The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Blackwater Mercenary EXPOSES Private Military Contracting Secrets In Middle East, Fueling Terrorism

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

Former Navy SEAL and Blackwater team leader Jimmy Watson opens up about his intense experiences during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Jimmy shares how Blackwater’s aggressive tactics kept them alive, recounts living in Saddam Hussein’s palace, and details the emotional and physical toll combat took on him and his comrades. Jimmy opens up about being involved in the Nisour Square Massacre; one of the most notorious war crimes in U.S. history. From constant firefights to traumatic injuries, Watson reflects on the darker side of war and how he found healing through Operation Restore Warrior. This is a raw and powerful story of war, survival, and redemption. Go Support Jimmy! Website: https://www.jimmywatson.co/ YouTube: @MightyWarrior24 IG: https://www.instagram.com/mightywarrior24/?hl=en TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mightywarrior2024 Operation Restored Warrior: https://operationrestoredwarrior.org/ This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: PrizePicks! Download the app today and use code CONNECT to get $50 instantly after you play your first $5 lineup! https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/CONNECT Wondery! Follow MRBALLEN’S MEDICAL MYSTERIES on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In war, you just start adapting to what's going on. And as bad as it gets, you just start filling in the gaps. Why Blackwater didn't get hit more and the army would get hit all the time is because we were so ultra aggressive. Because perception is reality to the enemy. Freedom has nothing to do with right or wrong. War has nothing to do with right or wrong. It's just a matter of, do you have violent men standing by to do your bidding? If you do, you're never attacked.

Jimmy Watson is a former Navy SEAL who was a team leader for Blackwater, the private military company, during the most violent days of the Afghanistan and then Iraq wars from 2004 to 2008. This guy saw more action than any other American serving in the Middle East. He lived in Saddam Hussein's palace in Baghdad for four years straight and went on thousands of missions throughout the city, getting in constant firefights and witnessing and participating in countless atrocities. It was his team that was. was involved in the infamous Nehars Square Massacre in 2007, in which 17 civilians were gunned down by Blackwater employees, many of whom were later convicted of manslaughter, but eventually pardoned by President Trump.

Jimmy describes what it's like to truly be in the middle of a war zone, where every day he witnessed a friend or a comrade being killed and explains the psychological toll this took on his mind. He also expressed his disillusion with the war machine at American imperialism and exposed how private military contractors like Blackwater profit millions from these never-ending wars. Today, Jimmy is a veterans advocate and a life coach. You can check out his work at jimmywatson.co. He does some fascinating and very, very important work

for veterans coming home from war. This is one of the most fascinating conversations I've ever had. Jimmy truly was a part of history. And for an equally fascinating bonus conversation with Jimmy, where he talks about his time serving as a CIA, mercenary as well as the personal bodyguard for John McAfee, check that out on Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect Show. Without further ado, one of the most interesting, poignant, and important episodes we've done,

I give you Jimmy Watson right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. I saw this black smoke. I hear this team say contact, contact. We get to the checkpoint, right? When you leave that checkpoint, it's a point in no return. My tactical commander said that. team's about to go through Nisar Square Circle. And it was full of smoke.

It looked like Star Wars. You know, the Tracer's going back forth. And it was literally, it looked like hell. And I understood at that point that I was going to die 100%. I did what I had to do. And that's all I can say about that. That's when I see lights behind me start the flash. And I didn't even think.

I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. And then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shame. It's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this.

He was the reason I made it out of a place alive. I am trying to squeeze the most out of this life as possible. The most juice. Yeah. That's pretty much what's got me in trouble a lot of times. Well, is that why you went into the military? Yeah. Yeah, I went into the military because I was like, I was rambunctious.

You know, every man's, he wants to go on an adventure. Yeah. And I still want to go on adventures. That's why I'm here talking to you right now. I want to go on an adventure all the time, you know? That's why I ran from the FBI for two years because I wasn't ready to be putting time out as a kid. You know, I never, I'd never like time out. Time out.

I was ADHD in school, you know. Were you patriotic? Did you know anything about bro? From West Texas. The most patriotic dude you've ever met. I hated school, hated my teachers, you know, got Texas swears. Watts when they used to beat kids. I had the record of detention all.

And I had 99, I had 99 days. They wouldn't give me 100. I begged for 100 days just to cap it off. Memorized every president of the United States when I was in there. So I wasn't like a stupid kid, but I was, you know, I was ADHD. But you loved America. I loved America. And I was, I was willing and ready to die at, even as a little kid.

Because I felt like I owed America for such a beautiful childhood. You had a good childhood. I had an amazing childhood. I was on a ranch that was going bankrupt. But, you know, as a kid, you don't know this stuff. You're shielded from all the realities and harshness of this world. You know, I look at my son now. And I'm like, man, I hope that he can be raised as I was in a beautiful world.

I don't think that's possible anymore. So there's no reversing that, you know, and I look at it as a blessing. But also, I think those days are gone. I don't think I really understood how good my life was until later on in my life. In my life did get pretty harsh. A lot of trials and tribulations. But I look back and I'm thankful for that small time I had as a kid in Never, Neverland, like Peter Pan, run around out of the farm.

You were on Michael Jackson's ranch? I was on Michael. Yeah, I was on Michael Jackson. I've been on Michael Jackson's ranch. But you got the McCulley Colkin treatment. You escaped the fate of some of these other boys. Deny and make counter accusations no matter what, brother. Let's talk about Andrew, man.

Yeah, so Andrew Bustamante, the alleged CIA agent, we'll call him. He was on our show, his episode released last week. And you, who your background as a mercenary, as a Navy SEAL, as a Marine, and has pushed you up working with the CIA a lot. But you were saying that's all, he's, he's, he's, he's capping he's high caping yeah i look i looked at i watched the episode you know and um it was kind of offensive i was like you know i i don't think this guy is who he's saying he is and it bothers me because there's a lot of people that are going to believe into this hype like i was a cia spy

and i'm wearing the cia spy shirt no bro you weren't you weren't you weren't i'm not saying he wasn't in the cia and but i am saying that he was not on some special missions unit team out there running and gunning with the big dogs. Real knows real. And I'm not even trying to act badass here. I'm not even trying to fake like I would be, you know, you should listen to me now. No, that's not.

You'll see. And for anybody watching this, you know, oh no, here goes another seal. You know, like, I get it. I get it. People are angry at seals for writing a bunch of books. But I promise you on this podcast, I'm not going to say I killed Osama bin Laden by myself.

Well, he was talking shit. He was saying that the Navy SEALs aren't the top. military arm of the Department of Justice. He's saying the CIA, not just being, besides being brainiacs and dorks and being able to gather intelligence, they are the most badass when it comes to, you know, extractions, foreign assassinations.

No, I think a part of that is true. I think that's absolutely true. I don't think that he was part of those units. Right. But my point is, is a CIA spy is not going to come on the podcast and say I was a CIA spy. I was part of a unit that was ran primarily by the CIA. Okay.

I'm not a Sean Ryan on here saying I was in the CIA. I wasn't. But I was part of units that were. And you're red in. You're red in or you're red out. What does that mean? If you're red in, you go to soundproof room. You're red into the op or you're read into the mission.

If you're a CIA operative in any kind of color of CIA as an operator, you are going to be read in. And once you're read in to the op-word, you are not going to be able to speak about it, all allude to it at all. Say I was in Colombia, but you're talking about another country or anything like that. I just think there's a lot of misrepresentation out there,

false information out there. I don't have anything against Andrew whatsoever. But to come after the seals, look, everyone is ignorant in certain subjects. right. I'm ignorant in a lot of subjects, okay? I'm not even pretending to be on the deep level that he is because he can speak real well. But I'm not believing a lot of the things I hear now. And I don't know what's up with all the bashing of the seals.

You're like, we wrote a bunch of books, okay, I get it. All right. And guys took missteps here and there. But why the seal bashing? We're all part of the same team, right? I didn't realize that the Navy SEALs, I thought the CIA just did basically like white collar intelligence work. Yeah. From, you know, gathering intel on, you know, foreign adversaries on Americans, spying, right?

And then when it came time to kill a motherfucker, do some wet work, you know, that's when the SEALs got called in. Well, who do you, here's the thing. Who do you think is making those CIA teams up? it's going to be X seals that walked across the street over into orange or one of their units. All right. Orange is what? It's just one of their units. Okay.

That's what the CIA. Well, they've got a ton of names now. And I'm probably outdated just even saying that. There's going to be guys that are really in that going, ah, that ain't right, bro. You ain't really. You know what I mean? So, but that's one of the names for it. And then he mentioned Delta as being able to cover down the water side of the seals.

Look, you got to be realistic here. statistics go against everything that he was saying in regards to seals. It is absolutely the hardest group in the world, the hardest tryouts for sure. It doesn't mean we're better than anyone. But if you're going, if you want to go prove yourself, okay, and do one of the hardest things in the world is definitely the seal teams. All right. Because of the water element. Yeah.

It's the environment. It's not because we're so badass and we go through this and this. It's just that you're punished brutally. It's like literal torture. And I highly doubt Andrew could ever make it one day in that program because I've seen so many people talk trash like him. And it's just not happening, man. Real nose real. You're not going to make it too far with that type of attitude.

And it's just, it's brutal. So did you, after the seals, did you walk across the street to the CIA? Or did you get recruited by then? Did you, was there any, there was never an inkling like, oh, that's where I want to go after. No, no. In fact, I did toy with it. I was like, man, how do you do that? You know, it's all about who you know.

It's not what you know, really. It's about what you know and then who you know, right? But I never did that. No, I went to SDVs, which I'll, I can go into that a little bit, you know, the sealed delivery vehicles, which is ran by the three letter agencies and stuff. And you're read into the missions that you do over there. And it is very, very, very covert stuff. but to say that like seals aren't shit and you know they're not as hard as they say they are

it's like if you're offended because of the books I get it okay we've made some huge missteps but you cannot deny the stats that thousands of thousands of trial a year in a very very few amount make it these are just the facts and I don't know why people are so against that you know I don't think most people are against it I think just you know Bustamante is you know his opinion. Bustamante had some serious heat to deliver the seals. It's okay. Whatever.

So you went to the Marines first. How old were you? I was 17. I was the youngest guy in my boot camp. And my parents signed me in. And so it was a good time. It was pretty brutal for, you know, I watched full metal jacket before I went in. And so I was all ramped up for it.

But nothing could prepare you for that, you know. They scream at you for three months nonstop. And it's kind of hard to imagine somebody screaming at you that loud for that long and doing that kind of crazy stuff. But I definitely needed it. Today's episode is sponsored by PrizePix. PrizePix is America's number one daily fantasy sports app with over 5 million active members. It's the easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports. Unlike other apps, on Prize Picks, it's just you against the numbers.

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Okay. Gotcha. And right after boot camp, then I went to school of infantry. and then went to my unit, my 0-311 unit as infantry, the USS Cole bombing happened. You remember that? Yes. In Yemen. That's right.

And I have always stood by this. The fact that we didn't do anything about the USS coal is the reason why 9-11 happened. How do you put that together? Well, if you just look at it, okay, 9-11. Okay, 9-11 happened one year after the USS coal was bombed by the Yemenese terrorists, right? and we were allowing Yemenese terrorists, this organization, to come on board these battleships as they came in and fueled in the Yemen Harbor of the Gulf of Aden. All right. We were allowing them, we were allowing the people of Yemen, which are terrorists, a lot of them, to come on board.

Just like in Pearl Harbor, we allow Japanese to come in and take pictures of everything. And then they planted out. And then Pearl Harbor happened. Same thing with the coal. All right. Less than a year later, nothing was done about the time. terrorist organization with USS Colt where 17 sailors died. A year later, all right, a year later, you've got 9-11 just explodes in our face.

And I think, well, I know that it's our, it's our toleration. We tolerate the enemy to do certain things. And if you don't have a boot on neck policy, all right, worse things happen. Yeah, right? That's the idea. I don't agree almost wholeheartedly. I mean, you see what's happening in Israel. they're getting all the fucking they deserve

because they come into somebody else's land and brutalize them and treat human beings like less than for generations and they try that deterrence policy and it doesn't work. It's everybody's strapped and the Arabs are sick of it.

So this is my bias, right? Like, and this is what I want to talk to Eric Prince about. He says we should go in and he takes the his ideology, his worldview is, oh, we can do it more efficiently than the government, right? This is where mercenaries and private military,

this is where their need comes from, right? They can do it better than the government, which I agree with. But there's no justification to be doing what our government's doing in the first place. Because look at all this shit. After 25 years, is that neck, boot on the neck working? Has it ever worked? No, it hasn't.

So, but I think you're a little disillusioned, too. So that's, I want to bring that out of you, right? So regardless, you go into the Marines. What do you think? Why do you think I'm dissolution? I mean, I agree with you. I think you're a little disillusion with the military and with the United States as I think a lot of veterans are. But I think, I think that's maybe your judgment of me from not knowing me very long.

I think that looking at me as a Marine, as a Blackwater operative. Yeah. And partly, partly some of the. my time in the seals, then I was disillusional, right? About my, about my understanding. Disillusion, meaning it's not what you thought it was going to be. I think a lot of Iraqi, Afghani, veterans feel that way. Yeah.

Because we were the last generation that believed our government to an extent. You know what I mean? This was before social media. It's before all the secrets were out. It's when, like, the power structure of the United States still had, like, a grip on propaganda. We kind of believed we were still the good guys. But then you have all these veterans coming back being like, we, we destroyed the Middle East and all my buddies are, you know, amputees and they're dead. I got PTSD. And for what? So I think, I think a lot of

people share that. Yeah, what a waste of lives, time. War is, war is no match for her aftermath. When I was at James Haley Veterans Hospital, Polytraumatic Ward, I was sharing it with guys that were just absolutely wrecked. You know, third degree burns everywhere. Amputees. PTSD where one guy that was next to me was like, hey, man, I saw a grasshopper and he was talking to me, was crawling up on the chilies, on the side of chilies. And I'm like, whoa.

That sounds like shrooms, dude. Yeah, exactly. And then another guy came into my room one night, late at night. He was like, hey, I keep on having dead people walk in my room and talk to me. That was my first experience, real experience with. war is no match for her aftermath. Right. The aftermath of war, I mean, is so absolutely,

war is absolutely unnecessary in most cases, like the Iraq war. What were we doing? Now, but if you want to win the war, okay, if you want to put all stuff aside, like the Green Beret in Vietnam, or the sealer Green Beret said, hey, we won our war in Vietnam, meaning, meaning it's not about right and wrong. freedom has nothing to do with right or wrong. It's just,

it's just do you want to remain free? And so do we have to execute some policies, even though they're jacked up, impossibly for oil, possibly for another agenda, then send the seals, send the green berets, send these warfighters over there.

But to your point with Eric Prince, if you really, really, I've said this about the seals, the green berets. Look, with the new DEI policy, you're never going to win it with girls as special operators, like in the, in the SF community now. Okay, not saying that the seals won't have it eventually. The seals will eventually drop their standards and that it will corrode away. You can't have women in your special operations team for many reasons.

