Danny Jones Podcast - #75 - Predator Drone Operator | Brandon Bryant

Episode Date: February 4, 2021

Brandon Bryant is a former MQ-1B Predator Sensor operator for the United States Airforce. He flew armed predator drones in Iraq, Afghanistan, & Yemen. He has since come forward with information from inside the U.S. military’s secret drone program specifically on the issues of civilian 'collateral damage' and the struggles of drone pilots with substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder. The daily work of tracking and and taking shots as an operator took a psychological toll on Bryant & Since he left, he’s also been struggling with the pressures of going public as a whistleblower.  The drone program remains highly under wraps, even as the military continues to carry out targeted strikes around the world. Begun during the George W. Bush administration but massively expanded and normalized under Barack Obama, air wars waged by drone and conventional aircraft now continue in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're going to start posting each podcast episode that you see on YouTube a week earlier on Patreon. So feel free to join for early access to all episodes. Plus, we're going to start doing bonus podcast episodes every week. So if you want to join Patreon, it's patreon.com slash concrete videos. Next week's episode is already posted there. So feel free to go check it out. Hello, world. On this episode of the Concrete Podcast, we talk.

to Brandon Bryant. Brandon is a former MQ1 Bravo predator sensor operator for the U.S. Air Force, who flew armed predator drones over Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. He has since come forward with information from inside the U.S. military secret drone program, specifically on the issues of civilian deaths or collateral damage, as well as the struggles of drone pilots with substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder. The daily work of tracking and killing people as an operator took a psychological toll on Brandon, and since he left, he's been struggling with the pressures of going public as a whistleblower. The drone program still remains highly under wraps, even as the military continues to carry out targeted killing campaigns around the world.

Begun by the George W. Bush administration, but massively expanded and normalized under Barack Obama, air wars waged by drone and conventional aircraft now continue in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Without further ado, please welcome Brandon Brown. Thanks again for doing this, man. Super stoked to talk to you. Yeah, no worries. I'm honored that you've chosen my story to be interested in. When I first saw your story online, I never could have imagined what it would be like actually controlling some of these predator drones that you flew. So for people out there who don't actually know your story, let's give you like sort of an introduction for this podcast. Right. So you flew, you operated predator drones for the U.S. Air Force from 2006 to 2011, right?

Correct. Okay. And now you're essentially a whistleblower on the program. Correct. Because you, let me put it this way. Let me just ask you this. What is the problem with the United States using drones for warfare? I'll just reference Sun Su in the Art of War.

He says that protracted warfare is not beneficial to the state. And he says that our warfare is evil inherently, but if you have to do it, here's how you do it to win. And we're using drones not to win, but to bring devastation and control over an area. So in the art of war, in that philosophy, what we're doing with drones, is inherently evil because we're not using them to finish the war and win if we are well we're not even in a war we're overseas contingency that's what they call it my own personal reasons for doing it is that we are indiscriminately killing human beings and celebrating it and then pretty much destroying whatever moral fabric or moral law that we are supposedly fighting for

I don't think a lot of people understand that drone strikes primarily kill civilians. Is that right? It's not like they go like, oh, this guy's walking his dog. We're going to fucking kill him. No, it's not inherently that it's more like their. But bystanding civilians, just as like a consequence of killing one person who lives in a building. They're going to kill. They call it collateral damage.

And it's a term that they use to marginalize an individual human's life and just make them a tally mark. I saw a lot of really bad crap while I was in. And I've only really talked about my own experiences and my own sin and shame. but they would really like if there was probably 15 people at a wedding and they were going to they were there to strike two the 15 people were collateral damage worth getting those two people so an example would be if some rambo character whose job was to go overseas and go take out a terrorist target and this guy is just going through an entire apartment building with his with his automatic weapons just slaying every every innocent bystander all the women and children on his way up to the top floor to find the terrorist just

murdering dozens of people in this building before he actually gets the target this guy would be a war criminal this guy would be in a prison somewhere it's same like president trump just or former president trump um pardoned for black water dudes for doing that right they went into they were basically in downtown bagdad and were murdering people on the street and that is essentially what drones do just in an unpersonal type of way yeah it's a it's a weird thing where if you just take us out of it if you remove us from it it's this weird thing where it's like now it's this bridge that we're able to cross In a sense, it's, you know, there's, I talk a lot about warrior culture and warrior philosophy

because I grew up in a family of wrestlers, right? So like from the moment that I could pretty much walk, I was on or around the wrestling. And in wrestling, you face your opponent, you know, you work hard, you train, you understand your body and how you move and maybe study the enemy's movements. so that you can beat them. With drones, there's no facing your enemy. There's just, you're basically taking people who are incapable of operating on that level of physicality

and giving them the ability to glorify war in a way that makes them feel like they're participating. I kind of feel like it's a lot like the Q&ONON conspiracy crap where people want to feel involved and like they're doing, something for the greater good or they're part of a movement, but really all it is is just indiscriminate violence. Now, the argument against this would be, we're doing this to keep people safe here in America, right? Right. Our boots off the ground. That's another one.

What do you say to that argument? I say that you, we, we, we, devalue the people that are part of the warrior class that dedicate themselves to sacrificing their life for a noble cause, right? In the spiritual world of the warrior, they would talk about how even if you are a noble and good warrior and you're fighting an in noble cause, what you're doing is a sin. And so we're taking people who, um, Let's compare drones to a sniper, right? A sniper's in country. They're sitting there with their partner.

They're monitoring. They're sometimes sitting laying down for days at a time without moving, right? It takes a whole bunch of concentration and skill. Like years of training. Well, you're putting that same kind of power within the drone operators, but you're taking young men and women out of high school and giving them the power without the training and glorifying something that doesn't deserve to be glorified.

Now, isn't another thing that, like, we just, we tell people going to war, going off to fight wars, that they're fighting for a noble cause. They're fighting for freedom. But in these regime change wars, in these regime change wars and in the history of, of our wars. They have always been for the acquisition of something,

for the acquisition of oil or whatever it might be. But we tell these people, we tell our military, our warriors, they believe that they're fighting for a noble cause. They believe that they're fighting for freedom or for peace. Have you ever read Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman's on war and on killing? No.

So he's got two books on war and on killing. And on killing is probably my favorite of the two because it talks about the psychological cost of killing in warfare. And throughout history, the idea of fighting for a noble cause is given to every group of soldiers that fight, even though we can see through our own lens now that usually that most people,

People die in very painful way. People cry out for their mothers. What he says on killing is that we have to glorify it. A soldier has to glorify and say what he's doing is good in order for him to get past the barriers that prevent him from actually taking the steps necessary. The term that is used is drinking from the waters of the river Lefe, which is in Greek mythology, when you're dead, you have to cross the river Lethe and it erases all the memories from your past so that you can be reborn again. And Mars or Ares, the god of war, gives a cup of the river of Lethe to each of the warriors that fight. You know, so we forget the lessons of history and our society or we're not even taught it.

And so we must, so, you know, we have to, soldiers see their friends and brothers and people die and they have to say that there's a reason for it. People who lose family in the wartime, they have to say, well, my son or my brother, sister, mother, father, sacrifice their life for a noble cause. And it makes them feel better about the loss, the death. Right. And without that aspect of it, people would be in despair and people would be up in arms. And righteously, they should be up in arms because if we look at the last 20 years, what have we accomplished at all with our conflicts over in the Middle East and Africa? We've just destabilized the world even more for what purpose.

They want to get rid of Iran because of some sort of. control over monetary value of something, it's complete greed. You know, we're not fighting for a noble cause. We're not fighting an enemy. You know, there was a guy who was trained by the CIA who flew plane, who got men to fly planes into, you know, places in the United States. It wasn't a group of people who, an entire culture, it wasn't a specific country. it was a person trained by the United States military, United States, organizations and institutions that eventually turned on the United States

and started this whole conflict. You know, if we look at, like, what happened right before 9-11? The day before 9-11 happened, I think it was Colin Powell was getting on MSNBC and talking about how there's trillions of dollars that are unaccounted for at the Pentagon and all of a sudden 9-11 happened. If we look at Halliburton and Cheney,

they've made trillions of dollars off this war, and we see that our country is in severe debt. You know, our people are in poverty. It's hard to get health care. It's hard to get food. It's hard to get shelter. So we've really just destroyed our entire culture for an emotional reason rather than a logical reason,

or even a spiritual reason. Like, when I first joined the military, I didn't do so to kill. I joined under the intelligence program. I did so because I was going to get four to six years, get my education and get out. I didn't intend to join the drone program. I just scored high enough that they just shoved me into it.

But when I was joining the military, I asked my family where, they watched Fox News. they were they're the typical republican christians that don't even think for themselves but uh they were saying that we need to go there we need to destroy the enemies of god and all that type of stuff but when i actually joined they were like oh you're going to go overseas and get killed like we don't want you to do that so they were willing to send other people to die but when it came to a personal sacrifice that ideal was put in jeopardy and then once i actually went to the experienced and came out and started talking to my family, I was wrong because I was no longer

in agreement with their ideology. They still think that we need to be over there. And unfortunately, the Christians that I know still think that we need to be over there killing Muslims because they're the enemies of God. We're not over there for anything else. You know, well, where's the oil? Where's the resources coming back here? Where's, you know, where's the democracy that we went to go stabilize? You know, even if we look at the the Kurds who Saddam Hussein was genociding, burying in mass graves. We went over there and as soon as they're free, they're going up in north into Turkey, north of Missoula.

And then we're using our own drones to help kill them with the Turkish military. So we betrayed our own allies, basically our only allies over there. And it's what's it for? It's for greed. There's no no nobility. One of the biggest problems is it's really hard for anyone to have a deep, nuanced understanding of all these real issues, right? How did you initially get involved in the whole drone program in the first place? So, like I said, I joined to be an Intel operator.

And they told me that I'd be working with people like James Bond and shit. and played on my 19-year-old ego and sense of adventure. But when I got through Intel School, I was in the top 10 percentile of my class. And so they chose me. Really, they chose, I was the first, my class was the first class to be shoved into this program. And then basically every class after me for a year

were shoved into the drone program, to the point where they had too many. people in it. And so it was more an act of finding bodies to put into it than anything else. And I even tried to get out. Like when I went, when I showed up to the Creech Air Force Base, they told us that our job was to kill people and break things. And I even went to my commander and was like, I didn't sign up to do this.

