The Team House - Eyes On w/ Jack Murphy | EYES ON PODCAST

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseToday we're joined by Jack Murphy an investigative journalist, host of The Team House podcast, and all around good guy.Jack's new book about Special Forces history:https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=6LdeC&content-id=amzn1.sym.f76d456a-cb0d-44de-b7b0-670c26ce80ba&pf_rd_p=f76d456a-cb0d-44de-b7b0-670c26ce80ba&pf_rd_r=144-9783160-8516900&pd_rd_wg=4WEv9&pd_rd_r=9a77f183-8f7f-43ad-a38b-141d77407d95&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dskFind Andy here:https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023https://amilburn.substack.com/https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-OperationsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House. channel and podcast if you'd like to, and we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Aizan, and I'm going to jump right to the chase. We've got Jack back on along with the customary criminals, both the D and Jason. Jack, welcome aboard. I'm not going to use up your Star Space here by Blabbing.

So talk to us, man. What are your thoughts? My thought, what, like about life or? Yeah. This is your arena, Jack. What do you think about the state of masculinity in the United States today? Yeah. No, okay.

You're talking to the wrong. That's the wrong Jack Murphy. You need to go talk to the other guy that's bald and he'll help you out with that. I forgot we had D on the show. Okay. Let's, yeah. I mean, let's start with current affairs. you know you saw a mick and mark on uh recently uh you know events in the release

that's yeah and i mean um i mean all you guys have seen what's going on in the papers and you know i follow it too and um you know my my my thought about it is that there are yes some like really impressive operations that the israelis have pulled off over the last month or so um definitely did a lot of disruption of terror networks, definitely took some chess pieces off the board and set Hezbollah back probably at least a few years. And all of that is quite impressive. But on the other hand, I also can't help but think about the war on terror and that we did that for 20 years and still lost the war. At least we lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. I mean, we protected America, thankfully. But that's...

You mean when the dust, when the dust settles? Yeah, if you don't have a political. The problem remains. Yeah, if you don't have a political solution that you're aiming towards, that there has to be a political resolution to the conflict, then I mean,

you keep killing people all day, every day. And the Israelis have experienced this too. I'm not telling them anything. They don't already know. You know, they've been down this road many times. And I mean, maybe, you know, it sounds crass, but I mean, maybe it really is just a delaying strategy.

And like, you know, we're trying to delay this a few more years until hopefully a political resolution presents itself. Because otherwise, it doesn't seem like they really have like a long-term strategy here. And I'd hear all of these people kind of talking out their ass about how like Hezbollah is finished. They're done. This is over. Like, no, no, no. This is not over. This is the, this is the beginning, not the end.

Yeah, it's it taken taken individually. I mean, these these moves have been, have certainly been debilitating. The kind of interesting, as the story emerges on, you know, both the Pedro attack, the walkie talk attack and then the subsequent assassinations going after the headquarters there in Beirut. It, it seems that this wasn't so much part of a wider strategy as kind of, uh, targets of opportunity, you know, they had been targets of opportunity for a while, but now seemed like the right opportunity combined. But the real kicker here, I think, and this is why everyone is obviously on the edge of their seat. The invasion part, the incursion part, was the really controversial part. You know, the Netanyahu's generals had offered, had argued viscerously for it back in October. were perhaps less confident now, but did push for an incursion using just special operations forces. But to your point, at some point they have to withdraw, right?

I mean, yeah, this happened in what, 1983, and then again in 2006, if I recall right? Yep. Yeah, this will be the third Lebanon war. And of course Israel has a very painful legacy from the 82 through 2000 2001, 2002 invasion It was kind of their Vietnam And it was the first time Israel

Was shown in the role of Goliath Rather than David But anyway, I'm sorry, a lot But my point is Yeah, I agree with you 100%. And the real the real sensitive part is the withdrawal right what happens after you because you've got to you either stay there and occupy or you withdraw these guys and that is what what is left behind is going to be

the tough part the Israelis don't you know they don't believe in in clear and hold and build the way we do they they you know they clear and they rely they clear they hold briefly and they rely on other people to come in and build afterwards. And that, I think, is the opportunity for, you know, I hate to say international community, but it really is, to your point, Hezbollah's hold on Lebanon has been weakened significantly for the first time, perhaps in a couple of decades. This would perhaps be the time to finally enforce, you know, UN resolution 17-0, what is it? 70-01, I think. Yeah, finally, right? And and the UN and for the Lebanese government to to kind of get a grip and move ahead. It was an independent sovereign entity free of his.

