Stuff You Should Know - How Delta Force Works

Episode Date: September 30, 2008

With the world's best weaponry, a shadowy legal status, and almost no oversight, Delta Force is the stuff of military legend. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn why Delta Force was created, and how this group works. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. In 1968, five Black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school in Mt. Megs, Alabama. I'm writer and reporter Josie Deffie Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate the abuse that thousands of Black children suffered

at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children and how those five girls changed everything. Listen to unreformed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. This is Chuck over here. Say, hey, Chuck. Hey, Chuck, I should probably slow it down stuff sounding so like a morning talk show hosty. Have you heard about the bombing in Yemen of the U.S. Embassy? I haven't. Did that just happen?

Yeah. It happened very recently. I think this 16th, September 16th. Wow. I feel like a heel now. It doesn't feel too bad. For some reason, any bombing that happens in Yemen doesn't make, you know, the biggest news. I don't know why, because this is an al-Qaeda bombing. And actually, it could have been a lot, lot worse. There was a group of guys who were loaded down with explosives. Their car was just laying down with explosives. And they were making, they were going to go through the first checkpoint, blow up the gate after the first checkpoint, and then the second car was going to come through

and kill anybody and everybody. Wow. Well, the guards at the checkpoint didn't buy the first car's story. So they opened fire and they blew up. So these guards were killed, but it alerted everybody of what was going on. Sure. There was a firefight between the Yemeni security around the American Embassy and the second car. And eventually, all the terrorists were killed. Wow. But I think 16, 16 people total died. And most of those were American, well, no,

there was one American, but most of them were working at the embassy. It was a big deal. It was the first major terrorist attack on a U.S. target since September 11th, 2001. But we haven't heard anything about it because Sarah Palin's eyeglasses are making front pages. Her updo is capturing most of the headlines. No wonder I didn't hear about it. So I was reading an article in Time and they were saying, like, this is the most recent clear indicator that we have a real problem with Al Qaeda in Yemen. It's a hotbed. Like, it's very, you know, friendly to the West. And actually, this attack was supposedly a retaliation for Yemeni security forces staging like counter-terrorist activities.

And Al Qaeda is like, what do you think you're doing? So it is friendly to the United States, but at the same time, it's still kind of a hotbed of Al Qaeda activity. The thing is, we're pretty fairly entrenched in Iraq right now. I don't know if you've heard. Right. Yeah. We invaded in 2003, haven't left yet. It doesn't look like we're going to anytime soon. And now Afghanistan is boiling over again. Right. The last thing we need is another front. And Yemen doesn't sound like the kind of country we're just going to walk into and, you know, invade basically. Right.

So what do you do? What do you do when you have a hotbed of Al Qaeda activity and you need surgical precision takeout as much of the guys as possible? You know what I would do? What? Two words. Delta Force. Oh, I've heard of these guys. Actually, I haven't heard of them. You know why? Because they don't officially exist. I know. It's kind of creepy, but kind of cool. It is. Yeah. We should probably warn the listeners right now. Chuck and I will most likely devolve into some sort of weird boyhood admiration of all the sick, sick stuff Delta Force has done over the years. Right. So just be forewarned. If we start tittering or get really excited or one of us takes our shirt off, don't be offended. Okay. I know. I did find myself when I was reading your

article because I would say classified as anti-war. I'm not for this stuff, but when I was reading this stuff about the Delta Force, I just thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Well, I think that's what's so cool about Delta Force is you send them in. You don't need to go to war. Yeah. They take care of business. Sure. Maybe that's what I like about it. Clean and precise and quick and little as kind of how it should be. So we should probably give some background here. Delta Force is essentially, as we said, unrecognized officially by the U.S. government. Right. I had a lot of trouble in writing an article on them because you really have to piece everything together. There's lots of hearsay. There's no concrete evidence. Right. No Delta Force document.

Exactly. There is, but it was sadly disappointing and clearly run by some guy. No. No. Which, by the way, the Chuck Norris movie, Delta Force, highly inaccurate, wildly inaccurate. I'm sure. There was another movie he made called Invasion USA, which in that movie he much more resembled a Delta Force operator. He didn't wear a uniform. He had an Uzi. I think both of those movies, Lee Marvin, was in both of them. Right? The great, great, late, great, Lee Marvin. Right. Well, specifically in Delta Force, Lee Marvin's character, but also in Invasion USA as well. Lee Marvin's character was very much based on this guy named Colonel Beckwith. Yeah. I don't remember Colonel Beckwith's first name, do you?

