The Team House - An Army Unit More Secretive Than Task Force Orange? | Dave Fielding | Ep. 287

Episode Date: July 20, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseDave Fielding is a U.S. Army Green Beret turned spy. He has worked for every US intelligence agency in relentless pursuit of threats to national security. He is also an Eagle Scout, avid CrossFit athlete, ultramarathon runner, and graduate of Norwich University Military College of Vermont. A lifetime pursuer of hard things, he grew up as a blue-collar kid north of Boston with work ethic and grit to match. He is a Bronze Star recipient, Operation Inherent Resolve, and Operation Enduring Freedom veteran. In addition to writing, he stands up employee wellness programs for law enforcement, championing the tenets of fitness, nutrition, sleep and mental health, the things that kept him alive through the darkest of times.Grab Dave’s book here ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/Into-Darkness-Journey-Emotional-Freedom/dp/1962341321?dplnkId=c1229fd0-0eed-48e2-9b4d-eadb17b42c53&nodl=1Find Dave here ⬇️https://www.davefielding.com—————————————————————Today’s Sponsor:⬇️PIA VPNFor 83% off. https://piavpn.com/teamhouse—————————————————————-To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#specialforces #tfoBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Hey everyone, welcome to episode 287 of the Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave, and our guest on tonight's show we're really happy to have here in studio, Dave Fielding. He's the author of Into the Darkness. Dave served in First Special Forces Group, and then he went on to be an Army intelligence officer, all kinds of fun stories, and some not so fun, but also a lot of good ones. So thank you for coming in, man. We're really happy to have you here tonight. Thank you so much for having me, guys. Like, seriously, this is a really big opportunity. See, that's how heavy the book is. It might be thin, but, you know, it's knocking stuff over the weight of that. Knocked over our coffee. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Can't do that. But,

no, seriously, really great to be here. And just thank you so much for having me and help me get that message out there. Well, and, I mean, you went above and beyond, too. by comparison to some of our other guests. I mean, I got pages and pages of handwritten notes that you gave me with little PPs and wee-wees drawn in the margins. No, I'm just kidding about that part. So let's jump into it, man, and start. You want to do the ad up first?

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So let's jump a little bit into We'll start your story from the beginning Actually going way back to your grandpa And I know he had an interesting military history I mean can you tell us a little bit about your family history Absolutely I'd love to So my grandfather Originally emigrated over from Great Britain

When he was about four years old And settled in the Boston area We come from a long line of bricklayers From Birmingham area which is I like to joke with my father and say that we're really good at manual labor. And it transcends well into special operations, you know. But so, but his story begins in the third, sometime in the 1930s, he joins the Marine Corps. And he was first airborne Marine group.

He was a tail gunner on the back of the plane. And he served in the Philippines. But at that time, around night, by the time he got out, America wasn't only going to it was going to war to help out in World War II. So he went up to Canada and enlisted in the Royal Air Force at the time. And because of his Airborne,

his Marine Corps airborne experience, they made him an officer and he was a navigator on a Lancaster airplane. And so it's kind of cool because he was in one of the first special operation units that the British had. He was in the Pathfinder Group. So their job was,

they would fly far ahead of all the bombers and basically paint the targets for the bombers behind them, find the factories, find the sensitive sites, the heavy water factories, all these things, you know,

thousands of bombers are coming in and drop bombs on. He was shot down in February of 1944, and he was the only man that survived. He saved his own life by parachuting out of the plane, but to make matters worse and the madness that happened he lost his boots

his boots got blown off and so he's running around evading capture for about two weeks where was this that he got shot down I think it was on he was coming back he was on return from a mission for Frankfurt is where I think is where he got shot down I don't know where he ended up in the map of Germany

to be honest but I behind enemy lines definitely behind enemy lines like yeah and and it was kind of cool because Like one of the stories that he told my father and my father told me was when he was evading, he came up to a bridge and there was like a German century and he sat there and waited. He's like, I know this guy's got to take a piss at some point. And it's just kind of funny like, you know, in the moment like, you know, to see that thinking,

to hear that thinking, right? And then later in life, you know, going through Sears School and all the other stuff and the Special Forces qualification course, it's, you know, to hear, you know, think of those things too, you know, learning from him. but he ends up getting captured and then he did a death march

through I think they were bringing him to Stahlag Luf 3 when they marched him and what kept him going was he saw a horse and buggy carriage

but the horses were long gone but it was two it was an older woman and a man frozen to death in it And he just said, oh, I'm going to keep moving, man. I got to keep moving, right? And by the time he showed up to Stalog 3, they put him right in the infirmary because they were going to amputate his legs due to frostbite. Luckily, the German doctor saved his legs, but also while he was in the infirmary, the great escape happened.

And so afterwards, while he was recovering, he was helping working on the second set of tunnels. So his job was he'd be sitting in his little chair, can't move, and he would close the book, and they would stop working on the tunnels. Right, right. So he helped out with the Steve. Tradecraft. Yeah, so he helped out the Steve McQueen movie. So if you've seen the Steve McKeown of some of these things,

a lot of those are his stories too. And later on, he was a POW for 18 months when he was in that camp. But, you know, it's funny. I look at him, and thank God they never took his legs. they saved his lakes. He was running marathons well into his 60s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jack Fielding,

tough, tough dude, you know? Yeah. When your grandpa was liberated from the camp, I'm interested in kind of how that took place because I recently read Jerry Sage's memoir, who was in the OSS, and one of the founders, the daddies of special forces, and

he actually fell in with the Soviets. The Soviets were moving in and he ended up with this bizarre journey through Soviet Russia and eventually getting out through Odessa. What was your grandpa's experience like? I know that I don't know all the details, but I know he was liberated by the Russians. And then that story kind of got lost towards the ebb and flow of time, you know. Yeah, man, I wonder if he crossed paths with Jerry and, you know, they're all so similar.

Yeah, I know. And it's like, it's, it's so crazy because, you know, it was, at first, at first, my grandmother got a, a letter that he was KIA. And then three, four, six months, like, I don't know how long, but it was several months later. A red cross message. She got a red cross message that he was alive. So keep in mind that he was, all his family was back in Boston Mass while, you know, he was serving in the, in the British military, or the RAF, the Royal Air Force.

So, you know, it was like, obviously, it was probably like, how do we track this person down? That's so terrible. I mean, imagine thinking your husband's dead for three months. Yeah. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you know, he's alive. Like, I mean, thank God he is. I wouldn't be here today.

Yeah, yeah, right. Wow. So your grandpa, I mean, probably he went through Odessa also to get out of there and get repatriated, I would imagine. But what was then the rest of like your family history from then on? I mean, obviously your parents and then you come along. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So it was really interesting because, you know, my grandfather, he, when he was raising my dad, he would bring him up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire and, you know, do tough hikes, do stuff outside, very outdoorsy, you know, type stuff.

And so it was, it kind of almost became like a family right of passage, sort of speak. And so I definitely remember the first hard thing that I did, you know, growing up with Tales of Myel's Myles and Myles. my grandpa because he passed away when I was very young like two or three. And so everything I, you know, it's all living through, you know, word them all through my father and his brothers and sisters and stuff like that. And so, but I remember I was, you know, living like it was a larger than life legacy, you know, for me. And it was important to me to sort of, he was always a role model for me. Even in death. I mean, he was such a strong figure at that hand. Absolutely. And it's like, just the story I told you, it's like, holy crap.

You know, but he, you know, you take my father up in the White Mountains, and so my father made it a point when I was very young to take me up there. And I remember we did Mount Lafayette, which is about a nine mile loop. And I was like eight, I think it was eight years old. Eight years old.

And I had my little East Pack backpack on. And I had Tiva shoes on, not exactly something that you want to be doing a long height path on the White Mountains. But it was in the summertime, but we got to the top and the weather got bad and we got caught in a mist storm and I had no idea I was in any danger at all but like you know my father's behind me he's like he's hanging on in a backpack and you're like hanging on dear a life while like I'm trying not to blow off the ridge right and I'm like this is fun yeah so but you know at the time I was like you're like flapping in the wind like we yeah but you know I was like I'm finishing this hike you know eight year old me's like I'm finished this hike I'm doing it for grandpa you know and it's like um and so It was, his legacy was made me always wanted to do hard things, you know, reach for the stars, you know, kind of.

And it kind of led me into going into Boy Scouts. I found out, I was like, oh, wait, you guys go hike in the mountains and you guys camp at elevation and all this other stuff. So I ended up becoming an Eagle Scout, but it was really good for me. I remember the first overnight I did in Boy Scouts, I was like 12, 11 or 12, was, winter survival, right? And probably, I think, like, a lot of the character building that happened in that night was being prepared, you know, with the right gear. Pretty much everyone heard my teeth chattering, like, across the woodland. Yeah.

You know, so I didn't have a ground pad, didn't have a winter bag, even, a winter sleeping bag. And so I was like, oh, I'm never getting caught my pants down again. So it was a lot of doing these things, like, and just going up. up to the White Mountains all the time and having these challenging experiences, you know, in thinking about, you know, what my grandfather stood for and how he was as an individual, you know, and it kind of shaped who I am, you know, and shaped kind of this sort of mentality of like, you know, let's reach, you know, let's do hard things, you know, hard things build character. And, yeah, so it was like pretty cool.

And that led, I mean, at a certain point in your life, as a, you know, as a huge, you know, young man you had what exactly was it a summer camp at norwich oh thank you for bringing that up so it was a weekend camporee they had at norwich university so north university is a military college up in vermont and it is not known for its acceptance rate it's known for its attrition rate and you know they'll take you as you are right but it's very difficult to want to stay there you know for you not only you're dealing with adjusting to be, you know, in a military environment doing cadet land stuff, but also adjusting to the weather up there too. You know, it's like negative 30 in the month of January typically.

And but so I was on this, when I was in my Boy Scout troop, I went to a camperee. And I remember the early in the morning, 5 a.m., they wake us up with the howitzer. And the cadets are screaming and yelling. They're like, get out of bed, get the fuck out of bed, right? And they're like kicking the tents. And they're playing hell's bells from ACDC on the loudspeaker. And they're yelling at us. And in the midst of all the chaos, I'm looking around with this huge smile on my face like,

this is fucking awesome. And I remember later on, I'm like, is this how it is every day? They're like, yeah. And I'll just say this. It was the only college I applied to. was it like that every day yeah yeah your freshman year yeah it was like that every day and god forbid if you left your door unlocked to your room

you know you come back with you know everything we call it you get it hurricane yeah you know turn upside down so you know it was it definitely prepared me for you know a life in the military because you know by the time I you know fast forward years later I'm at basic train there's the penises I knew they would be in here Yeah, I knew they would. P-NI. No, there's three of them.

There's stuff shooting out of this one. Yeah. I think P-N-I is the plural. And then you get corrupted at a certain point by Master Sergeant Shane Bailey. I love Master Sergeant Shane Bailey. Corrupted in a good way. It influenced your life. Very good corruption.

So here's another mentor or another role model to live up to. And so I was a freshman at Norwich And I was like second semester And I go to my biology class And no one sat next to this guy And he's in BDUs This is back when we still wore BDUs Right before they used to use and stuff like that

And he had his power tower right You know long tab special forces Ranger airborne And no one else sat next to him And I was like all right cool I'll sit next to him And so I sit down next to him And I look at him and I go Special forces huh?

Pretty badass I didn't know what to say You know, I'm like 18, 19 years old. I'm trying to build report this guy. I have no idea. So me and him end up being, he's like my lab partner, you know, my buddy through biology. I remember we were sitting there. I was trying to use a scalpel.

And he pulls out his gerber, right? And he flick, you know, flick of the wrist. He starts dissecting that frog like a surgeon. I don't know if he was an 18 delta or not, but hilarious. And, but he's just who he was. Yeah. And he was in A5-1. a long time. Fifth group guy. And then he retired in 2007. And then went on, I think he's a game

warning now, enjoying life. Cool. Awesome dude. But every single one of us that was at Norwich at that time frame that was exposed to him, we all ended up becoming Green Berets in one shape of the other. I think there was a guy I went to selection with, just happenstance ran into that I went to Norwich with, you know, same class here, found out that there, you know, it was really funny. because I was just running into guys from Norwich, and we all signed up for the same thing. You know, we wanted to be like shame, man. Yeah.

You know, like just cool, calm and collective under any circumstances. He was the old serge who knows everything about everything, right? One of those kind of guys. Absolutely. Yeah. Very, like, very quiet, you know, epitome, quiet professional, this guy. And so, and, you know, coming from fifth group, you know, at that time, you know, he's done multiple tours over in Afghanistan and probably Iraq at the same time.

So it's just, he was. he was a real deal. And we were all like, I want to be you. You know? Yeah. Okay. So then you fucked up and you went into the civilian life and came and hung out here in New York City. Living your bohemian lifestyle.

You heard it was all hookers and blow and you were in. Yeah. I was like, oh, I'm in. I'm in, you know? No. But yeah, that was it. I did fuck up, you know. And I think of like, so I had some friends much older than me that, you know, I knew

since I was a very young kid, and they were working in Manhattan. One was working in finance, the other was working in tech, advertising tech type stuff. And they're like, Dave, what are you doing? Like, the war is going to be over by the time you get over there, right? They're like, just come to New York, make some money. And I was like, all right. And, like, I was coming down here to visit them,

and I was like, all right, this is cool, you know, going out drinking and, you know, East Village, all that stuff. Like, even when I was in college, coming down there and visit them. So I was like, all right, maybe I'll try it. So my friend, he got me a job at an advertising agency, night agency. And I was working on, I was there a project manager, and I was working on like Estee Lauder, Nine West, Mark Girl, makeup. Like, you know what I mean? I'm doing like.

Impactful stuff. The stuff that changes lives. Stuff that changes lives. And I'm like, I go from doing hard stuff in Norwich, hard stuff in high school, all that stuff to this, right? And I think like the Facebook was starting to become a thing then. And so around that time, I was working for about a year, year and a half. And all my buddies were graduating. I, infantry officer basic course, graduating in Ranger School and taking platoons and going to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm like, I'm doing makeup and women's shoes. Like, you know what I mean? And it was a good job. I can't knock it, but it wasn't true to who I was. And where I realized that was I went down to ground zero. I wasn't too far from ground zero from where my office was, but I went down there and there was still two giant holes in the ground. And they had the chain link fence around, the tarp around it,

and you kind of peer in there and pulling it up. But the whole sight of the whole thing, I just broke down. Broke down. And I had a friend. She was like, are you okay? Pat? And me, like, you know, trying not to cry and everything and doing like, you know, this quintessential, masculine.

and moves, you know, which we'll get into later, you know, as we talk about this book and everything. But, um, I went home that night and I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, what the fuck are we doing here, dude? What do we do? This isn't true to who we are. Like, you're, you're a, you're fucking fielding, man. You know, think about your grandfather, right? And, and I remember I bought Chosen Soldier by Dick Couch and Masters of Chaos by Linda

Robinson. Yep, yep. And I was like, all right. And then that's how I found out about the 18 x-ray program And I was like, all right, fuck this, I'm doing it And then I quit my job I started PTN a lot, doing rocking But I went down to the

Recruitment Office and I said, Give me a fucking 18 X-X-Ray contract And we'll not take anything else And I was like, okay, cool Right here's nine year Yeah So, you know, where it's like people going there Like I don't know what I'm doing my life

Like, you know, I would, at that point I was 24 years old Yeah You know a lot older than being 18 You're an old man. Yeah, totally. And I was like, no, this is what I want to do. Like, this is where I know I belong. So for the folks out there who don't know, the 18 X-ray program is, you know, like the RASP program or the, I can't remember the name of the contract.

But anyway, what it allows is for recruits to go to the Army, sign a contract, and it puts you into the special forces pipeline. And if you pass all the training, you go right into special forces. So you go to infantry basic training, airborne school, the beloved side. Popsie course to prepare you for SFS and then to special forces selection. Well, now you're in the military. I mean, what's it like for you? I mean, did you enjoy it? Was it what you wanted it to be?

Definitely was. Yeah. It was, the thing that blew my mind is that I came from work in 80, 100 hour weeks. And granted, we're, you know, in training a lot. And, you know, it's a grind. But I was like, oh, crap, I get weekends off. I'm not answering emails. I don't have clients bother me.

I don't, you know, and it's like, you're cut loose on Friday, you know, after training, you know, if you're not, like, in small unit tactics or Sears School or any of that, but, like, you're free to your own devices. And I was like, oh, wow, this is great. And so for me, it was, I mean, granted, there was a lot of fun, interesting things that happened, you know, it was, you know, like the stuff I did at Norwich, you know, when they were, you know, cadets messing with you as a recruit at Norwich, completely fails in comparison to what special forces is like. What year did you go to Sopsy and selection? 2010.

Okay. And I think I was in this October class of 2010, which was great because it wasn't too hot, wasn't too cold. But I still had a cross scuba road quite a bit, turn on a LAMF Star Course. But I think probably, you know, come to think of it, a lot of the, we were messed with so much as x-rays that when the active duty guys that got selected showed up to training you know they were expecting more of like a regular army experience like they're going to show up they're giving their hours and etc no gang this is special

forces and i remember one of my favorite moments in the cue course was you go to something called common leader training which was like back in the day it was like um um uh uh what do they call? Was that E5 course? PLDC? And then it became the Warrior Leaders course. Wardier Leaders course and then advanced leaders course. And then who knows, they probably, the alphabet soup of acronyms.

But yeah, and so it was, I remember we were at that WLC-A-L-L-C mix, they call CLT. And really, in reality, it was selection part two. And this time we had active duty guys with us, you know, because mostly it was just all of our X-ray buddies. we were all together, you know, a couple active duty guys that were with us. And they had no idea what they were in for. So we show up to Camp McCall. You know, we do a layout on the

airfield, and then we do what is called the Trail Tears. Yes, I've heard the story. Yeah, you're walking with all your shit. And the active duty guys are going, there's no way they could do this. And we're all like, oh, but wait, it's going to get worse, guys. You don't know. And then I remember

a good buddy in mine, Norwich friend. He was ahead of me in the Q-course, Frank Armisen. He saw me doing the burpee mile around McCall with our gear. Right. And so we were like, you had to throw your gear, do a burpee long jump. Pick up your gear, throw your gear, another burpee long jump. And it was really funny.

At the end of that, Eli Monroe, he was a third group team sergeant. Great fucking dude. Right. Southern gentlemen, too. You know, thick draw. Thick southern accent. He pulled this in. He's like, oh y'all think this is over i was like we have a swamp rock tonight gentlemen and i'm like and it reminded me when i was a kid and you know being in boy scouts and doing hard things

when the going got tough i just doubled down and with a big old shit eating grin on my face right and so i was like all right sweet i'm going to survive this you know and that was like kind of the internal dialogue i had of myself so all the active duty guys are going no way they can't do that There's only so many hours in the day They could fuck with us There's no way They have to give us sleep Blah blah blah

And I'm just kind of sitting there like Okay Denial is a hell of a drug Yeah exactly All right You stick with that And so We're in these like shitty trailers

They have us in It's just like Asholes and elbows in there Right And you got two bunks wall lock Or everything right And I remember I went back I like

Stract my Ruck man You know Had 45 dry in it watertight, you know, or as best waterproof as possible. And no shit, like, around 12, right after midnight, Eli Monroe kicks in the back door of this trailer. And he is screaming, this is fucking happening. This is fucking happening. And I remember he pointed at me because I was just laughing, right?

