Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 235 - Fred Galvin

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Fred Galvin served for over 26 years as an enlisted and Marine Corps officer including assignments in the infantry, reconnaissance, force reconnaissance and Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC/Marine Raiders). He led hundreds of combat missions including raids, deep reconnaissance, ship seizures, and ambush operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman and Gulf of Aden. The Marine Corps selected Galvin to command the first Marine Special Operations Task Force to deploy to combat. While conducting a combat mission in Afghanistan, Galvin and six other Marines were falsely accused of war crimes which led to the longest trial in Marine Corps history that led an acquittal. His new book, A Few Bad Men is the story of an elite team of U.S. Marines set up to take the fall for Afghanistan war crimes they did not commit—and their leader who fought for the redemption of his men. Following his retirement, he became a business entrepreneur, nonprofit executive director aiding families of service members killed in action, and a consultant to the Marine Corps, coordinating activities in the areas of cyberspace, electronic warfare, and psychological operations.

Today's episode of the podcast is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee, the finest purveyors of brown water. So if you want to have coffee that doesn't taste like it was stirred with the dick, go to black riflecoffee.com and they're going to have everything that you could possibly want. They got merchandise, coffee, equipment, t-shirts, hats, everything you could possibly need. My guest today is Fred Galvin. I've never had a Marsok Marine on the podcast. So for one, that's a huge bonus. And he spent 27 years in the Marine Special Operations Community. So he does a very good job of explaining exactly what Marsoc is and how they fit into the Socom world.

He's also an author, though, of a book called A Few Bad Men, because he happened to be the commanding officer of the first Marsok detachment deployment to Afghanistan. And they were involved in an ambush. And by the time they had gotten back to their base, the BBC was already reporting that they had killed. killed up to 60 civilians. Shortly after Marsok was removed from Afghanistan, and of course, this is the topic that he covers in his book, so I'm not going to get into it now. Let's just say it's an interesting story. So episode number 235 with Fred Galvin. Enjoy it. We're already going. Thank you for making the travel up, by the way. I started reading the book that you sent me, a few bad men, excellent choice, a few good men, quality movie, in my opinion. Most can't handle the

truth. But I stopped because I wanted to hear you unpack it in your own voice as opposed to reading it. So where would you want to begin? Thank you, by the way, for making the travel up here. Yeah. It's my pleasure. And this book, a few bad men, nonfiction. I wish it was fiction. Yeah. And I hope there's not a sequel because this is not a one-off. We got some two Marine gunnery sergeants and a Sark Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsmen that are engaged right now. They're called the Marsoc 3, but they've been going for three and a half years on a self-defense case. Still tied from the same?

Not. This was a theirs was an earbill, Iraq. And basically you had a retired Green Beret contractor, Lockheed Martin, 275 pounds, bodybuilder. And that's not any embellishment physically. Hard 275, not what I'll call a slop. P-275, which is what happens to a lot as we get out. Oh, yeah. Very lean and aggressive, intoxicated comes in.

And I don't know why mainstream media doesn't want to cover any of this because the Saltid was this gunnery sergeant, African-American, much smaller fit. But he takes two to the face by this contractor. Bam, bam, bam, just clubs him. And the Marine gunnery sergeant's starting to de-escalate. Is this like in the green? Oh no, you say it was in Irville. It's an air bill. Okay.

So this is a, in this case is still, they're heading to court martial now. So this isn't a one-off. When people say, what's, so why is this important? Well, we have a military justice system and we have senior leaders in the military, unlike in the civilian world that when a jury in the civilian world, they don't report to the judge. Their jobs, their promotions, their retention, their next assignments, completely, it's a, it's not a closed loop. Yeah, by design. Yes.

So it's uninfluenced. Military, different story. And you and I have seen these court marshals or military justice cases where somebody is truly innocent, completely innocent, but somebody has an axe to grind. And they're going to literally destroy their lives. And, you know, that's, unfortunately, the military is one of these systems that has absolute power in many cases, unless you want to roll the diet. I mean, if you go to nonjudicial punishment where the commander has. He or she has the ability to, you know, within those parameters of the maximum punishment, they can basically crush somebody and destroy their life.

Or you can say, yeah, I'll go to a court martial and have a jury. But in special operations, that court martial is a very small community. In the Marine Corps, special operations is the smallest. So they've literally moved all the Marine Special Operations from Camp Pendleton, California, now back to Lejeune. And so really? Yes. This huge mistake.

I mean, think strategically to tactically, you know, strategically you have all your assets in one location. How stupid. Tactically, you're, you know, you're only probably getting a train so many days outside of your home station just because of cost and everything else. So you're really getting one environment, a flat swamp to train in. Yeah, Hamilton's got some pretty diverse terrain, actually. And from there. And ocean. Yes.

Yeah. Maritime. You can do a lot of urban. You can go out to the desert in a day's drive. You can go out to Yuma and all places around there, mountains up in Bridgeport. But now, so anyway, but these guys, you know, they're soon to be jury will come from that Marine Special Operations community. So which the could be- Did somebody end up losing their life in that? Yes. Okay. So a little bit of background and then I'll get into a few bad men. But this, this provides, you know, the reasons why this is not a, you know, hey, this just happened. and it's, you know, probably won't impact anybody else. This is the nation's largest employer, the United States military, Department of Defense with all the active reserve, contractors, civilians. If you stacked Amazon and Walmart together until just recently, DOD is still the largest employer. But Amazon can't put you on bread and water or confinement, you know, on a ship.

They can't sentence you to death like that former major Hassan at all that gunned down everybody in Fort Hood. Yeah. been sentenced to death. But the military can. I support that sentence. I do support that sentence. That was just, and he's still awaiting the death penalty. I'd also volunteer to execute him, but I don't know what that says about me. The one of the things going on with these guys, so he's gunnery Sergeant Danny Dreher gets punched. He was trying to de-escalate. Hands down. Hey, calm down. And the other Green Bray comes in, punches him twice in the face. coming in for a third time and the other Marine gunnery sergeant, his buddy, hits the green

bray in the face once. Just one impact, no other, I'm not even talking other foul language, but he hits his head, goes down. Four days later, he'd been evacuated to a launch stool, Germany, dies, and all three of these guys, to include the reconcorman who was treating the patient, the guy who's assaulted Danny Dreher, they're all to recharge with homicide. It sounds like, yeah, really? That's the look that hopefully Americans understand like, this doesn't make sense. Yeah. When you read this book, you know, the upfront, so if people liked combat action that was like an American sniper or lone survivor from Iraq and Afghanistan or a few good men, you know, the courtroom drama, this has all of that, you know, from a career perspective.

So a lot of combat action in Iraq and through force recon prior to the activation in 2006 of Marine Special Operations. And then you get into our deployment and the combat action there. And then you get into what I feel, in my opinion, is the heart of the story. And that is these guys who have completely dedicated their lives end up, I mean, you expect and you've experienced and your friends who, you know, there's a gun battle. and then there's this false narrative, this information warfare that's the enemy plants and it spins out of control in our case there in Jalalabad Airfield, just east of there right on the Afghan-Pakistan border. We went into this village, you know, right on the Afghan-Pakistan border, so you get a sanctuary there in Pakistan. People are getting fully radicalized. These foreign fighters come across. The first little village is this town called Badiqo.

And that is basically a logistic site and link up with your handlers and they're taking them to get the jihad on against the infidel, you know, Kandahar, Kabul, Sangan Valley, everywhere else. So we knew there's four suicide bombers. We knew the house that they were in going in there. And this is a ridiculous nature that in Iraq, if we had good intelligence, we could go and, you know, immediately go in and, you know, prosecute. go and I'm not talking like in a court. You could action target. Action target. Situation is very different. Now in 2006, they changed the NATO rules of engagement and said before we're operating under the U.S. rules of engagement. So under this counterinsurgency, which is, in my opinion, was immoral. That's why we lasted 20 years.

And thank God. I mean, I wish it had done earlier. And Trump had ended the lunacy of what was going on. And Biden finally did. I didn't agree with. you know the retreat that happened last August. I'm not talking like a presidential retreat. I'm talking like how we evacuated and without getting into that. We did it totally wrong. When I say we, I'm talking to the United States military. When you evacuate, you know, non-combatants, you have multiple airfields or seaports and Afghanistan's airfields. And we went with the least defensible. Yeah, they should have gone with a bogrom. Yeah. If they were going to. Absolutely. We gave it up. We gave it up and I still for the life meet can't figure out why we stayed with a losing plan.

It was obvious that the timeline that they were trying to do that on wasn't working. Yes. Why the fuck didn't somebody somewhere? And maybe they did. I don't know. I'm detached from it. I was watching it on the news too. A bunch of people would reach out and be like, well, hey, what do you think?

And I think that Afghanistan was always going to have to protect themselves at some point, whether they're capable of doing so is yet to be determined. That it was always going to be messy when we were. left, but like that's, you make a plan and then you get out into the real world and you go, oh, this plan isn't working, so we're going to audible. Like, I feel like a lot of the catastrophe could have been avoided. And I feel like it was, it was probably just pushed for a political timeline. Top down. Yeah. And that's the thing. People want to say, well, it was Trump's fault because it was his plan. I'm like, let's go an administration before that. And an administration before that, there were failures all along the way. Biden was sitting in the seat at the time. So he deserves

and should hold the accountability for how the plan went because he was the guy at the top when he actioned it. I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me. It was a horrendous way to depart that country. Yeah. Well, every Department of State embassy there,

that country team has a non-combatant evacuation operation plan. And you never, basically have infantry tactic when you're doing these types of operations, your security is paramount. You don't go to one location. You have redundant primary tenant of infantry. You have a primary alternate position. You have a supplementary position.

And, you know, we went with one, the worst one, the most dangerous course of action is what we went with you. What happened is they first withdrew the military. And then the, I'm not talking, you know, hey, let's, I mean, for the security, gone. And then you see this circus stunt where these guys are jumping on the C-17 leave. So, you know, non-combatant evacuation operation. Your priority is American citizens first. then third country nationals, but what left first was these Afghans civilians. Who vetted them?

Well, the military wasn't there to do anything. Department of State limited resources. So they took out the, you know, Afghans first, then the diplomatic mission with the Department of State. And then finally, they flew the Marines back in and, you know, started to contact the Americans at that point. So total. It was a nightmare. Go rodeo. Complete shit show.

Even from a tactical perspective. Yes. The airport in Kabul. bull, just where it's at and the terrain and all the things around it versus Bogram with that buffer in space and distance. I don't know why. High risk. And yeah, but just like the story, a few bad men, you know, this isn't about those frontline foot soldiers in the trenches. I mean, they did their job, just like those Marines and Army soldiers that were killed there in Kabul. They were doing their job. And everybody wants to critique why this and that, but, you know,

The overall plan, you know, it was celebrated from the commander-in-chief, Secretary of Defense, Chairman and Joint Chiefs of Staff. And we see these trends continuing from this story, these senior officials, just going back to this Marsok 3 case, currently in progress. I mean, there's video evidence. They had video of exactly this assault. It's on camera. And this is still awaiting a court-martial, three and a half years after.

That's idiotic. It is idiotic. But when you have some people, just like in our case, and I'll get into this here in a second, with the Marsock 7, as they called, there were seven of us originally who were falsely accused of murdering. And this was the largest number of alleged civilian casualties, 19 killed and 50 wounded. So 69 total by direct fire weapon. There's other allegations that a bomb came off the rail of an aircraft and killed all these people. And some of that has been found. Some of it's unfounded.

but this ours was a very early evolutionary cycle where they started this false allegation in our case they uh they went to this very rare trial method called a court of inquiry and some people say well they did it for this or that but there was no prima facie evidence so in our case although pictures were planted later uh there was there's one body and that was the headless corpse of the suicide bomber that was driving this car bomb this van filled with uh mortars and uh massive fuel. It's the largest car bomb that I'd ever seen. And at this point in 2007, we'd seen and experienced several of these things, but went and burned the tops of the trees over 100 foot above, shrapnel is everywhere. It went off right 10 feet in front of our second team.

So, you know, you had a sergeant absorb the majority of that blast. He was on fire. He gets a piece of shrapnel in the arm. But when you've seen these IEDs that can just rock and totally destroy, some of these things have destroyed tank. tanks. It is truly, if you don't believe in miracles, you read some of this stuff. And it's almost seems like, I was there. This happened at 9 o'clock in the morning in front of our eyes. I was watching it. And we thought everybody was killed, obviously. Immediately after that, this sports utility vehicle, a Toyota Prado driver, and then three jihadists hanging out the windows, probably not the best to have accurate fire shooting on the move while you're driving a truck down an unimproved dirt road.

firing fully automatic AKs at our team that had just got, you know, detonated on, trying to finish them off. So that was our, that vehicle in our patrol was the thinnest skin vehicle was what we used as an ambulance. The rest were encased, fully enclosed steel armor. That one had a compartment sort of like a square with an open roof where we could load patients in the back of it. and I believe they, you know, just my opinion, they targeted that vehicle because the strength of the armor or lack of it. And so they hit that vehicle, went off. They tried to come in and T-bone these guys. So our turret gun are in there and then a Marine in the back troop compartment stood to their feet,

used light and medium machine guns and aimed in, made quick work of that Toyota Prado, killed the guys firing weapons. The driver bailed out into a ditch and was still continuing to fight us throughout. And he survived later on the story. When you read the whole story, this guy was one of the prosecution's lead witnesses. The guy that was driving the vehicle?

Yes. Three machine gunners? Paid for it. And, you know, he changed his testimony because NCIS investigates this guy where he says in a sworn statement to NCIS that three men in the vehicle were killed. Of course, he gets.

paid salacia payments, the equivalent of four years' salary. So. Where did they find this guy in a detainment facility somewhere? No. But he's an alleged, I mean, he self-stated, self-proclaimed, muja Hadin. So we pay this guy. And he's paid for the three killed in his vehicle. And then a year later, via he gets dragged on the base in Jalalabad Airfield,

interviewed in the courts. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, how the fuck did they get a hold of this dude to get his testimony? So they did send it in our case, it was, you, you, I don't want to tease the book too much, but NCIS had a mission to convict us. In their mission statement, it's written and said, we'll have two teams. One will go interview because we were already kicked out at this time from Afghanistan. They sent us to Kuwait.

So by their order, they had an operations order. One team was going to Kuwait. One team was going to Afghanistan to observe and do their investigation. It makes sense. This is what investigators do. They want to get to the facts while they're still fresh. What actually happened? And I don't know who gave this order,

but the decision was made to change from their operation order to have both teams go to Kuwait and dog pile on our Marines. And I'll get to some of that in a second because some of it's just so immoral. You go back to like, why are these Marines constitutional rights? Like, why was one Marine during the Article 15-6? That's an early preliminary investigation. he was

you know they had an Air Force colonel why you'd have an Air Force colonel do an investigation on Marines special operators I mean it's it doesn't defies logic but he made a statement

the young sergeant that was driving that vehicle they got blown up the bomb went off right in front of him so he he told the facts just like it was to the Air Force colonel we go you know we get kicked out of country gets in terror

They threatened to deport his family if he doesn't sign their pre-made statement. So the role of an investigator or a prosecutor is to present facts, not to create them. And when you have such bloodlust, like we were mentioned before the show, like when somebody wants to get somebody so bad that you're willing to manufacture. And that's nowadays, this is a product of modern media. You know, they want something juicy. But in this case, I mean, these are not members of the members of the media. media these are these are naval criminal investigators so what incentive do they have is it just to you know get the um you know a big case like the first marine special operations task force

we're going to convict these guys or is it somebody giving them a wink and a nod like this is what so when you send 45 criminal investigators and four prosecuting attorneys against seven guys you dogpile seven to one i mean when you were 45 45 This, I mean, there's other, the reason they call us the Marsok 7. So there was the Hamdania 8 and the Haditha 8. There's other cases going on. So they quantified the number of accused. And, you know, the term we were in Marine Special Operations, so they called us the Marsox 7.

So, but when you were a frogman, you didn't go, if the odds were seven to one, you're probably not, you're probably going to say, hey, boss, we need some reinforcements. Yeah, it's going to fail the risk assessment matrix. Yeah. It's why are we doing this? So we don't fight ourselves when somebody uses, is trying to dogpow. But when you start to break, I mean, the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits if you have citizenship, you cannot have it revoked, whether you're native born or naturalized, you know, to threaten an American citizen who's been naturalized legally. Oh, through his service probably. Yeah.

Well, he came from Guadalajun when he was young and legally went to school. Probably wasn't in social studies absorbing. Who knows what it was like in the East L.A. where he went to school. But, you know, they see people who are vulnerable and they go after that. And they use this ethnic targeting against two people. Both were Latino. You know, they offered everybody, oh, you can take a polygraph. But why did they go after a staff, Sergeant Q?

So hard again and again. Even, I mean, he testified in court. Like, on Thanksgiving Day here, they show up at his house and try to strongarm him to go down. they didn't do that to any they offered meaning i got the same thing you can take a polygraph and i did yeah took it from the president american polygraph association and it stated that there was no civilians killed that day um so yes before we get too deep into this i want to back up a little bit so people have context uh so two things i've never had anybody on the podcast from marsock and i've gotten a lot of requests from people to talk about it so you can probably unpack yes where it came from but

even before that how did you find your own way into the military Okay. And doing some background. It started when I was young. So just like you would do, Andy. My mom, she was a travel planner. She put together packages for farmers group travel and travel all over the country. And so being there in eastern Kansas, you know, I didn't really know too much about the military whatsoever as a young kid. You know, I was just normal. You know, we'd out and be playing sports. Yeah. Probably climbing the mountains on your weekends. Not in Eastern Kansas. I'm joking.

