Original subtitles

[ automatic gunfire ]

It was about a 24-hour battle,

stretching from one day into the next.

[ indistinct shouting ]

We'd been training for years, and this is our four minutes.

Every one of them, they gave their life

in that rescue attempt.

And they did it because one of their own was down.

Widely viewed as the world's combat elite,

the clandestine U.S. Navy SEALs

have found themselves in the media spotlight

as recent operations have brought these quiet warriors

unaccustomed fame.

NEWS ANNOUNCER: U.S. Navy SEALs rescued

American cargo ship captain Richard Phillips.

They're the superheroes, they're the titans,

they're impossible men doing an impossible job.

Much of their history is as secretive

as their missions.

But over the decades, the roles of SEALs

and their frogmen forefathers have transformed

along with evolving threats...

[ explosion ]

[ overlapping indistinct dialogue ]

and a 24-hour news cycle.

From Hitler to bin Laden,

from countering massive armies...

[ indistinct shouting ]

to countering terror,

from frogmen to high-tech commandos,

how have the covert SEALs become

the renowned warriors of today?

Who are the men behind the face masks,

behind the green paint, behind the history?

Move, move! Go! Go!

[ ** ]

[ shouting ]

[ ** ]

There are just 2,000 men today

who are active-duty U.S. Navy SEALs.

They are all volunteers who endure

what is perhaps the hardest military training in the world.

MAN: I think my hell week was just like

everybody else's hell week in the 92 classes before me.

And that's why we do hell week.

First and foremost, so that you have confidence in yourself.

You stay up for 120 hours during the week,

and you get about three or four hours of sleep.

And the reason why you get three or four hours

is because we've done studies,

and if you don't get that minimum amount of sleep,

you'll die after staying up for 120 hours.

Until you go through it, you don't understand

what it can do -- it grabs your inner soul.

If you don't think you're the best SEAL,

you don't need to be in the SEAL Team.

It's a real job, and it hurts, and it breaks people:

mentally, physically, it does all of that.

MAN: In the movies, they make it look like

everything goes as planned,

but no mission ever goes exactly the way you plan it,

so you have to be able to adapt.

That's the million-dollar question:

why do you want to be a frogman?

Because they're going to pay me and let me skydive

and blow [bleep] up?

Well, if you could be part of a team,

wouldn't you want to be a part of the very best

in the entire world?

While fewer than 10,000 men have ever been Navy SEALs...

[ men shouting and gunfire ]

they greatly define the modern battlespace.

Small groups of highly trained, well-equipped commandos

facing off against terrorist enemies:

the Taliban, Iraqi insurgents, al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden.

OSMAN: The reputation the community has

isn't because of anything I've ever done.

It's because of what everybody came before me,

everybody who's gone after me,

and that collective talent is now pooled

onto an emblem that's on your chest.

The SEALs' forerunners have always been state-of-the-art...

for their day.

The generic term for all naval Special Warfare swimmers

is "frogmen," allegedly because

of how their British colleagues looked

in their newly fashioned green wetsuits.

Others recall it's how the divers appeared

once they were issued some exciting new high-tech gear:

swim fins.

KAISER: What do I think about my frogman forefathers?

It's just unbelievable what they did with what they had.

[ ** ]

When I think about guys fighting the Japanese

with a KA-BAR and a bag of explosives,

it's unbelievable when I think about the things they did.

SPARKS: The older generation of frogmen

did so much with so little.

They had to rely on their ingenuity and kind of

their working-class-hero kind of person.

That's who they were: tough guys.

MAN: The guys who were the forefathers,

they're going out to go ahead and clear a beach.

And the guys who went out before them didn't come back.

And so now these guys are putting their hand up

and saying, "I'll still go."

That's the kind of people that are still coming in

to the SEAL community.

[ explosion ]

SEAL is an acronym

meaning sea, air, and land.

It's how and where they operate.

So how did Naval Special Operations teams

also become land-based commandos?

MAN: It's a Cinderella story.

It doesn't make sense that a Navy unit would be doing

the types of things that we're doing.

It doesn't make sense that a Navy unit would be

in Afghanistan or in the middle of Iraq,

completely separated from a body of water.

It just doesn't make sense.

The fact that we are there,

the fact that we're doing those types of missions,

it's all related to how we evolved.

The SEALs were born in World War II,

of two oceans, for two kinds of demolition work.

In the Pacific, their predecessors swam in

in advance of U.S. Marines and Army troops,

removing underwater obstacles

to make amphibious landings possible.

And in the Atlantic, teams were needed on the beaches of France

to blow open the gateway to Europe for D-Day.

Everybody knows that the invasion

is going to happen in France.

They know that they're going to have to put

millions of men onto the coast to unseat Hitler,

to defeat the German armies in France.

The Allies would have to land somewhere

along the coast of France.

They knew that Hitler had built a massive Atlantic wall

to prevent the invasion

and that they would have to find a way to breach it.

But on the eve of its entry into World War II,

the U.S. military had no one with expertise

in this kind of complex demolition work.

The U.S. Navy would recruit a 31-year-old expatriate,

Draper Kauffman.

He would help create one of the forefather teams

of today's Navy SEALs.

When the nearsighted Kauffman graduated

from the Naval Academy,

he failed to get a commission in the U.S. Navy.

But by the late 1930s,

France and England were at war with Germany,

years before America entered the fray.

So he went overseas to serve, becoming an ambulance driver.

After a brief stint as a German prisoner of war,

he went to London to join the fight there.

The Blitz is going on this entire time.

Hundreds of people are getting killed in London,

you know, every other day.

Bombs are falling.

Some bombs are not exploding.

They asked for volunteers for bomb disposal,

and true to form, Draper volunteers.

Yeah, he's a character.

For whatever reason, he wants to be

as close to the center of action as he possibly can.

Kauffman's experience with ordnance

got him a transfer from the British navy

to the American one.

His orders to start the U.S. Navy's bomb disposal unit

came just in the nick of time.

[ blades whirring ]

[ bombs whistling ]

Days after Draper Kauffman returns to the U.S. Navy,

the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

[ siren blares ]

Shortly after the Japanese attack on Hawaii,

Kauffman was ordered to dismantle

an unexploded 500-pound bomb in Pearl Harbor.

For his valor, he was awarded the Navy Cross.

He returned to Washington, D.C.,

to run the Navy's bomb disposal school.

Then, in 1943, while on his honeymoon,

Lt. Commander Kauffman received orders

to report back to D.C.

After four days of honeymoon, we were at the Hotel New Yorker.

And I got a telegram telling me to report immediately,

and I did what I guess anybody else would've done.

I gave the young bellboy five bucks and said,

"Son, you can't find me. Come back tomorrow."

When he arrived in Washington,

Draper Kauffman was given his new assignment:

clear Hitler's beaches.

"Have you ever seen intelligence pictures

of the obstacles the Germans are building

on their beaches in France?"

And I said, "No, sir."

He said, "Well, they're putting obstacles

out in 6 feet of water to stop the landing craft there,

and the soldiers would have to get out in 6 feet of water.

Do you know how much an infantryman's pack weighs?"

And I said, "No, sir."

He said, "Well, neither do I, but they'll all drown."

He said, "Now, I want you to put a stop to that."

Kauffman's new mission took him

from running a school on disposing unexploded bombs

to exploding ones.

He was ordered to create the Naval Combat Demolition Units,

or NCDUs.

MAN: By his own accounting,

he didn't have a clue what he was doing.

But he took some of his officers with him,

and those officers are actually the ones

that set everything up and made it work.

For their training camp, the men went

to a swampy outpost in Fort Pierce, Florida.

There was no air conditioning out there,

there was no OFF! mosquito repellent.

They said they would rather face the Germans

than the mosquitoes and the no-see-ums out there.

The training that still happens at BUDS,

which is Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training,

started right here in Fort Pierce.

So every time you see guys lifting up a log,

that started right here at Fort Pierce.

Boat teams going out through the waves,

that started right here in Fort Pierce.

The term "hell week" started right here in Fort Pierce

because Draper Kauffman wanted to condense the training

because he was getting ready for war.

So he said, "Let's get this all done in a week,"

and they called it introduction week.

The guys called it hell week.

MILLIGAN: Kauffman's trying to create

as close a representation of actual war as possible.

[ ** ]

When the Second World War starts,

Draper Kauffman is probably the one American

that has seen the most of it.

He's seen how horrible war is.

He's seen the emotional and physical toll

that it takes on you.

So when he creates this NCDU training,

he's trying to get as close to that experience as possible.

He's trying to show they can go without sleep

for a long period of time.

They can be cold and miserable and hungry and everything else.

Kauffman used instructors from his bomb disposal unit

to help transform Navy construction battalions,

or Seabees, into Naval Combat Demolition Units.

Men from the Scouts and Raiders,

a joint Army/Navy maritime reconnaissance unit,

were in charge of the physical training

that created hell week.

According to one of the original NCDU officers,

hell week separated the men from the boys:

"The men took off and left us with the boys.

But the boys who stayed turned out to have

the intrepid spirit for this kind of work."

Our first class started, I think it was about 200,

and we graduated about 70.

NCDU training began on June 6, 1943.

The trainees didn't know it at the time,

but exactly one year later, these men would be

on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

HAWKINS: Naval Combat Demolition men were put together

to get rid of the obstacles on beach approaches in Europe,

specifically Normandy.

There's a very high tidal shift at Normandy.

So sometimes the obstacles are underwater,

sometimes they're not underwater.

And if you're going to eliminate the obstacles,

you really have to get in there and get them at low tide.

