, and that can be advocacy,
it can be paying for testing, special tutors, executive function coaches.
Then we bring them when they're in high school to
(46:08):
Tampa for a college prep program where kind of teach
them the different kinds of schools, whether it's trade school, university,
big public school, small private school, trying to find the
right college fit, some personal branding, some basic personal finance,
and then we pay for their college visits up to
five thousand dollars total aggregate to go visit the colleges.
(46:32):
We'll pay for five college applications, act testing, all that
kind of thing. And then once they get into college,
it's full tuition, room board, travel, and miscellaneous expenses, so
kind of covered all and doesn't matter whether they go
to a really expensive IVY League school or a local
(46:52):
community college. It doesn't matter. We're going to pay for
wherever they get accepted and we hope it's the right
fit for them. And then about their junior year in college,
we invite them back to Tampa and do a college
career transition course where teaching basic skills like writing your
resume again, personal branding, interview techniques, elevator pitch dressing for success,
(47:16):
all those things that when they graduate they're going to
need to find a job, get a career, and so
we're trying to give them a leg up on that
to include internship opportunities, study abroad, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
How many children of Special Operators have you served, Well.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
We've had over five hundred graduate and a total number.
We've got two hundred and fifteen in college right now
and another nine hundred behind them.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
So.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Overall, I think we're well over eighteen hundred children total,
but we've got that many coming up. And literally this
last summer when we had the college career course, I
think eighty five percent of those kids had lost a
parent in Iraq Afghanistans. So they're coming of age at
(48:04):
this point. And frankly, we're still losing Special Operations personnel
mid helicopter crash and a tilt rotor crash last November.
Of course, we had the seals this year on the
counter who the interdiction mission. The mission will go on
indefinitely because it applies to all line of duty, all
(48:26):
seventy two thousand ish people in US Special Operations Command.
We don't differentiate between the so called operators, whatever that
term means and support. It's everybody because everybody's part of
the mission, everybody's part of the team, and so we're
going to cover everybody.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
And as you just made very clear, but I just
want to clarify, that's for all branches. It's not just
an Army thing, correct.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Right, Yeah, Army, Navy, Air Force, Special Operations all and
for the deployed task forces. Anybody that's working for a
SOCUM task force at the time of their death, we
cover them as well.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Last question, Colonel, I know you're and you should be
very proud of the work you're doing and doing well.
When you reflect on your military career, what are you
most proud of?
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Oh boy, I'm proud of the guys who followed me.
If you know, if I did my job right, they're
way better than me. And they are. I could name
a bunch of names that you probably recognize that are
have done very well in the military, are great at
their jobs. And so you know, it's about it's about
(49:42):
the unit, the team, whatever your unit is, the team
and making sure that the people that follow you are
better than you ever were. And I think, yeah, I
think if anything, that that is what I'm most proud
of and.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
We should point out that your family is one of
service now as well. Your wife is a retired lieutenant
colonel was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, I believe,
and so the sense of service in your household, and
I'm sure you're passing along to your kids as well,
is rich. And so we thank you and your wife
(50:23):
very much for your service to our country, and we
thank you very much for your time today as well.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Thank you, sir, well, thank you Rick, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Retired to US Army Colonel Sean Corrigan served in uniform
for more than thirty years, saw action in Panama, desert Storm, Bosnia, Afghanistan,
and Iraq. He is now executive vice president of the
Special Operations Warrior Foundation. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is
Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greag Corumbus, and thanks for
(51:00):
listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center.
For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You
can also follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook and
on Twitter. We're at AVC update. Subscribe to the American
Veterans Center YouTube channel for full oral histories and special features,
(51:23):
and of course please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast
wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and
please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas, and our guest
in this edition is retired US Army Colonel Sean Corrigan.
He served in uniform for more than thirty years and
saw action in Panama, Desert Storm, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
He is now executive vice president of the Special Operations
Warrior Foundation, and Colonel, it's a great pleasure to have
(00:34):
you with us. Thanks for your time today.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well, thanks for having me Greg, you appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Where were you born and raised, Sir?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I was born in Yankton, South Dakota, a small town
in southeast South Dakota, right on the Nebraska border.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Had there been a history of military service in your family.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I describe it this way. My great grandfather fought in
the Wisconsin Regiment in the Civil War. My grandfather was
drafted for World War One. My father served in the
Korean War. Out of my seven uncles, six of them
served in the military. But no, I'm not from a
(01:12):
military family. That's a typical American family.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
When did you join the service and why did you
join the Army?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I started West Point in July of nineteen eighty four,
so my service in the Active Duty Army started in
May of eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
What made you want to pursue West Point?
