I was in the CIA for 25 years — here’s how I explained my job to my kids

Ralph W. McGehee is a veteran of two and a half decades with the Central Intelligence Agency. McGehee was recruited in 1952 and stationed in Southeast Asia in the mid-1960s. “Dad, what do you do?” my 13-year-old daughter Peggy asked about six months after we had settled into our home in North Thailand. She had been […]

Watch: CNN’s secret video to be released at the end of the world

Say what you will about CNN, one thing you can’t question is their tenacity for staying on the air and providing the world with a source of information in even the most dire of circumstances.  Be it war, hurricanes, or the actual apocalypse, you can always turn on your TV, flip it to CNN, and […]

Hand-to-hand combat of SOF (Pt. 2): World War I

Note: This is part of a series. Read part one here. At the onset World War I, there was very little in the way of hand-to-hand training, or special operations forces for that matter. The only notable guerrilla forces during the war were led by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and the German, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, and […]

Philippine Scout-Rangers: Abu Sayaf’s worst nightmare

“We are the worst nightmare of the enemy,” Lieutenant Colonel Rapi told me while speaking of the Philippine Scout-Rangers when I met him at Special Operations Command at Fort Magsaysay. To find out why the Scout-Rangers are so formidable, I had to travel to the Philippines southernmost major island called Tawi-Tawi. It was early in […]

Hand-to-hand combat for SOF (Pt. 1): In the beginning

Since the dawn of warfare, so since the very beginning, man has sought the ability to subdue or kill his opponents with his bare hands. Weapons have changed, but not alleviated, that search. Bones and shafts break. Arrows and bullets run out. Swords and rifles get dropped and lost. Then, the warrior has only his wits and whatever […]

Warrior spies of Nazi Germany: The Brandenburgers

The pre-war German Army rejected Captain Theodore von Hippel’s idea of using small units of highly trained men to penetrate enemy defenses before main actions began. They felt it was beneath the dignity of true soldiers to engage in such renegade conduct and so sent the young Captain packing. Down but not out, he ended […]

27th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron turns 100!

How often do you hear about an active duty US fighter squadron turning 100 years old? Never! Well, the 27th Fighter Squadron does just that today marking its 100th year of service. The squadron is currently deployed with their F-22 Raptors in support of the Combined Joint Task Force/Operation Inherent Resolve fighting ISIS. The squadron […]