[ explosions ]

Much has been told of the D-Day invasion

and the sacrifices made on these bloodstained beaches.

But the story of the Naval Combat Demolition men,

forefathers of today's SEALs

who helped make the invasion possible,

has lived mostly in the shadows of history.

Eighteen-year-old Ken Reynolds

was one of the men who volunteered for the NCDUs.

I thought, and other people thought, it meant

non-combat demolition.

And my mother was elated, because it was non-combat.

But I soon found out that that's not what it meant.

The seaman second class went to England

to join about 100 Naval Combat Demolition volunteers

who were already training.

Allied engineers in England

had reproduced the German beach obstacles

so the NCDU men could practice exploding them.

[ explosion ]

One of the obstacles that the NCDUs would have to defeat

was called a Belgian Gate.

An officer named Carl Hagensen

pre-packaged 2-pound charges of C2 explosives

that could be quickly wrapped around the beach obstacles.

Engineers determined that these Hagensen Packs

had to be placed in 16 strategic spots

in order to flatten the metal tank trap

in a way that would allow Allied vehicles...

to drive over the former obstacles.

The NCDU men, along with Army engineers,

were assigned to Gap Assault Teams,

each one responsible for blowing 50-yard breaks

in the beach defenses at Normandy.

If they failed, it would jeopardize

the largest invasion in history.

Early on the morning of June 6, 1944,

the NCDUs pulled their explosive-laden rubber boats

as close to the obstacles as possible.

REYNOLDS: You knew what was in back of you.

There was thousands and thousands of ships

coming across the channel,

and if we didn't open up the beach,

there was nowhere to go.

Some of the Army soldiers advancing towards Normandy

looked at the hell in front of them --

their fellow troops being massacred

by German defenses on Omaha Beach --

and they clung to the obstacles

that Ken and the other demolitioneers

had already wired.

Ken tried, sometimes in vain,

to get the soldiers to loosen their suicide grips

on the German defenses.

We got about half of all the obstacles charged,

and the Army decided that they were going to come in.

You'd take a fuse lighter and you'd pull it

and so you've got two minutes to get out of here.

But some of them didn't move.

They were so scared that they didn't know what to do.

Despite suffering a 52% casualty rate,

the NCDU men, alongside the Army combat engineers,

were able to blast completely open

five of the sixteen corridors assigned to them

and three more partial gaps.

But that was enough to allow the landings at Omaha Beach

and the Allied forces to pursue Hitler's army.

We were an expendable unit.

If you survived, "Oh, well and good. Boy, you survived."

If you died, "Well, that's, that's -- we're sorry."

Nobody knew who we were.

The only identification we carried was on our helmet,

which says USN on the helmet.

So consequently we were there by ourselves.

But we were there.

Very much so, we were there.

One of the reasons that the NCDU remained

invisible to history is that they would only serve

in two significant operations in Europe:

D-Day and the invasion of Southern France.

And once U.S. troops were on the ground in Europe,

demolition work shifted completely

to the war in the Pacific.

Battles in the Pacific Ocean posed very different challenges

than the land war now raging in Europe.

The fight against Japan

was all about U.S. amphibious island landings.

American military leaders decided

the best way to advance towards Tokyo

was to implement an island-hopping campaign,

skipping the enemy's largest strongholds

while capturing other islands

that would allow them to hopscotch across the Pacific.

It began in the fall of 1943 at a place called Tarawa.

This would be the first major test

of the combined Navy/Marine Corps ability

to capture an island fortress

in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

It would also be the place

where the need for underwater demolition men

became tragically apparent.

[ guns firing ]

HAWKINS: Tarawa was the first major amphibious assault

in the Pacific, and they were using

photographic interpretation

of what the coral reefs looked like

or what beaches they were going to land on.

What they discovered was that the boats

hit these coral reefs far from the beach,

and many of the Marines had jumped out.

Hundreds of Marines drowned.

So they knew that they had to have

some sort of pre-assault reconnaissance.

That's when they established the two provisional UDTs.

UDT stands for Underwater Demolition Team.

[ ** ]

[ gunshots ]

After the Marines suffered more than 3,000 casualties

in the 76-hour battle to take Tarawa,

UDTs would subsequently be used

in advance of every major amphibious landing

in the Pacific.

[ explosion ]

Unlike their NCDU brothers at D-Day,

these men worked underwater.

History has dubbed them "The Naked Warriors."

The Naked Warrior was the UDT operator in the Pacific

who went to the beach just in swim trunks, a KA-BAR knife,

a slate around his neck, and a stubby pencil

to take a string line reconnaissance of the beach,

taking depth soundings and then recording it on their slates.

They were the naked warrior.

These barely-armed men made a critical difference

in the victories at places like Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

Other maritime commandos operated

for the Office of Strategic Services,

precursor of the CIA.

Their missions included infiltration behind enemy lines

and sabotage.

Of all the forefathers of the SEAL Teams,

the covert OSS Maritime Unit

pushed the limits of technology.

The Lambertsen Lung that was used by OSS Maritime

was very innovative in its time.

It was a closed-circuit pure oxygen breathing apparatus

that essentially took exhaled air

and spread it over a bed of chemicals

that re-circulated it back to the diver,

and this in essence created a bubble-free diving apparatus.

They adopted the first usable submersible from the British,

which was called Sleeping Beauty.

It was called a submersible canoe.

It was a one-man vessel

that could be propelled on the surface

and then submerged for the attack.

They developed a floating mattress that was propelled.

And they used an electric drill with a 12-volt battery

to propel two guys through the water with it.

As the Underwater Demolition Teams

prepared for an invasion of mainland Japan,

President Harry Truman changed the course of history.

[ explosion ]

Two atomic weapons ended the war in the Pacific.

[ brass band playing and crowd cheering ]

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Tens of thousands

of proud American flags dotted the square.

And as the day wore on, hilarity reached a high peak.

As happens after war,

the military immediately began downsizing.

The OSS Maritime Unit would not survive.

Nor would the Scouts and Raiders.

Nor the Naval Combat Demolition Units.

All but a handful of UDTs were disbanded.

Still, young men were drawn to becoming Navy frogmen.

[ ** ]

MAN: I saw the movie The Frogmen with Richard Widmark.

I was a very good athlete at the time,

and I was a good swimmer.

MAN: The movie was Frogmen.

I had said at the end of that movie,

"That's what I'm going to do when I get a little bit older."

MAN: The movie came out,

The Frogmen movie with Richard Widmark,

and I thought, "Well, I'll just go down and become a frogman."

That's when I went down and joined the Navy.

Despite young men's ambitions,

the Underwater Demolition Teams shrank

from 3,100 men at the end of the World War to 200.

The nature of warfare in the late 1940s

chilled from hot battles

against the axis of Germany, Japan, and Italy

to the Cold War between the democratic West

and the communist East.

[ ** ]

What some have described as "hysteria"

gripped much of the United States

over fear of Communist infiltrators.

Called the Red Scare

because of adherents' devotion to the flag of the USSR,

it prompted President Truman to issue a "Loyalty Order"

requiring government employees to be investigated

for adequate allegiance to the United States of America.

[ explosion ]

In 1949, the Soviets successfully tested

a nuclear weapon

and Communist forces led by Mao Zedong overtook China.

Then, in 1950, the Cold War boiled over.

[ ** ]

On Sunday, June 25th, Communist forces attacked

the Republic of Korea.

It was the first major combat of the Cold War.

When 75,000 Soviet-backed North Korean troops

poured south into the Republic of Korea, an American ally,

President Truman responded by sending U.S. forces

to stop the advance of the Communists.

The American military started arriving in Korea within weeks,

and the Underwater Demolition Teams

were in the fight once again.

Korea marked a transformation for the UDTs.

This would be the first time they moved inland

beyond their traditional Navy maritime habitat.

But their missions were still mostly nautical,

often keeping passageways for American ships open.

Wonsan Harbor in North Korea had been heavily mined

before U.S. and United Nations navies enforced a blockade.

But it required constant vigilance

from the Underwater Demolition Teams

to keep it from being further mined by the North Koreans.

A former WWII Scout and Raider turned UDT man,

Dick Lyon, was assigned a dangerous new mission

in Wonsan Harbor.

His commanding officer called the 28-year-old lieutenant

into his office.

He said, "I have to have the strongest swimmer.

I've just received an indication that a new shallow-water mine

has been dispensed inside of Wonsan Harbor.

You're going to be heavily armed

with a pair of 24-inch bolt cutters,

and your job is to dive down under the mine

and cut the mooring cable."

It was before we had any issued scuba gear,

which is why I was freebie

going down with bolt cutters -- kuh! --

and a KA-BAR.

So... [ chuckles ] that's it.

Dick Lyon entered the 36-degree water

with no experience or training in mine warfare.

And no American had ever confronted

this kind of mine before.

I swam down under the mine with my bolt cutters,

making sure that I don't do something really cuckoo

like break one of those horns,

because that's the last thing I would ever remember.

Inside one of the mines that Dick Lyon recovered

was its packing slip -- in Russian.

It's not clear why a receipt would be inside a mine,

but it was clear: the Soviets were supplying these weapons

to the North Koreans.

The Cold War was in full swing.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: It came on July 27, 1953.

While the Communists signed at Panmunjom...

After three years of fighting,

the Korean Conflict ended in a stalemate in 1953.

But once an armistice was signed,

the United States entered another period

of military evolution.

President Dwight Eisenhower, the former general,

was careful not to dismantle the military

as had happened after World War II.

But he now based his strategies around nuclear capabilities.

As the Strategic Air Command patrolled the skies

24 hours a day

while nuclear submarines plied the oceans,

the tides of warfare were shifting

to the concept of mutually assured destruction, or MAD.

