The Team House - Army SMU Operator Adam Gamal on the NOLA & Vegas Bombers | EYES ON

Episode Date: January 5, 2025

today im joined by former Army SMU Operator Adam Gamal to talk about the Vegas and NOLA bombers, vet mental health and extremism.Adam's book:⬇️https://www.amazon.com/Unit-Inside-Americas-Secret-Military-ebook/dp/B09Y457JN5Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseFind Andy Milburn here: ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023https://amilburn.substack.com/https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operationshttps://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialhttps://open.substack.com/pub/amilburn/p/journal-of-a-plague-year?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=emo6q&utm_medium=iosFind Mick Mulroy here: ⬇️https://fogbow.com/https://www.loboinstitute.org/https://x.com/MickMulroy?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_apphttps://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.socialBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes On. I'm Dmiti Contacos. I'm here with Adam Gamal. He is the author of The Unit, which is a great book. He had a great episode with the team house in studio. The link will be in the description there if you haven't checked it out. Also, the link for his book will be in the description as well if you haven't checked that out yet. It's really great. And he's a great guy. One little quick thing. I want everyone who's listening or watching. to like and subscribe. It's really important. It helps the algorithm and do all that thing. I want to put it up top. So give people a little bit of a call to action. Adam, how are you? What's going on?

Happy New Year. I did. Happy New Year too as well. And I'm sure everybody's talking about the beginning of 2025. And it's been a rough beginning. But I'm hoping and I'm sure it's going to get better as the year goes through. Yeah, same here. So thanks again for doing this.

the big things that are going on is, you know, the New Orleans attack and the Tesla bomb. Big news from yesterday was the FBI released a couple of pieces of, you know, some correspondence or some, like, messages from the bomber, who was not a former, but an active Green Beret and 10 Special Forces Group, who up until the day it happened, seemed to be, you know, be okay. and he went out with a, for lack of a better term, he went out with a pretty big bang, unfortunately. Fortunately, nobody else was hurt.

I mean, nobody else was killed. But my big, I think, like, you know, the Sean Ryan show had a guy,

Sam's shoemate that posted that's had an email. There is a little bit of going back and forth. Like whether that email is legit or not, the FBI did say it was

legit as far as they knew. But if you look at it compared to the other stuff that the guy's written, it's a bit off. Like, it doesn't seem like it's the same guy. But again, like, you don't know what the guys, you know, what he was going through at that in that moment, and the moment he was writing those things. So I think we're missing the forest for the trees because that one,

the one manifest that Sean Ryan posted, he was talking about like gravitational propulsion and stuff like that that China might have in like a war crime that went down where in 2019, where the U.S. a place in Afghanistan and killed a lot of civilians. And I think there needs to be a bigger talk about, like, veteran mental health, which is kind of being missed because the New Orleans bomber was also a former, he's a former army and stuff like that.

And he seemed to, like, you know, be struggling in life. And mental health and how that affects, like, your ability to get radicalized. Because whether it's you're radicalized by ISIS, or you're radicalized by something else, it seems to me that, like, people who are have mental challenges are more prone to getting sucked into getting radicalized in some way or shape or form.

So that's kind of what I want to touch on today. Yeah, I don't really have a question at him. I just fly. Yeah. Yeah, no, no. So let me, let me add a couple of points to you. Sure, please. I do have, I had friends who actually took their own lives.

I had people extremely high-ranking military guys who retired. We were friends. We've met. We talked about the next few months in business and what we're going to do. And literally like a day of two after one of those gentlemen just took his own life. I will not mention him, but was an extremely high-ranking guy. I sat for like, honestly, for like a few months after that. Till now I sit and I'm like, did I miss something?

Was he giving me any signs? The guy talked about his family, his kids, and his kids getting married. And he talked about everything that a person in his right state of mind will talk about. But what we missing is like what makes somebody like him flip? I'm sure. I mean, some guys will say, well, you know, a guy who committed a suicide. planned it for a few years. And again, I know another situation where a female, she was working for the government for DoD,

again, she was under the command that was in right before I retired. And she planned her, she did plan her suicide for three years. But that point of pulling the trigger is where these people are going from planning to executing. And if we don't catch them in between, we're missing something out. I think what's going on recently, and I get your point about, like, you know, the Sean Ryan show and the email and people making all of this propaganda to, it's very unfortunate that we try to use such a situation and such a tragedy to make a scene or something. So I'm not, I'm not like, you know, throwing rocks at anybody. I'm just saying that in a situation like this, we really have to take a few steps back and look at the root cause of the problem, whether the New Orleans guy who obviously was radicalized by watching ISIS stuff,

or the Vegas guy who decided to take his own life and make a bang, like you said. But if you look at most likely that both of them had personal issues, Both of them had multiple divorces. Both of them had issues with their exes or their current. Both of them deployed. And most likely a lot of people, me included, a lot of people who deployed to Afghanistan felt betrayed when the way, how we pulled out of Afghanistan.