And he's like, what the fuck are you laughing at? And he's like kicking kids bunks, right? And he's like, get it, 15 minutes outside. 45 dry and active duty kids that weren't prepared. They were like, fuck, fuck, fuck, right? And I just jumped up, threw my stuff on, put my record, you know, check on my other buddies. It's like, you're good, you good, you good, all right, cool. And we were outside.

And it was, we lost a lot of dudes at me. We lost a lot of dudes that night. I'll say that. And it was just so funny, before we even started the ruck, they took us a little pond. And it was like they were all bap. They would check our ruck first for weight. and then they would baptize us in the pond, and then we'd start the rock soaking what.

And you just can't help but laugh of how bad the situation is. You're just like, the only way out is through, man. And that is probably one of my core memories from the Q course. And you were the honor grad from the 18-ECHO course, the Special Forces Communication Sergeant training. Tell us about, you know, you get assigned a first group, ODA 1-1-1-1. Tell us about your first real special forces experience,

showing up on your team, meeting your team sergeant. So I didn't even, my first experience, I was still at Bragg at the time. And it was, I want to say September 5th, September 5th, 2012. And I'm just sitting waiting around for orders, right? Or I had my orders to go to Oki, but when you go outside the U.S.,

there's all these wickets you have to meet paperwork bureaucracy-wise, right? So I was like doing all that to try to get out there. I have an email from the ODA 11-11 team sergeant and he says, hey, we just lost a dude

KIA September 1st. You're coming this team. You better be fucking ready, dude. Well, you didn't say dude. That's a very boss of thing. But like, you know, and I remember I was sitting in I was sitting in the barracks and I got that email and I was like, oh God, I went out and I ran five miles.

I ran down Ardennes. You know, it was about like two and a half out, two and a half back. And I like ran my ass off, right? You know, I was like, holy shit. And, you know, the gentleman was Staff Sergeant Jeremy Border. And I had no idea, but the ODA that I was going to just got off the commando mission in Afghanistan. And so I'm sure you guys had people on here and for the audience is that. doing the command of mission in Afghanistan,

that was some real shit. You know, you were on four, four-day off cycles. You're going out, doing a raid, resetting, getting reinserted, doing another raid, you know, doing SSE, all that other stuff, right? And just ops, you know, ops keep on rolling. They did that for six months. And Jeremy was the heart of the team.

He really was the heart of team. He was the 18 Bravo. But really, he was the kind of, you know, the shadow government of the team. Not that he was like, yeah, he was the deep state. Yeah, all the guys listened and respected him. And it's really, it's really amazing because, you know, you think like Rank has anything to do with it, you know, him being a staff sergeant. But no, he was just a very competent warrior, very competent his craft, you know, in terms of, you know, leading that team from, you know, being the 18 Bravo weapons and. tactics doing the you know direct action raids you know so it's uh you know he was a driving force

of the team and so i showed up to the oda and i showed up to the first battalion with like there was like 15 of us buck sergeant cherry 18 x-rays just the you know lower than pawns scum right and you know you just got to keep your mouth shut and just pray to you know be good at your job and that's it right you're there to learn and so Um, the Q-course is humbling enough as it is. Going to a team is even more humbling. Because now I'm with warriors. Not just warriors, you know, that are far removed, guys that are hot out of theater.

Right. Still dealing with the loss of a great friend. And, and it was, you know, for us, luckily, um, you know, they all understand we were new guys. And so, you know, they took us all under our wing. but for the most part a few months after that we lost a lot of senior guys and then it was up to us

all the new guys on the team but I had I like to equate my leadership at the time to the big three in the Celtics Ray Allen and KG and Paul Pierce back in the day so you know throw the Boston Roots thing

but you know our warrant our team leader and our team sergeant were fucking awesome dudes at that time they understood that they were like And they were all, you know, multiple combat deployments. They knew what we needed to do to be great. And the good thing about where we were at is that we didn't have any bad habits, you know, it was only up from there. And so, you know, we had, you know, growing into this role and watching me go from new guy to senior guy.

Because I remember the first, as soon as I showed up, I was, like, slated to go to training. He sent me to ASAW. And I was like, huh? And that was a kick in the nuts. Do you want to tell people what ASOT is? It's, yeah. ASOT is like basically advanced recourse. It's an advanced reconnaissance course, right?

It teaches you a lot of, it exposes you to a lot of tools of the trade. You know, how do you get close target reconnaissance, you know, through, you know, different means. And so you do a lot of, like, urban hindsight. urban high sites, you know, moving, you know, moving in an urban environment, blending in. So it was a very cool course for me to get exposed to early on. But it was very neat because then I remember we go to Talisman Sabor and we were the pilot team. So Talisman Savor is a big exercise that happens in Australia every year. and for us it was an unconventional warfare exercise

and my team was tasked to be the pilot team so we had to do split team ops and then we would infill and for us we were infill in the outback but this is what I love about this story is like we're sitting in a team room and guys are talking about punting koalas right and my team

my grizzled team sergeant Russ Bannister he turns around and he's like he's like oh yeah he's like you know what that koala has focus and determination right? And it's like he wasn't fucking kidding, right? And you want to talk like, so we and Phil, we, you know, we do our job, we get the follow on ODAs and, you know, we're all high-fiving on the X-Split team ops. And, you know, we're ex-filling. Our half of the team is ex-filling. And Russ is with me and the warrant, our warrant officer Cliff, right? And I guess we were kind of the more chill half of the team, you know, because they were the old timers. Whereas, the other half the team had the team leader and you know he was a hard charger right so you know um but we were ex-filling and i remember the 18 bravo he's coming up on the on a creek oh wait i got a caveat

this when we before we even started the exercise the s as a Australian sas they give us a brief and they're going through all the flora and fauna right because everything is poisonous there everything is poisons so flora these are the plants that can kill you the fauna is a these are the the animals. Right. And Russ is sitting in front of us and we're kind of all like sitting back and like this SAS guy is like, yeah, you don't want to get bit by this bugger. You're fucked, right?

And here was the thing. Most of the stuff would kill you in 15 minutes. Yeah. And MadaVac was 45 minutes out. Yeah. So it was like the real thing was don't get bit, right? Or don't get hurt. And I remember he pulls up this slide and it was this monstrosity.

And he's like, this is the bird eating spider. and Russ, he turns around and looks at it. He goes, motherfucker is I told you. Bird eating spider. And I remember, you know, we're ex-filling, and we were on foot and we had to like meet our make our link up point to get picked up and, you know, end of exercise or whatever. And we're, Russ's thing was like, we're not getting wet, whatever we do, right? And, you know, this was his like last year. on a team, you know, right? And, you know, salty. Yeah. Mass. He's the guy going,

I'm too old for this shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm three days from retirement. Like, you know, type of shit. So it's just like, you know, we're all like, yeah, like, yes, Rassusan. That was our nickname from Rassuson, right? And, um, and so we're going through this dry riverbed and we're trying to find a, like, good part to, to jump across. And, and no shit, like, the SAS is like, there's no crocs that far inland. And, and then. outback where we were. Okay. All right, dude.

Yeah. I took that word too strongly. But I'm in the back. I'm rear security and we're in a file. We find this like perfectly opportune spot to jump across. Well, it just so happens that the entirety of nature is also crossing that spot. So it attracts certain predators. Yeah.

And no shit. Like, you know, it's at nighttime and I got my nods on. And like I see this thing like straight out national like a geographic like just start coming. Like, here's us rustling the leaves, and it comes up, and it was like a leather bag floating coming up. And the point man is Greg, and I'm like, Greg, crock! And he turns right, he goes, what?

I'm like, crock, fucking crock it out. And before I knew it, he was behind me. And then Russ is like, let's get the fuck out of here, right? And we ran. And just a bunch of city slickers, dude. Like, you know, and we didn't have any, we didn't even have sim rounds. you know we're busting through the outback with like you know wild boar crocodiles yeah and goddamn bird eating spiders which deserve to be shot on site you know like and with nothing and I remember

me and the senior Charlie we take point and we're coming up on we you know move around get up we're going through some brush getting out of there and uh some phezzits just like get startled they go and see Charlie falls ass over tea kettle on me and everyone in the back was like what the fuck was that right and We're just super spooked and like, it was just so damn funny, man, you know. And just shit like that, like, you can't, you know, you really can't make up. And like, I love, I love shit like that on an ODA, man. Like, you know, it's, you're all just going through.

It doesn't matter how, you know, how gris, how much of a grizzle combat veteran you are. Yeah. You know, we all have our limitations, you know. It's like, it's not even that. It's just like anything in that, in that bush could kill you. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so let's talk about OEFP.

And as I'm reading this, you know Danny Pomonog? Yes, I know, Dave. He's a good guy. Very good, yeah. I've hung out with him out at Camp Maxei. Uh-huh. Yeah. Fort McSysai, man.

Yeah, that's the heart of Filipino Special Forces. Yeah. It's like their equivalent to Fort Bragg or quote-unquote Fort Liberty. Yeah, he's a nice guy. I owe him a Starbucks Frappuccino. He will probably hold me to that the next time I see him. At the time when I knew him, he was a colonel. And then I think he retired as a three-star general.

Socom commander. In 2019. And so for the audience, Danny Pomonig is basically a legend in the Filipino special forces community. He is known as the hero Zambawanga. So in Zambalanga at the time, he was a colonel of their Tier 1 unit. And he basically, there was 300 Abu Sayyaf. fighters. It was a mix. You know, in, in the Philippines,

you have all these different terrorist groups, these offshoots. But this one, they assaulted and seized the city of Zamabuanga, these 300 fighters. And they just spread out, and they were killing people, burning shit down, terrorizing everything, trying to kill

armed forces of the Philippine soldiers, etc., right? And him and his, him and his crew, they fought for several days. And I remember one of the biggest things he said to, I think it was President Aquino at the time, it was the president of the Philippines. And he said that all I, he's like,

they've been fighting for days at this point, fighting like dogs. And there was ODAs, there was, you know, OEFP was there supporting them in ways that they, you know, they could with ISR, et cetera. You know, we're, and the Philippines were very limited. and, you know, they don't want us going out and getting in gunfights,

even though we could definitely make a difference. But at that time, so he said to President Aquino, he goes, sir, my men just need a couple hours of sleep, and then we'll be good to go. And literally, like, because they were, like, at the bargaining table with them almost. And it was like, no, we're going to continue mission. And that's, like, one of the things I love about Danny Pomodig is that, he's, I mean, like us, understands that the mission is the most important thing. Even when odds are against you, it doesn't matter.

And so they pushed through, they end up being victorious, they ended up killing a lot of those, you know, guys. Did you ever meet a light reaction commander named Ted? Probably. Ted's an really cool guy. And some of his, actually Ted was very reserved when I spoke to him about what he did. But some of his lieutenants told me they were losing. lieutenants at the time tell me stories about Ted taking them into Zambow. And like, we're going to put our talk right there in that abandoned schoolhouse,

like right in the middle of the battle. And, like, they go up there, take it by force. He sets up the field headquarters there. And they fought for, like, days out of that place. Hardcore guys. So one of his lieutenants I worked extensively with on that deployment was Lieutenant Salazar. And I probably, you probably know that name. Sniper?

Yeah. Yeah, and great dude, you know, great dude. Really good guy, yeah. Yeah, and, and, you know, here, you know, it's funny because, like, OEFP, you know, we're, I don't have Afghanistan or I have Iraq. This is like my first, quote, unquote, combat deployment, right? And so there's a lot of, you know, you're not that confident, right? You just don't, you know, you're insecure, right? You're like, you're on my chair.

And I was the guy, I was on this counterterrorism liaison coordination all. So I was doing the combat ops. Everybody was, it was like for the rest of the company, it was like an extended training. Right. You know, extended training, working with the host nation. Advising assisting. Advising assisting. And so, you know, me, we're going after Marwan.

We're going, you know, the first off I did, we were going after Bacidusman. They deployed me early from Oki two weeks early. So I could, we could do the handover with the ODA that was there. But also, you know, I get my chops around me with, you know, working with the host nation and just be like doing it. why, you know, we're going in. We're going after Usman. Okay, cool.

You know, me, I was at, you know, E6 at the time. And I'm like, oh, holy shit. And not knowing much, but, you know, Usman was surrounded by about 600 mill fighters. Like, like, probably, you know, if something goes wrong, it's going to be bad, right? Yeah. So that deployment was much lower intensity than, you know,

what my friends were doing, you know, in fifth group and third group and seventh group, you know, going to rotation to Afghanistan and everything. Because I, that's still some hardcore stuff that, you know, even just doing liaison stuff. I mean, the Marwan thing was a disaster. It was.

And I definitely want to talk about that later. But like, you know, one of the big, like the, one of the ops where, and this is what I really like talking about, like what it means to be a green beret. And especially a first group green beret is, you know, you're not doing something. You're doing, it's by with and through.

by with and through, you know, with host nation, whether it's a guerrilla force, you know, all those things that we learn in Robin's age, they all apply. And so I think of like, I'm sitting there. So we, it was Patty Kool, right? And we were on Holo. And there was two German kidnap victims, among several other kidnapped victims. And it was offshoot of Abu Sayyaf group run by Sawajan. And I think like loosely Saharan, all these names might be familiar to you, you know,

type of thing. And those guys were like the holo Basilon, Tawi, Tawi offshoot of Abusayev group. And so they had these kidnapped victims and, you know, Danny

Danny and the boys Ford deployed. And we were, me and my 18 Delta were waiting on air to get out there. And they ended up they ended up losing 15 guys to a friend friendly fire incident.

Yeah. They were about a one kilometer south offset from the Abu Sayyaf base. And the, you know, it turns out that they weren't, they weren't level on the bubbles on the 120s. You know, the smoke that was running the pit wasn't level in the bubbles. You know, I sent a J-TAC over there who was, there was also an MSAWT team that was working there too. And so we show up and you want to talk about some loss of rapport at this point.

Yeah. And I remember me and him are sitting in this. Were those American 120s or Filipino 120s? Filipino 120s. Okay. Thank you for. So for people who don't know, we just talk about the 120 mortars and, you know, level in the bubbles is just like getting them, make sure they're set and centered every single time.

Yeah, the bubbles aren't level. The rounds are going. The rounds aren't going where you think they're going. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. But basically that's what it is.

And they were a K, one kilometer off target. That's pretty significant. Massively. And all it was was one round. One round came right into their little talk that they had that me and the 18th Delta were going to afford deploy to, right, to help them run their raid on the camp. And so, and I just think, I remember looking at the 18 Delta, I was like, we. could have been dead. Yeah.

You know, and luckily, like, air, you know, we're like to say, air fucked up. Air fucked us. Yeah. They did it that time. Yeah. You know, so, but, you know, here I am. We're down half a company now. Half a company of dudes.

And, you know, I think it was 10 mooned in action, 5KIA. And Danny's like, dude, I'm pulling out. And, you know, I had orders from the task force commander. He was like, this shit's happening. Make this happen. Right. and also he was like I think it was Colonel Warman at the time

or I might I forget who it was but he was like whatever you need to make this happen we got you right type of thing and it was great because I had leadership buying etc but so I'm sitting with Danny we're in this open air concrete building in the jungle

drinking imperator light which is the drink of not San Miggs Not Sam Miggs, but Imperator Light is this Filipino brandy That is the drink of choice by the light reaction battalions Right? So, you're drinking it. You know, that's a report thing.

You got to drink that. And so, you know, I'm sitting there and we're sipping on the imperator light. And I'm like, so, you know, tell me what's going on? He's like, we're pulling out. I'm like, well, why? you know not simply you know

not going to just sit there and be like okay cool all right we'll meet you back in Manoa type of thing no like you know

make this happen man you know make mission yeah and and he goes to me and he like

leans in he's like I can't stand to tell another mother and father that their son is dead and here I am

Cherry E6 right yeah first of one and I'm trying to, you know, understand this guy. Yeah. You know? And I sit there for a second.

And I said, do you remember what you said to the president of the Philippines? I just need, my men just need a few hours of sleep and we're getting right back after it. I was like, whatever you need, you know, we're going to support you. Metaback, everything. I was like, and he's like, he's sitting there,

he's thinking about it. it. Me and him are going back and forth, you know. And all I did was I just gently reminded to who he was. Yeah. And, you know, I'm like, you know what, Danny? We're guys. We're all about the mission. If we pull out on this mission, those guys died in vain for nothing. Yeah. You know, to a friendly fire incident. And I'm pretty sure most of your men want to live up to that. and remember he he kind of like sat there and thinking he goes all right

I need two more companies I'm like whatever it takes you know and then we continued mission you know with it until we couldn't anymore you know but it was really interesting that you know that's appointment for me

was a lot of the human side of things and and I think of like when you're a green beret you're this is a lot of the stuff that you do. You know, not, not, you're not always going to be kicking in the door, you know, hey, granted, we all sign up to do Mac V. Sog stuff, you know, Jobbreaker Juliet, all these, all these really cool, you know, storied things of unconventional warfare. Was this the

mass count incident that you're talking about here? And, you know, the 18 Delta's got to go to work on, on some of these guys? Yes. And so for me, that was getting a taste of what it was I signed up to do. Yeah. And I would say probably that a, afterwards, we're doing, you know, we're supporting this off, we're running into, we're running ISR every night. We're trying to, we're trying to get some sort of BDL on, you know, where these kidnapped victims are at.

So we can actually do the raid and it be successful, right, to a certain extent. And, you know, because we were estimating it was about 60 to 80 Abu Sayaf dudes, you know, in this camp. And so, like, we ended up, um, um, We had a supporting element, Filipino Marine Corps element, that got, was a complex ambush.

They got caught in one? They got caught in one. So IED plus opening up a whole lot of 5, 5, 5, 6 on them. A lot of Abu Say after they carry M60s. You know, they get their hands on M60s, a lot of like old Vietnam era US-made stuff. So these guys made it back to base. They had one KIA,

and there was five other wounded in action and it's like all right I'm jumping in I'm jumping in I'm gonna do my training I'm gonna you know me and the 18 Delta are gonna start working on these guys and I remember we had this one guy who was the driver and he was the most fucked off at anybody else right and so like

I remember gunshot wound tension nemothorax so tension nemo thorax is when one side of the lung cavity collapses and you have to basically plug the hole and then stable and then release the pressure on the opposite side to kind of I don't know the science behind it. I know that's what you got to do. The attention neurothics, what happens is there's a hole in the lung.

