Dan O’Shea is a retired Navy SEAL Commander and combat veteran with more than twenty-five years of special operations and leadership experience. Built upon multiple deployments to combat/conflict zones from the Middle East to Africa spanning three decades. An asymmetric warfare specialist with extensive overseas and combat experience, O’Shea is a recognized subject matter expert in Counter-Insurgency (COIN), Counter-Terrorism, Kidnapping and Hostage Rescue (HR). O’Shea, is an Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Desert Storm veteran.
CDR O’Shea established and served as the Coordinator of the Hostage Working Group (HWG), at the US Embassy in Baghdad Iraq during the height of the Al Qaeda inspired hostage-taking crisis. The HWG was the US Mission’s primary planning facilitator, intelligence fusion node, and coordinating element for all hostage-taking incidents in Iraq. HWG coalesced the entire spectrum of inter-agency (IA) operations from diplomacy, Intelligence-sharing, law enforcement and military special operations into a force multiplier. O’Shea managed the inter-agency coordination of more than 400 kidnapping incidents and played a direct role in every major international kidnapping incident in Iraq from 2004 to 2006. O’Shea arrived at the height of the hostage-taking campaign targeting foreigners that averaged more than 40 per month; by the end of his service, foreign kidnappings in Iraq were in single digits with only one foreign hostage taken in the last month of his tour.
O’Shea served as a COIN advisor for the Commander International Security Assistance Force (COMISAF) Afghanistan 2011-2012. Providing direct observations and reports to COMISAF on strategic priorities identified opportunities to enhance and exploit ISAF initiatives and to maximize ISAF campaign effects. O’Shea played a direct role in providing COMISAF with timely, accurate assessments and recommendations that identified surfaces and gaps at the tactical through strategic levels.
Prior military service at SEAL Team THREE (1992-1998) where O’Shea commanded two Naval Special Warfare Task Units and served as the SEAL Team Platoon Commander of the theater contingency ready platoon deployed to Southwest Asia. Planned and prepared to execute classified contingency operations during periods of heightened tensions in the Middle East.
Recognized as an Islamic-extremist subject matter expert, O’Shea, is a past Associate Fellow and lecturer at the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) and the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC). A frequent CNN, BBC, MSNBC and FoxNews Military and Counter-Terrorism Analyst, O’Shea Co-Produced the Discovery Channel’s “Kidnap and Rescue” series regarding the global kidnapping industry. Currently a Senior Subject Matter Expert for JSOU.
Dan graduated from the US Naval Academy with a BS in History in 1991 and received a Master’s in Executive Leadership from the University of San Diego Business School in 2001.