Inside JSOC’s Most Dangerous Mission Ever | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS
Jack Murphy joins us to break down his new High Side investigation into JSOC’s planned mission to recover highly enriched uranium from Iran, a raid some insiders compared to “Eagle Claw 2.0.” He explains why the operation would have required far more than a small special operations team, the risks of fighting in a CBRN environment, and why the mission may have been too dangerous to greenlight.
The High Side:
https://substack.com/@thehighside/note/p-192763347?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=mr77m
Jack's new book:
https://a.co/d/0gywUGvn
00:00 - Inside JSOC’s Planned Iran WMD Raid
01:21 - Why Some Called It “Eagle Claw 2.0”
03:41 - Why Getting Into Iran Was Only Half the Problem
04:46 - Not a Quick Hit: Why This Required 1,000+ Troops
06:40 - Moving Highly Enriched Uranium Out of Iran
07:37 - Fighting Through a CBRN Environment
08:04 - The Libya WMD Plan That Foreshadowed Iran
09:55 - The Limits of Small Special Operations Teams
11:10 - Why JSOC Wanted to Capture the Uranium
12:29 - The Dirty Bomb Risk of Leaving Material Behind
14:56 - Why Trump Did Not Greenlight the Raid
18:14 - JSOC vs. CENTCOM Tensions Over the Mission
20:37 - Iran’s Air Defenses and MQ-9 Reaper Losses
25:20 - JSOC’s Counter-WMD Mission Before 9/11
32:10 - Pakistan’s Fear of a U.S. Nuclear Weapons Raid
"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.
Speaker 1: On one hand, it's about a type of mission that
Jaysak has been training for since its inception, which is
counter proliferation counter weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 2: But it also zeros in specifically on the.
Speaker 1: Case of Iran and the plans and the training exercises
that Jaysak has conducted to potentially go into Iran by
force and remove the highly enriched uranium, and this is
an operation that would be incredibly complex and incredibly dangerous.
Some people in the command began referring to it as
Eagle Claw two point zero, which is a reference to
Operation Eagle Claw in nineteen eighty in which Delta Force
and the Rangers went to rescue hostages that were being
held in Tehran. The whole thing ended in a fiasco
at a desert stage in ground called Desert One, where
a helicopter and aircraft were blown up. Other helicops were
disabled by a sandstorm.
Speaker 2: The operation fell apart for a variety of different reasons.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were technical and mechanical, not because
the guys didn't have the balls to do it. They
certainly did.
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, Welcome to a new episode special episode of
Eyes on Jill Politics. I'm joined with Jack Murphy, investigative journalist, podcaster,
forty three year old. Happy birthday, Jack Jacksonday birthday. Today,
you guys have a new article you and Sean Naylor
on the High Side about basically detailing the entire raid
that's been planned since the beginning of the war to
go in and grab the highly enriched geranium out of
a I guess if you once you dig into the article,
it's two sites that they were really planning on hitting,
but there's there's Intelli just suggesting maybe there it's at
three sites, so obviously an incredibly complicated uh mission. Yeah,
the article's great. Check it out at the high Side,
The high Side. That link is down in the description. Uh,
it's stuff that no other journalists I feel like get
so really good shit. I'm sure that people are freaking
out down and down in Where's Jaysuck based out of
Tampa Brag. I'm sure they're not happy there today because
you go into some good detail, like you name the
squadrons and everything, but like, just give me the whole
give us like the you know, quick pitch on what
the article is about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the story is called Iran WMD rate inside
Jaysock's most challenging mission yet. I wrote it with my
colleague Sean Naylor at the high Side. Shawn's on vacation,
so he's not here today, so I'm the best of yet.
Speaker 3: Sorry, guys, Sean's working on his tan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope so.
Speaker 1: I And so the story is about On one hand,
it's about a type of mission that JAYSAK has been
training for since its inception, which is counter proliferation counter
weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 2: But it also zeros in specifically on the case of.
Speaker 1: Iran, and the plans and the training exercises that JAYSAK
has conducted to potentially go into Iran by force and
remove the highly enriched uranium, and this is an operation
that would be incredibly complex and incredibly dangerous. Some people
in the command began referring to it as Eagle Claw
two point zero, which is a reference to Operation Eagle
Claw in nineteen eighty in which Delta Force and the
Rangers went to rescue hostages that were being held in Tehran.
The whole thing ended in a fiasco at a desert
stage in ground called Desert One, where a helicopter and
aircraft were blown up. Other helicopters were disabled by a sandstorm.
The operation fell apart for a variety of different reasons.