The theory was that if two opposing sides

each had enough nuclear firepower

to destroy the other,

then neither would fire their weapons

because there could be no victor in such a conflict,

only equal, shared destruction.

The massive nuclear build-up

was designed to contain both the Soviet Union and China,

but those adversaries were now using

a very different strategy: spreading Communism

through smaller guerrilla wars in countries like Laos.

U.S. military and political leaders were concerned

about what was known as the domino effect:

one country falling to Communism

triggering the next one to fall.

So they were determined to draw a line in the sand

without launching nuclear missiles.

In 1958, an admiral named Arleigh Burke

came up with a plan for special warfare teams

that would be the blueprint

for what the U.S. Navy SEALs would one day become.

MAN: Arleigh Burke was the Chief of Naval Operations.

He felt that the services had to be alert to

the changing national threat

and be able to create operations

that were something less than nuclear war.

And so he was the one,

if anyone would be considered the Papa SEAL,

Arleigh Burke would be Papa SEAL.

Although Admiral Burke conceived the plans

for unconventional naval warfare

under the Eisenhower administration,

it would be a new president who would champion them.

[ ** ]

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: John F. Kennedy settles into office

as the 35th president of the United States.

Fourteen days before Kennedy's inauguration,

the Soviets had announced they would be advancing

"wars of liberation" to spread Communism.

It was in this tense climate

that John Kennedy was about to take Arleigh Burke's vision

of SEAL Teams and make it a reality.

In the same speech that Kennedy announced the plan

to have an American on the moon by the end of the decade,

he also declared the need

for enhanced special warfare capabilities,

laying out his vision for the decade to come.

To expand rapidly and substantially,

in cooperation with our allies,

the orientation of existing forces

for the conduct of non-nuclear war,

paramilitary operations,

and sub-limited or unconventional wars.

A little more than seven months after this speech,

the U.S. Navy established SEAL Teams One and Two.

As is still the case,

odd-number teams are on the West Coast

and even-number teams on the East Coast.

Although the Underwater Demolition Teams

would continue on with their strictly maritime mission

of clearing beaches for amphibious landings,

every man on the first SEAL Teams

was pulled from the UDTs.

MAN: We had heard rumors,

because they'd been working on putting something together,

but we had absolutely no knowledge

that anything was imminent.

And we didn't really know what SEAL Team was going to be.

I'm not sure anybody did at that point.

MAN: First of all, I've got to tell you

I was like halfway through my training

before I found out there were SEALs there.

I had heard of them before,

but I thought they was talking about

a little furry creature that swam around in the harbor.

So I didn't really pay that much attention to the SEALs.

I just wanted to be a frogman.

McCORMACK: The first time I heard the term SEAL used

was in late 1961.

And most of us thought that the SEALs

stood for South East Asia Liaison.

Seemed to fit, but we soon found out

it stood for sea, air, land

and would take us beyond the capabilities of UDT.

A 29-year-old lieutenant named Dave Del Giudice was selected

as the first commanding officer of SEAL Team One.

Considering the sophisticated operations

the teams have today, these were humble beginnings.

DEL GIUDICE: We were only 10 officers

and 50 enlisted at that time.

We didn't even have a building to work out of.

So we had to start from scratch and get everything organized --

not only equipment, but a place to call home.

I had almost no guidance at the beginning of SEAL Team One.

It was a question of trying to learn as we went along

how best to fulfill the mission.

[ camera focusing and beeping ]

The mission would be Vietnam.

[ ** ]

Just 10 days after SEAL Team One was formed,

Dave Del Giudice and one of his officers, John Stockholm,

were on their way to Southeast Asia

where guerrilla warfare was already widespread.

Saigon's military was no match for the Communist Viet Cong,

and the Kennedy administration was concerned

that the V.C. would soon vanquish

America's ally in the south.

The first SEALs in Vietnam did not fight, they advised.

Although the teams arrived in 1962,

they would not operate in combat missions

in Vietnam until 1966.

Instead, they trained their South Vietnamese counterparts

for CIA-planned missions into North Vietnam.

The early '60s found the SEALs and CIA

as partners in formulating covert operations

against the Communist North.

The CIA picked the targets,

and the SEALs worked out the military tactics.

[ ** ]

In addition to working with the CIA on intelligence,

the SEALs collaborated with technological experts.

In 1964, American scientists

began working on a secret weapon for the SEALS.

The extraordinary new device?

A miniature nuclear bomb.

Known as "backpack nukes,"

these weapons were built as an alternative

to the massively destructive nuclear weapons

in the U.S. arsenal.

These little nukes were called

B-54 Special Atomic Demolition Munitions, or SADMs.

A handful of SEALs trained to parachute in

with the 58-pound device,

infiltrate behind enemy lines, and have the capability

of annihilating an entire battlefield.

A pair of swimmers could also insert into an enemy-held area,

plant the bomb, and swim back out.

Despite their size, some of these nuclear weapons

were more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima.

Other than in testing, the SADM was never detonated

during the 25 years it was in the military's arsenal.

Some Team members interviewed to train with the device

were uncomfortable working with its potential devastation,

saying they'd rather go back to Vietnam.

[ ** ]

Vietnam, 1966.

It would be here and now

that the SEALs would establish their reputation

as true combat warriors.

The North Vietnamese were successfully building

an insurgency in the South.

At the same time, the CIA realized there was little hope

of creating meaningful resistance in the North.

A detachment of SEALs were sent in

to take direct action against Viet Cong guerrillas

who had infiltrated the South.

Operationally, the SEALs worked almost autonomously.

They would gather their own intel

and plan their own counterinsurgency missions.

They also chose their own equipment.

MAN: It changed from being this guy in the water with fins on

and a face mask and a life jacket and a KA-BAR

to a guy with an AR-15, M-16 machine guns

going in and going directly against the enemy.

HAWKINS: The first SEALs in combat

wore Marine Corps green uniforms and camouflage uniforms

when they could get them.

And a lot of the later SEALs wore camouflage tops and Levi's.

More comfortable.

They also wore pantyhose, by the way,

to keep the leeches off of you

when you're going through the canals.

NEWS ANNOUNCER: These men are members of

one of the most unique military organizations in history.

Behind these green faces

are men who have accepted the challenge

of some of the most daring assignments

given to American fighting men.

These are the Navy SEALs.

BRUHMULLER: The "men with the green faces" was a term

that came out at the start of Vietnam

because we used to use this camouflage makeup

on our faces and everything,

and a lot of it was green and black.

And it used to scare the living daylights out of the Vietnamese

to have you pop up and wake some guy up in his hooch

and be looking at him.

It almost put him in shock.

THORNTON: Of course back then,

everybody knew that stuff didn't work worth a damn,

and it'd wash off after you'd sweated so much in the jungles,

it would be gone, and you'd be the guys with the white faces

or the dark brown tan faces, you know?

MARTIN: We started out with the simple missions

just to kind of get used to the terrain and acclimate.

You know, the weather there and the bugs

and the creepy-crawlies and the caimans.

God, those caimans.

You know, saltwater alligators, they come out of nowhere.

MAN: I was put in charge of a 14-man SEAL platoon

on the edge of the Rung Sat Special Zone,

which controlled the seaborne approaches to Saigon

from the South China Sea.

We had rules of engagement, but there was nothing --

I recall no restriction whatsoever.

In fact, it was a playground.

My SEAL platoon, we had the weapons we needed,

we had helicopters to insert us,

boats to insert us and extract us,

helicopters to shoot for us if we got in trouble,

intelligence assets.

And basically it was, "Okay, Lt. Woolard,

here's the Rung Sat.

Stop these guys from mining it. Just go out and do it."

The name "Rung Sat" translates as "Killer Swamp."

And in 1966, it was a dangerous V.C. stronghold

located deep in South Vietnam.

Yet the enemy's strength was hidden

in the shadows of the jungle,

in their ability to ambush.

Lt. Maynard Weyers led a SEAL platoon

that was supposed to keep the Viet Cong

from using this area as a supply route.

Saigon thought that there was a lot of stuff coming from there

and there weren't any U.S. troops down there,

or there weren't many, and so it was up to us

to go in there and find them and destroy them.

Twenty-eight-year-old Billy Machen was one of the men

in Lt. Weyer's platoon.

They had been through hand-to-hand combat school

together and were close friends.

Billy Machen was with a platoon,

and we were spending a lot of time in this particular area.

We found several caches of rice in buildings,

and so we destroyed them.

The helicopters were flying above us.

They indicated they saw a V.C. camp

and some boats and stuff.

They said that it would probably be good to check it out,

and so I talked to the platoon that Machen was in.

I said, "Hey, we need to go in and check this out."

And Billy said to me, he said, "Well, do you think we should?

They know we're around, and this may not be too smart."

And I said, "Yeah, I understand that," I said,

"but we'll have the helicopters above us for support,

so it'll be okay."

They got about halfway to the site,

and the helicopters called us on the radio and said that,

"We're running out of gas, we gotta go home."

And so they took off, and we were halfway to the target.

And they kept going and they got ambushed on the way in there,

and Machen got killed.

It was tough to take because, first off,

he got killed in there,

and then, you know, we always bring our people back.

One of the guys picked him up and carried him out,

and it was touch-and-go,

but they were able to get back to the boat

with everybody intact except for Billy.

It was a tough loss.

Despite the SEALs' growing reputation

as invincible commandos,

Billy Machen proved they were quite mortal.

He was the first Navy SEAL combat death

of the Vietnam War.

But as the teams expanded their direct action missions,

he would not be the last.