You know, this sounds naive, but my point is this is the only opportunity, the greatest opportunity, Lebanon, the international community has had. And Israel is not going to follow, you know, Israel is not going to build this. We, U.S. international community should be ready to. otherwise otherwise it's a third Lebanon war and there's going to be a fourth and a fifth and a sixth yeah unfortunately my view at the moment leans towards the latter option that like i said this isn't the end it's the beginning and and we haven't even talked about the relatives of the 40,000 or so casualties in Gaza you know they that that that's the one thing that we sometimes forget we don't factor in and counterinsurgency is that we're not you know we're not dealing with

statistics, we're dealing with human beings. And for every dead person who is a family member, there are waves of anger and retribution. We mirror image in other ways, but we don't mirror image our enemy or the civilian population in that way and realize the depth of anger that we are creating. I say we, you know, because we've done this. Yeah, no, people get upset sometimes when I pointed out it's a controversial issue. I get it. But what has happened in Gaza over the last year is going to haunt Israel for the rest of its days, I think. I don't think there's any, they've moved the corner, they went around a corner in several different ways. I mean, what happened in October 7th shattered Israel's sense of security,

maybe forever? And then the response in Gaza, and that's something that's going to haunt Israel for a very long time. Yeah, certainly. I think it's, I think it's changed. Israeli's perception of themselves, you know, it's undermined. There was always, there's always this feeling of, of kind of the plucky nation, right? With right on the side. Right. Yeah, the underdog. Yeah. And I think in the eyes the number of Israelis that's been tested, but it doesn't matter that it's been tested because fear has caused them the whole,

the whole country to, you know, really. solidify on this base that is to the outside world rather alarming, right? It looks pretty extreme. And it certainly obviates any potential for a two-state solution, you know, the way that that's really. We've never been further away from that than now. I think the whole topic of normalization in the Middle East between Israel and Arab countries, period, has been fractured.

You know, that was, it was looking pretty good for a while there a few years ago, but I think this might might have started to cause some cracks. I mean, that could be wrong on that, but that's what it seems. Well, that's one of the arguments, right, that the Iranians wanted October 7 to happen in order to spike the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia, of course, being Sunni, Iran being Shia. That's like the Cold War of the Middle East, right? that those two nations are kind of pitted against one another.

Yeah. I mean, to be sure, you know, to be sure and to be very clear for everyone, no crocodile tears for Hezbollah or, you know, Nasran Hasrallah. I mean, yes, I mean, we're all delighted that the organization is on the ropes. The question here is, is it part of a bigger strategy? And if not, then Hezbollah will return and will return probably stronger than before because that is that that's you look through the site it doesn't matter who's been leading his baller that is what has happened in the past yeah what a mess on that no no what's what's going on

oh yeah i was going to say from what a mess to on that know what is uh what's going on in in your life jac but um i do want to say that because i think that our our audience um doesn't get enough of you in fact a lot of our unfan mail, you know, beyond, hey, why are you guys on? We want to see less of you is we want to see more at Jack. I don't think you get those emails. I think that's a lie. He gets them. I just got back last week from a trip to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

That was really fun. I was over there. Hiking, horseback riding, cruising around. Bishkek and Almadi It was a real eye-opening trip A lot of fun I'd love to go back I'm actually hoping to go back

Wait you you went to Kugaskan On vacation Yeah basically I mean my girlfriend is from there So I mean I had a pretty squared away tour guide Yeah okay And I've said Yeah excellent

You tried out the horse's milk Or is that just Yeah yeah I drank the fermented horse milk It was awesome partook in the manly sports of horseback riding in the mountains. Yeah, all of that. Nice.

Bear chested. So anyway, welcome. Welcome back from that. What are you working on now? And, well, let's see. I've been reading this new book, David McCloskey's new spy novel, The Seventh Four.

We're going to have him on the team house, not this week, I think next week. We have him coming up. Interesting guy. He was a CIA analyst. And then the other thing, too. So, hey, so that book is a novel, Jack? Yeah, yeah, it's a novel.

Makulski was a CIA analyst, and he's written three spy novels, Damascus Station, Moscow X, and this new one that just came out, the 7-4. I wasn't a huge fan of Damascus station, didn't really do it for me. But I did. I really enjoyed Moscow X. That was a cool, cool novel. And the seventh floor is a, is a counterintelligence story. It's a mole hunt.

And I've been enjoying it so far. And so what about the agency? Jason, are these books, I mean, are they well acclaimed within the agency? Are they? Honestly, I have to, I check them out. I haven't. I've heard of McCloskey, but I haven't read the book. So, but I'm sure if it made it to the past publication review that, you know,

do they have to do that even for fiction? Yeah. Yeah, because you can still insert, you know, methods and procedures in there, you know, under the guise of fiction. So, yeah, it still has to go through. It's a very good book. The Moscow X is incredible. Yeah.

Nice. And that whole review process took nine months for my book. I was going to say, I was going to ask you how long yours took. Yeah. Yeah, I got. I can say that it was bogged down by the Intel community. Yeah. I was going to ask, like, did you have to just submit it to DOD or did it have to go through other agencies also?

It went, it starts at the at DOD and then it goes and then they, you know, so I know, I know they sent, They sent a copy to, anyway, it doesn't matter. They sent it to different agencies, and they sent it within DOD to Dev Group and, you know, any, any organization that might have been. And so any organization can come back and say, hey, we want this to be redacted. Right. And I was lucky. I got away with some minor, I thought were quite minor points, but I've been careful writing the book. I thought, you know, I wrote a lot about signals intelligence targeting.

And I knew everything that I wrote that was precedent in open source, because that's the only way to do this, right? There's no, you know, you don't want to be icebreaking when it comes to releasing information. So, you know, I'd look at, okay, can I write about that? And I'd find somewhere where it was written about, which was laborious, but it got me through the final check. And actually, there's a huge amount out there in open source information about targeting methodology in signals and diligence.

There is, you know, I think most people would agree. There's very little you cannot learn from open source intelligence. I have a friend of mine is written novels and he had to submit to both DOD and CIA. And they ended up killing, basically killing his series, you know, because both DOD and CIA wanted the first look. And he's like, I can't give both agencies the first look. that's not possible. It was like basically they found a bureaucratic way to stop him from writing. Yeah. God. Now, Jack, with your books, did you have to go through a review or?

No, I didn't put any of my books through a review. I put an article I wrote through DOD review once. I'll never do it again. It was absolutely, it's absolutely a political process. And I had a lawyer going to them. I mean, it was bizarre because I'm, showing them point by point, like, how is it that you cleared this information here in this publication? But suddenly it's reclassified again when I'm writing the exact same thing. Like, it's politics. It's not, it's not about safeguarding information. That's exactly it. It becomes, for its critics, it becomes de facto censorship. And what Jack's talking about, is something that has been kind of validated by a series of lawsuits against DOD,

where authors have said, how come you blocked me for this, but now you released it here. And there certainly is a perception that if you are being critical of DOD in your book, you're going to get a much more harder ride when it comes to getting cleared for security. And the article I submitted was very pro-U.S. Army. It was like, good job, boys, you know, you've done well. That's why it made people suspicious, Jack. And what else was I going to say on that, though? But yeah, yeah, the review process is bullshit.

Yeah. So you're about to show us a book in the background. Oh, yeah. So the other thing I've started working on, it's in the nasient phases, is I haven't read any of these books yet. But these are books about the military liaison mission in Berlin during the Cold War. These ones too. So this is my like fall winter reading that I got to get on.

