Steve Bucci. Steve?

Steve?

Okay, I'm going to do this very quickly so we can get to listen to Sean.

We are here to discuss his newest book, The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command, Relentless

Strike. Sean, if you don't know, is as sort of specialized in

special operations forces. He worked for Army Times where that was kind of his beat. He was

really the only guy around that specialized in that, didn't just pick it up at other times.

He's also a contributing editor to

foreign policy. He's basically followed J-Soc at least since 9-11, and a little before that.

He's also covered military operations in Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, goes to all the nice places in the world.

But if you're going to follow soft, that's where you have to go, because that's where they go.

He's as a previous book, Not a Good Day to Die, which is about Operation Anaconda, and just a ton of articles on all of this material.

I was kind of excited when the book came out because one of the first things I did when I came here to Heritage was to bump into Sean on the street outside

because he lives nearby here and he said, let's get together. I want to talk to you about some of the stuff you did in your other life,

particularly those last couple of years and I was on active duty working in the front office,

which was right at the beginning of the War on Terror.

So he, you know, I was interviewed as sort of a Forrest Gump kind of character, having been at the

decision-making level, at least watching or taking notes on a lot of the things that are

discussed in this book.

I have to tell you, in my opinion, this is probably one of the most factually accurate

depictions of J-Soc you will find, both from the historical

and all the more recent activities. But I will tell you it is not without controversy.

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