The Team House - Army Psychological Operations with Jo and Diann, Ep. 70

Episode Date: November 28, 2020

Jo was born and raised in Idaho and enlisted in the Army in 2005. She was a 37F, or a Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Specialist, where she met Diann. In 2007, Jo deployed to Iraq with a Military Information Support Team (MIST). After her initial enlistment she did about 1.5 years in a Reserve PSYOP unit. After her time in the Reserves, she went back to Active Duty at Ft. Bragg, NC. Jo medically retired in 2014. Diann was born and raised in San Diego, CA. She joined the Army in 2003 as a Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Specialist, where she met Jo. She deployed to Iraq in 2007 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Diann has spent most of her career at Ft. Bragg, NC, but has also been stationed in Germany, Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington, and Hawaii. She is currently still serving on Active Duty as a Career Counselor. https://sistersinarmspodcast.com/ Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things

to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents, and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Okay, we are live. Welcome to episode 70 of the team house.

I'm Jack Murphy here with co-host David Park. We are joined tonight by our guests, Joe and Diane. They both served in Army Psychological Operations, or sci op. We're going to have a big brawl about whether it's sciop or sciops. That'll come in a little bit. But Army psychological operations, they met each other in the military, still pals, and today they do their own podcast called Sisters and Arms, which really highlights female military veterans. So we're going to talk to them tonight all about their military careers, how they met in the Army, about psychological operations, what that is. their own experience in SIEOP. And then we'll talk a little bit about, you know,

what they're trying to do with their podcast and trying to highlight female veterans out there. So Joe and Diane, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you. Thanks for having us on. So we usually start off the show by having our guests sort of explain their origin story. And I was just wondering if you could tell us, you know, where you came out of, how you found your way into the Army.

What was that all about for you? Whoever wants to go first, you jump right in. I'll go first. Okay, good. St. Diane's face. I was born and raised in Idaho, middle of nowhere, southern Idaho. I worked my way up to put myself through Boise State. I graduated with a bachelor's in anthropology, which there's four areas of anthropology, which is archaeology, which is archaeology, which is the most,

known there's cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, and linguistics. And so when the time came for me to graduate and I didn't know what I wanted to do, I was talking to my grandfather who was in world or he was in the army in airborne in between kind of World War II and Korea when they were doing a lot of experimenting and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and I had a lot of student loan debt. So I joined army and I basically went to the recruiter and I had a high enough asvab score and everything that I he's like you can pick whatever you want and I said well which one is leaving the closest to the day I'm done with my last final at Boise State and that was

SIOP so I didn't even graduate or I didn't even walk I just handed in my last final and I left for Fort Jackson and And to me, it made sense. Sciop is the study of cultures because you have to know those cultures to be able to influence them. So it made sense to me, in my head at least, it transitioned well from anthropology to to sciop. And I went through all the training and met Diane. I think we were a few AIT classes apart.

And then we ended up going through the schoolhouse for like, jump school and then language school pretty close together and then she pretty much took this awkward introverted kid who didn't know what she was doing and adopted her and the rest is on our podcast diane why don't you pick it up how did you find your way into the military um so i guess i kind of stumbled into it i um grew up in san diego california and like most san diego girls ended up marrying a Marine at a Camp Pendleton and it didn't go so well. So after a while, it was kind of like I have to do something because we were just bouncing from him. He got out of the Marines and then we were just bouncing from dead end job to dead end job. And I, I don't

know i got i'll try the military and it seemed like a safe route to go so i joined and i just i don't remember having a conversation with the recruiter about what job i wanted to do it was like please just take me and i fell into sciop and i don't know it worked very well for me i ended up doing quite well in the military and my home life wasn't so great and thankfully the NCOs that I had really helped me out and help me stand on my own feet because it was not going to be a situation that I would have survived if I didn't have people that cared enough to stand up and and make sure that I was okay and I was able to escape a really dangerous situation. and Joe helped me a lot from that. She didn't even hesitate to take my kids. I was deployed and all of a sudden my kids were going to be taken by CPS. So it was really, it was an extremely difficult situation to be in

because, you know, obviously you want to do your job and you want to do your job well, but you can't focus on that when your family is. hurting and especially your children are not in a safe place or safe environment. So thankfully I had Joe there she took my kids obviously like without hesitation and I was able to get back on my feet but you know the my experience in SIOP I felt like it was a very good base for me because I I was used to already trying to figure out what other people wanted and what their motivations were and trying to make myself sort of fit in that environment so i didn't have i mean i joined the military because i didn't want to go to school

i didn't feel smart i didn't feel like i could do anything and then here i was in this environment like oh god i actually can do this and this is kind of fun um so once i got you know stable i deployed again and that deployment was just it was fun so doing side of up stuff and saying it was fun, I kind of feel like maybe I shouldn't admit that. But I don't, you know, I don't feel like I was a part of anything that was, you know, I guess negative or, you know, people would look at later on and say that was, that was awful. I can't believe you were a part of that. The work that we did there was not really stuff that I can talk about, But I felt like, you know, having my crash course through Arabic and then being able to, you know, create these products to influence people to be able to safely interact with the U.S. military so that we were, you know, experiencing less civilian casualties felt really good to me.

So after my return from that deployment, we were getting geared up to ready to deploy again. And that was really difficult because at that point I was a single mom and I couldn't. I just I couldn't do that. There was too much change and everything. So I decided to see what else was out there and I sort of fell into career counseling. And I'm super happy with that job change. I absolutely love what I do. I don't, I get to talk to soldiers about their careers and their plans and talking to a young soldier who probably, you know, is just existing.

like I was back then, and getting them to think about their future and what their end game is, you know, whether that's in the military or not. I really enjoy it. So this is like, sounds like a super hardcore situation that you were getting deployed, and it was kind of like you're getting deployed and CPS is going to take your kids. I mean, this is like the hardest thing you're ever going to deal with in life. Yes. Joe steps up and takes the kids so that you can deploy to combat. I mean, holy shit. It was bad. The school called our battalion at one point and said this is the last step before we call somebody else.

And I happened to be the one that picked up. I was in the office that day at the battalion. I happened to pick it up in there. And I don't know what planets were aligned or who was looking out for. for who that I was the one that answered the phone that day because at that time I don't know if all of the the leadership knew how close we were and would have you know passed it on to me so it was a it was a rough situation but I was glad that I was being able you know because then I could go get the kids and it worked out that our leadership understood and they said your place of duty is playing with Diane's kids until we get her back so yeah but but how come I mean I got to ask though like how come the army insisted on deploying you when you were in that

situation I didn't really tell anybody it was embarrassing so it was something that I it was something that I really struggled with the housing manager I remember after the final time of, you know, like, this is it, we're actually done. My NCO took me to housing to get the door locks changed and the lady was like, oh, this is, we've been through this so many times with them and was very dismissive about it. And it was really demeaning, you know, to, to struggle with that situation, you know, I have a real heart for women who go through and men who go through a struggle like that because it is something that you want to keep private. It's not something, you know, you want to share with anybody.

And I just I tried to do the best I could and unfortunately my attempt at holding everything together kind of fell apart when I was gone. So I mean it's also a testament to your chain of command that they were so supportive because that's not something that you often see in the military. They're more of the opinion than if they wanted you have a family they would have issued you one, you know. Yeah, I, sorry, I had a phone call one time and I called my commander at that time because it was a very serious situation and he, I mean, he showed up at my house. The MPs, everybody showed up at my house and I'm still, you know, friends with him today, obviously through social media and whatnot. I think the good experiences that I've had for the army definitely outweigh the negative ones. Like I've met so many people that just would drop everything and help me.