A CIA-backed ongoing operation

would cost five SEALs their lives

as they led local forces and mercenaries on missions

to capture or kill Viet Cong leadership.

Provincial Reconnaissance Units, known as PRUs,

were run under the CIA's infamous Phoenix Program,

an initiative to destroy the Viet Cong Infrastructure.

When the North and South separated,

the North kept a parallel government in South Vietnam.

And the idea was to go kill off this parallel government,

the province chief, the governors, the tax collectors.

It kind of got a bad name of being an assassination outfit.

WEYERS: We were trying to gather intel

is one of the main things you want to do.

If you can capture them without killing them,

you're ahead of the game.

For most cases we were trying to capture them.

I think there were 60 SEALs totally that were involved.

And no one knew we were SEALs.

We had special ID cards and were kept quiet,

and some of the reason is,

I was telling Army majors what to do,

and little do they know that it was an E-6 enlisted SEAL

that was telling them what to do.

We had a lot of power,

and it was very effective and also very dangerous.

According to the CIA,

the Provincial Reconnaissance Units became

probably the most controversial element of Phoenix.

The CIA used their existing network of over 100

South Vietnamese district intelligence committees

to compile lists of known Viet Cong Infrastructure,

or VCI, operatives.

These targets' identities were sent

to special forces, police, and the PRUs.

The stated preferred goal was to "neutralize" the VCI

on the list by capturing and interrogating them.

But if they resisted, which apparently thousands did,

they were killed.

There's a degree of it that's uncomfortable

because I was told to not talk about it for a long time.

At one point, I was an assistant principal in a high school

and I didn't really want the kids to know what my past was.

They knew I had been in SEAL Team,

but I never really talked about what I did.

There are parts that I'm uncomfortable with.

I think any time that a warrior starts talking about combat,

there's a part of that person will go back into that,

and I don't want to go there.

SEAL contact with the enemy was close and personal,

often operating just inches from their targets.

Their direct actions were considered

the most effective anti-guerrilla operations

in the war.

The last SEAL platoon left Vietnam on December 7, 1971.

By then, two-thirds of America's troops

had been pulled out.

By early 1972,

the ground war was now mostly the responsibility

of the South Vietnamese.

But a handful of SEAL advisors did remain,

and men like Lt. Tom Norris were still operating

on critical, dangerous missions.

[ jet engine squeals ]

On April 2nd, 1972, a U.S. electronics jamming plane

was shot down in an area that was occupied

by thousands of North Vietnamese troops.

Only the navigator, 53-year-old Lt. Colonel Iceal Hambleton,

survived the crash.

Also, a crewman from another plane, Lieutenant Mark Clark,

was alive on the ground after being shot down.

Clark had been trying to rescue Hambleton,

who possessed U.S. nuclear weapons information --

secrets that would be of great value to the enemy

if he were captured.

The mission to save Hambleton, whose call sign was "Bat-21,"

was memorialized in a book and movie.

When Tom Norris undertook the rescue mission,

12 airmen had already died trying to save Hambleton.

Rescue helicopters kept being shot down

in the North Vietnamese controlled area.

But Norris was able to walk in

and snatch Lieutenant Clark

from the riverbed where he was hiding.

Then Tom Norris headed back

into the heavily patrolled enemy area

to save Lt. Colonel Hambleton.

I was talking to the forward air controllers,

and they were telling me that Hambleton's not making

his scheduled calls to them.

And when he is, he's not very coherent

and they think he's losing -- he's not going to make it.

So I went, "Okay, we're gonna go after him."

Tom Norris and his South Vietnamese partner, Kiet,

traveled by sampan to blend in with the local river traffic.

And we came out of the fog just below the Cam Lo Bridge,

which was supposed to have been disabled.

It was not.

But it told me exactly where I was.

Tom didn't know it at the time,

but there were 30,000 North Vietnamese troops

crossing the Cam Lo Bridge.

From that, I had a pretty good idea

where to start looking for Hambleton

because the forward air controllers had seen him

and they had been able to get a location on him from that.

We got to an area where I thought looked pretty good,

beached the sampan, climbed up on the bank and started looking,

and the guy was 25 yards off the bank,

sitting there in a bunch of shrubbery, you know?

He saw me, and of course, he lit up

and he started smiling and waving.

So we loaded him on the sampan, put a couple life vests on him,

put him at the bottom of the sampan,

put a bunch of vegetation on him.

Kiet got in the front, I got in the back,

and we headed off downstream.

Racing towards their base,

the men were spotted by the North Vietnamese,

but Norris and Kiet kept paddling furiously

along the far side of the river,

trying to outdistance the enemy,

when they came under withering machine-gun fire.

Norris called in air support.

The men finally reached the safety of their camp.

Doctors later reported that Hambleton,

who had lost 45 pounds over his 11.5-day ordeal,

could not have lasted much longer.

And, as it had for over 10 years,

the Vietnam War bled on.

In Paris, President Richard Nixon's

National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger,

was in peace talks with the North Vietnamese.

To give him more leverage,

all military options were on the table,

including a massive amphibious landing

near the North Vietnamese border.

Two of the few SEALs left in country

undertook a reconnaissance mission:

Lieutenant Tom Norris,

who six months earlier made the Bat-21 rescue,

and Petty Officer Mike Thornton

were joined by three South Vietnamese special operators.

Norris, who was scheduled to go home in about a week,

hand-picked Mike Thornton for the operation.

NORRIS: Mike's the kind of guy that you think a SEAL should be.

He's the big, muscular, you know, "I'm a SEAL."

The rest of us, in actuality, most of them are my size.

They're not big guys at all.

They're tough average-sized folks.

Tom and Mike's mission called for them to reconnoiter

an enemy-held naval base on the Cua Viet River

and see how heavily defended it was.

Was it vulnerable to being captured

for a possible amphibious landing site?

Planned to go up with the Vietnamese.

They were gonna drop us off into small little rubber rafts

called Inflatable Boat, Small -- IBSs.

And we were gonna paddle into an area

and then offload from the IBSs and swim into the beach

and do our patrol and then come back out again.

The SEALs did not know it at the time,

but their Vietnamese boat driver inserted them

far north of their intended drop point.

We slipped in the water and swam to the beach.

Tommy sent me up over -- I had a Starlight scope

and went up over the beach, looked both ways

to make sure the areas were clear.

Couldn't see the Cua Viet,

but we brought everybody up over the beach one at a time.

The men did not find the river where they were supposed to be,

but as dawn was about to break, they spotted something ominous.

We're looking around and Mike says -- he called me Nasty.

He says, "Hey, Nasty, is that what I think it is

up there on the hill?"

And I said, "If you're talking about that tank, absolutely."

He said, "Okay. Just thought I'd check." You know?

[ laughs ]

"We're fine where we are, but you know?

They're up there, we're down here. It's okay."

And it didn't end up that way.

There was a patrol that came down the beach.

The officer that was with us

decided that they thought it would be a good idea

to see if we could do a body snatch.

He stood up behind the sand dunes and yelled,

[ speaks in Vietnamese ]

It means, "Come here."

- Tried to call the guy over. - Tried to call the guy over.

The guy's got an AK-47.

He's got this little...

And this guy's 100, probably 100 yards away from him and...

Things went from bad to worse.

You know, we got in a tremendous firefight.

The South Vietnamese officer's decision

to attempt to capture an enemy soldier by shouting at him

ended up alerting the North Vietnamese

to the Americans' presence.

The two SEALs and the three South Vietnamese operators

found themselves overwhelmed by a force of roughly 300.

They had dunes all up here.

So I would move up here and shoot.

And then I'd fall back and shoot.

And I'd roll over here and throw a grenade over there,

and then I'd shoot.

But by me moving around,

it gave them a false pretense as to how many people we had.

Thought we had a lot more people.

And we did that a lot, a lot of shooting and maneuvering.

After a three-hour firefight,

the North Vietnamese troops began to pull back.

But the SEALs realized that their enemy was not retreating,

merely repositioning to surround them.

Tom Norris used his radio to call in an American destroyer

to bombard their position.

"We're gonna be overrun.

This is what I need, and I want you to fire for effect."

And of course to them,

that means you're throwing rounds right on top of us.

And the guy comes back and he says,

"Understand fire for effect?"

And I said, "Absolutely. Put it on us."

And he said, "Are you sure?"

And I said, "Get it in here!"

And they did. I mean, they brought it in.

Thank goodness.

But, I mean, it was a long time coming.

As soon as I said, "Mike, we're extracting,"

we started leapfrogging out of there,

and I'm the last guy up there.

So I'm covering those guys until it's my turn to leapfrog out.

And that never happened, because I got shot.

I mean, I knew I'd been hit.

But I didn't -- I didn't know how bad.

So I'm scrounging around to find my rifle

to try and, you know, shoot back.

And I'm seeing tunnel vision come in,

and I'm fighting, going, "No, no, no, no, no, no!"

Because I need to shoot. I mean, I need to cover my guys.

And, boom, I went out.

Later on, I see Dang coming back by himself,

and I said, "Where's Tom?"

He said, "He's dead." And I said, "Stay here."

They both grabbed me and I said, "Stay here. I'll go get Tommy."

I thought he was dead,

but I wasn't going to leave him behind.

That was the thing, that we never leave anybody behind.

So I sure wasn't going to be the first one.

When Mike got to Tom's position,

it was being overrun by the enemy.

I eliminated several other guys coming over the top.

Then I picked him up and started running,

and that's when the first round hit.

And we got blown into the sky.

And I fell and I saw him flying off my shoulders.

When I picked up Tommy, he said, "Mike, buddy."