Speaker 2 (01:31):
The military option appealed to me, and I like the
idea of the discipline, and I liked the idea of
entering into the active duty Army straight away after college.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
And then how soon after you were commissioned did you
start pursuing special operations training as well?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I went to Special Forces selection right after a couple
months after we got back from Desert Shield and Storm,
and then I actually started the qualifacation course in nineteen
ninety two.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Well, in that case, let's back up a little bit
and talk about what happened right after commissioning, because that
happened in nineteen eighty eight. By the end of nineteen
eighty nine, you were taking part in Operation Just Cause
down in Panama. So tell us a little bit about
where you went after West Point and the unit you
were with as you prepared for service there.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Right, So, the basic schools that I went to as
an infantryman graduating out of West Point were Infantry Officer
Basic Course, Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and then
I stayed for a jump master course because I was
heading to the eighty second Airborne. So I got to
the eighty second in early nineteen eighty nine, and I
(02:44):
was assigned to a third of the five zero fourth
Parachute Infantry Regiment that's in first brigade in the eighty
second Airborne, and that's who I went to Panama with.
But we were the only battalion in our brigade that
did not jump into Panama. We were already there at
the jungle school when the US decided that it would
(03:06):
exercise its treaty rights, and so we quit practicing our
jungle skills and started rehearsing for our h hour objectives.
And that was the first combat mission that I saw
as a second lieutenant in rifle patuon leader in the
eighty second Airborn.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
How much time did you have to switch gears from
jungle training to the mission.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
We had about two weeks. We rehearsed and rehearsed and
did reconnaissance on our initial objectives, just kind of waiting
for the decision and h hour and sure enough decision came.
My company loaded helicopters and off we went down the
canal to secure our first objective.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
What was the objective? And how did you secure it?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, our objective was a logistics base called Sarah T.
Gray and we landed a chinook in some uh one H.
Hughey's on a golf course and moved across overland to
secure the objective. And of course the guards there as
soon as they heard the helicopters coming, went running for
(04:09):
the jungles. So it was uneventful, thankfully, but certainly could
have gone another direction.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
So not a lot of resistance. What happened once you
were there.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
We secured the objective, cleared it, made sure there were
no enemy there. About a day later we got picked up,
moved back Fort Sherman to Recock for our next objective.
I think we might have gone to Madden Dam after
that to cure Madden Dam a strategic objective because if
(04:40):
you released all the water from that it would flood
Lake Atoon in the locks and the whole canal system.
So we were there for a while and then we
went to the city of Cologne. My company did and
assisted in the clearing of the city of Cologne on
the Caribbean coasts, second largest city I believe in Panama.
(05:02):
So that took a while to work our way through that. Town.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
What did that consist of and how significant was the
resistance there?
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Resistance was absolutely minimal. By this time, we were probably
a week into the operation and it really came down
to finding Noriega, and course nobody knew where he was
initially until he turned up at the Papal Nuincia, So
we were looking for Noriega, looking for anyone who might
be able to tell us where he went, all that
(05:32):
kind of thing, getting rid of the Panamanian forces who
could have resisted, disarming them, kind of collecting all the
weapons and that sort of thing. But the population absolutely
no resistance, in fact, very helpful. The main thing was
maintaining some semblance of order and not having looting in
the free zone, which was a problem. You know, people
(05:55):
were breaking into the containers off the ships and stealing everything,
so we had to gain some semblance of control of
that as well.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
As your first combat experience, and thankfully it wasn't met
with two fears of resistance. You're a young officer leading
enlisted men and sometimes obviously that can be a difficult relationship.
How did you build trust in relationships with your guys
so that when you got to being deployed in that situation,
(06:25):
everything was running smoothly.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Well, thankfully, I did have probably eight or nine months
of training time with my platoon and a lot of
time in the field and some long exercises where you
have to prove yourself every day, that's for certain, and
you have to set the example. And you know, of course,
everything I learned about leadership in ranger School in West
(06:49):
Point put to the test in real life. And then
when we got pulled out of the field in the
jungle and into the barracks and issued our warning orders
for our objectives, things got real serious in a hurry
because we didn't know how much resist since we would meet.
At that point, it becomes very real that decisions could
(07:11):
cost lives or be the difference between success and failure
on any given mission or objective. That stayed the same
all the way through into the two thousands and then
twenty teens in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. That never
changes in a command or leadership role. Your decisions, people's
(07:35):
lives depend on them, and there was a wake up
call for a twenty four and a half year old
It all became very very real.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, the Panamanian mission just Cause was in late nineteen
eighty nine. By the summer of nineteen ninety you're focused
on something completely different. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait's Operation Desert
Shield is put into motion, and then a few months
after that it's Operation Desert Storm and early nineteen ninety one.
So once the invasion of Kuwait happened, how did that
(08:04):
change what you were doing? How did you get ready
for deployment and what else you had to consider going
into the desert.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Our battalion was in a support phase of the training cycle,
and so we were actually my platoon, SCALP platoon by
then was supporting Special Forces training exercise called Robin Sage
and literally we got the word on the radio training
missions over return to base. That was right after the invasion,
(08:36):
and we were seven thout of nine infantry battalions to
leave Fort Bragg heading for Saudi Arabia, and so we're
responsible for pushing out all those other battalions until it
was our turn, and that means outloading on one one aircraft.
