( CNN ) -- On Thursday in Tampa , U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel presided over a change of command ceremony during which Adm. William `` Bill '' McRaven handed over the reins of Special Operations Command to his successor , Gen. Joseph Votel . As McRaven stepped down he observed , `` We are in perilous times . '' He pointed out that U.S. Special Operations Forces are helping to fight the fast-growing Islamic State in Iraq ; the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines ; the militant group Boko Haram in Nigeria , and al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region . McRaven also said , `` We are in the golden age of Special Operations '' in which elements of the 67,000 men and women under his command have deployed to 92 countries . Now , after more than 3Â½ decades working in the world of special operations , Bill McRaven , 58 , is retiring . In his next incarnation he will become chancellor of the University of Texas . As Hagel pointed out in his speech on Thursday that celebrated McRaven 's storied career , no one has written McRaven 's full history , but if it ever was to be written it `` would need to be heavily redacted '' because so much of it took place in the `` black '' ( secret ) arena . `` Revered '' is the word you often hear about McRaven in the special operations community . That 's in part because even as a three-star admiral , about once a month in Afghanistan , McRaven went out with his teams on risky snatch-and-grab missions . ( His predecessor as the commander of Joint Special Operations Command , Gen. Stanley McChrystal , also went out regularly on such missions and is similarly held in the highest regard . ) The book . Hagel pointed out in his Thursday speech that McRaven also has `` literally written the book on Special Operations . '' Indeed , McRraven 's 1995 book , `` Spec Ops , '' is the standard text on the subject . It features lucid dissections of eight decisive special operations actions , ranging from the British forces who used midget submarines to badly damage the Tirpitz , a key Nazi battleship , in 1943 ; to the Nazi rescue the same year of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from his anti-Fascist captors ; to the raid at Entebbe in 1976 that freed Israeli hostages held in Uganda by Palestinian terrorists . For his book , McRaven interviewed many of the key participants in the raids that he examined , and he traveled to the sites of the operations . After a careful investigation of each raid , he identified six common principles that had made these operations a success : repetition , surprise , security , speed , simplicity and purpose . -- Repetition meant frequent and realistic rehearsals so that the `` friction '' of actual battle was reduced . -- Surprise meant catching the enemy entirely off guard ; for example , the Nazi rescuers of Mussolini crash-landed gliders on a mountain near the hotel where the Fascist leader was being held and rescued him without a shot being fired . -- Security meant confining the knowledge of the operation to a small circle . -- Speed meant that `` relative superiority '' over the enemy needed to be achieved in the first few minutes of the attack , and that the entire mission should be completed in no more than a half-hour . -- Simplicity ensured that the goal of the operation was well understood by each of the soldiers involved -- `` release the hostages '' at Entebbe . -- Purpose meant that the soldiers were completely committed to the mission . But McRaven 's influence on `` spec ops '' goes far beyond just the book he wrote . McRaven helped establish a curriculum at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey , California . And after taking up a job in the White House just weeks after 9/11 , he became one of the principal authors of the Bush administration 's counterterrorism strategy . During the Iraq War , McRaven led the shadowy Task Force 121 , which tracked down Saddam Hussein in December 2003 . Much of the public credit for Saddam 's capture went to conventional army units , but it was , in fact , the Special Operations forces under McRaven 's command who did much of the work to find the Iraqi dictator . Rescue of Capt . Phillips . From the beginning of the Obama presidency , McRaven has been the key to some of the most sensitive U.S. military operations . On the sweltering evening of April 13 , 2009 , several hundred miles off the coast of Somalia , as dusk deepened over the Indian Ocean , three shots rang out . All the bullets found their targets : three Somali pirates in a small , enclosed lifeboat bobbing on the darkening sea . For the previous five days the pirates had held hostage Richard Phillips , the American captain of the Maersk Alabama container ship . President Barack Obama had authorized the use of deadly force if Phillips ' life was in danger . Unbeknownst to the pirates , the USS Bainbridge warship was shadowing them , and days earlier a contingent of SEALs had parachuted at night into the ocean near the Bainbridge . The SEALs had taken up positions on the fantail of the Bainbridge and were carefully monitoring Phillips and his captors . One of the pirates had just pointed his AK-47 at the American captain as if he were going to shoot him . That 's when the SEAL team commander on the Bainbridge ordered his men to take out the pirates . Three