The Team House.

With your hope, Jack Murphy and David bark.

Hey.

Folks, Welcome to the Team House podcast.

I'm Jack Murphy here today with two guests, Matthew Cole and Dave Phillips.

They collaborated on an article in The New York Times called how at top secret Seal Team six mission into North Korea fell apart.

Dave Phillips is a reporter at the New York Times.

He's the author of Alpha.

We've interviewed him on the show before you guys can go find that.

And Matthew Cole is the author of Code Over Country.

We've also had him on the show to talk about his book.

So I hope you guys will go back and take a look at those.

So the story that they published in the Times is one of the biggest special operations stories we've seen in sometime, I think, detailing a Sealed Team six clandestine operation into North Korea and how it kind of went sideways.

A little bit of preamble before we'll jump into it, some of the background North Korea as I understand it really is sort of an intelligence black hole.

I've had in the past.

Seals tell me that they can't do ops because they have North Koreans out there literally raking the beaches every morning, so like there's just no way that you're gonna clandestinely infiltrate the area.

I've had CIA people tell me that when the Chinese send their diplomats and so forth abroad, they always have to travel in pairs to make it harder for the agency to recruit them as a source.

With the North Koreans, apparently they have to travel in trios, they have to travel as a three to make it like literally impossible to recruit these guys as CIA sources.

So I just say this to kind of give a little bit a thumbnail sketch of how difficult it has been for the United States government to penetrate North Korea from an intelligence perspective.

So, Matthew Dave, thank you for joining us today.

Let's start off a little bit talking about the further political background with President Trump during the first Trump administration and the nuclear talks that he had going on at that time that sort of formed the overall premise of why this operation came about.

You want to take it first, So yeah, let me take you back to the teens.

So this is when President Trump had first taken office, and Kim John Un was also a fairly new and unknown leader of North Korea, and it didn't start out well.

Uh, The relationship between the two swung between like fawning letters of friendship and like outright threats of nuclear war where they were both saying that they could annihilate each other.

And famously President Trump was was bragging that his big red nuclear button was much bigger than Cam's.

And it was a bad situation.

But then President Trump did something that other presidents had never done, which was to open one on one talks with no pre conditions with North Korean.

I think he really thought, and this is of course the Trump that we've come to know quite well, that he could personally make a deal that other people couldn't.

And so they were going to meet and he was just going to work stuff out, and and you know, there were some really encouraging signs.

The North Koreans, in a sort of a good will gesture, stopped all of their nuclear testing and missile testing.

They released some remains of POW's that had been held for decades, and the two did start meeting and talking, and the two countries started meeting at a pretty high level.

So that brings you up to twenty nineteen, where they still hadn't come to any deal, but they were actively planning summits.

They had a summit planned in Vietnam for the February twenty nineteen.

Things.

You couldn't say that they were going well, but they were certainly going better than they had been for years, and there seemed to be at least a possibility of coming to a real breakthrough that could lead to a d escalation of tensions.

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And so, how did or why did in twenty eighteen Jaysock sort of pitch this plan to the White House and say, hey, we have this other option that perhaps we can use to give the president the presidency a leg up in some of these talks.

Well, I think, honestly, like you said, it had the North Korea had been a black holl for a long time and so independent of anything that Trump was trying to do with the deal, the intelligence apparats in the United States had been developing long term solutions, and one of these solutions finally came to a point where it was ready.

It was essentially a listing device, but not something that's that's new at all the world of espionage, but something that they had refined in technology.

We're not going to say too much about it, but that gave them an opportunity to bug a sensitive place where they could potentially at least listening on very high level conversations between Kim and the leadership of North Korea and so so again, we think this all happened independently.

But on the one hand, Trump and his diplomatic efforts are trying to publicly reach out to mister Kim.

On the other hands, the intelligence agencies are, you know, very clandescently developing this program to slip a listening device onto North Korean shores.

And eventually those two things meet in the White House and President Trump, you know, is probably one of the very few people that understands all the things that are going on, and he has a decision to make, Okay, should I let this mission go ahead, knowing that planting this device could give me insight that would be super helpful in these negotiations, while at the same time it could you know, potentially cause a crisis that would destroy these negotiations all together, or worse right, I mean, really the worst case scenario here is an escalation towards war.

You know, what should I do?

And he decided, okay, I have a choice sending the seals to plant listening to device or not.

And he decided personally to send in the seals.

There's another one point of correction or just nuance, which is check from your question.

Jaysok didn't generate the idea of the listening device in North Korea.

The intelligence community did, and that was based on the technology and the creation of the device.

And so at the White House level, the question became, we've got this thing, we do with it and I don't when Jaysack says, you know, send me, sir, And then you get further down, you know, beneath Jaysack, inside Jaysak, the competition and the sort of challenge of you know, who's going to take it in, how we're going to get it in, and so that that's where it unefoolds as Dave described.

And so the the I mean, we'll get into a little bit of the concept of the operation, but you guys also reveal in the article that something sort of similar had been done in two thousand and five, where the seals came upon a shore on an island off the coast of North Korea.

So there's sort of like an idea template that this can be done.

