Aaron Bank Colonel Aaron Bank ( November 23 , 1902 – April 1 , 2004 ) was an officer of the United States Army , and the founder of the US Army Special Forces , commonly called " Green Berets " . He is also famous for his exploits as an OSS officer during World War II , parachuting into France to coordinate and activate the French Resistance and organizing an operation intended to capture Adolf Hitler . During his retirement years , Colonel Bank played a quiet but critical role in warning the nation about the risks of terrorism and modern technology and he is largely responsible for the high level of security at U . S . nuclear power plants since the early 1970s . Biography . World War II career . As a young man , Bank worked as chief life guard at an upscale resort in Biarritz . His widowed mother taught language ( French and German ) lessons to earn a living , this explains his unusual fluency in French and German , a skill which had much to do with his later activities as a special operations commander . He enlisted in the Army in August 1942 , then volunteered for special operations work . He was in his late thirties , and thought " too old " for combat , but he was an unusually athletic man and so was accepted into the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) during World War II . The OSS conducted both espionage operations ( SI Branch ) and special operations ( SO Branch ) , for sabotage and guerrilla warfare . Bank was assigned to SO Branch , and on July 31 , 1944 led the Jedburgh Team PACKARD , parachuting into Lozère Department of France and linking up with French Resistance . At the time of " Operation Anvil " , also known as " Operation Dragoon " ( the Allied invasion of Southern France approximately six weeks after the D - Day invasion at Normandy ) , Bank and his French partisans drove the German forces away from the beachhead ahead of the Allied troops , liberating a number of French towns before the regular forces arrived . In late 1944 and early 1945 , Bank led " Operation Iron Cross , " which evolved into a plan to capture or kill Adolf Hitler . The OSS actively recruited German POWs who were opposed to Hitler to form a special forces unit , outfitted with SS uniforms and highly trained in " raid and snatch " techniques . ( The OSS found many willing volunteers amongst former German soldiers , primarily former German Communists , who vigorously opposed Hitler , and German Jews who had taken refuge in the Wehrmacht , posing as Gentiles . ) This unit was trained as parachute infantry and was intended for insertion into the expected " Alpine Redoubt " on the Austrian / German border , where senior Nazi officials were planning to make their last stand against the advancing Allied armies . Hitler was expected to flee from Berlin and retire to the Alpine Redoubt before the Soviets could enter the capital city , so General William Joseph Donovan , head of the OSS , issued this order : " Tell Bank to get Hitler . " " Iron Cross " was canceled almost on the eve of execution because intelligence showed that Hitler had remained in Berlin . ( He committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30 , 1945 . ) Additionally , the 101st Airborne and 7th Army divisions were advancing so rapidly they were expected to capture the non - existent Alpine Redoubt before " Iron Cross " could be executed . ( Bank ' s enemy - uniformed volunteers would also be prime targets for allied forces . ) With the capitulation of Germany in May , 1945 , Bank was reassigned to the Pacific theater , where he was inserted into Indochina and linked up with Ho Chi Minh , then leading the resistance to the Japanese . Bank spent considerable time traveling through Vietnam with Ho and was impressed with Ho ' s manifest popularity among the Vietnamese population . Bank advised the OSS of Ho ' s great popularity , recommended that Ho be allowed to form a coalition government , and predicted that Ho would win a popular election overwhelmingly if one was conducted . It is not known whether Bank ' s recommendations reached President Harry S . Truman , but American policy was contrary : Ho was a long - time Communist , having joined the party in the 1920s in Paris , and therefore was considered unacceptable as leader of a coalition government . Some French " Vichy " military forces remained in Indochina , and the United States now consented to the use of these residual forces to block Ho and reinstate Indochina as a French colony . President Truman and later President Dwight D . Eisenhower provided financial support to the French , thus leading to the Indochina War and ultimately the Vietnam War . Post - war activities and the founding of the Special Forces . After the war Bank remained in the Army and became a leading advocate for the formation of a professional special forces ( unconventional warfare ( UW ) ) division , equivalent to the SO branch of OSS . Colonel Russell W . Volckmann ( who had been a guerrilla in the Philippines ) and Bank were instrumental in convincing the Army it needed such a force . The primary place such elements would be deployed , they thought , was behind the " Iron Curtain , " in the Eastern European nations dominated by the Soviet Union , where there was a real possibility of a local resistance movement arising . In 1952 , Colonel Bank became the first commander of the Army ' s first Special Forces unit , called the 10th Special Forces Group . ( This number was selected to confound the Russians with suspicions of nine more such units . ) In establishing the 10th , he was as flexible as he had been with " Iron Cross " , drawing upon former members of the " 1st Special Service Force " known as the Devil ' s Brigade , as well as veterans of the OSS , the Parachute Infantry units , and guerrilla elements in the Pacific . Using the training and strategies and the lessons learned during World War II , Bank created an elite unit of men skilled in foreign languages ( to interface with foreign insurgents ) , the arts of sabotage and stealth tactics , the use of explosives for demolition , amphibious warfare , rock climbing , jungle warfare , mountain fighting and as ski troops . Special Forces today are still all volunteer and organized into " A teams , " as Aaron Bank organized his men in the 10th Special Forces group in 1952 , with two experts in every specialty . They still undergo an arduous training process in which large numbers of men fail or quit , as Aaron Bank required of the men of " Operation Iron Cross " . Special Forces today acknowledge the paternity of Colonel Bank with great pride . Colonel Bank was commended by President George W . Bush in 2002 , the year he celebrated his hundredth birthday , for developing the unconventional warfare programs and techniques that were used in toppling the Taliban . Later years . Aaron Bank retired from the Army in 1958 , and remained a vigorous man well into his eighties , swimming several miles a day in the Pacific Ocean near his home in San Clemente , California . In the early 1970s , Colonel Bank began a personal investigation of the lack of security at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station , which is a few miles south of San Clemente . Bank determined that the San Onofre plant was protected by one private security guard with a sidearm , as if the only concern was civilian theft . Bank concluded that a single special forces soldier could overcome this guard , seize the plant and destroy it with a small quantity of explosives . The consequence could be a Chernobyl - type accident , whereby the damaged plant would spew radioactivity into the atmosphere and contaminate thousands of square miles , including the nearby Los Angeles basin . Colonel Bank became alarmed at the recklessness of the civilian operators of San Onofre , and actively lobbied , then testified before a closed session of the U . S . Atomic Energy Commission , warning of the dangers of terrorist sabotage at San Onofre . As one of the world ' s leading experts on the sabotage of electric generating facilities , Bank spoke with great authority — but the AEC ignored him and did nothing . Bank then shared his concerns with an investigative journalist , who wrote an exposé of poor security at San Onofre for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1974 . This led to a Congressional investigation and further secret testimony by Colonel Bank before a Congressional committee . This time , Bank ' s testimony was heeded , and Congressional pressure forced the AEC and its successor , the Nuclear Regulatory Commission , to act . The U . S . nuclear power industry was ordered to spend billions of dollars implementing anti - terrorist security measures at commercial nuclear reactors nationwide , including on - site security squads with automatic weapons , remote scram capabilities ( to take control of the plant from a distance and shut it down in the event of an attack ) and the use of " red teams " to probe defenses and thereby eliminate vulnerabilities . Personal life . Colonel Bank married his wife Catherine in 1948 , and they raised two daughters , Linda and Alexandra . He wrote two books , first , " From OSS to Green Berets : the Birth of Special Forces , " which describes his exploits in France and Indochina and his role in founding the Special Forces and then " Knight ' s Cross " , a fictionalized account of a completed Operation Iron Cross which was co - written with E . M . Nathanson . He died on April 1 , 2004 in Dana Point , California at the age of 101 . He is buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside , California . Awards . Colonel Bank ' s awards include :