Uh, Colonel. Yeah. Well, just call him Colonel. Yeah. He's like a murderous version of Cher, Colonel. Right. So Colonel Beckwith was this guy who basically had been over in Great Britain to train with the SAS. Right. The British Special Forces. Right. So he's over there. He's really impressed with this group. We have our own version of the Special Forces. It's a, I can't remember what, it's Special Forces Operational Detachment A, I believe. And that's, that's our regular Special Forces, who in and of themselves are just complete and total, just, they're rough. Right. Can we say badass? I don't think there's any way to get around it. Let's just get it out of the way right now. Delta Force is badass. Yes. They are most decidedly. And the Special

Forces in and of themselves, these are the thinking man's arm of the army. Right. They are basically inserted into enemy territory and they identify dissenting groups against the, the whatever government we want to topple. Right. And one or two Special Forces guys assemble guerrilla armies out of these dissenting forces and create insurgencies from within. It's been done before. Right. That's just Special Forces. Delta Force actually draws from Special Forces. They're not even army. They don't even, they don't identify with any particular branch, right? Because they draw the, the toughest dudes out of all the branches. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And have you, have you read Black Hawk Down or Killing Pablo?

No. I saw the movie. Okay. And I saw a great documentary on it too. I saw that one too. It was excellent, excellent on an unnamed channel. The author of that book, Mark Bowden, is apparently just loved by the Delta Force because he's actually interviewed Delta Force operators, which is what they're called. They're not soldiers. They're operators. Yeah, I kind of like that. And they don't wear, you know, uniforms or fatigues. They shoot anything they like, which we'll get into later that gets certain private companies who hire Delta Force operators in trouble. But they, Mark Bowden put it pretty, pretty clearly. He said, they are professional soldiers who hate the army, which actually really think about that's

the definition of a mercenary. Yeah, basically. But they're, they're under control. They're, they're ostensibly under the control of the US military, right? Yeah. But apparently, and this, like we say, all this is kind of, it's all conjecture, conjecture, but only answer to the president. And that's kind of my favorite part. Yeah. Well, that whole thing came out of their second mission. Their first mission was to guard the Pan American games, I think in 1978. Right. And that went smoothly. Nothing noteworthy happened. Maybe because the Delta Force is there. Sure. I don't know. Their second mission was Operation Eagle Claw. This is the hostage takeover in Iran in 1980, 1979. Right. Two years after Delta Force had been assembled. And this is

back when Colonel Beckwith was real hands on and he was in there and basically like the Lee Marvin character is leading the charge and shooting commies and all that kind of thing. There is no need for the outside world because we are removed from it and apart from it and in our own universe. On the new podcast, The Turning Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. There are not very many of us that actually grew up with Balanchine. It was like I grew up with Mozart. He could do no wrong. Like he was a God. But what was the cost for the dancers who brought these ballets to life where the lines between the professional and the personal were hazy and

often crossed? He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you. Only I can see you. Most people in the ballet world are more interested in their experience of watching it than in the dancers' experience of executing it. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty, exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty.

The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So this is Operation Evil Claw. They're flying in to do a strike on the American embassy that's been taken over by Iranian extremists.

Flying in in what? Plain black helicopters. Yes. It's not like a TC's rainbow colored island hopper on Magnum PI. No. It doesn't say US Army. Absolutely. It doesn't say CIA. To tell you the truth, it would probably more resemble TC's helicopter than your normal Huey.

Yeah, they have their own aviation platoon that can get them from place to place and actually creates plausible deniability. It could just as easily be a bunch of crazed, wealthy American businessmen bent on patriotism as it could be Delta Force. Right. But Eagle Claw, I distracted you. So Eagle Claw, they're going in, there's a helicopter crash and they never get to actually carry out the mission. The problem was Delta Force was being commanded by traditional special forces commanders.

At the time, after that, they were taken out of command. As I was saying in the article, no one has any idea whose command they were put under. Right. And you kind of get the impression, the more you find out about Delta Force, that they're not under anyone's command. Like I say, they answer to the president. I think that's probably about it. Right. And no one knows where their funding comes from.

It's got, I think you call it a black fund. It is a black fund. Yes, there's some sort of appropriations that I'm sure Congress deals with every year, two years, whatever, and then gives X number of millions and millions of dollars to this Delta Force black fund. And they do whatever they like with it. And actually, in 1985, that was a banner year for getting actual documented evidence that there is a Delta Force.

Some Delta Force operators were being investigated for basically misappropriating money from that black funds. They've been deployed to, I think, Sicily for counterterrorism activity. And before they could leave the country, they had to be cleared by the justice department because they were all under investigation. They've been basically pilfering money from a black fund. Right. And what do you do?

