Julian Dorey Podcast - [VIDEO] - CIA Hitman Joe Teti: Black Ops, Sleeper Cells & Stolen Valor Response | 186

Episode Date: February 17, 2024

WATCH JOE’S PREVIOUS EPISODE ON THE SHOW: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5nhycTnDGBnQUWFMPtuRbp  (***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. EPISODE LINKS: - BUY Guest’s Books & Films IN MY AMAZON STORE: https://amzn.to/3RPu952  - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/  - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  - Join our DISCORD: https://discord.gg/8ZUf5jgu  JULIAN YT CHANNELS: - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@UChs-BsSX71a_leuqUk7vtDg  - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily  - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP  JOE LINKS: - INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/theofficialjosephteti/  - WEBSITE: https://www.joeteti.com/  ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Joe’s 40 Time; Best Guns 5:56 - Joe Responds to Stolen Valor Allegations; Backstory of how rumors started 17:52 - CIA Ground Branch Secrecy 24:38 - Joe’s Combat History; Joe’s Feminine Side; Slander against Anti-Poaching Marine 36:47 - Joe’s distaste for his old job; Training bad students; Money problems 46:42 - Joe’s Dubai Client 50:13 - Shawn Ryan & Joe Teti’s CIA Surveillance Analysis; Captured Target Story 57:23 - When to take a target; World-Class Pistol Shooter 1:08:03 - Ladder-climbing warning 1:12:39 - Covert Operations & Targeting 1:20:30 - Jack Murphy’s CIA Russian Sleeper Cell Story; CIA Planning Protocol 1:29:06 - 10 Week Opt-out working w/ other countries; Afghanistan 1:37:39 - First Boots on Ground: CIA Ground Branch; Johnny Span Story 1:48:39 - Israel & Hamas War 1:58:53 - US partnership work w/ Israel; Israel & Palestine 2:05:42 - Mossad 2:10:33 - Hamas Tunnels & Spec Ops fighting them; RomeUnderground Tunnels; The Vatican 2:17:35 - British Intelligence & Surveillance Hostage/Rescue (MI6); Navy SEALS are studs 2:29:43 - Joe’s hunting; “Chip on the shoulder” 2:37:49 - Joe tells the story of his buddy Mike’s tragic death 2:43:49 - Mike’s funeral story; Survivor’s Guilt 2:56:33 - Smell of Gasoline; Living w/ Regret 3:05:12 - Dual Survival convo incoming CREDITS: - Hosted & Produced by Julian D. Dorey - Intro & Episode Edited by Alessi Allaman ~ 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 186 - 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 5 star review. Thank you. It was about 3 o'clock in the morning, very cold, it was in California. There was a scene that required a helicopter and the bird had landed, the pilot briefed everybody. I'll never forget this man, it was me, Dale and Mike standing there. The helicopter was warming up, blades were turning and I said, who's been in a helicopter crash? So he'd been in a helicopter crash and Mike was in a helicopter crash and Ranger Battalion. And so I'm like, well, I haven't been in one, so I'm going to go first. We went and did our scene. When we landed, Mike was standing there. And I literally said before I left, you just guys figure out who's going next. Mike went on the bird. So I walked in, I heard the bird take

off. And about five minutes later, this young lady came in hysterical crying that she said she heard on the radio that the helicopter just crashed. And I'm like, give me a set of keys. We had a bunch of cars and I knew where they were going to film. It was like, let's try it out. Lake bed. So I drive down into it and I'm looking, I don't see anything. And I go up on the hill. I don't see anything. So I drive back down. And as I'm driving across, I look out and I see a flashlight. So I drive back down, and as I'm driving across, I look out, and I see a flashlight. So I get out of the car, and I start walking. And as I'm walking, I get closer, and I can start seeing pieces of... Take your time, man.

To this day, it's so hard, man. It's really hard yes 48 40 yes sir well dude look at my legs i got short muscular legs like i got really fast twitch muscle like i'm built for sprinting yeah i'm built for sprinting but a four how old are you 59 god damn yeah that's crazy yeah straight up man absolutely the guys are like what the fuck yeah that's i mean yeah to run that fast at that age i was kind of shocked what were you running in your prime dude i'll I'll be honest with you. I never timed myself in the 40. When did you get time recently? This was like in the summer, this summer.

Wow. Yeah. 4.8. Yes, sir. I ride my bike around this track, this baseball field. It's four baseball diamonds, and there is a track, and they were down there. I'm like, what are they doing? So I went down there, and I fucking walked up to the guy.

I said, would you let me just –'s like yeah go ahead and so i ran it like five times and my last two times were like 487 488 wow yeah and i asked him he's like that'll get you hired here and these are college these are college athletes they're 20 fucking years old man yeah that's nuts yeah yeah so i'd like to talk about that like just like and why that's important to me and why what people should listen for sure you know i mean because i don't know what your goal is for this particular one but you know what your i have no goal i just go i go into these exactly like what it is we just start talking and we go where we go but last time worked really well how big did you say your gun safe is like how many do you have i have one gun safe i need more i was gonna save how many guns do you have though

i have a few i a few we talking 10 100 no not 100 maybe more than 30 it's enough yeah it's enough to be a dangerous little but listen here's the deal with me like i don't buy junk so i save my pennies you know i i everything when it comes to gun like working guns i call them they have to be reliable and if you buy determine that the quality you know the quality of the gun the the machining, who's making them. Like, I'm not going to name companies now. Obviously, I'm getting more hate mail than I can fucking handle. Anyway, but there are- Name them. Yeah, but there are companies out there that just make shit guns and their prices are reflected in that.

You know, there's a big difference between an $800 M4 and an $1,800 M4. Sure. And it shows in the accuracy and in the way the gun's made and the reliability, and it can eat any kind of ammo, any kind of mags, that kind of shit. What was your favorite gun to carry when you were active in ground branch?

Well, we were issued H and K four sixteens, which is what pulled that up is what a H and K four 16 is, is what CAG carries and dev group carries. And we were issued it. And I'll be honest with you, man, you stick a can on that fucking thing in an optic in an hour laser, it gets heavy. It's a heavy gun. Um, I, I carried it a few times and I literally went back one day and I'm like, Hey, I just want to just give me a freaking 10 inch Colt. They're like, i'm like yep i old school and a lot of times i carried an ak uh 47 or an ak 74 um but yeah we were issued we were issued hk416s whoa yeah yeah you probably carried a few in your

day yeah and it's a piston and it's a piston driven gun so there's a difference between a piston get piston driven gun and a basically a gas gun. Here's an HK416 on the screen. You like Hecker and Koch? Oh, yeah, they're German. I mean, they're expensive guns. That's why regular soft units don't carry them. That's why regular SEAL teams and special forces and MARSOC, they don't carry them.

They're very, very expensive. Yeah, you hear a lot of guys who served in the special forces or Navy SEALs talk about some of the weapons they carried, and they're not even trying to be dramatic, but they're like, it was like a family member because it was their protector. It was the thing that maybe they're wandering around on missions for three years in one place, and that's what they know. That's what keeps them alive. Yeah, and that's why you're very careful handling someone else's gun. Like, you know, they have it dialed in exactly the way they want it you don't mess around with another guy's firearm you just don't you know um and so it's kind of like an unwritten rule but uh yeah well last time you were here we had you in back in, I think, June and blew up.

People like hearing from you because people hadn't really heard from you in a while. And one of the things that I was kicking myself that we didn't get to that I knew we could touch a little bit on camera, but we didn't get to it because you had to catch a flight, was some of the bullshit you dealt with about eight, nine years ago. So I wanted to make sure we got to that right at the beginning today so that you could talk about it a little bit. But essentially, and again, people are going to have to understand some things legally. There's things signed you can't talk about. But essentially, you had this long, amazing career that you outlined in our last episode, and you did a lot of years in the military but then did around a decade in Ground Branch, which is basically an off-record CIA kill team, if that's what you want to call it. And after doing that, you went and starred on Dual Survival, which was a show on Discovery Channel. You were excellent in that, obviously.

It's exactly what it sounds like. You'd be dropped in these crazy places, and you'd have to figure out how you're going to – how basically you're going to survive and live off the land. And so I think that was about four years you were on that show, give or take? Yeah, I did one, two, three, four seasons. Okay. What ended it was when you had a nasty-ass campaign run against you online where people – I'll just say who you know were behind some blank accounts spreading rumors that then these rumors, which were ridiculous, that ranged from everything from – I think they even accused you of murder and stuff at some point, some crazy shit, accused some stuff, called your mom names, awful things as well, like just terrible things.

And it was not vetted by the public, and so people ran with these stories about you, and for a while there, it ruined your life. Sure. And you eventually had to bring – and I'm doing a lot of talking right here because Joe can't in case you haven't caught that drift. But eventually you had to file a serious lawsuit, pay all the money out of your pocket. I'm not going to say who it was against, but we'll say it was at least against the people who were perpetrating this. And I will leave it here. You won out of court on that. And it still – I mean we all know lawyer's fees.

We all know what that was and everything. But what pissed me off about this is I hate it when I see the military eat their own. And for a guy like you who had done – had given his life to the country in my opinion and who had done some crazy things that most people never get to do because frankly they're not qualified to do it. Shut your mouth, did your work and could be ruined like that by people from behind a keyboard. I don't accept that. I think that's crazy. And I will tell you, I had a lot of military people in my DMs when you would come on. And again, I was kicking myself for not having talked about this on the podcast. But I gave it right back to them.

And I got to be honest, to their credit, a lot of people shut the fuck up. Once I went through what really went on here, they're like, oh my God, I had no idea. So that's kind of me laying the groundwork. But if there's anything you are able to say, because again, there are some legal documents that were signed for confidentiality when you settle out of court and stuff. But if there's things you'd like to add, I'd definitely like to give you that chance at the beginning of this podcast. Yeah. So the very long story short of it was when I first got on dual survival, some things started coming out online about me that were very detrimental. And it ranged from, like you just said, that I was a convicted felon. I

was a murderer and a rapist. I mean, pretty much everything you could call somebody from a felon. I was a murderer and a rapist. I mean, pretty much everything you could call somebody from a felon standpoint, I was called. I was also being told that people were saying that I was kicked out of the Marines. I was kicked out of the army and, you know, dishonorable discharge and all this just awful things. Very hurtful. At first, it made me angry, but then it turned into hurtfulness because it all started from one individual that I was actually really good friends with. And I guess what I'd like to just say to the people that are listening is this. One, I was forced to file a lawsuit. I tried to talk to these individuals and say, hey, look, why are you doing this? You know, let's talk about this like adult human beings, right?

And the more I tried to talk to them about it, the more infuriated they got. Which to this day, I just can't quite wrap my head around it. Do you think they just went like crazy or? Well, one person started the of that stuff. It's a drug to some people. And what I mean by that is if you have like a narcissistic personality or something, that's like pure cocaine to people like that. So, and then you add some jealousy, the worst of human emotions, you know, add that into the mix. And that's what happened. And it was a combination of all these things.

And I really tried to avoid the lawsuit because if anybody has been in a lawsuit, it is literally like walking through hell. Knowing that you're going to come out the victor. I mean, even when I showed my attorney what was going on, he's like, you know, I've never seen anything like this before. And he says, this is a pretty much a slam dunk. Of course, attorneys can't say, oh, you're going to win. Of course they can't. But when they say this is a slam dunk, and it was, you know, like just saying, for example, that I'm a convicted felon. Well, that's pretty easy to prove that I'm not. All you gotta do is

pull up my NCIC report. Right. I've got like, you know, tribe with tire, um, expired tags, you know, et cetera, you know, speeding, but you know, murder, rape, I mean, come on. And it's this, the sad thing is Julian is the thing that hurts me even to this day is a person that actually really believes that, like, how could you believe that I'm even walking around and not in jail for starters? Like, okay, let's just go there for now. And of course people out there were saying, no joke, dude. I have the screenshots that I paid off the judges. Let me tell you something.

Elon Musk don't have enough money to pay all that crap off. But anyway, that's what they were saying. And can you believe people believe that? Yes, I can. I haven't seen the internet and how it behaves. I can see how people would run with those things i mean alessia and i have witnessed it in the studio with the types of things people are wrong with yeah but but anyway i i tried i tried to avoid it i didn't want to

go down that road but it got to a point where it was getting to critical mass and it had cost me some contracts and some endorsements. I spoke to my family and my friends, and they're like, look, you have no choice but to do this right now. So I filed a lawsuit, and I'm not going to get into details about it. All I can tell you is they settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money. They didn't have a ton of money, that person. I don't know their financials, you know, it was, it was several individuals, but let me just say this. If you were to put $20 million on the table and said, here's 20 million bucks, but for that $20

million, this is what you're going to go through for the next two years. I'd have been like, you can stick that where the sun don't shine. Yeah. That's how bad it was. And, you know, it took a physical toll on me. It took an emotional toll on me. Um, you know, it was a very dark part of my life because just like you said, you know, it wasn't, this doesn't come out of the blue from some idiot that I didn't know, you know, and, and it's true. And I don't mean to say this in a disparaging way, but unfortunately I've seen it before. This special operations community at times eats their own. And I can give you examples. I'm not, but they're pretty easy to find guys that work together. They turn on each other. I'm sure you've even interviewed people, you know, like,

and these are good people. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. And, and, and it, it, it boils down to, in my opinion, jealousy, some narcissism, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And, you know, um, but yeah, man, it was, it was really, it was an awful time. And for those of you who are listening you know um i challenge you you know i think you can spend 20 or 25 dollars and you can do a background check on someone if you're a convicted felon it's out there okay please do so uh it wasn't even creative some of the stuff that came up with oh no this is like no but wait hold on a second it was actually very creative no i'm talking like this stuff the stuff oh murder rape like you know when you're doing that but the other stuff i'd talk about this yeah and it was and it went into

my military career that i had forged my dd214s and i you know and then i was dishonorably discharged what's a dd214 it's where all your it's basically your discharge paperwork it shows the unit you were in the dates of service schools you've been to, your discharge, whether it's honorable, dishonorable, medals and awards and all that stuff. And so the big thing, here is the big thing. The big thing that these individuals were accusing me of was stolen valor. Okay. Yeah. Stolen valor. And again, don't take my word for it. Google it. Can you point the mic up at you a little more sorry stolen valor is when a person says they've got and it's a list of awards like medal of honor

navy cross silver star bronze star purple heart saying you have one of those when you don't and you actually use it to like monetize yourself you're just just like, guys, let me just tell you right now. I don't have medals. I have the been there, done that medals, but I don't have a bronze star or silver star. I just, I was never in combat in the military. And we talked about that. Yes. Okay.

Don't have any. Don't have any. So everybody listen. Okay. I don't have medals from being in combat, but that's what they were saying. I was a stolen valor. That is a complete and utter lie for people really quickly who haven't heard you speak before and don't know

your background. Can you just explain how you went to CIA ground branch and what that is meaning? Like it's not on the record, right? Per se. So was in the marines and the army and so you know of course when you're in the military you you do get awards if you deserve them whether it's a good conduct medal or bronze star silver star whatever right so you get medals in the military when i went when i was recruited for ground branch um i was contacted by the recruiter, uh, met him. And we talked about this in the last, uh, the last, and went through the whole process, you know, did the polygraph and, you know, everything and, and made it through the operator's course, went through a six month and two week operator course, and then came out the other end and was operational. But basically,

ground branch is the, well, when I was in, they called it SAD, okay, Special Activities Division. Now, I believe they call it the SAC, Special Activities Center. I may be wrong, but when I was there, it was the Special Activities Division, group and it's it's basically that the cia's paramilitary arm that conducts covert action it's the goodbye team well but it's but hold but julian you know understand something you know the idea doing that kind of work is to capture people, to get them to talk. So they talk about this. Okay. Well, we know where this guy's at and you connect the dots. Now we know where this, you know what I mean? It's kind of hard talking with a hole in your head. So the whole, Well, it's, but let's be fair. It's both. If they fight back. Sure. It sure is. Yeah, of course. You know, you're not going to,

you're not going to put your team at risk. Yeah. If they fight back, they're going to, they're going to get what's coming to them. But the idea is normally to try to capture these people, right. And to get intel from them. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. But anyway, the, the SAD is the action arm of the agency. It's very, very small. People have asked me, well, how many guys are there? Well, I had the balls enough to ask one time. And I asked one of the case officers that was attached to ground branch, very smart guy. I've been there for a long time. And he said, I'll just say less than a hundred. That's what he said. He wouldn't even tell me. Very exclusive. Less than a hundred. It's very small. But with, with being that small, what you have is a very nimble, quickly deployed, you know, unit that doesn't have to deal with the bureaucracies and the chain of command that you would have in a military soft unit right they they don't fall under the ucmj the uniform code of military justice they don't fall under the geneva convention it's not a military unit it's comprised of former military guys former tier one guys and tier two guys and whatnot but it when i say they don't play by any rules

that is kind of correct of course there's rules to everything but the rules that they play by if you were to apply that to the military you would be in a world of because it's you're dealing what's called title 50 which is a u.s code that allows the granted power to the cia to conduct covert action on the behalf of the united states government and covert action by nature and by definition is any any operation that the united states does not want to have a hand in. Right. So you have that plausible deniability. It's very tough to do that with a military soft unit because it's such a, you know, when you do operations, like when a tier one unit does operations, right? Whether it's Delta or SEAL Team 6, you know, they've got huge air assets packages.