And he was like, are you a fucking pussy? Are you going to do their job? not swear in order to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic? Foreign and domestic. And I was like, yeah, and he's like, well, then get out there and do your fucking job. You know? And I was just an airman

first class. I was the bottom of the totem pole. And this guy was a lieutenant colonel. Who the fuck am I to talk against this guy? Right? But if I was, if I had listened to my heart and if I had listened to the teachings of my grandfather, I would have been

like, yeah, fuck you. I'm not going to do this. but that's that's not necessarily the case and when i look at back at my um time in the drones i i scored a 92 on my as bad which is the military aptitude test most of the people that i was with scored less than a 50 so the minimum the minimum to be in the drone program was a 45 on the test and so really what they wanted was bodies you know they were ramping up the program they needed people to sit in the seat to do the job. When I was in the 15th reconnaissance squadron, I was the first Mac qualified drone operator, and Mac is multi-aircraft control, where basically a drone operator flies the aircraft

himself with just the assistance of a pilot. And there were plenty of people that were in my squadron that could not do that job because they did not have the aptitude to monitor and take care of a plane by themselves. And what kind of things were on this aptitude test? Like what qualities were they testing you for? It's basically like reading comprehension, mechanical comprehension, linguistic comprehension. There's four categories. I can't remember the fourth category.

Is it true that they, they, they. they specifically look for gamers, like people who are professional video game players? Maybe now, but that wasn't the case. When... Oh, okay.

Bye. When there was a lot of us that played video games when we were in the military, especially World of Warcraft. There was a whole bunch of us that played that together. And you can definitely tell that there is a skill

set that is directly involved with this program. You know, the hand-eye coordination, the ability to instantly recognize whatever button presses that you need to do in order to make the action happen. It's not really that complicated. Nothing near as complicated is playing World Warcraft. But there was definitely a skill set. If you even just look at the stick control, It was like if you were able to play Microsoft flight simulator with a joystick, you were able to do this. And there were a lot of people that, you know, their stick control was really horrible, where they took this, the control stick, and they would be like, bloop, boop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. Like, so the camera would go, dot, uh, uh, uh, like, so there was no, the camera didn't have the smooth controls on it, right?

Right. And you could definitely tell the difference between someone who was put in the program and without any real skill versus someone who practiced that skill a long time. Over in Europe, they are recruiting gamers for their own programs, like in Norway and England in the UK. They are going to video game conferences, and I have had video feed videos given to me and people who go to these conferences talk to me about this type of stuff and tell me what is going on. I've not done that myself. So maybe I probably should at some point. If you go over to there are these weapons conventions, military technology, conventions that happen, and they happen a lot over in Europe.

And one of the guys that goes over there talks to these dudes and what they're recruiting and how they're saying, they'll talk to little kids. They'll talk to little kids and be like, oh, do you play call a duty? Even in the United States, like, the recruiters will show up. There's been a couple times in my own hometown where they'll show up with a semi-truck. and it'll have like United States military on the back of it and they'll be and inside will be seats for kids to play video games like Call of Duty and they'll be like if you come talk to us for 15 minutes we'll let you play Call of Duty for 30 right so they'll use those things to to recruit and they'll say things like you know do you really do you want to be a real

Superman do you want to be a real hero do you want to be you know all those types of propaganda nonsense that kids would be like, yeah, I want to be a hero, I want to do something good, I want to fight for glory, I want this, or they'll even go to gang, they'll even recruit gang members who are like, you know, who want the training, who want the experience just so that they can go back into the game. For the most part, the people that I was with at the beginning were not that intelligent and they were just bodies put in the seat because they just needed someone to man the camera. They hadn't developed the technology to do it automatically with artificial intelligence. So when you first got into the program, what was your job? Like what kind of,

what sort of title did they give you? And what specifically were you doing with the drones? Were you flying them? Were you, were you shooting the missiles? Like, what exactly were you doing? So I was a MQ1 Bravo Predator sensor operator. And that is just a glorified camera. man. You know, I point the camera at the target. The pilot will tell me to point the laser, which guides the missile to impact, and the pilot will pull the trigger so that the missile comes off the rail. But I'm the one that guides the missile to target. About a month after I finished training, I was flying planes on my own. I flew planes on my own for about eight months. How long?

Eight months. and that means with minimal pilot input. So there's an officer pilot and an enlisted sensor operator, and I was the enlisted due. The reason why they have a pilot in the other seat is because pilots are J-TAC qualified. So they're qualified to drop ordinance with the approval of a joint tactical air controller

on the ground who watches our video feed and confirms that that's what they want us to do. And the JTAC is the guy who he basically knows what every single ordinance does in its impact radius, percent of incapacitation, which is like in order for us to fire within with friendlies on the ground, there must be a 0.1 percent of incapacitation, which for the predator missile is 105. what does that mean that means that there's 0.1% of loss of friendly life at 105 meters of impact loss of friendly life yeah meaning u.s troops yes so like if there were troops in the area like a j tech on the ground with a convoy and the j tech even if we knew that they were within range of incapacitation if the J-TAC says we are 106 meters away right he is saying that we are one meter away

from a 0.1% incapacitation even if they're like 50 meters from it sometimes the J-TAC will be like yeah fire a missile shoot these guys we are 106 meters away right and the official report will say that even though they're probably less than It's like the, you know, I shot multiple times and the first time I killed three, the second time I killed two. And the second, everyone always brings up the second one because the child ran into the field of you, right? Well, in the official report, they put that it was a dog, right? Because that's essentially what they do. They overwrite what actually happened with their version of events.

So if civilians are in the way, you know, they'll call it collateral damage and they might not even give the correct numbers. The only reason that people get the correct numbers is because we have cell phones on the ground now. People can be like, we lost this many people and posted to social media. In 2014, I think there was an app on the Apple store that every time a drone strike happened, it would mark it on a map. and it would give you local phone numbers to call if there were people in the area. And that was taken down. So, you know, as technology increases for the least of us, the reporting gets more accurate, right? And so these institutions can't falsely report things like, yeah, we killed two high-valued individuals with minimal collateral damage.

Well, no, they can say like there were hundreds of people that were killed for you to get just these two individuals, right? Right. And it can be personally reported by civilians on the ground. Now, that, the, uh, the, the shot that you said that you took where there was a dog reported. Can you, I guess can you walk me through, like the procedure of taking what you call a shot? Yeah. So, um, or that or that shot in particular. Um, I'll actually do the first one because that one was, is one that's clear in my mind,

you know, what the procedure was. And it's the proceeds, he's trained these procedures. There's a checklist that you have to run. There's, uh, we have a safety observer who sits there and make sure that we run the checklist and everything's within regulations and according to the rules of engagement and law of conflict. Um, so in the first, one, I showed up to work and we have something called monthly currencies where like you have to take a shot once a month or run through the checklist to pretend that you're taking a shot and all sorts of stuff. Well, my currency had ran out and they were like, all right, we're going to put you in the seat and make you do a real shot. And I show up, get in the seat and we run through

the checklist procedures. But what happened? and this one was probably more interesting because they were, there was a convoy that was in an engagement with Taliban troops, and they were on firing from the top of the hill underneath this tree. And they had, uh, the person that was in the seat before me had set everything up to take the shot. So I get in the seat after this guy and, uh, we're getting ready to take the shot and we get a call from the JTAC that says that, the missile impact would have less of a result than what we want from the Hellfire missile missile.

So we're going to have the F-16s that are in the area drop a GBU, a ground guided bomb, which would have a bigger impact. And so as we're monitoring this conflict going down, the F-16 gets in contact with us and says, we found three people 10 clicks to the south by southwest put your eyes on these locations this location so we move our we move our video feed to this location and we see these three individuals walking down the road and they can definitely hear this fight going on like there's bombs exploding guns going off grenades all sorts of stuff and they look terrified like they look like they're you know, they're walking. It's probably, see, it was probably really early in the morning,

maybe like five o'clock, six o'clock in the morning. So it's dark? Yeah. And so these, there were three individuals. Two of them were walking and talking together and you could see their hand movements and all these types of things. And, uh, um, the third person in the back was lagging behind and he was, he could probably hear the F, 16's in the area. He was probably listening. And so the, as soon as we put eyes on these guys, the screener, who is the intelligence dude, who was my job originally. That was the job I trained for, is watching this video feed and confirming what's on the video feed. And he says, we got three individuals with weapons. And the JTAC says, confirmed weapons, you are cleared hot. And cleared hot means

you are cleared to engage these individuals at your discretion. And so the pilot gives a two-minute call saying that we'll be ready in two minutes to pull the trigger. We run through the checklist. We power up the missile. We point the laser. And the J-TAC says, point the laser between the feet of the individuals in the front, because we'd rather get two than three. So point the laser. And if I'm going to give a little background information of my emotional state at this time. So my very first mission, I saw a convoy hit an ID. And I heard there's cries over the radio for medical help. And basically all we could do was sit there and watch them.

So I had this, I had this, you know, programmed hate into me. You know, I watched our own guys die. People in our own team die. I want to fucking kill these guys. I want them to die. I want them to suffer the consequences for hurting us. And there's a difference between. killing out of survival and killing out of conflict and killing out of hate because of an ideology.

And when we, when I, I was so laser focused on these guys and I wasn't really actually sure if I was able to do it, even though I felt all this, this emotional turmoil inside of me. When the missile finally impacted and hit, you know, it was, the, the missile comes off the rail and 1.5 seconds. 1.3 seconds after it comes off the rail, it hits the sound barrier. So it's sonic booms. But because the missile takes so long to get to target, the kinetic energy of the missile slows down that the sonic boom hits the target about four to six seconds before impact. So the guy that was behind everyone else heard the sonic boom and runs towards the other two and we end up getting all three, right? So the first two people were in pieces. I mean, you could see the body parts

everywhere. And the third guy had his leg, one of his right leg cut off right above the knee, and I watched him bleed out. And that was, you know, when you hurt some, I've never hurt. Before that, I never hurt him, even though I was a wrestler. I never, I got into a couple of fights in high school, but I never hurt someone, right? I just defended myself. This didn't feel like defending myself. This felt like straight up murder. Like, I watched the guy, the guy bled out.

He was rolling around on the ground. I can only just imagine what he was thinking, right? Like, he knew he was dying. Like, you can tell, he was, like, rolling on the ground, holding his leg. and the people on the watching our video feed were like keep eyes on we just want to see if anyone comes up and picks up the body parts and so i kept my camera on it and we watched this guy in infrared turn from a hot blob with his blood squirting out of his leg go pooling underneath him and we watched them cool down enough so that they became no different from the ground that they

died on and it was a January. So actually, what's the date today is? 20. Okay, so six days will be my 15th year anniversary, 16 year, 14 year anniversary from when. No, 15 years, holy shit, 2021. Yeah, so it'll be 15 years since my first half. fire missile shop. Jesus.

And I remember it as clear as if it happened yesterday. No. And after, like, you know, you never really think that you can do it until it happens. And after it happened, I was devastated. Like, I was in, I was in shock. Like, I felt like I just did something that I had no right to do. You know, I took another human being's life in such a gross way. Like they had no way to fight back.

