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CNN Live Sunday

Interview With Eric Haney

Aired August 11, 2002 - 18:22   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Military officials will tell you that any soldier going behind enemy lines needs special training, not just for what goes right, but obviously for what can go terribly wrong. And that is the story behind the new book, "Inside Delta Force," written by retired command Sergeant Major Eric Haney, and he joins us right here in our Atlanta studio to talk more about this training and what you talk about in your book. Thanks for being here, Eric.
ERIC HANEY, AUTHOR, "INSIDE DELTA FORCE": Thank you.

LIN: Taking a look at some of those clips from the documentary that's going to air tonight, what comes to mind in terms of the basis for this training? Because, how likely is it that our Special Forces are going to be captured and tortured?

HANEY: There's a great likelihood that some men will, and we can think of what happened during the Gulf War, with some of our pilots that were paraded before the television cameras in Baghdad. Obvious, just quite obvious the men had been terribly brutalized and trotted out to make these phony statements that they had lost faith with America.

LIN: So training like this, going -- does it help a man go into an unknown situation as a psychological tool, as well as perhaps a practical one if all goes wrong?

HANEY: Well, certainly it does, because that's the great fear of captivity, is the unknown, what could happen to you, and what's liable to take place both in the torture aspect, but the greatest fear the soldier has or the airman has and the most important thing is will he break faith with his comrades.

LIN: So give us an idea of how the training goes. It starts with basics, and then it intensifies. What happens?

HANEY: Well, each service has different categories of it. For pilots in the Air Force and Navy, they run their own courses. We realized about 20 years ago in the Army that we needed to do something to prepare our own course, and we had Colonel Nick Row (ph), who helped establish this Army SERE (ph) program in Special Forces schools. And Nick Row (ph) was the only American who ever escaped from captivity in Vietnam.

And we wanted each man to realize how to conduct himself, what his limits were, but really gain the idea that he has two objectives -- survive the encounter and the capture, and keep faith with his comrades, don't give them up, don't do anything to accept favoritism or to show alliance with the enemy.

LIN: So is it about just exposing them to different scenarios and then cranking up the pressure?

HANEY: Well, the pressure is very real. And you realize, even though you're undergoing it, that it's just training. Within two hours, it's absolutely real to you. And it feels that way. And the treatment is such that you're going to know it is.

LIN: Have you ever seen anybody break under pressure of the training?

HANEY: Yes, I have. Yes, I have. And that's a sad aspect. But it's something we have to know. And in my old business, in Delta Force, that was a person that was weeded out of the unit at that point.

LIN: Oh, really? So it is a mechanism to weed people out?

HANEY: Well, in our case. That's a very special situation.

LIN: Because in other units, it's not, that they're still guaranteed their position, but that they want to make sure that all their men go through the training.

HANEY: Right, because remember, it's training. It's to learn about yourself, and it's to learn about the situation and how you need to conduct oneself.

LIN: Have you ever found yourself in a situation when you were serving -- were you ever captured?

HANEY: No, I wasn't. But I have to tell you, I was almost left behind in our raid into Iran in the hostage crisis situation.

LIN: What happened?

HANEY: In 1980. I was the last man to get on the airplane, and the airplanes were taking off at that point. So you have to be prepared for it. Anyone that goes behind enemy lines, or even in the wars that we're going to see in the future, this new type of warfare, the Special Operations warfare such as in Afghanistan, or even our conventional infantry soldiers are going to find themselves way off in some bad territories. And we need to prepare those young men also, probably more so or just as much so as we need to do with our pilots and our Special Forces soldiers.

LIN: So you're recommending that they expand this training to other forces as well?

HANEY: Oh, we'd better do that. I can think back to the Soviet incursions into Afghanistan, and I remember footage that was aired worldwide of Russian conscripts who had been captured by the Afghan forces and the terrible brutalization they underwent, and so many of them were killed, and so many of them, again, lost faith with their fellow captives, which led to the death and demoralization of other men.

LIN: And when you say lost faith, what do you mean by that?

HANEY: They break from their comrades. They're either tricked into it, which can be easily done, and SERE (ph) school teaches the men what those tricks are that the enemy will use against them. Or just for their own survival, to accept an extra handful of rice or an extra canteen cup full of water, they'll turn on their mates, and it's the worst thing that can happen.

LIN: Indeed. Well, let's hope it doesn't happen, and let's hope the training does pay off and that these men don't have to face that situation, especially with all this talk about an attack on Iraq.

HANEY: We certainly hope not.

LIN: Thank you very much, Eric Haney. Good to see you.

HANEY: Thank you so much.

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