But the danger of attention pneumothorax is that when people like breathe in or whatever, that air fills the gap between the lung and the like thorax. Exactly, yes. So that pressure keeps building, and it starts to collapse the lung. So you have to do some sort of decompression on it. And I remember, well, there was a whole lot of things. I did an intra-a-sosis, because at the time our standard operating procedure, if someone's unconscious, we I owe them, push lytocaine, push the bone marrow out of the way. And this guy, they loaded them up with ketamine and as soon as he came in to kind of calm them down a little bit, you know, after getting his vitals.

and I remember he woke right up when I did that and I was like oh god I look at my 18 W he's like you're fine yeah you're fine right and this is my 18 WDDD this is first time doing any of this stuff outside the Q course too so it's like you know me and him and I remember I helped him there was like this machine he had

I don't know the science of it but basically we had to put it in his gunshot wound in his lung to stabilize his lung cavity because we were going to airlift him we're going to medivac him out in a pressure helicopter, right? Because the Filipinos had hughies, which, you know, our old Vietnam-era Huey's. And, you know, they're open doors, you know, they can't go that high elevation-wise. And so we had to do that. I remember that was kind of gnarly, but the thing that always stuck with me

was we were, his tourniquet wasn't tight on his arm. Because he got shot, he had a 5, 5, 5, 6 round. you know, entry wound on the outside, exit wound, bicep was gone. You're right. Right. I remember the, the audible sound of his, the meat of his arm plopping on the table, and my 18th adult was going, oh, that's not good.

That's not good, Dave, right? And we packed him up and everything, but I remember the funniest thing he said that night. And this is the only time I ever smoked a cigarette in my entire life. And he's like, we packed this guy up, and he was like, Jesus will not take this one, right?

And it was like, it was just so fucking funny to me. Right, you know, and like, you know, the proudness of watching him, you know, go from new guy,

doing his training exactly what he's set up to and saving some lives. And it was, it was really cool. So you're saying 55, the M60s are 762, right? And then the AKs are 760.

Were they firing? They had M16s. Oh, M16s. M16s and they had M60s. Okay. Yeah, so like... So they had a lot of Vietnam era, small arms, whatever they were. Yes, but it was definitely the size of the entry room was small, right?

So it was like a 5-5-6 round, like quintessential 5-5-6 round. I mean, it's really cool to hear this story in the sense that the cooperation between the American and the Filipino forces. And a lot of people, here in the States, don't understand. Like, when I went and visited, and I didn't even realize this existed until a friend took me there, huge it looks like arlington and it's the american and filipino soldiers buried together from world war two in the same cemetery um it just it's it's an incredible relationship that goes back like over a hundred years at this point um i remember going down to a filipino marine corps event down in tawi tawi and uh the guy stands up and it's given the presentation of all like the npa and abu saif guys they killed that

year like 14 July 6kIA it's like the American Marine Corps is like holy shit like what have we done I know I think we did a fine job if you ask me you know and it's a strong relationship and it's preceded the relationship is even stronger than the tumultuous politics of the Philippines in America be it Donald Trump or um

to terti to do thirte uh that relationship between military to military persists which i think speaks to what you and your teammates did yeah for sure absolutely i mean it was it was all about rapport you know i mean that's what they they beat into your skull rapport rapport rapport you know be technically intactally proficient first you know everybody on oda is a shooter first you know but you know your mOS know your job but it's also all the people skills having the emotional intelligence, you know, reading the room, reading, you know, what the host nation's feeling, you know, listening to their concerns, but it's also the camaraderie. You cannot beat the fucking camaraderie, especially with them. Like, and, and I think, you know, the stronger

the bond you have, you know, the easier it is to do hard shit with the host nation. And, and that's something that separates Green Berets from everybody else. Well, and it's interesting too, and I'm glad to hear that that you and others of your generation and, you know, had that sort of attitude. Because I think, like, during the GWAT, because the sexy part was in the kicking in the doors,

so many guys in the Green Beret, so many guys in the SF community were like, well, we don't want to do that, you know, that host nation shit. Like, we're door kickers. Like, you can't be a door kicker with 12 guys. Like, you, in a semi-permiss environment, like, you need those host nation forces.

or those other forces to help you do that. Absolutely. And I think that's exactly what the experience was like. Yeah. You know, I signed up for the Adventure Plus package. Yeah. Don't get me wrong, man. I was ready to go die with 11 other my best friends on the side of Hindu Kush, dude.

Right. Like, you know. And but we sign up for the action, but the reality is that's where we make all the money is in those relationships. So that was actually the vibe for a lot of us. Yeah. And, you know, we all signed up, you know, we wanted to do the job. Right.

You know, right wrong or indifferent, whatever, however it came, we were happy to do the job, you know, to wear the green beret and serve, you know, in the capacity that we did. So, I think it's being in Okinawa, being in First Battalion First Special Forces Group, you're forced to be creative, right? So you're working with senior guys that majority of their career, they were door kickers. Yeah. Commando mission. Commando mission in Iraq, right? And that's all that mattered, right? If you were, you know, Afghanistan and Iraq, no one cared.

Nothing else mattered. My sergeant major at the time knew I had a crazy flare in my eye. And he was always like, all right, I got to pull on this guy. He's going to get in a fucking gun fight. Put you in a body leash? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like that whole, that whole mission and Paddy Cool, he's like, where the fuck are you? Right, right?

He's like, you will send me six-hour updates of where you are on the map, right? Like, and it was just like, because he knew. Yeah. He fucking knew, right? And as a dude who's been there himself, right? And so, but it allows you, it teaches you this creativity. So I, um, I go to become the team's 18 Fox, which is the special forces of intelligence sergeant on the team. Um, and you're doing, you know, you research intelligence and you kind of, you see what the enemy is doing.

And then you help devise mission and operations with the rest of the team. So what I in lieu of being in a combat environment or going to Iraq and Afghanistan, which I always wanted to do, I was going to make the most of it where I was. You know? And so being a good green berets, what's the number one rule? Figure it out, dude, right? Figure it out. So I did two J sets to the Philippines two years after that rotation, right? and I ended up

I was like you know what here's the idea I'm going to train him on F3 AD find fixed finish exploit it assessed disseminate right so F3 AD is the process that we use

in counterterrorism intelligence operate not just intelligence operations but the whole counterterrorism life cycle is you find the bad guy you get a fix on their location you finish

airstrike raid however you need to do it and then you get all the intel off of that, and then that feeds into the next cycle of operations. And so I went there, it was like early 2016, and this was the served as the, I'm all about crawl, so being a green, right, you guys remember this, crawl walk run methodology.

All right, I have an idea for a concept. Let's crawl first. So go down there, I'm working with the PMP, the Philippine National Police Force, and they're targeting all these, bad dudes. And so all I really did is I went in there using my 18 Fox knowledge, I realized that they had no way of visualizing their intelligence at all. Like they were, you know, they're calling human intelligence sources. They're talking to, they're talking to action agents, all these other

things, principal agent network, stuff like that. But they're not putting it on a map and they're not drawing a lot, you know, just like, just make them a coup, you know, military combined obstacle overlay. And so I just give them a very simple class. and that. And Ray O'Rino, who was one of the guys that did the Marwan raid, right? I was working with his dudes, just real quick. The SAF. The SAF, right? Special Action Force. And he's like, he's like, none of the guys I was training thought I was going to bring him in because I knew him from OEFP. And he comes in and they're briefing him target intelligence packages. And then he gets on the phone. He's like, why haven't we action this? I want this actions tonight.

And so we just saw this in, you know, live, you know, building capacity and they go out and do it. So version 2.0 of that was, I did it again, but this time we went after an ISIS target. At this point it's in 2016. A lot of the Abu Sayyaf groups, a lot of the offshoots of the Abusayev group have pledged allegiance to ISIS. This is about when Marawi is about to kick off. Yes, it was actually right before Marawi. Because Marawi happened in May of 2015. I think.

And that was Insulaan haplon and the Mote group. And you know, over the years we were watching that kind of the Mote group was like the carrier of Black Flag ideology. Because we were kicking so much ass in Sankom and kicking

ass in the Philippines that they were kind of losing steam. But then when ISIS popped off, it really like breathed a ton of life into the jihadi scene. There's an interesting story there about how through the madrasas and, you know, Gulf money was flowing into the Philippines, like after 9-11 around that time frame. And we did some work to mitigate that. But then as ISIS pops off,

I mean, to what you're talking about, some of these groups pledged allegiance to ISIS to try to acquire overseas international funding. The, I forget, FTF is foreign, something financial. I forget the acronym but yeah the whole CTF counterthreat finance right and it was huge in all these they're trying to raise their profile right yeah that they're out there basically like they're they're like uh what are the baseball team the minor leagues or the not even the minor leagues but you know like the little triple a yeah yeah they're out there like triple a team like trying to like say hey look at us send us no that's that's not far off man because they're these guys were like bandits yeah and then all of a sudden they like oh actually were ice

Yeah, if we say we're ISIS, maybe we'll get some of that big money. And that was the thing, you saw that Abu Sayyaf group in the early 2000s when Al-Qaeda had all the street credit in the world of who they were. But then you fast forward, ISIS takes over the bank in Mosul, gets access to what? It was like $250 million or something like that? I still have a trouble processing this story that there was $250 million in a bank in Missoull. I have a hard time with that. You're the intel guy. Wait a little I tell you about the gold in Fort Knox.

No, I know. I have a hard time with that story. But it was, they were doling out two milly to, you pledge to be a willia, we'll give you $2 million. Yeah. And so, you know, who's first in line? Happelon and the boys, you know what I mean? Like, they were like, oh, yeah, well, we got a free $2 million and, you know, we get to do this.

Oh, oh, we got to basically, you know, do a siege. Okay. And, you know, at that point, I was on battalion staff waiting to get in the position, you know, to become, go the intelligence officer, do the intelligence officer thing. But, you know, I was doing a lot of support for those guys as an 18 Fox, you know, and they did it, they did a pretty good job. Like, you know, and we got them.

And it was a huge celebration because every single first group, Green Beret, at one point in their career, went after haplon. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like a tale is oldest time. Same thing we're Marwan, you know, and everyone like, you know, I talked to, I talked to GBs. They're like, oh, yeah, I know that raid you're talking about.

You know, the raid that never happened. Like, you know, and it's kind of funny, but I mean, there's what it is, right? So, yeah, targeting ISIS. Anything else about the Philippines before we move on? No, it was just funny. I remember that ISIS target that we brought down or helped bring down. It was all the Filipinos that did it. But I remember, like, they were like, hey, thank you so much for that J-SAT.

That was very critical in us being able to get this target. And at the time, General Fenton was the sockpack commander. Right now he's a Socombe man. And he's like, front of the line in the sit rep, man. That goes front of the line of the sit rep. And it goes up to Socom. And I remember I was on battalion staff at this point. I remember my S3, great dude, but he was not going to take this phone call.

And he was like, oh, Sergeant Fielding. It's for you. It's like I think the deputy director operations G3 so common. I was like, oh. And they were like, what the fuck did you do? Right now? You know, I told him the story. It was like, we just build partner force capacity so fucking well that they had the confidence to go out there and hit it themselves. Yeah.

And he's like, beautiful, cool, we're good. Right? And I'm like, oh, oh, shit. Yeah, well, I thought I was in deep shit, you know what I mean? Well, thank you. You had an alibi, right? Like, you guys were on your way out of country when it happened. Totally. We were on a C-130. No way. None the wiser. Innocent, bro, the glove does not fit. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

There's no way we had our hand in that. We're on our way. We're on our way. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, somewhere around this time frame, this idea of, you know, the Army intelligence comes into your mind somehow, some way. So I guess the question, first off, is, were you spooky and did you feel the love?

Definitely felt the love. Definitely felt the love. And so I was reading a lot of spy novels at the time. And Tinker-Taylor Soldier Spy, you know, that whole Carla trilogy by La Caree, Le Carre, excuse me. And a variety of different other spy novels and stuff. And so the whole idea of human intelligence operations was very cool to me. You see it a lot of movies.

And you'd been to ASOT, you've been to 18 Fox course, so you had a bit of the analysis piece and you had a bit of the trade craft piece. A plumbing, the tradecraft and whatnot. A little bit, yeah. A little bit, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Just a taste. Just a taste.

Just a tease. Yeah, right. I'm like, this is a tease. I want to go all in. You saw her ankle. Now you want to know what that knee looks like. Yeah, give you the knee. Let's go.

We'll go from there. By the time I get to knee, I'm sure I'm good, right? Yeah. But like, and that's really what it was. And so we had two individuals. They came out to the battalion and they briefed this on this program. And they would basically, it was like, hey, this is the path to become a case officer. And, you know, you can do this.

You can do that. And, you know, for me, I was pretty tired. You know, I, even though at the time when I was in Oki, I was gone on average eight months, on average eight months out of every year. You know, it was always like, you know, oh, yeah, after OEFP, I got a little bit of downtime, and then it was like 18 Fox course then. Thailand and J set. Philippines, training here, training in Korea, you know, Nepal, you know, all over the map. And so I was married at the time.

And I'm like, you know, hey, clock's ticking. Yeah. You know, I think it's time that, you know, we start thinking about having kids. And I kind of looked at that career as, being, this is going to sound insane. So you think being a spy is more stable than being on a ODA? 100%. Right.

You know? Right. Right. But they sold that to you too, right? They're like, oh, you know, we'll put you somewhere. That's where you'll work. No worries. Yeah.

And that's exactly it. And you're like, you know, the allure of, oh, you can do your job during the day and then you go home or you have a night job. And then you go, you're home with your family and everything else. And like, no one's the wiser. And that was kind of cool. But I was also attracted to. the fact of like just sheerly being able to get away with shit.

Yeah. Like the excitement of like getting away with something. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, this is like kind of, there is a dichotomy of being an intelligence officer, or human intelligence officer, right?

And it's, I remember in high school, yeah, I'm an Eagle Scout. I was a varsity athlete. Solid B student. You know what I mean? I had too much going on. But then by night,

me and my friends you know knocking over liquor stores yeah showing up to house parties with turntables and microphones right right and like emceeing house parties

and you know running beer for the town yeah right you know with all the other high school kids so it was like it was like the right amount of like all right this is like kind of a balance and it was like something I understood inherently just who I am and and I kind of looked at it's fun and for me at the time it was like

I get to work by myself yeah And the challenge of that. Yeah. There was a couple ops I did just in, you know, South East Asia that I was doing Singleton stuff. Yeah. You know, or just, you know, two-man teams too. Yeah.

And so it was like this idea of being armed with nothing, with nothing more of our wit. But yeah, we need, we need more booze, right? Okay, cool. It's funny, it's funny while we're taking this, like, refill break, it's funny how you bring that up because I remember when I took my MMPI, you know, for SOTIC. Right? Because you have to take that psych test so they make sure that you're not. The one about whether or not you like flowers.

Yeah, yeah. And if you know the person who's responsible for all your problems. Exactly. Yeah. I'll show you who the real man is. Yeah. And it's definitely your dad. I'm kidding.

And so when the doc came out, you know. Definitely. what you say on the sniper. When the shrink came out, you know, I was just joking around. I was like, so am I sane?

And he goes, as sane as everybody else that, you know, that is in your line of work and takes this test, I'm like, well,

what does that mean? And he goes, well, he goes, interestingly enough, he goes, you all have sociopathic tendencies. You're not sociopathic.

Like, the test would show us if you're a sociopath. He goes, but what, what, like, people in this field, I guess,

military, you know, psychiatrists, psychologists, What we don't understand is you guys have the same, like, sociological or the psychological profile as criminals. We just don't know why one of you goes one way and the other group goes the other way. So there's always that appeal of being, you know, pirates and hooligans, right? That's exactly it.

Yeah. Probably one of my favorite quotes is from Sergeant Major Chuck Ritter. I was at the senior leader's course back in 20, 17 or whatever and he was floating around in leadership but he came in you know because he has like three or four purple hearts and awesome dude riot of a human being like absolutely riot but he says you think you know what it you know what it's like being on oda it's like you're just in the pirate ship with all the other pirates everyone's got fucking scurvy right you know what I mean right you know like for me I was like a first group experience I'm like dengue malaria

fucking you know all these things right and it was a riot but there is that element and like there's a lot of guys out there who are like, I want to do hood rat shit with my friends. And that's really what it is. And, you know, in the book, it's like at the extreme level. Yeah. You know, we're going to go out and, you know, we have carte blanche to produce intelligence, you know, kill capture ISIS and al-Qaeda, right? And, you know, ISIS leadership.

And by any means necessary, obviously within the legal left and right limits of whatever lawyers assigned to the group and stuff. But like, it's so much fun. It's legal for you to do it in the purview of the United States, but it's very illegal for you to do it in the country that you're in. Totally. Yeah. Totally.

I mean, I don't understand all the relationships and everything else. I mean, we're there. We're doing this job in support of counterterrorism operations, which is establishing, you know, creating more secure environment, you know, better economic circumstances, all these other things. So it's like, all right, they're, you. You've got to have a crew of dudes willing to go all the way. And that's kind of how I viewed that job, you know?

So these two guys named Mr. Smith show up and give you a briefing. They, you know, was this just for foxes or was this for like any senior SF guys? It was open to the battalion. I don't remember how many. There was a bunch of us that attended. it was like some guys that were, you know, into, you know, kind of looking to do the spooky thing. But I think I was the only dude that applied out of it. But I applied and I didn't hear for like a year and a half.

And at this point, I was looking at getting out of the Army. Yeah. And I was like, all right, well, I'm just going to figure this out. Use my GI Bill benefits. Go back to school, whatever. Figuring out of my, you know, my at the time wife, right? And, but then I was. I get this like email, this memo from this four star general, you know, and Sipper, it was like,

congratulations, you got picked up and we're going to work on your orders and blah, blah, blah, blah, and I was like, oh, holy shit, this is happening. Okay, cool. So, and the squadron that I was going to at the time, the squadron commander was a green beret. Okay. And he was hot to bringing green berets. So I was the first green beret this unit ever had. Where else, if you can talk about it,

where else was this unit pulling people from? Generally everywhere, but what I saw was a lot of former soft enablers, former soft enablers who are already like in the Intel world type of thing. We had some other, I think we had, I'm trying to think. specifically. I think it was mostly if not all people with an intelligence MOS or discipline. Okay. And it was like the same thing. They wanted to get out outside the wire, do some cool shit, you know.

I know you'd prefer that we not name any units or specifics like that. But I would like to point out how, and correct me if I'm coming off base here at any point, that you have special forces and now you're in an unconventional career track. totally on conventional career track and I'm still being rated as an SFNCO but now you're on DASER and you are going into a different this alphabet soup of things I didn't even

understand I mean I was terrible with admin you know I don't think a single SF guy's good at admin shit right you know and so like let alone all this other stuff you know but you know someone was managing it yeah and whatever but because of the certifications you get and the uniqueness of the career path.

I made eight pretty quick. Yeah. You know, first look at eight, I got, you know, I got, I was eligible to pick up, you know, I got out still as an E7 special, start in first class, but like, but really, you know, for the audiences, you know, you, this job now coming into it, I didn't know what to expect, jumping into it. You know, didn't know, you know, the third. three letter agencies I was going to be working for.

Had no, no expectations, but I was like, I want to do human intelligence operations, man. Like, this is cool. And this is it. I'm going to do surveillance detection routes.

I'm going to do trade craft. I'm going to do bumps. I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to do brush passes, right? Like, all this sexy stuff like, and, scoop my briefcase under a table to somebody.

Yeah, with like a solid couple grand in there. Right. Gold bars. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. From Fort Knox, you know. Yeah. You know, I, you know, I heisted them out of there. Right.