But it does not mean that I take this into committed any acts of violence. right? So we're missing the point of, oh, let's talk about the guy with the conspiracy theory and aliens and all of these things. And we're missing the point of what made him do that. Are we paying attention to what's going on? Was there anything else in his unit? And a lot of people are jumping into conclusions. But I did talk in my book about PTSD. And I didn't call it PTSD. I called it like operator syndrome, which is, I think that's the, some of the psychologists. That's what do you call it. And whether you are a veteran or not, whether you were in a special operation unit or not, you could be a guy like the guy from New Orleans who was an HR guy, spent 10 years,

seemed very patriotic as well. Something happened made him flip. And if we can go well, he was Muslim or he was Christian or he was white or he was blacker. Then we're not looking at why did this happen? looking at, we're trying to over-analize things that maybe, may or may not be part of the problem. But yeah, it's very clear that in our veteran community, and there is something, actually, something else that not a lot of people talking about it. There was another guy, another veteran, Caucasian, I think he's dual citizen, Irish American,

who tried to join Hezbollah, and he was just arrested. recently. He went, I think, Syria and Lebanon in the last few years and tried to join Hezbollah. Again, non-Muslim guy. So within the veteran community, it seems that we do have an issue and we need to address it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And there's a great service an app called SoundOff, where if you are still a active member, whether it's DOD or CIA or wherever and you're worried about losing your clearance or something like that and you can't work anymore and you're struggling, you could go and do online therapy anonymously and you don't have to worry about that. So if anyone's listening and you're struggling,

it's a sound dash off.com. There's an app on the, you know, all the app, the app store and Google store. And it's free. So, yeah, the interesting thing, like, you know, there's a relatively popular YouTuber out there that's come out. His name's Ryan Macbeth. And he does a lot of like topical geopolitical stuff, smart guy, former army guy, Intel guy. And he's calling out Sean Ryan and the guy's shoemate. He's claiming that the email is fake. I mean, the guy is relatively reputable.

This guy, I wouldn't say relatively. He's pretty reputable. He's smart guy. He works on disinformation and stuff like that. but at the same time you had the FBI yesterday confirm it not so much confirm it but they said as far as they know it is that's an actual

that's something from the guy from Matt Silsberg so it's like again we're having this problem because I remember a couple days ago we had Alex Hollings on and we were talking about this where the information space is so cluttered and so

diluted and everybody wants an answer right away, um, that we just end up being more confused about it. And it's, it's, it's, it's not something like it doesn't make sense. And I'm sure for the families too, it probably does. It's like unbelievably shocking. Um, we had another instance where Jack Murphy, he wrote an article about a gentleman named Matt Frody, who was, uh, army Intel guy, who, you know, out of nowhere, uh, it, let's, um, he wrote. up he started acting paranoid and stuff like that and he was a he was an active guy he's still working he ended up taking his life um it's wild to me because it's like people lose you know how long

were you in the army for adam 21 years yeah so like you 21 years of like that camaraderie where you have a job to do and it's every day and it's all encompassing to not having a job to do basically or like maybe you're seeing the end of the road right like in matt's case the vaguely the vaguer the Tesla bomber, where what am I going to do next, really? Relatively young guy. Yeah. Very young guy. There is one thing, too.

You hit the nail on the head when you talking about, you're talking about like the camaraderie in the military. So one thing is the U.S. is the most individualistic country in the world. So when we look at, you know, family or not family, like group-oriented culture versus, and they call it, like, collectivistic culture versus. is individualistic culture. So the U.S. and the individualistic rating would be like number one, right?

And then we take guys who are extremely individuals out of high school or college and in a young age. And we tried to bring him into the military to mold them into this team, group, family. And in the military, they talk about we're a family, what are a team, and we take care of each other and all these things.

And you do that for them or to them for five years, six, six years, 10, 20 years. It depends how long he stayed in that situation, 19 years, and he was getting close to the 20, and maybe he can do like another year or two or another 10. But at the end, he's going to be like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to have to go back. So for the veterans who leave the military and go out to the civilian world again, while you are asked to be individualistic again. Yeah. And because that's the society. If you, some, some neighborhoods, if you tell your neighbor, good morning and your neighbor is like, are you saying good

to me, who are you? So they get nervous because it's a very individualistic culture. So we don't have that. So when we try to help people leave the military and transition back to the private sector, this is the civilian world, what we are doing is we're going. We're helping them, this is how you write your resume. This is how you can find a job. This is what kind of job you should be looking for. But we're not going and saying this is how you should take care of your, the group around. This is how you can build the community. This is because you come from,

you came from individualistic. And when you are like 18, 19, you're still a kid, honestly. And then you go. So you go to this community. And how do you go back after you leave the military and build this community? And like I said, I think, and I don't know, but in that situation, it seems like here's a guy who possibly felt betrayed even by like the politicians.

Hey, I voted for you thinking we're going this way and I feel like we're going that way. And then he has a family issue that could be the show that broke the camels back. But if we are not talking and we're not creating this safe environment for people to talk and discuss it and check out on one another, check out for each other and all these things, then that person can flip. And again, so the email that he sent to Sean Ryan, I don't know, most likely the email is true. Honestly, I don't know.

But whether the email is legit or not, it seems somebody who's extremely disturbed. Somebody talking about all of these different weird things and the deep system. And so I don't know if Sean Ryan saw the email before or not or if any of the people there saw it or not. But if I'm a guy in a, when you are a public figure, you have a lot of responsibilities.

And when you have these responsibilities, if I get an email like that, I would actually try to see, like, what's going on. And there are a lot of veterans on those situations where when you reach out to that, they reply to. Since I wrote the book, I received a lot of messages and emails from people who are in the military or not in the military who have personal situations. And they just went back. They just wanted to talk. And I listened to them and I chat with them. And it's okay.

