The Team House - Delta Force Operator and CIA Officer | Gary Harrington | Ep. 197

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

I spent most of my career working in the shadows. While some of my service was spent with large groups, such as the 32nd Marine Amphibious Unit, serving in Beirut in 1982, I spent most of my career working on small teams or alone. We often lived and worked with foreign military units like a Kuwaiti tank unit in the northern desert in 1996. In 1998, I worked alone in Yemen. Trouble spots on my own became my specialty. After 9/11, I launched to Uzbekistan in the vanguard for 5th Special Forces Group and served on several teams in Afghanistan during 2001 and 2002, participating in major combat operations alongside Afghan indigenous forces. Often, my mission was to enter a country to determine if other special operations forces could safely follow and operate. If so, I would develop the situation and make ready for them to arrive. In 2002, after departing Afghanistan, I moved to a mid-Eastern location to prepare the way for the next conflict. Working independently and conducting successful, often classified missions on several continents taught me the power of prudence…and the skills that must accompany it. Find Gary here:⬇️ https://www.garyharrington.net/ Today's Sponsors: SLNT (Silent) ⬇️ https://SLNT.com/?rfsn=7107485.9bde8d SLNT® sleeves, bags, cases and wallets are all exquisitely designed to ensure your devices become invisible, untrackable and silent. Get 10% off your order by using this link or using the promo code "teamhouse" at checkout! https://SLNT.com/?rfsn=7107485.9bde8d Thank you for supporting the companies that support the show ! To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #deltaforce #cia #theteamhouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, The Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Hey, folks, welcome to episode 197 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy, here with our guest today, Gary Harrington. Gary had a really incredible career stretching from the Marine Corps to special forces to Delta Force to the CIA. We're really excited to have him on the show today.

And Gary, thank you for joining us on a Monday evening. Hey, thanks. It's an honor. You know, I'll start from the top like we do with. most of our guests, I'm going to ask you a little bit about your upbringing and sort of that path that took you towards military service if you could kind of lay on your origins. My parents were the first of their families to ever graduate high school. So my grandparents, none of them ever made it out of elementary school. I had one grandfather that was a hobo for a while. So when I grew up, it was poor, it were poor farmers.

And my parents were that generation that, hey, we've got to leave the farm and do something different. My dad had served a couple years in the Air Force, and that was the time he met my mom when he was home on leave. And I grew up, you know, it was Western North Carolina. As a matter of fact, when I was young, we still buy. borrowed my grandfather's mule to plow our garden. So, you know, it was, it's funny because those skills, you know, I still had relatives with an outhouse. Those skills came back to serve me well in SF, you know, when you go live somewhere in some other country and you don't have all those facilities. But, you know,

military wasn't talked about a lot. My dad just did his two years in the Air Force. Mary, my mom worked for a telephone company we moved every few years for that and you know my parents were that generation that struggled real hard to make it and improve themselves from you know barely making hence meat you know i can remember when uh they used to have to go to borrow a dollar from a grandfather to make it through the week and we go up there and work on the garden and uh so we could have the garden and a hog and a cow helped get us through the year. But hey, they kept digging and working, worked real hard, living the American dream. And, you know, we became middle class family, lived in the suburbs, moved around.

I think I was one of those people that was shy. I had an upbringing that probably made, I would. I was probably not the most self-confident person, which later probably fired some of my drive and determination to do some of the things that I did. But one thing we were taught is hard work, and we were taught to take punishment. So that all served me well in the military. and you know I was pretty shy and didn't think of anything about going into the military until I was in college at a little place called Campbell College back at the time up near Fayetteville and there was this one day I was running track

there was this big giant Marine six foot four V-shaped officer selection officer walking around he came up to me and he I was a scrawny, skinny, thick glasses wearing a distance runner. And he said, hey, I hear you think you can run pretty good. I'm going to challenge you to a decafalon and you can pick eight of the events and I'll kick your ass. I was like, what? I'll pick all the events that I can do. And in the end, you know, I got invited to go to the platoon leader's

course up in Quantico. And, you know, I hadn't really thought about the military, but I was a smart ass and I, I love challenges. So, you know, that guy started talking about you're ain't tough enough to make it. You know, we, we exercise real hard. We push you real hard. And I just don't think you're man enough. Well, that was all I needed to hear. So, you know, I said, hey, wait a second, you're telling me I can go up there for six weeks. You're going to give me clothes to wear a place to sleep and you're going to feed me. And at the end, you're going to pay me like $700. Shit, I'm there.

So off I went to the platoon leader's course. But, you know, I got there and it was the discipline and everything that happened sort of just changed me. been an extremely anxious person and you know I had an outgoing overt personality to cover up my shyness and anxiety I think in some respects I grew up as like a long ranger kind of guy but the man I admired was Tonto the quiet silent guy the guy that my grandfather told stories about from his days of hardworking men and hobos. So the discipline in the Marine Corps, I realized that, hey, I can take more shit than most people can take. And I can be better than these other people if I take more.

So bring it on, give me all you got. And it sort of just slipped a switch in me. And I became a lot more outgoing and confident person. and from that day forward, I wanted to be a Marine, and upon graduation of college, I got commissioned as a second lieutenant in Marine Corps. And what year was that that? You got commissioned? In 19, well, December of 79, I was one of those people that was on a little bit longer than normal college course of study. So I didn't quit finishing quite four years. I dropped. I had dropped. dropped out for a year. And so December 79 and I began the basic school in early 1980.

And where did you land in the Marine Corps after getting commissioned and going through the basic course? After the basic and infantry officers course, I went to Camp Lejeune, was in First Battalion, second Marines. Did a year as a plighton. platoon commander there. Heard about this thing called Recon and got offered to try out for Recon. So made it, went to Recon. Love that. Yeah, I got to go to SF Scuba School, Mountain Climbing School,

Amphib Recon School, Scout Sniper Instructor School. I was the second officer to ever make it through. scout sniper instructor school. And that was in 1983. So this is like the green side recon, part of the Marine Corps back in those days. And what was going on kind of in the world and in the Marine Corps at that time? I mean, were these like the Libya Bay route years? So I was actually the one of the first the first Marine in Beirut in 1982. So you know, back in the 80s, Remember back then, the 82nd Airborne was known as the Jumping Junkies. And, you know, the military, you know, we were all suffering from the post-Vietnam time.

And people looked down on people in the military. And in the Marine Corps, you know, Marine Corps infantry is high diddle-dittles, straight up the middle. And there weren't any wars going. And, you know, I... I did take a my team, my team, we went out on float

to Beirut, wound up in Beirut. We were supposed to do us nice med crews where you hit ports and have some liberty doing exercise. But the moment we got over to the med,

we charged off to Beirut and did squares in the ocean until it was time to go into Beirut. The first time we went was to evacuate the PLO. And then we were, went to take some liberty and then we came back after the massacres and the refugee camps to start the M&F and we stayed stayed in Beirut till probably November, early November of 82

and were relieved by the people that ultimately were there for the bombing the next year. The embassy bombing in 83 or Marine barracks bombing in 83. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting because in that time, you know, I was, I don't know, I was an outspoken person. As a Marine officer, I had a mustache, which is not you're not supposed to do. But I chose to do so. And at one point, I was told to move my recon guys because we were covering the beach.

and doing OPs to move into that barracks. And I said, hey, this barracks is a sitting target. And we're better off at being out front and doing observation. Matter of fact, if we took everybody offshore and put them on ships, we could put Marines on rooftops doing OPs and accomplish the same mission that we're accomplishing now. And I refused to move the Marines into that building. The new people came in after that and, you know, things changed and they moved into the building. I mean, all this, correct me if I'm wrong, Gary, but it sounds like maybe this was a bit of a formative experience in the sense that an introduction to terrorism against the United States and American personnel.

but also sort of your future in scouting out locations where, you know, American forces will be housed. Yeah, it was, I mean, yes, we had no idea what terrorism was at that time. And I'd been trained in rifle platoon and company level tactics. So I could apply them, but here we were doing, you know, essentially a police force mission. and, you know, we still did our OPs and did the basics. And but it was an eye-opening experience. And that was the first time, you know, that I'd been in an environment where you actually talked to civilians and mixed with civilians and you weren't sure, you know, it's like low-intensity

conflict. Who are the bad guys and who are the good guy? Absolutely. And then what, after your trip to, uh, to Lebanon, what was sort of the next stop for you as a young Marine officer? Well, I mean, first lieutenant. And while we were on that float, I had the honor and misfortune of being put in a position of commander of troops, which is normally a lieutenant colonel on an amphibious ship, but there weren't that many of us on the ship. So I, so the captain and I had a very strange

relationship because I was a first lieutenant and he and I used to go at battle each other because he'd tell me that he wanted me to order the Marines to do this or that and I would say no certain things I'm not going to order the Marines to do and so it was interesting but I think that sort of set the tone I just had this knack always most of my career kind of bucking the the command structure somewhat and it was good practice to do that. So we came back to Camp Lejeune and, you know, my time on the team or with the platoon ended, and I got moved up to the training office, which I hated. I'm 26 years old.

I'm a distance runner. I've been to Scout Sniper Instructor School, Amphib Recon School, S.F. school with school. I want to be like, you know, an enlisted guy and fight. And then he said, well, you're going to be a trained officer. So I did that. Then the bombing of the barracks happened and they were getting ready for Grenada. And at first, they said they wanted me to take to take over and take a platoon back into Beirut because I had boots on the beach. ground. But then I think smartly they decided that wasn't the best thing to do to leave the person command in that platoon with his own platoon to do that. So I stayed the training officer and

eventually found out that, oh, hey, you've been promoted the captain. Now your time in the fleet Marine Force is over. You're going to go to, you have two choices, Marine Barracks, Adak, Alaska, or Guam. Now, I said, what is Marine Barracks duty? And they said, well, don't worry. You do that for a few years. Then you hope you come back as a company commander and get some command time. Then you go away for staff again.

And then you can come back in higher command. jobs if you make the cut but you know that's not what a 26-year-old guy on adventure wants to hear right so I ended I resigned my commission and thought about other things to do I actually almost followed the route of becoming a mercenary in Nicaragua and fortunately that didn't work out I think I'm glad now that that didn't and ended up being recruited by the FBI and went through their process and took their test until I made it to the point the final interview where I'm sitting in front of three guys wearing suits and they're saying okay you understand and this is in the 80s and it was

mid 80 early 1984 that the job of an FBI special agent is more admin and what you're used to and it's a lot of sitting in the office and then you have moments where you do other things and are you ready for that and again i i was happy right that i had been accepted and um but i looked at these three guys in suits and i said is that what i want to be doing 15 years from now and again i didn't think about the future i i thought i don't know i thought about The adventure. And I guess I believe that I had a role in life and that was to be in combat. Maybe I wouldn't make it out.

But I didn't have a plan on getting older, retiring, all that kind of stuff. So I, yeah, in the moment, I accepted and was told, you know, I'd be getting an assignment to go to Quantico. But after I went home and thought about it, I was like, I can't do this. So I called them up and asked them if I could get out of going to Quantico. And they said, do you know how few guys we can take that aren't lawyers or meeting certain requirements during this time in the 80s? And I said, I can't help it. That's just not where my heart is. So I bailed on that.

Then I went to enlist in special forces, went through a MEP station, was in the process of swearing in when an officer runs in and says, hey, stop, stop, stop. You can't swear him in. And he pulled out a reg and he said, here's this one line that says former officers of other branches of the military may not enlist in the United States Army. No way. And that's one of the reasons I'd bailed on the FBI, right? And I thought, holy crap, you know, the rug's been pulled out from under me. What am I going to do? But, you know, I fell back and I started researching, and I found that the Army Reserve

didn't have that one-line regulation in there. So I went to a reserve recruiter. then he was like, hey, you're kind of splitting hairs. I said, yeah, but do you want to look at how you can do it? Because it's not in your reg or do you want to look at how you can't? And I said, you're going to go out there and hire some 18-year-old off the street that you don't know. Maybe they're a dropout, maybe they're a delinquent or whatever. I said, I've proven myself.

I have a career. I've got a good record. So, you know, in the end, they accept me. me and I enlisted in the Army Reserves for SF, but to do that, you had to enlist in a shortage MOS. So now I'm going to be SF. I'm like, wow, I was in recon and I had these guys. They were E2s and threes and they had a little bit of years experience. Special forces, guys, they're E6s and E7s.

been doing this years, they're going to be like ghosts moving through the forest. They're going to be like this big, you know, it's the ultimate. It's everything. And so I, and I was really excited to become a demo guy or a weapons guy. That's what we all want to be. And they said, hey, sorry, buddy. We got all the weapons and demo guys we need. If you want to come in the SF, your choice is medic or commo?