But we were still gone within I would say less
than two weeks. We were out of Fort Bragg, North
(08:59):
Carolina in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and we had
a long time, a lot of waiting, a lot of training,
probably more trained than any other time in my experience
in the army, because we had nothing else to do
but train. And then of course the war kicked off
and went a lot faster than anyone expected at the time,
(09:23):
and so that was intense and we didn't know what
to expect. Literally, there were battalion commanders ordering extra body
bags because they were convinced that we're going to take
a lot of casualties on that one. But obviously it
went another direction, in a good direction for the US.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Yeah, much better than expect did. There was concerns about
chemical weapons and all sorts of other things. What role
did your unit play once the ground portion of the
war kicked.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Off, So our battalion was in support of the French
Foreign Legion way out on the western flank the Big
Hook movement into Iraq, that's where we were in. French
Foreign Legion had some motorized armored vehicles, so we were
trailing along in our trucks in case they met resistance
(10:11):
and needed infantry support. But the Big Hook went really
really fast. We were moving and just kind of policing
up Iraqi prisoners, war. As we went it worked as planned.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
So you're still mid twenties at this point, you've been
in two conflicts. Thankfully they went well and quickly. What
did you learn about yourself and the process of preparing
for and executing those missions?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You know, the Panama mission just caused went so fast
that you know, people didn't have a lot of time
to think about it. We had a lot of time
to think about what was potentially coming in desert shield
sitting there for that waiting on a desert storm. So
you know, people had issues at home that had to
be resolved. And it was not just deployed, do the
(10:57):
mission and come back, it was we're going to be
here while so really got to know all the troops
at a different level, you know, all the concerns they had.
Of course, I wasn't married, didn't have kids, and a
lot of my older NCOs did, so all those things
they were even magnified as we went past nine to
(11:17):
eleven into a twenty year war. All those personal issues
you have to deal with on a case by case basis.
Everyone's an individual and there's no cookie cutter solution for
dealing with any one of the myriad issues that pop up.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
That's retired US Army Colonel Sean Corrigan. He's a veteran
of Panama, Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan. He's now executive
vice president of the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Straight ahead,
we'll discuss his entry into Special Forces and his work
up to and through the nine to eleven terrorist attacks. Later,
(11:56):
we'll talk about his time in Iraq and Afghanistan, a
very ten assignment serving in Yemen, his work as a
critical officer at Special Operations Command, and what he's doing
now to honor our special operators. That's all still to come.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles sixty Seconds
of Service.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
This sixty Seconds of Service is presented by T Mobile.
T Mobile offers exclusive discounts for a veteran and military
families and are proud supporters of the National Defense Network.
Visit tmobile dot com slash military to learn more about
how they support our military community. Engaging with veteran communities
through your farm is not just socially responsible, it's a
strategic advantage that could supercharge your operations, marketing prowess, and
(12:40):
business growth. Veterans possess a unique set of skills and
experiences that align well with the demands of agriculture, making
them ideal partners for farms and businesses looking to foster
innovation and resilience. Eleven percent of farmers and ranchers in
the US or veterans, and this figure is expected to grow.
USDA is expected to continue offering substantial grants to private
(13:00):
and nonprofit stakeholders to support veterans in agriculture. Today's sixty
Seconds of Service is brought to you by Prevagen. Prevagen
is the number one pharmacist recommended memory support brand. You
can find Prevagen in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is retired US Army Colonel Sean Korrigan. He's
a veteran of Panama, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We
just heard Colonel Corrigan describe his service in Desert Storm.
Not long after returning, he started pursuing opportunities in special operations,
(13:36):
and Corrigan explains how that got started and then takes
us all the way to the nine to eleven terrorist attacks.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Fort Bragg at the time was home to third Special
Forces Group, which was just getting stood up, and seventh
Special Forces Group, and my interest was in seventh Special
Forces Group because of the Central and South American focus,
and at the time sort of the counter communism phase
(14:03):
was pretty much over an Al Salvador and other Central
American countries, but the counter narcotics mission was growing and
the training of counter narcotics forces in the Central and
South American countries, so that was sort of the hottest
thing going at the time, and that very much interested me. Thankfully,
(14:25):
I was assigned to seven Special Forces Group and got
a lot of great experience in that arena.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
What a Special Forces training or even qualifying look like.
What's at the next level that you have to be
able to achieve.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Intellectually, there's a language requirement. You have to be willing
to learn an additional language. For Central and South America.
Of course, Spanish is the predominant language, relatively easy compared
to some of the European languages, some of the Asian languages.
So you have to have a certain level of proficiency
to be able to learn and the dedication to able
(15:00):
to learn to at least be functional in another language.
In terms of physicality, look, I'm I'm five point five
one twenty five and there was nothing I couldn't do.
It comes down to in your head and in your heart.
That's really what's being tested, and your your teamwork, your
(15:22):
ability to work within a twelve man team to problem
solve and if one person's got a weakness in one area,
how to compensate, and you know, all work together. So
the twelve is a functioning entity with all these various skills,
and you know, the commander kind of applying the skills
(15:43):
to solve the problems. That that was kind of the
beauty of the Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
A little bit later in the decade, you ended up
in the Balkans, if I'm reading correctly, in the Bosnania,
I heard Sigovina situation. What's your role there?