Yeah, the the wasn't I mean, I don't know, we know that it's specific a specific island.

We know is that there was a previous mission done by Seals Delivery Team one to penetrate North Korea in two thousand and five, and it was successful.

They got on land.

There was although we didn't I think we pulled this apart from the storage just from editing, not reasons.

But the commander of that mission got a Silver Star, which the reasons for us remained classified, but got a silver Star for leading that mission into North Korea.

And as I understood it, a lot of that mission had to do with using the Sealed Delivery vehicle that was new at the time was essentially a prototype that they wanted to use to test and see if they could get them get into North Korea and back, which they did.

But it was a prototype also of the operation that Seal Team six used in twenty nineteen to study what they should do and how they should get in and out.

And so this mission is ultimately giving to one of the SDV teams working in conjunction with Red Squadron from Development Group or Seal Team six.

Why was that decision made?

I don't understanding is that it was first given to Seal Team six, or rather they they ran into it and raised their hands as Matt Cole said and said, stand me, sir.

Uh.

And then of course, uh, they had to connect with it with the unit that really specializes in using mini subs, and and the premiere unit for that is Sealed Delivery Vehicle H Team one and and seal Delivery Vehicle is just a fancy name for a mini sub.

These things are about the size of a killer whale.

They're a wet sub, so you're you know, the passengers inside are actually using scuba gear.

There's no air in there, and and they're they're pretty short range and they're pretty slow, so they have to get delivered themselves by a larger vehicle, either a submarine or or there are some other things that can deliver them.

There's a newer, you know, modernized mini sub that's dry, where the seals are actually inside it breathing oxygen.

I don't know if that's operational yet or not.

But the ones we're talking about in this mission, I mean, the guys were in open water freezing their asses off.

Frankly, Yeah, that version that you're describing, the dry sub is actually the one.

The first generation of it is what was used in two thousand and five really into North Korea.

Interesting, there's a there's.

A backstory on all of that.

But the those those were not available for this operation, and it had to do with the fact that the second generation were made without There was an error NSW did not put in its proposal that they that the dry subs had to attach to a to a larger sub and so as a result, they were manufactured without the ability to be brought in by a submarine.

And so now that that problem has been fixed, but for this vision, it meant that they had to go old school and bring in the sdvs, which, as you describe, are wet and cold and slow.

And well like they've been using these things since Vietnam.

Now, obviously they've been updated, but the basic concept and shape of these things is not new at all.

This is an old, old technology and yeah, and a really like risky one.

And next, as these guys start to conduct mission rehearsals, what's the concept of the operation that they come up with, you know, sort of like logistically, piece by piece, how we want this to work.

So it's complex and bold, as many Navy seal missions are.

But basically, a nuclear powered Ohio class submarine, which is a really big submarine.

These things.

This is the longest sub in our fleet.

They're about two foot fill field.

It's long.

That's going to sneak into North Korean waters and carrying it on its back.

It has too what they call dry docks, essentially a little airlocks that are carrying mini subs.

The Navy seals are going to go into those mini subs, those sdvs that we talked about, and once they're close to the shore in North Korea, the sdvs are going to leave the nuclear powered sub and go to the shore maybe one hundred meters off shore.

The seals are going to come out, swim to shore and plant the device, the listening device we talked about, and their target is only a couple hundred meters from the beach.

So it's supposed to be quick in, quick out, and it's absolutely vital that no one gets sneen.

Now this sounds pretty simple, right, but it's not.

Of course, you have to get a sneak a nuclear sub close to North Korea and then sneak mini subs right up to the shore.

The seals riding those many stubs are crammed into these little vehicles surrounded by cold water water.

That's what we were told is about forty degrees, you know, which which could easily kill you if you were submerged in that without protection.

So they have to wear heated suits.

They're crammed into the dark.

They're breathing off of essentially scuba gear that's hooked to the subs for you know, at least an hour, maybe a couple hours as they sneak up to the shore.

Now, once you get to the shore, there's all sorts of security apparatus.

Remember North Korea and South Korea have been in open conflict for decades and they built up pretty fortified shores with all sorts of obstacles that keep this type of stuff from happening.

So you have to get through that, and you have to get on and off of the shore without being seen at all or even having your footprints show up on the beach, because in order for this intelligence stuff to work, no one can know that you planted this listening device.

So that's essentially the plan and some of the other challenges with this mission.

Special Operations that's gotten very used to using ISR or drones and having that up for every single mission that they do.

That wasn't available in this case because of the nature it's a you know, denied operation and a denied area, and.

Then the communications issues too.

I mean, we're also very used to having comms up at all times, you know, real time communications, and it doesn't sound like that was available on this operation either.

It wasn't you know.

The overall scene for this is something you know there were This was you know, what they call a no fail mission, but you're really talking about inserting US personnel behind enemy lines in a place that has a total communications blackout with no overhead satellite.

Right, So even leading up to mission in the way that they studied to the location of where they were coming into to see what the possibilities were that those were limited because it was still done mostly by satellite.

Right, They didn't have people on the ground, They don't have anything local on the ground to give them, you know, additional intelligence and information about what's going on on the land side of where they inserted.

