[00:00:01] Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised.

[00:00:07] Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:26] Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics, and intrigue.

[00:00:33] This episode is presented by Matt Fulton and produced by Chris Carr.

[00:00:39] Hello everyone and welcome back to Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:41] Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Jack Murphy, former Green Beret and now investigative journalist, author, and host of the Team House podcast.

[00:00:49] Jack's career spans service in the 5th Special Forces Group and Army Rangers,

[00:00:53] to bombshell reporting on JSOC, the CIA, and conflicts around the globe.

[00:00:58] His latest book, We Defy! The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History,

[00:01:02] is a fascinating deep dive into the lesser known missions that shaped the U.S. Special Operations community as we know it.

[00:01:09] These aren't the stories of big battles or famous campaigns, but of covert operations, dangerous experiments, and extraordinary resilience.

[00:01:16] From Cold War Berlin to nuclear contingencies that read like something out of Dr. Strangelove.

[00:01:22] In this episode, Jack shares the untold history of units like Special Forces Detachment A and Blue Light,

[00:01:28] and reflects on the evolving role of special operations in today's world.

[00:01:32] Together, we explore what these stories reveal about the ingenuity, adaptability, and sacrifices of the men behind the missions.

[00:01:39] As always, a couple of housekeeping notes first.

[00:01:41] If you enjoyed the show, please leave a five-star rating and review on your podcast streaming app of choice.

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[00:01:51] Just go to patreon.com forward slash secrets and spies.

[00:01:55] Your generosity helps keep this podcast going.

[00:01:58] Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

[00:02:00] The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast.

[00:02:24] Jack Murphy, welcome to Secrets and Spies. It's great to have you on finally.

[00:02:28] Yeah, thank you for having me.

[00:02:29] You were, I'm sure, probably well known to a lot of people listening or fans of the team house also and are just aware of your reporting over the years.

[00:02:39] So you were Green Beret.

[00:02:42] You served in the 5th Special Forces Group and 3rd Ranger Battalion after that, right?

[00:02:47] Yeah. Well, the other way, first in Ranger Battalion and then in 5th Group.

[00:02:50] Okay, cool. So you've since been an established voice in national security journalism slash commentary at space as long as I've followed it.

[00:03:01] You've covered Iraq and Afghanistan, counterterrorism in the Philippines, the wars in Syria and Ukraine, veterans issues and broken stories on JSOC and CIA activities.

[00:03:13] You've written some novels as well. You're now writing for the high side, a sub stack you share with Sean Naylor, awesome reporter as well. And you host the Team House podcast, very popular outfit there.

[00:03:24] So your latest book, it's out December 9th. It's called We Defy the Lost Chapters of Special Forces History. Give us a thesis if you would.

[00:03:32] Yeah, sure. So this is kind of like a long-term passion project that I've worked on and off for probably close to a decade, did probably close to 100 interviews for.

[00:03:44] And so the premise of the book, The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History, is it's about those chapters that obviously have not been written about and have not been covered.

[00:03:54] So, you know, there's been a lot of writing about like horse soldiers in Afghanistan or like Green Berets working with Montagnards in Laos and South Vietnam.

[00:04:04] You know, a lot of these types of stories are out there and they're great.

[00:04:08] But what I noticed was that, you know, from the time I was in the military myself, I first started hearing some of these stories, these like whispers of like, hey, you know, fifth group had the first counterterrorism unit before Delta.

[00:04:20] Or you'd hear, you know, did you know, we had guys like undercover in Berlin or, you know, there used to be a mission that guys would jump with a backpack nukes.

[00:04:30] Like you'd hear these sort of like vestigial stories that are still carried on in special forces.

[00:04:36] Like people know this stuff happened and some of the older guys will tell you it happened, but nobody really knew the full story, at least that I talked to at that time.

[00:04:47] And there was nowhere you could go to find out more.

[00:04:50] There was no internet website.

[00:04:52] There was no book that you could go and find about this type of stuff.

[00:04:56] So that's exciting for me as a writer.

[00:04:59] It's a place that, you know, you can explore some uncovered ground.

[00:05:04] And that's sort of how the, you know, the theme of the book took place.

[00:05:09] And like I said, it was written over a fairly long period of time.

[00:05:12] But the chapters are Blue Light, the first counterterrorism unit, Green Light, the backpack nuke program, Detachment A in Berlin, Detachment K in Korea, and the commanders in extremist force.

[00:05:25] That's the bulk of the book right there is those five chapters, all of which there's like little to nothing out there about.

[00:05:32] I mean, maybe you'll find like a paragraph in Charlie Beckwith's book.

[00:05:35] Maybe you'll find a page in Rod Lenehan's book, which is a pretty obscure, hard to find book itself.

[00:05:41] So my intent is to, you know, interview all these special forces veterans and bring these stories out to the forefront.

[00:05:48] These are almost all of them except for Det K.

[00:05:52] They're all defunct programs now.

[00:05:54] They don't exist any longer.

[00:05:56] And most of it is declassified.

[00:05:58] So it was, to me, it was a great subject to explore.

[00:06:03] But I think that maybe it hadn't been written about before because a lot of writers, historians, journalists, and so on, they want like a big set piece battle.

[00:06:14] Like Way City or Mogadishu or, you know, the battle for Masur or whatever it is.

[00:06:19] Tor Bora, yeah.

[00:06:20] Yeah.

[00:06:21] And this book doesn't have that.

[00:06:22] It is the lost chapters.

[00:06:24] It's like every chapter is sort of a vignette.

[00:06:27] You can read them independently, but they are kind of connected, as you'll find out if you read the book all the way through.

[00:06:33] One thing I like about how the book came together is it's packaged in these really kind of digestible chapters, I guess.

[00:06:40] I mean, you noted what a few of them are about.

[00:06:43] So I wanted to go through them.

