Julian Dorey Podcast - 🤫 #74 - Special Agent Jim DiOrio: The Mysterious Al Qaeda Raid Of September 15th; The Silk Road Case; Mental Health In The Covid Era; Recapping Afghanistan

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Jim DiOrio is a Former FBI Interrogation Expert, Military Veteran, Undercover Operative, and Savage. A member of West Point’s Class of 1986 (along with his roommate and former Secretary of State/Director of The CIA, Mike Pompeo), Jim served overseas as an Army Ranger in the late 80’s and early 90’s before leaving the military and joining the FBI. He went on to spend 10 years as one of the most successful undercover agents in the Bureau’s history––and another 15 as a ferocious Special Agent In-Charge and heralded FBI interrogator around the world. Basically, he was the guy who told Captain Phillips he could have his boat back.    Currently, Jim is the CEO of J3 Global, an international crisis/security firm (or as he explains it: “I’m Ray Donovan with more experience”). In his spare time, he also owns a Jersey Mike’s because why not. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Intro; Jim analyzes the Ross Ulbricht & The Silk Road Case; Sexual Harassment in the FBI 32:59 - Jim talks mental health and the tough times the Covid era presents to a lot of kids 52:59 - Jim tells the story of how he was there when the first Fallen US Soldier from the Afghanistan pullout was brought home to America; The Behind-The-Scenes of what happens when a soldier’s body is brought back home 1:10:14 - What made 9/11 different; Jim’s wife Sheila and her work helping those grieving; Veteran and 9/11 Victim Family Member, Joe Quinn’s, touching article marking the 20 year anniversary of 9/11 1:37:17 - The Afghanistan pullout; Why everything went wrong; Jim talks Trump, Mark Milley, and the path we’re on right now in America 1:57:26 - 9/11 should’ve been prevented; Jim talks the problem with John O’Neill behind the scenes; The Saudi connection with 9/11 2:14:01 - JIm on why many people are a part  of the problem and not the solution; Jim talks Biden 2:34:21 - Addressing the “Dancing Israelis” theory; September 15th, 2001 -- The *Full* Story: Who, where, how, and what happened; Guantanamo Bay has more than 19 prisoners left? The full story behind the mysterious Brooklyn Plane Crash from November 2001. ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  ~ Get $100 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover: https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier  Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey  ~ Beat provided by: https://freebeats.io

You really don't want locals to know, right? You don't want locals to know anything that's going on because who the fuck knows? You don't know if these guys in five years, they could have been tight with the dudes, whatever. So like I said before, knock on the door, and before they even answered, the parent and I was like, we got a problem.

So we went and did what we had to do. We got them on the ground, and the TV is just playing a loop of the planes crashing into the tower. So. What's cooking, everybody? I apologize for my voice right now. I have COVID and I feel like shit. So I'm going to keep this intro very, very short. This is part two of my sit down with Jim. As I had mentioned last week, he was here for about six and a half hours. So we had a very

great wide ranging conversation. I will note at this point, we've been going for a long time. So sometimes when I'm in here for a very long time with somebody, my voice will get a little soft, especially if we're drinking a little bit of whiskey. So there were a few times where I felt like I was a little low on the volume. But other than that, conversation was great. Most importantly, we got to a lot of the open-ended questions that fans had from our first sit-down back in May.

So I was very, very happy we got to address that. I think you guys will enjoy it. So I was very, very happy we got to address that. I think you guys will enjoy it. One note on that, though, when Jim is talking about the September 15th, 2001 raid, that was basically like the biggest open-ended question that existed from the May episode. You'll hear him say something along the lines of they were there since 2005 or 2006. He meant to say 1995 or 1996. I just didn't want people confused. Other than that, though, I think we're good.

If you're on YouTube, please subscribe. Please like the video. If you're on Apple or Spotify, thank you for checking out the show there. If you haven't already subscribed on Apple or followed on Spotify, make sure you do that. And that's it. You know what it is.

I'm Julian D dory and this is everyone understands this but you seem to do it if you don't like the status quo start asking questions there's a side of a search warrant that wasn't scoped properly right so there there was no access or there was limited access to his computer his network is whatever right, right? So that's one, that's part A, right? So separate that out. Secondly, there's usually, even though you may decide to go to trial, you may decide to roll the dice at trial, you are always presented with some type of document, not saying that it's a plea agreement or even a cooperation agreement, but what it will give your attorney is the ability to see,

here's the guidelines. And the guidelines come in, you know, they're kind of broad guidelines, and they'll look at a couple different things. They'll look at, you know, obviously, if you had ownership, there's point, it's a point system. So you'll come up, you know, he's a guideline 33 with a, you know, with a three criminal history, which means, hey. He was offered this. Okay. He was offered what you're talking about. So when they do that, right, you'll see and you'll say, okay, looks like my max is 84 months. My minimum is 72, right?

But what I'm saying is your defense attorney will have this in hand. I believe, I just want to state this for the record, and I'll check this. Yeah. It was at least 20 years what they offered him, which was so beyond the scope of what he did. And I believe it was 25 to life. So what it can say, though, is it can say something along the lines of this charge faces a maximum of 20 years. So it'll say 240 months in prison, right? That, if you look at any indictment, federal indictment, every single charge will have something associated with that.

What I mean is there's actual a presentation to the defense attorney. Two things always happen, right? Nobody wants to try a case. Like, I'm just going to be honest, you know, like it's time, it's resources, and it's time that you can't get to the next case. You know, it's time, it's resources, and it's time that you can't get to the next case. You know, it's like anything else. So, you know, I'm going to waste, you know, it's a waste. It's honestly a waste.

A trial like that could be three months, four months, plus the prep leading up to it, plus the witness prep, plus the travel, plus the expense. Plus, like I said, you take your best people. Clearly, you're putting your best prosecutor on that case because it's significant. Yes. So, you know, what they do is they they'll present let's just get rid of this you know so i would i would love to know like i would love to look deeper into that to kind of understand two things first off what was the federal prosecutor doing that he wasn't up front with it sounds to me like first off he like i said he's got he's got know, like fruits, what do they call it?

Like evidence or fruits of the poisonous tree is what your typical search warrant. Hey, you can't use that fruit because you fucked up the roots, you know, along the way in your investigation. So there's something in there with the scope of the warrant and the fact that they shouldn't have been looking or they should have had additional warrants in order to gain the information. Or there was some cooperator that provided information that they didn't run out. So they didn't identify the other people that were utilizing. Right. So they didn't identify.

They stopped. They stopped, you know, to close it all out. So that's one. By the way, and I want to note this just so you have this information. Yeah. I think there were multiple the main cooperator they had was a key figure early on in silk road like online on the chat rooms always who the way that they set it up the way that they got the dread pirate roberts to order a hit and again this is where i believe it was not ross doing it they had that guy turned him and then

used him as a rat and he was goading the other guys into doing it they did it and then what the agents did and i'll put the picture in the corner i've put it in here before they put they put like they put like a can of old tuna fish or some shit like on his mouth and a couple other things to make it look like he had died by drowning in a bathtub in a hotel room. And they sent the picture as proof and DPR, Dread Pirate Roberts, said confirmed. Great. Thank you. And so even with that evidence. And so this guy, the same guy who whether or not Ross ordered the hit, by the way, he was not in good graces with Ross when this happened.

We know that. So like if Ross was incentivized, he would have been incentivized if he was going to do that. He was incentivized to do it. This same guy sits next to Ross's mom and does shows like this and says it was not ross i'm sitting on the fucking show telling you with a picture of my quote-unquote dead body that he thought quote-unquote was me and i'm telling you i'm sitting next to the guy's mom it wasn't him he didn't do this so it's probably you know listen it's probably an undercover right that's doing it but but my point is there's a couple things that are that that don't make sense that I would like more information on.

One, what was the scope of the warrant? What were they supposed to have? What were they not supposed to have? What did they look at? What did they do? What was the ruse? How did it work out? And then secondly, the other big part of it is what was the presentation to his defense attorney that went from X, whatever X was of the guideline, whatever

he was offered in a plea agreement versus it doesn't matter. Like that never changes unless there's some egregious action that happens during the course of the trial where you're like, this fucking guy, oh my God, you know, he did this. Then they would stop the trial and and what they you know basically issue another indictment a superseding indictment would they absolutely the good ones would everybody should well here's and here's another here's another thing where i'll defend them yeah and without any evidence whatsoever by the way i'll give them a benefit of the doubt putting on my little tin foil hat right now to me the way this case went down

the federal prosecutor even the judge they had nothing to do with it they were pawns on the on the board i think this was a clear message i think this was i don't know from who but i think this was from high up in government because this kid beat the system what he did was he it was incredible what he did and what he created and by the way and i say this again cannot break international law just because you have a point doesn't work that way but he took drugs out of the hands of all the people who we armed in the 1980s by the way who've been pushing all this shit into this country and are now pushing in this shit that comes from china that includes fentanyl in it on the black market and this is where like i don't want to see people on drugs i i get very very when we start talking about

legalize everything i start i'm all about legalized weed that one's common but when we talk about for everything i'm like ah there's a lot of downside to that i'm not one of these guys who's like let's just do it but there is an element of like we let this keep happening all right you put el chapo in prison congratulations pat yourself on the back there's fucking three guys hanging from the from the city trees the next day from the next guy who's in charge setting an example for some people who just looked at him the wrong way right and then they're putting all these drugs into the country and it continues to happen because by the way they own politicians down there they own politicians here money you say follow the money i follow the money and i look at like i don't have a good

answer for you i'm sitting here telling you like i'm not ready to come out and say i'm open to the conversation but i'm not ready to be like let's legalize it all but i am saying he did broke the law had to go to jail he did prove a point with this there were people around the world who got access to fucking drugs in the mail that otherwise and not this by the way I won't even give him this credit, not to say it always came from the best source, I'm sure there were, look, it was a black market he had no control but the good if the good is defined as taking

drugs and sales out of the hands of the cartels and Hamas and shit like that versus the bad of, okay we got some bad actors in there we have some people putting fentanyl laced products in there some bad shit the good did outweigh the bad

and so my utopian view is that go to prison and if the government actually wants some things start the conversation out of it and when he gets out of jail and has served his time don't have him spearhead it. Don't act like this is the second coming of Nelson Mandela.

But have him be a part of the conversation. Make him a part of the solution instead of just a definition of a problem to say you got a notch on the belt. Well, they never even got that far. No. So, I mean, I think the – what's not making sense to me is the whole – the process just seems warped. You know, I've never experienced that. I'm not saying it hasn't happened before or since, but I never experienced that piece. You know, I was methodical about being close contact. Even if the federal prosecutors decided to let it off for a month, I was in close. I was always trying to negotiate a plea or trying to get cooperation on a daily basis.

You know, I was calling my guys like they were an insurance claim. You know, I mean, hey, man. What was your incentive for that? Well, I mean, I just think that the more of a wide. My incentive was I understood a wide, diverse intel group. You know, the more intel I had, the more availability I had to other law enforcement to my to my um and not for my own good but for instance just take a simple kidnapping let's say a kidnapping piece right um if i had taken the time let's say i didn't let's say i was a one-third or that just had a source because you're required to have at least one you You know, back in the old days, guys would just go to the cemetery

and pull a fucking name and put it in. It's my source. He's been dead for, you know, nobody checked. Right. Right. So my incentive was always let me establish as many sources as I can because there's going to come a point where the office or law enforcement in general or the FBI in general or interpol or

whatever is going to say man we were stumped by this and i'm going to be able to reach out to my you know 30 40 50 sources and say hey what do we know and there wasn't a there wasn't a time that i wouldn't get 10 or 15 credible responses so that was always my incentive to continue to work gazes okay all right that's actually a great answer so can i take can i ask a clarification then yeah because that that's important i i wasn't even expecting that and i should have been so sources obviously it's a network like anything else and you and we talked about that last time extensively you understood that and you understand you know like pre-9-11 where that wasn't the fbi's job and that actually hurt the really and not that that makes it right it hurts the relationship with the cia because for sure on information okay outside of that once let's say sources

whatever the case is sources are irrelevant to an extent and you are – you have a guy dead to rights. Are you just doing that so you can get the result done on paper guaranteed in case he gets some crazy defense attorney like Gotti's first defense attorneys who got him off and it's done and it saves taxpayer money because you're not going to trial and doing the whole drag out thing. Is that? Part of it. Okay. Part of it is that. Part of it is the quicker I can get you pled out, the quicker I can kind of nurture you as a source. So you're always thinking about that.

Yeah, that's the key. Intel's the key, right? So it's been the key to my life since the Army. You know, as a civil affairs guy, that's what you're doing. Hearts and minds, right? So I never got away from that. So, you know, my point is a source is always a source, so it doesn't matter where he is, what he's doing.

You know, because, again, I Because again, I have examples in my life of things that have happened and the only reason they were success and they saved family's heartache or they saved money or they saved people from getting hurt is because I had a source base that was different. So I think in this instance, what it sounds like to me is, if it were me working this case, and it were me that was in front of the defense attorney and the guy himself, my thought first is, listen, if I'm talking to you, you fucking did something. I'm being honest. I talk to everybody around you before I talk to you, but once I come to you, we you fucking did something sure like i'm being honest like if i'm i talk to everybody

around you before i talk to you but once i come to you we got a problem you know and again i've said this for like four times but i want to be clear on this yeah again no questions asked criminal yeah and i and i agreed but but that gives me more of an opportunity because guys i think only one of the good things to come out of COVID is the fact that I have successfully been able to sleep throughout this week and being sick and everything. I mean, obviously, when you get COVID, when you get the flu, anything that involves like a fever, chills, stuff like that, they tell you to sleep it off. You got to lay in bed and just try to get rest and get fluids and things like that. But it's easier said than done because you have the chills, you have muscle aches and stuff, you're tossing and turning. It's very, very difficult to get a deep sleep. Not with innate sleep though, because I just woke up maybe, I don't know, a half hour ago, like 1130. And I went to bed at 945 last night. And I don't think

I got up in the middle of the night even once. You want to talk about a deep sleep in the middle of having COVID, no less. That's pretty incredible, and it is all because of my 8 Sleep Pod Pro cover. So if you use the link in my description along with the code TRENDIFIER at checkout, that's T-R-E-N-D-I-F-I-E-R, you will get $100 off your own 8 Sleep Pod Pro cover, and as I tell you every week, it is an absolute game changer, so much so that it will actually help you get a deep sleep when you have COVID, no less. Now I'm a test dummy for that, and I can tell you it works very, very well. So use that link in my description along with the code TRENDYFIRE,

check out and get yours today. I now know I've done my homework, and maybe the agents did a good job up to that point, you know, improving with it. And then what happens is you immediately flip switches. I used to say this is the worst day. The day I arrest you or the day you're indicted is your worst day. Because now it's not even your worst day. It's your worst half day. Because the second half of that day and from then on, you're Team America.

You're going to help me with other things and if you you're crazy if you tell me that you're not because you're gonna be alone and you eventually you're gonna come and you're gonna talk even if it's a two-year sentence it doesn't matter if it's 24 months in jail it sucks where i'll defend your position here yeah your position uh excuse me i'll defend the fbi's position potentially here and i don't know this for sure is that i don't know how much of a shot you would have had with that with ross because when i say ross was a radical purebred libertarian he was literally that like he was like all government's bad i get it right but eventually even even that guy, I'm going to find a way.

I'm going to appeal to some part of that head. That's what I get paid to do. I'm going to appeal to some part of that head that he says, shit, I kind of, even if it's, I like that guy, he's funny. And eventually, it could take longer and could take longer, but it could take, you never know. But always, what I'm saying is I would have been in there at least entertaining that and offering an out for him. Like offering it. I told you, I've said to people, bad people that I don't have any, you know, love for in any way. I've said to them, bro, you're fucking crazy for going to trial.

