Navy Seals

by Couch, Dick

  On October 4, 1962, Attorney General Kennedy chaired a meeting of the top-secret Operation Mongoose “Special Group” steering committee, which included CIA Director John McCone. The meeting minutes revealed two astonishing passages when they were declassified more than thirty years later. The first was a probable reference to assassination plots against Fidel Castro or another senior Cuban leader, and RFK’s direct knowledge of the plots: “another attempt will be made against the major target which has been the object of three unsuccessful missions, and that approximately six new ones are in the planning stage.”

  The second passage showed the president of the United States exerting strong pressure for sabotage attacks against Cuba, the kind Bill Bruhmuller would be involved in the following year: “The attorney general informed the group that higher authority [i.e., President John F. Kennedy] was concerned about the progress on the Mongoose program and felt that more priority should be given to trying to mount sabotage operations.” In April and June 1963, after Mongoose-type activity was temporarily paused in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK again personally authorized continuing sabotage operations against Cuban targets.

  From 1961 to early 1964, Operation Mongoose and other similar efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies and various anti-Castro Cuban exile groups included mafia-connected plots to assassinate Fidel Castro with a high-powered rifle or an exploding cigar; attacking an oil refinery, a molasses storage vessel, an electric power plant, a sugar mill, and a railway bridge; stashing weapons caches all over the island for use in a hoped-for popular uprising; and a wide range of attempted clandestine landings on the island by CIA and exile sabotage teams. At least two teams of Cuban frogmen were trained by CIA, UDT, and SEAL experts in underwater demolition and other techniques. SEAL historian Tom Hawkins noted, “Personnel from SEAL Team ONE and SEAL Team TWO participated in much of the ‘unconventional’ planning and worked directly with the CIA to establish and operate a series of ‘safe houses’ in and around Miami. SEAL Team personnel trained Cuban commando teams in small boat operations, beach reconnaissance, and combat swimmer methods. Much of this training was accomplished in austere base situations focused in and around the Florida Keys.” The Mongoose and post-Mongoose anti-Castro campaigns continued after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, and for a brief time after the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. It was such a chaotic stew of tangled plots, quixotic operations, and sometimes hare-brained schemes that Kennedy’s secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, would later say, “the whole Mongoose thing was insane.”

  ON MAY 25, 1961, five weeks after the disastrous CIA-backed Cuban exile amphibious invasion at the Bay of Pigs, and a year and a half before the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech before a joint session of Congress that helped launch the U.S. Navy SEALs.

  One line in the address assumed an exalted place in world history when he declared that the United States should commit itself to “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth” before the end of the 1960s. Elsewhere in the speech, though, were two sentences in dull bureaucratese that have led some to pinpoint the birth of the SEALs to this precise moment: “I am directing the secretary of defense 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 war. In addition, our special forces and unconventional warfare units will be increased and reoriented.”

  With this order, Kennedy encouraged the Pentagon to beef up counterinsurgency and special operations forces like the SEALs, the Army’s Green Berets, and the Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance Units. JFK was no stranger to non-conventional naval tactics himself; as a young U.S. Navy lieutenant j.g. serving in the South Pacific in 1943, he skippered PT-109, a patrol-torpedo boat that was famously cut in two by a Japanese warship, creating a legend of heroism, survival, and leadership under fire that helped launch his political career.

  The full story of how the SEALs came to be created has only recently been pieced together by experts, notably by former Captain (SEAL) David Del Giudice, the first commanding officer of SEAL Team One; and by former Commander Tom Hawkins, a retired SEAL and a respected historian of the Teams. Their research reveals that the SEAL concept dated back at least to 1958, when Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Arleigh A. Burke argued for non-conventional warfare capabilities to target the Soviet bloc, apparently in light of rising tensions in Southeast Asia. At the same time, in the post–Korean War era, the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams, or UDTs, were experiencing a fairly quiet period of ongoing research and training. “They honed diving and submarine operational skills,” wrote Hawkins, “began attending U.S. Army airborne schools, developed maritime parachuting techniques, and experimented extensively with a host of swimmer propulsion and delivery vehicles.”

  Hawkins added, “The changing needs for the special warfare community, and the transition from UDT to SEAL really started occurring after Korea. The one thing that President Eisenhower was very cautious about after Korea is he didn’t want to tear the military apart like they did after World War II. So, he prevented that, but by the same token, he shifted the dynamic of the military to be more strategic and more deterrent-focused with nuclear weapons. Communism was expanding, and there were ‘little wars’ going on in Laos and they were looking at the domino effect on the Asian peninsula. So they had to find a different way to fight those wars, and so it looked like it was going to be smaller units and unconventional warfare type tactics.”

  In 1958, one Navy man already had a vision for a different kind of special warfare team—one that would be a blueprint for the Navy SEALs. “Arleigh Burke was the Chief of Naval Operations,” SEAL Team One’s first commanding officer, David Del Giudice, explained to us. “He was a very forward-looking person who 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 would be able to give a measured response. If anyone would be considered the Papa SEAL, Arleigh Burke would be Papa SEAL.”