It's not, it's, if you're not reaching out to these people, and they reach not to you, so you can help. They're not reaching out to you because they want to have a drink with you. They reach not to you, seek and help. And they saw in you whether through your writing, through your show, through whatever made you more of a public figure, they reach not to you because they feel they can trust or relate to you. And this is where we should.

And I'm sure, like, you know, like if Jack, for example, if Jack Murphy gets like a thousand email a day, then he won't be able to check all of them. Yeah. So I'm not sure how it can be done, but to build those communities to help these guys out, it's very beneficial. Even the guy who did the New Orleans,

which just seems like now we're talking more about Vegas than the New Orleans. But New Orleans was more tragic, actually, because he had people lost their lives. The guy was doing this to create a lot of damage, to make a statement to get people killed, and he was prepared to be killed as well. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today

about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad-free. That's the big bonus for that.

I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go in and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Yeah. Yeah, the New Orleans one for sure. I mean, what's interesting is it's not really looking so much like people, the narrative-wise, in terms of like, oh, the Vegas one's not so much terrorism.

This one, but the New Orleans one is because it was inspired by ISIS. And you saw like initial reports when it first happened was like, it was an ISIS cell that snuck in through the border and like all this stuff. And then it was found out the guy's actually a U.S. citizen who was just radicalized in that way. I mean, it doesn't matter what you're radicalized by, right? Like it could be ISIS. It could be super left. swing or super right it doesn't matter like the fact is like it you shouldn't no one should get radicalized

and the quickness i think it seems like how you can get radicalized in less than a year like there's a book out i think it's like seven to nine months could get you to become like normal and then you're a suicide bomber you know what i mean like and it's it's pretty it's pretty scary how easy it could turn. You know what one thing that we, I was, we used to say as kids, or we were told, we were taught as kids is like when, whereas, like, if you have a wolf and it's going to attack like a hard of sheep, who he's going to, who the wolf is going to attack. The sheep that is walking by itself, right?

That's the easy target, just the loner. Yeah. So if it's a lot easier to radicalize a guy who, uh, sitting home by himself, have nothing else do is by himself, he's a loner, he doesn't have a community. And like I said, when you look at these guys, either they had like bad divorces, they are in their own, they trying to, they felt the system failed them, they felt the government failed them, they felt betrayed. And then they, then it's easier to radicalize these guys. And not to not to forget like, you know, our foreign policies in the last 200 years, right?

Some people will agree with it. Some people will disagree with it. So some people disagree with it so bad that they want to make a statement. Yeah. And again, like, you know, that was some talks about maybe Matt, the Vegas guys, like,

maybe he wasn't happy about the Ukraine thing. But, you know what? We have people in the military who are not happy about the Iraq thing in 2003. again, because we were a community and we were listening to each other and we were talking to each other. I was talking to about a lot of these platforms, and I'm not talking about social media platforms. I'm talking about channels like yours and channels like other guys and newspapers and news outlets and CNN and Fox News and all. It seems like they wanted to talk to people who are in the extreme right or extreme left.

If you are in the middle, nobody wants to talk to you because then you are normal. in my opinion, right? If you're normal, nobody wants to talk to you. So that forces people to be extreme this way or extreme that way. And then when you are like holding the people who are in whatever extreme you are on, you hold them on a pedal stool and then they fail you, then the betrayal is huge.

And then, yeah, and then if you feel like you losing everything that you work for, like I think Matt's situation that is getting divorced or his wife, breaking up with him, that could be the straw that broke the camel's back. And I'm not saying, like, we're going to go and get in personal people's life. But the military does, by the way. The military, they offer you marriage counseling.

They offer you a lot of different things. If we ask these guys to go to war and fight for us, when they come back, we have to offer them everything possible to help them. Not over-medicating them, not just giving, oh, he's depressed. Let's give him just depression medication. and he has PTSD, just put him to sleep all the time. That's not,

that's not the answer. I think the answer is a lot more of building a very strong community. Yeah, I think it's definitely nuance. I mean, it's like you use anything available, whether it is SSRIs or, man,

I don't know, like what talk therapy, equine therapy, you know what I mean? Like, and again, finding that purpose, that meaning and whether it's like,

even if it's something as frivolous as like, I don't know, know, like doing a podcast or making something, right, making knives, like getting something you can get so deeply involved in that, like, it gives you something that you want to do every day where you wake up in the morning and like, I'm excited to do this. Yeah. Do you want a no secret? Go ahead.

Tell me. It's actually one of the reasons I wrote the book. So I never mentioned this before, but writing the book was extremely, extremely therapeutic for me. It's sitting down on writing your thoughts, writing your feelings, writing experiences that you went through. And it's like you said.

It's the podcast, it's the talking to people. It's building that community. And my co-author and I, we used to talk. And poor Kelly, I used to just dump those things as a tart. And basically telling her all the feelings I had and all of that,

thoughts I had. And then, after that we're going like hey Kelly let's not right let's not put this there let's just clean up a bit but it is it's like you said finding like making knives I have a couple of friends who are like you know I'm going to make knives I'm going to I'm going to keep myself busy doing something I like and then find that community yeah that they make lives with you find the community they they write with you find the community and those podcasts or any of those things is that they they have those conversations with you it's extremely helpful and I do highly recommend to any veteran or active duty guy who does have, who feels like he has some

challenges to seek help. And the help does not mean I go to a doctor, doesn't only mean I go to a doctor and the doctor is like, this is going to affect my clearance. This is going to affect my job. So after I leave the military, they're going to think I'm a crazy guy. Well, crazy guys usually don't say they are crazy. So if you go in and ask and help, it means you're not crazy. It means that you are a guy who has some challenges and you go in asking for those challenges. But sorry, I wanted to shift a bit on the New Orleans situation.

