Julian Dorey Podcast - [VIDEO] - Deadliest Spec Ops Sniper Tells Story for 1st Time Ever | Silver Star-Awardee, Danny Hall • 216

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Danny Hall is an Army Ranger, Green Beret, & Silver-Star Awardee. He served many tours of duty on multiple continents over the span of 3 decades. - BUY Guest���s Books & Films IN MY AMAZON STORE: https://amzn.to/3RPu952 EPISODE LINKS: - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/ - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey - Support VETPAW (Ryan Tate's Org.): https://vetpaw.org/ JULIAN YT CHANNELS: - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ***TIMESTAMPS*** 00:00 - Danny Hall Joining Military Becoming Ranger Batallion, Dale Comstock, Delta vs Rangers 🪖 10:34 - Special Forces & Selected Missions, Best Snipers, Longest Sniper Shot Recorded, Danny Goes Through Shooting Sniper 🎖️ 24:07 - Danny’s First Sniper K1ll, Sniper Record, Okinawa Stationing, Special Forces Training 👟 35:09 - SEAR School 😫 40:01 - Missing Grenada Campaign, El Salvador/Nicaragua Missions, Almost Died, 🔫 51:05 - Questioning Past Missions/US Intentions, #1 Most Wanted Capture, Testing Surveillance & Counter Surveillance 🫢 59:06 - Undercover Operations, Death of Freddie Gray, Portland Sketchy Altercation, Shawn Ryan 😱 01:11:01 - 1980s Mission, Structure of Operations, Failed Coup D'état of Marines, Operation Gideon (2020) 😯 01:19:20 - Left in 1987 & Came Back, Returning to Army, Balkins/NATO Kosovo War, Green Beret ☢️ 01:34:00 - Green Beret Training Course, Tragic Philippine Missionary Capturing, Okinawa Base, Fastest Jet Ever Recorded (Black Bird) 🫢 01:46:57 - Danny Hall in NY During 9/11 🗽 01:56:01 - First Death of Tragedy, Aftermath of Towers Falling 🏢 02:03:01 - Danny’s War Hungry Appetite, Invading Iraq, Secret Operations 🤤 02:10:03 - Kosovo Post Genocide & Bombing, Serbian/Albanian Controversies, 1999 F-117A Shot Down ✈️ 02:18:05 - Bosnian Genocide, Living w/ Russians, Man Hunting Famous Terrorist 🤯 02:30:41 - French Military Exposed, Leaving Afghanistan & Taliban/Al Q@ida Campaign 😈 02:44:01 - Afghani’s Taught Enemies Our Tactics, Surviving EFP Bomb, Ryan Tate’s 2-Month Afghanistan Operation 🕌 02:54:32 - Tommy G & Illegal Driving, Danny Reacts to Afghanistan Falling, Black Market 🙃 CREDITS: - Hosted & Produced by Julian D. Dorey - Intro & Episode Edited by Alessi Allaman: https://www.instagram.com/alessiallaman/ ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io ~ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 216 - Danny Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The second time I went to Kosovo, I was on a recon team, surveillance team. Then we were actively hunting people. Let's talk about that. So what went on there? The one guy, now what I call this guy, a huge terrorist, because he seemed like a terrorist until I went to Iraq and all this other stuff. And all of a sudden you're like, nope, that's what a terrorist looks like. Diet terrorist. Yeah, this over here is a goodwill clothing store up there. It's over here.

He'd fired RPGs at Camp Bondstill, which is in Kosovo, which is an American base. So we were actively hunting these guys. Now we knew kind of who they were, blah, blah, blah. So we started hunting them down, started pulling surveillance on them. And we ended up deciding to do this pretty cool takedown at a restaurant. So we had a guy, had two guys that were there. They had somehow got to know him. They played like they were somebody else.

They spoke the languages and stuff. And they said, meet us at this restaurant. And they met him there like four or five different occasions, you know, gave him some money, this and that and there. Until the guy that we wanted showed up. And he had a serious injury to his big toe. That's all I know. And I'll tell you why it's funny in a minute. So he has them meet him at the restaurant.

As he did that, we're in there already. So here's crew over here, crew over here, crew over here. When it's time, like our guy goes, when you've got him and I've got him where you need to be, I'm going to lay my hat on the table and you guys do what you do. While the bad guy's talking to him, he's like, well, don't do me wrong, man. I'm armed. And I'll freaking do you right here. And all of a sudden, my boy's like, okay. And he hands him like, here's your free camera.

He hands him this pretty fancy camera and all this other stuff. And he gives him some batteries and stuff so he has to screw with it. And he's looking down like this. My boy sets his hat down. We all jump out. It's a race. Let's see who can get there first. Jump out.

What's up, guys? If you're on Spotify right now, please follow the show so that you don't miss any future episodes and leave a five-star review. Thank you. Wait, you speak Russian? Are you Russian? Russian and Ukrainian. No, shit. What a combo these days.

That's spicy. Which side are you on? Depends on what year it is. All right. Well, we're rolling, right, Alessi? Yeah, we're rolling. We're good to go? All right.

We got a full house today. I'm really, really excited for this one. This has been something that the man in the second seat today, Ryan, has talked about us doing for the last couple years. But we have Mr. Danny Hall here today. Longtime Special Forces Commando. Continued Special Forces Commando

in a way for the work you do for your company. So thank you for coming up here from Texas. Thank you for inviting me. It's going to be fun. We're going to talk about your life and everything you've done. We also have someone guest in the studio. My man Aaron from in town goes to Stevens here. Figured he could pull up for an episode. So thanks for coming, brother. Hope you enjoy this one. also have someone guest in the studio. My man Aaron from in town goes to Stevens here. Figured he could pull up for an episode. So thanks for coming, brother.

Hope you enjoy this one. I think you picked a good one. That'll be good. But yeah, we got Ryan over here from VetPaw, episode 117. If people haven't seen that, but organization that's near and dear to my heart that I know Danny will talk about today as well. You do some work for them. But Ryan, can you just tell people what you do? Sure.

So VetPaw is Veterans Empowered to Protect African Wildlife. work for them but ryan can you just tell people what you do sure so that paul is uh veterans empowered to protect african wildlife we are a registered non-profit organization that employs and also deploys u.s and international combat veterans to africa to train advise and assist in counter poaching wildlife protection efforts but on the grander scheme, conservation efforts, it's just a new, a new purpose for veterans. So, and you guys do an amazing job. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. I love, I love supporting on here. We'll have the links down in the description and you and I are going to do a separate podcast tomorrow. So that'll come out after this one, where we'll talk more about all the updates on the ground and things that are going on over there because that whole poaching international syndicate, the ins and outs of that as far as like ties to foreign money, terror groups.

This is stuff I knew nothing about before I met you, and most people, when I tell them about it, they're like blown away. So it's important we continue to educate people. Well, brother, thank you for using your platform to put a spotlight on it, man. When you touched on that, speaking of which, he recruited me to come help him do some stuff like we're talking about. But when he told me the depth of the involvement with all this stuff, the things that are going on, you think one thing's happening? And when we got into it, I was like, wow. I mean, I never, ever conceived it had that big of an influence on the entire planet. So he's doing great things. Yeah, it's very cool been it's been cool to see you guys grow too so we

got to keep that going but danny man of the hour right here so you and i had a very entertaining phone call yeah first time we talked on the phone and now for a couple hours today before we got started i was getting a lot of stories outside and i'm like save it for the podcast but what what first got you into being in the military was it something you dreamed of as a kid or was it more like I'm 18 I need something to do no uh I come from a family of veterans uh the entire hall side of the family with a whole large amount of my mom's side of the family too but the hall side my dad's side every single person that's a male as far as we can trace back, several females have been in the military.

Wow. And most of them are highly decorated combat veterans. And if you're in my family and you don't serve, you don't really fill the shoes that you've been given, and then once you do serve, if you don't really serve well, then you really don't do a very good job either. Like I came home to leave one time, and I had my Class A's hanging up next

to the table. We were getting ready to do Thanksgiving because my grandmother loves to take me to church with my Class A's on. My dad looked up, and he's like, where's your ranger tab at? And I was like, I don't have one. Take that shit down. When you get one, you can hang it right back up there.

That's good insight. So anyway, I knew I played war games, and my dad taught me to shoot. We're country people, so we're always doing something. I knew I was going to the military instantaneously. There's no question. I went in two weeks after I got away to high school. Whoa. Now, when you went to join, were you just joining the Army in general, or did you want to immediately go for something more towards Special Forces?

Immediately signed up for unassigned Ranger. So unless I did something severely wrong or incorrect, like failed airborne school or something like that, or failed RIP, used to be the Ranger Doctrination Program, I was going to go to a Ranger battalion somewhere. I just didn't know where. And so I ended up going in, doing it, infantry, airborne school, and they picked me up from airborne school.

The crappy thing about that was my dad came to my graduation to airborne school and knew the senior tech officer at NCO for RIP. And RIP is where they just torture you. And I come out of there. I wasn't wearing a beret because I'm not crazy. I've kept my regular hat on. And I walk out walk out my dad's sitting on the front of car talking to this guy who turns out to be the man named mooney and uh i come walking out and my dad goes yeah i was just telling mooney how you said this uh this rip thing seems kind of gay and i was like i mean

why would you say that i mean we're using exact words now. He said it. And I was like, I never. And he just goes, shut up. Go back over. I'll get to you shortly. And I was like, oh, my God, it's going to be such a bus ride. And it turned out to be a bus ride and a half, too. So, you know, three weeks later, I was finally reporting to 1st Ranger Battalion. Once you kind of proved your mettle in the Army, though, was your dad proud to see you follow in the footsteps?

Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, that's a big sense of pride. He came to my graduation from AIT for the infantry school. He came to one of my award ceremonies that we're having. It was a better one than some. And he got a bad foot infection, which turned out to be something very serious, and ended up having to get his leg amputated. So from stepping on a thumbtack, but he didn't get to go to the event,

and nobody knew there was going to be something like that. And it turned out to be a whole lot more things than that, and cancer and all kinds of stuff. Yikes. So I went from planning on attending a graduation ceremony or award ceremony to that. So it's tragic. But, yeah, he was proud of me.

So it was good. That's good. It was nice. I love hearing the stories where it's like the military is something that's really within the family because there's just an extra understanding of that at that point. And obviously, like, each generation is on them to kind of follow in the family because there's just an extra understanding of that at that point and obviously like each generation it's on them to kind of follow in the legacy and follow the footsteps

which you certainly did but as you said you started off you wanted to go immediately for like ranger school so one of the things i'm always interested in in different parts of the military whether you look on the marine side or the army side and all the different subcategories in there is the training they put people through because it varies for each of them. And when we had Dale Comstock in here a few months ago, or whatever that was, we drove into an area that's about seven kilometers

that the Taliban owned. It was their territory. You can't make a left or right turn. You got to go north or south down this road. And we had to stop. We heard the Taliban on the radio. They had to set up ambushes on both ends of our small convoy. And they were getting ready to hit us. And then I realized, oh, shit, the only way we're getting out of this is we got to run the gauntlet now. And I remember when we turned around that

night, my Afghan interpreters with me, dude, as soon as I start driving, I said, shoot anything where a bad guy can hide behind it. You know, I said, don't relent till we get out of this thing. So as I'm sitting there, I'm watching the vehicles go one by one. The firefight starts. I got time to watch the show and think about it before it's time for me to start driving my vehicle, right? You know, he was walking us through, Alessio, was that, was that, that was Delta training, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was going through like the Delta thing. And I never realized how much you're like on your own doing that versus, you know, what you see more in the movies with like the Navy SE where it's they're all together doing it obviously doing very hard shit but like when you were doing the

ranger training is it similar to delta in that way like you're kind of going out in the terrain on your own or are you working in teams well the thing is a lot of things with delta which i'm not going to get into their stuff that's separate from uh like uh rangers and stuff like that would be uh they do a lot more individually graded type of events, going through training versus Rangers don't do it quite as much because it's more squad, rifle team oriented more or less. But you still have a certain amount of events and things that you need to do on your own,

like all your qualification tests for Ranger Doctrination Program. That's all you. You fell it, it's you. Tough. That part is, but like Ranger School, the rest of it, it's entirely team-oriented, that part. Okay. But you still have to be graded on your own

to prove that you should even be in that environment to even start to be tested. Guys, if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button, please take two seconds and go hit it right now. Thank you. Well, when you look within the special forces and you talk about like the Rangers, Delta, Green Berets, what is it, like what's the Rangers calling card as opposed to like the others? Well, Rangers, big time direct action and airfield seizure. So it's no winning hearts, well, at least it didn't used to be, no winning hearts and minds.

There's an objective. It needs to be gotten to and taken. If it's a bad guy in a house, we're going to the house. We're taking that house, and we're going to get whoever's in it. We're going to take all the information we get from that. We're going to go to the next house and get that guy, and we're just going to keep on doing it. Same with airfield seizure, parachute in, drive in, whatever we choose to do.

By dawn, we'll own that airfield, and then we'll start flying our own airplanes in there. And we'll have control of it and grab all the bad guys as needed, and then we'll operate out of that airbase if we choose to. Got it. So, like, when people talk about Navy SEALs and they talk about, like, amphibious missions where they got to go in the water and stuff like that, we still see other missions, though, that you may hear about, like SEAL Team 6 or something, doing something like the Bin Laden mission where there's no water involved in something like that.

So my thought, amateurly, had always been like, okay, well, if there's water involved or something like that, they're doing Navy SEALs. If there's not, they're probably doing like Delta or Rangers. But how do they make that decision when they may say like, oh oh navy seals get this one versus you guys well so that's a tricky part right there uh for a high-end target like that guy yeah uh it's going to be one of the big boys out of that regardless it's going to be still team six or whatever you want whatever you want to call them delta whatever you want to call those guys it's going to be one of those guys 99 time but it's going to have attachments from special forces rangers all that so what do you mean

attachments they're going to have uh they're going to run the show the delta or still team six they're going to run the show and they're going to put the entire project together but one thing about delta for sure is they love Rangers because Rangers do what they do pretty much. I mean, they're kicking down doors and breaking stuff. That's what they like the best, and they're trained to do it. So they'll have them in there as the bigger chunk. The specialty guys will be the guys right dead center of it, and the Rangers will be the parts on the outside, like the guards

and all this other stuff most likely. I mean, just generally saying. Special Forces has like seven different missions. So not every single guy is real awesome at direct action. Everybody's good at all of it, but most teams are specialized in something really good. Like when I left Special Forces, our team was direct action and halo. So we concentrated on high altitude, low opening, high altitude or direct action kicking down doors and then on the side of that

we trained foreign forces which is another one of our missions counterinsurgency you know all this other stuff so we trained iraqis and we take them into battle with us see what i mean so it's kind of a culmination of those things versus these guys that are already trained. Delta and Rangers, they're not training anybody. They're going to do the mission and they're coming back. That's their entire purpose. Got it. So how long was the training when you went in when you were 18 to initially become a Ranger? Well, it was basic and AIT, which is like 12 weeks, I believe.

Maryborn schools, three more weeks. And then RIPs, three more weeks. So then you report to the unit and then uh you have to do at least i had to do it at the unit you do your range of qualification test was over a week till so you can wear a beret back then they were black now they're tan uh then it's just ongoing then from then on they send you to schools like i went to a marine corps snapper course i think i was first i I think I was one of the first honor grads. I think you told me.

First honor grad to be from Marine Corps sniper course. Dreaming. Lynn would love that. Not even on the team. Classic. But they send you stuff like, I did go to Marine Corps sniper course. I went to Department of Army sniper course. And that kind of got me.

Because I always shot long guns my whole life. I was going to say, had you done, you had experience with that. But I didn't know how to do extreme ranges, you know. So they thought, well, if you've already had this much experience with this, maybe you'd be good at sniper stuff. So they threw me into one, a lot less than Marine Corps sniper or DA sniper. They sent me to a basic sniper course, and I did pretty good at it because I was young and listened, you know.

And then it just grew from there, and then eventually I just went to every one I could go to, and it became a thing, really. I still do teach it and use it here and there, maybe for vet paul sometime soon. I don't know. Who knows? What makes the best snipers? What sets them apart?

Patience and severe concentration being able to take whatever environment you're in you may have to sit there for five or six days you might not even shoot anything you might just sit there and report because a big part of being a sniper is reporting you might not shoot anybody what do you mean reporting like i have to tell you like there's a say for instance there's a force coming behind you waiting to hit this big building. And so we go in like four or five different sniper teams. We'll go and surround this place from way off. We'll watch it, decide who's coming and going, record all that,

take aerial maps, do all this kind of stuff. And we're shooting it back to the attack force that's back here, assault force, which we may end up being a part of, but we're shooting it back to the to the attack force that's back here assault force which we may we may end up being a part of but we're not yet depending on how big this force is and then they they put together all their information sometimes they're in an aircraft flying to the objective if we're overseas and they're receiving all this stuff on on the aircraft and they're making their plan they hit the ground we we make a place for them to get there guide them in because we know the terrain and we set them up and then when i get ready to take it down we make sure the outside of the building is safe about the millisecond that they're going in the building and if need be

we'll go in the building with them immediately after that part so you're planted way ahead of time on things like this it's down to i mean that's ass dude i mean it's it's it's it's tiny uh the planning on it i mean it's just it's milliseconds timing and it's just uh it's it's a big plan it's it's good but then when shit hits the fan and they come in and suddenly you're in the mission yeah drop of a fucking second you gotta be ready to take someone out right this second transition from that sniper rifle to an m4 carbine or whatever you're carrying and you may have to jump in stack with them so you have to have you have to know the same tactics and so peas as they know or you look like a moron oh my god so like we were talking though off camera about how because like you still compete in in some different sniper events and stuff today but

how much calculation goes into taking a shot? Because we think about these long-range bullets. They come out so fucking fast or whatever, and it's like, okay, 1,000 feet away, how far could wind really move a bullet? But you were saying it can move it 96 inches on a 10-mile-an-hour wind if you're like 1,000 feet, something like that? 30-06 bullet, to best my recollection, 10-mile-an-hour full-value crosswind. In other words, at 1,000 yards can drift a bullet at 96, 97 inches. That's insane.

So if you're shooting at a human, you could literally miss that human and shoot a kid standing over there accidentally in a village. And now, guess what? That's a war starter. They're mathematicians. I mean, when you really think about it, you're dialing it. I mean, you also have to think about the earth moving and you know the curvature of the earth and i mean it's crazy what what snipers the knowledge they carry and they really are you become a

i mean what's what's the movie with with matt damon with mark walbert sniper no no no no no good you're thinking goodwill hunting yeah oh yeah think of danny hall just a little rougher around the edges but it is it is it becomes the longer it gets it becomes a big time trigonometry problem uh like i said i was telling you when i do some shooting competitions um at least back in the day you weren't allowed to have a calculator and you couldn't have a laser rangefinder. You couldn't have any of that crap. You had to learn how to use your mil dots and your scopes and the reticles that are inside of them.

And you just turn a corner and there's something sitting out there and it's like, and that. And it might be a valley just out in the middle of nowhere and there's a target. And you got two minutes to see that, figure out how far away it is, figure out how fast the winds are going, put the on either on your scope or do a hold however you choose to do it i'm more of a hold person i just kind of figured out on mills and then shoot it that way and then it's faster versus turning all those dials and once i turn the dials i don't have

my zero anymore you know so i like to leave it on whatever i got to sit on but uh it becomes big time math and that's why if you don't do it all the time, like if somebody gave me a mile-and-a-half shot to calculate, oh, my God. That's crazy. Three different directions, and you've got to figure it out on one-third, two-thirds, three-thirds, three total, and all this. Oh, my God. What was it, Alessi?

Can we look this up, the longest shot nick irving took didn't he like take a famously long shot no it was uh it was chris kyle no it was the canadian yeah well last was canadian yeah well how long was that shot oh it's over a mile yeah it's well over a mile the the one before that he was the marine and he shot through the the concrete wall yeah now see i think the marine one was more and i don't know quote me for sure but i think the guy the canadian the longest shot wasn't a one round hit i don't think he shot i don't think he hit on what do you mean oh like he shot and adjusted yeah shot yeah shot and i think it took like maybe two or three shots if i recall at that point so does count? Like when they're judging this?

It's still happening. Oh, no, no. He's talking about actually making a kill. Yeah. Oh, yeah, a person. It doesn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.

But like if they're judging like the record, like if you miss. I mean, I don't know how it works. Either way, the bullet flew from this guy to that guy. That's it. Yeah. Okay. I mean, does that become a little bit more of aim and pray? Yeah.

It's because, believe it or not, when things are happening really fast, Does that become a little bit more of aim and pray? Yeah. Believe it or not, when things are happening really fast, especially when you have a semi-automatic rifle like an SR-25, 308, things are really kicking quick. Sweet gun. You need to pay attention where your bullets are hitting because you might have multiple targets. When you have multiple targets, you pick out the one that is the most viable and the most urgent, possibly.

You shoot low you know from let's say he's 400 and you thought you had 200 meter dope on but you only have 100 meter dope on so now you're not getting it so you shoot you go boom okay correction ting half mil chink and from then on you keep a half mil on it and then you'll never miss again because now i know that's going to drop that much so it's a mental calculation you just do real quick so basically what you're telling me is Lee Harvey Oswald, no fucking way,

fired three shots. No. From that far away. And sadly, those shots can be done, but not with the gun he had and the condition it was in and his skill set.

And the speed. No. Like at that speed. What was it? Like three seconds or four seconds, something like that? You can't even ratchet that gun quick enough.

Well, the one he has is raggedy, too. Yeah. Because they had it on there, and they're showing him how it would work and all this stuff. But if you take that same rifle and tune it and smooth it out and do all this stuff, and they put a really, really awesome rifle guy on there that knows how to use that rifle, it can be done. When you're taking a shot like that, like some sort of long-range shot, whatever it is, with a sniper rifle, how important is breath work with it? Very important.

Long-range, everybody's got their own. I'm a blowout person. Some people hold their breath. What do you mean? Like when I get ready to take the shot, it's just like a, ugh. But I'll do it a couple times. If I have the time, I'll let out, let my body settle, and see where it's at, and I'll make an adjustment.

Because when I settle, I want to just fall onto it, like no muscle being used anywhere. And I just like that, and I want it to be where I want it to be, right there, and I don't breathe, and I send it. Whereas some people, and then they'll hold it and shoot, which is fine. But for me, if I hold my breath, I get too much of my heart in my ear. I can hear it. I start shaking.

Yeah. I start to get, if I hold it too long, I start to get muzzle lift and stuff. When I let it out, I just fold into it. Just let it just collapse on it. If you have that kind of time. It's artistic in a lot of ways. It is. And it's patience.

I mean, just ridiculous. Because you want to shoot to get it done. Because it might be something that needs to happen right this second. Say, for instance, you're looking across a field and there's a convoy up here and there's a bunch of guys out here. And somebody comes running up there and starts shooting at them. And you need to start dropping bodies to get them off of those guys. You can't just start firing. Right.

You need to take a split second to get your crap together because that one round matters. How do you keep, in the heat of a battle situation where you're in a faraway spot sniping, how do you keep your cool? Do you divorce yourself from what you know is happening down there? I think you know that you're going to have the most effect on it. And I don't think that happens overnight. I think that's one of those things that it goes back to training probably too experience is number one of being put in that same situation like everybody says you know a file folder i've got i've done it before so it's not new

and uh but uh training does it just running use those type of scenarios non-stop because if you've if you try to do something you've never done before it's 10 times more hard so if if you're doing sniper shots and you go to the range you're putting together all these different mathematical shots then when you finally do see one you have a log book and you go back through them you know you keep building them it's it's muscle memory kind of a thing you know you just plug it in really quick so that kind of situation uh you've been put through the scenario enough times that you know. Because you're important at that point. People are getting shot. Oh, yeah.

What was the wildest sniper situation you ended up experiencing on the battlefield in your career? Our commander went to talk to a bunch of people next door to us in Iraq. And he was going to go talk to them because they put some stuff up, looked like Communist Party type of stuff on the side of their building. And he went over to talk to them. And we had an assault force outside the gate, some metal gate,

compound kind of a place. And I went on top of the building on the next door to it and had like a little wall and I just drove my foot on top of the wall. And a guy was leaning up against a blue car, which now, I took a, I didn't think it was going to kick off. I thought we were just on top of the wall. And a guy was leaning up against a blue car, which now I took a – I didn't think it was going to kick off.

I thought we were just going to have a conversation. So I literally took the time, me and my guy standing here, and I took a photo of that dude with my crosshairs on the middle of his head through my scope, just kind of messing around. Because, I mean, this is hours long. Well, now that's in 10th Group headquarters on the big poster from the initial invasion. It's actually on there, that photo.

Never knew that was going to happen. And so I'm sitting there watching, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this cat just reaches back, goes, AK, and turns around and just starts splaying. And hits my commander. And I think he hit him in the calf or something, I think. I forget. And then, here we go. It's time to do what you do.

And everybody started slinging the lid. How many people were there? On their side, there was probably like 10 or 15. And then how many people in the general vicinity? There was 10 or 15 down there, and there was me and another guy here, and there was another guy and another guy across the alley this way. Okay, so he's not talking to a huge crowd. No, it's on the side of walls, too.

And everybody there is together. And how far away were you from the shot? Shoot, 50 meters or less. That's close. That's a close range. Yeah. You're not measuring as much wind on that. No wind on that one, no.

That's almost 1911 distance right there you know 1911 pistol you can almost do that with a pistol but uh yeah so that that happened really quick and it was i was just already kind of goofing around so i kind of dropped the ball luckily i was back on the gun before all that started i was just sort of taking a picture and we're kind of laughing about it i was like nobody's armed or anything you know so well this ain't gonna kick off yeah i was like well let me take this more seriously. And also here comes AK out of the back of the seat.

I'm like, holy crap. You said there were 10 to 15 on their side? Yeah, probably. So you had to take them all out? A bunch of them made it to the building too. So there's a bunch of them

laying out there. Not all of them dead because when it happens really quick, you don't always get a confirmed kill or a kill with one bullet right off the bat. But they're not running anymore, and they're not shooting. So the real big deal is stopping from doing things. And then, you know, if you care, you'll go back and evaluate that situation.

It's crazy how you can have, like, a totally innocent situation like that. Like, just another day at the office, and then boom! But you know what? It only takes one time for you to make you straighten your crap up oh yeah because after it was over i was looking at my boy man i was like man that was stupid of us taking that photo then of course they found i had the photo they wanted it yeah but you so you had said a while ago like you were doing a lot of this growing up and then you were the first guy to what was it winning an award in the Marine Sniper School?

I won honor grad from Marine Corps Urban Sniper course in Okinawa. And I also set a record on their course called Chaos. Wait a second. I don't know anything about this. You went to Okinawa to a course they have just to do sniping? I was stationed in Okinawa. And we were pretty good friends with the special ops guys over there, you know, the force recon guys,

and we took a few of them with us to teach a sniper course, and we helped them with stuff, and we went back and forth. And then two or three of us really wanted to attend that course because it's urban, it's all civilian clothes,

it's all, you know, it's all semi-automatic rifles and stuff. Really good, very well-run course. I mean, Marines run a good course, period. Very disciplined. And they let three of us attend it. And so I walked over to do it, and I was like, oh, yeah, heck yeah, we'll do this thing. Would have just showed up and just done my part and passed, but the two guys I knew started talking smack.

Oh, can't let that happen. He's like, my Marines are going to burn you down now. And I was like, they might. I mean, those young E-5 Marines, you know, snip't let that happen. He's like, my Marines are going to burn you down now. And I was like, they might. I mean, those young E-5 Marines, you know, snipers are damn good. And then something came about to the point where if you are

honor grad or top shooter, we will bring you some beer to your unit, just like Thai schoolgirls. I was like, well, that must happen. That must happen. He goes, but but if you don't guess he's bringing beer to camp hansen i was like dang okay so we went and did it and i ended up being honor grad by 0.3 percent of a point or something like that this other guy i knew i was like he can

shoot and i barely barely want it how'd they grade it like that it's by I mean every single target because it's three weeks long so every single target is graded graded graded so it all

breaks down into percentages at some point and and somehow or another I got it and

they're reading off the roster at the very end of the course my commander and everybody standing in the back you know

because they go to our graduations for things we do and they're going through it and they run through the whole freaking thing and never said my name of graduations, you know, handing out hogs to us and stuff. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill.

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Staff Sergeant Denny Hall. He just kind of tossed his paper down again. I was like, son of a bitch. Of course, you know, I got up and just ranted. And I said, oh, wait, top shooter? Who got that? My boy over here goes, no, you got Top Shooter too. Oh, snap.

Here we go. Who's got the beers and the tie, ladies? And they brought it, boy. And I videotaped every square second of it. It was awesome. You videotaped every square second of that? Every square second. Every square second.

You still watch that sometimes? Sometimes. It kind of gets you a little bit. It does all the time. Makes me pull out my outfit sometimes. But you know what? They did set me up for failure because we went to a Marine Corps gathering bar. It was their bar down by their base and all this other stuff.

And they invited me to come over during some training we were doing. And they had me get up on the stage and say, I forgot his name, the big, oh, crud, I'm going to make an ass out of myself. Chesty Fuller. Chesty Fuller. And he said, get up here and say he's a f***. And I was like, God almighty. That's death wish.

I was like, it seems like a good way to die. And I said, what do I get? And they were like, I don't know, we'll work something out. And I was like, fine. And I got up there and looked around, made sure I could get away and die. I said, what do I get? They're like, I don't know. We'll work something out. I was like, fine. I looked around me so I could get away. I was like, that's what it's like. It all hurt. It was tables and chairs.

These dudes are coming for my butt. All of a sudden, these two E7 Marines step out behind me, behind this curtain behind me. They step out. All right, we're good, boys. We got it. It was there. Turns out it was all set up. Anyway, said, all right, we're good, boy. We got it. We're just going. And it turns out it was all set up. Anyway, they just wanted to see if I'd do it. It would have killed me.

Yeah, you're in enemy territory in a way. I'd have got shot. They wouldn't even have charged me. Yeah. What year was that? That was like 2000-ish. Okay, so this is way later. Yeah, way, way back.

Okay, so you've done a lot of years. We skipped a lot of years there after your so you've you've done a lot of years we we skipped a lot of years there after your initial sniper training i got a lot of years okay since 84 so yeah so you you get out of sniper training though you're now at this point if i understood it correctly you're a ranger you have a specialty in being a sniper but then you were saying they train you in in like a rotation and and a lot of other things too. So what did that comprise of? Well, they teach you more advanced tactical maneuvers. They teach you basic stuff in infantry, AIT and all that stuff.

But then when you're with your unit, you learn their SOPs, their way they operate. Then you're going to learn how to do a shoot house more efficiently, how to patrol the shoot house more efficiently. How to patrol the way they patrol. Do river crossings. Survival type of things. At some point you're going to have to attend Sears school. Survival

escape. Resist evade. Not fun. Not fun. What do you do there? You run through the woods. They capture you. You become a prisoner for a few days. They just beat the crap out of you and interrogate you. Nice. And actually, they go hard, right?

Oh, they go hard, yeah. And then you've got to escape and they catch you again and do more of it. Wait, it's planned that they catch you or you have to try to? Oh, you try. You ain't getting away, though. The way it's figured out, you ain't getting away. They have like a Truman Show set up, like a closed course. There's more games than Dylan Bradley, man.

Oh, yeah. It is. They got it mastered. And there's a really funny story that comes out of that stuff at some point because everybody just gets wacky, lack of sleep, lack of food, you know, and you start acting crazy. And I ended up almost tearing a chair apart because I was taped to it, butt-ass naked, and I was sitting in this wooden chair,

and I had my feet taped to it. I had jungle boots on, though. My feet are taped, my head's taped back, and I'm going along, and I'm like, okay, I'm not tired enough now where I don't know it's real. I mean, I know I'm at a school, so I'm all right. But, you know, I'm tired. Is there a safe word?

No safe word. And, Ellen, you know what else? You can't quit. It's one of the few schools you can't. Oh, you can't. You can't quit. You've got to gut it out. You're just going.

So I'm in here. Here comes this Air Force. I think she's Air Force or maybe she's an Army pilot or something. Anyway, a little blonde-haired girl, like 5'2". She goes walking in. And they all have this fake Russian accent. They talk to you the whole time. It's pretty good.

When you go to the back side later on and you watch it happen from this side, it's crazy. I'm going to have Aaron give you a fake Russian accent and get you a little PTSD in here. That'd work. So they had her come in here and she asked me a bunch of questions and I didn't answer quick enough. And she reached up and kicked me right in the freaking ribs. It made me mad. Boy, I don't know what did it. I don't know if it was her doing it, not this big, bearded, crazy-looking Russian dude.

But she hit me off guard, and I was talking to him. Made me so mad, I just started taking that chair apart. I started rocking that thing back and forth, started ripping stuff off, and I was like, and they just grabbed her and tossed her out the door like, okay. All right. Then, of course, the other two big Russian guys came in and beat me up, put an end to that. Oh, so they finished the job. Oh, they went ahead and beat me up, put an end to that. Oh, so they finished the job.

Oh, they went ahead and beat me up, put me back in another chair. That's crazy. So they really go all the way. Yeah, you're going to do what they say you do. How long does that last? Three weeks. Three weeks? It's a long three weeks.

Yeah, it's a long – and it's got all kinds of stuff in it. Some of it you can't even – some of it's so classified you can't even talk about because they don't want to run it for the next guy. But it's like, wow. You will cry at some points in there. Just surely not because you're a pansy, just because it is like emotional blood. Some things just go on to happen. It's just, wow.

It's over the top. But it's a super useful school if you ever were captured. You'd be able to use it, I guarantee you. So in the Rangers, obviously, they were doing that. Did they do this across all the the high level all the high level groups across the military they all have to do seer yeah i had to go to seer special forces too did you do seer ryan i did yes oh you did i did the first level so what does that mean how many levels abc yeah there's three levels um pilots have to go so you did the refreshments

at the end level i didn't do that shit but they do know everything about you good luck hiding it oh you ain't hiding nothing dude no did you do polygraphs during that i didn't no what's that did you do any polygraphs during that too or no they put you through any simulations with that no uh the only time i had something where they were really trying to put the heat on me was I was grading another team in Korea when we're already special forces guys stationed in Okinawa, and I went along as a guy that grades them on their mission. They're doing all this looking at stuff and some other stuff. Anyway, I'm just with them, and we're watching them,

and it turns out that team is the one that was chosen. We're out there freezing our butt off for like a few weeks on the DMZ, and it turns out that that team was chosen to do SEER afterwards. And they put them all in their vehicle, you know, and it's only like a two-day thing, you know, total, but you're locked up the entire time in boxes. And they're putting them all in the truck and this and this that and they're pulling them off the back of the deuce snap and they're zip tying them putting hoods on their heads and all that stuff

and he said okay which one you use the hood and i said i'm him and they're like he's standing right there and my sergeant major and we were buddies uh hunting buddies and stuff he's like i mean if he's gonna grade them i mean kenny might as well just grade them all the way in, shouldn't he? And I'm looking at him like, what? And the guy's like, put a hood on him, let's get this gun in. So I end up getting stuffed in there with their asses. Oh, no. This is bull crap right here. But they had me strapped down.

And this tells you that the first SEER schools weren't good. And these guys were former Air Force SEER instructors. Their entire job was in the air force and uh older guys like my age now probably and uh they said me they had me sitting in this chair and i wasn't tied up and i had my pretty uniform already put it up you know all my patches on it which you don't ever want but they're on there anyway and he's videotaped me and i can tell that thing's coming on when the red light comes on oh yeah he goes so have you been treated fairly oh yeah you've been you've been doing this that on. Oh, yeah. He goes, so have you been treated fairly? Oh, yeah.

You've been doing this and that, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes, okay, we're going to record you to say all those same things again. Okay. And I'm just sitting there like this, like, you know, sitting proper. And he's like, okay, ready? I was like, yeah. He's like, I'm just going to ask you to go.

Okay. That red light goes, ah! I just crossed my eyes. Gah! And I just played like a fainted and fell out of the chair. They're like, okay, stop. They went back and turned it. They tried it like three or four times.

I knocked the water all over his papers on the desk over here. Finally, he just gave up on me, turned me upside down, threw me head first into that box. Did you ever actually get captured in any point in your career? You never actually had to do it out on the field like that?

I had a bunch of Colombians chase me one time through the woods because this guy was with me, knocked a bunch of rocks off as we were observing them. Was that during a rancontra? That was, actually. Son of a bitch. You're good, aren't you? All right, let's go.

What were you doing out there? So that was actually assisting DEA. We were helping to observe. I wasn't supposed to be shooting anybody or nothing I'm just on a hill way off looking down there and this guy that was with me I'm not going to say what branch he's from wasn't a military though and he knocks off a bunch of gravel off the front of us

and somebody down at that village saw it and here they came boy I mean lots of vehicles and I'm like get and we just ran and ran and ran and they're coming after us to the point where the helicopter wouldn't pick us up at the first HLZ and I'm like, get! And we just ran and ran and ran and they're coming after us to the point where the helicopter wouldn't pick us up

at the first HLZ. They said it was too hot, there's too many people on us. And so we started having to do the old ziggy-zag through the jungle and all this other crap. So luckily we made it to the second one. What part of Columbia? Near Bogota. I'll just say that.

Where it's high. Yeah, and this is later 80s. Yep. So this is like... About 86. This is getting near the height of the Colombia Narcos. Yes, it is. Yeah.

You don't want to be caught... Oh, no. ...at that time. No. So it was funny. And later, it was really funny after that. But when that dude knocked that gravel off, I crapped my pants.

Oh, yeah. Well, I say gravel. It's like a rock this big. It goes boom, boom, all But when that dude knocked that gravel off, I crapped my pants. Oh, yeah. Well, I say gravel. It's like a rock this big. It goes boom, boom all the way down the side of this mountain. And there's a whole village full of bad guys. I'm like, this is brilliant. Yeah, it's not good. And he couldn't run worth a crap.

So there you go. How many guys did you have with you? One. That's it. Me and him. You are outmanned. Yeah, so it was fun. By the time we got on the helicopter, it was really awesome.

I loved that part. You give them a little wave from up there? A little salute? Later? Goodbye. Luckily, I didn't even see them, but my guy's on the M60 if need be. He's probably dying to shoot them, but we didn't even see them after that. Well, we got onto this tangent because we were talking about SEAR

and some of the other training you did besides sniper school. How long total, again was you said this earlier but you said it all in week periods what was the total length of weeks where your training was done before like continued education training like maybe you're a ranger and you're in it 12 weeks ait basic uh three more weeks of airborne school yeah three more weeks of rip and then you go to your unit. Okay, so like 18 weeks, something like that. Yeah, about 18, back to back.

So you get into a unit, and you were telling me outside before we started, you just missed Grenada? Yeah, I came in right after Grenada. Right after. Well, about nine months, I think, eight months, but long enough. Did you go there? No. Afterwards, where we had a base and stuff?

Never went. I just showed up to the unit with airborne wings, and I was like the only sucker in there with nothing else on. And everybody else had combat infantry badge, gold stars, scroll, combat scrolls. And here I am standing there with nothing, and there's no combat going on anywhere. And I wouldn't get one anytime soon. And you wanted the action. And I was like, man, this sucks.

This is terrible. It just blows. Yeah, it's a a strange time too like when you look at the history of it because we're we're in those what year did you come out again 84 first time i came out of 80 no i came out 87 okay 87 so you're in that decade after the the vietnam war you're still five years pre desert storm so the 80s are this time where you know communism's thawing around the world there's more diplomacy going on there's some weird shit here and there like happening in south america obviously you did some shit there but like what what was the first obviously you're not lining up in 87 thinking, okay, we got a war right now, but you are looking for action. So where did they first put you in?

South and Central America was pretty much where the stuff really got going. El Salvador, Nicaragua. What was going on in El Salvador? That was an uprising, you might say. It wasn't really called a real conflict. It was more of a bunch of bad guys wanting to do bad things, and they just sent a crew down there to keep them from doing it. Pretty much all I can say about that.

