Shaun Newman Podcast - #467 - Matt Osborne

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

He worked for the CIA for 12 years and was stationed in Spain, Venezuela and Mexico working on drug trafficking and terrorism. Since 2014 he has been a part of Operation Underground Railroad which leads the fight against child sex trafficking and sex exploitation around the globe. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast Patreon: www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

This is John Verviki. This is Simon Esler. Hi, it's Heather Prozac. This is Tom Romago. This is Alex Kraner. This is Steve Kirsch. This is Dr. Pierre Corey, and you are listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Friday. Hope everybody's week has been eventful, maybe uneventful, whatever you prefer, I guess. On this side, enjoying being down in the States with the kids and the fam and, you know, and starting to fire off some. some new content all over again. So we've, well, we've found a place to hang our hat here in the house

and found a way to work around some of the, the activities and certainly the new time zone and everything else. But hey, we're sitting down here and looking forward to some of the different conversations we got going on. And today's no different. Before we get there, I want to talk about Patreon first and foremost. So Patreon,

I talked about it with Tom Luongo when he was in Lloyd, and he convinced me, and I don't know if he realized it, but he convinced me to go back and try it all over again. So we've been talking about Patreon. We've started putting some things in there that I didn't do before. So this week, something new would be a bonus material from the Tuesday mashup. Every week we have a couple of topics that don't get talked about, get lost on the cutting room floor, essentially.

And Tuesday and I did a bonus feature. We called it instead of mashup 64. We call it mashup 64.5. So you can find that on Patreon. Of course, Patreon is behind a paywall. All the money you put towards that to help support the podcast. So if you want to do that, great. If you don't, that's totally cool.

But there's going to be some more bonus material coming here in the near future. You're going to see some different guests have a little bit of a bonus material go behind there. You're still getting the same interview. I've just convinced a few of them. Hey, give me a couple extra minutes. Let's give a couple thoughts to the Patreon, folks. So if that's something up your alley, just in the show notes, click on the link for Patreon. And would love to have you guys come support and be a part of that world and help create it, to be honest.

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They offer accounting, bookkeeping, business consulting and training, financial planning, and tax planning. For more information, go to McGowanCPA.ca. Now, let's get on to that tail of the tape brought to by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years. They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol, and chemicals delivering to your firm, commercial oil field locations. For more information, visit them at Hancock, Petroleum. Dot, CA. He spent 12 years working for the CIA. He served over in Spain, Venezuela, Mexico, in drug trafficking and terrorism.

Now he's the president and chief operating officer at Operation Underground Railroad. I'm talking about Matt Osborne. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Matt Osborne, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Matt Osborne. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on.

Well, thank you so much, Sean. I've been looking for this for a long time. Well, I appreciate your excitement. And, you know, I, I've had this marked on the calendar for a while. You know, I've been following the movie as it comes out, you know, and as it's moving along and everything else. And so when I first reached out, you know, like obviously, you know, the story being about Tim Ballard and Underground or Operation Underground, sorry, Railroad being about Tim Ballard or at least, and I'm looking forward to the entire thing. and they're like, well, how about Matt?

I'm like, oh, fire me up. Let's rock and roll. I've listened to a couple of your interviews. So I'm probably more excited than you are. Either way, how about we do this? There's going to be, I assume my entire audience has no idea who you are. So let's just start this. Who is Matt?

And let's get a little bit of your background and we'll go from there. Well, very cool. Thank you. So if my wife of 25 years and my two college-age daughters were here right now, they would tell you Matt Osborne is not cool, but he has had some really cool jobs, and I'm very fortunate. I served 12 years with the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Department of State, worked issues of, you know, terrorism against the homeland after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Hard to believe, Sean, right, that our kids now just know that in the history

books and don't remember that, you know, that day and how Canadians were so kind to Americans, and we really just had such unity, even in that dark moment. But that's what really galvanized me to say, I want to join the CIA and try to protect U.S. national security. Well, then I had a chance with the U.S. Department of State to go overseas as a diplomat in Spain, Venezuela, and Mexico. And it was during that time I was working drug trafficking, organized traffic, organized crime, terrorism. And this thing I'd never heard of before called human trafficking. In the year 2006, my eyes were open that, oh, my gosh, there's actually, this is trafficking. It's not prostitution.

It's not that movie Pretty Woman, you remember. remember from a long time ago, the Julia Roberts character. So something on my heart said, okay, I need to do something about this. I didn't know what it was until later, and you mentioned Tim Ballard. He was my colleague in graduate school out in California. He had started briefly with the CIA and then spent the bulk of his career with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He asked me to join his organization in 2014 as we just were getting started. And actually, we can talk about the movie Sound of Freedom. We were just about to do that operation. So I was involved in those operations that the sound of freedom is based on. So I've been with Operation

Underground Railroad and anti-human trafficking nonprofit for nine years. I've been leading our undercover operations. And now I currently help run things as the president and chief operating officer and also get a chance to do some media and meet people like you and try to spread the word. So thank you for using your platform to talk about this really important topic. Well, I tell you what, it's, I remember talking with a hockey player up here, Theo Flurry. and he first brought it to my attention. And I'm like, no. Like, no.

And I don't even want to talk about it. Like, this is the most perverse, uncomfortable. I can list off about a thousand words here that just, I don't want to talk about this. This is not happening. And I'd interviewed a singer, Paul Brandt, up in Canada as well. And they have Not in My City, which is based here in Alberta. And it's all about, you know, raising awareness of human trafficking in Calgary

with a focus on child sexual exploitation. He's like, you need to go live. listen to him. And I'm like, okay. So. Well, it is. You know, but then you start talking about it, you know, and getting, in my opinion, a little bit educated around just the thing that it actually is happening. You know, this isn't happening. I mean, certainly it's happening on the other side of the world, but, you know, in Canada, it's happening. In the United States, it's happening. And the longer we, you know, kind of act like it isn't, the longer it gets to exist.

you know it's and grow and everything else and so that was my first foray into this very dark topic so when I when I saw the stories start to come out about sound of freedom and different things like that I was like oh wow this is going to be something like this is this is in the I don't mean to make it sound like the movie's cool but just like the the fact that it's being talked about openly and you're having like you know Dana white the president of UFC come out and say, hey, you need to go see this movie. And different characters like that, both of them being on a fellow Albertan, this high-profile guy up here in Canada,

and I assume the United States as well, in Jordan Peterson, them being on his podcast. And just like on and on it goes. It's like been super interesting to watch. And the powers of B try and act like it's a Q&ON conspiracy theory movie. You're like, well, this is something else. That all being said, I draw it all the way back. to where you started. You mentioned 12 years in the CIA. Before we get to Sound of Freedom,

before we get to Operation Underground Railroad, could you just enlighten me? You're the first CIA operative I've ever had. I don't even know, do I get to call you an operative? You said it's like you've had cool jobs, but your wife and kids would say you were boring. Right. Like, I have this, like, probably Hollywood view of CIA. For 12 years, is it like that, or is it something completely different because you mentioned Venezuela, you mentioned Spain, you mentioned Mexico. It's not like you're just sitting at a desk twiddling your thumbs by the sounds of it. Correct. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. So started off of the CIA as an analyst and what was really interesting, we're called an all-source analyst. So you're taking all of the secrets and intelligence you're receiving from the different

intelligence platforms. So humans and signals intelligence, you're reading open source, and you need to pick out those nuggets that the president of the United States needs to know. So I work for two presidential administrations in the United States. I work for the Republican Party. I work for the Democratic Party. George W. Bush and Barack Obama. For me, it wasn't about politics. It was about U.S. national security. And it was fascinating to be able to meet the presidents and national security cabinet and provide them with intelligence to hopefully help them make decisions. If any of your viewers remember the movie, Some of All Fears with Ben Affleck, it was kind of like that. He said, I write reports that no one reads until they do, until something happens in a

