The Team House - Former SEAL and CIA Ops Officer Jeff Butler, Ep. 45

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

Jeff Butler served as a Navy SEAL, a CIA operations officer, and today works as a firefighter. In this episode we talk about Jeff serving as a SEAL officer, training for underwater demolition missions, and then applying for the CIA. We get into his training at The Farm, being sent to work as a spy at European diplomatic parties, and then working in Afghanistan as a case officer. We also discuss how he transitioned into another form of public service as a firefighter.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. All right, everyone, welcome to episode 45 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with co-host Dave Park. Our special guest here tonight is Jeff Butler. Jeff served as a Navy SEAL officer, and then he went on to serve as a CIA operations officer, and he is today a firefighter. So a life of service in so many ways. And Jeff, I mean, these are unique historical times we're living through,

and even here on the team house is a unique moment. We have lifted our prohibition against Navy SEALs. We've lifted it for this one episode. And I told you earlier you're in the trust tree with the nest and the baby birds. It's like it's all happening right here, right now. We have to make efforts to reach across the divide, the things that separate us. We've got to reach across, and we've got to shake hands. And I don't mean to joke about all the crazy stuff that's happening in America right now.

But we do joke about Navy SEALs quite often. And I just hope there's no hard feelings, Jeff. And you're welcome here. And I really, I do appreciate you jumping in and filling in on short notice, especially, and disrupting some of your plans. I absolutely had no plans tonight, so you didn't disrupt any of them. I do follow your occasional jives at the Navy Seals,

and I'm always like, oh, Jack, but I don't engage. It's just like with BK when he writes crazy tweets. I don't, I just let him go behind. I go, you know what, he's doing him? I'm going to just ignore it. Well, Jack did say that you were the test case, so good luck. I hope I represent us well. No, you are, man.

I have known Jeff for quite a while. I mean, probably since like, since we first started rapping, it was probably like 2013. It was a while back now. Yep. Sounds right. Yeah. And it's been really great, though, to make your acquaintance.

And, you know, I've always known you to be a very smart, very thoughtful person. And, yeah, I think you do represent the SEAL team as well because, I mean, look, God's honest truth, you guys have gotten a ton of bad press over the last couple of years. maybe it's deservedly, maybe not, I don't know, but there are a lot of guys out there who serve the naval special warfare who are completely down-to-earth good dudes, and I'm happy to bring those types of voices to the forefront. Oh, I appreciate you guys having me. I haven't murdered anyone.

I haven't done anything that's got me like blackballed by large segments of the population, so, you know. So, Jeff, since this is. our first time meeting and for probably most of our viewers, their first time meeting you. Why don't you tell us a little bit about maybe how you grew up or what led you to the SEAL teams, when you became aware of them, you know, just how you got there? Yeah, that's an easy story for me to tell because my dad was the second seal on our family. His cousin was the first and went through, I think he went through like in the late 60s.

or maybe the mid-60s, went through buds. And then my dad went, and by the time I was born, he had already left the seals and was in the, he became a doctor in the Navy and was going through med school. So I grew up, it was just normal to grow up hearing about the seals. And my uncle went through seal training when I was about nine. So I, you know, would hear daily sort of updates on what, how he was doing and what parts of it were hard for him because there's always something that gets somebody.

you know, it's not easy for anybody. And so it was just for me just part of growing up. And my dad still, so he made it through med school. He was a Navy doctor. So even at his hospital that he worked out, you know, when I'd go have lunch or something over there, like he still wears his tried it or worse tried it. And people would be like, oh, that's Captain Butler of the Seal.

You know, he was always Captain Butler of the Seal, you know, whatever. So it was just a part of a daily life for me. So in a way that is super helpful if you're trying to go through something like Buds because it takes away tons of them. mystique and takes away that like mystery of oh these must all be supermen and you know these crazy animal PT gods and stuff and I was like well that's not my dad he's a normal dude like if they can do it I can do it so that's kind of where I were I mean it was a family family tradition for me you know a lot of guys grow up with police dads or fire dads or army dads and do the same

thing for me it just was a sealed dad you know did you know at that like at the young age that you to be a seal or was it something that you grew into at a certain point time? I was dressing up like an army guy from like this early as we have pictures in our family. So I was always kind of into it. And then by about, I'd say about eighth or ninth grade, I kind of knew I was going to try. You know, but you don't ever know, obviously you're going to make it. Even getting accepted is pretty tough. So, you know, but I had the goal in mind.

By 9th or, well, maybe by like 10th, 11th grade, it was a pretty, it was a pretty firm goal in my, in my head. Like, I'm going to do that or try to do this, you know, which was good because I needed about four years worth of getting ready. And why did, why did you go, did you go to college first? I got an ROTC scholarship. And I honestly, I'm not sure I would do it that way. Again, if I had the choice, but I wanted to go to college first. and did an ROTC scholarship and then went straight from college to Buds. And like, since you are the first seal, and we haven't kind of been through this before,

can you kind of tell us a little bit about like buds and what that process was like for you? Yeah, it was miserable. I trained really hard for about four years because I was never been a strong swimmer, and I just didn't grow up swimming other than at the beach. And I wasn't a competitive swimmer. So the running wasn't too bad for me. need the other stuff, but I had to train a lot of open water swimming. So when I got there, I never failed to swim, but I, that was always what I was like pushing every single time to pass.

And then, you know, some things like the underwater breath holding and the underwater not tying is just tons of repetitive practice. And I got there and did good on those. Drownproofing, I almost about died. I had a sinus infection. So I couldn't breathe through my nose. So there's this point where you have to bob up and down with a mask in your mouth. with your hands tied and your feet tied, well, it's hard to breathe through your nose if you have a sinus infection and you've got a mask in your mouth.

So I failed that twice. You get three chances and I passed on my third. And then, you know, other than that, like I had been prepared mentally that it was going to be super cold and you don't really get that until you get there and you're cold constantly. But I did okay with that.

And then really, it was really just a matter of not quitting and telling myself either kill me or, roll me out and fail me. And they do roll people out and fail them all the time. So that's always a danger. But that was going to be the only way they got rid of me, you know, I wasn't going to quit. Back in those days, I mean, this is in the 1990s, right? This was in the, this was in 99 is when I started Bud. Okay. Okay. So the UDTs had already been, uh, done away with at that point. Yeah, my dad was in, uh, he made it through Buds and went, actually was at a UDT team first before

we went to a SEAL team. And back then you just interchanged. I mean, it was in the mid-70s, early to mid-70s. By the time I got through, there was no more UDT teams. I think they went away in the 80s, but I don't know that. Sure. So most of our viewers probably know this, but BUD is basic

under water demolition slash seal. And then it's the initial course, the selection and training portion, right? Is it six months? Basically for the... It's only seven weeks when I went through. And it's more basic training than anything else because you're not learning a ton of hard complicated skills there okay and then go walking back

how are the udt the underwater demolition teams and the seals divided before your time uh so you mean how did they divide the how did they decide who went where yeah and what how did their missions differ oh okay um you i mean i wasn't around for udt so i'm not an expert on it but Really their job was if you think of the Normandy landings and all the, if you watch saving private Ryan, you see all the obstacles on the beach, there looked like big rocks with like pipes coming out of them, you know, big rebar lengths. Well, that was underwater also. And then right there at the shoreline, that was really to impale boats and prevent landings.

So UDT teams went through and blew all those up, they essentially clear beaches for invasions. That's really the 95% of that mission, as far as I understand it, hydrographic reconnaissance, so reconting a beach, figuring out what obstacles were there, and then doing the demo to get rid of those obstacles was pretty much the entire mission there. And I guess it pretty much went away

because they just assumed that mission in the regular seal platoons and decided we don't need a special team just to do this. That's what they did. And then the seals were more focused on sort of one foot in water or land warfare? I mean, well, in the last 20 years, it's been more focused on land warfare. But I assume, I'll be saying I've been out for a while, but I assume they still have a

huge, huge emphasis on diving because that really kind of sets apart. The seals are at least thinking, hope it does, from other units as we try to do more of that and be as good at that as anybody else in the military, if not better. and so we do tons and tons of like just dives four hour long dives where you're shooting a heading you know making a turn making another turn and trying to hit a target that might be a ship or a harbor or a pier or something ship attack could you talk about some of those training missions back in the day about you know what you because this is all pre-9-11 still you know what kind of missions you guys anticipated rolling into if you know the balloon ever went up uh well so a perfect example

is Panama, when the Panama invasion happened, a seal platoon went and blew up Noriega's yacht, which was, you know, I can't remember, I think this wasn't the canal they swam across. They swam across not a very big body of water. It was a bay, I think, yeah. It was a day, yeah, it was a really short swim, though. So it was pretty much the world's easiest combat swimmer operation. It was like literally swim 200 yards at this bearing plant the explosive and go out. So it's a bread and butter easy out, but that was pretty much what, that is what a ship attack or

combat swimmer mission is. So say we were going to invade whatever country, country X, and we want to take out their ports or block maybe maybe take Coronado is a perfect example. So we wanted to blow that bridge, Coronado Bay Bridge, because we're invading America. We want to keep that fleet trapped inside the bay. We'll blow that bridge. Well, that's a mission where you just go and plant explosives on all the on the pylons below that bridge and then you're blocking that harbor. So it's really any kind of maritime base. ship attack we call it or combat swimmer mission. So you may not be attacking a ship, but a lot of times that's what we trained on as planting explosives on the bottom of a ship.

You could sink that ship if it's a warship of whatever kind. But it may be destroying infrastructure. It might be planning sensors or listening devices. It could just be infiltrating via C into, for example, North Korea. Say we wanted to insert in the North Korea. You could do it over the water, and that's kind of our specialty. It's come across the beach and then go do a mission on land, go back out through the water, rendezvous with a small craft, which would then rendezvous with a larger craft.

Wow. And when you're doing all that underwater, like, so you said you could spend hours underwater, how do you navigate, like for those of us who, you know, having spent time doing that underwater. Like, how does that happen? Yeah, so like, so think of a,

So like an 80-second airboard. Don't they plan in for like a 10% casualty rate on any combat jump, something like that? You're going to lose 10% or something of your jumpers. That's what I've heard anyway. Well, I mean, I would be okay, but, you know, someone else might get hurt. When combat swimmer, you kind of do the same thing. So you'll put, you have two, you have swim pairs. So it would be being a buddy and you'd send like six swim pairs hoping that four, for example, made it to the target, didn't get lost or compromise.

So that each swim pair, you have one dude is just driving the compass. Like literally he is face down in his compass board kicking, counting his kicks or counting his or having his stopwatch or whatever. The other guy is tethered to him and is probably swimming on top of him. And he's watching for obstructions and just being aware and his swim buddy, you know, be there with him. So the compass guy is just driving a bearing and you just, you have to plan it all out with charts and maps, assume you did your navigation correctly, you're plotting correctly. And you might plan in a, if it's safe enough, if you're coming from far enough distance, you might plan in like a peak where you'll pop up, you know, 600 yards or whatever from the target. You'll, in your brain,

you'll have some markers in mind. Like you'll say, okay, from my map study, I know when I pop up at this point, I should be able to look right and see a bridge and look left and see a lighthouse. So you pop up and you're like, oh, crap. The bridge is like behind me in the lighthouse is way over there in the front. So then you've got to reset yourself and be like, okay, how do I correct this? So it's a lot of trial and error if you're not good at it. And if you don't know, you're kicking and you don't know you're and you're not able to assume that very- In the Army, we call that dead reckoning where you're just looking at the

compass and heading straight towards it. But this, I mean, this is even more hardcore what you're describing, Jeff, because you're literally underwater at night. You have no landmarks, no points of reference, no nothing. and all you can do is look at the compass. Yeah. And when you pop up and you're in the right spot, you're just like,

man, I am the greatest combat swimmer that has ever served. Every time, you're like, oh, my God. Oh,

thank Jesus. But then other times, how does it feel when you pop up and you don't see your time? Oh, it is terrible. You're basically like, okay,

let's salvage this and not embarrass ourselves because it was all training because I never did one of these for real. You'd be like, oh, my God, how are we're going to be last. You just start thinking

of all the ways you're going to be terrible and how everyone's going to never let you live this down for months. That's incredible. Yeah, I popped up one time at a pier and I was right in the right place. It was awesome. I pop up and I'm like looking around like, oh, I made it. And then I looked to my right and there's a dude fishing and he looks at me just like, what the hell are you doing here? And he shakes his head and he's like just reels it in you and cast it out again. Like, sorry, man. It's pretty funny. Didn't expect us to pop up out of the dark sea.