And I thought about the 104s and the radios we'd been humping around in my time in the Marine Corps. And I said, I sure is hell don't want to be a combo guy. So I signed up to be a medic. And went through the medic course, Q course, medic course, airborne school. and wound up in seventh group as a medic. So I got to give a quick shout out here before we continue, Gary, to the sponsor for tonight's show, which is silent. And they make these little Faraday bags that you can put your devices in,

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And you use the promo code team house. You get 10% off your purchase. Again, that's silent sLNT.com and use the promo code team house to get 10% off your order. So Gary, you hit the ground in seventh group. And I mean, is it what you were looking for, what you were expecting? To some extent, you know, going through the Q course, I was surprised how everybody kept saying, listen to the Rangers, follow a Ranger, do what a Ranger does. And I was like, to be honest, I love Rangers. They're great.

But my training in the basic school, the officer infantry, infantry, course and the recon school, amphib recon school. We were really, really good at patrolling. So I'm not sure I'd learned anymore, but applied all those skills. So it was good. And then, you know, the thing that was new to me was deploying and working with foreign militaries. And that, you know, that was a whole new awakening at it it kind of reminded me in my first days and as an infantry platoon commander where you know you had high school dropouts and I had a couple guys that that had been given the choice of jail or the Marine Corps so I found that some of those old skills came came in hand and this is what year that you get the seventh group I'm I hit seventh group probably

I think 85, 86. So the wars in Central America are still raging pretty hot at that time. And that's, I mean, as a former Marine, I mean, one reason I wanted to go to SF was because during my time in the Marine Corps, I did make a little short trip to Honduras, and I did meet some guys at one of those black agency sites and some of the folks they were training. That's how I almost made a misstep there and wound up working in Nicaragua. But I was so excited because I saw, you know, this is peacetime. These SF guys, they're out there doing it.

And if there's anybody that's going to get mixed up in anything, it's the SF guys. And that's where, if you want action, that's where you need to be as in SF. So I was very happy to get there. We didn't, you know, it didn't work out quite on my top, my own personal time frame of getting in any action. But that's how I spent my time in the seventh group. Down in Honduras? I made several deployments to Honduras and into Panama as things were getting difficult in Panama. We went down there.

a couple times got extended there for several months once as people were trying to figure out what was going to happen and um yeah so it was that during that time is are the is the first time i heard people talk about this whole delta force thing and um you know i i'd never really heard of it uh now my sarne major um sarne major um sarne major pa was on what did you call it green light team the forerunners to delta blue like blue light and he did not he didn't care for people that worked for him going out for delta but i heard this thing you know and everybody that i knew kept talking about if i get in shape you know it's so hard and we were on a scuba team i was on a scuba team scuba teams are fit

teams we we run hard uh pt hard and you know but everybody was like i have to get ready for it when there's time and i'm just not i'm not that way i like challenges i like uh if somebody says it can't be done i'm the guy that that would say well you know try me and let's see um so i heard that they gave a PT test at the old 18th Airborne Corps by the stadium there. I think once a month or something like that, you could just show up and take a PT test. So I didn't tell anybody and I went and took the PT test, past their PT test. You know, we probably all know that guys game that system, right? They know what events they're on.

I didn't know. I just showed up. You know, what do you want me to do? And some of those events, the crab walk and some of that the, some of the runs and stuff you do, I had no idea how to do them. But they, you know, I made the PT test. Then they send you to take all the psychological tests, review your records, all that stuff. And I wound up getting an invitation to come to selection. So, and my SAR major did not like it.

And I was not successful. My first time, you know, and I think it's the way I'm wired, I got really motivated for it. So, I mean, I was in good shape, but I started training crazy. And, you know, every other day I was rucking 13 miles for 50 pounds. then I would go do stairs with a rucksack for an hour. The days not on that, I would run six or seven miles. And I was so motivated to get ready to go that I didn't realize I was putting myself in a deficit. I went to that first selection, had one of those days where

I've never had a broken compass before, but I had a broken compass. And then my backup little wrist compass on my watch band, when I went to that as the backup, it had broken off of climbing over deadfall and had a really, really bad day up there. They kept me in, but then like the next day, you know, I was cut. But they said, hey, you can, we like your attitude. You can come back in six. You can come back and try again if you want. I was like, sure, when's the next time?

Six months from now. So I said, okay, you see me in six months. And went back that second time. And, you know, it's odd. I was smarter. I, like, I saw pictures of myself. that first time. I looked like there's a picture of me on a Halloween. I think I came back right before it was the fall course that I was unsuccessful. And I looked like an Auschwitz victim. My neck was all

drawn tight. My skin was tight. I looked like an Auschwitz victim. And the second time, I just, I didn't train like I did. And I made sure I ate well. And I went up there. healthy and with a good weight on me. And I tried to relax some, a little bit more during the legs. And it worked out. And so you make it through selection and then go to OTC. And I mean, what was that experience like? I mean, what year are we at now, 1990 or so? Yeah. And well, I got to OTC. is, I mean, you talk about training. OTC is, I mean, you shoot more rounds. Well, I forget what they used to compare to,

that each individual shoots as much as or more rounds than a company of infantry does, something like that. I've heard like a million rounds you fire at OTC. It was something like that. You know, for a first couple months, I mean, just to get your hands used to firing that much was a lot. And it, I mean, it really hones your skills. I mean, special ops, special forces isn't, I don't think it's a lot of super things.

It's doing the basics with a very high degree of proficiency. And the OTC teaches that. There's a lot. Yes, you learn CQB and some other special techniques, but as a lot of time is spent on doing the basics of shoot, move, and communicate very, very well. And those are the things that never leave you. All these years later, like in the agency, when I go back to weapons qual, they would always give me a hard time because I don't shoot. just when it's time for the recoil and they want to put me up against some delta guy or some special ops or ranger guy and try to egg us on to have a shooting contest but but those those

that you do the reps so many times that it's just ingrained in you i mean from some of the folks I've talked to. They say like it was the time of their life, all these like counterterrorism scenarios they keep putting you through and that are challenging, but it sounds like it's also a lot of fun. Well, it's fun. But you know, one of the things that happens is, I mean, you think you've made the big time. And, you know, I'm, I'm one of those people that probably put too much emphasis on it. It was being that was all I wanted to be. And, you know, things about family and everything else just go away. And I, by this time, I was married and had kids. And, but that was what was important. I mean, you think you're going to save the country. You're going to be,

right. When I went to, when I went to Marine sniper school, that was the time. you know the ayatola homani was there and i used to dream about laying laying behind a or lying behind a sniper rifle and seeing him through my scope and taking that shot well then you go through the the the o tc and you dream of doing the assault like like seal team six did to get bin laden right um and And it felt just great. And I eventually wound up in A Squadron and was serving there. During my time in A Squadron, because I spoke Spanish, got an opportunity to go to, in 1992, to a Central American country where there were some action.

activities going on that Delta was taking part in down there. And during that time, I had a disagreement misunderstanding with the guy in charge of that. And one thing led to another, and then I got sent back home. And eventually I got the invitation to leave the Delta unit. You know, the then Colonel Boykin told me, yeah, he thought about keeping me, but, you know, my, somebody else down the chain that was more involved with that, didn't want me around.

So I got invited to take a hike and find somewhere else to live. So, yeah, that was a. This was like a, like a personality conflict. Yeah, it started. We had a misunderstanding on this thing we were doing, and it blew into stuff. And probably the way my personality is, I got phone calls that said, you can't talk about this to your wife, to your team leader, or anybody back in the States. You can't say anything. And so I was holding all this stuff inside, and I couldn't understand what was having.

happening because I like well nobody's even asking me nobody's talking to me. So, uh, you know, eventually, eventually I made a choice to talk to somebody I thought was a neutral person that I could speak to, uh, with confidence. But then they felt there were things that they needed to tell, uh, somebody else. And in, and basically what I did was I, I, I, sort of just threw fuel on the fire unknowingly. And a lot of fingers started going back and forth. And in the end, I'm the newer guy.

I got asked to go. And it was a devastating blow. You know, this is, I had built all my self-worth on that. And I thought, this is it. All my career being a Marine being, how I viewed my purpose in life. Everything I did was based on that. And then the day that ended, you know, what are you going to do? You know, you walk some sometimes there's things in life that hit you like that.

So everything you believe, you have to question, what do I believe about myself? What do I believe about how people perceive me? And, you know, my future planning. plans and goals are gone. So I'm going to have to start at the basics and, and refigure my whole plan. And that, that's a, it's a difficult thing to do. For me, it was especially hard because now you've got to go find another job in

the military and you go and you go, how are you coming from Delta? Oh, yeah, good, good, we're good to have you. And, uh, wait a second. why don't you leave delta and um you know i never went into detail or trying to make excuses i said hey i had disagreement i got asked to go um take a look at my record and as a marine and as a soldier and then judge me on what i do because i mean if you if you think i'm a you know a ship or whatever and hey, I'm happy to look for somewhere else. Did the unit offer you a bit of a soft landing?

Because this wasn't like an ethical or an integrity issue per se. Did they try to help you find a new place to settle out? To be honest, they must have. I don't remember how that happened. But I wound up for a very short time going to the center and writing a manual on, I think, one of the first Sephardic manuals. Oh, really? Right.

Yeah. At the Special Warfare Center. Yeah. In 1992. Because there was, oh, man. Yeah, so I probably know a bunch of people that you cross paths with. Some cool people were involved in, like, standing up that course at the time. And there was like a, I don't know how deep you want to get into it.

But, I mean, I know there was like a stack. of SOPs that the unit used and that had to be kind of like distilled into what Sephardic was going to teach as I recall. And I didn't, I didn't, I wouldn't part of, I think I was dealing more with a language part of it. Okay. And dealing with a secretary there. And we had, we had the documents in trying to get that turned into manual. But then after a few months, I got asked to.

if I wanted to go to Norfolk, Virginia, and work as the Army rep to the Naval Safety Center to oversee the diving safety of all Army diving. So that was a different thing. I was the only Army guy, and I was an SF diver. But here I was with master divers, hardhead divers. There was one seal Corman there. So everybody else was hard hat divers. And we divided into little teams and we traveled around the world.

Anywhere there was a U.S. military command that had dive equipment. We did the inspections on the equipment and on their program and some of their record keeping. record keeping and did that stuff. So it was, it was an interesting time, a lot of travel involved. I got to go to get qualified in hard hat diving and the C, was it CR 15, the mixed gas rig. Oh, wow. While I was there. So it was interesting.

And the seals wanted me to show up to do their inspections because the hard hat divers. hated the seals. And always, they were always extra, extra hard on them. So I did that. I mean, you're also like becoming like highly qualified as a soldier between all of your Marine Corps training, SF, you know, being a medic, training you went through OTC in the unit, free fall, all this additional dive training. I mean, kind of, you were a busy guy.

Yeah, O and I court. I went to O&I course before I went active duty. Oh, so I guess I missed the part that, so I came on as reservist with 11th Special Forces Group when I signed in and went through the Q course and all that. But I was honest with everybody and said, I don't plan on remaining a reservist as soon as I can go active. I am. And so I sort of backdoor the rules. While I couldn't enlist on active, Right. I did enlist in reserves.

I did get qualified in a shortage MOS. And then there was a reg that said, if you're qualified in a shortage MOS, you can come on active duty. So I, I hand carried my paperwork after I, I think that it's after I finished O'NI school. And literally from driving all around the country,

in two weeks, I went from being a reservist to getting an assignment to seventh group. I love the workarounds. Yeah. And I got to me, did I remember Henry Bone, it's our major Bonn.

There might be some people out there. He was the person I had to see to get accepted on active duty. And I was wearing a mustache. Henry Bone was the guy that he hated. He was a very regulation-focused individual. And he hated, he hated mustaches and he was kept staring at my mustache and I'd heard all these stories about him and I said,

So I'm Major Bone, do you like, is there something wrong with my mustache? And he goes, well, you know, I think, well, wait a sec, if you can just make sure it stays within regulations, as a former Marine, you know, I would expect that from you. I said, I'll just shave it off. So I didn't, I didn't say you had to shave it off. I said, I don't want every time I walk around, you staring at me trying to find a hair out of place. So I'll shave it off. Yeah, so I lifted that dive program.

It kind of got more known. And then people started clamoring for it and wanting that job. So eventually I got reassigned to Fifth Spellors. Special Forces Group in 1996. And they showed up at FIth Special Forces Group. And in processed, went to 545 as my first fifth group team. And Terry Peters was my, was my team sergeant. It was a great team.

Had a great time. And, you know, You know, we deployed to Kuwait, did a bunch of training deployments, and just, you know, really cut my teeth on the Middle East then, got used to working with Middle Easterners. The group commander, who happened to, we both know him, have been my squadron commander at Delta, one day asked me to come to his office. So I thought, oh, shit. He's after all this time, he's, he's got something for me. So I went up there thinking, you know, I'm going to get clobbered. But what he told me was that he wanted to lead the way back to an emphasis on unconventional warfare.

And, you know, would I, you know, he. He was counting on me to take a lead role in trying to push that effort forward. And so there was some initiatives that was in the earlier days of the ASOC course, advanced special operations technique course, and those things. I started coordinating with the guys in fifth group that were kind of leading the charge on that. Steve Poteet was one of them. And this is just trying to dip back into history a little bit,

but like this is like there is a somewhat like notorious of the quote unquote like long hair teams and special forces and the guys who did like clandestine things. Which is, and correct me if I'm wrong, Gary, didn't that grow out of the RST mission? It did. So at the time there was no teams other than the RST. that were long-haired teams. Right, right.

