The Team House - DEVGRU Squadron Commander and Lobo Institute Co-Founder | Eric Oehlerich | Ep. 128

Episode Date: January 15, 2022

Eric Oehlerich is a retired U.S. Navy Commander (SEAL) from the Naval Special Warfare component of the USSOCOM’s Joint Special Operations Command. He is a Senior Fellow for Technology and National Security with the Middle East Institute, an Analyst for ABC News, and the Lobo Institute’s Co-founder.  Check our Eric’s organization here: https://www.loboinstitute.org  Today's Sponsors: 👇  A-TAC FITNESS (Veteran owned and operated)  https://www.ATACFITNESS.com Use the promo code "TEAM10" for 10% off!  Selection Starts Here.  GROUND NEWS  https://GROUND.NEWS/TEAMHOUSE Download the free Ground News app at https://ground.news/teamhouse and compare more than 50,000 news sources. Ground News frees people from blindspots and makes media bias explicit.  Thanks for supporting the companies that support the show!  Want 2 bonus episodes per month and access to the bonus segments?  Subscribe to our Patreon!👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse  Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963  Social Media Links:  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] #DEVGRU #JSOC #sealteam6Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Hey, everyone, welcome to episode 128 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with Dave Park. We are joined tonight by our guest, Eric Ulrich, also goes by Ollie. He served in the SEAL teams and was also a squadron commander with SEAL Team 6. And we're going to get into all sorts of adventures that he had. But first, we're going to have a quick word from one of our sponsors. Yeah, so our first sponsor for tonight is our friends over at ATAC Fitness. they sell these great kits

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And then they all come with a couple of these nylon or braided ropes so that you can sit there and practice your knots underwater, which we all know is very long. Yeah. No, they're really well thought out kits. That was a horrible knot. But, yeah, check them out. Selection starts here.

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We'll reach out to you. For the T-shirt is also MD Daniels. So you got two of them. And then for the, the coffee mug is the Chris Schumacher. So we will reach out to you to get your sizes and for mailing addresses. Thanks guys.

All right. So let's jump right into it here with Eric. I really appreciate you coming on the show tonight, man. You are the third Navy SEAL we have had on the show. We have been a somewhat SEAL-Sceptical program to tell you the truth. But we are very happy to have you here. I'm just throwing some shade because we have to because we're Army guys. But I'm not joking. I really do appreciate you coming on the show and sharing some of your life and your experiences with us.

And the first question I wanted to throw your way is the same one I, you know, hit all of our guests with right off the bat, is we'd like to hear a little bit about your upbringing and sort of that path that you took growing up that eventually led you into the Navy. Yeah, so on the seal subject first, if you just want to get it done with a little bit of flare, You just got to ask a team guy. Anyway, thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate it, Jack, Dave. What brought me in the Navy,

a very interesting path. Top Gun. I was a sixth grader in middle school. You got Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, who's not so good right now. But anyway, I had a math teacher here locally in a small town in northwest Montana.

And he flew F-4s and had been in the Navy. And he was a little bit of a ego-tistical pilot. He would wear his bomber jacket to school and drive a motorbike and raybans and pretty much Tom Cruise, only in northwest Montana. for a kid that had never seen anything like that, that was a little bit intriguing. I started doing a little bit of research. I expect an interest to potentially go to one of the service academies. He told me that I wasn't smart enough and I was dumb and I'd never do it. So anger is one of my better motivators.

So I reached on down and I was like, all right, all right, buddy. Well, we'll get to the bottom of this. and I started working pretty hard. Yeah, it turns out that I was really good at working hard, but I wasn't as good on the SATs as probably a lot of really good spec ops operators aren't. My dad had grown up in a town that had even smaller than Whitefish, which was 3,000 people. He'd grown up in eastern Montana.

He had a graduating class of eight. And not a stoplight in town, just a yield sign. And one of the kids in his class was now really good friends with Senator Conrad Burns from Montana. So I called Senator Conrad Burns, told him that I wasn't a stellar standout in the grades department. I was a good athlete, but not like an NCAA level athlete. but that I would do whatever was asked me. I'd work until I was dead and that I wouldn't let him down. So he gave me a primary nomination of the Naval Academy.

And went to the Naval Academy. He started with the prep school in 1994, Naval Academy in 1995. The more I kind of hung around pilots, the more I just didn't rub me right, the more I hung out around seals, there's a couple seals around the academy yard there, the more I was like, man, those guys are for each other,

they work hard, play hard, you earn your respect, your credibility is kind of everything. And that just resonated with me on a really deep level, and I was like, that's what I need to do. So being a young man that grew up in Montana,

hunting elk, in the fall, fishing, running rivers in the spring and summer, running chainsaws, you know, to cut your firewood, splitting it. Hard work was, I wasn't afraid of it. And that whole collective background, though, I didn't know how to swim very well coming from Northwest Montana. So I had to start working really hard, the Earth Nail Academy for a couple of years every single morning in those pools, beating myself into being competent in the water. But by the time senior year rolled around, we kind of took our final, you know, physical fitness test and the pool of folks for 16 seal slots. The start of our junior year was about 240 dudes that wanted to do it.

They kind of whittle it down. I think they interviewed around 40 of us. and then out of those 40 they picked 16 to go to Buds. So I was one of the lucky 16 that was selected. I had a great group of dudes around me. We were really tight in camaraderie and, you know, off to Buds we went as soon as we graduated in 1999 in the summer of that. So that's really what led me in the Navy. It was driven by anger.

I did, when I was a senior at the Naval Academy, one of my, my younger cousins in Montana, the town called Missoula, was in the same math teacher's class. I sent him a teacher with my name and the year on it and the Navy Naval Academy crest on it. And I was like, hey, wear that to school. So we did. And the teacher was like, you know, what is that? And my cousin was like, yeah, that's my cousin. He's getting ready to graduate from the Naval Academy.

You taught him seventh or sixth grade math and whitefish. That's right. We got ours. That's playing the long game. Is that your Bud's class number behind you on the memorabilia on your bookshelf? No. Oh, okay. That's actually, I took an SDV on a really cool dive-op.

And I didn't know it, but when they went to scrap that SDV, my platoon chief, I love them to death. he's a great guy. His name's Paul Robinson. He took the prop off that SDV because it was quite a significant dive. It's one of the harder nights I've ever had in the SEAL teams. And he cut the prop off and then put a trident on it. And that's what he gave me when I was getting out of the Navy. So it's 813 for SDV number 813.

Okay. I'm going to circle back around on that story for sure. Okay. So you play the long game, some payback on your sixth grade math teacher for being a smart ass. But now you're in the Navy. Now you're going through, you pass Buds. Now you're going to SQT.

You said this is 1999. Yeah. Well, 2000 basically went to Buds in 99, graduated early 2000. You know, it's just a long, good, hard kicking the teeth. Every frog man's got to do it. There's no credit given. and it's what's required to prove that you're ready to have what it takes either to really truly be a part of the team or not.

And, you know, the strength of the pack is the wolf. The strength of the wolf is the pack. That's the way the teams work. And what was it for you like when you finally did show up at a team as the, you know, I don't know, forgive me for not being familiar with all the Navy terminology as a platoon leader? Like what was the biggest challenge or how did it feel? What was it like for you walking into the team, with, you know, 16 cockhard young Navy SEALs and you're a butter bar, right?

No practical experience, but you're in charge. Yeah. You know, I would do credit, I got some really good advice straight out of the gate by one warrant officer. His name is Jimmy Duke and another officer who had been a prior enlisted guy. His name's Matt Burns. You may have heard of his admiral now. And Matt Burns told me basically maximize the talents of your men and don't try to beat them at it. Just allow you need to be the conduit that represents the maximization of their talents.

And he was spot on with that. And then Jimmy Duke's advice was, hey, stop. slow down and keep your mouth closed. If they want you to speed up, they'll tell you, and if they want to hear your opinion, they'll tell you. So between those two things, you got it. You're like, okay, work hard at being an operator, but understand your role as an officer, which is to take care of the men and advocate for them because in that two-way street, in the teams, they will not let you down.

if you can get it to where their services are required, they're going to die trying. I mean, you would too, but they're not going to let you down. That's the two-way mutual respect between the officers and listed in the teams. Because you go through the same training and you are all kicked in the teeth at a mutual level, they know that you have the grit if required when all the chips are down, that you're going to be as solid as they are. And then you were going into, you know, taking control of this platoon and starting to train them going through your first workup just prior to 9-11, right?

Yes. So there were three officers in the platoon just for clarity. I was one of the junior. We had a mid-a-senior-level lieutenant that was in charge of it. and we were in the very final two days of an 18 month plus workup, and then we were going to get some leave, and then we were going to head to the med for some engagements, some bilateral engagements with partners, and 9-11 hit.

So we were already almost there on packing our bags for deployment, and, you know, AQ flew those jets into the towers. Towers dropped. We're at war. You know, the mentality at the time, and I mean, you guys remember this. It was like, like, oh, my gosh, I mean, America just got, I mean, just punched straight in the face. And it was almost like, you know, all of a sudden now there's this name called Al-Qaeda out on the street. And everybody's wondering, like, where are all the terrorists within our own society?

And, like, there was some angst and paranoia. But eight days later, you know, I was part of an advanced team that just went straight to road to Spain, linked up there at the seal unit that we used to have there in southern Spain, and started to coordinate for the Theodore of Belt Battle Group, the carrier that was then going to immediately deploy off the East Coast out of Virginia, come through the med, go through the Suez, and we're going to go park right off Pakistan and start. start taking care of business. So yeah, you know what I mean? Is it is a brand new, uh, Anson eight days after nine 11. Okay, like you need to go coordinate the, the physical security of a,

of an aircraft carrier is going to go through the Suez. So we can go get after bomb and the guys that had just dropped the towers. Uh, simultaneously you're going to, you know, stay tied to your seal platoon to be ready to do whatever. kind of spec ops role that they're going to ask of you when we start to push on into Afghanistan to hold those accountable. What ended up being that role for your platoon through that deployment?

