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"  Read the full story on &amp;quot;The Shooter&amp;quot; by Phil Bronstein &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Yesterday, as Washington, D.C., got ready for the State of the Union, the man at the center of our story &amp;quot;The Shooter&amp;quot; was on Capitol Hill. We had arranged meetings with nine of the most influential members of the Senate and House to discuss the larger issues of the story \u2014 the difficulty soldiers, and especially members of elite Special Operations Forces, have transitioning to civilian life and the inadequacy of the assistance provided to them by our government. Our little traveling party, which included Phil Bronstein, who wrote our story and is executive chairman of the Center for Investigative Reporting, met for breakfast at about 9:15 and ended up hurrying out of the Capitol building just as it was being locked down in preparation for the President.  The Shooter is not as large as I expected. He&amp;#039;s one of those guys who is sneaky big. He doesn&amp;#039;t stand out. In a suit, you can&amp;#039;t see his tattoos and you don&amp;#039;t realize how solid he is until you stand next to him.  In every meeting, he hit on the same themes. In the years since 9/11, the toll on members of Tier One Special Operations Forces has become even more brutal than in previous eras. As the way we wage war has transitioned from boots on the ground to tactical, highly targeted strikes, those who do the striking are under unprecedented stresses. Without drama, he described his life as a member of SEAL Team 6: Three hundred days a year away from his family. Four-month deployments during which they performed missions \u2014 sometimes multiple missions \u2014 virtually every night. When not deployed, constant training \u2014 parachute jumps, underwater exercises, skills development, conditioning. The toll on the body, and the psyche, is unending, which makes the requirement of twenty years of service to qualify for pension and retirement benefits an unrealistic expectation in the modern era of war.  In one meeting, the Shooter gave an example of one of his own long-term injuries that stuck with me: He has arthritis in his neck that is the result of wearing heavy night-vision goggles every night for 120 nights in a row, repeated over multiple deployments. He&amp;#039;s in his mid-30s.  He spoke of how difficult it was to leave the service. His fellow Team 6 members saw it as something of a betrayal, as quitting the mission. The command structure discourages it to keep force levels up. As a result, even though he gave notice of his intentions a year before his actual departure and signed up for another deployment (to Afghanistan, in winter) after the bin Laden mission, assistance in transitioning from military to civilian life was brief and abrupt. Health benefits for his family ended at midnight of his last day; no pension; no security provisions for him or his family.  It was this last point that seemed to have stayed with him on a personal level. The Shooter is self-sufficient, as you&amp;#039;d imagine. He took pains to tell the legislators at each of the gatherings that he was not in D.C. to ask for help for himself \u2014 &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not about me,&amp;quot; he said in each meeting \u2014 but for colleagues and friends who are still in and concerned about the approaching end of their service. After six months with minimal income (as the story reports), he&amp;#039;s been doing a form of consulting that is making him a living.  But, in several meetings, he spoke passionately about the lack of action to provide for the safety of his family. On returning from the bin Laden mission, he asked to have his house fortified by the construction department on base, but was rebuffed. He also talked about more recent measures he and his wife have taken in anticipation of the release of the Esquire story. During each meeting, the Shooter and the members of the group accompanying him presented the legislators with a three-part proposal for easing the transition out of the military for elite forces that would require no legislation.  \u2022 A tiered pension plan that would begin after five years of duty and vary depending on base pay and length of service. \u2022 Enhanced transition services that must be provided on an &amp;quot;opt-out&amp;quot; basis to overcome the fact that many vets are unaware that such services exist or how to apply for them and to include 18 months of comprehensive health insurance available immediately for vets and their families. \u2022 Departure pay based on length and type of service.  In every meeting I attended, the senators, representatives, and their staffs were receptive \u2014 in many cases eager to help. They are all extremely attuned to veterans&amp;#039; concerns, as nearly all of them have heard from constituents that the Veterans Administration system is a challenge to navigate and that high percentages of veterans never take advantage of the benefits offered. The Shooter mentioned in most meetings that it was only in recent weeks that he was made aware of the medical benefits he is eligible to apply for through the VA. And in most meetings, the staff members who attended included former military and/or active-duty service members who were on staff or interning in the office.  But it was illuminating to hear what the roadblocks to change will be. While most legislators were entirely attuned to the unique and uniquely punishing demands put on special operators like SEALs, creating a special category of benefits, even if it applies to the elite Special Operations Forces of all branches of the military, will be difficult.  There was discussion that while more effective transitional assistance is essential, it can sometimes be seen by the command structure as providing an incentive for soldiers, especially the elite, to leave the military and thereby deplete force levels. The Shooter&amp;#039;s mentor, a former SEAL who attended all the briefings, spoke about both the peer pressure on elite soldiers to continue their mission and also the pressures on the command structure to retain its best talent.  In each legislative office, the story had been avidly read and certain details in particular \u2014 such as the discovery of raw opium in bin Laden&amp;#039;s compound \u2014 elicited comment. In general, there were far fewer questions about the mission than we anticipated, though several legislators were curious about what the Shooter thought of Zero Dark Thirty. As in the article, he was generally complimentary of the movie, with a significant exception: The quality (and quantity) of the SEALs&amp;#039; tattoos in the film was not up to his standards. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a19523/shooter-on-the-hill-15097803/?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_6966021>