State Of The Union

It was during a training mission that Harvath’s father, a SEAL instructor at the Naval Special Warfare Center, was killed in a demolitions accident. At the time of the accident, Scot was training with the U.S. Freestyle ski team in Park City, Utah. He had been with the team for several years at that point, much to the chagrin of his father. Michael Harvath had not worked as hard as he had to watch his son forgo college for a career in professional sports. The two had fought bitterly, as only two proud, headstrong men with passionate convictions can.

The fighting had been a strain on their relationship; one that Scot’s mother had worked tirelessly to try to mend. It was as if she had somehow sensed that her husband’s life was going to be cut short. It was only through his mother’s Herculean efforts that the family stayed together at all. The stronger Michael pushed, the more Scot pulled away and pursued his own path. Father and son were more alike than either of them realized. By the time Scot figured this out for himself, his father was already gone.

The loss was devastating. Scot’s mother had lost her husband, but it could be argued that the greater grief was Scot’s, who had not only lost his father, but had lost him with so many things between them left unsaid and unfinished.

Up until his father’s death, Scot had done extremely well on the World Cup circuit and had been favored to medal in the upcoming Olympics, but try as he might, after his father’s death he just couldn’t get his head back into competitive skiing. It suddenly wasn’t important any more.

Instead, he chose to immediately follow in his father’s footsteps. After graduating from college cum laude in less than three years, he joined the Navy where he passed the rigorous Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL selection program, also known as BUD/S, and was made a SEAL. With his expertise in skiing, he was tasked to Team Two, known as the cold-weather specialists, or Polar SEALs. With an exceptional aptitude for languages and a desire for even more action, Harvath applied, and was eventually accepted to Team Six, the Navy’s elite counterterrorism detachment, also known as Dev Group. It was while he was with Dev Group that Scot Harvath came to the attention of the United States Secret Service.

Whenever a President made an appearance on or near water, the SEALs were called upon to provide support. Harvath was part of a contingent that assisted several such protective details for a former president who loved to race his Cigarette boats off the coast of Maine. Scot had proven himself to be extremely talented on many occasions, but when he discovered and defused an explosive device meant to disrupt one of the president’s outings, the Secret Service stood up and took notice. They had been looking for someone just like him to help improve the ways in which they protected the president.

It took some doing, but the Secret Service eventually succeeded in wooing Scot to join their team. After Harvath completed his courses at the Secret Service advanced-training facility in Beltsville, Maryland, he joined the presidential protective detail based at the White House. A lot had happened since then. Harvath had not only rescued the president from kidnappers and helped to prevent a major war in the Middle East, but also realized along the way that the life of a Secret Service agent was not for him. Surprisingly, the president had agreed and tasked Harvath to a new assignment.

President Jack Rutledge had added a new weapon in his war on terrorism. As part of his reorganization of the American Intelligence community and renewed dedication to countering terrorism, the president had created a special international branch of the Homeland Security Department dubbed the Office of International Investigative Assistance, or OIIA. The group represented the collective intelligence capability and full muscle of the United States government to help neutralize and prevent terrorist actions against America and American interests on a global level.

Though Harvath’s title at the OIIA was listed as a “special agent,” very few people knew what his job actually entailed. The benign title led most to believe that he worked in the field, assisting foreign governments and law enforcement agencies in their counterterrorism efforts. That, after all, was the express mission statement of the OIIA. Had Congress known Harvath’s true marching orders, the Office of International Investigative Assistance would never have gotten their budget approved.