Shawn Ryan Show - #334 Clint Emerson - Inside SEAL Team 6's Spy Unit: Black Squadron

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Clint Emerson is a retired Navy SEAL who spent more than two decades in Naval Special Warfare, including time with SEAL Team 6. During his career, he specialized in intelligence collection, physical and technical surveillance, and operations against high-value targets in hostile and denied areas around the world. He is also the New York Times bestselling author of 100 Deadly Skills, the founder of Escape the Wolf, and the only Navy SEAL ever inducted into the International Spy Museum. Privacy Isn't Paranoia. It's Protection. Download Glacier - https://srs.site/glacierapp Website - https://theglacierapp.com Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Head to https://Superpower.com and use code SRS at checkout for $20 off your membership. Get 100+ biomarkers tested every year. Plus a personalized health plan and on-demand care team. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod Search onX Offroad in the App Store or Google Play to access an off-road navigation app with trail maps, land boundaries, camping info, and offline capability. https://www.onxmaps.com/offroad/app SpotOn GPS Fence — trusted by Shawn Ryan for his dog Moose. The most reliable GPS dog fence: 100% secure from backyard to backcountry with virtual boundaries you control from your phone. No wires, no digging. Sets up in minutes, any size, any shape, anywhere. Learn more: https://spotonfence.com/srs Try Amazon Music Unlimited for music, podcasts, and audiobooks all in one app. Your subscription now includes access to audiobooks. https://music.amazon.com Clint Emerson Links: Website - https://clintemerson.com/books Books - https://clintemerson.com Escape the Wolf Website- https://escapethewolf.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Emerson. How are you doing? Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me. It's cool to be here. Thanks for coming. We've got an awesome studio. Well, I appreciate that.

It is beautiful. Inside, out. I mean, do people get to see the whole thing? Have you ever shown all of it? On camera? Yeah. No, we haven't shown all of it. Oh, man, that's nice.

We've got some secrets in here. Yeah. But I think they get the gist of it. It's got a spa vibe. Thank you. I can tell. You're a man who loves massages. Oh, man.

Man, but, well, yeah, man, I can't believe it's taken this long to get you on here. Yeah, well, life, you know. But it is good to be here. I was going to tell you guys that you're like Oprah, Ryan. There's so many tears have fallen on this leather chair. My man, I hope I don't cry while I'm here with you. Hey, same chair since episode one. Is it?

Yeah, man. Oh, nice. Yeah, history. Same exact positions, too. Make sure I smell this chair before I leave. But yeah, I'm excited about this. Really excited. Yeah, it should be fun.

Well, let me give you an introduction here. We're going to get more into that towards the end of the interview, but I thought that was a great, great opener. Clint Emerson, you're a retired Navy SEAL who spent more than two decades in naval special warfare, including time with SEAL Team 6. During your career, you specialized in intelligence collection, surveillance, and high-risk operations in hostile areas, including mission. involving Somali pirates, al-Qaeda leaders, and other covert targets. You're also the best-selling author of 100 deadly skills, where you break down the surveillance, survival, and tradecraft techniques you learned in special operations for a civilian audience, awarded the Scott Fitzgerald Award for Excellence in Writing.

Since retiring, you've worked in crisis management and security consulting, helping people, and organizations prepare for threats like targeted violence, kidnapping, and other high-risk situations. You are the only special operator included into the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks, buddy. So, you know, typically in these things, we started childhood, which we're going to do a little bit today, but we're only going to touch on a small point. portion of your childhood at the beginning because this is all going to tie back down, back back to childhood at the end. So scary.

Kind of the first time we've done something like this. But everybody starts off getting a gift. Oh, of course. You know, I think I tried these, but they came out of somebody else's vigilante gummy bear bag. And they were spectacular. So I will definitely be gobbling these down. I would love to counter you with a guy. gift if this is a good opportunity. Sure. You can do that or we can we can do it later on,

whatever you want. I'm game. I don't know what works best for this whole like I got to get up and get it and give it to you kind of thing. Let's wait till we'll wait till it's appropriate. Okay. Perfect. Probably the second segment. But I can't wait. I love gifts. Yeah. That's good for you. I think you'll like it. So we'll start with where did you grow up? Well, I am a born in Texas kid, but at the age of eight, my dad got hired by Aramco, and we left the United States, moved to Abcake, Saudi Arabia, where he worked for the oil industry until I guess I left for high school. So I grew up in Saudi, which was in the 80s during the height of, well, terrorism has always been going on, hasn't it? But it definitely was going on then. You know, that's back when TWA was nicknamed, you know, terrorist world airlines, you know, because the hijackings and all the things that were going on during that time frame.

And Saudi with, you know, obviously, it was a very interesting place to grow up as a westerner. So I could imagine. Yeah. Not a lot of fun. What age did you say you went there? Eight. Eight years old. Second grade all way up to high school.

Wow. Yeah. So not a lot of. do for Western kids. You know, you live on a compound. It's surrounded by anti-aircraft guns. Constantina wire. It's probably the first time I actually started paying attention to security. Because I was like, well, are they trying to keep bad people out or are they trying to keep us in? You know, like, why do you have all this? You know, gate guards with AK-47s and the Constantine wire part, I was interesting. You know, razor blades at the top of the fence line and

the anti-aircraft guns that you could see out in the distance. And yeah, it was an interesting way to grow up. And you had a security force. Then you had the religious Saudi police. A lot of redundancy, you know, and there's always somebody around to see something to ask you what you're doing. I wouldn't say it's a surveillance state because they're not that motivated. You know, there's some of the laziest people on the planet. But they definitely have to be.

had all the resources in place that made you question like, why? Why you got all this, you know? And then you quickly realized as a kid like, oh, well, there's a lot of terrorism that you heard about in the news outside of Saudi. But there was plenty of events inside, right? Cobar Towers was during that timeframe

and a couple other events inside the kingdom. And then you go, oh, okay, now you get it, right? They're keeping their own out and also keeping us in. They don't want you wandering, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, did you, I know you don't have anything to, you know, bounce it off of it, but did you like it there as a kid?

Uh, not really. I mean, you, uh, it's a radical Islamic state back then. You know, MBS since then is westernized Saudi and he's really trying hard, you know, he's a 30-something-year-old prince of Saudi and he's doing a good job. I think opening the kingdom of, and trying to create new venues really following Dubai and how it's prospered. And I think they see themselves as they had gotten behind, you know,

and their values and their dedication to the religion actually kind of held them back, you know, because they're home of Riyadh, or of Mecca, sorry. And, you know, there's a lot of weight in that for them. And so I think Saudi felt like it could never actually modernize because of Mecca. And you have a lot of respect there still for the elderly and older clerics and those really running Islam. And so I was there during the height of, you know, the most extreme aspects of Saudi religion.

And if you look at Saudi as a whole, it was like 27 different tribes or clans, whatever they called themselves all the way up until the 1950s. And the biggest clan or tribe pretty much gained power. and it became a kingdom. And ironically enough, the 1950s is when Aramco was established, which AR is Arabian, AM is American, and CO company, and started pulling oiled out of the ground, right? And very quickly became one of the richest countries in the world, liquid. But as a kid in the 80s, that was the height of when a majority of Saudis,

want you there, you know? They didn't want Americans, Brits, or Canadians because that's a majority of the folks working for the oil companies pulling that oil. And you felt it, you know, and there was a lot of privilege there for the Saudis. I remember my dad, he would get just so irate. Like if you're standing in line at the souk, right, to pay for whatever merchandise we were buying, Saudi citizens had a front of the line privilege, no matter where you are. And that's country. If you're a Westerner, you're the back of the line. You will always let a Saudi go first. And I always think like, why aren't we doing that here? I'm just going to bring that up.

Yeah. Can you imagine like American first in line? Like, I can't imagine it. No. Because it's America last. Yeah. But as a Westerner, you're standing in line for an extraordinary long period of time sometimes. And my dad, I remember he would just turn red in the face, you know, and it could just hear him under his breath and other fuckers, you know, like just pissed that he had to let these people in front. It was part of their protocols, part of, you know, when you get briefed up in Houston, you know, at a Ramco headquarters before they put you on a dedicated 747 to Saudi, you know, they tell you, hey, these are the protocols. They give you all these briefs and the culture. And so, you know, and that was just the beginning. You noticed that, you know, you are second rate, third rate citizens, you know, like even like the Saudis back then treated Indians, Pakistanis, and Filipinos. They were the slaves of that country, you know, literally.

And even, you know, there was times we even had to get in line behind them. Wow. So it was. Yeah. didn't follow it, you know, it was all kind of like the threats were real. You know, you get deported and a heartbeat, you know, for sometimes the simplest things. You know, they don't care. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking care of your own.

Right. There was something to learn. Now, being a visitor, it sucks. But now as an adult, I can reflect on a culture and go, damn, man. Like, but then there's the other side. Back then, women, you know, we'd go on base, or there's a base, but, you know, there's a base, on compound they had two restaurants. They had one called the date pit.

You know, dates are very, dates that grow on palm trees is, you know, one of their biggest fruits, if you will, or vegetable. And it's got one seed, right? So what does that make it? One seed is a vegetable?

Yeah. And so it was called the date pit. Could play on words, but it was kind of like the fast food. A lot of kids would go there, hamburgers, hot dogs, that kind of thing. Then they had the dining hall. Dining hall was more of a sit-down kind of restaurant, but a huge partition down the center.

And the women would go to one side, the men would go to the other, right? Really? To eat. Yeah. And that's where all the women would go, because you even had Saudi employees living on the compound. And so you had to follow a lot of those traditional cultural rules and, you know, basically social etiquette and protocol. And yeah, everything was separate, you know, and it was always the women behind these curtains separated from the men, you know, and the kids would always default with the women. And didn't matter where you went, that's how it was, you know. There were a number of times that really made them live in their unpleasant was that

younger Saudi men, they're probably in their 20s, you know, and you got to remember, I'm like eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, you know, those age groups and they'd go out of here way to like kick your ass, you know. And their favorite thing, you know, and I think we kind of joke about going in and out of the Middle East, but they're sandals. Their sandals are this hard leather. And somewhere in their upgreen, they learn how to hit you pretty good with the blade of those saddle, those sandals. They take those sandals off or they got really good at throwing these things like a damn frisbee. And they would, I mean, you know, 20, 30 yards away, throw that sandal at you. And they'd hit you in the head every single time.

I was like, damn, man, they're good at this. And those sandals, the blade of them, I mean, it's like getting, you might as well get hit by the edge of a plate, you know, like a, you know, dinner plate. You know, it's hard and it hurts and it sucks. And it's not to say that we probably didn't bring some of those beatings on ourselves, just being bored, without Westerners with nothing to do and cause trouble, you know. So why did you come back to the States? they only go up to the eighth grade there. Okay. So a lot of Ramco kids go to Swiss boarding schools at ninth grade, you know, for basically high school.

So at that point, my dad had had enough. You know, once again, he was a Texas kid. Growing up, Texas, kind of had that, like, I'm not going to let somebody push me around that long. Yeah. You know, I'll go make a decent salary for a little while, see the world. you know, as we all have learned, Saudis are not bashful when it comes of money. You know, so then, this is the 80s,

they would make you leave the country for 30 days at a time. So they'd give you an 11-month visa. And on the 12th month, they'd give you $5,000 per head in your family and say, leave. So you'd go on a 30-day vacation and go see the world or whatever. and you know and oh yeah by the way stop and get your visas renewed and then come back to work so that aspect though was actually really cool we got to see all of europe one year you go see parts of Asia another year and um and

pretty much all paid for by uh by the Saudis you know and uh I always thought it's funny I had this kid is they were Mormons and so there was like eight kids in that family so can you imagine they would take the $5,000 per head, and then they would just go to Cyprus and hang out for a month to not spend a dime. I was like, that's pretty smart. Yeah. Just take all that money and put it away. So what got your interest in the seal teams?

You went to, you came back, went through high school, went to college. Yeah. So a couple things. as on one of those trips, you know, we were traveling through Frankfurt Airport and the first thing you want to do when you get out of Saudi is have a Coca-Cola, at least for me,

because all they had was Pepsi. Now, they don't pronounce the P word in Arabic, so it's Bebzi. You're stuck with Bebsi-Cola the entire time you're in Saudi because a couple of reasons. At the time, Coca-Cola supposedly was run by Jews. The can is the colors of the Crusaders, red and white. I don't know. But they didn't allow Coke into the country. Okay. So, you know, they got a lot of reasons for a lot of stuff. And so if it's an airplane leaving Saudi, it's not going to have Coca-Cola. So the first place, land in Frankfurt, whatever. And we get to our gate. You know, my mom and dad, my brother, I'd go stage themselves. And I'd beeline it to the little restaurant bar across from the gate. And the first thing I do is go to the bar and ask for a Coke, fountain Coke. And there's this guy standing there. He looks kind of like us.

Now he's all tatted up and he's got like, actually he's got a black collared polo on. Could have been Dick Marchenko himself. I don't know. And I'm a curious kid and I'm kind of looking at his tattoos. I'm like, what's that? He's like, looks down to me and he's like, what? He's like, I said that tattoo right there. He's like, that's a trident.

I'm like, what's a trident? He's like, it's a symbol represents, you know, military unit. What military unit? The Seals. like what his seals doing he's like kid where where are you from like well i live in saudi like what are you living in saudi for i'm like wow my dad works for ramco and you know and he's like huh all right well do you remember when we bomb libya like yeah actually i do because you know at the time vice president george bush came in country i was a boy scout so i'm color guard holding the american

flag and i've got my i'm proudly wearing my order the arrow sash and uh and he stood behind the post and told all the Americans, hey, you know, in the next coming months, there may be conflict. And if anything happens, we're going to have C-130s and everything set up for you guys, get the Americans out of country because you are the closest country for retaliation of some sort, right? So I tell this guy this story. He's like, yeah. He goes, well, those B-11s had to come in extra low. And I'm like, oh, yeah, why? Like, well, so they wouldn't get shot out of the air and it gives me a lot of, I don't know, if it was even legit, right? He's like, me and my buddies, though, had to sneak in the middle of the night, and we had to take out the anti-aircraft guns

so that these B-11s could roll in, drop bombs, and roll out, not worrying about any threats from the ground. I'm like, what do you mean you took them out? Like, well, we show up in the middle of the night, we shoot everybody on site, and then we put a bunch of explosives on the guns and run away, and they blow up. Holy shit! Like, that's what I want to do, right? And up till then, this is the 80s, right? I wanted to be a ninja up until then, because it's a ninja. The movie Revenge of the Ninja was like my favorite movie. I was like, I want to be a... I love that movie.

I want to be a ninja. I meet this guy in a Frankfurt airport. I'm like, okay, all right, I'll switch over to seal now. I want to be a seal. And of course, later you find out, like, well, if you murder people as a ninja, it's called murder. But if you murder people as a seal, well, then you get labeled a hero. It's like, just a matter of picking the right side of the line in life, right? So anyway, I switched from Ninja to Seal and

I switched from Ninja to Seal. And when we got back, I remember going to the library and starting to try and find these seal books. And there was only, I think there was one. And it was like a picture book. Only one? I think there was one seal book that I could find in that library, in the Abcake Library in Saudi Arabia. Well, you know, I've contributed. I know.

Yeah. That's actually kind of funny. So now we have a whole section of Bar-GEL. Yeah. Oh, boy. And so I find one seal book, and I think it was like a picture book, you know, and it just had photos in it, like, guys coming out of the water, the camouflage face, and the jungle hat and different things. And I started digging in and digging in.

And, man, interestingly enough, they had this career-oriented MS-DOS computer system at the school. And you would sit at it during, I don't remember if it was during class or something, and you would answer questions, click, click, click, green screen, asking you a question, a, B, C, or D, A, B, C, D. And, you know, as a kid, it felt like 300 questions. It was probably 50. And you answer all. And then on the printer, you know, with the green line, green and white line printers with the holes in the side, you know, printed all up. And it would tell you, you know, based on your interests, what kind of career path you should take. And sure enough, the top three, the first one was offshore rigged scuba diver, welder, right,

marine biologists. And the third one was UDT. Didn't even say seal yet. It just said underwater demolition to the United States Navy. And I was like, huh. So then that led to looking into scuba. I found out that I had met the minimum, age for Patty certification, which at the time was like 12 years old. So I told my dad and he's like,

okay, and there happened to be a Patty scuba instructor guy that would do classes at night. He worked for Ramco, but he was also a master diver and had all the instructor calls for Patty. And so we'd go to the local pool and you do all your lessons and deep end and learn all the class and you take the test and then eventually you go do open water. You go out and this is the Persian Gulf, right? Correa Beach, you know, and going out, walking out through sand, crappy, murky water. You know, the Gulf then is the same as it is now. Go to the bottom, do your open water part.

Get in a circle, instructors in the middle, makes you take your mask off, and then you got to clear it and all of the little things. And I did all that, got my claw, and my scoutmaster, an adult who all, also was scuba qualified, was like, once he learned, I was scuba, I was like, hey, do you want to go do tire reef? I'm like, yeah, I'd heard about this tire reef. It was a, it was a reef made of the tires that they use on the big desert vehicles out, you know, they're massive. Tires are the size of this room. And it's a whole reef where they've dumped them, stacked them, you know, done different things with them that you can go to. So the way you get there is you go

out to the end of a pier. We get to the end of the pier and is the biggest swarm of jellyfish I've ever seen in my life. My scout match is like, yeah, don't worry, we're just going to, instead of jumping in and giving me the okay, don't fill up your BC with any air, just take that leap. We'll jump right through them, sink to the bottom. I'll find you on the bottom. I'm like, uh, okay. This is my very first dive. And so, you know, hold your face and mask, take your step off the pier into the jellyfish. You know, of course, it's pens and needles. My face. and my hands, everything, right? Pass through the jellyfish, get to the bottom.

There he is. It's murky. It's dark, but I see him. Bubbles, okay, okay, okay. Give all the hand signals. Off we go. And he has this rope that's along the bottom. And you just start going along the rope.

And I'm right behind them. We're just pulling ourselves. And it takes you out to the tire reef. And we get out to the tire reef. You're kind of cruising around, you know, you kind of get up and some of the tires are upright. And you can go, up, blow a bunch of bubbles, create a big bubble, go in there for a split second, clear your

mask, whatever, put it back on, do what you're not supposed to do, right? And then we cruise around some more. Well, before you know it, I lose track of this guy, and he loses track of me. And I'm looking out in the distance for bubbles. I don't see bubbles. So I'm like, what the fuck? And I'm all by myself now, 12 years old, out the tire reef. So I circle this thing a half a dozen times looking in and out of the tires looking around for him. I can't find this dude. And then I'm like, okay, well, maybe I'll just go back. Okay. So now I'm looking for that rope. Well, I didn't pay attention where that rope came in on the reef. So now I'm on the perimeter looking for this damn rope, which I can't find the rope. I'm like, well, now I'm starting to panic. And I'm like,

what the fuck do I do now? So I'm like, well, there's the surface and I can figure out my bearings. So I go ahead and start to make the ascent, hands up, you know, following all the textbook rules, which I just learned, I get to the top, break the surface, fill up my BC, look around, it's choppy, it's horrible, it's cloudy, and I can't see land. And so I'm circling, circling in a panic, but, you know, I'm only right here. So I'm like, well, kick really, really hard, get myself way up. And I do that bobbing basically 360, boom, sea land. I'm like, oh, thank God.

Fill up my BC, start turtle backing. And it felt like it took an attorney to get back to that beach. I was way down from the pier. I drifted, get to the beach, you know, 12 years old. You're single little 180 tank and your BC. It feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. And I'm carrying my fins and all my crap and walking back. And he's sitting at a picnic table.

Oh, hey, what's up, man? Was that fun or what? And I'm looking like, what? I was like, you left me. And he's like a grown-ass adult, you know? And, but I tell you what, I probably leverage that experience and how many times in buds, you know, like Beehive, anytime you're doing pull comp.

