Part One: Richard Marcinko: The Founder of SEAL Team 6

Summary

---

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Richard Marcinko: The Founder of SEAL Team 6

July 14, 2026 | Host: Brett (Cool Zone Media) | Guest: Andrew Ti

---

Episode Overview

This episode kicks off a two-part deep dive into Richard Marcinko, the controversial founder of SEAL Team 6. Host Brett guides guest Andrew Ti (of Starter Trek) through Marcinko's life, exploring how SEAL Team 6 evolved from a covert, elite military unit into a media-hungry, scandal-plagued brand—and how Marcinko's mythmaking helped spark the "operator" culture fueling everything from tactical apparel to far-right influencers. The conversation ranges from the origins of special operations in WWII to the distorted modern image of Navy SEAL badasses.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Allure of Special Forces in Pop Culture (08:06–19:20)

• "Operator" Aesthetic: The modern look and branding of special forces—bearded, armed, tattooed men in non-uniform tactical gear—pervades right-wing and masculinity-focused subcultures online.

  • Quote: “The operator look is one of the more dominant styles in American pop culture these days… every right wing influencer who can pull off posing with a gun has tried to ape this aesthetic at least a little bit.” (Brett, 18:45)

• "Pipe Hitter" Term: Originated as military slang for reliable, hardcore special operators, now repurposed by civilian marketing and wanna-bes.

  • Quote: “Pipe hitters are why the US can’t win wars anymore. The pipe hitter ethos and ideology has locked us into this… mental way of looking at how conflict should proceed.” (Brett, 10:05)
  • Marketing examples: Pipe Hitters Union apparel, Nicholas Orr's tactical books, Eddie Gallagher’s Pipe Hitter Foundation.
  • Analogy: Compared to the “Dim Mak” strip-mall martial arts charlatans of the ‘80s–‘90s; selling a myth of deadly expertise to insecure men. (14:17)

• Toxic Evolution: The media, commercialization, and cultural glorification of SEALs and "pipe hitters" turned them from secretive operators into scandal-prone PR monsters.

2. Navy SEALs and Diversity, or Lack Thereof (03:16–04:59)

• Discusses how while the US military as a whole is diverse, “Special Forces, particularly the highest echelons, are a lot whiter than the rest of the military.” (Brett, 03:58)
• Connection to recent scandals and how those in elite units often end up in politics or the media.

3. Richard Marcinko: Assembling the Legend (23:57–34:41)

• Background: Born 1940 in Lansford, Pennsylvania, in a poor, dysfunctional mining family.
• Autobiography as Branding: Marcinko’s Rogue Warrior wasn’t just a memoir—it was the first big SEAL tell-all, creating a lucrative template for post-service media.
  • Quote: “The book Rogue Warrior is the first Navy SEAL tell-all... written by a former operator for the purpose of turning himself into a brand.” (Brett, 24:13)
• Self-Aggrandizement and Myth-making: Many anecdotes in Marcinko’s book are likely exaggerated or fabricated to fit his macho image (e.g., fistfights, early independence, sexual exploits).
  • “He has, this is a political work in part for him too… a lot of his book is him outlining ‘these are examples of good people and these are examples of bad people.’” (Brett, 27:39)

4. The Frogmen: Origins of Special Ops (35:41–42:59)

• WWII Underwater Demolitions Teams (UDTs): Specialized divers, “frogmen,” crucial for allied beach landings—revered for risking their lives, not for killing.
  • Quote: “They were not an attack force. They were a crew of workmen out to do an insane job... They could be as crazy as they wanted.” (Alpha, cited by Brett, 38:53)
  • “Half-naked, swimming straight into Gustav guns. 52% casualties in a day.” (Brett, 38:59)
• Cultural Shift: Early frogmen celebrated blue-collar values and self-effacing grit, not ego or violence.

5. Militarization of Popular Culture (42:05–44:25)

• Collaboration of the Pentagon and Hollywood (e.g., 1951’s The Frogmen) glamorized UDTs.
• Marcinko’s generation grew up on these portrayals, further fueling the masculine commando myth.

6. Transition: Frogmen to SEALs (50:47–59:47)

• Kennedy and Counter-Guerrilla Warfare: JFK’s call for “rough men, tough men who could kick ass and operate outside protocol” launched the SEALs (1962).
• SEAL vs. UDT Culture: New culture embraced creativity, criminality, and autonomy—a double-edged sword.
  • “You need those things, but you don't want anyone who would describe themselves as those things.” (Andrew, 52:48)
• Hell Week: Grueling selection was about tolerating physical abuse. Psychological profile less important.
  • “Are you comfortable shitting yourself while running? Basically the primary determining factor.” (Brett, 55:09)
• Marcinko passes OCS, becomes an officer (despite constant complaints about officers), and becomes a central figure in this new breed of operator.

7. The CIA and the Phoenix Program (58:35–59:47)

• In Vietnam, SEALs became tools for Phoenix—kidnapping, assassination, and “murder squads” for counterinsurgency.
  • Quote: “This is how counterterrorism strategy in US Special Forces worked in Afghanistan and Iraq too… it hasn’t changed since project like elements of it.” (Brett, 59:47)
  • A grim lineage of violence, secrecy, and consequences flowing straight from Marcinko's era to the present.

---

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Why would you add hearing organs to your body?” (Brett, 00:09 — opening banter)
• “My YouTube algorithm got poisoned... within 20 minutes, it was like Nazi shit.” (Andrew, 09:04)
• “Pipe hitters are why the US can’t win wars anymore.” (Brett, 10:05)
• “Extreme strip mall karate vibes.” (Andrew, 14:48)
• “They’re all dressed like Kyle Rittenhouse a little.” (Brett, 12:52)
• “The guy who actually killed [Bin Laden] was... a dude whose nickname is Red. We don’t know his real name and he does not talk.” (Brett, 25:53)
• “You need those things [criminal element, creativity], but you don’t want anyone who would describe themselves as those things.” (Andrew, 52:48)
• “Are you comfortable shitting yourself while running? Basically the primary determining factor.” (Brett, 55:09)
• “It’s really all downhill from World War II, but that’s American military history in a nutshell.” (Brett, 60:38)
• “World War II was sort of our Batman Begins. It set a tone that actually every subsequent thing based off it really, really fucked us as a global concern.” (Andrew, 60:44)

---

Episode Structure & Timestamps

| Time | Segment/Theme | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:05–01:28 | Banter, Intro, Guests, and Podcasts | | 03:16–04:59 | "Is this racist?" Navy SEALs and diversity issue | | 08:06–19:20 | Pipe hitter culture: the operator look and civilian obsession | | 23:57–34:41 | Marcinko’s childhood, autobiography, and self-mythology | | 35:41–42:59 | The WWII frogmen: real origins of the SEAL lineage | | 42:05–44:25 | Pop culture, propaganda, and the soldier archetype | | 50:47–57:03 | The making of SEAL Team 6 and Marcinko’s ascendance | | 58:35–59:47 | CIA’s Phoenix Program: dirty wars and the birth of modern SEALs | | 60:36–End | Reflections, bleak summary, pop culture wrap-up, and plugs |

---

Overall Tone & Takeaways

The episode’s tone is irreverent, darkly humorous, and deeply skeptical of both institutional hero stories and the self-mythologizing of military figures like Marcinko. Brett mercilessly dissects myth-making and commercialization around SEALs, situating Richard Marcinko’s legacy as both a symptom and architect of the rot that would define SEAL Team 6’s later corruption and notoriety.

Fans of military history, media criticism, and deconstructing toxic masculinity will find plenty in this episode.

---

For Part Two…

Brett promises a deeper look at Marcinko’s Vietnam-era exploits, the formal founding of SEAL Team 6, and how his ethos continues to shape both military policy and American pop culture to this day.

---

Behind the Bastards: Exposing the infamous, the myth, and the damage left behind.

Transcript

[Sophie]

Call Zone Media.

