re: #42 Cardio (formerly JRCMYP)

So, when we call them “special forces” really we’re talking about people who were analysts, not people who were trained (or at least expecting to be suddenly thrust into) a combat mission?

One would presume we’re talking about Green Berets, about which on Wikipedia:

The United States Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets because of their distinctive service headgear, are a special operations force tasked with five primary missions: unconventional warfare (the original and most important mission of Special Forces), foreign internal defense, special reconnaissance, direct action, and counter-terrorism.

They would be the logical unit that would be poking around various different State facilities and assessing security. A group of four, lightly armed, would certainly be able to do no more than investigate.

I don’t necessarily agree that they should have been better armed or greater in number. They would presumably be travelling point-to-point by helicopter between various US facilities that already had an armed presence. Making them tote around rifles would put them in a different mindset and distract them from their actual job that mission, which is looking and thinking in an abstract way.