Jocko Podcast - 326: You Can't Make a Case Sitting Behind A Desk, w/ Joe Piersante

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

0:00:00 - Opening.0:004:15 - Joe Piersante, DEA.3:24:46 - How to stay on THE PATH.3:47:01 - Closing gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 326 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Throughout October 30th and 31st, 2011, in furtherance of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Drug Law Enforcement Mission in Afghanistan, special agents of the DEA's foreign deployed advisory support or fast team conducted counter-narcotics, counterinsurgency operations with their police partners from the Afghan National Interdiction Unit, assisted by the Australian Defense Forces.

The task force departed their base via four helicopters as part of a mission to execute Afghan drug warrants and to search for narcotics, caches, and heroin production labs. The team began to search the target area and accompanying Opium Bazaar when they began to receive sporadic incoming enemy fire. They accomplished their assigned duties and then maneuvered to the extraction location all while under sporadic enemy fire When the task force arrived at the helicopter landing zones they continue to receive effective

enemy fire one of the four helicopters was forced to make an additional orbit and subsequently land in the vicinity of special agents Pierciante Johnson Vanderbilt Harris Stewart Fisher Portinga and five members from the Australian special forces. This helicopter landed under fire. Special Agent Pursante laid down suppressive fire, which enabled Special Agent Stewart, Harris, and Fisher to board the helicopter. Once inside, Special Agent Stewart continued applying suppressive fire. Special Agent Stewart directed an Afghan door gunner to initiate suppressive fire in an attempt to cover the remaining members of the team still outside the helicopter. Special Agent Pursante was a prompting

Approximately 10 meters from the rear of the helicopter when he was hit by enemy fire. The round penetrated his ballistic helmet, entered above his right eye, and exited above his left eye. And he was immediately rendered unconscious and fell to the ground. Special Agent Portinga positioned himself at the rear of the helicopter and continued laying down suppressive fire as special agent Pursante was being brought back into the helicopter. He instinctively put himself in harm's way and returned fire until all personnel were on board the helicopter. As the helicopter took off, Special Agents Vanderbilt Johnson and Harris immediately rendered first aid to Special Agent Pursante and controlled his bleeding, maintained an open airway, and stabilized him. Special Agent Pursante was eventually transferred to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia for continued treatment and rehabilitation. The actions of all agents involved both before and following the shooting were very clearly heroic.

And that right there was an excerpt from an article by the U.S. Department of Justice who oversees the DEA. And Special Agent Joseph Pursante survived that round of the head. he became the first ever member of the DEA to receive the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom and also received the federal congressional badge of bravery. But that bullet did do significant damage most significantly. It rendered Special Agent Prasante blind. But he has continued to drive on to gravest. grow to teach and a set an incredible example of perseverance for all of us. And it is an honor to have him here with us tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned.

Joe, thanks for coming on, man. You're quite welcome. First, I want to say it's an honor to be part of this podcast. And I was very flattered that you guys asked me to be on it. Well, you're the first DEA guy we've got here. So you got another first under your belt now. But you didn't start off in the D. Let's let's like, I like to go back to the beginning.

Let's figure out where you came from, how you ended up being who you are. Born in Detroit, right? Yes. Actually, grew up, was born and raised in the city of Detroit. My dad was a police officer there. And at the time there was residency. So we had to live in a city. I'm actually third generation law enforcement officer.

and my family. When you say there was residency, what do you mean by that? You had to live in the city. You had to live in the city to be a police officer in the city. Yes, or at the time, any city workers. Wow. If you're a fire, fired or, you know, work for the city sanitation, things like that. You had to live in the city.

So we all kind of clustered and huddled in little areas. And your dad was a cop. His whole career, that was what he did? Yes. He retired in Detroit, 1990, then went on to work at the University of Michigan. their police department eventually became chief of police there. Did you have aspirations of being a cop as well? Yes.

You know, growing up I always played team sports. It was fortunate enough to play college and football to smaller school in Southern Michigan. And I always like that kind of team atmosphere. And my father, he worked conspiracy narcotics for years and years in Detroit Police Department. And I just saw that kind of team environment. team atmosphere. And it kind of drew me to it, even though my father never pushed me to go into law enforcement. And actually, when I went away to college, my major at first was sports medicine. I wanted to be an athletic trainer. And then the more I thought about it, I'm like, you know what,

I really want to do this law enforcement thing. So I talked to my dad and he's like, okay, you know, I support you. And if you're going to do the law enforcement, He worked on a DEA task force and a drug task force there. And he says, you know, I would encourage you to go federal just because the pay is a little better. You get to travel the world and you get to see and do a lot of things. And I've always been a kind of rough tumble person. And DEA has always been known as the kind of blue collar federal law enforcement. So he kind of tried to push me that way.

And he had friends that still work there. But unfortunately, when I graduated from college in December of 91, DEA was on a hiring freeze. So I went back home to the Detroit, Michigan area. Detroit Police was hiring, so I put my application there and got hired by the Detroit Police Department in February of 1993. Now, when you say you were a rough and tumble kid, to me, it seems like when I talk to people that had police as parents, they're either like, really good on the straight and narrow or the kind of rebellious. Where were you at? Were you were somewhere in the middle? Yeah, you know, I kind of had a rebellious streak to me, but luckily I had a strong father and a strong grandfather and kind of kept me on the straight

and my father was pretty tough on me and but he always supported me. He always went to my athletic events. It was there all the time. You know, he, you know, would put a foot up my ass if I needed, but also, you know, was very loving and support. You know, I could still call my father today, hey, dad, I need help. He's like, okay, I'm on the way. And a little more background, my dad's father, and actually my mother's father, they both served in World War II. And my dad's father, he actually landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and the second wave and later got a silver star pushing through Germany. Dang.

Did you have brothers and sisters? I have one sister. She's four years younger than me. But you were kind of the only son, so your dad was at every sporting event that there was. Oh, yes. And he coached me every sport but football. But to always, even at grade school,

he would video my games at the old VHS video cameras and we sit down and watch the games at. after with him and he'd be like, you know, Joey, you know, they called me, his name is Joe too and both grandfathers were Joe. So they called me Joey, Joey, you did this wrong, you did that wrong. My mom would be like, leave that poor kid alone. Were you, how were you in school? Were you, did you feel like you had to do good in school because your dad was kind of keeping

an eye on you? Yeah, you know, I felt, you know, I needed to do, you know, well in school. have school things I would say I have you know I'm I'm a pretty athletic guy but I've I'm a pretty athletic guy but I've always had to work work in life for things you know I was taught you work hard you put the effort in and if you didn't succeed at something you go back and look at it and you kind of become kind of analyze yourself okay what did I do right what did I do wrong what can I do better. I've had a good example to, you know, put hard work in, you know, and most often, hopefully it's going to pay off. And I just had a good example that way. And you played,

you played college football as well. Yes. And you, how was that? How was that? Did you guys win a lot? Did you lose a lot? What lessons you take away from playing college ball? You know, I tell you what, I tell everybody, sports teaches a lot of lessons in life. teaches you how to win, how to lose, how to be a team player, all those things. And I learned valuable lessons from sports. Now, in college, I went to a small school in Southern Michigan called Adrian College. We were the most winningest football team in Michigan in the 80s, all divisions. So we did really well.

When I was there, we won two league championships and actually went to the division. in three college national playoffs in 1988. So it was a good, you know, I was able to get my education, and I excelled in college in football. I knew I wasn't going to be the tallest guy, you know, bless my mom, she's only like five foot. So I better be strong and fast. So that's when I picked up the weights and kind of blew up as soon as I started lifting.

So in college, I was an all-league player. twice. I was team captain, team MVP. In our league, we had every week they listed an offense and defensive player of the week. I made that defensive player of the week numerous times. So, you know, it was a good experience. You know, you get the bond with those, you know, the people you play with and you learn life lessons. And actually in college, you know, you finally get to do things, you know, classes that you're interested in your major. And I did really well in college. And actually in my major, I had over a three point average and stuff. And you said you transferred or you switched from being in wanting to become like an athletic trainer into what?

Sociology criminal justice. So you made the decision to have to go go be a cop or something like that. Yes. After my freshman year at the time at our school, we didn't have a just specific criminal justice program. So it was sociology with the emphasis on criminal justice. and I continued sports medicine as my minor degree. So then you get done with that. The federal, the DEA is not hiring, as you said. And so now you decide you're going to go and become a Detroit cop. Yes.

Is it hard to apply for? How strict is it? Is it easy to get into? Did you third generation, do you just get like a welcome mat at the front door to get in there? I wouldn't say that. It was when I showed up to recruiter, you know, it was like, you know, they didn't give me any, cut me any slack at all. You got to go take your little eye test and this and that.

And, you know, you go through the process. Of course, it's not as intense and as detailed as a process getting hired federally because you have to get security clearance. You know, but, you know, they do a good job. And, you know, I had decent credentials. And, you know, luckily I just didn't get in a lot of trouble or didn't get caught. So I didn't have bad things on my record. So, you know, I got in fairly.

easy and showed up there and went through the academy. And I'm not only kind of a muscle head guy, but I'm fairly intelligent. And I graduated top academically in my class and got just lamp on knowledge on plaque and stuff, a little genie lamp on there. You know, I say no great shakes. You know, my, I guess my competition there wasn't as at the greatest level as the DIA academics. But it was pretty good. You get to teach a lot of learning a lot of things.

And in Detroit, I grew up there all my life, so I kind of knew what I was getting into. And Detroit, on the police department, is kind of a bat tip of my fire. You get to learn how to be the real police real fast. You know, it's kind of sink or swim. And do you immediately just go right out being like a beat cop in the street somewhere?

What they did is they took the top people out of our class and put us in this unit called Tats. Tactical Service section. We were a citywide unit that did crowd control. Also, if there was a barricaded gun person, we would do outer perimeter. And we would work in areas where they were having problems, certain precincts, or the precincts got overrun with calls, and we would go and flood the area and help the precincts out.

So it was kind of like a almost like a QRF, like a quick reaction for us? Kind of like that in a way. You know, but you know, we just answer the priority one and two calls. Like the shots fired, things like that,

robberies in progress. We took a little of those higher level calls. So it was pretty crazy and Detroit's kind of a weird animal. Like I grew up on the east side. So I mostly was an east side guy. and when I became in TSS, we worked the whole cities.

You might be in a couple different areas or a couple different precincts, as they call it, in one day. So where I grew up, if I got out and chased somebody and jumped a couple fences, I knew where the hell I was. And I'll be on the west side, bail out, and I was pretty fast, and I could jump fences pretty good, so I could usually catch a lot of people, and I was in shape. So I jump a couple fences, I'd be in a yard holding a suspect at gunpoint, and I would know where where the hell I was at. I'd be like radio tech three. I'm a couple blocks east of my original location next to the burned out garage, but the

problem was like every third garage is burned out. So that was the day-to-day. So you did that right out of the academy? That seems like a strange thing to take someone that's brand new and put them in that kind of situation where you're going into these tough calls all the time out of the gate. That's trial by fire. Oh, yes. But which was good is a lot of the better officers worked there at tactical service section.

So you got to be trained and learned from some of the better police officers. So, you know, you really got to learn the job fast and from some good individuals. Like how many people were on the team? Did you guys show up in like a freaking armored truck? Well, each shift we had, we ran two shifts, a day shift. And then a power shift. The power shift was seven and like the three in the morning. Those are like the busiest times.

Day shift and power shifts. So we roll out there eight to ten cars of two people in a car. So we would flood an area. So it was good if you needed backup or you needed help. Somebody usually was there fairly fast. But it was intense. And then after at the time my dad finished up, he was on the full-time SWAT team in Detroit. and was crazy about Detroit of being a big city.

They didn't have a full-time SWAT team until 1986, which to me kind of blows my mind. Yeah, that's crazy. And he was one of the original members on the team, and then after three years of working a patrol-type unit, you could apply for a special unit or bureau. They call them also. And I tried out for the SWAT team

and later made the SWAT team on my last year on the job. I was on the full-time tactical team, which was, you know, pretty intense. You got to do a lot of fun stuff, and you didn't have to do a lot of paperwork. It was usually the sergeant of the team. You know, he did the write-up after the barricaded gun person, or unless you got into, of course, a shooting, you would have to do a report. So you went right from that tactical service section into the SWAT team? Yes. How many years did you do the tactical service section?

Three years, and then one year on the full-time SWATCWSWT. team and then I got hired at D.D.A. Did you shoot any, did you fire your shot, fire your weapon at all during those three years with the tactical service? Not with TSS, but on the SWAT team. It took a while to get hired by DEA. You know, government sometimes it's hurry up and wait. And I was sitting around. It didn't hear anything that I had failed something. And time went by, months went by. And I get a call. And they're like, Mr. Persani, you're still interested in a job. DEA. I said, of course I am. Yeah, we had lost your application. We found it now. Oh, man. I'm like, this has every information about me, you know, parents, siblings, every neighbor I've ever had,

you know, had. And the process kind of really sped up. So I'm like three months out from the academy and we go to a barricaded gunman and one of the precincts in Detroit and it's an ex-military person. and they have kind of mental problems, and they would hold the neighborhood and their family at bay, shooting at them every so often. So we respond, and we began take over from the precinct, began negotiating with them,

and they start shooting at our armor personnel carrier through the window, and it's starting to ramp up. And we had some officer stationed in the backyard, and the person goes out and, you know, exchanging, shooting at them, but they don't have a clear shot at the suspect. And they had a car in the driveway. And my team was on a break. We were like four or five houses down in between houses.

And we had one of the suburbans we had with us, and we had like half our gear on. And they're like, do not let them get mobile. We feel they're trying, they're going to might try to go for the car. and then sure is crap, they go for the car. So I jump in the passenger side of the suburb. My buddy jumps in the driver's seat. We're like half dressed.

We just got our MP5 submachine guns strapped around us. So we pull behind the car to try to block them in and they start to ram us. And we're like, oh, crap. And by this time it was dark. And then I see a muzzle flash through the rear window. And they start shooting at us. So I Exited the vehicle tactically and my partner did and we opened up into the car and unfortunately had to

Dispatch the person and I was like waiting all this time for DEA and then finally I get into shooting, but thank you know thank God it was a good shooting I didn't you know there was no drama with that but I was just like just my luck you know wait all this time and then I get in this you know critical Incident How often were you guys as a SWAT team? doing hits. You know, it varied. Sometimes in a month,

four or five times would be maybe a barricaded gun person. Sometimes we would serve like felony warrants for more dangerous individuals. Once in a while, we go out with narcotics. They were hitting a spot, which they deemed was pretty dangerous and needed a little more trained unit. So we'd go and do that.

But, you know, did a lot of training, tactical training, a lot of shooting, you know, and as you can attest you, the more you shoot, the more proficient, you know, it's kind of a perishable skill. So, you know, we got to do all those type of things. So it was a good experience. And you were just sporting that 1990s MP5. Yes, nine millimeter.

Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, you're in a vehicle and you have an MP5. And I'm, you know, in the 90s for me and the SEAL teams, you know, we used the MP5 and we thought it was cool until we had to shoot somebody that was more than, you know, 50 yards away. And all of a sudden you think, this is not a good weapon to have. No, or they have a ballistic vest with place that's not going through it. Yeah. You know, and the A pillar in cars, we'll stop that 9mm.

Yeah. Yeah, that's, I guess we've all transitioned away from the MP5 now. But damn, that's an accurate, easy-to-shoe weapon. I think that's like, sometimes people ask me about home defense weapons, like for a female, maybe. And I think, man, an MP5 is not a bad call. You're in the house. You're only going to shoot someone that's in the house, most likely. You know, so I think it's, and it's so easy to shoot so accurate.

Yes. You know, you know, there's very, very little to almost no recoil on that weapon. Yeah. And with a suppressor on them, it's nothing, nothing. But that's a lot of experience that you had. I mean, just doing hits all the time in the 90s, just that kind of experience. I remember from the SEAL perspective in the 90s, you know, we looked at SWAT teams,

especially, you know, city, big urban center SWAT teams. You guys were doing, you guys were doing work all the time. So the experience that you all had, and, you know, we would work with L.A. SWAT from time to time. Seals would work with L.A. SWAT. And it was, we were kind of, we were kind of envious of the fact that they got to go out and do the job. And, you know, it's the same thing for you up there in Detroit.

in the 90s, if you're in the military in the 90s, chances were you weren't doing anything real. Yes. You know, so you get in that experience is, that's a lot of experience to have in the 90s from that perspective. So meanwhile, you get done with that, you spend that this year. So how long are you on the SWAT team for? About a year. A year on the SWAT team.

And you got picked up for the DEA after three months of being at the SWAT team. Is that what you said? No, I was there a little longer, but it just took, I got in that fatal shooting right three months before I was ready to start my academy date. Got it. For the academy. I got hired with DEA in June of 1997. And this was, you liked the DEA because they're, and I actually never heard that the DEA was the blue collar of the feds. I like that.

I didn't know that before. That's the reputation that they have, huh? At the time, you know, things are changing in law enforcement. now and everything. But at the time, we were kind of the roughnecks, so to speak. So you get, you get to go to, what is it, they have the DEA Academy. Is that what they have? Yes, it's in, it was in Quantico, Virginia, inside the Quantico Military Base. When I went through, us in the FBI shared the same academy. We since have our own academy that's right next to the FBI Academy, but we still share the gun ranges and driving track and gym with the FBI.

And how long is that pipeline? You know, it's like 16, 18 week academy. And what are you doing? Is it legal? Is it physical? Is it, what are you doing? It's a little bit of everything where the Police Academy was more paramilitary. DEA was more Gentleman Academy.

You know, you didn't have to line up for inspection every day. I see a speckable lint on your, you know, your uniform and getting, you know, the front lean arrest position and all that jazz. But it was very intense, very academically challenging, very physically challenged, challenging. We did a lot of shooting, a lot of tactical training, a lot of scenarios. I was very impressed with it. The biggest thing was you're away from your family for four months, as opposed to I went to the Detroit Police Academy.

It wasn't an overnight thing. You come and go and stuff. But it was a very, very intense academy. And then when I went through the DEA, you couldn't go back to where you were hired from. They had this thing with our administrator, who's the person who runs DEA. You couldn't go back because there might be potential for corruption. And to me and my, if you're going to be corrupt, you're going to be corrupt. wherever you go.

True. So we, you know, three quarters of the academy, they put a list out. And a different spot's opened. And, you know, say you've got 50 individuals in your academy class and there's 50 spots. And, of course, it's where individuals are needed. And, of course, DEA, what the drugs come up from Mexico, a lot of border spots. So I'm like, well, I don't speak Spanish. So maybe I won't have to go there.

A lot of spots in New York, L.A., you know. know, big cities like that, and you get to pick your top three choices. You're not guaranteed necessarily to get any one of those, and you can work it out with the class, and you get to sit there beforehand, and, okay, there's so many spots here who wants to put in for one of these spots, and you can kind of work it out, and then you submit your top three. And like I said, you're not guaranteed to get them any of those spots, and if you speak Spanish and there's some border spots, you're probably going to go to the border. And hi.

So what did you put for your top three slots that you wanted? I put Phoenix, Arizona. I'm number one. I had never been to Phoenix, but I was going to have to move. And I was married at the time. And my wife had at the time had dual custody with her children. Two boys, young boys. And she's going to have to move away from them.

So I kind of let her pick. And then I put Fort Lauderdale in Miami. I was, I had, being from Michigan, I had a lot of family. that lived vacation seasonally in Florida and the winter months. But I also had a grandmother that had a place in Arizona, and then my wife at the time had a grandfather that lived there. So put in for Phoenix, Arizona, and as long as you weren't like a butthead and this and that,

and you, you know, you more or less got one of your top three spots, so I was very fortunate in that. So I got that selected and got Phoenix. and then... So what do you do when you show up? You're a new guy. Are you a new guy? They call you a new guy?

