Posted on 08/27/2012 6:02:44 AM PDT by Travis McGee
-snip-
But the anonymous author isn’t the first to tell his story of the SEALs, or even the bin Laden raid. Here’s a few other examples of stories from former SEALs willing to put their real names on the jacket cover:
• SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden (November 2011) — Former Navy SEAL Chuck Pfarrer uses his status as a former SEAL to gain access to members of the team that carried out the raid on bin Laden to tell the story of Operation Neptune Spear. The U.S. military has called his account inaccurate, but he adamantly stands by his retelling. Pfarrer is also the author of the 2004 book Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy SEAL.
• SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper (April 2012) — Former SEAL Howard E. Wasdin takes readers fro training to combat in Operation Desert Storm as a member of SEAL Team 2 before chronicling his rise into Team 6, where he tells the story of the Battle of Mogadishu.
• Inside SEAL Team Six: My Life and Missions with America’s Elite Warriors (December 2011) — Don Mann was a Seal Team 6 member for over eight years and a SEAL for 17 years. His book looks at the toughness required to train and carry out the secret missions, including Mann’s first-hand responsibility in helping train the group that carried out the bin Laden raid.
For those looking for a big-screen version of the bin Laden raid, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal will release Zero Dark Thirty, a movie about the event, in December.
(Excerpt) Read more at entertainment.time.com ...
Now, it seems that guys can't wait to write books about their SEAL Team experiences. Maybe they are in too much of a hurry to sign a movie deal, perhaps, and grab the big money. At this time no less than THREE movies are in the works about the Osama raid, based on books by former SEALs! (I knew the author of one of them, Chuck Pfarrer.)
For the record, this is why, as a novelist, from the start, I decided to never include anything about the teams. No SEALs or ex-SEALs are featured in any of my novels. I always felt it would be cheesy, and I'm glad I made that decision a decade ago when I wrote my first novel.
/ / / / / /
SEAL’s Osama tale film-bound (NY Post)
The former Navy SEAL who has written his eyewitness account of the slaying of Osama bin Laden is in talks with Steven Spielberg to turn the book into an action movie, Page Six can exclusively reveal.
The author, who uses the pseudonym Mark Owen, was “one of the first men through the door on the third floor” of bin Laden’s lair in Pakistan and was there when he died, according to publisher Dutton.
The book — “No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden — will be released on Sept. 11.
Following the book announcement, Fox News revealed that Mark Owen is 36-year-old recently retired SEAL Matt Bissonnette. Then special operations chief Adm. Bill McRaven said Bissonnette could face prosecution for revealing sensitive and classified information that could cause US forces harm.
Meanwhile, multiple sources tell us Bissonnette has already been in talks with DreamWorks about turning his book into a movie.
One source said, “He met with HBO’s Richard Plepler, and he also met with Spielberg.”
Another source added, “He is still talking to DreamWorks and Spielberg,” who declined to comment.
A “No Easy Day” movie would add to an already busy field of bin Laden films. “Hurt Locker” director Kathryn Bigelow is working on “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the decade-long hunt for terrorist leader bin Laden, leading to his death in May 2011. The cast includes Scott Adkins, Joel Edgerton, Jessica Chastain and Taylor Kinney, with release set for Dec. 19
Meanwhile, the Weinstein Company has secured the US rights to “Code Name Geronimo,” the John Stockwell-directed drama about the manhunt for the 9/11 terror-attack mastermind.
According to reports, Weinstein will put the film in theaters in early fall, a move that would beat “Zero Dark Thirty” — which was delayed after Sony decided not to put it out ahead of the presidential election.
http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/seal_osama_tale_film_bound_jM0NYcLjOlVSApLxjYPnhM?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=Page%20Six
They forget Richard Marcinko?
How long does it take, starting from Day 1 at BUD/S school, until a student is nominally considered to be a fully-trained SEAL?
Marcinko’s books were a joke, crapola, pure fiction written by a ghost-writer with “Demo Dick’s” sea stories as input.
Nobody in the community took them seriously. He had just gotten out of federal prison, and needed to make a buck or two.
In my era it was a year, six months of BUD/S Training, followed by a six month probationary period, which included successful completion of what was then called SEAL Basic Indoctrination in-house at the east or west coast SEAL Teams.
My understanding is that with the past decade’s war footing, it’s a lot faster, and deployed platoons are lucky to go overseas with even a couple of experienced frogs. The “new guy” ratio in the platoons is at an all-time high.
It’s not a question of it being worth reading. It’s a question of opsec, the tricks of the trade that allow SEALs to sneak in, get a job done, and get out alive.
When those current tricks are included in a book, it puts the lives of our specops warriors in direct danger. Or, by outing the tactics, it puts them off the table and makes them unusable.
Either way, it’s a violation of a very basic trust to cash in by giving out current operational tradecraft and other secrets.
And that’s the way it should be. They shared their honor only among themselves until many, many years after the war.
They were true warriors, then.
> It was not until 20 or so years after the VN war that books by VN-era SEALs about their experiences came out.
And if someone were to check, many of those missions are probably still classified and divulging them or the tactics used ought to get the blabbermouth a fast trip to Fort Levenworth.
When I was in the 5th grade at Maude Saunders elementary school they allowed us to order a free paperback book from a list. I can’t recall how often but I got several.
One was about Italian Frogmen in WWII. I can’t remember a whole lot about them but do recall just how successful they were. Another was about German Frogmen and their far less successful attempts on the pontoon bridges over the Rhine.
I suspect swimming in the Rhine was particularly difficult as my Father told me you could put your hand down in the water and it would splash up.
I guess being on the losing side didn’t help their publicity either.
The MAC/SOG stuff didn’t come out for probably 30 years after. That’s long enough.The tactics discussed in the SEAL books about ops inside of VN itself were old news by the time they were written about.
I refuse to support either.
While I fully appreciate and respect the idea that secrets must be maintained for a variety of reasons, I think a major play here is that why can’t the military members make money on their fame just like the politicians do? I mean, if Obama and his staff can leak the information for political and financial gain then why can’t the frogs leak it for the same reasons? The information is going to be leaked so why let the polidiots have all the glory?
Clinton leaked information that still has the intelligence community hurting and no one said anything so it has continued to this day. There has been a systematic dismantling of our most critical secrets that the general public would never know about, so this isn’t just about the SEAL teams, but about the entire presidential level players due to an abuse by the likes of Clinton, Obama and others at that level, including some Republican players. The necessary level of trust by the military operators of the executive branch just isn’t there anymore. No one trusts anyone else anymore.
When there is a breakdown in discipline and loyalty to the country by those in DC it will affect all levels of players.
Like a fish, it would appear our military is beginning to rot from the head: their civilian masters in Mordor.
Are you sure that's what they are called? :)
I don’t understand why anyone would publish something like this, knowing that it could compromise operators who are currently in the field.
Makes no sense to me, how someone could endanger brothers-in-arms who are still “downrange”.
I understand it’s a story that needs to be told, but isn’t there a better way to tell it....?
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