And that's when I knew he was back alive.

I had blood all over my face.

I mean, my brain was hanging out and I don't know what all.

Bad guys just shooting at us,

and I could see rounds hitting the water going,

"Cha-cha-ching! Cha-cha-ching! Cha-cha-ching!"

And pretty soon, I'm kind of losing consciousness again,

and Mike's trying to pull me out to sea.

Shot through his leg and hit with shrapnel in his back,

Mike Thornton was now swimming

two injured comrades out to sea:

Tom Norris, who was barely alive,

and one of the South Vietnamese operators

who'd also been shot and couldn't swim.

Mike carried them both for several hours

before they were finally picked up.

The doctor gave him no chance at all to live.

His first operation was almost 19 and a half hours long.

Nearly a year after saving Tom Norris's life,

Mike Thornton would be awarded the Medal of Honor,

America's highest military honor.

But Norris was still in the hospital.

When Mike was to receive his medal, of course,

he wanted me to be there.

We went to the hospital and said,

"You know, I'd like to be able to be at this ceremony."

And they felt that was --

I mean, medically, I wasn't supposed to be doing that.

So they said, "No, you can't do that."

Of course, that's not the thing to tell...

you just don't tell a SEAL he can't.

You know, it's not a word in our vocabulary.

And so we...

[ laughs ]

I just went up there in the middle of the night.

[ laughs ]

Yeah. Well, he did.

Mike kind of kidnapped me out of the hospital.

THORNTON: The Navy got so angry at me

because I ended up keeping Tommy for four days

instead of one day.

I told Admiral Zumwalt, I didn't leave him in North Vietnam,

and I sure as hell wasn't going to leave him in the hospital

on that great day.

I'll never forget President Nixon said,

"Mike, what can I do for you?"

And I said, "Well, if you could break this medal in half

and give the other half to the young man standing behind me,

because he saved my life, too."

Four years later, President Gerald Ford

awarded Tom Norris his own Medal of Honor

for the rescue of the two downed airmen.

Once he and Mike Thornton both had received the medal,

it would be the only time in modern history

that one recipient had saved the life of another.

Neither one of us feel that we deserve our medals.

He may think I deserve mine

because he's sitting next to me now.

But did I ever think about it twice

about going back to get Tommy?

No, because I knew that he would've done

the same thing for me.

And that's what type of trust that you have to have

within each other to do missions like that.

The last SEAL advisor left Vietnam in March of 1973.

With another war ending,

the special warfare units were once again imperiled

by budgets and bureaucracy.

MAN: The worst time I can remember is post-Vietnam.

We actually took United States Navy SEALs out of the teams

and put them back in the fleet.

At that time the brain power said,

"Well, we probably don't need that much special operations."

That was a terrible mistake,

and a lot of guys suffered for it.

So I think the darkest time in the 45 years

I've been associated with this community

was post-Vietnam just because the SEALs weren't valued.

Funding for the military, including the SEALs

and Underwater Demolition Teams, dropped off quite a bit.

And there was a very low period where it was difficult

to get the supplies you needed to even train properly.

We got a lot of training done,

but we didn't get a lot of shooting done

because we didn't have the money for bullets at the time.

Skills atrophied or were not developed with the times.

That went on for a number of years after Vietnam.

But special operators would still be needed.

[ crowd chanting in foreign language ]

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter

approved an Army Special Forces rescue of 53 Americans

being held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran.

The rescue mission, however, met with disaster

when a helicopter collided with a C-130 troop carrier

that was refueling.

Eight servicemen were killed and several others injured.

In order to avoid another catastrophe like Desert One,

the military created two new organizations:

a Joint Special Operations Command

to coordinate all special warfare missions

and SEAL Team Six, the Navy's

dedicated counter-terror and hostage rescue unit.

They chose the number six to make the Soviets believe

there were five other teams working against them.

[ shouts indistinctly ]

[ automatic gunfire ]

While now considered the elite of the elite,

SEAL Team Six's first combat mission met with tragedy.

[ explosion ]

Early this morning, forces from six Caribbean democracies

and the United States began a landing or landings

on the island of Grenada in the Eastern Caribbean.

When President Ronald Reagan gave the go-ahead

for Operation Urgent Fury, he expressed concern

for the safety of 600 U.S. medical students on Grenada.

But the underlying concerns were, once again,

about the spread of Communism.

The country's Marxist prime minister had been gunned down

by even more radical members

of his Cuban-influenced administration.

Grenadian military forces had been augmented

by Cubans and other Soviet Bloc troops.

Reagan saw the prospect of another Communist toehold

in the Americas as unacceptable

and ordered the American military to capture the island

and restore constitutional democracy.

While this was America's first major combat operation

since leaving Vietnam, it was planned in just three days.

SEAL Team Six was part of the rushed operation.

Twelve teammates undertook an ill-planned parachute insertion

in heavy winds.

Intelligence failed to consider daylight savings time,

and a daytime mission faded into night.

The men were dropped in the wrong place.

Ten-foot swells and a driving rain

dragged the men and their parachutes.

Four SEALs perished that night.

Other SEALs were able to save the Commonwealth governor,

who went on to stabilize the country.

And the mission in Grenada was hailed by President Reagan

as a triumph over Communism.

But the operation exposed the need

for better Joint Special Ops communications

and cross-service training.

The SEAL community did some soul-searching.

If it was a training exercise, we would've cancelled this.

But we can't. This is real world; in you go.

And so you look at those things,

and you talk about it in very gloves-off terms

not to assign blame, but how do we train ourselves

or how do we prevent this from happening again?

Because had we made the better decision,

this would not have taken place.

We wouldn't have lost those people.

[ automatic gunfire ]

The SEALs had been fighting Communism

since their inception.

But the threats were shifting in the 1980s.

There were Islamist militants

who held Americans hostage in Iran.

Then the war on drugs flared

and President George H.W. Bush sent the U.S. military,

including the Navy SEALs,

to capture Panamanian drug lord Manuel Noriega

in December 1989.

Six weeks before that, however...

[ jackhammer pounding ]

the Cold War took a turn.

The Berlin Wall came shattering down.

[ cheering and applause ]

Much of the history of the 20th century

is written in the struggle for dominion

between communism and democracy.

There is no more enduring symbol of the Cold War

than of the Berlin Wall...

[ people shouting and singing ]

even in pieces.

Erected in 1961 as a permanent border

between East and West Berlin,

it was designed to keep East German defectors

from leaving the Communist Bloc and heading West.

[ trumpet blaring and people cheering ]

Although the wall was down...

[ bomb squeals and explodes ]

the U.S. military continued preparing

against its traditional enemy,

not knowing the extent of an ongoing Soviet threat.

[ ** ]

So the men just kept training -- Cold War training.

Foxtrot Bravo, this is Alpha Charlie.

We worked with the Norwegians and the Germans,

and we did crazy stuff like

the border of the Soviet Union on skis.

And we would go out and patrol for days and days,

living in the Arctic, below zero,

thinking we were going to stop the Soviet invasion?

I don't know.

But as the threat of war

between the Soviet Union and the United States declined,

a new enemy was on the rise: al-Qaeda.

In its first attack on America, the terrorist organization

bombed New York's World Trade Center in February, 1993,

killing 6 and wounding 1,000.

This was the same year that Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa,

urging his followers

to kill American soldiers stationed in Somalia

as part of a United Nations humanitarian mission.

bin Laden provided military training to Somali tribes

opposed to the UN's intervention.

My first actual combat mission was in Somalia in 1993.

I was a member of Task Force Ranger,

which was a Joint Special Operations task force

that went overseas to Somalia to capture Mohamed Farrah Aidid,

who happened to be one of the warlords

in control of the area at the time.

[ men chanting and clapping ]

They were taking control of the food,

which was causing famine for a lot of people.

Innocent civilians were dying.

[ ** ]

And before we had actually deployed over there,

they had actually killed a group of Pakistani soldiers

and massacred them.

So our job was to go in there and try and capture him.

I was part of a small SEAL sniper team of four guys,

very close-knit, and our specialty

was sniping off of helicopters.

We thought that that's the skill set they needed in Somalia.

When we got on the ground, though,

it was a different story.

The Army was in charge,

rightfully so -- we were only four SEALs --

and they decided to use their guys in those roles.

So we just took it upon ourselves to find a job.

You know, that's what SEALs do.

We weren't just going to sit on the cots at the airport.

Rick Kaiser and his teammates from SEAL Team Six

successfully carried out

several "snatch and grab" missions in Mogadishu,

intent on capturing Aidid's top lieutenants

on their way to the warlord himself.

The SEAL utility vehicle, right, was our transportation,

even though it was not armored at all.

It was very dangerous.

So anyway, we went in to reload our magazines, get some water,

and get ready to go out, and I went to the bathroom.

And when I came back, all the guys were in the Humvee already,

ready to go, except for one place: the driving seat.

And I looked at them and I go, "You bastards," you know?

Because that is the worst place to be

is in the driver's seat, because you can't shoot.

You gotta just drive.

You're just like, wide open,

especially with no door and no armor or nothing.

But they all looked at me, and I could just see them,

a couple of guys were behind the sandbags going like this...

laughing at me.

I was like, man, it didn't pay to go to the bathroom.

So before the big battle on October the 3rd,

we had already conducted, I think, six other missions.

All of which gave us, I think, overconfidence

that we could do whatever we wanted in the city,

that the enemy was not that fierce.

But unfortunately, you know, as events unfolded on October 3rd,

when we were doing another typical mission

to go into a city,

to a hotel in the heart of the bad-guy territory,

one of our helicopters got shot down.

