The Most Successful Failure: Operation Eagle Claw and the Birth of Modern Special Operations Forces

Author:   Tom Neven ,  David De Vries
Publisher:   Tantor
Edition:   Unabridged edition
ISBN:  

9798228836501


Publication Date:   02 June 2026
Format:   Audio  Audio Format
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
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The Most Successful Failure: Operation Eagle Claw and the Birth of Modern Special Operations Forces


Audio Format

Overview

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took the entire diplomatic staff hostage. While President Jimmy Carter initially pursued a diplomatic solution to the crisis, he authorized the military to begin planning a rescue mission. Still, planners slowly assembled a team and formulated a plan to insert a raiding force directly into the U.S. embassy compound in Tehran and get the hostages out. But launch they did on April 24, 1980, on a mission dubbed Eagle Claw. It ended in disaster when two aircrafts collided in the dark in the confusion of a hasty withdrawal in the middle of the Iranian desert. Eight American servicemen died. The lessons learned from that debacle in the desert would be used over a period of less than twenty years to craft a special operations capability second to none and would culminate in a near-perfect raid in May 2011 to kill the architect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden. Much has been written about this operation, but this new, comprehensive account incorporates information from thousands of recently declassified documents that provide additional detail and never-before-told stories.

Full Product Details

Author:   Tom Neven ,  David De Vries
Publisher:   Tantor
Imprint:   Tantor
Edition:   Unabridged edition
ISBN:  

9798228836501


Publication Date:   02 June 2026
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Audio
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

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Author Information

Tom Neven served seven years in the Marine Corps as an M-60 machine-gunner and as an embassy guard in Africa and Europe. He has written for many publications, including Marine Corps Gazette, Leatherneck, the Washington Post, the Denver Post, and Rocky Mountain News. He spent fourteen years in the history & research office at U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, researching, writing, and editing studies and reports on a broad array of special operations topics. David de Vries can be seen in a number of feature films, including The Founder, The Accountant, Captain America: Civil War, and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. On television, his credits include House of Cards, Nashville, Halt and Catch Fire, the National Geographic film Killing Reagan, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for HBO. As a veteran stage actor, David appeared as Lumiere in Disney's Beauty and the Beast on Broadway, as Dr. Dillamond in the Los Angeles and Chicago companies of Wicked, and in hundreds of shows in regional theaters throughout the country. He is an Audie and Odyssey Award-winning narrator for his performance in Pam Munoz Ryan's Echo and has voiced over 100 titles in every genre, including his Audie Award-nominated performance of the 2011 Caldecott winner A Sick Day for Amos McGee.

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