Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 156 - Keith Barry

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Navy SEAL Chief Keith Barry spent more than 18 years serving his country before being wrongfully convicted of rape and serving two and a half years in prison. He had also been required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and was preparing to live out his days a convicted felon. Three years after the conviction, and after two failed appeals, it was revealed in 2017 that the convening authority in his case had been pressured to rule against the evidence and to uphold the conviction against Barry in the post-trial clemency phase. Barry was reinstated into the Navy at his last held rank, Senior Chief, and it was ordered that his back pay be restored, as well as his other privileges. He has since retired and begun his civilian life.

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And when you're ready, text code, cleared hot, 47, 47, 47. And that's it. My guest today has a fascinating story. And I don't think he would describe it as fascinating. I think I can say that because I didn't actually have to live through it. His name is Keith Berry. He is a retired Navy SEAL. Started in the SEAL community, I think less than a year after I did because he was five Bud's classes behind me.

Pretty sure there's still six per year. So we're within 12 months of starting the pipeline. And he then launched over to the East Coast, where I started my career on the West. He had an action-packed and deployed. employment-filled career. And a lot of the issues that are often associated with that, from TBI to post-traumatic stress, the combination of the two. He does a great job of talking about that and the impact, so I'll leave it there. He also has an experience with the military justice system that I think few people are familiar with. He was convicted of a crime and sentenced to three

years in a military prison, of which he served two and a half years before getting off six months early for, I forget what they call it, good behavior. I'm pretty sure that's what it is. He was going to have to live the rest of his life as a registered sex offender and felon. Both of those things, as people can imagine, change the trajectory of your life. And it wasn't until a whistleblower inside of the JAG Corps, Judge Advocate General Corps, started to change the horizon for what Keith's life was going to look like. In the end, the charges were dropped. It was erased from his record, and he's going to be able to move forward absent having those stains on an otherwise stellar military career. There are often a lot of questions about the

UCMJ and NCIS and the JAG Corps inside of the military, even from people who are in the military. And I say this every time that I talk about these particular topics. I have seen the military treat people so incredibly reasonably and with the amount of care, even exceeding the amount of care that you would want from an organization. And I have also seen them completely throw them in front of a string of buses as they get flattened, smashed along the way, and everything in between. My personal experience with NCIS and the JAG Corps has not been bad. but there are some horror stories. The story that you are about to hear is in fact one of those.

And to me, the most important thing the military can do to maintain its integrity is be 100% transparent. Unbelievable conversation. I had no idea that this man had gone through this experience, and I'm now going to shut up and let you listen to the episode for yourself. Episode number 156 with Keith Berry. Enjoy. To the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. How long have you lived in San Diego? Because you were originally an East Coast team guy, right? I was.

That's where I spent the majority of my career. I got to the East Coast in 2000. Nope, 1998. What Bud's class? We have to start at the beginning. Yeah, 217. 217. Your fucking new guy.

I was 212. Yeah. Still funny. I was hoping you'd say 215 because then you'd have to be my hoo-ya class, which I'm not going to take the time to explain what that is for people. It just, that would be an inside joke. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, my whole career on the East Coast. And, you know, the highs, as you know, the high highs and that low lows. And eventually, you know, moving forward with life, started dropping the ball big time, losing all SA and losing all, uh, losing all, uh, ability to to operate and finally came to the grasp of what was going on with with my head and went to go check out so you're talking about when you were still in the military I was still yeah an essay for people listening is situational awareness a very common term used guys talking to each other just

about well how would you describe it you're aware of what's going on around you essentially in the and the terminology you were using it in yeah very important in anyone's life but more We're doing our profession as a leadership. Flying and blow up around you. And that's what broke the camel's back was I was acting as a troop chief for a team on the East Coast. We are two months from deployment again. Everybody's burned out. Everybody's tired.

This is 2012 by this time. And what number rotation are we talking about? Five, six, seven, eight. Eight. Yeah. So many, many times of. I try to describe it, the life of an enlisted seal at least, well, at a conventional team, even for an officer, it's 24-month blocks, 18 months of training, six months, minimum deployment. Come back, and it's like, hey, you guys, you want to do that again?

Yeah. And then you come back, like, hey, guys, you want to do that again for a career. Yeah. I just, it's, it's sandpaper over your knuckles, over decades. We don't get off season. Yeah. Yeah. We, uh, now, we've learned a lot from those experiences from those falls and failure.

Have we though? Have we? Have we? I have. I think the individuals learn from those experiences. Like you said you realized you were having issues with your situational awareness. You recognized that something was going wrong. And this is a question that I posed to a few team guys. Do you think they should limit combat exposure to guys in the SEAL teams?

Which I think as a concept, it's easy to talk about. But I think in reality it would be hard to do. If the question you're asking me is, would I, looking back, of course, hindsight, you would have probably fought against that? I would absolutely fought against that. So would have I? But would a good leadership say, I don't give a shit and taking that young man and said, after two deployments, you are going to get a short duty? I didn't know what a fucking short duty was. Yeah.

None of us, you know, until you do a tour of buds or 10 or 12 years in, yeah. I'll tell you, but you just thought team guys just kept going down range. Like you said, came back, you had your two weeks off vacation, which we know that was bullshit. At least five of those days are spent turning shit in. Exactly. Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah.

And then it's you got to travel probably for one or two of those days. So you're netting five days off after a two-year cycle that terminates the end of that two-year cycle is the peak of stress, physical workload, mental workload. Yeah. And we wonder why the divorce rate was so bad. So high. What would you actually estimate it is? Because I don't have hard math on this. I only have like my own anecdotal experience.

What would you put the number at? Currently as is or was back when I was operating? Because I haven't done anything since 2012. It was the last time I operated. I got out in 13 and the last deployment I did was 10. So I'm timed out as well. Percentage wise. What would you say divorces?

Active duty? Mm-hmm. In the teams? Yep. 80%. I was going to guess 75. What do you think about afterwards? There's another, I think total high, 90s.

90s, I think it's very rare. Yeah, it's easier for me to count the people who haven't been divorced than those who have. 100%. It used to be a joke. It used to be something that guys would laugh at, not that it's funny. Yeah. But, you know. Oh, it's all fun in games until it's fucking happening to you.

Until it's happening to you. Yeah, which marriage are you on? Which wife are you? But and I'd see that and I knew from the beginning, I'm not a smart man. I'm not a mathematician, but that doesn't add up. There's an issue, I think, also with team guys as well. They don't always make the best choices when it comes to women. Well, you've sat in front of the psych as I have, and I asked the same question to him.

He said, do you have any questions for me? And I said, I do. You know, what do you think about the guys that, guys in this career field? He said, honestly, they're just normal guys that want to do extraordinary things. And they're high. They want to. But the women that they choose to be with? Don't marry fucking strippers is what I was trying to say in a polite way.

That should be a no-brainer. It should be a no-brainer. I know a baker's dozen worth of guys that have done it. Against the advice, actually, of their friends at the time. They're like, nope, this is the one. Well, and that's another thing. We always had the two-platoon rule, right? Two-deployment rule where a kid had to do two deployments

and then get okayed by the senior guys before he got engaged. Oh, I haven't heard of this rule. Yeah. It was, I mean, of course you can't uphold it, but it was trying to keep the new guys away from jumping into the teams, going through a workup, and then getting married before their deployments so they had somebody to come home to. If they were lucky, they would have somebody to come home to. I know, again, a good amount of guys who came back to figurative and literal empty houses.

Oh, yeah. Like ice cube trays missing. Shower curtain rings missing. I worked with a guy who lived on inflatable furniture for an entire workup cycle after he came back because his wife at the time left and he legitimately. came home to a house with cobwebs on the floor. Or I actually think it was an apartment. But either way, that's fucking brutal.

And how many times you have to see that guy, guys who are just amazing human being, studs, warriors, sleeping in their cage. Hard men sleeping in their cage. And just broken. They've just come back from that. And now they're witnessing. Now that's what they're subjected to.

You see the, and they're not going to say anything. Yeah. We have to, you know, we're suffering silence, which I'll get into, you know, we'll talk about one later. But, you know, they don't want to say that they're hurting and that they're, they're just destroyed. They've got nothing in reserves. There's, so I got out the last day of June 2013. When did you get out? June 2019.

Okay. So I've been out longer, obviously. and I've thought a lot about are the things that make the SEAL teams what they are. And there's a lot of things that are not unique about them. Because like you said, I agree with the shrink. It's very average people who have a desire to do extraordinary things. And the training pipeline, in my opinion, at least, even starting at buds and going forward, it can teach you some amazing things.

But it's a double-edged sword being taught and reinforced an entire lifetime that quitting is a sign of weakness, letting anybody down around you is a sign of weakness. It can get you to hold on to things far too long. And that guy who's sleeping in the cage, who doesn't want to say anything, who's financially destroyed, emotionally destroyed, they don't want to go ask for help because I don't want to be seen as a burden,

but that's exactly what that person needs. And I've been that person. And I didn't go get help because the last thing that I wanted was to be viewed as a liability of the team instead of an asset. To anyone. And in my personal life outside of the military.

To your family, to your friends. Exactly. So yeah, it's like, nope, I'm good, but are you? Right. Like you go paint your face on in the morning. Like, I'm fine. You're not fine. If there's one thing that I could change, if I got to be more calm for the day.

King for a day? Yeah. It would be that we drastically change our training pipeline. And that would apply for all of special, well, let's just talk about our background. Our community. We allegedly tried to emulate all. these warrior cultures. Yet every single one of those warrior cultures was successful because of their mental strengths, their mental health prior to the physical health. They knew that physical

came secondary to mental. And we fail miserably at that. Has it gotten better? So when I was getting out, there were Sykes and Shrinks that were around. There was a lot of family advocacy and resiliency programs that were being brought into the fold, but that I have no situational awareness into what has happened into the teams in the past seven years. So you were at least more proximal to it. Have you, in your assessment, are they making more of an emphasis on that mental health? Are they trying to jam?

I mean, because a lot of the times, much like I was talking about earlier, you know, should we limit combat exposure? And you think back on your own career and you're like, oh, I would have fought you tooth and nail. But it would be the best thing that would have happened. So I think for a lot of guys, you might have to jam it down their throat, at least until it gets the point

where it's no longer has a stigma attached to it. There's the difference between young man and a wise man. For sure. When we get older and we recognize these things, and yeah, of course we're going to, I had nothing better to do when I was a young man, but it doesn't mean it was right. It doesn't mean that it sets you up for success later in your life either.

You could break a young man in that cycle and grind them into dust, and the military will get everything that they want out of them and the seal community will get everything they want out of them, but they'll come out of that a broken human being. Exactly. And what good is that for anyone? Yeah, it's not.

Not just for that person, but for the person's family. And when you're talking about any member of the military and a veteran, doesn't have to be special operations, but it's not a one number. You're talking about one veteran equals, I'd say, 15, 20, if you're talking about citizens that they directly affect between their family and oh I'd say it's probably higher than that

yeah unless they go I was trying to be conservative yeah unless they go full lone survivor sure off the res which some of the guys do yeah oh yeah for sure

I'd say they talk they might touch two or three X that for sure it's yeah so did you did you see them making more of an emphasis though at least I mean closer to

like I was closer to 2010 you got out closer to 2020 were they making it more of an emphasis from my perspective they were playing catch-up as best they could which it's almost futile there's just not enough sykes and there's just not enough doctors and therapists to have enough time to treat that i've spoken with therapists and doctors that looked at me and they said we could see each other for every week for the next 10 years and you're not going to change so I had to do some drastic work on my own. I couldn't rely on that. Well, I think that's the role of the psychiatrist

or psychologist or therapist wherever you see. And I think this is a common misconception that people might have. I mean, I talk to somebody every week. I talk to him on Thursdays in the morning. And people will say, I've heard people say to me, well, that person's just not, they're not helping me do the work. It's like, hey, buddy, the work is actually yours to do. They can set the plate for you. You know, they can serve. meal but you need to carve it up and you need to eat it. So having that support network and then being willing to actually do the work yourself, two very different things.

It's tough going and sitting down and talking to somebody. It sucks being confronted with the potential inadequacies that we all have in shortcomings. Because, I mean, I can tell you, I mean, I have plenty, maybe a list that's longer than the things that I'm actually good at or capable of. And I suspect most human beings are like that. I think we're imperfect out of the box. The baseline model has some flaws. But it sucks working on them.

It's hard working on them. It's really hard. I get why people want to avoid it, but it's also the exact recipe for why they end up in a shitty place in their life sometimes. Yeah. Those thoughts create habits or habits create thoughts and then create that lifestyle. And yeah, you end up in a shitty place. Happened to me. Happens all of us.

Yeah. So how would you change the training pipeline? Have you thought about where you would interject to that emphasis on mental health? Oh, from day one. Just in an educational perspective, you mean? No, not just educational. It would be implemented to every training, every vignette we do. Having that support network there.

And understanding that while the suffering silence was effective and necessary as a student going through a selection course, that doesn't translate to being a professional soldier. Yeah. If your weapon system is, if the greatest weapon system you have, your brain, your mind, is not functioning 100%, then why would you, why would you take that out? We wouldn't do that with a rifle.

If that thing's malfunction at least bit, we're not going to go out the door. We're not going to do a comms check and step off. And if it does start to malfunction, were taught immediate action drills. You're taught how to break it apart, strip it down, clean it out, put it back together. Yeah. Yeah. And you have people

to help you do that. Hopefully. You have people, you know. Well, somebody's taught you how to do it. For sure. Yeah. Yeah, and then it's reinforced a career, actually. You'd have to figure that on on your own. You know, actually the weapons analogy is a good one. I mean, think about how many times, every workup, like we're talking about the life of 24 months, the cycle,

every lamb warfare phase or every range evolution where you start going through the tap rack bang you know every time on every weapon system immediate action drills yeah but not on the old not on the old cranium yeah yeah but we didn't know what we didn't know and that was the yeah i think the first time i had an idea that i had concussions from from combat was probably 2007 what was the uh indication that you were noticing um i had just uh just a work up i was was an LPO of a team and I was doing my best to hold it together. You know, that position sucks.