Like that moment, I was like, oh, I've already been lost at sea. And, you know, and tried to figure this shit out of my own as a kid, you know. Not that pull comp or any of that stuff was easy. But I definitely leverage that moment. I don't know how many times, it's like, okay, you've been here, you kind of done something like this, kind of sort of at least once in your life when you were a kid, so you can definitely handle as an adult, you know. A lot of people get blood work done once.

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And you don't manage it. Open the app once, hit the button, close it. Glacier, download it today on the App Store. And remember, privacy isn't paranoia. It's protection. What did you go to school for us? I mean, if you learn that early on, that's what you wanted to do, then why did you wind up going to college? So, good question, man.

I always wanted to go to the Navy. I just didn't have the balls to, like, actually sign up, you know, and I didn't know. You know, back then you didn't, there was no information. There's no internet or anything to leverage to like, okay, well, how do you become a Navy SEAL, you know? I ended up going to University of Houston, of all places. And I ended up meeting a guy, Rick, Rick and Brian, but Rick was the guy I met. And he had been to buds. And he was like this gold mine of information.

And I was like, so tell me all about it. He's like, well, he told me as far as he made it, which was like, Hellweek or whatever it was. And he ended up having an injury and ended out of out of the nation. So he can only give me so much, we gave me enough to know that, okay, you got to be able to be pushups, pull ups, this, this and that. And you just go to a Navy recruiter and sign up. And I was like, okay. So once I learned the, you know, very basics, and I started working out with this guy. And then we pulled in another guy, Brian.

And then the three of us were like, well, I kind of motivated them in a weird way. They're like, well, why don't we just all go in together? I was like, you would go in again? It's like, fuck, yeah. So we went to the Navy recruiter. And at this point, I had maybe a semester left on my degree. I was like, hell, got to scratch it, right? So we go to Navy Recruiter, we sign up.

And I didn't tell anybody until about, I didn't tell my family or anybody. Because my dad, you know, he was like big on college, finished college out of the, but I was like, screw it. I'm going. We signed the dotted lines in about two weeks from leaving to go to Chicago for boot camp, you know, like told my parents, of course my mom cries. And my dad was kind of like, what? I was like, yeah, it's going to happen.

He's like, all right. And, you know, off we went. The three of us went to boot camp at Great Lakes at Christmas. Left right before Christmas. It was great. Sideway snow, learning how to march. You know the deal. Spend eight weeks learn how to march and make your bed.

That's Navy boot camp. Yeah. And then a and then A school, I picked Corman. I was going to school for, kinesiology that you have okay yeah so i was going to i thought oh it's like sports medicine you know kind of had an interest in medicine from doing my first aid merit badge and then i realized basically navy corman school basically is the boy scout first aid merit badge that's really it's three months you learn really nothing you know you learn how to take pulse and count breaths

right on stop bleeding some sort and then uh and then you show up to san diego buds class 203. 203. What year is this? 95? 95. I think that started in 95, graduate 96? No, started 96, graduate in 96. Fuck, I don't know. 95 to 96, I think. Yeah. Would you think of Buds? Buds is, you've had enough guys.

So the only thing unique for me is my true, true name is Smith, right? everybody has a pen name right and um so there was we started with 180 something guys in our class and there was probably five or six smiths okay and as you know at the end of every day of first phase you go to the first phase classroom and you sign deficiency chits i was c smith on the list so of course i ended up with every deficiency chit for all the other smiths every single day. And what is the one word

we're only allowed to say all through buds? Who ya. So mine always had a question mark at the end. You know, they'd say, Smith, push-ups. And then they'd pull out another deficiency. Pull-ups. Another one for, you know, the O-course, the swim, the run.

And I'd go up there, who-ya? And sign every single one of them. There was like, you know, four to six a day. to where eventually a couple of the instructors are like, pull me aside with this other kid, Garcia, and they're like, hey, you two suck. You guys are horrible.

I mean, I don't understand why you show up to this course and you can't do push-ups, pull-ups, you suck at the O course, you suck at runs, you suck at swims, you know, remediation. I want you to show up at the first phase office when the day is done every day from here on out. And this was an instructor who was fresh out of SEAL Team 6. He had a reputation for being wired a little tight.

And he looked exactly like Richard Gear. And anybody from my era who hears this knows exactly who I'm talking about. And I remember showing up like, holy, this is going to suck, right? Show up first phase office right next to the bell. You're staring at that bell. He comes out. He's got a big old dip in. He's spitting.

you're on the grinder. Hold on a second. Goes back inside, grabs his lawn chair, folds this thing out. And we're like, I kind of look over at Garcia and we're like, we're in this for the long haul, man. This is going to suck. And he's like, eight count bodybuilders begin. And we just start going about 30 minutes into it, which is a long time doing an eight count bodybuilder. He's like, go hit the surf. And so we take off like, oh, thank God. And that's a long run, to the berm, over the berm, into the ocean, back, you know, get wet and sandy, the whole thing, come back. Push-ups, ready, begin. Start doing push. Eight count bodybuilders begin.

Pull-ups begin. You know, firemen squats, putting him on my shoulders doing squats, put on his shoulders doing squats. Fireman carry to the surf, switch, come back, you know, so I carry him to the surf. We dump him in the water, get wet and sandy. Now he puts me on his shoulders, go back. and this goes on and it's starting to get dark. And I'm like, dude, they're going to, and it while we're whispering to each other, and then definitely while we're hitting the surf, like, dude, they're going to try and make

us quit. This is going to suck, you know, don't quit. Okay, don't quit. Yeah. And this goes on every day, the first phase for me in Garcia. And we get about before Hell Week. And Hell Week at that time was the sixth week of Buds. So we're probably week four of getting my ass handed to me after every.

day. And at this point, a couple other Smiths had quit finally. I was like, thank God, because these guys were screwing me over every day. And so Garcia were doing push-ups, and he decides to cross his feet for some reason. Instead of at attention, ankles side by side, he crosses, which is what instructors would do, right? They'd cross their foot doing push-ups. And the instructor gets out of that lawn chair and tie kicks him so hard in the ankle snaps it. Breaks the kid's ankle. No shit. And I'm like, oh, God, just keep doing push-ups.

Keep doing push-ups. Don't look. I didn't see anything. And then there was a hesitation. The instructor was like, keep going, get your feet right. And he couldn't. He couldn't get that ankle to do what he needed to do. Right?

And he's like, you know, take him to the surf zone. So I throw him on my shoulders, fire him and carry him to the surf zone, throw him in. And this kid's bored. He's crying. He's like, not crying because of pain. He's crying because he knows that he's not going to be able to continue. You know, and it hits him hard. And he's like, he goes, dude, I think he broke my fucking ankle. I'm like, I think I heard something snap, but put some weight on it. He kind of puts weight on. It kind of gives. And he's just like, and the thing starts swelling up. I mean, shit. Throw him on my shoulders to bring him back. And then instructor's like, no, you carry. You were supposed to switch. Couldn't do it. He couldn't even get me on his shoulders. He couldn't even stand.

And so the beating stopped at that point. He's like, go put ice on it. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Next day, he goes to medical and never to see him again. I don't even know where that kid went. And that was the end of his career. Crazy part is we get through Hell Week, we get to dive phase. And I remember it was like day one or two, a dive phase.

the first phase instructors come in with second phase instructors. And they're like, everybody drop in the whole room, right? We drop. We knock out whatever the required push-up is. What is it in that 40? You get bumped up from 30 to 40? And I cannot remember it is. So we knock out our push-ups.

Now we're still in the lean and rest. And one instructor is like, all right, whoever witnessed instructor so-and-so hit a student a couple of weeks ago stand up and I'm like nope I'm not going to do it stay in the front lean arrest and then they go on start beating us and to where the class leader is even like whoever it was just identify yourself nope I am not going down this path I just held on to it man And they beat us a couple of times during first phase. And I remember one night we got back from one of the first night dives.

We still got the twin one 80s on. We still got our rubber on. And it was like, once again, who was the man who saw an instructor in first phase hit another student? And I was like, I'm not doing it, not giving it up. And so they made us put our, fens, you know, one in your left hand, one in your right hand, filled up our masks with water. And then we did the death march with our twin one 80s on all the way down to the demo demo pits, which is, I think it's a mile and a half down there, mile and a half.

So it's three miles. Well, you have your hands out, fens out, mask full of water, soft sand march, twin one 80s in rubber. And I still, everybody in that. class at that point was basically like whoever it was give it up give it up just tell them nope this is the first time actually i'm kind of like saying it out loud you know what's funny is fast forward 10 plus years i um where the hell was i was in some east coast locker room and there he was and he's a warrant now no shit instructor yeah and i went up to i said, I don't know if you know this, but I'm pretty sure I saved your ass when you were a

Bud's instructor. And he just kind of looked at me. He's like, oh, yeah, why? I was like, do you remember me? And he's like, looking at me and I don't know, yeah, you look kind of familiar. We crossed paths, you know, overseas, wherever. Like, nope, there's Buds. Buds class 203.

And there was just this moment. And then he's like, his eyes got a little bigger. And I could see a little bit more of the whites. In his eyes, he was like, holy fuck, yeah. He's like, I almost got a shit can for that shit, man. You were the guy that never came forward. You know, it was like, yeah. And we kind of laughed, you know.

It was like a big thing, you know. But yeah, full circle, you know, that was probably the highlight of buds, other than my trouble making side. You know, I carried a handy cam from first phase all the way through and made a video of our buds class. I snuck that thing around the whole time. Damn, no shit. And then had it edited it out in town in San Diego,

and they pieced it all together and gave everybody. Back then, it was cassettes, VHS cassettes. Everyone got one when we graduated, and it had all these moments. I'd set the camera once, like, in our cage. Remember the cage area out on the beach? So I set the camera up there and hit record, and we were just getting our asses handed to us out on the beach.

And then there was a time where the instructors had us in the dip tanks, you know, trying to freeze us. Yeah. You know, and I'd gone and set the camera up while we got our asses handed then. Oh, shit. Do you still have that? I do. I do.

I have all the footage somewhere. That's awesome. Yeah. I wish I had something like that. Oh, yeah. It was a thing, you know. And then later we got, I got them, I had it burned a DVD and that's what I have left. Now I'm like, where's a DVD player?

Yeah. That was buds. Right on. I'm looking for me. Right on. Yeah. Get my ass handed to me. And the beatings after first phase.

didn't end until then finally when the last Smith quit, they stopped. No more deficiency chits. Right on. It's crazy. Where did you want to go from there? I always wanted to go to Team 3. Why? Well, growing up in Saudi and not liking the culture, and that was before Force 21.

So Force 21 is when the community was restructured. so that everybody deployed everywhere. Prior to that, the teams were all regionally focused. So SEAL Team 3 was the Middle East. And so that little kid in me, right, was like, I'm going to come back someday. Fuck with these people, you know. Right. And so that was the driving factor, you know, that eight-year-old Clint, man.

It's like, you think about how powerful that is when things happen to you when you're a kid. Right? Yeah. So you fast forward to us being in Iraq. And I remember looking at this kid, probably around eight years old looking at me with evil eyes, going, well, guess what I had. I had options.

Eight year old, I can be a doctor, I could be an attorney, I could do whatever the hell I want. And what did I do? I stuck with that passion that was put there when I was a kid. Interesting. Yeah. Now you look at these kids and you're like, Huh, what opportunities they have?

It's a damn good point. Zipping zero, you know? Yeah. A lot of those moments of reflection, right? You know, a lot of people want to know, they always want to know, you know, what got you through, buds? What was it? Man, in the moment, it was just pure desire

to be better than who I was at the time. Like, I just, I saw myself before I was. went in the Navy, I was just going down, even though I was in college, it just felt like a loser, you know? And I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I had seal on the brain since I was a kid, and so I just felt like I was destined to be a loser. And I was just like, man, I'm going to do everything and anything in my power to prevent that and needed to prove it to myself more than anything. And, you know, and I think like a lot of us that come from like broken homes, we're just trying to prove to ourselves on a regular basis that we're worthy and that we can be better

than what we are. And then a minute you achieve it, you're looking for the next thing to be better. Because it only satisfies you for about the 30 seconds, you get that trident punched into your chest. And then you're like, I'm a fucking loser still. I'm a fucking loser. You know, know, and then you can make it to a national agency and be like, I'm still a fucking loser. Then you can get to a tier one command and be like, yep, I'm still a fucking loser. And that's the drive. And it's sometimes I feel like it's still there today, just a fucking loser. And you're just trying to prove that you're not every single day, you know?

Are you proving it to yourself or you're proving it to somebody else? Well, I think early on I was probably doing it. I didn't even realize it. You know, you're definitely not doing it for yourself, right? I think early on I was trying to prove it to family and friends and this and that. And then you get older, get a little wiser and you start reflecting a little more and you go, okay. Yeah. I'm definitely just trying to fill it. Who in your family were you trying to prove it to? What's that? Who in your family were you trying to prove it to? I think early on, you know, I was like, I was like, you know, I was like, I was like, like, oh, just even for my little brother, give him, like, hey, him be proud of me kind of thing, or my mom or your dad, or your friends, you know, maybe even, you know, who I was engaged to at the time, stuff like that, you know, you're kind of like, but it's not till later you realize, no, I wasn't. I was definitely proving it to myself, but telling myself a different story, you know, yeah. Yeah, it's, uh, it's, uh, I. I think, you know, that childhood stuff is sticky.

Yeah. You know, for all of us, you know, you look at the community. It's what? Some crazy, I don't even know if it's been Peru, but you hear it all the time. Like, oh, 95 or 90% or from broken homes. And that's special operations as a whole. Yeah. It's interesting.

I mean, I've learned that in here. Would you say almost everybody, has anybody come from like a normal home? You? I did. Oh, yeah. So mom, dad, stayed married. everything's happy yeah that is an anomaly in mike rittland yeah my parents been married for 50 years yeah but i know i'm an anomaly you know because the majority of the guys that come in here it's

it's uh child abuse sexual abuse like it's just it's i hadn't i had no idea how common all those things actually were yeah i started doing this and you know the majority of guys and women, you know, that have been on the show, they've been through that at some point in their childhood, if not the entire time. And, man, I think that's one of my, I mean, it sucks to hear it, but it's also, I think it's a beacon of light because I do realize how common it is. And that means millions of millions of millions, hundreds of millions of kids are going through it right now.

Yeah. You know, and they see this. and they see, you know, that there is a way out of that that can be a tremendous success. Yeah. And so I think it's a beacon of hope it is. Right. To a lot of those kids that are going through that. You don't, yeah, and you don't know any of it at the time.

You think that's normal. That is your norm. Whatever your parents or your priest or whatever it is, it's going on in your life. You think it's the norm until you realize one day that it was. wasn't, you know. And, but until then, it's like, almost like a superpower. It can drive you and you don't even know it, you know. I feel like a loser too. You know, that's, I think that's what got me through. Yeah. But, um, I know that's what got me through. I didn't even give a shit about being a seal after a while. I was just like, I have to do this. Yeah. But, um, but I know you, um,

you had a loss right at graduation. Correct. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it was, we graduated Buds and went to 18 Delta, checked into, yeah, is that the order? Yeah, 18 Delta, then jump school, then checked into SEAL Team 3. And checked into SEAL Team 3, you know, and as you know, back then STT was what is now SQT. And it was all handled in-house. And each SEAL team had its own training cell. Had gone through STT, was on the tail end of it, and had just jumped into a platoon. And this is back when your platoon decided when you got your Trident. And is the Fourth of July demonstration.

New guys are usually the ones that get chosen to go do the Frogman version or all the frogman tasks. So mine was the Frogman, Drager, diver, three of us online coming out of the water with our guns and looking cool and walking through the crowd of people that are there for the rest of the Fourth of July demonstration stuff. And it's that morning, my mom and dad had come to visit and they were going to watch the demonstration. And so, oh, actually, it was the day before. It was the 3rd of July.

And my dad had gotten up that morning. And I lived in a condo in downtown San Diego. And so you could walk down the street and get a newspaper kind of thing. So he walks down and never comes back. And so cell phone. were still in their infancy then. You know, you had landline. I don't even remember if there was a cell phone involved.

Either way, made, you know, communication far difficult than what it is now. And so he left, he didn't come back, time goes by. I had to go to, I knew I was pressed for time on the rehearsal stuff. But it got to the point where it was, like, concerning. You know, I had already driven the neighborhood. I'm looking for him.

It's like, he's a very squared away dude. Like, he didn't get lost. You may have gotten distracted looking at like architecture homes and stuff because he's an engineer kind of guy. No, that wouldn't be it. You know, and you kind of do this process of elimination, creating excuses, driving around, starting to stress, stress, stress. And then by the time I get home, somebody had called the landline. It was my dad's brother and says, hey, your dad is at the hospital. I'm like, is he okay?

And they're like, yeah, yeah, I heard him in the background. Like, oh, huh, did he say what happened? No. I'd drive over to that hospital. And I had also done paramedic school before this. So, and so I knew this hospital really well from doing all my paramedic runs. And so as soon as I walk in, do the name ID thing, they started walking back towards the chapel. And I knew that, those doors.

And I was like, whole fuck. And so the rest of the ER is to. to the right and I saw a set of closed curtains. And so I beeline it there. I stopped following the dock that had bad news and I just went straight over there and I was with my brother and he was, he's 11 years younger than me.

He kind of followed me. And I didn't even think about it because I was like on a mission. And so I pulled back the curtain and my dad was already in a body bag laying on the table and he had a ET tube sticking out of his mouth. They leave it all that like that. prior to the autopsy. And so then it was like,

that's when I realized like my brother was looking at the same thing as me. And so it was like a very emotional thing. And so I just got my brother out of there because he was too young to be seeing that. And then, uh, yeah. And the part that really was crazy and sucked is that obviously worse, not anything worse than that, but um, he had brought this, motorcycle, 1970s

triumph trident. And he had rebuilt that whole thing, blacked everything out, cromed anything that could be croned, and then put two tridents on the gas tank, you know. It was pretty badass.

Thing was made a Harley sound like a Honda. It was so loud because it was a triple three-cylinder triumph, it was the same motorcycle. Evil Caneval used to, you know, jump buses or whatever, you know, he used to do.

Same exact make and model. And yeah, I had that thing forever, but that was like his gift to me for finally getting my bird and the whole thing. But it was a, that was the kickoff to, you know, showing up to SEAL Team 3. Yeah, it was a shitty moment for sure. And it used to bring me to tears, but I think, you know, as time goes by, because that was 1997. He was 46 years old. 46 had a massive heart attack in between two parallel parked cars. So when he dropped in between them, nobody could see him.

He was young enough to probably have survived it. And I went into like investigation mode afterwards and went back to that area. And I talked to this lady who said she thought she heard somebody yell, but she had her hairdryer going. She turned the hairdryer off because she thought she heard something. Looked at her window. Her window was at an angle where you couldn't. and see in between the two cars.

And then I talked to the paramedics and I knew those guys. And, yeah, just a shitty way to kind of kick off the seal team three portion of the career. You know, I was like, man, damn, man. And it's all this stuff that he would have loved, all of our stories, you know. Every dad wants to hear all of that, you know. And so it was like, I always had these moments. I was like, man, my dad would love to hear this or see that or shoot that guy. or whatever, but yeah, it was definitely a shitty way to kick it off.

So, you still have the bike? I had the bike for a while, and my mom, there's a whole other story. She ended up selling that thing because she needed the money. So some guy in Texas has it. But, yeah, it'd be kind of nice to get it back, but yeah, she got rid of it a long time ago. she needed cash. Damn. Yeah.

Yep. But team three was, you know, you know the reputation like the West Coast, you have SEAL Team 1, which is like Stalin Team 1, right, super strict. Then you had Team 5 that was super late back.

There was no Team 7 back then. Then you had Team 3 that was in the middle. Like, probably one of the coolest teams to be at. It had a little bit of both, you know, strict, but also, You could have fun, you know, it wasn't miserable like some of the guys at Team One. And, yeah, it was a good place to be. If there's anything you could say to your dad right now, what would it be?