What do they call you? Oh, yeah. They're kind of, you know, effing new guy, you know, all kind of stuff, you know. And so I find out that I'm going to show up there. I'm going to the clandestine Laboratory Task Force Group. We're going to be doing meth labs. Now, from Detroit, I've never seen methamphetamine one time.

Really? But it's not really an urban city draw. drug. That's kind of more of a white trash drug, per se. You know, in the city, you know, you have heroin, or they call it in a city, Heron, and, of course, cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana, and things like that. So I just leave the academy, and they're like, Joe, you're going back to the academy for Klan Labs go. I'm like, oh, shit.

So I got stuck in the Klan Lab group for my first four years, but it was kind of good. It was a local task force, ran out of the American. Copa County Sheriff's Office. And you got to learn the basics of narcotics and investigations, how to write search warrants, how to deal with informants, which is kind of our bread and butter. And you get to learn the job. So it really taught me how to become a DEA investigator. And I would say on the low end of the estimate, I've been in at least 500 methamphetamine

lapse. And we were on all the protective gear in it, but we really don't know with the long-term exposures to all these caustic and hazardous chemicals are.

I had a neighbor whose nephew got involved in meth and he told me he had been to prison and he got out of prison and when I met him the nephew had gotten out of prison

and I met him and was talking to him and he was talking to him. Yeah, I was, I just got out of prison. He said, and he told me, he said, when I tried crystal meth for the first time, as soon as I tried it, I realized that was the only thing I ever wanted to do for the rest of my life was more crystal meth. And he stole everything from his mom, everything was from his grandma, everything from his uncle, everything from all of his friends, ruined every relationship in San Diego and then went to somewhere else, San Bernardino, and made friends there and stole from all them. did that all across the country until he finally wound up in Texas and, you know, that's where he finally got rolled up and sent to prison. But that, that meth thing is freaking crazy, huh?

No, it's crazy. You know, these drugs are crazy, especially these harder drugs. Like, as you kind of said, he controls their whole life, you know, and most of the labs are smaller. We call them mom-and-pop labs. They're cooking ounces. That's cute. You know, you know, it's, they make enough to get their own for free and, you know,

and sell a little bit to their friends, you know, so they get theirs for free. And, you know, they're cooking in these houses with these little kids. You know, and everything is off-gassing into the, you know, into the air, getting into the carpet and walls and everything else. So we started bringing child protective services with us when we would do methamphetamine lab warrants. And they would bring the kids to the hospital.

And when they would test them, you know, high percentage of them would. test positive for methamphetamine. Just because the stuff, you know, was in the carpet and the atmosphere, you know, it just breaks my heart. You know, me having a daughter, you know, these little kids involved. And then not only would they get charged with the meth lab in manufacturing, they would get charged with child abuse from CPS also.

So you would do these investigations. You're, you're getting, are you getting human intelligence that's telling you, hey, I get my, I get my meth from this person over here. you find out where that person lives, then you track them for a little while, figure out, you know, where they're doing suspicious activity, and then do you do a hit on it? How does it work? Yes, that's one of the means with an informant. Hey, you know, you know, informants, you know, some are trying to work off charges. Some are just paid informants and they go around and that's what they do, you know, so-and-so is manufacturing meth here, you know, I saw, you know, these

glassware items. I saw this part of the cooking procedure. I saw these chemicals, you know, and then you do, you know, some more background and then you do, you know, some investigations, surveillance, and use kind of some of our techniques that we use to, you know, kind of make sure and validate the informant. And we also get information from different places to sell these chemicals. You know, Joe Blow is buying, you know, keeps by, you know, every month so many pounds of red phosphorus, so many pounds of iodine crystals, or the different stores when you could buy the cold pills, the pseudofedrine or ephedron tablets over the counter, they would kind of, some stores would work with us, and they would get license plates. So we'd do a workup and, you know,

find out where these people live, they started an investigation, and then we got enough, probable cause for a search warrant, we would hit these locations. And now, because of the dangers of meth labs, a lot of times you don't know what the atmosphere was, so you, when you rated it, you would have to go in with full SCBA self-contained breathing apparatus. But you didn't know what the environment and oxygen level was in the houses. And of course, you got this big tank on your back and it's kind of cumbersome. And a lot of local SWAT teams were Klan Lab trained for tactics. So there were little smaller tactical bottles you could use.

So a lot of unknowns. And, you know, one of our investigative techniques you go through and garbage. cans when they put it on the curbs. A lot of these meth people would know that we would pull trash. So they would save every bit of lab trash they ever had in one room. So you're missing, you know, you're missing, mixing acids and bases together and things are off casting. So it's not a very safe environment, to say the least. Real quick. What's a paid informant? They're actually, almost like a professional informant. But it's like for money seizures,

and drug seizures, we would pay them money. So they'd go around and work and travel sometimes from city to city just to make money as an informant. You know, and at different times when, you know, budgets and we had good money and, you know, they got a certain percentage of a cash seizure or asset seizure. You know, they can make some fairly decent money. And what? These are just guys sort of off the street or do they apply for that job? It's really, you know, you have to to fill out a package for a person that wants to be a confidential source. Of course, you have to run their criminal history, make sure they have no act of warrants, and you have to supervise them pretty tight.

And some people get approved to work as informants. Some don't, just because their criminal history and their stuff is just so bad. You know, so it's a catch-22. You know, you can't get a choir person or choir boy. you know, to catch people, but it's a fine line. And you have to manage it well. And as you're doing this, and you say you went into over 500 meth labs in how many years was that?

Four years. In four years. So that's like, you know, hitting a meth lab every two or three, maybe four days going into those things. Did you feel like, hey, we're making a dent? Or sometimes you just feel like we're just overwhelmed? and we could keep doing this forever. It got to the point where it was bad for a while.

You almost felt overwhelmed, but there was so many. And it was so easy to get the precursor chemicals to manufacture methamphetamine here in the United States. So then we started, as a whole DEA, we started cracking down into the companies that made the ephedron tablets or the pseudo-fedrine pills, which is one of the primary precursor chemicals of methamphetamine

and would track where they're shipping and made it harder to get. And that's why you probably see, like if you buy any cold medication that has pseudophedrine, you got to buy it. You have to get it from behind the counter now. Because people were going in and just buying two, stealing two boxes, and they called it like smurfing pills, and they would get enough to make, you know, how much methamphetamine they wanted to make.

So that started really putting, we saw that, started putting a dent into it. You know, and course, you know, then originally when I was working these labs, of course, there was a lot of methamphetamine coming up from Mexico, but it wasn't that pure. So a lot of the true tweakers did not want it. They wanted that real pure glass, 98, 99, you know, percent pure methamphetamine, which was homegrown, made. And then once the, we, you know, cracked down the precursors and harder to get here, Mexico started picking up their game and started making the real pure methamphetamine down in

Mexico and sending it up through the border. So does that mean you were dealing with the cartel, the big drug cartels? Yes, a lot. And especially when I worked in Phoenix, you know, of course, that's what is, you know, the Southwest is controlled by the Mexican drug cartels. Do you have any big memorable operations that you did that you were part of? Yes. Like I said, most of the labs were like mom and pop tweaker labs, but I was able to do a couple of pretty big, we call them Mexican National Labs, where they're making multiple, multiple pounds at one time.

and the sheriff's office had some information that they had a couple guys came in, they wanted to work for money, and they knew of this big Mexican national lab west of Phoenix in an area called Whispering Ranch. You know, and we're like, okay, I went with another partner to see what they had to say. You know, a lot of times a lot of things can be BS and people overhype and overblow it up. you know, so we go out there and, you know, hey, this is this group of these Mexican nationals. You know, they're making, you know, 30, 40, 50 pounds of math at a time. They're cooking out in this real rural location, you know, so we get a workup and start doing some investigation

and identify where the people are living in the city. And we have an informant that's willing and knows when they're out there cooking. You know, so we're building up a plan. And, you know, of course, it's out in the middle of nowhere. So there's no address of this place. There's a parcel number. So you're getting like a GPS grid coordinates to hit this place. And that's what's on the search warrant.

And, you know, how are we going to hit this place in their cooking? Are we going to do an air assault? What are we going to do? So we finally, it got up in, um, got close. Okay. They said they're going to cook this weekend. And what's the time frame on all this? Like, how long does this take?

Is it, is it weak? Is it days? is it months? It all depends. It varies. I think this one in particular, I think we were working on it for a couple months. So the informant says, I think they're going to cook this weekend.

It said, okay, we'll get ready. So, you know, we're preparing and getting, you know, as much information as we have typed up in the search warrant and everything. And we knew there was a property close to them, which the guy was kind of involved. And if they were going to run from the lab location, they more than likely they were going to go hide at their residence you know so the informant calls me okay they're going out and buying a bunch of ice so one of the processes of cooking meth at the end

you got to start adding ice to things and cool it down so we knew okay they're cooking they're almost they're getting close to done so we spin up the team we put an affidavit what the informant says and we get assigned by a judge and And we were working with the sheriff's office at the time. And it was decided we're not going to do an aerosol. We're going to convoy in there. And, you know, this is a rural location. You know, in a desert type environment, you're kicking up dust and stuff.

They can see you coming from five miles away. How big of a team are you bringing? And this is like an assault team? Yeah, we're bringing the, the Maricopa County SWAT team. You know, it's probably 20-something individuals. our lab team, you know, we probably got 10 individuals or so, and then we're bringing chemist and hazmat and everything out. So it's a pretty good force.

Big convoy. Big convoy, a lot of dust. Big dust up. So, of course, the plan was the SWAT team was going to hit the lab location. Do you put a recon element out at all? Or do you do aerial or nothing? We had an aerial prior, but we didn't have time. to get people lied in there, laid in there to do it.

We would have liked that to happen, but it just wasn't feasible with the situation. So, of course, the SWAT team hits it. Hey, we got a huge lab up cooking, but nobody's here. They're like, oh, shit. So the group I was with, we go to, you know, we. So wait, let me catch that.

So the SWAT team hits it, they find the lab, and there's no people there. Yes, it's up in cooking. Oh, man. Okay. And so, like I said earlier, I said, if they run, they're probably going to go to this other gentleman's house. So we go to that house and we hear some noise and some scurrying in the house and we hear like a lady like calling for help. So we're like, damn, they're in there.

So egnance and circumstances we enter the house and they're all trying to hide in this back. back bedroom. Got one guy's halfway up the chimney. The guy's lying in bed with his muddy boots and everything out. Like he's sleeping and laying on the couch and I'm like, really guys? We're going to fall for this. So we brought him back over to the lab and, you know, processed the lab and ended up being a nice size lab. They think they had like 50 pounds of methamphetamine in solution. And then that later led to, they end up cooperating and then hit another big lab. And, you know, in South Phoenix and that individual, he also was running labs in Riverside, California, too. So he was wanted, you know, by Riverside Sheriff and this and that, and we end up hitting them and getting a big lab at that time.

And we make entry with the SWAT team. And this guy was living on a horse property. He had horses and stuff. Wait, where was this? This guy was in Phoenix as well? Yes. Or Phoenix area? Yeah, South Phoenix, actually.

So this guy was. a legit like he had horses and a ranch of some kind oh yeah this guy was doing well and had a ranch in um

Riverside too yeah because I kind of get the impression you know when you talk about like the mom and pop labs that a lot of people are just kind of getting away with what they can

and then they eventually get busted yeah and they're broke but occasionally you have somebody that broke us the joke and these people they're in it for making the money

and yeah it's this guy who we hit in South Phoenix, he actually taught the other people in the other lab how to cook. So, yeah, we go in there

and he's in the back cooking and he's cooking with a 22-liter flask, a big triple-neck flask. It's a good-sized flask, about size of a basketball a little bigger. So when the SWAT team goes in, he takes the flask and smashes it on the ground. You know, but of course you take the samples there.

You know, he's not going to, you know, we figure out what's in there. Right. Right. So, yeah, you know, we found some, you know, methamphetamine in the house and everything. We're like, what's this? Oh, that is feed for the horses. And that's not feed for the damn horses.

Come on. What happens to these guys? You go, then you wrap them up. They immediately go to jail. Wrap them up. He went to jail. You know, they did some search warrants on his place in Riverside in California. And then we indicted him and, you know, put him in prison for a while.

How long is a while? Like this guy, his name was Thomas DeHaro Sanchez. I think he got like 10 years. So he's probably out, but he'd probably listen to this right now. Yeah, probably perhaps, you know. You know, but this lab, oh, hell, this is back in, this one, I think 99. So, for sure.

Yeah, he's back out. You know, I forgot to ask you this. When you got in that shooting back when you were with the Detroit, Did you have any lessons learned from that about the way it happened, about how your reaction was? Did you do something well? Did you do something bad? Did you feel like your training worked? Did you feel like your training didn't work?

How was that experience? Yes, that's a very good question. With all the training we had, you know, the different scenarios and different barricaded gun people, I just reacted with my training. You know, I saw the muzzle flash. I knew it was gunfire. and, you know, I just did what I had to do to neutralize, you know, to stop the threat. So the training you had worked? 100%.

You know, I didn't even think, you know, I didn't even, don't even remember looking through my sights. I know I did. You know, you get that perceptual narrowing, you know, when you're in a fight or flight or a gunfight, you know, with your eyesight increases, your hearing decreases, you start using to find motor skills. So you felt all that stuff. Yes. What about the, you were the passenger and another guy was driving?

Yes. Did he get hit or was he okay? No, he was okay. He fired like four or five shots and I had my MP5 on full automatic and I just fired burst until the weapon ran dry. Damn, going full auto, huh? Yeah, I was like, hey, I'm going to end this as quick as possible. Yeah.

You know, people get all these, you know, lucky shots. You know, you're chasing these, you know, perpetrators, whatever. and they're running from you and they take the gun and shoot it over their head and hit you, you know, dead between the eyes. Yeah. Yeah. What about doing all these, you know, doing all these hits over the years with the DEA down in the Phoenix area? You know, you obviously are starting to pack away

some good, some good, you know, methodologies and thought processes as you're going to do these things. Like, what were your big takeaways as you developed as a, you know, as an agent? I always was very tactically proficient, and I think one of my fortays and strong points as an agent was being able to deal with people. And that's what I suggest that anybody who gets in federal law enforcement, I would advise them to be a local law enforcement officer first, but you get to learn the job.

You get to learn how to deal with people. And I happen to be very good at dealing with informants. And I could work informants well. What do you think was that? What made you good at it? One, I think my street smarts growing up in Detroit, you know, and being able to talk to lingle and look the part, you know. And life, unfortunately, a lot of times,

when you first go in a situation, especially criminals, they're going to size you up. They're going to say, does this individual look like they know what they're doing? Can I trust this person? you know but a lot of times these people that are working for us they're risking their life and they have to feel confident that you're going to do your best to protect them and i also learned never promise somebody something you can't deliver you know don't promise them well you know you work a couple weeks and you get a couple you know i can make all your charges go away it's not up to it's not up to the agents you know you have to bring their cooperation attention to the prosecutor which then brings it to the judge and you know, those decisions are made then.

And also treat people like a person. You know, you don't have to start, you know, talking down to somebody. You know, I'm the big bad fed and, you know, you're just the lowly peon drug dealer. You don't do that. You know, I start off giving everybody respect. Now, if you want to go sideways, we'll go sideways. But I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubts at first. first, you know, and informants, too, you've got to be careful. You know, they're informants.

They're criminals. You know, you know that they can turn their back on you, too. So you've got to, you know, never can trust them 100%. You do your best and, you know, and you lay the, you know, lay the ground rules and everything and then, you know, you manage your informants, you know, going on from there. But, you know, being, you know, having a good informant, you're kind of of like, you know, they're confidant, you know, there's therapist, everything else. You know, your phone's going to be ringing the middle of the night and your former's going to want to talk to you, you know. Because his girlfriend left him or whatever. You left him or he's, they're doing this, you know, they're, you know, thinking about making a bad, you know, you need to answer those calls.

And a lot of people don't like to do that. But if you want to do well at the job at a high level, that's kind of things you have to do. You got to put the work in. How many sources would you be running at a time, like how many people would you be working? working with how many informants? Usually I kept anywhere from three to five informants at anyone given time. What is the trajectory of their lives that look like?

I mean, do they end up, they just do that until they eventually get caught and killed? Do they do it until they eventually, you know, do something that sends them to jail? Do they ever get out of that life? It's kind of a mixture. You know, some do it until, you know, they think they're slick

and they're going to play both sides and do they get caught, then go to prison, you know, some get killed, you know, they get found out. You know, we do everything we can

to protect their identity and some do it for a while or some are, you know, trying to help their legal situation or a family member situation or just doing it for money and, you know, eventually move on and get on with their lives

and get back into some normalcy of life. You know, and when I was a DE agent and a police office, officer, you know, I didn't gauge my success on how many people I arrested and this and that. I gauge my success on how many people did I help? They get their life together. You know, just because a person, you know, gets caught up in drugs or some crime activities,

it doesn't necessarily mean they're a bad person. You know, they made some bad decisions. So I gauge my success mostly on, hey, how many people this year did I help? Yeah, that's, you must start to really, understand the way people operate too, especially dealing with all these people and you're hearing from them all the time like the insight that you get into interacting with people. Are they they they're showing up there most of them though. Do they most of the informants have some kind of criminal background and that's how they end up in this situation? Most of them do. Yes. Okay. So at what point or where were you when September 11th happened?

I was in my house in Phoenix getting ready to go to the gym because I never knew how long I was going to work so I always been into working out and keep my stuff fit so I'd get up and work out before work and I'm sitting there watching the news and when the first plane hit. I said a small plane just hit the World Trade Center. So then of course we're all, you know, people were glued to the TV

then the second plane hit and they're like, this is not a small plane. And, you know, of course, all the kids chaos and everything that went on that day. I ended up going to the gym and, you know, work, you know, hey, you know, we don't know where we're going to get hit from next, you know, so it's all hands on deck and, you know, you had the plane hit the Pentagon and RDA headquarters is right across the expressway from there. So people who had office on that side saw the plane smash into the Pentagon. And so if things were in chaos for a minute, to say the least. And did they

did they start to think about how to utilize the DEA for immediately trying to assist like the national effort? Did it change? I'm saying, I guess I'm asking, did it change like your immediate life, your immediate job? Or was it, okay, well, we still got to, you know, arrest people that are making meth. So you're going to continue doing that. Or was it some kind of change? What kind of happened, one of the change that happened pretty fast was we, when we, do you, brief and informant. There's different things you have to put in there, like different blocks.

You know, what is the drug-related activity they have known right now? What is the non-drug-related activity? And then they started a terrorist-related activity. Did you know, you know, any people doing terrorist-related activities? And being in the Klan Lab scene, a lot of the individuals who sold and made money out of the ephedrine and pseudo-fedrine were middle-eastern individuals. So, of course, they were like, you know, get all your Middle Eastern informants and see if they have any terrorist activity. And we had a lot. D.E.A. had a lot of Middle-E. You know, with the drugs in the pseudo-fetrons. So FBI then wanted to come over and started debrief in our informants, you know, about terrorist-related activities. Was there much of a connection or was it more of them

just trying to make money? There were some. You know, there were some, you know, some were, you know, sending money back and things like that. And, you know, when the military first went over to Afghanistan, you know, we had some intel, but we didn't know, you know, other, you know, Ben Laden had his training facilities over there. But, yeah, when the U.S. military went over there, they shortly realized that the Taliban and those insurgent groups were making their money for their legal terror activities by the sale and reduction of heroin. And that's one of the first questions I get, why is DE, why was DEA over in Afghanistan? So the military, they knew they were not subject matter experts on that. So that's when they reached out to the DEA, hey guys, gals, we need help here.

