Richard Marcinko

As a Navy teletype, Richard “Demo Dick” Marcinko had to punch an officer to get into elite Special Forces after his requests were denied. While serving as a Navy SEAL, Vietcong offered a reward of 50,000 piasters to kill him. He once body-surfed behind a military patrol boat while under enemy fire. He even headed Red Cell with the job of infiltrating U.S. bases around the world to test their security. He once managed to kidnap a high-ranking officer, his family and “mildly tortured” them to get nuclear codes. Out of embarrassment, the Government spent $60 million to find something to pin on him and convicted him on trumped-up charges, sentencing him to a year in a minimum-security prison, during which time he wrote Rogue Warrior, which embarrassed the military again. He is now forbidden by law from writing anything about the military, so he writes popular “fiction” about the adventures of an elite badass who is “totally not him.”