Col. Keith Nightingale, USA (Ret.) served for 25 years with notable roles in commanding airborne units and especially in operating with special operations forces. He was involved in some of the most significant military operations of his time, including actions during the Vietnam War, the Iran Hostage Rescue Mission (Operation Eagle Claw), and the invasion of Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury).
Colonel Nightingale shares behind-the-scenes insights into his operations in Latin America, from having the host nation join the AWACS to target illegal drug labs to battling drug cartels in countries like Nicaragua, Colombia, and Panama. He also talks about snippets of his book 'Phoenix Rising' and how the US failure in Iran led to the continuation and development of special forces into what it is today.
Get a copy of Keith's latest book 'Phoenix Rising': https://amzn.to/3ysAsp6
Join the SOFREP Book Club here: https://sofrep.com/book-club
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Hey, what's going on? It is another wonderful episode of soft Rep Radio and I am your host, Rad and today I have a legend of a guest. But before I introduce you to him, I want to tell you about our merch store, the soft Rep dot Com Ford slash Merch Go check out our merch We have shirts, branded hats. There's lighters that you can carry. If you have an DC or you need to light them up, Come get a lighter. Go check out our merch store. It helps keep the fireplace on. And the interview is going with my next guest for sure. Second, we have the book Club and it's soft Rep dot Com Forward slash book hyphen Club. That's book Hyphened Club, all right. And if you're new to the show, welcome for your first time. And if you've been a fan and you've been a listener and your name happens to be you know Johnson, all right, and you're out there saying, Hey, Rad, I want you to I want to hear you talk about Colonel Keith Nightingale. And I have Colonel Keith Nightingale here today on the show, Jim, And this is for you, bro. Okay, I know Jim is a mutual friend of ours, Keith, and welcome to the show.
Keith. Hey, my pleasure to be here far away.
All right. So I'm gonna introduce your resume here that I have and I'm just gonna go over that and you correct me if I'm wrong. I'm gonna introduce you to my guests for those that don't know already, all right. Colonel retired Keith Nightingale. Education United States Army War College eighty seven, US Army Commander, General Staff School seventy six. He's got a political science bachelors from Claremont in sixty five. Military background US Army sixty five through ninety three included the following assignments. His last assignment was the director of the Department of Defense Counter Drug Task Force in Latin America. Mister then Colonel Nightingale supervised a standalone joint staff organization of sixty eight personnel, including military customs, the Central Intelligence Agency, the DEA, and ins personnel. The organization was designed and managed by Colonel retired Nightingale, and included state of the art communication systems and all source intelligence capabilities. The task force was responsible for developing and executing an and dean Ridge regional interdiction attack on the drug industry, combining US and host nation assets. His responsibilities included planning and executing the DoD and customs aviation support to the counter drug effort, as well as supervision of the Adean Ridge Security Assistance Program and the Escobar Task Force. Colonel retired Nightingale was the key coordinator for DoD in the pursuit of Pablo Escobar and managed the direct support to the government of Columbia. There's more. Colonel Nightingale served two tours in Vietnam. One is the senior advisor to the fifty second Vietnamese Ranger Battalion to include TET nineteen sixty eight. The second was his rifle company commander in the Hunter first Airborne to include Lambson seven one to nine er. Upon return from Vietnam, Captain Nightingale became a founding member of the first of the seventy fifth Ranger Battalion when it was created by General Creighton Abrams in nineteen seventy four, later commanding both that battalion and the Ranger Brigade. His first battalion command was the five o ninth Airborne, an independent airborne battalion in Italy with a broad Northern American Treaty Organization mission. He later commanded the two five oh fifth Battalion Task Force of the eighty second Airborne Division, the one to seventy fifth Rangers, and the Ranger Training Brigade. His experiences in these commands include the liberation of Grenada and Panama and a variety of special operation missions. As the Ranger Brigade Commander, mister Nightingale developed the present Army Ranger Training Program and initiated the Snowcap Model training program for DEA personnel assigned to operation missions in Latin America. As a battalion commander in the eighty second Airborne, the lieutenant colonel at the time conceptualized and executed the return of the eighty second Airborne to Normandy for the fortieth anniversary. This was the first time they had been to Saint Mary Glise since sixth June nineteen forty four d Day. Subsequently, Colonel retired, Nightingale has led annual battlefield to raidewalks in the Normandy area, and as an honorary citizen of the City of Saint Mary Eglise. Colonel Nightingale commanded at every level in the two to five oh five, from second platoon leader to battalion commander and acting commander of the five oh five PR. Mister Nightingale's military staff assignments included as an original member of the US Special Operations Command and joined Secial Operations Command when they were created in the aftermath of a failed Iran rescue. Prior to this, he was the member of the Special Operations Director of the Army Staff and participated as the Ground Operations Officer within Task Force Eagle Claw the Iran rescue attempt. Key programs included participating in the planning for the Iran rescue Achille leuro incident, Dosier kidnapping, the TWA hij USCMIA issues extractions, and various bay route hostage programs. Additional responsibilities in this area included developing and executing a zero based special Operations budget exceeding three hundred million US dollars. Mister Nightingale also served as special assistance of the Commander in Chief US Special Operations Command and US since South. I'm breathing, I'm breathing. I'm breathing, I'm breathing. There's more. I'm almost there. During a portion of the above, he was seconded to the CIA within its Operations Directorate. Professional Affiliations, US Army Ranger, Society of Vietnamese Rangers, Life Member in the five oh five pir and the Ranger Regiment. Awards and Honors, Defense Superior Service Medal, three Legs of Merit, five Defense Meritorious Service Medals, Humanitarian Service Medal, Iran and four Bronze Stars of Valor, the Vietnamese Medal of Honor Acroix du Guier. I hope I didn't say that wrong with Gold Palm, Member of the eighty second and Ranger Regiment, Halls of Fame, Officer of the French Legion de honein bro. Can you sign my baseball card please?