you are on the hook. And I'll just real quick, if you remember that time where someone had, you know, the chief director of Central Intelligence had to pull a sport coat off someone and a tie off someone to give it to him because he was wearing a golf shirt to go up and brief. That happened to me as well. On casual Friday, I show up and I was working the Iraq account and I had written a report about something going to be happening in southern Iraq that likely was going to lead to an explosion of violence. Well, darned if that didn't come true overnight. So I come in casual Friday and they're like, bro, you've got to be at the White House here in about five. 30 minutes. So that was kind of fun. Then I wanted to go overseas and I didn't speak Arabic and I

couldn't take my family of the Middle East. So Madrid, Spain was a wonderful opportunity to go over and work in an embassy and my kids learned Spanish. The account was really interesting. So again, not being able to go in too many details, but there was a little of the James Bond, Jason Bourne stuff, even though I'm not nearly as cool as those guys. But it was just amazing opportunity to, again, I'm a proud American, love Canada as well and just really wanted to do what I could. But again, it just kept coming back to this human trafficking, human trafficking. And what I think is I needed to gather, again, not the special set of skills. I don't want anyone to think I'm sitting here comparing me to Liam Neeson. That guy's much cooler than I am.

But I do think I needed some type of skills, some type of training to then lead our undercover operations that hopefully we can talk about more on your show today of how we set up the traffickers, how we sit across the table and barter as if we really were going to buy these kids. How do you not great character. How do you keep a straight face? It was all of those tools and tricks I learned in the CIA and U.S. Department of State that served me well now with Operation Underground Railroad. Man, that's, you're messing with the dark side of the world, you know? Like, could you, I don't, you mentioned you can't share, you know, working with the CIA and different things, but can, is there a way you can tell us about like that, you know, like, everyone has this moment where

their eyes are open a little bit more because you just like see it and you're like, what? And, When it comes to child exploitation, human trafficking, however you interacted with it for the first time, you mentioned you didn't think it was real. You know, it was Julia Roberts. Right. Can you lead us through the first time you were like, oh my God. Yeah. And what's really interesting, it ties into the sound of freedom because I joined Operation Underground Railroad in August of 20. The Sound of Freedom rescues happened in October of that year.

So just about two or three months before those operations. But leading up to it in September, Tim Ballard and I led our advanced team down to meet with the traffickers. So for anyone who's seen the movie, Giselle, the woman, her name is was really, is based on Kelly Joanna Suarez, Miss Cartagena. We met with her. We met with her boss, Eduardo, Fuego from the movie. That's a real person. sitting across the table from them as if they were bartering or as they bartered the life, the health, the safety of a human being, as if they were casually talking about a sack of potatoes,

a bag of limes, it costs this much, it'll do this much, you know, do this. Then we went back. And so, Sean, here he gets your question. Then we went back to the house where Edward, the main trafficker was. And my wife had told me, you know, before I joined this, Matt, you think you're so cool. You've done all this stuff with the CIA. This is going to be the hardest thing you've ever done. I said, are you kidding me?

They teach you to go in those special places to compartmentalize in your brain that you're fine. Well, in that house, Sean, he had two very young girls sitting on a couch. And in Spanish, he said, this one's 12 years old. This one's 13 years old. And they have zero kilometers on them. They're virgins, essentially. And he said, they will be reserved for the special prize for your boss coming in. Again, on the island rescue, the island operation.

and that was all set up. It was everything true in the movie. That, Sean, is for that moment when simultaneously I wanted to throw up, I wanted to strangle him, I wanted to grab those girls and run out, but I had to stay in character. I had to look him in the eye and say, yes, that's exactly what the boss wants. And then I remember my wife saying, this is the hardest thing you're going to ever have to do.

Darned if she wasn't right. Well, brings up two thoughts. First is, I don't know what it is about women, but they are like they can just understand things before us yeah who's ever get there right it's like it's not even it's not even funny how perceptive they are you know it's going to be the hardest thing oh yeah sure hon yeah i've done hard things right it's like yeah i'm a moron right thanks hon you're the best um the second is like do you have to i don't know uh draw on something very deep down to stay in character like that? Because, I mean, I don't know, like, I assume, you know, these aren't

dumb people that you're dealing with. I would assume they're very dangerous human beings, which means they are very perceptive of, you know, and fool me once, okay, fair enough. But, you know, as it becomes more difficult and more people are getting busted and as, you know, different people are starting to talk out about it, like, this isn't something where you can, you can, like, you know, even raise your eyebrows at two virgin girls. You have to be, like, Like, I didn't even know. Like, where do you go, Matt, to, to ensure that you don't give anything away? Yeah, I mean, just another great question, Sean. So a couple of things. We know and you know in life you can never eliminate your risk. There's always going to be risk. In Operation Underground Railroad, we won't take dumb risks, but we'll take calculated risks. We're willing to take calculated risk to try to save these children. So how do you reduce risk? We only work with units in these different countries vetted by the U.S. Embassy. Now, the U.S. Embassy rarely can help us because as you remember from the movie, it's the same thing. Tim, we're Homeland Security.

We can't go off rescuing Honduran kids in Colombia. Well, this was the same thing. They couldn't go off rescuing Colombian kids in Colombia because there wasn't a U.S. tie. However, we use vetted units from the U.S. Embassy. So again, you reduce your risk as much as possible. Then when we get with these units, we say, just so you know, the U.S. government, the embassy, they know we're here, hopefully giving us a little bit of protection. But at the end of the day, you plan, you rehearse, you sit down.

I will say I'm a man of faith. Oftentimes I just do everything I can and then I pray and I say, you know, God, let me know for some reason this isn't right. And we've actually had a few times we've done that and we felt there isn't something, there's not, something's not right. And we've pulled out and we found out later. Oh, wow, that unit was corrupt or that was a setup. But if we feel let's do it, then we go and we do it. And we have our Navy SEALs. We have our, you know, law enforcement, you know, former who come down. We have our bodyguards. We do everything we can to protect. But we can't carry weapons. Our weapons are hidden cameras.

cover microphones to record evidence for the prosecutors and for movies and documentaries. But again, you just try to stay in roll. And you mentioned when they say 12 year old and 13 year old, zero kilometers, you can't even for a minute flinch. You just have to say, yes, that's perfect. We're the middleman. We're just negotiating, but that's perfect. It's a little bit unsavory.

But if we can keep the roll, we know that in a matter of days or weeks, hopefully these kids will be safe and back with their parents or invented aftercare homes. Yeah, that's It makes my skin crawl And I have to I should come clean here I haven't seen the movie yet So we

I was saying to before we started I was really excited When it came to Lloyd Minster You know People from the community Pushed on the movie theater From what I understand Movie theater's awesome

And it comes It's been you know I just listened My brother went last night It was sold out again Like it That's really really cool I on the other hand have not seen it yet.

We get to see it Friday. So the day this is released, folks, I get to go see it with Mel. And we've been waiting, but we've been traveling so much. We haven't had time to go see it. Three young kids on this side, so you can understand 7, 5, and 3. It's not as simple as just running out to the theater to go see this. So I have to come clean. I haven't seen it yet, which doesn't bother me one bit in saying,

because I plan fully to go see it. I'm excited about it. And I've been watching as things come out. but when you're rattling off characters and everything else, I'm not the guy. I haven't seen it yet, Matt, so stop giving me teasers. Well, no, give me teasers, but don't spoil anything. Well, quick, if I can do one, slow alert,

I did survive the operation. So I just got to throw that out there right there. I was able to survive. But in all seriousness, I'll send you a link and any of viewers who are interested. On our website, ohurrescue.org, we have a little link that says, based on a true story except the parts that aren't. So we're very transparent.

Most everything was either true the way it is portrayed in the movie or taken a little bit out of context. This was true, but for artistic license, we moved it over to this country. And then, of course, there are some things, as you can imagine, Hollywood gets its hands on it, and it's exciting. It's fun for the movie. Didn't quite happen that way,

and we're very transparent about that as well. Is it wild to see, you know, like, is it kind of wild to see the movie get compared? to like Q&ON and like people come out and try and like slam it when you're like, this is, this is interesting, right? Like, oh, they're just propping up these Q&on conspiracy theorists and all these right wing people and oh, now Donald Trump's on board and now it's just, you know it's all on. And you're like, what are they talking about?

Like this is, this is interesting. The United States in general right now is interesting. Yeah, it really is. So just a few things. This movie was filmed in 2018. I was on the set in Cartagena, Columbia, you know, consulting. I don't even think QAnon was around back then or we ever heard of it. Even today in 2023, honestly, Sean, I can't even tell you what Q&N is other than just some kind of wacky conspiracy theories.

We do not subscribe to any of that. But how frustrating. If there is one topic in this whole world that we think we should be able to all unite on, it's that kids should not be abused. Kids should not be sold, should not be traffic. And yet how much resistance is out there? It's just frustrating. All I can say is clearly say, we are not any part of that. Everything we've done, we've seen, it's portrayed, it's real.

Again, a little artistic license here and there. But this exists. It exists in every corner of the world. Dallas, Texas, where I am, Lloyd Minster, Canada, Central Canada, Central U.S., and all around the world. And I think we shouldn't stick our heads in the sand and be ostriches. And I'm just grateful for your platform to talk about this. I'm sure there's great QN on people out there.

Actually, I know there is. At the end of the day, some of the things that have come across different platforms as conspiracies, you know, show me a good conspiracy six months later. It's pretty much bang on the truth, right? So like, I'm not even going to harp on the Q-knots. To me, I'm like, I can't believe a news agency said that. It's like, I can't believe they're pushing that. It's like, at the end of the day, you know, there's some awful things happening to human beings.

That's what the movie is trying to talk and shed light. on. Right. You'd think it would be, you know, especially as, you know, like some of the things this movie has gone through has been really surprising to me. You know, you talk about 2018. Did you ever think it was going to get released? Are you like, oh man, this project is going to be like one of those things that shelved in the back room and never come to light? So 20th century Fox originally did this movie. That's who did it. They had the rights. It was amazing. We were down the Fox Studios, Fox Latin America. Well, then as you know, did it? Disney buys out Fox.

Disney did not want this movie out. Again, I'm not going to speculate on the reasons. I'm sure we all know and can see with our own eyes. They didn't want it. We talked to Netflix, Amazon Prime. We talked around.

You got to love folks. Chief Operating Officer? Yes. What am I calling you here? C-O-O-of, I'm like, I'm not going to say anything about what Disney. I can say what did. Disney bought it and then shelved it.

I mean, like, come on. This is insane. Anyways, it's like they don't want to make some good, hard money. Anyways, carry on. Yeah, no, as you know, right? U.S. Department State diplomat, I know, right? And here I am a minion of small town, Alberta, Saskatchewan. We say what we think, and be damned the rest of it.

Like, it's just here we are. So carry on. But anyway, we were told, well, maybe we'll take the movie, but you can't quote Bible verses. You can't have faith. You can't, you know, say God's children aren't for sale. So we just really were saying, is this movie ever going to get out? And then, as you know, Angel Studios, who's amazing what they've done, they said,

you can do it as is. We're putting it out. And again, diplomat, I'm not going to say ha, ha, ha, but how funny, Sound of Freedom beating Disney's Indiana Jones and Pixar and all the other movies. It's really neat to see this taking over the U.S. I haven't actually seen too much in Canada. I hope people in Canada as well are going to see this. You won't be sorry.

It's very powerful. Well, I'll say this to like literally, last night, my brother was going to see it, and it was sold out again in our town. And so, I mean, what was it, July 4th? So that's, you know, we're well over two weeks from then, you know, and it's still selling out in our little town. And I've heard nothing but great things from people going to see it. And tons of people who are like, yeah, I heard about this sound of freedom. So we went. And I mean, that's, you know, like it's a pretty sobering topic. And it's like, yeah, yeah, it is, you know. So it's interesting. You know, I find,

find this interesting what you just said fascinating you can't quote Bible and what is the big deal I once again listeners know this about me by now you know over the last year I picked up the Bible and I've started reading it because I'm like well there is a lot of strange going on in the world how about we just see what this guy named Jesus had to say I'm we'll go from there I I'm gonna stop being ashamed of talking about it's like at the end of the day if that's what gets me judged in the world so be it Like, let's just, I would like some, like, cut out the, you know, the statesmanship. Let's get down to brass tax.

And, you know, it's funny. Like, when you say that, I'm like, that's a wild thing. Like, we like the movie, Bible versus ain't going to sell. It's like, I think you're, like, I see it with politicians. I'm seeing it with Hollywood. I'm seeing it with a lot of these big organizations. They're missing out on what the public actually wants and is talking about right now. So the Bible verses doesn't bother a single soul.

Sir, I shouldn't say a single soul. I'm sure it bothers a few. But overall, it ain't going to turn off the public. The public's actually more interested in it now than I think in my entire life. Yeah, absolutely. And don't you think that the movie had to come out at this time? It just wouldn't have had this effect early in the court. Pre-COVID, COVID, after COVID.

The country's ready for us. And again, I say the country, but I would say Canada as well, United States, Canada. I think we're sick and tired of what we're being fed. We're sick and tired of this garbage that we're being told. have to look at. We have to believe we have to see. And this is just a feel-good movie. Yes, it's a dark subject. But as you'll see, again, when this comes out, as you said, tonight you're going to see it. So you'll see tonight that this is very well done. It's tastefully done. For any parents out there listening who might say, okay, it's rated PG-13, but I have

an 11-year-old or 12-year-old. Parents know best. Isn't that a crazy now, a concept that parents actually know what's best for their kids? Parents, you know what's best for your child. I would say a mature 11 or 12 year old, absolutely take them. There's no graphic in there, no nudity, no hard language. The scenes where you kind of know what's happening, it's all inferred. And that's what we wanted. We wanted a movie that everyone could see and stimulate a conversation like you and I are having now. That's the way we're going to end this is by talking about child exploitation and human trafficking.

You know, I was listening to you on a different show, and you brought up something that we have, once again, young kids, so our oldest is seven. and so we got talking about how in my lifetime how things have just drastically changed you know as a kid you know you didn't have to worry about a cell phone you didn't have to worry about you know all the different social medias and i was just literally saying in a call right before this you know i just i'm not big on social i get the point of it but i just like that's it can suck you in like i don't even mean the the the the the hate online or the conversation i just mean like in general just scrolling can suck you in, let alone anything else. When it comes to children and phones, what's your thoughts, you know, background in the CIA, now you've been in in this project for

almost a decade, right? 2014, so it'll be 10 years in 24. You know, like when it comes to parents and kids and online, what are your suggestions for parents? You know, because everyone's like, well, they need a phone. They need to have a phone at this age and that's just it. You can't not not give them a phone because if they're the one kid when they're in you know high school or junior high or whatever it is and they don't have a phone they'll be ostracized for that and and on and on it goes so parents do as i'm saying right now not as i did i wish i would have known things differently back in the day uh my wife and i were in mexico city for three years right where our kids were in those formative ages around nine to 12 years old and they went on a bus a school bus every day

for 45 minutes across town, across one of the most dangerous cities in the world. So you know darn well, they're going to have a phone, but it was a flip phone. It was just for emergency calls. Well, we weren't even thinking back in 2012, 2013. What happens when mom's smartphone is up for an upgrade? Not even an iPhone, a smartphone. Well, she then gets the new iPhone. And our 12-year-old, we give her the smartphone just because it makes sense. And then our 9-year-old gets the flip-phone. So my daughter has had essentially a smartphone, iPhone, since she was 12. You can't put that toothpaste back in the tube. So parents, as long as you can't hold out on that, there is no need for anyone to have one of these cell phones until they're much older. They can have flip phone. They can

have emergency calling. There's just way too much out there. And you may have heard me say, Sean, that, you know, we always ask parents jokingly, but would you let your kid go night clubbing at night, Friday, Saturday night, by themselves? Well, no, of course not. Would you let them stay in their room alone with their smartphone? Well, yeah, they do. So what's the difference in a lot of ways? these dangers are out there. Have really great talks with your child, with your grandchild. Let them know about the dangers that they're out there online, grooming, social media. Be careful about the friend requests they take and accept. If they don't truly know the person, they won't ever know if that's really a 15-year-old boy or a 65-year-old man.

Is that a 13-year-old girl or a 55-year-old man? And make sure that if anyone offers to do something, it's too good to be true, it probably is. and if anyone asked them to send any compromising images, you never do that and please tell a parent or a trusted adult. The crazy thing is, Matt, like as crazy as like that, like compromising photos, I actually know of one for sure and I want to say two

that have had, at a young age, sent compromising photos to, you know, and you're just like, oh, my, like I just,

I don't even have the words because like when I heard, I'm like, oh my God, right? Like you don't think it's that close to you. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Matt's talking about, you know, some poor kid that isn't my kid, right? And today's world online, man, it is about as creative as it gets.

And I'm an adult looking at it, let alone, you know, fresh eyes of a young kid paying attention to all the traps that are out there. I mean, it's hard for me to decipher. How's a child going to be able to decipher that and understand it? especially with artificial intelligence, photoshopping, as you said, how clever people are getting. And my daughters now are in college, 18 years old and 21 years old. They're in the danger zone for some things in life, but they're sort of out of that social media danger zone to some extent. Sean, I'll be honest, I fear for your three, who knows, right? Eight years from now, you're seven-year-old, 15, and your younger's, what kind of crap is going to be out there?

What kind of garbage and what kind of danger? That I'm really scared because it's just going in the wrong direction. isn't it, with the type of technology that we're seeing the type of, if it feels right, don't think twice, that just get out and do anything online, get our kids, think they can be famous by putting pictures of themselves up there in line. And it's just really, really scary. And I am worried a little bit about the future. When we draw back to your career, you know, to me it sounds like you had a pretty interesting life in the CIA, one that I would suggest was successful from being able to do different areas, you know, Venezuela, Mexico, Spain again.

What was it about Tim Ballard's phone call when he says, hey, I got this idea. I know you know a little bit about it. I know you've seen some things. What was it about the phone call? And was it a quick yes or was it, you know, like I, I got to think about this. What did your wife say? You know, at this time you have kids, you have, you know, like this, I assume this isn't an easy decision.

Right, yeah, certainly not a quick decision. So if anyone knows Tim or seen him on interviews, those who've seen the movie. And as you'll see, the Jim Caviesel just does an amazing job capturing that bull in a China shop, but in a good way, like, we're going to do this. We're going to find a way to do it. Don't tell me no. There's ways we can do it. And that's kind of how he came to me and said, 2013, middle of 2013. Again, I've been with the agency for over a decade, it was down in Mexico City. And he said, I want you to leave your job and join my organization because you can help help me lead. Everything you've learned is an intelligence officer, a diplomat, use your skills, your languages, your contacts. And I really honestly said, I asked them this, Sean. I said, so wait a sec, Tim, Uncle Sam pays me faithfully twice a month. I have access to government health care. I will have a full pension in just six years from that moment if I stick it out.

You want me to leave all of that and join an organization where I only get paid if the donations come in. He said, yes, that's exactly what I want. So I thought about it. I prayed about it. I asked my father, he actually told me, Matt, don't do it. Don't do it. Do you realize how few companies give pensions? Just stick it out six more years, get your pension, then you can do it. And that was portrayed in Sound of Freedom with Tim. Then my wife said, well, I love you. I support you. It seems a little crazy to me. So I thought about it. But at the end of the day, for me, it was, all right, six years to a pension, those are six of the best years I have left. If I even have six years, what better thing could I be doing with my life than taking those skills I learned in the government

and trying to save innocent children? So that's when I made the jump. And it was a big leap of faith. And it was one of the best decisions I've ever made, but it certainly was not easy. Well, I'm going to hold you to this for a second here because I know having three young children and going from an oil field job where I made very, very good money to sit. To sit down, I'm sitting across from you now, sitting in Minnesota, in a bedroom podcasting, which doesn't look that professional, I'm sure, from your angle. But, you know, back home, I do have a studio and everything else. I had to have this very interesting conversation with my wife of like, we can do this, and I think it leads to here. And I think, you know, the sooner I do it, the sooner I get to on and on and on.

And now some of that has come true, but I mean, some is we're in the process. And the thing is, is if it had just been myself and Mel, I don't think it would have been that big of, oh yeah, go do what you want. But you got three kids, you have bills, you got this, you got that. Matt, you're talking about leaving a pension in six years. Even I'm sitting there going six years. Like six years, I mean, you're out and then you can go do whatever you want and we're financially stable and everything else. I'm sure your wife was like, yeah, I love you, hon. But.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, what it was for us, a couple things was we had an opportunity to move back to Texas where my parents were, my wife's parents are. And we're getting older. We have a chance to spend time with them. Then we were going to leave Washington, D.C. We're back in 2013, it would have cost us three quarters of a million dollars, $750,000 for actually a small single family home. and then you pay well less than half of that for a decent-sized house in Texas. So that was a little bit too.

But really for me, it was just this is what I thought God was calling me to do. I mean, I didn't see visions. I didn't hear voices, nothing like that. But I just felt this is what I wanted to do and needed to do. And I felt if I could just get one year in the organization, then I would be able to have my roots back in Dallas where I grew up. And again, now we're almost 10 years in running. But I don't want to minimize it. It was a huge sacrifice.

However, I'm always quick to say, Tim was really the brave one. He quit cold turkey when there was no money in the bank for Operation Underground Railroad. He had six kids. I just have the two. And he always joked and said, I want you to join me. I said, well, you tell me when that plane is up in the air and I'll join. So then when he finally did call me back in late 2013, early 2014, he said, we're on the runway. We're gathering speed.

We're about to take off. Come join us. And that's when I ended up doing it. It's super cool to, I don't know, to hear that. Because I'm like, that's a huge leap of faith. And, you know, when you talk about, like, not seeing, oh, I didn't see visions. I didn't have a burning, you know, brush sitting there talking, you know, it's like, I get that. But at the same time, like, you can pray about things and it can become clear, you know, of like, oh, I think this is where I'm being pulled.

You don't have to understand that. So I think myself sitting here, I get that. I think a lot of people understand exactly that. So it makes, it makes sense to have conviction to something and not full. understand why you're being pulled there. And, you know, it's, it's almost been a decade later, you know, Sound of Freedom is going to be, oh, yeah, we're going to get released, everything, and then it gets bought by Disney, and then mothball, and you're like, oh, maybe it's not, I don't know, maybe this is never going anywhere. And then, you know, you talk about perfect timing is like,

isn't that a funny thing, you know? I think lots of times when I've had lots of interviews fall through, you know, show up and they're, oh, I got sick or this, or whatever, I guess it's not the right time, right? Like, it's just not the right time. And certainly when it comes back to sound of freedom, I'm assuming you had a lot of faith in that if it's meant to happen, eventually it will. Yeah, we really did.

We never gave up hope. We knew that this would come out at one time or another. And again, we really do think it's God's timing, not just because, as we talked about, the United States, North America, people are flocking to the theaters to see us. We're ready for this, a movie like this. But in the cases that you're going to see when you go the movie, the island rescue. All of those defendants are still defendants, you know, those

perpetrators. They were held for about a year and a half, two years, prevented prevention, prevented custody, then they were let out, then COVID hit, then, you know, just the backwards nature of, you know, Colombian justice, although they're doing good work now. Tim and I went down in February of this past year, this year, sorry, a few months ago, and he testified against those very traffickers who were now featured in the movie. The trial. is still going on, but they are very much going to be convicted. So how interesting will that be now? And we actually told the Colombians and have told them for months and years, this movie will come out. And the documentary that Angel Studios will be putting out soon after the Sound of Freedom makes its run called

triple take, which is the actual rescue behind Sound of Freedom, that will be out as well. And we told the Colombians, this big spotlight's going to be on you and everyone's going to say, what happened to those defendants? And I think it will be a good news story. You know, when you talk about different islands, the first thing that comes to mind is Estin and certainly everything that went on there. The fact he, you know, hung himself in prison and everything else. Like, with your background and Tim's background, I assume you guys have a very interesting view on an interesting being, like, I just guess, in the know of like the fact that that is not unique. There is a lot of things the public doesn't know about, probably doesn't want to know. boat, but needs to have some light shed on. When it comes to these islands, was that a one-off,

or is it like, no, no, you're entering into, you know, like Pinocchio and the little boys get taken away and never come back kind of thing. So it's funny how many people have asked us since the movie came out, is there any symbolism to the island rescue and Epstein's island? Giselle is the name of the bad, you know, trafficker, and then Galane Maxwell. And what we said is honestly, this movie was, you know, five years ago, you know, 2018 when not a lot of this hit hit the press. However, I do think God has a sense of humor. So again, who knows how that is? But in terms of your question, we unfortunately know that this happens around the world. And Epstein is not an anomaly. And you look at someone like him who had bigwigs from both political

parties in the U.S., Titans of Industry, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates. This unfortunately happens. It is difficult right now for a group like Operation Underground Railroad to go up against some of these, the powers that be. We are trying. We are very active in Mexico going after some of the cartels. We've got office in Thailand. We've got offices in Africa in the Middle East. We are expanding. And then in the United States, we work behind the scenes when we provide funding, training, tools, technology to law enforcement in the U.S.

And we've actually been very fortunate now to start in Canada, just over the border of Michigan, just over the border to Canada and a couple of places. we'd love to expand this. We started, we're looking at a partnership with the RCMP, and we hope other Canadian law enforcement will be interested because we come in and we don't tell these units what to do. They tell us what to do. So it's really interesting, too. Even in Lloyd Minster and passing between Alberta and Saskatchewan,

there's trafficking happening. And why do I know that? Because it happens everywhere. And we're hoping that this movie will get more people to come to our website, OUR Rescue.org, to donate and support, so that we can take those funds then. power law enforcement in Canada, in the United States, and around the world. I think it's good to note, you know, I sometimes I stray away from, you know, I get talking to

somebody, I forget kind of to bring up some of the facts, you know, and people are like, human trafficking, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, Matt, Sean, yeah, okay, yeah, I haven't seen anything and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's from not in my city, so here's the Canadian organization in Alberta. Fastest growing crime in Canada, human trafficking. second largest source of illegal income in the world, $32 billion per year and growing, right? So when you talk about that,

here's something from the United States, as I sit here. US is the number one consumer and producer of child pornography. US is the number one supplier of sex tourists. And we just had in Canada, the Calgary Stampede, where it's just this giant event in, candle where all, you know, the prime minister flies in. Everybody comes there. It's this huge event, right? And it talks about how that's like a big, when all these people are coming in, you know what's going on. So if that doesn't just make you pause for a second, and I'm sure Matt can add to that.

Yeah. And in the movie too as well, Jim Caviesel, the character will say just what you said, but I want to echo that this is true. Fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world, it is eclipsy illegal arms trade in terms of, you know, lucrative. Luke being lucrative. And then, it is approaching the illegal drug trade because how many times can you sell a bag of cocaine one time? How many times can you sell a human being? In the United States, you're right. We are again, unfortunately, it's very embarrassing. Number one producers and consumers of child sex abuse material, child pornography, sex tourists. UK is up there, Netherlands, Germany, and Canada as well, kind of in the top five. Now, why is it? Well, it's because people have means. Westerners,

oftentimes traveling. And this is a real issue. But it happens everywhere. It happens domestically in the U.S. and Canada. But we started Operation Underground Railroad in 2014 to focus internationally. And we used a group of men mostly, but also women, Americans mostly, but Australians and others, because it is this face. So unfortunately, Sean, it's people who look like you and me who are doing this. So we take people who look like you and me then to go undercover in countries where we just go to the tourist areas. We walk along a beach, we go to the bar, we go to a disco, even maybe the red light district. And the traffickers, we don't even have to work for it.

They come and approach us. They just offer because they see this face. They think, hey, they've got money. Well, we use that against them by recording everything they tell us, turning it over law enforcement, and then setting up sting operations such as portrayed in Sound of Freedom. I don't know why that bothers me so much, but that really bothers me. Yeah. Like, you know, I just, it's pie on the face of Western nations for sure.

But, like, you know, when you talk, you go back to the Epstein Island thing and you talk about some of the high profile people there and you understand like how far up the chain this runs, which is disturbing. I don't know. It just really unnerves me. So I guess it comes full all the way around. It's like, so then what can people do about it? you see different things happening like, uh, uh,

I brought this up with Paul Brent, uh, before about maps, you know, minor attracted person or peoples or whatever else and trying to change pedophilia and make it normalized and trying to, you know, change like there's just,

there's just crazy stuff going on, Matt. Like this is this, you know, the fact that the United States and, you know, I might argue that Canada is pretty bad as well, considering our population size.

Right. Um, some of the things going on, in our cultures right now, are like offshoots of exactly what we're talking here. This is why it came to light probably at the perfect time. What can populations do in their communities to ensure this isn't happening to help make sure children or people in general just aren't trafficked? First and foremost, we need to recognize this for what it is.

And we talked about earlier, this is trafficking, this is exploitation. These aren't lifestyle choices that people are making and that we should just accept. I mean, to try to change the way we describe a pedophile to a map, as you mentioned, a minor attracted person. Now, people might think, oh, that's so crazy. It's really not going to go anywhere. I mean, Sean, as you know, we're in the year 2023. In 2013, 10 years ago, if you or I would have gotten on and said, hey, in 10 years, there's going to be arguing over what a woman is and there's going to be arguing over gender.

If they would have described today's society, you would have said that's crazy. Well, now we're telling you what's going to happen in 10 years. So I always say I recommend people, get involved in your politics, your school board locally. Let's fight against this. And let's talk about this, too, in terms of demand. And this is where I love this opportunity, Sean, that maybe you and I can rally the good man in this audience or the women who are listening, the good men in your lives. At the end of the day, this is a demand issue.

