"It was hard to watch it from afar, at the White House, but at the time, because I was still broken up pretty bad, I'm not sure I could have done much to help," he says. The commandos dropped into 10,000 feet of free fall, reserving their parachutes for the last moment. And, oh by the way, the guys are still in the compound. Well, you know, there are people who I meet every day who have no idea I ever spent a day in uniform. And he became the overall commander of the US Special Operations Command, the rest is history. OBAMA: Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, // A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. But by then he and his young lieutenant had fallen out. Admiral William McRaven commanded the Special Forces who captured Saddam Hussein. I got on the plane with my aide, Captain Hank Henry. And never once, never once in all those years have I heard Moki Martin complain about his lot in life. The compound could still be booby trapped. And I really didnt have any relief in terms of the mission until after all the helicopters had come back across the border, the Afghan border and were landing at the back at our base. And you know what? HOOVER: Bring us back to this moment, will you, Admiral? I love this sense of kind of duty, honor and country that I saw in this greatest generation. Or, I have to be careful, Im not sure From the time the mission started I think maybe its 15 minutes when I got the call from the ground force commander, for God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo. And Geronimo was the code word for bin Laden. NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to retired Adm. William McRaven, who may be best-known as the Navy SEAL commander who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, about his new memoir. Just like the young female sergeant who I just visited at Walter Reed this week. So I grabbed Hank and I said, Hank, turn the plane around; we got to get back to Baghdad. Retired Navy Adm. William H. McRaven has written a new book called, "The Hero Code: Lessons Learned from Lives Well Lived." McRaven knows about heroic deeds, having directed the 2011 U.S . (0:01-1:46) Source. Tell me about the impact that Moki Martin had on you. We all remember those images of Saddam Hussein the moment that he was captured. Well, thank you president Powers, Provost Fenves, deans, members of the faculty, family and friends, and most importantly, the class of 2014, it is indeed an honor for me to be here tonight. And we had a plan to do that. But after SEAL training, we were stationed at the same team and we became very close friends. MCRAVEN: Well, I think its interesting when you think about Westmorelands observation in context. commander under the obama administration. Having said that, I knew bin Laden was about six foot four And I thought, well Im six foot two. Judge plans to appoint Special Master to Dominion, Fox News . But having said that, I mean, the troops are thoughtful. McRaven made headlines in August when he wrote an op-ed condemning President Trump saying, "Revoke my security clearance, too." Now Fox News is reporting that last month, just a few days after penning the op-ed, McRaven left a prominent post with the DIB over the incident.. "People like McRaven know that.". Shortly after jumping out, McCraven says something was clearly wrong. McRaven's special operators, meanwhile, are flying high. And, of course, that generation, you know, they were children of the Great Depression. At the time, ST-6 was commanded by the legendary (and infamous) Richard . And every day that I went in, he tried to engage me in a conversation. And I think he was probably glad I didn't ask him. So he lay down next to the body and sure enough, the body was about two inches longer. So it broke my pelvis several inches apart, you know, ripped muscles out of my stomach and my legs, fractured my back, and I landed about two miles from the drop zone. I dont know, as a young boy, whether I thought I would follow in my fathers footsteps, what I knew was I loved the camaraderie. And so when I got the call from the squadron commander and he said, we have Jackpot, youre always, as the guy sitting in the rear, youre thinking, ok, this is good news. it showed that we as Americans can do the hard things and do them well. Now, in the case of Saddam Hussein, it was pretty obvious. But they do know you as the make-your-bed guy. That was a day that I think motivated all of America to go forth and realize that we had to bring justice to bin Laden, to bring justice to Al-Qaeda and to do what we felt was right for the country. He bought them. Those were the Wild West days of special operations, and McRaven did not share his commander's easygoing attitude about rules. By Barton Gellman. So while I didnt know at a young age that I wanted to follow in my fathers footsteps, I dont think it took me long before I realized that this was the path that was the right fit for me. We noted early on that you managed to get through a severe injury because of a