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American Morning
Interview with Peter Moss
Aired November 08, 2002 - 08:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: In central Afghanistan today, U.S. Special Forces shot and killed a man who fired on them. American bases there still coming under fire several times every week, we are told. The Special Forces, the Green Berets, the army's elite, their training takes them to the edge of mental and physical breakdown.
Writer Peter Moss had unprecedented access to the Special Forces training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He has written about it in the "New York Times" magazine article, "The Bulletproof Mind."
Peter Moss is with us right now with exclusive CNN videotape, again, to accompany this story -- nice to see you, Peter, good morning to you.
PETER MOSS, "NEW YORK TIMES" MAGAZINE: Good to be here.
HEMMER: The hook for the story essentially goes back to early January, a hospital in Kandahar, U.S. Special Forces working in concert with Afghan forces, trying to, essentially, get al Qaeda terrorists out of this hospital, they were holed up inside.
You spoke specifically with one of the Special Forces officers who was involved in this, guy by the name of Major Christopher Miller.
This is what he told you, essentially, this is what you wrote to relay part of his feeling going in on this operation. An eight-year veteran of the Special Forces, he had never killed before, had never given an order to kill, had not even seen a dead soldier. That changed that day in that hospital. How did it change him?
MOSS: It changed him because, all of a sudden, he realized what the cost of battle is, that you know, you end up with enemy soldiers who are laying at your feet, their body is dead, blood on the walls, flesh on the walls, and that though this was a justified operation, there were dangers that all the soldiers involved had to go through, and six Afghans were actually injured in this episode, and you learn very much from this kind of battle just how difficult it is to go into an urban environment, to go into a hostile building, and to get the guys you got to get.
HEMMER: And he described to you, and you relayed in the article about live grenades being tossed in and then coming back. He said what about that?
MOSS: Well, exactly. It was actually another soldier who talked to me about that who was involved in this episode. They had to go down a corridor to the room where these al Qaeda guys were holed out. They were throwing grenades -- this was the Special Forces guys, throwing the grenades into the room where the al Qaeda guys were. The grenades, however, were picked up immediately by the al Qaeda guys, thrown back out into the hallway at the Special Forces fellows who had to drive for cover, which meant, therefore, the next move the Special Forces guys did is they popped the pin on the grenade, hold it in their hand, so that the fuse...
HEMMER: A live grenade?
MOSS: A live grenade, because the fuse is about four seconds long, if they threw it in there with two seconds left, it would get picked up and thrown back at them. So they held on to it two seconds, one one thousand, two one thousand, and then threw it.
HEMMER: Talk about being cool under pressure. This is the practical application for what these guys train for literally years, maybe even decades for some of them.
I want to show some exclusive pictures from "CNN Presents" that you are going to see here on CNN. It's a mock POW camp, essentially, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This is where some of this psychological training, some of the mental training takes place to help guys in situations like that in Kandahar. What are they doing here in Fort Bragg, and how are they doing it?
MOSS: Well, part of it is just imparting skills for this mock prison camp, where the Special Forces soldiers kind of go through the ordeal of being in prison. Part of it is figuring out how to survive in an interrogation situation, in a prisoner of war camp, should they be captured.
But also, a big part of this training is just basically what they call stress inoculation, which is to acclimate the soldiers, the Special Forces soldiers to undergoing extreme levels of stress so that when, in a real life situation in combat, they deal with it much better, they can remain calm than otherwise would be the case, and make the right decisions that, if they were panicked, if this was the first time for them to be in a stressful situation, they might not be able to make...
HEMMER: So that all of this is mental preparation in the event that you face the worst case scenario. Three-week program, right?
MOSS: Yes.
HEMMER: What can you learn in three weeks? Twenty-one days to me seems like a short time.
MOSS: It is a short time, but you can learn a lot. But most importantly in some respects, what you can do is really find out just how far you can go, just how much pressure you can take, so that then you have a lot of confidence the next time it comes up, and that really is what a lot is about. I mean, you were in Kandahar, you saw these guys, the Special Forces guys, and they looked like they really knew their business, and they did, even though most of them, like Major Miller, had never been in urban warfare before, but it was because of this kind of training, where they had simulated urban warfare, where they had simulated the stress and even worse stresses than they usually would encounter, that enable them to act the way they did.
HEMMER: Talked about the hospital in Kandahar, as you mentioned. This is the videotape going back to January of that siege, and it was bloody, and it turned out to be deadly, and it was a long holdout on the inside. Bring it back to the U.S. Special Forces right now. How many would you say right now within the military have had exposure to training like this?
MOSS: Well, there are about 6,000 active Special Forces soldiers, OK? And most of them have had urban warfare, and quite a bit of urban warfare training, but really only a small number of them have actually ever been involved in it, because the United States Army hasn't been involved in urban or close-quarters battle for quite a long time.
HEMMER: What is the genesis for this? Is this Vietnam? Is this Somalia?
MOSS: Well, it's the next battle that they have to fight. It's not Vietnam. They were fighting, of course, the Special Forces in Vietnam, but what the trainers at the Special Warfare Center in Fort Bragg are trying to figure out is, OK, what is the next battle that we are going to have to fight? How do we need to train our soldiers, what areas do we need to specialize in? In urban warfare, close- quarters battle is really becoming on of those. And that is what these guys specialize in.