[00:06:44] Sure.

[00:06:45] And draw some connections between them.

[00:06:47] In the introduction, you highlight how even within the special forces community, some stories have been mythologized or forgotten.

[00:06:56] Grave misconceptions about the community have seeped into public consciousness.

[00:07:00] Why was it important for you to preserve these lost chapters, as you call them?

[00:07:04] And how do you see these historical insights influencing how we understand the role of special forces today?

[00:07:10] Well, it's history.

[00:07:12] And, you know, to be clear, it's not my history.

[00:07:14] The history belongs to mostly to the men who directly participated in the things that I write about.

[00:07:20] But it also belongs to the special forces regiment as a whole.

[00:07:24] I mean, all, you know, past, current and future Green Berets, it's their history.

[00:07:29] And, you know, if we learn the wrong lessons from history, we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

[00:07:35] I think that, you know, there are, especially for the young soldiers out there, I think this history is important for them.

[00:07:44] To understand where they came from, where they're going.

[00:07:48] And also, when you have that sort of like background knowledge beyond your own experience, you know, you can draw ideas.

[00:07:55] And the younger generation, I think, is going to be tasked with taking some of these old school methodologies and fusing them with technology that the old guys didn't have.

[00:08:06] That, you know, robotics, drones, maybe AI, some of these new technologies that are coming into the fold.

[00:08:12] But at the same time, I mean, you're going to be working with indigenous personnel who are almost living in biblical eras in some cases.

[00:08:21] And so all of your high-tech radios and cool guns doesn't really apply to how you're interacting with these people.

[00:08:27] So there's going to have to be some sort of a fusion for the future of unconventional warfare.

[00:08:32] And there's been talk about this before, you know, revolution and military affairs, which sort of happened, sort of didn't.

[00:08:38] You know, net-centric warfare, all these other names like got applied to it.

[00:08:42] But I mean, that's one of the big reasons why I think it's important to preserve the history.

[00:08:47] Some of this explains why special forces continue to exist and continues to exist.

[00:08:53] You know, the nuclear mission, some people think that is what kept special forces alive during the 50s and 60s.

[00:09:00] That, especially after Vietnam, the military wanted to forget about all this messy counterinsurgency stuff.

[00:09:07] So there are some people that think that kept them in the game, but also the direct action mission, counterterrorism, the direct action mission that the SIF teams had.

[00:09:16] All that stuff kept special forces going.

[00:09:19] And that doesn't mean it's the only thing they did or that it was even the main focus.

[00:09:23] But it was an important mission.

[00:09:24] Your first chapter is all dedicated to a really cool piece of Cold War history, Special Forces Detachment A.

[00:09:32] Can you explain a bit about what Detachment A was and the unique role it had in Cold War Berlin?

[00:09:38] And given today's focus on urban warfare, what lessons can modern special forces units learn from Det A's mission set?

[00:09:46] Yeah, this was an incredibly unique mission.

[00:09:50] So Detachment A consisted of Green Berets from 10th Special Forces Group who were in Berlin undercover.

[00:09:57] There was a non-classified name that they were part of like a military police unit or whatever.

[00:10:03] But the reality is that they were a clandestine unit.

[00:10:06] They had the urban guerrilla mission or the stay behind mission.

[00:10:09] So there are three methods of infiltration that people are probably familiar with, air, sea, and land.

[00:10:16] So parachuting, scuba diving, driving in trucks or just walking, right?

[00:10:21] The fourth method of infiltration is the stay behind mission, which involves going undercover, becoming a sleeper agent, so to speak, as enemy forces roll over your position.

[00:10:33] So in this case, it would be Green Berets going undercover in Berlin, going to ground when the Soviets invade.

[00:10:40] And after the Soviets blow past them and continue into Western Europe, Detachment A would activate.

[00:10:47] And they had targets that they looked at over and over again, power plants, rail lines, logistical nodes, all that stuff was on the target list.

[00:10:58] And they would conduct acts of sabotage and go and destroy these facilities.

[00:11:03] A lot of it had to do with, especially as the war plan, I think as the war plan was rewritten later in the 80s, about wearing down the second echelon of Soviet troops.

[00:11:13] And the Green Light mission played into that as well, of course.

[00:11:17] So that's in a nutshell what Detachment A did.

[00:11:20] These guys were, a lot of them were Vietnam veterans.

[00:11:24] They had to speak, they had to be fluent in something, mostly German, of course.

[00:11:29] Some of them, like if they spoke fluent Greek, they could go undercover as a guestarbeiter or a German guest worker.

[00:11:36] They wore German clothes all the way down to the underwear, had to have the right pocket litter in case they got stopped.

[00:11:44] It was an incredible mission.

[00:11:47] And as time went on, what got added to that was counter-surveillance missions, counter-terrorism mission, and all sorts of other things.

[00:11:56] Even like anti-crime activity with the German police, they got sucked up into in later years.

[00:12:01] In the early days, some of them, I didn't know this, some of them were German veterans of World War II.

[00:12:07] Yeah.

[00:12:07] On the other side.

[00:12:08] Yeah, the Lodge Act guys.

[00:12:10] So Henry Cabot Lodge, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, it's named after the Lodge Act.

[00:12:16] This is after World War II.

[00:12:18] What the Lodge Act did was it brought in a lot of foreign nationals, mostly Eastern Europeans.

[00:12:24] So like Hungarians, Romanians, Ukrainians, Germans, and others.

[00:12:30] And they were all brought in.

[00:12:32] And it was like the fast track, the US citizenship for them by serving in the United States Army.

[00:12:36] What the army got in exchange was access to their language abilities and their cultural understanding,

[00:12:42] because it's their home, their natives.

[00:12:44] And that was pivotal for us as the Cold War began to pick up steam.

[00:12:50] And yes, some of those Lodge Act Green Berets had served in the Third Reich.

[00:12:56] They were former Nazis.

[00:12:58] Yeah, that's a fascinating bit of history there to the whole story.

[00:13:02] So some context for listeners.

[00:13:04] So we're recording this now on December 3rd.

[00:13:05] And as we record, the South Korean president declared martial law and parliament's in a whole bunch of chaos.

[00:13:13] It's a mess.

[00:13:14] I don't have a lot of details offhand because I've been busy prepping for this all morning.

[00:13:18] However, Chapter 2 paints a fascinating picture of the dual role Special Forces Detachment Korea played as both military advisors and informal back-channel diplomats during periods of intense political chaos in Seoul,

[00:13:35] specifically around 1979 to 1980 is a period that really stuck out to me in the book, at least.

[00:13:41] How did Detachment Korea manage to sort of build that trust in such a volatile environment?

[00:13:48] Well, through long-term sustained engagement.

[00:13:53] And there's really nothing else today like Special Forces Detachment Korea.

[00:13:58] But they have had this liaison mission, I think, but since 1960.

[00:14:03] I mean, the Korean War ended.

[00:14:05] KMAG came about, which was like Korean military assistance group, where we have an advisory capacity with the South Koreans.

[00:14:13] And then Detachment K gets formalized a little bit later on.

[00:14:18] And what makes them unique or different is that they are the resident team in South Korea.

[00:14:24] Most Special Forces training and liaison missions are more episodic.

[00:14:29] They're called JSETs normally, Joint Combined Exercise Training.

[00:14:32] You know, so the team deploys from Fort Bragg or wherever in the United States, they deploy to, you know, Bangladesh or, you know, whichever country, Sri Lanka.

[00:14:42] And they train there for, you know, four months, five months, six months, come back home.

[00:14:47] Well, a resident team is there all the time.

[00:14:51] There is consistently a Special Forces team there.

[00:14:54] We used to have resident teams elsewhere.

[00:14:56] You know, there's even one in Taiwan back in the 50s.

[00:14:59] We had, you know, kind of close to that in the Philippines.

[00:15:02] But there are a number of countries where Special Forces is in and out of all the time.

[00:15:07] And it would make sense to have resident teams because the Detachment K has paid, you know, great dividends, I think, for the United States.

[00:15:14] Got a lot of bang for the taxpayers' buck.

[00:15:16] We're talking about 12 to 15 people.

[00:15:19] Their budget is maybe $100,000 to $250,000 a year, depending on what training exercises are being run.

[00:15:26] And their main job is that these guys are liaisons to the South Korean brigades, both South Korean Special Forces and conventional forces.

[00:15:36] And so there will be, like, a Det K guy in the office next to the commander to make sure we have that tight relationship, which is important because if the war kicks off again, if the North invades, what's going to happen is we're going to form, you know, a joint combined task force, you know, South Korean and American, that is going to repel this attack.

[00:15:56] And so those relationships have to be there beforehand.

[00:15:58] You can't develop them in response to a crisis.

[00:16:02] And the other task that Det K has that they would perform is they would be the receiving party.

[00:16:08] So when American forces start to land on the Korean Peninsula during, you know, a potential, you know, Second Korean War, Det K will help guide those units up to the front lines to where they need to go, whether they're SEALs or special forces or conventional infantry or armor.

[00:16:24] Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with more.

[00:16:43] That model of sustained engagement, I think, I don't know if you would agree, I think offers a lot of important lessons, I guess, models for operating alongside similarly politically unstable allies.

[00:16:58] I'm thinking specifically about the Middle East and a little island in the Western Pacific.

[00:17:04] It just seems like Detachment Korea really kind of, like, figured out how to work in that area.

[00:17:11] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:17:12] They did.

[00:17:12] And it definitely provides, I think, a model for how special forces could operate.

[00:17:17] I mean, not every country in the world needs a resident special forces team maybe, but there are some places that we're in and out of all the time.

[00:17:25] Kurdistan comes to mind.

[00:17:27] The increased focus on Taiwan, that comes to mind.

[00:17:30] The Philippines is another.

[00:17:32] And I've even talked to, you know, when I was in the Philippines and I was meeting with the Filipino special ops guys.

[00:17:38] They have a strong relationship with special forces.

[00:17:41] And I think all of the special ops guys, you know, I also ran into American SEALs, American Green Berets, American Marines over there.

[00:17:48] They were all doing a terrific job.

[00:17:50] But I think they could get a lot further by having a resident team there that maintains that long-term engagement.

[00:17:57] Yeah.

[00:17:57] Do you think that sort of political tightrope to walk with the Taiwanese is to not sort of piss off mainland China too much?

[00:18:04] Do you think that-

[00:18:04] Absolutely.

[00:18:05] All of this is, it's inextricably political.

[00:18:08] And when I say, you know, that we should have a resident team in Kurdistan or in the Philippines or wherever, I mean, understand that all of that is with absolute permission from the sovereign countries that I'm mentioning.

[00:18:23] That it's a partnership and a friendship and they have to invite us in as the South Koreans invited us and wanted.

[00:18:30] It was actually the South Korean military that kept Detachment K alive at some points because they were like, we want our Green Berets here.

[00:18:39] We want this liaison relationship.

[00:18:41] And so they managed to hold on to Detachment K even when First Special Forces Group itself was inactivated at one point.

[00:18:48] It's sort of interesting.

[00:18:50] I mean, like the story of Detachment K is also kind of parallels and it's pretty intertwined with the story of how modern Korea was built from a sort of Japanese colonial backwater to this one of the big Asian tigers.

[00:19:03] I mean, they just built right alongside each other.

[00:19:06] South Korea is absolutely a massive success story.

[00:19:11] It demonstrates to the North that democracy can work for the Korean people.

[00:19:16] There is, as I think, you know, you interestingly point out like this element, this unit has existed for so long that there's a lot of history that it has survived through.