So what else, like, can you tell us about Buds? Whether it's general or kind of your experience, you know. So the instructors, a Bud's instructor is a special breed of human. That's really kind of like a masochist and a sadist. Well, maybe a sadist. They just, they live to torture and they enjoy it. and they relish it not only as like it's enjoyable to yell at people and really know that they're suffering and you're not but then also they consider themselves the gatekeepers of the community so like

I mean they take that thing seriously you know they're they're gonna make sure you get the hardest buds that anyone's ever had in history because they want to they they have a reputation to maintain also hey you guys were easy on those guys and you let a bunch of crap bags through well that's so they really took it seriously and man it it was funny for like 30% of the time you'd laugh because it was just so absurd some of the like torture they were putting you through but then like 70% of time like god I hate that guy I really won't and I really don't ever want to work with him and I don't ever see him again so the instruct but at towards the end you kind of grow to love it and you're like oh this is fun you know everybody's having a good time because you think you're going to make it

at that point you can the ribbing is almost good nature towards the very end but before that it's pure I mean they just drive behind you when you're running on the beach and dude, we're sitting in a truck with the PA system just talking crap the whole time. Like, you don't need to be here. You can do this on the internet now. Like, there's a correspondence course. This sucks. Why don't we just quit?

There's some guy with your girlfriend right now while you're suffering through this training. I mean, just constant. That really sticks out my mind as much as anything else. It's just the constant doing their best to make you want to leave. And they do, man. In Hellwake, they'll offer you like a hot chocolate, pizza, a warm, bed. You can come in getting my warm truck right now. We'll turn the heater on. Is it, is it true that you have to go make sugar cookies when you fuck something up? Oh, totally. You have to

get wet and sandy every day multiple times a day. You just live with sand in all your orifices. What is a sugar cookie? Go get wet in the surf and then get roll around in the sand and get sand over your entire body. And then, and that's bad enough. Like, that's uncomfortable, right? Oh, we're going to do that, but now we're going to go do. rope climbs when the hot wet sand all and all. You're like, oh, God, come on, man. Now you're going to go run 10 miles, and there might be some shafing involved in all that. There's all kinds of chafing that goes on there. It got so bad. I mean, for a long time, they had outbreaks of necrotizing fasciitis. Like, guys, open sores were getting infected with flesh-eating virus because

you just have constant chafing, and you're in this crap water, and, you know, you guys are going to give me PTSD after this podcast, and I get on bed sweating tonight. So what was it like after you graduated, Bud's the initial torture session? And was it still called SQT back in those days? Or was it something else? It was, no, it was called STT. And it was run by the individual team.

So it was really kind of non-standard. Oh, wow. And yeah, and that's kind of what did it in. Everybody kind of taught their own SOPs at their own teams and platoons and stuff. So East Coast guys would get a whole different sort of education than the West Coast guys and even teams on the East Coast would be different

than other teams on the East Coast. And people, guys, I guess, weren't getting a uniform enough advanced training curriculum that they've made it into a formalized class. So now you go straight into SQT and jump school and get your Trident through that command, whereas you used to, you're trying to used to be a team bestowed ordeal.

you know, your team would decide when you got it. And they would have a ceremony. So you wouldn't get it right when you graduated, Budge. You would go on to the STT is that like SEAL tactical training or? Yeah, that would seal qualification training, meaning you at the end of that, you get your try-that. So it's essentially getting your try-in-tet training. It was the same thing at STT,

but it was your command really had the full determination of who got the train of who didn't like in those old days. it's like way back in the day before Dave and I were even in Ranger Battalion like you know who they used to have Rip the Ranger indoctrination program used to be at each battalion. It wasn't consolidated. So a previous guest of ours, Emil Praslich, when he was in 275 back in the day, he went through battalion level rip. He didn't go through what Dave and I went through. Was it harder or easier? He said, I remember him telling me once, he said, you're squadron.

leaders were basically the ones putting you, your future squad leaders putting you through the selection course. So that, like, they absolutely tortured you. My bet. I can imagine it was probably harder because it was just more personal. Personal attention. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And at the end of it, so when I went through STT at my team, at the end of it, you know, they beat the Triton and everybody walked by and punched the Triton into your chest and then you had a big beer party and bought a keg. I mean, it was fun. I enjoyed it, but I bet it's more professional now. And where were you assigned?

East Coast, West Coast, which team is? I started at SEAL team and then was a plank owner when they created SEAL Team 10 back in 2002, maybe. So you're an officer. I mean, you get to the team and you're, you know, what, a SEAL platoon leader? Assistant platoon leader. Assistant platoon leader. Yep, everybody starts out as a either, you could either be a assistant, or every officer starts out with either an assistant platoon leader or you could be a third

and I don't really call it, which was really pretty good deal. So you had essentially no responsibility. You're another enlisted guy, a worthless enlisted guy is pretty much what you were as the third officer. He had no rating, no true skills. You were just another officer. But I was a second officer in charge. And how, I mean, how was that for you, like being a new officer and a new seal? Like, how was your relationship with your team, with the enlisted guys?

I think it's tough. That's why I said if I had to do over again, I probably would have enlisted first because you don't know anything as a brand new guy. but as an officer you're still expected to be you know obviously kind of quote unquote in charge of stuff but you if you were smart you understood you didn't know anything and you really relied on your senior enlisted guy in the platoon because so they put in the Navy it's a chief

in E7 they put the chief of the platoon in with the second officer for obvious reasons to basically keep that guy from killing himself and others and you just had to I mean you just you had to first admit to yourself, I don't know what I'm doing because I'm a brand new seal, but I'm an officer, so I've got some responsibility, and I tried to do it this way. Like, you just would defer to your chief, and, you know, you'd be like, hey, what are we doing here? How do we do this?

And everybody kind of knew that's what you did, but you still had to sort of be in charge. So it was a hard, it's a hard line to keep, and I wasn't great at it all the time. I tried to be good at it. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff I do over with, like, I just was a 22-year-old, you know, like, trying to be a new seal and also an officer. It's not ideal. I think the ideal way to be to serve an enlisted period or even maybe two, maybe six years, you know, as an enlisted guy, then become an officer would have been more of the ideal. I don't know why we, that's a whole philosophical thing about the U.S. military. I don't know why we do it. The fire service does nothing

like that. I mean, it'd be absurd to even think a fire officer would show up and be in charge of the fire company. It just doesn't happen that way. I totally agree with it. Like, I've worked eight years before I became a fire officer, like learned how to fight fire, built up my reputation and my skill set and my sort of cachet or whatever you want to call it of authority before I actually assumed a role of authority, you know? In the military, we just kind of thrust them into it. You're in charge. You don't know shit, but here you go.

I don't know why we do. Honestly, I don't know how I do that. Maybe Jack knows the historical aspects of that, but I don't know why we've gone down that road in the U.S. military. I don't offhand to tell you the truth, but I have to imagine that it's just because the ideas it's built for war and people are dying left and right. So there's just an assumption, you know, today our military is much more professionalized. But it comes out of a tradition where I, you know, the infantry were a bunch of nugs that, you know, on the off season when they weren't farming, they would be, you know,

essentially drafted into the king's military and sent off the fight and maybe die. I don't know. It's some of those like those pre-World War two even traditions that, you know, the military still has lingering. And maybe it is time to overhaul a lot of those ideas. It may come from the British tradition, too. I know the Navy is hugely influenced by the British Navy. There was a whole, it was the officer class, you know, it wasn't a, it was a lot of thought. It was a, it was sort of a whole separate upbringing, you know. Is that true in the Seals, too, that like the officers have a separate mess hall and all that sort of stuff?

no we always uh or at least when i was in um at the team no it was not true at all the officers officer they had one platoon room and in that platoon room the officers had a computer because they had to do crappy computer work but then if we went on a ship like we went on the sixth fleet command ship or whatever for however long we would actually not we would tell our guys not to wear their insignia uh so nobody on the ship knew what their rank was or rate was and that way they didn't get sucked into sweeping the deck or painting the hole or any of that crap. And we just kind of try to keep it all. It's like these are the seals and not be enlisted in the officer seals.

So we didn't have, we don't have officer quarters or anything. That's cool. And it's interesting that you guys tried to kind of like break through that, that cast system. Well, and our guys would have just never let us live it down. Have we not? But you really have a choice. You're almost doing it for self-preservation or anything else. these guys aren't going to accept this this is crap and so you mentioned going out with the fleet and

I mean back in those days the correct me if I'm wrong Jeff but the idea was that seals would be the direct action element for the fleet when they were out at sea yeah and that still is the case if you're a if you're a seal platoon attached to sock your special operations command Europe and that Navy Emerald that's in charge of sixth fleet and Europe wants to use a seal platoon, he can, he draws that seal platoon and he controls that seal platoon. It's all depends on what theater you're deploying to. So the platoon doesn't belong to a, uh, you know, a, um, a theater special operations command. It does, but then the, it does. Yeah. Sock Europe would own that European based seal platoon, but then if, if, um, naval forces Europe goes to sock Europe and it's like,

we need a seal platoon, generally sock Europe's not going to be like, well, we're not giving you a seal that's I mean that's their job is to give them that seal to do so that it's a pretty but if you're in Afghanistan then you're going to go to the justota for wherever they need you but so if you're in southcom or if you're in uh you come or africom you're going to kind of do whatever missions those commanding generals or admiral's need that are seal missions obviously you know would there be contention amongst or between like a ship's captain in a SEAL-Team platoon commander over taskings or missions or you know in the Army there's the idea and I'm probably in the native but the idea commander's intent this is what I want you to do

but sometimes that gets into micromanagement like this is how I want you to do it did you guys experienced that at all no that would be where the conflict would come as if they were telling you how to do it so if a no I never experienced it our the the naval leadership that was non-Seal leadership that I ever experienced in my short time in, just said, here's the mission, here's where you're going to be on this ship or whatever platform it is. And then this ship captain is going to get you where you need to go. As far as what you do and how you do it, you know, that's going to be however the tasking

comes down. They were always extremely professional knowing, you know, their job is their surface warfare specialist. They're not seals. They don't ever pretend to be. Their job is to get that ship where it needs to go, do what that ship is supposed to do. if that means getting within three miles of the shoreline to launch a seal element, then that's what they'll do.

They aren't going to tell you how to do your job as a seal, at least in my experience, which was nice. In fact, I was on a ship one time with a seal lieutenant. The guy was, the captain was extremely supportive. You know, he got on and was like, hey, you know, social operations on the ship. This is right after 9-11, you know, don't, this is a clandestine mission. Don't be emailing home of your families and saying, we're doing secret stuff, you know, and these guys are going to be on board

and don't try to rope them into our daily activities because they're doing their own training and whatnot. So it was kind of a very supported relationship there. Now that might not always be the case, but it wasn't. Did you get head of the Chowline privileges while you

on board? You would never try to you wouldn't try to do that because that's kind of it, that's abusing your cashier. That's how I describe it. Well, it's different then from what you're describing between a, a SEAL officer and a naval officer generally that, you know, there isn't a huge separation

between the officers and the enlisted. And I mean, you tell me, Jeff, but is that because you guys are, you know, your naval commandos, you know, your kind of boots on the ground? And it's just the relationship you have when you were in a small unit team like that. Yeah, that's by design. That's why officers enlisted go through the same buds, go through the same program. It is very much culturally ingrained in the seals and by design. So it's, the officer still has the ultimate responsibility and bears the fault when the mission goes arrive.

And it's, I mean, he will, you know, there's regular officer stuff involved. I used to do all the paperwork and the admin stuff and we had to write e-vals and fit reps. But as far as the tactical seal operations stuff,

you were a fool not to rely on the, enlisted guys in your platoon that generally have way more experience than you. and those matters. And really there your job is, in my opinion, a good seal officer's job was get the assets and support that they can get. So that's a big military, you know, push. You know, like convince J-Soc to give you a Hilo support

or convince TF-160 to provide this air cover. You know, that was more of an officer job. Like, I used your leverage as an officer to get us resources. Whereas then then the enlisted guy, you might tell your chief, hey, I want you to outline out this op for us. Like, tell me how we're going to do this. That's, in my opinion, that's how a smart officer worked. And then he took care of the more like, right, tactical details.

And right, yeah, you know, getting it all laid out and all the assets laid on and all that stuff. That's how it's supposed to work. But yeah, as far as the stratification, it just didn't exist. It wasn't, you wouldn't, you didn't succeed as a seal officer. if you try to do the, I'm an officer, you'll listen, you're going to listen to me. That didn't really go super far in the seals. I actually saw it, unless I got a guy punching officer in the face one time on deployment.

And now I did get sent home. There are certain lines you can't cross. But I mean, like, I think the guy kind of maybe deserved it. I don't know. I didn't see the start of the argument, but, you know, he only got sent home because a bunch of other people saw it. So had it happened just within the, platoon room, you know, the officer probably would have tried to make it go away and sort of been like,

hey, man, everybody had a hot temper, like, let's cool down. But what size element would you guys typically work in? A squad, or a squad of eight or a platoon of 16 would generally be the biggest unless it was just some large operation, you know, but generally it was a squad, sometimes even a fire team, which was four guys. So, yeah. So, Jeff, you get in there, 1999, and now you're going out with the fleet and you're doing, I presume a lot of training. What happened in, you know, the run-up two and then 9-11 happening?

Yeah. So we were finished. We were scheduled to deploy October of 2001. We were scheduled 18 months out to deploy that date. And we were, I'll never forget, obviously, like everybody always remembers where they were. And we were down in Florida training with AC130s down in the Gulf Coast area. And I had been doing call for fire mission training all morning, or actually all day and all night. And then went to bed, had a full week of it laid on, went to bed that Monday night and then woke up Tuesday morning.

