Speaker 1: If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Software up Radio, Special Operations, military news, and
Speaker 1: straight talk with the guys and the community. Hello and everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome back to soft Rep Radio. I'm your host this afternoon,
Speaker 1: Steve bl Stray soft Rep Radio, on Time, on Target.
Speaker 1: We have a very special guest with us this afternoon,
Speaker 1: Chris Wallace. Everyone knows him from Fox News Sunday Show.
Speaker 1: He's written a new book, Countdown Bin Ladden, the untold
Speaker 1: story of the two hundred and forty seven day hunt
Speaker 1: to bring the mastermind of nine eleven to justice. Chris,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. We really appreciate you taking the
Speaker 1: time today. Well, I'm really delighted to be with you
Speaker 1: and having written this book down Ben Laden and obviously
Speaker 1: Seal Team six plays a big role in it. I am,
Speaker 1: and I spent a lot of time talking to Admiral
Speaker 1: mcgraven and to a couple of the members of the
Speaker 1: team that rated the compound, and about about Will Chestney
Speaker 1: and especially Rob O'Neil um. I'm delighted to be talking
Speaker 1: to you and to your audience. Well, we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because I know that, you know,
Speaker 1: you had written the book to be released on the
Speaker 1: you know, around the twentieth anniversary of nine eleven, you know,
Speaker 1: and then with all the fiasco would happen the last
Speaker 1: few weeks and how everything kind of fell apart, uh
Speaker 1: with our withdrawal from there, you know. Um, the thing
Speaker 1: that stands out about this book is now, this shows
Speaker 1: how things are supposed to be done, How when everyone
Speaker 1: works together and you know, all the pieces have put together,
Speaker 1: this is how it should be. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: You know, I absolutely wrote the book intending it to
Speaker 1: come out on the twentieth anniversary of nine eleven. It
Speaker 1: never occurred to me that the thugs, the killers that
Speaker 1: were in charge of Afghanistan on nine eleven, two thousand
Speaker 1: one are back in charge of Afghanistan on nine eleven,
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty one. And you know, it made me
Speaker 1: think about this book, which is a celebration and uh
Speaker 1: an account of of what happened and how we took
Speaker 1: down Ben Laden. It made me think about how does
Speaker 1: that fit into the war, particularly with the end. And
Speaker 1: I think I came away with two thoughts. First of all,
Speaker 1: that you know, for all the feelings and I'm sure
Speaker 1: a lot of your your listeners, you know, are mad
Speaker 1: or frustrated about how it's all ended. The fact is
Speaker 1: that that we did accomplish our prime mission in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: Didn't do everything, but you know, why did we go
Speaker 1: in in the first place. We went in there to
Speaker 1: get bin Laden, to decapitate al Quaeda, and to protect
Speaker 1: the homeland from another terror attack on Afghanistan. And we
Speaker 1: accomplished all of those things and protect the homeland from
Speaker 1: terror and Afghanistan for twenty years. And then the second point,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what you're saying, if the last month
Speaker 1: has been a case study of just everything being mishandled
Speaker 1: both from a a political side, an intel side, and
Speaker 1: and a military side, not necessarily the performance of the military,
Speaker 1: but the position they were put in and what they
Speaker 1: had to do. Um, the bin Laden mission is exactly
Speaker 1: the opposite. It's a case study of the intel community
Speaker 1: being absolutely uh, you know, just so persistent, so just
Speaker 1: sticking to the to the mission and going through one
Speaker 1: dead end after another until they found this compound in
Speaker 1: a body body. The political community, I think doing really
Speaker 1: an excellent job of considering all the options, all the risks, uh,
Speaker 1: and coming to a really thoughtful and considered and meticulous conclusion,
Speaker 1: and then especially the the remarkable job that Admiral mcgraven
Speaker 1: did in conceiving of this mission and then putting the
Speaker 1: right team together, and then the performance of the Navy
Speaker 1: Seals when they went into the compound. So it's a
Speaker 1: case study, as you say, if when everything goes is
Speaker 1: done right. Yeah, you know. And the thing that stood
Speaker 1: our about this book is, you know, I mean, we
Speaker 1: all know how it how it's gonna end. You know,
Speaker 1: the as the old saying goes, the guy gets the
Speaker 1: girl in the end. Well, we all know how this
Speaker 1: is going to end. But the intriguing part about this
Speaker 1: book is the father in you get, I think the
Speaker 1: more the reader, as even somebody who knows a lot
Speaker 1: of the background, gets pulled in because you've had some
Speaker 1: really well documented access to guys from c I A.
