Stolen Valor Phony Navy SEAL of the Week. Was Jesse the Body Ventura a Navy SEAL. Yes… Yes He Was 

I guess Jesse, love the guy or hate the guy, Jesse Ventur is back in the media uh again for some things and my emails just overwhelmed. I’ve done several videos about Jesse in the uh past. Uh and I just stay neutral on this stuff. I will just tell you the facts. You can ask the average SEAL about Jesse Ventura.
I mean, the majority of SEALs, majority, and they don’t know what they’re talking about. You get all kinds of crap off the media. They don’t know what they’re talking about. To get an accurate depiction of Jesse Ventura, you have to come to a guy like me, a naval special warfare historian. And I’m only that because I have to know all about World War II, Korea, Vietnam, modernday SEAL everything because I bust them. I bust him.
I hear all the stories. So, I’ll tell you the unknown story about Jesse Ventur first. Did Jesse graduate Bud’s training? Yes, he did. basic underwater demolition school is what he graduated him and his brother Jan Janos. Uh was he a Navy Seal? Yes, he was. Did Jesse serve in Vietnam as a SEAL? Yes, he did.
So, here is Jesse’s foyer record of him. James George Janos. He went in the Navy in January 5th, 1970. served until September 10th, 1975. A couple of years of that was in the reserve. So his active duty dates were uh 5 January 1970 to 10 December 1973. He got discharged as a storekeeper third class. He received the National Defense Service Medal and a Vietnam service medal with one bronze star.
Now that one bronze star uh can mean different things. It means 30 days in Vietnam or it can mean 60 days because you had that bronze start. It can mean campaigns. It’s the most confusing award that’s out there that he served in different campaigns uh in Vietnam. So in June of 1970, Jesse goes to the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado for 18 weeks of uh underwater demolition team training. Graduated Buds.
Jesse was assigned with his brother at underwater demolition team 12 right in Coronado. On 17th November 1970, the Navy gave Jesse the Navy enlisted classification code for [clears throat] underwater demolition uh team 5321. Seals are 5326es and we don’t have the uh uh NEC for UDT anymore. little known after Buds, Jesse goes to Fort Benning Jump School, which a lot of the UDT guys did not go to jump school.
Jesse goes and he graduates jump school uh on 9 December 1970. Little known fact more Jesse graduated Seer Training. So before you graduated Buds Training a few weeks before when they were processing you, they knew you were going to make it. Uh they would give you what’s called a dream sheet in the Navy because the Navy likes its happy sailors.
They’re going to give you an opportunity to go where you wanted to go. Back then, it was underwater demolition or a SEAL team. It was East Coast or West Coast. And they would do their best to please you. And when you graduated up there, the commanding officer would salute, hand you your certificate, and tell you what team you were assigned to.
Some guys in his class went to a SEAL team. Other guys in his class went to a UDT team. Jesse went to UDT12 with his brother. So when I interviewed Jan Janos, Jesse’s brother, he had told me that Jesse was color blind. He never should have been a SEAL, but they somehow fudged it up and got him through Buds and then he got him assigned uh to underwater demolition team 12 with him.
UDT12, by the way, in 1983 was decommissioned UDT12 and recommissioned seal delivery vehicle team one. That’s Marcus Latrell’s team. And a lot of guys just really when you hear Jan Janos describe what was going on, they both loved the water. Jesse was a a crazy medalinning swim guy in high school and they loved the UDT mission. Guys love that.
They love the the movie The Frogman. They love getting the little toy frogman that they pour baking soda in and he’d swim in. Jan talks about all this and some guys just really wanted to be an underwater demolition team. The whole SEAL thing never really interested them at all. And you see guys going to a UDT team in the database and then you see them going to a SEAL team after that and then you see them going back to a UDT team.
One big happy family. Guys loved doing both of them and completely interacting. So Jesse deploys to the Western Pacific with his platoon, a standard Westpak crews going everywhere doing underwater demolition teams, just having a great time. There was a SEAL team one platoon in Vietnam that had picked up some kind of crazy thankless job.
They were launching balloons into Viet Vietkong country, bad guy, Indian country, and it had a single channel propaganda radio on it that they would find they could listen to American music and listen to all the propaganda the US was spewing. And they asked for two guys from underwater demolition team in the Philippines.
And Jesse volunteered with another guy. He did that mission while the other SEALs went out and, you know, on these crazy SEAL operations. It freed them up to do SEAL things. Jesse wasthere at least 30 days doing that because he has a Vietnam service medal. The noteworthy thing is he’s got a bronze star on that. It usually indicates to the requirements for a Vietnam service medal are really kind of crazy.
Uh, it depicts two campaigns to get that bronze star or uh maybe 60 days in country. Whatever he did, he served in Vietnam. When Jesse gets out of the Navy, he still got obligated reserve time to do. There was no UDT reserve unit. There was a SEAL team one reserve unit. And that’s where Jesse went and spent a couple of years acquiring more SEAL qualifications and doing everything there.
He was there for a couple of years at SEAL team one reserve. So if you go through Bud’s training and you are attached to a SEAL team one platoon in Vietnam for at least 30 days and you are in SEAL team one reserves for a couple of years, I’d pretty much call you a SEAL. Love it or don’t love it, I it doesn’t matter to me.
I’m just giving the facts. By the way, the last class to send guys to underwater demolition team was uh class 122. 122 sent two guys to underwater demolition team in May of 1983 and that was it for underwater demolition team. It was over and they were retroactively called sealed. So I don’t I’m not splitting the hairs with anybody.
That’s the way it was and that’s the way it is. Like it or don’t like it. See you.