Former Navy SEAL on Coming Out of Shadows

It used to be that Navy SEALs didn't just operate in the shadows. They trained in them too. Their whole story stayed shrouded in mystery. Their secret missions stayed secret to the rest of us.

But when they got Osama Bin Laden, snatched back an American cargo ship taken by pirates and rescued two air workers held hostage in Somalia, then suddenly, it seemed that SEALs were headline-makers.

Add to that some SEALs wrote books about SEAL adventures and even acted in a movie about the SEAL experience using live ammunition when they made "Act of Valor." They can't quite be called "the military unit that no one ever talked about" any longer.

Watch the full story on "Nightline" TONIGHT at 12:35 a.m. ET

Rorke Denver played Lt. Commander Rorke in "Act of Valor," a film that used dozens of SEALs and went on to gross $80 million at the box office. Now, with the help of a writer, Denver is doing some pretty decent storytelling in a new book, "Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior."

He agrees that with SEALs like him telling their stories that these guys are out in the open like never before.

"We are, at this moment in our history, when the heat is on, the missions are getting press and coverage," Denver said.

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When asked if it was a good thing, he said, "time will tell."

"We are in the public eye and I think that mythology is something that people are hugely, hugely interested in and they have an appetite for it," Denver said. "So for us with the movie and then also with 'Damn Few' I had an opportunity, I feel, to authentically represent and hopefully do it from an honorable point of view and accurately do so."

It's mostly his own story Denver tells in "Damn Few," how he joined the SEALs after college -- they didn't want him at first.

"I put in my first application and they said no, and I am glad it went that way. I think the community really values resiliency and toughness and focus and a 'never quit' attitude. For me, when they said no I thought, that ain't going to cut it."

Denver didn't quit. He reapplied and went on to survive the SEALs brutal Hell Week and training, joined the team and deployed all over the world, including the deadly Al Anbar province in Iraq when the war there was at its hottest. His family waited for him to return stateside.

"The families, I feel, are the ones who pay the price of our choices," Denver said. "But I didn't appreciate how much I was asking my family to bear and experience it with me. They really are every bit a part of our experience and frankly they are the ones who are back home and praying and believing that you are going to come home."

But even his family didn't quite know what Denver did at work every day.

"I never ask questions about what he does," said his wife, Tracy.

But "Act of Valor" was revealing in that way, and Denver's wife watched the film.

"For me it was incredibly eye-opening to actually see a submarine mission or running around in the jungle, jumping out of a plane, shooting his weapons," she said. "For me, it was like, oh, so this is what you are doing when you are away. I appreciated it actually."

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President’s Day, by George

Did you enjoy that relaxing three-day weekend? Caught up on sleep, maybe sneaked in a movie or a few errands?

That’s no thanks to Rep. Frank Wolf
(R-Va.), who’s playing the role of the Grinch Who Wants to Steal Presidents’ Day.

Wolf recently reintroduced a bill that would do away with the congressionally established Monday holiday (it’s set for the third Monday of the month) and instead designate it as Feb. 22 — George Washington’s actual birthday. This year, that date falls on a Friday, which means we’d still have a three-day weekend. But that won’t happen every year.

Wolf thinks that by celebrating on an arbitrary Monday, the American people are missing out on the chance to truly remember the life and legacy of our first president (who, like Wolf, hails from the Commonwealth).

He bemoaned many schoolkids’ ignorance on the subject. “Congress has unwittingly contributed to this lack of historical understanding by relegating Washington’s Birthday to the third Monday of February to take advantage of a three-day weekend,” Wolf said in a statement entered into the Congressional Record. “We need to change the focus from celebrating sales at the mall to celebrating the significance of President Washington’s birth to the birth of our nation.”

Wolf even trotted out endorsements of the idea from presidential scholar and author
David McCullough
and from Jim Rees, the executive director of Mount Vernon.

But what would happen to all those great Presidents’ Day deals on mattresses?

New blood

As key members of Team Obama move on, a new study finds that President Obama is beginning his second term with fewer than a third of the senior staff members who made up his original team — a level of turnover that’s pretty typical among modern second terms.