The reason there's a supply is because there are too many men out there willing to purchase other humans. Now, it is just a small, small percentage, and I neglected to talk about something you mentioned just a second ago. So the Calgary Stampede, remember again, such a small percentage of men who would do this, but when you bring a whole bunch of men together and there's party and guys coming together and buddy trips, same with the Super Bowl in the United States, big sporting events. I know your past career, oil and gas. I live in Dallas near Houston, Texas, where they have the big oil men's convention or whatever they're calling it. Now, again, small percentage, but when you get so many men, this is what we need to do. I use myself as example. I'm not sitting here with this false halo over my head that I've always known about this.

I wish someone would have told an 18-year-old Matt Osborne, a 20-year-old, even a 25-year-old Matt Osborne, that the women in strip clubs did not really want to be there, or they wound up there because of bad things that happened to them in their life, that people online aren't willingly selling themselves. It's not an easy, even trade. They want my money, I want their body. The more that we can talk about this, that's where I think we start to end this. So that I think is an answer to your question. I hope people can rise up, post on social media, talk about this, educate people,

but let's also focus on the demand and discourage this movement towards legalizing prostitution, towards allowing minor attracted persons just do what they want. This is a really slippery slope that I'm worried. worried who knows what it's going to look like in five or ten years. Well, the thing with, I could be wrong on this. Actually, I know I'm not. I don't know if it's eight out of ten or nine out of ten or 99 out of a hundred. But when it comes to, well, we'll stick to men, when it comes to children, you know, like

minors, I can't imagine anyone arguing against this at all. there's going to be one because otherwise there would be no demand for it but by not talking about it it allows to persist and the truth of the matter is is like when it comes to somebody in canada who is under the well is in school years uh grade 12 and younger it's a minor like pull your head out of your ass and figure it out right like i mean that's that's that's not good the thing with the internet that is that is disturbing is um the the pursuit of normalizing it and the fact that uh you know just as i can find mad osborne to come talk on about this i assume the other thing is the network that happens where they find other people that are just like them and normal and continue to normalize

and push to normalize it that's probably been the um the the the dark side of this thing uh more than anything. Yeah, and it's getting worse. So much of this is now going online. It's now the, it's more rare to see the old pretty woman, Julia Roberts, working the boulevard, working the street. Yes, that still happens, but it's online escort services. It's online in these networks of pedophiles, those who are exchanging this child sexual abuse material, what we used to call child pornography. Operation Underground Railroad has a few digital experts on our team. One's based in Thailand, one in the United States, one in Central America, where we are going online now and creating different profiles to try to help set up some of these traffickers, because this is

kind of what's happening now. And when you look at why this explosion in demand, and Tim Ballard talks about this in some of our documentaries, there's one called Operation Two Saint or Tucson that's on Amazon Prime. And he talks about how the way the mine works. Unfortunately, if someone was abused as a child, again, not blaming them for that abuse, but then seeing how their mind kind of gets warped in terms of what is healthy sexuality with people of different ages. And that's where they kind of are interested more in children. But the vast majority of sex addicts, those who are doing these things, become addicted to online pornography, internet pornography. It's become much more violent, much more fetish focus, more focus on children. And that was, and as you know, I don't think we even realize how, damn,

dangerous and damaging the COVID lockdowns were. We're going to only know that a few years from now, but so many people for 18 months, two years were cooped up in their house, only on their laptops, only on their cell phones, looking at this. After a while, the human brain gets conditioned where it's not enough of a rush to just look at pornography. You have to act on it or become what we call a contact offender. That's now what we're seeing in Operation Underground Railroad with our partners around the world reporting an uptick in sex tourists. Could you maybe elaborate a little bit on this? So you're saying after the lockdowns we saw across the planet. Yes.

You saw more people, and I forget the word you just used, becoming contact users. Contact offenders, yeah. Contact offenders, thank you. Can you, like, could you, like, see that, like, oh, my, oh, my God. Like, did you see that? So what we saw is just basically when vaccines were available, when people were able to travel, countries opening up, that all the tourists then were going. And again, general, you know, legitimate tours.

as well. But the sex tourism was on the rise because what our partners and others who are studying this believe is after a while looking at pornography, right? Your brain is conditioned where you're not getting the dopamine hit, like looking at a playboy magazine or watching a video of two adults in the act. After a while, it's got to be violent or got to be kids or got to be some sort of fetish. Then after a while, it's not enough to just look at pornography. You have to actually be with an individual to act these fantasies out. And that's what we're seeing a lot overseas. And also, some of our U.S. partners. And I think we're still dealing with a lot of this even now, however far years we are past the pandemic.

I know. How many people work at Project, like at the Operation Underground? So we have just under 100 full-time individuals, about another 20 part-time. This is across our international operations team, aftercare, education, strategic alliances, and of course, you know, HR finance. We do have a number of contractors, and this is what's the coolest thing. We have women and men who had amazing careers in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, military, Department of Justice. They could be doing anything now with their post careers and they're coming to support us, helping us to build out capacity across the world to fight human trafficking. Prosecutions, aftercare, the actual training of the undercover operations.

and that's something we hope we can continue doing because we think now the need is greater than ever. And over the course of nine plus years, how many, well, I don't know, how many people have you helped get put away? Because you're not actually arresting them on site and taking them away. And I assume the offshoot of that is on the flip side is like, and how many kids have you pulled out of these situations? So we keep very detailed stats, and so I'll be very specific what these stats are. So in our almost 10 years, right now we are at just over 7,200 victims supported and rescued. Now, that's a combination of us being boots on the ground. Rescues liken the sound of freedom people will see, or us providing funding to in-country groups

or training or actually coming in and helping them with these operations. So this has really had an exponential effect. But what we are most proud of is just over 6,700 suspects arrested. Like you said, not by us. We don't have arrest authority, but it's providing support the law enforcement. Why we think this is so important. And again, stats are so hard to come by. I heard a stat one time that in an average life of a pedophile, he might hurt up to 112

individuals. I don't know if the number is 62 or whatever, but even if only 10 or 20, getting them off the streets, that has this exponential effect. And that's what we're doing training law enforcement in the U.S. and around the world. Hopefully Canada as well will start up to try to fight this. Well, and you, once again, I may butcher this a little bit, folks, but a ton of pedophiles come from sexual abuse as a child, yes?

So if they're going to hurt anywhere between 10 to 110, all it does is perpetuate the problem further and further into the future. make it worse and worse and worse. So this is like almost trying to cut off a Hydra's head, you know, like as you nail one-off, you've created a bunch more because they've already done the damage. You know, one thing in our motto is break the chain and I don't have one of my wrist. Actually, sorry, you can see it on the shirt. So if you see the OUR, we have to kind of break the chain because it's what you just said,

whether it's a pedophile abusing a child who then unfortunately with that damage will then become one day an adult who abuses children. or one of the saddest things I ever saw, and you asked me earlier about my first rescue operation, on the day of the Sound of Freedom Operations, after I had helped Tim get everything set up, I was in another city, Armenia, Colombia, helping to take down a child pornographer, someone who had a studio there and was trafficking. Well, his right hand, so to speak, was a female, was a woman who was one of his victims years prior, then she decided if I can start recruiting other women bringing them in, then he will stop abusing me.

even pay me. So she was a perpetrator and she was arrested, but yet she was earlier a victim. It's this cycle and we want to break the chain. And so I'm grateful that you brought that up because that's something we can hopefully stop for as many people as possible. Man, that's a little bit of a mind. Like, I don't even know the word. Like that's tough to think about you. You abuse somebody so much, they find a way to get out of abuse by abusing other people. Yes. That's exactly what you're saying. It is. Yeah. So it's that chain. That's why we say, oh, you are, break the chain, but it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking, but it happens so often.