A lot of them were technical and mechanical, not because
the guys didn't have the balls to do it. They
certainly did, but you ran into these insurmountable problems. And
I think this operation, you know, I had a Delta
Force veteran one time. Tell me he's like, you know,
Operation Eagle Claw was so complex that even today, with
all the fancy helicopters we have and great technology, we
probably still couldn't pull something like that off. And I
think that was a thought process that went, you know,
it kind of carried forward into this operation. And again
the guys, you know, the commands were certainly very eager
to get in and do this mission. But there's also
some trepidation in some corners about what the likely prospects
are once the operators get on the ground. What I
mean that is the movement into I ran into a
denied area is difficult. You have to get there, You
have to establish some sort of a stage and ground.
This operation would require an improvised landing strip if nothing else.
You'd have to land aircrafts. For two reasons, The first
is that you would have to land all kinds of
engineering equipment and bulldozers and excavators and stuff like that,
because the tunnels that lead into these underground facilities have
been collapsed and destroyed. Largely they were destroyed by Operation
Midnight Hammer a few months prior to all of this
kicking off, where we went in and bombed these sites,
but there are also reports that the Iranians went in
themselves and collapsed and booby trapped some of the tunnels.
So you have to move in heavy excavating equipment. That's
not a jastock mission per se. That's more of a
just a conventional army or a Navy operation where you
haven't bring these guys in.
Speaker 3: So it's not just like one hundred operators going in
doing the thing getting out correct.
Speaker 1: It's not the bin laden raid where like fifteen guys
are going to go in there and like save America
and kick some ass. Right. This would require probably in
the neighborhood of a thousand of fifteen hundred boots on
the ground. You would have rangers doing an outer court
on and then you would have in this case it
was a development group Sealed Team six had the lead
on this one. They would be the assault squadron that
goes in and if there's of course a security element,
they're going to be eliminated by the operators. And then
at some point the excavating excavating is going to have
to take place that we talked about, and then there's
an unit called the twenty first EOD Company, which would
go in and actually secure the device. They're the ones
that have the actual WMD training to do that, and
then it becomes the whole process of getting it out
of there. We're told it's something in the neighborhood, like
three hundred to four hundred kilograms of highly enriched uranium
that would need to be moved. There's a separate, yet
another element that would handle that, called the Technical Escort Unit,
and they are the guys that manage and move nuclear
materials physsile materials from point A to point B. They're
part of the US military. They didn't They've done operations
in the past. For instance, they removed highly enriched uranium
from Kazakhstan in the nineteen nineties, and even this one,
this flew under the radar, but I mean, the US
government reported this themselves in a press release. Just in
the like maybe a month and a half ago, we
removed highly enriched uranium from venezuela from a student like
a academic student reactor or something like that that they
had there. And again that would be the technical escort
unit that would manage that and the Venezuela thing that's
done in the Kazakhstan mission that I mentioned. These previous operations,
they were done in cooperation with the local.
Speaker 4: Government, right yeah, environment, yeah, right, right, We're going to
go in, We're going to take this dangerous material off
of your hands, and in return, you know, you're going
to get favorable economic deals or whatever whatever the case is.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, this would be by force. Now, the whole
scheme of the operation that I just laid out, the
technical escort unit brings the uranium out. It has to
be flown out on fixed wing because of the static
electricity created by rotor blades. That's a whole other thing. Now,
everything I'm describing in this Iran mission would also be
conducted in a CBRN environment you know, chemical, radiological, biological,
and nuclear, and that would require wearing protective suits, you know,
the protective masks the whole nine yards and while you're
doing that, you're having to assault, excavate, secure, you know,
render safe all sorts of different devices.
Speaker 3: And hold off the Iranian military from coming in be know,
basically attacking you the whole day.
