Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

target building, our SEALs quickly secured all the rooms and controlled
the people found inside. We would then conduct quick battlefield
questioning on military-age males, identify suspected terrorists or
insurgents and detain them, then turn them over to a detention facility
for further questioning or confinement. Before leaving the target, we
searched the building for intelligence and evidence that might help
convict in the Iraqi court system the captured persons. Such evidence
might be bomb-making material, weapons, or anything else that could
either lead us to other insurgents or help build a case against the suspects
we detained.
We had trained extensively to patrol through cities, breach doors,
clear buildings, and capture or kill bad guys. But we weren’t police. We
had very little training on how to search buildings for intelligence and
properly collect evidence. But how hard could it be? On our platoon’s
first few operations we did what any rowdy group of highly trained,
armed young men would do: we ransacked the place. While the terrorists
proved highly adept at hiding weapons and evidence, SEALs showed
particular skill at breaking things to find what had been hidden. We
flipped over furniture, emptied desks and dresser drawers onto the floor,
ripped down curtains and pictures from the walls. We smashed anything
that looked like it might have some kind of hiding space in it, including
televisions, cabinets, or radios. Often, we found evidence where you
might least expect it. But we created such a mess in the process that we
had to go through everything again to double-check what had actually
been searched. This meant moving everything that had been dumped
onto the floor to check under carpets for trapdoors, where contraband
might be hidden. While we often found the evidence or intelligence we
were looking for, on several occasions critical intelligence and evidence