Yeah. And my sister platoon, the OPO there, was fighting an accidente divorce in custody for his children. So I was pick up on that. And then right before deployment, I kind of hit a wall and had the chief over for a conversation in the garage over a six-pack. And I said, I can't do it. and this is right before deployment. Ooh, that's a rough conversation to have at that time period. And the amount of time and consideration it took me to come to that point to look my chief in the face and said, I can't do it.

Because I knew I wasn't ready. I didn't, excuse me, it's not ready. I knew I wasn't functioning on all cylinders. And, I mean, I was excited. Of course, we want to go. Yeah. That's all we want to do. do. And we sat there in the garage and had a couple beers and he talked to me in to go in. He said,

you know, you'll be fine once you get down there again. Oh, fuck, I shouldn't be laughing at that, but I've heard that conversation so many times. Yeah. And it's not his fault. I mean, he honestly, he honestly probably believed that. He might have believed it. But again, as a leader, if you have somebody who's coming to you and saying, Yeah. I am not physically capable. Yeah. I'm having issues, even though I'm in a leadership position.

People, especially younger junior people are looking at me. And I need to take an E. And they say, hey, it'll be okay once you get downrange. Yeah. I mean, in my experience, downrange, the evolutions were equally as difficult, if not sometimes more difficult than that workup. Yeah. So what in the fuck is giving you the indication that I'm going to be okay once the pressure cooker is actually on for real? And having said that, I understand exactly why he said that to you as well.

Right. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah. I thought about it a thousand times. And I said, would I have done any better as a leader? I've failed so many times in leadership. Yeah, as of I. So would I have done any better?

I don't know. Yeah, so, I mean, again, Monday morning quarterbacking, hindsight being 20-20. That's right. Looking back at it. So if I got downrange and fell apart, I got down range, I think I held it for a month or so, and then just everything crumbled beneath me. From a mental perspective, which probably led to a physical decline as well. Well, it was mental.

I mean, I wasn't making calls fast enough. I was making stupid calls. I was just doing shit that I should not have been doing. I was not doing enough of this stuff I should have been. Everything. I mean, I was relieved. I was taken off of the eventually. Made a bone really stupid mistake.

Well, made a bone mistake on Target. And I'm glad nobody was hurt. Yeah. And that's, you know, when it comes down to that, when it comes to that point, and our profession, you know, far too often comes to that. Why is it have to come to that point? The catastrophic failure, you mean? The catastrophic failure that, God forbids, thank goodness, nobody was hurt or killed.

Yeah. And I've noticed oftentimes with that catastrophic failure, it's not the person who has the deficiency that gets hurt. It's the other people that are around them that suffer the content. consequences of that failure. Which is our worst fear. Yeah, for sure. I totally agree.

Yeah, see, that sucks because, again, you go back, the strong leader would have been, okay. This sucks, right? You've been part of the cohesive unit this entire time, but you are telling me you're not physically or mentally capable of doing this. Roger that. We're going to give you the time to take any and re-interject you later on down the line and make that hard change. Because making that change overseas on deployment, where you either need to surge out another LPO, which stands for leading petty officers.

It's basically the bridge between the junior enlisted and the senior enlisted in an operational element. It's also a mandatory career wicket for you to make chief later on. Or, you know, so you could surge somebody over there or you have to elevate somebody into that position who hasn't gone through that workup in that position. So an additional leadership burden on them. It's worse by delaying that decision.

Yeah. Until you get to an environment where the consequences can be dire. Yeah, I look back at my career. I think I might have a few more tick marks in the failure column than success. You're not alone. You're not alone. And the more I think of those. I've done some bonehead shit on Target.

It's humble. For sure. It's humlin. I made some calls that I have regretted. It took me a long time to come to grips with those things and be comfortable to admit that and be comfortable to talk about. it. And again, it's almost like mental health. I think the community would be better if we could acknowledge that. I think it's exactly like mental health. Yeah. I think that's a key point to and getting to the point of working on yourself that you can forgive yourself for those bone

head mistakes that you almost killed somebody. Or the mistakes you did make that you may have hurt or killed somebody else. And that's been made it unfortunately as well by a lot of us. military-wide. You can extrapolate that well outside. Whether or not you want to admit it, yeah. Yeah, for sure. What led you to the occupation in the first place? Why did you decide to join the Navy and go to the seal run?

That's all I ever wanted to do. I learned about it when I was 11 years old. What a Frogman was. Underwater Demolition Team. I read a book, this dime store book. Do you remember what it was called? It's called Frogman. It's fucking awesome.

I still have it. Of course you do. Yeah, of course. Where are you from to go back even farther? Connecticut. Okay. Yeah, Denver, Connecticut. Dad was a police officer.

Mom was stay at home. We live about an hour and change north of New York City. Any military background on your mom or dad's side of us? Yeah, mom and dad was, the only background was dad, excuse me, my mom's dad was a congressional medal of honor recipient from Korea. So when I learned about him, he was a, he was a, he was a, he was a, Ford, well, prior enlisted and then became an officer. Also known as a Mustang for people.

Previously, that's the route that I went. Yourself as well, I believe. Which is proof in my case that the military advancement system is flawed in many ways. Yeah. Indeed. And, yeah, he was a platoon commander for a Ford Air Observer. I'm sorry, for an artillery platoon. On the Korean Peninsula.

On the Korean Peninsula. And he was a forward to Arabs. Excuse me, Ford. FAC. Yeah, they weren't air. Probably F.O., Ford Observer? Ford Observer. Yeah, for artillery.

Artillery. Okay. That's one. Thank you. And Lee Hartel, first lieutenant. They were there in the peninsula and they were on the North Korean side of the line, doing what they're doing. Yeah. And eventually got overrun.

And he ordered his platoon to return to the last rally point and held his position and kept drawn enemy fire. And then once they got to his position, he called a strike on his own position. Did he survive it? No. Okay. No. in the Korean War are, they give me goosebumps when you read those things.

Very few, if any of them ever survived. That's right. Yeah, almost all medals in honor in those wars were posthumists. But there are stories of people in trenches fighting off grenade attacks with shovels. Yeah. Like what the fuck, man.

Yeah. Like literally swinging a shovel like a baseball bad and hitting grenades back at North Korean troops. Just, yeah. Yeah. It, I mean, I don't know. I have my own issues with the current modern day military award system. I think it's far too tied to rank.

I probably share that with you. Yeah. So it's definitely, it's tied to rank and it's interesting to see the awards. And I'm not putting a value judgment on anybody's award. But what I will say is if you compare a BV from Bronstar with Valor from Vietnam to the Korean War to modern day, there is a difference. Yes. And I think that should be noted. And I think it should be noted and looked at when people.

of a certain rank seem to achieve a certain level of award because they have to get that to make their next wicket. So once those two systems are tied, they become intrinsically flawed. Very strong, valid point that needs to be discussed. General populace will never understand that if it's not eliminated. Yeah, you know, the military awards is one that I don't know if the general public will ever understand. Because, I mean, it takes a few years to get it inside of the military anyway. And it sucks because I see people who, are really, really playing it to their advantage as much as possible.

Oh, you can definitely. Actually, you know what a Bronze Star is a good example. Most people don't realize that's the highest military award you can get for valorous or meritorious service. And there is a huge difference between the two of those things. You know, so in the Navy, the V, the combat distinguishing device, if you get a BV or a Bronze Star with V, your citation is going to begin for heroic achievement. But you can also get a Bronze Star for meritorious achievement.

And I know people who have gotten those for administrative work. And I'm not trying to degrade their effort at all. But I also know of people who will take a BS, which is known as a Bronze Star Without V, and they will try to, their narrative will become anything other than what they actually got the award for. And the people who don't know any better, they don't know any better. And it's a problem. Right. It is a problem, in my opinion, for sure.

Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And I don't, I don't know how to solve that one. Well, guys are saving lives back in, as you said, in World War II, and they were getting a letter of appreciation on a fucking napkin. Navy achievement medals. Dude, there's some NAMs from Vietnam for charging fucking machine gun nests. I'm like, that would be a minimum Navy cross in this day.

And he's probably a goddamn metal of honor. Kids get that for keeping the Gidunk stocked right now. Yeah. Gidump is basically the snack drawer for people listening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I've often, I think a lot about my time in the service, having been out now for almost seven years. And I think about the award system because I hear people talking about it. And I don't know the best way to explain it to them. But I do think it is broken because about halfway through my career, I saw that realization of, oh, you're in an LPO slot. You're definitely going to get this award because you need this to look good on your cheese package. Yeah.

So it was tied to rank, not personal actions. I've seen Silver Stars awarded to people for multiple, you know, they combined multiple operations and multiple actions, which actually is against the guidance of a Silver Star. It should be for one Valor's action, not the combination of the two, and specifically not for your fucking rank. Right. And it cheapens what those things actually mean. And I think the cart is so far out of the horse on that topic that I don't think it can be put back in. Well said. Grie.

Yeah. Did you find that Frogman book on your own? I did. I don't know how. I was going to say, did somebody say to you? One day they're like, UD, T, T, T, T, T, and you wouldn't found it? Or did you, you're not, you're not, you're not, you're not, it wasn't a library. I think it was, it's crazy.

Maybe I made this shit up. It's, I kind of vividly recollect a dime store. Just an old... Was it like a comic book? No, I'm looking forward to sharing with you sometime. Now I'm going to look this thing up for sure. A little paper thin. Okay.

Probably pictures of UDT dudes? Nope. Nothing? No pictures. Yeah. I would have thrown that book away if I was you, but that's me. I'm looking pictures first. If they're not appealing, I'm not reading that thing.

Yeah, I had no idea. At that point, I had no idea. Richard Mersenko hadn't come out and told everybody what seals were yet. Yeah. So I just thought that, playing with blowing shit up underwater. You're going to, I grew up swimming, you know, in Connecticut. So it was dirty lakes and stuff like that, but neighbors pool. But I enjoyed swimming.

I enjoyed, you know, as a teenager, I enjoyed being a lifeguard and a Boy Scout and a volunteer firefighter. I ended up being paramedic, that kind of thing. So that service, you know, with the background of my grandfather and my family. It was everyone in my family's service-oriented. But learning of that, I'm like swimming underwater with explosives and blowing shit up. Yeah. Haversack. What? Yeah. Limp it what? Yeah. Yeah. Bangalore torpedo. Yes, please. Yeah. Welcome Marines.

Yeah. Oh, that's right. I forgot. They used to put the signs up. Yeah. Yes, I forgot about that. So that one book got you, though. It hooked you and lit the spark. And that lit the spark. And then, of course, Richard Mersenko's Rogue Warrior. Rogue warrior. Once I became a teenager, I got a hold of that. And I didn't know. I hadn't learned. But once I discovered the evolution of frogmen, then I was all in. And that was, even that was at a young age. So started, the spark was lit about 11. Same for me. It's interesting when you said that. I was like, you know what, I'm not going to say anything because I bet your story is very similar to mine. and one of the so people ask me to be on their podcast our poor mothers oh I know

our poor mother and as of course I was talking about it like the age of 11 12 with 13 I had the seal flag up in my room yeah um the Charlie Sheen movie was on heavy heavy rotation handlebar mustache and MP5 SDs with no max flight suits which I actually get to play around with a little bit pre 9-11 sure yeah I remember that one of the most uncomfortable outfits ever designed to be itchy I remember doing VBSS with us. For sure. Visit board search and seizure, for those of you trying to figure out what the hell military acronyms are.

But, yeah, so I'll do podcasts and people will ask me, you know, when did you know you wanted to be a seal? I'll tell him 11. And for me, it started with a conversation with my dad because he was on the first squadron of Mark I patrol boats in Vietnam. Wow. Yeah. And so as you know, we're using Mark Vives at least in my day.

Who knows what they're on right now? Probably Mark 6 or 7, or I'm sure that's in the level. pipeline. Yeah. But so he wasn't a seal, but he was the insertion extraction platform. Fantastic. Told me a little bit about it. And just his description of kind of what they did. I was like, huh. Got a hold of men with green faces. Got a hold of the rogue warrior series. I found it in the nonfiction section. Didn't realize somebody had put it there by accident. And yeah, the hook was in it for me too. And I have no great explanation for why it had that draw. And I tell people that it's abnormal to hear of an 11-year-old saying that, but you get

into the SEAL community and you're surrounded by people. Just like you said it's like it's like, it's the most common narrative in the SEAL team. It's like, nope, I knew from a young age. People like, how did you know? Like, I have no idea, but I knew. Yeah. And then that set forth. I mean, I wasn't a great student in school because I knew all I was going to do was join the military. So I did whatever I had to do to get physically fit and strong. Again, I should have been focused on the mental, but we're kids. Come on. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, poor mom. My mom came from an army brat family. Both mom and dad served, uh, in the army. Yeah. She, her sister actually was a Navy chaplain. I remember I think I was 12 or 13. And for Christmas, she got me a trident. I was like,

wow. Wow. Yeah. That's legit. It was legit. And I remember leaving it in like the plastic for a long time. I'm like, I don't know if I'm allowed to touch this. And then eventually opened it up and probably lost the thing. But it was the first time I actually saw one in person. I was like, whole-be-shit game on. I did the same thing. I didn't pay much attention in school. My friends were studying for their SATs and doing college applications.

And in hindsight, a terrible plan to not have a backup plan. I had no idea. I had zero backup plan. My poor. Yeah. I didn't know either. But here's the thing. I wasn't worried about quitting in buds.

But I didn't know. I went back as an instructor in 2000. six through 2008 when I got commissioned. I didn't know the injury rate. Right. I did not have any idea. Right. I didn't know about the role stuff, the performance or injury side of the house.

And then I went back as an instructor. I was thinking about my plan. I was like, ooh, not great idea. Right there, right there. Yeah, watching people fall off like the dirty name break their leg or the spider wall or the slide for life. And sitting there as an instructor as you can feel their impact and they're getting carted off. It's like, ooh.

And you're an awesome guy. but your pelvis doesn't work anymore, so not going to work out for you. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a rough one. Thanks for coming out. Yeah, for sure. So how soon after high school would you pipeline in? I took a year.