Speaker 1: Which is very rare. Uh and you know the State
Speaker 1: Department of course, Leon Panetta and the guys from the military.
Speaker 1: How difficult was it to get him to buy into
Speaker 1: this book? Well, uh, first of all, thank you for that.
Speaker 1: And and let me say, I mean that's my idea.
Speaker 1: This is my second book I've read and I first
Speaker 1: wrote a book about Truman's decision to drop a bomb
Speaker 1: on Hiroshima. Came out last year called Countdown. And you know,
Speaker 1: my feeling was that I think history, I think histories
Speaker 1: is going to sound like I'm a little over my
Speaker 1: skis here, but I do think history too often has
Speaker 1: written the wrong way because we write it like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we know the ending, now let's try to explain how
Speaker 1: it happened. Well that's you know, I think if you
Speaker 1: were doing a mystery novel or a thriller, that's exactly
Speaker 1: the wrong way to do it. And the fact is,
Speaker 1: as you know, they come the three members of the
Speaker 1: counter Terrorism Center at the CIA come to Panetta on
Speaker 1: August and say, you know, we've had all these false leads,
Speaker 1: but we think we have traced a guy that maybe
Speaker 1: U Ben Lodon's courier back to I don't call it
Speaker 1: a compound, they call it a fortress in Abadabad, Pakistan.
Speaker 1: And then you know, to go through that and as
Speaker 1: they're trying to to to get the lot more intel,
Speaker 1: and then they take it to President Obama and all
Speaker 1: of his team is trying to figure out what to do,
Speaker 1: and they don't you know. They don't even tell the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense Gates, and they don't even tell Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State, because it's so closely held. And
Speaker 1: then in late January they bring in mcgraven and the military.
Speaker 1: The point is that at each of these points they
Speaker 1: didn't know how the story was going to end. In fact,
Speaker 1: when Obama decides on April eleven, actually he made the
Speaker 1: decision that night, but he announces it to his staff
Speaker 1: on on April twenty nine, Friday morning, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he says, it's a fifty fifty proposition here. Some people
Speaker 1: are saying it's seventy presents, some people are saying it's
Speaker 1: and he goes, you know what, forget the percentages. This
Speaker 1: is he's either there or he's not there. And then,
Speaker 1: of course when the seals are going in, and I
Speaker 1: had talked, particularly to Rob O'Neill, he said, I said
Speaker 1: to him, how dangerous did you think this mission was?
Speaker 1: And he said one white ticket And I said, excuse me?
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, suicide mission. We figured if ben Laden
Speaker 1: was there and they weren't sure he was gonna be
Speaker 1: that they weren't coming home. He said, either when we
Speaker 1: hit the compound, it's going to be booby trapped and
Speaker 1: blow up. Or when we go into the house where
Speaker 1: we think bin Laden might be, you know, he'll have
Speaker 1: all kinds of bodyguards and they'll take us out. And
Speaker 1: they were willing to do it anyway, and we can
Speaker 1: talk about that, uh, but but they thought so. My
Speaker 1: point is that there was tremend there were tremendous unknowns.