They had no way to, to, I didn't look them in the eye. I didn't know who they were. I didn't see their face. We just ended their life. And I watched a guy slowly drain his life out. And afterwards, I left. Like, I laughed when people were celebrating. In my squadron, people were like high-fiving themselves as if they're like, yeah, we're

winning the war on terror. Yeah, high-five. Yeah, congratulations. But I felt nothing but sickness in, you. And I left. And as I was driving, I drove off base and I called my mother and I cried to her. And I, as a young man, like, I cried. And I was like, I can't believe I did this.

I can't believe that I did it. I felt so sick. And I called her after every shot to tell her this. And the advice that she gave me was, you know, I know that it's a horrible thing, but you're being there. and feeling bad about it is a good thing because it means that you'll make sure that the wrong people don't need to die.

The wrong people aren't going to be killed. But as I look back on, as I reflect on my time in the military, I'm not sure if there was a right person. You know, we caused this whole mess. Like, even there was one time I was in what they called the Predator Operations Center, which is similar to what they show on

in movies and stuff where there's, all these video screens in this command center with all these feeds going on. And there was one time in downtown Baghdad that I watched a dude pull out two little girls from the back of his vehicle, the trunk, and execute them in the middle of the street and drive off. And he did it because he was like, the U.S. can't touch me. Like, no one can touch me. And he did it as a statement. in Afghanistan, I watched a guy, a mayor, a village elder who let his village be kidnapped by known members of the Taliban and executed as well.

And even these guys, like, you know, the guy was executed for not cooperating with them and for cooperating with the enemy, right? We were the enemy. And so even when I look at them, like, I feel like that's our fault. You know, we caused this conflict. We caused this strike. We weren't going over there to bring peace. We were going over there to bring a sword, right? And we were doing this in such an unhealthy way.

And no matter what I look back at, I don't feel like we were noble. No, we didn't do it good and right. And in my second shot, when the child ran into the field of view, like I remember my supervisor. So it was called out on screen that a dog, that was a dog that was on the field of you. I asked my pie. How did that whole second shot start? Like, like, how did that, that whole mission or that, that whole operation specifically begin?

So usually, you know, things, when, when the shots happen, it's not like an immediate thing. Usually there's a buildup. they had been following two high-valued individuals, and they had thought that they were in this farmhouse, and they had been monitoring traffic in and out of this farmhouse, and eventually they thought that, well, the two guys that were looking for are in there. So we're just going to take the shot. And that decision had been made before I sat in the seat.

And so when I had been sitting, when I had come to sit in the seat, I didn't know about that decision, right? So I had just been, you know, it'd been, the guy before me had been watching this for eight hours. The guy before him had been watching it for eight hours and then watched the aircraft to this mission. And I had just thought, well, I'm just going to be the guy that just watched this mission. I thought that usually they're going to act, when they say that they're going to act in a place, they're going to, they're going to send a group of Rangers in there to capture these dudes and figure out what they're doing. And so when they finally made the decision to shoot, it was more like, well, we don't want to send anyone in there.

We're just going to shoot these guys. And while I had, you know, I had been feeling quite loathsome of myself, I thought that, you know, I'm in this position. I might as well follow through. and so it was an L-shaped building and everything was going down and you know it was typical run the checklist point the we estimate that they're probably in this area of the building point your crossers at this corner turn on the laser and that was it right and I'm sitting there just mindless And I had a lot of drama going on with my peers. Like my peers were really dumb and stuck in high school. So like I said before, one of the problems is there's no discipline in the drone program is because they take a lot of high school kids

who are still stuck in high school, the drama. How old were you at the time? 19. Actually, I was 20. Okay, just I turned 20 in November before that. And my second shot happened right, either right, before right after Valentine's Day. I kind of get confused, but it was at that point in time. And this girl that I was, I had dated in the squadron. If I were to give any advice to people in the

military, never date anyone in your squadron. It just causes a whole bunch of problems. And this girl was causing problems for me. She was, I broke up with her and she wanted to sleep around and she was saying things, really nasty things about me. I tried to apologize to her. I tried to make right with her. My grandfather had just been, he's like, just be kind to her. And she just caused more and more drama. And so I was feeling all that as well. And when the, so we're sitting there on this building and they give us the order to shoot. And again, you know, these people over there, they hear the sonic boom, the missile impact. They, they know what's going on. So I think that this person who the child who ran in the building was told that if you ever hear something like this run

into shelter right and that was probably the closest shelter building that they have right and if it was early in the morning like most of the shots happened that person was probably taking care of their animals because there was a there was a little barn that had a couple of sheep and goats or whatever in it and maybe a few cows and this person could have been taking care of doing the early morning chores and here's this this sonic boom go off and run to the building um so you saw this this small person or child run into the building before after you pulled the trigger yeah after we pulled the trigger and about six seconds before impact like um and it was probably even sooner than that it just seems like the time goes off but the the sonic boom whatever was hit this area first and the the person

ran into the building. Or was, I'm not even sure if they got into the building. They were just running into it as the missile struck. And so, like, I was devastated. When I went to my supervisor, I was like, look, man, this is not right. Like, and he's like, send me an email about it. Just, you know, just ignore it. Just, you know, go with the official report.

And I was, you know, they teach us one of the core. values of the Air Force is integrity first, service before self and excellence and all we do. And in that regard, we failed. There was no, there's no integrity in what we were doing. There's no excellence and there was no service. You know, service to greed, service to violence is maybe the best I can come up with. And I reviewed the tapes. I reviewed the feed and everyone basically told me to just shut the fuck up. You know, shut the fuck up. We don't want to hear it. And So I did. You know, I, I bitched a lot while I was in, but that was because I was the best at what I did.

You know, I would tell people that were being wasted, that were being used, that this is a waste of time. But so what they do, they just made me work more. It just put me in a GCS and made me do the job more. And it was, it was really devastating to me. It was, it crushed me. With all the drama that was happening behind the scenes, it killed me. It really, it killed who I believe that I could be.

You know, it killed the dream that I had for who I wanted. One second, I'm going to shut the door. Okay. And I keep trying to tell people this, and it's like I'm speaking to, to deaf ears, right? When I remember, when I first got out of the military, I started hanging out, I met a Vietnam veteran who recognized the signs within me, and he's like, you need to go to therapy about this, but I had a top secret clearance at the time, and I knew that going to therapy puts your

top secret clearance in jeopardy. Actually, I think I still have my top secret clearance now that I think about it. How do you still have a top secret clearance? Because I got it renewed right before I got injured. And it's a new. They renews for 10 years. And it hasn't been 10 years. Actually, it'll be 10 years.

And how did you get injured? I had a, I have a traumatic brain injury. I had a 170 pound log. It dropped on me during a training exercise. Oh. broke my skull in two places and compressed my spine and bounced off my shoulder. I tried to catch it, which was probably the worst idea that I could have had, but I thought I was tough. And so, I mean, that was actually the reason why I blew the whistle was because I was on my deathbed,

and I was facing the consequences of a tarnished soul. And I wanted to, the whistleblowing was essentially my deathbed confession. If we want to look at my wrestler background, what is a whistleblower? You know, it's a referee. Someone who says, time out, you know, we're doing the wrong thing. And I had a lot of compassion for people in the drone program. I knew that I knew what they were doing and what they were going through and the the sickness that was happening. But after I came out and started speaking, it was like my entire, everyone turned on me.

You know, in the worst fashion. Like, you know, I have a, I have a, I have a stalker. You know, now his name's Rick Ryan Nerson. He has this blog who talks, he says all sorts of shit about me. He's in his blog, he calls me, he says that I'm part of a death cult who used the powers of the people that, the souls of the people I killed to give myself supernatural powers, stuff like that. All sorts of weird shit. And this guy was, he claims to be, have come from the program. And they say all sorts of shit.

My call signed in the military was church because I was a good church kid. You know, and I'm no longer religious. In fact, I disdain religion above all. things. I think that it leads people astray more than it leads people to flight. And even in the military, they say that we're doing this for God and country. When I went, when I was in the third SOS, they made me go see a chaplain because I couldn't see a therapist due to my clearance. And the chaplain was like, God wants you to feel this way. God wants you to kill these people. And it's all right. and like they were trying to use my own religion against me.

When my great-grandfather was a minister for his whole life and my grandfather was the one who raised me. And he would totally have been, you know, I didn't get to confess to him anything before he died before he passed away. But I know for a fact my grandfather would have been like, this isn't, this isn't the God that I told about. It's so, it's so crazy to think that the greatest. superpower in the world of the United States has 19-year-old high school students flying around shooting hellfire, hellfire missiles at apartment buildings or into wedding parties. Weddings, funerals, you name it. You name it. We've done it. Dude, it's mind-blowing to think about that. Yeah. It's it's the reality.

And it's strange to see all the media. Like one of the reasons, so a big reason, this is kind of a serendipitous moment. But when I was in, so my injury happened when I was in training for survival. I was going to be a survival teacher, you know. I didn't want to be a guy on the ground because I knew the shit they went through, but I wanted to be someone that taught people how to survive in these scenarios, right? And when I was in training, when I was in breakfast one day, they would always have the news on, whether it was MSNBC or CNN or Fox News. They'd probably, they usually had one of each.

And Obama, there was civilians, was it civilians or friendlies were killed? An accident happened with the drones and it was being reported. And President Obama himself was saying that it was the operator's fault that this happened. not the intelligence, not the military. And I was like, oh, motherfucker, I voted for you. And you just straight up lied and through the entire drone community under the bus. And that was actually one of the ideas that I had was to redeem my own group of people because we're just, we're just instruments, right?

We're just basically tools for the military to do this job. we have no say. And they don't even tell us who it is that we're killing. They're just like, this guy's a bad guy. We're looking for nefarious activity. We want you to shoot him. This is what we've determined. And it just really infuriated me that, you know,

they were blaming us for their poor decisions, you know, for their mistakes. They weren't taking responsibility. And, And there was a, I could speak about the military leadership and how they were, they're very poor. The military leadership that was in the program, they didn't fly. Most of them were people that were rejects from other squadrons. About six months after my first shot, I don't wait, January, February, March,

five months after my first shot, they did something called a patch swap, which shoved majority, of the people into Joint Special Operations Command. But a lot of these people that were in military leadership, they didn't actually do the job. They were trained to do it. They would come in. They would do their currencies once a month. And they would get flight pay. And it was like basically double their income.