I actually, I knew I was going to make a career of it. Interesting. I did not. I had a plan, and the plan said I was going to take a year, and I was going to get it out of my system, get the parting out of my system. So are you wise for your age? I've been accused of a lot But not being one

Never Not that But I did I wanted to I lived in a house On a lake with all musicians I didn't play a lick I had no

I still don't have any musical ability But on the lake With a bunch of musicians We had keggers every weekend I hitchhiked a little bit On the East Coast I had ball Yeah

And then after a year I said okay thanks guys, I enjoyed myself, I'm going to go enlist. And I stuck to it. My friends I grew up with that had known me my entire youth all through high school. They were generally concerned because I was having so much fun. But then it was time to go. After a year, that was it.

And I enlisted and went to boot camp. I actually found out, of course, went to boot camp with the expectation I was going to go to seal teams. That's the only reason I was going to join the military. They needed you. I don't know if you know this, everybody, but I'm kind of a big deal. And the SEAL teams need me. Yeah. I hear the call.

Yeah. And they're calling me. Got there and, of course, you pick a, well, you know, during. You got to pick your rate. You got to pick your rate. Did you take the screener before? No, I took it at boot camp. No, I mean before you picked your rate.

Because I think so. No. And there was the problem. Oh, shit. There's the problem because... You could have picked a rate that would have pipelined you out of the seal community. Well, I was good enough to ask them what the seal criteria was, what the pipeline required. And so they gave me a list of possible jobs.

They said, what do you want to do in the neighbors? I want to be a seal. The person looks at me and laughs. Yeah, never heard that one before. Get that lot. But you still need a job. son. So for when you don't make it through, let's just go ahead and pick the job that you want to do, which is actually on the Navy's side of the house a good call, given the attrition rate. Yeah, of course.

And this was back in 1994. Yeah. So I, um, they read off the list and they, they read past Corpsmen. I asked what that was. They said it was, you know, a medic. You, um, you can do things with the Navy, but you can also go with the Marines and so and so forth. And you're a medic. It's kind of breaking it down. simplifying it, especially when you start talking about being with the Marines or being with SEAL teams. But I said, that sounds good because I enjoyed that kind of thing. So a double-edged sword, I get to boot camp, and my A-school is Corman. And as I'm screening, I screened, did well, went up to the chief.

Now here's a big little hairy-chested frog man. Yeah, probably handlebar mustache? Handlebar mustache, rocks. I mean, he looked like a poster child. chiseled out of like a marble looking like Adonis. It's probably instructor Griffith. He probably was. That guy has one of the most high quality dick brooms I've ever seen.

Just three sides of that thing are getting cleaned on the way in. I can't help myself, as you can tell. But it's what it is. It is. Yeah. It's a gift. So he said, good job. You know, you passed.

And what's your A school? I said, Corman. He looks at me. He's like, you're not going. Ooh. Yeah. my heart stuff. I said,

you know, what the fuck you're talking about? He goes, it's closed for Cormin. Oh, they had too many,

didn't they? They had too many at the time. Back then they couldn't. I've heard of this happening. They couldn't manage. So it was either Evan Flo.

And at the time, I just happened to have been in the, came in the time that there was too many. So he's like, you're fucked, you're not going. Simple.

So I said, what the fuck? I don't want to be in the Navy. What do you, what do I do? He said, if I were you, I'd go with the Marines for a couple years,

give some experience and do it again. So that's exactly what I did. And looking back, of course, you know, I wouldn't have changed a thing. It was a phenomenal opportunity. I love working with Marines. I always have. I always will.

There's some of the most amazing people that I've ever met. Like there's, of course, the inter-service rivalry and the jabs and the jibs at each other. But you want to talk about people who are solid performers on target and pressure cooker situations. I'll take the Marine Corps. every day of the week. Like you said, it's a sibling rivalry pretty much. It is. Yeah.

Like, and there's shit talking that occurs on target. It's beautiful. For sure. It's beautiful. Yeah, but you're talking toes on the line together, shoulder to shoulder, zero issues. That's right. Yeah. In fact, there were several occasions where as a corpsman with Marines, you'd have somebody try to step up to me. I'm not a big guy. I never was. But as a doc, as a corpsman with Marines, they try to try to instigate some sort of, uh, aggression towards me.

It's not going to go well. Oh, poor bastards. Your big brothers are going to step in. I couldn't even get to him fast. I couldn't stand up before three sergeants are just tearing this poor kid apart. Yeah. Just tearing. It's vicious.

Some lessons are best learned by experiencing. Oh, my God. Pretty sure that person didn't lip off as much for the rest of their life. No. Yeah. So what does that look like going Navy boot camp? It's an FMF Corby, right? That's right.

What is this? Fleet. Fleet Marine Force. Fleet Marine Force, Columbia. So after a boot camp, where did you go? How did you end up working with the Marines? And what did you do with them? Giger. I was Camp Giger, Giger Tigers. That's where the, it's, what they do is they take Fleet Marine Force. You go Fleet Marine Service School, FMSS, at Camp Geiger, North Carolina, part of the Lijun. Okay. And it's kind of condensed.

again, a condensed boot camp of all they're going to do is teach you how to operate within the Marine Corps, but you're not a Marine. Your job is to be docked. But you'll hump, you'll fire weapons, you'll understand the structure and the rank and the unit structure and basic tactics of the Marine Corps. That's actually really smart that they do that because obviously Navy boot camp is not going to prepare you for any of that. What does Navy boot camp prepare you for? Well, we're folding clothes. I mean, you and I are not a good example of what Navy boot camp prepares you for because, I mean, shit, how many seals you think there are? 2000?

There's a couple hundred thousand people in the Navy. It's like less than one percent of people are going to go down that pipeline. Right. The boot camp is for the people who are going to be Hayes Gray and underway largely. So I'd have to actually ask one of them. I found my Blue Jacket Manual recently. The BGM? I think that's the first time I think I actually opened it.

I was flipping through it. I can support that. Yeah. I can support that for sure. The only time I would have maybe looked through that is before I was taking like the OSC test. Right. Before we had our own rate and I was trying to figure out what in the fuck I could study to actually get an answer correct. Yeah.

Because it certainly wasn't going to be radar scope operator stuff. So after those schools, where'd they send you? After those schools, they sent me to New River Air Station, again, still in North Carolina. And then I had a great time there, worked with some great Marines, fell out of my first helicopter. Good times. Yeah, how high were you? It was like 30 feet? I can leave a mark depending if you're over water or shale.

Yeah. We weren't. We were on the tarmac. It's fine. That's not fine, but I mean, survivable. It's not fine, but it's survivable. But I had a great time with those guys. And then I ended up going to Oki for a year, Okina, working with some wonderful guys there. What years were you in Okina? 96, 97. Okay. Were you on Cadena? No, I wasn't on Cadilla. I'm familiar with it. Yeah. Because that's where it was Air Force Base. Cadena is an Air Force base. That's where I went on my first pre-9-11 deployment,

was Cadina Air Force Base in 98. Yeah, no, I was on Schwab. Okay. Which wasn't too far. I think that was a 20-minute drive or something like that. Yeah, it was a north. Okay. Yeah.

It's a good time. Good people. And then how did you... Good hurricane, typhoon parties. Oh, for sure. Dude, you want to talk about the power of Mother Nature? I was wondering, I was remembering those barracks. I'm like, you know, these walls are like really, really, really thick.

And the roof is really thick, too, and I wonder why. And then a typhoon. Yeah. Oh, yes. I understand now. I can just shelter in place. Yeah. With dozens of Marines and alcohol packed.

What could go wrong? What could go wrong? It's going to be fine. Well, probably. In the aggregate, it would be fine. Doc's going to be busy doing barracks triage, which is known as IVs, hangover IVs. I think how that is actually written down. And sutured.

Yeah. Yeah. So after that deployment, how did you get back? on track into the seal pipeline? Oh, that's actually a great story. One of the docs that I practiced under as a corpsman, great. He was a dive medical officer. He was at the time the dive medical officer for the recon for Fifth Force, I believe,

at the time. And nobody, I couldn't find a Navy diver to give me the screening test for buds, because you have to, the way it's written out, you have to have a Navy diver. It doesn't have to be a seal. They just have to be dive qualified. Yep. And the dock I happened to work under, work for.

He said, hello? I'm a dive medical officer. I'm dive qualified. He goes, find out if I can give it to you. If I can, then I'll give it to you. So that was the physical screening aspect. All you had to do was have a diver sign off on that. give it to you and found out the the order for it and wrote it down for her or got him a copy of it

put it in front of his desk he said all right be ready tomorrow morning sweet and uh we went out and he gave no quarter um you remember the rock i mean that's all it is is solid rock um thankfully he didn't put me in soft sand but uh yeah but uh yeah we knocked it out and then uh put that as part of of my package. He helped me submit the package, which certainly didn't have to do. We became good friends after that, actually, and got orders. He had left the island before me, and I'd say maybe about six months, and happened to be on Coronado when I got orders. He happened to Ben, I think he was one of the docs for one of the teams, if I can recall. And he said, look me up. When get out there and I did I called him up I said sir do you remember he's like yeah dick I

remember you and uh he goes I'll pick you up at the airport sweet yeah so it was awesome he picked me up and we became good friends I was there when he when he um proposed to his then girlfriend now wife and uh said his wedding and um best uh godfather to his firstborn that's awesome Yeah. So no issues being attached to the Marine, getting your paperwork in, and then probably got a message saying, hey, or your next set of orders were two buds, I would assume? It was. Do you start with 217? No, I started 215.

No, it started 213. See, this is what I didn't know about when I went in. I didn't know about all this performance role and medical roll stuff. What happened? I got double roll. Why did I get double roll twice? So first one, I have no idea. I'll have to look that up.

I'll have to figure that out. The first one was, I broke my foot during Hell Week, which it was during Hell Week, and it's a foot. So it's fine. It was a stress fracture like everybody else had. Probably got issued a couple 800 milligram motion and told to continue. And it was, thank goodness. I mean, they were nice enough to keep us in the water and keep the swelling down. So we had no issues.

For sure. I'm sure that's exactly why they had us in the water, too. It was for swelling reduction. Very conservative. It keeps it. Yeah. So you made it through Hell Week with a stress fracture in your foot, which I sure felt great. Yeah.

So, but then I rolled in the medical check afterwards. But then I rolled afterwards because I couldn't keep up on the walk week just to chow. Yeah. They had to put me on crutches. But I think it fully snapped. They actually felt better once it snapped. It was, really? It was maybe Wednesday night.

It was at the, it was when, was a Wednesday night or Thursday night? I don't know. It was after Lions Loap. We were running around on the field over across the street. Yep, on NAB, Coronado. On NAB, Coronado. We had done... Were you guys doing the treasure hunt? The treasure hunt and all that. But they had us running races up some field. Probably over a Turner field. Yeah. I remember turning and pivoting on it and felt it. And I think it felt better once it snapped. And then once doing the x-ray, yeah, when we had to go, we had to check out.

You can see the clean break. It's amazing. And again, I did not know this. Fourth metal tarsal. Yeah. I did not know this until I went back as an instructor. There are some hard motherfuckers on the face just playing it. I'm not one of them.

Nor am I. But I've watched students who would go through. And they're like, at the end of Hellweek, you know, you'd be like, are you just going to put out or just going to sit here and be a pussy? And at the end of how week you're like, you have like eight breaks in your legs. And you've been running on these. You sir deserve some time off. And the guy who's got C6 vertebrae, his neck broke and does the entire thing. Yeah.

I think that was a couple of classes. That's probably around your time. Yeah. There was. And again, as a student, you never saw that because they would get detached. And you'd be like, hey, where'd Bob go? I don't know. And moving on.

Yeah. As an instructor, you'd see the student hobbling around like, oh, you have a neck collar and what's going on? Oh, nothing. You know, they're just going to fuse my neck. So you've been running around with a boat on your head for the last four days, and you said nothing. Yeah. You, sir, are a harder man than I am. Yeah.

Yeah, pretty impressive. Yeah. So you got rolled, double roll. So we started 2.13. That puts you in 2.15. Mm-hmm. You probably picked up a post-Hel week next class in first phase. Yep.

And then what was your second roll for? I can't recall. You do have some post-concussive syndromes. We got some good imagery if you want to post that sometime. I'm sure you do too. Yeah. I'll be honest with you, I'm terrified to have my brain imaged, and I have Ferris metal in my body, so I'm not a candidate for a CAT scan.

Okay. Or I'm sorry, for an MRI. For an MRI? So when they were doing my disability, they had to do, it was an estimate based off my operational history. But concussions, concussive blast, TBI, for sure. The severity of it, unknown. I will say that when they put the images up on.

the screen and the neurologist goes over it and you see it, that makes a lot of sense. It helps you connect the dots. It helps you connect the dots. You're like, I actually said, I verbally said, thank God. When I saw it for the first time. Because it gave you like an explanation? Yeah, exactly. You're not crazy.

You're not, you're not broken, you're injured. Yeah. You just have an injury just like everything else. And with time and, and therapy and whatever else is necessary, mostly time. rest. You're going to be, you can get over those injuries. You can acclimate, but, you can at least mitigate. Miningate. You know, I don't know. I mean, did they even know if you can repair your brain? Oh, I heard once that they know more about the surface of the moon than they

do about the human brain. That wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, that there's more unknown than no when it comes to the human brain. It's so fascinating. Yeah. It really is. I'll be honest with you, the The head injury stuff, the concussive blasts, I have my concerns about what the tail end of life will look like for me. You know, they put me through NICO and for people listening. That's the National Intrepid Center of Excellence. It's attached. The one I went to was attached to Walter Reed. And it's a 30-day, all-inclusive, the best medical treatment I've ever received.

And there was a battery of tests. A lot of them are cognitive. They give you everything from IQ tests to memory. tests. Shit. If there's a test associated with it, whether it be blood, you know, sleep, they put a sleep study on me, sleep study. All of that stuff.

