The Mastermind behind SEAL Team Six and the End of Osama bin Laden

On May 1, 1940, a group of highly trained killers was flying through the air on gliders. The gliders were thirty-seven feet long and had wingspans of seventy-two feet. Each was equipped with three machine guns; carried ten combat-ready Nazis; and was soaring as fast as 180 miles per hour toward a fort in Belgium.1

Located just inside the border Belgium shared with Germany, that fort—known as Eben Emael—was seemingly unconquerable. Its walls rose two hundred feet from the banks of the Meuse River, and from that height its Belgian defenders could see for miles into the German countryside, use the fort’s arsenal of massive guns to destroy the three bridges any invading Panzer division would have to cross, and then rain bullets on any Nazi foolish enough not to flee.2

The guns themselves poked out of either six-inch-thick steel domes or concrete blockhouses designed to withstand everything from surface artillery to aerial bombardment.3 And, on this day, nearly a thousand untroubled soldiers manned this seemingly unconquerable fort.4

At 4 a.m. the Nazi gliders reached the air above Eben Emael and then, almost as one, the teams dived sharply to avoid antiaircraft fire, landing within close range of the domes and blockhouses protecting the guns.5 They then ran up to the structures, placed specially designed explosives on them, and stood aside as the explosives blew the structures to bits, taking the guns out of service and killing many of the men inside.6

Within just fifteen minutes, this small but fast-moving and well-organized group of Nazis neutralized the fort’s massive guns. Soon after, they seized the fort itself, enabling Nazi Panzer divisions to invade France via Belgium.7 And, because the French and the British were compelled to commit forces to the north in response, they were unable to defend against the Führer’s primary offensive on France, launched soon after, through Luxembourg.8

Fifty years later, William H. McRaven—the son of a WWII fighter pilot—went looking for the Nazi who planned that infamous operation. Tall, muscular, and brainy, a friend once described McRaven as both “the smartest [Navy SEAL] that ever lived” and someone who “can drive a knife through your ribs in a nanosecond”—not exactly the kind of person you want hunting you down.9

But McRaven did hunt down Rudolf Witzig, the mastermind of the Eben Emael attack, and found him in Munich. McRaven had waited a long time for this moment and had come prepared—to take notes.

* * *

McRaven wanted to interview the old Nazi so that he might discover why some special operations succeed and others fail. “The assault on Eben Emael,” he held, “was one of the most decisive victories in the history of special operations.”10 But what went into its planning? How did the soldiers prepare for it? What factors enabled them to succeed? McRaven had many such questions, questions he hoped would lead him to a general theory of special operations that he could apply to his work with the SEALs. Witzig, he thought, could help.

As Witzig relayed the importance of the intelligence he and the Nazis had gathered on Eben Emael, McRaven listened intently. Witzig said he had acquired not only aerial photos of the fort before the assault but also blueprints from a German subcontractor who helped build it.11 This, Witzig noted, allowed him to know the exact locations of the large guns—which proved crucial to the operation’s planning and rehearsal.

At the airfield where they practiced, Witzig told McRaven, “everything was laid out as things were at Eben Emael.”

We had markers set up with the exact distances between them. This way the pilots and crew leaders could orient themselves. I would go to each man and point out his objectives—“This is yours, this is yours, and this is yours.”12

With that setup, the men practiced with their gliders until each could “take off at night, fly the profile, and land on a grassy surface within fifteen to thirty yards of his target.”13 The men also practiced on similar but “more difficult” forts in Czechoslovakia.14 And then, after returning and practicing even more on each detail of the operation, they put the plan into practice.

Although these preparations could hardly guarantee success, McRaven saw how they made success increasingly probable. After the interview, McRaven integrated what he had gathered from Witzig with his own experiences as a special operations commander, and proceeded to study other operations.

McRaven researched the midget submarines that Britain used to attack the German battleship Tirpitz, the six Italian frogmen who rode special torpedoes into the port of Alexandria to sink two British battleships, and the Israeli commandos who stormed an airport in Uganda to rescue Israeli hostages. He also studied the assault on a POW camp in the Philippine jungle, the rescue of Benito Mussolini from a well-guarded mountaintop hotel, the British attack on a Nazi-held port in France, and finally the raid of a camp suspected of holding American prisoners in North Vietnam.

As he did with Eben Emael, McRaven interviewed those involved in the operations; inspected, where possible, the sites of each; and, for every single one, analyzed the “merits of the plan and its subsequent execution.”15 Eventually, McRaven integrated the data he collected into a unified theory of special operations with six principles at its core: simplicity, security, repetition, surprise, speed, and purpose.

