The Team House - From an Army SMU to Secretary of Defense | Chris Miller (throwback episode)

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

originally aired 4/28/23If you know one thing about Chris Miller, it's that he was President Donald Trump's final Secretary of Defense, elevated to that position in the days after the 2020 election. If you know a second thing about Chris Miller, it's that he oversaw the U.S. Armed Forces during one of the most controversial and tumultuous periods the military has experienced in decades, culminating in the shocking events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Yet Chris Miller is no political partisan. On the contrary, Miller has spent his adult life in the crosshairs of America's most dangerous enemies--from Middle Eastern deserts to the bowels of U.S. intelligence agencies--and emerged as one of the leading national security minds of his generation.Needless to say, Chris Miller has stories to tell. In Soldier Secretary, he reveals for the first time everything he saw--in a book that is candid, thought-provoking, and like that of no Secretary of Defense before him. This book is not just the inside story of what happened during the Trump administration--it's the inside story of what happened to America, its military, and its institutions during the two decades after September 11, 2001.Part badass, part iconoclast, Miller is an irreverent, heterodox, and always-fascinating thinker whose personal journey through war and the White House has led him to some shocking conclusions about the state of American power in 2021. With a perspective that will surprise and interest both Republicans and Democrats, Miller argues for a radical rethinking of U.S. national security strategy unlike anything since the creation of the joint armed forces in the 1980s. He offers a roadmap for how the United States can win in the era of unrestricted warfare by shedding the bloated defense bureaucracy, bringing American forces home from endless conflicts, renewing our national unity, and beating China at its own game. Miller is a true American warrior whose incredible journey from Iowa to Afghanistan to Iraq to the White House endeared him to the troops, prepared him for the unprecedented crisis of January 6, and left him deeply concerned about the future of our military and the future of our nation.Grab Chris’ book here: ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/Soldier-Secretary-Warnings-Battlefield-Dangerous-ebook/dp/B09N3DL5Z9To help support the show and for all bonus content including:-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#armysmu #greenberet #secretaryofdefenseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy, David Bark. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Episode 205 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park.

And our guest on tonight's show is the author of Soldier's Secretary, Christopher Miller. Chris served in Special Forces, went on to serve in ASF. St. Solick, people don't even know what that office is. Yeah, everybody's like, what the hell is that? But we'll get into the weeds on it. Me being one of them. I. What's correct? I or me. Either is acceptable.

And Chris, of course, when went on to become acting secretary of defense. So, I mean, you had this like amazing career, you know, rise through the bureaucracy in so many ways. It is a bureaucracy. That's a really good description. I would say hacked

the bureaucracy. Especially when you get to the, the Pentagon level that you talk about in your book. Did you think the book was equivalent of Grant's memoirs kind of on that scale? What do you think, Jack? I haven't read Grants Memoirs. What? They say that the best memoirs ever written by a military officer. It's not.

Don't worry. Don't worry. I was just trying to like, well, you're a historian, man. I'm going to go out on a limer. I'm going to go out on Limer and say that it was better than Grants' members. Man, that's why you guys had the most popular podcast, National Security right there. It's an ass. It works.

No, I did enjoy the book. Did you get a laugh out of it? I got a laugh out of key moments in it. Yes, absolutely. Some of the very self-effacing stories of a young special forces officer. Trying to figure it out, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were talking before the show about war story, Jim Morris's book.

It's like the classic special forces. How old were you when you read it the first time? I was in fifth group when I read it for the first time. You did. Yeah. Yeah, and I thought it was. I was too. But I told Jim about it.

I was like, Jim, you could take your book and just replace the word Vietnam with Iraq and the word, you know, communist with terrorist. And it's like pretty much the same thing. It's very similar. We learned no lessons, my friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did I say that out loud? Yeah. So, Chris, I want to get into the book.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Before we start, you're not going to give a shout out to Demetri. Oh, son of a bitch. He's literally going to call me on that. Two years in, he's the power behind him. the throne and he keeps this he keeps this circus on time if it wasn't for him we'd still be b s'n't and talking trash and we'd still be in a super low rent studio with like a white cloth behind us and i didn't want to go there yeah but so you know can i give a shout out to my friends who

made me drive from western dc up here yeah because well there were a couple reasons why one was when I got your instructions for how to Zoom call in. I was like, I don't know how to do half the things that you said. Like lighting, there was like being a soundproof. I'm like, my office is my basement. The dog's going to run in. Kids are going to be screaming. And then the thing that got me was you need to have an HCMI cable to attach to your router. An Ethernet cable. This is why I drove up, my friend, because I was like, well, I'm going to be a lot. I'm going to going to spend all day rigging my Zoom studio. I'll just drive up. And then I got some really good friends. Joe Tonin, Andrew Cote, and Joe Francesc, and were like, you're going on the team room.

That's the best podcast. I was like, yeah, I've heard that. They're like, you have to go. You can't do this Zoom call. So I drove my ass up 95. Delaware Memorial Bridge was a breeze. I didn't sit. And then the Jersey Turnpike. Oh, my gosh. For you, all right. You know, this is my last public appearance for pushing... Hustling the book. Save the best for last.

There you go. For last. You guys heard it here first. Now, final point, I got to talk to you. Is my wife's car safe out there? Maybe. A strong maybe. So, you know, I finally had enough money to buy a new car, a car for me.

Because in the past, my wife picked the car. Honda minivans, odysseys, you know, the routine when you have kids. So I'm finally making a few shekels now. Bought a car. You know what happened to the car two weeks ago? Yes, I crashed it. My new car I crashed. So we got this rental car, this rental thing now.

And I said, honey, what car do you want me to take? She said, take my car. She said, I have one request. park it in a safe spot. You guys, if this goes bad, this whole house of cards crumbles.

And you guys are just up in Brooklyn laughing while I'm standing out there, but I do like NYPDs right down the street, man. She'll have you a dress down on the front lawn. You should be okay. You should be okay. I've left my car here over the weekend

and no problem. Well, you got the Precinct 90, right? My car? No, NYPDs right down. I thought about parking. They don't care. They don't care if cars get like up on cinder blocks. Yeah, you might be on your own. Yeah.

All right, fellas. If, if things go bad, we'll get you an Uber home tonight. Oh, okay. To D.C. Yeah. That'll be a, and I'm sure I'll get a talk. I would have offered an Amtrak ticket myself. Could you see I get a talkative Uber driver?

Like, for four hours and 15 minutes, we just talk. It would be great. And after this episode, yeah, I'll be hung. All right, sorry, man,

I took you off strip. And it is D's like, to make your anniversary. So that D doesn't assassinate me. Please like and subscribe to the channel. We're trying to get to 100 subscriptions on the channel. 100,000. 100,000,

thank you. And there is a link. You only got 100 subscriptions and I drove my ass all the way up here for, no, And there's a link to our Patreon in the description if you want to get these episodes ad-free. Thank you. So, Soldier Secretary, you're a memoir of your life, the life in times of Chris Miller. No, it's not complete because they only paid for 70,000 words.

So how many words do you think we delivered? 70,000. So it's very truncated. So we can't wait for the director's cut. We can't wait for the director's cut. Yeah, exactly. So start with your origin story. Chris, tell us about how you grew up and what was that path that took you towards military.

Did you see what I'm wearing? Iowa wrestling. Right. Yeah. Kid from Iowa. Actually, I was born in Platville, Wisconsin. Does anybody care? Yeah. Where's Wisconsin?

Flatville, Wisconsin. The mountaineers or the miners, I think they're the miners. Grew up in the Midwest. And my old, my dad, Korean War veteran, got drafted, you know. Farmer, got drafted. and then it's the quintessential. How many people have you had on this show that talk about my uncles were all World War II veterans? You know, I playing with G.I. Joe's in the backyard.

So Gary Harrington you had on a while ago. I watched the episode in the drive. No, I didn't watch. I listened. I was driving. I was not watching while I was driving. I just want to be clear about that. And you wrecked your car.

I hope my wife's not watching. So, you know, Gary, it was really telling, he said this basically told the same story. He's a little older than I am, but same story, you know, raised by greatest generation. It was hilarious with my dad was younger, so he didn't go to World War II. He got like the second, you know, Korea War, you know, the forgotten war, which it really is. So you would sit around at family. family reunions and what happened. Did this happen in your family where they start talking about the war? You guys are younger. My folks were not in the military, but grew up around older folks who were in World War II.