And we didn't have a kind of tactical team that was up to speed to do this at the time. years prior to that we had an operation called Operation Snowcap where we were in Columbia and other cocaine manufacturing destinations and hitting co-collaps with partner forces and this and that so DEA had to start up a team so they used some of the individuals that we worked in snow cap and developed this fast team this foreign deployed advisory and support team to help the military and mentor our partner force over there, but we really don't have over there any, like, criminal authority. So in the Afghans, they were behind the time. So we went over, you know, the military, you know, they got plenty of trigger pullers. And of course,

we can pull triggers too. But they went for expertise on investigations. How do we handle these? How do we process these labs? Because in Afghanistan, And even though heroin production is crazy, the penalties for getting caught manufacturing drugs over there are very, very severe. And we can actually take somebody off the battlefield a lot longer, you know, for drug-related things than just for, say, you know, you hemmed somebody up for tactical questioning, and then they're back directly on the battlefield. You know, but the issue is, you know, we're working with U.S. and coalition special ops teams over there. But most of these labs are well behind enemy lines, and that's their money. You know, so they're going to fight like hell to keep them. So you have to be up to speed to run with these, you know, these special ops guys.

You know, so at first they just had a, you know, put a solicitation out. Hey, you know, this is what the mission's going to be. We need some volunteers. You know, some of the guys have been that, done that in the past, and maybe we're special ops guys, but at the current time, maybe they weren't in the best shape. and they would get over there and we're having problems keeping up. Got it.

So that's when our fast team institute a selection process. And that selection process, they took various areas of selections from different special ops teams and put a selection together. And at what point did you hear about that and at what point did you volunteer for it? I knew the fast team was going on. You know, I started hearing rumbles about it in 2005 time frame. But the problem is in the field. The basic agents didn't really know what was going on with this fast team. I had a buddy that went to the fast team.

He was Marine Corps officer. and I was pushing on with my career and I've always, no matter what I've done, I've tried to go to the highest level, whatever I did in life. So, you know, I was just kind of like, you know, sitting around and like, hey, you know, wonder what just fast teams doing.

Were you still in Phoenix at this time? Yes, I was. So you were in Phoenix from like 1998, 1997, 1998, so all the way? 1997 until I actually got selected on the fast team. team in October 2009. Are you there for a while? So you have over 10 years experience as a DEA agent on the ground doing, and was that

whole 10 years? Was that all that time doing the meth lab stuff? The first four years, and then I went on to a conspiracy group where we were higher level traffickers. I worked on a task force with the, you know, a lot of local officers. When you're, what's the conspiracy group all of? I mean, it sounds cool with that.

We know that, right? Yes, yeah, exactly. A lot of things, it sounds real cool, you know. And we have, you know, real cool acronyms and everything else, you know. You're going after mid-level to higher-level dealers. And still meth mostly? Or are they dealing everything? Meth, cocaine, marijuana.

Okay. Heroin. So you had a mixture. So Phoenix is kind of a weird animal. You're kind of close to the border. So it's a transshipment point. So a lot of the drugs are coming in, coming up from the southwest border into cities like Tucson and Phoenix. And they're staged there.

They only stay there a short period of time. And those drugs are picked up and sent out to the East Coast. You got to be like on your game to get stuff. You know, you might have a stash house loaded up one day and it's gone. The next. So you had to really be on your game. you know and move fast to do these things so you know I worked in a combination of different groups and I call my buddy and I'm like hey what tell you guys doing there are you guys

doing training or are you guys going out and doing missions he goes Joe you know we're you know working what some of the best units in the world this is when you're asking when your buddy's about fast come yes okay got it you know what do you guys doing you know we're training and working with some of the best units in the world you know we're doing you know we're doing things which you would think DEA would be doing. You know, we're doing this high level stuff. And at the time, every year they would put out solicitation for, to go through the fast selection. And you need it to be at least GS-12, so that usually takes about three to four years to get to a GS-level 12. And they wanted people who had experience of how to be a DEA agent.

So, and then you put in for the selection, and then if you get picked, you know, you go through tryouts. And I was 39 when I put in for selection. You know, as we get older, we don't recover as fast as we once did. Some people. Yes. Your potential for injury sometimes increases. So I knew I wouldn't quit anything. I was just worried about my old body, you know, holding up.

I got a lot of miles on it. You know, 50,000 miles is kind of up. You know, there's a lot of different swimming and different testing and different things. And, you know, so I started training and... And you're still doing your job working the conspiracy stuff. This time I was on a task force group, or west side task. And what's the task force group do? We were a task force on the west side of the city.

And we worked with various west side police departments. And they were all sworn in. as federal task force agents. So they had the full powers like of a DEA agent. You could do investigations over state lines and everything. And we were hitting a lot of like big marijuana hits, meth hits, cocaine hits. So I was still, yes, doing my full-time job and then have to get ready and train for the selection. Any good, between on the conspiracy thing, like what's the biggest people you ever rolled up when you were doing the

conspiracy gig. We had one case, this one group, and they were an African-American group. They had people out of Detroit, Atlanta, and Los Angeles in Phoenix. They would get their large amounts of shipments of marijuana from the Phoenix in Tucson area. Now, we're talking large amounts, I'm talking. they would buy two, three thousand pounds of marijuana at a time. And we had information. From Mexico?

Yes. Well, they buy it in Phoenix. The marijuana came up from Mexico. And, of course, you buy it. And, you know, Southwest is a lot cheaper than you bring it out east and you can sell it for almost double the price. So there's a lot of money involved. And we have an informant, you know, these guys are rich.

And they have this huge place in this gated community. in Scottsdale and all these truckers that are driving for them and everything. So it's full on. You know, it's a full on enterprise. Full on enterprise. You know, but you got to be kind of suspect a little bit.

You're like, yeah, this is a little far-fetched, you know. So the informant says, okay, they're meeting. They're going to meet their source of supply and they're going to do a deal. And I'm going to be at the house.

So like, okay, we set up. We have a general area where we think their nice house is. So we got some people set up in that vicinity, and they go into this residence in Phoenix, and they pull a van in the garage. We're like, okay, this looks good. So the van leaves the garage, and the informant says, okay, they picked up. So sure is shit, they're found a van, and we take it to this gated community in Scottsdale.

where you got to get keyed in and buzzed in and everything and we sit on the house and get it identified where they're at and see people coming and going and they foul them out and sure is shit they go to a warehouse too or there's a semi-truck or like oh it's on and popping now so we get enough for a search warrant for the house and the warehouse and hit it and get a pretty good large amount of marijuana. And during this time, we followed one of the guys to the airport. And, you know, we're kind of short numbers. We got people all over the place. And I'm by myself following this guy.

And it's very hard to do surveillance by yourself without getting burnt, you know, without them seeing you. And I don't know how I pulled it off, but I did. So what are you wearing? Just street clothes. Just street close. Man, I did some of those surveillance and counter surveillance and like dressed up and, you know, trying to look like a bum and this and that.

Man, I was horrible at it. I was like the worst, like the worst undercover person ever. I don't know. It seems like you would have a similar issue since you're pretty jacked, you know. You just stand out in a crowd. Yes. You know, so you just kind of. If you were following me, I'm 100% going to know.

100%. Like there's no, you're not going to sneak around, follow me is not happening. Yeah, and foot surveillance is very hard. You know, so you're in a vehicle. You're trying to stay far back as you can and everything. Somehow I pulled it off. And as the person got out of, they let the person out to go into the terminal. Somehow I got one hand to snap the photo of him.

I don't know how I pulled it off. But I didn't. That happened to be the main guy. So we ended up getting the, I get him getting a picture of him. And we didn't know who he was at the time or not. And he was flying back to L.A. You know, so we hit it and, you know, get some people in custody and then get the person identified who dropped him off. And she had some prior criminal history.

So we knew this case was, you know, bigger and tied into all these states and everything. So I told my partner, I said, hey, we're going to go visit this lady. tomorrow. We're going to bluff her. And we're going to say, hey, you know, we got you taking this person, yada, yada, yada, you know, and you're helped in the furthest of this conspiracy to their drug traffic organization. You have some criminal history in the past. You know, you know, we're going to potentially look at indicting you and maybe seize in your vehicle. And my partner had the time, she goes, it'll never work. I said, watch. You're just trying to get her to roll. Just get her to roll. I said, watch.

So we knock on her door. So you're wearing plain clothes. Playing clothes. You got like a badge around the neck and a chain, you know, kind of like TV and this. You wear a t-shirt and a pair of jeans? T-shirt, pair of jeans. You want to look as unintiminating as possible? Do you want to look intimidating?

Like, what's your, like, what's your character? What character you're going into? Just kind of, this kind of low-key, intimidating enough, but they know your, you know, federal law enforcement, you know, you're not playing around, but, you know, you're trying to, you also learn you've got to build rapport with these people too. You know, to try to get some common interest. And my partner at the time...

Your partner was naysaying in this saying it'll never work? She's like, I don't think this will work, Joe. She was a newer agent. And I said, just watch. I said, watch Kim. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. We got like a 50-50 here.

Let's give it a try. And you don't worry that you're going to give away the fact that you're on to them. You know, at this point, you know, we... had, you know, a significant amount of people in custody. Okay. So they know you're on to them. You know, they know we're on to them.

At what extent they don't know, you know, but I tell people, too, you can't make cases sitting behind your desk all the time. You've got to get out there and shake the bush. So she's kind of naysaying me, and this person ended up being a topless dancer, one of the gentlemen clubs in Phoenix,

where there's, A lot of the Mexican sources go hang out there, and a lot of the people from out of town come in there to find sources. And this person, this informant, she was known to date a lot of these out-of-town drug dealers, and she would hook them up with the sources of supply. So we go talk to her and knocking a door, and you can tell by her face, she's like, oh, shit. And we just lay it out. And I said, this is what can happen to you? this is, okay, I'll cooperate. What do you want to know?

Dang. So we started working with her. Kim was wrong. Kim was wrong, yes. You know, so, you know, I guess you need to get lucky sometimes, and I got lucky then. So we ended up using her and going back, and they kept coming to town, but, of course, they moved their operation to another spot, and then we were able to investigate and look at all these other seizures that happened in different states and tie them all together to these

people. You know, interviewing, actually interviewing the truck drivers, got their sources of supply, you know, pulled receipts from hotels and playing things at different times when they were supposed to do these deals and were able to tie everything together. And some of these people, we had never caught them red-handed with drugs, but just, testimony by the informants, putting the things together by pulling receipts, we ended up hammering this group and getting them all charged and indicted when a lot of these other groups couldn't do it. And I actually helped my partner get her GS-13, but at DEA, our kind of journeyman level is GS-13, and you have to do so many things, you know, you have to have these complicated cases.

or did a wire tap or did some undercover. So I actually helped Kim get her 13. And I was already on the fast team when they went and did the takedown. But they said just to see these people's faces like, oh shit, you got all this on me. Oh, crap. And we used her to do quite a bit of other good cases, too. Did you ever do any undercover work? Yes, I did some.

What was that like? And everybody thinks it's intense. Everybody thinks that you need to look like a drug addict to do undercover. Now, kind of the contrary, like at DEA, we're dealing with people to make money. So a lot of these people look like business people. And it's kind of as long as you talk to talk, you know, you're all right. So undercover, I reverse chemicals and equipment to make meth. Undercover, I bought methamphetamine.

In larger amounts, I bought heroin. And then there's an individual, which a lot of people have heard their name before. They used to be a famous mob hitman, Sammy the Bull Gravano. He was out in Phoenix in witness protection, but still doing bad activities. So they actually put me under cover. He actually had this group of kids out there. They were into MMA, and they were selling ecstasy in steroids, and this group would go around, and they would beat up.

up like they would pick a minorities and jump them like five on one. Kind of like a 1% or motorcycle gang thing. And they put me in there to buy steroids from these kids. So I ended up buying steroids from these kids. And it later led to Sammy the Bull getting into additional legal problems. Where's he at right now? I'm not sure where he's at the moment. That's crazy.

When you're doing these undercover ones that you're talking about, Are you staying undercover for a long period of time or are you basically going undercover for two hours to go meet these guys, buy some shit, and then roll out? Did you ever do these guys that seems like they're going undercover for extended periods of time? That's called like a deep cover operation. Those don't happen that much anymore.

Got it. You know, there's a lot of risk involved in that. You know, so, you know, there was some, like, some of the pseudo cases were, like, I played a role for, like, months at a time. But a lot of it was done over the first. phone and stuff, but most of them is like, you know, you're meeting with the guy, you know, you know, this hour or two, you know, you're in the undercover role and then you're moving

on to the next thing, you know, and the biggest thing where people think if, you know, you're undercover and a suspect, are you the police? You're supposed to tell them, yes, I am. You don't have to tell them the truth. Oh, that's not true. No, that's not true. And when you're interviewing people, you don't have to tell them the truth either. You know, you're interviewing a couple of people and hey like when you're like you and Kim went to talk to that girl you told her you had all this information yes or you arrested a couple of people and hey your buddy's in the next room just spilling his guts on you saying it's your dope and your gun this and no no no no it's his you know and they think you need to tell the truth in that too you know you can in those

circumstances you don't have to actually tell the truth did you do a lot of that interrogation type stuff yes and i'm get trained to do that did you send you did they send you through training or was it just what you learned over the years? In the academy, you learned the basics of it, and there's different schools like the Reed School and everything. I never went to a formal school. Most of that I got was on-the-job training. You know, I got with some, you know, agents and some local police that were good at it

and just picked up and learned. You know, hey, this seems to work. This doesn't work. You know, so I just, like I said, I had kind of a knack at getting people to talk. And also, like I said, good with informants. All right. So after you got done with that conspiracy thing, what was the next thing you had? The West Side Task Force.

And the West Side Task Force, that's when you're working with the regular police from Phoenix. And you're all working together to try and do good. Do good, yes. And people don't realize that without the local law enforcement, we can't do our job. You know, the locals, they know the area, they have the local. local connects and everything. And most of the DEA groups have local law enforcement officers sworn in as task force agents in the groups.

You know, because we can't do the job by ourselves. And I kind of help me, me working at a local law enforcement agency first, too, I kind of had respect and street cred from a lot of the local officers. And I didn't think I was this big, bad heif, you know, federal agent and you're just this lowly peon local law enforcement officer. officer. You know, I respected them. And so what are you guys doing? You guys going after like different levels of drug dealers? What's what's what makes that west side task for it different than just regular DEA? It was um, we focus on the west side. Okay. In the west, the west, the west area

suburbs. And is it is it, is it the fact that you're working with them closely and interoperability and exchanging information that gives you a better chance of catching bad guys? Yes. And it also bolsters our numbers too. And we actually, in this West Side Task Force, we actually worked in one of the Westside police agencies, offside locations for the Glendale Police Department in Arizona. So we're actually, you know, you're with them every day, day in, day out. So same thing. You're doing investigations, but you're utilizing the local cops to help you do the investigations. Correct. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So, you're doing that and then I kind of pulled you back in the story a little bit but you

but then you you started hearing about the fast company and what you could do what that's going to look like but you're 39 years old you got some mileage on yes and so you're trying to get in shape for that how did you find out you got picked up or what was the application process like well you know he had to fill out this questionnaire you know I've been on the job you know this many years and this is kind of the background of things I did on the job and you have to get your concurrence from your supervisor and then the concurrence from the special agent in charge, whatever division you're in and you submit it. And if you're qualified, your name is picked to go to selection.

So they set a date for selection and they give you a list of, you know, hey, these are some of the events you're going to have to do, kind of give you outline how to train for them. You know, you have to do our standard DEAPT test, which is no great shake. You know, you have to do the shooting pistol and long rifle, but you got to score higher. Ruck marches with, you know, with weight on you. You know, during a certain time, a distance run, you know, and all these different thinking and, you know, kind of thinking on your feet and leadership, different tasks and things. And you actually have to.

actually use this company that the before a lot of people in the military go to different special ops selections they have to take this test online which is kind of like a psychological and like an IQ test and you got to answer these questions and then they can pretty much figure out if a person is going to make it or not through how you do these things somebody needs to tell the damn seal teams about that because we still have an 80% attrition rate after however many years it's been 60 years or actually no it's been freaking 70 80 years of doing that training and putting people through that training we still can't figure who's going to make it well and we can't quit you know so and i think we started with um i think there was close to 40 of us in our selection and only 11 made

it through to the end where's the selection take place quantico The first part, yes, the first week it takes part and Quantico all in house. It's kind of like... Is it a beat down? Oh, yes. It's kind of like we call it like our hell week. And who's running it? Is it...

Agents from Fast. And Fast, how long has Fast been around for? Was it created after September 11th? Yes, after September 11th, yes. But you said there was a previous, like, unit that was Snowcap. Yes, that was prior to that. So they took maybe some old Snowman. No cap people brought them back, see if they could help out something like that.

Yes. How to, you know, get the unit organized and the training and logistics and, you know, weaponry, you know, but you're going overseas fighting a war. So you're using weapons and weapons systems. The average DEA agent doesn't never use in their career. Right. You know, you're using, you know, belt-fed crew surf weapons, you know, grenade launchers, you know, handheld mortars.

Right. Carl Gustav Rockets, you know, laws, you know, all kind of crap. You know, so, you know, you're doing all this stuff. So, you know, they really, you know, invest in you. And like, if you make it through training, you make it through selection and you get picked up on a fast team, you have to at least commit to doing three years because they're putting all this time and effort and training into you. So what made most people quit?

How long was it? How long was the selection process? The first hell week was like a week. And you had Tier 1 events. They were their past fail. And if you failed one event, you're gone. And then we had Tier 2 events where... Tier 1 event would be a forced rock march...

Fourced Rock March. Nine miles. Here's the time. Something like that. Here's the time. A distance run was like a five-mile run. Our PT test, shooting test, things of that nature. A basic swim qual.

Got it. And then the tier two were like different other events. And if you failed one tier two, you were put on probation. And then if you failed another one, you could get removed. We also had peer evals throughout two because we had learned life lessons. You know, some people can just fly through all the physical activity things. And some people had a lot of military experience. But they can't play well with others.

So you're living in confined spaces, you know, and you're just living with an asshole. Yeah. And we didn't have time for that. So you could actually get peered out too. So are people quitting this selection or are they just not passing the standards? About half of both. Okay. You know, and when you go through there, they're telling you what you're getting into, you know, this is what you're getting into.

And this unit is not for everybody. And just because it may not be for you, it doesn't mean that you're a bad agent that you can't do your normal job, but this is what you're getting into and it's a total volunteer unit. So you get people that are going through Slack and you're just getting your dick knocked into dirt.

And if it was just, you know, you did, every day you did like a Tier 1 event, it'd be fine, but you're also getting hazed in between, you know, and carrying the logs and the inflatable boats and, you know, doing cruise. CrossFit workouts and you know you're 39 years old thirty nine years old you're not getting much sleep, but they're feeding you well What was the average age of the rest of the class? I would say low 30s low 30s Okay so you know did you have trouble with anything?

The water stuff I've always looked like you might be a little bit of a sinker And I learned that muscle does not float that's why I say that man. Yeah, we we learned that in the seal teams like you get these big jacked guys that are not only big and jacked also ripped and that means they don't have a lot of body fat and that's leanness doesn't help either oh yeah leanness doesn't help either you know so I grew up with a swimming pool and we had a cottage on the lake in Michigan so obviously I would say I was fairly competent in water but just and I had to learn in the pool you have to relax the more you get yourself worked out you get oxygen deprived and then you're

screwed. So, you know, for treading water for long periods of time and, you know, swimming in BDUs and boots and everything, you have to stay calm. You know, we didn't quite do the 50 meter underwater swim like you got. We did a 25, you know, in BDUs. And to me, you know, it's like, you know, they kind of tell you to go deep and, you know, and stroke and glide and, you know, I'm doing all that. and then when you get close to the wall, it's like I'm starting to do the panic swim. Hurry, hurry, hurry. You know, I'm screwing myself, you know.