Oh, man. Like, I think number one it'd be thank you for, because I've always looked at any man who, see, this is that Oprah Ryan portion. You're trying to pull out of me. I'm going to leave tears on this chair with everyone else. If there was any guy, like any guy that takes on a mom and her three-year-old, because that's what he did, he wasn't my dad, you know, so any guy that'll take up, he's doing his master's,

he's working a full-time job, and he's taking on my mom and me at age three, that to me is like a pretty honorable, amazing thing, right? So I don't think I got a chance to really go, hey, you know, thanks for taking that big step. That's a huge step for a 20-something year old, whatever age he was. You know, I'd definitely say thank you because he was a, he was a rock of sorts because my mom was not. So, and he did the best he could for sure, you know, filling that role. So I'd definitely just tell them thank you. Yeah.

You almost got me on that one. That's cool, man. Yeah. Yeah, good dude. But yeah, the stories that he would have loved to have heard, you know. It's like, damn, man. You know, that's the only guy you want. You don't care about telling your friends or, or, you know, even other team guys.

It's like, you know, if you're going to tell stories, it's the dads that want them and deserve them. You know, we're not really in. anybody else. So yeah. Yeah. Would have been cool. But, hey, you know, life goes on. Just keep moving forward, right? Compartmalize it, deep-six it to the bottom of your soul and deal with it some other day when you do Ibogaine. Have you met your biological dead? I did. Yeah. You did? Well, how old were you? It was just a couple of years ago, I think. Yeah. No. So there was a first time I met him. We came back from Saudi, met at some park. And I just remember I'm asking my mom, wow, he's skinny. Do you ever feed him? And that's all I remember of that. No kidding. Yeah. And who knows, you know, his story. And then my mom's story in the truth is somewhere in the middle, right? So. But yeah, it was normally what. didn't meet him because I think I was probably really nervous as a kid and not knowing what the

hell to feel or think about that crap. But, um, and then fast forward how many, how many over years till just recently, you know, met him again. Pretty uneventful. Kind of asked him, gave it interrogated him on a couple things. My mom said and just was like, hey, so why this, why that? And he had pretty neutral, normal answers. And at this point, he's an older guy too.

So, you know. But it was interesting. You know, he's shorter than me. And, you know, you're just seeing somebody older, probably more frail than what he used to be. And so I think I had moments leading up to it where I was like, I'm gonna ask this motherfucker all kinds of questions and put him on the spot

and ask them this and that. But once you're there, you realize, you know what? It's already come and gone at this point. It doesn't matter, you know. Anything I asked him was just curiosity. you know, most of it was just about my mom because, you know, she was a little, she was a little on the crazy side. Did you get anything out of that?

I think, I didn't get much out of it, but I think, I think, and I hope it gave him something. It was weird. I felt like I was kind of doing it. I felt like I wanted to do it for him. Because you think, if you put those shoes on, you go, okay, all these years have gone by. did play a role that raised this kid. I know I kind of thought like, well, maybe he wants to give him something, you know. I thought it would give me something too, but it really, I didn't really notice anything, honestly.

Yeah. Who knows? Did you feel a sense of guilt from him? I noticed a little bit of nervousness, I think. Maybe a tad of him, maybe there was a little bit of embarrassment in there. It's hard to tell because it's the first time to read them. Yeah, I didn't notice any guilt, but I think he was a little embarrassed. Knowing, right, he knows his own truth.

So once I sensed that, I just kind of kept it simple, you know. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. But I didn't give him any stories. You know, those are what have been kept for the dad. The guy who actually jumped in those shoes and did that job, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's take a break. All right. We'll come back. We'll get into still tip three. If you spend any time off-road like I do, you already know how easy it is to end up second-guessing where you're at, whether you're still on a legal trail or if the route ahead is even worth taking. That's why I've been using OnX off-road. It's an off-road navigation app that shows trails, public and private land-bound,

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I can plan ahead, know what I'm getting into, and spend more time actually enjoying the ride instead of worrying about navigation the whole time. Search OnX off-road in the App Store or Google Play. Again, that's OnX Off Road in the App Store or Google Play. Looking for another way to support the Sean Ryan Show? Head to Sean Ryan Show.com and check out the latest drops from Vigilance Elite. We just released new gear, including this beautiful moisture-wicking VE Performance Hat and SRS Campfire Mugs, and you guessed it, Vigilance Elite Gummy Bears

Oh shit Every purchase directly supports the show And helps us continue bringing you Independent Conversations without compromise Visit Sean Ryan Show.com And grab yours today All right, Clint back from the break Moving into

Your time at SIL Team 3 So this is where you and Mike Ritland became buddies, right? Right. Yeah. Did you guys go through buds together? No, here's several classes behind. Oh, okay. So I met him and Glenn and all those guys.

They showed up, I think I'd already done a deployment or two when they checked in as new guys. Oh, right on. Yeah, back when you could haze people, right? You know, I don't know. What do you think? The hazing thing, I always felt like it was such a great thing, you know, like. I equate it to, you know, you either did it for celebration or correction, and it worked either way. You know, if a guy who's getting married, you haze him.

If he was his birthday, you haze him. But if he's also really not performing the way that he should and or, you know, had a safety violation or something crazy, well, then, you know, you haze him. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It just seems too bad. I don't know what it's like now. Yeah, I've heard, uh, yeah, I don't.

either ultimately but i heard it's all kind of not that way the camaraderie is not the way it used to be i didn't really get hazed i got the shut knocked out of me well okay i didn't really get hazed yeah yeah our guys when we showed up they i guess they had a really bad and uh so they made like uh they were like we're not doing that to our guys and what year was that for you that was i don't I think I showed up. It was 02 or 03. I can't remember. That's about when the ethos came out.

But now, it wasn't any of that. I mean, it was a rough crowd. There was a lot of bar fighting. There was a lot of bar fighting. Yeah. And I think they kind of more took an approach of, we'll wait till they get cocky. And if they do get cocky, then we'll knock the shit out of them.

And that's what happened to me. So a couple times. but um but anyways you got any good hazing stories yeah let's hear well um probably my new guy hazing you know because you get one when you check in right and it's like uh it was a thing and i feel like a lot of this was leftovers because you know you look at the vietnam guys that were left there's a couple of them in the 90s when i checked in that they had created the culture you know Vietnam era combat vets created the culture of the SEAL teams, especially during all that time of like peacetime or not really operating.

And so the hazing piece was such a big deal. And I remember we went to Shaw's, a new guy. And it's after doing runs in the house all day long. And then we're in the weapons cleaning room, which was like part of a house out there at Shaw's at the time. and me and one other new guy kind of realized we're by ourselves. There's no one else in here cleaning their guns right now.

Where did they all go? And just as we realize it, they roll in, and this is back when you wore flight suits and body clavas for all your CQB stuff, you know? So they roll in with their flight suits on and their ninja hoods and they systematically, you know,

tackle us, take us. And it's cold at shaw. It's like in the 40s at night, 30s maybe. I remember the swimming pool who had a cover on it. Somehow we end up out there. They strip us down butt naked and put, it's Justin. I'll just keep his first name. And they put Justin and I in the 69 position.

And they tape us into the 69 position. and then they pull out the mini blasting machine. Okay. And they had, I don't know how they pulled it off with, you can do anything with duct tape, but they had somehow got it to where my head is basically shoved into Justin's ass. And his face is shoved into my ass, right? And there's enough flesh exposed on our asses for the lead wires of the mini blasting machine. Oh, shit.

And puts, they duct tape those leads onto our asses. And they have two machines. So once they had them in place and they're like, and then my ass would then clench his face because it sends that electrical current. So it's like tasing your ass, causing your ass to clench. And so interestingly enough, it was like my face kept getting sucked into his ass. Every time it would clench, it was like, you know, pull me in and pull me in closer, you know. And Justin, you know, he was, he loved squats. So his ass was definitely more powerful than my ass. So he didn't have it as bad.

But, uh, and then, of course, it's freezing cold. They pull out the hoses, drensen us. And then the part that freaked me out was the swimming pole. They're like, let's just throw them in. Well, it had a cover on it, right? And these guys aren't always thinking, as you know, like the smartest. And this is how people accidentally die and when there's hazing going on. Like it happened out at the, you know, on the East Coast you had the guys that tied the guy who's on a spine board.

And they tied it off to a bridge and then chunked him off and the rope didn't hold. Holy shit. I didn't even know that. He hit the water and it flipped over and he drowned because he was on the spine board. Wow. I did not know that. Yeah. There was a lot of, like, stories about,

shit, he's gone wrong back in the day. But, um, yeah, so, I mean, they were going to chunk us in. And that cover would have just wrapped us up like Saran Wrap and you drown to death, you know, while you're taped to the 69 position with, you know, your best buddy. But, uh, anyway, that, that was, uh, that was the, you know, welcome to the teams, hazing out of Shaw's. Nice.

Memorable for sure. Uh, sounds like it. Yeah. Team three early days. This is pre-9-11. You know, your workups probably in retrospect were more about liberty than it was about training. And you still trained and you trained hard. But, you know, when you compare post-9-11 to pre, you realize, wow, we weren't really training that hard. You know, in operationally, you weren't doing much except Team 3.

Team 3, we were doing all the shipboardings and enforcing the embargoes against Saddam at the time. So, but training wise, it's pretty like, you know, basic when you really reflect on it now compared to,

you know, these guys are like run and advanced, you know, day one, which you would consider advanced if you were to compare the two eras, right?

But probably one of the most memorable, and I haven't talked about this this much, but one of the most memorable training exercises, I was paired up with my platoon chief and he was a former Marine gone seal. Hard his nails.

One of those guys that never takes a break. You know, he never, you know, takes his boots off or lightens up his laces in the middle of a 10-click hump. He always leaves his ruck on, never takes it off, you know, during, you know, an infill or an ex-fill. One of those guys, right, just loves being uncomfortable and never gives himself any grace. opportunity to just take a moment or take a breath. And so one day they're like, hey, so we get an opportunity to dive against the dolphins. I'm like, dolphins. What do you mean dolphins?

And they're like, yeah, dolphins. I'm like, what is that? Like some piece of technology or something? They're like, no, no, no, they're real dolphins. Like, what do you mean? We're diving against real dolphins. They're like, killer dolphins. They're not to kill people.

And we're like, and we're going to dive against them? They're like, yeah, man, it's going to be awesome. You know, I'm like, oh, okay. So then it was a 14-man platoon. So seven dive pairs get put out broad daylight, middle of San Diego Bay. And all you're told is like, yeah, these dolphins will come and, you know, they'll tap you. And that's it. I'm kind of like, huh, all right.

I don't even know what the hell they're talking about. I mean, this whole thing was like completely foreign to me. And as we're in the zodiacs kind of heading out and our little points that we're going to drop each other off at, you know, chief was like, all right, we're going to be near a pier. I'm going to grab onto one of the structures down below. I'll hold on to it, kind of bear hug it and pretend to be, you know, a peer structure, pylon. And then you, you know, you're on a buddy line, so you just get blown me and just kind of lay down on your stomach in the dirt and the sand down there and just pretend to be the sand.

I was like, okay, I don't even like, it's so foreign. I'm like, what are we doing? You got Drager, okay, we put their draggers on. We go in. it's a beautiful day obviously at San Diego every day is beautiful and we go down to get we kind of make our way over to this pier and and uh we knew that there was a time when these these dolphins were going to be put in the water it was either one or two of them and the dolphin program obviously was like super hush hush then and now I think there's a discovery channel thing and I've heard guys

talk about them or whatever but um you know these things are basically trained to detect combat or enemy divers and then we'll kill them. And they have a harness that kind of slips over their head that basically gives them, it's like a weapon. And, you know, I'm not sure details. Details don't matter for the story, but they are incredible animals. I think we all know, man, well, these things are just as smart as us. And they communicate.

We know that as a pot or as a team, they can kill a great white, you know, they can get up to whatever it is, 30, 40 miles an hour underwater and if they hit you, you'll die, right? And so I'll never forget, man, we're in the water, we get set, we go down, he grabbed, I kind of watch him grab on and pretend to be part of the peer structure. I stretch my buddy line out. I get on my belly and I'm just kind of eating sand, kind of just hanging out on Drager, just taking a moment and kind of thinking to myself, like, what, I don't even know what to expect on this. What the fuck is going on? you know and then you hear and you're just like what the fuck was that you know in the water

everything is omnidirectional you don't know which way it's coming from and it sounds like it's right here you know and you just keep hearing you know and then you hear and you don't know if it's getting closer further where the where it's at and uh and then all of a sudden i feel like this big thump right in the center of my back boom just kind of drives me into the sand a little bit more I was like, oh, that must have been it. And so I just lay there still. And then now I hear my chief on Drager. And he's yelling through his mouthpiece.

And so I roll over and I look and the sun is in the background. It's beautiful. And this dolphin is like just majestic. Just hanging out, hovering above in space right there in the water. And you've got the silhouette of my chief, and these two are taking turns punching each other. Okay? So now, Chief's movements in the water, a punch, right? It's like, oh, and it's just slow motion.

And he kind of hits the side of the dolphin down below its eye, you know, and kind of yelling at it, like, get out of here. And then that dolphin would just look at him and go, and then wham! And just hit him right in the chest, right in the Drager. and then back off and kind of look at Chief, and Chief would look at the dolphin, and then, oh, another big swing and miss or hit, but it was nothing, right? And then the dolphin would look at him and go,

and then whack, and then hit him again. And you hear him go, oh, and each time this dolphin is hitting him harder and harder, right in the center of the Drager. And eventually, Chief, you know, the way they know whether they killed you or not is they have this styrofoam cone on their beak. And it's supposed to pop off after they hit you and go to the surface, right? And while this thing wasn't coming off.

And so he eventually gets smart and kind of grabs the styrofoam thing and lets go of it. And they both look at each other. The dolphin just goes and then just disappears into the water. Holy shit. But probably one of, I mean, when it comes to like training and something, I mean, it was like funny and beautiful all at the same. same time. And I had that, I had my buddy line stretched out as far as ago because I was like, I do not want anything to do with this thing. Yeah. If it decides it needs to hit something else.

Because there was rumors about one dolphin named Jake who had broken a couple of team guys' backs hitting them so hard. Oh, broke ribs. And they ended up retiring him. And supposedly he had like killed in some herber around the world where they deployed them. No kidding. Yeah. Right on. Yeah. Yeah. Super cool. Wow. But I mean, so point being is pre-9-11, you had time to go give, go be the training apparatus for dolphins. Right on. Because it was more for the dolphins than it was for us. I didn't realize they deployed them. I thought they were all like base defense type stuff.

Yeah. I don't, I mean, I used to, I think, know more about it forgotten at all. But yeah, I think they had deployed them a couple times on behalf of other harbors and other countries kind of thing. Interesting. Yeah. thing but yeah other than that we're you're our deployments were args you know you'd have a couple platoons i'd have to sit on a ship and go do the entire ship deployment and i'll bet that was horrible it was horrible did two of those back to back um actually that's when yeah met mike and and glen that was their so that was my second arg and that was their first and it was uh

It was a good crew, so it made it kind of funny. I mean, Glenn Doherty, Mike Rillan, Shane Hyatt. It's like, just the three of them alone is nothing but trouble. So, but yeah, we, I don't know if it was that one, but shipboardings and the Persian Gulf was like the thing before 9-11. Like, Team 3 was doing them all the time. And we kind of were like the pros at it. Why? What was going on?

The embargo. against Saddam at the time, oil, weapons, anything that was coming out of Iraq. So there's a lot of smuggling going on. So these things would come out of the K.A., completely blacked out. They would ride that international Iranian 12-notical mile line, completely no lights. And we would pretend to be fishing boats, kind of hanging out, loitering once they pass by, because these are big tankers. And so we would slowly roll in behind them on this, you know, because the

superstructure created a natural shadow that the radar couldn't see behind them. It could only see in front. So you'd wait for them to pass by and then you kind of slowly roll in and then, you know, crank up the speed and then get up next to these things. Those ribs would get skin to skin, hook, climb, get on board. At the time, it was like, this is the ultimate frogman off, you know. 20 knots, crappy sea state, you know, you climb up that ladder, you know, in a cave ladder is what six inches wide little aluminum with you know steel rump you know whatever the hell

what other things made out titanium rungs and yeah yeah aluminum wire and up you go you know and you climb up get to the bridge as fast as you can half of you go to the bridge half of you go to lower you know lower steering and then um take that thing turn it into international waters and hand it over to NATO forces and they take the oil or they take whatever's on board. And then you get off, get back on your boats and do it again because there was another one coming. How many is it? Were you guys doing? God, you would do like between the big tankers and then a whole lot of dowels.

You do a lot of dowels, you know, like those things were only like 100. The big dows are what, 150 feet long, something like that, you know? You'd do a bunch of those where you were literally pulling up next to it and like leaping, you know, from the rib over to the, to the boat. And, you know, it kind of depend on the night. There are plenty of nights. You're sitting around doing nothing. But in a deployment, you'd definitely get your fair share of hooking climbs. Right on. Yeah. And Team 3 started like inventing protocols and ladders and, you know, and started actually developing stuff and just to make it go faster, smoother, you know, and yeah, it was kind of the thing. And it was the only thing going on, you know, I remember,

Other teams were trying to get, you know, getting on the Middle East just so they could get that operational experience. But kind of goes back to, I think it was either one of our Admiral's Olson, I think, you know, or maybe McCraven. You know, what used to be the op of the decade back then, you know, after 9-11 just became the op of the night, right? Yeah, everybody was, you know, doing something cool every single night. Yeah, but pre-9-11, you're like, it was good to be a team three because you're actually getting to work. You know, it was fun. But it was a good team and then and then what, 9-11 happened and where were you when 9-11 happened?

I was, I had just graduated boot camp. Oh, actually I'd just gotten out of a hernia surgery. What their boot camp? Hernia. Huge hernia. Ooh. I was scared to tell anybody because I thought they'd kicked me out of the program. Probably.

And I later it just got so big. I was like, I could get it sewed up. I have to do something. And I was like super reluctant. I was like, oh, I don't want to get kicked out of the Buds program. And they're like, you know, you're not ass. Like, how long have you had this the whole time? Yeah.

But yeah, I just got out and then I was supposed to fly home actually for recovery. Oh, perfect timing. Yeah, before, you know, they didn't fly home. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was driving across Coronado Bridge to work that day. And at the time, my wife, ex-wife, she calls and was like, the United States is under attack.

And I was like, well, shit, you know, what are you talking about? And then show up to Team 3. And sure enough, at the quarter deck, there was a TV there. And everybody was kind of staring at it. And just as I look over some guy's shoulder, plane two went into Tower 2. like live and launched it and was like, holy shit, that doesn't seem like an accident. It's kind of weird. These planes are flying into buildings, you know?

So first you think it's like some air traffic control software glitch, you know, or like a, that's really weird. Then yeah, then it just obviously everything escalated after that. We had platoons ready to, that were about to deploy and everything shifted. And before we know, we're helping them build their pallets. And the first place they went was Afghanistan. you know, team three just kind of led the way. And I remember I was like trying to get in on one of them and couldn't, you know.

But shortly after that, Iraq kicks off. So before you know it, now we're covering team three was this still before task force 21. When they said, okay, now all teams and all are deploying everywhere now. Yeah. Before that, it was just we're all doing the math. Like, how is team three going to maintain a war in Afghanistan and now Iraq, you know? And then McCraven, who came up with the whole Task Force 21 thing, you know, did it the right timing and seemed like they pulled that off overnight.

Yeah, because before we know it, we push into Iraq and then Team 5 relieved us. And it just became a, it became the cycle, you know. Yeah. What eventful operations were you on? Like, well, probably the biggest noteworthy was the gas oil platform. Okay. Because that kicked off the war and it was, we were sitting in Kuwait waiting for that whole thing to happen. I know there was times we didn't think it was going to happen, times we did.