[Brett]

Welcome back to behind the Bastards. The only podcast that you're listening to right now. Unless you have multiple sets of ears or have had some sort of invasive surgery to, like, add additional, like, like, hearing organs to your body so that your life is one undifferentiated cacophony of noise. And if you have done that, why. Why would you. Okay, I have an answer.

[Sophie]

Because I could produce more podcasts. It would make me.

[Brett]

Sophie, you are the one person who needs grindset ability. Yeah, grindset. That's right. That's right. Wire all of the audio directly into your brain. Speaking of things I want to wire into my brain, Andrew T. One of my very favorite guests. How are you doing, buddy?

[Andrew T.]

That's available. We could probably make that a product.

[Sophie]

Andrew's hair. Andrew's hair is long. Is also so long and luscious now.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

I know.

[Brett]

I. I know, Andrew. Beach Boys. That's right.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah. Summer. Summer. It's maybe never going to stop being summer in Southern California.

[Brett]

That's right. It is always summer in Southern California

[Andrew T.]

at this point, maybe perpetually. I had the most distressing thing that happened to me is I went to Santa Barbara and. Distressing, but not, I guess, box crab is now very, very readily available in Santa Barbara when it didn't used to be necessarily in such numbers.

[Brett]

Box crab.

[Andrew T.]

Box crab.

[Brett]

Like the animal.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Brett]

Is that like a restaurant? Okay. Like, literally the animal box.

[Andrew T.]

No, the animal is available. The little delicious, spiky guys and the way the. The, like, Fisher guy and the, like, restaurant people were talking, I. I mean, they know it's climate change.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Andrew T.]

But I think they're, like, not. They're trying not to talk about it. It's just like.

[Brett]

It bums everybody out all of a

[Andrew T.]

sudden, I guess, I don't know, crabs just decide they wanna live here now.

[Brett]

A lot of stuff suddenly changed. Well, Andrew, you are normally. You've put it on pause. You're the host of a podcast called yo, is this Racist.

[Andrew T.]

That's correct.

[Brett]

That's right. And you are pausing it to do a Star Trek show with Tawny Newsom and Jesse Gender. Right.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah. I think we can cleanly say we're doing the Star Trek show as the main thing. Yo, is this Racist? Might come back. But, yeah, we're doing Starter Trek. That's a show where Tawny and Jesse are huge. Tawny was on Star Trek. Jesse loves Star Trek and knows so much about it. They both know more than me because I only ever watch Star Trek extremely stoned in syndication. So I Recognize shit. Basically every episode is me doing the Leonardo DiCaprio meme of like pointing at the screen. Like, I know that, but I don't understand it. Like, it's been in my eyes before, but I don't know what the fuck it is or what the context is or what the history is, so.

[Brett]

Well, that is exciting. But I figured this week we could give Yo, Is this racist Fans one last little hurrah. Cause I want to ask you an Is this racist? Question.

[Andrew T.]

Oh, good. Oh yeah, yeah. Maybe I'll bring back Yo, Is this racist? Just for here.

[Brett]

Is this racist? The Navy seals

[Andrew T.]

I listen. My only like experience with this train of thought is that people generally say that like law enforcement and military, the higher up you get, like, the closer to boots on the ground, like regular ass, like, you know, guys with no impulse control and anger issues. Boots on the ground. The more racist it is. So I think there's. My guess is I feel like there's a chance that it's less racist than your average Navy man.

[Brett]

That is. That's actually not true, at least as regards the US military. And I mean, how we determine the amount of racism in something. But the military as a whole is fairly diverse. Like the US Military is a very diverse institution. Special Forces, particularly the highest echelons of Special Forces are a lot whiter than the rest of the military. That makes sense to a degree. That's kind of uncomfortable when you also look at like where some former Delta guys who are now political figures and some former seals wind up. This episode is not actually about the Navy Seals as a whole, but we are talking about Seal Team 6. This is gonna be a two part episode because I want to talk about how Seal Team 6 went from like, you know, another Special Forces unit where they were. The term you would hear a lot was like quiet professionals, you know, these guys are incredibly good at what they do and they don't talk about it because that's kind of the point of like Special Ops right to now like every third Navy Seal, or at least Team 6 guy it seems like, has a fucking book and a podcast all over the media they're running. They're fucking Republican Congress people, you know, so how did we get there and how did we simultaneously get to the point where like the Navy Seals are now way better known for their scandals for shit like Eddie Gallagher stabbing a 16 year old kid in the neck for a re enlistment ceremony and Mosul than they are for even like fucking killing Bin Laden. And all of this comes back like the Reason why all of the shit with the Navy seals is as messy and as fame hungry and as crimey as it is today. It all starts with the guy who founded Seals Seal Team 6. A fella I can't wait to tell you about named Richard Marcinko. Have you ever heard of Richard?

[Andrew T.]

Nope.

[Brett]

Oh yeah. Well, this is. This is. This is going to be a hoot.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, can't wait.

[Ad Voice 1]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[Ad Voice 2]

This is Julian Edelman from Games with Names. As a fellow dude, do you ever get that not so fresh feeling in your butt? That's because you're probably using the dry stuff to wipe wet. Extra large flushable dude wipes get what toilet paper leaves behind in your behind. You wouldn't clean the tail end of your truck with dry paper towels, so why would you wipe with dry toilet paper? Wetter just cleans better. There are no more dingleberries, no more itch and irritation. Just a deep down the seam. Confident clean. So don't fumble the ball with toilet paper. Stop being an A hole to your B hole. Drop the toilet paper. Available on Amazon and major retailers nationwide. Dude wipes best clean, pants down.

[Ad Voice 3]

Introducing Taco Bell's new Jalapeno Citrus Salsa with bright citrus, real red jalapenos, guajillo chiles. Usually you add sauce to the food, but when the sauce is this good, the food is just there to get the sauce to your mouth. That rolled quesadilla. Not a rolled quesadilla anymore. Now it's a sauce shovel. Taco Bell's Jalapeno Citrus Salsa. Get it with any item on the Cantina Chicken menu while it's here at participating US Taco Bell locations for a limited time only while supplies last contact store for availability.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

Do you want to find a stress free way to buy your next car? Start at CarMax and shop your way. If you want to browse with confidence, get pre qualified online with no impact on your credit score and and shop cars within your budget. From luxury cars to family rides, CarMax has options for almost every price range, including more than 25,000 cars priced under $25,000. So hey, want to get started? Just head to CarMax.com for details and get pre qualified today. Want to drive CarMax, Dad?

[Brett]

Disney activities are on Lingokids.

[Child or Family Member]

What?

[Brett]

Moana and Elsa and Marvel's Spider Man. All of them on lingokids? Yes dad on lingok. That's pretty cool. I know. You just lost them for the rest of the afternoon.

[Child or Family Member]

Worth it.

[Brett]

Full of fun activities inspired by Disney's Moana, Frozen Zootopia, Marvel's Spider man and more. Lingokids is where little ones discover more about favorite characters. Lingokids, everything kids love, download it for free. So before we talk about him, I want to kind of lead you in to the reason I wanted to talk about this at all, which is that the Navy SEALs and like the kind of Special Forces look, the operator look, is one of the more dominant, like, styles in American pop culture these days. And this is. You can see this all over the fucking Internet. If you happen to be particularly a male who has looked up anything related to firearms or survival gear or talked about that stuff or on social media

[Andrew T.]

or how to sharpen a knife.

[Brett]

Can I just say, how to sharpen a knife?

[Andrew T.]

That's how my YouTube algorithm got poisoned. I literally was trying to learn how to sharpen knives during lockdown.

[Brett]

That's a very valuable skill.

[Andrew T.]

Immediately, like within like 20 minutes, it was like Nazi shit. It was incredible, actually.

[Brett]

Yeah. And so if you're. If you have done stuff like that on the Internet, you've probably run across ads on your social media feed that look something like this. And Sophie's going to put it out. It's an ad for. It says the Pipe Hitters Union. They're advertising their spring break special, 15% off store wide. And there's like a picture behind the ad of. You can just sort of see close in the center of a man's chest. He's wearing body armor. He's got like a tattooed hand and it's holding. He's holding an AR15 across his chest and like a low ready right.

