Synopsis
A military thrillseeker tells how he learned to draw blood in the name of justice by joining the Navy's elite unit, the SEALs, in which he became a powerful force in Vietnam and headed SEAL TEAM SIX, the Navy's first anti-terrorist unit.
Reviews
Special-warfare devotees will find this to their liking: an insider's account of the Navy's amphibious commandos known as SEALS, by one of the group's most controversial veterans, along with Weisman (coauthor of Shadow Warrior ). Marcinko describes his combat adventures in Southeast Asia in the '60s; his command of SEAL Team Six, one of the most effective counterterrorist outfits in the world, in the '70s; and his pioneering leadership in the '80s of Red Cell, a unit designed to test the Navy's vulnerability to terrorists. Super-macho in outlook and behavior, Marcinko delights in recalling the traditionally gross behavior of the SEALS as well as his own unique experiences such as eating the brains of a live monkey to impress his Cambodian allies. The super-secret Red Cell successfully penetrated many key U.S. naval installations, creating so much havoc that Marcinko was arrested. He is evasive about the conspiracy charges brought against him but reveals that he is currently serving time in a federal prison. Marcinko's anti-authoritarian behavior, as he improvises his own doctrine of unconventional warfare, makes for entertaining reading. Military Book Club selection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The stormy career of a top Navy SEAL hotspur. Commander Marcinko, USN Ret., recently served time at Petersburg Federal Prison for conspiracy to defraud the Navy by overcharging for specialized equipment--the result, he says, of telling off too many admirals. It seems that his ornery and joyous aggression, nurtured by a Czech grandfather in a flinty Pennsylvania mining town, has brought him to grief in peace and to brilliance in war. Serving his first tour in Vietnam in 1966 as an enlisted SEAL expert in underwater demolition, Marcinko returned for a second tour as an officer leading a commando squad he had trained. Here, his accounts of riverine warfare--creeping underwater to Vietcong boats and slipping over their gunwales; raiding VC island strongholds in the South China Sea; steaming up to the Cambodian border to tempt the VC across and being overrun- -are galvanic, detailed, and told with a true craftsman's love. What did he think of the Vietcong? ``The bastards--they were good.'' His battle philosophy? ``...kill my enemy before he has a chance to kill me....Never did I give Charlie an even break.'' After the aborted desert rescue of US hostages in the Tehran embassy, Marcinko was ordered to create SEAL Team Six--a counterterrorist unit with worldwide maritime responsibilities. In 1983, the unit was deployed to Beirut to test the security of the US embassy there. Easily evading the embassy security detail, sleeping Lebanese guards, and the Marines, the SEALs planted enough fake bombs to level the building. When Marcinko spoke to ``a senior American official'' about the problem, the SEAL's blunt security advice was rejected, particularly in respect to car-bomb attacks. Ninety days later, 63 people in the embassy compound were killed by a suicide bomber driving a TNT-filled truck. Profane and asking no quarter: the real nitty-gritty, bloody and authentic. (Eight-page photo insert--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
An autobiography of a career naval officer who dropped out of high school, enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and spent his ca reer struggling to win acceptance for special warfare SEAL (sea-air-land) units within the Navy establishment from the late 1950s to the present. Marcinko provides detailed descriptions of the early transformation of underwater demolition teams (UDT) into SEAL units. With interesting vignettes about training and actual missions during the Vietnam War, he gives a close-up view of this specialized and little-known brand of warfare. Marcinko's participation in the Iran hostage rescue attempt in 1980 and the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983 provide a perspective vastly different from the accepted versions of these events. However, the overuse of salty language throughout the book that lends new meaning to the phrase "curse like a sailor" and Marcinko's polemical accounts of his struggles to win acceptance for specialized warfare within the Navy are unfortunate. Not a necessary purchase. Military Book Club main selection.
- Harold N. Boyer, Marple P.L., Broomall, Pa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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