So we were just all, you know, basically fucking around. There was a tent city, you know, and we had four, I think we had four to six tents that were ours, you know. And we had two tents across from one another. And I think you've heard this before. we had these cardboard signs on the outside of each tent, one that said lions led by dogs, you know, and then the tent across from it had a cardboard sign that everybody could see that said never before have so few been led by so many because all of a sudden there was, you know, dozens of 06 seals coming out of their reserve desk jobs, now wanting to be.

to check the box on war that never got to do it during their tenure in the community. So we had never seen any of these officers before. And they literally just reservists came over. And then, of course, lions led by dogs, you know, that went over well. I'll bet. It's funny as none of them said remove those. And we were like the entryway into the area. So everybody read these big ass signs written, you know, with Sharpies,

nice and thick. And then we would just heckle people walking back and forth between our tents. We had built a war garden. We had white picket fences. I mean, during the time we were just hanging out waiting for war to start. We just got in trouble. And I was the LPO. I was in a leadership position for that platoon.

So, of course, I had all the leadership coming to me. Can you please tell your guys to just at least wear their uniforms or something? I'm like, I'll try. I'll try. But, you know, I'm telling you, it's not going to work. man. This is all about morale right now. I'm letting them do whatever because that beats the alternative. Trust me. And they're just like, well, you need to, they need to blouse their boots. I said they're not blousing their boots. None of that's happening, not on this. Wow.

You know, it was, yeah, it was an interesting time. But that was leadership that had no combat experience. So they were very risk adverse is probably the best way to put it. What a joke. It was. It was, it was interesting. Well, so then they're like, all right, you're going to take down the gas oil platform. So we train, train, train to dive in, you know, set up a blow and go line. And then you hook your draggers in to this line at about 10 feet down. And you blow and go. You close the valve, weapons up, frogman style to the surface, hook, climb onto the, we train that over and over and over again.

And then at the last minute, at the time, he was Captain Howard, Captain Harwood. The guy who was very popular for wearing a mask on the news, the ballheaded. Now he's an admiral, but at the time he was Captain Harwood. And he makes the command decision, like, we got to prove the value of these jetboats. And we're like, what do you mean? You're just going to pull up, pull up to that go plet with your jetboat. Why can't we take the jet boats, you know, a nautical mile or two out and dive in?

still prove the value. No, no. You're going to pull right up to that thing. And we're just like, wow. For somebody is risk adverse, you're putting us in, and this thing was lit up like a Christmas tree, right? It was this huge light bubble around this thing. You see us coming a mile away.

And so that was command decision that we're just going to pull up to the surf deck of this go plat. gas oil platform and take this thing down. And Intel said, hey, there's three bad guys in a hostage or something like that. And like, wow. And even then pulling up, they have obviously the high ground, the bad guys do. And supposedly it's wired to blow up. So at least for diving in, you got stealth on your side, element of surprise, all this and that.

You float in with some boats. That doesn't exactly give us the element of surprise. So it kind of started to smell and appear like, you know, this total suicide mission, which is one of my new guys labeled it. You know, this is a suicide mission. I'm like, shut up. We're going to have fun with it. Okay.

Just do whatever we're told, you know. So that same new guy ended up actually quitting. He, we, yeah, he was, he ended up saying, hey, this isn't for me. I remember Mike Ritalin told me that when I interviewed him. Yeah. Yeah. I had asked him a couple times because there was certain questions he was asking in the briefs that kind of made you turn your head like, what are you doing, man? Why are you asking that?

Like, is this smart? Should we be doing this? Is this our job? You know, and I remember confronting asking him like, hey, man, you, you all right? And he kind of turned it around. Wait, are you all right? Are you the one that's scared? And I was just like, no.

But you're kind of asking some questions that are concerning. Maybe you don't ask those questions anymore in front of leadership. in front of us, you know, like, just stop, you know. And then eventually ended up, yeah, gave up his bird, gave up everything and he was like, I'm out of here. I've never, I mean, wow. Yeah. I mean, to go through all that training and earn your way, it's unfortunate, really, you know,

but he had to like stay back in Kuwait. And we, after we took the gas oil platform down, you know, we got in our Humvees and drove north on Highway 1. I mean, I was really no mission. Just, hey, go to Iraq. It's like, okay. You know, we're on our way. With our Humvees, we borrowed from the army that had zero armor.

We like took the doors off. You know, it was horrible. But, yeah, we ended up pulling up to that thing. I was boat one, number one guy, jumped off on the surf deck. Shane was right behind me. We ended up taking those stairs at mock speed, kind of about halfway up the stairs to get to superstructure and boom first gun shot. I was like holy fuck. And then on comms I'm like dynamic dynamic that was the word for like okay the gig's up just go. And we get to the top

and it's right near birthing where the superstructure is. There's a guy standing in front of us, no gun. We're like get on the ground, get on the ground. We kind of move up to them. Look to our right and there's like, I don't know, seem like a dozen dudes staring at us. There was only supposed to be three bad guys and a hostage. And I'm like, now we're like, holy fuck, you know. And now everyone else is catching up. And I'm telling all these dudes, get on the ground, get on the ground, looking at their hands.

And it's kind of, there's an overwhelming moment because you didn't know who had what and we're thinking triggering device. And now you've got all these dudes. And why are they standing here and not like, so real time, it's just one big puzzle. and what we do best, right? Just start, you know, stick to your training and start figuring out solutions. So get them all the ground,

looking for guns, looking hands, and then start clearing the superstructure of the birthing. That was the priority to look for the triggering device, if there was any, if the thing was wired to blow. Anyway, we end up clearing it, and now you're clearing the entire, this thing was one click long,

seven decks. So seven clicks, seven clicks of 3D environment because the floors aren't floors. They're great. You can see up. You can see down. And it's a horrible environment. You know, when you are like, now we're like, wait a minute, it's not three bad guys. There's more. Now we got to go out seven clicks of this and clear it. And so we just started clearing it from end to end and deck to deck. And it was a long ass night. I remember we were so dehydrated out of it. We weren't ready for it at all. I mean, if, you know, we're finding shoulder fired weapons, any aircraft

guns and then it was wired to explode all subsurface. So all the explosives were just below the water line and find the, I found the triggering device. We had some EOD guys with us, so they made everything safe. It took hours. And then we had Marines roll in. They kind of took over. So by the end of it, there was 27, I think 27 bad guys, no hostage. And there was like 16 of us, right? Wow. If they really wanted to man up with all the guns and the shoulder fired rockets and the anti-aircraft gun and then the place was wired to explode, I mean, it would have been an interesting, you know, following Saddam's first run, what did he do? He blew everything up and created these environmental disasters that made Bush, you know, the first Bush look dumb, right?

And so our whole job was, the mission was, hey, prevent environmental disaster by taking the thing down before they could, you know, light themselves off, really. And yeah, so then we turned it over to the Marines and then we get back and we do a quick debrief and kind of like, all right, what was the first shot fired? And it turns out one of the boats. guys arm in the 50 cow and the bow was really nervous no way and so his thumb hit the button launched that ad straight in to the very pipe of oil that we are there to prevent spilling you know into the persian gulf holy shit yeah and had choice words for him and put him on a plane back to the U.S. And I don't even know what happened to that kid.

But yeah, who would have thought, right? No. And so now we take our Sanford and Son hoopedies that we got from the army, these Humvees that had zero armor. And we, you know, load them up with MRIs, water and fuel. And then we had law rockets and AT4 rockets, zip tied to every horizontal vertical pipe, you know, or, you know, every part of the vehicle and then our guns and comms. And they're like, yeah, just drive up Highway 1 and link up with the Marines.

Like, oh, okay. Interesting. That was it. And so we start driving up Highway 1, Kuwait, across the border. I'll never forget the pride, you know, looking to our left and looking to our right, the lineup of the Marine Corps. because the Marines had the eastern portion of Iraq, and then the Army had the western portion.

And that's full on everything. Tanks, artillery, all of the cobras, everything you can think of, racked and stacked, heading north. Damn, to just sweep the whole side of that country. And of course, the East had all the big cities for the most, You know, it had, you know, hit Baghdad, Anasaria, Baghdad, some others all the way up to Tikrit, you know, and it was a full push. And we were part of that first wave. And it was true, like seeing true combat, you know, like when we got to Anasuria, the Marines were in trenches.

It was trench warfare, you know. That's when Jessica Lynch convoy had just been hit. She was in a hospital that we could see right over there, you know. And we're sleeping under our Humvees. And they'd put the perimeter around a medical waste site. So it was all nothing but hypodermic needles sticking out of the ground. And we were laying on them thinking, wow, why are we getting poked? And you'd look.

And in the sunlight, you'd see the glitter. And you'd realize the glitter that was shiny on the surface was all hypodermic needles that they'd been dumping there for. Holy shit. And that's what we were sleeping on every night. You serious? It's crazy, right? And then. We kind of get settled in.

We had these pop-up tents that we had bought in Kuwait last minute, camping tents. I mean, you know, so we're setting up camp. And then I remember me and Glenn were like putting up IR netting over our little, we had like, what, 10 tents, little dome tents, like North Face tents. And then putting up a big NIR dome over that for like whatever reason for shade. And thinking, okay, yeah. And we got our lawn chairs out. We're all sitting around like, oh, this is war.

The Marines were working hard. And they had like nothing for us to do at first. And then at the time, Captain or Colonel, Colonel Kelly, right, who we later know is General Kelly working for Trump. Captain or Colonel Kelly, 06, comes out onto the battlefield. And he pulls aside. He's like, all right, you my seals? We're like, yeah. There's a city called suckass.

It's probably called something else in Arabic, but I don't know. It would just call it suckass. Population 80,000, okay? I want you, you my seals. I want you to go over there and start killing everybody. We're like, wait a minute, huh? He's like, yeah, 100 killer ops. I'm turning it on.

Okay? Ready go. And he turns around and walks away. And we're just kind of like, look at each other. Like, well, there's only like 16 of us against 80,000. This ought to work out great, you know? And I believe right after. After on Osiria, he was the first Marine colonel to be awarded general on the battlefield since Korea.

Wow. Yeah, I think something like that. I have to look that up. Great guy, hardcore. I mean, the Marines were not fucking around, man. It was like a sight to see. And so, yeah, we'd set up some L. ambushes and we're kind of starting to get our feet under us operationally. Like, what are we going to provide?

What are we going to do? You know, our OIC chief and myself started going to all the leadership meetings just outside of Anasuria and really starting to kind of figure out the groove of where, where to special, because they didn't think special operations play a role and this is conventional combat, you know, trench warfare up at the front. It's crazy, you know, and artillery going off that were set up behind us and cobra helicopters rolling in regularly, lighten up the place, day and night. you know it didn't matter you just constantly boom boom boom it's really incredible to see um and then uh then one night you know glen and i got pulled aside and and at um colonel kelly's direction we were told like hey keep this between you guys don't advertise it but we need you guys to go up to the front line and you know start pulling dead marines out of these trenches And the rumor time was that the Fedian were, you know, everyone was so tired.

Like, I remember, I've never been that tired. You didn't sleep days and days and days. There was just no sleeping. And so the same thing applied to these Marines up in these front trenches. And supposedly the Fedian, those were the guys with the Bollahas and black trench coats. They were sneaking in and like literally cutting throats while Marines were sleeping because they were exhausted. It wasn't because it was their turn to sleep or anything like that. And so we had heard that and we were like, what the fuck? And so we went up one night and it was just

Glenn and I and we had like some Marines that were just kind of providing security and really just starting to pull bodies and kind of pull into the back of the line. And it was probably the most emotionally intense thing that I had faced at that point, you know, this is real. And that's why that didn't want anybody knowing because it was all very discreet because they didn't want to fuck with morale they didn't want to fuck with the push and uh it made sense you know like hey let's just get them get the bodies get them wrapped up and get them home and uh yeah it was uh you know i'd never even heard about that yeah it was pretty haunting and it's still haunting to think about because you look at them and they're kids you know you can look at them in the eyes and you're like

Holy fuck, man. But yeah, it was a, it was a thing. And there was a, there was some other, you know, events that we had to help out with those guys. But, you know, On Nosiria was, was messy. You know, I think it was also for the Marine Corps, it was first time for them to kind of get their combat legs under them, too. There was like tanks wiped out everywhere. I mean, it was like, holy shit, you know, because you wouldn't think that we didn't hear anything about an actual battles going on. You just thought, hey, the United States military is just kicking ass until you got there.

And you're like, holy fuck, U.S. tanks that are all burned out and fucked up and, you know, a ton of like convoy vehicles that were burned out and, you know, had been attacked and just, you know, surprising to say the least. then some days go by. We kind of got into our rhythm. We had a reservist commander kind of takeover who was very front-leaning. And finally we started kind of like really working. And we were doing hunter-killer. So we're going to all of your, any scud that was pointed in any direction, but most of them were pointed towards Kuwait.

We'd go find, we'd get reports about a scud rocket or a launching site. roll in, put demo on it, blow them up, keep on moving. And that's kind of what we provide. As the line moved, we were always just a little bit ahead of the line, doing reconnaissance and taking out some of these scud sites, clearing buildings, ammo cachets. And we did that pretty much all the way to Decrete. And then To Crete was supposed to be this. We meet up with the Marines. They set up a perimeter. We got into the center. It was the first time like, okay, now guys, can take take a break and sleep. I remember one of the convoys we're a part of. Our, our Humvees stacked in the front was a ton of like convoy vehicles and behind was a ton.

We're kind of in the middle. And the sun's coming up. We're all sitting in our seats, lined up. And I remember waking up. I look at Zach to the right. I look at my OIC. I'm sitting, you know, backseat left or point driver. he's passed out and I step out and I look up the line the main convoy's already left but there's vehicles in front of us and I walk up to them they're all asleep and I look at the rest of the line we're talking I don't know 20 30 40 vehicles sitting ducks as the sun comes up and everybody is past the fuck out could not stay awake all the drivers are asleep while the front convoy had already left you know so I quickly start we don't

to run, start waking everybody up, waking, you know, down the line, getting everybody away, getting engines running, and then start moving. I mean, it was sleep became this, you didn't realize it. You just was rare. You just didn't get any sleep at all. Every time you moved, you'd lay up for the night, you'd go out and do something. You'd lay underneath your Humvee to sleep, but you didn't sleep. I just had crazy nightmares of fetting guys like cutting our throats in the middle of night. Once I heard that story. It's all I thought about. And, yeah, and then we make our way to Tcrete, you know, get inside this Marine Corps

Premier. I'm like, all right, it's time to sleep. And, you know, I got told the guys, you know, just lay down, try and get some sleep. And me and LT took the first watch. And then like when everybody's comfortable, all hell breaks loose. There's this explosion, gunfire, fucking shit coming at us. The Humvee, our front Humvee got hit, got a bunch of bullet holes in it. And we take cover and trying to figure out what the hell is going on because you're inside a perimeter of Marines, which 18-year-olds on 50 cows.

You don't know which way they're pointing these things, you know. And all hell breaks loose. Get on nods. You can see, oh, I saw this Fedian guys in this tree line. So the Marines have basically put the perimeter around some bad guys. And because it was at night, they didn't clear it. And then we ended up inside the perimeter next to the bad guys. So the bad guys are over there and we're over here.

We're trying to go to sleep. They're waking up, shooting everybody. And so nods, lasers, probably not even 100 yards away. We engage them. I remember it's first time like background, background, watch your background, you know. And ended up one of the guys ended up killing him. And we get online, roll up there, search them. This is when you realize first time, you're only these green tips.

we'll zip right through somebody because we knew between us there was whatever, let's say 12 rounds. There was 12 holes in this guy. But during the whole time where we're engaging him, it was like he didn't even know he's being shot. You know, and this was 03. And so those, they were, you know, green tips are just so hot. They're just zipping right through people. And he didn't even know it because he just kept on walking with his AK-47 like he's sneaking around, you know. And eventually drops and you go up search them.

And then, and then all the rumors of Taked, the next morning was going to be a bloodbath. And so we went in. We knew we were taking Saddam's palace. And probably the most eerie thing is as we roll in. And there was nobody there. It was like the whole town had left and it was so quiet that that made it even a little more like sketchy. You know, we set up and I guess the Marines had their, did whatever. they did, but for us, it was uneventful. And, you know, we set up for, I don't know, a couple of days

a week and just, you know, that's the gold toilet, you know, seats and, you know, the place had already been looted. And, you know, the first kind of exposure to one of Saddam's palaces, his birth palace, you know, and all this and that. And yeah, that's probably the long version, but it was one big op, you know. This was before. operations had names. What time span was it? The whole first couple of months of the war. No shit. Yeah. So you're yeah. I don't remember. I mean, it was just constant, you know, just moving, sleeping in the dirt. Oh, I remember while we're hanging out outside on Osiria, it's time for Jessica Lynch to get rescued, right? And we had heard like, oh, damn neck's rolling in. And, uh, sure,

Sure enough, they roll in, their hummers had a nickname called hammers, I think, because they had like supercharged motors and they were armored and they were very Guccied out or whatever, you know. So they, their Humveys, I don't know where they were staged, but they were staged for them because they were staying in a five star in Riyadh, right? And they get in their helicopters and their starched camis fly to their Humvees, get in their Humvees and then drive to us. here we are, like, covered in dirt and grime and sleeping in the dirt. And it was the first time where you could see, like, these guys get out of their Humvees, and they're kind of looking at us like, whoa, like these white side conventional seals, kind of living in the dirt and in the combat and this and that. And I knew a couple of them there, you know, from Team 3 guys and touch base with them and everything.

And there's that, like, split second where we felt like, oh, We've got the upper edge on these guys this time. Because, you know, the competition between the regular teams and SEAL Team 6. But they rolled in and fucking annihilated that thing that night. Just, you know, one of my good friends was the gunner. I'm just, you know, weapons free and just took out that entire bottom floor with 50 cow. Just lit it up. Overwhelming firepower.

Then the assault team went in. on the floor and something I think came from the roof and got to her grabbed her and got her out of there it's pretty cool we got it on man we watched you from afar back to feeling like a loser again well I'm still a loser I'm on a berm and on us rea been here living under my home v and these guys roll in pull the rescue of the year off and then go back to their uh five star in It's pretty funny. I'm excited to introduce to you the newest member of my family. We call him Stanley.

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code SRS for $50 off the Nova caller. That's SpotOnFence.com slash SRS and use code SRS for $50 off. So did you engage anybody in those couple months? Yeah, during that ambush, there was pop shots we would take. You know, you had some. some idiots, man. You can't remember the ROEs at the beginning were, they're really worn it. You know, once every male of fighting age became kind of like, okay, that's a bad guy. That's a bad guy. And you realize in that first couple of months, dudes were taking their uniforms off and they were wearing civilian clothes. You weren't fighting an army. You were fighting, which you thought were army guys dressed in civilian clothes, you know.

And, but there wasn't a lot of engagement at the beginning for any of this, any of those early seal platoons. That ambush, um, I definitely was shooting at those guys. And, uh, and then to the right of me, I think was the AOIC and to the left of me was at my comms guy, Zach. Um, but everyone else was just still trying to figure out what the hell was going on, get on nods and kind of get online. By the time they even figured out.

was over you know um and i know our 50 gunner up up top on the humvee would was taking shots from time of time at different stuff and but nothing like what was to come you know the future of you know the seal teams in iraq or afghanistan i mean holy shit you know yeah it was game on but we were at the beginning when you know you still had leadership that was very like a sussain I said a little risk adverse. No one's dying on my watch kind of attitude. Yeah, you know. Of course no one wants to die on your watch.

But I remember at our debrief at the end. And it was, yeah, it was Captain Harwood and our SEAL Team 3 head shed. And a big portion of that was a letdown, you know, and I told them like, hey, you know, when they're like, hey, you guys have any comments or concerned? Like, yeah, you know, like, this is the pinnacle and could be the only opportunity. that a seal has to, you know, shoot people in the face, what he's trained to do. And you guys kind of hamstrung it, prevented it. Like, you took, you took that away from a bunch of guys, you know.

If it wasn't for some of these reserve commanders we ended up working for the Marine Corps, you know, probably wouldn't have been able to do anything. But once those guys kind of didn't have oversight over us, that was the only reason we were able to, like, actually do some fun stuff, you know. And, yeah. But obviously it all changed once some more motivated, aggressive leadership got in there, man, than the game was on, right? So, yeah.