We roam the brerries. It'd be real tough to do terrain navigation in Kansas. Like, shit. This topo map has no lines. Hope your dead reckoning is good. But my mom took us to, one of the tours she was planning was an American historic tour. And this went all over the East Coast. And so as a young kid at 10 years old, I got to see all these different sites from the American Revolution to the

Civil War. And literally, you know, so this was a large group travel agency. So they'd have, whether it's National Park Service Rangers or tour guides, provide some really, you know, very deep analysis. And they talk and engage us because, you know, we're going to bring all these tours in there. So it had very descriptive. And you'd see some of these, you know, some of these things were actual reenactments. And some of it was at the battle site. So you saw. And then there's pictures of these people literally getting, you know, drinking the whiskey and then they're sawing a leg off for amputation. As a kid, I was like, I just couldn't hardly imagine that that was our American history, that that's what these guys went through to fight for our freedom. And some

of it was crazy. And then, you know, you see us fighting for, you know, the Revolutionary or Civil War, the freedom of everybody. And the 13th Amendment, you know, how, you know, an American president fought so hard just to try to get one one Democrat to vote on their side to you know and it ended up being some of them abstained you know eight you know to to abolish slavery and you know so people would not be oppressed in the United States and that's that's one thing that's always hit a nerve in my heart is when you see someone who is you know physically or just their position in an organization they are vulnerable and just like I was describing with this sergeant and these three Marine Special Operations currently under fire, who I've been very active over the last three

and a half years to defend them, pair them up with attorneys, get them legal defense funds. And people like, what's going on? It's just, it's always been in my nature since growing up that if someone is weaker and somebody's, you know, abusive to them, that there has to be some, somebody there to say stop. And I believe inside the military, that is the role of an officer. or a small unit leader that's enlisted. And so I would even go farther. I'd say I think a lot of people,

whether they can necessarily verbalize it, I think that draw to service, that desire to want to be able to stand in the breach when others aren't able to. I think there's a large portion of that in the people's desire to wear a uniform for a living. Yes. And a lot of guys were this,

hey, you know what? When you mention the uniform, they see the Marine in the dress blues. Best looking damn uniform ever. I had no idea anything about the different services until this buddy of mine in high school, he'd already signed up at 17. I was 17 too. And he's like, hey, the Marines have this logo.

They're the first to fight. And if you want to fight, you got to join the Marines. They're like, before he doesn't even need Congress. For 180 days, they can send in the Marines. And they're in there. These guys are killers. And I was like, damn. And you pair it with the class A's.

I mean, come on. And I went to an all-boy school. So, you know, in football and track. And this was a, this was kind of a gladiator academy. So in, and I loved that environment, you know, where, you know, but nobody else joined. This kid, he, he enlisted. And my date, you know, because he kind of influenced me, I was going to go in July. And he was going a week after.

He had his plan already made up. And then he went down on spring break and smoked some dope. And then the recruiter came back and said, hey, can you go to boot camp? I was thinking, this is a dream come true. He's like, can you leave a week after you graduate high school? Oh, you guys flip-flopped. Yeah. So he got D-Qed because, you know, he smoked some pot.

And then I, so I got my like, you know, Disneyland E-ride ticket. Like, man, I'm going like in a week. So boom, I went out there boot camp in San Diego. And then station in Camp Pendleton, which, you know, being from Kansas, that was kind of like, you know, where it's all flat and then now you see some mountains. Yeah. These beautiful ocean. World-class surf spots, you know, north and south of you. Yeah.

Pendleton's awesome. It is. And the great thing about Pendleton is it's undeveloped. So you have Orange County and San Diego on both sides flanked. But in there, if you want to physically train running the mountains and shooting, so I literally

thought like, this is Nirvana. Like you're doing all this and you're getting paid for it. You know, it's sort of like leaving home where you have a roof over your head and, you know, food in your stomach. And the Marine who's doing all that. Plus, you know, you're out there driving vehicles, shooting guns, going from ship to shore, all this kind of stuff. And it was, you know, I was in regimental landing team five when we went into, which is described in the book, when we went into a desert storm, desert shield, desert storm. But, you know, you take a kid from

the Midwest and, you know, you put them on a ship and you go over to Hawaii and the Philippines. And, I mean, you're doing and experiencing things that this isn't Kansas anymore. You know, it's literally. Literally. Literally. It's opening your eyes. And, but there was this friend of mine, give him a shout out, Justin Murray. He went to my high school. He joined after.

Like, I'd already been in the Marines and I lost contact with him. And then I see him in the Chow Hall there in Camp Pendleton. And I come to him and I said, hey, are you, are you Justin Murray? Because I just didn't, we went to this prep school. so most of these guys didn't go straight into military they went they're all like 99% and they still brag that go to college i was the the one that i didn't really have an easy path um my mom raised six kids so i went in the marines and then uh we went you know overseas it was this great experience but right before we go overseas i run into this buddy mine and he's like you need to come over recon

and i was like okay and uh he's like hey just meet me in my barracks everywhere and they're start talking about these stories about all the stuff that their guys are doing. And I was like, I really didn't know about this, but this is, this is awesome. This is where I need to be. And these guys are, you know, they're, you know, they're real warriors. And so he's like, show up over our little command post. And I did the next day, met their senior enlisted this first sergeant. It was a great guy.

And he's like, meet the sergeant over at the pool tomorrow. And so I go talk to my gunny and charge of my platoon. and he lets me go take this end doc. And so I go take it and I pass it. And then I go back and report to my gunning. And I'm like, hey, I pass it. So the company executive officer is fatter guy. I'll call me well-nourished.

I'll say, I don't want to shame anybody. He didn't miss any meals. No, he didn't skip the line. And so he got so angry. And there's always, when you see these haters, you have to, there's an incentive. There's an underlying reason that hits a nerve why they hate. And it almost always has nothing to do with you. No.

It has a lot to do with them, their own insecurity or a failing or trappings in their life previously. So at that time, I was a young corporal. Was that E4? E4. So this guy, the company executive officer who, you know, he'd been promoted to captain. He didn't even know who, like he said, it didn't relate to me. Before then, he didn't even know who I was, literally, because I'm just in the shadows. All of a sudden, now he's getting this information from a platoon store.

sergeant that's saying, hey, this guy took this endoc, passed it. And then he's looking at me all of a sudden is like, I'm trying to dodge a deployment. I'm trying to get out of the organization. I'm disloyal. And which wasn't the case at all. Yeah. And so we went on the deployment, going to Kuwait, liberation of Kuwait, come back and I still want to do this. And the door was closed. I mean, I just, the whole entire deployment I was looked at is a troublemaker, disloyal, just for taking this end dock. And that was it. I didn't. Didn't mention anything. For a desire to pursue your career in a path.

I bet you he was looking at a manning spreadsheet. It was literally going to be a minus one from his total headcount. He was like, that's unacceptable. And that was the role of the executive officer is administrative. And so, but the senior enlisted, you know, our company first sergeant, was a great guy too. And he always, you know, that's what I loved about the late 80s, you know, the enlisted were, the enlisted Marines, senior and leaders, they provided. that good leadership and they backed me up it was just this one hell bent officer so that door closed for me and so i decided to go to college there cal state san marcos get my degrees you did that while on

active duty i no so i so because the door was closed to recont after we got back yeah he said this you're not going to do that so he chose to get out so he chose to get out went in the reserves went to college and uh while i was there you know my my whole thing was i want to i don't want to waste a lot of college I wanted to go back in the Marines and so I went to college and was completing the courses as quickly as I could even one summer did like 15 hours like a full semester over the summer but it was a great experience you know because it went down took some courses at San Diego State and I was eyes wide open you know one thing we left out about San Diego is there's a lot of women there and when you're a young guy from Midwest and you went to

all-boys school and you're kind of unsocialized you know there was that's Calm distractions. Yes. There was a lot of opportunity in San Diego and Southern California. And when you're right in between, you know, Orange County and San Diego is awesome. Yeah. And then going to college, Cal State San Marcos, it was only open. And I had a ton of credit because I went to this Jesuit prep school.

So I had like a year and a half worth of college credit. And I took some courses and I got credit for some military service. So I went in as a junior. And I did literally in one year. I knocked out my two years. So I was in and out as quick as I could. But met this girl. She was from Newport Beach.

And she convinced me like, I'm not having anything to do with the Marines. And that was my whole goal. So these recruiters came on campus. And they, you know, career fair and this brokerage firm down in La Jolla. Oh, you could be a broker. And they recruited me. Got my securities license. Did that for two years.

First with this penny stock firm, which was like straight out of the boiler room sweatshop. Some wolf and Wall Street shit. Wolf of Wall Street, straight up. In the morning, everybody's wearing these white shirts. And these managers would be like, I mean, these guys were like athletic coaches. Like, Denver, how many shares of the stock are we taken down? Oh, God. They were totally manipulating.

And I was like, this doesn't seem like, you know, what we just took in the Series 7, you know, this may have some compromise here. I feel like we're bouncing up against the ethical boundaries. Yes. So I quickly, like, jettisoned that and was lucky enough to get over to Smith Barney. that time was by assets and number of research analysts was the largest firm on Wall Street. And so he did that total two years and got rid of this dead weight in my life, the blonde Beach Bunny and went back in the room. So did you enjoy that work? I actually did.

And that's, you know, for the last two years with COVID and everything, telework. I've been, you know, actively trading a swing trader with stocks and options. And I've always loved researching companies and then doing also technical analysis on the charts. I like to invest without researching. I try to hit it at the peak. Yeah. And I sell at the trough. So you've made a small fortune because you started with this large fortune.

Yeah, sure. And then you just take, you know, any winnings that you have and go buy a news car cars and drive them off the lot. It's great for asset development. Yeah. Yeah. The stock market scares the shit out of me. Well, and right now, you know, currently, 20,000. 2022, you know, this quarter in the middle of the bear market.

Yeah. So, you know, people think that we're at a bottom. And, you know, there's, if anyone hasn't been aware, there's huge resource issues. And it's not just because of Russia, but corporate earnings, you know, and the looming tensions with China, you know, if they push 96 miles across the streets of Taiwan, we're going to have a lot because we didn't want any of this environmental issues in our backyard. So it's all over there in Western China. Yeah. All of our chemicals made for anything and everything. that we have, we're going to have real, real problems, not just the small little tremors that

we're feeling right now with Russia. But anyway, that's a separate issue. So I did that. I couldn't get back in the Marines. I was trying to be. What year is this? 1995. So this is Clinton administration. There was a severe drawdown, which affected even when I did get back in funding. You couldn't even, you know, people were training without rounds, you know, faking it, you know, like blanks. The budget stuff was real for sure. Yeah. So I tried to return in that time as a sergeant. I was in the reserves. So there was this programs to, you know, come back in.

But they just didn't need my rank because of the numbers. So I put a package in and went in as an officer easily got picked up because like with a degree, you know, to be a Marine Corps officer, run fast, no crime, college degree. And you're in there. So went in. And I knew like, okay, the one thing that I didn't have the opportunity to do, I wanted to go in and be a recon marine. So that was my whole goal. I was like the route to that was starting in the infantry and then you have to be an infantry officer, do a tour there. So did the whole thing in Quantico, went out to Pendleton for my first division tour as a platoon commander out there again.

It's where I wanted to go, loved it. It was awesome. and then sent over to Okinawa as a platoon commander at Fifth Force Recon. So we actually worked a lot. Unfortunately, back in those days, the frogs were on the ships. And we're doing- My first deployment was actually to Cadena Air Force Base. We worked with, you guys were...

What years? That was probably 98 that I was over there. There was a different base. Same there. There was a different base. You guys weren't at Cadena. There was a... We were up at Camp Schwab, the northern...

We would come up there and do some jungle stuff occasionally. Yeah. in the Central Training Area and Jungle Warfare Training Center. Yeah. So the same time, I was there in night. So went over there in 1998 to 2001 as a platoon commander. It was awesome because my platoon sergeant, very aggressive guy, didn't bring in any married folks into the platoon.

So we were just going every month. We're in a country training, you know, with Australians, Koreans, Koreans, ties. Those are literally the same people we were training with, too. Yeah. I have a feeling we've crossed. paths before today. Yeah. And then so we did that as a deep recon platoon for the Marine Expeditionary Force, the three star general. We did that for two years as a platoon commander. And this is a kind of unique experience because

the platoon commanders in force recond in those days. Usually it'll still only stay for two years. And this is just the facts. I'm not boasting or anything, but but I really love, you know, I didn't know what is getting into by choosing Okinawa because I really wanted to stay in California with first force recon, but the boat space is there. And if if as an officer, if you don't take, it's different than the seals where you're able to stay a long time as an officer. Well, there's nowhere else to really go. Until you start probably hitting the 04 to 05, they're not going to really push a joint tour on you.

They will now. But up until then, yeah, it's very insular. Yeah. So in the Marines, it was an open loop. And if you're an infantry officer, they say, they told us at the infantry officer course, your infantry officers. And if you ever go to recon, don't stay there long and don't ever go back. It will destroy your career.

And they told us that and like, okay. So, but I get over to, I mean, this is literally Nirvana. I feel like I'm Peter Pan, like, didn't see my shadow yet because you're going to all these countries and doing this extreme training, you know, like high altitude work, Hey-ho, halo, you know, in Korea. I mean, you're up there jumping out of fixed wing helicopters, you know, the U-2's landing there at Osan right underneath you. And, you know, it's kind of surreal experience.

You're jumping, you know, 40 clicks off the coast in Australia at night. you know completely zero luxx condition and you know hey-ho just coming in i mean it's just some awesome awesome training it was everything that i wanted it to be and you don't want it to end and then uh the the only thing you're leaving out was the excessive amount of drinking that we did in our off time well and and again there's drinking and then the intersection of women you know from around the world it was just i mean you couldn't you felt like you're uh rock star yeah and uh so um and i'm sure friends of mine that uh you know that they'll probably tell some compromising stories uh but it was we took maximum advantage of every opportunity we could get and uh probably pushing some safety

limits with everything in that lifestyle uh but it was it was just incredible really indescribable and then in the marine corps unfortunately the assignments officer so i'm trying to fly below the radar to stay in that assignment as much as possible my a former uh battalion commander who's mentor mine uh colonel jeff powers he's told me he's like freddie here's the deal you need you need to do a B billet to like a non-fleet assignment he's like you need to do one of the commando assignments with either with the Dutch or the Brits and the Dutch is the best because you're in mainland Europe and you can go travel so I had my heart set on that and I was like I was trying to fly below the radar and then boom I

get tagged for by the assignments officer it's the guy that's telling everybody where to go yeah and I so I've been you know they usually keep you over there for two years I did two years as deep recomb platoon and then we went on the boats. They did two back-to-back deployments on the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. So you're the force recombatoon on the ships doing a lot of hook and climb

and fast roping to take down the ships. Probably at 03 at this point? I was Captain O3. And this was in, so when we went on the boats was 2000 and 2001. From there in Okinawa, the ships come down from Sospo, pick us up and you go to places. So we would, as soon as a

certification exercise was over. We'd fly to the next place in advance of the ships. And we'd be doing, for example, we'd go up to Korea and we'd do some close air support, calling in air strikes with the F-16s and A-10s over there or up in the mountains in Cunei range or Pilsong range, some with the Koreans, and then some jumps. And then we meet the ships when they come in and do the final bilateral exercise. And we do the same thing down in Australia, working with the, the commandos down there. It's just awesome. And then I got tagged.

I had nothing I could do about it. I actually went to the Force Recon commanding officer and then the commanding officer of the ships and his operations officer because they were good mentors and great, great men, great leaders. And they said, Fred, the assignments officer, they weren't let me out. They're like, you've been in the operation forces. There's a Marine officer. You can only usually do like one deployment. typical path is you do two years, then you do a three-year non-operations job. So like recruiting something that has nothing to do with infantry. And then you go to school for a year.

And I don't know if the... Like a master's program probably? Some people can get a master's. If they write a little thesis in an outside world, to be honest, guys, that has... It's like a war college essentially? Yeah, well, you're either at... So there's one course for captains, another for majors, another for lieutenant colonels. colonels and each of those you can get a little master's degree you do a little research project they rubber stamp it it's basically gun deck and you just so you get a master's in military studies or security or some other and it's not like going to naval postgraduate school where they're actually earning a master's degree it's you know these guys gun deck stuff in the in a gun deck

in it but uh they get i haven't heard that term in so long yeah for people listening gun decking is essentially falsifying or copying yeah yeah And so these guys get this, you know, it's like a degree. It's pretty much worthless in the civilian world. It's like getting something from. Yeah, but do they know that? Well, they feel like that's something that could be portrayed as something else. That's why I'm telling guys, like, it's almost equivalent to a degree from Tijuana Tech.

You're not, somebody at Tesla is not going to be like, ooh, guess what? This guy's got a degree in security from the Marine Corps Expeditioner Warfare School. Like, that means nothing. Yeah. Anyway. So, any, my time. Boom, they say you got to go and I went over to Yuma, Arizona. A destination location.

Yeah, it's a four-star. For heat stroke. That's right. And I actually show up there in August. So when you come from Okinawa, you're a single guy and you don't have your career planner, your wife, or go is the advanced party and have a car and set things up, you're just by yourself. So you land on a plane with sea bags in 120-degree heat. It's kind of like being released from prison, which I've never experienced.

but you show up there and there's not mass transit in Yuma. So you just start over. And I had to report in. So I'm in my little pickle suit, the service uniform and 120 degree heat in August 2001. I'm not complaining, but, you know, my mentors told me like, hey, they're giving you two choices. You can go to headquarters, Marine Corps, in the Pentagon. And literally as a captain, you're going to be serving coffee for these generals. And your other choice is out there in Yuma with the Marine Court.

as equivalent to the Navy, the Marine Corps has a version of top gun. It's called Marine Aviation, Weapons and Tactics Squadron 1. And Air Force is equivalent, red flag. So at the school, we have a six-week program where we put aviators, it's not just air-to-air, it's air-to-air and air-to-ground. So my role as a ground instructor was to bring in reconnaissance units and also infantry units. And then we would set up these very complex, I mean, super-complex. You see, you have joint platforms, and they're doing all kinds of funky stuff we can't talk about.

But then you bring in a fixed wing that's providing some surveillance and marking. And then as soon as the objective is about ready to be assaulted, then the rotary wings will come in. And I'm talking for these courses. So you'll have like a literally flights and divisions of these. So like fixed wing jets, attack fighter and attack jets. Just racked and stacked. 12 to 16 sometime, because these scenarios are just huge. So everybody's got to come in and get all the ordinance off the rails or aircraft.

And that was my job. So one of us would control the jets. Another would control the attack helicopters. And we have a different guy who was outside our command control, the artillery, and the mortars. So there's really no other equivalent of this level. I mean, you go out to 20 on Palms, California, where the Marines train. And you do something that's a much, much smaller scale. You don't have all these joint platforms.

