Delta Force, Tom Satterly, on secret missions at The Circuit of Success Summit

we're going to close here with with a story I'm going to for the fifth time I'm going to again ask for permission we're okay to talk about this I suppose we've checked most of you out in the room and you didn't know it to get some security clearance for this to share the story that they've not really or he's not really shared from a stage in a big room before so this is pretty cool to get to talk about this so I set the stage so so Tom as was a leader of a group and he'll do it way more justice and I will but he was the leader of the of the group that went on a two and a half year mission to find Saddam Hussein and if you remember that Saddam Hussein not Osama bin Laden but Saddam Hussein that's the one where they eventually found him in a cave right I remember that and so you led with that I will now shut up and let you take over and maybe start with you guys if I remember correctly we're at another gun fight and you saw this gentleman maybe head that way yeah that's what started it yeah my troop was stationed where he was Baghdad Fallujah and Ramadi you know all the fun spots in Iraq and we knew we figured Saddam was somewhere around Tikrit hiding I would look for him for a long time and that Thanksgiving George Bush had flown in and I was I was in charge of the security detail that did protection for him when he did the surprise visit and I'm Thanksgiving it told the boys but you know I couldn't tell my guys had one Secret Service agent flying in from Texas and say hey you know talk to my boss who came to got me a president's coming in with the whole encore for Thanksgiving us surprise everybody can't tell anybody though I mean even the Secret Service in the States don't know and I'm like okay I gotta get ready so I ended up telling the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were coming so they're motivated they're motivated and we're training we're running convoys out to buy off and practicing on the runways and then so Thanksgiving Day we're sitting down there and Air Force One comes to Barling down like what's this all about I gotta guess the stories up it's not the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader so they were upset a man there was President Bush and yeah cheerleaders so so when he came in we drove him around everywhere he went and at one point he's like GED that's like not yet but we're getting close you know and I'm pretty sure we could have him by Christmas second all right let's do it these boys he went out on stage and that was the only conversation we had and I was like oh told the President of the United States that we would have you know Sodom by December so not that that helped but the way it went down but I had that stress on me and so we did one hit one night on December 12 did it hit in Baghdad today one of the handlers of Saddam maybe is in town we think and he might be in this house in this neighborhood maybe Michael well that's what we do right we go look so rubble DUP the guys went down the street and did how many of you are at this time we're going in um 14 of us okay maybe 14 of us going in and then we had some Rangers on the outside and some tanks and Bradley's that we could have you know for use couple blocks down or if we needed a bit rolled in and it was on a dead-end street and we're going to the house industry and I remember as we're rolling up I saw a guy in black jacket pants whatever walk in I noticed he walked into a gate four or five houses up the street and went inside I just happened to notice and we went in the house took the house down nothing happened nothing was going on but there was some paperwork in the house that maybe made us think then we started taking fire from the opposite direction from an open field I mean nobody likes to fire at us and draw our attention unless they wants to eat her either trying to kill us which these guys weren't or they want us to chase them and chasing them is seems fun and easy but usually chased him into an ambush or away from where you need to be so I sent a team down as I go down to that house I kind of described where I saw this guy go Anna he might he might left his house he might have not I don't know go down there what we did was firefight and they went down and clear the entire house and I finally went to the last room and flipped up a mattress off of a bed there was a guy laying underneath it with a plastic a.k that they almost shot just a toy a plastic ak-47 today I almost shot him and had they might have been the end of it brought him back and I asked him some questions which is my job at the time to get the shock of the capture and ask questions on target see if we can lead to another target next door across the street or anywhere in town before we go home and he didn't have anything he was he was calm he had done it before I can tell when you're afraid I can tell when you're a badass and you know and you're not gonna give me anything you need to go to the big boys and he was kind of one of those calm unafraid like I know the deal if I get caught they have to let me go in three days if I don't give him any information which is catching releases what we did and I was like well he's still going with us he earned he certainly earned my attention so took him back to the rear and put him on a helicopter to fly to balad and that's where the detention facility was the big one I packed up everybody said all right let's go to bed man I guess that's a night and maybe two hours into my sleep I got shaken again hey we got acid ah me and I go again with the Saddam we started calling it chasing Elvis it was just always going after Saddam always looking for Saddam and never finding Saddam sorry I just went looking for Saddam earlier you know no this is this is the real deal and I go there all the real deal ever this old thing before so I get up I don't wake any bail so we start planning it starts