Episode 26. Master Chief Cooper - Navy SEAL

This episode features a guest who is from the same hometown as we are in eastern Pennsylvania, who had an extensive 25-year career in the Navy as a SEAL from 1987-2012.  After finishing college, he enlisted and made his way to SEAL team 2 where he went on several deployments.   During one of which he experienced being in a helicopter that made a crash landing in the ocean.  In 1993 he went to and passed selection for the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU); or as most will know it: SEAL team 6.  He spent the majority of his career within DEVGRU where he eventually became the Command Master Chief of the team from 2009-2011.
He talks about the basic pipeline of becoming a SEAL, types of trainings and what the typical team mentality is, which we touch on quite often and how it differs from the conventional big military type of mentality.  We talk about ways to succeed and what to do with failures, including being able to look at shortcomings and be honest about them so you can improve and succeed in the future. 
We get to talk about a few of his missions he was part of and helped plan, one of which was when he took a team into eastern Europe undercover to search for and snag a war criminal.  Another we get into is one most people are familiar with, the raid into Pakistan to go after Osama bin Laden... He talks about the weeks leading up to the raid, things that made it more difficult, and how they worked around those hurdles.