So you're literally, there's probably about 40 aircraft in the air. Oh, that's awesome, true. Yeah. And so you have to deconflict this with a helicopter assault force. It's going to land, let off Marines at night, in the desert, zero locks. And then there's an artillery and a mortar gun target line actively firing to suppress this while, you know, these helicopters are coming in and fixed-wing jets are releasing ordinance, doing strafing runs. And then the cobras and Hueys are coming in and also gunning. So you have to coordinate with deconflicting it with time, space, and life. lateral separation. So you get really good at geometry and understanding where all the friendly forces and where the enemy's at. But I did that for a year and a half. And unfortunately,

Camp Pendleton when I was this instructor out in Yuma, in Camp Pendleton at First Force Reconnaissance Company, they had a tragic accident and a workup for deployment. And they went from combat drills. They're on the close quarter battle range going from a live fire. combat drills to a blank fire raid. They didn't and this is a problem no unit is immune from

if you don't do inspections. There's a reason why inspections are part of doctrine. We used to, I already know where you're going. Let me guess a live round snuck into a Well they didn't clear out of it. He does attack reload

Yep. Comes up and does a failure drill on a role player kills him. Yeah. Anytime it was for us it was either all blanks or all live and we're talking senior leaders with flashlights looking at every magazine.

emptying out pouches. That's a huge no-no. So Marine got killed. They needed a platoon commander, fully trained. This happened in 2002. So 9-11. So actually, when I was there in Yuma, a month later, the 9-11 happened. I remember coming out of the gym in the morning and hearing it on the radio.

I was just finishing my PT going into, going to work. And I knew as soon, oh, this. is this is real now I'm an instructor in a non-deploying command I was like okay so it was I know I'm taking a step back I was in went through the first course this our course at marine aviation weapons attack squadron one is called weapons and tactics instructor course I had to go through it as a student first before I became instructor and the week after we graduated I had this appointment to get as a as a free faller you know you can't have LASIC so I had to go to Balboa Naval Hospital and get photorefractive carotomy on my eyes and it was

set up for I tried to do it when I was in Okinawa and my the corpsman who set that up who I just saw on Silicon Valley yesterday spent some time with he was good he was all pissed at me he's like in our second workup for a deployment he's set this thing up because we were training in camp Pendleton from Okinawes at kill house was down for maintenance and he set this thing up in Balboa I'm like I can't miss training doc I'm like I so anyway, Aserat Yuma, in between the courses, get this thing set up, and go to Balboa. They'd say take it easy, because, I mean, you're in some severe pain with... Yeah, I had PRK as well.

Okay. I get it done, and, you know, I'm a single guy, so I'm there by myself. I drive up to camp. This is after 9-11, and just a couple months, and I feel like, this is going to be like Desert Storm, like, I got to go. Sort of like the movie, the other guy's like, you got to put me in, coach! Yeah. You know, I feel like we're going to, seriously, I'm, I'm.

a captain a force recon platoon commander and now this is happening like they're they didn't even have backfill in my platoon at okinawa where i just left so i'm like i got to go so i go up to pendleton prior coordinated with a senior marine officers i'd served with who are the regimental executive officers for the two marine infantry regiments that are up there and then i also had appointments to talk to the executive officer who's as far as an officer that's who you're going to talk to to to get into the command. So four appointments with the two infantry regimental executive officers. So any infantry job I was seeking. And then the recon battalion and force recon company. So for those that are familiar with the Marine Corps layout, you know, in an infantry, you know, here's a forward line

of advance where the enemy is and, you know, the U.S. side. So the infantry battalion has snipers that will go from the forward edge of the battle area to three kilometers. deep doctrinally. Then you have recomb battalion that works for the infantry division and they will go from the forward edge to 30 kilometers behind enemy lines. And the force is not like they're being forced to do it, but they support the Marine Expeditionary Force commander, a three star. And they will go from 30 kilometers to 300 kilometers deep. And so, but I made appointments to talk to the executive officers at the recomb battalion in Camp Pendleton, first recombatian, which that movie Generation Kill was the book,

is all about them. And the First Force Recon Company. And First Force Recon Company is one that had the fatality in 2002 out on Range 130. You may have been up there in Camp Pendleton. Great range facility. But a Marine died, role player. And then they were looking for a fully trained platoon commander. So in 2001, when I had the PRK, and I had my name in the hat, and actually got chastised really hard.

Again, by the executive officer. Now I'm out in Yuma, this executive officer, again, who's looking at me like I'm the bad, and they look at it disloyal, like, you're in this unit. Yeah. You're an instructor at the Marine Corps's version of Top Gun. And like, you're here for three years. You're not going anywhere.

And like, and he's an aviator. And so the ground unit, you know, I was an infantry officer, had just came from Force Recon. And they're looking at, you know, ground guys, sort of like, you know, Navy nasal aviators. Like, you know, you guys walk on the earth and, you know, kind of down their nose. And so kind of got a little bad reputation there with the executive officer specifically. He looked at me as very disloyal to, I'm trying to get out. But there's,

this, we just been attacked. I mean, if we want to go back like 20 years, you know, America had, it was very cohesive. And everybody's driving flags flying. I mean, we were like, we wanted some blood payback. Like 3,000 Americans died. This was like similar, a 21st century version of Pearl Harbor. and I wanted to do the same thing and my blood was boiling and it wasn't some plot to get out of Yuma. It was like, hey, everybody wanted to get in the fight. At that time period shortly after 9-11,

were they already talking about creating Marsok at this point or did that come later? Good question. And that's central to this theme. And I'm going to take a step back because it's necessary to set the background on this. So step back in World War II the

situation in Europe was some trying times, dire and Winston Churchill said I want from within all of our forces. He created it the central basis was the British Royal Marines but they and I've been when we've trained with the British Royal Marine

Commandos up in Scotland at their so they set up their little selection phase up at this location, I have to scan my brain here. I have a senior moment of exactly where it is. But they took them to this area in the highlands, this train. And they say, men, you have one hour lads to make up this hill with all your kit. And, you know, then you can start training as commandos. And so anyway, they created this commando force to go in behind German lines in mainland Europe and wreak havoc on their command and control headquarters. That's what Churchill wanted. He's like, these

the command and control nodes are the ones that are making all the decisions and he's basically got jack them up and so he created these brit commandos and those warriors were the ones that went and did it so guess what america fDR got wind of this and there had been this marine who was stationed in china right after world war one uh edson carlson and he was major they used to have a presidential retreat down in georgia so he had that he was assigned after he left china and he was assigned after he left china and he was a he was assigned as presidential like recruit or retreat duty and he had the ear of fDR so he kept telling him like hey we need to have a command of force ourselves and he'd been in china you know he they had the little rebellion going on over there and you know people think the term gung hoe means something about motivated and enthusiasm and it really translates from the chinese from the mandarin to work together because he talked to the rebels and he said how do you use smaller forces defeat a larger force. It's like, this is amazing what you guys are doing.

He's like, we have a theory called gung ho. And gung ho means all of the units, all their other, you know, distributed, they work together in harmony with a sole purpose to defeat the larger force. And it's, you know, it's an awesome concept. And he took that idea, and he was talking to Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying,

hey, we need to have this commando force. And the Marines believe that they were the elite you know the army not this is just general purpose the Marine Corps not that there would ever be any inner surface rivalry never so he's whispering he so he planted the seed that root grew and then the FDR you know says hey you know I'm seeing Churchill do this I want the same thing this marine major edson Carlson has been telling me about these commandos and you know so the Marines, they never wanted an elite with an elite. But the president, it was ordered from the president in World War II.

You will create this. And in February 44, February 42, they created them right after December 7th. Yeah, Pearl Harbor. The nation won a payback. And so some of this history is starting to repeat itself. You know, as a technical stock analyst, I'm looking for trends. Yeah. So when you look at this, you see like September 7th happened.

you know, Roosevelt's getting furious because, you know, we kind of sat out a war wall in Europe while people are just getting punished over there. They get in and now we're, we, Roosevelt declares war, goes to Congress and, you know, now we're in the fight in the Pacific. And so he creates this commando force. Their first mission goes into making island. So the real objective was Guadalcanal, because we all, everything in the Pacific was about coal and fuel and how the Navy could protect. power to get to islands like in northern Mariana islands like Saipan so we could launch long range bombers to attack the Japanese mainland. And so that was a strategy in all these locations,

Midway Philippines, it was where we could get coal and refuel our ships to project that power. That was my first degree there at Cal State. It was a history degree. Yeah. So, but anyway, the, the Marines stood up there as raider and to distract and distribute the Japanese forces that were strong pointed on Guadalcanal. They attacked Macon Island, this little outpost, it's an atoll. And they went in on subs, you know, rode in at night. You know, it was portrayed in many books and even a movie is this huge success story. But even President Roosevelt's son wanted to get, they commissioned him as a major.

Really? Commission as a major? Yes. He was the executive officer on that. For second. It's a balsy move. Again, trends. Like we were the first to go in in Afghanistan, 2021, or in 2007.

Yeah. From second Marine Raider Battalion. It was called Second Marine Special Operations Battalion at the time. But second Marine Raider Battalion in World War II was the first to do any combat missions. So again, the number two battalions were the first to actually fight Marine logo there. And they go in to make an island. They row in, start, you know, giving the good news to the Japanese, killing them all. and some Japanese on the other side of the island come to reinforce the Marines get in the their rubber boats go back to the subs and the surf is just coming down on them crushing them Marines losing weapons radios they the majority of the force except for one boat it gets washed back up on the shore oh boy yeah and the Japanese are there with reinforcements yeah and so they this this no kidding happened on the very first

mission and it's you can search the history it's not the proud history but the seals had the same thing delta force had the same thing when seal team six let's look at how panama desert one desert one before they even any of those commands existed it's fucking catastrophe the very first so when in if you ever read the book the guts to try no so it's by the the executive officer the second in charge who's the air mission commander air force colonel little it's great book and you know these the British SAS took a wooden crate a beer over and delivered it when those guys landed in Oman and wrote on there the guts to try. They, you know, compromise intelligence, you know, warriors are going to under the information is going to get out that these guys when they came back, they knew what had happened. You got a national mission force in UK.

They understood that it didn't go well, but they had the guts to try. And the same thing when, you know, Steel Team 6 went in and did their early missions. Yeah, he got killed. Drowned. I mean, of all things, the water jump, where I think two, maybe even more, drowned. Yeah. In one of the core competencies or what's supposed to be a core competency of the community. And, you know, the thing is, is just like the title of that book, The Guts to Try.

Yeah. When you dare boldly, I mean, it's combat is not a noun. It's a verb. And the enemy has to say, so does Mother Nature. And things don't always go purport. And everybody thinks like, you know, but it's a... I'm still waiting for a time in my life when things go perfectly. Yeah.

But anyway, right around the corner. So back to Macon Island, they're sitting there having to assess whether they're going to do next. Because of surf just smashed them all up against the shore. That's not a joke. It's fact. So the CEO, the one that whispered in Roosevelt's ear, like, hey, we need to have this like, command of force. He's a CEO of the first, you know, Marine Rail's the first Marine unit to deploy, which was second Marine Raider battalion. He took two companies, Alfa

Bravo ashore. His executive officer, President Roosevelt's firstborn son, James Roosevelt, they write a surrender note, surrender note. And they took, they used a local care body, and they ran that over to the other side to surrender to the Japanese. And one of the Marines, again, these are the facts. It's not pretty. Yeah. But one of the Marines, we didn't have all this night vision goggle and you know prior coordination of you know friendly lines but they see this guy running and it's at night and they shoot and kill the caribody warrior and they care body local and uh they take that note in you know Tokyo rose who was doing like their sciop for the japanese they used that note that surrender note the rest of the war saying yankees surrender and making island anyway they

they kind of conceal this thing the Marines eventually got back to the subs they went to Hawaii and And it was this whole information warfare operation on the U.S. that, hey, we killed these Japanese. And the Japanese did have to distribute their force, which made Guadalcanal Canal, which still a bloody fight. But we successfully accomplished that mission. But, you know, everybody was awarded. And, you know, that was viewed as a huge success because it was payback for Pearl Harbor.

Yeah. Anyway. So, but two years after those guys formed in February of 44, they were disbanded saying, is not in the best interest of the Marine Corps to have an elite with an elite. So anyway, 9-11.

Rumsfeld, as his second term, is his secretary of defense. He'd been once right at the tail end of Vietnam. Now he's got his doctorate and he's for Bush Jr. Number 43.

He's his secretary of defense and he says all components of the Special Operations Command will increase capacity of Special Operations Forces. So he'd seen in Vietnam, you know, the seals, Green Brays,

he'd seen all these forces force reconnaissance these elite units this before the activation of special operations command in 1987 which the marine court decided to sit out we didn't want to contribute to a joint commander not have control like yeah why are we paying your tab and we can't even use these I can't even drink the beer yeah so um yeah the Marine Corps was the only branch to sit it out take a knee didn't contribute forces in 1987 and uh because like that was the year I joined At that time, before the activation of SOCOM, you know, the Marines had the slogan the first to fight. I thought, you know, these were the, you know, the shock troops. Yeah.

And, but now 9-11 happens. Rumsfeld says, a increased capacity. That's why SEALs created two additional teams. Yeah. After 9-11, 7 and 8. And the Special Forces groups added a battalion per group. So massive expansion. The Marine Corps, you know, they get the nudge and we'll send some lay us on.

down to Tampa. We'll do the minimal. We're going to do the slow roll politics. And they did. Even in the SEAL community, they might have built some new buildings that were labeled SEAL Team 7 and 8. The throughput through the training pipeline

say the same. Yeah. So they had really awesome empty buildings. Yes. And all they really did is they diluted and made a thinner fighting force, at least at that time, because that's what they had to do.

I mean, if you're not going to have this massive influx of new people and you're told to expand, it's like, I need 20% of every community or every command right now. And guess what? You're now a plank owner of this new building. Yeah. I remember my roommate when I went to Free Fall School in Yuma,

there was an Army captain, SF, dive team leader who had his, they call it an army. In the Marines, we call it a B-billet. The Army calls it Traydock. It's like the non-operational assignment. He was doing phase two. Oh, yeah. There was an Army instructor when I went through, actually. Yeah.

Yeah. And that was my roommate. And we stayed in touch for a few years. years until the war kicked off and kind of drifted away. But he's like, hey, it's one day, of course, in Yuma on the weekends, not much to do. So if you want the best parties, I was hanging out with the frogs that knew San Diego. And then he would also show me, you know, around the Bud's facility. He's like, throughput's a big issue here. But he's like, we've got to have numbers. And then now, as you said, you know, they created additional teams on paper. But how do you still? By diluting the commands

it existed. Yeah. How do you maintain the quality? I mean, when Americans really, I mean, look at now, I mean, we've had to just numerically. How you quantify using metrics. You used to have a GT score. It's a little test they take in the military

for all branches. It's kind of a measure of how much you can retain information when you're presented information in rapid succession, how much somebody can retain. So basically how smart. If you don't have a lot of time to teach somebody what they can absorb. And, you know, our GT score used to have to be 115.

Then they lowered it 110. Yeah. 105. One hundred now at waiver rule 95. So we're just not getting, I mean, there's smarter people these days, but those that have the incentive to, I mean, especially now when they're like, guess what? We want to make college free for everybody. Well, that's a huge draw to some people. I mean, it wasn't necessarily me, but my parents wanted me to go to college.

But it is for a lot of people. But when you make it free, why join the military? I also think they should stop using the word free. It's not free. The tab is fucking paid. Yeah. It's four years of your life. Yeah.

And the tab is paid through your taxes. So you may not be making a payment to the institution that you are going to or the lending institution that will allow you to go there. Right. But let's not pretend as if free means no burden to somebody else. Yes. Yeah. It's not free. No.

Nor is anything worthwhile free. I agree. So really it was, so it was rumfilt. Rumfield. It was really, that was the, the. the nucleus of what became Marsok. So picking back up there, Rumsfeld said, you're going to do this. The Marine Corps slow rolled it.

Sid will send some liaisons to Special Operations Command. Got a little bit more pressure from the Pentagon, SEC Def. Hey, you need to get rolling on this. I said not a few liaison. So they, well, slow rolling it again. The Marine Corps decided to create this Marine Corps Special Operations Command. Detachment 1. In 2003, right after, you know, First Force Recon comes, which I was at that time,

and Pendleton at First Force Recon. So we, you know, give up a lot of guys to go over to this MC-Socom. Marine Corps likes these McDonald's slogans. Like, even when we started Marsock, it was the Marine Special Operations Battalion. Everything was acronyms, not cool acronyms like Seals, you know. Seals is a ridiculous one, though, too, right? Sea, air and land. Yeah.

How do you fight in the air? I don't know how. I know how to have fun in the air. Land and water. I mean, land, okay, I know how to do that, but I don't ever want to get into, like, a knife fight underwater with somebody. The old James Bond movies, cutting hoses. And it'd be awesome if you're the one cutting the hose.

I don't know. That's what everybody thinks. These guys are coming down under canopy, firing and everything. Probably the most dangerous activity in the military is, like, full night combat equipment on odds. Free fall. Hay-ho or Halo. It's just dangerous. And it's like that one movie, totally.

fiction in Hollywood Patriot games where I think that was a movie where they're coming in under canopy. The laser. It's a busy guy's just like Peef!

Laser, of course, is just dead center on the ten ring of his heart. Landing on the top of a building. Like, that's real. What would really happen is you'd have 15 people

who landed over 30 square miles. People would be in trees. They would hit the side of buildings. Oh yeah. No pistols, no lasers. And it would be a complete and utter military failure. Yes.

Sorry, everybody. we're not that high speed. No. Yeah. So the war is going on. They needed this platoon commander. So in 2002, boom, I'm over at first force recon. And we're getting ready to go to Iraq.

And so as soon as the big push goes down, you know, the first force recon company comes back from Iraq. And we have to carve up. And boom, there's a group 86. And that was some enabler, some intel and logistics guys. a colonel, full bird kernel on top. And they went and they deployed in 2004, NSW Group 1 over in Iraq. And, you know, this was a test, a slow roll to make sure we, you know, force recon could even compete with the NSW or the green braves.

We don't know. We need to prove this. So it was a two-year proof of concept that lasted from 03 and then they stretched it to 06. And in the meantime, Bush 43 Jr. gets reelected. And they thought he'd be a one-term president like his father. And, well, you know, elections have results.