The report from the Brookings Institution shows that 71 percent of Obama’s “A-team” has left, compared with 78 percent for Ronald Reagan, 74 percent for Bill Clinton and 63 percent for George W. Bush.

The paper also examines the importance of senior staff to the president and the toll that turnover takes: “a loss of institutional memory, time lost hiring and orienting a successor, the disappearance of unique networking contacts.”

Most companies in the private sector would consider the typical White House turnover rates “unthinkable.”

But there’s a silver lining here, the author suggests. Second-term hiring affords the White House the chance to bring in new blood and fresh ideas. And it could assuage “disgruntled” constituencies by hiring from their ranks. “Repaying political debts could advance the president’s efforts to pursue a vigorous legislative agenda,” they write.

And finally, a bit of advice: in Obama’s second term, the paper assesses the president’s agenda and suggests that Team Obama recruit from Capitol Hill, which could “provide necessary expertise for the legislative battles that lie ahead. ”

Out of Africa, and back in

Democratic National Committee Executive Director
Patrick Gaspard
, former political director in the Obama White House, appears to be the administration’s pick to be the next ambassador to South Africa.

Gaspard, a major player in New York City politics — he was a campaign staffer for former mayor David Dinkins, for example — was a top operative of the Service Employees International Union and a political organizer.

He also was actively involved in organizing efforts in the 1980s and ’90s to topple South Africa’s apartheid regime. While in the White House, Gaspard, a Haitian American, was also a key player in U.S. relief efforts in Haiti after a powerful earthquake devastated the country three years ago.

Although he grew up in New York City, Gaspard was born in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, after his Haitian-born parents moved there for his father’s teaching job. The family moved to New York when he was 3.

Kerry on

Another longtime aide to Secretary of State John F. Kerry is taking a senior post at the State Department. David McKean is to be director of policy planning, a plum position created in 1947 by George F. Kennan and held in later years by foreign policy heavy hitters such as Paul H. Nitze, Mort Halperin and Richard N. Haass.

McKean became the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s staff director when Kerry took over the committee in 2009 and was his Senate office chief of staff from 1999 to 2008. He left the committee in early 2011.

McKean was also CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston and has written three books on U.S. political history.

Last April, McKean become a senior adviser to then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, assessing State Department operations. Ought to come in handy as Kerry takes over. And his long relationship with Kerry should enable him to provide candid advice — a valuable commodity in this town.

With Emily Heil

The blog: washingtonpost.com/
intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.

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Turkey crackdown on radical group after US embassy attack

ANKARA: Turkish police launched a massive nationwide crackdown on Tuesday against a radical Marxist group which claimed a suicide bomb attack against the US embassy this month, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

Police issued arrest warrants for 167 people in 28 cities as part of the operation against the Revolutionary People's Liberation Front (DHKP-C), which is classified as a terrorist organisation by the United States, Anatolia said.

A Turkish guard at the US embassy in Ankara was killed in the February 1 attack and three other people including a journalist were wounded.

The outlawed DHKP-C has waged a string of attacks over the past few decades that have left dozens of people dead, including prominent political and military figures.

The fiercely anti-US group has threatened further attacks on other US diplomatic facilities in Turkey.

- AFP/fa

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20 fishermen assaulted by Sri Lankan naval personnel

RAMESWARAM (TN): Twenty fishermen from Tamil Nadu were allegedly assaulted by Sri Lankan navalmen while they were fishing near Katchathivu islet early Tuesday morning, officials said.

The navy personnel surrounded the fishermen's boats, allegedly beat them up and then took away the GPS equipment.

They also cut the fishing nets and threw the catch into the sea, officials said.

Katchathivu is an islet ceded by India to Sri Lanka in the 1970.

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Confirmed: Dogs Sneak Food When People Aren't Looking

Many dog owners will swear their pups are up to something when out of view of watchful eyes. Shoes go missing, couches have mysterious teeth marks, and food disappears. They seem to disregard the word "no."