You know, so Jim Mattis wrote a book called CallSan Chaos. And in that book, he articulates how he was, I believe he is a one-star general. at the time and how he led the furthest land invasion or amphibious assault from the Indian Ocean into a place called Camp Rhino in southern Afghanistan. That was hand and glove with Captain Bob Harward at time who was a seal. And so my platoon played a part in that in going into Rhino ahead of the Marines and doing an area a wrecky, the Marines came in and started to give a lily pad in southern Afghanistan to then launch more forces up into Kandahar as the, you know, team jawbreaker, which was obviously the CIA

and SF guys started in the north with General Dostom and the Northern Alliance folks. They started mowing their way south. and the Marines and the SEALs we came in, sorry, they were in the north moving south, and we started in the south and started to move north. And that just started to set up to operational bases that we would then use. And, you know, 2002 in Afghanistan,

I didn't go into my platoon initially when they went into Rhino. I was follow-on in Kandahar with just being a junior officer, like they kind of task you around as you need them. And, you know, it's hard to watch your buddies go off to war and you're standing there like, good luck, jents. But I came in in January and what I would say is in 2002 in January, in Afghanistan,

you weren't going to get shot by an insurgent or shot by a Taliban guy because they had all been bombed and they were moving for the border. But like the amount of ordinance in that country was mind-blowing. I helped the EOD guys just outside of Kandahar Airfield. And we went out daily and did like basically like ordinance demolition. And I mean, we'd drive down the road and there would be, I mean, there were just there were RPG warheads like just scattered. around the roads. And we were trying to get into Tarnack Farms because Tarnack Farms is where Al-Qaeda had filmed

a propaganda video. And so it was kind of strategic. They didn't know what kind of SSE we were going to get, but they're like, hey, we've got to get to Tarnac. So we, me and a couple EOD guys, you are told, hey, we got to get to Tarmac. Let's take an FBI guy along with this so they can start to do some sensitive side exploitation. and we were working our way down these roads to get to Tarnack. And I mean, I mean, you just see like, you know, landmines, pronged line mines next to RPGs, next to fighting positions,

next to 250-pound bombs. And as long as it wasn't in the road, it wasn't a problem. Because we just had to get there. But when we got to Tarnack farms, there were mines that the Russians had put in, and then mines of the Taliban had put in, and al-Qaeda had put in, and then on our initial onslaught, we had gone through and bombed the whole thing. And, I mean, there were just, like, chunks of earth, like, lifted up and put up on these compound walls that, I mean, they had, like, three generations of fighting in mines vertically on these

walls. And, I mean, when we bombed it, it was full of people and animals. So there were just, you know, there were pieces and. parts everywhere. I mean, like for a brand new, you know, ensign team guys straight in the Navy, I took some sand from that

place as a reminder that this is what true war is. Just the smell, the decay, the level of violence that happened for years. It was, you know,

it's a, it made, your hair stand up. You're like, all right. If I don't pay attention, I'm a deadpan. That's all there is to it. And, you know, I mean, there's a seal there that stepped on some unexploited ordinance.

And, you know, he passed away like two weeks after I was there. We had a couple of Afghans right next to us. They got blown up. I mean, it was just, you know, it's one of those kind of touch and go areas. But that was my impression of Afghanistan in 2002 right after it. And we were bombing the Taliban out. And we all saw an account of. building. We saw what was happening with the Pakistan border and, you know, we're, you know,

we're 30 Coxstrong pipe hitting team guys sitting on right off the coast of Pakistan and we're like, that's it. Put us in. We'll close that border. We'll just go run recies off the high points with with glass and call in Cass. Like, you know, we can hem this. We can shut this back door right now. And, you know, unfortunately, the Bush administration decided that they didn't, they wanted to limit the exposure that Americans were taking. They didn't want to have dead American soldiers on their hands. And I'm sure, I guarantee you some of this would have got shot. But it was, in our opinion, it would have been worth it. And so they kind of left it up to the local tribes trying to close up back door and AQ had the end roads and they paid them off and they were into Pakistan.

So here we go for 10 more years before we can get to bin Laden. Yeah, we've talked about some of these stories with like Clay Huttmacher, talked about that overland, you know, with 160th, into Afghanistan. We've talked to Jamie Coldwell, who's one of the operators who is there for Anaconda and everything. I mean, it's just so interesting to hear these stories, these big campaigns from different perspectives. And this is one we hadn't heard before.

And I want to come back to you, Eric. We got a quick ad from our sponsor. We'll be back in one minute. Our channel is dedicated to providing viewers with a nuanced and realistic look into the world of the armed forces, defense, and national security. But lately, these subjects have become partisan, even though they shouldn't be. These issues are complex and oftentimes misunderstood. This is a huge problem for all of us. Thankfully, Ground News is working to solve it.

Ground News is a first-of-its-kind website and app that lets you compare how a single news story is being covered across the political spectrum. It's not simply a news aggregator, it's a tool, with tons of easy-to-use features that help you analyze the news so you can be confident you're getting the whole story. The biased distribution chart shows which media outlets are reporting on an issue and where they fall on the political spectrum. You can even compare headlines to how phrasing changes between news outlets. But our favorite feature has to be the blind spot feed.

The blind spot feed shows you stories that are underreported on the left and the right. If you're looking for a better way to stay informed about current events around the world, check out Ground News by visiting ground.news slash team house to download the free app. Yeah, no, we were winning. And we had a grace period in there, whether we did it right or wrong. I don't know. I do know that it was wrong not to shut that back door between Afghanistan and Pakistan with our own guys. I would swear by that until the day I died.

And I'm sure, as you kind of pointed out, Jack, there's a number of other people with different perspectives. I would be amazed if they didn't see it the same, even from the perspectives that they had that were different than mine. And then kind of fast forward, I end up back in Afghanistan from 2003, 2004. One second. We're muted. Oh, sorry. Sorry about that. No, you're good. Okay.

They're just delayed. Yeah, just a delay. Sorry, go ahead, Eric. I apologize. So didn't close off the back door. Was that kind of like the culmination of that deployment, though, is kind of at its end point by then? You know, we, they held on to my platoon for a bit longer, and we kind of became a water-based platoon. we stayed up in the just off of Pakistan and they asked us to board a number of ships that were affiliated with you with

the UBL company and they didn't really have good refined intelligence about what would be on them they weren't really sure but they didn't want those boats going from Pakistan to Somalia without somebody taking a look at them first so we did a number of non-compliant night, you know, visit board,

siege and seizure, CETS, CETs, search and seizure, BBSS, boardings with a couple of seal platoons and some, some Navy, Navy soft helicopters. And that was some great waterwork. I just wish that we would have had better intelligence on potentially interdicting some of the terrorists,

either logistics supply or people that were getting from, Pakistan fleeing the bombing in Afghanistan and working the way into Africa. And then that was the end of that deployment. Headed back to school back up and do another workup. Eric, for, you know, you make it sound so casual. You know, we're doing these shipboarding, these VBSS. Can you kind of describe that process to our viewers? So they, because it's not a simple process.

You're getting, you're talking about a ship, right? like you're not like waving much say pulled over roll down your windows license and registration so um it is it is a it is it starts out as a geometry problem so you've got something that's moving in the open ocean and it's got hundreds of miles of trajectory to go and you've got to place yourself in a in a similar sized ship that can you know travel at a similar speed somewhere proximity along that track to then be able to kick out your, you know, in this case, we were using ribs, rigid, hold, inflatable boat, like an 11 meter diesel powered, fairly robust naval craft, you know, a small craft.

And you basically kind of bring the small craft in fairly close, kind of wait until that ship is kind of going right by, and then you slide right in, where their wake zone is so that they're kind of blind radar with a radar pitcher, and then you come right up alongside it. You have to, it's a game of cat and mouse. It's really easy to get compromised. But if you do it right, you kind of slide on up there. You end up putting up a pole with a real small ladder,

and then you start getting guys climbing that ladder. and you know those two ships are your small boats crashing up into the hole of the big one and you're trying not to get smashed between them and it's at night and you're on nods and you get your machine gun and I mean that's that's what that's what being a team guy is it's dark it's cold it's wet and you got to get it done um you get enough guys up there on board that ship to where you feel like you have enough fighting force to be able to hold your own and then as more guys start to come up, then you go up into the, basically the bridge where they're driving the boat from. One of those boats, it was, or one of those ships that we took down,

uh, you know, I'll kind of never forget. We, I think I was like maybe number three or four on the, and in that train moving on up to the bridge. And, uh, we got up there and I was just kind of below one of the windows on the bridge. And I just peaked up to see how many dudes were in that bridge that we were going to have to deal with as soon as we breached that main door. And there was one guy sitting there staring at a computer screen, right, with a light coming at him. He's like the midnight watchman at 2.30 in the morning. And right at that time, I heard that number one and two man had kind of opened that door about an inch or two. And they just slid a flashbang grenade in there.

and I heard it like, think, think, thing, thing, going on the floor. And I saw that guy, he's like,

looking at his computer and he, he, he, like, looks over at the sound of this grenade rolling at him. And I was like,

oh, bad night for you, buddy. Like, I just dropped my head just so I wouldn't, you know, see the flash that thing

going off, and it blind me in. Obviously, it just rocked that guy's world. Um, and then, you know, we went in and,

and, And but, you know, like I said, we just didn't have the intel. And, you know, we didn't end up finding that hard cell of terrorists from AQ that were fleeing the bombing coming to Pakistan and then looking to go from Pakistan to Smalia. You know, we boarded some boats like that. And we just, you know, they were UBL affiliated boats. they were part of that construction company and things that he had as a construction conglomerate, but they just didn't have, they weren't supporting the terrorists that we were looking to find, unfortunately.

So, but yeah, a little bit more of a complex problem, Dave, but some great ops. Just, I just, we just weren't quite there on targeting AQ at that point. Yeah. No, I, you know, it's funny because to you, it was just work. And it was probably exciting when you did it in training. But then at a certain point in time, it's just, okay, we're going to do this again. But I think that for people who are not familiar with that concept, not understanding the power of the seas, you know, when you're out there. You know, and like you said, you're all kidded up.

You've got your nods on. You're banging your nods on shit. Your depth perception isn't that great at close. And the whole time, if you fall off, the best thing that's going to happen to you is you're going to be an open water. The best thing. You know, if you don't get caught up in the screw of the ship, if you don't, like, land and break your back on your own boat, like, you know. So.

Have you done that before? I mean, like, you're, you haven't. Okay. So you're actually, you're grasping a lot of the dangers right there and exactly what guys are dealing with. And then, you know, when it's a really big ship, when it's like a carnival cruise liner, and your climb now goes from like, a 25 foot climb to a 70 foot climb at night on that and you're you're looking down at your own boat

and you got you know 40 more feet to go oh yeah that's yeah yeah i mean like that that's where your man pants come out right like you know it's like uh-uh this is like this is this those guys that couldn't pass the rope climbs and buds that's why they're not there right right now that's an extent and and that's an extreme amount and when you're you're cold, your hands are numb, like even doing things like that. Like, oh, my God, I can't even feel my hands. I hope I can hold onto this. Yeah, it's, um, uh, they have some, some guys on the gear have this thing that

called the Fifi hook. And it's a little gear, they'll girt, or a little hook that they'll girth hitch in on their, uh, on their, on their, on their chest rig that they can pull out and clip into that, uh, little steel cable, caving ladder. Um, and take a wrap. and shake out their arms. But it's called a Fifi hook because it's like, hey, whoever uses the goddamn Fifi hook, do you belong here?

Yeah. You know, but anyway, I never ever had a Fifi hook on my gear, just for the record. I've never had a Fifi hook. I knew that I could get my ass through that. So at this point, do you start into that sort of deployment cycle that everyone came to know very well of deploying, coming back home, going on leave, training, back up for the next one and heading back overseas. Yeah, I did another deployment.

That's exactly it. Came off that deployment. We stood up Steel Team 10. Did a workup that was all centered on Afghanistan, mountainous fighting, a lot of a lot of recie, a lot of long-range sniper stuff, a lot of observation stuff.

And then, you know, refit, bang, October 2003, right back into it, flying straight into Bogram, hubbing out of Bogram, doing a lot of Humvee-based long-range mobility patrols and a lot of DAs through 2003 and 2004. And like, you know, almost got killed a number of times. That was a and that was when the insurgency in Afghanistan was starting to pick up. And that's when you were starting to be like, okay, I'm not going to get killed by unexploded ordinance, like the first one, like the first rotation in Afghanistan. But it's like, I'm going to get killed because I'm either going to get shot or I'm going to get, you know, step on an IED or drive over an IED. And, you know, we did, I don't know, we did a lot of. of direct action raids.

