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Apr 12 2009, 6:19 pm by Marc Ambinder

SEAL Team Six v. The Pirates

Background information provided by the White House provides an intriguing clue as to the identity of the Navy SEAL team that rescued Capt. Richard Phillips from Somali pirates. After the mission, Obama telephoned several military officials, including "Vice Admiral William McRaven, Commander Joint Special Operations Command."  Interesting choice; it means that at least some of the Navy Seals who participated in the rescue were part of a classified special missions unit -- the Naval Special Warfare Development Group -- DevGru, popularly known as "SEAL Team Six."   The commander of JSOC technically provides support for other special forces (SF) units. But really -- the JSOC commander overseas Delta Force, SEALTeam Six and other secret teams.

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Comments (6)

Froggy

Good pick up Marc. Most media outlets fail to capitalize all of the letters in the word SEAL, assuming, I suppose, that we are named after the animals rather than the media in which we fight. I'm quite impressed that you even know the difference between JSOC, SOCOM, DevGru, and so on.

Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle

Seal Team Six? So this is the unit that Richard Marcinko was charged with creating? I hope, where ever in the DC area he is(I believe), he is proud as all hell.

flynnbw

Just goes to show that, for all the high-tech gadgets that the Pentagon has spent billions on, it's a U.S. Navy SEAL sniper team that wins the day.

As a former military member, I'm impressed that the president had the confidence in our armed forces to basically say "I trust your judgment, if the captain is threatened, take out the pirates."

slag

OK. I've read this post three times. Even clicked on the link (yay internet!). Still don't get the big picture here. What's so intriguing?

wallyz

Slag-

SEAL team six , or DevGru, is very secretive, and we are not supposed to find out what they do or when they do it. The White house gave us clues that DevGru was involved, and Marc connected the Dots. This is a defense/military wonk interest post. If you are not a defense/military wonk, this post is not very interesting.

GirlieGirl

Impressed and happy that the DevGru was involved. No surprise it went extremely well. Those three snipers had to work as a single entity to carry off such an extremely difficult operation. Way to go Seals!