Speaker 1: There was tremendous tension throughout this process and what I
Speaker 1: tried to do in the book, and you know, you
Speaker 1: really you pitched it better than I could. It's a
Speaker 1: history thriller, and as even if you know the ending,
Speaker 1: I promise, and if you run it, you you know
Speaker 1: the last hundred pages, you're on the edge of your
Speaker 1: seat thing what happens next, because it it is it's
Speaker 1: a hell of an adventure story. In terms of how
Speaker 1: I got him, you know, I think I think my
Speaker 1: timing was really right. I mean, first of all, I
Speaker 1: knew a bunch of these guys because I didn't interview
Speaker 1: them all over the years on Fox News Sunday, and
Speaker 1: you know, I think they trusted me. But the other
Speaker 1: thing is, it's, like any investigative thing, you have to
Speaker 1: you have to build up trust, and people have to
Speaker 1: have the sense you're not in it to try to
Speaker 1: do something sensationalizing or to get the story wrong. You're
Speaker 1: really in it to tell their story. And so I
Speaker 1: started with some of the people I knew better, and
Speaker 1: I thought it would be more accessible and after and
Speaker 1: I would, you know, I'd interview them for three or
Speaker 1: four hours and at length, and then you know, and
Speaker 1: then I'd say, well, can you put me in touch
Speaker 1: with uh? And and I think the words fred Hey
Speaker 1: Wallace really wants to tell the story, right, really wants
Speaker 1: to get not only the big story, but all the
Speaker 1: little details, all the little anecdotes, right, And I and
Speaker 1: you know, ten years later, it's not as classified as
Speaker 1: it was. And in addition, I think, and again I
Speaker 1: was doing all these interviews before everything went wrong, but
Speaker 1: I think people took justifiable pride in what they had
Speaker 1: pulled off here, and I think they wanted to share
Speaker 1: the story. Yeah. You know, it's funny because you know,
Speaker 1: obviously as you're reading the book, you're you're learning new
Speaker 1: things because of the conversations that you were able to
Speaker 1: tap into the lad especially with Leon Panetta. You know,
Speaker 1: he's such a fascinating character. Never met him or talked
Speaker 1: to him, but you feel like you have a lot
Speaker 1: better um feel for what his personality is like after
Speaker 1: reading the book. And I love the the part that
Speaker 1: you wrote in there. You know, when he took over
Speaker 1: c I A. He took up an apartment in the
Speaker 1: attic with just his dog, and it's like, you don't
Speaker 1: picture of the head of the CIA living an attic. Uh.
Speaker 1: I thought that was fascinating. Were there any other big
Speaker 1: surprises for you as you're you know, researching this story. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, but you see that's this is funny because
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm my day job as I'm a reporter,
Speaker 1: and now I'm sort of moonlighting as a historian. And
Speaker 1: when I wrote the book about you know, I loved
Speaker 1: doing it. And it's a great story about Truman on
Speaker 1: the day he becomes president and forty five discovers the
Speaker 1: existence of the Manhattan Projects even though he's been vice
Speaker 1: president for three months. Nobody had even told them about it.
Speaker 1: But my frustration was that, you know, in writing about
Speaker 1: Truman and George Marshall and Robert Oppenheimer and all of
Speaker 1: these people, Paul Tibbitts, the the command pilot on the
Speaker 1: and Nola Gay. You know, they're all gone, and I
Speaker 1: they wanted to be able to say, so what happened
Speaker 1: in that meeting? And what were you thinking? And you know,
Speaker 1: and and and I couldn't. Obviously I had history books,
Speaker 1: and I had their diaries, and I had letters and
Speaker 1: memoirs and stuff, but I couldn't talk to them. And
Speaker 1: one of the reason that I decided to my second
Speaker 1: book to write it about something where people weren't gone,
Speaker 1: is who I could have exactly these conversations. And when
Speaker 1: you talk about Panetta in the attic, it probably was
Speaker 1: the third conversation, you know, because what you're I didn't
Speaker 1: know to ask, but uh, you know, so I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the mission with him and all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: what was going right, what was going wrong in his
Speaker 1: frustrations and and at some point, and this is just
Speaker 1: the advantage, probably three or four hours in during our
Speaker 1: our last conversation, something comes up about where he was living,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, tell me about it. And it
Speaker 1: turns out it's a it's basically a studio. He had
Speaker 1: an old friend. I mean, he don't remember. This guy
Speaker 1: had been you know, he'd been a congressman, had been
Speaker 1: the chief of staff to Clinton. He had left, he
Speaker 1: had gone out to California where he runs the Panetta
Speaker 1: Institute with his wife Sylvia, and suddenly Obama asked him
Speaker 1: to come back and be CIA director. And you know, so,
Speaker 1: I mean he's finished, he's in his seventies. He doesn't
Speaker 1: and and you know, so he's not gonna go. He's
Speaker 1: not moving his family, his wife's staying there as kids
Speaker 1: of grown. And so he calls a friend and says, hey,
Speaker 1: can I stay with you? When he ends up in
Speaker 1: an attic apartment with his dog Bravo. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: they were able to put all kinds of secret devices
Speaker 1: in there so that he could have classified phone calls
Speaker 1: from the attic. But you know, it's it's those kinds
Speaker 1: of details that I think add so much to the story. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there were, but there were a bunch. I
Speaker 1: think there are surprises on every page. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a couple of examples. So if anybody
Speaker 1: has seen the movie Zero Dark thirty, Um, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure a bunch of you have, this is the real story.