And so you're in this sort of retro you know, you imagine that there are so many people who sign up dream of becoming special operators seals in particular for a mission just like this.

The nation sends them on something that the president has authorized that is meant to you know, fill a strategic gap in its intelligence collection against an adversary, a nuclear armed adversary, and they're going to be sent, you know, they're going to go in these sub to a mini sub and then and you know, go in peeking their head up every now and again above water to see, you know, if they've been if they're clear, and make it to shore, you know, in the middle of the night, plant a device, and then get back out the same way, all without the ability to ever speak to a commander or have any kind of warning, for instance, if there was some kind of security element that was approaching them.

And so the level of a degree of risk and difficulty here is, you know, in that the realm of special operations about as high as it can get.

And given you know, the twenty years or so of the g Watt post nine to eleven Global War on tearror, totally different from the way in which Seals Seal Team six, regular Seals and special operations have been operating anywhere around the world.

And as we get into early two nineteen, the White House approves this mission.

What were were there any additional factors that went into President Trump's final decision to give this thing the green light.

You know, that's a really great question, and I wish I knew the answer.

I wish we'd been able to sit down with President Trump or his National security advisor Michael Bolton, Sorry not Michael Bolton, different man, John Bulton, John Bolton, But that would be great too, And but we didn't.

So what Trump thought in the moment when he decided to give this thumbs up is really a mystery.

Does we do know that he was only weeks away from meeting with Kim Jong un in Vietnam.

Maybe he hoped that he could learn something for that, or maybe this was a much long, much longer term deal where they thought, hey, whatever happens in Vietnam, we're gonna want to know what the North Koreans are thinking afterwards.

So it could be completely independent.

We just don't know.

But yeah, bottom line, I mean, the bottom line is that the nuclear power sub was in the water, headed towards North Korea when he had the final window to say go, no go, And then you can imagine the stub sinking beneath the surface and heading in Well.

Let's talk about that now about you know, beyond the concept of the operation, how the actual operation unfolded.

Matthew, you want to.

Take sure we're going to be a little bit.

We're gonna we're not going to go too far beyond what we published.

But in essence, a contingent of Seal Team six got on this sub.

They had the two mini subs.

They bring themselves the sub.

Once it gets the go order from the president or as it's relayed, the sub goes dark and it gets into North Korean waters.

They then, you know, the seals get out underwater, they load into the stvs.

They take a and as Dave said, an hour to two hours from the nuclear sub towards their insertion point in a North Korean bay, and those two many subs get to their location and stop.

But unfortunately one of the mini subs missed its mark just slightly and there had to be turned around and they released the seals from the mini sub.

At that point, they're in about I believe, about one hundred and fifty meters from shore.

Water is relatively shallow, it's not super deep, clear water, still evening, no weather issues, and the seals start to make their way with their breathing equipment and every few minutes are popping up to a century to see what's going on in the bay and make their way towards shore, and they get to sure, they're sort of you know, I think we had multiple descriptions, but water being standing in water between you know, knee and waste high as they're taking off their diving gear or parts of their gear, when they believe that they're spotted, when at least they noticed that there's a fishing skiff that's made its way through the bay that they had missed, and the mini subs had also missed its sonar had not picked it up.

And at that point that's sort of your critical moment when the mission essentially falls apart because the what you know, in the end we realize, or what we know is that they were North Korean fishermen, divers who were diving for shellfish in the bay in the middle of the night, but from the perspective of the operators on the shore, that was not at all clear to them.

And so what they see are North Koreans in diving suits, speaking hurriedly and excitedly with flashlights, and what they believe, you know, they think the skiff is up over the STVS in the water, and they've got these flashlights and they're they're shining them around into the water, and then one of the North Koreans dives into the water, and so the assumptions running through at least one of the members of Seal Team six was that they had been compromised.

The mission was compromised, and so when the diver pops back up, the seal decided to open fire, and once that first shot is fired, the mission is aborted.

And so the rest of the seals fire on the North Koreans in the boat, and then they have to make the mission is totally aborted in the sense that there's not even going to attempt to place the listening device, and they make their way to the fishing boat.

Inspect the boat, find no survivors, but also no weapons and no communication gear.

These are no evidence that this is North Korean military or militia or any kind of security team.

It's just fishermen and they ditch the bodies.

They stab the We have one account which they use their knives to puncture the lungs of the North Korean so that the bodies would sink, and then they make their way back to the STVS and call in a distress signal to the large sub and make their way out.

And so so you know, what should have been a two hour mission didn't even last that long because of how quickly the mission fell apart once they made it to land.

So it was you know, in one sense, I mean, obviously it's incredibly dramatic, but in another way it was it was over almost as soon as it began.

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A couple other interesting details from the article that I'd just like to tease out a little bit.

You mentioned how they were using deniable weapons, So these weren't like American M fours or for sixteens, It wasn't American ammunition that would have a head stamp on it that you know, the brass would be an indicator of where it came from.

So the weapon systems were deniable.

And then you also mentioned the quick reaction force that was off the coast.