[00:19:25] And South Korea did have a, I mean, starting in the beginning, you know, after the war, I mean, I don't think there was a paved road between Seoul and Busan.

[00:19:35] I mean, it was very third world and the amount of progress that they made over such a short period of time is incredible.

[00:19:44] I mean, if you've been to South Korea today, I mean, I think of that place as being like the Switzerland of East Asia.

[00:19:49] Like it's an incredible place.

[00:19:50] Yeah.

[00:19:51] But they have had a history of coups and counter coups and political assassinations and instability, riots, uprisings, military putting them down violently in some cases.

[00:20:04] And so, yeah, as you mentioned earlier, that's why it's sad to see what has happened today, what has transpired.

[00:20:10] I mean, martial law only existed for something like 150 minutes before parliament shot it down and said absolutely not.

[00:20:17] And the last I heard, the South Korean special forces have withdrawn from parliament following that lawful order, apparently.

[00:20:25] But it's sad to see, you know, a country backslide like that.

[00:20:30] You know, I think those people fought really hard for that country and for that democracy.

[00:20:35] And, you know, I just hate to see that.

[00:20:37] Do you see any kind of special effectiveness to a military-to-military relationship, specifically a special forces-to-special forces relationship?

[00:20:46] That kind of, I don't want to say backroom diplomacy, but non-official diplomacy in a way that perhaps in these kind of situations, in the situation that Korea was going through in the 70s and 80s.

[00:20:57] And, I mean, we see sort of shades of that somewhat, that kind of chaos today even.

[00:21:02] Can that military-to-military relationship, can that diplomacy kind of work in situations where it would be kind of maybe difficult for the State Department to act like it's business as usual?

[00:21:13] Yes, absolutely.

[00:21:14] There's a great case study in the book.

[00:21:17] But I would also point more recently to the Philippines where we have a very strong military-to-military relationship with the Filipinos.

[00:21:25] And they have a very strong cultural affinity with America.

[00:21:28] And that relationship goes back over 100 years.

[00:21:32] I've been to Philippine Marine Corps events where you will swear to God it's like you're talking to the American Marine Corps.

[00:21:40] Like it is like very much the same thing.

[00:21:43] Yeah.

[00:21:44] And my point there was that doing the Duterte presidency, there is a lot of political turmoil.

[00:21:50] I mean, between Duterte and Trump, I mean, these are kind of volatile people.

[00:21:54] Yeah.

[00:21:55] So, but that military-to-military relationship remained there and remained strong.

[00:22:01] Even while Duterte is flirting with the Chinese, the Filipino military is like, no, we want our American partners.

[00:22:07] Like we don't have a closeness to China.

[00:22:10] Like that doesn't exist.

[00:22:12] And in Decay's case, yeah, there was that incident in the 80s with the commander of Decay at the time, Chuck Randall.

[00:22:19] And there was a coup and the military was like taken over.

[00:22:25] And Chuck was at a local establishment enjoying a few drinks when the South Korean special forces come in and like, hey, you're coming with us.

[00:22:34] And they put him on like kind of de facto house arrest for several days.

[00:22:39] And while the relationship with the United States, with the State Department kind of collapsed and there was no communication there for a few days, they used Chuck as the back channel talking to the United States.

[00:22:50] And they even came to him at one point with their newly drafted constitution for South Korea.

[00:22:56] And they were like, hey, Chuck, could you take a look at this and tell us if it's good?

[00:22:59] And he's like, I'm just a major in the army.

[00:23:03] I'm not allowed to do that.

[00:23:05] They don't teach me this at West Point.

[00:23:08] Well, he was right.

[00:23:10] It would have been inappropriate for a soldier to review the constitution of a foreign country like that.

[00:23:16] If those conversations take place, they should probably be between South Korea's civilian leadership and our civilian leadership.

[00:23:25] Yeah, at a ministry level.

[00:23:26] Yeah.

[00:23:27] But hey, where relationships work sometimes, even if they're kind of different.

[00:23:31] Your stories on blue lights and the commanders in extremist force that I know you've reported a lot on before in the high side.

[00:23:40] Yeah.

[00:23:40] So those the commanders in extremist forces, those companies show, I think, the evolution of America's counterterrorism capabilities from rudimentary beginnings to highly specialized teams.

[00:23:53] How do you see the lessons from these units shaping the future of counterterrorism operations, particularly as the threats they face continue to evolve?

[00:24:00] That's a great question.

[00:24:01] I mean, it's a huge one, too, especially in this moment we're in now where we're coming off counterterrorism and we're focusing on peer-to-peer.

[00:24:11] However, at the same time, it's not going to go away.

[00:24:15] I mean, during the Cold War, we had to deal with terrorism and also state-sponsored terrorism.

[00:24:20] I mean, terrorism becomes warfare by other means.

[00:24:23] And there is some evidence that the Soviet Union sponsored Palestinian terrorist organizations to do aircraft hijackings as a way to tie us down strategically.

[00:24:35] I mean, it's a form of unconventional warfare.

[00:24:38] I mean, I've even heard stories that some of the Somalian piracy had a state backer, that things are a little bit more complicated than they sometimes appear on the surface.

[00:24:47] So we can't ever discount terrorism.

[00:24:52] It's always going to be a mission, but it's not going to be the entire Army's mission the way it has been the last 20 years.

[00:24:59] And it probably will fall exclusively to more specialized units, Delta Force, the SIF, maybe Rangers in some cases.

[00:25:07] Yeah.

[00:25:08] Chapter 5 sheds light on the Greenlight program.

[00:25:11] Tell us a bit about that.

[00:25:12] Yeah.

[00:25:13] So during the Cold War, we felt that we had a deficit when it came to tactical nuclear weapons.