So the military liaison mission was under like, I think it was under the Four Powers Agreement that governed Berlin after the end of World War II. the way Germany was chopped up was that, you know, American, French and British military liaisons in uniform in an official vehicle could go and drive into communist held East Germany. And the Soviets could do the same. They could come over to our side and do the same just sort of like a, as like an inspection to make sure everyone's following the rules, basically. but those openings were used for all manner of espionage by both sides and i've been talking to some of the special forces guys who are assigned to the military liaison mission and there are some epic epic stories um that i don't think i've ever been written about before that i'm looking forward to chronicling um a lot of stuff like stealing soviet military technology and then reverse engineering it, putting guys up across the border and getting pictures of tactical

ballistic missiles that weren't supposed to be there. Dudes actually like getting up under the tarp and crawling into the like the brand new T72 tanks and taking like in there taking pictures, like just really cool stuff. So that's that's something I'm working on right now. I guess a lot of that was pretty, it buried, you know, I don't know if it was classification, levels at the time, but, you know, it's kind of also eclipsed by what was going on in Vietnam. But that, I mean, the stories, the stories you've been, you've been recounting and researching have been really fascinating. Yeah. Who knew? Because, you know, I always thought

the Cold War must be in a really boring time. I mean, it was a boring time. I was there. Thank you for being about to remind me, Jack. So, it's all the papers chained to the wall. But it was generally a very boring time in the military. So whenever I see Cold War, you know, Cold War whatever, except for Cold War spy, obviously those books are interesting. Cold War warrior. I'm like, you know, how boring.

But you, you know, you bring up a genre that's not well known, but kind of at the core of our ethos, right? I mean, probably probably the reason why I'm still doing this job, like, what have I been working this for like 12 years or something like that, 13 years? I mean, there's always something new to learn. There's always something interesting and surprising. And like the article I was complaining about that I submitted to DoD review, that was about Special Forces Detachment A in Berlin. And I wrote that and I was like, okay, I unraveled the mystery.

And then suddenly the MLE thing lands in your lap. And it's like, oh, shit. There's all this other stuff going on. there's always more and more. You know, my, I wrote a, I wrote a book that's coming out in December that's going to have a huge amount of special forces history that's never been published before. And one chapter is Detachment A. Another chapter is about Detachment K in Korea. And then blue light, green light, and then the commander's in extremist force.

And I just added like five more pages to the manuscript about the creation of C-37, which was seventh group's SIF team down in Panama. And there's a whole epic story about how they got stood up and did some chicanery to get the facilities and weapons that they needed to do that job. Pretty cool. So yeah, I ended up just this. This was for chess calls. this was before just cause so this would have been 98 so the tasking for C37 I believe came in 77 and I think they finally got it up

and running in 1980 they got like a year extension to get that going so like all this stuff is happening in tandem with with the creation of Delta Force and these other counterterrorism capabilities you know they're trying to do these stand these elements up at the same time what are they using as their model well yeah that's interesting um so charlie beckwith absolutely was using the s as the model for delta force um hence why they have squadrons and troops and so on um when the when when they stand they stood up c37 uh colonel chuck fry who is the battalion

seventh special forces group at the time he called up charlie who he called up charlie who he had served with in Vietnam and asked, hey, do you have any lessons learned, like best practices as I, as I stand up this, this counterterrorism element in, in seventh group. And Colonel Fry reports that Charlie told him, fuck off, Fry, and like hung up the phone. And so it, and so it began there, right? Yeah. So a lot of the special forces counterterrorism capabilities, um, came out of the blue light experience, 1977, 78. They had their own interim counterterrorism force

called Blue Light at Mot Lake in Fort Bragg. And a lot of those lessons learned after Blue Light was deactivated, those lessons learned were kind of retained out at Mont Lake. Who were the Blue Light guys, Jack? Were they drawn from Special Forces? Yeah, yeah.