And they wouldn't even be flying. And people like me, we didn't get flight pay. I was flying. I was probably flying six days a week, 12-hour shifts. and I never once got paid or compensated for it. And there are these people that would fly who were in, you know, they'd go to parties and they do all these kinds of stuff. If you were part of the good old boys club,

you didn't have to fly very much. And you can go and volunteer and Padger, enlisted performance report and all sorts of stuff. They would totally discard what was happening overseas and what we were participating in so they could be politically and socially set. And that was a really poor environment. And a lot of the pie, so there was at one point a three-star admiral came in and was like,

we want to get the Navy involved in this and send you guys, people to train up. And we want our own drones. And I want to talk to your leadership about this. And we sent them a captain, a staff sergeant, and a senior airman. And the guy was like, where are your enlisted, where are your senior? leadership. Where's your upper echelon leadership? And we're like, well, these guys know the most. They've been in the program the longest since it was in prototype. And the guy was like, yeah, this is unsatisfactory, went to the secretary of defense and the secretary of the air force and

said, we need to put bodies higher enlisted and officers into these positions. And so they sent out this missive to the entire military that was like, we need people for the drone program. Well, they didn't no one joins the military to fly remote controlled aircraft like pilots don't join the military to sit in a box to fly remote control they want to be in the air

they want to be in their machine and they want to feel it because it fucking gets them off and so the people who were responding to this were like yeah this is a joke they sent us all their rejects my um my first uh supervisor was a cop reject because no one could fucking stand him everyone hated him

in his prior squadron and so they sent him to us and as a way well it's a cross-training opportunity for you to expand your military career and to get promoted he got he ended up getting master sergeant because of it, basically just given it to him. He was a good tester, but he was a terrible human being. And, you know, most of the people were like that. The pilots that were given to us were rejects from their squadrons. They couldn't make flight lead. They couldn't make flight command.

They were one of the pilots that I was, that I loved to death, was he was a B-52 guy and he would get air sick. so because he couldn't stay in the air, they sent him to drones. There was another pilot that I loved who was my commander in Iraq, and he, the reason he was an F-16 pilot, and the reason he was no longer an F-16 pilot was because his eyes were going, and he didn't want to get out of the military forced retirement, so he became a drone operator, right? So we had a lot of these guys with medical problems, and there's a couple of dudes with behavioral problems. as well. They spend millions of dollars to train these guys and then they don't want to get rid of

them because if they kick them out of the military, these guys either go to jail or spend the rest of the lives time. Oh, shit. Oh. My. What happened? Your computer fell. Yeah, my little desk thing is all good. Lay down, but. Lay down, lay down, lay down, lay down, lay down. Um, you know, they send they just these guys that had behavioral problems they after I'll use an example for one of them this guy's

when I started blowing the whistle a couple of years ago his ex-girlfriend called me up and was like I need you to reach out to this dude because one of the pilots that you were with is now like he's in jail he's drinking he's

gambling, got gambling problems. He's no longer in. He just fucking lost it. Like, he got out and was like, he, he just lost his shit. One of the women pilots that I was friends with, when we were, when we were flying, like, we would complain. Like, her and I would be like, this fucking sucks. This is, you know, she was a heavy pilot. So she, she was a transport and she was like, I love flying. Like, that was my dream. And now I'm sitting here murdering people and hunting people down. Like, This is a nightmare. And at one point, she was flying a training mission, a local sortie, and she ran the aircraft off the runway. She, like, had a mental breakdown when the aircraft was coming off the runway, didn't pull up.

And the aircraft just went off the runway, right? Jeez. So a lot of these people would just, they would just have mental breakdowns because we weren't getting, we weren't getting, not getting the support that we needed. How far do you guys take off? far do the drones fly where they're based out of so they're based in country and they can they can fly for up to 17 to 32 hours depending on missile loadout um the reason i say 32 hours because um i was part of the longest predator mission at the time um i launched the aircraft uh no missiles max fuel um no even intel pod uh to gather information it was just empty load max fuel i launched

I launched the aircraft, came back 24 hours, did an eight-hour mission later, and landed the aircraft in the final mission, in the final hours of it. So 17 hours is probably a good estimate if it's a full loadout. And they have a eight, usually the ceiling is between, in Afghanistan, it's 18 to 25,000 feet. And in Iraq, it's 11,000 to 15,000 feet above sea level. And where were you physically based during all this? I was in, for the first part of my career, I was stationed in Las Vegas at Nellis Air Force Base, had training at Crete Air Force Base, which is 40 minutes north of Vegas. And then I was moved to the drama with the girl that I dated in the military

forced me to be stationed over in New Mexico. Okay. So I was, the last part of my career, I was with the third SOS down in Canada Air Force Base, which is Clovis, New Mexico. Did you see at one point? I was over in Iraq for six months. Six months?

Yeah, 2007. And that's where you saw the thing with the guy that pulled up in his car and execute two girls and... No, actually, that was so... A lot of, strangely enough, most of the action that happened was when I was in Nellis Air Force Base. The description that I like to use, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone use it before is it was like the Wild West. You know, when we were in Nellis, we had very little rules governing us other than the law of conflict and the rules of engagement. And so it was very much like, if we were in the area and there was something happening, people would call us up and be like, hey, we need your missile. We need your eyes. We need you to do this. The first, and I got, so I graduated on my birthday, 18 November in 2006 from training. And then my first mission was December 4th. And there's an end of the year report.

that we have at our Christmas meetings or Christmas parties. And they said that 200 and, I want to say 112, but I don't think that's right. 200 plus shots were fired over the course of the last year in just the 15th reconnaissance alone. So over the next course of the next six months, I witnessed that happen like pretty much every day that i would go in a shot to be recorded like it was debriefed it was briefed with us every every brief and debriefed every debrief right and the shots were always shown to us everyone got to see them if uh on my lunch break uh there was a 7-11 that was across the street next to um uh papa not papai it's a jack in the box and my buddies and i would take the squadron van and go would get lunch and then bring it back and we would sit in the predator operations center and watch missions that were happening.

Now, we'd be sitting there with slurpees and fucking corn dogs and watching this shit happen. When I was in the third SOS, we went from basically 200 shots plus a year with the 15th reconnaissance squadron to the third SOS to maybe less than 10 shots. right because I actually respected the joint special operations mission more than I respected the conventional forces mission because they were in my understanding they were actually hunting the dudes that were high up individuals and and trying to to not let this conflict go out of control but eventually the same corruption that the 15th was dealing with made its way over into joint special forces because you can't have a group of secrecy operating at that level without corruption eventually taking over. But the difference is staggering. I spent more hours just sitting there

watching marketplaces and what they call patterns of life with the third SOS than I did with the 15th after all these shots you said they were they were like debriefed did was there ever a record or was there always a record of potential civilian casualties with every single one of these shots no um in fact from what i can remember um the collateral damage was never mentioned never not even thought of no it was it was like yeah we got these individuals the a funny thing here's a here's a fun little funny stories. So pilots are very particular. I, as much as I hate, especially fighter pilots, they're egocentric personalities, they've got a lot of quirky traits. And one of the funny things is, is that a pilot, after every action, there has to be something called an after-action report.

And when I was in the, when I first joined the 15th Reconnaissance Squadron, we had so few people that usually it would be the same pilots do. the shots more often than not. And they would write novels. Like it was like watching someone writing the next script for the next top gun. It was like, I was in the seat and I was doing this. And we were watching this action happen. And they would go into so much detail of things that were going on that eventually,

because leadership has to read every report, they would be like, keep the report to a paragraph. you know, six to eight sentences. That's it. And then it became, after that order came down, it went from being everything reported as what's going on to being like, you know, not even complete sentences. It'd be like, missile came off the rail, missile impacted,

missile took out two individuals that were labeled as high-profiled individuals, mission accomplished, stuff like that. So it wasn't even like, I remember reading one report and the pilot was like, I was sitting there drinking my coffee and we got the call from the J-TAC to power up our missile. It was just like this thriller that they wanted to write, right? They wanted to be a part of it. I actually knew a pilot who got out and went to Hollywood because he wanted to write. He was so inundated in the top gun world that he wanted to write a top gun script for Really?

Yeah. That's fascinating. I'm actually curious about this new top gun movie coming out because I hear that there's drones. I didn't even know there was a new top gun movie coming out. Supposed to come out this year or last year, but it's supposed to it's coming out this year. Really? Yeah. Top Gun to Tom Cruise and everything.

No, we're not doing Tom Cruise again, are they? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah. If I ever had the chance, I would actually like to get a conversation with that guy because there's so many people and so many pilots that just reference Top Gun and him and Maverick and the drones. Like they wanted to be Maverick.

Like, I have more respect for Iceman because Iceman was professional. You know, it was it was Maverick's mistake that got Goose killed. Right. Right. And so, and Iceman was, he's not a bad guy. He was just a strict. disciplined due. And so many of the pilots that were in the drones were rejects because,

but they felt, because of that, they felt like they didn't belong in the normal group. They were the Maverick. You know, my stalker, Rick Reinerson, wants to be Maverick. He wants to be Maverick. In fact, he calls him, he labels himself as Django from Django and Chain. Like, he wants to be Django. Like he has this idea of this egocentric great personality that he wants to be, but essentially they're just wannabes. Yeah, well, like we were talking about earlier, it kind of gives them a story, kind of gives them some sort of meaning or purpose, right?

I feel like everywhere you hear about drone strikes or you hear about these drone operations and the massive civilian casualties, it's always synonymous with Yemen. Why is Yemen, why is Yemen and drone strikes so synonymous? Mostly because we shouldn't even be over there. And Yemen is a humanitarian crisis going on right now. Like there is, the children are starving, entire places are being devastated. And the excuse that was given to me was that their government requested us. us to help them out. So when I was in the third SOS, the end of my enlistment,

I was a part of an operation to track down and hunt Anwar Alalaki, who was an Islamic imam, a holy man. This guy, when 9-11 happened, was invited to the White House by the Bush administration, and was even friends with the Obama administration, like went to the White House and was like, yeah, we need to be over there. There are, you know, radical Islam is not Islam. Where's this guy originally from, Anwar Al-Alocki? For people who don't know his full story, like, what?

He's from Yemen. Okay. But he was a United States citizen and lived in Colorado. I think Colorado Springs, actually, if I'm, if we want to be specific. And his son, Abdullah Rahman, lived here too, right? And so when Anwar Alalaki, he was invited, he, you know, being a celebrity in his religion, he was invited to go to mosques all over the world. And he especially, of course, any compassionate religious figure would go and help his people.

Regardless, like one of my favorite phrases is from the Bhagavad Gida, when Lord Krishna is talking to Arjun, and he's saying, he's like, anyone can come to me whether they be good or evil, and I will give them their judgment. Right. And I think that, you know, my grandfather was the same way. Like if anyone came to him, regardless of whether they were the worst scum in the world or the noblest of saints, he would still talk to them, as if they, you know, they're still human. And so Anwar went to a mosque, and of course there were,

people that were opposed to what the U.S. government was doing over there coming and talked to them. And he was giving them advice. We don't know what advice he was. I wasn't told with advice. But we got video of him talking to known members of, I think, Hamas. And just that alone right there was enough for people to be like, okay, we should kill him. But then he was like, he saw the devastation that was happening in Yim. He saw what we were doing and what was going on. He was like, the United States is wrong. The United States is wrong in this. And you know what they decided to do?

