Julian Dorey Podcast - 😳 [VIDEO] - CIA Mercenary Got Paid $200,000 To Fight Al-Zarqawi | Chris Cathers • #136

Episode Date: February 11, 2023

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Chris Cathers is a former Green Beret & CIA Paramilitary Specialist. Cathers did 12 deployments to 16 different countries over a span of two decades. Currently, Chris has a rare Stage 4 bone cancer due to chemical and waste exposure he experienced while serving abroad. His upcoming documentary, “Brother’s Keeper,” will address the PT5 epidemic among Veterans. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Craziest fans in the country 2:37 - Chris’ childhood 7:54 - The time Chris’ dad arrested him; Early army days 11:56 - What Green Berets do; Languages in the Special Forces 20:12 - Where Chris went after training; “The Dog” 30:29 - We’ve never been invaded & it shows 39:22 - Misinfo & Politicians 47:12 - Deploying to North Africa; Counter-poaching & Demining 54:46 - The rise of Al Qaeda 1:00:03 - Chris gets back in the game with CIA 1:06:57 - Chris revisits days in Iraq 1:14:39 - The people Chris protected in Iraq; Iraq goes south 1:20:17 - The Sectarian violence post-Baath Party banning 1:23:53 - Chris takes down Baghdad Airport 1:29:13 - Coordination between military & CIA 1:37:37 - Intel Chris was getting in Iraq 1:41:08 - The difference between Iraq & Afghanistan; The Taliban 1:48:03 - Chris’ time in Israel; The Israel Palestine Conflict 1:53:30 - The withdrawal from Afghanistan 2:00:20 - Chris’ International Firefight Incident in North Africa story 2:12:48 - Chris sells Armored Vehicle business to Private Equity 2:17:11 - The mysterious death of John Zinn Intro Credits: Lone Survivor (2013) The Contractor (2022) Criminal (2016) Leave No Trace (2018) Doctor Strange (2016) Cherry (2021) Green Zone (2010) Inferno (2016) ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “TRENDIFIER”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A bunch of dudes were working through back channels, pulling resource where we could to get people out of Afghanistan safely. And you were thinking about going over there? Dude, if I could, man, I was still learning. With stage four cancer? Oh, yeah, man. It's just physically, I knew, you know, I had to make that assessment. I'm like, look, I could be more of a hindrance because of, you know, this thing's not tested. You know, my hip, my glute, my quad, I had it all, and my femur taken out.

So if I need to carry somebody, like, I know I can do it, but not like I used to be able to do it. I don't know. You didn't go to the parade, I take it, in 2018 when they won? No. I mean, dude, I saw people piss in places I've never seen in my life. Philly fans are like Oakland Raiders. Those two have been at odds. Like, who's the worst fans on the planet?

Well, Eagles, dude, because we had, like, the first jail, right? In a stadium? Yeah. So, I mean, that's something to hang your hat on. They threw people off the 700 level. That is true. Don't be wearing a giant jersey bro in philadelphia or cowboys make it worse that is true but it was always like a handful of people

you know like there's and the whole like drunk santa thing made no sense because because santa was it wasn't the fans it was him who was drunk like when they threw the snowballs at him like santa was fucked up and he says it today he's like yeah no i really deserved it like i was making a scene in front of kids so santa did media yeah well no there's a famous video from the 70s that's when they got hit with the the uh people were throwing batteries at santa no no they i mean there might have been batteries in the snowballs but it was snowballs but it's because he was fucked up and they're like there's children here what the fuck like you can't do that so we're gonna throw fuel on the fire we're gonna we're gonna beat the

shit out of santa in front of all the kids because that's gonna be better that's that was the logic now you have a drunk belligerent santa getting his ass beat by a bunch of philadelphians yeah yeah we'll never live that one down but i'm telling you man it's like i try to explain it to people who aren't from here obviously you are we'll get into that so you get man. It's like I try to explain it to people who aren't from here. Obviously, you are. We'll get into that. So you get it. But it's a religion. Like when they won in 2018, I will never see anything like that again.

It's crazy. Crazy. But you've had a hell of a journey, my man. Thank you for coming up here today. I really, really appreciate it. Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. When I was on the phone with you, got connected through Pete Polgar.

So shout out, Pete. But when I was on the phone with you for the first time, we talked and I looked down when we hung up and it was like two hours and 55 minutes or something. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is going to be a good podcast. That never happens. Like I really, when I'm talking to people on the phone before bringing them in here, I usually like to be quick so we can just kind of whatever. But there was just so much that you've had going on. So I'm like, this is fine. And I just enjoyed hearing you speak.

But we'll get into your full story and what you're putting out there these days with your message and the stuff you got going on. But to start off, can you tell everybody where you're from exactly? We kind of just want you to, but where you're from and what your early history in the Army was? Yeah. Yeah, you totally set me up with that because I know you want me to say I'm a reformed Yankee because I am. So I live in the South, but I was actually born and raised up in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. So it's about 45 minutes north of Philadelphia. So it's good to be back in

the area. And yeah, I grew up up here. Generations of my family have been in Pennsylvania. And you know, kind of grew up with my father. He was in the early days, you know, I always talk about like the formative years for him kind of has a lot of impact on me as a young, young man. So, you know, he, he volunteered during the early days of Vietnam, 60 to 64, he enlisted, became an MP. Then he spent the rest of his life in law enforcement, whether that was the police department or 20 years at the sheriff's department. So I kind of grew up under his tutelage. My parents got divorced when I was six, and I kind of transitioned.

And I guess it was about nine years old on my dad raised me by myself. So my siblings and I were all split up. How many siblings did you have? I've got an older brother who still lives in the area, a younger brother who does, and then my sister. She's my older sister as well. So you were living somewhere with mom and it was just you with dad? Yeah, after the divorce, I spent like a year, maybe in second grade, I was in West Texas and then Louisiana and kind of bounced around different schools. And then I made a decision to go live with my father, you know, from third grade on.

You made that call? Yeah, I think, you know, it was kind of a weird, kind of weird situation. So growing up, my other siblings stayed with my mother and then I stayed with my dad um the whole time all the way through high school when i got out so um we were kind of split up so it kind of gave me a little bit of chip on my shoulder you know like going through a divorce back then it wasn't as prevalent as it is now you know now you talk to most kids they have they've been going gone through a divorce but in those days you know um you definitely had an impact because i was so young i was only like six when they got divorced so going through that it was kind of a rocky tumultuous situation but um

yeah um my dad did a really good job kind of you know guiding me uh the best he could so there's limitations you know being a cop you know i got my share of uh trouble growing up as well and uh really it's the son of law enforcement oh yeah shocker yeah no it was good you know i was a good kid i tell everyone you know i was i had a good heart um but academics wasn't my thing i was really excelled in sports which kept me in school and what'd you play well i did a little bit of everything any kind of bald sport i probably played um i played basketball football even though my younger brother who played college football says i never played football he likes to kind of get a rise i played you know junior high did eighth and ninth grade i played football but from eighth grade on, I ran three seasons a year.

It's just something I excelled at. Like in eighth grade, I kind of broke the five-minute mile when I was in eighth grade. And that kind of was kind of a milestone, which kind of was like, hey, that's pretty competitive for an eighth grader. So I just continued doing that and grinding, you know, through. It's kind of one of those individual sports that you just have to kind of overcome. You know, I didn't have the most talent. You know, it kind of translates into where I'm at today. You know, through all the chapters of my life, I just had this like indomitable will. And that's what kind of, um, kept me moving, you know?

Yeah. And I mean, that's going to be so clear when people really hear about the stuff afterwards, but, you know, I guess you had a pretty good recognition when you were young that, that maybe the whole college trail, get a job behind a desk wasn't going to be for you. But like, was there a dream when you were 10 11 like oh i want to be in the army or in the military well it was kind of i was um like i said i got in a lot of trouble i got arrested several times my own father arrested me in high school yeah it took me to took me to jail it was actually a a friend of ours um who was one of my my dad's deputy he was the first on the scene in the high school.

What was the scene? Well, I got into a fight in high school. It was no big deal, but I had a pocket knife on me at the time. At school? At school. And this is pre-Columbine, all the crazy drama, right? And it wasn't unusual. I always carried a knife.

I still do. I've been carrying a knife for but i happened to get into a fight and another kid brought a gun to school and they thought we were linked up i didn't even know this kid he was a kind of a vote vote tech student and he had bad intentions for sure so when the cops came i was like well i don't see what the big deal is you know i just got a knife and then i saw you know my dad's uh deputy who used to come over to the house. You know, we used to have parties like barbecues or whatever. So I knew all the deputies.

I go see my dad at work. And as soon as I looked at him, he goes, man, what did you do? And I was like, you're not going to call my dad, my old man, are you? And he's like, yeah, I got to call your old man. And that was worse than getting arrested for sure so my dad actually came to school in a sheriff's car handcuffed me and took me down to the well local it was just a holding cell and i had to go to court i was out of school it was just all you know holy shit and i looked back and i went, I put my dad through all this drama. Like there's many more layers.

You know, I got a lot of little instances, which could have been a career ender for me, you know. And luckily people gave me a second chance, you know, because if I didn't have that second chance, I don't know where my life would have went. I have, I suspect it would have went off the rails, you know, at an early age. I was kind of at a crossroads where I'm either going to go do the right thing or the wrong thing. And, um, so that kind of leads into my dad gave me three options essentially, you know, um, he's like, look, you're, you're, you're a smart kid, but you're, you're not academically, you're just not performing. So if you want to go to school, you can pay for it. Um, or you can go get a job

or you can join the military like I did. So my dumb ass goes down to the maps like the next day and I enlisted for six years, right? Six years. So I came home right afterwards. You don't usually have to enlist that long, do you? No. The recruiter saw me coming like a mile away, man. I was like the poster child of like, you know, the, I got screwed by a recruiter story because I didn't know. There was no Google. There was not a lot of reference points for me besides talking to an actual recruiter. And all they care about is their numbers.

So like, well, what do you want to do? I was like, I want to be an airborne ranger. I had no idea what that meant per se. Why'd you say it? Well, I knew I wanted to do something like kind of, I wanted to do something that was super challenging. Right. And I wanted to be tested because I had this like little bit of a chip on my shoulder, you know, I wanted to prove myself and, um, and do something that was, uh, super challenging. So they were like, yeah, everyone qualified. So when I enlisted, I ended up in aviation. I had no clue. I go to basic training, go to AIT.

They're like, you're going to be working on A-64 attack helicopters. You're going to be the furthest thing away from special operations. Were you going to be a pilot, I take it? No, we were working on electrical systems and armament. Like, you know, we'd go in the field and, like, load them up with, like, hellfire missiles and things like that. And I knew right away, I was like, this is not what I joined the military to do, man. I don't want to be, I want to be kicking doors and, you know, how do I get to ranger school? And they're like, you can't go to ranger school, man.

You're not a combat MOS. Your job is not infantry ergo you can't go to ranger school but you can go try off to become a green beret and i was like well that seems even better so can you explain to people who aren't familiar with it just i think this is a great opportunity to do this because these terms that the military will often just talk about passively because you understand all this, like Green Beret, special forces, stuff like that. You mentioned Army Ranger. Where does Green Beret fit into things? Like what types of things do they do and how do they select people to get into that? Yeah, so we call it either SF or Green Ber beret kind of synonymous, right? So special forces in the army

is generally considered your, your green berets and in the Navy, kind of an equivalent, you have the SEAL teams, right? So we both have to go through extensive, um, selection processes and rigorous training to, um, to go through the course. And then when you go through, so I went through in 95. And the first thing you have to do is go through a special forces assessment and selection course in North Carolina. So I was living in Germany at the time. And all I knew, what they told me was, as long as you don't quit, you have a very high probability that you're going to succeed and get selected to move on to start the training course. So I had no other reference points. I didn't have a lot of the experience that most guys did have at the time. Like there was guys coming from infantry. They knew all the small unit tactics and how to move and fire teams, and I had no reference point, no land navigation skills.

So I went in green. And, you know, what they're really trying to weed out is they don't want individuals. They want team players. But, you know, right you're trainable and you have kind of this um it's more of a mentality i guess um this that never never fucking quit mentality right because they give you tons of opportunity from start to finish you can quit at any time what's the training like like? Like, what does it consist of? At that time, you know, when you go to selection, you know, you might start off doing like, you

know, one day they might just tell you to run. And I was a runner. So I was running sub 10 minute mile or two mile time, even in high school. So I was a really good runner but you have no no idea how far you're going to run is it a 12 mile run or is it a two mile run and sometimes you'll be running with a ruck you know in boots and they'll just say go and you're like well how far they're like till i tell you to stop so there's a lot of mind tricks to that right so I think a lot of people get discouraged, especially if you're not a runner or less fit. You're just going and it could be a two-mile run or a 12-mile run. And then there's a week where you're working with a team under this crazy, you're not sleeping, you're not eating, and you're constantly moving.