Yeah? How great val art. But I can tell you that all those impressive looking titles, none of them came by design. They were all by chance. You know, I'm a big believer and that life is luck and timing, And what I did basically was I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, and the particular jobs just kind of meshed with my personality. So I was very fortunate in that regard. Was certainly not something I ever planned for. It just happened.
Yeah, it just came your way. You just stepped this way and then stepped that way, and that's where it led you. And you were the guy. It's just like, hey, this is your life. I grew growing up with a father in the Special Forces community. It was just like, that's just how he was. It's just his life. He went and rocked, he went and did these things. It's just who he was and managed to do it every single day, and other people did other things in their lives.
I just did what I did.
Yeah, that's so awesome that you've been through so much of our history of battle, right, I mean, boy, okay, so let me just rebring up my dad, former Green Brier.
Right.
He was in sixty eight sixty nine in the Navy in Vietnam and then went up until about ninety one ninety two as an SF guy. Same type of you know, timeframe that you put in. I'm sure he'd be like you're interviewing who today, Aaron.
He was probably in the swift boats down in three Corps, three and four corps.
He was a radio operator and so he did Morse code, and so he just talked, yeah, on a boat, some kind of boat, some kind of boat, frigate maybe a frigate.
Well, frigate's off shore. Was he in the Brownwater Navy or the Blue Water.
He said that they were being encroached, so their systems all shut down down and their boat stopped in Chinese waters perhaps, and they were just adrift and they were being encroached upon by Chinese and so they were burning everything inside of their boiler. So he or whatever, they're just burning everything, burned all the paperwork. They thought they would get boarded and attacked and et cetera. And then he said there was a marine who was on standby to put one in him if it was to come to that. So, since he was the radio guy and he handled every single thing for you know, the comms spoke the language of Morse code, and back then, back then, that's that's our cane now, yeah, exactly. It was essential then. I mean, when I was in the Vietnamese Rangers, the bulk of our communications was UHF by Morse code because we were in the deep Green and the FM didn't work, so we usually used a long wire antenna with one of the old World War two bicycle generator systems. And you had this Vietnamese guy with a Morse key on his leg, happy now you know, help us, help us, we're surrounded and overrun over. He probably had that down. He probably reputation. Oh man, my dad had that same system at home, and I would put it on and I'd sit there and tap it on myself, just not realizing what exactly as a young man, you know, ten eleven years old, growing up around all that equipment. But he told me as a joke, which wasn't a joke. He's like, oh, I mean when I was in the boy Scouts and Explorers, we did Morse code. Yes, you know that was one of the merit badges because at that time Morse was a primary means of transmission. Yeah, it was, you know, send a message off to another place and use Morse code. Come on, now, I've seen three amigos. I only have fifteen dollars to send a code just say we'll be there stop. Yeah really, And so I know I'm laughing with you, and I love that you were in the Boy Scouts. You know, I'm a big proponent of the Boy Scouts, and I know it's going to Scout in America, but I'm okay with the fundamentals of learning to sustain yourself in a situation or helping others in need.
Yeah. Well, I lived out in the country, which I still do, and the Boy Scouts and the Explorers in my area were really focused on the local environment. You know, we did a lot of hiking, fishing, learn how particular outdoor survival skills if you would. So it was valuable to me in my later life. I mean, I wasn't scared or ranger school. You know, I'd been in the Boonies shore, so you know, all I had helped in terms of development. But at the time you don't think about it. You know, you just do it because that's what everybody else is doing. So after a while you get comfortable with it, and you know that's that has all certainly helped me in the earlier part of my career. You know, Vietnam is the boony Yeah, so it didn't bother me that I was out there.