Speaker 1: That was the Hollywood version, and that story is you know,
Speaker 1: it's good, but I actually think the real story is
Speaker 1: as usual, much more interesting. And there was a Maya character.
Speaker 1: If you remember the movie, the main character, Jessica Chastain,
Speaker 1: was known as Maya. Now Maya is not a real name,
Speaker 1: but but she she was this kick ass operative analyst
Speaker 1: for the CIA. She was not over in Pakistan or
Speaker 1: any of that. She was. She was at headquarters in Langley.
Speaker 1: But she became the expert in the Pakistan Afghan Department
Speaker 1: on on DN Laden and as they brought in the
Speaker 1: Seals in April, UH, you know, so really in the
Speaker 1: last month April, she becomes the liaison between the Seals
Speaker 1: and UH and the CIA. Now before I tell the story,
Speaker 1: am I allowed to swear on this podcast? You can sure?
Speaker 1: Go ahead? Okay? So anyway, you know the story I'm
Speaker 1: about to tell. She she ends up in Jelalabad, which
Speaker 1: was where the mission was going to be launched from,
Speaker 1: right on the eastern eastern Afghanistan, right across the border
Speaker 1: from Costan. And she's there when the mission goes down.
Speaker 1: And now it comes back and the Seals come back,
Speaker 1: and they had really formed an attachment with Maya because
Speaker 1: you know, one she she was there with him on
Speaker 1: the front lines, and I never met her. I talked
Speaker 1: to one guy who would never talk before, who was
Speaker 1: her boss, Gary, who was the head of the Pakistan
Speaker 1: Afghan Department, and he described Maya to me, and also
Speaker 1: the seals did. But you know, she's a tough lady.
Speaker 1: So in any case, they come back. They bring the
Speaker 1: body back with with bin Laden in it, into the
Speaker 1: hangar and uh, one of the seals says to O'Neill,
Speaker 1: who's who took ben Laden now, says, hey, you've got
Speaker 1: to have something from Maya. So he hands her his
Speaker 1: clip from his gun which had thirty rounds in it,
Speaker 1: except it had seven because he had put three bullets
Speaker 1: in bin Laden's head and and says, hey, here, you
Speaker 1: got room for this, and she said yeah. So then
Speaker 1: mcgraven himself literally takes the corpse out of the body
Speaker 1: bag and he lays it out, and Maya walks over
Speaker 1: to it and looks down and says, well, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm out of a fucking job. Turns around. I love
Speaker 1: that line in the love that story so much, and
Speaker 1: it's not, you know, it's not in the movie. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking why wasn't that in the movie. It's such
Speaker 1: a great moment. What I have to ask you, though,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was just coincidence, but it
Speaker 1: was like almost two hundred pages in to the book
Speaker 1: before I heard the slightest mention of the Vice president
Speaker 1: there's now our president, President Biden. And you know, we've
Speaker 1: we've heard all this. I thought it was a lot
Speaker 1: of political back you know, backstabbing whatever, that he was
Speaker 1: totally against this operation. But in reading the book, he
Speaker 1: actually was against this, wasn't he. Yeah, And and you
Speaker 1: know it's interesting, I'm writing this book while he's running
Speaker 1: for president, and you know, I kept, well, I gotta
Speaker 1: speak to Biden. I gotta speak to Biden, and nobody
Speaker 1: mentioned him. I mean when I'd be talking to people
Speaker 1: of the c I A about what was going on
Speaker 1: in the White House, they wouldn't mention him. When I
Speaker 1: talked to top people in the White House, and I
Speaker 1: talked to everybody, I didn't The one person I didn't
Speaker 1: speak two was Obama. But I felt to all of