But Eric Prince, a guy like Eric Prince, leading a black army of mercenaries, would do. definitely get the job done. Yeah. Because think about it, in Baghdad, Iraq, just as many, uh, contractors died as did military while I was there. But the contractors aren't reported. But the contractors were seals, Marines, green berets, right? 18 deltas, all these guys, Rangers, awesome, awesome, solid guys dying for their country, right?

Dying over there, but they're not reported. Why did they choose to be mercenaries and not just join the regular forces, the government forces? Because the pay is not good enough. Makes sense. Like, think about that's why you have so many seals getting out and writing books. That's why you have so many guys getting out now. They're bored. They talk trash about each other like I did with Andrew.

Yeah. Like Andrew probably will do with me after this. You know what I mean? Like we're bored. And so, and it's all about how can I get my name out there more? How can I sell this book? I got to say some crazy stuff. I got to shoot this guy in the face and this guy in the face.

Nobody shot that many guys in the face in the seals or green brace or anything else. Let's jump ahead then to real quick to when you joined Blackwater. Do you remember, were you recruited by them? Or did you hear they were hiring and you went and put your name in the hat? So I was taking my ASVAB and unlike Andrew, I'm not that smart, you know, so I was taking my ASVAB. I'm just kidding. But I was taking my ASVAB and I scored a 49. on my ASVab and you had to have a 50.

Now, not like a 50 in a regular test score where 50 is really crappy. 50 is pretty good in the mechanical math and stuff. But I dropped out of school when I was like 13 years old. So I had to self-teach myself a bunch of stuff, you know? And so I was still lacking in the math like a lot of guys are. And so I scored one point under on the ASVFAB, felled it, bombed it. I was walking out all disheartened. You know, this is after the Marine Corps, by the way.

And so I'm walking out, but this green brace standing there all proud. with his brain. He's got the silver wings on his chest. And I mean, he looks squared away, like badass. And I'm walking out and my head down. And he grabbed me. He said, hey, brother. He said, today's not your day, but maybe tomorrow is. And I said, what you mean, man? I was like, no, life is shitty. You know, life is crappy, bro. And he's like, no, he goes, listen. He goes, you ever heard about a company named Blackwater? And you know, at the time I had heard about anti-poaching patrols in South Africa. This is very, this is the genesis of Blackwater. And I'm like, No, I've heard of.

Yeah. He goes, well, go put your application there, man. You never know, right? He said, they come back and do the seals. I mean, he had it all planned out. You know, iron, sharpens iron only at the right angle, right? And so we need masculinity bestows masculinity. We need men at some point in our life that we look up to.

I know that we can all relate to this, that grab us up like this, not like Michael Jackson, but like that on the shoulder. And they say, hey, they say, hey, man, this is what you need to do. this is the way. Okay, this is what you. And so that's what he was telling me. In that conversation changed the trajectory of my life forever. It got pretty squirrely.

All right. So I went and put my application in, put a bunch of stuff. CIA operative. Black ops. No, I didn't say that. But, you know, I said all this stuff, you know, like all this different, this bullet points of stuff. I don't know how to write a resume, bro.

I just got other Marines, man. I'm like, what? I'm like 21 years old, 20 years old? 22 maybe and sent it in and man they must have been desperate to fill these contracts right and so they were just like hey show up to moyak north Carolina this is one of their first classes bro and so i get there and these uh these guys come in and you can tell they were real real real recognizes real i wasn't real all right i was i was prime marine and i respect the marines it was awesome but i just was still green you know i had gone to war with that in afghanistan had seen a

you know, collected the bodies of the USS Cole, you know, smelt that and done that. But, but I hadn't really experienced what I needed to experience to have that kind of resume, right? Yeah. And so they come in, these instructors come in and they were all part of the car's eye detail. And Brimmer was the ambassador at the time. And they were coming off these deployments.

And these guys were green berets. These guys were seals. Yeah. And they were like, hey, all that bullshit, you all put on your resume. we know it's we know it's crap um but now we're gonna we're gonna test you to see if it's true and i'm just like i'm like sinking down in my seat like this i'm like oh man but i wanted to go i i i always felt like i was destined like born on the fourth of july kind of stuff right destined to die in combat i mean i was ready to throw myself on bobwire and let my marine buddies run over me type stuff i was

ready to jump on the grenade i can't really say if i would ever jump on a grenade literally You know what I mean? But I was that type of cat, man. Charge the machine gun nest, sacrifice my life, you know? And where did I get that, bro? I don't know. But I'm sitting in the class and they had this black angel of death and blackwater come in. They called him like the death angel.

Like, and he would come in every day after we had to do all this crazy stuff. We'd have to put a AK-47 together out of a box. And I'm just like copying people, man. Fake it till you make it. I'm like looking over and some guys like fiddling. around. I'm like, bro, you know, help me out, bro. You know, whatever. And then we'd have to go qual on the range at the 200 yard range and shoot, shoot the AK-47. Then we have to shoot this 203 grenade, like at this mailbox 400 meters away, like the maximum distance. The winds are blowing,

you know, like on the golf course. How much did you, did you know what you were going to get paid at the time? Yeah, we heard it was $500 a day. I would have done it for a dollar a day, man. $500 a day. 500 bucks a day. That's pretty good. And then Are the missions, like how many months at a time? Like, you're there. Do you know how long you're getting deployed for? Yeah. So they had all these mixed match contracts.

They had all kinds of different little sales things I could give you. You know, they have 60 days on, 30 days off for a rotation of three times. They had 90 days off, 90 days on, 30 days off, a rotation of two times. But man, I just made it my permanent address. Once I skim past the black. Angel of Death coming in every day and he was just canceling dudes every day. They would come in. I mean, this is at the very beginning of Blackwater when they had two instructors per guy.

And they had your face. They had my monkey face on a clipboard. And then they had two instructors per guy. And so they would just walk around and just evaluate you all day. Wow. But one time I missed one of my shots with the 240 machine gun. I missed one of my shots and you had to hit these tombstones. you know, only like 20 yards away.

But you had to really bear down on the machine gun. And I barely made one out, bro. And I was like, oh, no. So I'm in line. I'm in line. And I'm like going up to the instructor. And I just grabbed my pin and I kind of made that hole a little bit bigger to make sure it was inside that. It was great.

You know, guys were doing that all over because the standards, it's a vetting process. To get into Blackwater was a vetting process. Well, are the standards higher or lower than trying out for? or, you know, a government-run military arm? It was, they were extremely high at the time. Okay. And then Blackwater made a brutal mistake towards the end. And they started hiring police officers.

We had a guy that was a paramedic and fire department guy there. No hit on these guys. But this guy was so far out of his element. Can you imagine? You're serving in a fire department as a paramedic. Then you show up to Blackwater and you got to put on kid. you're taking rockets, 74 millimeter rockets. Iranian-made rockets, by the way, smashing telephone-sized rockets,

smashing into your man camp every night. And this guy was so scared. His eyes were so big that he just couldn't take it. And a lot of guys got to Iraq after that vetting process. And they left, man, in short notice because it was no joke. We've all been there. Turning to the internet to self-diagnose inexplicable pains. sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

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It ain't enough. There's other, when your, when your buttons on your blouses, like in the Marines, is not big enough to smash yourself in the ground when bullets are coming in all of you. But then there was other days where I would just go to Saddam Hussein's palace, his pool,

pick up on shigs, play my little snake game on my little Nokia phone, and drink and party. You know, so it was like a baller life. You partied in Saddam's palace? Oh, yeah, I partied in Saddam's palace.

You got to send us photos of that. That's pretty historical. Bro, it was, it was, that's legendary. It was crazy, man. Does he have a pretty nice house? He had seven palaces. Don't quote me on that,

but I think it was seven palaces, one for his mistress, the windows, I went up there and partied and drank all night in one of his mistress's palaces. Yeah. And the windows were like this thick, bro, bulletproof pexyglass.

Right. They were like this thick on the outside. Like he was trapping her in this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this is so funny to think about Saddam Hussein having a mistress. Because mistress implies like she's a secret. But he could just tell his wife, hey, this is my girlfriend. You got a problem? Can I, can I? Can I, can I?

Do we have a problem here? I didn't think so. Dude, can I tell you a little known fact is I. dated a Iraqi girl that was working for Stanley Baker. She was a contractor. It was a beautiful, beautiful girl. She lived in Canada. And I dated her while I was there.

And she told me, you know, Saddam Hussein ruled this country with an iron fist. But there was only two murders every year before we came in. Right. When we got there, bro, we tore that place up. Like the movie's tremors. Like people with their head in their lap like this as you drive by. Like as a like cartel stuff, you know. Little baby on the side of the road.

They cut them open, put a one five, five howitzer in the kid, you know, cover it up. And because they know an army patrol or a convoy is going to stop for that. If you see a little kid on the side of the road dead and bloated, you're going over there. And guess what? There's a bottom of off. Wow. They had all kinds of nasty, nasty tricks there, bro. So basically that was like the tribal.

He, Saddam Hussein had a grip on like the tribal divisions between the Sunni and the Shiite Muslims and the competing groups. Well, you know, his, the Bathurst party after he, after the U.S. took him out, killed him. That was the beginning. That was the genesis of ISIS, right? Exactly. So that is unbelievable. Okay. So how long are you in boot camp, blackwater boot camp?

we'll call it. Yeah, the vetting process is only, I think it was only a couple weeks, but it felt like it was longer than pretty much anything I've done except for seal trials, of course. Yeah. And still training is like two years. I don't know why people kill on saying it on line. It's six months. Yeah. What are you talking? What world, what fantasy world do you live in? No, you get a cartoonist Sammy the seal and Freddie the Frog. Okay. When you graduate buds after about a year, it takes about a year. And then you walk over the street and the SEAL qualification training, which takes another year.

And then you go to language school. Now, it's not like we pick up the languages, but we go there. I don't know why. Yeah, because they were trying to pick up the SF operations. Say, we're going to be like the SF. We're going to be like the Green Bray. So we're going to send you to language school.

That's just not our mission. And people need to understand the missions. Green Brays have their mission set. The seals have mastered the water because we're in the water all the time. something on your podcast with Andrew, I'll just go back one more time. He said something about Delta Force doing all the water stuff. And the seals, yeah, they're trained killers, but they're one dimensional.

Maybe they're not that deep. You know, and I'll tell you, we rule the water. There's no one else that are doing water missions. Mars Sox not going to do a combat swimmer mission. No one, Green Berets, Delta is not going to do a combat water mission. Just like the seals are not going to do certain missions that the Green Berets and Delta do. right and so it's not that it's not that i'm saying that skills are more badass it's just like dude don't talk about something you have no clue about okay okay so putting aside this like you know

competitiveness between the the branches yeah i don't even care yeah no neither do we so i want to talk about your story so i live this though online it's like you used to see the people they call me it's like okay who cares live your life exactly you got a master ignoring that but uh what are your as as blackwater with all that said what did black water specialize in if it wasn't ground was it water was it air was it all of it what was it what was their special so the the original mission to fulfill the contract was a diplomatic department of state mission right where you go over and you guard basically you guard condoleza rice the strap hangers the under secretary for dick cheney all these all these political figures this is the department of state mission they gave us a black

passport. They gave us the rank of GS-13 until guys were smuggling drugs and guns with the stuff. And then they took all that away. But we went over there, bro, you know, right from the military to this mission set now. And at first, we were just guarding these, this diplomat mission, you know, taking diplomats out to go get coffee or something and bagged at it and risking everyone's life. And then it turned into a 911 service. Eric Prince was at a ball at some kind of gala. And the Marine Corps general, the Army General, and somebody else came up to him and thanked him, Eric Prince, this is before Nezar Square, and said, we want to thank you. He said, why?

And he told us the story, Eric Prince at the man camp in Baghdad. And he said, why are you thanking me? And he says, because you are our 911 service. No one else will go out. And so in war, you just start adapting to what's going on. And as bad as it gets, you just start filling in the gaps. And so Blackwater just started filling in all these gaps. And Eric Prince was allowing that.

Eric Prince was like, go here, go here. The project manager, Danny Carroll, was like, hey, you know, whatever needs to be done is what's going to be done. We even volunteered to go out and smash those goons that were rocketing us every night because General Petraeus wasn't answering that. Can you explain what that is further? Yeah. So we were getting rockets every night, you know, three or four rockets. rockets a night, maybe 90 on average a month. And these are massive telephone pole-sized rockets.

And our man camp for the Blackwater guys, the operators, was positioned in front of Saddam Hussein's palace. You know, maybe I can't remember what it was, maybe 300 yards in front of Saddam Hussein's palace, right? Is this the green zone? Yeah, the green zone. Like the protected zone. Yeah, a six mile corridor on the off area. But it was not safe. And there and people, and there were people shooting rockets into the green zone.

So the insurgents would fire rockets into the green zone. And they really didn't have much to aim these rockets with except for the top of Saddam Hussein's palace. So they could see Saddam Hussein's palace way off. And they would aim these rockets at them like an aiming stick. And if the rocket was short, it hit the band camp. It hit us. If the rocket was long, it either hit the palace like on the top of the palace or they shot over. Like one time I was literally going to the palace to use the phone.

because that's the only place the phones were. And, man, it was like my first day there in Baghdad, Iraq. I was going to go call home. And I made it, Mom, you know, here to Baghdad. And I was walking up there in a rocket just smashed into the top of the palace, went through several layers and killed two or three people. Wow. And I just turned around and walked back to my barracks room.

And we had a lot of guys get killed, man, like that. In the green zone. We had a lot of people. A lot of people died. And General Petraeus, which we. just called him Betrayus, he wasn't firing back. He wasn't trying. He wasn't using what we had to use to fire back because they didn't want the American people to get the news back that Iraqi civilians were dying.

Right. Okay. It was okay for contractors to die. It's okay for military to die, but it's not okay for Iraqi or Afghanis to die. So to report that was very negative. So they weren't firing back. So they allowed the drones actually watched these insurgents setting up these massive rockets and firing all the time. Wow.

And so when enter Blackwater and Eric Prince, Eric said, we'll go eliminate this problem for you. Did they allow him? Did the military allow him to do that? No, we begged him. We begged him. And remember, they even thanked Eric Prince for being the 911 service. So we started answering the call. Remember, we could monitor all the radios.

And so what we started doing as a team leader for the Quick Reaction Force, a red cell team that I was part of, I just, I promised my guys, three things. I said, guys, I said, I know you're sick and tired of not working. I know you're sick and tired of not getting good food. And I know you're not resting a lot. I promise you three things. If I'm your team leader, we're going to go out and we're going to work. We're going to work. We're going to do exactly what we're here for.

We're going to actually do a real mission out here. We're going to do many missions, right? And we're going to save these army units, save these convoyes, save these National Guard teams that are just getting smashed out there. And so that's what we started doing. We started going out all the time. I had my team going out all the time. We would shadow, parallel, ghost.

Okay. So now you're a team leader. Yeah. Okay. Went from every position pretty much, right and left door gunner. Did your pay go up? $50. Okay.

And it wasn't worth it, bro. 5.50 a day. Yeah, team leaders didn't last very long there. Yeah. You're getting fired pretty much soon. Okay. Now, are you bound by the same rules? Like, now that you're a mercenary, a mercenary, you're a private military contractor.

Do you have a rule book that's passed down to you by the government? Because you're getting funded by the government, right? All this is government money, but you guys are private citizens. So, but do you, are your rules of engagement different? Yeah, absolutely. Could you explain all that? Okay, okay. So they were the same, and I'll explain it in detail. They were the same as the Army and the Marines, but they weren't enforced the same way. So, okay, so for instance, Army Convoy has the same rules of engagement as us.

If I feel like my life or my team or equipment's life is in danger, if any of those three are in danger, deadly force is authorized. Okay. That's the Blackwater Rules of Engagement. that was the Army rules of engagement, but they weren't allowed to actually execute on that. They had to call in, brother, and I'm not being an extremier. They actually had to call in to hire ups to fire back at times. Like a sniper's firing from a building. We can't j-dam him. We can't do anything because there's possible civilians around.

But we have to take the fire. We have to die for it. Blackwater was hell no. We traveled all the black routes and Sawyer City Black routes. The Army couldn't travel them. And I'll tell you, why Blackwater? Blackwater didn't get hit more and the Army would get hit all the time is because we were so ultra aggressive because perception is reality to the enemy. If he sees a dude with a mohawk with a with a plate hanger this big tattooed everywhere, not that that makes you hard, but tattooed everywhere with a beard.

For sure. And you got a 240 machine gun grenade launcher, grenades all by you. And you're this far out of your turret gunner looking like a G like this with headphones on. Right. Dude. ain't nobody wants a piece of that okay but just to prove this we would go through an area

a very dangerous area like route Apache all the black routes where guys are like strolling around like gangsters in Compton with RPGs right and we would roll through there and not a freaking a bird with sharp because they knew that if they fired at us we're gonna stop

and just exchange until people die right do you remember can you talk about some of those crazy fire fights really quick that you remember yeah we would pass through there And then two minutes later, an army convoy would go through there, all buckle down and get smashed. You're talking to RPGs getting shot at them. Oh, yeah, IEDs, EFPs, freaking EFPs and watermelon stands going off.

I'm talking the whole gamut. Wow. Guys losing limbs. And then a follow-on attack would always ensue, follow-on attack. Which is. So when IED goes off, their favorite thing to do. They love to sit off at IED. Yep.

Boom, right? Everybody's discombogulated and you think it's over. You're like, oh, are you okay? man, yeah, I'm okay. Everything's okay. No, then a follow-on small arms attack. Oh, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They even waited sometimes until the little birds came into view, the helicopter medevac and then set off in a big follow-on attack. Right. Right. I was in, I was in many, many firefights in Blackwater, many, many, way more than I ever was in the Seals, man. Way more than I ever was in the Marines. And is that because you were being the 911

cleanup crew? We were the 911 force. And when we came back, from these big fire fights, I'll tell you about one here's a second. When we'd come back in the green zone, now we were the cleanup crew 911 ambulance service for all the hits with the rockets. And so if a rocket hit, Blackwater would go straight into the fire, straight into the smoke and either collect up body parts, which I did many occasions, or rescue whoever was surviving, if they survived it. So you're operating, you're doing. You're doing. what the seals are supposed to be doing. You're going in to the most fucked up situations where your brothers from the Marines or the army are pinned down. Some of them maybe are dead or dying.

And you basically engage the enemy until they get killed or run off and then extract and save everybody. Exactly. You're basically like a life saving force. Yeah, exactly. So then why aren't the seals doing it? Like that's what I never understood. It's like why, if you guys technically have the same rules of engagement as the government-run military, why isn't, why can't the SEALs just do it? Why do they need blackwater? Because the military is turned into a bunch of pussies. It's not the general patent anymore. That's just how it is.

Right. You have DEI going on. You have infiltration of all the special operations with females. it's crazy. But even back then, though, when? I'm talking about back then when you were, you know, when you were active in the hot years of Iraq. It definitely started around that era with General Petraeus.

Remember, he wrote a book called Win the Hearts and Minds. You are never going to win anyone's hearts and minds if you're smashing their donkey in half with a how it's around in their backyard. It's never going to work. You know, if somebody came on my dad's farm and just destroyed his tractor and then try to come in with a party afterwards, like the Petraeus Doctrine, and have coffee with him and say, hey, well, we'd love to pay for this.

We'd love to give your family money. Your two sons died in the process. Can we still be friends? That's what Petraeus was trying to do. Make no mistake. And so that's when it all started. But Blackwater was no holds bar. It was the Wah-Wa West.

We were doing crazy, crazy stuff. Do you guys remember killing civilians? I'm talking about putting the Nahir Square incident aside. Yeah. Do you recall civilians getting killed? Civilians definitely were killed. One of my friends was all distraught one day. And it wasn't like guys were like,

if you talk like that, if you said, I killed this dude and he was unarmed, your ass is done. Like as a team leader, I would send you home. We called it window or aisle in Blackwater. Basically, window seat or aisle, brother, you're out of here. That's like psychopath type thinking.

But in war, things happen real fast. Right. Like one of my buddies. And remember the rules of engagement, all right? And remember, a V-Bid can vaporize your convoy at 300 feet away. You know, you're made up of primarily water. Yeah. You know, it goes to the armor and just destroys you.

And so, and you're in a city where there's four million people. Okay. So you had these, you have these V-bids trolling around. Can you tell us what V-Bids are real quick? Yeah, yeah, it's a vehicle born ID. It's basically a bomb in a vehicle. vehicle. Yeah.

Okay. And they would basically beef up the suspicion of the vehicle. It's so heavy. And then sometimes they would zip tie the insurgents hands to the steering wheel. Because you can you can imagine this. Wow. You're about to kamikaze this thing into an Army convoy or Blackwater team. Wow.

You've got to have balls, man. So they would they would tape the switch to his hand and zip time to the to the steering wheel. And because these guys would become weak. Yeah. Shaking. Yeah. Because they drive. And in fact, one guy.

he got tired of driving around all day. He couldn't find anything. So he just went into a school. I remember that. He went to a school play yard, playground yard. I mean, it's just like brutal stuff, bro. It can't make this stuff up. So there would be these kamikaze cars.

Kamikaze. Just driving around all day, just looking for a target. Yeah. So if you see... Jesus Christ. So I'll just put it this way with civilians. A lot of Iraqi civilians died for what we would see here as a small traffic infraction. So if you made a slight wrong move into a Blackwater convoy back in the day, all right, considering these V-bids are rolling around with a 2,000-pound bomb in his lap.

And he's gunning for you. Okay. A lot of times, like my buddy came in that one day distraught. He said, man, I don't know what to do, bro. I said, what happened? He said, a man and a wife and two kids were in a car. They were in, and the car sped up on us. He said he came out of the rear of the SUV.

you know, because you're derrigged in, and you can lean all the way outside of the SUV. And he said, you know, he pointed at him and he was like, you know, like, Kif, Kif, Kif, you know. And he's looking at him. He says, he says, and he looked and right as he was firing, he says he could tell they were just arguing. And so he shot once. And when they saw him, all right, the driver, the Iraqi driver just went like this and just went right off the bridge. I think bridge six or whatever. Killed them all.

That's the kind of stuff that happened all the time. Because it happens so quickly. So they're basically reacting out of fear. You know, you guys knowing there's these V bids driving around are just making a mistake. Yeah. And so you had to have a lot of, you had to have knowledge of the scenario. I was a lead turgana, right? And I got almost fired out of Blackwater because I did not kill two guys because warning shots in the rear of the vehicle are not authorized.

So it's remember, if you feel like your life, is in danger, there's no disabling shots. There's no engine in the back of the car. So that's a warning. There's no warning shots. It's either you're trying to disable the car, and that's only two to the engine. And if they don't stop then, you start working your way up the glass, spiderweather glass, shoot low. It deflects high into their face.

And so that happened a lot, man. And I remember there was a car parked ahead of us, and we were stopped at the convoy. And we would pop smoke. And if you breach that smoke, you're getting it. Right. And so you would think people would understand there's a big convoy with these mass trucks or these tractor tires on with turret gunners up there. And then you got this and then you got this line of cars that are not going anywhere. And then you would always have this one car or moped that would try to break through. It just come straight at you. That was the Uber Eats. That's the Iraqi Uber Eats. He's just trying to fucking get to. These guys were trying to deliver some food. So if somebody pot. Yeah. And so. So. So. So. So. So. So. So in this case, two guys, they went to, they were parked in front of us about 100 yards. And they were arguing slapping each other. They like to, Iraqis like to slap each other.

I don't know why. They literally, a man will slap another man in the face and it's perfectly fine. It's like how they communicate. And they were backing into our vehicle. And I'm the lead turd gunner. And I felt, I felt hands grab my leg because you're standing inside the vehicle. And guys down there can't do anything. It's hopeless.

And so all they see is a car backing up. And I knew these guys were just fighting. And so I just rocked their back of their trunk. Yeah. And gas poured out everywhere. And they stopped and put up their hands. I could have killed them. I got in trouble for that.

They said, why don't you kill them? I said, because I just knew they weren't insurgents. They said, you should have killed them, bro. Like, what do you think? Like, stupid. And I'm like, bro, I did the right thing. And I'm about to get fired for this, you know? I, you know, I criticize war.

I'm a pacifist from the Northwest, you know? at the end of day. I really, uh, right, but if I were in your position, like, I just want to let it be known, like, I'm not judging any of this. I don't think we ever should have been over there. No. But if I was there in your position, bro, I, these people would be getting fucking lit up. Because I'm, because I'm like, I can see that. I could see your, your position is impossible. Our brains are not, our brains are not programmed to be able to, um, think about like different steps. Okay, what am I going to do here?

No, when chaos hits, that's what I like survive. Yeah, you're always fumbled around your Eotech's off because you're driving around all day. You're not going to keep your EO tech on all day long. Your sites on your, your, your, your, your carbine. And so your Eotech's not up. That's why you got to have backup sites. I hit a guy once with just my front site post without Eotech. But yeah, we were always rescued.

We rescued an Army National Guard team. Army National Guard team. The girl was underneath the Hummer as we came up. We came up and there's like 30 or 40 insurgents had barricaded themselves in these high rises along this traffic circle. And this National Guard team was coming out with their principal and the insurgents just blast them, man. And we were on standby that day. And I was in the green zone, monitoring the radio, and I was hung over from the day before party. and with all the guys with like a blue smurf.

I looked like a blue smurf. I was getting an IV, actually. And I was getting IV by a guy to get hydrated. And were there Iraqi hookers the way there was a bunch of hookers in Vietnam? No, no, no. Okay. Nothing like that. No one was on heroin.

No one was smoking opium. There were drugs. There were drugs. There was a lot of value. Think about it, man. Your adrenaline dumps are like so, your adrenaline's going so high. And at the end of the day, man, they're passed around Xanax. pass around volume and you just man you know or or some guys had morphine you know the one hitters boom in the leg you know see a lizard walking around saying hi to you you know then go back out on the mission you're just doing basically you're doing everything you can to survive at that point and I I paint it as it as real as it gets I'm not sugar coating it a lot of guys might think oh you're you know but that stuff that goes that stuff goes on the seals that stuff goes on everywhere when you're in when you're really in the

of the war. So you go to, you go out on a call, 40 insurgents. That's a lot of, maybe more, because we killed 30. So I don't know how many. But the Ranger battalion that went in and did the battle damage assessment on the, on the situation reported 30 KIA after we went in there and saved this army. Bro, when we showed up into that traffic circle, I had the 240 machine gun in front of me mounted and I was a lead to a gunner. And we, that driver was going 50 miles an hour to try to get there before they were overran, this National Guard team. They had no hope whatsoever. But Blackwater monitoring the radios being the 911 service, we went straight in there. And as we were going up, ma'am, I remember seeing these insurgents walking up point blank, you know, from the side. They didn't see us.

And we were about to enter in this traffic circle. And it was full of smoke. It looked like Star Wars. you know the tracers going back forth and it was literally it looked like hell and i and i understood at that point that i was going to die 100% and i'm not glamorizing war i just knew that i was going to die so i was going to give it to the enemy yeah because you're going through it you're going into a gauntlet and wall of tracers and rpgs and stuff and you're not going to survive when you're standing like this and people you're you know people are look at you like a bullet bullet magnet when you

show up yeah and as we showed up i just i just gun these guys down from the side of They never knew it was happening. A couple tried to hide under a police car, and I just chewed the whole car up and the tires went everywhere. And there was no escape of that of that firepower from Blackwater with all those stuff of gunners. So you guys killed everybody that was there basically. Oh, yeah, definitely. Killed everybody that was there. And how many of the National Guard, these are Iraqis, right, that you're saving?

Yeah. How many? These were American National Guard. What is National Guard doing in Baghdad? They were doing a PSD personal security detail work trying to do with Blackwater. There's the Army has PSD groups and I'm sorry. I don't, I don't know if I can articulate that mission very well. But all I know is when I was in Blackwater, you had teams inside the Army and the National Guard,

maybe reserve units that were actually doing the PSD for generals. like the general wants to get coffee the army protects him like a whole PSD team is there no KRIG in the green zone there's no caterer what the fuck is this? They were always going out to get coffee stupid meetings bro

I've been I've been I've been part of so many stupid pointless meetings like what were we doing and risking God only knows what kind of assets to go there so how many of these like 911 calls do you think you went out on in your time in Baghdad.

Bro. Just ballpark. I don't know. I don't know. We were doing eight missions a day. Oh, shit. And I was there for almost four years. Oh, my.

Dude, so many, I don't even know, man. So you killed a lot of people. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah. No, of course, it's unfortunate. But that's the facts. And I don't glamorize it because I've, I got to live with that, you know, no matter what. I got to live with, I got to live with all that, you know. And, and what's sad.

as I was disillusioned when I went into Iraq thinking I was there for a real mighty cause and purpose. I mean, like almost like brainwash, bro. I can't even believe that. But as I progressed through my time there, I realized how terrible it was. And Nietzsche said, be careful when chasing monsters for you may become one. And you just become a freaking monster. Because it comes down to survival. People will kill each other for a gallon of gas.

gasoline after Hurricane Michael or Hurricane Katrina. What do you think they'll do in Iraq war for nothing? Yeah. So I wonder what Eric Prince would have to say about that because his whole pitch is we do everything better. We can clean up. We'll go in and flood Hamas out. It's simple.

If you would just take the gloves off. But it seems like the gloves kind of were taken off in Iraq and at the end of the day, nothing was accomplished. They're worse off now. And a million people are dead. Exactly. Well, Eric Prince has to be Eric Prince. And he has to, he has to portray this image in case that Eric Prince is called up one day by President Trump or somebody, you know.

I don't know. I don't know what his agenda is. I know he's a great guy. I mean, he was a great guy to me. He always stood behind the Blackwater guys after the Neesar Square. He's always been legit to me. But he's got to keep with his story. And everybody's got to keep with their story, I guess.

When civilians were killed in the course of, you know, doing these missions, right, eight a day. It's insane. Eight missions a day. When civilians were killed by Blackwater, what was the protocol? There were never no civilians killed. What I mean is if you were a Department of State official and I did a report to you or somebody in Blackwater, let's just say somebody else did a Blackwater report to you, I would say on the back of an MRE card, two military aged males approached me. I was in fear for my life.