They have AC-130s and DAPs and QRFs and big signature, right? And rightly so. You've got to protect your guys. But when it comes to what I used to do, that even though they had all the money in the world, right? The agency's got billions of dollars. You don't say. Yeah, they do. They took that signature and just shrunk it down to

nothing. Guys, if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button, please take two seconds and go hit it right now. Thank you. So for example, if you were, you and I were going to hit a compound and we get into a really bad situation. There's no calling in an AC one 30 to drop a one Oh five to save our bacon. There's no QRF. There's no daps flying in. There's no nothing. You fight your way in, you fight your way out. And I've talked to guys in the soft community are like, that's bullshit. Well, not really. If you know the rules of the game going

into the game, you have every right to say, you know what? I don't want to do this. And I have met guys that I would have never worked there. Never. And I get it because, you know, you want that support that's that protects your guys. But unfortunately it just – it's not something that they can afford to do to keep that plausible deniability down because all it takes is one American helicopter to get shot down somewhere like – now, who are all these people here? Yes. What do you – And this is at the heart of the issue for you because what you are is you're officially unofficial, right? So when people were causing all these problems online that led to all this stuff, they're pointing at your military career, which as you already laid out in the last episode, you spent I think it was 12 or 13 years Army and Marines. Approximately. Okay.

And in that time, you didn't see combat, which made you very surprised when you were then recruited to ground branch where you spent a decade and saw a lot of combat right but because that's the part that it's officially unofficial right people can just try to point to your career and say well this guy never saw combat or something and then try to lead with claims on that and we even saw and to the we've used it a few times but the term eat your own like we've seen this is the ultimate case of that because we you saw it with you getting kicked out of the Special Forces Association and all that. Oh, yeah. It's very, very sad to me. And so I was honored that after years of you mostly sitting on the sidelines conducting your business, doing your thing down in North Carolina, you came on and we're we're open about

your career with us in the last episode and i really appreciate that and i'm glad that we have got this thing to a point where we can give something like that a platform and we can we can hear from the man himself to actually get him to describe exactly what this was and how it happened and again it's you can't go into all the details. That is how it is. But I, I really appreciate you being open about it and run through it. I mean, it's, you know, of course it's embarrassing and it's hurtful, you know, that individuals would go to the level that they did. For example, you know, one of the things I was getting hammered on is I was calling myself a combat veteran, right? And they're like, well, you can't call yourself a combat veteran unless you were in the military. And so I said, okay, fine. I was doing combat, direct action, combat operations. What am I supposed

to call myself? A combat, what I was saying, something like a combat contractor or something like, yeah. Like, what do you want me to say? And it just, it made some people irate. Yeah. And I said, fine. And I, and guys can go online and look, I said it a million times. I was not in the military doing what I was doing. And I had pictures of online of me being downrange and, you know, um, in people still like, you're not a combat veteran. You have never seen combat in the military. Yep. You're right. I never did, but I did over here. So it was a play on words. Yeah. It was a play on words and it stirred people's emotions and it got people pissed off. And it was just like this, it was like this little whirlwind that just got out of control.

And, you know, yeah, I had death threats and all kinds of stuff. It was, it was really, but I will tell you something funny and we'll move on. This is actually kind of a funny story. So I was home one day and my phone rings and it's a buddy of mine. And he's like, Hey, Joe, are you sitting down? And I'm like, no, but do I need to be? And he's like, yeah, probably. I'm like, oh, freaking, here we go. He goes, get in front of your computer. He goes, I'm going to send you an email. I'm like, all right, go ahead. And so I'm sitting there and this email pops up and it had

an attachment and I opened this attachment and I'm sitting there and it's this hot chick. I'm like, all right, dude, this is hot girl. What's the, what's the big deal? He's like a dumb ass. That's you. I'm like, what? So I grabbed my glasses and I'm like, oh god dude they had literally taken my face my beard off and put my photoshop me on a woman's body and put out there that i used to be a woman come on dude i was hot bro oh wait you were hot at it or you were i was hot as a woman dude i was like wow i was like damn but anyway dude it got that bad it got that bad it got that bad i was dude it's so back in 2015 they were that good with the airbrush bro i'm telling you if you would have saw it it was i mean even had the Next question. But anyway, dude, I laughed my

ass off. It was so funny because I thought, oh my God, is this all you have to do with your time? Apparently. You know, and it was really funny, but it would, it kind of made things put into perspective. Like how desperate are these people? It's sad. Yeah. You know that you have to tell, you know, Photoshop a picture of me as a one, like, but I was pretty hot, you know,

I don't know. I mean, I'm thinking about some of the stuff we, we got to talk about on the phone that we're not going to talk about today. But what I'll say to people is that it's just – it's a gut punch. It's a gut punch in every way. And I had a chance to talk with one of your main witnesses that was going to be used in that lawsuit before they settled it and just hearing him go through this stuff because he did it with you and he's just like, this is crazy. Well, they started attacking everybody like anybody that i was talking to and anyway it was it was it was i i i forked out a lot of apologies to people you know like hey i'm sorry this is people are contacting

you and this it was it was it was really um again it was hurtful. You know, I could expect that from a complete stranger. But, you know, when it comes internally, it hurts. Yeah, bro. It was really rough. My buddy, Ryan Tate, who I've had in here, he's coming back in as well. It was intense. Now, that was when, that was like right before we got out as a car, right? Yes.

And I actually, I chased them too. This was badass. So we have this vehicle checkpoint and... Out of nowhere, and it comes in on the radio, and then there are Amtrak tanks, the amphibious tanks, just flying over the Euphrates River. You know, he's run this organization you and i talked about vet paul which is unbelievable what they do it's it's a bunch of u.s veterans who work hand in hand with the african governments yeah you got that you got the mug right now right there right there shout out vet paul but they work with the african governments on anti-poaching measures because poaching is this horrible industry that

is funded by foreign governments usually they even pay terrorist groups on the ground to do this it's not just like your regular guys trying to eat for you know get food and kill animals to be able to feed their families it's not that simple and you know he went through very similar things a couple years into vet paul and it almost i mean there are years past that now, but at the time it was a disaster, and some of these guys who make these claims, they're still public and they don't live in America, which makes it really difficult. They live in Australia and I think the UK, and they just run around and they say these things and then people believe it and what happens is sometimes it's also i don't think this is relevant to your situation this was more just a personal attack but you look at some of these other ones it's also the enemy funding that stuff that's very clearly what happened to ryan it's some of these interest groups who are upset that ryan and his team are

stopping all this industry from happening and so they're funding these fucking morons to sling shit online. And like, to this day, when it comes up and some of these, I know who these guys are, when some of them say some stuff, Ryan gets like bulldog angry. Sure he does. And I get it because it's like, look at all the work we're doing

and some asshole can just say something on Reddit. Sabotage the whole thing, yeah. Exactly. And it's very sad. I mean, I started off, you know mean i started off you know very upset you know angry like why would someone be doing this and then it you know i'm i'm a christian you know i i definitely leaned on my faith a lot to be honest with you during that time did a lot of praying um and i just you know i i got to a point where i'm like you know what lord i'm turning this you, you know, because there's nothing I can do.

You know, you can sue people, but at the end of the day, there is a reason why I had to go through that. There was a lesson that had to be learned, and I kind of just look at it like that. It was a painful one, I'm here to tell you. What I will say, if I'm, who's ever listening to this, I'd like to give just a little advice. And this is my advice. If you ever caught in a situation where that happens to you, where somebody or someone or an entity or a group of people are slandering you and, you know, acting in a libelous fashion, don't wait. Yeah. That was a problem. I tried to take the high road and throw out the olive branch and be like, hey, why are you doing this? Let's stop. Let's talk.

And it wasn't working. And it wasn't working. And I waited too long until some damage was done. So my advice to anybody listening is if you are in that position, pull the trigger immediately. Hire an attorney. Hire an attorney that's capable and understands, you know, especially if you're a public figure, which I am. There are certain things you have to prove, believe it or not, if you're a public figure, there are things you have to prove that other people, and you are a public figure now. So understand, Julian, this applies to you. There's things that you have to prove that John Q. Public does not. And it's really crazy. So anyway, and I think your father is an attorney, if I'm not mistaken, right? So I'm sure he can

clue you in on it. But anyway, but yeah, anybody listening, just, you know, if you try to handle it as a professional, as an adult, like, hey, look, let's just stop this. And they don't, don't wait. You need to get, in my opinion, you need to get a competent legal team together to handle it. Yes. And, you know, yes. It's sad that you got to say that. Is it expensive? Yeah.

Yeah. It's not cheap. You know, good attorneys are expensive. Five hundred bucks an hour. But if you're And by the way, dude. It's the least I could do. And by the way, I should have said this in the beginning. This is a badass studio, dude. Oh, thank you. This is really cool. I know this is going to sound kind of weird. I'm very proud of you.

I've watched you now for a while grow your business, and I've watched you. You're taking those steps, right? And you've gone from a small little studio that was about half this size to a beautiful place. I'm not going to say where you live. People know it's in Hoboken. Yeah, okay. But you just took me for a little tour and you live in a very beautiful area and a very nice home. But yeah, you're doing good, man.

Thank you. Keep doing what you're doing, brother. Look, I say it and I especially got to say it with people like you. Keep doing what you're doing, brother. Look, I say it and I especially got to say it with people like you. It doesn't happen without guys like you coming in and flying in for the day to do what you did and now you're here again. I mean I lean on the fact that I get the opportunity in this job to talk to some really cool people who have done some really cool shit. And I'm fortunate that a lot of them are very open about it when they come in here. We spend three hours sometimes. If we do two episodes, we spend six, and they open up, and this doesn't happen without that.

But look, I mean, it's cool to see where we're at because you got to see it towards the end of the last era. There's unfortunately a lot of work to be done here. Obviously, Alessi and me are working seven days a week these days. But eventually, hopefully, it won't be like that. And there's good little steps along the way. So to have my own place, not in my parents' house like this, and all the people who helped out building this thing for a couple months, it's gratifying. Because it doesn't matter what kind of business you have or what you do. You are the people that you are lucky enough to be surrounded with. Hopefully it's lucky to be surrounded with good people. And

I'm surrounded by some great people. And you're passionate too, man. It's very obvious. And I, when I coach people, I always say, if you are passionate about what you do, it's not work anymore. You want to wake up at five o'clock in the morning. You want to work till 10 o'clock at night. You know, what you do, you obviously, you love what you do. You're very good at it. So, um, yeah. Did you ever run into a situation where you started to feel like something you loved became work? Oh yeah. How did you get out of that? Um, so a lot, I think I talked about this on my last podcast, um, between my Marine Corps career and my army career, I was a stockbroker. And so, you know, which is something I never even thought about doing. Cause like I did really shitty in

school, you know, and, but I had a very good tutor. Um, and I, um, I thought it was really sexy in the beginning, like, wow, like a white collar guy, you know, as a Marine corporal, and now i'm going to be a stockbroker so i thought it was sexy and cool and that faded very very quickly even though i was making pretty good money like 70 grand a year ish 75 grand a year for back then in early 80s that was pretty freaking good money and i was in my early twenties. Um, but that it became work because I got to tell you that job was a grind. You had a hand dial phone numbers and you would not be able to leave unless you made 400 calls. The branch manager sat at a desk on his machine and could tell you, Hey,

you got another 50 calls to make. You got another 30. It was a grind. I I'll be honest with you. As far as like a mentally exhausting job, that is like right close to what I used to do with the agency. It was exhausting. Comparing the two. Yeah, dude, because it's a different kind of anxiety but it was just like a you know like but you didn't like it no and you got to remember too man every month you started over yeah every month you started at zero and you had a quota and if you didn't hit it you got one month of like you're on notice if you didn't hit your quota next month you were fired so it sounds like in your example right there the way you fixed it is you left and you went back to what you know

yes you went you went back to something you know you love yeah i i wonder about it though with and i guess you didn't run into this i wonder about it though with things you do love like when it becomes a little bit of work because i'm i'm in that phase a little bit right now this is the fun part when i get to sit with people the process to even getting to this part though has gotten so tedious sure and i'm over it i mean if i i mean alessia how many frames am i gonna fuck before this is you know i don't have to edit anymore you know what i mean and he gets it i mean he works his ass off with me now too so he gets it but it gets tough some people don't understand it's like what i used to do for a living you know everything is bang bang shoot them up dude that was the last two seconds of what i used to do what people don't see is all the work from case officers and intel people did did did for it could be years to lead you to someone just like what you

guys do just like the show i was on if i'm not mistaken, I remember them telling me it took 40 hours of actual video for a 40-minute show. Crazy. Think about all the editing. Oh, my God. That's the grind. That's the grind. Those guys are amazing. The people who do that stuff, unbelievable.

That's the grind. Doing this is great. This is fun. We're having, having a good time and talking, but it's the backend stuff, you know, just killing it. And that, and yeah, I mean, as a broker, that was, that, that became work after a while. It just, I just didn't enjoy it anymore. Um, you know, I do like teaching, you know, obviously with my, my company, I like to teach, you know, farms training and tactics and stuff like that. Sometimes depending on who my students are, it becomes work. For example, I taught a class not long ago. There was 10 people in the class and there was one guy who self-admittedly had never shot a pistol, but like maybe 10 times. And I, I like training guys like that. They have no bad habits, but this guy was so scared. He was visibly shaking,

shooting. I'm like, dude, relax. Like it was, I was, I had to concentrate on him so much just from a safety standpoint. He wasn't flagging people and keeping his finger off the trigger. It became work. It wasn't fun anymore. I couldn't keep the momentum of the class going because this guy, and I put them all the way on the end, but that's when it becomes work. Like, man, if this guy wasn't here we could have done so much more right so but yeah i mean i think it's vitally important you know for anyone that's listening if you've got a if you've got a career it doesn't matter what it is but you're passionate about it you you got the world by the short hairs man yeah because you want to wake up you're lucky yeah dude that's hard to find, dude.

It's not easy. I mean, even when I was doing what I was doing with the agency, like I was passionate about the job and it was a job understand, but I was very passionate about it. And when you're, when you're passionate, you can perform at very high levels, right? And there, they needed you to perform at very high levels you couldn't like mediocrity there wasn't happening dude like you you needed to shine and i think i even mentioned on the last one like that you know when i was doing my interview this guy ron he goes you know do you think you're a good operator like yeah i think i'm you know pretty good and he's like we don't need good and that kind of blew me away. Okay. I don't know what else to say,

but I think, I think passion for, for a career, um, and what you do is like, I think that's what separates the rock stars and the groupies, man, people that make a little bit of money compared to people who are ultra successful. And, and bro, I don't, I don't judge or measure a person by the size of their wallet. Like I know a lot of wealthy people that I wouldn't trade their life with mine for all the golden Fort Knox. You know what I mean? They may have a lot of money, but they've got highly dysfunctional families and blah, blah, blah, blah. It goes on and on and on. Hey guys, if you have a second, please be sure to share this episode around on social media and with your friends, whether it's Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,

doesn't matter. It's all a huge help. It gets new eyeballs on the show and it allows us to grow and survive. So thank you to all of you who have already been doing that. And thank you to all of you who are going to do so now. I think those that are out there that are passionate about their work, there's a huge intrinsic value for that. I know a lot of people make a lot of money. As a matter of fact, I have a friend of mine. He owns his own company. I've never asked him how much he makes, but if I were to guess, he probably makes $4 to $6 million a year in his pocket. That'll do. In his pocket. That'll do. Miserable. Guy hasn't been on a vacation in 10 years that's the problem man what's the trade-off there no good no no good at all and he doesn't eat right i mean he doesn't

exercise he's got all i'm like dude why don't you hire a trainer and a cook i mean he's got money hire a cook you know go to the gym hire a personal trainer no he won't take a vacation you don't know why you won't take a vacation oh man they'll rob me blind here i'm like are you telling me you can't hire one person pay them a really nice salary so you can get away and go enjoy your life like you're doing something wrong yeah that was something in my last career working on wall street we worked in the in the bank, so we dealt with the big-time money people. And there were some people who did it right and who lived happy. I don't want to be all negative here.