And it was so amazing considering like I didn't have that through my life. Like it was kind of like figure this stuff out. Yeah, that's squared away. So you guys, so what is, if we rewind it, what is like the, what is like the, um sciop a i t like how long is it what what how do they train you to be a propagandist and what is psychological operations and i'm kidding about the whole propagandist thing i'm well i mean so for those that don't know um i'm sure if they're watching your podcast they probably do but special operations is like an umbrella over several mOSs several jobs so you've got the special forces you've got

psychological operations you've got civil affairs you've got i think the rangers kind of fall under there um and so you've got all these different mOSs that fall under special up special operations and psychological operations is one of those um soft jobs um the 30 second elevator pitch is that sciop is getting what other people getting other people to do what you want them to do but having them think it's their idea to do it and if we do it it's siop if the bad guys do it it's propaganda and if civilians do it it's marketing so um that's obviously the the huge over overlook and it's a lot more complicated than that um according to my mother it's what women have been doing to men since the beginning of time but it's a it's a tool that can be used to either

influence the battle space in the way that the command wants it to go or it's a tool to disrupt things if they wanted to go it's a tool to save lives it's a tool to disrupt it's a tool that can really be used your imagination is the limit of what of where and how sciop can be used getting to know the culture is better than they know themselves so that you know how to influence them based on the mission talking a little bit about this before we get started and how I think there's a lot of misconceptions about sciops. There's a lot of that it also it's the army itself. It's not our ticket. Sciop. I like sciop's oral because I think we should have more than one. We shouldn't just do

one sciop and then go home. We should have multiple. Diane and I did so many pushups in the schoolhouse. If you called it sciops, you had to push that I think that's one of those things will be ingrained in us until we're old and drunk in a nursing home together that you don't put the ass on it because we don't want to do push-ups. You know, the misconception I had, like when I was in Ranger Battalion and we'd

do training exercises, the tactical sci-up guys would come out with these loudspeakers and they would like play sounds of like cats meowing for hours and hours. Like meow, meow, meow. And it'll go on like this for hours and hours.

So if you ask me like, hey, private Murphy, what's SIEOP? Oh, yes, those weirdos that come out with the loudspeakers and they play cats meowing for hours on end. But there's a lot more to this career field and what the two of you did and your peers did. Could you tell us, like for real, beyond the private Murphy explanation, what is it that psychological operations does? Well, it depends on the mission. Sometimes it's just plain old leaflets out of the back of a helicopter in a black plastic bag telling people to surrender. Sometimes it's traveling through some crazy neighborhoods with the speakers telling people that the people you're listening to are bad guys and you should not listen to them. Sometimes it's giving kids soccer balls

so that that generation doesn't hate us. Sometimes it's the tactical guy that's going out with you know they're whatever they're attached to at the time to kind of just chat up the locals and see what they got going on it it really um i don't know diane i was going to say sometimes it's making terrorists cry but that sounds really negative and awful sometimes it's playing barney on the loudspeakers until people cry I never stared at goats and I never played music repetitively to anyone. So when you for the AIT, like what types of things are you trying? Because I'm sure the mission differs a lot.

And when you go to when you go to your AIT, that's just sort of the foundation of what you need to know. But like when you went to your AIT, like what do they teach you there? What are some of the topics that? Well, full disclosure, Diane and I went in early 2000s. so I'm sure a lot has changed. You got your basic few, you know, weaker few days of SIOP history, everything from Hannibal and the elephants to the Trojan War and the, you know, the Trojan horse. You got your, what is SIOP?

And then you start learning about how to research cultures. A lot of it is nerd stuff. Like, honestly, if SIOP is holding the line in a, in a, things have gone seriously wrong. Like a lot of it is nerd research and that's where I excelled because I can research something like through and through until the day I die and and I like that. A lot of it is, you know, we learned a little bit of the tactical stuff in the schoolhouse. You learned how to put the speakers together the the, oh god, I remember the acronyms, the big ones and the little ones and the ones on your back. You learned how to interact with locals.

You learned how to negotiate. You learned how you learned a lot of design stuff because you do have 25 mics on your team usually when you deploy, but they wanted you to have a baseline in case, I don't know, something happened. And so you learned how to make leaflets with the picture close enough to the edge that they can't be manipulated by other people, but not so close that when you have third country nationals cutting of it doesn't cut off part of the message. And you basically just get the the basics and then you really like any I think like any other job any other MOS even civilian jobs You get your basics in the schoolhouse and then you show up to your first job and you're like

I have no idea what I'm doing and then you learn on the job Was let go ahead I'm sorry. I was going to say we also learned a lot about target audiences and, you know, being able to decipher who you're looking at and who influences that target audience. And it is a lot of research. I mean, you're like, Google being like crazy and getting into very questionable Al-Qaeda websites to get information. But, you know, compiling all that and being able to see where your points are that you can influence a certain.

a group that you need to target. It's actually pretty interesting, so it is good for nerds, I guess. Well, like, if your target is actually 18-year-old males in southern Iraq, then who are you actually going to be targeting? Those 18-year-old males probably aren't going to listen to you, but if you can talk to their moms and their aunties, and their moms and their aunties are going to influence them, that's the stuff that you learn how to do is, like,

Like, okay, so maybe a direct message isn't going to affect your target audience, but you learn enough about your target audience and your cultures to figure out, okay, so who is going to have an influence on that target audience? That's very interesting. So how long was that training? Got it. It felt like forever. See, I graduate 16, I want to say, maybe 20. I honestly don't remember because everything after. after basic AIT blends into jump school and jump school blends into language

language yeah and you're in that pipeline for about a year so and that's not and now I know that they've when we were going through they didn't include CIR you had to go to CIR later but CIR is part of the pipeline now so that's another however many weeks and the reason why you have to go to CIR and jump school and all that that's for the tactical sci-op teams. I mean, if I'm not mistaken, could you explain a little bit about that? I mean, maybe we're getting into deployments now, but maybe the difference between a tactical sci-op team and I don't know what you guys call it, a strategic, I don't know, you tell me. A regional, yeah. Some of it is just so you can wear the red beret and distinguish yourself

from other people and say you're special. Some of it is tactical, but I mean, mean the last tactical sciop mission where they got that muster state on their wings was world war two i mean i think i could be wrong it's happened before but it's been a while maybe vietnam i was thinking vietnam but vietnam okay um so tradition um and to make ourselves distinguished from other until you mean from the legs Yeah, from the legs and from other Intel MOS is. You can say dirty, nasty legs on here. But they can also walk and it takes.

I struggle to walk up the stairs in the morning, so I don't know who's the winner in this. So it, I'm sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was just saying, so did you guys, you guys didn't go to AIT at the same time, right? Like there was, there was, you met at the unit. Did you want to be met because that we met because I was a holdover I had Yeah, so I was a holdover because of my

constant drama in my life. I went to jump school After about six months postpartum I was able to finally go to jump school and we went to together we weren't in the same company and then we came back and then we went to language school and we weren't in the same language class even though we both learned Arabic but you know we were in the same circles for quite a while she I was a three or four classes behind you because you were a holdover because of all the because life and then after that you know airborne school everything matched up and I can look at her, her I Love Me book and kind of it's the same as mine for quite a few years. So let's get into, this is the team house. Let's start talking about some of these deployments that you guys went on and what it's like to actually do your job. Well, I sat at a computer.

It was very exciting. I had a lot of phone calls and a lot of time on the computer. Yeah, I had, um, I don't know, I had a different experience, I think, because I got to be, you know, part of the cool guy stuff. And I got a J-Soc patch out of the deal. So depending on, I guess, who sees that patch? Because I've had a lot of people like, oh, you know, when did you deploy them? And I'm like, oh, well, I was inside.

Oh, that means a lot of things to a lot of different people. And that's basically like, I see that as like my fuck you. Okay, thanks. Yeah, yeah. okay all right i feel like i got to to earn it maybe not on the same level um i can respect you know people's feelings about that um the fact that you know i left the wire but i wasn't on the ground when i left the wire so you know however you want to look at that i wasn't like attached to the teams like some of my friends were out there running around in in iraq but um i still

So like I was able to provide a good impact towards our mission. When you went, did you, when what year did you guys in both, when did you deploy? When or when it was the first time you went? 2007. Did you feel as though particularly for the SIEP community, did you feel as though they had a firm grasp on their mission set at that point in time? They knew what they were doing. and they had everything in place or were they still sort of, you know,

relearning how to do this in a wartime environment? Well, for me, I mean, I came into a well-established team and they were very clear on their mission. And, you know, as tasks came in and as our mission sort of changed while I was there, I didn't feel like it was a hot garbage mess. Yeah. I was a specialist at the time. And so, you know.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things

to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents, and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. My understanding of what was really going on obviously was very limited. As it came down, it was just like, you make this, okay, and that's what I did.

