THE COMMANDOS

From a Newsweek correspondent who's seen them in action on a number of fronts: an absorbing and informative briefing on the American military's elite but covert forces Drawing mainly on personal observations and interviews with over 200 of the roughly 46,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen who comprise the US Special Operations Command, Waller focuses on four outfits—the Army's Delta Force and Green Berets, the Navy's SEALs, and the so-called cowboys who fly the Pave Low helicopters that, among other missions impossible, put commando units where they have to be by day or night. While he went along on the rigorous, realistic field exercises many such cadres employ to separate the men from the boys, the fortysomething author was obliged to tap retired veterans and the precious few manuals that are publicly available for insights on how Delta Force screens and trains its counterterrorist and hostage-rescue squads. Even so, Waller offers vivid accounts of what America's shadow warriors (the disciplined latter-day equivalents of WW II's apocryphal dirty dozens) are prepared to do and what they have done in the post-cold war era. Cases in point range from the 1989 breakout of a US businessman from a Panama City prison through a host of reconnaissance forays, airborne raids, and diversionary feints behind Iraqi lines during Desert Storm. Covered as well are the turf battles unconventional troops must fight with the Pentagon's establishment, which regards them as an alien element in the nation's arsenal. An evenhanded appreciation of special forces and their varied roles in a Global Village that, despite the USSR's collapse, falls well short of being a peaceable kingdom. (First serial to Newsweek; Main Selection of the Military Book Club)