But kill him. Right before. Anywhere, sorry to interrupt, but I feel like anywhere you are, whether you're in the United States, Africa, Yemen, if you see an exorbitant amount of innocent people being slaughtered for no reason, you're going to feel extremely passionate. about or extreme, you're going to feel compassion. Compassion and or resentment for whoever is doing that,

whoever's responsible for that. Yeah. And I remember that my leadership was, you know, every brief that we'd have, they'd be like, this guy deserves to die. He's a traitor of the United States, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But no one really, you know, one of the first times I actually ever read the constitution was at the end of my enlistment, you know, we're told, we, we swear an oath to this

thing, yet we don't have to fucking understand it or know it. No one teaches us. They just like, do you swear to uphold the constitution? Right. Everybody talks about it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Um, right. Um, uh, and so I, I remember coming in on one day and one of the pilots, I'm going to just, I'm going to name him and I hope he forgives me, but I respect this guy. a lot. His name was Chris Ayers. He was a major in the Air Force. And him and I had a game going on wherever he was a briefing. I would go in and I would change one of his slides to say something silly or stupid. Or I would like copy one of the slides like 10 times so that when you clicked the button, it would go to the same slide. So him and I, him and I would play these games to just

entertain ourselves. And I remember coming in one day and he looked like he was like this. He was like, oh my God, like he looked sick. And I go up and I was like, hey, sir, what's going on? Like, what's up? And he was like, we're now going to be flying armed in Yemen when previously we weren't. You know, the episode that I said that I flew the longest mission, that was a Yemen mission. And it was we were flying unarmed with no sikint pod because we were just doing visual. And it was February of 2011, and he's just like, yeah, we're flying armed now. And if we are given the order to kill Anwar al-Lawki, President Obama himself will call up the GCS ground control station and give the order. And I was like, awesome.

Like, we're going to kill this guy. Like, it's probably going to be me, right? Like, I'm probably going to be the dude that's going to do it. There was three of us. There were three crews that flew this mission because it was so hard. high profile. What did you guys know about Anwar Alalaki at that time? Nothing. Like, we just knew that he was a traitor. I didn't look him up. I didn't know anything. I was just doing what I was told, right? I, I didn't watch the news or do any of that type of

stuff because it just, I knew from what they were reporting versus what we were doing. I knew that they were reporting back. Right. And I was like, I was like, all right, we're finally going to get this mission done. So what's the problem? And he looks at me and he's like, church, don't you understand that our Constitution says that even a traitor deserves a fair and free trial in front of a jury of his peers? We're violating. We're violating. We're violating. We're violating everything that I swore to do. And I was kind of like, whoa, really? And he's like, yeah. He's like, this is wrong.

And I remember, so we have to build a mission profile, a mission folder before every launch. And as I was usually the person that launched the aircraft, I was the one that was making this folder. So I'm sitting at the computer and I'm putting it together and putting the dossier together. And I get this sense of, I'm standing at the printer and I get this sense of vertigo.

like, like, I'm thinking to myself, yeah, I'm probably going to be the one to kill this guy. I want the, like, if Obama taught, like, I voted Obama in the office, right? Like, I voted this guy. I'm going to get an order from the president in the United States. The guy who I voted into office. Like, I just had the, it was like this euphoria. And then I remembered my first shot. I had forgotten about it.

And I remember what my mom said. And my mom said that, you know, as soon as you want to do it, that means they, you are no longer capable of carrying the responsibility of doing it right. And I don't know if you've heard of a book series called The Wheel of Time. That's one of my favorite book series. I read it. I've read it five times. And it's a super long series,

but there's one point one of the characters gets an axe, and he's this young boy, and he's like practicing with it in the woods, and he wants to use it. He wants to be this hero. and he ends up killing some other men and getting sick, like just horribly sick from it. And his mentor comes up and he says,

he's like, it's good that you feel this way. You know, as soon as you want to do it, then you must throw that axe away and rock the other way. And my mom said the same thing in different words, you know, like right after I had done it.

And so, like, I had this echo, like these, this, this series that I had loved so much. And my mom's words and my grandfather's teachings just echoed within me. And I had this sense of vertigo that I was doing the wrong thing. And I was like, I can't stay in. I was, I was thinking about maybe reenlisting. I was thinking about, like, had I reenlisted, they were going to make me an MQ9

Reaper operator. I was going to get sent down to White Sands. And then I was like, I can't do. do this. I can't be a part of this anymore. And right before I got out, it could have been like right before I got out or right after, no, it was right after. So I left early. I got, I got terminal leave, 84 days of terminal leave. And in April of that year, they had their first attempt to capture Enwal Arlaki and they failed. The helicopter that was going after them had a critical malfunction and crashed in the middle of the desert and I think it killed five Marines.

So then they were like, yeah, we're just going to kill him. And I had people keeping me updated. And then later that year, Anwar al-Lawki was killed. And then his son, Abdullah Raman, was killed two weeks later. Well, I find out that Abdullah Raman, what had happened was as soon as Enwara Laki started speaking out against the U.S. government, they took his passport away and trapped in Yemen, couldn't come back, which he intended to. He intended to come back and go to Washington and make a stink and being like, this is wrong. You must stop this. Well, he had power, right? He was,

he was basically the Islamic Martin Luther King, right? He wasn't trying to incite violence. He was saying that the United States was wrong doing. And then he became more, once they took his passport away, became radicalized. And then his son, who, who ran away from home to find his father, went to Yemen, was killed in a drone strike because the United States didn't want him to become an icon. Was it Anwar doing some crazy shit, like praising the guys who flew the planes into the towers on 9-11 and, and was it? I don't know about that. I just know that once his passport was taken from him by the United States and he was hunted down he became like flies. And whatever he

said from that, you know, he was just super fucking pissed. Right. And his emotional state, I'm not excusing what he was saying. I'm saying that his emotional state pushed him to into a debt. He saw the suffering and he

took it as his own and he did what he was believed was right, even if it was wrong. And one of the things that people don't know about the Trump administration is that Anwar's daughter was also in Yemen

at the beginning of Trump's administration and he ordered them to kill her because they didn't want her to become an icon either. So Trump gave the order to kill an eight-year-old girl. And that went through? Yeah, it went through. The Yemeni crisis is wrong on all fronts.

and I don't know what they're searching for over there. I don't know. There's, I don't know what resources or the destabilization or whatever. But if we, if we even go back to Sun Tsu's The Art of War, the way that you win a war is not through violence. The way that you win a war is by getting the people on your side. And the way that you get the people on your side is not by inciting violence, but by giving them the resources that they need to live a normal life. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Not everyone wants to be a rich CEO.

Not everyone wants a golden fucking toilet seat. People just want to live their lives free and happy. And what we're doing over in the Middle East is causing the opposite of that. And even when we look at our own home, we're doing that as well. If we look at the Black Lives Matter movement, the same operations that were being done over the Middle East, the signals intelligence, the following. They were flying drones over armed drones over U.S. cities following these Black Lives Matter people. Do you know Chris Dorner? Have you ever heard of him? No.

So Chris Dorner was a radicalized police officer in L.A. who, a black man, who was seeing all the corruption going on and took a stand against the police. police and they fired him. And so then he started killing corrupt. Oh, I have heard this story. So they found him in a cabin in the woods. And if you listen to the radio, the whole radio sequence that plays out was a fabrication. It was all an act.

They said that they, they said that they burned the cabin down with gasoline and everything, right? Well, what actually happened was they shot a fucking hellfire missile killed. So he was killed on American soil by the California Guard with a hellfire missile. How do you know this? Because I know people that were in the California Guard. So this isn't public. This isn't public knowledge. No.

But those same tactics, that was the first, I think that that was the first person killed with a hellfire missile on U.S. soil. But they were in the protest that were happening all over the United States, the California Guard, the Texas Guard, the Syracuse Guard, we're all flying drones. There's guard bases all over the United States that do this, and they all have their own drones on the base, and they do fly them for practice over the local area. So it's no stretch of the imagination to say that,

well, for practice, we're just going to actually do mission operations over in the United States. And these drones were armed? Yeah, they're armed. So, you know, all these people are worried about being tracked on their phones and stuff. You know, everyone's being tracked. Everything is being monitored. What we're, our conversation right now is being monitored right now.

Our conversation is being tracked and disseminated and people are, are doing these types of things. You know, there's nothing that you can say or do that is going to escape the attention of these people who have developed this technology. The thing that is advantageous to most people, is that they have an algorithm monitoring them, not actual people. I have actual people monitoring my shit. Meaning who specifically? I don't know.

Government agencies. I have people interfering with my own personal life all the time. I have people with all the stuff that I'm having with my local community, the police follow me every time I leave my house. That's an important thing I think we should bring up the reason that we're not sitting together right now doing this podcast is because you're not allowed to leave the state? Yeah. So I, if the story behind that is my mayor and city council are

fraud waste and abuse of government resources, taxpayer money. They're doing something called using something called tax increment financing, which if you look into it, it's taking possible future taxes and using that money now and then increasing the taxes to pay it back later, well, they've been giving money to out-of-state developers and people coming in from out-of-state. There's a guy from Wisconsin named Nick Jakota, whose father made money by selling faulty medical equipment and then was exiled from Wisconsin while running for Congress because he was so corrupt. He's here in Missoula and he wants to be this music mogul. He wants to make Missoula some sort of music venue place.

And the city council was going to give him $17 million in tax money to build a failed business that was going to be under his control for 70 years. and we were going to pay it back after 70 years. Well, also, we've got a bank called Stockman's Bank that was given $4.4 million in tax money to build their building. And the first interstate bank of Montana was given $1.5 million of taxpayer money to build their bank when they could have done it themselves, right? The whole point of being a business person is to make those investments and build the business yourself.

and it's increased the cost of living in Missoula is is has skyrocketed since Engin has become mayor and there are 120 plus houses on the market and only 17 of them are below. So you broke up for that last part. Would you say there are 17 houses that are below a million dollars on the market right now in my own hometown? and the medium income in Missoula is less than $40,000. Whoa.

So I yelled at the mayor for basically stealing money and giving it to the wealthy, like the sheriff of Nottingham. And they put me in jail for a month. So how do you yell at the mayor? Where were you? I was at a city council meeting. Okay. And I told them, so I told them the story. I don't know.

So I make a lot of biblical references because I was trained in the biblical mythology. But King David is my favorite biblical character. And King David is the man who's called a man after God's own heart, the only one in the Bible, in fact, all that. And he was an adulterer, a liar, scoundrel, but he was king. And the reason why he was called a man after God's own heart because he was repentant. And the prophet Nathan, who was the prophet during that time, came into David and told the story. He says, there was once a rich man with 99 sheep and a poor man with one.

And the rich man was having guests come over to his house. So he goes out to his land and sees his 99 sheep. But he sees that the poor man's one sheep is greater than all of his 99. So he takes the poor man's sheep and serves him up to his guest and leaves the poor man destitute with nothing. And I was like, do you guys understand this? And we'd been going, I've been going to the city council meetings for about two months at that time. And they didn't listen. They were all bought off.