So, and they were in fifth group. So, um, we had both teams, the team that worked with, uh, DARPA and Dithra. And then the RSTs were the two kind of long-haired teams. And it's kind of odd because fifth group was trying to stand up at SIF when I showed up. It hadn't done it yet. They were the last ones. And well, and it's funny because I showed up. Oh, Delta guy, you're at student.

You're an assalter. You know, you got. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what you are. But I was assigned to a scuba team because I was a DMT qualified medic. You know, you're never, Sarn majors never going to let you off scuba team. And so I, you know, I was. but I said, well, I'm assigned to a UW team.

And I'm throwing all my effort into that. You know, a lot of people wanted me to try to change and come over. You know, I'd been to sniper instructor school as a Marine. But, you know, I'm a person. You tell me what my lane is. I'm going to do my best to do that. And that was nice of the group commander, I guess, to offer some sort of reprochement after a falling out.

Yeah, because, you know, technically, to be honest, that was the same guy that, you know, my previous conversation with him was, I'm going to make sure you get kicked out of the army. So I was, yeah, it was confusing, but, hey, I was glad for the opportunity. And that's one of the things that drives you, you know, to have had what I had and leave Delta the way I did. I mean, that was a big driver to me. It's like I have to prove myself. I've got to drive myself to the ends, no matter what it takes to show that I'm not just defined by getting kicked out of Delta, you know, for a disagreement that happened one time over a long career.

And so, yeah, I pushed. real hard at everything I did. And I got, it coincided with my first wife and deciding she had greener pastures and we did it in that her, uh, her role was to be somewhere else other than with me. So about that time, uh, after she left, I, you know, I started, I went to A-Sod, and I had a very interesting time at ASOT. And I have this thing of when I go through schools, if there's something I don't like,

I challenge the instructors. And so I challenge the instructors pretty hard, and they in turn were pretty hard on me. But, you know, it worked out well. And I think I probably built a reputation with some of the things that happened at school as being innovative, maybe having some skills. And so, you know, I finished that school. Well, then just like a month later, I got called down to Soxent. And they were talking to me.

you know, about some classified programs that they were wanting to start. So I got selected for that, you know, and I felt, again, that's one of those things that drove me, because I was like, wait a second, of everybody in all special forces and all fifth group and Delta to choose from, I'm getting chosen. So yeah, I was, I was, whatever they wanted, I was like, hey, I'm a moment for it. So off I went. to Yemen and operated there by myself for a while, waiting for a team to join me to do a demining mission. And during that time is, was my first time up close at trying to do like assessments. I was sent ahead of time to work in the embassy and yeah, I spent I spent, I, I spent

like two months going through training and getting all the right clearances so I could read all the humint and sigint in the various offices in an embassy that hold those and I was to make that assessment about the security for follow-on special forces teams during that time that I was there is when the situation in Yemen first started, we're talking 1998, first started to go downhill. The Islamic Army of Aden was posting threats against any Americans. The line that the ambassador had and all the embassy had was Yemen is a very safe place.

Yes, al-Qaeda passes through here and gets documents here. but they do nothing here. It's the peaceful place. It's like an R&R place. And, you know, Yemen is an up-and-coming Middle Eastern country. Matter of fact, they were planning on Hillary Clinton coming out to visit as First Lady. And, you know, it, so the party line was, yeah, there's a group of like three, guys with a fax machine that call themselves the Islamic army of Aden.

But they, they're not capable of doing anything. You're just a bunch of blowhards. Yemen at the time, European tourists used to go there to get kidnapped because they would kidnap you and take you down to like Hadramat region and treat you well and feed you and house you. It's kind of like a, you know, give you good stories to tell. And as soon as the government would access and give them some vehicles or wells, they would let people go free. So I think that figured into the ambassador and the intelligence community's assessment that, hey, nothing much is, you know, it's not dangerous here in Yemen.

But during my time there, things started happening. there were still wherever it was a car bomb in sena out near the german consulate um there were more acts of violence no no big terror attacks or anything but but it's to me it started it was that things are escalating eventually the team that was going to participate in demining uh showed up and I went with them down to Aiden. And we set up in Aden and started operating in Aden. During our time in Aden, there was a police checkpoint that caught a carload of six guys, I think, in it that had explosives, AKs, RPGs, and a diagram of the little hotel that we were renting to stay in.

That so they arrested them. Those became known as the Aden 6. Later, like a month later, there was the Islamic Army of Aden did take hostages in Aden at the British consulate, took some British hostages. And it ended in a hostage standoff sort out outside of town. It was a fiasco. The bad guys were in a depression in a circle. They had the hostages stand with their legs spread around them, and they were firing between their legs.

And, of course, the Yemen Army was not well trained. So they were kind of in a circle shooting at everybody there. So I think a couple of hostages were killed and not probably some of them by, you know, friendly fire. But that changed my assessment. You know, I'm still reading the traffic and I'm seeing that, okay, it's true Al-Qaeda is not active here. But they have communications here and they pass through here. Now I have this Islamic Army of Aden that has shown that they not only have access to arms and ammunition, but they're willing to take violent action, and they're willing to conduct operations against Western interest. And now they may be inept, and they were truly inept.

But in my assessment, all that remained to happen for them to be, you know, deadly would be to either accept operational control, meaning training and direction from al-Qaeda or from hosting an al-Qaeda cell. So now, you know, we're in 1999. And the U.S. had just signed the agreement to allow U.S. ships to start coming into Aden. But again, this, for me, my assessment was all enabled by my past history, but now my time in Delta and learning about terrorism and studying terrorism. And so I think it all helped me form this opinion. The ambassador told me I was crazy. The defense attache quietly on the side advised me not to get on the wrong side of the ambassador to do like he and the other people, including the agency, did, which was, you know, shake their heads and say, you're right. but it bothered me i i was as time was coming for that mission to end and go home i was like

the thing how can i go home and something happens here to americans americans lose their lives and i didn't do anything shades of Beirut it was just it it it reminded me of Beirut because like okay saying here we go the same thing for political reasons She, the ambassador, did not want an assessment going out that would stop Hillary Clinton from coming up. That was the big feather in her cap. And, but it bobbed me to the point that I said, okay, I'm not having success through the embassy. But as an SF guy, I can write an area assessment and send that out through military channels. and then I can get the word out.

Right, right. And I'm not violating any rule. Well, I didn't know because in my training, nobody trains you up that I didn't realize that the ambassador has the right to see everything that's written and to weigh in on it. And so I sent it, you know, used the SATCOM and sent my report out and informed the embassy after. And that was a pretty major thing to do. It prompted a flight by the ambassador down to Aiden, call us all in and chewed us all out. She said that she would rather run the risk. And she wouldn't let us have our rifles there in Aden.

With all this going on, we were pistols only, and our rifles were locked away in Sinawa, several hours away. And she made this statement that, hey, I'd rather run the risk of one of you getting hurt than the risk that one of you would hurt an innocent civilian. Yeah, this is sounding

negligent at this point. Yeah. To me, it was. You know, but your soldiers, when you're in a foreign country, State Department has a final say. Right. And so, you know, we went on.

I left. Well, that was 1999. Now, after we know now that in January of 2000 terrorists. And I saw the SIGINT that should have indicated something was going on. Let's just say that the SIGT, if you go back and look at everything that happened, sort of backed up my assessment. But in January of 2000 was when terrorists loaded a boat with explosives, and they tried to attack the USS, the Sullivan's.

But as they made their run towards the boat, it sank. Too many explosives, not a good enough boat, it plowed under, and it sank. And we never, nobody knew about that, but they recovered the explosives. and, you know, later in October, made the successful attack on the coal then. And I was, by that time, I left Yemen, went back to the States, and then immediately got trained up and sent as, I guess I became the first, the first guy to do these sort of classified go somewhere, do your assessment using whatever techniques that you've been trained in and some classified stuff. And so I got sent back to the Middle East.

And I was in another country. When the attack on the coal happened, I got flown back to Socom to do a classified deposition to go to the coal commission. Wow. But guess what? I thought the State Department was political. I did not know that Socom can be political to because when I, you know, I gave you a quote earlier about what the ambassador said about us and their rifles.

Yeah. And there were two points that I made on my deposition. And when I saw the final wording of my deposition, those two things were struck out. And I was like, hey, wait a second. In Delta, we do a hot wash. And a hot wash is right after a training exercise. So we talked about the good, the bad and the ugly to make things better. And I thought that's what we're doing for the coal commission.

And, you know, they did not want to cast any dispersions toward an ambassador. or the State Department because they said, hey, every J-SET, every S-F team, anybody that wants to get in any country, you know, the State Department has to approve that. So we're not. We're not going to send this out. A deposition, I mean, is a legal document, a sworn statement. I mean, I didn't even know you could go in there and chop out parts of it you don't like. you know what's right i i don't know i i i know i was pissed off i yeah i understand that because i thought you know we're soldiers we always put the lives first and the truth has to

be first you know even if it's unpleasant yeah truth has to be first so um yeah it you know it was tough but you know i went back to uh to my place in the middle east and uh kept doing what i was doing i finished a year there um and so it was that was 2000 and i came back to fifth group um at the at the end of the year and the project i had been doing in the middle east was in conjunction with the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Soxent sponsored it, but I was working, doing some stuff for the JPRA. And a lot of the, some of the guys that worked at the JPRA had been guys that worked at Orange and retired Sarned Majors from Orange.

And they knew me and some of the stuff I did. in my classified projects, I had some successes. And so I came back to fifth group. Now, I've got, you know, long hair and civilian clothes. And I showed up back at Group. And I mean, I just landed. Well, group happened to be having a change of command ceremony. And it was John Ball Holland was taking command.

So, you know, I just showed in to sign in and say, okay, I'm getting the hell out of here because I got to get a haircut and shave and, you know, in uniform. Uh-oh. Well, then I ran, I ran in to these sergeant majors that I, um, that had that worked at JPRA. And they were like, hey, welcome, you know, and, and I was, oh, we got to, we worked with John Mulholland, you know, he was, you know, Delta and, one of the commander at Orange. So, you got to meet him. I go, I can't meet him. I'm in, oh, don't worry, he's not that way. And they took me and introduced me to John Mulholland.

And, you know, I guess he. put a lot of weight on them and what they said. And yeah, you know, I told him right off. Hey, I got has to leave Delta. But he placed what those guys said about my ethics and work ethic and abilities. Then, you know, what the paper might have said or whatever happened those years ago. and, you know, he wound up giving me an assignment, putting me in fifth group headquarters to work in this classified cell.

Fifth group was the first ones to have it. To kind of, there was a three-man cell that kind of oversaw. One thing was the stand-up of the SIF. The other was the RSTs. The other was that other team that does other works with Dittra. and DARPA. And to for all the Speakat programs,

we are the ones that sort of had the reins on those. And, you know, I don't know, John Mahon and I became pretty close. I don't know why. He, he trusted me a lot. He asked my opinion a lot. We had a lot of heart to hearts

in his office. I think sometimes to the chagrin of some of the battalion commanders and officers, because I didn't pull any punches if I thought somebody was trying to get over or use the, like, the long-haired team, you know, to get away with something. You know, I'd call them on it. And sometimes with the stand-up of the SIF, I go, hey, you ain't. any delta don't need it's no and uh so but but you know it it worked out and that's where i was sitting in 2001 when 9-11 happened and what was that day like for you and and i mean this is like a pivotal

moment in fifth group history i'd really be interested in like your perspective like what it was like for you but also what it was like for fifth group uh that that day and the the days a month afterwards. It's some it goes for general humanity. You know, that was a shock to the nation and to everyone's senses. And, but being a soldier,

being in fifth group, being trained and having a mission, it had a different impact on me. I happen. The moment it happened, I actually was on my way to the Nashville airport. I lived on a little farm outside Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and was on my way to the airport when I heard on the radio about the first plane hitting. I had a little bit of time to spare, so I pulled in this little tiny cafe and went in and turned on their little tiny TV in time to watch the second plane hit the other tower to South Town.

And, you know, the first one I'm debating, like, you know, could it be an accident, but there's a co-pilot, there's a flight engineer. I'm not sure that it could be an accident. I think this is probably terrorism. But I'm not sure. And then I saw the second plane. Boom. It's terrorism. And, of course, then they were announcing they were going to shut down to airspace.

So coming out of the. that cafe, I should have gone left to continue to the airport, but I knew not to. I turned right and went to group headquarters. And, you know, I just, I rolled in and we started planning because we didn't know what yet, but we knew that we would be involved in some sort of strike or payback for 9-11. And it was instead of the panic, we were all just focused. It's like, this is what I've lived to do. All my years as a Marine, all my years as in recon, in special forces, in Delta, now is our chance. This is what I'm here for. And that's what it was like throughout group.

It was sure, we were upset. maybe a little bit angry, but it was just intense focus on what we had to do and getting ready to go. Two days later, I was on the first, when the first planes flew, I was on a plane to fly to Tampa to help plan the invasion. Wow. As an E7, as an E7. But because I worked in this cell handling the classified stuff, part of that was our, you know, all the Speedcat stuff, which, you know, includes relationships with the agency and DIA and all that, which we knew would be a lead effort. So that's why I would send.