And all of a sudden, that was 9-11. And those assets all immediately deployed or basically shut down the training to get ready to leave. And they sent us back to Virginia. And we deployed when it was at that point, it was like two weeks later. That was our last training block before our deployment. So it was a, it was, it was heavy because you were, I don't know if you were in at that time. You were like, okay, this is it. It was why we train.

Like, this is the good stuff. Let's do it. And it was exciting to me. I mean, I was 23 years old or whatever it was and was looking forward to it. And just kind of had it as a sense of, okay, this is what we're doing. This is what we were trained to do and let's go do it. To me, it was exciting. And then so it happens.

And then what, so did you deploy? What happened for you? Yeah, yeah, deployed. We were a, we were a U-com platoon, meaning we were supposed to deploy a U-COM, and we were a winner-warfare platoon. So, you know, our luck is 9-11. 11 happens. Obviously, none of those guys were in a winter warfare location. So we continued to Germany. My sister platoon went also over there, and then they ended up getting rerouted to CENTCOM, and we ended up going to Kosovo. And we never went to Afghanistan right after 9-11.

My sister platoon went and did all the recon and the advance work for Camp Rino and basically were some of the first U.S. units on the ground after the SF teams and CIA and all. Showing your good side has many rewards. Become a donor at Griffle's Plasma, and your plasma can make life-saving medicines. Millions of people depend on these medicines to live healthier, more active lives. And every time you donate with Griffles Plasma, you're compensated. You can receive over $500 the first month. Learn more about plasma and how it helps people at gripplesplasma.com.

Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. And then we just went and did kosable stuff and then did a bunch of training and came back home in April of 2002. Kind of having what we thought at the time kind of having missed the war.

At the time, everybody thought like, oh, this thing's going to be over in like eight months. We're going to wipe out the Taliban and the al-Qaeda and everybody's coming home. And so it was a real big disappointment because we thought we had. kind of missed the boat. So that's, that's interesting, Jeff, because, you know, you were having that back and forth today on Twitter with Ron Mueller. If you had crossed paths in Afghanistan when you were both at the agency, you and Ron were in K-Vo at the same time as well. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's what we had really been training for that whole workup, because that was the only mission and talent at the time was a K-4 operations working for NATO. So we were, man, we were

boned up on surveillance and reconnaissance and all that kind of stuff. And it was fine. While we were there, it was cold and snowy. And we did some okay stuff. But it just was, I mean, it was just such a deflating feeling like, you know, like, the guys that blew up frigging New York City and killed a bunch of Americans are 5,000 miles from where we are. And we're over here watching smugglers cross the Albanian coast of a border. Did you guys get to do any ops though while you were there? Yeah. I mean, yeah. But it was. was all, just surveillance and reconnaissance type stuff. Nothing, nothing exciting. I mean, we did some prisoner transfers of war criminals, not even, not even high level work criminals, just thugs.

We did some, we did some maritime stuff with Sixth Fleet that I was talking about. And it was fine. It was, as a mature 43-year-old now, I get, like, everyone's got their role, you know, but as a 22-year-old new seal, you're like, I'm going to the freaking show or I'm going to be pissed. you want to go to the main show. Right. That's what you had been doing all your training for. That's why you signed up. Exactly.

So it was disappointing to me. On a personal level, pretty disappointing. And again, I thought everything was done also. I had no idea. If you would have told me there's 16 more years of this or whatever happened. No one,

yeah, no one believed that. I'd have been like, okay, cool, I'll be patient then. So after that deployment, I mean, what's going through your head?

you're thinking, I miss the war, and now I got to go find something else to do? No, I definitely had the sense that I missed that war, although Iraq was just starting to enter into the consciousness around this time. So it was around 2003, obviously, is when that started heating up. So I was like, Iraq, you know. And I was like, man, I'm going to put in an application at the CIA and just see what happens. And I did. And then I just also decided, you know, I had an international affairs degree and studied international politics and then said so that's a good fit for the CIA is a good fit for someone with that background and I was like I can use that degree I can probably get in and keep doing al-Qaeda focused stuff and so I kind of just then made up my mind like I'm going to I'm going to leave and pursue that and honestly that's such a long application process that I applied to grad school too because like crap I might not even get this job and I got to have a backup plan.

So funny story, I applied to grad school and the CIA at the same time and then also applied to the CIA's intern program for graduate students. Thinking like, okay, if I get in grad school, I'll do this intern program. So I applied both the regular clandestine service training program, which is the primary DO training pipeline. And I applied to this intern program at the same time while I got a phone call saying like, hey, we want to talk to you about coming to the CIA. instantly thought to myself, oh, this is the intern program. Like, okay, good, cool. I'm going to go to grad school, become an intern. And went back and forth with this guy.

He probably thought it was a moron. So for a good five minutes, he's like, yeah, I really need to like start asking you these questions now. I was like, well, I haven't got accepted to grad school yet. He's like, no, no, I don't care about grad school. Like, this is for the CST program. This is like to become a CIA, you know, case officer, operations officer. I was like, oh, crap.

This is the real time. You got to play it off like, yeah. right, right. I mean, by that point, I was going to, like, orientations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Like, I was ready. Like, I'm going to grad school. Like, my brain was flipping into grad school mode.

And then all of a sudden, like, I'm getting phone calls from the CIA. Like, oh, crap, I've got to make some decisions. And ended up accepting that job and not going to grad school at that time. I went later. But it was. What was that recruitment process like for you? I mean, you're a SEAL officer. So, I mean, you're pretty tough dude.

But now it's like a whole different can of worms that you're walking into here. It's a completely different world. You're almost at a disadvantage of being a seal officer because you're, you know, you're in kind of from the world of brute force to the world of gentle persuasion. And so, yeah, I mean, I struggle with them in the training. So the recruitment is not, it was fine. Like I just applied. I didn't get sought out.

I did the, I applied online. And it's a very extensive interview process. and background checks and polygraphs and all that stuff and made it through all that. But then in the training part of it, it's a, it's a change of culture, having to learn how to coerce something out of someone in a way where you're almost convincing them they want to give you things as opposed to like taking a door down and taking something because you're a skillful team, you know. Did you ever have any moments at the farm where like, you know, you wanted to like reach across

the table like, listen, motherfucker. You do. And I kid you not guys do it in the farm. They generally get past and not good grades. They generally get told that's not going to work here. I didn't do that. I wanted to do it plenty of times, but I would just get flustered.

Like, man, you would like face a role player and it'd be like a 60-year-old woman, you know, you're supposed to be stealing secrets from it. She just, and these instructors are amazing. They'll show up. And they're all officers of the CIA that do this job, this training job. And they would show up and she would just burst into tears and like my fam, my mom is sick.

I've got to get to America tomorrow. I need money and help me. And you're just like, I don't even know what to do here. Like, I mean, that kind of stuff would throw me for a loop all the time. I would come out of there sweating like, oh my God, this is terrible. So it was just a totally different world, completely different world. I had to learn finesse and manners and empathy. Yeah.

You said that for your train up and your deployment is a seal that you guys had like the reconnaissance and surveillance aspect down. When you went for the clandestine service training and then, you know, we're learning counter surveillance and things like that. Did you feel like your experience with surveillance training with the seals have prepared you? Or was it was it completely different? Did you, I mean, did you learn? Was it a new world? Yeah. Yeah, it was good in the sense of, um, uh, because so in the SEAL's surveillance

and reconnaissance is a generally a standoff, maybe like a mile or more out with, you know, optics and sort of you might have different elements surrounding a target and you're all collecting data. Surveillance in the CIA is a much different deal. It's a closer up, um, intimate almost kind of thing where you're trying to blend in to the surroundings and then also not be discovered by, like you can throw on a gilly suit in a hide site as a seal and lay up in the mountains and be looking down into a valley and you're fine. You can't in the state surveillance world. You're, you're got to be in that city

on the street, not getting detected by your surveillance target or if you are knowing that and peeling off and letting someone else assume surveillance. So yeah, it was a totally different. The whole thing was a whole different world for me. There was not honestly a lot that translated over from the seals to the CA, other than maybe like self-motivation and sort of getting the job done, you know, like that's a huge part of the CA, much more so than the Navy because you're an individual. And really, you're policing yourself. A lot of the times you're acting as your own boss, your own motivator, like, you know, there's nobody that's, I mean, there is people above you that are kind of forcing you out there to collect intelligence and meet assets and stuff. But really, it's up to you to be,

self-motivated. So that part of it was helpful, but that's about the only thing that translated over. It was a completely different world. I think it was our buddy James Powell, who we've had on the show also, and he was telling me people ask him like, man, how many pull-ups do I have to do to make it in the CIA? Like, what's my two-mile time got to be? You're like, dude, it has nothing to do with that, like absolutely nothing to do with that. Especially on the, in the, so there's the traditional side of the operations world, and then there's like the paramilitary sort of everybody has heard about, you know, everybody envisioned CIA officers with guns and out, I don't know, doing paramedical. Even though the banner image for this very interview is you with a Kalashnikov and all this paramilitary shit on.

I do. That's probably misleading to a large degree because I was not in that world. I was only because I was in Afghanistan, but there was a huge, I don't know what I dare say, the majority of regular operations officers really saw the Afghanistan Iraq mission. It's sort of this outlying, like that is not, that kind of stuff is Cal. boy stuff. Like, they really think of the real CA work in the ops division as being Europe and Russia and China and embassy parties and back alleys and sort of what you think of in the 80s spy. Espionage films, yeah. So the Afghanistan, Iraq, the CTC world is really different in the CA and is kind of a standalone. It's a behemoth now because of post 9-11, but it was really kind of a stepchild

before that and didn't get a lot of love and was kind of thought of as like a, I mean, when I said I wanted to go to CTC when I was at the farm. People were like, that's not where you made your name. You know, you made your name in Venezuela and Russia and China and stuff, you know. But again, I was still not like, man, I'm in this Al-Qaeda killing mode. I need to get over there and fight terrorists. Sure. And it became a huge behemoth. And now is a, you know, you can get ahead going there now.

So before we leave the training aspect of it, I mean, what would you say was the biggest thing you struggled with then at the farm in the training and trying to wrap your mind around this new mission that you had. So, and so I should clarify, I was a, there's, it's a, it's hard, it's weird to describe them. So CIA has different divisions. There's an analysis division. There's an operations division. There's a technology section division, if you want to call it, a director. It's really what they call them. I was in the operations director, the DO, the NCS, but I was a, and came in as a CST. So the CST is like, think of it as the kind of the bread and butter CAA officer.

That's, they hire you as a, generally they've all had careers. They've all, they don't come right out of college. They've got business careers or law careers or military careers or some part of a career. They're not 22 generally. You generally have some experience. And they take that group of that cadre of people, they hire and they make them CMO, collection management officers, support staff officers, and case officers or operations officers. You pick a track, all of you are certified as an operations officer, a case officer.

That's the point. It's called a core collector. They have this core of people that can, they can send out to collect intel all over the world. And then they have, think of it as like an MOS and the special forces. You're a green beret, you're a special forces soldier, but you're also a column guy. Kind of similar to that. So I was a CMO by designation that went out and did CMO tours, OO tours. I never did a staff operations officer tour headquarters, just forever as I ever did.

So anyway, so you're going through the training, and they're training you to be a core collector. So that really means developing a source, getting this person to trust you. Well, it starts with identifying who you want to be. I could go recruit a gas station clerk at the come and go in Washington, D.C., but is that really going to do a lot for my knowledge of the inner workings of the government? Probably not. So you had to identify who you wanted to recruit, identify someone that had vulnerability or motivation to work for America, and then you had to develop them and convince them to do that. That's really, that's hard, man. It sounds, in the movies, it looks easy. In real life, it's not,

because you just people have imagine if someone approached you Jack Murphy and trying to convince you to provide info on Ranger Battalion or whatever else they're going to have to get through this shell of like reluctance they're going to have to come with Russian hookers wheelbarrel of gold I mean you got to decide what it's going to take to make you want to do that

and that's throw a dog a bone here you know that was the hardest part was like a bunch of people to marry you I mean, really, you know, I mean, you know, tell them, you know, selling them on the benefits of why they should hitch their, hitch their trailer to you, basically. That was the hardest part. It was just learning how to, it's really, it is,

I always in my brain, aligened it to trying to convince a woman to marry you or at least date you. Like, it's as difficult as that. How do I get this person to want to hang out with me on that road? It's how do I get this person to want to hang out with me and give me secrets from their country. So that was stuff, especially for a not very, I mean, not super mature 24 year old or whatever I was. It's gung-ho, like I'm a badass seal. I can do anything. Anyone would give me information. Come on. I think that's just. Jeff, could I know, you know,

I don't want to tread on anything that could be sensitive, but speaking in generalities, could you tell us about any opportunities where you got to do that in real life? And I, identify a potential asset and walk them through the recruitment pitch and all that. Yeah. I mean, specific details of it? Not specific details, but I was in a country and I identified a person and tell us what that relationship was like. It's easier for me to give you an example of where it didn't work.