And, you know, the test for the cognitive stuff, it came out okay. And it was really hard for me to explain to them in terms that I felt got the point across that I can feel a difference in myself. So their spreadsheet might say my brain is still firing at a level that is acceptable for performance. But I'm sitting there telling them, like, listen, I'm not that. the same person, like my brain is slower. There are things that don't work as well in my brain that used to, and I don't know how to get this, like, I don't know how to, I don't know what tests

I need to take for it to have that show up. And I think one of the biggest issues is I didn't have a baseline for when I went in. Right. So absent a baseline, they're like, oh, you're doing okay on these tests. And by the test, I'm like clicking a mouse and looking at a computer screen, which is not where I feel the biggest cognitive issues. And what's the parameters for okay? What are those standards that you're looking at? I promise they're not special operations. Yeah. They're not at the level where the multitasking,

clinical, excuse me, critical thinking of people in a high risk, high consequence. I wonder what the criteria would be for okay. So I felt that same way. And during cognitive, they said, well, you did fine. You did okay. I was like, I did fine on your test, but I'm struggling with shit throughout my normal, everyday life that your test isn't testing for. Yeah, yeah.

It was a very tough one. And I actually went back and I didn't argue with them, but I wanted to talk to him about it because I was like, listen. No, right. They're phenomenal. Yeah. And they did a narrative summary. And I was like, listen, your narrative summary is based off of just the results that came off off of this battery of tests that I did. But I'm telling you it is not indicative of the struggles that I have in my everyday life.

It was very challenging. because it well and then it leads to questioning yourself. I'm like, well, this test says I'm okay, but I don't feel okay. Right. And then I'm like, okay, well, what does it look like 10 years from now? 20 years from now? 30 years from now. So I have some concerns for the tail end of life when it comes to that level of performance cognitive-wise.

I can appreciate those concerns. And the fact that you have it is enlightening enough that you get to start to work on things that you can, mitigate you can yeah we uh we did very well physically taking you know wow some of us more than others we could argue that too physically but uh but mentally uh you know now i'm age 46

and i'm learning how to breathe it's it's it's it's amazing i'm learning all new i'm learning how to sleep I'm learning how to breathe all these things that yeah we should have been doing pretty well our whole lives But of course we didn't. Yeah. And knowing that now, I hope that they are interjecting that into the pipeline for the younger guys. I certainly hope so.

Yeah. The advancements in technology, whether it be the human. It's only going to benefit. It's only going to create better people. Agreed. And I think. Or don't. Or don't.

And suffer the consequences. Yeah. We're seeing that now. Yeah, I was having that conversation. Who's I talking to? God. I forget who I was talking to. We were talking about the number of people.

that we know who get out and just disappear into the bottle and they spiral in absent the support system of the people who are there next to them. And it's far too many. Far too many. And I think that stuff, one, you know, the. And I get it. Yeah. I get it too. And I don't know how to stop it.

Right. I don't know. I don't know what to do. Yeah. But I do believe, and I don't have any data to support this, that a large portion of that for a lot of people, is directly related to the occupation that they've dedicated their formative years of their life to. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you're doing what you can right now. Yeah, I don't know how much of it impacted it has, but at least I'm trying to explore it for myself. And I think having a conversation, you know, if it sparks other conversations, that's at least a good first step. I mean, I can't solve the problem myself, obviously. Absolutely.

Hence, smarter people than me, which is a spoiler alert, everybody that I come in contact with. So it makes it easy. Most of the time I just listen to the problem. them but present company excluded i don't know we haven't spent that much time together i might find out that i'm actually a functioning just idiot so you graduate two 17 so that puts you probably graduate you graduated in 97 i'm gonna guess or early 98 had it been because 212 six classes yeah june 98 okay that makes sense yeah what'd you put down on your uh dream sheet in third

phase for the teams you wanted to go to east coast did you yeah i put two four eight and got five What did I put? And so I'll explain it in third phase. So seal training is broken up first, second, and third. I can't recall the number of that. First is largely physical conditioning where most of the attrition happens. Second is diving, closed circuit, and open. And if you pass the pool comp test wicket, you've got a very high chance of actually making it to the community.

Third phase is San Clemente Island, largely land warfare basics of demo. And I think it was in second phase. You fill out your dream sheet. Yeah. They disaffirm and it says, where do you want to go? Yeah. Team-wise. I was born on the West Coast.

I was like, you know what? Let's get some East Coast time. Two, four, and eight. Even number teams, East Coast, odd numbers are West. And I got my first introduction to the needs of the Navy. We were out on San Clemente Island and they broke us up into little individual groups. And they came along with like this group. And of course, we were doing like burpees or something.

Yeah. This group is like Team 2 and this group is Team 4. They came up to mine. And this group is team five. And I was like, fuck, man. I put two four and eight on there. I'm like, oh. It's more of a fantasy than an actual dream sheet.

It's actually exactly what it is. It's a dream, a pipe dream. That's it. Because I'm going to go where the Navy needs me to go. Quite the first lesson. Yeah. Yeah. So that's actually cool that you put East Coast and got East Coast.

Yeah. I don't think there was, I think my entire class went to East Coast. I've heard of that. Mine was actually relatively split, pretty much down the middle. Smattering to one, three, and five, and a smattering two, four, and eight. No SDV guys in my class. Right. Now, I had the joy of going to Fort Bragg for the medical training prior to checking in.

18 Delta? 18 Delta. So that was six months. So my... You, sir, privileged. My class, it's... What a joy. That was, yeah, we could talk a lot about that.

I bet you the training you got there was awesome, though. The medical training was phenomenal. Yeah, 18 Delta Corman. If you're leaking hydraulic fluid, I want one of those guys or a fucking PJ on me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stop the bleeding, keep them breathing, get them back to bright lights and cold steel.

Yeah. We can do that. Yeah. We can definitely do that. Under extreme situations, as you know. No oxygen. No other medical capabilities. No light.

It's an interesting thing to watch somebody give an IV under nods. Or just by feel. I watched a PJ one time on a guy who had low blood pressure, was leaking hydraulic fluid under nods on a helicopter, just sitting there just feel in his arm, got it on the first stick. If he had given me that needle, that man would have bled out. Because I would have gotten everything. I would have definitely gotten the vein and gone straight through it.

and then slice the thing open and just been like jabbing him. I couldn't believe it. I was sitting there watching. And it was one of the most impressive things that I've ever seen. Operator feels no pain. He just. I actually don't even remember the guy was in and out of consciousness. Yeah.

But the fact that he was able to get an IV on the first stick under those conditions. Unbelievable. And I think he probably had gloves on too. It's like, come on. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody worked.

That was one of the things I really. really enjoyed. And both working with the Army, the Marine, of course, the seals I worked with, just the caliber of guys. I mean, we can get in that later too. That's open and all, but the, just remarkable human beings, especially under stress and pressure, which is all that really matters. Everybody can be great on a warm, sunny day, you know, and be a nice person, but when bad things happen and things are stressful, then, you know. I think it's a testament to the pipeline and the fact that the curriculum does the job well. Yeah.

I mean, you look back and having gone there and applied the curriculum to students for 18 months, it's really about pushing people to those moments where they're stressful and they're miserable. Yeah. And then asking them to do something critical or just asking them to think beyond themselves and then sit back and watch and see what they do. Right. I definitely believe it's a testament to that training pipeline. and I have heard, you know, they have no issue. People ask me all the time, like, well, what about a woman being a seal?

And my thing is, as long as no standards are changed, I don't care. Bottom line. Could give two shits. I don't care. I don't care. Yeah. High five, fist bump. Let's go rock and roll.

But if you modify those standards, I have a massive problem with it. Because, like I just said, I believe the performance and what the guys are able to do is directly related to that crucible and the training pipeline, which is driven by the man's of the real world. Couldn't agree more. Yeah. So as long as they don't modify that stuff, every activity that we have in that training pipeline is because it's been done in combat. It's purpose driven. Yeah. That's not just pulled out of our asses. Yeah. Why we're doing this evolution, why we're doing that evolution, right? For sure. So Bud's graduation, did you hit Benning on the way? Oh yes. I almost freak. What a joy. How could you forget Sergeant Airboard?

So now the current seal pipeline. What was that? Was it three weeks? Two weeks? It was at least three. It was about three days of work packed into three weeks. I remember learning PLFs for five days on the sawdust, huge. I think they might have called them the parade grounds, but that huge...

There's no parade. Yeah, that huge covered area where you'd go forward, backwards, left, right, 45 forwards, 45 left. Yeah, all to get five static line jumps in. Five static line jumps. I'm pretty sure it was three weeks. I believe you're right. So Benning for Static Line, I had the same experience. Well worth, well spent taxpayers money right there.

Now at an O-Tai, they're getting Static Line and Free Fall, basically, you know, 20 miles from where you go through the seal pipeline. I totally missed the deal on that. Yeah. Oh, we did by a long shot. We missed it. And then we don't send seals. Of course, they're not 18 deltas anymore, either, though. But we don't send new guys to brag for our 18 Delta.

What are they now? SoCMs? Something like that? ESOS Special Operation Combat Medic. Yeah. And it's taught independently, I'm not Memphis. No. Okay.

I don't know where the facility doesn't matter. I had heard about that, but I had also forgotten that that was the case. I was never a corpsman, so I never followed the pipeline. So instead of 18 Delta does give you the scope practice, there's no license because you're working under a surgeon's license, whatever group surgeon you're. whatever group surgeon you're assigned to, but it does give you the training and the capability to administer medications, to order medications, administer medications to include anesthesia, to include narcotics, does give you the capability to, I said, anesthesia, surgery, after, after,

There's a lot of patient care that they deemed wasn't necessary or that we could get PJs for. They stripped that out. They stripped that out. And for the Sockham course that they're currently doing, it is, it's a medic on steroids. It's, again, stop the bleed and keep them breathing. Yeah. Because 18 Delta was six, right? Well, 18 Delta was a year.

It was broken up for us because the community did not want us away, which I don't blame, thank God. For a year. For a year at the conception or the initiative, at the genesis of our career in special. Yeah, straight out of Bud's pipeline. Right out of Bud's pipeline. And then going with the Army for a year. So they said, do six months. You come, you do two platoons, and then you go back for the second portion, which was more advanced.

and which the second portion, while it was necessary or it was good to have, that was more of the clinical. So that was a lot of the stuff that... Why like the patient care type stuff? Exactly. Okay. So the course, I believe, I understand the course that they run now is pretty much like the first six months that we got. Okay. The initial six months would, hey, if you're good enough to deploy for two platoons with that, then why don't we just...

Yeah. Yeah, it's a stay in life, get them to a high level of care. Exactly. That makes sense. Yeah. So Benning, Bragg, and then where was your first team? Team 8. Team 8.

Team 8 on the East Coast. Yep. Yep. Where are they on? Little Creek, right? Little Creek. Yep. And where were?

I think I was a U-com platoon. Yeah. Yeah. I was a U-Convah. Pre-9-11 still? We're probably getting to like 99, 2000 at this point? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. 99. My first off, first place. place we went was Kosovo. And my first stop was we were chasing Piffwick, a persons indicted for war crimes. Yep. They were, they had been put on that list. The Bosnia, Serbia. By native, yeah. And so very anticlimatic. We worked a guy for, you know, here I was in my first platoon and going after bad guys and chasing them. And it was, hey, at least you were going after bad guys.

Yeah. My first platoon was to Japan. My second one was to Guam. Yeah. The only bad guys here were chased was Jose Cuervo. We chased that fucker everywhere. Everywhere. Sometimes we just brought them with us.

Yeah. God. That's a whole other thing we're going to talk about. What, booze? Holy shit. It's alcohol. It's a competitive sport. Yeah, and you know what?

And then we wonder why we go to it when. Or you wonder why guys have issues. with it later on. That's what I was going. Yeah. I mean, I remember when I first got in, people would joke like, oh, you're not going to make chief until you get a couple of DUIs. And now a DUI is an ejection seat out of the seal community.

No questions asked. Yeah. It was an interesting culture for sure. And I tell you what. Yeah. That's a culture you grow up into. That's a tough one to get its hooks out of you later in life. Correct.

Yeah. That's, uh, I hope that they're doing better with that as well. I mean, I can even say in 2013, that they at least were at a doctrinal level trying to change the narrative, but there was still at an operational level a lot of the same drinking mentality and culture. There was a little bit of a divergence between what was being said and what was being done. Yeah. So.

I could, yeah, I understand that. So Kosovo, what was after that? You did a platoon with Team 8 and then where to go for you? I'm stuck with the teammate for a little bit. Did a couple platoons at them. And then... Where were you when 9-11 kicked off? That was a sniper school.

That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. Atterbury? Yeah. Yeah. Of course, like everyone else, you'll never forget it. Yeah. But we were stalking.

We were in the field. You were on a stalk. We were on a stalk. Fuck. I can't make the... shit up. I mean, I could. I guess they make Star Wars. They made up. This is true. I'm not

creative enough to make shit up like that, though. But yeah, on a stalk the the safety recall goes off, that horn. Everybody immediately goes, God damn it, wasn't me. Fuck. Everybody goes, fuck.

Yeah, it's like, I need to turn points on this. Yeah. And clear and say and stand up where you're at and walk in on the safety van, wonder who got shot. Yeah, that's a tough one because they don't do that unless there's a catastrophic accident. Fuck it. It was scary. Yeah. And then you're walking up to the van and everybody's got a full height count. They said, get in the fucking van. We're like, what's happening? Terrorist just attacked New York. Guys looked at each other, like, we're thinking there's some sort of joke and what the f, you know?

Yeah. Without hesitation, the instructor looked at us in the eye and said, get in the fucking van. No more. And just nothing else said. We all got in the van. We drove in. And, uh, yeah, we walk into the burning buildings inside the talk, inside the classroom. Yeah.

And, uh, I don't think anybody said a word. We just went and started cleaning our gear, clean our weapons packing our shit. Yeah. Watching the burn. Watching the building of the burn. Where was, I'm assuming you were in a platoon at that time. So you were doing the pro dev. phase or the professional development.

How long after 9-11 until you did your first deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq? Not until 2003. Okay, so it was a bit. I never went to Afghanistan. You really? Yeah. Was that just a timing issue or what caused that? I don't know.

That's, yeah, I was never on a platoon. I was never on a team that was going to Afghanistan. You were on the West Coast. I mean, that's your bitch. I did my Afghanistan. Actually, I take that back. Well, you did. I did Afghanistan and Iraq multiple times at Damneck.

And then I actually, at Team 3, the last deployment I did in 2010 was to Afghanistan. Yeah. But most of the team, where they were doing Cree stuff or going to the Philippines. So I just happened to be at a team in an element that was sourced to go over there. Only one troop out of the team actually went there. Yeah. So 2003, I was there as well. Were you there for the initial invasion?