You know, when you go all the way back to just being like, hey, just people who look like us, we just walk down the street, they approach us. Is that how operations initially start then, is just going to tourist destinations, putting an operative out there and say, hey, walk around, see what comes to you, film it all, find what rooms you get into. And I don't know how much you can talk about this, but, you know, like in general, Is that just how easy it is? Yeah, there's actually a lot I can talk about.

So that is one way. But first, let me back up. As you know, we are not a vigilante organization. So we don't just go do this. We go do this at the direction of the country. Well, the country's law enforcement will tell us one of two ways. First, they'll say, look, we already know this guy, John, on this street corner. This is where he's trafficking.

This is where it happens. But I'm a Mexican federal police officer. I don't look like you guys. I'm a Colombian CTI official, as we saw in the movie. I'm a Royal Thai police. I'm a Royal Canadian Mounted Police. You know, I can't infiltrate like you guys can. You know, not that I shouldn't use a canon example because, you know, we all sort of look

alike. But down, you know what I'm talking about, right? Latin America, Asia, Africa. However, you guys, you Americans, you Canadians, you Westerners, you can infiltrate. So go to this street corner and see what John offers you. Well, we just walk by and sure enough, John comes out and offers us a whole bunch of things. So that's one way. Second, though, is what you were getting to a minute ago.

They say, look, we know trafficking's happening, but our government doesn't give us the resources to fight it. They say you've got to go after drug, you know, drug traffickers, organized crime, murders, armed robbery, whatever. Then way down the list is human trafficking. However, Operation Underground Railroad, if you guys will pay for your operators to come in, spend two or three days in Cancun, Mexico, Punta Kana, Dominican Republic, Bangkok, Thailand, just go to all the tourist areas and see what you're offered. that's what we do. And again, you may have had this happen to you, Sean, on vacation. I've certainly happened when I'm walking on the beach. Hey, do you want to go kayak, jet ski, horseback? Do you want drugs? Do you want girls? I mean, that's how quickly it is. And so we record information. What do you have? What's, and they offer to us? That's the kind of information then we turn over to law enforcement.

They can work at themselves, but mostly they use us because we already have the trust of the traffickers and they come in, law enforcement does, and work with us. You know, when I, when I've been on vacation and that's happened. My brain always goes, they're offering me a prostitute that's probably like anywhere between, I don't know. I don't know where my brain goes, 20 to 30, I guess. I don't really think about it. When you're asking questions, how young do they offer? And do they offer it as in like young? Yeah. So we're very careful not to entrap anyone and not to create demand. So entrapment, we can't say, hey, I know you have kids. Give me the kids. I'll pay a million dollars if you give me a kid, right? Well, of course, they're going to go grab a kid and

he can't use that in a court of law. And we have to be very careful, too, that we're not just walking around with money and people then say, well, I'll sell you this, I'll sell you that. So what we do is they say, well, I've got whatever you want. Well, what do you mean? Well, whatever. Okay, you have old girls, young girls, what type of girls, well, whatever. And what they do is because they're very careful at first. Okay, well, 18 years old, 18, 19 years old. Okay, yeah, that's fine. You know, I'm not really into this, but I got some bosses, some colleagues, they're kind of crazy. Is there anything kind of crazy that they would love? I know what you mean. So does that make sense, Sean? That's kind of how you just get in this negotiation with them.

We always let them be the one to bring up minors first. Sometimes we have to go then meet with the boss. Sometimes they'll pat us down. They'll see if anything funny is going on. But we have skilled operators. It goes back to the whole, you know, in the role CIA, you know, diplomat, intelligence officer talking your way in. And that's a success we have because unfortunately this happens every day and every corner of the U.S., Canada and around the world. You know, with the success of the movie right now, I put it, Sound of Freedom took home the number two spot at the box office this weekend that was after Mission and Boss came off with Tom Curse. But it's earned since it started 85 million over since July 4th, which is incredible. and it's only going to grow. What is that,

I guess like, what does that mean to you guys, you know, moving forward with like, the only way we get in is if governments ask us to come help. Man, that's a sad, like, anyways, I just feel like that's just a sad state of where we're at. But like, on the flip side, with the success of the movie and so many different eyes seeing what you guys are about,

like what is the what does that mean to you because i assume you're going to have more and more opportunities of people reaching out saying hey would you come work here we we feel like we have a problem would you come see what you can find out etc etc yeah i mean the whole success of the box office is made even more impressive because it has it's in fewer theaters as the indiana jones mission impossible and with a much smaller advertising budget so it's just crazy well and People may recall on Tuesday's show, Tuesday Mashup 63 with me and with me and twos, I think you guys were in like 2,800 theaters and Indiana Jones was over 4,000 theaters, right? And I should point out, right?

Like, theaters weren't going, oh yeah, sound of freedom. I'm getting it. It's like people going, hey, we'd like to see this. Would you bring it in? Oh, yeah, we'll bring it in. Boom, done. And all of a sudden it starts selling out. Like, think about that.

That's, it's quite insane. And you guys did something that the $2 million for $2 million. So pre-bought tickets, you could buy tickets for other people. And when I checked it out before we started, you were at $7.9 million. That's 398% of your original goal. Like it's just like, you know, it's got to be pretty crazy to be sitting there, Matt, and going like, this is something. Yeah, it's one of those that you always hope would go this far and be this viral,

but you never want to go out that far. or you don't want to get your hopes up. But it's amazing. But something really important for your listeners here to know, actually Operation Underground Railroad does not get any money from the movie, no proceeds from ticket sales or anything. And so what we always say is once you go see the movie, then please go to our website,

OUR Rescue.org, our rescue.org, and learn about the real life heroes now who are on the ground doing this. However, we've been so blessed over this past two-plus weeks now that the movie's been in theaters. We've had such an uptick, 10,000 new followers a day, people coming to donate. We are able to now get more resources to send more operations teams around the world. This has been an enormous blessing, but we really hope it continues.

And so again, anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet, please go see it. Please visit our website. And I've seen it three times. My nephew, my 15-year-old nephew, has seen it three times. How crazy is this? This is really a great movie. I'm curious then. You know, coming back to the Operation Underground, has Canada reached out?

Like you mentioned, you're starting to broach like the RCMP, or they're just specific countries that you've been working in. And, you know, because like, I don't know, I see that it's growing in all the developed places. This isn't just like it's only happening here. Certainly it is happening in some of the underdeveloped countries. the world and have heard stories about that, but it has like Canada reached out or is that nothing on the radar? So to my understanding, we have been able to help in a couple of provinces just sort of over the border. I think if I remember correctly overboard of Michigan, maybe around Windsor, and then one other, I'll try to get more information on that. We would love to expand throughout

Canada. Now, just like in the United States where we don't actually do the undercover operations, that would be the same way in Canada. The men and women and Canadian, law enforcement, head and shoulders along with the U.S. above other countries in the world. But there's so much we can do behind the scenes. We have helped, as I mentioned earlier, provide funding, training, tools and technology anywhere the gaps need to be filled. And so again, anyone affiliated with Canadian law enforcement or knows anyone in law enforcement, please have them reach out to us. Again, we will not tell them what to do. They will tell us what to do. But the problem is really expanding. And we know there's so much we can do in Canada

to mimic some of the successes we've had in the U.S. and around the world. And as we close in on time, I want to get one question in on Jim Cavizal, because you know, you being there along the entire process, you know, one would think, I don't know, actually I won't think, I'll just ask the question. Like if you had the budget under the sun, you can pick any actor you've ever wanted. Was Jim always the guy or were, you know, like if you could have had, I don't know, Like what Hollywood, I mean, well, Mission Impossible just came out. Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt or the list goes on.

