Customer Reviews

Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America's Most Secret Special Operations Team

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Smith's account of the special forces community from Desert One to Enduring Freedom offers an interesting glimpse into the byzantine workings of special operations. If you were expecting a white knuckle Clancy-esque account of operations reeking of cordite and sweat; FORGET IT.

Smith reveals that much of the work is in gathering and proper inmplementation of intelligence, through exploitation and signals gathering. There are myriad of operations recounted in this book: the killing of Pablo Escobar, SAS and Delta snatches of Serb war criminals and the current ops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Smith also covers the battles within the Penatagon, the scramble for funding and the decision makers.

The authors approach is academic and even handed, so if you expected "go-team-go" and techno-thriller action you're going to be VERY disappointed. Killer Elite is a great page turner for those of us who understand that "James Bond" movies are just that and the REAL shooters are quiet professionals.

I have not finished reading this book yet, but it is for the people that want to be educated on the roots of the very special ops community. if you are looking for a blood guts and gore read, then you don't need to get this book. if you are looking to hear of the hardships these units go through and the paperwork our government makes them file in triplicate only to get lost along the way, just to go and complete a mission that shouldn't need more than an instant green light then this is a pretty good read. has everything from iran, beirut, and panama in the 80's up to present day missions. I am thoughroughly enjoying this book so far. and i'm sure anyone who appreciates gaining insight into things the general public are not entitled to know at the time of their going ons to give them a general idea of what might be going on behind the scenes today will enjoy it as well.

this book shows another good idea brought forth by the military but never used to its full potential due to all the political bullcrap that always prevents units such as these from doing their job.

Interesting subject matter and worthy of a book, but the title gives the impression that these folks breath fire and are ruthless killers. Perhaps they are, but the content does not support that view. What the book does do in an excellent fashion is describe the backbone of a military intellegence organization that works quietly and efficiently behind the scenes to collect and process the operational intelligence critically needed by the front line commanders where the rubber meets the road. Those of us who know and understand the special operations community know that the bulk of intellegence gathering is the patient and "quiet" gathering of accurate information (humint and electronic)followed by the distribution and professional analysis of that information. Most of the time, it's not the fire-breathing "killer" with a knife in his mouth who is the real hero, but the folks who watched,listened and assembled the real picture of what's going on so the guy with the knife in his mouth can do his job and come home in one piece. The book's subjects certainly are the "elite", but "Killer Elite" is a stretch. There may be more to the story than the author has shared (and that's OK in my book) but the execution of the ops described in the book is often left to others (Delta, etc.) and to me that's OK too. I'm delighted to have some insight into what these pros are doing and have done, warts and all.

If you read the book by Steven Emerson Silent Warriors you have read Killer Elite. Killer Elite is a copycat of Secret Warriors except that it was written in the 21st century and Secret warriors in 1988. The book does not describe what the title states. Suppossedly Killer Elite will describe elite commnandos performing raids against terrorism instead you get a description of how an intel unit was created, managed and mismanaged. At least it tells you that people in the Pentagon are gutless and egotistical. I am given three stars beacause the work the author did after what Steven Emerson wrote. If you are looking for action you will be disappointed.

These were my recent when-reading-does-not-otherwise-require-serious-concentration books. I'll review them together since they have considerable overlap and then cross post this review.

Why one might want to read these books together, or in quick succession, is that they cover Spec Ops, particularly counter terrorism, from the late 1970's to about 2004 and do so in a complimentary manner. For example:
- Mr. Pfarrer did 7 months in Lebanon and covers some of the complexity on the ground there. While Mr. Haney only did one (successful) counter sniper mission there, Mr. Smith gives a detailed account of the politics behind the whole mess.
- Mr. Haney did combat time during the invasion of Grenada, Mr. Pfarrer only heard about it from others and Mr. Smith again gives us the politics behind this operation.


Warrior Soul by Chuck Pfarrer - 4 stars

At first I was having feelings of regret over purchasing this book. The cover has a cheesy Hollywood photo of a Rambo wanna-be and the opening chapters have all the hallmarks of "military jock blows sunshine in ego inflating tall tale telling". Certain facts are a bit suspect. Take the following quote from the Author's Note, first page; "No SEAL has ever been captured, and not one teammate or body has ever been left in the field". I used to work with a guy who completed two combat tours in the Vietnam War as a Navy SEAL. He talked about the war on perhaps two occasions. The one I remember is the comment he made to another coworker about mining Haiphong Harbor at night and there was a relatively small but deadly explosive mishap underwater. Two SEALs were left in the water that night after the effort was made to recover the bodies. Given the extreme danger and great number of missions performed by SEALs I simply cannot believe others have not been unwillingly left behind under equally distressing circumstances.

By about chapter 4 ("Operator 156") Mr. Pfarrer gets into his own as a writer and the book flows rather seamlessly from then on. The author does a great job of relating the attitude/culture and abilities of the SEALs. Unfortunately, but by necessity I think, the facts not involving the author's personal life have a high degree of gloss. Operationally we get a good idea of what SEALs are capable of but not really how they go about fulfilling those capabilities.

One criticism of BUD/S comes to mind and if anyone reading this has an answer please feel free to leave a comment on this review. Training, particularly Hell Week, it seems to me, weeds out those less willing to suffer but also takes out a fair number of perfectly capable men. Sure training needs to be harder than combat but as the author himself points out some of the training crosses over the line from hard utility to plain stupidity. Washing out an entire boat crew because one or two members ring-out ends up removing one or more men who would otherwise have made a fully competent member(s) of the Teams. I guess maybe these guys are superstitious and if one is "unlucky" enough to get assigned to a wash-out prone boat crew then they don't want you or your bad luck on the Teams. To say the current system works well enough is to say `lets not find out if it can work better'.