And yeah, around like Christmas time, they start telling all of a sudden stories about D-Day come out. And it's like getting your foot blown off by a Nazi tank. It's like, what? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's like crazy stuff. Yeah, same experience. And then I was born in 65. Vietnam War's going on. In those days, he had three TV channels. And when my dad came home from work, he was a cop.

He sat in the Barkle lounger. And the old man, I'm watching Hickory Hollow, whatever on PBS because there are no cartoons or anything. You get like the one VHF station out of Philadelphia or something. We were living in Delaware.

And, you know, my dad came home. Not like my kids who have, watch whatever you want. There are 4,000 channels, and I just, you know, different parenting style. So the old man sat down and guess what he turned on? Well, I was the channel change. Right, right.

CBS News, Walter Cronkate. I'm not making this up. And guess what? Every night, you know, I didn't want to do homework, so I'll sit here and watch the news. So I kind of was weirded out by you're seeing the Vietnam War stream live. And you're like, wow, man, that's how that stuff works. And my dad was a civil servant. a public servant and he was always like there's inherent dignity and service and you know you roll your

eyes but you hear it enough and you see you see his example so i just figured i guess this is the family business we do public service and the military all right like you had the same thing like i'm going to go give this thing a try yeah yeah i don't know why just like got to serve it's expected family thing. We're not a military family. My dad, like I said, got drafted, fled Germany in 1848 draft Dodgers. Family, I come from a family of draft Dodgers and Shirkers, which I think is ironic beyond belief, right? Right. What about you guys? How was you, why did you decide to suit up? Well, I was telling you before the show, you know, I was in my senior year of high school, 9-11 happened. And I was already thinking about the military. And so now.

it's like, you know, there's a war on, you know. Yeah. You, it was, you had to serve. I, that, like, youthful thirst for adventure, right? Yeah, I mean, that's definitely part of it. I mean, yeah, I mean, I like to blow myself up as I did this, like, noble thing after 9-11. You're looking for, but I was looking for adventure, too. You know, that's a big, big part of it. Yeah, what misguided youth did we have? It was the same thing. What about you, Dave? I mean, I, I like the military. I didn't really think I'd be going into it. But, you know, I like the A team and, you know, all the popular shows that were on at the time. I wasn't a MacIver fan. I'm sorry.

Are we going to get bad press on that? I've watched McGiver at my grandpa's house after church every Sunday. Oh, really? That was my entry into McGiver, yeah. So Mr. T and the A team, that got you going, Dave? Oh, absolutely. I'm going to, I'm joining up. Absolutely.

Well, I mean, but, no, I was 19 when I joined. Like, I was bored. You know, I was, like, working a job, and I was bored. And I was like, I need to do something. Like, what am I going to do? and I thought, oh. You're down in Wichita. No, I was out in California, actually.

I moved out to California like three days. I had a vision of you in Wichita working at like the Cessna factory. Don't they have made planes in Wichita? Yeah, yeah, Cessna, Boeing. Yeah, I think because of the wind conditions and whatnot, they do a lot of like a lot of manufacturing out there. It's a pretty typical story, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Let's give it a whirl. Smaller city, yeah. Yeah, let's give it a shot. You know what really appealed to me about the military? didn't matter family background race color creed sexual orientation blah blah blah blah you know figure all that stuff didn't matter what kind of car you drove didn't matter how much money you had it was all like it was the ultimate meritocracy right and remember fellas come on it's not that hard in the army so either of you ever get article 15s yes sir you did you did yeah

what? Late to a formation. So, you'd have these young kids come in and they're kids. They're soldiers, but they're kids. And I'd say, what do you have to do to be successful in the Army? And it'd be so cute. You know, they're all at detention in front of you. And they think about, I said, just relax.

Think about it a moment. They're like, be at the right place, at the right time in the right uniform. And I'm like, that's all it takes to be successful. And you can't, Jack, you couldn't even do that? I was a work in progress. I was a leadership challenge. What did you get? You got suspended pay, 14 days extra duty.

I got 14 and 14. Restriction and extra duty. They didn't take pay. They suspended that, meaning if you got in trouble again, they're like, oh, you're fixing the pay as something. Well, if I got in trouble, I'm almost, again, I'm pretty positive. They would have kicked me out of the Ranger Regiment. But I was lucky to dodge that bullet.

So company commander gave you your article 15. Why were you late to formation? Oh, that's a good question. Well, I mean, no, it's pretty stupid. I was a new private. I didn't have a cell phone or a pager or anything like that. So I was just out bebopping around on a weekend. Oh, they did a recall.

Oh. That's kind of fucked up. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of weak leadership. Like, hey, you didn't give you a pager. Yeah. Those were the days with a pager, man. It was right on the,

Cosper talking 2002. Right. So people were getting flip phones at that point. Yeah. Yeah. Or you could play snake on them. Oh, yeah. They all had snakes.

I just got rid of my flip phone. Like, I kept the flip phone way longer than needed. It was, I thought it was kind of cute. A lot of embarrassed family members, Dad. Got an iPhone now. Oh, we're not doing brand placement, are we? Not unless we get paid. Yeah, I'm not.

I'm just saying. Or it's Lafroy. We'll do Lafroy all that long. And interrupt whenever you have to do a shout-out to our sponsors. We will. We do have a sponsor somewhere in this thing that Dee will yell at me about. I think Dee is yelling now. Is he?

Is that what that light is, D? No. No. He's not yelling. He'll get there. So you get into the military. Like, what did you come in in the military to do? I'm 17.

I'm in Iowa City, Iowa. Iowa Hawkeyes wrestling. Dan Gable. For your listeners. Greatest American athlete ever. Well, Jim Brown maybe. Jim Brown was pretty good playing lacrosse. Not a bad football player.

Actor. So-so. And I just had this, like, probably read too many books. You know, we were still reading then, right? Only three TV channels, remember? My dad was watching it when he was at home. Read a lot. So I got this, like, fever dream that I just had to get out of that town.

That small town was holding that complete bullshit. right but nonetheless i created this i'm like i'm going to go join the army go down to the recruiter and i'm ready to join the army like you're 17 you can't join what went back got my parents to sign off i joined the army reserve one weekend a month two weeks during you're a 19th group started out that way because i was already going to college

so between my senior year of high school my first year of college I went to basic training at Fort Benning. And, you know, got a little taste of, got a little taste of the Army at that point. And like I was saying, I just kind of came to this weird conclusion. Like, I had a, like, my mom's like really, really tough. Like, like, insanely tough. And I kind of learned I'm kind of really stupid and have an ability to take a lot of pain and suffering. And I was like, that's kind of the army, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's like, I got this. It's like, I got this. It's like, everybody would be complaining like my, it's raining. I was like, who cares? Yeah. You know? Yeah.

And so did that. And then, and then ended up in D.C. I went to George Washington University because I had to get out Iowa City, University town, Hawkeyes. Wow, I'm getting covered with suit. This is great. And then, yeah, so applied for an RTC scholarship. that's kind of a good gig right yeah got one and you know went to rotc reserve officer training

corps and got commissioned i i ended up uh transferring to the district of columbia national guard military police was a cop family business my dad was a cop i'm like i'm going in the family business was the only thing they had in dc i was at college i had no transportation So I had to be able to walk to the armory, which was at, you guys know D.C. It was Andrews, no, it was Anacosti Naval Air Station, Bowling Air Force Base. They were separate then. And I would, my, I'm in college. I would put on my, you know, oh, then it was BDUs, you know, they weren't ACUs.

And I would get up at 6, 5.30, 6 in the morning on Saturday morning, and I would walk like, I don't know, four miles through southeast Washington, D.C. Over the bridge. Yeah, man. Yeah, got a motorcycle in next year. So that's kind of the creation story of going into the machine. And so the next stop for you was you land in Korea and sounds like you had a pretty good time there. But then the next assignment was leads to a lot of like self-loathing and introspective moments

when you're back in D.C. So I wanted to go to Korea. Why? Because at that time, there's no war going on. It sounds so insane, but you guys can appreciate it. A lot of our listeners can too. I want to go where the action is. Don't know what happened to me.

I don't know what kind of genetic disorder I have that created that desire. But you're like, okay, if we're going to do this, you want to go do your job. And so I got, I took Korean in college. to learn that. I wasn't very good at it. And you know where I got assigned, Germany. That's right. You had to trade with a friend. And so my buddy, Rolf Glessner,

I haven't talked to him in 30-something years. Rolf, if you're listening, thanks. He got his degree, he got his degree in German history. And he was going to Korea. I'm like, hey, is that not the classic army story? It's how it works, right?

Is that the classic army story? Needs of the Army, yeah. Yeah. And all, I mean, in those days, it was the first battalion 506 infantry, which was legendary, and that was the time Band of Brothers came out. So I'm going to that unit, and it's at the time, it was so, you know, so motivated. The most forward-deployed infantry battalion in the free world. Come on, man.

Like, you got to love that, right? Right. And we were right there in the DMZ at Camp Greaves. And that's where I learned the business. It was just, oh, fellas, like, unbelievable NCOs. It was just like the renaissance of the armies going on where they're, I think it was, they would have the year of the NCO, and then they had the year of army education, and the army is rebuilding after Vietnam.

And, you know, I don't really appreciate it at the time I do now. but it was just such a vital time. So like so much energy, creativity. You guys were doing like actual patrols on the DMZ too, which... Well, in those days, you guys can laugh about it now, but in those days you didn't carry live... There was only one place in the world. You carried light of ammunition.

And that was three months you would be on the DMZ mission. You would patrol. You would do your patrols and all this stuff. and they counted every single bullet. You got a basic load, right? You got seven magazines. And the executive officer for the company, you know, the two I see, responsible for logistics, he had to count every bullet each time.

Can you imagine? And think about where we were, like, then we go to war, you know, and it's like, here you go. I got a funny Gary Harrington story, too, about Afghanistan. Okay. Okay, I want to hear it. But yeah, so that was really the play. where, you know, you could, you could learn your business.

And remember, it's seven days a week. We got, we got one, you would get off work Saturday afternoon and then you had to be back Sunday night. And then you, it was just game on. It was like insane stupidity beyond all human understanding, but you were working. You were just working, learning your craft, man. And it was, you know, it was a place to do it. Yeah.

And so what happened? when after that tour when you got sent down to dc well i met this phenomenal woman in college and i proposed to her at mid-tour leave she came to the dm z on thanksgiving day and remember what we do in the army officers serve get behind the line and serve chow right wearing our crappy dress blues you know the like polyester ones. And that was the day I proposed to her. And she goes, so I was getting married. It's coming out. At the time, I talked about the Renaissance of the Army. There was this guy, General Thurman, Maxwell Thurman, who was in charge of professionalizing, reinvigorating training. And they changed the rules when I got there to Korea. Usually when you came out of Korea,

you were able to get your assignment of choice. You could pick any place like, I'm going to go to the 82nd Airborne Division, you know, something like that. And of course, at that time, Thurman comes in, realizes he needs talent, changes the rules, I'm in there.

And they're like, oh, no, assignment of choice to any training, basic training company. And I thought, so I was like, okay, I guess those are the rules. I was going to go to the Air Defense Artillery School. I think that's Fort Bliss.

Because I never had been to Mexico. So I was like, that'll be fun. I'll go there and then be able to go to Mexico, Wores, whatever. And then I was like, I probably need to do something else. That's going to be a horrible. I did not join the Army to train new soldiers. So the Old Guard, which is the Army's ceremony unit,

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, buries people, ceremonies at the White House. My Italian commander, who I talk about in the book, Mitchell Zays, who comes from a legendary family. The Zay's family is military royalty, right? He's my battalion commander. His brother's taking over the Old Guard, the third United States infantry, the old guard, the oldest regiment in the Army, which is a ceremonial unit. They have horses, you know, all that crap, casons.

So he made a call. You want to know why I got in there, though. Six foot four. I was a slender. Slender 210. They call that unit the postcard, right? Right? What's the minimum height to get in there?

Well, it depends on your rank. The higher rank you go, the shorter you can do. Oh, really? Okay. Because one of our regimental commanders was Joe Hunt, legendary. He was the third battalion, third Ranger battalion commander in Panama. Oh, okay. You're a third Ranger battalion guy, right?

A little bit after that. Yeah, yeah. But no, but legacy. Yeah. And Joe Hunt had served in Vietnam as an advisor and had like to, you know, the Vietnamese Airborne and had made a name for himself as warrior par excellence, right? And so he was much shorter, but he was allowed to because he wasn't, he wasn't public facing. He's the guy who's the guy who was the president. Like the other day when the president was on, who was here, the guy for. from South Korea, though.

So yeah, man, I go to the old guard. You know what my job was? What? I had a platoon, and there's this ceremony. They still do it called Twilight Tattoo. And it's a parade, I think it was like every Wednesday night, right by the White House on the ellipse. And it's for tourists to come visit,

and then they bring out senators, Congress people, all that stuff, right? The platoon. I was a platoon leader of they acted. And they would have period costumes. You can laugh. I was horr. Tri-corners? I was horrified.

Oh, I was in the tri-corner. So we would go from that to like, and then they'd had this really great music about the army and the nation. And my, I was evaluated on making sure that they were in the right uniforms and that they they struck their pose at the exact moment. I was like, I'm, I feel like I'm on the Frank Capra, World War II thing, right? It was hilarious, man. So you go from Korea where you're carrying live ammunition, you know, doing the deal to being a postcard. I loved it.

The old guard, though, like, especially for the, like, the, the enlisted I think, I don't know, like the officers. But, like, when you talk about being at the tomb of the unknown soldier, when you talk about, you know, know the change like it's a hard job it's very like dc does not have what we would call you know temperate weather throughout the year and so they'll stand out like the tomb or whatever and just the the the tomb guys are very that's a whole other thing that too so yeah and i think dav thanks for bringing that up because i was kind of tongue and cheekish yeah the tomb guards that's a whole different level i mean they are they try out they have to go through this huge selection process like you know ranger indoctrination program combined with all this other stuff so that

that's no joke yeah and the tomb is guarded 24 hours a day 24 hours a day and have you guys been yeah i've i've been there but i've spoken to guys you got to go down into where they they they're built not billets but where they're their green room right right it's just amazing and those kids are so, I mean, you know, get weepy. They're just incredibly professional, dedicated. And to get the Tune Guard badge, they get awarded after a certain amount of time. I can't remember what it is. It's like a year or something.

It's a year. There are fewer Tomb Guard badges have been awarded than medals of honor. That's a big deal. Yeah. So to make it through that process. And do you know, like it's 21, 21, 21, everything's. 21. So you're like, man, that's a lot of counting. You will talk to them. They're like, it becomes internalized. You can sit there and count. Yeah. They're like, I don't count.

They're their minds, their bodies, and it gets really spiritual, it gets really spiritual in a good way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You wanted to know, man, but thanks for bringing that out. Yeah. It tongue and cheekish in the book because, but yeah, though. I remember writing a story a few years back about the first African-American tomb guard. And as the unit war goes, it was the president of Ghana, I believe, was visiting John F. Kennedy and said, like, how come there aren't any black soldiers out here? They were like, oh, my God. So they had to go and find them.

And they found this African-American soldier became the first tomb guard. What an accomplishment. It's no joke. Yeah. It's no joke. Yeah. Yeah, I did that. And then just was like, I mean, I am kind of like,

it's not what you joined the army yeah it wasn't right you know i was but at the end of the day i was honored to have in to be part of that in the book i talk about like i ended up so i'm six foot four you work through the ranks i start out wearing clonal uniforms which was you know what i'm going to wear a colonial uniform like you got to be kidding me and then ended up there's one company called echo company honor guard company which does the white house functions, the very high visibility. Now, this is the good one. Like every, there's a platoon that's called the marching platoon that you'll see on TV. Now, that's the place where everybody six four or above. And here's the reason. Like, when they have foreign dignitary come in, they want

them to see, like, holy ground. Like, that's the American army. We're not going to mess with them. It's kind of cool, right? It's almost the psychological. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're really, really good. And so I ended up in that company. And I was responsible for it. I was a cordon platoon, which means it's a cordon. And like when you see White House ceremonies, there'll be a cordon of joint service, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Space Force. Now, I don't know, haven't been around there. I would be the platoon leader of that. And my, this is what I, You want to know what I got evaluated on? What was that?

So I went from patrolling the demilitarized zone, you know, fending off the North Koreans from infiltrating in the South Korea. The communist menace, like, the Cold War, baby. I'm like, I got evaluated. I had the saber. And I'll give you, the queen of England came. And her car would come in to the White House grounds. and I'd be right there by the gate. And the tip of my sword had to drop exactly when the front wheel of her car came even with me.

And if I failed to do that, yeah, I was not a good officer. Wow. Yeah, I mean, pretty stressful, right? Yeah. Not. So, yeah, it was, you know, it's kind of disconcerting to go from, you know, combat readiness to being valued. Yeah. So how did you eventually Shanghai yourself out of this unit?

I mean, you were trying to find your way out, and it was a pretty funny story. Well, Desert Storm happens. 91. I'm like, oh, damn, I came joining the Army to go to war, and I'm stuck here. So I, 4187, you guys are familiar. It's a request for personnel action. Anyone can fill it out. I just started, like, sending those things in five times a day.

And mass. Yeah. I kept getting using carbon paper at that point. I know. And remember, they were expecting

like tens of thousands, potentially tens of thousands of U.S. casualties. Yeah. And guess who's going to bury him? So they're like, you're not going anywhere, Miller.

You're shut up in color. And finally, a lovely gentleman who is our deputy commander, John Shortel, called me in, said, Chris,

stop sending 4187s. I'm with you. I want out of here, too. I'll do everything I can to get us out of here. You know, and that's all you wanted to hear. Yeah.

That was good leadership. Yeah. And then, of course, the war lasted all of 100 hours. Right. No 10,000 casualties. Thank God. And so I had, we talked books. Polack.

I cannot remember his first name, wrote this book called Mission MIA about rescuing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's written some other stuff. I didn't realize it was. It was fictionalized at the time. Really good book. And it was some green berets, free falling. I was like, I got, I need me some of that stuff.

I need me a piece of that. And I realized that my current trajectory and the infantry was not going to be long live. I missed two wars. Panama and the Desert Storm. I'm like, I got to do something different. I'd also, well, I'll ask you, what drew you to special forces? Well, you know, the Ranger Regiment, as much as we all love it, and we do. We do.

But, however, as the name implies, is very regimented. And, you know, yeah, at a certain point, it's like, yeah, there's got to be more out there than, you know, seizing loss in airfield, you know, a dozen times. I was also ready for something different after a while there. Do you guys remember, like, you would have to wait to get the word from the company first sergeant? And remember how your platoon sergeants would all go to the first sergeant's afternoon meeting, and you would have to sit there. Like, everything's done for the day. Like, you'd just be sitting there.

Yes. And I'd be like, why can't we just go home? You got to wait for the word. Did you have this? Well, yes. And it became increasingly ridiculous because it's like, you realize we have these things. called cell phones right so if you need us to come in at a different time like you can call us up and you were yeah you were thinking man you were thinking right you're like this is ridiculous

i got to try something new and uh special forces i'd learned a little bit about you know the green berets it's like i'll give that i want to give that a try so you went to selection yeah what did you think of selection man i thought it still holds up doesn't yeah i i won't i i would never bullshit about it. It's challenging. It was a tough course. What were you the team? What team of that were you the team later of? It was one of the, oh shit. It was like when we had to string together some sort of contraption with a telephone pole and put like wheels on one side of it and just like muscle it the rest of the way, however nine kilometers. That was a tough one. And that was always at the end of the day. Like that was the last event of that day. And there would be people coming in like nine o'clock at night because they couldn't. The apparatus. Yes. You can figure out the apparatus and remember? Well, yeah.

And I mean, here's the thing. Again, like, I'm no genius. I just like, but if somebody came to me and was like, they had a better idea than I did, I was like, we're doing that. Well, yeah, because you always had somebody that was really good mechanically. Right, right. And knew how to lash. No better than I do. Like, okay.

You know what, you know what event I got? Sandman. You want to tell them? The sandbags? Sandman. Remember there was that, that you, it was a casualty and it was a five, you, it was a five, pound duffel bag full of sand. It was the most...

You didn't do that one? You have to make a stretcher and carry it. Well, all our Metallica fans, of course. I just remember they had those the latrine facilities, and you would go in there and on the, like, instead of like call Ronda or something, it was like,

remember the sand man? We had the million dollar shitter by the time I got there. It was there too. It wasn't? Yeah. Oh, wow. And I just, it was. it was just built up in your mind as like the most heinous event. And so they're like, okay, next team later for the team event, for the Sandman. You know who they called? I was like, and people quit on that thing.

Like, I remember you're the team later and you're trying to motivate. It was the most crushing. You don't remember that one? I do remember making the stress. The Sandbabies was horrible too. And the one with the Jeep, where that has two flat tires. That was hilarious. That was a funny one.

That was hilarious. There's one. You make a can of leave. and like some dude gets to sham out and just chill to counterbalance the Jeep. Oh, yeah. But you rotate and it was in that sand. It was on the sand road by the railroad tracks, remember? And I remember Amtrak would come down there and you would be out there with a Jeep missing a wheel with all these dudes hanging off at pushing it.

And I just remember looking at the Amtrak. And there'd be kids like, and you're like, what did I get myself in? Did you remember that? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. selection holds up, man. That holds up as, you know, it was based on British SES model.

Was that Dick Meadows? Who? No. Beckwith. Beckwith went over there, yeah. And they all kind of brought those. I know they did it for Delta, but a lot of that transferred over. A lot of OSS stuff got brought into that and how they ran it.

And to this day. And I don't know, do you know David Walton? No. He's a, you know, SF guy. and he just wrote a book called like Ruck Up and Shut Up. He studied SFAAS academically. I think it was part of his PhD dissertation, actually. He's an interesting guy.

Doesn't that sum up special forces, though? Like, they have allowed PhDs to come in there and study their process. Well, he was an SF officer, I believe. Really? Who got his PhD. So he's a smart kid. Yeah. But that's another one of the special forces.

Different types of dudes that you find. Yeah. Like kind of not atypical. That selection held up, though, didn't it? It sucked, bro. Yeah, it totally did. But, you know, that's one of those when you got done with that thing. Like, yeah, that was an experience.

And I think that's what a lot of us joined the military for. Yeah, yeah. That one held up. It still holds up. I'm going to go down there soon because I want to see how they're doing it now. It's very much the same from what David told me. And do you think the some people claim, because in our, maybe not in your era, my era, it was true. Like, if you don't quit, you'll be fine. And then there's this thing,

you hear some people go, well, how does that really prepare you for being a thinking warrior diplomat if just because you don't quit and you can carry a lot of weight, too stupid to quit? It's more than that, too, because the difference between like RIP back in the day or now RAS and SFAS, they're also, in SFAS, they're also looking at how you interact with your teammates. And they want to see if you're like if you're the type of person that like flips out and yells at people and loses you're cool like eh it's not really the kind of dude we're looking for i think that's one of the differences but that you said it best when you said hey i uh uh i was team leader and i asked for input you at that point that's what you're looking for special forces as opposed

and that's interesting who has the best idea and it's interesting coming out a ranger regiment which is very regimented i thought that was very funny how you said that uh where it's always very hierarchical right Dave, and like, you're more senior ranking, therefore you're smarter than everyone. Right. And in special forces, it's like, hey, anybody got a good idea? I don't know what I'm doing. And, you know, there's that self-confidence that people can say that. And then somebody goes like, oh, yeah, I used, in Afghanistan, we landed and all our trucks were blown up. Well, they weren't, they were my trucks, then, our trucks, whatever. And lo and behold, guess what? Oh, I used to be a mechanic before I joined.

Oh, I worked heavy machinery. Started using their leathermen and putting trucks back together. It's crazy. Took five and got two running, you know. But that's just some, that's like the quintessential tea, green beret. Improvised. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you get sent to fifth group.

Team leader position? Yeah, I was like fifth group. What's that? Like, oh, they'd made their, of course, Vietnam that was the only special forces group. Right. So legendary, right. But and then

fifth group worked, was in charge in the Middle East, of course, did Desert Storm. So that was 91-ish. I got there, what do you talking here, Miller, 94-ish. So

I didn't, I don't know about you, man. I didn't want to go to fifth group. I tried to get out of it. But you guys know that there were a third group guys going, man, I really wish I get to fifth group. I don't know. Maybe. Third group? Maybe. Yeah. I agree with you. They didn't have a mission at the time. Third group is really getting some at that point in Afghanistan. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. I mean, my era. No, I mean before that. Oh, third group is

like, remember we established third group to make sure we had force structure that we could get rid of when the army downsides. Like, literally third group was the sacrificial lamb. Yeah. They combined all the other groups. And everybody knew. And everybody knew. that right and they're like wow i'm in a group that if they decide to cut the defense budget we're going to go away you're yeah dave it's very much that i mean everybody wanted seven the group or tenth group for right right because you're a first group or first group right or first group right go out to the pacific you hear these stories right they're getting max per dm making two hundred fifty dollars a day yeah all staying in one hotel room well first group had like it was the old school guys

in the 90s told me about how there was like one battalion that was always doing kind of Well, then they had the Arctic battalion. And then there was one battalion that was always doing Korea. And so their trainups a lot of times are like in Alaska. So they're bouncing between Alaska and Korea. And then there are these other guys that were doing like Okinawa, Thailand. Yeah. And the fifth group.

Oh, the Middle East. Yeah. Garden spot. Yeah. What was the bright star? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, this is just great. Lucky us. But you got Kuwait, right? Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Because that was remember a. a company would be in Kuwait after Desert Storm, there was always a company there year-round,

and you'd rotate, I think, every three months. And so that was kind of your big deployment where you would go out there. We were at Fort Campbell, and there wasn't a lot of money then. Remember, it was like the peace dividend, which meant you had got, oh, you could, here are your four bullets to fire this year. Yeah. You know? And then you go to Kuwait. and unlimited resources. So that's where you got all your training done, all of your training done.

I thought the story you told in your book about this crazy slash stupid idea to a team building exercise with your guys was interesting that you fooled your team and made them think this was a live escape innovation that they had to do. It was brilliant and incredibly stupid at the same time. You know what I learned from that?

Don't do things when you're pissed off. Those guys, like, Special Forces A team, they're just sitting around complaining. We're not doing anything. I was like, oh, you want a little something? And did that cross-country, we did that movement, escape and evasion, which, yeah, it was,

it seemed like a good idea at the time. It was a good idea. Tell us about it, because for people who have not yet read the book, but are going to, who are going to, please tell us about the, well, remember fifth group during Desert Storm put out special reconnaissance teams, 12 man A teams, deep behind enemy lines to look at key road networks,

key facilities, or key roads that the enemy would be coming down to reinforce the front line. So these cats, and I knew these are the guys that raised me, right, and fifth group. Like some hardcore dudes. Oh, man. And so this was before desert mobility vehicles. They flew in, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, flew them in,

dropped them down in the middle of the desert with 150 pound rucksacks. And they dug holes and they put up like nets above them and immediately got compromised. Because you're in the middle of the desert. And so all of these teams had these amazing. amazing fights. Like epic, historic, like, alamo stuff, right? I remember I'm reading about it. Yeah.

Those cats were, like, the ones that were training me, and I was horrified. Like, it's like great stories, but I'm like, I don't want that to happen to me. And they, many, so everybody talks about escape of evasion. Now, in special forces, we take that seriously. We actually do. where you plan for it. We were talking earlier about one of your teams that got blown out in Kazakhstan. Where was that?

Oh, it was in my battalion. It was a team in Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan. They got blown out of their safe house to someone called the cops on them and had the place raided. And a couple of the dudes had to E&E to the embassy. It's legit. Yeah. Like, you know, special forces are in politically sensitive areas.

It can turn on you really quick. You need to have a plan. And it has happened. It has happened. So I was like, I got to take this seriously because I don't want to get jammed up. It's all about me. Right, right, right.

And, yeah, so we're out in the middle of the desert of Kuwait with a brigade. Now, the Kuwaitis at the time, there's a part-time army. They would show up about 9 o'clock and about 11 o'clock. They're done for the day, so you had a lot of time. So I decided, I said, we're going to do escape and evasion planning. And everybody blew me off because they're like, who gives a crap about this? We got trucks. We're in Kuwait.

It's all good. So I, dude, every night I would, and this is like first generation computers. Like, it's word perfect and I'm right now. So I come up with this complete like checklist. And so on the designated day, no one knows what's going to happen. I go for a run. I have provided a checklist to my company headquarters. The company commander was read on.

And he makes a call, or the commo people make a call to the A team that I'm the commander of. I'm out running. And they give the word to go into escape and evasion. I get back from my run. I know exactly the timeline. And everybody's like, hey, sir. Like, we got to escape and evasion. It's bullshit.

It's bullshit. Like, huh. KL43 Charlie, anybody remember it? The stupid thing with the phone? That you would have this, like, you would take this device and you put it to the phone. It was like first generation modem, essentially. There's like, we're supposed to get KL43 Charlie traffic in five minutes. I was like, well, get after it.

Describes like there's unrest in the Capitol. It appears there's been a coup. All U.S. personnel are to enter escape and evasion per their plan. Yeah, man. You got after that shit, dude. You got after it. And so the only time, I got scared twice. One was when the Charlie, the demo guy, pulls out C4 and says, we're going to blow all our vehicles.

I hadn't, like, planned for that one. I'm like, oh, that's going to be hard to explain to hire headquarters that I'd blew up four of our vehicles. I was like, Mark, because I remembered Panama. Do you remember Panama, the radio station? How about take the spark plugs out instead? Do you remember Panama, the radio station? The one we took over?

The Navy, maybe it was Grenada. Navy Seals plan was like to blow the thing, the smithereens, and the SF guys were like, we're just going to go take the circuit card, and then we'll come back and put it back in. So I remembered that. I was like, Mark, do we have any other options? Like, we might have to come back and use our vehicles, and they did that. that they pulled out some component and buried them in a box. So I was through that.

And we started walking that night into the desert. And so you plan, remember, you plan exactly what you're going to carry. And I think we were all carrying about 110 pounds in the desert. And I knew we couldn't do it. And we just, people collapsed. Yeah. It was a nightmare. And then the second time I got worried was the A team just completely.

completely, we just became physically unable to continue because it was just devastating. So we set up a Ron, remain overnight site, security. And the next morning, I was on security. I fell asleep. I'll tell it be perfect. I was smoked. I fell asleep. I wake up to Quady border security.

And these are the nicest Ford, like F350. these beautiful trucks are surrounding us. And they have their weapons drawn. And I'm like, oh, crap. I made everybody load, lock and load, which was unheard of, right? In training? But you have to keep the- I had to get illusion alive.

Yeah. Yeah, I was like, I said lock and load. People were like, what? I was like, we're an E&E. So I'm like, oh, crap, this could get really bad because we had been in a little international. incident in the past, not my team, but another team. So I walk up to the border patrol guys. I'm like, hi, you know, song and dance. Oh, we're on the train next, trying to be quiet so they can't

hear me. They're like, oh, okay, you know, call range control next time, you know, which is kind of scary that, oh, we were so easy to, we were so easy to catch. Yeah, yeah. I turned around and walk back and everybody had, you know, very gently moved their, yeah. And so they pull away and they're like, sir, we would have smoked. Because remember the whole, the whole thing is if you're meeting, you're making link up with somebody, if you've dropped, you know, everybody just opens up over the top of you. And I'm like, please don't trip. Please, could you imagine that?

So like, sure, we would have. I was like, oh my God, I'm an idiot. I mean, I really wasn't, yeah. And I, how did your guys respond when they found it was just an exercise? So they didn't know. So we get picked up at the pick, the pickup spot. We get in the truck. They drive us back to the base.

It was, uh, Ali Asaline. No, it was Doha. There was this warehouse complex that we owned then. It's not, it's, it's a warehouse complex again. and in special forces is jack's well aware and you've done this too is you go for your debriefing right as soon as you get back you go to get debriefed by the military military intelligence people like what was the enemy situation what did you learn so we do the military intelligence people come in and they do the debrief right just like legit and at that point the company commander comes in

And everybody looks at him. And he goes, this was an exercise. And everybody's like, who's dumb ass who came up? I mean, it got really, really aggressive. Like, who came up with this dumbass idea? And the company commander, Al Knox, just looks at me.

And, dude, it was like everybody just like, it was just like, it was just shy. Because I was the nicest guy in the law. world. I would never do anything so manipulative. I was like, it was me. And they were so they were so pissed, man.

And they just storm out and go to the Chow Hall. So I go with my team to the Chow Hall. They all sit, like they shunned me, they shunned me. So I'm sitting here. They all would walk by and just like look at me and go sit down.