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I had tried out for a different special mission unit,
and so while still being a Special Forces officer in
eighteen Alpha in Military Occupations Specialty Code, I went more
to a counter terrorism role. So we were in the
Balkans literally looking for personnel indicted for war crimes in
(16:23):
the Balkan Wars. And so that was the beginning of
working in the interagency realm with different entities of the
US government and fusing together intelligence and operations and reconnaissance
to hunt down individuals and capture them.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And how long were you there?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Those were short tours. There were only three month tours
and I think I did two or three, I can't remember.
But the mission was always ongoing, so you paid attention
to what your predecessor is doing. You're the person who
backfailed you're doing. And that theme kind of went on
after nine to eleven. You're never really out of it.
(17:06):
You're always keeping up with the intelligence operations, so when
you hit the ground, it's not a cold start at all.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
And one other thing that comes with special operations and
certainly rising in the ranks of the officers, is the
education that comes with it. So how did you continually
educate yourself not only about the situation in the world,
but just in improving yourself in terms of the higher
and higher levels that you were responsible for.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
We had a special course called it the Troop Commander's Course,
and it exposes us to a lot of different interagency entities,
primarily intel entities, but also law enforcement that we would
be working with different executive branch entities, state departments, justice
through the FBI. That really opened up my eyes to
(18:00):
all the different elements of national power and how if
applied together, is much stronger than any one entity all
by itself. And General McCrystal really put that all together
when he was commanding the task force in Iraq. He
really forced the issue, the inner agency issue, the transparency,
(18:23):
flatness of communications, and you know, really paid off. The
seeds were kind of planted in the Balkans, but until
after nine to eleven, and especially after two thousand and
three after we invaded Iraq, you really had to do that.
It was obviously it wasn't going to be quick. Probably
heard the whole of government approach, but it really is.
(18:47):
It has to be.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Where were you on nine to eleven and how did
you hear about the attacks?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
I was on a training mission exercise at an airfield
in Hungary and it was kind of I'm designed around
you hunting down the personnel and guide it for war
crimes in the Balkans. And I walked into the tent
that we had the tactical operations center in and I
(19:12):
think I saw in the news the second aircraft hitting
the second tower, and initially it's like, wow, what's this
got to do. I thought it was exercise play, like
somebody had made this up for the exercise, Like, what's
this got to do with what we're doing in And
it's like, oh no, this is real. Grab the AMMO,
off the deployment palette, and literally we had all our
(19:34):
m all our gear.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
We were ready to go.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Now. Of course, nobody knew where to send us. There's
just too much unknown. So we did end up flying
back to Fort Bragg. In our naivete, we thought, Okay,
we got everything we need. Who did it, We'll go
get them take care of this right now. Twenty years later,
nobody knew what we had in front of us, and
in our mindset was different at the time. It's like, Okay,
we've got a problem. We're going to go take care
(19:58):
of it, go back home, get ready for the next problem.
So it was definitely mindset change.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
That's retired US Army Colonel Sean Corrigan. When we return,
Corrigan is deployed to Afghanistan and then spends a lot
more time in Iraq. Plus we'll explore a very precarious
assignment in Yemen, his time at Special Operations Command, and
his work now with the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. I'm
(20:25):
Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is retired
US Army Colonel Sean Korrigan. He's a veteran of Panama,
Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as a harrowing
assignment in Yemen, which we'll hear about a little bit later.
(20:47):
In a moment. We'll learn all about the factors Corrigan
had to consider when pursuing high value targets or rescuing
hostages in Iraq. But we pick up the colonel's story
in the aftermath of nine to eleven and his immediate
role in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, it was definitely to hunt down Osama bin Laden
and other top al Qaeda operatives in countries where we
could get to them. We knew somewhere hiding in Iran,
and we weren't going to go to Iran to get them.
That was just that was obvious, even to a young
at that time major. But the places where we could
get them to include ZARKAUI, not exactly huge initial leader
(21:27):
in al Qaeda, but we knew it was operating in Iraq,
and we knew that it had had be captured or killed,
and that was the enduring mission. Initially in Iraq, mission
was to find Saddam and his other key leaders and
capture the former regime leadership. Once that was done, then
(21:47):
it quickly shifted over to fighting al Qaeda in Iraq
and tracking down their leadership and destroying their network.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
How quickly were you deployed to Afghanistan?
Speaker 2 (21:58):
The unit I was in was in there by October after,
you know, maybe a little more than a month after
the attacks on nine to eleven. I didn't get there
until April. My squadron I happened to be in at
the time was last in the rotations. So and of
(22:18):
course at the time, you know, we're pulling our hair
out thinking, oh, you know, bin Lan's going to get killed,
and you know we won't have our chance, and that
I know I'd be going back to Afghanistan a lot
more times. I think the last time I was there
was like twenty sixteen or something.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
So logistically, once you're there, are you following up on
intel leads? Are you responsible for a particular geographic area?