You know, so. Yeah, relax and glide. That's easier said than done in many cases. Exactly, you know, and keeping your breathing controlled and everything. You know, so after, I did enough to pass with the swimming. So afterwards, when I got selected on the fast team, the FBI had a pool over there,

so I'd go there a couple times a week and just go into water and just swim and get better at it. So how long was the whole selection process? You know, the first week is like the hell week, and then you do a training phase next. And that's usually a couple months. And that's usually run by an ODA Greenbrae team, or with us it was going to be Naval Special Warfare with the Seals.

And I was the first group that was done by, the seals. And sometimes the first part goes and then you go right into your training phase. And, um, you mean the first part goes, you mean the hell week, the little, hell week. And then you go a bunch of people to quit. Yes. And then you go right into your training phase. But we got to have a break because we were going to use maybe special warfare and weren't going to be ready for a couple months. So we got to go home and heal up and lick your wounds a little bit. You know, I pretty much had a blister in every part of my foot. I lost every toenail on both feet. And at the time, my girlfriend picked me up from the airport after the hell week. And she's like, what the hell happened to you?

Of course, I was beat to shit. Had to go to the ER room the next day. My foot was infected. You know, I'm trying to tell them what happened. They're looking at me like, I don't, this doesn't sound right. You volunteered for this? You volunteered for this? You volunteered? And just because you make it through everything, say the Hell Week, still the fast cadre, they sit down and you have to be asked to go on to the second phase of training. So I made it through that and got to go home and just lick your wounds for a little bit and go back to work in your regular group. And then we reported in early spring.

We started selection, I think, February 2009, early spring. of that year to Little Creek, Virginia, to do our second phase of training. So we're like, okay, you know, we're told this is your learning phase. This is supposed to be the gentleman's course now. Roger that. So, you know, the SEALs had never had outside people there either. So we show up and some of the cadre and some of the people from Team 2 and 10. Hey, we got all much old BDUs for you guys.

And when are you guys getting your badges and this and that? have no clue. I'm like, well, I had my bachelor for 12 years. And, you know, we pretty much got a lot of high-speed stuff. So we're staying at the Navy Inn there in Little Creek. And so we report zero dark 30 to first day and for formation of PT. And we go straight to the ocean. Good times. Team too. In the ocean, out of the ocean, you know, sugar cookies. I'm like, oh, really? I'm like, I thought this was supposed to be a gentleman course. And they were like, we were told to treat you guys like buds. I'm like, who the hell told you that?

Damn. You know, so, you know, got hammered. But, you know, they kind of, you know, slacked off, you know, for a while. And, you know, he had different things, distance runs and stuff. So we spent time training there. And then we bumped over to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas to do the land warfare part of that. And, you know, it was, it was. It was very, very good training to say the least.

And it was funny before we went over there. And we found out the seals were going to do our second phase. And another buddy who was very competent. But he was struggling in the water a little bit. I called him. And I was like, did you hear her who doing our second phase? He goes, yeah, the seal's like, oh, shit. And then you ended up coming out to the West Coast to do some training, too.

Yes, later on. That's after I got selected on the fast team. Okay, so when did you actually get selected? October of 2009. Okay. And just because you make it through all the training, it doesn't mean you're going to be picked up on the fast team. Because as openings occur,

you can get cherry pick from the list. Got it. Got it. So was there anything else about the initial training course when you were at Team 2, You went to Fort Chaffee, you go do training out there. Are you training with a task unit? Are they just putting you through training as your own entity?

That one, it wasn't like they were as our own entity. Oh, really? So you had, you know, people from Traded there. Yeah. And actually, a senior chief, Tony Gale was assigned to us. Oh, right on. Do you know him? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Tony, he's such a beast. So he's like, uh, smaller than me. shorter than me, he looks like, how do I describe this? He doesn't look like he's like a super beast, but he was faster than me and he could bench press more than me. So he was like better than me at everything and no one would ever, you know, suspect that. And he can go through the obstacle course pretty good too. He's freaking awesome. And then we had a master chief Hitchcock too. Oh yeah. Yeah. Helped out right on. Right on. Yeah, both those guys. With things. And so yeah, it was,

it was intense and of course we would do different events you know but the team guys and if we did a distance run of course they put their distance run stud out there or if we did a crossfit workout they put you know their best cross fitter out there out there you know so they kind of cherry-picked you know people but you know I don't blame them you know when you show up there

okay we're doing a distance run you couldn't wear any watch no GPS and we're just going to run and so you guys get did get it hooked up with a little bit of extra bonus program. Yeah, and it wouldn't tell you how long we're running for. You know, I've always been a bigger guy. And I cut weight for that because I knew we'd doing all the endurance stuff. So I was sitting around 2.15, 220.

But we had some guys on our team that were like in the 160s. You know, I can run a couple six-minute miles, but I can't run six-minute miles for 10 minutes. And we had some of these little rabbits. They could do that. Not me. You know, I blow through a cross-fit workout, no problem. them, but, you know, so we'd go on these distance runs, and you wouldn't know how long you were going for when you were done.

It's like, you know, just do your best, you know. Okay, what's the time hack here? Well, we didn't not tell you. You can't have a watch on, so you don't even know how fast you're going anyways. Yeah, well, they were treating you like Bud students, because in Buds, you don't have a watch, and it's a total pain in the ass because you never know what you're doing. The only thing you can do is just go as hard as you can because that's the best

that you can do, you know? In selection, what I didn't try to look too far in advance. I just took each activity for it was. You know, and you were being beat down and on our team day, the last day of help, the kind of hell week, I was just like, hey, Joe, just take another step. Just worry about one more step.

And then we'll worry about the rest later. I didn't try to overwhelm myself. You know, and I read some things before, you know, about different selections and things. And that's one of the things they said, don't overwhelm yourself. Just worry about one thing at a time. And you make it through that,

you worry about the next thing then. So you get done, did you do anything besides Chaffee? Besides Land Warfare with those guys? We went to Chaffee and then back to the creek. And then you culminate, you know, you're doing FTCs throughout. And then it culminates with a final FTCX where you

got to hit a target over there. I know. And you go in, you know, with Sims and everything. And they didn't have the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, gear like we had in nylon there. And, you know, you'd do a hit and, um, the group I was in, we had to fast rope on top of this, um, building at night and they could be tricking. We're using our DEA pilots.

And I hope they can hold a hover good. But there was always a couple times when guys, um, almost were going down the rope and the rope's not over the building. and, you know, I've always been a heavy guy. If I'm full kid or I was carrying my EW, I'm not stopping myself on that rope. That was me too. I'm not.

When I'm going, I'm going, that rope better be in the right spot because I'm going to be at the bottom of it in about two seconds, and that's that. It is funny when we were doing our fast rope training at Little Creek and the towers and everything. You know, you start with the tower at first and you do your repelling and everything. You know, okay, just take your time, sit down, you know,

on the helicopter, you know, and then grab the rope and then slowly, spin yourself, just take your time. So when we go out in the helicopters and first time to free, they're like, go, go, go, go, go. What happened is take your time thing? We're like, F it. I guess we're doing it live, you know.

So you get done with that, and you said that's when you actually got selected or chosen to go to a fast, what do you call it? Fast companies? Best team. Fast team. So you actually get selected to go to a fast team, and that's in the fall. of 2009.

Correct, October 2009. And when you get there, are you going, do you know you're going on a deployment at a certain time? Well, we knew what team you were going to. We had five teams at the time, Alpha through Echo, and each team is made up of one supervisor, eight agents and one Intel analyst. So I knew a team I was going on. Then once we got there, they would tell you.

you, okay, we always had a team in Afghanistan all the time. And each deployment lasted 120 days, give or take some days. So you knew when you were going up. So once I got there, I was assigned to Delta team, which was made up of some senior agents and with some of the newer individuals. And we were set to go to do the, our first deployment in Afghanistan was going to do. I was going to be the spring summer tour of 2010. And a lot of people don't know, in Afghanistan, there's a fighting season over there. You know, it gets bad weather there,

gets winter and stuff like that. So in the spring, summer, that's when all the fighting's going on, and that's when they're harvesting the opium poppy to manufacture the heroin. So that's kind of your busy time. So you get settled in, and you start doing your pre-deployment workup,

kind of like, you know, with the military. And then we had a group come in. You may be familiar with them. They're made up of ex-Navy Special Warfare guys and actually some dev group guys called the David group. Okay. Right on.

And they actually, we actually use. your guys' system and developmental groups of combat clearing. Okay. So they actually taught us in that, and then that's when we find out before deployment. You guys are going to Camp Billy Macon in Nile in California, and you're doing land warfare with a West Coast SEAL team. Right on, right on.

You know, so, you know. When was that? Do you remember when that was? Yes. Um, I'm sorry on taxis, I want to say April, May,

ish of 2010. Yeah. So, yeah, I was definitely still there. An SQT, you weren't there when we first got there. Yeah.

You showed up at the end. Yeah, show up for the FDXs. Yeah, that's what I would do. And, um, the SQT was going through there at the time.

Hey, and, um, so it was a full house there. Mm-hmm. How was that training? It was intense, you know, it was,

you know, three weeks, day and night of, you know, you know, getting, you know, kicked in the balls, you know. And, you know, this is what I was told. And the seal pre-deployment workup, that's usually the hardest pre-deployment block or the toughest. Yeah, the land warfare, especially at that time, was no joke.

You know, so there was a lot of buddy carrying, you know, for extreme distances, you know, and, you know, different things. But I tell you, you got to learn how to do. you know, land warfare drills very effectively. You got to get to know how to use your equipment, your night vision, your lasers very well. You came out of their well-prepared, like, you know, knowing that something happens in combat,

you know, but, you know, you ran out there. You know, you're training there for worst-case scenario. Yep, yeah. And so it was... Yeah, that was always my goal was that. And, you know, the goal was as crazy as a goal this may seem like. The goal was, oh, okay, I want to make sure that these guys, if they get into a gunfight, it's going to be, it's going to seem easy compared to what they've been through in training.

And I had countless guys come back to me and say, hey, this is the situation we were in. Here's the gunfight we got it. And here's the contact we got it. And here's the scenario we were in. And they were able to handle it exquisitely because the training. the land warfare training that they'd been through and the urban training that they'd been through was so hard that the actual combat seemed easy now obviously can you simulate someone actually getting wounded or actually getting killed no you can't but as far as especially from a leadership perspective understanding how to manage all those elements on the battlefield and then the young shooters being thinking shooters and knowing how to execute knowing how to operate knowing how to move themselves it's just an awesome package that that you have you have this just unified team when they get done with those with those training cycles so it was nice because in niland you know

they didn't you know they broke us up and just intermixed us with the team yeah you know so they put a couples you know with this you know fire team that fire team so they kind of mixed you in so it was it was it was it was very very good training a lot of the the train and stuff there in niland one was good because it's very similar to afghanistan terrain too i was good we were trying we had some some other entities trying to get control of that training site for us. And I remember I put together a brief for my leadership in the chain of command, my most senior leadership in the chain of command. And what I did was I took pictures of Nileland and pictures of Afghanistan, like, seals patrolling in Nileland and seals patrolling in Afghanistan. And I put together like five or six of those pictures

side by side in a slide show. And I said, this is the terrain we're fighting in. And this is the terrain we're training in. We can't do any better than this right here and we need to maintain control this. And so yeah, it's a it's, it's very, it's almost uncanny how similar to those two environments can look. And I didn't realize when we were there, he had two army rangers, you know, doing an exchange program to help teach the land warfare there. Yep, yep. Um, you know, those, those rangers that we would bring out, they're just outstanding guys because we as seals always want to have an open mind and make sure that we are understanding the tactics, the techniques, the procedures of other units,

what do they know better than us? What can they teach us? What can we learn from them? And that's one of the ways that we've always done that is taking individuals from other units and bringing them to our units, especially to our instructor cadre so that we can learn more and try and get better.

And those Rangers that work with us were just outstanding guys. And I say, and I feel you guys do an outstanding job of your guys's training, you know, like you said, knowing that, hey, there's always, you know, there's more than one way to skin a cat. And let's see what other people are doing. You know, you put things in your toolbox and, hey, I might use this again or, hey, I may never use that again, but you have a lot of tools in that toolbox.

Yeah, indeed. So you end up going on deployment to Afghanistan, your first deployment. How's that? It's intense. Every time we go to Afghanistan, things are a little different. And at the time we were doing a lot of work with, you know, the Army ODA, the Green Berets there. And at this particular time, we were operating in Pangeaway area.

You know, the Pangeway, Kandar area is kind of, that area is kind of the burst place of the Taliban, where there's a lot of insurgent activity, but also a lot of heroin production going on there also. So they broke us up into like 2Zs and 3 Zs and put us with different units. And a good partner of mine, a friend of mine, Travis Brooks and myself, we were assigned with first Special Forces Group over there, ODA 1231. And they were stationed in Kant-Simmons, just a little base outside of Candar Airfield, which is like our main base was at Candar Airfield in Afghanistan. We were living with the ODA, the first group guys. you know and we would bring

like I said earlier our expertise on investigations and we had our partner force over there which we were mentoring and we were living over there with the Green Berets and using our intel information you know from the

DEA and also using the military information and we would try to pair that information find out where the bigger drug labs were where they were selling the chemicals and equipment to manufacture heroin. And we would not go after as the opium farmers, the poppy farmers.

Got it. Because a lot of times they were made to grow the opium. You know, the Taliban came in and they had the biggest stick at the time. Either, you know, you're growing this poppy for us, or you're getting killed. You know, so we knew they weren't reaping the benefit, so we would try to find, you know, the people who were getting the money from this. And it's called a narco-terrorism nexus. And so we would hit these bigger locations and take people off the battlefield and train to Afghans out of process and how to conduct these, you know, investigations.

And we were with the Green Brazier at the time, they were doing movements to contact, which for the non, you know, military people, and I didn't know at the time because I wasn't in the military before, you know, you basically go in a hot air and you pick a fight. and you assess the enemy how strong they are. And you stay there for a couple days. And then a lot of times conventional forces are brought in. And we were hitting areas where a lot of drug activity was going on. And of course, in Pangeway at the time, they had a lot of implanted IEDs. Yeah, this is 2010. So IED threat is just full on at this time.

Especially in that area. And that's when they started switching over to like the homemade explosive, the HME, where the metal detector is not picking this stuff up. You know, and we had dogs and stuff with the bomb guys and gals. But sometimes they couldn't smell it. And a lot of times these IEDs are hidden so well. You can't see where they're at. And especially at night under Nods, you know, in every mission, people were getting, you know,

injured with IEDs. You know, that was, you know, in a straight up fight. most often than not, they couldn't hang with us. You know, so they use their weapon to IED and, you know, to inflict terror on us. And, you know, it's like, okay, this is going to be my last step. I have my legs. You know, you're trying to do everything to try to, you know, mitigate it, but, you know, you still never, never know.

So, you know, we're doing these movements to contact and, you know, We're most often than not hitting these labs behind enemy labs lines. And that's their money. They're fighting like hell to keep it. You know, so I think that first year, I think I did, we did about 11 missions or so. And it was only two times I didn't have to fire my gun. And I carried a belt-fed weapon at the time. I show up the fast.

Of course, the listeners can't see. I'm a decent-sized guy. What are you walking around at that time, weight-wise? I'm 2.30-ish. Okay. So they're giving you a belt-fed weapon? Yes. You're like, you're a big guy.

You carry that. I'm old and it's still heavy. Did you carry a Mark 48 or Mark 46? Actually, a Mark 43. Oh, damn. Okay. You know, old school, M60 at 04. That's freaking crazy.

You know, and that was made, you know, for you guys. Yeah. You know, we had Mark 48's, but I'm a left-handed rifle shooter. I was all jacked up. I was very left-eye dominant. And I shot a pistol right-handed. And that Mark 48, you eat all the brass and link. The Mark 43 was a little better.

I put like a broomstick handle on the front, and I moved it way back. And I could stand up, and I tucked my right elbow real far in. And so I wouldn't catch as much slink in brass. The cyclic rate of fire on that Mark 43 is not quite as fast as the 48. But as, you know, it's a pretty reliable. it's a reliable weapon. You know, so I carry that damn thing every mission. You know, and it's nice to have because it does a lot of damage,

but as automatic gunner, the enemy knows that, so you're a target too. 100%. You know, and tracers work both ways. Yes, they do. And luckily at night, I got a hold of some of the IR tracers, which you can only see under Nod's, and usually the enemy did not, for the most part, And there, they did not have night vision capabilities.

So, yeah, it was, you had to, you fire and you move your position a little bit. And you fire, move your position a little bit. And, you know, it's not like TV, you know, that you had a box of 100 rounds on that gun. And it doesn't last for five minutes. You know, if you're hammering that trigger down, it goes pretty quick. So you've got to learn to conserve your ammo and spread load ammo with other people, too. Were you going out with, so you're going out with an ODA team at this time? Yes.

And you also would have Afghan partners with you? Yes. So these are pretty big elements that you were going out in? Yes. And the ODA had their partner force too. Oh, so wait. So you guys had your own partner force? Yes.

Wow. Like a DEA, an Afghan DEA? Yes. The National Interdiction Unit. Okay. The Afghans. They were more, they're investigators. And then the Green Berets or whatever group they had their own group, too.

which the Green Braves like to use the Afghan commandos. That was kind of like their special ops unit. But to be quite honest with you, even like we were working with the best and brightest, it was like herding cats. Oh, for sure. Yeah. You know, it's like, okay, you know, you couldn't do these advanced like wedge and echelon movement.

It was like single file. No, just get in line and we hope you can stay in line. Get in line and please stay in line and stay behind the bomb people. and that, you know, don't walk on, like, the path is to look like people walk the most. Don't go over the foot bridges, but that's where we're going to place the IEDs. And within 10 minutes on the ground, they're everywhere.

And I'm like, oh, Jesus, they're going to get me blown up. How big would these elements be? So you've got the ODA team, their commandos, your guys, and then the Afghan DEA, whatever you called them. Yes. What are you talking like? You got, like, 50 people, something like that? It depends how big the operation is, you know.

a Greenbrae ODA team. We got like 12 individuals. And their partner force probably would be around 30, you know, and fast. Because we were like Tuesdays and threesies have two to four fast agents. And we would bring our partner force. At this particular time, like we could cherry pick people that were the better fighters. And sometimes two to four we would take out. And to be honest, like I said, we worked the best and brightest.

not a high percentage of them are good fighters. And a lot of times they weren't in great shape. So we're kind of limited what you can do, how long of an infill and ex-fill you can do and how complicated a plan you could do. So, you know, it kind of hamstringed us a little bit. You know, but we went out there and got the job done. You know, when we were really hitting them hard,

You know, they call it second and third order effects. You could see they were having trouble getting some more of the better munitions and stuff. When we were like just, you know, putting a smackdown on them. And halfway through that first, oh, near the end of that first tour, we had, first group was leaving and then a group from third group came in, ODA 3116. they came in and we did a couple missions with them and I know you're probably familiar with this and some of the listeners is, you know,

that the Afghans, they use these icon radios to talk with each other. You know, we intercept these things. You know, a lot of times they're just talking shit on these damn things. You know, we're killing them, you know, they're dying. No, we found your ID and we're blowing it up, you know. That's what you just heard. And, you know, so we're getting, at the end of Artur

and we're going to hit this spot called Hazimidad in Afghanistan. And there was a little combat outposts out there which I think the 101st Airborne was out there and they had a Taliban hospital in the area. Of course they were growing a lot of marijuana and poppy seed out there but they also had several

dish gus in the area. The enemy did. And that's the old, like, Russian anti-aircraft weaponry. 51. And they would harass the coalition forces their error. So, you know, we had several tasks in this mission, you know, to eradicate some of the drug activity going on and also find these dish gus. So the Rangers went in there before us, and they got in a pretty good dust up and tick. Tick stands for troops in contact, and they lost a couple of Rangers. So we were going in a couple days after, and you're doing your pre-mission briefing,

and, you know, we're going to get inserted with, you know, three CH 47 helicopters, and there's a high probability. We're going to lose a helicopter on infill with the dish goes. And, you know, you're sitting there the night before. Oh, shit. I hope it's not me. You know, you're like in a coffin up there, you know, even most time when we flew with. With the green braids, they used to like to use the nightstalkers at 160th.