And the consequence was Rumsfeld was stayed on as sect deaf. And he told the Marine Corps, and fall of 2005, thou shalt, you're going to create this force, whether you want to or not. And so the Marine Corps was scrambling. And so literally, I just got promoted a major. You know, we were doing these six month on, six month off deployment. So you had two force recombments. companies, one on each coast, and then one in Okinawa.

The ones in Okinawa were supporting the ships in the Pacific. So in Iraq, we, first force recon will go over for six months, and then at the end of that, we'd have a two-week turnover on either side where we'd do a turnover with the East Coast Forest Recon Company. And so we're doing that the first three and a half years of war. And then... That's such a crushing opt tempo. It was ridiculous.

I mean, that's actually a recipe for just grinding people into dust. And that's... So guys, especially married guys in... you know, one of the platoons that we replaced from second force recone. And I'm not saying this, this is facts. It's not to disparage anything, but they had 22 out of 24 casualties. And so when guys are getting wounded and killed and seriously wounded, um,

is you know that puts something in the back of somebody's psyche, like makes them a little hesitant. And it's not, I mean, when you're, when there's no break, like, hey, you're going back. And literally because of the two weeks, turn over on either side so you're over in country for seven months you're back for five and you're

doing that for the first three and a half years the war and then we started this marsock so i was there in pendleton we're on a we just finished a work up to go back to iraq and they say um you're you're gonna you're the major i remember i was over in hawaiian kona or hilo with my ex-girlfriend and uh i get this phone call. My buddies, these, they only, by the organizational chart, you had one major as the executive officer in a force recone company. He had one as the operations officer. And there was three of us. And I was there the longest. So it's like in the Mikey Life Serial commercial, they're like, hey, I was, I was overseas, or not overseas. I was in Hilo with my girlfriend out of comms. And the two other buddies, my, you know, my colleagues, they, uh, they were there in,

Pendleton and I was taking my pre-deployment leave because they'd taken theirs earlier. I just finished the workup and they're like, hey, send Fred and they give me a phone call. Buddy is only half the word. That's right. I get this phone call from my buddy Lance and he's like, hey, congratulations. You're the first guy to go to Marsock. And they've been talking about this Marsok. And I'm in Camp Pendleton. So I'm back in California in a good spot. Single. I had a little Fonzie pad there in Carlsbad life was pretty good and I get this call like I don't have a choice I didn't want to call my buddy back I don't like what you know so I go back there talk to CEO and it gives me the the phrase Fred needs the Marine Corps and at that time I knew like when you say something like that

like it's a never good conversation yeah like there's about to be told something you don't want to be told right and so and I was asking like you know I'll go but I've been here for four years and this is like your brotherhood and now, and you just finished a workup. And I left my platoon because now I'm a major, 04, equivalent of a lieutenant commander. And so I realize I'm not walking around with a carbine, you know, taking down targets.

But I'm the guy in the operation. So when you're doing, we were mainly doing direct action and personality targeting, going after these key leaders. And that's what I knew. That was my game. And I'm like, you know, having been a Motson instructor and using aviation and and I well suited for the role yeah and uh I was you know knew a lot about how you know to use all forms of different intelligence to successfully I mean

we we were had great results first force recon company not boasting but it's uh since the start of the war in that 20 year span from the beginning in they were there from the beginning and then and they didn't have any casualties now they had fatalities and that's what got me to there in training is the only Marine Corps unit that had a kinetic mission no I want to say casualties there no deaths yeah we did have casualties which is huge man if you can walk away it's you know that can be tough getting wounded but in our wounds were not serious but anyway so a lot that was my family I didn't want to go and get that from the CO

got it. I tried to say, you know, can, after this deployment, can I, can I go? But I didn't want to, I mean, you sort of feel disloyal. Like, you know, being sort of like a wimp. You have to tell the guys that you've been fighting with for years in the worst parts of Iraq. And I know you've been there. And now you have to, this decision is like, you know, I'm not like a man or something like your buddies and you're being forced. Anyway, so I went to North Carolina. They said, you got nine days. Okay, drove across. In those nine days, we, I had to be communicating to, luckily, I'd been in the community for a while. So I knew, and we were doing these six month on, six months off, with these guys on the East Coast. So I'd seen these guys over in Iraq.

I know who they were. And so started picking the team. The team was formed in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. And that was the preponderance. All these guys were coming from Lejeune, except for me, they, a major would, form the first company. I know NSW sort of has these task units

formations similar, but we were more akin to what was going on the ships. So you had, usually had a 25-man force recomb platoon, and then you had an infantry security platoon, and then you had all these intel guys to assist, and that was kind of

the construct, but we beefed up from 25 to 45 our force recomb platoon, so we could really go and pack a huge punch. Yeah. And And so we were selecting these guys from kind of who was alive and not seriously wounded, who was the best that we could. And we were cherry-picking guys. Yeah.

Oh, as you should. Yeah. And, but we knew, like, we're going to deploy in 11 months. We don't have time to horse around. I had to get the enablers that the guys outside of the force recombatoon. So having been at the Marine Corps top gun, I knew, like, I don't want to horse around. And when you have some guy to plan all the aviation assets, and I know there in the Virginia Beach area,

you have guys who have J-TAC experience and you actually have pilots, and I wanted the best. I knew from having gone through the tactile air control party school as a student and then controlling air and these massive aviation assets, I'm like, I need to pick the best. I don't want a tire guy that flies CH-53s or CH-46 and lands guys like i need a guy that knows those weapon systems like what a gb u 54 does need he understands he's controlled he's done a fac-a he's in the aircraft he's controlled aviation in a large

setting not just his own so i picked this guy who'd flown for us a f18 pilot um it was a recommendation and from uh one of our air officers at first force recon company he's like oh you got to get this guy and I'm like, where is he? Oh, he's going to a red flag. He's in Nellis Air Force Base right now. I'm like, okay. So I kind of charted out those nine days. I'm like, I can go to Vegas.

And this guy was at Vegas. I'm like, meet me at Spearmine Rino. And I had a little interview there over some beverages and some entertainment. Entertainment. And for those that are just going to do with. Yeah. And so I'm like, okay, are you single? What are your hobbies you have?

He's a big gun guy. And I'm like, okay. as long as you don't have all this distractions and you know if you're you've got some all this stuff on the side like we're going to war and nobody's told us where it's going to be I need somebody totally focused it's experience that has that mindset of a warrior and is not going to be distracted with silly other things because we're we are going to be training as much as possible and that was our mindset that the you know at that time there's high casualties and I didn't want to I mean there's a lot of this stuff is actually. I mean, I'm talking 2006, so Operation Red Wings, the lone survivor. All this stuff is in the minds. Not only accidents, but mistakes and errors in planning, in judgment and leadership. It, you know, they say, I'm sure you heard it often throughout your career. You know, there'll be a rule of some kind and, hey, this rule is written in somebody's blood.

Yes. I think people, if they, the military, the U.S. military, the steel community is all I can talk about. And prior to 9-11, it was a very capable force, but nothing in comparison to what it is now. And those first few years were probably far less seamless than most people would think. There was a lot of writing in blood that was occurring. Like, this is a great academic principle that falls completely on its sword in practice. So we need to change this. Yeah.

Yeah, it was a rough time period. And, you know, just prior, and I hate bringing up these things, but you got to say what the good and the bad is. So first force recon, the prior to leading up, I was over in Okinawa and the first major casualty happened at the unit that I would eventually go to, which in the Marine Corps at that time was really a collection of awesome Marines that had these same, a lot of the same missions. Specifically December 1999, they were doing it off the coast of San Diego there in Point Loma, the USNS PECOS, the SEALs were coming in.

doing bottom up. Oh, is this from the 46 flipped? Hit the side netting and flipped backwards. God, that's a rough video to watch. Yeah. So seven Marines and a corpsman were killed from a very small company. Frogs, you know, assisted with the recovery. But, you know, some of those guys, we learned those lessons.

Like, hey, you want to do it fast. You want to get down the rope, especially, you know, you're flying in. There's no cover that you can get behind when a helicopter is coming in on a ship. If somebody's going to shoot you, you're going to, aircraft's going to take some hits. Yeah. So everybody wanted to get up and get their hands on the rope, ready to slide down as fast they can.

But when the aircraft lands in the water and you're not connected to the aircraft, you're just going to get, you're going to get knocked out and you're going to drown. The aircraft's going to go down. So although it's not as cool and like the movies, you know, like everybody's on that rope. And, you know, boom, you're down there, you know, okay, you need to be secured inside that aircraft. And then once you're over the target site, then, then get down that rope as quick as it can.

But, you know, some of those guys lost their lives. And some guys made it out. You know, we had old equipment. And I remember being, because I was a force recon, commandant in Okinawa, when this happened, we were doing some cold weather diving up in Iwokuni in mainland Japan when that happened. We were post-diving our LAR-5s.

And, you know, a lot of our recon Marines came from Pendleton, knew that. And so learn that hard lesson. Then another platoon at First Force, Recon, they wanted us, you know, we're kind of like the, we're aligned by our organizational chart, much like the British SAS, where we had a mobility team, then a ground mobility team like desert rats and vehicles, you know, coming in on aircraft landing in a C-130s and doing the long-range rat patrol. We had a dive team and then a free fall team, although many people had been cross-trained,

but they wanted, this one platoon wanted two free fall teams. And this is back in the day, when Marineco didn't have our own free fall school. And so quotas were really hard. Yeah, to get a spot out at Yuma. Yeah. So, but they finally got enough guys. And then so they, right after school, a guy just came from the free fall basic course.

And his first jump out in operational forces, like, you know, the Marines in the Yuma, they used to jump rear mountain rock. And the Marines would jump in front mountain rock. So they, everything in Yuma was a fixed wing. So high performance aircraft now, he's jumping out of CH 53. night oh that's a way different experience lower air speed lower relative wind yeah front matter

rock gets them a full kit you know wall locker jump with O2 at night out of a CH 53 anyway investigation found you know he's reaching for his rip cord and just different experience but same in Yuma we were jumping the MC4s Marine Corps we were jumping MC5 so a little bit different rig but the handles were the same location the guy died balanced second casualty. Then this one in August 2002, when they went from live fire combat drills to blank fire raid. Roll player fatal.

Rule player three right in a row. 99, 2001, 2002. In 2002, they relieved the chain of command. I was one of the guys. They brought it from instructor duty out in Yuma. And then we're getting ready to go to war. Iraq 2001 we already had platoons fighting in 2001 in Afghanistan so you know we were very focused and when we stood up Marine Special Operations Command that we were picking the Marines and I was like okay

and now I got to find the intelligence guys I need to find the eight we had one on the organizational chart one officer who would be able to control fires and one enlisted the enlisted guy I already had known, I chose a guy that operated with us in Afghanistan, Marine Corps has a structure. Marine Corps, we love these acronyms. You know, it,

like, makes you a part of the organization, so it's not yourself. There's, so our, uh, guys that control fires in the Marine Corps, we take, at that time,

they were from air, naval, gunfire liaison, Anglico. Mm-hmm. So I pulled a guy from there who'd, uh, supported us very well on our, on our deployments in Iraq.

I got a pilot one that I interviewed in Spearmint Rhino and then picked these guys, came over to Lejeune. We trained because we didn't. I had three requirements. I don't know. In the seals, they call you probably same thing, call them commanders critical information requirements. Yep, CCRs. Yeah, CCRs. I told our general.

There's a general in charge of Marsok. And at first, so they just told me like, hey, this isn't how things are supposed to go. There isn't a unit that exists. It's going to activate later. So the orders, we're not even going to cut you orders. There's not any like paid line of accounting. Just drive to Camp Lejeune. And so I'm like, okay.

I was a single guy and, you know, didn't have wife and kids. I pack everything in the truck and head to, you know, from Camp Pendleton, go to go to Vegas. And then went to Fort Campbell, talked to 160th. And I already made some connections there. Worked with 160th in Iraq. So I knew like we, they told them. we're going to go on the ships, but we're going to go off the boats, most likely. So I knew, like, having had that experience at the Marine Corps's version of Top Gun, I'm like, aviation, you need to embrace technology.

You're going to be destroyed by it. People were getting blown up and seriously killed by IEDs, it's roadside bombs. And I want to stay off the roads. So if we're not going to be with the Marines possibly, you know, if we are, great because they have aviation assets. But if not, I want to see what the 160th can support us with. So went in there, talked the regiment. talked to guys at fifth group as well, but I kept asking questions

for the whole 11 months of our workup. Here's our three commanders critical information requirements. What's our mission? Like, are we going to be training people? Are we going to do focus on direct action? Are we going to do special reconnaissance? Are we going to take down some ships?

And that was one question. What's our mission? Second is, who is the commander that we're going to support? Because the earlier you can coordinate with that commander and his staff and integrate and understand, you know, hey, how are, how do you envision us supporting your mission? And then the third is, I don't need a contingency grid, but I need to know which sub-region of sent com because I'm assuming that we're

going to be in sent comp. So I was asking these questions of General Weekly for the whole entire 11 months. Never got an answer. We got on ship. You got on ship and had largely no idea where the hell you were going to go? Well, there was some rumors and it would go back and forth. Iraq, Afghanistan. Roomint, if you will. Rumors, yes. Rumors intelligence.

Yes. So at that time, and you saw this, you have a New York Times, full page ad, you know, this information operation warfare. This is going into a political, you know, general presidential cycle. In 2007, they put this full thing out there of General Betray us because he was in charge of all forces in our Iraq and he wanted the surge and going in and you know Marines soldiers special operators people are getting killed wounded seriously in Iraq so they were boom this was real bloody and that's we were the pawns in this stuff too they didn't want you know going into that 08 election between McCain and Obama they you know now Marines are in Afghanistan and they

murdered these civilians and I didn't being a guy from Kansas I didn't expect to be exploited like something that we would do at the tactical level now this is international media. You know, you have a head of state, President Hamid Karzai, condemning us publicly. The generals booting us out and it happened like that. Maybe look into Hamid Karzai's family lineage in lines and what his fucking family was up to in that country during that time. Corrupt. As a, if you have any, free time.

Yeah. It gets rough. So we actually found, it was Iraq, Afghanistan, constantly changing on us. And we even had some people like, no, you really need to focus on the Horn of Africa. And I know there was special operators doing special operations. This was like early 2000, a little early for that. Yeah. So, but there was things going on there.

Yeah, good forward thinking for sure. I think it's heated up a lot more in the recent era. Well, and I wasn't a political oriented guy at that time, but I'm like, we're going into general election. Like, why would, we're not going to start something in the horn of Africa going into presidential, like, not overtly. Yeah. No president wants like, now we're going to send in these Marines special operators. But the Marines had the strong. wrong. So they took all forces, which we were in both theaters in 06, and then we pulled everything

out of Afghanistan and sent it into Iraq. So my head was thinking like, good chance with everything, you know, it was kind of economy of force. The situation had been fairly tame in Afghanistan up to 2005, 2006. It was slowed down. Iraq was where it's really getting bloody. Iraq was on a stock chart that was heading towards the roof. Yeah. It was. It was. was boom. And so that's where I thought we're going to Iraq. Where in Iraq? I don't know.

I tried to figure out as much information. I'm the CEO. I need to, that's my responsibility. Nothing. So we got on the USS baton out of Norfolk, heading east to Europe. And about three days afterwards, we were going to Afghanistan.

So we'd kept a, and we expected some notification. So we kept a rear echelon back with all of our enablers, all our intel, logistics guys. We didn't have logistics, but people that could set up a fob for a forward operating base. So as soon as we got the green light, this is where we knew we're going to go. And we knew we'd find it very soon. So SOX sent the Special Operations Command Central and down in

Tampa. They were going to make this decision. And that's why, you know, leaders have a responsibility, you know, to be competent and to, you know, we have this rule in the Marine Corps, at least. It's a, commanders should use one-third of the full amount of time to make this decision and to, you know, provide as much guidance as possible and allow those that are actually going to execute the mission and have the greatest amount of risk, two-thirds of time to plan prior to execution. One-third, two-thirds rule. No, we, you know, only found out after we, 11 months of asking the general. Yeah, you were already on the boat.

Yeah, 11 months face-to-face every week, these are three CCRs. You know, it was like, ah, but I have. also started to smell the odor that again Rumsfeld ordered this thing they didn't want it um the from the meetings that I also was attending that we're not putting down any military construction I was told like all the weapons that you're going to have are in the second force recon army you're going to use everything that's there even though that there's programs of records that rangers and green braes and seals everybody who's you know you're using this binocular night vision,

all this stuff, and like, it's, it's available. We can, we can just go get it. Well, why not? There was reasons why people, and I was starting to smell this odor like, okay, I'm not getting the wink in the nod from you, but I understand like we don't want to set down any roots. So these extra units that are being created,

they're put in trailers. There's no blueprints even for putting down roots because just like in World War II, you really don't want this. nor did the joint community when we were going overseas and when they finally said afghanistan we're going to work for the siege of soda combined joint special operations task force afghanistan out of bogram commanded by you know colonel hoss uh the third special forces group commanding a officer who was a siege of soda commander uh army green beret that's kind of like you know bring in

your mistress to meet your misses and you know we were not wanted you know the green berets didn't show up there and welcome us aboard and like hey let's let me give you all the hints there were some again just like back in my enlisted days there were some enlisted who were very very helpful and one army logistician who is very very helpful but the command had this uh you know we're not going to give you anything you need and if you really want to slow operations down and if you're politically minded uh it's not those guys with a career trajectory they want to move up it's not like all the things you'll do right, but if you do one thing wrong. Yeah.

You know, so they have this risk aversion and, you know, they put this little circle on the top of the Torbore Mountains, not defined by any boundaries, geographic, or grids. It was just a circle. Operate up here. You know, that's the last place that they spotted Osam bin Laden. So at first, Naïve Fred was like, okay, Osam bin Laden, I know who he is. And that sounds, man, we're, we're the lucky guys. And then I realized like, well, wait a second, U.S. taxpayers built this nice paved road, the only road at the time in Afghanistan.

And it's connecting Pakistan and Afghanistan. So why would you summit in February when we landed? The snow covered 14,000 foot peak. When you got this road, you know, all the poppy that's being grown is being exported on that road. And foreign fighters are coming in. And so I quickly realized. And we weren't trying to resist. We were the whole time.

And so they dropped you into Bogram. That's where you first. We landed in Boggown. and they sent us over to Jalalabad Airfield. Yep. And so for people listening who aren't familiar, I'll call the J-Bat-A-Bat area, northeastern Afghanistan.

