And never once, never once in all those years have I heard Moki Martin complain about his lot in life. Admiral William H. McRaven is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Make Your Bed and the New York Times bestsellers Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations and The Hero Code: Lessons Learned from Lives Well Lived. Im listening to the radio. "There now has been an accumulation through the course of 2011 of very significant losses in core al-Qaeda and also the affiliates in Yemen and some of the other offshoots," Petraeus says, citing two al-Qaeda figures, Atiyah Abdel Rahman in Pakistan and Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, whose deaths have not been officially acknowledged as JSOC's work. Admiral, Youve just written a book, The Hero Code: Lessons Learned from Lives Well Lived. And your father served in World War Two, and you share memories of him and his fellow service members swapping stories about their missions. Four-star Admiral William McRaven shares stories of heroism from his service to America. ), (See TIME's 2008 Person of the Year: Barack Obama. . In an interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep, McRaven describes what should have been a "routine parachute jump." Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. commander under the obama administration. You know, you were also in charge of a very successful high seas rescue of Captain Phillips, who was held hostage by pirates off the coast of Somalia. And so what we had to do pretty quickly was to make sure he understood that he was a prisoner of the United States and we were going to treat him well. MCRAVEN: In Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, you saw these horrific injuries. 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. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. We go through this cycle every couple of decades. We had a helicopter with an optical ball on it that was providing our ISR, our video coverage, if you will. We always find heroes in the next generation that are more than willing to serve and sacrifice. How was it that you came to be inside Iraq, though, on the day that Saddam Hussein was captured? This is a disturbing phenomenon to me because I dont believe our democracy long range is going to work unless theres an attitude in our society and particularly among our young, that they have an obligation of service. MCRAVEN: 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. We actually didnt have a drone. 10 years after the operation that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, President Obama and Admiral Bill McRaven, the commander of the special operations force. Yeah, well, having done thousands of missions before, you know, this was not an overly complicated mission. The Navy brass had established a secret counterterrorist unit under Commander Richard Marcinko, a creative, mercurial and extravagantly profane enthusiast of commando arts. The DIB, on which McRaven served, was created during the Obama administration by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Judge plans to appoint Special Master to Dominion, Fox News . Then it was back to operations. I don't know whether I've been knocked unconscious. McRaven says it is just one part of a broader offensive against America's foes. Yeah, it was interesting. Did you actually ever think that he would be captured alive? Will they be, you know, somebody of importance? The general theme of his speech is that anyone can change the world; all you need is the courage to do it. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. But the fact of the matter is, I didnt want to engage with him. But I knew immediately the guys were okay. "If I were to react to a ship takedown in a foreign port or an embassy in a foreign country, the Eagles would stick out like a" O.K., well, that's as much of the quote as you get in TIME. But the fact of the matter is, I didnt want to engage with him. False, Marcinko says. So for 30 days, I came in every day to check on him and then would leave the small room without engaging him. He's a former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, best-selling author, and organizer of the operation that killed the world's most wanted terrorist. So, yes, we believed we had bin Laden. The accident happened while he was participating in a Naval Special Warfare exercise involving a 1,000-foot free-fall jump. We were holding our breath . But, you know, I think leaders know how to recognize other leaders. We have had a lot of times in the course of the last 20 years where we thought we had the right individual and then we get them back and we look at everything from their fingerprints to their DNA and we find out its the wrong guy. Thornton is a former Navy SEAL that was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during a mission in the Vietnam War. So he lay down next to the body and sure enough, the body was about two inches longer. I mean, he was, to me, the gold standard in Navy SEALs. While the rest of the Pentagon is scaling back spending, special-operations forces are asking for more. 