Julian Dorey Podcast - #256 - Navy SEAL Charged w/ Murder EXPOSES "The System" | Eddie Gallagher & Jim DiOrio

Starting point is 00:00:00 There was a building that had about 15 fighters hiding out in there. And so we dropped two Hellfires into it. That'll do it. Yeah. And so the Iraqis then pushed up to that building and there was one survivor. Ended up throwing him on the hood of their Humvee and driving him back to us. They brought him back, they threw him on the ground. He was on death's door.

Starting point is 00:00:19 I mean, you could see just looking at him, you're like, dude, he's not going to make it. He wasn't breathing, having agonal breathing. And so we were, you know, they pulled him off and we were like, all right, what are we going to do with this dude? So I was just like, get my med bag, treat him until he's gone, right? Because the other thing that was just going to happen is they were just going to take him back and torture him or do whatever. There was like some Iraqis already pulling out their knives, like ready to, you know, lick in their chops. What's up, guys? If you haven't already, please smash that subscribe button

Starting point is 00:00:52 and hit that like button on the video. And if you don't have time to watch this episode right now, I'd really appreciate it if you saved it to your watch later playlist on YouTube. Finally, if you'd like to follow me on Instagram or X, those links are in my description below. Eddie Gallagher, thank you for coming here, sir. Thank you for having me, man. This is going to be a very, very much needed conversation because you've gotten your story out in the past on Sean Ryan's show and Mike Ritland's show and some other podcasts as well. But I still think obviously because of the milieu that was caused in the media and the misrepresentation of things that happened with you, there are still a lot of people

Starting point is 00:01:32 who probably haven't heard those podcasts before who are listening today who may have an idea of things that they don't understand. And I also want to point out we have our friend, friend of the show, Jim DiIorio here riding shotgun with us to help us out with all this. the military lingo all the military i'll do my best to uh keep away from acronyms um but if they pop out they will you know it's just uh it's institutionalized you know i'll stop it's it's all good but you know what is it what's it like to be you now in 2024 we'll get to the story but you're now several years removed from all the drama and everything that happened like it obviously still follows you in some ways but are you at peace you feeling good

Starting point is 00:02:11 in life yeah completely man like i'm i'm living my best life now uh you know i think the the further distance i get away from it you know it's you know time heals all wounds uh so yeah the further i get away from it that you know it's it's not one of those things. It doesn't, like, irk at me or bother me anymore. I just focus on taking care of my family, being the best husband and father I can be, and then, you know, providing for my family. So, I mean, that's what men are supposed to do. So that's why I keep pushing forward. But at the same time, I don't mind still talking about the story because it's a catalyst to what we're doing now, which is with our Pipehitter Foundation.

Starting point is 00:02:49 We formed that because of what happened to us. And that, you know, for the past five years, we've helped out numerous law enforcement officers, active duty guys and girls in the military and first responders when they are being unjustly accused for doing their job. We step in, we provide funds for their legal defense, we raise money, we provide emergency relief aid to their family as they're going through that time, and we also advocate for them. But the big thing I like that we do is we help mentor them. Because when you're going through through when the government is coming down on you um it's like the ultimate form of betrayal and what they do is they'll come down on you so hard they'll try and rip your families apart um that's that's their their goal and so we

Starting point is 00:03:37 are able to through because we survived it um and because we have such a strong foundation as a marriage and you know my wife's my best friend, we can talk to these couples and sort of give them advice on like, Hey, you know, try this, don't do this. Um, you will get through this. Uh, so it's, it's, um, it's a blessing, man. And at this point in my life, I mean, as much of a shit show as that was, um, I'm glad it happened. Um, it had to happen. It's, uh, you'm glad it happened um it had to happen it's uh you're glad it happened yeah with uh all the people that i'm able to help now i mean i don't think we'd ever be in the spot that we're in now um and you know that's that's life though and it's uh you know life's not fair it's gonna throw you curveballs but um i tell people no matter what's thrown at

Starting point is 00:04:21 you you know if you uh challenge it and overcome that adversity, you should take all the experience that you had overcoming that adversity and pass it on to others to help others because that's what life's about is service to others and trying to help your fellow man. Amen to that. That's pretty cool. How do you feel though like you were a SEAL for I think like 14 years, 15 years, something like that. 15. Yeah. Okay. So you were in there a long time. You were known as a legendary trainer. It's you and I've talked about it. It's come up a few times on this podcast with different guys. And you obviously were all about the team's understanding. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool.

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Starting point is 00:06:26 you but how do you feel about like being a seal today are you still extremely proud like the first day you were to have been a part of that community and you just look at it like there's a few black eyes here and we'll ignore that or does it kind of does it taint your feeling as as to what you did and and all the deployments you did and and the service you gave to the teams in the country? Not at all. I couldn't be more proud of what I did in the SEAL teams. Becoming a SEAL, I tell people, I'm like, I don't think there's a higher calling than joining the military and serving this country. And then to do it at that level, um,

Starting point is 00:07:05 was just a, it was a privilege. Um, that's how I look at it. I mean, you know, I came in in 1999, I served four years with the Marines first as a corpsman, and then obviously went to buzz and became a seal. But, um, I tell people, man, just that, you know, I was in for the whole GWAT. Um, and that, that is a privilege, um, to be able to do it's, you know, I think if you join, obviously when you join the military, you want to, for a lot of us, it's like, yeah, I want to go to war. Like that's why I'm joining. I'm joining to be, you know, the best warrior I can be. And then during our era, we were actually given that chance. Uh, and so I have no, um, like regrets or ill will, um, towards being a seal. I think, you know, and I try to explain it this way. You can't blanket blanket statement, a whole organization

Starting point is 00:07:53 just because a few bad apples, it'd be like, if I went to Walmart and I got a bad, you know, the register lady was giving me shit or whatever. I'm not going to be like, well, screw Walmart. You know, it's just, that's, that's just one person. And that it's, and that's the way it is in the military. You will have bad leaders, um, and who make bad decisions that really do affect the men and women under them. Um, and I'm not the only case, you know, it happens all the time, which is why we started the Pipehitter Foundation. But, um, yeah, I, I just have, I have nothing but hope, uh, for the military and especially for the SEAL teams. I think right now it's in a rough spot for sure, but there's one thing that you can count on the military, and that's change.

Starting point is 00:08:34 And I think it will – the pendulum will swing back. Why do you view it as being in a rough spot specifically right now? Just because of the – well, obviously the recruitment crisis that they're going through. But then also the – we have been breeding weak leaders for a long time now, especially in the officer corps. The way that – and I don't know when it started. I could see it start trending. I remember back in like 2010, you were getting these new officers in and it just seemed like the way that they were being taught at whatever academy that they went to was to ladder climb. It wasn't to be a leader and serve the men and women that were below you, which is – I grew up in a military family.

Starting point is 00:09:20 My dad was a West Point officer. I got all the talks growing up of what being a leader is, how you should – it's servant leadership. You should be serving the men and women below you. And if you do that, they will respect you and they will want you as a leader and that's how you should get promoted up through the ranks is through merit, right? I think we created a long line of yes men during the war. And in order to get promoted, they would lie. They would not tell the truth. They would be, you know, everything's fine over here. We're doing a good job. And that's all to get that next rank. And I think it just has worsened over time.

Starting point is 00:10:03 And to the point we're at now. You know, I think we could see it clearly. There couldn't be any more clear evidence of that during than during the Afghan withdrawal. When you have, you know, General Milley and the other, you know, officers that are up there calling it a victory. And that's insane. But then also at the same time, taking no accountability at all, because at the end of the day, they're the ones that are signing off on that, right? They're in charge. And for them to not take any accountability just shows the level of elitism that is within our ranks right now. It's no different.

Starting point is 00:10:39 They're politicians in uniform. So – Agreed. Yeah, and that's not what being a leader is. So I do think that that is, you know, going back to the first statement, that is what the problem is with our military right now. That is why recruitment is low. And it's also, you know, they're pushing this woke agenda through the military. I think, three years, I've gotten more kids to join the military where I'm at. I mean my son joined. Oh, wow. That was his choice. My daughter's boyfriend joined. I got a couple other guys to join.

Starting point is 00:11:15 And they would call me like, hey, dude, I'm going to join. I'm like, well, why? Well, because I want – like I see the way you are. I see the way you live, the routine and discipline, and I just want – it inspires me. And so I was thinking about that, and I'm like – and I don't view myself as anything special, but I'm an institutionalized SEAL for sure. And I live a certain regiment every day. I live a certain lifestyle. But I think – A few people know your name too.

Starting point is 00:11:46 Yeah, well, yeah. Good or bad. But yeah, I think that's what's missing, man, is inspiration to join. These kids, they have everything at the palm of their hands, right? They can see everything that's going on now. And when they see all this wokeness,

Starting point is 00:12:06 they saw what happened during the the vaccine mandate they were just kicking people out left and right for refusing the vaccine so i think these kids are like well why would i want to join if that's how they treat individuals that are raising their right hand that's right their country and not only that it's like you look at these officers who are in charge who are on TV. I mean, nothing about them is inspirational. I mean, we have what's the secretary of health? I mean, it's Rachel. Yeah. I mean, that is is that what's inspiring people right now?

Starting point is 00:12:35 Yeah. You know, that that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it is. But I mean, that's that's where we're at right now. Yeah. I, I, it's, it's funny to hear

Starting point is 00:12:46 you talk about that because Jim, I feel like you give the same exact answer about the FBI. Like that's why you got out. Well, and even the military too, you know, we were always taught like my dad, like your dad, I'm sure it was about being close to the flag, right? So just being around, right. That's the, that's the sign. That's the first step of becoming a leader and showing your people and showing your comrades and showing the people next to you that you're there. You know, you might not be contributing at all that day, but you're next to the flag. That's leadership in a nutshell, servant leadership. All my classmates from that small group that we've stayed tight, we still have the group text and everything else that goes down, it's all about that.

Starting point is 00:13:21 It's all about no, you know, leave ego at the door, leave pride at the door. It's all about soul, right? It's all about how you, how you connect with those young people. Yeah. And for me, that's everything, what you just said. I mean, that's, that's really our challenge. The other thing is I really want to, I want to get involved any way I can to give my legal, you know, and my, my, with your foundation. I mean, I would love to, man. Yeah. Well, uh, after, yeah, after this, we'll definitely connect with my executive director. I love what you're doing. Because we're always looking for people with any kind of background experience. And thinking outside the box a little bit, bro.

Starting point is 00:13:53 You know, not just like the typical FBI guy. You know, I remember on Sopranos, right? Uncle June was like, that FBI guy is so far up my ass, I could taste the bill real quick. I mean, that's kind of like, that's kind of the reputation still. You can't think outside of the box. Hey, you get this thing, you charge it, you move forward and next. That's not the way it is. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:14:10 You know? And so I love what you're saying, man. You know, but yeah, I mean, same thing with the Bureau. The Bureau is lost. Yep. Lost. Yeah. Gone.

Starting point is 00:14:18 You know, it doesn't exist like I knew it. It's across the board. Yep. All the three letter agencies, military. I mean, it's, and I'll say, you know, they've done a terrific job of infiltrating with their agenda. Oh man, you're not kidding. We've let it happen. I think the, you know, cause I can remember back to like 2010 or, you know, past like this, just the mindset and sort of started changing and you could, you noticed it even

Starting point is 00:14:46 when you deployed back to Afghanistan multiple times and just the, the level of like scrutiny and rules and, um, just the way that, you know, these officers were making decisions. Like it wasn't about, like, I remember asking one time, I was like, are we even trying to win? What are we doing? Like, I thought we were here to, and it wasn't about that anymore. It was more about staying in place, and a lot of the officers became super risk adverse. They were like, no, we're not going to go out there and hunt down the enemy.

Starting point is 00:15:14 We're – this is how I'm going to promote. If I can bring everybody home in one piece, which is fine. That's what you want to do, but at the same time, you're there to do a job. That's right. And so what I found, you know, there's a lot of these officers were very risk adverse. They had no interest in taking it to the enemy or, you know, trying to win. I think they're also, I believe there's a huge fear that somehow still exists across the whole bureaucracy of what the media is going to do about things because you know where the media is going to lean on issues like this.

Starting point is 00:15:48 It's always about what's the big bad America doing at all times. And so they're going to come down on people like they did on you. But even on way smaller scale type stuff, just day to day with some of these decisions that happen, a lot of these, in this case, more spineless type people who are, like you said, trying to rise the ranks, they got to have that in the back of these in in this case more spineless type people who are like you said trying to rise the ranks they gotta have that in the back of their head like well i yeah i don't agree with that but i'll just go with it because i don't want nbc breathing down my fucking neck exactly yeah it's all about protecting the institution at the end of the day that is the truth even take a law enforcement that's why we can't recruit into law enforcement young guys don't want to become

Starting point is 00:16:22 cops yep same price it's even worse for law enforcement. It really is because now everything you do is scrutinized. But then you look at the top levels. Eddie, what you were saying, like Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense, he could just go off for four or five days, doesn't have to tell anybody where he is. That's the guy that's supposedly coordinating our efforts. Wasn't he your best friend at West Point? He wasn't, yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:43 But he's around your dad's time too i think he's 74 he's a 74 guy and that guy just boom took it off through the right you know i mean he just has taken off for really no reason i don't see any never around the flag that's around the flag why the fuck aren't you anyway yeah but again that's leaders start from the top though yeah i mean so look at the way our president acts. Yep. Right? Absolutely. He just comes and goes as he pleases. It's like, yeah, I'll talk to the country when I want. Yep.

Starting point is 00:17:10 So everybody else is taking that as an example. And they're like, well, he's not doing it. Then I don't got to do it. It seems like it's run just very nonchalant. Absolutely. Whatever. And where it's at the same. It's like, did you guys see

Starting point is 00:17:25 what's going on in this country? And not only this country, what's going on in this world? Do you think we would be taking this a little bit more serious

Starting point is 00:17:31 and having a little bit more professionalism? But it just, I haven't seen it. Have you ever read the book, The Fourth Turning? No.

Starting point is 00:17:40 So highly recommend. I'm not going to go through the whole thing because people on the podcast are yelling at me. I've done this probably 15 times before. But it's these guys. They were these historian sociologists in the mid-'90s.

Starting point is 00:17:53 And the thing about historians, unfortunately, is that they're usually like they can report on the history well. But there's this bias that happens where then they think they can predict the future. And so they're usually pretty bad at that because they take like these biases from what they got and they change the patterns, sometimes unknowingly. So they're not correct in what they predict. But what these guys did is they just found these generational patterns, especially like since like the Revolutionary War in like these 80 to 85 year segments across four generations that would be in America. And they just said, okay, whatever's happened, we're just going to lift that and place it right here. And that's probably what's going to happen next. And it's really uncanny, the shit they were able to kind of get at.

Starting point is 00:18:38 The issue is that I'm like a backend millennial, almost Gen Z. So when you look at the millennials, they're supposed to be a part of a pattern that's called like the hero generation. So think of the greatest generation, World War II. That was the last time that happened. 80 to 85 years before that was the generation that fought the Civil War. 80 to 85 years before that was the generation that fought the Revolution. It comes in cycles. You see the pattern. But now we're in this quote unquote crisis period that they talk about, you know, between 2020 and 2030. And the hero generation that's coming of age, which is my generation, doesn't have the, I mean, I'll put a simplified word on this, doesn't seem to have

Starting point is 00:19:19 like the same courage that those other generations had. And it seems like in your case, and particularly, you started to run into that as well, where you had younger generational guys who thought differently about things. And there wasn't the same, I don't know, like if you want to use the term respect for the shield, if you will, that guys like you and your generation had. I think, yeah, there was – so there is a, definitely a big generational gap, um, when my last platoon, right. And I've said this before, I was 10 years older than the oldest dude in that platoon. Uh, I thought long and hard about it. And what I came to when I actually, when I was

Starting point is 00:19:56 locked up is when I came to this realization, cause I couldn't comprehend like some of the, the mindset that they had, um, just some of the stuff that they were saying, like, you you know i don't believe in this war and we shouldn't be doing this and i'm like well why did you become a navy seal um but when i was locked up i was talking to some like 18 19 year old kids that were in there and i think it was um you know right after 9 11 um one of you know september 11th uh not 911 but after September 11th 2019 I was locked up and I was talking to them about it and to them they were like oh yeah

Starting point is 00:20:30 like it's just we know that happened but it's not they don't have the same vigor I guess or like you know that's what drove me like for the past 20 years and that's what also drove my teammates and everybody that kept going back to war over and over and over was that day. But to them,

Starting point is 00:20:50 that's just a piece of history. And I don't, it's not no fault of their own. Just like if a Vietnam vet tried to talk to me about Vietnam, I'm not going to have the same passion about it. Cause I'm like, dude, I wasn't around in that time. So I don't blame them, you know, for not having that same mindset, but at the same time there, I feel like what I saw is the community. I'm not, I'll talk NSW specifically, uh, naval special warfare. Um, that's where the SEAL teams fall under. Um, they started like sort of kowtowing to the younger kids are like, hey, man, like these kids are different now. You have to change.

Starting point is 00:21:31 And it was like, wait a minute, what? And that's the way I think it's been rolling. It's like how can we change to satisfy this younger generation that's coming in, and that includes like lowering the standards and, and doing all this stuff that, you know, that when I was brought up, it was like, if you don't meet the standard, you're gone. Like, and that's it. And that there's a reason. And that's also what makes the military great, right? Is they have standards, no matter what branch you go to, you have standards. So when these young kids join to be whatever they want to be in the

Starting point is 00:22:05 military, they're doing it to become a better person because the military has standards and it holds you to those standards, right? So that means it drives these young people to try and achieve those standards. It makes them better. But when you lower the standards and you're like, okay, we're going to, you know, like I said, kowtow to you and we just want you to feel comfortable here. That's where we're losing that battle. And that's what I saw, especially with this – my last platoon. And these dudes weren't like complete weak cowards obviously, right? They went through buds.

Starting point is 00:22:41 They went through BUDS. They went through SEAL training. They had the grit to make it through, but their mindset was just that of like, oh, I'm a SEAL. I'm good, right? I don't – I want to be a SEAL, but I don't want to actually go do the job. And that's what – I mean that's what they showed me on that deployment. And that was their first combat deployment ever. The one in 2017. Yeah, to Mizzou. We're going to get to that yeah so i think that you know that is also a big part of the problem here i mean we are supposed to be

Starting point is 00:23:14 america's fighting force that's right and if you are a fighting force then you need to have standards to make sure you are the most elite fighting force that no other country wants to mess with. And I think right now we're at a point and not, we're not completely weak, but we're showing signs of it all over the place. And I think that's a major problem. Yeah. When, when you look at like, one thing to thinking about given not earned, right? That's that generation. So, so they're looking for something to be given and maybe it's just as much to say, Hey, this is who I am. Look at, look at what I am. You know, I'm a Navy SEAL and I'm doing, but, but it's kind of like, that's, that also totally destroys the person that has that

Starting point is 00:23:53 mindset. Cause at the end of the day, they're thinking, I want, I want to earn this. Yeah. But, but nobody's, I don't have to, you know, because the higher ups are not, are not making, not holding me responsible. Yeah. It's, it's complete, you know, and the higher ups are not, are not making, not holding me responsible. Yeah. It's, it's complete, you know, and it's, it's not just in the military. Obviously it's across. It's across parenting and everything that we do. Right. If you're, if you're, it's instant gratification with this.

Starting point is 00:24:14 And so, Hey, that's what I want. And I really don't want to work. You know, I've had, I've had kids, I've heard kids say like, yeah, I want to have all that stuff, but I really don't want to work. Well, how the fuck, you know, how the fuck can you do that? Yeah. But they believe it, you you know and it's crazy but anyway i think the military just reflects society it does as we move forward for sure does yeah and so does the law enforcement as well and first responders i mean they're having the same thing well you also because

Starting point is 00:24:39 like jim you were you got out in what like 96 yeah? Yeah, I transitioned in well, transition, that sounds bad. Speaking of the new generation. You know, I had that gap from 94 to 98. So done pretty much in 94, but still crossing over again. This is terrible. Don't you edit

Starting point is 00:25:02 this shit to make it look like good. I got new plans. But yeah, I mean, I'm using – this is terrible. Don't you edit this shit to make it look like good. I got new plans. But, yeah, I mean, like I look back and we were more – I don't want to say better. I don't think we're better. I think these kids these days are more educated. They're more with it. They're smarter. They're smart, you know, tech-wise. Technologically more intelligent.

Starting point is 00:25:20 And I definitely saw that with them. I was like, dude, these kids can work anything. What's that fucking drone up there? Yeah. I mean, they could pick up stuff real quick where my Neanderthal ass who had been in for 18 years at that point, I'm playing catch up like, holy shit. Yeah. Now we're using drones and this and this. And so you're trying to keep up with all that.

Starting point is 00:25:44 But they are good at that. But I just – there's this missing thing that I just saw. I was like, dude, you guys aren't – you don't have the same drive or like intensity or aggressiveness that I think I saw from my generations past. Well, I mean that that's the thing, though, when I look at because my civilian ass is just looking at the military as a whole and saying, like, well, how much of a deterrent can we be right? Like that's that's at the end of the day, if you want to be the leader of the free world, that needs to be backed by a great military. And when you look at the top of the structure, you know, you have your Navy SEALs, you have your Delta Force, you have different special operations groups who are supposed to be the baddest ass warriors that walk this earth, which is why the training that goes into it, the difficulty, the qualification process and all that has to be at that level. And I have a great respect for the guys who do it. But, you know,

Starting point is 00:26:38 when you look at a career like you had across all those years, including the four years where you weren't yet a Navy SEAL, you lived through the era of a complete change in the standards of combat and like what you were, what the, what you were allowed to do out there, right? Your ability to engage. So at the beginning of say the global war on terror in 01, 02 in Afghanistan. I believe you deployed there, right? Afghanistan and Iraq, yeah. Yeah. What were the biggest differences from beginning to end from like an op tempo and ability to do your job like – and have the support of leadership in doing so? Like what were the biggest changes across those 16 years? Oh, that's a good question and there's a lot involved in that. I

Starting point is 00:27:25 think, uh, well, you can talk about the ability to do your job that ebbed and flowed throughout the war. Um, it just depended on what the, you know, agenda was at that time. Um, but I think going back to the beginning, you know, when we did the invasion, um, I was, you know, I was young, I think I was 20, uh, at time, and I didn't know shit. I was just like, they're like, okay, we're doing this. But then looking back now, I think from the leadership on down, everybody was on the same page because nobody had done it yet. Nobody had really been to combat. You might have like a sprinkle of some guys that did Desert Storm.

Starting point is 00:28:04 Kosovo yeah right and i mean i we went to ko i went to kosovo in 99 or um with the marines but that i mean those conflicts were like done real quick right so there was really no experience gained from that it was like hey just keep doing more of the same obviously Obviously, and we were still using the Vietnam tactics, you know, coming up back then. Like I went to Marine Corps sniper school in 2001 or 2002. I can't remember. But, I mean, back then it was still very Vietnam-style tactics. And the SEAL teams were the same way.