And what was like that when you get down to Tampa and start planning the invasion? Because like some of the stories, and we've interviewed on this show, a lot of, like, some of the first teams, another fifth group guy, Justin Sapp, we've interviewed on the show before. Yeah. So I'm Justin pretty well. You know, Justin. Yeah, I'm going to see Justin tomorrow at a charity dinner for Afghan refugees. I mean, some of the, like, it sounds like we were going really into the unknown,

that we sent the paramilitary teams and the initial ODAs like into this giant black hole, like, where we really didn't know what was going on in there. And what was it like from your perspective? well i went down there with a young major um just cut getting cutting his bones you know getting his bones uh chris wait what's his last name was just sec deaf chris miller uh yeah chris miller he's going to be on the show next month oh great yeah yeah so chris and i go there but now let's be honest you know i'm i'm a hardened nCO and still in east seven and he's seven because of the way I left Delta.

And we go down there. And I'm a bit of a, particularly if everybody's too serious, I don't like to be too serious. And everybody was serious. And we were initially told, hey, you need to plan for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. What? You've got to be kidding me.

And, you know, shortly after they say, okay, we can, We're going to scratch off Iraq. You don't have to plan for Iraq. But, you know, as it started, everybody, you know, you imagine right after 9-11 the intensity that everybody had to get started. And I remember being in this big room and everybody's waiting for a meeting to start. Nobody's there to start it. And it's just everybody's just all tense. So I stood up on a chair and I said, hey, can I have everybody's attention?

And, you know, of course, it's all, you know, everybody from majors to colonels, you know, a shitload of them, turning, everybody's staring at me in there. I said, now the first thing that we're going to do is, I don't know, because I got no business. You know, I have nothing to do with this. I said, however, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. So because at the time they were doing that commercial. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, Mike tries to be an expert.

And at first, everybody just stared at me. Then after a while, you know, some people laughed. But, yeah, we started kicking off the planning. And I returned to Fifth Group. And then Colonel Mulholland asked me to go with the first guys from Fifth Group out to Karshi Kana, where we were going to set up the base. So there was an initial group of four of us that went.

And, yeah, it was good because I wasn't on a team, but I got to be in the vanguard to go. And so I'd already established a record. It kind of seemed like I was always the first person to go somewhere, sort of figure out what was going on. and then prepare for other people or give a report back. And it was an interesting time. We landed in the middle of night, in a light rain in Karshi Khanabad.

And it was old... This is Uzbekistan? In Uzbekistan. And the guy, the battalion commander had gotten Mohan to let him go. And he was taking over as the three after we landed. Some Rangers were there, maybe some support people, and it was pretty bare.

But they just landed. So the Rangers are out on the perimeter. Nobody knows what's going on. And we land in the middle of night. And that guy's walking back and forth. And for whatever reason, I guess I'm the senior NCO. He said, Sergeant Harrington, he is, I'm the operations officer now that we're on the ground. And I'd like you to walk the lines.

And I was, you know, it's like 1 a.m. We don't know where the lines are. We just landed. And I had started, you know, we landed. I did what a soldier does. I got my rucksack and got out my canteen cup and was making some coffee and cocoa. And when somebody came running up and said, hey, the colonel wants to see you. So, you know, I went there and he walked the lines.

And I was like, walk the lines. I go, you can get shot. Yeah, yeah. We don't have, we don't have a challenge and password or anything. That's Rangers out there on the line. And he's like, I don't care. Walk the lines. Or troop the lines.

Troop the lines, right? One of those officer training things you get. And I said, yeah, okay. And I walked back to my backpack where my, my coffee and cocoa was getting ready. And another guy asked me, he said, what do you want you to do? I said, troop the lines. He said, what's you going to do? I said, drink my coffee and cocoa.

And then. So I put on my my Gortex and drank my coffee and cocoa. Then I took off my Gortex so I could get wet. And then I went back and to where he was. And he said, did you troop the lines? I said, everything's fine. He goes, outstanding. Outstanding.

Outstanding. And on from there. And, you know, then things. built up. A couple days later, I drove from Karshi Kanabad up to Tashkent to hook up with the agency and to facilitate the agency coming down to the base where we would launch the agency teams out of and support the agency teams. And so I was in that cell that stood up, I stood up that cell to do that the fusion cell between the agency and the army and of course justin um sap had been detailed from the army to be on team alpha so i met all of all of team alpha jr seeger's team

team yeah jr's team and Alex and uh mike span uh Dave the other guys Justin uh so you know, they got back and then the CIA started sending its teams in and we would oversee the infill and resupply. And then as agency teams developed the situation, then we started putting SF teams in with them to work with the locals. mostly in the SF mission was mostly at that point one we the medical support was key because there essentially wasn't enough medical support and the call for fire and you know I think the other thing that's always short in when you stand up that many teams are combo guides so the agency was really sort of raping fifth group and groups in all taking medics and commo guys to fill out their teams.

I remember Rumsfeld was, we're giving them any more people. And the things started happening in Afghanistan on the ground so fast that just more and more teams needed to go in. I was frustrated because I'm like, shit, you know, I'm going to miss my chance. I've done a whole life for this. And I'm good. Like the thing at ASAT, you know, is sort of preparing a pilot team. And I had, let's just say I had excelled at some of those actions and activities. And I thought, you know, I need to be on these teams.

and then they started running out of the agency couldn't get enough teams. I'm like, well, I'll take a team. I'll go. But no, no way, you can't. You're on. I had someone tell me once, Gary, that because of the mission you specifically referenced doing the A-SOT unconventional warfare mission in the Middle East, that that actually set up fifth group pretty well to go into Afghanistan

as far as like having some understanding of how to do that. And I mean, I guess you were kind of the tip of the spear for that. Well, it did as far as that part goes, but also just to be honest, any SF team, we all hated FID, right? But doing FID, whether it was Central America or in Kuwait where, you know, people don't want to work, don't work. It's a different culture, different work ethic and trying to get them to do stuff and to do military operations does prepare, you know, you for what we ran into there. Right, right. And so, you know, I was pissed.

I wanted, and I guess I got better. And I was like, well, shit, you know, I, I just want to go back to the States then because after I've been there and I set all this up and got everything going, I don't want to sit here and just keep watching other teams, other people go in. And then John Mulholland asked me and some other guys to come with him on his infill because we had just, just taken Bogram Airfield. So I went in with him. And we were there. And after a few days, it's around Thanksgiving.

We'd spent Thanksgiving there on the ground in Afghanistan. of 2000. The planning it started spinning up that Torabora was the place where al-Qaeda had regrouped and where bin Laden might be. So the agency was spinning up to go to Torabora and military was trying to figure out what we're going to do. There had been an ODA 572 that the paperwork to chop them to the agency had been done. to detail him.

But that mission never came to fruition. You know, they were going to chop the whole team to operational control of the agency. But that mission never happened. So they were there and available back at headquarters. Excuse me. So the agency, when, you know, they realized how, how big. Tora Bora was going to be and that they weren't really prepared to handle all that themselves. Asked for that team.

And Masari Sharif had just happened. Span had just been killed. John Mohan was a bit reluctant to just give the agency another and ODA for operational control. and he had some other reluctant reasons that he was somewhat reluctant about that team but one of the guys on on the who was detailed from happened to be orange to the agency said well you trust this gary guy a whole lot what if we took gary with the agency um to to serve as an advisor, would you let us have that team then? So whatever, he said yes.

And so the next thing you know, without the legal paperwork to be detailed with a handshake, they said, okay, you're now on Team Juliette with the agency, and along with this ODA 572. And off we went to Zalabad to, to get ready to go up to Torabora. I mean, that's wild. And this is cool, because I've never heard this side of the story and so many of the other folks

that we've interviewed over the last few years. So what was the situation when you hit Jabad and getting ready for Torabora? I mean, you linked up with the unit guys? It was the, there were a couple people actually one of former guys on UN Delta that was detailed to that team. And the unit guys weren't there. So I got to go in ahead of my whole squadron.

It was just the agency guys and us. And we went to Jabad. And it was real uncertain. The warlords there is one thing when we first went in the pancheer. And people that were aligned with Massoud and hated the Taliban and hated the Taliban. al-Qaeda for killing Massoud. You know, they were eager to get into the battle. I mean, look at what Dostom did.

But as we started moving further south, that was changing. So we hooked up in Jalalabad, we were hooked up with a guy named Hazaret Ali. And they were, he just drug his, dragged his feet. He was reluctant to get involved. And let's be honest, it was the bags of cash that we were ferrying in that did it. But someone else, I got to do some cool stuff like what you train for. The airfield in Jabad was bombed, we had bombed it out. So to get the first supplies in of uniforms, arms and equipment to outfit the force, you know,

I called in the C1. on 30s and they came in low and leapsed our parachuted all the equipment in and i remember being there and the afghans couldn't believe that suddenly in the dark i don't know where these planes come real low and the parachutes are coming out and uh so i i actually found myself dancing in a circle with with some afghan guys you know holding rifles in one hand and their hands on the other and uh you know It was exciting times, but it was real uncertain. You didn't know who was who. Warlords were against warlords.

We were in a vehicle coming back from that airfield, and my vehicle made it through a checkpoint, and hey, we didn't, we couldn't speak language. We didn't have, I got through, but then the second vehicle behind me, they stopped. Well, you don't know who's good and who's bad, so they're stopped, and it's, and it's, It's not going well. I remember getting out of the vehicle and then take an aim on the, you know, it's just some dude that's at the check with a couple of dudes at the checkpoint. And maybe they're trying to follow orders, but maybe they're going to ambush us.

You don't know who's who. And I remember this argument going on and they had an interpreter. And me trying to decide, I may not be able. to shoot him fast enough if he opens up. Should I shoot him now preemptively? But then what if that, you know, I cause that. So it was, you know, it was tense.

But then he let him through and we went on. It took us the agency a long time to get him ready to move his people up to Torobora. You know, and delays were horrible. It was Ramadan when we went up to Torobora. There were so many things wrong. You had to kick and yell and plead to get them to move up. But it's Ramadan. They hadn't had anything to eat or drink all day.

So when it starts getting towards night, they know that food and water are back in the rear. So anything that they made up during the day, they give up at night and go back. It's a lot of problems. I was on an O.P. There we divided, we had a headquarters element that was in there, and Delta came in later and joined up with them, A squadron. And the rest of us split in two OPs. We were five or six of us on an OPE.

I think the Socom history calls that Cobra 25 Bravo was the OP we were on. So, hey, you know, we're just, we're calling in bombs. We're designating on the base of the mountain where bin Laden was supposed to be. It was really interesting calling fire because we were up so high on mountains, like up on the top that when you we'd call for fire down in the valley a thousand meters below you you'd see those missile the bombs come beside you you could see them coming in the air to go down in the valley because we were up high on their trajectory because they were dropping at 25-26 a thousand feet and we had by that time you know the friendly fire incident also at mazari shrieff

Um, it was, I had a close call as I think it must have been on like 2 a.m. I was calling in. There was a, uh, a aircraft that had a, like 20 jams on it. So I brought him in first to drop one or two to see if we're on target. And that went fine. So, you know, he comes out, they roll out. And you have about a 15 minute turnaround. before they can come back on a B-2.

Yeah, B-2. And as he's rolling back in, I say, that was good, drop the remaining ordinance same spot. And he calls back the coordinates, right? But he gives me, you know, because you're a call for fire. I had, I gave the location of the other OP, but he calls out that location as the target location. And, man, you know, I remember my throat jumped in my, yeah, yeah, my stomach jumped up in my throat because I like, did I hear that right? Did I hear that right? What?

And I was just screaming, abort, abort, abort. And I pictured, because it was like a 45 second delay, you know, they would drop. And I was afraid he was going to say too late. But then he corrected. And then he gave me the correct coordinates and dropped the ordinance. But it was a big learning, a big learning incident. But yeah. And we know now, you know, bin Laden got away.

The one of the war. lords, whether it was Hazrat Arlie or the one that was affiliated with the Brits that were there on site to, covering the back end towards Pakistan, somebody facilitated him going. And there's a book called The Hunt for Bin Laden written by a Delta guy. It was a major on the ground there. Oh, Kill bin Laden. Yeah. Yeah, or kill bin Laden.

And, you know, he talks about the night that the Delta guys went forward and all the locals bailed on them and they were left the two guys alone. One of them had, Sean was, had been on my team in A squadron. So it was actually A squadron that came in, my old squadron with a few people still left on it. And that same night, the, and this is where I think. that the warlords had something worked out with bin Laden, the Hazrat Ali, the chief of the of the Afghans, called up to his guys that were with us. We had, there were five or six Americans, and we probably had 10 locals with us. Now, we wouldn't let them with us because you didn't train these guys. You didn't know who they were, good or bad. So we used them as tripwires.

