It’s not just women who are sidelined and denigrated in this hyper-competitive, ultra-macho environment. Delta Force Boosting, which is overwhelmingly male, has plenty of Black and brown men serving as support soldiers. But in Williams’ time, less than one in 100 of the actual operators were nonwhite. “It is very, very, very rare,” said former Fort Bragg paratrooper Jordan Terrell, who felt out of place simply being a Black man in the airborne infantry. The Army as a whole is tremendously diverse, but the infantry is mostly white, the Special Forces is even whiter and Delta Force is the whitest of all. “I could not believe, mathematically,” said Licea, “that there were not more minorities.”

For the most ambitious officers, the high-speed West Point studs looking to rise in the ranks, Delta Force is a steppingstone to the highest echelons of the Army and the Pentagon. “All those unit commanders have their paths laid out for them,” said Licea. “Next stop is probably USASOC. Then MacDill Air Force Base as some sort of SOCOM [United States Special Operations Command] deputy CO,” she said, using an acronym for commanding officer. “Eventually, they all make general.”

In his memoir, former JSOC commander Stanley McChrystal obliquely critiques Army special operators for being excessively tribalistic, insular, strong-willed, opinionated, arrogant and entitled. In a telling passage, he writes of feeling intimidated and eager to make a good impression when he came down from the Pentagon to take command of JSOC. He had risen in the ranks through the 75th Ranger Regiment, not the Delta Force “old boys’ club,” as he calls it, and was susceptible to the pangs of an inferiority complex.

The imprimatur that the unit leaves on top officers is invisible to outsiders, but looking at photos of known ex-commanders, you begin to develop an eye for the signature steely-eyed, square-jawed look of the generals who came up through the Delta Force mafia. You see the physiognomic continuity, too, when you walk down the spine of the building, past portrait after portrait of former commanders in an unbroken sequence that does not include a single Black or brown face. “That makes an impression,” said Williams.

Both women said that cheap Delta Force Boosting the unit was even less tolerant of gays and lesbians, who were not represented even in support roles. At work, Licea heard homophobic slurs uttered “all the time.” There was one longtime contractor rumored to be gay, said Williams, but “he sure as hell wasn’t talking about it.”