I was like, I just destroyed the A team that I was responsible. will for and uh I felt really really really bad like this was the stupidest thing I've ever done. They avoided me all day. We had evening chow

and some during that time period some people had come up and had heard about what we'd done other green berets. They're like oh my God, that's amazing. You guys are so lucky that you train so hard and so it flipped and by the time we left that night

they became fifth group legends it was like they had it was the most amazing thing i didn't plan it that way right uh but i got shunned dude i got shunned it was like you know they talked you know leadership's lonely huh being the boss is lonely you're like yeah it's like and then you know at at the earlier chow where i was being shunned everybody's laughing like oh there's miller that dumb ass yeah you know it was like really but uh came out the other side uh built built off of that but it it was uh it was traumatic so before before moving on i i did there are some pictures in your book but you don't think you really talk about in the book maybe this is later on we don't need to jump

ahead but there are some uh j sets to pakistan oh yeah that was the first thing we did oh okay yeah i'm a new guy do do do do do hey we're going to pakistan great love it went up uh because you know it was before al qaeda we went in swat river valley and we trained with uh Pakistani special services group. They're special forces who had this wonderful relationship dating back to the establishment

of the country with 10th special forces. You go in there, Ranger Handbook, they would have translated. It was amazing. And so we're up there in the Swat River Valley

training with them. That's like, isn't that the SF stuff? Isn't that like amazing? Yeah. And our company commander, we were all alone. It was just great.

He wasn't even there. So it was like, Like that's SF mission, right? Just amazing. After you finished your time as a team leader, you went to another unit. I think you described as an Army Black Ops unit in your book. What can you tell us about that? I finished as a team leader, which is the job, right?

You're a captain, you're a green beret. You have a 12-person team. That's all you ever want to do, right? And then the battalion commander, the boss, who oversaw at those 18A teams, decided after 18 months it was time for me to learn about, had a larger perspective about special forces. And at those times, you're going to laugh, the logistics officer, the supply officer, was a green beret and the personnel officer. Now they're SF branched guys. Right. Now, of course, they have experts, which is.

long overdue but at the time you know we were very short-handed and army hated special forces and they're like we're not going to put any of our specialty people in there you guys figured out so i got the opportunity to be the supply officer and i try to get out of it finally is like you're not hearing me roger i go over there first day i show up in my office in the headquarters and as i came in we were live in crappy buildings. They're all gone now. It was great. There literally is a piece of a copy

paper taped to the door that says unit recruiting ISOFAC isolation facility which is still there, which was the kind of nexus for it was the only place you had a lot of room. I was like

crayons or something. I was like that doesn't look so good. First sergeant of the headquarters company who was a dear friend came in and said hey sir come with me we're going to go to the iso fac to this recruitment thing i said i don't even know what that is he goes just come with me so we show up in the uh isolation facility there're probably like maybe 80 people there this guy gets up in civilian clothes and goes hey we're looking for people for a specialty unit that we can't tell you about what do i do get up and leave i'm like that's the stupid as shit I've ever heard. The first sergeant grabs me, goes, sit down.

So each person was taken back into the separate room where there were these people in civilian clothes that would be like, hey, you want to give this a try? I'm like, what is it? They're like, oh, it'll be fun, special mission unit. I'm like, I don't even know what that is. I said, and then you filled out some paperwork. It was really interesting. and the application was like a series of 20 questions, and the questions were weird. Do you read, yes or no? What do you read?

And then there was, if you have the choice between playing flag football or going for a run alone, what would you prefer? So they're looking for individuals. I mean, and I just answered honestly, and they kind of look at my stuff and they looked at my record, and they're like, okay, thanks. Talk to you later. You just leave.

And I'm like, okay, go back to work. And lo and behold, I think, you know, it's like Delta selection where if you volunteer, you're going. Instead, I get these weird orders to report to a city in the West, Western United States. And they had all our names on it. And there were only like six of us. So 80 people go in. interviewed, I'm like, this is a different thing. I don't know what I'm getting into. You show up and it's all individual skill stuff. Like, you're not with the team. Thank God. And I was like,

hmm. And it's, you know, we call it, what do we call it now, AFO, advanced force operations. It's all about having capability to go in to a area that could have a military operation imminent or potentially, you know, what's a hot spot in today's day and age, I imagine, I don't know if they were there or not, but, you know, you would go into Sudan, realizing this thing's picking up, right, right, you know, go in and get the lay of the land, make sure that the infrastructure for, you know, what's the airfield look like? Hey, are there transportation assets available if we have to evacuate the embassy? So that's what this unit was all about. I didn't know that at the time, right? tried out another selection.

And you want to know why I did it? Because my buddy said I couldn't. My buddy, Joe Bovey, I remember this. Goes, oh, you'll never make it. At that point, I was like, huh. So, yeah, went there as after fifth group to the special mission unit. And it's a year-long training program.

And it was what, you see, you guys have had a different experience. As an officer in special forces, you're an inch deep, a mile wide. You're really not an expert. And I joined special forces because I was like, I want to be a commando. Right. I'm a knife, like shooting, you know, blowing stuff up. The training pipeline was all that. You know, so every single skill, even if you were an officer, you learned it and mastered it.

And it was brutal meritocracy. Like if you failed a test, see you. And it was nerve-wracking, right? Because I'd, honey, I've got a great idea. We're going to move to Virginia. And at the time, here's a common theme in my life. At the time, if you got into that unit, you could stay there for the rest of your career.

Do you think that lasted? So I show up. And I literally in process at this, legendary facility in Virginia that's no longer there. But World War II,

just this epic place. And I'm there. And the senior sergeant, the Sergeant Major comes out, sits me down at a picnic table. It goes, hey, there's been a change.

I've had some counterintelligence issues here in the unit. From now on, you can only stay three years and you have to leave. And I'm like, my wife is going to kill me. And so with that in mind, got through the training process, which came out the other end. Like I said, man, it was zero defect thing. It was really, but somehow got through it. I don't know how.

And then went to one of the operational units and went overseas. one of the big missions. I think I talk about it. Bosnia. Bosnia, right? So, and I've said this before, I don't know if I said it in the book. That was the first place where it was an interagency effort. CIA, special forces, Rangers, the whole kit and caboodle is out there looking for war criminals. And we're learning how to do surveillance. It wasn't a denied area. It was literally like the perfect place to train, right? Because one person got killed during that operation in Bosnia. You guys don't remember this. It was an infantry platoon sergeant because the place was just seated with mines after the war in Bosnia.

And he decided that he would go disarm a mine with his leatherman. That didn't work so well because the mine went off and the leatherman went through his head and killed him. Tragic. But the point is it was a very forgiving environment. And we were now, this is the first. time in probably since the Vietnam War where you had this coming together of all the different elements of our government. And so we got to know each other there. We made mistakes and you get busted by like, you know, your comms. You get busted doing stakeouts, you know, doing surveillance.

But that's where we learned. Right. And it was first generation. Tracking cell phones was a new skill I think I didn't know it at the time I think that was probably the first use of unmanned aerial vehicles I didn't know it at the time because that that shit was so top secret but I've heard now like oh yeah we had predator or whatever it was then so that we did that and uh fifth group guy remember we're fifth group guys we don't fit in in the middle east that was the only place I've been able to fit in and you know you you were sitting up safe houses and you were looking for these these war criminals from the war. And that same group,

guess what? September 11th, 2001. Well, not September 11, 2001. The weeks after that, we all showed up in Karshi Kahnabad, who's Beckastan, which was our forward-staging base to go into Afghanistan, and guess what? Bands back

together. Yeah. It was just so weird because we were all at the same point in our careers. Right, right, right. I was a major, you know, the CIA people were kind of GS-14s. We were the worker bees, right? We were the people that were not in headquarters yet. We're on the ground.

And those are the cats. And it was like old Home Week. We're like, hey, we haven't seen you. And, of course, during the global war on terrorism, we hyper accelerated how we were doing things. But isn't that interesting? The nucleus of it. That was the nucleus.

Yeah. Isn't that weird? Yeah. It says something about like institutional learning, right? And that's kind of where a lot of you guys kind of, you know, cut your teeth. Yeah. It was just weird, you know. And that was Bosnia.

And that was, you know, a national training center at Fort Irwin, California is where all the conventional forces go. And they do their big war exercise. And it's the penultimate training exercise. I think of Bosnia very much the same way. And that was the place where we learned how to do this and we learn how to work together. Right. Yeah. But you did it in a real world environment, but it was not like the risk was low.

You weren't going to get killed. Right, right. Like you might get embarrassed. And you tell your story about getting rolled up in Syria, right? Oh, God. By the Pesh? The secret police. Secret police.

You know, that was dangerous. In Bosnia, okay, you screw up, you get rolled up by the local police. They're not going to shoot you. They're not going to shoot you. to pull your fingernails out. Do you ask them for an AAR? Like, hey, what do we do wrong? What can we do? What can we do better next time? Exactly. Yeah. You know, and just learn how to, and learn how to operate independently. Yeah. So that was like the ultimate training. So where were you at when 9-11 happened? You always ask, I, you know, I listen to Gary Harrington's podcast in the way up. Because it's the big inflection point for so many people's careers. No joke. 10 September. I had made the decision with my wife to lead the army. I was like, I can't do this bullshit anymore.