There were some clients who were very wealthy who – I don't want to say they were carefree, but a couple of them were, and they were just – they had good families great lives great balance good everything great perspective but i got a chance to to learn not just from them but the many people who were not like that right and i will tell you the phrase mo money mo problems is very true and i would it doesn't sound as good but i would add in mo Money Mo invented problems. People get more money, they invent issues for themselves. Interesting. They invent struggles that don't need to be there. They let money get in the middle of family. They let money get in the middle of friends. They let money get in the middle of – it drives everything they do.

And one of the things that I think was awesome about me having that job was that at a young age, coming out of college, when you're unbelievably impressionable, I got to see that before I never made any, I never had a chance to make money in my career. Right. So I still, to this day, cause any money we've made here has gone back into this place. I still have never had money in my pocket, but if I'm successful, I know that's going to be a point where I do. I have a lot of thoughts about how to not change. And I don't know, but I don't know if I would have had that if I hadn't got to see it up close like that. And so you're talking about a friend right there. That's someone you get to see up close a bit. It's a good example for all of us. Yeah. I mean, dude, I'm not rich. I live

comfortably. I've made some really good money in my past and I've lost money in my past through bad investments. And 100% my fault, didn't do the proper due diligence, um, took a risk where maybe if I had a dollar in the bank, I put 80 cents of it in something, which was right. And it went kaput. Um, and so, you know, I would caution people. I mean, again, I'm talking about this, but, you know, money is very easy to lose and very difficult to make. Yes. And everybody, you know, that old saying, be at the right place at the right time. Let me tell you something that's complete bullshit. It's not right place, right time. It's right place, right time, right market, right product, right partners, right amount of money.

Like all of these stars have to line up because I have been at the right place at the right time and it still didn't work out. Yeah. Still didn't work out. So, you know, businesses, you know, sure. If I had failed businesses, yep, sure have. If I had businesses that have made me money, yeah, sure have. But the difference, and we were just talking about this, that the two businesses I'm thinking of, I wasn't passionate about. It made sense. Like, yep, that makes sense. But I didn't have the right partners.

And, you know, we didn't, you didn't calculate the right amount, enough money for the marketing piece. And down it went. But what I've been passionate about, like what I do now, you know, I, as a matter of fact, I want to thank you for something.

By the way, I don't know if I even told you this, but a gentleman that lives in Dubai saw this last podcast. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And here you go. Here's a perfect example. Watched it. Didn't know really who I was. Didn't know anything about Ground Branch. But he had been contacting all kind of different companies, guys that are former Delta dudes and still team six guys and this, that, and the other

thing. And he watched the podcast and he's like, what, what is, what is never heard of ground branch? And this guy's very, very smart, you know? Um, and he started Googling it like, wow, this is the guy I want to train with. So with anyway he ended up contacting me and he flew from dubai to train with me one-on-one wow now what kinds of things are you putting him through and training so he had a very specific menu uh i call it he yeah well it was man he actually likes he he kind of told me like i want to know this this this this and this and i said yeah and he asked me how long it was going to take. And I told him, um, and, um, but no, he wanted to, he wanted a very in-depth, uh, course of pistol carving. Um, he wanted to understand, you know, how to bug out. Um, he wanted to understand, and he and this guy travels extensively

through the Middle East, understand. So he goes to some pretty dicey places. He wanted to understand how to spot surveillance, stuff like that, you know, some trade craft stuff. And obviously- She had to take him into the city. Oh yeah, oh yeah. We spent two days in a mall.

She lived out in the woods. Yeah, we spent the majority of the time at a thousand acre facility that I train at. She had to take them into the city. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We spent two days in a mall. Because you live out in the woods. Yeah. We spent the majority of the time at a 1,000-acre facility that I train at. And then a few days in a city, actually in a big shopping mall. How would you do that? Because you're a civilian now doing this. How – you take them to a mall. What – do you set up like a drill?

Do you have people that work with you that you have as like dummy plants there how does that work correct on all aspects so i had role players you're getting it bro you're getting it for me no you're right so i had role players um and i factored this into the cost i told him like do you want to do this from one to ten i basically said this is what you're going to get for a one and this is what you're going to get for a one. And this is what you're going to get for 10. And he's like, I want the 10. He's from Dubai. I mean, yeah, very successful guy. Yeah. Very, very smart. Uh, athletic, just a good, a good, good dude. We got along very, very well. Um, so I told him, you know, we're going to have role players and I just kind of ran it similar to the surveillance course that I went through when I was with Grom Ridge. And so we did some time on foot and then we did some time in vehicles.

Obviously, surveillance in vehicles is much more difficult because it's very easy to lose somebody in a vehicle. Like you're not, you get caught behind two cars and they get a soft yellow and they go through it. You're screwed. And like, right. That's why you need multiple cars and stuff anyway. But we, uh, we, we did the, the foot piece in this huge mall, um, massive mall, really, really big mall crowded. And, um, I started them off at a crawl walk,

you know, run pace where I made it very obvious. And then I kind of backed it up a little bit and like, all right now, and backed it up a little bit to what got to a point where at the very end, um, he couldn't tell who was, who was following them. And I'm like, if somebody is actually good at this, you're to be honest with you, if they're well-trained, you're not going to know. You're not going to know. And so, but how often is that going to happen? It's probably not. It's going to be somebody that just targeted you because of how you look or maybe the watch you're wearing or the jewelry. We're like, Hey, that guy's rich, which he didn't look that way. By the way, he looked very nondescript. He did not look like a wealthy individual, which was great. Yeah, he's very smart.

And obviously, he's got the money. But he just would just dress kind of like you, just very nondescript. And so he wanted to know how it would go down. And I told him, like, they're probably going to survey you for a while, get a pattern of life, watch where you go, find a weak link, and then hit me up somewhere. It's crazy how similarly when I had both you and Sean in the studio, almost like back-to-back. Yeah, we did. Yeah, I recorded those back-to-back. It's crazy how similarly you guys describe surveillance

and how you both said it the same way. You'd never know. I understand Sean, and I've never met Sean. He was in a very, very high-level protection unit, GRS. Never served with them. I knew who they were. That's the top of the top of the food chain when it comes to doing protection details. I'm just going to tell you right now because the people they were protecting were at high risk in high risk areas.

Yeah. So there's no doubt Sean has received some very, very high level surveillance training. MI6 actually trained him first. There you go. Which is crazy. There you go. Yeah.

Doesn't surprise me one bit. So, and that was a very important piece of what they did. What I did, they just wanted you to be well-rounded. But literally, I've only done the surveillance piece one time in my entire career. One time. That's it? Yes, sir. One time.

Can you say roughly where that was? I can't say where it was, but it was the longest op I had been on. Was this in a civilian territory or combat territory it was not in a combat area it wasn't like iraq or afghanistan i'm saying it was greece what's your guess alessi italy italy all right we're in the same part of the map two cool places for sure but but it would be a place that you would go to on like a honeymoon like it was that kind of a place so i would say yeah it was pretty pretty good but anyway it was it was just because the way this mission came about and the way they wanted it conducted um that we actually got to do

the surveillance piece oh so you're on a team with this one? Yeah. So, and again, you know, don't want to get into TTPs and how we did it, but that training came into play because I'm here to tell you, I wouldn't have known whether to shit or wind my watch. Like it would have been like, holy Jesus, this is a lot more complicated than you'd think it is, especially in a real world environment. You can simulate it all you want and you and you can but there's always those factors that murphy law right that just pops up and you're like don't remember that class you know like hold on let me break out the manual for a second you

have that's where your critical thinking skills have to come into play. Was this the type of situation where you're trying to surveil a person or people for their pattern of life to see what they do or to see if they're going to go somewhere advantageous for you guys to make a move on turning them or something like that? It was one person. We were to establish a pattern of life, see who they were associating with because of who he was and what he was doing. And then if the opportunity presented itself, they wanted him to be captured. And we did. Shit got real. Wow. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so, but what was really cool about it. Do you use chloroform when you do that? Uh-oh.

No. Oh, man. It's called a baseball bat. No, just kidding. Just kidding. That's one thing I wanted to do before I die. But you know what's so funny? He knew the gig was up.

Like, it was almost like that. Oh, he held out his hands? Not quite, but it was damn near like oh man like he you have to understand something bro these people that you know the agency goes after and other soft units they know they're hunted people right they're not good people these are evil people that know that they're on somebody's list somewhere is looking for them. So when the gig is up, a lot of times this – the look on their face is like, I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, and that was this guy. He knew like we were – Was he just like an international criminal or like a government person of like a dictatorship kind of deal? He was – so the term facilitator, I don't know if you ever heard of that before.

Yeah. He was a very high-level facilitator. That's all I can tell you. Very high level. And they'd been looking for this guy for a long, long time. He was very elusive. Don't tell me this was Victor Boot. No.

Okay. That would have been creepy. But the thing about this guy, though, you got to remember, and I think I said this the last time we spoke, these are very smart people. They may be terrorists, but some of these people are very educated. They've got advanced degrees. They're not stupid. They understand tradecraft. They understand they're being hunted they understand you know what they need to do to kind of um screw up their pattern of life so you can't find that weak spot right um and we I'm trying to think, we were there 10 weeks.

10 weeks. You're surveilling them for 10 weeks. From the time, well, from the time we got in country, we got to a safe house, which we moved several times. Yeah, it was about 10 weeks. Yeah, it was a long time but i tell you what i've got more experience out of that op doing the whole thing from soup to nuts not like hey we know where julian's at go get him well okay that's not very hard i'm not trying to downplay it but like you know where i am yeah there's this house right there there's this compound right there you know i don't have

a compound for that yeah right you do have a house in beverly hills though you showed me right no no i i wish that'd be great it's coming brother i'd love it's coming but no it was really cool because you got to see how the whole thing like laid out instead of just seeing the last piece of it i got to see from the very beginning all the way to the end and i got to do it once how do you know when to go in and i said because you're you said it's 10 weeks i would imagine you had eyes on him pretty early. You probably could have taken him earlier than you did. How do you know when? We wanted – well, not we. Our leadership wanted him to be seen and meet two people specifically, and it just took time for them to actually – so they could PID them.

Like, yep, that's that. Oh, that's them too. Like there was a method of the madness, so they could PID them like, yep, that's that. Oh, that's them too. Like there was, there was a method of the madness, so to speak. Oh yeah. We could have him, this guy up two weeks into it. Yeah. Because remember, dude, you, you, there's a thing called tactical patience, right? It's a great term and it's, you got to know when to kind of put the brakes on and go, OK, just stop and just watch.

Right. Just hold on. Like everybody take a knee and chill. All right. Now move like. And that's something that I learned over time. I didn't even know what that was when I was in the Marines and SF like tactical patients. What the fuck? You know, I learned it there. That's what guys that are really, really good. They can, instead of just rushing into something and just, you know, overwhelming force, that's great at certain times, but there's a time we've got to put the brakes on to go, right. Just slow down for a second. Let this unfold, let it unfold, Let it unfold. Okay. Ready? And that is a learned skill. And that comes with a lot of maturity.

And I didn't have that until, to be quite honest, we did the very latter end of my career. Really? Yeah, man. It takes a lot. It takes a lot to get that good. And I was just lucky I was around a bunch of dudes that already had it. Do you know what I mean? So it's just kind of like,

you know, like I was telling you before. It won't take long to tell you neutrals ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors. So what should we talk about no sugar added neutral refreshingly simple or it's like playing basketball with a bunch of you know michael

jordan sir lebron james it's like every freaking guy, Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan, like, you know, and I loved it because it just upped my game. And you know what the sad thing is? And when it, when it comes to training and stuff, it is a lot of guys just can't park their freaking ego. Like, I don't want to go to the range with this guy because he can out-shoot me. Well, pick his brain and find out why. You know? Like, I got a chance to train with Jerry Barnhart when I was in ground branch.

I trained with the guy for two weeks. It was one week of pistol, one week of carbine. And Jerry Barnhart, back in the day, he was like a 10-time world IPSC champion, right? I think his nickname was Jerry the Burner Barnhart. Unbelievable shooter, like couldn't compete with the guy. But when you, when you have the opportunity to train with a practitioner, practitioner, not a hobbyist, right?

And that's what I kind of have a hard on for guys online that quote that they can teach stuff. They're not practitioners, they're hobbyists. And we can get into that if you want. Yeah. Can you explain how you do that too? But I got the train with Jerry Barnhart and, you know, this guy took my shooting to the next level. Why? Because he was just that freaking good. That's how I got my draw under. Yep. There he is right there. That's him. Yes, sir. That's him. Okay.

Super, super nice guy. Very humble. He was in the military before? I don't believe Jerry was. He was just a world-class pistol shooter. Wow. And the thing that I respected about him even more so is that he was so good at conveying this here. For people just listening, not watching.

Yeah. So you can be a really good shooter or really good tennis player or really good golfer, really good, world-class. But if you can't verbalize how you're that good. You're basically useless as an instructor. And I know guys like that. I know guys are amazing operators. They don't have the patience or the ability to, to verbalize what you need to do to get that good. He was a master at it. That's where I got my draw under a second, going to his course. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, it was under a second. You know, to this day, I don't shoot enough. I still can't break a second. I can do like 1.2, 1.3. That's unbelievably fast.

That's respectable. But when you're under a second, that's pretty fast. Yeah, if I tried that, someone's dying. It's pretty fast. Not who I'm trying to shoot either. But you got to remember, though, but what you have to remember is you have to train with a guy like that to get that good. I can't train with a guy at my level or lower. I got to train with a dude like that.

And so people that are listening, whatever your sport or whatever it is you want to be good at, seek these people out. Seek these people out. And that's how you're going to really get good. And for the guys listening, park your freaking ego. Okay. Don't be like, well, you know, yeah, this guy's a much better shooter than me and I don't want to embarrass me. No, I want you to embarrass me. Like I used to, look, I, yeah, this guy is a much better shooter than me, and I don't want to embarrass me. No, I want you to embarrass me. Look, I'm not an MMA guy. I know the basics.

I used to grapple with this guy that weighed $1.60. I'm 200. I was much stronger than him, and he could literally beat me, and I'm not joking, with one hand. Oh, yeah. It's skill. Yeah, and I love the trade with one hand oh yeah it's skill yeah and i love the train with this guy because he's like joe you're trying to overpower me because you're a strong

dude but it's all technique no it don't and i love training that guy because it was very humbling right those are the people that i to this day seek out to train with yeah i want to train with people that make me look like an amateur did you run in when you're in ground branch so i know it's a small exclusive team but you're i think you may have even said a few minutes ago so many guys had this mentality but you you had to run into some guys who were just totally driven by the ego no even in that excuse me yeah um and how are they if they're like that how are they so effective at their job to be in that position? They're just built a little different. Having – so you got to kind of like separate it.

You could have this giant ego and look, yes, and I think any soft guy out there that's listening right now, if they don't agree with me, they're in denial. When you get into the special operations community, whether it's Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, ground branch, whatever, you're dealing with some, not everybody, but you're dealing with some individuals that have a big ego, raging type A man, you know, ultra, you know, driven, you know, very competitive. You know, I get it. Uh, I wasn't one of them, uh, only because of, you know, just the way I was brought up and, but anyway, that's a whole nother story, but yes, there were guys I worked with that had big egos. Um, but they were still good operators. You know what I mean? These are the guys that, you know, like if I'm going through a door with somebody, yeah, that's the guy I want to be with me. You know what I mean? Having an ego to me is exactly what we were just talking about. The guys that had the egos, in my opinion, thought they were at the top of the top of the food chain and maybe they were there, but to the true professional, you can always get better.

Yeah. You can't say, I know it all. I'm as strong as I can get. I'm as I can, I'm running as fast as I can. That's bullshit. You know, 1% better every day, 1%, 1%, 1%. That's what I kind of consider ego is when somebody can look at you and I, and be like, I can't, I can't, I'm at the, I can't get any better. That's ego. Everybody can get better. Right. Everybody. Yeah. And so, um, I can't, I'm at the, I can't get any better. That's ego. Everybody can get better, right? Everybody. Yeah.

And so, and it was, you know, you just dealt with it. These aren't guys that, you know, I would have gone beer drinking with, you know, or like I worked with them and you just tolerate it. You have to. Yeah. You tolerate it and you respect them for who they are because they were better operators than me. They were, you know, they were these guys I'm talking about. I are because they were better operators than me. They were.

These guys I'm talking about, I'm not going to mention their names, but they were. They had more experience, more combat experience. They came from either Tier 1 units or just regular units but had a lot of experience behind them. They had a lot of training, there done that but um you just have to be careful man because a big ego is also you know that can get you hurt yes when you think you're seven foot tall bulletproof exactly you know even in business if you think you're unfat you know like you can't screw with me until one person brings you down it's a balance you i struggle with having any confidence, and that's not good. You do have to have, you got to be confident in your abilities, which

if you want to tie that to like an ego awareness, okay. But it's, you don't want to get it past that point to where you get overconfident and over-egoed up, right? So I'm always, I've always erred way down here on the scale. That's not good. You got to be more here. But, you know, the guys who are up here, that's, I think that's where you miss things. That's where you start to become a target and you don't even realize you got the dot right on your forehead. That's right. You know, I've always been, I've always been to the person that believes in, I'm a student of war. Sun Tzu, one of his famous quotes is, be a student of war. In Jersey, we say Sun Tzu.