Starting point is 00:28:40 So the change, and I think it was across the board for all the militaries, we advanced so fast during the past 20 years when it comes to warfare, when it comes to using technology. I mean, that's a good thing. I mean, we were there getting after it, and we were evolving because we had to. And I think that's a plus. But what I saw as the war progressed, and I remember thinking, I think this was like in 2008, I was in Kandahar. And we got assigned the VSO, Village Stability Operations Mission. It was the COIN strategy that came out, right, The counterinsurgency. So they pulled us all in and we had been going out every other day, doing disruption ops, taking out the Taliban and all the places they were using to smuggle weapons,

Starting point is 00:29:39 drugs, this and that. I mean, it was great. And then all of a sudden it was like all stop you guys are now going to go live amongst the afghans and you will befriend them and then you will get them to fight for themselves right which at the end of that's a that's a green beret job like that's green berets all day that's their bread and butter they're great at it but why is it why are they great at that because that's a that's like one of their main mission sets is civil affairs basically yeah to go over there win the hearts and minds and then get them to stand up and fight for themselves right okay seals that's not really what you guys aren't hearts and minds people yeah we're more bullets and brains yeah they are we got a saying about that but but you know i think they that we all got tasked with that job and it wasn't

Starting point is 00:30:25 you know it was also marsak everybody right and i remember just thinking i was like so you want us to go out and live among the populace which we've just been going and wrecking shop for the past how many years tell them we're the good guys now and that yeah they're like you killed my dad exactly and i was like this you know and i was like dude i'm not the most like intelligent individual hi there i'm ryan reynolds and i have a list of things i like to have on set it's just little things like two freshly cracked eggs scrambled with crispy hash brown sausage crumble and creamy chipotle sauce from tim hortons from my rider to tim's menu try my new scrambled eggs loaded breakfast box and i know that you know i always had like this belief that there was, you know,

Starting point is 00:31:06 whoever's making these decisions is like, you know, the strategist and they know what they're doing. But I remember thinking, I was like, dude, this doesn't make any sense. Like we were just kicking ass and now you want us to stay in place and try to rebuild, bring democracy to, which they don't want any fucking part of. We're not good at the whole spreading democracy. No, shouldn't i mean but that's how arrogant we are though we all we all think oh everybody wants to be like us like and they don't they let them be how they want to be you know um but at that point that's when i was like yeah we're not trying to win we're we're

Starting point is 00:31:42 literally staying in place and this is a big money making machine. And that's, that's what this is. Um, and you know, it didn't, it didn't deter me from to keep raising my hand to keep deploying because, but that, that was only because my brothers were going. And I was like, um, if you're going, I'm going. Um, and that's why I kept going back over there. Yeah. You, you had said earlier in the conversation in reference to something else, you were, you were talking about how, like there were guys questioning why they were there and stuff like that. And you're like, why the fuck are you doing that? You're a Navy SEAL. But when you look back on the overall global war on terror and what we did like spreading out the resources, essentially like they attack us here.

Starting point is 00:32:21 We go to Afghanistan. The beginning paramilitary operation was one of the most historically great things in modern history. But then 03, suddenly we go to Iraq and now resources get pulled from Afghanistan. So by the time you're going back and Kandahar in like 08, the ball there for something that was more of a – the neocons in their offices were more excited about Iraq and then destabilized the whole region. When you look – not when you're in it. When you're in it, your job is to be there and do your job and I respect that. But looking back on it, do you wonder sometimes about what – if there even was a strategy at the beginning there, or if they just got, you know, I think we all got manipulated and were lied to. And I, I,

Starting point is 00:33:11 yeah, I admit it. I got, you know, um, fooled into, I thought what we were doing, um, was a righteous thing. You know, we got attacked and it was like, nobody attacks us. Now you're going to pay. Right. Um, and I thought that's what we were doing. And, you know, even with the back then, when we were switching, you know, Afghanistan, then to Iraq, and then now back to Afghanistan, I mean, you know, I, I was gullible and I'm like, okay, we, the people in charge know what they're doing. Um, but now looking back, obviously, you know, with more information that's coming out and everything you're like yeah dude we we completely got duped we were lied to um you know dick cheney is probably one of the biggest evil pieces of shit that uh exists um and you know it's he

Starting point is 00:33:59 he orchestrated pretty much a large percentage of what went on just so he could fill his pockets. And he's not the only one. There's so many in line behind him, and I think that's one of the major reasons why that war extended for 20 years. Yeah, and you saw every era of that too. We'll get to it, but obviously the final deployment you do is now when ISIS is just like all over the place, which was – not that Saddam was good. Saddam was a very bad guy, but like way worse by the end. Saddam was a bad guy, but he was the leader that they needed. He kept that place as stable as it could be.

Starting point is 00:34:41 And as we saw as soon as we took him out that that place went to shit because what i saw over there that's and i don't know if this is like their mindset over there is they they listen to like if you don't do this you're going to get smoked and then they're like okay that's what i'll do but if you give them the free option like you can do what you want there there's no, I don't know how to think of like a civilized, they don't just don't have a civilized way of doing things. Right. So if they don't have some dictator in power that's sort of laying down the rules, then they run amok. It's the collegiate culture thing. Yeah. But not at the end of the

Starting point is 00:35:20 day. Yeah. Saddam Hussein was an evil person. But then we formed ISIS pretty much. I mean that's on us. Yeah. We put them all – all the ma'ams in prison camps when we were over there and that's where Baghdadi freaking formed ISIS. And that became the most aggressive terrorist organization out of all of them. My friend, Joby Warwick, who's been on the show a couple of times, episode 134 and 198, he wrote the Pulitzer Prize book, Black Flags, which is about like how ISIS formed and everything. And when you look at the genesis of that, because people just thought of it as this thing. Oh, we started seeing videos in like summer 2014. When you look at the genesis of going all the way back to Al-Zaqawi and him slipping through the system and then being allowed to move between countries and formulate a following and build that culture that then Baghdadi just explodes on top of that. It's infuriating to see it because there were so many opportunities to kind of nip it in the bud.

Starting point is 00:36:24 Yep. There was a lot of opportunities to nip it in the bud. Yeah. The past 20 years. I mean, again. I feel like there's a lot behind that answer. It's one of those things. And I don't regret going and doing what I did and with my brothers for the past 20 years at all.

Starting point is 00:36:44 Because there was – at the end of the day, and this is how I, I, I talk about it, you know, cause I think there's a lot of veterans that struggle now with just the way the Afghan war ended. And they're like, you know, they have all these regrets. I'm like, what was it worth? Why was I even over there? And we all, you know, we all lost lots of friends over there. I just break it down to a simple, you know, as simplistic as possible. I'm like, there, there was evil, there's evil people over there and we were able to take them off this earth. Um, and that, you know, there's evil people in this country too, but at the end of the day, it's, we got to do that, um, because we did see pure evil over there. Um, and yeah,

Starting point is 00:37:22 we were able to diminish it. Um, but it just, it was like, there was no, there was no end. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's when, when I, I don't know if the word love here, but like, I enjoy reading a lot of the modern history of that, of what happened over there, because we saw the, you know, Jihadi john and the media and stuff like that and we saw horrific things but when you look at the at the scope of how deep and intense the evil that isis was went i mean like i never heard about the yazidis here and then i started reading about that story like three years ago i'm like holy shit you had like 1.5 million people completely targeted half of them wiped off the earth like that you know we're supposed to be talking about genocide and stuff like that and the whole never again which i totally agree with

Starting point is 00:38:13 obviously and yet there's things like this that aren't even reported in the history that are the same people that you were on the ground fighting and sometimes being told, you know, you can't take action against some of these guys. And I can imagine that has to be infuriating. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely frustrating, especially during the Obama regime. That's when really like, you know, all these strict ROEs were in place on us. Rules of engagement.

Starting point is 00:38:42 Yeah. Sorry. Rules of engagement. Yep. on us um and engagement yeah sorry rules of engagement yep and then uh you know during um i think it was like 2015 16 we had teams deploying over there but they were not allowed they could they could watch isis all day they were like watching them from the forward line of advance and seeing and then if they wanted to engage them, it literally took five different channels to get approval. So they would be like, hey, I see this dude, you know, torturing a woman or planting an ID.

Starting point is 00:39:13 I can shoot him. Oh, my God. And then that would have to go all the way up to the White House, then come back down and be like, yes, take the shot. And it's three hours later. And it's like, dude, he's gone. So nobody had approval on the ground to do anything until Trump came in. And then once Trump became president, he gave authority back to the people on the ground. It was like, take care of this problem.

Starting point is 00:39:35 You get them up the floors. Yeah. He said, kill them all. That was from Mattis as well. He was like, take the gloves off and get it done. That was actually one thing in Trump's foreign policy. I did like, he did a great job on ISIS. Like he came in and that was, that definitely, definitely shifted. Because he gave us a directive. We had not been given a directive and I don't know

Starting point is 00:39:55 how long during the Obama era. It was like, there was no, yeah, you're going to, like I talked about earlier, doing the village stability operations, right? It's like, like okay we're doing this but why why why are we doing this and no you know you could have you know officers would come in and explain they're all they're doing is regurgitating whatever was told to them and you're like dude you don't even know why we're doing this don't act like you're smarter than the rest of us like what is the end state here and there was no there was no like end state given like this we're doing this because this until trump came in and was like we're done take the gloves off kill them all and that's it and so that's all you that's all you really need to to tell troops on the ground i mean and it doesn't mean that troops on the ground like yeah go go crazy and kill

Starting point is 00:40:42 everybody it's like no we're we're trained to do this. So then we can formulate a plan. Like, this is how we're going to attack this problem, but we are going to get the job done because that's what we were told to do. Yeah. And that was the first time in a long time. And that was, that was right at the end of your, of your time. Yeah. That was in 2017. All right. So look, Obama's big. I think about the one thing where he was like, look, you can't travel down the center of the roads. Stay off to the side.

Starting point is 00:41:08 I mean, you're basically telling, you know, the terrorist, the terrorist population, hey, just fucking set these things up on the side of the road. Yeah. Shit like that. Like that simple. Well, when you tell people how you're going to pull out, like we're going to pull out 12,000 troops on August 13th and they're like, all right, August 14th, bet. Here we go.

Starting point is 00:41:25 You know what I mean? You're kind of giving the plot away. Yeah. I mean, even during this time, they were giving out awards. You were getting an award for, what was it, heroic restraint. Heroic restraint. That's amazing. Yeah, by not engaging.

Starting point is 00:41:38 Great job not doing your job. Here's a medal. Yeah. I mean, basically. Those were medals that were that were given out um then guys if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button please take two seconds and go hit it right now thank you you know at some point at one point during um his administration we weren't allowed to go out at night anymore um you're not allowed

Starting point is 00:42:00 to hit targets at night because it's unfair that's's how we got bin Laden. Yeah, it's the best. It's crazy. It's unfair? It was his best mission ever was bin Laden. It's unfair to the Afghan populace that, you know, Betty Sue wakes up and her husband's gone and, you know, she's wondering where he is. We would have to, if we had to take somebody,

Starting point is 00:42:20 we'd have to leave a receipt for the family. Like, hey, we took your husband yeah you know chain of like draw that out on like an eight by chain of custody eight and a half by eleven establishing an evidence chain yeah so they can come back and fuck you over if you did something you weren't supposed to do yeah oh my god that's crazy great stuff all right so we've gotten some highlights of like your backstory but i really want to want to get to that now if that's if that's okay just to kind of run through that to get us to the point of obviously what, what went down here. But you mentioned, I think you get in, in 99, you do four years as a Marine.

Starting point is 00:42:52 As a, so I was a corpsman. Um, I was in the Navy the whole time. Uh, so the Marines don't have their own medics. So they, the Navy supplies them and that's, they're called corpsman. Um, so I went to corps school. Um, I volunteered, you can either, once you supplies them and that's, they're called corpsmen. Got it. So I went to corps school. I volunteered. You can either, once you're done with corps school, you can either go to the fleet, which is on a ship, work at a hospital or go to the Marine Corps. So I was like, I want to go to the Marine Corps. I want to go serve with them. Went there, did, yeah, until 2004, did three deployments.

Starting point is 00:43:23 Where? Afghanistan? No. Let's see see kosovo they were they're uh called muse uh what is it a maritime expeditionary unit so you pretty much go on a ship for six seven months and then wherever trouble is you know you'll go off the ship and um go you know do what you can uh so we went yeah kosovo obviously the invasion um africa um a couple other places i can't remember um you know it was a long time ago yeah um so i did that till 2004 and that's when i went to buds how'd your dad feel about you going to the dark side going navy army hey he he was like he was pissed at first not like obviously not like you know super pissed no son of mine does that shit but the problem is all of his brothers are navy officers

Starting point is 00:44:17 so oh yeah so there's you had backing yeah they all my uncles are naval aviators so yeah they you know he couldn't really say too much uh but i had told him my intent was being a seal i was like i want to be a seal from the get-go when did you first like have that dream um i not until i really walked into the recruiting office uh i obviously i grew up watching all the cool movies you know commando predator navy seals uh so i knew i was like i want to do something like that uh platoon was like good always on the always on the tv in our house uh but i knew i was like dude i want to do something tough i want to like prove myself um and i heard that you know when i went to the navy recruiter he's like yeah you're not

Starting point is 00:45:01 nobody makes that like and so then i was like check check, that's what I'm doing. Um, and I just, once I made that decision, it just, I, it became an obsession. Um, literally like I just dropped everything and just focused on what, what I could do to try to get to buds and be a seal. So obviously I had to pay my, my dues with the Marine Corps. Um, but the whole time I was in the Marines, I mean, I had no life. I was either if I wasn't training with the Marines and I was training to go to BUDS. And I volunteered for every school that would just better my chances of making it through. So I went to obviously I got to go to Marine Corps sniper school, which is unheard of as a Navy corpsman. But it was a privilege to be able to go through that.

Starting point is 00:45:50 I went to Marine Corps water instructor survival school, which is a very tough course. I became the only Marine Corps water instructor survival in my battalion. So then I had to swim qual like all the Marines in my battalion. So then I had to swim qual, like all the Marines in the battalion. So I really like, I was blessed to be able to go to all those schools to just like, give me experience and better my chances. And so by the time I got to Buzz in 2004, I was a more mature candidate than a lot of the guys that were there because I'd already been in and I'd already gone to some like pretty tough military schools. Was there, I'm trying to think of where you were because like there were, there's other guys I had in here. I had Ephraim Matos in here recently,

Starting point is 00:46:34 who Matos, who you actually were, I believe you trained him. Yeah, I think I put him through BUDS. Yeah. Right. So he was like 18, but he's way after you, right? He was 18 when he came in. And when you joined the military, was it like you couldn't do BUDS right away or it was more the conscious decision like I want to, like you were saying, like train myself up to that? No, I tried to – and this is my fault. I went in there with no help and I was like, yep, sign me up. The recruiter was like, yeah, for sure. You'll go to BUD Buzz right after boot camp. No contract. So right when I got done with boot camp, they were like,

Starting point is 00:47:10 you're not going to Buzz. You're going here. So back then, in order to go to Buzz right away, you had to get a contract saying that. And it was pretty tough to do back then. So it wasn't until I think when Ephraim and all those guys started going through, they developed a program, which if you were going to Bud's, you were completely separated at boot camp. So you were just with a group of guys that were all trying to go to Bud's. And then you went

Starting point is 00:47:37 to right across the street, Great Lakes. They had a, it was called preparatory course. So they spend like a couple months there prepping to go to Bud's. I mean, everything is like focused around this is where you're going next. It's a different setup than you did. Yeah. So for us, like a lot of the guys in my class, you know, were prior fleet. You know, they all came from the fleet. And, you know, some of them were, you know, straight from boot camp.

Starting point is 00:48:04 But it was definitely a mix. And now these days it's just kids coming straight from boot camp. What do you think is – and I ask every Navy SEAL this because I get a different answer every time. But what do you think is like the key trait that separates the guys who make it from the ones who don't and the reason i ask is because you constantly hear the stories of like the triathlete that shows up he's like a brick shithouse and they're like oh that guy's gonna win yeah and then they're the first one to drop out you know and then the last guy you think that would actually make it through is like ends up being the best trainee there like what what is it that really separates you know this isn't the right way

Starting point is 00:48:45 to say but the men from the boys with that i get yeah i get what you're trying to say um that's a that's a difficult question to answer because i think each individual has his own reasons why he's trying you know wants to be a seal um but i think the one common trait between all of us that do make it through is just the willingness to sacrifice everything we have to become what we want. And that is uncommon. That's why Bud has such a big attrition rate. But the guys that make it there at the end have – there's just this switch in them. They're like, I will give everything to you know um i

Starting point is 00:49:27 will die before i quit uh and the then you have the other individuals who show up and they're like yep this this is too much for me um and it's also a mental thing as well um when you're there you know if you look at it as you know buds is about you know, if you look at it as, you know, buds is about six months. Um, if you look at it as, Holy shit, I have six months, then yeah, you're probably not going to make it. You just take it day by day or actually chow to chow. It's, I just have to make it to lunch. Now I just got to make it to dinner. And the reality is you have weekends off. Um, so you have Saturday and Sunday to lick your wounds and recover, get ready for Monday where I went to, you know, other selection like sniper school and all that. You didn't get any time off.

Starting point is 00:50:13 So to me, that was sort of like, oh, all right. You know, this is kind of a break. But, you know, yeah, you can't tell who's going to make it, especially I was a buzz instructor. I was first phase instructor for almost two years. You should have a class show up. You might be able to pick one or two out and be like, yeah, I think that guy's going to be here. But really, you can't tell. You'll have this kid that shows up that can barely do 10 pull-ups.

Starting point is 00:50:43 He's 145 pounds. He's standing there at the end, um, because he just refuses to quit. Um, and he's got something to prove and, you know, and that's, that's really what we're looking for. Um, it doesn't, we don't care what you look like. We don't care how big or jacked you are. Do you have what it takes to get your shit pushed in day by every day and then still get up and do the job yeah and you know how'd you feel at the end when you made it you seem like an all business kind of guy yeah i i was i mean all right great i was no i was i was definitely like real proud uh i mean that was a big goal of mine you know i mean it was my only goal so i was definitely elated man

Starting point is 00:51:23 uh when there's no better feeling yeah when they they pin that trident on you and you're like yes but at the same time i knew where i was going you know and this was like i'm not shit like i get it and that's what they tell me back then at least that's what they told us uh they pulled us all in a room and it wasn't a big celebration it was like you got pulled into a room and it was all just a team guys in there that, you know, pinned your trident on. But at the same time,

Starting point is 00:51:50 they're like, this doesn't mean shit. You guys ain't, you guys don't know a fucking thing. And when you show up to the team, you better act that way. Um, keep your mouth shut,

Starting point is 00:51:58 you know, keep your ears open, eyes open. And they didn't give you a ribbon. Yeah. They didn't give you any like gold star. No. And the, the, the theme is you you earn you earn that trident every day every day so it's like you can get kicked out anytime too like once you once you get it like i've had other guys explain like

Starting point is 00:52:17 then who's next year or whatever if you're not cutting it you're gone yeah if you're not cutting the mustard and that's and so there's almost more more pressure once you get it for me, at least to me, there was, I was like, okay, now I have to really prove myself. And that's, and that's what I tell people. I'm like, that's my whole time in the teams was just proving myself every day that I belong to the men that sat to the right and left of me, that I belong there, that they wanted me there. And that's just the attitude that most of us have there. We just want to be a better operator, a better warfighter, and a better teammate. So when you made it through, so this is what, like 04? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:52:55 When you made it through? How did it work then? I always forget the timeline, like when the team thing changed from theater to just like what coast they're actually on. Meaning like it used to be like SEAL Team 7 was like yep and then i got you one was desert or whatever what was it when you were coming out that had so the change had just happened um i and i don't you know don't blast me on this i don't but i think it was like 2002 2003 um maybe it was like right when the war kicked off they started realizing like okay uh we need to change this so by the time i got to the team it was already the change had happened um there was platoon or teams weren't you know uh what did they i forget what they call whether

Starting point is 00:53:36 they're just deploying to a certain part of the of the world like south america or whatever so now they changed it to um a couple platoons might go to guam or wherever but mostly everybody was jockeying to go to iraq afghanistan um it was where yeah because we needed bodies over there so did did you have the option to say what you what team you would like prefer to join which they don't have to honor but like was that you got a uh dream sheet that they give you and they're like hey write down three teams that you want to go to and i did not care i was like send me to war yeah whatever well actually i will say this i knew team three was jockeying ready to go um that was before uh you know the know, the big, whatever, Jock, Jock goes Ramadi deployment.

Starting point is 00:54:30 Um, and that's where I was, I was trying to get on that as a new guy, but I had to go to 18 Delta cause I was a medic. So that is a seven or eight month school. Um, but that's the team I wanted to go to. So I put, I think I put team three, I think I put an East coast team. I was like, dude, I'll whoever takes me, I'll, I'll go. Um, and I just said, yeah, I ended up going I'll go. And I just ended up going to Team 1. You were on Team 1 at first. Yeah, Stalingrad 1.

Starting point is 00:54:50 Stalingrad 1? Yeah. What's going on there? It's got the most history. So Team 1 was known as like the Nazis of all the teams, like haircuts, uniform inspections, formations. They were very militarized I guess compared to the other teams so that's where I got to go there first but

Starting point is 00:55:12 coming from the Marine Corps I was like yeah the same this isn't anything close it's still the teams yeah so where did you first deploy? And how soon did you deploy after actually joining the team? I think I showed up after 18 Delta. We just started workup. So I showed up, I think a week later, we were in workup. So I deployed probably a year later. So we went right into training, did the whole. So you go to workup.

Starting point is 00:55:46 Workup is about six months um and then you do um and i'm gonna check this up it's like uh individual like sit is what they called it and i forget the acronym but it's where your platoon you you go through work up you're assessed by other seals you're graded and then you have about three months after that to work on your own as a platoon to like hey here's the things that we need to work on and we now know what theater uh we're going so we know what we need to work on that gives you about three three to four months there and then you deploy and what was your specialty coming in so i uh obviously came in as a medic because I showed up, but I also was already a sniper because I went to Marine Corps sniper school.

Starting point is 00:56:31 So I had those two qualifications as a new guy right off the bat. Okay. So that makes you valuable. You've got a couple things going on. Was that at Quantico? Did you do sniper school at Quantico? No, Stone Bay. Okay.

Starting point is 00:56:42 Yeah, Camp Lejeune. Okay. And where was the first deployment? To hit Iraq. It's about an hour and a half from Al-Asad. So yeah, we went out there. We relieved an ODA team, which is Green Berets. And we had a Marine unit that was co-located with us and so we just spent our whole time doing DA's we'd get Intel we had sources come in and then we'd pretty much go hit targets well night after night it was a lot of fun it was a good it was a good deployment for as a new guy just to really start processing

Starting point is 00:57:20 how everything worked and just how we conducted business and also just getting the reps in. You know, we did some pretty cool stuff on that deployment. So that, yeah, that one was about six months long. When you say cool stuff, what did you do? I mean, like I said, you know, obviously doing DAs is awesome. And then we actually conducted an ambush, which was pretty awesome. It was like Vietnam-style tactics.

Starting point is 00:57:50 What was the story there? Let's see. My good buddy who's no longer with us, Aaron Vaughn, he was killed in extortion. So he was a second platooner in that platoon. And him and a couple other buddies, they got this source um to um that he came in and the source was like hey i have these guys that want to buy weapons to kill americans and so

Starting point is 00:58:13 we're like okay um we set this whole thing up we got them on video saying it uh we had the source go out film it um and then we went and uh buried about i forget five or six ak's um it was like hey tell them tell them the weapons are there to go out and get them so then we went in the night before set up an l around it um it was like something out it was actually something out of like a training environment because we just watched these guys march in dig up the weapons pick them up and as soon as they had them in their hands, we just lit them up. Like the 4th of July. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:58:50 So, I mean, that was like doing little missions like that is just, it's awesome. Had you seen, when you were on your deployments before becoming a SEAL, had you seen like real action or was it more? Some. Some? Some, yeah. All right. So it wasn't your first exposure to that.

Starting point is 00:59:04 I had already been in yeah yeah you were a pro I wouldn't not even close not even close but I I had some X I'd already seen like some of the atrocities that can happen during war so I I wasn't and I had already lost friends especially because I when I went to buds my sniper platoon redeployed back to fallujah so while i was in buds i lost three friends uh in fallujah as i was going through buds so i i think oh man i already understood the reality i was like i know what this is um you know and i think for some they you know they become a seal and you you feel invincible um

Starting point is 00:59:42 but then when you like nope we, we can die too. Uh, it sort of hits guys a little hard and I, you know, and they get over it, you know, not over it, but they're like, okay, they get an understanding. I think I already had that understanding. Like, I know I can die doing this and I know I can lose teammates doing this, but that this is the job. Yeah. And there's also, you know, and I think this ties like right into your story and everything that happened. There's a reality of it is going to be us or them, right? Yes. You're going into these dangerous situations.