HEMMER: Interesting look. Thank you, Peter. Peter Moss, "New York Times" magazine. Really interesting look, "The Bulletproof Mind." Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired November 8, 2002 - 08:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: In central Afghanistan today, U.S. Special Forces shot and killed a man who fired on them. American bases there still coming under fire several times every week, we are told. The Special Forces, the Green Berets, the army's elite, their training takes them to the edge of mental and physical breakdown.
Writer Peter Moss had unprecedented access to the Special Forces training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He has written about it in the "New York Times" magazine article, "The Bulletproof Mind."
Peter Moss is with us right now with exclusive CNN videotape, again, to accompany this story -- nice to see you, Peter, good morning to you.
PETER MOSS, "NEW YORK TIMES" MAGAZINE: Good to be here.
HEMMER: The hook for the story essentially goes back to early January, a hospital in Kandahar, U.S. Special Forces working in concert with Afghan forces, trying to, essentially, get al Qaeda terrorists out of this hospital, they were holed up inside.
You spoke specifically with one of the Special Forces officers who was involved in this, guy by the name of Major Christopher Miller.
This is what he told you, essentially, this is what you wrote to relay part of his feeling going in on this operation. An eight-year veteran of the Special Forces, he had never killed before, had never given an order to kill, had not even seen a dead soldier. That changed that day in that hospital. How did it change him?
MOSS: It changed him because, all of a sudden, he realized what the cost of battle is, that you know, you end up with enemy soldiers who are laying at your feet, their body is dead, blood on the walls, flesh on the walls, and that though this was a justified operation, there were dangers that all the soldiers involved had to go through, and six Afghans were actually injured in this episode, and you learn very much from this kind of battle just how difficult it is to go into an urban environment, to go into a hostile building, and to get the guys you got to get.
HEMMER: And he described to you, and you relayed in the article about live grenades being tossed in and then coming back. He said what about that?
MOSS: Well, exactly. It was actually another soldier who talked to me about that who was involved in this episode. They had to go down a corridor to the room where these al Qaeda guys were holed out. They were throwing grenades -- this was the Special Forces guys, throwing the grenades into the room where the al Qaeda guys were. The grenades, however, were picked up immediately by the al Qaeda guys, thrown back out into the hallway at the Special Forces fellows who had to drive for cover, which meant, therefore, the next move the Special Forces guys did is they popped the pin on the grenade, hold it in their hand, so that the fuse...
HEMMER: A live grenade?
MOSS: A live grenade, because the fuse is about four seconds long, if they threw it in there with two seconds left, it would get picked up and thrown back at them. So they held on to it two seconds, one one thousand, two one thousand, and then threw it.
HEMMER: Talk about being cool under pressure. This is the practical application for what these guys train for literally years, maybe even decades for some of them.
I want to show some exclusive pictures from "CNN Presents" that you are going to see here on CNN. It's a mock POW camp, essentially, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This is where some of this psychological training, some of the mental training takes place to help guys in situations like that in Kandahar. What are they doing here in Fort Bragg, and how are they doing it?
MOSS: Well, part of it is just imparting skills for this mock prison camp, where the Special Forces soldiers kind of go through the ordeal of being in prison. Part of it is figuring out how to survive in an interrogation situation, in a prisoner of war camp, should they be captured.
But also, a big part of this training is just basically what they call stress inoculation, which is to acclimate the soldiers, the Special Forces soldiers to undergoing extreme levels of stress so that when, in a real life situation in combat, they deal with it much better, they can remain calm than otherwise would be the case, and make the right decisions that, if they were panicked, if this was the first time for them to be in a stressful situation, they might not be able to make...
HEMMER: So that all of this is mental preparation in the event that you face the worst case scenario. Three-week program, right?
MOSS: Yes.
HEMMER: What can you learn in three weeks? Twenty-one days to me seems like a short time.
MOSS: It is a short time, but you can learn a lot. But most importantly in some respects, what you can do is really find out just how far you can go, just how much pressure you can take, so that then you have a lot of confidence the next time it comes up, and that really is what a lot is about. I mean, you were in Kandahar, you saw these guys, the Special Forces guys, and they looked like they really knew their business, and they did, even though most of them, like Major Miller, had never been in urban warfare before, but it was because of this kind of training, where they had simulated urban warfare, where they had simulated the stress and even worse stresses than they usually would encounter, that enable them to act the way they did.
HEMMER: Talked about the hospital in Kandahar, as you mentioned. This is the videotape going back to January of that siege, and it was bloody, and it turned out to be deadly, and it was a long holdout on the inside. Bring it back to the U.S. Special Forces right now. How many would you say right now within the military have had exposure to training like this?
MOSS: Well, there are about 6,000 active Special Forces soldiers, OK? And most of them have had urban warfare, and quite a bit of urban warfare training, but really only a small number of them have actually ever been involved in it, because the United States Army hasn't been involved in urban or close-quarters battle for quite a long time.
HEMMER: What is the genesis for this? Is this Vietnam? Is this Somalia?
MOSS: Well, it's the next battle that they have to fight. It's not Vietnam. They were fighting, of course, the Special Forces in Vietnam, but what the trainers at the Special Warfare Center in Fort Bragg are trying to figure out is, OK, what is the next battle that we are going to have to fight? How do we need to train our soldiers, what areas do we need to specialize in? In urban warfare, close- quarters battle is really becoming on of those. And that is what these guys specialize in.
HEMMER: Interesting look. Thank you, Peter. Peter Moss, "New York Times" magazine. Really interesting look, "The Bulletproof Mind." Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
