Mind. You must fight confusion, you must fight fear. And this was when theres great physical fatigue and when theres great mental fatigue, your mind gets worn out. The ability to persevere through that mental fog is another test. And thirdly, to dominate your spirit, to drive your will, to constantly go forward. To be able to do those three things at the same time, there are individuals who can do one or the other or the third one. To really do all three is really extraordinary. And this culture that creates these unique people is under threat as our politically correct Defense Department begins to change what is culturallily allowed under this unique set of commandos is changing as well. And that was interesting to me, so thats why i wrote this book. Host are there women . Guest not yet. Although the Defense Department is certainly looking at this. There are former seals who have had a sex change operation, so some would say there are women now. But seals are unusual outliers. I mean, not everyone can be a seal. Very few people can. Its an extraordinary thing. Whether theres a lot of debate within the community, within the Seal Community about women, whether women can physically do it. I talked to a u. S. Army ranger instructor, someone who trains rangers, and rangers have a very demanding physical program as well. And he pointed out the case of an olympic athlete, a woman who couldnt get through ranger training. And there are male olympic athletes who female. So the question is whether or not you can maintain the same standards and have women. And that sounds like a political question, but with the navy seals involved, its really a practical and physical one. Can you, you know, do the pushups, can you carry the heavy load, can you physically endure for, you know, 140 hours . Can you carry those heavy logs, you know . Can you physically do the job . Because seals are operating in some of the most demanding environments on earth. There are seal operations where theyre dropped from 40,000 feet at, you know, eight miles high into a cold ocean ten miles offshore where theyre swimming underwater. One of the missions we talked about in this book, theyre literally swimming with sharks in the philippines, swimming in the cold waters of pacific to set up surveillance beacons. Theyre operating at high altitudes, 11, 12,000 feet in the mountains of afghanistan and other places. So that takes a great deal of physical endurance. Host how Many Navy Seals are there, and how many try out . Guest the exact number is classified, but it is roughly about 2,000 navy seals worldwide, and then theres an Alumni Organization of a few thousand more. At some point i think every boy thinks and girls, im sure, do too think think about beia navy seal, but those who actually get to try out is about 10,000 over the course of the last ten years. So to even get to the point where youre able to go to basic underwater Demolition School which they call basic training for seals is a demanding process by itself. Used to be you had to join the navy and go through navy basic training. Now you can join the navy and get seal training directly. But even after buzz be theres sqt which is another demanding training program, so it takes about a year and a half, two years of tbriewling Selection Process to get through that that program, and very few do. Less than 20 in most classes make it through the program. And these are highly selected, highly fit young people with demonstrated capabilities. Annapolis grads, former marines, or olympic athletes. All these people fail. Host how long does one stay in the . Guest thats a great question. You think its a young mans game, but ive met a great deal of seals who are still in active duty who are in their mid to late 30s. Often they want to do about 20 years to get the pension. A Record Number of early retirements, people leaving after 16 years or after 12 years. And thats because today sense that its becoming more politically correct. There are alqaeda prisoners who press charges which turned out to be false, and seals were later exonerated at trial, but the trials went on for a year and a half before they were exonerated, and once they were found not guilty, i mean, this is the case with the Seal Team Ten captured the alqaeda leader at fallujah whos responsible for hanging those four american bodies off the bridge in fallujah, that infamous atrocity that was seen around the world. Five years later Seal Team Ten captured the guy behind it. It was a flawless operation. They turned him in without firing a shot. It reads like a thriller, the chapter on how they caught him. But the guy behind it was woken up about four hours after the capture and said youre in big trouble. He said, why . The prisoner as a bloody lip, and that led to a year and a half of legal charges of abuse of a prisoner. Seals were later exonerated. Many of those then decides, you know, after theyd been subjected to this tree of legal scrutiny, they just didnt want to sign up for another tour. And the fact is lost millions of dollars of training and investment in each of these men. This is something we need to think about. Yes, we need to protect the human rights of prisoners, but we also have to realize that the alqaeda in manuals that weve captured in the somali plains, afghanistan, trains people to make false reports in order to tie up our military in red tape and keep our war fighters off the field. Be aware that sometimes the enemy will make false reports on purpose, not in good faith. And we have to protect the seals and other special operators from that, or theyll spend all their time in court and not enough time protecting our fellow americans from some of the deadliest people on earth, alqaeda and the taliban. Host what kind of access were you granted officially to write guest i got a fair amount of very good access to current and retired seals. Some of whom are not named in the book. But i think both my coauthor scott mckind who cowrote american sniper, we both had a fair amount of access to interesting people. Why do we hear so much about Seal Team Six . Guest well, should we be hearing so much about Seal Team Six . One of the things the seals complain is that theyre becoming famous. And they thought it was a mistake for Vice President biden to label them as the executioners of osama bin laden. And when there was an attack about 09 days after bin lands death, shooting down a helicopter which led to the single greatest loss of life for