A decorated, veteran Navy SEAL died Sunday after a mishap during military free-fall training in Arizona, Navy officials told USNI News. So I grabbed Hank and I said, Hank, turn the plane around; we got to get back to Baghdad. Take us inside that closet as you watched your SEALS enter Pakistan and clear the compound floor by floor. McRaven says civilians die in fewer than 1% of the raids, a good record in close urban combat, but it still means U.S. commandos are killing noncombatants twice a month. Retired four-star Navy Adm. William McRaven discusses why he finds it hard to be a Democrat or a Republican with CNN's Chris Wallace. And Ive seen it in this current generation, the millennials and the Gen Z. HOOVER: In 2003, you were the commander of Task Force 714 in Iraq. I said, hey, son, how tall are you? And even with that giant beard he had, it didnt take long for us to realize that we had the right guy. With her father by her side, she laughed off the injury like it was a scratch. INSKEEP: You refer to remembering this incident, this kindness of effectively overlooking the regulations, you think, and how you behaved later as a commander, as the wars began in Iraq and Afghanistan. McRaven said in a 2019 interview. Updated at 5:38 p.m. Rochor exit ECP traffic accident involving a van and a car on 15 February 2017 around 9.34am. I had received an intelligence brief the night before from one of the great noncommissioned officers that was part of the Saddam hunt. HOOVER: You write about a skydiving accident that you were in in 2001 that nearly cost you your life. Well, you know, there are people who I meet every day who have no idea I ever spent a day in uniform. "He was the boss. 10 years after the operation that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, President Obama and Admiral Bill McRaven, the commander of the special operations force. (Photo Credit: United States Navy / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain) McRaven's plan was successful and bin Laden was killed by SEAL Team 6 on May 2, 2011. According to participants in the closely held Abbottabad debate, McRaven spoke thoughtfully about the risks but never expressed doubt that his men could dispatch bin Laden and return home safely. The story did not end there. So I think all of those kind of clicked in my mind. Marcinko rented Mercedes sedans with Navy funds, a friend of McRaven's says, "just because he could." In his thirty-seven years as a Navy SEAL, he commanded at every level.As a Four-Star Admiral, his final assignment was as Commander of all U.S. Special Operations Forces. I was a very young lieutenant. I went back to my little headquarters area, got back on the video with the president and the president said, OK, Bill, let me get this straight. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made. HOOVER: You know, you were also in charge of a very successful high seas rescue of Captain Phillips, who was held hostage by pirates off the coast of Somalia. MCRAVEN: If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day and will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. And so I recognize that shots are being fired. "If I were to react to a ship takedown in a foreign port or an embassy in a foreign country, the Eagles would stick out like a" O.K., well, that's as much of the quote as you get in TIME. Downing wanted McRaven on his staff. Yeah, I mean, even to this day, the impact of Moki Martin is with me every day. I mean, there were risks every time we came close to the Pakistani border or crossed the Pakistani border, the Pakistanis were not concerned at all about engaging us. William McRaven, former University of Texas System chancellor and retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral, joined the school as a professor in national security in 2018. So I was doing a freefall operation out in Southern California outside San Diego. Now, in the case of Saddam Hussein, it was pretty obvious. And every day when I would come in, he would try to engage me. So, yes, we believed we had bin Laden. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made. And eventually, of course, the SEALs execute a mission that all of these guys, in terms of the tactics of it, had done hundreds of times before. Courage. And now the Pakistanis, of course, are waking up to the fact that were there. You wrote in your book, Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations, quote, I was having one of those feelings, again, inexplicable, powerful, eerie, one I couldnt shake and I certainly couldnt rationalize. Retired Adm. William McRaven, shown here in 2014 addressing the Texas Board of Regents in Austin, Texas, is one of five prominent former defense officials who have been named to the inaugural . They could see fine out of just one eye. General Stanley McChrystal as JSOC's top commander. Image: MIT News Office. This year, a decade later, their paths finally crossed. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. You said, quote, As a commander, you would like to be in ultimate control of all of the decisions, but the reality is you cant be. Yeah, it was interesting. The bad news is that when it opened, it split me like a nutcracker, I guess, and just kind of broke the pelvis, broke my back.". Just like that, it was over. Well, thank you president Powers, Provost Fenves, deans, members of the faculty, family and friends, and most importantly, the class of 2014, it is indeed an honor for me to be here tonight. Or, I have to be careful, Im not sure From the time the mission started I think maybe its 15 minutes when I got the call from the ground force commander, for God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo. And Geronimo was the code word for bin Laden. You know, youve got to play four quarters of the game. I don't know whether I've been dazed. McRaven grew up as an officer in the aftermath. Eight weeks later came the surprise attacks of Sept. 11. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. Having said that, I knew bin Laden was about six foot four And I thought, well Im six foot two. On that mission, they were representing a tribe that had trained and bled and hungered for 31 years to redeem itself as sensationally as it had failed in its public debut. Admiral McRaven: ( 00:00) Thank you very much, thank you. But again, to your point, I had a moral and legal obligation to make sure that we took good care of him. And, oh by the way, the guys are still in the compound. You know, when we first captured Saddam, he was pompous. Now, what I am getting, of course, is reports from the ground force commander when shots are fired. So for 30 days, I came in every day to check on him and then would leave the small room without engaging him. So if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. Meanwhile, JSOC carries on with those 2,500 commando raids a year, an average of seven per night. If you can't complete a small and mundane task each morning such as making your . By clicking Sign up, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider Those were the Wild West days of special operations, and McRaven did not share his commander's easygoing attitude about rules. "[They] kind of snapped me in two," McRaven said. Admiral William H. McRaven, USN. On May 17, 2014, Admiral William H. McRaven addressed the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin on their Commencement day. But after SEAL training, we were stationed at the same team and we became very close friends. MCRAVEN: Yeah, it was actually a C-130. And so on Jan. 29, it was McRaven who began to plan "finish options" for bin Laden alongside his counterparts in a seventh-floor CIA conference room. From there he began an extraordinary rise, moving rapidly through command and operational roles. Well, he pulls his parachute, and I collide with his parachute - little bit like getting hit by an air bag. Long before the bin Laden raid, the special operators came to believe they had rebuilt themselves as a stealthy, lethal and strategically potent military force. His story with the near fatal jump accident and, before that, the ignominious loss of his first command fit the narrative of setback and redemption in the special-operations community writ large. MCRAVEN: I had arrived in Iraq in October of 2003, and we were hunting Saddam Hussein. Sign up for notifications from Insider! He salutes the Greatest Generation and has faith in the new one. If bin Laden had his hands up and he clearly was not a threat which was going to be difficult because you dont know whether or not theyre carrying a suicide vest underneath but if he had come out of that room with his hands up and clearly not a threat, we had an obligation, a legal obligation, a moral obligation to capture him. And then, of course, when we get on target, we didnt know whether or not the entire compound was booby trapped, whether bin Laden was wearing a suicide vest, all those sorts of things added to the risk. By Barton Gellman. So Im getting radio calls from the ground force commander. Credits. Then, I thought, well, you know, thats probably not very distinguished for the three star admiral to be lying down next to the body. She's been in the hospital for two months and has years of . 2. So I understood pretty quickly that the guys were a little banged up, but they were OK. And so we went from plan A to plan B. I didnt want to because I didnt want him to think that he was somehow important enough to be able to engage El Jefe, as he called me. During a routine exercise, while serving as a Navy captain with decades of command of SEALs around the world, Admiral William H. McRaven was involved in a parachute accident: he fell more than 1,200 metres before the parachute deployed! 