Like, you're going to get convicted. And once that happens, my hands are tied. Once it gets in front of a judge, there's not a lot I can do. I'll fully admit that what I'm about to ask, I don't know if you would say on camera, this might be an untouchable territory. And if people don't like that, fuck them.

They'll have to deal with it. you say enough that i think people should trust your credibility and and appreciate what you put out there my scenario to that would be okay what you just said i accept and those two possibilities fine i'm sure they happened all the time what about the scenarios and how true are these how often do they happen where you have a higher up come down and say fuck what you think we're making a political statement for x y and z you are not permitted to do k j or i i can honestly look you in the eye and say it never happened to me Now, I also never put myself in a position where that could have I knew more about anything those guys could ever, you know, opine to So, you know, you come down and you could

I honestly can't remember ever even having that conversation but if they did i they knew they were gonna get just embarrassed in front of whoever they did it in front of you know so now does that happen yeah i'm sure it fucking happens you know i mean i'm sure it happens and a lot of things happen in the Bureau from higher-ups. Did you ever have buddies come to you about that kind of thing? I mean, I'm trying to think. You know, not that particular type of situation. Hey, we're going to charge this because we have to get something on the books. I would say the closest to that that you would see is during times when a field office, and there's 56 field offices plus the international kind of presence.

And if an office was struggling, per se, like, okay, when I say I want Jim Yacone to be the director and be the face, What I mean about the inspector general is to straighten out this inspection process because it's ass backwards. They're missing out on shit that they need to address. And one of the things was, let's not create a case because we don't have one in that particular area. Let's not create a healthcare case just because the inspectors are coming in so they say that without a doubt yeah i mean that happens right so now that case may be dormant i like that it might be dormant it might not it just might be hey we we have allegations that this health care

you know facility is doing is billing double billing for testing for diagnostic okay i can hold on to that and just say oh yeah oh do i have a double billing of course i do yeah but might not ever do it or could it be more sinister than that maybe you know i never experienced that i never let it happen you know i would get to the bottom of it if i was doing an inspection i'd be like hey man you're full of shit you know this is not whatever right so but that doesn't mean that other offices and i have seen examples so so take the casework right that's one part of it where you're kind of like i haven't really seen in spite of just laziness i haven't really seen like somebody's oh let's let's fucking do this what i have seen is is you know the lack of due diligence you know um not lies per se but lies because there's dereliction of their duties you

know they just haven't oh yeah i did 30 checks on that dossier no you didn't yeah okay you didn't right or man what's becoming a big problem in the bureau is the sexual harassment you know i mean i'm telling you like i see stuff that is just like just awful to friends of mine that have reached out to me in my retirement that friends that i love like you know female agents that i love and that just have nowhere to turn nobody believes them nobody believes them so so i what does that say about the character of an organization what does that say about the need to have someone go in there and clean house like it's time man it's no longer a good old boys club. It shouldn't be that way.

There's too many talented people of all types that can do the job. I'll leave the one-thirders alone, honestly, because you know what? They're not going to do anything anyway. They're not changing. What am I going to do? All right, so I'm going to make you take your crossword puzzle and go to Dunkin' Donuts instead of sitting there. Fuck it.

Who cares? As long as they're there when we do a search warrant and they the boxes out i'm good well i don't care where it's from whether it's the fbi or some corporation nothing makes me sadder than people who are a victim of the taking advantage of the awareness because they can So, like, there are a lot of, that's a very real thing. When, and, you know, it can be both sexes, but particularly with women in the workplace where that happens. It does. And it's more common than I'm comfortable with by far. Not that I'm comfortable with any level, but it's like it happens much more than a cynic would think.

I agree. And immediately you and I both know that the victim is looked upon as if they're fucking crazy. And here's the problem. Here's the problem. One of the biggest things that hurt this was the quote unquote me too movement. And I'm not categorically ripping everyone who played into that. If anything, there was some awareness that came of that, that I appreciate for those people, if not for the fact that a lot of people used it as an opportunity to take attention so i can say out of the same mouth that like a harvey weinstein whose case started that thing that was a disgusting guy i don't care how many women came out like a hundred yeah yeah whatever it was i'll even play this card if there were 10 who were full of shit i i care but i don't care because I'm like, there are fucking 90 who weren't. And this is like the worst of the worst.

Right. Fine. A lot of other things also happened after him were, whether it's people in power or people who had power that people didn't know, but they were rich, whatever, where people got exposed. Great. Love that. Like anything else, though, we don't have an ability to be 50 miles an hour. We don't have an ability to do anything besides zero or 100. And we went 100 with it.

And so you had a lot of people, grifters, who took advantage of this and boy slash girl, depending on the situation, who cried wolfed it and broke some people on it I know my dad actually did a case where he was before he took it he did due diligence on it because he was like I I I need to like my you know my dad very well my dad one of the things that probably hurts him as a lawyer is I don't think he's ever defended a guilty guy like and he's not in defense he's in he's on the civil side but as far as like someone who's like in the wrong yeah like he won't do it like his clients are his brothers and his sisters like that's how he is before he took this he needed to like look through it and it was a case where a guy got quote-unquote me too'd right he was innocent as fuck and he they cleaned out the other side in court and i was so happy to see that happen because you don't see enough of that don't my issue with the whole thing is that we saw a lot of people on that cry wolf side who now and i see

it all the time it's created an environment of people just being like, oh, God, yeah, I'm sure they did. Whatever. It's sad because now what it does is the people that it happens to and it does. Now, it was your own words. You said it. You know how it is. People are less likely to believe them. They're like, okay, yeah, whatever.

Well, that's sick to me. You know, and my intention, my first gut is to believe you. Yep. Like, it's a very personal thing. Yep. And the fact that i have in the back of my mind that okay well let's check this out that's sad that i gotta think it is you know it's it's kind of like we've become those kinds of movements which are important because i think they do you know definitely raise situational awareness in a lot of different ways, but we are cynical towards, come on, you know, it's a money grab, right? And it's really not. Like, it's really not. Sometimes

it really is a true, like, distraction at best and devastation at its worst you know like listen it's the bureau is still a good old boys network i mean i'm just telling you it is and um i think i've said this i don't know if i've said this but you know i managed a lot of agents like a lot of agents and my top five four of the five are women wow and the way they. Wow. In the way they worked. You never said that. In the way they worked. Who? I mean, it was just, you know, one who's getting harassed right now in an office, you know, that I'm trying to help out.

Don't say that. Yeah. And then, you know, another one. They're all active. They're all still active. Is one of them the person? I'm just curious on this. She was young when she did this which made it impressive

but she led the post 9 11 investigation at the fbi i can't remember her name no i'll pull it up while you're talking yeah no i i no i was uh no okay um yeah but i think that many times we're kind of paralyzed to the thought of it being a truthful allegation, right? And we've seen it time and time again. We've seen public figures kind of walk away from it you know and nothing happened and i mean look at even right like i think didn't cosby get released from jail i mean you know what i mean um and then this this latest clown you know uh hey our uh our guy got him off the first time i know yeah and you know he and then refused to he's a lawyer second time he'd sit in here as a good lawyer and say i cannot discuss my client he was innocent whatever but he knows he he left the case after

that and then he got convicted that tells you everything tells you you know so but i mean it's um it's kind of it's it's sad you know it's sad that we've come to the point where women still have to defend the fact that they just want to be treated like everybody else and i sound like a a goddamn you know like you know i said i probably should do some push-ups or something but you know what i mean like it's just and it's it's become personal for me and I think of the fact that if somebody did that to my daughter we wouldn't have to worry about a lawsuit

or we wouldn't have to worry about crime or conviction because I know how I take care of it period. Just got to draw them off out of the states I tell people I've only told two people in my life that don't ever travel outside the United States oh you'll never come home

nice only two though and they know who they are it's not that many and remember reminding you again do not travel outside the United States or actually one guy you know you are definitely take a trip you you make me like I believe you when when I'm serious about that they're hurtful dudes and they need to go and you're you're in an interesting position with that kind of thing because you know there's like the law there's the way we execute it there's the right to fair trial there's all that shit but there's a human anger like you remember that what was the case that they're they're animals these two people yes they're animals they're they're animals you remember the larry nasser case yeah the gymnast doctor do you remember the father yeah in court absolutely

absolutely and he didn't and and i actually the guys they they subdued him but they didn't want to and they they were treating him like a million bucks and they didn't charge him nope and they shouldn't and i appreciated that yep because you have to again it comes back that intent thing you keep talking about you have to put yourself in that position the bailiff's job is to make sure, all right, he doesn't get there. There was 10 of them there. He didn't get close. He didn't get close. Right?

And I don't know that he knew that that was going to be the case. No. But imagine being the father in that. I can't. I'll put that clip in the corner so people can see what I'm talking about. I can't imagine. I can't imagine. And you have a daughter, too.

Exactly. I can't imagine i can't imagine you know and you have a daughter too exactly i can't imagine and you know i think about um times that i've had that you know i've witnessed things that have happened to to parents and and um you know i don't know how they i don't know how they get through it you know what what's that conversation like like when you have to deal with one of those where you have to inform next of kin not about a dead person i'm sure that one's brutal too but like about hey this happened like a victim you know a victim witness type of thing you know where you're kind of like it's hard to do it because, you know, you're basically interviewing parents at first. And, you know, I am, I consider myself a really pensive interviewer.

I think about everything like we talked about. You know, I think about when I think about a prosecutor I was bringing a case to or a judge we were going to be in front of, I do more work on their background than I do on, you know, anybody else's, right? Because I want to understand their thought process. And it's the same thing with parents. You know, you spend some time thinking about the reaction, you know, how they're going to be like, what can I tell, you know, there's different ways I've approached different people. And that's, that goes back to my military days as a, as a casualty assistance officer, when you're basically going to, you're walking with the chaplain in order to tell people

in the middle of the night that their son or daughter has passed, is killed in combat or, or you're actually escorting somebody from it and you're spending time. And I still have two families that I, that I regularly talk to that I did that. I was with their kids when they died. And so. In combat. Yeah. And so they are, you know, they've become family.

They've become family. You're close with them. Very close. You know, and they've become family. And it's comforting. And my wife has taught me through her loss and through her loss and grief center that, you know, it is so important. I can remember the first time I never knew that up until I would say six or seven years ago, how to do it or not even how to do it, but how you should act. So you're always very tentative about it, right?

You want to treat it like you feel like you're honoring you're honoring but you're it's hard to treat it you're treating as a disaster when you really shouldn't do that you know wait what do you mean so so you're going into it with this pen like you know he's dead you know what i mean like it's but what my wife taught me that i the first time i i did it it was it was so natural that it was crazy and i was like why didn't i have this woman before to explain this and I was at a function in Chicago and it was a similar to the Johnny Mac it's an organization just a reminder that's your foundation that you're on the journey yeah talked about okay this one is it's based out of Vegas they Folded Flag. And it's run by a guy. It started by a guy. I think he's class of 67 from West Point. His name is Bill Foley. And Foley is a very, very, very successful businessman um fully um probably one of two multi-billionaires alumni and fully

owns the golden knights so he owns the vegas hockey team and so he started this foundation doing very similar work to what we've been doing yes i have it behind us you got right full the provides educational scholarships and supports grants to the spouses and children of the u.s military and government personnel who died as a result of hostile action or an accident relates to us exactly so you guys are specifically focusing on college and the kids and he's taking the spouses under his wing which is wonderful so we work together and and bill's in it. He's a very unique guy. He's a difficult guy to get to know.

Like I imagine most billionaires are, right? So anyway, I'm at a function in Chicago and I decided to go out and kind of be a liaison between their organization and Johnny Mac. And I did it on my own dime and we get out there and there's, you know, they have a speaker that night and it's a man who lost his son in combat and uh he gets up and he it's a it's a a beautiful story like you know about his service and he always knew and at the end of that thing you know everybody kind of just dispersed and grabbed a drink and stayed away from him you know and i thought to myself man sheila she told me what you know to do something so i walked over i shook his hand and i said hey man what what sports did did i forget the kid's name i i feel bad what sports

did bill play in in high school and he turned around and he was like and he just had like this smile and he said well he's a great baseball player you know and we started talking and what did you oh man like tell me a story about when he was in school did he get in trouble and and just treated him like he was there the kid was there because he is there it's never going away for this guy and it was powerful for me i was like shit that is a simple thing that we just forget because we don't you know i don't i don't want to go to that because i don't know what to say. You know what? Ask him what the fuck his name was. You know?

And my wife has taught me that. So I feel comfortable around that now, which is, you know, I hate it, but I feel really comfortable saying like, hey, man, you know. But another story I have to think about, like helping people, right? And not feeling bad for yourself, but similar line on that piece. Like, um, I had a really good buddy. I shouldn't even say that. He's a really good buddy now, but he's a, it's a couple in my town. Who's who's young son is 16 year old son. Um, four years ago, um, wind up wind up um dying by suicide and um man at first i was like i don't

know you know i'm not i'm not going there you know and what happened was slowly in the town people just they didn't want to be around it so they stayed away and sheila of course my my my angel of a wife you know be friends she knew them kind of but she befriends these people and they become friends and how like they're amazing people and they they their spirit you could feel it around and I've played golf with this guy a bunch of times and you could see at his club everybody stays away and so he's like you know what Jim you're the only dude that still wants to play golf with me and i said pete i'll do it forever i'll play golf with you for every single day whatever and i told him a story about having some discussions with family members about you know

life is tough and hey you gotta watch you know and and that his strength and and his son, whose name is Pierce Jark, I never knew, but I feel like I did. It's always that way for me. You're so good at that, too. But it comes natural because of Sheila. You're so good. That's awesome that you credit. It just becomes of Sheila. I said to him, if it wasn't for Pierce,

I might not have had some tough discussions with young people that were struggling. I don't feel uncomfortable saying, you're going to kill yourself. And sometimes they'll say, yeah, what's your plan, bro? Well, I don't have a plan. Well, that makes me happy because you're not serious about it. What happens when they say it? They light know but what happens when they say they light up they light up what happens when they admit it they just feel better like nobody ever asked me that when they admit that they have a plan yeah i've thought about it uh plan's a problem you got to

get help how do you deal with it you got to get help you got to get them to the right spot you got to get them at a level of you know a higher level of care than jim diorio you know people admitted that to you i've never had somebody have a plan so I'm happy but I but I you know how many people shy away from not asking the question because you don't want to hear because you know the old adage is well if I ask them they're gonna it's gonna encourage them to do it bullshit do you think some of them are lying but your recognition of the fact that you see them and the fact that you call them on that you ask them the question and and show concern shows that maybe people in the world have you see them and the fact that you call them on that you ask them the question and show concern shows that maybe people in the world have concern for them and suddenly

totally meaning and i think that's 100 accurate i think when you actually call them on it's a question listen you know i think we've all had thoughts of maybe you know maybe this isn't going the way and not not to the level of some of these kids. And this is a tough time. Like it's a tough time. I see kids all over the place that are suffering. They're just suffering. They're anxious. They're, they're suffering from panic attacks. They, they, they are being diagnosed with stuff that maybe they don't even know what the hell it means. And, and they're trying to deal and it's competitive world, you know, now. And so I think it's, yeah, I think it really, and I think it's just, and it's a competitive world now. Fewer opportunities.