navy seals in their history difference dday, they thought that was retaliation by alqaeda for them killing osama bin laden. So naming them, they think, put their lives at risk and the lives of their families at risk. We know from intelligence documents, this is in the book, that alqaeda has an online unit that looks through social media, especially facebook, to find the identities of seals and their families. Host seal is an acronym for guest sea, air and land, basically. It was a term developed in the kennedy years. Before that they were the frogmen of the underwater demolition team. They snuck into enemy or harbors and put bombs on the bottom of the boats and cleared obstacles for submarines during world war ii. Seals came about in the early 1960s through kennedy. Kennedy, of course,jfk had been a skipper, and he understood the ability of a small boat, a small crew of Navy Personnel what a big difference they could make in combat, especially in the pacific. So he pushed for a Naval Commando force that could go in the sea, the air and the land, all terrains, all environments. Not just operating from ships, but operating very far from land. And now, you know, so in vietnam they went out of the blue waters of the navy into the brown waters of counterinsurgency and deep into the jungles, laos, cambodia, vietnam and hmong areas. And in the current war, the war on terror, the seals are operating thousands of miles from the sea. Some of them say the only water we have is in our canteens. Richard miniter, you finished up eyes on the target in benghazi. Guest thats right. We thought benghazi gets ignored, and its an important part of the seal story because two of the four victims of the benghazi attacks, Glenn Doherty and ty woods, are former navy seals. And this is something that we in the course of our interviews about the history of the navy seals we kept hearing about what about glenn and ty, they would say. And benghazi is a fascinating story, and its been largely overlooked by the media. We found a couple of things that are new. Weve done an intelligence report, we found three intelligence reports that were circulating inside cia and Defense Department and, most importantly, inside state department in the months before the deadly attack in benghazi warning about an alqaeda buildup. One of these reports showed photographs of an alqaeda rally in martyr square in downtown benghazi. About two months before the attack in june 2012. There were some 900 alqaeda 300 alqaeda activists publicly calling for the death of the u. S. Ambassador. At the very same time the state department is denying security for that ambassador. They also knew that the private life of ambassador stevens was known and used as a targeting device by alqaeda. Who some of his friends and associates were if benghazi, his jogging schedule was posted on alqaedas facebook page. All in this this utterly ignored. And we have sort of a minutebyminute account of the attack and the immense value that Glenn Doherty and ty woods had in saving the lives of more than 40 Diplomatic Security personnel in benghazi. So they didnt also i dont think they had to die. The ambassador and sean smith died in the first half an hour of the attack. They were separated in a small building which was, they were suffocated to death. The attackers knew exactly where the diesel fuel was hid on the u. S. Embassy grounds, or the u. S. Diplomatic outpost grounds. They were able to break into those drums and set the building on fire where the ambassador died of smoke inhalation. But the other two, today died eight hours later. This was a rolling attack. So there was ample time to save them and the other americans. But also we wanted to highlight their role, their seal training, you know, how they both volunteered. One came from tripoli, the other came from across town this benghazi to save the besieged diplomats and how their sacrifice saved a lot of lives. Host this photograph on the front, is this posed, or is this a guest no, its not posed. Thats a shot taken in afghanistan, i believe in 2003 although dont hold me to that. Host and those are navy seals . Guest those are navy seals, yep. Host richard miniters newest book is eyes on the target. Thank you for your time. Guest thank you. Booktv is on facebook. Like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers, watch videos and get uptodate information on events. Facebook. Com booktv. Booktv covers hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long. Heres a look at some of the events well be attending this week. Look for these programs to air in the near future on booktv on cspan2. On tuesday were in princeton, new jersey, at labyrinth bookstore for kwame appiahs account of w. E. B. Dubois time at the university of berlin. Hell speak with cornell west, author and Professor Emeritus at princeton university. That same day were at book passage book store in california as Steven Pressman recalls the efforts of gilbert and Eleanor Krause to rescue 50 jewish children from nazicontrolled vienna in 1939. Then on wednesday ralph nader speaks at politics prose bookstore in washington d. C. He argues an alliance is emerging between progressives, conservatives and libertarians to fight against the power of corporations. Thats a look at some of the author programs booktv will be covering this upcoming week. For more go to our web site, booktv. Org, and visit upcoming programs. Historian Simon Shah Ma presents a 3,000year history of the jewish people next on booktv. This is a little under an hour. [applause] thank you. Settle down. [laughter] there will, as usual, be an exam later on, so pay attention. Dont want to hear any snoring. Thank you so much, free library. I should say thank you to pbs as well for allowing us to make a wonderful coproduction with the bbc. Its always really wonderful to come back to philadelphia. It reminds me that, actually, i think this is right, goodness, historians ought to get their dates right, but in 1790 it must be the case that washington was still living in philadelphia. American historians, is that right . Yes . And when he goes on tour with Thomas Jefferson to promote the bill of rights, the constitutional amendments as well as the becoming more acquainted with the country as he charmingly put it, the two famously Founding Fathers not getting on terribly well, and they visit newport, rye, rhoe island, as you know. This sounds to me, you know, i sound to myself like the kind of cross between a