Julian Dorey Podcast - 😱 [VIDEO] - CIA Assassin Unmasks Deadliest Black Ops Force in the World | Joe Teti • #149

Episode Date: June 17, 2023

Get Joe's Intel Report via his website: www.joeteti.com Support Our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey BUY ACCIDENTAL TRUTH ahead of our podcast w/ Director Ron James: https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Truth-Col-John-Alexander/dp/B0BXX3BV8Q Subscribe To Our Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChs-BsSX71a_leuqUk7vtDg  (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Joe Teti is a former CIA Black Ops Commando & Reality TV Star. Teti spent a decade as an off-books kill-team operator in the Agency. After retiring from the government, Teti hosted “Dual Survival” on the Discovery Channel for 4 years. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Joe leaves for boot camp 7:11 - Joe leaves Marines to work on Wall Street in Vegas 12:45 - Joe had fun in Vegas 17:52 - Joe enlists in the Army 26:00 - Q-School & Operation Uphold Democracy 34:19 - Joe gets recruited to CIA ground branch 41:26 - The Shady Polygraph story 50:07 - The dense details CIA knows about recruits 53:18 - The Operators Course 59:20 - The one unexpected trait CIA looks for in Ground Branch 1:03:46 - 2 teammates get cut story 1:07:23 - CIA GB Chain of Command & Case Officers 1:12:20 - CIA wants Sociopathic traits 1:16:24 - Joe’s first experience in combat with CIA GB; Afghanistan undercover 1:26:44 - CIA Ground Branch team sizes; The requirement they had of Native Afghans 1:32:14 - Muscle Memory and shooting 1:38:36 - Proprioception; CIA Case Officer vs. GB Training 1:50:59 - How CIA trains GB Surveillance; CIA Disguise tactics 1:58:38 - Decision making in the field 2:01:49 - CIA Legends Ric Prado, Billy Waugh, and Bin Laden story 2:03:55 - Joe tells story of when he met Billy Waugh in Warzone 2:11:42 - What Joe and CIA GB fought for 2:15:17 - Joe’s funny story about final CIA Interrogation he had to pass 2:22:33 - The CIA’s Public Opinion today; CIA & Media 2:30:33 - The Osama Bin Laden Mission; Deciding what public can know 2:42:57 - How long Joe was in CIA Ground Branch; CIA Effect on his marriage 2:47:19 - Joe’s close call with an RPG; Bin Laden bomb story 2:50:08 - Joe talks Survivor’s Guilt 2:57:17 - What happens when CIA GB Agent dies in combat? 2:59:52 - Joe’s first kill in CIA Ground Branch 3:07:42 - Did killing become easier? 3:10:20 - The moment Joe knew he was done 3:13:41 - 48 hours post-mission in a Kroger’s Julian Dorey Podcast Episodes Mentioned in this Podcast: Jim “Mad Dog” Lawler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ5Grn5_ABY  Shawn Ryan: https://youtu.be/ib4atmvMqlk  Andrew Bustamante 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jNz3-WPV5I&t=8284s  Andrew Bustamante 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PUs7l2jW9c&t=1s  ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io ~ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 149 - Joe Teti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up guys, if you're on Spotify right now, please follow the show so that you don't miss any future episodes and leave a five-star review. Thank you. of douchebags that showed up outside shot rpgs at hotel and i ran up on the roof with a bunch of other dudes and they were across the street in an abandoned building and you could see their muzzle flashes it was like whack-a-mole Joe, if you were my personal alarm clock every morning, I would wake up ready to attack the day. I got to tell you. Holy shit, am I energized talking with you for the last few hours. thanks that's that's you know what i don't think anyone's ever said that i've got the exact opposite before but i've never i've never had somebody say that but thanks man no a hundred percent like you just kind of have that like let's attack the day let's go

man let's get it like it's it's like not you're not like the marine drill sergeant like fuck you soldier you're more like the ah let's get after it it's fun cool but thank you dude you're not like the marine drill sergeant like fuck you soldier you're more like the ah let's get after it it's fun cool but thank you dude you're talking with you on the phone before coming in here you had a very very unique career we're gonna get to where you ended up and where the crazy shit happened today i do want to say as a disclaimer you worked in one of the highest levels of government there is so there is going to be stuff today where people will say, ooh, I wish he'll ask him about this. And we cannot do that because these are,

you worked in the most covert, high level, under secret forever missions. So we're going to speak broadly about some of that. But as I told you off camera, don't be afraid to say like, oh, we can't go there or something. No problem. But where did you start off? You did both the Marines and the Army, right?

Yeah. So I – it was so funny, man. When I was like seven years old, I remember watching like commercials on TV of the Marine Corps. And they were just like – they had the baddest ass commercials. I'm like, I want to be a Marine. Then I started reading Soldier Fortune magazine. You're probably too young for that, but there was, there was this, I haven't heard it. Yeah. There was this magazine back in the day called soldier fortune. And it always had like articles about special ops guys. And so I was like enamored with like recon Marines.

So it was very early on that. I wanted to be a Marine. Um, and I left from Marine Corps bootcamp 10 days after I graduated high school, literally at 18. Yeah. Yeah, man. It was, I don't know if that was a good decision or not, but like I was a train wreck in school. Like I didn't get good grades and I wasn't an athlete. I didn't play any sports and, you know, I had pretty rough growing up, you know, what was it like growing up? What was your house like? Yeah, so, you know, only child. My parents divorced when I was really young, seven, eight years old. And, you know, my mom went and lived with her dad and my dad lived with his mom.

But close, like I could see both of them. But, you know, electricity was like an on and off kind of thing. I used to steal my clothes out of a Goodwill box for school. Like, yeah, man, I had a coat hanger. Where'd you grow up? Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yeah. A little, little town outside of Pittsburgh called Turtle Creek. It's about an hour, about an hour outside of Pittsburgh, a little coal mining town. And so, um, yeah, man, grew up very poor, um, which is, you know what, though, bro, it served me well as I got older. Like if I'm walking into a shopping center and I see a penny on the ground, I'm picking it up, like to this day. So, you know, I kind of grew up appreciating the value of a dollar.

But anyway, yeah, I went in the Marines 10 days after I graduated after I graduated boot or 10 days after I graduated high school was in bootcamp Paris Island, South Carolina. And, uh, yeah, I spent, uh, four years. I made it actually right into force recon, which is really bizarre, dude. I went to bootcamp, then I went to infantry school and I was honor graduate out of infantry school. So I got meritoriously promoted as well. And while I was there, a recruiting team from second force came to the infantry school. And at that time, there was only one force recon company in the entire Marine Corps, which was second force, which was in French Creek, which was in Lejeune. Then you had first recon battalion, second recon battalion, and third recon battalion.

So highly unusual to go straight from Infantry Skull to 2nd Force. But anyway, a bunch of guys tried out. You go take this thing they called the NDOC test, which I don't know if they still do it. And then you pass that, and you basically wait around for your amphibious. The new BMO VI Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights.

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At Sobeys, we always pick guaranteed fresh Canadian produce first. Restrictions apply. See in-store or online for details. It's reconnaissance course to start, which ARS. Amphibious reconnaissance course. Yeah, it's like buds for the Navy. They had, I think they call it BRC now, basic reconnaissance course. But back then they called it ARS.

And it's where you actually get your 0321. Back then was your reconnaissance marine mos so anyway and so but here was the shitty part about it man like unfortunately the marine corps back then now you're talking about the early 80s right yeah didn't know what to do with a spec ops unit they just didn't know like what to do with them so like all of our parachutes were like hand-me-downs in the army that had patches in it all of our dive gear was hand-me-downs in the navy that they didn't need no more here use these twin 80s they were great no you know awesome no budget no nothing so i saw this and it was very disconcerting because i actually got to train with special forces and

seals i'm like wow these guys have good gear they're getting missions and it was because back then the marine corps was not the marine corps second force recon was not part of socom special operations now they have marsoc which i think they formed in. What does that mean again? MARSOC? Marine Special Operations Command. Got it. Okay. They formed in 2006. I think it was. I actually was one of the first instructors to run their assessment selection course.

So, which is a great program. I ran it twice. I wasn't the primary instructor. I was one of a handful of guys. When was that? It was. When were you like? Yeah.

Actually, that was time off in between my government work, it was like 2008, 2009. So it was great. I really, I really enjoyed it to see the Marine Corps blossom into that whole special operations community, you know, cause they had a great asset. They just didn't know what the hell to do with them. Right. And they'd have no money and you gotta have money, you gotta have you have to have money to be in that game so once they became part of SOCOM um they got the they got their funding but yeah man so I got really disenchanted and I left and I got the Marine Corps and uh went in in 82 got out in 86 and when you get out in 86 that was when you went to Wall Street right out in Out in Vegas? So, yeah, man, this is kind of funny.

So I leave the Marine Corps and I had a cousin that I was really close with. His name is Jack. And he lived in Vegas. He was a percussionist for Wayne Newton. Yeah. So I end up calling him. I'm like, hey, man, I'm getting out of the Marines. And he's like, dude, come out here and hang out with me in Vegas. I'm like yeah i'm like 21 i've got 2500 in the bank what could go wrong right

everything yeah so uh i could think of a few things yeah so i end up getting out and i fly to vegas and i end up staying with my cousin and I was out of money in like two months. And so I started doing like odd jobs. I actually caddied at this country club for a while, which was kind of fun. Sucked at golf, but I could carry a bag or two. And then I end up meeting, bro, this was so bizarre. Like you just never know where your life's going to take you. But I ended up meeting this girl.

That's how it starts. Right, right. But this was a good finish like even though i see a stripper no believe it no no believe it she wasn't she was actually dude she was an ivy league she went to princeton she had a degree in i think economics she was in vegas yeah man so she was a stockbroker so i meet her and you know start dating and then one day she like drops this freaking bomb on me because i wasn't really doing anything and she's like why don't you become a stockbroker i'm like i said i don't have a degree she's like you don't have to have one you just have to pass the series 7 and 63 and i'm like is there any math involved and she's like a lot i'm like, is there any math involved? And she's like a lot. I'm like, I got like C's and D's in math. Like, she's like, no, no, no. She's like, I'll, I will,

I will tutor you. And, um, so anyway, the core, the course back then was called the Longman series. And, um, it was at UNLV and you studied for your series seven and you're 63 and it costs 1500 bucks for like your books and the whole course and i'm like i don't have 1500 bucks like i was eating like ramen noodles like you know the deal yeah and she's like look i'll give you the 1500 you just pay me back in your first paycheck like she dude i don't know what it was about her she just saw something that i didn't see like i'm like a stockbroker white collar like i just got the marines like i was you know sure you as a stockbroker dude that's a compliment bro it was the proverbial round peg and square hole yeah it was you know i don't look good in a suit not to wear a suit every day i freaking hated it but anyway anyway, so I go to UNLV, a study, and don't ask me how I passed the first time because it, I can't remember what the percentage is. It wasn't good. Normally people

take the series seven several times. They say it's harder than the accounting exam, but not as hard as the bar. But here's the kicker. It's a pass or fail. Yes, I took it. Yeah. And back then you couldn't use a calculator. All of your math had to be done. So you had your answers page, but then you had to have the math for each question. And if you didn't have the math, the question was wrong. So you had to know the actual math on converting options and all this other stuff. And so anyway, I passed. I think they probably misscored my test or something bro to be honest with you or there's a different joke exactly

right so so unbeknownst to me they gave a 1500 bonus if you pass the first time to cover your so i just gave that straight to her we were flush flush. I had my Series 7, my 63, and now I'm this stockbroker. Well, she worked for Bear Stearns at the time. And she even said, look, they're not going to pick you up as a fresh broker. So I ended up, you had to be sponsored to go take the Series 7 and 63. And so I ended up contacting this. It was a penny stock firm way back in the day, if people remember those. If you've ever seen the movie Boiler Room, that's exactly what it was like. It was intense, man. Mega stress.

You had to make $400 a day. But anyway, it was nuts so i end up going working for this company for a year and then kind of like building up my book of business right and then she got me an interview with with bear stearns which was a wall street firm you know um had a medium-sized office in vegas interview wasn't with jeffrey epstein was it no no no i don't think he was conducting i don't think he was back then but no um but anyway yeah so i ended up going over there and actually learning about the market and how the market worked and actually trading real stocks and um you know and then back then black monday hit which

oh yeah remember that that was 87 right um october 87 yeah it was it was yeah it wasn't long after i became a broker but it what two days in a row boom boom 30 down right it wiped out it wiped out people's business yep so and i already had kind of like one foot out the door because, I don't know. I just, what I still had in the back of my head, I wanted to do the special ops thing. Were you having any fun like in Vegas though while this was going on? I mean, you're living in Vegas. Dude, it was bad. So, all right.

You really want to get down that road? Let's go all the way down it. All right. So, you know know i'm a young guy you know i was in my early 20s and so i was making i thought was a lot of money which actually back then i was i was making like 70 grand a year which that's decent that's a lot of money yeah dude coming out of them yeah right and coming out of the Marine Corps and not making, you know, I was a corporal when I got out. So, um, so it was a very fast paced business and you know, how's that saying go work hard, play hard and dude. And then now you're in Vegas. And so I've admitted this to many people and I'll admit it right now to those who are listening I started drinking way too much um and to quantify way too much um every Friday and Saturday night to the point where I didn't know where my car was right you know that's a good thing yeah you didn't know where your car was at that point and just drinking my problem was it's not that um I didn't want to stop drinking like I wouldn't know when to stop drinking.

Like I wouldn't just get, I was one of those guys like, hey dude, you got a good buzz, quit drinking. No, I think I'm going to drink nine or 10 Long Island iced tea. Yeah. What am I going to do with one? Yeah. You know? And that was my problem.

And so it kind of got out of control. It's a miracle, to be honest with you, that I never got a DUI. And I'm not proud to say that, but I was a young kid. kid i don't know what the fuck i didn't know what i was doing you know i was around a bunch of raging type a guys that were partying really hard i never got into drugs which was everywhere i couldn't see you on drugs man you are born with it in your veins you don't need that bro it was like right in front of me all the time coke ecstasy yeah it was right there it's vegas yeah parties and so that that i am proud that i never did it um but uh it just got to a point where you know i was i could see me going down that rabbit hole and not getting out of it because i seen guys literally like this one dude, his name was Bert

and he was from, um, Salt Lake city. He was a Mormon, never drank, never smoked, never cursed, never, never, never. I watched that dude in a year, Coke drinking, topless bars, like you name it. He went and I thought, man, if that happened to him yeah you know i mean so it just it was just it came to a head um just it's lucky like stupid shit like this like one night we were not drinking and there was five of us and um my buddy's like hey man no it's like three o'clock in the morning he's like hey let's go get my dad's boat and go and go toward around you know um lake mead like oh okay what's wrong with five drunk guys going taking the boat out like right pitch black dark right so dude we swing by his

dad's house he gets the keys and we we drive out to the lake and um getting his dad's boat was it a dock and we just it's pitch black out there right and so we're driving and we we probably didn't go five minutes and all i hear is this like underneath the boat and i hear it go under oh did you hit the dude i thought we ran like at first like oh please tell me you didn't run somebody over but it was like who would be out here swimming at four in a freaking morning right but we stopped and turned around and he ran over a log that was floating in the water. Oh, so he didn't bar it. No, dude, he went right over it.

Yeah. And it, all of a sudden, water starts coming up in the back of the boat. He tore the tree. And I'm like, uh-oh. Now here's five drunk off their ass guys. I'm like, dude, turn the boat around right now and get back to the dock. Didn't make it. sunk about 100 it sunk about 100 yards from the dock man no i sobered up real quick though man oh man but dumb dumb stuff like that yeah you know they could have really changed

the trajectory of my career yeah right getting down the road and the clearance i had to have any of that stuff would have disqualified me dui anything with the law that would have been an instant instant disqualifier so i ended up i ended up uh getting out of the business and and it was good it all in all though bro it was a good experience i learned about the market i learned about sales all of that like in a very very high level right think about i mean you're calling people you're never going to meet and asking for money but you didn't like it at all i know i didn't wake up every morning going oh i can't wait to get to

work right no it wasn't like that it was kind of like a means to an end because i wasn't really doing anything and i went from like caddying at a country club to being a stockbroker right so technically i did that too a little bit of a different that's cool but but it just it just wasn't me i just i just didn't wake up in the morning with pep in my step you know what i mean so i ended up getting out of the brokerage business and quick question for, not to go back too far, but like before that, when you got in, you, you had said like, you weren't good in school and like, you figured, okay, I'm going to go into the Marines. Did you have like a real, had you already developed like a real like patriotic sense? Like I want to fight for the country. And was that pulling back at you

now when you're on wall street and wanted to leave yeah actually that's a very good point so yeah i i grew up in a very patriotic family but what's really crazy is no one really enlisted the military like i had an uncle was drafted for korea and when it was drafted a cousin was drafted for vietnam but pull that mic up just to see how it's like down pull it up a little bit yep there you go that's what i want and so like no one really enlisted in the military but i my family was very patriotic flew a flag 24 7 365 was raised with those core values right so it was instilled in me in a very young age so you do feel that oh 100 yeah and and i i feel to this day you know yeah absolutely you know every time i see a

flag you know it's like you know just fuck yeah baby exactly and so um but yes that but it was more of like i never completed the job like i i like i got into force recon but i never got to do what i really wanted to do which was serving combat like that's like the test that's like the litmus test like yeah you got all these schools you know this but you never done crap with it like you know it's like putting an elevator in an outhouse it just don't make sense like put these guys to the test well they never did so i went back i re uh re-enlisted in the army. So guys, I got a really cool podcast coming for you in two weeks. It's something we recorded at the end of May and it has become all the more relevant this month with the recent news in the

UFO phenomenon that we have seen with whistleblower David Grush coming out and discussing secret government programs that have never been talked about before where we are studying extraterrestrial craft. Now, my podcast is going to be with my friend Ron James, who is the director of the award-winning documentary, Accidental Truth, which came out just this year and is available on Apple and Amazon. The documentary covers the modern cover-up of UFOs in the government and features people like Dr. Michio Kaku, Colonel John Alexander, Ralph Blumenthal, Lou Elizondo, Christopher Mellon, Congressman Tim Burkett, and the list goes on. this truth over the years and he probably has the most extensive interview ever recorded in a documentary with former head of the atip desk at the pentagon lou elizondo so if you want to check that out ahead of our podcast i'd highly recommend you do that you have two weeks and i think you're really going to enjoy the conversation because we got we got pretty meta no no pun

intended on many different subject matters around this. And obviously, it's something more people are thinking about now. So check that out on Apple or Amazon, and I will see you in two weeks. This is actually kind of funny. So I get a contract for Special Forces. Well, you went into the Army, not the Marinesines so you had to start from scratch right so no i actually went back in the army as an e4 because the minimum rank in a special forces a team is an e5 okay so they gave me my e4 and the day i graduated the q course i was an e5 got it okay because that's the minimum rank on an SFG. I got to follow the military stuff. No, no, no worries, dude. I wasn't in.