Inside Delta Force by Eric Haney - 3 Stars

One thing I'll say for Delta Force members is that the mental stability of the men who are accepted into Delta is unrivaled. The SEALs are mostly crazy but have one redeeming mental quality - they can shut off the craziness to get the job done. Off hours there is no such restraint. And SEAL Team 6, the direct counterpart of Delta, is by far the craziest. Mr. Marcinko (founder of SEAL 6, known as "Mob Six" under his command) was Class-A egotistical bonkers and an insatiable thrill seeker. Just read his books if you don't believe me.

Because the war on terror (war against extremists) is ongoing, neither of these first two books gives us much insight into specific techniques and/or training. I suppose that is a necessary element since, even though much of that can be found out on the web, one can never be sure about the accuracy of strictly web-based information sources.

On the negative side Mr. Haney does not have the writing acumen of Mr. Pfarrer which interrupts the flow of his book. In his defense Mr. Haney has far less popular writing experience than Mr. Pfarrer (several major movie scripts) and, relatedly, may also not have had access to as talented an editorial group as someone with Tinsel Town connections. For example when Mr. Haney describes his encounter with an Army shrink; "`Haney,' he began in a sibilant voice". Seriously now, who, besides a parseltongued adept at Hogwarts, can reasonably be described as using a sibilant voice? People whisper when they talk sometimes but sibilance went out of the common parlance shortly after the days of Jane Austin. This type of airy language is used in conjunction with; "How dare that fat bastard speak to me that way" and the contrast is a bit distracting.

However, this book is a quick read and has a useful, if short, epilogue on the war on terror.

Killer Elite by Michael Smith - 4 Stars

This book has a dorky (if apt) title and reads like a summary report for a house sub-committee member in DC. The latter is both its strength and weakness. The book is a quick enough read and gives some good insight and back story on SEAL 6 and Delta and an indispensable treatment of the Activity. The authors' background in writing history shows and that's a good thing if you like reading history. Extensively end-noted there is enough ancillary information to keep one reading for quite some time on the subject.

Mr. Smith goes into more non-technical detail on how Spec-Ops was and is being used. So for instance we get to know just how many members of Delta, SEAL 6, etc there are at any given time (sorry but you'll have to read the book to find that out). His book also gives us some idea of the costs involved. My back of the envelope guess is that the major terrorist targets are costing our government (us taxpayers) somewhere around 5 billion each to track and put out of commission. That adds up to half a trillion dollars in just a few years - not a sustainable pace I think.

Taken together these books give a good picture of what kind of effort the US and a few allies (most notably the UK and Australia) are throwing at the War On Terror. These books might accomplish the proverbial help in sleeping at night except for one tiny little fact. Osama bin Laden is still a free man. Not as free as he would like to be but still free and he must be the most hunted man on Earth in these days. I find it more than a little disturbing, after reading these books, that we cannot bring him to justice.


And a couple of after thoughts:

Another facet of modern Spec-Ops warfare not directly addressed is suicide bombers. While it is clear that the most effective means of combating them is to target and take out the leadership* there does not seem to be anyway to stop the bombers proper except by happenstance. Terrorists that want something can be delayed until taken out but a suicide bomber just has to get close enough to the intended target and (boom) in no time the task is complete (*the leaders aren't too crazy or dumb - that's what the bombers are recruited for because they're too dumb to scratch together a coherent bombing plan or build suicide/homicide vests).

Lastly, there also seems to be no plan for building economies that breed people of responsible global citizenship. Not that this is a task for Spec-Ops but what good is it to chase and kill the current terrorist mastermind while waiting for the next one to show through some horrendously spectacular event?

A little dry at first, but overall this is a great book about a little known unit that was present at many of the events that shaped the history of our military and the world we live in.

Some (though by no means all) of the information in this book was interesting and even surprising. However, the book was poorly written (I agree with the review stating that it was heavily written) and recounted well known information that could be gathered from the newspaper as though it was exciting, new information apparently never before revealed. This felt like a very long college paper.

This book reads like a text book. It appeared that the information came from public sources. Beyond the group name, "The Activity," I didn't learn much. Most of the events (written about in the book) like, Panama, Iran, Columbia (Pablo Escobar) and Somalia have already been written about and published in other (much better) books. Vague, boring, tedious waste of time. I will avoid any future writings by this author.

Whether you smash planes into U.S. skycrapers, build up a formidable drug business in Colombia, protect a dictator, blow up an embassy or just get away from the Americans before they get ahold of you, you will probably end up dealing with The Activity, a super-secret arm of the U.S. Army that provides super-secret activity all over the world, mostly in conjunction with Special Forces, Delta, Seal Team Six and the Brits' SAS and SBS. With top notch technologicl resources and superior human intelligence, The Activity seeks out the world's real bad guys and brings them to military justice. A lot of the Activity's activity seems similar to that performed by other groups, but in truth, it's the other groups that largely copy The Activity. This book tells the brutal history of this top-secret special ops within a special ops and its role in bringing down the likes of Bin Laden, Hussein, his sons, Uday and Qusay, drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and a whole host of Serbian war criminals. It may sound trite, but I will sleep a little better tonight, knowing these professionals are on duty. tjue