Eastern. Yeah. Nangar province. Yep. Right at the base of the Torbore Mountains. So we also took assumption of another forward operating base at the very foothills of Torbores in Kagiani. And, you know, we had, our task force had,

it was very heavy with intelligence. signals human all source fusion you know we had different government agencies we had seals there from you know Virginia Beach area and you know they always tried to pawn they want especially our signals intelligence they're like you guys have this equipment in these people like we don't have all of this so we're getting kind of like yeah we'll let you guys play along if as long as long as we can yeah you know tap into some of this this is pretty good stuff you guys and they were believe it's called quid pro quo that's right yeah you know and it's not like we were wandering around clueless i mean we are guys that we had sent

over there early that was all our intel teams yeah and so they had a good pulse on what was going on and so when we entered what month did you land there February okay early February and so it was quick to assess that okay there's nothing going on this mountains but that's where they signed this when you don't i'm agreeing Braves and one thing in the Army, they sent in their officers to a lot of these schools. And they're very detail-oriented. I've gone to some of these things. You know, very exact, you know, grids on a map for a boundary because, you know, if it's up against somebody else, somebody could have fractricide.

We just see this big circle like, oh. But nevertheless, I'm a Marine infantry officer and I'm going to try to do everything within my ability. Every fiber and every cell in my body is going to try to accomplish that mission. So being a guy with a lot of aviation experience. I'm like we need to do a visual recic get up there in helicopters see what's going on see what the rat lines get our imagery guys so that's what was starting they approved you know the first overflight and then every single day and then I got guys kit ready mission rehearsals trained ready to get up there request but the one caveat that the colonel hoss the siege you sort of

commander said he's like Fred again risk averse doesn't want anything bad to happen he says, I can't afford to have another operation. Red Wings go on. He goes, you have to have a quick reaction force immediately able to reinforce. So I knew like, okay, where we could, we had force in Cagiani down there at the foothills. And then, but, you know, the Torbore is so steep and covered with snow. Like, if we're going to get up there and start doing some specialized reconnaissance, we, I mean, the terrain is very bad. So we're going to have to have helicopters to get us in there.

and then we're going to have to have helicopters to be able to reinforce us. So those are some of the things I'm thinking, but never, after that first visual reconnaissance, and there was aviation assets readily available. This is just sitting on the airfield at Bagram, or not just at Bogum, but also at Jalalabad, where we were. And so I was requesting these, denied, denied it.

Every day when I say I, personally, myself, as the task force commander, was requesting these two our hirehead quarters every day. No, you're not going to get it. So I was like, well, you keep saying you need to get up there in those mountains. You're hounding us to do that. And here's the resources that we need. And the commander says that we have to have assets to be able to immediately reinforce that. So time goes by and I'm like, okay, if we can't do it right there from our foothills at Kagiani, maybe we can stage a quick reaction for us.

it right at the Afghan Pakistan border and get up in the same area because from there it's a closer distance to push up so on the morning of the 4th of March threefold mission that we were there doing is I wanted to face to face with the military army military police commander

who own that base to make sure that we could stage our guys there and it's not going to be any problem as a commander you need to do face to face with that other commander just make sure there's not going to be anything screwy that somebody's not going to have some half-hearted handshake. And, you know, yeah, you can stay here.

And then there's problems. She was a lieutenant. I was a major. So I wanted to go and make sure guys could carve out a little space. And this is where we're going to stage our guys to reinforce as a quick reaction force to accomplish, you know, what we've been told and hounded to do. But we're never given the assets to do it. So we're going to do it ourselves. I'm going to do what that commander told us to do.

But I'm going to do internal organic resource. interesting. So go there, meet her, get a little intel update from her, which was very weak, compared to what, you know, our guys, they've been there a year. We just got there a month. And our guys had a lot more information like this little village right next to her, Body Co, the first village on the inside, going back to what we were mentioned earlier, Pakistan, the sanctuary, fully, they get these guys fully radicalized, they bring them across the border. What do you think that village is going to be used as, the first village inside? It's the staging point.

Yeah, staging point. And from there, they're going to hub and spoke and go out all over the place. So we had Intel, like I mentioned, there's four suicide bombers. We knew the exact location, that exact house they were in. So we were going in to do a meet and greet because obviously, if this is, you know, we're going to have stage forces there and have to resupply them. It's a huge threat. So you have to, how are you going to reduce that threat?

So the second fold mission besides meet and greet with the, Army military police commander was we wanted to drive as far up because the Torbora right there at the Khyber Pass. This is some of the most formal train in the world. In the wintertime, snow and in March, some of it's starting to melt. So it's really kind of nasty. I mean, you can roll a vehicle down a cliff and get killed real easy. So I wanted to see some of that train before I tell our Marines, you know, on foot or from a vehicle, you know, starting to get in that. And treacherous terrain I wanted to see it myself and so that was a second phase is to do a mounted in our humvees reconnaissance of that area and when we got to that base Andy this is what was going on

they the army MPs were about ready to line it they lined up their vehicles and they're doing their emergency procedures so I was like oh this is good stuff but it's in the morning so we left our base at six o'clock in the morning we got there roughly like about 645 and I'm seeing these uh I'm like that's good but this is I mean the Khyber Pass mountains all around and they're at the very base So when you're doing a broad daylight surrounded by elevated terrain And you're you're calling out I mean what do you think the enemies? You're right there at a choke point You're being observed. Yeah, and I'm seeing these people do these rehearsals the first thing is okay, this is good military discipline But why aren't you doing it at night and you're doing it telegraphing one that vehicles are staged that you're probably ready to leave and you're all kidded up and

and you're going through your actions. And their emergency action procedures were literally contact front. And they, all the turret gunners dropped down in their turret. And then drive, drive, drive. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. They really like ducking and running. And that's what you're sending. So their whole theory was just to foot on the gas pedal and get out of there as fast as possible.

Punch the kill zone. That doesn't always work. No. And so they were lined up. And after our little meeting with the lieutenant, We left going south into the foothills and did a, you know, off-road, visual reccy mounted in our vehicles and saw how we can get up there. And then we re-entered and got back on that paved road, Highway 1. And we didn't realize that, you know, I mean, I realized that the Army was staging.

They were going to leave. But we actually beat them into this village body co where we knew where the bad guys were. And we had a, that was a third part of our mission is to do tribal leader engagement. Because back to what they were saying in Iraq, we knew where the bad guys were, we could go in and just prosecute them. Now, when you give the advantage to the enemy where you have to have some chai, sit down and, you know, I mean, expose your warriors to the threat of suicide bombers, you know, blasting trapnel. So as we went through there that morning at 6 o'clock, and that little village was normal pattern of life. Women, children, men, there's a little bizarre there called Marco Bazaar.

Normal things, buying everybody all over the place. And then come back through, once we got on that road, it was about three hours later from when we first went through. We had niece, baseline totally changed, lined up on the sides of the road like a parade. Military, these were fighting age men. we're like as soon as I call out in our vehicle

be prepared you know total atmospheric change when they're lined up you know these are just fighters car bomb just detonated right in front of our second vehicle

a massive car bomb huge fireball I was sitting there like shit like every one of those Marines killed now and I was like so you just lose your stomach

then you see this vehicle come off you know, on the south side of the road to our left flank, jihadists firing full of automatic weapons. And, you know, then you just see this Haas, Marine Sergeant Klein in the book. That's anonymous name. But, you know, he stands up and the same with the Marine in the troop compartment guns him down. Then we make quick work. The driver bails out of that vehicle. We get on the opposite side, on the right side of the road, on the north. We have dismounted jihadists. So these were trained. They were, you know, suppressing element and another element would maneuver. So they're, you know, leaping, doing bounding against us in this dry riverbed.

So we're on the road. We had some elevation into that riverbed. And the first two vehicles, turret gunners and the one gunner in the troop department start to engage and make quick work in that dry riverbed. Pretty bad location. There's not a lot of covering concealment. So make quick work at them while. Sounds very coordinated, though. Totally.

I mean, obviously they were maneuvering through low ground, which is kind of a Bush League move. It is. But the fact that they were maneuvering, the, you know, the V-Bid, the vehicle, and then, you know, dismounted troops. And they had a sniper position that was firing at us, too. Yeah. So I think they were caught off guard. Because this ambush, because you said it's a little, and that's an accurate assessment, a little JV. I feel like they were going to ambush the MPs, though.

That was probably the plan. That's exactly it. and they didn't have everything set because we just, we came from off road. So they obviously were watching that base where the military police were, but they just got there first. They hadn't left yet.

So when we entered that kill zone, people were lined up so it was kind of like a hasty like, hey, hey, hey, there's Americans, vehicles on the road here. They probably were doing their rock drill. Yeah, that was it. Rehearsal concept. This was their rehearsal.

Like, hey, you know, like, they're like, oh shit, get the guns. Where do these guys come so fast? They haven't even left the base. now, you know, now it's on. So because they hadn't totally trapped in the kill zone. So when we got there and they started fighting us and we were fighting back, at that time, they dragged a vehicle.

So all of a sudden these military men dragged this chariot across the road. So there was some preparation because, you know, the American MPs were staged. So like they got rid of all the fighting. And you see this when, especially in southern Afghanistan, on subsequent deployments you're like when they're about ready to fight there's this mass exodus women and children and so they were it's almost a guarantee when you see that yeah there's a complete absence of women and children at this time at 903 in the morning when that car bomb went off and you know i sent the data transmission back to our headquarters which was received and mentioned

in the in the trial the war crimes trial that i'll get to so boom you know troops in contact small arms fire vehicle born iED you know headquarters immediately received that and it was reported in the court room trial that they received our voice transmission so data and voice you know troops in contact you know who's got forces outside the wire um it was quickly over in five minutes but you know they did simultaneous so it wasn't totally prepared it was more hasty they dragged this vehicle across the road a massive mob of unarmed military age fighting men swarmed at us trapping us in that kill zone you know we had a all of our turret gunners were very experienced You know, been in combat.

We wanted to put, you know, savvy guys on the guns. And so Gunner and Vehicle 1, after we'd been there five minutes, we assessed that because the comms were out in vehicle 1, so we had to use hand and arm signals far recognition for okay. Because we didn't have audible with them. So once we assessed everybody's okay, their chariot can move. And then pass the word, you know, we're going to, why do a tribal leader engagement when we know this town is bad? Like there's three other suicide bombers still alive. We don't need to figure out, you know, what the other three are going to do or where they're at. So we decided after five minutes and assessed that everything's where it's at.

We finished, we fought through, did our counterattack. And then at that point, the only thing that was still firing us was a sniper fire. And U.S. Army, it's sad that naval criminal investigative service was not, there was not enough of them. So they even implored and utilized the resources of the U.S. Army's criminal investigative division. And their criminal investigative laboratory down in Georgia, they did an analysis on our, the armor. They actually took the armor off of our vehicles. Oh, looking at the impacts? The impacts in this.

I'm going to butcher this because, you know, I just learned to walk up right, Andy. So the meteorologist, somebody that does a forensics on, they determined that the impacts on the sides of our vehicle was from Soviet. Dragging off sniper rifle. Sounds about right. Yeah. And the Army colonel, this is when you make a rush decision and then you send somebody like one of your mobsters to cover it up. And so this Army Colonel, an Air Force colonel that did the 15-6, the preliminary investigation, he said, I think the Marines shot themselves. Or they shot their vehicles before they ever left.

That was his. That's how we used to warm up before targets. We would just shoot our vehicles. Yeah. You want to shoot your windshields. Yeah. So you, you know, you can't really see what's going on. Super reasonable.

And then shoot the sides of your vehicles because, you know. Fuck. Yeah. Like who? I mean, here, I'd been in. A military officer actually floated that as something that was plausible. They just shot their own vehicles. He didn't just put that in as 15-6.

So a year later, when we're on trial in the war crimes trial, the longest trial in Marine Corps history, he was his prosecution is one of their lead witnesses, this Air Force colonel. And he says, well, I talked to this one guy. There was this human intelligence guy that had been shot through the helmet in Iraq. And around, went around, didn't go through his head, but it went around the actual helmet and came out. So it was, I know, HIPAA, maybe I'll get trouble. There was some things medically.

I'll just leave it at that. And he stated on the record that before he even got off the ship to go into Afghanistan, that he didn't think any American should be in Afghanistan. And he actually stated that in the courtroom, like basically being a conscientious objector. So we had a guy. And then he sends an email as soon as he gets back. He basically being derelict of his duty. You know, he's not one of our special operators.

He's an intel guy. And I treat everybody equally. But there is a difference in his training. And he sends an email as soon as we get back because he decides, I don't even want to participate in the debrief. But he sends a couple emails, one that says, which was a message. Immediately afterwards to an army buddy of his says, yes, indeed, it was a complex ambush. We were shot out on both sides of the road. So he sends that.

But later in court, he perjures himself and says, I just think some innocent people died that day. He was one of our own. So when you read this book, and I'm trying not to give it all away, but this book, there's so many insidious things because it's not, you expect the Afghans to attack us. You expect them to do, you know, this information warfare. and we do that against enemy forces. We don't do it against ourselves. It's actually illegal. It's illegal to do psychological operations against yourself.

But that's what the American generals, either they allowed to happen or they give the wink and a nod to get rid of this. Again, I've talked about, and there's reasons why I set the background, that the Marine Corps did not want this, and they were ordered to do this by Rumsfeld. They weren't setting down roots with weapons accusations, equipment and technology.

There was no investments going in that. And, you know, I was in the court described by a Marine colonel who was a mentor and an advocate of mine that, you know, Fred's a gear queer. So if you have been in war at all this times and you're seeing the advantages of like binocular night vision and you're seeing all this different weapons systems to, you know, eliminate your flash on you know cruiser machine guns you know I was out there like hey I know I can get this like B. E. Myers makes this kind of equipment and I was I didn't have a life I my whole thing was your life was your occupation at that time it totally was and so but the people in charge of us were like this thing is just gonna and they looked at me as kind of like a zealot like this will go away and

So anyway. So you blast your way or fight your way through the ambush. You return back to that base that you would stage out of? Yeah. So we fire the lead gunner and vehicle one. Smartly fires far above the heads of these unarmed civilians that were mobbing coming at us. And they part like the Red Sea. We go to around this vehicle.

20 minutes later, 16 clicks, we're back on the base. As soon as we get in the wire, I have a guy from our operation center comes out, says, hey, sir, there's already reports after. Afghan civilians being killed. And I was like, at that point, I knew, okay, this is something we weren't hit with in Iraq on previous deployments where the information warfare is that quick. Sure, it has happened. But sometimes, you know, they'll go back and they'll have like the Shura and they'll decide, like, what they're going to accuse.

It takes time. I've never seen it happen in 20 minutes unless it was pre-planned. This was already teed up where they had these stringers. They had a new source and it was already on BBC. And then it spread like wildfire. How is that possible they could do it that quickly? So we were, a good question, Andy. Early, we were very early on in this evolutionary cycle because later the thing and the reason that way used a court of inquiry, which very rarely used it.

I don't think I've ever even heard that term, to be honest. Yeah, they used it, you know, the Navy sub that overturned the Japanese tourist boat in Pearl Harbor and killed some people. Yes. And Custer, they use them very rarely. When there is no prima facie evidence, it's an option to use that to make it more of a fact-finding thing. And in a court martial, they have to present the preponderance of the evidence has to support their case. But when they don't have, in our case, they didn't have a body, bullet, blood. Later on in these, you know, in that evolutionary cycle, they found like, oh, yeah, here's the dead bodies and everything.

But they didn't have any of that to show. So they go to this. But the risk of a court of inquiry also is that there's no rules of evidence. So you don't have to present with preponderance of evidence. You can actually use conjecture and hearsay, which. is if you're a defendant, you know, to bring up something that's unsupported is, and I was warned by Colonel Petronzio, he told me, he's like, Fred, you need to be very careful going into a court of inquiry. He's like, and that's when the Marine court, they decided on this procedure.

It was actually General Mattis, who was the convening authority for all Marines in the Middle East at the time. He was the commander, Marcent. He ordered this. Not only the comment on the Marine Corps said that you're going to do a court of inquiry, and it's going to be the Marcent commander, who's Lieutenant General Mattis at the time. But then Lieutenant General Mattis decided like, okay, here's what I'm going to unleash and dog pile on

with the 45 criminal investigators and four prosecuting attorneys, basically seven times, you know, the force against these seven guys, I'm going to dog pile on this. And they also put this freakish thing out. It sounds completely un-American because it was a protective order that we couldn't talk to the press.

Our attorneys couldn't talk the press. our attorneys would be disbarred if they said anything to the press. In writing, how fast did this happen from you get back to base? You hear that this is being reported. How much time are we talking here before? 20 minutes.

And that's the most amazing thing because if somebody was shot dead here, you know, the senator's office, boom, somebody's dead. 20 minutes later, U.S. journalists, you know, they're going to have to substantiate that. Their editor's going to have to, or the producer's going to figure out,

like, where's the proof? But 20 minutes later, this is out. So they did start using this tax. where they have stringers with pre-made stories and but they didn't have the the pictures you know that and what was the story they were selling that the Marines in this was fueled also by the tribal leaders the Marines were drunk so there's this other government agency came in to see me that morning right after we just finished our debriefes like hey my Fred and this guy had been in the Marines it's just a organization that trains local commando units got you yep and he's like You know, I just came back from the village and they said, the elders told me that you guys were drunk. The elders that you didn't meet with. Yeah, the elders that didn't meet with. And they said that you guys dismounted and went sport killing just door to door.

I'm like, and I've realized, I mean, quickly cycling through his emotions, like, he's not joking. Yeah. And I'm like, my response to that, be like, are you out of your fucking mind? Yeah. I'm like, Mike, do you think? Exactly. I'm like, do you think I'm drunk? Do I look like, you know, like I've been in the Marine Corps this time, 20 years?

Do you think I'm going on a patrol in combat? After I've been doing this since the start of the war, do you think I would let these commandos loose? I mean, we didn't even dismount from our vehicles. First of all, a military infantry officer, Army, Marines, if the threat and people had been dying and getting maimed with shrapnel from, you know, of devices. And now you know that there's four suicide bombers in there. One just goes off on you. Why would you just say, hey guys, dismount the chariots. Get out of the trucks. And stay in the armor. Stay in the armor. Let you guys fight. This is broad daylight. So we're in, don't give up your strength. And, you know, the main thing, you know, we stole from the Romans is, you know, take when you have the high ground and you maintain fire superiority.