So I didn't, I thought it looked like they knew what they were doing. but like i said my perspective at that time was was this e4 that was just there so and what about you joe um i'm trying to figure out how to word this um um i felt like i mean we went into a mission i was in a military information support team which we were in bagdad we were working in the same office with the state department We were doing a lot more of the attributable missions, all the white level. It's the U.S. Army putting these on. I felt like the team handovers were really well.

I didn't feel like it was hot garbage. But again, I was also in E4. But my team that I went with had a couple guys that I went with all the way through AIT in language school with. And my AIT class, I think there was only two or three people that didn't have at least a bachelor's. Like we were all kind of older. Some of them had masters. And so we weren't the typical 18 year old private that doesn't know his ass from his elbow. At least I hope so. So we there's people I know today still from the State Department in Iraq that were convinced that me and my team members were actually like captains or majors and we were pulling a SIOP on the state department because they couldn't believe that specialists were doing these missions.

Because at the time, I think it's changed, Diane, but at the time you could enlist straight into SIOP and now I think you have to reclass into it, I think. I don't know. You ask like I know. You're a career counselor. But I felt like at the time, because we were able to do all the attributable missions and it was kind of, we didn't have to deal with either the gray or the black. It was easier to just go talk to people and go do our missions. And we put on unity missions or unity programs that were kind of geared toward the youths in Iraq. saying you're not you're not Sunni and you're not Shia but you're Iraqi you're not Kurdish, you're Iraqi and trying to get that that mission out. So I think that because that mission out of the

the mist in Iraq was all attributable or most of it was it was it was a lot easier for that mission to stay easily functioning and you know the transitions were easier. But again like that Ann said. Quit putting a square peg in a round hole. I mean, that's kind of a hard sell to Iraqis. Yes. It is. And the anthropologist in me had issues with it because I knew that.

But again, I was also the specialist, you know, on my first deployment that didn't know anything. And I really feel like this job, you ought to have a couple deployments in you before you even know what you're doing. Sure. And that must have been very hard. I mean, again, as you're an E4, you're given a mission that you're, it's literally, that's mission impossible if that's what you're trying to accomplish. But that's because a policy decision was made way above our heads. I mean, when I was in special forces, they came to us and told us very similar, we cannot let this country disintegrate. We cannot allow them to balkanize. We need to keep the country together as one nation. It's kind of like, I get it. That comes from a good place. something you're trying to accomplish there but yeah it's kind of mission impossible without that knowing the history behind it that they weren't iraqi you put those borders on them and you put those borders on three completely separate cultures that you know sunni is shea Kurdish and then now you're just supposed to say hey forget how many thousands of years of who you are and now you're iraqi like we put those borders on them and then we expect them to be okay with it

So how did that mission go down? I mean, is there any anecdotes or any scenarios you can tell us about where you were doing this job and some of those, either successes or failures or difficulties that you had? We had a whole series of kind of like poetry slams. Poetry is a huge thing in Middle Eastern culture. Like if the biggest poets in the country are super respected, like rock stars here. And so I got to meet like the, I don't even know what, like the Justin Timberlake of Iraqi poetry. I got to do a couple missions where we went up to Erbil and got to meet these people and set up at concerts. And I grew up in, you know, middle of nowhere, farmland, Idaho. And I fell asleep on the plane between Baghdad and Urbile.

And if I hadn't seen some signs in Arabic when we got off the plane and off the base, I would have thought we were in Southern Idaho because there's the pivots on the farmland and there's the wheel lines and there's crops that I recognized. And to me, that was really kind of an eye-opening moment because I've done all of this stuff in books and I've studied for years and I've know all this stuff, but to actually be there and be like, holy shit, there are farmers like I grew up. How am I if I if somebody came to my my dad and my grandpa's and said all of the sudden You're now Canadian instead of an American. They'd probably be like when I go farm what you have no Like who cares what you say I still have to feed my family right and that was That was eye-opening for me to to

Have it looks so similar and help kind of open my eyes to understanding what we were up against That's super cool and I did not know that that you were confabulating with the poets of Iraq and was that seen poetry was that seen as the medium that you were going to use to try to convey this message to the to the nation It was one of them. There was several we used we did you kind of pop concerts poetry All kinds you know we did the traditional sci-op we had soccer balls and backpac in a connex outback like Anytime we went out you had those. It was it was one of the ways that We were trying to get Everybody to come together with something that they all liked Did you guys work hand-in-hand with civil affairs for stuff like that?

My team didn't I know that there were teams that did I didn't know yeah and that's the thing with sciop though you can Diane and I were in the same country in the same deployment with the same battalion in the same year. And nothing we did was similar. So it is completely one of those. It absolutely depends on what team you're at, in what country at what time. With, it sounds as though it takes a very specific type of personality to,

to succeed in that field. and with like with with Rangers or SF there's like a physical selection process that people go through because that's sort of part of what we rely on and then with SF they also you know how to do the Robin Sage and things like that for for your school for your AIT was it academically strenuous or did it did it a challenge people like was there a weeding out process for people that just weren't a fit for that career field. It was all of the above. I mean, we went out to Pine Land 2 on our final culmination

at the end of the schoolhouse. I don't, we didn't, at the time, at least, I don't know if it changed. We didn't have the peer select out like SF does. But I think all of it was kind of designed to where you would self select out if it wasn't you. Yeah.

And Diane, what are you allowed to tell us about your time and sigh up? What can you get into there as far as your time abroad? I don't know. So I feel like a lot of what I did probably stuff I shouldn't talk about. So I use that as my gauge of like, okay, maybe I won't talk about it then because I don't feel comfortable relaying some of that stuff but you know the the stuff the projects that I did work on that I could probably talk about would be like the the leaflets that we created for you know just alerting people that we're coming through this area so you know please you know be be mindful that we're coming through so you don't get run over barting trucks or whatever right so That sort of stuff was was okay. And whether or not that's cool guy stuff, I don't know.

Like I sat at the computer a lot. I did a lot of Photoshop of terrorists running away from tanks and things like that. Like it was, it was fun. You know, here I was just a young 20 year old kid from San Diego that had really never done anything. And then I was part of something really big. And I did get to go and toss some leaflets out somewhere. And that was really exciting. And believe me, like before I got on that thing,

I was like, okay, is this belt gonna unhook? Cause the night before I had a dream that my, you know, they hooked me up to the side of the aircraft and my belt like starts the outcome undone and here I'm like hanging off. But like stupid, stupid shit like that, right? So my team that I would, was there with was a bunch of, you know, random nerds all put together and we were making these

products and stuff. And the E4 Mafia was really strong on our team. We had, you know, a staff sergeant, NCOIC and a captain that were off doing their own thing. So it was us running the shop mostly. And it was good. We probably did a lot of stuff. Stupid crap we wouldn't we shouldn't have done. But it's mayhem. Yeah, of course. The E4 Mafia doesn't exist. That's just a myth. Yeah, it's like Fight Club.