Speaker 1: his top aids, everybody, you know, I'll just Tom Donald
Speaker 1: is the National Security Advisor. John Brennan is the Chief
Speaker 1: counter Terrorism advisor Nick Rasmussen, and on and on that
Speaker 1: nobody mentioned Biden and the one the one time that
Speaker 1: they mentioned him was in the final meeting that he
Speaker 1: had with the president had with his National Security Council
Speaker 1: on April Thursday, April, and he's going around the table
Speaker 1: and first he goes to Biden, and Biden says, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think we should do it. One,
Speaker 1: we don't have enough intel. It's not it's circumstantial, is
Speaker 1: not conclusive. And two I worry about um the fact
Speaker 1: that that this is really going to screw up our
Speaker 1: relationship with Pakistan, and we were depending on Pakistan at
Speaker 1: the time. That was a major supply route for you know,
Speaker 1: all of our troops UH in Afghanistan. So he was
Speaker 1: against it, and this is a story that's never been
Speaker 1: told before. And they go next to Gates and Gates
Speaker 1: is against it. And I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: for Gates was that he had been the executive assistant
Speaker 1: to the CIA director back in when they did Operation
Speaker 1: Eagle Claw, the failed rescue mission for the Iran hostages,
Speaker 1: and he just had this sense something always goes wrong
Speaker 1: in these missions, and he'd seen, you know, the American
Speaker 1: soldiers had died. Uh, it had really probably crater Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter's chances for re election, and he just didn't think
Speaker 1: it was worth the risk, particularly since they didn't have
Speaker 1: a hard, hard proof anyway. So when when meeting is over,
Speaker 1: Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mike Mullen
Speaker 1: getting a car to be driven back to the Pentagon.
Speaker 1: And as I'm sure you know, and I'm sure a
Speaker 1: lot of your listeners know, Kates doesn't, doesn't, didn't, and
Speaker 1: doesn't think much of Biden, and in fact that it's memoir,
Speaker 1: he said he's been wrong about every major foreign policy
Speaker 1: decision for the last forty years. Well, it turned out
Speaker 1: that Gates had been saying that when he was Defense
Speaker 1: Secretary and Biden was Vice president. So when they're in
Speaker 1: the car on the way back to the Pentagon, Uh,
Speaker 1: Mullen says, wait a minute, Bob, you know you you
Speaker 1: keep saying, uh that Biden has been wrong about every
Speaker 1: major foreign policy decision for forty years, and you just
Speaker 1: voted with him against the Ray. So it was kind
Speaker 1: of an open secret and an open joke inside the administration.
Speaker 1: How little Secretary of Defense Robert Gates thought of the
Speaker 1: Vice president. Yeah, you know, and reading the book of Uh,
Speaker 1: it's changed a lot of my perceptions as well. We
Speaker 1: were always under the impression that the President was lukewarm
Speaker 1: about going after bin Laden, But in reading the book,
Speaker 1: he made it their priority. And two thousand UH was
Speaker 1: the two thousand, none of thousand nine. He may have
Speaker 1: to excuse me and may have two thousand nine. He
Speaker 1: has a meeting in the sitting room, and he says
Speaker 1: to just a few of them, including Donalin and Leon Panetta,
Speaker 1: a couple of others, he has come up with me
Speaker 1: to the Oval office. And it's not the you know,
Speaker 1: the CIA wasn't still looking, but the trail had gone
Speaker 1: kind of cold. They kept looking, but but you know
Speaker 1: it wasn't And and he says to Panetta, I want
Speaker 1: Ben Lawden to go to the front of the line.
Speaker 1: I want and I want you to report to me
Speaker 1: regularly on where we stand in the hunt for Bin Laden.