Like, if you have guys, why would you want to dismount and have our guys, and have our guys, mixed amongst, you know, the threat. So we were there, consolidated. We went into this herringbone formation, guys in the turrets, observing what was going on, killed the threat, you know, and we're making our assessment,

okay, things are good, depart the area. 20 minutes later, you know, we're back on the base. This is starting to circulate. Then they start riots. And the governor Sharzai of Nanga Har Province puts all this pressure on

Hamid Karzai. Hamid Karzai publicly condemns. they sent out an investigator, this Air Force colonel, does an investigation, interviews the first two trucks worth of guys, 10 guys that doesn't talk to any Afghans, decisions made to kick us out four days later. You know, sees all operations, you guys are leaving. No Afghans even just.

So in the first two vehicles didn't contain, the vehicle three was this guy, he was a conscientious objector. This guy Milton in the book, this is call sign. But, you know, he didn't even get to anything that raised his suspicion during his whole entire investigation, a military investigating officer, if you come across somebody that's suspected of committing a crime, you actually have to stop and give them their Article 31B rights, which is equivalent to the Miranda rights. And you have to say, hey, here's a deal like you're being suspected of this. And you have a right to an attorney, you have a right to remain silent. He never randomized anybody.

And he said at the very, when he came out to see us, he's like, you know, and if you don't want to make a statement, that's fine. I'll order you to make a statement. Again, things were, and I was kind of like, hey, we want to cooperate. We don't, you know, we, because they had a cease, not just with us, cease all military operations across the country of Afghanistan. So this is a big deal. Like, yeah. I mean, and then we were being threatened, not to go too much down that road. So picking up chatter that there was a dual car bomb. from some of the cell that we didn't get that was going to be coming in through the main gate and then mortars and dismounts going to they were going to attack our base there at jolal about airfield and so you know we were on guard with that and which is why we wanted to get back out on the ice what you know let's cooperate get this investigation because we have a real threat yeah and so but the decisions made march 9th boom we're done getting kicked out sent to Kuwait in a way we went the investigation was continued it hadn't even been The guy's just barely starting.

So we were ordered out and he was still, so it took a while to get the planes and pack up an account for all of our equipment and get us out of there. While he was still interviewing our guys, like the decision's made, now the investigation is going to suit what the commander's decision was. You have a two-star commander, Major General and his actual name was Frank Kearney,

mentioned in the book. This book does, A few bad men doesn't just name the names. It shows the pictures. And it uses what they voluntarily, either said to the press and I don't think there was some Jepetto tell I mean this is what they said there's no puppeteering they either said it voluntarily or a year later when we went into the longest war crimes trial Marine Corps history they went sworn under oath and set it on the record the information

warfare that happened we are allowed to use information warfare against enemy like I said we cannot legally do that to our own soldiers Airmen, Marines. We can't do it to the people. And when we went into that courtroom, this is a big danger of a court of inquiry, is they had a colonel who was overall in charge of the court from the legal perspective, and then they had a public affairs officer, Lieutenant Colonel. Usually you'd see if somebody's handling the press, probably a sergeant at the most. Highest ring. They brought a guy up from Tampa, a maid man. Wise guy, as the mob calls these guys, for three and a half week trial. Lieutenant Colonel, the senior public affairs officer, he was handling these guys.

So every time the defense would go to talk, although the jury still stayed there and they heard every word of the trial, the media would get escorted out during our defense cross-examination. So character witnesses, guys had never even been in Afghanistan, but there were colonels that knew me and they had nothing classified to talk about at all. Go in the press and find one and then provide any type of, no. It's not because the media didn't care. It's that they weren't there. and I had plenty of these guys that came in during that three and a half weeks as well as guys with exculpatory evidence

and one thing that was going on tangentially at the same time you may remember this case 2007 also in North Carolina down the road at Duke so this prep you know a lacrosse team guys they got out of control

they hired this it was called her a dancer and entertainer entertainer yes that's so it's probably what she puts on her taxes Yeah. So maybe if she files taxes. Yeah. Probably a cash business. Yeah. So she accused, made some allegations. And Michael Nyfong, who's a state's attorney prosecuting the case, was found guilty, disbarred and punished for withholding state's evidence. So his case is, although it's sad because, you know, there's guys high risk, but this is capital, you know, 19 killed women and children. That's what they were charging with. Charging us. Charging us. Order of 19.

And wounding of 50. The largest number from direct fire weapons in the whole war in Afghanistan. So this is melee. Andy, they didn't. There's no, there's, so they were trying to use this conjecture. And then how they would do it is,

so the Marine Corps didn't want Marsok to begin. And they're like, this is what happens. And we're going to spin. So the Marine Corps, the military is not supposed to play on the minds of American people and use their own Marines as pawns. And that's what this book,

a few bad men is because decisions were made and I don't have the proof but do you think it's coincidental that every time that we defend ourselves the media would get not just escorted into the lobby two buildings, this is the main courtroom in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina two buildings over, there's this

Andy Steakhouse. If anyone has ever been there they'll know, and above on the second floor the media got to hang out there. That's where and I've been on just stating facts, hundreds of interviews since I retired and I had a gag order on me but now I'm retired. The Marine Corps has never disputed a word. They sent me to a second. So after this was over,

years later, you know, as soon as it was over, I went over to Okinawa. I would like, send me back to recon. Went over there and redeployed to Afghanistan. And I've sent, then on that deployment, which is also in the book, this battalion commander drops a 500 pound bomb. I'm like, hey, I'm the weaponier expert. I'm the operations officer. I'm like, we have a hellfire missile. It's 10 pounds of high explosive is using overpressure. It's not shrapnel. It doesn't blast three-dimensionally like a GBU 54, which is a 50-50 mix of 200 pounds of

HE and 250 pounds of steel blasting three-dimensionally. I'm like, we have a hellfire, which is 10 pounds of H.E. And we also have the Marine Corps went cheap. We didn't go with the AC 130. We had a KC-130. It has a harvest hawk, which is on the rail of one of the fuel pods. And you can put have a system called Griffin missiles.

It's essentially a laser-guided javelin. It's only four pounds of H. So at that time, in this one engagement on 6 June 2011, you had a recomb platoon engaged in the battalion commander, intel officer, never been to Afghanistan, very indecisive after 50 minutes, constantly talking to the lawyer. I want to this information, this information. And like, okay, on the left. 50 minutes of a unit in troops in contact. And they became enveloped. So the enemy moves from 275 meters down to 34 meters, hitting them with RPGs, meeting machine guns.

And they're probably screaming for help. Yeah. They, and we don't have surveillance that's provided in a video feed at this time. So I don't blame the platoon commander for saying like, for not saying that he's in side cover in this ditch. But the battalion commander decides like, I'm the one in control. And he drops a 500 pound bomb off of AV8B Harrier.

500 pound bomb, 34 meters away. You can't drop these things. It depends on slant angle if you're more or less than 69 degree dive. But you can't drop within 180 meters. unless it's greater than 69 degree dive and then you can drop it 130 meters because the splash is less. You know, again, I was this Uber

joint terminal attack controller from working out there in Yuma. But I'm like, you legally, there's a paragraph four of this ISAF directive says compliance is mandatory. We can't drop this ordinance as close because you've waited 200, you know, they went from 275 meters down to 34.

Now they're developed. Which is actually smart on their part because they probably realize that they limited what you can provide from overhead. Yeah. And they realize that this is how the Americans are going to fight. Yeah. They're going to get to a buckled distance and eliminate that kind of threat. So as long as they remain at that foul language distance, then they can continue to bring it.

And that's what their tactic is to do is to immediately engage and try to trap us, you know, shut us down. I mean, it's smart. I'll get it to. Yeah. And so that's why I'm like, let's use it. We have other precision guide munitions. they're immediately overhead one from a drone

we had a MX 9 or MQ9 armed Reaper and that had the hellfire so that uses overpressure to kill it doesn't blast three dimensioning it basically sucks the air out of it it's an anti-armor weapon that's made to punch through using a shape charge

and suck everything out of the armored vehicle and I'm like this is what we want to be very non-invasive at this point because you've wasted this time and allowed the enemy to have this advantage let's use either the Reaper or the KC-130 with the Hellfire or the Griffin missile and drops a 500-pound bomb. Harriers that dropped it had to go away for gas.

So now it hit a target building that the enemy had already vacated. And they realized that like, hey, if they're using a building to suppress the other maneuver elements, it's a matter of time before that building gets targeted. I mean, Andy, the prior deployment, and the end of the end of the end. mean he's savvy this is 2011 at this time so the 10 years of fighting well schooled yeah these are the guys that earned their master's degrees so they on the prior deployment third we come down i wasn't on that deployment but a reconnaissance team same unit and we're from i was in okinawa and in okinawa you um you don't have a lot else to do so they're training constantly but this team splits up and these three guys were compromised on a reconnaissance mission also there in a helmin

province and they were captured tortured shot shot in the head and bodies thrown off cliffs so my point in saying that is not saying anything bad against my recon brothers but if you fail to act and if you failed to be decisive and you fail to demonstrate courage uh with decisiveness you're going to pay in helman province yeah there's no points for second place yeah we're 2011 the next deployment This is one I'm describing in the Sagan Valley. This is the worst place on Earth at the time. And as battalion commanders being political, ah,

and so after that, Harriers check off, the platoon is still asking for ordinance. You know, they're trapped and we don't have a feed. We don't know when the bomb drops at that distance. And if, because their contour interval on the map,

there was no, there's no elevation gain or change significant. So it looked like flat ground. I didn't know they were in a canal. That's what kept them alive. But they're still getting, as you know, the energies going through your soft tissue, 500 pound bomb, there's soft tissue damage to your brain. Guys get affected by traumatic brain injury. They were also covered that up. No one was allowed to be screened for TBI even after they returned. So guys weren't getting medically treated. This is a fact. This came out on a subsequent trial that I was sent to in Okinawa. But worse yet, the guys are still

asking for fire and I said hey the arm drones up either use a drone with a hellfire or use the KC-130 with the Griffin missiles four and ten pounds shape charge. The battalion commander decides I'm going to launch two Hi-Mars rockets surface-fired rockets 675 pound warheads each again how accurate are those things

are they GPS so it gets within one meter but you can't drop those within 180 meters and the guys are at 34 meters two of them and not to get tech or already on artillery but you fire, you can do it in a closed sheaf where it lands like almost right on top of each other. Or if you're really trying to pound a target,

you use closed sheath or you have friendlies close by. Or you can fire an open sheath to spread that trapnel further out, you know, larger destruction of like troops in the open. He fires an open sheath formation. Our guys are 34 meters away. Again, we thought no, no negative thing that I'm making against the platoon commander, but he didn't report he was, and we didn't know

that he was inside this canal. So I thought, was he not asking, I mean, so I come from a J-TAC background as well, so I'm thinking, A, why wasn't the guy on the ground just coordinating directly with the assets and asking for what he wanted? He was. Yeah. But the battalion commander, this intelligence officer, took over the fire mission. remotely? From our command post, which was a little... Oh, it's so fucked. That, and exactly. you said it not I I'm already thinking to this the move is you use the smaller charges and you start walking it in

until the enemy realizes that they need to bail and you probably wouldn't have to fire that many because if they think that if they close the distance to 34 that they're safe and then if you start getting vaporized I mean they're not dumb at this point they want to fight and kill American so they'll leave or back off

and they would at least end the engagement yeah and so when there's two high Mars rockets impacted that allowed our guys to be able to disengage in withdrawal. The training that I had had and the experience I had is, you know, not just as an instructor in Yuma and going through the tactical air control party course

and getting the training and qualifications to do this, but I'm talking years of applying it in combat in Iraq. And in training in between the deployments going into another combat deployment, And I'm like, what this guy is telling me to do is registered is going to needlessly. I mean, as a platoon commander going on all these deployments, a force recomb platoon commander is a little bit different than recon platoon commanders in the past that send recon teams out. A force recon platoon commander, what we were really doing in Iraq was direct action missions. People call it personality targeting, but you're finding these key leaders and you're, you're hunting them down.

You're going into their homes in the middle of night and killing them. And so I realized that from doing those missions on those deployments in Iraq, our lives could be required of us in the mission. I'm not sitting here in risk. I can't do this. I'm just saying we have to make calculated risk. And you have to be smart about it or people will needlessly die. And so I meet with the battalion commander. I was shoulder to shoulder with him when he was doing this.

But after the mission was over, I debriefed the platoon that comes back. talk to them, get the information. And I come and find the battalion commander. I'm like, here's this situation, sir. You're about ready to go to leave for a period of time to do this. Shura. I need to understand your intentions for fires. So I can employ it within your intent while you're gone.

He said, Fred, come back and talk to me later. And so he's thinking about what he's going to say. And come back and meet with him later. He said, I'm willing to sacrifice the life. lives these Marines. And I need to make sure you will too on all future missions. What? Am I clear? And then he repeated it. In this, you know, I went to court and this was corroborated with my polygraph that from the President American Polygraph Association, the late Terrence Victor O'Malley. But this was the Department of the Navy in 2019 reviewed this

whole thing. After the second, I went to two trials, unfortunately, both from incidents in Afghanistan. The first they said we were too aggressive. The second they were, they came after me, as they said, I question the judgment my commanding officer in combat. But when your commanding officers dropping ordinance, which is violates, you know, the, not just, you know, in the J-TAC terms, as air controllers, we call it a probability of incapacitation piece of buy at 0.1. Like one out of a thousand would be wounded or debilitated. If they're in the prone position with the helmet and the arms down by the side and sleeves down, they find this calculus. They've tested. Conditions that nobody would ever be in, so.

Right. But, you know, when you're 34 meters away, when you're five times inside that acceptable fractricide distance, and there's actually regulations, not just manuals, like the Joint Fires Manual, but there's actually ISAF directive in paragraph forces, compliance is mandatory that, you know, you can't deliver it inside here. But when you're delivering something, the high explosive element is 64 and a half times is greater than what I'm, I mean, is Navy SEALs. Same as Marines, you know, we try to defeat the threat or the charge if it's or the locking mechanism with the mental amount of force. Yeah, always. Why use more when you don't need to? So, you know, but this guy was using the most and I question about it. And then he said, Fred. And in between those two times, he makes his statement, I said, I went through the tail of the tape with him. Like, this is what happened. The team got engaged. there's 50 minutes between when any aviation ordinance or any ordinance was delivered from supporting arms and they were continually requesting that and we used the largest ordinance available from that came could come off the relevant aircraft and when that aircraft left and we had the

the ones with the smallest amount of high explosive precision gun munitions pgms to deliver immediately that were still from on station then we went with the high mars an open sheath formation to 675 pound rockets. And then he said it again. He's like, Fred, I'm willing to sacrifice lives these Marines for the greater good. And I need to make sure you will too. And I said, sir, what you just told me is an unlawful order. And I have a duty to dismay.

And he said, immediately you're fired. You're relieved of your duties. And they sent me back from Afghanistan to Okinawa. And then, you know, I was pretty serious because guys are still in contact. This guy's in charge. So I was, I wrote, I took a polygraph and I wrote a sworn statement and I sent it to 88 members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committee. I sent it to my local U.S. senators, the two U.S. senators for a state of Kansas and my

district congressman in state of Kansas, the Senate, that polygraph and sworn statement to the Inspector General. I was stationed Okinawa at the time, so I sent it to IG there on 27 November 2011. Less than a month later on Christmas Day, which was in 96, it was actually Sunday in 2011. I get this nice letter from a three-star general in charge of all manpower stating that I'm going to a trial. And it's called a Board of Inquiry. It's an involuntary separation board. You have to show cause that the allegations against me. Here I was infantry officer, selected be the first Marine Special Operations Command. My whole time was in the operational services going to combat, you know, force recon. And they said, they can't just wake

up out of bed and say, you, you're going to a board. They have to have a reason. And the reason they said was substandard performance. There was a Marine two-star general that was it in the board that made this decision that referred it to the three-star general. She'd been overseas. She was a adjutant, it was her background, like a legal or administrative officer. She'd been overseas one time in her entire career. She was enlisted to officers. She's been in like 37 years, been overseas one time to Okinawa pre-war. And she's saying here this man who's this warrior proven in combat multiple times, a Marine top gun instructor, substandard performance. And the weird thing is, so I went to trial on that in our evaluation that you get each year or when you transfer periodically

when you get evaluated, there's a block that says performance. And even though guys, you know, I've been relieved when they were, you know, they kicked us out for the war crime in Afghanistan. And even the battalion commander when you dropped the bombs, you know, they, they wrote these things. And so the reason that they were kicking me, that wanted to kick me out was substandard performance. But on, on every evaluation, to include the ones from these two officers that in the trial, they were the two witnesses against me. they even marked, you know, far superior on performance. They were questioning, like, judgment and all the old fitness reports had loyalty, but on these fitness reports that I was, you know, being brought up, you know,

they didn't have anything to, like, go for substandard performance because, like, hey, we're even saying his performances, even though we don't, the two guys that they brought up there to say, that hated me, that, you know, testified like, I want this guy out of the Marine Corps. Yeah, they still John Hancocked your fit rep. Well, and they said his performance, what he's being alleged of poor performance is, his performance is exceptional. We just don't agree and we think his judgment's bad. And so, but the panel on that second trial said, hey, you know, there's no evidence of

substandard performance. And then I was sent to, they said, you're going to leave this, the Marine I was the black sheep then. Yeah, I was going to say you were fucked either way. Yeah. You're going to leave Okinawa. And I was fine. I know I'm terminal. They're going to force me to retire.

It's an up or out organization. If you get adverse material on your record, you're gone. So they said, where do you want to go? But you're not going to stay here. I said, well, send me back to the West Coast. I've never been to Hawaii. And one of those places would be awesome. They send me that you, they don't even send me a marine base.

They send me a Navy base. No offense. But I'm like, Norfolk, are you kidding me? Norfolk Marine Corps security force regiments so which is actually a huge blessing in disguise love that job because in the Marine Corps as you know you've been to many of these embassies overseas and there's that Marine post one. Yep. Sometimes in camouflage utilities, sometimes it's dressed blues.

