CHAPTER 3

From Pirates to Professionals

Lt. Ryan Zinke drove through the security checkpoint at the secretive base of SEAL Team Six, near Virginia Beach, in the spring of 1990. Not knowing what to expect, he appeared in his starched Navy dress whites. That was a mistake.

He had been selected to join SEAL Team Six—the team within the teams. It has a demanding selection process, both formal and informal. At six foot two and 220 pounds, Zinke had proven himself as an athlete, a scholar, and a SEAL. He lettered all four years in a Pacific 10 football program, graduated from the University of Oregon (Eugene) with honors and passed BUD/S on his first attempt, class 136. After earning his trident, he was assigned to SEAL Team One in Coronado, California, where he led counterinsurgency and contingency operations in the Persian Gulf and the Pacific theater of operations. He had jumped from airplanes and dived into cold oceans far from home. He was about to learn that all of that meant little to SEAL Team Six.

At first, he couldn’t even find the office of the commanding officer. Unlike other naval bases, there were no signs pointing the way. He stopped in at a few buildings, but the sailors inside couldn’t tell him exactly where the command was. They simply didn’t know. That was strange.

As a SEAL, he knew that he could never give up. He had to keep hunting. He would stop at every building and question every uniform, if necessary.

Finally, he spotted what looked like an ammunition bunker. The door opened and two men emerged, in a hurry. They looked like outlaw bikers. Beards, long hair, earrings, tattoos. He wondered how the pair got past base security. Then, he noticed the second man was carrying a belt-fed M-60 machine gun. Before Zinke could decide whether he should report the men to the shore patrol, the two Vikings mounted a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and rode off toward a gun range on the horizon. If they were Navy men, why weren’t they using official naval bunker trucks?

He had never seen that before on a U.S. Navy base.

He decided to go inside the bunker, if only to ask for directions.

Inside, he found a team room, a meeting and staging area for SEAL teams. The dirty white drop-ceiling tiles had collapsed from the weight of empty beer cans secreted up there. He had never seen that before in the U.S. Navy, either.

He had found SEAL Team Six.

The men and even the officers were wearing civilian clothes. Many looked like bikers. Their appearance was designed to allow them to blend in among civilians during covert operations in the most dangerous parts of the world. Still Zinke was shocked. In his bright whites and short hair, he was a typical squared-away naval officer—and his appearance made him an oddball. The very thing that made him normal in the Navy made him abnormal in the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six. It was the first of many shocks. He had joined the pirates, and the swashbuckling was about to begin.

* * *

Zinke quickly realized that the culture of the SEAL Team Six was unique. It was daring and bold but also wild and raw. It was a lion, ruthlessly effective at hunting and killing, but also a beast that answered only to itself.

The typical military hierarchy was upside down. The senior enlisted guys had come in under Lt. Cmdr. Richard Marcinko and, to an extent far greater than in any other corner of the U.S. Navy, the senior enlisted men ran the day-to-day operations. Zinke soon realized it would be unwise for an officer to buck the senior enlisted men who were technically under him. Zinke knew he must win the respect of the enlisted men under him or he would be sidelined as an officer. In the rest of the Navy, the reverse was true.

“The ship was run by Fred Fritsch, the senior enlisted man, and, if you crossed Fred, you were out. That was it. And in that organization, a master chief versus a lieutenant, the young Lieutenant Zinke would lose. It was part of the process. I knew my limit, and made sure I knew how to run a mission.”

The facilities were unusual by U.S. Navy standards. In Big Navy, a ruthless campaign was underway to eliminate alcohol on base. Among the SEALs, alcohol was as common as diving masks or spare magazines. Every team room had a bar. The men didn’t drink on duty, but they drank enthusiastically on base as soon as the “beer lamp” was lit. “You never drank and shot, but you certainly drank.… I mean these guys were hard men. They would train hard, they would go out and they would drink hard, they would play hard, everything they did was hard.”

Even though Marcinko was no longer there, SEAL Team Six was still basically an operation living under rules he laid down. “Things were pretty wild. And wild, I mean that guys were hard, we’re moving fast, there probably wasn’t as much accountability,” Zinke said. “You know, it was called a ‘porthole to Hell’ for officers.”

Even the officer corps at SEAL Team Six was different. Most of the officers were “mustangs,” meaning that they were enlisted men who had worked their way up through the ranks, as opposed to officers who received Commissions straight out of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. In Big Navy, the SEALs’ dismissive term for the regular navy, officers were rarely mustangs. SEAL Team Six seemed like a world turned upside down.

There were two major reasons for the high concentration of mustangs among the SEALs. Marcinko, the founder of SEAL Team Six, was a mustang, and he preferred other mustangs. That preference cut a cultural groove that took decades to overcome.

Also, many officers actively avoided being sent to the SEAL teams. Being an officer in the SEALs wasn’t considered a solid career move at the time. Few SEAL officers rose to captain and, at this point, none had become an admiral. And the SEALs were seen as a hard bunch to command. Why kill your career to take on a thankless command that would inevitably take you into cold waters, parachute jumps, and shoot-outs with terrorists? Wasn’t drinking coffee on the warm bridge of a Navy cruiser a better move?

