Just got done reading a pretty intersesting book called
The Final Mission: Spooky8. To sum it up, it's about this guys involvement with tons of secret missions the USA had him and a team of guys perform between 1973 through 1992, as a civilian though.
Some more interesting things he talked about was stuff like "legal amphetamines"- they would take before a more critical mission, that would allow them to work at 150% for 3 or 4 days without sleep. He could also accept or deny any op as it was offered, with most being intel gathering deals that routinely got hairy.
So this book got me thinking. Why contract out to civies (most of his team had proir mil service though)
if these hush intel missions got hairy? Couldnt our active duty guys get this done w/o the occasional firefight, they are the pros yes? At a national security point of view, would it be more acceptable to have a bunch of gringos with scrubbed weapons and uniforms be caught than say a SEAL Team or whomever, so we could deny any involvement?
And finally, how often does this shit go on? I wonder how many teams there really are, and that are used just for Homeland Security