As the assistant intelligence officer aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise, Lieutenant Commander Dan Kenda helped coordinate "the overall intelligence for the battle group," which was operating in the Persian Gulf region from October 2003 to February 2004: "everything that's of interest to the admiral, to the commanding officers and to the pilots actually flying the missions." While comparatively few of Enterprise's aviation assets were needed by this point in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, carrier aircraft, he said, were nonetheless available anytime "anybody dialed 1-800-I-Need-Bombs." Kenda's most significant operational memory was a high-seas drug bust that resulted in the seizure of "hundreds of millions of dollars in narcotics," contraband that - intel suggested - was linked to a "larger terrorist financing organization which had funneled money to al-Qaeda, to the ongoing insurgency in Iraq, and a host of other things." In this interview, Kenda also discusses the sharp eye they always kept on Iran and what he feels was the egregious risk his carrier battle group was forced to take – “for no good reason other than politics” – by passing through the Suez Canal. He also talks about the difficulties of identifying and interdicting sea-based threats to U.S. naval vessels. “How do you distinguish,” Kenda asks, “between a hundred or so smugglers and the one guy who’s got a bomb … and is trying to ram you? Nobody has a good answer for that. Nobody does.”

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