Starting point is 01:00:10 You're going in with the guys who are effectively like your brothers that you live with. And when you get into tight spots where you got to make impossible decisions in split seconds, you're going to protect the shield more than anything and unfortunately like we all want this world to be this perfect place where everything makes sense but yeah shit is foggy as fuck it's gray it's all gray yeah and that's that that's the misconception i think people have that aren't you know haven't been is they think it's like this black and white um you know there's the good guys and the bad guys and there's uniforms. And it's like and it's stuff that they've probably seen in movies, depicted in movies. And even like, you know, these remakes, you know, stuff in World War Two and or these documentaries in World War Two. It shows, you know, these pictures of soldiers passing out candy.

Starting point is 01:01:02 It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka. Soda. Natural flavors. So, what should we talk about? No sugar added neutral refreshingly simple bars and like being the heroes dude that's how do you think we won that war it was by being savage yeah like and they don't they don't show any of that because then they shouldn't but that is what war is is it's you live in the gray you

Starting point is 01:01:45 have to make decisions um that could end somebody else's life and but as long as it's protecting yours and your teammates but at the same time you also have to be a thinking shooter and know like what a civilian is and right you know is this person being nefarious or is this person this is just how they conduct themselves and this is how they live over here? And that's – and to put that on individuals when they go over, yes, you are trained in some capacity to deal with those situations. But when you're faced with it in real life, you have 18, 19-year-olds over there with a gun. That's a lot of weight to put on an individual. And I'm talking more of the conventional units you know um but with us we're definitely held to a higher

Starting point is 01:02:30 standard um and we're expected to make the right decision yeah and it's again still though you do have the split second stuff even even if you are at the higher level like you do there there's there's shit that can happen and i i just recorded with nick the the reaper nick irvin okay who's who was obviously like a pretty legendary sniper in the military when he and i were talking off camera obviously like he looks at all the same things you do about like the difficulties of the rules of engagement now and he's like do you understand like if you're looking through a scope at someone fucking 750 yards away and they move around the wrong way to someone else and it looks like there could be an RPG, it's like what am I supposed to do? Like sit there and be like, well, let's find out if it is.

Starting point is 01:03:13 And sometimes that happens. I mean there's examples of both throughout the past 20 years where shots weren't taken and it cost American lives. But then there's examples of like shots were taken and they shouldn't have been taken. That's right. But at the end of the day, it's like as long as the person that took that shot could justify and be like, this is why I did it and this is what I was thinking, then we should do our best to protect those individuals.

Starting point is 01:03:38 We put them in that spot and they made the best decision they could at the time. Now, you do have individuals who should not have been in the military or even had a gun. There's plenty of examples of actual war crimes. But no organization is 100% safe. That's right. And people hear about the terrorist attack that happens. They don't hear about the 99 that got stopped. It's the same concept with this. You hear about like what you were accused of and acquitted of. If someone was actually doing that stuff regularly, then yeah, that would be war crimes.

Starting point is 01:04:13 That's not someone you want in the military. And obviously your story is different in that way. But I don't support any of those types of things. But I also understand like shit is going to happen out there. And I'm fortunate to have the privilege to not have to be a part of it and be caught in those decisions. Eddie said something that was really important. Two things, right?

Starting point is 01:04:35 People, places, the things they do and the times they do them, right? That's basic. If you go back to law enforcement, my dad used to talk about that. Then it was on NYPD Blue, which we talked about before with Sipowitz, right? One of my favorite characters. But it's really true so it's the same kind of thing you know if you if you know when who they are what they're doing why they're doing it the times they're doing it you're less likely to have that kind of panic at a time right but then sec you know secondly we had i can remember i think it was anton Anton Scalia, when he was on Supreme Court, went to one of our, you know, like, what the hell is it called? Like a shoot house, but did scenarios.

Starting point is 01:05:13 Yeah. And, you know, he kind of walked in, he was thinking about things, and then we just put a scenario on him, and he screwed it up. And at the end of it, he said, man, I've never had that kind of stress in my life from the 30 seconds. And it was a simple scenario. It was a law enforcement scenario. Right. So if you think about that, right, here's a guy that, you know, pretty smart in his own area. Right.

Starting point is 01:05:35 He had made some critical decisions in his life for others that were affected by others. That really the most stressful time in his life was a time when he walked in and there was somebody on a screen, not even really the ability to hurt you or hurt you back, and he wasn't able to get through that scenario. That's one. You know, so if you think about that, and he had a different appreciation for the job guys like Eddie do, guys like I did, people don't take that into account because you're right. They're watching it on here.

Starting point is 01:06:02 Yeah. Or they're playing a game or they're watching a movie and everything works out great when Denzel is equalizing people who just watch and everything else, but it's not the way it is. Eddie, the other thing is, no matter what, every life is valuable. So it doesn't matter who it is or what they're doing. Every life is valuable to someone or someone. Exactly. The Lord, right? But at the end of the day, you're tasked with having to make some of those decisions. Yeah. I mean, how does that, like, when you looked at it, I was interested just to know, like, what, and not to get into a kind of a religious piece, but what was your, what was your thoughts on why God has put you here? You know, why you have gone through the trials you have gone through to be able to give this testimony

Starting point is 01:06:43 today and help other people. That to me is amazing. So that is a big part of my story that I put in the book too. And it's probably like the most important chapter in my book is I became so close to Christ when I was locked up in a cell. I was always a believer. I was raised Catholic. Sorry, me too. Yeah. Like any good Catholics. Sorry. Me too. Yeah. Like any good Catholic, when I left the home, I stopped. I think we got four losers in here. But then when I married my wife, she was a Christian, and that was on the contract.

Starting point is 01:07:22 She's like, you have to be a believer if we're going to make this work, right? And of course, I was like, yeah, I'm Catholic. You're like, no, no. Yeah. A believer, no. Yeah. So, I mean, she read her Bible every day. You hit her with the, I believe in you, so I believe in God. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:07:35 I'm like, we're good. Yeah, we're good. So, yeah, I mean, I always had faith. I prayed before every operation to myself. I just prayed over my team. But I really, and I've said this, I was half-assing it, right? I had faith, but I still was like, I'm in control, right? I'm going to make the decisions. And it's not until everything is taken from you. And I was locked up in a prison cell and I was like this, I had no control about what was going on. Um, I really just like, let, I gave everything to God and I spoke out loud to him in my cell. That was the first time I ever did it. And I'll tell you, there's no drug on earth that gave me the feeling that I had after talking to him out loud. Uh, and ever since then, like that, he is a pivotal part of my life. Um, and I, I, every morning I have a routine. I, I get up, I talk to him, I read my Bible. I have my own, I, every morning I have a routine. I, I get up, I talk to him,

Starting point is 01:08:30 I read my Bible. I have my own relationship with him and he helps me get through day to day, but it's also given me a bigger, a better perspective, um, on life on, and yes, it's, you know, we label, you know, terrorists and this and that at the end of the day, we're all human beings. Um, and those people are thinking the exact same thing about us, that we're the terrorists and this and that, at the end of the day, we're all human beings. Yeah. Um, and those people are thinking the exact same thing about us that we're the terrorists and we're over there in their country and they probably have, it's like, yeah, they're right. You know? Um, but it's war and that's war's nasty and what lives get taken. Um, and I'll, at the end of the day, my goal was to make sure my teammates made

Starting point is 01:09:04 it home to their families and I made it home to my family and I'll, at the end of the day, my goal was to make sure my teammates made it home to their families and I made it home to my family. And I'd be, I have to kill you and then I have to kill you. Um, and I, it was funny. I had this, uh, like this liberal, well, it was like the, the Apple podcast guy was telling me about, you know, he, he just, he was asking me all sorts of questions and couldn't, you know, and I was like, dude, it's so funny to listen to you try and break down like philosophize war and this and that. I'm like, it's so simple.

Starting point is 01:09:30 It's a game. And I'm like, it's you're in the game. It's how we're over there. And if you pick up a gun, you just entered the game. And I don't care what age, gender, skin color. Like, there's only one way out of the game and that's death and i was like i'm playing the same game as you so that's it um and you know there's you really can't i think people think you can sit there and oh well let's reason and try and like

Starting point is 01:10:00 before i shoot this person maybe i should go through his background and be like maybe he really didn't want to be isis and maybe he was forcing, there's no time for any of it. Yeah. It's like, no dude, it's, it's on and it's you or me. Yeah, absolutely. That's a great answer. Yeah. What was your most memorable deployment? Uh, probably my second one with the teams. Uh, we went to Kandahar. Um, the one you were talking about. Uh, yeah, my second deployment. the teams uh when we went to candahore um the one you were talking about uh yeah my second deployment yep so we went and did disruption ops there i mean that is my most memorable my first two platoons um are actually my most memorable just because the guys that i was with i mean i couldn't have been more blessed to be with just like the most professional, like, but savage warriors that, um, you know,

Starting point is 01:10:48 my, from my peers to the older guys, um, it was just a awesome environment to be in. Everybody was on the same page. Um, we were very tight, uh, so that it just made those deployments that much more, um, I mean, memorable, but, um, I, I got so much experience from that. Um, and then, you know, Afghanistan at that time was hot and heavy. Um, so we were, we were putting in the work going out, you know, all the time. Um, and yeah, it just, uh, I had, you know, a lot of good experiences on that deployment, a lot of close calls. Lee, can you give an example? Well, let's see. You know, I put it in my book that I fell down a well and almost died.

Starting point is 01:11:35 You did? Yeah. So we were – And we'll have the link to your book in description and in the arena so everyone can go get that there. But go ahead. Yeah. So that one, we were patrolling into a target and, um, we had passed this well. So there's, you know, Afghans, there's wells everywhere, but this one was pretty massive. It was like, uh, eight feet across, you know, big, big hole.

Starting point is 01:11:56 And so we saw it and we threw a IR chem light by it. So everybody could see it and walk around. Um, I was a, uh, breacher. So they wanted to blow down a wall. I ran up, pulled some of the wall charges out of my bag, started setting them up, and then they decided not to do it. They were like, hey, we found another way in, so let's not go explosive. So I was like, all right. And I pulled the breaches down, put my ruck back on.

Starting point is 01:12:20 Now I'm in the back of the patrol catching up. And what happened was one of the afghanis that we were with had accidentally kicked the ir chem light down the well so there was no loom that night what loom is is when you're under night vision right um there's the moon's not out you really can't see uh too great i mean it's still dark so i could not i was walking i remember thinking i'm like dude where is that hole and then then I just fell down. It was like a 25-foot drop. Oh, man. But luckily there was water at the bottom, a good eight feet of water.

Starting point is 01:12:50 Did you get hurt? I bashed my head on the way down. I banged a knee. So I was down there for probably 45 minutes treading water. They couldn't get me out. It was November, so it was freezing out. So they eventually, and actually an Afghan is the one who, one of the Afghan guys, they found a tunnel that went down. It was a little opening above me. So he had burrowed himself down there. And then I ended up, I ended up getting out through that tunnel. Uh, when one of my teammates came down and ended up pulling me out, but I was hyped out,

Starting point is 01:13:28 um, completely just, you know, but, uh, Nick actually, his buddy Pemberton had the same story at a similar time. I think that was in Iraq though. Right. They moved to Iraq at that point, but he fell down like a manhole like that at night. His was like 85 feet and there, thank God there was water at the bottom. Really? Yeah, he was treading water.

Starting point is 01:13:49 He like broke his leg and shit, but it's crazy. He was saying, yeah, there's a lot of this stuff. Yeah, I remember Green Beret had died a week prior falling down a well. There was no water. So, I mean, they're all over the place there. But, yeah, that was a memorable moment. We got it on video. So, like, when I was treading water, so I had the rucksack on.

Starting point is 01:14:09 I was a medic, so I had all my medical gear. I was a breacher, so I had wall charges. I had the.50 cal sniper rifle broken down. And then I had my M4 slung. And so when I was treading water, I was pretty much like going underneath, coming back up. And so I ended up dropping my M4. I was like – the thing was – and I just let it go. So when they pulled me out, we actually –

Starting point is 01:14:30 It's like Rose letting Jack go. Yeah. Right. They could have both made it by the way. Oh, dude. That thing had so much room on that thing. Easily. That's fucked up.

Starting point is 01:14:38 Yeah. Rose is selfish. She's Catholic. Yeah. She's not a Christian. But yeah, we ended up going and hitting it we went to the target anyways um got in a little firefight um and then you got a firefight right after that yeah they've been down in in in a well treading water oh i was in a polypro too like so they had stripped me naked and put on poly pro on me to warm me up.

Starting point is 01:15:06 And so I'm at this compound. And, yeah, we started taking incoming fire. I'm like, what the fuck? So I grabbed my – I had the.50 cal still, so I cleaned it, and I got it back up and joined the fun. But then my OIC was like, hey, you need to go back. We need to retrieve that rifle. We can't leave it there. Yeah, they really changed that opinion in the next 11 years apparently.

Starting point is 01:15:30 Yeah, right? Yeah. So I had to patrol back. Well, he was like, hey, we're going to send somebody to go get it. And I was like, no, that's my rifle. I'm the one who fell. I'm going to go back. So I went back.

Starting point is 01:15:40 You're going to jump into the well. Yeah, that's on video. My buddy was filming it. I jumped back in. I found it. Do we have that video? Is that public? I don't know if it's public.

Starting point is 01:15:50 Damn it. Let's see if I can send it to you. The funny part of that, though, is I lost my wedding ring. So as I'm going down and digging down, I found my gun that came up, and my wedding ring was gone, which I don't know why I was wearing it in the first place on a knot. but yeah my wife she doesn't let me live that down oh that's terrible got the right yeah but didn't get the one yeah she's like i see what's more important we'll get another one that's hilarious it's wild we've just ironically had several guys in here who were in afghanistan particularly during those years like 08 to like 2012 it was nasty oh my

Starting point is 01:16:27 god the shit that was going down it was nasty like that deployment we would uh you know i have like we were told we had to go to every ramp ceremony right which is either like hey you're gonna pay respects and we were all on board with it but what ended up happening is we're going to ramp ceremonies every night. So you were just watching these caskets get loaded on. And then eventually I think it was like at some point, man, this is sort of like demoralizing. Yeah, definitely. It's having an effect on everybody.

Starting point is 01:16:56 But that's just – I mean that's how bad it was during that time. I think that was – we were there during the deadliest – one of the deadliest years. Yes. So, yeah, I mean and that's all all those poor, you know, conventional Army Marines. I mean, they were just getting worked. And, you know, it was hard to watch. Was that 2010, you said, or? Nine, 08, 09.

Starting point is 01:17:16 Are you still SEAL Team 1 at that time? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Because you ended up SEAL Team 7, right? Yep. I didn't make that up. Yeah, that's after I became a BUDS instructor and then went to SEAL Team 7 after that.

Starting point is 01:17:28 I guess like along the early deployments, like to become an instructor and things like that, like you have to have serious leadership qualities and I would assume, right? Not specifically. Specifically, I think it's more – I mean obviously they want – especially in first phase, I think they want a person that holds himself to the SEAL standard, looks the part because you have to think about it. That's the first thing a student sees when he comes to Buzz, right? Is like, holy shit, these are the Navy SEALs that are putting me through it. So you don't want some like half-assed dude that's like whatever you want a guy that's like hey i'm holding the standard you know um you better in order to get past first phase you will meet these standards and i'm doing everything with you right uh were you more hyped up than you were with like tommy g on the beach when you were disappointed yeah just just a little bit which by the way shout out to our mutual friend yeah tommy he's a man dude that was an awesome

Starting point is 01:18:29 documentary he did fantastic job what did tommy say what was his quote any good quotes when he was getting smoked oh oh by eddie no i i think he just thought like he'd be able to do it easily so you know i'm a wrestler i could get now yeah he found out in about 10 minutes yeah i love you like you you don't have enough sand on you. Let me spray that on you. Sprinkle it. I'm like, there's no way he was this low key during training. Actually, I mean, you don't – there's not a lot of yelling.

Starting point is 01:18:55 You don't have to yell at buds. You don't feel like a big yeller. No. What do they call me? They made – I got a plaque and a sweet tomahawk thing they made me uh they made they made a i got a a plaque and um a sweet tomahawk thing they made me but it was um oh dude it'll come to me but yeah i was more silent uh but the silent hammer so i'd come in and be like but the thing is is the silent i would do everything with them like if i could you know i'd be like hey i'm gonna do the four mile time

Starting point is 01:19:23 run with you guys oh wow the old course with you i did two mile ocean swims with them like if i could you know i'd be like hey i'm gonna do the four mile time run with you guys oh wow of course with you i did two mile ocean swims with them and that was more just to like lead like lead by example like dude this doesn't end once you make it through buds this is a lifestyle like you have to perform all the time and you know then you have you do have some instructors that let themselves go and they're sort of sloppy and they don't want anything to be like, I'm not going to go PT them. But I wasn't like – I was pretty intense. Yeah, you were about that. Yeah. I was about the – yeah.

Starting point is 01:19:51 So – which I was – I have a lot of guys that I put through who will call me and be like, dude, thank you. That's what they say in here? Yeah. And that means more to me than anything. I mean that's – that means more to me than anything i mean that's that means more to me than any uh deployment i went on you know it's like i had a positive effect you know on these guys so what made you want to do that uh i didn't uh i think it was um they were like hey you need to take a break uh or like because once you do a bunch of rotations they're like hey you can't just keep doing them um you have to they call it

Starting point is 01:20:25 giving back to the team so like you have to go somewhere to either train uh be a trade at where you put you know grade uh platoons as they come through you go to first there's a bunch of options to go to and they knew they're like you're you're going to first phase like you're you know pretty in shape and you're you're all about it so i I went there kicking and screaming. I didn't – I wanted to do another platoon. I just wanted to keep going. But the reality is – and my wife was like, yes. Time to settle down a little bit.

Starting point is 01:20:54 Yeah, like I want – it would be cool. You'd be home for a couple years. Little did she know though, little did I know that that was probably one of the hardest I've worked. Really? Yeah, because at the time we were undermanned and they were also trying to produce more SEALs. The directive came out from Obama that he wanted 500 more SEALs, which is ridiculous. So they upped the class sizes and then they also upped the classes. So it was seven classes a year. So we called it seven, seven, and seven. So you would do seven weeks of first phase,

Starting point is 01:21:30 and on a Friday, start a new class on a Monday. Did they lighten the requirements? Meaning like if you had to score X on this kind of thing, well, now it's X minus one, because they're trying to take more? No. So they were trying to. When we were there, they were're trying to take more no so they were trying to um when we were there they were always trying to like it seemed like fine little ways to lower the standards or like cut corners um but here's the thing not under eddie gallagher not well not when you have team guys running running the show uh being instructors they can sit there hey you can't do this and that it's like no we're we're gonna make sure they get full Benny, you know, while they're here and do it the way that we've been doing it. Uh, so yeah, I mean, the only thing I would say is they, they up the class sizes. So when you, and I, I brought this up, uh, another podcast. So like with the, with, I guess they're like, Oh, how do you get these

Starting point is 01:22:22 guys in the teams that don't really like belong there but and you always have your bottom two percent one percent right but usually it's like one or two guys might make it through that really don't belong and then they're they're sort of taking you know taking care of when they get to a team if they show their ass right but when you up the class sizes like that you'll now have maybe three to five guys that don't belong. And then you go ahead and have seven classes a year. That's 35 guys that don't belong in the teams that are now spread amongst the teams. And you do that for two, three years and the teams aren't that big. So that does have an effect. Um, but they,

Starting point is 01:23:00 they really didn't like lower the standards from like on paper. Right. You know, it's still the same. And it was – yeah, it was – I was glad. It was a good experience. I'm glad. At the end of the day, I went there kicking and screaming, but then I'm glad I did it. It was probably one of the most beneficial times for me.

Starting point is 01:23:28 It's like just as becoming a more experienced leader, just experienced team guy, being an instructor. But this was the hardest you ever worked to that point? I mean, I would say that like being at home. Yeah, I was never home. I would get up 4 a.m. I wouldn't get home till six, seven at night. And then you work hell weeks and that is, you're pretty much not home. I always had the midnight to eight in the morning shift. So you're on a totally different schedule. Um, so yeah, it was, uh, it was a dick dragger, but it w I had again, awesome guys, uh, that I was working with. So everybody's sort of like we banded together and we're like, we gonna you know gut this out and everybody's gonna do their part were you were was dan corbett a trainer while you were a trainer too no dan was uh he came

Starting point is 01:24:15 maybe he i think he was at uh sqt um teaching assaults because he came back from red squadron um and then he was there for a little bit right because that's why i ended up going to sqt assaults as well i i screened for dev group i went over to green team i got dropped halfway through came back wait what's green team it's the screening process to get into development group got it okay yeah um so i had screened and that's really when i when i went to team seven so i had screened out of that's really when I went to Team 7. So I had screened out of first phase, made it about halfway, got dropped. They were like, hey, told me that you can come back, come back whenever next year. Why'd they drop you?

Starting point is 01:24:54 Bro, I'm not – That's kind of shocking. It's – I mean, well, first off, I'm not anything special. That's what they all say. I was lucky to be where I was among the men that I was with. Um, but green team is a very, uh, subjective. Um, and you know, I just, they were like, Hey, um, come back next year. So I left and, uh, they, I screened again and they were like, yep, you can come back, but you have to wait a year because we can't just have you come back right away. And they're like, just stay in a training command, and I was like, no.

Starting point is 01:25:34 So I found the next platoon that was going to Afghanistan, which was at Team 7, and I joined them and just went from there. What year is that now? This had to be 2011. Okay. So there was a very old podcast, I think from 2014, that Joe Rogan did. I want to say it was the first one he did with that CIA guy, Mike Baker. Oh, yeah. I love that dude.

Starting point is 01:26:00 Yeah, that guy's great. But it was crazy. I had never listened to it. And then maybe a couple years ago, I think it was like right after the Afghanistan stuff, I listened to it. And again, this is back in like 2014. This guy laid out play by play to a tee as if he had a crystal fucking ball down to like the image almost like I think he might even use the word you're gonna have a fucking helicopter like the one over Saigon. Like down to the imagery of how Afghanistan would fall, which tells me that he's not the only guy that could see that coming. You could see it coming too. I would imagine when – from 08 to 12 or 13 when you go back, it's even worse. Like what were you guys thinking at that point? Like what the fuck are we doing here? Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 01:26:49 That was – so that – we were doing the commando mission. So that's when we were taking – we would take freaking 80 Afghan commandos and go hit a target and there would only be like four of us with them. So it would be like – so everything was like sort of pushed to be Afghan- afghan led right it was like the afghans are now fighting for themselves and but we're there going on ops advising them and and the reality part of it is these guys ain't doing shit i mean there's some good ones uh you know that were decent but the reality is we were still taking it to the enemy um i mean that was a that was a decent, but I definitely saw the differences when I went back there. Like, just to give you an example, we got there the first week we were there. We went and did an operation.