Sun Tzu. Yeah, we got to say it that way. You have to. Jesus. I'm sorry. But no, I've always had that mentality. That's why I'm reading. I read a lot. I don't read fiction. I read books that add to my capability, whether it's in business or what I do for a living. And I think that's the kind of people I want to work with. I want to work with people that are humble enough to know, hey, there's always somebody else that'll knock you off the ladder. Yes, that's right.

You're never at the top. You may think you are. It may appear that you are until somebody knocks your ass off. And this is what I told someone the other day. It's so funny. I was coaching somebody and I said, be very careful because I could tell by the way they were talking to me that they had the ego they had the money in a business and i said take this however you want but be very careful whose toes you step on climbing up the ladder because they're the same

people's asses they're gonna kiss on the way down oh that's a great line write that one down we gotta use that it's true yeah it's true 100 true yeah on the way down you'd be like uh-oh here comes julian again hey dude how you been hey fuck off right right that's right right man and it's about how you treat people too yes i mean yes sir that's the worst that when i go in somewhere and someone treats the waiter different or something like that that is it's hard to come back from that for me like as far as like if I'm watching you do that. That's right. I have a judgment on you.

I know I have an attitude about you. That's right. Is not good. Yeah. And I try, dude, I try every day, you know, to live my life like that and just respect everyone. Because first off, that's a good way to live. You know what I mean? That's just a good way to live and a very healthy way to live.

Trust me, I carried a lot of baggage around with me for a long – I still do. Nah. Yeah. My closet's overflowing. I just keep it locked. But, you know, we all have baggage. You know, give me a break, dude. The older you get – I'm a little older and you're going to have more and more baggage.

We all do. It's just, what do you do with it? They say, you've got skeletons in your closet, skeletons in your closet. Yeah, I do. But my skeletons stay in my closet. They don't get out and run around and get in your closet. And that's the difference, where you try not to let the things of your past interfere with the things of your future because that is a sure recipe for disaster well you also got to worry about some people that you saw in the past not

coming and showing up in america and be like i remember that motherfucker not me my terrorist friend no not me that was somebody else yeah you got the wrong guy i'm surprised though that that you only had one where you actually had to do the surveillance though. But you did have – and again, we can speak broadly here because I know you can't go into exact missions on some stuff. But you did do, as I understood it, at least some volume of situations where you're kind of like undercover, no? Yes. Yeah. So that's – and you're –, you're separating out the two. So if you're doing something where you're in plain sight, but you're acting as something else, you're treating that very different than actually tailing someone when you're distracted. Correct. One is an actual operation, a skill, like pulling surveillance on somebody is a hard skill. It's something that's, you know, you don't practice it, you're going to lose it. But the term that you're kind of groping for is the gray man right you want to

be the gray man and so you know how do you hide in plain sight some people can pull this off and some people can't just because the way they look if you're a blonde haired blue-eyed six foot seven guy in afghanistan tough okay you better start dying your hair and like, you know, like it's going to be tough. So some, depending it's environmental, um, it's an environmental situation that you have to be able to blend into. Right. Like I said, the other day, you don't want to be the token white guy. Like you're going to stick out like a sore thumb. So, um, but there is there, it's certainly a hard skill being the gray man and understanding the RAS, the reticular activating system in your brain. A lot of people don't even know what that is.

Google it. It's basically a filter that – You talked about this. Yeah, it's a filter that your brain is taking in like 11 million bits per second of information, but your conscious mind is only able to process like that much. So understanding how all that stuff works and what you should wear and what you shouldn't wear and how fast you should be walking or how fast you shouldn't be walking or what kind of vehicle you should be in. I mean, it goes, and now you're like, uh-oh. They may or may not think they're being followed, and now you've got to change up the whole game plan. Right.

Right. So, yeah, it was awesome, man. I really enjoy that stuff because you can't make mistakes, and it's all the little nuances, man. Like, it's very cool. Are you able to broadly without giving up people and locations talk about a time where you guys did kind of have to set a trap for somebody? Again, not surveillance, more undercover. And I guess when I'm asking about this, it's a little difficult because you got to be vague on stuff. But when we think about it, we're just thinking about the movies like Smash and Grab. Like, okay, there he is.

Once we got it figured out, we're just going to take him or whatever. But I would imagine it's because you're an unofficial team. There's a lot you got to take into account with what direction this is going to go so one of the things um that you have to take into account um when you're doing covert action type stuff is who's seeing what you're doing so you always have to take into account cameras right there's cameras everywhere. Well, now especially, yeah. Yeah, and even like where we were doing that, we knew that was one of the things that we did when we first got there

is we sent guys out on singleton operations by themselves in certain areas, like find out where every freaking camera is, buildings, streets, you know, everything, because you don't, you don't have a video of you hemming somebody up in a, in a vehicle interdiction, right. We're going to snatch somebody out of a vehicle. And now, now some camera just got the whole thing on film. Like you really, really want to avoid that kind of stuff. You know, that's important. But, you know, you're looking for a place that is out of prying eyesight somewhere where preferably they're going to be alone, where they feel safe, right? We're like, Hey, you know, like for example, going into their apartment, you know, that they're in a secure building or they think they're in a secure building. Um, and now they're home, you know, their guards kind of down.

They're not, you know, at full alert because you have to understand like what I just told you, these are people for the most part part, know they're on a list somewhere. They're doing shit they shouldn't be doing. They're attached to or working for a terrorist organization. It doesn't matter which one. They know what they're doing is wrong. And they know somebody is probably watching them and sooner or later is going to send people to stalk them. And so I don't know if that answered your question.

Yeah, I mean I was looking for like some sort of specific story where that may have happened though without going into the place. So to use what you just described, was there a situation where you and maybe a team of your guys in an undercover operation lured someone to, say, a private place and then captured them? Okay, so one time we rerouted a road. So basically put signs that the road was under construction i mean it's not sexy but they didn't have a freaking choice and basically funneled them into an ambush an ambush oh yeah well a vehicle interdiction right not that we'd fired their car up again like sunny and the Godfather type deal here? Oh, not that bad. No, no, no.

Okay. Yeah, that was a flat-ass ambush to kill the guy. Again, the whole idea here is capture these people so they can be interrogated to get more information. What I'm talking about right now, we interdicted their vehicle, but the way we did it was, is we just rerouted the road and sent them to a place that they went through a choke point where they couldn't get out of, you know, they drove in and that was it. They couldn't get out if they had to. And we were on them so fast, even, and they did have a weapon in the car. I couldn't even get to it in time. And one of the dudes I was with is actually funny. were on them so fast even and they did have a weapon in the car i couldn't get to it in time

and one of the dudes i was with was actually funny um the guy's uh driver's side window was down and one of the dudes i used to work with is big he was a huge dude man he was a big guy he was like six six two fifty like he was a he got his hands on he's gonna hurt you he literally drugged this guy through the window it was really funny like nice yeah didn't even open up the door you know and um but yeah i mean dude there's all kind of there's all kind of neat little ways that you can set somebody up for failure and this is where and i keep saying this and i've said it before like the guys that I worked with were freaking smart dudes. Okay. They weren't, they were exceptionally gifted planners.

I wasn't when I got there, I'm be totally honest. Didn't have a need to be until I got there. And just like we're sitting here, no different for all the fricking Intel on the table. And you're like, all right, how are we going to do this? One person starts looking like, hey, what about this?

Oh, shit, that's not going to work. Hold on. Hey, check this out. Like there's a building right across the street. Like, ooh. Then the thing starts gelling, right? And then one guy chimes in and another guy chimes in. And before you know it, you got this bomber plan, man. How often are these meetings happening with just all ground branch guys versus also having some other dudes maybe from the agency or something else in the room?

When we planned something, it was just us. Just you. Yeah. Maybe – I'm trying to think. Maybe once. There was one chief of base that we worked with. He was a younger guy that wanted to be you know clued in on everything most of the of our quote-unquote bosses the chiefs of base were just like hey man

there's my office if you need me you're talking ci station chiefs yeah well not the station chief that's that's the the head guy i'm talking about like a chief of the chief of base like of a base right so you have like so you have like the in-country head head guy and then you've got all these outposts and they all report report to him i'm talking about if i was at a base yeah and so they just the capos of the family there you go there you go yep the captain you're in jersey there you go translating to our language but but that was the chief of base. Normally, there were older, mature guys, been there, done that, and they kind of just left you alone to do what you did.

And they would be like, hey, like literally, like, hey, there's my office right there, and if you need me, come get me. Yes, sir. Roger that. Whoa. And sometimes we would have to get them and say, hey, you know, this is the situation right now. How do you would have to get them and say, Hey, you know, this is a situation right now. How do you want us to handle this? Because at the end of the day, they are in charge of that base,

right? We aren't, we're just a tool, no more, no less. Um, and you got to remember everything that we were doing was all part of a bigger picture, if you know what I mean. And you may not even know, quite frankly, the big picture, hence the term special compartmentalized or sensitive compartmentalized information. You know, like everything's compartmented, you know, so you may not know the whole picture. So if you do get rolled up somewhere, you don't know everything. All I know is I'm this.

That's it. Right. But for the most part, yeah, they just leave you alone. You can just do your thing. Big boy rules. Yeah. I mean, I also always wonder how much – how many layers there are to people out in the field. It's, it's a little different with ground branch. Cause you guys are literally deniable as,

as we've gone through. But did you see, did you see that story? Jack Murphy put out, God, this is like a little over, I think it's almost exactly a year ago now about the sleeper cells in Russia. I did not. Okay. so this one's interesting and maybe

you could break this down a little bit but essentially jack murphy went and did a podcast with my buddy danny jones on danny jones podcast going through everything he reported but he's a former army guy reports on everything related to special forces intel around the world he's got a podcast called the team house that's really good. But he worked on this story for months after the Ukraine war broke out about these sleeper cells that we, the United States, along with NATO allies, allegedly blowing up and factories in to live undercover lives. And then almost like a Morse code type – it wasn't exactly a Morse code, but almost like a Manchurian candidate wake-up kind of thing. Like the name Sleeper Cell. The minute that war broke out, they were put into action where they knew like, okay, maybe one guy he he buries a bomb at this latitude and

longitude in in the boreal forest or something and he's going to go take it to this facility and blow it up or something like that and and caused all this guys like that i would imagine a lot of them are are assets on the ground that were turned so a lot of them are native russians that now work for them but are they are they purely sleeper undercover during that time or are they would you say someone like that might actually be routinely handled and report and do reconnaissance as well in the build-up in the years to towards something like that well for starters i've never been involved in like a quote-unquote sleeper cell operation are they out there yeah of course um and the word you're looking for is called a bona fides yes you've heard that term

before um they get a certain word or a sentence that basically tells them hey that's telling you to go do this operation right now so it's called a bona fides um but anyway yeah of course there are sleeper cells and of course there are people that are on the payroll the agency that um you know some are knocks you know those are like the non-official cover those are the guys that are embedded in a business like that's really heavy duty stuff um they're embedded as a business as an it guy or whatever at least they think they are but in fact they're collecting uh intel um understand they're again i'm not i've never done this type of operation i just know to people, any asset that you have, well, not you, that the agency has is managed somewhere. Somebody is managing them in one way or another,

and it's by a case officer more than likely. And so these individuals aren't just like rogue, so to speak. They're not just out there flapping in the wind and can do whatever they want, whatever they want. They are told when to do they, cause everything has to be done. It's a process, right? You got to do a, before you do B before you do C. So they're managed. These people are managed. They're, they're paid, um, their assets of the agency. But as far as just like going out there and do whatever they want, whatever they want, I'm saying no. I mean, think about it. What happens if they do something or they go hit a target or taking a certain individual out of the equation when in fact, like we needed that guy to get to

that like you can't just have people out there just randomly running around like a loose cannon this is because besides what the tv shows and movies the agency is extremely methodical like extremely methodical like they plan way way out, almost like the Chinese, like Chinese businessmen, they don't plan two, three years out. They plan 20 years out, 30 years out. That's the way the agency is like, if we do this now, what kind of ripple effect is that going to have five years from now? Maybe we should just leave this guy in control for a while, right? And I'm just spitballing right now, but I know how these people think. They're very, very smart, okay?

They think way long term. What are the effects of if we do A, what is the effects of B, C, D five years from now, 10 years from now, right? So yeah, sleeper cells, duh. Yeah, that's a no-brainer dude there's people out there doing it of course i mean do you think we have sleeper cells in this country yeah oh yeah i mean people that are listening if you don't think there's sleeper cells in this country from terrorist organizations you need to be smacked it's like time to wake up yes they're here how many where don't know but they're here even beyond sleeper cells just like embedded intel and andy bustamante said there's an estimate that you have to highlight it's an

estimate because he can't really know that at any given time in the united states of america there are at least a hundred thousand undercover agents of some sort that's that's scary i wouldn't have guessed that he would know yeah we're all one degree of separation from one. Yeah. When you really extrapolate that, 340 million people, 330 million people, 100,000 of them, which is a small percentage, but it's big enough that at spread out scale, chances are you've met one in your life. Yeah. And of course, a gentleman with his background and access and placement to what he did, I would probably guess that his estimation is probably accurate. He's not just pulling it out of thin air.

Yeah. It's scary. Yeah, man. It's, um, it's very scary. I mean,

think about during the cold war, you know, how many, you know, sleeper cells we had. And, and there was actually teams, uh,

special forces teams set up to, and again, this is all open source i mean that would jump man-packed nukes you know literally jump in a man-packed nuke into a country you know so crazy yeah yeah for sure man it's you know again open source you know i read about it um there've been books written about it um but yeah very scary man we live in a very rogue and feral world and i just don't understand how some people can just like well put a blind eye up to it like god bless man people see the world they want to see and that's i always have to check myself on that too we all

want world peace we all want things to be happy and dandy but like that's not at scale how things work there are bad people in the world sometimes they're here too that's right right it exists everywhere and there are there's a reason that guys like you have to exist you might not like that that has to happen but it's just how it is right you know there's always i'm very fascinated by the idea that there there always has to be an enemy and so sometimes it gets maybe created in a way or like a self-fulfilling prophecy nonetheless you're always has to be an enemy and so sometimes it gets maybe created in a way or like a self-fulfilling prophecy nonetheless you're always going to have someone who hates you regardless of where you are in the world right now you're always going to have some sort of other team that doesn't

like the team you're on and human beings make some wildly stupid decisions and lead themselves to some sometimes evil places in the face of conflict like that. And look, we're seeing it all over. I do want to talk with you about the fact that we've had two major wars play out on the world stage now that are still going on over the past two years. But before I got there, the one clarification I wanted to ask as well on top of sleeper cell stuff is, as I mentioned, that mission in particular was one that was run conjointly with other NATO countries as well. So it wasn't just like a US operation. For you guys though being an off-books team, meaning no one knows about you. I would assume, I just don't want to assume and be wrong,

that you didn't do any types of missions with representatives from other countries on teams similar to yours? No. Yeah. So it's completely, yeah. Yeah. Okay. We would, the one op that we did, I told you it was 10 weeks.

Our cover for status and cover for action while we were there was obviously different than what we were there to actually do. And you may interface with other – and we did with other assets of other countries, but they had no idea who we were and what we're doing oh so are you in that situation are you saying like oh we're representing special forces or state department okay all right state department we're with the state department okay how often was that type of thing your cover like a public office like i was gonna say that's not really, dude, most of the work that I did was in Afghanistan, Iraq, working with foreign nationals. Can we pull up that picture I texted you, Alessi, of Joe? Put it on the screen.

Just working with foreign nationals, Iraqi units, Afghan units that we, the agency, put together. So you can pass. Yeah, dude. You can totally pass. Oh, my God. units that we agency put together so you can pass uh yeah dude that was pass oh my god that was uh yeah dude that was actually in the arabian desert when i was on my show um is that moses burning bush right there dude it was 127 degrees i bullshit you not it was so freaking hot and we had just come from the jungle and went to the desert. Like everybody got sick anyway. Where in the jungle?

Sri Lanka. Oh, you went from Sri Lanka right over to here? And then from there to a glacier in Norway where it was 20 below zero. Oh, yeah, dude. I was – it wiped out the crew. So this is during – we're going to talk about dual survival soon. This is during dual survival? Yeah, that was in Oman in the Arabian desert.

Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And I just found this little tree. I'm like, dude, there was nothing. And there was like this tiny little like bush. I'm like, what the hell? It was just weird.