So right after I retired, I did like a year or two in consulting jobs. And I had a lot of opportunities for what we called in the Intel community as well as the soft community like placement and access, that we had opportunities to help, still help the U.S. military to go after bad guys in certain areas. I don't do that anymore, obviously. It was just like for a year or two after I retired. So there was like 2017, 2018.

And I did have friends in the National Security Council, and I reached out to them, and the sad part is everybody was like, and I don't know when we declared the general. Watt is over that we won. So we used to tell people like, hey, we have those opportunities and we know some bad guys doing bad things in certain areas. But the answer we're always getting is like, you know what, if some bad guys in Mali

killing some other bad guys, or basically how I was told verbatim, if some Muslim guys in Mali killing some other Muslim guys in Mali, who cares? And my challenge to them was, by the way, when they're done killing these guys in Mali, they're going to go next door. They're going to go to Algeria. and then maybe from Algeria they go to France and maybe from France they're going to end of year in the US so the GWAT is not over like that that that that extremists uh those weather again so we have different kind of extremism right and we agree than that but what's coming from overseas

mainly is Muslim extremists and I'm a Muslim guy and I'm I put that in the book and it's very clear But I'm telling, I was telling people, like, we really need to go back to funding counterterrorism. We need to go back and put emphasis on counterterrorism. And whether counterterrorism coming from abroad or domestically grown, and obviously we can see now some of it is domestically grown. And we don't have to go and just, you know, don't jump into conclusion and say, oh, you know, this is an ISIS cell came across the border. The election is over. So everything we wanted to say before the election to win the election. Yeah.

Okay. You won the election. Thank you. Let's focus on how we, how to, how to protect the country. Let's focus on what challenges are we having and how can we, uh, space those challenges. So not just talking about PTSD and, and, uh, mental health challenges. Like I said, I hate people call it mental health issues. Those are challenges that we need to face.

But we have the other challenge as well, which is that terrorism coming from abroad or homegrown, that we need to focus on that as well. But if we not funding the ICN, we're not trusting the ICN, we're saying, oh, you know what, we spy on Americans. We don't spy on Americans. We never did. There is a FISA court order for the U.S. government to go track me. They cannot do it without a court order. have to justify that court order. So we need to we need to go back to guys counterterrorism still exist and we should pay attention to it. And there are people respectful,

respectable people by the way, went in the Sean Ryan show and talked about that. And I agree, I partially agree with that, not on everything, but we do have, we do have terrorism challenges that we need to pay attention to. Yeah. I think that, I think, yeah, like the GWATs, probably never going to be over. It's not going to be, you know, 150,000 troops in Afghanistan and 200,000 troops in Iraq, but, or maybe even like, you know,

five or 10,000 special ops guys with contractors, even like a smaller footprint. But yeah, we need to address this going forward forever because it's, if we really look at it, like our escapades, for the most part in Afghanistan and Iraq specifically, I would argue fomented kind of more extremism

brought about ISIS and stuff like that so we were kind of we kind of added for a lot of fuel to that fire unfortunately so yeah it's definitely something we need to like stay on top of I think now it's probably better to like focus more on the espionage whether it's human sagan rather than the paramilitary

and like work maybe by with and through like our partners in the region and stuff like that because I'm sure these most of these countries in their and their governments don't want things blowing up in their backyard really, right? So yeah, it's going to be a tricky problem. It's not going to be as cut and dry as it used to be anyway, I think. You know what, D? Yeah, I agree with you.

But here's something to add to it is if you, if you don't have the people with the right skill sets with the right background. Yeah, whether training background, military background, cultural background, you're going to miss some stuff. For, I mean, again, not long ago, some, one of the SIV Afghan guys who came to the US was planning an attack on election day. And I did, I did mention something like that in a podcast, like about seven, eight months ago, a different podcast where I mentioned, like, you know, I.

I hope I'm wrong, but with a lot of people who came from Afghanistan, some of them were not vetted the right way. We are vulnerable. So we have to pay attention to that. Again, by no means I want anybody to target that Afghan community that came recently because 99.9% of them were helping us. They were working with us. We're doing a lot of great things for us.

And some of them are great Americans now. some of them will be great Americans soon and some of them wanted to join the military in the U.S. I mean, they come into the land of opportunities and again, 99.9% of them will take full advantage of that opportunity for them and for their kids. But we have to again,

like, you know, trust but verify, right? Yeah. So we trust, but we have to verify what's going on. So we have to pay attention to those things. And not go and say, oh, you know what, these guys came from Afghanistan that came under the Biden administration. look what he did.

It's not. I mean, we cannot put politics and everything. Politics and national security cannot go against one another. So I cannot go and say, well, I'm going to defund the CIA just because I don't like them. You can.

You have people. Or the FBI too, right? Because domestically, that's their job to find these people, right? So 100%. And even some of the missions I was on internationally, we could have not done it without the FBI being part of the task force. And the FBI had people in the U.S. working a source while we had a guy in our task force overseas.

I'm not going to say the name of the country. But they were given us the information coming from the U.S. and then we would go execute the target that we were getting information from the U.S. So you cannot do that. So again, including, like involving politics in those things, it's a very dangerous game. I'm not saying that we should not clean up the government. I'm a big fan of cleaning up the VA. Sure.