Starting point is 01:27:34 We were going to an old – so at this point, we had turned over all the Bills to build the operation sites back to the Afghans. We're like, these are yours now. You know, go do good things so our job was to go back and assess if they were actually doing good thing you know with like hey are they using these vso sites and as you can guess they were all shitholes right they had stolen every you know taking everything out sold everything i mean i'm talking millions of dollars just wasted uh and during our first one we were assessing this old vso site and

Starting point is 01:28:06 the taliban had actually you know taken it back over and i watched it was like at one or two in the morning the b1 was above us and we were talking to him and one of the uh taliban in the village shot a rpg up at the ac-130 and i was like what the this idiot but that's hostile intent dude yeah so i ended up waiting uh i saw him go back into the building i waited till morning uh i was watching he came out he had a pkm he started making his way um and the b1 was talking me on to him like yep there he is so i ended up blasting i shot him um and another dude came up to grab his gun to run i shot him i get back from that op and i am put under investigation right off the bat they're like you weren't you're not here to like you're

Starting point is 01:29:01 here to assess to make sure they're doing the right thing, but you aren't. And I told him, I was like, the, he shot, it's the B1 will tell you all day. He shot at them. Um, and I ended up being cleared. I mean, it was just, it was still, yeah. Just the fact that I was then pulled out for a week, you know, told, I was like, you know, you're under investigation like this and this, we don't know. And I'm like, like what what are we doing here um and those that those are some of the changes that i saw uh also the fact that we were paying off all these warlords i mean dude it was so corrupt and just you know we're paying these warlords to keep ieds off the main roads but then these warlords are also giving back to the taliban it was just one big circle jerk uh That's when...

Starting point is 01:29:45 I knew before then, though. It was like, this is the process of what we're going to. Like the Sons of Iraq funds and all the bullshit that are just wide open to just corruption 101, even amongst our own soldiers. I mean, holy shit. We had a few cases in the Bureau

Starting point is 01:30:01 where they went bad. They tried... You got shitloads of cash sitting on top of a safe unsecured in like a forward base, right? Didn't you do – you went over there to do investigations, right? And we actually had a kid that sent money back the first time. He sent 20 grand back via the postal service. And then he waited like two weeks and he's like fuck nobody said anything it's still sitting at my door so then he just started sending as much

Starting point is 01:30:29 as he could oh my god ultimately he got caught he's a west point kid and uh ultimately got caught the sad part of that whole story is his battalion commander killed himself because he said it was my responsibility now we all know mental you know other mental issues, obviously, but that's a sad thing. And the only way we got this kid to talk was because he's an Asian-American family. And so we just served search warrants on the accounts that belonged to his parents and his aunts and uncles. And once that happened, he gave us everything. But to the tune of like $2.5 million he sent back. Damn.

Starting point is 01:31:03 In seven months. I mean, that's a wow that's just one and nobody found it like nobody bothered to say what hey what's going on so and so is you know he's always around the safe you know there's being around the flag but then there's being around the safe he just bought a bugatti man what's going on exactly he put like in the other thing like he you know his nieces and nephews had the best electronic equipment and their rooms were redone. I'm like, oh, my God. He wanted to get caught. Also, I just put this together.

Starting point is 01:31:32 Didn't Johnny Mac, wasn't that in Afghanistan too? That was. Yeah, that was in Afghanistan. So your buddy, that was like 2011, same time period. 2010, May 18, 2010. He was the guy, he was a colonel. He was killed like, I think it was at the time it was the guy he was a colonel he's killed like i think it was the at the time it was the highest ranking officer to be killed over there he got okay but hit by a

Starting point is 01:31:50 suicide bomber uh coming out of basically it was a two-week mission they were in transition team the brigade battle group they were coming over i think the 82nd was no no no 101st was leaving 10th mountain was coming in and he you know basically got off the aircraft got onto an armored bus 17 of them and he got hit within like 10 minutes now the irony of this the time uh secretary of the army was john mccue so they thought these idiots thought they were killing the secretary of the army and my buddy had the same name at 06 oh my childhood friend man like we grew up together and then all of a sudden i get a phone call because his son was deployed at the same time. I get a phone call, and it's his brother.

Starting point is 01:32:27 And he's like, hey, John's dead. And I'm like, oh, what are John and Connie going to do? Because, you know, Michael was over there. It was him. So I was 46 years old, man. Just hit. Like, it was – and no one ever really got to – it was just like, yeah, we kind of – nobody really ever – Got to the, like, why it happened.

Starting point is 01:32:46 Just let it go, man man they just let it go i feel like that's that's one memory i have too of one of my deployments like just working with the conventional army we went uh it was fob wilson um they were just getting worked disease and we got told like this, these guys were like getting smoked every time they go outside their fob. Um, so we were like, Hey, yeah, we'll come over. We'll, we'll go help assist and take care of the problem. And so they're like, yes. So we flew out there. Um, and I remember landing at that fob and seeing these army kids, man, like we got off the plane and it was my, my steel platoon and they came walking up to us and these kids were crying like are you here they're like are you here to help us and we're like yeah they're like please like i just like all of them just lost friends within the past week and it was like a normal

Starting point is 01:33:34 thing but then i would watch the leadership just send these kids out like with no no like contingencies plans it was like nope you just going to go drive down that road. And I'm like, dude, who is like running the show here. But at the end of the day, we stayed there for about three weeks and we, we mopped up. Yeah. We, we would go out every night and just tear the place up as best we could. But again, you're like making these little dents with the overall strategy. It's not there. So it's like what, you know what I mean? Itents with the overall strategy. It's not there.

Starting point is 01:34:05 So it's like what, you know what I mean? It's like, great, you're doing your mission, but that's one key to the entire cog here. And it's like, you know. What you talked about, I'm so interested in this. You talked about your first couple of platoons, right? And what was the difference between that leadership? And we talked, we touched on it a little bit. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:34:22 Like being around, you know, actually taking the person by person. That's what you're doing it for versus like later on, like stuff like that. Like you see a conventional army unit that obviously there can't be any leadership at all because these kids are just getting sent out and like, hey, kill them, you know, next. Yeah. I mean, what, what would you say if you could, a couple of things or one thing that really stands out to you as you look back on it or during the time that made a difference leadership wise. That my leaders did everything that we did. There you go, man. They were out with us. So like my, my platoon chief and then my OIC, they weren't sitting back and sending us out. Everybody was going out together. And that's, as the war progressed on, I saw more and more, like, officers would sort of,

Starting point is 01:35:10 no, I'm going to stay in the jock and watch from ISR and then, you know, I'll make the plans from here, which is whatever. You want to do that, that's great, but then you cannot armchair quarterback from the jock either. And that's one big thing I saw with the Army unit. I have one distinct memory of patrolling out with them and there was only like me and two other seals in their patrol we just sort of embedded in there and we kept stopping and i was like what

Starting point is 01:35:36 the fuck is going on like i mean stopping every five minutes and then i would watch the junior officer that was in the patrol walk up and down and be like you need to get some separation like and like and so i finally pulled him aside halfway through i'm like what are you doing what is going on he's like oh well the oic is back at the jock and he's watching you know they had those uh big uh cameras in the sky yeah he's watching and like critiquing the way the patrol is on the way to target and i finally told him i was like shut that comms off i'm like stop talking to him i'm like you're in charge dude you fucking get us there and then he was like oh all right you know but that's that's the kind

Starting point is 01:36:18 of goofiness you're like dude how how is this even working like this yeah you know what's ironic about this there was so i guess jernal mccrystal had the whole thing go down in like 2009 or 2010 and then he was out, right? Yeah. So I believe it was him. But I remember in my old career, my boss had a chance to go to like one of these private conferences where I'm pretty sure it was McChrystal talking. Yeah, Larry was there. And he was blown away because the whole point of the talk was about like delegation and leadership and he was citing the example of right when they went

Starting point is 01:36:51 into afghanistan in 01 or 02 the military had been so like top heavy with like having to go all the way down the chain of command just to take a shit or you know things like that and they gave again takes an attack for it to happen, but they then compartmentalized it and empowered different little sections to make their own decisions. And it seems like they just went completely backwards on that within a 10-year period afterwards after having initially success. Yep. And that's, I mean, that comes back to what we talked about, you brought up in the beginning is kowtowing to the media, kowtowing to like, oh, well, look what they're doing here. So then the leadership, we need to protect the institution.

Starting point is 01:37:30 So now we're going to then tighten it back up. Now none of you guys can make a decision unless I say so. That's right. Yeah. Now, I mean you said you could kind of see the chips falling in the wrong direction in Afghanistan for a long time, but when it finally did go down in a horrible ball of heat in 2021, what was going through your head? I mean, I didn't think it would affect me as bad as it did. I came down, I watched obviously whatever the whole world watched, which was these Afghans holding onto the plane, falling off.

Starting point is 01:38:05 And I mean, I literally, like, I started tearing up. But I think it was just more like, yeah, you're just filled with, like, what the fuck? Like, why is this happening like this? Like, who made this plan? So, yeah, I mean, it was devastating to watch. And then followed by Abbey Gate where we lost those 13 service members. I think the hardest thing about that, all that, obviously it was a disaster. But to watch the – like we talked about earlier, the officers take no accountability to literally call it a victory.

Starting point is 01:38:44 Yeah, correct. To not acknowledge the 13 service members that were lost. That was more of a hard pill to swallow because it's like, dude, what kind of example are you setting? Like you're setting the precedent right now. So basically nobody is accountable for anything unless if you're part of the elitist whatever officer corps that we we can do you know it's rules for thee but not for me um and then you you know you have the young privates who are getting screwed over for losing a weapon and their whole career is ruined but then you have right you have these leaders planning an operation.

Starting point is 01:39:25 It's a total failure. Lives are lost. And they're just like, yep, move on. That's where I really had – you've always known that in some capacity. But just to watch it in front of the country, like happen in front of the country like that, it literally was like, dude, this is bad. I can't fathom it in your position because you were there. You were there fighting it and everything. But I can imagine how much worse it must feel because I feel something when I see that.

Starting point is 01:39:56 One of my first memories. Everybody should. Yeah. One of my first memories that's like a vivid like, whoa, I remember every second that day when I was really little was 9-11. We knew people who died in those towers and whatever. And so this was my first introduction to like, oh, the world's like a kind of fucked up place sometimes and shit goes down and war's a real thing. And to see over the span of a generation, that semicircle form that then goes full circle right to where it was you know it it makes you

Starting point is 01:40:26 feel a certain type of way and and to your point when you see guys like like sean's friend tyler vargas andrews who survived that abby gate bombing and you know now has yeah he's missing two limbs triple amputee i think right there's two double double i think i think it's either way like yeah inspirational guy to say the least but like you, you know, when you see his story, like get ignored by so many people and they won't even talk about it and cover it in the quote unquote mainstream media and stuff. And, you know, doesn't get the recognition from the administration where, you know, the buck stops with them and how this happened. That that's infuriating. Yeah, it is. And it's I think that's the main element that, you know, is piss poor leadership, man. It's, they don't deserve to be in those leadership positions. They did not earn it. You know, they didn't earn it by merit. They earned it by being yes men. saying what you think everybody wants to hear and not actually doing the job. And then you're in

Starting point is 01:41:26 charge of making decisions like the Afghan withdrawal and it's a complete failure. It's like, yeah, well, this is what you get. And I just, there needs to be, I don't know what the answer is, what my, I brought up my solution or i know it's super extreme but i was like dude if trump gets an office it's like every 05 and above you're gone you are gone i and i'm sure there's some good ones in there but it's like an example needs to be made like we are we have gone down a path that is just tainted and if we keep allowing this to it's never going to go away unless an example is made. You need a little reset. Yes, and then they need to go to West Point, to Annapolis, to all these institutions and look at the curriculum that they're putting out.

Starting point is 01:42:14 What are they teaching these young officers in these schools about leadership? And if it's the wrong thing, it needs to be addressed and it needs to be fixed. I agree with that, man. I think about it a lot. And there's great things going on that are different than when I went through there, but there's also things that we're missing. And it's simple. It's simple things like mandatory dinner.

Starting point is 01:42:39 I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's where it starts. That's where you kind of start what you were talking about on the side of being close to your people, being around your people, being around the flag, doing everything that they do and not just saying, well, I did it once when I was a junior. I did it once when I was a sophomore. I did it once when I was a lieutenant. I don't have to do it anymore because I'm a field grade officer now. Those things are missing. Yeah. And it's very clear that they're missing. And, you know, you could see the results. It's pretty. the results are evident and everything is on here now. So, you know, everything, cops, it doesn't matter if it's cops, first responders, guys like you, guys like me, you know, it's, it's out there. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:43:30 So if you stay close to that flag and you lead from, by example, and you truly believe in what you're doing, because most, most people I think still believe in protecting, protecting the country, you know, but they have different ways of believing that. some of them are beneficial right they're self-serving that's the people we got to fucking get rid of yeah because that is not working it's just not not and doesn't that really doesn't work in any environment it does it's like yeah if it's all about you me me me me it's like yeah you're then you're gonna be a problem yep. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. All right. Well, I got to run to the bathroom real quick. But when we come back, let's let's get to Mosul and what happened there. Sounds good. Those are the whole case. Be right back. All right.

Starting point is 01:43:54 We're back. So obviously, we've been kind of building up to this all day. This is the core of what became your story. But before we get to actually what happened that then caused this whole case, what was the whole situation where you even got called in to be the chief of this specific platoon for Team 7? How did that work? Planning on going and screening again to try to go to dev group. That was like my goal. And I got offered a platoon chief. I had just picked up chief and the master chief was like, hey, I want you to stay at seven and I want you to take over this platoon. So I had called my friends that were already a dev group. I was like, hey, this is the predicament I'm in.

Starting point is 01:44:45 What do you guys think? And here I do take the platoon chief spot. Like don't worry about coming over here. And so I was like, all right. And honestly, my family wasn't really keen on – my wife is not really keen on moving to the East Coast. I already knew that. So I was like, all right. I'm going to take the platoon chief spot.

Starting point is 01:45:02 So, yeah, um he i was in charlie platoon and so he's like hey i'm gonna send you over to alpha um alpha that last rotation did not do very well um the one before you yes the one before the one before i took over so what they you know like i talked about earlier when a platoon goes through workup they get graded um on everything and they just did not they didn have any, they didn't have very good high remarks. Uh, I think their leadership in the platoon had problems. Um, so he was like, listen, you're going to go take over that platoon, um, straighten them, you know, straighten it up. And I was like, okay, you know, and I didn't know anybody in that platoon.

Starting point is 01:45:48 I just didn't know most of them. I knew one guy. And so I went over there. I ended up taking two individuals from my prior platoon with me. I was like, you two are coming with me. Oh, they let you do that? Like you can decide to do that? You can try uh it's every every platoon chief when he takes over like when it's his turn he tries to build the best platoon like he's like

Starting point is 01:46:11 and you know who's who you know everybody america if you will yeah like reputations are everything in the team so you're like okay i know this guy's a my pipe here i want this guy i want this guy but if that's really unfair to do um you need you need to spread the wealth and experience. So I was, you know, lucky enough to grab, uh, two guys from my platoon, my prior platoon brought them over there. Um, and yeah, we, I checked into that, uh, not checked in. I was already at seven, but went over to alpha and from the get-go I was like, like, hey, we're clean slate. I don't care what happened last go. I don't – I'm on no judgment, but we are going to train, and we are going to be the best platoon at this team.

Starting point is 01:46:55 That is my goal. And the reason you want to do that is because then you get to pick where you get to go on deployment. And I was like, I want to go, obviously, to combat and to the best spot. And everybody was on board. They were. Oh, yeah.. And I was like, I want to go, obviously, to combat and to the best spot. And everybody was on board. They were. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they were like, yep. So we started off the platoon.

Starting point is 01:47:12 So when you come back from a deployment, you go right into a phase called professional development, and that is where the guys get sent off to schools. So it doesn't, you know, to go get their qualifications. So sniper, breacher, JTAC, whatever. You know, if you, if you're missing quals in that platoon, like, Hey, we only have, uh, two snipers, but we want four. I'm sending two guys to sniper school. If we need a JTAC, I'm sending, that's the time to do it. It's during professional development phase. So during that phase, usually the whole platoon is not together because everyone's,

Starting point is 01:47:43 you know, at different schools, but I just chose, I was like, hey, the guys that are back, we are going to train every day. So we would go do all the basics, patrolling, you know, pre post-assault procedures, you know, shooting, CQC. And I think for someone, and I, when I say older guys, they weren't, they were, you know, third platooners. They were like, not with, you know, they're like, why are we doing this? And to be fair, we were the only platoon really out there doing it. I think there was this mindset of, oh, we'll just wait till we get to work up to do all that stuff. Well, work up is where you're getting graded, right? So it's like, if you're not putting in the work beforehand, you should be shining during work up to do all that stuff well work up is where you're getting graded right so it's like if you're not putting in the work beforehand you should be shining during workup you should show up

Starting point is 01:48:30 and they should be like holy this platoon is put together right um which is what my goal was so i i think there was a and it wasn't really like vocalized too much um i could just tell by some of the body posture like some of the faces you know when we're out there patrolling on the beach again. And it is corny. We wouldn't even have weapons. It was just like, hey, we're going to work on just formations and how to get into different formations. And everybody knows where they're at. But either way, I mean, we did all that and then went into workup, and workup went fantastic.

Starting point is 01:49:06 We got high remarks from every block that we went through. Are you still – I mean you mentioned the body language and stuff, but do you still feel like your relationship with the guys is fine? Yeah, yeah. Everything seemed to be going fine. I definitely think there was Dylan DeLay who was one of of the guys he, from the get-go, did not like me. But he was a very timid, meek type of individual. I just don't – my personality and his just didn't jive. Wouldn't have guessed that.

Starting point is 01:49:37 Yeah. Which was fine. I didn't really think too highly – like too much of him. But at the same time, I wasn't like holding a personal grudge. I was like this dude is in my platoon and whatever. Like we'll keep going. But yeah, everything during workup was good to go. Really no incidents.

Starting point is 01:49:57 We had – we did just a great job. And then we got our pick going to Missoula. Um, we were told that we were tasked with like, Hey, this is where you guys are gonna go on deployment. Uh, so then we did sit, um, which is where I talked about earlier. We go do our individual, like, uh, or as a platoon, which is where I actually, um, found where I live now. We went down there to train for two weeks.

Starting point is 01:50:24 Oh, you did that in florida yeah so so usually like there's your wife made it to the east coast yeah eventually yeah down south though yeah yeah not virginia beach yeah i take a passport there yeah so we we went there uh did our two weeks there and then then even then during that two weeks, there was definitely some, like, gripes happening, but it was more focused on my OIC. They were, like, complaining about him, which me and him were pretty tight. When it comes to, like, a platoon chief and OIC relationship, it was good. Does that mean officer in charge? Yes, officer in charge. Um, and usually from what I've seen, like those relationships aren't that

Starting point is 01:51:10 great. Right. Why is that? Uh, it just depends on personality. So like you could have an officer come in. So usually the platoon chief is, uh, the most experienced one. Right. Um, so, you know, just take me, for example, I was at that point in 18 years. Yeah. I was on my ninth deployment. My platoon chief, that was his second. So there's the level of experience is different, but he is overall in charge on paper. Right. So you can have a good OIC will come in and be like, hey, you have the experience. I'm here to back you. I'm looking up and out.

Starting point is 01:51:49 I'm making sure I'm going to get us work but also protect us. But when it comes to tactics and like how we're going to plan operations, that's usually on the platoon chief, right, because he has the experience. A lot of the times – not a lot. Sometimes you'll have an officer come in and be like nope i'm i'm doing everything right i'm making you have to check with me before you make decisions and that's where the relationship can sour um and there's you know personality and everything involved in that um but yours wasn't like that no we we were rocking and rolling he came in with that attitude he's like dude you know um you're in

Starting point is 01:52:25 charge of the tactics and this and that um and then i'm looking up and out but i will i'm here to support you and then i'm the same way i was like i'm going to support you so it wasn't yeah during sit they started griping about the oic um but it wasn't like anything too crazy it was just i just something i noticed you know uh is there anything now – I mean hindsight is like more than 2020. But is there anything you would have changed up from what you did to basically flip this team's performance around? Like the leadership tactics you used during that time period? No. No. I don't – not during workup or during sit. During deployment, yes. There's a couple of things on deployment that I would have changed a little bit.

Starting point is 01:53:09 I mean – and that's the thing. Like leadership is not – I think there's some people that get out of the military and they sell leadership as this like this is the way it is and this is how you will become an effective leader. Leadership, you are going to mess up. I think a big thing of being a good leader is being humble enough and being vulnerable enough to be like, hey – and I said that to my platoon a couple of times when we went into MAROPS, Maritime Operations and Diving. I was like, dude, this is not my strong suit. I've been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Like maritime and diving was not on the, you know, we did it, but it wasn't like focused on. So I told him, I was like, I'm going to need some of your guys help, uh, during this, these blocks to actually, you know, succeed and be the best.

Starting point is 01:53:56 And so, I mean, I think that paid dividends cause they were like, and I actually put, uh, some of them in charge and some stuff like hey you're gonna run this um just i mean i was really running it but to give them the um confidence yeah i feel like they're in charge yeah yeah um so yeah when we got but when we got on deployment um that's one thing things shifted really quickly um how so uh we got there and we hit the ground running. Yeah, maybe a little context for people just what's going on at the time in Iraq and Mosul. Obviously ISIS had control of Mosul and there was a SEAL platoon that was already there, which my best friend was a platoon chief of. They had pushed through the east side of Mosul and that's – Trump took office when they were on their deployment. I think it was like the last two months of their deployment when Trump took office,

Starting point is 01:54:51 and that's when they started being able to push. They were like, hey, you're going to push through the eastern side of Mosul, which was pretty rural. And then you had the western side, which was completely urban. I mean just cities – city city after city it was just packed so by the time we got there they had cleared the eastern side and we were being tasked with doing the western and i remember my best friend we had about two days of uh we call it turnover so when you you show up you do like a little turnover with the platoon that's there um you know i usually get

Starting point is 01:55:23 what's working for them like hey, Hey, what have you been doing? That works. What hasn't been working? So you can start implementing those, you know, if that's what you want to do. Um, just two days. Well, yeah, sometimes usually, um, you show up a week in advance or two weeks in advance and you'll do some turnover operations where you'll go out with that platoon. we did not do that um it was literally because we actually the reason we didn't do it is because we were given a different partner force so they were working with the um oh fucking the kurds uh peshmerga yes and so they have been working with them i don't know why i blanked on that. It's all good.

Starting point is 01:56:05 And then when we showed up, they're like, hey, you guys aren't going to be working with them. You're going to be working with ERD, Emergency Response Division, which is a bunch of Iraqis. That's not as good. Yeah. Well, from what I was told, the Pest and Orchid were awesome to work with. Yeah. Just like on board with doing everything everything this group was not vetted they had a heavy iranian influence so we were told like hey you need to watch keep eyes in the back of your head because some of these guys could smoke you um if they wanted to so it was definitely like all right um this is going to be a little complicated. We ended up, we were in this mansion when we showed up,

Starting point is 01:56:49 which is where the team was staying. Because we were clearing the western side, we ended up having to move into Mosul and stage out of there. And we actually, we fell under the Marine Corps. We fell under MARSOC because they had operational control. So my platoon and one other SEAL platoon fell under a MARSOC, um, cause they had operational control. Uh, so my platoon and one other SEAL platoon fell under a MARSOC command, which was awesome. Uh, they, I could not say better things about them and the way they operate. Um, but they pretty much, uh, took over a couple

Starting point is 01:57:17 houses right outside of, uh, Western Mosul. And that's where we lived. Um, it was a shithole. Um, it was like, you know, but it was like everything thatole um it was like you know but it was like everything that i nothing i had done before i was like this is what i expected um you know no i think there was out of the four platoons that were there plus the head shed and all the uh administrative we had two port-a-johns no no no showers um oh wow – it was just MREs. But that's – I was sort of like this is reminiscent to the beginning of the war. Like, okay, we're back. Had you had exposure already in any previous deployments to ISIS?