Oh, so that's not one you can do. Yeah, but that part stopped. The thing was that that wasn't released. So I didn't get anything from it because it wasn't released until 2016, I think. 2016, I think, where you could actually have a patch from it or whatever. Got it. So it was totally secret. Yeah, but the Nicaragua thing was a good one.

Was that the one where Dale might have been on the same mission in some way? Maybe. We were talking on the phone. Same era, yeah. Yeah, when I said Dale Com been on the same mission in some way? Maybe. We were talking on the phone. Same era, yeah. Yeah, when I said Dale Comstock on the phone, he's like, Dale Comstock? Holy shit. I haven't heard that name in a long time.

He's probably down there. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good time. I remember one time we walked out. We went to a bar, and it was like this triangle shaped. The road was in a Y, and this bar was actually shaped like it. It was called Waco's.

I can't remember the name of the town. Outside of Palmo Air Base, either way. And Nick Raw was just right over there. And we come in there and all these little kids are running around. We're always giving them money and buying them food and stuff like that. And they keep you right. They keep bad guys away. They let you know when things are going. They've got their finger on the pulse

of the entire city. We're in there partying, just having a good time. Messing around, drinking, whatever. We've got guns on. Of course. Back when you're allowed to drink with guns, no. The better days.

You're not getting shit-faced because you're downtown. You don't want to get in trouble down there with that problem. All of a sudden, my guy, Hordahay, comes walking in and he's like 12 maybe. He goes, time to go. I was like, okay. Let's go. I grabbed my two guys

and apparently all these people knew that the bad guys were outside, so they just gathered up and the building was shaped like a wall like I was saying they gathered up on this side of the doorway so when we came out we could hang a right and take off that way back to where our vehicle was and as we're stepping out I look back like that

and there's probably 60 or 70 armed, camouflaged Latin American dudes leaning up against that wall oh they were camouflaged, this is not like gangster shit I mean it is, but this is like government shit. Yeah, there were guys that weren't in the mood of messing around too much and carrying AKs and stuff, but I got a glimpse of them, and I was like, man, we're better off if they don't spot us.

And to this day, I don't even know who they were exactly. I just know I wasn't in the mood to duke it out with a Beretta 9mm. That might not have ended well for you no so but that lends another question here because it seems like when i talk with people about different missions maybe in that time period but in other time periods too and stuff like south america there's missions where the governments of places where there's problems going on are partnered on the mission like yeah come in do it and then there's missions where maybe perhaps the one in el salvador where you're just going in quietly

how does like obviously there's at this time there's a lot of problems in all those countries how did the military make the decision to be like yeah we're either we're going to be discreet and not tell and and apologize later versus hey we're actually going to be discreet and not tell and apologize later versus, hey, we're actually going to talk with the president and his staff and be like, hey, we got to go do this. Well, you want to try it? I don't know if the military made that decision. I mean.

You want to elaborate there? There's agencies and other departments, state department. There you go. Gotcha. That's where we're leaning. We'll get Boosted Myothane here and talk to him about it. I'll overthrow a few governments. Never hurt nobody.

Yeah, no, I mean, think about that, though. It does suck. Like your destiny is in the hands of foreign affairs officers or so-called foreign affairs officers. They get to dictate everything that you do. Yeah, it's crazy the difference, but then the amount of work that has to happen between guys like you and then the case officers and the foreign affairs officers.

Obviously, we've had both in here. I've had ground branch guys like Dale and Joe Tedai. I've had special forces guys like you. Obviously, they are too, where you are, you're the muscle and in a lot of cases, the brains coming in on these missions to execute them. But they're the other brain that's like, well, this is a part of a bigger plan. Yeah, here's what we're doing. But your job is to is to complete your mission, right?

You're given an objective. This is what these these guys got to go or these guys got to get captured, whatever. Here's where it's got to happen. This is the time it's got to happen by. I'm going to go do it. Did you live by that versus ever letting yourself think about, well, what are we really doing here? If it was orders, I just kind of did it.

If I'd ever seen something which I haven't, if I saw something just outlandish you know like go in and shoot up something that did not need to be shot up or had no effect on the battlefield whatsoever so i would have whined about that for sure i've had i've had specific missions where i've i've discussed it with other people you know like okay what exactly have we done this for and usually it gets clarified i. And I'm kind of, oh, okay, I just didn't have all the info. You want to go into every one of them wholeheartedly, you know what I mean? But your primary mission is to do what you're supposed to do to meet the objective.

And your command, in special forces at least, is usually driven to get to that end result. You know what I mean? They're not going to guide you down the wrong path normally or put you in danger for no good reason whatsoever. I'm not saying it has never happened. I don't know. I mean, it's a lot of decisions to be making to not have something go wrong, you know. But to give you an idea of how the military plays with the agencies, different agencies, stuff like that.

Remember I told you we were helping those DEA guys? Right. They had found a house. We went into this house and hit it, and it was empty. But as we're leaving, the DEA guys are outside. We're pulling overwatch with sniper rifles and all that. They hit it first and then we rolled in

and just secured it so as we're sitting inside there all of a sudden I hear a gunfire erupt from a room

inside the house and it turns out there's a one of the kids rooms the bed flips up and there's a cellar underneath it or a tunnel

so somebody flipped it up and just started shooting out that window at those DEA guys so they turn around and start shooting

the building and me and my around and started shooting the building, and me and my buddy are still in the building. Now you got it. So they have one of those little doggy gates that separates the kitchen from the living room. So we're crawling over that thing, you know, trying to get the hell out of there, and there's stuff falling everywhere. And it all gets done, blah, blah, blah.

And we come back, and we go down into that. They go down into the tunnel first, and it's like this long tunnel. It goes into a trailer house, and it's full of cocaine and all kinds of stuff, big, huge boxes of money, and it's being filtered out into a river. That's the way it gets the filter out of there. What do you mean it's being filtered out into a river? Like all the fumes are coming out and going underneath the water, and there's a river right next to it.

I got you now. So he said, you two go down there and secure it. We're going to get all our crap together and start hauling all this crap out. I mean, it's a river right next to it. I got you now. And so he said, you two go down there and secure it. We're going to get all our crap together, you know, and start hauling all this crap off. I mean, it's a lot of stuff, huge piles of money. And we're over just looking at it. I was like, wow, that's a lot of $100 bills. And they're in these big boxes like this big.

Don't mind if I do. So I was like, you know what you could do? You could just flip this over, cut a chunk off the bottom, get you a bunch of money, you know, stick it in your car, but we're making all kinds of jokes about it. And like, this is funny. And so it goes, goes, goes. Nobody swaps any money or nothing.

It ends up, them coming back down, like, okay, let's start loading it up. They start scooping all that coke off in the trash bags, and we start grabbing all these cases. Because you could walk. Walked out there, put it in the trucks. They had like four vans. So we threw it all in four separate vans. And then they frisked us.

Good thing he didn't take any. And then I was like, how come they're not being frisked? And he's like, they're with us. Powers of knowing the inside, man. So anyway, it went four separate vans. I don't know. I mean, I didn't follow up on it. I'm sure it went back and done the right thing with it i have no doubt so yeah we had in ken mcgee and then we're gonna have in we confirmed that right we're having

in pina and yeah and murphy yeah right yeah so the guys who were down there my friend ken mcgee was on the team with pina and murphy who ended up being the subjects of Narcos, the show. But they were down there a long time. Like Ken was down there I think like seven years straight or something like that in Columbia just in the middle of a war. And they're – no disrespect, but it's like the DEA agents. You don't think of it this way but at the time they kind of had to be and then they're calling in i guess back up in the form of men who bring bullets and and death as as necessary i mean it's it's i mean that i don't know if they even have enough people to pull that mission all by themselves you know if it

at that point at that point in time because that's a that's a monster that whole thing is just so massive i mean i don't even know where you'd begin to to take to take the whole thing out just is a whole different matter i don't even know did you ever like you said if if you were in the middle of a mission which this never happened as you put it but you know after things happen a year later years later and you see maybe where the pieces of that one mission fell on the board with some big chess board of foreign affairs or policy that some dudes in langley maybe were making did years later and you see maybe where the pieces of that one mission fell on the board with some big chess board of foreign affairs or policy that some dudes in langley maybe were making did you ever have questions about the strategy or whether or not that was just or fair uh

no i don't think so um uh that's kind of hard to say because the battlefield and the logistical piece of that is so freaking gigantic, too. You know, when you have a bunch of different entities involved and then you got all these different special operations units involved and all this other stuff, there's so many pieces together that I don't even know if you'd ever know that they're tied together unless you just knew they happen in the same spot. You know what I'm saying? Because there's so many big chunks happening at all times. And there's a lot of, like, at the peak of Iraq and Afghanistan, there's everybody known to man over there. I mean, not just our country, but everybody else's country's got their guys there, too.

Oh, yeah. And we're doing all these combined operations. So I don't think you'd ever be able to tie them together to find out really they're just it's too massive i could do it within special forces but then if i went and tried to do the navies and everybody else's that i don't think i could do it but uh i never did question too much of that and most of the time luckily i don't know about everybody else but most time for special forces and and higher uh they don't really tell us how to do it. They just tell us the end result.

They want to end state. Like this guy is somewhere in Basra, for instance. This is the way we got it. The British know there's a guy there. He did some stuff he shouldn't have done, blew up some stuff. We need to make him go away or bring him in, one of the two. And the British are going to help you, SES. Okay. Do we have any clue where help you, SES. Okay.

Do we have any clue where he's at? Nope. Do what you do. All right. Then we just go find him. But see, that ain't my primary mission. It's one of my missions. So I'm still hunting down dozens of other people.

And I'm just waiting for all this stuff to culminate. And we got people that are giving us intel also that we just put that with ours. And we just build, build, build, you know, like a big storyboard or spotter chart or something. And then we run across them. And in this particular case, the Brits got the pop on it. And they asked us if we want to go with them. And we literally just got into Bajra on this one. And it's back in the cowboy days, man, where, you know, anything goes.

And there's only three of us there because we were a forward party. So we hopped in there with them, went down there, and they did the hit and ran inside the house, and there's eight dudes. Well, first of all, they blew up the gate off the house next to it because they weren't sure which house. They're getting the signal off of it. Blew the gate off this one with like four blocks of C4. They do pee for plenty now.

One of those times where you set a charge, you run around the block to set it off, and it moves your hair. Yeah. Came back, hit this house. I don't say that like I know from experience, but I'm not an attirant. You normally can stay in a stack when you blow a door. You know what I mean? No, you're not blowing it with them guys.

And so it blows. We run in there. Wrong house. Must be the one next to it. But the house next to it is like this big four-story tall, beautiful home, all this other stuff. And so I was like, we probably should have chose that one first now that I'm looking back. So we go in there, hit this house, blow the gate off, then blow the door off, and there's eight dudes asleep in the living room. And I'm like, so let me see.

We just blew up four blocks of C4 half a block away. We blew the gate off this house, and we just blew it up with a triple wrap on this front door of stuff. And you're telling me these guys are asleep? There we go. So we walk in there, and here's the eight dudes asleep. Here's the big shelves over here. And there's all these plastic bags with, like, laptops and money.

And these guys are dead asleep. Here we are just standing there looking down. I'm like, get up. What are you doing? So we got them up, and one of them was in the back. And they gave us some photos of the guy we wanted. So I pull this out of my deal, and I look at all of them. I've got them up against the wall.

We're looking at them. I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Dang. Daggum it. It's not him. And also my boy calls from the back. Come back here and check this one. There's one back in the back hiding.

Went back there. Oh, look at that. Number one. Number one most wanted where we were at and all this stuff, this blacklist. Had them send us a guy out bringing the rest of the list with photos and all this off this blacklist had them send us a guy out bringing the rest of the list with photos and all this stuff from our people and uh here's seven more they're on that freaking list but they're set this like this is like eight of 15 so you know there's like three top three right off the bat and i said oh yeah you're f now i

mean you're going everybody's going with. All y'all are coming with. Going to school. You had all that money. They woke up that day thinking it was going to be good. They went to bed and not so much. Not a good day. You knew they were up to something because there was no cars there. There's all these people.

The cool thing was we're staying in this building. There's these Australians in the bottom command structure. We had like a fire pit out there and we had these bags of money I don't know if you added it up it's probably half a million dollars and it's like hundreds they're all fake

so we're never hitting them with a marker you don't watch the TV you got it all bad so we put them back in the bag and they're done they're cooking out and I was like oh we're just eating with them and stuff. And they're like, man, we ain't got any more firewood. I was like, hold on. I ran back over there and I said, here's how we do.

Boop. Boop. I started throwing these freaking big old ones. They're like, no. They're like, oh, my God. This guy's crazy. I was like, it's getting burned tomorrow either way. So why don't we do something cool with it?

Freaked him out for about 10 minutes. Did you do any jobs like playing close? Yeah, lots of jobs. So you did. So in your training,

did you do a lot of surveillance training as well? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we do,

it's levels. I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to say, it's it's from here to up here somewhere that depending on how far you go with it and i still do it uh i help teach it now as a matter of fact as a contractor um i help test them on it is what i really do mostly and once they're trained to do it i i come back and me and a lot of other people a lot of other people uh we test them on their skill sets and all that. And that's about all I can talk about that part. But, yeah, you go through all this different stuff and how to do it and how to surveil and how to know when you're being looked at also

and how when you're looking at somebody to see if you're looking at this guy as somebody else looking at you, counter surveillance. Oh, yeah. Because you start doing stupid stuff watching this guy and somebody else that knows their stuff can watch and tell that you're staring at you. Counter surveillance. Oh, yeah. Because you start doing stupid stuff watching this guy, and somebody else that knows your stuff can watch and tell that you're staring at him. So you've got to be able to do all this without them knowing all these things are happening. And just like anything, I mean, gangsters do it all the time.

Oh, yeah. Whatever. So that's nothing super secret. It's just being good at it is the trick. Did you do the training where they take you into the city and throw you in the middle of people? Yeah. Yeah. Sure did. trick did you do the training where they take you into the city and throw you in the middle of people yeah yeah sure did did one when they put us in hotels and they come back and all your stuff's missing the hotel and she was like okay you don't even know what's going on now i was like i don't

even know where i'm supposed to live and you're kicked out so i don't get to stay in this hotel any longer and all my crap's gone that's cool start walking down the road just pouring down rains without figuring out here we go this guy sn snatch you up in a van wait what do you mean they snatch you up in a van he just drew that one in there real soft oh well uh you have nowhere to go you don't really know what to do so uh to add to it and try to make it really really relentless they just pull up next to you in a van and snatch you up put you in there and drive you around maybe dump you out somewhere else interrogate you a little bit in there just kind of add to some fun. They give you the little chloroform for good taste?

Tell you what, it would make it a lot nicer if they did. Anything would have been better than that because half of them are sitting on you and they're just kind of trying to make your life suck a little bit. They throw your butt right back out somewhere else. But every course is run differently, so you're not really giving away anything by saying it because whoever's running the course, they just come up with stuff themselves. All that stuff in between, it's just what they think works or might be for you.

But you're saying these courses and stuff, though, too, and it's like this is the part, though, that they're doing out in public. Oh, yeah, you're in the middle of it. This is not like the course like you're out on a separate course. You're in the middle of random-ass people who have no idea this is going on. Hey, guys, if you have a second, please be sure to share this episode around on social media and with your friends, whether it's Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. It doesn't matter. It's all a huge help.

It gets new eyeballs on the show, and it allows us to grow and survive. So thank you to all of you who have already been doing that, and thank you to all of you who are going to do so now. You got to figure out sometimes, like, I know Ted, I told stories about how, you know, they'd be doing reconnaissance work going through cities and you have to figure out how to break into, like, a clothing store and change your clothes without being seen and shit. Like, God forbid you get caught, you know. This is high-stakes kind of stuff just for training.

You know those donation boxes? Those things with the bomb now. The donation boxes? Donation boxes where you have people pull up and they throw all their kids' toys in there and they throw their extra clothes in and all that kind of stuff. They look like big dumpsters. Oh, yeah. Some have a big door on them.

So that's like the golden ticket in that business. Because we all know how to pick locks. And so we just pick a lock, hop in there, grab you a bunch of cool clothes and walk around. Nobody's looking at you then, dude, because nothing matches. You all know how to pick locks, though, you said? Oh, yeah. That's another course. Picking locks, hot wiring cars.

God, you do some fun shit. It is fun. Not all of it, but you know. Some of it's fun. Some of it's not great at all. They get dumped out in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes they just want you

to walk back. So, see, that's not fun. It may be way out there, too. They're like, look, there's Vegas. Get to walking. It's there in the distance. You can almost touch it.

Or maybe it's Baltimore, Maryland. That would be an L. Well, remember that time? I don't know how many years ago. It's been five or six or something. A kid got shot by the police, a black kid, and it stirred up some serious trouble, and there was all kinds of rioting.

They're burning stuff. Oh, Freddie Gray. Is that what it was? In Baltimore, where he was in the back of the car, and they strangled him or something. Can we Google that? I don't want to get that wrong. Are you talking about the female officer?

Is it? I honestly can't. I just remember there was a big riot, and they were sitting. She shot him. In Baltimore. Yeah. Yeah, I think it would be Freddie Gray. It says here there's a killing of Freddie Gray, April 12th to April 19th, 2015, in Baltimore.

Does that sound right? Yeah, sounds right. Yeah, that's when it was. So when that happened, for one, at night, we don't do night operations in Baltimore or Portland or Seattle. Because those are some of the big – we like big cities to do these projects in. And a lot of these people are females that we do. They might be from agencies and stuff like that that are part of the course. Oh, so wait.

Do they mix this up? Yeah. Like all different people from all different – Everywhere. Depending on what company you're working for. Oh, interesting. If it's your the course. Oh, so wait, do they mix this up? Yeah. Like all different people from all different? Everywhere, depending on what company you're working for. Oh, interesting. If it's your company or somebody else's or whatever. So at nighttime, you can't just have whoever walking down certain streets. Yeah.

Because you, I mean, I can't walk down certain streets unarmed. I mean, you'll get it. I mean, there's just trouble. I pulled up to a red light before in the wrong place right off the square in Baltimore, and I had a whole crew of dudes chasing me down the street, throwing beer bottles at me and crap because I was in the wrong neighborhood. But anyway, we're doing it daytime, and I'm literally walking right down the middle of the square, and I look off to my right, which I believe is the south,

and there's cars burning and stuff. I mean, there's nothing good going on. And I'm following a dude in front of me doing some stuff, and everybody in that crew is shoulder-checking me. Shoulder-checking you? Like everybody walking by, boom, banging me because I was the only guy that didn't look like he belonged there, I guess, or something. I don't know.

I wasn't dressed the same. I wasn't a gangbanger or whatever. And they're all banging into me and smacking me. And I was like, this sucks, really, in this broad daylight. And apparently they weren't doing it to the guy. The guy following, he's cool. Apparently I just look like a Texas redneck or something. So anyway, I just tell you, you just don't know.

But you get off that square where there's not a thousand people standing around, anything goes for any place you're at on the earth so if i heard you correctly though at the beginning of this what you're getting on is that you with your current companies you do some of this training on a contract basis for the government on behalf yeah and what we were talking about was when you were in it which is where you being you were being trained by the government in that case not by a contractor right right? Yeah. So when you were doing that, were you just doing it with other guys in the Army Rangers, or was it also where you're doing it with people from different branches? That was all Special Forces when I was being trained.

That's all in Special Forces at the time. I don't believe there was any civilian contractors on the training itself part. I believe we were evaluated by some civilian contractors. Because that's what I do now. I don't really teach them how to do it. I teach them how not to do it. If I catch them doing something they're not supposed to do, that kind of thing, more or

less. I tell the team leader, or if I'm the team leader or whatever, we brief them over the phone. We don't talk face-to-face ever. But like I saw you do these things, don't do these things. They're not what you're supposed to do. They're not what you're trained to do. What are some common things?

Don't let me know that I know that you know that I'm following you. Because in all reality, if you're in a foreign country and a bunch of bad guys were pulling some – and they're good at it now, real good. The bad guys. Yeah, the bad guys are very good at it because they're raised doing it. Say they're pulling like a six-vehicle convoy or not convoy, a surveillance team on you, and you're driving around town, this, that, and the other, and you realize that there is somebody on you.