No, no worries. So I go to – the first thing you have to do is go to selection. And so – well, actually, the first school I went to was PL – it was called PLDC, Platoon Leadership Development Course. I don't know why I had to go to that first. It was just a leadership school because the – well, actually, now I look back. The Marine Corps has a very specific way they lead and so does the Army, but it's not exactly a parallel course, right?

There's a lot of leadership styles that are a little bit different. So that was actually probably a really good thing. So I went to PLDC and then I went to Special Forces Selection. And it was really funny because you show up and you got your duffel bag and you dump it all out and they do like a cursory inspection to make sure you don't

have like supplements and protein powder and all that stuff. Right. So I'm standing there and I dump up my bag and the instructor's walking down the line, looking through stuff and you kind of like standard parade rest. And he comes up in front of me, and he's looking at my stuff. He's like, what unit are you coming from? Bear Stearns. He looks at me, and he goes, what the fuck unit is Bear Stearns? I go, what? And I said, Bear Stearns.

It's a brokerage firm. He's like, a brokerage firm? He's like, a brokerage firm? He's like, don't even unpack. Yeah, man, it was pretty funny. And I'll be honest with you, man. I was very ill-prepared physically for what selection dishes out to a person i suffered man and there were some guys that made it through didn't even have a blister i lost all my toenails um i lost your toenails yeah so what happened was you do a lot of rock marching yeah you're carrying a lot of

weight and a lot of this and so mud and all that shit you know well i would get like these blood like blood underneath my toenails so what they said is like you just take a needle and draw a little hole and you squeeze but then you end up losing your toenail i lost them all i lost all my tone i looked like an ape it was the weirdest looking thing how does that feel though like yeah but like can you i'm just trying to like imagine i've lost a toenail before but like you know how you're walking on it like you feel like that toe doesn't exist how do you walk like are you walking on the front of your foot i wrapped all of my toes in moleskin in what moleskin the fuck is that it's like uh it's like this tan stuff that you put on

like blisters it keeps it from rubbing it's like it has tape on one side and you can build off anyway my whole feet were wrapped up in this shit because they were just trash. Like, I had a blood blister on both of my feet the size of an egg, like, underneath it. And it was painful. And there were guys that suffered like that, but a lot of the guys didn't because they were training up for it. They were hardening up their feet. My boots were brand new, like, in a box. You know, not very smart. But anyway, I ended up, the very last day you do a 25 miler and it's timed

what do you have to get man i don't remember i can tell you the pace is 15 15 minute miles that was the standard 15 miles yeah which is a fast you know ruck march and a lot of guys would run walk run walk run but you had a you had to be humping it dude but i remember about five you got all the i'm sorry you have all the equipment on too oh yeah you're carrying a heavy rock i was thinking like you were going for a no no no you got it at that point i think it was like a 65 pound ruck with water right you know it's waste that's intense in a weapon and so so about five miles into it, I remember I was crossing the stream and just my left foot just, I don't know, just. And I ended up making it, but I had a stress fracture.

So I did like the last 20 miles on a freaking stress fracture. Dude, it was, if it wouldn't have been the last day i don't know if i would have made it physically just because it hurt so much i left on crutches literally i got a picture of me on crutches so leave it as a fast so anyway went to selection what the q course um 18 bravo weapons guy uh because you've got, you know, weapons, commo, demo, medical, right? I was a weapons guy. And then went straight to language school, which sucked because normally you have like a break. Language school. I went to, so after you graduate the Q course, you go to a language, whether, depending on what group you're in. Oh, you know what? Yeah. I heard that from somebody

else. Go ahead. Yeah. So I, I went to Spanish school, which was the easiest, but it, but group you're in oh you know what yeah i heard that from somebody else go ahead yeah so i uh i went to spanish school which was the easiest but it but literally they when i was at bragg like don't even leave your spanish classes starting in like five days i'm like i want to get the hell out of here stuff yeah like i want to get out of here man so because it was like sfas you know q course and then language school so um anyway i went to language school um which again spanish is the easiest and i'm one of those rocks man like i had a hard time learning spanish like some dudes can learn five languages that blows me away man dude i'm not one of them yeah neither am i you know like i was graduating spanish school and

the dudes in farsi were like learning the alphabet still like, Oh, were you, cause I don't know how I've only ever lived in my head trying to learn this stuff. But were you like one of those people who was always trying to translate it directly to English? Yeah. So, and that turns exactly. And that don't work. That's what I, that's what I would do too much too. Yeah. So. So, and that was at Bragg. I didn't go to DLI. There was actually a language school in California called DLI. I think it stood for Defense Language Institute.

But they had one at Bragg. Got it. So I went to language school at Bragg. Bragg, the one in North Carolina? Yeah. Yeah. And it just sucked, dude. You're in a class who made hours a day you know just you

start learning the language and like the last month you can't speak english you watch like spanish um uh like uh soap operas in spanish then you have to write a paper in spanish about what you just watched so you really i don't know if they do it anymore but it made sense like i'm watching something listening to it then i gotta write it yeah so um repetition yeah and so you know it was it sucked it was just it was just you know boring as shit like you know like this it's falling asleep how long was that again uh i think language school was four months okay uh which again spanish school was the shortest these poor guys that went to like farsi and mandarin chinese it was like nine months or a year or some shit like which is even crazy like that yeah dude no no no i would have never yeah no i'll take a pass on that right like no

so um actually this is kind of funny so i i graduate from language. What year are we in? I went to the Q course in 93. Okay. Yeah. And so this, I graduated, that'd be like a 94. It's just like post Somalia right after that. Yeah. Yeah. And so I ended up driving back to our headquarters and I drove in and our school's NCO was on the phone

and you turn in your orders and all your medical stuff. Right. And he's on the phone. He's like, Hey, hold on a second. And he's like, Hey man, you have an active chamber card. And I'm like, and for those, a chamber card is like to go to free fall school, to halo school, you had to go to Wright Patterson and sit like in a chamber and they take you to altitude and you breathe oxygen. You ever seen, you ever seen, what was that show with, uh, Richard gear? Um, when he was a pilot, young Richard gear, um, officer and a gentleman. Oh yes. When they're in the chamber and that guy starts freaking out, that's a chamber ride. Got it. So it expires every, I don't know, year or two. But I had just gotten it like right before.

So anyway, he goes, you got an active chamber card? And like, yeah. He's like, you want to go to Halo school? I'm like, hell yeah. Right? Because that was a tough school back then to get. He's like, don't even unpack. I'm like, oh.

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halo high altitude low opening um so I was in the last class because at that time, Halo school was at Bragg, but they moved the entire schoolhouse out the Yuma, Arizona, which is a much better place. Unrestricted airspace and. 310 to Yuma, same place. I'm sorry. Same place as the movie. 310 to Yuma. Oh yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Interesting yeah interesting yeah so it's just out in the middle of nowhere yeah and um but what was crazy dude was uh so you have to do a certain amount of jumps um to graduate and um the last jump you have to do is a night oxygen combat equipment jump you have to do that or you won't graduate so uh it was raining that day and like we were already

behind because some dude i think over at cag um jumped and burned in he hit his head or something on a dc3 and like burned in and died and when somebody dies jumping they like stop all jump operations till they find out what happened. Naturally. So we were already behind. And like, if we didn't jump that night, I wasn't graduating. And I was like, oh. So we're sitting out there.

We have ponchos over us. We're all kitted up. And the first group goes. They get the jump. And I was in the very last group. And so we get on the bird and it started raining even harder. And I'm like, man. And we kept going up and I'm looking at my altimeter and we got to about 9,000 feet.

And all of a sudden the jump master's like, stand up. And I'm like, oh shit. Cause it's not how high you jump. You just have to jump oxygen at night with combat equipment and there was cat litter all over the ramp like they put down because the ramp was all wet and slippery and shit it was crazy promising yeah right so i ended up doing my my final jump in halo school at like i think it was like 9 500 feet oh you were combat equipment and that heights guy yeah dude either am i to be honest with you, you know, I think,

you know, it, everybody has a fear of heights, you know, especially known if shit don't go right, you're going to be a lawn dart, like, you know? And so some guys loved it. Um, I did it cause it was part of the job. Um, but I wasn't like, we call them sky gods. Like I wasn't that guy, like let's jump, jump, jump, jump, you know, all yeah and then um i um i hit a lot of schools i hit as many schools as i could um which are good to have but that just goes back to the same thing i was telling you about what are all these schools worth if you ain't actually using it you know you, it's like a, it's like a doctor going to med school, a surgeon and never doing surgery. Like what, you know, it's like every guy that joined, well, I don't say every guy, I'd say most guys that joined special operations, they want to test themselves.

Is that warrior mentality? And you want to test yourself in the crucible of combat. Right. And I think anybody you talk to, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, they're going to say the same thing. Yeah, man, I want to see how I perform. Like, that's the litmus test. We deployed to Operation Uphold Democracy and Maintain Democracy in Haiti, but that

wasn't like combat operations. It was like a peacekeeping thing. And then the UN came in. It was a total cluster screw. It was called Uphold Democracy? Yeah operations it was like a peacekeeping thing and then the un came in it was a total cluster screw it was called uphold democracy yeah it was in haiti it was during like a campaign dude it was a mess but anyway i was there for six months um we got there and then the un came in and it went from uphold democracy to maintain democracy when the un came in we even had to wear those stupid ass un patches they were blue and white and anyway but it wasn't combat like you weren't kicking indoors and killing bad guys you know so again kind of missed the whole thing never went to

desert storm or desert shield um but, fast forward a little bit and I end up getting a call one day in this, and I don't, if you want to go down this road, we can, I'll tell you as much as I can. Always. Let's drive. All right. So I get a call one day and it's this gentleman on the phone and he says, is this Joe? And I said, yeah. And he says, my name is Ron. And he said his last name. And he said, I work for an organization that may be interested in hiring you. I said, who? And he's like, well, I prefer not to say right now. And he said, do you know so-and-so? I'm like, yeah. And he's like, do you know so-and-so? Yeah. He asked me how I knew him. And I said, well, I went to the Q course with the one guy and I knew the other

guy from seventh group. He went to seventh group and we were just friends, you know, really good friends and went to some schools together and just got to know both of the guys pretty well. The one dude ended up going over uh to delta um it was an operator over there and so it was really funny because i thought they were dead like it's like they kind of like fell off the map you know what i mean like yeah you know so anyway he's like look man he goes i think he said he was in kansas city or something he's like i need you to jump on an airplane and i'm not joking this is what the dude tells me on the phone. He goes, you need to jump on an airplane.

I'm at the Holiday Inn Express in Kansas City. I'm in room 105. And can you be here like on Thursday? And it was like Tuesday. What year is this? This is pre 9-11. Okay. So you've been back in now for a long time.

A while. But I was out you because that unit i had already gotten out can you explain that so like yeah so like i didn't i didn't re-enlist in the army and i had a little break and like a break in service before i went because you can't be in the unit i I'm about to talk about being active duty, but you had never, the point being you had done all kinds of training and been on basis, but you hadn't actively deployed.

And now you're getting this phone call from Ron. Yes, sir. Okay. Got it. And so, and again, at that time,

I didn't even know who it was to be honest with you. I thought it was somebody from Blackwater, like one of these big defense contracting companies. But then I'm like, why are they being so secretive about who it is? Right. And it just didn't make any sense. And I still couldn't put two and two together. So I end up, oh, and he says, save your plane ticket, save your tax,

save all your expenses. I'll give you cash when you get here. And I'm like, okay. So I go meet this dude and he opens the door and brings me in his room and he's like, Hey, do you mind if I record this conversation? I'm like, yeah, sure. So he puts up a computer in front of me and he goes, so look, he goes, sorry for all of the, you know, cloak and dagger shit. But he said, I am the recruiter for the CIA special activities division

special operations group ground branch can you explain to people what ground branches before you so you tell this so they can appreciate this yeah so um this is open source i mean you Um, the CIA has an organization inside of it, um, that is their special activities division, special operations group. I think they call it the counter. I think they changed the name instead of the special activities division. They call it the special activities center now, but back when I was in, they called it the SAD. It's basically their paramilitary unit that conducts covert operations. So for those listening, there's a thing called and it was given to the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert actions on the behalf of the government.

So covert action is basically missions that the United States government doesn't want any hand in. Like if something goes wrong or like plausible deniability, we don't know, right? So the military does not have the legal um ability to do covert action that is assigned to the central intelligence agency only so that they can have no diplomatic immunity and things like that if they were to get caught yeah to be totally deniable yeah like higher government joe who delete right right so um yeah so and i'd heard of them you know of course in a bit you know it was kind of like this the unicorn like do they do they exist they really know who are they what do they do like nobody like really knew and you're not going to see

movies about it and you're not going to read missions about it like you see you know guys doing missions now it's all over the news you're not going to hear ever anything those guys do and so i do this interview with them and um dude you could have knocked me over the feather like i was not expecting that at all and you're in a hotel room yep in a hotel room in kansas city now did part of your brain go towards what if this is some sort of setup Not at all. And you're in a hotel room. Yep. In a hotel room in Kansas City. Now, did part of your brain go towards what if this is some sort of setup? It didn't. That never really.

Why? Because the dude knew two guys by name that I knew. Like, how would you know those guys? If I were a Russian spy and had information, I would. Yeah, but I wasn't that important. You know, like, who was I at who was i at that time like i wasn't like why would you be targeting me like i wasn't got it privy to really classified information like i was when i got in the unit so anyway we do this interview and to be honest with you man it was a very mundane interview it's not like what you think it would be he just asked me questions about growing up uh my military um just very basic questions it's kind of

like getting to know somebody kind of questions nothing crazy like you would think that came later did he tell you at all about himself yeah yeah he told you it was actually uh old school delta guy um yeah and um an older cat but super in shape like you can that's the first thing i was like dang man this guy's freaking yoked like he's right yeah but i could tell he was an older guy but he was in really good shape and um so just did this interview in in was it, man. He's like, hey, man, thanks for coming. We'll be in touch. Like that was the extent of it. And so, you know.

Give you a business card? Yeah, right. Picture. Hey! Hold up a second. Let's get a selfie for Instagram, please. Yeah. So, dude, you know, here's me.

You know, I get back in my rental car with this. I just pump the neighbor's cat look like, what just happened? Right. Like, what? What was that? And I drive back to the airport and fly home. And about, I don't know, it was maybe a week later, two weeks later, I get a phone call from him. And he's like, hey, man.

He's like, I need you in Virginia as soon as possible to take a polygraph. And I'm like, when do you need me, sir? He's like, when can you come? And I tell him, he's like, all right. It was like a couple of days later. He's like, all right, look, don't the 24 hours prior. Don't drink soda. Don't drink coffee.

Don't drink any stimulants. Don't take pre-workout. Nothing. I'm like, Roger that. I never knew that. don't drink soda don't drink coffee don't drink any stimulants don't take pre-workout nothing i'm like roger that i never knew that so they don't want you having anything that could possibly affect your blood yes sir yeah nothing interesting yeah so um quick question yeah what about when they have to do like pop-up polygraphs then like when they surprise you and they didn't tell you 24 hours or something good question um don't know that's weird yeah but they were he was very specific no coffee no soda no no uh pre-workout nothing had caffeine in it

that's okay um so i ended up he he sends he tells me this is the address you need to go to and so i decided to drive to virginia instead of flat i don't know why it was a long ass drive from where i live it was like eight hours but i just want to north carolina yeah from where i lived where actually i was at that time it was no maybe not eight hours maybe seven ish hours but i just wanted to have some time to myself you know what i mean and just like think about what was about to happen which was a stupid thing to do because you start mind screwing yourself, right? You're driving going, oh my God, oh my God. Well, you know what you're driving to

because he told you. Oh yeah, yeah, dude. You know what this is. This is major. This is the high league. Oh yeah, dude. This is the tip of the spear for sure. So I drive to this address

and it was just a very nondescript six-story building in the middle of like this commercial center. And he told me, hey, when you go in, there'll be a security guard downstairs at a desk. Just tell him you're here to take a polygraph and they'll tell you where to go. I'm like, okay. So I walked through the front door and there's a, you know, like a security guard sitting here behind a desk. And I'm like, hey, sir, I'm here to take a polygraph.

And he says your name. And he's, I told him my name. He's like, okay, okay yeah go to the third floor like okay so i get in the elevator and i go to the third floor and i get off the elevator and i look around and it literally looked like some company left in the middle of the night like all the shit was hanging from the ceiling and that like there was nothing there like the the false ceiling was like missing shit and just wires hanging down and just i'm like what the fuck so i look i get back in the elevator i'm

like i'm on the wrong floor right no you're right i'm on the right and just as i turn around here's this dude standing right in front of me he says joseph and i said yeah he says follow me he's got two electric wires going like this testing for the the current. Dude, I'm telling you, man. So this was crazy, man. It was like, this is what I expected. It was really bizarre. So there was an office, and there was a desk, the machine, a guy sitting behind the desk, and a chair in front of the desk. That was it.