Starting point is 01:57:58 No. So this is your first time with that? Yeah. Yeah, I had not – we had not gone against ISIS. It was all Taliban, al-Qaeda. So we show up there and it was literally – it was like figure it out. So we were given the partner force and they're like, hey, you guys are going to – we were doing a AAA mission, which is advised, assist, and accompany, right? So we were really there just to advise them and assist them with air assets. And then if need be, if need be, we accompany them up to like help them out to get the job done. But that's like last resort, right? The rule was we were not allowed 800 meters. We had to be 800 meters back from the front line we could not like go up

Starting point is 01:58:46 to the fighting um so what the hell are you there for to air assets so what we would do is we would go out this is like the first couple weeks and this is when i talk about figuring it out um the the first day that we started clearing was probably one of the gnarliest things I'd seen. We show up. There must have been miles of just Iraqi Humvees down stretching the line. And they were like – pretty much came over comms and was like, and go. And they just started pushing into the city and they're just blowing up like let ieds going off like you're just watching mayhem happen it was like a thing out of braveheart you're just like what the fuck

Starting point is 01:59:30 so our job is do we set back we fly a puma or a drone we look for targets with a puma or drone and then we had mortars and we would either hit them the target with mortars or call in airstrikes. Right. The problem with that was the Iraqis were getting their shit pushed in and the leadership of the Iraqis were like, hey, you need to come up there with us. And we had to. Well, we're not allowed. Oh, and then they're like, well, you guys are fucking cowards. And so you're not gaining the respect of they're like well you guys are fucking cowards and so you're not gaining the respect of the partner force that you're working with so i played this game

Starting point is 02:00:10 me and my oic played this game for about i'd say a couple weeks and we're like dude this doesn't make any sense because also what would happen is we were sitting back 800 meters and isis had drones so the is, that's nice. Yeah. It was awesome. It was like a really 360 environment. You had to not look for IEDs, VBIDs. Now you had to look up in the air.

Starting point is 02:00:33 So ISIS would fly over drones. And as soon as that would happen, we were taking mortars. Because what they would do is just get your location, boom, and start hitting you with mortars. And so we were just getting smacked with mortars each time we went out, and they were coming close. And so we would call back and be like, hey, we want to push forward because we're taking fire. And they're like, nope, just return to base.

Starting point is 02:00:56 So we just kept doing that, and I was like, dude, we're not making any ground. Like, this isn't doing anything. So myself and the OIC were like, listen, we're going to go on the offensive here. Like we're an offensive unit. This is not – we can't just sit back here and do nothing. Yeah. And so we started going out. We'd set up our position where we're supposed to, 800 meters or wherever we chose.

Starting point is 02:01:21 But then I would take an element up closer to uh i would well at first i would go recce a spot with a couple guys you go what a spot recce uh recon oh got it recon a spot find some high ground and that was you know had a good advantageous position and then i would come back and grab you know four or five guys go up there with javelins sniper rifles adubs all the organic weapons that we had at our disposal. And we started having an effect because then we were able to engage ISIS from an area that we could see them. And the partner force started moving. They started clearing because of that, because we were going up there, not only helping them out in that way, but we were showing them

Starting point is 02:02:02 like, hey, dude, we're in this with you. Yeah. Like, let's go. Like this makes – on paper, this makes all the sense in the world obviously. I see why you did it. But was there – because you're kind of entering that gray area of technically not doing the 800 meters back thing. Was – is this where there started to be like guys in the platoon like, we're not supposed to be doing this shit? Yeah, I think – well, I think from the get-go when we showed up like i talked about we only had about two or three days and then it was like go um and like i said it was definitely it was a fucking chaotic environment dude like we had our partner force there was also probably

Starting point is 02:02:39 three other partner force elements out there that belong to another platoon or you know an ODA platoon and then just then there was just like regular Iraqi police that were out there clearing so you had all these elements that you had to keep track of we use these ATACs so we would look on our phones and a lot of the partner force would have these beacons on them so you could tell where they were on the battle space. But then the problem was they would get killed. Then ISIS would have the beacons. And so you were like, well, we don't know if this is ISIS or what.

Starting point is 02:03:17 So it was just one of those like figuring it out was it was definitely drinking from a fire hose for the first couple of weeks of like, all right. But once we got into a groove and we knew what we were doing, we started pushing forward. And, yeah, there was some pushback. Well, one thing, first things first, is we were going out every day. And like I said, we were living in shitty living conditions. But what I did was, like I described before, how we would just take these mortars every day. I brought the whole platoon out probably for the first four or five days. Um, and then I realized I'm like,

Starting point is 02:03:50 this is stupid. Um, there's too many, we have too much of a footprint out here. So I was like, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to split the platoon in half, half platoon went back to remember I talked about that mansion in Erbil. I had sent, I sent half the platoon back to Erbil and was like hey you guys are going to go back rest and refit for a week then you will come change out with the other half of the platoon and then they will get to go rest and refit for a week myself the oic and i think two other individuals were we stayed out there the whole time so that right there i think caused some issues um unbeknownst to me at the time.

Starting point is 02:04:25 I thought I was like doing them a favor or just being like, hey, this just makes sense. But what happens is these guys would go back and rest and refit and they'd bitch about whatever because there was no one there to control the bitching. It was just like they – I call them hate circles, right? They're just like, oh, they start complaining and they all get you know riled up did you see this in your previous years and other platoons did you ever see stuff like that happen yeah dude yeah i mean here's the thing if guys aren't bitching then they're plotting right so it's fine it's like if they're complaining great it's but it only you only allow it to get to a certain point and then you have to squash it and let like, just shut the fuck up.

Starting point is 02:05:05 Like this is the job. Yeah. So, you know, I've seen before – you know, when I was part of it, we called it the E5 mafia. You're in the E5 mafia. You think you know it all and you're like complaining about the leadership and blah, blah, blah. It's just natural. It happens, right? But the thing is it never gets like unprofessional. It stays within the E5 mafia and that's it. It doesn't go outside the platoon or even to the leadership.

Starting point is 02:05:33 Yeah. So this is sort of like what was going on. real quick like when i look at your story after the fact as you're going to go through this and drop the details once i really learned what actually happened which was i i think the first one i saw was sean ryan's podcast on that which was excellent i was like holy shit you can't just believe what you hear on tv yeah you know there were so many little things like teeny tiny things and you'll end up describing some of them where it's like in hindsight nothing was wrong there but you could see how that then looks if you just take that and lift that and say oh but he did this yeah like there's there's these little moments where i'm just thinking of myself as a human and i'm like i would never think anything of that and then you see it in some different like lit up context you know like if you're in the bar and you see a lot of ugly girls but like you go like this and one of them looks hotter yeah you know what i

Starting point is 02:06:28 mean like it's almost like or looks uglier once you see it because she looked hot because all the other ones were ugly like it's almost like that with your story it's a bunch of tiny little red flags that really weren't i didn't think were that big of a deal um and and like i've said this in other podcasts i give them the benefit of the doubt as far as they had never been to combat and then they get thrown into this and it was a very chaotic and kinetic deployment um but the amount of like atrocities like the amount of atrocities that were witnessed on that deployment i had had never seen. And I had seen my fair share, and this was – ISIS was like on another level. What kinds of things did you see?

Starting point is 02:07:10 Well, just to like give you – so even the partner force. So this wasn't an American-led war, right? We were there doing advising, assisting, and accompanying. So the Iraqis were like the lead. We lived with them and so where we live in this house was attached to another room that the iraqis had and that was their torture chamber um so we went to bed every night listening to isis just like get tortured killed i mean it was like normal it was like okay um which was kind of weird, but nobody – it was sort of like, oh, this is happening, but whatever.

Starting point is 02:07:48 It's not our jurisdiction. Nobody – yeah. I don't – it was like, what are we going to report? And then on the flip side of that is as we're clearing through Missoula, I mean it wasn't uncommon. Like when I talked about going to recon areas, like you have to climb over mounds of dead bodies to get into buildings. They would pile up women and kids. And then they would – Pile up women and kids.

Starting point is 02:08:14 Yeah, dead bodies to block off entrances. And then they – at one point we had pulled into a – it was like downtown near the museum in Mosul. But there was a park and there was kids' heads on spikes. Kids. Kids, yeah. Decapitated kids' heads on spikes. And then they would – a couple times they would – they'd probably be like three or four hundred meters away from us and with a field in front of us and then they would send out a group of like 15 women and kids

Starting point is 02:08:52 some men sprinting towards us and then mow them down and like they were trying to get us to come out of our position to go help which it worked the iraqis the partner force would go out there and try and help them and they would get smoked So this is the kind of shit that was happening and this was like normal. Oh, yeah, it just became it was like Yep, this is the environment. We're in this is this enemy is they don't give a shit about anything You're your guy your guy Ephraim was actually there at the same time. He had just left the seals you ever see that video He was there. So I so i was he lived so here's a funny story uh the guy ephraim was working with um it's like a human ranger yeah he's uh he was a ranger but then he started um burma burma yeah yeah he's got his own organization yes yeah

Starting point is 02:09:41 i actually was wrecking a place one time and I turn and there's a truck coming, a pickup truck. And I'm like, what the fuck? And I saw it was a white dude in there. And he stopped and he was like, hey. And it was a guy who I didn't – I was like, what are you doing? And he's like, oh, we're up front. They're on the front line like saving people. And he got out and prayed over me right um, right then for five minutes and got back

Starting point is 02:10:06 in his truck and went to the front lines. Whoa. Yeah. And so Ephraim was with that dude, uh, while we were there. So like they actually, yeah, we actually assisted them, um, at one point, um, we'll call it, I think they called it some Willie, uh, some white phosphorus rounds or something one time when they were trying to, um, yeah well they show on we can't show that video on the screen but people can go google it when when he got shot yeah in the leg behind the tank yeah which by the way insane cinematography on this whole thing i'm like dude you couldn't have set that up any better but wild to look at it because he was doing he was in the middle of exactly what you just laid out where they would mow the people down yes and you can see in the background of

Starting point is 02:10:50 the video there's literally just piles of bodies and then there was one living little girl and that's who like he and his guys went and saved but there were there's no like the isis guys are the closest things to like actual animals I've ever personally studied. And like I studied the Nazis a lot and I'd say they're up there too. Yeah, pure evil. Yeah. And so that is – that was just the environment, right? And that's why I'm like for these guys on their first deployment, like it's a lot to take in.

Starting point is 02:11:22 Oh, yeah. first deployment like it's a lot to take in oh yeah right so i think once we started really rolling i think some of the guys were like dude i'm not why are we going out all the time like one of us is they first they were worried about one of us is going to get killed like this is you know we can't we should just be staying back like we're told and uh i think there was some of that discrepancy. And then also the – obviously the living conditions. And then I just think like – like I – a couple of them are like we don't agree with this mission. And here's the other – oh, here's the other issue is we were – what we were doing and tasked with is really a conventional mission right we i mean we were driving pure daylight into missoula every day like no sneaky peeky it's like here we are we're in giant matt v's so i mean that i think for them some of them are like dude this isn't our job like this is not

Starting point is 02:12:17 what i signed up to be a seal like we should be hitting you know targets at night going in sneaky peaky doing this and it's always like having to explain to them like dude this this is what we're tasked with it's the job it's yeah and we're not it's we're not going to stop just because you're uncomfortable with the mission or like how we're conducting business and i get it i'd rather go in at night too but we're not allowed uh there's no we in order to go in at night you had to have air assets and they were, the fighting was so strong and fierce during the day. Like the air assets were like, no, we can't just keep going all night. Right.

Starting point is 02:12:51 And you only have so much ordinance you're allowed that you can drop. We would go Winchester on ordinance every day from dropping, uh, hellfires or whatever else. I mean, that's how much ordinance we were dropping on a daily basis. Plus using organic weapons. So I think all that mixed in. That's what started this hate circle. But it really – I think that's the other misconception that's been put out. There's like the whole platoon like turned on him or this.

Starting point is 02:13:20 It was three individuals. Yeah. You're still friends with some of the other guys in the platoon. Yeah, I still talk to them. Yeah, I still talk to most of the guys in the platoon every once in a while. But yeah, these three individuals were really like the cancer that sort of – and they tried to pull everybody else in. Right. But all this – like this is not things that I was paying attention to. I wasn't really like seeing it, right? Do you think you should have or like kind of missed it or is that really hindsight 2020? I think, yes, I didn't do it. If I perfect world scenario, I would have fired Craig Miller as the LPO. Um, so here's the other,

Starting point is 02:13:59 um, he wasn't my LPO at first. I had another guy that was my L my lpo which is he's sort of like the second in charge below me right well he had picked up chief right before we deployed and so he was doing it that he is the reason like everything was running as smooth as as it could because he would nip things in the butt for me if like guys were talking or doing whatever he would smack it down uh but then our sister platoon platoon chief got shot in the chest uh and so they needed a platoon chief so he got i sent him over there i was like hey you're ready go take over that platoon so then craig miller was next in line and that's really where the downfall of like he what he didn't do was actually step up and be an LPO. He was still one of the boys with

Starting point is 02:14:47 these two other individuals that were toxic. And so he was just feeding into that when really he should have been nipping it in the butt, um, and being like, Hey, stop. And again, you don't really know. And I don't know this is, yeah, I don't really know this is going on. Um, I'm more focused on day to day, like, Hey, we're going out again. I got to go to the night, the amount of sleep, there was no sleep, um, for a long time. So we would come back from a mission and then we, myself and the OIC would have to go debrief and then they would bring the Iraqis in and they would brief us on their movements the next day.

Starting point is 02:15:20 And then we would attempt to advise them, which they didn't ever fucking listen to anything. But those meetings would go till one in the morning and then we're up at four, 4.30 to go back out again. So it was like, this went on for weeks and weeks and weeks. It sounds like the combination of like lack of sleep, lack of, are we on the front line? Are we not on the front line? But there's people getting,

Starting point is 02:15:42 there's civilians getting mowed down every day. You're trying to work with another military that also is like kind of doing things that are against the geneva convention and you can't do anything about it feels like the it's just a chaotic it's a very chaotic environment yeah right like a lot going on i mean in the reality though i think we handled it very well i mean i think that you think that once we got into our groove of like, hey, we're making some effect here, and then the partner force started loving us. I mean, I had the general, General Abbas, who came and testified for me at my trial. He flew all the way from Iraq to testify for me to be like, these guys are lying. I was here. Oh, he was there that day? Yeah. Wow. He's the one who brought the dead – or the ISIS – like not even prisoner, wounded ISIS dude to us. But he ended up really liking me because he knew I was like, yeah, well, what do you need done? I'm like, all right, we'll go get it done.

Starting point is 02:16:36 And so he really like took a liking to me and was like telling the MARSOC command like I want this guy out with me every day. Him and his platoon are doing good things. So everything was rocking and rolling. It was just behind the scenes there was this. Burgeoning. Yeah, a little cancer that was spreading. And I really just didn't know how bad it was until probably five months in, four, four and a half, five months in. Was this like a six, seven month deployment? This was seven. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:17:07 Okay. So how far in did the event that eventually became the whole thing happen? This, and this might've been three months in. So. And none of it, there weren't any problems right afterwards. All that happened way later, right? Yeah. All this – yeah. There was no – nothing was brought up ever. So these guys who were going to later claim some of the things that you're going to lay out served with you for another four months in combat? Yes.

Starting point is 02:17:36 Okay. All right. Yeah. And this is where the ridiculousness of their lies like really just comes to fruition because of the things they were saying. So yeah, Leslie, by the way, can you pull up the Wikipedia page on Eddie while we're at it? Cause we're going to have to go bullet point by bullet point at some point here, but that Wikipedia page is way off. Yeah, I know. I know. Like they didn't put in any of the stuff that came out at court. It's just like whatever. Yeah, of course. But anyway, so that, that day.

Starting point is 02:18:05 So yeah, we, so that about three months in three and a half months in, we had been clearing, um, from South to North. And so we ended up butting up against old Mosul, um, which is a very historic little place in Mosul, right? It's biblical. Um, and that's where ISIS was really just embedded in down. They were using that as a stronghold. And so we were losing our partner force daily, trying to like butt up against that. So we decided like, hey, let's change the way we're advancing. We completely moved north of Mosul

Starting point is 02:18:42 and then we were clearing from north to south. So we switched, switched directions on them. And so it was the first day that we were going in, moving from north to south. Uh, and it was, dude,

Starting point is 02:18:54 it couldn't have been a better, a better day. Uh, we pulled up and there was this little, uh, village town, I guess, before you really got into the city.

Starting point is 02:19:03 And we were told before we got there, like, Hey, there's a bunch of ISIS dudes in that town. Um, just so you know, I'm like, all right, town i guess before you really got into the city and we were told before we got there like hey there's a bunch of isis dudes in that town um just so you know i'm like all right check so we pulled up that morning probably like at 5 5 36 in the morning set up um our map v's they were set up behind these perfect positions behind these walls where just the turret could look over i had sniper positions set up and what we were supposed to do is wait for the iraqis to start clearing pushing forward and you know observe and you know uh help out when we

Starting point is 02:19:31 could right but iraqis in typical iraqi fashion were taking their time uh you know seven o'clock comes around they're still like oh we're not ready and we're watching isis just set up we're like these dudes are maneuvering around this town like pkms everything's they know what's coming so i was like you know fuck it like let's do it and we just started engaging them uh how many guys would you say there were probably i mean 30 to 40 um and and they're in the middle of civilians and stuff too no this was pretty like this town was pretty desolate. Okay.

Starting point is 02:20:06 It seemed – I mean there were probably some civilians in there, but it was like clear as day. Like they weren't even hiding it. It was like they're setting up positions. And I don't think they knew where we exactly were or what we had because we were only like 500, 600 meters away from them. And so we just started lighting them up. And that went on for probably 10, 15 minutes of just guys having a great time. Just turkey shoot, hitting dudes left and right. And then when we got done with that, the Iraqis then were like, oh, we're going to advance. So that obviously went pretty quick because everybody was dead.

Starting point is 02:20:44 But they ended up hitting up against a building it is now time to go yeah they're all dead well they ended up coming to this building that had or not they hadn't come to it yet but there was a building that had about 15 isis fighters hiding out in there and um one of our guys uh got that got that over, uh, comms. He was like, Hey, there's Intel, there's dues in there. So we dropped two hellfires into it. Um, yeah. And so the Iraqis then pushed up to that building and there was one survivor and that was that ISIS fighter.

Starting point is 02:21:18 So they ended up throwing him on the hood of their Humvee and driving him back to us. And so they had never done that before or like, you know, and so they brought him back. They threw him on the ground. This, I mean, oh, you know, 17, 18 years old. I don't, you know, nobody knows his age, but definitely, definitely not 12 or 13 like the media was putting out. This was a. They were saying, I didn't even know they were saying that. Oh, the age, the age switched around so many times but this this you know he was a kid 16 17 18 but he was an isis

Starting point is 02:21:50 fighter um but he was on death's door i mean you could see just looking at him you're like dude this he's not gonna make it what kind of injuries like like uh definitely internal a lot of internal uh injuries from the explosion i think he had a massive laceration on his left leg. And then he wasn't breathing, having agonal breathing. And so we were, you know, they pulled him off and we were like, all right, what, what are we going to do with this dude? So I was just like, get my med bag, like treat him, like treat him until he he's gone right um because the other thing that was just going to happen is they were just going to take him back and torture him or do whatever um they already i think that there was like some iraqis already pulling out their knives like

Starting point is 02:22:34 ready to you know licking their chops so it's another thing we didn't hear in the media that part yeah so we ended up medically treating this dude. Um, I, I cracked him, which is, uh, gave him a crack authority out of me. Is that like a trachea? Yes. So it's where you,

Starting point is 02:22:51 if he's not breathing. So like he had agonal breathing, he had, you know, blast exposure. So I gave him that airway, uh, put that in.

Starting point is 02:22:59 And then, um, the other medic, Corey Scott came up. Uh, he was helping out. We ended up giving him two chest tubes and an interosseous

Starting point is 02:23:09 because we could not get an IV to get fluids in them, so we gave him an IO in the chest plate to get some fluids in. By that time, he was pretty much dead. I was running back. By this time they were there was two other seals working on them that wanted to be medics or like wanted to get some training and that's we pretty

Starting point is 02:23:31 much were like all right yeah go ahead and the other medical assist you and help you do a chest tube or the io um and that's the best training you can get it's a real world experience so i was going back between my oic and that and my oicIC's like, hey, what's the status? And I was like, oh, I think he's dead. And he's like, well, just check. So I went up. I thumped him, and you couldn't really tell. And then I sort of smacked him to see if he'd get a response. And then I took a knife out, and I poked him in the side, like a hard jab.

Starting point is 02:24:00 And didn't break skin, didn't do any of that, no response. Was that kind of standard like that's something you had had to do before i hadn't uh no i think i at the time i was like dude is this guy dead or what like because i couldn't even i thump and he was so out of it i just was like if there's no stimuli from this then he's gone and we can just like forget about this dude like he's it's done so that's all that was done um he was dead and so we actually were requested to go back to base uh not too long after that because the iraqis it was like at one o'clock in the afternoon and of course they're like we're done for the day uh and so we're like hey the iraqis don't want to push anymore um

Starting point is 02:24:44 we'd like to you know return to base rtb and they were like hey hey, the Iraqis don't want to push anymore. We'd like to return to base, RTB. And they were like, hey, no, we want you guys to stay out there for another whatever, how many hours just in case. And we're like, OK. So we were out there. Nothing was going on. We were flying the drone, like trying to find targets to hit with mortars or air assets. And that's when the fuckery started happening. were bored and that dead body was there so guys were going up like taking pictures with it and just joking

Starting point is 02:25:13 around i mean and then we ended up taking a group picture with it yeah right which you've admitted was yes i'll admit it was not professional uh and i you know that's one thing i was like hey you know i'll take the hit on that for sure um you also said though you know and and again i don't think this is a good thing like we shouldn't be doing that but this is something that guys did sometimes like in the past since the invention of the camera well yeah i mean in wartime i mean you could go and look up world war ii vietnam like all these things it's been done in the past. Right. Um, but I will say on a professional level, no, it's not, it's not a professional thing to do. Um, but we did it. Right. So we ended up, you know, just, we're messing around. That was it. Like literally

Starting point is 02:26:01 that that's all that was done was taking pictures and um i think the the guys were a couple of guys were flying the drone like around him seeing how close they could get to his face this is how bored you know bored team guys is there any shit talk going on with the guys who you felt were more cancerous at this time is there any signal that anything's wrong nothing is said like and this is what's hilarious craig miller who's the head of the cancerous thing, right? And he's the one that NSW holds up in this high, like, oh, such a moral and ethical dude. He was over there kicking the guy in the face, like doing shit to him too, right? Is there any video?

Starting point is 02:26:36 Like someone was taking video at some point, but do we have any video of that? So there's – here's what's – this is what's crazy is TC Byrne had his helmet cam or his helmet cam on the whole time. This is as I, so there's video of me coming up with the med bag, opening it, starting to work on that guy. Right. But then it shuts off at a certain point and that's it where I, I i was like where's the rest of that video and i know it was there i know that everything was recorded but what tc craig miller and them did is delete

Starting point is 02:27:15 everything from that point oh tc was one of the guys yeah um so that's why there's no rest of that video and i i didn't have the video that was they were in control of it um but uh no that's why there's no rest of that video. And I didn't have the video. They were in control of it. Is that standard for someone to have a helmet, always have at least one guy with a helmet cam on the teams, or was that just random that he happened to have it? It was more the guys wanted just to get content. To get content.