  Early in 1960, the last full year of the Eisenhower administration, Admiral Burke ordered his planners to identify Navy units that could be geared to small-scale warfare, in contrast to the mega-conventional and nuclear orientation of most of the military at the time. His staff came up with an ideal candidate who could be transformed to meet the mission: the men of the Underwater Demolition Teams. They were a ready-made commando force with strong talents for speed, mobility, sabotage, clandestine infiltration, and small-team tactics, all talents that were ideal for the new mission.

  A key “birth document” dated March 10, 1961, was sent to Admiral Burke by Rear Admiral William E. Gentner, director of the Navy’s Strategic Plans Division, in which he proposed an improved “Naval Guerrilla/Counter-guerrilla Warfare” capability. He laid out the specifics, which soon became the foundation of the SEALs and Naval Special Warfare that endured for the next fifty years and beyond: “One unit each is proposed under the Pacific and Atlantic amphibious commanders and will represent a center or focal point through which all elements of this specialized Navy capability (naval guerrilla warfare) would be channeled.” Later in the memo, the new force was given its name: “An appropriate name for such units could be ‘SEAL’ units, SEAL being a contraction of SEA, AIR, LAND, and thereby, indicating an all-around, universal capability.”

  On December 11, 1961, a letter was issued from the office of the Chief of Naval Operations officially establishing SEAL Teams in the Pacific and Atlantic Fleets. SEAL Team One was established on January 1, 1962 at Coronado, California, with Lieutenant David Del Giudice from UDT-12 as commanding officer and SEAL Team Two was established on January 6, 1962 at Little Creek, Virginia, with Lieutenant John Callahan from UDT-11 as commanding officer. Each team had just ten officers and fifty enlisted operators.

  A little more than seven months after JFK’s May 1961 sp
eech, SEAL Teams One and Two were established. “We were only ten officers and fifty enlisted at that time,” recalled David Del Giudice. “We didn’t even have a building to work out of. We were working out of a single office in Underwater Demolition Team 12’s space. 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.”

  Most of those first SEALs, like Bill Bruhmuller, were pulled from the Underwater Demolition Teams and today are called “plank-owners,” an exalted group in the SEAL pantheon. But you could also consider Admiral Arleigh Burke to be an honorary plank-owner. “Little did these men know,” reflected Tom Hawkins, “that they were creating a Naval Special Warfare community that would eventually promote many officers to the rank of admiral—including the two four-star SEAL admirals [Admiral Eric T. Olson and Admiral William McRaven] who commanded the 67,000 members of the U.S. Special Operations Command.” In its first half century of existence, this once little-known Navy unit evolved into one of the world’s most celebrated forces of combat arms.

  The new teams took up residence at the naval amphibious bases in Coronado, California, and Little Creek, Virginia, respectively, where they reside today. Personnel for the teams were drawn from UDTs, but the men were to have expanded mission responsibilities that included airborne and land operations as well as traditional maritime activities. Almost immediately the new teams began to train for direct-action and reconnaissance missions on land, coming from on or under the sea or from the air.

  The new “SEAL training” was an evolutionary, dynamic process. There were no SEAL training manuals. These new SEALs trained their own. Early on, SEALs adapted the UDT training they had undergone, and to this day the SEALs selection course is known as Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs Training, or BUD/S. The rigorous conditioning and the notorious Hell Week remained much the same as it had been during the time of NCDU pioneer Draper Kauffman and the UDT men of World War II. Once U.S. involvement in Vietnam was under way, SEALs fresh from combat deployment became cadre instructors and trained those SEALs headed for Vietnam. Today, basic and advanced training for a Navy SEAL takes close to a full year. Another eighteen months of training with a SEAL team is now normal before a new SEAL makes his first operational deployment. Of all special operations ground combat components, Navy SEAL training is the longest and arguably the most difficult. With the exception of the aviation components, it certainly is the most expensive.

  Perhaps the single most enduring characteristic of BUD/S training is the high attrition rate. Historically, five good men have to begin the process in order to get one qualified, deployable Navy SEAL. A great deal of time, effort, study, and testing has been devoted to this subject, but little has been done over time to make it more efficient. The physical characteristics of those who make it and those who don’t are strikingly similar. Those who successfully complete BUD/S training seem to stand higher in terms of leadership, self-confidence, self-discipline, self-esteem, and intelligence. They also come from families who have high expectations of their sons.

  Training is long, rigorous, and painful. Recently, careful attention to recruiting the right men and more sophisticated conditioning methods have resulted in a higher percentage of candidates getting through this difficult training. Yet, until there is a test for heart or some way to measure who will and will not quit under stress, there will always be a Hell Week and the physical, mental, and emotional crucible that is BUD/S training.

  “Most SEALs, I think, maximize their God-given ability,” explained Tom McGrath, former commander of SEAL Team Four. “Quitting is very, very, selected against. Our training is spent in the water, cold water, and you can quit anytime. I mean, it’s absolutely easy to quit, but it is irreversible.”