And they might put you in a leadership role to put additional stress on you and to see how you perform under all these different stressors, which kind of emulates what it's like in a combat environment. You might not be sleeping, you might not be eating, you're going to be under a lot of stress, you're still going to have to shoot, move, and communicate with your teammates. And some people thrive in those environments, and other people kind of wilt. How many guys were you with? So when I went to selection, I think it was slightly over 300 started. I think it was like 320-something. And I think by the end it was like less than 60 for this selection. And then you'll have to go through phase one, which is small unit tactics.

That's usually a month you're in the woods doing raids and ambushes with, you know, with kind of a mock-up ODA or A-team. So like 12 members, you'll be doing like raids and ambushes. And then you go to phase two and you'll learn your actual job. So I was a weapons sergeant. So we'd have to learn how to employ different weapon systems from small arms all the way up to, you know, surface to air missiles. And foreign and U.S. When you say employ for people, what do you mean by that? And training other people like that could be indigenous people, could be in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a force multiplier, you're training these guys up, utilizing what weapons they have commonly available.

But yeah, it's a long course. I mean, you're in training for a year and a half, two years. Wow. You got selection phase one, phase two. Then phase three is robin sage and then you can go to language school for six months which is nine to five you're learning a language depending on what regions you might be deployed to so for me thankfully i was a french speaker i didn't get arabic thank god and then uh you kind of move on from there. Wait, they thought they were going to deploy you to France

and that was going to be like your ultimate place as a Special Forces guy? Well, I was in 3rd Special Forces group, and at the time it was either Arabic. We spent a lot of time in North Africa, so there's a lot of French speakers there. Like most of the countries that i was in uh french french was like a close primary language um because it was colonized by we talking like algeria morocco some of those yeah most of the north there's a lot of french speakers um interesting and um then arabic the same. So you might be teaching students. Half of them are speaking Arabic.

The other half might be French speakers. And then there could be other dialects. So it's pretty challenging to train people when you're not totally proficient in the language. It's a lot too. Like there's a reason they teach kids when they're so little to become like bilingual if they grew up in a bilingual household or something. It's because they can pick it up. The older you get, the harder it is to do that.

So whenever I hear guys like you, whether it be from a military background or like an agency background or something, learning languages like when you're 25 or whatever, or 20, something like that, it's, you know, you guys make it sound easy. Like, oh, I had to do this over six you're 25 or whatever, or 20, something like that. It's, it's, you know, you guys make it sound easy. Like, oh, I had to do this over six, nine months or whatever. That's hard. Yeah. It's definitely tough. Thankfully I took Spanish, you know, growing up in Latin. I, um, I had three years of Spanish in, in, in high school. Um, so that kind

of gave me a little bit of, cause it's, you know, when you talk, you know. Romance language. Any of the romance languages, you have that Latin root. Makes it a little bit easier. But, yeah, I'm sure if I watched me in language school today, I'd probably be laughing at some of the shenanigans. Can you still speak it? Not well. I can understand better than I can speak. And I can read better than I can speak. Did you ever get to a point where you could think in it?

Not quite. I don't think I was quite that proficient. The problem with me is I've been exposed to so many different languages. I blend them all together. Spanish, French, Latin. It's like I've been in all these different countries, so I kind of mold all these things together and it's hard to switch sometimes depending on who I'm talking to. Yeah.

I'm always amazed by that too. When you have the people who speak like six languages or whatever, and they can go like that from one to the other. And I'm like, how do you like, I can't wire that in my head. You know what I mean? I'm trying to master English still.

You know what I mean? So I want to make no mistake and claim that i'm like super proficient french speaker don't call me get a rosetta stone you do it pretty well with english i'll give you that for sure but so you you did that for a year and a half two years like the full length of that and then they sent you was it to north africa right away or did you like go over to some base like germany or something first i um so hey guys got five quick things for you this week one please share this episode around with your friends two as always please be sure to subscribe to youtube if you haven't already subscribed three please leave a like and comment on the video. That is a huge, huge help in the algorithm. Four, over on Spotify or Apple, please leave a five-star review. That's a huge help over on those platforms, and I

appreciate everyone who has done that already. And finally, five, the Patreon is almost ready. We are going to be launching in the next week or two, so please keep your eyes out as that is going to hopefully be a very, very good driver to be able to fund this show. Thank you. When I started out, I had to go to airborne school first before I started the whole process. As soon as I finished selection, I went back to Germany. I left, I kind of closed down that part of my career in the military. And then I was sent to Fort Bragg for special forces training to the special forces Q course or qualification course. On the way there, I had to go to airborne school because, you know, everybody has to be airborne qualified just before you even go to start the Q course.

We had to go through airborne school. So I went through that and then I started the Q course. And I was at Bragg until really about 2000, like the end of 99, going into 2000 is when I transitioned out after doing a couple deployments to Africa. Oh, so I was going to say you did do actual deployments. Yeah, yeah. So I went to my A team. My A team was a lot older than some other groups. So by that, I mean there was more guys in their, like, 30s to late 30s. And I was young.

I went through as – I was, like, 25 years old, which for us is young. So in the SEAL teams, you can go through buds. There's 18-, 19-year-olds that can go through buds. It's kind of rare though right it's usually they're younger guys a lot of guys try out when they're pretty pretty young in their young 20s that's what i was going to say it's usually like right after college i thought we're a little bit older historically um when i was in you had to be at least an e4 to try out meaning you know you've kind of progressed up the the food chain as far as rank you know you don't

have to be a sergeant but you have to be at least a corporal or specialist just to go to selection so i had to wait until that was kind of why i had to wait a little bit longer which was good because allowed me to mature as well i wasn't quite ready at the time um you know when i was like 21 i would have struggled because it's a lot of mental yeah it's a it's a mental game um not just physical the older i get the more i have an intense appreciation for those who enlist just in the military period when they're like 18 or something because i'm like holy shit me and everybody i know was a fucking moron when we were 18 years old you know like we couldn't you know we we a lot i at least a lot

of my friends and and me like we were independent and you know we're had no problem transitioning to college and things like that worked but this is is a whole – this is life and death shit. This is like higher calling. This is seeing the world in a whole new light depending on – well, anywhere you go, period. But like especially depending on where you go if it's like a serious war-torn area. It's just – I can't even imagine 18-year-old me having to do that. And I do believe I would have figured it out, but the idea of like volunteering to do it and like, like, Oh yeah, that's,

that's what I'm going to go do. That is a crazy fucking thing to me. Yeah. And looking back, you know, it's just, I just wanted, um, yeah, it was, it's kind of interesting because right when I got in, I started kind of working, you know, PT or physical fitness and physical training came fairly easy to me. Um, cause I was always in good shape. I started working out when I was six, seven years old, you know, through martial arts or whatever sport or running or whatever it was. So I had that under my belt, but you know, it's, it's interesting. It's kind of like I tell people

about, um, talent, like I didn't have any talent and, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie, Steve Prefontaine, he was a runner back in the day, but it was kind of interesting. It's like, you know, you're not big, you're not, you're not, you're not strong enough. You're not fast enough, you know, might not be the most athletically gifted person. But that's what I think those types of people, like we were kind of talking about Rocky, right? There's people that grind. And people that are super talented in sports or anything, it could be professionally, some of those people don't have to work quite as hard that people that don't have that talent do.

So sometimes when you have a lot of talent, you don't have to go in that deep water. Like the deep water meaning the struggle, like the mental challenge when you're pushed to the brink to break. And I like to use the analogy with MMA fighters, right? So you could take a really highly skilled mma fighter in the ufc and then you'll take a dog you know a guy who just likes

to get grimy and drag people like uh nate diaz is a good example he has great cardio yeah but that dude is a dog yeah and he'll pull people into that deep water that are way more talented than him, stronger than him, more athletically gifted. And he'll, you can watch them break. And I think there's something to be said,

like, you know, it's those people that just know how to, they're not afraid to put themselves in those situation and go into those deep waters. And they're the types of people that I really, thatinate me you know because i kind of i'm kind of one of those guys like you know i'm very familiar with discomfort and pain and you know just just grime you know of like uh overcoming adversity and that's where i excel you know so I might really might be working with

working out with somebody who's way stronger than me or more gifted but it's like putting those extra rounds in and you can see who really wants it kind of like the Iraqi analogy yeah and that's what's fascinating with as I kind of reflect now that I'm getting older yeah i think for a career like that like in the military i'm convinced that it's not like everyone who's ever joined the military has that ability there's guys who do and guys who don't but for jobs like that it's almost like even if they fall into it as like as in maybe even like you a little bit like oh oh, well, that's one of my options here. So let's just take that option. Careers like that will find the people who have those innate qualities, that dog, that ability to have intensive mental toughness at all times.

And military is I think a phenomenal example. There's other industries or careers i should say that certainly have that you could say that about martial artists for sure as well but you know i i'm always so fascinated by how people are able to it's not the word i want to use right now but it's going to get the job done because i can't think of the right word but like how they're able to compartmentalize and then execute you know like when you're dealing with going through a hail of bullets to get to a place you got to be you know some sort of objective that you got to take you know there's guys who can do that and there's guys who can't and the guys who can have an ability to put aside

the whole concept of the depth of death when they do that and just focus on i'm at point a we're going to get to point a point b and that's what's going to happen you know and some guys give their lives doing it because the law of averages says that's going to happen and that's a very sobering reality but you know a guy like you just speaking with you on the way here from the airport this morning it's like and speaking with you on the phone last month, it's like, you definitely have that black and white, so to speak, objective mindset. Yeah. And I just heard, kind of on into that whole topic. You know, like he was kind of commenting on, I don't know, he was running like a 240-mile race, right?

And, you know, he's like in that 62-hour time period, I forget, I'm probably bastardizing this, but he's like when he's running like an ultra marathon or 240-mile race over 62 hours i mean some of these events he's showing up hurt on the on the starting line oh yeah so you already have that doubt and that's that inner in your head it's already creeping in when you're at going to the starting lines but he goes out and does it and what you learn and what i'm trying to share with people is like through adversity, there's opportunity for a significant amount of growth.

And Goggins talks about it like he was talking about that 62 hours is like the equivalent of seven years of life, of understanding the dark. That's where things grow. Things don't grow in the light. They grow in the dark. It's like when you're going through the deepest, darkest struggles, it's what you do with that information when you come out the other side is what will define you and how you handle that adversity. And it's an opportunity to learn. And I think most people are such in that fight, such in that struggle that they miss that opportunity to go, what did I learn coming out of it? What did I learn about myself? And what didn't I like?

And what am I going to fix? Yes. coming out what i learned about myself and what what didn't i like and what am i going to fix yes so i think it's that that part to me is like fascinating on the whole process of you know growth it's it's actually really applicable in in another way i'll say to like the state of society as well it just makes me think about that. You talk about like not being able to grow in comfort, so to speak. To me, when I look out at the division we have and how people speak to each other, especially online, which is the best example because you get to hide behind a keyboard doing it. I think it is all drawn from people just being complacent. And I'm focused on this country right now, like in America. I won't speak for other places right now.

But for right here, it's like this is kind of an awful thing to say in a way, but we have never been invaded in this country since it was founded, and it really shows. I mean we're technically like kind of invaded for the war 1812 but you get the point we have never been really invaded and it shows because people just have this idea that like you know you can go to the wawa and get your coffee and no matter what's going on that's always going to be there and knock on what it has and knock on will it will but that complacency is then making people think that like well i can say whatever I want and do whatever I want, which you can, but therefore I can be a dick to other people and talk shit on every single thing about this country sometimes depending on who you are and not have any perspective of anything else and just assume that I know everything. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. No, yeah, it makes perfect sense. Weak times are, you know, we're in good times, create weak men. It's that whole, that's where we're at in the evolution of those four

quadrants. Right. And we're, we have a bunch of weak leaders and weak individuals. And unfortunately, usually something bad has to happen to do that reset. And we're kind of, unfortunately, I think we're getting closer and closer to a higher probability of something happening, whether that's the market just crashes and it's financially a distressful time for people, or it could be not only economic, it could be military, you know, to your point. It could be another conflict or war. And that's where people are going to have to step it back up. And that's what I think we're all witnessing right now.