And I can tell you like, so in every country in the world, Americans and Russians in the espionage, intelligence, real bump against each other. and are constantly playing against each other. And we both know it. They know it. They see us as the sort of like John Wayne, honest to a fault, kind of like can't keep our intentions masked, and we see them as these brutish sort of will do anything

to accomplish what they need to do. And then we're on these dividing lines. So it's almost just, it's almost absurd, honestly, when you walk up to each other and you know what each other is trying to do. So it's just this game. So I played this game with this large, burly alcoholic Russian guy, a party in Europe for like a night. I mean, we just went back and forth. We could both just, after like 30 minutes, we could both tell this is going nowhere.

Like you're not convincing me and I'm not convincing you. And we just kind of were like, ah, fucking, we just drank some alcohol and like agree to disagree. And like, I mean, so, but that, you know, like, at a certain point, that's the beauty of it. It's like you kind of realize this is going nowhere and you treat it that way. And then who knows, you hope three months later the guy called. you on the phone, like, man, I enjoyed our drinking, let's meet again. So like, of course, that didn't work for me that one time. And that's why I could tell that story. But like, that's kind of what you had to do. You just had to kind of read the room almost. And they're,

they're definitely, that was a good example of an extremely tough target. We have them all over the world. People that just, they can't even talk to us. And as Americans, you know, they go and report it to their host service and all that's the. Are those general, those, those stereotypes you mentioned, the CIA officer, honest to a fault, can't hide what the fuck they're really trying to do. And the Russian, who is like the KGB, Boris and Natasha, Stereoctupt twirling their mustache. I mean, is that real? It is, to a large degree, it is, because we are just so open as a society. Like, we, I mean, we don't, you know, they know we operate under certain restrictions and

laws and rules. And for the most part, we do. Now, they're different in espionage world and we can, there are ways we can do things that surprise them. I'll just put it that way. But like, for the most part, we can't do half the stuff that they can get away with doing. And I mean, that's okay. We were okay with that. We'd still operate that way. But yeah, no, it's totally like that. There's, and then, you know, every country's got their reputation and their, just kind of their MO. And it's weird. It doesn't always correspond with the. Being a parent can be really challenging.

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We see them as our sort of our spirit animals, you know, in this region of the world. And that's great for the population. But their intel service we see is this conniving, evil lying, like, can't trust them. They're always out to get us. Like, it's weird how that will happen. And it does happen quite a bit with a bunch of different countries. And they have to be that way because they're trying to survive and we get it. But, like, it's just funny how the public persona and the intel persona of various countries is different sometimes.

And so you're saying, like, you would be, like, in a cafe trying to pitch an asset, and there'd be like a rush in there trying to pitch the same asset. And you guys are running across each other like that. That'll happen, yeah. And European capitals, that kind of stuff happens all the time. Mainly at parties, like dip parties. And it's, I mean, those are, it's like the, I don't know how you explain it, but that's really just the kind of the meetup place.

Like nothing serious has happened in those parties or in those cafes. That's kind of the introductions and, you know, just kind of a place where they, kickoffs happen, you know. It's the dating app, if you know. What was it like? Going from a close-knit team environment to an environment where you're on your own, was that much of a culture shock for you? Or did you have any difficulty adjusting from like that tight-knit camaraderie to just being out there by yourself? Yeah. So, I was lucky enough

I'm a generally I wouldn't say like a solitary person I like being alone I thoroughly enjoy working on my own and I've always been that way so that part of it wasn't hard but then yeah the part of um so I was lucky I had half my CIA career I was in a more of a team environment

like in Afghanistan it wasn't we had a base a tight knit base with so many CIA officers that we all were very close and worked hard together And then I was in a European station where it was more on your own. And I didn't really struggle with it. It's different. For me, it's a difference I liked because I kind of liked me and doing my own thing and just being in charge. It was a nice change almost in a sense because I liked just being in charge of my sort of stable of responsibilities.

I didn't have to worry about how much people below me and how a unit was performing. I just really had to worry about how I was performing for that period of time. So I liked it. But it is totally different. And you never really were fully alone. You always had support staff and people back at headquarters. A good buddy of mine on the Twitter, Jack knows. He was at worked at headquarters.

You always could reach back to those guys at headquarters and they'd do whatever they needed for you. And you had people at the station that would always be. If you say, hey, I'm going to go meet this guy. I don't trust him. I'd like two of you guys to come and just overwatch our meeting. And everybody would be like, oh, yeah, that sounds awesome because that's an easy job and it was fun and you got to do some fun stuff. So you always had that resource there.

But it was, for the most part, an individual job. But I like that. It didn't bother me. But it's on you as the case officer to like go out and get that cheddar, right? And the station chief is expecting you to bring in, you know, fresh meat for the grinder. That was 100%. And you are the one that pays the man if you don't. Like it reflected poorly on your e-val if you did not.

It's a high pressure job. There has been cases in the U.S. government of this might seem shocking. CIA officers that have lied and made up sources and just fudged the books to get those numbers because you had to. It's a little high pressure deal, you know. So was there like a quota for you or was it just sort of somebody above you with a general sense of this person is doing work and making progress? I wouldn't say there was a quota, but there was each, in my experience, each station or theater you went into had an idea of what a motivated case officer would do in that area. So they might have an idea of what you should accomplish. It was never

necessarily laid out in a metric format like you will do this, this and this. It was more kind of an unwritten thing. And it's like any other job. There's always politics and the other stuff involved. So the CMO part of my career there, when I deployed as a CMO, for example, it was nice in the sense that the pressure was not there to recruit and do the identifying and spotting as much of potential assets. It wasn't, that part of it is like a secondary part of that job. It was more collecting all the intel that comes in, writing it up, figuring out what's important and what's not. So that was kind of almost a nice change in the sense that I didn't have that pressure in that tour anyway. And as CMO, you covered before, but it's collection management officer.

Would you have like several collectors underneath you or not necessarily underneath you? They weren't underneath you. You would manage, so I was a CTC, CMO on that tour. So I would manage the officers that were collecting anything involving terrorist issues in Europe. So anything that involved terrorist issues in Europe would come through me, the products that they've collected. And I would sort them out and figure out what was important and what was not write up, tell them to write up what I thought needed to be written up as an Intel report. I would say, hey, leave this guy. He's crap.

You know, don't worry about it. Because it's kind of your job to know what we know and to know what we don't know. And then to tell them, this is what we don't know. You need to get this. We don't need this guy telling us all this stuff about the Muslim Brotherhood. We don't give a shit. We know everything there is to know about them. I appreciate that you're talking to him, but it's just not helpful.

So that was kind of your job in the CMO one. And where would you work with analyst? Like how would you just? like fact checked, fact check everything that they would send you to see, like, against a database? Would you know, would you work with analysts? Like, how would you determine, and then would you guide them and say, hey, these are, we need people with access to this kind of stuff? Yeah, it wasn't necessarily fact checking, although that's a good description of it. It was more like, it was like saying, we already know, you kind of have to know your target, first of off.

So that when you see something come in, you instantly know that's something we want to know. And this is not. If you weren't sure, yes, you would send it to an analyst and be like, hey, do we need to know this? And then they would come back and be like, yeah, we'd love you to collect on that. And you would then redirect that to the case officer, be like, yeah, they want to hear more about this. Keep going on this target. Or they might say, ah, we already know that. Don't worry about it unless he can tell us this separate thing.

So then you'd redirect that to the case officer and be like, hey, they want to know this separate thing. If you can redirect them to this, great. If not, you just need to cut this guy away. So it's really kind of a, like you said, it's almost kind of a middleman between the analysts and the CEO and the case officers managing what's coming in to the analysts. People may not know. The whole job of a case officer is collecting info that's going to analysts,

consumers of products. So analysts on one side that are writing up products for government officials. That's essentially the job. if they don't want to hear it, the government officials don't want to hear it and the analysts don't want to hear it, or not don't want to, but already know it or don't think it's important, then we don't collect it. It's a waste of time. So somebody's going to kind of regulate that. It might be really interesting that MoMar Gaddafi likes to sleep naked under a palm tree in the desert,

but like, do we really need to know that as the U.S. government? We can probably put that in separate cable traffic, and we don't need to blast it out to the whole U.S. government. Dave, let's take some questions from the viewers before we roll into the next thing. Absolutely. So, JK, thank you for the donation. David, ever commanding your regular units? I never commanded any units. Jeff, did you ever take command of a SEAL team?

No, I only did one deployment in the SEALs and then went over to the CAA. So I was a second in command of a SEAL team. Okay. Thank you, Andrew. Any Bud's instructors reciting D.H. Lawrence? No, not that I heard, but I mean, maybe they weren't. I didn't know that's what they were reciting, but they recited plenty of help for me. They didn't need to be hate. It was, yeah. Yeah. Irene B. Thank you very much. How did you get your nickname? First off, what is your nickname and how did you get it? What nickname were we talking about? I think that I'm not sure. I'm not sure. talking about your from entireus name oh my Twitter name that is a in the Roman empire it was a wheat they used wheat collectors because wheat collectors would move all

throughout the Roman Empire and while collecting wheat would also collect Intel and they would send that Intel back to the authorities and those wheat collectors were called Fremontari the singular is a Fremantarius so I adopted that as my name because that's I was an Intel collector so there you do and the In the tradition of U.S., early American political thinkers that always adopted these Latin names when they wrote, that was kind of my thinking, too. It's, I'm probably going to mess up the history a little bit, but if you look it up, you can fact check what I'm saying. And later on, in Italian history, there were the charcoal burners, and they provided a similar function as far as there's a secret society because they could go into different towns selling charcoal or creative. it. And as I recall, they had a big role in the Republican movement in Italy and creating

the modern Italian state later on in Italian history. There you go. See, I didn't know that. They were called like Carbonari or something like that. Carbinaria is like the Italian FBI. That's the police today, yeah. So, Alex, thank you very much. For the uninitiated, what is a plank owner slash holder? That is someone that is a founding member of a unit. So if they create, if they tomorrow created, I don't know, the Super Ranger Battalion X, and it was filled with Super Rangers,

like the greatest Rangers ever to live, the original guys that were picked for that unit to stand up that unit would be the plank owners. That's a Navy thing. I mean, you own the original planking of the ship. Okay, great. And then Alex asked me a personal question for which, Alex, I will answer you probably in the Patreon or offline.

General Crang, thank you, he donated twice. And then Amy Sanchez, thank you very much. She just has a fox emoji laughing. So I assume. Andrew, thank you very much. Is there a correlation between officers who can recruit sources and people who excel at picking up one-night stands? skill sets seem similar kind of that's a fascinating question i don't know i mean that's uh probably not

because it let's delve into it by definition a one-night stand is relying on probably your physical looks you're some sort of immediate connection you're making and the unspoken understanding that this is probably a one-night stand and nothing is going to come out of it. So that's the almost exact opposite of what you're looking for in an asset relationship for intelligence purposes. You want the long-term marriage

version where they're telling you all their secrets. You're meeting every week. You're kind of getting to know their deep, dark personal stuff. So, I mean, I get it. I see the simile that's trying to happen there, but it's almost the opposite. Now, in a way, you could make a

metaphorical leap and call the one-night stand aspect, kind of the Afghanistan model of Intel collection. Some of that was very brief in a lot of ways. It would be like a guy showing up, hey, I want to give you this info. I need some money. There's some terrorists in this village and you're like, here you go, here's your money. I'll never see you again. Thanks a lot. And then he would leave and your relationship was done. So that does exist in that respect. Yeah. Well, and it's like you said, like to take it a little bit further, when you were drinking with the Russian, the thought is we're just having a good time. I'm being earnest.

you know, I'm not, I'm not being coy or false or whatever. We're just having a good time. And maybe in three months or five months or whatever, he'll call me. But when you talk to somebody at a bar, that's not your goal is to have, hopefully that they'll call you in three months when they're ready. You hope they don't call you in three months. That's more than the three. Right.

Or nine months. Ian, thank you very much. How closely did the CIA work with five eyes allies? very close so the five eyes relationship is I don't know for sure how it started but I think it started in SIGA world I believe that's where it really got started

which obviously is not us that was the NSA but it definitely trickles down so there's a there is a very close healthy intimate relationship amongst the Five Eyes countries and when we're talking about Five Eyes

we're talking about a group countries that were closely related to. Yeah, America, the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, I believe, is the five. Did I say Canada? Yeah. Yeah. I believe that's the five. So we, yeah, without getting into deep dark seekers, we have extremely close relationships with them on purpose because we all have extremely similar and copacetic.

national interest. It's like, it's like open kimono to some extent. Isn't it, Jeff, that like, there are no classifications here? You would think that's what it would be. Everybody still, there's always, there's always got grandma's chest in the closet. They're like, you know what, I'm not going to show my wife this crazy thing I've got in my chest in the closet. There's still some secrets held between amongst and between them, but for the most part, yeah, it's open come up now is a good description of it. And it waxes and wanes, depending on political leadership, I would imagine now it is waning a little bit.

For example, so if a president, any president, sort of is mouthy and not good at keeping things we know under wraps, then that makes the other, let alone, not even including the five-wise countries, but even the five-wise countries kind of tighten up a little bit. So they might. Right. We're not even going to release this to the five eyes. That happens in every country.