Starting point is 02:27:40 Yeah, like there was probably three or four of them that had uh helmet cams gary v would be proud there you go yeah content war content but that's even i i briefed them on that too like i was like hey you guys shouldn't have like yeah this isn't we're not out here making fucking youtube videos like why i don't understand why you guys they were so fixated on putting my camera. So like if we got contacted, I'm like, hey, contact right. The first thing you do is face right with your rifle at the ready. They would go right to their camera and then –

Starting point is 02:28:14 That's what you would do, Jim, right? You'd throw the camera on first? It was not. And then once again – Maybe. Generational thing as well I guess. But yeah, that was – that that video like there was probably more to it uh but they deleted it and i'm sure it would show a lot more and the reason they deleted

Starting point is 02:28:32 is because they would be uh culpable for for their actions as well very convenient yeah too it was all there was a similar thing like with the with the blackwater four guys where the where the drone conveniently turned off yes well i forget what the minutes was i'll get it wrong but like you know before the the shit goes down so it's kind of the same thing with you that's pretty fascinating yeah and i you know and i to this day i don't know who deleted that video it could have been ncis that did it it could have been the prosecution i mean there was so much corruption and deceit going on like i it could have been any of them but um but no fireworks

Starting point is 02:29:05 right after everything's cool so the only thing that happened afterwards is we went back and the craig miller had uh a little meeting with the guys which the lpl usually does you know just to like delegate like hey this is what we need to do um geo my good friend geo who was a marine that was attached to us um and you know i'll just say rest in peace he committed suicide last month uh but he was in there and he heard craig say those pictures that we took are war crimes and we need to get like that's not right and even though he was in the pictures right which okay but geo, but Gio, I guess, was like, hey, dude, you should not throw the word war crimes around. That's not a war crime.

Starting point is 02:29:51 And you're you know, this that's not right. I wasn't involved in that meeting, but I got told afterwards. Corey Scott's actually the one who came up to me and was like, hey, some, there's some, you know, shit going on about the pictures. Guys are sort of like divide, like, I guess Craig's like, we should delete them. Other guys are like,

Starting point is 02:30:10 I don't want to delete mine. I want to keep it. But Corey's the one that came up and told you. Yes. Interesting. So I was like, all right. So I ended up calling all the E sixes,

Starting point is 02:30:18 like the, um, and the platoon and had a meeting with them. I was like, what's going on? And they were like, Hey, the guys are worried about the pictures. And I was like, okay, delete them. I was like, just get rid of them. And I even said, I was like what's going on and they were like hey the guys are worried about the pictures

Starting point is 02:30:25 and i was like okay delete them i was like just get rid of them and i even said i was like yeah probably shouldn't have done it get rid of them and call it what it is the problem is some guys were like nope i'm keeping it like they liked it and then some guys wanted to delete it so all i knew is i put out delete it it, and we're continue mission, whatever. There's another day. And that was like the end of it. It never brought up again. There was no discussions. The only other time that during that deployment where I was like, all right, what the fuck's going on is when I lived.

Starting point is 02:30:59 So I lived with the OIC and the J.O., who's a junior officer, lived with us as well when he was there. And I had asked to borrow his phone. We had in-country phones, and I wanted to text somebody back at Herbio to make sure they brought up some supply. I forget what it was when they were coming back the next week. I had opened up his phone, and it was a text thread already on there. And I saw my name right off the bat, and was like oh and so of course my curiosity i'm like reading it and it's craig miller uh delay and i think doltin they're like you know fuck eddie like it was just talking all this shit about me and like we we don't want to craig should be in

Starting point is 02:31:44 charge we want to go out with you know blah blah and this is to this junior officer so the junior officer walks in and i was like hey what's this and so right away he's like oh i don't know he's shit himself yeah so i was like this needs to be nipped in the butt um so i called another meeting went down i actually drove to urbeel i call i canceled the operation the next day i was like we're gonna solve this so i drove up there with my oic nice scenic drives through the yeah countryside that's right um and so we i had a meeting with all of them and i again it was it came to like i was like what is the issue here what is the problem and the one guy who was talking the most trash on the text thread he's just like oh i was like what is the issue here what is the problem and the one guy who was talking

Starting point is 02:32:26 the most trash on the text read he was just like oh i was like let's mean he's like i don't know i'm just pissed and i was like well let's talk is this corey no this is another guy named joe who really was just like not part of it he was just getting wrapped up in it and so i talked to him i'm like dude what is what are the issues and really he there was no issue he even admitted it he's like dude it's just we're coming back here and you know the hate circle starts and whatever you know and i'm like okay i was like well do you understand the mission i'm like why we're doing this every day and he's like yes and i was like so you guys are just tired whatever and he's like yeah and so i was I was like, okay. I was like,

Starting point is 02:33:05 is there anything else? No. Cool. We went back out. Uh, everything was like, Hey, let's, I realized, you know, I think we all agreed at that point. I was like, you know, like I said, we're like five months in, uh, Hey, we're all tired. We're everybody's beat down. We've been working hard. I'm like, but let's finish this deployment off strong clean slates let's just like try and cut the drum out um you know i was like i will try and fix things i guess you know on my end like you know um but the reality is this we we cannot stop going until the mission is complete they were obviously on this chain though they're complaining about you like in general yeah not just they're not pointing to like the one event with the guy that's not even like discussed in

Starting point is 02:33:49 that or is it which guy like like the like the the the isis guy no and that's not discussed none of that is discussed they're just literally saying they're so and what i found out later is this is from geo and some other guys in platoon everything that happened on that deployment was my fault it could have rained and they're like fucking eddie like they were putting everything on me i was making them go out every day uh this you know everything bad that happened to the point where if they lost something they're like eddie stole it they that started becoming a rumor they're like he's stealing things from people and i I didn't know about this either. I was like, until I got back.

Starting point is 02:34:27 Was this like Red Bulls and Power Bars and shit? Dude, this is so petty. Again, the ugly girl on the bar thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, well, at the time, it was like Craig had lost a pair of sunglasses. Immediately, Eddie stole them. Oh, you stole them? And here's the thing.

Starting point is 02:34:47 He found them under his bed two weeks later, but didn't like say, just like, oh, somebody put... You put them there? He said somebody, yeah. Put them back. He said, I put them back. Yeah, yeah. So I stole them for two weeks, and then I put them back.

Starting point is 02:35:01 These are all just... Were they at least Versace's? Like, were they nice? These are, I don't know, the are typical seal gators is what they were. Gators. What were they running you, like 50 bucks? Oh, no. Those are about 150.

Starting point is 02:35:11 They were expensive. Oh, that's up there. That's out of my price range. Which is a misdemeanor. Yes. It could have been charged with that theft. Yes, that's right. But he did return it.

Starting point is 02:35:19 So it's only half price. And then, oh, here's another one. Ridiculous. So I'll skip to – so all that was going on, right? We had that final meeting. We ended up clearing Mosul. We had about three weeks left of deployment. And so it was nothing else was going on.

Starting point is 02:35:38 So I was like, hey, this is a perfect chance. Take this three weeks, decompress while we're here. We're probably not going to get tasked with too much, but we, we did end up getting tasked, um, with, so the next city they were going to take was Talifar. Uh, they were like, Hey, we want you guys to go get eyes on Talifar and just like observe, report back anything. Um, simple, simple task, right? We go up to the forward line of advance, um, and just keep eyes on it. So I went out there twice and it was, you know, you're watching just tell a far, some

Starting point is 02:36:11 dudes mill about, but you really like, that's not a chance, you know, you're not going to drop ordinance or do anything kinetic. It's like just reporting back. So I told Craig, I was like, so you, you know, everybody wants him to be in charge. I was like, Hey, you go out on this next one, be the tech lead. I was like, you're running the show. I'm going to stay back. And he was like, oh, okay. They go out. They end up killing four innocent civilians they come back and i get this gets reported to me i get a phone call like hey this happened so they show back up and i'm like what the fuck and so what happened is another

Starting point is 02:36:54 guy josh varens who was one of the dudes he said he spotted an isis fighter a thousand meters away aiming a gun at him so what they did is they which is it's a thousand meters aiming a gun yes that's through his uh sniper rifle you know they threw they launched a switchblade which is a remote control uh little airplane with a um ordinance on it which you can control and fly into you know know, whoever or a building. They launched that and land that into the group of people that Bryn said was, you know, pointing guns at him. It turns out it was like a couple of kids and two dudes and they smoked them all. So they weren't aiming guns at him?

Starting point is 02:37:40 No, these were civilians they so i get i get told this and this is i felt this is like probably the most pissed i was because i didn't go out the one time i didn't go out and i was like this is on me like i should have fucking been there but either way they come back i'm like what happened um they tell me what happened i I'm like, listen, the problem is you guys, they, they, they lied and reported up something else to MARSOC. So I had to drive down to the MARSOC command and I'm trying to smooth this out and I'm trying to help them out. I'm like, dude, how, what are we going to do about this?

Starting point is 02:38:15 And they're like, they're like, dude, these guys are fucked. Like they reported this and this is what actually happened. So I went back and I even helped them out. I was like, dude, you guys need to get what happened. Get your story straight. And you're going to get investigated when we get back. But you need to stick to your story. And that's it.

Starting point is 02:38:33 I was like, I don't – I have – my name is Paul. This is between you all. I was like, I wasn't there. But this is my advice to you. This is what you need to do. Ended up they got investigated when they got back and it all got squashed like sort of just like whatever yes um and which is this that incident wasn't allowed to be brought up in my trial either why not because surprisingly enough before the trial they classified it and they're like oh that's classified now and so were those

Starting point is 02:39:02 guys witnesses at the trial yeah against you so no chance to impeach the witness with a very clear and they had full immunity yeah so actually they classified it before was it right before the trial yeah because we were like we have evidence of the really only war crime that happened was done by one of the witnesses. Accusers. The accusers. Yeah. And that's when they were like,

Starting point is 02:39:28 and that's classified. And you tried to help them. Yeah. I mean, like any chief's got to look out for his guys and be like, hey, I don't want to see anybody get burned. This is war. I've been doing it enough. I'm like, I realize mistakes happen.

Starting point is 02:39:42 So yeah, I mean, we ended up finishing off the deployment. Um, is it tense at all? Like, cause you, yeah, the last, the last three weeks were just weird, man. Like I, I was like, I did not like these dudes. Uh, and I was, you know, but I was like, Hey, you got to finish out the deployment. I really just didn't, I wasn't hanging out with them. These guys had built a bar up on the roof of the mansion because by this time, we're back in Rebeal. So we're done. We're allowed to go back to Rebeal. We're chilling in this mansion.

Starting point is 02:40:12 We're finally like living in AC and have all the amenities for the last three weeks of deployment, which I was fine with. I'm like, dude, I'm just going to work out, get healthy. I had lost I don't know how much weight during that deployment. So these guys built a bar up on the roof. And so they were going up there every night just getting hammered and like having a good time. But I wouldn't – I was like, dude, I'm not going up there. I had no like desire to hang around them. I was so sick to my stomach of just like dealing with their bullshit that I was like, dude, I'm just going to finish this out and be done with it.

Starting point is 02:40:43 And so – But everyone else you're okay with yeah like the other dudes you know i mean it was sort of like hey what's up blah blah and i think everybody at that point was you know they're worn out and everybody's just like dude trying to do their own thing and uh just get ready to go home right you know um it wasn't like super intense in the house it was just known like it was by that time it was known that Craig Miller and them didn't like me and I didn't like them so it was like oh the chief doesn't like the LPO there's a bad relationship there and I even what month are we in here if you don't run this will be near the

Starting point is 02:41:15 the six going on seven yeah but what month of the year oh like it's just still No, this is 20 – maybe it is 2017 still. Like either late 2017 or early 2018. Yeah. I apologize. I can't remember. No, it's all good. Just like in that range. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:41:35 Yeah. Okay. So it might have been 2017 still. Yeah, that makes sense because we got there at the beginning of the year and then we got home later on, like seven months later. So I think it was until 2017. Okay. But the last few weeks, you're just kind of staying separate from them. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:41:54 You're doing their thing. You're doing yours and less actions going on. Yeah, and I'm dealing with sending the upcoming – like the platoon that was coming to relieve us. I'm sending back reports to the platoon chief, just, you know, doing what I got to do. Um, and then, uh, my, um, you know, I'm talking to my wife, Andrea and she, our daughter was, uh, 16 at the time and they were having some issues. They were, you know, she's a teenage girl.

Starting point is 02:42:24 A 16 year old girl mom no yeah like and so andrea god bless her man like i have never come home from a deployment or i've actually always stayed the late latest one to stay on deployment like she's never asked me for anything and she was like i need help i can't like i'm done you know she was i think she was just fed up so i was like all right i'm gonna see if i'll get on the first flight out of here to get home I need help. I can't like, I'm done. You know, she was, I think she was just fed up. So I was like, all right, I'm going to see if I can, I'll get on the first flight out of here to get home, which is actually like not unheard of, but usually I would stay to the last flight. Right. Right. But I had like, uh, ran it up to the master chief of the team.

Starting point is 02:42:58 I'm like, Hey dude, uh, my wife's, you know, we're having some family issues, whatever. Is it okay if I go home on the first flight? I was like, I already sent everything I need to for the next platoon coming in. And he was like, oh yeah, dude. Yeah, for sure. So now they're going to say you abandoned your platoon. So I went home on the first flight. They're like, this guy, piece.

Starting point is 02:43:14 So when the, up, the, the next platoon came in, it was like, dude, Eddie's a piece of shit. Like he left on the first, it was, you know, know and that's and then they went to my oic so when i left on the first flight my oic told me they all went to him and they were like this is a guy you got along with yes they're like eddie's been manipulating you the whole time you you know he's fucking you know just oh he was also talking shit about you like these are all like high school rumors that they're pulling and and j and Jake, who was the OIC, he told me this when he got home and he was like, Hey dude, this is what they're doing. Um, and they almost had me, but then I was like, what the fuck? You know, this isn't, this doesn't make any sense.

Starting point is 02:43:54 And I was like, dude, okay. So I waited until the whole platoon got home and then I had one last little meeting with them. And I was like, all all right you guys are still carrying this bs on i'm now i'm hearing from other guys and other platoons that you guys are going around telling them like that i'm a thief and that i was doing like there was multiple rumors that they had spread so i'm like i want to address like please tell me what did i steal i i want it because i've never been labeled as a thief.

Starting point is 02:44:25 And I took offense to that. The other rumors that they were spreading that I was dangerous and tactically aggressive, too aggressive. I was like, great. I'm like, when you guys are platoon chiefs, you run it your way. You're like, thank you for that. With all of your vast experience. But I was like, I do want to know what I stole. And that's when they were like, well, there was a Red Bull in the fridge six months ago.

Starting point is 02:44:52 And it became a big deal because it went missing. And I'm like, dude, I don't even know if I took that Red Bull or not, man. I was like, is this seriously? And this is how petty it is, dude. You imagine telling us that george patton yeah exactly so then i had arranged during that deployment i got a company called badass boxes to send us care packages twice a month and i mean these were legit care packages like anything i sent this chick she sent to us right so what i would do is go around the whole platoon

Starting point is 02:45:22 like hey what do you guys want what do you guys do you guys want? And then they accused me of taking power bars out of the care packages that weren't mine, which I was like, dude, I'm the one who ordered all this shit for you guys. So then it went to power bars. Yeah. Then the sunglasses thing got brought up. Oh, my God. It was like, you stole my sunglasses. And Craig Miller's like, you stole them. And I'm like, well, I don't have them.

Starting point is 02:45:44 He's like, well, I have them. I have them now. And then the J.O., Tom McNeil. How did these guys become SEALs? Exactly. Well, Tom McNeil, who's the junior officer, was like, he didn't even say it. Somebody said it for him. They're like, you owe somebody money for a haircut.

Starting point is 02:46:03 And I was like like i only got one haircut on that point near the end of the point before i redeployed and i was like tom you paid for it i went with you because we went out into a iraqi mall and got it done you went to an iraqi mall and got a haircut yeah oh dude best haircuts you'll ever get oh by far you learn something new every day. It's a man spa. They use an AK to fucking – They massage you. They burn all the hair on your ears. It's legit.

Starting point is 02:46:30 Iraqi salons. Yeah, bro. Stick it on the list. It's worked for me for many years. All right. So, yeah, I look at Tom. I'm like, I do owe you money for that haircut. You paid for it.

Starting point is 02:46:41 I forgot. He's like, oh, I don't even care. I don't even care. I'm like, obviously, you do because he's saying it that for you so this is all stuff that's built up so at the end of this meeting i let them all get it out i'm like is there anything else and they're like no i'm like well here's the deal i was like i know you don't like me i was like i don't like you i was like i haven't liked some of you for a long time i was like i think you're weak i think you like you're cowards i was like but here's what long time. I was like, I think you're fucking weak. I think you

Starting point is 02:47:05 fucking like you're cowards. I was like, but here's what we can do. I was like, there's a fight room right over here. I was like, let's go in there and I'll fight every one of you. And you're good. You'll beat me up. I'm like, I'm not gonna be able to take every one of you. But I was like, let's just get it out, get it out of our system and like move on. And none of them would step up. They were like, and you know, I was like, let's go. So if I was like, all right, if you guys don't want to solve it that way, then I suggest you drop this baby bullshit, go decompress for the next, cause you're going to have two weeks of leave. And I was like, this is normal. I'm like, this is normal coming back from a combat deployment. You're stressed. You're, you're, you have to decompress. Everybody's worked up. I'm like, just go do that

Starting point is 02:47:49 and we'll call it. And I was like, and I told him, I was like, I'm your platoon chief. I'm still going to take care of you if you guys need, because you know, guys go to different commands or you have to give orders. I'm like, if you guys need help getting to a certain place, I will do what I can for you. Um, I even got, so I had Craig Miller, who was, uh, the LPO. I went to a ranking board where all the chiefs have to rank the LPOs to see who's going to pick up chief or whatever. And I ranked him number three. I kept him there. And I came to, what was funny is I came down and he's sitting there in the, uh, team room. He's like, Oh, did you just come from the board? I'm like, yep. And he's like, in the uh team room he's like oh did you just come from the board i'm like yep and he's like oh oh and he's like milling about i'm like do you want to know where i ranked you craig and he's like yeah i was like you got number three dude i'm like i got you

Starting point is 02:48:34 number three which is good you're gonna get promoted and he's like oh man and this is the weirdest part he's like i'm just so sorry i don't know man and i was like listen dude i was like i me and you are never going to be friends i was like we were i i i was cool with you until you accused me you accused me of stealing from you dude to the whole platoon i was like we cannot like i'm we're work companions i'm gonna help you out but i was like off duty dude you don't know my fucking name i'm like i i don't i don't respect you and that's it and so you know maybe i can and that's another thing i could handle differently but at that point i was like dude fuck you guys unless he's fucking dying over here so i handle that one differently he you know we ended up dispersing i got sent to trade it to be the uh senior enlisted um advisor

Starting point is 02:49:27 for urban combat and while i'm there this is about seven months after the deployment so midway through 18 maybe something like that yeah i get it was probably like march or april of 18 okay um i get pulled aside and they're like hey you're under investigation and i was like for what you're like the fucking power bars they're like laws of armed conflict war crime and i'm like oh what is i was like so what do i okay i'm like and i don't even know what it's like yeah what it's about at this point and And so I'm like, what do I do? And they're like, well, we're pulling you from your position. You're not going to be the senior enlisted advisor. We're just going to put you in this office until this thing, this investigation

Starting point is 02:50:12 gets settled. So I'm like, all right. Um, well, can you give me some advice? And this was like the master chief who was in charge and the new master chief that was in charge of me. And he's like, nope. He's like, you're on your're on your own um he's like and this is what he said to me in the office he's like if they're saying what you did is true then you need to own up to it and i'm like well i need to know what they're saying he said i'm not talking to you and so right away i got this like vibe like oh shit sinister yeah you're you're already accused like i'm guilty right right? Yeah, yeah. So I end up going and hiring – well, I went and talked to a buddy and I was like, hey, dude, what do I do?

Starting point is 02:50:54 He said, you need to get a lawyer on standby just in case. And you don't even know what you're defending yet. No. But I ended up – he had a lawyer that he hooked me up with who was a retired lieutenant colonel. And he belonged to a group called United American Patriots. It was a nonprofit, kind of like what we do now, except I'll get to this. I end up talking to him, and he's like, yeah, okay, we'll represent you if this thing goes forward. You won't pay a dime.

Starting point is 02:51:23 This is what we do as a nonprofit. So I met with him and another lawyer named Phil Stackhouse. And they were like, cool. I sort of gave him everything. I'm like, I don't know what they're coming after me for, but this is, I gave him the whole story from the deployment. I'm like, you know, this is what's going on. Did they ever stop, stop you at anything that happened, even including like the one one with with the guy and say like was there anything else there or like you know try to zero in on it and what someone could possibly be trying to accuse you of or was it just like pretty standard it was staying like working on like law of armed conflict there was no no no i mean i'm sorry i should ask that more clearly when

Starting point is 02:51:59 you're talking with your lawyers and you're taking them you know day by day as best you can across the seven months were there any events in, possibly including the event it ended up being where they stopped you and said, Ooh, tell me more about that. Maybe they're trying to accuse you of this. Every day was an event. So it was like, in my mind, I'm like, dude, it could be anything. Right. I'm like, I don't know what, you know, it was a fricking chaotic deployment. That incident was like the last thing on my mind. That wasn't even in my thought process. So these guys said like, Hey, we'll help you out. We're, you know, what this thing furthers will be, will be your lawyers. So again, I'm back,

Starting point is 02:52:39 you know, I go back, I'm checking into work, no job. No one's – like I start getting shunned more and more. They're like, hey, we want you to move across the street to this other office. And like literally it was weird, man. Like nobody would talk to me. And then, of course, I already knew the rumors were spreading. And here's the thing. The SEAL teams is like the biggest sorority ever. I'm getting that vibe.

Starting point is 02:53:03 Sorry. Yeah. It's just fucking yeah it's it's a bunch of women and they well actually no i would they're worse than women dude and so i was hearing guys were coming see the headlines now eddie gallagher sexist sport criminal yeah i was having dudes come up to me that i knew and they're like hey man um i heard that you were stepping on baby's heads or like then I heard you raped a woman. And I'm like, what?

Starting point is 02:53:30 Like this is this is the teams. It's the telephone game. And it just the things keep escalating. So I'm like, dude, this is so out of control. But at the same time, there's nothing you can like you can't like go out and just defend. You're like, hey, this isn't going on. So I just like I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut and let this thing play out. And that's what I was told to do too.

Starting point is 02:53:49 Everyone's like, just trust the process, trust the process. You'll be fine. Um, so it wasn't until, uh, I get called into work. So now I'm over at supply, which supply. Yeah. Um, I'm like in an office doing nothing. And so I get called the, the XO supply was a seal. He's like, Hey, I want to talk to you tomorrow morning. I get a call, come in. I haven't met you yet. I really haven't got a chance to converse. So I'm like, okay. Uh,

Starting point is 02:54:17 so I get up the next morning and get my uniform on show 15 minutes prior waiting outside of his office. I knock it, you know know 0730 and he opens it and there's six ncis agents in there they grab me they're like empty your pockets they handcuff me um and they're like you're going to we're taking you to interrogation and i was like okay and so they're and they're all posture like waiting for me they thought I was going to like start trying to fight all of them. I could tell right off the bat. I was like, you know, you can just sense it. They're all like on edge.

Starting point is 02:54:50 And I was like, dude, this is, why are you guys handcuffing me? They're like, oh, it's just procedure. No, it's not. They marched me in front of the whole command handcuffed, which automatically makes you look, yep, like guilty. They take me to an interrogation room. I'm in there and they're like hey um do you know why you're here and i was like i know i'm under investigation uh but that's that's it and they're

Starting point is 02:55:13 like okay well we want to talk to you i was like well i was like and i was polite as possible like i don't be a dick to you guys but i want my lawyer like i'm not talking to you about a lawyer and so like all right um they walk out shut the door and lock it and don't let me out for another seven hours. During this time, they raided my house. So my wife wasn't home. They had a whole assault team like come and it was probably like 25 kitted up NCIS agents. Raid my house, point guns in my kids' faces, pull them out in the street in their underwear. Your kids?

Starting point is 02:55:47 Yes, my 8-year-old son and then my – at the time, he had just turned 18, which is their excuse of why they did that. They're like, whoa, there was an adult in there. And they knew he had just turned 18. So they – I don't know any of this is going on. I'm just in the interrogation room. Where was your wife? So she was at a brunch with a friend. She gets a call from a neighbor.