Yeah, really. And I think it's okay. When I said to that man, I was scared to go up to that guy and say, hey, what do you like to do? What sport do you play? I was like, what if this guy says, shut the fuck up? What if he just thinks i'm an idiot for being so um you know just forward about it but then i put myself in his shoes and i said to myself what if it was me would i want everybody to stop talking about my son no because he passed no i might even feel like

as a fuck yeah as a parent and i've never been a parent so i can't truly imagine this but i can try to understand it i might even be just questioning if i had done anything differently in a way that i would think and it might be different for a lot of people i'm not saying this is how you have to deal with it but a way i might like to not like but a good way for me to face that and put that out in the open and be able to not move on with my life you never move on but be able to live yeah is the ability to talk about it and talk about the good and understand that like very bad happens in the world and i i think that as a parent that's probably the worst of the worst yeah when your kid's in that position and you know he or she didn't feel like

they could ask for help but right to have someone in here especially from your generation you know you're not a millennial no luckily thank god sorry not to read my own people but like you know you're from and you're a military guy you're a pick myself up i'm gonna take care of my shit kind of guy and yet you have all these nuanced views on stuff and like i'm gonna clip the fuck out of what you just said i'm sure i'll have to go back and look at it to make sure it's possible and it's right but it sounded right to me when when you said that because I want people to hear that there are people like you who think that way. And like not for nothing, some of the stuff – like I talked with you earlier when you brought up the CJ Morgan thing, maybe on the last podcast because we're on part two by now. But there are some sacred things that happen in here that don't come out of my mouth and they come out of the mouth across from me from all different types of people and a couple that come to mind right now on this subject would

be grant wiley my friend who was one of the best college linebackers ever west virginia amazing guy by the way and then another amazing dude ashton larold who's had and is unbelievably open about it has had all kinds of mental health struggles since a young age right there were things that he got into when he was like 10 years old by the way not from bad parenting his parents are great it's just kind of life and like people he was around where you know he he got in front of drugs and and and alcohol before he could jerk off i mean let's call it what it is and some of the things he then dealt with from that to see like some of the stuff grant shared in here and then what ashton shared where they put it as guys too which is also you know that's more of a taboo

thing they put it out in the open they talk about it i mean like ashton talked about the note he talked about the it was a time period where it was like every day like oh which way am i gonna go man and we put out one clip of that it was great and you know i want to see how i want to say this but it went viral yeah and the the number of people who were touched by that on one hand for our society as a whole was concerning for me because it was so many and on the other hand because of part a right there the part b of the fact that they saw this and saw i mean he's a wordsmith he's a musician brilliant writer like his deck i could listen that guy read the phone book and like remake it words it's incredible the way he described this feeling he starts it off i didn't

want to die but i didn't want to be alive and then gives a visual and explains like eventually i got to a point where i realized anxiety depression post-traumatic stress all the i dealt with and deal with okay you're all still there but we're all in a car and i'm driving and i'm in control of this the part b of people seeing that who are in that position to realize oh my god this guy's not denying that existence no but he lives on and has lived on through this years later and lives it lives a very good life right like like i like that guy a lot i really love him great dude yeah you know and puts his name behind things puts his opinions out there makes music does all these different things and it's like well he made it through and he did it

without saying oh it doesn't exist i'll just toughen through and he did it without saying, oh, it doesn't exist. I'll just toughen myself up. He did it by saying, no, you exist, but I'm going to own you. Yep. And the idea that like, okay, there's more people than I'm comfortable with who felt that, but I can't change that. That already happened. They already feel that way. The idea that a 29 second clip of this dude sharing that in here on camera on a microphone can be played over and over and over again i mean this thing has like 78 79 000 shares like shares views it's

at like 10 million that is a beautiful thing and like we talk about the impact with like a cj morgan clip yeah i don't really control that i'm the vessel to put it out once people say it but goddamn am i appreciative of it because they give me the opportunity to do that. Absolutely. So from another angle, a completely other angle, I might add, when I hear you describe this situation that way, I appreciate that a lot because there are a ton of kids who are growing up in this time, too. I mean, it's a fucked up time. It's tough. It's a fucked up time.

Yep. Who maybe not even the fault of their parents or whatever no they just don't feel seen with this and you know how it is actually you can understand this with and i appreciate you bringing this up a few minutes ago because i know i i don't go here because i don't want to bring up stuff that you don't want to go to. But like your own PTSD from the battlefield. And just in general, man. Yeah. Things you see, you can't unsee.

But I think the importance here is you've got to fake it until you make it. And I remember thinking about there were a couple days where i woke up in the morning and i'm thinking to myself why the fuck am i saying like my life sucks what is going on but you recognize the ability to to work it out work through it right it's the it's the people that let that go which i'm not saying listen it's not it's not the end of the world when you do that but it shouldn't be that way everybody there's value you know in everybody and everything they do and you know even like i said even the guys that worst guys that i ever met there's value there's something I learned from them, you know, about life or about what situations do you, or how to be more situationally aware or how to be more

cognizant. Look at the, look at the guy I was talking about that said, you're placed in the path for, for a reason, you know, you're placed in the path of this kid for a reason. That's a bad, he was a bad dude. Like he was not a good guy he'll tell you that right so i think it's like it's just it's just the realization of being comfortable enough with yourself that you can you can be comfortable with others if that makes sense you know to be able to and it's all we always we all fight that negative core belief that we're not good enough i'm i will go to my deathbed saying that, you know, and it's what drives us. But at the same time, you got to be careful because it'll knock you down. You know,

it'll knock your ass down. And we all have the ability and value is not in dollars and cents. It's not in the nicest car and the nicest clothes and the nicest college and no student loans and this great job. Value is in your impact. It's in your impact on others, period. I mean, it is time and time again. The best people we know, the best people we know, we all have two, three, four people that we know or people that made an impact on our lives or the lives of others.

Not the money. I never say, oh, you know, that guy was a good guy. Like my coach I talked about today, like, you know, my, my, my literally coach, the guy made an impact. I thought of shit. I thought of stuff that he said to me at every stage of my life in difficult times, every stage, you know, just, just the, just the, why didn't you throw a curve ball? Like, you know, cause I don't know how to, well, you know what? It taught me like, Hey, why didn't you, why didn't you do this in a situation? You know? Well, you know what? Maybe I better learn how to do that because I'm going

to need to throw a curve ball at some point, you know? And Mr. Papa helped me to do that. So I think that's, that's the beauty of what we're doing, um, in life. Like that's the beauty of what we're doing in life. Like that's the beauty of being able to just talk about mistakes and talk about things we did and incorporate some humor into it, incorporate some, you know, some true feeling. And being, you know, I'm open. Like you see it. Like my parents did a good job. me to, to even in a, even in a place that didn't really reward, you know, outside the box thinking, um, I learned how to do it, you know, and, and my classmates at West Point will tell you like, and I forget some of this stuff, you know, but they'll tell me like, Hey man, I remember one time, like we were all sucking wind and you just did an imitation of the company tack officer.

And it just brightened everybody's night, you know and i was like well that there's my there's my value that was my value and i learned to take that and and utilize it in ways to get people to to cooperate or people to talk or tell me that that's a perfect spot to leave it man like i i want to leave that conversation right there i'm sure i'll clip that up and put that out there just to live on like youtube like forget tiktok even but i just i i really and i say this and i'll say this every time people kind of share that pure behind the the blinds there on this i i really really appreciate you sharing that and and putting that out there and giving people an opportunity to see the other side of it from a tough guy.

You're the dream tough guy. You're Hank Schrader, man. You're Hank Schrader except you're FBI. Go on. You love that. Ray Donovan. Yeah. Without the killing.

You're more Ray Donovan, but I'm saying you look like Hank Schrader. hank he's a good man there were a lot of tiktok comments going i saw that hank schrader rolling in i love it you're like a big tiktoker now too huge tiktok guy i couldn't even spell it a year ago yeah dave urban really converted you herbs the herbster herbs good man well something less hilarious would be remiss if we didn't really dig into this and this is where yes obviously i love your fbi background and the interrogation stuff and war on terror things you were involved with but especially military side this is where that comes in from an expertise standpoint but you and i talked back in mid-august when afghanistan went down and i'm glad we waited because like even i think like the next day after that happened i was recording a podcast and i

always talk about this i have shit age badly in here like a day later sometimes like we're just reacting to stuff i was tempted to bring you in right away after that i'm glad we let some dust settle yeah me too some ability to see some things out for what they were and also now figure out where we go from here and there's a lot of bone to pick off here we could talk about this for a while let's do it one thing though before that because i really really appreciated this and this is the thing that unfortunately goes unseen you told me a story i don't know if you remember this but you definitely remember this happening because it was pretty serious where when afghanistan fell you happened to be was it in

north carolina yeah at the time yes so you were with a bunch of flying back from Yeah from from a golf trip in Pinehurst So you were with a bunch of your class of 86 buddies from West Point? Yeah among some 86 or some 91 errs Yeah, a good look a solid group Now the way I understood this and correct the record if I have any of these details wrong was that i guess it was like the day after afghanistan fell or a couple days later maybe maybe a couple days yeah within 48 hours prior to what we now know was the horrific attack on the military where 13 i believe was 13 u.s service members that's. It was prior to this.

There was one basically unreported death that occurred post-Afghanistan. That we have since, yeah, that since has been confirmed. But at the time, we really, we weren't sure at the time. And we were all kind of, you you know kind of going our separate ways and and um raleigh-durham it wasn't in charlotte it was in raleigh-durham i'm sorry and um the airport's the airport's kind of weird it's a smaller it's really nice but it's a smaller airport and boy it takes it takes forever um if're flying, especially if you're flying JetBlue. For some reason, they don't come on time. JetBlue not being on time.

Yeah, but, I mean, just like they're people to check you in. And so I had an early flight, but because I was there earlier than anybody else, and it took me just as long as everybody else who was flying other flights to check in and to get down into the terminal. All of a sudden, obviously, we have a group text. It's a group of probably 20 of us that are pretty tight. It's a larger group than my normal six or seven person group daily, but, uh, all West Point guys, all combat veterans. And we get a message from one of our buddies and he says, Hey, um, there's a, there's a, uh, a tarmac ceremony, which means we're, we're used to it. You know, you might've been, you might've been on an aircraft where the pilot will actually announce, Hey we have a hero um on board and you know

most i know what that means immediately but most folks are kind of looking around like where's he sitting where she's sitting what that means is they're carrying the body of of a service of the deceased service wait like a regular yeah commercial flight absolutely and they'll have a they'll have a service member's body down yeah underneath so they'll they'll carry it in the cargo And they'll have a service member's body down below? Yeah, underneath. So they'll carry it in the cargo, and they'll be escorted by... If you ever want to really understand... What? Yeah, that's normal. But that's normal.

It doesn't come on the military plane? No. You know, a lot of times when... That's fucked up. I'm sorry. No, it's good. It's a good thing. You think so?

Yeah, and I'll tell you why, because I think it exposes so many more of—it educates. We talk about educates. It educates people what the sacrifice is like, because it just flew on a military plane. We know what that's about. We do the ramp ceremony when they're leaving country. That's interesting. But we do this. So normally you're going to be FedExed or UPSed into Delaware.

We all know that. We laugh about it. What's that base called? So that's Dover. So it's where they prepare the bodies, right? And it's amazing. But if you ever want to see something that kind of shows you the process, there's a movie that HBO did with Kevin Bacon probably 10 years ago.

Love Kevin Bacon. It's awesome. It's called Taking Chance. And what it is, is he's a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who never got the opportunity to serve in combat. So he asks for a mission to go and escort a body of a young private who was killed. And it's based kind of trip to this Wyoming small town and how he carries the body. And it's great. So definitely it's sad, but it's beautiful. And it tells exactly what we're talking about. So what happens is we get this text message that says, hey, this is happening. And we're all kind of scrambling because we're not familiar with the airport.

But it's a small airport. And we kind of look down upon um an aircraft coming in and we we recognize it right away because they're service members and family that actually go out on the tarmac and and stand and this is a commercial aircraft commercial airliner yeah so we kind of gather you know we find ourselves we had left and said goodbye and did our hugs and and you know be safe love you and all that stuff and we kind of gather again and we just stood outside just beyond the family and we kind of stood at the position of attention and we we saluted uh you know not not a regular suit hand salute but hand over the

chest and what you went out to the tarmac we actually stood just just behind the family because we didn't want to go too far out but this is a rally durham airport yeah yeah so they let you out on the tarmac yeah they let us out how'd that happen that might be me you know i might have said west point yeah and i showed my my retired we all showed our retiree you know id cards and they just they wouldn't let us go all the way out to the family because you never know right you got to really be cautious and careful and we kind of just stood there and uh and watched and witnessed and um you know kind of um companion grief is what i call it just being being around so so i want to understand how this works i'm trying to picture this commercial aircraft gets in whatever it is american airlines u.s airways whatever pulls in does it pull in all the way to the booth no okay so it waits on

the tarmac so that people are also on the plane and down below the plane with the cargo is the family gathers the family gathers and there's a body that's presented they let the escort off the aircraft via stairs um they ask the pilot makes an announcement remember i'd say 90 of airline pilots are retired or were military so they understand and it's amazing because if you think about flights think about any flight you've been on when the pilot says hey listen we've got people that are either catching connectors or we're not up folks don't take your seat belts off yet you know we're not up to what happens people are like fuck that you know get up and act like the obnoxious assholes that most people are but in this instance and i've seen it a couple times i've actually been on aircraft

i've been an escort officer and people for some reason just freeze they stop and they tears in the eyes and they some of them stand up and put their hand over their heart. It's pretty amazing to witness. In the aircraft? In the aircraft. So you can see that. Yeah. So I know it because I've been in it, but I know that's kind of what happens.

And then the body is removed with a flag draping the casket. They kind of take it out of a – it's actually in a crate. They take it out of the crate, and they have a flag, and they present of take it out of a, it's actually in a crate. They take it out of the crate and they have a flag and they present the flag. And they don't present the flag, but they put it over the casket and the family's there and they say their last goodbyes and, you know, kind of before the funeral home or wherever they're going or if they're capable of being open casket.

And it's a very ceremonious, you know, it's a powerful piece. You know, it's a powerful piece you know it's a power there's only other one other thing that i can compare it to and that's um you know when you lose a soldier in your in your unit and you actually have a ceremony immediately upon the body being returned and we usually cover the body and do we have to do but we put his boots and his helmet and their rifle up. And, you know, you kind of – it's incredibly powerful. And then you have what's called a roll call. And basically your first sergeant, who's your top NCO, your top noncommissioned officer, kind of stands up and he goes through the list of people. And he, you know, probably first class Dory, you know, present, sir. You know, whatever, you know, you know by first class Dory you know presence or you know whatever uh

you know Captain Diorio present and they get to the person's name and they yell the name the first time they just say it like you know um you know Colonel McHugh and there's just silent right and then Colonel John McHugh I've seen this and they go through it, and then as soon as that last yell, and it's a yell, it's like a, it's like a, almost like a nerve, a panicked yell, like, where are you, kind of thing. And then as soon as that stops, TAPS lights up, you know, so the bugle goes.

And so it's a similar kind of feel, but yet without a lot of that, you know, and the family is just there and you're just in, you know, you're companioning their grief, you're being around them. And boy, I tell you, we kind of, before it ended, we kind of made our way back up and we're standing above overlooking the window onto the family. And as they started to walk up everybody they just like kind of looked up and they had a smile on their face you know just we don't know who you guys are but god damn that was fucking spectacular you were still just kind of stand it and then we just as quick as now we don't you know just hand over the heart and um

you're not in uniform i don't salute you know i just don't believe it's something i want to do out of uniform why is that but and it's just it's it's listen i've seen you know i've seen a lot of the the older the korean war guys the vietnam guys do it and that's great and i support it but i just never i always was trained and and felt like if i was in uniform i saluted if i wasn't i didn't you know i put my hand over my heart and stood at the position of attention and um you know did that yeah it's just my sense you know i just and a lot of guys a lot of my classmates believe that and so then we just separated as quickly as we came and you know that was it you know we just went back and and it's um there's never a coincidence with my group you know there's something that always calls us back to, hey, you know, we're here and we're here to do what we're supposed to be doing. And that's, like you said, the universe and the pieces that fall in, it's very much present in our daily lives.

Did you get to talk to the family? We didn't. No family we didn't no we didn't um you know i was able to get uh through you know i was just able to to verify that was there a need for uh children's education like they did the but the person was so young that it uh oh right you know so that's kind of what we want to see is there anything that we can do to help? And the person was very young. As a member of the military though, West Point guy, the whole nine, how does it make you feel when you see, how do I want to put this, deaths politicized?