[Sophie]

Not the Pipe Hitters Union, honey.

[Brett]

Yeah, the Pipe Hitters Union. Yes.

[Sophie]

This is.

[Brett]

He's got. You can also see his, like, chin. There's a slight shadow of a beard. This is like a very clear sort of tactical apparel look, which is based on the look of US Special Forces operators. Now, the fact that this business sells tactical, tactical and special forces themed apparel should be obvious from the context of the ad. But what are pipe hitters? Have you guys heard that term before?

[Andrew T.]

I just assumed it was just, you know, weed smokers, bro.

[Sophie]

That and just. I've heard that in a girly pop conversation.

[Brett]

No, definitely not. That's not what it means. So the short answer for what pipe Hitters are is it's a modern synonym for like a Special forces badass who kills people for the U.S. government. And the long answer is that pipe hitters are a big, like, pipe hitters are why the US can't win wars anymore. Right. The pipe hitter ethos and ideology has locked us into this sort of, I would argue, this kind of mental way of looking at how conflict should proceed that makes us incapable of actually winning most of the fights that we start anyway. It would be accurate to point out that the term pipe pitter has now crossed into the civilian world, as this ad shows, and become a general way for guys who think they're badasses to brand themselves. Now, much like the word based, the term's origins start in drug lingo, which also, by the way, Special Forces, massive drug problems. Like, there's a fuckload of drug issues all across US Special Forces.

[Andrew T.]

Right, right.

[Brett]

And a pipe hitter originally. The lingo originally is someone who smoked, particularly opium from a pipe. Although some people will say crack, but I do think it's more from opium just based on when it started being said.

[Andrew T.]

Right.

[Brett]

And here's how.

[Andrew T.]

Cause these were dudes in Afghanistan, presumably, right?

[Brett]

I mean, and before. Yeah, sure, I think Vietnam too. But here's how the Soldiers Project describes the military origins of the phrase. It gained widespread popularity among the special forces and SEALs after it was featured in the iconic movie Pulp Fiction. The term was associated with someone who could be depended upon in the midst of combat. And the military usage of the term pipe hitter was initially a description heavily trained operators used for themselves. It was an internal term. Right. If you were a Green Beret or a team, a SEAL guy, a SEAL team guy. Right. Or a Delta guy, you might call yourself and your buddies a pipe hitter or pipe hitters. Right. But today it's more commonly an aspirational term used by people who are desperate to embody it and usually seek to do so for buying things. Right. Here's a fun example from the Student of the Gun Company, which offers tactical training and books like the Pipe Hitter's Guide to the Citizens Irregular Defense Corps for 1099. What a deal. And you can see the COVID of this self published book. There's like four schlubby looking dudes with. It looks like ak, various AK style guns, and like quasi civilian tactical gear in like a grayscale foggy photo of a city behind them that looks kind of post apocalyptic. And the best way I can describe, like, the way these men are dressed is like it's race rioter chic, right? Like, yeah, that's how they all look. They're all dressed like Kyle Rittenhouse a little.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

Or how Kyle Rittenhouse thinks he's dressing.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah. The product description of this book reads as follows. Building upon the widespread popularity of the original Pipe Hitter's Guide, this book will take the lessons from the original text and build upon them. The Citizens Irregular Defense Corps is a modern incarnation of many successful programs used throughout history for the defense of a community during times of crisis. And I intended to look out that first Pipe Hitters book and I found myself falling down a rabbit hole of related text, including A Pipe Hitter's Guide to Access Denial and A Pipe Hitter's Guide to Small Arms and Weapons. Both of these are by Nicholas Orr. And I had to look this guy. So I found Nicholas or's personal website and it turns out that name is, quote, the nom de plume for a civilized barbarian. A Savage gentleman with 30 plus years of operational and combat experience in the United States and overseas. The author has carried a gun during innumerable assignments worldwide as a member of the United States military, as a military contractor and an executive protection agent. I don't know if any of that's true. It's not under a real name. He could just be lying. Like.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, I, I mean the small like sliver of, I don't know, silver lining to all this stuff is this is just like identical to the like dim mock people in the 80s and 90s kind of vibe. The, the like bloodsport guy, like all the fake, like, like, like white martial arts guys that could like kill you with three moves.

[Brett]

Yes. And they, I, I guess what I

[Andrew T.]

mean is these guys have always existed with basically the same guns, same mindset.

[Brett]

And also they have always worshiped the Special Forces aesthetic. And that has always been like the coolest thing. And the this guy hierarchy is a Special Forces dude or a dude with special Forces experience. And again, I don't know if Nicholas Orr is ever served in the military. This is just some dude fucking rebranding. Like old military training manuals to make a buck.

[Andrew T.]

Extreme strip mall karate vibes.

[Brett]

Exactly, exactly. But this guy's whole shtick is the perfect embodiment of what Pipe. Right? It's a branding term to sell the illusion of special secret special forces knowledge and violent hyper competence to insecure white dudes who feel like they're like one book and maybe one gun away from being like John Wick. Right? If I buy a $6,000 pistol and enough books about tactical shit, then maybe I'll be that cool. And even before it reached the civilian word, Pipe hitter as a term was an act of branding Special Forces guys at the dawn of the gwat. The global war on terror took a term from a Popular recent movie and it to define themselves how they wanted to be seen as gruff, tattooed badasses who didn't follow the rules but got results. And that's why when disgraced Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher got off the hook for the series of war crimes that he had committed thanks to President Donald Trump's intervention, he created the Pipeheader Foundation. And Sophie will show you the website for the Pipe Hitter Foundation. But yeah, I mean, again, for an idea, Eddie Gallagher, this guy was such a fucking maniac. His colleagues were doing shit like shooting above people's heads so that they would take cover so that Eddie wouldn't murder them because he was just shooting every civilian he could find in Mosul to try to rack up a kill count that would let him, like, market himself as the next Chris Kyle. Like, that's what this guy is alleged by a bunch of his colleagues as having done. Right?

[Sophie]

Bad representation by Ray Band here.

[Brett]

There's not any good representation of Ray ban in the GWAs so far.

[Sophie]

Bad representation to women name.

[Andrew T.]

The main step up in the pipe hitter ethos is these meta glasses. Just the idea to look like this and be like an easy creep.

[Sophie]

Bad representation for people named Andrea.

[Ad Voice 3]

Yep.

[Sophie]

This website's amazing stuff.

[Brett]

It's incredible shit, right? We'll talk about Eddie in the very end of these episodes because a lot of what we're talking about with both Richard Marcinko and with, you know, the history of kind of this conflict in Team six between these quiet operators and these like, maniac murderer publicity hounds. Right. Is what birthed the Eddie Gallagher in a lot of ways. Now, Special Forces guys have been seen as cool pretty much since we invented them, but their popularity really rocketed up after the Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, which is a little ironic because basically everyone is there was like, it's the easiest mission we ever had. It was not hard. We were not in. The main danger was that we fucked up our own helicopters because we didn't. Like, a pilot was like, if you're going to land, you can't land a helicopter in like a walled in environment like that. It'll fuck up the rotors. And they were like, well, you're fired. And then the thing the guy said happened. Not quite as professional as they often come across. But yeah. Since 2011, the term has made its way back from the military into movies like Sicario. That's kind of the first place I seem to remember hearing it in like a pop culture sense.

[Sophie]

Yeah, I saw theaters.