Just growing out of the sand. I didn't. It was bizarre. It's a great picture though. Yeah. But you see what I'm saying though? Yes. Dude, you see what I mean?

And my beard was short there. I wore a little bit longer beard in Afghanistan. So, you know, again, when I was in Iraq and we worked up in the northern part of the country in Kurdistan in this little town called Erbil, everybody there thought I was Kurdish. Right. I never got a second look ever on the street. Yeah. I mean, you have a good profile. Right. That's what I'm saying. Some guys can't pull that off. Right. I never got a second look ever on the street. Yeah. I mean, you, you have a good profile. Right.

That's what I'm saying. Some guys can't pull that off. Right. You know, right. Just cause you just don't have that look. Maybe it'd work in another environment, but there you have to have a certain look to, and that makes it even more dangerous. Like I said, now you're the gray man.

Now you're literally the, the wolf in sheep's clothing and people have no clue what you're doing until it's too late. Your work that you did there, obviously you're one unit, but your units maybe combined with some of the other special operations type stuff we do. conscious understanding of how close to complete chaos and conflict we often were but perhaps because some of the actions guys like you took you know things were avoided maybe in afghanistan yeah here no obviously but like in afghanistan it it started becoming apparent that things weren't going to work out well. When? Towards the very latter part of my deployments and just hearing other guys talk and sharing their experiences and just – What years are we talking here?

Sorry, I shouldn't ask that. I'm going to say like 2010. Wow. Long before it even – Yeah, it was, there were just little telltale signs, you know, I just, um, and again, dude, I wasn't involved in the politics there. So let's just get that out of the way. I was not a politician, you know, that's case officer stuff. And, you know, chief of base or excuse me, um, you know, chief of station stuff, they're interfacing with high level people. That was not me.

I was a very, very small piece. That was the last two seconds of it, but you could just see, you know, like, like, I'll just give you one example. I'll give you one. So early on, you know, you had you ever seen you ever seen a commercial not a commercial but a thing on tv it showed early on in the war these afghan training camps and it showed guys like going across ladders and coming out okay they had these training it was like an incubator dude like they as fast as you could get rid of people they were backfilling them and backfilling them and backfilling them like it was like trying to kill cockroaches

you know like there's another one like you got to a point where like there's just not enough of this now what i mean by that is like soft look that was that was a soft war. Okay. That was a pure, in my opinion, a special operations war, right? It was counterterrorism missions that is assigned to special operations and military and government, right? So it was very apparent that you just couldn't get rid of these people fast enough. I mean, like I can just tell you, like when I was in Iraq, we were commingled with other military soft units. Delta was there. The SCS was there. These guys were out every fucking night, like every day, seven days a week almost.

And they were hitting multiple targets. Like there were just wasn't enough people taking it down fast enough. Do you know what I mean? It's kind of like if you look at a company, like if you look at a big corporation and, you know, you cut the head off, you cut the, you know, get rid of the CEO. Well, they've got eight people waiting in line to backfill them. Then you knock off a couple of VPs.

Well, they just got a bunch. It's, there was just, you couldn't get rid of them. I hate to say it, but you just couldn't get rid of them i had i hate to say it but you just couldn't get rid of them fast enough that was my opinion just because of the fucking op tempo which is crazy yeah it was it was that's why deployments with the unit i was in in like the guys from delta and the guys from seal team six 6, you're looking at 90 days, 120 days, that's it. You're done. I mean, you are road hard and put up wet for 90 days.

I mean, there's guys in those units where I came from who have done 2,000. Dude, 2,000 missions. Yes, sir. That's not even possible. No, it is. I'm not one of them. I'm just telling you, I know I've got 1,500, 1,700. Oh, yeah. Wow.

Yes. Unbelievable. Yeah. I'm not one of them. I don't have that many. But yeah, there are guys that were in that number. I mean, think about and surviving. That's nuts, man. Oh, yeah. I mean, the odds there. That's what I'm saying, the odds are good. It's a testament to those units. It's a testament to the training and the selection process and how good these guys are. Sure. You're going to take casualties. Sure. You're gonna have guys get hurt. Sure. Sure. Sure. But for the amount of missions that they were doing there, the casualties were, you know, they were big,

but compared to what they were doing was incredibly small but over over in afghanistan like the the line i know i've said a bunch on this podcast and i i think it was a line obama actually said that was pretty spot on was that it felt like with afghanistan we took our eye off the ball correct and we went and spread out we went to iraq and stuff but you're right at the beginning when we first went in there was a post 9-11 it was a historical moment for modern warfare because it was a cia paramilitary you know with in combination with the military operation and what it seems like is what you're saying is it didn't it never got to get too far

beyond that because we put all the resources in Iraq, which had a lot more. Understand, regardless of what anybody thinks or reads, the first boots on the ground in Afghanistan, ground bridge. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Hands down. Yep. Matter of fact, one of the guys that got killed – You know some of the guys.

Well, Spann was one of the guys. I never knew the guy. First name was Johnny, I think. I never knew the guy. First name was Johnny, I think. He got killed in a prison, kind of just got overran. But he was – Wait, he got killed in a prison? He was there with another guy. I don't know the whole story, but they were in a location with a bunch of – I think they were prisoners.

And somebody got a hold of a gun gun and it was just a bad judgment call and and basically he got killed i don't know if the other guy did but he was one of the first guys killed in the war and he was from ground branch well you can google it it's not classified yeah i think it's span s-p-a-n-n johnny span and don't quote me on it but but... Let's pull that up. Yeah, I... Yep, that's him right there. All right, do we have a news story we can read? Okay, wait, go back to the Wikipedia. I don't know if I... We'll go with the basics.

Let's go down, down, down. Death of King Jeannie. Spam was killed... Can we just zoom in, Alessi? Because it's like size 8, sorry. Spam was killed during an uprising at Kaiyajangi. Sorry if I said that wrong. Compound near Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. Based in Tashkent, question John Walker Lind, an American citizen and other prisoners. Around 400 Al-Qaeda prisoners has surrendered on November 24th and been kept overnight in the cellar of the Pink House in the southern half of the fort. Spann focused intently on Lind, and another prisoner identified him as an Irishman. Spann asked Lind, do you know the people here you're working with are terrorists and killed other Muslims? There were several hundred Muslims killed in the bombing in New York City.

Is that what the Koran teaches? I don't think so. Are you going to talk to us? Lynn remained silent. Two Afghan doctors interviewed by author Toby Herndon witnessed Spann's final moments. They saw the CIA officer, who was about five yards away from them, swing around and raise his AKMS rifle to his shoulder as the prisoners revolted amid sounds of gunfire and grenade explosions. Prisoners went rushing out straight at Spann. The doctor saw Spann shoot two or three of them with his Kalashnikov before the Qatari

prisoner and others who had been sitting close to the pink house stood up and jumped on Spann from behind, pushing him to the ground. Spann pulled out his Glock 19 pistol and fired one or two shots before he was overwhelmed, disappearing beneath a pile of prisoners desperately trying to seize his weapons tyson ran towards span after hearing his comrade shout dave dave dave tyson then used his browning high powder pistol to shoot dead four al-qaeda prisoners on top of span kicking span and seeing the blood on the ground tyson concludes span was dead tyson grabbed span's akms rifle and used it and other weapons to fight his way into the northern half of the fort, killing at least a dozen, possibly up to 40 Al-Qaeda prisoners. Holy shit.

That's horrible. Didn't go well. But, you know, I don't know if you're aware of this, but in the main foyer of the CIA headquarters that you always see on movies with the big emblem on the ground. You also have the memorial with the stars. The stars on the wall. I think there's, oh boy, I'm going to get this wrong, but 139-ish. Something. Half of them are SAD, SOG guys. Wow.

What I was told, half. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's heavy. Yeah. Yeah. That's heavy. Yeah. So, but yeah, that gentleman, I never met him, never had the honor or the privilege to meet him, but just in a bad situation, too many prisoners, not enough protection. They overwhelmed him and he died.

That's crazy. Yeah. But you were saying you saw the signs there around 2010. I mean obviously like we said, we took resources out there. It remained kind of a soft war and you have limited people on the ground. But I think what shocked people the most when – besides the craziness of the imagery we saw, like the famous pictures and videos we were seeing in afghanistan august 2021 but what shocked people the most was how much the taliban still obviously had enough support across the country to do this did that ever really change like when when they were taken down at the beginning was it like oh

now 90 the country is against them and eventually it got back to like only 50% was against them or did there remain a serious thought among a lot of people on the ground like hey you know that they are a better option oh wow dude that's a really very tough question to answer My view of that war was like this, meaning I wasn't a big picture guy. Yeah, I mean, we had intel that was told to us, but we were more focused on individuals. Do you know what I'm saying? As far as what we did, we weren't strategic planners. That was way above my pay grade we were just a tool you know the surgeon that took out little cancer cells but in my personal opinion i just think that we underestimated big time the support that they had the assets that they had i mean dude when you started digging into

how their money how they remember dude money makes the world the world go around 100 okay when you started when we started to hear like how much money they were getting from all these different profit centers and drugs and child trafficking and all this other shit that they were into, it was staggering how much money they actually had their hands in. And when you have money, you know, what do they say? You throw money at it, right? You can make things happen. Because what do you think we did when we went over there? The first guys, like that guy that you just showed,

they went over there with bags of money bags millions and millions of dollars and just bought these tribal leaders like hey we need your help and by the way here's a half a million dollars which is over there it's like 50 yeah dude it's like 50 million 100 million dollars it's stupid money right so but just remember too man money to those people are very important like anyone else but it's only going to buy so much loyalty right you know i mean like only so much they don't buy their heart you just know their mind that's what i'm saying for it it's a time and space right so but you know i am definitely not the guy to ask as far as like, you know, the whole strategic thing. It just, I wasn't privy to that.

You know, I mean, I just wasn't. Because I didn't need, I didn't, I wasn't operating at that level. Those were decisions that were being made way, you know, way, way above our, you know, you're you're talking about you know the chief of station and above right talking to people back in virginia and like and it just filters down i was just a small piece of you know taking care of the problem children like did you ever see the poppy fields there i had yeah yeah crazy no yes and you know my dumb ass didn't know what the hell they were i'm like what pretty flowers no dude i was like those are fucking really cool looking flowers my buddy's like dumb ass i can't feel my mouth no more yeah no yeah i honestly didn't really

know when i first saw them because they bloom they're very colorful but when not they're kind of like just like a how big like was the one you said? No, but how big was like, um, the one that I saw was probably 300 yards long and a hundred yards wide. Maybe something like that. That's a lot of heroin.

Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, you see these pictures of these american soldiers like forced to guard them and whatever but i do wonder about i mean we saw the shit in vietnam when we were there there's there's a black market for that even in the military yeah did you ever see any of that see um some guys on the take no no never dude yeah and dude even when i'll be honest with you like

i know when you would hit a compound you know they're especially in iraq we hit a couple places where you'd find those gold-plated ak-47s that the republican guard carried i mean i don't know much those things are worth but i know to a collector like dude i've never that's one thing i'll tell you i never saw one guy that i worked with ever do anything that was even slightly like not necessarily people you work with but i'm saying did you see anything with the military with that dude we again didn't really associate with them. Never went out on ops with them.

The only military guys that we went on ops with, and it was every now and then, was either Delta or Dev Group. That's it. And it was every now and then. And it was like, hey, you know, we're hitting this place and it's kind of too much for us to take down. Can you do this? And we'll do this. And we're like, okay, great. But that's about it.

Yeah. We didn't, you know, we're kind of like bastard children, so to speak. Like, you know, like the unsociable guys that live over there. But yeah, dude, we just didn't. And rightly so. We had no business. All right. Well, let's talk about those modern wars that are happening right now we've been hitting that all day yeah so without me going into details

you had been looking or i should say you had had people reach out for i'll say one of these war zones to potentially go over and do some i I guess we'll call it consultant work, which you have turned down and you're not going to be doing. But I don't care which direction you go here. If you go Ukraine, Israel, we'll hit both of them. But it seems to me like now the concept of a proxy war is fought openly in the media. And in the middle of it, you have two sidesroom, people trying to run the world type deal. Sure. So when you see things like this, obviously you know very well war is hell.

But do you think there's any ability in either those types of situations to get a real peace or is the whole point that there's never going to be a boy oh boy it's a heavy question but let's just start with it you know i've been to israel um absolutely beautiful country um amazing people i was there for six months um on a protection detail for the State Department. And our job was basically to take people from the consulate that was in Jerusalem to the embassy, which was in Tel Aviv at that time. I think it might've moved, but anyway, and we went all over the country, West Bank, Gaza Strip, Abu Dis, Ramallah ramallah but you know i don't know how a country that has been infected where's infected but like they've been at war so to speak forever not like a war war

constant terrorist attacks you know they're constantly having to monitor their borders they're constantly having to monitor their own streets like when i was there um there were seven bombings in one day yeah like you know and again this is a long time ago but you know i don't know how you take out the hatred that Hamas has. How do you just get rid of it? I don't think it's possible. I don't think it is. And it's passed down from generation to generation. And, dude, you've got to remember, you're talking about land that was given by God.

This is very religious stuff. You may not think so, or some people, but there's a lot of religion involved by God, like you're, this is very religious stuff. You may not think so, or some people, but there's a lot of religion involved in here too. Oh yeah. You know, the, the land and anyway, um, and it is a horrifically complex and Lord knows, I don't know one 10th of it, but it's a horrifically complex situation. I just read online, and this just goes to what you just said, how do you know what to believe? It's like, you don't. And you know what? You just don't. It's somebody's narrative or it's the truth. You don't know. But I just read online and it was, quote unquote, a legitimate news outlet, if you want to call it legitimate,

that they said that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, knew for a year prior to this attack. Did they know? I don't know. If they knew, why didn't they do something about knew, why didn't they do something about it? Well, according to this- Why didn't they do something about it? Well, according to this article, the word, and I may be wrong, was they said that the plan was too audacious. There's no way they could have pulled it off. But if it is true, they pulled it off with perfection. Because it even talked about in

this article that they were going to use paragliders and they were going to you know all this everything exactly the way they did it they executed it exactly the way they said in this article is it true i don't know i don't know and that's you know you don't know. And the bottom line is you're dealing with deep-seated hatred. Yes. Okay? Like beyond your comprehension and yours and mine. I think it's clear and let's call Hamas what they are. It's a terrorist organization, plain and simple.

And there seems to be – that's getting lost in some of these conversations these days. I understand this is a very difficult topic and everything, but there's some common sense things we have to have to talk about this. I mean, I had Remy Adeleke in here telling you about this off camera. He hunted them when he was in the Navy SEALs. He was telling me before, we've seen some of these stories come out where Israel has to bomb some of the ambulances and stuff. I remember there was one, I don't know, a few weeks ago where that happened, and I was on the phone with him a week into this war, and he's like, just to let you know, that shit's real. Like they do hide in hospitals. They do transport around in ambulances. They hide in schools. He's like, you're going to hear Israel get shit for bombing ambulances and stuff, and I'm telling you they're bombing terrorists when they do that. So sometimes there are things, but then we see there are two sides to this struggle. And I will tell you some of the actions of Israel have been maddeningly disappointing.

Taken out – I mean they took out a refugee camp and admitted this because they were targeting one terrorist or something on on the whole thing i mean the number of civilians and it's hard to know what the exact numbers are again i'm like you i don't i don't really know what to believe and i understand there has to be a response to such a horrible terrorist attack but the number of civilians they've they've seemingly indiscriminately taken out is wrong and what's disappointing to me is that you know hamas is gonna play dirty they're terrorists i mean we've all seen videos at this point of them you know people crying and they're holding a plastic baby they're not even like sleek about it sometimes there was another guy i don't know if we could

pull this up alessi but there's one dude who's known as the Hamas actor. He plays every role. You know who I'm talking about? He takes a video where one day he's crying with supposedly his son. The next day he's being operated on dead. The next day he's taking a drone video in the middle of the street. The next day he's like in the middle of a – he plays – I forget what he's even called. But like we see all that. I just don't like that from a government on the other side that's not a terrorist group, you're seeing some propaganda too.