I was in fear for my team's life and Department of State, $400,000 vehicles, lives. And that was it. And they said, okay, there were never any civilians killed by Blackwater. You feel me? That's how it was. That's how it was. It's crazy as that is. So you basically on, you just make sure the paperwork is right.

Well, for me, it was always true. I was like, there was military age males that had RPGs maneuvering on our position. Now, maybe they were running away. Maybe they tossed the RPG after firing it at us. And they got just smoked because you're not getting away. You're not getting a blackwater team. You're not going to get away with that. But no, I'm talking about like when you, for example, when you lean out of the suburban and you shot the family and they flipped over.

That was my buddy. Sorry. And your buddy shot the family and they flipped over and everybody died. What's the protocol there? I don't think he reported it. Oh, see. Yeah. Because things are moving too fast. Things are moving too fast.

And maybe people might criticize this that are watching this. Man, that's just hard. That's too hardcore. But if you want to win a war, that's, you have to send in an organization where there's no overhead. There's no more handcuffs. There's no more. I got to keep my weapon in condition for and then load it and you get permission because nothing will ever happen like that. You have to go in with total, brutal, violent force. Do I agree with that now?

If America's freedoms are in jeopardy, okay, freedom has nothing to do with right or wrong. War has nothing to do with right or wrong. It's just a matter of, do you have violent men, face eaters, killers, killers, you know, when it was called. the face eaters, the white devils, you know, green eyes, great men with green faces. Do you have guys standing by to do your bidding? If you do, you're never attacked. That's why America needs to circle the wagons. If you have these kind of violent men that Eric Prince, let's say, is leading. By the way, Eric Prince, you could use me as a team leader again.

It's okay, you know. If that's the case, if you want to win a war, that's who you got to send in. Case and point. When I was a little kid, I was in, I was in, I was in, enamored by a high school coach. He was part of the long range reconnaissance patrols, the Lerbs, and part of the Rangers, man. I was fascinated by this guy had a lucky charm on his wrist, tattooed. I said, what's that for? He said, they call me lucky. I said, why? He's a super humble guy with like 15 kids. They later fired for no reason. He says, they call me lucky in Vietnam. I said, why? He says,

because I made it through two different teams, everybody else died. He said, we would do long range patrols with hunter killer teams. That's what you got to have in a jungle environment. You got to have hundred killer teams in war. Just four men, four to six men stacks. You go in and you have all the firepower in the world with your JTax. You have howitzer, you have the ships willing to send over Volkswagen sized bombs across the ocean into the jungle.

And they would just decimate entire units of the NVA and then be running away as they're calling for fire on their own business, walking rounds in. And this coach would tell me about this stuff. And I was always fascinated by that. And that's exactly how the seals. won their war for a time until they were kicked out of Afghanistan and stuff for some stuff. But my buddy who later died, Merth, Merthew, he said he was sent in to augment a team in the Seals as part of one of these hunter-killer teams, okay, in Afghanistan.

And he told me this in private. He said, man, he says, it was Camp Holland. There was an army fort there in Afghanistan on an outpost in Afghanistan that was getting decimated, bro, getting decimated because they weren't allowed to apply their rules engagement. They weren't allowed a fireback. So they were just hunkering down this fort and getting decimated by the, I think you call the Mountain Tigers or the insurgents, okay, by the, by the Taliban, sorry. And finally, the army generals went to the seal general and said, or I think it was President Obama said, do whatever you have to do to take back this fort and to stop this madness. Well, the seal,

the seal admiral said, well, you don't have what it takes to do it. And they were like, no, we'll do anything. He says, no, you don't understand. You don't have what it takes. to win this war. They said, we'll do anything. He said, okay. He said, then take all the overhead out of the picture. Take any, any cameras, any drones, all the nine layers that you have watching every move and then NCIAs comes in and investigates you. No, take all that out. And my seals will absolutely mafioso that place in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in Quelch, the fighting. And that's exactly what they did. And they did some seriously, seriously brutal stuff. And they won that battle, that war.

That battle. They certainly didn't win the war. They certainly didn't win the war because they're not allowed to. Yeah. We can win the war in a heartbeat. Yeah, that totally makes sense. You can battle to battle. When you're there, it doesn't make any sense to put all these restrictions on a bunch of people that you trained to kill in the first place. Long term, my argument is that, and my argument to Eric Prince when I finally got him on the podcast, is that there is no winning.

like there is no winning like blood and violence and evil will it's just an impossibility of the universe that you are going to win like that but it doesn't it has nothing to do with winning all it has to do is we have a capable

violent of action force standing by ready to do America's bidding right no matter right or wrong it's almost always wrong by the way and so my policy which I've said many times is to circle the freaking wagons. Circle the wagons. Okay.

Do you think because of the backlash that the public in America had against, you know, our forces killing civilians, do you think that's why Blackwater there was a need for them? Like it was them saying, okay, we have all of these restrictions

around engagement with the Marines, the Navy SEALs, et cetera, the infantry. Blackwater, and do it. Do you think that was why it was so popular to hire private contractors because you guys can, you know, basically take the gloves off? I honestly don't know the answer to that question because I don't know whether or not they knew Blackwater was going to be so effective or that we developed that because I was there from the genesis of Blackwater. And so in having that as my

permanent address in Baghdad Iraq, I saw Blackwater grow from basically standing around guarding diplomats to full-fledged freaking hammering down on a very offensive battle strategy in Iraq traveling all the black routes saying basically come on like we wanted to get hit right because we wanted to fight we wanted to fight did you have any guys killed in your units blackwater yeah blackwater guys yeah nobody in my team ever got killed they went to prison for the rest of their life until trump parted them in my team we're going to get to that but But as far as guys died, man, guys got smoked all the time, bro. When I was in the lead turt gunner on the one team, on the tactical support team and quick reaction force in Red Soh.

I was a team. I was a lead turrugner, eight missions a day, all right, for probably two years straight, like running and gunning. I would go party in Vegas for 30 days, full disclosure, go crazy. And then I would come back and do it all over again. Okay. I was a walking talking dead man. I knew. I pretty much knew I was going to dial there.

So I don't know what I was doing. I just was going over there and just having a great time and put it to the enemy. So I thought. But we were doing eight missions a day. In that time, man, it was absolutely crazy. And I don't even know, I kind of lost my train. My question was, did you have anybody in Blackwater? Maybe not on your team, but over there in Baghdad that got killed, that you remember going to kill.

Excuse me. I left the turgunt to go lead another quick. reaction force team. They said, Jimmy, we need you over here. You're going to lead this team because I was a lead turret gunner. The day I left, the day I left, brother, that tactical support team, that quick reaction force team was hit by an IED or an EFP in a watermelon stand and blew my position, the turret gunner out of that turret like 30 feet in the air onto his head, his head was all swollen. He barely survived. Another guy lost his arm, I believe, or took a massive chunk out of it. Dudes were getting smoked all the time in Blackwater.

Guys were getting smoked all the time as contractors, just as many contractors died as military. So about 5,000? Is that same to say? Because they say the casualty count officially in Iraq, I think was like 5,500 for America. Total. That's the official. Yeah. That's the official count. So I think about 2,500 died in contractors. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

And was that typically by IEDs? Because it sounds like in a firefight, you guys were just overwhelmingly favored. Yeah, we had a lot of guys injured, though. Yeah, we had a lot of guys injured, though. Like one guy's name was Jesus and he was always getting hit. He was the most unlucky guy in the world, but he looked like Jesus. You know, crystal blue eyes, long, dark hair. And so we told him no matter what, you're staying in the vehicle.

Don't get out. Don't do anything. We had a turret gunner in one firefight and Blackwater hit in the head. And it dropped him into the chassis of the vehicle. And so Jesus, of course, saw his opportunity. And so Jesus jumped in the turret. He tried to jump in the turret. They grabbed him because they knew he was going to get hit.

So he decided to make a side exit out of the vehicle. And when he opened up the side exit door, he put one foot out and was stitched up by a PKK, automatic fire in his legs. I think he got shipped out to Germany. then he came back and got hit again. I just got hit all the time. Did you ever get hit? I got hit by grenade. I mean,

I claimed to be hit by a grenade. It was a cheap, cheap Chinese Qom grenade. Cheap Chinese Chi Kong grenade. And I was because I was basically playing grenade tennis with the insurgents. And it's not that I was like some badass, but I just embraced the fact that I wasn't going to come back. And so I just like, I thought, I saw guys die scared. And I saw and I saw a lot of stuff.

And so I learned really quickly. I said, you know what? I'm not going to go out like a coward. I'm not going to be remembered like that, right? Right. And so I'm going to take it to them. I'm going to go all out. And so I ended up stepping on the vehicle one day because they were trying to drop grenades in our turts running past in their pajamas.

And so I got out and got smoked by that thing. So somebody threw a grenade at you? You lobbed it back? I didn't. I would lob my grenade. I had three grenades always on the side of my vehicle by my seat, ready to go, you know, ready to go. And when we got hit that day, I think it was Aminat City Hall, a guy ran past the vehicle and I heard in the vehicle shook like this. And what I later found

out is he tried to throw a grenade in the turret and it bounced off in and landed like underneath the vehicle. And so it kind of rocked the vehicle like this. And when he did that, brother, I had seen three army cats die right before that a couple days before that in the hospital. I was visiting one of my Blackwater friends that had, was dying or got hurt really bad. And when I saw that, I knew that they were trying to do the same thing. They were trying to land those grenades in the turrets. And it's like a fish bow in there.

Compressed, everybody dies. You're fucked. And they did that to Army convoys. And I heard about this. We were always getting news of the latest inventions of the insurgents. And so when my vehicle got rocked like that, I handed the radio to the driver. And I said, bro, when I go down, you're the team. You're the new team leader.

I jumped out because I wasn't going out like that, brother. I'd already seen that in the hospital, three or four guys died. And so I jumped out of the vehicle and started throwing my grenades and then I would hear a grenade go off right next to me. So like the first one he threw, went over the vehicle, blew up. I threw one and I was lobbing him over this wall at him. He was on the other side, this massive wall right by my truck. And then I would lob one, boom. He would lob one, boom.

Finally, I just remember just getting smashed like this. and the Hummer door was open, this armored Hummer door, and it landed right behind that armor door. So everything that was exposed, you know, so it was covering like this. And that door took a blast, but I still took ball bearings in my leg. And right at the top of my head,

it wasn't crazy, man. Well, that's a pretty crazy engagement, though. Pretty crazy engagement, bro. And that guy got smashed. I killed that guy. Wow. Yep. Did you feel some kind of way, like some kind of personal anger towards guys trying to kill you?

Never, bro. Never. Never. You're a real psycho. Yeah, that's psycho stuff. My wife calls me a psycho all the time. But that's the way you're an effective fighter. Like boxing, you know, Mike Tyson, he always talks about how calm he was before he walked into a fight.

And he never had, he was never took it personal. Never, bro. Even guys, you know, you meet in prison, the best street fighters, they teach you like, never be angry while you're doing it. There was never a revenge seeking, like, platoon, and like they tried to doctor up the Nisar Square thing. Like, we went out there with revenge. It wasn't like that. It saved the movies.

It was live or die. And I always looked at it as an extremely fair fight. If somebody came to my backyard in Texas or Miami now and started running around with machine guns, shooting everybody, doing crazy stuff, I would stand up like, gee, and be like, hey, bro, it's me and you. And so I always looked at it as a very, very fair fight. If I died, it was a win for him. If he died, well, he lost that day.

And that's exactly how I approached every firefight. Never angry. Just business, man. Did, leading up to Nisar Square, did, was there a point where you looked around? Because you're there years now. Four years. That is crazy. So you're there for four years.

There was my permanent mailing address. You know, like, okay. You know, in Vietnam. basically they would tell you go take a hill. Yeah. And you would run up a hill and the Charlie, the VCs firing down at you. Hamburger Hill. Hamburger Hill.

And it's just people are dying, like, hundreds and hundreds of people are getting killed a day. And thousands of VCs are getting killed a day. And you finally take the hill and they're like, okay, I'm on the top of this fucking hill in a jungle. For enough for what? It kind of, this, this, these stories kind of, I'm getting hints of Vietnam there. like, hey, go rescue this squadron in this traffic circle. Bro, it was so stupid. For what?

And at the end of the day, okay, everybody's dead. Now what? Now you got to go take another traffic circle. Was there a point? At what point did you start to question like what the mission actually was long term? Very, very years afterwards. Because when I was there, brother, I looked at it as saving people. And we did save people.

We did save him. I'm not trying to romanticize this, but we saved. We saved a lot of convoys. We saved a lot of, you know, if you were, if you were changing your tire as an army convoy for more than 15 minutes there, dude, you have a kid that calls it in, tells his older brother, and now you're getting hammered. In about five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. You're going to get hammered out there. So if somebody was changing their tires, some team leaders, man, in Blackwater,

were just chilling in the rear with the gear, playing their poker and I, drinking with the girls, partying with the Italian seals, the FBI compound. me I was like no bro no if if you're if you're changing your tire out there I'm up on you man and I'm going to put I'm going to put up a wall of steel we called it I'm going to put my vehicles my guys in front of your your vehicle why you change that tire and so when we take the heat we're going to take it off of you and so we set up this wall of still all the time I would have my team literally drive directly in the middle of a firefight where another team team was a Blackwater team was pinned down getting smashed like Aminaught City Hall where that

grenade thing happened. I drove my vehicles directly in between, put my team directly in between the enemy and our guys. And so we would take so automatically if you're the enemy firing on Blackwater like you're just kicking their ass or the army and then all of a sudden you see these four big ass trucks loaded down with literally thousands of thousands of rounds with literally one to two up turret gunners with fully auto, belt fed, 240 golf machine guns with 308 rounds coming out at what, 600, 800 rounds a minute at you. And they pull right up here. You become the bullet magnet.

But that would cost pandemonium. Right. Because they're like, what the heck just happened, right? Yeah. Yeah, those guys get scared too. And then we would just beat their ass, man. So they would beat ours. So you weren't questioning.

You were like, it almost seems like you approached this like a big party. I did. Is that accurate? Unfortunately, yeah. Yeah, I did. It was a big party for me. It was a big party for me, brother. And I got to the point where at night, the machine guns would kind of lullaby me to sleep at night in my room.

Instead of guys, instead of putting my kid on and sweating and I'm going to die tonight, a rocket's going to smash you because rockets would hit your trailer and just smoke kill you like that in the middle of the night in the green zone. You got to think, you know. And so I, instead of doing that, instead of like surrounding myself with, with. with sandbags like one guy and sleeping on his armor and all this dude i would i would i was stripped down in my wighty tides i know i wore wadi tides still i didn't get the memo till i went to the meps the second time to seals and the doctor was like what are you doing brother you're 40 years old waddy tides but um i i would lay there at night and hear the machine um fire in in the distance and i would allow that to like i've never been more peaceful bro

so you would accept so you really thought you were going to die expected to die. Oh, I definitely did. I wrote my letter out to my mom. You know, I accepted, I accepted the fact that I was going to die. I didn't think that I would live through it. I thought there was a bear, especially being there when you're there for eight months, nine months, you're just, you get complacent. Complacency kills. New guys, they got hit for some reason. I don't know how the universe works. And then short timers always were killed. or got injured. We begged a guy not to go out one day on his last mission.