And let me expand upon that so you fully understand let's use this afghanistan situation that we're going to talk about in a minute as a full-blown example this was a service member whose demise was not really covered right no one talked about it yeah i don't think so at all about what like you wouldn't have even known about it unless you saw what was happening it was like oh yes i know what that is yes and then a couple weeks later and i'm not even saying this is wrong i think we should cover all of them but you see the tragedy where 13 people whatever it was it was a lot of people who were blown up in a suicide bomber yeah was covered extensively yes and it was politicized it was a fucking war in the media instead of you know full appreciation of the fact that they were who they were and they were doing

a dangerous job that they were doing as a service member what goes through your head when you see that just absolute sadness you know on every level i mean um i just don't think i i'm still not at the point where i can get away from that you know i just feel sad you know i feel sad i feel um yeah i just get to the point you know where i where I want to educate, you know, I want to lead by example as to the value and the impact that these kids have had on our country. And, you know, I often just kind of, I go into a bad place for a minute or two you know and uh it's i i just can't get it's one thing that still just really has an effect um and it could throw me you know in in years past it could throw me for a loop now i'm much more capable of just using it as a chance to educate you know it sounds cold but to say like see that you know that's that's the real deal like that is the real deal that's no movie that's no episode

of seal team or you know that's the real deal and that's that's where it's at you know and so that's how i i think sadness is the best way, but also a sense of urgency to make people understand. And it used to be, the problem for me is it used to be sadness, some post-traumatic stress, and then a chip. A chip on the, like, you motherfucker. You don't fucking know. Stop putting your hand over your heart. That kind of thing you know and i think that's normal because you're still you know when you come back from anything i guess come back from two dayers three dayers and i'd still have that heightened um

you know kind of sense of um i don't even know how to how to to, it's hard to explain it cause I've, I'm not there anymore. I don't want to go back there, but, um, you're always kind of on edge, you know, like a heightened sense of urgency, you know, like a heightened sense of you're, you're very, um, aware of everything. So what, what normally would be to you or me or, or to people like a car beeps the horn, you know, at somebody else in front of you, you know, now I'm good. You're good. You know, I'm a fucking some asshole, right? But when you're in it, that can be an issue, you know, because you're always kind of on edge. You're always, you know because you're always kind of on edge you're always you know looking around so i

think that i've gotten thank god gotten through that and i can i can deal with everything and i just feel really sad for the family i feel sad for what they're about to go through and i'll be sad for the constant thought of you know until they can get to the point where it's an inspiration you know until they can get where they and a lot of folks never get there you know never get there um 9-11 had the same feel you know on a on a honestly man on a probably worse because there was no expectation yeah there was no expectation of that happening. Like, I don't care what anybody says. You write that check, and I used to say all the time, it doesn't matter if you were in combat 100 times, once, never.

You write that same check, and that check says, up to and including my life made out to the United States of America. Here it is. Right. up to and including my life made out to the united states of america here it is right so um i just think it can happen to anybody you know anybody can have that sense any veteran can have the sense of that possibly occurring the thought of it even and and not to i don't want to take away from at all i want to be clear on that from any life that's lost in defense of the country overseas yeah i think what makes something like a 9-11 so shocking is like you you say and it's the obvious point it's not expected of course but also when you are a military member, you made the ultimate sacrifice. You took that risk.

Like Pat Tillman, who we use as an example, I love that example. It's so amazing what he did. I do too. He was about to sign millions of dollars in that contract in the NFL and said, fuck it, I'm going to go to fight. Absolutely. And he lost his life, sadly.

Yeah. But when you, not that it takes away anything, but when you go over there, your family, your people around, everyone, they know that there is a possibility. Yes. Maybe not an expectation. I don't want to go there. But there's a possibility. Yes. That the worst could happen.

Yes. And it doesn't make it better when it does. But there is a special sacrifice that goes into that. And there is an appreciation for the value of your life prior to you going over there that you have the mental. And again, I don't want to say preparation, but you have the mental space in your head that like, hey, it could happen. Yes, agreed. When you see a 9-11, when you see a San Bernardino shooter, when you see things like this, these are people, and I'm borrowing your words from last time, I don't know why I always hear this in my head, but when you talked about Jim Martello, you're like, dude went to work. That's it. He got up and he went to work.

That's it. He was very good at his job. Loved it. Worked in New York. Loved his job. He went to work. That's it. 3,000 other people went to work. That's it. That day, or got on a he went to work that's it 3 000 other people went to work that's

it that day or got on a flight whatever that's it and i think that's what makes that so shocking and scarring and and again and i and i'm sorry if i've said this already but i want i always want to make sure i hedge this because again we're on camera we're on mics and i'm talking with you so i don't want to touch anything whatever so if you gotta shut me down shut me down but with your own situation and the shit you've dealt with on the battlefield in particularly other places but there in particularly i i think one of the most inspiring things for me is that your wife sheila as you've said now on the last podcast and on you mentioned on this one at least she's an i-11 widow and she has to live with that you know and that's that's not just a life

changer that's a life ruiner it's not like and again not to take away from other people's deaths but your husband didn't die of a heart attack no he went to work and a bunch of extremists flew a plane into the building like it's insane it is still when i like 20 years ago digest just happened yep right and you and me covered it a little bit on our last podcast and there were there were some cute little clips from there yeah but that was four months before yep and then it just happened now two months ago and part of it was reviewing the clips on that podcast and going through it and reliving it and then reliving the whole day because it was such a seminal

anniversary but i i can't imagine even 20 years later living with that and so i think you we talked earlier on probably the last podcast about the universe working in some funky ways I think the fact that you and Sheila found each other all these years later too I mean you didn't marry until what like 2014 2017 wow even later so like 15 years after whatever it was where you found each other you know you have very different experiences I mean you were there on that 11 but you weren't in the building right you know your experience that's very different yeah yes it's it's there i mean i felt back where i was and you know it definitely was hyper vigilance um in a lot of ways but you make a great point and i think you saw guys die i want to be clear though you saw guys in your arms on the battlefield that's a whole nother level i saw i saw some dudes i saw some shit and right in 9-11 and

other places you know i'd say like i've said to you i've had worse times in the bureau than i ever had anywhere else you know really yeah i mean not worse times but similar and i think you the point you made that was great i didn't know that by the way yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm opening up a little more as we kind of get there. But, you know, the point you made, which I think is really well taken, and that is when the expectation is probably a good word. Because when you're deployed or a family member is deployed and you see somebody pull up in front of the house, you fucking know exactly what that is, right? Yeah. When you had a 911, there was a hope that your guy was going to be the person

that pulled up to the house, and nobody pulled up to the house. Nobody. So when I traveled or when I went out on these casualty assistance jobs with the chaplain, I was the guy that pulled up to the house. For 9-11? No, not for 9-11. But 9-11, nobody pulled up to the house. People were waiting. They were putting photos up.

They were, oh, I think I saw him. I think, or I thought, man, you know, he got out, but he, you know, I can't imagine that trauma. I can't imagine that trauma. And so much so that I can remember early on in Sheila and Mai's relationship when we got serious. And there was one morning that, you know, I just, I was up early and I didn't want to wake her up. And I was heading out to the office and I just kind of, you know, went open the garage door, jumped in my car and out of the front door, she comes. She's like, don't ever, ever leave without saying goodbye to me and she said you want to talk about post-traumatic stress do that to me again you know so it's kind of like that and it's

still to this day it's like that and there's not a night that goes by that like even we're sitting here and she's texting me good night you know i want to make sure like it's and i get it you know so i see it the difference there's really it's so much more significant not significant but it's so i think you prepare your time as a military spouse as a military family member that this could this could happen but you never think about something like that or a shooter or sending your kid to school right and never coming home or even even an accident right i mean you've had experience losing friends and accidents and even that is unexpected you know it's unexpected but the military i think it does a they do a decent job at being that you know being that

for for everybody i would love for my wife to be the the subject matter expert in the military on how to get kids through and how to get families through because there's nobody better i mean that's pretty awesome just save lives yeah i watch her save lives talk about that if you don't mind yeah like what she what she runs yeah she runs so back in 2015 um she had always kind of thought about doing this like having some type of place for people to go oh wait she did this 14 years later 14 years she didn't do it to 2015 oh i didn't know that yeah so she you know she raised her kids right so she didn't know that. about a dream that she had shortly after 9-11 and um and Jim Martello was sitting in the the you know kind of the recliner that he always sat in and that still sits in our living room which I think is really cool her husband her husband and it's funny because every pet we've ever had sits

in that fucking chair so you can't tell me he's sitting right there which freaks me out once in a while and I tell him all the time Jimmy stop you know don't don't animals but they don't i mean they know he's there right so but long story short about this one is she um has he she has a stream and in the dream he says hey sheil um i'm okay you know but if you were to ask me two weeks before 9 11 um you know if i wanted to leave you and go here where I'm at now, I would have to say, absolutely not. But I want to be with my wife. But if you were to ask me now, if I want to come back, no, I want to stay here. And he said'll i'll wait for you and i'll i'll save a place for all our loved ones but i gotta stay here i'm happier and then she woke up so as soon as she knew that she was like i gotta find a place for these people who are left behind because he's all right but

everybody else and that's how the idea of stephy's place came to be because stephy was a was a veteran um who died of cancer and left three kids behind she had that dream years later years no she had that dream like in 2001 but she knew she couldn't do anything so she set this place up and it's almost like i i look at it i'm sorryi, I'm sorry. I cut you off. Steffi was a veteran who one of Sheila's boys' hockey coach's wife was sisters with this Steffi. And Steffi passed, left three kids behind, three young kids who the sister actually went up adopting, which I think is a beautiful story. And Sheila said, I got to meet her a few times, and she was an incredible person. And she said to Sheila,

without Sheila ever saying anything about the dream, she said, you know, I know I'm gonna be okay, but I gotta find a place for these kids to be all right. And so, Steffi's Place is... And people, it's droves of people that come to this place. Like, it's free, and, you know, Sheila's got a budget, and all she does is basically, you know, she fund-raises once or twice a year, and it's great and and you know shill's got a budget and all she does is basically you know she fundraisers once or twice a year and it's great we have golf tournaments we have things

that we can to kind of be there but but it's an amazing organization it's an amazing place and it saved numerous lives and people that walked in there you know two days after their child died and said i don't want to live anymore anymore. And now they're supporting groups. They're orchestrating and being caregivers for people who are in the same boat and sharing experiences. It's amazing. I also want to say this. Yeah.

And if this is out of bounds in some ways, I apologize and I'll take it out. But Sheila's a woman of a lot of means yeah very much so you know she she needs a job like she needs a six hole in her right right she doesn't need to work and and she doesn't get paid and i didn't know that it was years later too yeah she's that's a to me that's that's and i don't even know sheila like we talked on the phone once when you were in there but yep yeah i hear a lot about her and and obviously like through larry over the years and everything he's been close with them forever but that's such a that's a beautiful thing to me and like we talk about people quote unquote using a

platform doing things for good she was not a public figure right but she's got a platform in the sense that she got some cash yep and instead of eventually finding i hate the words move on but eventually finding a way to live on right you know and like okay whatever and dealing with it herself she also helps a ton of people she wants she wants others to to have the same experience of bitter versus better you know that's her thing and you know it's interesting because i don't know if i told you this but around the right around the time of the 20th anniversary just a couple you know two months ago or a month and a half ago two months ago we were i have a an acquaintance who's a West Point graduate. He's a class of 03 guy. And his name is Joe Quinn. I love these class things, by the way.

86. He's an 03 guy. And he's a good dude. And he's a good businessman. And he lost his 23-year-old brother. You sent me this article. I did. Yeah, I did.

I'm going to. I can't put this on the video. It's an article. Yeah. I'm going to put this somewhere. Maybe I'll put it on my Instagram story or something Yeah, I read this right when I sent it to me. It was a man credible. Yeah, but tell this please so I mean You know Joe basically I followed his his blog and and you know, he wrote some great things

I mean some fabulous kind of introspective Words of advice for guys who are looking for advice, even though he wasn't thinking that. You know, just, wow, amazing. You know, amazing. So his 23-year-old brother died in the towers. And he was at West Point when his brother died. When it happened.

Okay. And Joe went off to combat and did all the things that we did and fought on the war on terror and pretty pretty exceptional and um along the way he had written like i said some powerful pieces and right around september 11th this year he he wrote an article and the heading of it was this is the last words you'll ever hear me or read from me with regards to 9-11 and he said um and the article goes on to talk about not not a never forget but an always remember and time to turn the page and what he meant there was who does that tie into by the way yeah i mean it's just pretty incredible with regards to don't i don't want to remember the i've been through since 9 11 and on the battlefield and doing the things i've done i'd rather forget

powerful powerful you know i i i just want to i it's not a never forget you know i want to forget i want to forget this and but you can't and the last piece was basically he talks about reading a book to his daughter and that's what he kind of lines it up with and he says she never wants the book to end she wants to flip the page and then keep going joe quinn joe quinn and if you just run west point yeah keep and um you know he's reading the book and she keeps wanting to go back to pages that have passed because it's a pop-up book and daddy i want to do this page i want to do this page again let's go back to this and he's talking about how turning back the pages in his life have been have been hard and you know the last piece is well

my wife comes in to bring my daughter to bed and and um we're on the last page and she says it's time it's time to go to sleep and he says you know basically it's time to turn the page you know and he has not written uh about 9-11 and i don't believe he will so um powerful piece powerful this is actually short enough i've never done this but i want to read this yeah are you okay with that absolutely i just i read this three times yeah you sent it yeah and it's about a five minute read so congratulations people you get an audiobook right now but i just i again it and i want to say this it was already hitting me hard leading up this year yep to the fact that it was 20 years because that was such a seminal for all the bad reasons moment in my life i was just old enough yeah to understand what was going on not all the way but

yeah you saw buildings you saw planes going to buildings and it was like well that's not supposed to happen yep and there's images you know like your mom picking you up from school your teachers in school who all their families are in new york city and they're on the phone tears my teacher who i've said this on another podcast somewhere but who did an unbelievable job i i can't, she should have been paid a million dollars for that day. Yep. Second grade teacher, just like, sitting us all down, keeping her composure, and explain, like, imagine explaining that to like a seven, eight year old.

No, I can't. And, but, she explained it. Yep. year old no i can't and but she explained it yep it wasn't wasn't like there are people jumping out of the building and and committing you know what you know what i mean like committing the most the hardest decision i've hurt people you know right it was bad people have hurt people and a lot of people are dead yep and i and i don't remember it's crazy i wish i remember so much about that day i wish i could remember exactly the word she said but of course i didn't appreciate it in the moment i was like oh wow okay no but yeah but later thinking about it you do even a few years later

when you're like 11 12 you start to think about that and you're like what an amazing teacher and she was an unbelievable teacher no it sounds like i was at a friend's school so you had to call him teacher or whatever but she was unbelievable but this this piece she sent me touched me because you know this and we talk about life happening in a weird way this guy he's sitting at one of the weirdest and craziest and also tragic Crossroads of he'd already signed up for West Point he's there yeah yeah he's committing his life to this stuff without at that point without the central cause there wasn't the main enemy that everyone was focused on and now suddenly not only do you have that but it it hit home your brother who didn't sign up for that by the way no new to his job yeah another guy that just went to work 23 year old 23 but yeah i'm going to read this

real quick yeah a little girl named beckett doesn't want me to turn the page i'm reading elmo christmas to her on a night in early september a children's book filled with trap doors that she must open one by one therefore the thin book takes longer to get through than anticipated but regrettably i'm not present because i can't stop remembering 20 years ago never forget a phrase forever linked to 9-11 but for me it's forever linked to my brother jimmy as too many people people now by now know he died that day and i can never forget how he died i can never forget my asthmatic brother looking down from the 104th floor of the North Tower as smoke billowed up I can never forget him being scared the fear in his eyes I see them and it I can never forget him suffocating of the building falling him

collapsing when I hear never forget I can never forget his beautiful face I can never forget his beautiful face. I can never forget his beautiful face burning, moving, melting, but never fading. Perhaps too graphic, but there's a price to pay for not forgetting. Two weeks before the towers fell, I'll never forget the back of Jimmy's head as he sat at the desk next to our childhood bunk bed while I rushed out of our Brooklyn home in a mad scramble to get back to West Point before taps without saying goodbye without saying I love you I'll never forget his gruesome death where we were we'd never find his remains and being so filled with anger that I was willing to deploy anywhere the president wanted to send me and with the passage of the authorization for use of military force I love that he went into this by the way. AUMF.