They were all fifth group guys. And almost all the NCOs were Vietnam. veterans. They were like MacB Saw guys, Sonte Raiders. A lot of them had served in the projects, you know, Sigma and Omega and so forth. These were very seasoned guys. And then the lessons learned the TTPs they developed got retained in special operations training, which was a course that was run into the like late 1990s actually out at Mont Lake. And then the next generation, of all of this comes around later on in the 1980s

when the SIF concept is becoming more formalized and they stood up Sephardic as a course to qualify SIF team members. And in order to do that and the way the SIF mission was structured to augment Delta Force

in real life operations as an extremist force, they had to harmonize the TTPs, right? They had to be on the same sheet of music. So there was a whole process where Sephardic and Phil Hanson, who was a former Delta Force member who helped stand up Sephardic, was a big part of that. And they had to go through all the binders and everything and basically take all the Delta Force stuff and condense it down to just what the SIF guys needed to know to execute their mission, the inextremist mission. And so that was sort of the next iteration that formalized it.

And I think the first Sephardic course was probably ran in 1987. And then I think it got renamed as Sephardic and became more formalized in 1988, as I recall. Jack, let me ask you something about, because I know that your relationship with, you know, with the Army, but more specifically with special forces and probably the Ranger Regiment, probably similar to mine in the Marine Corps, you know, except the Marines just seem to have a much. greater hold and I was in military about 60 years longer than you. But aside from that, you know, it's kind of that and that pride at having been part of the institution, pride in their history, but at the same time, also a determination to be absolutely blunt about the shortfalls and the organization that you love. And, you know, so the admirer of Green Berets, you know, I,

I can also say, though, that just like the Marine Corps, they're a victim of their own legends sometimes. And, you know, when it comes to, and I'll give you an example, when it comes to unconventional warfare, oh, my God, you know, that doctrine became almost a religion. And yet they just didn't, you had all the doctrinares and the only Army SF can do this. Meanwhile, in the real world, this shit was going on, counter ISIS, you know. Right. But it was Marines and sailors and, you know, Air Force as well as Army guys doing this shit, not just Green Berets working out how to do all that stuff, stop working with the resistance in Moseau. Army doctrine didn't change one fucking iota. It didn't even ask for input from that, you know, because who are these non-cognocentee?

They're not part of the UW, you know, and so the doctrine went on and talking about auxiliaries and blah, blah, blah. That, I mean, have you come across that? Do you think, though, do you think that special forces are indeed changing fast enough to adapt to what's going on? I mean, the agents are great. I mean, that's a tough question to answer. And also, I'm not quite current. I left the army like 15 years ago.

But what I do know is that special forces has been conducting some experiments essentially about, you know, messing around with their. task organization of the ODA, the basic maneuver element of special forces. And there's all kinds of different thoughts. And I'd have to look and see where exactly they're at with it. But they're looking to have like, you know, maybe an electronic warfare guy on the team to have maybe a drone guy on the team. You know, maybe cyber to kind of like have these elements as being organic to the ODA structure and bumping the teams up from 12 guys to 16. That's something else they've looked at.

I've even heard some stories about how like they want to have a space force guy on the team, which I think is ridiculous and will never happen. Maybe you'll have a space force guy up at group, you know, group level. But they are looking at these things and it's, it's interesting. I mean, a lot of, um, something that was really influential on me, you know, was science fiction, honestly. And I mean, I have tattoos on me of the film Ghost in the Shell, which in this film, it's a clandestine unit that does direct action, disinformation, cyber warfare.

And now it seems it took, you know, till about today for the army and special operations to come to the conclusion that we should have these blended capabilities in one team. so it's interesting to see that starting to come about yeah it's um i you know i i asked that question being equally critical by the way of the marine corps um but it's it is yeah holding on to holding on to our traditions holding on to the legends of the past are all hugely positive um and and until now it's been positive as far as projecting the ethos for the future. But I'll just give you an example.