And we would always infill and ex-fill with the Spectre gunship overhead. You know, but still, that's not any guarantees. And so you said night before, I hope it's not me. You know, hope it's not a helicopter to get shot down. So we plan this up and we infill. We usually like to go in at night to use our advantage with our technology, with their night vision and lasers. Because I stated earlier,

the enemy usually doesn't have that. So we like to go in at night, get a foothold the best we can, and then when it's light, search. And then, you know, X-Fell the next day or depending on how long the mission's going to last, you know, a day or two or whatnot. So we fly in,

and we take a little incoming fire, but all four birds make it. So we begin to sweep through and get a foot hold and then for individuals who are listening that have been over there usually they'll try to hit

or probe you the enemy over there after morning prayer and usually they do their first hit and try to feel you out so we get in a couple little skirmishes some see implant some IEDs

and you know We're, okay, we're moving through, and we didn't find where we were at. We didn't find the discos. We were finding some marijuana fields and this and that. Throughout the day, they're talking. You're like, we need to find a good place to set up our P-KM machine guns, meaning the enemy. And, you know, we blew up an IED. And, like I said, you know, oh, we are killing them, you know.

The Americans are screaming. So, you know, setting up their P-K-A-Ls, we're like, okay, you're just, But you're bullshit and whatever. Screw you. So this is in August, and it's hot as hell. And we didn't have any close air supports at the time was they got called over to some other units that were having some contact. So we had a predator overhead,

but the predators wings iced over and had to land. You know, this is, you know, 115 degrees, you know, under 10 degrees. But, you know, they're flying up higher and I don't know all the specifics and stuff. So, you know, we're in sporadic skirmishes. So we were under fire. So they're like, we're not going to send air to pick you up because the LZ is going to be pretty hot. So you're going to have to make it, we're going to have to try to make it to this combat outpost over there, which was probably a couple clicks away at the time.

time. So we move out and we stopped this little like village area and we get set up to make our final push. And it was just the villagers there just had a, it just, we had a funny sense. Like a spidery, something's not right. You know, we get in there, where are your IDs? We do not know where they are. Okay.

So, okay, you're going to go out in front of us. and you're going to take us through. You know, and you get to a spot, I will not go any further. You must kill me. Oh, I thought you don't know where the IEDs were. You know, so we found a couple IDs and blew them up. And so where the termination is made,

we're going to make it to the combat outpost. So at this time, we're probably about clicking a half away or so. So we're moving through. This is daylight, and we're in a single file, and one of our guys sees. some movements in this little hut above us. And he's like, tells one of the green brace, hey, I think I saw some movement. So he glasses it with his scope and doesn't see anything.

So we're moving out. And I'm next to like a pony wall, like a probably a couple foot pony wall to my right of me. And I'll tell you one thing, those old mud buildings, like when you're over there, those mud huts, you can explain it to people, unless you're over there, you can't believe people still live like this. But those things do a hell of job of stopping bullets and stuff. So we're going through and then sure is shit, they were looking for a place that's up to

P camps. We got caught in a near ambush. So I got bullets going over my head, coming to the side of me, and people are calling off. We got four people hit right off the bat when the ambush opened. one being the ODA team sergeant and he's like I got a formal bleed and we're like oh shit so I'm rocking my 43 and I usually care about 400 rounds of ammo on me and we get spread loaded some more

and so you know I'm trying to pick up like puffs of smoke where I think enemy fire is coming from but I'm also trying to conserve some of my ammo too because if we start getting overrun, I want to have some. But I always carried a pistol with me, too, and at least one fray grenade. Because if I could help, I wasn't, you know, I'm going to fight to then. I don't want to be taken alive. And so I'm rocking through ammo and being the near ambush, you know, people are throwing hand grenades.

It was that close, you know, firing law rockets. And I asked one of our Afghan counterpart, two-spoken English. and the ODA counterparts, they carried the full-length 240 bravos. So it's the same round that the Mark 43 was fire. So I'm like, go get me some ammo. So he runs out and brings you back a little link of ammo

about 24 hours. I was like, what am I going to do with this? So I just link it on one of my belts. And I said, okay. And so we're fighting. and we finally get some close air support. We get a F-16 from the UAE, but they won't fire. And, you know, we got people hit, and we got Medevac coming in.

And I tell you, those Metavac pilots have balls of steel. When they started coming in, the RPGs were shooting up all around them. They landed those birds and got our most severely wounded people out of there. And, you know, back to, you know, higher care. you know so we finally get some close air support to suppress it a little bit the 101st here's all this activity going out so they bring some of their gun trucks but they can't get too close to us so we're like okay we got to make you know we're getting a little break so like okay we got to make it to this combat outpost so we did our vote our version of the mogadisha mile there

where you know you're running and shooting and you're You're not caring about the IEDs at this time. We had to cross open field. I guess, you know, you're up, you see me. I'm down. You know, I guess if I step on some shit, I guess I'm going to blow up. And, you know, they get their gun trucks out there and they start shooting, getting some press of fire. And we ended up getting to the combat outposts.

And, of course, we look, I'll look like soup sandwiches, you know, when I'm done. It was like, you guys are out there. He goes, yeah. And I learned in a combat, you know, we got stationed, you know, you know, sat there and, you know, got some rest and, you know, we're going to go to the Chaha and get some food. And that's when I learned most of the bases we were staying at, did unlimited food. And that's why I learned to combat outposts.

There's limited rations. You know, you only get, you know, what's there, a little serving, you know. So grace of God, everybody ended up surviving. You know, we had some injuries, but we ended up surviving. So that concluded my turn. And I tell you what, I had a bad, you know, I thought it was going to end that day. busy. When you come close to run an ammo, you're like, oh, shit. You know, what's hell I'm going to do? You know, so it was, it was quite an experience. So we kind of went out with, went out in a bang that first turn.

Yeah. So, yeah, you definitely seem to end that deployment with a bang. When you, when you got done with that deployment as you looked back at it, what were some of the takeaways that you got from your experiences there? Like anything I've done in life, okay, every mission I would take it for each mission. It's like, okay, these are the things I did right in the mission. These are things I want to do the same again. And these are the things I did wrong and I never want to do again. So each thing, you know, I looked at myself critically. I've always been probably my own worst critic. These, you know, I don't want to do that ever again, you know, and this is what I want to do.

And you can probably relate. some of our listeners probably, the more you're in that environment, you never get 100% used to it, but you get calmer during it. I remember my very first operation, it's O Dark 30, with the Green Beres that year, and lucky we didn't get any ticks or anything, is I remember landing in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, and I guess, I said, I guess this shit's for real now. And I'm just trying to make sure I don't lose my element and night vision. You know, it's not the easiest to see, you know, you know, and we had some pretty decent night vision.

It's like, please, please, Lord, let me keep up with the people in my group and not get lost out here by myself. So, you know, and I told, I was talking to my fellow, some fellow agents back in Arizona when I got back. And I was telling them stories, you know, this is what we're doing, you know. You're like, oh, you're bullshit. There's no way you did that shit. I'm like, oh, yeah, we did. You know, it's common, you know, everything kind of fell in the place where I don't know if it ever will happen again. You're at war with a country that has a drug nexus.

You know, so I did things as a DA agent. I never thought in a million years I'd be doing. And, you know, people would ask me, were you scared or nervous? I said, hell yeah, I was. You know, I said, but you still had a job to do, you know, there's nothing, you know, scary a feeling. you're going to land and you're giving, you know, five minutes, two minutes, and you hear the doorgunners open up, you know, you're going into a hot LZ, you know, you had to unask this bird and, you know, start putting some fire down.

But I explained it to it, it's like at the amusement park. You're riding the biggest, baddest roller coaster. You're scared and nervous. And then when you get done, it's like, okay, when we're going back again? You know, I guess I got that warp sense, you know. I've always been kind of an adrenaline junkie, but, you know, it's like, like, are you nuts? I don't know if I'm nuts, but, you know, I tend to, I've always, even in football,

tend to excel when the pressure was on. You know, some people fold under pressure. Some people can handle it well. Luckily for me, I always had a knack of being able to still function pretty effectively under stress. When you got home from that deployment, you said you went back to Arizona. Do you? No, back to Quantico. Okay, so you got back to Quantico.

Yes. So is that where you're actually living now, is in Quantico, since you're with the Fast Team? Well, I'm retired now, but when I was on the Fast Team, yes, I was living in the Quantico area. I was living actually in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Okay. So you get back from that deployment.

No one can believe what you did. You can barely believe what you did. I'm just lucky to make it out there with my life, you know, and have two legs still, you know. And then what's next? You get to decompress. You know, you get to spend time with your family. You know, you've been gone a while.

They send the psychologists in, and they kind of debrief you, and see if you're having any issues or problems. And you just get to take it easy for a while and to spend time with your family and just relax and recuperate. And how long is that decompression time? You know, usually a month or so. Nice. You know, so then, you know, we were scheduled to do our next,

tour in Afghanistan. It was going to be the late early winter tour of 2011. And the meantime, we started operating in the Western Hemisphere also. And we had a team out there, Echo Team,

which their primary thing was to Western Hemisphere, and they were giving us language, training in Spanish and everything. And they were operating in Honduras. real shit hole too Rootan's real nice so the scuba diving destination

and stuff but the rest of the country is a disaster a lot of violence there so echo teams going there and they're doing which is called these air tracks of interest and we were working in conjunction with Joyce

Joint Task Force Bravo over there out of Sotom and what you're looking for is these small like planes these Cessna's and different things coming from source countries, you know, like cocaine, Peru and stuff like that, loaded with cocaine, you know, multiple hundred kilos of Coke at a time. And, you know, they would fly in and land in these remote landing strips.

And their so-called remote land was like a road or just like a clearing. And they would come in there at night with no night vision and no runway lights. and just have like things lit up and land and you know try to safely land the plane but the drug dealers didn't really as long as the the cocaine was okay they didn't care of the plane got destroyed so we were we were sent to they needed volunteers so me and another guy from my team volunteered to go and help them out so we go and we go and we're in Soto Kano we during training with our partner force there, getting up to speed and our tactics, how to take down a plane, land and take down a plane and all that jazz. And working with Joint Task Force, Bravo.

And right before we got there, we were doing some training. So another team went there. They had one of these air tracks come in, and they launched on it. And actually got in a pretty good firefight. and actually were shooting RPGs at the military aircraft, the 47s that were bringing them in. And the joint task was Bravo guys. Like, oh, whoa, time out.

You know, we're just supposed to provide you guys a minor transportation role. We don't really want to be in the combat here. So when we got there, they made a pretty good seizure and killed some, you know, decent amount of enemy. And so we get there. So they're like in like, well, okay, we have to have a lot. so many hours of training and, you know, we have to practice this and that. And so we're practicing and doing all that, you know, waiting to go. And then DEA, we bring some of our airwing assets there,

but we just have smaller vehicles, I mean, smaller aircraft, like kind of like a super black hawk. You can't fit a bunch of people in there. And we were, you know, you're doing a salt. You want like a CH-47 or something. So they're making every excuse in the world not to fly us. And was this for a specific target that you were going after? Or was it just in general they were making excuses not to fly if a hit happened to come up? In general. Okay. Because they knew that there was going to be gunplay.

And one of our Honduran partner forces got shot during that first operation. They had to medevac him out. And they're like, if we sent you guys down there and if somebody gets hurt, we are not flying into a hot LZ to get you. So there's a lot of things. So we had two DE aircraft there. So we had a couple good air tracks that came up. So the first one, we launched just with our DEA birds. And the amount of fuel then carry is not that great.

So you can't be up that long. And it takes a while for us to get on these bogey birds and get tracking them. So we launched and we had in each one of these. these helicopter, two DEA pilots, we had two fast team guys and two hinder and partner forces in these birds. And each one of these birds, we had a full-size 240 Bravo on there and stuff. But with that limited people, you're not going to land and fight a force. So at best, we hope to see where they land and, hey, if we got harassed, and maybe, you know,

you could defend yourself and put some fire down at least disabled the aircraft. So we launched twice and we get on both tracks. But before they landed, we were running low on fuel so we had to get back. So we're there and we're staying out at Porta Castillo near the Port of Castillo area. There's a base out there that's where we're launching from. So it was a pretty big media event. So they all knew we were the, excuse me, they all knew we were. were there. So one of the local drug dealers, he knows where coming, so he leaves the country.

So one of his people that works at him, one of his lieutenants is there. So he concocks this hairbrain scheme. He's going to get DE out of there. D.E.A. We're going to get them out of there. So my boss can come back. So we're staying in this hotel. So wait, so one of the local drug dealers says to himself, I'm going to get the DA to leave. so the big boss man can come back. The big boss man El Heffi can come back. Got it. So we're staying in this hotel and there's off the water there.

And there's another hotel there, the Christopher Columbus, where a lot of the military guys are staying. And they had this little airstrip there. So a lot of those fast guys would get a morning and do PT and we'd run in the morning. So this guy's scheme was they knew kind of our schedule that they were going to, when we got running in the morning. morning, they're going to go and drive up and shoot a couple of us down. So they're going to kill a couple of de agents and DAs is going to leave. And wait, you got wind of this or this is just what

their plan is you found out after the fact? We end up getting wind of it because one of the partner force guys we were working from recognized a guy in town and he said this guy in town got recruited to help kill a couple of us. So he reports back, he reports us to his buddy, and they come to us, and the two people they're going to kill in the morning is the big guy, which is me. And then another guy in our team, Dave Claussen, the guy with the funny shorts, because he has these colorful, long, goofy shorts he would wear to run, and they're just going to pull up alongside of us and his machine gun is down.

So we get wind of this and then they get us the hell out of there back to Sotomano and Send us back to the States What about the other DEA agents? They were there like another week and they'd be left It was just there was it was at the end of when we were going to leave anyways And plus it's high risk low reward high risk low reward JTF Bravo is not flying us so it's It was just a mess we later went back there and had full support

and ended up doing some good with some of my other teams. How did you feel when you were trying to get out of there walking from the freaking hotel to the car to the airplane to get you out of there? I tell you what, you know, we're staying in this hotel, Casa Alamane, house of German, by the water there. And, you know, I got a first floor room, and it's a decent-sized room. So I'm, like, we got to stay in one night there. So I'm, like, barricaded my door.

I got my Mark 43 set up. ready to go, my car being ready to go. I'm like, okay, Lord, get me through this night. I said, if they're going to get me, they're going to have to, they're going to have to work to get me, you know. So it was. Were you able to sleep or just stay awake all night, finger on the trigger? I didn't sleep, you know, I had, you know, the belt, you know,

down the feetray cover, shud, you know, the weapon cocked back with the safety on, you know, ready to go, you know, so they're going to, you know, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to respond with a burst of gun fire. They tried to get through here, you know. So it was like, you know, you know, I survive Afghanistan and then I'm going to get, I'm going to get hit in Honduras, you know, so I'm coming home and like, oh God, Joe, what are you, what are you getting yourself into? And you're volunteering for all this? And at night in Honduras, at night, there would be all this, you know, fully automatic AK-47 gunfire. And the couple, who ran the hotel.

Is that just like celebratory fire? Or is there fights going on? I think a little bit of both. Got it. And the people who were the preparators of the hotels, oh, they're just killing chickens. They can't kill no damn chickens in the middle of the night. With AKs?

With AKs. With AKs, yeah. There's nothing left of the chicken, you know? So we roll back into the States and then we're doing our pre-deployment training, getting ready to go to. to my next turn in Afghanistan. So again, we're in the fighting season, you know, time frame parameter.

And, you know, working with these specialized special ops units, if you hadn't worked with them before, and you can probably know this, there's a lot of dick measuring going on. Check. It's like, who are you? What can you do if they never work with you? You know, we weren't a special option unit for say.

You know, we're the best that DEA have. But we could shoot, move, and communicate pretty good. You know, we could hold our own. So a lot of times it took two or three missions of going out with people, hey, these guys are pretty good. You know, they're decent. So a lot of people thought that we'd go in with these units and they would clear it and then we would come in after the fact.

That wasn't the case. We were up there from the front leading elements. So to get to my point, we had our fast team before us that was there in Afghanistan. And at the time, a lot of the U.S. Special Ops units were doing these field stability programs where they were going out and living with the people out, you know, in the villages and getting them to kind of see our way of thinking and views and values. And, you know, we could talk for hours just about that. but we won't get into that here today. So no U.S. Special Ops units were available to do direct action missions.

So the Australian commandos stepped up, hey, we'll do it. And they were operating, they can only operate in the Helmand Province in Afghanistan. And that's a pretty hot insurgent area of activity, and they have a lot of drug production that goes on there. And that's where we have a big base, their camp Leibnick, where the Marine Corps are. Marine Corps is. So they were working. Our fast team came in,

and they saw we were good to go. So when we got there, we didn't have to go through all that rigamarole. We just hit the ground running. And in fact, the second op we did there that tour, we had hit the biggest heroin lab to date at that point of time in Afghanistan. And it was just huge.

And they weren't used to us being in helmet. in. So we weren't running into a lot of in-placed IEDs because they weren't used to us being there. But they were still pulling up a hell of a fight. You know, you're trying to take their money and, oh, hell no. So we hit that huge lab. How big is that lab?

Like, is it? They're producing at a time multiple 100, 100 kilos of, of heroin at a time. And in fact, when we came in, they had a lot of it drying out. We didn't know. And, you know, the rotor washer, those seats blew a lot of it away. But there was just a ton of chemicals and equipment left. You know, then we, you know, we can't take all the stuff with us.

So we just take representative samples, take photographs, and destroy the rest of the stuff in place. So we're, you know, in the process of destroying the stuff. and we're running into a sporadic, you know, gunfire encounters. We got one of our partner force guys got shot in the lake, and we have to bring them to a medevac, and a couple of the Australians got shot, and we're processing this lab. And I tell you, the Australian commandos, they're a very, very effective unit and very good.

you know, I kind of put them on par to like maybe our Army Rangers, and they roll in pretty heavy when we roll in too. They will deploy snipers in there first to set up, and if we're rolling heavy, they'll bring a whole mortar company and everything too. So we... And that's who you started working with, and they were being guided by the Aussies? Yeah, we were being guided by the Australian Commandos. that's who our partner force was

and it's funny because like we'd be talking like this and you can kind of understand the Aussies and they have different slang words and stuff but under stress and under firefight you can understand what Taylor is saying you're like can you 10-9 that last please okay and my very best

English accent this is what we want you to do so you know we had quite a few prisoners during this op and stuff And, you know, you're getting ready. In the middle of the night, you're loading them on this helicopter. And they never seen helicopters up close.

You know, so they're just looking around and I think it's like an alien spaceship. Like, come on. You come with us. We're not going to execute you. Come on. You know, so we're rip rolling through this tour. We're just making some hell of a seizures. So we're getting close.

We got like three weeks left to go. It's getting close to Halloween. And this bazaar, Pake Bazaar, and the northern Helmand province pops up hot. You know, and these bazaars out there, like outdoor flea markets with like rolling garage doors and things. And they saw everything from, you know, sundries, shampoos, chickens, but also to include chemicals and equipment to manufacture heroin, IED bomb making material in small arms. So this bazaar pops up hot. And our team, the fast team that was there before us,

Bravo team had hit the Spazaar with the Aussies. And they seized a lot of items. They got in a pretty big gunfight. And in fact, the supervisor of the fast team, Brett Hamilton, who was in my selection, he was a Marine Corps officer, old, tough, crusty guy. And we were the two oldest guys in our selection. He was a little older than me.

they're fighting their way back to the helicopters and he ends up getting the forest gump wound a bee jump up and stung him he got shot in the butto-hard dude man he stayed the rest of the turn you know they packed his wound he was still going on ops and stuff so we knew we were going to run into some resistance but when we could hit it with the Aussies

there wasn't an airwing platform available with night vision capabilities that could fly us. So we're like, we really don't want to go during the day. We want to use our technical advantages, but we didn't have that option. And we were, our confidence was, I think, a little higher than it should have been. You know, they say you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

So like, we're going to go. So we're going to use this air wing that's training the Afghan pilots for when we left, they could take over and do stuff. And they were using old Russian MI17 troop transport helicopters. Now, it's a pretty robust helicopter. It's not as big as our CH-47, but they move pretty fast. and the door gunners, they got on one side of PCAM machine gun, on the other side of Gao mini gun.