You know, they stayed there. I don't know where they went. Can you walk us through a little bit of that process? Like, how do you come up with the idea for the pamphlet in the cartoon? Is that like a jam session you guys have? Is there a process? And then through the whole process of like making it, printing it out, and figuring out how to distribute it and who you're trying to get it to like that that whole process of crafting that message and trying to get it out to the target audience i'd be really interested to hear about

yeah so we we definitely had a very you know strict layout of of how you go through the process who you're targeting you know what your what the commander's intent is obviously and then how we're trying to what our ultimate outcome is and you come up with all these different crazy ideas all the different people that you could possibly target and the ways you would go through it and you refine that down so that you get rid of all the good idea fairies and then you get to like the meat of it of the stuff that would actually work and we had an amazing interpreter on our team and i was super thankful for him because my six-month crash course through air pick i had a kindergarten you know like if i spoke to a kindergartner who knew about the economy like we could talk but about that no

no so we would we would no no it's alf bay te fay thay like that basic would uh how would the sort of uh orders come down or the intent come down would it come down we want you to make a flyer that that says this and then you guys would decide how to say that or would it be like we want to influence this segment of the population to think this or to do this and so you guys would would formulate the whole process from there i've seen both of yeah for sure because you know it depends on um whose idea it is because obviously um officers have a lot of really good ideas ideas and they want to tell you exactly what you have to do, especially those outside of Siop and being able to take that, you know, order, that mission and then actually make a usable product because you don't want to, you know, yes, sir, and make this product if it's going to be absolute crap. But I mean...

Would you guys work like in a writer's room, like in a like for a script sort of where everybody threw out their ideas or would everybody kind of work it on their own and then you pitch them or how did that work how was that process we definitely had both of those situations it depends on how how we were given it and um you know what our our outcome was a lot of times we would work our own stuff up and then we'd come together and kind of you know piece through it sometimes we would write up our own um tie up plan and it would pass around the room and people would writing the crap out of it um it also depended on the timeline like how fast you have to get this done and sent back up to get approved and then back out i mean if you have all the time in the world

then you can do the writer's room and do it if you've got 48 hours right there were some products where i was told directly you have to work on this and i was not allowed to share with my other teammates what I was working on. So, you know, depending on what that mission is, they they would obviously have different personnel identified for missions, but we could be working on completely separate tasks. Interesting. And then how do you design the pamphlet? Like, are you trained to be like a cartoonist like Calvin and Hines? How do you, how does that take place? You usually have a 25 mic on your team, a graphic illustrator. At least one, you know, each area then you can give the basic like stick figure drawing and be like here make this

something yeah artist artist being an artist was not part of the schoolhouse i have to say that i did not know that there were graphic artists in the military no i just learned something new that's amazing yeah the 25 mics and a lot of them actually i think their school houses at fort mead um they get stuck doing power you know death by PowerPoint for colonels for their entire career and they hate it but we had some really amazing ones that were not only did they they keep up with the physical side of being in special operations but mine on my deployment team was she was amazing and it got to the point at the end that she just wasn't our 25 mic that we would hand it to she was part of the team and would help us and like gave her perspective on the mission and how to get it done. So she was amazing. I'd like to hang her on the show sometime. That'd be a fun one.

Her name is Jeanette Shusack. She's a professional photographer now. She's amazing. That's a little big deal. That's really cool. So when you would get these orders or get these ideas, these intents, were there metrics established? Like you said that you're trying to influence the youths of Iraq to,

put aside their their Sunniism and Shiism and Kurdishness and and just be good Iraqi nationals like and and for some of your projects Dan were there metrics in place was there did they know how to capture whether or not a mission was successful or not so there I mean there definitely were and on our products So through our brainstorming sessions and the SIOP process, we would determine what types of products would be effective to reach this. And if the commander ultimately signed off on that, then yes, we would be creating these posters, these leaflets, you know, sound bites, whatever it was. And I didn't get the feedback personally on whether or a certain product was successful. The way I knew if it was successful is if they were asking for more

products like that. So I ended up being quite successful at targeting, you know, certain types of people. So that was more the lane of the products that they would give me. And then you said you got to participate on some of the actual leaflet drops. And was that like I think maybe Joe was saying, Is it literally like you have like a black glad bag full of leaflets that you dump out of a helicopter? No, so you have to create the box and that's part of our AIT. You get to learn how to build the leaflet box. So it's, you know, like the Army has to make everything crazy. So it's a cardboard box that we have to pack the leaflets in in a certain way.

You have to cut the box the certain way with the, you know, your airborne or the, what's it called your you hook into is there like a static line or something like that static line thank you static line she says so you have to get your static line and you cut the box a certain way and you wrap it around and that's one of the things you learn at the schoolhouse that you completely forget once you're done and then relearn once you're there yeah honestly probably took a long time to learn how to do I mean to develop a tech you know a technology with cardboard box that would just distribute leaflets evenly over an area. Right, because you have to take into consideration, you know, the speed that you're flying,

the altitude that you're flying in, what the weather conditions are, like, there's a lot of nerd stuff in there for sure. Yeah. No. I mean, it sounds funny. Oh, yeah, you've learned how to build a cardboard box, but I'm sure that the actual execution is much more difficult than it. You know, you can't just drop a bundle of them and they all land in the same place. place or whatever. So interesting. And where I was at, we had our own printers there. So we were able to print a lot of our own products there in-house, which was incredibly boring and time-consuming. And then we also got to spend quite a few hours at the burn pit disposing of the ones we didn't use, which was also really exciting. And I'm sure my lungs are going to thank me later on in life. Sure. But yeah.

Sure. And the VA is going to be right there by your side. Oh, absolutely. Right there with us for all of the different injections we got before we went and shots we got before we went to. You know, I'd love to take a moment just to dispel some of the myths about SIOP as well because we have some good questions from viewers that I will ask. but I mean there's also in here I'm just looking for it now

I mean there are some people chiming in like about I think one of our moderators already deleted them but people are like you guys are sioping America right now COVID-19 is a sci-op all this kind of like people have some pretty wild ideas

about sci-op and what you guys do what is the truth what is the reaction to the way a lot of Americans perceive what you guys do. Well, first of all, it's against the Geneva Convention. You can't SIEOP your own. But really, it's specifically targeted for small areas.

Like, I don't think there's ever been a SIEP mission that included as many people that would be needed to make COVID work as a, how um sci-up mission because you'd have to get politicians and health care workers and schools and if you've ever tried to have a Zoom meeting with more than four people you know how ridiculous it is to try to herd those cats

so I think there is you know like I said at the beginning marketing is a form of it because you can target your message to whatever population you want, your target audience, and a lot of the same techniques do transfer on the civilian and the military side. But for something that big, I mean, it boggles my mind on how many people

would have to be involved and not say anything about it, that it's ridiculous. And I mean, the majority of people that are in the military, the majority of Psiopers are regular people. Like, you're not twirling your mustache is putting the tight up girl on the railroad tracks. It's not like that. Right. We're not like figments of someone's imagination. Like we're actual human beings. We're Americans, right? We have families. We have people we care about that live in this country. So we have a vested interest in this as well, right so i don't know i think that that probably you guys get some of the same fact that uh like

the cia gets and and you know other organizations in the sense that you know we've had a number of people uh you know former cia uh officers and whatnot on the show and just so people can see like just like just like you guys they're they're relatively normal you know huh relatively normal yeah yeah i wouldn't I wouldn't say normal, but I would say, you know, not, you know, not comic book supervillains. Yeah, yeah. Right. They're, so speaking, you know, you talked about not sci up in your own. It's also illegal, I should mention, like super illegal.

There's the Schmidt Mund Act and other laws. Like, it would be illegal for these young ladies to propagandize the American public or for current army of psychological operations to run ops on the American public is completely against the law. And Congress and the military are like super conscientious. And actually, why don't I throw this one out there to you guys? I'd like to talk about, hear your thoughts about

SIOP in the digital error, because now we have the notion that we could use the internet to target the enemy or to target foreign populations. But there's always the potential that if you put something on the internet, Americans are going to see it. Just by accident. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, maybe the challenges and difficulties about running modern psychological operations in a digital environment. I don't even know where to start. I mean, to me, we talked before we came on about how there's been missions that people wanted to do that was going to target people in specific.

foreign countries on the other side of the globe and do it through social media, but because it was coming from being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Places in the United States, it had to get not only military approval, but it had to get congressional approval. And not only do none of those people in that chain of command, well, not none, but a lot of those people in that chain of command and I would bet almost nobody in Congress understands what's going on. It's just so hard to do that all of those get completely shut down and you're not allowed to do it through social media.