There was nothing else in it. And so I sit down. Just you and him. It was, there was a guy behind me running the polygraph machine and then another dude that walked me in. And so I sit down in the chair and they start hooking up the machine. They put like this tube across my chest, the thing on my finger, heart monitor. He's like, look, put your hands on your knees. Don't tap your feet. feet don't tap your hands don't hold your breath blah blah blah blah blah i'm like okay answer yes or no any questions i'm like nope

and so it starts so you can hear the freaking machine you can hear it behind you like making some noise and of course you know you got sweat dripping down your back as you know this is this is for real like this oh let me let me back up when he when i did the interview with ron he said look man don't get excited because we called you 70 of the people don't even pass the polygraph 70. now how long was this polygraph do you remember yeah an hour maybe hour 15 minutes it wasn't long now if you can't get into specifics about necessarily some of the exact questions you and i did talk about this in the car earlier but on a broad level because you explained that what types of things are they asking you sure so the first set of questions were very benign is your name joe ted i right are you from pittsburgh pennsylvania blah blah blah there's

like a term for that like yeah exactly they're probably just trying to get a baseline of i think that's it yeah of what your what your answers are then you took a little like two minute break sat there and then he asked another set of questions they were quantifiable type questions so like for example have you ever done drugs yes right whatever they're going to quantify that to a point where like if you've done drugs in the last 10 years five years like they're they dummy it down but as the questions progressed each set of questions became more and more intrusive so all i can tell you is imagine the most personal obtrusive questions that would make you squirm as a man that's what they're asking you i'm curious though are you

serious question because i've never experienced anything like this seeing as this is like the highest level of secrecy that the government even has to offer and you're in a room with three guys who are you know their shadows basically do you even do you even care as much versus like if if you were sitting on a pod forget a podcast if you're just sitting with your friends and answering these questions? Is there like a wall? Like, I don't give a fuck what these guys think. Well, I'm just answering it from my, it was stressful. Because this was the 70% don't pass.

Like, the chances of you passing us aren't good. But, dude, you can't lie. They probably invented the freaking thing. And you don't know what's a right and wrong answer in a sense you really don't yeah i mean look they're not looking for choir boys okay but i'm sure there are questions i'm 100 sure that are 100 disqualifiers if you answer yes to that question you're failing You're failing for sure. And there's a reason for that. That unit really deep dives more so than any other special operations unit. Like guys from Delta and still Team 6, they don't have to take polygraphs.

They have a TSSCI. A what? A top secret SCI, which is sensitive compartmentalized information. It's like a caveat on a TS clearance. I don't want to say it's higher than a TS, but in reality it is because you're exposed to very compartmentalized information. But you're saying it's not CIA top secret level. Yeah. That's why that agency goes to that next step with the polygraph and the, and, and, and even guys that come over from the tier one units, you know, even though they may have a TSS CI,

they still go through some type of background that they kind of like police it up a little bit, like, okay, let's just double check some things because that's what I was told. I'm not, I'm just telling you what people have told me there. So, so anyway, but yeah, there's very, there's questions that are a hundred percent disqualifiers and rightly so, because the way it was explained to me is, you know, we have to be able to trust you a hundred percent. Matter of fact, Ron said, Joe, we would rather have 10 guys that we have a hundred percent

faith in than a hundred guys that were like 95, like not there. Did the fact though, because at this point, like you said, you hadn't seen combat, right? You've been in for a long time. You handled a lot of different training. Like obviously you're a qualified guy for a lot of things, but this is essentially to me in my head from outside the military, this feels like the kind of jump, like you're going from the eighth grade AAU star to the fucking mba yes about it bro yeah um yeah so were you wondering why they why they were asking you did you ask a question like guys i haven't seen combat

why am i being considered for this um so during an interview process down the road, after you passed the polygraph and it was during my time getting my top secret clearance, uh, which took about five months for them to do all the background investigations and said, bro, they, I'll tell you something really funny here in a minute, but you do an interview, like a, like a board interview had four guys. They were like all the top dudes in SAD. And they're all just sitting there at a table just asking you a bunch of questions. And this is how deep, deep dive they do you. So the one dude asked me, so Joseph, tell us something that happened to you in high school that might reflect on your character. It's like an interview question. Yeah, right regular interview straight up and i'm sitting there i'm like high school i said sir can you be a little more um can you be a little more like

give me a hint he's like no he's like tell us he goes what happened to you in high school that would reflect on your character that we would want to know about? And I was like, what the – I really didn't know what he was talking about. I hate those questions. Oh, bro. And of course – I can't think of it. Dude, I got sweat dripping down my back, you know, and I'm like, uh, uh, you know, deer in a headlight.

And I basically said, I don't know what you're looking for. And they each had like this, um, dossier in front of them. And he's looking, he's like, correct me if I'm wrong. Were you not suspended in 11th grade? Hmm, dude, I totally forgot about it. And I was, he goes, I said, yes, sir. I was, he says, you want to tell us why and I said yeah um the seniors had what's called like a senior skip day where all the seniors right well I was in 11th grade a bunch of my buddies and I went got caught and got suspended for a day and so I told him that and he's like okay but dude they pulled my micro fish from my high school. Yeah. Right? So like.

I'm not surprised. Yeah, yeah. And that's the only way they could have known about it. Yeah. And so, yeah, man, that was, it was a real epiphany for me. Like, this is no freaking joke. Like, they want to know what chinks are in your armor. Everybody has them.

I have them. You have them. But just like any other special operations unit, whether it's special forces or SEALs or Delta, you know, dev group, they're looking for the right guy, better operators than me to make it.

I'll be the first one to admit it. There are dudes. And I'll, and I'll tell you, maybe for the right reasons too. I mean, it's like, you know,

well, the story I'm about to tell you a hundred percent, you know, definitely because they, they don't, because the stakes are so high in that type of work. Mistakes are really what's costly in any special operations unit, but they're doing covert action stuff. It can, you know, you don't want to end up on the cover of a magazine or the newspaper, right? So, um, the stakes are a little bit higher and I'll give you a very good example, um, of what I'm talking about. So after you take your polygraph, you, you, your clearance comes back, interview, um, physical, you had to do a physical fitness, um, exam, which was like a class three flight physical, like soup to nuts, PT test, a couple other things. And then you go to their operator's course, right? So where's that? All over the place. It's all over. Okay. It's you bounce all over the country.

Got it. Yeah. It's school after school, after school, after school, after school school after school after school after school after school after school, right? And it's about six months long. And what was really funny, I'll tell you the first place we went, and this I can tell you. So the very first school I went to was in, I think it was in Rochester, New York, and it was at the Harris Corporation. Harris made the 117 Foxtrot, which is a radio that SOCOM, or excuse me, JSOC was using at the time. And it's the radio that Ground Branch used. I never even saw one. Like that is not a radio that SOCOM used.

It was just for the tier one units and for Ground Branch. Never even saw one. So they sent us to Harris to where they make this thing to run us through like a week long course on, Hey, here's the radio you're going to be using now. And you know, no more of these, this is what you're using. So in walks this dude, we're all sitting in this classroom and then walks this dude, he gets up front and he turns on this powerpoint presentation and it's just math that i had never seen before and i'm kind of looking around and he's like yeah my name's so-and-so and i'm the engineer

that wrote the algorithms for this radio and i'm like dude how do you turn this thing on like you know like i don't need to see all that i was crapping i'm like i'm gonna make it through the first course you know like but that was just it was more like a holy shit moment like but he actually was one of the guys that designed the radio so we stayed there for a week and it's actually a very user-friendly radio um very easy you learned how to you know put in your freaks and load it and download crypt and you know crypto and all this stuff and fills and blah blah blah so that was the first school and after that it was just one after the next after the next and it you know some of them were mundane like that was a mundane course but very needed because i never seen a freaking 117 fox drop but you're i mean you're doing this obviously there's

a lot going on which keeps your mind busy and keeps you busy just trying to keep up with it. But again, you're coming from having never been in combat and you're now training for something where you are going in and the only mission is kill. And you are maybe not the only one, but you know what I mean. That's a heavy part of it. You're going after the worst targets in the world. You're going to be in plain clothes depending on the place you are sometimes and you're basically like going to be the highest level assassin the government has that we've ever heard of in the public is there any point where you're starting

to come to grips with the fact that you're going to have to do obviously you're removing what you view as evil from the earth but like are you thinking about that like holy shit like this is about to go zero to a thousand real quick bro it was scary i'm a man enough to admit it was very intimidating because you're exactly right i basically was gonna be thrown into the fire you know like uh the deep end of the pool and you better swim. And most of the guys I worked with were former combat vets. They were either in Grenada or Panama, Desert Storm, Desert Shield. All SEALs and Special Forces. Yeah, had a whole plethora.

You know, it was a very eclectic unit. You could have five guys in a room, Army air force marine you know and and a hundred years of experience like it was crazy that's very intimidating when when you're on that kind of talent well you had said there were guys recruited to it or in it who you had worked with and who knew you so recommended you but like did you ever think about like why still they were asking you yeah and to this day yeah they're um the the two dudes that um that i knew that that were there um i don't know man maybe they just saw something i never really saw in myself and see that's a confidence thing which is really odd to say that from a guy that was marine recon and army sf you think you'd be confident and i was i was confident in my abilities but there's a difference between being

confident and going i've done this for real and i did well you know I didn't buckle. Yeah, oh, bro. You can't simulate that. No, no, you can't. Yeah, you can't. And so, like I said, 85% of the dudes I worked with had some type of combat experience. This is one of those great examples of things where I'm always careful with anything in life. But let's look at this example of when i say a phrase like if i were blank then i would blank you don't fucking know no and when you're dealing with this kind of shit

you i don't care how trained you are how you don't know no and i always had my own you got to remember dude this is kind of funny my like what i thought about combat is what i saw on tv yeah that was my dude that was my freaking standard you know and it's not that like you know there's i can just tell you from where i came from you'd hear guys on the radio under fire and it was like they're ordering a pizza there is no scream no seriously man there's calm, you know, because that is how you have to operate in that environment. There's no, none of that shit ever, you know. And when you work with guys at that level, it's almost cancerous. Like, it comes, it sticks to you.

Like, that calmness. Like, okay, he's calm, I'm going to be calm. You know what I mean? So, because once one person starts losing their shit, another one's going to lose them and then another one. And you can't have that. You know what was odd? I just remembered this based on you saying that you had been telling me this in the car. But you asked me, what do you think is the one outside the box thing?

I think you said it differently than that, but that's basically what you're saying. Is the one outside the box thing i think you said it differently in that but that's basically what you're saying is the one outside the box trait that they're looking for in all these people that they recruit to this and what did you tell me so dude one of the there's a few self-confidence is is a biggie not that one no this was the one where you were talking about you want guys who have faith. Oh, okay. It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors. So, what should we talk about?

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Yeah. So this dude, and I'm just telling you from what I saw, my experience, not secondhand, not he said it. I saw this with my own eyes. um to the man that i got to know that i worked with every guy had some assemblance of faith whether it was catholicism christian protestant whatever they had some a semblance of a faith behind them and so i i heard this from one of the psychologists um when you're going through the process and it was a woman too of all things and she's like you know joseph if you look at all the warrior cultures of the past and she's like you know look at the spartans look at the samurai knights templar vikings right what did they all have you know in common i'm like tough yeah yeah and she

was like they they all had faith in something and i was like and that was about all that was said like they don't they didn't come out and just say, like, oh, if you're an atheist. But I'm just telling you from what I saw, not a lot. Every guy I worked with, when you start to get to know them. So interesting. Isn't that crazy, dude? Train killers. Isn't that crazy?

But think about it, though. It makes sense. K killing in the name of jesus baby but no it gives you some peace because let me just tell you man one of the one of the guys i used to work with i don't want to mention his name because he may even still be there he told me he's like bro this is we're not handing out cookies in front of walmart okay people get hurt here people get killed here you have to resign to your own fate like and once you do that that's what these warrior cultures did the spartans dude they'd already written their lives off right they're gonna die on the battlefield right samurai same thing vikings

same thing knights templar same thing they fought with passion and you're at effect yes cool and that is a very dangerous person you can flip that script and think about the taliban and al-qaeda dude look at right very scary people to fight because they have already resigned to their own death and when somebody does that that is not a person you want to be fighting then you add the skill sets and the training you even become more you know more um uh deadly so to speak but yeah i thought that was very interesting that these these dudes i worked with and you know we just sit around talk about religion all the time but once you got to know someone you're like well because i came from a catholic background i went to um church every sunday i went to catechism you know so i was born in an italian

hardcore catholic you know i'm not catholic now i'm a Christian, but this is a common denominator that a lot of people don't understand that guys at very high levels of special operations have some deep faith, man. And it makes sense. I didn't never thought about it until I was there. And I'm like, wow, that makes 100% sense. It makes 100% sense. So, yeah. But uh you know we're talking about your training and the different schools you were going to and everything before we got on that tangent gotcha so back you know acquiescing to the schools it basically lasted for six months. But here's the kicker. We had about, let me think here for a second, about two weeks left.

We were in Tyson's Corner in Virginia. We were staying at the Sheraton Hotel. Had about two weeks left. Didn't know exactly when, but we were told about two weeks. And so every morning we would meet the proctor the the instructor for that day down in the um in the uh waiting area the hotel and so we'd of course early of course you know right gotta be yeah right so so four of us are standing there there was six guys left at that time and i look over near the elevator and i see the proctor talking to two of

the dudes that were in the course with us. And I'm just kind of looking and then I see them shake hands and the, the two guys just walk back down the hallway to the elevator and the proctor kind of just like walks by. She's like, come on. So we go outside and we had a 12-pack van that we were using for training. He jumps in the driver's seat and we're all just sitting back there and turns around like this. And he said, you probably noticed that two of your compadres are no longer here. Does anyone want to take a while? Guess why? Of course, you ain't going to say shit, right? You go through that course, you're all ears and no mouth, right? You ask questions, but you're not going to say anything. And he said, what did we tell you day one?

Now, you got to remember, this is five months and two weeks later. Like, what did we tell you day one? And I'm like jesus um he's like we told you be on time be in the right uniform with the right equipment roger that i remember that he goes we also told you don't ever show up to training with alcohol in your breath oh those two gentlemen tied went on last night and i can smell it on them dude one guy was some seal team six the other guy i don't think he was some dev group they were both seals really good operators super studs very very experienced schooled out dropped them boom two

weeks ago that was an epiphany right there. Like, they are not fucking around. Yeah. Whoa. Yes, sir. So how many, you said it was like 12 of you in that van at that point? No, no, no. Four.

I graduated with four guys. Oh, there were only four in that van? So there were six at that time. Two guys got sent home. And it was me and three other guys. And that's who i grabbed my graduating class had four guys now how many cl do they do classes simultaneously in different only yeah now now how does this i don't know if you can say this part but like how does this

work once you graduate are you sent to an existing team i take, and it could vary in the number of people, so to speak? So once you graduate, you're now operational. I went home for a couple of weeks, just about three weeks I went home for, then I deployed. So without getting into details of how that unit is organized, it's more projects. They got this project going on here this project going on here this project going on here and then you're basically assigned to a project and when you're assigned to these projects as you explained at the outset with with this group this is where it's not military it's cia because this cannot be a military type operation, but you have military people who are brought over to the CIA to help run it. No?

So everybody in ground branch was former something. Got it. They are no longer active duty. They're out of the military. So they're former SF, SEAL, Delta, Mars, whatever. You're recruited, you know, by somebody, you get in, you make it. And then once you're there, you get put on these projects. And does your communication happen exclusively all with those people? Or do you also have communication with say Langley and the, the quintessential, you know, guys who are lifers at CIA? So those, that is done by the case officers, the full-time case officers. So you're having contact with case officers. Yes, sir. Which tell people what that is. Right. So case officers or like, those are the full-time guys that you hear about spies, right? Case officers, basically, they find people, they recruit them, they train them as assets. So for people listening who are fans of this show, obviously, Boost Amante from episodes 97 107 and 126 and

jim lawler from episode 129 are perfect examples it's interesting to talk with you because your expertise was in the field undercover with nuclear arms deals and things like that and it's like the whole reason we went to iraq was because they had wmd and that turned out to not be true that's exactly right people ask me about that sometime and it And it is true that Saddam Hussein had been working on nuclear weapons before then. He had used chemical weapons against the Kurds. The Kurds are an ethnic group there in Iraq. Killed thousands of them. In fact, one of his cousins was known as Chemical Ali.

And Chemical Ali used... Yes. And yes, those guys are the quintessential case officer type their job is to identify recruit and train assets to gather intel and other things for them and they handle them so when you are sent to a project air air quotes there, you're sent somewhere in the world, which you're not going to get into specifics of a lot of places today, obviously, but you're sent somewhere, and your coordination on the ground

usually involves some sort of case officer who is then. And your communication that happens for your job to happen effectively obviously isn't just with them, it's also with the leadership of your ground branch command. So to a point, the thing that's really cool about that unit is the ability to execute immediately. So in the military, you got to remember, you know, you always have a chain of command. You know, if you're on a special forces aid team, you've got your team commander as a captain. Normally you got your XO, who's either a lieutenant or maybe a warrant officer.