How did you orchestrate this?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
We were based and so we could go anywhere we
needed to, and we had the resources to get anywhere
we needed to get. So we literally had one job,
and that's to hunt down these leaders. We didn't have
to control terrain, or train any forces or anything like that,
(23:05):
so that that was our sole mission is to hunt
down the leadership and either capture or kill them.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
And then tactically, when you had a lead, how did
you execute that.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It definitely evolved over time. When we first started conducting missions,
we would send out a reconnaissance unit and they did
watch the target for up to a week before we
would even consider going in on a raid on the target.
After a while, that became untenable and we figured we've
got to move faster than this because they're just moving
(23:37):
around too much. We can't sit on an empty building
for a week when we know he's already left, hoping
that it'll come back. We had and this was all
before the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance platforms really had ramped up,
so we didn't have that overhead surveillance like we did later.
On the early days two thousand and two, it was
(23:59):
pretty rudimentary. We might do two or three raids in
a three month period, whereas in Iraq, by two thousand
and five, we're doing five or six missions day, you know,
day and night, all day long, all night long. The
tempo just ramped up. And part of that was General
mccrystal's fine, fixed, finish exploit analyze mantrope where the operations
(24:25):
feed on the intel which feeds into the next operation,
and you just keep you keep going, and you attack
the network in its breadth and depth along different lines
of operations might be logistics, might be money, might be leadership,
or the different departments within the terrorist organization, and you
just stay after it and after it and after it.
(24:47):
And that's why our deployments were three months instead of
one year, because you can sprint for three months. You
can't do that for a year straight will You will
break people.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
And so when you are executing this mission, what type
of resistance are you generally facing and how do you
position yourself to be in the best position to attack
and to repel?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It would literally vary, and you never well in some
areas were definitely worse than others. And you knew if
you're going into a certain area they're going to shoot
at you. You knew there we knew there was going
to be IEDs and when we needed to. Like the
task force that I commanded from two thousand and five
to seven, we had four tanks and four Bradley's, so
(25:31):
if we needed to lead with tanks, we would, and
you know, they got people's attention, they tended not to
mess around with us. Now, we always also coordinated with
the local battle space owner, the general purpose force units
that were responsible for that that terrain and maintaining the
(25:51):
peace and that terrain, so they always knew where we
were and where we were going and had airspace deconflicted
all that sort of thing. Now by then we'd also
come a long long way in terms of ISR platforms,
so we had overwatch watching our routes and the objective
(26:11):
and all sorts of things like that. A lot of
advantages we did not have in two thousand and two
when we started in Afghanistan, and then of course we
relied on the intel that we had drived, and most
of the time we had pretty good idea of whether
the person we were looking for was going to be there.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
So we had a lot of advantages working for you,
especially as time went on. The enemy had some as well,
they were more familiar with the terrain and they've been
fighting for a very long time. So what was the
biggest challenge in pushing them back or what was the
biggest challenge they presented to you?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I can speak more to Iraq down Afghanistan because I
spent a lot more time in Iraq on Afghanistan. And
really one of the big challenges we had was when
the Iranian back Shia insurgent groups started attacking US forces
as well, and making no mistake, they caused a lot
(27:06):
more US casualties than the Sunni extremist groups did toward
the end, you know, from about two thousand and seven
on the challenge there was the government of Iraq was
happy to have US hunt down the Sunni terrorists Al
Qaida in Iraq, Zarkawi's bunch and all the people that
followed him not so keen to have US hunting down
(27:29):
the Iranian backed groups. So that was the beginning of
some really politically challenging times because by then two thousand
and seven eight time frame, the Iraqis at a government
constitution and we were abiding by their laws. So began
this process of having to get Iraqi approvals for targets
(27:52):
using their legal system, and it became very very difficult.
More important the person in that Shia terris network, the
harder it was to get and arrest.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
More how did you deal with that because there's still
a threat to you but the government's not cooperating.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, it was very very difficult. We went through their system.
We had Iraqi judges embedded with us that went through
all the files and gave us a sanity check whether
it was good enough, for lack of a better term,
the functional equivalent of an arrest warrant, I can't remember
exactly what we called it. They were under intense pressure
(28:30):
as well, and for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard could force
officers who we knew were in country. That was a
really hard pull to get the approval to go after them,
because that's strategically, that's an entirely different animal there to
arrest an Iranian operative in Iraq. I gave a lot
(28:51):
of credit to the commanders that had the courage to
to authorize it. But those were challenging times, and that's
when it's seemingly very easy tactically and operationally strategically, Sometimes
it's not tennel, it's just within the risk calculus. As
you go from tactical operational, it's risk to force risk emission.