He had 24 hours left to go home. And he was like, I want to go with you guys. And we're like, dude, it's stupid. If you're a week out, you're not going to go out with the boys anymore. Is there a choice? You're a danger. Yeah, absolutely. Now, is that right?

So you can get fired. But that's the worst that can happen. There's no getting court. There's no getting court martial. There's no getting, you know, dishonorably discharged. You could say, hey, I'm good. There were absolutely no rules in lack of That's why the Army hated us so much.

Can you imagine? Right. Like you go from saluting an Army general. Yes, sir, I, sir. To basically you could give him the bird in Iraq if you wanted to walk past him. Not that I would ever disrespect the general or something. Okay. With that said, did discipline ever break down?

Because there is no hierarchy really? Yeah, guys, guys, but you got to let the sled dogs out. You got to let the grooming standards roll. You got to let the guys get tattoos. That's why I said the military. You got to let them get tattoos. You got to get the facial hair going. There's a reason why that.

you tell guys that they can grow their facial hair out, now they're going to shave, you know, if you, you know, just do the reverse matrix on them. Right. It's like parenting. Yeah, it's like parenting. But if, but if you allow the guys to do as they please, they're pretty much going to behave because they want that $500. They want that $1,000 a day.

Right. They want that bonus at the end of the year. And, but what a lot of people, I don't think, understand about the military. And while I was questioned so hard at Neesar Square as a team leader, is that there was no hierarchy past me. you had Danny Carroll this old time frog, you know, with the black eyes as the seal commander of the Blackwater Base as the project manager. And he was the end all end, right? He told you there were enemy out that day.

You there were going to be enemy. But anyone above me and that was just an admin position, maybe a prior law enforcement guy because he doesn't mind writing paperwork. So he's sitting in his room all day in the air condition. And there is no like, there is no like, hey, sir, can I go out today? No, it's all on the team leader. Yeah. You know, I was the sergeant, the lieutenant, the commander of the team, you know? Wow.

How many people total from Blackwater were in the green zone when you were team leader? I don't know. I was the team leader. Thousands? I was over 30 guys and I would say 28 to 30 guys depending on the rotational leave. And I would, I want to say there was maybe 300 operators. Oh, it's nothing. Nothing. Nothing. We were running off of bare bones because you think about it, guys go there in the heat of the battle in 2007.

No, sorry, 2006 and 7, it was so bad. So bad. You look at the charge man and the death toll was skyrocketing and it was getting just nasty. It was getting real bad for Blackwater. Okay, so let's talk about Nisar Square. What happened? Oh, man. Well, a team was out there with that with one of those strap hangers with one of the diplomats. What year was this? Doing coffee, 2007.

2007. And the grenade thing just had happened six days before. Sorry. Okay, yeah. Tell us about the grenade thing and that'll lead us. That'll kind of give some context to what happened at Nesar. Bro, it was just, it was blowing up in Iraq. Stuff was, okay, we were getting three to four rockets a day.

That's going to wear your nerves. So we're getting it was. So we're answering those calls at night. At early morning, we're washing out the blood with pressure washers out of our vehicles. Imagine that. Wow. Downing our kit on, getting in the turrets, loading all of our gear back up. And now we're going to run eight missions a day, you know, four to eight missions a day, depending.

And as you're going out, the checkpoint in front of you disintegrates. A V-Bid just blows it up with a couple of Marines, poor Marines standing there all day. Wow. 12, 14 hours a day. You witnessed that? Yeah, I witnessed that. Witness a lot of terrible stuff, man. witnessed four Marines burn alive in a in a tank.

And, you know, you're praying that the wind will pick up. So the fire will get hotter because there's no saving them, brother. So you're praying the wind will, will pick up. This is your mindset there. You're not, you're not like, oh, man, we got to get them. You're like, man, I hope they die quick, these Marines. Because you're in a whole different world. Maybe it's not reality, but it's war.

And so. Aminaw City Hall happened. Gray 5-5 happened. Route Apache happened where you're just running through a gauntlet of RPGs and grenades are hitting you. And PKM fire. You're getting smashed every day. Your vehicles are smashed up.

The little blackbirds that were flown by the 160th pilots, they're getting like 6,000 a day. Something crazy. I can't remember exactly how much. But these guys, man, are getting paid big money to fly these little birds for Blackwater. They're getting hit every single time they go up. up.

Wow. Super dangerous, bro. Yeah. Little mosquito blackbirds, they just love shooting at you. Right. You're taking rounds from sniper rifles. Yeah. There would be missions that I would come in to the green zone.

And I'd be like, bro, we didn't get shot at today, man. That's pretty cool. Whatever, although I kind of wish you did get more action. Yeah. But there was one time I came in, I said, bro, we didn't get shot at or nothing. And I said, hey, man, look at, look at your arm. And I looked in all the water bottles that I always had here to throw at cars to warn them before being shot.

They were, they were destroyed. And my arm was wet. And I looked down in a, in a, in a sniper around was shot just while we were screaming through downtown Baghdad, shot at me. And it traversed my left pectoral muscle like this and went straight into a case of water and blew it up. And I never knew it, bro. He didn't even notice.

Never knew it. It was just like, shoot, like Trump in the ear, bro. Something crazy. Yeah. Okay. So this is the scenario. this is this is the environment it's incredibly violent there's you're seeing people killed every day you're killing people every day i just left the other team who gets hit by the watermelon stand vbid or it's not

vbid iED iEDs pfp just plasma copper plasma just melted through the engine blew the guy out of the turk tore the other guy's arm off follow-on attack they barely made it out so that team's down so now we're running double time the quick reaction forces just me and another team are running and gunning we've picked up double the load. Yeah. Everybody, guys are getting killed. Guys are getting just smashed. The guy got hit with a piece of shrapnel just sitting in his room talking to his wife on

the webcam. He's talking to his wife on the webcam. He survived, but his brain was showing and it's just a miraculous recovery. You could look it up. So guys are exhausted. Guys are just exhausted, bro. I'm limping around with ball bearings of my leg. I refuse to go home.

I got it tied off, you know, like I'm about to go home anytime now. And I just, bro, I had this ominous feeling. like a storm's coming. And I just knew that my time was up. I didn't know how, you know, but they kept on saying, Haas, you're doing a good job. Eric Prince was giving me, you know, the coin, the watch, all that stuff, you know. I was writing all my guys up for the gold-plated M-4, all the awards, you know.

And they kept bringing me inside the room and kept saying, Haas, you're doing a good job. And at the time, I'm still seeking validation. I mean, look at my past, Marines, Blackwater, Seals. I was always seeking that validation, you know, like, I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to get this, then I'm going to get this accolade. Well, these guys are validating me every time with that man validation, like bringing me in saying, Jimmy, you're doing a great job.

Do whatever it takes. You ain't got to ask for permission. Just go out and do whatever it freaking takes. The project manager pulled me to the side and whispered in my ear, Jimmy, do whatever you have to do out there. do you understand what I mean? So you're a license to kill. Yeah. You had a license to kill.

You could kill with impunity. As long as you could articulate it. Like if somebody came in here to the studio right now and I was carrying, let's say, and he has a weapon, all right, in his hand. And I just drill him. I just drill two to the chest, one of the face. And he drops down. Please come.

It's all the way I articulate it. If I say, no, man, I don't know. I don't really think our lives are in danger. And the police are going to be like, oh, you're going to jail or you're going in front of a jury, right? But in Iraq, it's however military age men maneuvering on your position, I felt like, and that was true. I felt like my life was in danger, bro.

He came and tried to throw a grenade in my turret. You know, I felt like my team's life is in danger. And so you have this storm coming, this ominous feeling in my stomach, bro. And I just knew, man, my time was up. there. So Nisar, Nisar. And so we've got, we've only got two quick reaction forces that can go out and help the Marines or anybody. Marines sometimes didn't need help. I don't want to say that. You know, I don't want to act like we were helping the Marines like stepchildren. But a team was out there with that, have that nice little coffee meeting in Baghdad, Iraq, not too far away. And I thought,

man, I need a break. I need, I need some time off. I'm hurt my leg certain. I get a Coke float in the Chahall Hall. It was my favorite, man. I would get an ice cream and pour some Coke on it. And I sat down with that thing and I'll never forget the windows and the Chal Hall just vexed like you're on an airplane and turbulence happens. The whole thing just goes boom like that. And I was like, whoa. I was like, what was that? That had to be a massive V-bid, you know, explosion. And then I could see black smoke coming up. And right as that the windows vexed on the radio, that team that we're monitoring said contact, contact, contact, yelling and screaming. Like, that was them. Yeah. So your brain can only put together two things. Okay, that team just got smashed and I've got to go out and rescue them like I always do.

This was just going to be a regular routine day. So everybody runs out to the trucks. We have already got them stage with the 240s. We already got up stage with the machine guns. and we roll out and we roll out hard. How far is Nisar from the base, from the Greens? Oh, bro, like a mile. Close.

It was so close. It was right by the base. And that plays a factor later on. But on the way out there, the, on the way out there, I just knew it was going to get back. We stopped at the checkpoint briefly. And my tactical commander, Corey Wayne Scott, who later died, and he was like, Jimmy,

he was like, Haas, my nickname Haas said, Hoss, what do you want to do? And I just knew, man, if I go out there, that something bad's going to happen, I just knew it. You just had that six cents. You know, when you're in the woods for a year, that everything starts to fall off your teeth,

your senses are aware. You can hear the bear coming. You can sense the cliff coming. I could sense because I've been in war for so long. Yeah, bro. Just like that Lurb coach told me, you know, they shit like, a little rabbit after a while. That's how you know somebody's really great. That's how you know you don't want to mess with somebody. When you look at their shit on the ground,

when you're in there, it's real small. I'm sorry, you know, because they're not eating much. They're lean. They've been in the war zone for a long time. I was real keen on my senses.

And as I was sitting there, I saw this black smoke. I hear this team say contact, contact. We get to the checkpoint, right? When you leave that checkpoint, it's a point in no return.

But you got to make a decision in life, right? And so I sat there and I just knew that it was going to be probably years of pain or I was going to die. I was or my parents are going to get the news that I died. And he said, what do you want to do, bro? And I said, I said, I said, put your chin straps on. And he was like, Roger that. And he's like, are you sure? And I said, I said, put your chin straps on.

We're going. He goes, roger that. Because it was so bad that I just knew if we went out. I knew it was going to be a follow-on attack. I knew it was a setup, but I knew that we could go and facilitate that team coming back. How many people are you with in the convoy? I can't remember maybe 25 at the time. And you're in the Humvees?

How many? We were in South African Mombas. We were in Bearcats. We looked like Mad Max on the Thunderdown, bro. Crazy vehicles with tractor tires. Wow. Some Hummers and some of the cat counter assault teams. Okay.

And you could have just said as a contractor, you could have just been like, I'm going to go finish my Coke float. There's no obligation for you to go out. Bro, I would say, I'd say 85% of the team leaders there weren't as crazy as me. And I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm not, I look back in my life and I'm like, dude, man, I've got some regrets for being for being that wild man. Right? I have a lot of regrets, bro. Shame, guilt.

You know, I've had to, I've had to process a lot of really hard. hard, hard stuff because of what was about to happen. And so I told him, let's go, man. And he said, Roger that. And we rode out that gate. And we made a right turn and went through all these HESCO barriers. It seemed like it was taking us a long time. And he said, that team's about to go through Nisar square circle.

We knew it. That place had been decimated by bombs before. blood like blood everywhere on the streets. Crazy stuff. I mean, it wasn't its first time to see terrible stuff. Yeah. Which they try to portray as never.

It was a perfectly, a nice place. So we pull up in the traffic circle. The team is about to come through. And a lot of times with my tactical sort of with the quick reaction force, we would block off every avenue of approach to allow that team to smoothly. Because the traffic circle is the most dangerous area you could ever be in. That's why the firefights always happened.

because any if you if you're ambushing an enemy you want them to turn right them to slow down sometimes i'll just put a cone an orange cone in the middle of the road in afghanistan so you have to just turn why is an orange cone in the middle of the road but you would turn psychologically oh let me slow down and turn and get around instead of running over it so the enemy would try to set off a bomb to bring everybody to the circle to slow everybody down and then try to you know shoot at you or you know rocket you had all kinds of nice little tricks i see all kinds of tricks for following attacks. Right.

Follow on. Okay. So we get into this traffic circle. We have to go counterflow and we start to go around this traffic circle and about the time where we were bogged down in traffic and we would lock it down. Right about the time we stopped, just all hell broke loose. Like I remember just getting burnt by the 240 machine gun casings. We're just going in my collar.

burning me. And it's just like every truck was just do, do, do do do. Bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo bo and I just was like. And one thing that I got hit on during this event and the reason why they didn't send support to me is because I had been there for so long, I was so calm. And that's not me saying I was calm, bro, and it's just, I just knew that panic is contagious in your life. You know, and if you say, contact, contact, it's going to ramp guys up. It ramped our team up. Right.

And in fact, though, that team that said that, contact, contact, contact, they didn't really get hit. A bomb went off on the outside of their perimeter where they were having coffee. But they thought they got hit. Right. And they were freaking out. And so on the radio, every time I key it up, I'm like, tactical operations center. This is 23.

We are getting in a, we're in a major assault right now. We're getting hit. And in the background, you get here, do, do, do, do, bo, you know, guys yelling and screaming. Right. And, but you're trying to keep it calm. But I'm keeping real calm. And they're like, oh, you're getting hit right now. And I'm like, that's right.

We're getting hit right now. And we're going to need some serious support. We're going to need error right now. And I'm talking like that. And later on, when they testified, they said, well, he was so calm. He was too calm. Like, we didn't think. It's like, don't go on my demeter, bro.

Go on my words, what I'm trying to tell you. And so a major firefight broke out. Okay. So as soon as you guys pull up to the square, the circle, you start to get hit with fire. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. And are you above the, are you in the turret? I'm in the team leader spot. Yeah. So I can't see much. I got my maps everywhere. I got two or three radios. A cell phone that's going off.

And I just remember this bright, the sun coming in. And green fluid came up all over the, the window, which was never entered into the courts. Which is? What was that? Which is a radiator fluid. Okay. And or some type of fluid, right? Obviously from a bullet, right?

I mean, I can only assume unless just, unless hoses just blow up like that. And so I'm thinking we're dead. And so I can hear all this craziness going on. And to preface this, I am still under a major gag order on actions, certain certain actions that day. But people can look it up in the testimony. People can see what happened. But hell broke loose. And I had to make a call right there to either burn my vehicle in place because of the encryptions and stuff going on in our vehicle.

What does that mean? Burn your vehicle in place. Like incendiary grenade. We had incendiary grenades, thermite grenades, taped up everywhere to just pull them and bounce out. Yeah. You know, in case we got over in. So at least the enemy wouldn't have stuff in their hands. Yeah.

And instead of burning it, which I wish I would have burned it in place. Because perception is everything. And if you look at the Nesar footage, all you see is a bunch of cars burned and destroyed. And a lot of civilian deaths unfortunately happened there. But you didn't do that. But we did it. But I didn't burn it. I towed it out.