So, and, you know, I looked at it, you know, all those pictures on social media that have. teachers holding up the sign saying, I'm trying to teach my sixth graders a lesson that once you put something on the internet, it can't be taken back. So please share and comment where it shared from and then you get people all over the globe. I think that's one of the issues because now that you've got, you know, you can record your screen and you can do screenshots and you can do everything. You may be targeting one area, but unlike traditional sci-up with, you know, speakers on Humvees or backpack mounted speakers or anything like that once it's out there you can't I don't say can't but it's a lot harder to control where it goes in in the

digital world right and I mean I understand that the hesitation there because you know we don't we're not trying to target American citizens but the enemy doesn't give you right they don't care I mean they're not gonna let slow them down right the russians the chinese the iranians like no you know they're all good at it and and they all have an advantage over us and i you know i've been out it'll be seven years in january um diane has been in a different mOS for a little bit longer than that so i don't think either of us are qualified to speak on what's going on on the black side today but i can almost guarantee that there are a lot of people with ulcers and losing sleep over how you control that

because just because somebody else is doing something bad doesn't mean we should do it too and I have no doubt in my mind that there are those kinds of things going on but I do at least on the lower level the people I know are trying to do it the right way I also heard some really funny stories actually from I'll just say US government employees that the CIA thinks SIOP is running all these high speed operations targeting the bad guys SIOP thinks all the CIA is running all these high speed influence operations when really neither are it's probably China doing both yeah it's like oh my god like we are just so far behind on some of this stuff it's

ridiculous um we are and the army take I mean the military in general take so long to change anything. Like we're still teaching kids in the schoolhouse how to cut a part a cardboard box correctly. Right. When we probably, when that technology was developed in Vietnam, we probably need to be focusing on something. And they may be because Diana and I aren't there, but you guys know anything in the military, it's going to take another 20 years to catch up to what the civilians and other people are at because it's so hard to get things to change in the military. So after that 2007 deployment, what was the trajectory for each of you after coming home from that? Well, I was bound and determined not to stay in.

I was pregnant with my first child. My husband was still active duty. I wanted to go into the civilian side and do things. So I got out and was out for about a year and a half. I had I joined a reserve sciop unit because a lot of the guys that I had been in with at the same time and then we all got out after our first four years We're getting recalled involuntarily and with a new baby. I wanted to be able to control that So I joined a reserve SIOP unit and was in about a year and a half which was a long enough time to realize I did not want to be in the reserves. I liked active duty way better

my life was better on active duty thing my life worked better on active duty um i came back and re-enlisted to go active duty um a year and a half later almost two years later um went back straight to the center of the universe fort bragg um that's i mean that's the only place really siop can be you can always leave and do deployments to be detached or attached to some other unit or once you get higher you do other you know you can move around but man fort bragg is the center of the universe you always end up back there so i came back i was with i was ready we bought a house outside of phaiville i was going to be in for another 20 something years i was just getting to where i felt like i knew my job better i'd been in long enough i'd have enough experiences both on the reserve

and active duty side that as a e5 promotable almost e6 um i finally felt that like I had a little bit of a grasp on my job. I really loved my job even though it's hard with a family like the opt tempo is hard because you can only really do your job when you're deployed. You can practice and train when you're at home but you can only really do that job when you're deployed. I was gearing up. I was with my team we were getting ready to go to Nwakcha, Mortenia and we had a couple more months of stuff to do. We're all gearing up and I did that one last jump out of a helicopter. And instead of doing a normal landing, it was an ankle-ass head landing. And I walked off the drop zone. I got my guys in. We shook out our shoots. And I mean,

I'm sure you guys know it hurts when you land. Like even if you do it perfectly, you're going to be sore for a couple days. So it was still hurting after I got my team in and I went up to the Humvee with the medic. You could already see the bruising coming up over like my boot. And so I started enlacing my boot and he was like, no, no, no, don't unlace it. Tighten that shit back up. And so I walked myself into the clinic and for a long and, you know, the nurse didn't believe me. She thought I was faking. I finally get in there and I unlace my boot and it goes

And she's like oh, I'm so sorry. I'll get you a wheelchair. I'm so sorry. I'm like you already told me I was faking lady And so for a long time it you know I was on crutches for a while and it was my ankle and but my ankle healed and that was summer some point it was freaking hot you know you had to do the oh god early jumps because it was too hot to do them in the afternoon. That's all I remember And then by I think it was about Halloween, my back had just not healed. My NCOIC for my team for Mauritania found me laying in the team office on the floor because that was the only place that I could ever get comfortable. About the third day where he found me with like a computer like this reading because I could only get comfortable laying on the floor.

He threatened me with an article 15 if I didn't go to the doctor, get my back looked at and that was kind of the beginning of the end um i because diane was at the battalion level as the um uh career counselor she got to influence who was her battalion or her she was at the group level so she got to decide who was the battalion retention enceos so once again nepotism is great and So she, instead of getting sent to like a warrior transition battalion or things like that that, that I think are the worst things in the military, I got to go to the battalion and just be the retention in CO while we figured out what was going on. And there was probably, what was it like two years, I think of, you know, all the injections and the needles in your back and the,

all the different things trying to radio frequency ablations and all of that to try to save you because they probably spent $2 million on your brain while they were training you. And it just, I tried to stay in and just reclass and go the same as Diane. I wanted to stay in and that wasn't going to be airborne and I wasn't going to be able to be G.I. Joe still and be super cool because, you know, I was this nobody kid from Idaho and all of a sudden I'm I'm in special operations and I'm jumping out of airplanes and I'm doing all this amazing stuff and I'm that my own family told me I would fail at and I would never get to do. So I didn't want to get out. I wanted to stay in, but the army decided that I was too broken and I would be medically retired. So I medically retired in 2014. So in the meantime, Diane, what was your path from, you know,

coming home from that initial deployment with your unit and then you know finding finding your way i guess into into being a career counselor well i got to um go on a i got to go to a blackwater training which was actually super amazing um so they taught us like all the cool guy stuff and um i got to do like an unofficial seer class where they threw uh they did the training teaching us how to break out of all sorts of different uh restraints and whatnot through us in the back of a van and i just remember so i could see kind of through my uh pillow case or whatever it was that they had over my head and the the instructor said okay everyone who slipped their restraints raise your hand and all of us but one raised our hand and the MPs who had all restrained us were like their jaws

dropped it was just really exciting and um i i loved it like i mean who wouldn't love doing that sort of stuff right i could get picked my way out of handcuffs blindfolded in an airplane hanger like it was fun um so yeah the po w camp i wouldn't use the term love uh no well okay so mine was mine was like the friendlier seer if i could it was like a seer light official Is it apprehended? So I think maybe that's why I liked it, right? Like it wasn't quite the same. So my experience was dramatically different than a lot of what, you know,

my fellow brothers and sisters have to go through now. But that being said, you know, my personal life really fell very heavily on my decision to not stay in SIOP because the opt tempo was very high. And we did deploy quite a bit. So thankfully, you know, I had that very supportive chain of command and they put me as the retention NGO for the battalion. And in doing that job, I fell in love with it. It was fantastic. And so I reclassed to become a career counselor and I've been doing it ever since. So what did you what did you love about being the retention officer? I think it was the fact that I got to

talk with other soldiers about their life and their goals you know I mean it's so being a career counselor versus being a retention NCO is a little bit different because it's a lot of hard work you know there's a lot of hours that you put in as a career counselor but as a retention NCO it's a lot of bullshitting right if you just got to talk with people about what's going on with your life and and having those conversations to where Like a young soldier doesn't have a plan. I'm just going to get out and then you talk to him about what the reality of that is She's still angry that I didn't convince her to stay in

But there was no talking Joe to staying in she was like getting out hell or high water. It was it was done Yeah hindsight's 2020. I should have stayed in and gone off the server, but what are you gonna do? But you know having those conversations where you kind of get that aha moment from a soldier and they come back to you later like hey thank you you know I got the assignment that I wanted or I got whatever you know and they're very thankful that you helped them with that it just I got a lot of satisfaction out of doing that job and so when the opportunity came that I could reclass to do that job absolutely and then I went to the school for career counselor and I was like what the hell did I get into because it was extremely difficult