Nope. I didn't get there until maybe it's 2004. Okay. I take that back. Because March of 03 was the invasion, I think. Pretty sure. Might have been April. It was in 2003. So we're at Biop and Baghdad International Airport. And we took turns. We had shifts. We did half the deployment at Buyup.

working with oh working with the West Coast team that was a good time great guys do you know what team it was can we say that yeah well now I can't

now I don't know which team it was god damn it I'm sorry how many times have you been hit in the head I can well guess we're going to say team one because that's a good West Coast team it was an odd number I know exactly I can

I know don't say the guys I won't say the guys I say the teeth. Right. It's good. Yeah. It's cool that you were able to take. And I don't know if a lot of guys have had that experience of interop between the West and East Coast.

Because there was some big brother, little brother syndrome, even in our own community pre-9-11. Absolutely. Well, it still is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's... I think... Everybody knows that the West Coast is better, right?

So I understand why you guys would be upset. I get it. Yeah. I mean, you guys would play volleyball if the weather didn't suck in Virginia. True. But then what would we do with all the car heart and... Copenhagen. I don't know. The diesel trucks? I don't know. Park them in the parking lot. Who knows?

Yeah. So how was that first deployment? It was good. We split the time between there, between Viap and then doing protection details for the incoming government. We had Jalal Talibani, the president, right off the bat. Well, my team had everybody at the prime minister. But my platoon. and I should say, had Jalal al-Talabani. So, yeah, that was interesting, as you know. Yeah. As you fully know, we were never trained for protection to be PSD.

It's actually my least favorite mission set. Nobody likes that. Because of the complete reactive nature and the fact that you have to stand there and posture and wait for somebody literally to take action against you before you can react. That's right. Absolutely. I think, yeah. I would love to have been on the training cadre at Blackwater, though, for every platoon that came through and did their first training of PSD.

It's probably an absolute shit show. When the first, well, I remember ours, when the first gunshots going off and you're supposed to get the PSD off the X and you're in the vehicles or you're, I think you're doing an escort from a building to a vehicle or vice versa. and contact and you just have this rush of team guys attack full on as your principal's just like as the principal's looking around he's one do I drive what's yeah I'm just gonna if you guys are good I'll just get in the car yeah yeah yeah you gotta train that mindset out like somebody has to be responsible for this person we're protecting we're like oh yeah I get it running to the sounds of the gun yeah is a it's a real thing well when you're that's it yeah when you're

train that from day one. It's a hard concept of break of I am not going to shoot. I'm going to throw myself over this person and force you into a vehicle. Yeah. And run away. Yeah. As fast as possible. Yeah.

It was definitely challenging. But interesting. As I'm sure you know, well, as you do know. Yeah. And would your career progress after that? I mean, assuming you got back and fired off another platoon, work up deployment, workup deployment. Yeah, exactly.

Ad nauseum. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually got to that point of burnout, I guess, is what it was. Or maybe it was undiagnosed concussions. I don't know. I don't know what it was, but that was to the point where I knew I wasn't operating on cylinders and had that conversation with my, that was 2007.

Yeah. What was the origin of, the majority of the concussions. Breaching charges. Breaching. I was a lead breacher. Yeah. For several deployments.

I'm going to guess you were inside of minimum safe distance a few times. Man, I'll tell you, well, we didn't know what we didn't know. I mean, we were definitely. And sometimes you know what you know and the opportunity to do what you're supposed to do doesn't present itself. It wasn't tactically sound. It would have put, yeah. I have been rocked just absolutely. flattened by charges that I was almost always on the security team. I was, uh, I was a breacher,

but not the primary breacher. So I'd go up and I'd be holding security and, you know, bringing the breacher back, we'll hold on the door and, and just eat it. How many times? How many times? How many times? Uh, countless. Cowliss. Headaches, nose bleeds. And we, and we, and we do it again. Yeah. The same night sometimes. Sometimes. And then we do it again. Or you may do that in the courtyard to get in and then you're still breaching on the inside. And you still breaching the inside. Yeah, I have been absolutely flattened by those charges.

The worst I recall was the charge going off. Same thing that the team goes in. I roll out. I was the breacher, so I roll out of the way. And the team makes entrance. And I can't find my safety. I try to locate my weapon safety to go, to roll in. And I can't find it.

Like, damn it, who moved it? Somebody moved my fucking safety. Damn, fucking new guys. And it took me, I would say, 10 seconds to get, for the bell, for the ringing to stop and for my vision to come back. I'm still on nods. That vision to come back. And for me to physically locate that safety so I could go through the door. And even when you did, let's be honest.

You probably shouldn't have gone through the door anyway. Just because you could find the safety, it doesn't mean you were going to manipulate it in any fashion that was going to be a gunslinger in nature. Yeah, you're better off just sitting down. I'm very grateful. It's a blessing, yeah. Some new guy didn't pop out in front me wearing that haji mask.

Yeah. It's interesting. They let you be a head breacher as a Corman as well. It's actually real. And sniper. Yeah. And that's awesome. I know a lot of guys who are like,

oh, no, you're a Corman. You can't go to comp school. You're not going to be a sniper. You're not going to be a J-TAC. You're going to sit here and carry the medical stuff. You know, I did those too. And I was very, I was very grateful at the time. I was a new guy.

I was just eating up as much training as I could get. And that was another thing I wish I could have, I would have changed. Yeah. Because, you know, Jack of Allot Trades Master of None. I'm not even, I mean, I'm not even Jack of Out Trades. I've got all of those. I'm definitely the master of none. Man, I would have liked to be really good at one.

Yeah, but then, you know what? The stuff that we were asked to do, you would have, you know what I mean? I just think the SEAL community rewards the multi-tool better than the scalpel. I was definitely the multi-tool. Yeah. Which is, I mean, you're always doing work. And at the time, and that's what, yeah. Yeah.

And I guess that's what. Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to be a calm guy because I'm thinking of my head, oh, we're always going to need radio. Yeah. Want to be a J-Tack? because like, well, that's awesome when things come off of airplane wings and just go, I want to be a sniper because that's cool, and then it'll make my field craft even better. And I just, I would pick stuff early on in my career based off of how could I make myself more useful.

I didn't want to be like a special team's player. I just wanted to be a guy I can play both sides of the ball. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. As you said, medic, sniper and. Breacher. Preacher. I think the top three.

Yeah. I think that's a safe. The only other thing you could edit that would be com guy. I'm sorry, comms. Yeah. I'd say, because you're going to every operation. Com sniper and medic. Oh yeah, you're going on everything.

Yeah. You are going on everything for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So how many times you end up going to Iraq? Four? Probably back to back, to back, to back. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And then when they relieved you, I'm assuming that was on your last time to Iraq? No, that was my second time. So nine times. So I don't really, I guess, it's like I don't count that one. Yeah, I did a ninth deployment to Iraq. I, that was in the talk. Okay. So I wasn't, fair enough. That's why I wasn't counted. Yeah. Okay. All of those at Team 8? No, four as well. Okay. Four and, yeah, four and eight. Okay. And at some point, you're going to have to tell me the tale of how the military bent you over.

And you had one of the, I don't even know how to describe it. I mean, I read a lot of the stuff that you sent, and then I stopped reading because I wanted to just have the conversation and talk about the experience that you went through. Yeah. And because it's unique, for sure. I think a lot of people are familiar with Eddie Gallagher's case. Right. But very few people are probably familiar with what happened.

with you inside of the military. Because everything we've talked about before is an awesome and amazing seal career. Yeah. But it doesn't sound like the military treated you in a very amazing way. I don't think that's in their lexicon, the military to treat theirs.

I've seen it happen. Yeah. And, you know, people will ask. I was disappointed. I was very disappointed. And I think you should be. And again, I don't know all the details. because like I said, I stopped reading.

I'd rather hear it from you directly, the broad idea of what happened. But, you know, people will ask me about Eddie. They'll say, hey, well, do you believe Eddie? I'm like, listen, I was around the military long enough to see the military system absolutely screw people over. Yeah. But I was also around it long enough

to see it rise to the level that absolutely everybody would want to see it rise to and everything in between. So I cannot speak to the system in what is going on with this particular case. So you have to let the system play itself out and hope that the chips fall where they should fall. Yeah. And not where they're forced to fall. Well said.

Yeah. I've seen to go both ways. And that's exactly where I fell. It was perfect storming of time. It was at the height of the Me Too movement in 2013. Okay. And certain actors involved in the government. government using platforms to crack down on sexual assault in the military, which we're all for.

Yeah. The majority of us, we have a- Well, I don't think anybody's pro-sexual assault. Nobody's pro-sexual assault. And I would challenge the majority of the guys that you and I work with are protectors by nature. Oh, the vast majority for sure. And hold the women highly respectable. Agreed. And chose the profession.

to protect those who can't protect themselves. Even if they couldn't articulate that, I think it's one of the most common traits, just like that early gravitational pull, they may not be able to describe why. I think as they grow up and they have a better understanding of themselves and their vocabulary,

that's one of the most common things is they want to step up for people who can't step up for themselves. Yes. None of us tolerate bullies. Oh, bullies don't do well. No. I don't like bullies.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the strength and the compassion, uh, equally of, uh, of the guys,

uh, that I've worked with has, has, uh, always impressed me and always, that's, that's been the, that's the reason you stated.

That's the reason when after 9-11 happened. And, uh, and Blackwater's paying thousands of dollars a day for anybody with a trident to, to go do contracts. Yeah. Um, that's why,

that's why you stayed in because you worked around with guys like that. I agree. And they had little girls and little boys to come home to, and they had their wives that knew you and looked at you to depend upon, to make sure they got home. So, sorry. Yeah, no worries. I completely agree with everything that you're saying.

There's a deep sense of being the protector inside of the SEAL community. for sure. So that probably that's probably why it was so crushing so what happened? In 2013 when I was accused, I

just got into the West Coast. Oh, well, I guess I need, let's start from on the East Coast that 2012 I would was acting troop chief.

And we were going to deploy again. And we were doing Salk down in North Carolina. Also known as urban combat. What is that? SAC is special operations in urban environment or something like that? Urban comment. I don't know. I can't keep up the outcomes.

I know most of them, but at some point I'm like... Exactly. Yeah. And I was running the troop. My boss was in D.C. at school, I think, at the time, something, the actual troop chief. So I was the platoon chief, acting troop chief. And we went through an entire day of training. And no problems, no issues, until it was time to just do hot wash, let him hang, circle up.

And everybody spoke their part. Every element debriefed their portion. and it came to me, and I was going to do a clean-up shot, as usual. And I looked at all my guys, and these are guys I'm going to deploy within a couple months, and I can't remember what the fuck just happened. I don't know what we just did five minutes ago. And I looked at him, I said, you know, senior guy, whoever the senior guy was, go get weapons and guns, put away, I'll see you back at work, drove back to Virginia Beach,

back to the team, got in work, picked up the phone, called the boss, tell him something's wrong. I don't know what it is, but this ain't good. And now here is an example of leadership I appreciated very much. His response was, whatever it is, we'll get it taken care of, don't worry about it. We'll swing the bat for you. Go over to medical, get your blood work done, make sure you didn't pick up something somewhere. Let them do a full physical, figure it out.

And, yeah, it was crushing because that was, was really, I just, you know, every single one my guy, and they knew I was. Yeah. If you're recognizing it in yourself, there's a good chance that the people around you were picking it up in the world, too. Yeah. And years later, I had conversations with some of those guys, and they, yeah, they picked up. And they, they might not have known exactly what was going on, but they knew something was going on. Yeah. So, went to medical, got that all taken care of, and then, of course, everything came back fine. And they gave you the, the, the lovely, I think you need to go talk to Syke,

and which every team guy, everybody wants to hear. So I went to psychology, had a conversation with him. It wasn't more than 40, maybe 35, 40 minutes, until he said, I think he'd be a good candidate for Nike, which, as you said, National Intrepid Center of Excellence. And this is 2012. And he explained what it was and why he thought I was a candidate for it. I hadn't won anything.

It was for my experiences and everything from training and just workups. Yeah. You know, we beat ourselves. And just the, I mean, looking back, I don't have to tell you, you know, exactly. But now I had to make the tough, I talked to my boss. I explained to him what happened and he talked to the headshed. And they said it's your call. We'll support you, whatever you want to do.

but the bottom line was there was no call to make because there's with the you can't deploy like that and I found you know I made that mistake the first time I was going to say you'd already tried that I already tried that you know what the what that's going to look like a few months down the road and this was going to be to Africa this is going to be eastern Africa and uh that was an ao that I wasn't familiar with at the time and um and just alone just dealing with other government agencies the state department, so and so forth. The last thing I need is to choke out some, somebody in the state department, you know,

get into an international incident somewhere or something. Or just not be operating up to the standard they expect. And that's the bottom line. And that's what I told the guys, which was at that point in time the worst day of my life when I had standing in front of the guys and said, listen, I don't know what the fuck's going on, but I'm going to go, I have to go find out.

And so those were my words, but what I felt was I'm taking a knee and everybody else is exhausted. Everybody else is tired and you have wives and children and you've all been going just as long as I have but I'm going to be the selfish one and take a break. So that was a worst day at that point. I bet.

But, and had I, I wish I'd made the call sooner because by the time I got to Nike, and I realized what it was about and the guys that were there. And the phenomenal staff and doctors and therapists and nurses and nurses that were there and what they were doing, had I gone earlier, I could have taken care of myself, fix the weapon system, fixed the, and gotten back in line, and then, you know, gone and maybe taking a little bit of time off, but then I would have been able to get back. And taking that little bit of time off, you would have given yourself.

self-lubo runway. Exactly. Yeah. So I didn't. And so by the end of that time at NICO, I was near in 20. I was a chief, post-platoon chief. And I said, you know, this one's been a good ride, but it's time for me to look at something else.