Now, a new study suggests dogs might understand people even better than we thought. (Related: "Animal Minds.")

The research shows that domestic dogs, when told not to snatch a piece of food, are more likely to disobey the command in a dark room than in a lit room.

This suggests that man's best friend is capable of understanding a human's point of view, said study leader Juliane Kaminski, a psychologist at the U.K.'s University of Portmouth.

"The one thing we can say is that dogs really have specialized skills in reading human communication," she said. "This is special in dogs." (Read "How to Build a Dog.")

Sneaky Canines

Kaminski and colleagues recruited 84 dogs, all of which were more than a year old, motivated by food, and comfortable with both strangers and dark rooms.

The team then set up experiments in which a person commanded a dog not to take a piece of food on the floor and repeated the commands in a room with different lighting scenarios ranging from fully lit to fully dark.

They found that the dogs were four times as likely to steal the food—and steal it more quickly—when the room was dark. (Take our dog quiz.)

"We were thinking what affected the dog was whether they saw the human, but seeing the human or not didn't affect the behavior," said Kaminski, whose study was published recently in the journal Animal Cognition.

Instead, she said, the dog's behavior depended on whether the food was in the light or not, suggesting that the dog made its decision based on whether the human could see them approaching the food.

"In a general sense, [Kaminski] and other researchers are interested in whether the dog has a theory of mind," said Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard University, who was not involved in the new study.

Something that all normal adult humans have, theory of mind is "an understanding that others have different perspective, knowledge, feelings than we do," said Horowitz, also the author of Inside of a Dog.

Smarter Than We Think

While research has previously been focused on our closer relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—interest in dog cognition is increasing, thanks in part to owners wanting to know what their dogs are thinking. (Pictures: How smart are these animals?)

"The study of dog cognition suddenly began about 15 years ago," Horowitz said.

Part of the reason for that, said Brian Hare, director of the Duke Canine Cognition Lab and author of The Genius of Dogs, is that "science thought dogs were unremarkable."

But "dogs have a genius—years ago we didn't know what that was," said Hare, who was not involved in the new research. (See pictures of the the evolution of dogs, from wolf to woof.)

Many of the new dog studies are variations on research done with chimpanzees, bonobos, and even young children. Animal-cognition researchers are looking into dogs' ability to imitate, solve problems, or navigate social environments.

So just how much does your dog understand? It's much more than you—and science—probably thought.

Selectively bred as companions for thousands of years, dogs are especially attuned to human emotions—and, study leader Kaminski said, are better at reading human cues than even our closest mammalian relatives.

"There has been a physiological change in dogs because of domestication," Duke's Hare added. "Dogs want to bond with us in ways other species don't." (Related: "Dogs' Brains Reorganized by Breeding.")

While research reveals more and more insight into the minds of our furry best friends, Kaminski said, "We still don't know just how smart they are."

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Russian Meteor: Close Encounter, Preventing Impacts

Feb 18, 2013 7:03pm

MOSCOW — As if Friday’s massive meteor explosion over central Russia weren’t enough, just hours later a large asteroid buzzed dangerously close to Earth.

And that evening, the California sky was lit up by a fireball, apparently entering Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s a barrage from space that has people asking: Are we ready for the big one?

Nearly 100 tons of space debris enters Earth’s atmosphere every day. Most of it burns up or falls harmlessly into the ocean, but experts still worry that eventually something big will come our way.

PHOTOS: Meteorite Crashes in Russia

Image credit: Chelyabinsk Region Branch of Russian Interior Ministry/HO/EPA

The prospect of Earth getting hit by a giant hunk of space rock is concerning enough that the United Nations is gathering top minds in Italy this week to discuss it.

Scientists say the idea of blowing up an asteroid — as Bruce Willis’ character did in the movie “Armageddon” — is pure Hollywood fantasy. Even if we could hit it, it’s unlikely to stop it.

Existing sky-watching programs run by NASA and others can only spot the biggest asteroids, not the small ones that sneak up on us.