  Training is literally a life-and-death matter, noted former SEAL and retired Vice Admiral Joseph Maguire: “Look at Section 60 in Arlington National Cemetery, it’s full of SEALs: men who’ve sacrificed and given their lives. The enemy gets a vote and nobody’s immortal. SEALs are the best there is, but they’re not perfect and they’re not immortal. And that’s why they train so hard. They are brought to death’s door.”

  BILL BRUHMULLER WAS A powerfully built, soft-spoken man who had joined the Navy in 1953, at the tail end of the Korean War. In 1954 he volunteered for the Underwater Demolition Teams and was immediately assigned to UDT-22 at Little Creek, Virginia. “When I was 18 years old,” he recalled, “I went into UDT and I was fortunate to work for a lot of the older World War II guys who were divers and I learned a lot about underwater work from these old-timers that really served me well throughout my Navy career.” When the U.S. Navy SEALs were formed in January 1962, Bruhmuller was assigned to the new unit.

  Bruhmuller recalled of the earliest days of the SEALs, “I think I attended something like 36 schools. I went to Navy survival school, Air Force survival school, Marine Corps survival school, radio school and free-fall parachute school at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, language school, patrolling school in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, jungle warfare school down in Panama, weapons training, parachuting, and all kinds of sneaky stuff like kitchen demolition, where I learned how to use small explosives to do big jobs, from kitchen materials like flour and bleach.”

  The veterans from the UDTs quickly went to work outfitting the new SEAL teams. They immediately saw the need for lightweight weapons and used team operational funds to purchase AR-15 rifles. The new rifle, the forerunner of the M-16, was the best gun for the new maritime commandos. They also began experimenting with new parachutes. The UDTs were past masters in scrounging useful equipment from military salvage depots; the new SEALs were even better.

  The Teams focused on commando-style raiding while coming from the sea or through the air. Their training involved small-unit tactics for direct-action missions and behind-the-lines reconnaissance. While Vietnam loomed large in their future, some of their earliest operations were focused on what the president of the United States considered a grave security threat just ninety miles south of American shores: the pro-Soviet Castro regime in Cuba. In fact, the SEALs’ immediate predecessors, the UDTs, assisted Cuban exiles in planning the failed CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.

  Tom Hawkins traced UDT and SEAL Cuba operations in his 2012 publication for the Pritzker Military Museum and Library titled The History and Heritage of U.S. Navy SEALs, in which he reported that UDT personnel trained twelve Cuban exiles in swimming and demolition techniques, first at Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, then at an unused U.S. Army base south of New Orleans, Louisiana. “On the night of April 17, 1961,” wrote Hawkins, “two landing craft with a CIA ‘operations officer’ and five UDT frogmen entered the Bay of Pigs (Bahía de Cochinos) on the southern coast of Cuba. UDT men also embarked the submarine USS Sea Lion (SS 315) at Mayport, Florida, and evidently were inserted near Havana to conduct harbor and beach reconnaissance. It has never been acknowledged that any U.S. advisors went ashore with their trained operatives.”

  In the buildup to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, the SEALs were alerted to take part in the imminent invasion of Cuba. “I was eventually ordered to command a secret SEAL detachment aboard the Sea Lion to ‘secure the beachhead’ for night-time insertion of an on-board Special Forces A detachment, partnered with a few CIA types and Cuban nationals, who would penetrate inland in Cuba and establish guerrilla activities,” reported one SEAL Team One veteran. “The Sea Lion was called back from underwater surveillance off the southern coast of Cuba to Key West, Florida, when President Kennedy ordered a stand down.” Bill Bruhmuller added, “In the Cuban Missile Crisis, we had one group that was going to parachute into the island, we had another group coming out of Key West on a submarine that was going to go in by water. I was on a group that was going in by boat to Havana harbor. We were going to shoot up the harbor. It never materialized.”


  The fact that the CIA engaged UDT and SEAL personnel for the Cuba operations was corroborated in detail by James Tipton, a SEAL Team Two plank-owner. “The Company—the CIA—had been using men from the UDTs in the late fifties and early sixties to do foreign training and run other operations for them,” remembered Tipton to SEAL historians Kevin Dockery and Bill Fawcett. “This kind of thing went on for a number of years, with the program just kind of expanding over time. In part, this is what led to the commissioning [establishment] of the SEALs. By 1961, we had almost a permanent group of instructors stationed down in southern Florida, training Cubans and running them in and out [of Cuba] for operations.” He added, “We were running people in and out of the islands on a regular basis. And there was always one or two of us on the ops. Officially, none of the instructors were to set foot on foreign soil, or at least that was always the saying down there. It did seem that there was a time or two an instructor was away from the camp for longer than seemed necessary to just drop someone off or pick someone up.”

  Earlier that same year, in April 1962, according to Bill Bruhmuller, a group of seven SEALs was called into SEAL Team Two commander John Callahan’s office. “There’s a job that has to be done,” Callahan announced. “I don’t know where you’re going, how long you’re going to be gone, or who you’re going to be working for.” Bruhmuller recalled, “Naturally, everybody said ‘Sure!’ I was between wives at the time so it didn’t make any difference to me, I was ready to go.”