I felt like it was more strenuous than what I went through with sciop but you know it is what it is I made it so that's not you know when you say like career counselor that's not something that like off the top of my head I would think would be a strenuous school what like what was strenuous about it what what was like what were some of the major challenges about it so for for me personally it had a lot writing on it it was sort of like i have to do this job like i have to pass so i can i can do this job um so a lot of that pressure was was self put on it like when i was going through sciop i didn't have quite that same level like if i don't make it here it's going to be really bad right um it's a lot of math and you know the the the

detail that you have to pay attention to in the career counselor course. Like you get one day wrong and you have screwed up everything and you completely fail a test based off like one miswritten number, right? So what was like when you say math like what was the this is actually fascinating. What what was the curriculum as as a career counselor like what I mean because in my mind would just be you have to know like what the different MOSs are and you know know what the re-enlistment bonuses are right so i mean you know like the army obviously likes to change everything so there's specific army math that you have to learn which is not normal math um and being able to convert that time and knowing if the person was in the r o tc or in the debt program before 1983 they get credit or they don't you know

know like it's stuff that you have to memorize and those fine little details um because you are making a contract between the u.s government and an individual and your name is going on the line so there's you know a lot of pressure there to make sure that you don't screw up and you know the last thing you want to do is tell someone hey you're getting a 10 000 bonus and then who's just kidding you don't you know like then the wife's coming at you or something like i'm good i want any part of that And she's really good at her job because she just made E8. She will pin on E8 December 1st. Congratulations.

It's awesome. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, let me, let's jump into some viewer questions here. So Andrew asks, what were the meow cat speakers supposed to achieve? So when I was a young trooper out there and the tactical sci-op people pull up with their speaker system playing the cats meowing,

What is it that the SIEOP people are trying to accomplish with that? Surrender. Yeah. Drive you insane until you surrender, probably. I mean, I never did cat specifically. We did Barney, but pretty much just drive you insane into like, I can't handle it more. Take me away from here. I think some of it is intimidation as well, right?

You're adding that factor of, oh, it's either really annoying with the cats, me out or it's super overpowering with like Metallica or something that sounds kind of scary, right? So they're trying to get you to stop doing whatever it is that you're doing, hopefully in a peaceful manner, obviously. But I'll never forget that. Meow. And I guess his CO, not CO, but his captain of whomever told him, hey, you know, take the Humvee up with these speakers and up to that hill and play the tank soundtrack make it seem like there's a tank up there.

That makes a bit more sense. And he's like, why don't you send a tank up there? We'll put speakers on it, make it sound like a Humvee. Joey says, Rangers are very much special operations. Thanks for explaining sciops, ladies. Rangers lead the way. Sci op, Joey, sci op. Thank you.

And he also asks, do a lot of sciops soldiers? get recruited by the CIA and State Department? So I don't think as many as they would hope for because I had a lot of soldiers who were like, I'm going to go work for the FBI. And I saw them back rather quickly before their contract was actually up. So yeah. I think at first a lot of people think that would be awesome and it's a great way to transition, but they're so different. I don't think nearly as many people

do it as one either the soldiers would hope or the general like civilians would think uh Alex Bennett asks any fun encounters with DSS when you work with the State Department DSS uh diplomatic security services the like oh yeah yeah um just make sure on the yes bottoms up um go ahead yes um yes um I am still, well, on social media, I'm still really good friends with some of them. They were the ones that, how do I put this? They covered for us a lot because when we were in civilians, they let us say that we were, we were them. They introduced us to the Brits and the Aussies, and those guys were freaking awesome.

Which means that you guys broke general order number one all the time. Never. I will play the fifth. There are so many amendments. I can only plead one. Yep. Maybe in another 20 years or so, when everybody that was on my team is off active duty,

we'll talk about it. Fair enough. Well, it's not like every, every captain and above didn't have a bottle of scotch in his or her desk out. there so allegedly there's some captains and majors that are are very nervous right now because

they know what i can say well this this isn't my interview let's just say i got some fire pick stories about iraq um save that for another time uh hammer and nails thank you uh and then let's see where are we here andrew as a retention nCO did you ever trick anyone who who was rude and signed them up for a four-year enlistment to be spent above the Arctic Circle. Is this someone that I know? I wonder. I would never.

Like honestly, if somebody was rude, my mindset is like, I don't need you. I get paid whether I make mission or not. So if you wanna be a dick, you can go be a dick over there. To you guys, out of curiosity, there's always the rumor about recruiters having quotas. And I don't know if that's true or not. But did you guys have, like, were your performance evaluations, were your performance evaluations, or are,

are your performance evaluations based on your retention records? Um, that, that definitely has some play into it. But, um, thankfully we're program managers. And the mission for retention is actually the commander's mission. So we just help facilitate that. Nice. Yeah, uh, Corey says is C-HAPs for officers? a lat transfer, similar to having to be a first lieutenant and try out for SFAS, to then be in 18 alpha. And is DLI as long as 35 mic slash PMOS? Thank you. DLI is going to depend on the language.

Yeah, it is a lateral transfer, and DLI is anywhere, it just spends on language. Some of them are a year and a half. Yeah, it goes from cat one, which is six months, which is like Spanish and whatnot, up to four, which, like Arabic and Chinese, which are 15 months. Yeah. That's a very lawyer answer for you. It depends. Alejandro asks, how many sci-oppers transition into corporate or social media marketing firms? Natural transition, yes or no? More than in the CIA or the FBI.

Yeah. I think marketing is more of a natural transition. And it just like anything else if they have that personality because you have to, you know, you schmooze more on the civilian side, but you've got that baseline understanding of how to do it. So definitely more than go into the alphabet organizations. Are there ever marketing campaigns or advertisements, commercials, things like that, that you guys see that you're like, man, that's good. Mostly the bad ones, honestly, because if they're doing it right, you don't notice.

But we'll be watching movies or a TV show, and I'm like, oh, look at that product placement, or look at that dig. Yeah, it's just something that becomes, after you do it for so long, it becomes ingrained to you to notice it. Yeah. So, folks, if you have any questions for Joe and Diane, get them in now. The next thing I wanted to ask you about is, you know, you guys are ride or dies. So you created together the Sisters and Arms podcast. I want to tell you to tell us the genesis of this podcast, how it came together and what you're doing with it. Well, it was New Year's Eve last year, almost a year ago.

And I saw something, I honestly remember it was, but there was the hashtag Sisters in Arms. And then there was some comments of like, ah, women can't do that shit. And so that night, like even before midnight, I was like, hey, Diane, guess what? We're doing a podcast. You're doing this with me, okay? She's like, ugh. Because I love podcasts. Like, I've been listening since, like, serial, you know, like, I love them.

And when I was commuting to law school and back podcasts are what kept me awake for that, you know, I commuted 18 hours a week. and like kept me awake and i don't think diane was really as versed in podcasts at that point as i was so luckily she loves me and i said hey we're doing this and she said okay what are we doing and so it took um a lot of time we had it all kind of laid out and then COVID hit and my personal life, my health kind of took a nose dive, Diane PCS. So it took us until July to be able to get the ball rolling and get all that done. But in that kind of downtime when I can really do much, I was networking with all of our former sisters in arms. One of our friends from our original between,

Italian after the schoolhouse is who created our website. Another sciopper created our logo. So it was kind of a group effort to get us going. That's how it works in the beginning. So what is it? Why are you guys making this podcast? What's it about? Okay.