Then you got your team sergeant. So when you plan and you do your op orders, you know, everything's got to be dress right dress. It's got to be approved. Okay. In that unit, you and I can be sitting around and, hey, we know where so-and-so's at. Go get them. Yeah. We throw a plan together and

we go do it um and of course planning is important but there's no we got to run it up to the flag there ain't no flagpole they trust you enough at that level that's why they have you there you know what i mean and let me tell you one of the things that that proctor said to us in the van was very profound. And to this day, I say this to people when I coach them and when I do speaking engagements. He said, if we can't trust you to do the right thing when we're looking, how am I going to trust you to do the right thing when nobody is watching? Right. Nobody. Yeah, this is high. I mean mean it's dude that highest risk that the term

big boy roles apply that's i would have to tell you that definitely applies to that place because no one is going to go oh julian you can't do that oh dude you can't do that you you have full autonomy bro yeah that's where the big boy rules come in in a lot of if you've got a narcissistic type personality i mean they're looking for all that shit yes you can go sideways there man like you can go really i can see it how it could happen because you are you are given all the tools all the support that they're not telling is just accomplish the mission that's it yeah see that and here's an interesting dichotomy for me because again you're a separate part but you know this is under the cia branch especially when i had jim lawler in here he talked

about well both boost montaigne Lawler talked about some of the psychological traits the CIA looks for in case officers. And the main one that Jim really hammers home because he said, it sounds wild to people, but you got to hear me out, is that he said they are often looking for, usually looking for case officers who are dangerously teetering the line of sociopathy, which means that once in a while they're going to hire someone who's actually a sociopath because you don't get every hiring right right and the reason they want this is because they want i won't explain as well as he did but they want people who are willing to do insane shit and have a pulse like that right right and so a lot of they they view sociopathy as having like a a distant

relationship with feeling things you know because they're just willing to go in but in what you do i almost wonder because you even said it like they're looking for things like narcissistic personalities and stuff like that which would fall in in this type of personality i almost wonder if they're if if they are in fact completely not looking for that because unlike most case officers their job is to go turn people and get information and manipulate them your job is like yo people are going to die buyers are going to drop we better be right about this and we have no diplomatic immunity. Right. Again, I can just tell you what I saw in my experience. The guys that I worked with were extremely intelligent, first off.

That was one of the very first things I noticed. These guys were smart. Are you talking about your group, Ground Branch? Yes. Very, very smart. Are you talking about your group, Ground Branch? Yes. Okay. Very, very smart. Very creative thinkers. They were able to apply unconventional solutions to a conventional problem. So you got to remember, at the end of the day, dude, everybody... That's a good way to put it.

Yeah. It's all the basics, right? Everybody's like, oh, dude, show me some real high-speed this and high and high speed that and why are these units so good i'm gonna tell you exactly why they're so good because they got the basics down so freaking cold you know how's that saying go amateurs trained do they get it right professionals trained or they can't get it wrong that's that's why units like that's good yeah that's why units like delta and SEAL Team 6 are so freaking good and ground branch because they've got guys that have the basics down so cold they can do it in their sleep. And that is high speed. You know, I always tell people, you know, if you can do the seven fundamentals of shooting, side alignment, side pitcher, grip stance, breathing, follow through, and trigger press while somebody's shooting at you, you're a bad mofo.

That's high speed. That's high mofo that's high speed that's high speed that's high speed yeah because guess what 99% of the people out there can't do two of them on a flat range you know what i'm saying so that that's that's a lot of people don't understand is that these units they they're really really really good at the basics and once you get the basics down then then you can start adding on more advanced skills more advanced skills but if you don't have that foundational basics down it's like the mud hut you gotta have the basics and that's what they're looking for and so but getting back to the type of person, you know, very intelligent, creative thinkers, critical thinkers, very calm. Yeah. And see, that's where I was really nervous because like, I didn't know how I was going to react in combat. Just like you said, you don't know. You don't know. Let me tell you the first time that I got into a tick, that's when I realized this isn't like tv that you know i mean there are the sounds

of combat the smells of combat all it's got a weird pace to it like it's not what you see on tv how quick question though like how long because you said you'd get dropped in for what's called a project but these projects could be just based on what you were telling me in the car i'm using broad examples here sure they could be everything from being dropped into a random city somewhere where you're in plain clothes and you just go murk a guy or something or it could be in an actual combat zone where you're in where you're wearing fatigues and everything and like now it's more what you're describing how long before you experience like the combat zone project so my first deployment was iraq and the first time this is actually kind of funny the first time that i actually pulled the trigger shooting at somebody was at a

hotel that we were staying at and our hotel got attacked in the middle of night by a bunch of douchebags that showed up outside shot rpgs to hotel and oh yeah like woke up everybody and i and i ran up on the roof with a bunch of other dudes and they were across the street in an abandoned building and you could see their muzzle flashes it was like whack-a-mole had you been asleep when they started oh i was dead asleep okay oh yeah that's a shitty way to wake up man oh like you know you go to instant adrenaline dump and it was crazy bro i wish i had a camera there were dudes up there like in flip-flops and their their shorts with body armor on and their m4s shooting off the roof at the dudes across the street and that was the first time that i actually heard and seen and smelled the sounds of combat hey guys just a

reminder 23.5 and i are going to be dropping the show branded fashion line this week make sure you get your stuff while it's live because this is going to be a pop-up shop so it is a limited time offer been very very excited to get this out to you 23.5 has been working so hard on it the designs look great we're going to have 12 to 15 items i believe in the final drop like we've gone through probably about 60 70 iterations but we're gonna have 12 to 15 items i believe in the final drop like we've gone through probably about 60 70 iterations but we're putting it down to 12 to 15 and i'll be announcing this on youtube instagram and on all the socials when it goes live so make sure you get in there right when you see that see you this week and then the big army showed up like 15 minutes later and with

their apcs and shit and it was all done now was that a blur or were you hyper aware of every second from the moment you actually like for real? It was kind of a blur. Like I remember, like, like I remember hearing brass hitting the ground, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, like from rounds getting ejected out of a guy's magazine. Like I remember hearing that adrenaline is a weird thing, dude. Like it, like get tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, fine motor skills gone. Um, but it's crazy what your brain will pick up. I do remember seeing

guys up there in their skivvies and flip-flops like, man, this would be a crazy video right here, you know, with their body armor on and shit, but it's the smells like the sense of smell supposedly is the strongest sense that brings back memories so and i've got a story about that a helicopter crash it killed one of my best friends and the smell of uh gasoline after that like even to this day when i pump gas i instantly go right back to the helicopter crash because there was gas all over the place after it crashed so were you scared at all yeah fuck yeah yeah dude i think a lot of you you know i i think anybody says i was never scared well dude now you're one of those people okay and i'm gonna

say it right now uh you know on your podcast fear is a good thing okay it's a gift it's it's a good thing people it's they're like i was never afraid or out. Dude, that's not normal. Okay. We're human beings. Nobody wants to get shot. Nobody wants to get hurt. Nobody wants to get killed. Okay. It's how do you manage that fear? Yes. That's the difference. Yeah. I was scared, but it's how you manage it. And I'll tell you what really, really helps is being around other guys that are as calm. They're ordering, I say they're ordering a pizza. Yeah. And when they're calm, it kind of calms you down, you know?

And I worked with those kinds of guys and it was, dude, it was so humbling. Like it really was. It was so humbling. I can't even really put it into words to see guys operate under that kind of environment and stress. And I'll give you an example. So, again, a lot of the guys they recruited were from Delta and from SEAL Team 6. Very experienced guys, Tier 1 operators, right? Super, super trained.

I asked these guys on private occasions. I'm like, hey, let me ask you a question. Like, compared to what you did over there, are these missions more dangerous? Oh, absolutely. Why? I asked them. They said, well, when you're over CAG, you got an AC-130 flying above you. You got fast movers.

You've got, you know, DAPs. You've got a QRF, blah, blah, blah. You got bad guys on this side of the wall. You call a 105 down from ac-130 gone yeah none of that shit none of it why too high profile you're putting an american signature on it helicopter gets shot down not good right what about the missions where you're actually wearing fatigues though and stuff too aren't you saying like i am team america when you do that so these these these

projects that i was telling you about yes i love that word yeah well that's what they were yeah i mean that's what they call it's a great word for it um you know like in afghanistan they had various units afghan units that were set up by um the organization for what you do ground branching yeah exactly and you would go with these guys on missions so you may have two ground branch guys and 50 afghan commandos do you see what i'm saying yes but when you do that isn't that like you're overt like if you're on the battlefield and other people see you they're like oh those guys are too you look just like them we wore the same uniforms the same afghani flags the same kit so you are undercover in that way well it's not really under you're just blending it you're being you're being the gray man right you're beat you're i could show you pictures of me with guys i worked with

yeah and you're like i'd be like pick me out and i'm just trying to picture it you know what i mean yeah yeah no i didn't get and everyone listening right now we didn't even people listening who are in the military right who fought over there and stuff they weren't in this like they may even they may know what it is but like i don't know so i'm like trying to picture like how would i not know looking over at jo, that he's obviously here on behalf of America? Right. Does that make sense? So, yeah, you're like the token white guy, right?

You know what I'm saying? Yes. But, dude, remember, you know, you're growing your beard out, right? You could pass. Yeah. Dude, I'll tell you what. When I was in Iraq, people thought I was Kurdish. I had Iraqis thinking I was from Kurdistan.

Like, I had that look. I don't know what that was from, from Kurdistan. Like I had that look, I don't know what that look is, but like no one ever, when we went up to Erbil, which is up near the border and it's, that's basically Kurdistan. I never got a second look on the street one time. It was really weird, which is great. Cause that's where you want to be. Some guys can't pull that off. Right. So, um, but yeah, man, yeah man you look like i'm just pulling up a picture of you right here i'll put that in the corner screen i mean oh shit dude but i don't know if i even had a longer beard than that when i was over there you know what i'm saying yeah and and dude there were times i went out dressed just like a native in their clothes you know um i've

got a picture on my wall on a horse in afghanistan dressed up like the taliban with a black turban on in the whole freaking nine yards like yeah yeah so but yeah that's that's the whole the whole thing with that unit is like you don't yeah they got stupid money i mean millions and millions and millions of dollars but you don't have those assets. One time, one mission I went on, a predator crashed, a UAV predator crashed. And I had to go in with some guys and retrieve all the sensitive information off of it. And we had two Apaches and an A-10 on station. That was the only time. And it was only because it was just all Americans. Like I couldn't go in there with our Afghani counterparts because our chief

of base is like, you need to have American assets to go retrieve this because it was a sensitive thing. So you had to retrieve all, it crashed. And anyway, that was a crazy mission because they had one predator flying out and another one flying in to have overlapping coverage on a target and the one flying out shit the bed crashed so they kept the other one flying in orbit until our until we showed up and as we're flying in like hey man there's like seven bad guys on the crash site right now. So we knew we were flying into a shit storm. But that was the only time. And literally it was perfect timing. We landed about 500 meters away because it crashed in a ravine. And just as we were getting off the bird, fucking A-10 flies over, warthog, and they told us, and and then that two apaches but that was it one time

after that dude you're on your own man like you're you're getting a tick you're fighting your way in you're fighting your way out there's not going to be an ac-130 dropping a 105 on them there's no dap showing up no cure kind of changes the you, the environmentals of combat a little bit, knowing that those are the rules that you're going to be playing by. And I talked to a lot of guys, you know, that weren't in ground branch. He was like, fuck that, man. We don't leave people behind. I'm not saying they leave you behind, but it's just a different schematic. Like, this is the way you're going to have to operate. You're not going to be calling these other assets to bail you out of shit goes wrong because it's too high profile.

So anyway, yeah. So that one, that one mission, I mean, I can honestly tell you that's the only time that I knew we had support. Normally, yeah, it was you, another guy, and maybe 40 Afghan commandos. Well, actually, on that note, I kind of asked this a little bit ago, and I think we got off it, but in that example, you were saying like, oh, it would be two of us and a bunch of Afghan rebels. When you're dropping in with Ground Branch, though, are you allowed to say, like, whether it was normal to have, like, two or three of you versus could it sometimes be 30 of you? Like, what type of cadence was it? Very good question, actually.

It just depended on the mission. Size of the compound, size of the building. Um, you know, how many bad guys you thought were on, you know, at the site you were going to, and this all comes to you in Intel, right. In an Intel package, hopefully not all the time, but sometimes, I mean, you know, you don't have all of the Intel you want, but to answer your question, it was all mission driven. Um, the way we tried to operate was with the minimum amount of people to accomplish the mission. Why lower signature, right? Lower signature. Yeah. So if you looked at a compound and said, all right, they think there's six bad guys there and they know there's four outbuildings and this, that.

Okay, we need two, four, six, eight, ten. Like you start just doing the math. Right. And then you kind of like reverse engineer it from there. But I've been on a mission where it was just me and one other guy, one other ground branch guy. And I've been on a mission where it was just me and 60 let me go 65 afghan commandos big target just you so you would go on missions sometimes where you are alone oh with me and 65 other afghans yeah but like alone oh yeah wow all the

time that was common wow yeah yeah dude that was common they really are giving you autonomy holy shit oh yeah that's what i'm saying and that's where it's so important that the you know these projects that they recruited the right guys too from regardless what country you had to make sure not i will tell you um the the afghan counterparts that we worked with um one of the um what's the word i want to use one of the requirements was that either their mother father brother or sister were killed by the taliban or al-qaeda because they wanted that vengeance and dude let me tell you something the afghans are kind of like the hatfield mccoys a lot of people don't know this shit but like if you you know somebody kills

somebody in your family dude 20 years later somebody gets the opportunity they're gonna dunce you yeah that's just their culture right they're not the only culture like oh yeah yeah so you use that to your advantage i respect respect that. Right. Yeah, for sure. So that was one of the things that we, uh, when those projects are set up, those are kind of like the, you know, your left and right limit, like they need to be this, this, this, and this. And you know, um, this is really important because that's a loyalty thing. You can pay these guys and they were paid well. Um, but money only goes so far. Once you get down to like, you know, I want payback.

And a lot of these guys, I don't know, maybe. So you guys went for faith, but in them you wanted vengeance. Yeah. And they had faith too. I mean, of course, I mean, very deep, deep seated faith, but they were motivated to do the work. They had the proper motivation to put themselves out there. And dude, let me tell you, the bad guys found out that they

were working for the Americans, dude, game over for them. Like, Oh yeah. And everyone they love. So they were at huge risk. I mean, I'd even say bigger risks than we were for sure. Cause our families were at risk, but yeah man they were they were very motivated to do the work um of course they went through a selection process and had to go through training i would say out of let's just say you know we had a 80 man force somewhere i would in afghanistan i would say half 30 were former muhijadeen guys oh from the 80s they were young back then but they were still so they were highly experienced we would actually be on patrols and stuff like oh yes mr joe this is where we ambushed the russian come like get the

fuck out of here man like i'm like picking up rocks and shit like i'm bringing this shit home like you know i mean like this is cool. But no, for real, man. They would show us where they used to ambush Russian convoys and all kinds of stuff. So these are some badass dudes, man. They were legit. They were legit. They were very good at what they did. You just have to understand their culture when it's time for them to pray.

You have to understand. And that's all the winning of pray you know you you have to you have to understand and that's all the winning of hearts and minds you know they have to respect you too because remember man if they're putting their life on the line for you they better like you better be worth it yeah so that was a biggie like you had a again right guy for the right job right you can't go in there like johnny homewrecker you know and freaking upset an apple cart. People that rotated through these projects and these programs, they have, they had to have the right mindset. When you went in there, you had to know how to, you know, work with four nationals. Like you had to understand their culture. You had to understand how they think and, you know, what motivates them, what upsets them. like there was a lot to it besides this i mean dude i can teach anybody to

do this i can teach a monkey how to shoot a gun yeah it's everything that leads up to that last two seconds that actually makes this is that's nothing anything high stakes in the world it's all between the ears the rest of it you know that's that's 80 90 of it the rest of it if you're physically able depending on what it is it could be taught for sure yes sir yeah and people don't understand it they think it's all bang bang shoot them up that's just you know you're doing that to be quite honest with you when you're at that level you're doing it on a subconscious level anyway you know if you're doing cqb and you're going into a room and you're in half the war you're worrying about side alignment side picture grip stance breathing fault. You can't process the freaking

room. It needs to be on a subconscious level. And that's why you shoot a lot, you know? And so it becomes, I hate the word muscle memory because your muscles don't have memory. It's all the neural pathways in your mind. And that's a whole nother thing, but that's how deep diving they get into this stuff. They make you make you understand look it's not muscle memory it's the neural pathways i know when my gun's right here boom that center mass like i know it's a shot that i can take so that just takes reps a lot of reps good reps proper reps you know not doing it half-assed doing it correctly so um it's where that years of training though by the way it's your you were just training for so many goddamn years

that's where it comes in man yeah and and you know what's so fun what's funny dude is uh i can honestly say there were things that i wasn't doing exactly correct when it came to shooting especially pistol shooting that's what actually separates the rock stars and the groupies and special operations if you want to know like everybody can shoot a carbine but a pistol is unforgiving it's unforgiving you any little mistake it's going to show up on the target but you know i mean so you got to get everything right they make it look so stupidly easy in movies. It's such a joke.

Yeah. I mean, it's not. I mean, it gets to a point where, yeah, it becomes easy. But I trained with Jerry Barnhart, who back in the day was like a 10-time IPSC world champion pistol shooter. And I went to one of his courses and um when i was with grom branch and he said to us um once you get to a certain level you know obviously like his level or you know a high level of proficiency every day you don't shoot you lose three percent of your ability three percent three that's a lot yeah i didn't think it was until you think about a month

you're out that's right well technically no my math is off but like you're you're fucking you can still shoot obviously but you're not at that razor's edge you don't have that sub one second draw right you just don't because you you need it needs to be that's why units like that shoot a lot because you have to maintain that proficiency and you're constantly just sharpening the sword sharpening the sword you know what makes me think of actually this is a random one but because i've never done this but you ever hear from those guys who do like one week or two week fasts or something yes yeah i wonder if it's like when you eat for the first time if the muscle memory from eating is not perfect right and this could be like on a parallel field

like your ability to shoot is literally a part of your everyday survival like oxygen and food and water and so if you go a week without it you're a little off you know yeah definitely and i can tell you just some personal experience. You know, like I don't shoot as much as I used to. I'd love to, but, you know, I just don't. And I went to the range the other day and I couldn't save my life to get my draw under a second. It was like 1.1, 1.2, 1.25.