(29:16):
Is you get into the strategic realm, there's also strategic
risk or Franklin political risk. If we do this, do
we lose Jordan's support? If we do this, do we
lose Pakistan support? That's a very real thing, of course,
as they had subsequent positions at the six kernel level,
in different staffs working at the strategic level. And when
(29:42):
I say strategic level, it's tactical operations with strategic impacts,
be it a hostage rescue operation in Yemen or a
cross border operation into Syria or Pakistan, something like that,
that regardless of the tactical success or failure, it's going
to have ramifications and those are decisions made at the
(30:03):
inner agency level and ultimately, but when.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
You talk about risk, whether political or to your guys,
it also highlights the point that as we're going on here,
you're rising in rank and in your different positions of responsibility,
and so you're a little bit more removed in terms
of the chain of command from the enlisted guys on
the ground as opposed to where you were in Panama,
desert storm and that sort of thing. So what did
(30:27):
you do in order to make sure that you still
had a good connection, understood what they were seeing, thinking,
going through and so so you weren't detached, but really
understanding what they were experiencing.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Right, So, really, all the way through fall of twenty eleven,
two thousand and five to seven, I was a squadron commander,
and I was going out every day. Point being, I
wasn't going to ask my squadron to do anything I
wasn't willing to do myself and put myself in the
same harms way that I'm asking them to do. As
(31:00):
the six commander would go out maybe once or twice
a week on different missions with different entities, because by
then I had not only my own unit working for me,
but a lot of other subordinate units, so I would
I would go out with them as well and share
(31:23):
the risk.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So those are the best ways possible to stay in
touch with what your guys are going through, to be
shouldered shoulder with them as they do it. What are
some of the biggest leadership decisions you had to make.
You talked about some of the complicated aspects of dealing
with Sunni versus She and so forth, But in terms
of the missions themselves. What were some of the toughest
leadership decisions. You had to make a point to.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
One mission a hostage rescue mission, which was rare in Iraq.
Our job was to hunt down and destroy terrast networks.
The test force commander gave me three days to work
on this because anytime I was spending trying to find
and rescue this hostage, that was time away from hunting
down the network. Now I could do two things at once,
(32:07):
sometimes with the forces I had available. But yeah, we
did three days worth of operations to figure out where
we thought the hostage was. I really felt one. I
was definitely running out of time. You know, I pretty
much exhausted the time my commander gave me. And because
of these operations, my assessment of the risk to the
(32:29):
hostage was they got to no work getting close and
so I made the decision to do a daylight raid
to rescue him into called it the Triangle of death.
The Suni Triangle is really really bad area. And you know,
tactically that takes the helicopter fleet out of operation for
(32:50):
an extra day afterwards, because you got to keep the
pilots up fly him during the day. Then they have
to reset, so they're not gonna be any good for
that night. There's a resource call, but also huge amount
of risk difference because a lot of our technological and
training advantages rely on being better than the enemy at night. Well,
(33:10):
you take all that away when you come bombing in
in the in the middle of the day in your helicopters.
So that was that was a huge risk. Mission went well,
we found him, got him home. Yeah, he had been
in captivity for like nine months and he was literally
cemented into a jail cell under a building with just
(33:32):
a small pipe to breathe through and bare landing food
and water. So but I put myself in my squadron
at a huge amount of risk, and the helicopter pilots
at a huge amount of risk because you do that
on hostage rescue missions. The mission is rescue that person,
and you will do what it takes to do that,
(33:55):
to include putting yourself at a higher level of risk
than a normal killer capture mission.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
That mission was successful, thankfully. How much second guessing do
you do when you're forced to make a decision like that.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
They're really really hard decisions and I got to see
a lot more of that when I was chief staff
at Jaysuck because now I'm seeing all the units that
are doing this. Now I was involved in the ones
I was involved in personally or commanding on the ground,
but now in that job, I got to see all
the different units doing them, and you know that calculus.
(34:32):
The things you really have to have to beware of
the traps, the confirmation biased trap, looking at the intel
and seeing what you want it to be rather than
what it is, or even watching the ISR platforms and
that's the hostage. Well is it you want it to
be the hostage so you can go rescue them, But
(34:53):
is it some cost trap? Well, we've got this much
in it. We got to do it now. The information
silo trap and not everybody having the right information to say, wait, no,
I know something different that refutes that. So there's all
these traps, and for every failed mission, I can point
to at least two of those traps that we stepped in.
(35:14):
You have to red team every one of these big missions.
You have to have an honest red team attack your plan,
attack the intel, not attack, but give it a really
critical third person objective view, because it's really really easy
to get emotionally attached to these missions, Especially when it
(35:37):
comes to trying to rescue an American, you get emotionally
invested in it and that can lead to decisions that
you wouldn't otherwise make.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
That's retired to US Army Colonel Sean Krrigan, a veteran
of Panama, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In a moment,
you'll also learn about his very tense assignment in Yemen
just after the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. That and
much more is still ahead. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this
is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus.
(36:13):
Our guest in this edition is retired US Army Colonel
Sean Korrigan. He's a veteran of Panama, Desert Storm, Iraq,
and Afghanistan. In just a few moments, we'll hear about
his service at Special Operations Command and his current work
at the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. But first, there's more
to his story of service in the face of our enemies.
(36:36):
In addition to the difficult command decisions he faced in Iraq,
Corrigan also served an assignment in Yemen in late summer
and fall of twenty twelve, which was a very volatile
time in the Middle East and beyond, and that's where
we pick up his story.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
I think I got there in August, and in September
we had the incident in Benghazi where we lost Investador
Christopher Stevens. Two days later, again the Iranian backed Houthis
attacked the US embassy. It happened to be on a Thursday,
which in Yemen they took Thursday and Fridays their weekend days.