Oh, okay. No, it's fine. It's our whole goal is kind of twofold. one to just tell stories of women veterans throughout history. I've done everything from the 1600s all the way to OEF, OIF veterans. First part of the podcast, we each tell a story about a different woman veterans somewhere in history. And then we highlight a charity that is doing great things for not always specifically women veterans, but we try to at least lean that way to women veterans. There's a few that we've had women veterans interactive. The final salute,

a lot of them are focused on women veterans issues, a lot of them being homelessness and suicide. Women veterans are twice as likely as male veterans to be homeless and four times as likely as women civilians to be homeless. And a lot of that goes into that most shelters that even though they lean towards veterans, they don't allow children. And a lot of women veterans, when they get out, end up being single mothers. And so if they can't take their children with them, they can't go there. So we're trying to get these charities out that are trying to get those stop gaps because you know the VA reports only like what was it it was I think 4300 women were reported as homeless through the VA last year when the actual estimated amount is somewhere around

50 to 55,000 so there's that many that are falling through the gap the gaps because they don't trust the organization they don't trust the VA the typical VA patient is a white male aged 45 to 60 and so with women now becoming 10% or so give or take depending on where you look of the the veteran population and it's only going up with OEF OIF veterans but not only younger there's more of them the VA like any other government organization is struggling to keep up with that change and so we're trying to put out the information of these charities to that are our becoming that safety net. You would tell me a little bit, or before we got started tonight, that you feel like, and maybe this plays into also why you created the podcast,

that you feel like female veterans are like, kind of invisible in society. It's like you're not really there. Yeah. Well, I, like, I refuse to go out to eat on Veterans Day because it's just so insulting. It's not even worth it. it oh only he gets the meal like you know it part of it is um my personal like i want to say

healing but my getting over my being bitter and jaded about what happened at the end um i'm using this to help others so that i can get over that um soft is really hemorrhaging talent in so many ways and one of the ways is kind of that genetic lottery that we really don't know until you're about five, six years in and you're either falling apart or you're not. You can't really control that after, you know, you have so many jumps under your belt that you finally get degenerative disc or you don't. But the other is the leadership and the leadership, at least from my perspective, I'm sure, you know, have to do that caveat. It's been a while, things can change, but they expect you to be the

best of the best. You are special operations. You are literally G.I. Joe. You do the best with the little, with the least amount. But they're not taking into consideration people's, they're not taking into consideration people's mental health and opt tempo and all of that as breaking people down until it's a triage situation. And the mental health and morale, I don't know if, I don't know, I don't know if mental health and morale and suicide levels seem worse,

in special operations because it's such a small world that you see more of it, or if it's actually on par with the regular army and we just, it's such a small world that you see it more. We are above average. I've seen this. Okay. Like the internal reporting that's so calm. Right. We are above average.

But it's not being addressed until it's a triage situation. So a lot of that kind of played into my being bitter at certain leadership and certain battalions that out of respect for some people I won't name but I like ninja chopped my the military out of my life there for a while and my children didn't even know that I was in and there's no memorabilia

hanging up it's all in kentico boxes in the shop it's completely gone and once my my physical health took a nosedive and I had I had to step back for my second career um it unfortunately gave me the time to think about all of this and how to be able to help me get through all of it. Maybe a way to do that is to help others so that they don't have to deal with it. I'm sorry. Since getting out, have you utilized the VA or tried to utilize VA? And if so, what were you? Yeah, good and bad, just like anything else. So when I first got out, we were going to stay in the Fayetteville area.

area before my husband got a job or in the DC area. And I tried to get everything set up. And I was eight months pregnant. And I walked in to get everything set up. And they're like, oh, I'm sorry. We don't do prenatal care here. If you have it's like when you go into labor, just go to the ER and they'll help you. And I'm like, it's two.

What was it? Mid 2000s in the United States. And you're telling me the VA because they, they, they, they, I have a baby, they're not going to be able to help me. And then the VA, I don't know why, but the West Coast ones seem to be better than the East Coast ones in general. I've been very lucky. The VA doctor here in Boise after five or six years is the first one that was finally able to officially diagnose everything. And it's been a few years of working to get the medications right. but I've got a good doctor there, but as early as, was it like two weeks ago?

Yes. I walked in, yeah, I walked in for a scheduled appointment. Like, I had to get a coronavirus test like eight hours before my scheduled appointment. So I walk in, like, hi, this is my name. I'm here for this appointment. They've been calling me every day for like three days so I know where to go. And the lady at the front, like, entrance area who was, you know, scanning for, foreheads for fevers and checking everybody was like, um, I'm sorry, you can't be here.

This hospital is only for veterans. Wow. Like, um, I am the veteran and I have an appointment. That lady right there that's waving at me to come over is telling me to come over here for my appointment. She's like, oh, well, you don't look like a veteran. I'm like, is it because I'm, you know, I'm young-ish. I'm not super young anymore. Young-ish, I'm female.

Is it because you know, I've been on steroids for two and a half years. I gained 75 pounds. So because I don't look like I'm running 10 miles a day every day anymore. I can't be a female veteran. So and I, you know, I'm very. Uh, salty vocal about it. So. So understandable. But I can't imagine what other women who are a little less meek or haven't got over that home to, but they're going. going through. Yeah. Diane, what's your take on all of this? You're a veteran, but you're also still an active duty soldier. I mean, do you feel like you're like invisible in society that like, some of you had experiences like Joe talks about where it's as if you don't exist to people as a soldier or as a veteran? Well, I think now it's a lot better.

I mean, there's a, you know, the percentage of women that are in the military is significantly more than when I first joined. So I just remember for the very first sciop ball that I attended, I had a place setting for Sergeant Trana and Mrs. Trana. And I was totally mortified because I had complete, I had provided the information that was required and they still, you know, at that time was the one who was in the military. Yes, yeah. And you know, calling the doctor to try to make an appointment. Oh, can I have your sponsors social? I love that.

Hey, may I have your husband social? No, it doesn't matter. It's my social. And I can't tell you how many times, you know, my husband has called in to make an appointment or something, and they need my social. However, they're asking him for his. And he's like, but my wife is the one that's on active duty.

I'm not. No, that's okay. We need yours. And then he gives them his. And they're like, we don't we don't see you in the system because you need my wife social and then at that point it it is a parent right so oh okay what's her social You know like that sort of thing still happens even just you know a few weeks ago that one happened but Overall I don't feel as invisible I've been very fortunate for the teams that I've been a part of to have you know very supportive teammates and

And at my last duty station, I actually got to lead an all-female team. And, you know, before I took over that team, I heard a lot of, you know, feedback of like, ooh, that sounds awful. Like, you know, I can't imagine, you know, because everyone has in their mind it's just going to be catfights and, you know, craziness. And we did extremely well. Um, there was, you know, conflict there, but I don't believe that that was, you know, just

because it was an all female team. You know, you're going to have conflict in any team and we, you know, we made it through that. And, you know, it was, it was phenomenal. And I think being able to show everyone else that we could run a completely successful team, um, as females, it said a lot to those around us, right? And I'm just, I feel like now it's not as bad. Was it all female by design? I didn't hear you.

Oh, was it all female by design? No, it just kind of worked out that way. We have a question that kind of relates to this. Thanks, Joey. What is the male, the female ratio in SIA? 4 to 1, I would guess. I mean, maybe 5 to 1. I honestly both of us have been out of that world for seven or so years so from what I can see from people that are still in I think it's getting better

but make no mistake any ladies that are thinking about it it's still the army it's still special operations you absolutely 100 percent deserve the respect to be a team member and I'm of the mind if you can do the job, I don't care about anything else, but you will have thick skin and you need to have thick skin, but there's a difference between having thick skin and letting somebody abuse and harass you. And unfortunately, that will probably happen. And you, so it's one thing to have thick skin to be able to, you know, they make a, you know, the sandwich joke and my, my go-to is like deadpan, like, I don't get it. Why would I make your sandwich?

