Mike Ritland
speaker
855 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Feb 2025
Mike Ritland’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
What did you think of working with the SEALs? My first impression of them weren't great because we had a few interactions with them where I'll never forget, you know, at the time I was, I believe, still in E6.
I hadn't made E7 yet, but I had combat rotation behind me and I was on my second deployment and had been in training for years, had been in the military and the infantry, and so I had a background. I'll never forget one of the young SEALs being told by one of my guys who was a senior guy. I was the most junior guy in the SIF.
A SIF, a Commanders and Extremist Forces, filled with the most senior guys in the group. I think my detachment years later, everybody made Master Sergeant the same time. Like an entire senior team with guys with multiple deployments. I had the least amount of combat. Guys on average had three or four rotations, and this is early GWAT. He said,
hey, maybe you should hang out with these guys because we could do some cross training and maybe teach you guys some things. And he said, what could your guys possibly teach mine? You got to be shitting me. He said that. And... And I was humbled to the fact that a lot of my own guys were so senior and already legends in the community. There was already stories about them. And so I paid attention.
And we had a lot of experiences like that with the young SEALs, but a lot of them weren't. I mean, Jeremy Wise, who eventually went to work for the CIA and he was killed, unfortunately, in a suicide bombing. He was there, he was great. A couple of guys that are now in other special missions units were working with me and they were great.
So I didn't have a horrible experience, but it was different. I mean, a young SEAL coming out of training, 21, 22, and even at that time I was 26 at the time. So it was different, but we got along good. I mean, we didn't have problems with operating with them and we had a lot of action and we had a lot of fun that rotation.
What comes next? Another rotation in the SIF. I mean, the SIF is a grind. I did three SIF rotations that I racked back to back.
going to war coming back going to war coming back going to war coming back i eventually moved up into reconnaissance in special operations and became a sniper went to sniper school went to free fall school and started specializing my efforts on long on the long gun so between unilateral operations which is working with task force the joint task force
I think at the time we were working with Tom DeTomaso, who's a famous Black Hawk down platoon leader, and he was a special missions unit commander.
we we operated under him and under task force 16 which is stanley mccrystal's big uh you know kill capture conglomerate of the best units in the world we were part of that effort when we went out and crushed bad guys for years i mean it was it was a good run of killing a whole bunch of bad guys yeah so i did that for three rotations in a row you've got a hell of a career man yeah thanks man
So you leave there and then... So I leave and start grinding to build up this unit, hire and fire a couple of guys.
Build up a skill set for special reconnaissance in the continent of Africa to be able to respond to crisis That potentially happened and there was no There was no at the time Organization that was covering down on Africa because it used to be third groups responsibility, but because of the war We had a change in hands and change in responsibility So we stood it up It was a grind.
We got validated by Special Operations Command. And that was, ironically enough, September 1st of 2012. We got validated. And a week later, or September 11th, Benghazi happens. Mm-hmm.
I had already been notified prior to Benghazi happening that my team and myself was going to be the first guys into Libya to run what's called a 12-weight program, which is a congressionally mandated counterterrorism program to counter al-Qaeda, which therein lies the Benny. Therein lies the point, which is before September 11th, 2012, I had already been identified.
We're going to go in there, stand up a counterterrorism force to counter Al Qaeda. So it's often been said that, hey, oh, there was no threats there. There was threats, there was bombings, there were shootings, there was attacks on the UN, foreign nationals, embassy staff. So I was getting all those intel sit reps before that happened. And then obviously that happened and it changed everything.
Where were you when that happened? Ironically enough, I was back in... special missions units compound doing a crosstalk brief with basically a key leader engagement with the team lead from Team Libya that had been designated and me and the other guy from my unit because we were former unit members of that unit we were there doing a crosstalk I'll never forget I went
I went there and met up with a J-3, which was at the time a colonel, and he told me last night, this just happened and this is what's going on. And so I stayed an extra few days to assess the situation and to get tied in because at that point, it was my unit's responsibility to react and respond outside of obviously the primary main effort
that unit that i was in's responsibility of uh responding to that crisis so was this happening was benghazi happening real time when you found out yes yeah it was happening real time it had it had it was it had it was still active and it was still happening and i was watching on isr things things unfolding jesus christ yeah is this what ultimately led you to separate
Yeah, so that's exactly right. Long story short, I deployed to Libya soon after that and stood up a 1208 program and We had all the right things done to go after the guys that were responsible for the killing of the four personnel that were killed in Benghazi. You know, Ambassador Stevens, Smith, and then Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods. So we went there. I was deployed there for over six months.
I busted my ass and tried everything I could to kill or capture those guys with obviously other special operations units that were there. One other special operations unit that was there. And we offered up a full platter. Kill capture, bilateral mission, unilateral mission, whatever you want, we'll do.
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