Speaker 1: And Panetta said, look, you know the way bureaucracy is
Speaker 1: working washing and the President of the United States puts
Speaker 1: a fire under me, as c I a director, I'm
Speaker 1: going I then go back to my staff and I
Speaker 1: put a fire under them and in fact he from
Speaker 1: then on for and this went on from May of
Speaker 1: two thousand nine until they give him the big lead
Speaker 1: in August. Every week he would have a meeting with
Speaker 1: the top people in the Afghan Pakistan Department, where are
Speaker 1: we unin lot? Even if it was they really had
Speaker 1: nothing new, But you know, that just put pressure on
Speaker 1: the bureaucracy. Yeah, do you regret not being able to
Speaker 1: talk to President Obama about this? Sure? Absolutely? And uh,
Speaker 1: you know I I tried and tried and tried, and
Speaker 1: and you know, particularly why I regretted it a little
Speaker 1: bit is there are some characters in this book that
Speaker 1: are larger than life. And I'm delighted that you really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the way we portrayed Panetta, because he's one of,
Speaker 1: to me, one of the the stars of the book
Speaker 1: and one of the stars of the whole operation. And
Speaker 1: he's a CIA director. He's you know, a big, burly
Speaker 1: Italian h quick to laugh, big belly laugh, his nose
Speaker 1: crinkles up when he laughs, and quick to you know,
Speaker 1: to to drop for f bombs. You know, just big,
Speaker 1: big emotions sounds. Yeah, positive and negative and uh and
Speaker 1: and and mcgraven, I think it is another you know,
Speaker 1: to me, he's Captain American. At one point Obama said
Speaker 1: about him, you know, if they were making a movie
Speaker 1: of this, he would be the star and he would
Speaker 1: play himself. I just have such regard an admiration for
Speaker 1: Bill McRaven. But the interesting thing is that Obama, and
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of goes along with what I
Speaker 1: think most of our impression of him is where a
Speaker 1: lot of these guys were more animated or you know,
Speaker 1: more more extroverted, Obama played it close to the vest.
Speaker 1: And you know, there weren't people I'd say, we'll tell
Speaker 1: me what Obama did there or how what is you know?
Speaker 1: What was this? And they basically said, he asked a
Speaker 1: lot of questions, you know, and he gave us a
Speaker 1: very terse I want you to do this, or I
Speaker 1: want you to look into this. There wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: of a big outward emotions or anecdotes, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have had um that to
Speaker 1: ask him, basically, what's the in the interior conversation? What's
Speaker 1: going on in your head? Is this is happening and
Speaker 1: that's happening. But his people said, and when it was
Speaker 1: true that he had written a memoir that came out
Speaker 1: just as I was writing the book, and they said,
Speaker 1: he wants the chapter on ben Laden to speak for itself. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we took what we could from that, and
Speaker 1: I took what I could from talking to all the
Speaker 1: people that were in the room with him. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that you know, that wasn't it wasn't perfect. That was
Speaker 1: there was a frustration about not being able to talk
Speaker 1: to him. Well. I love the bit at the end
Speaker 1: of the raid where the president's on the phone with
Speaker 1: Admiral mcgraven and McRaven says, you know, uh, we're pretty
Speaker 1: sure this is the guy. You know, he's six ft
Speaker 1: six ft four. Uh, you know, we have a six
Speaker 1: ft two navy seal. We laid him down and he's
Speaker 1: obviously taller than him. And the President's comeback I thought
Speaker 1: was just classic. He says so so so, I mean literally,
Speaker 1: they the graven And it's interesting. It's interesting the things
Speaker 1: that people corrected me on, because I at one pot,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm talking to him and I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, and then the seals took the body out
Speaker 1: of the body bag and he said to me, no, no,
Speaker 1: I took the body out of the body bag, and
Speaker 1: he said, and I was the one because he was
Speaker 1: kind of all, you know, folded up that you know,
Speaker 1: stretched him out so he would be his full length.
Speaker 1: And then he turns to a navy seal and they
Speaker 1: knew Ben Lodden was six four and he said to
Speaker 1: this navy seal, he says, son, how how big are you?