Somehow you see too many signs, whatever they are. It doesn't matter what they are. You realize it, and you start trying to maneuver your way to get away from them on this night, and they realize it, that you realize that you've been seen. They'll just put 20 cars on you now, and they might just put an aircraft in there and just shoot your damn vehicle right off the street because I'm not even going to mess with you now because I want to know if you're doing something i don't want you to do and if you're not telling me you're not doing it then i might

let you slide but if you're not i'll blow your car off the road yeah i've had my my friend sean ryan who was in here he did he was a navy seal who then ended up being cia grs where he was protecting assets and case officers around the world and stuff and did heavy surveillance but before that back when he was a SEAL he actually got trained by MI6 to do undercover work that he then he got all the skills he didn't end up having to do the mission that they were going to do I think they were going to go hunt some of the some of the genocidal guys in Bosnia at the time. But then he didn't end up doing it.

But some of those skills or most of those skills completely translated to what he was doing. And so when we were talking, he actually brought up some of the same concepts that my friend Andy Bustamante, who is a CIA case officer, brings up, which is the different ways that you get burned. So I, I'm going to forget the terms, but you remember those things, unless he was like, there's three things. There's one, there's one where you get a tail and you don't know it. There's one where you get a tail and maybe they show you. And there's one where like you get, they're bringing you in. Yeah. Right. So his point was that if sometimes if you get a tail and they're not showing you but you catch it it could just be like you're an american in a foreign country so they're just double checking and they have no idea who you are but then if you get a tail and they're

kind of showing you it's like hey we think you're somebody this is a problem and then if you get the tail where they're right on you they're they going to capture you. So in the course of your career, did you have, I would imagine a lot of your surveillance work involved more shorter jobs, meaning you're not somewhere for a year or something like that. But did you have situations where you thought you might be getting burned? I've had cases, we've had myself and a few other people have had a lot of cases where we've actually caught dudes doing stuff on base that were foreign nationals. Whoa. And so we've seen all kinds of stuff pulling surveillance on us.

And once you do it a lot, that's the reason that when you go through the course, that's why the training to be graded and all that kind of stuff is so extensive, because they want to give you every scenario you'll ever run into. So if that guy, if whoever's in charge of that guy in training tells, he'll call back and tell us, like, I need you to do these things because he hasn't ever seen it before. And then we try to do it as best we can do it without him noticing or whatever, but we'll just do it, do it, do it,

until he finally starts picking up on it or whatever. That way it goes back like that file folder I was talking about. I've seen it. I know what it looks like. I know what somebody looks like when they do this. And we've been on base many times and see a guy doing something and feel, know what the deal is with all that kind of stuff. We go, hey, hey, watch that guy right there.

But then we'll just turn it off and we'll just be walking around doing our own thing, you know, minding our own business. But meanwhile, now we're watching. And, shoot, man, I can't even count how many times I was doing that. Because there was a point there where we had a real problem with insider threat, like guys, foreign nationals that work with us, not us, but work with U.S. military or government agencies and stuff on base. And he knows about it, I'm sure.

Like, for instance, I'll just say there's a bunch of Iraqis that worked on an Iraqi base. Right. And U.S. military is there, and a guy just out of nowhere, best pals, spins around, kills like seven Air Force dudes right there. Playing both sides. Unarmed. Yeah. Because he has them, you know.

I just had my friend Joby Warwick in here for the second time. I was actually telling you about him off air. He he's the guy who wrote the book black flags oh and i says the one the pulitzer but his first book was actually the basis of one of the plot one of the many plot points within zero dark 30 where they had el bellowy that doctor double agent come on the base and blow up all blew up cia members and i think there were also if correct me if i'm wrong there were a couple military guys there too but like same deal it just makes you wonder do you ever really know any of these guys well and the thing is you have to take into account too which i know he's dealt with this too, is culture's context, for one. I mean, it's just it is.

But religion's one thing, too. If you're smart, you learn about the religion of the people that you're going to see because their religion is not the same as yours. I mean, I'm preaching to the choir by saying this. But certain ones are never going to be your buddy. Never, ever, ever. But they'll play like you're your buddy and all this other stuff. Now, I'm not to say that a Muslim, for instance, a person who practices a Muslim religion could not be your friend ever,

but there's other ones that will have the Muslim religion that will not be your friend ever, ever. It depends on what their state of mind. How do you determine that? It's tribal. It's very tribal as well. Tribal too? Yeah. And for context, Ryan, you were one of the guys who was chasing out It depends on what their state of mind. How do you determine that? It's tribal. It's very tribal as well. Yeah, tribal too. Yeah.

And for context, Ryan, you were one of the guys who was chasing Al-Zaqawi in Iraq. Many. Many. And obviously you saw this. It's been hinted, but just so people know, you saw this up close for sure. Oh, yeah. No, hands down. There are certain neighborhoods where you can go and speak with the sheik,

and there are certain neighborhoods where the sheik is calling through the loudspeakers to have calling reinforcements to come blow you up. Right. We talked about that a lot in episode 117 when you were in here. That was some pretty heavy shit, some of that. It's like when you hear the speakers going off and it's not prayer time and you don't speak the language, better find somebody who does. And you hear the tone too yeah and everybody's doors are closed nobody's outside everybody's

running inside it's like yeah we go here we go same time same way like that thing we're talking about pulling into the market and all the doors are shutting you better find somewhere to be soon or be ready to do something because it's coming. And if you see a car driving on the road, you better disable that vehicle as soon as possible or it's going to blow you and your whole unit to smithereens. Yeah, we're going to get to Iraq today because obviously that's where you won your Silver Star and spent a lot of time there.

And Ryan, you spent a lot of time there as well. But in the meantime, we're talking about the 80s where you're doing a lot of these jobs where you're coming in South America, whether it's going into this country, that country. A couple of quick questions on that just before we move on. When you go in to do some of these missions, like you were talking about the one in Columbia where it's just you and another guy from another agency and then the DEA agent. So it's just you and another guy from another agency and then the DEA agent. So it's just you in a military capacity. But, like, are most of these missions you're going in with your same team that you work with, your same unit within the Army Rangers? Or is there a lot of, like, no, it's just you or one other guy going in?

Depends on what size element it is that's required. If it's a platoon size element, you know, 25, 30 dudes, something like that, it'll be my crew, you know what I mean, the guys I work with. Special stuff like sniper stuff, it might be, depending on how you're structured, it might be two or three different sniper teams of two like this, you know. There will be guys you all know. Advisory roles might just be two guys. I mean, there was a time when two Army E-7 Special Forces dudes caused a coup d'etat.

What do you mean E-7, just for people out there? Third and first class. Okay. They planned and caused a coup d'etat in South America, and it went. So I'm not going to say who or when or how, but it happened. So that wasn't the CIA's fault then. That was someone else's fault. So something like that did happen.

Okay. And it was planned by two guys because the E7 in Special Forces is kind of the middle of the road rank-wise, I guess you'd say. Operator-wise, it is the rank. Operator E7 is the rank operator E7 is the rank

perfect because E8 now you're in a different position but E7 is that spot so you're talking about E7 guys they're

not normally playing a coup de tas you know but in that case they grew a brain yeah they grew a brain

and and talked to somebody that said it's okay apparently so I don't remember what year what their names names were, or anything like that, of course. Yeah. Or exactly where it was.

You forgot that. Yeah, I forgot. Conveniently. Yeah. Well, there were some guys, I think they were former Green Berets, that tried to do something like that a few years ago. Oh, yeah. They got. That's public then?

Oh, yeah. That was all over the news. Can we look up that story? Green Berets try to overthrow government? They're former. Former. Former Green Berets. So they got like

course marshal and everything. They got... They're in jail. They're in jail. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're in jail over there. Well, they didn't have military or agency backing.

Yeah. So they did it all by themselves. Was it Operation Gideon? Is that it? I can't remember the name of it Venezuela? Let's pull it up Oh, they were trying to take down the old Venezuelan government?

Yeah, that's what it says here Venezuela This is 2020 This just happened Yeah, they were running their own They had their own contracting company I don't know what's going on with it Yeah, it just happened not too long ago

Man, it was It was bad for them though It was pathetic Yeah, it just happened not too long ago. Man, it was bad for them, though. It was pathetic. Yeah, it was terrible. That's a big operation to take on by yourself. Hold on. We're going to pause for one second. I'm just going to fix the TV.

We'll be right back. All right, we're back. We got the TV working. So this is Operation Gideon 2021. You want to read this, Alassie? Yeah, so we got here. It was an unsuccessful attempt by the active coalition of the venezuelan international reserve venezuelan dissidents and a private

security firm jordan gordes silver corp usa to infiltrate venezuela by sea and remove nicholas maduro from power the plan executed from the 3rd to 4th may 2020 was for the expatriate venezuelan military living in Colombia to enter the country by boat at Makoto, take control of an airfield, capture Maduro and other high-level figures in his administration, expel them from the country. Wow. Nice. Sounds like a plan,

boys. Wow. Yeah. So, they're acting on their own accord doing that, and then these guys... Can we scroll down, like, to the prison section? Poor guys never even got paid, I when they're dealing oh were they doing this like yeah go down go down keep going oh this is long this is a book is this the guy we gotta do a podcast on this oh dude you two need it that's fine that's fine if there's a journalist out there who's been covering this, hit a bullet up.

Let's do it. Aftermath. All right. Different versions of the narrative led to questions about the operation. Maduro's attorney, General Tarek William Saab, announced that 25,000 national troops were mobilized in a Venezuelan military mission named Bolivarian Shield, Spanish Escudo Bolivarionario, to protect the country from similar attempts. Saab requested that the Supreme

Tribunal of Justice declare how do you say that, Alessi? Guados? Guados? You're Spanish. Guidos. Okay, Guidos political party, popular World War II. A terrorist group due to attempted sea incursion, Guido responded with the charges, stating that Maduro

defended irregular groups like National Liberation Army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Ind indictments and arrests this is what i want as of may 21st 2020 66 arrests took place and 99 arrests wanted to be issued 63 of which remain outstanding so they labeled them mercenaries and captured them there's a lot of details there i don't want to get too lost in the weeds but basically some dudes got in trouble and it looks like some guys are on the ground with police cop foot on their hands. See the one thing that says right up at the very top? War materials on their boats.

That did it. What does that mean? Gun stuff to fight war. Guns, paperwork, things that you can use in that to try to do. Because see how they got different markings and flags and all that kind of stuff? Yeah. All the things that just kind of lead towards some kind of a takeover, which just is absolutely incriminating.

I love how they didn't forget their American flag patches. I'm going to represent this goddamn country. Follow me to freedom. My gosh. That was terrible. That's tragic, man. Wow. It's an embarrassment.

That's a big, man, that's optimistic. They even had their dog tags on. So you never got involved in anything like that, obviously. Nope. I'm not a part of anything like that. Just making sure. You know, we like law-abiding citizens in here sometimes. Now, if you give me like a thousand people and some U.S. aircraft.

You got enough to work with? You got enough to work with there? U.S. aircraft, sanctioned. Okay. Oh, got enough to work with? You got enough to work with there? U.S. aircraft, sanctioned. Okay. Oh, sanctioned. See, that's cheating. That's sanctioned. That means the DOD signed off in some secret document

and said, don't worry about it. We know, but we don't know. Way more fun when the president's name is signed on something. It makes me feel way better about stuff. It makes you feel like you got a big dick when you have that, right? It definitely does. You can do what you want. When you got a Spectre gunship flying above your head,

you're kind of like, yeah. Yeah, we're good. I want that to disappear. right? It definitely does. You can do what you want. When you got a Spectre gunship flying above your head, you're kind of like, yeah, we're good. I want that to disappear. Please. It's gone. So what were you doing in the 90s? See, I got out in 87 and I didn't come back

until 92, very end of 92. Oh, so you got, you left. Yeah, I left. I thought I was done. What made you want to leave? And can you stay

a little turn to me? I just want to make sure the camera's on you. You're good. I was trying to be a part of the collective. Yeah, I left. I thought I was done. What made you want to leave? And can you stay a little turn to me? I just want to make sure the camera's on you. Oh, my bad. You're good? I was trying to be a part of the collective. Yeah. We'll leave Ryan on his island. Let's wrap along. I like you turned this way. That's perfect. Your camera's right there. Oh, yeah. Leaving in 87.

You thought you were done. I thought I did my time, because not everybody in my family did retirement. You know what I mean? Like, very few actually retired from the military. They just served. But weirdly enough, they almost all got combat time, like serious combat time, you know. And they did their time. They got all their accolades and decorations and all this other stuff, you know,

and went about their way and did great things, actually, afterwards. And a lot of them held public offices and things, you know, for a minute. They didn't really seem like it was their cup of tea. And then they just kind of moved on doing different things. Like my dad did a whole bunch of really, really cool stuff, and he ended up being an air-conditioned heating guy. That's just what he liked to do. He enjoyed it.

An electrician. And that taught me how to do some of that stuff and made me crawl through that installation too, you know, because that's why you have a kid. But getting you ready for boot camp, son. Low crawl. Hit it. But I got out, went to college, University of Texas. I started off at Grayson County College, computer science.

I was pursuing the money end of it because in 1987. Wait, you did computer science? Yeah, believe it or not. You? Allegedly. Yeah, sadly, more like. I just can't picture you not driving yourself nuts at a desk typing things. Well, we're not that part of the story then, are we?

Okay. I got to head in. That's coming very soon. This is like the longest Sears school ever. I'm not kidding, man. Except for beating me physically, it's just mentally. So I went to school, went up there for computer science, was a minor in structural engineering,

which I like structural engineering because I'm a math guy. And did that for a while, then went down to University of Texas, Austin, went through that, got my degree, went to work for, originally I went to work for EDS, which was owned by Ross Perot. Oh, shit. So you can't go wrong there. Yeah. And it was all a bunch of, you know, former military guys.

I was like, this is awesome. This is before he's doing the whole running for office. Yeah. That was what, like 92 when he did that or something? Yeah. He's doing the whole running for office that was what like 92 when he did that or something yeah he's buying like up commercials for like an hour on almost almost exactly the same time it's it falls right in there so whatever the case was i worked there for like three weeks and that whole section that i worked in was shut down because of some reason they're getting rid of it and they're doing something else so during that time i went to

another place called dsc communications became a programmer over there. Pretty much everything I used as a program is obsolete nowadays. Pretty much everything I took in college computer-wise is obsolete, except for a couple things, machine language, coding, C+, that kind of thing. All the rest of those stupid programs, they're gone and useless. And now I do get to turn the thing on and off. And so I got a job over there i was one of the few military members former military members in there setting my setting my little area there

kept my mouth shut in the beginning and then uh some other stuff went and i've realized nobody liked me and uh i was too outspoken and this that and i just realized typing for 10 hours a day and not be able to read the street signs when I go home. How many days in was this? Until I decided I was sick of it was about four. Until I realized absolutely I'm wasting my money on this.

They didn't like the veteran in there? People didn't respect that? They didn't like the way I acted either because once they started treating me bad then I started acting up and uh started doing stuff just to annoy people like what like i had my food one time in my cubicle and i didn't have it cool or anything i just had a plastic bag through the floor and uh it's like some chicken fried steak in there you know and we all shared a break room at different areas of the building. I went down there to warm it up with food.

Somebody goes, you know, there's ants all over that. I was like, I don't give a crap, dude. I got like five minutes. Just figured through the crap in the microwave and it's heating up. And people were like, there's ants crawling out of the microwave. And I was like, but I said, here's the cool thing. Look at them. They're crawling all over that meat and none of them are dead.

Imagine that crap, dude. That's awesome. Paul Rosalie would like that, man. They're crawling all over that meat, and none of them are dead. Imagine that crap, dude. That's awesome. Paul Rosalie would like that, man. He'd be all about that shit. That's more monkey brain. So I was just like, it's ant. I mean, serious school, man. I've survived on ants half the time.

Those things are good. Oh. So. I don't want to know. Pick them up one at a time. It takes a while to get your meal in. I'm good. So I ate that stuff. didn't really care about anything.

And then our conversation earlier, there was a deal with a guy with a peace sign on his ankle, and I was like, come on now. Oh, this was the guy with the peace sign? Yeah. He was working in the computer job. Yeah. So what happened, just for people who weren't in our conversation in the kitchen earlier? He was a guy that had a peace sign, red, white, and blue peace sign on his ankle.

And you didn't like this? I don't like peace signs in general. Why? Because if we had peace there, I wouldn't have a job. I wouldn't have a contracting job. I wouldn't have anything. I mean, I want a certain amount of peace, but not all of it. Peace where I choose for it to be.

There's the quiet part out loud. Yeah. And so we had words about that peace sign and this and that, and I didn't think he was up to par for the whole thing or whatever else, and we had discussions about it, and I said a bunch of mean stuff to him. He put a peace sign on the back of his car with some shoe polish and thought he was going to be funny about it. On the back of your car?

His car, but it had my name on it. Oh. I said, to Danny Hall. And it was the day I was leaving to go back in the military. And I was leaving there to go to the MEP station to get back my stuff. And everybody knew it. And now everybody thinks it's funny. So they're like, what are you going to do?

So I went out there as a Toyo Supra. I just hopped on the back, peed it right off the back window. And he just stood over there in his big ponytail staring at me. And taking up about two parking spots with his belly. So I just hopped in the car and went off. I said, I'll never see you punks again. Bye. Literally, when a recruiter called me, because I didn't know when I was going to go,

he called me and said, when I call you, we're not taking prior service. So when I do call you, you've got about 45 minutes to get your butt here. We've got one prior service slot every so often. I don't know why that was that way there in that time. It was hard to get back in. And he calls and said his name was Sergeant Zap. Pretty cool. That's a good name. Big old black dude, like 6'6", just jack

diesel. Zap? Yeah, Z-A-P-P. Yeah. Cool sucker. And he calls me up and goes, alright, Ranger, get your shit up here now. Time starts. Bink. And he calls me up and goes, all right, Ranger, get your shit up here now. Time starts. Bink. And he's hanging up. I got all my shit and went into the trash can.

Bye. Gone. I walked out the door, no notice, no nothing. It's like out of a movie. Like the bat signal goes up. Here we go, boys. I ain't never coming back, bro. Gotham needs me.

Yeah, so that was that. Back in the Army I went and went to 101st to get back in because I had to make my rank back. You had to be an E4 specialist to get into Special Forces Selection. Again, for people out there, E4, you said E7 earlier, but E4 is? Well, E4 is a specialist. So E1 is private, E2 is private, E3 is private first class, and then E4 is where you're kind of starting to get into more of a leadership position,

maybe like a team leader or something. So are you going back into the Rangers when you're doing this? That's the goal? No, I'm going back. No, this is different. I'm going back to go to Special Forces this time. Okay. Gotcha.

And I've actually already started training for it because I already knew I was going to do it. And like about six months out. But it took me that long to get back in. But you're saying there's an equal rank you had had based on being in the rangers so then you have to earn back some of that rank to get to the point where then you can go into the special me being out of the army got so i got out as an e5 sergeant and i came back in as an e2 private so that's that they took two yeah they took it all so normally they'll take one rank away. Yeah. And you were out four years?

Five and a half. Five and a half. Yeah. So how old are you now? Like 28? 28? Oh, you mean now. I was like 58 now. Then when you were getting back in, 28?

See, I got out when I was 21. Yeah, somewhere in there. 27, 28. 28. Sounds right. So you went and got this whole degree and everything. Go out, you do a job for four days. You're like, fuck this, I'm going home.

Yep. Well, I decided in four days. It took me six months to get there, though. I had to sit around and gut it out for the rest of the time, but I wouldn't say I was the best in productivity. Okay. All right. So you get on. Where was the base you had the report to?

Fort Campbell, Kentucky. And we're in 1992 now? Yep. November 92. Yep, November 92. kentucky and we're in 1992 now yep now november 92 uh yep november 92 i had to think about it for a second there's a lot of dates here right so mr gorbachev has torn down that wall at this point he done tore down we got communism fallen again this is and this is coming up right onto where desert storm it just happened to right you missed that right i missed it that was 91 so again no main war on the table but did you do work in the balkans in the 90s yeah after that oh yeah balkan kosovo all right we got somebody because this is this is i love

this history i mean it's actually like a kind of nasty history to be honest. But it's one of the most forgotten periods in modern history in my opinion because I didn't even know about any of this until – maybe like it was two and a half, three years ago, something like that. I saw an old image from Time Magazine from 99 on the internet that showed the NATO bombs in Kosovo. And I was like, what the fuck is that? And then I in kosovo and i was like what the fuck is that and then i started googling this i was like holy shit the breakup of yugoslavia and that whole ex-communist bloc yeah from the in the balkans led to you had all these thousands year old race wars going on between the people because they were all mixed up. And now you have Serbs, you have Croats, you have Albanians, you have Bosnians, you have some are Christians, some are Muslims, some are secular. And it led to things like the Bosnian genocide, which I mentioned Sean Ryan was, I think,

training to go in and get some of those guys at one point. It led to things like the Kosovo genocide. And again, this is like 50 years after people said never again. It didn't take too long in like the same region too. But I would see a lot of stories then pop out where I'd listen to guys like you who had long distinguished careers in the military, talk about their special forces or Navy SEALs work, and they would always start and like almost kind of gloss over like,

yeah, I started off in Kosovo in 99, started off in Bosnia in bosnia in 95 i'm like holy shit so many of our guys were like there so what what was that where did where did you get sent uh first to bosnia then to kosovo okay so bosnia three times went to bosnia once when was your first time going to bosnia what what year approximately? Oh, one. Oh, so you went after. Yeah. You didn't go in the 90s. Mm-mm. No, because I was in the Q course to be a Green Beret from 92 to,

geez, I was in there a while, apparently. All right, well, let's go back. I was going to say, I was in there a long time. All right, let's go back for a minute because let's not miss some of that. So you decide to become a Green Beret within the Special Forces. What made the decision for you to want to go Green Beret as opposed to Delta? I just thought it was a path I should travel to progress. I thought Ranger or Green Beret, Delta was the proper way to do it.

That's not written anywhere or anything. It's just the way I wanted to do it. My dad was a Green Beret, so I wanted to be a Green Beret. So there you go, and both of his brothers. So I wanted to be one too. If I'm going to do it, then I would eventually progress, you know, go to Delta and all that stuff. But I went in in 92, but I had to make my rank back.

So that took two years-ish, somewhere in there, to make that back. Then I went to selection in 94. Then it took another seven months to even tend the course, probably. So another seven months right there because it was just backed up. They just built a new facility. There's still part of it's at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, and the other part was still at Fort Bragg, North Carolina being built. And I went to one of the last classes they had at Fort Sam Houston and went to that. And while we're waiting on, I was 18

Delta medic, the medical course wasn't built yet. The rest of it, the first half was and the second half wasn't. So while I'm waiting on the second half to finish being built i had to go do a year in korea completely out of special operations entirely again with a signal unit because they just picked a nice one to send me to they just put you on it they picked me something cush and i'll do a skydive the whole time i was there just goofing off and it's got out demonstration jumps i was the assistant to the assistant training nco so the training is so he just kind of makes little schedules here and there the assistant does nothing the assistant the assistant to assistant doesn't even show up and all i do is just hop on trains and me and this other guy it's a lieutenant from another unit and we just went around skydive jumped into changes

commands and just i mean it's really you just skydive wherever you want while you're over there? Yeah. Because it's a club. It's forked. I can't remember the name of the club now. Anyway, it's on one of the military bases. Something's hitting my tongue. But anyway, it's a military club.

And if you're a member of it, you end up being part of the leadership or whatever else. You just go up there and get the parachute, hop on a train, go to these places. But if you're jumping anywhere off these premises, the military bases, you have to be in the – like a Korean base has to be for like a change of command where there's American involvement. Our command's there. Their command's there. We parachute in, fly American flag in, fly Korean flag in. I mean, I know you train people in – you mentioned it. You train people in halo jumps and stuff now,

but before this era, had you done a lot of that before already? Yeah. I'd already skydived a lot on the civilian side. On the civilian side? Yeah. Oh, not on the military side. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just for fun.

Yeah. When I was in college, I started skydiving. Why does that not surprise me? My favorite thing was base jumping at the time. So I'd just carry around a parachute with me, and if I drove over a bridge that was at least 300 feet tall, I'd jump off of it. Just anywhere?

Yeah. Is that legal? No. I was going to say. Not at all. So you just, like, hope there weren't cops at the bottom by the time you floated? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Living dangerously. At least a creek, a river you'd get away with. But my ex-brother-in-law, he was a big deal in Marriott River Center in San Antonio. And that's 440 feet tall over the river walk and all that stuff. It's high enough to die. Yeah, oh, yeah, plenty. And get a good look at it while you're done, too.

Because you're not going fast when you first start. It takes a little bit to get terminal velocity. So you get to look at all those people in a boat down there before you eat it. So he told me I could jump off that, but I couldn't jump off the property. I couldn't land off the property or else I'd go to jail

if it caught me. So there's a big, huge ballroom over here and there's the big towers right here. So I jumped off the towers, flew over here to the ballroom and just and there's the big towers right here so i jumped off the towers flew over here to the ballroom and just spiraled around like this and then landed on top of the ballroom and walked back in the building you do a little curtsy when you landed like hey nobody's everybody nobody's saving but like this is official government business that's right well they

they were gonna originally put me down as a window washer and let me jump off all those deals i was like dang i'd be cool i I fell again, man. I'm sorry. My bad. I think I got this parachute with me. Safety parachute, not a rope. And so I walked in, walked in his office, took all my crap, put it in his closet right there and walked off. And the cops showed up.

They're like, yeah, somebody's jumped the parachute off the building. He's like, what? Again? Oh my god. It wasn't me. They're like, okay, well, he landed on the ballroom so he didn't break any laws necessarily, but you'll keep an eye out. Okay. I come walking out of the bathroom. Thanks, bro. Got my shit and went down the runway. But Dirt, before you got sent on to that base, I was a little confused.

Are you saying that was before you went into Green Beret training? My bad. So when I got done with all that, I graduated Special Forces course in 1998. So I was already a Green Beret. Oh, so this base was when you were already a Green Beret. Yeah, I'd already been a Green Beret. But the Green Beret training was two and a half years, you said. Yeah, pretty close to it with language school and everything. Like what do you do?

Take me through the 18 delta course supposedly is the most academically challenging course in the entire u.s military the washout rate is that ridiculous i mean 18 deltas are badasses i think it's 18 deltas are we still talking about special forces medic it's it's your it's your um billet within your special forces okay all right understood so so you're doing you're doing language school i remember chris cathers talked about this like he had to do a bunch of that as well he was in special forces what else are you doing in the training well i think in medical training you do i think the pass rate's like four percent something like that we start off at 230 and we end up with like seven or eight or

something i remember something crazy number wow and then then you go to language school and then you go to serious school again which is the worst one and it's the way way worse one there and then uh you get done with all that and i went to okina 99 i was there till oh two and then i went from there to uh but that's right when we started doing the uh going off to a zambawanga to the philippines hunting down the uh the burnhams remember the burnhams the the uh missionaries that were a man and a wife no oh you were hunting yeah Yeah, a whole bunch of people were hunting, but yeah. What happened there? I know nothing about that.

We didn't find them. We found hints of where they had been there. Who were they? They were two American missionaries. I believe they were... There we go. Yeah, they were American. I'm trying to remember exactly what religion they were, though.

What was their name? Burnham? Burnham. B-U-R-N-H-A-M. Burnham Missionaries? Naha is Okinawa. Okay, we'll come back to that in a second. I just want to make sure we get this.

We'll just read the quick Wikipedia overview and then let you tell the story of what you saw. All right, go to Wikipedia, Dos Palmas Kidnappings. Does that look right? Dos Palmas kidnappings? It was a hostage crisis in southern Philippines that began with the seizing of 20 hostages from the affluent Dos Palmas resort on Private Island in

Honda Bay, Palawan by members of Abu Sayyaf on May 27, 2001. It resulted in the deaths of at least five of the original hostages. Three of these hostages were american citizens guillermo sobrero and a married missionary couple gracia and martin burnham at least 22 filipino soldiers were killed in attempts to apprehend the captors and the hostages in the 12 months following the initial hostage taking an unknown number of captors were killed

by government forces this is what you're talking about. So you were one of the guys sent in here to go try to find them. And they were with those guys still running around. And they'd stop in places and they kept them captive the entire time. But we were so close to them one time that we walked into a house and there was like a dining room table or something, like an old fold-up table or something there. And somebody had written burn them with their finger in the dirt. And was like man we gotta be kind of close but every time we'd find a uh like we'd feel like we're pretty close to them we'd call it in and they'd pull us back why i don't know exactly but they call us back to zambuanga which is the because this is the island we're on right here and then we're at the corner of on the philippines over here so we'd launch

from there to go look for them. They're on this island somewhere. When you say launch from there, you take a helicopter over, and how many guys are dropping in? Helicopter, we'd take about seven or eight Filipinos, and there's like two, maybe three Green Berets. Oh, that's it? Yeah. So we're kind of running that part of the show,

and we've got to have their interaction too because, you know, they didn't want just Americans going over and shooting anybody or grabbing anybody or doing anything you want to make sure the filipinos are involved sure they're shooting too kind of like kind of like if you go to africa you don't want to be just this one american guy we're doing stuff you better have some african rangers running around there somewhere i got you so you this was this was in 01 though so you're you went to okinawa in like 99, you said. You're on that base, base jumping, fucking around for a year, and then you start doing missions like this?

Yeah. It pretty much kicked off right... The part where it wasn't as much fun anymore was the World Trade Center, actually. But yeah, this is already gone. We're going to get there in a second. Where is Okinawa on this map? Naha.

You see Naha there? It is a hell of a place to sky to skydive yeah it's beautiful yeah there's nothing around it's got up skydiving scuba dives what's on on skydiving though like what because i've never done it but like you're doing some of the high level military stuff and you still train guys obviously do this but when you go to do these things, you're doing it around bases and stuff like that, but you want to do it from a plane over the ocean and then get towards land, or does it not matter? Either one. Military, if it's my rig, I want to land on the land because I don't want to hit that salt water.

Yeah, I don't want a shark eating me. Military, we jumped into water all the time because there's an island right over there to the left of okinawa we jumped onto that island all the time too if you hit satellite it's like real real small give you more idea of yeah i hit that perfect oh look at that wow if you zoom in on naha yep see right there to your left kumagina was that what it was called oh kumagina yeah So Naha. Yep. See right there? Akini? To your left, Kumagina. Was that what it was called? Oh, Kumagina.

Yeah. Wow. Naha is a great city. Mm-hmm. Were you stationed there at one point, right? Yeah, that's my first duty station. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because then you were helping with the tsunamis eventually.

You got called into that, right? It's a beautiful, beautiful island. It's like the farmland of japan farmers it's their version of hawaii now too you were hunting you were hunting pirates over there right yes were you hunting pirates at all or were you just based jumping i was i was just based out of there and i flew all over southeast asia doing what we do right right i didn't base jump in there what do you think how enough jump off of wow yeah i've never been out anywhere over there but some of these places look beautiful i've watched obviously like a lot of the world war ii history with stuff like this and you're always you're always amazed like when you look at the pacific campaign world war ii and

color stuff which is really incredible but like you had this brutal war, just people just getting massacred on all sides in this backdrop. That's beautiful. Oh, yeah. It's so strange to watch, but now, obviously, it's peaceful. If you look at the Naha right there, and you look to the right where that ledge is right there. When you're out there diving, you swim up that ledge, it's deep. And they say it's the, I don't know what the first is. Well, it's got to be the Great Barrier Reef, which this.

It's closer to Guam or out there. But they say Okinawa is the second most beautiful waters in the world to dive in. It looks like this when you're underwater. It's clear. Wow. That's incredible. Now, this is the base. I mean, we have a bunch of bases, so I shouldn't say that.

Yeah, we've got like seven bases on Okinawa. But these are the types of places where maybe we're monitoring the whole boy in North Korea? You might think that. It's just down the road. Yeah, that. I mean, we've got Korea, so. Oh, we do have bases on there, right? Yeah.

South Korea. Okay. Fair enough. No, it's the third Marine Expeditionary Force is there, and then we've got a pretty badass Air Force base there. Yeah, real bad one. Kadena Air Base. Kadena Air Base.

That's where I think I saw when they canceled the SR-71 Blackbird, I think there was like 12 there. Oh, no way. We watched all 12 of them because at the end of the runway, Highway 58, and here's the ocean. Here's Highway 58. The fence of the base ends right here right beside you. And planes fly right over you, man. Do you know what this plane is?

No. The SR-71 Blackbird is the most. This thing? It is. Yeah. Dude. Nasty. Fastest plane ever made.

They're big. There's one, if you go into Manhattan, they've got one on the, was it the Constellation that they have? Yeah. Aircraft carrier, the museum. Oh, I've never seen that. I don't think it's. The world's fastest jet at the time.

Highest altitude, fastest jet. It held all kinds of world records. It's mean. It is really. It held the record for New York City to Los Angeles. What was the, can we Google the time? SR71 Blackbird, New York City to Los Angeles? What was the... Can we Google the time? SR71 Blackbird, New York City to Los Angeles time. Let's see what that was.

Because they'd be taking fucking six hours to do that on commercial. It's quick. All right, 67 minutes and 54 seconds. Yeah, there you go. So there's a really cool story about the Blackbird. There was a guy flying a Cessna. I want to say it's outside of LA somewhere. And he was calling in to get a speed check from Air Traffic Control, ATC.

Give him a speed check at like 160 miles an hour. I don't know, something very low, maybe 130. Then some F-14 pilot who thinks he's cool does a speed check with ATC to big dick him. And then, well, it just so happens that the Blackbird pilots are flying, and then they called in right after the F-14 pilot gets called in at like 1,000 miles an hour. And they're like some ungodly speed, like 2,000 miles an hour. It's so cool. Well, it's right there.

It's 2,124.5 miles an hour. It outruns missiles. Yeah. That's insane. It flies in low altitude, I mean, or low orbit. What were the planes? Because we're going to get to this in a second. And you had to have a space suit, too, by the way, because we're going to get to this in a second. Jet flight, and you had to have a spacesuit

too, by the way, to fly. Because you have an interesting story with this, but what were the, like when we scrambled the jets on 9-11 and those two or three jets went into the sky, was that these things? No? No. It was different? Yeah, these were already put out of action by then. Okay. They were retired.

So they were doing this kind of speed in like the 80s. Oh, the 60s, bro. The 60s. The 60s. The 60s. God damn it. DARPA, DARPA, what do you have?

I want to know. The frigging engine size, it leaked this rim. It's got two of them. But on 911, it's more like F-18s, F-15s. Slow pieces of shit. There's plenty fast still. You don't want one after you. Let's just say that.

The F-15s are greatest fighter jet of all time, I think, right? Overall. Fast as hell. Now, I found this out when we were standing in the kitchen earlier. I didn't know this because, again, we're getting right up against it now. This chase of those missionaries was May 2001, so you're still over there or whatever. Yeah. But you were in New York on 9-11? Yeah, funny enough. Well, not funny at all, but...

How did you... What were you doing here? I was married and had a not even one-year-old baby daughter yet. And we were going... My ex-wife was from Queens, New York, and she was a paramedic with the fire department there back in the day. And we were going to go back there and visit her family. So we flew from Okinawa, Space A, you know, just like get a free flight. Then we got there and we stayed at her aunt's house the night before. Got there on September 10th. And then got up the next morning, and I had worked there before doing my rotation rotation was my 18 delta stuff i had to do

medical stuff at the world trade center well and yeah the world trade center was there and it but it had been attempted to be bombed once before yeah 93 so the restaurant upstairs was still not functioning as far as i know at least that's what she said and so uh i knew a bunch of people in new york city and all that stuff so now we back. We're going to visit all of them. She wanted me to go to that restaurant with her first thing in the morning and have breakfast. On 91st in the North Tower? Yeah. So I was like, I've been to the towers, but I've never been in that restaurant.

So hopped on the subway, stepped off. Everything's groovy. And all of a sudden, I hear a bunch of commotion going on. And literally, walking down the sidewalk, there's a window right here with a bunch of TVs in it. You know, like they sell them. Everybody's gathered around. I look down. I was like, what in the hell? But I could see the

Twin Towers sitting down here. And I'm standing on the side where the first airplane hit it. So, which I think is the south side. I can't recall. But anyway, I see it stuck in there. I was like, what in the world? I see the black smoke coming out. That's strange.

Never crossed my mind that it was an attack of any kind. Really? Even at the beginning? I thought it was just some dude did something stupid and ran into one. Maybe he's drunk from the night before. I don't know. Nobody flies over there. Everybody knows not to.

I'm like, well, crud. So we're like, okay, well, damn, we're already down here. We'll do something. So she knew everybody since she worked there in that area. So we walked over to this ambulance, and the guy driving was a National Guard Huey pilot helicopter. So we started shooting and breathing him. I said, what are you guys going to do?

And he goes, well, I said, we're both paramedics. You know, you want us to run down there and help you out? You know, her aunt's right here with my daughter. She's going to take her home. I said, we can go down and help you guys if you want some help, you know, and all this other stuff. And I said, and I'm getting paid hazard studio pay to be doing stuff that I do. So, you know, no big deal that way, lawsuit-wise or any of that kind of junk.

He's like, no, there's a bunch of glass falling, stuff like that. We're just going to wait for a little bit first. Okay. He says, no big deal right this second. Well, you know, not threatening right this minute. All right. As we're sitting there, I don't know how many minutes this is, but it ain't many. I've never really kept track of exactly.

But I hear another plane plane coming and it sounds strange because it's uh it's obviously a big jet and it's it's like it's uh it's like you're going you're flying you're like revving it up and letting off revving it up and letting off like you know going up and down or something oh yeah and and i'm like what is that noise and i hear the ways off and all of a sudden it comes in distance. I mean, this thing's low to the ground now for a jet that big. And I'm like, what in the crap? You saw it?

Yeah, I mean, it's flying right here. And right over there, because I think we're standing on Avenue of the Americas at the time, I believe, and I'm looking right over there, and it's flying right over that way. So how far do you think you are from it? Oh, I don't know. 500 yards, maybe. I mean, from its path, possibly, I think, if I was to guess.

From the building? Oh, from the building? No, I was probably. I was pretty good ways from the building. Yeah, because you're up on Avenue of the Americans. Yeah, I believe so. I could see the building, but I don't know. I was probably 1,000 yards away from it. Well, 800 yards, maybe. I don't know. That's probably 1,000 yards away from that. Well, 800 yards maybe.

I don't know. There's a good way. A well-safe distance, that's for sure. So this thing goes by. Even the guy in the front seat here is going, oh, crap, man. Oh, wait. Sorry. I thought about that wrong.

Go ahead. Yeah, that makes sense. And he's a pilot. I said, dude, what in the world? Because he's got all this time to think about it. It's barely even moving. So it goes, goes, goes. And I see him turn turn he got a swing looks like look like swung out first and he comes back like it's not and i'm like is he gonna try to fly that between those buildings like what kind of psycho crap we got going on then he levels off and it

it's obvious what's about to happen now and you can see the wing sticking out of it all the way just it goes through and you see the nose of it come out the other end of the building second one hit like a blade i mean hard and the engine shoots out which i didn't know at the time of what it was uh obviously i'm repeating some of this because i know the news too but i mean that's what i saw is something shot out and went to this building over here and it was a hotel which ended up burning down while we're down there and uh i said get my daughter get my get gone i don't know what's going on but it's bad get going right this now at this point once it hits her you're like terrorists yeah yeah because as soon as he's

doing this crap and i see as soon as it touches that building i'm already gonna get her go go go get out of here and uh so i hung around and she hung around. And I said, well, let's volunteer. Let's do our thing. And they knew her, and they knew my background. So you're a special forces. Your wife is a nurse. I mean, like. Well, she's a paramedic with the fire department at the time, but when I met her before that.

So she knows all these people. Yeah. So we're perfect for the job. So they call up somebody, and they say, bring them down. And we go down to a collection area. And they said, okay, here's your tasks. You know, here's kind of put us in little groups, you know, and here you guys go this way, this way.