They were all there for popularity contest. They were, they fucked up Missoula. Like, they literally have fucked up Missoula. Jackson Construction Company, a developer, has, the mayor Angin has been giving them money and got his apartment, his condominium, under market price for working with them through an LLC, a shell company. And so I exposed all this. And so I was like, do you understand the story? Do you understand what it is that I'm telling you?

And they just kind of were like, they were on their cell phones. They were on their computer. And I was like, you are that rich man. And I yelled at him. And I was like, you have stolen from my home. You have stolen from my community. Like my grandparents had to sell their family home. My grandparents had to sell their family home.

My uncle had to sell my great-grandparents home because they can no longer afford to pay the property taxes here. You know, we've been here since the 70s. My grandpa led Hellgate High School to its first state champion, legendary. My grandpa has taken Hellgate. Hellgate High School, yeah. Wow, what a great name. Actually, we're the city of Missouri.

the entryway to the city of Missoula is called Hellgate Canyon. Really? Yeah. That's amazing. There's a beach right down the street from here that we call the gates of hell that we call the Gates of Hell because it's Junction 666. That's cool. Yeah, it's funny.

Yeah, it's called Hellgate Canyon because when the settlers were coming through, the Native Americans would kill all the settlers and just leave their corpses. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. So like my family, my mom has been a teacher.

My grandpa was a teacher at Helgate by a biology teacher. My mom has been a teacher in the Montana School District for almost 25 years now. I was going to be a teacher. My grandfather was a minister helped build a couple of churches here. My father is a rancher who owns 10,000 acres of 40 miles from here. My family has deep, deep, deep connections here. And people are leaving because they can't afford to live here anymore because wealthy people from out of state are coming in and buying the politicians. And the people that are, the slumlords that are here, they force people to pay exorbitant rents, but pretty much all the people that live here live in squalor at their slums.

my sister moved out of a place that this guy, he has multiple boats, he has four-wheelers and snowmobiles in a large truck, and he could barely be bothered to go and fix anything that they had wrong with their apartment. Like, their apartment was falling apart. And so I yelled at the mayor, and they jailed me for inciting improper influence, of a government official is what they said.

They arrested you right there on the spot? No, they put a lot of warrant for my arrest and I turned myself in because I was like, you guys are fucking stupid. Like, this is so dumb. They put me in jail for a month. And it's been a year. It's now, it'll be a year and a half before I get my trial.

And the reason being is because they don't have anything. Like, they're they're they're they're oh so one of the things that people don't know is that um calispell montana is actually a hub for drone development and there's a lot of money and people wanting to put me in jail and punish me for what i did right and if they put me in jail then i lose all my medical benefits from the VA um which is how i survive right so if i go to jail then i get all my benefits taken away. If they convict me of a felony,

I'm no longer eligible for benefits. And I'm basically going to be a poor man on the street. They can silence you effectively. Yeah. Do you think this is specifically tied to your whistleblowing and speaking out about the drone programs and all this? Oh, absolutely. The guy who got me into speaking out at the city council meeting, he actually told me that I was,

he's like, you're probably going to go to jail. And I was like, I'm not going to do anything to go to jail. but the guy set me up. The guy was a government agent that was specifically set me up to go to jail. He told me that I was going to go to jail. And I know that there is a lot of people out there that are fucking pissed at me.

They want me to suffer. They want to punish me. And they're pissed off that I haven't faced any consequences for my action. But you're going to punish someone for telling the truth when it's these people who are fraud, waste, and abuse of government resources. They're murdering people. like the consequences for that are more dire than having the truth reveal. Because if the consequences, you know, for stealing money from the community,

the means the community is undermined. We look at what happened with the coronavirus. Like, we should have had a pandemic team in place to show us and tell us how we're supposed to deal with the situation and have proper guidelines. But we have people dying all over the place. We have hospitals that are overrun. run and CEOs that are, well, we can't make money off of this. So they're writing people as getting the coronavirus, but they're not taking care of people

because they're getting money from the government, like bear money from the government, but they're so greedy that they don't want to spend any of that money on what it's actually supposed to be spent on. Right. And I had thought that my own reputation would save me from dire consequences because A, I'm not sitting here trying to incite violence. I'm not sitting here trying to attack people. Like, I'm standing my ground, which is what you're supposed to do, right? I don't, I will defend myself and I will defend others. But I will first make sure that if you are going to be in these positions of power, that you will, I don't want their job. I want them to do their job right. Because if they don't do their job right, I suffer the consequences. My community suffers the consequences. you know and that's not what I want to do I've traveled all over the world I've seen what happens in places like Egypt and Europe and even other places of the United States where corrupt politicians

just build concrete of cities and they don't take care of their people there's homelessness everywhere mayor Engen ran on this in 2012 he ran on this uh to get to to lower homelessness in Missoula well homeless has increased like 400% in Missoula and they've done nothing to elevate. Right. And so we have all these wealthy people coming in. The person that he is grooming to run for mayor next is a woman from Wisconsin named Gwen Jones.

And Gwen Jones is what she has done. Anytime anyone goes to city council and talks out at city council, she looks them up on the internet and will go to the place that they work with and get them fired. she'll be like if you don't if you're work if you don't fire your worker for what he's done i'm going to ruin your business she'll do that you know she was the reason she and a guy named brian von lousberg are the reason why i was put in jail in the first place because they um they actually found my stalkers videos of me and used my stockers videos as a reason to put me away uh which is exciting to me because now my stalkers

going to have to admit in the court of law whether or not he's what he was saying was true or not and this guy has been inciting violence against me he's actually gotten my he's actually tried to get veterans to come and kill me and my family who is this guy that's his name's rick his name's rick rhinierson and he's got this blog called um pick your battles and uh he says on his blog, pick your battles is a phrase that people who people, people say when they don't battle. But Sun Su, in the art of war, specifically says, pick your battles because you only have a limited amount of energy. And if you can pick your battles, you will be more efficient in how you use that energy. So what is, what is his goal in battling you or trying to go against you?

What is he trying to do? He's trying to silence you. He's trying to, he's trying to, um, so his wife is a a lawyer who works for Raytheon and has worked for Johnson and Johnson and Monsanto. So Raytheon is the company that has the main military contract for the drone operations. So he is probably being directly paid by someone to put all this stuff out there. And he's, I, he's, this guy is kind of fucked up because he says that he denied, when he was in the drones, he denied an order to shoot. But I'm not, if he did that, then he did the right thing. This guy was in the drone program.

Yeah, he claims to be. Okay, okay. And then he drove an armored vehicle through border patrol coming from New Mexico and recorded it and said and sued the border patrol for illegal search and seizure under the United States Constitution violating his constitutional amendment rights. And tried to make it. make himself out to be a whistleblower. And then when I,

he contacted me and tried to get me to be part of this group called Veterans Against Police Abuse and then tried to set me up with a guy who got a, like he sent me down to this never met. He's a drunk. And everything that I've

heard about him from people in the program hate him. They say that he's one of the worst fucking people that they've ever met. But he sent me down to this conference for police abuse and wanted me to hang out with these guys and bought my ticket to go there and then leave the next day. He wanted me to stay there a couple days and I was like, I don't want to do this. Like I don't feel comfortable.

And then got mad at me for not staying there. Well, the people that he wanted me to hang out with and ended up being arrested in downtown Austin that night. and then one day he posted this thing on Facebook how he doesn't believe in free will and he believes that we are all destined to behave and act a certain way and I disagreed with him

I was like I believe in free will and I believe that I have the choice to do what I want to do and after that he just started attacking in everything that I did and said so this guy is just a narcissist with deep connections to deep pockets and has been really trying,

there's a blog called This Ain't Hell, which is a blog about angry veterans who just hate people. And they reported on me as being, they're like, our contacts inside the drone program say that Brandon Bryant's a liar and filthy piece of shit and all this type of stuff.

And some of my grandpa's former wrestlers a rangers and one of them came to me and was like you better shut up and stop telling lies and I was like I'm not telling a lie and he's like swear on your grandpa's life and I was like I swear on my grandpa's life I'm not telling a lie and this guy went back to this group of people and they murdered him for standing up for me how did his names they murdered a ranger yeah so uh this group of angry veterans who were who were threatening me and threatening to kill me if I didn't shut up this guy who was one of my grandpa's former wrestlers came to me and was like if you don't shut up we're going to hurt you we're going to come after you what happened to these people that murdered him are they

in jaded him are they in prison now what no no he died in a fire house fire and there was no sort of investigation to homicide no native american kid so they didn't they didn't do any investigation. And where was this? Here in Montana. The kid's name was J.C. Whittacombe? And he... Whitacombe?

Yep, Whitacombe. And he was murdered. Like, I also had a friend who was part of Lulsec in a similar story. How do you know for sure he was murdered, though? How do you know these people actually... You're saying they burned his house down? With him in it. How do you know...

that though. Because these guys weren't citing violence against me on their website and blog and this guy was JC told me all the things that they were going to do to, they were going to kill me, they were going to torture me and murder me. They're going to kill my family as well.

And he stood up for me and less than a week after that he was killed. Like these are the types of these, you know, people discredit disgruntled veterans, but when veterans feel like they've been wrong, or when they have a target, like they think I'm a traitor.

People call me a traitor or a monster. I have no friends. And so this guy was sticking up for me and they killed him. And then after that happened, there was no more talk about me on their blog until Rick Reinerson wrote a guest piece for them and started inciting violence against me again. And another guy who's from Lulsec, who, I don't know if you know who Lalsak is, but it was a group who broke off from 4chan hacker group. This guy I knew personally, and he was my friend, and he was actually my contact

to give me a bunch of information about what was going on. He was the one that was following forums. He was the one that was when the FBI came to my house and told me that if I didn't shut up and stop speaking, then ISIS would come and kill me and my mother. He did the research for me, and found out that it wasn't anyone outside of the country that was doing it, it was Christian patriots who were saying that I was a traitor and I had deserved to die. And I had him start researching information about this, and he died a month later, under mysterious circumstances. So, you know, there's very evil people, really evil people in this world.

back in October, I had a man throw a knife at me through my open window, driving down the interstate or the freeway at 70 miles an hour. And I've never seen anyone throw a knife like that except for a Marine. And it hit me in the head. And the only reason that it didn't kill me was because it tumbled and the hilt hit me right here in the head. And I moved my head. So it would have hit me straight in the temple, but I moved my head slightly because I saw it coming at me and it hit me right here in the back of the head. So, like, there are, there are people that are actively trying to kill me in my life and trying to hurt me in my family because of the things that I've done, including members of my own community and even the police department. I mean, obviously I can tell you're really angry.

and this everything that that you're talking about with the drone program and all your experiences have definitely changed you yeah but don't you do you think about the fact that maybe talking about things like even though you may strongly feel like your friend may have been murdered or people you know may have been murdered but do you think Do you ever think about publicly saying that you know for a fact they were murdered and blaming a specific group of people for that? I worked with these people. I know exactly how they think and operate. Like I worked with these people.