You don't ever give all your secrets away, even to your closest satellites. And General Crang donated again, he said, did you ever, did you have any interaction with British forces? And if so, how were they, how well were they integrated? British forces, in the seals, you mean? maybe speak to both I guess I didn't do a lot with the British seals I just didn't have a lot of experience with them in the military and I had a little bit of experience in the intel world and they're extremely professional just like you would think they would be there they're much smaller but do a lot with with their size and their resources that are smaller than ours which was which is fairly obvious since we're a huge country and they're not. They work really well with what they have and are very good at what they mean.

Did you, I don't know if you're speaking about the militarily or intelligence-wise, but did you find, I don't know, did you find that they, because of like Northern Ireland and stuff, that they came with a, with an experience of all that maybe Americans didn't have? yeah um intel wise for sure and then and there was also at least in the early days after 9-11 there was a little bit before um the london bombings and the paris bombings and all that the rest of it there was a little bit of dragging along not a lot but a little bit of dragging along america had to do um because it was it was our fight at first um right had to spread to europe yet So, you know, even though your best allies are wary of committing resources and lives and money to...

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That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Certain fights. So there was a little bit of that first, but once they did become wholeheartedly involved, yeah, they definitely had that experience of Northern Ireland drawn.

I am a big, without every allies got their, their hang-ups or their sort of their issues with us and we with them, and the Brits do as well, but despite those, they're great in what they do. You have to admire militarily and the mental world, in my opinion. And I mean, the Brits also have hundreds of years of experience of colonialism and pacifying foreign populations. Let's not forget about all that. Which can be helpful at times if you're looking for that kind of thing. Well, that all like parlor room, British gentleman kind of facade.

I mean, yeah, it exists, but they're very good at the kind of like a chicanery and subterfuge. I mean, it's something they do well. Yeah, they definitely do. It might be because they're so small. It's such a small island. that they had to do so much for so long. They were essentially ruled the world, you know, for the longest time, with that tiny little population.

So you got to learn something if you're doing that. Brendan Marsh, thank you very much. This is kind of skipping forward in your career to your current career. But would you run truck work versus engine work? I think that's skipping ahead, right? Or am I wrong? No, that is skipping it. I am on an engine now.

so I love engine work but I love truck work too it's like any other thing man when you're doing it it's your job you think it's the greatest job and when you're on the opposite you think when you're a ranger

you probably think that's the most important job in the world when you're a seal you think that's the most important job in the world same thing with firefighting now the rescue is a whole separate deal I mean that really is the you know firefighters will get that joke

but I was on the rescue before I became an engine lieutenant but I like engine work. Engine work is putting out fires for you guys that don't know. So engines have all the hoses and all the water. Trucks do a lot of getting on the roof, cutting holes in the roof, breaking doors, a lot of the kind of non-fire suppression work, and then rescues do a lot of fancy rescuing and technical rescuing and stuff. So they're all different jobs. They're all important. So the engine would be sort of the water aspect, the truck, would be sort of the breaching or the entry. And just any big kind of manual job,

maybe like pulling victims out, cutting a hole in the roof, breaking doors, setting ladders up to get to second floor windows. It's more truck work, quote unquote. And then a rescue to be rescue work is like a PJ, technical rescue, ropes, things like that.

We'll take a couple more and then we'll kind of get back because they're coming in. Man, I am so sorry. I believe somebody, I believe this is Russian, but I'm not one person in a certain, but thank you very much. You want to know the name of the guy I had drinks with? Andrew, I don't know. What fluent, this might be Andrew. Anyway, what fluency level did they have you get to on the C-E-F-R scale? and was your sign language Russian? Does the agency do with...

I'm sorry, go ahead. Does the agency... No, actually, we'll address... Because the second part of that question is different. I did not work against the Russian target and was never in Russia. I would spend my whole time in CTC. That story was meant to illustrate

the time I bumped up against Russian. I did speak of zero Russian. For all the Russians out there listening, they might want to come send me emails and whatnot. I'm a waste of your time. They have, so proficiency-wise, we scaled it like a one through five, or a five was fluent, a native speaker, and a one was like, I know how to say, Ola.

So I don't know if that's called a C-E-F-R or not, but I don't, I was a zero on Russian. I don't know. You can answer this to whatever detail you can or not ask. at all. But why would the Russians and us have overlapping targets in a counter-terrorist environment or counterterrorist. The al-Qaeda and a lot of the Central Asian groups hate Russia, just as much as they hate us. Look at what they've done in Russia. They have done all kinds of stuff there, the Chechens and Al-Qaeda. So we overlap just because they hate Russians as much as America. Then we Russia invaded Afghanistan, you know, that's who the original baby al-Qaeda fought against when they became al-Qaeda.

So, but I wish I could say that that led to a ton of cooperation and sort of bridge building, which made us in the Russians, but I don't really think it did. But we do have similar targets sometimes. And then the second part of the, does the agency deal with fighting drug traffic? There is a counter narcotics center at the CIM. That is about all I can say about it because it was never my mission. I think it's a ridiculous waste of money if you want to know my personal opinion, but I believe they still do it as far as I know. DJ Segway, Oregon, thank you very much.

Are Knox a real position? There is such a thing as a knock, yes. They do exist. And all Intel agencies across the world, or I mean, most of them. What does Knox stand for? It just stands for non-official cover. It's a real, it is a real capability and status of cover that most intelligence agencies in the world use, meaning you are covered as a commercial, non-official, in a non-official capacity. So say I'm a Russian businessman. And the Russians want to send me over to America, collect Intel.

They may be like, okay, here's your, you now work for Ross Neft. Here's your papers. You've worked there for 20 years. And they will send him over to America to live and work in our oil industry while collecting on our oil industry or whatever else they want to collect on. But his status is a is a Rossnaft employee, not a state or not a Russian ministry of foreign affairs. It's but not communities, basically. And those countries use it. And then Amy, thank you very much again.

She said, I love the show, did me to send the Fox earlier. I thought it was a cat, but it was a ginger, so whatever. I think I know what she was harassing me earlier on the Twitter, making fun of my red skin and pale, no tan. The glow up. I love the glow up. I feel your pain. Right.

In fact, but I think you have more color than I do, actually. It's like this room. I mean, I'm apparently in the hottest room in my house right now. All right. So, Jeff, I want to talk about Afghanistan. When you went over to Afghanistan, were you going as a case officer or as a paramilitary officer at that point? Case officer. Okay.

I deployed there as a OO operations officer or case officer. to a area where we also had paramilitary officers as well. Okay. And were you supporting their mission or was it just mutually supporting? Yeah, they have different missions. And I would say we supported each other. The ultimate mission of all of us was to root out al-Qaeda from the country and defeat all those forces that were supporting them.

So they were doing that on the military side. and we were doing that on the Intel collection side. And so we, some days we supported them and some days they did more supporting of us and went back and forth. So to the extent that you're able then, can you walk us through kind of the lay of the land? I mean, Afghanistan, I think people understand more or less geographically where it's located and what the terrain is like. But I mean, sort of the human topography of Afghanistan that you were having to interact with and root out, you know, some bad actors out of the country. Yeah, the human topography was essentially almost all Pashtun where I was. Afghanistan's got different ethnicities and groups of tribal affiliations throughout the country.

The area where I was in the east is almost completely all Pashtun. And the Pashtun is mainly what the Taliban were or are. And they go across both the border. They're in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They kind of span the border and different clans will have Pakistan residents and Afghanistan residents. And you're essentially in the world of Pashto when you're in that part of Afghanistan. You had to kind of work in that world. And so in that Pashtun culture, which is the native culture there, you also had Arabs that had kind of infiltrated in really since the days of the Russian invasions in the 80s that had set up camp there.

and much more came over before and right after 9-11. And the Arab al-Qaeda element there was the kind of, was really who we were after. The local Pashtun insurgency and the Taliban insurgency wasn't necessarily a big concern for us in CTC because it wasn't, Taliban didn't attack us on 9-11. We didn't really give a crap other than that they were supporting al-Qaeda. So we would go, we would look at him for that reason. but really we were after the Arab al-Qaeda leadership that was hiding out in the Pashtun world

and on both sides of the border. They were both Afghanistan and Pakistan at the time. I don't know what they are now. But so you had to kind of, you had to know kind of what you were looking at in that human topography, you know who was important. If you ever heard an Arab name or someone described as an Arab, you would immediately kind of perk up and be like, okay, and not for ethnic reasons, but because that equaled probably an al-Qaeda leader. They didn't let Pashtuns be leaders in al-Qaeda for the most part.

I don't know what it's like now but then it was really all Arabs Egyptians Saudis were the big two and then So if you hear somebody whose name is like Al Misery or Al-Siri you're like what the fuck is that

that immediately you would be immediately be like I want to talk to you let's do this like if somebody was like I saw this guy Al-Misserie in the village the other day with a big caravan of like five trucks you're like that's exactly what I want to know about and you would just kind of, you know, you would laser focus in on that. And then you would kind of run with it from there and try to figure out who it was and what they were doing there.

And it was somebody we cared about. It generally was. And so that was really what you were dealing with. It was a lot of like, it was like sifting through a, you know, the river silt to find the gold chunks, really. Was it a, go ahead, Dave. I was just going to say, how difficult was it to work in sort of that posturing area? because you say that they span Afghanistan and Pakistan. And for our viewers, you don't know, like the postings don't recognize the board.

They have a tribal area or they have a cultural area that's existed long before that border. And they kind of divided by tribes and families and things like that. And they don't always get along. So how hard was that for you to sit, like you say, sifting through it, Was there a lot of deception, like trying to blame their rival tribes? Did you do a lot of that? Yeah, and man, passion culture is like, it's probably as close to, it's the best way you can almost describe it for American years is like Hatfields and McCoys.

It's a very real tribal sort of family versus family, tribe versus tribe, village versus village society. It always has been for thousands of years. and that worked to our advantage a lot of times in some ways, but then like you're saying, in other ways, it doesn't because you really never knew. Is he reporting on this guy because it's a blood feud that goes back like 40 years, and he just wants us to go blow his house up because his cousin, you know, married his sister and they didn't approve? Or is this really something that's important? So you did have to sift through a lot of that.

And you, the institutional knowledge of us having been there for so long, but at the time that I got there about 2006, It was pretty easy to do that and not super hard to figure that out. And we knew we knew more, we knew more about what we were looking for than they knew we were looking for if that makes sense. So things that they would say that may not seem important to them, we kind of latch on to, like you said, like mission and name Al-Missary. Or Haji or Ibrahim, like these little keywords that we would pick up on that we had heard in traffic or whatever else. So, you know, you almost would ignore the first 30 minutes of a meeting where they talked about how they were going to go murder their cousin because they had a blood feud over a truck. And you'd be like, you had to listen to it because, again, rapport building and empathy.

But then you'd be like, yeah, that's good. Let's talk more about that. But first, let's hear about this Ibrahim guy. And then you'd kind of like prod them. And they'd almost be like, I mean, I don't know. He's an Arab and he's in the village and he's in a truck. I don't know. Why do you want to know about him?

Like, it was kind of a, you had to kind of direct them where you wanted them to. go while sifting through. It was hard. And then and then the opposite was some of them were very, very good at knowing what we wanted to hear, like any culture in America would be the same way. And there's all police, I'm sure, deal with it on a daily basis, informants that know exactly what you want to hear and always have a steady stream of it to feed you as long you got some money to give them or something in return. So we play everybody faces that all the time. You kind of sifted through. And I'm sure we wasted thousands. of dollars on some of worthless information, but that's kind of the price of doing business sometimes,

you know? What was it like the difference going from, you know, you're working in a European country, going to diplomatic parties and cafes, and now, you know, you're wearing, it was from some of the pictures you were able to share with us, you're wearing fatigues, carrying a Kalashnikov, you know, all kidded out. It must be like just a totally different operational environment for a CIA case officer in the way you're going about doing business. Yeah, honestly, for me, it was the opposite because I went from SEALs, the end of the CIA, and then really my first tour was in Afghanistan. Okay.

Well, I was still kind of, it was almost like this slow transition. The real shock was going to Europe and then wearing a suit every day and having to live like in an embassy. And that was honestly, it was very difficult. And I don't know, I'm not even 100% sure there wasn't some like weird kind of strange pseudo-PTSD that came into play. because I just couldn't, a lot of that stuff in Europe, I couldn't see as important. I would get real, like, anxious. Like, why are we?

Right, right. Why do we give a shit with this second minister of, you know, state from Uzbekistan is doing? I just don't care. Like, this is not important. Why are we going after this? So you almost had to kind of, like, readjust your whole mental framework, which I had a little bit of trouble with. And I had a boss that made that difficult, too. But so that was almost harder than the opposite.

Like, you know. it is in a war zone. It's easy. You don't live in an war zone for the most part. You don't have a lot of responsibility other than staying alive and doing your missions. You don't have to go to the store. You don't have to pay bills. You don't have to worry about stupid on important stuff. You really just tend to focus

on important stuff. It's very pure in a way. It was almost harder going the opposite way and trying to fit back into normal society in Europe. Yeah. And you said that for most of your fellow employees that Afghanistan and Iraq were the anomalies, right? That they were kind of throw-off type things.