We did a lot of driving about. We got shot at a lot. We shot at a lot of people. And I would say it was about month four of that platoon where we had almost been killed a number of times that I finally felt like, okay, I'm a mountain guy. Like I come from the mountains. And so I grasp fighting in the mountains relatively quickly. And it was month four of that platoon is where I really felt like, okay, I understand the game. I know how this is played.

And I can't believe we haven't been killed at this point. But now we can own these guys. And that's when I felt we really turned the corner on being effective. In the way we ran our reconnaissance missions, the way we never gave up the higher ground. You cannot give up the high ground. The way that we had approached problems. So that was 2003, 2004. It was a long, long, hard period of time there, about seven months.

Yeah. And at this point, were you all already into like targeting high value targets and the HVT hunts and that sort of thing? You know, at that point in time, we were right down the road from, the deployed J-Soc guys. And, you know, they were doing the HPT hunting. They were doing the HBI hunting. But, I mean, we all knew each other.

We're all frogs. We're all partying in the same bars in Virginia. We're all, you know, we know one another. And so they would pass off targets that would help them shape their HVIs. Right? So it's hand in glove, but when it needed to be done at a higher level, like, it's them on it. And, you know, on that deployment, I was exposed to, you know, that was my first exposure to ArmySF. And, you know, I learned a lot from the special forces guys.

I learned a lot about how they dealt with Indage. I learned a lot about how they ran their ops. And, you know, I had one. warrant officer, an Army warrant in particular that taught me more about how to set people up and draw them out and bring them to you and then hammer them than anybody to that date. So with J-Soc, we were in addition. With our other guys working with Nizu SOTA, we worked very well together. And it was a really eye-opening experience in that regard.

Eric, you mentioned that up into that point you felt you like you were lucky that, you know, it took you guys a while to find your legs. And I think that was true of everybody in Afghanistan. You know, it was a type of warfare that people hadn't been training for, you know, CQB had been the sexy thing. And, you know, how did you feel as though, because I haven't been to buds and I know you guys do a combat school after that or like a land combat school after that and then your workups?

do you feel as though the seals were prepared for land warfare adequately in that way? Or do you feel that there were like lessons learned through that, through that time that were taken back to the training house? No, I mean, it's, you know, I would say that at the, at the smaller scale of land warfare and engagement, I ads, flanking, bounding. maneuvering, like any of that stuff, like, you know, we could hand the, we could hand the Gannies of their ass any day of the week. What I consider to be, like, confident at it is it's the larger game. It's the, wait a minute, like, okay, they're moving this over here and we know about it. It's actually not this that's important to them. It's that. And when you go at that, you can't go at it from the valleys in a Humvee.

They've got you 50 miles out. You have to go at it two valleys over that they would never expect people to go two valleys over in a helicopter at night that they don't know exactly where it landed. And then have guys that know how to hide their tracks and make it up over two different valley systems for nine miles without getting track. And actually being at the right time and the right location for what's, important in this region. And so I say it's more about it's, you know, I hate the saying, but it was understanding chess, not checkers. Right. And we, you know, the preparation for training a, like, you know, if you can't learn how to, how to run an I ad, an immediate action drill and get yourself either, get people or get out of an ambush. You're never going to be a good team

guy. Right. So that's not what I'm talking about, which I think is. a lot of what the training focus is. And, you know, I mean, CQB and all that, I mean, that's absolutely a pickup basketball game. And you got to read your buddy and go with the flow and things like that. But I'm talking more about the chess, not checkers. And that chess piece is what I felt at four months. I was like, okay, I'm stuck. Like, we're starting to collectively understand the checkers piece here, or sorry, the chess piece.

And we actually started being effective. Right. Yeah. It's the idea of going from the sexy, you know, fast roping on the X to, you know, two terrain features away so that they can't, so that they, you can mask your infill. Yeah. Yeah. And I credit that the ability to understand how to be two train features away and then close on them and not let them know that you closed on it and be competent enough with your mountainsmanship and your woodsmanship and your skill set. I credit a lot of that to my upbringing in Montana where I was doing the same thing with

animals with my dad growing up. Right, right. I would like Eric to circle back around because somewhere during this time frame, the SDV story. And if you could tell us, when was that that you got put on the SDV team? So it was actually right after that deployment. I ended up taking over the platoon that MIRF and the lone survivor guys. So it was Alptune from STV-1, and that platoon on the previous rotation had gone through the incredible firefight that, you know, the majority of that platoon lost their lives in.

So I volunteered to go to SDV-1. I went out, so SDV-1 stands for a seal delivery vehicle team one. It's based out of Hawaii. And I went out to Hawaii. And me and this guy named Paul Robinson, who is a chief that had put me through, Buds. We are now the seal-patoon chief and the seal-patine officer in charge. And it was an incredible experience. and I you know it's it's one of the better things that I was allowed to do in the Navy but to pick up a

platoon that has had the vast majority of the leadership killed and then rebuild what a professional culture is within a platoon what's going to be acceptable not acceptable we're going to work hard, play hard. You know, we're, we're only going to do shots and crying their beer for so long. And it's time to just giddy back up and get on the pony. And we got to, we got to build a capability here. So that was a leadership challenge that I embraced and that I've, I got a lot from. And I hope that I was able to lead those guys through that transition.

So we ended up, you know, and a lot of guys shunned going to SDVs, and then SDVs kind of started to turn a bit of a corner with some technology advancements to where they were being used. And then we ended up, you know, being asked to do something on behalf of the nation that is, you know, It was an honor to be a part of, and it just needs to stay. It is one of those things that it just doesn't need the light of day. Sounds spicy. Nope, I'm not going there.

Sounds spicy. No, no, not at all. So, you know, it just, it, we had to work super hard, and it was, um, big mama ocean doesn't like you, even if you're training. much less going to do an uncontrolled, you're on your own combat dive somewhere on planet Earth. So it's an easy environment to get killed in. It's a lot easier. You know, after doing some Hayho ops and some real ones,

I often compared what's more dangerous, you know, an SDV combat dive or Hayho combat. jump and um you know i think it's the STV dive um it is i mean even if you're not even doing a combat dive like just maintaining your own survivability in a complex dive rig at 130 feet i mean you can mess that up just by the slightest and before you like you're not even going to get a heads up. You're, it's just that you're hoping that your buddy next to you sees you're passed out and can correct your O2 and partial pressure. So it's, it's a, yeah, it's, it's a extremely unforgiving environment. There's not very many guys that do it in the SEAL teams and they're extremely hard men. You think a 10-hour car ride is a, is a bit of a pain in the butt. Try 10 hours

underwater submerged 50 feet. Can you describe a little bit of what the SDV mission is like the unclassified version? Yeah, what is an SDV and, yeah? So it's a, it's a small underwater Jeep that's actually a submarine. It's filled with water. You got a couple guys in the front that one guy's driving it, one guy's navigating it. And then you either have some equipment in the back end of it or some dudes in the back end of it. and you're going to either deliver the equipment or deliver the guys.

And you dive a lot to make sure that you can end up at the right place, at the right time with the right delivery package. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's extremely hard physically. Um, especially when you are in like, you know, cold water. I mean, you're submerged. entire time. So and you're, you know, I mean, you're in water. Typically, you've got like a great big, monstrous complex Navy dive rig, a semi-closed Mark 16 on your back. You'll have a dragger completely closed, um, bubbleless rig on your front. You'll have a, a manifold, kind of right

next to you that you can breathe off of that's more just like a scuba tank, you know, only you're breathing off the air that is in an air tank in the STV. So with all of that, all those options, you can kind of like manage your signature in the water as you get closer and closer to wherever you're trying to end up without people knowing you're there. So think about it as you can leave a submarine or a place on land. you can go for, you know, X number of miles, just breathe in bubbles like a scuba diver. And then you can throw on a different rig and then you can go another, you know, 15, 20 miles on a rig that only occasionally lets out a bubble. And then when you're in the last couple miles of being close to wherever you're going to be, you can transition to something that leaves no trace. And you can go do whatever you want.

So it's an extremely versatile capability, and it gives you a lot of access around the planet to really push the point of government policy. It's great. And, you know, I mean, the guys that do it, my hat's off to them. I did it for a short stint. It teed up some of the hardwere's problems I ever had to solve as a critical thinker and as a seal officer. and I have nothing but respect for the guys that are doing it. Oh, I was going to say, but spending that long in the water in a stationary position,

you guys have seat heaters and like, you know, the heat coming off, right? I mean, you guys are comfortable on that three-hour to eight-hour voyage, correct? So when we were training up in the Fugustown of Seattle, training dive. We wanted to just see how far we could take the SDV. It's called an exhaustion dive. It totally sucks. We took off from a small little submarine base up there,

basically went around the Point of One Island and then started working our way up to Sand One Islands. And we went all the way up, this complex navigation problem between the Bethameter, and the bottom and where you are and what you understand on a map and every so often you can get a GPS update that tells the boat where it is and you're in 39 degree water that entire time you even in with today's wetsuits or in a dry suit or a wet dry suit which whatever you're running with there's no way to not get cold in 10 hours of 39 degree water and so we go all the way up to the northern end of of be island we find this little thing we're looking for and then we turn all turn and come all the way back down so 50 plus miles almost um as far as is that that boat can go and uh we you know we come back to the to the boat ramp and there's you know they back down a trailer and we run the sdv up on it and

they pull it out and everybody's excited we're going to go jump in a in a boat and head on over across Puget Sound and they go to Seattle and start drinking martinis it's Friday night, right? And at that point in time, as a dive had been going on, I'd realize that I was losing less and less feeling in my body. And it was, they started kind of the hands and then it kind of went to like the teeth and the face and the chattering. And then it started, it continued progressing to the feet and then up the legs. And by the time we got the SDV on the trailer, I couldn't feel anything from my chest down. Nothing. And so guys are like,

all right, come on, let's go. It's Friday night. Let's go start hitting in Seattle. And I was like, I'm like, guys, like, you gotta help me out of this. Like, I can't, I can't get out of the STV. I can't move. I couldn't move.

I was numb from the chest down. Yeah. And it started this entire, like, massive rewarming drill with our, with our corps and with our medics and my pilot was a little bit better because he had had the ability to like push against the water flow and and actually when you're kind of running those rudders and stuff it requires some physical activity but there's no seat heater I mean it's yeah it's it is it literally is one of the worst things you can yeah I mean

as a how as a hard hat diver you know yeah well with no physical exertion you're not doing anything to heat that water between the shoes and you and the other thing is is that you know when they pull you out and you're hypothermic like that i mean they have to rule out decompression sickness too because you know numbness and all that stuff is one of the primary things is like okay is it just hypothermia or does he you know did he bent you know does he have the bends and we don't know yeah is an a g is an arterial gas symbolism like you know what's gone yeah it's uh it's uh it's rough it sounds miserable no it's horribly miserable um and uh yeah you know it's also like the coolest thing the seals

like in my opinion it's like something super cool that the seals do i mean like that's a real frogman mission right there oh it's it's a terrible frogman it's a terribly cool frogman mission um yeah i mean it's it's super high risk it's super dangerous uh just in training and uh but you know i I really like the idea that you can put some of those things on a submarine and it can disappear from planet Earth. You can't find it. It can take off whatever, call it the East Coast of the United States and it won't pop up for 20, 30 days. And then you can take something small like that and you can ram it right where you want it. And there's nothing anybody can do about it.