I might have just been a drone operator cameraman, but I worked with these people. I was in the direct center of the epicenter of who these people are. Like I know how they operate, what they. do. I remember when Chelsea Manning first blew the whistle. That was when I was still in the program. I remember how people fucking hated her. I remember how people talked about her and Julian Assange and all that type of stuff. They're saying the same thing about me. I've spoken to veterans. I know veterans in my own community that tell me that if they ever get me alone, they will fucking kill me and they will not have any question about it. And they tell me all the time that, you know, they think that

they'll get away with it because no one's going to no one's going to defend me no one no one's no one's going to protect me yeah i tried to live in i tried to live in norway i tried to move to norway and even when i found out that the norwegians are helping create the missile parts you know for the hellfire missile and guess who they have working in their factories refugees who are from the very countries that are affected by the drones are coming in and moving to norway and working in the that build the same weapon systems that destroy their community. And as soon as I found out about that, started talking about that over in Norway,

the Norwegians beat me up, broke my arm, stole my son from me and kicked me out of my country, out of their country. How long were you in Norway for? I was in Norway off and on for about two and a half years. Oh, wow. I was trying to live there.

I was trying to get a visa and everything. and the woman who got pregnant with my son sabotaged me. She took all my paperwork, forged the paperwork, and did all sorts of stuff. Like, it's a mess. Like, like, people are purposely interfering in my life. Like, I can't live a normal life because of all this type of stuff. I try. I try to live a normal life.

I didn't do this for fame or wealth or celebrity status. I did it because it was the right thing to do. I did it was because it was what I was trained to do. Even the military kept telling me, integrity for, First, service before self, excellence in all we do. Always tell the truth. Always do the right thing. You know, the same thing over and over again.

And I'm doing it. And the people that are doing the wrong thing just so happen to have more power and influence. And they can't face me publicly. None of these people. I've talked to members of Congress, Ted Lau, who's in charge of the drone oversight committee. You know, they don't give a fuck. They do not give a fuck. How did you speak to Ted Lau?

I went to D.C. And where did you talk to, did you talk to him in person? In person in his office. And what sort of ideas did you express to him and what were his reactions specifically? I expressed to him that what we were doing is wrong and we need to curb back and start reassessing why we're using this technology. And he's like, but isn't drones better at killing people than booze? the ground or an F-16. Aren't they more precise?

Aren't they more surgical? And he was just, he just gave me excuse after excuse for why drones should be used rather than listening to anything that I had to say. What was your main concern that you brought to him? My main concern. Was it, was it collateral damage?

No, my may actually, my main concern that I brought to him was how the people inside the program are being treated and abused. And the consequences, of that, how it affects, you know, why people take the shots, why people are angry, why people are, and the leadership and all that type of stuff. Like, I brought more personal insider stuff. What people don't understand is that I've gone up my chain of command.

Like, I've gone up my chain of command in three separate occasions. I went to my supervisor, I went to my supervisor's supervisor, I went to my flight commander, I went to my commander. I went to my first shirt. I went to my DO of two different squadrons. And then I went up to civilian chain of command. I went up to, I went to senators. I went to politicians.

And none of these people, I went to politicians in my own state, John Tester and Steve Daines, and asked them if they would address this and if they would talk to me and help me and support me. And they told me directly that they do not support or help people like me. So how I'm a I'm a good American boy. I was a good Christian boy who joined the military and I'm doing everything that he taught. I did everything right.

I've done everything right. You know, I'm intelligent. I observe. I am thoughtful. Like I'm deliberate. And like I've tried to do everything right. And so the only way that I figured out to do. anything right more is to do things on my own and to talk to people like you. Actually, I'm more

interested in the academic side of it because I feel like if more people are educated on this, than those people that are educated who are pursuing a route in the legality of this or the ethics of it will have the clout to stand up eventually to stop this. Yeah, I totally think that's the right way to do it. I'm happy you're doing it that way. Talking to the right people, going to the right media outlets, expressing yourself in a thoughtful, intelligent way. I mean, I've spoken to the United States security, the United Nations Security Council. Like, I spoke directly to the UN Security Council in a private meeting and told them all my concerns, you know, but what really, what power do they have? You know, they can come out with a report

that says, yeah, the United States is wrong in causing devastation all over the world, but ultimately it's the United States that has to do the right thing. Right. And then, you know, what is the root cause of this? We talked about the art of war, right? How do you, how do you resolve a conflict like this between nations? How do you create peace? Obviously, it's not dropping bombs and killing tens of thousands of innocent people. But, but we, the United States doesn't want to create peace. create peace, does it? This is a result of the military industrial complex and businesses making more money and spending. What was the military? Was it like a trillion dollars thing Congress passed for

military spending recently? I mean, the core of the problem is Wall Street, the lobbyist, the military industrial complex. And I don't know what the answer to that is. The answer to that is, is to put them all in prison. Give them Sanders in office? Yeah. Well, we need a second. Yeah. Well, actually, I think we need a second Nuremberg.

Do you know what the Nuremberg trials were? No. So the Nuremberg trials were what happened after World War II, the Nazi trials. Okay. So there were the trials where the Nazis were, you know, I was just following orders, right? There needs to be a precedent. These people need to be held accountable. It's like the fact that, you know, Citizens United, how corporations are considered people?

Yes. Okay. So the reason why that is is because it means that the people that are running the corporations, I think corporations are not people, they're vehicles for people to operate it. And if corporations are people, then they should be held accountable, the same accountability that an individual is held accountable for. But because they're not, they cannot be, you know, corporations can go under and then they start up again under a new name. Right.

And the people that are running this and making these decisions are not being held accountable. They just want money. It's just greed. It's the same thing that's happening in my town. Like, we could be putting money, this taxpayer money, to better education, better health, you know, better environment. You know, but we have all these people that want to develop Monta, because they're coming from Silicon Valley. They're coming from New Jersey, New York.

They're coming from Seattle. And they want to bring the same environment that they had over there, over to here. But we have vastly more limited resources than they do. We can't build on top of a hill here because that means that we have to drill a hole hundreds of meters to get to the water basin that is the aquifer that is below. That costs more money than actually building the places that are, that are going up. But these developers want to build high-rise condominiums here

so that they can densify my home, but they only doing it for money. They're not taking into consideration the people that originally lived here. It's colonization. It's colonialism is what it is. It's not even the military industrial complex. It's you got something that I want and I'm going to take it. That's what it is.

And these people are evil. these people are evil. Like there's no other word to describe it. They're evil. Do you think, well, Joe Biden was elected president today. He was sworn in. Do you think there's any chance that he could help steer this ship away from the rocks or that administration at all? I mean, what do you think the difference is going to be? Do you have any kind of, do you have, is there any glimpse of optimism inside you? I feel like, as much as I feel very proud that Kamala Harris is our first female vice president and not Hillary Clinton, I feel more a trepidation that we are headed towards a police state, a fascist police state, rather than more freedom. I whistle-blue during the Obama administration

when Joe Biden was vice president. And unless Joe Biden takes a stand against the military industrial complex and being like, we need to pull back. We need to, we need to, like, We're in a climate crisis right now. We don't even have 50 years left on this planet if we don't get our shit together. And there are people that wanting to make trillions of dollars. Jeff Bezos has made more money in the last year than he's made his entire rest of his career. And yet we have people starving and on the street and a homeless population that is growing exponentially. We have more than four empty houses per homeless people in the United States.

and yet it's more profitable to keep those houses empty for the banks than to allow people to go in and move in to them. We have a humanitarian crisis that is building that will probably golf Yemen pretty soon. And Yemen and the stuff in the Middle East was just practice for these people to come back and do it over here. That's how I feel about it. No sort of optimism for the future. Well, if people will take a stand, then yes. And not in the, not my, you know, I listen to people to Trump supporters to try to understand them and the QAnon supporters and even the anti-vaxxers. It sounds like those kind of QAnon supporters are the same type of people that have the blog, the guy who is against you.

That sounds like the kind of person who was some of those people that sort of. stormed the capital last week. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, Ryan Nerson is a is a Q&ON and Trump supporter as well. And even the people, so the people that got me to speak up against the city council, I find out later that they're Trump supporters and Q&N supporters as well, conspiracy theorists. And so I, you know, I'm not going to say, make speculation and be like all these people are connected, but there are very similar, there are many similarities that I observe in between behaviors and actions. And my military training,

I spent eight months in training for observation. You know, that's what my original job was before drones was being an intelligence operator that observes, right? Observes and disseminates. And I feel like that was some of the best training that I could have ever gotten in my life.

And on top of all the healing and self-work that I've done, it helps me like, I can tell the similarities between the actions that are going on, and I can make those connections just like I had been in training. You know, these guys aren't, you know, when people act in secret, eventually these things will come out, you know, eventually people who act in secret and think they're going to get away, they're going to get lazy and something's going to happen that is going to expose it. But we see what's happening right now. Things are being exposed all the time. And so more misinformation is being thrown out there and these people no longer care if they're being exposed

because they can say something else and still get away with it because no one has the power to actually stand up and do anything about it who's going to stand up to the military industrial complex are you right no is your average uh a viewer going to just watch your videos and and you know say well that's good information i'm going to do something about it I've spoken to millions of people all over the world. And one of the things that I was talking about in Europe is being like, you know, if you think drones are a problem, you can get involved to do something about it. But that's probably not going to be your thing.

You know, there's going to be a crisis that you are going to have to address. It's going to be different from the drones. But I can tell you this. This is what I did when I ran into my crisis and this is what I think that you can do. I think that you can make a stand. I think that you can be like, yeah, this is right. right and this is wrong. We all know what's right and wrong. What is in us, what is in this portion of us can tell us what is right and wrong. If we are curious, if we want to know,

if we want to be at peace with ourselves in the world around us, we just have to make a stand for what is right. We don't have to fix it because eventually if enough people get there, the fixing will be done. Right? We just have to make a stand and be like, enough's enough. Enough is enough. We don't have to do the capital riot shit. We don't have to storm the capital. We don't have to lynch anyone. We don't have to do that. We just have to, we should want justice, not vengeance.

You know, Buddha says this about vengeance. He says, if you want vengeance, dig two graves. Ooh. Right? Right. We don't want vengeance. We do not want vengeance. Christ says this.

You will lose everything that you love and you will keep everything that you hate. Right. So we must recognize that everything in our world. life that we love eventually that we will lose it. And if we hate someone thing, we will carry it with us. And we don't want to carry hate. No. Hate it. I've carried hate. I know what hate feels like it's sickening. It's tiring. It makes you feel worthless. It makes you feel powerless. That's what hate does. You know, anger leads to hate. Hate leads to the dark side. Right. And it creates internal suffering for yourself. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And what are we going to be attached to? Are we going to be attached to love? You know, are we going to be attached to that concept? Love comes from within. Love comes from with, it's easy to love someone that loves you back. It's harder to love someone that you despise. Right. But the love only spares fruit if you give it to someone who is acting unlovable. Kindness only works towards people who are being unkind. Right. So what? What are we supposed to do? I've gone all the way to the fucking top of the chain of command, basically. I know President Obama and Biden and Trump know who I am. I know that for a fucking fact. But have they done anything? No. So where do I need to go? The people. The people need to do it.