Yeah, it's interesting the weapons were deniable, but it's it'd be hard to keep this vision deniable if anything went wrong, right, because you have a team of about eight Navy seals at the shore and presumably none of them are Korean or or seam Korean, and so uh and you and you, as you mentioned, you have a quick reaction force off of the shore.

So in a nutshell, what happened is these guys went to the shore, they thought they'd been spotted, They killed some people that they thought might be security forces.

It turned out they were fisherman, and they left.

Everyone got off outsafe.

Few But when I was reporting this, we had a lot of conversations about how bad this could have gotten because it wasn't just eight seals.

There was another quick reaction force of seals based on the at the nuclear powered stuff that were ready to inflate speedboats and come to shore in case someone was wounded captured.

You know, you can imagine that that quite easily could have happened.

That a small firefight on the beach where a seal was wounded or captured grows as quick reaction forces come in and maybe more seals are wounded and captured.

But there was another part of the of the response plan was there was stealth rotary aircraft that may be some blocks was that are the stealth version or maybe some Ospreys that were ready to bring in even more special operators in case that was needed.

So one could imagine that if that happened, you could have a black Hawk down situation where one of those aircraft went down.

That has happened in a number of recent Special Operations missions.

So just imagine if that happened on that night in North Korea.

There would be probably some dead service members there.

There would probably be some captives.

Best case scenario, shooting stops within a few hours and North Korea then has a bunch of American captives.

Worst case scenario is that the shooting continues and spreads across the border as North Korea thinks it's being attacked in response to South Korea, and that could have gotten really bad.

Now, Fortunately, all we're talking about is a mission where two or maybe three civilians who are out trying to catch something to eat got killed.

But it could have been much much worse, like strategically worse.

And I mean that's kind of my next question is the North Korean response, which is interesting because apparently it was just silence.

Yeah, so silence from them, also basically silenced from the Americans.

President Trump said in when it was questioned about it in the Oval Office during a press conference that he didn't know anything about it.

This is the first he's hearing about it, which, by the way, our reporting does not support.

You know, I've been sort of scratching my head about this because we believed, through the course of reporting it, it was relatively clear to us that the North Koreans did learn about this, and so we wouldn't be breaking the news to them, But it wasn't clear to us how the North Koreans were going to respond, and so as far as we can tell, they haven't responded at all.

But I was speaking to someone yesterday who's sort of a specialist in this, someone who was a Green Beret and worked for special Operations come in Korea for a long time, and he said, you know what these types of missions by South Korea and North Korea have been going on forever, and neither side ever acknowledges either unless civilians figure it out.

And he pointed me towards two missions in the nineteen nineties where North Korean mini subs essentially went aground in South Korea and it was and it was chaos and people got killed.

It was very serious, more serious than this one.

And you know, in those cases, these they were the missions got too big to deny.

But he said, you know, as far as we could tell, missions like that had been happening somewhat regularly, and the South kind of new and the North kind of new, but they would never there was no upside for either by calling them out when they happened.

And he gave me an example.

He had actually, early in his army career, had been in charge of a watchtower on the DMZ and they would actually do little ambushes and patrols within the DMZ.

And he's like, look, we were told, even if we saw a North Korean like infiltrating, like unless he's actively like aiming at you don't shoot him because like the risk of like an escalation is probably worse than the risk of an infiltration and maybe that at like a very sort of small unit level, is what's going on at a strategic level with both nations is like we know, we know, they know.

We know that they know that we know.

So what is the upside of us actually discussing something that you know is inherently supposed to be secret.

In the nineteen sixties and seventies and North Koreans would even send death squads into South Korea.

I mean, you know, wild stuff happened, happened in the past.

That kind of gets memory hold.

Yeah, Matthew, we know.

I mean, you know, one of the things we do know, and I think we reported in the story is is that the Trump White House was working after the mission failed under the assumption that the North Koreans knew.

Part of it was that there was an unexplained, an unusual military build up in the location where the operation had occurred.

And just on the sort of basics, right, you're talking about North Korea is not a country outside of you know, the security forces, where people have weapons, and so in a in a shallow, relatively shallow bay that was well trafficked.

I mean, we're not going to get into the specific location but it wasn't you know, some random, totally remote place.

You had three bodies that were ultimately going to be found, and we're going to be found with bullet holes.

So even if you can't you know, trace back the ammunition specifically to the US, the North Koreans were going to be able to figure out that someone had come in by water and killed three of their citizens with a gun.

And so there's really only a few options.

You know, quite likely, of course, that they made the assumption that it was the South Koreans.

That's certainly a possibility, or they, you know, guessed that it was an American provocation.

We don't know that, but we do know that they that the White House assumed that the North Koreans knew, and at least in one case, one of our sources told us that leading up to the Hanoi summit, the concern or the question inside the White House was are the North Koreans going to cancel the summit because of this mission?

With no one of course saying or signaling either way.

But the American side, you know, let's call it the guilty party, if you will, with the knowledge of what they had done and that had gone it had gone wrong, concerned that it was going to end the upcoming summit between Kim Johan and President Trump.