[Brett]

Right, right, right. It's A good movie. And also a wide array of products marketed to civilians who wanna feel more like Special Forces dudes when they're at, say, the gym, you know, here's another example from the Pipe Hitters union, right? And my favorite is probably this original Pipe Hitter T shirt that shows this is part of like a series where it's like the Founding Fathers reimagined as like Special Forces gangster badasses. You've got like fucking George Washington with a tomahawk. And Teddy Roosevelt's got a machine gun across his shoulder. He's like shirtless, heavily tattooed. He's got a jug of hard liquor, right? And you can see in this ad how much this product line really relies on the aesthetic of the operator and what the aesthetic of the operator is. Because Teddy's not depicted as a regular soldier. He's got a gun over his shoulder, he's shirtless, he's muscular, he's covered in tattoos, and he's drunk carrying what looks to be a jug of moonshine. And all of these elements, including constant illegal intoxication, are central aspects of real life Special Forces culture. Now, I would define the Pipe Hitter aesthetic today as a man, usually bearded, wearing weapons, armor and gear, but no uniform, so to speak, who operates as a soldier but is unaccountable to any. And today, every right wing influencer who can pull off posing with a gun has tried to ape this aesthetic at least a little bit. And as an example, here's Andrew Tate posing for Instagram. He's got the plate carrier, he's got a gun, he doesn't have a beard, so he's got one of those skull masks around his face. And by the way, his plate carrier is riding too low. You want to have that thing up higher. You see that there's like right underneath.

[Sophie]

He looks dumb.

[Brett]

As you're watching this in the video, right underneath where his mask ends, there's like three or four inches of open real estate before the armor starts. That's just like. Well, that's just your heart, bro. Like you want to have that and covered.

[Sophie]

He looks really dumb.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Andrew T.]

Now skull, the skull gator too. That's the big. Yes.

[Brett]

The skullgater is a big part of this aesthetic too, for sure. Yeah, sure. Now we're going to look this week into the first Pipe Hitter. The man who created the template for this kind of guy. And also who literally invented SEAL Team 6, Richard Marcinko. Now, the Navy Seals were already well known when an operator with Seal Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad Pakistan. But before that day, they were simply among the best special forces units that the US kept in its arsenal. And in all honesty, prior to Abbottabad, their public record wasn't all that impressive really any sufficiently. We'll talk about that. Any sufficiently nerdy ROTC kid when I was growing up would have told you that like, well, Delta Force is the more elite unit, right? That was certainly like the, the, the, the attitude then. But after Bin Laden there was not really any SEALs and Team 6 in particular were the premier military badasses of the American imagination. So yeah, anyway, I think I've hyped this up enough. I'm gonna start with the story of our actual this day. But first, here's some fucking ads. This ad is brought to you by Veiv Healthcare, the makers of Dovato Dolutegravir Lamivudine. If you're living with hiv, do learn about Dovato. Dovato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Dovato is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Dovato is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Dovato.

[Medical Ad Voice]

It is unknown if Dovato is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B if you have Hep B. Don't stop Dovato without talking to your doctor as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Dovato if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Dofetilide due to serious or life threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Dovato and get medical help right away. Other serious or life threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding or planned pregnancy.

[Brett]

Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devato.com or call 1-877-844-8872. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] switch upfront payment

[Medical Ad Voice]

of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms.

[Child or Family Member]

This is Troy Millings from Earn your leisure when traveling for events or festivals throughout the country, every dollar matters. We compare flights, prices, hotel rates and restaurant options. So why wouldn't we compare rides? Personally, I always check Lyft before booking a ride. Prices can change throughout the day depending on traffic, weather and what's happening in the city. If you're headed to a concert, out to dinner or catching up with your friends on a Friday night, taking a few seconds to check Lyft could leave you with more money to enjoy the experience. Save money. Check Lyft.

[Ashley]

This is Ashley from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. You know, it's become a literal nightmare lately. International travel. Why sit on a plane for 14 hours to get to Lake Como when you could be having the time of your life at Caesars Republic in beautiful Lake Tahoe? Caesars Republic, Lake Tahoe has it all. The splendor of Lake Como without all the unmagical moments that come with international travel. It's all there. Amazing dining options with restaurants like Wolf by Vanderpump and Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen. Incredible entertainment, some of the biggest names in music already lined up for this year's Lake Tahoe summer concerts. Plus relaxing spa experiences, breathtaking views and non stop excitement throughout your entire stay. Spend your days enjoying the pristine lake and natural surroundings and the nights enjoying the incredible restaurants and world class casino. And don't forget all of this right in your backyard. Caesars Republic Lake Tahoe Book today.

[Brett]

And we're back. Richard was born on November 21st in 1940 in Landsford, Pennsylvania in the home of his grandmother. Now his hometown was a mining community and coal was the big business of the day. His ancestors were Czech on both sides. And in his autobiography he described the ethos of the men in his family line and in Lansford as a whole. As they were born, they worked the mines, they died, right? So understandable that he's gonna wanna get out of this right now. We'll be discussing his autobiography, Rogue Warrior, not just as a historical document, cause it's a terrible historical document, but it is in and of itself an important piece of history. Because the book Rogue Warrior is the first Navy SEAL tell. All right. It is the first true story book written by a former operator for the purpose of turning himself into a branch. Right? There were books about the seals before and by the way if you're looking for like a good book about the seals in. Because I used to know a SEAL team, one guy who was fought in Vietnam and the book he recommended was, I think was called Hunters and Trackers. That was like, he said was very true to his experience. Marcinko's book covers Vietnam heavily, but it's nearly all lies, right? It's an important historical book, right? Because every one of these Navy SEAL fucking books that's come since, in the modern era, there's two of them from two different guys who were part of the Osama operation who claimed to have shot him. Neither of them killed Osama bin Laden and everyone knows that, right?

[Andrew T.]

Oh, God. I. I'm just gonna. This is also like LA comedy community stuff. And I don't remember who it was and I don't know the story, but basically someone. I forget who it was. You know, podcast listeners might be able to find this, but someone like LA comedian Wise basically went on a date with another person who I don't even know if they're actually Davy Seal, but claimed to have killed Osama bin Laden.

[Brett]

If you actually like, the serious and good reporting on that has shown and proven, basically because they've talked to a bunch of guys who were there. The guy who actually killed him was a dude whose nickname is Red. We don't know his real name and he does not talk. Right? That's what people say about the guy who actually did it. We'll talk about that too. Because again, because two different people who were there on the day they killed bin Laden were both there with the primary purpose for them being to write a book about it later. They both, like, fucked up and broke the rules and like did broke ranks and left their colleagues exposed during the raid to try to get there faster to shoot him so that they could write a book about it. It's very funny. And that's all downstream of Rogue Warrior, right? Like, Marcinko not only starts Team Six, but he establishes that this is a way to make a fuckload of money after you get out of the new series, right? So again, don't take anything he says in this literally and assume a degree of artistic life license when Marcinko describes that his family was too poor to buy boots to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, right? I don't doubt that they were poor, but he's probably exaggerating a little bit. From an early age, Richard seems to have identified with his maternal grandfather, Joe Pavlik, who he described as a cantankerous Short barrel chested, shot in a beer, hard drinking, son of a bitch with a square face and Leonid Breznev eyebrows who worked the mines all his life and never complained about it once. Maybe this guy existed. Right. If he didn't, you know, then Marcinko just invented this personality to graft onto a real guy because it was way more convenient. Right. This is part of he, he has, this is a political work in part for him too. So a lot of his book is him outlining the guys. He considers these are examples of good people and these are examples of bad people. Right, right, right, right, right.

[Andrew T.]

It's also like that's, that's what everyone sees their grandpa as, like, give or take.

[Brett]

Yeah. And so maybe it's that because this, this sounds like maybe how you'd idealize a person, but this is not how you describe like a real person you knew. Well, this is a description of a character in a screenplay. Right. Here's Richard again. He was a real hellraiser. One of those archetypal tough guys you see in working class bars with big wide labor, toughened hands that look as if they were designed to go around old fashioned beer glasses. Get it? That's all aesthetic. He's not telling us anything about what his grandpa actually did or said. He's just talking about his hand and how he's like an archetypal tough guy in a working class bar. That's just not. That doesn't sound real to me. That's not how like. Well, or it's like my grandpa was a guy, but I wouldn't that way scrape that surface.

[Andrew T.]

That's like fucking 3,000 guys in that town of 5,000 people.

[Brett]

Exactly. That's a picture. That's not a man. Right. Anyway, Richard says that he was independent from a young age. Right. His family is not very functional. Right. His parents are fighting all of the time and so he's just kind of doing his own shit. He starts working his own paper out at age 5. By age 7, he says he's leaving on his own for a day or two at a time to explore the woods and the wilderness around him. He claims his parents weren't big on education and says his dad probably dropped out of school around 8th grade while his mom may have gotten a 9th or 10th. And that I don't, I don't doubt.