The people need to stand up for themselves. The people deserve health care. Health care isn't the right. Health care is not a right. Health care is not something that is like you have to bake. for that should be base level because who builds all the stuff who buys all the stuff the people no one's going to build anything no one's going to invent anything no one's going to to live a life that is meaningful and beneficial if they're sick totally agree man i totally agree all this money needs to be we need to be focusing on ourselves and our own communities and and bettering each other with our health care, we need to make ourselves and our children give them better educations and everything. We need to, we need to heal ourselves before we try to change the world.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And if we do it to ourselves, the world will change. Right. Right. If we take a look in ourselves, I don't know if you know anything about like the eightfold path, the Buddhist eightfold path, right? Talks about right thought. Actually, I'm going to reference the Bhagavad Gita because that's that's actually my favorite I I might not like religion but I love spiritual scripture like I just I love it the poet the poetic there's a lot to learn from religion there's a there's a lot of real life real life references and religion that I think are very relevant to absolutely to human being and suffering absolutely and one of the things I like about the Bhagavad Gita is the baghavad Gita takes place in the middle of a battlefield now prince arjun and his

brothers show up at this battlefield after 13 years in exile to take back their inheritance. And Arjun has this moment of crisis because the people that took his inheritance are the people that trained him and raised him and he loves. And he's like, how am I supposed to fight these guys? How am I supposed to fight people that I'm supposed to give my reverence and love to? I would rather have a beggar's crust and have them murder me unarmed and unresisting than to soil my life with their blood. Right. And so what does Krishna say? Christian says, well, you're here to take back what's yours. You might as well do it.

And here's the right way. Be a man of wisdom, Arjun. Wisdom is my, I love men of wisdom the most. Be a wise man. But if you have to, take the path of right action. What is right action? If you eat of the fruits of the path of right action and the path of wisdom, they are the same. You know, there is no difference.

Wisdom is learning from other people's mistakes. wisdom is learning the mistakes without having to make them your own. But if you have to make your own, do so with the right mindset, do so with a pure heart, and you will make no mistake. That's super strong, man. It is. So it's when my grandfather told me all the time. It's what my mother taught me growing up.

One of my friends is a university professor, and she works at MIT now. and she wrote a chapter in her book, Age in the Life of Dron War, life in the age of drone warfare. And she called me up one day after I was having like a mental breakdown after I got attacked. Like I was like, like people are trying to actually actively kill me and hurt me. And she's like, she's like, people need to learn, hear what you have to say and learn from you.

And I was like, how am I supposed to teach people the things that I learn? when I was a toddler. I remember the first time that I lied and I got caught for it, my grandpa says, the reason why you don't lie isn't because you're going to go to hell if you lie. The reason why you don't lie is because it's so hard to track a story that you make up. You know, if you have to tell the truth, you can tell the truth. And you only have to suffer the consequence of the truth.

If you tell a lie and you are caught, you have to suffer the consequences of both the lie and the lie and the truth. Right. Which is hell. Which is hell. No, hell is within. Here's a story for you that I love. Actually, one of the inmates told me this in jail. He was, uh, this is, I'll tell you this story fully. So I get into jail and they had been plastering me all over the news. And these guys had seen me yell at the city council on the news. And this guy comes on video. Yeah, it's on video. Oh, that's great. So this guy comes up to me and like, I'm, I'm kind of like sitting there as like, someone's going to try to make me their bitch, right?

This guy sits next to me. He's like, he's like, hey, I want you to read this. And he's like, in my face. And I'm like, okay, this guy's going to make me his bitch, right? So I read this story. And it's the story of heaven and hell. And this samurai warrior goes to this Zen master and says, master, teach me everything that you know about heaven and hell.

And the master looks at him and says, teach you about heaven and hell. I doubt that you could even keep the rust off your sword, you ignorant, stupid fool. Why should I teach you anything about heaven and hell? And goes off and starts insulting him, and the samurai is kind of like, whoa, this guy's fucking on my shit. He's insulting my honor. And he pulls his sword with rage and fury, and he's about to kill the master. And the master looks at him calmly and says, that is hell. And the samurai drops his sword and falls to a.

his knees and begs for forgiveness and with compassion the master looks at him and says that is heaven and the samurai picks up his sword and she is it and walks away and he realized that the master told him everything that he needs to know about him yeah what is that from again um it's just a it's just a zen story so this guy had this guy he was a pretty tough dude but he he was like on his own path of searching right and he told me that i i i i looked like a sorcerer who was casting spells at the city council. But he had all this, he would take all these clips of wisdom and put them in this book.

And, you know, he would even rip out pages of novels and stuff. One of the, one of the actual stories that he had me read, I actually wrote it, I wrote this journal story when I was in jail. And he wrote this thing about,

pietas. This is from King Arthur book. And I compared my grandpa, my grandfather, to pietas. I can just, okay. And this is what it says. This is actually one of my favorite things that I've ever read, and I need to find the book that this was so I can read it. And I think I read it when I was in high school.

That's why it's familiar to me. But I'll just read it. this section if you don't mind. Yeah, for sure. Some say that this is a fight for our lives, but it isn't. It is a fight for life itself. On the mat, the only death is the end of the match, heralded by the whistle of the referee. In the world, it is for order and justice and all the ordinary and simple things, the little things that we have been deprived of for so long, the things that any decent and healthy society should secure, but the truth of America never has. The guarantee of food, a safe place to rest, roads that any person may travel with

security, from thriving town to city and to country, into the wilderness, and back again. Homes of wealthy folk, where some grace of living may grow and mature, free from greed and desire, giving scope to any who wish to hone their craft, and those who simply seek to learn, where anyone can read a book on any philosophy, faith, creed, or science, and have a healthy discussion of the thoughts and emotions they provoke, where lovers can grow old together, watching their children and their children's children thrive to learn the gentler arts of living. A place for truth, justice, and understanding replace violence, intrigue, and petty tribal jealousy. That's my dream for Montana. And that's what we are fighting for. Martin Luther King spoke of a

similar dream while he yet lived. I get to dreaming of a world where men walk simply without deceit or subterfuge, a kindlier world than our own that we know right now, with a strong defend the weak instead of the greedy, and to have some manners is not thought to beneath the warrior's dignity. truth, justice, and mercy. One cannot impose these things. They must grow out of a man striving for himself. We wonder why evil and wickedness exists in the world. Those that follow the church of the dying God say that the world is evil because of one great sin.

I grew up in that religion, but I can no longer prescribe to its remedies. Though we take the finest sieve and sift the entire universe through it, no molecule of love can never be found. For a man who has not known despair knows himself, and no one. man who does not know himself can find the truth, the rhythm of the universe and the love that sustains it. Whether it is on the mat or the battlefield or in everyday life, we must be ready to enter hell's gate and confront all which lay on the other side. As Dante says in his inferno, all hope abandons ye who enter him. And this is how courage is born. There is no courage without fear. The hero of time taught me that the bravest is often the most frightened, and if we are

afraid of something that means we must confront it. In that respect, solitude is often fears companion. To be afraid is to be alone, but it is only then a person attains that self-discovery. Pain defines and exacts the price of wisdom, and the price is with pain because it must be paid. Through courage, one earns honor, and in all of life, my heart, my mind, my body, and my soul, courage is the principal thing. Shakespeare says that all the world is a stage. On earth, every man plays a part and that part is appointed to him by the powers that be before he was even born. In one incarnation, a slave, in another a king, in another a common soldier, a priest, a merchant, even a politician. In each park, as he plays it out in life for ill or well, he learns something

he needs to know until all good and evil have been experienced, and the soul can distinguish for itself between the two, and so grows towards the perfection that is man's final goal. A king is not greater than a slave for both of men. In fact, a king is a king. In fact, a king, is more difficult, for what a great man does, others will follow. It is of equal importance that they should act their part so that they play the mirror's truth. This spirit needs to be awoken, set to a standard, create a pattern that even the dullest can comprehend and strive to achieve. A promise is a promise. Once given, it must be kept, lived by, or be forfeit of honor, and to the noble dishonor is worse than death. The old faith of the druids holds that once a vow is made,

it cannot be unmade without damage to the soul. In this greater cosmos, we are the individual cosmos. In the triad of the bards, obiates, and druids, there are three things no man can alter, the stars in their course, the flow of the tides, and the pattern that unrolls from the given word. By these things taught to me that I have learned through my own experience I live in service,

given without grudging and without hope of reward, through the quality of my heart and the respect earned by it. We must honor our own gods and give respect to other men's. We must seek truth and speak it always, even to our own harm and hurt. We must be worthy of trust and trust one another. I would have us use our strength to protect those that cannot protect themselves, the old, the weak, the infirm, the widows and the fatherless, even those that we hate so long as it treads the path of right action. We must have the manners of kings equal to any in any land, and so above those things which led in a man's spirit,

anger, love, and greed. Well, look, Brandon, I think that was a super strong way to end this thing. The stuff that you're sharing with the world is super powerful and important, and I'm super grateful for you coming on here and sharing those experiences with me today. Thank you very much. Tell people that are listening and or watching where they can find more of the stuff that you're doing or follow more of your work. Since I was being attacked and harassed and I had no defense, I've

I put fire to my social media and I've put my own personal projects to the side. I would recommend everyone just watching any, if they are curious, watch everything. Even the stuff my stalker puts out. You know, watch that stuff. Watch what people are putting out there to hurt others. You know. Search for your name, Brandon Bryant on. Yep.

Okay. Just say Brandon Bryant drone. Okay. Right. And that will lead them to anything. my documentary is on Netflix in full itself it is the drone documentary by Tonya Heson Shai a Norwegian director and producer I think that that when that movie first came out

that was the first time I ever felt that I did something right with this so there's plenty of interviews plenty of talks I'm always open for civil discussion if people want to contact me on my Facebook, but I can definitely tell you that most people get on Facebook to attack me and say nasty things about me. And if you do that, then I will respond in kind. Should we link your Facebook in the description of the video? You can if you want. Would you like me to? Sure. Okay. Yeah, I can do that. My other, so my Twitter has been suspended because I was speaking out against the establishment. My Instagram is private because people were

reporting that. So all I have is that Facebook lift. I also have an email. You know, if people want to email me, I think it's out there on the internet, they can. But if they're curious, they can. But I just want to mostly encourage people to stand up for themselves, you know, and reflect on what's right, you know, get rid of emotion, get rid of thought, and just do what is right. You know, love one another.

You know, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard.