The Team House - Former Chief of Ground Branch | Don Parnell | Ep. 335

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Donald “Don” L. Parnell Jr. is a career CIA Paramilitary and Operations officer who retired in 2020 after 35 years of government service. Mr. Parnell served as a senior leader in various CIA positions and has operational experience in Latin America, Near East, East Asia and Europe, to include multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Parnell is broadly experienced in field operations, covert action, and cross-agency coordination. He has worked extensively within the Intelligence, Military and Law enforcement communities, to include FBI, SOCOM, JSOC and DHS. Mr. Parnell’s Awards and Commendations include: The Distinguished Intelligence Cross, the highest award given by CIA for extraordinary valor/heroismThe Distinguished Intelligence Star, the 2nd highest award given for voluntary acts of courageThe Wazir Akbar Khan Medal, awarded by Afghanistan President Karzai.The Career Intelligence Medal, for distinguished career service.Find Don here: ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/donald-l-parnell-jr-1836066/-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:LUCY⬇️https://lucy.co/HOUSEUse the code "House" for 20% off your first order!The Perfect Jean ⬇️http://theperfectjean.nyc/HOUSE15for 15% off!!____________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️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/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"Want to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#cia #groundbranch Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

It was a supposed to be kind of a quiet day. We were kind of in the process of we were in the process of having the Taliban come into our village and we were going to negotiate the peace with Kandahar with him. Of course, Karzai was with us. And then this happened. So it was really a setback. Karzai was lightly wounded. It's superficial.

But, you know, of course, he could have been killed. And that would have really turned things in a different direction. It was just a really bad day And because we You know it's obviously friendly fire I don't know I don't really like the term too much But it's anything but it hurts just a month But I had never been at ground zero

A 2000 pound J-DAM I hope I never am again It was it was it was it was It was a day that changed the rest of my life About how far away from the impact do you think you were I was in the little building, but there was a big plexiglass window in front of me. I was actually sitting on a footlocker,

starting to work on my laptop and type some things out. So all the frag came in that window, and it's a pretty good-sized window, it was probably about 10 or 12 feet wide. And so that didn't help. And that was, that, that, it was, man, 50 meters, 40 yards right outside my window. So it was very close.

I can, yeah, I just go baseball. Yo, what's up, guys? Today's episode sponsored by Lucy nicotine. It's 100% pure nicotine, always tobacco-free. Lucy breakers are nicotine patches with an extra little surprise. Each pouch holds a capsule that can't be broken and open to release extra flavor and hydration. Set yourself up with a subscription and have Lucy delivered straight to your door. I've been rocking these for the last couple weeks.

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that I'll throw in a little pouch and it's uh it's freaking awesome I love Lucy you would love Lucy too do us a favor go to lucy dot co slash house and use a promo code house to get 20% off your first order Lucy has a 30 day refund policy if you change your minds you can send it back no sweat again that's lucy dot co use the code house to get 20% off and here comes to find print lucy products are only for adults of legal age and every order is age verified Warning, this product contains nicotine, and is an addictive chemical. Thanks, guys. Special operations, covert ops, espionage, the team house with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Hey, everyone, welcome to episode 335 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy

with our guest today, Donald Parnell. Don served for 24 years. and the CIA, and as I recall, 11 years before that with the Marine Corps. He served all over the world, mainly in war zones, went all the way up to become the chief of ground branch, bouncing around between being an operations officer and a paramilitary officer. He has also been awarded the Intelligence Cross, and we're very excited to have you on the show today, Don. Thanks for joining us.

Absolutely thrilled I'm being here, Jack. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. So Don, let's jump into it, man, a little bit with your origin story. Tell us a little bit about, you know, how you grew up and how that took you towards, I think initially it was the police department. Yeah, no, actually initially I went to the Marine Corps, then I went to the police department. Oh, okay, okay, got you.

But I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'm a multi-ethic guy. My mother's Korean. My parents were younger when they had me. They're only 21 years old, so we've always been close in age. My mom had come to the United States in the late 50s and met my father in Oklahoma when she was in school. Then they had me. And so then seven years later they had my sisters who happened to be twins.

But pretty much great, great parents, great upbringing. My mom's still alive. My dad just passed last year. But fantastic parents just had a great family life growing up. We, say, I was in Tulsa up until about the third grade, and then we, my dad worked for the oil companies. He was actually a landman, which has been made famous now with the Billy Bob Thornton movie and stuff like that. But he did that stuff back in the old days. And we moved to New York, White Plains.

We lived in White Plains for five years. I know where that is. Yeah, sure you do. That was the late 60s in the early 70s. And then, and then at 1774, we moved to Fort Worth, Texas. He still worked for, he just, he was with Texaco and he moved on to another company. And so I went to basically eighth grade high school and college in Texas. So Texas has always kind of been my home, per se, Fort Worth, Texas in particular.

It's, I still have some family in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and stuff like that. My sister still lives there. That's when my dad lived up to his death. I mean, so it's for, especially the west side of Fort Worth's always been considered my old home and stuff like that. I have a number of friends back in the area. Went to school. Went straight to college. My parents or my father was one of those guys.

You will go to college. You will go to school. You were not going to do anything else. So I was a big football player and I was a big athlete in high school and growing up. And I wanted to play football in the back in those days in the defunct Southwest Conference, Texas and all the Texas schools and stuff. like that. But I was about a step too slow and maybe an inch too short. So I, unless I want to be a tackling dump.

So I ended up going to a, at the time as an AI school, now it's Division III, a school called Austin College, which is north of Dallas up on the OU border in Sherman, Texas. They had a four-year college football team, everything. And we just, I played there for four years. Fantastic time. It was the best decision I made. my entire life up to that point was decided to go to school at Austin College. My junior year, we won the NAI National Championship of Football, had some great success,

amazing coach, just amazing friends, amazing connections that I made while at Austin College. And then, you know, like a lot of us, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. I got out of school. So I heard about this program called the Marine PLC program, leaders course that you can go to marine oCS between the summers of your of years in the skungy summers of your college years so i went the plc combined it was called uh it was 10 weeks long back then in the summer of 82 oCS boot camp it completely crushed me i somehow i made it through uh i lost like 40 pounds so it was just i went from like two i was in football

shape and it went for like 225 to like a buck 85 in like 10 weeks. But it was fantastic. It was, you know, I got back, went to my, came back for my senior and football and senior in college. Had a great year, a great final year. And then it was like, okay, I graduated from OCS. I can then take my commission as a, as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. So I said like, hey, this is another great thing. I wanted to fly helicopters. I was, I've always been fascinated by helicopters. I still am to this day. But I took the Navy flight physical and I was determined that I didn't have the eyesight. I had an astigmatism that they couldn't correct. So I still joined the Ring Corps under a ground contract and I went to the basic school. You know,

every Marine second lieutenant goes to the basic school, whether you're ground or aviation contract. And there I got my, I got to become an infantry officer after six months. at the basic school, went to the IOC, the MTF course. It was a ball buster back in. I think it's a bigger ball buster today. It was fantastic, great. First time young, you know, 22 years old. I had a great time.

Then I, you know, I was in MOT 302 now. I pushed out and got orders to Camp Pendleton, third battalion, first Marines. And went with my first unit out in Pendleton and absolutely loved it. I still mean, that was. over 40 years ago and I still keep in contact with a lot of those guys. We still get together quite often. Just absolutely just loved every minute that I was out there with those guys.

Remember that unit with 3-1, did a, you know, did the usual Westpac deployment, things like that, floating on a big, great boat, part of an amphibious task force. It was just, it was fantastic. It was, it was a mid-80s. Not a lot was going on then. Lebanon. Yeah, Lebanon. on. That was the MOW back there, and now they're called Mews out of the East Coast.

And that was about it. I mean, there were a few other things that were happening. And then after my time as a lieutenant, I was coming up on captain. And there's an opportunity for me to go to my B billet. In the Marine Corps, you basically going to leave the fleet as an officer. And as a senior first lieutenant or junior captain, you're going to go out and either go to the drill field, go back to Quantico, go recruiting, duty. I had an opportunity to go flight back seat in the OV10 Bronco. They don't fly them anymore. I don't

know people are familiar with it. It's a twin-tel boom, a tober prop, light attack, aerial constance vehicle. Aircraft, excuse me, that I absolutely loved it. I had three plus years in it. I just ate it all up.

Really great friends. Kind of was able to scratch that aviation itch that I had when I wanted to first join and become a helicopter pilot. flattening the backseat of the OV10 gave us a bit of training. They called us aerial observers.

It was a program that goes all the way back to the Vietnam days. I put in a combat arms officer in the backseat of the Bronco. It was right. A lot of Ford Air Control, RDI Air Spot, all that good stuff. Aerospace System helicopter escort, multi-functional aircraft. Marine Corps got rid of it in the mid-90s. it had gone by the wayside. Then I went to school,

career level school, fantastic here in the Marine Corps, and I was debating on whether to get out, and then I ended up going out to the fleet as a captain, as company commander. I was in, I was in, I was going to get these things, I was in one three. I was in three one.

I was also in one three as a weapons company commander. That was during the, Somalia had just happened taking place. Our unit didn't go to Somalia. Clinton had come in, his administration, they had the big drawdown, and all the big cuts that were coming. You know, everything is happening today. People are talking about all these cuts,

but we went through all this in the 90s with the Clinton administration. You know, he cut like 377,000 federal jobs, and he cut a bunch of people out of the military back in the 90s. I was, I was, I took the, I was offered an incentive, to get out at that point in time. There's a different time in the Marine Corps. It's a different time in the world. And I moved back to Texas.

And I didn't, I was applying to all the three-letter acronyms. We had our first child in Hawaii and then we had moved back. And meanwhile, I always wanted to be a cop and a fireman. I mean, what kid doesn't want to be a cop and a fireman, right? So my plan was go to the police academy and then become a volunteer fire and fire. and settle right there in the west side of Fort Worth, where I'm from. So I started out. I did the police cadet.

I went to the Arlington Police Department right next between Dallas of Fort Worth. It's right where the Texas Stadium is, where the Cowboy Stadium is at now. Loved it. I was only there for a short time. I was out on the streets for a short time, went to the academy field training out in the streets. I say to this day, even after 40 years of bouncing around doing variety of things, that was one of the funnest jobs I ever had in my life. Now, this was 30 years ago, okay?