That's amazing. That's pretty baller. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty much like, that's a bold testament to the U.S. government saying, we're just going to do what we need to do. And you just don't get a vote. It's great. What was it this? I'm kind of curious about when the idea that you wanted to go and assess at Damneck or begin that process. I mean, what was it, you know, going hypothermic in the SDV? You decided that maybe it's time, maybe it's time for a new job for me. no um you know i've always had a terrible pool to come back to uh the mountains and my rivers and things like that that i'd left as a childhood so um i i intended to get out of the navy

um probably at about like years six so somewhere around the 2005 2006 time frame but i told my wife I was married at the time. I had a kid. I just told her as like, look, I'm like, I can't leave the SEAL teams here with questions. I can't leave with skeletons in the closet. And I refuse to do that.

And so I just, you know, I was like, hey, I'm like, I have to at least go screen to see if what they need there is what I have. And, you know, like, you absolutely put. your professional reputation at risk on that. It's, you know, it's seals selecting seals for another higher, um, organization. And anytime you do that within a highly competitive community, like, there's going to be some broken China.

But I had it. I had to see. Um, so, uh, she was, you know, my wife's terribly supportive, um, you know, lover to death. And she was like, okay, if that's what it will take for you to either continue on or for you to leave clean, she's like, then do it. So, you know, I went to selection. And, you know, I was, I was honored just to be allowed for an invite to come select. So I went, you know, kind of through their selection process to see if I had the right attributes, both as an officer and to learn a lot more of a refined skill set that's needed to operate at a higher level within those within that team.

So went to selection in 2008. And, you know, it's an honest selection. and they start with extremely accomplished people, and they end up with a smaller group of extremely accomplished people. And it's just, you know, it's just not a part of it. And you do everything you can day and day out, not to maximize what's asked of them and to make sure that it's a reputable place.

How were things different from dev group from the other SEAL teams. I mean, when you, again, I guess the same question that I asked you earlier, what's it like showing up

in that team room as the new guy? Yeah, it's just, you're confident in who you are, and you're confident in your abilities, and there are people that are much more confident and much more proficient in every ability that you think you have. Yeah.

You know, I mean, between kind of like a really advanced high school football team and the NFL. It just, you know, like when you have guys that have been allowed to work together and dedicate themselves on problem sets for decades at a time, the proficiency, the camaraderie, the teamwork,

the what's possible is just at a different level. After having like, you know, done combat tours, what was green team like for you? Was it challenging? Was it just refining what skills you felt you already had? Was it a whole new skill set? No, what they do is they,

they test your ability to learn. And they do it by putting the tools that you should, you already have, you know, as a seal under the rest. and they do it in your ability to do those things underdress at a very high, high pressure situations. And then at the drop of a hat, they're going to tell you, okay, these things have been ingrained in you for the last four to six years. Right now, I'm going to tell you to do it differently by this, this and this. Okay, do you understand what? what I'm asking you, yes, I understand what you're asking me.

Okay, go to that door and do it right now. And if you can go to that door and do it right now and adapt to between where you're standing and that door off of six years of what you've already ingrained in your head and adapt that fast and perform, they're testing your ability to learn and adapt and how quick you can do it. And then once you've shown you can do that under duress and under stress, then they start to layer in more advanced tools into the quiver to make you a more lethal hunter. And then when you start to combine that into teams and elements,

that's when you start to be ready to do, you know, the higher end of what the nation is going to ask. That makes sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so what was that like then? Now you're, you are the JSOC guy getting deployed overseas. You are, you know, the big leagues, the guys you saw hunting HVTs earlier in your career. And now you are that guy. You know, you maximize because now, now you understand that they're giving you the tools to make you extraordinarily effective. But they've screened you for your intellect and your ability to learn and adapt. And that's where this gets to be, okay, am I on the right line of targeting? Am I really getting after, remember how I was talking about the Afghanis would be like, hey, we're going to show you this.

But really what you were seeing wasn't important to them. And they were actually doing something else here. That's what was really important to them. so when you start to get all of the collection tools and all that and you've got your whole cadre of let's go get this done dudes behind you it's really like okay am i sick in these pit bulls on the right problem or not and that's where that's where you're like now you've entered the chess game that's highly highly highly um vulnerable, strategic, and volatile.

And you can get it totally right. And you can hit them right where it hurts. And you're like, absolutely, gotcha. And then they're like, oh, wait, I'm going to throw up all these false pictures and claim pregnant women in school kids. It just got thumped by, you know, American forces. And you totally lost it because that was like that was their fallback. And they wanted that all the time.

Right. even though we won on like the night of we won the next day at noon they were out ahead of us right and you're like god damn and then you know then you're dealing with some army o four from conventional unit whatever coming to run an investigation on you and you're like god damn a dude you don't even understand what the what the hell word you don't even understand what the checkers game was and now you're here to investigate me. Fuck. Anyway,

I will say that like guys are a thousand percent ethical at the way that they always applied the ROEs, the rules of engagement, and the policy. I never saw any of the I never saw anything that

that wasn't in defense of their own lives or their own teammate as we were going after good, solid, righteous targets. Yeah. You mean like some of the mayhem that's been reported in the press over the saying you didn't have the disciplinary issues in your troop? No. And I saw like there was nothing but professionalism and, you know, I mean,

a hardcore commitment to upholding and getting after the job. And, and, you know, I think all of that stuff is. is either people with a gripe or maybe like these like 1% offshoot gray area things that maybe somebody heard of heard of heard of heard or it's just it's not there it's not what the it's not what the place is about it's not what the guy stand for it's not what they dedicate their lives for it's not what they're willing to die for right and uh so yeah it um i you know had i seen it ought to grab my troops chief or my squadron match chief right then said, I sort this out.

Right. I have, but it's just not there. I have seen, Eric, though, that you have been pretty outspoken and vocal about some of the, you know, cultural issues that have come up in the press in recent years. Some of the comments you made, you know, about the whole Eddie Gallagher situation. Yeah. No, I just, you know, the COO community is. a special place.

And I've got, I was humbled to be a part of it. I'm humbled to be an alumni of it. And you don't want the perception and the public audience to be dominated by people that have, well, I'll just put it bluntly. When you either ride for the brand, right? Or you're writing the brand. And folks that are either writing the brand or that are out there grinding a max that may or may not be justified, I don't think that they should be painting the perception of what's going on

within a writ large community of professionals. That's my personal stance. And I have no problem going, going toe to toe with anybody that wants to see it differently. Well, and the challenge, I think, in any kind of community like that is it doesn't matter. You can have 5,000 operators and former operators, but if one person with that brand, you know, it kind of is controversial, then it's the whole brand. Because that's what people see. That's what the public sees.

And you don't hear from, you know, the fourth. thousand nine hundred nine people that that aren't out there you're only hearing from one or two one yeah right yeah yeah yeah so you know i mean um i'm an abc news contributor i help them with the content on to make sure that their their content is accurate and on occasion i will use that as a platform to be a lily pad for a broader voice. Just recently, I wrote like an

800 word thing on the passing of Dick Marsenko. And hey, Dick Marsenko is that guy within the CEO community, you either love him or you hate him. Right? I mean, he's just a, he was a super large personality

and he was extraordinarily controversial. And, you know, however, whatever the inner dealings were that landed him in the federal penitentiary, it's, it's, it's probably debatable and a bit of a gray zone. Right. But at the end of the day, like, that guy was so bold that he took an opportunity that he saw to, to stand up a Navy tier one unit, to be ready to do counterterrorism operations globally. And, you know, this is urban legend. And I, And I can't either confirm it.

And I don't even have the ability. I don't know who would. But the urban legend is that he got a memo approved for a small unit, called like a platoon-sized unit to do CT operations in the Navy. And he went and broke back into the joint staff's office at night, broke into the safe and changed it to a team. You want to talk about some balls, but you also want to talk about some foresight.

And yet you want to talk about the personal integrity to like, make it happen. Right. That's a personality that is a maverick. And, you know, I alluded to Jim Mattis writing a book on, you know, calls on chaos. And in his book, he talks about the strength of mavericks in organizations and how they have to be allowed to be given rope.

And they also have to be protected. Right. Because they take organizations in places that are better for the organization, even though those organizations doesn't want. it. Right. I saw Dick Marcinko is that type of personality. So I just recently wrote that into ABC news because I didn't want the dialogue from the broader community to be centered about negativity about Dick. I think that guy was visionary and he had some balls. And, you know, like, like or love it, that's what the SEAL teams need from time to time. Right. And it's easy. I mean, you know,

it doesn't matter if it's in the military or in the realm of business or anything. else like that. Like it is easy to pot take pot shots at a person who has created something or done something. Maybe they're not a perfect human being, but the same things that you don't like about them are the things that enable them. Those types of characteristics are the things that enabled them to accomplish the things that they did in the first place, which have moved us forward in one way or another, in one realm or another. Yeah. Call it 12 September. We needed that. Right.

Yeah. Absolutely. So from that time frame of running operations in Afghanistan, are there any particular missions that kind of like stand out in your mind? Just like, man, that one was particularly hairy or stressful or difficult to pull off? Yeah. You know, I was leading a four-man reckey. We ended up getting to the right spot.

And we ended up not getting compromised for two days. And we were watching about 60 Taliban fighters. And then we ended up getting compromised by kids. And then being surrounded by a number of other Taliban from the other valley over. And getting us out that night. That was, you know, like kind of a puk in your mouth. You're going to get, you're dead by sunrise for sure scenario. But, you know, I would say that probably the better one that really sticks out in my mind is we've been trying to catch a guy for a bit.

He was pretty smart. He was pretty slippery. Couldn't get a hold of them. And then randomly, you know, one day a convoy got attacked right outside of base. And we started trying to assist with it. We started pushing assets to it. And then the reactionary force that came out of the nearest base, they also got IED. And so I can't recall if it was like 10 or 16 Americans that died that day in those IED attacks.

And that dude that we've been trying to catch for a couple months, he was there. And we figured it out. And as soon as we got him on camera, we never let him go. And that guy went up over a couple of valleys with him and his Jum, mooks and they went into this village and all the villages were clapping and all this and and uh you know those guys went up and basically went to sleep in this in this compound at the top of this valley meanwhile we're just topping off our mags put some drags in our vests and we're like yep we got you asshole um and uh so we rolled up that valley that night and we settled the score um and uh

and they did not come out on top nor did the village that decided to come out against this as well after we'd slipped in there. And, you know, so we're flying out right at sunrise. But that one, to, you know, to have the tools that the nation has given you to be able to collect the intelligence and then be able to, right now, send a message. like that's not going to be tolerated and you spill American blood like we're going to come make this right that's one of those

that stands out is that's what makes it worth the years of putting up with logs on your head and boats on your head and all of the trouble and sacrifice you go through it's

needed and so that that was one of those nights. I think it's important to say for people who aren't so familiar with like the operating environment that like when you say the village, like you don't mean like I know what you mean, not like a my lie like, you know, oh, this village. But what happens is in a lot of these, whether it's in Iraq, like in Sauter City or in a lot of these villages that are heavy like Taliban operating areas in Afghanistan, if you guys

can imagine like a SWAT team in America, you know, on some, you know, bad guys house and then all of a sudden all the neighbors start coming out and shooting at that SWAT team that's sort of what happens in these types of environments so they these people they could just sleep through the night and leave you alone and you roll up on your primary target take them down and you're gone but they decide to get involved they decide they're going to like try to bring the hate and it doesn't generally work out for them that well no and i i've a thousand percent and I appreciate you highlighting that, and that's exactly what I mean with that statement.