But you heard it here first. Yeah, here first. Yeah, here first. Yeah. But there's a, there's a good story about a heist in the book. I'll save that for later. But like they, but so it was, you know, opening up in this world. But for me, the off tempo was more stable. And I just had to get through this.

It ended up being like 20-something months of training. So I started off, 2018. I reported to D.C. Had no idea where I was going. They were like, hey, stay in, you know, you can stay in this area and we'll call you in, this sat in the other thing. And you go through this process where you get a badge and all the shit. And so it takes months. So at that point, they've lined me up for all the spy training that I was doing.

And it was, and we'll kind of, we'll transition into the book because this is where the book picks up is, you know, I go to this, I go to this training, this prep course that they had us go to. And you had this like 40 year, 35, 40 year veteran of the CIA. And, you know, And he's talking to all SF guys, right? Getting ready to do this training and shit. And I love this because he says, gentlemen, what you're getting to learn,

what you're about to learn to do is a felony or capital crime and basically every country you're doing this in. And in this business, no one gives a fuck about you. And it always stuck with me. The whole no one gives a fuck about you line is really about,

it's all about the source, right and it's all about caring the source none of your ego and if you're doing this job right it's extremely fucking inconvenient to you yeah as a case officer like you're busting your fucking ass all the time

commo you know communication plans right cables irs but like you know you're doing your surveillance section route you gotta make sure you're sort of the opsack around it all the offsack everything with it you know not only that you're you're constantly assessing this human being you know for

flaws, vulnerabilities, changes in accesses, changes in motivations, you know, and anything else that's going on in life. But you have this person that's in front of you, right? When you finally, as we like to say, lift the skirt and you're like, oh, surprise, I'm United States intelligence, you know, like, this is really what this relationship is about. They usually know by that. If you've done your development right, they usually know what's up by that. Look, I don't really like the Kardashians.

I just said that because. Yeah, and usually, I mean, I would imagine a person that watches that show, they're going to attract certain attributes. Right. You know, that'd be interesting. But, you know, as we like to say, it's not about them simply wanting the money. It's what the money's for. Right.

You know? Right. And so, but it was really cool for me. So, but at this time, you know, and this is really what the book is about, It's more, less about the sexy shit, but more about all the mental health aspects and the internal dialogue. Right. You know, because I'm coming off of, you know, four plus years of team time, right? You know, going here, there everywhere in Southeast Asia, never home.

And, you know, I'm swapping it for also a high stress career. And, you know, but to me, my optic is like, you know, most of the situation, it's not my job to go kick in a door, right? I'm the guy that's going to figure out which door to kick in. Right. And that was like kind of the cool, you know, the dynamic of coming from my ODA was, at the time, was, you know, more focused on direct action. We were a boat team, but we were all direct action. You know, so always breaching, you know, going live, nods in the house, you know, pushing the limit. But so, you know, taking all that experience of like how we set up for a raid, doing stuff on OEFP that, you know, exposed me that stuff, it's like, all right, now, I'm the guy that's doing the intel now.

You know, out of curiosity, one, how did you deal with that? And two, do you think that you dealt with it better or worse than, say, somebody who had been an enabler and had moved, been moved up? I don't want to say moved up, but they were in more of an action-oriented role, but they still weren't the number one guy on the door. Did some of them want that out of the job where you had already sort of had that and you were fine with, like, being the. that's it guy. I was totally fine being with the that's a guy, but what I experienced was you had a lot of people chasing prestige.

You do. The sexiness of the job of doing high level intelligence operations for all these three-letter agencies that you had this sort of dichotomy. It's the same thing in corporate environments, the same thing everywhere else,

is that you have, have ops guys, right? And then you have, you know, guys that like to do the soft-skill stuff in the backside and the backside, you know, talk and good idea fairies. Briefing, right? Briefing, right? Power points. And I'm like, you know, and that was like kind of the mindset I brought to this job was the same mindset I had on the ODA was like operationally forward leaning. Operationally forward leaning. And so it's for the people out there, it's that the job is like we, there's all these different units out there. Right. You have like, you have like, you have like, I know like TFO, right?

You have JSOC units, tiered units, etc. All that stuff. Where I was at, the level of entominy was huge, right? You had to be extremely entrepreneurial on your own. Even when they deployed me last minute to Iraq and Syria. You know, a lot of the shit I was doing on my ground over there other than, you know, helping, you know, produce intelligence against ISIS and al-Qaeda, I was working on strategic shit,

strategic shit too. You know, so it was like you had, you only, so you can go talk to five people, you know, one of those people, one of those persons are going to work out,

you know, and, and, and so it's, it's having a lot of irons in the fire, but, um, I found now is that you had,

for, to people, like people that come from an intelligence background, getting the certification, becoming a case officer, becoming that, right, going to FTC or the other courses or anything like that, they have that, that wasa now. Yeah, and that's really what it was.

And for them, it was like a self-actualization. Right. Whereas more like, I was like, this is just a cool thing I really want to do, you know what I mean? Yeah. You got the beret in the tab. Yeah, you got the barret in the tab, where for them, this was sort of the pinnacle of the field that they were in a lot of times.

Absolutely. So without getting into, you know, obviously say as much or as little as you want to. But, you know, when we look at the different agencies who have, and even within the military, the different organizations under the DIA or whomever, who have case officer qualified people, here you're in a very small project, a special access program, and also trained to conduct these human intelligence operations and also working with people who have their own people. Can you talk at all about where you guys fit in

in the tactical to strategic picture of any of this? If you can, if not that's fine. And it's not anything, I don't think it's anything hard to really talk about. It's, if you look at it this way, right, every unit, they have a mission, right? And just in the intelligence community and in these, you know, secretive intelligence units that, you know, one of which I belong to, is you have information needs, right? And you have something called an operating directive. Every CIA station has an operating directive, right? And they're like, all right, the case officers,

these are, this is all the shit we care about. Go out there and collect against that. What makes us special is that our OD operating director was so vast, right, and what we could go after. And a lot of it is working by with and through all these other three letter agencies. So if you take my green beret background of buy with and through host nation, you know, a lot of it, what it is is I go out there, I find something. right it might answer this intelligence requirement

there's a customer everywhere and that's where it's like you're not even so how it fits into the tactical you know and strategic you know tactical operational strategic level like effects is like you know you have customers all over the place and you know there was we were talking we were talking earlier it was like I had this one-op where I didn't I you know I had Intel I was like I don't know what to do with this. And I reached out to a particular, you know, area of the world. And I was like, hey, you know, I think you guys should care about this. And they're like, oh, yeah, we really do. And then we work together. We ended up shutting down this adversary operation there. Right. So it's like a lot of it is

taking something very tactical that no one else thinks who you care about. Right. And in spotting the opportunity. Right. And that's why I say that it's entrepreneurial. It's so entrepreneurial and and and this is the thing it's like you're either grown or you're dying yeah right and and the dangerous thing is that when you are so wrapped up in your identity of doing the job in the mission and everything else it it does require a lot from you um before we jump too far ahead i i want to talk about you're going through all this you know spy schools all this training that you're going through but at the same time your personal life is starting to come unwound and that's in your book into the darkness I mean I mean because we want to

talk about this piece of it as well tell us about what was going on with you you know not just professionally but also personally so a lot of the book is about those internal dialogues right I think as like a case officer right or an intelligence human intelligence professional you learn right you you learn it's mostly a job about emotional intelligence and in building genuine connect with yourself and most importantly asking yourself why and and so in this book or in you know my my story really is like you know I make all these sacrifices for my ex-wife and you know because I wanted to start a family we wanted to you know we're going to have more stability you know I was sold on all these things I was like yeah you know you know the potential being operational where I live and I'll be

home I'll be home for dinner right right and you won't have to to raise a kids by yourself. And so it's like, but, you know, I make all these sacrifices. I sign up for six more years and Uncle Sam, I take this job. And, you know, so we moved to D.C. And, you know, I look at like this time being, you know, potentially the most stable time. And they're already talking about like when they're, the squadroners are already talking about when they were slating me to deploy. And I was like, all right, cool. Like, it really turns out of the most unstable time. It turns out of the most unstable time. It turns of the most unstable time. So, you know, I'm sitting down.

I'm having a glass of Balvini with my, you know, with my wife. And I was like, you know what? I think this is that we should start trying this year. She should start trying to have a kid. And, you know, at this point, I had, like, one iteration of, like, my intelligence training, you know, knocked out. Or two iterations of intelligence training that knocked out at this point. And she's like, I don't think so. I want to travel more.

And I'm like, we're done traveling. Yeah. You know, like, this is. Yeah. We lived in Japan for five years Like we're good You know what I mean? Like I want to be on the East Coast Close to my family close to your family

Everything else like that so I was uh you know And instead of being What the fuck are you saying right? I was like You know this new intelligence training I was starting to like you know What's going on here? And I'm like you know what I should ask why right and and I was like Well why do you feel that way you know we just lived here

And I'm trying to frame it and everything else And she gets really uneasy and then she's just like Like, you know, I don't want to ever have kids, right, eventually. And I was like, huh. I'm like, all right, well, like, when we signed up to do this, you know, when we got married, this was like eventually the long-term plan. So at the time, I was training for my first ultra marathon. And, you know, my grandfather was, you know, Jack Fielding.

He was, like, one of the OG long-distance runner. Ran marathons into his 60s. And he did a double century. Holy shit. A double-century cycling ride. I don't know how, I think he was in his late 50s, early 60s. And from Boston to Portland, Maine, which is like 100 out, 100 back, right? And all he had in his bag was like tuna fish and water, which I think, talk about it.

Like, if I am not my grandfather, you know, if I am not of his blood, I'd be really surprised. You know, I'm the same exact way. Like, you just learn, you know, his years of being a POW, or your collective years of being green break you just learn it like live without shit austerity yeah you're like oh fuck it I'll be fine right it's not gonna be as bad as that one time yeah and so like he but anyways like you know I was trained for my first ultra and I'm doing like 15 18 mile training runs and what's an ultra is 36 or 50 um it's 30 the baby ultra is 30 miles 30 30 it's like 30 31 miles okay it's a 50k so I was training for a 50k

and I'm out there. I'm in the woods and I'm just logging miles and I'm like, fuck man, what the fuck do I do, dude? Right? And I'm like, do I divorce her? Like, you know, and I'm running

and all this internal dialogue is on repeat in my mind. Like, what do I do? And then I'm like scared shitless to date again. Yeah. Right? And not that I know, because I was with her my entire 20s.

So it's like, I don't know how to fucking do that again. Like, you know? Yeah. But and so I I I I do my first ultra Did it in like six and a half hours 30 miles 30 30 miles and some change And 50K And we end up uh you know

It was it was a friend that called me A Norch friend who called me And this is where the shit gets wild right And you know in the army You do all a suicide awareness training and all this You know what the fuck ever yeah Yeah and this guy like me and him Watch this video.

Click next. Yeah, click next. Yeah. Or if you're a new guy on the team, you're doing the entire teams like all their 50-1 training. Right. That was the right of passage for a lot of guys. Yeah. But I did their cyber awareness training.

You're going to do my cyber awareness training. Right, right. Like, it's no anyone's. But fucking, anyways, like, we're, so this good friend of mine, Gene, I was his upperclassman at Norwich. When I was a sophomore, I was his, corporal cadre. And so he was my fire team and I took care of him and this kid was going to be a general

officer someday. Easy. Like infantry was our you know served in 100 first, Rockasan, Pactika province, I think it was. You know, nine months of slugging on out with the Taliban. Good fucking range qualified infantry officer. Obviously

you know, not going to get a platoon without it, right? Type of thing in conventional forces. And but when I was in the Q course, like He lived outside of Fort Bragg. And, you know, I would go up to him. We'd play golf. We'd get fucking wasted.

You know, we drive around a golf cart, chasing after deer. And, you know, at night. And, you know, just doing funny-ass dude shit. It sounds very familiar. Yeah. And so he calls me. He hits me up at, like, 8 o'clock in the morning. And he's like, dude, I need to talk.

And the only time I hear from him is, like, he's, you know, in the, you know, half in the back. I love you, bye, brother. You know, in the middle of night, you're a wicked awesome kid, right? He's from Boston area too. But at 8 a.m. was a giant red fucking flag. And so I was like, hey, I'll call you

as soon as I get on the road. And so I give him a ring. And he's like, I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to say this. And this is completely out of left field. He's like, I'm not, really a man, I'm really a woman. And I was like, huh? But at the same time, though, this is a guy, like, you know, I shared a lot of shared suffering with. Yeah. And I didn't know how to

take it, but yeah, I'm thinking, I'm like, knowing him or her, right, excuse me, there's a 45 on the table, and I have no idea if I'm the last phone call he made before. Right. Just to see. And, you know, I tell him, her, or I tell her. And I'm like, I'm like, you know, I don't care whatever the fuck you are. You'll always be a brother and me. You know, not knowing. Right, right. Right.

And then he or she started crying and going into it. But the thing about Gene, this is Gene in the book. And the thing that really fucking stuck with me was that what they said of me. was I can't go another day without being happy or about being true to myself. Yeah, not being who you are. In the entire fucking time, I'm going out doing hours of training on the trail, afraid of, you know, the stigma of a divorce, the, you know, a broken marriage of what that is. Who the fuck wants to date a guy in his mid-30s, right?

You know, with all this other stuff, right? And I'm like, I don't even know how to date anymore. And this dude, excuse me, girl, right? This chick. Yeah. It's got twin girls on the way with his wife. Yeah. Right?

And it's like... You know, I know exactly who you're talking about, right? Probably, but I am not going to put it up. No, no, I won't either, no. But I know, I definitely know that you know, you know. And wild story. It is a wild story, yeah. But, you know, for me was like...

In their life, they are a power lifter? I don't think so. Okay, maybe it is a different person. I've lost contact with Gene because around this time, you know, in the subsequent months of me going through more spy training and everything else, like, I couldn't, you know, I couldn't go, you know, I couldn't go, doing everything that was going on in my personal life. I couldn't deal with anyone else. Right. You know what I mean? Right.

And so I remember, I said to myself, I was like, what the fuck am I afraid of? You know, a divorce? Right. Whatever. Right. You know what I mean? And so I remember. That was kind of inspiring, right, that like Gene called you up and was like, hey, I'm this now.

Yeah. And that took some balls, right? It took some real balls or lack up or whatever. Like, you know. But like. But it took was. And like it took, yeah, it took. It took.

Yeah. It definitely took a lot of courage. Yeah. And, you know. And so with that, I was looking at, you know, my wife at the time and I was like, I'm really afraid of like, you know, I have all these internal dialogues that I'm like, I'm afraid. of what's going to happen, you know, what's the second door effects of this. So, like, that fall in the following weekend, and, like, I decided

to have the conversation on my wife. And it did not go as well as I thought it was going to go. I'm thinking I have, like, I'm hot shit. I'm hot shit. I got, like, you know, this little bit of intel training. I'm like, oh, I can frame it. Yeah. And, you know, I can be friendly, fair, and final. Right. Which is,

you know, the terminology you run a source through termination meeting. As it turns out, there are limitations to this training you've received. Very much limitations as frustrating I've received Not as cool as I thought I fucking was. Which one should be able to look at the CIA divorce rates

And figure that out. Yeah, exactly. Right? Like, there's a whole body of evidence there. That says some things cannot be solved through trade craft. Yeah, exactly. Clever conversationalism. And all these tools and emotional intelligence is a limit for sure.

But she got on a plane the next day, I never saw her again. Wow, man. Yeah, man. And it was like, we were together for, I think, in total, like, 12 years between marriage and dating. What did that feel like, man, that like, you're living your truth, but at the same time, I mean, there is very, like, real personal consequences. Well, in the classic day fielding sense is like, you know, at the time was, I'm just going to continue on. Burry myself and work. Barry myself and work. And so they were like, hey, we want you to, and they're like, we want you to finish all your human training this year. yeah, fuck yeah, let me finish I got nothing else to look forward to now, right? And so, you know, I take off for spy school

but all this shit is with me. Sure. All this shit is with me. And every time, you know, we turn in all our phones, you turn in your wallet, you get swapped out. And, you know, one of the gatekeepers that I talk about in the book, he was a former SF guy.

And it was wicked funny because I think he picked my, like, fake name. and like they kind of do it based on personality and I was Jackie Ray Biggs so I like completely fucking leaned into that yeah right Jackie Ray Biggs so I'd leave I'd become Jackie Ray Biggs and I'd come back and I'd have some serious fucking day fielding problems

which were like this you know more bad more bad news for my lawyers right I was getting you know wanted alimony wanted all his shit and you know I would always I'd be out in the road I'm doing these long ass surveillance balance detection routes. And I'm remembering all my turns, all my cover stops, the time hacks, I need to be there.

You know, so time hacks is like, you know, time on target that you need to be there. And meanwhile, remembering the combo plan for my source and then showing, you know, showing up and being excited to see them. And I'm like in this car and I'm just fucking like, all these things are on repeat in my head. Yeah. You know, this negative internal dialogue that just, it's like, I'm never going to win. And that was the biggest mistake that I made in the start of this was that I looked at, you know, depending on the outcome of the divorce was me as winning or losing. Right. And, you know, to add insult to injury was a lot of my, you know, you like to say war money, you make on deployments and stuff.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I paid off a lot of her debt, sure, student loans and stuff like that. So. Out of curiosity, I don't know if you know this, but did she get married within like two years and have kids? I have no idea. Yeah. I have no I

I feel as though I mean first The things that we do You know People say thank you for your service But things that we do Are very selfish Like we are living the dream

Like we We are living The lives that we Imagine to small kids Right The lives that they make movies about And when we're married And we're doing that

I think we forget That we're leaving somebody You know Somebody got married to be in a partnership. Yes. And all of a sudden, they're at home alone.

I mean, they've got their own life, obviously, and job and whatever they're doing. But they also are single, but married. And we're out there, like,

living the dream. Living the dream, baby. And we leave a lot of people behind, I think, when we do that. And, you know, I'll agree to that,

you know, and there is stress on both ends. Yeah. of the spectrum, you know. But, you know, there wasn't any lack of pining for each other. Yeah. You know, when I was out there. Yeah.

It wasn't like I was just like, I'm on the OBA. Yeah. I'm with the boys. I can't talk to you. Yeah. I was like always making an effort. Yeah. Always making an effort, you know.

And no matter what, like I had any downtime. I'd spend it talking to her. And this is the great thing about living in the age we live in. Right. Is that we have. Skype and Skype and all these other things, FaceTime, et cetera. So there was no lack of effort on my behalf.

have, but it was, I mean, for me, it felt as though I just signed six more years in the Army because you thought. Because I thought we were going to have more stability. Yeah. I was going to be home a lot more. Yeah. And, you know, it would be great for us. Yeah.

But what I ended up starting to see was I saw the person that I wasn't around anymore. Right. You know, when I was on deployment and stuff like that. And really it was. Right. She had a vision for her life that was different than a vision that I had for us together. Right. You know, she had her version.

I had my version. It just wasn't going to work out. Right. And so, and these are things that we all deal with. Yeah. You know, and the high divorce rate within special operations, high divorce rate within, you know, television community, CIA, you know, for example, and stuff like that. And as, as you're going through this training, uh, that. I mean, there comes another woman into the picture.