I think the VA is some serious work. But again, we have to be methodical, surgical, and smart about how we do those things. Yeah. I think there are definitely common sense ways of doing all that. the trick is the problem is you run into the friction is when it gets politicized and uh once that happens i feel like it automatically throws a wrench into what you're trying to do because like i can't you know 80% i guarantee is a higher number of people want the government to be more efficient want to stay safe want the fbi to do their thing what i mean i want i mean people talk about

the CIA like it's terrible and sure they probably had some blunders but I mean, their job is to go out there and get information from other countries. Like, all the countries do the same thing to us. It's the name of the game. It's like we can't live in this, this naive fairy tale land where, like, there aren't bad actors, or even if they're not bad actors, and it's just like political espionage, right? Where we want to just find out what's what in a certain country. Like, and for the most part, like, especially like my experience with doing the team house

and meeting a lot of these people, there's a lot of competent people that honestly could probably be making way more money doing almost anything else than being in service. And it kind of helps me sleep at night. Sure, there's some dumbbells out there. We're all human, right? Like, there's going to be dummies.

But for the most part, like you're working in public service, you know, you're not making an amazing living. It's a respectable living, but it's not like your mansions and jet skis. And so, yeah, I think, yeah, I think we need to, like, give him what they need, right? And at the same time, expect efficiency. I think we could do both. Absolutely.

I mean, you don't want to, none of us wants to go to get his driver's license and stand the line for five hours. None of us, right? None of us want to go get his passport and wait for two, three weeks. So we all looking for the efficiency And we all are taxpayers And I'm like hey I'm paying taxes to feel safe in my community None of us wanted to have

Called the police because somebody is like Trying to rob my house and the police doesn't come So we all want those services And we all want those services to be efficient And we all wanted to be fair to them We're paying taxes to get We all want that But at the same time

We have to be realistic with, we have to give the people the tools, right? We have to be realistic with what they do. So I did some work with the FBI when I was in the military. And I mentioned it in my book. And this was when everything was so centralized in New York office. And they had the Al-Qaeda manual sitting in New York office, I think, for two, three years. Before it got translated. They borrowed some from the military.

They borrowed some translators, from the military. I was one of them to translate the al-Qaeda manual. And because they didn't have the, but if it was not centralized, it was not so centralized and it was like, you know, field offices were, sorry, if it was, back then it was like field offices were doing everything and, the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. Yeah, so I've heard things about the FBI office in New York that it's like its own fiefdom outside of the FBI even.

Like it's its own thing where I think there's like more. agents there than they're on like the entire or like close to that like where it's such a big thing that it's it's it's kind of siphoned off or siloed off from the greater larger FBI or at least it was it was so in 1999 this is when I went to and I did like two months there like in a temporary duty to help them in in some stuff but during those two months not just the not just the office did not like the New York office most likely did not know what the DC office knew right it's a actually within the same office, the guy was sitting in this cubicle didn't know what the other guy and the other cubicle was doing. So to centralize the power and to make sure the information are shared, this is what we call fusion cells, right?

This is the fusion of the intel and you get this intel from this guy and that guy and that guy and you put the pieces of the puzzle together and you solve the puzzle and you stop a terrorist attack. But if you know, you knew one guy was going from Boston to L.A., to San Diego, and he's going to get on a plane to try to attack the World Trade Center. And then I knew a guy, and then this is from the entire right. You knew about one guy, some guy knew about one guy, another guy knew about one guy. If 20 guys knew about 20 different guys, none of us will draw that big picture because, like, one guy, what the heck is he going to do? But when you know 20 guys planning and doing that, then it's a big deal. So this is where centralizing and sharing information will be very helpful.

How does that apply to the New Orleans thing? You know what? I don't know. I mean, we're not going to be able to stop every terrorist attack, but somebody could have saw something and said something. Right. We don't know what the guy was going through. We don't know what he was doing. but again, from the YouTube video that everybody most likely watched when he was marketing for his own real estate business,

you can see the guy was, he's talking about his military service proudly. Yeah. And we need to study, we need to go back and study, what made the guy flip, whether that Matt in Vegas or Shamsuddin from, the one who did the new or was the guy from Texas. What did make him flip? Yeah. We had Alex Hollings on the other day who runs air power for sandbox news. And he put it in a really,

really succinct way. I'm going to butcher it. But he said, like, we all kind of want there to be this narrative about, like, how it's like this clean cut, how it happened, why it happened, when it happened. What was it like? And it's sometimes, like, in the other Vegas shooting that the mass casualty won a few years back,

where like sometimes you don't find out what the motive is right or what the like the the catalyst that that took them over the edge and stuff like that because it's never that clean it's never just like a movie where it's perfect beginning middle and end and you have all your questions answered right so yeah yeah and i i don't know why i keep going back to this but it really annoys me where like yeah the information space gets clouded with everything and everybody and everyone's opinions and and they should have opinions and stuff like that, but people should, I think, understand that these are, people are editorializing, even myself, right?