And I would just say, like, I'd reiterate it again. I've never ever been a part of nor seen anything that wasn't a clear, lawful application of the rules of self-defense. And, you know, basically, it's exactly to your point there, we go in after these guys that have killed Americans and the people that are sympathetic to them, they come out with guns at night to hammer us because we're kind of going after the guys that they admire,

and we defend ourselves. Right. The call of prayer starts going at 3 o'clock in the morning, calling everybody to arms. And, yeah. Eric, I wanted to ask you about sort of maybe the next stage in your career in AQAP, Yemen. And you had this story about Christmas.

This was about 2009. I was wondering if you could kind of start, like, lead us into that story and tell us what happened. Okay, so a couple wars are on, so I'm pretty thick and heavy. You go, you know, you fight in Afghanistan for four months, you come back home for a little bit, you train for four months, then you deploy to other parts of the world for four months. You come back, you train for a little bit, and then you go back to Afghanistan. So at the end of the day, you're spending about somewhere between 270, 300 days gone from your house out of the year. You kind of start doing that year after year after year. In that particular instance, AQAP was starting to become a viable threat.

They were starting to really get some sophisticated ways to bring down, international jets with some of the ways they were going about making explosives. And it was really starting to become, like I said, a viable threat. So the Obama administration was like, okay, we need to put some counterterrorism efforts here into Yemen. And so we were kind of doing that on the back burner while the main efforts were Iraq and Afghanistan. but every other four months you weren't either there, you were you were centered on on Yemen and Somalia with AQAP and AQ, East Africa,

Al-Qaeda in Arab Peninsula or Al-Qaeda in East Africa. And so right about Christmas of 2009, 2010 timeframe, we were hunting primarily a guy named Anwar Laki who ironically was an American citizen right at 9-11 had come out against the Muslim actions, but then swung to the other side of the spectrum over time and was now in Yemen doing his best to bring about attacks to the international community that I define as Europe and the United States. So we're kind of hunting them down. And as you start doing this, you kind of start seeing the Al-Qaeda fingerprint.

You start seeing the training camps. You start seeing the recruitment. You start seeing increased threat levels. You start hearing the international chatter about, you know, attack spending this here, here, here, here. And so out of one of those training camps, some suicide bombers. came at the American Embassy. And we did everything we could to have the locals handle it. But at the end of the day,

we weren't able to get them where they needed to be, whether it was the Yemeni military, the Yemeni police or other. And so now it ends up being an emergency action committee, more or less to the White House level with a couple key leaders along the chain of command, you know, going up, uh, um, yeah, and, you know, into the, the principals committee, which is, you know, the head of the secretary of state, the, uh, the head of the agency, the, you know, the lead military guy, which is sent county commander at time, which is,

uh, Dave Petraeus. and at the end of the day we come down to like hey either we take care of this problem now with a couple of harriers off of an amphib so some marine jets with some 500 pound bombs

or we try to defend ourselves at the gates of the embassy tomorrow morning I don't know if we're going to be successful against suicide multiple suicide bombers coming into the embassy So at the end of the day, they're, you know, and, you know, as a first time as a, as a mirror lieutenant commander in the Navy, talking into the principals community on an emergency action, decision brief, and articulating in three minutes or less, the need to not only take care of the suicide bombers, but hey, we watch, we've been watching this training camp of 100 plus terrorists.

and this is where these guys came from. And if we don't take care of this problem and this problem, this other one is just going to continue to launch more people at us over time. So anyway, decision came down, even with all the lawyers involved, to take them both. And so, okay, let's take care of both of these problems, at the same time. So we did through a combination of

of ship launched munitions and jets and bombs. And so we took care of the suicide bombers that were going to come in on the embassy and we also took care of this training camp. And so we're like, okay, but what that did was that decimated a

rank of AQAP. So now the senior leaders in AQAP that we'd been really trying to get after, they had to start coming up on the net to reorganize. So that made them more targetable. So then another target starts to develop. And sure enough, it's a bunch of guys

that are starting to congregate in the mountains and starting to kind of come together. And then we start to see some of the high value signature pieces, you know, guys dressed in white, getting shown deference. meetings, like sermons, planning meetings type things. And so, you know, we key up another strike for decision pretty much at the presidential level. And this is Christmas Eve.

And the, you know, the approval comes like, hey, like, do it. So we, we, you know, we also. kind of take care of that problem, start taking more chest pieces off the chess board. And we were like, hey, we're good. You know, Team America. We're bringing it. Steal on target, right? Taking care of threats to the international community.

Go to bed at night, wake up in the morning. And there's reports about this kid on a jet, on a passenger jet, over to Detroit. that's trying to light his underwear on fire or explode his underwear. And instead of exploding his underwear, they just light him on fire and he burns like, you know, horribly around the crotch area. Good for him. And it's like, man, like, where did that come from? You know, was that al-Qaeda in East Africa? Was that al-Qaeda in Pakistan?

Was that al-Qaeda in Yemen? like where did that come from? Because now this is the level that you're involved in. And it turns out that one of the primary guys we were after had designed that entire explosive package for that kid to wear. And then they knew that the scrutiny coming out of Yemen was going to be fairly severe. So they sent him down into Africa. And then he came out of northern Africa, Tunisia, on a flight to Detroit.

And the only thing that saved the people on that plane and the people in that plane's flight path that would have been killed in their house on Christmas morning is this 747 plows into the outskirts of Detroit was that he had had the underwear on for three days and he sweated just in the house. to change a chemical composition for it to go lower her instead of higher over so it lit him on fire instead of exploded and he had a seat right over the wing where all the fuel was and we had no idea about it which is kind of scary because like he had been on the radar of like British intelligence like he he wasn't somebody who hadn't been under watch before he didn't have a criminal past but But people were aware of him. Yeah. So that taken in collective, it was, the writing was on the wall. But there are people, no, this was, this was a plot.

You know, you guys, it was like purely coincidental that you, you nuke these guys from orbit, not knowing a plot was being hatched. A thousand percent. The entire intelligence community, whether it's Brit, American, you know, other five-eye, anybody, nobody had any idea about it. Right. Right. So to me, the writing was on the wall. Hey, professional people either dedicate themselves as hard as the enemy is or we lose. And so, you know, I was, I was kind of on a trajectory to get out of the Navy.

I felt like I had done more than my part, and I wanted to get home around my family and the things that I had, you know, kind of cherished, cherished. And, but I was like, no way. I'm like, if smart people that understand this problem said, don't stay here and commit themselves to it, like, we lose. and so I came back home I kind of laid it out to my wife the timeline as far as our kids ages and you know Navy life and but I was like

we're in this and you know to regret it like as soon as she kind of understood it she was like yeah we're in this let's say you told me so I'm sorry, go ahead. No.

I was just going to say during this time frame, 2011, 2016, you were telling me earlier that what you were seeing was that things were developing on the ground and you guys were developing things on the ground to the point that it was outpacing policy that it got to that point where like you need you need the White House or you need policymakers to actually make a yes, no decision on this for us to move forward. Like the situation on the ground was developing faster than our government could react. Yeah, no. And that's a great point. That's exactly the way it was. You know, we would end up uncovering something that was a viable threat could not be tolerated to not be either, you know, either. somebody that needed to be captured or somebody that needed their choice, he was to capture, kill, but it would be their choice kind of out on the end of however that went down.

And, you know, they would be a person with no international linkages for citizenship, and they are absolutely an extraordinarily viable threat to the international community. and you're like, hey, we have to get this guy or this person, whether it's a man or a woman, it doesn't matter. And they are traveling from point A to point B. And we can get them right here in the middle. And okay, if we get our hands on them, what's the ultimate disposition? They have no citizenship.

Maybe they had applied to be like a British citizen. five years ago and the in the UK said, now we're like, you're not going to be a citizen in our country. And then, you know, it turns out that they're like, okay,

well, let's just get them. And then depending on what they say during, you know, during, you know, the questioning, maybe they'll incriminate themselves enough that we can

then hold them in a U.S. criminal court. It's like, Gitmo is no longer an option. I mean, you know, Gitmo came off the, off the plate as an option in what, like 2003, really, is when the, the pushback from the international community was so large and our own population that just it was an option. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I saw, I saw people that were not U.S. citizens, read the Miranda rights and then given the same rights that, you know, Joe the plumber from Nebraska got who paid taxes for 20 years and then they were prosecuted under a U.S. criminal process. And I saw U.S. citizens, um, that mayor, that were not given a trial by jury, but given a capture kill. You're talking about Al-a-Laki?

Yeah, I'll Acqua specifically in that instance. And, you know, I mean, you know, it's so you see American citizens that aren't given a due process and you see non-American citizens that are given a due process. And that's when you start to realize that our country at the time had not kept up on laws or legislation enough to keep pace with what we were dealing with. So, I mean, you know, we joked about it at the time, but the reality was we were like, hey, let's, we're going to drive policy by PowerPoint. We don't see any good solution here. We know that there is no solution for it, but we can't just stare at a fascinating problem and do nothing. So we're going to table this and, you know, the Beltway is going to have to figure out what to do about it. But we cannot pass up the opportunity because this is an extraordinarily viable threat.

to the international community. And that was our job to voice that and then our job to follow through on it. Yeah. And it's interesting because, you know, this is 2010, 11, 12, 13. But this has been an issue since 2001. Like the whole, what do we do? We don't have prison of war camps. Like, you know, you didn't say in World War II, right?

Or whatever. What do we do with these non-traditional combatants in a legal sense? because we can't try them in a U.S. court because a lot of times we don't have like the evidentiary standards met and you know you give them all the rights of a U.S. citizen and all these other things you can't turn them over to certain like their own countries

because their own countries will kill them and our own policies say we can't give a detainee back to a country that will kill them and it's like well what do we do with these so that was you know, starting out with Gitmo in 2001, 2002. Then we're now we're in 2010, 2011. And it's 2021, 2021, and I imagine that we still don't have answers for those questions. No, we don't.

And I mean, that was a small problem that, you know, like we were dealing with. I would say the problem was only amest to size and got a lot larger. I mean, how many... ISIS fighters are incarcerated in Syrian Democratic forces penitentiaries. They're being held in Kurdistan by a non-recognized government entity, the SDF, after the fall of ISIS. Yeah, thousands. Thousands. So you have thousands of guys being held in the prison with no due process.

And the international community, I mean, like, you know, the French, paying the Kurds to watch over the ISIS guys that they don't want coming back to France. Same thing with the UK. I mean, is this one of those scenarios where we took all of the pot dealers, you know, and the war on drugs, and we put them all in prison, and then they got out and then they had a PhD in how to run cocaine? I'm not sure. I'm not sure how this plays out.

I just know that we've got thousands of former ISIS fighters incarcerated together held by a non-recognized non-government entity with no no end state in sight, no reintegration back to society with a here's a vocation that you can you can do this going to be productive. And I mean, what do you think those guys are going to do? I mean, they are going to radicalize harder in those places. Yeah. I mean, we turn to blind eye to it. We stopped paying the bill. The door goes open. Stand by.

