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More bad News for the Best of the Best

Phil1

Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Mar 3, 2009
465
7
Minot N.D.
The Virginian-Pilot
© December 8, 2013

VIRGINIA BEACH

Dave Cooper stepped down this morning as president of the Navy SEAL Foundation, two weeks after being placed on administrative leave.

A receptionist who answered the phone at the SEAL Foundation said that Cooper had resigned this morning. She referred additional questions to the foundation's Boston-based public affairs consultant, who did not immediately return phone calls.

Cooper was suspended in November, just a month after taking the job. The action came after U.S. News & World Report published a story that quotes Cooper discussing high profile SEAL missions and the SEAL community's recent struggle over secrecy and leaks.

Cooper, the former command master chief at Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known widely as SEAL Team 6, had been named president in October following an extensive search. He reported to the foundation’s CEO, Robin King, and was to be the face of one of the nation's fastest growing charities.

Cooper was hired as part of a restructuring at the foundation, which is located on Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek. At the time, King called him "the perfect person to fill the role."

Cooper could not immediately be reached for comment.

In an email exchange with The Virginian-Pilot following his suspension, Cooper said he did the earlier interview with U.S. News & World Report as part of his new job's public relations responsibilities. He accused the writer of misrepresenting some of his comments and said he had been falsely promised a chance to review the quotes that would be used in the story."
Beach-based SEAL Foundation president resigns | HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com

Original story:

Shadow Games
Culture of leaks at CIA, Pentagon and false portrayals dog classified raids
By Paul D. Shinkman November 14, 2013

"A tendency to break the rules, and a healthy disrespect for authority."

Dave Cooper uses this phrase almost like a mantra to describe the team of elite and secretive men with whom he served for a quarter of a century. He operated in some of the world's most austere environments conducting missions that will likely never enter the public record.

[WORLD REPORT: Libya, Somalia and the Shift Toward Special Operations Forces]

That code of silence, however, is becoming harder to maintain for his former unit, the ultra-secret Navy Special Warfare Development Group or DEVGRU, more commonly known by its Hollywood title, "SEAL Team Six."

Any military organization wishes to portray itself as the best and most desirable, not in the least to get top missions, secure the most funding and attract the best applicants to its selection process. However a string of movies, books and newspaper articles perhaps has done as much harm to the unit's reputation as it has bolstered it.

"The stereotype can be dangerous," says Cooper, who began in special operations in the larger SEAL force on Team 2 before entering the elite DEVGRU, where he spent the bulk of his 25-year career. He retired in 2012 as one of only 12 to become the unit's command master chief, the highest enlisted rank.

Cooper is concerned about a culture at the CIA, Department of Defense and at offices of elected officials where the threat of leaks can define covert operations before they have even begun.

He participated in and later oversaw the high-profile missions that inspired such pop culture blockbusters as "Zero Dark Thirty," a reference that causes the former operator to grimace slightly.

"I don't think it's an accurate portrayal," says Cooper, who has subsequently traded tactical gear for a business suit in his new role as president of the Navy SEAL Foundation.

He offers the film "Captain Phillips," as an example, which depicts a unit of flawless operators who serve as quite literal shadow warriors, never exposing themselves long enough for the audience to get a clear image of any of their faces. The film breathes life into what government sources have leaked about the incident: At least three DEVGRU snipers set up on the fantail of the USS Bainbridge and, in rocking seas, simultaneously shot and killed the three remaining Somali pirates holding hostage the real Captain Richard Phillips in a lifeboat. The team then packs up its gear and disappears back into the darkness shortly before the closing credits.

[REVIEW: 'Captain Phillips,' a Tale of Two Captains]

"One of the best snipers I know, he was on the back of that fantail," says Cooper. "He is a guy you might not even know is a Navy SEAL. He's quiet. He's humble. He's in good shape, but he's not muscle bound. He looks just like a normal guy. You wouldn't be able to tell.

"And you wouldn't want to be within a mile or two if he's got a bone to pick with you," he says. "[He's] just a normal guy who is incredibly skilled." In real life, those operators completed an after-action report following the mission to critique any shortfalls in their own performance. They then worked out, read a book, played video games or turned to other routine methods of "winding down."