Like, I'm editorializing. I'm not giving you base straight up facts, right? I try to, but at the same time, like, I feel a certain way. I have my certain views, and that's always going to affect my opinion. I think people need to get smarter in terms of, like, understanding that when their favorite talking head or influencers saying something, take it with a grain of salt and understand what's really going on you know yeah I agree and the one thing too so I talk about this right when you are in a position of power and that that doesn't mean you are

the president just any position of power you could be a squad leader in the military you are in a position of power you could be a manager in a company you are in a position of power you could be a guy who does podcast and you have 20 30,000 people listening to you know to you, you are in a position of power. With that position of power comes a lot of responsibility. And the responsibility is on you as a guy who sends the information, who's the sender. And there is a responsibility on the receiver as well. So you can go now and say, I can go now and say, hey, the capital of France is London. And it's on, and so it's on you to go and Google it. Is it really the capital of France is London? You know, the guy's an idiot.

it's actually the capital of Francis Paris. London is the UK. So if the person is given information, just don't take it, just don't take it as a given. Exactly. Just go do your own research. So if somebody go and say,

well, the email that was sent to Sean Ryan or the email that was sent to somebody else, it says this, this, this, this, and somebody mistyped this and he misspelled this and this was from there. Look at those things and go do your own research as well. Yeah.

Do you know, if I, if I go on and, and I say, hey, you know what, I was in this super duper unit and I did this and I did, go do your research. So people who, I got people who are like, hey, you know what, this guy talking a lot about diversity and diversity, this, diversity, this. This is a DEI thing. And I was like, actually, when I wrote the book, the term DEI was not in existence. Yeah. So this is really funny because I wrote the book in 2019. it didn't it goes it went to doD set for you so people will go and and jump into conclusions because it's very easy for me to criticize you it's very easy for me to say you know you you didn't

do this the right way but go do your own research and then you're fine well did you really do it or not and then have an open conversation have an open discussion have an open communication anybody who sent me a question i answered yeah go ahead sorry sorry but it's not that it's not that hard to answer people's question by if you are honest and you're truthful you know what if you ask me like you know how many jumps did they do i'm not going to tell you i did a thousand jump i can tell you how many jumps i did and i can verify that right then you have the stolen valor and you have veterans attacking veterans and all of these things is not is not helpful well that was yeah that's been a hot topic the last few weeks before these tragic events and stuff like that um but i mean

listen like the DEI stuff that's kind of a buzzword that people freak out about um i mean diversity in america should be our strength in terms of like national security and stuff like that because are they going to send a guy that looks like jack murphy to go do things that you did when you were in a smu no and let me let me tell you something else so for us to you for for i love jack murphy i love jack let me put that out i love the guy yeah great guy but i i i so for me what I was telling everybody. Diversity means, yeah,

send the right guy in the right place. However, make sure he's qualified. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I was asking, what I was telling people, like, you know what?

Make sure the door is open for everybody. Yeah. So if the door in a smoo, in a special mission unit, is open for everybody, and you have the same exact selection criteria, invite me and invite you and invite Jack and invite,

invite Anna and invite Mary. And then whoever makes it through the door, so you won't 20, the first 20 guys makes it through the door by their own effort, then they are qualified. Yeah. And then you have the diverse. You have the diversity of qualified people. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like I said, I was stationed in Germany and we used to listen to AFN, armed forces network radio. It was really funny because it was the only radio in English who could listen to there. And the chaplain used to come on these commercials because they are all like homemade commercials because AFN is just military, right? Yeah. And the chaplain used to always say like, you know,

our diversity is our strength. And I'm like, what happened? Why all of a sudden diversity became a bad word. Yeah, I don't get it either. Honestly, it's such a trigger word. And it's like the next war is going to be against China. Everyone's saying that, right? China is our big rival.

Correct. I mean, and we, I've said it before, like, you know, the MSS targets Chinese nationals in America, whether it's through coercion, like telling their, you know, their family that's back home might get fucked with. We're going to have homegrown Chinese American citizens, like American citizens from Chinese descent. That will end up being like the next generations, like,

Like people that are doing the spying or defending the country or finding out what they need to find out. Without that, we can't just have a bunch of like me's around unless I'm going to Greece. I could probably do something. But like you need to have that. It's like I think it's a I think it's a positive rather than a negative. When we had the mission in Bosnia, they didn't send me. Right. Because I wouldn't.

I wouldn't fit there. Right. Yeah. But the military actually too had, and I don't know if they still have it, but there was a program called Stripes for Skills. So basically, come in and they make you a sergeant. Two months after you're in the military, if you possess certain skills. Believe they're not like the army band,

the people who are, they go through audition and you do that. But it was the same thing for military intelligence guys with hard languages. So Arabic, Chinese. So if the military was recruiting Arabic speakers, Chinese speakers, Korean speakers, Japanese speakers, Persian, there was like a Russian in a certain time. So there was like multiple languages that way if you have it. So if you're going to have a guy coming off the street who speaks Chinese in a very professional level, I guarantee you, he does not look like you or does not look like me. I guarantee you that. Right, yeah, yeah.

Unless he was the luckiest guy on the planet. And his family just moved to China a long time ago, and he grew up there. And that's one in a billion, most likely. Yeah. So you have no choice, but you're going to have diversity. This is something that is just you cannot go around it. Yeah. And it doesn't mean that we have to be scared of every guy who doesn't look like us.

Like, yes, the guy from New Orleans. Again, U.S. born, we don't know if his family a long time ago or recently came from somewhere or not, but definitely the guy from Vegas, his family did not just come from somewhere. It doesn't mean this or that. It just means to go back to these guys. Again, we have to look at inside the service to see what are we doing wrong. That's one issue. And then how are we going to empower the country to do the right thing,

empower the community to do the right thing, and make sure these guys are receiving the right care and receiving the right training. and being welcomed to the military community because for last year, it was the first year since the army became voluntary army. Last year it was the only year that we did not meet our recruitment target. And you go talk a lot of people and a lot of people like,

no, I really don't want to join the military. Yeah. I don't know how they fix that, to be honest. You know, the U.S. military is the most. respected organization in the U.S. by the, like, they did some surveys and stuff like that. So we are very well respected.