I couldn't break that second mark because it's the little nuances. If you're just off a little bit, there's two tenths of a second. Eh, done. You know, and that's a big number. A sub one second draw is like pretty freaking fast. That's respectable. Now, is it realistic in combat? No, but if you can do it, it basically is telling you

you've got all the fundamentals down really really well are you going to be able to do that with kit on no like no you're not but it's good for a confidence thing like yeah man i got a sub one second draw you know just static on the range with no kit on but it's not realistic in a combat situation but it's telling you you're doing everything right which is programming your brain that, hey, man, I've got the confidence to do this. And that's a huge thing. Absolutely. You know, is having the confidence. And not, you know, I just did a speaking engagement about this

in Florida, and I was talking to this company, big packaging company. And I told him, you know, the number one attribute for top performers, number one proven fact is self-confidence. Proven fact. And so I told him, like, being self-confident has to do with mastering the basics, right? Yes. I got this solid foundation. Like, you can't break it down. It's, you know, it's brick.

It's not mud. And I told him it's imperative because it was our salespeople. And I was talking to like that your salespeople understand how to come back from rebuttals, et cetera, et cetera. They have to have it down cold because if they don't, that self-confidence is going to waver. But it's not just in their ability. Like where I came from, you had to have confidence in yourself, confidence in your teammates, confidence in your equipment, confidence in your leadership, confidence on your, the intel you're getting. I mean, on and on and on and on, right? So if, if one of those tenants is kind of like, oh man, you know, I don't know about so-and-so man,

like that creates doubt and you just, you just really, you know, I don't know about so-and-so, man. Like that creates doubt. And you just really there's no room for that in that business. I mean, there's really not. Dude, the power of the mind in anything. The older I get, the more I understand that. I'm like, some of those people that were talking to me, they were spot on. I didn't think about that shit when I was 20. But you let one idea even build into a second.

It's like planting a root of a weed. And you got to get deeper and deeper the more it grows. Dude, one of the things that's so funny when I teach shooting is I talk about some really in the weeds psychological stuff that people have never heard of, like the RAS. You ever heard of that? The R-A-S? No. The reticular activating system. And basically what it is, it's a part of your brain that acts as a filter. So your brain processes about 11 million bits of information a second, but the conscious brain can only process about 50. So think about that. Overload. Completely overload. And it's the

rat and people listen, Google it. I mean, you read it. I'm not pulling this out of my butt. This is stuff that I was taught when I was with this particular organization, because they wanted you to understand how your brain works. Cause when you can understand it, then you buy into it like oh that's why we're training like this ah i get it not like well julian told me to do this i'm just gonna do it no that don't work you have to buy into it and understand how your mind works and the rass is one of them um the other thing was uh proprioception and i'm what's it called i may be mispronouncing this word proprioception yeah and it's basically what it is is how your body reacts in time and space in a particular situation did i get that

right bro basically yeah perception or awareness of of the position and movement of the body and then use an example exercises to improve balance and how do we how do we say this yeah proprioception yeah proprioception that's it proprio dude never heard of it before didn't hear it in the marines didn't hear it in army yeah but it's it's how your body reacts in time and space and one of the examples they gave us is like you ever seen like a gymnast on a balance beam yes and all of a sudden they start to fall and they go whoop. But their arms know exactly where to go to stop themselves. That's it.

But it applies to CQB, close quarters battle. And they explain it. I'm like, oh my God, they got this shit. This is everything. They have figured this shit out to the umpteenth, like. Fuck yeah. Like, holy shit, like... Fuck yeah. Like, holy shit, never heard of it. And I even teach SWAT guys

and former special operations guys, I never even heard of this stuff. Wow. You know, like never even heard of it. And I didn't hear of it. But this is the kind of stuff they teach you because they want you to buy into it so you have confidence in why you're doing this.

They even said, look, if we told you you're going to bust through that door, there's a dude in here with a gun for real. Are the tactics that you're going to use, the tactics that you're going to use, are you going to go, I'm not sure if I if i do that then you better not do it like you better be bought in that what you're doing works because that creates doubt doubt creates fear blah blah blah they want to take away decision making they want it to be set reaction yeah and and that you're that you believe in what you're doing so you have have ultimate, you know, the whole speed, surprise, violence of action, you know, for CQB, that's part of the violence of action. It's like, you know, I'm better trained than you. I've got better tactics than you. I'm stronger than you. I have better, like,

it's a psychological thing. Speed and surprise speak for themselves, but violence of action is really a mindset. In your time i'm curious like in your time spent with case officers out in the field over the years did you guys ever compare notes on what your training looked like no you didn't no i'd be very curious about that just because like i'm sure you guys had a lot more special forces type shit that was integrated into yours but like a lot of the psychological stuff they're putting you through i wonder how similar it is the only thing on that note that i know that my training overlapped theirs and this was a fluke to be quite honest with you um during the operators course you do um a piece of the course is surveillance and counter-surveillance training, right? Yes.

But they have what's called the short course and the long course. The short course is a week on foot and week in vehicles. That's what you're supposed to go to. What do you mean a week on foot? So you do a week walking, like just walking around. In random places. Yes, doing surveillance and counter-surveillance. Then you get in vehicles and do it, which in vehicles is much harder, right? So you're out, they take you out into like a real field to do that.

Oh yeah, you're out in the city. You're in the city doing it for real. Oh yeah, this is all like true training, dude. You're out amongst people. You can't do that on like a base and on a farm. No, no, no, you can't notionalize that shit, dude. You got to go out there and do it because there are elements and environmentals that play into shit that you're like, God, I never even thought about that. Absolutely. Elements and environmentals that play into shit that you're like, God, I never even thought about that. But I ended up going to the long course, which was two weeks on foot and two weeks in vehicles. And that's what the case officers go to. I just got lucky.

I don't even know how that happened, but I got to go to it. So that was like the only training that I know overlap with them, but just understand they're the job of a case officer is extremely difficult and it takes a lot of skill and trade craft and, you know, stuff like that, which we got into a bit, you know, um, but it's a different mission, you know, their, their job and what I did, it's two different things. Of course. Now, I will tell you, our chiefs of base, good dudes. I've worked with a few that were kind of hard to handle, kind of like old Cold War type guys. But we actually had a few guys that wanted to go on missions with us and you know couldn't saying like he ain't freaking going but we're like sir you know can't afford to get you you

know starched like this is not a good idea but they were just they wanted and i love those guys because they wanted to actually see what goes on. Do you know what I mean? Yes. That's not their job, but they wanted to see it. So on one occasion, the guy was a super insistent, and he was just like, well, you know what? I'm going.

I'll stay in the vehicle, but I want to observe. What am I going to say? No. He's your boss, for lack of a better word. Um, but, um, but yeah, man, um, they, again, just like that word proprioception. I mean, that is the difference. Um, when people are listening, you, they just take you to a different level of understanding. And when you can understand what you're doing, you can apply that to your training and go, ah, now I know why I don't do anything that has to do with fine motor

skills because you lose all your fine motor skills under stress, blood pools from all your extremities to your vital organs, right? So if you're doing any kind of shooting that has to do with fine motor skills you're screwing up bad it's all gross motor you dummy it down keep it simple because complex things and things that you can't manage become unmanageable under stress and in a combat the fog of war it becomes unmanageable so you keep it simple keep all your techniques and your tactics and everything this is as simple as you can obviously there's times it's not gonna be but that that is why they're so good the basics because they they're just faster like doing cqb right guys are like joe like what's the difference between us doing it in a unit like we came from well

wait cqb close quarters battle like room clearing right well speed is one of the things guys that are really really good at it are very fast at it their footwork is impeccable and it doesn't sound like that's a big deal but it is because it's conservation of movement like button hooking into a room or turning a corner making dynamic turns turns that's all has to do with technique right and if you're not showing the proper technique what another person would do even though it might only take three tenths or four cents of a tech that second that's too long you know that's too long yeah you know what i mean the way your muzzle comes into a room and

your butt i mean everything is just dialed down to such a finite detail. I loved it. Like that. I can tell. Dude, that's. I can see your eyes reliving it right now. Man, dude, that's what I was salivating for. Like, I want to know how the best of the best do this shit. Right? I want to know the finite details.

I want to obsess over. Dude, it even came down to the kind of rubber that was on our boots yeah like what kind of rubber is best for shoes for doing cqb none of this detail surprise i don't know how people out there listening feel about this but like none of this detail surprises me for for for organizations like this at this high level i would imagine it's psycho shit you know what i mean it's what like think about know what I mean? It's what, like, think about the stuff they're asking you to go do. Right. And, and like, they're worried about your safety too, because they ain't helping you if you get caught. Yeah. Oh, dude, no,

they support you for sure, dude. They want you, they set you up for success. You just can't have a bad day. Yes. If you've got a bad day, that's on you and you know things are probably not go well for you so you have to obsess over the details right i mean obsess because like i tell like my coaching people give me a show me a way in the gym to give me a one percent advantage over that guy i want to know what it is one percent give me a one percent advantage because you know what that might be what you need that one percent yeah give me a one percent advantage because you know what that might be what you need that one percent to save your ass or to be faster than somebody pulling a gun up and you're able to draw and shoot or whatever so um they weren't and that's that's another thing like and they again they had this down so cold they when you went through the course and you were training, training, it was little victories.

Not like, oh, I want to bench press 500 pounds and I can only bench. Dude, that ain't going to happen. But hey, I want to knock two tenths of a second off my draw time. Victory. I want to knock 15 seconds off my run time. Victory. They get you in that winning mindset. Win, win, win, win, win, win. want to lock knock 15 seconds off my run time victory they get you in that winning mindset win

win win win win win and you build it yeah man not win win oops i screwed up i failed win win win oops i failed i screwed up like that doesn't work like you have to get in that winning mindset and it's little victories minute minute i did it it it seems inconsequential at the time but if you add it all together it's massive it's massive so um and again that's i never thought i would make it into a unit like i really didn't you know um how long was that training again six months well actually ours was six months and two weeks because the surveillance serve uh the surveillance counter surveillance piece was two weeks longer okay and we was funny that's not like that's not that long considering like all the shit oh and it was non-stop that's what i'm

saying dude it wasn't like weekends off it was bing bing bing bing bing bing you were going from place to place to place to place you're either on an airplane hotel or training because my brain when you start talking about this goes to two years like it just does but the fact that you got that's wild but see they're already taken i know they're taking seals they're already taking guys that have a really good foundational background in special operations. All they're doing is the way the first proctor said, we're going to smear some black on you. That's what he said. We're going to smear some black on you.

And I'm like, freaking A, man, smear away. Like, that's what I'm here for. And yeah, man, there were some pretty, there were some pretty interesting things that, you know. Are you allowed to talk about that surveillance training? Like. Yeah, I can't tell you like how we did it. Okay. But yeah, like, yeah, that's, I mean, that's, yeah, that's, that's out there.

Like the surveillance, counter surveillance, dude, it's a no brainer. You know, how to, how to, you know know watch somebody get a pattern or life appeal l find the weak link in it and that's when you get them but if they're dropping you into whatever some random city wherever it is yeah are you watching random people that that they know are going to be there or are you like how that's that's where i'm a little confused because like i do think like my friend andy who we've talked about he one little thing he does on the side with his business is a couple times a year he'll go train people in a city like how to surveil sure and so they just drop into like st pete and they play games or whatever are you guys

playing games versus like actually trying to get a beat on the random guy standing right there you're talking about for training yes okay so they had role players got it so it was and it was uh a training event that was structured right it was structured and it was structured to throw you curveballs too right so what do you do if this happens and that's why i loved it was two weeks because the first week of like learning how to do surveillance, you're getting the basics down and it's like, all right, it's done. But that second week is now you can start adding some tradecraft stuff to it. Right. And you're really starting to like dial in like.

Like what? Changing your appearance. Hmm. Um, changing your appearance. So if you're surveilling someone and they start getting a feeling that they're being followed, how to dash into a place, change your appearance and come right back out. Stuff like that. I mean, yeah, shit like that. And it gets more and more in depth, but you couldn't really do it if you only do it for a week because you're still learning the process and how to do SDRs, surveillance detection routes, and all this shit. And it's very detailed. Yes.

But if you only do it for a week, it's like, all right, I got it. But you didn't get to add the tradecraft piece. And that's when it gets sexy. That's when you're like, this is fucking cool. So you really like Robin Joseph A. Banks when you're doing that? Oh, dude, it's freaking cool. Huh? You're doing that for real when you're like this is fucking cool so you really like robin joseph a banks when you're doing that oh dude it's for real huh you're doing that for real when you're doing this though right the training that the training piece like i said it has role players there but yeah you're out in a city doing it yeah see they can't walk in behind you like hey sorry we're training at the cia no listen that's who's on us here you go there's no dude you're doing it you're hiding in plain

sight yeah but you have to do it like that because that's the way it's on. Here you go. There's none of that. No, dude, you're doing it. You're hiding in plain sight. Yeah. But you have to do it like that because that's the way it's going to be. Right. You know? And I'll be honest with you. That was some of the coolest training because they had so many role players. Again, money.

Plenty of money. Plenty of money. Make it as real as possible. And they even had the police on the, they they're like if you see this guy roll them up question them oh yeah because you had a cover for status cover for action oh yeah they told us all about like oh yeah the cops are looking for you too and if you get caught like you're out right um i don't know if you were out now you probably would have been out if you didn't stick to your cover for status cover for action but they weren't stick to your cover for status, cover for action.

But they weren't going to arrest you, but they were probably told, like, what are you doing here? Why are you here? And if you say, oh, I'm training, like, eh. You know? Interesting. Yeah, I'm here for a convention. You know, there's a software convention in town. And, yeah, like, just stick to your shit.

You know what I mean? Very interesting. You know what I mean? Yeah, because that's what they're looking for. because you didn't know at the time that the cops were in but they told you like oh yeah man every cop in town had your pictures and right i'm like god bless man right um but yeah that was really that was fun and where you do that training is an extremely complex environmental uh well you did in washington um washington dc oh they would do it every time that that's where i did my surveillance piece

in this kind of surveillance and if you ever been to like almost surprised at that that they do it right there but no dude if you think about it because you've got buses and taxis and the tram and you have georgetown everything's like right there the mall area but thousands of people like when you're walking through i know but why not do new york why not do miami i don't know they may but that's where i did mine and i tell you it was very challenging it was very very challenging um and that's good because they want to put you in a situation where it's not easy, you know, because let me tell you something, dude, it's easy to lose somebody.

And there's different ways to do surveillance. There's discreet to lose, discreet not to lose, depending on who the target is and the mission. But like, it's very easy, especially in vehicles to lose somebody would you be working on and off like yourself on the street or and then also where it's you guys in teams like how would it go yeah so you start and again one thing i do want to say is that is not the job of a ground branch guy like they've got real no bullshit teams that's all they do and they're so good you would never know you're being never right never even if you were trained you'd never know you're being followed um they just wanted to round you out so you understand

like they wanted to give you tools right to put in your tactical toolbox just in case you ever had to do it but um you would start out uh understanding like surveillance detection routes and you worked in three-man teams that was a surveillance team three guys you're wearing a mic in your ear yes you got to have comms man very discreet comms yeah you you can't do that without comms you can try but make it happen did you get a i mean because i'm thinking of the years you're doing this, you were called about this, right, pre-9-11. So you're doing this in the 2000-ish area.

Early, yep. Did you get to look behind the curtain at how capable, even during your career, not necessarily just during your training, but how capable CIA disguise tactics were were and did any of it shock you um i never like put on like fake noses and all that stuff you're talking about sure but growing beards and darkening your beard and maybe your skin and wearing clothes of the locals yes but that's about as far as it went never never had the opportunity to actually do a disguise like you're talking about that is again that falls like under

case officer stuff and and you know um the trade craft part um but no i never they weren't as focused on that with you obviously so they wanted you guys to know how to do the surveillance stuff at an expert level, but that's really – Yeah, and to be honest with you, during my entire time with them, I only did the surveillance piece as part of the mission one time. Interesting. One time. That's kind of surprising. Well, normally, you have to understand that work has already been done. Oh, you're just sending to kill well but no dude that's not it's you know look man it's hard to

talk with a hole in your head yeah the the mission is try to capture these people because you capture one fish that tells you about another fish that tells you about another fish right you got to try to get information on these people but sometimes um they fight back and when they fight back you have no choice um but to fight back and it really depends but a lot of the case officers meaning once again the people who are undercover under some sort of whatever who work for the cia who you would be doing this stuff in support of a lot of them their job is just that the undercover part and then guys like you come in and then once in a while you do have a case officer who's kind of both and can do those things so i would imagine you didn't really do a lot of work with those guys no so ground brat ground branch had their own case officers that were

assigned to god okay even better yeah yeah they were oh yeah these guys were not just like some kid that just graduated you know yale no dude that was always like a fucking 23 year old who just graduated yale yeah but you understand i'm saying these are seasoned very experienced case officers that understood the mission they understood what was going on um young guys and again i wasn't a case officer but like those guys are assigned to different stations that were probably not quite as dicey just to kind of cut their teeth and then okay now you get to go over there now you get to go on this project that's the way where i came from but like they didn't just throw

you into these like super like um not complex but like takes a lot of experience to pull that one off so they would send you over here and just kind of grind your teeth a little bit over here like okay i got it and then you would go to this project that was maybe a step up then you'd go to this project might be a little step up from there because they're they don't they can't expect you to go and operate because you gotta again there was me that had no combat experience so you're gonna throw me right into the you know the the deep deep end of the pool that's not how they that's not how they operate um they i don't want to say they spoon feed you but they slowly expose you to a little more complex yes a little more complex okay a little this project that project um i rotated

through one project more a couple times which was great because i got to know the afghans uh on a much personal level and i rotated through this one project several times and which was great you know um but uh there are times that something pops up like a time sensitive target um where you don't have time to really plan it's like you know we know this guy's gonna be here for 12 hours and then he's gone yeah you know what i mean and that's where you're making some of those decisions like on the spot dude yeah you don't have time to be like let's see let's check that with langley let's see no you don't have time dude you need to come up with a good plan.