Because you'd already spent some time out there fishing and camping and setting up your tent and just you know, being on your own hearing noises at night, you just do exactly. You know, it's like, what's pacing around my tent right now out there? But now we got thermals thermal imaging for that. If you ever want to sit around a campfire and wonder if someone's looking at you, turn around with a thermal optic and see if you can see what's in the dark shadows behind the Holy Cow.
When I was in Vietnam on both my tours, that was way before we had any technology. We loggered up during the night because you couldn't see anybody, you know, in the bush. Now night is your primary operating time.
Yes, starlight night vision was just starting to float around.
Well, starlight needed moonlight, you know, if it was less than thirty percent PMI, they didn't really work.
X It's got billows that opened up to suck in the light, I believe, and so it has to have that light.
Yeah, but it was limited. You know, the optics then were limited so that it still needed light to gather so you could focus on the actual target you're looking at. Like I said, if you had less than thirty percent PMI. They were maybe good for only about twenty five or thirty meters any kind of moonlight. You could probably get one hundred meters out of it in an open.
Ground a football field.
Huh.
Yeah that's now Today you've got like high tech nudge, you know, modular I mean night vision, PBS phosphor.
The optic system does your killing. Yeah, thermally, you know, it tells you when you're on target, and all you got to do is follow the.
Really, I mean really really now you okay? In Vietnam now again, we came together by a mutual friend, Jim Johnson, his father, Jim Johnson Junior. I don't know if you're it was always Colonel Johnes. Colonel Johnson. He was my brigade. Was that during you know the time in Vietnam? When was he your brigade commander?
This is when I came back to the eighty second as a battalion commander, like nineteen eighty one through eighty four, and he was my first brigade commander and a really good guy. He allowed me to do things that perhaps he wouldn't have allowed with others because he understood what I was trying to do. Basically, I turned the two five of five into a ranger battalion, so it required a lot of work and some things that were kind of unusual for the eighty second. And he was very supportive, as was General Lindsay, the CG during that whole time.
That's really nice. And so he gave you kind of like free reign to do your job and do it and then you know, if he needs you.
He gave me very broad latitude and as long as I told him what I was doing, he would support me. You know. Occasionally when I would do something off the rails, he'd call me in and say, why did you do that? And I would say for the following reasons, whatever they were, and he'd say, okay, but talk to me next time before you do it. Let me know.
He was very taller, sure and understanding, but he knew the type of person that you were in your persona, and so he was able to work with you.
You know.
I mean, he does have his son who has like followed his legacy of being a stellar officer in the military as well. Do you ever get those two confused?
Junior is certainly part of his head. You know, they had the same basic characteristics you know, physically fit, understood soldiers, which not a lot of people do, and knew how to get the most out of people, which is another skill set.
Yeah, you know, and and I know he's going to be listening to this, So just a shout out to you, Jim, and thanks for bringing Keith into my life. And I love it. So far, so good, right, so far, so good. Now now, well, Jim, Jim Jr.
And I go back to Jordan. I spent a lot of time there, both in the Special ops as well as later as civilian on putting in a communications and ops center for the Jordanians. So you know, we knew his majesty and we knew the people around him, so we were both welcome because I think the Jordanians recognized us as being real soldiers, you know, not just you know, paper mache dummies with a contract.
Like to see you for you a warrior? Yeah yeah, well.
Sure, I mean I Abdullah was a colonel and the who ran the first the Special Operations brigade. He was at that time, he wasn't expected to be the king because the king's brother, Hussein uh you know, was the nextant line. So Abdullah then was basically the brigade commander. Uh, and we got on great. We jumped together at one of their airfields and then he treated me to a couple ebations out of the saddle bags of cool.
That's so cool. You know, he loves his camouflage. You know, he has like so many different active patterns in his Jordaanian military that are I just I look for them. I love like I've got my tiger stripe on right now, You've got your multi cam on right now, Like I love all different camouflages. Big props to him believing in his camouflage. I love that.
Well. He's very forward thinking and in an extremely difficult situation. You know, he, like his dad, has to walk a very small tightrope with their Palestinian population.
Uh.
You know, Abdullah is focused towards the West and Western values and h the situation today as well as previously. You know, he had to balance the desires of his Palestinian citizenry at the same same time with his beliefs and what needed to be done. Yeah, not an email task.
That region is definitely difficult to navigate in this day today. You know, it's a he's doing it, but he is a very Western valued kind of individual and or seems to be with his own you know, heritage, right, I get it.