Yeah. But we have some work to do and we need to do it. So again, we cannot go on TV and attack D because D wears glasses. Right, right. Now everybody else who wears glasses, they're going to be like,

hey man, the attack and D and I don't want to be attacked. Right. So I'm not going to go. So those are the things that we really have to. And again, bring the diverse forces to recruit diverse forces. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like there's nothing, like, not there's nothing going on in the world, right?

But there's no active, quote unquote, war zone for like a conventional military. I think that might also, I've heard maybe the recruitment numbers. I think also like most respected that's fine like I've been to ball games where they show like they bring a veteran out and everyone claps takes a hat off and for the most I'm a civilian for the most part that's all they fucking do let's be let's most most civilians most citizens don't have any idea what the military is about myself included um even when Iraq and Afghanistan was going on it was like an afterthought right for most Americans lives It wasn't affecting them day to day.

And I think trying to like, trying to help them figure, like, realize that, like, just getting up at the ballgame and clapping when they show a veteran isn't enough. Right. You know what I mean? Like, whether it's making sure the VAs got their shit in check and they're covered, right? Like, making sure vets and active military have the things they need. if you have a if you're having some kind of mental challenge or something you can get the help you need without worrying about losing your job or your livelihood or your you know your pride of what you know not seeing the boys every day um i think there's common sense ways to fix this i really do i agree with you and i'm sure they can bring some of these big consultant firms and they'll fix it for them but the one thing is don't over medicate such as don't don't If you have a deal with the pharmaceutical industry and the pharmaceutical industry, most likely make billions from the VA, this is what I'm going to just get in a,

okay, this is fucking bullshit. Yeah. Because I went to the VA quite a few times. And any time you go, they're like, so what medicine do you want? Well, I don't want any medicine. I just want you to help me sleep at night. Oh, you're depressed. Let me give you some sleep and talk.

No, no, no. Don't just give medication just to give medication. I was traveling one time. So I told the VA, hey, I'm going to be gone for the next 90 days. Oh, here's some medicine that will last you for six months. So they are over-medicated our veterans. And again, one of the things Trump said he's going to fix is the VA health care system. I wish he can.

I wish he does. And I would love to see the challenges the next administration going to face with the pharmaceutical industry and the pharmaceutical lobbying firms. because the pharmaceutical industry is making tons of money from the VA, and I would love to see that being fixed. I don't want you to give me medication left and right. I want you to help me get better without medication, if possible. But what we have been doing for the longest,

for people with mental health challenges, we just over-medicating there. And I'm not a doctor. I'm not... So I'm just speaking from my own personal experience on this one. and if some of the medication they were given us, by the way, it makes me hallucinate. Yeah.

So if I'm overmedicated on this bullshit medicine going to make me hallucinate, yeah, most likely I'll type an email like that guy typed for Sean Ryan, and I'll talk about aliens, and I'll talk about all kind of deep state this and deep state there. And most likely I'll come up with some super crazy ideas. So that's why I'm saying let's look deeper into. what else is being done rather than, hey, you know what, we feel bad for the guy. He just told him so. Right.

Yeah. I mean, well said. I got a question, not having to do with this, really. So you came out the book last year, right? It's been like nine, ten months now, right? Yeah, correct. It came out in February. Yes, yes.

About 10, 11 months. Check out the book. Obviously, the link is in the description. I don't want to say fallout bin because you're obviously we're part of a highly secretive organization where people don't want to even say the name we won't say it here I swear

what's that fallout been because I know of situations in other units like Delta even 160th where guys and girls get a lot of shit whether they're on the when they go on the they go on the podcast, they say too much,

or they go write a book or something like that. Have you seen or felt any kind of blowback from people in your former unit? So people will be extremely surprised to hear, I have not gotten one bad message from one person in the unit. As a matter of fact, I got a lot of thank you notes. And most likely that's because of two things. number one, I went through the process step by step.

I, like, I, again, I, at first, when I wrote the proposal for the book, and the Asians sent out, you'll see the proposal was extremely unclass. It was just, hey, I was a member of an organization, blah, blah, blah, just, you know, very, very general, like, you know, maybe 10 pages. It was sent to a lot of publishers, and all the publishers. and all the publishers said we will do it, we'll do a good deal if you go with your true name and if we can do it without DUD approval

without going through DOD process would be even better. Publishers don't care if you get arrested, right? They don't, right? So the guys who did like, you know, they're killing blood and then this and there. So a lot of these guys who had fallout from the community because they really went without going through the proper process. So I went through the proper process 100%.

So that's one thing. The second thing I did not for anybody. As a matter of fact, people were disappointed. I did not spell the beans. I did not go and say, well, let me tell you, selection. It's these many phases and day one you do this and day two you do that. So I did it. Then I mix selection and training together.

