Yahoo Finance Richard Marcinko, First Commanding Officer of SEAL Team 6, Dead at 81: A 'True Legend'
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Richard "Dick" Marcinko, the retired U.S. Navy SEAL and founding commander of famed SEAL Team 6, died on Christmas night. He was 81.
Marcinko's son, Matthew, made the announcement in a post to Twitter on Sunday afternoon.
"Last night, Christmas evening, we lost a hero, who's also known as The Rogue Warrior, the retired Navy SEAL commander AND the creator of SEAL Team Six, my father, Richard Marcinko," Matthew wrote in a tweet. "His legacy will live forever. The man has died a true legend."
"Rest In Peace Dad," he added. "I love you forever."
Matthew told the New York Times that he believes his father died of a heart attack.
According to the National Navy UDT SEAL Museum, Marcinko — born Nov. 21, 1940 — was deployed to Vietnam in 1967 as a member of SEAL Team Two. He led the "most successful SEAL operation in the Mekong Delta" during the war, and subsequently had a bounty placed on him by the North Vietnamese Army due to his campaign.
Later, during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, Marcinko was one of two Navy representatives for a task force known as the Terrorist Action Team (TAT).
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The task force's assignment was to free the dozens of American hostages kept inside the U.S. embassy in Tehran, but their mission, Operation Eagle Claw, resulted in the deaths of eight military members after they encountered a violent storm in the desert, according to the U.S. Army Airborne and Special Operations Museum.
After the mission's failure, Marcinko was given the responsibility of forming a full-time dedicated counter-terrorist unit.
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Marcinko became the first commanding officer of the team, which he named "SEAL Team 6." Though the Navy only had two other SEAL units at the time, the purpose of the name was to trick other countries into believing the U.S. had three other unknown SEAL teams, the National Navy UDT SEAL Museum said.
SEAL Team 6 would famously lead the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, resulting in the death of the Saudi Arabian terrorist behind the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
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After his retirement in 1989, Marcinko became a best-selling author, co-writing books such as Rogue Warrior and Rogue Warrior: Green Team.
"The SEALs who knew Dick Marcinko will remember him as imaginative and bold, a warrior at heart," retired Navy SEAL Adm. Eric Olson told the Navy Times. "He was a spirited rogue for sure, but we are better off for his unconventional service."