Well, you know his education. He went to Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, and then he went to Camberly, you know, the military the West point for the United Kingdom, and you know that's where his value structure comes from, plus his own you know hash in my legacy.
That's amazing. And you jumped with him, that's so cool. Static line jump right.
Static line jump one thirty at one of the more distant airfields. His dad was in the audience. So we were going to jump, and I think the winds were probably twenty plus off the drop zone. I still have on my Tha fifty back there the scratch marks from being dragged across the runway, you know, and the wind trying to get us a parachute to drop. Bro.
That's a cool story right there. That's way I love airborne stories.
Airborne, well, it was it was unusual. I mean my dzso on the ground was giving me the wind readings and they were all eighteen to twenty five. Oh, you were just a normal no jumps in the US. But he also said that Jordanians that's with him says, this jump will happen, and even if you don't jump out, they will. So you know, it was basically a done deal. We just had to had to do it.
Not a segue, right like, because you got so much I read a lot of you know, just things that you want people to know about. Okay, So so Panama right. I got a friend who jumped into grenade Panama mad Max Mullen, Howard Mullan. He's a ranger Hall of Fame guy. And uh, did you go in on that as well? Were you a part of Uh?
No, I was not in on the initial assault. I came in on the follow on, on the reconstitution. Uh. We had we were still rooting out the a lot of the call it the Gorilla resistance. Even though we had gotten the pres out Pineapple Face, there was still.
A lot of.
No diego. There was still a lot of dissidents that we're trying to create issues with the election process. Billy Ford was the guy that was basically running for president in a democratic election, and so we had to work very closely with the newly installed Panamanian police plus our own intelligence networks to pinpoint these guys and put them in their box before the election began. The other part of it was squelching all these rumors that the US had killed thousands of Panamanians and had buried him in the woods. My job, among others, was to get with the most vehement anti US person who was claiming these mass casualties, and General Jallen gave me a platoon of engineers along with a couple of medics, and we went to every place that she said there were buried bodies, and we went out there with her on the side in the jungle with the engineers and we said, okay, where do you want us to dig, you know, and there was nothing there because there wasn't nothing.
You're looking for the accountability you're like, we'll take that was.
Sort of what we had to do to eliminate all the noise, uh in the election process. Well that's good.
At least you went and did that. I mean, you know, you were like, show us, show us where this is at, Like we'll go and uncover this in on earth this and figure why this what happened was this? That's that's a big atrocity to claim.
We also made a point of inviting the local press so that they could see you know, they hear what she says and then they see what they.
She's taking them there, and yeah, yeah, She's like, this is where it's supposed to be. This is X, this is X, this is what she's saying. They you like, let's go bring your press boom right, just clear the air.
Yeah, And you know, eventually she could see what was going on and she just basically bailed.
Are you anything to do with the Desert storm?
I was assisting on the intelligent side when I was Panama. Oddly enough, through General Downing. General Downing and I knew each other in the Ranger Battalion were the first creator. He was the second S three. I was a headquarters company commander slash plans officer, and we had been close ever since and actually through the day that he died. My particular job, because I had some unique intelligence ASSSS, was to independently look at some of the intel packages that he was given. He was a JASOK commander then, and I would give him an independent analysis of what I thought. It was very peripheral. You know, most of my time, all my time, virtually, it was spent chasing the druggies. You know. After we got Pablo, the thing shifted to developing host nation drug interdiction programs. You know, we worked with either their military or their federal police to go after the precursor chemical labs down in the south along the Pu Demle or up in the Andian Ridge Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, or wherever they would grow on the dope. You know, we would develop local host nation forces so they could chase after the drugies, and we would provide secondary support in a way of intelligence or oversight as to what they were doing. I had an a wax from Customs all. You know, Customs is our.
Big that's an aircraft with a big circle satellite dish that spins around on top of it.
And we would put the host nation people on board when they would run anop and they were just wow, you know, this is the cats mew. And because of that, they became a lot more supportive. You know, they initially were kind of suspicious, didn't want to do it, madeor problem in country because the Tugies had a lot of power, and you know, we would show them all with toys and we did a lot of ground training through the unit down there as well as I had CIA and DEA and Customs, and you know, we would put it all together and we'd target a drug lab and we would have the host nation guys go in against it directly, and we'd be overhead with the a wax with the locals on board, and they were directing their people. So it was very reinforcement.
Yeah, they're just seeing that you could see things that they had no idea it could be seen. And it just kind of like said, hey, check out a wax, right, this aircraft that has technology. And back then what yours was? This is like the eighties nineties.
No, this was nineteen ninety through ninety.
Yeah, nineteen ninety ninety three, right, So I mean a wax, right, I know what it does. You know what it does. But if you don't know what it does.
