Va. Beach SEALs killed bin Laden

May 02, 2011|By By, cnealon@dailypress.com | 247-4760

In terms of elite military forces, it's hard to beat the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

The Virginia Beach-based outfit, more commonly known as SEAL Team Six, or DevGru, draws its ranks from select company: other U.S. Navy SEALs. Its missions are so secretive that not even the president talks about what the team does.

It appears an exception was made Sunday when President Barack Obama announced that U.S. special forces swarmed a mansion in Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden, the man most associated with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Senior defense and intelligence officials declined to say if Team Six, which is based at Dam Neck Annex at Naval Air Station Oceana, was responsible. But multiple media outlets and one former member of the group said it was their work.

Ryan Zinke, a former Team Six mission commander who is now a Montana state senator, told the Daily Press the assault was led by his former unit. He said the team is comprised of top hand-selected operatives from other SEAL units who are considered the best of the best.

"SEAL Team Six, along with the Army's Delta Force, both are extraordinarily well-trained, superbly led and well-funded as far as equipment and resources," he said. "By and large, those two groups represent the nation's best force."

After being identified as top performers in their SEAL units, Team Six members are subjected to an additional, rigorous qualification process, Zinke said. Little is publicly known about the group's movements, its training and its capabilities, let alone the identities or number of its members.

Indeed, other retired SEALs, some of whom served in Team Six, declined to speak about the group.

"I'm sorry — I really can't talk about that," said Albert M. Calland III, a retired SEAL who commanded Team Six from June 1997 to June 1999, according to his Navy biography. A former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Calland chairs the Virginia Beach-based Navy SEAL Foundation.

Zinke, who spent 23 years in the Navy — roughly half of that with Team Six — said the small group of operatives is shrouded in secrecy by necessity.

"I think it's appropriate that those things are held at the secret level and beyond," said Zinke, 49, who retired in 2008 as a commander. "If you openly publicize its capability, (enemy forces) can formulate a challenge to that capability."

He said he was out of the country between 200 and 320 days a year.

"You basically spend all of your off hours with your family or with your comrades — that's who your closest friends are. They're the only people who know really what you do," Zinke said.