How do you pilfer money from a black fund? You just put it in your pocket and walk away? I guess so. I mean, there's got to be a money trail somehow, but nothing that, you know, is public. Also, I mean, what are you going to do? It's Delta Force. Like, hey, give us our money back. No.

Okay. Sure. We'll come in there with a submachine gun. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We'll have to talk about it. And their weaponry, actually, is the stuff of legends as well.

Apparently, they favor Heckler and Koch tremendously. MP5s, M4s. M4s and MP5s. Yeah, which are pretty cool submachine guns. Yeah, I looked them up on the internet. Yeah. It's pretty cool looking. And I don't even like guns.

No, but these things are awesome. Exactly. This is the heart of Delta Force. Okay. This is what Chuck just said is exactly the heart of Delta Force. He is against war, and yet he is awed by Delta Force. He doesn't even like guns. And yet he's awed by the guns that Delta Force uses.

This is quintessential Delta Force. Yeah. And well, part of it has to do with the fact that, you know, their operations, they have some of the names Eagle Claw and Operation Urgent Fury was one of my favorites. What was that, Grenada or Panama? No, that was Grenada, and then Panama was Operation Just Cause. Operation Just Cause was the operation where the United States, including Special Forces, I think the Army Rangers were there.

Basically, we sent a contingent of our best of the best down there to get rid of Manuel Noriega. Right. And rescued a CIA guy. Yeah. There was a CIA guy who'd been operating in Panama, basically doing a radio free broadcast. And he'd been captured. And so Delta Force went in and I believe rescued him.

Yeah, rescued him. And they also captured Noriega. Right. If it wasn't Delta Force, somebody captured Noriega because, as far as I know, he's still in a prison in Miami right now. Well, I think they helped capture him. Okay. So it might have been one of those things where I have a feeling Delta Force,

a lot of times, didn't get the public credit for some of these things because they don't exist. Right. Yeah, exactly. And the other impression I have is that Delta Force really doesn't care about the public credit. I think they just like to be deployed. Right. Whenever I think of Delta Force, supposedly they're headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Supposedly.

Which is the home of the Army Special Forces as well. And apparently it's very well funded, great training center. But when I think about Delta Force training, I just see a bunch of guys who are either bored or frustrated. Right. They want to be around the world in Yemen, for example, illegally hunting down Al Qaeda operatives and shooting them while they're unarmed. Right. Well, you know, the other thing that you'll find if you were to see a Delta Force

training operation is some excellent marksmen. Yeah, this is really something. You want to tell them what the requirements are. As far as we know, again, this is conjecture, but we got this from, I think, VFW Magazine. You want me to tell them? No, I'll tell you. This is reputed, of course, that Delta Force recruits must show 100% accuracy from 600 yards away. Okay, so that's six football fields.

Six football fields. You have to be able to hit some target in the heart from six football fields away. Where's the 90% accuracy? 90% is at 1,000 yards. So they'll give you a little bit of leeway if you're shooting from 1,000 yards away. 10 football fields. Right. 10 football fields. Now, they also, we were talking about the armaments, the weapons they like.

There's a Browning 50 caliber sniper rifle. That's a very large shell for people that don't know. It's enormous. It is enormous. And apparently they use that for targets up to 1,750 yards. Right. I mean, that's the kind of thing that can go through a wall, then through another wall, and then through a brick wall, and then into someone's, you know,

tank, probably. Or yes, sure. And then through somebody's helmet and head. Right. That's what a 50-cow will do. And then go out the back and wrap a Christmas present on the way. Right. Yeah.

It's not a friendly caliber. So I'll tell you what though, man. If I was stuck in Grenada, if I was a journalist, and I was blindfolded, and potentially going to be beheaded, you know who I would want coming to visit me? Oh, no. I realize. Delta 4. Sure.

Of course. Nobody else. No. And they have had some sterling operations that have made it into the media. There was a hijacked airliner, and I think 1984. And what country was it, Chuck? Uh, 84, was that Yemen? If it was, then, wow.

Okay. It wasn't Yemen. Okay. I'm kidding. All right. Let's just say, okay, we'll go with the 1984 airliner hijacking. These guys, I believe, I don't know how many members were on the team. They stormed the airliner.

Now, there's four hijackers in there. Indonesia. In Indonesia. Right. Okay. They stormed the airliner that was on the tarmac. The jet, there's four hijackers who had this whole plane load of hostages. Delta Force goes in there, and as far as I know, they used the two-tap method,

which Colonel Beckwith came up with. Right. The two-tap method is where you put two bullets in the head of each target. Right. It's not a love-tap. No, no, no. So, I think I'd point out in the article, you know, when you see somebody in a movie or on TV, and they have spared some enemy that is dying, but he picks up a gun and tries to shoot,

maybe kills you. Die hard, for instance. That doesn't happen with Delta Force. You get two bullets in the head from a Delta Force operative. You're going down and you're not coming back. Yeah. It's definitely a shoot first. Don't even ask questions.