It was a peacetime army, zero defect. It was all the, you know, like, oh, what's your quarterly training brief slides? You should have 12 font. You've got 14 font. You're a failure. That's where we were. I can't do this anymore. I just, so I tapped out.

My wife and I said it's time to move on, become a civil. and get a real job. On 11th September, I was planning to go turn to my resignation paperwork, Clarksville Base. Remember, I'm running, I went out for a run with, I was a company commander, Alpha Company, third battalion, the Special Forces Group, best company ever, not because of me. This is a really, really great company. had this unbelievable non-commission officer, Mel Bynum, was the company sergeant major,

the senior NCO. So I'm the company commander. He's the senior. I'm the senior officer. He's a senior NCO. We went for a run at Clarksville base. And just the two of us, and we were just talking through things we wanted to do with the company, got in the car to drive back to work, to group, and John Boy and Billy Show.

If you ever listen to that, it's a Southern. It was kind of one of the first Southern shock, jock. Oh, I think so, yeah. It was all the rage there. It's still on, but it was kind of really distinctive then. Yeah. Kind of, very humorous, busting on people. And I'm listening to that, and the announcer, the news person breaks in with complete,

the tone changed from like jocular, like, busting on each other. and telling jokes about bodily functions to completely serious and says, hey, we just got a report in that a plane has hit the World Trade Center. And like the whole tone changed. And Gary Harrington talks about where then he pulled off. I got back to work. And remember they were talking in World War II, B24 something crashed into the Empire State building. And they're like, oh, maybe this is just an accident.

at and I walked into the military intelligence detachment, which was the only place that had had a TV then. Now, of course, every office has four TVs. I walked in there and a plane, I didn't know it at the time. It's the second plane hits. And I'm like, was that a rewind? Was that a rewind? What am I trying to say? Replay. Yeah. Of the first attack and they're like, no, that's a second plane and dude that's when you're like you know how you have to go back yeah like that really happened to me because maybe i'm like but that's exactly what happened i saw the second plane go in and we're like oh shit yeah like game on because and all of the officers got called the battalion commander's office we go in there and senior leadership is nothing to worry about don't

jump the conclusions and all of us are like oh we're going to war man yeah yeah like we're like this is al-kata this is our a-o we are going to get our game on and i just remember senior leadership was like really trying to like nothing to see at the moment yeah so i walk across into the company and this is what i see everybody has all their equipment out in the hallway doing their pre-combat putting new batteries in checking everything out loading tough we didn't have tough boxes then tough boxes are those plastic boxes we had these metal kickdown boxes were which were horrible but that's what we had they're loading boxes and i wasn't i didn't i didn't say like oh there's nothing to see here i'm like we're going keep going yeah and that to me

you know is like that's the genius of the american fighting man like our leadership was nothing to see here, but the dudes were like, oh, we're going to get it on. Yeah. Isn't it? Taking the initiative. Yeah. And it was like, okay, we're fixing to do it. Gary was wrong.

He goes, we left two days after the attack. So Gary knew John Mulholland, Colonel Mulholland, who was the group commander. I had been an officer, commander for then-Lutinent Colonel Mulholland in Virginia, previous assignment that we were talking about, the Bosnia stuff. Mulholland and I, like, he, Mulholland, have you, have you met him? No. Man, in the day, he was like Vince Lombardi, you know, he's old school, like, never, you can never do anything good enough.

You're always ate up if you were an officer. Colonel Mulholland and I were, I did not think we were compatible at all. And he, so I don't go back to the. special mission unit like I did my three I did two years there and then I got selected to go for advanced education called the command general staff college so I left and I was thinking well this would be great I'll get invited back to the special mission unit no I did for whatever reason I don't whatever so I decided I would go back to fifth group and I called I got back to fifth group guess who gets selected to be the group command

commander, Colonel John Mulholland. I'm like, what have I done wrong with my life? Who have I pissed off to have this guy as my commander again? Because like this isn't going to work. He takes command in like July, August. And it was just the most interesting experience. I stayed back like, change of command. You know, everybody has to go and thank.

Congratulations. Congratulations. I was like, I don't really want to talk to this guy. but I have to because it's a professional thing. So I wait till the end. And I go past, I know his family, and I'm talking to his family, and he sees me and he gives me a hug. And I'm like, dude, like cognitive dissonance. Right.

I'm like, like, he's hugging me. And I'm just like, what the hell is going on? And I now realize if you did good work for him, you're always in his tribe, right? He never told you if you did good work, though. That was the thing. Right. But he would show it. And so I was gobsmacked.

And then when the attack happened, we're all sitting in the battalion commander's office. We had to go there like 50 times a day to get an update. And Mulholland comes in and goes, hey, I need to talk to Chris. And of course, the battalion commander's like, what is the group commander doing in my battalion? He goes, hey, I need you to go to Tampa to Special Operations Command Central and get us into the war. And I was like, okay, that's some good guidance.

And he goes, you're going with one other person. Gary. Gary Harrington. So Gary, Gary has the date wrong. We left. The attack happened on the 11th. We went to Tampa on the 16th of September. Because I know you guys are,

this is like an historical record. Yeah. And this is the kind of thing that historians will look at. It was the 16th of September. How do I know that? this my anniversary and normally my wife would be your job sucks you're an idiot you're never at home we have children and it was the first time she goes you got work to do what are you doing here get the hell out of here that was the 16th of september went and met gary at the group headquarters

and gary was a legendary figure right i was like holy crap Gary i've never told anybody about leaving behind some documents. It all went well. It all went well, but it was a test too. Because Gary was older experienced, and I was the young punk major, and the two of us knew Mulholland. And clearly, I think,

you'd have to ask General Mulholland whether this is the case, but he could trust us. So he sent us down there to get us, he said, get fifth group in the war on the 16th of September. that's wild Gary yeah I was so

it was so nice to hear him relay that he was wrong about the date it was the 16th of September so you guys go down there and like you're like charged with planning this SF was it a hard sell yes really down there and at the time special operations

command central was in this world Cold War era bunker how are we doing on time am I talking too much no this is perfect it's this cold war bunker that they probably I don't know probably a nuisance or something, that he repurposed into this headquarters. And there was only...

J-Socke is there. And they are the big show in town. Right. They're the standing counterterrorism task force. Like, all you little people, get away. Right. We're like, we're green berets. We're going to do unconventional warfare.

They're like, bye, bye, bye, bye, by, by. Of course, back to Bosnia, back to being in the special mission unit. Gary and I knew all those people. So we got behind the door, you know, somehow, the secret door. And what they were planning for was the hit on Rhino. Remember where the Rangers jumped in, filmed it all, and then Counterterrorism Task Force hit Mullah Omar's compound in Kandahar. So that's the 16th, 17th, 18th, all of a sudden, they're gone. Like, what happened?

Well, they completed mission planning. I was working with the recovery shop. We'd been shunted off to the nobodies. Like, we weren't, we were unclean. We couldn't be part of the pores. Yeah. Right. And there was a guy in the air who does not get enough credit.

Bob Kelly was a fifth group guy who was a planner in an unconventional warfare planner. He was a major. than Special Operations Command Central buddy in mine. Bob's like, we're going to do on conventional warfare. This is what the regiment was created for to go behind enemy lines, former resistance, and overthrow the government. I said, so I just became a cheerleader. I'm like, go Bob, go Bob.

So Bob sells this plan, and we're sitting there. I'm getting pretty frustrated because we're doing nothing except making PowerPoint slides. I think it's Harvard graphics. font that right yeah exactly you go dave you go dave and somebody yells hey does anybody know anything about unconventional warfare somebody yells this in the in the operation center and we stick our heads out we're like hello and all of a sudden We're the lead planners. And we plan the unconventional warfare operation to get people in.

And then Gary leaves. Gary goes and jumps on the advance party that went into Uzbekistan to set up the forward staging base. Like he talked in his show. I'm trying to daisy chain shows. Nice. We're trying to help out, Matt. Nice. Yeah, it was just really funny to hear the rest of the story from Gary.