I don't know if I want to be a cop in today's world, but in 95 and 96, I had rookieitis. It was really one, I was applying to all the three-letter acronyms. The agency kept calling me back. And I just got farther along in the hiring process with them. It literally was the last place in the world that I thought I was ever going to work. I didn't know anybody in the military. I didn't know anybody that ever worked in the intelligence community. I literally mailed a resume and a cover letter to a post office box in Langley, Virginia,

and kind of forgot about it. I mean, that was back before the Internet was really kind of going. So it was something that, and then it happened. And this 18-month, almost 24-month processed took place. We, I'm out on the streets, just really loving life. and then I got an offer to become a paramilitary officer at CIA. And it wasn't an easy decision. We had a great setup back home in Fort Worth.

So we had one child at the time. We just had a really good setup. And it was kind of nuts for me to pack the family up and move. But that's what we did. And so I, in the summer 96, I moved the family up to Northern Virginia. and then the next 24 plus years, you know, we're on this crazy ride that I would have never expected my wife subsequently started working at the organization in about 10 months after I did. Wow.

It just just kind of happened to work that way. She had a background in banking. So she became a finance and budget officer and had her full career. Is that why they offered you paramilitary operations? officer because of your Marine Corps background, they figured that was like a good fit? Yeah, that was a good fit. Back then, we weren't called that. We were called something else. I think they were called SOPOS back then. I don't even know what that stood for. But the paramilitary operations officer didn't come to a little bit later on in some time in the

2000s. But back then, it was a very, very small community. There wasn't a lot of us, you know, As you come in as a PMO back then, and even today, you'll come into one of the, back to one of the branches, airground or maritime, spent some time in each one of those. And then, you know, you kick down and go to the farm and you become opt certified at the farm just like any other prospective operations officer or case officer. But I just would, I would just go back to ground branch or back then, those days, it was called Special Operations Group ground branch. and Rosne was still big back then. Flag Columby was big back then. And we all thought, you know, let's go do that. We're going to be in Latin America.

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move my family down there thinking that okay this is where the future is you know a couple tours down there popped back up to Washington GV and you know kind of bouncing out of GV for the rest of my career which is kind of what I did but of course 9-11 hit

our paramilitary branch back then was not that big I've heard numbers like during the 80s and 90s that like ground branch had like 12 guys in it. We could all fit around a conference room, you know, maybe a couple chairs on the outside. It was pretty darn small. I was a nugget back then, too. And, yeah, it was not a lot of, not a lot of people.

We just hadn't grown our numbers and we just didn't get to support. And then also, our stock goes way up, obviously, with what we happened. And we know, here we go. I get recalled back to Washington a few weeks after. after 9-11, things are crazy back inside the building, as you can only imagine in those early days, trying to organize, you know, they're getting teams in with the Northern Alliance.

You know, they had first teams in there, you know, late September of 01 and rolling into October of 2001, and then we get to the end of October of 1. And then our time, my time comes up. So, okay, you're the next team out. You're going to be the first team into the south. We had teams with the Northern Alliance when you had plenty of guys on the talk about that, pushing down from the north towards Kabul. And that's been well documented in books and movies and stuff like that.

Our team was actually going to be coming in to the south of the mid part of Afghanistan and push south again towards Kandahar. So we actually inserted in the early November, I think it was November, like November 8th or not. ninth. It was about a six and a half hour insert on four Blackhawks. They had hit the refueler a couple times. It was a less than, it was an interesting insert because it was, I would call the zone semi-hot. We weren't too sure who was shooting at who, but they were shooting at something. We were separated upon insert. I was on the four stick. The other three birds went into another HLC. It took a while for us to link up, but we did get linked. up. It was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a less than optimal answer, but we all got

in safe, didn't get hurt too much. And then we, we basically humped over the mountains for a while, met up with some of the Karzai's tribes. And we ended up staying in a very small village. And this is in the middle of Orsgan province. And we were there for three or four days, kind of keeping a bit out of sight. Things were still very tedious, you know, with Karzai being back in you know because cars i first went in and we had to pull him back out and then we went back in with them a lot of people didn't realize that when he went in the first time the telemen were chasing pretty bad we actually went in and pulled him out and then and then uh came back in with him uh and so that that was there was only 20 of us cars i made 21 so it wasn't like was it was it was it your

paramilitary team in an oda together yeah okay pretty much in a couple a couple a couple of couple other guys down at Brank. Gotcha. Is what it was. And we made about 20. It was made about 20. So there wasn't a lot of us. It all happened.

I can't even begin to articulate how fast it happened. I mean, we landed in Islamabad at like 11 o'clock at night. And then the next day we're in down south and someplace in Pakistan where we can push into Afghanistan. And then that night of that same night, we instantly. I mean, it was it was less than 48 hours, which we hit, we hit country when we actually went in. It happened so quick because the Northern Alliance was pushing down so fast. And they wanted Karzayan because he was our guy. Oops, you got a good.

We're good. I can't hear you. Yep, I still can't hear you. Can't hear me. There we go. I got you now. Okay. And then, so we launched on them really quick.

notice. I mean, there's some, a couple of guys in ODA. Yeah, I literally met when I got on the helicopter. It was just, it was just that catch and catch can. So we got in, we, we, we started then arming and equipping Karzai's tribal over the course of the following weeks. We ran out of water early on. We couldn't get our resupply in. So we had drink afghan well water. That really sucked. Really bad. That's the only time I've ever ran out of water. in a real life situation. And, well, technically we did have Afghan well water, some iodine tablets and those little...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the charcoal in them? Yeah, yeah, you don't get a lot of water out of that. So we got our supply eventually, ended up in Taryn Kot. Taliban didn't know we were in Taryn Kot when we got there in Zero Dark 30 in the morning. And they started coming up the ways from Kahnahard north towards Terenkot. And then it's clear blue day, the ODA and the combat controllers went out, just slaughtered them. You know, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it's literally, we had air stacked up to the heavens,

and they just came in and they just started, and they stopped him dead in their tracks. After a number of, after, we're in current hot for one of eight, nine, ten days, reorganizing, doing some drops. We started pushing towards Condahar, doing lethal aid drops, building up Karzai's forces. as we went, mostly with weapons, ammo, supplies of all different types. The Air Force was fantastic, and their air drops here were right on time, spot on every time. Amazing stuff. We kind of ran into them just north of Condahar, where they started resisting pretty well.

So we had a little bit of fighting there. we took over and occupied some spaces on this little knob of a hill. We could see the blood trails coming off the hill and stuff like that where they had taken injuries and casualties. And then there's a little medical clinic, old medical clinic, right next to this little knob of the hill. And I'll tell you why this is important in the second. And it's the first clinic building we'd stayed in Hedieie and Glassin.

It was just place, class. It was kind of nice. Oh, we've got Glassin here. Well, a couple of days later, That's the, that's, on December 5th, we got unfortunately hit with our own 2,000 pound JDM, came off of B-52. Investigation found out, I think it was a year so later that the air controller had changed out the batteries and his GPS. It reverted back to his own location. And even after checking in a few times, he dropped a bomb on top of his own position, on top of us.

So it landed literally right on top of us. Killing, you know, three members, well, three U.S. service members, and Dan Pedatory, Cody Prosser and J.D. Davis. And wounding a lot more. Almost all the arrest of the ODA that came in with this was all wounded after that were met a vacact. Plus, just a lot of Afghans. A lot of Afghans. it was a supposed to be kind of a quiet day we were kind of in the process of we were in the process of having the Taliban come into our village and we were going to negotiate the peace with kandahar with him of course Karzai was with us and and then this happened so it was really a setback Karzai was lightly wounded

is superficial but uh you know of course he could have been killed and that would have really turned things in a different direction It was just a really bad day. And because we, you know, it's obviously friendly fire. I don't know. I don't really like the term too much. Firm fire. It's anything but it hurts just a month. But I had never been at ground zero of a 2,000 pound J-DAM.

I hope I never am again. It was, it was, it was a day that changed the rest of my life. About how far away from the impact do you think you were? I was in the little building, but there was a big plexiglass window in front of me. I was actually sitting on a footlocker starting to work on my laptop and type some things out. So all the frag came in that window. And it's a pretty good size window. It was probably about 10 or 12 feet wide.

And so that didn't help. And that was that, that, it was, man, 50 meters, 40 yards right outside my window. So it was very close. Yeah, I just throw baseball up there. Yeah, yeah. If you weren't inside that building, it probably would have killed you. It would, yeah, I would definitely injure to me more than I got injured. It was a funny sequence of events led up to that.

You know, one guy was going to need this, and I barred this. I'd barred the team sergeant's not night before, and I was going to run him back up the heel, but I got intercepted, and the other guy's going to take him up to the hill. He tells my team chief, and he's Greg Vogel, and he says, hey, can you write up this case? So I can you start working on some cable traffic? And I start writing stuff up, and then three minutes goes by, and both. So, I mean, you have these weird sequence of events that I could have easily been standing next to JD.

Now, the bomb hit at J.D.'s feet or hit him. I mean, there was nothing left of him. He was completely incinerated. It literally landed right on top of him. And I would have been standing right there with him, giving him back his nods. And the ODA always made a good couple of them. of coffee in the morning, so I had my canteen cup, and I was going to make my cup of coffee. And just a strange sequence of events that happened that I wasn't there.

Other guys were, you know, I, you know, I don't know. I just, and then when the blast came in, the windows, I was, all I heard was a sucking sound. That's only way I can describe it, because it's coming in, you know, maximum terminal velocity, 140, 150 miles in there, whatever that is. and just through this and then this unbelievable explosion we had thought that

we had gotten some probes the day before we took a couple RPG rounds and it hit some of our Torio to Hyluxes and the gas tanks and it caused those secondary cause that major explosion but in the back of my head I'm going man that's a big RPG and that's a big gas tank

but I was I kind of I was pushed to the ground there was nobody there to push me I don't know how I ended up in position it actually kind of fell into the blast rolled up into a ball all the I remember thinking slow motion

all the shrapnel frat coming over me it was my first of two I should say things where I was think I was a byproduct of divide intervention and I'm not an extremely originalist religious person but

close calls yeah And I, you know, no really real ways. How do I fall into the blast? I rolled up in, I mean, I even rolled it up in the ball really well. And it was just strange. Anyhow, we got, we and my buddy kind of checked each other out. He got blown in the corner.

And then we just had, we thought we were going to go fight. And we kind of figured that, took us a while to figure out that we weren't getting probed. And there was still concern where the Taliban was going to take advantage of this. So then we just started dealing with some significant. casualties. I mean, casualties beyond my level of medical abilities, and most people's medical level abilities, unless you're an ER trauma doctor. We had a couple of PAs, three PAs that were, you know, 18Ds that just saved a lot of lives and did amazing work. But at the end of the day, we were faced with some very traumatic injuries during the course of this. One of them was

I read out building one of the courses of this and there was a U.S. soldier. I don't know who he was. He had just come in that morning. We'd gotten some additional troops in that morning at like 3 o'clock of the morning. This was about 9 o'clock in the morning. This was about 6 hours later. And I didn't know this guy. He was laying there on the ground on his back,

but all his intestines were out and everywhere. It reminds me a little bit about, if you've also seen, the movie saving private Ryan and the scene on the beach where the guy has his intestines laying down and screaming for his mother uh it's just like that except it doesn't have any water just a lot of sand and dirt so all this stuff is covered so i you know i go over and he's a lot got a pulse and you know he's breathing and i we had these rounds as mortal rounds and RPG rounds on the hill where the bomb hit they started to cook off and so they're shooting and explosions are going off.

And we're like, as somebody shooting at us, what's going on here? So I throw myself across this young soldier's body, just instinctively. And this guy waits up, throws me off of them and runs about the 20 feet back into the, straight to the steps the little building I came out of and then passes out. Wow. Now, that was fine, but all. his intestines and upper and lower and I don't know how many feet you have in you but you got a lot all right 35 40 feet we're dragging behind him so i would you know so i'm i'm lack of a better

term i'm picking them up like you know like this okay and i'm carrying them or and i kind of you know here's a little bit here's a little bit there and and and i kind of get over to him and roll him on his back and I pop him down on his belly and wash him off and never got the kid's name. I know the kid lived because he wasn't considered a KIA then that incident. So never got his name, you know, got him cleaned up and he survived for what I understand. But we, you know, other blast injuries were some of the guys off the other U.S. soldiers, a lot of Afghans. I mean, I had an Afghan hand me an arm and the arm was still connected and the kid was standing right next to me that I was connected to.

And, you know, he's kind of does this thing. And he's, you know, those old Afghans with one of the beards and just, you know, wanting me to make it better. And, you know, just very challenging, challenging things to deal with, you know, and or you have, you know, you have 30 seconds save this guy's life. Go now. Boom. Right.

Boom. Go. With what you got right now. That's all you got. Nothing else. And, you know, we do all do the ABCs and first aid and, you know, stop the bleeding, get the breathing, chicked airways, all that good stuff. But, you know, it was challenging. It was challenging for me.

I had medical training. And I didn't have enough. At times, I felt impotent. I felt incapable. I should have had more medical training. I always preach this. You can never have enough medical training. Okay, especially trauma.

You can never have enough. I'm rusty now, but, you know, that's a skill that you just got to constantly, constantly scrape off the desk, rub, you know, working back up, get it warmed back up again because you just can never have enough of that stuff. You can really save people's lives. And we did that day, collectively, we did. And then we, we know, we picked things up and negotiated a piece of Talmud. We moved to the Kondahar. And then it was the bottom of west. We went through, we were looking for al-Qaeda had a bunch of safe houses and schoolhouses and stuff and conduct.

So most of them were abandoned, not all that squatters. So we just started going after all those places. And then we picked up a treasure trove of information. We went to some of the terrorist training camps. You know, once again, our sensitive site exploitation was significant. And it was pretty elementary back in those days. the SSC process. But we still picked up some pretty

amazing stuff. We didn't find out about a lot of this stuff until much later. And then we got Karzai up to Kabul right before Christmas of that year. And he was, you know, he had been elected as the interim prime minister

during the bond conference and Obstencia when we were in November when we were pushing down with him. And then I think that he was the interim president for them and then became the president later, four or five months later, the official president later. And then on a 12-year run, circa 12-year run, after that, we had no idea that Karzai would be the president for 12 years of Afghanistan. I would joke about when he got, when he got, you know, we're

staying in Mudhuts, drinking chai together and talking, you know, he's a good guy. He was a good guy. He was a, he was a different guy back then. I still have a lot of respect for him. He's, he's still one of the bravest men I've ever met. I've told people that many times. what he did he didn't have to do it the price on his head at the time and even through the years you know there's been a lot of disagreements a lot of people have their own opinions about him as as he matured in office over that 12 year period but it's a tough job for anybody I used to tell him that I remember joking with them I said when he got weird sitting in one of the mud huts one day is early on he got voted by the bond conference no take over as the enterprise I said you know

we used to call him Mr. K. That was all like, that's what we called Mr. K. His English is perfect. Like, man, you're going to make it the White House before me. He goes, do you think so? I go, I absolutely know so. And he was true. He never said, I always wanted to go to the White House.

You know, who doesn't want to go to the White House, the noble office? You're going to be able to do that now. I think he did that really in his first, first year as his presidency. But he's like, yeah, you're probably right, you know. He, his English is fine. I saw him giving his acceptance seat

to the bond conference on the M.R.SET phone in English without any notes and it was just very eloquent, very, very smooth.

Just, just a very special guy. That just changed over the course of that period of the 2000, early 2010s. Basically had an

impossible job. in a country that was, you know, had an illicitory rate in the 70 or 80% that just had no infrastructure. Didn't have a lot of things going forth from the get-go, okay? And still does it to this day. And it was pretty much an impossible task when we showed up in early 2001 and late 2002. So that was, it was, it was interesting to be part of that. A lot of that perspective I didn't get until I came back. from that first trip because, you know, we're in there.

We really only know what's going on right in front of you. And the whole, the weight of Karzai taking over and him being with us like he was, kind of bringing him to power in Afghanistan. Agree or disagree with it. It was a fascinating thing to be a part of. He's a fascinating individual. He's someone that I still have a lot of great respect for. And he literally had the toughest job you could ever have.

I still think. We used to joke about that with him. But, you know, how that progressed over the next 12 years. And then how we, you know, progressed over the next 20-plus years in Afghanistan. I'm sure we'll talk a bit more about how Afghanistan proceeded in the subsequent years. But, I mean, it sounds like there wasn't a lot of rest for you that you were over to Pakistan in short order. Yeah. I spent a lot of time in the war zones in the early days.

Pakistan, when we first started chasing after AQ in the Fata, the federal ministered tribal areas. After some time later in 2002, the Pakistanis kind of clamped down on our activities significantly. And then we, for the next eight or nine years, we played that game with them, which led up to obviously the UBLRA, which everybody knows about. and playing that game with the PACs. First of all, I've worked with a lot of great Pakistani officers, and some of them, I won't name them, but I mean, you know, I really have a lot of admiration for it. They were quite enjoyable to work with.

But, you know, the challenge was you'd have, you know, two guys working with you and two maybe two guys working against you at some time, so it could be kind of challenging. So, but I've got a really great thing to say about are my Pakistani comrades. They were just, and a lot of them really tried hard to do, and did with a really tough job. The political dynamics were amazingly difficult to deal with at all different levels. A lot of this, you know, we didn't get until we reflected back on it.

At the time it was happening, you know, was there collusion with the Pakistani forces with al-Qaeda in the federal administrative travelers? Because, you know, we had this, you know, history has a tendency of repeating itself. We had the whole chief, old Laos, Cambodia, Chiemint Trail thing from Vietnam going on, all right? They all run across the border. And yet that imaginary line right there, the Duran line, which was sometimes not well defined.

And in some places, in that part of Afghanistan, it's not defined at all. And where Pakistan starts and where Afghanistan begins, that, you know, that was, that was, we couldn't go on the other side. And it was, it was, it was, we, we dragged ourselves down and here we had a Vietnam scenario. all over again, you know. And we don't learn from our past lessons, lessons learned very well, our past experiences. We repeat a lot of same mistakes. It's a difficult scenario, isn't it, where Pakistan kind of becomes the fulcrum of the war in Afghanistan.

I mean, we did the strategic bombing of Laos and Cambodia. That didn't stop it. The agency had their drone program in Pakistan. You mentioned some of the early on stuff. I mean, it's not as if we didn't try. No, it's not. We did. And the drone program was absolutely fantastic successful. And we did try until they finally put the clamps down us early in 2002. In 2002. But it was also go back more on the strategic level. A lot of it was dictated by the relationship that Bush 43 had been from Sharf. And how that trickled down was huge. There was a certain amount of trust and confidence that the president. at the time I'd put in that relationship.

A lot of us realize, you know, it's easy for me to say this now, but I actually said it then was like, no, they're pulling the will over our eyes. And there was a cycle to what the higher-ups in the Pakistani government were doing with us to keep us incentivized and get us in HVT every six months or a year. And we just keep the money flowing and keep things going. We all saw this like, Jack, you saw this cycle. A lot of us have seen this cycle. I can remember explaining this to codels that would come out and visit us when I was at certain locations in Afghanistan in the early days as we got into the mid-2000.

And you just saw the cycle repeat itself. And I said, oh, yeah, we just got so-and-so. So this is what's going to happen. We're going to go through those six or eight months and there's going to be more posture. Then about a year from now, we're going to get another one. Oh, we're going to be happy. Let's go. And we give them their $2 billion a year and everybody's happy.

And this is going to continue for as long as they can. do so because we had you know we were in some of our cases just naive and how we went about things when I come out of foreign policy with that that's how I call it there was in the 20 plus years we were in both theaters we're still in Iraq I mean Rob but but in Afghanistan as much as you try to get the senior policymakers whether they're congressman senators senior members of the civilian or military members of the Pentagon or whatever it might be, or even in the intelligence community, there was just, there was always, there was just disconnect. They just didn't quite understand the realities on the ground.

They didn't want it to. You saw a lot of people come out and they're trying to, you know, they have a certain narrative they want to go back with, whether they're on the left or the right, you know, to push certain things and they're trying to find bits and pieces to fit that narrative. And I'm like, you know, that's not the way, that's not the way to do it. And you saw it happening in front of our eyes. I'm not going to name any names. I mean, everybody did it.

This is both Republican Dimmock. I'm not pointing fingers. And it just turned into this big, huge political mess. And there was really just a completely different understanding. I mean, the cultural differences in Afghanistan were so enormous. Trying to, you're talking to some of these people had never even, never even had in contact with the Russians back in the 80s. I mean, you've been there.

You know, I mean, how am I going to explain the World Trade Center? and when they've never seen anything bigger than a two-story med hut. Right. I mean, I remember when we were in some of these Afghan villages early on, there were four or five things that I could find that gave me any indication that we were in the 20th, that the 20th century ever existed. Now, granted, we were technically in the 21st century at this time. Cell phone?

Nope, nope, nope, nope. I got there yet. Kalashnikov. Klishkinovko, that's one, a weapon. Automobile. Usually a vehicle. Usually a vehicle, something around. The third one is usually a well done by an NGO, a water well, some sort of something like that, right?

The fourth and fifth ones are very obvious, but hard to figure out what they are. Fourth one is plastics. Plastics were invented in 20th century. after the Second World War, we had a lot of plastics, right? And the fifth one was the easiest one to see, but the hardest to find. And that was polyester. Polyester didn't exist until the 20th century. So you had, there might have been one more thing.