It's the first time in my life I've ever seen it. The last three years have just been mind-boggling. And that's why I focus all my attention on bettering the country and individuals through serving others you know and it's super rewarding it's still you know the the aggressive part of me wants to do something more you know like you know kind of like i'd love to spend more time and talk to young men coming up. You know, if I could be a little bit more articulate in my messaging, I think I have some, like, you know, sound bites for the young men coming up. Because it's a confusing time for young men, young women, doesn't matter, to grow up because of the cultures. There's such a rapid shift culturally that it's, I mean, how do you keep up with that?

If you're a teenager or a teenage boy, how do you know, you know, how to act or how you're supposed to act in this, in our culture now? It's super confusing. What do you mean? Like with some of the. Well, I think if you talk about, you know, the hot button topics, you know, it could be a toxic masculinity, right? So you throw that term out and if you're a young man and you like to play football and then people go well you can't play football because that you're a toxic young man you're you're just doing these brute brutish

things and you're dom you're trying to dominate and um maybe the person's just interested in playing football because you know he grew up around the sport and loves it and that's okay you know like and i think you know that just opens the door for so much confusion um you know on um especially youth coming up there's i don't you know i don't want to get in all the hot topic butts because there's so many. I mean, people know what they are. But yeah, I think that just throws fuel on the fire with social media and all the other, like we were talking about previously, algorithms drive engagement and it's fueled on, obviously the responses, negativity and hatred fuels more engagement than good feeling stuff. So, you know, how do you not fall victim into that?

And just like you said, keyboard warriors, you know. Whatever I say to somebody on a keyboard, I will 100% come say it to your face. Yes. But I don't waste my time trying to bring other people down i try to build them up you know that's where i spend my time is on the positive attributes if i don't like somebody i just don't follow them yeah i'm not gonna spend time and try to like hey this guy's a clown you know it's like all right that's not helping anything right well it's a good point because the problem is a lot of people especially younger who came up in this era so to speak they live in a world where you know think of teenagers right

now they live in a world where you can be instantly in a micro way connected to anybody including the most famous people or whatever. So when you want to say something, you have access to do it. And because their friends do it, then they feel like they can. And then once they do it once, they'll do it twice and then four times and then 16 times. And it just continues. It continues. And what they don't realize or seem to not realize is that it's not just them saying these things to other people they become self-fulfilling prophecy like ideas that they carry with them about the world so if you are out there every day saying fuck you die in the comments to somebody right to whoever it is all these

different people you're gonna start it's not like you necessarily going to be the person who actually like thinks that when you wake up in the morning. But you're going to take on that vibe. You're going to take on that teardown vibe instead of build up and that's going to affect – like if you have dreams or want to do something or go after something. That's going to affect your ability to even approach that yourself because you're going to be defeatist in a lot of ways because you're like, well, they couldn't do it and they're fucking assholes. So I can't either, whatever. that's a hundred percent and there's so much online's dangers all the way around the board like i think you know i'll give you two examples just off the top of my head one like say pornography for young men young girls doesn't

matter whatever um but you know when i was growing up you had to trade playboys man like yeah yeah growing up in the stone age we did not have all you know porn hub you had to work for your porn so you'd have to go out there beg borrow and barter with your buddies like hey my my dad he's got some old playboys from up in the attic and then you you kind of work these drug deals out and then you're like ah you know you have to it sounds silly right but now it's like anything that you can possibly think of in you just put into google search google image it'll show up and kids are subjected to that at an extremely young age. And it jacks up everything when it comes to how they perceive relationships, women.

You know, it's just one little thing, you know? And it's just a danger. It's dangerous for kids. Like, we were raising an 18-year-old. We didn't let him have his iPhone until he was like 13 or 14. And he gave us so much grief, but even then it was still restricted until he was like 16 years old.

You know, I was like, Hey man, we had teen safe on there. I could read his text messages and you know, it depends. Everybody parents, parents differently.

But for us it was like, like, yeah, he's going to see stuff, but let's try to educate him on the the dangers of some of this stuff and whatever he's gonna do when he's a you know grown-ass man is gonna be up to him but i don't want to condone it and you know i'm not here to be a buddy i'm here to be a good role model as a father figure you know to a young man that's growing up and

you know people get a lot of grief for that, you know. They shouldn't. You don't have an iPhone, like, fully enabled and you're 10? Well, yeah. That's crazy. I guess the other kids definitely are like that, I'm sure. But I think in the long run, he'll probably thank you for that. Yeah.

I mean, that's the goal, right? And the second one is just, you know, information's flowing at just such a rapid rate, more than we can process the information. So whenever you see something that's a hot button topic that pops up on Instagram, TikTok, whatever, whatever social media platform, as soon as it goes out, people don't even read or fact check. And I'm a fairly intelligent human being, but it's hard for me to fact check. I've been called out before. I posted something online before that wasn't true. I took it down, you know, because I was like, oh, I fact checked this, but two different sources, but they were both wrong. So that disinformation, that's actually true disinformation is there's people that put all this information out there simply to get more follows, more likes, more engagement. And at the end of the day, it's crazy. It's wreaking havoc on society because people don't do the due diligence.

And the way it used to be when I was growing up back in the Stone Age, again, you'd have the old timers would go out. Everybody got the paper back in the stone age again you'd have the old timers would go out everywhere you got the paper back in the day so you'd read it and then on the weekends the old timers would get together at like a diner or something for breakfast right and be like rumpf rumpf yeah what's this about yeah and that's how they talked about it and they communicated with peers or and they would create this yeah one-on-one they would actually have conversations with words and now it's just like as soon as they just flash a photo you get fired up and you just you just it's all tribal man everybody's like you got to be in this camp or that camp yes and i think that's dangerous too you know i was telling you like i no longer call myself one thing or another. I say, man, I'm an independent thinker.

I have a brain. I'm not going to vote for somebody just because they're in a certain party. It depends. It depends if they represent something that I feel like I have a strong value for, if they represent it. Unfortunately, in our society right now, we have a bunch. It's voting for dumb and dumber. We have better people in the United States that could run this country. A hundred and ten percent.

Who wants to do, of good people. Nobody. Who wants to do that job? There's a couple of dudes that I know that just ran for Congress. Eli Crane. He just got elected as a congressman in Arizona. Marcus Luttrell's brother morgan out in texas there's some dudes that are doing it for like holistic reasons like hey man i serve this country i don't like where i'm i see things and i want to

make a difference but that's so few and far between if you look at most people it's for power influence and if they just become part of the mechanism i mean there's people i think in the state of pennsylvania there were some people voted in that were dead or something recently. Really? I didn't see that. I mean, you don't even have to be alive. And people are going to vote for that person based on name recognition. No research, bro.

When I went into the ballot a month ago or two months ago, whatever it was, I actually looked like really took a minute because it wasn't crowded in there at the time when a good time so i wasn't making people wait or anything and i took a look through i think on this one there was only for my district there was only maybe like seven positions it wasn't like an enormous ballot this time but i just was i'm like read the the names of like the jobs like what they're doing and before i even read the name of the person who i don't know on most of these things i'm like what who's walking into this ballot right now or into this poll and voting and has any idea what that job does because i don't right i have no clue i don't know if i don't know if they're

in charge of the trash or the fucking you know newspaper i don't know that maybe none of the above but yet i'm voting on this person right now and i didn't vote for either on any position or whatever so it made my life easier but i'm thinking of the people who are going to make the binary choice and i'm like what how can you even blame someone for whatever they're going to pick right now you can't because we live in this world where they the people who are in that world that little club right there they make as much of this stuff uh what's is this a word un undecipher or whatever? I might have made that up. But they make it impossible to understand so that people just get sick of it and move on and go to the next major public fight that's on social media over something. And if you want a great example of that, look no farther than what they name these bills.

They may try to trick you with something simple, call something the Patriot Act because it's like, oh, how can you vote against that? It's got to be good. I'm a patriot. But then there's other ones where they'll name it, although that might have even had a long name itself too. They just nicknamed it that. I don't remember. But there's a lot of bills where it's called the ba-ba-ba-ba-ba word I never heard of, word I never heard of, word I never heard of, and you don't know what's in it. And that's because they get to be in their little chamber down in D.C. to say oh look at all these dumbasses they don't even know what we're doing

right now and they're the ones creating the laws yeah for the common person that's a that's a wild thing to think about it all comes down to money um yes if if you don't have i mean we just had the massive runoff in georgia for for senate oh yeah you live outside atlanta right yeah yeah so we had that whole situation similar to yours up here with um federman and oz like you're just amazed at the uh qual the qualifications of candidates i was like listen i don't care where anybody sits politically but i'm pretty sure i love me some herschel walker as an athlete but i'm pretty sure i could beat him in a game of chess right you know hey man if you're out there herschel walker you want to play a game of chess and put it on film i'll be

your guy and i'm not very good at it but pretty sure i could beat you when he started talking about the air the air in china it's blowing over there it's just like and then it's the best we got in our country bro the worst is you hear like four people in the audience like hell yeah whatever you're like oh no that was probably me but a lot of my southern accent a lot of a lot of people in there were even like crickets though where you're like what what did he just say like that's we're for this guy i mean you know that thought process is coming because it's just it seems like it's almost like a joke now like they get the candidates get worse and worse well i mean what number one thing people need to remember when it comes to politics is the politicians represent us the people supposed to

that's what the narrative needs to change when you go through all these political arenas and and these i mean if they're spectacles i mean like let's call it what it is it's like reality tv um they work for us they represent the. The people are the ones in control. And that's the way this country was formed. And it's all twisted right now. I think people are just like, they're in awe of all these politicians. And I'm like, look, they represent,

they're our voice. So if you don't like what you see, get out and vote. And, you know, the biggest challenge is how do you get better candidates in office? And unfortunately, you need tons of money. These super PACs and everything else that back these candidates, I mean, I'd see 100 in the course of an hour or two-hour show, maybe like 50 to 100 ads for that runoff.

And I'm like, how much money are these guys spending? And you can see who has the deeper pockets and that's not that's not a good indication of like qualification so anyway money wins the day for sure but back to you and everything we have been talking about

your training at Q School and all that coming back to Fort Bragg and then you had mentioned quickly before we got off it that you coming back to Fort Bragg. And then you had mentioned quickly before we got off it, that you did deploy to North Africa. So where did you go and what did you do? And this is late nineties, I take it? Yeah. So late nineties, um, my first trip, well, both, both trips are North Africa. So like in the, I spent most of my time in Chad, which is kind of borders south of Libya, you know, for reference. And, you know, when I first deployed, it was kind of a little bit of a rude awakening because, you know, I was trying to figure out, you know, where I fit on an ODA.

On a what? On a Special Forces A-Team detachment or our team. So we have typically 12 members and um my first trip we punched out to uh i think we're doing it was either demining or counter poaching was the first real i can't remember which one i did first because it's all kind of gray at this point was that in southern chad with like counter poaching um because there's a lot of it desert we did a lot of the training in uh in enjimino or chad for counter poaching and then we went down to the central african republic and we trained up students how to

basically engage or defeat the poachers because the poachers were slaughtering elephants at like such a huge well anything you know there was a lot of the black market was um rampant at that time and they were just slaughtering elephants you know and a bunch of other on these game preserves the poachers would come in and they kill an elephant for like 50 bucks or whatever yeah and you're just like holy cow man this is uh but the military had you doing this. Yeah, because they were killing game wardens, the people that worked on the preserves, and also some of the military that were trying to protect, you know, and augment. They were just getting owned. So we had to teach, you know, counterpoaching and like, okay, how do we combat these guys and how do we engage them so we train train our students up and then you know work with them to actually go fight with poachers and things

like that my friend ryan tate who is on this podcast he founded an organization called vet paul and he's a former marine he served in japan and then was in both afghanistan and then iraq and when he left he worked for the State Department and found out while he was working at the State Department in the U.S. about the poaching wars in Africa. I was so blown away that he picked up and fucking moved there. Holy shit, it rocked my world. The first one was an elephant laying on a tar road, no face.

ISIS in Africa, up to 40% of their operations, terrorist activities are funded off the illegal trade of elephants and rhinos. They are poaching animals to kill humans. We arrested the poaching network responsible for 18,000 unaccounted elephants in one year. If they catch a park ranger, they will torture them. They'll kill their family, everything. The poachers.