And there's U.S. contract pilots in there with Afghanis, and there's one British guy, British aviator too. So the night before they tell us, okay, one of the helicopters you guys are using is going to be all Afghan crew and piloted. we're like oh we don't really want to be on that helicopter nor any of our awseys because if they decide that they're going to

get their jihad on that day and crash into a mountain don't want to be on that and they're not quite as skilled as our pilots so we're like okay we'll go but our Afghan counterforce is going to infill and exfiel on that bird So we get a plan

We're going to hit the bazaar Early morning hours of October 31st, 2011 Just after first light And you know, we want to get there We're no people in the bazaar You know, so we don't have to deal A monkey around and deal with all that crap Just get there

We're going to hit this bazaar Then we're going to hit another location After it So the plan was We arrive in three Am I 7th No 4 MR-17s, some fast team members and Australians are going to be in one.

The Afghan Pounder Force is going to be in another, and then the Australians are going to be in the other two birds. And the Australians are going to land and kind of set up an outer perimeter to try to keep the enemy from maneuvering in on us. But the only bad thing is it was a little bit of mountainous area, so the enemy had the high ground on us. And our Afghan partner force are going to land in the helicopter. They're going to search this little village area right outside the bazaar. We're going to link up. And then we're going to search the bazaar in two groups. I was in charge of one of the elements made up of

fast team members with our Afghan partner force. And then one of our other guys was leading the other group. So we land, start moving through, hook up with the Afghans, and shortly after infill, we receive, start receiving sporadic incoming fire. Not very effective. So we're moving through and we're finding poppy seed and stuff to manufacture heroin. And I'm standing outside of one of the stalls in the bazaar behind this old beat-up car. I hear a shot fight. and I hear it hit the beat-up car behind me, and then I feel the back of my neck burn. I'm like, oh, shit.

So I dive into the stall of bazaar. I put my hand on my back of my neck to see if any blood. I don't see any blood on my glove. I have whenever Afghan translators look at it, and he says, oh, it looks okay, sir. But the bullet got so close I could feel the heat of the bullet burned the back of my neck. So I kind of had my guard.

yard up after that and I'm like oh that's a close call Joe so I kind of was using all my techniques and tactics I had learned throughout the years on the police department on the SWAT team as a DA agent as the DEA fast training and prior missions so shortly after that over the little shitty loudspeaker system they have over there the insurgents do a call to arms today's your day to die we must kill the infidels we must must drive them out of our land. So the incoming gunfire really increases. So we really hear the Aussies get into it with them. And you're still in the bazaar at this point? We're still in the bazaar. And the Aussies are on external security. Yes. And we have the Marine air wing providing

close air support. And we hear the marine air wing get into it. The Aussies getting into it. so we're finishing up what we have to do. We're taking the samples, taking photographs, and starting to destroy all the stuff. So we do that and we say, okay, we're like 10 mics, 10 minutes out and we'll be ready to move. So we start calling our birds to come get us. So they're inbound and we have to make our way to our X-Fill locations. We're only about a couple hundred meters away, not far. but we get bogged down in the gunfire.

So we can't make our exfail positions in time. So we have to wave the helicopters off. So they go a distance away but keep the rotor spinning. So, you know, at this time, you know, we're like moving in between mud huts and, you know, you're leapfrogging and you're like, you know, I know we have to get the hell out of here because the longer we stay, the more the end. enemy has time to amass, you know, and it's not going to be good. But, you know, in combat, you can't show fear to other people on your team or squad, even though you're feeling like, I don't know if we're going to get to file out of here. You know, so you're moving and we finally get set up in our ex-field positions, Afghans and their little spot and us and the Aussies.

So the four helicopters come in, and we're receiving pretty heavy incoming fire, two of to include belt-fed machine gunfire. Don't recall any RPGs. So the four helicopters come in, and we got the Afghan crew and piloted helicopter that one we're never going to get on in a million years. And three land.

Guess which one doesn't land? The Afghan crew and piloted helicopter, and afterwards they said, because of the brown-out conditions with the helicopters, helicopters picking up all the dust and rotor wash and all the incoming fire, they didn't feel comfortable landing. So instead of waiting for their bird to come, guess what the Afghans do? Pile on.

To the next helicopter. And that's ours. So they get there first. We're in this open field. We run out there. We're like, get the hell off. They're not moving. I don't blame them.

I wouldn't want to go back into that hell. So instead of being shot in this open damn field, we're like, okay, just go. Go. So the three helicopters lift off, and then it's us for Fast team members and several Aussies. So we take... Like how many guys are left on the ground? Like 10, 15 of you? Yeah, at Max.

We had from Fast, we had Jared, Justin, two mats, um, Brent, Paul. myself and a couple of Aussies. So like under 10. So, of course, all the fires focus on us at this point. So we take cover in a little ditch. And then our helicopter short time lands about 100 meters away. And this is the one we never going to get on, the Afghan crew and pilot helicopter.

So they land. And I remember saying to myself, of course, your heart's racing. I feel like I got to get a hell out of here. I remember saying to myself, this is going to be a shitty run. You know, there's bullets just popping up everywhere. But I knew we couldn't stay. So one of the last memories I kind of have from that day is I get up to run. I remember firing a couple shots on the run towards the direction I felt insurgents were firing at us from.

I guess I got the helicopter about mid-pack, and that's when I paused and was provided. providing fire for the rest of my teammates to get on or near the helicopter. And then once that happened, my team leader, Jared Johnson, said, let's roll, I guess. And that's when I turned left to run onto the helicopter, and then I got hit in the head. At first, he thought I'd fell, and he's trying to rouse me, and I'm not moving. I'm face first into the ground. And then he rolls me over, and he sees the ballistic class as I was wearing. were shattered and he sees a hole in my head.

So they roll me over and they're thinking I'm dead, which is very, you know, very possible situation here. You could take a round to the head. And so they grabbed me, scoop me up, throw me in helicopter. That's when Brent and, you know, he put him in cover fire down. Matt Stewart's trying to get the Afghan doorgunners to fire. They're not even firing. And helicopter is getting shot up.

You know, we're getting shot. And he's like, shoot, shoot, shoot. So they fire a couple rounds, you know, burst into the ground. So he's like, no, shoot, shoot. So he takes, you know, he grabs the gun and starts shooting a little bit. So they throw me on the helicopter. And, you know, they think I'm dead. You know, the helicopter is very loud and air, of course, and everything.

So you can't hear breathing. So one of my teammates, Justin Vanderbilt, who actually, before DEA, he was a medic in New Orleans, and he was there during Katrina. So he was kind of like one of our more highly trained, kind of our version of like 18 Delta medical guy, even though we all go through pretty intense T-T-T-T-TCC combat care and actually live tissue training and stuff. He's like, he's alive. He's breathing.

So they start getting my stuff cut out, and they, um, they, apply combat gauze to my head wounds, which is gauze with clotting agent in there. So they're getting that under control. And then a lot of times with facial wounds or different head wounds, you want to try to establish a better airway. And you know, and you can do that by a couple different ways. You can do a crick where you cut, you know, the person's throat and you insert and implement it in there, help them breathe more. Or you can use a nasal pharyngeal airway. and they decide they're going to stick a nasal pharyngeal airway up my nose.

And in training, we have to insert these in and each other. Just so everyone knows, this is like a, it's basically like a U-shaped tube that you-craming someone's nose that will open up the airway between your nostrils and like your lungs, not all the way down to your lungs, but like through your head. You know, they're probably, what do you think they are, Joe, like maybe five inches long total? something like that? Yes, and in one end looks like there's a funnel on there and the other end.

And in training, we can put lytocaine in our nose before we do it, but it still sucks. Or no offense attended. When we were training with the seals, they allow us to spit on them and stick you up with his nose. And these are not fun. And when they're cramming this up my nose, I come too. I don't remember any of this.

It's probably a good thing. I'm talking, making sense. I recognize people's voices. I'm not complaining about my head, even though I have a hole on each side. I say, get it out of my eyes. The pressure from the high velocity round, which we think was the armoured pursing round from a belt-fed P.KL machine gun. Traveling through my head ruptured both my eye globes and detached both retinas. So they pour saline solutions on my eyes.

Of course, that doesn't do jack crap. And then I'm telling them I got to move my leg. So they think I'm shot in the leg too with all the gunfire that was coming at us. And this particular mission, I did not have my belt-fed machine gun. I had my carbene with a suppressor on it. And I had been shooting quite a bit. So when I got knocked unconscious,

I fell on the barrel of my rifle and it burned inside of my left leg real bad. And actually the cry pants I was wearing were burned, you know, they were burned. And they burned my leg pretty good. So they're, you know, they're working on me and, you know, they're getting me back to the base as quick as possible.

And I know my teammates said, the thing that scared them, even the bleeding stopped, my head just kept swelling up and swollen. up. They knew there was nothing they could do there. But luckily for me, the helicopter is there when I got shot. So, you know, I usually take the time now to talk about some of the things that I think led to my survivability is that, you know, even though I was severely wounded by my team providing that fast medical attention,

they had stalled my decompensation, giving time for me to get the higher care. And I know it's not in vogue at times or this and that, but for all instances, I should be dead. Talking to the medical professionals, over 80% of the people who get my injury do not survive. And the day I became a police, police officer, my mother gave me a St. Michael's Medallion. It's a patron saint to protect police

officers and always carried one on me. I had one in my kit. I always did the Psalm 91 prayer before I went on missions and carried a copy on me. That's the prayer of soldiers going into battle for the Lord to protect you. And I had one of my grandfather's dog takes in World War II on me. and it was not my time to go. The Lord had more for me to do. I think some of that is me doing my motivational speaking now, helping others deal with situations and instances, and it just was not my time to go.

And then with all our high-speed medical training that we had, once my teammates found that I was alive, nobody panicked. And unfortunately, over there, we had to use our medical training more than what we had liked. So that, and also, you know, I talk about mindset. You know, you have to have this mindset that if you're in a fight for your life or you're with a suspect or an enemy, you're fighting for your life or getting in a shootout, or it could be at home, you could have an accident or driving a car.

If you're in a fight, you have to survive. You have to fight. You have to kick, claw, scratch, go out, whatever you have to do. You have to think to yourself, I am not going to lose this fight. I am not going to lose. I'm going to survive. I'm going to make it through that. You have to have that mental attitude.

you know, I kind of call it the warrior's mindset or the winning mentality that I'm going to survive and make it through this. You know, there's no way I'm not going to make it through. Even though at first I was not unconscious, my body and my mind didn't give up. You're going to make it through this, Joe. You know, I didn't see any bright light or anything. I may have saw some little fire below or something.

It wasn't time. So also, talking to the doctors, I was in really great physical shape when I got shot. And the better shape you're in, a lot of times, the more traumatic injury you can survive. And a lot of times, the better your recovery is. So when I talk to groups, you know, especially military law enforcement groups.

You know, I tell people, you don't have to be an Olympic athlete, but please, please, please, be in the best shape you can. Because it may save your life. You never know. Like I said, it could be a car accident you're in or you could fall of a ladder at the house. You know, just please stay in the best shape that you can. So we fly back to the base, Terent Cout,

which we're staying at with the Aussies. So we land on the airfield there, and the ambulance comes out to meet us, and they don't bring a stretcher to the bird. They think they have me on a stretcher. Even though we have them, they didn't have me on one. So I hear this commotion going on. So guess what the guy shot in the head does?

He gets off to walk off the helicopter. My team is like, no, Joe, we got you. We'll carry you. So they carry me to the ambulance, bring me to the medical facility there. They do what they can for me there. Do you remember trying to get up and walk? No.

I don't remember talking to my teammates on the helicopter. None of that. All I remember is firing a couple shots on the run. Because, you know, talking to the doctors, because I guess, you know, when I got hit, it was just lights out. And it's kind of your brains, mechanisms, to protect you.

And I'm probably glad I don't remember any of that stuff. So they brought me to the medical facility there. They knocked me unconscious, did what they can for me there. And then they make arrangements to fly me in a MEDAVAC helicopter to Kandahar Airfield, which they had a neurosurgeon and eye surgeon standing by. So I'm flown over there with one of my teammates, Matt Stewart. We arrived there. So, of course, they do an assessment on me there.

And it was fortunate for me that day, it was Halloween. So not a lot of groups were doing or units were doing missions. So they didn't have many casualties in the hospital there. So they first take a look at me and I guess I'm starting to be kept alive with basic life-saging procedures at this time. And they don't think there's anything they can do to save me. So they're just going to have me pass peacefully and then have me sent home back home on an angel. Angel flight, deceased. But the doctor, the neurosurgeon, he's a pretty aggressive guy, and then the nurse that

in took me there, and he's looking at me, he's talking to my teammates, you know, my teammate that I was talking after in the helicopter. I got up to walk off. I was trying to get whatever's in my eyes out, and he sees what shape I'm in. He's convinced that if he gets in and performs surgery, that they can get the, you. the bleeding in my head stopped and some of the pressure relieved, at least get me home to the state so my family can see me. Didn't know what condition I was going to be in,

even though I was talking in the helicopter, and he had to decide whether I could survive even what he was going to do to me during surgery. And he felt strongly that I had that we had that, that I wasn't going to die. And he told me after the fact, with brain injuries and head injuries, he said there was a smell that somebody gave off that he could tell if they weren't going to make it or not. And he said, I did not have that smell. And they had a nurse there, you know, they're bickering back and forth, whether, you know,

he's fighting in the command, whether they should use their resources to save me. And I guess there's a line in the hospital there. Once you cross over that line, surgery has to take the patient. You can't push him back. So the head nurse at the time, which I'm still friends with, I'm not going to mention her names, because I don't want to get in any trouble, push me over that line. So surgery had to take me.

So they began to operate on me. The neurosurgeons spend approximately four and a half hours operating on me. They actually removed the whole frontal skull piece off my head. All my frontal forehead is now titanium. They got the bleeding stopped. They put a valve in there to regulate my pressure. And then the eye surgeon came in. And she's like talking to the main doctor.

He's like, he really survivable. Am I going to spend all this work on somebody where he's just going to be sent home? in a box. And that was a possibility, but he says, I think, you know, he's going to make it. So she spent approximately eight hours piecing my eyes back together with a microscope. And the work she did has given me the opportunity in the future to be able to potentially see more. My left eye has some light perception, and I can see some moving in my left eye, and I can see them shapes so there's a bigger color contrast

between light and dark. So she pieces my eyes back together. So the next day, one of my best friends on my unit, he was in another part of the country trying to get some other ops together. He makes it there and he flies back en route to the states with me.

Of course, they have me on this big, I guess, medical plane. You know, pretty much each patient has their own nurse and everything. and we're en route back to the states. And, of course, they're letting my family know what happened and everything. And at the time, I was engaged. And I told my fiancé at the time, I said, don't, if I can't get a hold of you, you can't get a hold of me, I'm out of an app.

When I get back in, we'll Skype or, and I'll text you or call you. I said, only worry if two people come knocking on the door. So she was a nurse. night shift and she, Afghanistan's like eight hours, always different. And she hears a knock on the door that morning after she got back from work and she goes to the door and she sees two gentlemen through the window. She doesn't recommend and they put their badges out. And she's like, oh, shit. So she opens the door and she starts bawling. They're like, he's not dead. He's in surgery. We don't know, but he's alive at this point. So they get all my family notified and everything.

and then we had to fly over to Launstool, Germany, and they had a pretty good medical thing there with my buddy Travis, and it was the pressure of my head was rising. They kept me there for three nights. And then they flew me to Andrews Air Force Base. I was going to say Dover, but you don't want to make it to Dover, because that means you're dead. So they flew me to Andrews,

and then had all my family at the hospital and all the people from DEA and everything, the higher-ups and some of the other people on their team's waiting to receive me. So they take me via ambulance over to Walter Reed National Naval Medical Hospital and Bethesda, Maryland. So they, when I arrived, they let my family see me. They plan on doing some other surgeries there. But of course, I'm a mess.

I have no frontal skull piece. My head's all caved in. I guess, you know, I'm swallel. and I got a tube coming out and almost every part of my body. And they let my family see me. And at the time, my fiancé was an intensive care nurse. She's seeing a lot of trauma and a lot of bad things. But I guess when she saw me, of course, when it's your loved ones, it's different.

She put her hand on her mouth, screamed, ran out of the room and passed out. Her dad had to help her off the floor. You know, when it's somebody you love and care about, it's different. So they brought me in there. They did some surgeries on me. They reattached my retinas. They cleaned up my head area more in preparation for putting my plate on, my metal plate that I have now and later. But they don't want to put it on too quick, but the chance of rejection is greater and everything.

So they want to wait. So they do that, and then they put me in an induced coma with that proffal ball. You want to maybe call it the Michael Jackson drug, the one Michael Jackson used to sleep. I don't arrest Michael Jackson, you know, God rest of the soul. It works very good for putting people in a coma, but you can reverse them real quick, but not necessarily, it's not necessarily prescribed for sleep. So they had me on that, and they had me intubated and everything. So they had me in a deuce coma for about a week.

And then when they were getting ready to bring me out of the coma, they didn't know how I was going to be, even though I was talking and making sense on the helicopter and all that. With the additional trauma of the surgeries, they wouldn't know if I could speak at all. Would I remember anything? Would I have my same personality? but they

shortly after they learned I was the same smart-ass Joe I was before I was little confused at first they asked me where do you live I'm like oh Detroit Michigan what do you do I'm a police officer what's your dog's name

I said Max that was my very first dog I had when I was a kid but I soon shortly after I got my bearings I knew who I was at the particular time I knew who I was working for and everything. So then started my road to recovery. You know, so now I'm blind.

I'm not in the best, you know, the best condition physically at this particular time because of the injuries. You know, so they begin to start my recovery process. And I was on a feeding tube for a while, so they had to pull that out and they trick you. They say, okay, we're going to pull us out on three.

One, two, oh, you didn't wait for three. I was like, oh, you didn't wait for three. I was like, we say that because we want to catch you by surprise. You don't want you to say three, then pull, and then you tighten it and it makes it worse. So I had to learn how to eat solid food. I failed a couple swallow studies at first. And, you know, of course, I'm losing weight by the minute

because I'm not being active. and the people at the hospital, oh, he's got a lot of muscle, he's in good shape, you know, and Mike's wife at the time where ex-fiancee, you didn't see him before. So we started making them feed me, you know, like insure in between meals and stuff to try to put some more weight on and we do things like, okay, today your task is, okay, Joe, have you put your shorts on and your t-shirt and your socks, you know, how long is it going to take you? I said, you know, obviously five or ten minutes or whatever. So the one time I was sitting there with the physical therapist,

and my ex and I'm feeling these shorts and I'm like, these don't feel like my size. I'm like, what size are these? And of course, my ex doesn't say anything like a church mouse. She's like, she knows she's telling me what size they are. I'm going to throw a hissy fit.

So the therapist says, let me see, I'll tell you. She goes, they're medium. I took those shorts. I threw them across the room. I said, I'm a big fellow. I wear extra large. If I would have put those extra large shorts and everything felt straight to the floor because when I got shot,

I was probably 2.30s really lean and they would weigh me on the bed every day. I was down, I got down to like 160 something. So those shorts would have... What was the time frame for that? Like a month? Two months. I spent two months there.