I risk the lives of the men by towing it out, doing a toe out, which I regret that. And just to save a $400,000 Department of State vehicle, you know, when we just left billions of dollars in Afghanistan, it kind of pissing me off. But they, I did not burn it. So you're getting pinned down with fire. Are there civilians walking around? Is this like a commercial center? It's mad chaos. There's people.

Are there businesses? Like, what are people walking around and work? It's like there's a bazaar over here. There's cars everywhere. I mean, it's so jam-packed. And I'll just say this. If you get in a firefight with 240 machine guns, belt-fed machine guns, in a super Walmart parking lot at its most crowded peak day, peak hour,

there are going to be tons of people get killed by shrapnel, by ricochet. bullets don't just like stop when they hit something. They ricochet, they spark, you know, and they jump up and hit cars and hit stuff and glass shatters. And it's echoing everywhere. It's so loud. When you get a firefight in the city, it's like nothing else before. It's definite. Roar is definitely.

So people are running around. I can't really see because my front window is slimy with the green stuff. And I'm thinking we're going to die. And so I did what I had to do that day. I did what I had to do. And that's all I can say about that. I did what I had to do. I had to go back.

I had to go into survival mode. Okay. I know you have a gag order, but I don't know what. the difference is, what is the difference between what happened in Nisar Square and all of the other missions? A bunch of civilians got killed, but again, what is the difference? A bunch of civilians have been getting killed, it sounds like. Exactly. So what specifically was like the egregious event that happened that made it different? That's on the record. You can Wikipedia this. Yeah, so could you tell us like the outcome, like did a bunch, did you guys accidentally spray down a bunch of,

of women and children? So I didn't really know the totality of it, the carnage of the situation until we got back. And when we got back, you know, we get to our rooms and they want us to write these reports. And I've got black stuff all over my face. I've got,

you know, guys are just jacked up. Okay, okay. Let's, for the people, though, you got, was it successful? Did you rescue the people that you were there to rescue? So when we, so. Like how did it conclude? So I can only speak in,

in a theory because not because the gaggleer, but here's my thing is, is we show up, okay, and quite possibly we diverted an attack that was meant for the principal team that was out because the bomb goes off at their gate. They know they, they know the only route for them to get back, the quickest route.

They know 100% the enemy knows 100% that they're going to go is through Nisar Square to get back. It's easy. It's a straight shot into the green zone, safe zone. right there. And they were going to do that. But as we were, as we blocked it off to protect that principal team, I believe in my heart that we were a smashed. I believe that we took the brunt of the enemies. Okay. But man, most people think we just rolled straight up in there like the mili masker. It was compared to the mili masker. This Neesar Square, Black Baddads, they call Baghdad's

Bloody Sunday is actually been compared to the Milai. master. Now we weren't lining guys, lining kids and women up in the ditches and shooting him in the back of the head. But I'm still not judging their actions in Vietnam because I wasn't there. So it sounds like it was a fight. You guys rolled up. You thwarted

this ambush that was prepared for that original team. There was a big ass firefight and then the enemy either got killed or fled. Was that what happened to the enemy? Yeah. That's what my belief is. And it's hard to say when you're in war like that.

because it's not these, it's not call of duty or movies where you're like, that guy, I kill that guy. That's a confirmed. That's why I have a hard time when people are like, I got 35 confirmed kills. I mean,

I may have hundreds. I don't know. Probably. I don't, yeah, I don't know. Thousands. I don't know about thousands,

but I definitely have double digit in there. You know, and but my thing is always like, you don't know if you, sometimes you'll smack a guy and he'll keep on running. And then they find him dead like a day later at his, at his house trying to, trying to recover out of it or at the hospital.

You don't know. You know, bullets just don't kill people right off the bat. Sometimes if you hit them right. But I get inside the man camp. Yeah, we get back. And CNN is already playing like this burning vehicles in Nisar Square. Wow. 17 civilians killed. There were civilians killed all the time.

Obama did a drone attack. I'm not trying to get political here about Obama, Trump or anything. But Obama did a drone attack. Yeah. And it killed, I think, the same amount of. innocent people around the same amount of time. And we're being told what were the murders. See, you're a murder if you go in and kill somebody with a knife, let's say.

He's an insurgent, but you can be looked at as a murder because it was so hands-on and physical. You were there. You push the knife in him. All right. But if a drone does it, the drone pilot sitting in Clovis, New Mexico at Cannon Air Force Base in a hangar, you know, just a simulation. He's not prosecuted. Right.

But he did the exact same thing as that person with the knife. People can argue all day, but that's the cold hard facts. But they're looked at it's completely different. Sure. The Navy pilot, the Marine Corps pilot, they land on the carrier after dropping a bomb on a bunch of civilians. Right. They go have ice cream in the Admiral's Mestek. Right.

And they go to sleep. And nothing's ever said about it. Oh, what happened? Oh, gosh. Really? Okay. Next mission. Right. Blackwater, if it's a political issue, especially if it's being leveraged to end the war or to do a construction deal with Biden with his brother, then it's going to be held to pay for years until they get that fry those guys. Yeah, absolutely. It's much more impersonal. And when a politician does it, it's not war. It's not murder. It's war. Right. That's how they. spin it. Yeah, 15, they said 15,000 Ukrainians died, Ukrainian soldiers died, but it's not being reported because it's not popular. We don't want to hear that. We want to hear about the Russians dying. Yeah. Right. Right. So it's the biggest money laundering scheme of all time. I wonder,

okay, so you get back to the base. Did any of your guys get killed? No, and that's the problem. That's the problem. I wish I would have been killed. I wish I would have been hurt. Because if I would have lost an arm or lost a leg. I would have gladly done it. Trust me. I've been through hell because of this. And so did the guys. They went to prison for this.

I would have gladly taken around. There would have been more justification. Like, look, hey, my arm, my arm's blown off. Self-defense. Yeah. Yeah. The tragic thing is nobody was killed. And when you have this kind of mindset in war, you understand why.

It's nobody was killed. So now you guys are murders because nobody was hurt. God forbid you come back from a. mission and nobody's hurt, now you're going to pay, especially in this event. Since nobody was hurt, except for burns and stuff, then they looked at it as completely unjustified that Jimmy took his team out there plotting revenge for actions for them killing Blackwater guys days before or whatever, and that I orchestrated this somehow, just like the movie platoon.

It was just like the movie between where there's two different separations. You got Barnes and then you got the other guy, right? Yeah. And Barnes, you know, those got that. And I was portrayed as him. I was portrayed as that guy like Jimmy, you know, told these guys, you know, you better not say anything. You better. And that's just not the case.

It's just not how it works out there. When do you recall yourself shooting civilians by accident at Nisar? So I can't say anything about that. Okay. I can't. I can't say anything about that. Okay. Sorry.

Let me phrase it a different way. Like, you guys are good, clearly. You guys are, you seem like you're better than all of the government, the Marines, the army. Like, you guys are real pipe hitters. Why do you think so many civilians got shot? Were they standing? Was the enemy behind them? Or was it just chaos?

Did you guys have a bad day? Like, do you know what I'm saying? Like it's it's um it's always been with a human shield it's always been in my mind and I and I probably stayed up for two years straight no longer than that um at night sweating at night thinking did did well did uh did we get shot at did um what happened that day and I don't think I'll ever have a clear answer okay and um and I think it's one of another tragedy of war where things happened so fast and it's so blinding that things just get out of control when you're running off no sleep and all the things you've seen already. You can see your buddy get smashed. You visit your buddies in the hospital

getting smashed. And so you become this, you don't have a revenge mentality, but you have, you have that, I'm going to survive this, man. I don't want to be those four guys in the Baghdad hospital screaming out for Jesus and mom because that's the only people you call out to when you're dying. I promise you. Four guys dying in a row in the hospital. screaming, Jesus, Jesus screaming out loud, dying one by and fading away in front of you. And then the very next day, and they tell you that a grenade was what they did that in the turd. And the very next day that happens, no, man, you're going to, you're going to go all out in this world.

And that's the mentality I have. And that was hell to pay for years up to that. Okay. Got it. So, and CNN is there. They're just like on it. Maybe they, I don't know. It seems like it was bad timing, too.

I think CNN reported. I think the CNN got video footage of the aftermath from Iraqis and stuff. Okay. And they really, really rolled with this. But this is not to take away from the fact that many civilians were killed, many more wounded. And man, to live with that, bro, to live with the, you know, that, you know, I made a decision that that changed a lot of lives that day. is I have to take full responsibility for that, you know, and the responsibility is heavy, man, to to, to have that on you.

Seems like it. Good on you, though, for taking responsibility. I mean, that's a true leader. Yeah, I'm not blind. I'm not blind. I'm trying to try. You know, we can convince ourselves of a story for many, many years. And I think, I know I've been guilty of it, you know, convincing myself of a,

of a pity party story. And that allows me to not be a better man. That allows me to have an excuse. I mean, my mom sometimes says, Jim, you're just so, I'm just so glad you're alive and you're still there up here and you're not dead.

That's not good enough for me, bro. Because I know that if I get sucked into that, that type of mentality and say, you're right, mom, I should just be dead right now. So surviving's never been good enough for me.

It's all about thrive. striving in, you know, striving to thrive more and more in my life. So how does this resolve itself? You go back there. Is the paperwork legit? Do you say, hey, we're, you know, worried for our lives? Yeah, we turned in, we turned in team statements. As a team leader, I turn in everybody's statements.

And, but it just was never good enough. You know, they just kept on investigating the guys. And then they sent the FBI there, but the FBI couldn't even. then come out of the room to investigate Nisar Square because those rockets were hitting. And they were like, hell no. So if you can't come out of your room, I always said this. If you can't come out of your room to investigate the thing, then maybe you shouldn't be there in the first place. Because you're in a new, you're in a war.

So they came up with an old 1920s mobster law, violence with the Machine Gun Act. And they went after the guys with manslaughter, 17 counts of violence with the machine gun. How many guys do they go after? And why didn't they go after you? Because they did it. I can't say that. But I never spoke to the FBI. I'll just put it like that.

I never, the FBI came to my mom's house and I was called over there and I never spoke to them. And I never said a word to them. And so all they could do was basically, they could they could only go after the guys they knew that they knew that they could get.

I see. And that they could link to the stuff. And who was that? That was the turret gunners. They knew they could link the turt gunners to the shooting. And why is that?

Why were they able to link them? I don't know. It was video footage because they're hanging outside of the vehicles. By admission of witnesses. I see. By other team members. I see.

Other team members saw them do that. And so if you. you were in the turret gunner that day, if you were in the turret gun that day, you were going to prison years later. It took a long time. How long? When did you realize, oh, fuck, this is real? Like, people are going down for this.

Man, when I got home, everybody in their mother said, Jimmy, don't worry about it. You know, I don't think you're going to make the seals anymore. I don't think I wouldn't join the seals, you know, but I don't think anything is going to happen from this. There's a lot of hoops to jump. They had to jump through the seal documents. the immunized statements that guys made. But then they kept going at it and kept going at it.

Were you doing missions in the course? How many did you leave? How long after Nisar did you leave Iraq? I stayed for about two weeks, maybe a week or two. And the higher-ups were like, Haas, we got to let you go, man. we got to send you home, bro, because this is, this is too much. This is going to be a situation.

Plus, you got to get your leg like that. Right. And about, I would say, like, three quarters of the Blackwater guys, at least three quarters of them went in the office and said, if Haas is gone, I'm gone. I'm leaving too. So it was great to have that kind of, that kind of reputation and that kind of respect. You know, I don't hang my hat on that, but, but they were, they were refusing to work if they come me. So they brought me in the office and they said,

Haas, tell these guys, man, to chill out. You know, you can stay. And I was like, no, I'm ready. I'm ready to go home. It's time. Yeah. I'm done. So they flew me out on a Huey with one other guy. Um, I mean, immediately. Yeah. Because Blackwater had a big bounty on their head after that. From the insurgents. From the insurgents. Yeah. And so Blackwater teams, they repainted their vehicles. Right. Which was, which, which, which, which the DOJ said that was a, act to cover up evidence. And I think they were just repainting the vehicles just to not look like the same vehicles.

Yeah. You know, when you're going out, you know, oh, there's a white mamba. That's Blackwater. Hit them. Did you guys get attacked? Did you hear about teams getting attacked? No. After you left?

No, because they weren't allowed to go out. Nobody was. The Army stopped going out. Wow. So Mila Masker had the same effect. So Mila Masker in Nears Square, bad assholes. Suddenly were actually very similar. Yeah.

In that they both ended the wars pretty much. Because if you don't let guys go out, at least the casualties, I mean, if you look at the casualties in 2007, 8, they're like this. After Nearsar Square, like none. Right. Because everybody stopped going out. Right. Nobody's going out after that.

And now you guys are just stuck in the green zone doing what? Stuck in the green zone. And I think they were doing little missions here and there. Yeah. But they were super, super careful. So that wound down the major fighting. Nisar Square. Oh, yeah.

Big time. Wow. Wow, that is a piece of history. It's a big piece of history. Wow. You know. And why do you think they were so aggressive with this prosecution? And how long did it take for the feds to finally convict your team members?

Years. I mean, 2007 to 2015. Wow. And so years. And Eric sold Blackwater. Yeah. They change it to X-E. Yep.

And then the case actually was thrown out by Judge Arbina, an extremely liberal judge who was retiring. That was his last case ever. And everybody said it was doom and gloom. Judge Arbina is going to smash these guys, he's put him in prison for life. But I think he had seen enough and heard enough. And so he threw the original Blackwater case was completely thrown out on

on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. Wow. So for breaking those guys' immunity orders and looking at their statement. And, you know, that's how they got those guys, right, from their statements and from eyewitnesses. And so they threw the whole case out. But then when Obama was elected, I was in sniper school in the seals, you know. And they said it was impossible for me to be a seal after that with all the legal stuff. Right.

But I just put one foot in front of the other and kept going, man, every day. And so I had a pass of my top tier clearance. I didn't have to lie. You know, I was like, no, I never spoke to the FBI. You know, they never visited your house. No. And they didn't. They visited my mom, you know, I never, never, never talked to them.

And so, and that's when they were, they basically eventually came to me with, with an offer of full immunity. If I was to come in and speak to them. And it's a, it's a compulsory immunity order. So I have to go in and testify. Well, if I would have played ball, if I would have went along with their story, their truth, then I would probably still be in the SEAL teams down and retired out or well on my way. But I stuck to what I know. I stuck to my truth. And under that full compulsory immunity, I told my story.

And it did not help the DOJ. So now they're just pissed at me. And so they came after my whole seal career. They came after me hard, man. Hard. I don't understand. I don't understand the last, just what you just said. So they gave me.

Who wanted to bring you in? The people working on the case to try to prosecute. So the Department of Justice gave me immunity to come in and tell my side. Because I was the only one they didn't have my testimony. So they were trying to get you. I never spoke after all these years. Right. So they were like, okay, we're going to force you to test.

testify. And they were thinking about charging me with the 17 counts of violence with the machine gun. But they didn't really have enough evidence. They had they had hearsay. And so they didn't know. So they finally go, you know what? We're going to offer him. We're going to give him immunity. He's going to come down here to testify and give us everything that we want. What do you think the purpose of that is, though? Why, why give you immunity? Oh, because I make you testify if if they're going to give you immunity. Because they wanted to hear. Because my, my. of this story was likely going to damn the guards. That's right. That's what they wanted to know. That's what they wanted.