Right exactly, well, it was a shiny news boy. I mean, it didn't cost him any moody.
It listens to everything and sees things that no one else knows. And you're just like what they're watching TV in their house and that's the show. You're like, wait a second here.
Well, I you know example, I watched the takedown on Pablo looking at the Fleer feed from the Customs bird you know, I was actually in Panama on the op Center during this particular takedown, and we had an a wax overhead with locals on board from the search block, and you know, I was just getting the feed from the a wax. I could see him on the roof. I could see the vehicles pulling in and the guard guys chasing up the stairs and there's Pablo chunkin across the tile roof and he gets whacked and he's down, you know, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, draped over the tile.
Wow.
Man, Wow, technology is wonderful, I.
Mean really right. And so that takes care of that story right into story there. And so did his organization tricked? Is it still trying to thrive? Did it just fizzle down after he was taken?
What happened is basically, the Colombians eliminated Mediine when they eliminated Pablo as a force there. The drug program then was shifted over to Collie, way down south, and they were totally different organization, probably the most effective and efficient international business organization on the planet. These were guys that were ranchered, wealthy ranchers in Collie and what they did instead of shoot people, which was Pablo's approach. They just bought them off, you know, this judge and that cop and everything else. So it was very low key. That plus the E l N and the UH, the FARC created so many problems for Columbia that they just basically kind of forgot about the drug war, right, they pulled back and doing a whole lot. So I would say the shift to Collie was actually to our disadvantage. You know, if we had kept Pablo in place, we'd at least been able to contain him. Collie was much more sophisticated. I mean, their sons went to the Wharton School of Business. I was just going to London School of Economics. Yeah, and you know, it was just amazing to sit there. I was in the fence and office one day in Louisiana watching a money transfer go down with them among the bad guys, and that money in nano seconds went across about thirty banks. It became completely untraceable, you know, at a point and very quickly just boom. Yeah.
See these guys go get trained up and you don't even know who they are. Sometimes they're just like working next to everybody.
Well, you know, it's a bunch of teenagers in their garage, you know, doing it.
Yeah, I mean, you know. So there's other things that go along with it, like the guys that get the government contracts that can't fulfill it, but they apply for a contract next thing. You know, they're important the wrong AMMO and selling it to our troops. It's like they just get their hands into these situations. Like you said, sometimes it's luck. Sometimes you just stepped right into it, like I didn't, you know, and.
You know I don't.
That's crazy, right, No, Really, you went after Pablo Bro Pablo Escobar, and you've been involved in so many different theaters of operations. Right, it wasn't just based on just the Pacific you were. You did do a lot of Latin America, right, Yes, that really was between my army and my civilian life. I probably spent fifteen years more or less throughout Latin America. Initially when we were in Special Ops, when I was a major slash lieutenant colonel, we spent most of our time focused on El Salvador and Nicaragua and Honduras. I helped set up the camps and the Honduras side for the our side, and Ali North did the ones down south in Costa Rica. But we had two totally different reporting chains. I went through the agency guys and he had a separate program. But I remember seeing him get interviewed by Congress over the whole situation in his Marine Corps uniform, you know, and I sit with my dad.
He just kind of like, that's why. My handler, if you would, was very careful to make sure that we had memo on everything that we did. Every dollar was accounted for. We had the ambassadors sign off, negar Ponte on everything. So when they started looking at our side of the house, we were completely clean.
Right, You're like, audit me. Here you go. You know, you can live that line. You can live that life. You can say, yeah, it looks funny, but go ahead and audit it. And then they audit it and it's not funny. You know, I'm just saying, but then that's funny. It can be funny. And I know that during all of that, President Reagan and his administration was really trying to say, hey, you know, what's going on down the Contras and everything like that. You know, the violence of the Contras and their tactics of the contrast were not as hardcore as it was being propagated through the media or being talked about, you know, and then you have you're referred to them as Ali. But Colonel Oliver North, which a Colonel Oliver North at the time, you know, Marine Corps was around contrast, there was arms going to the Contras after it was supposedly stopped, right, and that's where he kind of got involved. You weren't in dealing.
That was the It was a deal with Iran. Yeah, uh, you know it was we had to figure out a way to get guns and money to the Iranians. And on Ali's side, I don't know quite how it meant worked, but they would they would get money from arm sales and it would end up supporting the Iran program. Was Iran contra. It was what the investigation was.
Right, right, And so I don't know, our guys.
Were pretty clean. In order for us to give them food, AMMO, take care of their families, you know, we required them to tell us what the op was going to be, and in many cases we provided the intelligence for the op and it was primarily resupply ops across the Gulf of Onseeca that we were trying to interdict because that there was the Nicaraguans say, and Denistas were shipping arms to El Salvador, and that was really our focus was preserving El Salvador.