But there's always Marine on post at these embassies. Kind of like comparing to a cop like a black and white cop where the Marine Corps also has another unit called Fast and these are kind of like the SWAT team for the Marine Corps. So when something goes into duress, which happened as soon as 2012 when I took command of first fast in charge of Europe and Africa, we had this situation going on. Ambassador Chris Stevens was sending these communications and needs reinforcements. And that's what FAST is there to do. It's not just to react when something's already bad has happened, but it's to provide that security.

So something doesn't happen. Just like in a good reconnaissance mission, it's when guys do what they do when they're doing reconnaissance. well, you don't know that they were even there. It's not to get engaged all the time, but to deter or to provide intelligence and reconnaissance. So this whole thing was going on all summer of 2012 when I was first in command. We staged, they had two platoons over in Spain. And then it got even more serious. We started to commit strategic aviation down to Spain, guys sitting on gear ready to go.

Ambassador Chris Stevens was still sending communications. who wants these guys in at in uh tripoli and as well as bengazi uh air force a little bit different hey we can't be away from our families we've got to use these aircraft uh so our guys went from spain up to germany to give the you know so you're talking about a fast platoon 50 guys so that the minimal amount of crew can you know get a relax with their families and uh i mean our guys are overseas and the Air Force wants to be near the families there in Germany. So we again, I understand that desire, but the mission first. The mission is first. Yeah. So we're, we got our guys over there, two platoons, one forward staged, a little bit closer response, you know,

further north away from the threat, but, you know, than Spain. And then they had a, the commanders in an extremist force from the 10th Special Forces group, the SIF. Yep. They got moved down southern Italy. Is it true that they got rid of that? They re-fresh. raised it and that's a general Clark kind of you know that and uh yousauk they have decided hey we're going to go to like more of a general purpose force anybody any uh green bray guys can which to me in my opinion having a done a in force reconnaissance your two missions deep reconnaissance and direct action which vbSS is subset of but you know you really need guys that are that is their bread and butter.

They're trained and they're cohesive. It's very inefficient and ineffective to try to train the whole force to do what a siff is the purpose of what they're there to do. Yeah, sometimes you need a scalpel, not a multi-tool. Yes, definitely. And so we had our guys move up to Germany, and unfortunately, the decision was made by the administration not to put boots on the ground until four Americans and, you know, the story. But we had guys on the ground 12, September 2012, stayed there. for 90 days. Regional Affairs Office, you know what that is,

and then the American Embassy for those three months. And then a retrograde, but all of North Africa was, you know, it wasn't a video. But, you know, all these terrorist groups were really inciting, you know, riots and terrorism all across northern Africa, mainly, but the continent was about ready to explode.

And then I left Marines and went back to Kansas and started a, going to grad school, start my own business, automatic teller machine business in the ghetto. Dangerous. But I did that because I knew as a studying in business school, my MBA, they talked about this blue ocean strategy, that you want your differentiator to be something

that a competitor cannot easily replicate. And so... Makes sense? I was like, a friend of mine who told me about this idea about automatic teller machines, and I was taking care of our sister, she was dying of terminal ovarian cancer. and so I want to control my hours.

So I'm like, okay, ATM kind of makes sense because you're leveraging automation. As long as you put it in key locations. And kind of my strategy was, I will do this where bank won't. And my competitor, the only real competitor is these guys that do these indoor models

that put an inside like a 24-hour convenience store. But you have to get out of your car and go in and there's risk in going out to parking lot, especially at night, and the weather, people don't want to get rained on or the heat or freezing cold in Kansas. So this was in Kansas City on the Missouri side. So I do kind of like what I learned in the Marines,

like when you're doing personality targeting. I got on the Jackson County government website, looked at the darkest color yellow, which is the highest population density because I want high volume transactions. These were my own machines. I'd go and do the business development, look for a 20-year land lease,

put it on a person's property. I'd install it. I'd get the steel kiosk. These were big, and I'd build steel barriers, you know, vertically. horizontally it was kind of like an uparmored ATM. Sounds like it.

Because I didn't want it going down the highway. Level four ATM. That's right. And, you know, so that kept me busy in grad school. But I would, I hired Marines to do the security. And then they all are like, hey, this is too dangerous. And they, you know, in the hours, I think we're very, very inconvenient doing it. Because, you know, same thing.

Look at the pattern in life. And just like when I'd select the location. I'd look at the highest color yellow for highest population density, and then I'd look at overlay that with the highest violent crime report. I'd circle those intersections and do ground reconnaissance. And one thing, I'd make sure are they paying in cash at that location? So I'd just visually observe if they're paying cash. That's my inventory.

That's what I'm providing. Second thing is if I instinctively sensed that I could get killed at a location, that's when I assessed this is where I're going to put an ATM, because a bank will who is the shark that could come in and shoot me up in the competition they're not going to go and put they're the only ones that could afford that and i was using all my military retirement dollars to but these are like 39 000 $39,000 39,640 per location was the average and that's not that's not the cash inside but yeah anyways very profitable finished grad school uh started to get it the day i retired i got attacked

in the press you know this guy's tired he killed all these people and well so Before you go on with that, we kind of glossed over the trial. The longest war crime trial in history of the Marine Corps. Since your career continued, I'm going to assume that they ruled in your favor. Seven more years, yeah, sir. That's what I'm saying. So obviously you weren't found guilty. I was exonerated.

We were, so they went. First, they focused on seven of us in the patrol. There was 30 Americans. One was African interpreter. We had a recon Marines until he meant guy. The guy said, I think so civilians could. And that kind of, when you read the trial, and this guy Salmona who wrote the co-authored book, it's not written by a knuckle-drager that, you know, from eastern Kansas, I mean, a layperson can read this book and understand without all the jargon.

It's not a typical soft. I don't talk about tough guy. It's a lot of combat action. Like I said, so if you like lone survivor. I like the combination there, lone sniper. Yeah, lone sniper. American survivor. American Survivor.

And then the courtroom drama, it's got it all in there. But it's not this just because the book is really about, and I think a lot of people can relate, whether you've had just like happened in our family with our sister, you know, severe life-threatening health problems, severe, especially through COVID. A lot of people had mental health or severe other health or career setbacks that just seemed overwhelming.

Like it's bigger than you. You're not going to survive this. And a lot of people have had relationship issue, where, you know, especially those been deployed. Some people have had all three of this stuff happen. You've had your health go down. You've had your relationship. You've had your finances and, you know, your professional life.

It feels like a tsunami. Yeah. And that's what the trial was is you have all these 45 guys coming after you. And, I mean, it was a gladiator pit from day one. And thank God I had this awesome military defense counsel who's Lieutenant Colonel Scott Jack. That's his actual name. All the bad guys, their names are in there,

except for a few of the good guys. Colonel Scott Jack, that's his actual name. He was the linebacker in college. So this guy's a beast still. Bald-headed dude. He picks up this wooden podium and it's movable so the attorneys can move around. And day one at our opening comments,

he's picking this thing up, spewing spit, pounding this into the ground. He's like, these Marine prosecutors are witnesses. They participated in interrogations, dressed in civilian clothes posing as a naval criminal investigative service, intentionally deceived and lied to Marines. And, you know, the prosecuting attorneys are sitting there.

So I thought, we're going to have a mistrial. This is going to get thrown out. Or the longest trial in the history of the Marine Corps. Didn't. Yeah, it was just kangaroo court. Something you'd see maybe in like Stalin or the Gestapo would do, We may be in Tehran, but not the Marine Corps. How long did the jury deliberate?

So good question. Everybody calls them jury in the military. It's a panel. The panel of the peers. Yeah, in the book, because this is plain language, it's I call them a jury. Yeah. It's essentially certainly on the same purpose.

So they made their decision right away. They wrote it all up in February. So this was from the 7th to the 29th of January, 2008. Our ambush was 2007. Then they met with, the convening authority, then General Mattis had pinned on his fourth star. These guys get rewarded when they go along with what the seniors want. So he got four star.

Then the other general, General Helen took over. He was a convening authority when the actual trial was going and deliberated. So they met with him in April. They gave him their assessment. Now, you've been, I'm assuming, You've been inside some non-judicial punishment or the Commodore's mast or whatever they call it in the branch of the service. But you've seen somebody's career. I personally traveled in and out of those circles a few times.

In mud. Yes. It's not a good time. It's tense. Hopefully it always ends at Exo's mast and it's just like he gives you a slap on the wrist sometimes. Yeah, you guys call it X-O-I, executive officers. Well, X-O-I is generally the step before. Before.

And then it goes to say Captain's Mass. Yeah. I've been to both. Yeah. We both felt the heat. Yeah. So they use legal terms as lawyers, not a lawyer. I was a lawyer.

So they either say, you're innocent, you're guilty, or it's dismissed based on the evidence. Our case, the longest war crimes are on history, the largest number of alleged by direct fire weapon. This is like the melee of the 21st century. They said, they waited and waited. and waited and waited. During this time, I was engaged for like two years, with planning on getting married in May. I put it further away so that, you know, they,

I thought they'd, but they even waited after our marriage date. And so four months after the trial, they release a one sentence, and it's not any legal terms, and that's why the press continued to do these drive-bys and just assassinate us continuously in the press, because they said the Marines acted appropriately in accordance with the rules of engagement

and tactics, techniques, and procedures for a complex ambush. So although you may say, well, they were exonerated. The press took that as they never said they were innocent. They also never said they were guilty. There's two ways to foot that coin. And so like in a debrief. To me, yeah, in a debrief, I understand all of those terms. I'm like, yeah, Roger that.

You did your job. Acted appropriately is something that you'd use in a debrief. It's not a legal term. It's not something that you'd use. So the press, they always, you know, if it bleeds, it leads, if they can sensationalize it, if they can vilify somebody. And that's what they would continue to do. So I continue to serve seven more years.

The day I retired, you know, they wrote that, you know, Fred Galvin, you know, commander of this first task force killed 19 and wounded 50 and like, really? So I contacted that guy, the reporter, the Marine Corps Times. And I said, hey, I got a bone to pick with you. And here is, I'm going to send you a copy of the, my polygraph, the executive summary from the court of inquiry. what you're writing is false. And I'm talking to you and I'm telling you, you need to correct that.

So all they did is a little shell game. They changed the words that they killed up to 19. It's like, okay, so you're still allowing people to think that we killed civilians and got away with it. And when the trial said that and the convening authority, actually, they said it on Friday of a Memorial Day weekend. So you know there's very few days that the Pentagon goes to a skeleton crew. and in the media they call that a Friday night news dump where they put out some bad news right at the end and they've only put it one news source the guy who is one of the media members Estes Thompson of the associate press they so he wrote this story put it out on Friday night you know the Pentagon comes back after a four-day Memorial Day weekend on Wednesday and you know the stock markets changed all this other news has happened and it's it's old cycle and they don't even have to talk about it and they really didn't and so but it did cause right in Afghanistan like oh we want justice and so but we still so this cloud

continued to you know shadow over our lives and you know I didn't realize it until seven years later I'm trying to transition not the transition that people use these days but like go to a different military different profession than the military I'm looking at all these jobs sending resumes out tailoring to all these different open positions, 700 total. Then I'm just out there furiously attending these courses to make this resume perfect. And that's why I became an entrepreneur. I started my own ATM business because I knew like, okay, they didn't teach us how to do

business in the Marine Corps. But they, as a platoon commander, you're very entrepreneurial. You know, you're, you have a lot of leeway. But that's why I did that job. I didn't want to do that. But then I didn't want to sit on my butt and do nothing. just, I'm retired in Kansas at this age. I know that can lead to a lot of guys have mental health issues when they check out.

Yeah, that isolation too. Yes. So staying busy is very healthy for your mind. And so, yeah, the trial ended. We, through those years, even before we, before I retired, there's all these drive-bys in the media. But I was still focused on our new mission. I immediately went over to Okinawa. And then the focus was going to the next combat deployment.

And we were sending, so in Okinawa as operations officer, we had forces and Americans don't always understand that like they call Afghanistan our longest war. But we've had guys in southern Philippines in Mindanao, Tawi, Tauai, Baselon, fighting this advise and assist mission down there with this, you know, terrorism in Southern Philippines since 9-11. And still, we're out of Afghanistan, but the guys are still down there. We're in a forever war. Yeah. I mean, it's... I actually, thinking back on it, we were so good if they collected, you know, the fine, fixed finish piece. We were so good.

Obviously, there's the EA at the end of that, the exploit and analyze. But our enemy isn't dumb. I mean, I did actually watch one time a guy go into street and shoot an AK at a predator. Those people didn't last long. No. And they do their own AA. and they learn and they shift tactics and they realized, hey, you know, when we get together, we all seem to die. And it's now it's worth a multi-headed snake that's kind of fighting across

a globe. People think that because we're not in Afghanistan, well, I don't know how many people do. Some seem to think that because we're not in Afghanistan and it doesn't lead the news cycle, that there's not people constantly engaged throughout the world. I think it's, you know, probably not from a material perspective in all these different places, but for as far as like the total number of areas, it's exponentially increased. Yeah. It's a, it has, you see it all over Africa. It's all over the world. Homegrown terrorism here in the United States. It's a huge, huge threat. And, you know, it's when, when our military starts to have this decay and our leaders start to compromise,

we're seeing that now. And that, it becomes not just a moral hazard where if you look, present day, let's take, for instance, Russia and Ukraine. why isn't a force of that size with that technology able to just do what they're supposed to do? Well, when morale is a problem, when you actually are lying to your people back in Russia saying, oh, this is just a military special operation and then guys are coming back dead. And, you know, the guys on the front line don't trust their senior officers because they know that there's misinformation going on across the nation. That's what a few bad men is all about. We cannot have a force that's one demoralized.

We cannot have force that's led by incompetent commanders. We have seen and experienced in like in special operations, you think like, yeah, well, we have this assessment selection. We're kind of, you know, we've taken care of that. We're immune to it. And like in Marsok, what they did is now there's an assessment selection, but they have early on in that they open the floodgates. You know, so there wasn't this force recon, you know, where you go. through a reconnaissance training and you wear this rope and there's this yeah you guys call it hell week we we were never like in in the Marine Corps in reconnaissance we we're still have the oversight

of the regular general population so like infantry officer senior guys with the brass like you're not going to have blue water navy go down there to buds and say let me check out what's going on yeah and if you do they're they're given a limited observation of something very controlled they can come take a you know a peek through the looking glass, but they have no operational oversight. No. And in the Marine Corps, so we term things like instead of Hell Week and our reconstit, we call it Beach Week.

You know, and... Adversity training. Yes. There's a... They're being challenged. Is Marsok more permanent now? Have they put roots down? Okay. Yes. So, and that is a good thing and those guys have sacrificed, but, you know, like I was mentioned, these Marsok three guys, when you have guys at the top

who now, you know, so you open the floodgates, a lot of these guys, you know, the little Raider badge, they got it without any kind of training, especially the officers when you would never have seals who had been like old UDT guys or, you know, you'd never have them being led by a SWO that had never had any kind of training or some pilot. It's not like the movie JAG where these guys are just now all of a sudden he's doing this different role. He's a lawyer.

He's before a pilot. Like they have to go through the- Don't forget hand-to-hand combat expert. Yeah, exactly. Expert marksman, all of it. You have to. And it's like they may be good guys and they may have done good things. But when I fly out of here, I want that pilot to be the best qualified person.

I don't want to take a risk, nor do I want a person defending it's a capital charge. And the max punishment literally is death. I don't want that person to be inexperienced, nor do I want somebody in special operations unfit or inexperienced at controlling aviation ordinance or making decisions, which, people's lives depend on, but we have that. And in the Marine Special Operations, it's very sad. And I, you guys bring it. If you hate me, I got a lot of haters out there. It's like a lot of the Marine Special Operators

that, you know, at the front lines, you know, they love like, hey, he's telling the truth. Those are the facts and that's what needs to go out. Like all these other people where, you know, the little laser, you know, aims in on them like, ah. Yeah. And they, they, a lot of these people talk to these journalists and sit there and say, hey, you know,

why are you interviewing him? like why are you talking to the press about like not you know covering a story isn't that censorship why why do you not want his i mean especially like in a book like this the last half the book is all quotes from sworn testimony and it's like if you if you object to the story a lot of it is what was suppressed i've i took 11 years andy to go to the special operations command and go to the Marine Central Command to get the investigation from Socom and the courtroom transcripts from Marcent through the Freedom of Information Act. I had to get attorney threatened to go into federal court where the press would be allowed and like, this was a gunfight. We're not talking

Jason Bourne's knock list or the locations of submarines at sea. We're talking about a gun battle on the side of a road that you decided you're going to classify over half of this testimony. And now, after fighting. They classified half the testimony? And so if you guys traveling with suitcase nukes, like what the fuck's going on? That's it. Nailed it. First get.

So when you were, you know, a lot of people have read soft rep and they were one the early ones to, after I retired to cover a lot of this. Yep. And I started to get some of this stuff declassified. My request from the Freedom of Information Act started to come through, but it was only through threats, you know, court, federal court. And this came through. And so this report.

reporter Nick Kaufman he would I'd send him here's the information and I'd give him the enigma machine because he was asking because it's all still redacted so all the nouns are missing and I'd tell him this is the person that said that about this place and but he literally put the stuff software ups online so you know and I received these documents that says secret no foreign just align through it on top and bottom and so like people who have read classified information when you see that stuff in the open source like online you're like you know like intel folks are like what is

going on but like my point is it's I we didn't cherry pick or paraphrase or anything that's it's what these guys said in hour long I mean some of these guys got grilled for eight hours and we had to convince the courtroom portion the book was originally like 400 pages and then go down and they wanted 300 pages

I put some pictures in there for Marines we like to color and you know with pictures is like 340 pages, but... Some Marines like to paint. Yeah, some Marines like to eat the crayons. I should... I tell you what, that's one of the most common

like Marine Corps jokes. I know. But Marines have been some of the most fantastic people that I've ever met. I don't know... It's also Marines that often make that joke. I'm like, you fucking guys are very intelligent. Why do you do this to yourself?

What are your thoughts on your military service looking in the rearview mirror and what you had to live through? So, Andy, I don't really look at it all the time because, you know, your life now and what you're trained to do is always, you know, looking at the right side of the timeline instead of like where we're at and what needs to precede that. And I see a lot of my friends that are the vets and a lot of them have the people that are

staring at the rear rear mirror, the ones that have a lot of bitterness and, you know, they just hung on to something. And I'm not saying just like coming in here today, you know, see these, the good thing, you know the little memorial that's down the road. You know, you got veterans out there, drove right by it. You know, they're policing everything up, you know, raking it. Like, that's awesome. But don't, especially if you had something bad happen, don't feel sorry for yourself.