commanding officer who maybe bent the rules a little bit, although you never confirmed that. This past May marked 10 years since the historic and heroic mission that you orchestrated, Admiral, what is it like for you to watch President Obama say those words now, 10 years later? But I would go in every day to check on him. Lesson #1: Make Your Bed Every Morning. It was July 18, 2001, midway through that quiet summer before the whole world learned Osama bin Laden's name. In fact, we had a plan with what we were going to do with bin Laden if we captured him. But it wasnt the first time Id had a, quote, premonition. The bad news is that when it opened, it split me like a nutcracker, I guess, and just kind of broke the pelvis, broke my back.". Later, William McRaven shares his story of a horrible parachute accident, which leaves him hospitalized for . INSKEEP: You tell story after story after story in this book. Hes done more from a wheelchair than any men standing erect. What were you seeing? I had to fly from Baghdad down to Al Udeid. But occupied France and John F. Kennedy are not what usually come to mind when special operators look for a reference point. So whenever people begin to lose hope about the future of the country and whether or not the men and women will continue to serve, I think weve seen this movie before. It obviously had a lot of political risk with it, and I dont want to minimize the risk. And so I recognize that shots are being fired. Theyre all kind of crammed into this small room with General Brad Webb, who was my liaison to the White House at the time. MCRAVEN: Well, the Joint Operation Center, we refer to it as the JOC, was probably about a hundred people that are sitting in a room with a lot of computers. Having said that, I knew bin Laden was about six foot four And I thought, well Im six foot two. Moki, to me was this kind of quintessential Navy SEAL. I wonder what you think we can do to convince more people to make their beds every morning? Patient and ingenious work by U.S. intelligence agencies marked a spot tentative, but more likely accurate than not on the map. And even with that giant beard he had, it didnt take long for us to realize that we had the right guy. Operation Neptune Spear stripped al-Qaeda of its iconic leader and offered a kind of recompense for the traumas of 9/11. But again, to your point, I had a moral and legal obligation to make sure that we took good care of him. Richard Marcinko, the hard-charging founding commander of Navy SEAL Team 6, the storied and feared unit within an elite commando force that later . Why is that, Admiral? HOOVER: Its quite striking because you write that the command center breaks into cheers, but you, quote, had no sense of relief, no internal exhilaration, no feeling of victory. And he pulls. MCRAVEN: Yeah, well, obviously, like a lot of people who watched it on TV, it was a horrifying moment for all of us. And so when I got the call from the squadron commander and he said, we have Jackpot, youre always, as the guy sitting in the rear, youre thinking, ok, this is good news. MCRAVEN: You know, I think the military guys - what I know is, you know, we go where the nation asks us to go, and we do what the nation requires us to do. And then, of course, when we get on target, we didnt know whether or not the entire compound was booby trapped, whether bin Laden was wearing a suicide vest, all those sorts of things added to the risk. McRaven, who served as the ninth commander of the U.S. Special Operations command from . Yeah, well, he knew that I was in charge. I mean, we flew the 162 miles really without incident. William McRaven delivered MIT's 2020 Commencement address. I need to go personally identify the remains before I can kind of come back and tell you for certain its bin Laden. We put the body bag on the hangar floor and its a rubberized body bag. Never once did he say, why me? So I understood pretty quickly that the guys were a little banged up, but they were OK. And so we went from plan A to plan B. Commentary. there are plenty of public issues right now that i want to ask you about, but i want to defer that for a moment and talk about . But before all that, he had to recover from a terrible accident. General and Mrs. Caslen, General and Mrs. Clarke, General Trainor, Col Brazil, Command Sergeants Major Duane . Then, in 2001, came the parachute accident and the long climb back. Take a look at this video. I had been talking to the leader of the Army Task Force. "He was climbing the steps, and it was agony, step by step. Rescued Captain Phillips from Somali pirates, Phillips: The first people I want to thank are the SEALs. But I knew immediately the guys were okay. He never had his hands raised. Admiral William H. McRaven, USN. And just something said, hey, we got to turn around, weve got to get back, because, you know, tonights going to be the night. On that mission, they were representing a tribe that had trained and bled and hungered for 31 years to redeem itself as sensationally as it had failed in its public