I was the coffee maker. But you know, you can have thick skin and be deadpan and throw it back at them because you I mean, you're in the army and you're in special operations and you've got to be able to pick and choose those battles, but you do not deserve to be harassed and abused. And going into that, I mean, there was a federal judge, a federal district judge in Virginia in 2012 that said rape and sexual harassment is an occupational hazard for women in the military so fucking crazy um it's as politically incorrect as that statement is there's also unfortunately a truth to it um if you look at the the sexual assault rates in the u.s military i mean it's it's and it is and one in

three women in the military report the military sexual trauma and that's just the ones that report it So it's estimated anywhere from like, you know, have to even more actually experience it because only a third of them are reporting it. I mean, I, a little bit of luck, a lot of bit of luck, a little bit of my attitude where I'll just punch you in the dick and a little bit of luck and a little bit of luck in luck and a little bit of luck in having good team members that I never experienced the actual abuse. use. I was plenty of harassment. I mean, I can remember, God, what is that, what's that system called the light system? Anyway, I was at some school thing, and we were allowed to wear civilian clothes for the classroom portion. And the instructor, every time he'd walk by my chair, he'd, he'd like, let his hand across my back. And every time we were in a break, he'd be like, I love your tattoos. And I'm like, I'm married with a kid, you fucker. Like, and so, for somebody like me who has had a lot of luck to never be because I did some stupid shit and there were situations where I look back now and I'm like oh my god how did I not get like killed or or anything you know but a little bit of luck and a little bit of my attitude that I can't imagine I mean there's so it happens to so many people and it's going to take an entire cultural shift not even in the army but in special operations of ever. everybody shutting that shit down for it to change.

Yeah, I have a feeling that he probably did not tell male soldiers that he loved their tattoos. No, and, you know, the funny part was, is I couldn't figure it out because I have a bunch of tattoos on my back, but I've tried to keep them pretty professional. So if I'm in even just, you know, a long-sleeve t-shirt or whatever, you can't see him. But I guess one day I had a shirt on that was see-through or not, I had a tank top underneath, but you could see some of the tattoos sticking out on the back and I was just like the worst part of it is I couldn't figure out how this guy was seeing my tattoos like do you have like a mirror in the bathroom or like a camera of the bathroom like I couldn't figure it out but creepy yeah it is creepy and nobody none of the guys it wasn't the guys that I went through school with or in our battalions that were with me in that class so but none of them called him out on it yeah why do I have to be the one that says hey fucker like ew right don't the other all the other guys in the class that were watching it should have been like ew don't and until that happens I don't think things are going to change enough for

rape and harassment to not be an occupational hazard and until they stop commanders allowing to handle it in-house like that's a that just boggles my fucking mind I don't understand how a criminal matter can be handled in-house at a unit level like what right and after going to law school and being a public defender, I can't imagine one of our own, you know, a lawyer in your office, something happened to them and like, don't worry, the other lawyers are going to take care of it. And what other occupation is that allowed to happen? You know where it happens is on college campuses, actually, where they handle it. I was thinking like after, but you're right. Yep. No, they are because it goes to, yeah.

That's also mind-boggling. Like, you have a violent crime. How are you allowed to handle that on a college like some some college administrators hold a board like white you should be right no it isn't it i guess it's not just a soft or military it's our entire culture that needs to shift on that um okay so i'm gonna ask if you could stay uh for the bonus segment for like 10 minutes if that's okay well is there anything like Dave and I and the two of you but we failed to cover or that we didn't bring up anything you want to put out there um our podcast is Sisters in Arms podcast. It's every week on all of the

all of the podcast apps. Our website is sisters and armspodcast.com and you can go there and find all the links to all the social media and email and all of that. And I know that you guys probably pick different charities each week but are you plugging anything right now?

Any charities you want to put out there? That's usually Diane's department. We do a new charity every two months because that's eight episodes to be able to kind of give all of their programs. So is there a particular charity that you guys like to put out to our audience right now and the people who will be watching that if they have a few extra bucks, I can go and, you know, give it to a worthy cause? Oh, absolutely.

Oh, sorry. Look, I have a lot of distractions in the background, so I'm listening to other stuff going on too, so I apologize. So right now we have the women veterans interactive. They have some really great programs to help with transition for women who are transitioning out of the military into the civilian world because that is dramatically different, you know, for anybody leaving the military when you go from being told what you have to wear and where you go, right? So no one really instructing you. it's it's difficult and i think um you know women have very specific issues so it's nice that there are charities that help with that and then we also have the final salute which it sounds you know

ominous yeah i guess but um it targets you know women that fall into that category that um are experiencing homelessness or having a hard time with employment uh and it those are both really great organizations for women veterans that help all across the country. The financials for them are very, you know, decent. The majority of the money that you donate goes directly to the veterans that you're helping 80 to 90 percent of it. So, you know, it's a very small portion that actually goes to the overhead of the charity. And then another one that we would like to plug is Project Sanctuary, which covers, you know, all veterans and their families. And I think, think that so for joe and i our podcast isn't you know like men hating women only it's you know

highlighting an underrepresented group right we did get a lot of feedback of oh great right like this is just a bunch of women hating men which we're not we you know okay because this podcast is really like me and dave making a little fort out of couch cushions and like we should nerf balls at the girls as they come by in the living room um But, you know, like there's a lot of really good charities out there that are set up to help with the specific needs that veterans and their families have. So, you know, those are just a few to mention for us. Yeah. And Project Sanctuary was a really good one for me because it included the whole family.

And basically what it takes service members who are having mental health issues or at risk for suicide. And it not only helps them and brings them into, and they do. do all kinds of events with them, but it brings their family. And that family can be whatever you think is a family, whether it's you and a caregiver, whether it's you and a spouse, whether it's you and your kids, it's whoever you are, it brings them and it focuses on the whole unit, because as I'm sure all four of us here know, that opt tempo is not kind to families and marriages. I have been on both sides of it. I have been the one deployed and I have been the one left home while the spouse is deployed and every time i will pick being the one deployed than the one left

home every time it's so it's easier to be deployed than it is to be home but and project sanctuary focuses on both sides of the your family however you view that family and brings them together because one of their stats was even as of 2012 even military spouse suicide had spiked and was at a 25 or you know 25 no 25 percent there we go higher than the baseline just civilians because it's so hard when your spouse is in so project sanctuary was an awesome one um that i really loved because they took you know just like anything medical mental health if you're not looking at the whole picture you're not looking at the whole person you can fix their their r a or their lupus but if you're not focusing on the mental health or what's going on their home you're not going to help that entire

the whole person and if you're not focusing on their family you're not going to help the whole veteran so right uh thank you b piaz he says to all of my sister vets which includes my wife um and thank you to you too um we have i think we got a couple more questions it rolled in but Andrew uh he said the least smart criminal you've dealt with understand as like as an attorney or in sciop maybe as an attorney um the least smart criminal probably the ones that um try to say it wasn't them when there's audio and video evidence and you know i have a whole soapbox about you know i went to school knowing i was going to be a public defender and i you know going into impoverished community

They need that legal representation, but sometimes you've got to be like, man. It's a frame. They have five cameras of you shoving the bacon down your pants. I cannot defend you in this, man. I'm sorry. That's awesome. All right, so check out the Sisters and Arms podcast. Where can people find it?

Sisters and Armspodcast.com. We have Instagram, Facebook, Twitter at arms pod a rMS p o d they're all the same um sisters in our podcast at gmail.com they're all it's all on our website sisters in arms podcast.com yeah and and definitely if if you guys are interested in in uh vet issues in military history i mean do check out this podcast because it's you know it's not a she woman man hater club it they're simply you know focusing on on the of women in military service which really doesn't get talked about a lot so it's it's a great platform and it's a great space and likewise please like

share and subscribe to this here YouTube channel help us spread us around share this video with your friends far and wide there's also a link down the description to our Patreon page if you're interested in supporting us and keeping this show going and you get access to bonus segments like we're going to do in two seconds here. So I think that's it for today's show. Next week, episode, this was episode 70, right? So episode 71 next Friday, we're going to have Ebben Barlow on the show. Eben was the CEO of executive outcomes, a private security firm that took the fight to some really bad actors in Sierra, Sierra Leone and Angola back in the day. And he has a new book out about his

time as the chairman of a company called Step. They, what were in, Uganda working against the Ward's Resistance Army. They were in Nigeria fighting Boko Haram. I'm halfway through the book right now. It's freaking amazing. And you guys are going to love it. So we will have Eben here next week. Tune in for that.

And until next time. So thank you again, Joe and Diane. Really appreciate you. Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Okay.