But fear not, citizens of Earth. Scientists have a plan.

RELATED: Russian Meteor: Rushing to Cash in on the Blast

One group, the non-profit B612 Foundation, proposes sending a telescope, called Sentinel, into space to detect incoming objects decades before their orbits intersect ours. Then, unmanned spacecraft could fly to them and nudge them clear of Earth’s path.

The group is trying to raise $200 million to make it happen and hopes to launch the telescope by 2016.

Another project, proposed by the University of Hawaii, aims to give earthlings a heads-up when necessary, starting by 2015.

RELATED: Meteor Events: Rare, but Dangerous

It is called the Atlas program, and the plan is to deploy a string of telescopes that would search for even smaller objects in the sky, hoping to be able to give people at least a few day’s notice that could allow time for an evacuation.

Until then, better keep Bruce Willis on speed dial.

SHOWS: World News

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Congressional staffers often travel on tabs of foreign governments

About a dozen congressional staffers flew business class on a trip to China last summer and stayed at luxury hotels while touring the Great Wall and the Forbidden City and receiving a “briefing on ancient artifacts and dynasties” at the Shanghai Museum.

The all-expenses-paid visit came courtesy of China. The Chinese government hosted a day of meetings with officials in Beijing followed by eight days packed with outings to destinations often frequented by tourists along with a stop at a missile frigate and two others related to national security — the official theme of the trip.

More and more foreign governments are sponsoring such excursions for lawmakers and their staffs, though an overhaul of ethics rules adopted by Congress five years ago banned them from going on most other types of free trips. This overseas travel is often arranged by lobbyists for foreign governments, though lobbyists were barred from organizing other types of congressional trips out of concern that the trips could be used to buy favor.

The overseas travel is covered by an exemption Congress granted itself for trips deemed to be cultural exchanges.

A Washington Post examination of congressional disclosures revealed the extent of this congressional travel for the first time, finding that Hill staffers had reported taking 803 such trips in the six years ending in 2011. Lawmakers themselves are increasingly participating, disclosing 21 trips in 2011, more than double the figure in prior years.

The number of congressional trips could be far higher, because only lawmakers and senior congressional staff members are required to disclose the travel. A former senior aide on a congressional committee said that junior staffers were usually sent on the trips because they rarely had the chance to take official trips paid for by the U.S. government.

Some Hill employees have gone on repeated trips to the same country, and others chain them together, traveling directly from one expenses-paid visit to another.

China is by far the biggest sponsor of these trips, with senior staffers reporting more than 200 trips there over the six-year period, according to The Post’s review of 130,000 pages of disclosures collected by the Web site Legi­Storm. Taiwan accounts for an additional 100 trips.

But other regions of the world are also well represented.

On a trip to Jordan, for instance, congressional staffers stayed at the Four Seasons in Amman, where they received an audience with the king. The group also visited the Dead Sea and the famed mosaics in Madaba and spent two days at the ancient cities of Petra and Jerash, according to an itinerary for the trip.

In Switzerland, staffers took a helicopter ride through the Alps to Monte Bre, hiking up the mountain for coffee at a summit cafe overlooking a lake, according to another itinerary.

Organizers of the trips say they’re an important way for U.S. government staff members to learn about the world with no cost to taxpayers. The trips are supposed to include visits to historical and cultural sites, including those frequented by tourists, to foster international understanding.

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Indonesia floods, landslides kill 17

MANADO, Indonesia: Four children were among 17 people killed over the weekend in central Indonesia after heavy rains triggered floods and landslides, officials said on Monday.

The children, aged between two and nine, died along with 13 adults when flooding and landslides hit the northern part of Sulawesi island early Sunday, provincial disaster management agency spokesman Howke Makawarung told AFP.

"We recorded 17 people killed. All bodies were found on Sunday," he said, adding that heavy rains had hit three areas, including the North Sulawesi provincial capital of Manado which saw water levels up to four metres.

Water, which inundated around 5,000 houses in Manado, had receded by Monday and residents had begun cleaning up their homes.