And it makes it even more sickening because all it does is it ups the ante of anger on both sides. It gives more people political points to try to score and that leads to what? More death. Right. It's very – it's so sad to me yeah um to be honest with you when that happened excuse me when that happened i wasn't surprised yeah i'm like that's kind of like a long time coming i know it sounds terrible no i know what you mean but like you know just like here you know in our country you know if another terrorist attack happens a bit is anybody surprised like if you are where you've been living like where you you got your head buried in the sand somewhere um you know i have israeli friends um i yeah And you know, um, they, one thing I will tell you about Israel and I'm just going to say this because I seen it with my own eyes. They have a huge, huge national pride because if everybody

that is in their country, man or woman has to serve, I may be wrong. I think a woman has to serve two years and a man three. I may be wrong, but everybody has to serve in some capacity. I love that. I think that's amazing. And they have massive national pride there. Massive. A salt with my own eyes and rightly so, and they should. They're very proud people um and they've been through years and years and years of conflict and um i will tell you when it comes to counterterrorism they invented the game yes they invented the game and that's just let's just say it right now yeah when it comes to what modern day counter-terrorist units do and how they operate all goes back to to how they started i mean yeah of course you had the

british sas that you know um took it to the next level but actual like counter-terrorism operations israel was doing it way before anyone else was doing it and doing it at high levels yeah out of survival exactly out of survival not just like well let's just form this unit no we need people to take care of this stuff right now and they're very very good at it their intelligence service very very good you know what these places have such an advantage of us on in my opinion they don't think about today and tomorrow they're always thinking about a hundred years from now this is what we don't get in this country in this country it's now now now now now instant gratification yes yeah but we have no i've used this quote a bunch on the podcast and i'll keep

saying it we really have never been invaded before and it shows. I mean we were invaded in the War of 1812. Right, right, right. But we don't know how lucky we are with our geography. That's right. And with our enjoying the benefits of being the world power. Sure. These other places, I mean Israel is the size of New Jersey.

Yeah, small state. It's a little a little smaller right like they get it and they're surrounded they're surrounded yeah they're they're surrounded yeah and they have no choice and i'm not flag waving for israel i'm certainly not flag waving for hamas but i'm just saying you need to look at the facts like just take the emotion out of it for a second. You know, don't be pointing fingers like, ooh, what they did, what they did. When you force somebody to fight, you force somebody to fight. And let me tell you, those are not people we want to pick a fight with. I agree.

They have zero sense of humor about this shit. And I mean zero. Yeah. And what do you expect their response to be oh let's talk it's it's past talk okay the talk days are long long gone for those people you know it and in my opinion or they wouldn't be where they're at right now it's a tough spot politically with gaza and sure and there there's there's a logic here that needs to be appreciated for both sides. So Israel don't have to get into the whole deal, but essentially they give Gaza their autonomy in 05 or 06.

Right. Gaza is this 20-mile strip of land. It is separated geographically from the West Bank, which is the other part where there's a Palestinian stronghold. There are four borders. North border is Israel. East border is Israel. West border is the sea, which three miles out in there is now Israeli territory. And they can't let the guys by there because then they could – if bad people got through there, they could come around and invade by land in Israel.

The south border is Egypt, but more specifically it is Sinai, which is fucking no man's land. It's a desert often controlled by terrorists who don't give a fuck about any Palestinians. Let's make that clear. So Israel creates this spot and says, okay, you guys take that. We'll remove any Jewish people living there, whatever. It's a lose, lose, lose, right, and says, okay, you guys take that. We'll remove any Jewish people living there, whatever. It's a lose, lose, lose, lose, lose. Imagine if in 2006, Iraq were on our border in America. Instead of Mexico, it's Iraq. Would you ever let that border open? I get you.

Right? So what happens? Israel then can't let these people in. They also close off past three miles in the sea. My understanding, I think Anthony Bourdain talked about this back when he was alive, that the reef is like six, nine miles out. Maybe people can correct that in the comments or unless you could check it. But that means that any real fishing that happens, they can't do from Gaza because they can't even get out to where it is. It's past where they're going to get shot by Israeli boats because they're encroaching on Israeli territory. So you lock these people in, whatever it is, 2 million people into 20 miles. They can't really leave. They can't really build an economy. It's a self-defeating prophecy but also what is israel

supposed to do if they're trying to give them land to give on their own they're at least giving them something but then they it's not like they can just constantly open up their borders and have total cross-trade and everything when among the many good people that are living in palestine you have embedded as well people who are not good. This is one of those where I see it both ways there. Like when the Palestinians call an open-air prison, I agree. When the Israelis say we gave it to them so we could not have autonomy there and they could, but we can't really let them over our border all the time, I agree. It's so hard for me. Like there's no winner.

There's no path to victory to me. It is a highly convoluted situation. Far beyond, I don't think, even any American, unless you're at this super high level at the State Department, even understanding what is really going on. Like you may think, oh, yeah, this is what's going on. No, there's underlying currents that you probably have no clue about that only the senior leadership know about, you know, in, in man, all I can tell you is, is that situation going to go in my opinion, is that situation going to go away? No, never. Not in our life. And I pray for them that they do. I really do.

Who needs to live like that? You're dealing with a terrorist organization that's – they're not going to just throw their hands up and go, oh, you know what? My bad. That's right. You really think that's going to happen? No. Are you fucking kidding me? Like that ain't never going to happen.

Hell is going to freeze over before that happens. So it's – how do you win? Like you said, it's a lose, lose, lose. I don't know how you can win or at least have a favorable conclusion where you're like, you know what? That was actually worth it. I don't even know. Again, I'm not a strategic planner kind of guy. I'm just looking at it at

face value, man. That's a, that's a, that's a bad, bad situation, man. Anyway, you look at it and I'll be honest with you, dude. I, somebody asked me, um, a couple of years ago, they said, um, name, uh, two leaders in this world that you were like highly – that you hold in high esteem. And I named two women. One was Golda Meir. The old Israeli prime minister from the 60s. And the other one was Margaret Thatcher. Oh, yeah.

The Iron Lady. I've read books about both of them and these are in my opinion let me say it again in my opinion very strong courageous leaders that i in my opinion serve their country very very well what what do you think made gold in my ear so i can tell you right now dude she was the one at green lit the mission after the munich massacre and went to them and said, kill every one of those motherfuckers. Yep, there it is. Yep. Yep.

People can't see it off camera, but we have that. Do you know how big of balls you have to have, man or woman, doesn't matter, to greenlight a mission like that when the whole world is watching? Dude, you got my respect. You got my respect. And Margaret Thatcher was a prime minister when the Iranian embassy got taken over in – I don't even know what the date was, 72. I can't remember. And Green lit the SAS to go in and take down the Iranian embassy at Princess Gate on TV. She was a tough girl bbc was there like video i mean you can see videos of this fucking shit going down like dude these were exemplary leaders women but i hold them in very very high esteem i didn't even

mention two men i mentioned two women yeah it's kind of funny, right? But dude. She was tough, man. Bro, these are the kind of leaders that you need in our world today. You know, what you just watched and you need a wartime consigliere. Like, yeah, you can't be like, right? That's what you need right now. You're Italian. Come on now. I know. Consigliere.

Consigliere. There you go. But anyway, that movie, for those of you who are listening, if you've never watched Munich, I think you need to watch it. And they have to say fictionalized story. There ain't nothing fictional about it, bro. That's very real. They basically, Golda Meir basically greenlit their people to find these people wherever they were whatever country they're in and it wasn't a capture mission yeah they're targeted assassinations like i don't want to

i do not want to create excuses for war crimes or anything that could happen that is is beyond the pale and as i said i i got a serious problem with some of the actions Israel's taking right now. If we're going to understand both sides, like the Palestinian side, we can absolutely understand because they basically lack the ability to have a central government, have their own country, and I get it. I don't even know what to say to that. On the Israeli side, they have often been left alone. country and i i get it that's i don't even know what to say to that on the israeli side they have often been left alone and there's no better example than what you're talking about

right now i mean you have you have the olympics 27 years after the camps are freed in germany okay you want to show germany's denazified the world wants to give them a shot all right okay fine that's probably not what i would have done, but okay. And then all these Israeli athletes get taken hostage, two of them killed right away during the games. The games don't stop. Correct. The German police says, German government says, no, we got this. They have the Israelis there ready to help. At this point, Israel is known as having great special forces people, great intelligence, whatever.

No, no. You guys lay off. everyone gets killed that's right and the games go on as i said so if you're gold in my ear sitting there i can't imagine how lonely that's got to feel you're like shit we're 27 years after this shit and they're already forgetting about you know what i mean that creates a tough situation and yeah i didn even realize, to be honest with you, dude. I didn't even recognize what that was from until I saw that actor. I can't remember what his name is. Eric Bana. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's a really pretty good actor. But yeah. I'm going to take a video here so we can loop this in while we're talking because people can't see this. It's off camera. But I have the two images of – you can see it now on youtube probably but i have the two images at the end where they're standing in front of the skyline in manhattan yep very cool stuff yeah and i remember this scene he was basically talking to him and he's kind of like a quote unquote a case officer for the massad and just trying to talk to him about, you know, what was going on.

And, like, he played a great, a really, really great role. Oh, yeah. By far, that was his best role he ever played. And that would be very difficult playing that role because he was kind of like that retired guy, you know. What was he, like a bodyguard or something? I can't remember. Yeah, he was a bodyguard.

Yeah, he was a bodyguard or something i can't remember he was yeah he said he was a bodyguard he was bodyguard and it's based on a guy uval uval what's his last name can we look that up alessi the who munich is based on he lives in arizona now used to live in new york amazing movie i tell everybody to watch it i said this is and i've literally said this is how you handle business. You know what? You're going to act like this. We're going to let the dogs of war out on your ass. And heaven forbid, they find you.

So Yuval Aviv. Yuval Aviv. That's it. Yeah, yeah. That's the guy. He was – and there's all kinds of claims made because they have to deny this stuff. I get it. So there's like, oh, he's a liar, all this stuff. But go look up the murders that happened. mean that's exactly how they yeah yeah exactly

but again you know i have when like netanyahu i mean look dude he was put he's he's sitting in a hot seat right now like he had to make a decision on behalf of his country and right wrong whatever it's quite frankly none of our damn business, the way I look at it. I mean, it is, but it isn't. I mean, he has to do what's right for his people and what he feels what's right for his people. Not what's right for us.

Let's just say this right now. Not what's right for our freaking country. What's right for his country. Yes. Period. Part of the issue there is the people in this latest government that he has surrounded himself with, though, because he has surrounded himself, himself unfortunately with a lot of scumbags, a lot of people. I mean you see some of the quotes these guys say.

There's no – I'm the last guy to be histrionic about things and take things out of concept. But some of the things that these guys say publicly, I'm talking about some of the people in his cabinet right are genocidal i mean you heard the guy talking about the nukes and whatever so casually like yeah you know that's on the table get them out or at least ethnic from it there there's ethnic cleansing language happening there and to me you know it goes to show you just like we were talking about something else earlier it's about who you surround yourself, and he has miscalculated on that. But to your point, yeah, if a terrorist attack happens on your soil, you're going to take action. And yes, people are going to die, and it's ugly. It's horrible.

I agree. It's just a matter of – and it's a hard question. What is that proportionate response? And I do think we've passed that. So as we're talking right now, there have at least been some small days of mostly – not all the way, but mostly ceasefire to exchange some of these hostages. That's positive. But you're also dealing with all these tunnels and stuff too. I mean how much do you know about that, like the Hamas tunnels? Not a whole lot.

I've seen photos of them. They're quite extensive, probably more extensive than what the media is putting on. What's very ironic is that certain special operations units in the very recent past have been tasked with fighting in that environment. Kind of funny. Like down in the tunnels. Like, yeah, fighting in subterranean, yeah, structures. How do you even do that? Cause they're the one person can fit through a hallway. Aren't you just like caught right away?

Dude, it's, it's not, it's not an environment I would want to fight in. You're in a tubular environment that you may or may not have a way to hide or, you know, it's just, yeah, it just depends on the way these things are designed, but it's not, it's extremely restricting, you know, and casualties and something like that are going to be very, very high. I don't give a, I don't care what unit you're in. You get in a tick in a tunnel like that, you're going to take serious casualties. So yeah, yeah i mean i think leadership in our country saw stuff like this coming look it's not just in israel there are other countries i'm not going to mention them that have very complex tunnel systems that are used um oh yeah i mean

that's it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody um you know and quite frankly you're talking countries that aren't run by terrorists or something, like more normal countries? Yeah, yeah, sure. And yeah, and quite frankly, that is a skill set that I know for a fact is something that's important to modern day, quote unquote, urban warfare. You know, and it was years ago i mean if you think that tunnels and sewer systems and things like that haven't been used in the past in other countries to move people surreptitiously from one place to another covertly without you know being a you kidding me el chapo baby i mean seriously i mean think about it um i'm not going to get into details about it, but yeah, you better believe it.

That's a very, very covert, surreptitious way to move small elements and small teams through urban environments completely unobserved. Alessi, can you Google how deep underground the Hamas tunnels are? Because that's always something I think about. Like when they were doing the Second Avenue subway, which maybe I'm never over there anymore. Maybe they're still doing that over in New York, meaning they're building however many feet that is. I'm not going to guess. It's maybe 20 feet below ground or something like that. Right. You knew it was happening.

Right. You could tell. I'm not just talking like the construction tape you'd see in certain places. Right. You could hear some of the shit. Right. So it always blows my mind that this stuff can be built. We're talking miles underground or something like that, and no one notices.

And keep this in mind, too. And again, I don't want to get into details. Some of these tunnels have been there for many, many years. They're not new tunnels. How deep? 60 to 80. 60 to 80 feet that's wow yeah just think about and again not mentioning places but think about some ancient cultures and ancient cities they are there's tons of tunnels under i mean think about italy oh the vatican baby i mean come on now like if you don't think there's tunnels all

over the freaking place there you're you're you're you're you're yeah so again not getting into a whole lot of detail about that there's a ways to use that to your advantage if if that's the environment you're working in but that's not a place i'd want to fight no no no no and you see joe ted i just going go go go go go right down the fucking tunnel this is where tactical patients would come in man like you'd have look dude when you're doing like something that specific you're gonna have very unique sops and ttps that's gonna drive how you're going to fight in that environment like what's ttp? Tactics, techniques, and procedures. I was thinking trust the process. I'm interested in that too.

That's our TTP. You better trust the process, man. You know? But yeah. So like it's a whole nother, you know, challenge. Yeah. That was one thing. The Vatican keeps coming up on a lot of podcasts.

Now I never did, but I've been talking about how when when i lived in rome i lived like right by the vatican and i couldn't at the time i didn't like appreciate i mean i knew it was very short i was like oh wow cool the vatican but i didn't think about we saw it all the time like if i went there i'm like oh right yeah right but like even the you know the underworld of it maybe and what's down below there. I never really thought about that stuff at the time. But now I'm really thinking about it all the time. And if you're familiar at all with the subway system, the metro system in Rome. Rome's a big city.

The metro system, I always joked, I wish it was like that here because it's so easy. It's an X. It's like that. It's basically got, unless it's changed since I've been here because it's so easy it's an x it's like that it's basically got unless it's changed since i've been there it's basically got one line running uh top down diagonal one way and the other one running right across it that way so you learn the subway system in two seconds but thinking about it now i'll have to go look at them maybe we can pull up the map of the of the rome metro Alessi. But I'd love to know if part of that is built in such a way and it's built so simply because there are so many intricate underground tunnels that they can't be running into, which is like, whoa, baby. I start going all the way like the rat lines of World War II. I don't know how. Let me see.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. See that? Interesting i don't know how let me see yeah oh yeah yeah see that interesting didn't know that now they're oh let's see if you look at the pictures right there see the third one from the right yeah yeah click that one this is basically what it is see that so there's like another little one running in the middle but it's maybe that one's new but it's basically like an x yeah it doesn't it doesn't you know how new york oh yeah it's all over yeah same with washington same it's all over the freaking place yeah yeah yeah that was always fascinating to me

looking at it now but back back then it was just fascinating it's like oh wow cool it's simple yeah you know i wonder why yeah i wonder why that's interesting you you've got one thing you've kept on mentioning though a few times that is a little off topic, but I did want to ask about it. You keep on shouting out the British services for, I guess, some of their special forces techniques combined with their spy techniques. What makes them mention in the same breath, per se, with counterterrorism as Israel? Why are they so good? Well, so I've actually had the privilege and opportunity to train with, or not train with, but operate with guys from SAS when I was in Iraq, they were there in the same compound. So I got to know some of these guys, you know, very, um, one thing I'll

tell you about those dudes, man, they had probably the funniest sense of humor of any fricking dudes I've ever met they're fucking funny guys anyway they they what they did is they just took you know that game to the next level they were the ones that really got into um the dynamics of hostage rescue i mean that's what their bread and butter is, is hostage rescue. You know, they, um, for example, the selection process to get in the SAS Delta basically took their selection process and made it their own. So you're, you know, think about that for a second. And of course, you know, the guys, the original plank owners from Delta, you know, trained a lot with the SAS guys to get like, how do you do this?

How do you take down an airplane? How do you take down a train? How do you do this? So they were kind of like the first people that really honed it. Even though the Israelis were doing it prior, the British SAS guys really sharpened that sword, so to speak. And they're very good at it, obviously. And, you know, if you want to watch a really good movie, you know, watch the movie about the Princess Gate.