[00:25:19] And a program called Greenlight was brought in in the early 60s to try to compensate for that.

[00:25:27] And so the Department of Energy and others, they developed the Special Atomic Demolition Munition or SATEM.

[00:25:35] There was a predecessor to that called the Matem, but that was basically loaded onto a truck.

[00:25:42] The idea of the SATEM was that it's man-portable and can be employed by relatively non-technical people.

[00:25:48] So you can take Green Berets and train them to set off this device.

[00:25:52] And the idea was that these guys would, during the event of World War III, they would jump behind enemy lines with this backpack nuke, which was in the one to two kiloton range, and hit strategic targets.

[00:26:07] So there was a lot of targeting of dams, bridges, ports, enemy troop formations, mountain passes, anywhere that you could slow down or stop the Soviet advance.

[00:26:19] And that's the gist of that program.

[00:26:21] It went on all the way until like 1986 or 87.

[00:26:24] If anyone, I guess, studies the history of continuative government planning back into the 50s, somewhat into the 60s until the yields for nuclear weapons get up to the megatons and stuff, there was this sort of delusion from a lot of civil defense planners in the U.S. that nuclear war was survivable to an extent.

[00:26:43] Right, atomic warfare.

[00:26:44] And I sort of see...

[00:26:45] Yeah, yeah.

[00:26:46] Yeah, well, yeah, okay, half the country's killed, but the post office can get stuff up and running again in a couple months.

[00:26:53] It'll be fine.

[00:26:53] Do you see that same kind of, I guess you could call it delusion, in the Pentagon's Cold War military strategy in Europe and the military calculations that came with it, even reaching out to the men that they tasked to deliver these weapons?

[00:27:08] Oh, you mean like, was the program or was the mission even feasible?

[00:27:13] Well, that's part of it.

[00:27:14] I mean, is it feasible?

[00:27:16] There's one thing.

[00:27:17] And you quote a few Green Berets who were around the program back then who sort of like, they just deduced it was like a psyop to freak out the Soviets.

[00:27:25] And you can say more about that if you'd like, but also just the, okay, even if we could do it, should we?

[00:27:31] Right, right.

[00:27:32] There's definitely a Dr. Strangelove sort of element to this that I think people today probably scoff at or even wonder if this is real.

[00:27:40] Like maybe Jack has whiskey in here instead of coffee and he's just telling worse stories.

[00:27:46] It's past me.

[00:27:47] But no, this happened.

[00:27:49] This was a real thing.

[00:27:50] And, you know, interesting, one of the interesting takeaways for me was that the guys assigned to this mission were deadly serious about it.

[00:27:58] And if they were called to go, they would have gone.

[00:28:00] It absolutely was the real deal.

[00:28:02] But let's look at the, like, if we talk about the feasibility and the feasibility, whether it's feasible or not, tells us whether we're being delusional or not.

[00:28:10] The feasibility of it is challenging because we accept that as Americans, we're not going to initiate a nuclear first strike.

[00:28:17] We're not going to start a nuclear war, right?

[00:28:19] But we will respond to one.

[00:28:21] So that means we're not going to have the element of surprise unless we get forewarning that the Russians are about to strike.

[00:28:28] Maybe.

[00:28:28] Okay.

[00:28:29] So we're already starting to assume things, right, that our intent is going to be good.

[00:28:33] So the Soviets are going to invade Western Europe.

[00:28:36] We are then going to activate our green light teams.

[00:28:39] The green light teams are then going to have to travel to a bunker.

[00:28:42] They're going to have to draw out the nuclear weapon.

[00:28:44] And then they're going to go somewhere else to another location.

[00:28:47] In one case, we're talking about guys going from Germany to the bunker and then flying into the UK.

[00:28:51] And then they would get on their aircraft with the weapon, fly behind enemy lines somewhere in Eastern Europe, parachute down to the ground, move to their target, put the Saddam on a bridge or a dam or whatever the target is, and then pull off and blow it.

[00:29:05] Well, by the time all of that happens, there's this real question of, will those targets even be valid at that point?

[00:29:11] Because the Soviets – now this war has been going on for two days.

[00:29:15] How relevant are these targets?

[00:29:17] And I think that did kind of play into the contingency plans being redrawn in the 80s, that now they were thinking more about striking the second wave, the second echelon of Soviet troops.

[00:29:29] But again, even – okay, let's take the time aspect out of it.

[00:29:34] As far as the timing, is it feasible for us to parachute 12 – four to 12 Green Berets behind enemy lines with this device and getting up there and detonating it?

[00:29:46] You know, one person told me that the targeting packets were very, very interesting when he got to view them, that they did not seem like they were written by someone who understood what a special forces team could and could not do.

[00:30:01] And it was his deduction was that, you know, basically the Green Light program was a psychological operation designed to, you know, psych out Soviet military planners to make them defend against something that probably was never coming.

[00:30:17] But then, I mean, on the other hand, I mean, you have to point out that, like, the Army and special forces invested a hell of a lot of time in this program for it to be just a PSYOP.

[00:30:27] I mean, for the whole thing to just be, you know, some sort of fake out, that's tough to believe too.

[00:30:33] I mean, they put a lot of time and effort into this.

[00:30:36] Yeah.

[00:30:36] You know, that was something that really struck me in the chapter that it was just – I mean, not to say that it specifically had to just been all for show.

[00:30:44] But when you look under the hood, like that quote you gave from the guy who started to do, like, yeah, it was just to freak out the Soviets.

[00:30:51] I mean, I'm thinking, so the yields for these Satums, they're sub-kiloton yield.

[00:30:57] They're less than one kiloton.

[00:30:59] So for listeners, the yield for Hiroshima was like 12 kilotons, right?

[00:31:03] So it's still a nuclear bomb.

[00:31:04] You don't want to be near it when it goes off.

[00:31:06] There's still fallout and all that kind of stuff.