A landslide which hit the city killed a six-year old boy.

"He was taking a bath in the morning when a landslide suddenly struck his house," the capital deputy mayor Harley Mangindaan told AFP.

Indonesia is regularly affected by deadly floods and landslides during its wet season, which lasts for around six months.

Environmentalists blame logging and a failure to reforest denuded land for exacerbating flooding.

Heavy rains caused flooding in the capital Jakarta in January that left 32 people dead and at its peak forced nearly 46,000 to flee their homes.

- AFP/de

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SC admits PIL against former MCI chief Ketan Desai's election to university senate

AHMEDABAD: A division bench of Justice H L Dattu and Justice Ranjan Gogoi has admitted special leave petition filed by an NGO - People for Better Treatment (PBT) and its NRI head Dr Kunal Saha against election to the Gujarat University senate of former Medical Council of India (MCI) chief - Dr Ketan Desai.

Dr Saha and his organization have been filing various litigations to prevent Desai's possible re-entry in the MCI. He has questioned the Gujarat high court's decision to reject his public interest litigation filed last year.

Last year, Dr Saha requested the high court to direct the GU chancellor, before whom he had made representations to declare Desai's election to senate as illegal. The bench in HC had junked the PIL saying that it is not maintainable, particularly when the same court had rejected a PIL on the same issue a year before also. On the previous occasion, the petitioner had sought HC directions to the university authorities to declare the election of Desai as illegal.

Later, he sought directions from the high court to the governor of Gujarat Dr Kamla, who is Gujarat University's chancellor also, to decide on his representation seeking removal of Desai from the university's senate.

The petitioner wanted Desai to be disqualified as a senate member on the ground that with his arrest on corruption charges, Desai's licence to practice got cancelled.

When the HC turned down his plea, PBT moved the Supreme Court and upon inquiry, the university clarified that Desai was not elected to the senate in the category of medical practitioner at all. Instead, the former MCI chief was elected uncontested in the category of qualified physician, that any person that has an MBBS degree can contest election in that category.

PBT had to withdraw the PIL from the SC, but the apex court permitted the NGO to make a representation before an appropriate authority, which is the governor in this case, for she is the chancellor of the university. Hence, PBT has come up with another PIL stating that two representations were made before the governor, but she has not responded to them or taken any action. This is the second round of litigation by the petitioner.

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Meet the Meteorite Hunter

Michael Farmer is one of the world's only full-time meteorite hunters. Since the 1990s, the 40-year-old Tucson, Arizona, resident has been scouring the world for pieces of interstellar rock, racing to be the first one on the scene and selling his finds to museums and private collectors. On Friday, as Russians reportedly scrambled to collect fragments from a passing meteorite that injured hundreds, Farmer spoke with National Geographic about his unusual line of work.

Why are so many people in Russia busy gathering up meteorite fragments?

It's a historic event. This will be talked about forever. Everyone wants to have a little piece of it. And scientifically, we want to study it. We want to know what's out there, and we want to know how big it is, and we want to know what damage it can cause. The preliminary data from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says about 7,000 tons landed.

How many meteorite fragments are known to be on Earth?

There are a couple of hundred thousand known meteorites. Of course, there's millions and millions on the planet; we just have to find them. Most of the Earth is inhospitable—heavy forest, jungle, ocean. Meteorites that fall in the ocean are just gone, disappeared to the bottom.

How many other full-time meteorite hunters are there?

Dedicated, serious meteorite hunters? There are maybe 20 of us. If you add in the part-timers who go somewhere whenever [an impact is] close to them, then you might approach a hundred.

How did you become a meteorite hunter?

Here in Tucson right now we have the world's biggest mineral show going on. I bought a meteorite at this very same show 20 years ago, and I was absolutely obsessed and hooked. Since then I've been around the world more times than I can count—four million miles on American Airlines alone.

How many countries have you been to?

About 70 countries, by my last count. About 50, 59 trips to Africa—a lot of work in Africa. The Sahara and other deserts there make meteorites easier to find than on other terrains, and also keep them well preserved.