Simplicity, according to McRaven, is often the hardest principle to get right, but also the most crucial.16 In each of the operations he studied, McRaven observed the importance of limited objectives. He saw that whereas Witzig accomplished this in his planning for the raid on Eben Emael, other planners failed to delimit their targets and suffered losses as a result.

The British attack on Saint-Nazaire, a Nazi-held port in France, made this especially clear to McRaven. It was, he saw, anything but simple:

[The attack] involved 611 men, sixteen motor launches, the destroyer Campbeltown, two escort destroyers (the Tynedale and the Atherstone), and the submarine Sturgeon. The plan called for the destruction of eleven major targets, using 257 commandos, from eight different units, most of whom had never met prior to the final weeks of training. . . . At any one point in the operation there could have been fifty separate elements . . . all required to act independently during the engagement and then reassemble at the designated time for extraction.17

McRaven saw this complexity as a fatal flaw, noting that the British Navy’s one dress rehearsal prior to the attack revealed its difficulty, and that the implementation of the plan—in which many men died and many more were taken hostage—confirmed it.18

Security, according to McRaven, “prevents the enemy from gaining an advantage through foreknowledge of the impending attack.”19

McRaven learned in studying past operations that in many cases the enemy was prepared to defend against the attacks. From this, McRaven gathered that the most important aspects of security pertain to when an operation will occur and the specifics of how to execute it.20 Clearly, if an enemy had knowledge of either, it could more effectively defend itself.

McRaven also concluded that security should not be so tight as to impede the preparation or execution of an operation. This was another reason to avoid large and complex missions; they were harder to keep secret.21

Repetition, according to McRaven, is “indispensable in eliminating the barriers to success.”22 He saw this, for example, in the Son Tay raid, where a pilot had the difficult task of landing in the small courtyard of a POW camp.

It was considered essential to make this controlled crash in the courtyard in order to gain a few seconds of surprise. Initially, this maneuver was considered too difficult, but after hundreds of flying hours and a dozen rehearsals, the difficult landing became easier and surprise was achieved. Constant repetition made the task of landing in a confined area easier and thereby improved the opportunity for gaining surprise.23

Surprise, McRaven says, means “catching the enemy off guard”—and this is achieved by some combination of deceiving the enemy, planning the time of one’s execution well, and exploiting the enemy’s weaknesses.24

In the abovementioned Son Tay raid, for example, McRaven noted that three of the navy’s carriers lobbed missiles into North Vietnam in order to direct the enemy’s attention away from where the raid was set to approach.25

Whereas other theorists consider surprise all-important, McRaven concluded that it alone was useless. Surprise, he saw, was essential but must be used in conjunction with the other principles.26

Speed, McRaven says, simply means “getting to your objective as fast as possible.” He noted that this was even more crucial for special operations teams than for larger military operations, due to the differences between the two in size and strength.27

But there’s another reason speed is crucial to successful operations—a reason McRaven gathered in part from the British attack on the Tirpitz using midget submarines and in part from another operation he studied:

The Italian frogmen who entered Alexandria Harbor on manned torpedos were constantly exposed to the cold water. They knew that even if the enemy didn’t discover them, the forces of nature and physical exertion would overcome them. As he closed in on the British battleship HMS Valiant, Lieutenant Durand de la Penne recalled, “I am tormented by thirst . . . I cannot continue working from the extreme fatigue and for the breathlessness.” He knew that “speed was essential . . . [because if he were forced to surface from fatigue] the alarm would be given, depth charges would be dropped, and [the] operation . . . would be doomed to failure.” But because Durand de la Penne worked quickly, he was not discovered until after he had surfaced. Hours later the warhead from the manned torpedo exploded and the HMS Valiant sank in Alexandria Harbor.28

In this case and others, McRaven noted that timing was important not only for fear of alerting the enemy but also because the means of entry demanded it. Getting to the objective quickly, and getting out as fast, was key to achieving the mission and returning alive.29

Purpose, says McRaven, is “understanding and then executing the prime objective of the mission regardless of emerging obstacles or opportunities.”

There are two aspects of this principle. First, the purpose must be clearly defined by the mission statement: rescue the POWs, destroy the dry dock, sink the battleship, etc. This mission statement should be crafted to ensure that in the heat of battle, no matter what else happens, the individual soldier understands the primary objective. . . . The second aspect of this principle is personal commitment. . . . The purpose of the mission must be thoroughly understood beforehand, and the men must be inspired with a sense of personal dedication that knows no limitations.30

Of course, McRaven saw that, like the other principles, purpose alone is insufficient for a special operation to succeed.