You know, those are the two that it kind of stick out. But like, or was Jim at? Jim was the guy and you knew it from early on. Yeah, so Tim has told me in the past. It was always Jim. He always had Jim in his mind. Loves Count of Monte Cristo, you know, great movie, obviously Passion of the Christ.

So I only knew Jim actually through The Passion of the Christ and what a great actor he was. I got to spend a good deal of time on the set with him in 2018, 2019. I've never seen anyone throw themselves into a role as he did. Just to see him learn, whether it was learning Spanish as he speaks from Spanish in the movie, whether it was actually the tears coming under the most powerful scenes, also showing a little bit of the sense of humor, the glint in the eye that Tim Ballard has. And to me, he's now the perfect actor for this. It is incredible. I think people who have seen the movie will see it. We'll understand this. I think you will in the coming hours be able to see this. it's just he's genuine and for those of us who know tim it actually kind of morphs you know

because jim's normally has dark hair tim has blonde hair did jim died his hair for the movie and you'll see and not too many spoilers but at the end they have a picture of jim of up there a photo and they morph it into tim and you'll see just kind of how close these two guys are he did an amazing job with the acting performance is he is he that he seems like he just seems like an intense guy in the best possible way i'm not meaning in a bad way but he just like every interview I've watched him. He just seems like hard on his shoulder intense. Like you get what you get. And like, I don't know. Is he that way in real life? Yeah, he absolutely is from what I know of him on the set. And the hours of work of when we work down there, start at 3 p.m., ended at 3 a.m. You can imagine.

So you can get some daytime scenes, some sunset and some night scenes. Every day he'd get there. I mean, I would bleary-eyed, I'd come up. I'm like, I don't even want to be here. I don't even have any lines. I'm just consulting. Every day he was ready, he was on up till 3 a.m. when they said that's a wrap. And again, not a lot of experience. He was great. Does this go back to your wife and kids saying you're not that cool of a guy, but you've had interesting jobs? You know, being a consultant on a Hollywood film, that must have been an interesting. How long did you film? How long did filming take? So filming took about three, four weeks in a few different locations. And it was really neat. I was able to come back a couple of times to watch. So Bogota, Columbia, the vast majority of anything inside, you know, know, buildings, other things, that was recreated in Bogota. Then Cartagena, the beach scene. I will tell you real quick, when you go to see it,

halfway through the movie after the successful beach rescue, I have a three-second cameo. I'm a Homeland Security Investigations Officer walking across the beach. If you blink, you'll miss me. But, Sean, I hear they're putting up for an Oscar in the category of best supporting actor in a three-second role. You know, when you list off your resume, Matt, I bet you a Hollywood actor wouldn't be in there, even as a cameo.

Did you know that was going to happen? Or they were like, hey, do you want to be in this one scene? We just need somebody to walk by. So they were going to give that cameo to Tim, but Tim said, you know what? I don't need to be the focus. They folk feature me at the end. He said, Matt, you do it. You've been here from the beginning of Operation Underground Railroad.

So it was the coolest thing I ever did for literally, for three seconds on camera. We must have rehearsed for about three hours, different scenes, going up to the boat, trying in different ways, just a really great experience. You didn't have a line though, right? So I had a few lines that were cut out. They were throwaway lines. They didn't need to be in, but it was funny. But then they probably would have signed me up for the Screen Actors Guild or something.

I probably would have a bloody. You know, and all the things you've done, how nervous were you for those three seconds? And a couple of throwaway lines that never made it. Oh, so nervous because one of the lines that didn't make it. I was supposed to look at Jim Caviesel as he's arrested in the boat because, you know, we get fake arrested. I was going to say, Tim, you know, his character, we'll be on, you know, we'll be waiting for you to get any leads on. human trafficking or something like that. Like, hey, well, listen, they had me do it

five, six different ways. I'm sure I messed it up, and they're like, get that out of there, he's gone. We'll just put his face up on the screen and show Homeland Security was involved. You know, you mentioned Tim saying, you know, you've been here from the start. In Operation Underground Railroad, where do you fit, like, Tim, and then who comes after him?

How far away is Matt Osborne? I was basically hire number three. Higher number three or four in the summer of 2014. and then I think I'm pretty much, you know, one of the only ones left, but it's, it's been an amazing ride. I've done everything from operations aftercare, now media speaking. But since I'm in some of the documentaries, my face is out there. So now I get to be in the wimpy seat in the control room and the real brave men and women.

Now they're the ones going undercover. I did that back in the day. It's a young man's game. You can see the gray hair, Sean. I'm not a young man anymore. Do you miss the days of going out and, like you say, being the brave man or woman? Do you miss those days? So what I miss is going undercover.

I miss languages, you know, using him thinking on my feet, I don't miss sitting across the table from pedophiles and traffickers. I don't miss having to see the girls as people will see in Sound of Freedom, having to see them, having to, you know, even when you're going to rescue them, it's a great thing. That just really weighed on me. Having to say some of the things the said or like lick my lips and say to the boss trafficker, oh yeah, she's hot or that's going to be great. I'm just like, oh, I just want to throw up. I want to wash my mouth out with soap. That I don't miss.

Was that, is that tough to come back to home life after that? So it is really tough in a couple of ways. One is, even in the most successful rescue, there's still some you didn't get or you know there's still or some out there. So even though you had a successful rescue, you're like, yeah, but I could have rescued more. Or on those operations that are, we have to abort and that were failures, you really are sad. But then coming home to my house, house, my wife, my kids, and then having this burden alone where my wife bless her heart, she doesn't want to think about this or talk about us, then my kids, and again, they don't know any better, but they'll say, dad, welcome home. This was the worst day ever. Oh, sweetie, what happened?

My iPhone screen got a crack in it. I'm just like, do you know what I've just been dealing with for three or four days in horror and in hell? And you say your worst days because your iPhone screen got a crack in it. It's like, oh, perspective. Yeah, perspective and probably a nice. change of pace from, you know, dealing with, you know, the battle of good and evil. And what you're talking about is about as dark as it gets on the planet. One final question before I let you go. It's the Crude Master final question. And you've kind of actually outlined, I think, a good chunk of it. But it's what's next for Matt Osborne or if you would like Operation Underground Railroad? And then how can people help? Well, thank you so much. So we really want viewers, listeners to know

that Operation Underground Railroad has never been in a better position to help more law enforcement agencies in North America and around the world than ever before, but we need donations, we need support. So as we say, go see Sound of Freedom, then go to OUR Rescue.org, our rescue.org. We have stories, videos, tools, and things that we can talk about, you know, how we help. And then for parents and grandparents, we have educational materials as well, how to keep us safe. So I would just say at the end, thank you to all who have listened to have watched Sean. Thank you for giving us this platform. But remember, we'll end as we began. Let no one have any doubts. This is trafficking. It's not prostitution. This exists. This isn't some conspiracy theory. This happens. And how do I know it's

happened? And it's happening on 25 different occasions with Operation Underground Railroad. I've gone into countries as we talked about earlier. And within minutes, someone asks, offers me everything from a shell necklace to a jet ski ride to drugs, to girls. And within an hour, I'm sitting across the table talking to a trafficker because they see the Western face. They offer us individuals for trafficking and exploitation. We turn that information over to law enforcement and we work it from there. I am optimistic. There is a way everyone can do something thanks to every single person who can get involved

to support Operation Underground Railroad. Well, thanks Matt, for giving me some time here today. And, well, I'll be paying attention to what you guys are doing here in the future. Thank you, Sean. Hope you enjoy the movie tonight. Hey, thanks for tuning in today, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. Today's episode has been brought to by Calrock Industries

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