3 commander twice a year. "He was a bright guy, but he didn't like my rude and crude way," Marcinko said. When I went to visit guys in the hospital, they always said, I want to get back in the fight. They pull it up, and there's Saddam. A natural storyteller, he shared highlights from his high-profile career at a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last week. Then, in 2001, came the parachute accident and the long climb back. A hard landing off to the side. He has unique facial characteristics. McRaven speaks respectfully of Bush as Commander in Chief, saying he "made some very, very tough decisions." There he produced an original treatise, "The Theory of Special Operations," that the Navy credits with "considerable impact not only on the special-operations community but on [the Defense Department] at large." William McRaven delivered MIT's 2020 Commencement address. The bad news is, when a parachute opens, it blossoms. You were hit by a fellow divers canopy. The master's thesis, which weighs in at 612 pages, proposes a theory of "relative superiority" to explain how a small offensive force can defeat a larger, well-fortified defense, which Clausewitz described as holding a decisive advantage. You write about a skydiving accident that you were in in 2001 that nearly cost you your life. And so I really didnt kind of come off the business end of this mission probably until later that evening when finally I was able to hit the rack. A lucky break came his way, it seemed, in 1982, two years after the hostage-rescue debacle. So while I didnt know at a young age that I wanted to follow in my fathers footsteps, I dont think it took me long before I realized that this was the path that was the right fit for me. Then McRaven swung back into the picture. It's a lesson Admiral William H. McRaven (retired) learned after a parachute accident that left him bedridden for months. Olson was the first Navy SEAL ever to be appointed to three-star and four-star flag rank, as well . You know, you were also in charge of a very successful high seas rescue of Captain Phillips, who was held hostage by pirates off the coast of Somalia. Shortly after jumping out, McCraven says something was clearly wrong. And I certainly didn't make it to where I was as a result of my own wonderful talents. The sentiments appear to be mutual, for McRaven and his special-operations units. . . I mean, he was, to me, the gold standard in Navy SEALs. On September 1, 2014 . Rescued Captain Phillips from Somali pirates, Phillips: The first people I want to thank are the SEALs. MCRAVEN: Yeah, I would say its a little surreal, but, you know, I go back to that whole operation and Ive offered to the American people, regardless of what side of the political aisle you might be on, you know, you would have been proud of the national security team the president, the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, director of national intelligence director of the CIA all of these men and women that came together to do what was right by the nation. MCRAVEN: Yeah, well, he knew that I was in charge. We did. "Frankly, I wasn't sure whether I had been knocked unconscious, so when I had the chance, I pulled my rip cord," McRaven told TIME. "They went through a period of appearing more like cowboys, a period of 'tried but didn't quite make it,' " said retired Marine general James Cartwright, who was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the raid took place. And the reason that I am so impressed with this generation, because the 9/11 generation, these young men and women that signed up after September 11th, that raised their hand and said, Im going to join the military, knew that they were taking on the risks, knew that they would probably go to war. Cartwright, the Marine general, says, "If every time you knock one off all they do is replace him, how valuable was that, particularly if you could have been watching him? I need to go personally identify the remains before I can kind of come back and tell you for certain its bin Laden. We put the body bag on the hangar floor and its a rubberized body bag. HOOVER: Admiral, youve led sailors through harrowing missions. And then in 1983, as you mentioned, he had a head-on bicycle accident and then was paralyzed from the chest down and has been since that time. He said, well sir Im six two. And as I say in the book, kind of inexplicably, I just had this feeling that this was going to be the night that we got Saddam Hussein. HOOVER: Bring us back to this moment, will you, Admiral? These lessons helped Admiral William McRaven overcome SEAL training and found that they applied to overcome life's challenges. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status. He was a Vietnam vet. Around that time came a call from Wayne Downing, a retired Army four-star general. HOOVER: So upon reaching the third floor, the raids second SEAL, Senior Chief Petty Officer Rob ONeill, came face to face with a, quote, tall, thin man. "He walked again, which was amazing," sister Nan recalls. The planning and decisionmaking for the bin Laden raid, he volunteers, "was really everything the American public would expect from their national leadership." Once there was a President who called for building up the Green Berets in the same speech, in 1961, that called for landing a man on the moon. Admiral McRaven, in an inspiring speech, addressed the Class of 2015 at West Point to celebrate 500th Night. Plenty of junior officers admired McRaven's stand, but most, as one puts it, "thought that was the end of his