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. I had a medical professional, either a corpsman, a medic or a doctor in the room with him 24/7, along with a security guard. And when it did, the leg with the pilot chute went one direction, and the leg with the risers went the other direction and kind of snapped me in two. University of Texas System Chancellor William H. McRaven, a retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral, leads one of the nation's largest and most respected systems of higher education. Admiral William H. McRaven is the ninth commander of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). But having been through these missions before, what I always know is, you know, you really have to sit down with the operators. He took the special out of special warfare.". When the chute blossomed the two parts went different ways and took his legs with them. Now, what I am getting, of course, is reports from the ground force commander when shots are fired. And I thought it was a fair question, and it's a question that needed to be answered. And of course, it started in SEAL training. 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 youve probably seen the iconic photo from Pete Souza. And that was pretty evident. 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. Retired Adm. William McRaven and Nicholas Rasmussen, former National Counterterrorism Center director, discuss the raid on the Usama bin Laden compound in Pakistan in commemoration of the 10th . And at one point in time, a senior chief petty officer, Navy SEAL senior chief petty officer, he said, Admiral, I don't get it; why are we still doing this? But I'm stunned. 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. President George W. Bush had asked Downing to inaugurate a new position as Deputy National Security Adviser for Combatting Terrorism. Can you reflect on that moment and what it was like for you, what you took in at that moment? And just something said, hey, we got to turn around, weve got to get back, because, you know, tonights going to be the night. The drill was to jump at 13,000 feet and once you dropped to 5,500 feet, you pulled your ripcord. This Week on a special, Independence Day Firing Line. You know, he ate as well if not better than a lot of the soldiers that we had. A hard landing off to the side. But he was not going to have outside contact with any of his former Iraqi leaders. I knew that there would have to be some sort of follow on action against Al-Qaeda. 2. He was running special operations in Iraq when Task Force 121, a clandestine unit under JSOC, tracked Saddam Hussein to his spider hole. I said, hey, son, how tall are you? Take us inside that closet as you watched your SEALS enter Pakistan and clear the compound floor by floor. But it was a relatively straightforward mission in terms of the first part of it. What were you feeling in those moments? "We do raids. . It's one of the tales he recounts in his new memoir, titled "Sea Stories: My Life In Special Forces" (ph). McRaven and his four SEAL teams had trained for such a moment, but it was all he could do to follow the news in bed. Admiral McRaven also explains how it isn't necessary to change everyone's lives for the world to change. "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. INSKEEP: You're in a command position in Iraq, in a senior position in Iraq. I had a medical professional, either a corpsman, a medic or a doctor in the room with him 24/7, along with a security guard. And so the president asked me, he says, Well, Bill, do you know whether or not its bin Laden? I said, Sir, I dont. Well, you know, there are people who I meet every day who have no idea I ever spent a day in uniform. HOOVER: Duty is among the virtues that you write about in the hero code. On the downside, "relative superiority" does not last long. You were in the joint operation center and you heard the C squadron commander who was on the ground saying, we have Jackpot. Take us inside the Joint Operation Center at that moment. . As you point out. You know, when we stood up an all volunteer force, I remember thinking initially, well, this will never work. I didnt want to because I didnt want him to think that he was somehow important enough to be able to engage El Jefe, as he called me. And to this day, Moki oversees the triathlon that we run every year as part of our underwater demolition team and our SEAL fraternity. The mishap happened when Chief . MCRAVEN: No, I dont think that contributed to his decline. Never once did he say, why me? 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. But in the end, you never addressed him directly. What kind of intelligence did we get off the target? Take us inside that closet as you watched your SEALS enter Pakistan and clear the compound floor by floor. 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. And, of course, that generation, you know, they were children of the Great Depression. I loved the sense of patriotism. Never once did he say, why me? 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. And every day when I would come in, he would try to engage me. MCRAVEN: Yeah, I mean, even to this day, the impact of Moki Martin is with me every day. "So now I am tangled up in my parachute, falling towards the ground. I mean, he was, to me, the gold standard in Navy SEALs. As you point out. "That was his favorite!" Michael E. Thornton - BUD/S Class 49. He also explains how giving up isn't an option no matter what you're going through. So anybody that claims that theyve got a helmet cam video, nobody was wearing helmet cams. 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