We put them, we were up on this knife ridge, and we put them, between us and al-Qaeda. We figured, hey, if al-Qaeda rolls through us, they'll hit them first, and it'd be like a tripwire to give us a little bit of time. But he told them that they had to move us off there, and it was for our own safety. And so, you know, our interpreter tells us, you have to go now. You can't stay here. We're not going.

He goes, no, but the general said you have to leave, and we're all leaving. And we said, no, we're not going. So in the end, all the Afghans left and left us up on that ridge. I guess that was a point with me because maybe the guys down in the headquarter element didn't get the whole story. But in his book, he says that we moved, you know, that we evacuated. We did not. Oh, wow. You know, we stayed up there.

And we had movement that night. down in the bottom, 1,000 meters below us where there were some lights and movement. And one of the guys wanted to, you know, light them up. But I was like, hey, at night with your M4, you know, we're not going to be effective fire and just going to give away our position. So, you know, we're not, but we had that movement. So I tried to call some air in. But there was happened to there was one of the few times in Torobora. There was no aircraft overhead that had any ordinance on it.

And I was like, oh, man, you know, they're moving. And we didn't know if they were trying to maneuver on us. So what can we do? The only thing I found was there was a, back in those days, the drones were not yet armed. We weren't that far into the development of the war on terror yet. but they sounded kind of like AC 130 when you if you brought it down low enough you could hear it so i was able to get them that um that drone to come in and drop low enough that you could hear it and in those lights that we saw down in the bottom of valley they disappeared so uh so you know

it did his job um so we left um we left um we left TORBORA, got relieved by some Delta guys. A couple of them, guys I knew we went, we hiked down the mountain, we're using donkeys to carry our backpacks, and all our gear, just kept our LBE and weapons with us, and then met up with the Delta guys, and then they came up to take over the O.P, and they're the ones that wound up pushing further end of the mountains to try to get on the trail of bin laden after we left but i i got you know i got to say hey you know it's about time you delta guys got here we've already got the most of this stuff done i'm sure they love that yeah it was funny well and you know and we've been told this stuff about

afghan culture and what you can say and what you can't say and it was snowing when we were up in torre war before we came down it started snowing on us As a matter of fact, Delta was supposed to come in a day before. And they radio just said, and I said, hey, do you have winter gear? And no. I said, well, it's snowing up here. And it's just, it's going to get really bad. So they actually delayed and somehow within 24 hours came up with all kinds of winter gear, that whole Delta supply line, you know.

Um, and, but when we were doing the turnover with them, there were all these villagers there. And so we're talking to the villagers. I got the interpreter and they said, one thing you never can talk about is they're women and, uh, or the religion. But I, I couldn't help myself. I said, Hey, I know why you guys have four wives. You can have four wives. And, you know, he's like, yeah, well, what's your reason? And I said, because it's so damn cold up there that you need a warm place to stay as you move around.

So you can spread four out to different places so you can get warm at night. And the Delta Sarin Major that was there was like, no, no, no, don't say that. Don't say that. But it went fine. You know, they appreciated it. The joke. Yeah. So after Torabora, you did like a subsequent number of deployments back to Afghanistan.

Yeah, well, I didn't go. So I didn't even leave Afghanistan. No, yeah, we were in a safe house in Jalalabad. Our team kind of recovering from our time up here in Toribura. And the radio message came in, said, hey, Gary Harrington, get back to Karshi Khanabad and see the commander. Well, okay, how am I going to get back? So I talked to the agency. and they let me hit a ride on one of their aircraft. Of course, I had no passport or anything, and the aircraft landed in Tashkent. I had to hide on the aircraft until they went through it. And then wound up getting on, I think, the next day, or maybe that same night, when the agency helicopter going back to Karshi Kahnabad.

It was, you know, and, okay, let's be honest, it was cool because it was kind of like a movie. You know, because I go by now when I left, there was nothing. Now there's this plywood headquarters built. I go in there and I walk in. I'm all nasty and dirty. And, hey, I'm here to see the commander. And they go back there in office.

And I walk back in there. And, you know, he greets me. We have a talk. There was, you know, he asked me a really tough. question about a personnel issue that had occurred and he said uh you know i got to make some decisions and i'm going to trust you so give me give me the rundown on on what happened you know so now i'm back in the same it's sort of like what happened to me in delta but i'm the guy that's that uh uh is making the call but so i talked to him and then we finished and he goes hey uh

now I'm putting you on another agency team called Kilo and they're going to go to a place called Coast. So get yourself to Kabul, Afghanistan, go to the Ariana Hotel and hook up with them. That was my instructions. So I wound, I said, can I shower first? I'd like to take a shower, get cleaned up, repack my rug. So I did that and then I went down to the flight line, found a, a, a CH47 that was doing a checkout ride. It had some repairs.

And the pilots agreed to let me on it. And they flew me into Kabul or into Bogram. And then I guess I got a vehicle and showed up at this, you know, run down, old hotel and joined Kilo, which Nate Chapman was on. So I met Mike Span and helped Alpha get in matter of fact, the picture in the CIA museum of Team Alpha, I took that picture. But now I'm on a team with Chapman and the other guys. And, you know, they'd been together a little while. I joined late.

We did, I did Christmas in Jalalab. I did New Year's there in Kabul and then I guess it was like about two January the infill to coast I'm getting ready I think it was the night before the infill some major from group came over to the hotel and said hey Colonel Mahal and said you're not to go in on the first helicopter in the coast and And like, what do you mean? Not going in the first helicopter. He goes, no, he wants you to hold and go on the second helicopter.

And, you know, I probably had a few words to say about that because I was pissed. But, you know, he's a colonel. So he'd already had to write letters for the guys in Kandahar and enough other letters for people. that weren't coming home that while I wasn't really happy with that decision, you know, it's his call. He's the boss. So I delayed. Well, then the next morning, I'm getting ready to get on the helicopter to go in. And that's when the guys on Keelow got hit and Chapman got killed.

So, you know, the Medevac came out that had a medic on it and it was a guy, a third group guy. And, you know, I went back. So dealt with that. And then I went back in that evening to Coast. And we were, you know, team was still dealing with what had happened and what we're going to do after. And that's where, you know, the agency is great at what is what it does. And the Army agency, the fifth group agency link up was effective. But there are some things.

And I think this was one of those and some of the stuff I saw in Torobora, where, you know, I felt that a seasoned special ops person could have, would have made different calls. after Chapman got killed, we wound up changing. We went in backing one warlord. But after he got killed, they decided, well, that warlord didn't powerful enough in Coast. The other guy is who we actually, everybody is pretty sure, ordered the ambush that resulted in Chapman's death. But then the agency said, we're going to back this guy. and for a while we're going to

they wanted to back both and hey from that guy's standpoint it means millions of dollars right and uh so you know he's collecting that um but yeah we uh so we did the infill the coast but i learned the lesson i tried to apply the lessons i learned from torrobora that my job when mahan told me that

you get there and develop the situation and make sure that this G-Force is ready to accept S-F, you know, S-F people to work with it and direct them. Well, now I didn't want a gag on. I learned that, okay, one of the first things I want to do is build mobile kitchens, outfit little pickup trucks with, you know, gas stoves so we can cook forward so the troops don't have to come back to get fed. I want to develop some sort of staff structure so that the SF guys have something to fall in on. Because, you know, these guys were, you know, had flowers sticking out of their guns.

A lot of them were inoperable. It was a joke. And, you know, it's really funny because the guy running that agency team was a former SF guy. officer. And you know, they they kept doing stuff, but they sort of were delaying on letting me get to the job of getting things structured the way I wanted to.

And I'm the Army guy there. And they kept saying, tell Mohan to send us some SF. And I was like, no, nope, nope. And I said, not until we do this. I remember one big team meeting there.

He said, wait a minute. So you're telling me you and E7 in the Army telling all of us that it's up to you if we get SF people or not. And, yeah, I think I cross my arm to say yes about it. Yeah, because you want everything set up to properly receive the team so they can be effective when they get there. We got to be effective. You know, you can't just jump in on a crowd of people and hope and pray that something's going to happen because it's not.

And plus, I'd given the, you know, the commander of my word that I would make sure that it was effective and ready. So I wouldn't do that. But and so that was going on. And we agreed that we would send a team in. But by that point, the two warlords are men. mentioned it was a ziahan and um and pasha khan that were fighting each other the two warlords that we were back in and it turned into a blood feud it was it was going to derail everything the agency and the army was trying to do up there so i i went to that one guy so to zia khan and i said um yeah you come from orgoon area what if you go back to Orgoon and I will take

a group of people with you and we'll bring special forces into you and support you but back in your home area where you're from. So he agreed and then the agency bought in on that plan

so it was decided to split off and open up a new base in Orgoon. And I got to lead plan and lead the infill for that. And it's just a way different than how I'd ever been trained to run an infill in recon or SF. I had al-Qaeda was spread throughout the region. You didn't know if you were coming into what you were going to come into.

And, you know, the warlord had a nephew that didn't speak one word of English. and how am I going to make an infill by a helicopter in a place and ensure the most safety we can? So you're inventing it. I trained the guy how to use an IR strobe and what we needed for an LZ picked out the most probable place from maps and overhead imagery. and I did some dry rehearsals that, you know, to know he'd know how to set up the IR strobe and sent him back and they had Theraias, and we had an interpreter that spoke poshtun that we were communicating. And so we waited a few days as it got time for the, for the infill. What I told him to do was to go out and mark.

that LZ at night and to keep marking it every night. And we waited so I didn't go in. We didn't infill the first day or second day. Maybe I remember if it's third or fourth day. And then to make the infill, I invited some of his relatives to get on the helicopter with me. So I figured I could throw a few civilians on there. Kind of isn't insurance policy.

I want to make sure you know that I have, you know, is on this helicopter with me. And so, you know, we set the pattern of not coming in. And then the one night we did show up and make that infill. And that was the start of the base, the fob at a lagoon. Yeah. Pretty much that existed through like pretty much the whole war.

Yeah, it was, it was interesting. you know, I, we, it was wild, it was kind of Wild West. You know, you want to be that guy. There's no rules. There's no other military around you. You kind of run around. We were going out and hitting, you know, I'd say hitting, not hitting. I think I was extremely successful without ever having to hit a weapons cachet.

Everywhere in Afghanistan had weapons caches from the Soviet war, the war with the Soviet. It's every little village had stuff. You would never, ever find it. But, you know, I developed this thing where we'd work with a village elder and an interpreter. And we go there and we'd have a couple vehicles with food and blankets and mattresses on it sitting off backaways. And we just go up and ask nicely, hey, you got some stuff here and it's bad stuff. somebody could get hurt. We don't want any misinterpretations. Um, we'd like it if you'd let us dig this up or, or help us show us where it is. And they would do that. And then after we

would recover the stuff, um, and would roll these trucks with all these goodies before, and you know, eventually got to the point you'd be finishing in one village and here's people from another village. Hey, hey, come to our village because we got a money and we started. And we started collecting, you know, it just kept getting more and more and more. And I started paying guys with tractors to haul artillery pieces back, back to Argoon. And I was like making a collection of big artillery pieces. It was, yeah, it was exciting days that you had, I remember when I was in Yemen, the Yemenis during

the demining. mission had two guys vaporized in a truck carrying a whole bunch of mines and whatever happened to detonated. The whole truck went and they were gone. And the Afghans would always pick the two lowest guys to drive the truck. And it was, you know, stuff hidden from the Soviet time. It was rockets. It was rounds.

It was mortars. It was mines. Everything under the sun. under every kind of condition. That's an inshallah detail. Inshallah. And the Americans, at first I did this, it would be two or three Americans go.

Eventually, we would ride in a truck and we'd make sure we stayed a couple hundred meters from that truck. Then one day I was in there, because now music's allowed. They had their little, their little cassette player playing the most horrible Afghan music I ever heard. But they were all excited.

And these two guys were in there. And I felt, I felt bad for him. So I just went up and opened the door and said, hey, I'm, I climbed in the truck with them. And they looked at me like, you're going to ride in here with us? I was like, inshallah. If you go, I'm going. And off we went.

And, you know, after that, uh, those guys started treating me different. the Afghans. I would, when we get to where we go, I would help them unload the truck, you know, do the manual labor. And it got to where they took it personal and they didn't want me touching anything. They started, you know, taking care of me and treat me like I was one of their commanders. My experience with the guys in Torah Bora was they were so undisciplined and untrained. I expected the same here. We went out to do what recover one cachet we thought was going to be maybe hostile. So you don't have time to train all these guys, you know. So you just just let them follow me. So I remember I had them all in the back of a steakbed truck and I was

in the front. My plan was we were going to get off and we were going to cover one ridge. Another guy was going to take other guys in another vehicle and cover the other ridge. And the cachet was in the valley. And I thought, okay, all you do is follow me. I'm going to jump out of the front and run to the back. You're all going to come out of the truck and file behind me. And I'm going to, I'm the American. I'm going to lead the way up the ridge.

And I've got all my American gear on and jump off the truck and come back. Well, they're jumping off. faster than I planned. And they're all coming. There's this little guy with a big beard and wearing a Soviet officer's belt buckle. And, you know, we started up the ridge and he just started barking orders. And those guys were running up the ridge. And, yeah, I'm carrying twice the three times the weight they are.