Speaker 1: While they're lobbing drones and ballistic missiles at you and
all kinds of fun stuff. Right, So it's an incredibly
complicated mission. It's Jaysak has trained extensively for this type
of mission. However, as far as I've been able to ascertain,
they never really trained for an operation where they first
had to do the excavating of the site, where they
had to like dig it up. There are some past
examples where this was looked if something similar was looked
into in the nineteen nineties, there's the Tarhuna facility in
Libya where Gadaffi was running a underground chemical weapons facility,
and this is really interesting. The plan to go and
deal with that was for the Delta Force guys to
goad vehicles onto these huge Marine corps hovercraft, drive them,
you know, through the sea the Mediterranean up onto the beaches,
and then go as far inland as they can stop,
drop ramp, unload the vehicles. Then the vehicles drive to
the facility and they would be taking with them, towing
with them industrial mining equipment, industrial drills, you know these
things that would you know, go vertical and you drill
down into the earth. And what they were going to
do was go on the top of the facility, drill
down into it, and then using a cement mixer truck,
they would pour an explosive slurry down the hole into
the facility and detonate it and destroy the facility. But
there's also again there's complications there. They carried out feasibility
studies at the Nevada test site on this drilling into
bedrock to see how fast it can be done, and
even with the best equipment and the best professionals doing it,
it could take weeks. Yeah, so all of these things
are much more complicated, and you just run into these
sort of insurmountable problems. But I think one of the
other things that this article explores a little bit is
that there are limitations on what small teams of special
operators can realistically accomplish. You just run into these problems
where you know, there's only so much that they can do, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, they basically how it read was essentially
like you know, Silver Squadron ragor Battalion and maybe some
elements from eighty second Airborne or whatever would shoot their
way in to get to Isfahan and either four dour
natons I don't know which, I know Isfahan was probably
the main one, and then set up a perimeter, a
security perimeter for weeks at a time so they could
have a construction project going on. Right, Like that sounds insane,
right because we al know that, like or at least
we think that, like you know, Jaysack and special operations
in general is usually used outside of like Iraq in
Afghanistan where it was more long term, but like they're
used for quick hits, like that's their whole, that's their
bread and butter, that's where they make their money essentially,
and then to send in a bunch of like the
twenty first EOD guys and equit me. It's literally like
set shooting everybody up, setting up a construction site for
like a month probably yeah, and hopefully fingers crossed, we
could get all the stuff out and bring it to Washington, right,
is like the lab where they could do like the
you know, the investigation on where it's from and all
that stuff and just you know, securely retain it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's another aspect of this operation that has changed
over the decades is that in the beginning, in the
early years, the idea was interception or sabotage destruction, that
you would go in and destroy the facilities, like we
talked to Mountain Libya. What it evolved into over the
years was that Jaysok would actually go in secure the
physile material, secure the warhead, whatever it was, and actually
take it out with them.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And from what I can tell this is this would
be done for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2: You know, if it's uh, you.
Speaker 1: Know, a Russian nuclear warhead or something like this, we
would want to obviously study that and reverse engineer it.
Speaker 3: In detail, you know, see where they got their stuff from, right,
obviously like.
Speaker 1: To see how we can defeat that kind of technology.
But also yes, if you know, if we went into
Iran and we secured physile materials, we would want to
study those materials in the lab here in the United
States and determine if another country gave that to them.
Speaker 2: You know, and again I do not know this for
a fact.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you know, theoretically, if like Russia or
China were to give them physile material, if like something
like the aq con network were to like render that
that sort of material to them, that's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a really interesting quote that you just posted
when you reposted the article just now. I don't think
this is an operation. I don't think this operation has
been done before, even in a training environment, said the
former defense contractor, adding that if the facility itself was
buried in rubble jaysock would probably just completely destroy what
remained with explosives rather than try and dig out the
fissile material. That sounds insane too, Like, how is that
you know it's already covered up, It's already for the
most part buried anyway. Also in the article, you also
mentioned about like the worry about even taking a couple
of kilograms of enrich uranium and making a dirty bomb.
Wouldn't that also, like, you know, there's probably environmental factors
to be thinking about if you're blowing up fissile material
in place, right. I mean, sure it's on the ground,
so maybe it'll be a little bit less impact, you know,
impact the environment, but still there's dangers there.
Speaker 2: If that course of action was taken.
Speaker 1: I think the idea would be that you'd fully collapse
what remained of the tunnels and just entomb the material inside,
which arguably is more of a delaying measure. It's not
really a final resolution to the problem. The problem being
that you can't really just leave highly enriched uranium under
the deserts of Iran forever, because if some idiot were
to go and dig that up, doesn't have to be
the Iranian government. I mean, say some terrorist organization even
went and digs that up and just a few milligrams
of it could cause a serious issue. Like you said,
if you blew up a dirty bomb, you know in
you know, Eastern Europe or Western Europe or wherever, you know,
you could cause a huge disaster. So you can't really
just leave the material out there. Someone has to secure it. Now,
maybe we reach a deal with the Iranians and they
secure it. I know at one point there's even talk
with the Chinese government that they might go in and
secure it, or we could reach a deal with the
Iranians where our forces go in there peacefully and secure it,
like we did in Kazakhstan years ago. Yeah, but you
can't really just leave the material out there under the
desert forever. But for the time being, it seems like
that's kind of what's going to happen at least for
the foreseeable future, that we're going to monitor these sites
with satellites and if anyone started moving excavating equipment in there,
we would be able to detect that and pick it
up pretty quickly. Because, you know, the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, Dan Cain, got briefed up on this and
he went and briefed President Trump, and the President decided
not to greenlight this operation, largely for the reasons that
we've been talking about that it's high risk, there could
be quite a few American casualties. And there are some
other things to some opsect things that I think some
people in the community are glad we're not going to
have to use. There are things that relate to like
electronic intelligence and things like this. Basically capabilities we would
use that we would only be able to use once
because our adversaries would afterwards understood what understand what we did,
and they would adapt. So there are kind of high
end capabilities are considered to be like one and done's
you know, you're only going to get one shot at it,
and so I think perhaps this is the administration coming
to terms with what we were discussing that there's limitations
on what you can accomplish, that Jaysak isn't just the
easy button you can press to resolve tricky foreign policy issues.