The president was granted by Congress the ability to send me anywhere. So after graduating West Point, I was prepared for Afghanistan, but was sent to Iraq. Which, side note real quick, all the service members who had to do that and didn't go, quote unquote, where where they would rather go that's not their fault and not that not the media i give the media a lot of shit not that they do that but we forget that sometimes yeah these guys were doing their job a lot of them signed up to go to the taliban that now fucking took over yep all these years later because we handled it wrong and took our eye off the ball obama was right about that it was i agree with because we handled it wrong and took our eye off the ball obama was right about that it was i agree with them 100 it's like we took our eye off the ball right but i appreciate someone who was in the middle of that saying it like that because it's

important anyway i'm sorry i'll never forget my brothers in arms who were six of the 4598 u.s service members killed in iraq they were shot out of a Chinook. I'd pack their gear up in duffel bags to be sent home to their parents of the young and the wives of the old, the ones in their mid-20s, with one wife of a sergeant carrying their unborn child. I held a picture of the ultrasound in my hand for a second before stuffing it in the olive drab bag. If he couldn't be a father then neither should i i'll never forget although i've tried in between tours in iraq i'll never forget a brown-eyed girl i met named melanie a girl i thought i fell in love with i lost one brother but she lost two

her brother jeff to an iud on a bridge in iraq her brother kevin to suicide we talk about our shared losses we talk about having a family having kids but a year before bin laden was killed we thought it could never work i could never be a father she could never be a mother because i would never forget my brother and she'd never forget hers i'll never forget one of my best friends who was killed in afghanistan i agreed to grab a beer with him before he took off to afghanistan but i never showed up he was killed a couple weeks later one of the 2443 u.s service members killed in afghanistan and sometimes i try to grab a beer with him still one for me one for him in front

of an empty chair sometimes i try to forget him with several beers But it doesn't work Trust me, I've tried I'll never forget my translator Remind me to talk about this by the way I want to ask you about this Dale in Afghanistan We'd always joke about how our Italian colleague Would call everyone a quote unquote Shit guy

We'd drive around to meetings with elders, governors and generals He'd drive, he'd translate He'd save my life He'd bring the whole chickens to the base We'd drive around to meetings with elders, governors, and generals. He'd drive. He'd translate. He'd save my life. He'd bring the whole chickens to the base. We'd feast. After coming back from a big meeting with a big American general over a big Afghan dinner, our Italian colleague asked what he thought of the big-time general. He'd respond, quote, he's a shit guy.

Regrettably, I've lost contact with Dale. But most likely, he's been left behind. Dead or hiding. And that's what I want to talk about. Fighting for his life. And thank God there are organizations like No One Left Behind and Better People Than Me advocating to bring our Afghan allies home. Since 9-11, I spent the first 10 years remembering and the last 10 years unsuccessfully forgetting. I've learned that forgetting is impossible impossible but holding on is a choice i was prepared to let it all go until i came across

an image of a marine sergeant who was a baby on 9-11 cradling and i saw this this was amazing cradling an afghan baby in her arms who was one of the 13 u.s service members killed by a suicide bomber at the kabul airport kabul airport it makes me want to airport. It makes me want to go back. It makes me want to go back to the Kabul airport where I landed so many years ago to fight the war of necessity. It makes me want to go door to door looking for Al Qaeda to avenge my brother's death without my friends and 46,000 Afghan civilians being killed. It makes me want to go back to Iraq without Jeff and 185,000 Iraqi civilians being killed. It makes me want to go back to Iraq without Jeff and 185,000 Iraqi civilians being killed. It makes me want to go back without Kevin and 30,177 veterans taking their own lives.

This guy hit everything, man. It makes me want to avenge the 13 U.S. service members just killed. This was in August. Without killing seven Afghan children by an American drone strike. It makes me want to avenge our losses without the 7 552 u.s military deaths the 30 177 suicides and the 600 000 civilian deaths during the war on terror it makes me want to go back to fight the war without any of the consequences but war always has consequences mostly suffered by the lower enlisted troops and the civilians

caught in between the roadside and precision bombs. It makes me want to go back and ask Vietnam veterans for forgiveness. They warned me how it would end. I didn't listen. I apologize for them for it. I love them for it. I'll warn a young soldier one day. She won't listen.

By the way, shout out to those guys because it wasn't their fault they were over there. But as we collectively lament the sad, horrific, and incompetent exiting of the war, if we're being honest with ourselves, we know the war will never truly be over until we rip up the authorization for use of American force, AUMF, that gives the president, regardless of party, unlimited power to extol the treasure of our taxes and the blood of our sons and daughters on any war of their choosing. Repealing the AUMF without conditions is the only true way to end the forever war forever. I'd like to go back to prevent the AUMF, but mostly I'd just like to go back to have that beer with my friend. I'd like to go back to that bridge in Iraq to tell Jeff to bring his men to safety. I got it from here. I'd like to go back to Kevin and all veterans and tell them that it's okay.

I've been there too. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be you. You're not alone. People want to hear your story. I want to hear your story. I'd like to go back to finally tell Jimmy. I'd like to go back to finally tell Jimmy. I'd like to go back to finally tell Jimmy goodbye.

While I can never truly forget you, it's time to let you go. So goodbye, my brother. Goodbye, my friend. I'll be missing you. And while the word love does not suffice how I feel about you, it's the only word we got. I love you. This is what I'm thinking about when I'm not present. But this little girl named Beckett snaps me back to attention without hope or with hope in her big brown eyes.

I see them and it. With mischief and determination, she must name every character in the book. Big Bird, she says, always pointing. Bert, Ernie, Elmo. And when she gets to Cookie Monster, she points at me laughing and says, Daddy. When we get to the last page, she refuses to turn it, but wants to go back to the beginning, reopen all the trap doors,

do the same thing over and over again because she's a child who just can't let go, who doesn't believe in tomorrow. In walks Beckett's mother with our son in her arms. Melanie says it's time to go to bed. It's time to turn the page. I get the goosebumps reading that it's good stuff yeah good stuff truly it's uh it's deep it's well written and it's from a good dude

yeah thank you for passing that on yeah that was awesome but i i wanna i wanna get to the difficult topic that's been in the middle of this at hand which is how it ended and to me it was a sick sadistic twisted just evil of a symbolic ending and you know even put myself in the shoes of someone who lost a family member on that day. Or lost a family member in the war afterwards. To see Afghanistan fall to the Taliban was... It's beyond words. And while Vice gets a lot of shit these days for the nature of some of their reporting, I will say I still enjoy a lot of content depending on what it is from Vice. And they put out some amazing reporting leading up to this in Afghanistan.

They were trying to sound the alarm. And then they put out amazing reporting while it was happening. And there was one woman, which I was shocked at, given the Taliban, who went open cover with the Taliban. They invited her in, which I don't know if that's like progressive. Who the fuck knows? But all right, whatever. They bring her in and they weren't progressive when she got there because they were still doing their bullshit. I'm going to cut off your hand for taking a goat, tribals and stuff and talking about the the implementations

they wanted to do and the point is the writing was on the wall and i want to turn it over to you to talk about what went wrong here and in your estimation how it went wrong and we can go all into this but one thing i do want to say is that when we look at Afghanistan and how it went down, every president since Bush, it's been a popular thing to say, in this article that forget the fact it costs a lot of money and taxpayer dollars it's it you're sending service members over there to fight in the line of battle for what for what and the one thing that is a for what is the afghan people who were caught in the middle of this as well and i'm not talking about the ones who support the Taliban. I'm talking about the ones who don't want to do that Yeah, and we took our eye off the ball this war started to go south talking to people who were there in

2003 when we went to Iraq and for 17 years even if we were talking about plans over and over again to leave We didn't have a plan in place. I don't care who it was. We've seen the execution now, and the execution was terrifically bad. I mean, it was epically bad, I should say. But we never... We could have seen this. We did see this. We knew what this power vacuum looked like.

We knew what a fucked up place this is, given the nature of its history and its location and geography. And yet, this still happened. And so one thing to address right away that I'd love you to give an open opinion on, whatever it is, is the people who are saying, including some service members, I think, I think I've seen that, who are saying, we're concerned that people died in vain here. I don't like to think that that but i'm curious what your thoughts are yeah i mean i you know i have to start it off with saying obviously that's a concern you know is is those family members that i know especially the mchugh's

and you know kelly his daughter and he died in afghanistan yeah john died in afghanistan yeah yeah i didn't know i thought no may 18 2010 right at the airport probably i would say feet from where those 13 service members were killed literally the same intersection so you know i think that was my big concern up front was how is connie how is the family you know how are they doing with regards and to it and you know they're they're a pretty faithful family so you know they kind of help us through it as a class like you know and there's others that have died that we know you know along the way i mean not necessarily my class but others you know that we know from West Point and other locations that we've either led or have served with us. And I just, I have a hard time as an American

service member ever, ever talking about a life in vain, you know, lost in vain. I just do. I, I don't think I'll ever be able to do that. You know, that being said, I just feel that for so many years, and listen, we were all, you know, I've got so many, I mean, many, many, many of us were there in one capacity or another and it's just it's hard for me to say this but it's a really kind of poorly executed Joe hits it on on the head you know with regards to a president that can just make a universal decision to send anyone anywhere at any time you know it's just not the way it should ever be and i get the i get the knee jerk um

initially with regards to these towers are burning they've stayed burning for months and months and the pentagon is burning there's a plane you know 800 feet in the ground in Shanksville, PA. And let's rally America and let's go. And let's go to a World Series game and watch the president throw a first pitch out. And all the shit that everybody thinks is great until you're there. Until you're in that shittle, you know. And it still goes back to I can never be that cold is the wrong word, but can never feel that any life was ever left or lost in vain. And what I do worry about is those left behind

because I think they're just being executed. And there are people that were of value to this country and i had experience with it you know in um in iraq with regards to what we call the sons of iraq funds that were given out in incredible volumes of cash that were given to informants and in iraq question yeah i knew you were in the middle east and everything i didn't know you were you went to iraq too yeah i mean we had investigations for service members ripping off money because what happened was the the dynamic was just what's kind of going on now the dynamic was i develop a source and i pay them a lot of money right in order to give me information on what the build-up is what the terrorist groups or organizations are planning and plotting and where they are where they're

located and what they've done and these motherfuckers are like so so violent and so barbaric that they would find these folks and just execute them you know with the money and then they hang the money around their neck. So the dynamic that happened was a lot of service members were like, fuck this. We're not giving them the money, so we'll put the money in our pockets, which is bad. But it's also a post-traumatic piece, and you can't forgive it. And it's like a bank robber that gives the money back the next day. You still rob the fucking bank. So we had to deal with that along the way,

and that was a big part of my job over there was to deal with some of those issues. And you had to, as a service member yourself, you had to go over there. Well, no, as an FBI agent. I know, but as in ex-service member. Yeah, but I mean, I think that's the right person to do it because you talk the talk and you— You get it. But that, it is a, it was a, you know, just everything about it was uncomfortable. There was no, there was never, if you think it goes all the way back to the early 90s, you know, there was no true mission.

You know, there was no way to possibly, if we didn't learn from what the Russians, what the Soviet Union discovered in Afghanistan along the way for 20 years, like we didn't learn from what the Russians with the Soviet Union discovered in Afghanistan along the way for 20 years like we didn't learn the lesson you know we didn't we didn't look in research and we had some smart people we had some solid smart people and even to today you know we had good people sitting in the White House that were recently that just weren't you know just just didn't didn't see it. Do you think it because it wasn't a priority? I mean, was it ever a priority?

I don't know. You know, I mean, I just think that. That's scary. If you think about, there's a lot of other things that we could go, we can go down some pretty productive rabbit holes. Let's do it but but i mean i think like in order to do that you know you got to kind of understand and it's all speculation on my part but what i think you got to understand is that

we never truly had a joint understood mission. There was never an objective. I mean, I'm a military guy. I never saw an objective. What about at the beginning? Well, we did a great job. Yeah, all right.

So I'll give them, I think we did a great job at decentralizing, you know, the terrorist organizations. Agreed. And that was important. That was really, and really even up until a couple years ago, honestly. Like, I believe that. I believe up until a couple years ago we had a handle. We had a firm handle on who was who and where, and we were whacking them one by one and knocking them off.

And then the big mistake is, you know, not guarding that airport. Basic gates and guard shit. Not guarding that airport. Not sending the 82nd over to be the combat troops that they are and the way they're trained until it was too late. 82nd Airport. Yeah. Not using all of our, and we've been guilty of this before, not using all our resources, not, we don't have to play by the rules of engagement when we're in this situation.

We don't have to ride on the fucking sides of the road. You know, we can ride down the middle of the road, that kind of shit. We can use armored vehicles in order to clear houses. philosophy that was supposedly, you know, oh, it's a kinder, gentler, you know, military to people that didn't have any respect for life, you know, and we allowed ourselves to be brought into, you know, brought into that situation. And I just struggle with it. I mean, I have a hell of a time making sense of it i just do i don't know what i don't know who to blame i i've i've done a lot of reading on it i've done a lot of talking to people on it i'm not i'm just not sure we had adequate resource and leadership i don't think it's i'm just not sure of it you know i i can't i can't

put my finger on anything um it's sad it's not recent like here's the here's the one thing and i'm not i also i'm not going to defend biden at all on on how the pullout was one of the worst executed things you'll ever see it was atrociouscious. But it's also not, like, the resource issue is not a recent thing. No. We've been doing, like, for a long time, it's been like, and frankly, it started with Obama talking out loud about how we were going to, the number of troops we were going to pull out. Which, to me, like, I understand your intention. That's fucking crazy. That's like saying to the other team, here's the plays we're going to run on this drive well i mean it's the same it's the same you know

announce a date and then don't have a plan crazy and don't have and think these people aren't going to rip across that they're all they're they're violent killers they're not it's not like you're dealing with people you can negotiate with you know i mean i'll be honest my buddy did the best job that's been done pompeo fucking had those people at the table he did that you know he did a great job what this was the this was the taliban yeah negotiate to drop arms yeah i mean he had it done you know okay and then we had uh you know whatever happened happened and and the election takes place these fucking people aren't capable i mean they're they're non-military people they're not capable they don't understand they don't they've never been in a tough situation they've

been you know all of them trump's been a career fucking businessman fucking biden is a career politician who couldn't even keep his fucking family together and the rest of them are fucking knuckleheads you know i mean there's the secretary of state now who's this clown you know like i mean mark milley i'm going all over the place because i'm getting a little tired too but um you know i'm not as i'm not as sharp on this um right now but it's it's just frustrating you know it's frustrating beyond belief. I don't have any answers. I don't know enough about it. I don't know enough inside information.

You know, I know what I saw. I know what bothered me back when, but it's to have people jumping out of, you know, off of aircraft. Yeah. Like, come on. You know, like, and to have a guy that doesn't even have the ability to stand up and make a statement about it in the world. I mean, there's no doubt.

That was four or five days ago. There's no doubt the guy. It's crazy. The world is looking at us, and they're just waiting. They're waiting. Something's coming to this side, I'm telling you. Mark my words. And we're not ready for it.