So, I think this was a TWA flight or something. They stormed this flight two taps to each hostage taker, not one casualty. Not one innocent casualty. As far as I know, only the four hijackers died. Isn't that crazy to think about this international incident and these hostages and eight bullets take care of the whole thing? Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

That's kind of cool. I agree wholeheartedly. Now, we are getting a little drooly as I warned. We're pretty excited about Delta Force. We want to be in Delta Force. Kind of. Kind of, although you wouldn't know if I was. There is no need for the outside world because we are removed from it and apart from it and

in our own universe. On the new podcast, The Turning, Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. There are not very many of us that actually grew up with Balanchine. It was like I grew up with Mozart. He could do no wrong. Like he was a god.

But what was the cost for the dancers who brought these ballets to life? Were the lines between the professional and the personal were hazy and often crossed. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you. Only I can see you. Most people in the ballet world are more interested in their experience of watching it than in a dancer's experience of executing it. Listen to The Turning, Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that.

And on the prime example, okay. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting?

Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. So there's there's some plenty of criticism of Delta Force. They were reputedly part of the siege of the Branch Davidians compound in Waco that went

horribly awry. Yeah, it didn't get across in the in the article. But some of the sources that I read, it sounded very plausible. Yeah. And that's one of the definitely one of the black eyes. Definitely. The Clinton administration and our country as a whole, I think. The other thing from researching this article is Clinton seemed let me put it differently.

The Delta Force was operating in within U.S. borders, which is not what's supposed to be done. The military sure isn't supposed to operate in the in the borders of the United States, unless martial law has been declared. Right. As far as police, police. Right. That happened a lot under Clinton, a disproportionate amount that happened supposedly at Waco.

Well, actually, what I love about Waco, though, is they admitted that there were three Delta Force guys there and one was supposedly an observer. Right. I just don't know. You're just standing there watching. Yeah. From what I get from these guys, they're not ones to stand around and look and go, wow, you're doing a great job.

Right. Exactly. You know, patting the backs of the FBI like, wait a firestorm that place. Way to go, buddy. We know for a fact that they were at the World Trade Organization Summit in Seattle in 1999, which went horribly awry. Yeah, they do a lot of guarding of dignitaries. And Hamid Karzai, apparently, is being protected by Delta Force right now.

Right. And it's so weird when I was researching this again, I saw photos of Karzai with guys that were identified as Delta Force operators. And you'd start looking and all of a sudden, you'd start to recognize this guy or that guy. Really? Same guys? Same guys, but in different locations. There's a very famous photo of a special forces guy out of uniform wearing, I can't

remember what they call it, but basically that head wrap that goes around the head. And then it's not a turban, but it's somewhat similar. It goes down the back. He's riding a horse through Afghanistan with laden with guns. Yeah, two-tap and his way through Afghanistan. Exactly, but he was special forces, but you see that guy around here there. So it's really interesting to start to root through their history and come to the present and start to see the same people over and over.

And you're like, I'm pretty sure I'm looking at a Delta Force operator. Somebody who doesn't exist, somebody who's a shadow, somebody who is basically the closest thing we have to a license to kill. Like you don't send Delta Force in to rough somebody up, you send them in to completely slaughter everybody. Two-taps. Hopefully Chuck and I will survive the night after recording this podcast and we'll find out. I know.

We just want to say we're glad these guys are out there. I mean, I much prefer Delta Force going in, a few guys doing something efficiently and quietly than sending in 10,000 troops. Oh, sure. Yeah, it's much less clumsy and it gets the job done, although I'm quite sure there's several human rights activists that would disagree with us on that matter. Yeah, Josh, I'm sure you're right. That's a good point.

Yeah. Well, I'm sure the Delta Force would disagree with them. And I would not want to be the human rights activist. No, thank you. While we're sidestepping an international incident, don't forget to look up how Delta Force works on HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at HowStuffWorks.com.

Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. The cartels, they just killed everybody that was home. Setting an aspiring private investigator on a collision course with corruption and multiple murders. The detective agency would turn out to be a front for a drug pilot.

Would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1968, five black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school in Mount Megs, Alabama.

I'm writer and reporter Josie Duffy-Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate the abuse that thousands of black children suffered at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children. And how those five girls changed everything. Listen to Unreformed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.