I'm trying to remember the name, but there's been several. One was very realistic according to like interviews I saw with guys that were there that were actually on that raid. But you can Google it and of it. There's been several. One was very realistic according to interviews I saw with guys that were there that were actually on that raid. But you can Google it and find it. You can just see how methodical. That's it right there. Six Days. Yep. That's a very, very good movie. You're not going to recognize any of the actors at all, but it's an excellent, excellent movie. I think it portrayed the regiment in a very, very good light, and it was an amazing hostage rescue. I mean, a couple of things went wrong, but they flowed. Like one dude, if I'm not mistaken, he was upselling.

He was rappelling down the backside of the building and got knotted up up something happened with his carabiner and he was just basically hanging there above a door that they were getting a breach or a window or something and anyway just like stuff like that that's where those units make their money because anywhere else that's like uh-oh and everything comes to a screeching halt right not there not at that level it's just critical thinking skills come in what do we do i think they cut the guy down something very quickly and another guy got caught on fire going through the window or some shit like a i think a curtain or something fell on him and anyway just dude kept flowing and everybody talks about we get into training stuff here a real second but like everybody talks about you know know, the tenets of CQB, speed, surprise, violence of action.

Well, actually, there's a fourth tenet that nobody wants to talk about, and that's momentum. You have to keep the momentum. You can't just get bogged down in a hallway or in a room or, you know, whatever. You have to keep moving. When you become stagnant in that environment, bad shit happens. So like when I've taught it and I talk about, you know, the tenets of CQB, yeah, it is speed, surprise, violence of action, but I also add in momentum. And I think it's very applicable to, and I didn't come up with that just an FYI. It's not my thing. I've heard other people talk about it. People that I respected. I'm like, you know what?

That fucking makes sense because that's absolutely what I experienced. Like you cannot like come to a screeching halt in a hallway or especially in a hostage rescue type situation, like where you have to get to the, to the hostages quickly. You can't be fiddle farting around in a hallway and like, you got to get there immediately. And how do you pick up that momentum? Well, that's what flashbangs and, you know, distraction devices are for. And anyway, not getting into all the tactics, but anyway, but yeah, like, but a lot of people don't talk about it. And it's really strange because, and I'll talk about really experienced guys. And to me, I ain't the most experienced guy in the world, but to me, it makes sense. Yeah. Speed. Absolutely. Surprise. Yes. Violence of action. Yes. And a lot of people even get that

third one wrong. Like what is violence of action? And it's actually, to me, a mindset. It is an overwhelming mindset that I am better trained than you. I'm physically stronger than you. I I'm better, better, better, better. And that just gives me that ability to deliver like violence of action on the target. Like wham, like there's no hesitation. There's no doubt when I come through this door, you're going to lose period. Like that to me. And some people may disagree with me, but to me, that's what it means. Cause that's what I felt when they talked about it. Like violence of action was a mindset with me. And did I actually have that day one? No, I did not. Didn't have it, you know, had a a little bit but as i got better and better and you know worked with

guys that exemplified that i'm like ah kind of light bulb went off like i get it now like you know you're like i like when these people come for you you have no you have no chance and that's what it is like you literally don't have a snowball's chance in hell surviving and that's to me that's what violence of action is like you know it's just it's a mindset it's very powerful dude it's very powerful when when remy was in here and i remember you had some similar sentiments too but he put it like exact on the point he was talking about how at the highest levels like in the navy seals if if they've been able to identify like one core gene that makes

someone oh this person's gonna be in and they're gonna make it and they're gonna be the guy they want he said no they haven't there's just there's some intangibles that can only be seen once they're put that's right in the spotlight for something not necessarily on the battlefield yet but you know some of the stuff like what you laid out last time some of the stuff you even get put through this just there's there's a thing you can't say what it is but it's not it's not tangible and you dude let me tell you you can't just look at somebody right that guy's a stud right that let me tell you, you can't just look at somebody and go, that guy's a stud. Right. Let me tell you, those guys are usually the first ones that quit.

Yep. In my experience. That's what you said too. Then you look at this guy like, dude. And then guess who's standard graduation? Yeah. He said there was one guy, I think this was Remy who said this. He said there was one guy who was like hardcore, crazy triathlete, someone that they had been asking to come do buds for a long time. Sure.

And he finally agreed to do it and everyone thought, you know, of course. He's going to smoke it. He was gone. He was gone. again this is what i coach people it's great to be physically strong which you have to be to be in a special operations being special forces or seals or whatever you have to be physically strong give me a break dude but without that mental toughness it's like having a ferrari body with a volkswagen engine in it it just ain't gonna work. And when you start heaping, especially a program like Bud's, you know, Bud's is an amazing, I've never been to it, but it's an amazing

selection course to get to the SEAL teams. And it's very, very well thought out. And it is, its sole function is, I'm sure like the first phase of it with Dorian Hellwick, it's just to weed out the guys that may be mentally or physically strong enough to do it, but they just don't have it mentally. They just don't. And I'm sure you could ask anybody, Sean or any of these guys that have been in the SEAL team, just like SFAS selection. It's a physically demanding, wear your ass down day after day after day, where it gets to a point where yeah you're a physical stud but you're past that now you got blisters on your feet that are this big i lost all my freaking toenails i had a stress fracture i mean that physical fitness is not going to get you through that it's just not your mind is going to get you through that you've got to take yourself

to a place where you just kind of the pain is still still there, but it's dulled. I don't know how to explain it. No, you're explaining it beautifully. Yeah. It's dulled. It's like, yeah, this fucking sucks, but it's dulled. Or you're concentrating on somebody else. Like, and that's why they're so big on team stuff. Like I would concentrate on another guy that maybe was having a trouble and focus on him. Hey, dude, let me help you out. And you're not worrying about your pain right now. I'm worried about him. That helps. Does it make it go away? No. Does it dull it? Yeah, it sure does. Yeah, it sure does. To a manageable point where you're like, I can deal with this for another day. And then you get to

the next day. I can make it to dinner. You know what I mean? That's how you make it the dinner you know what i mean that's how you that's how you make it that's how you make it through courses so you're gamifying it in a way kind of but you're not looking at like graduation like i looked at sfas like the guys like dude just make it the dinner every night just say i'm gonna show up the dinner i'm showing up the dinner every night that's it okay you can't be thinking a week or two weeks or three, like you just, dude, you can't, if you do, I think that's dangerous. You know, I think you're, you're biting off more. You can chew, but just, I'm going to make it to dinner. You make the dinner and like, oh, cool. I made it. I can make it one more day, one more day. And that's how you get through courses. And dude, I'll be the first one to tell you. I was not prepared for SFAS. I showed up with

brand new boots. As a matter of fact, I remember when I dumped one to tell you, I was not prepared for SFAS. I showed up with brand new boots. As a matter of fact, I remember when I dumped my shit out, the one instructor was like, don't even unpack. He looked at me and said, don't even unpack. Yeah. And so I suffered, you know, a lot of guys, there's guys that, dude, there are guys that make it through selection courses like SFAS and Ranger School and Buds that come out the other side kind of like, yeah, that sucked, but they just were prepared mentally, physically, emotionally. And I'm sure you could ask guys besides myself.

Like, yeah, there were a few guys like that that just, meh, you know, I wasn't one of them. You know, I suffered. I wasn't prepared. I didn't take the time to break my boots in. I didn't do enough ruck marching. You know what though? In getting to know you over the past year, you're one of these guys that there's something in you that – and we see this in a lot of guys who do high level military stuff it's not just that you crave the action you also crave the challenge needing to get even bigger as you go like you crave the the difficulty of things it's almost like that's that conquering gene that we all are born with because we're animals right right? There's something deep inside of us that makes us need to feel like we got to the top of something. And you're always chasing that through. For a long time, it was adventure vis-a-vis serving your country, but it's never really stopped. I mean, you do it now with your teaching in a lot of ways, constantly trying to push the boundaries, depending on who the clientele is of what you can do. But this was – we haven't talked about it yet on camera.

We should probably do it now. Like this is what dual survival was too. I mean obviously this is a reality show on Discovery. But we've already put up at least one of the pictures. Like you really went to these places. You really got dropped into the worst spots. You really – yes, you had camera crews following you around. But one minute you're in the middle of a barren, dry desert that's 127 the next minute you're on an ice cap in fucking nova scotia or something and

with nothing else around and you have to survive and to me sitting at home that shit seems crazy to me right like i i enjoy my air conditioning and you know so do i but he wants in a while but it's i can't take my eyes off it it's very it's very cool to watch like before you did that show obviously you did crazy service where you did have to get dropped into most dangerous places and live off the land sometimes and stuff like that but did you have an interest in that kind of thing previously that even predated your military days to be on tv no no no to to do things that you know to be like a survivalist to be on TV? No, no, no. To, to do things that, you know, to be like a survivalist, to be someone who has to go into wild places and do wild shit. No, it wasn't really. No, I liked to hunt and fish. When I was a kid, I used to, you know, uh, I was a big bow hunter

growing up and I love being out in the woods. Don't get me wrong. Like that was my sanctuary because I wasn't an athlete. I was a train wreck growing up as a kid. I never played sports and I was that guy. Like if they had a pickup baseball game, like, oh, you get Ted Eye. Like I was that kid. But I was always very comfortable in the woods, especially at night, which was weird. Like I felt I should be there. Like I felt very safe and very comfortable where I think other kids would be like, eh, this is kind of creepy.

But to be honest with you, man, I've always had a very big chip on my shoulder. That makes sense. Growing up, you know, just never had the confidence as an athlete i never had the confidence as a as a you know getting good grades because i didn't you know um shitty family life you know parents divorced just you know again i'm not saying this is i'm pity it's i wouldn't want any other way it's just the the cards that i dealt. And I think that chip on my shoulder came at a very, very early age. Um, probably like my parents divorced when I was seven and it just, um, it's stuck with me. And so like losing to me is extremely distasteful. I don't like the feeling

of losing, especially when I have people telling me you're going to lose like my family did. You're not going to make it through Marine Corps boot camp. Like straight up. I had cousins and uncles saying that you're going to embarrass the entire family. Don't do this. That fucking pissed me off. It pisses me off right now just talking about it. And I've done it and it still pisses me off.

You know what I mean? Like it's a weird, weird thing. And I'll tell you one other thing that was said to me, um, that I didn't bring up on the last podcast, but I remember when I was going through the little psychological piece of, of when I was in ground branch and talking to a psychologist, they're looking for what was referred to as a predatory gene. So I was like, what the fuck is that? And the only way I could explain it to you is it's not the thrill of the kill.

It's the chase. Do you know what I mean? Yes. It's not the last. I want it like a lion. I want to chase your ass down. That's the thrill of it. The last.

That's over and done with like that. It's the. That gets me excited. That makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I like that feeling. I know it sounds kind of odd. No, it sounds exactly right. But it's a predatory type gene that they're looking for or mentality, whatever you want to call it. Because understand that's what it takes to get to the last, to put yourself in the position to flex cuff somebody and say, you're coming with me or pep, pep, pep, pep.

Done. Yeah. It's one or the other, but you have to get to that point and you have to like the thrill of the chase to get there. I hope that makes sense to people who are listening. Yeah. If it don't, I may be explaining it incorrectly. No, it's good. But I think that's another thing.

I've always had that weird thrill of just pursuing something and trying to get good at it and failing, obviously, many, many times growing up. I just was not – I wasn't that guy. Like, dude, I was not the poster boy. Let me tell you. I was not and I am not that guy. Like, dude, I was not the poster boy. Let me tell you, I was not, and I am not the poster boy for special operations. I was very lucky that I was with the right people at the right time to mentor me, to take me under their wing and make me a better version of myself that I would have never been on my own. Never, never without the help of these people.

And you're going to be interviewing one of them without mentioning his name, big time mentor of mine. Without him, I, you know, I would not be the best, a better version of myself. Oh yeah. And there's been several people in my life like that. And you know, the credit actually belongs to them. I am nothing more than a, um, a person of, of experiences in just being around, you know, high performance people where, you know, good isn't good enough. You know, you raise the bar bar even if it's that much you're raising it and then a little more and a little more like i would have never most people don't get to live a life like that where it's like i'm good at what i do and that's i'm good enough

that's most people i just at an early age i wasn't that person but it was just really frustrating because i couldn't be that person i wanted to be it i just didn't have it physically and mentally you know what i mean and it just took years to and i'm still not there i mean give me a break dude i just i'm always i'm work in progress i always tell it to my friends i'm like man it's it's a never it's a zero i call it a zero-sum game it's like it's like a moving target you can never hit right you're just never quite catching up to it you know um and i like that i think if i ever got to the point julian that i was like ah i've done it all i don't i can't even say that it's so distasteful to me because it's like there's always something else you can do there's always another everest you can climb so to speak whatever that is in your life but i think when people get

complacent and they just get comfortable where they are as you kind of like die like to me like it's not you're not you're just existing you're not living you know what i mean like you and i both know the difference of of existing and living two completely different things i don't want to exist you you don't you live yeah i want to live dude i want to live and i live i try to live every day and i said this before you know like when i go to the gym i've got a picture of my friend mike that died in that helicopter crash what happened what happened there we were shooting another show long story short um and you're going to get the interview one of the guys that was there um it was dale comstock by the way i'll say the name i'm excited to bring him in

yeah dale's been a longtime friend of mine um been there done that makes me look like an amateur um he was in ground branch with me um we coach people together and just, he's been a very, very good friend of mine through thick and thin. And I've learned a tremendous amount from him, tremendous is so ironic. It was, it was about three o'clock in the morning, very cold. It was in California. And there was a scene that required a helicopter and the bird had landed. The pilot briefed everybody. And I'll never forget this man. It was me, Dale and Mike standing there in the, the, the, the helicopter was warming up blades returning.

And I said, who's been in a helicopter crash. I'm not joking. You can't even make this shit up. And Dale said, well, I wasn't at, he was in a black Hawk to crash in Panama. Actually, I think he broke his back. Like he was in a full body cast. So he'd been in a helicopter crash and Mike was in a helicopter crash and Ranger battalion. And so I'm like, well, I haven't been in one, so I'm going to go first. So it was me, the pilot and the cameraman behind me. And we went and did our scene, threw a couple of rucksacks out, came back. And when we landed, Mike was standing there. And I literally said before I left, you just guys figure out who's going next. Just flip a coin, whatever. And it, so be it. Mike went on the bird. And so I got off the bird. I went into this warming, uh, they had like a warming trailer. Cause it was really cold.

They had like hot chocolate and coffee and stuff in there. And I walked in, I heard the bird take off. And about five minutes later, this young lady came in hysterical crying that she said she heard on the radio that the helicopter just crashed. And I'm like, what? And she was like, literally hysterical. And I'm like, give me a set of keys. We had a bunch of cars and I knew where they were going to film. It was like, it's dried out, uh, lake bed.

So I got in a vehicle and I drove there and it was literally, you know, like a half a mile away. And so I drive down into it and I'm looking, I don't see anything. And I go up on the Hill. I don't see anything. And I'm like, this is bullshit. So I drive back down. And as I'm driving across, I look out and I see a flashlight like way, like a couple hundred yards away. I'm like, oh, they must've just had a hard landing or whatever. Like it just hadn't clicked yet. So I get out of the car and I start walking. And as I'm walking, the first thing I noticed, I started smelling gasoline or JP4. I started smelling fuel. I'm like, hmm, they must've ruptured their fuel tank or something, whatever. And I keep walking and then I'm getting closer and I

could start seeing pieces of fuselage of the helicopter. And as I get closer, then I can see the fuselage, all the props are tore off of it was in a face down configuration and just a mess. And Dale was standing there and there was another gentleman who's a former seal that was actually on the show as well um and i went hey dale it was very casual i mean you can ask him i said dude give me a sit rep and he just looked at me and he said they're all dead killed them all and uh dude even to this day i have a hard time like your survivor's guilt over oh fuck what do you think but yeah it uh and to this day i really don't know what happened but you know dale will tell you the story too like i think he was up on the high ground he said he

heard that he saw the helicopter fly right over him like went down into this dry dry riverbed and so anyway yeah and um i i just remember saying to him you know where's where's mike's body and he says it's over there um it's about 30 40 yards away from the plane crash but the cameraman was right next to the fuselage. Very obvious he was dead. The pilot was still in his seat, strapped to his seat on his side about 20 yards away. And then Mike, his body was 30, I kept hearing a voice saying, medic, medic. And it was Dale. And, you know, I didn't really understand at the time the gravity of what happened. You're not in a war zone. Nope. This is supposed to be just all fun. Yep. Yep.

Wow, man. Yeah, it was horrific. It was horrific. The worst thing I ever saw. So I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, it was horrific. It was horrific. The worst thing I ever saw. So I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. What happened? Did they determine pilot error or something like that?