It was an interesting time. You know, it was awesome. I wouldn't take any of it back or change it because everything has to evolve. You know, it's just the way it is. And when you take a bunch of SEAL teams and say, okay, now we're going to war and have been, you know, 20, 30 years, since anybody had really been true combat. Then you start with the training wheels and eventually, you know, get to the point

where guys are just crushing the enemy left and right every night. It's interesting, you know, how you describe it, a bunch of reserve officers who had never been to war. Yeah. All scurrying out like a bunch of cockroaches. Oh, yeah. Going to war. Yeah.

To prevent. Everybody to actually fight. To go to war, yeah. Yeah. A bunch of pussies. Right. You know? Yeah.

There's a lot of unfortunate moments to leadership. I mean, even I'm probably giving them excuses as we speak, but, you know, they're, oh, well, you know, we hadn't been to combat. We hadn't done this. We hadn't done that. But the truth is the truth at the end of the day for those guys. Yeah. They know who they are. So there's a lot of them.

Yeah. There's a lot of them. Yeah. So where do we go from here? Well, came back from that trip, and that's when I was like, I was kind of disgruntled. I had my, I was a sailor of the corridor, sailor the year, put my officer package together. I was that back at Team 3 and I was about to do my board. I think it was like the day prior.

I took my, my, my, my, my OCS package and just, was it OCS or Seaman Admiral. one of the programs, I just threw in the trash right in front of my CEO. I was like, I'm not doing this. I don't want to work with you guys. I want to stay with my guys, you know? Wow. So dumped it in the trash and then the next guy in line took it. I think he's still in, actually.

He's like, he's got to be a captain. But yeah, totally threw that in the trash and was like, just didn't want to be part. of that, you know. And plus we both know if you want to operate for the long haul, you stay enlisted, you know. And I wasn't there for the retirement. I wasn't even thinking about that, you know. I knew I was going to do 20, nothing more, nothing less. And I didn't care about the retirement. Something every now and then, I'm calling, maybe I should have. But, you know, I wouldn't, I still wouldn't change it. The enlisted world runs the show and, and you, uh, got to confirm that once you get to the East Coast that the enlisted do run the show out there.

But yeah, I got back through my officer package in the trash. And then my master chief, you know, had told me about a new program and they were doing a screening and selection for it sounded interesting. It sounded different. I was like, sure. So I went to Warcom. And it was a new initiative led by Admiral Callan at the time. I walked into this conference.

I got like my dress whites on and sit down. It's a bunch of people in civilian clothing. I didn't know anybody except for the master chief and he was in civilian clothing. I kind of look at him like, hey, what's up? You sit down. They're like, hey, how you doing? I'm like, good. Like, go ahead and turn around in your chair.

Like, okay. So I turn around in my chair. Now they're all at my back and I'm looking at the door I walked in. I get handed a piece of paper. it's on a clipboard and a pencil. Like, go ahead and draw the quarterdeck that you walked through two minutes ago. And I'm like, oh, shit.

Was I paying attention? You know, and I started sketching overhead. You know, I remember, okay, there's the front desk, there's the doors, there's some doors over here. There's an American flag, American flag, you know, some chairs. And I put my, you know, Cardinal Bering, North Arrow, down at the bottom. Like, this sucks.

I don't know if this is a year. even right. I'm like, okay. And they're like, okay, turn around. Go ahead and tell us what you saw. I'm like, well, I think I saw. And I kind of describe everything in my drawing. I show them the drawing. I kind of go over it real quick. And then they're like, okay. And so then they start asking a series of questions, you know, like, you know, where are you been? What have you done? They gave me some scenarios. You know, you're in a bar overseas. You know, guy walks in. with a slung AK-47, what are you going to do? I'm like, oh, watch the guy, pay attention, make sure I take note of it, you know,

orientate myself properly inside that bar to where this guy's at, you know? And they're like, okay. And there's a lot of questions like that, very scenario driven. And then, uh, and then they, um, what was it with the, they had like a, this small little like cup. and they had a bunch of broken down writing pens inside. All the springs, the ink cartridge, the tops and the bottoms. And then they had a stopwatch.

And they're like, okay, go ahead and put all those pens together. Okay. So I can dump it. And I'm like putting these, you know, spraying cartridge, put it down into the bottom, put in the top, function test. okay, do the next one. They were all different makes and models of pens. And I was like, that's weird.

And then they had some math problems. So they gave me the math problems. I wrote them down. They're like, okay, they time it. It was like basic algebra stuff, something like that, did those. And then they were like, okay, turn back around. I'm turn back around in my chair. And I'm like, starting from left to right, you know,

everybody introduced themselves. go ahead and tell who each person is. I was like, oh, shit. I'm like, that's definitely one thing I suck at, you know? I was like, but I'll give it my best try while I'm talking to this door in front of me, right? I'm like, okay, so I think the first guy was Frank. I know the next guy was Billy because I worked with him. Next guy, I think was, you know, Phil, you know, or something.

And I just, you know, I don't even know. I didn't know anybody's name. I was just like fucking fumbling through it. And I could hear them kind of laughing a little bit. So I was like, okay, thank God. At least they see the humor in my, in this. And then they're like, okay, what were the first three questions we asked you? I was like, damn it.

It's like, you asked me to draw the quarter deck. You asked me to tell a little bit about myself. And then you guys started introducing yourself. You know. And this thing, I'd say, I think it was like an hour interview. It's really odd, you know. Sounds like it. I had no idea what was going on, what it was for.

And they're like, okay, thanks. Like, all right. I walk out. As I walk out, now there's like probably 20 other seals and their dress whites all standing there waiting. I was the first to go. I saw another dude. I knew.

I saw a couple other guys. I knew. They all were going in for the same interview. you know and um go back to the team and a couple weeks goes by and i'm not really even thinking about it anymore and um my match chief command match chief at team three pulls me in and he's like hey uh you know we're going to um there was a program i don't know if you know you did your interview and stuff they called and so you know we're going to send you over there like t a d at first see if they like you like send me where and they like to warcom like well what am i doing they're

like oh they'll tell you that stuff and you get there and And so I'd get over there and check in and there's nothing permanent because they just wanted to, it was me. Another guy that was in my platoon actually, one of my lead comms guys. And then there was like two or three other SEAL senior chief and a match chief that I didn't really know that well, but I knew of them. And they sat us down and said, all right, fine, fix, finish. We're really good at finish as a community. we're okay at fix as long as it's like rural-based reconnaissance, like, you know, wrecky team, snipers.

That's about all we know about getting a fix on a target, right? We know nothing about the urban side of getting a fix someone. So what we are tasked to build with basically unlimited budget, and it's a ready-go, work as fast as you can, is build the fix and the find for the community starting right now. And we're like, well, what the, I don't know, it's the first time I've ever heard of a fine, fix finish, you know. And so they kind of explain it to us, you know, find is really all the ends.

At the time, they were really, it was SIG-int and there was Hume, man. Now you got a hundred of them, you know. We're like, okay. And they're like, what is that? You know? And it was just to, hey, ready go, go figure it out. And so with the power of the admiral on an unlimited budget, civilian clothes, and basically got blue badge to every agency in D.C.

And carte blanche, ready go, figure it out. And that's what we did. And so we went to everyone to figure out, well, how do you find bad guys? And, okay, now if we're going to build a program, what would it look like? And we had, then we put together at the group level, group one and group two, we put little cells of guys together as force multipliers to start helping on educating the force and determining you know how to do this and this was all pre-GWAT and so we got really far really fast and built the entire ASO program for naval special warfare then built the AFO program so my buddy

covered down on ASO but the army was the proponancy for ASO they ran that And then we became the proponent for AFO and we ran ours. And then I eventually got it certified through Socom and it became the first like joint course. And so there's a lot in there because we were, we were deploying. We'd go overseas, work for an embassy, not really have a job and come back and say, okay, I think this is what we need. And then go, all right, build a course.

let's educate some guys and then send them over to fill that void. But what we realize is once you have a foothold in an embassy, that is the magic in the whole program. So it was like, all right, we need to get guys over there. Well, we don't have enough seals. Okay, put an intel kit over there. So then we learned, oh, start grabbing people from the fleet, start drawing in. We're going to build this thing out.

Get footholds of the embassies. Once you have a foothold operationally, then everything else. comes from there. And so it was very, very strategic. It was very operational and it was very tactical all at the same time. So I was learning through a fire hose agency level shit, you know, at the national level, then at the operational, then at the tactical, and going, okay, well, how do we put all this together? And then you had Admiral Callan and even McRaven, because McRaven had started a thing called Quantum Leap, I think prior to all this, and I was privy to it when I was trying to learn, like, well, how we build something in light speed

so that we can get our guys involved in outside the theaters of war and truly operational prep of the environment, which used to be called operational prep of the battle space. Congress didn't like the word battle space because it intends that we're going to do something nefarious there, so they change it to environment. And we started just mapping it out, but McRaven had one thing that was so sticky that I and I still use it to this day. And it was, if I were to send you, Sean, to China right now by yourself, how would you take out an aircraft carrier by yourself? And it's a pretty impossible thing.

Getting into the country, the layers of security, when you dial in and look at the ports and harbors there, you're not getting close to an aircraft carrier in that country. But how can you take it out? can you take it out? And then the quantum leap aspect of it when you start thinking strategically was, well, I don't have to get near that. I can go 20 piers down to the tugboats that have zero security. And if I take out every single tugboat in that harbor, that aircraft carrier isn't moving, right? And then that, just that one example, just set my,

creativity and everything we started doing on fire. I was like, wow, you know, like, that's what we need to be doing. That's how you get ahead, because that is all about how you think and allowing Frogman to be as creative as possible. The tugboat theory became the theory. Right. And so then it was like, okay, now we can build on that. So we started, we started with the education and the deployment simultaneously. So anytime I wasn't like putting a course together or testing out a course, then I was going overseas. And it was awesome because you got to wear all these different hats all the time every day. And then so then we, we partnered with Army, Usa Sok for all the ASO billets. And then we started contracting. You know, you had a bunch of Army guys get out and start companies

that taught ASO. So then we started using them. And then I was running the AFO and defining it. like, okay, what is advanced force operations and mapping it out and really getting into it? And what all does it include? You know, so we break out the doctrine. So it included, you know, joint RSO and I, which is reception, staging, onward integration, and movement. So RSO and I was like, okay, what is that? At the conventional level, it's how the army moves 100 Apaches to Kuwait, right?

Reception, staging, onward integration into combat. If you think about it's a logistics nightmare. What does that mean for me and you? Me as a singleton. It's like, how do I get a troop of 22 guys from the beach to the safe site, put them on target? They annihilate everybody with non-a-trib whippings and ammunition, back to the safe site, sanitize them, back out to the ocean. And then I go around, sanitize everything they did before the sun comes up and start my day's. job, right? So that's what became RSO and I for Naval Special Warfare.

Missions like that. And we knew there was people out there already doing it. But Admiral Callan is like, we're taking that from them. And we're going to do it through excellence and professionalism and creativity. And we started building these programs. We started putting people in embassies. I mean, everything all at once, as fast as possible. And it became a program of record and became a big deal for Naval Special Warfare. Yeah, it was a huge deal. You guys, people that followed ended up learning all the TTL stuff and basic electronics electricity like the EFO course I built.

I mean, it was awesome. I mean, you started with getting your concealed carry classes. We had the district attorneys and all the major cities buy off on it. You got creeds. You got guns. You were packing the whole course. And then you would go to, initially it was TSS, technical service. surveillance science in New Orleans. They would teach you basic electronics, electricity,

modification of consumer products, lock picking alarms. Once you got all the tech under your belt, tracking, all that stuff, then you would go into physical surveillance mode. We had the Brits coming over teaching physical surveillance. They were all MI5, MI6 SAS guys. I took that course. Did you? Yeah, it was awesome. Did I put you through? No, it was just them. Later. Oh, I think it was that course. Merlin. It was a contract, right? Yeah. Yeah, we were, yeah, we were, we were going to do the Bosnia thing. Oh, yeah.

That's like when this first popped up on my radar. So I guess it would have been 04, I believe, the 4 or 5. Yeah, that was presented as test. And then I got switched and I wound up going to Afghanistan. But I went through the whole course. It was, it's probably the best course I've taken. Yeah. And the teams.

Yeah, I had so much pride in that thing, man. I was. Surveillance, counter surveillance, running. ops from Richmond to Virginia Beach. Yep. How to blend in. Like the shit we were talking about this morning. Yeah.

I remember they'd take us to, they'd put us in, we'd start walking around them all. And then it became a couple of city blocks and then it became all in Norfolk. And then it became, then they introduced cars and vehicles and then all the way up from Richmond down and just getting into top floor of Bank of America building and all kinds of shit. It was awesome. And they put you in on. comfortable. You would have a target that you had to follow or whatever, and they would always take you into the most awkward, notorious secret, or a baby store.

Places we don't belong, that you feel uncomfortable. And then they would confront you there and you would have to act. You would have to figure out how to act normal. Or they'd walk into an elevator and one of the guys on the team would follow them in. And they'd, what time is it? It's like, oh, shit. But it was, yeah. And there was no. shooting, no explosives, no jumping out of planes. And it was my favorite course. Yeah. Some guys had a knack for it and loved it. And some had a knack for it and shouldn't never do it. Just because I was pissed. They were going to take me to, I guess they were like, they had an augment to somewhere in the UK. Yes. And I got selected for it. You would love that. It was a great built. Yeah. I was pissed. Yeah. And then I got, yeah, then we went to Afghanistan. Sam, which whatever, you know what I mean. Yeah.

There's all nothing but good deals back then, you know, it was like every day was a good deal. For me, running and building and kind of putting that whole thing together and then also deploying at the same time and testing it, you know. I remember the first like, oh, offensive technical stuff, right? I remember Zin Djibouti. And our first sales pitch was, hey, our guys can do source vetting. Wow. How old you guys do source vetting?

Well, when you're vetting somebody and you haven't come to a hotel or whatever, we can exploit their car because guys know how to break into cars. And we can exploit their briefcase. If they have a briefcase and blah, blah, blah, you know, right? It was just to sell the technical capability that a guy can do these things, right? It was very defensive. And, um, but it worked. Work like a charm, you know, hey, we can set up camera cars for you, right?

Take the case officer's car, rip it apart, put cameras outward looking, inward looking, put it all back together because they learn all this stuff in the course, you know. And the BWE portion of the course, I feel like whether guys realized or not, it was the most important aspect, especially when you fast forward, you know, when things started getting more advanced. Because that basic electronics, electricity package, that's what allowed, what later that I would call like a true like back to our roots and Naked Warrior program. If you look at, you know, World War II, whatever, the guys with their UDTs, a knife in their mouth and fens and a mask and go get it done with a 22-pound haversack. And I was like, okay, well, you could take that concept. How do you apply it now? The modern day version of the Naked Warrior is an operator who's transitioned to operative, right?

Operator being a guy who wears body armor cam, he's night vision, kicks indoors and shoot people in the face. Now you've transitioned that same guy with that same experience to an operative. where he's business casual, flying business class. He doesn't have 21 other dudes stacked up behind him. All the success, all the failure reside solely on him. He's got as much cash as he needs. He takes off from Dulles. He goes overseas.

He gets the job done and comes back. Right? That's the dream job. And I was like, yeah. A lot of guys didn't like that. No, I didn't. That was what I was, I was very drawn to that from the get. I was like, this shit is cool.

That is sexy. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. And nice work putting that together. Oh yeah. No, it was awesome. And it just kept evolving it every year.

And then we solidified it all, got rid of all the contractors. We housed it at the NSA. Now you could teach everything in a skiff, secure it, lock it down, and then take it to the next level, which is kind of where is kind of where it ended up, that's where its home ended up being, majority of the courses run out of the NSA. And you had all their assets and everything that they brought to bear that made it like a thousand times more professional, made it very secure.

And then being that close to all the other agencies, it became like a reputable, you know, course of instruction that like I said, even SOCOM signed off on it. And instead of Warcom funding. it became a SOCOM funded thing and took off. So did you take this over to the development group too? So that's kind of how part of it, yeah. So I... Because you went over there to Black Squadron, right?

Yeah. And you, but it wasn't, you weren't an assaulter. It wasn't like through Green Team and all that stuff. You went over to Black Squadron and that's kind of, from what I understand, this is what they do. Yeah. Yeah. I laugh because, you know, when you're... you're a non-green teamer inside that fence line, let me tell you.

Oh, yeah. I've heard. Especially if you're a deploying, you know, guy inside of a troop, you know, it took a couple of years for me to build the trust. But, yeah, so I had, once I built that course and it was kind of like an autopilot, then I moved out to D.C. I was helping with the course. we built a NSW debt DC and it was one billet. I sat in it and you were liaison to anybody. Like, I got pulled into so much stuff. I can't remember half of it. Like, if you're an enlisted operationally, sitting in a basically a C billet, right, a deployable billet in D.C. You'll have every agency

coming here, hey, can you go do this for us? How can you go do that for us? I mean, it was pretty phenomenal. And at the same time, so I was attached to NSA, but representing Naval Special Warfare inside the Beltway. And so I got pulled into countless things. I did a lot of cool deployments. That was where the initial, one of the deployments that kind of led to me becoming more, you know, independent and doing the Singleton stuff was Bin Laden's boats, right? Bin Laden had 27 vessels. And they had like a three ring binder of these vessels and pictures and stuff. And they're like, man, we need to get these things like tagged, you know.

And I think the initial idea was like the third deck at Fort Meade having this Tom Clancy room with all these screens and being able to see, you know, all 27 vessels on a global screen, you know. I think that was the idea. but um so the first little gig was you know hey we got this boat called the well it was called the jameel and it's a smaller metal um tanker not really that big and it was supposedly sitting in the jibouti port and harbor right and so it was like all right let's go put a fucking tracking device on this thing And so that was kind of like the first like, you know, trial run. And I was working a lot with all of your TTL companies. Did you do it?

Creatively, yeah. Yeah, we pulled it off. How did you do it? Literally went in there and put it on there. So this is where cover and all that kind of stuff, right? We were kind of still learning. But the duty-free shop inside, well, inside the Djibouti Port and Harbor, is a duty-free shop.

And a lot of times, if you're a Westerner, you can get away with going in there and buying cigarettes, buying alcohol, whatever, right? And so there was a lot of Rekkes involved. We built a camera car, you know, took a car, break it apart, outward-looking cameras, put it all back together, and then drive through there. And it took some time to actually find it,

but it was its color scheme. It was green with a white superstructure. And so we knew, okay, got to get that. And then once we ID'd it, they had literally taken paint and painted over, Jamil, and like had some other name written on the side of it. And in the nautical world, every, like, like aviation, everything's English, right? So it makes it a little more bearable to figure things out. And it had some other name.

And but we knew which boat it was. And so once we kind of figured out the poor, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, pattern of life of the Port and Harbor at night and different times a day. And then also the guys at the front gate, you realize, okay, they're lax. They're not like security. They're just guys checking vehicles coming in. I'm just management of the flow of people coming in and out. And then, yeah, once we figured out, we're like, okay, it was me and another team guy and like, let's go ahead and see if we can pull this off tonight. Oh, there was one other piece to this. So the, I think it was the agency had someone who had access, who worked in the

Portn Arbor. And so we built first generation camera with RF antenna into a pack of cigarettes with a little pinhole. And, you know, this was back when we're using these Sony X-View cameras you could buy online. You know, put it all together in this cheesy little RF device and it would push back and that was it was video so you wouldn't push very far. And we put it in the kid's backpack. It had a mesh exterior pocket. So we put the cigarettes down there, made sure that the everything lined up just right, glued it all in place, made this kid wear this backpack. And then he went on board and was able to film the inside. And it filmed locally, but it also pushed. Of course, once he got into skin, it went static.