And that old saying, I'd rather have a good plan now than a perfect plan later, right? That was it. Like, make sure you're abiding by all the, you know, the tenets, you know. How are you going to protect your force if things are wrong? It goes on and on and on because, again, you don't have that support. Yeah. My buddy Danny Jones from Concrete, that podcast I was telling you about down in Florida, on and on and on because again you don't have that support yeah my my buddy danny jones from concrete that podcast i was telling you about down in florida he was just sitting with a guy

recently this guy rick prado you you probably at some point heard of him i don't know if he'd recognize that just offhand but he started off he was with the cia for i want to say like three four decades something like that he started off 10 years ground branch and his expertise was slit in your throat with a knife i think i might have that wrong check that in the comments but he i don't know how it worked i can't remember like if he was then like kind of dual like he was both for a while before he went full over as like a case officer with the agency but there was a story that he worked with this guy billy wall very closely he just passed away right so you know but billy wall is like a legend he was annie jacobson's

like main source i have an autographed picture from him on no shit dude so i'll tell you about it since you're done talking okay probably the only one in existence of two guys that were on his halo team i have a picture of him it's a very famous picture of him and three dudes i'll tell you the story after you're done all right yeah yeah really badass dude i want you to tell that i just wanted to say this just for like some context i guess of like these decision points you're talking about but apparently there was some story i want to say rick was working with him on this but don't quote me on that where billy wall as like he was old at this point he was like 65 years old or some was posing as i don't

remember if it was like some photographer or something on the ground in one of the east african countries in the 90s and he had a direct shot at bin laden and he couldn't take it yeah so it wasn't it because he i guess he wasn't ground branch at that point but he was still doing shit like billy wall was still doing shit like this but there's an example like he had a quick maybe it was two hours where he was gonna have a shot at bin laden he was going could have taken him yep and he didn't whereas you guys like purely when you're doing this it sounds like you're like all right let's go yeah time sensitive targets are exactly what they are we got intel that so and so is at this location and um he's gonna be there for 12 hours yeah you need to get there and get back um with him or his body so how do you know how'd you get the billy wall thing

so dude this is no bullshit you can't even make this up like i knew who that man was he's like a legend and special literally mac v sogg yeah first combat halo jump into vietnam or laos cambodia where the hell they jumped into. I could have killed him with a pencil easily, but pencils aren't going to do the fucking job. If I had to kill Bin Laden with a pencil, I would have driven it right through his eyes. Anyway, I was in a hotel in Afghanistan. I can't say say the name of it but it was an agency hotel so when you like

come in country and come out of country that's where you stay meaning like they didn't own it no no they just rented it or they bought it whatever but it was just just agency just yeah dude like yeah doesn't that stand out like a source no you wouldn't have known if you saw it dude and it was all surrounded by jersey walls and shit like you couldn't have drove a tank in there it was it yeah it was yeah yeah yeah so it's where you rotated through and in and out of when you came into the country and when you came out of country so inside of this hotel for lack of a better word better word was a bar dude it was the coolest freaking thing i've ever seen floor to ceiling and on the ceiling it was nothing but memorabilia quotes from people shit hanging on the wall

pictures everywhere it would and the sad thing is you couldn't bring a camera in there like obviously you're not taking click click click click click right check that shit out click click so i don't even have a picture of the place. But anyway, what was crazy is I was sitting at the bar, and I looked over, and I went, holy shit, that's Billy Wah. And I looked again, and he was sitting there talking with this other gentleman. How old is he at this point? 60s, I would say, probably. would say probably okay yeah yeah i'd say this has got to be like late 90s at earliest because you're already ground branch at this

point he he was i mean i think he passed away was 90 or something yeah he was like 90 something but dude this guy's a stud yeah this guy was a stud so i look over at him and i'm like and dude was you know i've never been starstruck by anybody, but it was just intimidating guy. Like, like he's a freaking legend. So anyway, I looked over at him and, um, I said, I'm just going to say hi. So I walked over and say, Hey, Mr. Wall, I just want to say hello. You know, you know,

You're like taking the blood off a knife he used earlier. Mr. Wall. So I said, Hey, you know, pleasure to meet you, sir. And he's like, oh, he goes, why don't you pull up a seat? I'm like, oh, shit. So I'm sitting there, and it was him and another guy. I didn't know who the other guy was at the time.

And so we're just chit-chatting, asking me what I was doing there. And, of course, I could have an open conversation with him where we were and stuff. And across the bar on the wall was a photo of him. And it's in all like books and shit. It's three dudes, black and white pitcher, them kitted up with all their halo equipment on, getting ready to jump, do the night jump into into vietnam very very famous pitcher him and two other guys and i said man i said i love that picture right there i said that's just the coolest thing i said what were you thinking then right and he's like oh

man he goes where should i start he started telling me about you know you know we probably knew we weren't gonna hit the drops all this shit and i'm like god the balls these guys had because they didn't have like like, nav packages. They had a freaking altimeter and a compass. And they were jumping into a blacked-out drop zone in Vietnam. Dude, that takes elephant balls. Oh, yeah. I mean, beyond courage.

And so he goes, hey, grab that pitcher. He asked the bar. He goes, grab that pitcher for me. Oh, no. Dude, takes it off. He goes, give that pitcher for me. Oh, no. Dude, takes it off. He goes, give me a pen. Dude, he takes the pitcher out of the back of the frame and signs it at the bottom and hands it to the guy next to him.

The guy next to him was the guy next to him in the picture. Oh, my God. I bullshit you not. I think on the picture it says Turkey Man was his call sign. His name is Jesse Campbell. I bullshit you not. I think on the picture it says Turkey Man was his call sign. His name is Jesse Campbell. Dude, they both signed it, and then the pen ran out, and he's like, give me a marker. So one signature's in pen, one's in a marker, and at the top of the photo it says, Joe, kill all the bad guys. Oh, my God.

Bro, think about that. Where is this picture the original is in my safe in my house literally in my safe but i have a copy of it on my wall in my home oh my yeah dude it's just a testament to like how badass some dudes are you sure that wasn't a test that they're gonna see like oh is he gonna accept this and take this home off this fucking property that's CIA secret? I was floored, dude. Wow. Absolutely floored. I bet you that is the only pitcher in existence of two, I think his team was Team Florida, Recon Team Florida.

I may be wrong, but I think it was Recon Team Florida. Two guys from that halo jump with their autograph. I bet it's the only one in existence i would almost put money on it recon team florida i think mac v sog recon team florida and it was billy jesse campbell i mean a couple of guys like one dude they never found i think or something this dude is crazy man wow yeah but um but yeah i think it was recon team florida because i remember him saying that to me i'm about 90 sure yeah he's he is he is such an interesting oh dude interesting man in addition to as you already properly laid out like literally

the most legendary mission guy ever for the cia i mean he lived a great life died to 90 died 93 but i remember that author i don't know if you ever read her books annie jacobson he in like his retirement he vanished it was a kill yeah yeah that's about ground branch and like not just that but then i think he was also a source in – I haven't read her DARPA book, but I think he was in that. He just – in his retirement, he shared so many, I guess, gems from over the years. But it's just wild. When you think about the movies and stuff, which, again, they're movies. There's a reason for that.

You don't think about a guy still at at like 70 like doing some shit let me tell you that's rock star shit yes like to be able to operate at that level with that age and how the guy even survived i don't that much nine lives and not be dead yeah i mean i know he'd been wounded but like how is that guy not dead it's just a testament of how badass of an operator he was, dude. Like, seriously. Like, yeah, I'm a one. He's about a 10. You know, like, I'm not even close to that guy's level.

Nothing wrong with that. I mean, that guy was on another level. And, you know, he just very much like that picture's in my home. You know, it's on the wall. And I see it every day and it just reminds me of the sacrifices that like extraordinary Americans have made, like for our country. It's, it's unfathomable. Some of the shit that people have done, like the stuff I've done is, I mean, I'm glad I was able to participate and, and, and, to participate and do my bit, but compared to other people, it's nothing. Well, that's a very humble way to look at it.

But, I mean, obviously what you did was some of the highest level stuff. I always say this when I meet guys like you who are extraordinary and also humble about it, but did so many years and stuff like this. I'm glad it was you doing it. I'm glad you were on our side, not someone else's. But, you know, it's a very, like, do you ever think about that? Like how rarefied air you have occupied? You know, some days it's weird when I, especially if I start talking about it with someone like yourself and I start

reliving some of the events that I've, you know, experienced. Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, like it kind of hits you. Like I've even gotten an adrenaline dump before thinking about a couple of things, like a little adrenaline dump, like thinking about it, like man like whoa like that was you know that close you know um but um you know it's everybody thinks that when guys join special operations or whatever unit you know they're they're doing it for the flag and patriotism and all that stuff and you know that's true to a point but to be quite honest with you, it's about the guy next to you. You know what I mean? It's about these men that you serve with and you don't want to let them down. You don't want to embarrass them. You want to perform at the highest level because they're trusting you with their lives and you're trusting them.

So that's what it's really about it i mean sure it's the flag in the country but when you boil it down to its you know like prime components it's about the guy that's standing right next to me yeah i mean it really is and people go huh but that's what it really boils down to because it's the respect and the humility that you have for these guys like i still to this day you know i look at pictures of when i was you know doing that work and i still can't wrap my head around it quite you know i mean like yes i still can't quite go what wow because you were so present for it you had to be yeah and it was it was just, what a blessing. Like, like it was a blessing. Like you said, I went from eighth grade to the pros, you know,

and, and that wasn't something that's normal. I mean, like I said, most of the guys were combat veterans from the tier one units. And so, um, yeah, I mean, it was very humbling. It was, but I was very lucky because lucky because you know a lot of the guys um were very forthright and like would take you under their wing and like mentor you yes i'd be like why do you carry it like that why don't you do this oh because of this why don't you wear a sling like this oh because of this oh shit never thought about that why do you have like little finite details like that is where you get good you just start picking these guys brains who's been there done that and i did man i could probably fill up an encyclopedia

with like just little techniques and tactics and just little things that you would never think of until you've actually done something and going well that didn't work you know like that that sole on your boot is too slippery yeah you know or that one's too hard or you don't want soles that pick up rocks because if you walk through like gravel and then go into one of these buildings in iraq it's marble or tile and you have a rock on the bottom of your shoe what happens your feet slide like duh like i would have never thought about that unless you've actually done it you know and it's just dude it's crazy like the detail is just blow your freaking mind i would love to know like your answer there just makes me think about this but when you were talking about those initial tests and those initial interviews and how they knew fucking everything about you

they're pulling up your 11th grade suspension and all that like doesn't surprise me they found a way to find out everything but i'm always interested in how they are able to determine exactly who someone is because the reason they took that jump of you and aau in eighth grade to the nba is because they knew you were lebron james so how did they know that if you had never seen combat experience and it's not like you were operating right in front of these people while you were coming up through the Marines and Army. I mean, you operate in front of people who know them for sure. But, like, I would love to know what it was that they're that spot on and they get it as correct as they got it with you when it's, like, from the outside. You're like, a guy like me hears that and they're like, what, are they crazy?

They're taking someone from basically the Marines and Army straight up to that. Holy shit. But they know. and then you go and guess what you're sitting here 10 years after retiring in front of me alive and in one piece no limbs off you and god knows how many important things you had to do along the way my only answer to that is i bet that's highly classified oh fuck yeah i don't know the answer dude to be honest with you but i'm sure it's you know it's like the standards to you know delta selection right yes that shit is highly classified they don't just tell every swinging guy out there oh by the way this is a standard like Like a handful of people probably know what the

standards for that selection process is. Probably the same thing there. I don't know the answer. I know the deep dive here really hard. I know there's right and wrong answers. I know there are, like when they ask you situational questions, like what would you do in this situation? I would do this. Well, why would you do in this situation? I would do this. Well, why would you do that? Why wouldn't you do this? Okay, here. I got to share this.

So this is going to blow your mind. So one of the questions I was asked, and this was in front of a board of people and they said joe we're gonna we're gonna send you on a mission by yourself and you're gonna meet an asset and this asset has information that's vital to national security okay and you're gonna meet him one-on-one when you meet this guy he says he's not gonna give you the information unless you perform a homosexual act on him i knew where that was going what would you do all right so swallow the nectar so so dude i can tell you what the wrong answer is so if you i can tell you what my answer was. I said, well, first off, if you briefed me like you are now, and you said that you got the wrong guy, find somebody else.

And I said that. So the one dude looks at the other three like this. He goes, could you say that again? Gentlemen, I want you to hear this right here that you're saying joe for national security you couldn't put aside your personal beliefs is that what you're saying i can almost guarantee you and you got the wrong fucking guy that was exactly my answer that's okay and that's what they wanted to hear wow you see what i mean yes but if you but he made a big deal out of it gentlemen did you hear what he just said i'm like uh-oh uh-oh you're saying to say it again that for national security you couldn't put aside your own personal feelings is that what you're saying did you say to him did i stutter

i said that's exactly what the fuck i'm saying you got the wrong guy and they just moved to the next question wow did you see what i mean dude that's the chink in the armor they're looking for. Like, oh, this guy is swayable. See, yes. And that's, but here, see, these are the tests of it. But what I'm even getting at when I say, like, how do they know? It feels, I mean, sometimes I try to treat the world and everyone else in it like they know everything and I'm stupid. Right. Therefore, I always operate like just assume

they already know julian and that keeps you honest i think that's you know it can torture me sometimes but it's a good way to live but when i think about this stuff i of course i think that way and i kind of wonder if they they already knew the answers you were going to give like down to the word and this is just like a role play where they're like see we told you he was going to say that. And they know the wrong answer. Yes. Yes. They know the disqualification answer. He swayed. He doesn't stand next to his beliefs.

That's what they're looking for. Now, I don't know what they would have said. It's like, oh, yeah, I'd do it. I'd give him a blowjob. I don't know what they would have said. That's kind of gay, man. I'm like, hey, man. I couldn't know what they would have said, but, you know, that's kind of gay, man. I couldn't tell you. That's not my answer, but, but you know what I'm saying? They're looking for steadfast beliefs. You're not swayable. You're, you know, you believe in what you believe. Like that's all part of the process. And yeah, dude, I really don't know. I think that's all part of the process and yeah dude i really don't know i i think that's

all highly classified stuff because i guess maybe you could game it i don't know you can't game a polygraph i mean maybe some people can they say some people can yeah but you can't game a board you can't game like a psychologist unless you know they're about to ask me this question that's why i don't discuss the details of that because i don't want somebody watching this going oh i want to get in ground branch and they ask this and then i'm not right hey that's on you if you're the right guy for the right job and you meet the standards then good on you you'll be operational if not you know doesn't mean you're not a great operator or a good person you're just not the right guy for the right job you know what i mean um and so

yeah like for example like another thing that they look at is they classified is your your financial status your credit score yeah duh duh exactly right something that can be held yeah yeah i mean so like and i never i mean i I don't know if my credit score wasn't bad but obviously was enough to I think my credit score at the time was like 750 or 740 and it was decent it wasn't But I guarantee you if you had like shit credit that is a reflection on you Like why aren't you managing your money correctly? And that can be turned so easily. Oh, bro in a heartbeat exactly do you see what i mean

so they're looking for every little chink every little thing john minnelli was telling me that and we were talking about it because like they talk about like these contractors who will flip and stuff these days when you hear that stuff happen i mean there's some like just interesting ones where they're trying to actually they're not flipping but they're leaking information to the public with their name behind it like like Snowden and stuff like that. But I'm saying the guys who actually like flip and become an agent for someone else, a lot of the times it leads back to not all the time, but it leads back to something where they got in some sort of financial trouble or incentive. Here's a million dollars. Yeah. So yeah, these are

the things that they look at. Yeah uh and rightly so you know um but um what do you think i'm curious on this just while we're on like the broad cia and how they're viewed and what they do like when you hear people talk about the cia today and i see this a lot because of some of the people we've had in here i'm very familiar with the different attitudes on the cia i i have a personally very very nuanced view i'm very appreciative that the cia exists they got to do that is unspeakable sometimes but it is if i i live in reality it is a nasty world there are things that occur that sometimes are speechless and that's how it is what i also will do though is like when they get wrong that we've seen over time we talk about mk ultra and shit like that fuck yeah i'm gonna talk about that sure fuck yeah there's

corruption in there fuck yeah there's been some bad guys to work in there i'm not denying any of this and i will call that out every time but i find that when you hear like the commenters in the world it's either one one or the other the cia is all good and every single thing they do is important and shut the fuck up about it or the cia needs to be abolished debunked gotten rid of and whatever and they'll be like it's a murder organization it's run by the illuminati and i'm just like like how do you how do you approach that like like do people ever come up to you and and say like fuck the cia and shit like that like what's your approach uh i would say this where do you think our country would be without an intelligence agency that's what i say i mean i'm just you answer that question you know if you say it doesn't matter well i beg to differ

um it wouldn't we wouldn't we wouldn't be we wouldn't be living the life we are now Now, am I saying they've done everything right? Of course not. I mean, give me a break. You know, there have been some very, you know, Contra scandal and all that. There's been some very embarrassing moments. I get it. But all in all, the organization is comprised of highly, highly skilled people. Very patriotic.

They love their country. They're doing a very tough job. Um, very dedicated. Like look, look at the women hunted down Ben Laden. Yes. Right. I mean, she was on that dude for years, like a pit bull. Yes. Right. Um, and you know, that's the kind of tenacity and professional excellence that that organization has. Like, it's pretty humbling, dude. You got people that like, they dedicate, that woman dedicated her life, lost friends, you know, to hunt down one guy. Yes. One guy. And, you know, who does that? Like, they do. They, that's what they do. And yeah, it's easy to slam dunk the agency.