Then Islamist militants shot down a second U.S. helicopter.

But the men trying to rescue the embattled Americans

also got trapped.

Ninety-nine U.S. servicemen

were now stranded in the middle of the city,

surrounded by thousands of armed fighters.

This operation was memorialized in the book and movie

called Black Hawk Down.

It was not widely reported

that four Navy SEALs worked with Army Rangers

to rescue their downed soldiers.

So we were in a gun battle from about noon that day

until noon the next.

[ gunfire and shouting ]

We took wounded guys in

and we went back out and fought some more,

took some more back in, and then we went out a third time

to rescue the guys in the helicopter.

And we did. We finally got them out.

Although 18 Americans died

in perhaps the fiercest firefight since Vietnam,

every SEAL who was in Mogadishu earned a Silver Star

for valor in combat.

But the brutality of the battle was broadcast

and the U.S. withdrew.

Known as the Mogadishu Effect, fear of public humiliation

underscored many future U.S. foreign policy decisions.

But a loss for America was taken as a victory by al-Qaeda.

What we found out later is that

that was really a test bed for al-Qaeda

and other Islamic militants for the future,

because what they saw us do

was when the going got tough and Americans got killed, we left.

So it really gave them the courage

to carry on and fight us, you know, all the way up to 9/11.

[ explosion ]

September 11, 2001, was a new generation's Pearl Harbor.

[ engines humming ]

[ explosion ]

But after that deadly attack on America in 1941,

there was an obvious enemy and a nation to hold responsible.

[ sirens blaring ]

Sixty years later, 9/11 was different.

Terror had no government.

[ siren blaring and fire truck horn honking ]

I was in the Operations Department at Dev Group

when 9/11 happened.

We were standing in our operations center,

watching it happen on the news.

MAN: I was in the Pentagon when the airplanes flew into it.

I was where every good team guy needs to be

when the caca hits the fan -- I was in the gym working out.

And I heard the fire alarm go off.

But we'd had numerous such drills,

and I thought it was a drill, so I casually got dressed.

And I went out, and as I stepped out I saw

25,000 of my closest friends leaving the building,

going down to the river. "What the hell happened?"

They said, "We think an airplane hit the building."

[ sirens blaring ]

My response was I gotta find my boss, he needs me now.

So I fought my way back into the Pentagon,

and was inside the Pentagon and actually sitting right there

with the Secretary of Defense and my boss

while they were trying to figure out what the heck was going on

and how many more airplanes were going to come in

and were going to hit what.

OSMAN: I didn't even believe it.

"What do you mean they're hijacking planes?"

He goes, "There's terrorists that have hijacked planes,

and they're crashing them into buildings."

And I'm like, "What?!"

[ sirens blaring ]

Our intelligence agency,

we're tracking terrorist organizations,

and it just felt like it was just a matter of time.

You had already had some of these attacks overseas:

the barracks in Saudi Arabia,

the bombings at the embassies in northern Africa.

Then you had the USS Cole.

It was like, these things are coming more quickly.

It changed the course.

OSMAN: So I was a sniper at that time.

I was the ordnance rep,

so I was in charge of all of the platoon's firearms,

all of its weapon systems.

So I said, "Sir, what do you need from me?"

And he goes, "Obviously you've heard.

You've seen what's going on downstairs.

We're packing, so load up everything."

And I just turned to him and I said,

"What are we -- packing for what?"

And he looked right back and goes,

"We're going to war. Take everything."

(chanting) USA! USA!

I can hear you!

[ crowd cheers and whistles ]

The rest of the world hears you.

And the people --

[ loud cheers and whooping ]

And the people who knocked these buildings down

will hear all of us soon.

[ loud exclaiming and cheers ]

What changed on 9/11 for us?

I don't think we realized it

until probably two years into it,

that it changed us from a reactive force

into a long-term, long-range fighting force.

Whereas before, we would go for quick missions, a week or two,

go rescue some hostages,

go take down a ship that's been taken over,

that kind of thing,

and we'd be home and happy and everybody'd be, you know...

But now, we were like, this is the long haul.

[ ** ]

OSMAN: Fourth or fifth day after 9/11,

got a brief from the commanding officer

telling us that we had been selected to go overseas.

He'd been given National Command Authority

to send one SEAL platoon, and he was going to send our platoon.

And, like, you are happy that you're going,

but you feel bad for the guys in the other platoon.

And I remember leaving, and I was like,

"Oh, man, sorry you didn't get picked."

And one guy looked at me, he's like, "[bleep] you, dude."

We were allowed to go home for one night.

We basically got about seven or eight hours off to go home

and say bye to our families.

And we filled out last will and testaments.

We filled out life insurance paperwork.

We filled out power of attorneys for all of our families.

So it was the real deal.

KAISER: It took about four weeks after 9/11

before we knew what the government wanted to do.

We just kept training like we normally trained and got ready.

The general consensus of the population

is that SEALs hide in a cave somewhere.

When the bat signal goes up, they show up -- doo-do-do! --

and they save the day!

And then when they get done, they go back

and they attach their feet to the ceiling

and they go back to hanging upside down.

Not really the case.

What they're doing is they're going back to training.

Training is as close to realistic combat conditions

as is allowable.

[ gunfire ]

You always shoot live rounds in the SEAL teams.

There's very little blank training.

If there is, it's only just

to kind of get some of the basic moves down

before everything turns into live fire.

And so all the rockets are real, all the rounds are real.

What it's fostering in you is your ability to react

under extreme adversity and to be able to clearly think

under a lot of stress.

So, you know, when bombs are going off and rounds are flying

and, you know, you hear "man down,"

and next thing you know, you gotta do buddy drags,

and you're doing all of these things,

what that is doing is allowing you to remember

that you have to stay focused

and the last thing you're supposed to do is panic.

[ gunfire ]

The Taliban must act, and act immediately.

They will hand over the terrorists...

or they will share in their fate.

Shortly after 9/11, SEAL Team 3's Echo Platoon

headed to an unknown destination in the Middle East.

We were the first SEAL platoon

to deploy from the United States that I'm aware of.

Well, we didn't know where we were even going.

It wasn't until we had gotten to altitude

that our Officer In Charge asked one of the air crew,

"Hey, where's this plane even going?"

And he was like, "We were told

we're flying you guys to Kuwait."

We're like, "All right, Kuwait it is," you know?

What are you gonna do?

You're not gonna leave, you know what I mean?

[ laughs ]

The men had hoped they were going

to the heart of the fight in Afghanistan,

but their disappointment would soon diminish.

Chris and his teammates were assigned a maritime mission

called VBSS -- Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure --

of smuggling vessels.

A couple of weeks into their deployment,

a drone in their area identified a tier one target

related to Osama bin Laden's earlier terrorist attacks.

It was the ship that al-Qaeda used

to smuggle the explosives into Africa

for the two U.S. embassy bombings

that killed over 200 people.

And so they wanted that ship taken down,

and our platoon was given the green light to do it,

and we were just like, "Wow!"

No one says anything, right?

And all of a sudden, the joking, the grab-assing goes away

and it's game time.

So, you know, unzip the bags, put all the gear on,

press check the weapons.

Make sure there's a round in the chamber.

And we raced up at 40 miles an hour in the middle of the night,

hooked and climbed up the side of the ship,

jumped over the railing.

We probably had about four or five people

that had already made it over the railing

and we were setting a security perimeter

when the doors opened and people started coming out.

At that moment, really, we couldn't even wait

for the rest of the platoon,

so we started the assault on the ship with four or five people.

There was a -- a seriousness about what we were doing

that I hadn't experienced before.

The professionalism rose to the challenge,

and all of us just never really said anything,

never talked, nothing; we just operated.

So that ship takedown took about three minutes.

[ ** ]

In October 2001,

SEALs were among the first U.S. forces

to set foot in Afghanistan

as part of a true Joint Special Forces Operation.

There were a lot of folks who initially asked the question:

what are SEALs doing in Afghanistan?

Well, SEAL is an acronym for sea, air, land.

That's just how you get to work.

SPARKS: I can tell you the first time

that I ever touched down in Afghanistan,

it was a very surreal feeling and experience.

You know, you feel like you've trained

and worked so hard and so long for something,

and now you're -- the time is here.

You know, everything you --

all your blood, sweat, and tears that you gave in training,

you're gonna get ready to test that overseas

somewhere for real.

But it was, you know, exciting

and a little bit scary all at once.

You know, I landed at night shortly after September 11th,

and it was... the time had come.

[ ** ]

Although Osama bin Laden would not claim responsibility

for the 2001 attacks on America until 2004,

U.S. intelligence quickly assigned blame to al-Qaeda.

They had also known that the Taliban,

fundamentalist Islamists based in Afghanistan,

had been harboring al-Qaeda agents for years.

[ gunfire and indistinct shouting ]

Early in 2002, the U.S. and coalition partners

launched Operation Anaconda, the first major initiative

to capture or kill al-Qaeda fighters

and their Taliban supporters in Afghanistan.

Before the operation began,

U.S. intelligence agencies concentrated satellites

and other spy technologies on the valley

where the initial attacks would be staged.

Despite focusing what one officer at the time called

"every national asset" on the Shah-i-Kot Valley,

the intelligence estimates turned out to be

wildly off the mark.

Rather than 1- or 200 al-Qaeda fighters

concentrated mostly in the villages on the valley floor,

there were probably several times that,

and a lot of the positions they occupied

were in the high ground overlooking the valley

and therefore overlooking the landing zones

that the helicopters carrying the U.S. infantry

were going to land on.