I couldn't, you know, it's debatable on whether there was another thing like there. But you had those five things that told you that the 20th century did exist at some particular point in time in Afghanistan. Otherwise, it's like biblical times, basically. It pretty much is. And then we're trying to, why are you here? We look like, I mean, we're sitting there and we've got all our kit on and all our gear on. We looked like. Space aliens.

Yeah, space aliens being down from Mars there. I mean, that's what we look like. It was, they would come up and touch our skin and ask the touches. They're very curious. Are we like them? You know, they had no idea. This is really out in the hinterlands, too. And it was just, it was fascinating, just the dynamic of that.

But, you know, I hate to, you don't want to clump everybody together, but I love the Afghans. I love the Afghan people. They were very, very accommodating, loving people. I fought with a lot of our Afghan brethren, as did you. And Dave and guys, you know, they gave their life to save my life many times with some of our indigenous forces. And I just, I just had the greatest respect for them. And some of the stuff I witnessed over the 20 years or so. I do almost anything I could form.

So I do like that. I mean, I do have an appreciate, some appreciation for the culture, but it's so difficult. It's so just completely opposite everything we had. So here we are in Afghanistan. If you remember,

the time's okay, O.2 comes along really quickly, and then what are we going to do? We're going to go invade Iraq. All right. I said this back then. People say it now, it's not for the cosmic,

what the heck are we doing invading a Muslim country? Okay. So the same, you know, group from Bush 43 administration decides to do this. I'm in Iraq. I'm in Ali al-Aulim, along with a lot of other guys sitting there, what the heck are we doing here? Why aren't we back in Afghanistan where the fight really is? And so did the Iraq invasion? Fascinating unto itself.

Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, where you were during the invasion? I mean, were you embedded with an ODA again? We were, we, I, my particular team wasn't working, we at times worked with different ODAs from fifth group. We had a little bit different task when I went in. I'll just leave it at that, but we were sometimes co-located with some of those guys.

A lot of us ended up in the same spot south of the job after the big push inward, push inward because third ID was just moving, you know, so fast that, you know, you couldn't stay, you couldn't keep ahead of them. And it was a very conventional war in that regard. It was extremely conventional. Big tanks, big Bradley's, attack helicopters, the whole thing. You know, it's what big army does very well.

And if you're not part of that, you need to get the hell out of their way or they'll either shoot you or run you over. That's basically it, right? and but we were part of a small team that were we had some command of control elements to it as we went in and we ended up setting up south in the Jof and the Seaman factory with a lot of other teams when the big dust storm hit I don't know if you remember that that was still one of the most unbelievable natural phenomena I've ever experienced in my entire life

was when that dust storm hit I mean I've never seen a wall of dirt that just lasted for like a day and a half. There was unbelievable. Ended up setting up part of our unit was we set up Baghdad, we set up the office in Baghdad first week and then buy up and then put up in the green zone when we first went to Baghdad. So we were there with a lot of the units and some of our other teams that were using assets and stuff like that we're working with in coordination with

our military counterparts. But it was it was. It was conventional warfare. It was crazy. The Saddam Fetaheim were just absolutely nuts. They were psychotic in what they would do. They would suicide missions, just charging tanks and Bradley's and just getting mowed down. I mean, it was just absolutely crazy.

You know, my biggest concern during that entire Afghan, excuse me, entire Iraq campaign, I did not want to get slung. I did not want to be the recipient of a chemical attack. I think that was shared across the conflict zone with everybody, every soldier and marine in the conflicts. None of us wanted to get slimed. And there wasn't enough decontamination units in the military to take care of everybody. And that was my number one concern.

And I could remember a certain time where we were south in the Jaff earlier than morning where we had thought the unit, there was some rumors in theater. We felt, we smelled a very heavy sulfur smell in the air. And I'm driving my Humvee and I look over at my buddy and he looks at me. And we're looking at each other because not real all that concern is like, is he going to start doing the funky chicken? Amar I'm going to start doing the fucking chicken here any second. I mean, I hate to say that, but we're like, okay, that doesn't smell.

Yeah, white foam coming out of the mouth. Yeah. And, you know, you're reaching for your gas, man. but is it too late? You know, what's that smell? And we pull up to the top of this little plateau, and there's a couple of troops from the 101st there, and they're in full mop-for gear.

I mean, all mopped out. You know, I get out, and I'm wearing my Callaway golf hat, you know. You know, I got my Columbia shirt on. That's such a CIA story right there. Do you have the Hawaiian shirt on? Yeah, it wasn't Hawaii. But I get out and I'm like, hey, well, what's going on, man? What's up?

He goes, who now? you guys with and I said I that's not that important we're all on the same team I go what's up with the mop four and you're god damn if I know what's up with the mob for I've been in this thing for the last 10 hours how come you're not you know what I poor kid you know I'd been in that bobs seat for like 12 hours and then what was interesting right by that checkpoint was there's a couple of dead horses oh yeah so and but there were a bunch of dogs eating breakfast down down on these horses And so initially

I think it was a horse And I can't remember But there was larger farm animals And at first I concerned me But there was a lot of stray dogs And the dogs seemed to be fine So I'm like

Okay I don't know what killed the horse Or the cow But the dogs seemed to be fine You know It's like putting the parakeet In a little cage You know

We actually had those In Kuwait at our base No we had Really? Birds and cages. Yeah, yeah, it was old-fashioned. We had a lot of other NBC warnings and all this other stuff, right? But we actually had birds and cages, yeah.

And so can never have enough warning when it comes to stuff like that, right? And so the dogs barking and being alive made me feel a little bit better that there was anything there. And it turned out there wasn't a chemical attack. But then that was always our big concern. We got into Baghdad. It was day one. And it was crazy at Biap. We ended up setting up at one of the presidential palaces after a day or so.

And it was just the green zone was just getting established. All the, all the MEC units were formed up there at the, remember the arches, the big arches where the parade deck was. And then Baghdad had turned into basically it was all the have-nots were taking. from the halves. Right. So it was, it was, I don't know if I could say this,

but it was basically, everybody was grabbing everything they could and taking it, I've taken it home. I mean, you saw, you know, refrigerators on top of cars.

You had to, nobody cared about anybody else. You could go out to tell, nobody cared about you. They're just all literally RF and everything. And this went on for quite a few days. Okay. I mean, it is, they are totally just completely just, just, it's just no law.

Everybody's going after it, taking what they can't, right? It was just crazy. I mean, I've never seen anything like that. And then after a couple days, things kind of calmed down. But the, all in bad, it means that people are just taking stuff from everybody else. Ken, can you tell us about the October 31st? You got ambushed with a fifth group team? Yeah, I had, so we had come home that summer and then went back out a couple months later in the, we're just south and western Iraq out close to the Syrian border.

We, we, the operating base wasn't established when I got there. We had to get it up an operational. We were trying to get our, get some good area knowledge, get an understanding of what we had to do. We were right there on the border. we were we're a lot of foreign fighters coming across very challenging times is very difficult to do the intelligence work that we needed to do at there at the time you know just leaving at that but it could be done and we had just come into a border town and we never even got out of the vehicles we just drove around we're trying to keep a low profile but it was that was challenging

we come pulling out of town we think where everything's fine uh there's this beat up old SUV in front of us with about four or five military age males. Two of them climb in the back of this little SUV, which concerned us a bit, like they were going to get something and do something. And then just when we thought that we were thinking about, there was only two of us, two vehicles, we were going to try to get these guys pull over

and see what the hell they were up to. They took off on this dirt road, and we didn't think much about it. Well, the way the road was, we had to take the hardball road kind of like in a sea and this dirt road they took kind of cut across that. So we come around

I don't know a mile or so later and there's one of the guys standing inside the road the RPG pointed right at us and he gets to tell you the truth to this day I can't remember if he shot the RPG or not and then they separate

they scurry off over this little heel they get flustered the I'm with a split team ODA and up and then I got my guy and then we have our vehicles the other ties to the ODA and the other vehicle our vehicles are Mercedes G5 level seven up ardor and they're in an unarmored suburban this is important to note later on so they we get a little split up the the guys in the ODA get out and they end up on this little foot pursuit of these of these guys

that try to ambushes we consolidate two vehicles and in the midst of doing that we're trying to to get comms up. I walk from the uparmament vehicle to the suburban. And in the process of getting there, the ODA communicator guy named Joe Brisco takes an RPG round. And it severs this completely severs his right arm. I mean, it fins it out RPG community. It chopped it off like whack.

And went off behind this. Subsequently, I turn around, Joe. is at my feet. He's completely missing his right arm. It's obviously bleeding pretty profusely. I have to, you know, shooting over the vehicle, but now get Joe, and I throw him in the back of the car. And another guy named Chuck Good, I'm in the ODAs,

is with me at that other vehicle. And we were going to get back over to the other vehicle and kind of get out of that area. where we turn some fire. We do so. We get over to the other vehicle. We kind of get out of that off the X per se. And we still have the other small maroons of a team up over this little rise.

And so I tell the other vehicle to go and the driver to go collect those guys up. We're not that far from our base. And Joe's, and I don't want to lose Joe. So I make that decision to do that. And so we turn around and get the heck out of there. What we didn't realize is that when we took that RPG round or took another RPG round at that same time frame, because we had a couple of them go off. And it hit our gas tank. It hadn't exploded the car, but it knocked a big hole in it.

We found this out later when we saw the gas when we went back out there the next day. And so we only had the gas in the fuel lines. Oh, wow. And so the car ends up dying right there right in the big open area. When the dirt roads meets the hardball road, and it's, boom, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. You know, and we're like, oh, my gosh, what's going to happen here? So, Chuck and I get out, we're firing back over the vehicle. We're starting, we're starting to become a bullet magnet.

That vehicle's becoming a bullet magnet. The rounds are slapping the hard plastic and the metal pretty hard. Joe's in the back, kind of in and out of it. I'm standing on the road. I look to my right. There's nothing. to my left and there's a vehicle about 150, 200 meters away. And until Chuck, I said, go hijack that vehicle. We got to get the hell out of here. We cannot be here. We got to be

anywhere but here. Chuck wouldn't still start for this. I wrote him up for it. And just deservedly so. Boom, off he goes. So they start shooting at Chuck. I mean, he's a little tiny guy, but he's moving pretty quick. They start shooting him. They kind of stopped shooting at me, and then they realize, okay, he's too hard to hit. So they go around to the side of the vehicle and I get, as I'm getting Joe out of the back of the vehicle, he's kind of in and out of it. Okay. He's losing consciousness coming to and from.