Another subject that I wanted to talk to you about is the, what we're calling now is like near peer adversaries or great power competition is like some of the buzzwords that get thrown around for going back to nation state versus nation state type conflicts, you know, at a level of less than warfare, right? open warfare. And I think there's some thinking that I've read at least that special operations that has invested deeply in counterterrorism for the last 20 years, it's kind of their time to take a back seat now. And this is sort of a conventional military deterrence. I don't, I hate to compare it to the Cold War. But it's, it's kind of back to that sort of, conventional military deterrence and contingencies and preparations and international brinksmanship, etc, etc. But you think and believe that there is a role for J.Sock and special operations community

in this current era that we find ourselves in? You're totally right. When it's state-on-state, I mean, the way that our system is designed is that the conventional forces are going to, they are going to, they are going to, they are going, to do the heavy lifting. The responsibility for the, for the soft guys is to find those small things that

the conventional forces can't do or those small things that are exponential gains in situational awareness and intelligence. And it's probably pretty hard to get it done, but you've got to figure out a way to problem solve and then either get it done to help with the overall intelligence pitcher or to support the conventional forces.

And, you know, brinksmanship, I think, is a perfect word for exactly what's going on right now between, you know, Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. slash NATO. And how this plays out, you know, I don't think,

I think if anybody told you that they knew how it was going to play out would be the first person I wouldn't listen to. Because there's so many variables in it. And I think, you know, really the only, you know, Putin is the antagonist. He's masked his forces.

And whether or not he decides to tell him to get a buffer zone into Ukraine because he doesn't like what's happening with NATO expansion or whether or not he tries to go for the whole pie, I think the only person that knows that is Vladimir Putin. And so you see the role of the special operations community, to be one of largely intelligence-based and maybe, you know, small-scale like commando operations, like even going back to the types of things like the Jedbergs did during World War II.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would hope, and I'm not confirming this, and I don't really have any, any knowledge of it, but I would hope that there are Jedberg-ish-like teams that are peppered throughout the Ukrainian populists, they're helping to prepare and organize insurgency type forces to go against the Russians. And I'm sure that there are probably, you know, like aid, advisement, intelligence, and equipment

that are making their way into Ukraine, as per the legislation that's been passed by our government. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, countering Russian aggression is right down our wind cone as far as national interests. And I would hope that the SF guys are right back into the Jedburgh days. Well, it's interesting, of course, that my friend Zach wrote an article just this week that was published about the CIA bringing to America teams from the Ukraine, training them, and then sending them back to potentially active stay behind forces in case something ever did go hot over there. So at least what's in the press this week, it seems that some of that is happening, yeah.

No, get on them. whoever started those programs at whatever point they did. Like a lot of really good foresight. And I would highlight personally, I don't think that you can not overlook the fact that I think the buildup of Russian forces and their propensity to make such a bold new, old move right now is probably linked to the way that they watched us exit pat kingston what do you think about our relationship uh from a uh a geostrategic competition point of view with china especially with your

background in j sock also as an sdv guy i know you must have some opinions about that you know i mean uh china they use all of the quivers in the or sorry all the arrows in the quiver um And predatory economics, predatory economics gains them access and placement, gains them the ability to influence, gains them the ability to start setting up their own little lily pads for military-ish expansion. When China is dominant or owns any number of the choke points

for sea transit across the globe, and they can start now dictating taxation and sea routes, the economic picture of our globe changes. Absolutely. And, you know, for anybody that wants is going to talk about China, if you haven't read the 100-year marathon, like you have to read that in order to understand the Chinese mindset. Michael, Michael Tilbury's book. Absolutely.

Yeah. I think if you read that book, you'll understand the Chinese mindset and you'll understand the advantages that they have. in a one leader communist system that has a 100 year vision over a cyclic four year system that turns over across the spectrum every four years. So yeah, they absolutely have some advantages. They are not above using the economic power that they can to expand their military influence

and their military dominance, especially within the near neighboring states, you know, in the South China Sea. So yeah, I mean, I think it's as much as a military-backed economic threat that as soon as we realize it for what it is, then we'll be able to start to, whether we say counter it or grapple with it or shape it, whatever, we have to come to grips with it, and then we have to decide what policies need to be put in place, be on a four-year turnover rate to adequately be able to be on par with China in 30 to 40 years.

Right. Or maybe 20 years. But either way, it has to outlive our own four-year administrations. And we have to understand what their goals are. And their goals are, you know, their goals are not to remain second best. And their goals are not to just feed our Walmarts. with no benefit to China other than a large bank account. Right.

All right, Eric, I'm going to roll into some fewer questions here. This one you sort of already answered, but did you ever meet Richard Marsenko or SEAL Team 6 plank owners? If so, what were they like? Yeah. Sorry. Met Dick a couple times interacted with a number of the plank owners. our spectrum.

And I always got a sense of men who were comfortable with themselves and men who were comfortable breaking barriers. I think that was the culture that he ceded in them. And I think they really, that ingrained in them. And they were good with it. And they had the utmost confidence. and I didn't, you know, a lot of them had ponytail and they looked like they belonged to the hell of the angels.

That's fine. But they still had the drive. And he planted them to have vision and determination and the balls to follow it through. And that's what you need in a lot of these uncomfortable situations. So, yeah, no, hats off to those guys. I love what they started. And I have nothing but respectful of them. Jackson says, how different is the day-to-day life?

of a troop commander and dev group compared to assaulters. Question applies to deployment and a damn neck. Like, are you doing CQB as often as they are, or are you more focused on the big picture? No. So as a naval officer, but as a SEAL team officer, whether it's applicable to Damneck, especially, you're charting the course of the ship. and the guys are fighting the ship. So, like, I mean, you're not doing CQB.

That's, like, those guys are the world's best. I mean, I know guys left to right hand shooting doesn't matter. Big circle, small circle, head, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder, doesn't matter. They'll hit it every time. In fact, three times in a row, if you want it in under three seconds, It's not a big deal. Yes, that's their job and they're damn good at it. The guy that says, wait a minute, this is where the international threat is going to be.

We need to be here in order to have this effect. That's what the role of the officer is. And you better be damn. You better be as good as it as those guys are about putting those three bullets where they need to be. And if you're not, then you're just not going to be there. Jackson asks, what were your experiences like with CAG or FBI, HART? Did you cross-trained or deploy with them often? And was there a rivalry there?

I would say it was a healthy rivalry with CAG that wasn't vindictive, but a healthy rivalry. And it's good. It's good for the overall organization and for the needs of the nation. you need to have two different cultures looking at similar problems from different perspectives and maximize what they would each use to go at it. So, hey, rivalry, absolutely. We're all very type A driven, motivated people that want to come out on top. So mutual respect, yes.

Rivalry, yes. For the betterment of the nation, yes. Broad HRT, you know, there were a lot of instances there that I talked about, you know, like bringing in folks that need to be, you know, detained so that they were no longer a threat to international community. we would do that by extending the long arm of the law. That's the FBI. So we would do that by facilitating the FBI to arrest people in countries where they had warrants for these folks. And we would go into really scary places

and to be able to facilitate an FBI warrant and an arrest. And then they would bring them back for an incarceration. So we would work with them. We'd bring them, you know, whether it's Army or FBI, when you start to get to those higher levels, everybody is as committed as you are. You just need to work through who has what authorities, who has what ideas, who has what tools to get it done in the best manner possible.

And you got to check your ego and see who has what, and then make the end state, the ultimate goal and then go for it. And, you know, I mean, that's how, that's how you're able to, over time, whittling down these complex threats. How rare are Mustang officers in Dev Group? Pretty rare. Which is that the same? Is that the same Jackson? Yeah, Jackson's asking a tonne.

Like, he's, I'm going to look. I want that email. I guarantee you I can find out who that guy is. And Jackson, thank you very much for all these donations. We really appreciate you. Which side appealed to you more, assault or reckey? I like to break things. Assault.

All right. Here's one. He says he has a spicy question, but is asking for your thoughts of some of the more public members of the unit, former members like Bissinette and O'Neill. You know, you ride for the brand or you're riding the brand. I would hope that guys can ride for the brand. brand for the entirety of it. I don't know if they, I don't know if they can look in the mirror and answer that question as they've been riding for the brand or not.

What qualities make for the best troop commanders? Humility, confidence, and integrity. And I think you addressed this earlier, and it's funny because what you said is very similar to what a couple of the other officers have said. And it's like, my job is to support the guys. Those guys go out and do the job. Like, if I do my job right, they're going to make me look good. Like, I don't have to make me look good through them.

They're going to show up to work. And if the look good factor is what's motivating somebody, I would say the screening process fail. I mean, it's not about looking good. It's about having a healthy relationship and understanding what you're trying to get done and what they need in order to get done and what you need in order to provide in order to get it done. And that's a tug of war, right?

Because, I mean, you know, if the only way to get to a place on planet Earth involves a space shuttle, well, shit, like we're never going to. going to get there, guys. So you know, you got to you got to be able to work your way through the problem on, okay, how are we going to get there? How are we going to have enough understanding of it? And then do we have the right assets to be able to not only defend ourselves, but to know that what we're getting into is what we can handle. Right. And that's where, you know, you're pulling everything that they need to be successful and by their success is kind of what you're alluding to is the look good factor. But at the end of the day, if the goal isn't things that matter,

things that matter to the safety of the international community, then I'm going to start to question who's, you know, what are your reasons for being here? Right. Is that the sun or your spotlight? Yeah. Tapa, thank you. Yeah. Jackson says, how challenging was the CQB block of Green Team? Is it as nightmarish as everyone makes it out to be? And what did you do to prep for it?

Yeah, I know. It's a nightmare. But what do you do to prepare for it? You know, it really, it comes down to self-confidence, Your ability to think your way through a high stress situation, your ability to manage your physiological responses and continue to apply the rules of reasoning that they're asking you to apply. If you can do that and you can follow the words of Jimmy Duke, go slow. And they'll tell you when they want you speed up and keep your mouth shut. They'll tell you when they want to hear your opinion. then you'll be just fine.

Real quick, Taffa gave a donation, Michelle, or actually, I don't know. This person, Taffa, also had a question after that. What does he think about the show Seal Team? And what did he think about Mark Owens and O'Neill's books? I don't know if Taffin's. You know, I stopped reading,

I stopped reading books about seal stuff, probably, in maybe like 2010. So I don't know, and I've never watched an episode of SEAL team. I know it's written by SEALs, though, I'm pretty sure. I've never seen it. I'm sure it is. And I don't know who the technical advisors are.

I could probably write some names on a piece of paper and hold it up on the camera, and I bet you I'd probably be within 75% of who the technical advisors are. And I just kind of fall back to, you know, are you writing for the brand or are you riding it? And then as far as the books, I didn't know that Rob had come out with a book. And as far as the, you know, the no easy day to die, I think is what the one is there from, um shouldn't have done it and you know kind of saying that hey i'm going to take the proceeds from this book and i'm going to give it back to the community is not what the community is about um it didn't need to be it didn't need to be put out there especially about the uh the raid into

Bodabod. Andrew asks, it strikes me that Seals and SDVs when in a sub would find themselves in a very alien environment stuck in a sub being told not to touch anything. It's true. I mean, the only thing I asked for on the sub was I asked them to weld a pull up bar kind of in the back by the nuclear reactor because if we were going to go

underwater for 30 to 60 days. We're never going to come up this to have any air at all. We're going to have some really angry motherfuckers on our hands. And we need a pull-up bar. We're going to need, like, probably an erg. And we're going to need some dumbbells that go up to at least 100 pounds, or else, like, we're going to just start bending subduits in half. You guys are going to need some good bronzers, too, though, right?

