Watch: The Green Beret is an outdoorsman trained to live and fight anywhere

As U.S. Special Forces recently turned 67 years old, it is interesting to take a look back at this public service announcement from the 1960s about the legendary Green Berets. Check out the video to learn more, but you may also enjoy this interview I did with Sergeant Major (Ret.) William Bowles. Sergeant Bowles passed away in […]

Watch: 1984 documentary about Special Operations Forces sounds oddly like 2019

In recent years, we’ve witnessed the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and an annexation of Crimea. Television news channels are nearly hysterical reporting about covert Russian influence campaigns in the United States. Think tanks and policy councils weigh in on these events and delivered a series of terms like […]

Op-Ed: Where does the Italian Army go?

In recent years, we’ve witnessed a slow breakdown of Italian military institutions. It’s a crisis that affects the whole of Europe but in Italy, has consequences that reflect on the dignity of the army environment. The most worrying data related to the investment which, with Italian Defense Minister Elisabetta Trenta, has reached an all-time low. […]

US Special Operations Command rolls from the TALOS boondoggle into another with Hyper-Enabled Operator

Four years ago, NEWSREP reported that United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) developed the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS)—a hardened exo-skeleton suit for special operators—and it was really a sham, but promising technologies emerged in the process. From 2015’s “TALOS: Special Operations Powered Armor or Just Another Boondoggle?” Initiated under Admiral William H. McRaven […]

MH-6 Little Bird gets an extended fuel range with some new toys

Some sharp eyes over at The Drive recently spotted a modification to the MH-6 Little Bird helicopter in a USASOC-released video. The footage shows the Little Bird configured with external pods designed for ferrying special operations soldiers to their targets, but underneath one can see a rectangular attachment that appears to be an additional fuel […]

Burying heroes: Where military and civilian worlds meet

During one rainy afternoon in March, the cloud cover had blocked out the Massachusetts sky enough that, to my memory, it could easily have been the middle of the night.  Freezing rain fell as it tends to in New England, so the turnout at the funeral was small.  As we stood there, on either end […]

‘Murphy’s Law’: The time I got smuggled into Syria

The following is an excerpt from the new book, “Murphy’s Law: My Journey from Ranger and Green Beret to Investigative Journalist.” That night we were driven out to the border crossing. On the side of the road, we picked up a Canadian named Peter Douglass, which had been prearranged with the driver. He was a […]

‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh released from prison

After 17 years in prison, John Walker Lindh, the American who joined the Taliban prior to the 9/11 attacks, was released. He was captured by 5th Special Forces Group soldiers and Northern Alliance fighters during the opening days of the war in Afghanistan.  Often referred to as the “American Taliban,” Lindh converted to Islam as […]

Op-Ed: This Washington Post article about encrypted communications did not age well

Looking back at this 2016 article from The Washington Post, one really shouldn’t blame them for their optimism regarding WhatsApp’s “end-to-end encrypted” capabilities. The encryption (e.g. security) behind WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, is actually quite good at its core. But what couldn’t have been so easily predicted by the Post is what I’ll call the […]

Michael Hayden says Russians were behind Jade Helm conspiracy theories

Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden recently made an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” where he commented that conspiracy theories surrounding Special Operations Command’s Jade Helm training exercise were stirred up by Russian influence agents. Jade Helm was an unconventional warfare training exercise run across the southwestern portion of America by the U.S. military. The […]

No, the CIA did not attack North Korea’s embassy in Spain

Much hand-wringing and melodrama has surrounded the broad daylight break-in that happened at the North Korean embassy in Spain on February 22nd. Adrian Hong Chang and former U.S. Marine Christopher Ahn are accused of breaking into the embassy, holding several North Koreans hostage, and stealing a tranche of computer hard drives and documents. The alleged […]