He's kind of in and out of the whole time. Did you guys get a tourniquet on him? So this whole time I've been trying to. That's not funny, but it's. Yeah, no, I mean, you're getting shot at. I mean, I see what there is, there is no nub. Oh, man. I mean, there is nothing.

I mean, the arm is completely severed. And, I mean, there was just nothing to put a tourniquet on. It was severed all the way up to the shoulder joint. During this whole escapit, I've been trying to put a dressing on Joe's arm the whole time. I never do get a good dressing on the arm. It was very challenging to do so under normal circumstances. So at this point in time, I take Joe and I. pulling him over my shoulder

and that we're starting to take a lot of fire. I mean, the rounds are hitting everywhere. And this was my second time of divine intervitch. And I talked about my first time earlier in Afghanistan for the 2,000-pound bomb. It had felt to me as though, you know, Joe's about 6'2, he's about a buck-nine. He plays.

He's got his kid on and everything. It's a pretty good-sized guy. you know and I just felt like all these everything's hitting around me you can hear the you can hear the slap of the rounds hitting the metal and the plastic and I just felt like there was a force field around me I can't explain it I can't I just knew that I just knew that we were going to be I didn't know we were going to be okay but I just knew we're going to get the hell out of there I just did I mean and so I turn around I start taking off with Joe and I can step on all the rounds that are hitting the ground around me.

I can just step on it. They're everywhere. They're like firecrackers going off on the ground. They're shooting RPGs at me across them right in front of me. I'm a big fat, fat, slow moving target. I'm moving, but, you know, I do pretty good for back those first 50 meters. And then, you know, I start losing my poop. And, you know, I'm going, I'm going.

I am now, you know, I'm not quite there yet. Chuck, it's meantime has, has absconded with this vehicle. Uh, helped get us out of there. And I am running out of poop. I don't have anything left in the tank.

But, you know, max adrenaline, max blast. I, I went, I went to a dark, very dark place for a few moments during that incident.

That I've never been to since. And it was just, it was almost a surreal. and you might have experienced something somewhere and I've talked to some other veterans. It was just, it was a very, I can't even explain it. Nothing else in the world mattered

except to get Joe to that vehicle. When I mean nothing else, I've had guilty feelings about this. I mean, whatever it took, whatever it took, even if it met my children, I'm going to grow up without a father. Whatever it took,

I just, it was just, there's a very surreal moment. I, I reflect back on it now and I don't even quite grasp it as well. I cook that well. It just, that's all,

I just know, one thing that, you know, any of us that go into those combat situations, there's one thing that you, you never want to be, you never want to make sure you do. And you always,

you never want to let your buddy down. You know, I don't care if that guy is, you know, Army, Navy, black, white, doesn't make a difference. We're all green, okay? I'm talking, I'm never going to let that guy down or gal down. It doesn't make a difference. And hopefully, they're never going to let me down. And we're never going to leave anybody behind.

Period. End of story. And that was just, it was a very surreal moment. I finally got to the vehicle with Joe, throw him on top of the vehicle. I barely can move. I'm so cramped up. We get him around the side. And then there's this Iraqi family in the ditch.

And the ones that Chuck had taken out of the vehicle to hijack their vehicle. And one of the guys yells me, in English, he goes, my money, my bag. And so he's pointing in the vehicle. So in the middle of the firefight, I start unloading these bags. I had like Walmart back and I'm looking for if I had some like cash in my pockets to give these guys because I felt horrible.

I was all doing no firefighter. I'm shooting, unloading these bags and everything. Then we can't get the vehicle started and we had to get the driver back in the vehicle. And anyhow, we end up getting out of there taking up a lot more rounds and RPG rounds.

Fortunately, they all went too high and none of them hit us directly. We did round up the rest of the team. it took us a while. QRF rolled out there, soon thereafter, and just, QRF,

we were with, we were co-located as the first and third Arbor cavalry regiment. And when those guys roll, they roll, and they roll big. Yeah, Bradley's tanks,

and they don't take any crap. And so it just leveled the place when they got out there because they start taking fire. I get back, I was trying to get the QR, RF out and I end up having this I'm trying to find the ODV commander and I get stopped by them. I finally find him kind of brief him up, guy named Don Franklin, great guy.

And then, and I'm trying to get back out to go out with the QRF, but they had already taken off, but check he's with him so they know what they are. I mean, they end up hooking up with him about 15 minutes later. So I end up getting this discussion, some 10th Mountain guys were there with us, to provide a security at our base and he goes, Don, your head, your head. And I'm like, I am. He's like, I started, you know, I start checking this. Thinking, well, maybe I am yet and I don't know it.

So we kind of have this argument for what he thinks I'm hit. I don't think I am yet. Because I'm, what I don't rely. I'm covered in, I'm completely covered in blood. And so it was natural for him to think that. So after ripping off all my stuff, we finally determined that I had not received any significant their wounds. Like I didn't have any shrapnel or gunshot wounds that I could tell.

And then, uh, that's then I said, I told you I wasn't here, you know? And so then I went inside, saw a mirror and I, and I always just looked like I jumped in a pool of blood. It was all just Joe's, mostly all Joe's. So, um, but you know, Joe, we got Joe on the desktop pretty quick. Uh, I mean, he was out of there. We had, we had a couple of dustoffs right there at the base at that, that tiger base. And, and, you know, Joe ended up doing full 20 in the army, retired, you know.

Good for you. Yeah. So, I mean, it really was a great strike. I ran into him about five, six years later in San Antonio and met his wife and his four daughters, two of which had been born after he had lost his arm. And it was, it was, it was a good moment. It was incredible. A bit of closure for me. So that was. one we had gotten hit other times and other days and we had others in that that particular day

it was just more personal i don't it was it was it was also more surreal i don't i don't really know how to put it just was it was just different it was more personal to me uh i don't know it's just you know it's it was just a surreal day uh we're lucky nobody got killed that day uh you know of course nobody got killed that day we killed a lot of bad guys. I'm not going to say we were luck. We made our luck. But I mean, some dividered intervention from the guy above. I don't know how that happened twice in a couple years. It's made me do a lot of deep thinking about some things ever since then. And you were awarded the Intelligence Cross for saving that soldier's life. Could you tell us a little bit about that

award? Because I think a lot of people don't know what it is or what it means. Yeah, it's always difficult, you know, like I was telling you in the pre-interviewed. I know, I know. I never good about talking about stuff like that. But in general, it's a pretty interesting award, and the fact there's only been 39 of them issued

since the CIA was founded in, you know, 1947 to 48. You know, transit from the OSS, the CIA was created, right? Only than 39 issued. And most the recipients are

are awarded the cross posthumously for soon. Of course, they're not there to receive it because they're dead. And there's a small group that live to actually receive your award. I happen to be one of those. So it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very special thing. I think it's important that people understand that there's these types of individuals out there in the shadows. and a lot of them have stayed in the shadows. True secret warriors, if I can use that phrase.

Some of these awards are still classified. Yes, they are. The list are. They're very classified. They're, and you don't even know exactly who all of them, who all those people are. There's only 39. You do know if you're,

if you work in the organization, you can look some things up and they can tell you. you that. There's a couple that are still withheld, but it's truly an honor to be put in that category of individual. And then, you know, the next one down is the intelligence star. And that's that's still a very, very honorable award. It's, it's the second one down. It's, it's, it's given out a lot by a lot more. It doesn't devalue it. It's just what it is. That's a difference for like a Navy Cross's Silver Star and stuff like that. I mean, that's that type of thing.

But, you know, the number of people that that have both can definitely sit on your couch right there in your studio. There's not a lot of us. And that's just a byproduct of, I didn't do anything that you wouldn't have done or anybody else would have done. It's in those certain circumstances. Or you probably did. I don't, it's my efforts are just minuscule compared to other.

It's just, it's an honor to have been honored, but I feel as though I want to spend a lot of my time honoring those that never made it home. You and I both have a laundry list of guys and gals that never made home. Okay, we expect I could just sit here and start naming them off and I don't want to do that. but, and that's what's important. Remembering, you know, I remember them on their anniversary dates. I don't, I don't get them all. I think sometimes I get, I forget about one or two here and stuff like that. I beat myself up.

But there's a, I feel this enormous responsibility and obligation to, you know, on those, on those dates every year. And I'm sure you and Dave did the same. Remember those. I can't remember them all. I didn't know them all. I just remember those that are in some form of fashion connected to me. And whether I was with them when they died or whether I was, you know, whether I had to tell their families, I've had to do notifications,

which is probably, not probably, it is the worst thing in the world to do to notify a, that's their husband and their dad and it's not coming home. that's tough, especially with people that you've known and you've known for a while. It's tough. I've had to do that. I've had a lot of guys in the office, G.B. that didn't make it home. A lot of guys that were wounded. We started collectively, we started our own foundation called the Third Option Foundation. I'm sure you've heard of that at third option foundation. I'm sure you've heard of that at third option foundation.org. It's a fantastic organization. It's a, CIA paramilitary officer's version of, and I hope I'm articulating this correctly, our version of kind of what you see with the Wounded Warrior program, Navy Sift Foundation, stuff like that. It's that version of, this is for our CIA paramilitary family. It does some amazing work.

I just, just fantastic people. Don, I just want to point out for our listeners out there, it's kind of important to understand that incredibly all the things you're described, that technically, like legally on paper, you're actually not a combat veteran because those things happened to you while you were working for the CIA. Yeah, gosh. I had to get out of the Marine Corps to go fight combat and CIA. You did more incredible things than I did, no doubt about it. However, I am on paper a combat veteran, but people who served in the CIA aren't.

And the third option fills this void because you guys are not able to go to VA. You can't go to Veterans Affairs. You can't get that kind of treatment that is out there. Thank God for all of our veterans. But that is not in place for our CIA folks, the paramilitary guys. And the third option kind of steps in and fills that role. You're exactly right. That's a great way to put it.

Thank you for. And it was started by some guys inside our organization. They know who they are. It's just amazing work. and a couple of guys is actually one of them with Brian Hoke Brian was killed in Afghanistan in 2016 Brian's you know Brian and and Nate Delmar were killed on that day

both GV officers and they both had worked for me Brian in particular that year leading up and so Brian was a big part of of getting third option foundation going and then, you know, so, and he's killed in combat action in 2016. But you're exactly right. And these are guys that, I mean, most of American public doesn't even know what we're doing. And that's how it should be.

You know, I always found it in the last 20 years, I always found it comforting. You know, I'd come back, see some buddies in my college or whatever, and they talked me and asked me about it and I couldn't say much about it. I always found it comforting when I came back that everything was pretty normal in the United States. Really? People were, you know, taking their kids to school. You know, we were worried about, you know, we're going to, things are pretty normal. And we're at, most Americans just kind of went about their daily lives.

But that was a good thing. I wanted that. I wanted to come home to that. I didn't want to come home to, you know, something that wasn't normal. And I always reflected that as a very positive thing. I want it to continue to be that way. There are a handful of guys like yourself, Dave and others, that will go do what we got to go do. It's a very small percentage of the population.

And things are pretty much normal. Yeah, you have all the craziness that goes on in American politics. But I mean, you know, it's good because I want that. I want it. That's what we go fight for. That's why we, you know, that's why, you know, that's why we made the sacrifices that we made and why some of our brethren who didn't come home, the sacrifices that they and their families have made and are still making today. I mean, those brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and dads, they're growing up right now without their dad.

Yeah. Or their mom. I mean, that's happening every day. And then that, they, they live it every day. And I think it's important that I know, you know, we, we, we continue to beat that drum, per se, and remember those. And even so it's something more important when I could share those from my organization that paid that up on the sacrifice. You know, the stars on our wall, which, which, which some of those names still have, been released, but it's just as precious as anything else to me. So if one thing comes of

having this chat with you today is that people have understanding, whether it's third option foundation, whether it's, you know, all these other great mooned borders, Telst Towers, all this other great stuff that's out there, you know, I don't want to be saying here. It's just kind of being a big, I'm just saying it's just people show their appreciation for those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice or those that are still paying for that sacrifice today, whether they've been severely wounded. Because you know, you and I both have, buts that have been severely wounded and have severe lifestyle issues today. Sure. Sure. And the challenges that come with that, not only for them, but also for their families. So I find

it a huge obligation on my part to remember those guys as much as I can on those specific anniversary dates. I will always do that. I feel a bit, I do have a, I do have my, I do have a little bit of survivor skill. I would be, I think a lot of us carry that around.

Some days are better than others. You get reminders of certain things and it kind of flares up. This is actually very medicinal for me in a strange way. Talking about it with, even though this is a very public forum, obviously. But, and I encourage guys to do that. I appreciate you doing that. And I know like some of these like, honestly, they are traumatic stories.

They're difficult to tell sometimes. And you don't really want to like boast about I won this award. It's not that's not really what it's about. for you. However, you are out here, you are the one that survived and you are the one that's out there speaking for all of these guys who didn't come home, right? You're, you're, it's, it's on all of us, really to tell, to tell their stories. Yeah. It's on all of us. We all have, we all have, we all have, we all have our, our own list of guys and guys that didn't make it home. And, you know, mine's not, mine's not any special any better than yours. It's just, it's different experiences.

different units, different things and stuff like that. And that obligation to listen to to keep reminding people with the sacrifice that were making. And it's applicability in today's world. I mean, it's applicability. And, you know, the guys that have been to combat have been in his combat, we're the last guys that want to go back to war, okay? Right? I mean, I'm the last guy that wants to go back and do something like that. And I will try to do anything to keep us from having to do that again.

You don't want to experience that. That's just, it's not, it's not, it's just not, it's just not something you want to experience. If you got to do it, you're going to go do it. You're going to go do it well. But, but it's been, so I still do that every day. I try to, I try to out of those guys in whatever little way I can. I literally think about most of them every day. I really do.

You just something you just can't, you, you almost have. to. I mean, I'll kind of get off. We've been kind of beat this. It's okay. But I mean, well, to change gears a little bit, you know, you had some other assignments after Iraq. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about working with the FBI and the joint terrorism task force. You know, that was interesting. I took a break from my time in the war zone. It was, you know, as we all experienced, my kids were little back then, little, little er back then. and we needed a little break from that. So I was integrated with the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

And it was interesting. Being on the domestic side with the organization, it's different. And being embedded with the Bureau was different. It was still in the time frame where the JTTS were very active, as a lot of them still are today, we're still concerned about the internal threat, the homeland threat. And so building up that intelligence picture, building up that network, as the Bureau would put it inside whatever major city you were in, was critically important. So to keep us from not making the same mistakes we had made leading up to 9-11, the inter-AG cooperation, not only within the intelligence community, obviously the law enforcement community is part of the intelligence community, but, you know, with the different members. members of the law enforcement, federal law enforcement community, state and local county city.

And was integral in that. And then having that person, being able to make sure we keep the lines of communication open, the sharing of information that can be shared at the appropriate levels, that people that need to know about whatever threat situation it might be. You know, we have such a diverse country and different parts of the country. We had different despores of different types of people that live different places. And the concerns that that was bringing up to a lot of a lot of people. There was a lot of ignorance out there at the time.

I mean, some of those patriotic loyal Americans are some of the people that just immigrated this country in the last 20 years. I mean, you know that. I mean, I can go on and on and on it. We can't put these people in a bundle based off a religion or based off their, ethnicity. I mean, I'm a multi-ethnic guy to begin with, so I got a little bit of appreciation for that. And so it was interesting working with the Bureau. The Bureau is on their own turf. They're extremely effective. Then I'm a few years dated. Extremely effective, but it's called the Bureau for a reason,

because it can be somewhat bureaucratic. And so what was it like for you going from being this wild man paramilitary officer in Afghanistan and Iraq to being, I'm guessing, I'm guessing, sort of a liaison. Yeah, it was. I was a lone guy in there. I had my little skiff, you know, and my high-end systems. And it was, first of all, it was a lot of fun. It was a good break.

We had some interesting cases. We were looking for some interesting individuals. We were, I like to see the working together with him. I could bring a different light to certain things because of my practical experience in the previous four or five years leading up to that. You know, a lot of guys had men to the Afghansans and Iraq's at that point. And a little bit better understanding of some of the cultural things that we had to deal with when dealing with, you know, whatever local population there happened to be. So that part was interesting. And given it, given a, and in certain sense, I was, I was kind of the lone.

Rangers so I kind of bounce in squad, squad, whatever. The organization, the agency gives its officers quite a bit of autonomy when we operate and work. And that's not the case with some of the other federal agencies. I'll just leave it at that. So that autonomy was something at times that, you know, was envied by some of our other count, Mike, some of my counterparts. But, you know, it's also one of those things, they give you enough rope to hang yourself, too.

Sure. So one comes with the other, too. So we're in, and we can, our communication lines a little bit quicker and faster and the, sometimes federal law enforcement, and for good reasons, too.

I mean, we're not, CIA is not a law enforcement entity. And the Bureau and the other federal law enforcement agencies do what they do. But they have to do about it in, and their manner, because sometimes, you know,

they're trying to build a case or whatever the case might be. And they have to follow that rule book. So, the challenges are many. I do know the FBI's recently has, you know, has gotten a lot of bad press. We've all gotten a lot of bad press. But I got nothing but the greatest respect for the FBI agents that I worked with. A lot of them I still stay in contact with.

A lot of them are retired now. And I've got nothing but the greatest respect for those guys and guys. Absolutely. Great Americans. Talk to us about going on to become the chief of ground branch around 2015. I mean, what's it like? I mean, you had this pretty incredible career. I mean, you worked your way up through the ranks.

Yeah, it was, it was, you know, to me it was kind of the kind. It was a bit of a pinnacle assignment for me. You know, I guess I would equate it to me and maybe a battalion commander or CEO the Ranger Regiment or whatever the case might be, something like that. I mean, Italian commander in a fifth group or something like that. I have a fifth group commander. I mean, it, it was. It was, it was an unbelievable, unbelievable challenge.

You have some very hardened, chiseled veterans, as you can only imagine. A little gray in the sideburns and a little longer in the tooth. It's a tough crowd. So I'll tell you know, and deservedly so. some of the innovation was amazing and we expanded on that we just trying to keep up with the operational tempo was we're not that big I won't say how big we were or are but we're just not that big compared to some things in the military

but what we bring to the table with a relatively smaller or very small a group of individuals is hugely significant and in all the different places in the world. And it was an enormous challenge. It was an enormous honor. It was a tough couple of years. We took a number of casualties, both guys that were killed and guys that were severely wounded. That's going to happen.

We were still heavily involved in Afghanistan, Syria, and all the other places in the world. There was taken up a lot of our time. really having to do, you know, the hard and dirty work that needs to be done along with some of our colleagues and the special operations commands. So it was a lot of interaction with obviously with J-Soc and SOCOM entities, which was just critical. But, you know, a lot of these relationships, they grew over time. I mean, there were guys that were in 2001 and 2002 who were like captains and majors or lieutenant command. matters and they grew up to be admirals or whatever grew up to be colonels and generals we all kind of grew together over this time frame and you know and so it wasn't like you had to go and reinvent the

wheel when you went down to talk to the range or edge or you went down to go talk to these guys whatever I mean we we had been working there for a while a lot of us had known each other in different jobs or different capacities in the past and so it's not that big of a community at the end of the day, the special operations community. It's pretty small. And so that was fascinating. It was fascinating in the fact that our office had, you know, we were in a lot of different theaters doing a lot of different amazing things. It just wasn't all Afghanistan or Syria. So that was a challenge. Huge challenge under itself. I would go back in a heartbeat to do it again. I don't know. I might be a little too old. But it was an honor.

It was absolutely, it was definitely, it was one of the biggest honors I had to work at the organization. It had been chief GV. There's no doubt about it. Nothing, nothing will talk that. I don't care what happens. As a matter of fact, I think I've already told my wife from my gravestone, I wanted to say, Don Parnell Grand Branch. I mean, that's, that's basically it.

That's, that's all that needs to be said. And of those guys and gals that are out there, that are listening this or know me. They know exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. And a lot of fantastic Americans that are just, and that are getting the job done right now, man, plank hitters, they're just, pipe hitters,

they are just absolutely going after it. And yet they do it, they do it in the shadows. They do it in secret. And that's just how it should be done. And it has to be done that way. So greatest honor I had, I would do it again. But, you know, I had to move on. I went out to be chief in her bill after that, which was absolutely the most amazing job.

Slow down there. Slow down there, Don. I'm not going to let you skip over this. Around this time when you're chief of GB, there are some interesting things going on here. Both Ukraine, 2014, the first time around and Syria with ISIS is popping off. Yeah. That was fascinating. It was, you know, of course, you know, what happened in Ukraine and the Russians went into Crimea. And then we know, we know our work there was, then you know, that time frame between 2014 to 2021. And it's early on there. And our work with the Ukrainians was critical. And it still is to this day. We knew what Putin wanted back in 2014. He wanted the land bridge. the Crimea still does. He thought he had the rifle rights to take Crimea.