So that's why I took orders to Bud's as well to go to, I was a senior. I was the LCPO for leading chief petty officer for the training department for the actual training department, not the in all of training. Gotcha. So did ORMs, Operation of Risk Management and that kind of stuff. Which is what you join the SEAL teams to do anyway. Fucking paperwork. For every evolution, for people who are listening,

they think it's all like bullets and explosions. For every evolution, we do, you do ORM, operational risk management. There's a risk assessment and a risk statement and it's got to be bottom line, depending on the level of risk. It is an insane amount of paperwork, which nobody wants to do. Yep. Keep the, I was, people ask what I was doing there.

I got kind of, I'd say I'd try to keep the, try to keep the boss out of jail. Which is actually kind of what ORM does. Nobody uses it or cares about it until there's an incident. That's right. And then when there isn't an incident. And it's one of the first things I look at. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. But then, of course, you want to keep the sled dog, keep the guys in their lanes, too, so they don't go rogue. No, it's important. It's important. It's just not sexy. No, exactly. But it actually enables all the sexy stuff. It's the foundation from which a lot of that stuff is based.

Well said. Absolutely necessary. Yeah. Absolutely. So I did that and was introduced. So I took those orders. and actually in route to California, I hadn't even arrived yet. A good friend of mine, no, not a good friend, I'll take that back.

A friend of mine introduced me to his current girlfriend's cousin via text. Asked if I'd be interested in meeting up with her, and I told her I'm not even there yet, and I have no place to live. I'm not ready to jump into a relationship or anything. by any means. And he said, no, that's fine. She just, she wants to party. She wants to hang out.

She was an attractive woman. I've never dated anybody in Southern California. And I will say I was in the mindset of, I had a moral casual attitude toward dating as far as while in the teams watching all of my teammates, and what they went through with their wives. It was very evident to me that I was never going to get married in the teams. And so when I met women,

the majority of them were very business-oriented themselves. They had their own thing going on. The relationship with secondary tertiary is what you're saying. Exactly. To both of our lifestyles. Yeah. What's the only you're saying wrong with that? As long as both people are opening it on,

it's about what they expect out of it. I mean, there's the crutch. As long as both people are open and honest. And that worked. And that worked for us. And then getting there, having met her. So she lived in San Diego? She lived in San Diego.

I actually lived in Pasadena, California. She lived up north. Okay. She was visiting her cousins and her family down there in San Diego. And me being forthright and telling her my intentions off the bat that I'm just brand new there and I'm not looking for anything serious. She alluded, she didn't just allude. She stated the same. And so we started dating.

It was very short, I'd say about five weeks until I realized that this is not somebody that I'm going to have. a future with, where I foresee a future with, and that I proposed, I said, you know, I'm okay with just keeping this casual. She gave me the, where is this going? Conversation. And I thought we had already discussed it. In fact, that's how I, it wasn't very tactful. I should have, I should have been more tactful, but I said, this isn't going anywhere. It's the same, when I met you, it's five weeks ago. If you're not comfortable with that, with our relationship, then I understand.

I respect that. We can go our separate ways, but I can't give you anything more than that right now. And she says, no, that's fine. What I didn't know, what we hadn't been honest about, was that she was telling all of our friends and family that we're a couple, we're in love and we're getting married. And so, and I found this out only later,

on after the fact because when I finally did break up with her a week later I got a call from my boss telling me to go talk to NCIS, Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Yeah. Which, by the way, that's never a good call to get. No, it's not. Ever. It's not, but I've had them before. And you thought, you know, you figure something downrange, there was a shooter statement

or somebody sits. I was going to say, every time I've talked to NCIS. It was not about an event that I was actually involved with. They wanted information or had questions about somebody I may have known or something I might have knowledge of. Exactly. Exactly. Which that's what I assumed it was about, which I was quickly corrected as soon as I got there and they started asking me questions and setting up a, I know how to say it. but they started very, very politely, you know, trying to get to know me.

Whatever the small talk is. Did they tell you why you were there? Like did they open with, hey, this is what we want to talk to you? No, and it finally got to that point. After about 20 minutes, I said, look, guys, what are we talking? What's going on? Yeah. And then they came straight outright.

And they said, do you know a woman by the name of so-and-so? I said, yes, I do. and they said, well, she's claimed that you sexually assaulted her. And that was... The portal to hell opening? That was, yeah. That was the IED that my chest just... From that point on, I really didn't understand what they were saying.

All I know is that somebody, a woman, had accused me of harming her. And now I have two federal agents asking me questions about it. So I'm sure I'm sure it's not the first time or the last time that somebody sits there in shock in front of them. So they heard me my rights. In that initial meeting when they first sat down with you?

Yeah, yeah. And they asked me if I wanted to make any comments. Do I want to make any statements? And all I could think about was no, absolutely not. Don't say a damn word, get an attorney. And again, this is the height of Now this is 2013.

Oh, no, no, this is 2013. Because I got there at the end of 2012, about November, December. So now we're talking about March-April time frame of 2013. And so absolutely not. Something like that. I don't know what's going on right now. I can't think. I can't process this.

I'm going to need some time, and I'm certainly going to talk to an attorney about this. So they didn't charge you with anything right there. Did they? Or did they? Or did they? They read me my right. Okay, so they miranized you. I'm sorry, excuse me.

You're correct. Yeah, they mirandized me. They didn't charge me. Okay. Correct. So they had no intention of detaining you that day. They were just, uh, correct. I was your safe fact finding.

Right. Okay. Right. Which was the attitude that they had. Okay. Even though it comes, you know, I question that. But of course, I'm jaded. So I question a lot that the government anyway.

Yeah. Well, I think you might have reason to. So. But, uh, went back to work, told the, the boss what was going on. How did the meeting end? Like how did you close that meeting out? Them swabbing me.

They took my DNA swab. Okay. That was another of all the bad guys, of all the people that we had DNA swab that we swabbed. And now somebody was doing it to me. And I'm like, wow. And what did they leave it with? Like, hey, we'll get back to you. Yeah.

Or did they bad cop you? Like, hey, fucker, this isn't over. No, no. Not at all. No, quite the opposite. There was a, there was a, there was both a male and a female in the room and they were adamant about, you know, you have everybody right not to say anything, but if you say anything, you can use against you. No, they weren't being aggressive at all. Okay. So, and I have absolutely zero issue with them. They're doing their job. They're, and, and it's, you know, very necessary. Yeah. I think you keep creeping. I don't need to check this out. I think so. There you go.

That'll probably fix it. Thank you. It might not fix it. I don't know. There you go. Look at that. There you go. Full service here.

Yep. So I found that out and told the boss what was going on. I'm sure that was a fun conversation. I showed him. I immediately, of course, got all the text messages, copied those down that I had with her. How did the... accusation of sexual assault make its way to NCIS. She contacted them.

Really? Yeah. She contacted them. So I believe she went to, I believe she contacted base security. And then since they... Probably a mandatory reporting requirement for them. Yeah. And I don't think there's really anything that they could do.

Yeah. They said contact NCS, which is what she did. Okay. So it was directly from her. Okay. Yep. Yeah. The allegation was simply that the last time we were together wasn't consensual.

There was no question whether or not we'd been sexually intimate, physically active. But we had several times over the course of five weeks. But it was the last time that we were together. Okay. which happened to have been the day after I had that conversation with her saying that, you know, if this is not what you're comfortable with, then we can go our separate ways. Okay. So.

And how did it progress after that meeting? So you went and talked to your boss and then how did it unfold? I was told not to worry about it and that it would work. It would work out. I certainly got an attorney. And he told me the same thing. He said, I'm sorry that you have to go through this, but there's no evidence of a crime here. She made an allegation, and there has to be some sort of, you know, you're innocent until proven guilty.

Yeah. And that's where he's wrong, but we'll get to that too. But I was investigating. I went back to work as normal and just did my job. as best as I could for I'd say about 18 months 18 months from that initial interview Yeah it took about

Well it took about 12 months I have to backtrack Yeah I'd say it took about 12 months Till I was charged Okay Which they did end up coming in charging me Did you hear anything from them

At work in that 12 month time period from that first initial interview to that 12 month? Not at all. Okay. And then got called in the Ex-O's office one day at work. Blind? Jag was there, blind. And Jag was there.

X-O was there. CMC was there. And they charged me. They charged me. But I was allowed to stay. I wasn't. They didn't detain. you. I wasn't detained, no. And everybody else left. And I sat in front of the X-O, and he's the, he's the only

person at that command who said, you know, I don't, I don't find you guilty until you're proven guilty. As far as I'm concerned, you're innocent until proven guilty. And I said, well, I sure doesn't feel that way, but thanks. I appreciate that. Great man. Lots of respect for him. And then when we went away. It took about another six months until I was, until they gave me a court marshal. They, they did a, whatever it is to, it's a, it's an investigation, um, to see if court marshals are appropriate. Okay. The NCS did this or the commanded? No. Not the command. Now it's, now it's going above their head. Now it's, now it's part of, about the warcom. No, it's past the board come. Now it's part.

of West. Now it's part of the... So we're talking big, big Navy. Big Navy. Okay. Yeah. So they do a fact-finding mission to determine whether or not a court marshal is appropriate. And that's what they were doing in that six-month time period from when you were charged? Yes. Okay. And at the end of... I've got this paperwork. At the end of the fact-finding mission, the... It's a lieutenant. It's an 03 doing this. Okay. Doing the fact finding. Yeah. Okay. And here on both sides. And at the end of this fact finding of two or three days, I think it was, it's kind of, it's like a hearing, but it's not. And the bottom line on the report states that there's no evidence to support the allegations, but they still recommend court martial, which that's interesting. in a lot of wide range.

Yeah. Because what are you doing court-martialing somebody that you don't have evidence to support Yeah, you're taking punitive measures against someone. A crime. Without evidence of a crime. And the number of court-martials, once a service member does go to court-martial, their chances of being found guilty are extensive. Okay.

So... Better than the coin toss, safe to say? Absolutely. Okay. Which we found out very intimately because after, let's see, I was accused in March of 13, and I went to court martial October of 14. Okay. Yeah, it's about 18 months. To which time NCIS had torn my life up.

part. They'd gone back to the East Coast, of course, talked to all my neighbors, talked to all my ex-girlfriends, and found out, you know, to, which that, do do that. Absolutely. One hundred percent. That's called due diligence on, for their part. But, but there's no due diligence. They never investigated the accuser. Never, they knew where I was for the last 20 years. I was, at this point in time, I had almost 20 years in I think I had 18 years in and top secret clearance for 15 of those

which we get reinvestigated every five years and they knew what I was going on they knew who I was they had no idea who this woman is but she made the allegations and they ran with it

and this was the first glimmer of hope I had where all of my neighbors people I hadn't seen any years all my girlfriends girls that I had not had the greatest breakups with

only for the reason that they again I absolutely could have been more sensitive and tactful but they knew they were second place to work which I regret not that they were I mean that's the choice I made at the time

but I could have been more sensitive the job suffers last yeah and every single one of them said yeah he could be an asshole but that's not him he's he's not a rapist um which was amazing i got phone calls from girls i hadn't spoken with in 10 years and they said hey you know so-and-so's gave me a call what's this all about is everything okay um and then let me know if you need me to show up in court for you um pretty awesome yeah to a

girl that probably broke her heart or yeah could have had a better end could have had a better end And after all that time, after 18 months, went to court. The hearing that you're talking about, the two or three day hearing? Yes. Now that's a court martial. Oh, now it's a court. So they recommended a court martial proceeding after the two or three day hearing. Yes.

Now you're going to a court. Now I'm actually in a court martial. And the government never calls NCIS as a witness because there's nothing to testify. They have nothing against me. There's nothing to testify against. Um, so on the sole accusation and testimony of my accuser, I was found guilty of sexual assault and sentenced to three years in prison. And dishonorably discharged, my rank was dropped to E1 without pay. Um, so still give you the medical benefits because you're going to prison.

Yeah. Um, military prison. A military prison. Was it 11worth? No, it was, um, it was, um, it was, um, it was, um, um, it was, um, um, it was, um, um, It was Miramar. Okay. Under 10 years, sentence will go to Miramar.

Over 10 years, we'll go to the Levinworth. Okay. And now I could have been given 30. Oh, that was the maximum sentence? Maximum sentence 30 years in prison. And, yeah. At the court, I've never been anywhere near a court martial proceeding. Is it, are they talking to you or is it people reviewing the evidence and making a decision?

And that decision is final. The latter. They never spoke to me until sentencing. Were you physically present? I was present. Okay. Absolutely. And the evidence that we have, it was overwhelming.

And I was constantly reassured by attorneys and my command that nothing is going to come of it. They saw the evidence. They saw the text messages. Even text messages and her posturing and an attitude after the alleged. legit incidents, some of which was she invited me to her place for the next weekend, because we'd been bouncing back and forth, to which unfortunately I denied. I turned her down. I didn't deny. I turned her down because I wanted to go climbing, rock climbing with a buddy of mine, which I did. But who knows, had I gone and spent the weekend, the following weekend,

but you can't change it. Yeah. But she, I mean, she was sitting on my lap. We were making out, We had lunch together. We had a picnic in the park afterwards. Just everything. It was, I don't know. So I walked into the court. It was a judge alone. We didn't have a jury because I found out during the jury pick

that the command that was court marshaled me, also picks the jury. They also picked the judge. And the jury, one of the members of the jury that they had picked was the senior Sapper representative for that command, sexual assault prevention and reporting. So they had a chief on that within my jury that was the senior representative for the command against that. So we chose, judge alone and it was a female judge so I believe judge alone I believed uh if anybody was going to do the right thing I know what was going on here it was another woman so um but I didn't have a background on this on this judge either which I found out this this is so later they're they're not even judges they're not a judge they do a two-week course in the United States Navy they're their attorneys So they go through the JAG Corps. They go through the JAG Corps, and then you have a two-week course, and now you're a judge.

I don't know how it works in the civilian world, but that does sound like quite a short time period. Yeah. Well, just a simple fact that two federal judges that can issue out, or other judges, that can issue out a 30-year sentence, or even a three-year sentence on something like that, they don't have, their paycheck's not going to get. How do I say? They can abide by the law. They don't have to play with the political climate. This is an 06, 05 or 06.