TV, movies doesn't always portray people from that organization in a very good light. I'm just telling you again, from my own, from my little peeking through the veil and looking on the inside, everyone i met highly professional highly competent everybody was on the same sheet of music um you know the glass is always half full you know i mean they always had the right mindset i don't think that's a place that allows for you know mediocrity right Right. You know what I mean? Like if you, matter of fact, when I was interviewed by Ron, the first interview, one of the things he said to me is like,

he says, do you think you're a good operator? I'm like, I think I'm pretty good. He's like, we don't need good. We need great. That's what he said. he's like we don't need good we need great that's what he said he goes we don't need good and i was like oh shit okay but also like that's such a stupid because what are you supposed to say i'm fucking amazing yeah but but see dude that's just it what do you think would have happened if i would have said that you're a narcissist you're done do you see what i mean like every little, they set you up to either

answer it the right way or they set you up to answer it the wrong way. If I would have said, dude, I'm the man, I'm Superman, I'm seven foot tall and bulletproof. That's not the guy they're looking for. I just said, I think I'm a pretty good operator. That's what I said. I think I'm a pretty good operator. And then he said, think about it a pretty good operator and then he said think about we don't need good oh well dude you know i'm i'm better than good you see what i mean yeah and and with the whole broad argument of like the organization how they operate though you know it seems to me the more i think like the macro level in society of anything and and things get to bigger populations and bigger groups there's kind of no right answer like the buck is gonna stop somewhere right how hard do you want it to stop right and which is the is the least

worst right so let me give a parallel example like for people that might complain about everything the cia does a parallel example could be okay let's look at socialists and libertarians socialists want everything i guess to stop with the government libertarians want everything to stop with the private individual right if you go extreme on both of those we've seen that problem problem because you know what those two things have in common bad people infect powerful places and all it takes is a few that's right that's all it takes so with the cia you know i think it's more like just like any government agency on the things that we do find out and some things you don't in public and that's i think that's the scary thing for people the unknown but like you hold them honest to the things that are like fucked up and regular heads will roll if shit goes down.

Fine. And then you also recognize that there's a lot of things you don't know about. Like you don't hear about the times they do shit that thwarts stuff, which is all the time. I didn't see on the news like when you murked people that no one ever found out about that were killing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. You know what I mean? Like you don't he that's not newsworthy you know and that's why one of the things i really admired um about the agency and something i kind of have a bad taste in my mouth about recent doings in special operations who killed who? Who killed bin Laden? Who killed Zawar Khali? Those types of missions should not be assigned publicly to any unit, whether it's Delta or Dev Group, whoever. It should just say U.S. As you know, they're saying the unit, the squadron, it was Red Squadron that killed Bin Laden. Like, I mean, you know, like I personally don't think you need to push it out there like that.

And where that comes from, I don't know. Can I give you a theory on that? Sure. I have no idea. It's just me guessing. Sure. I think it is a part of the government media relationship. I think the government feels like

if we are going to control some of the narratives when we don't want say national security, relevant information getting out, we need to be able to give sexy stories when we can to those same people who we're gonna call upon in those. If I were, and I'm just guessing. Sure. I don't know what you think about that, but that would be my guess.

Yeah, I mean, that's certainly a course of action for sure. I just find it a little distasteful. Sure. You know, I can just tell you this. You know, you're not going to see somebody on the news saying, oh, and today such and such person was dunced or captured by where i can't dude ain't gonna see it you're not gonna see it well this is this is i can say this already this has been like obviously a riveting conversation we're in the middle of having right now and yet not that i didn't already say

this at the outset and know this coming in you haven't had to get specific on much at all you also can't and so you're not you're not sitting here discussing missions on an individual basis like i've gotten details of like a country on a couple things and like a rooftop here and there but like that's all i'm getting you're not out here like so it was it was this exact guy this dude in this place this time with this guy we whacked them here you know what i mean like there's a clear line you have there i have uh look dude you know my contributions and what i've done is extremely small in comparison a lot of people but one thing i don't uh that i find distasteful is talking about war in missions and in a in a detailed way we're like oh you know i killed

55 guys like we were keeping score like how the fuck like really you know um i i have a problem with that you know i just i don't like glant uh glorifying war war's barbaric dude yeah it's barbaric period good men good men die for scum um how do you glorify that you can't you know um and one of the things that again i i have a problem with is some of these dudes out there that are talking i'm not going to mention names that's unprofessional but you know some things are best left not talked about. And when you talk about war and special operations and stuff, and it, you make it sound like a game and a game, it's life and death. You know, there's no reset button. Okay. There's no, oh man, just cause things aren't working out well. I want to call a timeout. There ain't no timeout.

Um, I won't do it. ain't no timeout. Um, I won't do it. I've never done it. Um, I'm not going to do it. You know, my meager contributions, I know what I've done. I'm comfortable in my own skin. Um, I'm certainly not the most experienced guy out there. I'm not the least experienced guy, but I think some people just take it a little bit too far for their own glory and and edification um to the point where it's like you know what you shouldn't be talking about this it's not just like the mass media and social sharing culture though it's also like i think about this sometimes it's like the call of duty era and stuff people get you that's what i'm saying like it sounds very stupid and it is but like people get used to like oh you get to reload you die and and i look i'm not saying that's how people look at war but i think it's

just enough desensitization for people to be like oh let me settle in for like a four-hour podcast talking about you know what i mean 100 like i always want and i this is very important to me and i hope i get it right when i have guys like you who are nice enough to come in and talk about this i want that reverence for it you know my friend sean ryan does a great job with that on his show because he lived it right but like i'm not a guy that lived it and i don't want people being like oh let's talk about iraq war today yay you know it needs to it needs to still have like yeah we can have fun doing this but it needs to have like hey guys like you reminding people yo war is hell and it's not just some fucking idiot podcaster saying it.

Like, I did it. Yeah. I've watched numerous podcasts from Sean. He does a really good job, and I do like his attitude. He's a humble guy, and that's, you know, from the SEAL community. He does the community good he does there's other guys not going to mention their names that they're the exact opposite yes that that um too much flag waving i say you know um too much flag waving wait what do you mean flag wing just like hey we did it all right we want

that you know and and i get it like the whole thing with Ben Laden, you know, not the, you know, look, great mission, dev group. I mean, look, dude, crashed the helicopter. That would have been mission abort for 99% of the people. The guy that saved the day on that mission was a pilot. Because if he were to crash that bird and hurt the guys, that was it. Their assault force was cut in half. That's mission abort, dude. Done. Ain't no fucking way they were going to take that compound down with half the guys

no way that pilot saved the day how many guys were on that again i'll look it up yeah dude i'm not sure for some reason 20 i heard rob o'neill talk about it one time and i, man, don't quote me. I think you said 24. I may be wrong. I may be wrong, but if you just lost 10 or 12 guys, that's mission abort criteria. At least where I came from, like you just lost half your assaulters and you know, reset, get out of there like right now. Um, but, um, I think I tell you where I think this all started was so delta got hussein i was actually in country and that happened um yeah excuse me in iraq yeah they caught hussein in iraq into crit um i've never heard someone call him hussein that's funny yeah that's a first it's always sit down yeah yeah great job you know let me tell you delta dude they were out every freaking night

night after night after night we were in the same compound with them it was like these 10 houses that were like cookie cutter houses that uh saddam hussein for his family had for his family had pools in the backyard and everything but anyway those guys were getting run into the ground man they were they would hit a target dry hole or like, Oop, he ain't here. Get intel. Boop, go to another target. Bro, that's grueling. Like you're just getting, you know, you're just getting beat into the ground like a tent peg.

But I think what happened was, you know, Delta got Hussein and everybody knew it. So then now DevGru had to do something. So they were in afghanistan um so they split the two countries at one point where they were operating in both but then it's okay delta's going to take iraq dev group's going to take afghanistan right you had you know task force green task force blue and so i don't know if it was an ego thing or what I, you don't know, but it had to be somebody way, way up the food chain to release that kind of information. Like,

yes, it was dev group. Yes, it was red squadron. You know what I mean? Like you don't, that just doesn't come from an operator level. Do you know what I mean?

Yes. That's not some assault. We're going, Oh, we did it. It's somebody way, way up the food chain saying, yeah,

we did it. So I kind of think it was a tit for tat thing, you know, and you got to understand there's a lot of egos involved in this kind of stuff, bro. It's still human beings. You know, in the farther up the food chain you go, the egos kind of get, you know, get little, and that's something I'll be honest with you, man. And the knock on wood for me, I didn't bring an ego cause I was super intimidated. Like, you know what I mean? Like I was like, okay, you know, I'm picking everybody's brain here and i'm gonna suck as much information i can out of these guys because i was always thinking i was at a deficit and i had

to inch my way up you know um you know what from this is just me from the outside i don't know how much i i assume you could speak on this a lot but but not just from yourself, but for other people. I mean, I can do a lot less of that. But I feel like sometimes, especially the higher up you go in military, the military in general, but the higher up you go, the more specialized. You're talking about, I mean, what did you say? What percentage of people makes what you do? Like 1% of 1% of 1%? It was like one-tenth of one-tenth of 1%. Right. So point being, when you get into these teams, that, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, you are so talented and the best of the best, a total badass, strong.

You're like what would be on the front of a fucking magazine. You're like this hero, and you do all this shit. And yet, unfortunately, we do live in a country where, A, those guys stolen get paid a ton of money because they're government employees. Sure. B, they come home with all the fucking everything they just did, all the trauma and everything, and all these places forget about them. Veterans suicides are at an all-time high, I believe, right now. Either way, it's high, and it's ridiculous. And I think guys – I don't want to say they get envious but i would understand i wouldn't use

that word negatively here i think guys look at like you know the nba and nfl players and say why the fuck are they always why do people forget about us and like fine like they're great players and stuff but they're like stars why don't people talk about us and i think there's a piece of it where it's like especially when they see people fighting over dumb shit here right like look what we did this is real life this is what we did right you know and and as a human being who didn't do that i have i have a lot of room of empathy for that so sometimes like when i'll watch one and i know what you're talking about with certain people where it's like maybe he shouldn't be talking about that one i have a huge amount of empathy where i'm like yo this guy did 20 years and that i get it yeah you know what i mean sure like and i understand why you're strict about it

and and i bully it i get it but like as a civilian i at least understand where some of it's coming from there's some times where it's obviously like all right dude shut the fuck up like we've heard it you know what i mean but there's other times where i'm like okay you know maybe i'll let them handle that right let the let the military community handle that you know and it's tough too because you know guys that have served in special operations you know you know everybody's talking about a code like you don't seek admiration or right like the seal code it's right in there it's right in their code right um which is one of the it's the best code i've ever it's badass the seal code is really cool um but it says it right in there i don't seek admiration or and i don't want to botch this up for the seal team guys it might be listen i apologize but i i've read it and it's very good

but what do you do when you're a seal or an SF guy or a Delta guy and you have done this stuff? You can't just erase it from your past. And it is noteworthy, some of the stuff you've done. So it's a very fine line. Yes. Man, and you can fall off that. It's like a snail crawling across a razor blade you know what i mean like it can get ugly snail crawling across a razor blade yeah you got to be very very

careful what you say when you say it how you say it who you say it to or you're going to come off either as a bragger or like dude shut your mouth like you just say like you're talking too much the american american public don't care who did it we just want to know you did it yes right there's people out there doing stuff on the behalf of our people um every day like i told you the agency's at war 365 days a year 24 7 ground branches that's why i said hey you know you're gonna be at war 365 days a year i'm like hmm i like to stay busy like that was my response i didn't know what to say but like yeah cool but like but there there's it's a it's it's hard even for me like it's like yeah man i'd love to tell the world you know like hey man do you know that there were guys that did this for you for your kids for your kids so your

kids don't have to go do this shit i can't but would love to. And I know a lot of people would be like, wow. You know, like, that makes me proud to be an American. Yeah. You know what I mean? But that's the whole quiet professional thing. And it sucks. But that's, you know, that's the game. That's the game.

Those are the rules of the game. That's what we sign up for. Yeah. You don't seek admiration. You don't, you know, if we would ever did something somebody else got to be like oh it's the afghan commandos that did that woohoo it was this unit it was i mean you would never never never take credit for stuff like that and that's the way it should be at least at least where i came from it had to be that way um but you know i think we've got a

little i don't know just a little out of whack. Sure. You know what I mean? Social media doesn't help. Yeah, dude, Lord, yeah. That's a four-letter word, social media. You know? But, you know, but I've tried to maintain the best I can,

a quite professional demeanor about all this stuff. mean look it was a job at the end of the day that was my job I volunteered for it no one stuck a gun to my head um how many years were you in ground branch again nine that's a long time yeah and and like how often were you said you'd get dropped on these projects and stuff. And then I guess they'd send you home for time. Sure. You'd chill at home. So like what – was there an average? Like you'd be like 45 days on, 20 days off or – Normal deployment was 90 days.

Okay. You could extend for one month. That's it. Like once you hit that 120-day mark, you're going home. Yeah, just the up tempo was pretty high. And how long would they send you home for? few months oh no um and this is this was kind of like the crappy part i would get home and be like oh there's a free fall train up you want to go to oh there's a school there's this so like always on yeah because i wanted to hit all i wanted to get as much training as I could. It cost me my marriage. I mean, I had a wonderful wife.

We lived a very good life, had a beautiful home, lived on the water, but I was never home. I was gone. Did you have kids? No. I was gone 10 months out of the year. And it just, yeah, it just, you know, for anybody listening right now, let me, here's the best, best advice I could give someone for the, once you get in special operations, do it while you're young and do it while you're single.

Yeah. I mean, huge divorce rate. I mean, huge, 80% ish more. Can you blame either person? No, you can't no i mean i remember coming home and just you know um i remember one time i came home specifically i had a uniform had a bunch of blood on it and it wasn't my blood i had carried a guy bad guy and threw him on the back of an atv and i got blood on me and my wife saw it and she just started crying. And I'm like, honey, it's not my blood.

But you know what? Like, it's just not normal. Like, it's normal for that culture. Normal for you. Yeah. It's work. Not normal for her. No.

And it's just, and she was a strong woman, but it was just too much, you know? And while you're gone, you're not calling people. You're not email, at least there, you ain't contacting nobody, nobody while you're not email at least there you ain't contacting nobody nobody while you're gone they don't want any contact with anyone while you're gone they don't want to be able to trace emails or nothing oh so you're totally dark nada for 120 days in it yeah it's tough dude and then you've got your spouse at home is he alive is he dead's he doing? But that you start mind screwing. You're like, how long can you do that? Yeah. I mean, think about it. That's really hard on a marriage, man. It's really hard. Did you make, and this might be too invasive of a question, so stop it if it is, but like, is that, was that part of a calculation

why you didn't have kids? You're like, I'm going to be the dad that's not home or um no we tried to have kids that just never never got pregnant got it but um but that did cross my mind um several times because i mean obviously i had a will made out obviously um but you know the reality of that work is someday your luck might run out you know and i had a few close everybody has close calls but like my first trip to iraq first week had a round hit my peltors this is after the one after the rooftop thing yeah this is what my first rotation yeah this is that same rotation but after that yep that was the first time you saw a gunfire the first one now we're on the new one i was in a cab with three other dudes and there was a kind of a traffic jam going on but something kind of looked like it was shady going on so i got out

of the cab and i was standing in between the door boom one shot and hit my peltors and freaking spun them all the way around dude like if i would have stepped over that much more like i would have taken around right between your eyes you know i mean like shot it do you have any no nope nope shit like that you know and you know you you at the moment it's you're like whoo but then later on you think about it like man if i would have just stepped over one foot farther if the car would have been over one foot farther, I would have been dead. That's the kind of stuff that starts wearing on you. You know what I mean? You start thinking about, oh man, oh man, that was close. Oh man, that was close. Ooh, ooh. I was on, there's like a really interesting happenstance. I don't even know what you would call this, but like we were hitting a compound one time and I, uh, I was hiding behind like about a three foot high wall that, um, surrounded a

well. Right. So I was behind it shooting and I hear this on the other side of the wall. I hear this like a thud, like a, and at the time I didn't know what it was so after everything was done compound was cleared we were doing the sse i walked over there and some asshole shot a fucking rpg at me and it didn't detonate it hit the wall and just but it didn't detonate if it would have detonated i'd been dead for sure do you ever feel like like that's too close calls you're telling me about for the first time now but do you ever feel look back and feel like there was something else going on that kept you here sure how could you not yeah how could you not um but yeah and dude again you can sit here and tell stories all day long that's this is shit that happens like there's plenty of guys that like my one buddy

um a fucking bad guy threw a grenade at him didn't even know it and after it was all said and done he looked down and was sitting right next to him and it didn't aid you know who else had a story like that bin laden you ever hear that one no that just sounded i don't know why but that was like the same there's a story that bin laden when he was fighting with the muja hadin thinking oh this could have fucking changed history this is the wrong way for it to go which the fucking thing blew up but some rocket or maybe it was a grenade i forget people can look this up i don't know if it's urban myth or if it really happened but we'll put it out there because i remember reading this it fell next to him and it didn't explode and he told himself right there he was the chosen one and that flipped

his that's like this thing like no matter who it is or like what the universe can cause a weird turn in the right or wrong direction with this life or death shit you know what i mean and it have effects for years and years yes yeah butterfly effect to the oh yeah 100 crazy but yeah man those those are the things that um like now um you know i don't do that stuff anymore but i think about it i think about if i would have just i wouldn't be here if i'd have stepped i wouldn't be here if that thing would have detonated i wouldn't have been here like and again my experience compared to other guys is nothing like there's dudes of way more experience like how like billy wall like how does that guy survive all of that shit

you know divine intervention good operator probably a combination of both right um but yeah i mean that's the kind of stuff that kind of haunts you and then of course you know you i don't say everybody i mean i i don't have pts Thank God. I don't. But what I, what I, what I do have is I do have some survivor's guilt. You know, I think about guys that had lost their lives and, you know, I don't know how you couldn't like man that guy was you know better than me more experienced than me that you know he he um he didn't make it that'll wear on you you know that'll wear on you for sure um but that's not a so if you have that i mean forgive me if i'm way off here but i've just i've heard a lot of different people from different backgrounds talk about PTSD from things.