Starting point is 02:56:09 She's like – yeah, I think the neighbor called her. But she was like, hey, your kids are out on the street in their underwear with guns pointed at them. They blocked off every street. They're yelling at everybody to get back inside. They're like ransacking your house. So she drives. She's like, what the fuck house so she drives she's like what the fuck so she drives back they immediately start interrogating her they pull her in a van

Starting point is 02:56:29 and they're like your your husband's a murderer and she's like well who did he murder like what who did he murder and she's like they're like isis this is no shit so my wife is like do you not know what he does for a living like um she's like this is a joke isis but they were trying to get her to you know they're like do you know anything this and that you know my wife's like no like i don't pay yeah i was there yeah and at this point you know i really wasn't telling my wife everything that was going on but she knew i was like there's some bullshit going on and you know and i also i actually did tell her like i didn't get along with those dudes in the platoon like this one oh but you hadn't told her about the pending i will because i really was like you weren't sure

Starting point is 02:57:11 what it was i don't know what's going on i told her i got a lawyer i was like oh you did tell her that yeah yeah okay so all right so she knew something she knew so yeah but she was like hey i don't pay attention to rumors i'm not going to talk about anything like and so they just they raided our house, did all that. I end up getting released out of an interrogation room. I go back, and that's when I found out what happened. What's going through your mind when you find out your kids were pulled out at gunpoint? Bro, I was, like, in such, like, irate shock because I had to have my oldest son walking me through i was like dude

Starting point is 02:57:46 because he was like they pointed guns in my face and i'm like no fucking way they did i was like you're just exaggerating that they're like i was like show me walk me through exactly what happened and he walked me through and like they did and i was like so they had the gun pointed at your head and ryan's yes so in my mind i'm like these are NCIS agents who they're the biggest nerds of – I mean they claim they're like, oh, we're just like the FBI. They're all flunkies out of every other three-letter agency. Then they go to the NCIS. They are a bunch of like just geeks that want to take down – they want to make careers out of like taking down better men than themselves. Does this sound like out of the context of of what proper procedure would ever be, Jim?

Starting point is 02:58:26 Oh, yeah. Because it's just, you know, why do you have to? You hit the nail on the head with NCIS. Why do you have to do that? There's no point of this. There's no threat. You're looking for him, and that's it.

Starting point is 02:58:37 Well, they also know he's with them. Correct. Correct. Here's why they did it. And you can see this in the way our government acts now. It's a scare tactic. They do that to you. It separates you from everybody else.

Starting point is 02:58:53 So all of our neighbors, everybody that we've known, they're like – Must have done something wrong. You did something. They just don't do that to anybody. So then nobody talks to you. And also what they're trying to do is put a divide in your family. Like this is happening to you because it's your husband's fault and so they want your family to just like completely leave you leave you alone and it works because I've talked to other guys

Starting point is 02:59:14 that's happened to it works it'll fracture a family like no other um and yeah it's just all it is is to drive fear into you know else that, anybody that would stand up for you is now no longer. They're like, I don't want that happening to me. Wasn't that raid also on September 11th? So no, this happened before then. So after the raid, after that happened, I went into work the next day and I went and I requested to talk to the group one master chief. Oh, you went back to work. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:59:44 I was like, I want to fucking, I want answers because this just happened to my family. And nobody at work is saying anything. No leadership is like, hey, dude, are you doing okay? Like, we heard what happened. It's like completely, you're on your fucking own. And you're not charged at that point. So that's hence why they're just, they put them in handcuffs, which is absolute nonsense. But at the same time, you're not charged.

Starting point is 03:00:05 So you're now just – they're searching your house, which happens all the time. We search people's house very respectfully. We don't throw anything, dump anything. We don't bother – families very well respect it. That's the difference. So, right. I mean they want you to be a pariah and they want everybody to see it. So it just adds to your story.

Starting point is 03:00:22 It adds to the legend of you being a murderer. Exactly. And you can imagine the rumors that went on. see it yeah so it just adds to your story it adds to the legend of you being a murderer exactly and that you can imagine the rumors that went on so and then of course while they're raiding my house they go into my garage i have all my kit bags and everything in there so i live in california so they're pulling out my 30 round magazines like these are illegal they stack them up we'll charge him with he has 25 magazines we're going to charge him with whatever 25 counts of this they found to add whatever charges each carrying each carrying 10 years whatever they can find each of those to throw it's like throwing spaghetti at the wall

Starting point is 03:00:55 and seeing what sticks right they found a blue body grenade which is a training grenade that we use they called eod to come made a scene eod drives up into their eod fucking vehicle their you know suits and everything my mat my buddy who's a mass chief drove to my house because my wife called him she's like what the fuck so he drives there they're about to like do this whole you know bomb fucking thing they and my my buddy walks in and picks it up he's like it's a training grenade and they're like they're like in their hurt locker equipment yeah yeah this is how dumb they are so you can imagine like the rumors that spread then through the teams like because i went back and like dude i heard they found rockets in his house and like this and this

Starting point is 03:01:42 um so i went in the next day i talked to a group on mass chief i'm like dude explain to me why this is happening to me um he was like no he's like uh and i so i had picked up i got selected for senior chief he was like um nope you're not picking up senior chief either he made me sign a piece of paper selected for it even through all this yeah because this is all like i got number one chief out of the whole team i had nothing but like this is in place it's still rolling i had all these accolades they're like yeah he's picking up senior chief but then well you know oj simpson ran for 11 000 so you know that's true um so yeah like all this shit happens right um i'm again like in purgatory still like no one's talking to me so at this point i moved move my wife and kids to Florida where we're at.

Starting point is 03:02:29 I go down there, help them move in, and I was just going to go back to San Diego. I had a year left on my enlistment, and then I was done. I was going to retire. So I fly back, and I'm staying with a buddy, and I end up going to TBI clinic at Camp Pendleton, Intrepid Spear. You go to TBI? Multiple. Yeah, everybody does in the teams. And so you go to these things before you get out to get a full head-to-toe assessment.

Starting point is 03:02:56 So that way you get it annotated in your record and be like, hey, this is what I need to be taking care of in some form or fashion. That's when I was in that TBI clinic. It's a four-week whole process. And the second week I was in there on September 11th in CIS, and they come in and arrest me out of the TBI clinic and throw me in military prison. The break. The break.

Starting point is 03:03:19 Again, I'm like, why are you guys doing – I'm like, what am I – why am I doing this? And they're like, we just have orders. And so the Admiral, Admiral Green, who was in charge of Warcom, was like, yep, send him in the brig. What the NCIS told them was that I was a threat to the investigation. You're still not charged. No. I wasn't charged until I was in prison for two and a half months when I first got my first charges.

Starting point is 03:03:44 So this is what you have to know. When you're in the military, you fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You do not have the rights that you think you have. So there's no bail system. Right. If they throw you in prison, you're considered a pretrial prisoner, which there's no difference between you and a prisoner. Right. And then you're just – if they deem you a threat to the case then you're

Starting point is 03:04:06 in there until your trial so when i was there's guys in there for two years i haven't gone to trial yet like sitting there i mean it's it's nuts dude the the this the ucmj is an archaic system that needs reform yes but and you didn't know anything about it before you heck no dude i was like completely lost you. You get two classes along the way. Yeah. And they're basically like, hey, just don't DWI and don't fight anybody and don't have sex in the barracks. Oh, okay.

Starting point is 03:04:31 Yes. Teller Cavanaugh was like, that's going to be hard, boss. What about if I falsely get accused of a war crime? No, we don't cover that here. Yeah. That's next week. Yeah. Nobody knows what they're signing.

Starting point is 03:04:42 When you sign your name on the dotted line during the military, you have no clue like about the rights that you really don't have in the military system. So I get thrown in there. I get thrown into solitary for the first four days and they – yeah, they treated me like I was like Jason Bourne, dude. Like they really thought – they had me shackled like from my legs and i come on yeah walking through no other prisoners got treated like that uh they had announced to the prison i was coming a week prior and that i was a like super threat um so as they're like marching me through like all the prisoners up against the glass like looking and trying to think is it like oh my god that's eddie fucking gallagher it has a similar role to it it literally was like that though um and so i

Starting point is 03:05:31 get let out of solitary i get put in a general population and that's when you know i was like all right figuring it out what kind of people are you in there they're military but like what kind of charges are the other guys so that military is a Miramar Air Station. That is a sex offender prison. Oh. So mainly a large percentage of them are in there for pedophilia, sexual offenses, online shit. So I'm in there, yeah, with some real winners. Oh, boy. But there's also like some other dudes that are in there for whatever, popping on a piss test or, uh, whatever chart,

Starting point is 03:06:06 you know, showing up late, like literally showing up late to formation. There's Marines in there for that. That's a little harsh, but yeah, well, that's, this is what I come, I came to find out, uh, when I was in there. So I feel like pushups would suffice, but that's just me. Yeah. Um, so I'm in gen pop and they, what they do when you get in there is they hold a little mini kangaroo court for you, right? So this is to deem whether you should stay in prison as a pretrial prisoner or to let you out. fucked, like so fucked up. So they bring me to this room and I have my lawyer down, you know, Phil Stackhouse shows up and, uh, we're in there waiting. They, they pull an officer,

Starting point is 03:06:53 any officer from the base to be the judge. So just some random officer comes in and he's going to be the deciding factor. This is where I first meet the prosecution the prosecutors show up the ncis agent joe rapinski shows up he's the lead ncis agent and uh they sat there and berated my character and like straight up told lies about me they were like he fucking beats his wife. He is a fake Christian. He – like he's a drug mule. A drug mule. Yes. So when they raided my house, they found that I went to Mexico for my best friend's wedding for four days.

Starting point is 03:07:41 And out of that, they're like, we think he went there and is smuggling drugs back. So this – and this is what they do. They just pile on bullshit. So you're a cartel coyote too. Yes. Yeah. And then they used every qualification that I had ever achieved against me. They're like, we cannot let him out because he is a sniper. He's a breacher.

Starting point is 03:07:55 He's this. He's that. He has deployed too many times to combat. He is a – pretty much like he's a broken toy and we cannot let him out. Didn't they also like charge you for having stuff that you had prescription for yes uh they said that i was uh abusing uh tramadol and like we found tramadol and his stuff i had a prescription right there uh yeah it was but still they charged like it doesn't matter it's like as soon as they say it, that gets put on paper and then what they do is they leak that to the media.

Starting point is 03:08:28 Yep. And so, boom, it's a fact. Yeah. We said it. It's a fact. And your prescription from a doctor. Yes. Not a dentist.

Starting point is 03:08:35 Yeah. All right. Just making sure. Sorry to the dentist. But the VA isn't broken. Yeah. I can go get – you need 1,000 Klonopin, I can have it for you by't broken. Yeah. Yeah. I can go. I can go get. You need 1,000 Klonopin? I can have it for you by Monday afternoon.

Starting point is 03:08:47 Yeah. So they just say this and then every fucking press outlet is going to run with that. That's all they need. So they're just adding up to a pile now. Yes. And you're finding all this out while you're in the break. I'm going through it. I'm just like, okay.

Starting point is 03:08:59 Like, what the fuck? And so obviously they don't let me out. So I go back to general population and that's when, yeah, I pretty much spent nine and a half months in prison before my trial. But during this time, my wife, who was like, what the fuck is going on? Because she got a call from my lawyer. That's the one thing I told her. I got a five-minute phone call when I got put in solitary. And so I called my lawyer. I'm like, you need to call my wife right now.

Starting point is 03:09:24 Tell her I'm in prison. Like, that's all I know what's going on. And so my wife went to, she called the command and she's like, is what is being done? Like, what is going on? They wouldn't talk. They completely, Nope. So she wrote a letter to the command and was like, you know, are we not a brotherhood? Are we not like, this is what my husband signed up for. And this is what like the, the culture we've come up in. Is anybody going to help us? No response. So that's when she took it upon herself. She's like, fuck this. And she went, she created a, um, organic social media campaign, started putting out what was going on. Um, and she gained a massive following because people were paying attention. And then she, and I'll say this, my brother at

Starting point is 03:10:12 the same time who lived in DC was going to Congress day after day, banging on doors, trying to get people to pay attention. Nobody, everyone's like, ah, don't take on the military that's just let the let the system work itself out so eventually my wife got invited on to fox and friends i think with my brother and uh that's when trump who was president at the time he took notice and he uh i think he took notice and then there was like this rumor like okay because uh he might let you out or like you might be getting out and of course that didn't happen for months dude it was uh the best way i can describe it it was like the biggest emotional roller coaster to be on there'd be like days it's like hey i think you're getting out and then nope you got another two

Starting point is 03:11:00 weeks and it just kept going that way um i was going to court hearings that whole time um are any of the guards like are you having any interaction with the guards and some guys are like this is fucked up but they're so two of the guards they were marines um came to me and they were like hey um this was like the first month i was in there they're like we're being briefed on Mondays. Like you are like officers from your command and NCIS are telling us to make you snap to fuck with you. And so that's what was happening. So I was getting strip searched all the time, like to hold down, to spread your butt cheeks, do whatever, um, sell tossed all the time. Uh, if I did anything like, so this is how petty it was so like

Starting point is 03:11:46 if i sat down to watch tv and took my blouse off like my shirt like because we had we wore uniforms in there which everybody else was doing if they saw me do it they're like no longer is that allowed and then if they saw me doing push-ups in my cell i'm not allowed to work out in my cell i'm not allowed to do anything that benefits me in any way uh they they literally then they would deny me visitations they denied me medical visits they denied me talking to my lawyer um so here's the system when you're in there dude they deny you talking to your lawyer so in order to talk to your lawyer you have to put in a request there is a person like a counselor that's assigned to each pod, general population. So I had this black chick named Rashida, and she was a typical government worker. And so she – I put in a request shit, and she'd be like, yeah, we'll get to it. And eventually you're like, dude, I have to talk to my lawyer. Yeah, this isn't the DMV. Here's the best part is if they're not letting you talk to your lawyer or you have a complaint, you put it in the complaint box.

Starting point is 03:12:51 Well, guess where the complaint goes? Right to Rashida. So she would come in and announce to the whole general pod. She's like, have my complaint. Oh, Prisoner Gallagher, stand up. And I'm like,'re you're not happy you can't talk to your lawyers guess what now you ain't talking to him another month and she would just walk out and like so this is like the petty shit that was going on and so i'm telling

Starting point is 03:13:14 my wife all this over the phone i'm like dude this is the environment that i'm in like they're not letting me do shit and i'm trying to keep my cool the whole time because at this point since those guards told me that they were trying to make me snap i knew it was a game yep so i just literally yeah bit my tongue and like would just sit there and like dude all right this is gonna get hashed out that does help that they did that it does oh it does because i would have snapped dude yeah uh there was a couple times in there where i would took an act of god um so like when my, my youngest son came to visit me for the first time, he comes in, he's wearing a hospital gown, like, and I'm like, why is he wearing this? And so, and then I'm told you're not allowed to embrace them. You're not allowed to touch them. And so I'm like, why can't

Starting point is 03:14:00 I embrace my son? And they're like, because of the pedophiles that you're in here with, it excites them and it's unfair to them. And which is why he had to wear a hospital gown too because he was wearing a tank top when he came visiting me and they're like that bare skin will excite them as well and we're trying to heal these pedophiles oh my god yes so this is what's going on and so when that happened i that was like i mean tears like tears forming because I was so angry. Rage. But I couldn't do anything. You're like, just hold it together.

Starting point is 03:14:30 And you said they're strip searching you and stuff all the time? Yeah. Then like one of the guards, he was a Marine gunny. He would strip search me and then I'm sitting there naked in front of him. And he'd be like, bend over, stand back up, bend over. This is someone you outranked by like 40 rungs too. Yeah, and I'm just looking at him like, dude, why are you doing this? And he'd be like, well, you got a problem?

Starting point is 03:14:52 Yeah, looking for you to do something. Real quick, Jim, I just want to ask this. Like you've done a lot of deployments. You're this decorated Navy SEAL. You've seen horrible shit. You're obviously an incredibly tough guy but probably more importantly a very mentally tough guy too you know but this is where all your rights have been taken away and you feel like the whole world's closing in on you

Starting point is 03:15:17 for shit you didn't do which i always say my ultimate fear is being stuck in an eight by eight box for something i know i didn't do i feel like i'd be able to live with it if i did it because i know i was in the wrong but if i didn't fucking do it like it's a shitty feeling i can't imagine that and i'm really sorry you went through that but like you know you are still a human at the end of the day like those quiet moments alone you know are you you didn't break in front of the guards or anything but are you breaking to yourself a little bit sometimes? No. Like I talked about earlier, I gave everything to God.

Starting point is 03:15:51 So here's the defining moment. It was like two and a half months in, three months in. I'm talking to my wife, and this is how institutionalized I am. I still had some belief that my command was going to be the right thing. I was like, there's no way they're just fucking throwing me away. And so I would ask, like, what was the commands, anything? And she finally she got so sick of me, like saying that she's like, let me tell you something. And she gave me like the best speech ever.

Starting point is 03:16:16 She was like, for 15 years, you have deployed over and over and left us. You've left me to take care of the kids. You always said what you're doing is a righteous thing. And we believed you and we supported you. And, you know, she's like, now I need you to do the same for me. No one's coming to get you. Your command's not for you. They're against you.

Starting point is 03:16:35 Everybody is against you except for me. I'm the fucking last one standing. So she's like, you need to get through your fucking head that you, the team, the brotherhood, all that, it doesn't exist. Like, and so hearing that I hung up, went back to my cell and that's when I was like, got on my hands and knees and gave, I just talked out loud to God. I was like, dude, take this from me. Like, I don't know what to do. And then I was like, you know, if I'm found guilty or innocent, like whatever is your plan, like I'm, you're fully in control. I'm on board. And then I felt the weight

Starting point is 03:17:10 of the world just like come off my shoulders, man. And like, not to say everything else was like easy street, but I just had this confidence. Like I'm good. Like even you can do whatever you want to try to do to me. Yeah, it's not to say that you were When you were doing your job you were arrogant or anything But you were very sure yourself like you were you were you were in control You're confident and like not that there's anything wrong with that But maybe that can also lead to being like ah that's not gonna be an issue or whatever Yeah, with little things along the way and this maybe brings it home that it's like, you know what? This is this is it's the worst way to get knocked down to square zero but like maybe i can i can come out a better version from this oh

Starting point is 03:17:51 for sure and that's what happened you know and then my wife says she's like honestly it's the biggest blessing that could have happened is you being thrown in prison she's like you're a stubborn son of a bitch she's like you're not anymore yeah well i try not to be at times but yeah she's like it took you being thrown in a prison cell to like you know get close to god so the trials and i've thrown back to the yeah like one thing on your lawyers so even if they i guess pre-trial when was the first time you had you were able to have some type of meaningful planning or contact here so this is like as this is a separate thing which actually this doesn't get talked about a lot in my story because it's just there's so much shit that goes on so the first lawyers i hired right the united american patriots okay

Starting point is 03:18:37 this is stackhouse stackhouse and colby bokeh are these the guys that turned on you yeah dude so this is this is how nasty it gets. I show up to the first day of court with them, and I'm not a lawyer. I don't know shit about anything that lawyers do. I've never been in a courtroom. But watching them, they're just like shuffling papers. They're like, all right, well, let's just go in there and see what happens. And I'm like, dude, and I'm facing life without parole. So I'm like me, like, this doesn't seem like you're got your shit together. Uh, but whatever.

Starting point is 03:19:17 I was like, maybe, I mean, maybe I'm just being too, you know, whatever arrogant, uh, or think I know better. But so I just, I was like, okay. But then the more and more I went to court with them, I was like, dude, something isn't right here. So I would tell my wife, I'm like, dude, I don't trust these guys. Like, I don't think they're, they have my best interest. Like, they just don't seem like they're putting forth the effort for someone that's facing life without parole. Is she in the courtroom too? No, she's back in Florida. So then she, but she was communicating with them on the phone. So she would call them and be like, hey, Eddie's not confident in you guys.

Starting point is 03:19:43 And they would manipulate her like, oh, he's just in a stressful situation. Like, don't listen. He's just he's locked up. Well, it wasn't until they pulled me out for a meeting one time. And this is I think I was about seven or eight, seven months in. And they were like, hey, and this is what they would do. They would schedule a lawyer meeting with me, which I would go to the local JAG building on base in handcuffs and sit in an office, which was like a little reprieve. You're like out of your cell.

Starting point is 03:20:12 But they would never – they'd show up like with 10 minutes left before I had to go back. They showed up and they're like, hey, before you go back, we need to tell you something. I'm like, what? They're like, we're going to extend your trial out by a year. And I'm like, what? And they're like, yeah, we think it's better that way. Um, we need to get prepared. And I'm like, so you want me to, I've already been in seven months at this point. I was like, you want me to sit in prison for another year until my trial? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, you're out of your fucking mind. I'm like, nope. And I was requesting a speedy trial the whole time I was like I want a speedy trial now and they're like well if you brush it then you're gonna get

Starting point is 03:20:51 you know what if you get found guilty like we need our we need time to work and I'm like dude you've had seven months and this is what really set me off Colby Boeke goes oh yeah and you need to tell your wife to knock it off with the social media and she doesn't run the show we do and that's what i was like you're fired well i went back and then uh that was like you know i was like these guys and then my wife got a voice uh mail from the head of uap extorting her because another organization called navy seals fund was raising money for my legal defense and there was a couple of awesome it was um oh dude drago drago desire and his wife rachel drago and rachel they started this fund is to help out team guys if they're in trouble

Starting point is 03:21:40 so they raised about 250 000 wow and the uap's like we want that money and so my wife was like that money is and i told him the same thing i'm like that money is set aside if i get found guilty that goes to my family yep so they can take care of themselves so what they told my wife was like if you don't give us that money we're just going to leave your husband in prison and not represent him the way he should be oh so boom that was when we were like you uh bernie carrick you know who he is so this is all divine intervention like bernie read the article about me and was like this doesn't seem right he somehow got a hold of my wife didn't know us from adam and was like hey what is your legal team doing and so when she told him everything he was like fuck that he got tim parlatori who's one of his lawyer he became our legal representation we fired i just like i was like hey i told colby i was like you're fired

Starting point is 03:22:39 i actually kept phil stackhouse on for another month until he quit so i fired uh colby phil i kept on because i was scared of i was like he sorted he's been involved in this so i need some continuity um but when i made tim first chair and stackhouse second yeah he didn't stop nope i quit they ended up suing me for a million dollars after my trial, which was really awesome. We actually just took care of that last year. That's nice. Yeah. But that is another reason why we started our foundation.

Starting point is 03:23:16 Yeah. Right. Because that UAP started off as a good thing, and then it got corrupt with these lawyers who were on the board. Colby was on the board of directors and also working as a lawyer. Yeah, that's the fan. So it was super incestuous. But yeah, so I mean I ended up firing them, and that was probably a month and a half before my trial. And I got a whole new legal team in there.

Starting point is 03:23:40 And I was let out of confinement when the prosecution got caught spying on my – The prosecution got caught spying? Oh, yeah, dude. So – Oh, let's hear this story. I didn't see this in the New York Times. I must have missed this. On your day-to-day in jail?

Starting point is 03:23:56 No. So what they did is – so when I hired the whole new legal team and what happened is – so the prosecution was leaking all sorts of crap to the media the whole time. And we were on a gag order. So I wasn't – my team, nobody was allowed to talk about the case to anybody. But they're allowed to talk. What they were doing was just leaking stuff. And so when we caught them, they had leaked some information that we didn't even have yet. And then it came out in an article.

Starting point is 03:24:24 We were given that information that day didn't even have yet and then it came out in an article we were given that information that day in court my lawyers were like how was this already out in the media and we just got this discovery rules but this is how corrupt yeah yeah ucj is the judge was like oh yeah that's disheartening um prosecution did you do this no move on that's it and so they were pulling shit like this the whole time. Oh, that's disheartening. But it wasn't until I hired a whole new legal team. Tim gets an email from the prosecutor like, hey – or actually it was Mark Mukasey who was also one of my lawyers.

