"Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators"

[WillBrink]

Speaking of Billy Waugh, this interview with author Annie Jacobsen who was good friends with him. She wrote the book "Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins" which supposedly Billy gave the OK on and is a major focus of her book.

[BoringGuy45]

Read this book about 2 years ago. Excellent read!

[ABNAK]

Didn't he deploy to Afghanistan in his 70's? Dude was hard as nails!

[Sam]

Didn't he deploy to Afghanistan in his 70's? Dude was hard as nails!

Yep. He was on one of the Jawbreaker Teams, might have been on the first or second team.

I read that Annie Jacobson book, it also covered his time tracking down Carlos the Jackal.

[WillBrink]

Just finished Surprise, Kill, Vanish. The amount of research she did for that book is astounding. The book is much more than just about Waugh, but he's the central figure in the book. One of the real take aways was that for the most part, the CIA acted on orders from POTUS, often after being clear they didn't support nor recommend the actions taken. There's plausible deniability built in from the start for POTUS's "hidden hand" operations that when/if they go titz up as they often do, never lands on POTUS. The book also makes it very clear 9/11 would have been avoided had the useless coward of a POTUS wouldn't let Waugh and co do their jobs when they knew exactly where OBL was at all times and could have and would have removed that POS easily. The MacVSOG stuff is also really interesting and much of it only recently declassified or gotten by her and others doing some FOIA work. Waugh was still doing work for the CIA in his early 80s!

[BoringGuy45]

Just finished Surprise, Kill, Vanish. The amount of research she did for that book is astounding. The book is much more than just about Waugh, but he's the central figure in the book. One of the real take aways was that for the most part, the CIA acted on orders from POTUS, often after being clear they didn't support nor recommend the actions taken. There's plausible deniability built in from the start for POTUS's "hidden hand" operations that when/if they go titz up as they often do, never lands on POTUS. The book also makes it very clear 9/11 would have been avoided had the useless coward of a POTUS wouldn't let Waugh and co do their jobs when they knew exactly where OBL was at all times and could have and would have removed that POS easily. The MacVSOG stuff is also really interesting and much of it only recently declassified or gotten by her and others doing some FOIA work. Waugh was still doing work for the CIA in his early 80s!

The pattern in the book was that every time the CIA was going to save the day, either the president or the military screwed everything up. But every time the president or the military had the right idea, the CIA weaseled their way into the operation and screwed everything up.

[WillBrink]

The pattern in the book was that every time the CIA was going to save the day, either the president or the military screwed everything up. But every time the president or the military had the right idea, the CIA weaseled their way into the operation and screwed everything up.

The expansion of Ground Branch from small to a large group of face shooters post 9/11 was interesting also. 9/11 never needed to happen, Iraq II shouldn't have happened. So many missed opportunities.

[Campbell]

Great read, I really appreciate the research that went into it.

[Harpoon]

"I'm from the US government and we're here to help."