So they wanted to use this for the case, almost like ratting. They wanted to use it as like testifying against the people on your team. I got you. And there's more backstory to this. We don't have no time, but there's more backstory to me getting that, you know. But they finally did. And I came and testified. And when I testified to him in the original grand jury,

they were pissed, man. They were like, you know, like, what did you just say? And they knew that that was going to be very, very hard to weasel around in the courts to the jury and convince him that guys were wrong. And so what they did was they were like, well, okay, if you testify like that again, my lawyer told me this straight up. I mean, this stuff should be illegal. My lawyer, my defense lawyer, who is Monica Lewinsky's lawyer. Really? Being paid by Blackwater Insurance, Eric Prince Insurance, a thousand an hour.

he said, Jimmy, if you don't play ball with the DOJ, if you don't go along with their line of testimony, they said they were going to go after your wholesale career. Your career is a Navy's. My career is a seal. Right. And I said, I'm not changing it, man. I'm not changing my truth. Okay.

And so I didn't change it. And within, and there was a mistrial because of that. And so I went to my seal command thinking I was going to remain as a team leader, all this stuff. And I got called in the office by my seal commander. He said, Jimmy, you have 10 days left to get out of the Navy. I'm on first name base with this guy, barbecue in his house. I was like, what?

I'm like, is this a joke? I thought it was going to get a ward. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was going up to the office to get a war. He said, you got 10 days left to get out of the Navy, Jimmy. And I said, man, I said, yeah, I don't think you understand. I'm not going nowhere. And he said, bro, you're out of here.

And he was mad. He said, the FBI sent this memo and said that you lied on the stand. And I said, sir, think about it. If I lied, trust me, these guys are the one thing you can't do when you have immunity is lie. You'll go to jail for a long deal. It's perjury. I said, if I lied, they would pin me with perjury. Can't you see this?

And he was like, you're out of here in Jinnies. I said, I ain't going nowhere, bro. I said, my God will save me. That's what I said, verbalizing. He said, you're charging a machine gun nest. he was kind of playing off of my time in the Marines charging a machine gunness. And that's when I flipped a switch in my mind and said, dude,

you just messed up, bro. Because that's my game is charged that machine gun nest. I'll live and die by my honor, by my code, by my words, even if it costs me my family, my relationship with my wife that I was taking care of, hand and foot with her neck surgery,

my team leader positions, the seals, dishonorable discharge. It didn't matter to me. I wasn't changing my story for nobody. And that was one of the harder decisions I've ever made, man. Because everything was online. They said you're going to be dishonorably discharged now.

And so I fought it for two long years. I made it past the 10-day mark that my commander said. Went in front of an admin set board. They said I was separated. Then I fought that. I peeled that. Won that. Went to a mental hospital.

Hung myself. you hung yourself, hung myself, literally hung myself in my fight to stay free. And that's a terrible thing to go through to want to live so bad, but you're launching yourself off a toilet in the middle of a mental hospital. And that's hard, that's hard to process. But that's how die hard I was in my fight to stay in the Navy. it's crazy that is that crazy it's crazy what are you doing just go just go do something else no no because because you know I know a lot of people may not understand this was it ego uh no it was it was

it was right and wrong like I'm I was so die hard about my cause right and I felt so wronged yeah and trust me I have an ego well you know pride all this stuff yeah Benjamin Franklin said you know you think you crush your ego and then you're proud of your humility. Right. You know what I mean? You're never going to get away from it. Right. But I was willing to die for my cause.

Just like I was willing to die in Iraq, I was willing to take it to the utmost extreme to either make a point and say, you can't just come and railroad a dude in the seals. You can't just come and yank. Because you got to remember how hard it was to get where I was. You got to remember like what I had to go through to become a seal. It wasn't, the regular route is almost impossible. The route that I took against all odds with the legal system coming against me, it was very difficult. And so eventually it drove me pretty much mad. Wow.

And I was in a mental hospital for a year. Wow. And they said you can stay in there as long as you want, Jimmy. But the day you come out, it's going to be no different. You're going to be dishonorably discharged and all this stuff. What had happened in the meantime, how did they have? eventually, because there was a mistrial from the team members, right, from the shooting. How did they eventually get them without your testimony?

I testify it again. The case had to go through another process. I didn't know they could charge guy. I didn't know they could retry and retry and retry and retry. It's a mistrial. If it's a mistrial, they can retry you. Yeah. Okay, you're right.

And so I'll tell you that. So I go from hanging myself in the hospital. The Admiral says no matter what, when Jimmy gets out, you're. going to be disheartedly discharge. Well, the JAG came and told me that, that they had a message for me, that they said, you could stay in here the rest of your life, Jimmy, in this mental hospital. But the outcome is going to be the same exact thing. My hair was this much, bro, I had finger pain on me from pain.

I was like, I walked around with, I mean, I was doing my burpees every day, working out every day. I was hard as Nells. And I just stared at him with the crazy eyes. And they were like, do you have anything to say back to the Admiral? Because they wanted an answer. like you're really going to stay in here? And I said, I got finger painting in five minutes, brother.

And they were just like, and so I go finger pain. I'm so committed. I'm committed, bro. And I was committed to this fight. And then they said, well, you're getting kicked out of the mental hospital because this guy's insane. He's going to keep doing his middle. He's going to keep doing his finger painting.

It's going to keep doing his burpees every day, you know, for eternity. And so we're just going to kick him out. And I said, well, I said, is that your final? answer. And they were like, yeah, there's nothing you can do this time, Jimmy. You're getting kicked out immediately. I said, all right. And that's when I went to my bathroom and hug myself, straight up. Did you want to die? I suppose so. Are you thinking? No, no. I can't explain the process that has to go through your head to launch yourself off a toilet with the intention to die, but you want to live so badly and you can't believe that your life has got to this point.

And so I knotted up a sheet. I practiced it, you know, I think you thought about it for a long time. And then I stuffed the sheet with the knots through a little bit of hole in the bathroom above the toilet, you know, like loaded it. And, and then I put it on my neck, stripped down butt neck is finger pain everywhere. I just took a deep breath and I stood on that toilet and just launched myself head first. and I woke up with people cussing, crying, sweating all over me. Sweat was pouring in my mouth, my face, and a knee was on my neck. And I felt like I, I felt like, I was like, where am I?

What happened? And they were like, oh my God. And they're trying to put their, their fingers in between the sheet, you know, and it's so tight. I was so tight. It, like, fractured my neck. And they had to do CT scans. And that doctor that said, you're getting kicked out of here right now. And then I turn around and hung myself.

He's crying. He's holding my head. He says, I can't freaking believe you. You just did that. And I said, I told you, man. I told you. I ain't going nowhere. You know, my God will save me.

I kept saying that. I kept moving forward. About a month later, they said, bro, you're being reinstated in the seals. You're fine. We don't want nothing to do with you. Captain Kurtz from Apocalypse now over here. Yeah, I'm like, what's up? Yeah, I'm like, give me back my stuff.

And so you got to get a haircut. You know, you can't, you can't be disrespectful because I got to the point where I didn't care about nothing. So, but then I made a decision to get out on my own and retire. Okay, but how is in the meantime, what's going on with the new trial of the team members? I need to figure out how they convicted them. It's in, it's in deliberations or they're still in prison. They're being held in prison. You know what I'm saying.

Without bail. Yeah, they're being held. Is this in military? Is this in military court? No. Black or are civilian. Oh, of course. Right.

It's not military. That's why they had to see. There was no rules, no laws. So they had to come up with something. They had to come up with some kind of Mija, Castagar issues. They had to come up with the 17 counts of violence with the machine gun. Right. And so with that old mops, 1920s mobster law.

And so this thing is on standby. I get out. I end up working for John McAfee as his bodyguard, becoming the CEO of his company. Now, I've got a Bentley, I've got houses, I've got boats, I've got tons of money. And they call me up to testify in the next case. The last one was a mistrial. They called me up thinking that I was kicked out of the Navy, a mental patient all jacked up years ago.

But I had just got out because the JAG didn't have the balls to tell the DOJ, bro, we didn't smash this guy. He didn't get kicked out. They thought I was done. Yeah. And so I show up now as the CEO of John McAfee's company. Do you have to, though, as a civilian now? Are you obligated to go testify again?

Like, why did you go back? Yeah, yeah. It's the compulsory immunity still stands. Okay. You know? And if you don't go, they could take the, they could pull the immunity. I don't know. But your lawyer advised to go.

Yeah. Okay. It was very, very systematic. When you sit down in the court, you know, you say, I'm not, you know, they'll try to ask you a question. You'll say, I'm invoking my immunity rights now. And they're okay. And then they bring up the paper. So yeah, I was called up again.

And the DOJ prosecutor, his opening thing is because he wants to just destroy me now. And I'm their witness. I'm their witness. Think about this. But they hate me. They hate me. And so he says, Jimmy, let's talk about your seal career. And I said, okay.

And he said, you were dishonorably discharged, what, like three? four years ago. And I was like, no. And he's like, let me remind you, Jimmy, that you're, you might get charged with perjury if you lie here. I said, I know. And I just let him into it. And he kept asking me. He said, so you're telling me right now that you honorably retired from the seals three months ago, like the last year? And I said, yeah, it appears so. And he's just like, your honor, I have to take a 10 minute break. And they, because they want to destroy me. And so they made me get my DD-214. They, they, and they, and they, and they, they, looked at it for like 10 minutes or 15 minutes inside the courtroom.

And they just turned pale white, man. They were just like, I can't believe this guy. Was able to stay in the SEALs, retire. Now he's a CEO of John McAfee's company. And so, but that time they put the guys away. Yeah. Okay. So how were they able to use what you said to put the guys away?

Or was that a non-issue? Your testimony. The DOJ smart. They're super brilliant. I mean, amazing. And they're smart. And so this time, they just had me, instead of talking at all, they just had me read my testimony from back in the day, my original testimony, but just parts of it. They say, can you write, can you read, you know, page 365 alpha, bravo, you know, all this stuff?

And so I'd have to go and just read that one line. and it made me very robotic. It limited what I could say. Right. Anything. And so that's how they, they skirted that. How many people were on trial? Maybe, maybe, I think five originally.

One got dropped off. And then four guys. Were they friends of yours? Like, were they good dudes? Yeah, they were good dudes. They were, they were friends. I didn't know the team like, they knew each other because I came in from another team. Yeah.

But they tried to bring me in like we were best buddies as we knew each other for years. It just wasn't the case. If I was friends, I would have told them. But I just wasn't. Did you feel- We were a decent friends? Did you feel guilty? Did you feel like even you just going there was, you know, dry snitching, as we might say?

Yeah, I felt not about the dry snitching part because I knew that I was there. I knew that they made a mistake giving me immune. I knew that they made a brutal mistake. They should have charged me. You know, they should have, they should have done whatever they were going to do otherwise. Because once they gave me immunity and then I started speaking my, my truth, they, they hated me, right? And so I did, I felt like if anything, not on purpose, but my testimony was definitely going to exonerate the guys or help them out, right? Of course, I didn't see everything down there.

But I felt like it wasn't going, it wasn't going to hurt. them. Right. And that's what they hated about it. I see. And they felt like I was doing that on purpose. Right. Okay. So you thought going back there would actually get your guys off because it goes against what their narrative was, the government. Yeah. I felt like, man, when they hear what happened, they're going to be like, not guilty. But I didn't understand how brutal the system is. And how they were going to just basically craft you to muscle you. Yeah. To not be able to tell the whole story. Yeah, and just to give you an idea, when I would go in and testify every time, the jury would already be shaking their head at me like this, like, making noises and stuff. I was thinking, dang, I wonder what they said about me.

Really? Like, every time I stood on the stand, you know, they'd be shaking their heads going, like I was the biggest baby killer. Yeah. And I had taken the, and what they were trying to say was that I had taken the guys in secret. plotted this out and actually orchestrated this massive event. Right. And I didn't know that for years because you're very limited. Your lawyer, even my Preston, my lawyer, he was limiting me to any information.

So I'm always like, what a president? Is it just me or is everybody just mean mugging me? Angry at me. Wow. Wow. How much time did they get? Were they sentenced to? They got, one got a mandatory life sentence for murder.

Wow. The other's got like 30-year minimum sentences. And the judge was like, I'm giving you the max. I mean, he backs them out. That's wild. Yeah, and they served seven years. Right. And then Trump pardoned them.

And then Trump pardoned them. Yeah. Man, you know my problem with isolating those kinds of cases, the Mila Massacre, Nisar Square? Yeah, it totally like, it's used as like a way for the government. to say, hey, look, we, we make war just. We, we, we make clean war. You know, if there's any civilian casualties, we crack down on them.

When, motherfucker, you invaded a sovereign country, bitch. Exactly. You shouldn't have been there in the first place. They had nothing to do with 9-11. You lied to America to invade Iraq that had nothing to do with 9-11. And you dropped guys like you down there. and what the fuck did you expect to happen in urban warfare? No, I look back in my life.

I look back at that time and I was 26 years old. Yeah. I'm 43 now. You know, the me right now would not take certain actions that I took there. Yeah. But at 25 years old with a machine gun and now I'm in charge of 30 guys, like it's crazy, if you think about it's crazy, we scrutinize our soldiers. We send them off to a war that should have never happened, like you said, a,

total bullshit war and then you follow them around with the handcuffs and with the microscope and then persecute the exact same thing has happened to the seals now right uh and how so with the seals well look at look at um jaco and in all these guys i mean you know it's just like well wait i heard he did this and i heard this guy did this it's like bro just like a like a Marine Corps Battalion Commander once said. He said, show me a battalion and I'll show you a Mila Masker in war. You know, he was coming from Vietnam. And show me that Neesar Square, you know, show me, show me a team in Blackwater or Army or Marines. And I'll show you a Neesar Square. Stuff was happening all the time. And there's guys out there right now that are listening to

that saw all kinds of tragic, terrible things that they got a hold in for life. They can't even admit that they did it. But certain guys can stand up and say, well, he should have done this. And they're judging. I hate it when people judge actions of others in war. Because when you actually live it out, when you're the man in the arena, you're on the field, man. You're in the arena. You're not in the crowd. You actually lived it out. Yeah. No, who knows what you can't judge how you would have reacted because it's just an absolutely, it's madness. Madness. Madness.

And you try to control it as much as possible. But what you describe is just madness. It's really fascinating. I want to talk about, there's so much more to talk about. We're going to go over to Patreon. And we're going to talk about John McAfee. And what of crazy life you lived. There's a lot to unpack.

Yeah, dude. Finally, like, how have you, what did you do for your mental health in the wake of all this? like how did you recover to some kind of normalcy you're living a good life now well I went down the path somebody asked me today they were like why are the seals always getting in trouble

it's like because we have this unharnessed energy in that spirit of freedom in us as men and if it's not harnessed correctly if you can't control it then you're going to end up wrecking your Harley Davidson into a tree with the hell's angels

you know what I mean you're going to be part of that one percent gang. Like, it's just a fact. Like, you, or you might go be a highly successful CEO like I was or do both like I did. Mercenary, hanging out with one percenters, you know, going down the, hardcore drug route. So in order to numb myself, I went on drug hiatuses in, in order to calm myself from the guilt and shame of guys in prison to the things of war. I just started drowning myself with alcohol. It always starts out with something. Alcohol was the first thing.

