'Rogue warrior' Zinke uses 'unconventional tactics'

Michael Doyle

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke rose through the Navy as an aggressive risk taker, a trait that's rewarded in the elite special operations community but that can complicate careers in politics and bureaucracies. In large ways and small, Zinke's 23-year Navy career generally — and his service as a SEAL officer in particular — help explain his actions at Interior, some of which have gotten him bad press lately and could threaten his job security. On one hand, his doggedness — a SEAL's cultivated refusal to quit — endears him to key allies. "That's exactly what the president likes about him," said one senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He is pushing through an absolutely aggressive agenda." But the door-busting dash that propelled Zinke through the military may have also undermined him at Interior, where he's faced repeated inquiries over his fidelity to the government's standard operating procedures. "When I was with the SEALs, there were those who followed all the rules and played it safe," Zinke recounted in his autobiography, "American Commander," and "there were those who used unconventional tactics to win. We called them 'pirates.'" Zinke served several stints with the pirates, officially called the Navy Special Warfare Development Group and popularly known as SEAL Team Six. They were, in some ways, the defining chapters of Zinke's life, a character-shaping period he now commemorates with his ever-present SEAL lapel pin. "You want to know what kind of seagoing individual I was about to become? You guessed it. A rogue warrior," Zinke wrote, adding that "we trained harder, deployed longer, and viewed the conventional rules as guidance rather than the law." Zinke's Navy performance evaluations obtained by E&E News consistently lauded him, with one calling him "aggressive, determined and relentless in his pursuit of excellence." One "lapse in judgment" cited by a superior officer, involving travel pay, marred his stellar record. Now Zinke's future at Interior is challenged by several ongoing investigations, including one reportedly referred to the Justice Department. The inquiries, past and present, hint at a fast mover sometimes focused more on the mission than on the rulebook (Greenwire, Oct. 31). "We will all be better off when Zinke has moved on from public service and is able to spend all of his time on his true passion: self-promotion," said Chris Saeger, executive director of the advocacy group Western Values Project...MORE

Interesting article. Too bad that when it came to the OMDP National Monument he shed his SEAL uniform and donned the suit of a typical politician. I think he looked over at the Senate and saw that Udall chaired the subcommittee on interior appropriations and Heinrich sat on the authorizing committee for Interior bills and he blinked. We saw a SEAL cut and run. In a way, though, he was still a 'pirate', as he stole the future away from some 30+ plus ranching families. His retreat means their defeat. His decision to do nothing wasn't 'roguish', it was foolish.