So how did you relate to, when you went to Europe, how did you relate to like your fellow employees and your bosses and people like that? It was difficult. I didn't get along great with my boss because she was very much in that old school. we're in Europe. This is the important CIA work here in Europe. This is where things that are important happen. So she was very much focused on classical targets,

if you want to call them that Chinese and Russian. And those are, I can't argue, those are hugely important, but I was still in CET al-A-Qaeda mode. So we kind of butted heads, and I would be like, this is not as important as you're saying it is. We should be going and doing this thing. And we butted heads. My coworkers, most of which were young,

had also rotated in out of Afghanistan, Iraq. So it was much easier with them because they were kind of in the same boat. Or if they weren't, they got it better. You know, they were, they were post, most of them were post-9-11 employees and understood that dynamic, or they were former military and got it. So there's really mainly an issue with just certain bosses that just didn't have that focus and didn't think CT was very important. And I still did quite a bit at that point and still do, obviously.

But, you know, again, if I had been a more mature, 40 instead of 26, wherever I wasn't. I probably would have handled that. And we never, was never an issue, but it took me a while and kind of get through that. Did, when you were in Afghanistan, did your past as a seal? Did that give you some sort of cash with, with the other agency employees? Or, I mean, did they look at you in a certain way that they didn't kind of consider others? Only when we were dealing with naval special warfare units. So it did in that respect if we bumped up against them for whatever reason. But my other, the fellow case officers were out there, I think one was an army guy, one was a former Marine, so they didn't, they didn't

really care. And it didn't know, other than like, no, nothing more than stories and sort of like, oh, they didn't have to, like, some of people will show up out there. And it really would be their very first tour anywhere. So first deployment anywhere for the US government is two S-CIA base in Afghanistan. That's a little shocking for like a 27-year-old that's never been outside the country for that to be your first assignment. So you kind of walk them through it.

Like, hey, you are living in this mud hut. We're going to work till probably like 11 every night. There might be mortars and rockets at every once in a while. It's fine. Just go to the bunker. like things that a former military person is kind of like, yeah, I got it. Roger, like, I've been there. Like, I understand.

Some people that have never lived that life are like, what the hell are you talking about? There's a new rockets coming on the base. So that kind of stuff, they never had to finesse when you were a former seal or a former Marine or former Ranger. They knew you got that. So that's really the only kind of cachet it gave you was just that you had been there before. How about weapon safety? Yeah, and weapon safety is always a, there's plenty of time. in a CIA ranger, I got real nervous. But there was times in Navy ranges. I got nervous, too. So,

I mean, now we had an EOD guy almost shoot us in the range one time and I was in the Navy. It doesn't just happen in civilian, as we all know. So when I was in Afghanistan, I'm not going to, I don't want to put you on the spot. I was in a certain area and the task force had a relationship with the CIA in that area. Are you able to talk at all about that relationship? Because every so often, those guys would say, hey, we got this target for you. No, I don't, I don't know what relationship you're talking about. Some things I cannot talk about, some of those things are untalkaboutable in that respect.

I believe, so you're familiar with Title 10 and Title 50 and all that stuff. Sure. Some of that stuff legally is prohibited under law or at least regulated under law, which is very confusing. It makes no sense to say, but that explains why I can't say much about it. Right. So for people who are listening, Title 50 is the CIA's covert action authorities.

Title 10 is the military's authorities for combat, for direct action to go out and fight the enemy. So there's certain things a guy like Jeff could go do and it's certain things that a guy like me could go do. But the streams aren't supposed to cross, are they? But sometimes you almost think to yourself, it might work really well if we could work together and use both of these legal authorities in cahoots. Some might think that. Some might think that. That sounds like some crazy talk, but hey.

Nothing I would talk about. Yeah. I mean, for people who don't know who are listening or watching, like, even though you may not think it, like our intelligence is highly regulated, our special operations, and military are highly regulated. And what they're allowed to do by our own, law fall into very separate baskets.

Yeah. It's a good thing. It's honestly a good thing that we do regulate it that way because it keeps us from getting out of control. Yeah. And this might be a good time to address, actually, Jeff, with you because there are so many people out there who believe that there are these like CIA conspiracies and they think that you guys are just, like you can just do whatever you want.

Like you're just lawless, a law unto yourself. And, you know, if you want to kill someone. somebody, you kill somebody. And, you know, it's not true for the military. And I mean, I maybe there's a time in my life where I probably believe that about the intelligence services as well. But now that I know a bunch of you guys and I've been, you know, working as a journalist for many years and have seen a bit more of it, I know that that just is not the case.

Like it's not even close to the truth. No, it is one of the most tightly regulated. I would posit it is one of the most tightly regulated agencies in America. in terms of what it cannot and cannot do. And for good reason, I mean, there's been historically debacles left and right with the CIA. But it is, man, there is nothing we ever did. It was, there were times when I wanted to do more and nothing illegal, like within our legal authorities and would run it up the flagpole and get just immediately shot down, like absolutely not,

or not doing this. And you would just be like, oh, my God, why are we the CIA if we can't go do things like this? And again, that's a 30-year-old or whatever talking that wants to just be gun-ho. But I mean, it is, so there's U.S. law is extremely strict about the CIA and we follow it to the T. Now, some foreign law, we routinely break and we break on purpose because we're directed by the U.S. government to break that foreign law because that's our job. It's illegal for a foreigner to provide him to the CIA. We obviously break that law all the time. So, you know, it's a different, it's different when you're talking about U.S. law and foreign law.

Foreign law we really don't care much about, but U.S. law we absolutely care about because of our history of, and I say our being the CIA's history of pumping up against U.S. law quite a bit and being smack down for it. And rightly so. Sure. And a lot of those laws are in place because of previous abuses and whatnot. Yeah. I mean, I never came. I was never, I can honestly say I was never once presented with an opportunity to just drastically

violate U.S. law to the extent where it was like, we can do this and save America, but we're going to have to break U.S. law, or we can follow U.S. law and not save America. Like that just, that never happened. It was never even a. Yeah, just Jack Bauer on 24, like the nuclear bomb's about to go off in L.A. Do you torture the guy to get the info? That's very, that's a very Hollywood fabricated scenario. Yeah. Well, and it's, I think it's important for people to know that. If there are abuses in the CIA, if there are abuses in the special operations community or in the military, just like their abuse in the police force, it's not that those agencies allow those abuses. It's just there are assholes in every single community across the span of humanity.

Right. It's all it's it's it's human beings that are the CIA and human beings do dumb shit sometimes and most of it's like any other most of it's petty theft and yeah and I mean that's the majority of the abuses that happened now obviously there are been cases where there's been these great legal struggles and conflicts and moral conflicts over how far we go in terms of interrogation techniques and things like that but not I assure you Well, 100% certainty. None of that was done without the approval of political leaders above because the CIA are not idiots. And they know they get thrown to the jackals every time something goes wrong.

So they tend to cover their asses pretty good at this point and don't do things on the whim anymore. At least when I was there, everything is very, there's a huge legal department at the CIA and for that reason. Because they don't want to break American law. They don't want to do things that are against our government and our law. I'll just be like dead honest in my personal opinion just based on my observations over the years. I think J-Soc is the element that plays pretty fast and loose with the law. And the CIA is actually pretty tight about it and generally follows the letter of the law. I think it's actually the military that's, they bend the rules quite a bit.

Yeah, I don't know. I never worked there. I've seen what you've written about that. So I'll take you away for it. But yeah, when when people say, you know, the CIA is like, oh, they've gone rogue that they're that they're funding these groups in Syria or whatever the case may be, they're not going rogue. They're getting paper from the White House to do that. Now, whether or not we should be doing that is a valid question, but they're not going rogue. Oh, absolutely. There's always valid policy questions, but you don't just magically procure 30 million dollars as the CIA and give it to Syria and opposition groups. That doesn't have a problem. It comes down the pike and is papered over extensively for that reason. You know, that's a covert action program that is approved all the way up at the White House.

I assume, I mean, I wasn't involved in that program, but that's generally how it works. That money comes from Congress. That money doesn't magically appear in the CIA budget, you know. But it's fine. I get that someone's got out of boogeyman. It is fine to let the CIA be the boogeyman. And it's almost good in a way because it gives a little bit of like, power of mystique, you know, like, oh, they can do anything they want. Like, that's almost good

if your enemies think that. Right, right. It's like the reputation Mossad has, that people think Mossad is everywhere. It's like this little small agency in a small country, but people think they're everywhere. Right. I don't even know much about them. I'm sure they're less than a thousand or whatever more. And it's, but you think it's a good thing that the CIA is so has this irrational fear, that people have an irrational fear of it. Like I've been in Iraq and been in Kurdistan, and I've just heard the most bizarre theories that like,

you know, it rained out today. CIA made that, made that happen. You know, I've been sitting with people, smart people. They're like, ISIS? ISIS is the CIA. They air dropped chai to ISIS to keep them supplied and keep their morale up. So they coming in, they parachute chai down from them from the sky. It's like just crazy irrational bullshit.

Yeah. I think it's good that our foreign enemies have that opinion. I don't think Americans should do that, but it happens. I always tell people, especially like 9-11 conspiracy theorists, I will tell them, man, I worked for the federal government. There is no way we could have pulled off 9-11 if we had wanted to and it had an entire plan to do it. Like to try to cover that up and make it look like it was foreign terrorists. You could have tasked that with us 10 years prior we still wouldn't have pulled that off. So it's just stupid. I mean, to think, you know, and the, say, the, massage did 9-11. The, the, the second part of that whole conspiracy through with 911, and I don't like go off on a huge tangent is how, like, how do you approach something like

that? So Bush goes directly to a group of CIA people or a special force team. He goes, hey I want to kill like 10,000 Americans. Right. Are you guys in frame there? Are you guys in? What happens when they say, uh, no? Okay. All right, we have to kill all you guys.

We have to get a hundred percent commitment right now up front. Yeah. Yeah. No, Dave, you just don't get it, man. They made them sign NDAs. Right. They made those guys sign NDA so they'll never talk. Nobody ever breaks an NDA.

Look, I'm a fucking journalist. I'm here to tell you, no one ever breaks NDAs. That never happens. I have pulled off small-scale conspiracies on foreign soil against our enemies. And those little small-scale, like 10-man conspiracies, were extremely difficult to carry off. I will just tell you, things go wrong, people don't do what they're supposed to do. People talk. People do stupid stuff. Like to carry out one that entailed an entire country and a mass terrorist thing. Come on, man. So, Jeff, before we talk about your moving on from the agency and becoming a first responder, and do you have any, like, was there any crazy stuff in Afghanistan you can tell us about,

you know, getting into firefights? Did you guys ever get ambushed like some, you know, call a duty shit? That never happened over there? Come on. I never had any major brushes with death. I mean, we had mortars and rockets that land. There was some any tank mines that our locals would drive over and blow up every once in a while. but we were pretty lucky my year there.

It was, we, we were careful, man. I felt safe for driving around my part of Afghanistan in a thin-skinned local-looking car with my Haji gear on and looking with my burka on than I ever did in a Humvee, you know, just because you're just so, you're out of target when you look like you belong. Yeah.

That was a security blanket for me. And people don't realize, like, you know, your beard was red, you're a ginger, but you actually fit in there because there are fair skin, red-haired people there. Although I will tell you, one of my terms was like, Mr. Jeff, you cannot go out with that beard in that skin. He was pretty convinced I was going to be figured out. So he was like, you must wear a burqa.

So I always sat in the back of the car. I put the burqa. I mean, I just laid it over my head, you know, because I was so white. I think I was like an aircraft panel in the back of the car. and they're worried like someone was going to be like that's i mean we're done but we're not we're not letting this irish-american guy drive through our village looking like that so he wasn't like i generally put it a burq on just to be sure that but i mean the afghans got to see a fully grown american man wearing a burqa like that must have been a sight well they never noticed it was me i was

always sitting in the back of the car so i was i was low profile are you sure that your interpreter wasn't just fucking with you to clearly easily could have been pretty sure they all were at a certain point because we had like an Asian-American dude right up front driving. I'm like, well, there's no freaking Chinese dude on your coast and you're not making him wear a burka. Dang it. Holy cow. I'm sure those guys had fun for us. Hazing from the Afghans. They were good guys though. They were okay with that. We had a couple quick questions. Alex, thank you very much. Any advice for a GS-Nobody trying to get involved in the world of international high adventure.

And he said, great show. You've helped me survive many long-haul flights. Thank you. A GS nobody that already works in the government, I presume, like someone that wants a lateral transfer? I assume probably a GS-6, G7, something like that. I mean, I would do it. You never know until you try, man.

That's what I was basically a four-year lieutenant when I switched over. It's not like any much better than a GS-6 and the federal government. And when we talk about GSLs, there are levels of government pay grades, sort of like a military grade. But yeah. I left the, I started the CIA as a GS9 and left as a 13. So it goes, 13 is like a 04 equivalent or something, 0304. So, I mean, I tell my kids this and I tell everybody, it's like, just do what you want to do. I have never had a real job.