Because, like, subduits are all pasty. oh yeah yeah that that's an interesting community right there it really is it's a fascinating community it's a tough job that's a tough job and you know those guys do some massive strategic lifting in the intelligence world that never sees the light of day and I'm super grateful that it doesn't and I mean those guys go underwater for like 90 days to six months at a time I mean they are I mean, they are one-third of the nuclear triad for the strategic defense of the U.S. And when I see nuclear triad, that means you got bombers that are going to deliver bombs. You got missile silos from, you know, somewhere in the U.S.

that might rhyme with, you know, the Midwest somewhere on some, you know, plane that can launch a nuclear-capable missile at a moment's notice. And then you have submarines that are like 300 feet of depth off. you have no idea where they are on planet Earth and they can launch any point in time and deliver a nuclear capable missile, whether it be on North Korea or Russia or wherever it needs to be Tehran. So that's one of the three. And those guys sit there underwater for months on end to hold that one third of the nuclear triads.

In a tiny, I mean, they have to hot rack. So like they share the same bed, like, return it between and what shift they're on. but the chow is good the chow's amazing on a sub all right so uh yeah when I was on on a sub

uh and my time was limited my bed was from my elbow to my second knuckle right there in my middle finger that's as high as my bed is I'm I'm 5-9 I'm 175 pounds

I'm not a big dude especially in the CO teams. I had to pull myself out of my bed, my rack, and roll over and then slide back into it because my shoulders were too wide to fit in that space right there. I was lucky to have a bet that I didn't have to share with another dude that was going to come in there as soon as I got out of it or I had to wake up every four hours. Yeah, it's shitty on a sub. And the only way that they can alleviate that is by cooking them really good food. Yeah. And they do their best.

Yeah. Isaac has a question here. He says, I saw the ABC article of the SEALs asking for help because since the OBL raid seals have become a brand. What's the state of the community now? Okay. So I guess he's talking about something you wrote. I don't know.

Maybe it was kind of something to do with, you know, the Eddie Gallagher trials or things like that. Um, no, I mean, this, you know, you alluded to it before. You kind of have one free radical and they're painting the picture for, you know, 1,500 other people that are quietly training and preparing themselves day after day after day after day to be ready when needed. And dude, there is a, there is a, there is a. There is a core of people that are ready to sacrifice their lives,

dedicate their entire professional career to devotion, and to be as good as they can be so that they can protect a guy on their left and the right and push the point of the end of government policy I've called upon. So they're good and they're led well. and they're totally dedicated to it. Andrew asks, when it comes to the issue of policing soft personnel, it strikes me that regular military law enforcement might be at a disadvantage. Would the FBI be better suited for the task?

I mean, I guess he's asking, has NCIS been up to the task as far as the enforcement and accountability aspect in the special operations community? I would say the problems start when the leadership within the special operations community isn't doing what they should do, right? Like, I mean, the very first people that should be doing anything should be the leaders that are closest to the campfire. And if they, for some reason, their moral compass isn't right, then, yeah, I mean, it kind of falls outside of their control. or if maybe something that somebody within the soft community has done that's so egregious, it shouldn't be held accountable by a member in the soft community.

You know what I mean? Let's talk like sexual assault or something like that. That needs to be handled by somebody outside the organization because it's so egregious. Yeah. You know, and to that, I'm like, hey, I don't. I don't know any soft leader that would be like, oh, wait, like somebody's been up to something that egregious. Like, okay, you want to come in here as like either a federal, federal entity or NCIS, and we need to clean this out. Like, we need to put chemo on this cancer before it becomes, you know, like they amesthetized.

Yeah, let's do that. Jack, I have, but. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Sorry. No, but I was going to say, like, that's the rare. exception. You know, you know, that's, it seems to be like that's what's kind of out there in the media world. And that's, that's kind of what I've tried to counterbalance a bit through being an

, you know, an ABC news contributor is that that's like the, the 1% every now and then. There's 99% that day in and day out, like, God damn it. Like, you know, they're ready to give their lives. They're training. They're dedicating their entire professional lives to this. core skill set and to be able to contribute to, you know, the national efforts and policy. I totally see your point, Eric, but I mean, you also have to concede here that there's been a whole string of problems. I mean, there's a dev group operator allegedly involved in murdering a green beret in, uh, in Mali. And then we had a Delta Force operator recently murdered along with another guy out in the, you know, training areas of Fort Brae,

maybe some drugs involved. I mean, the strain, I mean, we could maybe blame it, at least partially on the strains of 20 years of warfare, that it's kind of pulled things apart at the seams. But, I mean, we do have some problems. As much as I agree that most of the guys are doing the right thing, right? That shouldn't necessarily color the entire, you know, special operations community.

Yeah, I know, I agree. You're right. And, you know, I kind of go back to, you know, the guys that are the closest to the campfire. Need to take care of it. They need to take care of it. And, you know, if the message at that level is, nope, not here. And if you think that, and it's probably stepping stones, right? I mean, let's take the, you know, the guys that are found dead out on a training range in North Carolina.

Carolina and drugs involved and like, you know, yeah, I've read the articles on it. You know, it's like they didn't just magically go from day one, the day nine, you know, 299 with, you know, cocaine and methamphetamines and all this. Yeah. And end up with a couple of bullets in the chest. Somebody I can't remember the other way for a long time. Yeah. No, I mean, dude, that's something that progressed with time that that probably had

10 different injects that a leader, whether it be an enlisted or an officer, had the opportunity to intervene on. And unfortunately, maybe they didn't. So that's where I say, like, those closest to the campfire need to remember about, you know, what the, what those units stand for, what those things stand for. And, hey, if guys aren't right for it, then they need to be shown the off ramp. Right. But they need to be shown the off ramp in the right ways with, hey, like, do you have PTSD? Do you have these problems? Like, and let's take care of you as, but like, not no with anger, but no with support.

But the answer is no because, dude, it's, you've gone beyond the bounds. The other thing I think that is challenging. and we can all, you know, sit sort of in our moral high ground when we aren't the direct recipient of the results. But I think the military needs to change the way that it grades its officers and deals with officers. Like if a colonel finds out about, you know, a problem in his unit and reporting that problem is going to be a black mark on his or her record, right? like this happened in their unit, then somebody who, then it's not hard to see how somebody who has spent,

you know, the last 15 years of their career is going to try to bury something in order to preserve their career. Like, it's not that hard to see why that happens. Like if, if an officer or a leader addresses a problem and tries to correct a problem, you can't necessarily hold them accountable

if that problem happened under their watch. You know, it goes back to the whole, you know, if one soldier gets a DUI, then the PL is going to get called up to the carpet because that soldier was their responsibility. But if we're talking about like murdering a dude in a war zone, like that is the commander's responsibility. No, I, it is to a degree. But if you're, it's the same thing. If you're like a senior manager at a company and one of your employees goes out, like you cannot control everything.

like you can foster a a culture you can set set these moral left and rights but you still can't control everything that everybody does under you and for an officer to pay for you know the the sins of their troops if they if if yeah so case in point here Dave uh 2010 uh uh res a hostage rescue operation gone wrong. A hostage was killed by the rescue force. Turned out she was British. Potentially may or may not have been a British military spy that was kind of trying to work her way into a sensitive area

in Afghanistan to target some HPIs. The 05 at the time did not know. it seemed as if she had been killed by a suicide vest and the way that the video footage kind of supported that and so did not know that it was actually an explosion that was caused by the rescue force and then when the 06 at the time got some higher deaf video footage

then they realized what had happened And so in a very professional way and in a very one-on-one way, and I respect both these guys to this day, the 06 in an isolated manner, showed the video to the 05 because he had to see the reaction of the 05 to know whether or not that guy actually knew about what had gone on or not. And the answer was he did not know. And he was shocked when he saw it. And that confirmed every single thing that the 06 needed to know.

And then they jointly came out with what had happened. And this was after the Queen of England had called President Obama and said, I know you guys did everything you could, but there's a British citizen that lost her life. You know, like God rest her soul. And now you have a president calling a queen and saying, it didn't quite happen like that 72 hours later okay so fast forward but they came out cleanly and they said it and yes um were they personally held accountable for the actions of their of the unit no were the members

within the unit that made those particular decisions on a hosso triske that were outside of what we typically would do in a hosso rescue were they allowed to continue with the unit? No. Were we public within the people that needed to know about the way that we handled it? Yes, we were public and we told them exactly what we had done. And so the 05 is now in 07 in the Navy and one of the best SEAL officers I've ever worked for. The 06 is now the future Central Command Commander, General Corrilla, that's coming right behind General McKenzie here in a couple months. So yes, it can be done. Absolutely mistakes are made. I believe it's on it. I believe it's the way that they're handled when they're made and the ability for those units to hold themselves accountable

that resonates above and below the chain of command and how it's perceived both ways. So that's a vignette, a little bit long, a little bit complicated, but complex and to your point on, you can absolutely survive it as a careerist and you can absolutely maintain standards within your units. Yeah. But it takes strong people and it takes a hell of a lot of leadership because you don't make friends all the way you do it. Right.

There's no way. So that's what I saw along the way. Yeah. And that's what I learned from it. This one's a little bit more lighthearted, I think. Isaac asks, have you ever encountered anyone from Alpha or Spetsnaz? On the Russian side.

No. But I drank some some hardcore homemade moonshine with some Lithuanian soft guys that was such hardcore moonshine that made my gums received away from my teeth for like a week one time at Christmas. So that's close to I got this.

Yeah, no, the Lithuanians are no joke. Brad, I think you already answered this. But he says issues are things you think senior NSW leadership can improve upon. I think we kind of covered that. Jane Baker, based on what you have heard, this is a weird one, when he was killed was OBL's Beard dyed black or gray and undied? I don't know.

We may never know. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I can make a phone call or two, but, you know, apparently a lot of that, the sensitive side exploitation material was pornographic films. And whether or not UBL was dying in a beard or not, he might have been. Maybe the least of our worries. I think the best two things about Bin Laden were that there were a couple of five, five, six holes in the chest. Let's see.

Okay. This is the last question I'm going to take here. What do you think about the double standard of going after an enlisted operator for years in court and not going through the review process? I have to suspect he's talking about that they sometimes officers get more of a free pass when it comes to publishing or speaking public. as opposed to the enlisted side. Yeah, that's one that kind of goes round and round. And, you know, yeah, that's, that's it. That's absolutely a tough question.

And I appreciate that one from whoever keyed in on this. You know, the message from senior leadership is be a quiet professional yet it was completely sanctioned by the Navy to have active duty guys and they put out the entire movie I think it's like with valor or something like that. Active valor. Active valor. Sorry.

And it's a dichotomy in messaging and it's not consistent and it doesn't work well. And then you have senior leaders saying be a quiet, And yet you have you know like I don't know what Craven's coming out with a book vice versa you have you know unless the guys You know that are you know like You know Mark Owens with his book So yeah At the end of the day I wish that

And I understand like the mode not the motivations but I understand the analysis that let has led to both sides of it right, right, right I wish that there would be some sort of, you know, like a 10 commandments from, from Moses that would say, this is what we're going to do for the next 50 years as a soft operator in the Navy. And I wish that people would stick to it. It's going to take a damn strong leader to come up with that and put that out, but put that out in a way that will resonate both to. who's officer and enlisted, maybe Wyman's the right man. I've worked for him extensively.

