Thursday 5 May 2011

Journalism graduate commanded Bin Laden raid


Vice-Admiral William McRaven, who commanded the SEAL team that hunted down and killed Osama Bin Laden, is a journalism graduate, reports TIME magazine's Battleland blog.

In an article headlined 'The Most Deadly Would-be Journalist in the World,' TIME reports: "McRaven hedged his bets while studying journalism at the University of Texas in Austin before graduating in 1977: he also was a member of the Navy ROTC program.

" 'You wouldn't expect a journalism major,' former deputy CIA chief and ex-Navy admiral Bobby Inman told the San Antonio Express-News, 'to end up running special forces'.

"But it looks like McRaven picked the right career path: in his 35-year career, McRaven went from being a SEAL platoon commander, to heading a SEAL team, to running U.S. special operations in Europe. But he didn't give up everything he learned in journalism school: in 1996 he published Spec Ops, a book on the art of special operations based on eight case studies."

The TIME piece concludes: "Not a bad day's work for a would-be journalist. Sure as heck beats writing about it."

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