Don't take self-pity. So, but I'm always looking at, if it's anything in the past, it needs to be germane to what you can do to help somebody else out, whether it's your family, these guys in Marsok 3. because nobody at first these guys were just going to be gunned down and like but it's a real case they're a capital offense case they're being charged with two include and why do the media doesn't prick up on like the guy who was assaulted was a black guy and he got punched twice coming in a third time I mean he was trying to calm things down and he gets assaulted and and now he's charged with homicide so all these people that like hey you know why is it always got to be like why won't you pick up on this case and make you mean he gets assaulted and mainstream media doesn't want to have anything about this. But my point is, what can you do that was bad and turn into something that's good and positive? And these guys deserve a fair shake. You know, people read the case of Marsok 3. They'll, just like you were like, what? This doesn't make sense. And exactly, you know, when the 13th Amendment was passed in Congress, you know, that was to end oppression of any race or class. Why is the nation's largest employer, those who

raise the right hand, swore to defend our constitution, and are wearing a uniform, why does that not apply? Why are they being oppressed when these people just abusing their authority? And that is kind of a new mission for myself. You know, you have to do things that obviously with inflation and everything, you have to make a living and try to do the best you can in that area. And I've, you know, I'm thankful. I know, people struggle. I struggle to have a job. And I've always very sensitive to guys, you know, if they, hey, this is going on, try to help them find certain opportunities. And it's, that's something that almost anybody can do is to help other people out, you know, whether it's telling them, hey, you should really get these credentials academically or, you know, some trait. And then you

can into some guidance. Yeah. And so, but that's, that's what I've, when I look back in the military experience. I don't wear any t-shirts or bumper stickers. That's that is not my identity. I think you just, you know, you can tell, you know, I have to write a book because that's part of making sure that the largest employer in the United States. I mean, I understand. I'm sure you do too. You very much appreciate people who are serving, but you value our nation's defense and see how important it is. We economically, we cannot continue to survive. If we have exported all this production of manufacturing, to include chemicals that are made for everything to countries like China. And then if we go to war and they shut all that off,

you think inflation is going to, it's basically going to avalanche our economy and our way of life. And people will die. So just because, you know, we don't have the resources that we need. We can't live the way, you know, our economy will collapse. So you got to make people aware. But it all starts on why has North Korea been starting to launch missiles left effort? right? Why did Russia invade and why is China continuing

not just to build up but to taunt people in the streets of Taiwan and south and east China seas? Because we are looked militarily as a joke and I'm being dead serious. I hate saying that. It's not that I'm unpatriotic. It's I'm realistically saying that

you know our military has had some degradation we need to take an honest look and do a health check and that's what a few bad men is. There's recommendations in here this is not a stone throwing book It's a factual book. What these guys said. And when you see, like, these are senior officers.

Many are still in circulation. And this is how they conducted themselves. And people say, well, the Marine Corps exonerated, you're like, well, in 2019, let me remind you that that 12-page very explicitly stating report from the Department of Navy was written. And that analysis was done by senior civilians. And it was announced by senior civilians. Preceding that for the prior two years, God rest his soul. Congress from Walter B. Jones had House Resolution 21, which I fought for two years, and he had co-sponsors. This had bilateral, bipartisan, and bicameral, also in the Senate,

support. And it was, so the common on the Marine Corps, it was to have him make an announcement that the Marines and Marine Special Operations Company Foxtrot were not at fault for the ambush on 4 March 2007. The Common on the Marine Corps for those two years in that 115th Congressional session did nothing. The Congress comment on the Marine Corps, a senior four star. So he's just like indifferent and ignored it. And so my point is, is no Marine officer has set the record straight. Yeah. He used any legal term and removed that cloud from these Marines lives. So you've seen special operators from all different branches of service when it's just like the Native Americans when something happened in battle to a brave, it took the chief of the tribe to,

bring that brave back in the fold, if there was a question on his courage and what he did or did not do. And we look to our chief right now. And that was deafening silent. There's been no statement at all. So that's what leadership's really all about to me is you stand up, the officer is there to not take the glory,

it's to absorb the pain when there's that pressure put there. And in a combat situation is to also regulate the violence. You can't have an officer just like, ah, let the situation get out of control. The violence was aimed at the enemy. It was regulated. Myself and the other officer who were there that day, we were the ones that went on trial. The two of us alone went in that courtroom for two and a half weeks or three and a half weeks and absorbed that pain. And I have not since, you know, you've probably heard a former lieutenant colonel, he didn't retire, Stu Scheller, you know, He's made a lot of, you know, he's came out, stated with the evacuation of Afghanistan, you know, called out on Facebook.

Gotcha. You know, he brought, you know, a lot of heat on himself, talked about a lot of this. But one of the things, you know, he's talked on a lot of other subjects, which, you know, let's get to be surgical shooter. Focus on your target. Yeah. And the main thing, spot on is where's the accountability? of our senior leaders. And when you, especially not just you see the Afghanistan,

let's call it what is, it was a retreat. And then you gloss it over. You had the commander in chief, secretary of defense, chairman of joint chiefs of staff, all talking that how well it went. I mean, people lost their lives there. They lost their body parts there. They lost their friends there.

And you're sugar-coating, you're whitewashing and lying and saying this went so handily. so handily, I'm glad that we're out. I mean, to have a cell there would have been good because it's between Iran and China and to have something there to not have to fight, but maybe to continue to advise and that's a separate discussion. But to have combat forces and continue to bleed made no sense to me. But how we left was an embarrassment.

And that's why we're perceived the way we are. And we're going to have greater threats from, they call it great power competition from China, Russia, their proxies like Iran in North Korea. And we're seeing that. And that's a threat to every American because our nation is not as secure. And, you know, are we recruiting the best talent and are we training them to, I mean, why could we not defeat the Afghans or the Taliban, I should say, after 20 years? We could have easily done it, but then it's a whole separate subject we don't get into about this no general left behind program, the incentives, the people that go like current Secretary of Defense came from Raytheon, former Secretary of Defense Mattis, you know, came from General Dynamics, went back to General Dynamics. The last Chairman or last Secretary of Defense Mattis, you know, came and went from GD. Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, the former one, General Dunford went straight before even retired.

You're supposed to have a six-month cool-off period went straight to Lockheed Martin, largest defense contractor in the world. There's incentives. Follow the money. See who's getting paid. See whose company jets are picking them up. You've landed in Dulles and or Reagan airports.

You've seen the names on all the buildings, the L3s. I mean, there's money. It's a largest non-discretionary spending line item on our nation's budget. So after all the entitlements, the things that would, in a business,

you have to look at, you know, What is our in that middle part of a you know your financial statements the expenses? You know, what are we spending the most on? And is it effective? Is that bringing in more top line revenues? You know, let's take a hard look at that. And then there's incentives for these guys that are constantly wanting to spend money on all these systems. And we need strong defense. We need innovation. I'm all for that. Yeah. But these generals, they're the ones that are paid now for their access and placement to persuade people in the Pentagon to sell. What would you say to somebody read your book and comes up to you as Fred, I want to join the Marines? Well, you know, there's a month ago, I just left the Marines.

I was a civilian. I did four years. People think I'm crazy because, like, you know, wasting it. You did 27 years. and then you had your own business for four and a half years and you sold it and you went back into the Marines, yeah. Like after what they did? And I'm like, yeah.

And because you and I understand like our nation, we have to have a strong national defense. And when you don't, and I've told people that constantly, I mean, where I just left, there is like a mass exodus of great officers. And it's a concern to me because I'm like, what I always told them, same thing when I was in uniform,

besides, you know, just recently when I was a civilian is, if you get out because all these bad guys are there, it's all that's left. Then it's, then we will have no security. Then we will be a paper tiger and a joke. And they will know that our enemies will just roll us. And there's a lot of social experimentation in the military. And I don't want to get on that subject. But it's concerning to me too.

It's wearing, it's all these good officers are saying 20 years, I'm gone. if they even make it to that. So not to get into my life, I just moved to Northern California from Hawaii. And these guys who I was working with, they're not complaining, and their wives are not complaining that Hawaii is terrible. They're not complaining that they're being overworked.

They're not complaining that they're being over deployed. The stories that we had formerly heard people, the reasons they were leaving, they're not telling you the reason. And that's because they realize there's risk when they say anything because the leadership has told them like these are let's call it endangered species these are hot but you can't so when they're not telling you why they're getting out but they're saying at 20 years I'm gone and some people are just saying I too in particular

turned down promotions and are just getting out like wait a second if you just stayed a couple more years you could even stay here in a way and then I'm literally next month one of the sergeants was in our special operations task force in Afghanistan. He went into a commissioning program. We put him in. He got a commission. He's a major. He got his DD-214 yesterday.

And so his retirement date, I'm going to be his retiring officer. I've never gone through this procedure. So I'm having to figure out, like, what do I do? But my point is, he got promoted up in the head. He's a major now. But they want him to take orders and he's going to retire. on the 18th of June is a captain because he's just saying hey doesn't have the time and grade he doesn't have the time in grade but he's just like so what you know and he's like I hate when our secretary defense is making racial arguments and criticizing people because my race and my gender because I'm a white man and I'm vilified because I mean you were in the Navy you know most of your adult life yeah did you ever go to formation see like a burning cross or people doing some racial

thing. But you also, you operated in special operations. You did personality targeting at the highest level. And you've targeted networks. So did you ever, when you're doing that, and I'm sorry to put you on spot. But so if this is the biggest problem, I mean, Secretary of Defense is talking about this. Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Miley is saying, you know, white male supremacy, this racism. You know, like, so your experience and my experience, what do we start looking at? This is the number one problem in our military is what's in that who's who's their leaders how are they organized how are they communicating what kind of weapons are these guys using you and i i mean i just left last month not even a month ago and i was doing that for four years in special operations in the

interagency and with marine special or marine forces pacific there wasn't even a hint nor the 27 years so 31 years total, but we have the top pushing this narrative. And when you do a mission analysis, you look at what's their center of gravity. And how can we divide them? What's their critical vulnerability? How are we going to divide and conquer? Well, in the United States, our center of gravity is that you may like the mountains. I may like a tropical location.

But we do agree and we are united on freedom of speech, religion, what we have in common, freedom of the press, freedom to work. worship. But when you start to divide and make everybody, you know, like, these people shouldn't be able to talk. I mean, look at Elon Musk, you know, Twitter. He's like, oh, he's bringing up. And people are starting to, like, you know, attack him because he's just like, I think both sides, you know, people should be able to say what's on their mind and like, wow, he's talking about hate. Elon Musk isn't talking about hate, you know, he's just saying that, you know, there should be freedom of speech. Yeah. And people are opposing that. And that is, you know, that, that, that,

Tears at the foundation of who we are as a country. Yes, very fabric. And that's what they saw, you know, in England, they didn't have the freedoms. And when you don't allow people to speak, you can easily control them. And why would we want that in the United States? Why would we want to be subjects and to be controlled by a government? See, antithesis, in my mind, at least of what we should be striving for. Yeah.

So what's next for you? What's book number two? So I It's titled Fuck the Navy No I hope there's never a sequel to this book

that like the Marsock 3 currently going through this don't have to talk about a few good men A few bad men part two This is to be a lesson learned This we need to take an open analysis If you're serious about

Our National Defense Even if you hate Fred Galvin You need to understand that like hey This is what happened There was things that were covered up intentionally reveals that. So, you know, this book needs to come out, or it will. Oh, yeah, when does it launch? Seven June. Cool. D-Day plus one. Oh, hold on a second. Let me see here then. This might actually be

very close to publishing of this episode. So this episode, people listening to this, the book will be out one week and one day from when this episode publishes. Okay. So close. Yeah. But I bet you they can pre-order. Yeah, you can pre-order the book on Amazon Barnes & Noble. There's audio book as well. Who read it? Brian, I could forget his last name. I didn't even have a choice. They just said, here he's...

I just am waiting to meet an author that says, James Earl Jones. Yes. James Earl Jones. He's got the best audio book voice ever. And I asked, I said, is there any other alternate? They didn't even respond. They're like, listen, so it's your first book?

and this is he you have. Yeah, that's it. And so it's also e-books. Some people like to read it on Kindle. So they can get it. Amazon will not charge people until it's actually sent. So that's the good benefit of it. And but what's next?

You know, I work at Tesla. I cannot speak on behalf of Tesla. So it would be, but I'm lucky to be there. I see these guys. And there's this comment. It was on the wall, the factory floor. It was a, it says, is when something is important, even though the odds are against you, you will do it.

Oh, like that. I like that mindset. You know you're in the right place when, you know, the leaders put something up like that that take risk, great risk to, you know, something is important, it's daring. A lot of people will decide no, but, you know, a leader, when you look at America and like George Washington and how we almost know. I mean, he went against all the odds. They were against him.

And that's, you know, being a young guy and having seen that stuff in America, that's why I studied history and joined the Marines. But, yeah, I feel very blessed to be able to at this stage of my life, to have a job like I do at Tesla to around people that are always trying to tactically solve this. And planners, I mean, you see these robots moving, you know, things around and putting heat and parts. It's on, it's just, it's kind of like the Terminator in the factory. In my head, I'm thinking, like, it's just a matter of time until we work for those things. Yeah.

Maybe we already do. I'm not sure, but what's the best way for people to find you if they want to interact or interface with you? Okay. So on Facebook, they can at FC Galvin, my initials and last name. And then LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn. And so when I was podcasting, they can search on YouTube for that your channel, Go. It was called Go. It's commandosho.com.

And they can actually look at a website, www. www.commodosho.com. And then see some of the old episodes, see stuff about the book. The book, especially read the whole thing, but the last half, you'll just is all the stuff that was classified.

And it'll shock people that, like, not this actually happened, but, like, these senior leaders got away with it. And none of them have been held accountable. So if people like, hey, this guy, Stu Scheller, he, you know, he made some big points and called these generals out. I've been doing that for years. But the thing is, is like, there's been no accountability. So, I mean, again, we're number one line item for non-discretionary spending.

You know, if, if, and why I say that, Andy, is if we're paying full boat, if it's the most expensive thing we're paying for, shouldn't you get the best quality? I mean, if you just bought, say, a Bentley, I mean, don't you expect that that thing is going to operate smooth? I mean, can't you take it back if it's not or if there's some kind of fraud involved? It comes with a warranty. I think you can take it back. However, I don't know a damn thing about Bentley's. Nor do I. But in America, we should expect that our military leaders, one, are competent.

Two, are not going to deceive, you know, the American public. when they fail, that they're held accountable. And when, you know, they need to go away in like 20 years. If we couldn't have fought guys that are using rifles made two years after World War II and using homemade explosives and rifles and wearing flip-flops, then we shouldn't even be talking about winning and fighting the Chinese who have satellites and missile systems and aircraft carriers. But, you know, that's the direction people are heading is everything's geared up, China, China, China.

And we really need to take a hard look at where we have recently been at and failed. And like you said, with the Taliban there, they study. They, you know, they didn't take, you know, vacations and six months off here and do a refit. I mean, they're over there to win it. And they're spreading their stuff all around the world. Yeah. So. Well, we've been at for over three hours.

What do you want to close with? Well, there is actually, you know, the job I just left in Hawaii's, you know, influence. And there's a lot of miss and disinformation out there. There has been some recent attacks against me in that, called information environment. You know, people creating personas on social media trying to make it out like, oh, this guy Fred Gobbins is crazy. He says he's dying and, you know, is he going to launch this like, you know, like I'm a man. maniac. They even hacked my account this last week and put stuff out there. So I would just say a lot of folks that there's what right looks like. People are manipulating in America right now,

especially with COVID employment issues with inflation. I'm big into, ever since I was a stock broker and trader. A lot of people are suffering right now financially. And I think it's going to get worse as we enter this bare market. But don't, as a leader, one thing I encourage people is to encourage them that they have a long-term vision and view because if it's just like what's right in front of you, it's easy. You've been shot. At that time, you're going to experience a lot of pain and it may seem like insurmountable, but you must understand that like this is something that I will overcome.

I may need to have friends, family, you know, help me. And part of that is reaching out to them. But, you know, don't take pity on yourself. Don't look back in the mirror. Don't, you know, why did this? You must continue to fight. And that's what they teach us. And that's why I loved, you know, enforce reconnaissance and living the life of Commando is, you know, they teach you when you're doing close quarter battle training that every cell in your body, you know, you're fighting until the last.

when you start to lose consciousness, you know, go to self-aid, you get some cover and go to self-aid, but, you know, continue to have that mindset to fight and win. That's, to me, there's a lot of things people talk about, but in your life, you know, fight, fight for others, encourage others. That's where you find the most meaning. The best days in my life were not, you know, night, free fall and stuff like that. it was actually writing the tedious till two in the morning fitness report or award. I walked away from that with a lot more energy and in my spirit feel a lot better, knowing that that guy that just bust his ass, you know, he is going to have a better quality of life. Him and his family are going to be able to provide, you know, resources.

Education can retire better than if I didn't take. I mean, this is, as you know, having been a leader that when you're training and you finish at 10 o'clock or midnight and you got to spend several hours, sometimes you don't even go to bed because you're, as an officer, you got to do the administrative work, write the awards, the fitness reports. And I've seen the opposite side of that where guys didn't do that. And then they got holes in their professional careers that then they just don't get promoted and they get demoralized. So, but you must, you know, to help others out as much as you can. That was my whole thing in life. And just like helping these guys, Marsok 3, when they win, and I know that, you know, just like in our case, we've had people sign petitions.

These House resolutions didn't just happen on their own. It's because the people, it was a campaign that I fought for 15 years to exonerate us. And it led to the Department of Navy finalized. clearing, you know, our Marines. So it takes a long time and you have to have a long-term vision. That's basically what I'd leave the listeners to is fight with everything you have, long-term vision, have a network that you can encourage others and sort of like the Marines raiders of World War II, the original slogan of gung ho was work together to accomplish your mission. You're not the lone survivor. That was the Navy SEALs.

Indeed. Awesome. Thank you for your time. Yeah, thank you, Annie. Of course.