Yup. And so what they do, and it's, it's in a capacity where they don't do it on behalf of the U S government. They work directly with the African governments in several countries over there, and it's it's in a capacity where they don't do it on behalf of the u.s government they work directly with the african governments in several countries over there but he has all veterans from the united states who previously served they come over there and they they man thousands of miles of land and cover it's like the wild west man it's like

keep that mic close yeah it's um those areas are just crazy i mean you'll see i didn't even know half the damn animals and i've been into nature you know as far as like i'm pretty well read when it comes to uh flora fauna animals all that you know so i get over there i'm like what is that it looks like a dlt they're like what's what's a dlt i'm like that's a deer like thing it's like looking at a deer that weighs 700 pounds you know and you know lions and that part was really cool but you know when you pull up and you just see elephant skulls lined up you know like a hundred of them in a row and you're like dang yeah these guys are decimating you know what's left in the central african republic or congo and you know, what's left in the Central African Republic or

Congo and, you know, there's areas that are somewhat untouched. So yeah, that was a pretty good, as far as op, that wasn't too bad. But then, you know, we got into demining, so I had to go to demining school and we were trying to help um demine some of the areas so libya there's a trade route between chad and um libya and north africa and it's super heavily mined and um so we actually had to like our students that we we actually had to instruct it was just a variety of a hodgepodge i mean one guy's wearing flip-flops the next guy's wearing like a 7-eleven shirt the other guy's wearing like bdu top and you know dress pants it's just it's a total hodgepodge of people and you know some are arabic some are french speakers and it's just it's kind of crazy but and i'll give you a for instance so like when

i started doing you know leading one of my classes as like the new guys with my second deployment we had to do mine identification so i'm showing a square anti-tank mine and they're stackable so you know there might be like two foot by two foot square and i'm like hey has anybody ever seen one of these and one of my students raises his hand and i'm like where do you see it he's like at my house i'm like, hey, has anybody ever seen one of these? And one of my students raises his hand. And I'm like, where do you see it? He's like, at my house. I'm like, why do you have an anti-tank mine? He's like, we sit on them at the dinner table.

I swear to God, the stuff, you can't make this stuff up. So they had like maybe four or five anti-tank mines stacked because they're meant to stack. And their pressure detonated. It depends. And they're sitting on there for fun and they're yeah and they get when they're in the desert you know the the um explosives it gets hot and cold and they crystallize they become sometimes less stable or more stable depending on the environment and i'm like bro you guys are sitting around dinner room table um sitting on stackable anti-tank mines. So it's just kind of like you're kind of like in the Stone Age.

And you said this is like, am I right on my timeline? This is like 98? Yeah, it was around 98. So this is like right after Princess Diana died? Yeah. Because she was huge into this. She was out there because it was just blowing up kids left and right. Yeah.

The mines. It's crazy. Yeah. I'm not a – you watch movies with the EOD guys. I am not an explosives expert. I don't want to go walking in the minefields anymore after seeing some of that craziness. But yeah, so at the time, long story short, with those two deployments, I just didn't like where special operations, especially SF at the time, Green Berets were doing a lot of foreign internal defense. They call it FID missions. So you're more or less training.

And the counter poaching, demining. So the mission set wasn't really what I was looking to do. But I already had re-enlisted my second time, and I was coming up for a third that would have put me over 10 years, so I might as well stay in at that point. And so I had a heart-to-heart with my team start, and I said, hey, man, things know, things just aren't, you know, the op tempo is not exactly where I'd like it to be. You know, I'd prefer to be kicking doors, doing really cool guy stuff. So I thought about trying some other opportunities, you know, if I decided to stay in. But I made the decision to get out because I was getting ready for my third reenlistment. This is 99?

Yeah, it was in the fall of 99 going into 2000 but did they i'm just curious for our history out there to just see what some of the attitudes were this is everyone knew what al-qaeda was once 9-11 happened and a lot of people weren't say nearly as familiar with it before then but in i think maybe it was like 98 you had the embassy bombing and stuff this is happening in africa were you involved around any of that yeah actually i was in country when the when uh dar es salam uh when the embassies um got hit we were i think we were one of the only u.s military groups in north africa at the time when the bombings occurred.

And that was the first time I heard of Osama bin Laden. So he was in Sudan at the time. And he actually put kind of some orders out knowing that we were next door. We were, I think we were a country to the west of Sudan. of sudan and you know we had to go like a higher threat posture after those bombings because he said any americans were gonna put a hit out you know on uh u.s service members that are in africa and so i got home and i kept the time magazine because they were like hey this guy is in sudan he's threatening you know we only had like seven dudes in country at the time. There was only seven of us.

So it wasn't like we had a big contingent. We didn't have military backing. So it kind of changed. That kind of changed the viewpoint. And then when 9-11 happened and so on, I was like, oh, kind of starting to, you know, that was just kind of like reading the tea leaves a little bit back then. Didn't know how significant, you know, Osama bin Laden was going to be back then in the late 90s. So when you left, because it wasn't in, things weren't on the footing that you had expected or wanted it to be it wasn't like you were thinking in your head yo like this al-qaeda stuff and this this vacuum in the middle east that's dragging into africa as

well is a big deal and like i want to be around for this you weren't it wasn't no man had i known i would have stayed in 100 like it just wasn't in the cards though i guess um i guess i would be a failed military analyst because I just didn't see a 20-year war occurring several years after I got out. But I ultimately made the decision really was about predestination. I didn't like the fact that I was going to be over 10. If I reenlisted a third time, I'm going to be over 10 years. I'm stuck in the military. I'm going to ride it out. At that time, there was no armed conflict. So it was like, I know when I get out, I'm going to be this rank. I'm going to be making this much money. And at that time, you didn't have all the variabilities that I like, the uncertainties of like, that's what kind of draws me to the allure there there is a risk inherent risk so predestination gets a little murky you know at that point i didn't want to have a scripted uh adult you know life in my 30s going into my you know to be 40 and be like

everything's scripted so i made the decision to get out uh came back to pennsylvania and enrolled in a physician assistant school i actually did community college for about a year and a half and then I went to a university and you know why I was in school 9-11 occurred so I was actually in a barber shop getting ready to take a biology test and it was like eight whatever the the first tower went down around 8 30 or so in the morning and i was in the barber shop and it was on live tv and i see the first plane burn into the uh twin towers and i was like whoa and right off the bat i i was pretty certain that it wasn't an accident but i wasn't 100 sure and i was like well i still got to go take this freaking test so i get back in my

car and i'm driving to towards philadelphia to take this biology test of all things and i'm listening to howard stern on the radio like live listening to that broadcast yeah man and he's looking out his window and he's like oh a second plane burned in and i turned right around dude i i left i was like i knew right then i'm actually getting left. I was like, I knew right then, I'm actually getting goosebumps. But I was like, oh, no, I've got to go right back to my house because we didn't know. Everything started to unfold between the Pentagon and Flight 93. All those things started occurring, and I was like, how big is this going to get? And so I knew we were going to go to war.

I mean, I was certain there was going to be repercussions something this this big so i called my uh team sergeant up i said hey man i want to get back in sf what do i got to do and he goes man same day uh it was probably like the next day because i was still trying to figure out you know you're kind of like what what's what's happening here with this event and uh you know i was with my dad my grandmother watching this my grandmother was like 98 years old or something like that and it was just unfortunate she had to witness this stuff but um so yeah uh told told my team sergeant you know and he's like look grenada panama and the first golf war they're all over super quick before you even get back in it could be over you know and he gave me something to think about and he's like yeah

it's going to be a long process man you got to go through you know everything all over process no just like you know you have to re-enlist and you know you know, I probably wouldn't go back to the same, you know, to third group. I could be going to fifth group or wherever. And it was just too, too, too long, lengthy of a process. So I ended up talking to a buddy of mine, my buddy, Ron, um, who's been a fixture in my life for 26 years, man, went through SF together. And then, um, he called me up and he was like hey bro you know oga or the the agency's hiring you know um for grs and agency cia yeah so they the cia was kind of scrambling to put human intelligence sources in iraq and afghanistan because we had kind of a gap at that time with human intelligence, like on the ground, boots on the ground. So, you know, I was like, well, what do I got to do?

And I said, I'm definitely game. I'm definitely interested in like, what do I got to do? I'm going to do it now. So I went through like this lengthy vetting process where, you know, you have to fill out an SF-86, which is essentially an in-depth background, you know, to get your clearance. Had to go through like, you know, your standard. What, is this right after 9-11? Well, it probably took me about a year plus. So I was still enrolled in school. Okay. But I was going through this vetting process like

i had to fill out a bunch of paperwork for the federal government they had to have the fbi come to my house and do a background check and then you had to go to like shooting shooting schools driving schools physical fitness you know all that kind of stuff so when all that was said and done um we did a workup and we were part of the first like really 30 guys but i think it was like for me i don't know if there's any other guys before us but we were we uh infilled into iraq just after the invasion. So it was like the summer of 03 is when we were like, basically boots on the ground in Iraq was like the summer of 03. All right. So let me make sure I understand this all correctly. You get in after going through all the stuff in the government, like you were talking about, background check. That takes a while. It takes you through 2002. In 2003, now you're hired, and you mentioned obviously going on the ground in Iraq in the summer.

But were you officially hired by the CIA, or were you hired by a private company that was contracted by the CIA? Why do you want to set me up like that, man? I'm sorry. I can't answer that question um well i'll talk about our you know our background so it was kind of a interesting what was interesting about it is you did have a lot of guys that had you know either sf or seal backgrounds so most dudes had military backgrounds, especially for the work that we were doing at the time. So predominantly, mostly SEALs and SF, but there was other outliers, like people with different backgrounds. It was few and far between, but they took this motley crew and kind of trained everybody up.

And we all had different backgrounds. So when you're clearing rooms, like CQB, things like that, it was slightly different for each group. And so it was a little weird kind of being thrust into a situation where you had guys from Army guys, Navy guys working together hand in hand. It was kind of a little bit unusual at the time. So it was kind of unconventional. You're saying because the way you guys went about things was different.

Well, operationally, we had similar tactics. But there's all, you know, each group has a slight variation that might make, you know, their secret sauce a little bit better, you know, for what they do. And so I thought it was interesting that, you know, you took a variety. It was kind of like SF, you know for what they do and um so i thought it was interesting that you know you took a variety it was kind of like sf you know if you take like a special forces a team or you know a seal platoon it's almost all synonymous like in the sense that you'll have your the different personality traits like you might have one guy from oklahoma the next guy's from new york city one dude's into like country you know you know and he'll go by his call sign will be country because he's like super you know big belt buckle hat the

whole nine he's like i grew up on a farm and then you get like the other dude is from new york city you know he's like from an urban environment never seen a horse ever and then all of a sudden you're in afghanistan and you have to ride them and you know like an sf unit like uh um which has happened and you you take these dues the country guys like i got this man this is what you got to do and then the city guy's like uh that is a large dog um i'm not getting on that thing so it's just kind of crazy man um and that's what makes complimentary you know when you have teams with a variety of backgrounds that tends to make the unit stronger right so you might have one guy who's like a moto you know or uh you know he's really into racing vehicles and he's like the mechanic guy. He has a mechanical background.

So when a vehicle goes down, you just got to rely on all these other skill sets that people have or their interests. And they pay dividends on when you have like a highly functional team, the team that has to perform at a high level. And you have – it's not all group think. Not everybody has the same background. There's a lot of variety. And so we were thrust in that environment, you know, in early days in Iraq where we kind of had this similar. But now you have guys from different groups in the military

that are all kind of working together in an environment. Did you have any thoughts on going into it i mean hindsight's so 2020 now but you know when you initially wanted to do this and go back it's you on the drive back towards home listening to howard stern as buildings are coming down yeah man dude that was a turning point for me well 9 11 was like 9 12 and to see like um i know we talked on the on the car ride of the studio i said man i'll never want to another 9 11 100 um but the 9 9 12 you know it's almost cliche at this point for people that do remember 9 11. the day after 9 11 man i remember walking down the street and you just bump into another dude nothing you don't even

have common backgrounds didn't matter man people were like hey what's up brother you know yeah it was like i got you man like everybody was so unified like you it was just american flags everywhere people were just kind of like amped up but there was a lot of positive that came out of it with the country that seems super unified and pissed. But you – the point being though when this is – when that's happening and people are unified around this issue, the issue is Al-Qaeda attacked us where it wore and at the time it's like, okay, we're going to Afghanistan where they're harboring them. But then you spend 2002 going through all this background to get back in and by the time you're roped up to go, now they're like, oh, by the way, we're going to Iraq. Yeah, I had no idea what I was doing. Was there like a what the fuck is going on thought going through your mind? No, not at all, man.

