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How can you be part of one of the most elite military units, when it doesn't officially exist? It's a little complicated.
Transcript
00:00How can you be part of one of the most elite military units when it doesn't officially exist?
00:05It's a little complicated given all the articles books news stories, and yes zero dark 30
00:11It's strange to think that Seal Team 6 doesn't officially exist
00:18And by this, we mean that the US Department of State has never come out and publicly said
00:23There is this crack team of SEALS called Seal Team 6 that engages in covert military activities
00:28In fact, as 2014's Navy SEALs, their untold story says, Naval Special Warfare Development
00:34Group or DEVGRU is a cover name for the unit's real name, which is the one we all know — SEAL
00:40Team 6.
00:41Thinking back, SEAL Team 6 wasn't all that well-known amongst the public until 2011.
00:45That was the year Operation Neptune Spear took place, which resulted in the death of
00:49al-Qaeda leader and 9-11 architect Osama bin Laden in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
00:55But even then, when President Obama announced his death, the head of state never once said
01:00Navy, SEALs, or anything of the like.
01:02It was just counterterrorism professionals, a small team of Americans, and so forth.
01:07Later on, sites like the BBC started calling out SEAL Team 6 by name.
01:11There's no public SEAL Team 6 recruitment site.
01:14There's just a regular SEAL webpage containing requirements like candidates needing to be
01:18under 29 years old, having good eyesight, passing some mental aptitude tests, swimming
01:23500 yards, etc.
01:25What we do have, however, are SEAL Team 6 testimonials, along with public figures like
01:29Robert O'Neill, who claimed to be the one who shot bin Laden dead.
01:34Even though we've been saying Navy SEAL Team 6, SEAL Team 6 isn't actually a unit within
01:39the U.S. Navy.
01:40They recruit from Navy SEALs, yes, and represent the Navy, yes, but SEAL Team 6 operates under
01:46the Joint Special Command Operations, or JSOC, which prepares assigned, attached, and augmentation
01:52forces and, when directed, conducts special operations against threats to protect the
01:57homeland and U.S. interests abroad.
01:59It's a division of the United States Special Operations Command, a joint military venture
02:04incorporating representatives from the Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy.
02:08This means that SEAL Team 6 is the Navy's contribution to the JSOC special forces stew.
02:14Military.com says that other representatives include the Army's Delta Force, which itself
02:18is so elite that it recruits from SEAL Team 6, the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron,
02:24and an ultra-secretive division called Intelligence Support Activity, about which we know next
02:28to nothing besides being involved in intelligence gathering and analysis.
02:32The ins and outs of who reports to who, whether or not JSOC leadership has greater oversight
02:37into special forces outfits than individual military branches, or anything else about
02:41the complexities of hierarchy, well, we've got no clue.
02:44To complicate matters even more, JSOC itself has a Joint Special Operations Command Intelligence
02:49Brigade that conducts its own intelligence operations.
02:53Speaking of office workers, SEAL Team 6 isn't just six burly dudes who prowl the globe like
02:58a baddie-beating superhero squad.
03:00But if you thought so, then congratulations to SEAL Team 6 founder Richard Marcinko.
03:05He coined the name in the early 80s to confuse the Soviet Union into thinking there were
03:09more teams than there actually were, since there were only two at the time.
03:13While we don't know how many SEALs those initial teams contained, per the Navy SEAL
03:17website, there's currently about 2,450 SEALs, or about 1 percent of all Navy personnel.
03:23But what percentage of those SEALs have gone on to join the elite, JSOC-directed SEAL Team
03:276?
03:28Numbers vary a bit depending on the source.
03:30Radio Free Europe said in 2011 that there were about 200 to 300 SEAL Team 6 members.
03:36Looking at an official 2015 congressional report about U.S. Special Forces budgetary
03:41spending, we can see exact numbers on the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, a.k.a.
03:45DEVGRU, a.k.a. SEAL Team 6.
03:48Back then, DEVGRU contained 8,985 military positions and 1,181 civilian positions in
03:55its headquarters.
03:56While it's highly unlikely that all of those nearly 9,000 individuals were some of the
04:01aforementioned globe-prowling burly dudes, those numbers are probably higher than you'd
04:05expect for an ultra-secret military operation that doesn't officially exist.
04:11Now we come to an unexpected point about SEAL Team 6 that's gotten a lot more press than
04:15other points.
04:16They had a dog.
04:17Not just any dog, but a super-special Belgian Malinois named Cairo.
04:21Malinois are a smaller, leaner, more agile version of a German Shepherd, as Cairo's trainer
04:25and former SEAL Will Chesney wrote in No Ordinary Dog, My Partner from the SEAL Teams to the
04:30Bin Laden Raid.
04:32The book stresses not only the importance of combat dogs in general, but how different
04:36and unique Cairo was.
04:38Speaking to the U.S. War Dogs Association, Chesney said the dog, quote,
04:41"...absolutely loved to work and was the literal pick of the litter along with eight puppies
04:46because of his determination, strength and cool head."
04:49And yes, Cairo was there on an MH-60 Blackhawk helicopter during the Bin Laden Raid.
04:54He was there in the case the terrorist got crafty and vanished behind a false panel or
04:58door.
04:59By the time of the operation, Cairo was already a veteran and had been shot twice on a mission
05:03in 2009.
05:05For his service, Cairo was awarded the Animals in War and Peace Medal of Bravery.
05:09Cairo died in 2015 to cancer, prompting the opening lines to Chesney's 2020 book,
05:14"...Cairo was my dog, and I was his dad.
05:16We're not crying, you're crying."
05:18"...goodnight, sweet prince."
05:21When SEAL Team 6 came to notoriety after killing Bin Laden, lots of folks did what you'd expect
05:25when a terrorist leader dies.
05:27They cheered.
05:28A few, however, had questions about the legality of it all.
05:30In President Barack Obama's speech following the raid, he injected a bit of justification
05:35aimed at this kind of question by saying things like,
05:38"...it's important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to
05:42Bin Laden."
05:43After all, Operation Neptune Spear was essentially an assassination on foreign soil, one that
05:48curtailed any opportunity for legal recourse under international or regional law.
05:53This is not to criticize the decision to kill Bin Laden, only to say that such an operation
05:57raises the point that plenty of other outlets have raised about SEAL Team 6.
06:01Where does the legal oversight for their actions begin and end?
06:04Sites like The Intercept talk about the crimes of SEAL Team 6, including revenge ops, stories
06:09of mutilations of enemy combatants, unwarranted killings, and so forth.
06:13Along the same vein, Politico describes how the Supreme Court's 2024 decision regarding
06:17presidential immunity for Donald Trump could extend to protection from legal consequences
06:22related to military orders.
06:23At the same time, let's not be naive about the final function of military personnel.
06:28Outlets like Business Insider talk about SEAL Team 6's kill-house training, designed to
06:32do what you'd expect soldiers to do — kill the enemy as efficiently as possible.
06:36Effective?
06:37Definitely.
06:38Super-duper legal?

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