Well, here's a question, because you just brought it up. I forgot about this, too. Yeah. What is the story, if you know it, behind the whole Taliban negotiation? Because I'm not going to lie. I would have had the opposite reaction to that. I don't know too much about it. Pompeo was, and I don't know that it was him versus like Trump was telling him to do this.

I mean, that is kind of. Trump never told him to do anything. Really? Trump never told Pompeo to do anything. Screamed at him. Fucking, that dude's the most clueless fucking dude in the world. Yeah. He's a fucking idiot. He does tell people what to do though yeah they don't listen it's like listen you ever have a

boss that just screams at you in the first two weeks it's like this guy knows and then the rest of the time you're like man he's just gonna scream he gives a shit he doesn't know what he's talking about that's what i see i spent all his time on a toilet bowl fucking tweeting. No clue. I mean, everybody tried. Anybody that had any influence with the guy tried. Now, it wasn't a vote for Joe Biden. It was a vote against Donald Trump. Yes.

Agreed. It wasn't a vote for Joe Biden. Agreed 100%. Are you fucking kidding me? The guy's a zero. He's been a zero for his whole life. He's asleep at the wheel. He's asleep at the wheel,

but he never did anything before for whatever, how many years, and then bringing in the administration he's brought in. I mean, Millie fucking cowering to Nancy Pelosi. I mean, come on, man. That's an example to me of the politicization of the military.

And I know you know, Mark. But, you know, and I've ripped them on the phone with you. I'll rip them now again. I see a guy there who, when you look at his public actions, where in the span inside of a year, he goes from escorting Trump behind tear gas to a church during the George Floyd riots to hold up a Bible. Yeah. Like in his fatigues to nine months later lecturing America on critical race theory and how he wants to know white rage. To me, like, I'm not even saying like i'm gonna judge either one though i will like assume i didn't do that that's an opportunist to me and then when i and

i don't know how much of it is you know political war but when i hear things like he contacted his, whatever it's called, his similar ranking officer in the fucking Chinese military in January. Now, I know some shit was going on. I know it was bad. That's not a friend. I mean, the contact, right. I mean, the CCP should never be considered a friend. Not a friend. But at the same time, you know, I just think that we are on the road to third world countrydom. It's going to happen.

You know, hopefully it's not my lifetime, but the signs are there. Signs are there. I mean, you know, little examples that I see every day. My produce fucking going times three from August to today. Gas prices in California, nine bucks. What the fuck?

This country's asleep at the wheel. So if you don't think that there's opportunities for attacks, you're crazy. You're crazy. You're crazy. Got national security advisors that couldn't get a fucking they wouldn't be able to get a basic clearance i i want to get to that i just don't

want to get off afghanistan i want to make sure we we cover some of this the the very like i believe in symbols a lot when you look at history and how history weirdly repeats itself afghanistan is the the graveyard of quote-unquote empires it is a very weirdly located place it is landlocked it's hard to fight it's hard to fight there it's hard to make a difference it's hard to and we had it done you know we had it done we needed to bail out of there years and years and years and years and years ago but we didn't because we had it done. We needed to bail out of there years and years and years and years and years ago. But we didn't. Well, we had it done. We went to Iraq.

Well, we needed a war. I mean, we needed a war, right? Well, we needed to, listen, we needed to get, you couldn't attack Saudi, so you had to fucking go into Afghanistan, right? Because that's the next best place with regards to any type of shelter for our boy, right? So I don't I don't know I wish I was I wish I was more knowledgeable of what the actual mission was that I don't know I couldn't tell you maybe there was maybe there was I just think it was it was retribution you know for a parts of Contribution for these 3,500 people who died. We've never done that before. No.

Well, I mean, I could think of it that way for World War II, but that was different because we went into a full-blown, we declared war. Yeah, two fronts. It's a little different. You had to stop a dude who was fucking killing generations and generations of people. i mean that's different you know it's different and in japan you know they needed us they needed us in that war as much as

we needed to be in that war you know i mean um who knows what that would have done you know yeah in europe so some crazy so it's kind of like i get that whole piece you know i understand but there's no other reason we stopped short in you know 91 of moving across and destroying something that shortscott said wouldn't have been a problem it wouldn't have been a problem we could have which one we could have marched right through iraq and destroy and took that back then and just had a north korea kind of south korea kind of look you know just had a stabilization force there for the rest of time and none of this would have ever happened would that have prevented nine i think so i mean i think a lot of things would have well not one thing about saddam hussein he didn't like

terror he didn't like terrorism no a basic intel would have would have basic intel sharing would have prevented we had it in have prevented. We had it. In Iraq? We had it. Not in just Iraq, but along the way. I mean, shit, you had a bombing in fucking 93. Oh, yeah. We had a lot.

In the towers. We had a bombing in the fucking World Trade Center. You knew they were going to do it. We fucking put reports forward to Carson Dunbar in New York. Fucking the worst FBI agent in history. And they went on and took over the new jersey state police you know guy's a moron was he the head of counterterrorism before and he gets the report they send them report hey there's dudes in arizona 63 page report dudes in arizona all they want to do they

don't they don't give a shit about taking off or landing they just want to learn how to steer the fucking aircraft well he was our guys he wasn't in charge of counterterrorism yes he was no john o'neill was no john o'neill was no john o'neill was new york's counterterrorist right carson dunbar was fucking new york's guy he was the adic oh yeah he was the assistant director in charge there and he didn't show that to john o'neill listen o'neill was o'neill was busy drinking and fucking banging chicks you know he did honest well let's be honest about that but he also i won't take this wrong i mean he sounded the alarm over and over again he did it in dc too he did it at these me i mean it's it's verified if you watch looming tower it'll make you believe

that you don't think so no no i think the key was the the key was very if if the first bombing doesn't trigger some type of defense mechanism that stays on that for the rest of time just like we've forgotten now just wait i'm telling you you like that documentary or not documentary you like that series because of what it some of the things it showed that were true themes like the Discord between yeah yeah yeah I mean about that last well that well that's the issue right so the issue is no information was shared right you can't get past that anything you look at you can't get past the fact that we had it you know, a school kid could fucking connect that. We chose not to because of personalities like John O'Neill. Well, the guy, I will say.

Just abrasive as shit, or Mary Jo White sitting as the U.S. attorney, you know, at the time. Just abrasive, like just abrasive personalities, and no better than everybody. That was the problem. Well, the guy. Didn't listen to the military. You know, I mean, did not.

The guy at the CIA was the worst. Have you ever heard that? I don't even know. I don't know that that guy's even a truthful character. Probably not. Have you heard his testimony at the 9-11 Commission? I've heard. I mean, yes, I've heard and studied it, you know, along the way.

I've never heard something like what he said that wasn't in a shitty Hollywood movie. He said, this is a direct quote, at the 9-11 commission, they were asking him about his relationship with John O'Neill. Because whether or not, and I understand the other stuff was true, he did say, whether or not he was sounding it every day, he's on record. He did say this shit like, yo, this guy Bin Laden is fucking coming here. He was the guy over there in Nairobi investigating. Some of his people died too. He was the guy at the USS Cole, which you know about too, investigating. He was on the ground with this shit, and the guy at the CIA, Michael Schur, who hid a lot of this stuff from him. He was the head of – what was it called? – Alexlex station which was the bin line unit at the 9-11 commission he was asked about his relationship by one of the senators with john o'neill and they said something

a lot i'm paraphrasing they said something along the lines of to michael schuer the senator said and mr schuer you did not have a good relationship with John O'Neill. And when you were asked about his death, you didn't like reflect that you were upset about it. And he said, yes, sir. And I'd like to add that I said the only good thing to come out of that day was that those two buildings fell on top of him. Yeah. That's some Dr. Evil shit.

But that also tells you that the mission to John O'Neill was not as important as John O'Neill. You think so? What job did the guy get? Here's what I think it says. What job did the guy get? I think John O'Neill, and I think this is reflected on the record. I think it's that same problem we had talked about, which was he was at the FBI.

FBI's at that time, especially police, they arrest, they make the case, they put it in court. He wanted to arrest and bring back CIA. Sometimes not for the right reasons here. They're all about cultivating that information. And so they wanted to cultivate and John O'Neill was not going to do that. But why did John O'Neill want to bring back an arrest? Oh, definitely for the credit of that, no doubt. Period.

Of course, yeah. Period. What did I say before? What is the true sign of someone whose intent is for the good of the bigger organization? Intel. Was there ever development of Intel in John O'Neill's watch? Never. I don't think so, no. Never.

Yeah. Bingo. And in fairness to him, that wasn't his job description wasn't his job he he pushed himself into every big case i can remember i remember i witnessed it we'd be like this guy's a fucking clown here we go again we're fighting with this one like was kind of like listen man we just want to get this shit done. We don't need to be fucking fighting with everybody. There's no need. I go in. I do the job. I collect this.

I do that. I talk to these three people. I'm out. I don't need to fight. What are we fighting for? And so that carried over at a critical time, at a critical, critical, critical time. That relationship carried over. And quite frankly, it cost us, because of egos, it cost us a chance to at least deter some of what happened, honestly.

And I think I look at, I have a lot of respect for the Bush family because of what they did for Sheila, you know, what W did for Sheila. I can never take it away from that, what he did. But at the same time, what else were we going to do? There was nothing else. They came on our soil, on our watch, and blew up. It was the greatest military operation in probably the history of the world. The preciseness of what they did. Yeah.

And then, you know, so those who don't want that to be true have to kind of theorize the, we blew up our own buildings. Fucking nuts. But whatever. I'm glad you brought that up real quick yeah nuts it drives me nuts nuts it's nuts it's it's it's treasonous you know ultimately but but my point on that is egos in my opinion caused the lack of intel to allow us to make appropriate tripwire decisions, right, on how to stop this and listen to the chatter and not be worried about shit. Secondly, after the towers went down, they came out on harsh soil, and they fucking did what they did.

It's never happened. Pearl Harbor was terrible. Pearl Harbor wasn't CONUS. It was military. It was outlying it was military did this they did what they did right and we missed it what are we going to do what what what can we do except we're the strong to save face we're the strongest military force in the world we have to go why did we not hold to this day and i never asked you about this like how sheila feels about this but why did we not hold saudi arabia accountable and that's been every administration well i think

i think listen i think in me it's a simple answer right oil period right but at the same time money money follow the money but but the other thing that i think has happened more recently um and this guy this guy i'll take credit just kind of like listen you know you come off of what the world considers a kook you can take credit for shit right but it's the same kind of dynamic you've studied it you know carter giving into reagan and reagan taking credit for the release of the iranian hostages right so this release of documents most recently not all but pretty decent my personal opinion and i i have not seen anything i gotta look at this but i didn't release some of these now i I want to say, yeah.

For some reason, Sheila mentioned it to me. But I think it's a pretty open and shut case to be able to prove that the home of bin Laden, Saudi Arabia, and I think arguably, arguably what one of the top 10 richest families in the history of the world um how could how could there not be some type of um tie back how could there not be you know a restitution piece so in that country it doesn't i just have it behind us to make sure we doesn't say anything or no so it they didn't do everything it seems like a small step yeah which is probably not the 9 11 families i'm sure but it's enough it's enough to go to it's enough to go i think that what they did is they were they were able with that to go back and continue the process in court i think so right so just real quick uh this is from reuters september 12th

because biden i'll give him some credit for this i guess he released it the next day he was not some of the 9-11 families at their personal memorial as sitting president as they had said the previous presidents if they're not released don't come don't show up right to our thing so then the next day he released it the fbi on saturday released a newly declassified document related to its investigation of the september 11 2001 attacks on the united states and allegations of saudi government support for the hijackers following an executive order by president joe biden the partially redacted 16-page document released by the fbi it's not offensive it's not a lot on the 20th anniversary the attacks detailed contacts between the

hijackers and several saudi officials but it did not draw a definitive conclusion whether the government and Raida – I never say were very aware of what was going to happen even if not the total medium you know dude was on the fucking radar for how many years leading up to that oh shit i mean they had i think in the clinton administration right they had oh yeah oh yeah bill didn't they say that by the end bill got it yeah by the end he was like okay these guys bad let's get him but there was a shot or before they had fully convinced them they had a shot at him yeah they were pretty sure it was him in the earliest days i believe of drones in like 96 95 they definitely had they saw a six foot four figure walking on top and and he didn't because he wasn't sure and i don't want to be a hypocrite and actually like yell at him for this because i yell at presidents for overusing drones and and creating warmongering

opportunities where they kill innocents you know and then it's like look your daughters and sons died it's on them let's go after them so in some ways i don't want to criticize that but god damn if you know you gotta take that shot i mean jesus christ they had him you gotta take that shot you gotta take i think but yeah i mean i just think that it's you know i'm i'm convinced i'm a total believer that saudi's 100 responsible you know for the part that they played in it um but you know is that ever going to happen in my lifetime no you know not a chance i mean you always talk about this follow the money yeah we saw it again with the jamal kashoggi incident which was just i was a slap in the face of the world yeah i mean so obvious oh god and nothing happened well well that's that's the result that's what happens when you have 20-year wars that produce the exact same

result as day one with taliban running all over the country executing fucking hanging people from buildings you know that's what happens you know i mean nobody everybody's scared to go do anything and this guy this this this guy in the white house he's just i'm not saying you know i'm not saying anything personally about the guy i mean i have some views on his behavior leading up to you know his a bunch of different things that i believe but ultimately he's just seen as a weak figure you know he's not he's not a guy that the world's going to respect they're laughing at him i mean you see it all over the place there's if you you can google any kind of news report from

anywhere in the world and everybody's laughing showing his mistakes and everything that's not good you know that's hence hence why um you know big government to me is scary. It's just scary to be dishing out everything to everybody. It just takes away incentive. And it doesn't matter. It cuts across race. It cuts across economic status. It cuts across everything.

It doesn't matter who you are or what you are. We're in trouble and just to be clear on the i guess part one of this podcast where i was checking the balance of a good fbi agent like you talking about it in the middle of the case where of course you see what's happening here and you want the objective right when i check it with that i'm not checking it because of you i'm checking it because of the other people in your position who aren't like you who get there you know and there are some who then no there's definitely used and that's used as an opportunity you talk about the big government like that it's used as an opportunity to expand that and to create precedent you know like like and this isn't our country granted but i mean look at australia right now well i mean

you know we're not gonna have enough time to create precedent Australia right now well I mean you know we're not gonna have enough time to create precedent what do you mean we're gonna be in trouble bro we're in trouble we're in trouble and I just don't know who the right person is to to come in and heal it you know I just we're just I mean the that's happening out there the way things are going there's no cause or concern for you know where where what tomorrow brings you know and that's sad it's sad for the kids it's sad for you know younger americans who are um you know i mean who's going to serve in the military besides texas and alabama wow that's one way to put it right who's going to do it california's going to go out there no

northeast going to go out there and be war heroes no i think that we've created like you talk about about who's going to come in here and solve it. If you have a D or an R next to your name, I don't think you do now by default. I don't care if you're the second coming of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, that's where we're at. And I talk about this topic all the time in different contexts so i'm never ashamed about bringing it up over and over again but like if you look at the chart of the wealth gap i mean you could look at it for the world but especially here since the 1980s and you watch this v form

the thing that's correlated with that is our political differences forming in the middle of it at the same rate across from each other and everything's just an iteration on top of each other well there's no you're right there's no true beliefs it's just how do i get more money or how how can i or how can i get or how can i not get less there's no true beliefs i mean you know you were in you were in an industry that, you know, it's how do I get more money? How do I become part of the 1% and stay there? Right? I saw a big mix of that.