And as we were talking about a little bit earlier, some of your friends read the book and they're like, really, Dave? Like, what the fuck, man? And I thought the same thing as I was reading your book. I'm like, dude, really? But then as I think about it a little bit more, I'm like, I did all the same things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, I know. It's a fucking, it's a story as old as time. The story is all this time. Like, you get down with that divorce, right? I show up, I'm this hot shit green beret, you know, in this special, you know, sapped Intel unit. And, you know, they find out I'm going, you know,

some of these women find out I'm going for the divorce, and it's like, oh, he's open, he's open season, man. Yeah. Right? And there's just something. I have a very good friend of mine. He was a very senior sergeant major in special forces. Love the dude to death.

And he was like, he said to me after he read the book, He's like, Dave, I don't fucking get it what it is with, you know, run-of-the-mill, female intel officers and loving S-F guys. But this is the quintessential story, right? I think I know what it is. Yeah, yeah. And it's also, like, it's not like there aren't any cautionary tales out there for us to learn from. It's just that this time it'll be different. This time will be different.

And to your point, I had friends going, really, Dave? And so for the audience, I'm not going to spoil too much of the book for you, but, you know, I end up in this spicy relationship. Very spicy. Very spicy relationship. You know, the individual, you know, I feel like it's a tale as old as time, like I said earlier, but it's especially true to, you know, a Boston white kid, white kid from Boston, you know, with a Latina. Yes. Right? Ben Affleck needs to read this fucking book.

Yeah. Right? Like 100%. Yeah. Like that's, that's, I mean, if a man knows, it's that dude, right? You know? If you've never seen a telenovela, you have no idea what you're getting in. No, I'm just kidding.

I never did. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but it was like, I had a buddy in mine. He sent a screenshot from the book. He's like, really, Dave, three divorces? And you didn't. You said you were going to be the one that changed at all? Yeah. And it was like, yeah, I'm a fucking, you know, Intel fucking, you know, master conversationalist,

EQ master, you know, ninjitsu. right right it's like no no I was not ready for that yeah you know what three divorces before 30 there's something going on yeah and you know what it's just I can fix her yeah it's a tail told but you know also too is like you know me at that time is like I look at myself who I you know like in that time I was in a fucking rush yeah you know my wife didn't want to have kids right and you know um in in the madness of this relationship that it was so it's like, we'll just kind of walk, you know, everyone through this, but like, it was a secret relationship.

It had to be, you know? Because she was technically your supervisor. Yeah, exactly. And it's not, you know, that's kind of not, not kosher, not kosher in a lot of circles. And, you know, and, you know, it's like, it's not like it was like my ODA team here. You know what I mean? It's not like they're going to, you know, it was more of like an administrative role than anything else.

And so it was like, and there was a lot of promises made. But here was the thing is that it was kind of like a cat and mouse game. And like I never been in a situation where I had like, you know, an attractive female like interested in me. And you know what I mean? Like trying to chase me. It was always me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I think of like how it was the relationship I had in my wife.

I chased her. You know what I mean? And so to be in this like different scenario, I was like, oh, this is really cool. This is unique. And so like there was. But the thing about it is that. it wasn't good for her. It wasn't good for me.

The whole thing was based on lust, you know? Yeah, yeah. And so, but it didn't help that I worked in a fucking unit with a bunch of other spies. Yeah, right? And so it's like, eventually someone's going to get, you know, to put it all together. You talk about this like triple life that you're living at this point that like

people are finding out about this relationship and you're running these like disinfo ops you brought you brought in what was it was like one of your friends from high school or something like that I brought in it was she was one of my close friends from Norwich it was her sister I brought her in so

so basically the bottom line you know the whole thing with the story is one of the guys of the unit found out I was going through a divorce and I came back from all my spy training like December of 2019 and I was like wiped out

exhausted, but haven't been laid in a very long time. And so I was like, he had a place in Baltimore. And he was getting ready to go to FTC. So I was like, all right, hey, he wanted me to live there, watch the house. You know, after all, it's Baltimore, right? It's like not, you know, don't leave anything in your car, right? You know what I mean? Like it's, you know, street smarts, you know, 100%, you know, head on a swivel,

getting in and out of your car, walking through your door type of shit, right? And even though it was in a nice neighborhood in Baltimore, the crime affects everybody there, right? So he's like, yeah, you can live here and then be cool. And I was like, all right, sweet. And so I am, but he ends up, like, being suspect of this relationship. Kind of sus. So he's got, like, the nanny cams up in his place to see what you're doing?

Yeah, exactly. But, like, I'd always detach the cameras. It's also some, you know, it's some Karen shit. man why do you care exactly like why are you going to yuck up my um yeah my mojo why are you gonna yuck up my yum man got a good thing going you know

I just feel like if that was some shit that happened in group the sergeant majors would pat me on the back it's like good job yeah you're a fucking idiot you have to work on the B team for a couple months now you know what it would have been fucking that's exactly how it would go down and it would have been like over with right you know what I mean

and they would have like you know the slap on the wrist type of thing but like you know the stakes are high so obviously you know i you know for me it was like i could do this but so i throw this straightforward deception off right i fly out one of my friends sisters to to play as her as your girlfriend as my girlfriend gabriela and you know the the story that i gave my roommate was that she was a a congressional staffer which are a dime a fucking does it in bc right And so fits a bill, you know, easy cover story. But it turns out that this, you know, my friend's sister actually did work.

She worked for Scott Brown when he was a senator from Massachusetts. So she could fake the phone. Speak the talk. Yeah. Speak the talk, everything else. And so she lands at BWI. You know, I fly her out. Now, does she know what her, she knows her cover for status, cover for action coming in?

So my friend informed her what was going on. and she's like, I'm in. I'm like, I'm in. And so she's like, I'll do whatever it takes to help out Dave, right? You know what I mean? That is the coolest. Yeah.

And so she, and like, you know, true to like real life training and everything else, treat your source as well. I fly her business class. I pick her up from, I pick her up from BWI. And I'm going fucking full send

with this, you know, case officer shit. And this is, this is the real, this is like the adult version. of my girlfriend goes to another school, right? It's like... Yeah, she's in another high school.

You wouldn't know her. You wouldn't know her. You wouldn't know her. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, it really is. So I pick her up. I take her up for a long launch, and I train her cover.

I give her cover. I, you know, I have, like, printouts of what her apartment looks like, you know? And we go, we go full fucking send on this, man. I mean, because I'm up against... Facebook. Facebook in a relationship? No, no.

Facebook, not in a relationship. Don't even have Facebook. Okay, okay, sorry. So it was like, no announcements on that. Yeah, yeah. No one in that community, I think, has Facebook. At least we'll admit it. But like, we, I'm training her on cover, right?

I'm giving her, you know, this is where we met. These are the friends that we hung out with, right? And I was like, you know, I was out with some other G.B buddies in D.C., right? Which was accurate. You know, I hung out with some other, you know, Green Beret friends that were, stationed in the area and stuff like that. And we met at Dirty Water, which was a Boston base bar.

I don't know if it's still there, but it was on like, I forget the street, but train her on all these things. And so, you know, Richard, you know,

my roommate, fresh out of the farm, fresh out of that fucking farm, right? And he's like a grilling her. Yeah. We go to the kitchen and he's like, it's like a cover challenge.

Yeah. Straight up fucking cover challenge. Yeah. And, you know, he starts with the light, for, oh, where'd you guys meet, right? Yeah. You know, like really...

What did you eat? Yeah. Yeah. And type of thing. And he's like, oh, you live, where the hell is she said? Whatever we said where she lived? It was, uh, Easter Market. You know, like, one, boozy apartment complexes are Eastern Market. And he's like, oh, really? Like, legit. Was like, describe your place to me. Right. Right. And I was like, I'm sitting there in the fucking kitchen. I'm like, bro, what are you?

You don't think I don't know what's going on right now? Right. And she just is like, uh, okay. but she executes beautifully. Yeah. And so, like, he's frustrated, you know, with, like, you know, he's frustrated with the whole thing, like, it's not working. And so we leave. And then, you know, and I remember she was like, he's a fucking asshole. Right.

And she's like, you were not fucking kidding. And so I remember we went out and, you know, you got to live the cover, right? So it took her out, went out to eat and stuff like that. And, you know, meanwhile. you know, my Gabriella, right? The woman I'm seeing in the book, right? You know, a woman I'm seeing at the time.

She's like, you know, you're cheating on me. She's not having. Yeah. Right? You know, and the other thing, she got like super drunk

and was like, and was like, listen, I'm sleeping on the fucking floor in here. All right. Like, she gets a bed. I'm sleeping on the floor.

It's done. It worked. Done story. But it doesn't end there. Yeah. After that, it was the, Like the cover is complete.

And then she, what did she text your sergeant major? Like a picture of the two of you together, something like that? Yes. Yeah. It was the squadron first sergeant, I think. Right. And I was like, oh, Jesus, fuck. Like at a concert.

And it was supposed to be, it was supposed to be like a concert for the victory. Like, we got through this. You know, I'm going to be out from under her, you know, per view. Now I'm in the operational squadron, not the training squadron. And it's like, said, done, complete. plan worked perfectly and I remember in the moment I was like

I freaked out I was like fuck man this costs me so much goddamn money to make this like off happen right it's all like I'm dipping into off on to use it

this is all fucking deep fieldings paycheck right right right right right you know you know meanwhile my divorce isn't finalized so it's like

you spent $700 on what you know what I mean like and so and and I remember real quickly I you know I text him back and I was like, oh, hey man, you know, I ran in a so-and-so, you know, at this concert.

I was with another chick. Is it going to be cool? And he was like, oh, yeah, man, you're fine. She likes you. Don't worry about it. You know, because, you know, I was like trying to play like, play a car, but I was really, you know, with her. But he eventually figured it out, you know, because of the tubware in the fridge. And I'm not going to spoil it too much for the audience with the book, but I'm taking it through it.

But more importantly, other than the whole. clarity of this situation was like the mental dialogue that was going on yeah you know because for me it was like the stress of that the stress you know stress of the divorce still was still was there right right um the you know gabriela you know my ex-girlfriend you know obviously now but like very intense human being you know a a version of relationship thing i've never experienced before was very ill prepared for let me tell you that and no amount of intelligence training is going to prepare you for fucking that, right? You know? And, and so I end up, um, I remember, you know, they're like, I'm still dealing with my divorce, right? And

it's still not going away. You had to pay a substantial dowry to escape, uh, bad marriage that you don't want to be in. Exactly. And so like, I literally, you know, jump through all these hoops, jump through all these hoops to, you know, thank you, thank you. Jump through all these hoops to just make this relationship work, right? Out of love, right? Right. Which was really just a form of lust. Well, I mean, lust feels exactly the same as love for two years.

Like, you can't tell the two apart. And thank you for that because, you know, I would have never known, you know? I would have never known. And, like, you know, for me, I'm like, this is the one, right? you know, wants to have my kids, all this other stuff, right? So it's like intensely tense, genuine, you know, intensely tense relationship, but this divorce is going on the background. Yeah.

And it's pressuring me and everything else. And so she did not know. At this point, I learned I'm not going to tell her about any issues cover-wise with the relationship, right? The figuring out with the tub-aware and shit like that. So it was like after Labor Day weekend, I get a little. a call from the squad you know the the unit sergeant major they pull me in the office and they're like hey we need you go to fucking iraq we need you go to iraq in syrian 30 days and i was like huh like you know i had plans with this woman right you know i was slated to go the next year you know

when you when you're working in these units you know you're they take your bog dwells bog dwells bog dwell time is basically like you know amount of time deployed amount of time of training you know and you know they manage it properly but they were like they weren't wanted to send me right away because they wanted to send the green beret downrange and right there was an entire fucking class of people ahead of me that graduated that haven't even been operational yet right and I was kind of like but I had the pressure of this relationship and I said you know in in this split seconds you know and I had the divorce still on my thing I still had to deal with the divorce and I look at him and I said I was like hey I was like I'll go but I should

be your last option. I was like, I have a divorce, I have a court date, and if I miss this court date, I am fucked, right? And, you know, I explain it to it. And Sergeant Major wasn't a very experienced guy, you know, operationally-wise. But also, too, it's like you would think in this unit of spies, you'd have a higher level of EQ, emotional intelligence among everybody else.

And he was just like, I have a drug. divorce. It's not that bad. Right? And I'm kind of like, uh, you don't really know all the, you know, details of it, right? It doesn't mean, and everybody goes through shit differently, but, you know, I said, I was like, you know, I'll go, but I'll be the last choice. And then, you know, my, my girlfriend at the time loses her fucking mind, right? Because she's in the leadership circle. She hears all the shit. And, you know, like, yeah, like she heard basically, he said yes, right? And, and don't get me wrong is that. Green berets are never going to fucking say no to its point.

Right, right. I would never dishonor myself. You know what I mean? And the mission is too important. The mission is too fucking important. Right. But also, though, some time and distance between me and her to give some space to the snoops. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Also not a bad option. Yeah. But I remember she was fighting with me. and you know I never really was one to fight with a significant other and I just wasn't fucking equipped to do that

I didn't have the the equipment and dynamic to do it and there was a lot of gaslighting a lot of shit like that you know stuff I never experienced before and I just didn't know how to deal with it and I remember I was in the literal fucking depths of my spare

on my I moved out of the apartment of Baltimore I moved to D.C. I go there right I go to D.C. to be close to her and I just like, she hates me. I'm fucking deploying and I still don't have a finalized divorce. I am literally fucked. Yeah.

Right. And there was those internal dialogues from when I was in spy school of feeling like not being able to win. Right. Absolutely fucking hopeless. Can't win. No one's in my corner. Yeah. And not even her, not even the woman I love.

Right. and it was like soul crushing because at this point I've made so many sacrifices for others you know in my mind you know took the job for my ex-wife to start a family didn't work she didn't want to have a family okay cool see you later right now I'm with this woman right making only sacrifices for and again doesn't appreciate them and stuff like that so I remember um a conversation with my mother got me up off the floor and I called my lawyer I was like I don't fucking Carol's just settle. And it cost me 90,000 grand.

All my goddamn money. Yeah. And then about two weeks later, I shut up to Iraq. Ready to fucking go. Yeah. Broke. Broke is a joke. I was still with Gabriella at the time.

And it was like, but at this point, how much the back and forth of the relationship was, I was very insecure about it. You know what I mean? it wasn't like it wasn't a place of stability yeah it wasn't a place of stability but like you know we talk about like a gb move here i would imagine you know but before i left for that deployment we lost somebody you know on that deployment before and there was a chance i could die um but you know for me like you know guys like us were like you know risk we're okay with a high amount of danger, you know? When it's your time, it's your time. And that's kind of like an old saying,

like you don't think about the dangers. You just say, hey, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. It's my time. It's my time. Right? And you think about this is how I'm going to act in this moment, like all those operator traits. And, but she said to me before I left, she would have my kids if anything happened to me. So he went to a sperm bank and I made a donation in her name. So this is the status of that relationship when I leave Iraq. Right. Right for Iraq. Right. And it was

like... It's a mind fuck. It's a total mind fuck. Yeah. Right. And so you know, I'm in Iraq and you know, I'm working with a task force that our sole job is to kill capture ISIS and Al Qaeda leadership. And

you know, my job was to produce intelligence to make that shit happen. Right. And And it was awesome. We had a good fucking time, man. Tell us about that. You want to talk about what we talked about earlier, a bunch of fucking goddamn criminals. You know, like, just hood rats doing hood rat shit, man.

And like, that was it. I get off the plane. They hand me $400,000 cash. They say, spend this. How do you need? Just get shit done. And I was like, what? Right?

I was like, holy shit. I'm going to cutter. I'll see you guys in a while. Yeah. Yeah, exactly, right? And, you know, and it was like, you know, for the first time of my career, I was like, I'm in the varsity league now. Yeah.

You know, going after Abu Sayyaf, like, granted, important. Working with the Filipinos and their security, important. But like you said earlier, is that I grew up in a period of GWAT where all the fight that mattered was in Afghanistan or Iraq. Right. And if you didn't do that, then, you know, you didn't really earn your stuff. chops, sort of speak. So, you know, for me, it was like, fucking finally, I get to be unleashed. Yeah. Right. You know, and I was like, just, you know, not only I was dealing with like all

these emotions, but I was going to fucking take it out on the goddamn enemy, right? You know? Yeah. And so, you know, I hit the ground running. Hit the fucking ground running. And, um, 18 hour work days, longer than that, sometimes rolling from one op, three hours of sleep, rolling into a second off. it didn't matter everything that we were doing you know when you work in counterterrorism human intelligence operations or just counterterrorism intelligence operations

you have to move at the speed of counterterrorism yeah it's fucking relentless man you don't know how long this guy is going to hang out at this location for right and we either either AGM that motherfucker with the 114 or we send out a raid force right or a combination of both

who knows gun run whatever right And so it was, you know, for me, it was exhilarating. But, you know, when I, it was also coming from first group, the boogiest deployment I've ever fucking had. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

I had my own chew, which is like a little, like they basically take a half a shipping container, cut in a half, put an air conditioning unit and a bed. And I was like, this is sick. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And didn't have to worry about it. dengue and malaria, you know, three hots, it was like three hots in a

cot, man, and in a lot of the times in most situations I was in the Southeast Asia, it was like, you got to figure out food on your own. You're out on a, out in the local, you know, figuring it out. And, you know, the fact I had like three hots and a cot and, you know, we were going out, you know,

outside doing clandestine operations, you know, here, there, and everywhere. But like, um, the fact I had that, like, stability allowed me to really focus on just work. Whereas, like, being on an operational detachment alpha SF team in Southeast Asia, you've got to do all that shit on your own. Yeah. You know, logistics, fucking everything, man, is on the team, on the ODA.

And a lot of that, they take all that burden off of you, so you just focus on your job. Did you miss that, though? Did you miss, like, being your own sort of internal intelligence, you know, creating the entire intel cycle, the entire FF3-E80? Like, having a ownership, right, yeah. all that for you? Did you miss that at all? I definitely did. And the fact that I had so much experience with it showing up there, and it was

like understanding how Intel drives ops and knowing that. And I was kind of extra dangerous in that in that regard. I think of like, I don't want to get too far ahead of some of these stories, but you know, I think about like

the, you know, the Christmas Day raid we were trying to do. And, you know, I was tracking this ISIS guy. and helping this SF team track this ISIS guy. And, you know, the guy met Trigger, right? So, which was like basically we had a BDL, you know, two forms of intelligence disciplines, confirming that this guy was at this location. And, you know, I'm in my depths of despair, right, at this point.

And, you know, for me, I just want to get my gun on. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And get out the door. Yeah. And, and fucking just do a fucking. raid, right, and just let

go of everything, right? And the team I was working with, I go, I call over there, I'm like, hey man, and at this point, my reputation over there, every time I showed up, shit would start spitting up. And it was like, I was

doing my own ops, and, you know, one of the characters in the book, Armin, who I love dearly, you know, he was over there too, doing ops, and I would support his ops, he'd support my operation sometimes. You know, either security, wingman, you know, type of stuff like that. They'd be running point on, you know,

source operations, it's their case, but then, like, I'm doing the surveillance detection around for him. You know, he's in the back of the car, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, or whatever, right? And so, um, but I get this team all spun up and I'm like, hey, how about this? Christmas Day raid. No one's expecting us on Christmas.