And when I've heard the survivor's guilt one, they describe that as part of the PTSD. You don't, you don't view that as. Well, I look, I'm no expert on, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder. I know about it. I know, like, I don't, I don't have bad dreams. I don't, you know what I mean? Like, I don't, I don't i don't have bad dreams i don't you know what i mean like i don't i don't suffer from anger management issues i don't suffer from being you know um taking prescribed

medicines for pain like i don't have any of that stuff what i do think about not every day but you know if i watch a movie or something or i see something it triggers it do you know what i mean like i was when you say triggers it like it makes me think about it like oh yeah man that that reminds me of my buddy mike or that do you drift off or do you still stay present and you're just i stay present yeah i stay present it's just i momentarily go and it makes me sad i ain't gonna lie to you you know how could you not you know go to a funeral and see somebody's wife crying over a freaking casket? How could that not affect you? It has to. How could you not be affected by some 10 year old kid coming up to me and saying, you know, how did my daddy die? Like, what do you say to a 10 year old? Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's the kind of stuff that haunts me for lack, know you know i mean like look dude every i think anyone everyone and anyone

that has been to combat i don't give a damn what unit you're in if you saw combat you're broken in some way yes some way it may be a little bit or a lot of it but you're broken some way you may not see it and it may not manifest itself in a way that you're actually going to see it during the course of your life. But how could you not? I mean, we're human beings, dude. We're not freaking robots. You know, we have feelings.

We have a soul. We, you know, how could you not taking life, whether it's a terrorist, you're still a human being. You're still going to, at least I did, like, you know, like that's still somebody's dad yeah brother whatever you know you're still gonna at least i did some guys look i don't want to speak for everyone i'm sure there's dudes out there like uh scum terrorists i mean okay great if you can compartmentalize it like that that's great i think that's kind of dangerous too i mean it's all right to be a human instead of that sociopathy thing yeah right there's a fine line you know yeah i could do the job but i still understood yeah these are terrorists yeah they're the scum of the freaking earth you know they deserve a bullet but at the end of the day

interesting you know what i mean at the end of the day you're still like at least i was maybe i don't know call me too soft i don't know some guys may some dudes listen this might go dude you're too freaking soft you shouldn't have been doing that work well maybe you're right maybe well there but you also are well equipped if all of what you're saying is true here you you were built well equipped to deal with it compared to the average person and i'll bet that's a part of their calculation for a group like this. Is this someone who is on a percentage basis likely to suffer from severe PTSD from what they do?

And they want to pick guys who, for the right reasons, the answer is no. And like, I was drifting for a second listening to how you were describing that. And my mind was thinking about all the people that, all your brothers who died in front of you and stuff. And then as you were getting through that point your brothers who who died in front of you and stuff and then as you were getting through that point you started to make it clear you're talking about all of it you're talking about including the bad guys you're killing sure which is a very it's a very human thing that it's it's kind of amazing to me that you're able to at the same time as empathizing with that very clearly sure compartmentalize

it to the point to understand what that was and not not be tortured by it i think that's great you know um one of the things that i learned um going through the process to get there is everybody has what are called coping mechanisms and so, they, they know all about your past, you know, they knew I came from a, you know, a family that was suffering. They knew my parents divorced. They knew that my mom, you know, passed when I was in high school, et cetera. So I had a lot of coping mechanisms and I don't want to say trauma. I don't want to say trauma, but whatever, in a very young age, you know, so does that help you do that kind of work? Maybe from a psychological standpoint, maybe. I'm not a psychologist and no one said, hey, by the way, if you have all this trauma in

your young life, you're going to be able to, no one ever said that. I'm just looking at it from a purely, you know, like, does this, yeah. Does that make sense? That makes sense to me. And so, and it's funny because when you talk to other guys, you start seeing this parallel. Like, oh yeah, you had some trauma growing up. You had some trauma growing up. You know what I mean?

It was like, none of these dudes grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth in this bubble. And you know, their lives were perfect. None of them. Not one. There was always a little something, something there. You know what I mean? And yeah, is that part of the equation? I think you said equation, or is that a part of the secret sauce?

No one's ever told me it was, but it it makes sense it makes sense to me from a psychological standpoint like can you imagine just having somebody who like me never saw combat i grew up in a rich family i was catered to my mom and dad are still alive that like and then you get thrown into the mix like that good luck oh ouch good luck that going to sting like hell. Not that it didn't sting anyway, but, you know, it didn't sting from a 1 to a 10, a 50. You know what I mean? So these are all the little nuances, I think. Again, we talked about this. Again, I didn't write the book on what they're looking for.

I'm just telling you from my experience, what I saw, heard, and talking to other other guys i'm sure this all plays into the equation sure somehow somewhere it all plays into it um and uh and i've talked to friends of mine um about this and um and they all agree yeah you know the guys i were like oh yeah a hundred hundred percent because it's it's a trick it's like a it's not just onesies and twosies it's every freaking guy yeah it's like how could that be a coincidence when you when you're talking about losing brothers on the battlefield so to speak though are you i assume you're talking about the projects that involved you actually being in a war zone you're

not talking about like when you did some sort of undercover work in europe where some guy had to go no yeah i'm talking yeah i'm talking about like afghanistan right yeah so that so because my question was going to be like what even happens when when the unthinkable happens and one of your guys dies and you're diplomatically no immunity like you're not even supposed to exist like to even get their body off so you know that is classified and they have processes in place for that all right well we'll leave yeah yeah they're they're gonna get you home but the way that's all done is it's done so that it maintains your covert nature you know what i mean so it's yeah they have they have processes in place to take care of that and sadly they've had to use it but um you know and

understand dude you know a lot of times guys that got killed or hurt really bad i wasn't even there like i heard oh you know so-and-so got killed oh you know i mean like i wasn't even there i just heard about it um yeah i've been on on on a couple of missions where guys got hurt really bad uh killed yeah um and even dude this is gonna sound really weird but like when you start working with like you know know, foreign nationals and, you know, Afghan assets, even one of those guys get killed. It's heartbreaking. Of course. Like we found a guy. We had a compound and we found one of our Afghan guys.

He was dead. He got shot in the ass. But the round came out and clipped his femoral artery. And we found him with trying to put his tourniquet on. And he couldn't quite get it on there's heartbreaking because if he could have got if he could have got his tourniquet on he's alive yeah we could have got him out of there you know um but yeah like shit like that like i remember that like i could close my eyes right now and see that dude like i could see him laying there um

you know uh you always take it with you it's just um you know it's just like people talk about you know how many you know how many people have you shot and i said dude the you know in my i don't know not a lot i'm not like i didn't keep score like putting notches on my car beam you know but that's what the job was you know you, you're going to, you're going to end up engaging people sooner or later, sooner or later, you're going to end up pulling the trigger on someone. Well, on, on that note, I mean, this is really the first time where this feels appropriate to go there today. But when I talk with guys like you, my focus, and I kind of said this earlier in another context, but my focus is on the respect for the job and not just asking the oh what's it like to such and such you know what i mean

like guys just want to know like oh it's like fanboy with shit like that but one of the things you did say to me right before we went on camera and you gave no details is you said you you do not mind being asked about your first time killing and i'm not sure that I've ever asked that on camera to someone But you're talking about it right now when you talk about pulling the trigger and stuff And again as we've laid out today your guy that before you went into ground branch You didn't you weren't in combat zero you were doing nothing and so now you're right there license to kill Mm-hmm without going into the classified details of obviously what it was. Take me there and what that was like and what happened.

And one of the reasons, Julian, I said that to you is – and it's not a disrespect thing. A lot of people are just curious. You know, like what was it like? You know, what were you feeling? And so it's – I think it's just a curiosity. It's a question I would ask someone. If I felt comfortable asking somebody that was in my situation, I'd ask them because it's something that's a curiosity to people because it's not a normal thing to do. It's just not.

But, yeah, I was in Afghanistan, and we were hitting this compound. And so early on, we were explosive breaching everything. And that kind of went away to doing a very surreptitious stuff, putting ladders on the walls, padded ladders, going over the walls, getting up security. And so I was always on the assault force. And I just wanted to be on the ladder team one time. Why? Because I wanted to do it. I'd never done time. Why? Because I wanted to do it. I'd never done it. And so I'm going to do it, right? So we had two ladders up and I got up on

the wall and the assault team was going to be coming behind me and they were going to be breaching, I don't know, maybe 60 feet down on this wall. They were going to go through the door. It was a steel door. And I got up on the wall and I going to go through the door there was a steel door and i got up on the wall and i was looking in the compound just for any kind of movement and i just happened to look down and there was a dude sleeping on a cot like right there asleep asleep dead asleep and i it kind of took me off i was like what the fuck and i looked and right next to him was an ak on the ground he was on a cot the ak was on the ground next to him this is stuff you don't read and okay this is what you're going to do when somebody's sleeping

like are you fucking kidding me like no one ever talked to me about this so this is where you need to make a decision very quickly i out of my periphery i see the assault team coming behind me i knew they were getting ready to breach here's a dude right here perfect line of sight down the wall no brainer shot even if he skipped rounds off the wall he's going to hit somebody what do you do what do you do take him out do you fucking wake them up excuse me you know um no seriously like you know like what do you do and so um very quickly i came to the conclusion that the minute these guys breach and they get in, this guy's going to wake up. He's going to grab his gun and he's going to start throwing rounds down the wall.

He's going to hit somebody. It's a, it's a foregone conclusion. What am I going to do? Wake him up. Hey buddy, wake up so I can shoot you. So I shot him in his sleep. Um, and I remember what was really crazy is that i remember seeing the rounds impact underneath his cot like so i could see the dirt go like as i know it sounds really odd but like that's what i vividly remember seeing is around

kicking up dirt underneath his cot and uh what did that feel like the first thing i thought was i just saved somebody's life i know it sounds really weird but i thought if if i don't do this, the risk to my team, to my guys, is unmanageable. Like, I can't let this guy wake up, and he's going to freaking wake up. It's a no-brainer. He's got a gun. If I wouldn't have seen the gun, I don't know what I would have done to be quite honest with you. But I can tell you this, my focus would have been on him for sure.

And if he would have gone for a gun, I would have shot him. But, you know, that's one of those moments where you're like, should I stay? Should I go? You know what I mean? There's no book answer for that. But there was a weapon. It was with an arm's reach um he was in my um in my view he was an immediate threat to our assault force all he had to do is wake up even

like closing his eyes and just full auto he's going to hit somebody so i i i neutralized the threat and and that was it do you know how long it took to make that calculation from first sight to doing it um i would say five seconds quick seven seconds something like that yeah i looked down went oh shit like it was like one of those ocean moments right i saw him saw the gun heard the team i'm like oh fuck go yeah that was it dude you don't really hesitation is not a good thing you know um and i'll be honest i had an issue with that for a while like you know i didn't expect like my first time so just shooting a dude in his sleep yeah i've never heard that one before you know what i mean like it just never i thought it'd be like some gun battle some dude's

gonna run out you know that's what i was envisioning and it wasn't and uh you know um kind of similar to um uh who was a SEAL sniper that got killed. Chris Kyle. Chris Kyle. And correct me if I'm wrong on this, I believe Chris's first kill was a woman or a kid or something like that. It was like. I don't remember.

Yeah. At least on the movie. And here another, like, that would be difficult because that's probably not what he expected as a SEAL sniper to have to do. Right. But he did it, you know, he was a highly professional guy. But yeah, man, like, it was just, I had a real issue with it. I had to talk to a couple of guys about it.

And like, did I make the right call? Fuck yeah, you made the right, like, it wasn't even, it wasn't even like, well, you know, you could have waited till he woke up. No. He's got an AK right next to him. Yeah. Every single guy, especially a couple of the dudes I held in high esteem and were like mentors to me. They're like, Joe, no, you did the right thing, dude. You're good to go.

Right. Like, doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was a big freaking deal, dude. It was a big deal. Like that first one, again, I'm just speaking from my personal experiences. You know, again, I'm not the most experienced guy in the world, but that was like, you know, that's the first time you've actually taken somebody's life. Did it get easier the next time? I don't think it's, I don't think easier is you compartmentalize it and you justify it quicker and not go, uh, you know, it's, i knew the rules of engagement right i knew what a threat was and what a threat was wasn't um it was just coming to terms with the fact like yeah dude you just killed that dude right he's done somebody's dad brother he's done they're gonna find him here like that's what

starts going because look after you hit a target and you do your SSC, it was like, they don't just move out. People come around, neighbors come around, there's, you know, and that's what they're going to see. And that, that was kind of just like, it just hit me pretty hard. I mean, I'm man enough to admit it. It hit me really hard. And, um, but no easier.

No, it just, I understood it that, again, an epiphany. This is my job. You know, you chose to be here. You could have said no. Fucking man up. You know, this is what you've chosen to do. And when you, what really helped me, Julian, was getting feedback from the guys I worked with you know going yeah dude that was

the right call if one of them would have been like why'd you shoot a why'd you shoot a dude in his problem oh bro that would have probably ended my career right there to be honest with you that would have been like i'm fucking out you know like this i'm not built for this you know what i mean i'm just being honest yeah no it's like oh kill him watch it really really you think it's just that easy i don't care how much training you have what freaking unit you're from it's not a normal act unless like you've been saying when you're on the other side of that yeah oh yeah just kill them all uh-uh no dude that's not normal that is not sociopathic yes and you know i will tell you that they uh one of the one of the proctors i remember him saying when i was going through uh the operators course they're like you know this place is a morality car wash oh you know a line yeah he said this is the morality car

wash you just showed up and i'm like what the fuck does that mean it means exactly what it means but at the time i was like okay it's a morality car wash okay then you know three years later you're like oh now i get it now i get it yeah yeah and there's a dude there's a time and a place i think every you know every good operator needs to say, you know what, I'm done. Yeah. And that's, that's what happened with me. I just, uh, I ended up going to a funeral of a guy that passed away and I talked about that 10 year old and that's exactly what happened. His 10 year old son came up to me, uh, after his funeral, I was just sitting at this picnic table eating, kind of just relaxing. and his son comes up

and he said mr joe how'd my dad die oh you know and and dude you know it was just what do you there's nothing to say what you know what is really crazy bro i don't even know where these words came from because i'm not that deep of a person to say something like that, like especially being caught completely off guard by a 10-year-old. I looked at him and I said, you know, I'm not going to tell you how your dad died. I'm going to tell you how he lived. Don't ask me where I got the words because even now, Mike, I'm not that philosophical of a person to say that. Again, you know, a little bit divine intervention here.

Like Joe, just say this to the boy. How do you respond to that? And he said, okay. And so he said he was a really tough kid, man. He was a testament to his father. Oh, yeah. He had an amazing family. Amazing family.

Amazing parents. Amazing wife, kids. But that was the moment where you're like, I've had enough of this. estimate to his father oh yeah he had an amazing family amazing family amazing parents amazing wife kids but that was the moment where you're like that was it i'm done enough of this done game over yep physically i could do the job mentally i was out and i knew it man you want to be an asset for your men you don't want to be a liability and i knew right there now i'm a liability because i'm thinking about that kid yep i'm just well i just didn't want about that kid now. I just didn't want to see it anymore. Yeah. I just didn't want to see it anymore. I didn't want to hear him get another fucking phone call.

Hey, man, did you hear so-and-so? He lost his leg. Oh, you hear... Wow. Yeah. Fingers in the ears. Like, I don't want to fucking hear it no more. That's a little bit divine, too. There's something there.

Like, where it's like, you need that... What's the thing they say i'm gonna give a parallel here but like when you see a cardinal after someone dies it's like a son like that that was kind of your cardinal to be like yeah it hit me like a thunderbolt that's it it wasn't even like you know what it was like literally the second he said it, I shut off. Yeah. And you don't want to put your men at risk. You don't want to put yourself at risk.

You don't want to be an asset. You don't want to be a liability. And the funny thing, I mean funny, but the interesting thing about that business is when you fuck up, normally you get somebody else hurt. You know what I mean? You're not the one that pays for your mistake. It's some other person. Either way, it's not good. No, no, it wasn't.

And I just, that was the end of it, man. And I, it was hard. I ain't gonna lie to you. It was difficult to, you know, hang your hat up. But I, it was, it was black and white. It wasn't, I wasn't even in a gray area. Like, eh, you know what? I can, I'd probably do this for another year. Like it was just like the bubble would. And that was it. You know, Humpty Dumpty can't put them back together again.

And that's the way I felt. And, and I, you know, and I'll be honest with you. I had come home, backed up one deployment. And I remember I was in a grocery store. I was in a food line. And 48 hours prior, literally, we had hit a target and I left. Holy shit. And here I am in a food. In a fucking Kroger.

And I remember looking around. I remember looking around and thinking, yeah, just thinking, this is so abnormal. Yeah. This is just so weird. I remember I was getting apples. I was putting apples in a bag. And I was just like, hmm. It's kind of hard to put into words you know it's just you know you just feel out of place you know like i shouldn't be here right now i should be back over there doing that and then

you're over there you want to be back it's this weird double-edged sword joe if if i touch that this is going to turn into two podcasts fast and and I got to get you on a flight. But you're going to have to come back. Yes, sir. Every second of this was a fucking amazing podcast, man. Thanks, man. Every second of this was awesome. I really appreciate you sharing so much from your career.

And also, I think people will fully understand. I know I do, that there's certain things you can't go into. But there are a lot of questions I need to get to ask today so yes sir we got more ground to cover and you also you hosted a tv show for four years dual survivor right dual survival yes sir dual survival yeah exactly yeah 41 41 episodes yeah that's a whole nother story maybe maybe that's a whole nother we're gonna do that next time yeah we'll do that next time but i'm gonna get you back on your flight thank you for doing this and i know people are gonna want more from you so we'll do it down the line thanks man all right everybody else you know what it is give it a thought get back to me peace