What are the challenges you face when you're on a hunt?

Well, you're usually going into a kind of chaotic scene where nobody really knows much. In Africa and other places I go [the locals] don't usually understand what's happening, and most of the time they don't care. They're more concerned with eating that day. But the instant some guy shows up and says, "I'll pay you to find this rock," the whole village empties—and then lots of rocks show up.

Related: Best Meteorites for Tourists

It can be dangerous work. I've been robbed, put into prison. For example, I was in prison two years ago in the Middle East, in Oman—actually sentenced, convicted, and put in prison for three months for "illegal mining activity." Not a very nice time. And the same year, 2011, in the fall I went to Kenya three times, after a major meteorite fell. On the third trip over I had a robbery where they ambushed us and almost murdered me. I was down on my knees, with a bag over my head and a machete on my throat and a gun at my head, being beaten. Luckily they decided to just take everything and leave instead of killing us. It's a dangerous line of work because it involves money, and people want that money.

What's the most valuable meteorite you've found?

Well, I've found three separate moon rocks in the Middle East. [Moon rocks are considered a type of meteorite that came loose from the lunar surface and fell to Earth.] And one of them I sold for $100,000 a week later. It was just a small piece—the size of a walnut. But the best meteorite I found was with my three partners up in Canada. It was actually discovered in 1931, but we went back to the location and discovered 53 kilograms [117 pounds] more. It's an extremely rare type of meteorite called a pallasite, and it's about 4.5 billion years old. We sold it to the Canadian government for just under a million dollars. Now it's in the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto, and it's considered a national treasure.

Where else do you sell your wares?

Well, I do shows around the world, in France, Germany, Japan. I go to expos, like this one here in Tucson, which is the biggest mineral show in the world and lasts for three weeks. And museums are always calling me.

Related: Archival Photos of Meteorite Recovery

It's a small market. It's not like I need a shop or anything. People call me or email me or go to my website and check it out. The market these days is so ravenous for anything new that when I get a new meteorite, it's usually sold in hours. I don't even have to work anymore. I just make phone calls to a few people, and it's all gone.

Where do you store your collection?

I have multiple storage sites—never put all your eggs in one basket. And I have lots of bulk material. Sometimes I buy this stuff by the ton, and it goes into storage and I sell it off one piece at a time.

What's the verification process like?

Any meteorite, anything that we want to have an official name, has to go to a laboratory, where it gets sectioned and studied by scientists. For example, I'd guess this meteorite in Russia yesterday will be in a lab in Moscow, being researched within hours.

Related: History's Big Meteorite Crashes

In the collector market, we work collaboratively with the scientists. I supply them with rocks, and they supply me with data, both of which I need to make money. People want to know what something is before they buy it.

Are there legal or ethical implications to meteorite hunting?

There always are. Certain countries have passed laws. But when I was arrested in Oman, they actually had no law—they were just very upset that we were taking lots of meteorites. The only law they could charge us with was illegal mining operations—basically running a company in the country without government licensing. But I won on appeal because we had no mining equipment. We were picking up rocks off the surface of the desert. And a judge said, "If a child could do it, then it's not mining." And I was immediately released and sent home.

But there's always friction between the collecting market and the scientific market. There are scientists out there who believe that no meteorite should be in private hands. Well, I tell you, I've been on hunts all over the world and I've only run into scientists a couple of times. They don't have the time or money to do it. So if it wasn't for us, 99 percent of these meteorites would be lost to science.

What about this meteorite strike—do you think scientists will go to Russia?

I guarantee there'll be scientists from everywhere in the world going to this one.

Are you catching the next flight to Moscow?

Well, of course as a meteorite dealer, I want to own this. I woke up this morning to a hundred e-mails from people begging me to get on a plane and go get it so they can buy a piece.

But I'm probably not going. Getting into Russia can be complicated. I'll just buy some from the Russians when it comes out.

Of course, if this had happened in China or somewhere in Africa, I'd be packing my bags right now and getting on a plane, figuring it all out when I get there.

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