Throughout President Trump's two administrations, there have been a number
of you know, lightning fast operations that were highly successful,
the killing of al Baghdadi and Syria, the killing of
cost Some Solimani in Iraq, then more recently the Maduro
capture in Venezuela, and then even Operation Midnight Hammer was
kind of you know, quick airstrikes. There wasn't really any
downside for the United States per se. But with this
particular operation, now you're coming up against that wall where
it's like, okay, we're not going to be able to
just helicopter, you know, twenty five operators in to kick
some ass and come home. Like it's it's a little
bit more complicated than that.
Speaker 3: I mean, you kind of see it a little bit.
What happened with the F fifteen pilot that got the
F fifteen that got shot down in the wizzow that
was out there for I can't even remember what it
was like almost a week, right he was out there
and no, just like I'm sorry, yeah, two days. But
like the operation that Jaysack went under, you undertook essentially,
you know, it was not easy. It didn't seem you
lost a lot of assets. Thankfully no one died on
our side, but still, like think about that, do you
know essentially doing the same thing, right, they wanted to
land fixed wing airplanes, they did it got stuck. They
got stuck in the sand essentially, so they had to improvise.
Uh So, just thinking about the scale and the scope
of what this would entail, it sounds crazy. It sounds
like it's it also like kind of mirrors or parallels,
Like everyone was talking about car Island and stuff like that,
Like taking carg Island. It's like, okay, yeah, we'll send
like five hundred one thousand marines in there, secure the island,
take it. But then they're literally getting pounded until for
what until when?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I also did like the sub little subplot drama
in terms of like the JSOCK officers and stuff like that,
who were like, yeah, no, we could totally do this,
like this would easy, you know, And I also like,
I want you to talk a little bit about the uh,
the friction between like Jysock and sent Coom specifically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the issue was that, Yes, I mean the the
JSOK headshed sounds by all accounts pretty eager to go
ahead and do this. They wanted to get on with
the mission and get it done. H They've been kind
of on standby for this mission for about three months,
which is kind of unusual to have Jasock ford deployed.
Speaker 2: For such a long period of time.
Speaker 1: I think they had to issue a bunch of waivers
just to keep them forward deployed that long.
Speaker 3: The question Jack starta there is because like the Jaysak
guys are supposed to like continue to rotate into like
the hot like you know, into another job. You know,
like is that it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have to maintain a high state of readiness
and you can't. You have to rotate the guys on
and off that high state of readiness so that they
can do their training, they can go on leave, their
professional development, et cetera. So there's this rotation schedule with
the different squadrons and the different ranger battalions. You know,
as we talked about, you know, Jaysak is kind of
tailor designed for highly precise surgical operations that happen, uh,
you know, during a period of darkness. They're not designed
for like long duration operations. That's more of like a
special forces mission, a conventional military mission.
Speaker 2: Even rangers, you know, bring.
Speaker 1: A lot more assets to the table for like a
long duration mission. But so yeah, Jaysock was eager to
get on with it, but Sentcom wanted to that is,
Central Command, the overall combatant command over the Middle East,
was more interested in prioritizing other targets. There's also a
thought that all kinds of triggers would need to be
met in the lead up to executing this operation, that
we had to do more things to eliminate Iranian air
defense and their various military capabilities before we even attempted
this mission. So, just as an example, JAYSAK had two
Reaper drones circling objectives that they wanted to hit that
they were interested in in Iran and they wanted like
that kind of like persistent twenty four hour eye in
the sky over those targets. And two of those drones
got shot down by the Iranians. And I'm not sure
the precise number. I think since the war started, we've
lost like fifteen reapers or something like that. So this
is this is a different kind of war. This is
not Afghanistan or Iraq, where we had uncontested airspace, and
so this is kind of like where the friction kind
of developed, I think a little bit between common Jaysock
and uh. But now we're at this point where it
seems increasingly clear this operation simply isn't going to be
executed and it's simply on standby as like a deterrent
to like rid your finger at a ram, Like, hey,
you better cut a deal with that.