His name's Wyman Howard. He's the, you know, the spec war commander right now. He's a damn strong personality and he's a great leader. I've, I work for him. I love working for him, and I'd go work for him tomorrow. Or maybe it would be Admiral Matt Burns or Admiral Mitch Bradley. I mean, those are all three very strong guys with healthy operational backgrounds and a lot of perspective. But it's got to take somebody like that that's going to be able to do that because it drives angst on both sides of the officer and enlisted sides within the community.

It's a great question. I appreciate it. I wish there was an easier answer for it. We see it. I mean, we see it everywhere, though, too, because we see, like, if somebody was, like, a federal, like, with the agency and say they were a GS-13, like, the publication review board may treat their book totally different than they would. Oh, God, yeah. Somebody who is S-IS with more political clout. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. Right. You know, that any review board is going to be less likely to censors, you know, or edit something that, you know, something like McCraven or somebody, you know. an admiral or a general comes out with. Yeah. And I'm a CIA director versus an analyst. And I'm also, I'm also biased on my end and I can go on and on about this.

I'll try to be concise. When we get out of the military, there's a pretty big stark difference between the enlisted side, the officers. You guys can go work for like think tanks. You can get blue chips jobs. You can go work in finance. Like if you're an enlisted guy,

yeah. No, seriously. That's what, when I got out of the military in the little Taps workshop, I was a green beret at the time. I put in my MOS. It tells you what job you're qualified for on the outside. It said security guard. Like there is just such a stark difference between the officer and the enlisted side as far as the opportunities when you get out of the military. And I don't say that as an excuse for inappropriate behavior, if we're going to, you know, use that term.

But there is a pretty big difference. like for an E6 to get out of the military and walk on to like a PhD program or to go, you know, hang out at the Brookings Institute as a fellowship program like that. Those opportunities do not exist for us. And it's all your fault, Eric. I started, I, God damn, I started a company with one other dude. Well, speaking, and our whole company is based on like, let's, let's continue to. serve a higher purpose.

Speaking of that, Eric. I mean, like, you know, we're not, we're not like, you know, like we're rubbing two nickels together. Tell us, tell us about how you met, another previous guest of the show, Mick Mulroy, how you guys met and started the Lobo Institute. How did that come about? No, it's a great guy, and he and I both have. We found through time that we just had similar philosophies on the highest thing.

to prioritize was the goal and not either personal egos or organizational fracture side. You just got to get to the goal. We met briefly in Afghanistan and Schen in 2010, maybe 11. It's a little bit blurry there. But we really started working together in 2012, 13 out of Kenya when we were trying to get guys or operators and intel folks back into Somalia to properly deal with the al-Qaeda in East Africa problem. And, you know, he was the lead for the agency's paramilitary side. I was the lead for the for the military J-Suc side. And together we had to figure out how to how to get our teams

molded and driving in the same direction and go after that problem. And through that, we both realized kind of what drove the other guy and we knew that we had similar goals and similar ways of attacking problems and we were very well matched together. So then we started talking about life after the government. And, you know, from 2012 onward, we kind of started planning a business that would be centered on international conflict resolution. And yet bring our combined perspectives between an agency, long-time agency background to a long-time military, you know, kind of tier-win background, two organizations that typically don't have it. So, you know, we do help the ABC News kind of craft their content so that it's accurate.

it. We worked for a year for the United Nations, specifically helping them come about designing a way for Yemeni government officials to stay alive in Yemen. And it's more or less like kind of setting up like a secret service for Yemenis, Yemeni elective officials to have a security force that can keep them alive over time as they're kind of working through their civil war. So we did that for the UN. We continue to work for a number of institutions like that that are all based on long-term stability and security.

So that's what the local institute's about. We've got a number of extraordinarily strong, talented expert cadre. from various backgrounds. And we kind of pull and piece out of those teams and say, hey, here's a project opportunity. Here's kind of what it's about. Do you folks want to be a part of it? And, you know, today they've been like absolutely.

And it's not just, you know, former soft operators are part of it. We've got a lady that used to be, she was a child refugee, you know, and then, and now she's a child. psychologist for, you know, kind of like war-torn areas is her specialty. And we've got a former child soldier. And we've got a guy that was the chief of staff of the white helmets, which is kind of like the 911 rescue force that would go into bombed out buildings in Syria and dig people out of rubble and stuff like that.

So it's a wide mix of people. I saw Andrew Milborn is one of your advisors too. Yeah. He'll be here in studio in two weeks. Oh, solid personality. You guys, I'll key you into that discussion for sure. He's been in studio before, but we only remember like the last half or the first half of that interview because we put what were you guys? I think the three of us went through a bottle and a half of LaFroid.

So one of the things you guys are working on at the Lobo Institute, or correct me if I'm wrong, is there's a, you're working with end child soldiering. advocacy programs. It's your passion. It's your nonprofit, right? Yep. So Mick and I were both, I was actually on hiatus from Damnick and I was at SACA Africa. And I was, you know,

working a number of problems on the dark continent. He was the chief of station in Uganda. And he came across this story. And it was actually an interpreter that We were using to interpret some of the intercepts to target this, a true menaceous society named Joseph Coney, who's responsible for abducting upwards of 20,000 kids out of their villages, mobilizing them into an army, and then basically creating the entire Darfur crisis with these child soldiers. So Mick met this guy, started to understand his whole story,

and turns out he was abducted at 14, went through this horrible indoctrination process, then became a fighter for Joseph Coney. He's been shot six times. And the last time he was shot, he was actually hit by an RPG that kind of came down tangentially. It ricocheted off his shoulder, but the fins basically tore his right arm almost completely off.

They thought he was dead. they came back to Barryham in the morning. His eyes were kind of blinking. Anyway, he then becomes a radio operator because he can't carry a gun anymore. Well, then he becomes Joseph Coney's radio operator. Now he spends years of Joseph Coney and he totally knows him.

He also falls in love, starts having a couple of kids out in the jungle. And it's this whole story about, like, the human spirit, never say die, love, you know, we can, it's an incredible story. Mick and I were both, we both established a relationship with Anthony for a number of reasons, but through it we started to understand the power of who he was in his story. We decided to make a documentary about it.

We made a documentary on iPhones and Gopros, and we started to be asked to show it to like, master's level international affairs type curriculums and stuff at yale and other places and in the process of that a new york times um author who's an extraordinarily successful man named is mark solomon he's a he's a montana based author saw it and said i i need to write that that's that story needs to see the the broader the broader audience needs to understand what that story has to, you know, to move them and inspire them. So anyway, Mark is now in the process of writing that book kind of as we speak. And the nonprofit side of Lobo Institute is in child soldiering, which is about being an advocate for those that have no voice of advocacy and that those

are that are exploited. I mean, grown up start the wars. And yet when those wars go on for years and years, yours, it's kids that end up fighting them. And that's exactly what we've seen in the Middle East. I mean, that's exactly what's happening with the Cubs of the Caliphate with ISIS and the Middle East and in Yemen. And, you know, I mean, some of the first people I fought in Afghanistan were 12 years old because their dads were dragging them to gun fights. War pumps. Yeah. That's not right. So that's what in child's soldiering is about.

Mick and I feel like we have enough perspective to be able to channel relief into those areas that need it the most through a nonprofit called and child soldiering that was inspired by the story of Anthony and Florence Polka from Northern Uganda that were child soldiers. That's amazing. It's right in its embassy right now. I would say that the book is supposed to come out kind of spring of 2020. I think that when the general public internationally reads it, I think that they will understand the ability, their ability to help shape the problem for the better. And that's where I think in-child soldiering will start to get more momentum.

And then mechanized job will go from Lobo Institute, a for-profit thing, even though it's for international conflict and really good reasons. I think it'll start to weigh out more on the end-child soldiering. peace so for those of you are watching um i put the link it is lobo lobo institute dot org is their primary website but then if you go slash is that a slash or backslash i don't know but if you go slash donate that will take you to the end child soldiering uh page there's a donate there guys throw them five bucks throw them a little throw a little cash this way like let's let's

let's help these guys get get this off the ground because child's soldiering, it's a horrible thing that, like, we don't even deal with in the United States. We don't even understand. But it's such a common practice in so many other countries. Yeah, and I would say if you're on the fence, read the book. If you're still on the fence after you read that book, you can hit me up. Write an email. Info at loboin institute.org.

It'll get to me. And I would like to understand how you think that this is not. responsible thing to do. And for those of you don't know, the general process of recruiting a child soldier isn't just taking a kid and say, hey, kid, here's a gun. They take, they go into their village. They make them do something absolutely horrific in their village to somebody in their village. And you can use your imagination because, you know, it depends on what it is.

Go go watch the episode we did with Baba Edolf, who worked in Sierra Leone. He'll tell you all about it. Yeah. But to where, to where they next. now have so much shame and feel like such an outsider that they're alienated from everything. They feel like they can never go back and they just become these recruits. And it's so sad. Eric, I really appreciate the work you're doing here and sharing all these stories with you up to

and including the advocacy work that you're working on now and kind of, you know, laying all this out for us on one of your Friday nights. I really appreciate you taking the time. And I really appreciate all the viewers who joined us tonight. Thank you guys for tuning in. I hope you'll come back next week. We're going to have Mark Giaconia on the show, who served in 10th Special Forces Group. He actually had some overlap with Mick Morroix when they infiltrated into Iraq prior to the invasion in 2003.

He was one of the SF guys there. We have one last question, I think, from Andrew. have the ICC indictments of LRA fighters helped or hindered resolving the LRA problem. Indifferent. Yeah, I'm going to say. Yeah, the LRA problem is kind of so far into the jungle. There's been, I think, one or maybe two guys that have gone to the ICC, and it really isn't a deterrent or a hindrance to ending the problem there.

I'd agree. I'd agree. Thanks, guys. Yeah. And where else can they find you? You can find you at Lavo Institute. They can find you, do you write articles for ABC News for ABC? Yeah, ABC News. We also kind of work for, it's called the Middle East Institute, which is a think tank. We put out some more like military applicable things there. Or, you know, we also do some things for veteran advocacy, which is called Vaha Veterans Alliance for Holistic Alternation. which is helping people, veterans specifically through processing trauma. So Vaha, we're on the board of directors, and that's about, you know, you never stop being a leader

even if you get out of the teams. And this is about leadership after what the nation has been asked us to do. And that's where you can find Mick and I, and this really good, a Marine has been through a lot of trauma, his name's Gary Hess. but it's within the Vaha nonprofit. So guys, please like, share this video, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. And down in the description, there's a link to our Patreon. If you want to support the channel, get access to the bonus episodes and segments we do.

And also there's merch down there for coffee mugs and all that good stuff. So I think that's about it. Eric, can I keep you for like another 10 minutes just for the bonus segment real quick, if that's cool? Totally cool. And I would just say for the broader audience, one, thank you very much for your time. And two, thank you very much, Jack and Dave, for allowing me the opportunity to be a part of your podcast. You got it, man. Anytime. Thank you for spending your Friday night with us. Yeah, we hope we'd have you and Mick back sometime soon, talk about some of your other projects. Yeah, we got some good things. Yeah. All right.