And then we were able to collect the wristwood once came out. So we had to knew like, oh, okay, now we know the inside of this thing, we knew the outside. And then went over there one night. They had a ladder going up, you know, to the side of the boat, no different than any other Navy vessel from the deck up the ladder. And just kind of dressed like they dress, acted like we owned it, walked up and were able to drop the device. There was, uh, there was like wood paneling and wood deck on a portion of this thing.

And any device. it has to be able to just see the sky. That's the most important thing and make sure that it's not behind metal. It can be high fiberglass, wood, can be pretty much behind anything. But it has to be able to get, it has to be able to see satellites.

So the device knows exactly where it's at. And it also has to be able to communicate with us or whatever device it's talking to. Early on, they had what was called mat tags, multi-access tags. And so that was, it can communicate through SIM cards. It can communicate through satellite. It can communicate RF if I do a drive-by and collect the information off of it.

Literally dropped it in there. There's nothing sexy. And then got out of that damn harbor as quick as we could. And Fred, the team guy with me was driving, get back in the car, which we're driving. And he was so fucking paranoid. He's like, we're being followed. And we ended up creating our own little like crazy on the, on the fly, SDR, back to where we're staying.

And, you know, I don't think anybody was following us, but it felt like someone was following us, you know. And it was probably just, you know. I think in those, at least in my experience, you're just human paranoia. Yes. You know, you always feel like somebody's following you or watching you in those situations.

For sure. And we were fumble fucking through it. You know, we didn't know what we were doing. And then you come back and you go, okay, where did I fail on that? and it's like SDRs trade craft you know just taking the risk of a harbor that was okay lit but we were fortunate that that one happened to be in dark you know and we got lucky with a lot of the environmentals that just didn't think to take into consideration you're just kind of like

fuck it let's just do it you know did you have any cover no I didn't think so nothing and things get and then we just advanced it from there everything we advanced the tags these companies we're working with building tags and I mean, it just kind of grew from there. We had another Bin Laden boat, another run. This one was the I think it was called the Hamur. It's named after Persian Gulf has these huge fish,

big black fish. They're like bass of the sea. They're massive. And they're not scared of humans, but they're called, I think they're called the Hamor. This thing was named after it. Now one was anchored. They're like, yeah, go out there and tag it.

And it's like, okay, well, we weren't advanced enough for that yet. You know, you had turtle high, turtle low systems. Remember those you train with? It's like a magnet. We thought about doing that, but those things can be seen if they pull into a port or harbor. So, but yeah, that was the kind of the kickoff first like vessel. And I think by the end of the run, I was a, the only guy who tagged vehicles, vessels, and even like a shoe, sold the shoe. How'd you tag that?

Oh, man. So the lead negotiator and leader of the Somali pirates was standing on the side of the road in Basaso, Somalia one day, broad daylight. on his phone. And some of our guys, when I say are the piss, which is the Puntland Intelligence Service, which is a bunch of Somalis that I went in a bunch of times and trained these guys. And there's some crazy stories associated that, but teaching them surveillance.

And they like see these guys. They rolled them up. I wasn't there. I'd just come in like a couple days later. So they see him on the side of the row. Goa-buga. Okay, boge-buga-buga. And so they square the block.

lot come back and grab them and throw them in the back of their truck, right, and take them to the safe site. And there was, and at this point, this is, you fast forward, we had now have NSW guys part of the very program that I had kind of belt, the SA, you know, that I don't know if, remember, they had these special activity teams that have been given, I don't know, a bunch of different names, but it was basically a command of team guys that now sitting in these houses in different areas now. I was like, wow, this thing is advanced, you know. So they're holding on to this guy. And so we roll in and they're like, so here's a deal. There's this whole like political issue.

You got the three main clans in Somalia. And the elderly have to kind of buy off on like this guy going away. This is the guy that was on the radio talking to Jonas and those other Gold Squadron guys and different people for, or red hybrid. You had Jonas, though, Killsaw, who's on, you know, extortion 17 guy, who was like on the radio and doing all the creative talking back and forth with the Somali pirate leader negotiator.

So when you're watching the movie, Captain Phillips, there's the voice on the radio. This is that guy. Okay. These guys just rolled up because they see him standing on the side of the road. No shit. Yeah. And he is, you know, a rock star in Somalia.

And he is brought, I mean, he brought in the biggest part of their economy. Somalia imports everything and it only exports one thing. Can you guess what that is? It's the largest exporter of camels. Cod. Well, they import cot. They import caught from Ethiopia. Yeah.

Those cot planes come in, land at about 11 a.m. Cot trucks go out to the cot stands all over Somalia. All the cot stands have cot by about 1 p.m. And then by about three or four, the entire country, cheeks are full of cot and they're high and they're just wandering around like zombies with literally, they got their cheeks full and two cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. So you can count on them all being high and you can get away with a lot during that time, obviously when you, you know, just like we always do.

You just use the culture against him. But should have been a shorter story. But they wrap the guy up, gives you context to who he is. And then there's a, it's a thing. We couldn't just snag him if we wanted to maintain support with the little support we had in Somalia. So all of those like the piss, you know, the, the Puntland Intelligence Service, we had the kind of the same version, other places. And so they all had to kind of agree, right? They're like, hey, you're going to take this guy who's the biggest part of our economy. All his ransom money

was funding that country, right? Millions and millions of dollars. Right. So it was political. They're like, we want to pull them. So there was this back and forth. And then there was this point when they were like, hey, we got to let them go. We're like, what? And I'm there at that point. And I happened to have, I always carried all these different tags with me everywhere I went. And I had a black squadron tech with me. And they were like, well, hey, so how do we, we're told, hey, like, make sure you tag him. Like, tag him. You know, so, you know, they had stripped him down and put him in like some, you know, their own clothes and kind of took his own clothes.

And we created this whole storyline on how to get his clothes and his shoes and everything. And they were like, one thing about Somalis is they always are, interestingly, they're always dressed nice. They got slacks on, long sleeve shirts, untucked, somewhat clean and shaven. They're always kind of moving with a purpose going from point A to point B. And always like leather dress shoes with old school wooden soles. And so we took a shoes, pulled out the insoles, had a dremel, put the tag in there, put it back. We put his shoes on, walked around in him, making sure it didn't feel different than the other. Made sure it was heavily concealed, everything glued back in place.

And then we were like, all right, here's the test. You know, it was the day to release him. And so, you know, they gave him his clothes and he got dressed. He put his shoes on. He didn't act any different, kind of watching him. Let him out the front door, or went and dropped him off, but basically let him go, knowing that, okay, we got to potentially grab this dude if he runs or whatever. The clan leaders, you know, don't come to a decision on this guy.

So, I feel like a week or so went by and everybody agreed. And then, yeah, they ended up lighten up that area so that his tag would reflect back. It worked, kept track of him the whole time. It's really cool. And then eventually, rolled him up. They basically ran a rendition package on them. We're moving from jet to jet.

He doesn't touch sovereign territory so that he can't pull any bullshit with the attorneys. And then he showed up in New York one day and put on trial and he's sitting in prison in New York. Wow. All those crimes against, you know, U.S. companies, citizens, all that. Yeah. Shit. Yeah. that's pretty badass.

Yeah. Who would have thought, though, you know, the guys are just throwing them in the back of the truck, you know, while you stand on the side of the road. I mean, you know, it's kind of, sometimes you get lucky. Damn.

Yeah. And here's another interesting, you know, that particular tag was invented and created by no other than Mitch Bradley. So everyone knows who. Admiral Mitch Bradley has been in the news a lot because of the, strikes against drugboats in

South America. He's our current... Is he Southcom or whatever? I'm no idea. I guess he would be, right? But when he was, I don't know, when he was an 04 and 05, he's at J-Soc. And I don't know where he worked in like science and technology or something, but he created this tag. It was fucking smart.

Right on, man. Yeah. What were you doing in Yemen? We were always in and out there primarily. Those were during the AAA days. Anwar all lucky. Anwar was controversial because he was an American citizen. He was the guy that was on, back in the day, YouTube allowed everything and censored nothing.

Believe it or not. And so back then you had people in orange pajamas getting their heads chopped off by Al Qaeda. You had everything on there, man. And one of the most prominent propaganda guys for Al-Qaeda was a guy named Anwar Al-Laki that we nicknamed AAA. And he, U.S. educated, U.S. citizen, but from Yemen. His dad is a wealthy guy in Sana'a. he, but he was their lead propaganda guy. He had a magazine called Inspire to inspire people to radicalize.

It had a lot of radical Islam articles in it, but it also, the biggest thing is it always provided, there's a true magazine printed and published, and it had diagrams to how to build bombs, S vests, IEDs, vehicle IED, I mean, you name it. And it was everywhere. Then he had his YouTube channel where he radicalized probably more people than bin Laden ever did. You know, if you look at the two Boston Marathon bombers, they're radicalized by Anwar's videos.

If you look at the Fort Hood shooter, radicalized by AAA. And there was plenty. The shoe bomber, the reason we were taking our shoes off at TSA for so long is because of AAA. The underwear bomber. Right? Luckily, we didn't have to take our underwear off at TSA, but I'm sure they thought about it. No underwear allowed. But he was, he influenced more people and radicalized more young Americans and young Muslims than anyone else out of all of Al-Qaeda. And so he's basically considered, I think, number two.

Once the command killed, number one, you know, then he became number one and he was in Yemen. And so a lot of our trips in and out of there was just really targeting him. The CIA on drone strikes had missed him like two or three times in a row. He would come in to Sena from time of time. And they'd always try to hit him on the highway going back out to wherever he lived out in the middle of nowhere. And it didn't work. And so then eventually, you know, once we had a foothold at that embassy,

you know, I think the agency was like, hey, what can you guys do? And so I went over and it was to tag his vehicle. I was like, all right, this is cool, you know. And he had a driver that would always park outside of a 24-7 convenience store. And he would park that damn car right in front of the glass. And the cashier inside, convenience. pointed outward towards cars parked right there. And over there, you know the deal. They like park up on the sidewalk. You know, so he would put this thing like danger close, the bumper to the glass. I mean, there was barely any room to actually walk on the sidewalk.

And it was, you know, you could tell it was with purpose. His driver did this on purpose. Keep his, keep that vehicle underwatch 24-7 or at least when it was parked there. And across the street was like this hotel, shitty ass hotel of sorts. And so once we kind of figured that out, we would roll in and set up wrecky cars, camera cars, park them, leave them, collect, go back, drive them away, see what we could collect on the driver, get ID quality. This was all spread out over time. But eventually we got ID quality of the driver, figured out which kind of car. Then we go out in town, procure and or a commodeer, the exact same car, bring that back to our place.

break the car down, rehearse, figure out how we're going to do it, this and that. And then my task force SCA is like, hey, you know, you can be as creative as you want on that. I'm like, okay, what do you mean? It's like, well, you know, if you got to like steal a van or steal something, you know, and, you know, come up with something creative so that you can park right next to it and knock it out real quick. And I was like, uh, okay.

So took his hint and like, start looking around like, okay, we need to steal a van now. You know, it's like, yeah, I'm looking forward to commandeering a vehicle for covert operations. You know, and believe it or not, the closest van are these Army guys, like U.S. guys. So I like kind of ask discreetly, hey, can we just steal their van? He's like, yeah, you can do whatever the fuck you want. I'm like, oh. So now I'm stealing these guys van that they bought. I'm just like, well, hell, that's the best way to do it.

Take a van, known people. but or do steal it from them. At least don't tell them about it. Just borrow it. So we borrow it. And then I have one of the techs go out in town by like a thermite torch. And we cut a hellhole into this floor of the van, right? And turn it into this hatch.

And then we buckled down a spare tire to it. So under inspection, it looked, you know, if you opened up the back of the van, you just saw a spare tire that, you know, was locked down to the floor. and, you know, this kid did a great job. I'm like, man, you did a good job, buddy. Give yourself a bronze star after this deployment, you know, like everyone else. And so the idea was, you know,

hey, we're going to pull up next to this thing. And with that guy sitting inside at his little cash register, you can have guys in the back, open up the trap door, drop down to the street, roll from underneath the van to underneath the target vehicle. And do your thing.

And so we had one guy, I think he was a blue squadron guy, pulled the rec he was out on the street. He was our Overwatch. And then I was team leader for this whole team of guys. And so I ran team lead and full disguise. I had my Yemenis mask on and my man and my man dress. And Yemenis like to wear their. like a blazer. It's kind of something that sets them apart. And they wear their head dress.

Instead of on their head, they wear it kind of over their blazer. And so I was looking at me, everything, drove the vehicle, happened to be a parking spot, got lucky right next to the target vehicle. And parked next to it, kind of looking at this guy, get my light up a cigarette, start letting my mask smoke, crack the window, look like I'm just going to hang out. That's nothing unusual for that environment. And then as soon as I saw him look away, went back behind the curtain. He was all blacked out and kind of kind of kind of like how we had our own concealment built into the back of this van.

It didn't look anything weird or could pass inspection. Open up the door, hit the deck, roll under the vehicle. So had a new, a brand new tracking. It had double satellite high. hockey pucks. It had double cell phone antennas, which are like, look like black thumb depressors or tongue depressors, you know, on a wire. Bottom line is you had like four or five things you had to conceal. Rehearsal is basically a piece of cardboard on your chest once you're underneath this thing and you're mixing these like super potent epoxy and you squeeze it out of the tube, squeeze it on the door, mix it around. And then you start fucking, you know, start fucking gluing shit everywhere. Double zip tie. Did everything.

You know, make it look right. Back into the vehicle. Get back to the front seat when the guy wasn't looking. And then, yeah, no big deal. The Overwatch cleared us. Everything was good to go. Pull out there, leave. Boom.

Got a tracking device on Anwar on Lockhe's car. go back, we're all proud and happy, pull it up, tracking's good, pinging on all four channels. This is awesome. So next day, things starts moving, moving around Sana'a, this and that, goes and does some things, log in. We're able to kind of bounce all this information off other people. And then right around the 24-hour mark drops. Nothing. Not one thing.

Double cell phone, dropped. Double satellite, dropped. And I'm like, what the fuck just happened to this thing? What did he, you know, go get an oil change? And the guy, you know, there's a risk to all this.

You go get an oil change, it puts it on a rack, and they see something, right? And then find something leads to everything else. You know, it's, there's risk. And we're like, holy fuck and it was a huge success you know and now it's not you're like and that's the thing about

that that world as you know it's like all the success all the failure resides solely on you sometimes or you and you're you know if you got a couple of texts with you or whatever motherfucker man so then I'm like leveraging everything I have Fort Meade or NSA dialing in on Yemeni's phone network trying to figure out if where it lost and this and that and pulling all these resources, you know, on their switchboards to figure out what happened. Couldn't figure it out. Time goes by. Time goes by. Valuable time. Now we're back to pulling surveillance on the hotel. Now, you know, two or three nights later, he's not parking there anymore. We're like, fuck. Burned. Possibly burned. Like, I think about seven-day mark.

And I'm already stressed out, can't eat, you know, this is one of those things. or you just don't want to go that way. And what were you guys going to do? Drones strike it? There was a lot of courses of action. You can imagine. Like this was, at the time, you know, McCraven was J-Soc. And so very aggressive.

Mitch Bradley, the same admiral, it's been in the news lately, was my boss. So, yeah, there was a lot of courses of action because drones hadn't worked. So it was like, let's do it differently. You know, what that was, who knows? And so turns out seven-day mark after every phone call, I was talking to tracking companies, agencies, all of the tech components of everything. This isn't going to surprise you. but J-Soc stopped paying the bill

on all of the communication components of that particular device. Yeah. Yeah. And for me, I was like, oh, thank God, you know, because I'm running that up. It's mine. And, of course, one minute, you're the rock star.

The next minute, it's that whole hero to zero thing, you know, and definitely felt it. that moment. And then it was like, so then we know the problem. You could fire it back up at this point. That thing, I think a week later, started pinging out in the middle of nowhere. They'd just gone back out to where they lived. But it gave valuable information. It gave a pattern of life that then was used later to eventually kill the guy. Yeah. Yeah. I think we were there. I spent a lot of time in Yemen. We probably crossed paths. Glenn.

My favorite place to work. Do you know that coffee shop that was supposedly owned by the American couple? They lived and it was kind of, it was over by the embassy. It was walled in. It was outdoor cafe in Sanah. Yeah. Supposedly owned by the Samarka. American, near the storm spot.

Yeah. Owned by an American couple. I own a fucking coffee shop in Sonagia. Had all kinds of antennas on top of it because they lived there too. So I remember I was going in and Glenn was coming. out. He's like literally bumping to each other and like, oh, hey, American? American. Yeah. Speak English. Yeah. You want to get a coffee with me? Sure. You know, we're kind of putting on the act. Just in case somebody's watching. Go back inside, get coffee. It was fucking last time I saw the guy, too.

That was it. That was his trip to Yemen. He came back home. I didn't get to see him. And then going over to Relief Ty is the next trip. Yeah. It's pretty, uh, God, it's such a small world in that world. Yeah. You'd run into the same dudes and you're always like, are we the only ones like doing this shit around the globe? Because that's kind of scary if it's true. Everyone's going to recognize us at some point, you know?

Well, shit. I mean, today you can't even do it. No. With all the facial recognition and all that stuff. I mean, I've heard that you can't even, you can't even get fake passports anymore. You can't really do any undercover. No.

Yeah. when I was leaving, everything I think was going, you know, back to true. The agency was leading the way, but yeah, you couldn't. And even with masks, you know, I have my Arab mask and I have my Somali. And it even got to the point where there's certain thermal that if that's running, you can see it. So you have to assume like once there's a piece of technology out there that can burn it, that particular piece of equipment, then, you know, you can't, you can't ever use it. You can't trust it. It won't be seen or seen through or whatever. Yeah. You know. But it was powerful. Disguise

was very powerful there for a while, you know, like deception point of view. And we were the only ones really using it offensively. Jeff and I, you know, the agency's always used disguise as kind of like go meet a source you never met before. or when you're shitting in your own backyard kind of stuff. But we were the only ones kind of... That was a hard place to hide, even with the local garm. Yeah. Because it's so tribal there.

I mean, we would do, we would walk these assets and, you know, through the whole city and clean them, you know, walk them through metal detectors and malls and whatever. Yeah. You know, to clean them before they finally got to us. And... Yeah. We would... Even women.

actually it was what we we just we get burned every time not even realize that until the assets in the car and he's like was that was that your guys in the hotel you know what I mean and be like how did you know that you know the guy he's wearing the thing on the wrong side

or he's doing this or he's doing that I think it's impossible for a you know a westerner to really to get it down perfectly at first glance it's great but yeah to actually do it no way. We've had assets get killed because of it. I mean, it's, it's a tough place to blend. Yeah. I would say almost every, all of the places we went, you know, Somalia. My mask probably there.

And, you know, you got gloves that go up to your armpits to make you a black guy. But it only works because, you know, they're high on cot and I'm doing it at night, you know? Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. for CMOe, which is what, you know, your initial question getting pulled out of NSA, it was because I ran a course for the four or five E-9s at Damneck. It was like a two-week course. They came up and I kind of put them through it and they realized, wow, you know what you're talking about. And you've actually done this stuff. Why don't you come work for us? And I was like, okay.

So, you know, did the screening for Damneck, you know, the interviews and the psych test. And then I actually said, hey, right, good idea. I go through Green Team. they're like, nope. And these E-9s at the time were like legends. And so what they said went, there's no arguing with them, you know. And so when once I got there and got into Black Squadron, you know, my job really didn't have anything to do with Green Team, but it's nice to check that box because it's selection. And if you're a seal, you want to be a selected guy.

But I put in like five different chits. return down every time. So there's a point when you just go, okay. And they just, you're not here for that. You're not here for that. You're not here for CMOE. I'm sorry, Roger that. But CMOE is clandescent methods of entry. So we built the pro I built the program there, which is basically lock and alarms getting in, leaving zero attribution of United States government, zero forensics. And so Jeff and I had like a, God, we had like a 10 million dollar budget. We like, we had like a 10 million dollar budget, which is nothing compared to what guys have now. At the time, we're like, holy shit, just the two of us. And that was to build the capability. So we went to the

2-2 SAS's capability, went to SRR while we're in England. They had a great small CMO capability, very experienced, get to IRA back in the day, went to FBI, toss their whole there's is a $100 million dollar CMOE program, right? Went to PAG, which is the agencies. That's another $100 million fucking, you know, entry program.