The transition was hard on Zinke. He wasn’t a mustang. Plus, he was a college man and therefore suspect. He had to earn his men’s respect in a way that simply wouldn’t apply in Big Navy. His rank and his uniform meant little. He had to impress the pirates of SEAL Team Six with his work ethic and his ability to get the job done, or he wasn’t going to make it.

* * *

Zinke worked overtime to acclimate to SEAL Team Six. He had to become a pirate like the rest of the men. He spent nights on inflatable boats, bouncing over the waves while the radio antenna whipped him in the back. He excelled at physical exercise. He never complained. And he started ignoring naval regulations on grooming and haircuts.

“I called them ‘Last of the Mohicans.’ At my wedding, I had a ponytail. So did everyone around me.”

He knew that when he had earned a nickname (they called him “Z”), he was in. He bonded with enlisted men. “You know, I was very tight with the SEAL teams, and the guys, and one could probably argue too tight, but also, I defended them. I was extremely loyal to the guys, and they were very loyal to me.”

The unusual culture had its advantages. It was more flexible and more forgiving than Big Navy. “The SEAL culture was fundamentally different in the 1980s and 1990s. As far as the bond between the officer and the enlisted, it was a little tighter. I think that mistakes were made, you were held accountable, but your career could recover. The commander would look at you and punish you, but the punishment wasn’t a shot-in-the-head dismissal.”

Long before the bloodletting of constant combat began in 2001, an internal bloodletting began in the SEAL teams. A triumphant training exercise had an unexpected traumatic effect. Zinke would be an eyewitness to a turning point in SEAL history.

* * *

Zinke was on the scene when the world changed for the SEALs.

In 1991, SEAL Team Six was divided into Red Team, Gold Team, and Blue Team, which was the most piratical of the pirates. Blue Team was called upon to demonstrate its ability to board fast-moving ships from small inflatable boats. Until they demonstrated it, the feat was considered impossible.

Using small inflatable boats with big outboard engines, the SEALs banged over the waves and approached a wall of metal several stories high—the smooth side of a U.S. Navy cruiser. Using grappling hooks and cables, they quickly scaled the slippery side of the ship. It was hard work. The inflatable boats were moving and so was the cruiser. And waves washed the hull of the ship, trying to pry off the SEALs climbing up the wet walls. Then they bounded onto the pitching deck and fanned out to dominate the crew hatches.

Through the glass of the bridge windows, senior officers watched the SEALs through binoculars. Next to Navy captains and admirals stood Zinke, the SEAL officer serving as liaison to the brass.

At first, the officers were impressed by the prowess of the SEALs—the quick and silent boarding of the ship, the rapid domination of control points of the vessel.

Then one SEAL removed his diving mask. His earring flashed in the sunlight. They watched as he shook wet hair free, exposing his long ponytail.

The officers sucked in their breath through their teeth and put down their binoculars.

Admiral Lopez, a three-star, was the senior officer on the bridge. Zinke heard Lopez say: “My Navy, these guys are in my Navy?”

“That was, I think, the last straw,” Zinke said. “Right after that, came what I called the ‘great bloodletting.’ ”

Big Navy didn’t want Naval Special Warfare to be too special. It wanted the SEALs to look and act more like sailors. It wasn’t just long hair, shaggy beards, and diamond earrings that would go. It was a degree of the informality and the power of the senior enlisted. The pirates would have to become professionals.

* * *

The housecleaning began with Adm. Eric Thor Olson, who took command of Seal Team Six in 1994.

Before his retirement, Admiral Olson would not only be credited with the re-creation of the world’s ultimate fighting force, but he would rise higher in the ranks than any other SEAL—all the way to four-star admiral, the Navy’s highest rank. He would also earn the title “Bullfrog” as the longest-serving Navy SEAL still on duty. Before retirement, he served thirty-eight years.

The admiral had impeccable SEAL credentials, making him the ideal agent of cultural change. Olson graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1973 and qualified as a SEAL in 1974, graduating in BUD/S in class 76. He served in several operational capacities with the SEALs, ultimately commanding at every level, including the Underwater Demolition Team, Seal Delivery Vehicle Team, Seal Special Boat Squadron, and SEAL Team Six. He also served as a SEAL instructor, strategy and development officer, and joint special operations officer. Olson won the Silver Star for his bravery during the Battle of Mogadishu, where the Navy found that he “demonstrated a complete disregard for his own personal safety in the accomplishment of his mission.” Known as both a gentleman and a frogman, Olson was arguably the perfect choice to accomplish the task he was given: to reinvent the SEALs as sailors, not buccaneers.

When Olson assumed command of Naval Special Warfare Command (which commands all SEAL teams) in 1999, he immediately started reshaping the SEALs. His cultural influence continued to be felt when he rose to commander of all special operations (SOCOM) in 2007. He retired from the Navy in 2011, when he relinquished command of SOCOM to Admiral William H. McRaven. It marked the first time that command of SOCOM shifted from one SEAL officer to another. (SOCOM includes Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force components.)