Speaker 1: And he says, I'm six too. He said, lie down
Speaker 1: next to the corpse and the guy he's and even
Speaker 1: the graven tells the story, says, the guy looks at it,
Speaker 1: looks at mcgraven. He's the admiral, he's the boss. Pretty
Speaker 1: kind of looks at him like you want me to
Speaker 1: do what? But of course he's the ploss And he
Speaker 1: lies down next to him, and mcgraven says, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: about two inches the corpses two inches taller than than
Speaker 1: the seal. So he calls the president up and he says, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I really do think it's it's him now,
Speaker 1: you know. They looked at the face, but frankly most
Speaker 1: of the face had been blown away by the three
Speaker 1: shots in the head. And he said, he's about two
Speaker 1: inches taller than the six ft two inch seal. And
Speaker 1: he says, let me get this straight. You had fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars for a stealth blacklock helicopter, but you didn't
Speaker 1: have ten dollars for a tape measure. And then the
Speaker 1: story continues, which is that he finally he comes back
Speaker 1: and he ends up having a meeting, and this says
Speaker 1: a lot about both of the He ends up having
Speaker 1: a meeting in the opal To Office with the President,
Speaker 1: and the President you know, is there at the resolute desk,
Speaker 1: and he goes back behind the desk and he opens
Speaker 1: the drawer and he comes out and he has had
Speaker 1: a plaque made, you know, a beautiful wooden plaque, and
Speaker 1: mounted on it is a gold plated tape measure, you know,
Speaker 1: as a kind of the you know, the honor of
Speaker 1: the tape measure, the Order of the tape Measure. So
Speaker 1: mcgraven thanks, well, this isn't really for me, this is
Speaker 1: for the Special Operations. So he gives it to the
Speaker 1: Special Operations Forces. Is that a president? And you know,
Speaker 1: a statement of of gratitude from the President. And a
Speaker 1: few weeks later he's at his headquarters in Fort Bragg
Speaker 1: and there's a knock on the door and he opens
Speaker 1: it and there's a fellow there and he says, I
Speaker 1: hear you. You know, the president heard you gave away
Speaker 1: the tape measure, and you know, he feels like I'm
Speaker 1: maybe I'm in trouble. He said, no, no, I didn't
Speaker 1: give it away. I I thought it was for the unit,
Speaker 1: So I gave it to the unit. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: that's what the president understood. Here's another one because as
Speaker 1: we want you to have it for you and your family.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I just think that's that's one of the
Speaker 1: awesome stories that came out of this um. You know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you, I know you told the
Speaker 1: story of some of the families as well. Especially there
Speaker 1: was real poignant part about I know, I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: your last name, Jessica Fornsky say that's exactly Jessica for yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: how did you you know, how did you find her
Speaker 1: for this? Well, there are websites where, you know, relatives
Speaker 1: of victims of nine eleven, and and she was on
Speaker 1: the website, and and and you know, we thought, look,
Speaker 1: people know how horrible nine eleven was, but we thought
Speaker 1: we needed to put a human face on it. Uh
Speaker 1: and and and so we found Jessica Forrensey, and the
Speaker 1: story very briefly is that she was a New York
Speaker 1: City cop and she was in love with and and
Speaker 1: and lived with another New York City top Jerom Domingez.
Speaker 1: And on nine eleven, she was testifying in court, which
Speaker 1: New York City, the local courts are all downtown, right
Speaker 1: near ground zero, and h her her her, you know
Speaker 1: to say, her fiancee, her kind of unofficial husband, says hey, look,
Speaker 1: I'll meet you for breakfast down there, and this is
Speaker 1: nine eleven, and then suddenly the plane goes into the
Speaker 1: first tower and she immediately knows, knowing Jerome, that he's
Speaker 1: going to go to the tower. That's just what he's
Speaker 1: gonna do. And she tries to reach him, and of
Speaker 1: course all the cell phones go out because everybody in
Speaker 1: the world is trying to call everybody else, and so
Speaker 1: she wants to go to the towers too, and uh,
Speaker 1: she's told by one of her superiors, now you've got
Speaker 1: to go guard the courts and guard the prisons because
Speaker 1: we don't know what this attack is going to be.
Speaker 1: And she never sees them again, never hears from him again.