And we're like, well, we got to build something in the middle. So we're just a two-man shop. And, you know, we got educated at the highest levels and we're able to get, you know, ultimately the goal for anything is, you know,

you want the squadron to be able to own the target. So our main job was to provide reliable, repeatable means of reentry. So that means make a key. So that's cool. That's all we did is roam around the planet, breaking into shit. And most of the time, there's only two reasons I'm going to be in your house, in your car, or on your boat.

And that is either tactical or technical. And you'd probably rather it be technical than tactical. Because if I'm there, that means 22 guys are going to show up after me and fuck you up for the rest of your life. make you disappear at sea. If it's technical, well, you get to live a little longer. We're just going to listen to you, watch you, and see where you go, you know. But it was definitely, I mean, like you couldn't ask for a better job. Singleton world, you know. Like I said, I wasn't as deep in as you were, but that was, uh, it's my favorite stuff. Yeah. It was just,

I don't know. I can't even really describe why. It's just, I don't know. It's just cool to be on your own doing that kind of shit. Yeah, that's it. It would have loved to have done TFO. Yeah. I did classes for them. I'd get pulled up there.

Really? Yeah, I got to help out with their selection. And they've got a great history. I mean, that's the closest selection to OSS selection that there is in history to this day. Yeah. Super cool. But I would help them out out in Nevada. Yeah. Fucking phenomenal course.

I, um, there was aspects of that that I put into ours because I was able to go see it and these guys are onto something. Well, that's really cool, Ben. Yeah. I did not know that you were the one that pretty much built that entire program, at least at the beginning of time, you know. Beginning of time. Beginning of its time. Yeah. Things like, very cool.

20 plus years ago at this point. So, yeah, it's old now. All old news. I can't even imagine what they're doing these days. I bet it's pretty damn cool. Yeah, I bet it is. But you want to take a quick break? Sure.

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It's protection. Take your privacy back. Download Glacier today. All right, Clint, we're back from the break. I think we covered a lot of the Singleton stuff and everything you're doing, or is there more to go into? I think that's plenty, right? I mean, people get the idea. It's really about, hey, you're taking seasoned operators, turn them into operatives and going and getting shit done outside the theaters of war and, you know, a creative way of taking out bad guys.

It's really super cool stuff. Yeah. So what's some of the stuff that you carried back then or carried now? Let's do a quick everyday carry pocket dump. Back then, it's going to sound weird. I mean, I always had a couple of tracking devices. I had my lock equipment, smart jammers for alarm systems and stuff like that, wrecky stuff, urban wrecky, like cameras and hide materials and video.

You know, notice the first thing I didn't mention is like, oh, an MP7 and a, you know, some kind of, whatever pissing with. But, you know, your tools, as you know, back then, or for that kind of stuff is, you know, it's commercial level stuff that you can explain away, you know? And so it's really, it's not about guns and all that. It's about having a great storyline if you ever get pulled over and have something.

You've got to have a story, you know, that matches what you have on you. And then that story also has to match the environment that you happen to get rolled up in. That's all you're thinking about the whole time, right? Because the layers of your cover come off as you get closer and closer to a target to the point where if I'm on my knee making a key to a lock, I really can't explain that away. So that's why time on target is so important. You want it as minimal as possible so that you can get your layers back on because the further you get away from that target, the better. You know, my, you know, disguises, you know, obviously those masks come in handy. One of them was actually on display at the International Spy Museum in D.C. And then I guess some

agency attorneys went through there after it had been on display for like four or five years. You know, the agency purposely unclassified disguised stuff so that someone can like, you can throw it in the trash. Because before then, if you threw it in the trash, Oh, you throw away classified material? So they unclassify all this crap. You know, and I didn't, what am I going to do with a mask that's built to my face, you know? So I just donated it. And the former deputy of Black Squadron was actually the director of the spy museum when I donated it.

So he was good with it. I was like, oh, okay. Well, if he's good with it, then. But they came through and took it, you know, and stuck it in their new museum at headquarters, I guess. Suppose, I don't know. Or they threw it in the trash. knows, you know. But it's actually, there's a, yeah, there's a funny story of this whole disguise thing. Like, at the time, PVH, you know, or the CEO of Seal Team 6 pulled Jeff

and he's like, you guys are, uh, my disguise guys? I'm like, uh, I wouldn't call us disguise guys. We just wear them from time of time. In case there's a nanny can. And he's like, yeah, whatever. Here's a deal. Can you disguise a troop of guys? Like, you know, with masks and stuff? And he's like, well, whatever. I'm like, well, no, probably not the mass.

Because it takes six months to build those things, you know, or whatever it is. I said, we could probably use, you know, some L.A. guys. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, figure it out. I want you to take 22 guys and get him disguised. Like, as what? You're like, I don't know. Afghanis or something. We're like, okay. So I call up, the first guy I call it was the, um, Stu Siegel. Okay, Stu Siegel Productions. He, he, uh, we used him in the AFO course.

And he is a producer that was in LA. He decided to open up his own production studios in San Diego. And, um, he had sets and he had an Afghan village that looked real realistic. And we can run scenarios there with actors and everything and really get guys. squared away on blending in or building rapport right for some of the things that require communication and and so I call him up and he's famous for all the 80s cheesy TV shows so Pensacola Buffy the vampire slayer remember Renegade yeah hunter silk stocking murders right he produced all those in San Diego. His claim to fame, though, was Jeremy the Hedgehog. He started in porn. So, Stu was a, was a porn

producer and made Jeremy the hedge, is that his name, Jeremy the Hedgehog? Famous, you know, the ugly little guy with the really big. Yeah, I know they were talking about. Yeah. Got a lot of meat on that guy, kind of guy. But I've never seen it, though. And so then he switched out of porn and started all those TV shows, has his own set and stuff. And then at the same time, I was like, well, who can do like really good at the Yeager brothers. Now, the Yeager brothers got their fame early on in the special effects world with Freddie Kruger. They got all kinds of awards and stuff, I guess, back in the day. And they became like the top special effects place in L.A.

And so they could make really cool masks super detailed, but they're faster. So I was just like, okay, I can leverage all my resources and figure out who can knock this out the quickest. And Stu, of course, like, I got you. We can knock this out. So if you know, Stu, he's like a big barrel-chested bearded. He should be a team guy, but he's, you know, he's a Hollywood producer. And so we fly these guys out there to the Afghan village, dress them all up. You know, they put prosthetic noses and bushy eyebrows and, you know, and beards and this and that.

And all these tanning ointments and got them looking all, you know, gave him AK-47s and then had them run around in this village. and we filmed it because the special instruction was, hey, film it with cell phones, film it with handicams, film it with all kinds of just average crap, right? Like average technology. And all you're at it, go ahead and use some high-end security cameras as well.

And we'll just see how these guys look. Do it a day, do it at night, kind of did it a whole thing. And, you know, I'm like, what the hell? What is this for, you know? And so we come back and kind of present it to the CEO, and he looks at it. And he's like, oh, okay.

It was really, all right, thanks. And that was it. We're like, well, what the? Because we jumped through our ass to make this happen. So did the, it was a, it was a troop out of Silver Squadron. And so we're just like, what the fuck was that for? Well, fast forward, turns out one of the courses of action for the bin Laden raid was to let everyone do it in disguise and then let Pakistan take credit for it. And so this was like to see how they looked if they happened to get captured on cell phone or cameras or whatever this.

And then I was like, oh, okay, that's kind of cool. That's my big claim to fame in the bin Laden operation. Controversial bin Laden operation. Boy, how that would have changed the latest drama, huh? Yeah. What is it right now? With the latest, you know what I mean? Who's, is it?

Yeah, I kind of lost track, honestly. Like, is it who's it? I don't know track. either. Who's winning? Is there anybody winning? Winning? Is this the who shot bin Laden time? Oh yeah, I don't know. Is that the current? I don't know. What were you talking? That's what I'm talking about. Okay. I mean, it's been kind of like the ongoing, the ongoing thing, right? Yeah. It's just like, had that have happened, how, what a change of? No one can say anything. And I think maybe, you know, that's why the course of action just was never looked at seriously. Like, these guys aren't going to keep that secret. I swear God, it was me. I'm the one with the big nose.

Oh, man. Yeah, that was weird. But, you know, yeah. Yep. So why did you leave? Well, boy, that's an interesting question. You just threw out there. Well, I was rolling up on my 20 to begin with.

And so, let's see, that was 2000. So, you know, the day. deal with retirement. You can put your retirement paperwork out 24 months out, two years out. As soon as you do that, it's supposed to kind of take you off the bench and you can take that last two years and kind of just do whatever you want and concentrate on your new future. At that command, it doesn't do that. I put my paperwork in, but kept working and still got pulled into stuff here and there. Plus, you're addicted, so you don't really say no to anything anyway. You want to be part of anything.

And then, but the way out ended up actually getting, having some drama attached to it, unfortunately. And it actually hinges on what we just joked about. So there, basically I'm sitting at home one morning and I get a call for my ops chief who I had gone through buds with. And he's like, Clint, don't come in, man. They've got your picture at all the checkpoints. I'm like, are you fucking with me right now?

No, I am serious as a heart attack. They have your head shot at all the checkpoints. And I was like, uh, okay. He's like, I'll call you back once I'm to have more information. What checkpoints? To get on base, to get to the command. Okay. Right.

So, and I'm like, still thinking, maybe he's fucking with me. Like, why would they put a picture of me? Oh, you mean there's a picture posted. A picture posted. I thought you meant pictures of you going through the checkpoints. points. No. What? No, no, yeah. Picture about me. Like, if you see this guy, like, if you see this guy, bring him in type shit. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Something. And I was like, oh, all right. So that was kind of like, obviously nerve-wracking. And I'm like,

so I'm sitting at home. Now all this shit really comes in Andy. What's that? Now all these masks really come in there. Yeah. So I'm sitting there and I'm kind of like, what the fuck could this be? You know, like, there's nothing. Like, I've lived a pretty clean career and you know i'm saying they're going if i done something wrong did i say something wrong did i you know and anyway a day turns into days and i'm starting to call people and nobody knows anything and as you know or i always kind of compare it like to that eddie galliger moment like knowing what it's like to have no control over your future right and i didn't i got a fraction of what he got but i had that feeling like, oh, you know, what does this mean?

You know, you start thinking it's the 800 pound gorilla sitting on your chest right now. It's the United States government. It's this. It's that. Your mind just starts taking off in all different directions. And, you know, I'm just sitting at home. And didn't know what was going on. Nobody gave me any word.

And then I think about a week went by. And then finally my office chief, same guy. He calls me up and he's like, hey, you know, I hope you're doing okay. It's still real blurry around here. I have no idea what's going on. So just hang tight. And I'm like, I've been hanging tight. Like, what the fuck is going on?

And he was like, I'm sorry. I just don't have an answer for you. And I was like, what the fuck, you know? And then a couple more days goes by. He calls. He's like, hey, meet me at the, I think it was Harris Teeter, grocery store. He's like, meet me in the parking lot. I was like, okay.

And so I, he's after work for him. So once he gets, meet him over there in the evening, it's pouring rain. He's like, hey, do you have your access badges and all your stuff? I'm like, yeah. So yeah, I've been told to take it. I'm like, holy fuck. You know, like you're handing over, you know, all your NSW. I got a ton of them on there too because they give me access to places in D.C.

and this and that. and I hand it over to him. And he's like, sorry, dude. He goes, I still have no idea. I was just told to come get this from you. He's like, just hang tight. We'll figure it out. My great.

So now I go home. When that happened, now I start to branch out and call other folks. And so the first person jumped in my mind was one of my buddies at a I think he was at teammate. Team eight was the one where they handed over a CIA source or whatever it was. Remember this? Team eight guys hand him over. He's alive.

And then when the agency got a hold of him, he magically died. Do you remember this? I don't. There was a bunch of team guys at eight or wherever that were getting, they were getting like court martial. And it was some crazy drama. And I talked to one of them and they were like, call Louis free. Because, you know, he, he ended up walking in. into the courtroom. The judge knew who he was. Everybody knew who he was. Louis basically looked,

judge said, you know, this is like a kangaroo court. This is ridiculous. Let these guys go. They didn't do anything wrong. And you know it. And so the military judge respected and knew who Louis was, the point where he basically let those guys go because it was a total sham deal or whatever the drum. I don't remember the details anymore. But so they're like, just call him, you know. And I remember there was a trip I took to Yemen in one of the houses. There was a kid named Justin Free. And I was like, oh, I've met Louis's son. He's an officer team guy.

So I hit him up and said, hey, I've been told to probably hit your dad up. What do you think? He's like, yeah, call him. Get him on your side now and get it over with. That way you're good. And I was like, okay. And if you don't know who Louis Free is, he's a, he's a, former federal judge, former director of the FBI, and he owns probably one of the most reputable

law firms in the country. His law firm took down Sandusky, right? All this, what was that, like, sex crime, sexual stuff at one of the universities, took down the BP oil spill in the Gulf, you know, when that thing was dumping, you know, millions of barrels of oil per day. But great American. And he's kind of an American icon, actually. He's kind of checked all the big boxes in the legal world. And so I called him up and said, hey, I have no idea what's going on. But, you know, I had all my badges pulled. I've been basically sitting at home for a couple weeks.

And, you know, here's this guy I don't even know. And he's like, don't worry, it's going to be okay. Like, if you can't think of anything that you've done, it's that wrong. And it can't be that bad. And either way, I'll take care of it. you know, and it was like, whoa. And it was the first time in that couple weeks, feel like, all right, now I got somebody on my side.

And it's not just somebody, you know, he's got horsepower. And in fact, on that first phone call, he's like, do you want me to call 60 minutes? We can light this up in a heartbeat, man. I was like, no, not yet. I said, if it comes to something like that, sure. And this is a long story. But to shorten it, you fast forward,

they do this full investigation that I don't know what it is. I just know there's an investigation, going on. They're not really talking to me. I kept Louis up to up to speed, but I never told anybody that I had him in my court and had him on standby to just start, you know, destroying people if it was necessary. And then one day I get called in, you know, I had to go to the visitor center. They took me to the MWR building, which is like, you know, you couldn't work for, you know, somebody who's been at the command for whatever at that point seven years something like that you know

it's like dude you're treating me like like a maintenance guy coming to fix something right and um they pull me into the mwr and you know a seal warrant who was in charge of the investigation or whatever sits down in front of me pulls out this big binder and i'm looking at the binder i kind of see like it's it's like printoffs from my website okay and so he's flipping through it. And he's like, do you, do you have a company called Escape the Wolf? Like, yeah. Are you actively making any money right now? Like, no. Like, do you have some product that you're offering? Yep. Have you, is there a conflict of interest with this product? I haven't sold any product. There's nothing. So he's got this, you know, he's got all these questions that have to do with my,

my retirement company. And then he's like, so Matt Bissonette. And then I'm looking at like, yeah? He's like, are you aware that there's a book that came out? I was like, I don't think so. No? He's like, hmm. So are you friends with Matt?

I was like, our acquaintances. I think I went over to his. he had a company called Element 5 or something like that. I can't remember. Anyway, I was like, yeah, I've talked to him a couple times. That's about it. He's like, oh, uh-huh. Like, staring at this guy and he's like, well, a lot of what you've got going on right now, you know, looks and smells kind of like what he did?

I'm like, well, what did he do? He's like, well, he had wrote a book and he had sold rights, you know, to a publisher and collected that money while he was on active duty here at this command. So what outside income are you collecting while you're here at this command? And I'm like, none. And he's like, hmm, well, you've got a lot of infrastructure set up online, you know, and it's part of the reason why you're sitting here and, you know, some people or whatever has some issues with all this. And I was like, are you aware that I put in my retirement paperwork

already? He's like, no. Like, yeah, so I've already put in for retirement. Hell of an investigation you got going on. And then he's like, okay. And I said, are you aware that I also filled out a

chit respectfully requesting to start my retirement company called Escape the Wolf? You gotta be shit in me. And I have five signatures of my entire chain of command and all the paperwork is sitting in the Jags office. And he's like, you have, do you have copies of this? I'm like, yeah, at home, you better believe it. He's like, oh. So this is like two or three months later. Okay. And I had stressed out, I was down to like

160 pounds thinking I don't know what to think. And it's them targeting, there's about 20 of us that they targeted, you know, to. figure out who had outside sources of income because they were comparing it to the likes of what Matt did with his book and wanted to they didn't have control of Matt. The CEO at the time was putting pressure on the DOJ. DOJ was coming after Matt, but it was a dotted line. It wasn't enough. So when the CO's job was threatened by the Joint Chief of Staff that, you know, hey, why do you have your guys getting out writing books about covert operations, that same COO saw his career pass in front of him.

You know, his grandfather was an admiral, his dad was an admiral. And now I think he saw it as like, oh, well, now I'm not going to make admiral because of this kid's, this person's book. Well, so I'm going to have to take it out on, takes it out on his own people. And I just happened to get wrapped up into that 20 guys. and we all got trident boarded and treated like criminals. They still did it? They still trident boarded you?

In order, well, the new, in order to close any case in naval special warfare, it's the trident board that closes the case. So keeping your trident, but we got to finish the board. So in the board is when the true colors came out. And I'm sitting across from a master chief who, bored yourself for being on a, a fucking dumb ass. Right. I mean, it was all kangaroo court, you know, knee jerk reaction to try and burn a bunch of guys that they had control over because some other guy, you know, did something they didn't like. That's what, you know, and so. Did the proper channels. I did. Bored. The other 19

didn't fare so well. But, uh, they still were like, hey, yeah, we got to board you to close this thing out. And so I sat down from a master chief who had an investigation on him that was ongoing, right? And I knew about it. I don't even know if he knew he had an investigation going on on him. And he's like, so, Matt Bissonette. I'm like, uh-huh. It's like, why didn't you disclose that you bought your house from him when you moved to Virginia Beach? What the hell, dude?

And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, yeah, I bought my house, but Matt's out of town. I'm out of town. My wife and his wife basically made the deal. Like, I said, I knew I was buying a house from a team guy, but I didn't, you know, that's it. Like, what do you mean? And here's what's interesting that I knew is the same Master Chief had sold that same house to Matt when Matt moved to Virginia Beach. And so I was like, didn't you own this house at one time?

He was like, that's not the point. I was like, okay. And then it was over. They did their little kangaroo court. Okay, you get to keep your trade in. I was like, well, good, because I'm like retiring next month. Thank God. But I mean, that was my exit out, you know, out of the Navy.

It was fucking horrible and stressful. And immature. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Some of the other guys, man, they were sweeping the quarter deck for like a year. They got their. Trident's pulled, sweeping the quarter deck, told that after that year of punishment,

we'll give you your bird back. Some of them once the year went by, they didn't get their bird back. Just let them, yeah, see ya. It's crazy. These were seasoned. That, dude, it doesn't surprise. Seasons, none of the shit, surprised. Operators. These were like troop chief level guys. They hit you up and spit you out like you're a piece of shit. I see it time and time and time again. Yeah. In here. Yeah. All the time. Yeah. Every unit.

Yeah. It's what they do. Well, they say, you know, it's a fence line of sharks and eventually you get bit. So got bet. It's kind of like they say, well, you can't make chief until you get in trouble. It's like, well, it kind of holds true a little bit. Yeah, the hypocrisy is just like, yeah. Nothing I've ever seen.

It had left a bad taste in my mouth for a really long time. And then eventually you're just like, well, Well, whatever, man. Like, I didn't do anything wrong. And I was glad I was the only one that filled out the right paperwork. Because you know us, Naval Special, nobody fills out paperwork. Yeah. And then it's W.

And the only reason I filled out that paperwork is because my deputy in Black Squadron, who was an army guy, was like, yeah, you should probably fill out of chit and just cover your ass just in case. I was like, oh. Good call on that. Yeah. An army guy. Because they're all about the admin stuff, you know? Wow. But yeah, I listened to them and it paid off.