I was like, hey, wherever you send me, I'll fucking go. Just tell me where I'm needed. I was just a cog in the wheel, you know. I just knew that I wanted to be a part of the fight i wanted to take the fight overseas so people in this country didn't have to go through one the biggest fear even before 9 11 was always that terror plots are going to happen in the united states and we've stopped countless ones um that probably some some of them will never be public knowledge. But to see that when 9-11 occurred, I never want to see that again. I don't want to see it. I don't

think anybody would, you know, it's just so, it's just crazy. You're, you know, attacking innocents, noncombatants, you know know guys are just going into work one day and then suddenly everything just changes on a dime so i thought you know the reason i was put on this planet is uh you know i always say when i got out of the military i felt like a ronin and even when i got out of contracting for grs i felt like a ronin you know I was like a samurai with no master. And I just didn't get the purpose. Money didn't drive me. It wasn't about how much power, influence, or money that I made running defense companies after I finished. I just felt like there was a higher calling and a purpose that I wasn't fulfilling.

And protecting other people has always been one of those things that I was just naturally drawn to. And when I was working for GRS, you know, whoever's in the backseat of your principal. What does GRS stand for? Global Response Staff. So basically what GRS does historically is they basically protect, well, I'll just say U.S. government assets and austere environments. So anywhere there's a conflict zone that's super high threat, you know, an easy analogy for people that are tuning in is like the movie 13 Hours. You know, they were all GRS guys. Benghazi.

Yep. like the movie 13 hours you know they were all grs guys um benghazi yep so in benghazi in the movie 13 hours that was you know uh people that were working in that capacity as grs either staff or or contract and you know basically you're just protecting people so they can do their job whether that's you know collecting intelligence – because sometimes there'll be analysts involved as well. But typically you're case officers that are going to be collecting intelligence overseas. Okay. So you were – I mean this does sound – minus some of the physical nature of like going into war-torn areas and and having missions and stuff like this this does sound like a lot different type of work than what you were doing in special forces no yeah it was it's more ep or executive protection um there's a big element of

that so your job is to protect your principal. The person that you're protecting, first and foremost, is you don't ever want to lose a principal or your protectee. Above and beyond that, your job is want to get off the X, get out of the kill zone, and get your package out of that environment as quickly as possible. Whereas in special operations, if you get into it, you're giving it all back, right? The only time you're going to give it back is if you have vehicles go down and you've got to fight your way out, which happens quite a bit. You might get hit by an ied and lose a vehicle um and then you're yeah the enemy opens up with a small arms fire well if you can't fit if you can't cross load you lost too many vehicles usually you know you could be running two or four vehicle in a convoy if you lose too many vehicles then you gotta fight your way out yeah and that's a that's not a situation you want to be in because your posture you could be running

low vis where you're not kitted up with you know we were always kitted up um meaning we had lots of ammo lots of water but you but you're not running food. You're not planning to be out for three days fighting, right? So you're planning to get back either that night or one or two days if you don't have QRF or quick reactionary force come and assist you. So yeah, it's quite different than the military as far as the tactics are the same. So if you get blown up if you're in an ambush you're in an ambush um but if you're doing ep work in a high threat environment or executive protection and you get um you know say people just start shooting at you

you just keep driving on and get the hell out of there how many like how big very odd how big a team are you usually working in for one asset to protect maybe well it really depends it depends on the principle because i've did five years of uh ep work most recently i just that was my last career i got back into high risk protection for celebrities and a-listers and things like that over here mostly yeah all in continent united states but i also did you know stuff overseas too as needed you know so somebody was going to you know malaysia or wherever um much easier work than the stuff you were talking it's a ton of planning man you just have to those type of gigs you just have to be very well you got to know your routes in and out um a lot of logistics you just got to

make sure everything's wired tight because your job is to make everything smooth like the bad guys don't exist you know but when they come out you got to be prepared to fight you know if needed so but when you were doing it in iraq i take it you obviously can't say who you're protecting and stuff like that but the types of people you'd be protecting would be like that guy paul bremer who was in charge of iraq over there it's like the key diplomat stuff like that you're saying yeah well bremer had his own detail um i knew some of the dudes on brimmer brimmer's detail but that was the ladies and gentlemen we got him yeah yeah and um so he had a full full entourage when you know you're not running low vis with a guy like that if he's leaving the compound you're running like

you know you're going high you're going to be high visibility um you're gonna like, you know, you're going high. You're going to be high visibility. What does that mean for people at home who don't understand? Well, he was a pretty big target. So he obviously had a lot of people on him. We would run low-vis, meaning low-visibility operations, where we would try to be more indigenous to the region. Like, so when we're driving down the road, you don't want to be noticed. Right. And one of the biggest problems that we had at the time was our vehicles. So in 03, it wasn't too bad. Uh, we were running around a lot of soft skin vehicles, like pickup trucks, dude sitting in the back just to get the point A to point B. And then doing ops, we were in 03 running around in commercially unarmored vehicles. So at that time, the threat profile wasn't as bad.

For just coming off the invasion after like a month, I think the dust was settling from the invasion. So we weren't getting ambushed every day. It was few and far between in 03. And thankfully, because we didn't have armored vehicles at that time. But what happened in the beginning in the spring of 04 rounds on a vehicle and thankfully the u.s government there's pros and cons they acquired all these um commercially armored vehicles and at the time it was just like hey if you guys have armored vehicles and you make manufacturing in the united states sell them to us now because we have emerging like an emergent threat you know overseas we need to get them all over there so when i tell you how ridiculous this sounds like i drove an armored h2 hummer in iraq with somebody very important

down cadizia expressway one of the most you know route irish for any military guys that listen it was the most dangerous road on the in the And I was like, are you kidding me? I'm driving a silver H2 Hummer in post, you know, the post-invasion, it was like maybe like five months after the post-invasion when we got that thing. I was like, this is atrocious. So what that was is a big magnet. So we're driving like Suburbans, Chevy Suburbans in Iraq, H2 Hummers, G500s, Mercedes G-Wagons, 7 Series BMWs.

Some had great armor packages, but you freaking needed them because every time you took that out the front gate, when they see three suburbans running in a freaking convoy like that's like the state department they're like they're bad you know hey those guys we need to blow them up so we started getting hit in 04 right before fallujah it just you know and uh i guess it would be like march april may it just progressively got worse and worse um what was it when you got there though in the summer of 03 obviously prior to felucia it was what was it like it was so hot but like what was the environment like was it still low-key like during the honeymoon mission accomplished phase where there wasn't a fuck ton of violence and the the sectarian stuff hadn't totally blown up yet yeah it was more or less i'm talking i'm just fixing the light go ahead yeah i think what it was was um

i think the dust was just settling after the invasion and really i think when we the debathification of the country when we took the bath this you know we basically we created a vacuum we fired a bunch of high-powered individuals government military and the dust was just settling off of doing that. Like we put Paul Bremer in charge. We started firing a bunch of the headshed from Saddam's regime. Because Saddam was a Ba'athist. Yeah. And then you had all these groups.

You had the Sunnis, the Shiites. And it was very tribal and that always makes it difficult is, you know, there's not, it's that whole divided we fall mentality. There was all these different subgroups and I think what happened is in the beginning of 04 that dust settled and people were starting to feel hey man i don't have a freaking job now like what am i gonna do i am a military you know i'm a general or you know i was in this really cush job and now i'm unemployed so you know naturally they just they were rising up you know because effectively they didn't when they pushed out all the bath this if i'm understood if i remember this correctly that's pretty much it was like they they bremer and and the state department made an order i guess through bush that was like

no one who was a member of the bath party and therefore basically no one who was a sunni could hold a government position and so that saddam had been a sunni technically obviously was saddam hussein was crazy but he was within the sunni shiite world he was a sunni so now you had all the shiites getting government positions and let's just call it what it is it's handed off by the imperialist american over here that's what their propaganda is going to say with that and so all the sunnis then get pissed off and the power vacuum leads to a guy like al-zakawi who just wreaked havoc as as a terrorist across the country for until his death in 06 yeah it was um there's so many different like micro like factors that that

played into the big scheme um but i think leadership i mean to me it's kind of like when you have a tribal area you got to maintain order some way some semblance of order and discipline within the the region that you're if you're, you know, occupying is so difficult. I don't necessarily agree with our doctrine where you're going to occupy for 20 years. I think that's a fool's errand. We're not good at it, for sure. You know, it's, well, I mean, who is? It's unconventional.

Warfares are very difficult to fight. But, yeah, I think in the spring of 2004, just everything just went wide open, man. We would, you know, it was not uncommon for, to get hit once a day, you know, and we're on the road every day. So, you know, our operations were like going into Ramadi, going into Missoula, going into Sadr City. Like with, I went into Sadr City one uh one vehicle once me and my buddy and i'm like you know they had 10 000 strong at that point and it was bonkers yeah we're just you know two gringos driving down you know hey we could pull up to a checkpoint i'm like i hope these guys are good guys and um in hindsight it was pretty crazy some of the you know you have

to know the roads inside and out there was no map data um so it was very much like the wild west but that's what i loved about it it was like beg borrow steal all that mattered was getting conducting operations and make them successful and keep keeping people safe it's pretty simple and then you know it was like that work hard play hard mentality but um the op tempo was freaking high man like there wasn't like you know sometimes you're doing one two three or three ops a day and so what would an op consist of like getting one one high value target from one place to another pretty much well i can't really get in the details like you know from a legal perspective but the uh it could be a variety of different things it could be um transporting your principal to you know a meeting with somebody you know an asset and

you know you have to do the reconnaissance you have to do all the pre-planning make sure we you know um you also got to look at uh different ied attempts like so you got to be up on the current situation sometimes just getting out of where we were stationed um when we first rolled in in 03 we took over the airport baghdad is BIAP, Baghdad International Airport. So there was like a hangar there. Your team did? Yeah. So we just slept there for like the first, I don't know, month or two.

How many guys did that? Oh, man. There was a bunch of people there. I don't remember the numbers, but it was a decent-sized group. It wasn't, like, military big. You know, it was only, like, maybe, I don't know, I can't throw a number out, maybe, like, 100 people or something like that. Took over the entire Baghdad airport.

Yeah. Like, when we rolled in, there was military already. They just rolled through. So we just kind of like, hey, this is where I'm going to sleep. It's pretty weird. Okay, wait a second. I'm just trying to, as a total layman here who has no kind of like, hey, this is where I'm going to sleep. It's pretty weird. Okay, wait a second. I'm just trying to, as a total layman here who has no concept of this, I'm trying to understand so everyone out there can. You get dropped on the ground in the summer of 03, as we said, and one of the first things you do is you take the Baghdad airport.

So it hadn't been taken before that. Well, the military had taken it, and then they left it. So it's unsecured at that point, right? Is anyone there? Are there any planes flying there? was there were some um other contingents still there like different government agencies there's like you know a couple dudes from here a couple dudes from there so we still had to make sure every the area was secure to set up like you know our infrastructure to run operations and what we're waiting on is there was a adjacent military base called camp slayer it was like maybe a half a mile down the road and we eventually took that over and we set up before the military even came back

into this camp it was one of Saddam's palaces. It was all walled in. So we set up there, and then the military, you know, they set up. I can't remember if it was before or after us. But, yeah, it was pretty much the Wild West. It was like you just claim your territory, you know? But I'm trying to, like, relate this to this to like imagine if it was here like what it would be like so you and i were at philadelphia international airport today is this pretty much

and i would imagine the bag that airport isn't quite that big but is this pretty much like like you where we would pull up to the exit there to get off there is now it's like i am legend around there yeah pretty much pretty much yeah yeah it was pretty similar it was uh it was just like um survival of the fittest you know and when when you say people were there though this is the part i didn't understand well i can't remember all the details of like man that was so long ago um Are they chilling in the concourse or like in an office? Like what are they doing? It was just this big central building that we stayed at

that we referenced and called BIAP. And there were different military and other government agencies that were kind of in that area, but it wasn't a big contingent of people at, by any stretch. And what, what, so like,

do you have a, is there a general there or is it just like a few guys? No, we just, I can't get into all the specifics on the stuff. Yeah. Cause I don't want to get, you know,

myself in legal trouble. But, so I don't want to get into the detail of all the specifics of who was there, and it's not really relevant. But yeah, the bottom line, it was the Wild West, man. Like, 03 and 04 in Iraq was, you know, you had the calm before the storm in 03 and it was hot did i mention that what are we talking like 110 human dude it was 130 i think one one one 125 130 it was not one of the hottest summers when i got off the plane i had to drive an armored vehicle from i had to drive it off the aircraft to wherever we're going. I had no weapons. I'm in no idea what I'm fucking doing, right?