So there certainly was the assumption on the American side that the North Koreans knew some evidence that they may have known.

I think the you know, it still is interesting to me.

One.

You know, you can't know, of course, what's going to happen until the story publishes.

But my thought had been that it, you know, our story would lead to the North Koreans going to the UN, for instance, to make some kind of formal complaint about you know, the US violating North Korean sovereignty.

That was sort of what I thought we might be in line with how they react, And it's been interesting to see that there's been total silence on their part.

But of course, you know, we're talking still about a hermit kingdom.

It's I mean, this gets a little bit into like sort of the international relations theory.

But you'll hear some people, I believe Michael Kaufman was one of them, talking about how nations will choose to acknowledge or not acknowledge covert operations or intelligence operations directed against them.

That there's this fear that you know, a war will accidentally break out between America and China because we make one false move.

But he was pointing out that actually states look at these things a little bit more objectively and will decide whether or not to acknowledge it based on their overall strategic picture.

And I think you probably saw that here, like the North Koreans must see something bigger, like we still want to get rice and beans from the Western world.

We're not interested in I don't think Kim Jong unreally cares about three dead fishermen, to tell you the.

Truth, well, and like, what's the upside, right, you know, if he acknowledges this happened, and you know, it looks bad on him, the authoritarian leader who's saying to your people, only I can protect you from the West, who's out to get you, and put your faith in me.

I'm going to need you to sacrifice quite a bit, but don't worry.

I've got your bath.

And something like this shows that his nation isn't as secure as he's been telling people.

That's not good, right, and making a big stink about it to the UN probably isn't going to lead to any like real material gains.

So maybe, you know, maybe he is just thinking like yo, you know, like why should I bother?

What what's in it for me?

That's one of I think, like the most one of the most interesting things about the aftermath of this story that you guys wrote is that And I don't mean to make light of the seriousness of this operation or the consequences that you discussed that many ways this could have ended in an absolute disaster, But I think it's kind of shocking how low the stakes turned out to be in the end, that there's like no fall out whatsoever on our side or their side.

Yeah, you know, I was again talking to someone who spent long time and Special Operations Command Korea yesterday and he said, you know, I feel like that's one of the benefits that comes out of this failed mission is we've spent so much time, like generations in this conflict, uh worried about North Korea's response, and this thing happened and there was no response, and so maybe that tells us something helpful about what North Korea actually is.

Maybe we built it up too much in our minds.

Now.

To me, I felt like that was a very dangerous sense of confidence, like great, so you feel like you can do this again like I'm sleeping so much better now.

So I think that that bit of knowledge is both potentially helpful and potentially harmful.

Like if somethingow this emboldens, the United States would be like, hey, check it out, we can mess with North Korea.

They're not going to nucas Like, uh, that's not necessarily a great.

Thing, right, Well, that's it's and it's because the fallout and the failure was contained, right.

I mean, there are scenarios here that we haven't even discussed.

But you know, at the end of the day, besides the Tier one operators who they inserted, you know, there's a nuclear submarine that's sitting in North Korean waters, and god forbid, there had been some kind of incident or some kind of misapp with the submarine itself where you have a you know, I think what they call it is a national capital asset.

Where there had been a problem with the sub we'd be talking about this in a completely different way.

And and it's it's those potential risks and the fallout that are supposed to be you know what is and I don't mean to say that they weren't, they're they're considered, but have to be weighed against the potential reward of a you know, uh, you know, and again I think even with the with the tap and what we do know about it was it was all potential in the sense of this was a black hole.

It was an opportunity that could have that might have been able to give them some kind of strategic advantage or insight into what was going on both in Kim Jungun's mind and thought process, but also just communications in the country altogether.

But they don't know that because the truth is is that there's no sure thing in any of this, and so the question is is risk versus reward with an adversary where you don't even have diplomatic relations with I mean, you know, the thing that I sort of thought through was, you know, if shit had gone had hit the fan during the mission, how are they picking up the phone to communicate with the North Koreans that, hey, it's us and we're not invading your country.

It's a small you know, we're just planting a listening device let them go.

As opposed to they believe that the South Koreans have decided to invade or there's some kind of you know, the miscalculations that go into this and so it turned out to be low stakes.

But you know that's circumstantial and just the way it broke.

So let me just there's what Matthew said to Like, this Ohio class nuclear power sub that went in there.

We don't know exactly how close it got to shore, but we were told that it took, you know, significant risks to come and retrieve this seal team once the mission was compromised and came closer than maybe was considered risk free.

Now, imagine if that sub had been grounded.

There's more than one hundred people on that sub.

That sub costs more than a billion dollars.

Imagine if that sub had been detected and had been attacked by their defensive forces because they have submarine hunting ships, and potentially that whole crew had been killed.

There's just so many scenarios here that turn out badly.

And so what I think what motivated both Matthew and I in telling this story is I don't have faith that that is that process is fully understood, not just by the general public but even by special operations, that there is a good understanding of the risk reward of these types of operations and the sort of the track record of these operations, because very few people, even in the Seals, probably even in Joint Special Operations, knew about this operation, and it's unclear to us what they were ever told afterwards.