DEVGRU's place in the U.S. military arsenal as well as it's best-seller image comes from stories like these that become public despite every participants' very specific non-disclosure agreement.

Cooper can't totally fault former teammate Matt Bissonnette, for example, for penning his 2012 tell-all "No Easy Day" under the nom de plume "Mark Owen." That book spilled classified information with dangerous effects, but the authors likely beat out other senior officers from spilling the same story without the same accuracy.

From Osama bin Laden's compound to the shores of Somalia, the storied unit's exploits have been splattered across the public sphere yet often miscategorize or outright mislead the true nature of the team's work.

Cooper reveals new behind the scenes details of these recent operations in an attempt to clear the record.

SOMALIA

In early October 2013, a team of sea-borne operators from DEVGRU crept ashore at the Somali town of Baraawe. Their mission: to capture and extract an elusive extremist leader known as Ikrima in the dead of night from his al-Shabab stronghold.

DEVGRU has operated in Somalia before. Reports of this mission say the team came under unexpected heavy fire after a lone guard happened to be on a smoke break and sounded the alarm. The commandos then retreated following an intense firefight.

Cooper stresses two points with the failed raid: Contrary to media reports, the commanders did not call off the mission, and the SEALs weren't chased away.

"It wasn't that DEVGRU was repelled. They chose to leave," he says. "They got surprised, because that's what happens."

[READ: 'Ikrima,' Secretive Terrorist Leader, Fights Off SEAL Team 6]

Cooper himself has operated extensively in Somalia in 2005, and again in 2008 and 2010. The most successful raids are conducted at nighttime, he says, when local militiamen are usually passed out after chewing qat – a native plant with amphetamine-like effects – all day.

"When you have 20 guys lying around armed, you have to get them asleep," figuratively and often literally, Cooper says. "That's how you capture them. When they wake up with guns, capture is not going to happen."

He stresses that, unlike the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, this was not a "kill or capture mission. It was capture. And there was no way to do that at that point."

DEVGRU also does not function in a way that would allow a faraway commander, or even the highest ranking raider on shore to make the ultimate decision to abort the mission. Operators within these units instead exercise a common decision-making process.

"It's all of them, really," says Cooper. "It's that kind of unit where leadership exists in every man out there."

In this situation, the Somalis regrouped and were preparing to launch a counterattack on the SEALs.

"We lost the element of surprise. We know where these guys are, and we'll be back and at time and place of our choosing. They should have left a calling card," Cooper says.

A COMPOUND IN ABBOTTABAD

Experts and officials in the realm of intelligence and national security say the creators of the 2012 blockbuster "Zero Dark Thirty" got a lot of things right. (Enough, at least, to prompt a real world Pentagon investigation into a potential breach of classified information.) The portrayal of the DEVGRU operators, however, particularly in the leadup to launching the raid that would kill Osama bin Laden, was not one of them.

"That was foolish. That was really bad," says Cooper. At the time of the raid he had been promoted to the unit's command master chief, serving as the top enlisted commando and senior advisor to the unit's commanding officers.

Contrary to the on-screen performances of Chris Pratt and Joel Edgerton, Cooper's operators were not barbecuing with popped collars.

"It's a sedate time. After you've done all the planning and preparation necessary," he says, such as checking their combat kit and refining parts of the plan, or the "what-ifs."

"Guys have their own things they enjoy doing prior to going on any mission," he says. "It really doesn't change. Some guys sit around and talk. There are guys working out, some do martial arts, some play video games and you have some guys reading books."

[REVIEW: 'Zero Dark Thirty,' a Search for a Hero]

There's also a great deal of levity. Some joked around about being taken prisoner by the Pakistanis, and who among them would fair well in that country's correctional facilities.

Much of the previous preparation for that mission revolved around training. Cooper was the first to tell his senior officers that a helicopter insertion was a weak link and would be too dangerous. The commander of that squadron later agreed, Cooper said. The commanders eventually "shouted him down," resulting in new training scenarios for his men in the event of a helicopter crash.

One of the stealth helicopter pilots would later lose control at the outset of the raid and crash against the wall of the outer compound. Cooper says the operators, as well as the pilot, were prepared and continued coolly.

"We threw as many scenarios at these guys as we could with no clear-cut solution to any of them, and that's what they do best on the ground: Think fast on their feet, and they solve it."