Speaker 3: We're ready to go.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, because I've been told that the forward deployed
Jaysak guys and their attachments and abors and so forth
are already starting to trickle back to the United States
because this forward deployment was impacting mission readiness for so long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, like, I mean, I guess it hasn't changed much, right,
But even during Afghanistan, in Iraq, like and Syria, you know,
Jaysock and Ranger Battalion deployments were usually like three months
give or take maybe four, So we're like coming up
to that. So it's understandable why, like, you know, they
want to bring people back and maybe rotate them out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some guys were afraid that this whole thing was
going to turn into like their delay. I meant to
Cyprus after Gaza happened, and they spent and I think
they may have been.
Speaker 2: Spent something like.
Speaker 1: I don't have the number in front of me, but
I think it was a couple of hundred.
Speaker 2: Days that they were so long, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and all that standing by to stand by, and
the only people who got to play on the Gaza
thing were the TFO guys. So, I mean, I guess
the you know, the upside is hard to see an upside,
but you know, the F fifteen pilot getting shot down
and the Wizzo, the Jaysok guys did go out there
and get to you know, do their thing and rescue
that guy.
Speaker 3: So there were elements from that Jaysock squadron that was
waiting for the highly enriched mission that went in for
for the fifteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were elements of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also just to remind everybody, when the Jaysock
deployed after October seventh and the Gaza War started, that
was for the potential of going into evacuate embassies right
and and get hostages.
Speaker 1: And hostages out of Gaza.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's a huge article also on the high Side.
Speaker 1: About that Gaza deployment that I wrote a few years
ago when it happened.
Speaker 3: When you mentioned the TFO guys, like TFO guys were on.
Speaker 1: The ground, Uh so, yeah in Israel, yes, And what
was going on was that they were working with the Israelis,
and the Israelis would in turn be sending they would
be sending their you know, spies, their surrogates and so
on into Gaza. And what the TFO guys were fielding
where they were fielding to the Israelis highly classified technology,
signals intercept technology that used like some sort of AI
on it.
Speaker 2: It was like some it was the most sensitive stuff.
Speaker 1: We've had, I'm told, and we're giving that to them
and like not even telling them what it was or
how it worked. Just like here's the on button, like
when you get where you're going, just flip it on
and then flip it off and come back and we'll
take it.
Speaker 3: And of course, yeah, the Israelis didn't, didn't and see
what the fuck that was about?
Speaker 1: For sure, No, I'm sure, I mean they know the deal,
of course. But yeah, so the TFO guys got to
go out there and do some stuff. I mean, when
it first happened, I was told there's a TFO bird
that got diverted from the Black Sea over Ukraine stuff
down to Gaza. Had to fly all the way down
and start doing coverage on that. I mean, we sent
so much air assets to Gaza. I mean the amount
of drones were flying over were insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, funny you mentioned that, like that TFO team got
diverted from Black Sea to Gaza. The Silver Squadron or
Seal Team six and Jaysock their mission. They were prepping
for something having to do with North Korea before the
Iran stuff popped off. You have any idea what that
was about.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there was a specific training scenario
or like a specific real world scenario that they were
training for. Usually the training scenarios are realistic, but maybe
not necessarily for like an actual situation that we that's imminent, right,
that you're going to have to execute on. That would
be a mission rehearsal rather than a training exercise. But
there are a number of underground North Korean nuclear facilities
command and control bunkers, and that's that's a whole other
can of worms. And so like when we're saying it's
going to take you know, a thousand people to do
this Iran mission, I mean to take one of these
like underground North Korean facilities would probably take a division.
Speaker 3: Crazy. Yeah, yeah, man, that's so crazy. And the other
interesting like little tidbit in the article was before nine
to eleven, jaysocks like this was a big, big part
of Jaysox's mission essentially, you know, like you wrote, like
hundreds of millions of dollars when into like training them
up and getting them ready for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from from the very beginning before Delta Force was
even validated, when they were like doing the train up
and getting their stuff together, they're training to intercept what
we're called I in these improvised the nuclear devices. You know,
what if a terrorist organization built a nuclear bomb, which
is kind of hard for a terrorist organization to do,
but this was a legitimate fear at the time, and
exercises were run where you know, the Delta guys would
go and secure you know, a tractor trailer that had
a simulated weapon in the back, and then like the
NEST guys, the Nuclear Emergency Search Team dudes would go
in and secure it. There were all these different like
nuclear teams that you know, people don't know about. You know,
we mentioned the Technical Escort Team. There's another element called
the Joint ember Immune Team, which like red teams nuclear
facilities and nuclear convoys testing their security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: But so the JAYSK participated in a number of early
exercises in the nineteen eighties, they had having their EOD
guys go down and the Department of Energy would test
them on like rendering safe devices, and they'd have exercises
where they'd have to break through security to get to
the device and then disarmam it. And you know, as
that mission evolved over the years, you know, during the
Obama administration, for example, there was well this is interesting
during the this isn't in the article either, but during
the Obama administration, the plan for Iran, the classified plan
was called the nitro Zeus and some of it was
done in conjunction with the Israelis, like we're developing some
joint munitions like bunker buster type bombs, and nitro Zeus
was sarcastically referred to by some in the community as
New Zion and and interestingly too Obama also decided not
to green light that whole Iran plan. He was like, no,
like that's crazy, and he went with Jappoah instead and
negotiated the Iran deal. And you know, it seems like
President Trump is getting to the same place, but only
after this prolonged period of back and forth bombings and
other nonsense, probably one hundred billion dollars wasted and thirteen
servicemen died. Yeah, but at that time, back during the
Obama years, you know, and not just then, but subsequent
afterwards as well, Jaysck was doing these exercises where like
a squadron would free fall into the Nevada test site,
heavy drop all of their vehicles.