You know, I mean, the Marine Corps is grappling with, hey, we need to really bring in a lot. We need to bring in more guys who are, you know, cyber-oriented, EW-oriented. We need way more of these guys than we do with a guy who can carry a 60-pound pack, you know, and strangle someone with a length of cheese while. And that is, you know, that's the image of the new Marine Corps. but it's not the image of the Marine Corps. You know, so how do you reconcile all of this? I think I imagine Army SF's wrestling with the same, some of the same stuff.

Yeah, I mean, the military, I mean, it's like, as you know, I mean, the military is what it is. And like as an animal, it's only so malleable. It's only going to change so much. And there's still, I mean, there's still this sort of like vestigial aspects of military tradition.com about, you know, when you had illiterate draftees. And we're not really there as a country anymore. You have, you know, people with high school degrees, if not college degrees. We're just in a different culture and all this like standing around in formation and

haircuts and it's kind of keeps people in an infantile state, I think, as I, when I look back on it now. And I mean, of course, there needs to be adult supervision. but some of that stuff that's uh that's why it's called the infantry yeah yeah i mean and so but i mean at the same time i mean look that organization like i said is only going to change so much we have to be realistic about that yeah i mean certainly the there's the requirement for kind of mass warfare does not go away um absolutely and yet and yet even that requirement for mass warfare becomes increasingly technical as the Ukrainians are.

Well, that's the fear, you know, that we have these like legacy capabilities, you know, like, you know, mass tax, static line parachuting. And a lot of people say, we'll never do that again. We'll never use that again. But it's one of those things that you get, you get rid of it. And then, you know, six months later, you're going to need it. There's always those feelings lingering. So I'm going to ask you something about totally unrelated.

but I know we're coming to the end of your very valuable time and you've got to leave us to sign autographs and take care of your hair. Eight by 11 lossy photographs, yeah. But, you know, I'm intrigued by the drive you has as an investigative journalist. One thing I've, you know, one point where you have been absolutely, I use a cliche laser focused, has been kind of uncovering hypocrisy. And I admire that, all right? And I hate telling you admire anything.

But I do. But can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, you know, hypocrisy. I know you've gone, there have been some, we talked about the high profile officer cases, but it was never, you know, the theory, the feeling I got was,

it's never personal. It was just, you know, people in positions of authority and hypocrisy. Yeah, people abusing positions. of authority. Yeah, I mean, so from like the Army's perspective, someone like me is a double-edged sword, right? There are some people who feel that I can be an asset to special forces because I write

this stuff. You know, I write these histories. There are some people who, I mean, I've been called a cancer. I've been called the TMZ of special operations, all sorts of things. So there are some people out there who are not huge fans. of your pal Jack. And that's just the name of the game. I mean, I sometimes write, like you said,

expose some bad actors in the ranks and expose some dirty laundry that's getting, you know, swept under the carpet. And when you do that about a closed off insular group of people who are not used to outside criticism, naturally there's going to be some pushback from that. Is there a case you can, is there something, an example you can talk about where that's happened?

I mean, there are, yeah, there are many. I mean, yeah, there's, there's quite a few out there. And I mean, it's the form it takes, well, I mean, it's, it goes all the way from, you know, I had one person threatened to kill my daughter. And they'll, you know, threaten to come after your family. Then there are other times where people threaten to come after you legally. and I have not been sued to this day, but that's the go-to.

Everyone threatens it right off the bat. And then, yeah, but I mean, it's interesting because I maintain a foot in both of these worlds. And there are former colleagues and teammates who I don't think would associate with me at this point. But there are others who do. And there's a lot of support for what I do out there as well. and all of that is just comes with the territory you know so what next jack i'm sorry go ahead jess

no no i was just going to say it would probably be less so if you didn't have one foot in their world yeah if you were just an outsider trying to work your way in they probably would just like pardon my language but like just fuck off whereas with now because you know they can say certain things and you're like yeah that's bullshit you know because you know so yeah that drives that drives some people nuts and it's funny the way they always want to like relitigate my military career. It's like, man, that it's like going, it's like going back in time and relitigating your little league games at this point. Like I'm a little, I'm a little, you know, long in the tooth. Um, you know, it's a so I, but, but that's because they assume that I'm like them and that the

military is my thing and and my time in the army is this like the only thing I have going on in my life. And it's an important part of my life, but it's also quite a ways in the rearview mirror at this point. And I enjoy what I do today. And I like it. But you're right, Jason. Yeah, if I wasn't, you know, sort of a quote unquote inside or the response would have been maybe a little bit different. Yeah. I think a good validation of that is the fact is just a comparison between reactions towards you and say Sean Naylor, right? You know, Sean created,