And for people who are saying that's a relatively senior officer. A senior officer who would like to be a more senior officer and a next pay grade up. And especially if they are, especially if they're even so if they're going to their civilian side afterwards if they're going to get out their paychecks depend on what they say and they're going to have civilian side they're going to abide uh no on the military side is what i'm saying oh okay gotcha yeah so um but long i mean just just the court alone i could I mean, we could spend a day talking about that, but after three days of no evidence of the government, the prosecution, except for the accusation of the accuser, I was found guilty and ended up charged and sentenced.

So she gave me the minimum sentence, which was three years. I'm assuming that your attorneys presented the information. that you've talked about, the text messages, all of those things. Yeah, and much of it is fascinating because much of it was denied under certain military rules of evidence, MRE. Yeah. That sounds way better than meal ready to eat. But certain military rules of evidence, they were not allowed to be submitted.

So it almost felt as if that anything the prosecution offered the government, could just say, yeah, that we don't care. So found guilty, do they take you into custody right there? Right there. Yeah. Straight handcuffs, Miramar, in your dress uniform, I'm assuming? Yep. Okay.

So it took a while to try to process that. Definitely denial. The world just implodes in itself. Anything you possibly think of that you believe. now is fractured. Your perception of reality is now completely dismal. You have no idea. The only thing I could kept thinking was,

okay, they're going to figure it out. They fucked up, and they're going to get it right. It's just going to be maybe a couple days or maybe I'll be here for a week, whatever. And that led to a few weeks. It led to a few months, and then led to two and a half years. I got off six months for good behavior.

So, but, how did you spend your time while you were in there? I did the best to keep my mouth shut because I knew they want another reason to charge you further. If anything were to happen and they have any opportunity. Like behavior-based? Exactly.

then I could find myself in Leavenworth, which was an entirely different beast. Miramar, you're stripped of all your rights as a human being, and that in itself was definitely new. Going from being a protector, going from being of service to others, now you're the monster,

and you have absolutely no rights. and do what you're told or else. What would an average day in there look like? Being woken up by a blaring alarm that scares the shit out of you, wakes you up every morning at 5 o'clock. And we'd have to clean up the area,

clean themselves, clean up the common spaces, and then go do breakfast at some. point in time, then go, if you're lucky, then you go to your job spaces. Everybody had a job to do. And you work all afternoon. What was the job that had you doing? It fluctuated. It changed. I worked at getting something outside so I could just be outside and be away from other people. As much time as I could get by myself to breathe and just be alone, I did. And then sometimes that's that's all you can do is just breathe. In fact, I found myself from several occasions. That was, that's all I had left. There was a, there was a course, there was a program,

which I fully support the spirit behind it. And the, it's, I think it was about a week long. For anybody that was related to sex offenses had to go to this program. Again, totally support that. If you're a convicted criminal, they assume that you actually did that crime. And so it's part of a type of rehabilitation. And the first thing you do on day one during that is you have to sign a statement confessing your guilt of that crime. Really? I imagine something like, I haven't been to AA, but I imagine something like that like that way,

you have to admit that you're an alcoholic. Well, to this you have to admit to the crime that you committed. And it's paperwork, and it wouldn't sign it. And the person facilitating the course said you have to, and I said, I don't have to. I have to maintain residence within these walls until I'm released. I have to breathe in and out. I have to sleep whenever possible, if possible.

But I don't have to sign something that I'm not guilty. of and so they immediately remove me from the program, put me in solitary confinement for 30 days but what was worse was they cut me off cold turkey at some point in time during that for my medication that I'd been on for the brain injuries that I was diagnosed

several years prior or a couple years prior which were S&RIs serotonin or a release inhibitor it was a faxer. So I'm in a cell No Support network No means of contacting anyone And no means of

Self And without the medication Cold turkey that I'd been on for years And I definitely hit bottom Yeah I bet So that was At that point that was the worst part That was the next worst day of my life

How are they able to take those medications? medications. Well, we have, of course we can't have meds, you know, on us. But aren't they required to administer to you the medication that you've been prescribed? So they just chose not to. Right. Gotcha. Yeah. Which, uh, thankfully didn't last long. I was put back on medication and I can't recall how fast that happened. It could have been, I'm thinking anywhere from three to five days. Okay. Um, good friends of mine, uh, several people. who are doctors and therapists, one of which is on the board of parole

for California State Penitentiaries. She contacted. They all wrote letters to the commanding officer when they found out this was happening. And they said, what you're doing? It's highly illegal, and you're going to stop it. You're going to correct it. So they did.

I don't know. I'd like to believe that the CEO wasn't aware. Yeah. I mean, I can see him not being aware absolutely everything going on, but that doesn't absolve him of the responsibility. Correct. Yeah. Correct.

We know that. Yeah. Yeah. So you get back out of solitary, spend the rest of your time, I'm assuming in whatever, I don't think, call it general population, but. Yeah. Yeah. And just processing every day on how this happened, I gave myself permission not to have

to deal with it, not to, I guess not to process it, just to breathe, just to tolerate. thinking that somehow it's going to get fixed. And then after two and a half years, I was released. I was giving all the type of, I was dishonably discharged pending appeal. I was required to register as sex offender, which also removes, I mean, you're not allowed within 500 yards of schools and all these things

and just everything, Just a massive life-changing, life-altering issues. Yeah. Not to mention, I mean, now you're a convicted felon. Yeah, what were your plans when you got out? Yeah. Yeah. You can't get a job.

I couldn't get a job of driving Uber. I can't pass the background investigation, you know? Yeah. So I went from all those years in the SEAL teams conducting hundreds of operations. Now I can't get a job driving Uber. Saving Grace was my friends and my family, my neighbors. Same neighbors that prior to this in Coronado

that I had lived with, I lived on their property in a guest house. They were all there for me during the whole, during everything, during the trial. I told everybody as soon as I was accused what I was accused of because I'd been working with all their kids. I'd been mentoring youth there on the island, both men and female, young adults, teenagers, for quite some time. And when I was accused, of course,

I went to all the parents right away and told them what I was accused of and every single one of them said, what can we do to help? Of course, my response was, don't worry about it, nothing's going to come out of it. It's going to blow over. It's fine, yeah.

There's no credit, there's no valid, you know. Yeah. But so there's no way that any, anything could happen. And everybody was floored. But those were the same people that were there for me when I got out. And that's awesome. And, yeah, supported me. Otherwise, I wouldn't be homeless. I would have been, I was trying to figure out. Honestly, if I, it came to that because at one point in time, when I got the call that, uh, I got the call that my, my appeal had been denied. And that was it. That was my second appeal, and you're a convicted felon for the rest of your life,

you're a registered sex offender. I couldn't process that. Yeah, that's a big bite. Yeah. And so all I could think about how to, you know, where to go, what to do, I got to be honest with you. I thought, crossed my mind to do contract work and just go overseas and just be reckless. Yeah.

So I couldn't live here in the States and be a burden to my family and friends. I don't think you would have been, it would. and it probably been very easy to find contract work. Right. I mean, if it was a U.S.-based country with a background check, would have been the same issues. Right. Isn't that amazing?

Yeah. Yep. So, how long were you living that nightmare after getting out? Obviously, the time when you were in, two and a half in the prison. An additional two and a half years. I lived that until November of 2018. And then what was the crack or the ray of light, where you started, I mean, I can only imagine that you probably at that point were in a headspace of,

this is my fucking life. Yeah. I have to, it is what it is. We need to move on. Yeah. Yeah. That lasted two days until I got a phone call from my original attorney, my original government appointed attorney, a wonderful woman.

She was a lieutenant at the time. And she called me and said, did you get the information? I said, yeah, I heard a couple days ago. She goes, no, no, no. And the information about the whistleblower. Oh, you were talking about the two days ago you got the information that the appeal. That the appeal was denied. Yep.

Yeah. Gotcha. And she said, no, no, this is new. This is information about whistleblower. I said, I haven't got any other information. Turns out that the judge advocate general of the Navy, the deputy at the time, James Crawford, had a conversation with me. my convening authority.

My convening authority, I've tried to explain this as simple as possible before, but the convening authority is a two-star or above, or Admiral in our case, general with the Army or Air Force. And a two-star who oversees cases

and has the authority to determine whether or not these are legitimate or are being done lawfully. So like a higher level of scrutiny for oversight? It's supposed to be. Correct. That's the intent. That's the design.

That's the design. However, the way the process is, those people aren't themselves attorneys. So my convening authority was a fighter pilot. He was an F-14, a naval laborer, who had rose to the rank through that community to a two-star. So what in actuality happens is you have a, a JA, a judge advocate general, assigned to you, a staff, staff JAG assigned to you. Is it fair to call a JAG a military lawyer? Exactly, right.

Okay. So we're going to, we're talking about people who are in the military, but their occupation is an attorney slash lawyer. Correct. And that person was the rank of 05, seeking 06, which was a commander seeking captain. captain in the Navy. And the attempt to try to make a long story short, there was coercion, there was, there was foul play. There was, I don't even have to make it short.

There was downright fraud and manipulation. And they call it unlawful influence. It's illegal. It's... It's tampering. It's tampering. It's going outside of what the law says. And to quote the...

The whistleblower comments that were... He overheard a conversation between these gentlemen that should have never been had because it was about me. And the Deputy Judge Advocate General of the Navy doesn't have those conversations with a convening authority. It's outside. He shouldn't be having that. And he was put in pressure to make sure that I was found guilty and that I continued to stay guilty.

And we're going to boost numbers for Congress. Justice be damned. So it was, I'll paraphrase, correct me if I'm wrong, the pressure was coming because they wanted to appear to a higher authority as if they were cracking down on sexual assault at the height of the Me Too movement. Exactly. Right. Okay. Right. So what in actuality you're doing is creating more victims or victimhood of and this is why.

And you're undermining the legal structure of the military. Which is, as they've stated several times, the mortal enemy of the uniform code of military justice. So somebody overhears this. So somebody overhears this. And he, now this is junior officer himself. He's a lieutenant commander. He's got a wife and kids. He doesn't know what to do with it.

He's, he's, he's, he's held this for quite some time and he can't, he can't let it go. He can't sleep. He can't, he can't live with himself, not doing something. But the problem is with this type of information, what you do is you go to a department within the Navy as an attorney. You go and you bring it to them and that's a bunch of other attorneys and they're going to take a look at it and they're going to give you some guidance on it. And there's just there, as a whole, we think that this is morally and ethically.

correct course to take. And he did that and they said, we're not going to work. We're not going to have anything to do with this because it was about the deputy judge African general of the Navy. It was about their boss's boss. And- So they're fearing shit running downhill? 100%.

And it's just fascinating how it all plays out. But the long story, short, I'd love to get into detail in another time, maybe shorter. But there was what was called a Dubet hearing. We offered up, well, let me see this. When they got the information, as soon as I got the information, I said, let me contact my appellate attorneys. And I contacted them.

Now there's three of my appellate attorneys. It was a small team. And they said, what do we do with this information? They have no idea. It's unprecedented. They've never dealt with this information before, something like this. So I believe after sitting around the table for a while, they said, let's just call him. Let's call him and ask.

Because now he's retired. The convening. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Call the guy who was having the conversation. Call the guy who was having the conversation. The convening authority was a two-star admiral, Patrick Lorge. So they called him, Cole called him.

He said, sir, this is lieutenant so-and-so. I represent Senior Chief Barry, and we have this information in regards to his case. Would you like to comment on it? and he confirmed or he stated the affirmative on everything they said and they were blown away they said just want to clarify sir you understand that we represent senior chief Barry he said I know who you represent I know the questions you're asking me and the answer is yes they got back to me immediately and they said they're going to send him an affidavit for him to sign they said he sounded

like he'd been waiting for the phone call. Like he'd finally gotten the phone call he was waiting for. And they immediately sent over that affidavit. It was, I believe, 12 paragraphs. Yeah, you've ordered it to me. Yeah. And he signed it as is. Didn't change anything.

He only added to it. He added a final paragraph to it. And as you've read, it states that he was begging forgiveness. for his failure leadership and uh and and uh he was asking for his wrong to be righted that's what excuse me thank you yeah and i'm paraphrasing i can we could find it or post it but that's essentially what it says is he was i think he was asking uh whatever authority that was going to go in front of to correct the mistake that he had i mean the only way to put it is willingly made yeah yeah and that to when the future allow and

innocent man to remain innocent. Yeah. Yeah. So what impacted that affidavit have? What did your lawyers do with that? That went to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which was the equivalence of a grand jury. No, it's equivalent to Supreme Court, actually.

It's a five true judge panel. These are federal judges. And they oversaw the case. It's called, well, I'm sorry, the Dubay hearing was another fact finding. And the Dubay takes all the information, has witnesses, has testimonies, and they actually called, they subpoenaed the, both my convening authority, the judge advocate general of the Navy prior my case, and then the current judge advocate general, who is Patrick Lorge, as well as I. other witnesses. And from that hearing, they determined that there was reason to present it to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. That was a fascinating, and that was taken away from the Navy, and it was given there was a Air Force judge sitting on that who was about to retire.

This had to have felt like your first victory in a fucking string of just horrendous defeat. I felt like it broke the surface, finally. I've been drowning. I've been drowning. I've been doing pool comp for the last several years and I finally got a breath of fresh air. I mean, it was certainly no guarantee, but Jesus, I'd put that sucker in the wind column. It was, it was, yeah. So what happened after that? So I went to, eventually there was the CAF, the Court of Appeals to the Armed Forces. And I've never been more proud of a team than my team of Lur, a team of Lur, a team.

attorneys. Even after they tried to, the government tried, not only after manipulating my case, they tried to manipulate my judges for my appeals. And the beauty was on this, this captain in the Navy who's in charge of the defense on the West Coast, these men are all ladies who participate are all genius but um he got uh some uh he assigned reserve attorney reserve jag officers to the case so they didn't their their paycheck wasn't going to be affected by the deputy uh by the judge advocate general of the navy yeah he wasn't a threat to them yeah because they had a life outside they were they have a life outside two weekends a month and a week a year exactly and this is what they did for a living a month they're how the fuck it works yeah

Yeah, so they actually tried to give me an appellate attorney a lieutenant from Guam to be my appellant for this, but this captain, God bless him, said, no, that's not going to fly. And I was assigned a team of spectacular attorneys. And they were brutal. They went after the government and it truly reinstated my faith in humanity, which had been crushed for obvious reasons. But they're remarkable human beings. And as I said, both men and women just intelligent, driven. It was nice to see that my belief that the truth didn't matter, that facts were terrible defense, eventually was resolved. So how long did the calf take?