debut. While nothing is definitive, "all indications are pointing to the fact" that Israel was behind a cyberattack that knocked out power at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility over the weekend, retired U.S. Navy Adm. William McRaven said Monday, and he finds the allegations "a little disturbing" given that the U.S. and other countries are currently trying to renegotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear . "I kind of tumble through the parachute. He previously served as Deputy Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command from 2003 to July 2007. You know, we had a lot of kind of heated discussions in the meetings I was in, but there was never any rancor. Admiral, youve led sailors through harrowing missions. Each chapter of Make Your Bed provides more context and stories for each lesson from the original speech. Around that time came a call from Wayne Downing, a retired Army four-star general. Now, a principle of democracy is, for every right there is a duty. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. INSKEEP: How have people in the military that you have known dealt with the reality that they put their lives on the line, in some places lost arms or legs, for this purpose that turned out to be false? Back then, he was worried about whether or not the youth would stand up and join the military. Admiral William McRaven is a retired U.S. Navy four-star Admiral. MCRAVEN: Yeah, I would say its a little surreal, but, you know, I go back to that whole operation and Ive offered to the American people, regardless of what side of the political aisle you might be on, you know, you would have been proud of the national security team the president, the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, director of national intelligence director of the CIA all of these men and women that came together to do what was right by the nation. HOOVER: Take a look at President Obamas speech to the nation the night of May 1st, 2011. And as I was descending, I noticed that there was . But that was still many hours after the mission was concluded. Of course, as we began to come in to target the one helicopter loses lift as it got over the target. Like most promising midcareer officers, the 36-year-old McRaven was dispatched to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. So whenever a shot is fired, somebody is reporting through the chain. He began the new job this summer. He also survived being ripped in half by a parachute. On September 1, 2014 . If bin Laden had his hands up and he clearly was not a threat which was going to be difficult because you dont know whether or not theyre carrying a suicide vest underneath but if he had come out of that room with his hands up and clearly not a threat, we had an obligation, a legal obligation, a moral obligation to capture him. General William Westmoreland joined the original firing line with William F. Buckley Jr. in 1979 for a conversation called, quote, the crisis in the US military. "All in all, a pretty good year," McRaven says, "but frankly it has been a big year for us really since 9/11.". Moki, to me was this kind of quintessential Navy SEAL. The Commander in Chief staked his presidency on a military plan with risks that daunted his Secretary of Defense. HOOVER: In your account of the rescue. I mean, it showed that we as Americans can do the hard things and do them well. So I saw some young SEALs standing nearby. Read the full transcript of McRaven's May 19, 2014 speech right here at Rev.com. By the time I landed back in Baghdad, the force was moving towards the target and within, you know, within an hours time, the Armys special operations guys that were working for me had had, in fact, captured Saddam Hussein. I said, good, come here and. Marcinko acknowledges that he arranged for female companions at the hard-drinking beach parties he threw on Navy property, but it would not be politically correct, he says, to call them "ladies of the night.". So Im getting radio calls from the ground force commander. The story did not end there. The accident happened while he was participating in a Naval Special Warfare exercise involving a 1,000-foot free-fall jump. Unsure of his altitude or even where he was, he still had the frame of mind to reach for his ripcord, and pulled it. The planning and decisionmaking for the bin Laden raid, he volunteers, "was really everything the American public would expect from their national leadership." What were you feeling in those moments? Well, the mission wasnt over yet. Did you have a sense that you would follow in your fathers footsteps? And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made. On September 11th, 2001, you were still recuperating from your injuries when you watched the terrorist attacks on this country play out on a television screen in your living room. INSKEEP: He wasn't in a very good position to negotiate, I suppose. I'm not exactly sure what's happened. "If I was a loose cannon, he was too rigid. . McRaven: He went from