I was in the embassy with very few other people.
(37:14):
My Cultural advisor was there. I don't think any of
the Regional Security Office, the RSO staff was there. Of course,
the Marine guards were there, five to seven of them,
and the ambassador was there. And these Iranian back people
broke into the compounds, started burning all the vehicles, trying
(37:35):
to get in, you know, hammering away at the ballistic glass,
which is rated in a number of minutes. It's supposed
to be able to provide resistance. And nobody showed up
to help, none of them in many forces. And you know,
so in the back of my mind, I think myself,
my cultural advisor, and the Marines were the only ones
(37:56):
with guns in the embassy, and I'm like, okay, we're
not gonna I have two ambassadors burn up this week.
This is it, you know, I'm gonna make my stand
in that stairwell, and this is the way it's gonna
go down. Eventually, the UH I can't remember it was
Ministry of Defense or Ministry of Interior finally sent somebody
after hours and hours, especially after Bengazi, It's like, yeah, okay,
(38:20):
this this is it. This is this is the Alama.
That was the beginning of the realization that Okada in
an Arabian peninsula. Yes, bad, it's the hoothies that are
going to be the problem in Yemen. And sure enough,
about a year and a half after I left that assignment,
they overran the haughty government and.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Here we are. So what was the situation outside the
embassy when the relief finally came, How close and how
serious was the threat?
Speaker 2 (38:47):
They had almost gotten through into the chancery, and so
every vehicle that we had at the embassy destroyed. And
at the time, all the US embassy employees lived at
a hotel that a Shraton hotel that the embassy had
rented out right, so the US government had rented out right.
(39:09):
So there are only people there and the marines guarding
that were in a fight there too, so it was
simultaneous attack on the two facilities. Yeah, it was pretty
tense for the rest of my year there, very very
tense and you know, of course finger pointing between the
Ministry of Defense and Ministry and Interior, who why this happened,
(39:31):
all that kind of thing. It highlighted the fragility of
the government and sort of the tribal nature of all
things Yemen. Very very complex. No entity that's tried to
establish law and order there has been able to the Soviets,
(39:53):
the Turks, the Egyptians, the British, the US. It's I
can't say ungovernable because that pretty absolute term, but as
it stands right now, it's not governable in a traditional
Western sense.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Last question about your active duty service, your final assignment
at the end of your career, the Director of Special
Activities at Special Operations Command, tell us what responsibilities came
along with that job and what challenges arose during that time.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Right, So that was managing a lot of the sensitive,
highly classified programs that were literally very shortlisted on who
had the need to know about them and kind of
unique niche capabilities in all the policy work that goes
with those And when I talk about strategic risk using
(40:43):
any of these capabilities, one you threaten to compromise it
and you get a one use out of it, and
then after that everybody knows about it and it's no
good anymore or use it, and if the operation doesn't
go right, you know, it's a huge black eye to
the US government. That kind of thing so very deep
in policy and again interagency when you have a capability
(41:08):
that you intend to use, but it could have all
these other ramifications. It could you could have literally ten
to twelve different departments in the US government that it
could impact, and they all have a say and most
think they have a veto and functionally that's not necessarily inaccurate.
(41:30):
So you get to see a lot of that. So
probably less sexy than it sounds, but it's a lot
of policy work and making sure that the capabilities, the
ones that need to be protected for operational security reasons
are protected and advising on when they can be used
(41:51):
and whether they weather they should be used. Just because
you can use it doesn't mean you necessarily should use it.
So that's kind of them gist of that function.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
What year did you retire Colonel.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
I retired on one June twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Twenty eighteen. How soon did you get connected with the
Special Operations Warrior Foundation and how did you get connected?
Speaker 2 (42:13):
About eleven months after that, I started with Special Operations
Warrior Foundation. My last boss in US SOCOM was Major
General Clay Huttmacher. He was the Director of Operations. I
was one of his division chiefs, and so my predecessor
here at Special Operations Warrior Foundation decided to retire. He
(42:34):
had done twenty plus years in the Air Force and
then twenty years here and he decided to retire, retire
and get really good at golf. So General Hutmacher called
me up and asked me if I was interested, And
I jumped right at it, because you know, it's a
chance to give back, to stay connected to the community
(42:55):
and do something for the families who lost their loved one.
You can probably see pictures of the kids in the
wall behind me. You know, I served with some of
their fathers, and I commanded some of their fathers. So
the last time I saw some of these kids was
when we were putting a gold star on a wall
at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and their little kids and off,
(43:18):
I head back to Iraq, and next time I see
them is when we bring them here to Tampa for
college prep course or or when we bring them back
to Tampa for a college career course. But this gives
me a chance to give back to them.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Tell us a little bit more about the focus and
the mission of the foundation.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
The foundation has two missions. One is immediate financial assistance
to severely wounded, ill and injured special operations personnel, and
that's we write a six thousand dollars check and send
it overnight to that person who's hospitalized away from home,
and it's their discretionary money. They spend it on whatever
(43:57):
they need to to get through this extended period of hospitalization.