Speaker 3: Once they get on the drop all their vehicles, I would.
Speaker 1: Like like push the vehicles out of the back of
an airplane with parachutes, and then once they get on
the ground, do like you know, thirty kilometer overland movement
to a simulated underground nuclear bunkler. There are a bunch
of tunnels at the Nevada test site. I think one
might be called like j tunnel. And these missions, these
training missions were not done administratively like they went underground
and were explosively breaching like heavy vault bunker doors. Yeah,
pretty hardcore stuff. So yeah, they trained extensively. I mean,
there's another case that I talk about in the article
just prior to nine to eleven. Also in Kazakhstan, there
is a biological weapons lab and the lab was kind
of set up and run by this guy named ken Alabek,
who was a Kazakh but obviously also a member of
the Soviet Union because of what was going on when
he was born there. Yeah, and he wrote a book
that I read called Biohazard, which is fascinating. He eventually defected,
But in the nineteen nineties we were looking at that
facility and they were going to use it as a
takedown target for Delta to come in and do as
a training exercise in conjunction with with the cooperation of
the Kazakh government, and it would be this great experience
for the unit to go and actually sees a live
It wasn't currently producing biological weapons, but it had everything
there that.
Speaker 3: You would need to do that. Yeah, there's pictures in
the article.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's about as realistic a scenario as you're
possibly gonna get. Yeah, and they were all jocked up
to do that there were Jasok guys that would come
to Kazakhstan undercover with the Ditra guys and like and
so again it's a way for like Delta to get
to certain places and like measure vault doors and stuff
like that. Like, oh, this is how the Russians build this,
you know, right, this is how they they the chemical
weapons vats are made, and there's all this stuff involved
in producing biological weapons and like how they're aerosolized or
how they're deployed even from ICBMs like this, this stuff
just gets increasingly technical as you dive deeper and deeper
into it. And that training operation got pushed to the
right because of the nine to eleven attacks and eventually
just went away, got taken off the board because the
guys were so busy, you know, fighting in actual war.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Do you think that the capability over the twenty
years of the g WATT kind of have eroded on
that side or no? Do you think they still trained
pretty hard?
Speaker 1: Is? I think they trained pretty hard for this one.
This this is the you know, all the terms you
want to throw out, the No Fail mission, you know,
the National Command Authority, you know, it's actually it's known
as the zero four hundred mission, the counter WND mission,
as opposed to the zero three hundred the counter terrorism mission.
I think they train extensively for this, not just the operators,
but all of the enablers, all these other guys I've
been mentioning DITRA Technical Escort Unit and so on. I
think it's taken quite seriously. And the Special Forces commanders
and Extremist forces also had this mission and a component
of this mission. And even though the SITH no longer exists,
those companies in Special Forces I think continue in Special
Forces does have a counter proliferation mission, so I think
they continue along these lines. But it's like everyone kind
of has a hand in it, you know, the Seals,
the rangers and so on.
Speaker 3: All. The interesting one is after nine to eleven and
when we went into Afghanistan and smoked the Taliban, Pakistan
got so fucking uh so like paranoid that we were
gonna come in and snatch their nuclear weapons. They started
putting them on like trucks and stuff, making them mobile
to make it as hard as possible for us to
come in and like interdict and that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So a funny story about that. There's a picture
of that that I put in the article. And the
picture is something I found on the internet. It's not
something that was like provided to me, so other people
have seen it for sure. And the picture depicts what
appears to be a movie tractor trailer, a non standard
you know, non military helicopter dropping what appears to be
for operators and helmets and plate carriers on top of
this tracking.
Speaker 3: And like jeans too. They're wearing like jeans and shit, yeah, with.