[00:31:08] But it's not nearly as big of a bang as you would think when you think a nuclear explosion.

[00:31:13] And when you get up into, like, I don't know, part of this program, like the late 70s, early 80s and stuff, I mean, conventional munitions and targeting and everything was still pretty good.

[00:31:24] Like you could take out a bridge or a dam without using a nuclear bomb.

[00:31:27] That's a big part of what led to the dissolution of this program.

[00:31:32] I mean, part of it was that the Cold War was winding down.

[00:31:34] The other part of it was the development of precision-guided munitions, which we all saw really exploded into public consciousness during the Gulf War.

[00:31:43] But now we had these 2,000-pound cruise missiles that can be laser-guided onto targets, which takes away the necessity of having a ground team go there and put a bomb on the target, like physically actually place it.

[00:31:57] So that was a big part of why it ended up getting closed down.

[00:32:01] But also, there's a page or two in that chapter about how the conventional army had the SATA mission also, although theirs was different.

[00:32:10] Around Europe, in Germany specifically, they had what they called prechambers, which was like a manhole cover with a lock on it.

[00:32:18] And if the war was ever happening or about to happen, army engineers would go out there, unlock the prechamber, set the SATA device, get it ticking down, put it in there, lock it, and then roll out.

[00:32:32] And that would blow up the road or the bridge or whatever, wherever that prechamber was.

[00:32:37] So, yeah, there was this theory from the 50s about like, yeah, atomic war, that these are just sort of like weapons that we're going to actually wield against people as opposed to today a deterrent.

[00:32:51] It's not something that we would use in even everything that has happened between Ukraine and Russia and the Western world over the last couple of years.

[00:33:00] I mean, we still have not crossed that threshold, which I think shows that both parties don't want to see that happen.

[00:33:07] Yeah, it's still such a taboo.

[00:33:08] So, even with today, while I doubt operators are lugging around nukes on their backs, Delta Force and some spookier corners of JSOC even still play a major role in counter WMD contingencies and hard target defeat missions.

[00:33:25] Yeah.

[00:33:25] That's always been sort of just a personal favorite interest of mine.

[00:33:29] I was wondering if you had anything you can say about that.

[00:33:31] Yeah.

[00:33:31] So, I mean, Delta has had the counter WMD mission since its inception.

[00:33:36] I mean, they were very early on.

[00:33:38] They were doing training exercises against improvised nuclear devices.

[00:33:43] That was a threat that they were – and people are still concerned about that or the dirty bomb.

[00:33:51] Nowadays, they use the term radiological dispersion device or RDD.

[00:33:57] So, JSOC, Ranger Battalion, and the special forces, they were the commanders in extremist force.

[00:34:03] They are now called the CTAC, or at least – unless they changed it again.

[00:34:07] But very recently, they were called the CTAC, the critical threat advisory companies.

[00:34:11] And they were going to have a counter WMD mission.

[00:34:15] And a lot of these guys, the CTACs, I'm told, spend most of their time underground.

[00:34:19] JSOC also does training exercises deep underground in bunkers out in Nevada where they're like explosively breaching vault doors and things like that and going in and securing – at least in one case.

[00:34:33] I mean, actual nuclear warheads that don't have the fissile material in them.

[00:34:38] I mean, the training is incredibly realistic.

[00:34:40] And some of those mission sets sound like a one-way trip to me, much like the Greenlight mission did.

[00:34:47] But they take it very seriously and they train for it very seriously.

[00:34:51] Another contingency that I know some elements are planning for is what if we see in other countries like China what happened in Ukraine where there's a nuclear power plant?

[00:35:02] The area destabilizes.

[00:35:04] Maybe the bad guys take it over.

[00:35:06] Maybe they don't.

[00:35:07] But the point is that how do we stabilize this facility and prevent it from having a major industrial nuclear accident?

[00:35:17] Do we go in there and secure it and bring in our own scientists to do that?

[00:35:21] Or do we secure it and just enable and help the locals continue to keep it running safely?

[00:35:27] All these questions and the counter WMD mission is incredibly complex.

[00:35:34] And I write in the chapter about the SIF, talk about the training they did for that.

[00:35:39] You know, specifically that first group did.

[00:35:41] They do it in places like Guam in Australia where it was a simulated, again, improvised nuclear device that they would have to go in and neutralize.

[00:35:52] And there would be, you know, radiological material that they would actually employ during these training exercises so that the SIF guys and they would have representatives from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, like vector in, like in real life, they're going to have to vector in on radiological, you know, signatures that are being given off.

[00:36:12] So, yeah, it's a hair-raising mission, but the guys I've talked to also, they feel that it's pretty rewarding, that it's an important mission.

[00:36:21] And, you know, as you can see, these different units are still competing for it.

[00:36:41] So when Delta goes out for a training rotation out to Nevada or White Sands or something and drills this stuff, they're training to hit Russian, Chinese, North Korean bunkers.

[00:36:54] Yeah, for the most part.

[00:36:55] That's what most of these targets are.

[00:36:58] I mean, don't discount that there are other countries, you know, back in the 90s, there was an underground chemical weapon facility in Libya called Tarhuna.

[00:37:06] They were targeting that.

[00:37:08] And they were actually, the plan was to go in on a Marine Corps hovercraft up over the beach and then drive vehicles off the hovercraft to the site.

[00:37:19] And they were going to use industrial drills to drill through the ground down into the facility and then pour an explosive slurry down into the facility and detonate it.

[00:37:29] So that's how elaborate some of these missions get.

[00:37:33] Yeah.

[00:37:33] But yeah, I think primarily when we talk about this mission, we're looking at, you know, major state actors.

[00:37:39] Yeah.

[00:37:40] There's, um, I, I, I'm sure people don't like when it's brought up, but there's been contingencies for Pakistan and stuff on the books for years.