That's very very small mission compared to our primary mission
is paying for education of children who lose their special
operations parent in the line of duty. We also do
that for all the children of all Medal Hoonder winners,
(44:18):
whether there are special operations or not, and whether they
perished in the process of earning the Medal of Bonner.
That mission has expanded over time. In nineteen eighty it
was one at a time taking care of kids' college
expenses right after Operation Eagle Claw, where we lost eight
(44:40):
service members and seventeen kids became followless. The people who
attempted that mission got together and said, we're going to
take care of those kids, and that kind of grew
into Special Operations Warrior Foundation and eligibility criteria expanded over
time to include not just combat related deaths, but training
related deaths, and then to all line of duty deaths,
(45:03):
which line of duty includes a lot like almost everything
fits within lineup duty. So our eligibility criteria increased, our
number of students increased, and then we expanded the academic programs,
and now we start with kids as early as two
years old, funding preschool education for them up to eight
(45:26):
thousand dollars per year per student for two through five
year olds. Then when they enter kindergarten, if mom wants
to send them to private school, we'll give up to
five thousand dollars per student per year for private school
tuition assistance. If mom wants the whole homeschool, we'll pay
all those expenses for books and computer programs. That kind
(45:47):
of thing. Unlimited tutoring from the time they enter our
programs until they graduate college any subject, any amount, unlimited
support with students with learning disabilities, and that can be advocacy,
it can be paying for testing, special tutors, executive function coaches.
Then we bring them when they're in high school to
(46:08):
Tampa for a college prep program where kind of teach
them the different kinds of schools, whether it's trade school, university,
big public school, small private school, trying to find the
right college fit, some personal branding, some basic personal finance,
and then we pay for their college visits up to
five thousand dollars total aggregate to go visit the colleges.
(46:32):
We'll pay for five college applications, act testing, all that
kind of thing. And then once they get into college,
it's full tuition, room board, travel, and miscellaneous expenses, so
kind of covered all and doesn't matter whether they go
to a really expensive IVY League school or a local
(46:52):
community college. It doesn't matter. We're going to pay for
wherever they get accepted and we hope it's the right
fit for them. And then about their junior year in college,
we invite them back to Tampa and do a college
career transition course where teaching basic skills like writing your
resume again, personal branding, interview techniques, elevator pitch dressing for success,
(47:16):
all those things that when they graduate they're going to
need to find a job, get a career, and so
we're trying to give them a leg up on that
to include internship opportunities, study abroad, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
How many children of Special Operators have you served, Well.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
We've had over five hundred graduate and a total number.
We've got two hundred and fifteen in college right now
and another nine hundred behind them.
Speaker 3 (47:42):
So.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Overall, I think we're well over eighteen hundred children total,
but we've got that many coming up. And literally this
last summer when we had the college career course, I
think eighty five percent of those kids had lost a
parent in Iraq Afghanistans. So they're coming of age at
(48:04):
this point. And frankly, we're still losing Special Operations personnel
mid helicopter crash and a tilt rotor crash last November.
Of course, we had the seals this year on the
counter who the interdiction mission. The mission will go on
indefinitely because it applies to all line of duty, all
(48:26):
seventy two thousand ish people in US Special Operations Command.
We don't differentiate between the so called operators, whatever that
term means and support. It's everybody because everybody's part of
the mission, everybody's part of the team, and so we're
going to cover everybody.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
And as you just made very clear, but I just
want to clarify, that's for all branches. It's not just
an Army thing, correct.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
Right, Yeah, Army, Navy, Air Force, Special Operations all and
for the deployed task forces. Anybody that's working for a
SOCUM task force at the time of their death, we
cover them as well.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Last question, Colonel, I know you're and you should be
very proud of the work you're doing and doing well.
When you reflect on your military career, what are you
most proud of?
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Oh boy, I'm proud of the guys who followed me.
If you know, if I did my job right, they're
way better than me. And they are. I could name
a bunch of names that you probably recognize that are
have done very well in the military, are great at
their jobs. And so you know, it's about it's about
(49:42):
the unit, the team, whatever your unit is, the team
and making sure that the people that follow you are
better than you ever were. And I think, yeah, I
think if anything, that that is what I'm most proud
of and.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
We should point out that your family is one of
service now as well. Your wife is a retired lieutenant
colonel was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, I believe,
and so the sense of service in your household, and
I'm sure you're passing along to your kids as well,
is rich. And so we thank you and your wife
(50:23):
very much for your service to our country, and we
thank you very much for your time today as well.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Thank you, sir, well, thank you Rick, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Retired to US Army Colonel Sean Corrigan served in uniform
for more than thirty years, saw action in Panama, desert Storm, Bosnia, Afghanistan,
and Iraq. He is now executive vice president of the
Special Operations Warrior Foundation. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is
Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greag Corumbus, and thanks for
(51:00):
listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center.
For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You
can also follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook and
on Twitter. We're at AVC update. Subscribe to the American
Veterans Center YouTube channel for full oral histories and special features,
(51:23):
and of course please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast
wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and
please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.