Yeah. And there's no care or concern for anybody else. There are people who absolutely, I'll say to an extent yeah take that into account yeah there are other people in there who do the job and don't actively think about that but they're not laughing about it in the elevator then there's the third kind of person who's laughing about in the elevator right and i did encounter some of those people sure and you knew who they were i'm glad i never worked for them they were they were the kind of people who i mean you want to talk about not having an open mind to anything their whole life was miserable because they looked at it as who's going to threaten the next bigger

check i'm going to get for the check i already have correct who's going to threaten the next bigger check and to me when i see all these regulations come in which you know drove me nuts drove me right the fuck out of there good thing all in all you know i got out of where i didn't belong to me the people that then make those regulations they have a huge argument behind making them because of the people like that because of the people like there's a guy jerry dillian who was a great trader at lehman brothers who after the financial crisis left banking behind he was a great writer during his career he would write a bloomberg newsletter every morning on the terminal and so he made that his full-time job and then he's an investor very successful guy wrote some great books but he talks about he has a great quote i always amend it a

little bit but he says there were approximately 20 000 people who worked at lehman brothers 19 995 of them were generally good people who by and large were good at their jobs i always amend it and say 19 970. but the point is taken the point is that you had a small select group of people who in that case I'm talking about the financial crisis made decisions that then trickled down the line to people who just have a job to execute right trusting what happens I mean you understand that chain ik man trusting what happens above you just like some people by the way would like stellar wind and stuff who were just you know they're doing their job right and

they're not thinking about it like I don't blame all those people who saw it. Like same thing here. And now you cause this whole crisis. You do all this shit. You're the fucking guy in the elevator. You're the guy talking shit against everyone else who's not you and your life that you already hate yourself.

And then what happens? Everyone in Washington, D.C. creates rules for all of us. They make no fucking sense by the way because what do they need they need a head on a stick and they need a symbol to say we did something it won't happen again until it does and then they'll make more rules yeah yeah yeah i mean you know my you know my feeling in the that world so yes i do and you were you were in the white collar world you saw one too many of those cases i think yeah i saw them all you saw less from our line the line that i was in

i'll say you definitely saw less from that and you saw more from the people who were touching the corporate side or like well i think ownership side i think i can throw it you give me a dartboard and give me anybody in that industry and let me throw a dart i can fucking make a case on any one of them that's scary but maybe you're right no issue not even an issue the thing i gotta ask you about though that a lot of because what's their value we talked we talked value and impact right what do you mean what's the value in that industry what's the only thing that's of value how much you make period i'll push back on that and say and i understand the cynic and yeah there's no reason in it

there's no reason there are i don't give a shit about my clients i give a shit about how much money my client's gonna make me period there are some people who don't think that way I'm not how do they think I knew know some people in there who genuinely give a shit and if they genuinely give a shit and they're good at their job do they make a lot of money? Yes, they do. I can't get around that. That's anything. You're valuable.

I shouldn't say anything. It's a lot of things. If you're valuable in something, you make money. But I've seen people in the middle. What about me? What do you mean? I'm valuable in something. Yeah, and now you've made money after your career. But during your career at the government, you're not paid much.

You're not going to make any money. Sure. But i don't do it for the money agreed but they do that's the difference that actually there's no there's no value there's nothing bigger than themselves it's themselves they're the big they can say the so-and-so wealth group is bigger than myself well that's you if they're at the head of it. Right. So I think that comes down full circle. It comes back to educating those people and trying to teach them what is important, what really is impactful. And so you hear so many people that are Monday morning quarterbacking a lot of issues, right? So the perfect example that I have, I can remember, I can remember, and it goes back to like a high-level coaching organization

that in order to stay relevant, they have to raise money, right? So in order for a team, a club to stay relevant in a very competitive sport, right, college wrestling, right, in order to do that, you have to raise money. And you have the right within college wrestling with these regional training centers to actually raise money and to bring people in, bring in like what they call elite athletes, right? So they come in and, hey, they wrestle, they're trying to make the world teams or Olympics.

And I can remember there was a dude that just had tons of advice, tons of advice on the actual operations portion, like the technique and here's how you should do this and whatever. And I can remember one of the greatest lines I think I've ever heard, and it goes back to, hey, I want to, you know, I think I can solve whatever issue. I think I could solve the way we're, let's just take, the way we pulled out of Afghanistan, right?

We can, here's, I have some ideas, right? And it was the same kind of thing. I think I can solve the way for your team to have more takedowns and matches late. Sure. And the coach just looked at him and said, really? I appreciate that. Write a fucking check. And the guy looked at him and said,

well, I don't really have a lot of money. You just wrote a check that bought all brand new football helmets, home away and alternate, for a 150-man roster at the same university. And I looked at the bill, and that was $495,000. Stroke a check. And don't ever fucking talk to me again about takedowns.

So my point is, a lot of those folks, if you want to become heard or impactful, put your money where, that's all they can do. Their opinions are only opinions that are valued by those in their organization. Right. About what the latest piece here and piece there. And, you know, listen, I, I, I think there's some great guys who have given back or have succeeded in the business. And, you know, most of those guys have overcome a lot of that, a lot of that good old boy,

you know, laughing in the elevator stick, but those who have not, or guys that need to, need to step up and be counted and their value where my value is in, you know, my, my ability to consult my ability to kind of help and guide and mentor their value is in write the check you know so that's kind of that's part of what I see as no longer being part of the solution but we continue as a country to all be part of the problem. You know, we're worried about what the next administration is going to do. Who knows? It could be worse. Yeah.

Hard to say, but we've had one after another after another that has been worse than the one before. Hasn't been great. No. So that's my point. Do we really think there's one without us really collaborating as a country, right, to put a better one in place? Do we really think that we have kind of solved that problem? Do we really think we have a true solution to the problem?

And really, honestly, if you go back and track it, I think one has been true solution the problem and really i i honestly i i if you go back and track it i think one has been worse than the next hard to do but you you might be i'm now i'm a i'm a big not george bush liker so i i'd probably go him but yeah like in general the theme there yes i i think you might be right i think we're i think we continue to get i to be more to be fairer we don't get any better no i like i'm not a fan of anyone we've and and i can't even believe i say this sometimes like i talk to my grandpa about this yeah he's like guys never voted for a democrat in his life he's like card carrying republican and he was powerful in the corporate world in the 90s at the height of his power. And he even can't believe that we say this, but I've said this to him a few times and he doesn't disagree.

It's like minus a couple things that were political moves like the 94 crime bill, which was not good, which was a bipartisan thing in fairness to him but and then also the repealing glass steagle in 98 which was catastrophic started the financial crisis like on its way and then obviously the blow job in in the oval office minus those things bill clinton i'll say at the same time very not good guy not someone i'd want my kid to emulate very effective president and in we had a lot of very good years with him when you look at every president since then there has been some sort of disaster at the very least yeah that occurred i'm not just talking like a 9-11 or something i'm talking like yeah catastrophic political disaster that happens a theme that you can point to and yeah like you really open my eyes in the visual of yeah maybe it hasn't gotten progressively yeah i mean i think about it and i i think conservatively we can say

it hasn't gotten any better no no so so i'm not going to say it's gotten worse each time, but it truly hasn't been any type of change and improvement. No. Right? So I think that is something that we can all, and this is like, you know, pipe dreams, but, you know, it's something that really, can we find that person or persons that can kind of bring this together? I don't know. I don't know. I just worry so much about the fact that the country, the people, the rank and file of this country are so distorted and so far apart, like you said. And it's not just dollars and cents or status. It's more than that. It's beliefs now.

It never – I mean, listen, 50s, 60s, yeah, beliefs were different, right? But way different. But it's way worse now. Way worse now. Way worse now. Way worse. I mean, and I think we can examine that and study that for the next 20 years and still not come up with the reason why or why it was different in the 50s and 60s than it is now. But it's really the same problems. It's issues with race. It's issues with um you know just self-serving agendas it's career politicians it's term limits it's the fundraising and the money it's campaign finance it's everything it's um you know a

a stretched thin group of public servants i..e. law enforcement, military. You know, all those things are years-long studies to even figure out what the fuck went wrong and when. I just don't think you can blame it on any administration, you know, and look at it and say, hey, this is totally this or this is totally that. And I'm not defending anyone, but I just think it – Trump was awful, all right? I'm not going to – but we voted against – like I said, we voted against Trump. We didn't vote for Joe Biden. I mean, if you hear the story behind the biden run it's sad it's

sad it's sad you know it's sad in that who who brought it to light for him like who who you know i mean shit you know my feelings on the on the bo biden you know you know promise me dad i mean fucking bullshit you know and and and i i do want to say this too because like i didn't know him but right but bo biden was such a i did know a lot of people who knew him yeah i know a lot of people know joe too previously you know politically not a fan but good people right and and and bo especially i'm not going to speak for hunter i can't say this yeah i don't know what happened but but for bo he was it's a tragic story that he died young but servicemen terrible well-liked great guy down to earth and then i felt like it

was such a manipulation of the fact that he's not here anymore to do that and i and i will say this as well it has never great story it has never felt like to me joe biden wants this right never i i feel like i ever matt kemanosh said in here i borrow this line he said it beautifully well not beautifully but he said it perfectly he was like it's really sinister what they're doing to him i agree i couldn't agree more and you know that's that's exactly right they had to come up with the story of bo b, which is a powerful story. Yeah, it's got truth to it. Somebody dies and that Joe never said.

And, you know, even if Joe would have said, I said to Beau, you're goddamn right. I've been waiting for this my whole life. It never happened. Like, you just, we've got to get this guy out. It was all about getting this guy out before he did something crazy. And I don't, I can't honestly say I don't disagree with that. Yeah, that's the crazy part of it. It's scary, right?

And at the same time, like, I look at the whole, they're so much alike, but from different areas right like the trump family is as more dysfunctional than anyone but the biden family's right there right i mean listen here's the thing that bothers me more than anything beau dies an awful you know painful i'm sure long, long-lasting cancerous death, right? It has to be horrific. Leaves behind a widow, beautiful widow. What happens? What happens?

Hunter Biden, right? So if nothing else. That's some Alabama shit to me. That's some alabama shit to me it's some alabama shit that's some fucking just that's some biblical shit bro right like yeah the the you know i i heard biden or somebody quote something about the bible like well you know the brother is supposed to take it well you know what the brother is supposed to take care. Well, you know what? The Bible also says we should fuck them. It's not supposed to fuck them. Well, the Bible says we should stone fucking people. Won't do that anymore.

That was just so. Adulterous. You know, so if Joe Biden couldn't find a way to lead that down a different path, how the hell can we expect him to straighten anything out? I want to say one thing, and then I want to, there's two things we got to close on and we're going to get out of here soon but i do want to say one thing to that otherwise we'll go down this for hours yeah you know what's so weird to me and it's strictly by coincidence of my geography is that in these last two elections we've had three candidates right we've had hillary trump and biden yeah i caddied

at wilmington country club for years used to caddy for joe biden's brother-in-law all the time never caddy for joe i never talked with joe well i don't fucking know joe is that doc biden the jill's brother i'm actually not gonna say all right yeah okay okay and i did stand near him and stuff and one of the shocking things is that last time i stood close to him was summer 2014 okay not that long ago and i remember my thought was holy shit isn't this guy like 71 he was dude he was yoked yeah he's coming on the tee like busting balls with everyone yeah everyone liked him including most of the membership who didn't vote for him they were not exactly democrats right everyone liked him and i'm like god damn

this guy this motherfucker's a machine yeah then i see him give his first speech five years later i'm like how many brain aneurysms like 10 so that part's crazy to me but with with trump you know i was up in north jersey how many fucking people i played at trump edminster with people how many fucking people? I played at Trump Edmonds there with people. How many fucking people do I know? I know a few people who are like that with them, right? I knew people. I have distant family members who were in business with them for years. It's like I knew all the bad.

I knew all the like, all right, there's less than what they say there. And then I heard some stories from Trump Edmonds that would give you a heart attack. Yeah. And then with Clinton, Chappaqua, New York. Got family that lives up there, got a lot of people that are close to that. And there was a weird dynamic here. And so there was a little bit of a human side

with all three of these people that I couldn't put aside. What I will say is that I never heard a good story about Hillary. She was the one person. I heard a lot of good stories about Biden. I heard a lot of good stories about Trump. I also heard negative political stories in the sense that people who would tell the same good stories would be like

for trump they'd be like but he's a jerk off right he has no idea what he's doing and then for biden they'd be like but he's kind of an idiot yeah you know so it was never like hey good ending for them to be president but there's like a human side to it right with clinton it was like no she's kind of evil so take that for what you want but i don't think any of those three people should have been in that position it is just very very weird to me like sitting in the seat where there's like a little bit of a connection to all of it yeah and yet we're at this point in the country where these are the figures that on purpose or not on purpose have led to the symbolic division of everything and then i guess you got to throw like obama and bush in there too but like in the recent years these are the people that the fights have been over and yet at the end of the day they're just dumbasses playing at

country clubs like that that's how i see you know you understand what i'm saying like how weird that is yeah and then like you're in government you were around these people i can't even imagine how you like the incompetency that you know of at certain levels that we would all have a heart attack over. It's weird. It's weird. It's weird. Well, the last two things are actually – they're to the viewers who are a huge fan of yours and the listeners. Yes.

And it's some stuff we discussed last episode. And as I've said on these – or the last time you were in here, I should say. As I've said on these, I'm careful about not in here i should say as i've said on these i'm careful about you know not touching you're already very open about stuff i don't want to overstep and stuff you don't want to touch so the first thing was the september 15th 2001 story yeah which also went a little viral on tiktok where that was something we had talked about not in detail off camera like maybe a few weeks before and so when you were telling it and you kind of stopped it i didn't push on purpose because i was like oh maybe there's

some details there or whatever but i talked to you on camera before tonight what i wanted to clear up was if we can't go into details the whole concept there were a lot of people guessing that this was the quote-unquote dancing israelis and my understanding was that the the quote-unquote dancing israelis were the people in the white van who you made yeah that was the north jersey piece right we're filming you made a quick mention of that what was they were filming they were filming they had cameras set up to um to film prior to the the crash. And they were Israelis. You know, I believe so. I just can't.

I was racking my brain for it. I think that's right, though. And so the conspiracy theory that people were putting on is that, oh, the Israelis knew. They were waiting for it to happen. And that's not the only story that had come out of that. There were similar stories. And there's actually, if I remember, I remember viewing a video of it being set up before, like, viewing a video from the towers, like, all focused in and then the planes hit so when you see something like that and i want to clarify too yeah right away just like as a high level

basic intelligence measure when i see people try to tell me those weren't planes that go into the building i i literally want to jump off a building yeah i would like to that's that's insane oh god but for the people that are like oh we knew it was someone who was coming when you hear something like that it's like what the fuck like i listen i i was convinced and there's a couple things you know that strike me um but those are israelis those are supposed to be well the one i was talking about was was that van, right, piece. That's separate from the other videos that I viewed. That's not the dancing as well? No. Okay.

No, I never – we just knew they had set up because they had equipment and they were in the spot to be where they were supposed to – where they could have had access to. Sure. But we – I've never – now, maybe there's videos of within that, but I never saw that. Okay. And I've never – now, maybe there's videos of within that, but I never saw that. But I did view videos of set up closer, and I don't – for the life of me, I don't know who those folks were. I just don't remember. Okay. All right. So I don't want to pick at that because that wasn't a purview.

The thing I do want to pick at is the story you told. So very quick recounting yeah it was the 15th saturday night after we get information from the employer which was the local food mart i can't remember if it's an acme or a or a um or shop right or what it was but it's kind of at the turn everybody knows where if you're familiar with seaside heights orly beach that area there's a there's kind of a where 35 makes a turn coming out of wortley going into seaside heights and around that turn if you kind of go down 37 there's the dock on the right and you go over the bridge you can see um seaside heights rides and all that stuff there's a food store that stretches that entire length.

