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Mike Drop

From Prison Riots to Hardened Targets: Supporting FBI HRT, Libya Tunnels, and Moral Injury Reflections | Ep. 277 | Pt. 3

Mike Drop

Mike Ritland

News, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Politics

4.96.5K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2026

⏱️ 91 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mike Ritland wraps up the interview with original Delta Force operator Mike Vining. Hear raw accounts of Urgent Fury in Grenada, Desert Storm bunker-busting, prison riot support, hardened target planning (Tahuna, Taji), moral injury, leadership lessons, retirement adventures, and his upcoming memoir Blasting Through. A legendary career summed up in one powerful close. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Between the 19, well, the Iranian hostage rescue mission and your time as a, as the exercise

0:10.4

planner, there was also urgent fury in Grenada that that kind of went south too. But you were

0:18.2

on that mission ready to go. Can you watch through that experience?

0:22.6

Yeah. Well, before Urgent Fury, I was on another mission before Urgent Fury between the two.

0:30.6

I went into Sudan. So, yeah, this mission's not, I haven't really told this mission much about going into Sudan.

0:44.1

What happened is the vice president of Sudan came to the United States.

0:48.6

One of the things he Rick asked for was a team to go to Sudan to evaluate the security of the president of Sudan.

0:58.0

President of Sudan was a guy named Numari at that time.

1:03.7

So myself and Bud Morgan, two people from Delta, went with another team, and we went over into Sudan.

1:15.6

So, and it evaluated the President's security of Sudan.

1:20.6

My job was to look at the EOD folks in Sudan, the Army EOD folks that they have. The Army EOD folks in

1:29.9

Sudan were trained by the Brits. So I went into Sudan and I started to create a VIP EOD support to

1:38.9

the president of Sudan. So I went with the Sudanese EOD and spent time with them to learn how they operated.

1:50.0

And at this time in Khartoum, there was terrorist bombings going on. There was a group of terrorists from

1:57.9

Chad that were setting off sophisticated digital time electronic IEDs in Sudan.

2:07.3

And so I worked with them.

2:09.8

One time we went to the airport there in Khartoum, and the Sudanese had great intelligence.

2:16.9

So we went to the airport, and they captured, they got these two suitcases.

2:22.4

And we took them to a small room.

2:24.7

And they were really heavy, large, like, Samsonite-type suitcases.

2:30.0

They opened them up in this room.

2:33.1

Just opened up the suitcases.

...

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