And it took a little while to go down there. It took a few minutes. And then we get down there and start doing what we can, you know, trying to organize to help people do whatever, you know. It's, you know, a big cloud of dust and stuff's on fire and uh wait are so the had the when you first go down there had the buildings fallen yet no okay so you're there when it's yeah and uh and so we're down there doing what we do you know not doing a very much productive really and uh and i looked up and you know now this building's burning good uh real good the second

building which i mean was that building too second building i can't remember well the second building the south tower got hit second but it fell first yeah right so it was like 846 tower one north tower gets hit 903 south tower gets hit 95 9.58, South Tower goes down. 102 minutes after 8.46, whatever that was, North Tower goes down. Okay. I'm glad you have that memorized. Dog, I don't have that memorized at all. Seems a lot quicker to me for some reason.

Oh, I'm sure it does. We're standing on the ground, and the fire's getting bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. And so my ex-wife had her go to the other building and i stayed at this building so let's don't be at the same buildings let's go somewhere else you know just be smart about it in case something happens you know we're not standing in the same spot and that was actually a fireman's idea where's your daughter at this point she's with my her aunt gone they're back in queens now and uh so i'm sitting there watching all stuff's happening. It's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I was like, oh man. So I was like, you know what?

I went up to this fire chief right here and I said, you know what? If we took two 93 foot rappel ropes, attached them together, 186 feet long total, put them on the bottom of a Huey, give me about

several rolls of one foot rope i make me some swiss seats tie me on the bottom one of those swing it over there let me get off i tie a bunch of swiss seats on people start clapping them on here pick them up put them on that building over there and we just go back and forth do this a whole bunch of times and they're like because the rope is long enough to where the helicopter would be above the building and still be able to reach the thing.

And the flames weren't kicking real heavy yet. You could tell they were going to. They said they couldn't get the helicopters anywhere near it because of the heat

coming off the building. But you didn't know that. But it wasn't hot enough at the time, I don't think. I mean, this is just at the very beginning of all this shit.

So you wanted to repel people. Just tie them onto a rope, put them over here now would it work uh seemed like it would fire marshall's like sir this is wendy's they they they sent it up to a bunch of other people and talked about it and this that and i said that's what i get paid to do oh my god can you imagine they said no we can't do that that's just crazy blah blah well then of course, then, of course, you know, it really turns ugly. Which, who knows?

Maybe it was too hot and it couldn't do it. It didn't look like it, but, you know, heat's heat. You know, who knows? Were you watching the people jumping? See, and that's what started happening next. And then, yeah. First guy I saw was flying like a V, kind of just like he didn't want to look at it. You know what I mean?

He just jumped out, and I'm like, well, shoot, and he hit a stop sign. And, I mean, I just started bawling. I was like, wow. And so here they go, here they go, here they go. And then all of a sudden, you know, time goes long. I mean, what are you going to do about it? I've read that a priest was giving last rites to somebody, and somebody fell on him. Yeah, it was Michael, they named that street after him.

Can you Google the first death of 9-11, priest Michael something, Father Michael Judge, that's it. Okay. I didn't see that happen, I just heard about it. Yeah, Michael Judge, there it is. Later. So, yeah, there's an image of him being carried out. I don't know if we can show it because it's a dead body.

But he's being carried out of the base of the tower. And he was dead because I think that's what it was. Someone fell on him or something like that. Some shrapnel fell on him. That's what I heard. So even someone... There it is. Don't show it on screen. But even someone as hardened to combat situations

and seeing what you saw that had that kind of effect on you to see this. It was the worst thing I'd ever seen. Yeah, easily. Yeah, to this date, still the worst. And then all this shit started going sideways then the creaking started making weird noises then the hotel started dropping windows off of it and they're just flying through the air doing this what do you mean dropping windows like they're just popping off like there's solid glass and they just started floating through the air like this and you don't

want to get hit with one of those i don't know how big they are 12 by 14 feet or something so everybody's jumping under fire trucks and stuff so it wouldn't hit you and air horns are going off right and left and then this thing starts creaking making all kinds of crazy noises and somebody runs out there whoever the cop or somebody's like hitting the horn like run everybody go everybody just took off and then that thing as we're making the corner around that thing you could hear that thing coming. The first one. Yeah, and it's coming down. What does that sound like? Excruciatingly loud because it's just the metal.

I guess it's just such big chunks of metal and glass coming. You couldn't hear yourself think. And the goal was, as you're running, is just to find a corner between those buildings to get away from it. And everybody's running away. And, I mean, people are being, you know, they're desperate. They're knocking people down, stepping on people, you know, all kinds of stuff. Did you think you were going to die?

Yeah, I thought that was going to do it right there. The dust, because the dust cloud overtook us, you know, and all this stuff. And you don't know where that thing's at. Is it right here? I wasn't standing right next to it, obviously. But it was terrifying. And so we went away. Then we're kind of hanging out.

Second one went. We just stayed out of the zone entirely. We're like way over here. So you're like, where are you? Are you in a building? Do you take cover in a building? We just went like, we made a left and just went blocks. Just ran and ran and ran.

Just kept going far away. Yeah, until we weren't in it. And you could hear rocks hitting cars and setting off fire alarms and all this kind of crap. And then the second one fell at some point. And they're like, well, ain't nobody going down there today. And so I came back the next day. It's still cloudy as crap, dirt cloud. But I knew some people, and I knew where to go.

So a police car picked us up and drove us down. Now there's a big crowd of people all the way down the side of the roads. They drove us down there. And then we got our crap together and went back out and started searching. Are you in, you may have said this at the very beginning of this, but, like, are you off in the military at this time? Like you're in the military, but you're... Just on leave.

You're on leave. So there wasn't orders coming in like that night, like, yo, be ready? Well, they were in there pretty quick because I went through the second day. Oh, no, I went through the first day, and I got back that night, and I was covered with dirt and stuff on the subway. And so was everybody. i was covered with dirt and stuff on the subway so was everybody everybody's covered with dirt and uh i got back and i called back to okinawa because they knew i was in new york city and i called back and i said hey i'm alive and everything's good blah blah they're like okay what's your plan i said i'm gonna go back in the morning you know

do some stuff he goes okay do your thing tomorrow but then get your ass on a plane because we're going somewhere now when you go back that next day though right and you said you knew some people yeah did you were you one of the first responders like looking for people who were alive in there pretty much yeah there wasn't a whole bunch of people left sadly because you know so many people had died from the first try of all that stuff happening. And then we kind of, in the beginning, we kind of didn't know where to go or what to do, really, because we're just kind of like, man, it's so massive that you just kind of just go around finding holes and looking under things. And then, of course, at that time, we didn't have helmets or anything like that. Then FEMA came along and said,

quit climbing and stuff without a helmet and safety gear. So they told us not to. So we went around and found a Verizon truck and stole all the helmets off of that and just did it anyway. So we ended up down in the mall. Oh, you went down in there? Yeah, because you could get down there. What did you see when you got down there?

Man, it looked like once you got down there a ways, you got off track a little ways. A lot of it was still intact. I mean, it's still there. I mean, there's like a dude's coffee sitting on top of a jewelry store cabinet. Believe it or not. I don't even know how that's possible. And now I believe while that was happening, I believe building 47 fell at some point while we were down there because you could hear the beams bending and all that kind of thing.

Building 7? 7 or 47? 47? 7. Okay, 7. And it tells you how often I think about this. Never. But it had those gigantic monster I-beams.

It just bent those things over in there. And it didn't get us, though. And we came out, and I told one of the cops on the surface, I said, hey, man, there's a jewelry store down here that's just got loads of expensive jewelry. And I had like a pillowcase-looking thing maybe or something. It was just kind of something laying around. And we grabbed a whole bunch of jewelry and threw it in that pillowcase. But we're talking high end, like Rolex.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And threw as much as I could carry in that thing. And I went up there to the top and said, here's this. Here's the name of the store. I don't remember the name. Same one had the coffee sitting on it, though. And gave it to him and said, this jewelry store is down there, man. If people start strolling around doing stupid crap, you know,

you need to get down there and empty it up. How easy is it even to get down there? Good question. I don't know. Yeah. That's crazy that some of that stuff survives, and then there's like 20 people that survived. Yeah, it's sad.

It's very sad. It was pathetic. And I don't think a whole lot of that stuff was going on because there's too many people watching everything. At the moment, at that time, there wasn't because I think if you got caught doing something, somebody would stomp you to death. Yeah.

Obviously, you're going there. You're trying to help. You're going into help mode because that's kind of what your life is. You're trained to be in situations like this. But, like, at any point in that 36 hours, say, from when Building 2 gets hit to the end of the day on September 12th when you've been down there helping out with all this did you ever have a moment where you started to think about what this was who did this yeah let's go kill some motherfuckers oh yeah when i came back the second day and i made the corner where i like i was going down the alley like you turn i was like one block away and i turned the corner to look down the alley to where the World Trade Center's complex would have been. I turned there and walked away, and I could see the antenna sticking up out of the ground from off the top of the building.

And a part of a wall was over here. A corner of the wall was still standing up over here, the outside wall. And, of course, you know, teared up heavily and just immediately got pissed off and then we just started searching again but man oh man my emotions were shot out i mean just wrecked and uh that's when uh we got we did all this stuff and then uh we ended it at the end of that day and i was sitting around with those those other firefighters and contractors and all this other stuff there's like eight of us that made a little team together to do our little search. Building contractor, a couple firemen, a couple cops.

One of them was seen for, excuse me. Sorry. You're good. Supreme Court Justice Bailiff, a New York City police officer was with me. A guy named Joseph Rickey. And he wrote a letter to the Pentagon for me and all this stuff for saying I did a good job and helped and all this stuff, which is nice of him because I didn't give a crap about a medal or anything like that. And we got done.

I was like, okay, y'all did y'all's part. I'm going to do mine. And I did. So when, when did, when did you leave to head back to Okinawa? The 13th? Yeah. The next morning.

Whoa. Cost expensive ticket too, but cause nobody was flying. So, uh, we had to go, we had to go a ways off to get an aircraft. I can't remember where we flew out of.

Uh, I can't recall.'d fly we'd drive like 200 miles to fly whoa i'm just picturing you i got the ticket at home though i can't think of it right this minute i'm picturing you on that long ass flight now finally sitting down after a couple days oh thinking about going there yeah now, prior to 9-11, how much intel had you been around, missions, everything put together, whatever it is, involving targeting al-Qaeda? Gosh, hardly any. Yeah. I mean, almost none, probably.

So you didn't know a ton about them necessarily before that happened. Because we hadn't even invaded Afghanistan or Iraq at that point, obviously. No, I didn't know a ton about them necessarily before that happened. Because we hadn't even invaded Afghanistan or Iraq at that point, obviously. No, I didn't know crap. Really, I mean, my biggest deal with Muslim of any kind was Kosovo. That was probably the biggest part. That and Abu Sayyaf, you know, they got their whole thing going over there. Now, you had said, let's circle back to that for a minute. You had said that you went to Bosnia in like 01, so that's before 9-11.

You were there. Yeah. Okay, and Kosovo also in 01? After 9-11. After 9-11. Yeah. Okay, all right, so let's stay where we are then. Okay.

So you go to Okinawa. In your head, you're thinking vengeance, whatever this is. Whoever did this, we're going to go find them. We're going to kill them. So we get back to Okinawa. I go to my team. They gather everybody up. We all meet in the war room.

I tell them what I saw just to get everybody stirred up, to let them know exactly what it really looked like. I told them some of the stuff I just told you all, generally. What was their reaction to that, hearing it from one of their guys on the ground? Oh, they were already burning, boy, burning. So once I got a total bunch of stuff in this, that, and that, I mean, they're pounding on the table and all kinds of stuff, like, let's get this party started right now.

And we did a whole bunch of planning. I mean, a lot of planning, really, really fast planning too. And we weren't the ones picked. So first group wasn't picked. Fifth group was. And third group at some point there, too, obviously. How do you plan without being picked? I'm just curious.

Like, what does that even look like? It's like, for instance, if you're going to do a halo jump in Iraq, not a whole bunch of them happen. So you tell all the halo teams to plan how you would take down this particular airfield, whichever one it was. I was trying to think of one not to use. But take down this particular airfield, how would you do it? And everybody comes up with a specific plan down to the nats ass on how you would do it then you brief that back to the commander in which everyone suits

his end state depending on the experience of the team blah blah blah you know all these things he takes it all in and that's who gets to do it so part of the reason that fifth group might have been picked besides i mean they're skilled no quite i mean they're all skilled uh was because that's their area of operations and they know their way around it way better you know i mean first group you know i never operated right there where they're standing so how big is first group like how many people are in that well all all uh all special forces back then were three battalions uh so figure uh 12 man team six times per company, ABC. Okay.

So that's 36 times three. That's all the teams generally. And then you have all the office jobs and everything else, which adds probably another 100. Got it. That's about it. Okay. So you guys didn't get picked, though?

No, we didn't get picked for it. As a unit, we did not get picked. So, not for the initial invasion. So then I... When was the initial invasion? Like September 16th-ish, something like that? Oh, that's quick. It's early.

That's fast. Yeah. And then the rest of the teams are just, the ones that were are just falling in after that. You know what I mean? All generally doing the same kind of stuff um then i came up on orders to leave okinawa to go to 10th group at fort carson colorado for february oh two yep oh two so literally months later but. But I already knew I was going to, so that wasn't a surprise.

I'd done my time. And then I went from there back to Fort Carson, Colorado, and then that's when I went to Kosovo. First time, I think. Are there things that hypothetically may have happened between 9-11 and going to Kosovo that you can't talk about on camera? Very good chance. Yeah. That I might have been involved in directly, too.

But nothing specific whatsoever or anything else. We're going to leave that one there, people. You're just going to deal with that. All right. So I do want to circle back to this because we're going to gonna al-qaeda is going to be a theme here in the middle east is going to be a theme but like within this you said you go to kosovo in 02 this is three years after the genocide and after the nato bombs and everything so what's going on at that point it's more of a show of force and still we did what's called a Bosnian – no, Serbian trace.

The hot dog. See what happens when you get old? Serbian trace. So, you know, obviously Kosovo is on the border of Serbia. Kosovo was Albanians. Albanians were being genocided by Milosevic's Serbia at the time. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Now, there was a big argument amongst a whole bunch of people about which side we picked, Serbia or Kosovo. There's been arguments since time began of who did we pick the right one and a whole bunch of stuff like that. So that's an argument for the politicians. Why is that an argument, you think? Because a lot of the arguments, since I'm not a politician, were that we took Kosovo's side,

ran all the Serbians off, then the Kosovo, Kosovarians took over all the Serbians' businesses and factories and all that stuff, and they failed immediately. Like, instantaneously. And

they didn't stick up to their part of the bargain as far as some things that were supposed to be followed through, which I don't know all the details on that stuff. That's their lane. Because all the Albanians came to New York, and they were on the nightlife. There you go. We got all the talent. There you go.

See, they all packed their crap. And the Serbians are just a whole lot easier to deal with as far as my task went. And to give you an idea, we did what's called that serbian trace which means we just hop on these trails through the mountains and a couple humvees or we also we live with the russians or they live with us russians live with us at the same time we take one of their btr armored vehicles or we take a couple humvees or whatever else and there's these really gnarly roads man i mean if you like to off-road, this is the ticket. But it's sketch. And you mess it up, you're taking a 400 or 500-foot ride down, you know.

And if you're a gunner, you're really out. So I wouldn't even let the gunner stick out at the top of the thing, you know. Just like, no, don't be sitting up there. You can't get down quick enough, bro. Because if you go, you're turning upside down right off. So we're going to do the Serbian trace, and we ride around. Show of force, there's Americans out here. got our flag flying stop off at farms everybody's you know nice and everything's good nope no problem stop off at a whole bunch of old uh old mills and stuff it's

really cool to look at i got some pottery from some of them just really really old stuff at this point the serbians are pretty much ejected from the country. Kosovo's forming. I think it took nine years before they were officially declared a country in 08, but they're forming into a country of Albanians. And Serbians are where they're supposed to be. Albanians are where they're supposed to be. Everything's groovy.

Well, they got their defense forces on their side of the border, and Albanians got their side going on. And so one day we're riding around and we pull up to the i mean it's it's it's obvious you pull up to serbian borders a great big sign says serbia do not enter it's like right there so we pull up there and there's like a big hilltop going upside we pull up there it's a beautiful day you know we did some snow and stuff a lot of times and this day it's really nice and uh we pull up there, and we're sitting there eating chow in front of the Humvee or pulling chow out to eat.

And all of a sudden, somebody looks over and goes, is that a machine gun nest or something, man? And I said, it weighs off. And I look up there, and I was like, holy crap. So I picked up Barrett, and I was a.50 caliber sniper rifle, and I looked through my scope on the hood. I was like, holy holy shit there's like four dudes

or five dudes in a pair and they're looking at us and I'm looking at them and I was like I held up 50

and I was like like this don't mess around you know you'll get something and they all start laughing and dance around

giving each other high fives and they reach down and they spread out real wide, and they hold up a 20-millimeter. This big. And they go, and they're like, for you. I was like, no, I'm good. I don't need that. I do not need that.

And they start laughing their butts off again. And I put the bear at the back. I goes, let's put that back there. We don't want that thing. And it's mounted. You know what thing's mounted, too, on a tripod. I don't need that thing. You know what thing is mounted to on a tripod. I don't need that. And all of a sudden, here they come down the hill.

I was like, what in the world? And they got their rifles slung and everything. And we're all like, all right, don't point at anybody or anything, but just keep your stuff ready just in case. I don't know what their plan is. And start looking around. Make sure this ain't something else. We're about to get wiped out by a bunch of bigger crew.

They come all the way down there and this and that and the other. And our interpreter, he speaks whatever language you need, pretty much. I mean, he speaks Russian, speaks everything. And they come walking down there and this guy's like, so you are American. I was like, oh, crap. Okay, speak English too, shit.

And he's like, okay, we have this and that, blah, blah, blah. I hate to ask, but do you guys have any food? I was like, yeah, we do. And he's like, we've been up here for like 30 days, man. We're freezing to death. We ain't got any water. We ain't got any food. And I was like, lay your weapons right there on that border,

right there on the grass, and just don't look at them again. And we're set. And he's like, okay. Go back here. Start handing out MREs. We're all sitting on top of Humvees exchanging emails. Wow. And just shooting a breeze.

That's diplomacy right there, man. That's what we need. More of this, less politicians. Yeah, I agree. So I said, okay, all these Humvees, every MRE box in here, just take it with you. That's it. See all these five-gallon water jugs? Take all that crap with you too you that's it see all these five gallon water jugs

take all that crap with you too just take all the food and water they just run off like hey thanks man doing selfies and stuff

I was like wow this is crazy so you're not seeing you're after the war you're not really like seeing a ton of action I mean we're talking O2

it's more like peacekeeping make sure yeah got it just kind of letting people know we are here and you're all over there. Got it.

So I didn't get the initial invasion of that, and I didn't do any of the CSAR, the crashed F-117. No, I don't know anything about that. A stealth fighter crashed in Kosovo. Can we pull that up, Alessi? Stealth fighter crashes in Kosovo? I think it was Kosovo. Yeah.

I know a bunch of guys went hunting for it. Yeah, I remember the day. The F-117, 25 years ago today. So this is 99. All right, yeah, click that. 1999 F-117A shot, shoot down on March 27, 1999 during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. A Yugoslav Army unit, the 3rd Battalion of the 250th Air Defense Missile Brigade,

which was under the leadership of Colonel Zoltan Donny, shot down an F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft of the United States Air Force by firing an S-125 Naval Pechora surface-to-air missile. It was the first ever shoot down of a stealth technology airplane. The pilot ejected safe. he got out and was rescued by u.s air force para rescue men conducting search and rescue the f-117 which entered service with the u.s air force in 1983 was a cutting was cutting edge equipment and the first operational aircraft to be designed using stealth technology by comparison the yugoslav air defenses were considered relatively obsolete

so basically they were able to shoot this down and then we were worried that like they had in their possessions so they could study it for proprietary and give it to the chinese or russians but i remember the the pilot i think was up in a tree climbed a tree or something for like a day or yeah and like or a couple days just to just to you know get some concealment then i believe they blew it in place, if I recall. So you're saying you weren't hunting that, that you weren't on that. No, I missed that one. Yeah, this is way before.