Very popular. I mean, everybody goes to the food store if you're a renter in Hortley and that stuff. Yeah, I know where that is. So we get a lead in on that Saturday morning, the 15th. And remember, the leads were popping. At one point, I think we were taking you know 1100 leads a day how do you like how do you judge those so you put so there's five desks we call you know we separate the desks via county okay and each of those desks is manned for eight hours at a time 24 7 by you know

hire some intel guys some U.Ss attorney people and they they route through them and they just prioritize so now they're assigning them i was a team leader so they're assigning me you know everything in ocean and monmouth county okay right and then we would get anything that was evidence collection my team would get to and it could be thousands you know so you were working i mean you but you you could get a lead that went 15 hours how many people were on your team at that time i think i had 11. all right well that's actually like impressive given how many teams there had to be yeah 11 i had 11 fbi agents and i think we had five or six task force guys so they were county prosecutors office guys so we had monmouth and task force guys so they were county prosecutor's

office guys so we had Monmouth and Ocean County guys wow that's more than I would have expected yeah so like 15 16 guys so we get we get this lead early Saturday morning and the lead basically says look these this group of guys and and they were Egyptians they were Egyptians, right? Which even freaky. There was one Egyptian hijacker, I think, right? Right. So there was seven employees of this food store. All... So we get, you know, hey, look, I don't know if it's anything. This is the way the call comes in.

And I talk to the guy. I'm not sure if it's anything, man, but I can't... You know, it's four days after this thing. I'm still a mess. These guys never missed a paycheck. So every single week for four years, I think it was more than four years, I think they started working there in 2005, they never missed a check. They missed a check this week.

This is where it gets scary, right? This was planned for so long. So you're going to love this. So we go you know we we take i think it took three guys and said the other eight we were on hey be standby we had another another job we had video of um we had video of the hijackers at a wedding like the week or two before so they were going to collect that uh in jersey of course and so um we go in you know there's the paychecks there's the names,

and it's the same address. And it's a street in Seaside Heights, small apartment. So we do all our site survey, do what we got to do. We, we, we get visual on it. Um, there's two brand new cars parked in the driveway. Um, no tags, just cars, brand new with still with the, um, window sticker on both of them. So immediately I'm like you know this is this is bad you know whatever so we do our airport checks uh run the names um they're like yeah these guys these guys got tickets but we halted everything down said tickets to fly back uh the thursday so what was that the 13th 13. they had tickets to fly back? Tickets to fly back to Alexandria, through Alexandria back to wherever they were going. We didn't have a...

Right. So they're on student visas for five years, six years. How's that even possible? Well, there's another guy that was arrested that I can't... I don't feel comfortable mentioning his name, but he was arrested for basically 5K a pop. He'd get you in the country and keep you here with a student visa separate apartments and just keep it crazy right but whatever so anyway we get it we do all our back we i get my evidence response team ready to rock and roll um

i didn't feel like i needed swat or special operations i felt more than comfortable because of what i did in the past they were scheduled to go out on the 13th though right but why didn't they everything shut down oh right duh everything shut down so i'm like okay we got a little bit of time but i want to go so we go in we surveil the the shop right or whatever we had two guys on that i had let's see me only a queen there was six of us that went to the apartment uh three were out surveilling and i had the other three guys i forget they were just on top of the street whatever full gear on um we did not have gear on we didn't have any identifiers um i made that call because i was just like just like hey i just don't want to mess around you know with um anybody seeing in case in case there's nothing going on or whatever

but you know imagine can you imagine like people who can see the smoke from the buildings rising up from oh yeah ground zero well in their neighborhood seeing like a bunch of fbi jackets out there well that was the issue you know we didn't want to get shot at we didn't want to get you know have locals you really don't want locals to know right you don't want locals to know anything that's going on because who the fuck knows you don't know if these guys in five years they could have been tight with the dudes whatever so like i said before knock on the door and um you know before they even answered my the parent i was like we got a problem you know so we went we went and did what we had to do we got them um got them on the ground and uh the TV is just playing a loop of the planes crashing into the tower so we start to talk they're belligerent as you know I think how did

you get through the door in how did you knock it down yeah yeah so they didn't open it up no they well they opened a little bit but we knocked it down so four of them are in there two came home my two guys at the top of the street grabbed those two coming in thank god so we find the first thing we find and remember you know the box cutters were the thing that yeah might have slicing the flight attendants next right so we open the first draw there's 20 box cutters laying in there so right out of the box you're like so now we they're all secured we got them cuffed and they're they're talking and everything else that goes on and we start to you know know, we basically call in, we need a search warrant.

Search warrants were being issued like at the drop of a hat, you know, basically it took, took us about 45 minutes to get a judge to sign off. You know, we, we gave them everything. We took pictures, we sent pictures, we did, we did backgrounds on these guys quickly to find out the whole deal with being on student visas for five and a half years, flight out the day after, two days after 9-11, right, the whole deal, and get the search warrant. We're not really, we're seeing stuff, you know, we're kind of seeing like a ton of different clothing and different shit, like brand new shit. So we turn around and we get the search warrant, we start the search warrant, And in the course of a small apartment, I mean, I'm trying to think.

There's one bedroom in the back. Six guys live there? Six guys. One bedroom. You walked in. There's a stove and a refrigerator on the left. There was a big living room in front. I could still see it.

Little hallway, two bedrooms, one on each side, bathroom right in the middle. So we start. It's pack-ratted out in the middle so we start it's it's pack ratted out in the bathrooms right uh in the bedrooms we start looking it's just all brand new clothing from eddie bauer in tons of different sizes what does that say immediately it's a it's a supply cell for people coming into the country the two brand new cars out there were ready to fit in to the community, and we find backpacks stuffed with American dollars. I counted one backpack. It was almost $150,000.

And these guys are working in a supermarket. Yeah, making $311 a week. And they weren't students. No. What happened to them? So we start the process, and we get arrest warrants, and we make arrest warrants, and we arrest them. And there's threats going on. They're threatening.

One dude was scary. He's a scary motherfucker. He's a big dude, and he just wanted to—he's like, hey hey as soon as i can get out of this shit i'm gonna kill somebody so we're like well you're getting out you know thanks for saying that we appreciate it it helps and so we that was he's saying that in english uh he was saying yeah it was broken english but you can clearly understand okay they were there long enough to know the deal so to understand the language and everything else. So in running everything, it led us to the guy who brought—one of them cooperated, gave us the guy who brought them in, which led us to other arrests around the country, which really was the start of Gitmo. We brought those guys to Miami first, and then we brought them to get moan i did

i did probably two and a half weeks of interrogations down there at guantanamo yeah and they're still there so that's going to be a next time story for that so yeah long story short is uh they're still there they're still there those guys yeah that you arrested yes absolutely so they've been there for two there's only like 19 guys left there now there's more but they'll they'll commute um they'll tell you there's there's not as many but there's more than that holy shit a lot to pick there all right i can't touch that yeah so and i don't know how much i'll get feedback from somebody i'll get a phone call this week or when it's released you may never that's fine that's fine but um ultimately i feel comfortable in telling that portion of the story because it's scary shit.

And that was a great pickup by a true American at that food store. Like that was – most people would not – we were getting shit that was like – that was just a great pickup. We weren't getting anything close to something that good. The guy who put that in, did he say he had had a weird feeling for a long time? Nope. They were reliable, extremely respectful, timely. Where they went bad was thinking they were getting out of country. Too perfect.

Yeah. And they had plenty of cash. They had everything that they wanted to do. You know, my thought – The other guys weren't like that, though. To this day, no. No, they were part of – Muhammad Atta was a dick.

These dudes were party animals. They were party animals, these guys, too. We found out later through interrogation work. Yeah, they're real – you know what? They're selectively extremists. So they were – there was a whole routine. They would fly back just to clear, and then they would bring in half of them back with another three guys or four guys or ten guys, however. And they would be available for additional attacks to supply, to provide supplies, to Americanize them.

You guys just cracked down. Yeah, and I mean there was nothing going to happen because the world shut down they they thought you know they're not the smartest dudes in the world so they figured all right we'll do this and then we'll just continue to blast west go through chicago ain't doing shit you know so um but but i worry i'm going to be honest with you i worry about this shit coming back we've let down look at the borders we've let down our we've let our guard down and we've got at least a weak appearing administration you know we do it's weak appearing i don't know anything about what they're doing or policies i haven't seen much i haven't read much i've tried to stay away from the news but ultimately i think we've

got an issue you know i think we've got an issue with at least the appearance, the way the world views this country. I don't like that. Again, I'm not going to – we're going to have to talk about that next time. Yeah, we will. I'm not going to touch that because we'll go all day. Yeah. The last thing that's got to be touched, though, and then we're done, was the plane in November 2001 because we started to talk we started to talk about that and then you got into something important with that that had to do with like being the guy being in charge of

the morgue yeah yeah which was crazy so appreciate you going into that but the the idea here was that in november 2001 after the sept September 11th attacks had happened. It was like right around Veterans Day. So in November, there was a plane that crashed in Brooklyn. On takeoff. On takeoff. And it was not a plane. It was a 767, I believe. It blew up it yeah the fit well the official the official word on it that was reported

was that it hit the plane that took off before it was a large 747 or yeah that'd be a 747. There was no Airbus 330 in it, but a huge 747. And its wake, supposedly the plane that crashed took off too close in proximity to the plane in front. And the wake, now let's be honest. Huge air bus. Right. Have you ever seen, right, have you ever seen ever any air traffic control let, let's let them both, except if you're the fucking Blue Angels. You don't. You know, it's whatever it is.

I don't know what the amount of time, but there's a standard at least a couple minutes. I mean, shit, we all sit on runways and we wait right um for the one so supposedly yeah that that wake of those engines off the 747 dislodged the tail wing of this 767 or i think it was a i think it was a 767 it's a big plane that's a huge that's like the double decker correct well no it no it's it's it's like the it's i can tell you because it's there was there was no pods back in those days on these things. Well, Air Force One was a 757, right? No, it's bigger. It's 747.

Is that bigger? Yeah. I thought 737 is the lowest. It is. But then it goes 737. 747 is next biggest. And then 57 is smaller but bigger than the 37. 67 is –

Oh, I didn't know that. 67 has the two two four two that's the air force one now air force one is even bigger it's bigger than that okay it's huge it's its own time um but um so this plane crashes yeah so in brooklyn it it loses jfk it was la guardia so the bronx i guess i can't remember look can you look it up real quick yeah yeah go ahead um i want to say i want to say it's no i want to say it's it's closer it's it LaGuardia. American Airlines Flight 587. I'm just going to put it behind us. Switch the source real quick.

This was November 12th, 2001. Yeah. It was... Veterans Day. I said the flight. So it was American Airlines Flight 587. Regularly scheduled international flight from John F. Kennedy Airport. To Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic. Yep. scheduled international flight from john f kennedy airport dominican to santa domingo dominican

republic yep on november 12 2001 the airbus was flying the route crashed into the neighborhood of bell harbor rockaway peninsula of queen so very close to brooklyn i see what you're saying so it got off the ground and then and plummeted so in the in the cause the cause was the tail wing fell off due to the wake. Now, you know, come on. Is this case closed? Yeah, it's closed. How fast? That's a good question.

As long as it took, you know, the FAA to, or the, what is it? What's the federal emergency, whatever the hell it is. The flight, is it, it's not. Whatever it is. I know. FST to or the what is it what's what's the um federal emergency whatever the hell it is the flight is it it's not whatever it is i know fstb or something like that yeah yeah so as long as it took them to get the black box and but the the tragedy was that it it killed a bunch of people on the ground it killed a bunch of people in the neighborhoods like a lot of like flying debris i never heard it, it was not publicized. I mean, I'm telling you, it was November 11th is Veterans Day. I remember it because I was scheduled to go.

I was actually scheduled to take my first day off on the 11th, and I got called in to do evidence. I had to bring evidence via Blackhawk down to our crime lab in Quantico. Came back late, got to bed late, and I get a fucking call at 3 o'clock and a 4, whatever time it was, 6 o'clock in the morning, 7 o'clock in the morning, we just had another plane go down.

So I'm thinking, oh, my God. Another one. And it was. And there's no doubt in my mind. You know, somebody loosened up that tail. You know, had to be. How the hell else can it? It doesn't fall off.

Who knows? Do you think that could have been like a copycat asshole i don't know but they kind of covered that up no i never got i did the morgue i did all the you weren't on the case you were doing did all the terrible like you know like we talked about last time most people die from broken necks yeah body's intact so picture i'm really yeah on a plane crash you're doing you know i mean shit the thing thing got up off the ground and came right back down so on impact think about you drive 250 miles an hour right now into a tree and there were no survivors no no no terrible carnage awful

so you know there's we're trying to get back to normal in airports right and that happens that could have been a coordinated kind of thing and actually i don't a million percent it was somebody that survived that is that is a cell that survived the fucking after that's lazy lazy police work see that's the shit that makes people not trust governments, though. That's my opinion. I don't know that. Yeah, yeah. I understand. But I know my guys didn't have a chance to do anything else.

I can guarantee you that. No one got on it. In my fucking territory. And that doesn't help anybody else. There's also a part of me that says, and people are going to yell at me for saying this, but there's a part of me that says I actually get that one. Because someone fucked up and the nation was on such a high alert this i i mean i guess it killed people on the ground that's horrible oh it was it i don't know what it said i mean the article but it killed some

people in their apartment in their beds burnt down houses and i can understand if the government had already people were still in a panic but i can understand if the government had already... People were still in a panic, but I can understand if the government was like, holy fucking shit, we can't have... Could be. I mean, I think that's a bad precedent. Don't get me wrong. I think that's the wrong decision. But you know that there was going to be panic on that.

Massive panic. Agreed. So they... How many people died? It was a lot of people 251 there were yeah no there were 260 occupants 260 died yeah and then ground injuries five fatalities yeah it was a young kid from it's like a high school kid uh in his bed right because i did his recovery too all right so you don't know a fuck ton about that beyond that i mean i kind of would you know remember we were still on we were 100 on 9-11 yeah on pimp on so we weren't i mean that was a

that was a 100 evidence recovery so i just got tasked out because I had experience at morgue overseas. So I just, and I was like, you know, we're like, you're going there. And I remember I was, I got back on the Blackhawk after midnight and went to bed. And then I was like, what the hell? That's my phone. And we were leaving, you know, we were leaving two, three phones on because if you needed something, you needed to go. We were the lead FBI office in New Jersey because New York was shut down. They weren't open because they couldn't take a chance.

So we set up everything. Fresh Kills in Staten Island was the evidence response. They were in that 26th Street Garage or whatever. They just made a documentary on that. I haven't seen it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's crazy. So, I mean, we had the ticket on that. Our office. Damn. Well, Jim, that was six hours, man. That's two episodes right there. My own. It's going to work out well.

My own. I'm tired. This was, I think this, I always hesitate to say this because I do enjoy all of them. I think this was probably my favorite we ever did. We covered a lot. We covered a lot. This was a great, this was a great curtain call coming back out for people because people appreciated this whole thing. But thank you.

Yeah, my pleasure. Really appreciate it. I enjoyed it. I know everyone out there is going to appreciate it too but it's pretty awesome to have someone who has been to where you've been who's willing to completely unabashedly share the opinions whether people like them or not and i i appreciate the hell out of that hey i i enjoyed doing it i hope it helps some people it will it will jim thank you man thanks bro all right and

thank you for the suds by the way we'll plug for jim's jim's second little hobby here after his after his career the the jersey mics brought some fire subs down there too i'm gonna go attack some more but come by our location in sicklerville hilarious route 42 south black horse pike thing you've ever done and um we're also opening a new standby for 2022 opening of our second store and our third store amazing and your son's killing i said this last he's killing i said again your son's your son's running the operations here let's be honest he's a savage yeah he's a savage takes care of takes after his uh his father he does he does all right well thank you. Well, thank you, Jim. Thank you, sir. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. This, this was fun. Everyone else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to it. Peace.