It's debatable on whether that's the case or not. At the end of the day, he did so. And then, of course, you know, was it seven years later? He'd go ahead and invade Ukraine and tries to try to risk. And then, of course, that conflict's still going on today. I got nothing but the greatest respect for the Ukrainians having worked with some of them. They're, you know, everybody totally talks about how corrupt. Ukraine is and how this is and how this.

Let me tell you, heck, our country's corrupt, okay? So, I mean, I mean, I mean, we have our own problems too. I don't want to get into this talk about corrupt Ukrainians, but I got greatest respect for him. And when Putin went in there a few years ago, he had no idea what type of fight he was really going to get, get into the Ukrainians.

The Ukrainians were backed up. They're in their own backyard. And they have just, you know, just, you just you don't want to go against that guy you know who's who's fighting you in his own backyard he knows the land he knows the territory you know he's he's got his back to against the wall and and and uh we need to continue to support are you creating him brethren we need to we need to bring both parties to the peace table okay we need to get we need we need to stop people from being killed in in this horrible war that needs to stop

and hopefully with this ceasefire agreement, that will stop for at least a temporary period of time. But I, and then work out some sort of, you know, longer term ceasefire agreement. I have my ideas and how they should do it. So does everybody else. But, you know, that Putin has wanted that land bridge to Crimea for a long time. I think that part of Ukraine is very pro-Russian to begin with, has been for decades. I think they'll probably end up with some sort of, this is just me guessing, some sort of, I don't know, demilitarized zone or something like that, that gives Putin probably what he wants. Of course, our current president will get a lot of criticism for that.

But at the end of the day, we don't want them at war. It's devastated the great country of Ukraine and the Ukrainians. It's going to take generations to rebuild that country. They're a first world country. There's a sophisticated, but it's going to take a couple of generations to build it back. It's sad as heck. What was that like for G.B.

jumping from Afghanistan, Iraq, theater to Ukraine? Yeah. Huge. Great question. The counterintelligence threat is significant, especially as you can imagine. imagine. So we're stepping up big time in that we're a bad arena. And it's just different because you have a lot of obviously dramatic cultural differences from Afghanistan and Iraq. And now we go into Eastern Europe and here in a former Soviet Republic, Ukraine. You know, you have a different

level of education, different level of sophistication. Not that it's any worse or any better. I'm just saying that it's just different. They're their first or more first world society. And even with the language differences, it doesn't matter. The Ukrainians are a very sophisticated people. And it had its challenges, believe me, because of that. Because they are, I remember talking to it. Like, hey, they were telling me like, two years ago, you were like the enemy.

Now you're sitting here in my office. You know what I mean? It was like, you know, one of those type of things. So, yeah, that was a few years ago. Of course, a lot of that dynamic has changed in these last three or four years. But a lot of those those brethren that we work with back there are dead now. It's sad, but it's true. But it really was a dramatically huge difference to change for us.

I put it that way. A couple times we had tap breaks. Like, hold hold on a second. We're not in Afghanistan or Iraq. We are here. So let's adjust how we're going to do this. So, my guys always did that. So fantastic work.

But a lot of it I just can't delve into. I get it. And then at the same time, Syria is happening. Yeah. And there's a lot of, yeah, I know, I sense, I have sensed over the years a lot of frustration about the kind of like stop go, stop go, stop go. Yeah, Syria was a tough one, man. It was, it still is.

I mean, now, you know, that HTS has taken over. HTS is basically, you know, Al-Nusra-Fut, which is Al-Qaeda affiliated. We all know that. And they're trying to rebrand themselves as the new, you know, as a new leader in Syria. The kind of Al-Qaeda that you can take home to mom. Yeah. I've heard something said along those lines. I wasn't going to say that, but since you said it, that's basically yet.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that doesn't make any sense to me. But, you know, that's what it is. They're trying to rebrand themselves. A lot of this hasn't made the headlines recently. It's got, you know, it's really gotten trompled down the headlines because everything

that's been going on in our country since the election. But that's what it is. I mean, they're all Nusrafan, a nooshan, every, a kind of affiliated organization. They were very effective in fighting the regime when the regime was still there. Syria was a strange place to It was just different man It was just different It was a lot of

Political ramifications to the area It was so it was such a complicated problem set And so many different dimensions I remember You know I lived it Briefed it All the briefs every day And I still

I had problems getting my hands around. How complicated it was. How complicated it was. You had all these different players and all these different areas and, you know, between the Turks and the different types of Kurds. Not all Kurds are created equal. There's different types of Kurds. And, of course, you had the Iraqis and you had, you know, the Syrians.

You had all the different anti-regime groups. And he had the regime, and he had Al-Nusra front. I mean, and then, of course, the Iranians. And then it just, it just got extremely complex very quickly. Very, very few people, I thought. And I'm not going to necessarily put myself in this batch, but I mean, this group had really understood what the heck was going on in Syria at any given point in time. It was extremely hard to get your hands wrapped around.

It just was. It was because it was so multidimensional. and just, you know, the different relationships we had with the different Kurdish groups, just by itself was complex. Sure. And the YPG, the Syrian Kurds, you had the KDP, the PKK, the PUK, you had the, of course, the Turks had all the Kurds and all the dynamics that go with that and the history that goes back with that. I mean, it just makes things, you had just strange dichotomy where you had, I remember far,

It was, you know, far in all the way in Eastern Syria, you had like regime checkpoints in YPG land. It was just so weird. Yes. You know? It was like, what? You know, the regime's like, 300, four miles away in Damascus, you know,

and I got this checkpoint. It was just strange like that. It was a strange dichotomy of things and a strange way for us to execute. What's, I'd like to ask, you know, one of the things as I've heard that made this situation complicated is that there was almost two different missions going on one was destroy ISIS the other was destroy Assad I would say that's a really good way of wrapping it up right there that's exactly what happened I I couldn't put it any better that's exactly and and and I literally saw at times where the two kind of came together

you know and morphed and right right right and and it was it was challenging but that's kind of like what it was it was very strange you did have this okay we're gonna go kill ICE we're gonna go kill ISIS everybody got that part

everybody's for that part even the heck the Russians were that yeah yeah right I mean everybody's for that part and then no no no we got to fight the regime okay but so we got these guys so wait who's on first and who's on Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that's why it made it.

That was one of the things that made it so weird. It really was. And weird may not be the right adjective. It was just strange in how we went about that. And in a certain extent, you know, up until recently, I mean, this is up until recently. We were still doing that, you know. Of course, until Assad left and stuff like that.

And HTS came in and said, hey, we're the kind of gentler, Akida. Don't worry about us. You know, we can bring us home to your mother and meet your mom and all this or stuff. I don't think so, but I mean, that's what they're saying. I mean, I can't remember the leader of the HTS on top of my head. But, you know, he's got some history. But I like that assessment best. I've heard that, I've heard that assessment a long time ago

when somebody said we're fighting a war and two differences in Syria in a way. Yeah. And that, in a nutshell, is basically what we, what we had been doing. but I would say of all the conflicts that we've had in the past 25 or 30 years, that one has to be absolutely the most difficult to understand and get your hands around by 10 million miles. It was just so difficult to do so. And so if you're working, if you're dealing with it, you can't get your hands around it.

There's no way the American public is. And there's no way that some of the policymakers are going to get their hands around it either. Yeah, true. They never really did. They never did. And they have got their hands around. on what we were doing in Afghanistan. Yeah.

Or even Iraq. I mean, after all these decades, two decades doing stuff, we guys never quite understood it. Like, I saw it happen. I could see it. I could see what some of these, with our policy makers.

They never, they just never got their hands around it. They were, maybe it, maybe it had no fault to them, but they just, you could just see that they, some got,

some did. There was, and I won't name them, but I could name them, some of our policymakers that, that really understood it. And at least in my eyes, and got what we had to do.

do. But there was a handful that didn't. So. And your last assignment was to Erbil. Yeah, working with the courage. I love it. I was, I was chief there, worked with, you know, I'm not going to speak too much directly about what we're doing, because we're still doing it there. But I love, you know, worked with KEP and the Barzani's and all our, and it was just It's a fascinating history of the Kurdish people. Nothing but the greatest respect for a Kurdish brother. They are a great ally. They are fantastic.

I actually wrote a paper a couple of years ago. They got published through the Lobo Institute, to Mixed Place. Oh, cool. I don't have to read that. On why and why we need to back the Iraqi Kurds. I got it cleared by the Bill Christian's Review Board. And basically it outlined kind of gave you a little soup to nuts on all the different categories of curds. If I could use that, I don't know if that's a proper term to use the Taitre, but different types of Kurds that you had.

Because they're not all the same and the dynamics between the two is it's important to understand that when you're working with them because they're going to be fighting amongst each other as much as they're going to be fighting with you if that makes sense. And so they'll spend 49% of their time fighting amongst themselves and 51% of their time fighting with you to whatever. you're going to fight with them against. It's kind of a weird dynamic. That's just kind of how it is there. That's just kind of assumed and accepted. And until they can stop doing that, they'll become a lot more effective.

But they just can't seem to get over that. And for valid reasons. I'm not knocking them. There's a lot of good valid historical reasons. Yeah, there's politics and history. Politics and history on that. You just can't just sweep that aside. But I love our Kurdish brother, and there's just,

We just, we've got to maintain that relationship. A place like Urbeel is strategically. It's critical as heck for all the obvious reasons. I don't know. It's geographical location where it's at the partnerships that we have there. It's something that has to be maintained. You know, unfortunately, it's, it's, the Kurds are landlocked. And so it creates some, it creates some problems, challenges for that because they are landlocked.

I will go ahead and like kind of add to that a little bit just to explain to people that whether it's Kurdistan or the Philippines or Ukraine. And I specifically talk to the Kurds about this. When the United States backs away and we decide, hey, we're done here and we move out, their weapons start to break down. Their vehicles start to break down. They, you know, we give them this war material and they are able to operate it, but they may not be able to maintain it. And so, you know, actually, Kurdistan is a great example because we pulled out of Iraq and then ISIS happens and we're right back. So instead of this like stop go, stop go, maybe just maintain a consistent presence in some of these countries that we're often in. I couldn't agree more with you.

As a matter of fact, our Kurdish brother have not forgotten that, you know, when ISIS was coming back up the road. It was just outside the city limits of rebel. and they've definitely have remembered that. Even though we've tried to screw the Kurds over many times over the past couple of decades, unfortunately with some of our questionable foreign policy decisions over the past 20 or 30 years, 40 years even more than that. But that's an ally that we need to have. Northern Iraq, you say in Kurdistan, it's not Iraq, it is Iraq, but it's really not Iraq.

I mean, you can go to, I will fly to Urbiel today. get off. It's a very nice airport. Go stay in a hotel out in town. Very nice. I'll go to a restaurant in Ankawa, which is the Christian part of town. The Kurds are very accepting, very tolerant people.