Because it's like, hey, we're going to go from here to here. We had no maps. There was no accurate data. We had garments and stuff like that back in the day, but there was no map data. So it was like you're kind of going in blind initially. You had no familiarization with the area. And so it's like, dude, I get in this thing.

I start it up. And the freaking air conditioner didn't work in the suburban. Bro, I drank two gallons of water. I'm not even exaggerating. Within 30 minutes, I was sitting in this thing baking. It was probably about 125 degrees actual temperature you can like die sitting in yeah and i'm a sweater for those that you don't know i'm a big sweater so i i was dying in this thing just that that was my you're like hey what

was like an 03 i'm like it was freaking hot bro like it was kind of cool you know you're just figuring stuff out it was kind of like you're a freshman but then you skip the uh you know junior and sophomore year you won't write the you know it's like oh now you're uh getting ready to graduate boy and 04 was uh graduation but this is also and i'm trying to think of the little i know, but Iraq I guess was a little different because in Afghanistan when they went in, you had an unprecedented at the time CIA paramilitary run operation with military supporting it. In Iraq, you had a military operation with the CIA also in a paramilitary capacity and stuff supporting it. So it wasn't like, it wasn't like Afghanistan in the sense that the CIA was completely in charge and was very focused and tactical. This was like a full blown invasion. So when you get dropped in there, it was called GRS, that was the name of it you said? Okay. When, when the GRS team gets

dropped in there, you are now officially contracted by the agency so are you how coordinated are you with in what you're doing with your ops with the military on the ground versus you're just kind of working with the agency and they're saying here's what we need to get done and just do it uh we work together it depends on the depends on the situation in the op. Sometimes we would work hand-in-hand with the military. And more so at that time were the tier one elements, meaning, well, I don't want to get into all the details of, but it really, it just depended on what was the requirement at the time. But there was many times where we would be working directly with the military. But most of the time from a day-to-day, like standard ops, when it wasn't something like super critical, we would just be out there. We were supporting ourselves. So if we got blown up, we got shot shot up the people that are coming from you is

going to be other grs guys it's not going to be the military we had no um unless it was like a serious long prolonged multi-day type of situation um you're not going to get military support and you know there was times where we had civilian aircraft backing us up throwing us ammo or um it just really depends on on the uh on the situation back then but most of the time we would have to respond to ourselves we were our own qrf so when you're out doing an op there's other dudes all kitted up and if goes down they get punched out to respond to you if they got shot up you send whatever else you got and then oh you hope the military would get involved after that but we weren't always connected you know tethered to them

but as as rarely as a contractor with the agency you know you're talking about all this basically like high level war zone executive protection and and travel planning and things like that but and again don't say what you can't say because you did and just full disclosure until recently you had you still had top secret clearance and everything so there's some stuff you can't talk about but was there any element of espionage activity or intelligence gathering activity that you were personally a part of? I won't comment on that one either. You're trying to get me arrested, man.

I'm like, I'm stage four. I got cancer. Don't come after me, the government. I love you guys. I mean, we were involved in a lot of different stuff, man. There was different groups. And, you know, when you say paramilitary, there's kind of a lot of, that gives you a lot of latitude on things that are typically deemed unconventional.

So every day was unconventional, man. Like, to be honest with you, like when I did EP work in the States and then I juxtapose or do a comparison compared to times in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, they're completely freaking different because, you know, you could be driving on an op in those combat environments. Explosives are super easy to get a hold of.

It's not unlikely you're going to get hit by an RPG. It's not unlikely you're going to get hit by an IED. It's not unlikely that a belt-fed machine gun is going to open up on you going from point A to point B with your principal. In the States or areas that aren't war-torn, it's very difficult to procure explosives. There are a dime a dozen over there. I mean, you just go walk down the street, you can find a 155 round and stick some C4 in it and rig it to a cell phone and blow a vehicle up. It's super easy. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to do this kind of stuff.

And they got more brazen. As time went on, foreign fighters came into the country in 04. That was another thing that the time gave people like hey let's go fight the americans so i think my viewpoint is there are some outside organizations obviously you know you know all the buzzwords when it comes to uh elements that were prevalent in the time but they would come from iran or where it doesn't matter syria yeah afghanistan i mean they could come from anywhere to pick up the fight, you know? So that's why I think, you know, there's a bunch of different reasons why things picked up in 04. But for me, I'm just an operator. You know, at the end of the day, back then, I didn't really

care about the geopolitical structure and like, why this? I mean, you know, you kind of, you have your finger on the pulse when you're on the ground you're talking to people you kind of get the vibe and you can kind of feel the the shift like people were really friendly in 04 or 03 then on 04 it just started the tide you just got a different sense you wouldn't see people out on the road so like when you're driving through a market type area in 03 you might see people everywhere but then when when the shit starts hitting the fan when you're driving down the road you got to be dialed into like yo why is this market like there's one person on the street oh shit

they were fixing the freaking you know hit us so you're really dialed into like on the minutiae but also politically you kind of get a better sense than some politicians because you're talking politics with these guys and trying to understand what makes them tick because one day they're your friend, the next day they could be your enemy. It's their country. Right. You're there. You're a visitor, you know. Yeah. And I think – and guys who were over there who had to follow mission orders to be over there, that's not their fault.

But they're then stuck there to clean up the mess or try to keep things tenable. And to me, again, in hindsight especially, it was an impossible job to expect that from our frontline military guys. We did a good job. We never lost the principal, man. That's something I'm always proud of, man. I've never lost the principal. I've been freaking blown up, shot up. But at the end of the day, that's all that's important.

It wasn't whether one of us gets injured or, God forbid, killed. That's part of the job, man. That's why we're doing what we're doing. Like, I never hesitated a second. Like, there was people that I was protecting at times where you're like, man, if you're on the street, I wouldn't even talk to you. You're such a dickbag. But it didn't matter to me, man. I was like, I might not like you or have the same belief structure.

You know, they're talking, you know have the same belief structure you know they're talking you know so it'd be crazy some of the situation would blow your mind what you you would overhear but at the end like what or can you not say well i mean some of it could be like political stuff you know it's like well you know they're talking shit about the president or whatever and i'm like dude i'm over here like you know we just got hit like nine 11, just two years ago. And I'm still kind of in that vibe of like, Hey man, I'm not here. My job is not to second guess, you know, during the invasion, whether this is a just war or not. Like at the end of the day, I have a job to do like time will tell, you know, um, on that stuff. I wasn't, that wasn't my concern at the moment. I just wanted, you know, I was like, Hey, there's people trying to kill people, um, that I'm protecting. And my

job is to either, you know, keep them alive or dispatch those other dudes because they shouldn't be out killing people anyway. You know what I mean? It's kind of a basic tenant. Yeah. Like, but more than just the vibe though, too, you,'re – and by vibe, I mean like what you were talking about with talking with people and getting a feel and sense on the ground and seeing how things were shifting 03 to 04 and then into 05 and stuff. Like obviously you get that, but with a top-secret clearance and working with – as a contractor for the CIAia like i'd imagine you're getting read in on intelligence all right oh yeah so you know what's going down in this yeah i mean of course like and you know coming from special forces kind of helped helped out you know because if you're if you're a green beret you got to win hearts and minds right like your job's not there just to like you know destroy things and

you know your job is to kind of make a connection with the people get a better understanding and have them help us you know and us to help them so i think you know coming from that environment it was it was easy to talk to some of the people you know i felt bad for some of them you know some of the good there's a lot of smart a lot of doctors and things that we were talking to you high level people very smart and very dialed in on politically and economically and you know they they got it all and they put their lives on the line to support our country um providing information at times and sometimes you see those people get killed you know it's like man that is like you know when you're an operator all you can do is be like hey bro we cannot go to their house in broad daylight you're gonna get

those people killed and then when the higher-ups don't listen to those things and somebody does get killed it feels like you're kind of responsible. But at the end of the day, I'm like, no, we're going to be in charge when it comes to operational security. You guys aren't going to tell us how to do that. You guys can do your job, but we're going to get you there safely and we're going to keep your assets alive. So there's some frustration. But, yeah, I was like kind of trying to get the vibe on the ground because all that intelligence is good for something you know it helps you understand and god forbid if you're ever captured you kind of know you got to know what's going on in the country right yeah for sure and how long

were you there in iraq um was there from summer 03 through the, through the fall? I can't remember when I went home, maybe for Christmas, I think. And then I went back in, uh, I think maybe half the year because then I punched out to Afghanistan in the end of 2004 going into 2005. Was that your call or orders to go there? Yeah, actually, I wanted to go there. I wanted to do as much as I could and kind of get a sense of where the value is, you know, for what I had to offer, which is, you know, I'm a Neanderthal. But no, I just wanted to, you know, I hadn't been to Afghanistan at that point. And I was like, well, there's mountains and it's cold because Iraq is hot. And so I can't remember. I know I was there half the year in 2004 towards the trail end

and then most of 2005 I did a couple trips over there. What was the big difference? I mean, obviously the climate and the geography were way, way different between the two, but you had a chance to see both of these places at some prime times of when this war was really really hot and going on and like i often when i talk with guys they'll talk about how it was it was almost forget just the geography and everything like it was it was kind of opposite it was entirely different objectives and opposite situations. But like, what was your experience with Afghanistan?

Well, I mean, the first thing was I was there. I know it was in the winter because it was cold as hell. And I went from one extreme to the other. I was like, oh, let me go from super hot desert to like, you know, to Kabul where there's like, you know, mountains and they're super rugged so i guess one of the main differences like if you talk from an economic perspective if you looked at iraq when i was there one of the first things i noticed was like man they actually have things to trade they've got oil they've got dates they've got water like they have a future because they have resource and they, you know, they have the people there are educated. There was, there was, that was probably the first thing.

Then you, when I transitioned to Afghanistan, I'm like, okay, they have dirt. They have opium. They've got dirt and they've got guns. I mean, and it's super tribal. Well, at that point, I'm just wondering, like, for, obviously, we know how this turned out 20 years later, but. Yeah, I'm not telling anything that nobody doesn't know, I guess. Were we at, when you're there in 04, 05, could you see it already starting to not go the right way because resources had been pulled from there? No, I mean, it was still early you know like we were trying to establish

and um it was a little more stability when i was there i didn't get blown up i didn't get shot up um surprisingly because i just seem like i'm a magnet to people are like you're like a bullet magnet man wherever you go like people want to ride with me because they're like dude i want some fun i was like yeah no it ain't fun dude that's why i'm deaf now but um yeah what were you asking me on that about about whether afghanistan in when you were there in 0405 whether or not there were already some signs of cracks in the foundation no i didn't see him at the time man man. I mean, the things that I was looking at was like, well, you know, what I noticed right away was I knew there was some tribalism, you know, you got all the different sects in Iraq. But there was a lot more tribes and disconnects and local chiefs and this and that and it made it i was like man this is gonna be a hard one dude like and the first thought in my head was like well the russians were here for 10 years we're not gonna be that stupid and like i try to occupy for like another 10 like 10 years so when i was

doing all this stuff everyone was talking at that time oh three oh four oh five dude it's gonna dry up soon man like it's gonna be over you know, man. Like, it's going to be over, you know. Dude went on for 20 years, right? I could have done that, you know, in hindsight, I would have just continued to do it, you know. But those times, like, Afghanistan for me was a better experience in the sense of, like, I've already had figured out the first location, and now I was going somewhere completely new. Once again, throwing my, thrusting myself into an uncomfortable position. I was like,

I haven't been here before. Other dudes have been here several deployments. And so you're kind of looking at them to kind of educate you like, Hey, here's where you need to go. Here's where you want to stay away from. And a lot of that was tribal for us in the sense of like, you got to rely on the guys, the OGs, you know. And unfortunately, I guess I was one of those OGs, you know. When I went into Iraq, there was nobody there, you know, like to get education from. We just learned, me and all the awesome dudes I work with. We just had to figure stuff out and pass that along to guys, you know.