So people who are, although selection is not classified. But people, I wanted to give people the same opportunity I got. If you go and you have Intel on selection, 99% you'll fail because you go in and you have, you know, what to anticipate. And then if it's something off. So I did not spell the beans. That's the second thing. The third thing, I was extremely honest in the book. I did not give somebody credit who doesn't deserve it.

and I intentionally did not bash anybody, obviously. You don't write a book just to talk bad about other people because it might make a good story for people to talk about and it might make the book sell even more. If I went and I said, well, let me tell you all the dirt that we had. Any unit had some dirt. People most likely would buy the book more because they want to know what's going on and that was not my intent.

my intent was like to send a good message about the organization about how the organization is saving a lot of lives how the people go through very very hard shape to make it there and to give people hope like a guy like me who came from Egypt with $500 that I borrowed from somebody and I didn't speak in English and most likely my socks had holes when I came who can make it through and make it to the highest and to drink in an organization like this in the U.S. and after I left the military, I had opportunities to consult and I had an opportunity to start my own business. And so I did not get any honestly, nothing. Most likely some people are upset

because nobody gonna have everybody agreeing. But even the people who are upset, I'm assuming there are some people are upset, or I'm sure some people are upset, I have not gotten any message from anybody I still receive emails and invitations for functions. The organization does and functions the former unit members, they do. I still get invitations for those.

I don't attend any of them just because I live far away from where they do it. But if I'm ever in the local area, most likely I would go. Some people from the unit actually asked me to sign some copies to give it to the organization and I did. Oh, cool. Good. That's good to hear. Yeah. Because, I mean, this was in the unit you were in,

but I remember a couple of Delta guys who did some podcasts, and Delta sent out an email to everybody. I know. Which was, I mean, the podcast they're referencing was kind of wild. Like, I watched the podcast, and I was like, I can't believe this guy's fucking saying this shit. And I don't know anything. Like, I'm just a dummy, like a civilian.

Like, I don't know what goes on, really. And he was talking about operations. I'm like, no way they're cool with this. Like I knew like instantly. Actually, I'm not going to mention the guy's name, but one of the guys who did a lot of,

who actually said a lot of things, he was with me on, on, on some missions. And when I watched, I was like, man, holy shit, how did they allow him to say that? But, again, I mean,

I don't think they did. And I'm assuming he's probably now, right? Like, he's probably. And, and I, and I, So a message to all the guys who are out there who think about doing this, you have nothing to gain from doing this. You have nothing to gain from going and saying, given, like, you know, the TTPs of how your unit makes missions

or giving people, names of people, you have nothing to gain by saying, I have five brown stars and you have one. Trust me, if you take the bronze stars with all the respect to the bronze star medal itself. but I guarantee you if you take it to Walmart and ask them to give you a loaf of bread and return of the bronze store, Walmart would it. Maybe some of the customers

would take it from you and buy you a loaf of bread, but Walmart would be. So I tell everybody, like, guys really, really, really find a way to help other veterans. We have, we from the book, have donated, not all of it yet, but most of the proceeds we got from the book have been donated to organizations that they support veterans or individuals, veterans who were in

tough spots and they have a go fund me or something and we donated money for them. So it makes you feel better, trust me. So for all the veterans out there who think about all the JSAC guys who think about going and writing a book, reach out to me, I'll tell you that the legal process that's going to make your unit happy because you're going to review the book before you put it out. if you think about helping other veterans let me know I can

connect you with other veterans but there are a lot of veterans out there really helping other veterans and then there are veterans who taking advantage of the situation because when you go tell people you are a veteran people want to help you and then they give you a freebie so don't

don't do that like again we know better and we've learned how to so when I first got to the unit I was told like, you know, just make sure you don't embarrass the U.S. government, don't embarrass the unit, and don't embarrass yourself. If you decide to embarrass yourself, we don't care. But if you embarrass the other two, we really care. So don't do anything that will embarrass your former unit or your current unit or embarrass the U.S. government. And you'll be happy.

It's simple. Yeah. Adam, this is awesome, man. Guys, grab that book. It's called the unit. The link is in the description. If you want to check out Adams interview on the team house. He was in studio.

Thank God. And then unblur your face because we were doing that live too. Yes. Great episode. And anything else, what do you got cooking coming up? Just a sequel to the book? So, no, like I said earlier, writing actually. So English is my second language.

If you didn't guess that already. So writing actually is very therapeutic, it's very helpful. So I write notes. So like, hey, maybe there is a discussion very early on in a, of like another book, but it's most likely it would be a fiction book. So I don't have to go through the approval, but almost like it would be a fiction book. But other than that, again, I'm dedicating a lot of time and effort to support veterans in need. And it's extremely rewarding.

So, but yeah, thank you again for this inviting. Adam, thank you, man. I really appreciate it. Guys, if you're an active veteran, active in the military or ICer anyway, you can go to sound dash off.com or look it up on the Apple, the I store, whatever the app store, or it's on Google, the Google store as well. It's free. It's completely free.

They don't pay us for this. It's started by a former CIA officer who's brother-in-law. took his own life, former Steel Team 6 operator. Completely anonymous. You can get help you need without worrying about losing your clearance or anything like that. I think you also don't have to be active military either. So check it out. Sound dash off.com.

Just Google Soundoff app and you'll find it. A couple things. All the links for all of our things will be in the description, whether it's Adam's book, our other hosts, socials and stuff like that. And guys, the best way to support the show is Patreon.com slash the team house.

You get Teamhouse episodes and eyes on episodes ad free. You can message us if you have any questions and stuff like that. We'll make sure I'll try to get them to the guys to answer them. Thanks again, Adam.

This is awesome. I hope to do it again soon. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, brother. You have a very, very happy new year and I'm sure 2025 will rectify itself and fix the rest of the year. And it's probably better. Thanks, bro.

Yeah, thanks. Have a good one. See you.