INSIDE DELTA FORCE: The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit

Haney, a founding member of Delta Force who retired a command sergeant major, was a career army man, having served in the elite Rangers; his memoir covers his experiences during the formation and early operations of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta. In the fall of 1978, Haney was recruited and ordered to report to a secret corner of expansive Fort Bragg, N.C., where he underwent a rigorous selection process familiar from similar memoirs. In the second section of three, Haney describes advanced work with explosives and weapons, studying airplanes to plan hostage rescues, and the "final exam," in which the class was sent to the nation's capital, given precise assignments and had to evade the FBI. (The result—a red-faced FBI.) Haney then relates his assignments: he served three times in Beirut guarding the American ambassador, participated in the invasion of Grenada, served in several Central American countries and narrowly escaped death during the abortive rescue attempt of the American hostages in Iran. Will he and a partner successfully eliminate a sniper harassing the Marines in Beirut? Will his unit rescue hostages aboard a hijacked plane without losing any hostages? Readers of other special forces memoirs will find this one distinctive for Haney's attention to interservice rivalries (he has a lot of negative things to say about the CIA) that he believes compromised several missions, as well as for Haney's nuanced, often disgusted descriptions of the human cost of war. (May 21)