[Andrew T.]

Right.

[Brett]

I mean, that's true of my grandparents. Right. I mean, my grandpa, I think had an eighth grade education. Yeah. I haven't found any accounts that contrast with this. So again, we and I don't have trouble taking stuff as red. Yeah. When he was in seventh grade, the mines closed down and so his family had to move to New Brunswick because the school was so diverse. He writes, he got into a series of fights walking to and from class. His uncle moved in with them. At one point, after he had a brother and the five of them had to cram into a small apartment. Richard remembered his parents fighting constantly. And since his uncle would take his mom's side, his dad kind of stopped showing up at home. All the unrest furthered Dick's tradition of avoiding his family. As he became an adolescent, he got a series of odd jobs. Pinsetter for a bowling alley altar boy. And as an adolescent, he worked as a waiter at a lunch place near the Rutgers campus. He claims to have worked 120 hours a week during the summer. He says the Italian owner of the place treated him like a son and started giving him wine, which Richard developed a taste for. And by age 13, he was a daily drinker. I also don't doubt that this Richard is a hardcore alcoholic his entire life. This is certainly true. When he was 15, Richard claims he pretended to be an 18 year old freshman at Rutgers and started dating a young teacher named Lucette, who he met at a fraternity party that he snuck into. The lie fell apart when she was hired to fill in for a teacher in his high school French class. She. She. He's like dating this girl and she shows up to teach at his high school. I don't know if this is wild to put it.

[Medical Ad Voice]

This is.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Andrew T.]

Autobiography. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brett]

He, he does want you to think this is cool that like he was.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Brett]

I mean, being statutorily raped by an adult, but also that she didn't know. Like, he really, like, that's part of why I kind of doubt it is. He thinks this is awesome. And he's telling you this because he thinks it makes him look cool that he's getting laid like hell when he's a kid. So by the time of his senior year, Richard was no longer showing up to class at all. He claims that he was dating an Italian woman, quote, married to a guy 27 years her senior and in serious need of vigorous humping. Pumping. Right again. This is from his autobiography.

[Sophie]

I hated that that was so this is a guy.

[Brett]

It's really gross.

[Andrew T.]

This is certainly this kind of guy.

[Brett]

Absolutely. Eventually he dropped out of high school. And this is almost the first specific detail of his life that we can independently verify. He definitely drops out of high school. I can Check that off as behind the bastards. True fact about Richard, he tried to join the Marine Corps. At this point, Eisenhower had just sent the Marines to Lebanon. And Richard wrote, after seeing them on tv, I liked their dress blues and their swords. So he shows up at a USMC recruiting office and he asks the sergeant, what can I do? I want to get a gun and go shoot a few bad guys. How can I do that? And the sergeant. And it tells you how, like, insane Richard must have appeared. Because recruiting sergeants will say anything to get you to sign that paper. And this guy's like, well, you gotta graduate high school. We don't just hand a gun to you, right? Like, he's clearly off put by this kid, right? Like, dudes who join the Marine Corps will tell you how hard it is to make a recruiting sergeant not want to get you to sign that paper immediately. You have to seem insane, right?

[Andrew T.]

This'll hurt me to pass him on more than it will to, like, get the additional number. Jesus Christ. Right?

[Brett]

My conscience won't allow this. And I'm a recruiting sergeant, right? So Richard says that he got disheartened after this because he knew by the time he did all of the training shit that was required, the Lebanese problem would be solved and he wouldn't get to shoot anybody. So he decided not to join the Marines and fucks off and spends the summer partying and getting laid. Richard starts dating seriously for the first time at this point. And he writes that when I wasn't catting around with other women, quote, I discovered that we liked each other. That's how he, he describes falling in love is when I wasn't cheating on her. I had a good time with her. Yeah, that's love for Richard.

[Andrew T.]

Marcy. Good. Good for him. And mostly good for her. Especially good for her.

[Brett]

Yeah. The less time you spend with this guy is probably on the whole helping you. Regardless, Richard abandons her that fall when she goes. Well, I mean, I don't know. They break up, right? She goes to college and he volunteers for the Navy. I shouldn't call that him abandoning her. That's a pretty natural split at that age. He reports for duty in October 1958 and goes to boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois. In the great book Code Over Country, Matthew Cole writes, shortly after enlisting, Marcinko, a radio man, saw The Frogman, the 1951 movie film depicting UDT4's heroics in World War II, and knew he needed to join the underwater demolitions teams. So we need to talk about the UDTs right. The underwater Demolitions Teams. Because while Richard was living his first five years of life. Right. That's during World War II, 40 to 45, military history was being revolutionized by the formalization of a kind of unit that had always existed. Special Operations Forces. Right. These have always been a part of warfare in every society, in every place that's done formal war. Right. You could look at the Greeks who hid in the Trojan horse as like an example. Whether or not that was literally true. That's an example of like a kind of operation that an opera. An early operator would carry out. Right. The kind of elite, highly trained soldiers, spies and assassins that would do the work that modern states have spec ops guys to do. Right. This has always been a thing. And During World War II, the development of technology mandated the creation of highly trained soldiers capable of extremely niche operations, particularly doing complicated underwater in the United States. Because this. This happens like the British have, you know, the sas and like this. Ha. This is independently happening in a number of places. The Germans have the false worm Jaegers, which a lot of. I mean, a lot of American Special Forces culture is descended from these. Different from Nazi Special Forces units. Right?

[Ad Voice 2]

Yeah.

[Brett]

As well.

[Andrew T.]

Unsurprising, unsurprised.

[Brett]

Just like a lot of. They were very influential in a lot of, like, small unit tactic development. And for the US A lot of this process started in the Pacific. The storming of Betio island by the 2nd Marine Division and the Tarawa Atoll was a hideously bloody affair. And the reason why it was such a fuck up is basically they calculated the tide because you need to know what the tide's going to be to have the boats moving in the proper way to get all of the dudes on shore at the right time so that one set of them isn't exposed and just getting shot to shit. Right. But. But there was a special kind of tide that day that if they'd had someone out ahead of the landing boats who could have gone back and said, hey, it's a different kind of tide. You need to alt, then it would have avoided a horrible bloody situation. Right. And so the Navy decides we need specialist divers who can scout out coastal areas ahead of a landing, measure the depth. Exactly. Figure out the tide, find and disable mines before landing craft come in. Right. Like, these are our first real special Forces units.

[Ad Voice 3]

Units.

[Brett]

So the Navy had started training underwater demolitions teams before Tarawa. And these guys are more commonly known at the time as frogmen. That's like the. The colloquial term. And they're Cool. By the way, like kids in World War II are like reading feverishly stories about Navy frogmen. These are some of the, like, some of the first GI Joes are frogmen. Yeah, it was like the coolest dudes,

[Andrew T.]

like GI Joe mentality. You need a water guy, you need an ice guy, you need a flying guy.

[Brett]

Exactly.

[Andrew T.]

You need a guy that looks like rocks.

[Brett]

Yes, looks like rocks for some reason. So the first men in the line of descent of the Navy Seals were Navy Seabee volunteers who took special training in Fort Pierce, Florida to learn how to fulfill this new role. Because the work of the underwater demolition teams was known to be so demanding and difficult, officers and enlisted members of these units went through the same training and were expected to handle the same tasks and work together in units so small that you couldn't have the traditional divide between officers and enlisted men. One thing that's noted as being weird about frogman is they all just called each other by their first names. Right? And you're not, you're not supposed to do that in the normal military. Now that said, I have known some people who were in units that would say that like after months of heavy combat, you kind of stop. Some of that stuff matters a lot less. Right. In a lot of like right. In the book Alpha, which is a great read about Navy SEAL alleged war criminal Eddie Gallagher, author David Phillips writes this about the first fraud. They've been formed from civilian workmen in the New Deal, 1940s America, and they embrace the era's informal attitudes of blue collar solidarity and equality. So these men were soldiers. Right. But they also carried no weapon besides a fixed blade diving knife, which is a major thing that differentiates them. These, these guys are badasses and they are widely renowned, but not because of their killing ability. That is not at all why they're, they're like respected. Right? They're respected because the thing that they have to do is both totally necessary for the success of naval operations and insanely dangerous. During D Day, UDT swimmers were the very first people ashore at Omaha beach and had to clear the way for landing craft with zero cover. And again for an idea, these guys are not in a boat. They are swimming ashore in like shorts with a knife and flippers maybe.