You know, maybe this thing is painted as a win, right, and that lessons learned from it are not being learned.

And so I think it's so important when the risks are so severe.

So I have a really clear eyed understanding of what happened and what could have happened.

Yeah, I mean, you think when a helicopter gets shot down on an operation like, Okay, this turned into a real shit show.

I can't even imagine what a grounded submarine off the coast of North Korea, like, what that would entail.

That's beyond what I can imagine right now.

When did the administration inform Congress that this operation took place?

Oh, the administration didn't inform Congress that it took place.

It didn't happen until Biden became president and he informed the Gang of Eight that it had occurred.

And that's one of the things one of in the ENDU and we walked into this.

As Dave said, I think trying to make public something that requires civilians in particular, but also senior military fish is to understand the full scope and consequence, potential consequences.

We had no idea until sort of the end of the reporting that Congress had never been notified, which, as far as we understand, is a violation of the law.

And it's a it's a you know, I mean, the truth is is that prior to Trump, that that issue alone is a massive scandal.

Now, unfortunately the world we live in, it's really like a Friday in September and and has has gone sort of you know, overlooked the idea that the president could authorize a mission like this and and then can have it fail under these circumstances and then never disclose it to Congress.

To me, is I mean that alone is reason to publish it, but is also reason to to for Congress in particular to be up in arms about what the president is or is not holding.

Yeah, you can imagine that, like if Obama had done the exact same thing or George W.

Bush, Congress would be going nuts right now.

Yeah, But like there it's such a different Congress, it's such a different Washington that this idea that like, oh, you didn't follow the rules.

I don't even know if that registers with these books.

Did you guys get any inkling during your research for this about kind of the US Title code stuff and like the legal authorities under which this operation was conducted.

Was it considered a military operational preparation of the environment or something else.

I'm not sure if we know to answer this specifically, whether there was ope.

We know it was Title ten and not Title fifty, and so that governed a little bit, you know, and that protected them from, for instance, not disclosing to Congress before the mission happened that it was going to happen.

So technically it's a clandestine not a covert operation, but it was still you know, as I was saying to Dave throughout our reporting, I thought of myself as being somewhat of an expert in Title ten versus Title fifty, for all the reporting that I've done over the years.

But the truth is this Title ten versus Title fifty is so complicated and fuzzy that I still am not quite clear if it's an intelligence operation conducted by the military under the authorities of the Secretary of Defense, but with the presidents say so, I mean, the president had to authorize it, but it didn't require a memo a finding from the president.

But it was for the intelligence community and not you know, a military operation as such.

It was confusing.

Yeah, I'm not totally clear on all of this stuff either, but I mean, I as I understand that the combatant commands, the COCOMs have a lot more authority than we commonly think.

There's something called like the Human Intelligence Executor.

I mean, there's all kinds of different things that they can do that they just choose not to because, as I was told, none of these generals want to get dragon in front of Congress, you know, telling the congressman like, oh, this is the twenty two suppressed pistol we use for close in work.

Like they don't want to be that guy.

So there's some interesting legal lease involved.

And I know you guys don't want to and I won't ask you about sourcing for this article, but is there anything you want to tell us about kind of how you wrote this article and how it came about and you will put it together.

There's nothing I want to tell you about that.

Uh yeah, I mean the less said is always the better here.

The only thing, so no one who's listening things for being coy, Like potentially people speaking to us broke the law, and potentially there's going to be an investigation, and anything that we can do to protect anyone who spoke to us is helpful, helpful to all of us as a society.

The only thing I'll say, just very generically, is that we really tried hard, and I think we were pretty successful at getting a wide variety of sources so that we were not stuck in some kind of you know, looking through a straw in understanding what was happening, and some of that, you know, is dun luck, some of it is just circumstance, but we sort of made our way together with a pretty broad assessment and understanding of what happened.

You know, it was well sourced.

I'll just say that we were very comfortable and feel very confident about our sourcing, and you know, from that side of it, I would just say I'm quite proud of it.

Well, you want to know what the White House's complaint was after we published?

Yeah, I mean, first of like for for weeks leaving up to it, they said, don't publish, you know you're gonna x y Z.

They had very big hands up in the air of reasons, strategic reasons.

But once it published, they're like, I thought you weren't going to name the unit and I was like, what they said, Seal Team six, Red Squadron.

That's very specific classified.

I was like, come on, you can look that up on Wikipedia.

And they're like, you said you weren't going to name the unit.

I was like, no, I didn't.

We did make an agreement that we would not name any individuals who were involved in this mission because saw it as, look, these are people who are doing their job.

Their privacy is very important to their ability to do their job.

We weren't didn't see any misconduct, so we weren't going to call it.

Went out from being uh, you know, a lawbreaker, but yeah, we were going to say the unit because it's important.

But that was the thing that the White House wanted to know that they disapproved of.

I remember when when Zach and I wrote about the Solomani assassination.

There's this pushback initially to it, but then once Pompeo realized he could use this to make himself look tough, it was all like, yeah, I killed Solimani.

I did that.

The pushback on what they what their reasoning was a moving goalpost.

