On the Job 

Col. Danny McKnight, who has been sharing lessons on life and leadership since his retirement from the Army in 2002, will be a featured speaker at the Ohio Attorney General’s 2016 Law Enforcement Conference.
 
The event, with the theme “Protecting Ohio: Fighting the Drug Epidemic,” will offer 30 workshops and a keynote address by Chuck Rosenberg, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration and former chief of staff and senior counselor to FBI Director James Comey.
 
McKnight, who will address the crowd on Oct. 5, is often asked to talk about one particular operation in 1993 in Mogadishu, Somalia, that tested McKnight and changed his life.
 
Then-Lt. Col. McKnight was leading a battalion of Army Rangers into Mogadishu, Somalia, on a mission to capture two leaders who worked for a local warlord when two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and a raid that should have been an in-and-out assignment turned into a 15-hour gunbattle in which 18 Americans died and 73 were injured, including McKnight.
 
The mission and McKnight’s efforts as the commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment were chronicled in the book and movie Black Hawk Down.
 
In preparation for his speaking engagement, McKnight, who lives near Cocoa Beach, Fla., with his wife, Linda, recently answered a few questions about the mission in Mogadishu; the book and movie; and law enforcement.
 
What can we expect from your Oct. 5 speech?

My son-in-law is a deputy sheriff in the county next to mine. He is my daughter’s husband and the father of my 6-year-old grandson. I will make it clear how strongly I feel about first responders – law enforcement, fire and rescue, EMS, EMTs, and our military. At this time, I don’t know of any profession that is tougher than wearing the uniform as a first responder. I think they deserve to know that people do care. I don’t think they get thanked enough. What’s happen in the past six months has been appalling.
I will also talk about leadership. In the Army, we use the acronym LDRSHIP. Those letters stand for seven values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. I focus very clearly on those. … The one I pick as my No. 1 of those seven values is respect.

At the time of your speech at our law enforcement conference, it will be almost exactly 23 years since the events of Oct. 3-4, 1993, in Somalia. How did that day affect you?

It definitely changed my life. The impact of it will never go away because I lost six of my kids, my Rangers. That impact will never change. The other guys, the Delta Force guys who died, were ones I had become close to, were some of my best friends, and they died, too. The impact of that day will never go away.
Of the six of mine who died, I’m still in touch with four of their families today. Since 1993, I have made a journey every five years to visit my guys’ gravesites. The impact is there. It will always be there. And when I’m laid to rest, it will go with me.

Did you watch Black Hawk Down when it first came out?

I’d been retired 18 days, when it came out. I had not, at that point, talked to (author) Mark Bowden. While I had no input to the book, I had a tad of input into the movie, but not much because I was still on active duty. Two of the guys who were over there (in Mogadishu), Col. Tom Matthews and Col. Lee Van Arsdale had retired and were in Morocco for the filming. They called me twice to ask questions because I was the senior guy on the ground. Tom Sizemore, who portrayed me in the movie, called me twice.

When the movie came out on Jan. 18, which was a Friday, I did not go see it. I did not go on Saturday. I chose to go on Sunday afternoon because I lived in the Atlanta area and thought that most people would be in church or eating. So, I went at 1 p.m. and there were only five seats empty. I didn’t want people around me, but there they were.

When the movie was over, I sat and collected myself. I’ve seen the movie again since then, so I know that on the first viewing, I missed a lot. I was seeing it on the screen and thinking back to the actual event.
When I got up to leave the theater, most of the people had cleared out. I was walking down the aisle and saw a couple on my right. The young man sitting there with his wife saw me, and I stopped. He got up and walked over to me. In the movie, there’s a guy named Scott Galentine who had his thumb shot off. That’s who was watching the movie in the same theater with me, about 200 feet from me. And we didn’t even know the other was there. We had a very emotional moment together.

So what did Tom Sizemore ask when he called you?

He asked me how I reacted at the time my vehicle was shot up. His portrayal was OK, but not 100 percent accurate. I know what I did and didn’t do. There was one thing in the movie that I asked him about. There’s a line in the movie where one of my guys said to me, “They’re shooting, what should I do?” and I said, “Well, shoot back.” So, I asked Tom, why he said that. He said, “I don’t know, it just came out. And Jerry Bruckheimer said to leave it because it sounded good.”

I promise you, I didn’t tell anybody to shoot back. They knew to shoot back.

Were there any other discrepancies?

One thing they did that I disliked is when they showed Tom Sizemore in the convoy at the end returning to bring everyone back. I didn’t do that. I had been shot twice and my boss wouldn’t let me. I got my gear on and ready to go, but my boss, who outranked me, said I wasn’t going.

I wish they hadn’t created that part. It bothers me personally.

In the movie, your character gets shot in the neck. Did that really happen to you?

I did get shot in the neck and right arm. The bad guys were fairly intelligent. They knew that the Army vehicles coming down the streets were unprotected. Those vehicles were not like the ones they have today. Bullets could penetrate them. They also knew that in the first vehicle, in the passenger seat, sits the leader. So they knew that was someone they wanted to take out — and they tried. I had shrapnel next to my carotid artery, and I still have some in my arm.

I see where you have your own book, Streets of Mogadishu: Leadership at Its Best, Political Correctness at Its Worst! Can you tell me about that?

I call my book the rest of the story. Mark Bowden did a very good job on Black Hawk Down, but my input to his book was zero. The reason I offered no input is I was in uniform on active duty and had promised myself that I would never talk about anything until after I got out of uniform.

After I retired in 2002, I decided, at the urging of my wife that I would write my own book. So we put the book together. The first three chapters focus directly on leadership. Some of it is about bad leadership from the very top down.

It has been an enormous, amazing trip with the book. I think we’ve gone over 40,000 with it, which amazes me. I’ll have books with me in Ohio when I come to speak.

Were you involved in other battles besides the one featured in Black Hawk Down?

When we jumped in Panama in 1989 to remove Manuel Noriega, I was the executive officer for the Third Ranger battalion.