[00:37:47] There is, uh, there's a picture floating around.

[00:37:50] I think I have it somewhere of, um, they look like operators and there's a helicopter landing on top of a semi truck.

[00:37:59] That's that's driving.

[00:38:00] And the operators are getting off with a quickie saw and the saw's all and like cutting through the roof of the vehicle.

[00:38:06] And it's like, what the hell is going on here?

[00:38:08] And then it dawned to me once I read years ago, an article in the New York times where Pakistan was getting upset with us because they were afraid that America was going to come in and steal their nuclear bombs.

[00:38:20] So they were putting them inside, uh, tractor trailers and driving them around town to make sure that we could never had a static location to hit them.

[00:38:29] And you know, that, that the article at the whole thing was leaked to the New York times tells me that the American government was trying to tell the Pakistanis like, Hey, knock it off.

[00:38:37] Lock these things up inside a bunker.

[00:38:39] Stop doing this.

[00:38:40] Yeah.

[00:38:41] But that picture I think demonstrates we were in fact planning for that contingency.

[00:38:46] Yeah.

[00:38:46] I've, I've, I've, I've seen that picture.

[00:38:48] I forget exactly where I saw it, but I've seen it.

[00:38:50] I, I showed it to my friend too, a while ago.

[00:38:52] I was like, what do you think you're doing with this?

[00:38:53] Guess.

[00:38:54] I mean, I guess better semis in like jingle trucks or something.

[00:38:57] Yeah.

[00:38:57] What are you gonna do?

[00:38:58] So, uh, throughout the book, I think we see attention of special forces adapting to unconventional threats and environments and preserving a clear focus on a particular mission or skillset.

[00:39:11] Whether it's detachment A's urban operations, detachment Korea's unlikely diplomacy or green lights, extreme risks.

[00:39:18] These stories reflect a wide range of different roles.

[00:39:22] As U S special operations community evolves beyond the war on terror.

[00:39:26] Uh, do you think there's a risk of losing this adaptability if missions are overly specialized or is it time for an hour focus to avoid spreading teams too thin?

[00:39:37] Yeah, that's a great question.

[00:39:39] So there's a couple of different ways to look at it.

[00:39:42] One of the ways I would look at it is let's look at the tasks that are already assigned to a special forces team.

[00:39:48] As far as their mission essential task list, I think they have like seven or eight different missions ranging from direct action to special reconnaissance to foreign internal defense and unconventional warfare.

[00:39:59] On top of maintaining proficiency at those tasks, they also have to maintain their language abilities, which is very difficult to maintain, uh, especially in a language like, uh, Arabic or Mandarin.

[00:40:11] They also have to maintain their infiltration techniques, um, free fall parachuting, uh, subsurface with, uh, rebreathers, combat divers.

[00:40:21] Mountaineering is another one, uh, all the work that they have to do with vehicles and static line parachuting.

[00:40:27] Uh, and then you have other specialized training, you know, intelligence based training.

[00:40:31] There's a lot going on.

[00:40:33] Um, and you know, sometimes this stuff requires more training than there are training days on the calendar year.

[00:40:40] Um, and that's a real problem I think for these guys.

[00:40:44] So you have to keep that in mind when you start thinking about adding additional tasks.

[00:40:49] Uh, right now they are looking at adding additional roles to the ODA.

[00:40:54] Like there might be in a larger ODA or, or a few more people on an ODA there, you know, the 12 man ODA is like the ride or die for a lot of guys, but they are doing experiments looking at adding like someone who specializes in robotics and drones.

[00:41:11] They're looking at things like cyber.

[00:41:13] They're looking at things like, um, even like space force.

[00:41:16] Like, do we need a space force liaison?

[00:41:19] You know, this sort of stuff.

[00:41:20] I definitely think that special operations has a problem of, of chasing the shiny object.

[00:41:25] And, and it's a little depressing, you know, when you get, you know, start to learn a little bit about how much of it really is about money.

[00:41:32] And I don't mean like people personally enriching themselves.

[00:41:35] I just mean the way these units compete for funding and it's like, okay, we're going to do that because there's money in it.

[00:41:41] Right.

[00:41:41] There's funding in it.

[00:41:42] And that, that funds our mission.

[00:41:44] And I think special forces would be better suited to choose a lane.

[00:41:49] And if that lane is unconventional warfare, as they keep saying it is, that's what they want to do.

[00:41:54] Then you might have to let that direct action mission go.

[00:41:57] I mean, you're not going to be able to, and I think it plays out in the book.

[00:42:00] You're never going to be able to let it go completely because these teams are tasked with training locals to do direct action raids.

[00:42:07] So that means they have to know how to do it and be proficient on it themselves.

[00:42:11] Um, but then the mission creep is, do we need a JSOC relationship?

[00:42:15] Do we need this counter terror, you know, a unilateral counterterrorism mission?

[00:42:19] And I think that's, I think that that mission was finally taking away, um, from the SIF.

[00:42:26] But with the SeaTac, I think what you see is special forces trying to maintain that capability in hopes that that relationship comes back.

[00:42:35] That's interesting.

[00:42:37] I always like cringe a bit when I hear it suggested that like the war on terror was like the golden age for SOF.

[00:42:45] I mean, yeah, there was a lot of money.

[00:42:47] There was a lot of clout, but, um, a lot of guys didn't come home.

[00:42:50] And there's a lot of guys who came home damaged in ways that you can't really see, you know, and like thinking at how some of those, how hard some of those ODAs and those squadrons were run just rotating in and out.

[00:43:02] Right.

[00:43:03] So when you think, okay, moving out of the war on terror, what is the role for the special operations community for SOCOM in a great power conflict?

[00:43:10] And I mean, you, okay.

[00:43:12] You have like, I don't know, the A-10.

[00:43:14] Okay.