That's what I always tell people like. I've had three careers, none of which were real jobs. I've been paid to do crap that I would have done for free, literally, because it's been awesome. I enjoy doing it and just do the stuff you like to do. That's what I say. And if you want it, people that always ask kind of what they should do to get to the CIA. I always tell me in language. You have to get a degree basically to be a ops officer and the CEO side.

Economics, history, politics, international affairs. I mean, there are certain things you do have to do to get there, but just go do it. It's a great job. At Bakers, no matter where you order free pickup, you get the same great deals as you'd get in store. So you can save when you order during band practice, or at the dog park, or wherever. Start your cart with the Bakers app and save from wherever today.

Bakers, fresh for everyone. $35 order minimum restrictions may apply, subject to availability. You can save an extra $10 when you spend $40 or more on a great selection of participating items. Just look for the signs and save. at Bakers. Brad Orrick, and there are other things you can look at. I mean, you can look at the NSA.

You can look at defense humant. Like, there are quite a few positions out there. Brad Oreck, thank you very much. Was there information we gained through enhanced interrogation techniques that we wouldn't have gained without it, as opposed to building rapport? That's the age-old question. I can only say that the reporting that came out of that program, and I was intimately involved in the reporting that came out of that program, was great and it helped us and gave us tons of leads and led to tons of following captures.

None of it was Jack Bauer stuff that prevented, you know, immediate attacks. But it was, it was important stuff, in my opinion, important stuff. And that's a, that's a, the more removed you are from 9-11, the less appealing that program seems, and rightly so, we're in America, we don't want to torture people. But at the time, I was 100% in support of it only because I knew firsthand the regulations on it and saw the strictures put around it. And I was okay with it and saw the stuff that came out of it. And to this day, the information that came out of it, but I still think was valuable. moral brain doesn't necessarily want to think it's okay to do that and I think it's okay that I think it's good that it was a extraordinary circumstance and that we haven't done it since and that it was

treated the way it was treated after the fact I'm okay with the with the Congress stepping in me and like even the people that are hypocritical and the supported it and then didn't support it I'm okay with that because I think they're trying to keep in and the confines of American morality so that generally is okay by me and I think a good thing but if we had to do all over again I think that program was successful I would do it again if it was me but things important things did come out anyone that says nothing important came out of it has no idea what they're talking about literally nothing yeah jack do you have an opinion on that um I guess it's you know like Jeff said it's a question of like is the juice worth the squeeze and just me personally I'm up with the opinion that it's

not. And, you know, once we go down that road, it's like where America, the torturers now, that's what we're going to do. And yeah, if it's to stop the nuclear bomb from going off in L.A., then, yeah, you know, you're a soldier in the war. You're going to do whatever you got to do. But that, like Jeff said, that's like a fictional scenario. That's not, that's not real life. And that's not how intelligence operations or special operations even work. And I'm honestly glad that most, I think most people are engaged. that program, I would imagine the majority. So that's a good thing to me.

I think the second we all, I think the minute with the majority of Americans are okay with that kind of thing is we're in trouble. So I prefer everyone have an opinion like Jacks, honestly. I mean, that makes me feel better as an American. Yeah. I mean, I agree with Jeff. I always consider torture something as,

I mean, if a person could walk out of the detention the next day as the same person. Like no bruises, nothing removed. You know, if you weren't doing actual physical damage or whatever, it becomes almost like an old pool hazing. You know what I mean? I can add, you know, a little bit further, my like two cents.

And I had absolutely no, I have no firsthand personal knowledge of enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA used. Jeff, you're the guy who can speak to that. I'll say when I was part of the Special Operations Task Force, one of the duties that unfortunately fell upon me and some of my soldiers, we were being guards inside what you could call the J-Soc Black site in Missoule. And they had contractors there who did use sleep deprivation, food deprivation, put the guys in stress positions, would not let them sit down until they talked,

would not let them sleep, would not let them get out of a stress position until they talked. And you could also hear them in the interrogation rooms and they'd have this little five-foot-two girl going there and slap the guys around. And you could hear them getting slapped around. Now, none of those guys, like you said, Dave, none of them left with like hands sawed off. None of them had their fingernails pulled off. None of that ever, none of that stuff ever happened there. But there's still some pretty nasty stuff that, like, I, I don't feel good about. And because I was a ranger, I was a nug, I was not an intel guy.

I can't tell you if actionable, important intelligence information came from those detainees. I don't know that information. I just say based on what I saw, I'm looking back on it now. And the way that the interpreters who worked in that facility encouraged my privates to beat the detainees. And that's where the abuse really starts in. And I told them, I said absolutely, no, you're not to do that. And if they try to tell you to do that. Were they indigenous interpreters?

They were Middle Eastern, but I'm pretty sure they were American citizens because they're working in a J-Soc detention facility doing interrogations with intelligence personnel. So they had to have a top secret clearance. And see, I agree with you. I mean, I agree with both you. I think it's good you didn't feel good about it. I don't think it even should ever feel good about that.

If you're a sadist, you know what I mean? like you're yeah i i you know i have mixed feelings about it and uh on many levels um because yeah it's what i went through in sear school was worse than what those guys went through in that facility right i was there voluntarily i was i was a special forces recruit i wasn't a detainee in a war overseas so those are it's kind of like comparing apples and oranges but sure interesting um So that's Brad and Andrew, thank you very much. How would the SEAL community react if their mission set,

if their mission set was going to be turned over to the Marine Corps? What? I don't know. I mean, how would they react if they didn't have a job anymore? That's what I've been lobbying Congress for for years, Jeff. Give it to the Marines. I think Marsok is an awesome command and SEALs have no problem with Mars like, we, we think all of our special operations brothers are valuable and in their own way. Now, when you say, what are you do?

No, man, Marsa likes a great command. I don't know why they would turn over all our permissions to them. So, Jeff, tell us where you're at today. I mean, now you've continued a life of service from being a sailor to a spy to now a first responder, working on fire trucks, working in a fire department. What has that whole transition been like to a different type of public service? That's been great. I started here at the fire department like eight years ago, almost exactly eight years, just over eight years ago.

I didn't know anything about if I just needed a job. I was going to stay around here because I had my kids were here and I was getting divorced and just needed to be in this area. and it was like, what am I going to do? I can't, I've never had a real job. I can't go be, like, on a desk somewhere. Like, I'll just firefighting. I'll figure it out from there.

And I didn't know the first thing about it. And it's been fantastic. When I first started writing, in fact, for you at Softrup, the second article I ever wrote was about switching from special operations to Firefight. Because there's a very similar world in the terms of camaraderie and the sense of mission and everybody being fully dedicated to getting their job done and being a part of a team like that, it's really exactly the same. But it's, so it's that part of it.

But then it's also you're serving in your own hometown. So, like, the people you're helping are, like, your neighbors. Like, so you're, they all, like, everyone in my kids school knows me is, like, that's, so that's Luke's dad, the firefighter, you know, like, you're just become a part of the kind of the community at large, much more so than you ever are in the military. In the military, you get the, like, the nods and the polite, helloes in the airport when you're in your uniform. But, like, you're almost, like, kind of set apart. And when you work for a fire department or a police department or EMT in that town, you're a very deeply ingrained part of that town.

Like, you see the worst of it. You see the best of it. You're kind of expected to be there to help people. And I love it. I think it's been great. And it's just, I mean, the adrenaline. And everyone loves the fire department, but you don't have a lot of the problems that the police departments have.

We're way more lovable. That's why we're just generally more handsome on the most part. And then also just way more nice, you know. We don't have to beat people or handcuff them or arrest them in front of their families. And I get it. I joke. We love the cops here. We work super close with them.

But it is a totally different job. Yeah, yeah. It's like everybody loves the swimsuit model. Well, yeah, because she's standing there in a bikini. And nobody loves the freaking school principal in smacking your knuckles because you're doing bad in school. Right. And was the fire department the only thing you applied for? Were you looking at different options when you were leaving the agency? That was the only, I went to grad school first and then did a little like I did some like selling things to the special operations

community for a little while, like a business rep. That was terrible just while I was waiting to get hired at the fire department. But I didn't apply to police. I'm just not a I'm not an enforcer of law. that's just not me. Yeah. I was a breaker of laws for like seven years. Foreign laws, but I mean, like still laws. Like I just find it hard to be like, it's just not my life, my personality.

Yeah. Much better run in and squirt water on fire in the leave. When you were applying to the fire department with your resume, was there was there disbelief? Did you run into credibility issues? That's kind of, boy, shit. It's funny you should say that because it was very funny. should say that because I got I didn't I just didn't think about it I was like I'm going to apply

and like I got called by the chief of the department uh towards the end of the process of trying to apply he's like hey uh you're you're number one on our list um if we offer you this job are you going to take this job it was almost like he was like are you just a fucking with us here to apply for this like what is going on here I was like no I seriously want to be a firefighter like I'm excited he's like you know you're going to have to clean toilets and stuff right I was like man, I was in the military. We cleaned toilets. Everybody cleans toilets.

Like, I think they, and some of it's the history of our department guys that rebel against having to do menial tasks. Part of the being of firefighters is cleaning toilets and cooking for each other. Right, right. I think they were thinking, like, he's coming from these other careers. Will he be able to do these menial? Right. I was in the military.

I can do any of that stuff. So I kind of had to sell them almost on like, no, I really want this job. I don't know if they thought I was going to do it for a year and then quit or whatever. Or if you're going to come in with, you know, like an attitude. You don't know who I am. You know who I am? You want to see Mike Trident? No, but I've gotten just, when I first started, I got 100, like, all the time, questions and stuff, which is completely understandable.

But it would get up to the point where I think everybody was like, yeah, that's just Butler. I mean, he's like, he's pale, he's got, he's bald. Like, I think he was a seal. He says he was, but I don't see it. He seems like a normal guy. I was almost like with the whole opposite way. Like I was a huge disappointment to everyone. Like as cool as we thought it would be.

Which I guess is good, you know. They were expecting Stephen Seagall. Yeah, they thought the rock was joining their fire department. Yeah. Yeah, I know I hear that too sometimes where people are like, you know, their friend tells them, oh, yeah, Jack's coming to this barbecue or whatever. He was an army guy in special forces. And then I show up and they're like, bro, I thought you were.

going to look like John Sina. They're like disappointed. It's just this like 180 pound dude. Right, because they're used to the TV shows where it's like, you know, some kind of superhuman thing. Like, no, man. And I tell me, like, man, a lot of that's just myth. And I'm just like you.

But I'm much more mentally tough. I always into with that, like some kind of funny joke. It's not true. Yeah. But it's been awesome. And I love it. So I'm on a pension track now. So I'm here for the long haul.

So this will be where I finish out my work. career. But I've been working for 21 years now and still have to do like at least 50 more fire department. So something my body hangs in there. Did they give you all your federal time or now? No, I bought all my military time into the federal TSP program, but federal government doesn't transfer to municipal government. I could have transferred my military time to the fire departments, but I still have my TSP. It's just not, I can't contribute to it anymore. You know, it just throws on its own. But I've got a good pension.

I mean, our department takes care, yeah. The pension makes the low, the comparatively low salary will worth it. You know, the pension's great. And the benefits. I mean, it's a great job.

Love it. That's awesome. We have a couple more questions. Yes, sorry. We have a couple more questions. Thank you, 576, 575, Sierra, or S. just like special operations you're creating their tactical companies,

do people in the Intel world do the same as far as Intel companies go? Yeah, I think a lot of it is corporate espionage. That's really all I ever heard of. I assume that's what they're talking about, private intelligence gatherers. There are, and there's even some to do international affairs. But it ends up being, from what I've seen, it ends up being more of a, business climate surveys and what's the political situation in this country and should I open a business there. So it never really appealed to me as a fun job.

A lot of writing reports and PowerPoint presentations doing private intel. When you were still in the agency, I mean, were you thinking about becoming a firefighter? Did you think that would be a great job to have or a good job to have? Or was it just kind of when you were deciding to leave, you know, you kind of looking around going, what can I do now? It was no, it was all of that was a second fiddle to marital problems that were going on.

So it was more of a, I'm here in Missouri now. What do I do now? That's more how I came up. I never thought about even a firefighter until like about probably two months before I applied. Yeah. As somebody who personally has been through two divorces,

oh, what, like in general, both with the SEAL community and with the agency, what is the cost of all that? Well, the relationship. Extremely tough. I think it's a, that was another,

that was another contributing factor to why I moved from the military to the CIA and chose that CMO track was because it promised more DC time. So part of the selling point for me was like you could do about 50% of your career overseas and 50% in D.C. as a CMO and I wanted I was trying to do that to so because my wife at the time was a doctor and needed to work can't just cart a doctor all over the world and expect them to make money so it was tough I think that that's an extremely tough job on any family did you see similar situations with other seals and with other yeah the force rate was it's hugely high in the Intel community

and the special operations community. And, man, part of that might be the personality types that are attracted to it, and then part of it's obviously got to be the deployment tempo. I mean, even in pre-9-11, just regular old seal-patoon workup, I was still gone like 40% of the time. And that was like back before any wars were going on. I have to imagine, it's way worse now. Again, honestly, it was part of the reason firefighting sounds so appealing,

because I was, I'm gone every third day, but I'm gone like a mile down the road at the fire station. So like I'm not, I'm not leaving the country for months of the time. I'm always here, you know, which is nice. Yeah. Graham, thank you very much. What was the most difficult part or parts of the farm you can talk about? And was there a high attrition rate? I think we already kind of talked about it.

