Greatness From Adversity
By Jeff Harp
Following my sophomore year in high school, I received an unexpected, handwritten letter from my wrestling coach. He wrote:
“Champ, you have just accomplished something that very few people in this life accomplish: You set your sights on a lofty goal, you worked hard, and although you were not a state champion this year, the expectation for you the next two years will be awesome…”
I finished my first season as a varsity wrestler 31-4, having lost only two matches. I then beat both of those individuals later in the year. I finished 4th in the state tournament as a sophomore, the first ever in my high school and hometown of Evansville, Indiana, a town known for wrestling and high school sports. I often refer to this year and remember the match that changed my life.
In the state qualifying tournament, I was paired to wrestle a highly ranked senior who had pinned me earlier in the year. To advance, I had to win.
The excitement in the gymnasium was deafening. All matches were halted. All eyes were on my match. My coach looked at me and said, “This is the moment you’ve trained for. Go get ’em!”
By the third period we were tied 6-6. With 10 seconds left I looked over at my coach as he stood up and yelled, “TAKE THE MATCH TO HIM NOW!”
I shot in for a takedown. The crowd screamed in excitement, thinking I just scored two more points. However, it was out of bounds. We were going to overtime.
I was exhausted. I got up and my coaches motioned for me to come to the sideline for the 1-minute break to recover as best I could before the 2-minute overtime match. As I looked at them, I said “Coach, I am so tired.”
“Yeah? Well, good! That way I know you are alive and working hard. Now get out there and kick his ass!”
I decided at that point that there was no one who had worked as hard as I did, and I was NOT going to give up. When my opponent walked to the mat, I ran to its center. The whistle blew and before I knew it, I was leading 6-0. With seconds left in the match, we went out of bounds for a final takedown. The clock went off, and the towel was thrown in. I walked away a victor. My opponent was so exhausted he was unable to stand. His coach looked over, shaking his head, and said to my coach,
“I have never seen a kid work so hard in my life,” and walked away.
Never, ever give up.
That match is where it all started and catapulted me into a new category of leadership, expectations, and desire to best the best. I was voted team captain, MVP, and broke numerous records the following two years.
***
I joined the FBI in 1995. Following the academy, I was assigned to the Los Angeles Field Office where I worked in International Terrorism and was a member of the S.W.A.T.
While assigned to the Los Angeles Field Office, I tried out for and was accepted onto the FBI’s Elite Hostage Rescue Team. My selection class started with about 50 men: 25 finished, and 7 were offered a position. This was a list of selectees comprised of former Special Forces members, Navy Seals, Army Delta, and Army Rangers. I had none of that experience—what I did have was a will to win, a desire to be the best, and the fortitude to never, ever, quit.
After 5 years on the Hostage Rescue Team, I chose to apply for a supervisory position at FBI headquarters. I was on a temp assignment at FBI headquarters when tragedy struck America.
Like everyone else, I remember where I was on that September day. I was helping a colleague on a terrorism case when he came up to me and stated that a helicopter had just flown into the World Trade Center. I looked at him and said, “How in the hell do you do that on such a clear September day?” We were both watching the TV as we learned it was not, in fact, a helicopter, but a commercial airliner.
I watched in horror as the second plane hit the towers. Alarms went off. People were rushing through the halls. We knew. And there were two other planes now unaccounted for. We were in for long months ahead.
I continued to pursue a supervisory position at FBIHQ through the spring of 2002. In May of that year, I was selected to lead the Guantanamo Bay Task force, an advocate group of agents and analysts coordinating the interviews and interrogations of detainees at Bagram Airfield and the new facility at Guantanamo Bay. As the detainees were brought in, the joint task force, which included a cadre of about 40 FBI agents, would talk to the detainees to learn anything that could be used to prevent another attack.
In July of that year, I received a phone call from a co-worker at GTMO. They indicated that SF was going to be transmitting a huge stack of 3×5 cards with fingerprints that they had obtained from captured enemy combatants in Afghanistan. My colleagues and I discussed strategies to use these fingerprints, some of which were illegible. During the course of running the prints, we had a peculiar hit. One of the detainees came back as “positive” and had made an attempt to enter the country in August 2001. I assembled my team of hardworking, young, and energetic fellow FBI employees and said, “we need to find out what this guy was doing entering the United States.”
There have been countless suggestions as to who else was in the United States to cause harm, but one thing’s for certain: my team pulled together critical information leading to the most likely scenario and most likely person to be the only surviving terrorist and 9/11 hijacker.
Never give up, never quit, and never settle for second best.
No one says being a leader is fair, easy, or filled with accolades. If you have never read the transcript of Todd Beamer’s phone call with the emergency operator on 9/11 while he was aboard flight 93, I ask you to take the time to read the entire transcript. It is a gut-wrenching and heartbreaking call. It is the epitome of leadership. He never quit. He never even considered failure as an option. He took charge, he seized the moment, rallied the troops, and put a plan into action.
***
On October 12, 2000, at 0418, a small fiberglass boat carrying nearly 700 lbs of C4 pulled alongside the destroyer USS Cole, which had entered the Gulf of Aden and was docked for refueling. The ship, commanded by Commander Kirk Lippold, had a hole torn through the hull that was nearly 40 feet by 60 feet. The Hostage Rescue Team was sent an advanced security element for the FBI and NCIS investigators arriving on scene. We had arrived in a hostile environment, and we were likely to encounter hostile threats from the very people we were there to protect.
After long negotiations we were “cleared” to unload our armored vehicles we had flown in, along with an armament of sorts. As we made our way across town to our hotel, then onto the location where the ship had been gravely damaged, I was struck by the position the ship had settled after the bombing. I looked at my teammate, claiming that they nearly had sunk the ship. As our security team approached the ship and made our way up the walkway, I could not help but notice the black bags which had been carefully taking what remained of the 17 sailors killed. I observed Commander Lippold with tears in his eyes as they carried the body bags from the ship.
Years later I met Commander Lipphold in the hallway of a government building. We looked at each other with a memorable smile and said hello. As we sat in a meeting together we both knew the familiar face was from another time, another place. After our meeting we shook hands and he said, “looks like we both made it home.” I smiled and replied, “Yes sir, and America thanks you for your commitment, honor, and sacrifice.”
Commander Lippold was a down-to-earth man who stood by the men and women of the USS Cole. Watching him agonize over the untimely and murderous death of those sailors showed me that leaders are human, they shed tears, they carry heavy burdens, and they never, ever quit.
Jeff Harp
Jeff has spent 30+ years working in executive roles in security and law enforcement, FBI leadership, and foreign diplomatic relations.