A 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Dick Couch served as a Surface Warfare Officer and a Special Warfare Officer. While a platoon leader with SEAL Team One in 1970, he led one of the only successful POW rescue operations of the Vietnam War. On release from active duty in 1972, he entered the Central Intelligence Agency, where he served as a Maritime Operations Case Officer. Dick retired from the Naval Reserve in 1997 with the rank of captain and has served as an advisor on military and tactical ethics for the component commands of the US Special Operations Command.
He began his writing career in 1990 and has authored eleven novels:
| SEAL Team One (Avon, 1990) | Pressure Point (Putnam Books, 1992) | Silent Descent (Putnam Books, 1994) |
| Rising Wind (Naval Institute Press, 1997) | The Mercenary Option (Pocket, 2003) | Covert Action (Pocket, 2005) |
| Act of Valor (Novelization) (Berkley, 2012) | Act of Revenge (SEAL Press, Jan, 2014) | Op Center– Out of the Ashes (St. Martins, May, 2014) |
| Op Center–Into the Fire (St. Martins, May 2015) | John Moody, Navy Seal (SEAL Press, June, 2016) |
His eleven works of nonfiction focus on Military ethics, Special Operations, Special Operations Training, and Tactical Ethics. They include:
| The Warrior Elite (2nd Edition); The Forging if SEAL Class 228 (Crown Books 2001/2013 | The US Armed Forces Nuclear, Chemical, Biological Survival Manual – Editor ( Basic Books, 2003) |
| The Finishing School; Earning the Navy SEAL Trident (Crown Books, 2004) | Down Range; Navy SEAL Operations in the War on Terror (Crown Books 2005) |
| Chosen Soldier; The Making of a Special Forces Warrior (Crown Books 2007) | The Sheriff of Ramadi; Navy SEALs and the Winning of al-Anbar (Naval Institute Press, 2008) |
| A Tactical Ethic; Moral Conditioning for Modern Warriors (Naval Institute Press, 2010) | Sua Sponte; The Forging of a Modern American Ranger (Berkley, 2012) |
| Navy SEALs; Their Untold Story (William Morrow, March 2014) | Always Faithful, Always Forward; The Forging of a Special Operations Marine (Berkley, June 2014) |
| By Honor Bound Two Navy SEALs and the Medal of Honor(St. Martins, May, 2016) |
His books and articles have been featured nationwide in leading outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Christian Science Monitor, Variety magazine, Booklist, Kirkus, and the Library Journal. His co-authored novelization of Act of Valor, reached Number Four on the New York Times Best Seller List. In addition to his writing, Dick is in engaged in corporate/keynote speaking events.
Dick enjoys a unique relationship with the US Special Operations Command and its subordinate Army, Navy, and Marine Corps component commands. They have allowed him special access for extended periods of time with their training and operational elements, and to tell their story in print. Dick has spent five of the last fifteen years embedded with these special operation components, at their domestic locations and their forward operating bases overseas.
Dick has served as an analyst for FOX TV, MSNBC TV, and ABC radio during periods of key combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has also been featured on National Public Radio, “The O’Reilly Factor,” with Bill O’Reilly, “Hardball” with Chris Matthews, and was a guest on Brian Lamb’s Q&A on C-SPAN. He has often traveled to the wartime theaters as an embed with American and allied Special Operations Forces.
He has lectured at the Air Force Academy, West Point, the Naval Academy, the Naval Special Warfare Center, the JFK Special Forces Center and School, the FBI Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, The Joint Special Operations University, and The US Marine War College on issues of character development, ethics, moral battlefield conduct, and counterinsurgency. He recently completed a year-long assignment as an adjunct professor of ethics at the Naval Academy. Currently, Dick is busy with his next book, a nonfiction work on two of his SEAL teammates who received the Medal of Honor.
Dick lives with his wife Julia and their two dogs in central, Idaho. When at home, he teaches writing workshops for the College of Southern Idaho. And when writing, lecturing, teaching, and a heavy travel schedule permit, he enjoys hiking, fly fishing, and skiing.