Speaker 1: A huge saw, you know, for sawing through the top
of the vehicle. And I was looking at that picture
for a long time trying to figure out, like, what
the hell are they training for here? And I remember
I woke up one morning and I must have been
having dreams or something, and it occurred to me. I
was like, hey, wait a second, and I went and
found it. And there was an article in The Atlantic
written years ago about how the Pakistanis were so afraid
of the United States coming in and stealing their nuclear
weapons that they started loading them on the tractor trailers
and driving them around the country to make them harder
to intercept.
Speaker 2: And that article in the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: I'm sure was the United States government waking that information
to try to tell the pakistanis.
Speaker 3: Like knock it off, like we're not going to do this.
Speaker 1: Well, well, more to the point, stop driving these vehicles
all around your country in an unsecured, you know, relatively
unsecured manner where something terrible could happen. Right, So, uh
that's where that you know, when when I saw that picture,
I was like, oh, okay, that's the scenario that they
were training for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, insane, man. I'm just trying to think of like
what the JSK guys, especially during the gy Man right,
like the you know, brutal deployments training training for this
mission as well. I mean, it's understandable why a lot
of guys come back I kind of really burnt out, yes.
Speaker 1: But I've also had guys tell me that they found
this particular mission set to be very professionally fulfilling and gratifying. Okay,
that you know it's it's not it's not a hazy
counterinsurgency mission. It's something very direct and something of immediate
national importance.
Speaker 2: That you know, it's it's again.
Speaker 1: Unlikely that a terrorist organization would ever develop an actual
nuclear bomb without a state sponsor. But you know, if
you know, uh, you know, Russia lost control of a
nuclear weapon. If you know, some terrorist organization did develop
a chemical or biological weapon, which is a lot more plausible.
Speaker 2: This is a realistic scenario.
Speaker 1: That could actually happen, unfortunately, And I mean it's a
good thing that we have all of these guys that
are are ready to go and deal with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I could see it particularly being like a big worry,
uh after the fall of Soviet Union, when all those
Soviet republics were breaking up and stuff like that, and
like they had nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: And it's it's honestly, in my opinion, you know, take
it for what it's worth. It's it's this is a
low percentage sort of thing, like it's not likely to happen.
We've never not, not with an nuclear We've never had
this happen with ken bio. I guess we have, but
we've never had an actual incident. You know that that
these guys are training for that they would.
Speaker 3: Have to respond to God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, thankfully.
Speaker 1: But if it did happen, the consequences are so dire.
If somebody got one of these devices into a port
in the United States or one of our allied countries,
you know, in in South Korea or wherever else the
results would be catastrophic.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean because once it's out of the bag,
like getting it into America in a port is probably
relatively easy, right because we're not checking everything.
Speaker 1: Maritime is not and has never really been watched as
carefully as like you know, commercial air. But since nine
to eleven, there have been all kinds of efforts made
on the detection side my federal law enforcement. There are
some ways to spoof the machines, as I've learned, some
of them are relatively simple. Yeah, but but they have
made some tremendous progress. I think on that.
Speaker 3: I had a question. I lost it. Fuck, what are
you working on now?
Speaker 1: For high there's I mean, there's a handful of stories
that are that we're thinking about. I know, Sean is
back to working on Willie Murkerson's story, and the next
piece is about his actions in Sudan and with the
when the this was in the eighties, when the Libyans
were crawling all over Sudan and the c i A
did some very very interesting stuff to get them out
of there. And so that's that's, you know, probably the
next piece this summer. Uh, there's also something with the
Rangers that I'm going to look at that probably will
go out this summer. And then there's some other like long,
longer term things over the horizon that I probably shouldn't
really get into yet.
Speaker 3: Okay, cool, I'm trying to remember the fucking question I have,
but I can't. Anyway, I want people to do me
a favor. I want them to go and check out
the high Side. Obviously, that link is in description. And
Jack is also a writer of novels. He's got a
new novel out that came out in June, June ninth. Yeh,
The Most Dangerous Man. That link is in the description
as well. Oh my question is this? I just remembered
for this whole like Isfahan ford Ow and Natan's like,
you know, like gathering of intelligence. We didn't send like
r RC guys. And that's how I remember it, because
there's an r RC ranger in Jack's book. That's why
I remember my question.
Speaker 2: No Interestingly, in the during the planning.
Speaker 1: For the Gaza hostage rescue, there was talk about sending
r RC in to do that to get eyes on
for the Jaysak mission. I haven't heard anything about that
kind of thing in regards to Iran though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the facilities are pretty fucking deep into Iran, right,
so it's gonna be pretty tricky to have an RRC guy.
How do you infill them? Right? Like?
Speaker 2: I mean you could, like that is the risk worth
the game?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: I think if anyone were to do.