Uh it.

We didn't know if Trump was just going to get on the phone with us and be like, yeah, I did it, that would have been a possibility.

I mean, you know, I think that the most interesting, you know, I said, from someone like like both of you.

I mean, I'm not a Washington person, and so it's somewhat fascinating to me to see, you know, Trump has become his own Washington creature.

And the response afterwards that he knew nothing about it, which we know to be inaccurate, untrue, was really I thought reflective of someone who just refuses to be associated with anything that gets labeled as a failure, right, And so you know, his his he ran from this because he can't own anything that isn't a massive success, right whereas it had been a success and we've written about it, he would be boasting, I imagine, And certainly we've seen him do things like you know, even he also has taken a lot of credit for the solomony you know, decision or striking you know, the the remember when he weaked out or tweeted the picture of the Iranian ballistic missile tests that had gone wrong and sort of revealing how good American intelligence satellites were, but to boast.

You know, if he wants to take credit for something, he has no problem declassifying things or talking about it.

In this case, it was I don't know what you're talking about, right, Yeah.

So, you know, on the tail end of this interview here, I wanted to kind of like return to some of the topics that we spoke to you guys about the last time we had you on the podcast.

Matthew you wrote Code Over Country about some of the war crimes and Sealed Team six, and Dave you wrote Alpha about the Eddie Gallagher trial and all the controversies surrounding that, And both of those books were, at least within NSW, very controversial, And I just want to sort of return to this subject with each of you to ask about what has been the response to these books over the subsequent you know, say, three three and a half years since the last time we spoke.

Who will you who should go first?

And we go first?

Dad?

Sure, that's a great question.

So I wrote a book about the seal named Eddie Gallagher, who was charged with murdering an ISIS captive and turned in by his own platoon, and the platoon had other complaints about it.

It was just like essentially a bad dude and wanted to kill people illegally.

It was also a story about how they had a lot of problems getting the Navy Seals as a culture and as an organization to hold Eddie Gallagher to account.

What was the response to that.

There are a lot of people who were either Eddie's friends or at least believed in Eddie's versions of things that just sort of dismissed me as a liar.

And there were other people who spent years in the Seals and it had seen other Eddies who really felt like, you know, thankfully, something's coming out.

I hope that it helped the Seals as an organization because again and again, what I have seen, and this is not unique to the Seals at all, but any organization that has a high level of self reverence and a low level of transparency is headed for Turmo.

And that doesn't it doesn't matter if you're a prestigious university, or you're a religious sect, or you're an elite military unit.

Like if you can't really understand what's actually going on in your community and look at it, critically, that's harmful over the long term, and so I think that there are a lot of people who saw it as as like a useful guardrail, and certainly not everybody, and I'm not surprised about that.

But.

Personally, I'm happy that it's still there for anyone who wants to pick it up and learn something.

What about like John Q Public, how how have they responded to the book over time?

Generally really really well, because it's I mean, honestly, the easiest thing for the reader John KU Public to do, The easiest thing that they can do is not read right.

So we're where you've got to make something accessible, and a murder mystery about Navy seals is a good way in to learning about this elite unit that you know, is very important in our national national security policy and learning about both its strength and its weaknesses.

So a lot of people connected with it.

I think people who maybe were surprised they were reading a book about seals but learned a lot because it's a story about one seal who was charged with murder.

But it's also a story about how their culture has grown since Vietnam, and so there's something there for someone who wants to understand the wide world.

How about you, Matthew, Well, you know my book was a little different.

It was about the culture, yes, but it was really focused on the sort of corrupted culture at Seal Team six the Seals at large, yes, but but focus mostly on Seale Team six, and there's some crossover and some causal relationship between the two.

They're not mutually exclusive.

The response was quite good.

I mean, I have to be honest.

I get people who reach out from Seal Team six, from the Seals who will quietly say thank you.

I've had other Seals who've reached out to tell me about some of the things that were in the book and say I was there.

I had someone not so long ago do that exact thing and described a scene that I have in my book and told me it was worse than I reported, and gave me details that I knew to be true but didn't have enough to support putting in the book at the time.

And I have had people complain and tell me, you know you're missing you're missing this, or you're missing that.

Not errors as much as omissions of things that I didn't know.

Although nothing that would have changed how I would have reported it or published to be honest.

You know, I knew going in that my book was probably never going to may be for the general audience.

What I set out with the book was, look, this is a group and a community that's been holding on to some really bad secrets, some pernicious secrets that frankly have do affect like a cloud, psychological cloud over everyone who's in on the secret as they go forward in life and their families too.

And shining light on that has both from an accountability standpoint and transparency, but it also has the ability for people to you know, just talking about things.

I mean it sound like a social worker now or a therapist, but you know sometimes when you just talk about things, they get easier.

And my notion was this book should be public as these stories need to be public because in the future, when there's another war, or or in the future when there is a problem that occurs with the Seals or Seal Team six, the public has to be able to go somewhere to read about where it came from, how it started, how we got to where we are today.

And and you know what's interesting, both Matthew and my books, there's a ton of sealed history books out there and there's zero overlap between those books and what we've written.