George Washington crossed the Delaware to kill the British on Christmas. We're going to cross Iraq. to kill ISIS, right? And you had guys that were like, yeah, fuck yeah. Right, like, let's fucking go, dude, right? And, you know, we had, it was just some

ISIS shithead, right? And it was like, and I got everybody riled up and we were going to like, you know, roll in with a 30 man raid force on like, you know, two or three guys and it didn't stand a fucking chance. Right. And so, and, you know, the concept of operations goes up and they're like, all right, you know, this is why, you know,

the response was, this is why I love doing this job because I work with fine gentlemen like you, but for Jesus Christ, guys, call your fucking wives, it's Christmas. Like, you know what I mean? You're not going out. And we're like, oh, shit. You know, but the backstory to that,

and I'm sure you've got a question for that, you know. Well, I mean, if there's something else you wanted to elaborate on, I want to, I mean, there's the big, the big Mish that comes up. But before that, I think, you know, you have your, brush with a very dark

place that I mean I think we should talk about because that's really the topic of your book how that culminate I mean you know quite frankly like you came within a cunt here right basically yeah and so it's so let me build up to that

and thank you for bringing me back there you know when you have a TBI you're like all over the fucking place you know what I mean and everybody needs to have a jack in their pocket for those times honestly yeah prod me. I will provide that rule.

Yeah. Thank you. So, you know, we're rolling into Christmas at this point. The relationship with Gabriella is like, I feel like I'm on ice, right? You know, a lot of the love that I'm trying to give, the same things that I did with my ex-wife, right? All these things just simply wasn't being reciprocated. Yeah. And so for me, I'm like, you know, not only I was a kicked puppy going into this deployment, Right.

But it was like all those internal, like, raw internal dialogues of like, fuck, she's going to fucking, I know she's going to break up on me. Right. I know. Right. And like, I made all these sacrifices, you know. And it's like I keep saying to myself like I can't fucking win. You know, I just want to fucking have a family. I want to do this.

I'm going to fucking rush, man. Right. Because it didn't work out with my ex-wife. Right. So, all these issues, these internal dialogues, like, especially the thing I can't win in that, a lot of self-hate, what did I do wrong? What could I have done better? How could I have been a more... What am I doing wrong?

What am I doing wrong? Yeah. I never looked at the other way. I constantly was looking internally to be like, how did I fuck up, right? and and so it's like about a week and a half, two weeks before Christmas, I think. She gives me, she calls me and she's out shopping somewhere. And not reciprocating text messages, not reciprocating, you know, things like that. Like, you know, my, my, you know, my little tiny apartment.

Your dumpster housing container. Dumpster housing container. The Rich Carlton, I would say, of, of, uh, department. deployments, right? The Ritzkral of deployments for me. You know, I had pictures of her. You know, it was just her, us, right? Guns, grenades, you know, radios, you know, fucking mag stacked high shit like that, my kit, everything else, right? And, um, and that was, that was my purpose. That was my purpose on that deployment. And I remember she calls me. She says, I don't see where this, where we're going to be. I don't see where this is going. Which is so, which is so insane because you're on a deployment. Your relationship has definitely,

has made zero movement forward or backwards while you're on deployment. But she's in her head, like she's creating this whole thing. Thing. I do not even know. Yeah. I don't, I don't even really fully understand it.

But the thing that fucking killed me. Yeah. Was that I could hear Chris. music in the background. It was like, you know, you could call me, you know, from your apartment. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah.

But it was like done out in public. Talk to you later. Yeah. And so I go, you know, green berets are never armed sisters away from their weapon. Fucking fact. Yeah. And, you know, I had my, you know, my pistol was right there in my nightstand. Yeah.

and here I am all these internal dialogues overwhelming me overwhelming me at once I can't win no one will love me how the fuck am I no one's going to take me

I just wanted a family all I wanted to do is be happy I did everything right in my life I did right by this I did right by that and then there was a whisper just fucking ended

just fucking ended dude you're never going to win you're never going to win right and I sat there I don't know how long I sat there but I stared at my pistol and I thought

how I was going to do it I didn't think about anything else right and you know this isn't in the book right but I don't know what happened there was a fucking

presence in that room though whether it was my grandfather you know higher power jesus god whatever but i could feel it i could feel that and it was like and i remember i said of myself in that moment i felt that presence and i was crying and i said all i have is the mission all i have is the fucking mission dude that's all i have now and I remember I pushed my pistol away and I said, I have to go to the fucking gym. I have to go to the fucking gym. I have to go to the fucking gym. And I went to the little gym that they had for, Sarah.

And I think it was like probably three, four o'clock in the morning. And I proceeded to fucking slay myself till Chow opened up at 7.30 for breakfast, which I never made because I was always sleeping until noon, you know, because I was up all night. Isn't it interesting, too, that you're operating at such a high level, you know, professionally, you know, the pinnacle of your military career really while your personal life is just a disaster? Complete and utter fucking disaster.

And the thing about being in the military is that you're always in a location, you're away from things that make you strong. You're away from your family. You're away from familiar locations. You're always forced to make new friends. You're always forced to make these new relationships every couple of years at EPCS, et cetera, right? I was away from the strength of the ODA. Right. Because I know if I was going through this shit on my ODA back in Oki, fucking Ickymo, love you, brother.

And my buddy Johnny would have made me sleep in their fucking basement and bang paychecks away to crawl myself out of financial ruin. Yeah. And I also would have had a Sargent Major that would have been like, hey man, listen, I've been through this shit. You're going to be fine. But here's what we're going to do for you. You know what I mean? Because every sergeant major has been through this.

Literally. Literally. You know, I mean, at least want divorce. I think, honestly, I think it's one of the requirements to becoming a sergeant major. If not, it should be. Yeah. Definitely. Definitely.

It makes you, it makes you way more personable. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it's a humbling fucking experience. But that's the thing is that, and because even though you were around solid dudes, who were bros, they weren't, they weren't your bros. They, you know, they were guys who you got along with and guys who had the same mentality, but they weren't guys that you were comfortable feeling vulnerable with, guys who would be like,

you know, maybe teach you about it or give you some shit about it, but also in a very loving way and a very like, you know. But yeah, but at that time, it's like you, the mission is priority. Right. Right. Right. Right. So, um, and this is where we get into the.

the sweet sweet mish the big mish the big mish and so i'm in the death of my despair right i go to breakfast i am not going back to my room and i just throw myself into fucking work right quintessentially running for myself again right right there is real you're on a deployment there's nothing you can do the mission is all i have go fucking all in dude and and that and that and that can become very pure in its own way that if you just focus on the mission everything else can disappear like it doesn't get better it does not but but it can you can like put it off

for a while and that's exactly what it is and we'll kind of get in that later but like you know the the mission I walk in you know people wake up around like 10 or 12 right and people floating into our little tiny office that is just you know this little dentist spies doing

doing doing the work that we were doing and um they're like hey Dave you know come on in right I'm talking to one of the senior leaders and he's like I need you to drop everything what you're fucking doing I was like what I'm like

you know I'm working on strategic shit I'm working on you know the shit for you know counterterrorism stuff targeting stuff yeah I'm like fucking all over the map man I was like falling that nicest target for that fucking you know those guys and you know doing you know million irons in the fire like I talked about earlier earlier in the show right

and um and I was like well what the fuck you want me to do what am I doing He's like, trust me, dude, you want to work on this. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. Now at this point, we didn't even talk about this, but I had a tiny piece of Baghdadi, very, very, very small piece. All the credit goes to the fucking guys that did the raid

and the people that found him. All I really was like a second set of eyes, you know, OPE, operational preparation environment, you know, type of shit. That was it. But people were like, oh, wow, you know, the people I was working with like, he worked on bad daddy and I was like I didn't really you know what I mean like yeah all right you know I wasn't a dude that was like did the fucking raid you know what I mean like I wasn't the dog that

that tried to bite his ass yeah you know he deserves all fucking credit you know what I'm saying and but you know so I was like you know I had you know I was doing some really impactful work intelligence wise um not just on the CT side but strategic side too and so I ended up um I was kind of a trusted agent, you know, and all, having a long tab goes along fucking way, dude, right? You know what I mean? So it's, um, we all think the same. GVs, we think alike, right? Green Berets think alike.

And, um, he's like, trust me, you want to work on this, you know, and, you know, I did my piece with it and, you know, it was a team of three of us. And so every day for like two fucking weeks or a week and a half, whatever it was, it was getting worse. Like we, I would, you know, we would get some intel in, right? Send it out. And like 45, you know, never we get like a reply back like that. I'm like half hour, 45 minutes later, they're like, hey, we want more of this. I'm like, what the fuck? Right. And I look at, I look at my dude, I can't even say his name. But I was like, bro, what the fuck is this? You know what I mean? What are we doing here? Right, because you haven't really been told what the op is. Haven't been told what the op is.

Are you starting to get a clue from what like the PIRs are that are coming in? No, not at all. Really? It was very limited. The fucking J2, brilliant, mastermind genius, whoever the fuck that guy is, right? You know what I mean? But, and don't get me wrong, there was probably multiple elements that work this thing. Yeah, I have no idea to it.

Yeah, yeah. Right? And so, um, so anyways, like, I'm in the depths of my despair and I'm just fucking, all right, fuck it. I'm going all in on this. And, you know, responding to everything, respond to every task and it comes back. You know, working with my buddy, you know, working with the two other dudes. All right, hey, you know, we should consider this. You consider that, you know, human intelligence-wise, right, all these things.

And Intel comes in, goes up. Get, you know, comes right back. Fuck, all right. We've got to retask, right? You know, it's very rapid pace. And it was expensive, too. It was expensive, a little expensive off. So, I think it was the night of January 2nd, 2020.

I'm fucking exhausted. Not only I'm dealing with having just fucking almost killed myself a little while ago, but, you know, an uncomfortable relationship with my now pistol, all these fucking things. I don't even care. I just want sleep. You know, I'm about three and a half, four months into this deployment at this point. typically guys are rotating back on four but I'm on a full six right I'm on a full six which at that fucking pace of operations it it builds up you know the allostatic there's something in

science called allostatic load like you're fucking you're capped out yeah and you know these mad scientists have figured out that like four months is the magic number but I'm still on I'm on a six month pump yeah and so it was hard because you'd have like a change of leadership and they have like this new fire. Right. And I'm like, oh, fucking time. All right, whatever, dude. I'm going to go collect Intel and we're going to kill this prick.

Right. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you know, and, but so anyways, I'm, I'm bit, we're in this little, or little dentist spies and I'm like, I'm going to bed. Fuck you. I don't care what's going on tonight. But all the ISR birds are at BIAP, you know, Baghdad International Airport. And so, like, I've been dev in this target for fucking a week and a half, two weeks.

you know, two other dudes, right? And who knows, slew of others that I don't know about that worked on this. And so I'm like, oh, well, something's going to happen, but I'm like, nothing's fucking happening. No way, nothing's happened. Nothing's happening this far. I'm going to bed. And my buddy's like, no, you're fucking staying awake for this. You're staying awake.

And he pulls out one of those, like, shitty metal chairs. He sets it down right in the middle of our, you know, our little talk. And, you know, we have ISR on the big screens and shit. he's like sit the fuck down and so we're sitting there and I'm watching it and so it's like a pred feed it's a pred feed right and I'm watching it and

plane pulls up and just like we thought on buy app on buy app right plane pulls up and just like we thought planned and all this other stuff dude gets off black SUVs come up gets in the SUV right guy takes off

starts going down Route Irish which is you know very familiar with a lot of people and then the fucking bird locks on and fires an AGM and then

you know Target wrecked and my buddy goes slaps me on the back and goes congratulations you just bagged Qasem Solomani

and we were like ah like we were like holy fuck right like fucking throwing shit, right? Like, screaming, hooting, hollering, like, total fucking animals. Just a bunch of

SF guys, like, holy shit, we just bag the super fucking bowl of targets. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And that's, that's probably a more significant target than bin Laden and Baghdaddy put together. Absolutely. I mean, you think of fucking anybody that's in this country right now, that's an Iraq vet that's missing a limb, it is because of him. Yeah. You think about the sheer amount of fucking suffering that, like, has been put through. by are Iraq vets early in the war, right? You know, quadruple amphithees, stuff like that. That was him in Cuds Force and all those assholes.

Bringing all the EFPs into country, you know, defeating our armor. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah, they were the madness of the science behind all that. Yep. And they were the impetus. He was behind all that. Yep. And the, you know, in the buildup of that strike, we were, you know, the embassy was under imminent attack.

We thought the embassy was going to get Benghazied again. And we were producing information, you know, for retaliatory strikes. We were producing information to like... The force pro side of it. All the force pro shit like that. We were talking people down there. You know, it was like, you know, jokingly, I was talking to a buddy of mine who was working in security down there.

You know, there was like a loose warno that went out. It was like, if you're a Ranger or 18th series, you've got to be on standby and we're like, holy fuck. Yeah. But like, we were like, oh, shit. man like this stack is not deep as we need a man with a very special set of qualifications and it was fucking funny because i was talking to my buddy that was down there and uh you know we have a whole gun locker or shit 320s two four nine and i'm like and i'm like hey man like so what do you want me to bring i'm like i got a 249 he's like yep bring that right and i'm like i'm putting the la 5 on this

you know optics and everything else but obviously it never happened but the the all the intelligence was indicating that they were going to do some shit, right? And instead you got the ballistic missile attack. But killing him, killing Soleimani,

was the thing I believe that stopped all that shit from happening. Because here's what I thought was going to happen. I don't fucking know shit, right? I don't know what, General McKenzie came out with, he was a CENTCOM commander at the time. He came out with an article in the Atlantic

about, you know, the decision-making process. It was really funny because we're fucking, it's like chaos every day. And for General McKenzie, it was like a fucking Friday afternoon. Right. You know what I mean? He like,

he like went and did like a tip off at some like NCAA football game. Right, right, yeah. And then like, he did the opening pitch or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, meanwhile, we're like, we're over there. We're like, holy shit.

Like, this is fucking madness. What's going on? And, um, but, you know, the stakes were fucking high. Yeah. But that was the response to killing the contractor on K1.

Yeah, yeah. Which was, you know, not only the appropriate response, but also all the shit that was going on behind the fucking scenes that didn't make, that didn't make the, you know,

level. And I think you're right, too, when you point out that, you know, Soleimani was irreplaceable. Oh, yeah. He was like the Bill Donovan of, you know,

Iranian Special Ops. Yeah, he was one of those rare cases where talent and ability found its place. No one else could quite do what he does. And I think that's true to this

death. Absolutely. I mean, I think as a case study, if I was teaching the 18 Alpha course, which is the Special Forces Officer course, I would teach him as probably one of the greatest Special Forces officers at the time. Just objectively of what he could do. Yeah. Yeah. Is

he a fucking tyrant? Did he fuck with us? Sure. Yeah. Did he need to die? Of course, right? Yeah. And so was the right decision? 100%.

Right. You know? Yeah, he was a talented professional. I mean, and able to be, in order to be able to wage a war by proxy, the way he did in Iraq with, you know, with their militias and also with the EFPs and everything else, it is a master class. It really fucking is. It just goes to show is that like When you have Political support, which he had

He had a line to He had to line Like a direct line Yeah, to community. Right? And like He could do no wrong. You know, Cud's force is I think it stands for holy force, right? Yeah. You know, in Persian and so it's you have But it's also a very dangerous

It's very dangerous too. You have ideology rooted in religion they justify all their actions in their religion yes right and you know we justify all our actions in law right and everything we do is legally you know through and through you know vetted by some you know lawyer right right who has done the homework and everything else so it's

there's a difference it's very scary when you have an entire country not you can't say an entire country because you have to say the regime Yeah. Because it isn't the average Iranian person. The average Iranian person in that, in that country is suffering. Right. You know?

And, yeah, sanctions everything else for their wrong ways. And not just from us, but from their own government, like the treatment that they receive from their own government. Like, Iranians, Iranians are not bad people. They're held down by a tyrannical regime. There is a epilogue to this story that I'd like to hear you tell that's in your book about Edith. Absolutely, and this is where it gets even spicier, gang. This is where it gets even spicier. So, you know, when you bring down a big target like that, you've got big problems.

Big problems. In the subsequent weeks, I can't obviously articulate a lot on it because there was a lot of heroics by a lot of dudes that I work closely with. Going after the PMU. Totally making shit happen to keep people safe. right and so Edith unbeknownst to all of us who is Edith before

she's an interpreter okay she's an interpreter and she was working for us I brought her on ops talked you know I brought her with me everybody brought her with me she had massive rapport with all the operators

she was like a cat three interpreter yeah is that the highest level one yeah she had to be read on the TS stuff right yeah and so I think she was that right And so Turns out like January 8th is when they did the ballistic missile attack on us And you know

Me being a good NCO I was going around cheering people up Right and my buddy Armin Who is a former He is a green beret But he was on his fourth pump in OIR Doing this job case officer shit right Good fucking dude

But he like He ended up like Busting his collarbone doing trying to train guys on dirt bikes to do to do a close target yeah yeah and it was like a whole fucking thing with him right but he didn't want to leave right so they sent him to Germany

and then he came back yeah right and he was like he knew it was his last deployment right and he was like I'm fucking sticking this one out guys right and just walking around with this ketamine lollipop arm in a sling yeah arm and that's right but like you know he was sitting outside

the the bunker fully kidded up like snoozing and he was like it's just going to be a bunch of 107 rockets right so 107 rockets the katushes

yeah they fucking they look all cool and intimidating and they go all this they go in all these different directions but actually it was a fucking short it was a medium range

ballistic missile at our base in her beal and then at alasad yeah right and we were lucky that it wasn't a direct hit where we were at. But I remember the boom's hitting and then his ass popping up out of his chair, out of his chair, dive it right into the bunker. And we were kind of quiet for a little bit.

And I remember I was going, I was like, wow, we're going to war, boys. And I looked at one of the new analysts, it was his first to support. woman. I said, you're the first to die, right? And he's like, shit himself. Right. And I mean, it was terrible, but, I mean, it was terrible, but that was the reality that sat in. Yeah. And so, you know, in the subsequent weeks, we were working our fucking asses off. Yeah. Working our fucking asses off. Requirements just pouring in, you know, and then I think at one, there was at one point, I don't know when that fuck this happened, but they pull us in and they go, hey, so, um, you know it was like five or six of us and they were like this is the pilot team for iran right and i'm like oh shit well you know at first i make a joke because dark humor is our number one thing right right but i say you know at least there'll be a book about us right yeah and then and then i said and this is this is the serious thing i say i was like you know they can't take us alive and they were like what the fuck do you mean i was like guys we all had heads full fucking secrets

Yeah. I was like, if we'd go all in on this, right, and we get captured, you think we're going to put the government in a bad position? And they're like, oh, fuck, you're not right. And I was like, you don't think it's going to be, you think they're going to fall at Geneva conventions, dude? Yeah. No. Yeah. Like, no, this is a all or nothing type of thing.