Speaker 1: That, you would probably have the Israelis using their proxy
networks on the ground. And we have proxy networks on
the ground too. Not as good as having a ranger,
but you know, it's it's still something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we're heavily relying on Israeli humid right, I'm
you know, you mentioned it in the article slightly that
we are pretty much like not totally relying on them.
Obviously we have like the geo stuff and the singing stuff,
but I think from what I've read and what you've
written in the article is like we're pretty heavily relying
on Israeli intelligence as well.
Speaker 1: Definitely working in close cooperation with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, anything else, Jack, anything on your mind.
Speaker 1: It's always something on my mind. But today is just today.
I'm just taking it easy. It's a birthday, boy, Yeah,
it's my birthday. So yeah, I'm just chilling and The
next episode of the Team House We're Gonna Do is
with Wayne Barnes. I just finished his book. I believe
the title is a Trader in the FBI, And it's
this whole aspect of ident of how the FBI identified
Robert Hanson as a trader that I've never heard of
before that I knew nothing about. And the book was
so good. It's like one of my favorite espionage books.
Now wow, okay, Yeah, so we're we'll have Wayne on
the show this Wednesday. People will see that episode later
this week, I guess Friday, Saturday, Saturday. Yeah, so I'm
really looking forward to that.
Speaker 3: It's we should probably make a compilation video like we
did about roberts Ridge. Not roberts Ridge, but Red with
Eric Red Wings, Red Wings, Yeah, with Eric O'Neill. And
then we'll have Wayne on. And you know, we've had
Jim Olsen too, that was talking about spies and stuff
like that. So I feel like the compilation video for that.
I'm excited about this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love the counter and Tell stuff so much like
my favorite ship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll really like this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, listen, guys, Wish Jack a happy birthday.
In the comments number one like and subscribe. Also, if
you're listening on audio, you could subscribe their rated five
stars as well. The High Side, which is Jack and
Sean Naylor's news outlet that lakers. In the description, they
literally write the stories that The New York Times, Washington
Post and no one writes they have better sources than
they do. They don't take They're not stenographers for the
d D or intelligence agencies. They actually get you the
story and The Most Dangerous Man, Jack's new novel. It's
an awesome book. I read it. I actually read it
one of the only three books I've read in my life.
I read it like one of the first drafts too. Yeah,
really good, cool story. Uh, tell me a little bit
about The Most Dangerous Man because I think there's like
a great pitch for it too, Like yeah.
Speaker 1: So the book, of course, is a modernized take on
the classic short story The Most Dangerous Game, which was
the first you know, uh, fictional work that dealt with
the idea of man hunting man for sport, which is
a premise that has been used over and over in
this book. My book is about a R R C
ranger who gets kidnapped in West Africa and is hunted
for sport by a group of finance tech bros. And
they're led by a South African safari guide who's a
pretty hardcore customer customer. Yeah, yeah, And so the book
is about them hunting this ranger for sport and how
he turns the tables on them. I really had a
lot of fun writing it. I'm halfway through writing the
draft for the sequel and really appreciate everyone who's taking
the time to read the book, review it on Amazon,
all that good stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really good too. It's like a commentary on
like life too, what's going on now, like society now.
It's very funny, like the stuff with like the the
billionaire people, like the billionaire tech guys and like their
their they're like thought gurus, their thought leaders, the guys
that they like really kind of you know, take really seriously.
It's so fucking funny some parts, and it's awesome. Also,
Like Jeremy Lopez, his own his one kryptonite is like
hot chicks, that's his one kryptonite.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean he's a ranger, and I
tried to make him an actual character.
Speaker 2: He's not some.
Speaker 1: Stoic operator guy, you know, ground branch guy out down
on his luck, you know, dishonored and disgraced.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Now this a young ranger guy who has a lot
of personality.
Speaker 3: Nah. Yeah, it's an awesome book. Guys. Check it out.
That links in the description. And if you have bought
the book, review it on Amazon or wherever you bought
it on the good Reads or wherever. Uh, that's important
as well. Jack, I love you Happy birthday.
Speaker 2: Thanks Dee. Appreciate it, man.
Speaker 3: Y'all for the audience. He never says I love you
back to me. I'm gonna get it from him one day,
one day. One day, I drop I love you on
you a lot, like in our chat.
Speaker 2: Ironically, Yeah I do.
Speaker 3: It is ironic. I like making men feel uncomfortable. I
don't know why it's fun.
Speaker 1: Anyway, kicking champion over here.
Speaker 3: Thanks bro.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I want to take a moment to tell
you about the Team House podcast newsletter. If you go
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you know, filtering in some fun stuff in there as well.
If you go and check it out. We send it
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Speaker 2: On a weekly basis.
Speaker 5: You can find our newsletter at teamhouse podcast dot kit
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Speaker 2: The link will be down the description