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By Root 1619 0

and Iraq, a considerable number of the insurgents are foreign fighters—Saudis, Chechens, Syrians, Egyptians, and the like. They look much the same to us, but not to the locals. They know, and, unless they tell us, we’re often unable to distinguish between friend and foe. The key to defeating an insurgency is intelligence—timely, accurate, actionable intelligence. Said another way, kicking the door and dragging out an insurgent leader is the easy part. Knowing which door to kick is far more difficult. Special Forces have the ability to find the right door, and that’s what makes them the most important Americans in uniform. Direct-action and military-reconnaissance skills are relatively easy to acquire and can be learned in a short period of time. The language and cross-cultural people skills come much harder. They are not as glamorous or media-genic as the running-and-gunning of direct action or the sneaking-and-peeking of special reconnaissance, but they are essential if we’re to defeat the insurgents. The Special Forces also do a lot of other things—coalition building, humanitarian activities, conventional-military support, to name a few—but it’s their counterinsurgency skill and expertise that make them our chosen soldiers.

Before we get to the business of Special Forces and their training, I need to speak to the mechanics of how I worked with the SF training cadres and how I was allowed to interface with the SF students and candidates. I was given certain guidelines and latitudes by the training command staffs and the public affairs officers. The bulk of Special Forces training centers on the core skills of small-unit tactics, weapons systems, engineering, first aid and casualty care, communications, mission planning, and the management of unconventional-warfare operations and foreign internal defense. There are a few areas of this training that deal with sensitive or classified information. In any Special Forces training class there are foreign students—a few senior enlisted soldiers, but mostly officers from allied nations. When the allies were asked to leave a training venue or were asked not to attend a presentation, I was usually absent as well. The senior trainers, however, were good enough to give me an unclassified overview of the training that I couldn’t attend.

Regarding security classifications, I’ve held final top secret clearances with the Navy and at the CIA, and have been further cleared for higher levels of sensitive information. That’s all history. Now I’m just a guy with a notebook, a camera, and a word processor, and that’s how it should be; I have no need to be privy to anything sensitive. I’m often asked how I can write about this if I’m denied access to the classified material—what many would call “the good stuff.” This is not a book about classified material or closely held information or secret missions. This is a book about what must take place to make a Special Forces warrior. It’s about the men in the arena, and believe me, this is the good stuff—the really good stuff.

Another issue in producing this text was the identification and the use of real names of Special Forces training cadre and Special Forces candidates. I handle this issue differently than most writers. In The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228, I used real names, both of the SEAL trainers and the SEAL trainees. This book was written and published prior to the attacks of 11 September 2001. My follow-on works concerning Navy SEALs—The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident and Down Range: Navy SEALs in the War on Terrorism—use pseudonyms to protect the identities of these special operators. Other authors do this differently. In his fine book No Room for Error, John Carney uses real names in telling the story of the Air Force Special Tactics Teams. So does Robin Moore of The Green Berets fame in his recent works, The Hunt for Bin Laden and Hunting Down Saddam. Perhaps the best book on Special Forces operations is Masters of Chaos, by Linda Robinson. Ms. Robinson also uses real names. All of these works identify