And I remember everybody in that room was like, he's right. He's not wrong. You know what I mean? And it was like one of those things. and, you know, it never happened, obviously, never happened. But what we weren't prepared for was Edith, the Cat 3 interpreter, betraying us. Who has been with you through source meetings, been with you through, you know, document exploitation, been with you through everything. Because she, she al-as.

She was the cultural conduit. Yeah. you know, speaks a language. And it was, we just didn't know how to fucking take it, but we just reacted accordingly. So what did you, how did you find out and how did you find that out? That was not my job. I found out somebody else figured that out.

And I'm very, I can't really talk about it. You know, but they did all their homework. I think The way The way they did it was I can't even remember Because at that time I was just Dealing with the depths of my despair

And you know what I mean Like dealing with the ops How did you find out? I mean long story short Edith was transmitting classified information To the Iranians Yes Yes

It turns out that she was Hezbollah sympathizer Like from a particular area of Lebanon that they missed in her SF 86. So the SF 86 is what you all fill out to get a clearance. You go through all your

Which as of like 2014 China has them all now. Yeah, probably. Yeah. You know, I'm definitely on their yeah, you know, definitely on their targeting list too, you know? Yeah. But like, so you look at you but you know for her

was you know, completely compromising us completely carmarizing the people we were working with. And so the fallout of that is, well, we have a lot of work to do. And then kind of before, you know, the funny thing about being a green beret is we always think about Fallujah, Ramadi, the guys that infilled in Afghanistan, we think about Nurstan, Silver Fucking Star Valley, right? You think about all these guys that have done been in hairy ticks.

Vietnam should even. Mac v. So Tick stands for Was it, time in combat? Troops and contact, thank you. Troops in contact, right? So, you know, you think that all these dudes in hairy-ass Ticks, and, you know, I was, I knew Earl Plumley. You know,

Earl Plumley, or I know Earl Plumley, Medal of Honor recipient, awesome fucking dude. He was in Oki on the tail end of my tour there, right? Talk about a hell of a fucking green beret being right place, right time, right? His story metal honor recipient. So it's like we always think of, you know, these things, like that's the

ultimate danger. That's the ultimate danger. But, you know, for me, I'm like, you know, talking to my buddies locally, I'm like, what are the two requirements that you would have if they assassinated one of our people? Like, if they went after Gina Haspel, for instance, love Gina, right? Great human being, like, you know, leadership-wise, everything else, right? But, like, if they took, Her out, for instance, which would have been the equivalent of Solomani, I think, right? One of the first two questions we would ask, who the fuck did it, and where the fuck are they? Right? And so when I kind of put that in perspective, the Iranians know exactly who did it and where they're...

Yeah, exactly, especially with Edith's... Working right next to you guys, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm kind of like... It's a nightmare. We're fucked, right? So I was like, you know, two weeks, two weeks shy of my six, finishing my six months there, packed in a C-1-3rd, or packed in the C-17, sent fucking home. And it goes back to what we were talking about regarding Soleimani. I mean, she wasn't recruited after the assassination or the attack. She, you know, she was recruited well beforehand.

And I don't know when, but. It had to be. Yeah, had to be. I don't know the details of it. but it's like... They're good at what they do. They're good at what they fucking do. They're equally good at what we do too.

I mean, like, and we think that... I would say this. The Arab world is generally very good at human intelligence because it's the cheapest form of intelligence they can afford. You know what the... Think about it. You know what the Filipinos told me once? They said, you know how you guys Americans have Analyst Notebook

and you have these computer programs that connect all of these different things? like we do that genetically. We just understand it in our mind. Yeah. Yeah. And that was like one of the hardest things of me when I was working there was like, hey, you need to put it on a map.

Yeah. You know. And you should do this, do it this way. Well, I think one of the things, I mean, is a lot of the Arab culture is so conspiracy-oriented to begin with. Yes. Yes, they are. That they'll make connections.

They'll make a lot of connections that aren't correct, but they'll make connections that are correct. Yeah. just because, like, their minds go there. A broken clock is right twice a day. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, the other thing that the Solomon and Ray did was it really, I personally felt when it happened, I felt like it was kind of a master stroke of sort of, like, diplomacy in the sense of just three weeks or two weeks before the Ayatollah had publicly told Trump, you can't do anything about it, you know, about the attack. Yeah. And then, you know, three weeks later, we take out a major figure of theirs, a major, and not just a political figure, not just, you know, a kind of an empty sort of figurehead. But somebody who's very effective.

Operational. Operation. Like Bin Laden was not really operational. Right. Soleimani was operational. Yeah. It was, you know what, and this is what I think about, and I don't really know all the details, but if I was him, I put myself in his shoes.

As an 18 fox, you always put yourself in the enemy shoes. Based on what was happening on the ground with Katab Hasbullah, plotting and planning and scheming to do an attack on the embassy for some sort of win, I'd imagine that he was going to let that happen and then come in and then pull his dogs off. And be like, hey, the Americans, I pulled my dogs off. What are you going to do for me? Right. thing and I think it was like one of those is like quintessential we don't negotiate with terrorists

yeah but but that's it's all like he understood that cat and mouse game he understood the diplomacy he understood all aspects of it he you know studied the shit out of us yeah the dude was a true master yeah and in a very formidable foe that a we we don't own you know it's he did horrible things against us sure but in terms of his effectiveness he should be studied very hard right in in in in in in in in in in in in in depth and not to be because objectively have we you know since wild bill dunovan yeah who do we got since then you know that was like that influential right he was a professional and if we were in that same position geographically we'd be doing exactly the same thing well and

And, you know, and he had years to study. You know, he had years, you know, our actions at Torobora, where they said, hey, back, you know, where the enemy says, hey, back off. And we back off with Muktaxar and Sauter City with J. Shalmati. We'd go in, kick his ass until he'd go, okay, hey, hey, look, I'm a religious figure. Like, peace, you know, peace and blessings.

And we'd back off while he'd build his forces back up. You know, like he had plenty of time to see our response to those situations and how we do give people the space to fuck with us because we want, we want to, like, try to take the peaceful route. Well, here's the thing. It's like it's like centers of gravity. You look at understanding our center of gravity analysis looking at the population, right? And that being the key, the key holder of our success and not only to encounter insurgency, but like unconventional warfare, we talk. about it, you know, and that's, he understood that we would say, we would pull back, not send our guys out at night, you know, not do as many raids, right? And shit like, you know, back then, right?

To appease certain people to win the population to, in hopes that they would reject this extremism, you know, view in fighting us in trying to make a more peaceful environment. Right. So they send you guys home because, I mean, essentially this entire program has been compromised because of Edith. So they send you guys back home. What's the next step for you? I mean, I'm interested to hear about, like, kind of the rest of your life. What happens after all of that? Thank you so much for asking that, because this is where the real battle of my mental health starts. I go back, so I'm living in Capitol Hill. I'm about two blocks from the Capitol building. And I live in in an English basement apartment.

My landlord's a congressman. My neighbor's Lindsay Graham. Senator Graham, right? And I didn't really live there before the deployment because I was at my ex-girlfriend's house, you know, most of the time. And so here I was now, no mission, right? No personal life. In the middle of fucking COVID.

I returned, I was RTB March 18th, 2020. Wow. If you look at the news, they shut down all the airports on March 18th. Yeah. Last burn in. Right? And I'm in my D.C. apartment alone with these fucking thoughts. No mission now.

And I'm like, holy fuck, dude. And COVID is hitting, too. COVID is hitting. I can't go home and see my family, right? Because they don't know what's happening. Restriction of movement everywhere. And I'm just basically told to sit in place. And they told me they were like,

hey you're in some time off just just chill I'm like just chill yeah I want my fucking life back right right you know like chilling isn't staying in an apartment yeah and isolated yeah and and so in this moment

all the thoughts of suicide come rushing back and I'm battling with it every fucking day but the thing I said to myself the first thing I said to myself and this this is the whole reason why I wrote the book. I wrote this book for my G.B. friends out there, Green Beret friends out there struggling, right? And for the first time of my life, I had

fucking compassion for myself. I said, we're not running. We're not going to do an ultramarathon. We're not going to fucking, you know what I mean? We're not going to like try to replace this void with some sort of material success or climbing adverse. Yeah. Extrinsic success. Right. I said, we're going to fucking sit with this and we're going to figure it the fuck out whatever this is. And I told myself I've been through a lot. And I didn't drink, right? But every day I was committed to fitness.

Committed to fitness. And there's many case studies out there that talk about people with mental health disorders, people that are struggling, you know, and the dopamine hits you get from fitness and how it improves their health. symptoms. Unbeknownst to me at the time, that was my fucking default. Just like I went to the gym that morning, enslaved myself on equipment before I blew my fucking brains out, I was doing the same thing every day. And I would run to, I was about roughly three miles to Lincoln Memorial from my house. So it was a six mile round trip. And I'd run out to, on a save. And there was no one on the mall. No one on the D.C. Mall.

and I would sit there on his fucking steps and I would like look at him and be like what the fuck dude what do I do you know what I mean and I would sit there and I just I sit with my shit you know and it wasn't until I was clearing out an old storage unit

that I had with my ex-wife getting rid of all the fucking shit from our marriage right um it hit me in a very concrete way and I literally got hit with the fucking by a concrete truck on 395. Yeah, yeah.

And I've been to an evasive driving course, you know, for the job. And so, like, in the moment that, like, training kicked in, and I got safely to the side of the road. And I remember the driver was, like, coming out and he was like, are you okay? And I was like, I was devastated. You know, because the internal dialogue at the time was like, I missed my fucking chance to die.

To die. Yeah. I miss my chance to die, to end my fucking pain, to not... Sorry. Because, well, I just want to point out that around this time, like, there were also a couple of suicides like around you. Absolutely. And one was an old friend and one was a colleague. I don't know if you're comfortable with me saying his name on here, but, you know, Jake in your book.

Well, I appreciate that. We'll stick with Jake. Sure. You know, but Jake's suicide at this, around this time, right, there was an all call about Jake's suicide, right? And Jake's suicide was basically like, they brought us all in, we're all on a Zoom call or whatever, and they talk about the details that happened. And they basically equated it to his, he had multiple TBIs. And Jake has done J-Soc deployments, Jake was an infantry guy. Yeah.

Before he was an intelligence operative, like, very, you know, getting after a type of career, right? Like, but he was going through a ton of shit on the sideline, right? Similar to you. Very similar to me. And, you know, and he had a divorce, you know, in the works and shit like that. Two. Okay, well, I'm not, I'm not tracking that, but like, yeah, thank you for. I know, I'm tracking a lot of that stuff.

No, I know. He, it's one of those situations. where it's like, you know, from the outside looking in, people are like, oh, my God, how could that happen? But when you really, like, look at the person's life and you start to pick it apart and you see all the little details, it's like it flips to how could that not happen? Like, this poor guy had so much stuff on him. And that's exactly it. And I think for me, not understanding all the details of what was going on in his life, right? but just a dude going through some shit with some empathy

right and having some understanding of like I know what that feels like I saw a dude who was just trying to chase happiness yeah you know yeah that's what I saw right and so and that's how it hit me just to find some peace peace exactly right peace tranquility but I mean there isn't a whole lot of this you used chasing the dragon just like you were exactly

chasing the high yeah And don't get me wrong. His girlfriend, she was, she was an amazing human being, right? Not gonna lie, right? Like, and there is, there is a high with that.

Yeah. Right. When you meet someone that's like very like-minded and everything else. And so, um, and so it's like,

we're on the all call for Jake and we're listening in. And the fucking, the same sergeant major that callously just fucking was like, yeah, you're gonna go to our, yeah,

and everything's gonna be fine. You know, without a tinge of operational experience compared to me or other, or a guy like Jake, for instance, couldn't hold a candle to this guy. Yeah. He goes and he's like, oh, yeah, it was TBI's. And I'm like, really, dude? We're not going to talk about everything else going on. Right.

Because at that moment, and I saw they were like, someone on the all call said, what are we doing in Memorium? for Jake. And that Sergeant Major replied, this is it. And that's when I took myself off of mute. I said, this is fucking bullshit. I read that Sergeant Major's reports on the 15-6. And I mean,

he had like three sentences to say about that gentleman's death. I think it, personally, how can you be running this unit? and doing the training that we do and the genuineness and establishing connection with sources

and having the emotional intelligence that we're trained to have that you're not going to extend it to your fellow dudes, guys and gals. I was just going to say, but he showed that clearly when you said, I have these issues and he said, your issues aren't real issues.

Exactly. And so when I look at, Jake's thing. Well, they treated my shit like that. Right. What is to say they didn't treat his shit like that? Right. And so that is why everyone's like, well, you talk about in the community and you're

working in these high level positions, right? Why guys are afraid of, why guys and gals are afraid to go to mental health? Because that's exactly the fucking reason, right? It's like you can't, you can't own your shit, right? That's what I say in the book is own your fucking shit. Like, you go to these things. You're going to lose the last thing that you fucking have, and that's a goddamn mission.

And, you know, a lot of us to work in these positions, we train our whole goddamn lives to be at this fucking point. That's what that guy was holding on to, you know. Just like we were talking to Bill Mulder's widow the other day. Yeah, and that's why William Nagley started Sound Off, which is an app that connects you with. with a therapist anonymously exactly. And Soundolph could have saved Jake.

Exactly for these reasons. Because nobody is going to risk their clearance, their job. They're not going to risk it for to talk to somebody. And the problem is, I think, like, you know this. Like, once you get to the point where you're thinking about it, you're you're you're you're you're like deep in it you it it's it's rare that you're going to go oh i should maybe i should talk to somebody about it like you're like you're there with it and and it's based on you know your own personal resources the moment you know those types of

things as to whether or not whether or not it happens 100% and it's like any intervention Like, I think of like, just checking in on somebody. You know what I mean? That little fight. I know in the book I talk about, I'm a very avid crossfit athlete. And I remember the day after, or that day, well, it was still the same day, but it was much later that day that I had my brush with wanting to blow my fucking brains out. I had a crossfit coach. My crossfit coach in Baltimore reached out to me.

And she was like, hey, how you doing? because she was like close to Christmas. Worryed about you, yeah. Yeah, and I just fucking like emotionally vomited everything I was going on. And she was like, don't worry Dave, I'll find you a nice girl when you get home, right? You know what I mean? Just being a supportive person. But it's like, and this is really why this is what's difficult working in these units.

And we kind of talked about this earlier on is that it doesn't have the same camaraderie that being on an ODA. Yeah. Being in Ranger Regiment, being on a CLE team, all these other things, right? And it's like, because you're largely by yourself. Right. And you're working with people like that Sergeant Major that guess what are just looking out for themselves. Yeah. And so to your point, not that I've read any of that stuff, but the three lines that he wrote is largely out of survival.

Right. That's what that sounds like to me. Yeah. You know. You're talking about it's suicide note? No. No, the 156. The three lines on the 156.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's. And that's the thing is that, one, officers need to stop being punished for shit that they really can't control, you know? Because in this case, Jake, I mean, he was failing to recognize his colleagues in the office. There's people who had to walk him to his car because you couldn't recognize his vehicle. He articulated an entire suicide plan to a colleague. a couple days before he took his own life.

That's fucking wild. Yeah. And it's like, it's, it's just, you know what? I almost think like probably whoever that colleague was at a self-preservation for their job, didn't report it. You know, because I'm sure that guy blames himself because I read his report in the 15-6 to the poor guy. Yeah. But it's not to blame everything on that one person. It's just to say that there were all of these different warning.

indicators that the unit should have taken action on. But what I was saying is that officers need to stop being punished for things they can't control and start being rewarded for uncovering or revealing sexual assault, for uncovering and revealing and helping soldiers who are in crisis. Because if soldiers should not be punished for receiving help when they're in crisis, They shouldn't lose their jobs and their clearances, especially when sometimes the whole suicidal ideation thing can be such a brief period of time, whether it's just one time or, you know, over the course of a number of months, but it doesn't define who a person is. And I love that you said that. I want to segue, you know, a couple things that you guys both said.

But this is the thing. This is why I wrote the book, right? the whole reason why I wrote the book is like you said, no one recognized the warning signs. Yeah. You know, I wasn't that close to Jake. I just,

I knew of him. Yeah. Right, you know? But the, the thing is, is that because someone goes through with it and completes and dies by suicide, it's not that you failed,

but there's all these recognition signals. Like, that's why I start with, you know, just simply taking care of me. Hey, you know, realizing that,

I have a lot of shit going on. We should probably not deploy him. Yeah. Right? Or that, you know, maybe we give him the time that he needs and then he handles his shit. And then because I know in special forces like, hey, you know, they'll fucking sergeant majors help out dudes all the time with shit like that, you know? And so the thing is, is that how do we, how do we encapsulate like what you said is how do we turn those things into wins for them? you know as opposed to hey look I took care of so many people especially in this case within a special access program

where you know as one person told me once how far does an IG complaint go within a sap not very far at all yeah I mean I have no idea I never made an IG complaint on anything you know what I mean but like but I would imagine that's how it is it's just like it runs it yeah yeah that it's we were talking about a little bit before the show that like it's fundamentally different than being on an ODA or a Ranger platoon or a seal platoon that being in a sap doesn't have that quite the same type of leadership and camaraderie that you would find in those units. Absolutely. I mean that is just so true. It's so true. And and you know, for me, I never felt like I had an advocate for someone that I could fight in. Right. Right. Because all I saw what Jake was he raised his hand and said hey I'm struggling and they were like fuck you

and then they were like all right we're gonna take your you know what they benched him and then he was dead within two months yeah right and that's what I saw and then I saw like on the backside on that all call was they were like oh yeah this is all we're doing for him yeah a man that definitely earned a stretch of highway named after him yes you know what I mean in terms of his sacrifices and things that he made to this country. And this is the thing, and this is the thing that bothers me. And I'm going to try not to get emotional about it. But like my buddy Lou, and I'll just say it, Bobby Barrios, right?

That's who Lou is, is Bobby Barrios. And because I've had a lot of guys in group reach out to me who knew. They're like, dude, it's Bobby, isn't it? And I'm like, yeah. And so Bobby, I was with a former friend of mine. I'll say fucking former in the strongest words, right? I'm in the depths of my despair, and I meet up with this guy in D.C. during COVID, and he's a, he's a green beret, you know, operating, you know, part of, you know, the alphabet soup of shit.

You know, that's in D.C., right? And, you know, we're going, you know, we're sharing war stories and stuff like that. And, you know, Bobby, or A.K. Lou, right? He fucking, he failed SLC the first. first time you went. And it was a PT test. A fucking green beret failing a PT test is a goddamn red flag. As

high as a red flag as you can possibly imagine. You know, and this was a high-performing dude. Sephardic, ASOT, fucking Halo, right? Way more schools than I have, right? You know what I mean? Like, high-performing dude. And I remember

this guy, well, not name. I forget the fucking name. I give him the book, but we'll call shithead for for a lack of a better word he went to SLC the same time I did with Bobby so this is Bobby's second round ago in a fucking SLC and when I was working on battalion staff

I'd like you know he was S3 Air and he's working his fucking ass off moving ODAs all over Asia right and I'm like hey man we gotta go running I know you failed two mile dude I fucking got you I was training for an ultra right so I'm like dragging his ass out during lunchtime

you know he did a day type shit get ready for, I mean, we're in Oki, the heat's way worse than it is at Fort Bragg, right? And so I'm like trying to, I'm trying to bring him, you know, bring him into the fucking fold, right? Being just a good dude. Right. And so we go out to SLC, he fails a PT test again. I'm like, bro, what are you doing, man?