I take all different types, all different types of religions, all different types of people. And you can go into a restaurant there. And you would, if I would plop you down in this restaurant, you think you're at a steakhouse in Tyson's Corner or in Brooklyn.

someplace. I mean, the only thing that would throw you off is that there'd probably be somebody smoking, smoke some hookah, would smoke it inside, and there would be soccer or football. That's not, I wouldn't throw you off that much, but it wouldn't be an American sports on the TV. And that would be about it. I mean, you can get any drink you want there. You can get the food. I mean, it's very westernized. It's not what people envision when they go to Iraq. It's not. It's Kurdistan. The Kurds have, it's very easy to say, I think we need to back these guys because they got their stuff pretty squared away here. It's pretty obvious in that when you go to a place like Rubeel and you see how these places are. They're, they're, they, they really are. I mean,

I've had those same observations from people that would come out and visit us and they were just shocked that they were in Iraq eating at some steakhouse in Arbile just like anybody else. It was just, He was just nuts. So Don, talk to us about retirement and working with Longbow and Fogbo. Well, I haven't done much with Fogbo, Mick Morroy stuff. I've been on the outside kind of looking in. I thought I was going to do some stuff. Fogbo does some amazing humanitarian work.

McMorroy and his crew, whether it's in Gaza and the African continent, they're still doing some more stuff. And I think they've got a lot bigger plans, I think, coming up in the future, as Nick can tell you. Some fantastic stuff that I may or may not be a part of, but I definitely support 100% in what they're trying to do. I spent, I've been retired about a little more in four and a half years. The first year was the whole COVID-6-so who was kind of just all screwed. Everything was all screwed up. Everybody remembers those days.

So I kind of discount that first year. but I kind of prioritize things. I didn't want to go back to work full time, a little bit had to do with my age and the time I was in my life. I wanted to, I retired on my 59th birthday right before the day before I turned 59. And I wanted to spend my 60s as being a grandfather. And so I've got four grandkids now. It's been great.

We spend a lot of time there. They're not local. they're about eight or nine hours away in northern Kentucky and the Cincinnati area. And then my youngest daughter is out of the West Coast. She's 27. She's out on the West Coast. And she spent time seeing my kids,

spend time seeing my grandkids. The rest of my family's number one priority. I do my golfing and hunting fishing trips as much as I can. And then that's, so that's up there on top of the list. You know, I try to stay away for the W word. But I still do some work every now. And it's mostly just contracting work as instructor, as a teacher instructor or mentoring for a variety of different companies.

Kind of might give back to the intelligence community of the special operations community. Kind of passing the torch per se. Some of the courses I teach and instruct, I really enjoy doing it. I really enjoy working with the younger folk. And, you know, passing on, you know, passing on this vast knowledge that I have, right? you know, this vast knowledge of experiences. But I, you know, I teach some of this stuff and then I give some of them, hey, listen, this is what we did in real life and how this applies to that,

how it applied to it at the time. And whatever TTPs that you might be talking about. So whether it's tradecraft or whatever, UTS, surveillance detection, whatever the case might be. So I do some of that. And we travel quite a bit. My wife and my wife retired from a year about a year after I did. So we're trying to do a little bit of traveling, not too much, but a little bit of traveling. I did a lot of travel when I was in an organization.

But I didn't go to any of the nice. I did go to one nice. I was stationed in London. I was the chief of operations London for a couple of years before I was chief in TV. So that was a heck of a great time and a heck of a great tour. Very traditional. I loved working with our British colleagues. I loved London.

I think it's the most fascinating city in the world. loved living there. If money were not an object, I probably would have a flat and marly bone. I could tell you that right now. That's how much I love it there. My wife, I'm the same way. We just, just something about London that I just love.

Actually, we're going back there in about a month, so there's business and friends and stuff like that. So, but, you know, I try to, it's funny how busy I've been since I retired. You know,

somebody once told me that, you know, when you retire, sometimes it takes you a week to do what you used to do in a day. And I first had to think about that when like there's a little bit of truth to that. I've had those, I've had those moments, but they've been few and far between. And I haven't had any problems filling up my day. And between the teaching, instructor, and mentoring that I do in family time, it's filling

right, my 2025 is filling right up, let me tell you. Don, where can people go to find you if they're interested in? working with you. I mean, are you on LinkedIn or social media? Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. Don Parnell. Pretty straightforward. I think I'm pretty easy to find out there. It has all my stuff on LinkedIn. I also have a Facebook page. I'm the same name. Probably not that hard to find me on LinkedIn if anybody has a LinkedIn page. We'll put some links down the description to this podcast. Yeah. So I do get people that have reached out to me via LinkedIn or view

some other medians. I probably get six or seven, people call me at least, oh, every four or five, I get calls all the time. People I don't even know. Friends are friends or whatever, like, hey, they want to talk to somebody

or maybe get some career advice or, hey, I've never really talked to anybody about working at the CIA. And, you know, there's not much I can, I can't share any details and stuff like that. But, I mean, you can kind of cover just a generality. of it. It is, it is, I hate, it's, it's, it's so common to say this.

It is more than just a job. It's truly a lifestyle. I know that's cliche to say that, but it really is. You're just, it's just, it is a, it's a, it's a lifestyle of everything and it's, everything that you do in your life. And so, but then on the front side, that's, that's the, that's the fun part about it. You can do stuff, you can do stuff there that you can't do anywhere else. and I know people that have stayed working good hard dedicated people that still work there when they probably could get out and make a lot more money but the mission they're driven by the mission they're driven by the things that you know that they like to do and that mission keeps them going thank goodness we have those people because you know you can only do those type of thing by working in an organization like that and you know it gets a lot of it's gotten a lot of bad press and here and there and who's this who's this

this. Let me say the core people at CIA and a lot of people in the intelligence community are just some good Americans trying to do a tough job every day and they're giving it their best shot to do it and we should be thankful that they're doing that job.

I can say that right now. Don, thank you so much for this interview. Really appreciate your time. I hope to have you back on the show again sometime. I think we kind of just scratched the surface and yeah, thank you, No, thank you guys. I'm a big fan of your show. I've just kind of gotten in the whole podcast thing in the last eight or nine months. I'm a little slow in the uptick. But I just find it interesting to listen and hear about very interesting people and what they've done. And thank for having me on. I hope your listeners got something out of this. I hope they found me interesting enough. I don't know. I guess you'll see in your comments. I don't know if you have a comments section.

stuff like that. Yeah. But it's been an honor to be on here with you guys. I wish Dave could have joined us. I would have been great. Yeah, me too. We have one question. We have one question for you, Don.

Yeah, sure. From JJ, were you surprised by how deep your background check went? You know, I was a little bit. Of course, I didn't know what I didn't know back then. You know, when you first came on board, you don't have, you don't know what you're going to know, but they go back deep. Like, I think I had to give them like where I lived when I was like when I was six years old or something like that for. I mean, it was, they go back deep. And then all your foreign contacts and stuff like that and all the different places that you've lived.

It was a little bit of a surprise. But then I think about it, you know, it kind of makes sense. It's a very thorough. They're very thorough organization as they should be. So, yeah, I was a little shocked on how deep they went. But after giving it some thought, it kind of made sense to me. That makes sense?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's it for the questions. I'm looking through it. Cool. Yeah, Don, this is great. Listen, if you're ever coming through New York as well, you feel free to come in studio. Absolutely.

I'm going to take, I'm going to definitely take Jack up of one of those Stogeys. Yeah, we have plenty. I was definitely envious of that. So I like to partake. occasion and stuff like that. And Dan, thanks for having me on, man. Thanks for all your help and assistance with this.

No, my pleasure. I hope this was informative for you guys and for your listeners. And I'm looking forward to hearing another year's show. I'm looking forward to hearing and listening to me guys and who else you got going on soon. So I'm a big fan. You guys take care. We appreciate that.

Don, thank you. I just want to let everybody know to, don't forget to check out our other show, Eyes On, which is hosted by Andy Milburn and Mick Mulroy himself. and Jason Lyons. Yep. We talk more geopolitical, topical stuff going on. The link is in the description for that.

And you can check out all of Don's links in the description as well. And Jack Murphy, he has a book called We Defy, The Secret History of Special Forces. Out now. The link is in the description as well. Jack, take it away. Oh, wow. I haven't read it. It gets me interested.

If you send me an address, I'll mail one out to you this week. Okay. I will do that. I've looked forward to that. I'm actually working on my own memoir. I actually have it sitting over here. Good. I printed it out.

Yeah, I have 102,000 words and about 244 typed up pages. Wow. Okay. I don't know what 102,000 words means, but I know it's a lot. 102,000 words is 350 pages probably. Pages, yeah. It's, it's, it's, I wrote it for, I'm writing it. I got to sit to the PRB, but I'm writing it for my kids and my grandkids.

Good for you. And to tell you truth, that is actually one of my motivators for doing, having this discussion with you tonight. It sounds a little self-serving in that way. But my grandson's, of course, my granddaughters, I don't know, 20 years from now when they're old, I have to understand this. They can, they can pull up and listen to their old, their grandfather. It's not self-serving. I mean, it's good and it's important. And I've said this before, and I'll say it again.

I get contacted by the children of Vietnam veterans all the time. And they want to know what their dad did during the war. And I can give them a little bit of advice about, you know, FOIA, you have some documents and things like that. But that document that they get from the government doesn't tell them the stories that they want to hear or that they want to know about, right? And that's why it's important to do, you know, things like this, to write your memoirs. You should. You should do those things. Yeah, I mean, to my daughters, Ali and Jayana and my grandchildren, Raylon, Addison, Samuel and Jackson, they, you know, when they listen to this, when they're old enough to understand it and appreciate it, you know, from their, from their, my official grandfather name is Papa, from their Papa. You have to choose your grandfather name now, okay?

You just can't be, you have to have to have to de-conflict it with the other grandfather. I'm a Papa, so I hope Papa's done him proud tonight. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I would tell to people, my recommendation to people out there is, you know, even if you don't want to do a podcast, you don't want to write a book, I totally get it. But write 20, 30 pages and put it into a shoe box or safety deposit box for your kids. They'll appreciate it. Yeah. Absolutely.

So thanks, man. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, thank you, Don. And everyone else out there, we will see you next time. Thanks for joining us. And we'll talk then. Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this.

You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the team house. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the team house ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, Mick Mulroy. that one you will also get all of those episodes ad-free and you support the channel and the show and we really appreciate it the patreon members are literally what has helped this company this small business survive especially during our early years and you are what continues to help this thing going even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising so we really appreciate all of you guys there's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page and there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers and we also have patches.

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