Inside SEAL Team Six

My Life and Missions with America's Elite Warriors

By: Don Mann, Ralph Pezzullo

Narrated by: Peter Ganim

Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

The ultimate story of America's dominant warriors....

When Osama bin Laden was assassinated, the entire world was fascinated by the men who had completed the seemingly impossible mission that had dogged the US government for over a decade. SEAL Team 6 became synonymous with heroism, duty, and justice. Only a handful of the elite men who make up the SEALs, the US Navy's best and bravest, survive the legendary and grueling selection process that leads to Team 6, a group so classified it technically does not even exist. There are no better warriors on Earth.

Don Mann knows what it takes to be a brother of this ultra-selective fraternity. As a member of Seal Team Six for over eight years, and a SEAL for over 17 years, he worked in countless covert operations, operating from land, sea, and air, and facing shootings, decapitations, and stabbings. He was captured by the enemy and lived to tell the tale, and he participated in highly classified missions all over the globe, including Somalia, Panama, El Salvador, Colombia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. As a current training coordinator for several civilian SEAL training programs, and as a former Training Officer of SEAL Team 6, he was directly responsible for shaping the bodies and minds of SEALs who carried out the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

But to become a SEAL, Mann had to overcome his own troubled childhood and push his body to its breaking point - and beyond. Inside SEAL Team 6 is a high-octane narrative of physical and mental toughness, giving unprecedented insight to the inner workings of the training and secret missions of the world's most respected and feared combat unit.

©2011 Don Mann (P)2011 Hachette Audio

Bleeping is infuriating

The contents of this book is actually very very good and contains lots of entertaining and interesting material, however the bleeping of classified information ruined the experience for me. It seems that a lot of the bleeps are place names, dates, exact weapon, vehicle/aircraft models and other stuff that could be easily rewritten to not include specifics instead of bleeping out. The bleeping seems to be performed by an over-careful bureaucrat and I'm pretty many of the details censored here are mentioned in other SEAL related books and are fairly general knowledge and I'm surprised a guy like Don approved of this bullshit! Other than the narration and the story otherwise is good enough to resist shooting your speakers out during the bleeps.

More bragging than anything...

I made the mistake of not listening to the preview before buying and downloading. Seems like Don likes to tell everyone how great he is. Lots of great deal stories out there, this is lower end in my opinion.

Only made is about 20 mins. BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

What would have made Inside SEAL Team Six better?

NO BLEEPING!!!! It just stupid and not needed. Write the story around classified materials.

I hated the darn Bleeping!

They keep bleeping supposedly National Security information in the audio every minute, this drove me nuts in the first couple of minutes, just make the story around it or generalize it but do not put a bleeping sound that will drive the person listening nuts!

Couldn’t *BLEEP* make it *BLEEP* the *BLEEP* Chapter

I couldn’t even listen to this book. I made it less than 10 minutes. In that time 1/4 of the book was unnecessarily bleeped. In some cases you knew what was supposed to have been said (things that have been spoken about at length in other books, so no need to bleep), and other times the bleeping was so invasive you’d miss an entire paragraph of information because it was so heavily “redacted”. I agree with another reviewer, I believe the bleeping to be a terrible gimmick to make the book seem like it’s LOADED with confidential government info to make it seem more interesting.

Very disappointing. Expected ST6 but instead got bragging and bravado. I would not recommend this to anyone looking for ST.

Very disappointing. Expected ST6 but instead got bragging and bravado. I would not recommend this to anyone looking for ST.

BEEP!!!

The beeping because of the redacted parts of the story is so annoying, I only made it through the first 10-15 minutes before I had to take a "break.

I completely understand that due to the sensitive nature of the topic, things need be redacted but it seems like they are just beeping random words!

Bleeps were annoying - couldn't listen to it

This could be a good story. I'll never know. At the start of the book, the narrator says that whenever classified information had to be redacted, the listener would hear a beep. So here's my first problem - if you have to have info redacted, just re-write the parts with the redaction. This is not a formerly classified memo that was released under an FOIA request that needs to be presented in its original format with just the sensitive parts blacked out - it is a story and can be presented however the author chooses. If the DOD has a problem with details on one part, then simply edit it, don't leave it in and sound some stupid tone over it. The noise totally interrupts the flow of the story. Listening to this book made me feel like I was watching a Jerry Springer show.

There must have been at least a dozen parts that were bleeped out in the first 15 minutes which is as far as I got. Furthermore, some of the parts redacted are just silly. One example was when the author was being shown the equipment of a young Seal. They bleeped several parts out. Anyone with an Internet account and access to Jane's military site or for that matter Wikipedia can obtain a reasonably close idea of what the Seals are packing today, so redacting this information is just stupid. And, if you are required to redact it, just modify the list of items in his kit so that the classified ones are not mentioned at all.

The whole reason that I listen to audiobooks is to be immersed in the story. The incessant bleeping took me out of that immersion far too often to be tolerable. Maybe as the author gets further into his tale, the beeping will be less, but I'm not willing to listen that far. As one other reviewer mentioned, "Inside Delta Force" was probably also full of redaction, but the author had the good sense to write his story around them so the reader never knows. Don Mann should have done the same here.

too much deleted

What disappointed you about Inside SEAL Team Six?

there is entirely too many tones to block deleted material

Would you ever listen to anything by Don Mann and Ralph Pezzullo again?

my complaint is about the book and not the author

How could the performance have been better?

it would have been better to simply delete the audio tones or indicate what percentage of the book was censored.

Redact

What disappointed you about Inside SEAL Team Six?

All the bleeps, right when the story gets interesting, it redacts (bleeps), Why not just leave it out or anything else, vary disappointed.

Would you be willing to try another book from Don Mann and Ralph Pezzullo ? Why or why not?

Maybe, as long as there is no bleeps.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

That's ok

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The redacted parts ruin the story

Any additional comments?

Remove the bleeps.