Then cocaine on the side, drinking. And then Coke benches. And then, hey, y'all smoked that. What is it? Crack, what? You know, meth, whatever, you know. Whatever was there at the time. And I tried to numb it all, man, with money, making tons and tons of money,

millions of dollars with McAfee, getting his, affection, getting his accolades, getting his validation. Good, good boy, good son. You know, you made us a million dollars a day. Good job. Now, now I've made it. Now I'm at the apex of my life. You know, I can forget about everything.

You ain't forget about shit, bro. You're on, you're on the highway to hell. Are you suffering like PTSD, waking up and... Yeah, absolutely. You know, I can remember waking up and hearing radio noises. And people talking on radios like, shh, you know, da-da-da-da. and then and then like kind of rolling off. It's hard for me to sleep on a regular bed.

I sleep on couches or real small areas. I don't know why. Still? Still? My wife is like, get in bed. What are you doing? But I would roll off that couch on the ground and crawl around like a weirdo and all sweating and stuff.

And just like the stuff you see in nightmares and movies. And you're just like, dude, I am screwed. How am I ever going to make it out of this? Well, one thing that held me were pills. drugs, women, Jack Daniels. I keep waiting for like the positive things that helped you out of us. No, no, no, no. No, and then, so, bro, my point is, is nothing worked.

Yeah. Nothing worked until I was arrested by the FBI in connection to John McAfee. Right. And he was sent to prison. I was sitting to the feds. And for a very short period. And then I was put on house arrest. And during that time on house arrest, bro, like Dr.

Seuss, the waiting place, I had to go to the, waiting place in my life. He talks about everyone has to be in the waiting place. And I had to be wrangled in by the FBI because I was a madman. I was in Columbia Medellín doing mercenary work, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Thailand, Spain, on the run from the FBI. I come back home to see my parents one last time. I get arrested, right? While I'm on house arrest, here's the good part. When I'm on house arrest, I finally, I have to face my demons. I had to face everything. Sobriety, you know, for the first time in a long time. Right. Right.

I had to face all this stuff, bro, and it was shocking to my system. You know, I was still working out stuff, but it was shocking to my system. And in my deepest, darkest place, in complete sobriety, I wanted to end my life. And I, in the middle of the night at 3 a.m., I said, God, I'm going to prison for life. I'm going to prison for life. My parents always talked about Jesus. And they said, my mom always told me, if you ever get in trouble in a fighting hole, if you ever get in trouble in Iraq, you're about to die or you're dying on the streets,

yell out Jesus, just scream out Jesus. I always remember that. And so here I am dying, proverbially dying on house arrest. And so at 3 a.m. in the dark, I was sweating. I'm crying, bro. And I know I'm going to prison for 15 years, but I don't even care. I just want to die. Like, I don't care about my life.

I'm so numb. I'm so hopeless. I'm void of. everything, bro. And at the middle of the night at 3 a.m., I say, I say, God, I said, if you're real, I said, show up in my life right now. Show up in my life. And I said, if, if you're real, Jesus, I cried out to Jesus. And the next day, this guy calls me on the phone, like just a couple hours later, because I wasn't sleeping, had a big ankle bracelet on. And he says, hey, you want to go to Operation Restore Warrior? I said, no, man, I'm going to prison, man. I'm on hospital.

arrest. I'm going to prison for a long time. He says, it's okay. We don't judge you. And we're a faith-based organization, you know, whatever. Anyways, the Texas judge allows me to go to Operation Restore Warrior. I get there. I'm on house arrest, man. I'm on a $5 million promissory bond. They ain't led me out of their sights. They're tracking me. I go there for three days. Right after I pray this prayer. And once again, I'm sent across a guy like this and he says, Jimmy, are you ready for Jesus to meet you at this place? I'm like, man, you guys don't tell people that bullshit, do you? And he goes, he goes, yeah, actually, it's true. He goes, do you believe that Jesus died on the cross for you in Rosigant on 30 day?

I said, I don't know, man. I said, I heard that, yeah. And he said, well, he says, by the end of this, you're going to know exactly what you're going to do in this life. And he's going to come and speak to you personally here at this place. And I said, man, this guy obviously didn't see the ankle brace it on my ankle. And I laughed at him. I mocked him. I said, Jesus ain't going to meet me here, man. I said, I can't believe you guys tell people that 100% Jesus going to meet him. But my hair kind of kept standing up, you know,

on my body. I felt weird there. And so I walked down the road, ma'am. And I said, I said, again, just like I cried out in the depths of despair in my house and house arrest. I said, God, I don't care about. I don't care if you save me from prison. I don't care. I said, I know I'm going to prison. That's fine. I said, I take that. I deserve it. I deserve what's coming to me. I deserve everything. I said, but I just want to, I just want to feel alive. I just want to feel something, man, in this life.

I'm tired. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I'm tired of running. And I'm tired of running. And I said, if you're real, show up here. And so the next day, two guys sit in front of me like this. And they said, tell us your story. And I started just, I said, man, I can't believe I'm doing this, man.

This is boring. And these guys said, tell me your story, Jimmy. And I started telling my story just like I'm telling you right now. And they stopped me in the middle. And they said, Jimmy, stop right there. They said, was that at the, was that at the such and such house? The love shack, John McVee's up.

And I'm like, and I, and, you know, if I was to tell you something right now in your life that was so personal to you in such a dark time and so weird, you know, you, you wouldn't say, bro, how do you know that? You would want to leave, man, Johnny. Johnny, you would want to leave. Because you'd be like, forget this, I'm out. And so that's what I did. I stood up. I said, hey, bro. I said, I'm a fragile man.

And fragile men do fucked up things, messed up things. And I said, I don't know where you just came up with that. I don't know if this is a reality show. I don't even know if I'm living reality. But I'm out of here. They said, no, just sit down, Jimmy. That's what we do here. And I said, okay, well, if you know so much about me in that dark time that you just mentioned like a psychic,

I said, tell me more. tell me everything and I'm not going to say nothing and they said okay and they looked at each other and the guy said go ahead like gave him permission to tell him about my life and I'm like looking at him and he says well he says you you walk through the door and there's a screen door then you walk in and there's a hot tub to the right and then you walk through another door and there's an armory with all the weapons in it in a secret door and a cherry door and then there's an elevator an elevator in this massive mansion that I was in with John McVee and I'm like and I'm just blown away.

He's giving me this information. And all I can say is tell me more, bro. Okay, if you know so much, tell me more about my life. And he says, okay, you go up the stairs past the elevator. And then there's all these rooms with, he said, grid coordinates, Latin longs on the doors and names of countries. And I said, okay, tell me more. And he walks me through the whole house. And it's with pinpoint accuracy.

Wow. And I said, tell me more. And he says, boats come up to the house. And I'm just like, I'm just so blown away because that's exactly my office in Macphys. And then I said one more thing. I said, I said, tell me more. I yelled it in his face. If you know so much about me, Johnny, tell me something that's going to blow me away.

Like, tell me something that's going to freaking blow me away. That's what I was telling him. I was egging him on. And they said, okay, they said there was a path that you used to walk down at night. by yourself and cry out to God. And dude, I just fell. I was like a dead man. I was like, dude, I was like, my, it was like my heart stopped.

I just fell back and, dude, I just bawled and bawled like a baby. Like I bawled and cried and cried, man, because I was crushed by the love of God. I was crushed by Jesus himself. And I don't know if Jesus actually showed up and touched me, bro. Yeah. Or it was just a completely. perspective change that oh my god jesus was walking with me on that dark path that no one knew

about because there is no way somebody could sit there and tell you the details this closely and he was showing me i knew you before you knew yourself i knew you in the womb i admitted you in the womb and you have a purpose to me and you're going to be a lighthouse to my people he said and and and and i stood up, bro, snot was coming out. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm going to prison, but I'm going to tell everybody about what Jesus did for me. I was one of those crazy people. Because I had just been met by the living God, the hand of God.

And they said, in your case is going to be dismissed. We want to tell you that. I said, well, that's not possible. And they said, a sword is coming out your left shoulder. I know this is crazy. And my shoulder was just destroyed by parachute stuff and accidents. and it was in a lot of pain. And they said, your shoulder hurts, right?

And I said, yeah. I made balling, bro. I'm like, and they just said, can we pray for you? I said, yeah. And they touched my shoulder. And it was, and the pain went away. And, bro. Wow.

And I limit what I say with that because I don't want to scare people off from this, but I stood up there. And it's like I dropped off two C bags full of rocks the rest of my life. And they said, Jimmy, we saw a checkboard. your case is getting dismissed. And I thought they have no idea. The FBI wants to be so bad. They hate me. Who are these people? Who are these two men? Operation Restore Warrior. Okay. So were they psychologists? Who were these people working for this nonprofit? Something that I didn't know until later on because they're very secretive. But they said,

Jimmy, all we ever had was your first name. The recruiter has your last name. They said, all we had was Jimmy. And we pray for you for two weeks. We fast. We pray. for you and you alone. That's how much Operation Restore Warrior cares about our veterans. And I'm not even plugging them in right now, by the way. I'm not to say no plug. We should, though. Yeah, I know, right?

And they forever saved me. Wow. And I asked that guy that was praying for me, this guy named Daniel, who was able to do what no psychic in this world could ever do. No magician could ever do what Daniel did, that one guy operating through the power of God, the Holy Spirit. And I asked him later, I said, what was going through? your head. And he says, I don't know. He goes, all I know is this to me. He says,

Jesus told me to continue to answer you until you believed. And I kept saying, man, I kept saying, tell me more. And that's the one thing that would floor me, bro, forever. And times get hard. And it's not like these are like, oh, great, you know, all the time. But every time something gets hard for me nowadays, bro, I look, I remember that. That is the realest thing that ever happened to me in my entire life was when Jesus met me. And when I came home, they told me when I was leaving the operation of restore. After three days, going back on house rest, right. I was like this new guy, crazy eyes.

And they said, Jimmy, your case is getting dismissed. I heard, he goes, I hear checkmate. Wow. And I said, what does checkmate mean? They're like, Jimmy, man. You know, they're like, you know, it means your case is getting dismissed. and you mean you won. And so I go home.

I go home and my lawyer calls me that I pay like 50 grand to to tell me I was going to prison for life, you know, 15 years. And I come home and he calls me, my lawyer. And he says, Jimmy, he goes, check me. And I said, what did you just say? And he says, haven't you ever played chess? And I said, not really, man. I play some checkers and stuff, you know?

And he's like, Jimmy. He goes, I said, what does that mean? He says, forget it. He goes, all it means is your case is getting dismissed. He goes, and by the way, man, say a prayer for me, because I was telling him about how Jesus made me in this place. He thinks something crazy. He goes, say a prayer for me, brother, because I have never, ever seen this in my life.

As a DOJ prosecutor. Yeah. And it's a criminal defense attorney. What more is there to say? Nothing, man. Wow, that's incredible. What year was this? 2002, I believe.

Okay. So this is fresh. This just happened. Two years ago, man. Wow, a little over two years ago. And ever since then, man, I've enlightened a fire in other people's lives, man. That's my whole purpose is to help me and find their purpose, reignite their purpose. Because by the word of their testimony and by the blood of the lamb,

by me telling you on the air my story, my testimony, and then acknowledging who did it, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the only one who can save somebody. By saying that to you, man, I truly believe that whoever's listening to this right now, they're going through problems, addictions, all kinds of porn, all kinds of stuff, then it can actually literally slice in half their chains off of them right now. Good. Good.

I actually believe that. I believe it as well. Can you plug what your organization? Yeah. Well, first of all, we're going to put the link to, I'm sorry, what was the name of the group, the nonprofit that saved you? Yeah. Operation Restore Warrior is that nonprofit, man.

Yeah. And they want to donate to that. Well, they work off a limited budget. they only like except six guys at a time. They have a huge waiting list. And man, I feel so, they saved my life, man. Yeah, yeah. Donate to that.

I certainly am. And then tell us what you have going on. What I have going on. All people got to do is go to Jimmy Watson.com. Jimmy Watson.com. Is my men's group. Guys are congregating from all around. We need accountability at such a time as this.

I do all kinds of courses, 40 Seal Mindset courses on there. I have all my Frogman Warrior workouts on there. And I do two calls per week on there. That's the real meat and potatoes. And guys have literally gotten in that group. And it's changed their lives. And so, and I do two calls a week with the guys personal, me and them, you know? And it's been a freaking, an awesome time.

Or they can go to my, all my social media platforms at Mighty Warrior 24. At Mighty Warrior 24. Oh, man, Jimmy. I want to give you a hug, buddy. Let's do it, bro. That was very powerful, very moving. I feel like I was a dick to you talking about the military. I didn't mean to be a dick.

Johnny. I'm always an asshole at the start of these podcasts. I really am. People have been dicks to me my whole life. They try to shut the gate on me at the airport here. And this guy was a dick to me. And I'm like, come on, roll. Bring it in for a hug.

That's what it is. That's loving your enemy. That's what Christianity rules. Yeah, and they open up the gate after that. But man, you know, I have that. that I have a mean streak to me too, Johnny. I think we all have a have these, these issues inside of some where we,

where we kind of want to, not that you have a mean streak. In fact, I didn't even see it. It's a bias, though. It's a bias. I have a bias against because I'm so, as a student of history and living through the Iraq war, I'm so furious at being lied to about the reasons that we were there.

And, you know, I really think, you know, we live in a, almost every president in the last 20 years as a war. war criminal. But I'm not trying to judge. I feel like that comes off sometimes. It's like I'm judging the men that served over there. And I'm not. But if anybody knows that, right? It's the guys that went over there. Right. We're so disgusted with this. I mean, I can't even believe, dude, it's, it's taking my life. I can't even believe I'm here talking to you alive because of it.

In fact, I almost went to prison for life pretty much two times because of that. Because all I ever want to do is serve my country. And then I found out it was all a farce. It was all, it was all. Well, thank you. Anyways, you know, you did what you did. And you did what you thought was right. That's all I can say. How can you judge somebody for that? Yeah. So, yeah. But you're doing like amazing things now. And so I encourage everybody to go, uh, that wants to talk to Jimmy. You can just go over to Jimmy Watson.co. Uh, links will be in the description. And yeah, man, we'll switch over and talk a little bit on Patreon.

But yeah, man, come on over, guys. I'm forward, Jimmy. Thank you so much. This was really a special one. Bro, it lifts me up to be able to tell this testimony. I know a lot of people are out there like trying to make money. But honestly, it really, it gives me purpose to light other. The whole mission in our life is to light other people's torches, you know?

Yeah. The more you give, the more that's going to come back to you. Yeah. So amen, bro. Amen, brother. I love you, Jimmy. I love you too, man. Thanks, buddy.

I appreciate you, Johnny. I love your show, man. Hey, and everybody that was watching this, I love you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, guys, we'll see you over on Patreon. Jimmy Watson, uh, right here on The Connect. Patreon.com slash The Connect show.

And, uh, thanks again, buddy. Thank you, man.