Not long. So, we got over that and then I was confused and then of course my eye doctor he was his name was Dr. Chung there and a very serious man so one day we're sitting in my room my father's there with me and my teammate Travis and Dr. Chung walks in and Travis is like Dr. Chung I want to tell you Joe thinks he's African American I was all jacked up so I'm talking and acting like I'm inner city African-American guy and lingo and everything and Dr. Chung like are you serious? And Travis says yes. And then my dad's like, well, he is from Detroit.

So Dr. Chung found out it was pretty serious, but I only acted that way for a couple of months, you know, a couple days, you know, and then I got my bearings back. So yeah, you know, it progressed there and they did everything they can for me there. And then they let me. start doing like a little bit of workout stuff there and they brought me to like the little PT gym area and they're like okay we're going to have you do like some little dumbbell stuff and like okay tell me which way are the 120s yeah with the weight you know tell me it's good I said oh these are too heavy these are too heavy these are too heavy okay these are good and then I found out after the fact max oh my joe those were the pink dumbbells you were using oh no

They're like probably two pounds or one pound. Oh, I don't care. I'm getting in work, you know? Yeah, yeah. You know, so it did that, and they start, you know, teaching you how to operate blind. And I don't know, for some goofy reason, I thought I didn't have any skin on my head where my brain was.

I thought it was just like mesh. So they're like, Joe, you need to take a shower. We need to get you a shower. And I'm like, I can't get my brain wet. and Max is like, Joe, you have skin there. I'm like, oh, I do. So you kind of lose all your dignity.

You got to go in the shower with this, you know, this nurse or whatever. They're all gowned up and all this rubber gear. And you just, you know, stand there with your birthday suit on butt naked. I'm like, guess I'm taking the shower, you know? And so how long was this, you know, recovery process? How long did you stay? Was this still taking place at Bethesda?

Yes. I was there for two months. Two months. when so you lost freaking whatever you went from 230 to 160 something yes and now you start rebuilding yes and when you start rebuilding is that really start to take place when you get out of bethesta yes but they transfer me down to the um mcguire VA down in richmond virginia you know after that so it was kind of nice but we're getting close to christmas time now ish and so on the weekends they let me go home as long as I came back

Sunday night and I got to go home for the holidays and then we became started doing a lot learning there a lot more how to operate in a blind world like use the blind cane use some of the voiceover stuff like on the computer and things like that and I began to let me start working out more there You know, sir, during this time, I'm like, I don't know what's going to happen to me or not happen to me. And I'm like, our administrator at the time, her name was Michelle Linehart. She was like in charge of us. And she asked my buddy Travis, what does Joe want?

He's like, Joe wants to keep working. She goes, we'll make it happen. So even the I didn't meet the physical requirements to be a DEA agent anymore. They kept me on as a DEA agent after this. because they figured out the money, you make a lot more retiring as a regular agent rather than taking a medical disability. So they kind of hooked me up. And during my stay in Walter Reed, Bethesda,

hearing my teammates and my parents talk about, they bring all these wounded service members back home overseas, tore up bad. A lot of these are younger kids. when this happened to me I was like 41 years old I lived a pretty damn good life and a lot of these kids maybe not married

maybe newly married maybe just had some you know a child and you know their life is drastically changed forever so when I would have my pity party and why me woe is me

you know I would say Joe it always could be worse Somebody always has it worse than you. You know, you can't control what you don't have anymore. All you can do is work with what you have now. So in life, when bad things happen, we can make a couple choices. We can let life pass us by, or we can get out there and do as much as we can do. and I made a commitment to myself that I'm going to try to do as much blind is what I could see.

I didn't know how that was going to look, but I made that commitment. And when there's a will, there's a way. If you want to figure out how to do stuff and make stuff happen, it may not be the same way you used to do it. It may take you a lot longer, but if you really want to do something bad enough, you can do it. So I made that commitment right there, right then. And I tell people when I talk, it's not been easy. Every day is a struggle for me. I still wake up every day blind. You know, I've had a very severe traumatic brain injury. I've had pretty bad PTSD because of it. And I've done stuff to manage and mitigate that. And, you know, when I talk, you know,

You know, with the amount of suicide from service members and this and that. You know, a lot of us want to play, we're tough and it doesn't affect us and this and that. But you can't get help unless you admit you have it and ask for the help. Because there are things and things out there. And I got the stelic ganglion block shot, which helps PTSD. You have a stelic gland in your neck. When you have PTSD, that gland gets all screwed up. And they go in deaden the gland.

And it's kind of like reboots your brain and your computer. And it helps you tremendously. You know, so there's things out there. So there's things that I've went on and done since I've been blind. I've tandem skydive jumped. And a buddy of mine, his wife out in Monterey, California runs a skydiving place. And before I wanted to tandem jump, but I've always kind of been over the weight limit. And he says for a tandem, he's like,

what, you know, what are you going to wait, Joe? I said, I'm about 240 right now. And I knew I couldn't be over two. He says, come up. And we'll make it happen. So when we wait in, his wife wanted to please, he says, tell me you wait 230. So my tandem guy that's jump with me,

he takes, look at me, says, we're going to fall real quick. You're like, how far do you want to, how high do you want to jump, Joe? It's the highest we can go. So I guess we jumped at 16,000 feet. Wow. And I guess that's the highest you can go without, we should go without oxygen, you know, any higher than that, you want to be on oxygen,

and any higher than that, you need to get FAA approval. So we were the first ones that go out of the bird, and I don't know if it's worse being able to see or not. Look, you know, we jumped out of a king air, you know, they opened that door and it winds just rushing. You know, we're the first, and they tell you what to do, you know, and we're going to rock back on, you know, one, two, three, then go, and then, you know, your arms back and then how to land properly and stuff. But it was definitely a kick in the pants. When I do it again, probably yes. I'm nuts. And even in the hospital, when we're talking about my frontal brain lobe injury, the doctors told my parents, well, he can never be trusted with a

credit card anymore. He might just be at work and take all his clothes off. My mom's like, well, he didn't make good decisions to begin with, so he's not going to lose much there. It affected me to an extent but did not affect me to the extent where it could have, thankfully. So I also do all kind of, I hunt and shoot blind with special optics. So how does that work? On top of your rifle, where a scope would sit, you have like, it's like a high speed video camera that has built in Wi-Fi, and it projects to a tablet or a smartphone. and basically it'll show on tablet or smartphone

like a site picture of a scope and you got, you know, assistant gunner, A gunner, and they tell me left right up or down and as long as I, my breathing's controlled and I don't jerk the trigger, I can hit a pie plate at 300 meters every time. Since I've been blind, I've shot five deer, two bucks and three dose.

I got two alligators in Louisiana with a We had a Glock pistol with a laser site And I remember before watching that show Swamp people and I can see I said they're nuts I said you would never catch me In a million years doing that

So an opportunity came up Hey Joe you want to go Gator hunting Oh yeah sure I guess That goes back to my poor decision making And I tell you there was some Pucker factor going on there buddy So I'm with another guy from fast and we were with the guy

we were with his brother is a DA agent and he this guy works in the oil business out in Louisiana New Orleans area and he does the gator hunting so we go to a couple of our

lines and if the listeners and whoever said if they've ever seen how they catch them you have a big like trumble hook with chicken on it and they set them up and the gator bites the chicken and gets caught in this hook and then you have to go and pull the gator up and then you got to shoot them now in the show like swan people they

yank on the line to try to get theator to go nuts for theatrics for tv now how you want to do it you want to pull them up slow so they don't fight and a gator can only stay underwater for so long and yada yada yada so we pull up to the first couple lines and they're not touched so we pull up to the third line and he's like oh shit We got a big one. He goes, he's on the bank. He's got the chicken in his mouth. He's about a 10-footer.

So we roll up in this little John boat, and we get to the line, and the guy's starting to pull him in. So I'm on my knees. I got this Glock with the laser sight on it, 40-cali-cali-clock, you know, and I can just press the pad for the laser sight, you know, when we're ready,

and he can kind of guide me in for the shot. So he's pulling a gator and the gator gets under the boat. He's like, oh, shit. So he's like, okay, we're not going to force this. He's got to eventually come up. So I'm thinking he got the gator snout not too far from me. I'm on my knees. And I'm like, Joe, what the hell are you doing out here?

I'm like, you're blind. And if this gator snaps to bite you, you can't even see. to jump back. And then these locals are going to be out, you know, we're going to see after the fact, that certain right, ain't no blind guy, ain't no business out there anyway. Even the hell that guy, I'm going to sit down, blind out there hunting alligator to get my arm bit off. So believe me, there was some pucker factor. So the gator starts yanking.

I like the fact that not only your little word, you might lose your arm from a gator, but you also don't want to look stupid in front of the same label, you know, it's always a key thing. You got to look cool, you know. Oh, you can't. Now there's the blind guy at one arm, you know. So the Gator starts fighting a little bit, and the guy is like, shit. He bent the hook and got off. So he's like, okay, keep your eye out.

My buddy's there with his pistol, and he takes the Glock. He's got a surface. He only stayed on for so long. So he goes, look for the bubbles. He goes, I see bubbles. He goes, he's coming up. So he shoots him, pow, hits him again, pow. And the buddy I'm with, he, so I shoot him too.

He goes, yeah. So he shoots him. So we go over to the gator and then we push him to the shore to try to get this big S-O-B on the boat. So as we're trying to get him on the boat, I hear another shot. The gator's already got three bullets in his head. He opens his eyes again. So the guy hits him in the head again, and he's done. And so we got this big, big gator on the boat, so it takes up all the room.

So we have to drop him off to try to check out of their lines. And we went to our next line. He had like a nine foot around there, and he was putting up more of a fight, and I got to shoot that one twice. So that was kind of interesting. Havalks, actually, I was in Sun Valley, Idaho last year during hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatments. Because that increases stem salt activity, trying to get a little more. our sight back and I got to downhill snow ski three times. I did that when I was younger and it's

counter counterintuitive but skiing you want to lean forward and blind. You don't want to lean forward when you're walking because you want to crack your head on things. And I've actually got stitches a couple times in my eyebrows since I lost my sight because I was in a hurry. So that was fun. That was on my bucket list. I tried slalom water skiing at our cottage up north this last year. I used to ski a lot when I was young. I just, I popped up, but I couldn't get my other foot in the rear boot. I couldn't, my balance was off with blind, so I tried a couple times, and at least I tried. So I did that.

I ran 5K races blind, and I've actually, last July, I, as you know, I'm a little guy. I became the first blind IFB Me Men's Pro Bodybuilder in history. Got my pro card. So I did that. And, you know, the sky's the limit. You know, there's different things, you know, you can do, and you can't cry over spilled milk,

and you can just control what you can control. And a lot of people ask me, you know, what are some of the hardest things getting used to being blind, Joe? I think one of the biggest things, you lose your independence. I just can't get in the car and go somewhere myself. Or if I want to work out, I just can't go by myself. So you have to rely on other people. And I'm typical like the law enforcement guy or the military, the real type A.

Want to do everything by myself. You know, you can't, you know, if you're falling behind, I'm just going to take over, you know. You want to do it right, do it yourself. I have to learn how to slow down and trust how to. people, and which was probably good for me. I had to learn to ask for help. I wasn't good at that before, but lucky I have a very good base of friends and teammates and family, and DEA has really stepped up since I've been hurt myself or my family.

It's never been without anything. And at first, being in crowds really freaked me out because being in law enforcement for as long as I have, you're always taught to be aware of your surroundings. I know you're not supposed to, you know, I'm trying to think of the, think of the, you know, oh God, it'll come to me, but. I was getting, on this subject, I was getting debriefed by like a psychologist situation. And we, I filled out some form. And they're like, one of the things was like, you know, do you feel comfortable in crowds?

And I said, do you feel comfortable in crowds? And I was like, well, no. And so, you know, the psychiatrist is a female. She looks at it. She says, do you, you say you don't feel very comfortable in crowds. And this was like, I mean, I was back from Iraq, but, you know, whatever. It's been a little bit of time. And she says, you know, you say you don't feel very comfortable in crowds.

And I said, well, no, not really. And she goes, well, why is that? And I go, well, you know there's terrorists in America, right? Yes. And she looked like, she like, whatever, she started taking copious notes, you know, about my mental health or whatever. Which I was just like, hey, it's a reality, you know, it's a reality. You know, because you always want to be aware of your surroundings. Okay.

Where are my entrances? Where are my exits? Who looks suspicious? Who doesn't? You know, you're not trying to like stereotype people, but it's all what doesn't look right. and at first being blind things sounded closer than what they were or farther than what they were I was just real uneasy but over time I learned to deal with that so I'm not as jittery and stuff as I once was I just learned to you know trust the people around me and so you know that's one

of the things people asked me, do I have a service dog? I don't. I put in for one. But then I got my left eye, I had a chance to get an artificial corny in my left eye, and they thought I could get back more vision than I did. So I didn't want to take a dog from somebody who needed it more, and the artificial corny helped me see a little better, but not as much as we had hoped for. so I still might get a service dog in the future. They're pretty incredible what they can do. They're awesome. Yeah, very incredible.

And, you know, people ask me, do I get headaches and stuff a lot? No, I never had a headache. Thank God. Because people ask that question. And, you know, they ask me, you know, what is, you know, what can you see? What can you can't see? Like I said earlier, I can see shapes. I can see light.

I can see some movement. And I chart, my left eye is 24. 400 to 2,500 depending on the day. Anything over 2,200 is legally blind. My right eye is nothing. That's the side the bullet went into. If the eye doctor shines a light, I said, I can think I can see a light. But there's future. With my left eye, I have artificial cornea. So there is help. The thing that's limiting my sight is my optic nerve and retina is still very damaged, but they are working on stem cell for that. to regenerate that. And they're still fairly confident in two to five years.

I could get more sight back, which would be nice. And if I do, that would be great. But if not, you know, I'm still going to keep soldiering on and do what, you know, and do what the hell, you know, I can do. And they said, you know, you don't want to be the first for any of these things. You want to let them work the kinks out of this stuff first. You know, before we had all this mess with China, you heard them doing this. stem cells and everything over there and I ask my eye doctor so I go to the S best eye doctors

that I can now to like you don't want to go over there Joe when the technology is good and it works we'll have it here too so you know just on standby to stand by for that you know so you know we'll keep going with that I do my motivational speaking which gives me purpose now you know I always been you know took jobs and different things were to serve people and serve I can't do my job the way I have in the past. But for me to get up there and talk to people and tell my story, one, it's therapeutic for me too to talk about it. And two, if somebody's having a bad day, a bad year, a bad whatever,

that to see, there's always somebody that has it worse. It always could be worse. So, you know, you've got to count the blessings you have. have and be thankful for the things that you still have. You can't cry about what you don't have anymore. All you can just do is move on. So, you know, I'm going to continue doing the motivational speaking, which is good, you know, and there's been groups I've talked to where I've got after-action reports where people

in the audience have, we're going to commit suicide. And they heard me talk, and they said, my life's really not that bad. you know, I can do it. You know, so I tell people, you know, if I can do it, you can do it. You know, I've always had a strong will. I've always been very stubborn. That kind of helped me survive, but the stubbornness isn't always so good in relationships, you know, as I could be a pain in the butt, just ask my girlfriend, you know, and I do really preach

the PTSD part, too, was we're losing way too many men and women for that. So if you do have it, and I always knew I had it, but I didn't get better until I admitted I had it, but it's why I was still working. I was afraid I was going to lose my security clearance and this and that. And in all actuality, I would not have. But, you know, there's things and treatments and things you can do for that. Like the Stellic Gangling and Blockshot is one a great thing for that. You know, finding a good fit with a therapist.

You know, that, you know, can work with you. So all those things are important. So to me, I tell people it's macho to say you have it. It's not macho to have it and say you don't have it. You know, so don't be, you know, a tough guy or a tough gal. There's help out there, but please, you know, seek that help. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's, for me, you know, one of my guys, Ryan Jobb was also shot in the head.

and he also ended up losing his vision. And unfortunately, after that, you know, after one of the surgeries, one of the many surgeries that he went through, there was some medical complications and he passed away. But it's for me, you know, meeting you, seeing you, talking to you, you know, you have the same kind of attitude that he had. You know, he had been blind and he was doing all kinds of. kinds of things. He was climbing Mount Rainier. He was, he had shot a bull elk. You know, he was

doing the kind of stuff that you're doing. So it's, it's awesome for me to see someone in your situation that has the same exact attitude that Ryan Job had, just a, just a warrior badass that just was still driving on regardless. Oh, one of the things I forgot to, another animal that I shot this past year, I went to West Virginia and I shot a black bear. So it was a female bear and I named a Penelope after the fact. I got that stuffed. So that's my little Penelope. What are the workouts?

You just do your normal workouts that you used to do for bodybuilding in the first place? And I've been doing it for solo. My very first bodybuilding show was in 1993. I did the Central States of Michigan. After college, I was still looking to something competitive. I've always been a big guy. And I'm pretty knowledgeable about nutrition. and the workouts and stuff,

but I'm also smart enough to know there's always somebody who knows more than you. So me being blind, I can't see how I look. I can kind of feel when I'm getting leaner and this and that. So I do have a coach. So my coach, I check in, at least right now in the off season every week,

send them pictures or videos, how I'm looking, answering questions, you know, how is my appetite, how am I feeling this way, that way, you know, getting blood work all the time to make sure everything is functional optimally. Of course, I spent a shit ton of money on supplements. And the coach kind of guy sees my, okay, you know, we'll, you know, you need to do maybe

some more fat-burning cardio, you know, we'll arrange your diet this way. And also, he sends me workouts, too, to follow, you know, depending on the time of year, you know, depending on the workout and the rep range and the amount of, cardio I'm doing. So it's important, too, you have to have a good coach. You can trust, too, that's good. But a lot of these coaches blow smoke up their client's butts. Oh, you look great.

You're going to be Mr. Olympia and this and that. And they can't even win a local show, you know. It's like, no, no, I'd rather have somebody be honest with me. You know, hey, Joe, you know, he looks like you're ready for this competition or you're not. And please tell me, I'll make the corrections I need to make or maybe we're going to have to wait on, you know, and do a. of later competition.

So, you know, we'll see what the future holds. You know, I, if I get some more sight back, I would like to do, you know, some tactical training with people, some firearms training, get more sight back. I could be a coach for people getting ready for competitions, but I couldn't justify now. If I can't see how they look, I can't really do an effective job. You know, so keep moving forward with those things.

and if any other opportunities pop up, you know, I'll be willing to do those things. And, you know, I'm 52 years old now. You can't like these young guys beat you. You got to keep yourself in shape. You know, I was working, you know, work overseas, you know, with these special ops guys. And I'm like, how old are you? 41. I was like, okay, grandpa.

So I got a grandpa for you, you know. Well, hey, that's awesome. Probably a good place to wrap up. So if people want to, you know, contact you for your speaking, I know you're at joe p.us. That's right, right? For your website? Yes, I got a website.

It's got all my things speaking on there, how to get a hold of me. And I've spoken to all different kind of groups, teams, different kinds. I've spoke to, you know, corporations. I spoke to people at Quicken's loans. So whoever wants to hear me run my mouth, I'll talk to. Awesome. Echo, you got any questions?

Yeah, rewind a little bit back to Afghanistan, heroin poppies. Who's growing that and why? The Taliban makes the farmers grow it. And the Taliban is growing that because that's their money source income. Okay, so who do they sell that to? A lot of that heroin. goes to Europe. We get some of it over here on the United States, but the great majority of it goes to the European consumers. Okay, got it. So just like, you know, in Colombia and stuff like that,

Afghanistan is yet just another hub for another make it. Yeah. And, you know, it's, you know, a real big country that consumes a lot of heroin is actually Russia, too. They have a pretty bad heroin problem there. But, you know, it's big money. And that's, you know, what funds their insurgency. And the problem is now that we're gone. out of Afghanistan and how we, it's crazy there again. They're just growing uncontrolled. And like I said, when we were hitting them hard, we didn't eradicate it, but you can see it was having an effect.