So I started sucking and breathing hard and trying to go. up the ridge and I thought I was going to lead them. They took off and left me and I remember getting to the top of the ridge and I could barely, I was wheezing and I said, uh, ridge secure. And it wasn't, it wasn't because of anything I did. They, uh, this, this group were hardened, uh, fighters, uh, from the Soviet time, you know, and they, they knew what they were doing. It was pretty cool.

So after this whole like initial push into Afghanistan and I mean, you were involved in it for quite a while. What kind of what were the next, you know, subsequent years like as you were like in and out of Afghanistan? Well, so I didn't go. Well, like for me, I actually jumped on another agency team for Operation Anaconda and did that. Okay. And then left. I was the last guy in fifth group to pull out of Afghanistan and went back to headquarters. And I had been asked for by the agency by name this time to be detailed to a Middle Eastern country to do some pre-Iraq preparation of the battlefield stuff there.

So there's a lot of paperwork to do to prep for that. So yeah, I went home in April of 2002, took some leave, and then started having to travel to get all the clearances and visit the places I need to visit to get detailed to the agency. So that later, after the summer, I wound up being assigned the agency for two years. So that was 2002. And I was brought there to do this sort of cross-border thing to do the tactical side of that. you know, in the run-up to the agency was collecting some information and running some low-level people, and they had to negotiate, the assets had to negotiate Iraqi security, and then there was this little problem of the UN.

The UN no-goes-on where Americans weren't supposed to be either. and they they it had been run by by Kuwaitis before cops untrained cops with 38 revolvers and they got hit in an ambush they were set up by a turncoat and they got ambushed and a couple of them killed that's when they decided they needed some experience on tactical side to come in and take over that part. So I was working with a small group of weighty policemen and there was a case officer in charge. And you were just like doing

operational preparation of the battle space before Yeah, my job was this yeah my my job was to sneak in past the UN. We had some interesting times where UN troops would come you know, it's an open desert. So, you know, use different techniques in an open desert. And I know we were up in this tower once.

And suddenly some UN guys stopped in there. And I'm up in the tower. I remember taking my, me and the other guy took our, the other American took our boots off to creep down this spiral stair, metal spiral stairway. And they were in, they were joking. and laughing in this other room with, I think it was Dutch soldiers from the UN. And we went creeping by the door to get out.

And it was, these were cops. So it was kind of like herding goats. They were, they didn't know what they were doing, but they had some guns and they thought they were bad. So I had to keep everybody close enough that I could put hands and push somebody, pull somebody, pull somebody. or kick somebody to get him to do what I wanted to do. At least I thought that was the thing. I was the big, badass SF guy. One time my hubris got me into a little bit of trouble

because at the border between Kuwait and Iraq, there's this 15-foot deep, 15-foot-wide trench and a berm. It was a tank barrier. The person that we had recovered that night, You know, my job was to get them in and get them to a place where agency people could debrief them and task them. Is that an asset? Yeah, an asset.

And they were like low-level smugglers. So, and then my job would be to get them back into Iraq. So, yeah, this guy had been lost for several hours down in this ditch. and so the the senior policeman said oh i know a place i you know i live here i know a place we can get him back across easy i'm like okay so we go and i didn't see that it looked it was some places it was eroded down but this place was not eroded but he said it's the uh the dirt is stiff enough he should be able to climb. Well, you know, we held this guy by the arms and dropped him into this hole.

And I'm watching through, I'm the only one with NVGs. And I'm watching him struggle and struggle and struggle to try to climb out on the other side. And he's not getting anywhere. And after a while, an Iraqi patrol is going to stop by here anytime. And we're sitting here watching this. And I was like, these guys are all idiots. But, you know, I'm a bad. And not only that, and not only I'm a badass, I am experienced rock climber.

I climbed buildings in Delta. I know what I'm doing. So I said, I'll get him back out. And I had the guys hold me by the arms and drop me down in this hole. I go over, put the guy on my shoulders, get him up, go back to get out. I went to a place where there was a 90 degree corner to try to climb out. And guess what? I couldn't get out.

And now I'm like, wait a second. I'm stuck in this hole. And everybody's up there. And the Iraqis are here. And I can't get out. And I'm supposed to be the guy that's the mature, experienced guy.

And, you know, I think I was thinking about, oh, my God, this is going to be hard to live. Because eventually a patrol is going to come by. I'm going to get captured. I didn't think they'd, me. I said, but I'm going to get captured. And when I'm released at the end of the war, I'm going to have to explain that I was captured because I got stuck in a hole. Yeah, I was, I was worried about that. But we thought about it and the other American had these hiking boots on. So had several guys undo their boot laces and tie them all together and made it a line. And I was able to make a loop in the line.

and get enough that I could get one foot enough where I eventually got out of that predicament, as we'd call it, I guess. And the smuggler? You know, I had gotten him back on the other side. So he, he was good to go. And we got it. But the first thing I did after that was by a collapsible ladder that I carried to the border with me every time after that. I was once detained by the Kurdish secret police who, they alleged that I scrambled across that berm from the Syrian side into Iraq. Now, there's never any proof to substantiate such claims, but, you know, I spent a night in their jail, which was a fun experience.

But yeah, those burms are no joke. Well, that's interesting that you got to spend the night in a jail later. So, yeah, you're doing the agency detail. And then the war kicks off. Yeah, the war kicked off. I went in and it was, you know, just a lot of interesting stuff. I went in. The former COS of Iraq was sitting in Kuwait.

And he had his GRS detail. It was going to take him back in, Charlie. And Alfred, get what happened, but his detail, he was going to go in from Saudi. And Iraq was still going on. I think the battle had moved to Najif at this point. And they, for whatever, whoever decided in the agency, he was going to go in and get a look, go forward and meet up with a guy named Greg V, that was running the show from inside

Afghanistan at the time, I mean, Iraq at the time. Greg V and I were lieutenants together in second recon. Oh, wow. Okay. I didn't know that. And I didn't, you know. No, I have asked him to come on the show before. I'm still working it.

I hope I can convince him one day. Yeah. Well, Greg and I were lieutenants together. And I didn't see him again until 2002, Afghanistan. and the guy, the agency guy, I was the tactical leader for like me. And he said, hey, you need to join the agency. Let me take you and introduce you to somebody. And I went, of course, we all had beards and civilian clothes.

There's this guy, bearded guy taking a nap. He stands up. He goes, oh, Gary Harrington, a company, second recomb battalion, 1983. I was like, whoa, you agency guys must do your homework. Like, he said, I guess you don't remember me. And no, I didn't at the time, again, because we all had quite different look than we did as young Marines. And then after, so after that, we renewed our friendship. And then we worked together in Iraq.

That's cool. And so, yeah, I, I, I, but Charlie Sadell or Charlie didn't have his detail. But they said, hey, this guy, Gary, he knows what he's doing. He can take you into Iraq. So they said, hey, will you do it? So, yeah, I by myself on a helicopter, took him into Iraq for his tour and back out. I went in and out of Baghdad. The agency let me do things that you should be an agency certified, farm certified person.

to do, but they decided I could do it. So they gave me a few little tests. And I saw I was running some assets in Baghdad in the area. I was

in Baghdad once with a, and hooked up with a seal. We were looking at doing a hit on a terror cell that was located by the Shia Mosque. It was a shrine And this is just right after Baghdad fell.

So the Shia were very happy and exuberant. And we wanted to get eyes on. So we had this rusted Toyota Corolla cruiser that we were in. And I'm driving. So we kept trying to get through. And the road was blocked off as we got close. So I'd back off, go around, try to come in again. The road's backed off.

So finally, I found a drainage ditch behind the shrine, straddled it with the car, eased through there. And it was hard going, but I got through there. And as we rounded the corner of the building into the square, suddenly we happened on tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia. And they were having a giant, it's their first Ashura since the fall. And suddenly we're in it, and I couldn't back up. It was too with a ditch and where I couldn't back up. And then just a way, but right before the wave of people came on us, you know, grab the camera off the dash, you know, pulled the camera down, take off your shirt.

You know, we had our shirts on, cover up the rifles. And, you know, there's nothing you can do when you're in that sea of people. You can't run over enough or shoot enough. Yeah. To get it out. And people would be plastered on us. And hey, you know, my big soldiery act was to look at people and smile and go, like, uh, uh, you know, I'm just a dumb American.

And like some, and they glare at you. Then they go, okay, and a guy would move you a few feet. Then you'd renegotiate with the next and the next and the next. I think it took us, like 30, 45 minutes to get out of the, that crowd. Oh, my God. Whoa. And I just kept picturing, you know, getting ripped apart by people. Well, there's that, that famous case study about the surveillance team that was, I believe it was an IRA wedding.

The IRA. Yeah. Yes. And they got a IRA wedding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or as a funeral, maybe.

No, it was a funeral. And we had, I think we had talked about that in Delta. And those guys, yeah, were doing surveillance. and got made and pulled out of the car and killed. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that went through, that exact incident went through my mind. I mean, we were there. Yeah.

But, you know, it was, it was different. We had, you know, some adventures and had fun. I had kind of made my bones with the agency. So they were supportive of me trying to come into the agency. And I finished my two years as a detailee in 2004 and had been running back and forth to Iraq. You know, during the day I'd be at the embassy like everybody else. And guess who else came to the embassy and was assigned there? John Mulholland again.

He was working at the, I think it was the OMA office there. So we got to see each other again and work together. a little bit. And so they, the agency supported me. I came back to the U.S. Fifth group had changed significantly. All of the people were gone.

They gave me a barracks room over, uh, the gym for two weeks. And I just hand carried my paperwork and punched out of the army, um, against advice and I didn't do all the proper things you're supposed to do when you retire. but I was by that time, I was in my 40s, 46 maybe.

And the agency had a job for me. And I was like, you know, I can't, this is my chance. If I wait, I'll miss it. So I left Fort Campbell on a Friday and reported for work Monday at Langley.

Wow. And what was the job? Took terminally. What was? was the job they had lined up for you? Well, the job, I'd been promised, hey, case, that I'd become an operations officer, case officer. They'd formalize you.

Yeah, and that I, you know, I'd already recruited and all that stuff, free agency. And, but then I got there and they go, oh, you can start out as a GS-11 and you can't be an operations officer. you're going to be a sue, a support officer. And I was like, huh? What? What? Wait a minute. Did you me support officer?

And they said, well, you're going to have to do that for a while. And so I showed up with the Near East Division. And that was my job to sit at a desk and support Iraqi ops, right cables. And I did that. I did everything I could. I'd been fortunate over from the time I was in Yemen to Kuwait, doing an army project to when I was detailed. And throughout that time in the war, a lot of agency people, I met a lot. And a lot of them depended on me to take care of them in the hospital. environments. So I guess I had friends on the inside and they were telling me, you're going to have to do two years before you can even be considered to do the training to get certified as a case officer. I'm like, but I already recruited.

Yeah, yeah. That doesn't count. And, you know, well, I wound up after six months there getting my opportunity to to go to the course to get certified. So I did that, and we were talking 2005. And then I said, you know, because I chose to go a case officer route instead of ground branch. Right. Because, you know, I was trying to look ahead. I was in my 40s. Yeah.

I was still great shape and very capable. But I was like, I got to do this to 165 or so. And I don't want to be that guy, white-haired guy trying to still tote the rifle and hang out with the badasses. And if I'm a case officer, I can have a, I've never had for the last 15 years. I haven't had a regular life. I can have a regular life and still contribute. So I went that around and had made them promise. me that, hey, I've done a lot of war stuff for you guys. Now, I want one of those embassy jobs. I want

to, like, go to Geneva or somewhere where I can, like, have a good time, live a good life and all that. And so I was set to go somewhere. It was not Geneva. It was Saudi Arabia. So, but it's still, it wasn't a case officer job. Yeah, it's a case officer job. And then, after I graduated the course, the day I graduated the division's personnel officer sent me a note. Congratulations on graduating the course. He said, please come by my office at your earliest convenience about your assignment. So I showed up and I said, hey, and he goes, no, you're not going there. And I like, well, what am I doing?

Well, there's a dire need in Afghanistan. and they need you and they ask for you, so you're going to Afghanistan. Oh, my. I can't, not me back to Afghanistan. And they go, yep, Afghanistan. It turned out it was the Greg V guy, was the chief, and had some people that backed out of assignments.

I still had the soldier in me where I thought, you know, when you're told you have to go somewhere, you can complain and you can say, ask him to reconsider, but you still have to go. I didn't realize, no, that's not how it is, D.H. Yeah, yeah. The interesting thing about the CIA is that like you're not a soldier. They can't order you to go to a war zone if you don't want to go.

But I didn't know that, really. So I was like, okay. But it, but I went. And it turned out it was Greg, you know, and, you know, I respect him a lot. and trust him a lot and he really wanted me. So I was happy to work with him and I worked with him. And, you know, he was towards the last half of his tour there. So he left and was replaced by the guy who had been a team leader that I was a guy named Chris.

