Annie Jacobsen: uncertainty

Transcript context

…So on the technical difficulty of those missions, just your big sense, how hard is it to assassinate a target on the soil of that nation? I suppose that just depends. Here’s another insightful thing Billy Waugh said to me, and I’m answering the question around because I don’t know, because again, I never had anyone say to me, “Here’s how it went down,” because you can’t. First of all, those are classified, so I’m never going to receive classified information. I did hear a lot about reconnaissance missions when people would be in charge of, you have to be able to what’s called make book on the target before, and making book on the target means photographing them then that gets run up the chain of command to make sure this is really Imad Mughniyeh we’re about to kill. But I once asked Billy when I was trying to get the question and he wouldn’t answer it, and I said, so there’s another person in my book named Rick Proto, who’s also a legendary agency guy, and so he’s like 20 years younger than Billy. And I said, “Billy, if you and Rick had to kill each other, who would win?” I was trying to imagine this hypothetical, how would that work? Who would win? And I posed the question to each of them, and of course each of them said me, then I went back to them and Billy said, “Let me tell you how I would win.” And he said, ” I’d cheat. I’d show up before the duel.” I’d cheat. I’d show up before the dual, and I’d kill him. Yeah. I have a lot of friends who were Navy SEALs. This is just guy conversation.…

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