But did you see like at that point in Afghanistan, was there any noticeable Taliban presence or were they pretty much just totally in the hills? No, I mean, I spent a lot of time in Kabul and then on the road, of course, like going up to Bagram or some of the forward operating bases. But, uh, yeah, I mean, we were dealing with those people, um, sometimes directly. And, um, so yeah, I knew they were there and, um, it was good to take some of those people off the street, you know know or help in some regard that was kind of you know a good thing um but um yeah i didn't get involved with the people quite as much that i did in previous you know like in iraq you know people are pushing tea on you and you're like what's your angle like i'm not drinking this dude And then I started drinking it as time went on. I was like, hey you guys got any that tea stuff without poison

That'd be awesome. Yeah, I might have the wrong shit in there. Sure I mean one of the things I I've never really asked people about Because I don't know how relevant it's been to some of the people I've had on here But like you did mention it at least in passing a little bit ago The the poppy fields in the opium in afghanistan you know i've i've talked with some people before who i haven't seen the pictures but they mentioned like oh yeah i have pictures of me standing in front of all this fucking pot like miles and miles of poppy and and yeah like the odas yeah over there i mean they're i've seen some crazy photos

so how much like you know everyone gets their conspiracy hat on and thinks about like international crime syndication or syndicates and how – obviously the poppy, it runs from multiple places around the world. But it stayed running out of there. But like how much of that was locked down versus like the government slash military knew that like, all right, there's a criminal element that is running this stuff to other countries and it's just not our problem so we're not going to deal with it um i don't want to comment on it because i don't have enough information to be relevant to like an intelligent you know which is going to somebody out there is going to be like matt's conspiracy theory though i never i never was like involved with the uh on the drug scene over there, whether it was like, you know, especially opium. But a lot of the ODAs and friends of mine that continued on and spent time in Afghanistan, yeah, man, they were doing, I mean, that was their sole focus. They were burning stuff and, you know, destroying things or taking down a lot of those places.

But yeah, never really got into it too much. So you're there, 04, 05. When did you officially retire and leave the game? Well, then I got a good sense of Iraq, a good sense of Afghanistan. And then it was kind of like a thank you for your service, like tour, um, an opportunity came up in, uh, in Israel to do some work in like, uh, you know, at that time there was a bombing, uh, state department lost, um, some guys, I forget what year it was. Um, but going into Gaza was really dangerous and there was an IED there that, that killed

some people and they shut that down right before I got there. We had that, that, uh, IED. And so we would go to the other areas like, you know, could be Ramallah or Bethlehem. They're Palestinian controlled territories. And it was cool because you go to work, go into those badlands you get all kitted up do your thing then you come back and you're like it's the equivalent of being in new york you know it's like downtown jerusalem and you're just chilling yeah going to a pool um going somewhere to eat and you don't have to be like super high threat profile because it was fairly safe outside

of those areas which was um completely different environment than coming from Afghanistan or Iraq where you have to be switched on 24-7, right? Yeah. So I wasn't used to that, you know, not having to be switched on all the time. Even when you're sleeping, you know, you're getting mortared or whatever, you know. It's pretty common. So being in there, it was awesome, man, Food was good. It was just a good experience. I learned a lot about culture over there and history.

What do you make of the whole Israel-Palestine thing and how, I mean, it goes back thousands and thousands of years, but it's like the hardest question to solve, it seems like. Yeah, man. I mean, what do you do when you're surrounded by all people that want to take you out? You know, it's – for me, it was kind of – I had some dealings with people like on the Palestinian side of the house. And then I dealt with some other people on the, you know, outside in Jerusalem on the street. And I was like, man, you can't, it's kind of hard to win hearts and minds when, you know, they put all these giant chicanes, it was basically concrete walls all the way around these areas and so some of

the palestinians have to cross over to see their family members that might be in israel and you know when you talk about this it sounds big but these places are small man compared to for comparison to our country right and the way that they they have to wait in line, and they put walls up to basically just divide them to keep people in Israel safe. But I'm like, is that sustainable? Look at the Berlin Wall. It's very synonymous with that. That's what it felt like.

It was like walls and people waiting in line. They're always unhappy because you don't have the supply chain. It isn't flowing like it does in Israel for the Palestinian people. So I looked at it from a different optic because oppression is bad no matter what. I'm not a big fan of oppression because that leads to hate and discontent and then people will rise up. So I think, I don't know what it's like now.

I've been back several times as a civilian, which was interesting, for work. And I just have a different viewpoint on that because of what I saw from my optic, you know, not from what I'm reading about politics and policy. I was just seeing it firsthand. I was like i don't know man some of these guys that i think are the bad guys are actually cooler than the people that i'm kind of trying to represent you know it's interesting when you start you know obviously i've never been i don't have that experience on there but just reading the tea leaves and hearing the different perspectives, a lot of what you just said right there resonates because, you know, I don't have a dog in the fight or anything. I have tremendous empathy for both sides as far as how difficult of a situation that is. And I think there's been wrongs on both sides for sure over the years. There's no doubt about that but you know to what point now that israel does at least have some allies in the area you know there there are friendly countries be it jordan egypt things like that where it's like at what point do you have to start saying we have some some human

rights issues we we got to deal with here and at what point do you start saying like oh is there is there an even if it's unintended is there an apartheid element going on here you know you just said it best where when people are oppressed that breeds some hatred and and leads to bad things and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in a lot of ways and it's hard for me to not understand where some of that anger is coming from when it when I look at the Palestinians like they didn't they didn't ask for this you know it's it is it is a tough and like you get in

trouble even talking about it or bringing it up it makes me very uncomfortable i feel like i feel like you're setting me up again you know i'm not i'm not i'm trying to like take all the heat on my own end off you but it's it's just it is it's super complex i mean all these things that we're talking about you know which kind of you can dovetail the withdrawal in afghanistan that show that just occurred um look some of these things are in your face you know like we're talking about a very complex geopolitical issue between the you know palestinian there's a ton of history there i'm no expert on any of that but i'm an expert on oppression and i know what it does and i feel like you know people need to be to feel the freedom to be able to spread their wings and be successful and not concentrate

on doing bad things other people yeah and um this latest withdrawal in afghanistan is a is a good dovetail i was never a big fan of occupying that for 20 years and losing more you know it's it's an unconventional warfare uh war that we were fighting super complex there's not a lot of infrastructure it's very tribal a lot of complexity but what i have a huge problem with was how we conducted the pullout in Afghanistan. It was atrocious. If you take a layman off the street with no military background and you say, hey, we made a political decision, which I didn't have a problem with, a withdrawal, but like, hey, why don't you listen to your team, being the military advisors, generals, the guys that are boots on the ground, that are living that environment day to day, and say, let's plan a good time to do this.

There's never going to be a great time. But what's the last thing that we pull out? The guys with guns, because we need to protect, you know, the women, children, the NGO workers. They should be the first ones to come out. The last people to go, you know, once you secure all your equipment and sensitive items, we're not leaving, you know, making them the third world largest, you know, a terrorist organization. The Taliban became like, I think it was like bigger than Australia's military. Like one day after. Billions of dollars worth of high-tech equipment, night vision goggles and things like that.

Absurd, absurd the way the administration handled that. It was going to fall regardless. I don't think there's much you could do. It doesn't matter who was in power at the time. But we could have done it in a way with the ted offensive i mean if you look back at history which all wasn't that long ago especially as guys in office can you explain the ted offensive to people who aren't familiar well when we withdraw if you look at the historical photos that burn images in the people's mind saigon yeah saigon the fall you know towards the end of the war,

it was just a melee of people trying to jump into helicopters to get the hell out because there was no proper planning. Right. And it just was a shit show. And that's what the people were holding on to, freaking aircraft falling to their death because they were so desperate to get out of there because we left 60,000 assets,

people that supported us and fought with us. And we just left them there hanging. They're going to get murdered. Their families are going to get murdered. Their kids are going to be raped. Did you, did some of your friends and guys you had served with, were they part, part of the people who, there was a bunch of this where guys were going back in there on the court to save the assets. I already had my surgery on my leg. So, I mean, I actually thought about going back over. I was so pissed off, man. I was like, I'll go with a freaking titanium leg, dude, and hip. Holy shit.

And so there was a bunch of us that were working behind the scenes trying to help assets get, you know, we're trying to keep people that supported us that could be special operations that could be doesn't matter military or government these people we said we're going to get your back you know and so we're trying to get some of these people out safely you know um you hear about like tim kennedy you know and a bunch of bunch of dudes were working through back channels, pulling resource where we could to get people out of Afghanistan safely. And you were thinking about going over there? Dude, if I could, man. With stage four cancer.

Oh, yeah, man. I mean, it's just physically I knew I had to, you know, I had to make that assessment. I'm like, look, I could be more of a hindrance, do more harm than good because of, you know, this thing's not tested. You know, my hip, my glute, my quad, and I had it all and my femur taken out. So if I need to carry somebody, like, I know I can do it, but not like I used to be able to do it. And so I just tried to help behind the scenes, you know, where I could because I was so pissed off at the way, you know, talking to everyone else that served in Afghanistan. I was like, dude, we knew it was inevitable that there's going to be a regime change. The government's going to fall.

Taliban's going to rise back up, sure. But let's not make it easy for them. Let's not give them everything. Yeah, don't give them freaking military surplus to fight us again. It's crazy. And you would think, because I am glad we're not there anymore. Obviously, none of us, including people in in the military wanted to see these endless wars so it's not good that you were still in a goddamn country 20 years on but like you said there's a way to effectively manage this and do it correct if you're going to

finally actually commit to doing it good glad we're doing that now do it correctly and take care of these people because by the way way, it's a precedent thing too. Not just for, oh, people will be like, oh, America will just leave somewhere. But to your point, like the assets because now in the future you go – Think about it. Who's going to help us in the future? Oh, yeah. Let me help you so you can leave me hanging.

Right. Work for Team USA. Yeah, okay. So that's my one – a lot of guys were frustrated on the way things were conducted and i'm not trying to monday this isn't a monday morning quarterback thing or you know or i'm sitting here that's fair it's not this isn't a hindsight it's 2020 this was like super apparent yes for pretty much the layman yes this is way you don't handle that kind of situation but yeah now you you were in israel in 0607 it sounds like something like that uh most

of 06 and you said that there was a tour like you you did some other places too like what other places did you go well that was the the kind of like you know um the cherry on top yeah it was it was just a good good opportunity and I hadn't been there. And I was like, yeah, I want to try that next, you know, because it was only the three areas that were kind of hot at the time, you know. So when did you get out? So that was my last year in the 06. So I was partnered with – my buddy Ron introduced me to a good friend of mine, John, who was from SEAL Team 3. He was a former SEAL frogman.

So he became my partner in Iraq. And him – he and my buddy Ron and another one or two guys started an armored vehicle company. Based on, we were noticing like, you know, I think it was like the second time I got blown up. I was like, okay, this is pretty apparent that the profiles that we're running, it's, you know, it's leading to engagement because we stick out like a sore thumb. We have big targets on our vehicles. Are you allowed to say what happened when you were blown up or is that classified? Well, there's a couple, you know, like a couple instances. You know, my first vehicle ambush was when I was in SF. You know, I was in Africa and got stitched up.

It wasn't like a military engagement. It was just driving down the road and some local, they turned out to be military. I didn't know it at the time because it was dark. And I was in a soft skin vehicle and they just like lit us up. You know, it was like, oh, I'm awake now, dude. What the fuck was that? And it is like stitched up the side of the vehicle with an AK. And we ended up rolling.

I ended up, you know basically uh eliminating the threat i was driving the vehicle part of the reason we probably crashed in hindsight and you know i had a fanny pack on dude so i get made fun of any pack yeah i don't really like they're back now by the way i know joe rogan's bringing them back i'm like dude i don't know bro joe rogan's wearing fanny pack oh hell yeah he rocks fanny pack i haven't seen that he probably has a fanny pack company i don't know i was talking about all like the all like the uh some of the like streetwear stuff where they got i mean they're wearing satchel versions too let's get this right but the 90s are coming back man i don't know don't bring a actually actually i got one right there it was the gift it was a gift just a gift it's convenient so so i'm sorry i cut you off but you were you were talking about one of the blow-up situations

where you were driving yes so in my time you know it was funny because we weren't in like a combat setting per se it was a high high high risk but when you're working in africa you're thinking like i don't want to get malaria i don't want to get dengue fever like everything can kill you in africa it is a crazy it's probably the worst place i've ever been um is north africa and um so you know we're we're there doing good things helping you know win hearts and minds do demining counterpoaching and you know, we're, we're there doing good things, helping, you know, win hearts and minds, do demining, counterpoaching, and, you know, you're just driving down the street one night and then get stitched up.