And I was, had been his tactical team leader in Afghanistan. Oh, okay. Wow. So, so between the two of them, now I'm a case officer, but they knew me with my military skills. So I sort of went by, they gave me sort of a different set of rules than other case officers had. So I guess I had more freedom of movement and more leeway at pursuing some different kind of you know it wasn't the usual embassy stuff you know i was going after uh i ed people and i like i was for a while i was meeting a guy that would bring iED trigger devices from pakistan in

and i would meet him and give him a little bit of money and i'd take the devices instead yeah yeah and then after a while it's funny i got called into the headquarters and i said hey we have like especially trained explosive people that should be getting these i go what are they going to do that i'm doing you know i was a breach i've been trained to breach her i know i can take a triggering device and uh they's not but it's you're not qualified and uh you know it works differently in the agency about your qualifications and stuff so um but i did that i did some stuff where i uh convinced some Taliban that they were on the wrong side of the fence and they should do some other things. I did a couple of the traditional case officer recruitment and hirings and all that.

You also mentioned to me that there are a few stories from this time frame that you cleared through the PRB that I'd love to hear if you can tell. Yeah, well, one of them. So I did do some stuff with Taliban and turning some Taliban. One of the stories that an interesting one is that I was standing on a corner in Kabul called Massoud Circle. It's right by where the U.S. Embassy was just outside the security zone. And I might have been breaking rules and I'm standing on the street corner with an interpreter waiting to meet in. Afghan that I want to take back in the interview.

And, you know, while you're standing there, your situational awareness is really turned on. You're scanning. You're looking. You're, you know, if is anybody going to try to come up and try to kill me, I'm watching. And as I'm doing that while we're waiting, my attention for a brief moment went on this, off to my left, a black Toyota Corolla. And but I was like, okay, well, I don't really see anything wrong with that and back. And, you know, I was keeping scanning, but then I kept turning back to that black Toyota.

And then I noticed, well, there's two guys in it. And they see me. We're about 30 yards apart. So they clearly see that I'm an American. And then I, you know, but I was ignoring that little sixth sense that comes on. in you because I was trying to get something done, right? So I just kept making excuses. There was a cop about 10 yards away from that car.

And I told myself, well, if there was something wrong, the cop wouldn't let them be there. Because I thought, I'm just bothered because cars don't normally park there. And well, then the guy that I was waiting for showed up. So we turned around, the interpreter and I went back through the, security zone. It's about 150 meters to the gate. We went in. And as we were coming in the gate, you know, there was just a deafening explosion and the ground shaking. And the alarm went off. You know, you had to get inside the buildings and get on the floor and wait. We were probably there a couple hours. Things started dying down. I went to see the regional security officers.

there that run security for embassies and I asked them I said hey was that a vehicle a V-B-I-E-D and they said it was was it at Kabul circle our Massoud circle right out here it was it hit a military a U.S. military convoy killed two soldiers injured four and killed a bunch of Afghans and I said I said, was it a black Toyota Corolla? And the guy stopped me, he said, nobody knows that. We're just finding pieces of that. Nobody knows that.

I said, well, I was there two minutes before it went off. There were two guys in it. So that, I mean, that's just one of those stories that happens. The lesson I took from that was pay attention to your instincts. And if something's bothering you, you know, you need to defend to definitively rule it out threat or not threat, but be definitive about it. Don't let it sit there because I've many times imagined the conversation those guys had,

you know, hey, let's just do it now. Here's an American right here. All we have to do is touch the wires together. And maybe the other guy, well, no, they told us military convoy. But who knows if that's going to come? Here's one right now. And they didn't. The pictures that went around the world after of that explosion aftermath, where I was standing was just gone.

It was obliterated. The tree, so everything was just gone. So, you know, fate was with me that day, even though I probably made some bad choices about sticking around. And then there's another one about asset recovery. Yeah, so I had had some success with some, a couple ops. I did with ground branch guys where we flipped some Taliban. We actually got some Taliban fighters that we did some stuff, you know, with for a while. And as a following on to that, there was a one of the guys that was on the,

top 10 list, uh, uh, Mullah Kabir that was in Pakistan. And through some people, I'd been trying to reach out to him to make overtures that

if he would come in and, uh, or cooperate with me, you know, I'd try to get him off the, the list of that, that means death. Because I, you know, if we can get him.

we're going to kill you. But maybe there's another option for you. And eventually, and I'd had some success doing some, those ops. And we thought, we were told that there, that he would come in. But he was going to do so at the border of Nangahar province and Naurusand province. and that was a back in those days we're talking 2006 i believe um that was no man's land it was it was bad i think later uh a big military u.s military unit got shot up pretty bad there um so we i rolled we uh did this op so it was some ground branch guys and i we rolled in into thin skin vehicles in the middle of the night uh to get in and we had two gun trucks, so pickup trucks that had the local Afghans that the agency had trained

were remained like 30 minutes behind. And our thinking, because we didn't have any air support, was that if we got hit, we would call in those vehicles and with a 20 or 30 minute delay, they could get in and provide some extra fire support to extract us. And we didn't plan on being there long. You can make an infill at night. But in a village or out in a remote place, unlike the seals and lone survivor,

you know that you're going to be made and you have to get out of there. So you can get in, but the fuse is burning so you don't have long to be there. as it started getting light, we backed up into, I found some guy and we paid him some cash that he had a walled compound. So a mud walled compound, we were able to get our vehicles there. But you know that we're still going to get you. You can't be somewhere. And as the village wakes up and people start moving around, you know you're essentially made. Well, this Mullah Kabir didn't show, didn't show.

I had an Afghan general with me wearing plain clothes, who was ethnic poshtun from that area. And he, after we had no phone coverage, even Therai at that point. It wasn't where we couldn't hit satellites. It wasn't working. So we're getting to the point where I'm going to have to abandon this mission. And we, the general decided to go forward because he's a local. He can blend. So he said, I'm going to go forward.

And we were at the edge of Afghanistan. So by going forward, he was going into Pakistan. And I gave him 45 minutes. I said, okay, I can give you 45 minutes. go see what the deal is get where you can make a phone call and see if this is on or not but we got to get out of here the 45 minutes went by he wasn't there and we had to try to um you know i've got to do something by now it's getting 10 10 30 surely everybody knows we're there by now so i know that by now Taliban, al-Qaeda, whoever knows.

And the question is, you know, how soon can they take action? And, you know, I wanted to pull out and take the Americans with me because that's the sure thing to do. And that's what the agency would want me to do. That was the politically correct thing to do. But then there's that soldier's creed of never leave a guy behind. And I, you know, I even ask myself the question is, well, is he my guy? It was my first responsibility to the Americans. Right, right.

And then this guy's an Afghan. And the ground branch guys were, um, were asking me, you know, it's my call. What are we going to do? And I talked with him a little bit. And, and we, you know, we decided, okay, it's no longer a secret that we're here. Let's make one effort to get this guy. So we called up the two gun trucks, you know, the two pickup trucks. So we, you know, we had 12 Afghans and with each vehicle was one, if not two other ground branch guys.

So we waited on them. They come rolling in. We got in front of them and our thin skin vehicles and off into Pakistan, we go looking for this general. And, hey, we got lucky that. But after we got inside and had gone just a few kilometers, suddenly this, you know, little cab car comes flying up behind us and out jumps the general. And he's like crying and running up and hugging me. And he had, his vehicle had stalled near a Pakistani checkpoint.

And he'd been, they'd fired a couple times. and then he'd been running for the last 45 minutes. Oh, geez. So he was glad. But we recovered him. And then, you know, thanks to the ground branch guy's skill and the guys that they had trained, we, you know, mounted up and got back out. And with no incident, you know, it was, it was just a very tense time.

It had reminded me that, you know, when I talked earlier about Afghanistan in 2002, I was the tactical leader. And that Chris guy that I talked about later was the team leader. And we got set up out in the middle of nowhere for this asset that was going to meet us. And he wasn't showing. And as a tactical leader, I noticed that, hey, we're out in the middle of a valley. We're in a bad spot. The people in this little outpost, there's only like five little buildings together, are disappearing.

If the locals are disappearing, something is getting ready to happen. So I told him, we've got to pull out. We can't stay here. And we left, and after we got back that night to our base camp, we found out that SIGAN had picked up Al-Qaeda Kams saying that they had part of the ambush in on us, and we're waiting to put the rest of it in before they initiated. an ambush but we ended up you know walking out and uh i just thought it was a a weird just uh sense of irony yeah that i'd been on one side and now here i was in the team leader job and uh

i like it better being on the tactical side was that sort of like emblematic of your time at the agency that they kept you in afghanistan yeah i did i did three tours uh it's supposed to be one And not that many people even did one. And I did, I did three. After two, I would have gotten, been able to go. But I went home on leave and actually married somebody in the agency. And she had never done a war's home tour. So you say, well, you know, you've done your share of war zone, but she's not done a war zone.

And she's going to be in a war zone. So if you want to be with her, you know, because we've been in separate countries, uh, married in separate countries for a year, uh, it's going to be a war zone, Iraq or Afghanistan. Uh, I was, hey, hey, you know, I've already got everything wired here in Afghanistan. and I'll stay in Afghanistan. So she came out. And I did my third year. It was maybe not the wisest choice I made

because I didn't realize that after all those years of war zones and classified missions, just back to back to back to back. You don't realize what it does to you. And I'm now in touch with some the GRS global support guys that, you know, were bodyguards that knew me and trusted me. In those days, they said, hey, man, that third year, and you know, we all wondered when you were going to buy a ticket because, like, you're going out on your own and Kabul and driving by yourself.

Right. And staying at a compound. And you kind of had this thing of nobody can touch you. And he goes, most people don't survive that. Right. And, but I did. And it, it was good. But I, you know, I was done with war zones.

I got it. I want to ask about kind of your transition out of the agency, but I'm going to hit you with a couple, some questions from our viewers. And let me see if I pull these up here real quick. I know we have a handful. Let's see here. Tomes asked, how does the agency have to adapt to penetrate harder targets like nation state actors, China and Russia, as opposed to our GWAT experiences?

And what from our GWAT experiences can be learned as far as like how we get? I guess I think this is a little convoluted, but I think what he's asking is how can we take our experiences in the GWAT and sort of like rejigger that to target nation states and some of. of the near peer adversaries that we're in competition with? Well, that one, to be honest, that's probably a few levels above my pay grade. I think that my opinion, based on what I know, is the intelligence services have had a very hard time in our near peer countries. You know, I don't want to go too far in what I say, but I think we're all aware that we've had some spectacular failures regarding China and some other countries. And so a lot of our thinking about how the intelligence service goes about it, I think has to be refigured. And the model that we use in Afghanistan would not work.

Now, I don't know what the special forces, whether first group or 10th group with Russia, planning is for, you know, to take their side of the battle to those countries. But I don't think it can't be the same. like command structure as it was in in Afghanistan. And one of the big failures, I was one of the plank holders as things started deteriorating with Syria. And so I was in the midst of the decisions as that was ramping up. And based on my experience, I knew that whatever we, did in Syria and I'll draw the correlation to to on your peer country that like Afghanistan,

while the agency might start it and have the legal authorities under covert actions to do these initial activities that it's going to inevitably turn over to fifth group. So my thinking was at the beginning, we need to share with Socom and Soxent and be tied in so that it's a seamless transition from agency to Army. And, you know, but that's where you get into those organizational divides and jealousies because they're like, no, no, you can't. And I was like, let's go tell them. And there was great reluctance to share much. I went down for my boss and I went down to brief General Mattis. And that did not go well at all.

Oh, my God. Well, it was a general Mattis is a very, very smart man. And at that. And, you know, we're used to doing military briefs. So that's one advantage we have. Well, then I came back in a few months later. It was time to go to Socom. And we'd had some, the agency in Socom had some difficulties.

And there was a level of distrust there. And I was like, eh. So I, you know, and by this time, I'm a GS-13. That's it. I'm a low-level GS-13 because I've done all my time, most of my time. most of my time in war zones i did have one tour somewhere else and i had some uh you know successes uh in the terror arena there but um so i i i said hey if anybody wants to go with me any flag level person wants to go down to socom you're welcome to but nobody came so i walked

into Admiral McCraven's office by myself. And it was an ambush. He was not happy with Fais and C. And one of his key staff members had had, there was a big rift. You know, I went there. His briefing table was, everybody was there. They introduced themselves.

They sit me down. Then the door to his office opens. He comes in, sits in his chair, facing them says hello then he spins it and looks at me and goes and what do you want and i was like well here i am former e7 now talking to uh the socom commander and uh you know i said hey sir i'm at heart i'm an s f guy you know and i'm here but i'm going to tell you the truth not only about what we have and what we're doing But more importantly, what we don't have and what we can't do.