But now it's just, you know, Bond's eye. It's open now. It's crazy. That must be, as you look at, like, drugs, you spent so much time in the DEA. When you hear people talk about legalizing drugs, what does that? What's your thoughts on that? And this is just my thoughts only. I've talked to numerous, numerous drug addicts.

And the common drug that they start with is marijuana. And in my opinion, without a doubt, it's a gateway drug. And the marijuana that's out there now, it's not the same marijuana that even was five or seven years ago. It's so strong. and it could lead the other things and we could have a whole debate on that and every state that it's legalized the auto accidents has really increased

it's still illegal federally and for some medical conditions I can see that it could be useful for but in my opinion a lot of people who use it say under the vise of medical it's just to get high you know and that's this that's just my opinion well joe you got any closing thoughts

just um everybody out there just listening you know like i said there's a will there's a way if you want to get something done you can get it done and just you know have that have that mindset and just keep going and if things get bad or down tomorrow's a new day make it through that day wake up the next day and give that next day hell awesome man um thanks for joining us Appreciate you coming on here. Appreciate you sharing these lessons that you've learned. And most important, thank you for your incredible service and your incredible sacrifice for our nation.

And thanks for what you're doing today, going around, talking to people, being here, just continuing to inspire people, to overcome whatever adversity that they're facing. It's an incredible example that you set for all of us. So thank you for being here. And thanks for everything you do. You're quite welcome with my honor and privilege. And with that, Joe, Pierrace, has left the building. Echo.

Yes, sir. What did you think of that? So I'm used to, and you mentioned this before, too, we're very used, at this point, I'm very used to, you know, military guys coming up, their mindset, their experience and stuff like that. It was interesting, even though it wasn't a huge deviation, I don't think. But it was like enough of a deviation to seem like a big change to go law enforcement. Yeah.

And it particularly, particularly, okay, I didn't grow up around drugs at all. Like, I don't think I've ever even- You haven't been to 500 meth house? No sure. Cook, what, meth labs? Labs. Yeah, what do you call it? Cook Labs.

K-labs or K-Landestine. K-Dastine lab unit or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, the answer is no, I have not. I've never seen meth before. I've never seen, I've seen Coke before. I've never seen heroin before. I've seen weed before.

Weed is the only one. Mm-hmm. I've seen a crack head with an empty crack pipe. I don't think I've ever seen real crack before. Check. Well, definitely, you could probably tell. I was exploring the police side of things. And especially, you know, the investigation side of things and the setup,

because that's, let's face it, that's all stuff that I'm not super familiar with. And it's very interesting because it's all about human nature, you know, informants and dealers and police. It's, you know, that's why they make all those movies about that kind of stuff because there's drama there, right? There's humans interacting in a really stressful, life-changing environments. And so, yeah, that definitely was interesting. And that's a, you know, he's, he had a really, I mean, he's had a very interesting life to say the least. Yeah. I mean, you could probably write a book about that one big bust or the other big bust or the one big, you know, you could write a book about any of those things.

Yeah. And it would be very interesting and fascinating and you'd learn a lot. So he's done that over and over and over again and then went to Afghanistan and then had a had a, had a, had a, had a, had a, had a, had a, had a, had a, had a, had a. on his head in Honduras, right? I started thinking about, you know, being in, like being in Iraq, when you're out on patrol, you think someone might try and kill you. You think someone will try and kill you, but you think they'll try to kill like you or someone near you.

It's not you. Just generally. I never felt that way. I never felt like, you know, the bullets that say, I always make this joke, hey, you know, bullets say they don't have a bullet with your name on it. You have a bullet that says to whom it may concern. Yeah. He had bullets, plural, with his name on him.

Yeah. I don't really like that feeling. No. I mean, you want to talk about, you think I'm paranoid right now, which I am. I'm paranoid about stuff right now. If that was going on, bro, I would be in a level 12 alert mode. No one would be getting near me. Oh, yeah.

It'd be pretty crazy to see, I think. Yeah, there's something very specifically sinister about a plan to kill you. To kill you specifically. Right, right. Yeah, I don't think, no, I, yeah, no one's ever specifically said, we're going to kill Jocko. Other than Dean Lister made that one CD. Yeah, they made to kill Jocko CD.

But that was just a CD. That was just music. He wasn't actually trying to kill me. No, no, no. It was somewhat of a conspiracy, though. I don't know. I will give him that. The law enforcement part of it, too, which, so a lot of times when you guys talk about Iraq, Afghanistan,

and I understand, but it does seem like, okay, that's a crazy, that's a different time and a faraway place. But now he's over here talking about San Bernardino and Phoenix and like all this stuff. And you're like, man, all this stuff right now is going on right now, like probably pretty close to here. Oh, real close to here. So and currently going on right now. At this moment. Yes. Like at this moment, there's an informant that's sitting buying some drugs from somebody there's a bust about to happen right now.

Something that I have literally no exposure to. So to me that is like, oh, man, that's kind of crazy. I did want to ask him about lifting. Yeah. But we would have been here for a long time. That could have been a long time. I thought you would at least want to compare bicep workouts with him. You know my man is getting his lift on.

Oh, for sure. For sure. Which actually, and I was going to ask him too, but he said he's age 52 right now. And if you can look like that at 52, I mean, I don't know if he's getting ready for a show or something like that. But if you can look like that at 52, that's like. It not only is it eye-opening, but it's like promising. You know what? Let's just go ahead and restate that.

If you can look like that at 22 or 32 or 42. It's true. Yeah. I'd be less surprised, but it does kind of set this a little bit better of a calibrated standard. You know, kind of gives like those of us who want to maintain muscle mass, we'll say. It kind of gives you some hope on that one, you know. And you know he's not weak either. Oh, for sure.

So it's not like that. And he didn't go in too much. but I, you know, read some stuff about him and some bios and stuff, but he won all kinds of, like, you know, awards for football. And he's just a great athlete and just jack and steel. So for sure, for those of us that want to maintain muscle mass, have you ever met someone that didn't? I guess occasionally you get maybe a wrestler, like a fighter or someone that's literally going down a weight class below their, what they can cut.

You know, sometimes people say, oh, I'm wrestling at 172. I'm going to go down to 162 and I'm already shredded. So I'm going to lose muscle mass, right? Occasionally that might happen. I think when people get into some, if they get into some endurance sports maybe like triathlon or something, they might want to lose some muscle mass, maybe. Yeah, and I'm taught, wait, what are you asking?

Like, is there? Have you ever known somebody that said, I'm really looking to find out how I can lose some muscle mass? No, no, no, no. Not negative. Not just for performance sake, yes. That's essentially it, but that's a rare case. Just life in general.

They say after age, whatever, 30 or something like that, like things like degenerate pretty quick or whatever. That's weird. And then muscle mass is one of those things where if you just lifted, like you're going to lose muscle mass as you get older. Straight up. You're just going to lose it. My daughter was telling me my daughter's in college and she's studying.

But I was up with her and she was telling me that she was, She's out there jack and steel and working out. She's got her little friend group. Which is cool because they're a little friend group. They're all into working out. Yeah. And she's training that jiu-jitsu. But she was telling me because she's studying some kind of kinesiology,

some kind of physiology. I keep forgetting what they call it now. When I was younger, so she's studying nutrition science. And what we used to call exercise physiology was a minor people. would get, right? They don't call it that anymore. I forget what they call it. But that's essentially.

There's kinesiology. Maybe that's what she, I think that would be. But that's different than exercise physiology. She's studying stuff. She's studying stuff about working out, kind of, right? Getting stronger.

Yes, but she says, she was saying, hey, if you don't lift, you immediately start, like, losing muscle. Degenerating. Just degenerate. Yeah. And it's not, it's not like a, I mean,

it doesn't matter, like, the process. At the end of day, you're losing. You're losing. your muscle and most of its functionality. Move it or lose it. Yeah. And then resistance training, which is lifting is the best one, is the thing that induces muscle like growth and or maintenance, depending on bigger muscles are.

So yeah, it makes sense. So basically go lift, please. Go work out, you know. I mean, resistance, that's another thing my daughter was saying, she's saying, oh, your bones. Yes. Your bones. If you're not putting your bones under pressure. Yeah.

Now that is because you could argue, well, you know, running is good too, which it is. Yep. And you can say swimming good too. Oh, that's good too. But you've got to put weight on your body. You've got to put resistance on your body to make your bones stronger. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's the point I think overall that I get from that, the beginning of what you're essentially saying, is all kind of exercise has it's like major, by the way, when you compare it to no exercise. All exercises have major benefits, major. They're all different, though. So good. So good. All right. So if you're working out which you are, you probably need some fuel for you.

Get some jaco fuel. Joccofuel.com. You can get protein. You know, you could get protein from a lot of places. You can get it from steak, recommended. Chicken recommended. Sushi, if you're echo Charles. Yes, sir.

Right? What percentage of protein do you get from sushi? Like 70%. And the other 30%? Mulk. I would literally say like literally probably like 50% not recently not but overall do you make sushi at your house ever no you just have to get it from a place yeah and you know your place do you know do they know your order already do you order

the same thing all the time yes for your whole family everyone's getting everything like everyone's getting the same Sarah will get different stuff residents we need our food Sarah goes variable literally like you're I see your face and you're kind of making a joke but I mean kind of no no I'm being too The answer is yes. In fact, I call the place, because there's a place literally walking distance from my house. They got caller ID? Yep.

Oh, so they're like, it's in the oven. Yep. No, it's not in the oven. Oh, it's not in the oven. Oh, it's wrong. Yes, sir. Oh, yeah. I'll call.

They'll be like, hi, Echo, how are you? That's it. That's all they answer the phone. Yeah. Then I'll be like, I want this. I got a same bite order and she already knows. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Yes.

How much is the cost? It depends. So some days they're closed or they close late. So if I, or they close at like 930. And there's another place that closes at midnight. So I'll get it delivered at minute. That one's way more. That one's like 100 bucks per just for me.

Oh, dang. Yeah. How about it the, for the whole family? No, how about just you at the regular spot? Oh, like 60. 60. Okay.

That's a good deal given like what I get. They have good prices over there. Cocky sushi. Tierrafe. That's good. Well, you're probably going to need some milk to watch that down. Yes, sir. To get the sweetness because sushi's not.

sweet, right? Is it? No, sir, it is not sweet. You can get some mochi ice cream afterwards. I don't like mochi ice cream. Dang, bro. I don't like that. It tastes like uncooked, you know, bread around, what do they call that? What do they call? It tastes like uncooked bread wrapped around a piece of ice cream. Who made that up? Right? Who made that up, right? What makes that funny is how accurate you can are. It is, right? In a way. Like, if you look at a certain way, because it is essentially like a That's right, dough. Uncooked, uncooked dough. Like, it's mochi, that's why.

You know what mochi is? Have you ever had mochi? Just mochi? You know that wrapping that you're talking about? It's just that. It tastes good. In Hawaii, you can get it. Oh, man, it's the best.

But my family was, like, somehow amped about mochi. And so they got me amped. They got me hyped. This was a couple years ago. Oh, you know, we get this dessert. Like, we had to go somewhere to get it, right? So we get in the car. We go.

We're going to get mochi. I get mine I'm like I don't think mine's cook because it doesn't taste good right it tastes like dough like you said it's dough is it mochi ice cream yeah there's yeah then there's ice cream in the middle of it but you wrap it's a piece of dough what what's the point yeah that's true do that why don't you do that you are right because it's not that sweet either so you're like oh I feel like my it's like no it's not so anyway all right so if you're not into mochi ice cream and you because mocha ice cream is just ice cream really so that's not healthy milk on the other hand Healthy way more protein than mochi and it doesn't taste like dough doesn't taste like dry flour dough

Is it odd that I'm like there's a tiny tiny part of me that's kind of insulted that you don't like mochi or mochi ice cream Like I'm like jockey you ever have that feeling where it's like one time okay so I'm a picky eater right? I'm a picky eater I don't like a bunch of different foods I was out with my wife one time this would know she wasn't my wife she was just a girl that I had met but I was kind of into her like a lot right but anyways talking about your current wife my current wife yes my current wife back then but you we were going out and she wanted me to try something something I knew I didn't like I think it was yogurt but not yogurt you know I'm an American I have an American I have an American that grew up in the 80s so so yogurt to me was a freaking Danin yogurt you know filled with sugar and blueberries like sauce at the bottom of like those things those things are good

because they're filled with sugar. So, but this was, we were, we were overseas. And I had already made the mistake of thinking that yogurt overseas equated to a Dan and sugar-filled yogurt that I ate when I was 12 years old and ate nine of them because they tasted good. But I realized that other people ate yogurt, it was just this weird tasting whatever with weird cucumbers in it or something. So anyways, my wife, who wasn't my wife yet, she's, oh, try, this.

She's from England, so she's all nice or whatever. Oh, try this. And I go, oh, no, it's okay. I don't really like that. She goes, no, just try it. She's had the same attitude that you're implying right now. Like, she was kind of mad. Yeah, as if, you know, as if you were saying, oh, you don't like air.

What do you mean? You don't like air. Of course you like air. She's like, oh, no, no, just try it. It's yogurt. It's good. I go, no, I don't know what I like it. You know?

Just try it. And she started escalating. Kind of imposed it. Sometimes, I go, okay. You know, I take a little spoonful. it's freaking disgusting I knew it was I mean it was

you know so so mochi whatever ice cream isn't that bad I can stomach it but I'm not going to make an effort to eat it now milk I will make effort to eat

milk is you you get that hey I will do what it takes to get some milk up in here I last night had a milk shake double with a ham it wasn't hamas turkey sandwich Boom, late night. That's a full, that's a pleasurable scenario.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Mine was the basic milk shake, by the way. What's basic? Just the milk. It was lactose-free milk. Okay. Because I had it for some other stuff I was made.

And just regular milk. That's it. No banana, no nothing. But you got that little Sammy on. And then you put down that milk. That's a quality scenario right there. You're good to go. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And it was like, no matter if I was into the extra protein at the time, and I was. but even if I wasn't it's like kind of like a cool little like a dessert you know what I'm saying go on go go go JockoFuel.com get the drinks at Wawa you can get all of it at vitamin shop

appreciated it go to origin USA.com we got some cool stuff for sale there boots jeans t-shirts most important jujitsu geese I trained some I trained some gijitsu up at

Paragon San Luis in Espos Paragon slow It's so cool man You go anywhere right now And there's Jiu-Jitsu And the people are awesome

Everyone's cool It's just freaking legit Great class But bunch of awesome people there So And you know you get You know what's interesting A lot of origin geese out there

A lot of origin geese out there People want to buy origin geese Because they know that they're made in America I saw I don't know What do you call it? A mini-dye's Doc, it was video about like American manufacturing or it was about manufacturing.

And they were just, it was talking about like kind of the history of it or whatever and the reasons that, you know, whether it be China or all these. But like, it's kind of like they, they kind of have to do the manufacturing for all these different reasons. And it depends on the product and all this stuff, right. But they kind of have to do it. Otherwise, it's kind of like that was kind of the storyline. But then there were there are a little, a few exceptions in there that they didn't go specific on. But they were just like, China's doing this, this, this, because of this. And to do it anywhere else, it's like, it's just unrealistic, you know, kind of a thing.

But then all the exceptions, when I kind of like deduced all the exceptions, I was like, oh, wait, that's why origin can do all this stuff. They do have to make certain sacrifices. But with the sacrifices comes like more, basically the detriments that places like China or whatever they call it. What do they call it? Affordable labor. Affordable labor. It's freaking slave labor, bro. Yeah.

Um, it's kind of like that, for example, but here you get basically each laborer or whatever they have like actual quality of life. Oh, for sure. That reflects on the end product kind of a thing. So anyway, you can kind of go down the line and be like, oh, I see. But here's the thing. At the end of the, my point is like, what they do is like, dang, that's kind of, not kind of. That's like, that's a very unique thing that they're doing. Who's they?

Origin USA. Us. Us. This is a very unique thing that we are doing. So yeah, go to origin USA.com for that. We also have a store. It's called Echo Store. Yeah, that's the forwarding area.

Jocco store.com. That's where you can read. That's where you can get your shirts and your merch. It's good stuff on there too, by the way. It's not just like cheap, you know, what do you call? Lowest common denominator, lowest bidder. What is it? that expression it's not either whatever the expression is it's not that it's quality good

stuff you want to represent and represent hard and look good and feel good by the way yes you can get all kinds of good stuff on there jocco store dot com subscribe to the podcast and also check out jaco underground dot com it's very interesting what's happening right now in the world and look yeah there's there's a war going on right now an insane war right a war the likes of which we have not seen in a long time in Ukraine. So that's happening. But meanwhile, you got just crazy things happening all around the world. You got censorship happening.

You got people shutting down websites, shutting down people from speaking. You've got control media influenced by the government, influenced by big tech. It's crazy stuff happening right now. Jocka Underground.com, if you want to help about where we have a little, a little bad. bastion of our own where if we need to retreat to to rebuild we'll be in there jocco on the round com if you want to support that you can check that out we have a youtube channel we have a origin USA has a youtube channel so check both those out um what else we got psychological warfare just a little album the Wednesday you can you can download this album if you and if you have moments

of weakness it's basically jaco telling you how to get past those moments a week it's very helpful on those moments. Trust me. Even if you don't have a lot of them, you can just have one. Occasional one. Reduce it to zero. Maybe you're addicted to mochi.

Flipsidecanvus.com. Dakota Meyer, my brother has got cool stuff to hang on your wall. I've written a bunch of books. Check them out if you want to. Especially take out the warrior kid books. That's where you can have a huge impact. You can have a huge impact on the kid's life just by getting that kid those books.

So check that out. Eschlamfront.com. It's our leadership consultancy. We have an event called the muster. We have one in Dallas. It's sold out. So, sorry about that. But we have other ones.

You can check that out. We have online training at Extreme Ownership Academy, Extreme Ownership.com. A bunch of information on there about being a leader and about being a human being. It'll help you with everything in your life. So check that out. If you want to help out service members active and retired, You want to help with their families, Gold Star family.

Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. Go to America's Mighty Warriors.org if you want to help out. Also check out Heroes and Horses, Micah Fink. He's got a bunch of awesome stuff going on. Once again, to contact Joe Piraconte. His website is joe p.us. And he's also got a LinkedIn account, which is Joe Pursante.

Pierceante and he's got a Facebook as well which is Joe Pierciante I B B B F Pro Pro yep international bodybuilding Federation Pro so check that out as as ECHO and I go we're both on Twitter we're both on the gram we're both on Facebook echoes at echo Charles I'm at Jocco Wink but you know just look out because you're you step in there going to be fighting the algorithm. That's what's happening. He's going to be fighting the algorithm, so be careful when you step in there.

Thanks once again to Joe Pierr-Sante for coming on, for just setting an incredible example of tenacity and of perseverance. And, I mean, just him saying, him putting the perspective of becoming blind, becoming wounded, becoming blind, and he said,

yeah, no use crying over spilled milk. To put those two in the same sentence and actually behave that way, truly inspiring person. So thank you, Joe, for coming on. And thanks to all the military personnel out there around the world that stand up and fight for freedom and liberty. And I know there's some of you out there right now that are truly standing up and fighting for freedom and liberty. So thank you for holding the line. And thanks to our police and law enforcement.

and tonight especially thanks to the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, men like Joe Pierrasonte that are out there trying to protect us all from the evil of drugs and the violent crime that it produces. And also thanks to firefighters, paramedics, Border Patrol, EMTs, dispatchers,

correctional officers, secret service, all the first responders. Thank you for your, service here on the home front and everyone else out there. Well, what excuses do you possibly have? Right? If someone like Joe can go through what he's gone through, can suffer what he's suffered, can still go out there every day and get after it. And, you know, he said something. He said, you can't make a case sitting behind a desk. And that's some pretty good advice, not just for, for law enforcement, but for life.

What you have to do is go out there every single day and get after it. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.