So Olson had the chops to win the respect of the SEALs. But it was his personality—the opposite of Marcinko’s—that surprised them. Zinke said, “He was quiet.”

“He’s not the bull in the room. And when you look at the personalities between Dick Marcinko and Eric Olson, it’s a big difference. One is bravado and in your face, and the other one is quiet, very thoughtful. I think the teams followed Olson’s lead and his personality. I think Olson had a profound influence on the change of culture of the teams, probably more than anyone else,” he said.

It wasn’t an easy evolution, several SEALs said.

Olson made several changes immediately. All SEALs under his command would be in uniform while on duty without exception. Regulation haircuts were once again required. Earrings were banned.

And the way Olson communicated the new policies was different, too. “I remember when his new policies came in, he didn’t go down to the team rooms and explain it. He made a video, which we all watched. This was a very tough group, that was very senior enlisted driven, and these were hard, hard men. They were kind of, they had their ways and in order to change the culture, you know, it was hard.”

The SEALs did not like it. But the video format itself was a message. These policy changes were not subject to a back-and-forth discussion, like in the Marcinko days. Instead it was a command.

Olson made it clear to the men of the SEAL teams that they had to change or they had to leave. Many did. The old guard that had served enough time to earn a pension quickly retired. Others stuck it out until they made their twenty years, qualified for a pension, and then they, too, left. Some even departed before they could secure a pension. The cultural shift was too much of a shock. Within four years, most of the old guard—officers and enlisted—were gone. Tens of millions of dollars’ worth of training and experience left with them. It was a real loss, though few dared say so.

“I think they looked at what the future was going to be and didn’t want any part of it,” Zinke said.

A new SEAL team culture emerged, one that won the confidence of Big Navy’s admirals. It was clean-cut and by the book. It was more like the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force. It narrowed the cultural gap between regular and irregular (special) forces.

* * *

By the end of his second stint with Team Six, Zinke began to see the well-oiled machine that Six had become. In 2004, Zinke was assigned as deputy and acting commander, Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force—Arabian Peninsula in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he led a force of special operations personnel in Iraq in the conduct of 360 combat patrols, 48 Direct Action missions, and hundreds of sensitive operations. He was responsible for killing or capturing 72 known enemies, insurgents, and terrorists. By the end of 2006, he was awarded two Bronze Stars for combat.

However much the technology had changed, Zinke noticed that the attitudes of SEALs had been transformed. “I can’t overemphasize enough the ability of them to make the decision, and it’s tied to their trigger finger. If you’re not compliant, there’s ways of making you comply, but if you’re a threat in that environment, you will die in a hurry,” Zinke said.

In the mind of every SEAL in a covert operation, Zinke explained, is a rapid calculation beyond words. “They’re only engaging what goes through their mind, which is threat/nonthreat.” It doesn’t really matter who has a gun. The decision is: is that target presenting himself as a threat? SEALs call this “threat/no threat.” It is a nearly instantaneous categorization of people that they encounter during operations. Honing this ability takes thousands of hours of training, in the “Kill House” training sites and in firefights far from home. It is imperative to the survival of the man and those working with him.

Zinke cited the Osama bin Laden raid as an example of the lightning fast “threat/no threat” calculation: “I think they honestly were looking at what they were trained to do and I don’t think you can deviate from that, because that’s what they do every time: does he have a weapon?” That is really the only consideration. “I think he [Osama bin Laden] presented himself as a threat and they took the shot. I don’t think they even thought about it.”

He pointed out that there were others in the bin Laden compound who were not shot, Zinke added: “The other guys along the way, if also presented as a threat, and they would have been killed.” The fact that civilians were not killed during a high-adrenaline operation is a testament to SEAL training, he said.

Like many within the teams, Zinke thinks too much media coverage—from the New Yorker magazine to a Hollywood film—is a kind of poisoned gift, a necklace with a sharp, rusty edge. “I think you know very well the SEALs have been glamorized recently. But, I think people oftentimes forget how hard, and ultimately ‘blue collar tough’ the job is when you’re involved in day-to-day training. You’re not jumping out of airplanes every day. There’s a certain grind to it, and you have to be dedicated to be good. It’s a lot of time away from your family, the divorce rate is really high. The number of days deployed remains well over two hundred, I’m sure. That’s the job that we forget.”

The SEAL community is very tight, and there’s a lot of sadness within it. “There’s sadness over how many SEALs we’ve lost, of how many only sons that we’ve lost,” Zinke said, with no attempt to mask his pain. “It is a tremendous amount of emotions when you have parents of a SEAL, their only son, and they’re so proud that their son is a SEAL, and he gets killed.”

* * *

Zinke was elected to the Montana State Senate in 2008 and now represents District 2, which includes the cities of Whitefish, Columbia Falls, and all of Glacier National Park.

He has been asked by many to run for the U.S. Congress in 2014. He may be on his way to joining another elite club, with its own traditions, rules, and initiation rites. If he does enter national politics, one of his goals will be to protect the SEALs from excessive bureaucracy. The United States, he said, still needs its pirates.