And so it's very easy if like, if you wanted to learn about the Seals, to learn a completely sanitized, like boy scout version of it.

And and you know, to your point, Matthew going into another conflict that might not like equip you with everything that you need.

No, totally, and it's exactly it.

And I think that the you know again, I mean I thought of it as like, this book is probably going to be like a cult if I could, you know, humor myself, it would be a cult classic.

But the reality is is that it on bookshelves.

There's just nothing else.

And so you know, the fact that it exists means people will find it, and they do and I hear from them, and you know, I'm grateful.

It's it has sold modestly.

Well, I'm quite happy.

And you know, again, it's it's it's probably I know it's not for the general reader.

My wife still struggles to to get through it, but you know, it's a it's an important story.

You know.

I'll tell you one thing.

There's someone that I know very well who every year speaks to a group of I'm not sure if they're graduating from BUDS, the BUDS process.

But there is something that some kind of event that happens annually at Coronado and they speak before Seal officers, And for the past three years that person has gone to the bookstore in Coronado bought copies of my book and handed them out to the young seal officers to go and go.

It is cool, and frankly, that makes me.

I couldn't be more proud of that, because that's really what it's about.

That's what that transparency, and it's what the journalism is for, which is trying to figure out how to fix things that went wrong.

And you know, I don't overestimate that it had any it had much effect, but if it can have any, I'm thrilled for it.

I'm really glad you brought that up, actually, Matthew, because that's what I was going to say next, was that I think these books serve as like a cautionary tale for young men and now women who are considering a career in special operations, that these other histories, the unpublished history until now, tells them what to avoid, warns them of what to avoid what you don't want to, you know, you don't want to end up here, right, Yeah.

You know, I ended up in a conversation with a someone who teaches ethics at the Naval Academy and who read my book.

In fact, they said, normally I wouldn't speak to anyone in the press, but I read your book and I took it to heart, and I use they weren't using anything specific from the book, but the general lessons that they thought were portrayed in the book as something that they teached the midshipmen that they have And again, you know, that to me is like, you know, ideal.

You know, I think that the seals are you know, one of the things I'll tell you over the years, the criticism is, you're a seal hater.

You hate seals.

You were you know, you must have been a nerd in high school and you know you must have been bullied by the jocks and the tough guys who became seals, and that's why you're doing this.

And I, you know, mostly it's so immature that I mostly laugh, and I don't mean to be glib, but it really almost like, you know, my sources for that book and for all their reporting were seals.

They were really impressive seals.

They were impressive seals who did you know, multiple decades at Seal Team six, these were not you know, in a word that I learned from from Dave's reporting on Gallagher, they were not turns.

You know, these were the best of the best who had been on the inside and had tried to fix things and were repeatedly shut down.

And so you know, in that sense, you know, I tell you that I admire the seals.

I admired many of the seals that I've met, and I, you know, surely admire what they do professionally, but that doesn't make them or give them some position that's above criticism or above accountability or transparency.

Yeah, I think that's true.

Like, you can't do this work without interacting with a ton of people from SEFF, and like, you know, you get to know people who are just awesome people, and maybe that motivates you all, or at least if you have a journalist like frame of mind, like motivates you that much more to be like.

But there are problems here, and maybe I can help out because I like a lot of these guys, and sometimes they're getting a raw deal.

So you guys can find Dave Phillips at The New York Times.

Matthew Cole has a website, the Cole Report, right Matthew yep on sub stack and there's you know, he publishes NSW stories on there as well.

You guys can go and check that out.

Is there anything else you guys want to talk about?

Anything you're working on now or you know where you want to direct people to.

Dude, I'll tell you to read The New York Times.

I always have an existential like crisis after a big story comes out, and I'm like, oh my god, what have I got.

I've got nothing.

I'm washed up, like you got no ideas.

So that's that's where you can find me now, in my closet crying.

I'm you know, it's funny to answer your question, I'll just tell you I had to source an old source who texted me after this the North Korea story came out.

He was a member of Seal Team six and he was sort of I had heard from him in a couple of years, and he was complaining that he had gotten text messages or emails from He said, roughly one hundred people with my story, and I said, you know, I apologize.

I genuinely.

Didn't.

He said, Oh, you're just kidding, you don't You're not sorry about it.

I said, no, I am.

I you know I'm not trying.

I didn't write this story to have people bother you about your your former life.

And I said to him, and I said, you know, as it happens, I am mostly tried to disengage from covering sealed stuff and working on another book for an imprint as Simon and Schuster that has nothing to do with the Navy seals, has to do with the foreign policy and Jared Kushner under the first Trump administration.

So at some point that book will be out, and I hope, even though it's not a special operations related subject, you might have me on again.

Yeah.

Absolutely, send me in another advanced reader's copy and I will go through it and make my underlines and vigorous notes in the margins.

We'll do.

So.

Thank you guys for joining us.

Appreciate both of you coming on the show today, joining us on the brocast here, and for everyone else, We'll see you guys next time.

Thanks Jack a pleasure.

Thanks Hey, guys, it's Jack.

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