being pompous and arrogant to frankly, just being, you know, a tired, corrupt old man. And as I say in the book, kind of inexplicably, I just had this feeling that this was going to be the night that we got Saddam Hussein. So, yes, we believed we had bin Laden. William McRaven, former University of Texas System chancellor and retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral, joined the school as a professor in national security in 2018. And then two days later, when I was back in Washington briefing the Congress, I get a call to come over to the White House. Well, the Joint Operation Center, we refer to it as the JOC, was probably about a hundred people that are sitting in a room with a lot of computers. They have just 500 days until graduation. The potency of that image may depend on making sure the triumph in Abbottabad is not succeeded by another Desert One or Black Hawk down. And, of course, that generation, you know, they were children of the Great Depression. "He was a bright guy, but he didn't like my rude and crude way," Marcinko said. And then in 1983, as you mentioned, he had a head-on bicycle accident and then was paralyzed from the chest down and has been since that time. Admiral McRaven, on this Independence Day weekend, thank you for your service and thank you for sharing your stories from your recent books, Hero Code, Sea Stories and Make Your Bed. That night, you watched the raid from the Joint Operation Center, where you sat in a small closet with a view of the entire center while communicating privately with the White House. Yeah, I couldnt hear any of that. "He was climbing the steps, and it was agony, step by step. Speaking to MS News, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) was alerted to a traffic accident on 1 Mar at about 6.45pm. When McRaven jumped he found himself falling at 125 MPH and hitting the parachute of another, who had deployed his chute too soon. Retired Admiral William McRaven speaks Wednesday January 10, 2018 at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. But in the end, you never addressed him directly. No, I dont think that contributed to his decline. "Frankly, I wasn't sure whether I had been knocked unconscious, so when I had the chance, I pulled my rip cord," McRaven told TIME. I guess he did.". The Desert One hostage-rescue mission in Iran that day, aborted in a spectacle of flaming aircraft, left eight Americans dead and the nation's prestige badly burned. So admittedly that particular operation was a lot sportier, a lot further, a lot more political ramifications, a lot riskier for a lot of reasons, but basically similar to things that we do every night. So a static line parachute is where you hook up inside the aircraft, the freefall you jump out with a parachute on your back. And I was just honored to be part of the operation. An accident during a routine parachute jump in 2001 kind of snapped me in two, McRaven said in a 2019 interview. You know, Ive heard you say that you are the quote biggest fan of the millennial generation and generation and Gen Z. MCRAVEN: I had a moment of relief, you bet. All the men went off to World War Two, and then they came back and rebuilt the country. Retired four-star Navy Adm. William McRaven discusses why he finds it hard to be a Democrat or a Republican with CNN's Chris Wallace. "Special forces have taken greater measures in the last year and a half to reduce civilian casualties," says Erica Gaston, who wrote a report for the Open Society Foundations, "but one night raid in a village can be enough to turn [people] against international and Afghan government efforts. I unzip the body bag and without getting too graphic he obviously didnt look too good, he had a couple of rounds in his head the beard was a little smaller, I think, than what we usually anticipate. I had received an intelligence brief the night before from one of the great noncommissioned officers that was part of the Saddam hunt. ADM McRaven's 500th Night speech, titled A Sailor's Perspective on the United States Army, was transcribed and released by West Point. I loved the sense of patriotism. Copyright © 2014 Time Inc. All rights reserved. How was it that you came to be inside Iraq, though, on the day that Saddam Hussein was captured? In his 2014 commencement speech, former Navy SEAL Admiral William H. McRaven offered 10 lessons to the University of Texas at Austin graduating class.He outlined the lessons of the bed, paddle, heart, cookie, circus, obstacle, shark, dark moment, song, and bell. And eventually, of course, the SEALs execute a mission that all of these guys, in terms of the tactics of it, had done hundreds of times before. McRaven: I was just honored to be part of the operation. Than not on the hangar floor and its a rubberized body bag on the map Make beds., they were children of the Great noncommissioned officers that was part of the operation home to a that! Parachutes for the traumas of 9/11 162 miles really without incident had on.. 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