To this day, I don't really know what happened. I can just tell you when I was on the bird with the guy, I was sitting right next to the pilot. He wasn't flying with nods. He was flying with instruments. It was very, very dark. It was a very, very dark night, like zero loom. So I don't know, but I was told that this pilot, you know, was a very experienced pilot. Obviously, you know, they're going to vet people flying helicopters and making sure that they've been maintenance and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I didn't own the helicopter.

I didn't own the rental company. But supposedly this guy was a very experienced pilot for filming those types of scenes at night. And what I think might have happened, and again, I'm not a pilot, but I've talked to other people is the bird was flying it was cold out remember i told you it was 30 degrees maybe he was flying up here and then went over the lake bed which is all cold air and probably lost lift again i'm i'm spitballing right now guys i'm not a pilot i don't know jack about jack when it comes to stuff but i'm just being told from other people that do have that kind of experience because remember cold air sinks hot air rises and so he might have went over that area because it was like a big dip went down and just lost lift and just nosed in so yeah man that that whole thing you know i went to mike's funeral and just dude it was just you know

life can be so cruel like dude did i expect that but let me let me i do want to say something i do want to say something and i i want to say this because this person saved me probably from a lifetime of medication. When I went to Mike's funeral, Mike had an amazing wife, he had kids, an amazing family, mother and father. I remember distinctly at his wake after the funeral, his dad came up to me and he says, come here. This is his father. He just lost his son. He said, come here, take a walk with me. I said, yes, sir.

And take your time, man. To this day, it's so hard, man. It's really hard to see a dear friend of mine die like that. But anyway, his father just said to me, you know, Joe, Mike wanted to do this with you. You didn't force him to do this. And I know what you're thinking right now. He goes, you need to get that shit out of your mind right now he goes this is not your fault i mean dude who does that who does that say can't even imagine being in his shoes i don't even have kids that's what i'm saying how do you how do you have the courage and and the the the strength to just take somebody off to the side after you just lost your son and take the time to freaking say that to somebody because he's a good person number one yeah and

number two he also knows that's the case. It gives him peace too. And I think the last thing – and again, I have been fortunate in my life to not have to sit in a situation like that where someone extremely close to me died like that. But I think that when you are in that kind of pain as that guy was and you were too obviously, the last thing you want is the casualties of the war that pain you don't want other people to have to hang on to things that have nothing to do with them because i know that that has to be playing with your mind all the time that oh what if i had been second and he'd been first i i that's a human thing right but you did nothing wrong yeah you know life this is where unfortunately and none of us have a good answer for it life just fucking blows sometimes man oh yeah and sometimes great people yeah don't make it yeah and good people die yeah good people it's the cruelest thing ever

but i gotta be honest with you dude that was probably the kindest act of in my entire life it's very cool they did that at that yeah stage too because i'll tell you what dude i'd be fucked i'd be mentally fucked right now because of the guilt i mean it's impossible to put into words but just kind of replay what i just told you and imagine like the conversation we had and we've been in a helicopter accident like you can't even make this shit up yeah and 10 minutes later i'm standing over his body because a helicopter crashed like but yeah it was a testament to mike's family and how mike was do you know i mean like he was he was a guy that i try to exemplify and and when i work out i told you his picture every day is in my gym bag and it

sits up right on my gym bag. So when I go get water, he's looking right at me because he, and the reason I use him is not, I've weaponized it is because every day he used to call me, you know, like six o'clock in the morning, wake up Skippy, time to go to the gym, except Sundays when he went to church every day, he called me and I'd be just getting my lazy ass out of bed. He's already at the gym. Do you see what I mean? So I took a very tragic, painful situation and weaponized it. It took me a while. Let me tell you, it took me a while, but it has served me well and i work out now

like i'm not gonna make it home and i and i've had people ask me well who's that guy who's that guy i said well he was a friend of mine well why do you have his picture and i tell him and like that's really like i had one kid that's really morbid i'm like dude no 10 more years from now when you experience a little life shitty sides maybe you'll come back and say oh i get it now there's nothing wrong no there's no they're not at all dude it's a tribute to him and i i use it to strengthen me because i do work out now like i'm not gonna make it home this is i can tell christ that fucking veins been aiming a goddamn 45 at me all day it's it's it's it's it's one of those things

where i hope anybody listening and i i mean look dude i'm not embarrassed to get emotional about this stuff i'm a human being it was painful and it hurts right now just thinking about it because he was one of my closest friends you know and he went he'd been to war, been to Ranger Battalion, SF, like he'd done it all to die. Like, like, dude, it is just, it's one of those things where I can be 99 freaking years old in my deathbed and still can't come to terms with it. But because his father took that five minutes, five minutes probably saved me a lifetime of torment. Again, it's still emotional for me, but I can't even imagine where I would be emotionally if he wouldn't have done that. Have you ever talked with his dad since then? Once. Yeah, I have. And dude, I'll be honest with you. I, um, you know, I've seen their family, uh, once it's just,

dude, it is so painful. I've been, I've gone to his grave before alone. Um, no one's even known Adonis cause I obviously went to his funeral and it's one of those things where it's very difficult to look in the face of people that you've done – I hadn't done it, but I feel responsible. I've caused them so much pain. It's hard to even look at them, knowing it's not my fault. I don't know how to explain it. You didn't cause it, but you didn't do it. You know what I mean? But in my mind, like if I could rewind it, dude, I would have got on second.

Like seriously, if God would have said, Joe, here's what's about to happen. Of course. This plane is going to crash. Either you or your – send him first. Send me on, yeah. I'm not – I wouldn't – you know what I mean? So like it's very, very difficult to experience that. And I'll be honest with you, man.

I – of course, I've talked to people about this. Yeah. Did I talk to somebody, a professional about it? Yeah, sure did. Good. Oh yeah. And for those of you listening right now, let me just give you a little word of advice. Don't be that person. And I'm strong enough. You know what? You're a human freaking being. Okay. You're not a robot. We're not artificial intelligence. We have emotions. Okay. When you experience something, whatever it is, that is that emotionally wrecking and you can't handle it, I highly suggest you go talk to somebody. Yeah. Maybe, maybe family members can help you with it maybe it wasn't

helping me it just wasn't you know and i talked to dale about it and you can ask dale ask dale when you talk to him it put the kibosh to him to think about it they're literally the flip coins you know like you go or me he'd be dead he'd be dead it would have been his funeral and i'm sure he'll tell you his version on it and dale Dale's a tough son of a bitch, dude. Yeah, he is. Okay? He's physically and mentally one of the strongest men I know. And you ask him about that and see what he says.

Because believe me, I've had many a conversation with him alone. I visited him down in Florida and we talked about it. And he gets kind of pale-faced talking about it and he you know he gets kind of pale face talking about it you know it's a very scary event that happened where literally the flip of a coin you lived or died you know and so i mean think about think about the context of your whole career though too how many i can't imagine sitting in your seat being all the places you were like this Like this is one obviously where you lost someone after your career too. I mean it's not on the battlefield either, but let's put them all together for a second. All the bullets that whizzed by your head that could have been two inches this way or two inches the other way and things are different.

Or the bullets that didn't whizz by a friend's head that took them out because last time you talked about guys you lost along the way in your career and that bothers you every bit as much. It's like I can't imagine dealing with the gravity of it, but as someone who's not dealing with it and in life at full force with your full heart behind it for the guy next to you. And you've come out to be able to talk about this now and be alive and have every limb, and that's a beautiful thing. But the people you lose along the way, I can't imagine what that pain is, but that's not on you. It's not. And I'm sure that that, as you've laid out, it keeps you up at night sometimes thinking about, well, what if it were me or whatever. But the best you can do is live your life to be an example to others and also make those people proud, and you're doing that. I appreciate that, man.

Yeah, I try to honor guys that I've lost, friends that I've lost, Mike, and just live in the best life I can because that's what they would want. I've literally gone to the gym, no joke, with a kidney stone and puking in the garbage can. I'm a dude. I'm not kidding. I believe you. Yeah. And, and like, I would, I've been very, very lucky that that demon that I had on my shoulder

was removed by his father because I'm here to tell you bro it was overpowering like i can't even it was like i was walking around in a cloud like i just i couldn't focus on anything except guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt like he had five kids like matter of fact, when I went over to his body, there was a couple things. He had a radio on him that was broken. I kept that. And I kept one of his shoes. But one of the other things that I kept, and I found a shirt because his shirt had been torn off in his jacket, but it was this thing that his son made.

I think it was like a one-year-old or two-year-old son. I can't remember. But it was like these little chits, good for one hug, good for one. Dude. Oh, my God. It was, dude, it was just, it would, it would stop a Mack truck in its tracks. It was so bad. I saw it laying there and I'm like, I'm keeping this. So I kept, I have a shoe, the radio and those notes from his son. And I have in a very special place. I don't, I don't, I don't look at it often, but sometimes when I need realigned perspective, like, Hey, in my home. And no one's going to know.

Um, but I'll go look at it. And that's like instantaneous, like a light switch click. Yeah. Instantaneous in a split second, it happens. And I'm glad I kept it because those things,

because it, it is a physical thing that I can touch and see. Yes. You know what I mean? Like one of the things that was bothering me to this day and not all the time, but like sometimes when I smell gasoline, um, when it first happened for probably six months, every time I went and popped gas, it was cause I, the smell of gasoline. Takes you back. Yeah. It smell is the strongest emotion or the strongest sense jim diorio's talked about that a lot people don't know that it's not what you hear or see it's what you smell yep and so you talked about that yeah and so you know every now and then dude every now and then it'll take me back to me walking through the brush at night and smelling gasoline.

What happens when that sets in? Does it kind of take you over and you hallucinate? No, no. It just kind of – I don't get caught up in the moment of what happened. It just makes me for a couple seconds, takes me back to like, I can just close my eyes and just see like a bunch of, you know, sagebrush and sand and smelling the gasoline.

I can see you seeing it right now. Huh? I can see you seeing it. Oh yeah. It's a bit, I don't get caught up in it. Thank God. I don't,

I don't get taken out of the moment, so to speak, but it's enough for me to think about it, you know? And I'll be honest with you. I don't not so to speak, but it's enough for me to think about it, you know? And I'll be honest with you. I don't not want to stop thinking about it. I know that sounds really weird. No, I understand. I don't want to. It gives me strength now. It gives me strength when I, when I, when I think about it and I see how fragile life can be and how quick the light switch can be turned off. You know,

I talk to people all the time, just because you're 30 years old and you're in stud shape and you're this, and you got money, that truck driver driving down the road that just fell asleep at the wheel, it makes you a hood ornament. You're done. In an instant. So, you know. God, it's so weird. Dude, it's true.

And I can give you many, dude, there was a bad, bad accident down the road from where I live a month ago whole family wiped out guy crossed literally down 24 27 the guy fell asleep crossed boom head on killed the whole family and you know like do you think they knew that was going to happen no didn't um but yeah i mean that and that's another thing i want to i don't know why this is coming up but i'm i mean we're just kind of free flowing right now. But you know, I remember after Mike passed, you know, this is really hard for men to do, but not women. But for the guys that are listening, if you've got close friends, I mean, close friends that you've known for years and you love them as friends, tell them, tell him, don't let your ego get in the way.

Tell him, hey, man, I love you. And I did that. And I remember one of the buddies I said that to, he, I thought he hung up the phone. I'm like, hello. And he's like, what did you say? And I said, I love you, dude. I love you as a friend. I'm glad you're in my life. Dude, I think that's really important because guess what I didn't get a chance to do with Mike? Didn't get a chance to say that to him. Yeah. Because of my ego. I don't know.

I think you've got to give yourself a little credit. I mean, whatever it was. You have the perspective to know that it's something you want to do now because you didn't do it. Yeah, 100%. But it wasn't out of a bad place that you didn't do no but now after that tragedy it has opened my eyes like you know what you need to do this and and just as a person like tell your mother and father your brothers and sisters you love them because guess what someday you're not going to be able to you don't have them yeah they're gone and i'm not trying to be morbid here, but that's life.

You know, that's what happens. We all die. And it's a terrible thing known if I would have just, it's too late. If I should have, would have, could have, didn't, too late. You can cry over somebody's grave all you freaking want. Doesn't matter. It's too late. Yeah.

And the odd part about it too is you don't want to think about life in fear of the morbid you know what i mean correct it's it's a tough but what you're saying is very important i want to be i don't want to be misheard here it's just like i look at my life and you know i've had some awful losses along the way but i think compared to like a lot of people i know it's been a really good life right like i haven't i haven't had i don't even want to put these things in the universe but you can use your imagination yeah you understand what i mean and i i find myself thinking about that sometimes because i'm like i try not to get into this zone but i'm like

when is that gonna happen when is that unexpected that clock gonna strike midnight right and how and you don't know how you'll deal with it till till you do but on the way there i try to stay conscious of that because i try to be that person who just so much ascends the text i mean like you you know how busy i am we talked about this day i don't need to relitigate that like we're all busy right everyone's busy everyone's got shit going on whether it's their job their family or coming whatever it is right but like i will be sitting here sometimes in the studio editing late at night and i'll be like damn i haven't talked to that motherfucker in a year and i'll send it off because it's even like a karma piece in the universe like i need to make

sure that he or she is doing well right now. Dude, that's good. You know, and I hope I do it enough because like you said, when you, when you get to that moment, if you feel like you didn't, it's heavy. Yeah. Everybody says, oh, I don't want to live with regret. That is regret. Yes. Let me just tell you right now, that is regret shit right there like oh if i would have just taken 10 seconds hey bro how you been i haven't talked to you in a while yep i had a right i i had a i think a good example that i i lost my grandmother somewhat recently and about um three four weeks before she died i prioritized taking my grandma

and grandpa out to dinner good on you man and i got it's it's weird because she she was unbelievably spry and everything you had never known anything was starting to go wrong but what was happening was her mind she hadn't had alzheimer's yet but it was getting there right gonna be there you know what i mean and i remember sitting at dinner with her that night and looking across and she moved great she acted great everything was great you'd never know anything was wrong but i'm looking at her for the first time it's like the lights are on but she's not all the way home she knew who i was she knew what i did she knew shit about me but she's not right all there and i remember thinking to myself it is a just like in that moment not even being present for a moment like stepping out and being like it is a really good

thing that i am here and doing this right now and god damn maybe this will be the last time i remember thinking that well and it was unexpected when she died a month later but i think that was a coincidence no no it wasn't and that's why i like it that's not a coincidence i have such peace over that good you know i got to enjoy my grandmother that's right so many years in my life like i'm so blessed but i i've had such it's a good example for me personally because i've had such peace over her death in that way i wish she was still here i miss her like crazy but i don't have that regret you know what i mean i'm glad you don't yeah it's a terrible it's a terrible type of regret because it's like a it's a regret

that you can't replace with something you know i mean you can't just go well i regret this but i'm gonna do this to take there is no trump card you can throw on the table. That's right. It's just – it is what it is, and there it is. And it's in a box, and it's there for the rest of your life. And so, anyway, I just – man, I think everything we're talking about, I think this is very important. I mean, that people understand that. Just don't take people for granted, man.

100%. You know what? Don't take people for granted, man. 100%. You know what? Don't take them for granted. And for those of you, the guys that are listening, you know, try it. Try it out for size. You might like it. It feels good. I like my best friends that know I care about them.

I do. You know what I mean? Guess what? This lives forever, too. They know now. Yeah. I mean, I want them to know that they're what this lives forever too they know now yeah i mean i want them to know that they're important to me and that that they make me happy and i'm blessed to have them in my life i think that's so important man it's just we got enough bullshit and stress in

our lives to put that out there just it just feels good yeah you know what i mean and feeling good you know i think that's a healthy thing 100 100%. You know? Well, I appreciate you sharing all that too. That's a heavy thing. And like I said, I hope you do know you're carrying the memory of Mike well. And I think that's a beautiful thing. But on a lighter note, we started. Moving on. Yeah.

Can we laugh a little bit now? No, just kidding. Just kidding. Got heavy in here for a minute. But we had started on that, getting into a little bit now? No, just kidding. Just kidding. Got heavy in here for a minute. But we had started on that, getting into a little bit of the dual survival stuff and really starting on talking about it. But how did that opportunity even come up? How did you get offered to do this and drop around the world? So first.

All right, guys. That takes us to the end of part one of two of my new sit-down with Joe Tedai. That's right. We have a second episode coming, and that conversation was completely different. We talked all about Joe's time hosting Dual Survival on Discovery Channel and how to survive out in the craziest places in the wilderness around the world. It was a riveting, riveting convo. So if you're not already subscribed, please smash that subscribe button and hit that notifications bell so you find out when that new episode comes out. Also, if you're not following the show on Instagram, make sure you head over there and follow at Julian Dory podcast where we post daily clips from the show every single day.

And also you can follow me on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description below. And finally, if you haven't seen Joe Tedai's first episode with me from last June, the link is on the screen right now and it's in the description below and finally if you haven't seen Joe Tedda's first episode with me from last June The link is on the screen right now, and it's in the description below