Much of the training was also focused on beating back the routine these operators formed in Afghanistan, where Cooper says, "a template happened." The same operational framework worked every night on kill or capture raids against Taliban or al-Qaida targets. Fighting that kind of enemy did not require as much focus on deterring wayward civilians, or concern that the opposing force could scramble F-16 fighter jets or take advantage of the resources of a nearby military academy. Cooper knew that a mission into Abbottabad would be very different.

"There are other things close to that target in Abbottabad as well that I can't talk about that would have certainly given the Pakistanis the 'heebee-jeebees' and would have led them to do things we couldn't see," he says. DEVGRU operators, however, are experts at producing creative solutions to tactical problems on the fly.

LEAKS BACK HOME

"That was supposed to be a covert mission, so we never admit if we were there or if we weren't," says Cooper. "But we admitted to it immediately. We just up and told on ourselves."

DEVGRU knew the outcome of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, perhaps the most high-profile mission ever involving these commandos, would not be airtight. In fact, counterparts within the CIA and the Department of Defense told the unit that the operation had what Cooper describes as "a very short window where it has to 'Go,' or it's going to be leaked" for reasons that might not be immediately apparent.

This trend, and that the unit left behind a piece of a secretive helicopter, left President Barack Obama no choice but to admit later the unit's involvement.

There were already people, Cooper says, who knew about the raid and were ready to tell all.

One of them of course was Matt Bissonnette, who wrote the 2012 book "No Easy Day" under the pen name "Mark Owen."

The contents of the book were controversial upon its release, and Bissonnette's decision to spill secrets remains under federal review. Pending legal action could end with the Pentagon and Department of Justice seizing the book's profits.

"The [Defense Department] continues to assert forcefully that this individual breached his legal obligations by publishing the book without pre-publication review and clearance," said Pentagon spokesman George Little at a press conference on Tuesday. "It's a basic tenet of your contract with the department in these kinds of roles."

[ALSO: CBS News Interviews Navy SEAL Involved in Osama bin Laden Raid]

In the book, Bissonnette documented the flight that brought the members of DEVGRU's Red Squadron from the U.S. to Bagram, the busiest U.S. airfield in Afghanistan, and eventually to Jalalabad where the team's work in-country would begin.

"The runway splits the base in half. Soldiers live on the south side of the airfield," Bissonnette wrote. "The [Joint Special Operations Command] area had its own chow hall, gym, operations center, and a number of plywood huts. The compound was home to Army Rangers, DEVGRU, and support personnel. Almost all of us had double-digit deployments to J-bad. Walking through the gate, it felt like home."

Weeks after the book's release, a team of coordinated suicide bombers conducted what military spokespeople called a serious and fatal attack on the base.

Cooper blames Bissonnette for revealing the central base from which DEVGRU operates and launches many of its missions.

"I think the story needs to be told," he says. "I don't think necessarily a guy needs to go out and do it that way."

"That's what we do at the foundation. We want to tell a story and we want to tell [it] in a way that doesn't hurt anybody," he says. "It has to be done in a way that doesn't endanger others,"

The Navy SEAL Foundation, in addition to providing scholarships and support for the families of SEALs, also works to advocate for the special operators themselves and the image they put forth. The organization supports 8,900 active-duty operators and their families, as well as 88 families of fallen SEALs.

"No Easy Day" was, however, the first to tell the story and was perhaps among the most accurate of the potential outcomes.

"The author was a good operator and a good SEAL, and some have suggested that he beat more senior officials to the publishing finish line," Cooper wrote in an email. "[He] did so in a way that gave credit to the men on the ground. Because of that some of his teammates have been unusually supportive of the book."

"That's why we can't condemn him. He beat others to the punch, and those others were wearing stars on their shoulders," he says.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles...fies-somalia-capt-phillips-bin-laden-missions

Don't turn this into a pol**** thread. Seems like the pointy end of the spear may be getting the short end of the stick,as usual, IMO.
 
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It appears CSM Cooper (ret.) was on the job about 30 days. Maybe he didn't like the job. You can walk away after retirement is in the bag.

This appears to be a Charity fund with a person named Robin King as CEO. It is a business.

All else we can do is watch carefully.

My military charities dwindle....The Semper Fi fund seems to be one of the best.