Yeah. Fun, fun, right? So we covered the Escape to Wolf stuff. Yeah, so. Let's talk about Ibegain. Oh, boy. Ibegain. How'd that go for you?

I think I benefited far more than I know. I feel like I went into it. pretty ready compared to a lot of guys. I feel like a lot of guys, I don't know about you, but the sign up, they go down, and they really hadn't done a lot of prep work, you know. So I had been through therapist after therapist after there. And I finally found Scott out of Florida. And this guy is basically like part therapist, part Yoda, part,

poet and has this very, he just has an ability about him. You can vomit all over his desk, and he will take all of that and turn it into just gold bars of wisdom, where you're sitting going, yeah, exactly. You know, if you tell like how you feel or what you're thinking, I don't know how many times with this guy, I would say, exactly. That's exactly what I'm thinking. That's exactly what I'm feeling. You know, two years straight of working with him. and prior to Ibegain and was able to just uncover the why to a lot of my own personal issues, you know?

Is this the childhood stuff that we're coming back to? Yeah, yeah. I thought this was coming after I've been. I'm sorry. No, it was all during that. Ibegain was like the grand finale for me. Gotcha. Yeah.

And so he made me dig. And, you know, and he, there's one exercise. he had me do that was so powerful that it kind of unlocked a lot of compartmentalized stuff from childhood. And he said, you know, before I grew up in, before I moved to Saudi, I was in Dallas. And I had this memory of standing in the bathroom doorway as like a four or five year old leaning against the frame of the door. My mom's sitting on the toilet, right? She's got a

cigarette hanging in her mouth. And she's like, ah, Clennie, you know your dad. Uh-huh. Yeah, you know he's not your real dad, right? And I'm just like, I mean, she just kind of left it at that. You know, and in retrospect

and through therapy, you learn, like, a boy's identity is through his father. You know, trust is through the mom and, you know, a whole lot of other things that carried a lot of weight in that moment and then she stacked a whole bunch of other stuff on over time, right? Things that I remembered, you know, when I was learning to walk and talk,

she was teaching me how to lie, cheat, and steal all at the same time. I remember us going to grocery stores and she would always stage me in the toy section, be like, stay here. I'm going to go get our stuff. And, you know, I'd stand there and look at all the toys or whatever. And then when she filled up her basket, she'd roll by and be like, okay, pick something out that you want. Okay, take, you know, whatever, G.I. Joe, grab a G.I. Joe thing. And then we just walk right out the door. We never went to the cash registers. Almost every single time we go grocery shopping, never paid for anything. And I just thought that was normal.

You know, and I was like, oh, maybe, I didn't even, I don't even know if at that age, it crosses your mind that you didn't pay for anything like everyone else, you know. And that the groceries in the grocery basket aren't like all bagged separately. You know, it's all just in there. And, you know, and I didn't, I didn't know any of this stuff. And, you know, and then anytime. She was lying in front of me. I always remember her looking at me and telling me in German, don't say anything.

And I always looked at her like, what do you mean? You know, as a kid. So she knew she's bold-faced lying to somebody and then looked down at me and, you know, like Zygeist or whatever it was, she said that, you know, don't say anything in German. And so I just watched her for a lot of the childhood do all her things, lie, cheat, and steal like crazy. And, but I didn't know any of that until Scott was like, hey, here's an exercise. You're going to figure out what apartment you lived in in Dallas and go find it.

And so I look up my elementary school on Google Earth. And then I kind of knew that, I knew that, okay, that was the school. And I could remember fragments. I remembered what that swimming pool at that apartment complex look like. And so I was able to go, okay, that's the complex. And I, so now it's time to go do this experience. And he told me, he's like, all right, once you drive there, you know, anchor yourself to the pool and then walk the path to the apartment you lived in when you were that little boy. I was like, all right.

And so get there, pull in. It is a shit hole. Like, shit hole, shit hole, Dallas apartment complex. And I even felt kind of, I was like, oh, glad I'm packing heat. You know, and go to the pool, get on that path, make my way. And I remember it was the bottom floor apartment. There were two-story. And I'm standing right there.

And it was like this overarching feeling of insecurity came over me, standing there, staring at that damn door. And he's like, all right. Now you're just going to imagine, you know, close your eyes, whatever you need. Now you're going to walk through that door. I want you to picture it and describe it to me. like, okay, living room is to the left, kitchen is, or living room is to the right, kitchen is to the left. You go through the dining or the living room and off to the left down there.

There's a set of stairs. A set of stairs go up to your bedroom. Okay, take those stairs. Go up and then the door, first door to the right was my bedroom. You open up the door, look in. He's like, okay, so, you know, what do you see? And I see myself, it's like five, four or five year old Clint. What are you doing?

I'm on my stomach. I'm by myself. And it was interesting, you walk into the room. And for me, visualizing, I could feel the feelings of that kid. There's fear, loneliness, sadness, depression. It's fucking crazy. And he's like, okay, you know, walk over. And then just lean down, put your head.

hand on his back. What is he doing? He's, you know, doing Superman coloring book or whatever. And, uh, you know, he's like, okay, you know, let the kid, let him, let little Clint know that you're there. And, uh, you know, and let him know I'm there. And, you know, and then he turns and looks up. And man, it was like so powerful. I lost my shit, like right there. Like even talking about it right now. And it was all about like, hey, you're going to, you know, get a little Clint, get them to stand up. You're down at eye level with them, you know, give them a big hug and hold on to them. And, yeah, I just remember you're hugging this little version of yourself at that age. And, yeah, you could feel all the.

feelings during that moment, even right now, like replaying it. And, uh, yeah. Wow. So you hug this little kid and you tell him, hey, everything's going to be okay. If you want to get out of here, you know, and little kid's like, yeah, you know, a little Clint's like, let's get out of here. You hold his hand, walk him down the stairs, back through that living room. At this point, you meet yourself standing outside. Now you've, you know, you got the, you know, you got your little version of yourself with you and be lying it to the car literally opened up the passenger door and visualized putting him in there closing the door going around getting in the driver's seat and driving away and leaving that place you know in the rearview mirror and then uh not forget i went to this

coffee shop that was nearby that i'd already kind of pre-locate he had me kind of said hey you know when you get done find a safe place and like you know you know and you know and give me a call. And so then I get there, get on the phone with Scott and fucking lost my shit. And it just unpacked, it didn't unpack it. It decompartmentized a big portion of the just the bad things during childhood. Not just up to that moment in that apartment, but it allowed all that compartmentalization to start just busting open, even post apartment, like moving to Saudi and things in Saudi and, you know, all of it unraveling. It unraveled everything.

And, you know, when, you know, then that was just the beginning, you know, and in that two years with him, he was able to, you get to like just whatever, I don't know, maybe six months ago, he was able. I was, I got kind of, you know, like we all do with any therapist, you get kind of frustrated. with some of them like, okay, tell me what's going on. Like, fix me. You know, and you got to find the right one. I'll tell you, Scott's the one for a lot of, I feel like for a lot of us.

And so he was, I got to kind of a frustration point when I was like, all right, come on. What the fuck? What's going on with all this? And he was able to take that red thread and sew it from when I was five all away to that moment in time. And, um, and I sat there and listened to him and I was just blown away. Because he took every single, like even these fragmented things I would say in our discussions, he had made note of it, you know, things you don't think are anything important, you know. And, um, he had made note of all these things over two years and was able to just tie it all together,

all the abandonment, all the treas of. trust issues, all the control issues. I mean, you name it. I had deep-seated issues that, you know, were, I think in some cases, like the most deep-seated and the worst he'd ever kind of dealt with or tried to dig up out of somebody, you know. So your sign or symptom at the surface could be drugs, could be alcohol, could be women. But that's just a sign or symptom of something much, much larger. And what in the therapist's world will call your 10%, right?

That's just the 10. When somebody cries over spilt milk, it's just 10%. It's not the spilt milk. It's not the drug addiction. It's not the alcohol. You know, it's not the womanizing. It's the 10% is,

those are just signs and symptoms. When you actually take time and fight in the right therapist, now you can excavate down into your core, into your soul, and find the 90. And that should be everybody's goal. Just go, okay, I've got to go find my 90. Because that 90% is the why you have signs and symptoms.

And when you never go figure out your why, well, then you can't really solve the problem. And so for me, having those two years and getting to the why, when you show up to something like Ibegain, where they tell you, hey, intention is everything, right? Your intention's going in. Your intentions coming out. You got to make sure those intentions, you know, are real and anchored ideally to your why. So I showed up knowing exactly like, okay, I got these abandonment issues from my mother, you know, trust issues from her. Nat led to trust issues and abandonment issues with women, which then, you know, the control issues,

trust, I mean, it's all connected. But if you don't know that it was all connected or unravel all of that crap from your past, well, then you can't really solve the problem. You can go to Ibogaine and go face your demons, if you will, but still, if you don't know the why, then you may not benefit as much from it. So anytime I'm talking to people now, I'm like, dude, figure out the why first so that you can show up with the intent. intentions that are connected to it. Right. So if your intention going under the mask, I don't know if you were doing it,

but I was like saying them to myself, okay, you know, trust, abandonment. All the, hey, thrown out with the old, in with the new, right? Even when you do the fire ceremony, you know, you're burning the old so that you can bring in the new. And so mine were all trust, abandonment issued intentions and getting rid of them so that you can now finally. kind of live free of all of it and live a normal productive life and get rid of all the bad habits, you know, and go find a guy like that or gal who gets you, who connects with you, who sees you, and then knows how to interpulate. I used to go to these marriage therapists.

I'm like, you go to a marriage counselor who's never been divorced, you know, it's like they're not the one. You know, if you're going to be a marriage counselor, you probably should have been divorced a couple times and seen both sides of it, the good, bad, and ugly. And now you can talk to it. I think, you know, counseling across the board should be handled that way. If you're going to be, if you're dealing with addicts, okay, well, hopefully you were an addict, you know, because that's where you benefit the most. Makes sense. Yeah. What did you piece together?

What were the missing components? I mean, for me, knowing the abandonment piece, the trust, and how it was all anchored to my mom, like, I had no idea, honestly, you know. Plus the Ibogaine, what it did is allowed my conscious to come back to the surface, you know, probably the first time on the post Ibogaine where it was nothing but every bad feeling for about 40 or 45 days straight. you know, grief, shame, guilt. There wasn't one good feeling for about 40 plus days. Every day I opened my eye knowing that this is going to suck.

You know, I'd wake up and go, oh, God, there it is. And I'd just feel it. In the random crying, you know, be driving down the road, start crying. You could be at the grocery store, start crying. I mean, it's just like it consumes you or consumed me for, you know, 40 plus days. And then there was the one morning where you finally wake up, you open your eye, you're kind of like, oh, maybe I'm back to neutral, right? Everything's not as bad. You kind of feel normal one more time again, you know.

But, man. But ultimately, yeah, brought my conscience back. kind of reset my moral compass probably, you know, and made feelings. Yeah, made me feel again. Pretty interesting and powerful, right? I'd also say, you know, with some of this psychedelic stuff, like, I also noticed, too, and I'm sure you've seen it, it's, I think they need to be careful. with a lot of it, you know.

I think it's, you know, calling it medicine and, you know, and capitalism is starting to get its hands on it. And I feel like when that happens, you better be careful, you know, because before you know, it'll be readily available and it won't cost so much and you won't need a nonprofit or you won't need this, you won't need that. And I think it just, they need to be careful how they, yeah, I don't know what to think anymore. Well, me and you, I mean, that's the first time I met you randomly. We're at the hotel getting ready to go down. You went to a different house and I don't, I am, I don't know what I think about it anymore. This was your second time, right? So did you have all the bad feelings like I did?

Yeah. And still creeps in there if you let it. Yeah, me too. Like it's weird. I can almost as if imagine the mask is off and right now I could do like almost like a thousand meter stare and good doesn't creep in. It's like a bad feeling that starts to come over me. Is that what you kind of? If you just let silence hang out a little too long and think about it. Do you believe them God? I do. Yeah. I didn't always. But even in the Ibegain, I asked, you know, you can get to about like whatever they tell you, like around seven or eight hours, you can start asking the Ibegain questions. And so I remember saying, hey, show me God. And like a film strip coming down from the top of my mask in there, in cursive white writing, it said, show me God, exactly what I was thinking. And then it kind of kept going. It was like a movie reel almost, right?

Then the very next thing that started to come down was this black medallion. It's like it was probably this big when you're under the mask, right? And it had cutouts in it. And as you know, you try to focus on anything in there. It goes blurry on you, right? And so I was using my, my peripherals trying to make out what the cutouts had. But they're kind of the eerie part of the whole thing was it was backlit by a raging fire. So the only reason I could see the cutouts on this

medallion or coin was because it was backlit by this fire that was burning. And it's slow, I tried to keep it there, but it just kept on moving down, down, and disappeared out of the bottom in my mask. It's really odd. You? What about me? Would you, you ask, do I believe in God? Oh, yeah. Is there something on the second run that? There was, I mean, I believe, I mean, are you a Christian? When I say God, I mean, do you believe in Christ? Yes. I don't know. I'm not really, don't know about the Christ part. Oh, no. I'm 100% sure. Oh, got it. The Ibegain part.

Yeah. There's been a lot of good that's come from it. I am not ready to share everything that I've been through yet and that I continue to go through. Yeah. But I will say I think there's a possibility that that is a realm that we as humanity should not have access to. Yeah. I think that a lot of deception can happen in that. I think we have a veil over us.

I mean, I'm very, I feel very in tune with the spiritual realm right now. All the shit that's going on around us that we can't see. And I think that, you know, we can't see frequencies. We can't see certain lights. We can't see really anything. We only have, you know, five senses. But doing that kind of proves that there's a lot more going on. And I think there's a possibility that God put that veil over us because we are not ready for that. You could see that. Yeah. Especially as more and more people get into this whole DMT on drip hanging out.

in different realms for hours at a time. I'm sure you've had people on here. You've heard about that. Oh, yeah. I've been invited to do it. Nope. I'm good. They're talking about talking to entities.

And that just seems like something that I don't really want to mess around with. No. And, uh, yeah, I don't think. Yeah. I've been a huge proponent of it. And sometimes I feel like maybe that was a mistake. And maybe I'd fall, let it. lot of people in the wrong direction.

But at the same time, I'm not short and I'm not really 100% ready to go there yet because I'm still trying to figure out what it all meant and what it does mean. And but that's kind of where I'm out right now. Yeah, I'm with you. I think people just need to be neutral on it. Don't get, don't become a huge, don't get on to. A lot of people get into. that and then that becomes their god that well it becomes their new addiction it's their it's talk

talking to the medicine yeah you know i think just we gotta be careful with some of the language but you know the whole like god made it it's natural to the earth and i'm like well you know so rattle snakes and crude oil i'm not drinking it every morning with my breakfast you know yeah you just got a i think there's a lot of good that it's done and can do and I think they just need to keep it from getting capitalized upon because I think that's where

once you know starts going to market in any other way than how it is right now I feel like that's when things go south just maintain the control over it and do it right you know yeah

but yeah where's my gummy bears You know, since you gave me these, I'll start here, so I appreciate you giving me these, though, really, because now I want to give you something in return if you're okay with that. Oh, love that. Okay. So, I'm going to get up for a second. You're asking about EDC. But I've got to take a moment here and, you know, counter you your gummy bears with at least a shadow system. Okay, all the components, all the components built, made in Texas. Okay, it's a veteran-owned company. He's a West Point guy, don't hold it against him.

Trevor Row, West Point, Combat Vet. This is the MR-920, and it's kind of their flagship compact. It's already set up, optics ready, obviously. That's number one. That's for you. Okay. Shadow, obviously, better known Texas company that, yeah, tell me how that feels. That's nice.

Yeah. Now it's been around. It's actually being carried by a whole bunch of law enforcement agencies. And then you are getting the first ever. This thing is the heat, dude. This is the new shadow systems U526. this thing is ready. This is serial number 0,005.

Dude. And they did not compromise on this thing. This thing dry is only 6.2 pounds. Didn't compromise on the barrel. It's twisted. It's chrome lined. Beautiful. It's got user-adjusted safety switch.

You can put it to your 60 degrees. or you can put it at 30 or 90. Right on. There's a lot of other perks to this. It's not your typical, you know, 556 rifle. And then we put the, or they put the Eotech 2Dot. Have you shot through the 2Dot yet? No.

So it has two dots inside. The top dot is 050 to 200. And then the bottom dot is 200 out. No shit. So all you do is change the focus of top dot or bottom dot and obviously a magnifier there for you. Thank you. Yeah, man. And I was hoping I was the first to, yeah.

See that, is it, I don't know if it's on. Holy shit. So that's the other piece. I forgot. It's a two stage three pound trigger on that thing. So you distinct first stage, and then the second. Three pounds on that, the barrel, the stock. Dude, this is, this is nice.

Yeah, I hope you like it. I love it. I was hoping I was the first counter your gummy, gummy bears with a weapon. You are. Good. That's all it matters. And, well, I got something for you too. Oh, yeah?

We're at that point in our relationship? We are. Dude, this is, damn, thank you. Yeah. I hope you get out back and tell me, tell me how it does. I think you'll dig it, dude. Maybe we can do that real quick before you leave. But I know we're pressed for time here, so I just get around to it.

So, I'm not going to say, I'll raise your gift. It's funny how these things are all... I thought we were going into MP7. territory. Oh, shit. Damn. I thought they were going into MP7 territory when you did the EDC, but you actually made fun of it.

So I was like, oh, shit. But, uh, yeah, so this is, uh, Sig Sauer, Rattler, 300 blackout. I got a buddy over at Sig. His name's Jason. And, uh, everybody knows him now. But, um,

yeah, I was, I was looking for a a new bedside god and i wanted 300 blackout because the penetration power yeah and it's five six just flies through everything as you had mentioned especially with green tip yeah and uh which we found out too kind of funny that you found out two years before we did yeah for whatever reason that board just didn't travel but um yeah so sig rattler 300 blackout sbr with the new sig optics got a sig flashlight on It's got a SIG suppressor on it, folding buttstock. Nothing's the heat. Super quiet.

That's pretty. But yeah, and you know, SIG's an awesome company. Yeah. So, quick story about SIG, if you don't mind. There's a sheriff's department that the county over from here. And I got a friend that works there. Very. poor county, not a big budget.

Huge meth problem. And he told me the shit that they're running over there. Yeah. And it is like 25-year-old ARs, mixed-matched stuff, unreliable, damming all the time. And like I said, he's a good friend of mine. And I was like, this is crazy, man, that you guys have to rely on this shit. you know, especially in that county with what you're dealing with. And so I, I just, I was like, how many, he runs a SWAT team now.

And I was like, how many guys are over there? And he said, about 30. So I just, I wanted to buy him 30 rifles that are good to go. And I called Jason up at SIG. And I said, hey, you guys have any old stock laying around that I can just buy a cost and give to these guys? And he said, well, give me a couple days. And it's like, look, I don't, I'm not asking for you to give them or I'll pay for them. You know, just be cool if you give them to me a cost.

So he gets back to me and he says, hey, yeah, we've got the perfect. We're going to give them these. I think they're the, it's a 556 SBR. He goes, we're also going to outfit him with optics. We're also going to outfit them with flashlights. And we're also going to outfit them with suppressors. And I don't need. you to pay for any of it. We're just going to get it right to them.

Damn. And I was like, dude, that shit's awesome. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a good American right there. Good company. Yeah. They make great shit. No, yeah. Can't beat it. Rattler, 300 blackout. Just sounds cool. Yeah. Awesome, man. This is beautiful. Thank you. Well, Clint. That was an awesome story, man. Thank you for sharing all of that. And it was an honor to interview. No, back at you. It's great to just be here with you finally and appreciate the voice. Probably the only one I'm going to do for, hell, the rest of my existence. So this is podcast, interview, last one, done.

All right on, man. Yeah, thank you for having me, man. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming. God bless you. Yeah, I do too. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe.

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