Speaker 1: And you know, part of the story we tell is
Speaker 1: the tremendous sense of loss and the tremendous emptiness that
Speaker 1: she felt and they partial but certainly not complete sense
Speaker 1: of closure she got from Bin Laden being taken out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was you know, the way you we've got into
Speaker 1: the book was excellent because you know we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the clinical side of things, where we're looking
Speaker 1: at it as a military operation, but then we forget about,
Speaker 1: you know, the human element to people who suffered on
Speaker 1: that day. And I thought that part of the book
Speaker 1: really brought it home. That's why we were there, that's
Speaker 1: why we went to Afghanistan, That's why the seals are
Speaker 1: going into a bata bed and you know it's still
Speaker 1: an open wound for a lot of those families, especially
Speaker 1: for her. She had a really rough that. Uh. I
Speaker 1: thought that was a great part of the book. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. And the you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I was when I was talking to Rob O'Neil and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, and he said to me that
Speaker 1: this was a suicide mission and then he said, I'm
Speaker 1: doing this for the woman who went to work that
Speaker 1: day on nine eleven. And you know, I was working
Speaker 1: up on the ninety story of the one of the
Speaker 1: World Trade Center towers, and the plane hits the tower
Speaker 1: and she's faced with the choice of an inferno degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit inside and looking out the window at the ground
Speaker 1: nineties stories below, and decides jumping is the better alternative.
Speaker 1: And you know that that that you're exactly right. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a thriller, spy thriller, you know, a political thriller,
Speaker 1: a military thriller. But we can't ever forget that. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a real life and what twenty two thousand,
Speaker 1: I guess I saw on on Saturday two thousand seventy
Speaker 1: seven fellow Americans were killed in New York and Shanksville
Speaker 1: and the Pentagon, and we can never forget that. Well, Chris,
Speaker 1: I could sit here and talk to you all day
Speaker 1: long about the book and all the characters in it.
Speaker 1: I know you're pressed for time. We don't want to
Speaker 1: hold you, but I really want to thank you for
Speaker 1: taking the time to talk with us here at soffer
Speaker 1: A Radio today. This was really enjoyable for us. The
Speaker 1: book was fantastic. Again, I want to reiterate all of
Speaker 1: our listeners out there. Countdown been laden by Chris Wallace
Speaker 1: along with Mitch Weiss. This is a great addition to
Speaker 1: your library. You will learn a lot of what went
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes. And Chris, thanks again for joining us.
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it. Well, thank thank you so much
Speaker 1: for for having me on. Steve and I just you know,
Speaker 1: I know we say it and we say it glibly,
Speaker 1: but when you when you do the research and you
Speaker 1: talk to the people in an operation like this, I
Speaker 1: just want to say to all your listeners, and from
Speaker 1: the bottom of my heart, I always speak for every
Speaker 1: American when I say it, thank you for your service.
Speaker 1: We you know, one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: about the seals in this story is, you know, we
Speaker 1: were the vast majority of us couldn't do it, wouldn't
Speaker 1: do it, And thank god, there is that one tenth
Speaker 1: of one, probably less than that of Americans who are
Speaker 1: are capable and ready and willing to put their lives
Speaker 1: on the line to protect our security and our freedom.
Speaker 1: And I am just so grateful. Well that sums it
Speaker 1: up perfectly. Chris, once again, thank you, We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And before we go, if if you wanted for our
Speaker 1: listeners out there, if you want to get SOFTWAREP on
Speaker 1: your phone, download our free mobile app to get easy
Speaker 1: access to our articles, podcasts, and gear reviews, all perfectly
Speaker 1: format it to your device. Please subscribe to software dot
Speaker 1: com to get access to our library of e books
Speaker 1: and our exclusive team room forms and content available on
Speaker 1: all Apple and Android devices. Folks, thanks for listening this afternoon.
Speaker 1: Thanks again, Chris. We really appreciate it, and please, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the next time a new Countdown book comes out,
Speaker 1: let us know because we'd like to get on the
Speaker 1: list and have you back on the podcast again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just want to say that I was talking to
Speaker 1: somebody earlier today, you know, and I've done Countdown nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five and Countdown, uh Ben Lawden, and you know
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the next one. And somebody said, I've
Speaker 1: got a great idea for you. So what's that? He said?
Speaker 1: How about Countdown Britney spears about our conservators next. You know,
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine who was a former Navy
Speaker 1: seal used to be Britney's security um and uh, he
Speaker 1: told me quite a few really interesting stories about working
Speaker 1: for her that we can't reach. That sounds like a
Speaker 1: whole other podcast day, all right, Chris, thanks again, man,
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it. And all the best with the
Speaker 1: book sales and look forward to seeing you on television
Speaker 1: on something. Thank you Stabe. Thanks to everybody love been
Speaker 1: listening to self recreating h