[Ashley]

Right.

[Brett]

They're basically naked and they're swimming directly into Gustavo guns. 52% of the unit were made casualties in a single day. A rate of loss no normal military unit could be expected to endure without complete collapse. The frogmen proved incredibly valuable in World War II and obviously more in the Pacific theater than the Atlantic. And because of this, they were allowed to live by different rules than other soldiers. Phillips notes that they had little use for discipline that regular troops were expected to live under. They refused to shave their hair, wear proper uniforms, march or salute as a rule. Officers outside the unit complained that they looked like criminals and hooligans, not soldiers. But from the book Alpha, they were not an attack force. They were a crew of workmen out to do an insane job. They could be as crazy as they wanted. Right. And that is. Then that's still a big part of the. And it's not a problem really in World War II. Right. Because for one thing, what they're doing is objectively heroic and good. I'm not just talking about the cause of the war. They're not doing anything to harm. Like, they're not killing people directly. They're protecting their fellow soldiers and risking their own lives to do it. Right, Right.

[Andrew T.]

It's sort of like the engineering version of the medic.

[Brett]

Yes.

[Andrew T.]

It's just like they're doing logistics under fire.

[Brett]

And there is like demolitions work that does kill people that they do. But that's not the primary thing that they are. They're up to. And it was not easy to train men to do this kind of work from code over country, quote. The final week of training culminated with the men forced to do a trench on the Atlantic beach while explos were set off nearby for an hour. The goal was to ensure that each man that they would send into enemy water had proved they could handle the stress. Many couldn't. Between 60 and 75% dropped out by the end of the week. Right. And a part of what they're doing, the way they will frame it, is we're looking for men who are immune to shell shock. Now, that's not a thing. Your brain is affected by it, or it isn't, depending on the force of the blast and how close you are. But some people are like, better at handling it and not collapsing until much later. It destroys them. Right. So this is the start of hell, which is still a very famous part, I'm sure. It's the thing everybody knows about Navy seals right now, we know that exposure to explosives like this causes cte. But again, at the time was that this is like hardening them and showing like, who's immune to shell shock.

[Andrew T.]

I mean, some stuff gets hardened, some stuff gets softened.

[Brett]

To say, now, we'd never really trained a unit like this before. And this was also a top secret unit. Cause we didn't want the enemy to know what these guys were capable of doing. And those two facts together bred an immediate kind of elitism within the ranks of guys who made it through training. The first UDT training leader was Lieutenant Commander Draper Kaufman. And he was a very observant man. Because so many wannabe frogmen washed out and because UDT swimmers weren't held to the same expectations of discipline, they had a tendency to view themselves as better than their peers. As Cole writes, Kaufman and his officers were concerned that elitism would pervade their ranks. But the needs of the war won out and this problem would only get worse in the years to come. Post war stories of these formerly secret elite units captured the imaginations of countless young Americans. And in the wake of World War II, the brass and our growing military industrial complex saw opportunity. The Pentagon had partnered with Hollywood during the war years to spread propaganda. Now that the Cold War was beginning, our national propaganda needs had changed. Military planners felt the wars of the future could be won by air power, with anything on the ground handled by small elite teams of highly trained soldiers. In 1951, a Navy Hollywood partnership produced the Frogman, which starred Richard Widmark and was designed to make UDT teams look fucking awesome. This is one of the very first like Hollywood US Military joint production propaganda movies. And the original theatrical trailer for this classic is still on YouTube. And I have to assume that Richard saw the trailer as a kid too. So here's a clip to give you an idea of what must have been appealing about this to the young man. From Top Secret Records, filmed with the cooperation of the Department of Defense comes the thrilling story of these pin footed goggle eyed beach blasting heroes. They fight like men from another world,

[Andrew T.]

but they've got Brooklyn, Texas and Missouri written all over their hearts.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

You're a brave man, all of you are.

[Brett]

You wouldn't be in this outfit, nobody questions that.

[Unknown Female Speaker]

But your kind of bravery is, comes

[Brett]

10 cents a dozen and isn't worth a hoot more when the chips are down.

[Andrew T.]

It's great.

[Brett]

So I love, I love this 50.

[Andrew T.]

What? It's so like fascinating to put yourself back in the audience mindset of like in cooperation with the US Navy being like a positive thing.

[Brett]

Like well and honestly like that whole thing about like they've got you know, Texas and you know all their, the home state's written all and just. Yeah there is something that does a little like these are like the original frogmen were just working class men forced by circumstances to endure insane danger in an overall noble struggle. And that's pretty cool, right? And they could not be further from modern day Navy SEALs, right?

[Andrew T.]

Right.

[Brett]

Modern SEALs are descended from these guys. Not at all alike, honestly, really. Now, young Richard Marcinko sees this movie and he loses his shit. He remembers it having lots of action, lots of heroism, and lots of songs. One of these songs was the official UDT team fight song, which ended with these words. Out in front of the Navy where you really get the heat, there's a bunch of crazy bastards pulling off some crazy feet. And that's that line, particularly those last two lines, that just completely writes over Richard's mind like that's software that just reprograms his fucking brick. Right? He never wants to be seen as anything else for the rest of his days. So Richard, who basically parented himself half his childhood, finds this really appealing. And he specifically recalls thinking, hey, I could do that after leaving the theater. And his logic for thinking this was, I mean, I was a reasonably aggressive sort of person. I'm really violent. That job looks great for me now. Richard had to spend a couple of years living the life of a normal enlisted sailor before he was able to try out for the UDT teams. They don't just let join and do that. His first attempt was foiled by a broken hand, and his second was, according to him, nearly thwarted by his commanding officer, who he describes as, oh, boy, the ugliest female I'd ever set eyes on in my life. I called her the big female ugly commander, or big fuck for short. Cool. Now, you know, that sentence didn't go

[Andrew T.]

where I thought it was gonna go.

[Brett]

How could you have guessed where that was headed? How could you have guessed maybe this lady existed? I can't disprove that. It does kind of seem a little unlikely, but it's not impossible. Women were first allowed to enlist in the Navy in 1908, but initially only as nurses. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who was weirdly woke for 1917, famously asked, is there any law that says a yeoman must be a man? Right. Is there any law that says, like, a young sailor has to be like a man? And he started letting ladies join the Naval Reserve while men were away during World War I. In World War II, a separate women's naval auxiliary was created, the Waves. And they have, like, the Wax is the Air Corps version, right? The Waves and the Wax are like the kind of Ladies Auxiliary During World War II and post war, the Women's Armed Services Integration act brings women into the armed forces properly, but obviously, and they're still limited today in what roles they can serve less than they were then. The first female Navy officers had just been commissioned in 1948. And so 58 is when this is all happening. Marcinko could have had a lady co, Right? But it seems likelier that this is a lie he created because this caricature of a lady officer symbolizes everything wrong with what he called Big Navy. Right. Which is also a term you'll hear in the seals to this day. Big Navy. And I think Richard, I'm not sure if he's the origin point, but he's certainly one of them. So, yeah, I don't know how seriously we should take this, but this is something that, like he wants us to believe. Richard writes, quote, Big Fuck was also a rule book creature. And he will later decide that basically all of the Navy's problems comes from people following the rules too strictly. In the book Brave Men, Dark Waters, or Kelly writes that some of the guys who served with Marcinko would later claim that as a second class radio man he bragged that he would one day be the Chief of Naval Operations. So, you know, he's got a mouth on him and he thinks he's hot shit. But soon he's going to get like the chance to prove that he is because he gets transferred to the UDT training. I don't know why he claims that he beats off. First he beats up one of his peers for being a whiner and then that gets him into a fistfight with his chief petty officer who he beats up so badly he gets transferred to UDT training to keep everyone else safe. And I think that's a lie. I don't think that's true.