A Delta Force Lt. Colonel, Pete Blaber,

was in charge of Advanced Force Operations.

Blaber's gut told him that it was important to get

U.S. eyes on the ground before the main assault force went in.

Blaber had two of his own reconnaissance teams

and requested a third from SEAL Team Six.

The five-man unit was code-named Mako 31.

It was led by a SEAL reconnaissance expert

named Goody.

Blaber pulled Goody aside and told him,

"The success or failure of your mission

will predicate the success or failure of the entire operation.

You have to get to your observation post by H-Hour,"

the time that the operation officially starts.

Goody was determined not to let Blaber down,

so he told them that if they were falling behind schedule,

they would just keep dropping gear if necessary

until there were five naked guys with guns

standing on the O.P. at H-Hour.

Shortly after dawn on March 1, 2002,

Goody sent the other two SEAL snipers on his team

to scout their pre-determined observation post.

When they finally poked their heads over the rocks

to take a look, they got the shock of their lives.

Right there was a tent occupied by al-Qaeda fighters

on the very spot

that they had wanted to put their observation post.

Everything changed when Mako 31 moved into position.

In addition to discovering enemy fighters,

the SEALs also identified a DShK heavy machine gun

on the ridgeline,

an anti-aircraft weapon with a range of about 1,000 meters.

That was the exact path that the infantry assault helicopters

were going to fly in just a day or so

to start Operation Anaconda.

Airborne surveillance had completely missed

both the men and their equipment.

FITZGERALD: Until you're on the ground

and until you see it from your own eyes

and choreograph everything in your mind,

you have to have operators on the ground

to pull the sensitive things off that we need to do.

Goody's plan was to wait until just before Operation Anaconda

was to begin before assaulting the al-Qaeda tent.

This would diminish the risk

of other enemy fighters in the area

being alerted to their presence.

The SEALs took up a position behind some rocks

only about 20 meters from the al-Qaeda tent and watched.

NAYLOR: As the SEALs waited,

an al-Qaeda fighter emerged from the tent

and wandered over towards their position.

The fighter let out a shout to raise the alarm,

and at that point, Goody gave the order to attack.

[ gunfire ]

The SEALs came over the ridgeline firing.

Somebody inside the tent fired off an entire clip.

They took the tent under fire.

The SEALs killed two of the five al-Qaeda men

and wounded a third.

Goody's team called in an AC-130

circling above the firefight

to take out the remaining al-Qaeda fighters,

ending the threat to U.S. helicopters

which would enter the valley less than two hours later.

FITZGERALD: Our guys made the right decisions.

And they took care of the threat.

If they had not been there

at the right place at the right time,

the beginning of this event

would have been a lot different than it was.

Diverting a disaster? Yeah, probably.

[ ** ]

In the first phases of Operation Enduring Freedom,

SEALs carried out 75

of these special reconnaissance and direct action missions.

While Team members would fight in Afghanistan

for the duration...

early on, their commander in chief

opened a new battlefront against a familiar enemy.

[ rippling explosions ]

The SEALs would, once again, be amongst the first to operate.

March 2003:

the United States was poised to invade Iraq.

Congress had granted President George W. Bush

the power to wage war

after the Bush administration argued

that Saddam Hussein had failed to disclose his arsenal

of Weapons of Mass Destruction, or WMDs.

The administration also accused Hussein

of forming alliances with al-Qaeda.

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

later admitted that they eventually discovered

the intelligence underlying their WMD estimates was false.

No WMDs would be found in Iraq.

And confiscated Iraqi documents would later reveal

that there were no direct ties

between al-Qaeda and Hussein's government.

But in March of 2003,

all branches of the United States military

were preparing for the offensive.

[ ** ]

On the eve of the Iraq invasion,

the SEALs undertook what was, at the time,

the most complex operation in their history.

Their mission: to capture

Iraq's enormous southern oil supply

without allowing an economic or environmental disaster

as had happened in 1991.

It was considered essential

that the oil supply be taken over before the invasion began,

before the Iraqis could destroy it.

MAN: The first Gulf War,

the first thing that Saddam Hussein did

was blow up his southern oil infrastructure.

And what that did was dump millions of gallons of oil

into the northern Arabian Gulf,

which created massive environmental impact.

Over a decade later, it was the SEALs

who were tasked with keeping Saddam Hussein

from destroying the country's oil supply

as well as the entire region's environment and economy.

The way that oil flows off southern Iraq

is it gets pumped from this large pumping/metering station

to two nodes, which you can think of as almost faucets,

on the very end of the Al-Faw Peninsula.

And it's through those faucets that oil runs

to these two terminals, KAAOT and MABOT.

And these are massive -- each one is about a mile in length.

If the Iraqis had a chance to destroy

any one of five critical points,

it would coat the Northern Arabian Gulf with oil.

We had to have boots on the ground

in each one of those five locations

at exactly the same time.

And so we started our planning months in advance

of how we would put SEALs onboard these two terminals

in the event that there may be rigged explosive devices.

We were getting intelligence from different places

that suggested that there were arms and explosive devices

on at least one if not two of the terminals.

What started out as a much smaller isolated mission

expanded into what became a very large mission,

all the night before the war started.

The day before H-Hour, it had just oil workers on it,

so at that point it was just going to be

go and secure it and get those people off of it.

Kind of no big deal, and then we'd hold it and secure it

and turn it over to someone else so no one could get on it.

And the day before, we noticed all of a sudden

all those guys were getting off-loaded

and they were bringing Iraqi bad guys.

And they were bringing them on,

they had an anti-aircraft piece that they brought on.

It changed quickly.

The Teams' nightly reconnaissance had revealed

that tugboats would patrol the perimeter of the oil platforms,

cruising a long circuit around each of the terminals.

There were also large rings of light

from searchlights on the MABOT and KAAOT.

HELLER: The plan was we would get all of our assets

outside the light ring of the terminal

and we would wait for that tug to go around.

And as soon as the tug passed us,

we'd send three RHIBs carrying SEALs

and a Polish Special Forces team

very quickly through the light underneath the platform,

and from there, the guys would scale up.

The operation began at 10:00 p.m. on March 20, 2003.

More SEALs were deployed for this one mission

than ever operated together during the entire Vietnam War.

We had helicopters where I was overhead

looking at it with the FLIR, which, you know,

I can see what was going on at like 2,000 meters.

And then once we were up close,

circling the thing, providing security as snipers.

And then I was up there also working the radio,

pushing the timeline along and the execution checklist along.

HELLER: Clockwork was so important.

It was so important to get guys there.

Every part of the mission was so interlocked.

And if someone got there early,

there was the potential to put folks in danger.

Until those guys were feet on the deck on that thing,

anything that moved or acted stupid on it

was gonna get shot by myself

or my partner in the other helicopter.

The SEALs successfully got aboard the platforms,

safely secured their prisoners

as well as the weapons they discovered.

The entire operation took about 45 minutes.

One thing we know is that unlike in the first Gulf War,

we prevented the destruction

of millions and millions of gallons of oil.

We prevented that environmental disaster.

Within hours, the United States invaded Iraq.

[ explosions ]

The invasion immediately toppled the regime

of President Saddam Hussein, who quickly went into hiding.

Although he was the number one fugitive in the country,

there were over 50 top-tier targets

on the Most Wanted List.

So a group of soldiers came up with the idea

of a deck of cards,

ranking the missing outlaws by the face value of the cards.

The deck of cards, well, they started at the ace of spades,

which was Saddam Hussein, and then they went down,

you know, to the twos down on the bottom somewhere

before they started the rest of the blacklist.

And that's how we knew them, you know?

It was easier than pronouncing their name.

SEAL Teams and other special forces

started taking cards "out of play."

There was only one woman featured in the deck.

Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash was better known by her nickname:

Mrs. Anthrax.

The Five of Hearts was a female who was part of Saddam's --

he was her main, like, chemical biological weapons gal.

She was moving around quite a bit

from safe house to safe house.

And the intel that we got on her, we needed to move fast.

And we figured that the best time to take her

would be while she was in a vehicle

when her security detail was smaller than it normally was.

[ ** ]

We had such a small amount of time

for mission planning on that one.

And that's the magic of the SEAL Teams, that's --

that's just the way we do it, you know?

If it needs to be done, we'll do it.

In December of 2003,

U.S. troops and a Special Operations Joint Task Force

captured the Ace of Spades.

But the arrest of President Saddam Hussein

hardly ended the war in Iraq.

[ automatic gunfire ]

As it persisted, more SEALs

were engaged in Operation Iraqi Freedom

than in any other war in their history.

SEAL Teams adapted to being unconventional warriors

in a conventional war.

For the first time, they truly fought side by side

with their comrades in the Army and Marine Corps.

It started in a place called Ramadi,

center of the insurgency.

[ gunfire ]

Al-Qaeda in Iraq declared this city to be its capital.

When we got into town,

we began to interface with the conventional forces --

the Army and the Marines.

They're the ones who own the battlespace, not us.

And so we very humbly said,

"Hey, look, you guys own this battlespace.

You tell us how we can help serve you.

What's going on here? Where are your bases?

Where are your outposts? What's this area over here?"

And there was an entire area --

I mean, I remember this distinctly.

They said, "This whole area right here

is al-Qaeda controlled battlespace.

Don't go there. You can't go there --

or go there, but nobody will come get you."

We got him over here.

In the past, the SEALs often did not work very well

with conventional forces.

SEALs had their mission, and it was like, "This is our mission.

We can't tell you what it is and we're gonna go do our thing."

And our task unit commander

had a much different philosophy on things.

We said, "What are you doing? What can we do to help?"

And guess what?

