Shawn Ryan Show - #252 Matt Bissonnette - SEAL Team 6 Operator’s First-Hand Account of Operation Neptune Spear

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Matt Bissonnette is a former United States Navy SEAL known for his participation in the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, as detailed in his bestselling book No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden (2012), written under the pen name Mark Owen. A DEVGRU (SEAL Team Six) operator, Bissonnette served multiple combat deployments and was one of the SEALs who entered bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The book, which became a New York Times bestseller, sparked controversy for not being cleared by the Pentagon, leading to a 2016 settlement where Bissonnette agreed to forfeit royalties and speaking fees. He has since advised on the CBS series SEAL Team (2017–present) and maintains a low public profile. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Buy PSYOP Now - https://psyopshow.com Preorder Now - https://callofduty.com https://americanfinancing.net/srs NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.327% for well qualified borrowers. Call 866-781-8900, for details about credit costs and terms. https://tryarmra.com/srs https://aura.com/srs https://betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://bunkr.life – USE CODE SRS Go to https://bunkr.life/SRS and use code “SRS” to get 25% off your family plan. https://shawnlikesgold.com https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://ketone.com/srs Visit https://ketone.com/srs for 30% OFF your subscription order. https://mypatriotsupply.com/srs https://patriotmobile.com/srs https://prizepicks.onelink.me/lmeo/srs https://ROKA.com – USE CODE SRS https://tractorsupply.com/hometownheroes https://ziprecruiter.com/srs https://gemini.com/srs Sign up for the Gemini Credit Card: https://Gemini.com/SRS #GeminiCreditCard #CryptoRewards #Advertisement This episode is sponsored by Gemini. All opinions expressed by the content creator are their own and not influenced or endorsed by Gemini. The Bitcoin Credit Card™ is a trademark of Gemini used in connection with the Gemini Credit Card®, which is issued by WebBank. For more information regarding fees, interest, and other cost information, see Rates and Fees: gemini.com/legal/cardholder-agreement Some exclusions apply to instant rewards; these are deposited when the transaction posts. 4% back is available on up to $300 in spend per month for a year (then 1% on all other Gas, EV charging, and transit purchases that month). Spend cycle will refresh on the 1st of each calendar month. See Rewards Program Terms for details: gemini.com/legal/credit-card-rewards-agreement Checking if you’re eligible will not impact your credit score. If you’re eligible and choose to proceed, a hard credit inquiry will be conducted that can impact your credit score. Eligibility does not guarantee approval. The appreciation of cardholder rewards reflects a subset of Gemini Cardholders from 10/08/2021 to 04/06/2025 who held Bitcoin rewards for at least one year. Individual results will vary based on spending, selected crypto, and market performance. Cryptocurrency is highly volatile and may result in gains or losses. This information is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Consult with your tax or financial professional before investing. Matt Bissonnette Links: YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@mattbissonnetteofficial Website - https://mattbissonnette.com IG - https://www.instagram.com/mattbissonnetteofficial IMDb (for SEAL Team) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6473344/fullcredits Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business. Matt Bissonette, welcome to the show, man. Thanks, man. It's been a minute. Glad to be here. Yeah, it has been a minute.

But, man, I just, first off, I just want to say thank you for coming down here. I know this was a big, big, big decision for you. You've never revealed your identity before. This is the first time it's on, and that includes 60 minutes. and a lot of big publications that wanted your story and especially about, you know, the Bin Laden Raid and all that stuff. So like I said, I know this was a major decision for you, and I just want to say I'm honored to be able to be the one to bring it out.

So thank you. I'm only doing it here, so I appreciate it. It's my honor. So what are we here to talk about today? We're here to talk about you got a new book coming out. And we're going to talk about, you know, how the DOD basically went after you unjustly for the previous book, No Easy Day, written by Mark Owen. But so we're going to talk all about that, some of the names of the people that were involved and going after you from, you know, coming out of the darkness and trying to fuck you over. And, you know, I just want to say these are my favorite interviews to do.

As much as I hate what happened to you, we've done this with Brad Geary, we've done this with the Blackwater guys, we did this with a Canadian sniper that held the world record for the longest sniper shot. He was on the team. Who else have we done this for? Our mutual attorney, our best buddy here, Tim Parletorys, going to be making an appearance. Who else have we done this for, Tim? Eddie Gallagher. Jay Cowell. Jay Cal. So these are my favorite ones to do, somebody with an amazing life story who's dedicated their entire fucking life to government service.

And now the government's trying to fuck you over and we get to name the names of the people that are doing it and make them and their entire fucking bloodline ashamed to ever have been associated with these pieces of shit. It's my favorite thing to do. They just want to make them

It's a crazy story. Eight going in public. Because, because, so anyways, everybody starts off with an introduction. See, I'm excited about this shit, man. Matt Bissonette. Former Navy SEAL who served with SEAL Team 6 and was part of the historic raid that took down Osama bin Laden, author of the bestselling book, No Easy Day, under the pseudonym, Mark Owen, giving the world an insider's look at the mission that took

bin Laden down. stepping into the spotlight with your new book, No Easy Way, and your YouTube channel, sharing unfiltered stories from your life and career. Consultant and executive producer for the CBS show SEAL team faced legal battles with the government over your writing, but you're still pushing forward with your message of resilience, family, and faith. You're a husband, a father, and most importantly, a Christian. So, once again, welcome to the show.

And, Matt, you've stayed under the radar for how many years has it been now? 12. 12 years. We've stayed under the radar for 12 years, never revealed your identity, your face, your name, nothing. Why now? Why now? Well, as you know, I called you to talk about my next book and possibly coming on here to talk about that book. And through that discussion, we had a real honest discussion.

And you asked me some straightforward questions. Like, why? Why are you still doing this? You've done it for 10, 12 years. Why not? And so through the discussion with you, I thought about it, prayed about it, and said, hey, maybe it is time, right? It's been 12 years. I've fought this battle that I've been in very, very privately and very quietly to the best of my ability.

And it's got me to this point. And the point was where I had to write the No Easy Way to tell this story. And so to then get this story out there and actually make sure people heard the true story and how I was treated. This is part of that journey. So where is No Easy Way? Where are we in the process of? No Easy Way book was submitted for government review, right? You have to submit that one for government review?

Yes, absolutely. And any book, anybody who's signed a top secret clearance has to get any and all works reviewed. Now, is that enforced across the board? Absolutely not. They just go after who they want to. Yeah, didn't McRaven just do a special on this on Netflix or something? Admiral McRaven? He started on McRaven.

Didn't he just? Yeah. I mean, that's way bigger. That's a Netflix thing, right? So he doesn't have to do it. Yeah, there's a double standard here. Yeah, that's an average. He doesn't have to do shit like that.

but um so hold on though why do you have to write why do you have to get the next book approved by the government are you talking about tactics it is a long story my friend um and it's i'm telling the story of what the government did to me over my first book no easy deal oh you have to get approval to tell the story on how the government fucked you over on your first book yes and and it's And it's been six months. And it hasn't been approved yet? They won't approve it. I've heard nothing.

They keep slow rolling me, which to me means, right, the DOD swamp, right, that's there. It wants to crush my story, doesn't want it out. And so, again, that's part of the reason I'm coming on sitting down with you here is to start telling the story and maybe shake the tree. So people hear a little bit about what these people did do to me. Geez. Well, like I said, I'm excited to do this. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to do a life story on you, starting from childhood through your SEAL team careers into development group and then, you know, the book and everything that happened. I know there's a lot. Well, it's basically two interviews and one because of the shit you're dealing with now. But before we get going, I got a couple of things to knock out for you. So I got you some gifts. Matt. Here you go. Everybody gets those. Very excited about these. I've got a lot of people asking for these. If I got some today, they wanted me to bring and share with them. So thank you. We'll load you up. And then

every once in a while, we give one of these out on the show. So I got a buddy over at Sig. His name's Jason. You got a good buddy over at Sig. Yeah, he's, man, he was really excited about this interview. So I thought it would be a good idea to present you with one of those. So that's the Sig Sauer P-365 Legion. You like that? Do you already have one? Yes, of course.

Son of a bitch. Well, now you got two. But the Legion is my favorite. The Legion's the Dux Nuts. So thank you. Hey, you're welcome. You're welcome. And then...

Wait, wait, I got something for you. Okay. Eagles and Angels. You ever heard of the brand? Yeah, dude. Former Delta buddy of mine, right? He uses our old camouflage where we donated uniform. He cuts them out.

I had these made with and God we trust because I mean you were a fan. These are awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Love it. These will go in the studio. Thank you. This is your uniform, right?

Yep. Right on. It's pretty cool. They're right. They do different operators. and they, you know, borrow a set of camies. They cut them up and then they sell them and kind of cool collector's items. Very cool.

Thank you. Thank you. And then, all right, one last thing. So I got a Patreon account. We've turned it into one hell of a community. They have supported me since the very beginning. And they're the real reason that we even get to sit down and have this discussion today. So I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest.

asked a question. This is from Matt Stockton. How do you keep your faith with so much opposition and how did you find so much solidarity after war fighting? It's the first part again. How do I keep my faith? How do you keep your faith with so much opposition and how do you find so much solidarity after war fighting? I would say I keep my faith is easier to keep when I've been in the trenches when I've been in the fight because it's much more I'm in the fight and I need to remember right where I've had my biggest struggles is where I'm not in the fight and it seems kind of quiet and there's not a lot of stuff going on and that's that's where I've struggled so in the most emotional experiences or when we dealt with a lot of death in the teams or whatever

it was that was able to understand that my faith and there's a plan right dealing with the government stuff. I was in a very, very dark, negative place getting out of the teams. I mean, I was in a very dark place after the way the government was treating me. And I guess I realized that it's anytime you're challenged in your face, it's God testing you. That's the way I looked at it, right? It was maybe God just challenged me through the whole thing that I've been through with the government to see if I was going to turn into a little bitch or not. Yeah, right? Was I going to man up and deal with us the right way? Or was I going to fold, melt, and become somebody I wasn't proud of? And so. Right on, man. Well, you definitely didn't fold.

It's been a long fight, man. It's been a long fight. I'm still in it. I've got, yeah, I'm still in it. I got a payment plan for the next 15 years. Talk, let's tell me about that. So give me a brief snapshot of what happened. Okay, we're jumping all over here. You want to jump in? Where are the book? No, we're going to go. We're just a brief snapshot of what you're going through, let's say, 90 seconds or less, and then we'll cover that in detail when we get to it. I've been fighting my own government for 12 years. You wrote a book on the bin Laden. I wrote no easy day, right? The government immediately came after me for writing that book without a pre-publication review process being done. They came after me legally with unlimited attorneys for a whole bunch of time. Ultimately, they said, hey, look, there's nothing classified in the book.

We just want all the book money back. Well, I had spent a million and a half of that book money on my lawyer fees defending myself against these baseless accusations. And in the end, the government said, we want it all back. So I gave them all the money book, the book money that I had left. And I said, look, you're still missing 1.5. We want that back, too. So I sued my attorney. I won, went back to the government with a winning malpractice case saying, hey, I'm relied on the advice of counsel to publish my book without a review.

I know the government didn't want to look at this, but I sued my attorney in one. Will you relook at this case? They said, no. I said, well, I can't pay you a million and a half in three years. Give me some sort of payment plan. And so they said, give us all the money your malpractice suit made, your winning malpractice suit, and then they put me on a payment plan. So I pay $3,800 a month for the next 15 years. They said if I miss one payment, they'll charge me back taxes and come after me again.

I only served for 14 years, right? I served for 14 years. I got a plaque with my name misspelled when I got out, right? One T and Matt. But yet, they want me to pay back more money than I ever would have made in my service for longer than I ever served. I only served for 14. I got a 15-year payment plan. So that and the story behind that is what I wrote about in no easy way.

That's the story that the government's trying to slow roll in the review process right now. And it's the reason that I'm sitting here with you now is so I can start sharing the story a little bit more publicly. I've been very private about it. I've just tried to duke it out with them the best way I could through the legal system. And it's got me to hear. Holy shit. Here we are. Matt, we've got to talk about how to set up a better straw man, Mark Owen.

yeah the mark going to find the mark going name didn't last more than two seconds and it was actually it was a fox news producer like one of their online producers who actually ran my real name are you fucking kidding me fox news never would have guessed that but okay it was an online producer so right it's pretty easy to find people's home addresses online these days right it's pretty easy figure that out so i've got some friends that uh they set up a whole bunch of online personas if somebody's trying to find me and all of the home addresses that are linked to my fake accounts are all that Fox News producer's home address. Oh, that's fucking genius.

Nice work. Nice work. I do one other question before we get in the life story. Why did you, I mean, another famous seals come out, you know, about this raid, Rob O'Neill, everybody knows. I'm just curious, why did, why did you decide to conceal yourself when you came out, when you wrote the book, when you did? I mean, 60 minutes did a piece on you. They did it, I mean, probably a better disguise than you've ever seen throughout your entire fucking career. Definitely throughout my career, I've never seen a disguise that, that well done. I mean, it was

like Hollywood production. It was wild. It was Hollywood-level makeup people that came out and did it. But to answer your question, A, I was a kid who I grew up reading books. I grew up reading books about the community. That's why I wanted to join. I read books about the seals in Vietnam. Boom. Had my, right, my service. I knew I knew the president had authorized the movies and the books, right? I knew all of that was happening, right? Three weeks after the bin Laden, Rish, and we go to Leon Panetta's retirement ceremony from Langley, Virginia. He's going to go over and be Secretary of Defense. He gives a great speech on stage, gets off stage, Langley, Virginia, right? And he literally brings over Catherine Bigelow and Mark Bull, Hollywood producer, screenwriter, director for Zero Dark 30. Panetta introduces them to us and says, hey, look, they're going to make you famous. So within three weeks, less than a month of the mission. For those that don't know, Leon Panetta was director of CIA at the time. Yep. Right. So he, uh, full,

full access for Hollywood for that movie, right? I knew that firsthand within a month of the mission, right? I got out of the Navy, right? I hurt my neck in the crash. That was the last mission I was ever on. I get out of the Navy later that fall. I'm contacted by the author Mark Bowden. Mark Bowden wrote Black Hawk Down.

He wrote a book called The Finish about the Bin Laden raid. And he contacts me. He's like, hey, Matt, I've already interviewed President Obama. I got the White House perspective of the race. I've already interviewed Admiral McRaven. I got the J-Soc perspective of the raid. We would love to interview you for your ground truth perspective. Fascinating.

I already knew the movie, right? Movie was percolating. I'm like, when do you want your book to come out? It's like, well, we're trying hard to get it out before the election. Okay. So I'm an enlisted guy, right? I work for a living, right? I'm not the admiral.

I'm not the general. I'm not the president. I'm the director of CIA. I'm sitting in my position watching every single leader from this country be willing to talk about their heroic actions for their, right, re-election campaign, whatever you want to call it. It pissed me off, all right? It made me mad because none of the 24 operators that were on the mission were getting any credit for it, right? It was all the heroic decision making in Washington, D.C. And so that's when I knew I was getting out.

A whole bunch of us had been to Ground Zero, right? I'd never been to New York City before. We went to Ground Zero after the Bin Laden raid. Crushed me, right? I stood there at Ground Zero and I'm pretty good at locking out the emotions. It crushed me. And I knew I had hurt my back pretty significantly on the Hilo crash. I was getting a divorce.

I had done 13 straight tours at that time. and it just felt like really good bookends. My very first deployment 9-11 happened. Last thing I did is crash into his compound. I'm now so senior, they're going to take me out of the operational side of things. Damn. And I didn't join to be the troop commander. I didn't join to be the officer.

I joined to stay enlisted, right? I had my degree. Stayed enlisted the whole time. You were on the invasion. Yeah. You were on the invasion. Holy shit. So your career kicked.

Wow. So my whole career, I saw it happen, I saw it evolve, and then I saw it, I saw it, I saw it spiraling towards the end, right? I saw the officers and the self-promotion side of things. I just, by the time I got back from the bin Laden mission and I knew I was hurt at that point, we went to ground zero. I was like, man, I am cooked. I was done. Came back from that and called it. Damn.

Why did you conceal your identity? Oh, sorry. I missed that part. Because why not? If somebody can tell me the upside of being out there and being famous or trying to be, right? I very much enjoy my anonymity. My neighbors where I live, you know, 20 feet away. I have no clue anything about my background. And I like it that way. I didn't. I read all these books growing up, right? I served 13 straight tours. And none of it. did I do by myself. So why would I then now all of a sudden write a book talking about all my heroic actions? I just, I never saw it that way. I was like, okay, well, if I'm going to write about it, I'm going to do it in my terms. And I'm not going to show my face because that's irrelevant, right? The story is what it is.

It has nothing to do with what we look like. Yeah. And so, yeah, that's when I was like, okay, I want to tell the story. I want to do it accurately, authentically. And then I don't want to be the center line of the story. So I'm going to remove myself from the equation. And that's where it started. Well, I mean, I think it's a pretty damn smart idea.

I mean, how many guys were on the raid? 25, 24, 24 people out of the entire world on the raid that takes out the fucking world's most wanted man. And pissed a lot of people off. But I didn't want this story about it, but be about me. It's irrelevant who wrote the book. book it's like let's hear the story who are these type of people where do they come from where do do you know who are these guys what are seals what are they all about yeah right and and i think hollywood does a pretty shitty job in portraying it right they they they think we all look like

jaco willing yeah but i'm sorry i don't look like jaco i i don't run like guggins right like sorry yeah well glad to uh glad you're here once again so let's let's get into it where did you grow up I grew up in a remote village in the middle of Alaska. My parents were missionaries, Christian missionaries. The village called Antioch, Alaska, 350 miles northwest of Anchorage on the Cuscaquim River, 500 people. Whoa. Drove a snowmobile to school in the morning. Graduate high school with three people in my senior class.

What? I was a valedictorian. Congratulations. The, our high school mascot, and you can Google it still to this day, right? Anniak's the name of the village. Our high school mascot was the half-breeds. Are you serious? The Anniac half-breeds, the mighty, mighty half-breeds, right?

Wow. And, and everybody thinks it's a derogatory term, right? I say bullshit, right? In the village in Alaska, right, I was one of the few white kids that were in the village, right? Most everybody was a half-breed, and everybody was. proud of that heritage and what was the moral of the story. Nobody cares what color you are. Don't be an asshole. That's the way I grew up, man. I grew up in a village as a minority as the white kid. Um, appreciating the fact that everybody was a half breed, right? I drove a snowmobile

to school. I bought my first AR 15 from my history teacher after class. Get the fuck out of here. What? After class, I gave him, I gave him 700 in cash. He reaches under his deck, pulls out My colt, AR-15, A-2, and boom, I put it in my locker till the end of the day. What? School ends. I slung my new rifle, walked out of school, got on my snowmobile and drove home. Holy shit. So, yeah.

What's the name of this town? Anniak. A-N-I-A-K. Love it. So, yeah, man, it was a middle school. Dude, well, hold on. So you're the only white kid in a town of, you just say 300? 500. There's a handful. I'm not, yeah, not more than 100.

I guess what I'm asking is, how the hell did your family wind up here? Missionaries. I was born in California with two sisters, right? My parents, my dad was a teacher and had an opportunity to move to Alaska and teach for some of these remote villages. And, right, they were always Christian and knew their faith. And so moved to the village. my dad ultimately became the village magistrate so like the law in town right log cabin courthouse right 100% of the rules broken in town were alcohol related so right you get drunk beat up your old lady yeah my dad would have arraign you to three weeks in jail well we didn't have a jail in our town so you'd have to fly a little cessna down to the next bigger village do your three weeks

in the the drunk tank or whatever you're doing then you'd fly back to our village and you're trying to get back to yours well the weather would roll in and you couldn't fly from place to place. So you just got sent to jail for three weeks. The only person you know in my village is my dad. So you show back up at the courthouse, knock on the door. Hey, Mr. Terry. Oh, hey, Sean, I see you're out.

Well, yeah, well, I'm trying to get back to my village, but the weather rolled in. We can't travel? You know, can I stay at your house? So my dad would be like, sure, but you got to stay for church on Sunday. So we'd literally have a guy that my dad sent to jail. He's back three weeks later. He literally stayed on our, slept on our couch in our living room, and then on Sunday morning, you know, we'd have kind of a small church service at the house and there's, there's my dad's buddy. Wow. Wow. That's, that is, I've never heard that before. I never wanted to leave the village, man. I thought the village was as a young man, right, hunting, fishing, running around 16 years old. I'm taking a boat up the river for a week at a time with a fishing pole and some, some guns, a dog, and, you know, a buddy.

We'd come back a week later, right? I barely trust a 16-year-old to Valley Park a car these days. No kidding. Alaska, it was just a whole different deal. So you spent your entire childhood up there. Yeah. Damn near anyways. Yeah, that's it.

Graduated high school, and then all I ever wanted to do, right? I read these books in middle school for a book report. Found the book, Men with Green Faces, Seal Book from Vietnam. I read that book. Gene Wentz is the author. Dude. I've met him. That was pretty cool.

Really? Yeah. Yep. That was the first book I read. And a man was hooked. I was like, man, I kept reading more and more books, more and more books. And it's like, I told my dad one day, he's like, no, you don't want to join the military. I'm like, no, this is what I'm doing. He's like, well, would you go to college first?

You know, all you know is this village in Alaska, go to college. I'm like, sure, okay, but I'm still going to the Navy. They were hoping I'd change my mind. So I went to school in Los Angeles. Same school my parents had went to, so I didn't know anything about, right? I went to college. Talk about a fucking culture shock. I'd never driven on the freeway.

I had never worked a gas pump at the gas station, right? Like before ATM cards, put a 20 on pump three. We had a barge that would come up the river and deliver fuel to like a 700-gallon fuel tank in front of our house that we would use for the year. Right? I went to college. I showed up in Southern California with a flannel work boots. Like, hey, I'm here for school. Nice.

Who's this knucklehead? Wow. Yeah. I'd never been on a date. I'd never driven on the freeway. I'd never done anything, man. You'd never been on a date? It's a village of high school class of three.

You've got to go to the next village over. The village of Alaska. Where are you taking them? Holy shit. You've never been on a date? Not telling me to college. No girlfriend, nothing. Okay, give me, hold on.

I got a slight girlfriend from down the river, the village down the river. Down the river? Holy. What did you guys do for a date? Well, okay, so we'd, for basketball. Right. I played basketball. It was Matt miss of the net when I played basketball. We would, you'd fly a Cessna from village to village, and that's how you'd, you know, compete with other schools.

And so when you'd fly to the other schools, there was always like a dance that night. So, you know, whatever. So that was, that was it, man. Fly from village to village. You're there for the weekend, play some basketball, find the locals, make some friends. Right on, man. Let's talk about the four Fs. That sounds like that was, was it.

something that's straight from my father with you straight from my father um that he demonstrated right a lot of people talk my dad demonstrated and and he demonstrated his four Fs were were what guided him through life that's his family his friends his fun and his faith and so that's that my dad passed last December and oh man I'm sorry to hear that yeah about 30 year battle with Parkinson's so long long spiral never heard him complain once not once so I that's that's rubbed off on me as as I've dealt with my situation right whether I was going to turn into a little bitch and start complaining or if I was going to put my head down get to work and deal with it yeah yeah what about your mother mom still here doing fine yeah miles an hour

you guys close very grow up close um yeah because you're you're in a village in Alaska. Not much else to do, right? I went to college, after college, joined the Navy, right? Enlisted. I thought they, my parents thought I would have lost focus on the, on the seal thing. And no, I was just as amped up. I tried Army ROTC in college, so they sent me to jump school, right? Army ROTC, so kind of got a little sidetrack thinking, okay, maybe I'll do this ROTC thing. It was an officer in the Army, and I went to jump school. as a cadet and and I'm at the chow hall and at jump school and I'm sitting across from right these seals little did I know they just graduated buds right but I think they're hairy chested frogman and uh and they're

making fun of my stupid army haircut and I was devastated I was like fuck these guys are making fun of my hair like if I if I continue with his army thing I'm gonna go have to do the haircuts and boots and like that's a thing and I had read all these books about the Navy I was like no man I I came back from jump school, my cadet status. I went to my little ROTC boss, and I'm like, hey, man, I can't do this. I've always dreamt about the Navy, and that's what I'm going to go do. They made fun of my fucking hair. I'm out.

I'm out. This is bullshit. Yeah, that was it. Left the ROTC, graduated, and then enlisted in the Navy. So you did, you got your degree. Yep, yep. What's your degree in? Social science.

Nice. Waste of time. Waste of time. waste of time. Never used it. But I had it. I went to the recruiter's office enlisted. They're like, great, you have a degree. You can join as an E3. So, E3, torpedo men. It's the shortest A school I could find, right? All my buddies did Gunnersmate. They're like, oh, six months, don't do that. So torpedo men, I think it was six weeks, nine weeks, something like that, and straight to buds, glass 226. Nice. And then I made it.

it straight through. So that was. And you were the honor man, correct? So they say. Why'd you get an honor man? Do you know? Somebody else picked me. Oh, right. Come on. You got a good inclination. I like to work hard. That's it. Did you find Buds challenging at all? Yeah, of course. Of course, Buzz is challenging. I'm not going to say Buds is not challenging, but I had read six million books and set my expectations here. And so I think I had set them so high. Maybe it was a little down from where I had set them at. Didn't mean it wasn't hard, right?

One of my best friends every morning he'd wake up. He's like, fuck this. I'm quitting today. And then he'd never quit. But every morning he'd tell me he was quitting. Where me, I was like, okay, if I allow myself to think that, every morning. Every morning, he's like, this, I'm out of here. Fuck this.

And he'd never leave. I'm like, listen, you've got to fix this because you're really, you're really rubbing me wrong. Lying to me. Every morning, you're fucking with me and you're not quitting. I was afraid if I ever entertained those thoughts, I'd quit. So I was like, no, I'm not quitting, never entertained them. And went right through. What did your parents think?

I don't think they knew what to think. I think that's the part when I started lying to my parents, right? As soon as you graduate, it's like, what? What they know is what they know and they don't really need to know anything more for right now. Right, I graduated, nothing going on. Still pre-9-11. And then on my very first deployment, I was sitting in Okinawa, Japan, watched it all transpire on my barracks television. No shit.

Yeah. I mean, we were like, holy shit. Like, think about it, your first deployment, brand new guy. Nobody in your platoon seen any combat. Like, you know, there's the stories of guys going around that made me the little grenade up, panama here and there. But nobody didn't really done anything. And then now we watched 9-11 unfold on my television. And right, the rest is history.

What did you think when you saw that? The first one had hit by the time we had turned on the news and by the time the second one hit, you know, we watched that live. And there was all sorts of speculation between the first and the second, hey, what was this accident, whatever, who knew? But by the time you watched the second plane flying, And it was the gut punch that you were like, okay, this is real. Something's happening.

And if that doesn't give you goosebumps and think you going to work, something's wrong. So, I mean, I probably would have got out of the teams had we not gone to, had 9-11 happen. Right? I would have done my time and got out. But now I was smack dab new guy. 9-11 just happened. We finished that deployment, came back, did another workup. And then my next deployment, we deployed right to Iraq for the.

kind of initial invasion up into Baghdad. Man. Dude. Still running like thin skin humvies, like before the IED threat. Way, way, way. What, what an arc of a career. So your first deployment, you're watching 9-11 happen. Your last deployment.

Well, we don't count as a deployment. Yeah, your last mission. Your last mission, I mean, fuck, you take the, you're taking the guy out that orchestra. It's just fucking wild to me. And you're on the invasion. So first deployment, you watch 9-11 happen, second deployment, you're on that invasion. And you're at Team 5, correct? Yep.

How did it feel going on the invasion? Because I would imagine. I don't want to upset my team three fellows that were there before us, right? They had done the oil platforms and moved up inland by the time five came and swapped out with three. We were just now taking Baghdad. And so we took Baghdad and then moved into one of the palisps. and spent the rest of my deployment running ops out of Baghdad, which was, okay, like living the dream, right? Young frog man, we got an enemy, we're going to take the fight to them, and you're new, impressionable, and gung-ho.

So, away we went. Was it pretty kinetic? Yeah, for that, for going from zero before. Yeah, I mean, my first shootouts, my first, everything, was that deployment. There were a lot of learning happened to that deployment, but it's still learning because it's a Team 5 platoon that's pretty new. Yeah. Well, let's talk about what was your first, what was the first shootout?

What was your first gunfight like? Was it what you had expected, reading all the books? it's never as expected, right? You can think what you're going to think and it never plays out that way. At least that's, in my opinion. Shut through the door. Shooting through the door.

That was the first, first, oh my gosh, they're shooting back at us right now, right? We assaulted a target, just hitting houses, hitting houses. And it was at the front door and they just started pumping around through the front door. And that was the first time I was like,

oh, okay, all right. Something's happening here. Right on. That was it. What else were you guys doing that deployment? That was it, right? We lived in the green zone. We lived in one of the palaces out by biop, Baghdad International Airport.

Worked for the different intel agencies, kind of giving us targets, and we'd go do our best to roll them up, right? I thought we were pretty cool at the time. Then every night you'd see these cool black helicopters flying over, and I'd go to my boss. I'm like, hey, boss, why don't we have those little birds around? There's some, why are we in thin skin humvies right now? Why aren't we in, like, why aren't we flying to these targets? Those little birds look really cool.

They're like, well, you don't get those assets here. So that's when I started learning a little more about the big leagues and the different assets that came with different units. And so I had screened for my previous command before my second deployment. So I got word on the Iraqi deployment that I'd got picked up to go to training to see if I could make it into Damnick. Okay. So for those that are listening, the don't know what Damnack is, that's where Steel Team 6 development group is at. So I've heard.

I don't know anything about it. Yeah. You'd be careful where these admirals might come after. They will. So Team 6 pops on your radar because all the assets, all the cool toys that they get, you're seeing. And all the guys I knew at five, right? Some of the bigger studs that I knew would, like, disappear. And then they went off to go see if they could screen.

And so I'm like, all right, well, if I'm here, I need to try this. And so. So you got word, you got word that you got accepted to try out. Yeah, I'd screened before the second deployment. And then I got word, what, six, nine months later that I'd been picked up. I barely passed my PT test. Are you serious? Bro.

We were doing an SR in Camp Pendleton, and literally they called us two days prior, and they're like, hey, your screening test is like tomorrow morning. I've been eating MREs, face painted, living under a tree for like three days, and literally three other dudes got pulled out of the field, drove down to San Diego, and the next morning, we had our PT test, and I barely passed my push-ups. Right on. Yeah, a little worried about that. all right, are they even going to, you know,

are they even going to pick me up? Because I was a slip knot and barely passed my push-ups. They, uh, I got picked up and, and then I made sure my push-ups were good for the. You'd take a screening test day one of training. They show up and give you a hard one. So I had to make sure I was ready for that. So you passed the screen test. You get in there.

Let's talk about showing up for training. How is that? Pretty cool. Different, right? Right. You go to Buds. You have the, I'd read a whole bunch of, about Buds. I hadn't read much about this. I didn't know much about this. I knew Buds was more

of a, hey, don't quit. Check. I've got, I don't have that word in my vocabulary. Now it's okay, how can you, it's selection and training, probably more selection than training, right? So they want to know you have it or you don't. And day one, it's shotgun blast to the face. and then it's uh i thought getting into that unit was twice as hard as buds really buds was simple enough where it was like you get the deal right yell you run that way don't quit okay check i got that the selection was okay how good are you at what we've trained you to do and can you make really good decisions under stress and pressure and can you do that right it's not just about just quitting anymore yeah you found that to be a lot harder um

I loved it. It was much harder, right? Because now the selection process in which they are judging you on has nothing to do with you just didn't quit. Now it's okay. How good are you with the game? Right? Buds was don't quit. We'll train you some basics.

Now you've been a seal for a handful of years. Now we want to put you to the test of what you know. And we're going to put high expectations on you. And then if you don't cut it, you're out. So I loved it. But it was very demanding. can you say how many people you started with do you know i don't remember the exact number i would say rough rough numbers 50% washed out 50% washed out and went and no disrespect no hey you're an

asshole you don't cut it here it's like hey you just don't cut it here go back to a team depending on what you failed out for you may have a chance to kind of reapply and screen again or or you just go back and and that's it gotcha 50% is so when you say it's mostly selection, a little bit of training. So, I mean, are the, so they, you have a baseline when you show up there that they, they, they, they have an expectation from, from the baseline that they, you know, I mean, so are you not learning in the training pipeline? You are.

And they will learn, they will teach you something new every single day. Every single day, you're getting something new and it's, it's just, it's amazing. Every single day. And if, if you're the guy who didn't pick it up the day prior, the next day there are okay now they stack something new on top and you weren't getting what they got yesterday okay the next day is something more and if you're next thing you know you got three of these things stacked up above you and you're not keeping up you're not you're not gonna last too long so what what did you find to be the hardest part of green team for those who

don't know green team is a training it's the training regiment to get into into development group i think it's it's an individual operator's ability to identify situation, right? It could be an elephant, a big, big elephant, and be able to be like, okay, I'm going to eat that elephant one bite at a time. I'm going to prioritize those bites smartly, and I'm going to start eating, right? And the hardest part of training was that. They were constantly putting big elephants in front of you, stressing you out, wanting to see how you dealt with that size of that challenge, the complexity of that challenge. Did you quit because the elephant's too big or did you say okay check i'll eat that elephant what size bite size piece can i take i'm

going to start prioritizing those bites and start eating got like the tactics were what they were they're constantly throwing something new at you if if you're into it and like that type of stuff it was it's the best training you'll ever get every single day you're learning something new and getting faster and better and better and if guys weren't cutting it they were gone do you get honor man of this too they don't give an honor man and green tea right on All right. So what is the, I've never really talked to anybody. We've talked pretty extensively about what Green Team is, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the different cycles are of the program and all that kind of stuff.

But what is the graduation like? There isn't one. There is no graduation. How do you know where you're going to go? It's like the last couple months of training. They're like, hey, you guys are going to this color, you're going to that color, you're going to that color. And you just, I mean, I remember guys who, the guys who went to one of the squadrons, I won't mention the color, but the guys in my class that were going to the next squadron

that we're deploying, they literally left Green Team two weeks early, checked into their squadron and deployed. No shit. So they were like, you're graduating and integrated into your second deck squadron. And for them, they deployed. I waited three months and I deployed three months after my, I graduated. Gotcha. So it's, it's the pace.

is insane at that facility. And you went to Red Squadron? I went, yes. Where did you want to go? Did you want to go to Red? It doesn't matter. I wanted to graduate and be assigned to one of the squadrons. You didn't care which one.

I think when you're going through and you're envisioning up on what the differences are and how you want to make believe that there's something special and different in reality. They're not. And whichever one you land in, you're going to be happy and content and welcomed. Are there different cultures? for different teams? I didn't think so. Maybe little nuances,

but not significant enough to speak about. How would you describe the culture of red? Put up or shut up? I don't know. Like, very cut and dry, black or white, right? Like, yeah, no, no quarter, right? It was, standards were this high, and if you didn't cut the standard, we're not going to give you a break on it, right? Here's the standard.

You're either meet it or exceed it, or we're going to have problems. I loved it because everything was very black and white, and you were either on one side or the other. And, yeah, and then, of course, right, the op tempo was through the roof, right? I had done two deployments at Team 5, which were the longer, slower ones, and then you get to that command, and they're more often. and quicker. And so then showed up and then just started

deploying every six months or less or whatever it was. It was just constant. What was it like showing up to red? Everything that I'd always dreamt it would be, it was. Let's talk about... It's a bold statement.

Yeah, let's talk about, let's just describe it, day one. You go up to, well, now it's all different, but we went up to the second deck, right? which is where all the squadrons are stationed. You show up with your case of beer and you introduce yourself and, right, the whole squadrons sitting around.

They're like, all the new guys are standing there and like, okay, Bish, you know, stand up, tell us about yourself and, you know, where you're from? You're like, hi, my name's Matt and I, Team 5, they're like, shut up! Oh, no, no, keep going. You're like, okay, well, is it Team 5, shut the fuck up, new guy.

You're like, all right, check, all right, here's my beer. Next guy goes, and they yell at him. They're like, great, we don't care anything about you. Welcome to the team. new doesn't care what you used to do in the past you're now part of the team let's go that was it and then and we went to work man and we went to work what's the team room like um in what way i don't know do they have any artifacts in there from previous missions it's like this on steroids right it's uh cool cool artifacts from from missions all over the place um a whole much computers

around the walls of the room right we got a new command by the time i left so it was updated The one I moved into was the old school, the OG building. It's been updated a lot since then. Right on. Any any particular artifacts that stick out in your mind? Nothing. They're all artifacts. Nothing that cool.

Right on. Well, Matt, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get into some of the different operations that you were on before. the bin Laden raid. Cool. Did you know your personal information could be making companies rich without you even knowing it?

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They're the real deal. Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out for yourself at roca.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide at checkout. That's ROKA.com. All right, Matt, we're back from the break. We had just kind of talked a little bit about green team showing up over at Red Squadron over at Steel Team 6 and kind of what that was like.

So what I'd like to move into now is basically your career over at Development Group, what the pace was like, where were you guys deploying, stuff like that. So let's just start with what was your first deployment with Red Squadron? Man, first deployment with my former squadron was we deployed to Afghanistan. I was actually there for about a month of deployment. And during this period of time, right, our army counterparts were very focused in Iraq. And the Navy team had leadership in Afghanistan. So, you know, most of the Navy guys were deploying to Afghanistan.

The army had control of Iraq. Well, Iraq had been picking up, right, from the tier one perspective. So I did about a month of deployment in Afghanistan, and then I got a call that a handful of guys from our squadron were going to move over to Iraq and integrate with a army counterpart unit. Okay. You said it, not me. Why would they pick a new guy? Oh, my whole team went. Oh, your whole team?

They pulled the whole team. So my team leader all the way down to me being the new guy, they pulled the whole team, moved us over to Iraq. and then they farmed each one of us out to a different army team. So I was integrated as a new guy into a army unit as a new guy on one of their assault elements. You know, other guys on my team more than another team, another team, another team. We all lived together, operated together, but we fully integrated with an army unit. With Delta.

So did they, did Delta send guys over to six to integrate in Afghanistan? At that point, it was because they had, they were taking some heavy casualties. is this one that IED factory blew up and killed a bunch of those guys I mean there was a lot of stuff going on Iraq was getting hotter and hotter right I had done my team five deployment there I screened I went to damn neck and now my next appointment was Afghanistan I was there a month and then they moved us over to in bed and I worked out of Baghdad again with with the Delta team so who was who took your guys a slot in Afghanistan they just they just didn't back fill us with anybody they

went lighter. The squadron that stayed there was light a team. A team went over and augmented the Army guys. Phenomenal deployment, right? I'm still very, very good friends with the Army guys I worked with there. Phenomenal individuals. Can we rewind just real quick? So were you guys, did you guys do anything in Afghanistan or did you get farmed out because it was just not, there just wasn't a lot going on? No, we were doing ops. I was out of Jalalabad and we were running missions out of J-Bad. It just, they weren't as kinetic. It was different, right?

Iraq, everything was just kicking off. Afghanistan was still, Afghanistan's been through its phases, right? I've been there 10 times. But at that time, Afghanistan felt a little slower. They were still hitting ops. They were still running missions. It was just the priority was, okay, let's move some extra assaulters over here. I think the Delta guys had already lost a couple guys before we got there.

And then while we were there, they had lost a couple more out of one of their other units. It was pretty, right? I wrote around on a little bird, right? As much as I dreamt about the little bird thing, we were Black, we were Baghdad SWAT, right? Cruise around on Little Birds once, twice, three times a night, whatever it was, all over Baghdad. So, hold on, hold on. There's a lot to unpack here. I'm really curious, you know, before, but let's just keep it to Afghanistan for your one month over there.

So, I mean, what was your impression of the difference between regular SEAL teams? Now you're over at SEAL Team 6 in Afghanistan with Red Squadron. Did you see anything right off the bat? We're not talking about, I mean, you're only two deployments into your 13 deployments. So you got 11 left over at 6. What was your first month like in Afghanistan with Red? Great question. A lot more toys, a lot more assets, and then the guys I was working with were all older.

I think our regular teams are all new. Age groups younger because you're newer, right? You get to damn neck. A lot of older guys have been there a long time. So A, just from maturity of force, I noticed that, B, from a mission planning perspective, right? just maturity of force, guys who've been around a little bit, the mission planning, what type of targets were, just all of that. The technology was a huge, right, differentiator.

We had different toys, different assets, different stuff that we could use to target our guys that we were going after. So that was kind of the biggest eye-opening, hey, I'm now in this big league unit that has some additional resources and tools, and wow, this is cool. I'm a new guy playing the breacher, new guy, just carrying the heavy shit. and love it every minute. But, right, we're only there a month, and it was, you know, you're chasing your phones and your bad guys and doing your normal thing, but Afghanistan terrain is not like Baghdad,

right? Unless you're in Kabul, right? I operate in the mountains of Afghanistan, so just the rural missions to urban missions. Was it everything you thought it was cracked up to be from the very beginning, or were you a little disappointed. I got to be honest, man. Everything, everything I dreamt about and read about and wanted to get to, I saw and I experienced and I was like right away. Fuck yeah. Nice. It was pretty legit, right? The caliber of guys you're working with are just next level, right? You're, yeah, It's, you know, everybody's tightening each other, making yourself bigger and better, and, uh, yeah.

Nice. Nice. And so what was it like jumping over to Delta? I mean, you have, you have a month taste in the training pipeline of development group. And then, I mean, shit, less than a year over from, it sounds like it's less than a year from when you showed up to Green Team to deploy with an army unit. Now you're with Delta. Yeah. Who's the, you know, the Army counterpart?

Yeah. They were phenomenal. I had a great time. I figured there'd be more, you know, the rivalry, shit talking. None of that. None of it at the operational level that I experienced, like I said, I'm still very good friends. Some of my best friends were the Army guys I worked with on that deployment. Pretty cool, right?

We're working out of Baghdad with all the sexy assets that, right, I'd been in Baghdad a deployment in half before. dreaming of all these fun assets and toys and what it would be like and now here I'm back now it's a tier one unit it wasn't you know army navy but it was army unit and a whole bunch of navy guys were still there and now we're we're hitting shit every night um that was that was that was a steep learning curve well I bet it was I mean what are some things that are different what are some things that you notice that are different between the two I mean Let's just start with the assets that you're given. I'm talking the difference between development group and Delta.

What are the differences that you noticed between... We swim more? That's it. And if you get honest with the Army guys, like half of them, be like, yeah, if I could swim better, I would have went to buds. Like, well, thanks for being honest. I appreciate that. Right on. No, great guys.

right, I've worked with operators from around the globe, right? German, Israelis, Brits, Aussies, all very similar, like-minded individuals, right? Their camo may be different. Their technology on their gun may be a little different. The funding they got for training is definitely different. But from an individual operator, all very similar. Very similar. And I would say that for the Army guys, our Army counterparts.

Very similar. Same mindset. Sure, they hadn't been through Buds. they have a different selection of pipeline. But from the operator themselves, the way they're structured, the way they operate, right? The tactics were all pretty similar, nothing that you couldn't assimilate into easy enough. So you didn't get over there and go, oh, fuck. I'm going to have to go through another selection.

I should have stuck with ROTC. Yeah, fuck. I never had to do this detour. Damn it. They, again, they were super cool. They opened me up, opened up everything, allowed me in, and I respected my talents on their team. I was arguably the outsider and a new guy. So what kind of stuff were you doing over there?

Baghdad Swat, right? Little birds to the roof, panders ground assault force, squish them in the middle, right? Night after night after night, right? Intel finds bad guy. We show up at the house. I can remember a good one where we Right these little bird pilots are shit hot Right they are

What they say they do They deliver on every single time And we're hitting you know Downtown Baghdad Thousands of rooftops right How do you find the one rooftop in the Masses that you need to land your helo on And every single night they were perfect

Every night always boom boom boom Nailed it Right well one night we come in and we land on the roof, but it turns out our pilot had land one too far by accident, right? Landed one too far. We get on the roof, one house passed our target building, ground assault fort hit the ground. They start coming up, big shootout in the stairs, right? One of my buddies, Jeremy, shot in the leg, right?

They're throwing hand grenades down the stairs. Turns out there was eight guys in the top floor that me and three other dudes would have landed. and made entry into that space, right? Because we were a little bird team to the roof, four-man team. We would have gone top down. We would have entered on to eight dudes. And that probably wouldn't have worked out too well.

Right. I got a lot of big guy upstairs scenarios where, right, you don't understand it in the minute, right? You're like, oh, fuck, we landed one house too small, too far we should have been there. Well, had we landed on the right, the odds are it would have, you know, maybe we wouldn't be here, right? It'd be a whole different story.

So, yeah, that was an average night in Baghdad. That mission was actually the first night I ever killed anybody. No shit. Brad, I had done two, first deployment, no combat, second deployment into Iraq. We'd done some shooting, but nobody that I had ever, like, engaged and saw type thing. And there was that night, there was a whole bunch of dudes trying to climb out the back window. and we lit them up and then we ended up a couple army guys ran in on the first floor of this building they were all sandbag bunkered positions on the second floor and so we pulled a Bradley fighting

vehicle into the front door this right right in front of the house and literally had the 18 year old kid behind the chain gun just start unloading into the house and so like 20 millimeter chain gun in the front yard of this house just blasting away and they all started trying to pile out the back window shit and uh so shot them a whole bunch of them and then uh how many of them it's probably four or five tried getting out um the uh we ended up sending an eOD guy in on the first floor of the house and they set a big thermobaric charge right ran out of the house right it's the army guys like okay 30 seconds it's going to go 29 30 no boom right

all right you're the demo guy you just set the demo you just said it should be blown up now it's not blown up what's up did you dual prime it you said dual prime it what kind of demo guy

doesn't dual prime something so okay now you're sitting there there's a thermobaric charge that has been actuated the clock's ticking I'm finding the difference

between Delta and death group always dual Brian. So anyway, we waited. We waited. We waited. And we're like, all right, somebody's got to go back in the first floor and hook another initiator to that charge. And you have no idea where that initiator's at if it's hung up or what's going on because you're the demo guy said it should be off. So the same demo guy had to run back in the house, set a second initiator to it, ran out and clacked it and whole house fell down. And that was, that was, that was a big, very significant moment for me in two ways. One, yeah, it. I didn't actually engage somebody for the first time. But more importantly, right, I was pissed because we missed our landing spot. Right. And you do enough of these. In hindsight, you're like, well, we're very blessed.

We miss that landing spot. Right. So, you know, it's not always bad, right? A little perspective. Look at the situation. And, yeah, we got really lucky there. So I probably shouldn't be mad that we missed the target. Yeah.

Yeah. What did it feel like to take an enemy combatant's life for the first time? Zero emotion, zero anything. Nothing's? No, it's easy. Didn't bother you one bit. Nope. To me, I've never had any issues with that.

I'm right, I'm on the right side of this. They're on the wrong side, and I had zero issues. Did you feel accomplishment? No, not really. Because what sense of accomplishment per se, right? a whole bunch of people there probably three of us shooting at the guys climbing out the back window it wasn't i just i went and did some crazy jiu jitsu move on him or something like it was just part of the team and part of the mission and how it goes down so i i've never been like well

i did that and that was me and that's just never been me let's talk about um let's just talk about Before we get to the bin Laden rate, let's just talk about any significant events that happened at Dev Group prior to the bin Laden rate. You covered it with Pete pretty good in your last couple episodes. I was on the Captain Phillips Rescue with him. You were on there. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Yep. Let's hear your perspective. How'd that go down? I thought Scabelle did a great job just describing it. I wasn't there. I wasn't one of the shooters. I'll say there's way more than three shots, right? Anybody who saw the movie and believes it was three heat-seeking sniper bullets, I got an island to sell you.

I would say, right, the other misconceived notion is right after the guys took the shots, there was one AK-47 round fired inside the life raft. I don't think that's in the movie either. So talk about hero to zero status, right? The shooters thought, okay, well, we just missed and they off the captain. So I think probably the sexiest move that night was a couple of the snipers that were on the back, fantail the ship, right? They put their long guns down. They stale their pistols, but they climbed off the back of the ship, right? Ocean waves, little rope that goes out to the life raft, and they did the commando crawl like the O'Course, right?

Down the rope on their stomach all the way to the life raft, you know, climbed to the back, stuck their guns in, and then everybody was dead. So that's that's that's the piece that that I always shared that's not in the movie Other than that right we I wasn't one of the shooters I wasn't intimately involved in it I was there with the almost hundred others that if right if they got their captain to shore We would have had to go hit some of the the training camps or some of their their facilities on shore a lot lot more booger eaters than the three we were oh shit so that's how that would have went down there was almost a hundred of us that jumped in right we didn't need a hundred to deal with four booger eaters on the on the life raft um but had they got to shore and they were within a hundred yards of shore right but they they realized that that stretch

of beach was a different tribes they would have made landfall they would have off them taking their captain so we were able to literally convince them to tie a rope to the life raft and tow him south the fourth pirate ride had got wounded in the hand during the initial assault so they'd hold him off the life raft and he's literally standing on the back of the the bain bridge with a buddy of mine um there he's got his hand bandaged right they're smoking cigarettes right he's lighten his cigarette for them and they were trying to get the the pirates in the life raft to see right i'm lighting cigarettes and he's got his hand bandaged and then my buddy's like hey tells one of the navy guys go in and get a soft serve ice cream cone i guarantee the somalis never eating soft serve

ice cream. So literally, there's the Smalley with his hand bandaged with a cigarette and his soft serve ice cream on the back of the ship. And that was us trying to say, hey, look, you know, look at your guy. He's getting treated very fairly. He's got medical attention, smokes and ice cream, you know, give up the captain and you can have some too. That clearly didn't pan out for him. Yeah, man. And arguably, he's the lucky. He's the luckiest out of all four of my if you think about it, because he's, he's in federal penitentiary in New York right now, right? The others are dead, right? He never got air conditioning in Somalia.

He certainly didn't get heat. I guarantee he's got free college, eye care, dental care, three meals a day. He's living the dream in the federal penitentiary compared to where he would have been in school. I mean, shit up there. They probably have his whole life planned out for him and donations and everything for what he gets out, right? For sure. So, wow, wow. But what else?

What else? That was the only real, right, there's the standby where something happens, you go. That was the only real spin up for a true standby mission, which was a, you know, okay, boom, go, go fly away, do the jump package in. That was the only one of those I did during my time. Did you lost anybody throughout your career? A lot of us. If I go through the contact list of my phone, there are 43 names in my contact that are dead. how many operational almost all almost all of them yeah a couple suicides but yeah almost all

who is the first person that you lost in combat uh mike coke it's in my green team class um then uh the badger there's a there's a list all guys i went through green team with nope nope no uh different squadrons um red did pretty well right squadron i was in squadron i was in We dodged a lot of bullets in a lot of different situations, right? A lot of my friends in different squadrons, not so much. Yeah, right? I mean, it's all fun in games, and these deployments are great, but they're not the most safe. And, right, you guys get zipped, just about every deployment, every other deployment, right?

Yeah, that was, talk about faith and my journey. um right from 9-11 for everything though all of basically the global war on terror i i saw a lot of it grow and change and i saw a lot of really good people not come home through it and uh and and that the way i dealt with that right without going crazy was i chalked it up as that was god's plan, right? I knew that if I got shot in the face tomorrow going to work, that was it. That was God's plan. It was what it was. I had done enough of these deployments and seen enough of, you know, guys not coming home for one reason or another, being bad luck or whatever. And so I think the more I dealt with the death, the closer I was with the God connection of like,

okay, that justified it for me. In some weird way, that was the piece, the Band-Aid I put on. in the moment to chalk it up is okay well it is what it is and i got to get back to work interesting so you never really lost faith going you know within within the seal teams think a lot i lost most of my faith when i was challenged when i got out by our own government and that when i didn't understand it and i was confused and i didn't have a community and had been cut off right when i was in dude like how do you deal with death like you're the same job i did you're the same job i did you You know the deal, right? It's part of the job.

And certainly, you're going to keep deploying and do this for as long as I did. If you're not, if you're not absolutely comfortable with where you're going, if you get shot in the face tomorrow night, maybe you're not going to be as good of an operator as you should be. And so for me, in those moments, I always was much more, I tried to place my confidence in, okay, well, that was, I don't understand it. But that is, since I don't understand it, somebody else must. I'm hoping, I'm betting on it, and hopefully I'll have some understanding of this at some point.

Were you married during this time? Yeah. How was your wife handled on the operational pace? I'm divorced. It's, right? It's tough. Before I got married, I was like, hey, look, just so you know if work isn't my first priority, probably not going to come home to deal with any other priorities you and I may have.

And so I was married for nine years, home for less than one. Both my kids were born three years and a week apart, so I was clearly home on the same deployment cycle. Divorce rates through the roof in the community, right? I think everybody does fine with, oh, your husband's in the day. There could be stuff happened after extortion. Right, a couple months after the bin Laden rate, everybody's on the high. Then extortion goes down, 22 friends in one night.

You talk about, we call it Pink Squadron. That's the wives and girlfriends. And you want to talk about some social pressure of, it's time to retire, time to get out, time for you to move on. Think of that, A, the amount of loss. Think then the pressure from the wives to the other husbands that are in the man you know how many RPGs I've seen come by a ramp on my 47 a lot every single one you're like oh man glad that didn't hit and then one hits so um they puts it in perspective really quick certainly for your loved ones how about your kids too young to understand how are you

how is your relationship with them now good because I got out right um I got out they were young enough that, right, they knew dad went on long trips. Those were deployments or short trips were training trips. I've done the math. I never put them to bed for more than like 14 days in a row without another trip. Right? Never home, more than about 14 days for 14 years plus. Do you think that, I mean, this is, I've done like 250 of these now at this point, at least 50% of these interviews have been military guys talk about the same things every single time you know there's there i mean it's every every story is obviously unique to that individual but i mean the arc is damn near the same every single time i mean what are what are some would

it even be fucking possible especially in a command like that you know to where you can be home for more than 14 days in a row to put your kids down. You can be home for more than 14 days. There were those options. You could raise your hand and say, hey, I need to come off the speeding train, but think about it. There's only a handful of people on this job doing this job. And the numbers are not good, right? The year I left the SEAL teams, the SEAL community had a net gain of one new operator. So that's going to, I know that I know the operator, the individual is going to be like, hey, guys, I need to take a break because I didn't get to put my kids down, you know, last week. But I mean, when you see the, I mean, you just said it,

the fucking net one, net plus one that year. That's it. In the middle of, of the longest fucking war that the U.S. has ever been in, we got a fucking net one. That's a problem. That's one. And so what I'm kind of getting at, you know, somebody that was over there and just, you know, my own career in the regular SEAL teams, which was, you're still fucking gone all the time. And, you know, the retention sucks. People are getting out, left and right. I mean, how, I guess you see what I'm getting at. Like, it would have to come down from the top.

Do you, do you think there is a way for, for the sake of retention that guys can get more time with family, with their kids, with their wives? I'll give you an example. I did, right? I'd never asked for anything. The longest break I had in my career was selection and training to get into my former command. That's not a break. That's nine months of just kicked in the nuts. That was my longest break, right?

I had 13 straight tours, raised my hand every time, volunteer, volunteer at the end, right? Post-Bin-Lodd mission, hurt my neck. I go to my master chief, and I'm like, hey, master chief, I need a break. My family's imploding, like, medically something's wrong. I can't drink a beer without my arms going numb. Something's off from the crash, I don't know, but, something's off, look, will you send me to go be a green team instructor or something so I can take a wrap off for 18 months? I'm like, look, I'll even go, I'll go get my master's

degree. I'll pay out of my own dime, professional development, whatever. I just, I need to be home. I need to do something for me. I'm getting divorced. Like, I've got to figure out how to slow down. He's like, listen, I've got to move somebody to this other squadron and I got your name on that billet. I'm like, I know, but that's not a, that's not a stay-at-home billet. That's a deployable billet. He's like, I know, but I got to put somebody there and we don't have enough people and I've got your name earmarked for that. I'm like, well, Master Chief, look, I've never asked for anything. My family's melting. My neck is broken. Like, I got some shit going on. I need to figure out. Can you please find something? He came back a week later.

It was like, no, it's the only option you got. So part of the reason I got out. Fuck, man. So, so can it be fixed? I hope so, right? Could it be fixed? I think so. The priorities at the time were mission success, not Sean Ryan's mental health. Matt Bisson, that's personal wealth and any of that.

How do you think that worked out in the long term? You think that worked out wealth from the burn. You always take care of your people first. That's right. They didn't take care of their people, right? 9-11. I saw a lot of changes, a lot of changes between here and here, right? I saw the tactics change.

I saw the leadership change. I saw by the time I got out, right? Every major officer I knew was writing themselves up for their own awards, and they were going to get promoted off the number of missions they ran, not off the number of bad guys they caught or doing the right thing. It was, okay, number of missions, amount of awards, all this nonsense. And then I saw the rules of engagement slowly starting to. to change, right? Making things more dangerous for us, right? So you'd have the Admiral McCraven's

coming in saying, okay, well, you can't use your dogs anymore. You can't go at night. Like, wait a second. We only go at night because it's safer to the force. We bring our dogs because our dogs save our lives nightly. But now the leadership saying don't bring your dogs because the locals are complaining about dogs being unclean. What? What? Are you fucking kidding me? That was Admiral McRaven? We had so many different officers and congressional delegations, right? We'd have congressional delegations come over. They would ask us, hey, are these new rules of engagement prohibitive costing you more danger on target? And our officers would be like, nope, nope, all good. Our senior enlisted master chief, I can remember a master of him, I'm not going to name his name,

but he stood up in the meeting with the congressional delegation and said, well, with all due respect. I don't, I don't believe what the officer over here is telling you, I'm the one going on the ground. And yes, it is making it more dangerous for us. Nobody was, nobody was communicating those things. I saw that slowly happening over and over and over as we're sent back to Iraq and Afghanistan, right, risking our lives. Well, well, the leadership is making it harder and harder for us to do our mission. And all of that was adding up to part of the reason why I was like, I, I'm no longer signing my name on the dotted line to work for the idiots. Damn, man.

I thought the leadership over a dev group was. Oh, it has its strengths and weaknesses. It was better. I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm not saying it's shitty. But I'm saying we've definitely had our less than stellar, right? When we get into talking about all the book drama, right, when that all hit, right, I reached out to my commanding officer that I had just left the squadron.

I'd known him for eight years. I'm like, sir, right? The only thing I've ever been taught, if there's an issue, you communicate with leadership immediately, and that's exactly what I did. You know what that SEAL officer in charge of the SEAL community did? He replied, delete me. That's the only correspondence I've ever gotten from any leadership in the SEAL community since I wrote my book or anything, period.

Wow. So, you're going to talk about leadership issues. I'd say the community has a few. Yeah, I'm not going to argue that. Jeez. All right, well, let's move in. Let's go to the bin Laden raid. Let's talk about, when did, I mean, just from the,

when did that pop up on your guys' radar? We just got home from a deployment. You just got home from Afghanistan. Like, eight days prior. they pull 24 most senior of us in in the squadron and briefed us up. They said, hey, look, we think we found him. We want you guys to plan the ground assault option. Eight days after deployment.

Yeah. Right after eight, 10 days, something like that. Just come home. I should have been on leave. They pulled us in from leave and pulled the 24 most senior in the squadron. Did you have any idea? That's what they were going to talk to you about? Um, no, no, I had no idea. And I actually had a medical appointment that I couldn't miss the morning that they were pulling these guys down to this other facility to read them in. And I'm like, hey, guys, I've got this medical thing at the doctor. I've set up, you know, is it cool if I miss this? Or do I need to miss the doctor's appointment to hit this brief? And they're like, no, you're good. Just drive down when you're done. So I finished my appointment and drove down. And then when I showed up at the facility, they'd already given the guys the brief and said, hey, look, we think we found the guy. Um, we want you guys.

guys to plan the ground assault option. Boom. So then we got to work. How do you plan that? Just like we've done any other mission, right? The enlisted guys at the bottom who actually do it start coming up with the courses of action. We're somewhat limited on the way we could tactically action the target based off where

it was. Right. In Afghanistan, we'd grown very comfortable with not flying the helicopter to the compound, right landing 20 kilometers away and patrolling in so right we're going to pick the lock on your door we'll get you while you're sleeping don't wake up anybody in the neighborhood that was that's much more of what we like to do but because of where his compound was in the city the odds of us landing five kilometers away patrolling through the city remaining undetected was was low so had we been compromised on that patrol right he would have left the building so

So based off the building, everything we were seeing, that drove us to say, okay, well, let's go straight to the target. Let's fly the helicopters. And that's where that plan was started, right? Did you know that you had those, the new latest and greatest blackhawks? I don't know anything about any crazy blackhawks. Okay. You can talk about them all you want, but I'm not saying anything.

Did you know you were going to get fancy helicopters to fly in for the mission? Not immediately. Walt's not going to come after you anymore after this fucking release. Not immediately. Not immediately. Fucking to you that or any of the other guys. But so you had no idea. When did you have an idea those were coming?

In the mission planning. During the mission planning, they told us about certain assets that we could use that had certain skills that we needed. and so some some discussion whether we truly needed it or not and and ultimately it was yes so how long did you guys have to plan the operation two weeks two weeks long as i've never i've never rehearsed for any mission right 13 deployments never rehearsed for a single mission every deployment every go do go to your plan brief the team roll out the door and go the only mission i ever rehearsed for slipping long no much i matter i ever had time how so can you talk about the about the two weeks from what we did uh briefed to execution i mean what was the pace like what was

came up with our plan and then just started started rehearsing our plan um with a mock up that we that we trained on um but again even even rehearsing on a mock up where you don't know the inside of it is kind of irrelevant right we knew kind of the outside layout and so you could you could go get a false sense of security running a running a dry run on a compound for time but if you don't know what's in the house and what's going to happen in the house you're getting a false sense of security of oh we ran this in three minutes we cleared it in three minutes where you're clearing a structure with paper targets and without any interference right um so yeah we spent a week week or two doing that went out to another state did some more rehearsals with the helicopters and then

came back i could remember um is this like you wake up rehearse all the way through the night rehearse just all hours of the day just rehearsed day night and then when we weren't there we'd we'd give the people like hey can you update this on the mock update update it we'd come back the next morning and hit it again or whatever whatever it was and just constant rehearsals yeah what did it feel like to get that brief especially not have no idea you're you come back from a medical appointment and it's look at your buddies the 24 that are going on and they're like hey we're fucking hitting the number one guy that doesn't get you excited something's wrong that's what i'm fucking saying like that's that's a you're like holy fuck

let's go right um i'd i'd been involved in one other spin for bin Laden years prior um so this one felt much different right the one years prior right it was flowing right robes where we're seen on isr feed and he's coming back into afghanistan to make his final you know take the fight to the americans and so it was this whole there's a big shit show is what it was all the officers everybody wanted to get involved to be involved it was the closest spin of any intel they'd ever had on bin laden so they just delayed delayed delayed this big force got built they flew in like b1 bombers from the states they bombed the shit out of an empty hillside um right like three days before they're going into the mission right they're going to take out

bin laden they send me and another guy over to pakistan to do some stuff there so i'm literally on the pakistan side of the border dressed in Pakistani uniforms with it with a Pakistani element and my guys are on the other side of the border they're dropping bombs on a whole bunch of empty mountains and you know two weeks later they're like okay bin laden wasn't there and they call us a home. So that was the previous spin. This one felt much different. This one was a lot more under the radar.

It was quiet. It was like, okay, whoever lived there was significant, right? It was none of the intel that I saw was 100% proof positive. It was Ben Laden himself, but it was somebody significant. It's okay. Whoever lived there was going to have a bad night, but we would figure it out. I remember in one of the Intel manuals, right? I don't even know who put these together, but I'm breezing through it the first couple days.

Like on page one or two, I see a statistic where it says you have up to a 70% chance being shot down on the helo ride in or the helo ride out. Wow. And I don't know who came up with that statistic. There was intel people at all levels thrown out different numbers and statistics. But I'm like, I'm not a numbers guy here, but 70%. That's just the helo ride. That's not dealing with the guys with the guns once you're there. Did you guys think it was a suicide mission?

I've never thought any of my missions were a suicide mission. I refuse to think that way, right? I don't care what, who I'm not allowing myself. It's like my buddy and buds who every morning was like, fuck this, I'm quitting. I'm like, I can't allow my mind to go there because I'd actually quit. So I'm like, I'm not going to allow my mind to go anywhere other than we're going to move through this target and figure it out. what was can you can you run through the plan of what you guys developed for the night that it happened and then we'll i love my mike tyson quote right somebody interviewed tyson after a fight they're

like mike didn't you have a plan going into tonight's fight and he looks at the reporter's like yeah everybody has a plan to you get punched in the face i love that quote right we had a great plan super simple like we didn't bag dad top down bottom up right we're going to squish them in the main house that was the plan pretty straightforward um we got to got punched in the face soon as we got there, right? These helicopters, helicopter pilots are amazing, right? I cannot say enough good about them. Rehearsals, everything, perfect, everything, to the second.

I'm sitting in the left door of the helicopter, right? I'm going to be the first one out, chalk one on the left side. My buddy's on the other side, right? Ropes hooked to the helo, 40 feet up. We come to a hover. It feels like four hours. It's probably two seconds. And immediately the helicopter goes 90 and starts going in.

I'm sitting in this door. Fuck. Helicopters crash very ugly, right? A plane maybe can come skidding in. My little chicken legs are hanging out the side of the helicopter and we're going in this way to the side. Buddy mine's holding me in. I'm literally falling out of the side of the helicopter as we come in and we hit. Nothing goes boom.

clear out your shorts whatever you need to do to get back in the game holy shit um man the the the way we hung up on the wall right the helicopter propped up against the wall there's a a wheel on the back section of a black hawk and that wheel is the only load bearing for the back half of the helicopter that wheel landed on the wall right had that wheel been the 10 inches this way or 10 inches this way tail section would have broke I wouldn't be here, right? The height of the wall was 10 feet. Our helicopter hit.

If you watch the Zero Dark 30 movie, the main rotor hits the ground, comes snapping off. That did not happen. Right. We hit. I jump out this door and run away. Turn around and look.

And the main rotors are still turning. They were then about a foot of hitting the ground. You want to talk about the big guy? Right? When your time's up, your time is up. And it was not our time. inches inches

landed perfectly helicopter didn't roll main rotor blades didn't snap off nothing 40 feet up you tell me how that happened why did the helicopter crash great question

okay so do you know what was happening in Washington D.C. the day before the mission that the president would have wanted to be at. I don't remember a White House Correspondence Dinner.

So the day we had originally planned to launch our mission was the day before we actually went. I was a weekend, zero a loom, so good time to go. President got involved. It was like, hey, can you guys push this one day to the right?

Can we push to the right? I want to hit my dinner. Okay, so we moved the op to the right. Not me as well above my pay grade, the op was moved to the right. The next day, the temperature was roughly 8 degrees warmer than the day prior. You know how weight, temperature affects density altitude, how a bullet flies over a mile. It affects how much lift a helicopter can have. So, hypothetically, if our, because I'm not speaking in real terms of weights, right? If our helicopter could carry, say,

a thousand pounds say we were at 800 pounds a load that's fine we operate within those margins normal the next day eight degrees warmer temperature we didn't have the lift so what i've been told is we got into the to the target area our pilot was at full throttle and we settled with power because he didn't have enough ass to keep the helicopter in the air so why did we crash because President Obama needed to hit the White House Correspondents Dinner. You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Eh, that's a portion of it. Wow. Unfucking believable, man. The only political shots I take in No Easy Day, right? I make two political shots because I hate all politicians. Biden.

right he was VP at the time we meet him after the raid and and he's like literally handsy like trying to rub guy's shoulders and like tell him bad jokes in their ears like we're not teenage girls with ice cream here dude like come on it's like who's the drunk uncle that showed up at Thanksgiving like oh that's the vice president like okay that makes sense oh shit and then and then Obama Obama was great right super smooth we we all stood up there got our photo with them you know gave a great speech and then he invites us all to the White House to the residence for a beer. Okay. I'm very apolitical, but if a sitting president invites me and my team that just risked our lives for whatever to the White House to have a beer

with the sitting president, you go, right? You're going to go. Right. He invites the freaking women's World Cup soccer team, whatever. Like everybody goes to the White House. Here's a sitting president inviting us to the White House for a beer right after we probably got him reelected. Do you think he ever followed up with that invite? Probably not. Nope. And so I put, I bet you voted for change, too. Like, that's my only one liner in the book of like, yeah, I bet if you're still waiting for Obama to invite you to the White House for a beer, I know you just risked your life for him and you probably got him reelected.

He invited you for a beer, but you think he's ever going to fall out with that? Wow. Not surprising, though. Not surprising. So, yeah, all my buddies are jumping out the other side of the helicopter and going to work. And I'm like, they're going to fucking make fun of me later if they see me over in the corner. So I couldn't run around the front of the helicopter. The main rotor blades are still turned,

and I literally had to run down along the wall underneath. There was like three or four of us on our side, but we all ran underneath the helicopter, joined with the team, and breached one gate, and we were back in the original compound that we would have fast roped into, but about a minute delay.

So our plan had gone sideways, right? Our plan was top down, bottom up. Plan had gone completely sideways. We crashed into the compound. Second helicopter. There was no radio. EO call between dash one and dash two that we'd gone in. Were you going to be on the top or on the bottom?

We were fast roping 40 feet down into the compound. My team was clearing and securing one of the southern buildings, and then we'd all wrap into the bottom floor and go up. Chalk 2 was supposed to go to the roof and work down. As Chalk 2 came into a hover, right, you're flying a really expensive helicopter looking through toilet paper tubes, night vision, right? and that pilot looks and he happens to see we've got a parked helicopter in the compound

he doesn't know if we've been shot down a mechanical what's going on he just knows there's a parked helicopter in the compound so

he makes probably the best decision of the night that nobody will ever talk about right he could have pushed a bad position tried to do the game plan and land on the roof

the odds are he would have crashed why do you say that well I'll explain why we crashed our hover was at 40 feet. The compound was mostly 50 feet, right? That second helicopter would have hold a hover with the same weight at 15 feet higher. If we couldn't hold a hover at 40 feet, there was no way Chalk 2 was going to be able to hold a hover at 60 feet

and lip land to let his crew off onto the roof. The odds are they would have crashed. So that pilot immediately sees, says, okay, I'm going to do the safe thing, and he hovers his helicopter outside the compound into a field across the street and lands them out there. They thought they were going to the roof. Now they're outside the compound, outside the wall, and a field across the street. Shit. So, yeah, we ran, somebody ran to the door, let them in.

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slash SRS. Do it now because tomorrow it could be too late. Go to mypatriotsupply.com slash SRS. That's mypatriotsupply.com slash SRS. all right matt we're back from the break we had just left off the helo crashed the other one landed outside the compound think you guys are getting ready to link up yep um my team was tasked with securing this this building to the south of the compound was one of the other he had been on at two facilitators that that lived in the compound and one of them lived in the southern little building inside the compound so my team was tasked with that while the rest headed to the first floor of the main building the uh we got to the door a little little southern building door was locked

i know we'd made a little noise crash in our helicopters but we're professionals here right we didn't want to make too much noise if we didn't have to so my uh my buddy uh that was there with me carried a sledgehammer right he starts banging on this metal door trying to get it open up and it's it's not going to open so okay we're not going to spend five minutes banging on this thing we got to get in so i was going to use my my explosives i commented one of the first times i ever got shot at was through a door right i've had that happen multiple times now um we just crashed into their compound we just beat on their front door with a sledgehammer the last thing i'm going to do is stand in front of their door setting my charge

there. So I literally got on my knee as low as I could setting my charge and as I'm setting my charge just above me, AK-47 through the door. Holy shit. Are you serious? Wow. I picked up a little bit of frag in my shoulder. Nothing crazy, but I carry a set of bolt cutters on a pouch on my back, right? Each handle can kind of come up. I can pull it out, cut my old bolt cutter set up. We got back from the mission. I was going through my stuff. There's a bullet stuck in the handle. Are you serious? So we, we, we, we, we, got lucky with the crash we got lucky with 30 seconds later at the door um myself and my partner returned fire through the door blindly and everything goes quiet wow all right i got to go back up

i got to get my charge on the door i got to clap this thing off we got to get in here right we got time time's ticking um my buddy spoke arabic right so he starts calling into the house in Arabic. And I swear to God, not five seconds go by and you hear the metal latch on the door inside and they're getting ready to come out. Like, why didn't we try this when we got here? This would have been way simpler, right? Just come on out, guys. Door opens up. It's a female holding the baby, two kids behind her, her husband laying dead just inside the door. Perfect Arabic to my buddy. You killed him. He is dead. Talking about her husband. Wow. Pulled her out, right? Women and kids away, cleared the guns, cleared all the area, left them there, left the dead guy there, and then

we rolled into the main house. While all that was going on, right? Did you guys know where he was going to be? Who, bin Laden? The assessment was assessed that he most likely lived on the third floor of the compound, assessed, right? Assessed was Khalid, his son lived on the second floor, and another facilitator on the first and another facilitator in this outbuilding. That was the laydown of what they assessed.

Right, the guys from Chalk 2, it landed outside the wall. They came and got let in the compound. Now everybody's hitting the bottom of the main house, right? Are you guys hitting the main house simultaneously, or did you want one door on the house? The way the house was rigged, it had multiple doors to go in, but it had been configured on the inside to secure the stairwell going up, right? And we got in one side of the house and there's a reinforced metal door at the bottom of the stairs. Sean, maybe hiding somebody upstairs if you have a reinforced metal door at the bottom of your staircase, right?

Maybe a sign that you're hiding somebody upstairs, right? So all of these things you're thinking through, you're like, okay, shots fired at the first building. They want to get jiggy, right? We've got reinforced metal doors at the bottom of their stairs. That's odd, right? A couple charges and that went away. No power. Pitch black, good night vision.

It's not like you see in the movies with Team America here to kick your ass and clear left, clear right, right? We're very calmly and quietly clearing the space. Got up to the second floor. There had been an adult male and his wife engaged on the first floor. In the stairs up to the second floor. what I remember, right? Seal in front of me. It just shot Khalid up the stairs, right?

Khalid was bin Laden's son. We'd been told we think Khalid lives on the second floor. We're literally standing on the second floor. There's a ladder, stairs that go up to a landing and up. A little head pops down looking at us on the ceiling. How did he, did he hear you guys? He had to have, right? I mean, the, anybody inside the house had plenty of time to wake up.

They heard helicopters hovering, helicopters crash, they'd heard muffled gunfire, some explosions, right? Outside buildings, first floor of the main building, and then now we're in the house. So they had had more than enough time to go, to assume there's somebody here that's... Is it true that somebody yelled to Khalid in Arabic? He came out and then was popped. Didn't yell? Whispered. It's the sexiest move I ever saw in the SEAL teams. whispered Khalid's name you're on the second floor you see a head peek down the leg peek down the wall look down at us try and see who's down there couldn't couldn't tell right it's pitch black we're quiet we're not hey it's America none of that and uh that same seal right sat right next to me in the heel of crash right

um in front of me on the stairs and he literally whispers Khalid's name Khalid Khalid had heard gunfire all this stuff then he hears somebody whisper in his name not yelling it nothing aggressive

peeks around the corner and gets popped in the head holy shit falls down rolls down a couple sets of stairs AK-47 right he was literally right around the corner

of the stairwell with an AK-47 had we made our way up the stairs all right he would have popped the point man point blank as we rounded the corner, maybe the rest of us. More importantly, he would have slowed our assault down, right?

We'd given ourselves 30 minutes on target with a 10-minute window to spare. And, yeah, had he stood at the top of the stairs shooting down, that would have slowed our assault up the stairs. I've had to assault years ago. There was a guy that's top of stairs shooting down at us. And literally, we threw a whole bunch of hand grenades up the stairs and then ran up right behind him. it's not not the prettiest way to assault a fixed position yeah um so thankfully right from a from a

historical move standpoint that was epic was that rehearsed or that just fucking happened like all pull it out in the midst of stress and pressure and send it and that is what i love damn that's amazing that's just come on who thing i wouldn't have thought of that Did you say anything? No, I wouldn't have thought of any of that. That was fucking genius. I didn't think of any of that. But you got to think, right, now you just heard some guy answer to the name Khalid, right?

We've heard all the guys downstairs got guns, right? I got shot out at the first floor. So, okay, whoever is in this house is putting up a fight and trying to hide. Right. So, okay, significant. At least chalk that up in the back of your mind as you're, you're, moving through the target that, okay, maybe the Intel folks are correct for once, right? There was a ton of different Intel people involved in this.

The girl from the Zero Dark 30 movie, she was always 100%, right? She wasn't a hot redhead, but she was always 100%. There was other intel people we had there. Some of them be 50%, 70. She was always 100%. So, yeah, you're thinking, okay, all these little pieces, these are all little signs that are adding up in the back of your head. step over Khalid and head up to the third floor how much interaction did you guys have with

the woman the CIA check yeah tons tons she was there when she briefed us in she I sat next to her on the flight over um the movie does a great job portraying how like feisty smart she is she wicked smart right yeah I'll leave her that all right so you're moving up to the third deck third floor Point Man in front of me again. Same guy. Same guy, whispered Khalid. Head pops out the door at the top.

Point Man takes a couple shots and the head disappears into the room. We don't, right, we kind of skipped over my 13 deployments, right? One of the biggest things that we had learned and evolved through was, right, the tactics we were taught, CQB, right? It's hostage rescue clearance when you're in a building, right? it's all about speed well over time we were using these old school hostage rescue tactics to assault buildings where there was no hostages in right so so why do we need to throw a flash crash in the room and then immediately run in here and do our clear left clear right you know old school cqb stuff when there's no hostage in here wouldn't it be much safer to stay at the

door of the room and like pie the whole door from the space where you're much safer and less chance to getting shot back. So we had started evolving our tactics, right? It was no longer hostage rescue clearance. It was combat clearance. And combat clearance meants were slower, much more methodical. There was no reason to just run in the room and clear things. So it makes a hell of a lot of sense. Right? Much safer. And trust me, the swamp in the community didn't want to evolve to those tactics, but over time it was it was saving lives nightly by not rushing into the room, right? Who do you call the swamp of the teams?

Yeah. Any of the old school guys that are still there? I mean, are they are there is the swamp at dev group as well? There's a swamp everywhere. Okay. I think there's swamp or just the so there. So there's. I mean, I mean, that's where all the, that's where all the teams tactics come from is

from development group. But, I mean, well, at least when I was in, when you go to assault, so all of that, it just comes down from you guys. And so, I mean, it just, just fucking shame to hear that there are people over there that are delaying. Not everybody, but any organization, there's the old school guys in the organization that don't want to change, right? And they want to do things the way they've always done it. And what they've always done is fine. And that's fine by them.

no judgment. I'm somebody who likes to evolve and adapt. And when there's people dying because of a tactic, I really think we should evolve that tactic. Yeah, right? I would share that sentiment. Kind of makes common sense. Yeah, yeah.

Where did that change come? Where did combat clearance come from? Was that, was that from? Guys like me and other operators that were operating and we just continually go to our leadership, right? I did eight years at the command and you're just deploying, deploy and deploying. And so I wasn't a. senior guy, you had a kind of middle management.

I mean, it's just so different than, you know, it's completely different than everything that I've been trained. I've never done combat clearance. I was out before that got to, you know, the vanilla side. But one of the missions we did with the, with my Army counterparts, right? And a good seal friend of mine was right there when it happened, right? They blew the door. As soon as the breach goes, you run in, right?

First four guys, four man entry. My breach, first four. First three went in. They had a sandbag, bunkered PKM at the end of the hallway. So everybody ran right into the PKM bullets. Right. My buddy, I won't mention his name, but he was literally standing there at the door and all three fell right in front of. Fuck, man.

Right? So you tell me how many times you need to be like, hey, guys, this tactic of like blowing the door and running in, if there's not a hostage in there that we need to save, why are we taking that risk to force? Yeah. Simple question. So we had evolved to that, right? So this, the Bin Laden mission, we knew there was no hostages, right? They're not holding somebody on the third floor. So there was no reason to be to rush, right, to do the old school tactics of run into the room.

And so cleared to the door of the room, looked in, and he's basically twitching at the foot of his bed. There's two women in the room. Ben Lodden's is twitching at the foot of his headshot from the guy coming up the stairs. There's two women standing there in the room, right? So is he still alive or is it just nerves? It's pretty, pretty twitchy. I'd say he's done. Headshot.

Cover the headshot, right? We didn't want to shoot him in the face. Nobody wanted to. We wanted the photo, right? The rules of engagement were capture or kill, right? None of this was go in and kill everybody. I've never been on a mission in the SEAL teams where they said go in and kill everybody. Never.

It's always capture or kill. And we had 30 different lawyers show up and brief us on this. Why was he engaged while we were coming up the stairs? Because the only thing he exposed was the head. Stuck his head out the door to look at the guy coming up the stairs and was engaged. Within the rules of engagement for that point, man. Why? Because he could have produced a gun.

around the corner, right? Khalid down the stairs had had a gun in hand. Guy in the first room I cleared had a gun in hand. So third floor had more time to set up a defense than anybody on the second and the first, and everybody else had got a gun on the first and second. So for the point man to think, okay, bin Laden's armed well within the rules of engagement. We'd been briefed. Part of the intel packages was, hey, they have the house rig to blow, or they're all wearing

s-vests, and when you get in there, they'll martyr themselves and kill you guys too. So again, rules of engagement, point man coming up the stairs, only sees the head well within the rules of engagement to take that shot. Now he's laying the foot of his bed, two women in the room, right? Same point man, grabs the two chicks and pushes them back against the far wall. Right, had they had a vest on or something, he would have taken the brunt. Turns out they didn't. pushing back against the far wall and and that's basically target secure right we finished clearing the third floor and it's okay um question the women and kids right trying to get a name

for the for the guy uh the women gave us an alias did you shoot bin laden on the ground yes you did yeah how many times a couple we're at the body and the body and the body how did that feel don't fucking tell me like i'm just doing the job bullshit you just fucking killed you shot i didn't kill bin lan i've never said i killed ben long i'm i'm correcting myself you shot him as he was twitching at the fucking edge of his bed and you didn't i don't know what that counts for but come on you didn't feel anything no sense of accomplishment Retribution, this guy fucking brought down the twin towns. We had a long way to get home still, right?

I think everybody was still very focused on, okay, right? We've got one helo down, right? Let's think big picture here, where we are in this situation. Yeah, we got knucklehead down, but... Did you know it was him? Man, looking at him, it looked like him, right? The women gave us an alias. The kids confirmed it.

We went back to the women, the women then confirmed it. We all carried photos of him, right? And all the photos we carried, his beard was gray and his little, like gray hair. I searched his bathroom on the shelf just above his sink just for men hair dye. Get the fuck out of here. Are you serious? He's been dying his beard. That's why his beard's pitch black and all the photos.

Oh, shit. So, yeah, right? We got a helo down. We got a lot of stuff going on. We're very far from home, right? You've got an hour and a half helo ride into a country that's, that's got surface to air missiles and they're way different

than what's going on in Afghanistan and so okay we got the clock's ticking 30 minutes on target so I started taking the photos a buddy of mine was there we literally he had a camelback

he took the hose of his camel back and dripped water on his face we took the sheets off his bed washed all the blood off his face I had bought I was the supply guy so I bought everybody in the squadron digital cameras

Right? Because we knew, right, if we had the body going out in our helicopter and then we got shot down on the way out, how do you have proof on your helicopter, right? So multiple digital cameras, taking photos, DNA samples, different helos. And then they're like, all right, you guys bag him up. So we had the body, drug him down the stairs by his feet. Nice. Right? I can shut my eyes and I can remember.

the sound of his hollow skull, bouncing down the stairs as we drug him down, drug him over his son's dead body, down to the first floor and shoved him in a body bag. Nice. At that point, right, uh, officers getting on the horn saying, hey, confirmed, we've got them. They're, uh, our EOD guys, we had one EOD guy on the mission. He starts running. around. He gets on, somebody gets on the radio says, hey, prep it to blow. So our E-O-D guy starts run around the house, setting thermal barrack charges in all these rooms. Like, what are you doing? He's like, well, they said prep it to blow. Like the house? I'm pretty sure they're talking about the helicopter. He's like, what helicopter? I'm like, dude, you need to go look in the car

in courtyard. We had crashed so quickly. There was no radio call between Chalk 1 and Chalk 2 that we'd gone in. The whole target gets complete. And then some of the people in Chalk 2 found out that we had crashed in the assault. They did not know. Everything was happening so quickly that that hadn't been communicated. So our EOD guy grabs a thermal barric charges, right, runs out to the helo, starts rigging that to blow. We're moving all the women and kids around the compound to safety.

We're doing the 30-minute or 30-second shopping spree at Walmart, whatever, you know, running around, grabbing anything we could, thumb drives, computers, anything you can find um i remember our master chief getting on the horn be like ex fill the building now like no more hey two minutes like everybody out now wrapped everything up i remember running out of the building i'm carrying a whole bunch of stuff and i look over and it's the most uncomfortable weird thing you've ever seen these helicopter pilots that are never on the ground and they've got these big like aviator helmets these big black dark helmets and there's like two pilots and two crew chief and somebody had handed them suitcases of like Intel so they're their big helmet they're looking around no

guns they've got suitcases I'm like come on guys let's go um pulled them out uh we were down a helicopter right so leadership called one remaining at two backup CH 47s with backup seals and backup fuel one of the CH 47s flew into the compound right um landed picked up the other guys since we had the body. They sent my team out on the one remaining Black Hawk. So we, uh, Helo lands, we go booking out through this field, carrying the body bag, get to the helo, throw the body in, we jump in, and I'm, I may be a little sensitive because I've already been in one helicopter crash that night, and the whole cockpit is flashing

red. Oh, shit. Whole thing's flashing red. I'm like, I don't know what that means, but I don't think that's healthy, right? it's our gas gauges. So we've given ourselves 30 minutes on target with 10 minutes to spare. When I lifted off, we're at 38 minutes. So we were running on fumes.

Our helicopter still had to fly 8, 10 minutes to our other refueling helicopter. We landed. We got gas, right? Everybody thinks it was the 24 seals that pulled this off. There's some army refueler out there who joined the army to refueling helicopters, right? Not be Delta Force or anything crazy to refuel helicopters, probably for college GI Bill. And that night, that Army kid refueled us up, right? None of us would be back if it weren't for the Army kid who refueled us.

We got gas for 20 minutes, right? Now we've blown up our helicopter, so now all the radars are coming up, right? Everybody's looking in Pakistan for what's going on. And you know you still have an hour, hour and a half helo ride to the border. Wow, man. So sat on his body. the whole way cleared uh cleared into afghanistan landed turned over the body to to mcraven and the crew then we we all flew up to bogram turned over the body we were all still in our uniform when

president obama came in and gave his whole spiel on the tv like we're literally watching obama the body's laying right there let's keep going with the deba there's a lot that's about to come out that's important. And the debrief on items that were kept. I mean, this is all rolling into what you really want to talk about. So I'd just be as descriptive as you can. Yeah. I mean, we did our debrief and that was it, right? Did our debrief? Flew home. On the way home, they're like, guys, really good job tonight. You get two days off. Like, what? We showed up We landed back at the beach, right? Nobody ever meets you when you come home from deployment, but half the command of standing

there with pizza and beer. And, of course, the Navy bus. Get on the Navy bus back to the base. Why was bin Laden's body thrown into the ocean? I don't know who made that decision. It was somebody way above my pay grade. I agree with it. I like it.

You agree with it. Yeah. Why? We turned over the body to some army counterparts, some army rangers. And they're the ones who flew it. all the way out to the carrier and dumped it. I like it because it's, there's no shrine, no memorial. He's just simply gone.

There's no, even Al-Qaeda has not said, hey, he's still alive and we've got him. Like, prove you've got him. He's gone. Done. Erased. Deleted. Never to be seen again. Right on.

I kind of like that, right? If there was some memorial or, you know, shrine or where they buried them, maybe that would be a little different, I don't know. Makes sense. but it also created a lot of conspiracy theories but you know government's got the photos they can release them they can do whatever they want was that photo there was a photo that was circulated there's no that was bullshit you didn't take that photo all right all the all yeah any of the stuff online is not accurate it's all so we were talking about you know the the the helo ride

that where you had to think about, you got to think about putting a bullet in bin Laden. Now, I think everybody processed it when we landed in Boggroom, right? We landed in Boggham, we did our debrief, and then we left the hangar, right, downloaded all our gear, like we were flying back a couple hours later. So literally, download, debrief download, okay, all that was done, and we had a couple hours and and we went to some of the some of the old area that we could hang out at bogram and hung out there and there were some TVs that guys were turning on and that's where the story was breaking in the states right like bin Laden had given or Obama had given his spiel right

there's the stuff university guy university's going crazy there was some like ticker tape at like a baseball game or something all these things were were breaking and and I would say that was the first time everybody sat in the room and was like like, take a breath. I hadn't had a chance to do that until then, right? We still getting back. We still had something to do. We just got done.

Like, now it's out. Only thing you're waiting for is a plane ride home. And you got a couple hours to kill. And we all went into, like, this area and just hung out, watch some TV. Until like, all right, guys, plane's ready. And then we hopped the flight. You know, you typically stop in Germany. We air-to-air refueled on the way home, flew all the way back to the beach, landed, and good job, guys.

Two days off. I went to work both days because what do you do when the world has just exploded in such a way, right? And what? You're going to go hang out at home and feel like you're normal? No way. Everybody showed up at work, right? I see one of my good friends. I went through Green Team with him.

We spent eight years. I saw him more than I saw my family. Right? I see him the day after, two days after the mission, in our cage area at the command. I'm like, hey, Pat, are you? He looks at me. He's like, hey, man, can I ask you a question? Yeah, what do you got, dude?

He looks around, make sure nobody else is there. And he's like, hey, are you sleeping? Like, fuck, no, I'm not sleeping. I haven't slept in days. He's like, okay, all right, good. I feel normal. That was the single most emotional conversation I ever had with any time. teammate in 14 years.

No shit. That was it. Are you sleeping? Nobody ever got, nobody talked about it. Nobody talked about mental health or how you were doing. There was none of that. It was, um, so that was, that was two days after the mission. One of my best friends, like, hey, man, are you sleeping?

Because I'm not. I'm like, no, I'm not sleeping. He's like, okay, good, good. I feel normal too. Fuck, man. It was a lot. It was a lot. It was crazy, right?

And the media just hypes it up and makes it want to be crazier. And it was us. doing it yes it was very historical significant event i get it i'm more proud of the captain phillips stuff and i wasn't even one of the shooters right we saved somebody not just killed a whole bunch of knuckleheads i get that bin lond's a significant figure i'm not knocking it but it was um there was a lot it's a lot all the all the all the stuff seals training gives you all right we can go snipers shoot you know homemade bombs all the all the stuff we've been trained to do not one second and hey what do you do if your friend gets shot in the face what do you do if

you do a bin Laden mission and it's it's fucking you up at home and you can't sleep nothing so yeah that's tough damn man if you if you're always going to revert to your training yeah in a bad situation there was no training to revert to it was just man the the right from from my first deployment to that lots of missions in between and right what are you how are you evolving adapting what was changing in between that i saw it all change man i saw from the beginning to the end um yeah yeah it was tough not not any of that not any section not any second in there was any leadership ever worrying about the individual operator brand newer but was excited to be there right i know that

Okay, eighth deployment, ninth deployment, nobody was ever checking in. Like, hey, Sean, are you okay? Another three, 12 devotions in the squadron last year. Your family okay? Nobody ever asked that. Nobody once ever said, hey, your family okay? Your kid's okay?

Are you home enough? No way. And then if you did mention, hey, I got some stuff going on at home. It was like, oh boy, we're losing this. so it was uh the the expectation and the pressure certainly it at my former command grew and grew and grew and with the success of captain phillips and then with the success of bin laden all of this the expectation was okay you're going to be fine and if i'm the officer in charge we're going to do all this great stuff i'm going to look good and i don't have to worry about the side effect it's

having on my crew um but yeah the the and then shortly after the bin laan raid and all the high of that we had extortion and you want to talk about a gut punch right um that was crushing how long after the braid was extortion what august uh it's a may to august couple of months yeah heavy heavy heavy heavy heavy um and yeah i mean that that was kind of one of the final straws for me right i knew my enlistment was coming up in december um i had been talking about i didn't like the the decisions being made in in afghanistan taking away our dog saying no night missions all this nonsense i had i had joined and stayed in because of nine eleven and i did all these deployments

And I saw all this change happening throughout this stretch. And as the longer I stayed in, the more I saw our leadership, right, was promoted based off writing their own awards and the number of missions they ran, not how they took care of their guys or evolved what we were doing, right? Name a general or an admiral in Afghanistan who said the way we were doing it was wrong and survived. there aren't any there's not one there's no leadership in our military who said hey the approach we have in afghanistan is wrong we should be doing this no you're relieved and we're going to

bring in another yes man to deliver my policy of what i want you to do and so i just kept seeing more and more of that um and and yeah i knew i knew that uh the leadership uh whether panetta Admiral McCraven President Obama all giving interviews and all their stuff for their own hype

and that's that's what finally hit me and that's disgusted you yeah what was McRaven's position at the time I don't care about that guy

I could give two shits about McCraven was he I mean what was he though he was commander he was the J-Soc he was the J-Soc commander okay

yeah yeah you know I'll just put it this way. McCraven was at the command years ago, right? Before he was the commanding officer, he was not well-liked at all. Everybody always saw him as a horrible boss, at least from my level, my perspective only. He gave it when he left the squadron. He, like, had this big plaque made that hung in the team room for, years. Years later, he becomes the position he was in. Nobody liked him. Nobody liked the position

he was in. He was very involved in trying to take away the dogs and the night missions and all the stuff that helped keep us safe on these very dangerous missions. So I may or may not have been there when his plaque was removed from the team room wall. We cut it in half. We shipped it overseas to a forward operating base in Afghanistan that we were working out of, and we burnt it in the fire pit. Now, we can keep going with the McRaven references here because I'm not a fan, right? You know, I wrote No Easy Day. Hold on.

Before we get there, I'm just, we'll get there. I know we've got a lot to cover there. I just want to rewind just a little bit. You know, when you, how long was it after the bin Laden raid, where you just, you were, you left the Navy? The raid was in May. I got out in December, end of December, January 1st, or on the terminal leave. Seven months. When did you decide you were getting out?

How, how fast did you know this is it? I'd been talking about getting out before my last, I told you, we came home from the last deployment. and 10 days later, we were spinning up on the Bin Laden thing. So I'd been talking to a lot of my guys on that deployment because that deployment had slowed down. All the new rules were kicking in that were making it more dangerous for us. And I, as somebody who'd been there this whole time, was looking at this and like, this doesn't seem right.

Like, we're going backwards here. And I was getting very frustrated with how we were going backwards. I'd lived through the beginning. I'd seen all the ups and downs. And here we were at the end. And I felt like we were going backwards. Right, I was not an officer. I was an enlisted guy who stayed there and operated the entire time, right?

Our officers bounce in and out and in and out and back and forth. I was there. So I saw a lot of changes. And the more changes I saw, the less and the more senior and the more mature I got and the more the older I got and the more dead friends I earned our gain, I was like, man, maybe I'm not putting myself in the healthiest position here being sent to war by some of these idiots. And so I was very open and honest with my team that, hey, I don't know about this.

So when I got back from that deployment, probably after the Bin Laden mission now, but that's when I went and sat down with my master chief. And I was like, hey, I need a break, right? I was done operational in the squadron. No longer staying there. I'd done, very few guys stayed there that long. They're like, okay, you got to move out of the squadron and go do something different now. I'm like, okay, well, I need a break for 18 months.

If I'm leaving the squadron, give me a break. And that's when they were like, no, the only other billet we're going to give you is an operational billet at a different squadron. I was like, okay, well, if those are my options, if you're my master chief telling me my only option is this, okay, thank you for that clarity. I already knew what was going on at the senior ranks in the military and what was going on in Afghanistan. And I saw them making it more dangerous for us doing our jobs. I was like, why am I going to continue to volunteer for these knuckleheads? Well, I mean, what did the other guys think? Were they on the same page as you? Depends on where your enlistment is. You know the deal, right? Are you at 16 years? Are you at 20? How close are you to that retirement? Right? I never joined for retirement, right? I joined because I wanted to serve. And then I stayed. And then I just stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed because there was a war going on and very few of us were doing it. So I stayed. I didn't stay for the paycheck. You know there's not much paycheck there. Retirement, right? I could do 20 years and retire.

at the same amount the trombone player and the navy band does 20 years and retires right so it's not about the money um like i said i got out with a plaque with my name misspelled that's all i got so it's never been about um i don't know what it's been about but it hasn't been about it was just it was it was time for me the other guys other guys that i worked with you know maybe they're sitting at 16 years i was at 14 maybe they have two years left on there and enlistment, they gets them to 18, and then, you know, they were, they were trying to get us all with the big enlistment bonuses at 19 years. If you stay to 25, we'll give you some big money, tax-free. So they were, they were definitely courting a lot of the guys at that level. And the hook

is, if you do pass 10, well, why not stay until 20 and get your retirement? Right, I was at 14. Why not stay six more? Well, what are the odds I make it? Six. It's a pretty good odds. I made it at 14 based off the amount of friends that aren't here, right? What are the odds I make it another six? And in these six years, I'm not going to be operational where I like. You're going to put me in the leadership with all these clowns that I don't trust and respect now. I'm out. Fucking hey, man.

Damn. A lot of dark stuff going on in the world right now. And it's to the point where I don't even believe my own eyes anymore because I cannot to verify what people are saying about all the political violence, the division. I partnered with this production company called Ironclad, and we're doing an eight-part audio series on SIOPs, on why foreign countries, governments, maybe even our own government, would conduct a SIOP on its own people. And I just think that this series is going to be extremely important because it's going to

open the eyes of people on why these things happen. You can head over to sciopshow.com, order it today. I think you're going to get a lot out of this. Who's pulling the strings? Who's pulling them? Here we go again. History is repeating itself. Gold just hit another all-time high

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online courses, and they're all free. Go right now to Hillsdale.edu slash SRS to enroll. There's no cost, and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale.edu slash SRS to enroll. There's no cost, and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale.edu slash SRS to enroll for free. Hillsdale.edu slash SRS. Did you have any aspirations to write the book before you were out? I had talked to, well, we knew the movie was being made within three weeks of the mission. So the movie idea and everything that the movie was happening was every. Everybody knew that.

You mean, what do you mean within three weeks of the mission? You mean, you mean the movie was fucking being discussed before? Bin Laden dies. Three weeks within the mission, we go to Panetta's retirement ceremony, and he has at Langley, Virginia, full access to Langley, the screenwriter, producer, director. So we all knew that. Very, very loud and proud that, okay, they're making a movie out of this. But how the fuck does the government sue you for $7 million?

They didn't sue. For writing a book or whatever the fuck they state, whatever you call it, prosecuted you. They fucking took your money. They took your, they took $7 million that you earned from the book. But the director of CIA has given full access to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, to make a fucking movie. They gave the female CIA woman. They gave her permission to talk to the producers to give them the movie. That's the reason the movie's so accurate.

So we all knew, plain as day, right? We knew this was happening. We knew this was coming. And honestly, it wasn't much of a surprise. Right. Did your team know you were going to write the book? Not everybody, but I talked to a crew that I respected. and said, hey, here's what I'm doing.

What was their take? Mixed, mixed results. A key piece to explaining what I was doing was, hey, look, I'm not putting my name on it. I'm not getting out in front of it. And I think they were like, okay, that makes sense. If you can do that, we get it. Because everybody else we'd seen was beating their chest, taking credit, right? And I was like, look, I don't want any of that.

I'm not using my name. I don't have any plans on showing my face. the story. I'm a kid who read a book. I read a whole bunch of books growing up, and it's because of those books that I voluntarily did 13 fucking tours. It was those books I read about, right? It wasn't, so yeah, I don't think writing books is bad. I think if you're a seal who's done, and there's some out there, right, that have done very little and written about it a lot. So those kind of give a bad, but those are also guys. saying, hey, look at me at the same time.

So I took a very different approach. I've been there, did it. I don't want the press publicity, and I'm going to tell the story, and I'm going to do it under the radar. At least that was the approach. That was the plan, until I got punched in the face. Where do we go from here?

A book came out. Well, let me back up. Next question, right? So I get out of the Navy, I'm going to write a book. I've never written a fucking book before. How do you do this? I'm like, okay, I, um, um, I met a, a, uh, a literary agent who does the book stuff, um, talk to her. I'm like, hey, how do I do this?

I need an attorney, whatever. She had represented a former Delta Force author by the name of Dalton Fury. That was his, uh, that was his pseudonym, right? Delta Force officer wrote a book called Killing Bin Laden. interesting yeah interesting but okay um he's he now died of cancer so um Dalton fury writes this book literary agent had represented him so she's like hey i can help you i helped him through the whole process i'll get you in touch with the same lawyer we used to to do his book amazing great that's exactly what we need so former socom jag now civilian practice

presented other military authors. Like, okay, great. I think I've got the perfect. I got a lawyer. I got my literary agent. We go get a publishing deal. And I'm like, okay, how do we need to do this? Lawyer, how does this work?

They're like, okay, well, I can review the book. I've got my clearances. I've done this for other people. I'll review the book. And set, that's how it works. I'm like, okay, check. Did I know anybody who'd write a book could create some waves in the community? Sure.

But as long as my lawyer was telling me I was legal, and I'm referencing that against the movies and everything else coming out from the administration, I'm like, okay, seems to make sense. This guy's a former SOCOM JAG. He's repented a former officer who wrote a book about Bin Laden and did a 60 Minutes episode. I've got the right legal advice. Seems like the perfect fit. So boom, knock out the book. Book finishes, right? We get it published, and the book comes out.

right and as the book comes out that's when the government hears it reads it whatever and they go high and right now mind you my book came out before the presidential election and it came out before Obama's movie right before the zero dark 30 movie and I want to say it might have come out before the finish which was the book that they'd all given interviews for so my my book was a surprise to the White House and everybody else. So the DOJ is sent after me. Man, holy shit. You think getting in a gun fight's bad. I've never seen anything like. I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know that this world existed. And then my real battle started, right? three years.

So this really happened because Zero Dark 30, the president's in Panetta's movie wasn't out. Their book wasn't out. Interesting timing to all of this, right? If I look at somebody who's running for president for a second term, right, who's going to run very much so on his movie that he's promoting, that's promoting his heroic decision-making to take out Bin Laden, right?

Right. you want to make sure that narrative is out there. Well, if a nobody presents a narrative that could counter yours, whether you've read it or not, what do you do? You crush the competition, right? If you have a Hunter Biden laptop weeks before a presidential election that could upset the election, what do you do? You have 100 former intelligence officers write about the fact that this isn't a real laptop and this is all fake, and they crush the other news. Same difference. I was just a nobody.

and so they came after me and legally right so legally so lots of lawyers throwing all sorts of threats my original attorney right the guy had given me all the advice that says look i can review it he's like look they're wrong there's nothing classified in the book he's like wait till they read it they'll leave you alone there's nothing wrong i'm like they seem pretty angry here it's like what's the dude's like no you're good my guy i don't like that vibe from my attorney when i got a whole bunch of pit bulls over here yelling at me, so I hired a second attorney. First attorney continues to tell my second attorney that we had no obligation to get the book reviewed, that he had the prior authority to review it, to vet it, to make sure there was nothing classified in it,

and check the box. New attorney is like, man, I don't know that that's accurate. So, remove attorney one, bring in attorney two, and go to the pit bulls at the DOJ and say, look, I'll give up attorney-client privilege. I didn't do any of this maliciously. I'll answer anything you want. Like, please don't be so mad. Look, this is exactly how we got here. I'll go through my emails with my attorney. For the past nine months, this attorney's been guiding me through this process to this moment. So if you have a, if there's a legal problem here, let's let's all sit down and discuss this, right? That was when all this hit, right? All the drama and the press hit when the book came out, I've been taught, right? Communicate with leadership. If there's a problem,

communicate with leadership. I'd done that every time in the teams, right? If there's a problem, go hit up leadership and communicate. It's our singer biggest asset is our ability to communicate through the issues. I text message my former commanding officer. Commanding officer of my squadron who'd moved up to be commanding officer with the whole team. I said, hey, sir, this has gotten out of hand. I would love to talk with you about this and explain what's going on, open up communication. he responds back with two-word text delete me that is a perfect example of the leadership inside nsw right delete me no didn't want to talk to me didn't want to ask what happened didn't want to say hey bis you're one of our top performers you've been here for years you just left like what's going on

there was none of that it was an immediate we're going to fucking crush this dude and so i had done some It sounded like my first got out, I did some video games. I helped with a video game company, shoot some, like, advertisement type content. Well, I'd hired some buddies that were still in. They went after them, the command did. They went after any one of my friends. They absolutely, one of my friends, they told him not to even come back into work for his last year in the Navy. Are you serious?

Officer. One of my officer friends that I had actually emailed a copy of my book to before it had come out. and when they, I gave up attorney-client privilege so they could look through my computer and see the advice I got. They went through my commuter and dug up everything they could and they saw that I'd sent a copy of this book

to an officer friend who was enlisted and became an officer in the community and they went to him and were like, hey, why didn't you report him? He's like, report him for what? Like, well, he was writing a book and you should have reported him and they fucked him, right?

They screwed over probably 12 other of my friends. I mean, what do they say, I don't know, I didn't know this was wrong. I mean, we just had the president, Leon Panetta, the director of CIA, fucking have Hollywood and open the doors to Langley. They didn't care. The hypocrisy is so in your face and sick when you're sitting through it. I'm like, hey, what about the movie? They're like, well, you're not Panetta. You couldn't authorize that. I'm like, okay. What about Admiral McRaven and Obama giving interviews for this book, The Finish? Like, did anybody approve what they could talk

about or not talk about? Well, they know what to talk. I'm like, okay. well, what's the review authority? We're all operating off the same. Like, come on, guys. Right? So for, for three years. Three years, they came after me. I've never written, thankfully the book made a ton of money, right?

All the book money went into a savings account. I've never written a $50,000 check in my life. I was writing $50,000 checks a month for my attorney's fees. Because if you're the government and you have unlimited attorneys, what do you do? You outspend them. So immediately they're like, yeah, felony. Felony for what? All sorts of threats, every threat under the sun.

I'm like, I gave up attorney-client privilege. They called me in for two separate, I'll tell them interrogations. They weren't questionings. They were 12-hour sessions in the basement of the NCIS headquarters in San Diego, right? Where they, no seals in the room, just some asshole N-CIS. guys, and literally going through every step in my book, be like, well, right here, right here you talk about, you guys launched the mission out of Jalalabad. Did you know there was a mortar attack in Jalabad a week after your book came out and an

American service member was killed that bloods on your hands? I'm like, I'm sorry, did you just say Jalabad was mortared? I'm like, have you ever been to J-Bad? No. I'm like, okay, well, I've been there like 12 times. Do you know how many times it's been mortared? every time I'm like

I hate to break it to you but we have Russian contractors cooking our chow and we have Afghans pumping the shitters like it's nobody's surprised

that we have an American base in Jalalabad right didn't matter that was them just trying to to poke me

they pulled up a picture of my book of the four tube night vision goggles like right there highly fucking classified how could you you're such an idiot

how could you leak this stuff like do you get internet down here in the basement And please, please Google GPNVG night vision goggles and the manufacturer's website will pop up with all the specifications. In fact, you can buy them for $40,000. They're on sale now. Anybody can have them.

The Canadian Tier 1 unit tried to pull that shit with us. That the four tubes were classified. Yeah, that the quads were classified. So we sent them the article. Actually, they said all of the equipment that was used to take the world record sniper shot was classified. So we actually sent them the article in Ballistic Magazine that I believe, was that like two years old, Tim, two years old, said, oh, you mean all of this equipment that you guys had Ballistic Magazine fucking put in the article about you? Yep. Oh, that's classified.

Okay. So we put four dildos over the nod tubes and sent it back to them. We said, there you go, Canada. Yep. They'll pick and choose the hypocrisy. They kept saying, look, it's tactics, techniques, and procedures, TTPs. It's the same bullshit they just went after Pete Schobell on, right? Yeah, who's that, who's the guy, what's the guy's name that?

I'll say, well, I won't see his last name, but his first name's Walt, and he had the balls. Walt Allman. He's an admiral, right? I don't know what rank he is. Is Walt Allman an Admiralton? Yeah, Walt Allman. He's the guy, yeah, he went after Pete Schobell and, like, threatened him and said that he's going to, he's going to fucking ruin his reputation in the SEAL teams because he came on the Sean Ryan show. talked about an operation. Look, I love, I love Walt, but I think people change when they get

into positions of leadership. And I think that's, that's what we, that's why I left the community is because I saw these great officers moving up into a, into a realm where they became politicians. And sorry, I'm not a fan of any politician. Yeah. You know, Walt came, he got in touch with, with my attorney, you know, who's sitting right over here, Parlatory and is telling him that Pete, Pete needs to, that Sean needs to take the episode down or whatever because Pete released classified information about the weight of the boats. He said the wrong fucking way to the boats. It's like, Walt, here's what I would say to that, right?

Leadership has the balls to call Pete, who absolutely bared his soul on that episode and crushed. it, right? But NSW has the balls to call a guy like that and harp on him. But, right, recently there was a Netflix documentary, right? A Netflix documentary that came out in the past six months on the bin Laden raid. So this is a great story. On the bin Laden raid? Specifically about the bin Laden raid.

Only about the Bin Laden mission, Netflix special six months ago. The same raid that you were on and wrote a book about it and then took $7 million from you. Producer of the show calls, gets a hold of me. He says, hey, Matt, we're doing this, we're doing this interview. I've already interviewed Admiral McCraven. We're doing this whole Bin Laden thing. I'm like, listen, A, hasn't this been done already? He dies in the end.

Let's get over with the story. They're like, no, but Netflix has never done it. We're going to do our version. I'm like, okay, great. He's like, listen, we've interviewed all the Intel folks out of D.C. We just sat down with Admiral McRaven at his house for like four hours. And look, we'd love some of the operators on the ground to come in and share their story. And I'm like, really, you, Admiral McCraven just talked about it.

I'm like, what authorities, any clearances, anything that we went through to the, it's okay to talk about this? And that's when I explained to the producer. I'm like, listen, I explained my situation, how the government came after and we got to finish it. But how the government came after me and put me in debt and all this stuff. I'm like, look, I got a payment plan for writing a book and talking about this mission. Now it's been 10 years and it's supposed to be okay for me to go sit down next to Admiral McRaven and tell the story. didn't go through, right?

Well, no, I talked to the producer. I'm like, Walt Allman would never allow this to happen. So I'm like, hey, can you get me in touch with the Admiral? Right? Nobody inside the Seals has ever talked to me about anything. But I'm like, can you put me in touch with the Admiral? And the producer does. I get a call set up with Admiral McRaven.

I'm like, fuck yeah, let's do this. Call McCraven. He's in his car. He's driving. Like, hey, sir. Hey, Biss, how are you doing? What are you up to? I'm like, well, yeah, I'm a little.

conflicted. A little bit of conflicted here, sir. Let me explain my situation. I wrote a book. Hired a lawyer, wrote a book. Government came after me for that book. I now have a payment plan on that book for the next 15 years and the government just can fucking kill me if I say anything about this book. But, but now it's, they're asking me to get on a Netflix documentary next to you. He's like, oh, man, man. Don't, don't feel obligated to be on that. Like, what do they want you to do? We'll take all the credits, man. Don't worry. What do you mean? Don't feel obligate. I'm like, sir, They want the operators to get on and tell our version of the story. And to be perfectly honest, sir, if you're okay doing it, then I guess it's okay for us to do it.

You could literally hear him shitting himself through them. I'll bet you could. Right? Go, Matt, Matt, Matt, no, no, you don't need a... Don't feel obligate. I'm like, sir, don't worry, I'm not. I'm not going to be involved in this. I still got a payment plan for talking about it.

Like, was there some authority that allowed you and other people to participate in that interview? Well, Matt, I know what to talk about and what I'm like, okay, great, I'm sure you do. Oh, he knows. He knows. Yeah. Oh, okay. So he then switches gears. He's like, well, Matt, maybe I can connect you with somebody who can help with your situation. Yeah. Like, oh, sir, that'd be amazing. It's so thoughtful of me. Amazing that now, all of a sudden. He's been thinking, Admiral. When you don't want me to go on the Netflix documentary and you want to now try and help me. So he sets me up with a civilian former seal. He's now a civilian. He's now a civilian.

aid to the sitting admiral. So I'm like, great. I get on the phone with this guy. This guy takes my call. This guy actually was phenomenal. Former Team 6 commander, older guy, now a civilian. Long conversation with him. Broke down the whole thing, everything I've been through.

He's like, man, can you back this up with documentation? I'm like, absolutely standby. Blasted him all the documentation with everything to back up, everything I've been through. And everything goes quiet. Why would Walt Allman allow Admiral McCraven to do a Netflix special? Well, that's my question. But he wouldn't let Pete Scobel come on and talk about... I'll get a call after this interview.

Pete Scobel got a call after his, and they're trying to smack us on the wrist. But who's calling Admiral McRaven and telling him to shut the fuck up? I'll bet Walt isn't calling him. I bet Walt's not calling him. Wonder why? It's further up the food chain, all right? Yeah. So unfortunately, right, I'll give you another example in the height of my, my issues.

I contacted a former seal. I won't name names, but he has an eyepatch. And he's a congressman out of a state... You mean Dan Crenshaw? I'm not naming names. Another one of my favorite people. Sir, here's my situation. You know, Dan actually sent me a message.

I should fucking read this to you. But basically, he tells me, I brought. something up about him. And I never even met, I gave him the courtesy of not even mentioning his fucking name. It was about his birthday party where he hired Steve Ayoki to DJ's birthday. I mean, that can't be fucking cheap, right? Especially on a congressman's salary. And I brought that up. And Dan sends me a message that says his boys over at six are really upset with me that I brought that up. They're going to, they might come beat me up. His boys at six. boys over at six.

Well, to infer he's got boys that are underhand. I don't know why a congressman would be threatening me with SEAL Team 6, but I'm still fucking waiting. This is actually a couple of years ago. I still have not had my ass kicked by a couple of guys over at 6. But Dan Crunch. He fits with all these fucking people you're talking about. So I called him, right?

He's a sitting congressman. He's a former officer. And throw him roll, please. He was getting ready to release his book. So I call him up. I get a conversation with him. I said, sir, here's my situation. I hired an attorney. The attorney gave me bad advice. Book was published. I've given up attorney-client privilege, cooperated everything I can to fix this. They've still come after me. We can get into all the

other stuff that I'm dealing with. I said, sir, can you help me out with this? He's like, well, you know, I'm about ready to publish my book and I'm not getting it reviewed. I'm like, well, sir, same letter of the law that they came after me for. failure to seek pre-publication review. I didn't get pre-publication review because my lawyer told me I didn't have to and he could do it. Like in your case, you know you have to get it reviewed. I'm here telling you, confirming you have to get reviewed or the government's going to come after you. He's like, yeah, no, but I'm not going to write anything classified in my book.

I'm like, there's nothing classified in my book. They said there was. They went through it. They said, no, there's nothing classified in it. You just failed to seek review. I'm like, so if I only thing I failed to do was seek review, You're willingly going around that obligation and you don't give a shit. He's like, yeah, but I'm not going to write about anything classified in my book.

That was the answer. Never talked to him again. So he published his book, no review. Nothing's happened. He's kept his money. He's a sitting congressman. I got a payment plan. So to say I've been a little.

I guess you're not one of Dan's boys over at sick. Definitely not Dan's boys at six. That's a pretty ridiculous statement if I've ever heard one. yeah you have been targeted man so so the first two years right it came after me um i signed an agreement called a proffer agreement and the lawyers can explain what that is but it's basically like hey listen i'm gonna i'll give you full disclosure i'm not lying about anything and unless you find some sort of smoking gun like we're good so they're like okay cool so i've full everything target what anything they wanted to answer anything they wanted to hear about whatever went

through it all, lie detector tests, two interrogations in the basement where they're accusing me of all this nonsense. And they finally come back after about two and a half, three years, they're like, okay, we'll leave you alone. But you, and there's nothing classified in the book. You just failed to seek pre-pub review. And we want 100% of the money back. I'm straight suicidal at this point, right? I've had a gun in my mouth over this. I am fucking, I've lost my community. You've legitimately had a gun in your mouth, or this is a figure of speech? No, legitimately in my mouth. Got that bad.

Yeah, I got out of the teams, my whole community, my world, everything was ripped from me, right? Every single one of my friends. I didn't have friends outside the SEAL teams. Gone, boom. And if you talk to me, I was getting comms from guys on their wife's phone or some prepaid 7-Eleven phone saying, yo, dude, when I get out, I'll come up for air. But if anybody's hot even talking to you from the command, they'll kick us out of the command. they'll kick us out of the command.

So it was this big, this big, hey, anybody connected to BIS got fucked. Man, what the, you know, I mean, this is just, an hour ago, we were just talking about retention and recruitment and how development group had a, what, plus one, was that development group or the entire SEAL? NSWWED. NS, out of the entire fucking SEAL team.

We had a plus one seal for the entire fucking year. And now they're just, and now that, now they have allowed, they've allowed a movie, they've allowed books, they've allowed everything, they target you, they target you for what, because your fucking book went out before the president's movie. And, and they are going to, they are going to fucking lynch people and the seal team's just for associating with you. So, over, over, over what they say is classified. But there was nothing classified the book. They can't even fucking run the classified operations because they don't have the manpower because their fucking egos are so, it's just, it's just fucking, and they're going to burn dudes for even associating with you.

All the headlines. When the exact same material went out and all these other avenues. Yep. And they're going to destroy the Navy's Tier 1 unit over making a fucking example out of somebody that's a double standard. Yeah. So, so to say, I think you made the right fucking call

getting out at 14 fucking years. What a joke. What a fucking joke. You saw what I saw, right? I saw that. It makes me so fucking angry. Do you know, oh man, and nobody fucking, nobody fucking said shit. Nobody fucking, nobody, nobody challenged it.

This is like, this is like this, oh, man, dude, what the fuck? Like, do you know who this J-Cal guy is that I've interviewed? He's an S-A-S guy. He's being charged with murder. Yes, I have. You know, I thought it would be a good idea to cover it. Maybe we'll fucking get this. He's really good buddies with DJ Shipley, he works at GBRS, and he now is fucked and he can't do it.

So I thought it would be great to expose it all. Do you know how many SAS guys have come out and, like, spoken up for this fucking guy? Yeah, zero. You know what they're fucking, do you, this is the best part. Do you know what their motto is at SAS? he who dares wins how fucking hilarious is that they can't even stand up for their own

fucking guys they can't even stand up for their own fucking guys it's it's the same in their fucking motto is he who dares wins what a fucking joke like what a joke I'm not smiling

because I get it I smiling because I've been I was in a very dark place right I got out I had everything ripped from me zero I got to divorced, everything gone, right? Any community I ever had, gone. Like, if you talk to me, no, can't talk to you best. They're going to get me. I can't. Nothing. Gone. And that's when I was absolutely, I'm like, fuck this. I'm out. I'm like, right? Okay. So they're like, okay, we want all the

book money back. Like, okay, great. Here, here's all I got left. I had spent close to just under a million and a half dollars in my legal defense in about three years. I don't have that money, right? I got a plaque with my name misspelled, no retirement, no pension, nothing. So the only way I could defend myself was with the millions of dollars the book had made that was sitting in my savings account. So I'm writing checks to my lawyers. Three years later, right, interrogations, all this nonsense. They're like, you didn't leak anything classified in the book.

The only thing you failed to do was seek pre-publication review. But we want all the book money back. Like, fine, take it. I don't give a fuck. Wrote him a check. They're like, whoa, you're missing some. Like, yeah, here's my receipts. You've never charged me with anything.

Never, no ever charged me with a crime, never anything. You're like, we want it all back. Like, okay? Like, we want it in three years. Like, okay, I don't know how I'm going to go make a million or two million. I may pay taxes on it to then give you assholes the rest. So I was like, hey, I'm going to go sue my attorney. He gave me the advice.

up attorney-client privilege, go through my emails, and look at the advice I got from counsel. This was not me maliciously going around my legal obligations. Like, we don't care. So I wrote them a check. Every bit of money I had, and they gave me three years to pay the rest back. I sued my attorney. Okay, I figured this out when you sue somebody. The first casualty of a lawsuit is the truth. And that's fucked up, right? The first casualty of a lawsuit is the truth. The truth is irrelevant. It becomes about statute of limitations and where did you file in? And so for two and a half years, we fought all this nonsense until we get to a court date. Two and a half years in, we get a court date. And the day we get a court date where we're going to go to court

and I'm going to actually get a chance to sue my attorney, he settles. It says, okay, you want. I gave you bad advice. We'll settle. Okay. So problem is the lawyers make all the money in that that space, right? He writes me a check. Okay, I got to pay my attorney and then I got to pay taxes on it. So I don't have the million and a half that the government needs. I go back to the government with my half a million dollars in my winning malpractice case. And I say, hey, look, I got a winning malpractice case. I know you assholes, right? And through the malpractice case, we did discovery, right? And in this discovery process, we were able to question my attorney. Did you know that the DOJ, right?

They came after me two, 12-hour interrogation sessions, three years long. They had one phone call with my original attorney. One phone call, 15 minutes. The DOJ called him once for 15 minutes, and my attorney was like, no, I told him he had to get a book review. Lied to him. Never looked in the emails, hundreds of emails with all of his advice, none of it. So the government took that, didn't care. the uh

well one the malpractice case went back to the government said hey will you relook at this right this proves I've got a winning malpractice case that proves I relied on council to publish this book without a government review and if this is the only thing they got me on is I failed to seek pre-public review then he told me I'd like look here it is he's culpable in that decision making government was like

we're not opening it up again So I wouldn't touch it. So then I went back to them and I said, okay, I can't pay you a million and a half dollars in three years. Will you give me a payment plan? So they disappeared. They wanted all my tax returns. I sent in a whole bunch of junk. They came back a couple months later and said, okay, this is just this last January.

I said, okay, give us all the money that you made from your malpractice. And then we'll put you on a payment plan. So $3,800 a month. for the next 15 years. I only served for 14. There's no way I made over a million and a half dollars in my service. So I'll pay back more money for longer

than I ever served. They went through my computers. They deleted every photo for my career. Gave me back a computer with no photos on it. Basically zeroized my whole career. That is when, right? And I've been very, I've been in some dark spots through this,

Right. That's why I said my faith, my journey of faith has been much more locked in when I was in the fight with friends and people and whatever. And it was like I understood, hey, seal shit's going to be hard and it's going to, I never expected the civilian world to be this hard and to hit me this way. And I got freaking jumped. And I was not ready for it. I didn't have a community around me to help me. I was alone. and in a dark spot, right? I went to the VA, right? Bad neck and back issues all through this time. I'm going to the VA for my medical care, right? The DOJ is fucking me trying to kill me. And I go to the VA.

I'm like, hey, man, I can't drink a beer without my arms going numb. The pain meds, pain meds, pain meds. Never even got an MRI in a year and a half. Holy shit, dude. Right? My final trip to the VA, I came back with a bag of pain meds, no MRI. My parents were in town visiting.

I remember showing my parents the pain meds and my mom just broke down. She's like, what the heck? So I wasn't, here I am, right, getting no help from the VA. And I don't know if it's because they said, hey, don't help this guy. Fuck them. I have no idea. I just know I was getting no help, but my only medical help that was there. I'd pay for my own insurance, right?

I served, so I get my VA, and VA's doing nothing for me. So, yeah, I met a neck and back surgeon in California, former Air Force guy, Dr. Robert Bray, disc surgery center, former Air Force trained surgeon that started his own practice. I met him, and he's like, best, come on out. He gave me x-rays and MRI, and I met him in an hour and a half. He's like, listen, man, you need to clear your schedule. Your neck's basically broken. Like, what are you talking about?

He's like, yeah, your C4 and 5 are like 8 millimeters offset. And if you hit a speed bump the wrong way, you're never walking again. Ooh. He's like, clear your schedule. A week later, he operated on me. Fusion, he's done five surgeries, hasn't charged me a penny. I'd still be going to the VA for help. That's a hell of a dude.

Yep. He's operated on probably, he operated on the guy who held me in on the helicopter on the crash, right? He's probably eight other of my friends now he's operated on. No shit. Yeah. What's his name? Dr. Robert Bray. What a fucking badass.

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that was over no easy day that was getting that money back okay that finished i started suing my attorney and while i'm suing my attorney one of the days i'm we're doing our our stuff with him I get a call from my ex-wife and she's like, hey, some FBI agents just showed up at the front doors, the kids are leaving for school. Real good, real nice. I'm like, what are you talking about? She's like, well, they confiscated your old computer

you had that we had when you were in. I'm like, okay, what? They'd say what? And they're like, yeah, something about your consulting, gear consulting work you did when you were in. I'm like, oh my gosh. So, okay. Up starts another investigation.

Your consulting? Gear and equipment. Okay. So this new investigation is out of the Department of Justice Norfolk Field Office, not the Dark Department of Justice San Diego Field Office that we'd been dealing with for three years, right? This was all new. Oh, surprise, surprise. Now they're pissed at gear consulting I did when I was when I was in, right? I was always a gear guy. I mentioned that earlier. I love my gear development stuff and I was very involved in that. my uh actually my former commander that ultimately said delete me um first name wyman um last name rhymes with coward um wyman coward uh came by one day and he's like hey you're really good at this gear stuff you know you ought to go talk to the jags get some approvals so you can do it the right way but you know a lot of your designs have some good craws you know maybe you design this flashlight

Marines can buy it whatever so okay i went to our jag at the command got approvals to do consulting for companies on the outside, shoes, hats, guns, whatever, just any of the stuff I was into. Outside of work, the very little time I had at home that was outside of work, and it was approved by the command. So, here we are. I hadn't done any gear consulting for years. I've been out of the Navy, and now all of a sudden, I find out they're coming after me for gear consulting.

So, okay, it's a whole spin up again. Now, instead of the 12-hour interrogations in San Diego, 12-hour interrogation in North folk new set of assholes run me through the regular oh you you did all these things you broke the law whatever you need a plea to a misdemeanor like a misdemeanor for what like prove any of this you're throwing at me prove that i made money off any of my designs through i had the i'm not the purchasing agent i can't affect anything that i design i can't buy we have contracting departments so there's no conflict of interest there but they're like oh no you made money off this stuff we're coming after you so for another year they came after me they kept trying to

throw throw anything at me to get me to they were like if you don't plead to a misdemeanor we're going to try and push a felony i'm like where what how so about a week before they're trying to get pressure me i go to the shot show in vegas and the press hits and all across the press said Matt Bissanette retained photos of bin Laden. I had photos of bin Laden. I told them about it in all of my interrogation stuff. Nobody knew that but the government. So then the government leaks that the same week

that they're trying to pressure me into taking a misdemeanor. Because they wanted so bad to get me on something. And I just kept saying, fuck you prove it. Now, granted, I have to pay legal bills to get that to work. So that's when I'd written my second book. I'm out of money from the first one, right?

Given all that back, I'd written no hero. I'm using that money to continue to pay my legal defense. This goes on for a year. After a year, they're finally like, okay, you didn't do anything criminal. Just give us all the money back you ever made. So it became a financial shakedown. So I wrote them a big check, and they went away. That was the last I heard from them.

And then I've just been dealing with the, trying to get to the financial closure of paying them back for no easy day. That is, that is why I wrote no easy way. Now, what's crazy about that, right? I've, I submitted that book for a review. That book has been into the government for six months. So what is that book about? Everything we're talking about right now. So you have to get, I just, I just, this all take place since me.

getting, I'm a civilian writing this whole book, but I have to get it reviewed based off the agreements that I've signed. Now, the guy with the eye patch doesn't, and he just blows it off, but I have to because they came after me for the first one. So I'm going to submit this one for review, but now they've sat on it for six months and they don't want it to get out, right? They don't want my version, this story that we're telling, right? They don't want this out in written form because it makes them look back. And so six months, they've been sitting on it. but there's nothing classified in the book unless they don't want me talking about something

that they don't want me talking about it so what if you were to write a book on i don't know fixing up your have to submit it 1950s truck have to submit it based off how they've come after me I wouldn't dare not get it submitted think of all the drama I've been through

because my book did not get submitted So I'm not about to submit another bug or to publish or without getting it reviewed. Well, but now they're sitting on this. Why would they sit on this? It's not because it's leaking tactics, techniques, and procedures. It's because it's exposing their hypocrisy. And they don't want it, right? They don't want the story of McRaeve and getting out.

How would they come after you if there's no? They just won't review the book. They'll just sit on it, let it die. And they know I owe payments every month. And if I miss one payment, they've told me to my face. They'll come back and charge me back interest and fuck me. What would they, what could they get you on if you, bypassed? I have no idea.

Could they get you on anything? I mean, I know they can fucking get you. If they could get me on something, they would have. Yeah. If they could have got me on something, they tried for four years straight to get me on anything, and the only thing they could do was break me financially. And so I've got to this point, and now I'm like, okay, I'm telling the story. Nobody's going to believe it.

I've shut up. I've fought my battles with the government. I fought the legal battles. I thought the Justice Department was going to be just. It's not. I've waited 12 years now for some sort of adult supervision to step in and be like, hey, this is fucked up. We need to fix this. Now, I will say, I will say, we may have some potential good momentum.

Literally last week, my attorney got a call, and there's some potential that this administration is getting involved. And hopefully, I don't want to speak, I don't want to think too optimistic because I've been shot in a face every time an opportunity comes up. But there is an option, opportunity that the current administration is getting involved and going to help fix this. So we'll see. Well, but I'll believe it when I see it. Yeah, that would be great. Let's bring on our attorney and see if we need to clean anything up here. Great idea.

Cool. Tim Parlatorie. How are you, sir? It's always good to see you. You too. Man, so are you representing Matt? So I have represented Matt for a number of years. And I want to be clear, you know, I'm here to talk about his case.

I don't represent him on his current dealings with the department. And that's the decision that we made because as he goes, you know, to try and negotiate, a better deal with the department, it made sense for me to take a step away from it because since I also have represented the secretary, we want the decision to be made based on the merits as opposed to having anybody sit there and say, oh, well, they just made a decision based on how his lawyer is also the secretary's lawyer. So for that reason, I've stepped away from that piece of it. Um, you know, however, you know, look, I, I maintain long relationships with all of all of my clients. So, um, yeah, I consider about a friend than a client and anything he needs,

you know, I would help him with. I mean, Tim, we met under similar circumstances. Yeah. So we met through the Dallas Alexander, the Canadian sniper. Yep. When they came at me saying that, oh, there's all this classified material in there. What, you know, and then we found out what it really was is they're fucking humiliated because they fired one of their legendary snipers over a COVID vaccine and not wearing a mask. Right. And they didn't want that out there. So we gave them, we gave them, you know, very politely gave them the finger and said, fuck you. The episode's going back up.

You were very polite about it, though. But, but, but, you know, the, the, the, the. This shit just keeps happening. You know, Matt's map was actually, though, I think the first person that I've heard about this shit happening to. Now it's happening again, obviously, with a new book. But, you know, look, I mean, it was, we've just seen so much corruption from the government. You know what I mean? I mean, I was going to bring up Eddie Gallagher and the Blackwater guys and Brad Geary.

But I think those fall under, you know, different different circumstances all just as you know even probably even more fucked up than this but um but you know it's it's the shit it's dallas alexander i mean a couple weeks ago we had a couple of delta guys reach out wanting their episode pulled because delta made a statement basically scaring the shit out of all their guys oh you can't go on here we're gonna fucking come after you legally and i had to tell them about i'm i'm fucking tired of playing this game. I am fucking tired of this shit of playing this game and they're freaking these guys out. They're not allowed to talk about, they think they're not allowed to talk about their own

fucking life, you know, and I'm not pulling it. I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not playing these stupid fucking games. And so it's, you know, it's Chris Fettis. We had to get involved with Chris Fettis because we had people telling us that they're going to, they're going to sue Chris and they're going to do this and they're going to come after him and they're going to ruin his reputation and it just got to the point where I mean on that one nobody even knows this but that one I called you and I said I want to fund Chris's legal battle and I want him to fucking whoever is making this shit up about him and coming after him and trying to ruin his fucking life we are going to sue them and then we're going to sue them again and then we're going to sue them again and then we're

going to sue them again so they don't have anywhere to fucking live so their kids can't go to school. So they're, I'm so fucking tired of people fucking with these guys for coming on here telling their story and because they tell their story, it jet launches their business and they're able

to get out of the of the fucking the Navy SEAL operator mindset and move on with their fucking lives. This is a problem that we keep seeing and a lot of it is

viewpoint or content-based because we are treating people differently based on what they have to say, whether people like it or not, and also, quite frankly, what their rank is. And I do want to clear up one point, if you don't mind. Walt Allman has only been an admiral for a few months, okay? And he was, you know, he was the common ottoman shipment at the Naval Academy before. He recently put on one star, and then he became the acting Warcom commander when Jamie Sands got fired. So a lot of the things that you were talking about with Matt that involved, you know, where you were talking about, Walt, the reality is that was before he transferred to that position. So it is the Warcom commander that you were referring to, but a lot of that was Sands, Keith Davids, Wyman Howard.

you know, Matt's, you know, a good friend who said, delete me, and some of it even going back to Colin Green and before. But, you know, what you have here is you have these, you know, people that once you get above a certain rank, it does become political. And they are doing things, you know, not all of them, but a lot of them are doing things to just try and get another star and to try and move up up the ladder. And so anybody who puts out information, you know, that may make them look bad or, you know, may upset somebody, they want to try and crush that. It's not right. And what they've done, I think Matt's case is one of the most extreme of this, where because

his factual, unclassified book, embarrassed President Obama, that created this situation where they had to crush him. and you have these people, you know, making decisions saying, I want to hurt this guy, I want to crush this guy, because he embarrassed me. These people have never been to any form of combat like Matt's been. That's what I'm saying. They have, but they don't care. And this is, this is the common thread that I see, you know, that I am going to pull back,

you know, to Eddie Gallagher and Brad Geary and J. Cal and all of them. those things, where they pursue these vindictive prosecutions because they are angry at the individual as opposed to thinking about what is fair. And so because they're angry and because they have power, you know, they will have NCIS go after people and do these type of things or Air Force OSI or CID or FBI, whoever, or whatever the, you know, the British equivalent is for J-Cal. And ultimately, you're unleashing complete incompetence from these investigative agencies to try to pursue, you know, what is a political persecution.

You know, NCIS was so bad years ago. It used to be called NIS, Naval Investigative Service. They had to do a whole rebrand and restructure because NIS had become such a a politically driven organization to go out there and anybody that the admirals didn't like, they would trump up these investigations, you know, usually trying to accuse somebody of homosexuality because that's the easiest way to get rid of somebody you don't like. It used to be called the Admiral's Gestapo. Okay, they went through a reorganization, a rebranding, and yet in a lot of ways, they're still

doing the same thing. They did the same thing to Matt. And I sit here and I look at it. And I say, you know, they take a guy who is given his entire life to this. He's given his youth, his health, everything. Put it out on the line to try and keep us safe, to try and go out there and continuously deploy. And when he gets to the end, they try and throw him away. It's something Eddie Gallagher and I talk about all the time where you sign up knowing that you're expendable. But they treat you as if you're disposable. And so what Matt went through of being excommunicated from the community, and you know this

as well as anybody else, when you go through that train, you become a seal, that is, for a lot of people, that's your identity, that's your tribe, that's, you know, what you are connected to. And when you're then removed from that and excommunicated from it, it has sort of many more negative effects. PTSD is something that is exacerbated through a feeling of abandonment. And yet the command, the military as a whole, the leadership is taking not just a feeling of abandonment. They're creating actual abandonment.

And so many other clients that I've represented that you've never heard of that because the command is angry with them, they will not only kick them out, but they'll take their Trident on the way out. And they'll say, you were never a seal. Okay? Guys who've done plenty of deployments, and I have clients like this where you look at their DD-214, and they've done, you know, 15 deployments, Purple Heart, Silver Star, no Trident, not a member of the community. And so when they then go to try and go to a veterans event or something, you know, They want to go to Navy SEAL Foundation for help because they're having difficulty. Navy SEAL Foundation says, nope, you're not a SEAL.

You're not a part of us. You can't even attend reunions. And, you know, Matt is lucky that he got out and then they got angry at him after he already had his DD-214. Because had his timeline been a little bit different, I have no. doubt that NSW would have wanted to take his trident away from him. So he'd be out there as one of the guys that put bullets into bin Laden's body, but they could say, oh, he's not a seal. They tried to do it with Eddie Gallagher. They tried to take his trident away. It's, it is bad for our people. it goes right back to what Matt was saying about leaders should be taking care of our people

and not focusing on writing up their own awards and chasing their next promotion and what they do is they see these people as an impediment to their next promotion so if somebody makes them anger or embarrasses them in any way well we have to destroy them because they hurt my ability to get another star so that's That's kind of thematically. How did Matt hurt somebody's ability to get another star? Because his superiors now have to answer to Obama of why did you let your guy put out his book before my version of offense? It's that petty.

Yeah. Yeah. And when it comes down from the top of, I want you to take care of this. Okay. So if that's true, how were all these other people, Leon Panetta, Obama? I mean, I get it. I know what it is. I know what it is.

It's the content. It's the content. It's the rank. It's the rank? The only fucking thing that matters is. It's the rank and it's the content. We like what their rank is and we like what they have. to say, therefore we're going to let him get away with it. John Bolton, perfect example. Former

National Security Advisor, he goes out and writes a book. He doesn't get the pre-publication review. They start to go through, putting him through the exact same process that they did to Matt, investigations and everything. But the election happens. And so all of a sudden the White House turns over to Biden. Well, Biden liked what Bolton had to say. because he wrote that Trump was bad. So therefore, all of a sudden the Biden DOJ puts the brakes on and says, oh, we're going to let Bolton Guff. Let his book that has classified material in it go right ahead.

Let him keep all of the revenue from his book that has classified material in it. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we still crush Matt, whose book doesn't have classified material in it, but has content that we don't like. You know, when his attorney, you know, Kevin Podlowski was the attorney that had given them this bad advice, when he settled that lawsuit, one of the biggest impediments that that Matt had during this process was that the attorney had lied to DOJ. he lied and he said I told him he had to get it reviewed and that was their linchpin because his whole defense is my attorney told me this was okay and they could say well we

talked to him and he said that's not true so now they have a witness against him they get him to take this settlement and I didn't represent him at the time by the way he then gets this gets this malpractice settlement. And in the malpractice settlement, I got to give him a lot of credit, I didn't handle it, but whoever handled it, got him a great settlement

where Podlowski actually admitted in the settlement that he had given him this advice. Usually settlements have one of those, neither side admit that they did anything wrong, but he actually admitted what he did. And that was something that, you know, I then came into this,

and I was able to take that back to Dio, O.J. and say, see, you brought this whole thing based on a false premise. You had a witness who lied to you, which is a crime, by the way. You have a witness who lied to you, and now you have proof that everything Matt did was on the advice of counsel. And one thing to understand is that the consent decree that he entered into on this, the cause of action was breach of contract. He breached the contract that says before you submit something, or before you publish something, you have to submit it for pre-publication review. If he was relying upon the advice of counsel, that's a defense that he would have had had had been litigated at the time.

Because we finally had this information, I went to the court and I tried to file a motion to vacate the consent decree and to change, you know, the result to match the actual facts. DOJ opposed me. They said, too much time has passed. You know, this should have been done, you know, within, you know, whatever it is, six months of the consent decree being entered. Even though the statute does say, yes, there's a timeline, but it says, and it can go after that for good cause shown.

The good cause shown, from my perspective, is this is something that he didn't have at the time. As soon as we had it available, we brought it to the court. But the problem is that the courts don't really like to change things. They like finality in the judgments. And so ultimately, DOJ opposed us, not factually, just on, well, they should have done this earlier. And the judge agreed and said, well, too much time has passed. so we're going to leave this judgment in place. At that point, that left me with no real options other than to try and negotiate down for him.

And the only way that we could really negotiate down at that point was based on an ability to pay. Now, there's a key aspect of this financial settlement that you need to understand, which is taxes. because when he got the money from the book originally, he paid taxes on it. The portion went to his attorney. Now, you have $1.5 million, as he said, he's got a little bit under $4,000. He's got to pay back a month. But he's not allowed to claim that as a deduction or an expense on his tax return. So in order to make the $4,000 payments, he's got to earn $6,000 a month pre-tax just to pay that.

So that $1.5 million figure, he really has to earn more like $2.5 to $3 million just to be able to pay it. And that's not something, you know, the IRS is not going to give him any, any break on that. He's essentially paying tax on this thing twice. He paid the tax on it when he first got the revenue, and he's paying tax on it a second time to try and pay it back. And all of it goes into the U.S. Treasury. So between the taxes and the forfeiture, the Treasury is making a ton of money off of this guy. damn why are they holding his book up pre-publication review is a messed-up process okay i've done it with other clients and you know he's right anybody who has signed one of these agreements

has to have their book uh submit now if it's a cookbook nobody's going to really, you know, throw a fit over it. Some guys do actually, you know, are that careful with it. But, and for him, I would definitely be that careful with it. If he's going to write a cookbook, he should submit it. What happens is it goes to the main office at DOW, Department of War, that does a pre-publication review. They do a first read of the book. They then decide, okay, how many different agencies have a stake in this? And then they'll send the portions off to those agencies. And so a big portion of this obviously goes to Naval Special Warfare Command.

Some of it may go to the CIA. Some of it for his portion of it will definitely go to NCIS because of the content of this third book. There's nothing classified in there. You know, there's nothing that NCIS has to be concerned about. And the, you know, the government is not allowed. to edit your book in any way or to, the only two things that they're allowed to object to is classified material and a misstatement of government policy.

Those are the only two things that they're supposed to remove. But the way that they do this, where they farm it out to all the different agencies, and, yeah, I don't want to defend them on this and say that they're not holding it up because I think that they probably are. But the reality is, when you send it over to Naval Special Warfare Command, there are just so many SEALs writing books that they have a backlog there. I mean, it's just a fact. That actually doesn't surprise me.

You can publish a Green Beret book a lot faster than the SEAL book. Does anybody read those, though? Well, they're not as interesting. I'm just kidding. I know there's at least one person out there. You can publish... I'm just fucking around. You can publish a surface warb for a book really fast.

So there is that. Yeah, I do think that there's probably some element of dragging their feet. And, you know, once you get it back, you know, they'll have a whole bunch of stuff blacked out. And some of it's silly. Like some of it, you know, it's like, you know, if anytime, you know, for a book like his, anytime you see a number somewhere between five and seven, that'll be, you know, a little black box. You know, green team is something that'll be blacked out. Things that are certainly public domain that they'll still black it. Eddie's book. When Eddie Gallagher submitted his book,

they tried to redact out portions of it because they were embarrassed about the name of the Iraqi unit that his unit had been assigned to. And they tried to say that was classified. And I went back to I said, you know, how is that possibly classified? Well, that's what they said. So, yeah, here's the transcript where the prosecutor said the name of that unit seven times in his opening statement in front of a courtroom full of media. So if that's classified, you need to prosecute the prosecutor. Oh, okay, you can put that in the book. So there is still a negotiation process at that stage.

But yeah, it does take a long time. and it takes even longer when, you know, somebody doesn't want this book to come out. And that really goes back to the original problem that Matt had, is his publisher wanted his book out before the election. That's why the publisher gave him a lawyer who said, I can help you do this so it gets out before the election. Because if he had done it the right way, if he had been advised by a different lawyer who said, This is what you legally have to do. The book would have been published after the election. It would have been published after the movie.

It would have been published after the other, you know, the Mark Bowden book. He wouldn't have had any problems. He would have been able to keep 100% of the revenue. But, you know, it would have been timed the way that the administration had wanted it to be timed. Makes sense, unfortunately. Do you think Matt has anything to worry about with the new book? No, no, not at all. And, you know, with the second book, with the third book, he's got nothing to worry about there because he's following the process.

He's not doing what the original lawyer said. And so as long as you follow the process, you have nothing to worry about. Is there any time limit, or can this just drag on for years and years? At a certain point, if it is clear that the government is dragging its feet, you can file a lawsuit at that point. How can you know? What amount of time will go through will go with Matt's book before his attorney? advises him to fucking file a lawsuit. It's no specific timeline.

There's no specific deadline, but if it's sitting there for 12 months and it hasn't been acted on and he decides to file a lawsuit, here's what's going to happen. He'll file a lawsuit. DOJ will get it. You know, DOJ is the agency

that defends every other government entity. They will all of a sudden spit out the fully reviewed book before they before their deadline to respond to the lawsuit comes how did I know you were going to say that and then they're going to put in a response saying we don't know what he's talking about judge you know we've we've complied with our obligations so therefore we move to dismiss the lawsuit so why couldn't he if you just file one right now a little bit early. Can you just file the lawsuit with the review?

By the way, if this isn't done next week, I'm going to sue your... You know, it's difficult because, again, the timelines for seal books are so much longer just based on the volume. Now, it would be worthwhile potentially, because I don't think that they published these numbers, it would be worthwhile potentially to file a FOIA to find out what is the average length of reviews and then once you can you know through the freedom of information I get what the timeline statistics are on you know books in general seal books green beret books compare those and then once you have that timeline you can see okay if it takes an average of you know two

months for a green beret book six months for a seal book and eight months for a mapassinette book now you know that they're delaying you. Gotcha. Gotcha. But ultimately, the people that are administering this are career GS civilians. This process is not something that any of the political appointees really have that much visibility on because it's something that's administratively handled at that lower level, which is of course where all of the you know the deep state lives and so um it's the kind of thing

that once you kind of bring light to it then maybe people up above say okay maybe we need to fix this process and i'm just so so fucking tired of people fucking with these guys just for telling their story yeah i'd have to go back and look i think it took eddie about seven or eight months to get his book reviewed. And everything in his book was stuff that had happened in an open courtroom. Now, we thought, you know, this book will take two weeks to review. All you have to do is read through real quick and see that he's not talking about any operations. Everything happened in an open courtroom.

So, yeah. But, no, still took a very long time. man this shit is pissing me off you know i mean matt just said it i mean i mean i me and you have talked especially with the chris feta stuff yeah like that really fucking pissed me off yeah and you know and we had had discussions that i had i said this is a this is a reason why these guys are fucking killing themselves right because they're not allowed to share their story and if they do they get ostracized by either the leaders of the command or the Operators at that command and when when that happened to Chris, I just want to clarify because I was pissed and I don't think I said it properly

But first the first thing was, oh, the CIA's pissed because they don't want that getting out Then it was some of the operators over a dev group then it was then we knew exactly who it was And you know it's always these fucking people who are lurking in the shadows who never want to be revealed right we found out who that was and it was If you, if there is any defamation, any fucking non-truths and whatever's going to come out about, Chris, I'm going to fucking sue your ass for defamation. Right. You know, and then magically, we never heard another fucking word about it. Correct. Correct.

I'm just sick of this shit. And then we get fucking Walt Allman coming on about Pete Schobell talking about some shit that happened 15 fucking years ago. about equipment that they don't even use anymore. It's another thing that I've seen where people that leave before they retire, you know, you know, when I left the first time, you know, I left as an O3. And I see a lot of veterans that leave, and they kind of mentally freeze at that rank. And so what happened with Pete is very consistent with what I've seen with other people where they'll have a high-ranking officer.

reach out to a veteran of a certain rank and treat them the same as if they were still a lieutenant or a junior enlisted guy and use that positional authority over them and some veterans, they still fall into that. I mean, that's one of my beliefs when it comes to our friend, the one-eyed congressman, is that

and Crenshaw right because when Warcom wants him to do something like stay out of the Eddie Gallagher case they'll send a flag officer to talk to him and you know tell him hey lieutenant commander this is what it is and he just nods and salutes and says

oh yes sir a video of him committing murder yes sir I won't I won't support him sir I mean, that's my belief, is that just seeing how he blindly parrots whatever the senior leaders want him to. Yeah, I think that they take advantage of that. I think there was an element of that of, hey, if we call up, you know, Lieutenant Schobell and just, you know, tell him, hey, you need to do this. Harass him. You mean fucking harass him?

Yeah. there are certain things... I want to get somebody to... I know. There are certain things... Just like they're trying to make an example out of these guys. I want to find one of these fuckers

that make an example out of him. There are things that we don't want people to say. You know, there are obviously classification issues. We don't want people going out and revealing, you know, secret missions and things like that. I get that. But you know what?

We're talking about People aren't even clearing fucking rooms anymore They have drones for this shit now We're talking to fucking dinosaurs in here This is big This is no different than me Talking to Don Graves about Iwo Jima

Right Like Good job You cleared a fucking house We don't do that shit anymore We have robots that do this for us But let's still attack them You know for shit that we don't even

Let's still attack them for fucking Giving up tactics that we don't even fucking do we don't even have humans on the fucking battlefield barely anymore give me a break man like fuck off and part of the problem is that the people that are trying to hurt these guys are ones that they don't really fully understand the rules themselves because they've never been on the fucking battlefield no there's that too they don't understand you know they may not fully understand what the law is on these things what the regulations actually say that people can and can't say? You know, when, you know, for example, while you have to get review to talk about operational

stuff, any military member can go out there and talk about their personal experiences. And so the morning after the verdict in the Eddie Gallagher trial, Eddie went on Fox and Friends and did his first ever media interview. I was with him. And it was Pete Hecksteth that did the interview. And he talked about his personal experiences of going through this trial, all of which happened in a room that was full of media. And wouldn't you know, within an hour, I get a call from the Warcom JAG saying, we're thinking about charging him, you know, for having done this interview. And I said, really? Okay, what do you think he did wrong? Well, he didn't get approval. He's talked about no, no, no. Okay. Why don't you pull out the Warcom Public Affairs Instruction? We'll read it

together. What paragraph are you looking at? Well, no, no, no, you pull up the instruction. I'll wait. Well, it's not really in it. Yeah, exactly. It's not in there. So you're threatening him for violating a instruction that you didn't even read before calling me up and threatening that you're going to charge him with. I read it first. I know what he was allowed to say, and I set up the interview so he could talk about the things that he was allowed to talk about and so he wouldn't talk about the things he wasn't so take your threat and go fuck yourself that happened but and that's what happens frequently but people maybe aren't able to push back at the introductory stage like i was and so they'll call pete scobal

and threaten him. They'll, you know, somebody may be dumb enough to try and, you know, threaten Matt here. They'll send threats to Chris Fettis. Tom Satterley, you know, you called me up about him, that somebody, you know, was telling him he should try and take down the interview from three years ago talking about what he did in Mogadishu back in the 90s. It's classified, Tom. No, it's people that are just trying to control, and they don't even know what the rules are themselves. You know, I just...

I don't think there's more to cover. Is there with me and you right now? Is there anything else we need to cover? Then what I want to ask you is... I mean, because it's my fucking podcast that, you know, that is getting everybody in trouble. So it's my fucking podcast. So, you know, what, and all these guys watch my podcast.

And so what I want to ask is, you know, for anybody who's wanting to tell their story or share their experience or document history or get their business off the ground or whatever their motivation is for coming out and sharing their story when these fucking assholes come after them, whether that's their, you know, former colleagues or, you know, the headshade of the command. I mean, what steps should they take? For the next guy that comes on my show and gets harassed by some other fucking admiral or general or whoever, I mean, what steps do they need to take?

I wish I had a better answer than this, but the reality is that the best answer is to get a lawyer who knows this system and push back. No. And now you're giving me an idea that you and I should sit down. This could have been a better advertisement for yourself, Tim. I'm not here to promote my business. I'm not here to promote my business. I'm here to help out a friend than a client.

But you know what? You're giving me an idea. Why don't you and I sit down? you know, later, and pull all the public affairs instructions and all the rules from the various services, and we can put together a little bit of a guide. You know, it's something that, you know, I had actually suggested to Walt Allman as an idea of, you know, people need guidance. You know, if they don't know the law or the rules, they need to be trained on it. But you know what? You know, just simply, you know, what they did in the wake of Matt's, you

first book where they just started, you know, going out with the whole, oh, we are supposed to be quiet professionals. I do not advertise the nature of our work. That's bullshit. Okay, it doesn't help anybody. You need to give specific actionable guidance. This is where, this is what the law is. The law says you're allowed to talk about these things. The law says, don't talk about this. Okay, so maybe, maybe you and I should sit down and I'll, you know, create a little guide on this, Because if, you know, if the commands are not going to properly train their people on it. And the reality is so many of these guys are out. You know, they've been out for 10, 15 years.

And so, you know, they're not going to, you know, Warcom is not going to be sending a training PowerPoint to Pete Scobel at this point. But, you know, maybe it's something that we should do. And, you know, to educate people, because the reality is these stories are important. they're important not only for everybody who you know who watches this and listens to this but they're important for the people telling the stories because it's therapeutic for them and then it's also therapeutic to other veterans who listen to this and watch this and they see their own story reflected there and it's probably the biggest recruiting tool in the fucking country true to come on this show true and talk about all the badass shit you did

True. So the answer is I need to do some homework for you, Sean. And I'll write something up. Well, I appreciate you, Tim. It's always good to see you. You too. You too. Do I get gummy bears here?

We will load you up. I was going to say, I'm not. Don't look like you're eating any of gummy bears lately, though, Tim. No, no, it's for my wife. My wife gets mad at me if I don't come back to gummy bears. We will load you up. We got some other stuff, too. So, but thanks for coming on, man.

Thank you. I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show, and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind-the-scenes footage before each interview. Early access to episodes, end-of-the-month live Zoom. calls with me, exclusive merch, and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month

by visiting patreon.com slash vigilance elite. That's patreon.com slash vigilance elite. Thank you for listening to The Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every, review that comes through and we really appreciate the support thank you let's get back to the show all right matt we're back from the break just got done chatting with tim but i got i got to interject here he he said you know what the seal community does very maliciously is they try and go after your seal trident after you've served and you're now out they did that to me too they did of course i've been out five years and they came back and we're like hey it's

part of this we're gonna we want to take your trident like my lawyer representing me at the time is like i don't even think they can do that you're out of the navy how do they retroactively go back and take away a warfare insignia that you earned and you got out of the navy with he's like that that's not even legal you still have it right yeah well still have it yeah i don't care but the uh in in the navy paperwork do i have my seal trident yes did they try and take it away retroactively to be spiteful and little bitches absolutely Absolutely. So they just literally just spew out whatever bullshit they feel like whether they have any legal recourse or not to try to fucking scare you, piss you off, ruin your day. I mean, whatever. They just, they'll just spew it all out there. It's the seal mindset when it all costs, right? And if it doesn't, you know, crush the other guy.

Fucking hey, man. So, yeah, it was, it's been a, it's been my life's biggest struggle for sure, right? Getting into buds, making it in the seals is one thing. I thought that was hard. Getting out kicked my ass. Not the getting out part because I was ready to get out. I was cooked. I was done. But what came after getting out was single-handedly my biggest challenge. And again, I would talk about faith.

I was in my lowest when I got out and didn't have community, didn't understand why I was being put through everything I was being put through. And that's where I was furthest from my faith. as I've got through this experience, it's really reminded me that, hey, there is a reason behind this. I may not understand it. I may not know it right now. It may take me years to understand why. And so it's really been more like, hey, I'm going to trust that this is all part of God's plan, right?

I dealt with a decent amount of survivor's guilt, having done what I did and getting out. and then I dealt with a ton of questioning why I went through everything I went through. And again, the only way I can, the only way I sit here and smile and think about it now is thinking that, okay, maybe this was God just challenging me yet again, right? Maybe he wanted to see if I was going to turn into a little bitch. Maybe he was going to see how I acted, how I let my actions. And so I'm big on my actions over my words, right? So, yeah.

has this entire experience changed your opinion of the teams yeah for sure how so man i would have given anything for that team for the teams the community right i was i was that guy that they had hook line and sinker i would have done anything died for him no questions asked easy check had friday man done then i get out and i'm like well wait a second this isn't the where's the this brotherhood It seems more like a school of sharks. And if there's blood in the water, they're coming after you. Like, this isn't the brotherhood I remember or was sold. Right.

Now, that community is, the seal community, whatever it is, it is, whatever it is, I care very little about it now, right? My community that I've gotten reacquainted with are all, a lot of my favorite operators that I worked with that have now gotten out, right? And I think we all collectively have a perspective that we respect each other for what we did, but it's not about the SEAL community or about this world. I guess the Delta guys I worked with, they're saying the same thing. They're like, fuck the leadership. I'm over it. We're over it, right? We were sent into harm's way by leadership for what?

Right? We got sent a lot, right? A few of us didn't come back. and that same leadership that arguably left millions of dollars of military equipment in Afghanistan they've got promoted

in retirement and everything and somehow I have a payment plan it's hard to process it's hard to justify in my mind the only way is knowing that hey there's a plan he's got a plan I may not understand it right now

keep the faith it's a good way to be man it's a good way to be so what else is in the new book the new book is me telling this story the new book is me venting about this because i haven't i've kept my mouth very shut and quiet i've been very private about it i tried to fight this battle as best i could through the legal system and when that ran its course i was like i've got to tell this story but then through this story i don't want it to be a debby downer and woe is me and this is over there just bitching and moaning i can't have

it right i i uh i try to be very optimistic in in some shitty situations and so i i uh we talked about the four fs earlier right i learned that from my dad family friends fun and faith um i sprinkle some of that end of the books i don't want it to come across like uh it's just some former seal bitched and moaning right it's some former seal who's been through some shit and is going to share a little bit of what helped him out when he was in his nice darkest times what is in there about the A.R. The AAR of the Bin Laden made. Only thing I put in there is, is that there's an audio recording of it. And I mentioned that because that's where my flow of the mission comes from.

Gotcha. What I saw, what I experienced, and then what I sat through in a debrief and what I remember hearing on that debrief from what was audio recorded. And I've confirmed with other people what they heard on that radio or on that recording. So that's the only thing I get into, just that there was existence of it, and that that's where my version comes from. And the name of the book is No Easy Way. No Easy Way. It's a playoff, no easy day, because it turns out the day is not long enough, right?

You're going to get kicked in the nuts. Life's journey is a little longer than that. It takes more today. Well, we will help you promote it when it comes out. I'm not using a publisher on this one, right? I use the publisher on the last two. Guess who kept all their money in the process? Go, go figure.

Publishers, literary agent, everybody kept their profits, except me. So this book, I am not using a publisher. I'm going as most direct that I can. If people want to help me, they can go to my website, mat bisonet.com, and order a book. And that cuts out all the middlemen, that cuts out all the fluff, that cuts out all the nonsense. And then when the book finally gets reviewed, go straight to. to you. Good for you, man. Good for you. What are you doing with the YouTube channel? YouTube channel. That's an interesting one, right? I kind of parachuted into Hollywood for this

the SEAL team show on CBS, right? I had an opportunity to sit down with, um, with the president of CBS. He says, hey, Biss, what does Hollywood do wrong with military content? Pretty easy. You don't hire enough veterans to make sure the veteran content actually gets across, right? I said, look, I did 13 deployments, and it's not about the Rambo shit. I did plenty of that. I was married. I tried to have kids, like all of these things, and it's a balance. It's not just to shoot them up stuff, right?

There's way more to being a seal than what's in combat. And he's like, okay, would you help me put this together? Sure. So started hiring a handful of vets. Then Hollywood stepped in. They're like, no, no, no. You've got three involves. like three we need like 300 so i went back to the president of cbs i'm like sir this this isn't the deal

we got like this you have to put a lot of them in here right there's only three of us so far and uh and of course right what he wants and the lieutenants below them they always change what he wants probably like the military um so i i kept budding heads but every time i'd go back and talk with the president he'd say okay bis okay and he'd win and by season in seven, right? What's seven seasons? Seven seasons. Seven seasons. Two hundred vets employed on the show. Oh, congratulations, man.

Directors, editors. We had two former seals and a former Marsok guy in the writer's room writing the episodes with the crazy Hollywood types that write the episodes, right? Otherwise, we'd be throwing nuclear hand grenades episode two, right? It doesn't work. They clearly pulled a whole bunch of stuff from my books and put it in the show. We talk a lot about mental health. We have veteran suicide. We have an episode where we had a veteran shoot himself in the VA parking lot. Right.

Mental health was never brought up at all ever during my time, ever. It was dirty word, right? So to have the ability to have an effect on a show that can tell a real story, that was it so seal team seven seven seasons learned a lot it's super expensive it's slow and and it's and it's a dying breed right um so uh i've got a farm in north carolina which is where i am moving to in my next phase of life i'm going to be a farmer growing some waggoo beef nice and and send some of that up here i'll trade you gummy bears for waggoo beef any fucking deal um so yeah through through that process right it's an old

old cattle farm that my wife and I bought 10 years ago. We've been cleaning up and we're like, you know what? We should share a little bit of the story of, hey, where our food comes from, right? I'm a little bit of a prepper, so we'll be getting off the grid with some solar and whatnot. And so we're like, let's put a little show around this. And then, you know, I bring buddies out and bring them through the show. No shit. Yeah, you'll have to come. We'd set up a thing called the Farm Olympics with my son now it's when you come we'll have you do it but it's shooting out of an ice bath sporting clays right paddleboarding side by siding with axe throwing with Winkler like we got a whole bunch of stupid fun stuff to do around the farm

dude that's awesome yeah sounds like a total man cap that's fucking amazing it is well congratulations and I'm really happy for you and um so a couple more questions send one what is the what is the the the one thing that stuck with you the most out of your career in the seal teams a positive one a positive a positive from my time in the seal team for all the bullshit happened man and you've lived it so so i'm speaking to the choir here there's something about working with a group of people. I'm not talking about the officers and all the people around. I'm talking about the operators that you worked with, right?

And the fact that each one of them, right, would give of himself for the team, right? And I loved that, right? I loved the fact that I worked in an environment where the team was all rowing in the same direction, and it was great. I absolutely loved that. I loved the black and white nature of it. Right? There's a very little gray area. You're either all in or you're not. And that was all in.

So I loved all of that. Problem is you get out and you miss it. I have a Delta Force buddy who's on the SEAL team show. Delta guy playing a SEAL. That's weird. But Tyler Gray. And he's like, look, Biss, we don't have PTSD. We have LTSD. Have you heard this one before?

No. Because I'm like, Tyler, what's LTSD? He's like, we have lack of traumatic stress disorder. okay explain it to me and it's the best way i've ever heard it explain really okay bis he's like for a decade straight our day job monday wednesday friday on average was to creep into the house pick the lock on the door and come deal with you and 10 of your friends with me and 10 of my friends right we're gonna be we're gonna be very calm in that chaos because that's what we do monday wednesday friday and for a decade all right it's kind of our normal night that's our

normal that's our baseline i don't get i don't get adrenaline rush in a shootout out. I slow down and make smart decisions. Adrenaline will get you killed. So if that becomes our norm, I turn to my ID card, I left the base. I never got shot at again. I haven't been skydiving. I've had lack of traumatic stress in my life. And Tyler's like, he explained that to me. I'm like, holy shit. It's the best way ever. I have LTSD. I have LTST. I did it long enough that that was my happy place and my norm. It gave me purpose. It gave me all the things I needed in life. And then one day I turned in my ID card, I left, and now I have lack of traumatic stress disorder. Now, why do vets step into drug and alcohol issues?

Maybe they're trying to recreate the chaos. Single-handedly, the best way I've ever heard it, explained to me. Maybe, maybe. I don't know. A lot of other symptoms going on while in service. Like you're saying, you're not fucking sleeping while in service. Yeah, I didn't sleep for more than four or five hours a night for almost a decade. Right. It's like there's a lot of, there's a lot of combined stressors that add up and add up.

And you think about it again, I was at the command for eight straight years and that pressure never got relieved for anybody. I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the command in general. That pressure just got more and more and more pressurized, more and more and more pressurized. Oh, big success of bin Laden-Rish. And okay, boom, we got gut punched with all of our. friends died yeah right like yeah man i got one other crazy story for you what do you got so when my kids were little i would go volunteer at their school right i they use their mom's maiden name so nobody know they're just trying to stay under the radar certainly nobody at the kid's school knows my background but there's a program called watchdogs dads of good students dads can go to the volunteer for the day and whatever so I'm gonna be a watchdog I show up at the school

like yeah you know I'm Ava dad you know I'm here for my volunteer like okay well you know here's your t-shirt um would you go work the crossing guard the as the buses show up here's a reflective vest and a stop sign I'm like I'm probably overqualified for this but it's going to be a really safe intersection I got my my Navy SEAL hand in arm signals right I'm working the intersection reflective vest stop sign I don't In the middle of this, I see this guy walking up with a couple of kids, and he's got a seal Team Six hat on. The type we don't sell. Oh, shit.

Right? We have Squadron hats. We don't have Team Six hats. So he walks across the intersection. I give him a look. You know, it gives me the tough guy nod and walks into school. Holy shit. I got to talk to this guy.

Maybe he was in the command. So I let him come out. I get out of the street. I let the traffic go. And I'm looking. I'm like, hey, man, just you're the hats. Were you in the teams? I was. I'm like, oh, no shit. I'm team six. Those are the guys that got bin Laden. You know, you weren't a part of that, were you?

This guy looks around. I don't like to talk about it, but I was. Oh, shit. I'm like, I can't believe what he just said. I just keep staring at him. I'm in my reflective vest. I got my stop sign. I'm like, no shit. So was I. And that's all I said. I just kept staring at it. Oh, my God. And he's looking to me. I'm looking at him. The two crossing guards are out there beating the shit out of each other. I'm like, I'm going to kill him with my sign. My wife's texting me.

She's like, you know, the kids are at school. Don't kill him with the stop sign. We had a few choice words. I'm like, who is the master chief on Chokwant? What Bud's class for you? All right, this guy had nothing. Like, listen, I got a lot of dead friends who'd be really upset that you're coming in here acting like you are. Why don't you beat it?

How about that? What are the odds of that? Man. 24 dudes in the world. and he's lying to the wrong crossing guard at the wrong time. Wow. Wow. Wow.

People never cease to amaze me. Well, man, we're wrapping up the interview. Last question. Send it. If you had three people to recommend for the show, who would they be? Ooh, three guys to come on this show. Great question. They probably wouldn't want me dropping their names on this right now.

I could think of a couple operators. that I worked with who would be phenomenal to help round out a whole bunch of stuff for you. Whether they will come here and be on the show, I don't know. Like I said, I wasn't gonna do any of this until I talk to you. Knowing you, knowing what you've built and the type of person you are,

that's why I was willing to come sit here. So I appreciate that. And I think there will be some others that will follow suit. Well. And so I won't drop names, but they will be phenomenal interviews if I can encourage them to come out. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, Matt, it was an honor. I wish the best for you. I hope that book gets the blessing soon. So, I appreciate it. God bless, brother. Thanks, man. Cheers. Thank you.