I mean, when he came out with Relentless Strike, it created furoral. But when it all came down to it, there wasn't a lot. No, I know, when I heard military guys talk about Sean, it was like, yeah, fucking journal. That was a good book, though. You know what I mean, it was.

But it was kind of, okay, that's what we expect. He's a journal. He's a journal. He's kind of the enemy. You know, but there was a sneaking respect. And, of course, they had a, more than a sneaking respect for you, Jack. But with you, when you say something in it,

and I imagine to a lesser extent, far lesser me too, it just, it hits something visceral in people wearing uniform because it looks like a betrayal, right? Yeah. You are, you are violating or murder. You are, you know, you're criticizing Kozanostra publicly. And that makes you a particular type of villain. You know, it's a brother.

Hey, everyone, everyone has a, everyone has some, uh, claim to fame out there. Mine may be that I'm the most controversial former green beret. Oh, this, well, there's, in fairness, there's a couple more. And actually one or two in jail right now. We may, you know, who are in running for that title, Jack. It's a tight race. All right. Okay.

So as we draw to a close, you know, with, uh, with our whole hierarchy chain of on Team House and Eyes on here, I'm going to let you guys close this with whatever, however you want to. And I'm simply going to sign off and say, this was a delightful conversation and very nice again to see you all and to be able to talk to our audience. So it's completely unrelated. But you're just talking about TMZ Jack. We're talking, since they do their, what is it?

Their celebrity spottings, our good buddy, Victor Bout, the arms dealer. Yeah. So apparently the Houthi sent some emissaries to Moscow to broker a, it was like $10 million arms deal. It was supposed to be for like automatic weapons. And who met them, but about. So he's back on the market. So his, apparently his attorney, I didn't know he was a New York based guy. His attorney declined to comment.

Moscow won't comment and the Houthis won't comment. But apparently there's video and pictures of it. that's got to drive CIA up the fucking wall. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Jack's books coming out December 9th. Check it out.

We Defy. The link will be in the description. You can pre-order it right now. Of course, Andy's book, When the Tempest Gathers, also in the description. Really good books.

Jack, we're going to do an audio book, right? Once you lock in the freaking manuscript. I think, I think that Amazon has like AI loaded into it or something like that that will do so an audio or text to speech yeah okay cool i think they can do it automatically um but yeah i i kind of finish the manuscript uh yesterday there's a a great forward from former secretary of defense chris miller uh in the book and um now i just got to

format the paperback edition so people keep asking me is there going to be a hard copying yeah there is i I just can't set up pre-orders on Amazon. They won't let you do it for the paperback for some reason. So ridiculous. It makes no sense why they don't do it. Yeah, I don't get it. What's really cool, though, is they're releasing the paperback same time as hardback, right? No, it's just paperback.

There's not going to be a hard back. Yeah. So you'll, but that will, the paperback will be for sale on December 9th on the release date. Yeah. So check it out. The link is in the description. That's exciting. It's a good, solid.

I'm stoked to finally get it out. And there may be, there may be a volume too. We'll see how things go. What can people do to help support the show, both the team house and IZon? They can go to patreon.com slash the team house. The link is in the description. You get ad free audio and video, some bonus content, things of that. And the early access to the Aizon episodes and stuff like that because I put them out early.

So on Patreon. So help the show out. excuse me help to show out i got it emotional uh youtube is crushing our souls jack can attest to that yeah and they're not playing ball and we're not happy with it but youtube's a big part of our show so patreon dot com slash the team house please yeah thank you guys thank you