Wow, that's you know that that whole era. The Contrast created one of the biggest video games in the world called Contra. I just want you to know. Nintendo just picked it up. They put a character like Arnold and Stallone as the two Bay guys that went running.
Through the game's the TV show Narco, I.
Know, I mean really, you know, yeah, I'm kind of speechless right now because what you've done is awesome and also not awesome but awesome. Does that make sense? Like you were in.
It was fun? Yeah, you know it was I had a lot of freedom, yes, and the general just said, you know, go do this broad terms, yes, and we'd pull all these people together play with new toys. You know. It was great, you could It was kind of like being in a giant toy box. You know. Suddenly I got agency NSA, you know, and a partridge and a pair of te and you go off, we.
Do it, yes, and it's great and we get done. Yeah, You're like this, let's get this done, and it would get done it Oh wow, wow, Wow. So when we talked on the phone the other day when we were touching base, you said that you you still go you go to the VA now? Or what's going on now that you're out? Are you you go to the VA? You're doing good? Everything's all up enough? Well answer yes and no, I have. I'm in remission from cancer, okay. And for that I went to UCLA Med, which has a number of branches in Santa Barbara, which is convenient for me. Plus all the rich old folks in Montecito donate a lot to the hospital. Good, so the food is actually pretty good.
So and that. Yeah, the big stuff I go to UCLA Med. The smaller call it continuing stuff. I go to the VA. They just opened up a new major facility in Ventura, which is close to me.
What do you think about that, DoD I my.
DP is there. Ironically enough, the guy used to be a med tech and the one sixtieth and you know we talked about that, the creation of Task Force one sixty and you know how it began, all things he had no idea of, you know. But yeah, for a lot of my meds because they're free, and I go there for my call it my GP checkups, you know, once every six months.
So the one sixtieth are you talking about the one sixtieth sore?
Yes, PASK Force one sixty. We created it in nineteen eighty one.
Is that what we call night stalkers today?
Yes, Nash Force went sixty, the SORE, the Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
Oh right, Oh, we saw.
The National GUARDH sixes and built it up from there to where it is today.
I love that. That is so neat. You are so cool. That is so I don't know. I just found the money. My job was to get the money.
Good job.
Well, the thing is that somebody came to you with their situation. You're like, well, let me find that. And you got it done because people listened to you, and those people that had broad, you know, rules with you like that allowed you do these things. They were like, hey, you're the guy man, here's the stamp. Let me stamp that for you, and you get it done.
I would say that, you know, this was not because I was so wonderful. It was because General Meyer, then the Chief Staff of the Army, mandated a lot of the things that we did over much of the opposition of his own general officers. And so people knew when I showed up, I was basically showing up with his requirements. So they didn't have They foddered as hard as they could, but they realized they were going to lose. So eventually they just quit fighting and you know, just did it. But it was extremely difficult. You know, my book Phoenix Rising I indicated in the second part how absolutely difficult it was. With the bureaucracy, the military bureaucracy. They didn't want to do it because it wasn't invented here. They kept demanding their own primacy, and it was essential that everything in they call it the Special Packages be unified. You know, we had to have aviation, we had to have maritime, we had to have the ground pounders. So you know, they had all of these unique units and they operated essentially in a stovepipe through the newly created JSOCK and then before that through the JTF the Honey Badger period. Immediately after the Iran rescue failed, Carter said, you've got to be ready to go back in ten days. So whatever you need, do it now. Allway, handcuffs are off. Whatever you need, you're going to get. And so General Meyer took that as a requirement and created out of whole cloth. You know, the Secret Army of Northern Virginia is a task Force one sixty the Rangers in a special operations mode, which the Army hated. They wanted it to stay conventional, and a much improved Delta force. All of that came out because of the failure and the honey Badger period lasted about eighteen months before Jaysok took full of control of the forces and the assets. But that building period was incredibly important to where we are today. I am absolutely satisfied that the failure in Iran on their rescue led to our ability to get Osama bin Waden. Had we succeeded, the Service chiefs les Meyer would have wiped their hands of it and disassembled everything, and they tried to do that. When General Wickham replaced General Meyer, he didn't like special ops, you know. He brought his own brand of puritism, if you would, to the army and he tried to kill it all of the organizations. And he went to the sec Army John Marsh, who was wearing his asd Solik, hat the DoD special operations are at and he said Wickham and Thurmann said we want to get rid of Task Force one sixty. We wanted to disband ISA, and we want to return the rangers to conventional infantry. And what Marsh did is he gave him a time out and he started asking people offline about the organizations and what they were doing and how they were doing it, primarily through General Downing, who did all of this clandestinely back door. Myself and a couple other people went up to the hill to talk with our favorite committees, the hask ASSASS, the HISSIC and Assistic and get their take on it. All of this was reported back to Marsh and so he told Wickham and Thurman, ain't no way you're going to do this. In fact, you're going to support them to the maximum extent possible. And I want to weekly memo on my desk what you're doing to support them and so that preserve the force. Uh. And I'm absolutely convinced that if Wickham had been allowed to have his way, that what you see today would not have existed. Would not exist, Yeah, would have.
