When the FBI, ATF, local law enforcement officers were looking for Eric Robert Rudolph (ERR) in the dense NC mountains, I wrote a letter to the FBI and gave them my advice on how to search for him.

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Now imagine this – go to the center of your backyard and look down at the lawn. You can see everything can’t you? Now put yourself in the center of your lawn and imagine you shrunk yourself down to the size of an ant. Now what do you see? You can’t see crap except the vegetation right next to you.

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Tourist Wandering The Woods!

Those law enforcement officers in NC searched the forest like tourist. The terrain was kicking their butt and all they were doing was just going through the motions putting one foot in front of the other. Even when fresh they looked at the terrain, vegetation around them like a tourist. Most folks that wander through the woods look at what’s in front of them – like a tourist. They don’t have the “searching eyes” that is learned. They failed to identify signs that their subject was there or passed through the area. Heck, they probably walked right by him. And I’m willing to bet law enforcement officers walked right by or over ERR!

Now getting back to pretending you shrunk to the size of an ant. How are you gonna find another ant (human) in that huge forest of a lawn (if you don’t know already I’m using this as an analogy for a real forest)? Sweeping searchers are hard enough to find somebody in a huge wilderness area. It’s pretty much worthless when trying to find somebody that doesn’t want to be found (ERR). So what can you do?

To find people whether they want to be found or not (ERR) is you have to DOMINATE THE AREA – DOMINATE THE AREA – DOMINATE THE AREA!  To do this you have to discreetly place 03-man OP-LP’s (Observation Post – Listening Post) that are static at several strategic locations throughout the area where the subject may be lost \ hiding. They stay there 24-hours a day. There is always somebody ‘searching & listening’ 24-hours a day while they stay hidden. These LP-OP’s do NO SEARCHING, all they do is silently observe and silently listen while they’re hiding. The LP – Op’s are like secret antennas feeding the main body of searchers information they can use to find the lost or capture the evading criminal.

Can you see how those static LP-OP’s can greatly enhance finding the “clueless” lost and even evading criminals? Like I said there’s nothing wrong with searchers wandering the woods but they can’t possibly cover everything especially if they’re not trained and wander the woods like tourist.

When I was a kid know-nuthin Private in the 82nd Airborne, our unit was tasked to support what is called Robin Sage. Robin Sage is a Evaluated FTX (Field Training Exercise) for US Army Special Forces Candidates (potential Green Berets) and their guerillas (more soldiers from the 82nd Airborne). There were several different teams of SF candidates supported by their guerillas. The area we we all patrolling was huge and the area was a thick forest with rolling hills with plenty of cover and concealment.

We were the bad guys and the Special Forces candidates and their guerillas were the good guys. Myself and others, we were part of small patrols looking for the SF candidates. We had our area to patrol and there were other several small patrols patrolling their assigned areas.

The job of these small patrols was to look for any signs of those SF candidates. Once we located them, we wouldn’t engage them. We simply got on our radio and alerted the main body and they’d deploy to close with and engage the SF candidates and their guerillas.

What we were doing, we were trying to DOMINATE THE AREA!  I hope you understand this technique to find the lost and the evading & hiding.

A few years later, I was just promoted to Sergeant E-5. Another Robing Sage FTX came up and our company was deployed to western NC. This time I had my own patrol. We had our own area to patrol and we patrolled day and night looking for those Green Beret candidates and their guerillas. I distinctly remember one action we called in. It was night and we were in an open field. A Hercules C-130 flew very low directly over us and the ramp was down. The inside of the air craft was lit-up real bright and I could see the 02 Air Force crew chiefs wearing their monkey harnesses as they stood on the ramp looking down. As it went away from us we could see deep in the low flying C-130. There was nobody else inside. We called it in to our higher ups.

I was always impressed with the Green Beret candidates and especially when we aggressed against Special Forces A-Teams. Back then, I had no idea I would one day try out for Special Forces. I hope you understand how to DOMINATE THE AREA to find the lost and the hiding evaders.

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