[Andrew T.]

That's famously how that works.

[Brett]

Yeah, I think that's the kind of lie a guy like Richard Marcia tells. Oh God, I do. I have an uncle who punched his training officer in the Marine Corps and he does not have a cool story like that. He has a. He got the shit beat out of him and in major trouble. Major, major trouble story.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah. Oh, I was just too, too tough. They had to, they had to promote

[Brett]

too much of a mess. They had to put me in the UDT to protect the others. Now you know who I want to protect. Really the only thing I want to protect. You know, if the Navy SEALs are there to protect America from terrorism, then I'm the Navy SEALs of protecting these products and services from you not listening to them. Yeah, that works. That's an ad transition. This ad is brought to you by Veeve Healthcare, the makers of Dovato Dolutegravir lamivudine. If you're living with hiv, do learn about Dovato. Dovato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Dovato is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Dovato is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Dovato.

[Medical Ad Voice]

It is unknown if Dovato is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B if you have Hep B. Don't stop Dovato without talking to your doctor as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Dovato if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Dofetilide due to serious or life threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Dovato and get medical help right away. Other serious or life threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding or planned pregnancy.

[Brett]

Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devato.com or call 1-877-844-8872.

[Child or Family Member]

This is Troy Millings from Earn your leisure when traveling for events or festivals throughout the country, every dollar matters. We compare flights, prices, hotel rates and restaurant options. So why wouldn't we compare rides? Personally, I always check Lyft before booking a ride. Ride prices can change throughout the day depending on traffic, weather and what's happening in the city. If you're headed to a concert, out to dinner or catching up with your friends on a Friday night, taking a few seconds to check lift could leave you with more money to enjoy the experience. Save money. Check Lift.

[Ashley]

This is Ashley from the Ben and Ashley I Almost same as podcast. You know, it's become a literal nightmare lately. International Travel Why sit on a plane for 14 hours to get to Lake Como when you could be having the time of your life at Caesars Republic in beautiful Lake Tahoe? Caesars Republic Lake Tahoe has it all. The splendor of Lake Como without all the unmagical moments that come with international travel. It's all there. Amazing dining options with restaurants like Wolf by Vanderpump and Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen. Incredible entertainment, some of the biggest names in music already lined up for this year's Lake Tahoe summer concerts, plus relaxing spa experience, breathtaking views and non stop Excitement throughout your entire stay. Spend your days enjoying the pristine lake and natural surroundings. And the nights enjoying the incredible restaurants and world class casino. And don't forget all of this right in your backyard. Caesars Republic, Lake Tahoe. Booked today.

[Ad Voice 1]

You've never been one to settle, stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence.

[Medical Ad Voice]

Excellence.

[Ad Voice 1]

There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now. Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing. Because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit Capella Edu to learn more.

[Brett]

And we're back. So Richard claims he got transferred to UDT training, right? And he does, you know, I just don't know exactly what leads to that. He completes his UDT training in 1961. This is a decade after the Frogman was released. That same year, President John F. Kennedy authorized the Pentagon to examine ways to develop new counter guerrilla forces. This included establishing new special operations teams as separate components of the existing underwater demolitions teams. And this is what, like JFK is why we have the Navy SEALs, right? He's the, effectively the father of the Navy SEALs right now. The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in mid-1961 prompted Kennedy to address Congress. And everyone remembers the bits where he stated his plan for the US to put a man on the moon. But Kennedy also asserted that the country needed to prepare to fight the new kinds of proxy wars that had come to define the Cold War. These next generation frogmen would need to be trained and armed to fight guerrilla conflicts, assassinating local leaders and military figures and carrying out acts of sabotage and then blending back into the jungle or the wilderness, whatever, right? Captain William Hamilton Jr. A UDT man from World War II who was one of the people who was tasked with creating the Navy SEALs, described the kind of men that he was looking for to populate this new unit. Right? So at the birth of the Navy SEALs, this is like specifically the job description. They had to be more than killers, all muscle and neck and attack dog mentality. I wanted demanded creative men who operated with their brains as well as with their muscles. Men of courage, dedication to duty, sacrifice, personal dexterity and intelligence. Team and mission must come first. At the same time, they must be individuals, near rogues, in fact, rough men, tough men who could kick ass and operate outside protocol. And you can see why you might want that. Right. If you're looking at a unit that's gotta operate without support for long periods of time, they have to be intelligent and creative and they have to have knowledge outside of what you'd expect from a normal soldier in order to be able to kind of pivot and think on their feet. Right.

[Andrew T.]

But it's like the same as, like finding an emperor. It's like you need those things, but you don't want anyone who would describe themselves as those things.

[Brett]

Right. And the other part of it, you need those things, but the training is mostly like, are you okay with guys screaming at you and blowing stuff up next to you and yelling at you while you're really cold? Right. And that doesn't necessarily, like, guarantee that they'll be able to do all these things. And part of the issue is, is that there will always be guys like this in the seals who are legitimately, like, just incredibly talented and skilled and have, like, wide variety of knowledge. But there's also guys who are there because they really just want to kill people. Right? And this, the fact that from the beginning they're like, well, we understand that these guys have to be kind of like rogues. There has to be like a criminal element to them if they're going to be able to do the job. Right. That was baked into the SEALS from the beginning. And it has always been a cause of prison problems for them. And it's because they like this, like, Richard is going to be this guy to a fucking T, right? One of these rough men with. Of the criminal element. Yeah. Like, it's, it's. They couldn't have made the job more perfectly for how he saw himself. Richard attended UDT class 26. 20% of his teammates passed the intense training, so most people dropped out, including, he noted in his autobiography with Glee, most of the officers, they just couldn't take it. He would claim he found that perversely enjoyable. Again, he really. He's going to be an officer later, but he really hates officers, like, very performatively. After four weeks, he graduates. Training for the SEALs at that point involved none of the diving instruction that it like, previously had and that it would later have. Right. They're not really learning to be swimmers at this point nearly as much as they had in the past and would in the future. And Dick's largest difficulty during training came with courtesy of his back. Here's the book. Rogue Warrior. I had a problem with Hell Week. I developed a case of the runs in today's Navy that would probably Be enough to get me excused. Not in 1961. They stopped for nothing. The solution was speed. I discovered as they ran me up and down the beach that if I ran fast enough, the smell of what ran down my leg and into my boot get left behind for the next boat crew to enjoy.

[Andrew T.]

Oh, man. So he. Right. So he was just in a soft, permissive era.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Andrew T.]

And. Oh, God.

[Brett]

Well, he was in an era where all they cared about was like, can you handle the physical difficulty of the running?

[Andrew T.]

The running.

[Brett]

We don't care if you're like mentally fit, if you're crazy, if you're an asshole. Are you comfortable shitting yourself while running? Basically is the primary determining factor. And so he's laughing like a lot of these smarter guys who probably have a lot of the other skills that might be useful, aren't tough enough to make it through, whereas he. He is. And this is. This is always going to be a factor of pride for him. So after he graduates Hell Week, he writes that he and his classmates were confident as $500 hookers. They were sent for 10 weeks of training at St. Thomas and given, he claims, unlimited women, a never ending supply of aged booze and fresh lobsters, and all the deadly toys you could ever want to play with. I don't really know how accurate that is to Navy SEAL training if they give you unlimited liquor and women, but

[Andrew T.]

I believe the deadly toys, that's like Blofeld style. That's like how Goldfinger recruits. Also, watch out with the lobster, Mr. Soft Stomach. Come on.

