A group of Navy SEALs emerged from the ink-black ocean on a winter night in early 2019 and crept to a rocky shore in North Korea. They were on a top secret mission so complex and consequential that everything had to go exactly right. The objective was to plant an electronic device that would let the United States intercept the communications of North Korea’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-un, amid high-level nuclear talks with President Trump.
The operation was so risky that it required Trump's direct approval. For the operation, the military chose SEAL Team 6’s Red Squadron — the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden. The SEALs rehearsed for months, aware that every move needed to be perfect. But when they reached what they thought was a deserted shore that night, wearing black wet suits and night-vision goggles, the mission swiftly unraveled. A North Korean boat appeared out of the dark. Flashlights from the bow swept over the water.
Fearing that they had been spotted, the SEALs opened fire. Within seconds, everyone on the North Korean boat was dead. The SEALs retreated into the sea without planting the listening device.
The 2019 operation has never been publicly acknowledged by the United States or North Korea. The details remain classified and were reported in the New York Times for the first time. The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress who oversee intelligence operations, before or after the mission. The lack of notification may have violated the law.
The aborted SEAL mission prompted a series of military reviews during Mr. Trump’s first term. They found that the killing of civilians was justified under the rules of engagement, and that the mission was undone by a collision of unfortunate occurrences that could not have been foreseen or avoided. Many of the people involved in the mission were later promoted.
But the episode worried some experienced military officials with knowledge of the mission, because the SEALs have an uneven track record that for decades has largely been concealed by secrecy. Elite Special Operations units are regularly assigned some of the most difficult and dangerous tasks. Over the years, the SEALs have had a number of major successes, including hits on terrorist leaders, high-profile rescues of hostages and the takedown of bin Laden, that have built an almost superhuman public image.
But among some in the military who have worked with them, the SEALs have a reputation for devising overly bold and complex missions that go badly. Team 6’s debut mission, which was part of the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983, is a case in point. The plan was to parachute into the sea, race to the coast in speedboats and plant beacons to guide assault forces to the island’s airport. But the SEALs’ plane took off late; they jumped at night and landed in stormy conditions, weighed down by heavy gear. Four SEALs drowned, and the rest swamped their speedboats. The airfield was later seized by a unit of Army Rangers who parachuted directly onto the airfield.
Since then, SEALs have mounted other complex and daring missions that unraveled, in Panama, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. During a rescue mission in Afghanistan in 2010, Team 6 SEALs accidentally killed a hostage they were trying to rescue with a grenade and then misled superiors about how she had died.
In part because of this track record, President Barack Obama curtailed Special Operations missions late in his second term and increased oversight, reserving complex commando raids for extraordinary situations like hostage rescues.
The first Trump administration reversed many of those restrictions and cut the amount of high-level deliberation for sensitive missions. A few days after taking office in 2017, Mr. Trump skipped over much of the established deliberative process to greenlight a Team 6 raid on a village in Yemen. That mission left 30 villagers and a SEAL dead and destroyed a $75 million aircraft.
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