And we got along. It sort of helped that John Mulholland became his deputy, and we were friends. And, you know, I got some assistance from him. And, you know, off we went. But as that relates to a near peer, that there has to be a seamless off ramp. and you know my i guess maybe that's changed uh since i left in 2015 i doubt it just because of legalities and jealousies and everybody's got to protect their turf uh joe asks what is your view of oil and gas exploration in yemen and its impact on the government and economy there um what do you

have any thoughts about that hey yemen has a lot of oil And it's just that the rift between the Shia and Sunni there, we're never going to get that. The French, I can't remember now the name of the French oil and gas company that had the big concessions there back during 98, 99. it doesn't matter who has the concessions and consortium there, they are not going to resolve that issue. No, and it's never going to be stable enough where anybody's going to be able to really put the infrastructure that needs to be there to be able to take advantage of it.

Mitchell asks, what was the most useful thing you learned at Marine Corps boot camp. And I guess he's asking that helped in your later role in J-Soc and CIA. Please tell us to somehow involved scrubbing toilets with toothbrushes. Well, yeah, well, involving toothbrushes. Hey, it's shoot, move and communicate. It's the basics of. never leave a buddy behind.

It's the belief in your country and in your service and devotion to those people around you. It's the basics. And the Marine Corps, I felt was really good at the basics. And no matter where you go in J-Soc, CIA, whatever the most complicated operation you're doing, And even, you know, I've, you know, I've done operations against top tier al-Qaeda leaders. It's still going back to the basics, taking care of people, shoot, move, communicate. It's sort of maybe an open-ended question, but Isaac asks if you have an opinion about what we've heard about in the press about the Havana syndrome. Yeah, I don't know.

about that you know when I first heard it I thought it was plausible um it's also plausible to me that it could be a another or a manifestation of anxieties you know this is our society today is walking around with a lot of anxieties and when you're operating in certain countries and you're undercover um particularly if there's hard targets coming after you, that can weigh on you and change you. But to be honest, I do not have enough information. And I don't, I think the medical community is still pretty divided on whether, you know, on, on the, you know, the reality of that and the impact of it. I would believe, if you showed me data, I would believe either way.

Certainly, I don't put it past some countries to use a weapon like that against us. Joe asks, regarding Torabora, when you say bin Laden and Al-Qaeda had a good understanding of SIGAN intercept capabilities? I didn't say that Al-Qaeda had a good understanding of it. We were intercepting communications coming out of Torobora and identified Ben Laden's voice on that at certain points. And sometime between 6 and 9 December, they stopped getting his voice. So that's when we know that he sometime in that time frame probably left Torabora. Which happens to be about the night they told us to that we had to get off our OP. Paul asks, do you know if any Afghans who worked with early on were able to get out out of Afghanistan, I guess, when the country collapsed?

I'm guessing it's hard to prove they worked with us if they worked with the agency. There's some did. Some didn't. There are some people, you know, that I know of that are still there. There's a man, one of the linguists that I worked with named Rasul is active in trying to help. You know, there's various groups and there's a lot of SF guys that help get people out. But there are guys that are stuck. And it's not to me just them, but they're family members.

There's one person I know that, hey, they're coming around now to my. brother and if you know it's either join or get killed and if they ever find out that i'm in america he's dead so it's uh there's a lot there there are so many people there are left and and probably a lot of agency uh affiliated people yeah uh jo's i think you kind of answered this question but he says do you have a lot of exposure working with sades or tfo during the AFO, OPB, mission sets. I think you sort of answered that question. Yeah, I don't.

The Sades, I coordinated with some of them, like mostly doing peacetime stuff in Kuwait and some of the other places. But not, I didn't really work with them in the, in the combat phase. I pretty much worked with agency people in most of that. Don asks, with all of your experience working by with and through the State Department, do you have any experience or thoughts working with the Diplomatic Security Service or MSD? Hey, a lot of great guys work there. There are plenty of guys. There's Rangers, Delta, Marines, every branch of service that some of them leave, you know, mid-career.

come to the diplomatic security service. A guy that I trained in, trained me in martial arts used to be their head of their martial arts program. Tony Moffness. I don't know if you guys ever heard of him, but that's the greatest martial artist I've ever known or seen. And he ran the DS program for a long time. So yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of good guys there. But yeah, there's some that are inexperienced. In Afghanistan, they were experienced.

But in places in some other places that were not hostile, you know, it's people that have more of an admin police type background. So they're maybe not as suited in. some respects to deal with, um, the hostile environment. Yeah, I actually have a quick question before we move on to sort of your transition out of,

out of, governmental service. I've been working on this article lately with my colleague, uh, Sean Naylor, um, for the high side, uh, that we've learned that the next commander of Delta is actually going to be a aviation

guy, uh, who comes from Echo Squadron. I was wondering if you had any thoughts of that, somebody who worked, in this community and closely with the community about rather than somebody who came from, you know, the traditional squadron commander position and working their way up about an aviation guy sort of landing in that billet. Hey, you know, I think it's time.

Delta's changed a lot. I actually, in the Syria stuff, went back to the Delta compound to do a briefing there in the run up to Syria. And, you know, when I left, it was three squadrons. I came back and it was like it doubled in size. I think there was a, we're at age or whatever, a bazillion squadrons, a whole bunch of different missions. And it had grown.

And so with that, I believe that, you know, the guys that have to develop the operational plan on the ground, there'll still be plenty of people that can do that. But to run that behemoth now, I think that anybody that has the proper mentality and training and experience in a joint environment is very capable of doing that. So I don't think that they'll miss a step. So talk to us. I mean, I believe you told me you spent about 15 years in the agency before retiring.

If you could tell us a little bit about your transition to back to civilian life after all these years and a life of working, you know, sort of in the shadows. The agency, I entered this field. Again, I was a young guy. I thought my job was to give my life from my country and never planned on surviving all that stuff and getting older. I pushed hard and I had just some things in the agency started, you know, going, bothering me somewhat. I had a successful operation against a senior Al-Qaeda person that sort of put me in the middle of the political aspect and at more senior levels. And I started seeing under the tent, you know, that a lot of, some of the politics involved and the decision making process and some stuff with the National Security Council and, you know, this whole thing about, hey, let's not tell Socom stuff. I, you know, I started becoming like, hey, I'm, this is bothering me.

And I think I had ended in the wife that I married. there in the agency decided to move on and do something different. So I started really wondering like, what am I doing here? I felt that the agency, a lot of the people in the side of the agency I was in were fairly liberal. and that, you know, I was viewed somewhat different. You know, I didn't think I was an old codger yet, but it just started getting where I started, like, I don't like the politics in this. And then in my personal life, and I started, I'd been on all these offensive things. It's how do we track down this guy?

How do I get this guy? I had a few times where I did something I felt was really good, like getting a family out of a denied country once. You know, that was that was a good feeling. And I, you know, I started searching for it and there was a spiritual search for me. I'd, I'd been a believer in God. Christian, but I sure as heck wouldn't have been accused of that if anybody didn't knew me in a lot of my military time and maybe agency time. And, you know, this I started having medical issues. I've been under extreme stress in some things that we haven't talked about, probably shouldn't talk about.

And for so many years and so long that I started having heart things. And I started thinking this isn't for me. And right when my career, after some pretty spectacular successes, should have been taken off, I was like, I've got to bail on this. And I resigned in 2015 after, I think, I was 11 as a staff officer and two as a detailee. But I'd been working on and off with the agency for, yeah, 15, 16 years. And so you sort of reconnected or made stronger connections with your faith.

Yeah. Got remarried? No. I actually, with my faith, you know, I hope I don't turn it. No, it's okay. But, but I had, again, I decided I needed to be not a believer, but a follower. I needed to be somebody that made what I, who I thought it was on the inside and what I believed be who I am, how I speak, and on the outside.

Because I was one thing that I felt I needed to be to get the job done on the outside. and I thought I was somebody different. The truth is you are who you are on the outside, not what you like to think you are on the inside. Sure, sure. So I did reconnect with my faith. I decided I probably wasn't the most qualified person to look for romantic entanglements.

All my buddies in the military say, Hey, Gary, every 10 or 15 years, Don't ever get married again. Just every 10 and 15 years, give all your shit to some woman and all your money. And don't go through that whole legal thing. Just PayPal them. So, and, you know, part of my change and my faith, I gave up on all that. And then I was at a church in McLean and, you know, met somebody there that,

was uh i get i get a god's then you know to me i i give up i was like okay i'm i'm not looking anymore and uh kimberly scott walked into my life and so we've been together like eight years you know and it's funny because i had just rolled back my cover in preparation to leave the agency and we agreed to have coffee to talk about church so i met her for this coffee and And she said one of her first questions, well, what do you do? And I said, well, you're actually the first person I can tell, but I work in the CIA. She goes, oh, you know, and she was a very, she is a very sweet and innocent person besides what little bit of corruption I've been able to achieve. And she said, oh, what I said, well, I actually was a Marine officer to start off.

But then I resigned and I enlisted in special forces. And then I did this thing that they called the Delta Force for a while. And then I went to the CIA and I'm in the CIA. She said, oh. And she goes back to school and some friends of her. She had a husband, a late husband who had passed away a few years before of an illness. And they've been trying to. set her up with agency guys because this teacher that she worked with, her husband was a senior

guy in the agency. And they were trying to set her up. She's, no, there's a guy in my church and I think, I think I'm going to start going out with him. And they, oh, tell me about him, tell me about him. And it happened to be that this woman's husband had been a ranger. And before the agency, she said, oh, well, his name is Gary. he was Marine

then he was special forces then he was Delta Force and now he's CIA and then the woman looked at her and laughed and shook her head and patted her on the back said oh honey there's nobody just done all that stuff that's what that's

that's the kind of thing that guys tell girls when they want to get very friendly with them but that that's there's no way she said but he seems so sincere and I met him at church she said no impossible, but give me his name. And I'll have my husband check him out.

So she gave him my name. And she said, you know, I found out much later, a couple days later that the lady came back to her and said, oh, my God. She said, not only is that true, there's way more than that. He's, you know, he's, he's done all that and then a few things. You passed the smell test. I passed that. they did give a little bit extra report. They said he's known as a real good guy, but he's not much of a rule follower.

But he never lies. So, you know, when he gets caught, he'll tell him what he did. But so I guess I passed that test. And so how has quote unquote retirement been going for you and settling into this new life? Well, you know, I think maybe all of us can. relate to that right is it's way way tougher than i thought yeah and um and i i like even in the agency i i got used to you know we're we're government and i want to do good things and when i was in the government if i write a proposal and get a proposal and convince people to approve the

proposal i get money like my last year in afghanistan one point whatever million dollars to set up this program. It was a very successful program. It was great. So I thought, okay, I'm going to apply my skills to business and do that. Well, guess what? There's not a bunch of people lining up to give me millions of dollars to start business. And at first, I think I got pushed with, you know, by that time, for whatever other reasons, I knew some people in places and they were hook me up with security gigs. And so I was trying to set up a security and

I would hire seals and SF guys. But I never made a success of it because by the time you pay the guys to do the work, there never was enough for me. So I couldn't live off the money. And one day I did an event for

women CEOs. And when I trained them in anti-assault, anti-abduction, escape from restraints, situational awareness. During that, one of the women came up and said, if I knew this before, I wouldn't have got stabbed and raped a few years ago.

And I just liked that. I like giving to people. It made me feel that the 35 years that I spent doing the things that I did in the hostile environments, living undercover, that there were things I could teach people that improve every person's life so they can take care of themselves so they can have peace of mind. And these days, you know, look how our society is devolving and violence is right around the corner from any of us. And people are increasingly less able to take care of it.

So I kind of view it as a mission to, you know, equip people to be able to take care of themselves. Just following the same principles and habits that many of us learn to live with throughout our careers. You're still doing the, do you, is this become something you do regularly, these seminars and things like this? I have in a past tended to work for, you know, higher net worth. families and people that have like daughters or children going abroad to study. I started, I did do some, I've been doing some events with organizations. And I'm getting ready to launch an online course called the Prudent Parenting course. And that's to just take parents and guide them through how,

to properly mentor your children so that they are self-reliant for their security and safety. It's a pretty extensive course, and I've spent probably two years putting that together. And where can people, like, find you on the Internet if they want to hire you to come speak to their group or enroll in one of these courses? Well, thanks for asking. My website is Gary Harrington. dot net and i'm on facebook is gary harrington and on uh instagram is the real gary harrington and have a youtube channel as well and gary i think throughout this interview and i'm sorry i kept you way longer than i thought we would this has been like over three hours but i realize we could easily do two entire episodes with you and all these stories and insights you have are

amazing and i hope you'll take me up on the offer sometime when you're coming through new york to come and join us in the studio sometime because this has been like really enlightening and enjoyable sure man we'll talk about coast some other time and uh the uh the killing of the CIA officers there absolutely I mean we've we've we've talked to people who are involved in that and I would love to hear more from from you on it as well um yeah I mean thank you so much Gary uh thank you I really appreciate the opportunity and uh again thanks a lot for doing what you on. Absolutely, man. And for the viewers out there, thank you for joining us tonight. And we will be back on Friday with Dallas Alexander, who is a Canadian JTF2 sniper. I'm excited to have him on the show.

If you want to find Gary, we'll have his links down in the description. So you can find all his information down there. And Gary, we'll have to do it again sometime, man. Thank you. All right. Thanks a lot, Ray. Thanks for your time. All right. So we'll see all you guys on Friday. Take care out there.