And I was in civilian clothes, which was crazy. And I only had two teammates with me, um, and, uh, a PA and, uh, who was a military and then two NGOs that were were working for uh the un and uh yeah it was dicey dude my first one i was as a young guy i was like 26 25 and i just didn't want to get in trouble i was like i said i shot that dude i'm totally gonna get in trouble for this we have to write up a report i mean i'm gonna get chewed out i don't know how this works it's like a second deployment dude um so it was kind of like from my perspective i was just a young operator i was like i don't want to get i don't want to get kicked out of the military i did something you know i was

just trying to protect the dudes because they we were in a toyota ambulance and so it only had a front driver door and a front passenger the rest of the dudes were in the back and uh so when we got uh stitched up I just named it the muzzle flash I had my Joe Rogan fanny pack on hey it was effective dude bread a nine millimeter also not the best choice of firearm for special operations but anyway I just unzipped it and aimed through the window at the muzzle flash. I just happened to hit the guy pretty much center mass. I was like, huh. Nice shot.

The shooting stopped. That's all. At the time, I wasn't seeing all this unfold that quickly. I was just like, hey, bad guy's shooting at me. Oh, Mongo, shoot back. Yeah. So he ended up shooting the front tire out is why we lost control but we ended up going into like this huge drainage ditch and rolled twice so the guy sitting next to me my captain he got

ejected or knocked out and uh i changed mags was the only reason i eventually saved my life because i was smart enough to change mags because i dumped i don't know probably half a mag and i i climbed out the window because the vehicle was stuck up in the air so my captain was knocked out not in the seat everyone else was in the back so i just figured he got ejected or something so i got out and used the vehicle was sticking up in the air and i used the front for covering concealment where the engine was and i see all these dudes walking down dude i'm like damn it i have the worst luck i'm like the new guy like you know captain's the most senior guy he's knocked the fuck out so i'm like hey yell back to my buddy walt who's on my team it's like hey bro what do you want me to do, man?

There's like five dudes online with I think two or three of them have belt feds, man. And we're stuck. And you guys are pinned in the vehicle. We can't get out the back door. I got to keep trained on this cat. Like they're walking down the street. And they're maybe like 50 to maybe 100 meters because it was dark. There's no street lights.

I could see him. I was like, fuck. And he's like, yeah, just hold fast, dude. So anyway, long story short, this whole thing turned into like this crazy situation where they all came around and surrounded us, and they put AKs to our heads, and I had a pistol to one of their heads. So we're all like, we all have guns to each other's heads. And we were standing there for like literally in probably two hours, you know, trying to

de-conflict and de-escalate the situation. Did you have a language barrier going on? Oh, fuck yeah, dude. Nobody spoke English. No French, no English. No, I'm like, hey. And all they cared, they're like, who shot our guy? And I'm like, hey, motherfuckers.

Look, I know I'm the new guy. Don't throw me under the bus, right? And there you go. My buddy Walt was laughing because he was just like no dude and so yeah they wanted us to give up our weapons and that was the the sticking point and i'm the new guy so i'm like hey i ain't giving them shit they're gonna fucking kill me dude yeah they're gonna kill all of us so we ended up you know it was kind of a crazy situation but like um it all all kind of worked its way out. You know, I think that was like two in the morning through like 530 in the morning.

With guns to each other's heads. Well, there was. So after the guns got, you know, we sent a showed him a letter. I was like, this is from your president. They tore it up. I was like, no, this is it says this is, you know, we're here on behalf of the U.S. government. We're trying to help your people. And they went. And I was like no this is it says this is you know we're here on behalf of the u.s government we're trying to help your people and they went and i was like oh that's bad i'm not i'm not the smartest guy in the world but i'm pretty sure this is bad and then they're like who shot our guy i

was like oh shoot no one shoot yeah who shot who shot at me no one no one shoot so finally the decision was made to, not my decision. I was highly against it. And just, you know, we're at a stalemate and they were, we're outgunned, gave up weapons. And then, you know. And they let you go? No, they didn't let us go. They kind of did like a little mox execution on us.

At least that's the way I remember it. But they, they kind of march us down to there was like these i don't remember how many dudes maybe five dudes um you think i remember that stuff how many of you three um armed you said ngo two ngos there's only two uh really two of us me and my uh um are uh you had the pa your partner and then the two ngos so it was walt myself and then my captain was knocked the fuck out so we were only three carrying but we only had pistols the craziest situation then ever since then i'm like i'm always going freaking heavy yeah because it was just supposed to be a short trip you know threat profile was very low we're just kind of going on night you know down down the road

and uh anyway they put they walk us over and there's clearly the leader you know he's behind a belt fed machine gun with his little nug you know his little guy you know training it and they put us made us sit down you know like in front of this fucking belt fed machine gun and they're like yeah i don't remember i said all i remember is like i told my buddy walt on my team i was like i said something about having a spider coat i was like i have a spider coat dude should we just go for like a knife like a like a folding knife i was like should we just go for it he's like shut the fuck up dude like it's all gonna work out i'm not convinced i'm on my knees yeah we're sitting on our knees i feel like we're gonna get executed i'm pretty sure um

so anyway it was just a kind of a crazy situation that uh you know so they just left they said cool yeah well what happened was somebody we had two native speakers, spoke French. So half these guys spoke Arabic. The other half spoke French. My French was not up to par for a conflict of this size. So they ended up recognizing who we were. Somebody knew one of the NGOs who was with us. They were just rapping the whole time and speaking french and

i was like man this is a bad situation it could have been very bad and they actually when they took my gun they started smelling the barrels my gun was hot i had meaning i had a round in the chamber it was on fire and since i switched mags i had a full mag and they were finger on the trigger guys smelling it, and I was like, I hope this thing goes off in your face, dude. You just ruined my night. Should have been like, yeah, it was me, motherfucker. But they checked the mags, too. That's why it saved me because they just wanted to know who did it,

and I was like, everyone had full mags. I dropped it on the floorboard when I got out the window. I climbed out the window, and I changed mags while I was transitioning, just instinctually from training. That saved you. Yeah, man. It's pretty crazy. So did they just say, okay, go?

Yeah, they're like, have a good day. And we're like, okay. So then I'm like, oh, I'm going to get in so much trouble for this. It kind of brought me back to my childhood with my dad, right? I was like, oh, I'm going to get in so much trouble for this. It kind of brought me back to my childhood with my dad, right? I was like, oh, I'm so in trouble. Why are you going to get in trouble for something, though, where you get shot at? Well, because I was a new guy. I was like maybe my first deployment.

And people had been getting – like there was other – a couple ODAs that had gotten in trouble, like drinking or whatever. So I was just like, yeah, like I just want to keep doing what i'm doing i like the situation wasn't bad to me very explainable um but i didn't want to i was like man i don't want to have to go through this whole i mean they flew like people they un put a protest in the the chattian government um The United Nations protested. The U.S. government protested. Like, it was a big. Over this.

Yeah, because it was like, I shot a military dude. The dude was in the military. We found out these people were actually in the military at the time. So I was, like, kind of worried about that, you know. It's an international incident. It could be. Jesus. But it all kind of went away, away i think yeah probably because they shot at you hey dude you shoot at me i'm gonna shoot back that is what it is you know misunderstanding something but that's that's

crazy so but towards the end like you were saying to go back to it you were in israel and then was that the last stop on that and then you came back home retired? Yeah, I didn't retire because I wasn't fully – I was contracting at the time, so I just stopped working. And I switched. I transitioned to armored vehicles. I got back in – I got into the defense market. So my buddy, John Z's in was introduced to me by Ron. So we were partners back in the day, um, in Iraq. He was a seal. Yeah. And he was a seal. My buddy, Ron, we went through SF together. So we already known each other. And he brought me in,

uh, when I went to, uh, OGA, he kind of opened the door. He said, Hey, you can talk to these people and there's some cool stuff. If you want to get involved, He said, hey, you can talk to these people and there's some cool stuff if you want to get involved. I said, heck yeah. So they got, they started an armored vehicle company. They stopped contracting before me and I invested in the company thinking, you know, they're like, hey man, they called me up and I said, yeah, man, whatever I can do to help. And it actually led to an opportunity to come in as a PM or a program manager. And I had no understanding of the defense base at this time. I just knew that, you know, what armored vehicles were the business cases for the company that we were starting.

And I kind of worked my way up, you know, in four years, we went from 26,000 square feet with a bunch of people from monster garage, you know, making a prototype in California to 68,000 square feet in North Charlotte. And then eventually we had 300,000 square feet on 34 acres in South Carolina, in Fort Mill. And it was just like three or four Neanderthals just working your ass off and sleeping in the office every day and just figuring it out. Like, how are we going to take this to the next level? So eventually we sold the company to private equity the guys did i didn't um i was just running the armored vehicle um business at that time i got my business degree started working on my masters and then uh was doing a bunch of automotive

courses like lean six sigma courses and project management like high level and um were you dealing with any uh just from all this i mean we're talking you basically spent years and years in high level situations you've already laid out all the danger you were in all the time like were you having any trouble with pts or or things like that no i think i i think i might have been like i wasn't comfortable around people. Like, when I transitioned out and started becoming a PM, I knew everybody. You know, like, thankfully, what made the transition, a lot of guys have struggled getting out of the military because you're losing those friendships. And you're going into, like, you know, an environment that you're not accustomed to. And a lot of guys struggle with that.

It's super common. And you really got to have a good social support system in place and have a good plan, you know. That definitely helps. But the guys, I already was partners with John and I knew Ron from back. Shoot, we went through Special Forces Q course together. And then we were also in Iraq together, working for other people. And then he brought me into that. And so everything was kind of jiving. It was a very difficult situation, you know, professionally,

because, you know, you're leading, it's a very high-stress environment. You're making life-saving technology for people. And I knew what that was like because it saved my life. More than one occasion, I got blown up in armored vehicles. And so I knew it was a lot of pressure because of that. And so everything was going well. The company went to the private equity group came in and acquired the company to kind of help us. We actually had three companies and a management company.

And I had six, I think it was like 60 employees or 65 employees at the time. So John goes on, John Zinn goes on a routine business trip to amman jordan oh and yeah it was kind of crazy so we were all young man he was only 32 years old i believe that's his age um my memory's not the best keep that mic tight sorry so you know one night John goes on the business trip. He goes to, I think it was SOFACS. It's a special operation exhibition where defense companies come in in Amman, Jordan, and they showcase their wares for military groups from around the world. It's a very big show. And this is 2011?

It's 2010. Okay. So it was like May, I think it was. So he'd been over there for a day or two, and we had other guys in our company. It was called Indigent Armor. We had several people that I had worked with in the past, some from GRS, and we had some guys from the SEAL community. And they're all very reliable people.

So my phone rings about three o'clock in the morning and I pick it up and it was another business owner and he was, he patched around on it. I said, Hey, what's going on, bro? It's like three 30 in the morning. I knew it was bad. And bad and he's like you gotta you gotta hold on for the private equity guys they want to be on the call and i was like what the fuck dude like we've known each other for you know been overseas and all this stuff what do you mean like you call me at 3 30 in the morning i want to know what's up because i just i just kind of knew i knew and um anyway he comes on and he goes yeah john's john's dead and i'm like what what the do you mean he's dead i just talked to him yesterday and i didn't really put a lot of

because we had situations in the past where we had i worked with a guy named tex that was his call sign we all had call signs and uh you know one time i think i was working with him i think but somebody called back to to texas and to to his wife and was like hey sorry texas dead well turned out to be another tex so our rat network is so fast that it's mind-blowing and that's how information was relayed back in the day it was kind of like there wasn't a official channels took forever. So you're always getting it from somebody that knows you. So I'm like, are you sure? Are you 100% that he's deceased, man? What happened? of Chris Cathers. I was on camera with Chris for about four and a half hours, so there's no way I was going to put out an episode that long. So we will be releasing part two one week after this episode is released. So if you're watching this episode more than a week later, the link is down in the description below. Chris and I will be discussing his very brave battle against what

is terminal stage four cancer, as well as how he got it, how a lot of his buddies in the special forces got it due to some of the things that they were exposed to overseas. It's very sad. It's very heavy. But Chris is a real inspiration because he is facing it with so much bravery and matter of factness too. I mean, the guy is absolutely awesome. So looking forward to part two. And I hope you guys will tune into that as well. That said, as always, give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.