U.S Navy SEAL sharpshooters fired simultaneously at the pirates from a distance of 30 yards in heaving seas at nightfall , killing them all . Obama called McRaven , then the leader of Joint Special Operations Command , to tell him , `` Great job . '' The flawless rescue of Capt . Philips was the first time that Obama -- only three months into his new job -- had been personally exposed to the capabilities of America 's secretive Special Operations counterterrorism units , whose skills Obama would come to rely upon increasingly with each year of his presidency . How bin Laden was found . It is , of course , the raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2 , 2011 , that has ensured McRaven 's place in the history books as the architect of the operation . During the spring of 2011 McRaven formulated the plan for the assault on the compound in Abbottabad , Pakistan where bin Laden was believed to be hiding . The planning for the raid was deeply informed by the key principles he had laid out in `` Spec Ops . '' McRaven explained , `` It was a simple plan , carefully concealed , repeatedly rehearsed , and exercised with surprise , speed , and purpose . '' Following extensive realistic rehearsals of the raid in both North Carolina and Nevada that included a full-scale model of the compound bin Laden was believed to be hiding in , McRaven went to the White House to give Obama his assessment of the plausibility of the mission . When he was outlining to the President and his war cabinet the planned Abbottabad helicopter raid , McRaven said , `` In terms of difficulty , compared to what we 're doing on a nightly basis in Afghanistan , what we 're doing in Iraq , this is not among the most difficult missions technically . The difficult part is the sovereignty issue with Pakistan and flying for a long stretch of time over Pakistani airspace . '' Obama knew that the intelligence regarding bin Laden 's presence at the compound was always circumstantial , but the president had confidence that McRaven and his men would be able to execute the mission successfully , whether the al Qaeda leader was in fact at the Abbottabad compound , or not . The night of the raid , when one of the stealth helicopters carrying a SEAL team crashed inside bin Laden 's compound , McRaven -- who was narrating the progress of the operation from his command post in Afghanistan to the White House -- did n't skip a beat , saying without altering his tone : `` We will now be amending the mission . '' Around 15 minutes after the helicopter had crashed , on his audio feed , McRaven heard a SEAL team member give the code word `` Geronimo . '' Each step of the operation had been labeled with a letter of the alphabet , and G meant that bin Laden was `` secured . '' McRaven relayed the `` Geronimo '' to the White House . He assumed that meant bin Laden was now dead , but suddenly thought , `` What if we captured him ? '' So McRaven asked the SEAL ground force commander , `` Is he EKIA [ enemy killed in action ] ? '' A few seconds later , the answer came back : `` Roger , Geronimo EKIA . '' Then McRaven announced to the White House , `` Geronimo EKIA . '' There were gasps in the situation room , but no whoops or high fives . The President quietly said , `` We got him , we got him . '' What 's next for special operations . On Thursday , McRaven gave his final speech as the leader of American Special Operations . In his dress whites , the famously unflappable four-star admiral concluded , his voice quavering with emotion , `` It has been the greatest honor of my life to lead the men and women of Special Operations Command . '' The United States owes a real debt to McRaven and to his wife , Georgeann , who , like many other military spouses , has also served her country stoically as her husband deployed repeatedly to war zones after 9/11 . McRaven 's successor General Votel , previously led the military 's elite and secretive Joint Special Operations Command , which comprises units such as SEAL Team 6 and the Army 's Delta Force . As a colonel , Votel led the unit that five weeks after the 9/11 attacks established the first U.S. military base in Afghanistan and is widely viewed as the right officer to succeed McRaven . As the United States and its allies pivot away from the post-9/11 conventional wars but still face threats from jihadist militants in countries in the Middle East , South Asia and North Africa , Special Operations Forces working `` by , with and through '' local militaries will be a key part of future U.S. military operations . Among his other legacies , McRaven has put in place a Global Special Operations Forces network , which in practice mean a small presence of U.S. Special Operations and Special Forces personnel in dozens of countries around the world . The goal of that network is twofold : To be better positioned to respond to an immediate crisis , such as the attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi in 2012 , and also to build up the capacity of local militaries so they can keep the peace themselves .
Peter Bergen : Adm. William McRaven stepped down as head of U.S. Special Operations Command . He says McRaven not only led the bin ##ational raid planning but wrote the book on special ops . He identified the key elements needed for success in special operations . Bergen : Troops under his command have deployed to 92 nations .