[Brett]

Can't have that much. Yeah, yeah, come on. You really think you should be eating lobster right now, man, you got the runs. I think I might know why he makes repeated mentions of his drinking in this book. About once a page in the opening of his autobiography, Marcinko talks about how much he likes to drink. A little earlier, when describing the kinds of men who made it through Hell Week, he mentioned that some guys like him spent all of their downtime at the bar. The reality is that he was a hardcore alcoholic who at this point was already beginning to drink problematically, and would be addicted his entire working life in Special Forces. Despite his constant complaining about how bad officers are, Richard almost immediately got his high school equivalency exam and went through OCS so that he could become an officer. So much of his book is talking, and then he goes through like. And then I. I became an officer, but I had to like, study the officers like they were aliens to learn how to become one. But I never really became, you Know, I just got the rank, but that was never me, you know.

[Andrew T.]

Right. He's just a tough guy trying to get ahead, bro.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think he's trying to protest too much now. As a reminder, the seals don't exist. I mean, I just said SEAL training, they're still not quite like it's, it's still like it's 1962. So it's like the year after this train, the seals are officially formed. So he's kind of in a similar situation to like former Governor Jesse Venture. Like Ventura's a little earlier, but Ventura was UDT and then gets kind of grandfathered in as a seal. Right. So the new SEAL unit would be similar to the old in some ways. The standard unit of organization was still the number of men who could fit on a small boat. Five enlisted and an officer. The name SEAL came from their expected area of expertise, sea and land operations. Their insignia was the trident with a flintlock and an eagle on it because it looked. And people immediately are like, that kind of looks like the Budweiser logo. Some people call it The Budweiser too. Captain Hamilton, who handled training at first for these Navy SEALs, wanted creative, criminal minded men. He sent his first team members to take classes from former thieves to learn safe cracking and hot wiring vehicles. This was all justifiable by the parameters of the jobs he expected they'd be assigned. What kind of jobs would the Navy need a bunch of heavily trained, heavily armed criminals to accomplish, you might ask? Well, let's talk about that. Who do you think was the first outside US governmental organization to see the potential in a unit of killers with criminal training who were unaccountable to a standard hierarchy? Who do you think found that really appealing?

[Andrew T.]

I mean, FBI at the time, right?

[Brett]

Nah, it's the CIA. It's the CIA. It's the C.I.A. yeah. Now, the CIA had recently inaugurated something called the Phoenix program in Vietnam. This classified operation was based on the widespread belief that the Viet Cong were only able to function because there was this shadow network of supporters in South Vietnam that enabled them. And the best way to defeat the insurgency was to kill these people. So as early as 1967, the year that Marcinko first shipped to Vietnam as a seal, his job was carrying out Phoenix missions all over the war front. CIA informants would provide the agency with info and they'd send it to the SEALs who would murder, kidnap and ambush whoever they thought they needed to. Each of these raids would gather more intel which would be used to plan further murders and raids. And we call it a different thing now. But this is how counterterrorism strategy in US Special Forces worked in Afghanistan and Iraq too. Basically. It hasn't changed since project like elements of it. They try to do less war crimes sometimes now than the old Project fucking Phoenix guys did. But it's the same basic idea, right? You do rage, you gather info, you do more raids, and you often just wind up murdering guys. Right?

[Andrew T.]

Yeah.

[Brett]

Both in Vietnam and in Iraq, it's just often just murder squads.

[Andrew T.]

Right, right, right, right, right. Sort of some Stasi type shit.

[Brett]

Yeah. You're kind of just trying to. At a certain level, it becomes just. We're killing as many of the male population in this area as we can. That's Vietnam, that's Iraq, and that's Afghanistan. Right, Right. This isn't really debatable.

[Andrew T.]

Right. And eventually we'll win. Eventually they'll be on our side.

[Brett]

It hasn't worked ever. But like, it's gotta. At some point.

[Andrew T.]

Could hurt.

[Brett]

We'll kill our way to the bottom of this barrel. Now we'll talk about how well all of this works in Vietnam and for Richard Marcinko and later. But I think this is a good place to end part one. How are you feeling, Andrew T. You think the Navy seals are gonna pull it together and become.

[Andrew T.]

I mean, they're only getting worse, so.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah, it's really all downhill from World War II. But that's American military history in a nutshell.

[Andrew T.]

It' World War II was sort of our Batman Begins. It, like set a tone that actually every subsequent thing based off it really, really fucked us as a. As a global concern, basically.

[Brett]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's, it's. It's pretty bleak. Yeah. I don't know. But hey, it's. Those frogmen were pretty cool, you know? You know who else is pretty cool, Andrew? You.

[Andrew T.]

Thanks, man.

[Brett]

Plug your pluggables.

[Andrew T.]

Yeah, you know what? Well, if we just kind of yada yada our way to 23rd century, you could just go to Star Trek times. Yeah, I don't know. Andrew T. Starter Trek. That's it. I don't know. Please listen. If you like it, we're really having fun doing it and. Yeah, it's really. And it's on YouTube also. That's the thing.

[Brett]

I will. Speaking of Special Forces and Star Trek, one of my favorite episodes of TNG is the episode where they accidentally take on a crazed Special Forces operative from some alien race that has been, like, arrested by his own people because they made them too good as killers. And, you know, he's on like a. He's on like a ship full of Starfleet people who are like really good utopian people and are absolutely not prepared to deal with them. It's a fun episode.

[Andrew T.]

It's sort of like Rambo. It's like they just drop Rambo on board.

[Brett]

It's like they dropped Rambo in like a kindergarten.

[Ad Voice 2]

Right?

[Brett]

Yeah, he's just. Worf is not prepared.

[Andrew T.]

All right, I can't wait. We'll have you on for that.

[Brett]

Great.

[Sophie]

We'll be back with part two.

[Brett]

Bye.

[Andrew T.]

Peace.

[Sophie]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Full video episodes of behind the Basterds are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com BehindTheBastards we love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

[Brett]

Let's talk about Peyronie's disease, or PG pd. It's not widely talked about, and some men may feel reluctant to bring it up, but it's more common than you'd think. PD can happen when scar tissue builds up under the skin of the penis, causing a curve with a bump during an erection that for some men may lead to pain during intimacy and impact mental health. A trusted urology specialist can help diagnose PD and walk you through your options, including non surgical treatment. Visit talkaboutpd.com a better help ad have

[BetterHelp Ad Voice]

you ever had so many tabs open that your computer starts slowing down? 10 for work, five for family, one for that thing you've been meaning to figure out. 20 more are running quietly in the background. Life can feel like that, too. According to BetterHelp's 2026 State of Stigma report, 85% of Americans say getting support is a smart thing to do. Yet 74% say society still discourages people from asking for for help. And more than three in four Americans reported symptoms of anxiety or depression in the past two weeks. Therapy can help you sort through what's taking up space and attention. With BetterHelp, you can connect with a licensed therapist online. On your schedule, you'll be matched based on your needs, and you can switch therapists anytime. In fact, 69% of BetterHelp users showed meaningful improvement in anxiety and depression. Depression maybe it's time to close a few tabs, visit betterhelp.com that's better. H E L p.com hi, this is

[Gronk]

Gronk from Dudes on Dudes. I'm here to tell you about protecting your end zone with wet extra large flushable dude wipes. Unlike dry wiping with toilet paper, dude wipes clear instead of smear. Wetter cleans better. Goodbye dingleberries. Goodbye itch and irritation. Plus, if you take Gronk sized grumpies or as I like to call them Gronkies Baby Wipes won't do. You need extra big dude wipes to handle the job. So don't fumble the ball with toilet paper. Stop being an A hole to your B hole and start using Dude Wipes. Available on Amazon and major retailers nationwide. Dude Wipes Best Clean Pants down this

[Matt Altmix]

is Matt Altmix from How to Money and we are all about comparing prices to save money on so many things in life. So why wouldn't you compare prices for your next ride share? Taking a few seconds to check Lyft can save you real money on your next ride. And I did this last time I caught a ride home from the airport after some travel. And guess who came out on top? Lyft. So don't just price check with flights and phone plans and your groceries. Comparing rideshare prices will help you to save money every time you ride. Save money Check Lyft.

[Ad Voice 1]

This is an Iheart podcast. Guaranteed human.