This is 99. Okay. Yeah. And you said you went to Bosnia, too, in 02? Yeah, 02. Now, what was it like? I did Kosovo, Bosnia, and Kosovo again. And I think I did a third one.

I did a third one after the initial invasion of Iraq. Then I did a third one after that, believe it or not. Okay. Yeah, so I went two times to Kosovo, one time to Bosnia in 2002. Bosnia. Can you pull up the 92 to 95 Bosnia genocide, Alessi? So Bosnia had this, in the wake of the wall falling and Yugoslavia breaking up, had this horrible genocide, and Kosovo did as well in 1999. But so many people were killed.

Here it is. The Bosnian genocide refers to either the Srebrenica massacre or the wider Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing campaign throughout areas controlled by Army of Republika. I'm not gonna say it aaron you want to pronounce that one srapska s-r-p-s-k-a right there srapska is that srpska srpska okay during during the bosnian war of 1992-1995 the events in sobrenica in 1995 include the killing of more than 8 000 bosniniak, Bosnian Muslim men and boys, as well as all as the mass expulsion of another 25,000 to 30,000, therefore ethnically cleansing, Bosniak civilians by VRS units under the command of General Ratko Miatic.

Maybe I'm thinking the wrong guy, but I think he was later found guilty at the Hague. Is that the guy who killed himself, like drank the wrong guy, but I think he was later found guilty at the Hague, right? Is that the guy who killed himself, like drank the, no, that was a croak. No. Nevermind. But I think that guy was found guilty. So this thing, again, happens like less than 50 years after the Holocaust. And then I don't know much about the history after that though. So when you go there seven years later, are there still serious tensions among some of these groups or is it more probably amongst the groups uh you didn't really see it

where we were as much uh i don't know if it was on the outskirts of all this stuff that they were dealing with each other uh more or less here now but there was still tension but uh i don't feel like i even got close to getting an engagement of any kind, honestly. I mean, it felt like it was more of that peace. Got it. Showing force, just doing what you do, helping out the populace, that kind of thing. You know what I mean? Now, this is a tension-filled year, though. Yeah.

O2 is we're fresh off 9-11. We're actively in Afghanistan, which I do want to talk about some of the paramilitary stuff there but we're also march 2003 ended up being iraq which obviously we're going to talk a lot about but you know you're this highly trained military killer right like your job is to go in there and and kill bad guys going into places that used to be hot zones that right now are not hot zones and not a part of the active campaign of like, let's eradicate radical terrorism. Yeah. And there's a whole war going on in Afghanistan,

and you literally were there on 9-11. Like, was there a part of you like, what the fuck am I doing here? Can you put me in the game, please? Well, yeah, that did cross my mind but i knew it was going to be that way from the get-go just because the way everything's configured i knew everybody would be in the mix at some point but it's just like any any military unit everything gets fed in because there's a there's also a follow-on plan so they put the guys that they think know the terrain best like blah blah like i was saying but they've also got a follow-on plan for all they put the guys that they think know the terrain best, blah, blah, blah, like I was saying,

but they've also got a follow-on plan for all these other units and they've got it all scheduled out to where each one's going to get to a certain place at a certain time

and all that. That way you have your units dispersed properly across all fields of battle so you don't get overwhelmed too, but also be highly effective. The first time I went to Coastal Vaughan, I didn't feel like I did much of anything. I just felt like i just did that kind of stuff uh lived

in a house with a bunch of russians did the serbian trace uh built well uh we did win the hearts of minds because we played with little kids uh we had we had chain link fences a house we had in town but we had chain link fence around all the little kids from neighborhoods who come running down their parents would bring them down there to stay with us. We'd play soccer with them and all this other stuff because the dogs were real bad about getting them. People were beating them up and stuff sometimes. So they'd stay with us.

We'd play with them, let them watch TV and all that, and then their parents would show back up at some point and escort them home. So we went in hearts and minds that way. Did medical treatment to a whole bunch of, which we always do, every country we ever go to, we try to help out medically because we have the resources and equipment and stuff. But the second time I went to

Kosovo, I was on a recon team, surveillance team, blah, blah. Then we were actively hunting people. Let's talk about that. What went on there? The one guy, now, what I call this guy a huge terrorist, because he seemed like a terrorist until I went to Iraq and all this other stuff,

and all of a sudden you're like, nope, that's what a terrorist looks like. Diet terrorist. Yeah. This over here is a goodwill clothing store over here. And he'd fired RPGs at Camp Bondstill, which is in Coastalville, which is an American base. And not when I was there. He'd fired them at some point.

Wouldn't happen on your watch. It wouldn't have done it to you. I live downtown, so you can fire on that military base. We'll probably know about it, bro. So you don't want that. And so we're actively hunting these guys down. We knew kind of who they were, blah, blah, blah. So we started hunting them down, started pulling surveillance on them.

And we ended up deciding to do this pretty cool takedown at a restaurant. So we had a guy, had two guys that were, they had somehow got to know him. They played like they were somebody else. I don't remember who they played like they were they're white guys so they could fit in you know anywhere over there they spoke the languages and stuff and they said uh meet us at this restaurant and they'd met him there like four or five different occasions you know gave him some money this net there until the guy that we wanted showed up. We mainly wanted this one dude. And he had been shot at some point. I think somebody shot him in the big toe, believe it or not.

I'm not even kidding you. And he had a serious injury to his big toe. That's all I know, and I'll tell you why it's funny in a minute, besides just that. So he has them meet him at the restaurant. And as he did that, we're in there already. We're set up. We picked a time of day where it's very populated.

So here's a crew over here, a crew over here, a crew over here. So our guys are talking to him. And to distract him at this given point, the key is to, when it's time, like our guy goes, he's a special forces operator, obviously. He said, when you've got him and I've got him where you need to be, I'm going to lay my hat on the table and you guys do what you do. I'm just going to scoot away from the table as things go. Well, while he's talking to this, while the bad guy's talking to him,

he's like, well, don't do me wrong, man. I'm armed. I'll freaking do you right here. He's making all these threats and shit. We're like, that's cute. Threats are fun because that means I do whatever I want to now without hurting any civilians.

We said, no firearms. We have them, but we're not going to shoot anybody. Let's go over and break them. We're backed up. All of of a sudden my boy's like, okay. And he hands him, like, here's your free camera. He hands him this pretty fancy camera. And all of a sudden he gives him some batteries and stuff, so he has to screw with it.

And he's looking down like this, and my boy sets his hat down. And I jump out of this. No, we all jump out. It's a race. So see who can get there first. Jump out, jump on that table, and I just kick that dude out of the chair. Boom. And he flips backwards in his chair.

I think he had a leg injury of some type, too. I can't remember. He had something wrong with his leg, too. Poor guy. And that was a gunshot wound, something else with his toe. I don't remember what. But it is messed up. He just pulled landscaping.

Poor landscaping, man. Rebar. And so anyway, he flips back. We on top of him you know grab up everybody and uh wrestle him down and uh pick him up put him up against the wall and i'm leaning on him real hard we're searching on him and all this stuff this dude is squalling because i'm leaning right on that freaking leg i wouldn't do it on purpose but we're searching we're squeezing you know all this. And he ain't liking that. What are the people doing in the restaurant? They just kind of backed up.

They're used to this kind of stuff. Yeah, you know. It is another day. Yeah, I care. It's like in a village. Damn it again. It's kind of like, ah, take him. He's trouble.

I don't like him. And so rolled this dude up, got him, a couple other dudes, grabbed him up, throw him in the back of the damn, what do we call those? Pajero. The back of a Pajero four-door SUV. Throw him back there. I'm sitting with my sideways to the back hatch,

and he's sitting this way between two SF dudes. And all of a sudden, he's going to be cool as shit all of a sudden. I don't know what his status was, but I hold a man forward like this, and he's like, so you like that M16? You like that M16? Mm-hmm. A lot. He's like, okay.

You use it? I was like, here's how you take it off safe. He's like, okay, thank you. I was like, click, there you go, shut up. And so we took him out of Camp Monticello into the isolation facility, and the isolation facility and i may just get rid of this oh here's the other thing the car is starting to stink bad oh he took a shit like somebody pooed and in this case not pooed but something whatever way past that is and uh way past that like volume wise a poo is something a baby does whatever this guy did is something, I don't know,

something over in Africa does and make it solid liquid? Don't blame Africa here, okay? It's not necessary. And so we get him up there and we load him up, get him up there at the counter, and this female comes out, army girl, and she says, I said, here you go. Here's the guy. Here's his picture. Here's all his stuff.

Here's the paperwork. Here's that. He's yours. You take him with you. Now, was this at this point like a black site? No. You're taking me to a good spot. No, the black sites are elsewhere. I mean, we had those things around Europe, too.

They don't require paperwork, though. That's the cool thing about those guys. This right here, this is like to make somebody look good in their government like he's taking action that's really what comes out of it so we dropped him off and uh as the the female's like okay we got him and they're saying we go we've got a zip tie and stuff and i said we can cut his zip ties whatever you want to do i mean whatever suits you and she's like oh my god did he did he shit himself i was was like, I don't know. It's your problem now. I'm signing his paper as fast as I can, too.

I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to touch him. I don't want to see him. Nope. And I just turned around and walked out the door real quick. I want to smell him. And so it's like four days later.

I've already forgotten about the dude. I'm in the chow hall here because that female walking back up with a couple of the dudes that worked there. They're like, dude. We stripped that dude down, had to hit him with a water hose, and it was grueling. He stopped up the drain, did all this other stuff. And the thing was, I was wondering why he's walking all weird. And, of course, this bullet wound in his leg is infected. But he's got a potato stuck on his big toe.

A potato? A potato? A potato. I don't know what for. She goes, we get back and he's got this big house shoe on with a potato stuck on it because he'd done something to his toe. Ingenuity. And it's super duper infected. Hell of a find out.

They put a potato on it. I have nothing. Maybe he just wanted to make sure the front of his shoe was filled the whole way. I don't know. But it was ridiculous. I'm like, I don't know what to tell you, but we'll be bringing some more of them over. When you were hunting some of these guys down in Kosovo, is this some stuff where you're doing it plain clothes too?

No, that was all plain clothes. Yeah, all of it. Until the take down. I'm picturing you in a restaurant. I feel like you're not in berets, like, you know, camoed up or anything. No, and that's back to it. No entree for you, motherfucker. the road well number two americans don't look like albanians yeah no some are a little lighter they're some of them are darker skin obviously but they also have

lighter skin but our features just don't fit at all like even in iraq we used to dye our dye our hair and tan our skin up you know wipe on stuff this and that. It works for 500 yards. Yeah. But you get up close, it don't. No, it don't work anymore. It don't work at all. I mean, period. So it doesn't work. But it works for what you're doing it for. It keeps a sniper from shooting you from a distance when you're doing something, you know, in a village or something. But same thing with

that. I mean, it was kind of crazy, but that was supposed to be the scary guy. And then I get, you know, later a year. He shit himself. A couple years later, I'm like, he ain't scary. Yeah. That's the guy who changes the diaper on the scary guy.

Yeah. His kid, you know what I mean? Something like that. And he's like, damn. When you're in Paz and Costa Rica or anything like that, did you lose any guys during this or clean? No injuries, no. That's great.

I don't even remember. I can't remember anybody shooting anybody at all, as matter of fact or anything i mean clean job it's just a i think the threat was gone i think i don't think anybody really was had the facility to come do it you know what i mean and by then there's so many american soldiers running around or special ops guys running all the dad burn place we all had we had all these different houses all over all the cities and then you had the polish there and you had french you know not that that matters Oshkosh guys running all over the dad-burning place. We had all these different houses all over all the cities. And then you had the Polish there, and you had French. Not that that matters.

Did you? I've heard some. Wait, are you talking French Army or Intel? Army. Okay, all right, never mind. I was going to say, I've heard some of their Intel. It's pretty fucking good. Yeah.

I'm just making a joke, but they abandoned this on an objective one time and just kind of drove off. Wait, what happened there? The Albanians are pissed off. They're going around burning all the Christian churches. For some reason, there's this gigantic riot, and they're just running around pulling up stop signs, hitting people, killing people with it. And so they called Special Forces teams out and said, go to this church.

You go to that church. You go to this church. Because they're still, you know, they're Serbian churches and they're Christian churches. They don't need to go burn them down just for the hell of it. You know how they do. And we got this little white, funny little cute country church, you know, went over, pulled up there. There's like 40 wrench guys standing there

all around it these guys are about I don't know 500 yards down the road coming and uh the French are like and there's like

8 of us 8 or 9 two Humvees we pull up and they're like you guys got it they just dashed man and they drove off man

I was like damn okay so I didn't know how big this thing was and so luckily they were downhill And they drove off, man. I was like, damn. Okay. So I didn't know how big this thing was. And so luckily they were downhill. And so as they're coming up, we got up there on top of the building. I was looking down there and I was like, dang, that's a lot of people. I mean, it's like a thousand.

You know what I mean? I don't need to be dealing with that. So we just took engineer tape and put it all the way around the Hummer and the church. And I had my turf rest on top of that. Me and Matt Gerard and another guy were standing on top of this thing and said, and Matt's, we call him the silverback. I mean, you know. The silverback?

Yeah, because he ain't playing around. He's a big brawny dude. And he's one of those. No, he's not in the mood for all that. Always in a bad mood to start with, so don't piss him off worse. You need guys like that. Yeah, you do. No nonsense.

So we get on top of the deal. There's a few of us all scattered around, and I get a.240 and just holding it. Squad automatic machine guns. Yeah. I was thinking Edward Forty Hands. That's what my head went. I just said, you know, had my interpreter say, and everybody, you know,

several guys with guns. There you go. How you doing? I'll take one. My left hand. There you go, sir. Thank you, sir. And then,

Aaron, you good? So we said, well, if you step over that white stripe there, that engineer tape, which is nothing more than like two inch tape, you know, it doesn't stick to anything. You just wrap it around stuff, guard stuff with it. I said, you step over that, you there, that engineer tape, which is nothing more than like two inch tape, you know, it doesn't stick to anything.

You just wrap it around stuff, guard stuff with it. So you step over that, you get shot in the face. And, and they come right up and they're like, ha, that's funny.

And then we had this, we hopped on top of the Humvees and everybody's standing on top of stuff. And everybody's got guns. And they're like, now they're like, oh, okay. That seems more serious now with a big chain link of freaking guns, you know,

ammo coming out of this thing and linked ammo. And there's this one dude standing right in the very front, man. He's just like, do-doop, do-doop, just put his foot over it like, or what? Or what? Dude, a 240 is a sweet gun. Can we pull this up, a 240? Yeah. I'm trying to picture this.

They replaced it with what now? Well, that replaced the M60 machine gun, and then they just upgraded the... 240 machine gun? Yeah. They should do it. M240, yeah. Oh, those things.

Yeah, it's nice. They're fun. How much does that weigh? It's not that bad compared to something. 28 pounds? 22 pounds? That's not so... It's not terrible for a machine gun.

Less than I thought. What it is is... 49.7 inch length. Yep. bad compared to 28 pounds 22 pounds it's not terrible for a machine guy i thought what it is 49.7 inch length yeah you gotta carry an extra barrel on your muzzle velocity 2800 feet per second that'll do it that barrel once you get cranking that sucker that's less than i thought yeah you make that thing sing and that barrel glows and you got to change it quick that's like that's cool thing thing is it's easy to change Because unlike all the other barrels You just go push a button, turn a handle, it pops off Snap the next one on and keep on rocking

Just don't touch that barrel That's like the price of a really nice MacBook too It's not like crazy I'd rather have that Me too Judge them by your computer I see And it's a 308 So anyway we're standing with that thing and uh this guy goes goes goes we're like dude honestly i mean we're we've made a statement here and we're

you know we need to make sure we have control of this we're here only because you're such a large force for a small force right we're not gonna play with you at all you might get us but you know it's gonna be ugly before it's over. So please just go somewhere else. Blah, blah, blah, this, that, C-steps are whack. Gets a three-round burst in the chest. And the whole crowd disperses, starts walking down a big road.

We'll be right on our way. He's just walking. He's like, okay, cool. I'm surprised it was only three rounds. Somebody did a good burst. That'll do it. A proper 240 burst is, what, seven to nine? I'm surprised it was only three rounds. Somebody did a good burst. Yeah. That'll do it. A proper 240 versus, what, seven to nine?

Probably, yeah. So somebody had some discipline there. How long was this last campaign in Kosovo? How long were you there? Four months each. Four months. Okay. How many guys did you catch?

Probably 10. I mean, over the whole deal. I mean, how badass were they and all that? I don't know. They were the scariest people they had. You know what I mean? If there were some badasses there, they'd already decided to screw it. They'd all just go to Chechnya and do it over there for a while.

It's a good place to do it. Yeah, it's a good place to do bad things. It's a good spot, for sure. A lot of good things happen there. They didn't do crap. Longest war, right? Yeah. Crazy time.

Good place to get something really bad done to you if you get caught, I'll tell you that. Oh, yeah. Have you spent time in Chechnya yourself? No. Doesn't sound like you have plans to get a ticket there. I would not want to go stroll around Chechnyaya by myself yeah yeah let the russians handle that yeah i've watched videos of the russians that went and did it and it didn't work out that was got kind of you want to have a nightmare over something that's a quick way quick way to help i can imagine being a russian soldier and being told that hey

you're going to chechnya it's your next spot like and you're the come on And you're the single guard on this gate out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, nah. No thanks. I'm cool. But during this whole time, one of the really sad parts about the global war on terrorism and that whole era is how Afghanistan culminated in 2021, where you feel like you basically go back to square one. And the worst part about it to me is that, you know, we can talk about, again, like we're going to spend a lot of time on Iraq.

I promise it's coming, people. But, you know, we can talk about that and whether or not we should have been there. I certainly have some thoughts there. A lot of people do. But Afghanistan was where the taliban was harboring al-qaeda and the guys who did these attacks and so i've always thought i'm like well yeah of course you had to fucking go there like that's what it is and what's really sad to me is that unless i'm very wrong here correct me if i'm wrong we were very successful

at the beginning of that campaign there we ran this historical paramilitary campaign on the ground. I know maybe some stuff you know about you can't talk about, but like from a general standpoint, just analyzing as a military guy where you had intel and military supporting each other and highly specialized teams of the best, most talented soldiers going in there. And basically piece by piece taking apart the Taliban within that country and taking control of it. And then throughout 2002, yes, there are American casualties, which is always horrible because it is a war. But like we have control of the country. We're trying to transfer it over to some sort of democratic leadership, if you will, before eventually, you know, we kind of take our eye off the ball and go to Iraq and put all our resources there. But in 02, like, if you don't mind, take me back to the vibe there. Like, did you view this as like, oh, warfare has completely changed now because of what we just did?

And we're going to be able to do it like this anywhere? Well, it's kind of hard to say because at that point, that was a new, new thing. If you're talking about 02-ish, 01 and 02. Yeah. 01, beginning of 02. That was a brand-new beast, boy. And the only people that had ever done anything there was third group, fifth group, really.

I mean, as far as anything extensive. I mean, because they trained over there, and they trained troops over there, and they did all that kind of stuff. And they knew the terrain better than most people did, too. But the way the war was fought was a whole different matter. A lot of people knew very well how the Afghans liked to do their battle and how they liked to fight and how they liked to attack and all this. And consider, I mean, they whipped the Russians' ass a lot yeah uh and with almost nothing you know i mean like pitchforks and shovels almost you know and so now you're like well this is a this is a capable bunch now that

you're giving a bunch of firearms and things that really do stuff you're talking about people that are a tough bunch now and they're crafty and they know the train inside out and they live it and so the tactics had to be taken very very seriously um i wasn't one of the people that that indoctrinated all the tactics on that particular thing because i got there too late you know to be somebody really mattered on all that stuff um iraq was my was my part for the initial invasion all all that stuff. So Afghanistan was theirs. But we definitely had to change our view on things. And another thing we couldn't do is go,

this is a third world country. Are they really a threat? Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, they are. You know what I mean? Whereas some other countries, you might be like, well, you know, they're still living in the Stone Age. You know, they're not really that big a deal.