Yeah, we did. Yeah. the attrition rate part there's not a high the there's not a super high attrition rate at the farm because the attrition happens before so it is like it's an absurd amount of people that apply every year to the CIA and then they hire very few so that's the interview process and the hiring process is really their attrition as most of their attrition there's a little bit of it there but yeah otherwise i mean for me personally i talked about it's just learning to be a an empathetic listener was the heart but it's different some things are different for everybody you know

that same with seal training some guys struggle through runs some guys struggle through swimming some guys struggle through o course everybody's different yeah is there when you are going into the agency when you said there's not a high attritionary at the farm is there screening that good that they can sort of psychologically profile people that are cut out for the work uh it's It seemed to me in my case, yeah, it was pretty good. That's, I mean, it's a, it's a lot of interviews and a lot of the, it's like you're taking those Myers Briggs. I mean, it's all the psychological interviews.

So they must know what they're looking for because almost everybody made it through. A small handful did not. But I'm now granted, I don't know how everybody did after the farm to see if those were worthwhile hires, but I assume they were. I'm sure they all did as good as meat or better. And then we have one question from our patrons, a Patreon supporter. Watching the Butler episode live, great guest. I have a question from, why are the operation officer's positions now on a five-year contract term?

Also, I've noticed a lot of CIA op. So there's one question. Do you know why operations officers on a five-year contract term? I've never heard of that. There must be something new. That doesn't make sense because a contract term, by definition, is not a staff officer. I mean, I was a staff officer at the CIA.

They were hiring me as though I was a career employee. That's what it was. You're an employee, right? It's not a contract. There are, there may very well be contract case officers. That might be what he's talking about. And then also I've noticed a lot of CIA operations officers don't seem to stay in as as long opposed to other federal government jobs, FBI, DHS, etc.

were agents officers, where agents officers seem to do traditional 20 years stents and retire, is the job itself that draining? Yeah, the being overseas and the travel and the stress of it. I don't know what if other agency jobs are draining or not because they've never done them. I assume they are. But it's the travel and the living overseas for 20 years that is draining. That's hard on a family. Some people are born to it and love it and thrive in it.

Other people love it, but their families don't love it. And then other people just don't love it. So I can solely see why the attrition rate would be higher overall for career employees at the CIA. That's just being. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. I thought I interviewed. Never mind.

I forgot my question. There's one more. What was the most difficult? Oh, no, sorry, that was already there. Yeah, that's it. I just got one more question. And, you know, Jeff, I know we've already taken up some of your time, but if you stick around, we like to do a bonus segment afterwards for like 10 minutes or so.

But I got one more question before we finish the interview, and unless Dave has anything, he'd like to get in there. But because, you know, you are a very like cerebral dude. And, you know, you brought it up before. I mean, can you tell me, like, what is it that you think maybe I'm getting wrong about the SEAL community that maybe I have this stereotype in my mind about a certain type of person or a certain type of personality. What is the reality? What is it that I'm missing here? I mean, honestly, I've been out of that community for so long that I don't, I don't, I'm not

an expert on talking about that culture anymore. I mean, it's been just been too long. It is hard to argue with the pattern of things that have happened in the media for, example. Now, I will say my time in, I never ever, never once came up against anyone that wanted to, that committed anything remotely like what is some of the things that have happened in the last few years, like the murders and the war crimes. But I was also there, not there during a time of war. So it's just hard for me to judge. I don't, I don't know because I don't, I kind of left that community and haven't, I'm not one of those guys that has kept tabs on it and like kind of try to stay in the culture and stuff. I just like to other stuff going on. So I,

I don't that's why I can't argue with you about like about things that have happened there. Otherwise I would if I could have argued. No, no, I wasn't trying to have an argument with you. I was kind of wanting to hear the other side of the story. That's what I mean. Like if I if I if there was a another side of it that I was like man, Jack is not seeing this other side. I would have definitely chipped in and been like man,

I get what you're saying. But here's the other part of that. I just haven't been around enough to know that other side. I do know like my cousin that is just finishing buds and is in. now in the community is a stand-up great guy and is whatever else. And my uncle's been there for 30 years. So I see the good people there. I hear the bad story.

Even when I was there, there was bad stories and there was drug use and things like that. But it was always on the margins, you know. Right, right, not pervasive. I just don't know. I'm not the, I haven't been there. It's been too long since I've been there immersed in it to be able to defend it adequately. It's probably my best answer. I want to hope it is not a.

bad as you think it is, but there have been bad stories that have come out and they're knowing they're not in dispute at this point. And like, and I'll tell that. I mean, I will say that to my family members, like, man, the community's got to do something. Like, this is a bad deal. Like, there's something wrong here, you know. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's to the point where like, you know, I'll be out at dinner with my mom and she'd be like, leaning over, Jack, what the fuck is wrong with the seals? I'm like, oh. My whole thing is when I would occasionally get criticized for like writing and making money writing about seal stuff by other seals. I mean, man, this is like your big concern.

Like there's like things going on that you should really be concerned with in this community. And dudes writing books is probably not the top of that list. So I would probably go focus on these other issues before I'd focus on them. But that was a personal like personal. You're right. And Jack and I have talked about this before. Like I, I mean, I don't begrudge any veteran at all who uses.

I mean, everybody has to make a living, you know, and if you're living is writing about your experiences or writing about whatever or like Jack and I having this, you know, this lifestyle. Like we all do what we can and we present how we can. I don't make a living at it. But to me, it's cathartic on the one hand. Right. And it is, people want to know stuff. We live in an open society. And despite what many, many people would tell you,

99% of seal shit is not secret. It is not like highly classified covered by NDAs. Like, it's just not. So if people want to know about it that are citizens of the country we live in and I want to talk about it, then why can't I tell them about it? Sure. And I don't make, I mean, I can honestly point an accusing finger to Jack and say, I don't make a lot of money talking about my seal experiences.

I just don't. I'm not making a living off of it. Yeah. And honestly, I do it for free and I have done it for free because I enjoy talking about it and writing about it. And a lot of that's just for me personally, like, it's good to get it out. Well, we appreciate you talking about it. Yeah, absolutely. And I do think it's great that there are former seals out there putting the best foot forward.

Because for all the jokes and the shit talking, we do do, there are also like some really stellar guys in Naval special warfare and you know you don't really hear from those guys because they're under the radar and they're not interested and they're not interested in being you know a live streamer podcast or a YouTuber guy they don't care about that you know which and I respect that um but so you know you sometimes you know because those dudes aren't really out there you end up just getting like like Instagram the bad version that's totally true my dad's one of the the latter he will not he doesn't do it he's like man I don't I don't want to get into all that stuff.

But then he buys like Admiral McCraven's books and like, oh, yeah, I'm like, oh, you like all those books? Why don't you write one? Your dad is like a bit of a legend, too. Isn't he in the world of special operations medicine? Yeah, in the medical world, he's, he is a big deal. Yeah, he could, I think he may end up one day writing a book about the T-T-T-T-T-Rple-C and the combat casualty care.

Yeah, I hope he will. Yeah, me too. I mean, that's advanced. I mean, every war brings massive advances in trauma care and prosthetics, unfortunately, but it does. You know, and at the end of the day, I mean, Jack and I rib on the seals, but it is like one team, one fight. Yeah, it's natural. I don't have a big direction. Just like I'd be.

I told you once, Jeff. The reason why I don't care for you isn't because you were a seal. It's because you were an officer. That's fair. Yes. We'll do. Oh, great, you know. I'm just glad it wasn't because he was the ginger.

No, no, no. You have no souls, but that just comes up the territory. That's not even a problem. Come on. There's a lot of things about it not worth liking. Nah, the ginger thing's not a problem. DJ, thank you very much. That's a solid episode, guys.

General of Krang, thank you very much again. And Brendan Marsh. Oh, what are some of the similarities and differences between the military community and the firefighter community? So there's the chain of command is similar. The fire community will often call it a paramilitary structure, meaning it's just it's not military, but it's military light.

So we have a span of control, a chain of command, unity of command, you report to one person above you, you know, one person's in charge of a unit below him. So that part of it's very similar. the mission focus is very similar. The big difference is obviously like labor and union rights. For most fire departments, you're unionized.

I've spent years kind of arguing for getting protections in the job and stuff. That part is different. But for the most part, it's very similar. There's a little less, it's closer to a seal officer enlisted mentality than it is a green army regular army mentality like it the officers they're the officers and they're in charge but your guys are still going to like bust your balls and tell you when you're messing out and like kind of and you'd be a fool not to listen to the guys below you so that's very similar so it's a good community at least where I work I'm sure it's different everywhere yeah

one quick question I that I remember when you were in Afghanistan working with the agency did you ever run into former like teammates or people who you knew that you'd have to kind of give them the shrug off or the you don't know me now in Afghanistan there's so that's a good question that touches on tons of seals went to the agency after 9-11 tons being a relative word because there's but the size of the community but a lot I think the great majority went into the paramilitary side. A handful went into the regular side like I did the operation side. But no, in Afghanistan, it was never really like a super secret who you were, which was nice. Like everybody knew you could even be like, oh, I worked for one of the government agencies.

Like it was never nearly, it was never as clandistence as other places by design. Yeah. We wanted everybody know who we were and that they could come to us to provide info. We weren't trying to, because what's Al Qaeda going to do if they find out where to see? They want to kill us no matter who they think we are. You know, it doesn't matter. It was never like the random crossing in the airport. We were like, you don't know me, you don't know me, you don't know me.

No, in fact, it would be the opposite. I'm like, hey, man, you come over here too? Yeah, it would be one of those. Yeah, like some of George Hand's stories about doing, you know, low-vis stuff in J-Soc and he'd come across other operators in the airport and like they have to kind of like look at each other like, oh, they like skewed away. No, we, you, have your operas stuff.

like in a non-war zone, that's a different animal all the other. So if you're in a non-war zone, yeah, that could very well happen. Because if I was, say, theoretic I was traveling under a completely different name through a European airport, and I run into this other seal.

He sees me and I see him. That could make for issues, in which case you just bug off, make a beeline for the bathroom or kind of given the old not now, you know. All right, guys. I think, I think that's pretty much it for tonight.

I mean, great interview with Jeff. Thank you so much for your time with us tonight. Thank you, everyone who joined us live. We had almost like 150 people watching tonight. I'm close to mention Jason Isabel so that people will make a donation to veteran charities. Almost forget. So I did it. There was Jason Isbell reference.

What the hell is that about? I need more information, Jeff. I'm constantly plugging this musical artist I love on Twitter and a couple people were like, hey, if you mention him on this podcast, I'll donate money to this military veteran charity. Oh, okay. So I was like, oh, I'll picture him.

I almost forgot. And which veteran charity are you plugging just in case any of our viewers want to throw them a few bucks? I decided. I don't really know. I tend to give the Naval Special Warfare Foundation because that's our seal charity of the family members of fallen. So that's as good as any.

So if you guys are feeling generous, give a few bucks to the Naval Special Warfare Foundation. Help out help also veterans. Next episode, episode 46 on next Friday, another CIA veteran, CIA analyst and targeter Sarah Carlson is going to be on the show. she has a new book coming out that I have to read this week before the next show. It's about her experience during the embassy evacuation from Tripoli, Libya. And I believe it was 2014 that happened.

It was after Benghazi. So it sounds like it was a bit of a debacle getting out of the country. I read the first chapter. I got to finish reading the book. So we will have her on next episode. Looking forward to that. And in the meantime, you know, please make sure you like the video, make sure you share it.

Leave some comments below. Let us know what you think of the show so far. And if you're interested in supporting us financially and support in the stream and also gaining access to the many bonus segments we do with our guests, there's a link to the Patreon page we have down below in the description. And guys, it's just, I mean, the minimum donation is a dollar a month, which gives you full access. So rock on.

And please do leave comments because we found out that that helps our algorithm while YouTube is kind of plugging Fox and CNN and MSNBC independent creators are having a harder time getting expensive. So we appreciate your support. Smash that thumbs up button, folks. And somebody, two people already gave us the thumbs down. Those are two thumbs down from two people who hate America in our way of life. And they're letting Al-Qaeda win right now. I probably think I'm too liberal to give a thumbs up to you. That's the problem.

Damn it. You know what? Those two people, they hate the troops. They hate the troops, Jeff. I don't know why they hate the troops so much. I don't know either. I'll never understand. It's disappointing.

All right, man. Jeff, thanks again so much coming on, filling in for us tonight, kind of short notice, just awesome experiences. And we really appreciate you coming on here, coming into the trust tree with the baby birds and all that jazz. and being our first former seal on the show. I was an honor to be here. I appreciate you guys having me.

Yeah, absolutely. I hope we do it again sometime. And how do I turn this thing off? Here we go. Okay, guys. See you next Friday.