Starting point is 03:24:58 Gets an email from the prosecutor. Hey, welcome to the case, blah, um blah blah blah if you want to discuss anything he's sending out to everybody tim sees it and there's a beacon embedded into the email and he's like what is this and so he thank god had a case just like this the year before with the same kind of so he was like dude email's a prosecutor back and he's like, dude, email the prosecutor back. And he's like, tell me this isn't what I think it is. Silence. Nothing. We find out.

Starting point is 03:25:28 They sent spyware to my whole legal team. Not only to my legal team. They sent it to the media. There were certain media outlets that started putting out positive stuff about me because they started finding out information like this isn't what everybody is saying it is. So they spied on the media, the legal team, other military lawyers they sent it to. It's completely illegal. So I mean keystroke. You have a keystroke evaluator.

Starting point is 03:25:53 You see everything they're typing. Yeah. It's basically because they had no case. They knew that they were like we're fucked. And so we're going to find out everything we can that they have. Yep. Maybe he'll self-incriminate himself on something else. You know what?

Starting point is 03:26:07 That is sinister shit. It's beyond sinister. And that's our military UCMJ people. We're talking about the military here, which makes it kind of a double whammy because they're supposed to be better. But when you look at prosecution in general, this is something that comes up as like a subtopic on a lot of different podcasts. I've always had such an issue with the guys who flaunt their record. Like I always cite this guy Preet Bharara in Southern District of New York. He was the guy who was 89 and 0.

Starting point is 03:26:38 Yeah. Well, Chris Christie was 100 and 0. Right, right. Yeah. You don't bring the other cases. You know this well. And my whole thing is like the justice system is supposed to put the government to the test and guilty people are in a perfect world supposed to be found guilty and innocent people are supposed to be found not guilty.

Starting point is 03:26:53 But we've incentivized a system where guys' careers are based on what they get. It's all about the win. It's fucking horrible. Yeah. Yeah. Every case needs to be brought if the evidence is there and the jury decides on what they decide. So did you ever get – did they ever – were they ever like trying to get you to plea out to something like all the time? So –

Starting point is 03:27:15 Just take this and the rest will go away and you'll be able to see your kids when they're in their 40s? That kind of thing? Like that kind of bullshit? They gave me – well, first first the navy has to provide you with a lawyer that's the one right you have right so i got when i was i was in prison for about two and a half months when i finally met my navy lawyer two and a half months he shows up lawyer but this is the best part dude this guy shows up and nothing against this guy i you know like the truski meme when he's showing up with his shit like, Hey man, um, I don't know.

Starting point is 03:27:47 They assigned me to you. I am actually stationed up in Lamar, which is five hours away. So I'm not going to be able to come down here and represent you. And he's like, I think we should start talking plea deal. And I look at him and I'm like, what? And I was like, dude, you're out of your mind. I was like, do you even look at the case? And he like no i'm gonna you know i'm like dude no i'm not taking a plea deal but then as we went later on into the as we're going later on into the case or you know um the prosecutor would come every once in a while and be like hey if you uh plead to this he wouldn't say it to me he'd say it to my lawyer and he'd be like we'll give him first it was like 65 years. Like, go fuck yourself. Every time they came, I was just like, go fuck yourself respectfully.

Starting point is 03:28:29 Like, it's not – I'm not taking – I am innocent, and I'm going all the way. Even to the point where before I went to trial, Trump was going to pardon a Green Beret and an army lieutenant that was already in Leavenworth. And my name got thrown in the hat to pardon. They're like – so my lawyer is like, hey, man, this could happen. And my wife and I are both like, we don't want it. Like we're going to trial. You want to be found. Like we're innocent.

Starting point is 03:29:01 And my – Did you ever – I'm sorry. Did you ever like have a – because you're sitting in a brig, right? Your whole life is like crashing in. Your mind has got to be going crazy. Did you ever like have a moment where you replayed to yourself and actually questioned reality? Like, oh, maybe something did happen that I didn't know about. Oh, dude.

Starting point is 03:29:19 I spent hours in my cell scouring. So they gave me binders and binders of like evidence they had you know all this stuff i would that's how i spent most of my time just kind of highlighting shit boom boom and then i would think back like did i did i do something like and you do you almost start like bro did i fucking like but then i i would i would literally like critique myself to the 10th degree like dude you fucked up something like real bad. And then I – no, man, I didn't. Like I could not find anything.

Starting point is 03:29:52 I wanted to at a point. I was like, dude, I must have done something for them to be doing this to me. You do. You have those crazy conversations in your head. Then you start having dark conversations like with yourself and you're like, if i get found guilty like you know i'm faith life without parole i'm like i'm telling my wife divorce me like now like move don't even like move on you know because you don't like i don't want you my kids visiting me and their dad's in prison you know so you do have like these dark conversations with yourself uh but yeah i mean but that's that's also part of processing you know yeah it's you

Starting point is 03:30:26 just have to you have those and then I but what I found myself I had a routine I created a routine there you know I got up every morning I did 150 burpees I did you know come out I had a little exercise group because we were allowed we were supposed to get one hour of outside time a day and it was at seven at night so it was always dark out so you never saw daylight um but they had some pull-up bars that you could go to and like some welded weights together so i took like these young kids under my wing there's probably like four or five of them and i'd run through workouts and mentor them uh these aren't those are they no no believe me this is just making sure these were kids that were you know made a mistake um and that were just being over punished so like that

Starting point is 03:31:15 little stuff like that helps you get along like you just find another purpose while you're in there you're like all right dude if i can't control what's going on then i'm gonna like find something to like give me me a purpose. Um, and you know, helping others, you know, like I talked about, it's like, okay, these poor 19 year old kids, you know, they have nobody guiding them in here. They're, they're under just as much pressure as I am, even though they're not facing life, but they're too young to be dealing with this. So, I mean, that's what got me through, uh, a lot of the, a lot of the stuff. Um, but you wanted to go to trial. You're like, fuck a part. And we're, we're, that's what got me through a lot of the stuff. But you wanted to go to trial.

Starting point is 03:31:45 You're like, fuck a pardon. We're going. Oh, yeah. Yeah, dude. We were like, no, we're going. Because I knew. My wife and I both knew. It's like once we get these little turds on the stand, these accusers, people are going to see right through this shit.

Starting point is 03:31:59 Because they had told so many lies that I would like. And I scoured through everything they had said. I'm like, that's contradicting there. That's a lie that contradicts that. Like, none of it made sense. They had even hidden evidence to where they charged me with – so obviously they charged me with killing the ISIS dude. And then they threw on two more murder charges. And this is just how corrupt the system is.

Starting point is 03:32:23 So you do – it's called an Article 32. It's kind of, it's like the military's version of a grand jury, right? So it's like, this is where we're going to decide whether this goes to court martial. Oh, okay. So during the Article 32, they were like, hey, we want to throw on two more murder charges. And, you know, they're like, oh, well, where's this coming from? Like, we have testimonial, you know, from the witness that says he shot a four-year-old girl in the chest with a.300 Win Mag, and then he shot an old man on Father's Day. On Father's Day?

Starting point is 03:32:54 Yes. So I was like, what the fuck? Well, here's what happened. And Dylan DeLay went in there on his interview was like, oh, yeah, I saw him shoot an old man and he dropped another name of somebody. This guy saw it too. So when they pulled that guy in, he's like, no, I didn't see that. And then that happened with a little girl too. Like Josh Vrenz said he saw a little – two little girls get shot shot which he probably did because it should happen but at the time he said oh i think it was isis but now now i think it was eddie i think eddie

Starting point is 03:33:34 did it so in the discovery you can see the different way they've given you at this point the different witnesses and what they said so you already know like okay well if he goes on the stand and says that we're gonna have to have him go. Okay, got it. So I knew. I was like, dude, there's so much bullshit. So we just need to get these guys on the stand. And that's exactly what happened. We went to trial.

Starting point is 03:33:53 These guys fell apart, dude. Like, they got on the stand. Craig Miller was crying. He couldn't keep his story straight. And they got immunity, as you said, too, right? So the prosecution granted everybody, all the witnesses that were accusing me, full immunity. So they could say whatever they wanted and never get in trouble. Anybody that was my witness that was like testifying for me was not allowed full immunity.

Starting point is 03:34:17 And they told them, they're like, if you get up there and get caught in a lie, you're going to go to prison. On your side. Yeah. get caught in a lie you're going to go to prison on your side yeah people and and when by the time you went to trial we'd cut this off earlier you now were at least at home technically like you weren't in prison anymore because they had been caught spying on you so the other thing is i just have this quick question once a prosecution is caught spying on somebody maybe this is something that just falls under the military rules that don't apply to the Constitution. But I would assume if I were a civilian, that would mean the case is now dropped. Yes. In a civilian court of law, the case

Starting point is 03:34:53 would have been dropped and that prosecutor would have been behind bars because he violated my four or five rights of mine. Yep. Think about it. It goes back to the Duke lacrosse case. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a perfect example where you had a prosecutor that was looking, again, to climb the ladder, right? So he's going to run for political office in North Carolina. So he just runs with it and gets caught lying. And obviously, a good bunch of defense attorneys did a great job.

Starting point is 03:35:19 And he's in jail. He went to jail. But even though the rules don't technically apply to the military, this is – like the judge saw this. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The judge can do something about that. So this is what they did. And I'll say Chris Chaplack, that was the prosecutor.

Starting point is 03:35:34 He got relieved and got sent over to the East Coast to continue prosecuting. They just filled in another prosecutor and they're like, carry on. Oh, and here's – no, this is my uh this was my reprieve for getting spied on um i was let out of confinement so i can now be outside for a month before my trial um and then during jury selection we got allowed three more strikes than the prosecutor so that means during jury selection we yeah that was it yeah please explain that to people though who don't know so during uh jury selection it's called the voir dire process voir dire according to my cousin yeah and that's yeah it's funny you bring

Starting point is 03:36:18 i keep picturing your first lawyers as their first lawyer yeah it's very very very similar man how'd i do um so yeah they bring in 20 uh jury members which are all um active duty and you can strike like hey i don't want that person i don't want that person i don't want that usually you only get like three strikes but we got like five and you need no reason. Like it can't – other ones you have like a conflict. Like obviously – That's not much repayment though. None at all actually because you're still –

Starting point is 03:36:53 I'll tell you what though. It did – like I think in the end it did help because I've striked every officer. I was like I want all the officers gone because I know they're institutionalists and they're just going to side with whatever the institution wants. And then I had, there was at least six combat, uh, veteran Marines.

Starting point is 03:37:15 I saw them. I was like, I want all of them. And then one seal was on the jury. So is this, I'm just wondering for the process, how it works in the military. These are guys who are stationed on the base and it's just like we get jury selection, they get jury selection too?

Starting point is 03:37:28 They don't even have to be on the base. They can be from any base and they're just called up like, hey, you're coming in to be part of the jury for this. Okay. And it's supposed to be a jury of your peers and a lot of the – and this is what helped me out is because those Marines were on there that were all combat, like infantry dudes, that was huge. But in most cases, it's like candlestick makers. You know, you'll have like some medical officer or like somebody has no idea, no idea what your job entails. So that, I will say that helped me out extremely, but that, yeah, again. Case should have been tossed.

Starting point is 03:38:03 Yes. It should have been tossed. but they brought in another prosecutor and then we went to trial uh and like it it couldn't have gone any better how long was the trial uh two weeks okay yeah so it was two weeks long um that's and then of course the big bombshell, uh, so Corey Scott. Who was the medic. Who was the other medic. Yep. Was the prosecutor, one of the prosecutor's main witness. Um, they had him and obviously Craig Miller, Dylan Lillet, um, were the other two and then me in the brig on his own volition when I was in there,

Starting point is 03:38:46 um, just showed up one day in his uniform and he literally was almost crying. And he's like, this is all a lie. Um, this got out of, this got way out of hand. All we were trying to do was like ruin your reputation. Oh my God. And I looked at him, I was like, dude, I know shit. Uh, but I'm facing life without parole and i don't i was like dude i appreciate you coming in here and at that point i think i was

Starting point is 03:39:12 in like four or five months and this is when i was sort of like i told him i was like i forgive you um i did i forgive her i forgive you for what you did um but i can't talk to you like i can't i don't even know if you're wearing a wire right now. I don't know what's going on. Like, I'm so like paranoid. And so he was like, I'm going to fix this. And that's the last I talked to him. Then he came in to testify and I'll tell you what, man, his lawyer fricking pulled, pulled a fast one, dude, that he, his lawyer got up before he testified and was like, i just want to make sure my my client has full testimony immunity and the judge is like yeah that's what the prosecution gave him he's like look at the prosecution like so he anything he says and the prosecution i think

Starting point is 03:39:58 it seemed like they were like what the fuck's going on why is this guy like asking this they're like well if he says what we want him to say and they're like no that's not what and the judge had to tell him like that's not what the deal is so the prosecution's like all right yeah so then cory went up there on the stand was like i did it and was like i killed the dude and that's when was that even true uh that's not even like that's he said he held his hand over the breathing tube which he could have done it man i wasn't but you didn't i was going back and forth i didn't watch him do it you thought the guy was pretty much you know cory was like i did that because i did not want him to get his head chopped off or like get tortured in front of us like we were watching

Starting point is 03:40:37 every other day um but that's when like the media like dude blew up ran out of the courtroom uh the prosecution got up started attacking their own witness like calling their own witness a liar their whole case just i mean it was already done before that though like i honestly think with even no i won't say like i think that was huge but even so like all their other witnesses shit the bed like got caught up on all their lies on the stand it was like so evident are you just looking at the jury like guys yeah not once so i was instructed stone face by bernie and by my lawyer like do not stare do not look at the jury do not show any emotion do not i literally was

Starting point is 03:41:18 just as calm as a cucumber staring straight ahead the whole time i would look at the dudes when they were testifying like did they look at you oh yeah well one of josh brands who is a fucking psychotic nut uh he's got bipolar issues but he he came in and literally was like on the stand staring at me doing this like oh man like showing like dude you obviously have a problem um and yeah he he was going nuts uh but he got because he got caught up in like i don't know how many lies craig miller got caught up in so many and it was like evident like the jury's like holy shit like all these dudes are lying they couldn't keep their story straight and then of course the cory scott thing was like the icing on the cake yeah but even then like it didn't matter um you would think like boom case closed no they were like they said that i had paid off cory scott to say that um they made up can you pay your lawyer yeah i, dude, I can't even afford to be in this courtroom right now. Yeah. But yeah, at the end of the day, the verdict day came out, and they was not guilty except for one.

Starting point is 03:42:36 Which was the picture. Picture, yeah. So because they had put so much effort and money and time into trying to convict me. They threw the book at me for the picture. And so I think I'm the first person ever to be court-martialed for taking a picture with a dead terrorist. Because I took that picture, they were like, oh, we're taking – reduce his rank to E1. E1. Yep.

Starting point is 03:43:04 And it was like my 20 years never existed. So I would have not gotten my retirement yeah so obviously the trial ended um i had to go back to work like but then at work i was banned from all the seal bases they're like you're not allowed to step foot on any of the seal bases and i asked why i was like why and they're like because the guys that testified against you work there and they're scared to death of you and i was like so this is yeah and this is where the persecution didn't stop like it actually like became worse because then they were like well we're gonna you know take your retirement do all this and they were still poking and prod me even when i was out like they were fucking with me a little bit and the media is not really reporting on what happened in the courtroom with the witnesses like no like yeah it was the media

Starting point is 03:43:50 was completely skewed so like even our best days we come out of court like bro huge win the media is like oh gallery you know they would just say something rotten about me and you're like dude what oh i know what planet are you on but But either way, I mean that's the way – we drank from a fire hose of just how all that shit works. And I'll tell you what, dude. I was apolitical. Like whoever is president, I'm going to do the job regardless. Like I never really pay attention. I voted for Trump obviously before that.

Starting point is 03:44:20 I did. And when he was always talking about fake news i was always like like but i didn't obviously read the news that much either until you get to watch the news in prison cnn oh that's awesome that's all they would play that's all you're allowed to watch so i got to watch myself being demonized on cnn and and you do get the view as well um you know what i was thinking in contrasting like my god like the uh the doj system the constitutional system if even if you're granted immunity part of that agreement is if you lie you could be charged that's the only thing so yeah but in the military no matter like if you if you sign a proper agreement with us, guys would come in, talk to us, and the first thing we tell them, hey, look, if you lie here, we're not going to use anything you tell us against you unless you lie.

Starting point is 03:45:12 It's the same thing. Then it goes to immunity. In UCMJ, that's not the case. Not in Rodney's case. Yeah, true. They make up the rules as they go in UCMJ. That's really like – it is. They just will shift it around and you feel like you're taking crazy pills all the time.

Starting point is 03:45:33 You're like, dude, how are they getting away with this or how can they do this? And it's the whole system is corrupt. So even your Navy lawyer who's representing you will not say a word. He's like, this is just the way it is, man. And you're like – Because everybody caves. Yeah. Everybody caves. Everybody except my wife and everybody caves. Yeah. Everybody caves. Everybody except my wife and my brother.

Starting point is 03:45:48 Yeah, shout out to you. Thank God. And that's – I'll tell you what, man. And that's what I tell people that we're helping now, especially the guys that are getting screwed under the UCMJ or their command is like completely screwing them. You know, it's – I help guys in the teams too still. Their national inclination is like, dude, fuck. I want to fight back. I want to – I can't believe they're doing this.

Starting point is 03:46:08 I'm going to say this. I'm like, dude, the best thing you can do is keep your mouth shut and let them dig themselves in a hole. I'm like because here's what their downfall is. They are so elite. Like they have this elitist mindset that they can do no wrong. And then when they get proven wrong, instead of having accountability and say, we made a mistake, they'll double down. Then they'll triple down. And they'll dig themselves so deep that you have them.

Starting point is 03:46:32 And I was like, they are not used to people standing up against them. They are not. They're used to everybody kowtowing and being like, all right, yeah, whatever you – because most people in the military are going to take it in the ass when it comes to this because they're just – that's what you're bred for since boot camp. Yeah. Trust the leadership. Have belief in leadership. They will not – they will do what's best by you. Don't ever question what's going on.

Starting point is 03:46:55 Maybe that used to make sense. Yeah. Well, I don't know if it ever did or not. But all I know now is like – More than now. You stand up for yourself and you start fighting back they have no clue how to handle it um they they could not stand my wife they were like dude my wife's instagram posts were being briefed at the pentagon yeah that's some that's some reach right there yeah like that but that's how like how do we like stop it's like dude you can't you can't stop my

Starting point is 03:47:23 especially my wife which my wife told him she's like you might have control of my you might own my husband but you don't own me like i'm gonna say whatever the fuck i want and what and i'm gonna tell the truth about what's going on and that's they they knew like the secretary of defense got fired over on the secretary of the navy got fired over my whole thing oh that's right what was his name again i don't remember. He was telling Trump not to get like involved with your Trident. Is that what it was? So that was even worse than that.

Starting point is 03:47:53 He – I ended up getting evidence. He was emailing organizations that were supporting me. This is while I was locked up and telling them – Snyder? Snyder? Is that it? No. Go ahead.

Starting point is 03:48:04 Sorry. while i was locked up and telling them snyder is that it no oh go ahead sorry um he was emailing organizations that were supporting me telling them not to support me that i was guilty this is while i was like i hadn't gotten a trial yet this is the secretary of the navy this is so i got invited onto fox news um this is after my trial and so i go on there that's him yeah spencer yep yeah freaking turd yeah your boy fired him esper yeah yeah doesn't look what happened to him trump yeah so he ended up getting fired over my whole um the whole thing because he was meddling and everything and i you know and then yeah he tried to so they were going to take my trident and he got – I don't know. He did something there.

Starting point is 03:48:47 But either way, it's like that's how high up and like corrupt it was. I mean from that top down, they were like your position that would bother me though is if I had done so many things right and had been the exemplary – it's getting late. put 20 years in with that you know did the whole thing have a family at home and i get found not guilty in court because i'm not guilty the evidence is overwhelming and that's supposed to be like the system in that case actually ended up working and threw out all the stuff that didn't work on the way but like the taint of people in the media continuing to push a narrative out there about who you are i gotta admit i would not sleep well at night with that and it seems like you're you're as you said like in the very early part of our conversation you're at least at peace with that now you there's no other way you're you're not going to like combat that or that's not going to go away so you you literally and i had to you know i struggled

Starting point is 03:50:05 with that the first couple years i got out uh yeah because i was still being demonized and it's like dude i i went to court and you know there was always still these rumors out there like he was pardoned like i wasn't pardoned i actually went and faced my you know the dudes and i thought you were part in two that's and that's one of the big rumors out there but at the end of the day man this is what i tell people because this is what when we help people through our foundation they go through the same thing like boom you get vindicated but it doesn't matter the narrative from the media is out there and i tell them like dude you are just going to have to learn to be who you are and be undeniable like if you are a good person and you are you know um a person that

Starting point is 03:50:49 you say you are then keep being that person and become undeniable eventually people will see it and then the people that don't the people that still want to hate on you okay you're not gonna change their minds yeah fuck them like i don't need to change your mind anyways i don't i don't care what you think of me but you know it's it is one of those things it was it's a weird thing to go through um to try to just overcome that i guess it's like real close to like cancel culture you know like how people feel like when they get canceled for whatever and then they have to sort of come back and try to redeem themselves when they were really innocent it's the same kind of premise you just have to keep pushing forward and not let, not let them defeat you in that manner.

Starting point is 03:51:28 And I, you know, I could give two shits what the media says. Um, I mean, they've proven themselves over and over again that they, they have no soul and that they'll report anything. Right. Yeah. Well, it's, it's pretty cool that you still have the great perspective of like loving the good things that the seals were all about that you got to be a part of like loving the good things that the seals were all about that you got to be a part of and love that culture it's also cool as you laid out at the beginning that you know the idea of the military and america itself and defending the country like you you still encourage people to get involved in that and like you said you'd like to see certain things in leadership change at some point here. And I think there's, I mean, a lot of the military guys I talk to and have in here say the same thing.

Starting point is 03:52:08 So it's not just you. And you're just a prime example of what, where it goes really, really bad and gets taken out on someone. But the story is pretty fucking unbelievable. And, you know, I do think more people need to hear it and and you do a great job telling it so i'm glad we got to do it here i'm also sorry for believing the media back when i was like 23 i was like oh yeah that guy must have killed people yeah that's don't don't be sorry for that either man that's like i mean that's i was the same way before i went through my shit like if i read something or saw it i'm like yeah that it must have happened right like

Starting point is 03:52:43 you know it's not until you actually go through it and then you know your eyes are opened yeah shout out i'm awake shout out to the like mike ritlans and the sean ryan's of the world though from the community of who've who've helped yes too that's really cool oh yeah both those are outstanding individuals man i mean and that's why you ask you know do you have the same feeling about this of course i have the same feeling about the steel community because that's what it's all about right there. It's brotherhood. And those – I mean the enlisted guys in the community and some officers are there for the right reasons. And that still exists.

Starting point is 03:53:16 It's just we need to change the leadership and the way that they are leading. You got me sold on that. I'll tell you that after hearing this shit today. I don't know about you, Jim, but it sounds like you got changed some things. Amen to that. But, Eddie, this was awesome, man. Thank you so much for doing it. Yeah, man.

Starting point is 03:53:31 Thank you for having me out, brother. I appreciate it. Of course. I look forward to you doing more content with Tommy G and torturing him. That's going to be fun. I hope so. But it was a pleasure, sir. And thanks for everything else you did for America.

Starting point is 03:53:43 Appreciate that. Thank you. All right, everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description below. Finally, if you'd like to catch up on our latest episodes, use the Julian Dory podcast playlist link in the description below. Thank you.

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Julian Dorey Podcast - #256 - Navy SEAL Charged w/ Murder EXPOSES "The System" | Eddie Gallagher & Jim DiOrio

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