looking a little bit real I start getting the team leaders up looking a little real all right let's get everybody uh let's make it make up a plan and so they flew that detainee up to the crib where he was supposed to be there's another element of the squadron there see one another 14 15 of their guys they were in charge of that area so they get to pick their position in their spot where they're gonna go of course they picked the hot spot the farm and I get I get the cook Saddam's cook you know thinking whatever man I'm going in what's going so we got the fourth Infantry Division lined up they get to surround the town and they had hit the farm the night before the same farm that we got Saddam on they'd hit it the night before but it's a long dirt road in the open to the creek where the fishing shack was so they could always see you coming and he would climb down in the hole they put this foam cork over the hole covered up a dirt you'd never find it I mean he lived down there whenever he had to and so that grip rolled into there my group I took my group in and we had cook and the wife and all the kids and everything and it cooks having a heart attack he's like ninety might keep him alive I'll take him to the front of the vehicle he's gonna point where tsunami by the time we left I knew he knew where Saddam was I'm on the radio going we know we know where he's Saddam's it mom's here Tom's here we're going there like negative return to base something no you don't get it ready negative return to base and I'm like these guys just don't get anything do they my leaders are horrible so we load up we do open drive back to the base and um one of my bosses comes here and I'll show you some open up the door nerds looks like Uncle Fester sitting in the chair you know behind a plastic table and I was like oh so this is why you wouldn't let me go looking for him they had found him in the hole finally they were getting ready leave the target and they had the detainee I caught the night before the other guy was like listen man this is gonna be a real painful night for you if we leave and there's nothing here it's like no no he's kicking around kicking around Saddam Saddam a nap becomes a string on the ground and they pull up the cork and there's some old man with his hands in golden ak's and like hundreds of invincible cigars and like eight million in cash and you rest cash US cash and I'm sitting here looking across the table at this guy like Wow two and a half years ago this is him this is the the leader of Iraq he looks like Uncle Fester so he must have known who huncle fester was so maybe where he just likes to spit he spit on me and I and that's when I look around the room but anyway that's what I just leapt across the table and gave him one of my best punches ever which by the way with the beard this big and you measure him properly and your anger and your jumping across the table I probably got about that much of his change and the rest was hair it was all hair and then a little bit of and he looked down looked at me I was like oh that's cool you'll be dead soon anyway and that was my big moment when you guys when he's dead now that's right and so when you guys found him talk about you know I think it wasn't President Bush in your guys's ears or something like that Christmas yeah Christmas deadline Christmas deadline we gave him his fully automatic go here to go out 19 a fully HitFix it was fully automatic was like a magazine that stuck this long down there because pistol doesn't go on how to Mack that long and we gave that to George the president and and they flew they flew some guys I have to talk to him after that kind of like they did after bin Laden to you but to talk to Saddam yeah yeah so they flew a couple of our leaders up to talk and give him the gift one of the guys that was actually in there with him got to show up and give it to him a former Navy SEAL that crossed over and joined our ranks what do you call your Navy SEAL friends what do you call them the Navy SEALs sea pigs where I know it floats around like a soft seal the brothers are so yeah they got great abs Oh last year we had a Navy SEAL here now we got this but I also think to talk about the guy that got to meet Saddam first out of the cave that was your your interpreter oh that guy yeah his whole family he got a couple punches into just that sort of famous picture for anybody new he's holding it on our house if you've seen a picture of him in the dirt and a guy hold him up and it slips your little bloody one of my buddies a punch him and President Bush sends his regards or something after he said I wish yeah he said he comes up says I'm the president of Iraq I was ashamed and there's so many stories I mean one story heard President Bush says disregard or something but it was President Bush sent his regards well bleep that yeah I didn't get the pre-brief but yeah just just nails him and you know and then that interpreter did the same thing and then he's hold him up for the photos because he had killed his entire family and then before he fled the country to probably Michigan and stayed there for a while and then we found found the guy I brought him back over a lot of the interpreters lived there in the past and their families were all dead so that was their motivation to contribute and go to war even though they weren't really trained at it to to run around with us and be interpreters and she had to build trust with them right yeah some of them some of them one guy showed me which gate to open by shooting a hole through his pistol he wasn't supposed to have right in the middle of ahead we're sneaking up and he marks it by shooting a hole through his post like there goes that there goes that secret yeah so some of them

Channel: Brett Gilliland

Views: 17,548

Rating: 4.985765 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: eNOIxC4BJIM

Length: 11min 2sec (662 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019