Come on, you can do this, right? You know, trying to give him pep talk. I was on a different team. And then he ends up failing the PT test again. So, like, Army standard or whatever, the Army protocol is like, you. fail a professional military education course needed for promotion twice you're out and i think that's what happened to it i say i think that's what happened to it because i lost you know going in the clandestine life yeah i didn't really talk to many guys you know back in oaky and shit like that and you know

all around first group and stuff so i'm meeting with this this friend of mine who i've known for a long time we went to norwich together and this fucking dude has the god damn motherfucking audacity to say hey you know that piece of shit you killed himself and me struggle i was in the fucking depths of my despair despair it was summer 2020 still struggling every day to figure out why you know asking myself why doing it you know all these things and i hate myself because the only courage i had was to say he was a good dude when deep down the man who I am would have beat the fucking shit out of that kid.

You know? That's what motivated you to write this book. That's 100% the reason why I wrote this fucking book. 100% the reason why I wrote this book. I wrote it for all my buddies, you know, GV, Green Beret friends, you know, soft friends, whoever's out there.

You know, and this is what I say. Come back to, not just Bobby, right? Not just Jake. Right? I found out not that long ago A bunch of guys.

Matt Hayes, guys served with Die by suicide. So many examples of this happening all the time, all over everywhere, right? But the power in the fucking book isn't just telling... I mean, the power is telling the story, but the thing is, is that

when I got hit by that concrete truck that I mentioned a little while ago, I went back to my little fucking English basement apartment. And I looked in the mirror. The same way I looked in the mirror when I said, when I was in New York City,

I said, what the fuck am I doing here? And I said to myself, I was like, I finally verbalized for the first time. I was struggling for months. I verbalized, I said, I looked at myself at the eye, I said, I want to kill myself. And I said it twice.

I want to kill myself. And then I said, why? What the fuck went? wrong and I took all this intel training that I had and I turned it against myself I was afraid

because of what happened to Jake to go to any sort of mental health. Right. Anything right? Right. I sat there and I said of myself I was like, I wide myself to death. It's the most important question you have as a case officer is asking yourself

why or asking, excuse me, asking your source why. Right. So I turn it against myself and I wide my fucking self to death. Why did this relationship fail? Why did I not have boundaries? Why? You know, I didn't even understand what boundaries were at that point, right? But like, you know, why did I let this happen to me? Who the fuck am I? Where is this fucking kid that is the grandson of Jack Fielding, the great escape POW? You know what I mean? It was like, who the fuck is this dude? Right? I didn't even know myself at this point. And I sat there.

And I fucking said, I owned my shit. And that's why I tell people to own your shit. I own my shit. And the conclusion that I came to at that time was that my entire identity was tied to the value other people had in me. I had no control. Right. And the uniform does that. Being an intelligence operative does that.

You know, you're only- Being a Green Beret does that. Being a Green Beret does that. You're only as good as like your ops. You're only as good as the intelligence to produce. You're only as good as this, right? And it was like this fucking reckoning that I had to have with myself. And I'm telling anybody that's out there right now, if you're struggling, you go into the darkness.

When you come out, you will never go back. And you will unlock a fucking superpower. Because I am the most genuine form of my fucking. self that I've ever been. And you know what I mean? It's like I look at that and what I had to go through and talking to, you know, in the book since it's been out, I've had Green Beret friends reach out to me. They're like, bro, I went through the same fucking thing. Yeah. Right. And it's like, what was that first step for you that you, you had this epiphany like, I have a problem. Like, what was it for you as far as like your path to recovery getting treatment? I think it was

very not unconventional, just like Green Berets are. A lot of it was realizing the negative self-talk, realizing the negative internal dialogues. You know, when I started looking wine, I was unpacking deeply, I was like, where is that coming from? And then I started realizing it. I would wake up every day and start with this whole negative internal dialogue about myself. Right?

I would say, oh, we, you know, we're not going to get what you want. We're not going to win. You suck. You suck. piece of shit, right? Like, it was so rooted in self-hate, right? And it came from a collective

of a, of a, it came from a collective of experiences that led me there. That's what trauma does. Yeah. You know, trauma fucks you up. Yeah. You know? And, and, and, and that's a thing. It's like, doing what we do in this job, we're exposed to such extremes.

Right. Saut trucking extremes, right? And we're working with extreme personalities. I, I feel like, I mean, I mean, can be extreme personality at times, you know, trying to convince a bunch of dudes to go fucking murder ISIS on Christmas Day. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes it's a necessity. Other times, you know, but...

Other times it's just for shits and grins. It's for shits and grins. Yeah. You can try to tell yourself that you're some sort of like rogue outside or outlier, but really we're all just part of the colorful cast of characters. Absolutely fucking lily, dude. And the biggest thing is that it doesn't matter how fucking

cool you are, we all put our pants on the same every morning. Right. Yeah. And the thing is, is that I had to, like, really look at myself internally and just wrangle those negative internal dialogues that I was having. Yeah. And it didn't come with, you know, I had a subsequent, you know, I was the operations sergeant major or squadron sergeant major, right? Even though I didn't hold the title of sergeant major, but I was filling the position, right? So it's like, you know, during those times, like, you know, I actually had fucking space to kind of like really think about myself. But the thing I never gave up, and this is why I think exercise is so important.

And it's the same thing, like my grandfather always exercise, always running, always boxing, right? I never gave up on it. I was always going to crossfit class every day. I was always running. I was always doing these things. I was getting those little dopamine hits. I was getting those little confidence boosters to say, all right, hey, we're good.

You know what I mean? Like, we're okay. Things are fine. And it would calm the internal storm. Yeah. You know? And it's just, I would say that I'm learning, even now, and here's a thing, the healing journey never ends.

Right. It never does. And I'm learning stuff about myself every fucking week. now peeling that goddamn onion. Yeah. Right? And it's not like, and here's the thing, it's like so many people want to undo and forget that identity or being a G.B.

Being a Greenberry, being a ranger, being everything else. I'll never stop being fucking dangerous. I'm sorry. Like, you know, that's, that's like kind of. Yeah. The more you try to run away from it, the more problematic it becomes, right? It doesn't really work. Absolutely.

I see fucking LinkedIn posts, dudes being like, I finally let go with this. I'm like, shut that fuck up, dude. Yeah, right? You're a dangerous human being, just accepted for what it is, right? You know what I mean?

But like, it's a temperament. And I think really is like as a warrior, right, adopting this warrior mindset. Like you have to have a mentor. I have mentors. Right. I have coaches. I have people I trust.

You know? And they're all green berets. And, you know, when you think of this sort of warrior, warrior ethos and this warrior ideology is like, you're hanging up the rucksack, right? But you're still true to who you are.

You know, and that was, I was a warrior when I was eight years old, fucking climbing up Lafayette. You know what I mean? My dad, like, trying to keep me from blowing off the side of the fucking mountain. But, like, warriors are forged. They're not born, right? And the thing is, is I feel as though, and this is something I'm still figuring out now,

is, you know, living with this. And it's not, I'm still who I am. and I'm proud, you know, have pride in who you are and pride for the things that you've been through. And the things that you've been through make you more resilient. Yeah. And don't forget how fucking strong you are. You know, because this is the thing I love.

That Green Beret will say more about you than you ever will say about yourself. And that is fucking facts. We have questions for Dave. Sweet. And if you guys want to pick up his book. book Into the Darkness. There's going to be a link down in the description. I read it on my Kindle. You can also pick up a hard copy. I hope you guys will go and check it out. We also just passed like two weeks. It's a audiobook is available too. Oh, awesome. Do you read it or does you have somebody else

to it? I know, I know. You did it? Nice. Yeah, of course. Plenty of, you know, quotes from my father, you know, said with a thick Boston accent. So there, wait, where's my show chat? Okay. So somebody, somebody, I haven't been able to pay attention to chat and pay attention to you, but I think there's somebody who knows you in chat who's been, who's been cheering, cheering you on. JWS 1983? Not, not familiar with that.

Anyway, but let's see here. What are our, I think that's who it was, I'm not sure. Okay, so questions. M. Corby, thank you very much. What happened with the E-S-E-E-E-knife and a source? Salt lick during Sear. I love you, Chris. So,

Sear School, I was, we're in CRC and we're going in survival. Survival mode. So there's like three phases. There's a couple phases, right? You know, you do your evasion,

right? And we were in the survival phase. So we ended up, we evaded like, it's like 18 fucking miles on like no food or sleep. And we're at our survival site. And here was a thing. Like having done like, you know, being an Eagle

Scout done winter survival, building shelters and everything else, you know, to save, we need food at that time. So I was like, hey, all right, I'll build us the fucking Hilton in the woods. You guys go forge food. And like, you know, in all these military

lanes, right? Like, they're picked dry. And we were right. It was, it was, I think it was January, February was our Sierra school. So there was fucking nothing. Right. Right. There was nothing. And I remember here's my thing.

I pack the packing list every time. You know, I've seen guys get scuffed up for having too much shit. But, you know, one of my buddies on that team, you know, he had this like boozy, a boozy ass knife, right? And I was like, hey man, you know, can I borrow this?

You know, and I hack this fucking thing up, dude. I'm like, chopping branches. I'm trying to build this beautiful shelter, right? Cover of concealment, right? I'm not going to lie. Everyone was warm and dry. I'm not going to lie. Everybody was warm and dry that night. But like, I

ended up like, putting a bunch of chips in it, you know, a chip in the dent. I mean, this is a survival situation. Right. Right. Don't bring a boogie knife. Like, don't bring a knife you don't want to use in the field. Did you, did you not just hear that, Chris? Because that's what I just heard, right?

But anyway, so to this day, he always gives me shit about it. Like, you know, and I'll never fucking live it down. So, you know, hopefully we pick up some copies of the book and I'll buy him a new fucking knife so I get off my ass about it. But like, it was, it was really fucking funny. And did you guys have a salt lake to attract game or something? I don't really remember probably. I think so. Yeah, like, because we were in like a hunting area, I think.

Uh-huh. And they were reconning just to see if like any deer whatsoever. And I mean, we're only armed with like what you build. Right. So fucking, you know, I had, were they 18 bravos yet? I don't know if they were 18 bravos. I don't know if they did. Back then we did MOS after Sear.

It's different now. I don't know. But like they were constructing like bone arrows, you know, like trying to make like, all right, how do we bag a deer with like bare minimum? Yeah. Right. I think, like, it was just, it was really funny, but we just ended up starving. That's the trend. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, survival is its own thing. I think it's one of the reasons why they took it out, like, took the main part of it out of, like, the old ranger schools. Because it's like, like, if you're trying to survive behind enemy lines, you're not hitting your E&E lanes. Like, you're not actually doing your job, you know. I mean, obviously you should know how to, you know, get food if you need it. bet but it's really interesting like it definitely is a it's just a grit test yeah you know it's like how bad do you want to be here yeah and i i the thing i love about sears school is like you see like that dude that i was with like you know

we're in the phase where you know we're all fucking p o ws and shit and i remember me and him like stage this fight he's he's a hardcore new yorker and i'm from boss and so he's like the fucking red socky suck and i'm like fuck you fucking yanky suck right you just start beating the shit out of each other right you just start beating the shit out of each other right And, you know, that was what we were told by the SRO, senior ranking officer and senior ranking enlisted, right? So it was like, it was really cool. But you also saw guys who like shied away. Yeah.

And you're like, hmm, are you really all about this shit, bud? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, you know. Yeah. Um, Corby. Thank you. Thanks again.

Is there any truth to notion of the brain being able to orientate, process, and decide on any four things in the smallest things in the smallest. perceivable time frame. What in the fuck does that question mean? That is some big brain shit and I wish I was on a gram of psilocybin and really fully answer that. Next question. But yeah. Any four things.

I don't know. Bro, this isn't a Tibetan temple. I mean, we try our best here, but. I mean, from personal experience, I'd say no. Like, when you, like, orient, like, that's what target fixation is, right? Like you have one thing in your view and that thing overcomes all other things. And I think probably doing the sheer amount of CQB training I've done,

and the biggest thing that you learn is taking your eyes out of the scope, right? Or taking out of the reflex site, right? It's being down here. Yeah. And looking. Yeah. And then just, you know what I mean? Yeah.

And ODA, right? Yeah. Right? And that's kind of how I take that question. It comes with its discipline, it's training. It's, you know, it's a lot of different things. It's like, you know, your reaction. And in building when you learn new skills, you build new connections and neurons in the brain.

So it's like very important to, I would say, how I reply to that? How do I do that now on the civilian side? You know, I just learned to ski this past winter. I fucking love it, right? You know what I mean? I'm going to continue to like, you know, learn new skills and stuff like that that I never did in special forces. So I think probably how do you. develop a better, you know, a more lethal mind is always be learning new things.

Growth mindset. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So, uh, Jen three Colley. Thank you very much. Um, did you ever meet former Norwich, uh, commandant, uh, Chakala? And if so, did he tell you about his time with the cords program?

Uh, no, I never met him. Um, my time at Norwich was from 03 to 07. and Rear Admiral Schneider was our commandant at the time. Great dude. But no, I don't know that individual. Sorry. Sean McDonald, thank you very much for subscribing.

Eric, thank you very much. I didn't see a question. If there is one throat in chat, and I'll look for it at the very bottom. Adam White, anybody, great to see you. Great entertaining and informative show tonight. Guys, keep on rocking. Long live Boston Humant.

I feel like every, because Adam is also, you know, Adams Boston, and he was a human intern. I have this image in my mind of every guy who does human being from Washington, like, from Boston be like, yeah, the source is wicked connected. That's, yeah, they're wicked sick, dude. They got everything, you know what I mean? Like, it's like the, we're running the whitey bulger of fucking, you know what I mean? Like, you know, you think you had Winter Hill gang? I don't know. Right.

but it's it's just like we have such a way with people up there yeah it really is like just a very different way with people and you know growing up

growing up in that environment like we're all like no one's no one's shy to be like what the fuck's up what you dude yeah what's the matter right you know what I mean

like and it just they'll pry you know they'll reach into you and it just otherwise like don't make eye contact on the fucking street

right you know otherwise it's just it's such a weird Boston's such a very aggressive, but incredibly like emotional, you know, tired. So like I like to joke. I like, you know, I grew up. My mother's, my mother was Italian.

She passed away a few years ago. But she's Italian. My father's Irish and English, right? Fucking fiery relationship, man. I bet. Fiery relationship, dude. You don't say. And it's like.

And the Boston thing, I've thrown on top of it. The Boston thing totally thrown on top. Right. It's like a force multiplier. Yeah, I've totally. Totally. I mean, my father, like, I love him to death, but he's like a fucking cartoon character in terms of like, you know, Boston fucking tradesmen. Yeah.

You know, it's just, it's just really funny. We're a special kind up there, you know, in our own regard. Louis Vasquez, thank you very much. Thank you for the amazing interview. And what was your favorite driving experience? My favorite driving experience, I feel like that's a loaded question, was the driving course I went to. Um, and I would, oh, wait, I know, I know this fucking question. I know what's trying to be said here.

All right. So is this a setup? This is a setup and I'm gonna fucking tell it because it's too good. All right. So I'm doing a source, I'm doing a source meeting, right? And I got two dudes with me. I got one doing long eye, you know, long run, you know, long gun. And I got guy doing one guy doing near side security.

And the guy that's doing near side security, he's a former ranger, right? fucking enormous human being just never miss a day at the gym and the guy that's doing my long eye is he was former 18 Delta right and so I'm about to

go do this fucking dick dance with the source and everything else and so we're in the car and you know you know Super Ranger there he you know we got the party bag of grenades MP4

fucking five, right? I'm ready to go. He's ready to go. Ready, you know, ready for anything, right? And he pulls, you know, one of the many brands of water you get on deployment. So a little shitty water ball. He goes, oh, got to pee. And I'm like, dude, we're on the X, man. I'm about to meet the fucking store. Like, we need to know. And he's like, oh, right? And he's taking a piss. And I have comms. And, you know, we're just like several weeks. I'm several weeks on this deployment high stress right and the long eye he's like he's like is he taking a piss and I just start fucking dying laughing here he is pissing in the car and it was just outrageous but it's like this quintessential like soft dudes a in high stress situation just being ridiculous yeah you know what I

mean not taking anything seriously no shots are fired whatever he was like Yeah, I'm just going to take a piss right here. And I'm laughing because he's this massive dude. He's got his long rifle between his legs. I'm like, how the fuck you, you know, with plates on? Yeah. Like, how the fuck are you doing this? Yeah.

You know? Yeah. We're all like rolling like low-vis plates and shit, but it's fucking funny. It's sort of the quintessential. What did the kids say now? IDGAF. Like, I don't give a fuck by culture. Like, it's just like, eh.

Yeah. And it's like, uh, we're probably not going to get shot at. Yeah. Things are fine. Yeah. And, you know, like, danger is a very relative thing to a green beret, a ranger, and, you know, we kind of think of those extreme circumstances. Yeah.

You're like, honestly, it's like, I'm meeting a dude in an alleyway. Yeah. You know, it's whatever, right? Like, it can't, what is going to really happen here? Right. You know what I mean? Like, and just looking for what it is. Delta Zulu, thank you very much.

So he's asking. So first off, I'll say what he said. Great interviewer, great interview, by the way, and thank you for your service. And then he's asking specifics about units you guys worked with and deconflictions. And I'm just going to answer that for him and say that he worked with a variety of task forces and units.

And we won't go into specifics, like which units specifically? Yeah, I can't really go, unfortunately, I can't go, like, you know, I can only go what's been approved in the book. But, you know, it's just this massive enterprise, you know, between, it's this cohesion between, you know, top units and three-letter agencies and everybody gets a say and it's, at times it's very competitive, but, you know, we figure, we figure it the fuck out and we work together and make great things happen, you know. So I just want to remind people, please check out our patrons down the description.

You subscribe to us and get all these episodes ad-free. Dee, who do we have next week? Is it Alan? Okay. One second. Check out David's book. Yeah, is there anything else you want to tell people about the book? Into the darkness?

Check it out. I mean, they can find it on Amazon. Absolutely, you can find it on Amazon. It's on Audible, Spotify. The audiobook is on myriad of apps. Hard copy covers available paperback, but Amazon's to find it the easiest way. Just look up into the dark. darkness by Dave Fielding.

And, yeah, man, be ready for a good ride. It is. Do we have anything on Patreon? Negative, no. But next week, we have David Nielsen from an Army Special Missing Unit. Awesome. Great to talk to him. Dave, thanks for coming in, man.

Anything that we missed? No, no. Thank you guys very much for having me on. Yeah, we cover, it had been about three and a half hours. Woo! Yeah. We covered a lot. Yeah, for sure.

But also just scratched the surface. So I hope people will go and check out the book Into the Darkness. And we'll be back next Friday. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thanks, Dave.