Paywalled. TLDR, after months of planning the SEALs were sent in by minisub to plant listening devices in effort to monitor Kim Jong-un during president Trump’s meeting with him in 2019. The team swam to a rocky shore at night but were soon met by a small fishing boat scanning with flashlights. The team opened fire on the boat, killing all on board, and escaped back to the mother sub. The mission was never reported to the intel subcommittee. How the NYTs got the story will be a story within itself.
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They were probably added to the chat group…
Too soon…? 
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Should have sent Bond in on a surfboard.
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I was thinking somebody talked about it in their soon to be released memoir.
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Who’s up for publication?
Whomever is probably planning on running for office next. Or trying to get a regular consultant gig on either CNN or CBS, based on the rumors of who’s about to take over that news network.
This is usually how it goes.
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Ah! I thought maybe someone had announced they are releasing their memoirs.
I find it a bit hard to believe. Not that a mission like this could go wrong, but that it would be authorized in the first place, and that it would leak out. A lot of ‘anonymous sources’, too many for me to buy.
As someone who wore an intel ‘badge’ for most of their career, I have seen far riskier ‘missions’ authorised. You wouldn’t believe some of the things that have been taken into, or out of, certain countries… undetected.
Also, that story is small potato’s compared to some of ‘stuffs’ gone sideways stories I’ve heard about SEAL teams. One of my SAS mates hated working with them.
Granted, leaks from this ‘realm’ are few and far between, my guess is someone with an axe to grind. And high enough in the food chain to:
a. Know about it
b. Avoid any serious repercussions if they are ‘discovered’.
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Wherever I hear about something like this, I can’t help but think of that mission to try and rescue the embassy hostages who were taken in Iran.
How that made it to the point where it actually went ahead I just don’t understand - I’m sure desperation to do something, anything was a factor, but driving in from the desert in commandeered trucks, busting out all the hostages, then driving through the city to a soccer stadium where they would get loaded into helicopters, then flying the helicopters into an an assaulted and briefly liberated Iranian airfield where everyone would then be airlifted on cargo planes out of Iran is… ambitious.
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I would have said ‘ballsy’ 
But sometimes… actually a lot of the time. Fighting through to the objective is the least worst option. ‘Keep going and we’ll improvise’ is the epitome of S = Simple.
K.I.S.S. is an acronym to live by. Overly elaborate plans are for fools & Murphy was an optimist.
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A while back in a training class, the instructor taught a lot of various SF units and one of his running jokes in the class was how to tell who was from where. “SEALS? Dive watch, nah. Mustache, nah. Those all worked in the 80’s. Now days look for the guy trying to sell signed copies of his book when his relays not on the firing line.”
Fast forward a couple of years, and we’re hosting a former SEAL for a class. What did he mention probably 5 minutes into his initial brief, “Also I’ve got signed copies of my book, if anyone wants one let me know on break…” I’ll give him credit, he was a good shooter and reasonable instructor, but it was just so on brand.
In fairness I’ve known guys from other units who were just as big if not bigger prima donnas, and I’ve known SEALs who are incredibly down to earth and you can barely get out of them that they were in the Navy. It just seems like culturally the teams are a little more inclined to let guys put their stories out there than some of the other communities.
The Son Tay raid was certainly ambitious too, and if it had been launched sooner would have worked. “Who Dares Wins” and all that.
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I Can’t BELIEVE This Happened At Disneyland
I Can't BELIEVE This Happened At Disneyland
https://youtu.be/9R6KnJhPGKA
Updated to YouTube on September 06, 2024
When Your Brother Is A Navy Seal. Trish Suhr
When Your Brother Is A Navy Seal. Trish Suhr
https://youtu.be/8Ah3iujikhg
Updated to YouTube on October 25, 2024
Wheels
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Exactly. Unfortunately there is nothing in between. Fortunately, the ones that matter are in the majority - You will never even notice them.
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I think that the Entebbe raid was fresh in the public’s memory and the US was trying to understand why we didn’t have that capability. And even though the Son Tay raid was a net zero, it’s operational success probably gave the Pentagon a bit of false confidence.
When I started at Eastern Airlines, hijacking airliners was still very much in fashion. Flight and cabin crews were trained how to deal with them. The training center in Miami was named after James Hartley, who overcame a hijacker after being shot 3 times. Hartley eventually succumbed to his wounds, but the captain managed to land the plane, even though he too was shot through both arms.
Why did I tangent to hijacking? Because it was happening so often in the 70’s that people just got tired of being abused by terrorists. The Iranian hostage taking was agonizing to those of us who lived through it. We felt like were being perfectly played by a random group of students and religious zealots. Right or wrong, Carter had the appearance of practicing a foreign policy of ineffectual pacification. Perhaps there was a bit of hangover and frustration from the Vietnam war, Pueblo, and Mayaguez incidents, all of which cast doubt on the capability of the US armed forces.
So looking back, even though operation Eagle Claw seems horribly planned and executed, the climate was right. Fortune favoring the brave and all of that. And out of its failures spawned the 160th SOAR and further down the road, the force that prosecuted Desert Storm.
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…The Osprey! That was Bell’s pitch anyway. As for the mission and SEALs and operators in general, there is much that I would like to say, feelings that I very much want to share. But I now live in a country where citizen deportation is being discussed seriously. The 200 years of general free expression are over.
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You guys make a lot of sense, hadn’t really thought to put it in context of the decade and those other rescue ops.
Still, as daring and intricate as those raids were, they were basically ‘in and out’ from the same location, you know? I guess the part that I still can’t get over is the ‘in’ to the embassy, out and then ‘in’ to the stadium; then out of the stadium, finally to the ‘in’ of the airfield, then out and friendly ground.
Never mapped it before so just did. It’s ‘only’ a 5 minute drive to the stadium, but that’s 5 minutes after presumably at least a fair amount of shooting and the time it takes to round everyone up!
Of course this is all hindsight, and plenty of people smarter than me looked at this and were confident it could be done, but it still blows my mind thinking about it.