[00:43:14] Justify how that gets used in the, in the Pacific.

[00:43:17] Right.

[00:43:17] And there's the tyranny of distance and all kinds of like the think Tankistan buzzwords and everything that come into that.

[00:43:23] I mean, you think of a great power conflict and it's like, okay, big army has their role.

[00:43:29] Big Navy has their role.

[00:43:30] Big air force has their role.

[00:43:32] Big Navy has their role.

[00:43:32] What's the role for SOCOM, do you think in a great power conflict?

[00:43:37] Oh, I mean, it's definitely a bit of a role reversal.

[00:43:39] I mean, during a counterinsurgency or counterterrorism campaign, special operations, in my opinion, should be the main effort.

[00:43:46] And in many ways, in some ways it was through the war on terror.

[00:43:51] But during a conventional conflict, those roles will be reversed and special forces will have the role of supporting the conventional military and supporting the conventional forces and enabling them and helping them do their mission.

[00:44:06] And some of that will be through disruption and confusion and disinformation, strategic sabotage, rangers jumping in and, you know, assaulting targets in places that they're not expected.

[00:44:21] And ODAs maintaining that those liaison relationships working by, with, and through, whether it's the Koreans or the Vietnamese or Filipinos, they're going to have those roles.

[00:44:33] So I think that's going to be the big difference between, you know, a major conventional conflict that we're looking at today and what's been going on in the last 20 years.

[00:44:44] But I mean, it's still a very important, an important mission, and it's a noble mission to support, you know, the young soldiers out there that are going to be doing most of the fighting and dying, whether it's on an aircraft carrier or a conventional infantry unit.

[00:44:58] And, you know, those special operations missions that would be conducted during a conventional conflict are going to be far more dangerous and more deadly than what we faced the last 20 years.

[00:45:10] And yeah, same problem.

[00:45:12] I mean, a lot of those teams, I imagine, would not be coming back in a major conventional war.

[00:45:17] You've reported on this a bit over the last couple of years since the war in Ukraine started, all the, you know, various mysterious fires and things going boom inside Russia.

[00:45:32] Is that sort of a return to form for Sof and a great power conflict?

[00:45:37] I mean, it looks a lot like what Detachment A in Berlin was set out to do.

[00:45:43] I, yes, in some ways it is, although this is a more of a title 50 intelligence service covert action program and special forces would certainly love to get in on that.

[00:45:57] I think nobody's getting sheep tipped.

[00:45:58] They want to, you know, the CIA always requests, well, not always, but mostly requests JSOC guys.

[00:46:06] Like it's one of these things where they don't want to work with the pores, you know, when really the, when the, in some cases,

[00:46:13] JSOC's the right choice and other cases, the ODA is the right choice.

[00:46:16] You know, it's, it's finding the right tool for the right job, but you have seen these, um, even, even in a non-classified environment,

[00:46:24] ODAs working with Ukrainians either in third countries or talking to them remotely, um, and doing that kind of mentoring.

[00:46:31] Um, so yeah, in, in some ways it is.

[00:46:33] And I mean, the technology changes, but the missions remain relatively the same.

[00:46:39] I mean, blowing up a railroad line is kind of the same that it was when Lawrence of Arabia did it, you know, over a hundred years ago.

[00:46:46] Yeah.

[00:46:47] Yeah.

[00:46:47] Yeah.

[00:46:48] No, it was very cool.

[00:46:49] I think it's something to see as, um, I mean, there's a lot of other nuggets and stuff, um, in the book that I encourage folks to check out.

[00:46:56] It was just sort of, uh, I don't know, everything old is new again.

[00:46:59] It was sort of the final takeaway I had from the, from the book.

[00:47:02] Anything, uh, anything else you'd like to add or touch on that we haven't gotten to?

[00:47:06] Man, that's all that.

[00:47:07] I mean, that's it.

[00:47:09] I mean, this, this was like a, a labor of love for me.

[00:47:12] I really am proud to be able to present this book and to tell all these veterans stories.

[00:47:18] It means a lot to me.

[00:47:19] And I hope that the guys who, um, participated in these programs would feel proud to give this book to their kid or their grandkid and be like, this is a part, you know, this is what I was a part of.

[00:47:30] This is what I did.

[00:47:31] And, uh, there's pos, there's a possibility for a volume two.

[00:47:35] If there was a, if I were to add a chapter, um, I probably would have added a chapter on all the stuff that the special forces teams did in Central America in the eighties.

[00:47:44] But then I real, I realized that would be years more of research and that chapter would turn into a book itself.

[00:47:50] So, okay, here we go.

[00:47:51] This is these five chapters of this book and maybe there'll be something in the future.

[00:47:56] Yeah.

[00:47:56] All right.

[00:47:57] Well, we'll definitely wait for that one.

[00:47:58] Jack Murphy, the book is out, uh, December 9th.

[00:48:01] We'll have links to that in the show notes, uh, links to your socials, team house, uh, the high side.

[00:48:08] Great stuff.

[00:48:09] Awesome.

[00:48:10] Awesome work there.

[00:48:11] Thanks for all you do.

[00:48:11] It's great talking to you finally.

[00:48:12] Yeah.

[00:48:13] Thank you, Matt.

[00:48:14] Appreciate it, man.

[00:48:15] Um, as you can tell, I get excited talking about this stuff.

[00:48:17] Yes.

[00:48:18] Yeah, no, me too.

[00:48:18] Me too.

[00:48:19] Especially the, especially the nukes.

[00:48:20] I get, I get very excited about that.

[00:48:22] Well, good talk to you.

[00:48:24] We'll, uh, see you soon.

[00:48:25] All right, man.

[00:48:26] Stay in touch.

[00:48:26] Thank you.

[00:48:27] Yep.

[00:48:57] Thanks for listening.

[00:48:59] This is Secrets and Spies.