We integrated and interfaced with them,

and it was -- it was a mutually beneficial relationship, right?

Rather than us having to coordinate

how to drive all our guys into a mission,

well, the Army guys would give us a ride... in tanks!

I mean, that's a heck of a lot better than a dang Humvee.

Andrew Paul was a lieutenant

with a task force of 32 SEAL snipers.

[ ** ]

[ indistinct shouting ]

[ explosions ]

As something would happen, we would come in

and we would go grab these guys.

Or we'd go out and do an overwatch operation,

and these guys with masks and guns would come out

to attack an Army patrol, and, you know, our snipers

would whack all four or five of those guys all at once.

Over the course of six months, we had over 360 confirmed kills.

That's just our task unit.

That area that was al-Qaeda controlled battlespace,

we owned it by the time we left.

When you're interacting with the local populace,

you are an ambassador of America.

And, you know, not everybody feels that way.

But I felt that was important, so I would talk to them.

I'd ask them where they were from.

I'd tell them about my family and where I'm from

and why I was here.

They'd first probably see these guys come in

with all this gear on and, I mean, they would be very afraid.

And that's not what we're there to do.

My idea wasn't that we were there to go terrorize Iraqis.

My idea was that we're there to go relieve the country of Iraq.

You can only shoot so many guys.

You can only, you know, blow up so many things.

You can only do so many missions.

You know, sooner or later, our mission really

is to give this back to the people of Iraq.

[ ** ]

When people think of SEALs,

they think of them kicking in doors,

doing the very offensive things.

Yeah, that's true, but I think

where the nation gets the most bang for the buck

is in that diplomatic problem-solving type guy

who can work with partners to expand their capabilities

and their capacity and prevent wars.

There are a lot of guys who we can train

to go shoot people in the face, but what SEALs

and Green Berets and Special Forces do

are working that full spectrum of conflict

and being able to go from drinking tea

to step outside the tent and go do something

that a commando needs to do,

and then go back inside the tent and drink tea some more.

And that is a unique skill set.

But what's going to make them SEALs

is they've got to be able to do both.

At that moment in time, it's --

to me anyway, it wasn't ever about God and country, you know?

It was about being with your brothers.

It's about operating.

It's about doing everything you could

to make sure they could come home to their family.

In September of 2006 in Ramadi,

a 25-year-old petty officer, 2nd class, Michael Monsoor,

was on his first combat deployment as a Navy SEAL.

Mike had failed his initial attempt at SEAL training

but persevered and ultimately made it to the Teams.

Mike Monsoor was one of our platoon mates

who lost his life in Iraq.

And he jumped on a grenade and saved two guys,

one on either side of him.

And he subsequently got the Medal of Honor.

Mike leaves behind a big hole in my heart.

But I'm proud of what he did

and I'm proud of what that stands for.

This idealistic warrior.

Mike had sent an email to his sister the night before,

saying, "Gear's packed. I'm on my way home."

Yeah, it's pretty rough.

Andrew Paul was already back in California

when Mike Monsoor was killed.

He was one of the men to notify the Monsoor family.

We got our blues together, we got our plan together

and drove up to find his parents' house.

And, man, that was the hardest thing

I've ever done in my life.

I remember the commander who came up with us said, you know,

"Sally Monsoor?" She said, "Yes."

He goes, "Well, we have some news about your son."

And, yeah, I mean, I just --

her head just slumped against the door,

and, I mean, I just watched the life drain out of her.

[ trumpet playing "Taps" ]

MAGUIRE: Look at Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery.

MAN: Ready. Aim. Fire!

It's full of SEALs.

Men who've sacrificed and given their lives.

The enemy gets a vote, and nobody's immortal.

At SEAL funerals, there is a tradition

of teammates removing their insignia, called the Trident,

and embedding them into the coffin of their fallen comrade.

You're not just burying a warrior.

You're not just burying a teammate.

You're burying somebody that you love,

somebody that you know,

somebody that you trained with.

You know his family. You know his children.

For those of us who wear the Trident,

everybody refers to each other as brother.

And that is not just an expression.

That's how everybody feels about each other.

Because my teammate's more important than I am.

Poseidon, the god of the seas,

wielded a trident that gave him the power

to both create storms and calm the waters.

Being a SEAL and the Trident,

you come from a long line of people

who've sacrificed greatly to get you to where you are.

Nobody who wears the Trident today earned that reputation.

They inherited that reputation

from the men who came before them.

And while you have the opportunity to be a SEAL,

what you have to do is keep that reputation intact

and make it just a little bit better

than when they pinned a Trident on your chest.

I think we're flesh and blood,

but there is something extra inside us.

And the enemies of this country need to fear that,

because there is something different they don't know about.

And the bonds to our brothers is incredibly strong.

It'd be like a parent losing their son.

It hurts a lot.

But it doesn't stop us.

In fact, if anything, it just makes us stronger.

We'll obviously go to some pretty extreme measures

if we need to.

Like flying in helicopters

that you've never seen or heard of in your life

into a country that we swear we'll never go to

in the middle of the night, crash one of them

and still kill you.

I mean, you know, it's just...

[ chuckles ]

Yeah, that's the SEAL Teams. What can I tell you?

On the night of May 1, 2011,

23 SEALs crammed aboard two stealth prototype helicopters.

They lifted off for a 90-minute flight

deep into the forbidden airspace of Pakistan.

Despite the unusual location,

for the members of SEAL Team Six,

this kind of raid was a typical one...

except for the target: Osama bin Laden.

As SEAL Team Six descended on the compound,

one of the helicopters got caught

in its own rotor wash and crashed.

The SEALs scrambled from the wreckage

and began moving toward the house.

The second helicopter landed safely outside the walls.

Quietly, the SEALs advanced.

On the third floor, they found and killed

the world's most wanted terrorist.

[ gunshots ]

Over the radio, the SEALs reported bin Laden was dead.

The news of Bin Laden's death

brought celebrations to the streets of the United States.

But it also haunted the world with memories

of a clear September morning a decade before

when the streets of America were choked by terror.

This man's death was personal.

MAGUIRE: I grew up in New York City.

I watched the Twin Towers go up.

But I also know the traffic pattern of the Hudson River.

And I saw the second plane flying south.

And I just said, "Look at that guy.

He's not supposed to be flying south there.

He's just taking a look at -- at that first tower."

And then I saw him go into the second tower.

I saw it when it happened, and immediately I said,

"We're under attack."

I finally got home from work

around midnight on 9/11 and my phone rang.

And I picked up the phone and there was a voice

extremely emotional and crying, and said,

"Joseph, I know what you do.

Get them. Get them for what they did."

And it took me a couple of seconds

to realize it's my brother.

And on the 2nd of May,

I placed a phone call to my brother.

I said, "It took us a while, but we got him."

All across America, people gathered

in spontaneous celebrations --

outside the White House, at Ground Zero, to Times Square.

SPARKS: I got numb. I felt chills.

He was the face of terrorism

and the driving force behind a lot of stuff,

but it felt like victory.

bin Laden was the embodiment

of the Western world's newest enemy.

The leader of an international network of splintered cells.

Nearly impossible to infiltrate.

His was a shadow leadership

that took shadow warriors to end.

No official state.

No traditional command and control centers.

No uniforms identifying an enemy combatant.

bin Laden's death symbolized the fact

that America had adapted

to fighting this new kind of adversary.

And the Navy SEALs became the embodiment of that change.

[ ** ]

We are what they're scared of.

We're they're -- that bump in the night.

That mystique and that legacy goes way, way back

to even Vietnam and before.

You know, the enemy knew the men in green faces,

if they were coming for you, you weren't coming back.

[ ** ]

BRAMSTEDT: When you're out there and you're in a conflict,

or a "tick" is what they call it,

you're fighting for the brotherhood.

It's the guys on your left and your right.

The real reason and the political reasons

why you're there and -- that's all gonna be argued

on the left and the right of the aisle

somewhere in Congress somewhere,

the guys in the barber shop,

people driving down the road, you know,

on their Bluetooth headsets.

But when you're in it and it's happening, it's about this man.

I'm not firing my weapon to make sure that I come home alive.

I'm firing my weapon to make sure he comes home alive.

Back!

KAISER: I never thought about killing people,

because I always thought about it as a mission.

My job was never to go out and kill somebody.

My job was to go capture somebody,

go collect intelligence, go do reconnaissance.

Because if you kill somebody,

you don't get any intelligence out of them.

You capture them, you're gonna get something out of them.

So -- eventually.

And then we can plan our next mission,

because that's what every SEAL wants is the next mission.

[ ** ]

WOOLARD: I think there's always gonna be SEALs

in one form or another, but I think they're still gonna be

the same basic sort of guy

who trained right down the road from us here in Fort Pierce

during World War II,

the same guys who fought in Vietnam,

in the mountains in Afghanistan, and in Iraq.

The innate thread, I think,

that goes through the teams since their inception

way back to WWII is what I call the Rudy Factor.

If you remember the Notre Dame footballer:

they have hearts that they just will not quit.

They will not quit no matter what.

They're the type of guys who can get knocked down, get back up,

get knocked down, and get back up.

That's the common thread.

Since World War II, SEALs and their forefathers

have faced whatever threat

the enemies of each generation have posed...

[ explosions ]

from Hitler's beaches...

to bin Laden's terror.

While the perils have changed and will continue to,

the invisible men behind the face masks

still claim a common heritage and future.

No matter how sophisticated they or their foes become,

they are simply frogmen.

MAGUIRE: We live in an extremely dangerous and difficult world.

And no matter where we as a nation go next,

the first people in will be the SEALs.

[ ** ]