Rogue Warrior: Rogue Warrior I (Hardcover)

When Marcinko goes on about dealings with purchasing equipment, I KNOW he's full of it. He claims the higher ups told him to buy an American car for undercover ops in Europe and he disobeyed, claiming the US nameplate was a dead giveaway so he bought a Mercedes instead. Yes a US car may have been a bad idea, and yes brass may have ordered one without thinking. I do know however that the procurement system does NOT intail giving a Comander a check for several thousand dollars and telling him "go buy a car".

I don't think the navy has ever acknowledged this yahoot and it wouldn't surprise me to find out he was a E3 Yeoman that got thrown out for drunken brawling.

Apparently he never expected anyone that was station at roosevelt Roads naval station to read this book. In the opening scene he describes an action where his team was sent to recover a stolen nuke, they were not told it was an exercise, didn't check their loads to dicover blanks, and were apparently dumb enough to believe terrorists would hide their pilfered nuke on the Naval gunnery range on the island of Vieques. Which for 2 years I could see from my bedroom window. 3/4 of this island was owned by the military! What kind of moron would hide something you stole in the house of the person you stole it from? OK Jon Benet Ramsey's parents, but other than that?

Personally, I believe Marcinko would have gone much further in the Navy chain of command had he stopped drinking. Had the guy had the sense to cut the boozing out, he probably would have made Admiral. I seriously doubt he would have ended up in prison had he cut out the booze. Its obvious the guy lives for booze and is a hardcore alcoholic. Because of his boozing, I dont see Marcinko as someone to look up to, like say I would look up to Colonel Charlie Beckwith or Dick Meadows.

As for the book itself, its basically a more flamboyant, testosterone filled version of Charlie Beckwith's "Delta Force." Marckinko describes basically the same exact problems in establishing SEAL Team Six that Beckwith encountered in establishing Delta Force. Principle among these problems were intense disagreements over the SEAL Team Six chain of command. Marcinko describes how he was oftentimes more at war with the conventional Navy bureaucracy and the established SEAL community of the early eighties era than with international terrorists.

Marckinko describes how conventional SEAL officers of the early eighties era fought vigorously to keep SEAL Team Six in the east coast SEAL chain of command. Basically keeping it regular Navy and having total Navy control. Whereas Marcinko wanted Team Six in the brand new, "high speed" JSOC chain of command that Delta Force was part of. Marcinko wanted Team Six as part of the JSOC, whereas the east coast SEAL Headquarters and conventional Navy resisted this severely. It was only thru repeated bypassing of the normal chain of command that Marcinko got his way. And he obviously made a ton of enemies within the regular Navy and even the conventional SEAL community doing this.

Marcinko was an independent officer who did his own thing, rather than bowing down to the conventional Navy and the conventional SEAL officers of the late seventies and early eighties. Again, many of his problems are exactly what Charlie Beckwith describes in his own book "Delta Force," written in the early eighties.

In addition, some of the things Marcinko mentions in his book are pure bull. Such as his claim that his men had to be able to bench press 500 lbs to climb special ladders to clandestinely board ships underway. Being able to bench press 500 lbs has little to nothing to do with being able to climb ladders or ropes. In fact, the muscle groups used in these activities are totally different. Again, much of this book is testosterone filled bull, from someone who is obviously a megalomaniac.

Despite this, its still a good read and Id recommend it to anyone interested in SEALs or SOF. One thing I admired about Marcinko was his total lack of respect for bureaucracy and conventional thinking.

Its my personal opinion that had he stopped drinking in the late seventies or early eighties, Marcinko probably would have made Admiral and might have ended up commanding the SEAL community when USSOCOM was formed. Or he might have been able to have become the second or third in command officer at JSOC. Instead, he ended up going to federal prison.

After reading this book and Marcinko's other books the basic message Ive gotten is threefold and simple. First, you cant have a real SOF unit without a clean, direct, bureaucracy free SAS type chain of command. Secondly, in the real world the SEALs take a backseat to Delta. And thirdly, booze destroys good men.