career." Im absolutely ok with that. Patient and ingenious work by U.S. intelligence agencies marked a spot tentative, but more likely accurate than not on the map. They were children of World War One. As it turned out, in a dark room at night. on. This is a disturbing phenomenon to me because I dont believe our democracy long range is going to work unless theres an attitude in our society and particularly among our young, that they have an obligation of service. He began the new job this summer. He was later memorialized in an eponymous film starring Tom Hanks. The second helicopter, which was supposed to come in and land on the roof, lands outside. Marcinko fired the 27-year-old McRaven after a year. On the night of the bin Laden raid, there were 13 simultaneous operations in Afghanistan by clandestine "special-mission units" under JSOC, according to McRaven and Petraeus. The guy stomped around on the floor and found this trapdoor, if you will. 1. That was a day that I think motivated all of America to go forth and realize that we had to bring justice to bin Laden, to bring justice to Al-Qaeda and to do what we felt was right for the country. "Look how much of their leadership we've taken apart and how long it's taken, and the movement is still not dead," says Wade Ishimoto, a former Delta Force intelligence officer. Jocko Willink. Suffice to say, I'm not sure whatever happened to that paperwork, but I continued on in the service, and some things are better left unasked. The compound could still be booby trapped. And fortunately, you know, the guys found me, took me to the hospital. One was to parachute in a SEAL . As you point out. In fact, he pushed two young girls, his daughters, in front of him, which created some chaos. But they do know you as the make-your-bed guy. But I also knew at that moment that life was about to change. In a special edition celebrating Independence Day, four-star Admiral William H. McRaven shares stories of heroism from his 37 years of service to America, including details behind the capture of Saddam Hussein and the killing of Osama bin Laden. The family including his two older sisters moved to Texas while William was in elementary school and settled in San Antonio. While encouraging the students to improve the world, . Theyre all kind of crammed into this small room with General Brad Webb, who was my liaison to the White House at the time. And you've probably seen the iconic photo of the spider hole. They are concerned about these things. According to Shin Min Daily News, the motorcyclist allegedly sustained fatal injuries . We must fight terrorist networks, and all those who support their efforts to spread fear around the world, using every instrument of national power diplomatic, economic, law enforcement, financial, information, intelligence, and military.". And then he fired three rounds. McRaven says it is just one part of a broader offensive against America's foes. it showed that we as Americans can do the hard things and do them well. I wonder what you think we can do to convince more people to make their beds every morning? An accident during a routine parachute jump in 2001 kind of snapped me in two, McRaven said in a 2019 interview. By the time I landed back in Baghdad, the force was moving towards the target and within, you know, within an hours time, the Armys special operations guys that were working for me had had, in fact, captured Saddam Hussein. He served in the first Gulf War and wrote the book on special warfare, "The Theory of Special Operations." Starting your day off by completing a task will initiate your momentum to do the next task, and then the next, and so on. I didnt want to engage with him because, frankly, I didnt want him to, at least psychologically, think that he was a VIP, that he was somebody important enough to be able to engage me in conversation. (0:01-1:46) Source. McRaven, then a 45-year-old Navy SEAL captain, led a jump exercise near San Diego. Admiral William McRaven (ret), former commander of Special Ops during OBL raid, writes: "Truth be told, I am a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national . And now I'm tumbling out of control towards the ground. So the mission was a long way from over. And we had a plan to do that. MCRAVEN: Well, you know, there are people who I meet every day who have no idea I ever spent a day in uniform. And as I say in the book, kind of inexplicably, I just had this feeling that this was going to be the night that we got Saddam Hussein. And to this day, Moki oversees the triathlon that we run every year as part of our underwater demolition team and our SEAL fraternity. INSKEEP: You write that somehow your staff sometimes lost people's paperwork. HOOVER: The story of identifying the body is such a memorable one. So there was always concern about the Pakistanis engaging. But I knew immediately the guys were okay. In 2008, McRaven succeeded Army Lieut. Image: Wikipedia.org. McRaven: He went from being pompous and arrogant to frankly, just being, you know, a tired, corrupt old man. 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