Yeah, that it just makes sense to have you guys, you know, my dad, you guys, the guys out there doing these things, the gals that are out there well, you.
Know, you need kind of special units to do special things. You know, if you have a hostage rescue thing, you can't jump in the eighty second?
Did he not see the dirty doesn't ever?
You know, there's got to be a different alternative, and you know that's why we were created, the Joint Task Force. You know, the JCS met a day after the hostage situation in the embassy and he said, what are our items? Well, we can newcomb or we can send in eighteenth Airborne Corps. You know, there was no middle ground anywhere, which is why we were created. Wow.
Now I have another friend that you might know, Colonel Danny McKnight arranger arranger right blackhawk down noted, and he does or did war games with me for a long time. He was my I would hunt him okay, and he was Alpha commander, and then Max Mullen was Bravo commander, so I'd usually fight with Max, and then sometimes I would go over and fight as lieutenant for Danny as the colonel for the war games that we would do, he would you know, run the whole Alpha team and then I would be one of his lieutenants over a platoon, etc. He's like rat Where are we going to go today? What are we going to do today? Rad? What are we gonna do? So, you know, did you have anything to do with you know, Serpent and you know Somalia in that whole situation that went down over there with market.
Well Tangentially, I had retired in July. The Olympic Hotel went down. On three October. I was living in McLean. General Downing asked me to meet and talk to the eight casualties that were sent back to Walter Reid. So I interviewed all of them, got their story about various things, and reported that back to General Downing. Some was good news and some was bad news. And General Downing was not always appreciative of bad news, but he understood it and that was the important part, you know. And that had to do with shall we say, command control arrangements as well as personal performances. Wow.
Yeah, So what are you doing today? I know that you're an official member or citizen in France for the Normandy. I understand that you still go back there is that something that's happening. We're recording this in May. It's coming out. I go back every year since I retired, and I give the terrain walk staff rides to all the active duty troops, and I do that based on my experience with the originals. I took the eighty second back to Normandy for the first time since World War Two on the fortieth anniversary, and we landed there and it was just incredible. And during this period of this particular experience, on six June nineteen eighty four, General Gavin thence retired, arranged for twelve bus loads of veterans of that period to greet us and walk us around, and he gave us the staff rights that I give today, and he had all of the captains and corporals and PFCs that were each one of these sites talked to us about what they saw, what they did, how the thing unfolded. And that was on top of my earlier discussions with Vet's beginning in nineteen seventy seven when I visited Normandy for the first time. All that together gave me a tremendous sense of what actually occurred on a given site, the human facts, you know, the facts behind the faces behind the facts you know. And I wrote a book about it, The Human Face of d Day, which you can buy cases of on Amazon, and it kind of lays out the whole Normandy invasion and from the viewpoint.
Of the people that actually participated, what they told you from the very beginning of this why I was Normandy selected all the way through the planning, the preparation, the execution, and then the subsequent follow on. And I kind of take it as a personal responsibility to pass on to the actives what the originals told me. And my thought is that if an active troop is in some deep dark place and deep ship, he will think back and he'll remember what happened at La fier Bridge and he'll say, if they can do it, I can do it, and it just gives them a little extra gas in the tank, a boost affirmative. Yeah, that book. I do it every year and I love to do it. It's my annual rejuvenation.
This Human Face of D Day. They got cases of it on Amazon for you to buy. Go out there get Yeah. I leave it a review, Please go buy Human Face of D Day. We will have that posted up in the Little Dissertation blog.
And five star reviews. The more reviews I get, the more Amazon put.
The five stars for the for the kernel. No, that's great. So you also have Phoenix Rising. Correct, Yes, Phoenix Rising is about the Iran Rescue. I kept a sort of a journal throughout the entire period from when I was first called up to when we finished with Honey Badger. That's kind of part one my own observations of people, things and issues. And the second part is about the Honey Badger period and how we created these forces against all the opposition of the bureaucrats to kill it in place. So you know, the first part's interesting to say, at parts boring, but if you're into this stuff, it'll give you a complete picture of how we got.
To where we are today. Oh yeah, and a little bit of you know, slam dunk on some personalities, but that just.