How long was that whole process before they ruled? It was a day. Wow. That was very quickly. They heard the case and they, well, now, truth be told, they had been researching it prior to that. I don't doubt that. Right. I'm sure they did their due diligence as well.

They did all other work. So it was just. But the actual proceeding was a day. So the proceeding was a day. Okay. Yeah. And what was their ruling? They had dismissed, they dismissed my case with prejudice, overturned and dismissed with prejudice.

and I was ordered all rights, pays, and privileges to be returned. And return back to active duty, correct? And return back to active duty. So what does that look like? You had been out, like you said, you were relying on friends and family, and then you show up back on base? Like, what does that even look like? I wouldn't wear a uniform.

I was issued. All my stuff's gone. Yeah, of course. Discharge. Years prior, I was, yeah. Master of arms came and cleared out my life. locker and took all my stuff all that stuff's gone oh man think about that everything i had was gone so i had nothing so i had to be issued uh everything and then um i was assigned to a um i was assigned to a unit

supply area that um yep was off the grid and uh because how much time left did you have to do to hit your 20 i'd already gone over oh okay uh i'd gone over my 20 at this point so now i'm at about 20 well I retired at 25. Okay. So what was the point of bringing you back on to active duty then? Did you want to? They had to process me out. Oh, that's right.

They had to, shit, that's right. Yeah. They had to change the old DD-214. I had to go through the very important checking out process. Yeah. And so they could tell me what to do for the rest of my life and how to, yeah. How did the, how did the, how did the military treat you? I'm assuming it probably took about six months.

Correct. Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, it took about six months. How did the military treat you during that time? The command that I was assigned to was spectacular. Good. I had known the X-O prior, and although he wasn't aware of what happened to me prior, he was ready to receive and support.

Yeah. And he told me that on day one as soon as I got there, He said, tell me what you need, and we'll make it happen. I would have said, I need you to leave me the fuck alone and let me get out of the military. I said that. Good. Not with those exact words, pussy. But he received.

Yeah. He received exactly. Just kidding. I would, well, actually knowing me, I probably would say exactly that and have a friend to six months. Yeah. But he wasn't the enemy. And that's one of the blessings I've learned from this experience. I've learned, I've gotten more.

more from this experience than they've taken from me. I'm very grateful. This is absolutely the worst thing that happened to me in my life. Yeah. But it's absolutely the greatest thing. So that ruling from the calf, does that, I mean, how do you get off the sex offender registry? I mean, does it take care of all of that stuff for you?

It does. Thank God. Yeah, I got a letter in the mail said you're no longer required to register. No longer convicted felon. Yeah, no longer convicted felon. It's just fascinating how your life changes like that overnight with a stroke of a pen or with a note. Yeah. Or how it couldn't have potentially.

It's just, yeah. So you've been out now for less than a year. Yeah. How does it feel? It's, of course, as anybody can say, it's quite an adjustment. I want to experience this freedom I've never had. And that was not only just never had because we were busy working, serving. You had years of your life taken from you.

But yeah. The serving ones voluntary. I mean, we surrender those years of our lives for what I would say is a higher calling or a purpose. Yeah. But you had some time that was legitimately stolen from you. Yeah. Which you can't get back. I mean, nothing you do is going to net you that time back.

Right. And the back pay, I'm sure, is awesome. But it still doesn't give you that time. Oh, no. I'm still working on that. Oh, they haven't paid you yet? Not all. That's fascinating. So check this out. You'll appreciate this. So I got my back pay at EA. I would have been the E9 had I not been convicted of erroneously and incarcerated. You would have been up for it. Multiple times. Right. So there's that, which in E9 retirement is much better than E8. But in addition to, they withheld all my specialty pays, which is a good chunk of change, especially over a five-year term. Yeah.

And those specialty pays for the listeners, we're talking about dive, demolition, jump, hazards, duty. That's quite a chunk of change. I'm talking six figures. They withheld those because I didn't maintain my qualifications during that period. Why weren't you diving when you were in prison? Why wasn't I not playing with C4? I know.

It's not their fault that you didn't maintain your quals, Keith. I got to stop. I know. I got to stop pointing fingers and everybody else. Fuck, man. Yeah, no shit you didn't maintain your qualls. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's a fight. I'm still going to fight, of course. Yeah. There's a lot of fight. And that's, I've got time. Well, yeah, the thing is now you're on your own time, as opposed to the government's time.

Yeah. When you look back, I mean, now the UCMJ, the military justice process, what are your thoughts on it now looking back and the aggregate? I won't refer to as the justice, uniform code of military justice. It's a legal system that's completely broken, and it needs to be overhauled.

And they keep, because of my case, and after Eddie's, they actually ordered an investigation into the Navy to overhaul it. And nobody's willing to be big boys. And they demand that of their juniors. They demand that of us. as operators, but they themselves aren't asking the real questions, and they're not willing to make the hardcore corrections, which need to happen.

So this is just going to continue. It makes the service better. Fortunately, I still see it, and it breaks my heart. This is not an isolated incident by any stretch of the imagination. This happens all the time, all the time. And so... You know what doesn't happen all the time? is the whistleblowers.

Because, I mean, that's it. Looking at this from my first time, taking a look at this, it's that whistleblower that was the straw that broke the metaphorical, you know,

camel's back. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. That's remarkable. The military would be better if they took a critical and objective eye

at all of their process and procedures, UCMJ and everything. I mean, why can't it continue to evolve and innovate like everything that they ask us to do. The same reason they're not maintaining standards. Go on any base right now and look at,

we're not talking junior illicit. We're talking senior illicit. We're talking to officers. We're talking commanding officers. None. That's not fair. There is a gross lack of maintaining military standards. And bearing physical appearances. You mean bearing standard? Holy shit. They've just written it off. Why? Because it's not fair. It's not fair. You know what else is in there? Military service. military service. You know what else isn't fair? There's standards for a reason. Yeah.

So because of that, that's what's encroaching and that's why it's, I truly believe, now me, just because of course it's, I was saturated in it for several years, but I truly believe it's a threat to national security because you're not going to have the type of young men coming into persons, but we're talking about special operations, to want to dedicate their lives to a service that we see it today. They don't have the trust in their leadership that they're going to back them up when bad things happen and bad things always happen. And so if you're not going to get killed by someone down range or something down range, then you're going to be accused of something when you get back and nobody's got your back

because everybody's going, the senior, not all, there's some outstanding and they're still outstanding. I work with some phenomenal officers in leadership. And they're still there, but boy, they're getting thin. And everybody, challenge me, please. I'm more than open for anybody to, that wants to debate that. Yeah, if you stop holding the standards in the justification that you use is that they're not fair and you are not looking at the roles and responsibilities of the armed services, you're out of your fucking mind. And that's what we're doing. Yeah. I would agree with you. I think that is a threat to national security. It's terrifying.

The fair is something that happens in Idaho, and there's fucking candy corn in a ferris wheel. And if you're looking for the fair, that's where you should go. If you're going to go into a profession of arms, which all four, if you count the Coast Guard, five branches of the U.S. military, it's exactly what they are. You can, you can throw fair in the garbage can. There's going to be an essence of fare. There's going to be a system in place that ensures the fairness is occurring or there should be, but don't think for a second that the real world gives two shits about your theory about fairness. That's it.

Yeah. And we used to be above it. I don't know what, I mean, now, now, generational shift. I guess it's a generational shift.

You and I haven't been in during the period of time. You know, I haven't, I haven't dealt with anybody since I was convicted in 14. Yeah. So that's quite a chunk of change since I had any sort of leadership or responsibilities to see what was going on. And like I said, I got out the last age of you in 13, so I'm timed out on my experience as well.

I have my concerns for sure, for sure. I'm terrified. And here's a thing. If you and I are terrified. Yeah. And we actually know the community that we're talking about. And the capabilities that we're supposed to have versus potentially, because again, I'm timed out. So I can't speak with any level of authority.

Yeah. versus the capabilities that potentially may be eroding. There's a lot of people who should be scared. Fuck, man. I don't even know, I mean, I don't even know what to say. My experience with the UCMJ and the legal system in the military was limited at best. But I'm hearing now more stories along the lines of yours than along the lines of fair and equitable treatment of service members. If anybody had told me this story 10 years ago,

I was said bullshit, there's no way that could happen. There's no, there's no grasp in my reality, or there wasn't, excuse me, in 2012, there was no grasp of my reality that this could possibly happen in this world. And that happened in this nation. And that is what took the longest time for me to deal with the process. That this exactly happened, and it's not isolated. and it happens all the time. And you are guilty until proven innocent

in a military court of law. Yeah. And whatever the climate is, whatever the political, whoever they are looking to appease, they're going to do exactly that. Or wherever they're feeling pressure from. Or wherever they're feeling pressure from.

Because, I mean, look at the, what, there's no checks and balances. There's no, the oversight, the people that are supposed to have the oversight, those are the people committing the crimes. The trust, just like, and you're assumed this is what I, this is the hard that I really had to choke down is they could choose, they could choose anybody. There were several cases that really, really caused me hesitation, sleepless nights, aside from my own.

Mine weren't the worst. Mine wasn't the worst I've heard of. But that you have a young man and the majority of us in the military. are low to middle income family come from families of lower income and um the government says you just committed a heinous crime and you're going to go to prison for 30 years or you uh or you can sign this um this um plea bargain and do five and get out worth three whatever it is yeah but get out to what and get out to what but the kid who is from middle of the kid who is from middle America? I mean, I sold everything and I borrowed from my family and friends for my defense

for no reason for not because that didn't, none of that mattered in the out because it had already been, it was by design. The outcome was already predetermined. And there was no way I was going to be found not guilty. And but the majority I would challenge service members. Don't have access to that? I spent $98,500 on defense fees. It was $30,000 for my initial defense. And there was $50,000 for my appellate defense.

And then some change for some other attorneys who helped along the way. Yeah. you know and their service member he or she are going to with the pressure of the command and um and c i s and you know you're going to go to prison for the rest of your life or you just do a few years and then get out i've seen that my point being i've seen that several times yeah and it it breaks my heart the only reason i didn't do it it was very easy for me to tell them you know go fuck yourself because i knew exactly what had happened i knew the truth but i also had nearly 20 years of life experience.

Yeah, you were longer in the tooth. Yeah, I was definitely, with the exception of one person, I was the oldest guy at Miramar. I was the old guy. Most of them were kids. Some needed to be there. Some of them absolutely needed to be there. And that was very hard for me too, because every day I wanted to unleash on them.

Yeah. Because they were the reason that I was accused of being that type of person. and just choking that down every day. But then there's plenty. I would say conservatively 30% of the guys that were there. Absolutely. Fuck, man. No reason.

No, no reason. Other than political pressure, other than... Yeah. How do you correct that? How does that get corrected? This? Yeah, civilians. I would hope that the military would be able to please themselves on the station, but I don't think they will.

Absolutely not. I don't think they're capable of doing it. Absolutely not. No. You know as well as I do. Once you make staff, you're a politician. You're a politician. And those are the only people that can make any change.

So you're going to abide by Mommy and Daddy, what Mommy and Daddy tell you to do. Or you're not going to get that next rank, that next star, that big paycheck, that huge, huge. pension when you go to the beltway and then get all that contract work on the beltway as well fuck man what are you enjoying doing now in life oh my goodness everything everything everything's great you know yeah what do your plans going for like what's the next two years look like for you man you're saying you're all about that van life now well i bought a van to get off the grid um i just need some peace and quiet for a little bit i'm sure that's no surprise um um But I need to get out in the big open.

You know, you sleep in the van. You don't live in the van. You sleep or you live outdoors. You get out into nature and that's very healing. It's a mobile fun machine. Yeah. Park that thing, sleep it. And like you said, get out and great outdoors.

That's it. Yeah. So experience that freedom in the big open sky. And when you do it, I mean, I'm not the first, and I won't be the last, but. Regenations now that, you know, guys have come back. from wars or had trials and tribulations and and sought hiking across the appellations or or um or just and i'm not going to this is this is the this is the um interim this was the other option vice buying that cabin out in the middle of nowhere as we discussed earlier because that's that's not

healthy so that's like some legitimate isolation in place i think that's one of the most dangerous that's dangerous can do that's dangerous that's dangerous that's dangerous that's Yeah, what you're talking about is go out and explore. This country is amazing. Absolutely. Geography, topography, from a societal perspective. I mean, the van life seems pretty damn appealing to me too. Well, it also affords me that while doing that, I want to still reach out to others.

Everybody else suffers. I get it. And that's been a big part of my life for quite a while. But it doesn't have to be. And right now, especially right now, with the way things are. There's a lot of people suffering. Pain is part of life. You're going to have pain, but you don't have to suffer.

And you certainly don't have to suffer alone. So when you're with people, as I'm sure you can attest to you with like-minded people, maybe they've been there as well. Maybe they've been something. It doesn't have to be the exact same thing. In fact, it's quite often not trauma's trauma. and if you're available to others to offer up assistance to show them some sort of light out of the darkness, then what's a better job than that?

I'll take that any day. What a great opportunity. So I think that's what I'll be doing for a while. Well, to be honest, I can't think of a fucking better ending than that. we've been at it for almost three hours as it is anyway drive that van up here again sometime let's sit down again and have a chat let a few months go by get some miles underneath the van man I'm not going to be a strain I love Montana this place is fantastic

who doesn't we're not supposed to say that I was going to say that when people like shut the fuck up about Montana that's how I think West Virginia must be great too because they just I'm sure it is and I think it's people who live in West Virginia that talks shit about it. The people who talk the most shit about Montana are those that live inside of the border of Montana. Absolutely. They're like, oh, the winter's here are terrible. It's 50 below zero for 75 straight days. You don't want to go. I just saw an amazing video, a guy drinking a beer talking about how all the deer in Montana have HIV. I'll definitely bite you. Yes. And the trees have COVID. Of course they do. But yeah, man, let's circle the wagons

again in the near future after you get some miles and some wide open space underneath those tires. Thanks, brother. Yeah, thanks for coming out, man. Appreciate it. Thank you.