The principles are interconnected and rely on each other for support. For example, if a plan is not simple, it will be difficult to conceal the operation’s intent and even more difficult to rehearse the mission. And if the operation is difficult to conceal and rehearse, it will be nearly impossible to execute with surprise, speed, and purpose.31

Having developed these principles, McRaven published them in a book titled Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice, a book that has been required reading for special operations officers ever since.32

Further, as McRaven gained rank—ultimately becoming commanding general of the Joint Special Operations Command in 2008—he repeatedly showed the power of his theory to achieve military objectives in the field.

Perhaps it should be unsurprising then that on April 29, 2011 McRaven received a phone call from Leo Panetta, head of the CIA. “It’s a go,” said Panetta—and McRaven knew just what he meant.33 SEAL Team Six—officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU—had just been given the green light to take out Osama bin Laden. McRaven had been planning the operation since late 2010.34

* * *

In keeping with the principles McRaven discovered, the operation was simple: get in, kill bin Laden, and get out—all as fast as possible so as to reduce the amount of time the SEALs involved would be vulnerable to a counterattack.

Team Six repeatedly practiced each aspect of the operation in North Carolina, Nevada, and, closer to where it would actually happen, Afghanistan. In fact, just as Witzig had done for fort Eben Emael, McRaven had a full-scale replica of Osama’s compound built for the men to perfect the timing and tactics of the raid.35

The operation was not shared with anyone in Pakistan. “There was a real lack of confidence that the Pakistanis could keep this secret for more than a nanosecond,” said one of the president’s senior advisers.36

As for the element of surprise, one of the SEALs who went into the compound put it this way: “Special operations is about doing what’s not expected, and probably the least expected thing here was that a helicopter would come in, drop guys on the roof, and land in the yard.”37

Indeed, on May 1, 2011, bin Laden probably went to sleep feeling safe. After all, he lived in a three-story house surrounded by 12-to-18-foot walls topped with barbwire. Armed guards protected the only entrance to the compound, locked doors barred the way between each floor, and the proximity of a military town provided added security.38

But this security was no match for the twenty-three navy SEALs making their way to the compound in stealth helicopters. By 1 a.m., these trained killers were hovering over the town, and soon thereafter they were descending on the house.

The helicopters swooped in, one landing hard, and the SEALs jumped out. As they made their way to the courtyard, blasting through two locked gates with the help of C-4 charges, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti—a courier who inadvertently led the CIA to discover the compound—came out with a weapon. The SEALs shot him dead.39

As they approached the house’s entrance, the SEALs saw Kuwaiti’s brother standing there with an AK-47, his wife by his side, ready to defend the compound with his life. The SEALs shot both.40

After blasting through a locked gate on the first floor, they ran upstairs. Bin Laden’s son Khalid interrupted them halfway up, and the SEALs opened fire. As Khalid’s lifeless body fell, the SEALs advanced again, this time knowing that all the men in the compound were accounted for—except one.41

As the first SEAL entered Osama’s room, however, one of bin Laden’s two wives came at him. The SEAL shot her in the calf, then grabbed her along with another of bin Laden’s wives, moving both aside and protecting the SEALs who followed, in the event that either woman was wearing an explosive vest.42

The second SEAL who charged into the room then trained his M4 on bin Laden and pulled the trigger. A 5.56 mm bullet ripped through Osama’s lungs and, as he fell backward from the force of the first bullet, the SEAL sent a second one tearing through his skull.43

Their mission accomplished, the navy SEALs quickly snapped photos of the dead and gathered thumb drives, DVDs, computers, and notes—all of which would provide the U.S. military clues about the inner workings of Al Qaeda, its plans, and the locations of its other operatives.44 Then they left, taking with them bin Laden’s corpse—to be dumped into the shark-infested waters of the Indian Ocean.45

Following the raid, many wanted to know who was responsible for taking out Osama, some out of curiosity, others in order to properly direct their gratitude.

Although we may never know the names of the SEALs who executed the mission or the one who pulled the trigger, and although they and every officer in SEAL Team Six and the entire staff of JSOC, deserve America’s thanks, the mastermind of bin Laden’s death was William H. McRaven.46

By integrating a huge amount of complex data into his theory of special operations, he not only helped ensure the success of this very special operation, he also laid the groundwork for many before and others yet to come.

About Daniel Wahl

Daniel Wahl is assistant editor at The Objective Standard.

View all articles by Daniel Wahl →