We got night vision goggles. We got all this. I mean. What made Afghanistan different and, like, the Taliban different? They came up with more technology right off the bat. They knew how to build bombs. They knew how to build directional or EFPs. Guerrilla warfare was just brutal and ruthless.

Way more advanced than war. You were in Afghanistan, too, right? Briefly, yeah. You were in Afghanistan too, right? Briefly, yeah. You were in Iraq, okay. And they were getting help from a lot of people that mattered too because like Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iranians were jumping deep into all that. What's funny is I believe that we taught a whole bunch of Iranians how to build all these EFPs and stuff way back.

Oh, before the revolution. Yeah. And they turned around and came back and taught Afghans and Iraqis how to build EFPs. Because IEDs, you know, a big bomb is one thing. Depending on how it's detonated, if it's initiated by a mechanical, like a guy pushes a button, I can beat that pretty often. Not every time, but, you know, changing my speeds but you know changing my speeds hauling butt not

falling but you know this net and it's hard for me to calculate and exact distance and point you know because he's way out there somewhere and it's hard for me to hit dead on and if i'm not on it you know it might kick it up on two wheels or something like that but not wipe you out uh in the beginning especially they weren't as accurate and accurate. Then they got to where they're better at it and started daisy-chaining them where you get a bunch of them in a row, setting those off, and then they started putting different initiators on

like a tripwire style thing, pressure plates, that kind of stuff. They started directing the bombs, too. Which is crazy. They become anti-tank or anti-troop carrier instead of that blast just going outward. Now it's all the forces going through the vehicle to kill everybody inside of it. Cell phones.

Flip, oh yeah, cell phones or remote control cars. Yeah. Oh my God. Because those things work real good. Yeah. And then, I mean, they flip a tank on its butt you know pile straight upside down and that charge inside just the pressure over pressure inside the tank kills everybody in it but then i wasn't ever terrified of it until i heard about efp being

fired uh explicitly fired penetrator uh that thing now, terrifying. And after I saw that it could burn a hole through a fully armored tank like hot butter, I was like, okay. And then they started hooking them up to lasers and stuff, so it's initiated instantaneously. So what they do is they start figuring out what is the distance from the tire to the window and all this stuff. EFP. And so it's going, pow, and it'll just fire right through the window.

Pow, fire that one right through the window. Don't even touch armor. And then that started being a little more scary then. When we got on the ground in Afghanistan, are you saying that there were, like, Iranian government-affiliated people on the ground there with them at that time? They're there somewhere, yeah. And they're also funneling the money.

And, by the way, it was explicitly foreign penetrator, my bad. I don't want to be saying the wrong thing. I said fired. Yeah, we're looking at a... I've made that mistake before. Ryan, what are we looking at right here? This powerful roadside bomb chart? What's this showing?

Hit the expand button. Is this right here? It's a daisy chain. I don't know. So. Oh, wow. What's that explosion right there? That's a.

Oh, that's an EFP bomb in the terminal list they were showing going off. So they're showing you the penetrator right there. So they put a concave plate in there inside a piece of steel or something, and they put a charge underneath it so it's concave into it. And then so when it fires, it heats up that, which is usually the best is like a big chunk of copper. And it turns into – it pits it, turns it convex, so it's flying like this.

So it actually holds the charge, turns this into molten copper, and it is flying like this. So it actually holds the charge, turns this into molten copper, and it is moving ridiculously fast. And when it hits something, it just spatters that stuff everywhere. But it'll still penetrate a vehicle and still have something come out the other side of it. I saw one hit the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle one time. The Brits were driving in Basra. It went through 10 feet of dirt because it's a raised

road it went through the whole freaking road ripped a big old chunk out of the back of the bradley luckily didn't quite get a big enough piece of it and it left smoke rings as far as i could see with no arc no nothing perfectly straight still still getting because you know like things normally go up oh right so it just it was going that fast like a laser beam straight and never never curved never did anything think about the the evolution of how they did this they they wanted anybody fighting against them not just to die but to die terribly they started with taking things like styrofoam and putting it in between the accelerator

and taping it onto the explosive part. So when that explosive goes off, the personnel, let's say the gunner on the top of a Humvee, is not just getting shrapnel. They're getting hot styrofoam that's on fire sticking to them and burning alive. I mean, it's brutal.

I mean, that's just straight evil. I agree. I don't care what anybody says. Imagine 1.2 miles a second. I mean, that is getting. I'll tell you something scary, though. One time we were doing a hit, and it went into daytime, which we don't like working in daytime on hits.

Downtown Boswell, we hit that thing in the middle of the night. I don't like being in daylight. When bullets flying around, I don't like working in the daytime on hits. Downtown Bosra, we hit that thing in the middle of the night. I don't like being in daylight when bullets flying around. I like my bullets in the dark. I like myself in the dark, yo. I will hit you when you are not looking. Plus, when it's dark, I have a Spectre gunship sitting over here, which really helps things a lot. And if it's cheating, I don't give a crap.

So we're rolling in here. We hit this objective, blah, blah. We grab a crap so uh we're rolling in here we hit this hit this objective blah blah we grab it grab a couple dudes just that throw them in the hunvees and we're pulling out and there's like there's like five vehicles or something like that and there's a as you come out of the alleyway there's a great big uh median a huge median like size of football field in the road you know one way this way one way that way with light poles as we pull out there there's a riot. Looks like it's about to start a riot.

So it's becoming daylight. Now it's curfew's over, so now I can run around and act stupid if I want to without all this stuff. Well, as we're coming out, they're standing out in the middle of the road. We stopped, and somebody, I think one of the other guys, he calls in an inspector and says, put three 40 millimeters in the middle of that median right there, right beside those people with tracers. With tracers.

Yeah. So it's still dark enough where they can't see the plane or hear it. They just know something's coming from the sky. So he goes, whack, whack, whack, whack. And then that did it. They dispersed immediately because they're like, what? God is mad. Let's get the hell out of here.

So we keep on, so now we pull up to the end of it. One of my boys sitting back here on the turret with one of the Iraqi gunners on their vehicle

and as we're pulling up, we're right towards the end of the building about to hang a riot and I hear, there's one vehicle in front of me and I hear, ta-ta!

I hear a double tap back there and someone's like, whoa. I stop for a second and I'm like, what's it vehicle in front of me, and I hear, I hear a double tap back there. Someone's like, whoa. I stop for a second. I said, what's it got? And Eric's like, pull up about 20 more feet, man. You'll see. I said, okay. We pull up.

Okay. And as we make this turn, my boy's going over the curb right here, new guy, hits a haylock block and high-sears the Humvee for a sec, which he liked to shit himself, which ain't no biggie. But he's shitting himself like like ramp you know wouldn't go but as that happens we pull around the corner there's a dead guy laying right here double tap in the chest i was like oh there he is and i looked up and there's a freaking 155 sitting here and a brick in the side of this building of efp somebody made it look like a brick it It's EFP sitting here and a 155

sitting right here on a box. The two wires, one's wired and one's not. This guy was wiring them and my boy saw it from back there and popped him. That's a 155 artillery show. Yeah. This is the last thing I'm ever going to see.

They're ready for anything. We're talking probably like a 6 inch EFP. Whichever one you pull in front of, that's thing I'm ever going to see. Yeah. So they're ready for anything. I mean, we're talking probably like a six-inch EFP. So we're just like, whichever one you pull in front of, that's the one we're going to light. And my boy saw him wiring it and popped him. And it was right in my window like that close. It was probably this close away, right? Thank God.

Yeah. God damn. So then we smashed in the guy in front of us and keep driving, dude. You wouldn't be sitting here today. Oh, no. You wouldn't be sitting here today if you hadn't done that. Nope. This is on top of his game.

Ryan, what were you doing when you were there for like a hot minute? How long? Like a month or something? Where? In Afghanistan? Two months. Okay. What were you doing when you were there?

That was when Congress put all the Marines in because they pulled all these units out and personnel out to go to Iraq. And then they just kind of forgot about Afghanistan. So we played this game twice. Right. It flip-flopped. So you were there when it turned. Yes. Where it's like, okay, now it's going to be a shit show.

Yeah, but they overloaded it. And then they realized the Marine Corps doesn't have enough personnel to sustain both countries or areas of operation in both countries. And so they pulled us back out, wasted so many damn resources. Thanks, Congress. I digress.

But honestly, I have the utmost respect for anybody that served in Afghanistan. I don't care how dangerous it is or it's not a pissing contest. I'd rather be in Iraq than climb mountains all day. I can do urban combat. I have no issues with that. But damn, you get in a firefight in those mountains or in those villages.

I mean, especially you get caught down in one of those valleys. Imagine being on one of those fobs. Do you know who Sebastian Younger is? Of course. Dude. Tribe. Legend. Yeah.

Amazing author. Dude, his videos, Korongal Valley and Restrepo and all that, I mean, those dudes were just sitting ducks. I couldn't do that, man. If you can see what's – I mean, I say this as a non-military guy. It's just common sense even to someone like me in an armchair. Well, I'm almost with arms. But like if you can see what's in front of you, all right, you can work with that. But if you're out there like fighting in the hills with Pocahontas and it's like they know what this is.

They live off the land and you're just dropped into this country. Like what the fuck are you supposed to do? For the record, I'd take your ass to combat any day. Listen, I'm good. I like it here in Hoboken. I appreciate the freedom of America very much. When the zombies come, you're on my team. Okay, alright.

If the zombies come, I'm in. And everybody's coming to Texas anyway if the zombies come. That's where all the guns are. Our Florida. By then, Texas to Florida's gonna be one country anyway. the zombies come. So that's where all the guns are. Or Florida. I got a spot in Florida. By then, Texas to Florida is going to be one country anyway.

It might be the whole bottom end of that. I take my passport to Florida. It's a different country. Mississippi and Atlanta. They're good. We good?

We cool? You do anything you want in my state, okay? Oh my God. Anything you want. Interesting state. And you're actually from there too.

Yeah. You live there now but you're from there. He's got a spread down there, too, so you've got room to do stuff. He's a wild card, this one. Yeah. You never know. He got one car that I know, dude, like 200 miles an hour or so.

From about here to that wall. My grandfather was a world champion pro street drag racer. Danny gets off on hot rods. That thing is mean. You're a driver yourself? Mm-mm. No? You just like it? Oh, no, I drive You're a driver yourself? Mm-mm. No? You just like it?

Oh, no, I drive. Like a muscle car? I haven't driven his. Yeah, I've got four of them. Oh, shit. Not fast like his. A 71 Dodge Dart. It's not mine, just to be clear.

No. It is. That was my grandfather's. Yeah, why aren't you fun at that part? My uncle's own it. You fuck. Yeah, no. Show the car.

Jesus. Jesus. But you said you had a 71. 71 Dodge Dart, 340 stroke to a 416, which is about 700 horse. 70 and a half Camaro, tub, roll cage, all that junk, big block Chevrolet. Stroked, 496 with 400 two-stage nitrous. That's the one he likes. Tub, back tires are like this big, you know, and all that.

That's about 1,400 horse. 1400 horse oh yeah it's more you just take this you just take this off-road in texas and they're all street legal believe it or not yeah so they say where i live that's less than reassuring there's no there's no emissions so yeah and then uh 93 Mustang Notchback Coupe with a probably 1,200 horsepower supercharged That's a sweet little drag car right there. It was until a tree fell on it. We had a tornado come through

and I walked out the next morning and there was a four foot wide tree laying dead center of the whole damn car. Well, shit. Net condition. So now I've got another 93 four cylinder car

that I've taken completely apart took that one apart and I'm rebuilding the engine and switching all the cool stuff onto the other car. It ain't happening today. Hey, listen. It will happen. They do some of this shit right here in New York.

Can we pull up Tommy G's latest video? Alessi, my boy Tommy G. Don't give him any ideas here, okay? My boy Tommy G, he was just on the show. He's one of the best documentarians in the world when he was in town i was able to meet some of these guys in a journalistic capacity with him i'll highlight it that way oh i didn't know i had an undisclosed location but you know these these drivers exist right i gotta get you premium, Alessi. Sorry. But just log into my account.

But these drivers in New York exist, and they're called Swim. Well, the first guy is not. But they drive. Like right now, Tommy is shitting himself. This guy at Squeeze Benz is going like fucking 100 miles an hour. But he drives like 240 in New York. He drives Lambos and stuff. Oh, yeah.

Wow. Skip ahead to 17 minutes in, Alessi. Right. Yeah, yeah. So these guys swim. Okay. They're called swim because they swim between cars in New York. And their videos are online.

From a first-person perspective, they'll rip it like 160 in teams and go. Oh, my God. Like in between. And I guess they do like a lot of rentals and stuff but you know i think they're also like souping up some of these cars and shit so they even have like a this is a video game that's real but like they have they have video games as well online where people can do it legally with them just like in a video game but so that's the video game but they do it also like for, for real. It's fucking crazy.

Yeah, I mean, listen. To each their own. I guess it can be impressive driving, but when you start putting other people's lives in danger, it's just like, what the hell? It's definitely... I'd still have to go to Verasano Bridge. You're going to swim if you hit somebody that's in my inner circle.

I'll tell you that. He asked them about that. Tommy did a great job with this video. And their responses on it were really interesting. And when I talk with some of them, they're really interesting as well because they're cognizant of that, but they still do it. So you're out there just talking about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you can see it on that. that yeah that's not a lack of respect that's disrespect

that's probably that's actually probably a really fair way to put it but it's interesting because like they you know they don't come across like normal i definitely want to watch this for sure i'm not i'm not knocking the uh documentary i want somebody to clear out the verisono bridge and the brooklyn bridge let me do a quarter mile pass with no cars on it. Well, just go swim, man. You know what? Just because I can. We might be able to hook that up for you.

I'd like to do that. We might be able to do that for you. Yeah. Call Chris Christie. He'll talk to... Too soon. Too soon, bud. My bad.

My bad. My bad. You're in New Jersey right now. We do not claim him, though. He's not yours anymore. The New Jersey delegation does not claim him. I want to be clear about that but but right before we get to iraq that i would be remiss if i didn't ask you what your thoughts were when you did see afghanistan fall 20 years later i mean obviously

this was something that in many ways we could see coming in the last decade leading up to that because we took resources out of there but like as someone who was was a strong veteran of the global war on terror in this whole era to see that symbol kind of tail end like that what was going through your mind well we knew it was going to happen it had to because uh what biden do soon he stepped in office took away every single law that was really good that that trump had passed everything that was wonderful first thing get rid of rid rid rid rid rid rid okay let's come up with mine all suck let's create 20 new set types of taxes so i get more money to give away play like and get more money back for myself and my friends but uh because trump was going to shut it down, and he said,

it's not the time. And it wasn't the time. Because we had too much stuff over there, and I'm not trying to make this a long story, but we had too much stuff over there, and troops over there, and American people over there. It's one of those things like any other war, you taper down,

and the last mofos to leave the country are the military members that's it that's your last line of defense like world war ii okay granted what are we gonna do though he's tanks and jeeps and all this other kind of crap what did he pull out the middle of pacific ocean or atlantic either one and just threw them off the ships but did a bad guy get them nope they're coral reef right now they threw them off the damn ship, so nobody got them. So Trump said, well, we're not shutting it down. It's not time. And this would be something we work up to. And we pull it out a little at a time, just the way we've always done it. And everybody that's, you know, a guy since does it. Instead, he left. So all my contacts that I know,

all my friends know, I've known. Imagine somebody that I knew Iraq and Afghanistan, but luckily the Iraq ones have done well, but imagine somebody from 2002 or 2003 and this happens then, their kids are old teenagers, you know been driving, old enough driving age and all that stuff

I've known them their entire lives been to all their birthday parties if I was in there because they're close to me. They're my contacts and things like that. They work with America. And they weren't necessarily incriminating anybody. They were just helping, that kind of thing. And all of a sudden, this shit pulls off.

I immediately get on the freaking computer, start sending out messages to everybody I know that's there. I've never seen one back from anybody from that day. Every single contact, every single person i knew that was afghan in that country are missing they're gone their entire family teenagers i had their emails too they're all gone every single one and then we drove off left a fucking shitload of americans sitting out there yeah flapping which is disgraceful i mean i mean i volunteered to go do whatever i said anybody comes up with a thing I'll go right now to get them out. We'll take care of this bullshit.

So then we left $83 billion worth of equipment sitting there. And now Afghanistan is the biggest black market for weapons there is on the planet. I'm sure. Well, guess why? So then here's how Blackhawk works. Here, China. Here's one. Here's how this works.

Here's all of our electronic equipment. They didn't even blow it in place. They wanted to blow it in place. They wouldn't even let them. They said, no, get your ass on a plane. Let's go. It's one of the worst executed pullouts imaginable. To me, that's something that's punishable by, I don't even, I mean, just, I can't say what,

but it's the most punishable thing I can think of other than something to do with a child. I can't stand it. I hear Bill Maher say, like, well, it had to be done, this and that. Well, no, there is no, but it had to be done in a certain way. Something, yeah. Dude, you're just getting too political with it at that point. Like, the second and third order effects of how that was done, we haven't even gotten close to seeing that. If you're saying I'm all for ending endless wars and getting out of stuff.

Me too. 100%. War's terrible. Sorry, Danny. It's like... I had the bumper sticker back in the day. Give war a chance. Marines need jobs.

But exactly like you said, the way you do it is so important. Yeah. It's not just rip the Band-Aid off. And it's like, motherfucker, you had 20 years to plan this. Yeah. There were four administrations. But he has to do it on this date because it makes it look like he did it and Trump couldn't.

He thinks it looks that way. I don't think he knows what he thinks, how it looks. Well, I mean, Obama, That's what I meant to say. Either way, it's like... I'm allowed my political views. Of course. 100% you are. Of course. I'm saying in case he decides to come after me

and rob me or something. I don't know, but... I didn't make a threat to nobody. I think you'll be all right. I'll be good. But yeah, I think that sucks that they pulled that move. And it is excruciatingly brutal because you feel like you spent a big part of your life doing all these things. And I know with him, I guarantee you, I know a bunch of stuff.

And I guarantee you, I'm not alone. You did all these things and put your ass out there heavily, especially in the beginning or during the ISIS rotations back in them days. I wasn't there for all that, for all of it. But there's people, they're getting burned down hard and putting their ass out there heavily and trying their best to do the great job that they're trying to do. And then here comes this freaking guy, and all of a sudden it's like,

eh, we're done. And then besides the local populace just getting a monster shit taken on them, can you imagine what it would be like to be a female living in Afghanistan right now? I don't know. My God. I mean, they were showing hope for a while, for a minute. And then it's like, oh, back to the Middle Ages. Uh-huh, yeah.

Now you've got Taliban rolling through the streets with do you guys feel with our stuff on rollerblades do you guys ever feel like some of it's in vain because of that and that's a that's a very dangerous way to put that i don't mean to be like cause an offense or anything but like but you know a lot of americans died in in Afghanistan, and it's right back to a similar place to where it was. My quick answer is it went too long. It didn't have to take that long. When we invaded Iraq, and I'll let him say his piece because I want to hear his part too.

When we invaded Iraq, my commander, I'm not going to say his name because I'm not sure if he wants his name, said one of the best commanders I've ever had in my life, so everybody knows who he is that knows me. He said, if you want to win the war, we're talking right after. Maybe been there a month. He goes, you want to end this, take all the news media, take everybody who doesn't do this.

If you're a supply guy, typist, anything, whatever, take them all out. Give me all the special operations guys I asked for. Put me in there, and I'll have it ended in three months. Three. Guarantee or I'll have it ended in three months. Three. Guarantee or I'll resign. All right. In front of Congress. Let's put a pin on that real quick.

We got to grab some dinner. Yeah. We're going to come back, and we're going to talk about all this. And that's going to be the next episode. So hit that subscribe button. Hit that like button on the video. And we will see you guys in a couple days with the next one. Thank you guys for watching the episode. So hit that subscribe button, hit that like button on the video, and we will see you guys in a couple of days with the next one. Thank you guys for watching the episode. Before you leave, please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video. It's a huge

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