Makes you know. I see if my editor guy that runs that part of our soft Rap, would be interesting getting your books into our book club, you know, jure, Hey, please, you know what I mean. I will. I'll link us up in an email together, so I'll say, hey guy, this is Keith et cetera.
And don't forget my first book, Just Another Day in Vietnam, Just Another Day, where I talk about one battle when I was a lieutenant in the Ranger Battalion Vietnamese ranger battalion.
Dude, So like you're alert.
All these wonderful options that are open, three books, five star reviews cases, they're great stocking.
St Colonel never thought when he was writing triplicate papers in his office with a typewriter that he'd be pushing five star Google reviews in twenty twenty four.
Exactly, saint technology. I never could have written it if I just had time.
I tell you what, at least I remember typewriters, right, So I was born in seventy seven. To let you know, just to let you know we're okay.
Well, I had a elite typewriter when I was in college, a tiny little type, and I could put the story of the world on one page.
Say, with my dad.
My dad was like.
Two fingers, go into town. Then he got really good with his just regular fingers. But you know sometimes those keys would get stuck and he's like pop it out. You know, he's in flow, get stuck on him. And I still have his typewriter. As a matter of fact, Well I am.
I am still two things, two fingers, but I can do sixty words a minute with two things. That's great.
I love that.
I love that.
Okay, So Look, we've had a great conversation. We've talked about things that you've done. There's things that we're never going to talk about that you've done. You get to take those with you, all right, And uh, I want to say thanks and welcome home from all your shitty situations you've ever been in. And uh, welcome back home. One in the sun and income to I love that you're wearing your camouflage. And I got mine on today that wasn't even talked about. So I'm right there with you.
Great jacket is perfect for my needs. You know, I'm my old guy. You got to have a little something on your rabs and all. And this is lightweight. I'll have this and point to hawk when I'm there next.
Let me let me ask you, though, there's one thing that's in yours on your shelf that I wanted to ask you about. Right, you got so many little, uh collectible things. Is that like a Scout cap? Bear cup? Is that a cover over your shoulder?
No?
That is my father's campaign Yeah from nineteen thirty nine.
Wow, what was Tell me real quick about your father? Looks like a boy scouts. Tell me about your father? Give me a brief story about that.
Well, my dad went to Stanford. He was commissioned in nineteen thirty nine in ROTC. Didn't was not activated, he was just in the reserves. And then in nineteen forty he was activated and he had his first exercise at Camp San Louis Obisito. He was an artillery and that was his hat. That was the standard uniform, you know, the high wool things, you know, San Luis paths, you know, in August, you can visualize it with my mom and they lived in a taskadero and there were signs at that time for rentals, you know, room for rent or house for rent, and it would say no dogs or soldiers. So you know, it was not a very supportive area until of course Pearl Harbor then it became very supportant. But anyway, that was his campaign hat.
And I've got underneath it my hat from the my Cami my Cami head gear from two five oh five.
We were the mop top.
I love that.
I love it.
I love it because you don't want to be just a roundhead.
You want to have well what it did? You know? I said when I commanded two five oh five, I turned them into a ranger batown, Yeah, which is sort of what I did because based on my personal experience and I wanted something to set them apart from the rest of the day. So my S three at that time was a brit Exchange officer and he said, well, why don't we wear the British Airborne camouflage helmet. Oh, that was a great idea. So we did that and they were unique to the street. Nine battalions, one of them were of the mop top and I did that as a motivational tool to get them to work harder. I said, hey, you guys are different, You're really good. You've got to meet the standard, work harder. And I'd give them high standards and they'd meet it because they was so proud of being in the unit with the mop top. It made a huge psychological difference to the troops in terms of, you know, leadership and what you could get out of them and their own sense of self worth. That's a long an. I love it.
No, I'm going to grow from that. I'm growing as a leader from you right now. I appreciate that, and my listener is going to appreciate that. Strive for excellence. I love that, So thank you for implementing that with all of your.
Esse.
Is that okay, sure, whatever work I think that works. I think that works, non applaud just say said money. Go buy his books. Go check out Human Face of d Day, Phoenix Rising, and Just Another Day in Vietnam written by Keith Nightingale. Retire kernel of a lot of things, in a lot of life, and I wish you much more life. And I'm glad you're in remission. And I'm glad we've now met and talked and again to Jim who put us in connection, I'm just gonna shot him out again. Thank you. I appreciate it. Hit me up with any more referrals, just like Keith, you're the best. Thank you for listening to soft Rep and on behalf, on behalf of Keith Nightingale and myself and Brandon Webb and my producers and everybody Martin and everybody on the email chains. I thank you so much for being a part of my life and letting me have this opportunity to talk to people like Keith. I'm truly blessed with this. So with that, I'm going to end the call and say peace from all of us here. Soft Rep.
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