So Gary's out there. in Afghanistan helping set up the forward staging base, I'm still back doing the planning, and it all came down to airfields. Like, it's logistics. Right. Oh, by the way, so the one thing I did when I was in that horrible logistics job waiting to go to Special Mission Unit Selection,

I went to Air Mobility Planner class, which you're like, what's that? How to load stuff onto an airplane. And now it's all computerized. You just like, we have 14, you know, these trucks, we have this many palace. It like spits it out. In those days, you cut out these little icons and you would glue them onto a mockup of the plane. So it all came down to airfields.

And, of course, a lot of places wanted a lot of money for us to fly into. And the only place that we could get into was Karshi Kanaba, which was this old Soviet-era base. in Uzbekistan, which we now know was basically a toxic waste dump. Yeah. Which would be fun to talk about that because people are struggling with that. And it all came down. You could only get one plane in. Like if we're going to go to Andrew's Air Force Base, you can land like five C-5s, right?

The airfield was so small. You could only land one C-7. No, they were, do we have, we had C-17s by that point. You know, C-141s were out of. business. So it was the first big workout for the C-17. You could land one at a time. You could only have two on the ground. So it all came down to the math of that. So I ended up basically being a load planner figuring out. That's crazy. Isn't that weird? Yeah. You know, what's that stupid thing about logist? One of a nail, Napoleon. Yeah, right, right. Experts talk. For one of a nail, the horse wouldn't

to fail for one of a horse the message would have been delivered. Yeah. And what's that thing about like novices study tactics, experts study logistics or something? Like that was kind of one of those. I thought it was all bullshit. Yeah. And they're like, oh, wow. It really comes down to that.

So that's what I did. And then went back. I was like, I got to get out of here because I'm going to miss the war. Again. Again. Right. Right. I'm stuck as a planner.

I conned. As a good green beret, hire your replacement. Hey, what are you doing? You ought to come down here. Got replaced. Went back to Fort Campbell. Everybody's out now. There are five A teams left.

And I'm there. The war's going on. And we're just sitting there. and finally get the call, like bring everybody over and Miller, you're the officer in charge, bring the 5A teams over. Can I tell one quick story?

Yeah. Gosh darn it. I feel like I'm talking to them. No, no, no, it's good. So 5A teams, I'm now in charge of them. Only one of them is from the company I commanded.

The other four, it's all the odds and ends that we're off doing a training exercise. y'all and i'm like i thought that okay well i'm going to command these guys in combat so i've got to figure this one out and how do i accelerate my learning of these subordinate unit leaders so remember the escape and evasion exercise i decide what better way to find out quickly who's who in the zoo than to do a long-distance movement so i tell them all to show up for work and we start walking And I don't tell them how far and it's hot as hell and I just keep moving moving moving

And then finally at the halfway point I had an exercise like to do IVs and stuff like that And I got a talking to at that point they're like sir you are destroying us we're going into combat My feet are hamburger my back's killing me and I'm like no problem at that point, a bunch of pickup trucks pull up with water. And I said, I'm walking back. You have to make your own decision whether you want to walk back or get in a truck. One guy walks with me. And he's a legendary guy. Glenn. And I'm thinking, this is a great idea. But then I start feeling like, I don't think I'm going to make it back in the barracks. And Glenn's with me and Glenn's just this hard Midwestern kid and I'm like, shit, I think he's going to win.

So I said, Glenn, what do you say? We dump our rucks. They were heavy. And we'll just go ahead and walk back in and come back out. We'll get my car and come back out and get our rucks. Glenn's like, okay, sir, if you want to do that. It's so fun. We talk now about that.

And Glenn's like, oh, my God, I was about to die. I wasn't going to quit. I wasn't going to let you show me. So we pack everybody up. We go to, you know where we break down, right? We're flying C-17 from Fort Campbell, Campbell Army Airfield. The hub for C-17s is Rota. Uh-huh.

So we land in Rota, and of course, the plane breaks down. Of course. The air crew wants to go out in Spain for the, yeah. It's no joke. Yeah, right. So, Dwayne Cox, do you remember Twain? He was gone by the time you got there.

Legendary guy. He's a senior NCO sergeant on the thing. He's like, we're going out. It's like, okay, man. He's like, we might all be dead next week. It's like, oh, this is going to be sporty. Is Mount Etna, there's some mountain near there. They all decide that they're going to go up this

because they pull out the ladder. And remember, you've got like the four, hour ladder, the 12-hour ladder. They've got the ladder that means like they're going to change an engine and we're going to be here a while. I'm too paranoid to leave, right? Because I'm in charge. So I'm staying in my

quarters. They all go out to quote-unquote climb Mount Ettinger or something. No, they just go out and drink so much sangria. It's not even funny. And guess what happens now? Like the two-day ladder? Yeah.

Major Miller, we're ready to move. It's like, who's this? They're like, this is the air crew. We're ready to go. It's like, okay. Everybody's out drunk. Yeah. Somehow, everybody comes staggering in and we load up in the plane and fly to cars.

One of the best I ever heard was 10th group guys staging out of Romania to go into Iraq. And they got put, their house they were staying in during that layover, it was right next to a bordello. But the Sergeant Major would not let them leave because somebody screwed. up. And so the NCO telling this story, you know, salty E7 is like, let me just tell you boys something. A bunch of bed sheets tied together makes a hell of a good improvised ladder. Green berets, right? A bunch of kids that you can't, you can't control. Green berets. I know. I'm just like, and you know, I'm thinking like, I'm the adult here. I'm doing a really good job at this. And off we go when we landed Carson, Kahnabad.

on Thanksgiving Day. And, oh, did you lose your mic? I'm just going to go take a P. I think, you know, it's funny because you mention it, but I think it's interesting for the viewers, if they don't know this, that whenever you're going someplace, if you pass through someplace really nice or fun, then the plane breaks down.

There's always a breakdown period where the air crew is like, oh, plane won't fly. It's not us. Yeah, it's not us. It's the plane. but we'll get it back up and run and that way the air crew can go out and have a fun night or two out on the town. It's no joke

isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It's standard. Now, do you, you've had Air Force people on here before. They, I'm sure, would deny that. Oh, that would never happen. Oh, I think now they would say, oh, yeah, we did that all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And now, like, past the point. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. It's beyond cliche, right? But it happens.

Yeah. And like, the ladders, I was like, the old time was like, that's a 12-hour ladder. I'm like, what are you talking about? out. Then if they had the one with the wheels on it, they're like, we're going to be here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. What did you think when you got to K-K-K-K-2? Like, it was kind of run down. I mean, the Army built it up quickly, like the contractors did. But it was pretty run down in the very beginning. What I remember is Red Horse, which is the Air Force Expeditionary Engineers that set up bases, right? I think it's Red Horse, isn't it? I don't recall that. You know, I think that was the name.

It might be something now. It was a mud pit, right? So they brought in gravel, but it wasn't gravel. It was these like stones that were like this, as big as softballs. And they, and I just remember like, I'm going to break my damn leg on these things. And it was mud covered, but it was still very austere. Yeah. It was very austere.

Yeah. The town was fun. I mean, did you get a chance to get up to Tashkent? I did lay. man. Not that time. I was just like, oh man, what am I going to? So we got the 5A teams. Yeah. And I'll have a little taste of that, if you don't mind, or do I already have some? Do you want ice? Yeah, please, yes, sir. Dee, you're the man. And then finally getting the respect that he deserves and earned. You've earned. Two years he's been putting up with you guys. Dealing with the hazing and harassment.

that we have dealt upon him. He's the power behind the throne on this thing. I figured that one out. King of the Castle. As soon as I came in. Boston us around all the time. I mean, and the selection he had to go through to get to get to this specialized outfit. When Mike Span

was killed on that operation, that was like, thank you to me. No, it was it. We, I don't think it was this. Yeah, I think it was that fight for Kuala-Jangee, the prison, you know,

where Mike Span went in. Yeah. And we dropped, we accidentally dropped, like, I think, 2,000-pound J-DAM right near one of our positions and injured, didn't kill anybody, injured a whole bunch of people. And there was no quick reaction for us. So the 10th Mountain Division was there doing base security. They got the call to put together a squad, maybe a platoon, and load up on MH47 and fly down as the reaction force. And they pulled our wounded out. I was there because I was literally like, I'm not doing anything here.

This is embarrassing. So I was like, well, casualties coming in. I guess I'll go help out. Helicopter lands. Help with casualties and all that stuff. And I had this epiphany, which is not an epiphany. It's a bold statement of the obvious. I was like, we got QRF, quick reaction for us by the 10th Mountain Division.

Like, that's an abomination. God bless the 10th Mountain Division. That's not what I'm saying. Right. They're not an abomination. Green berets are in a jam. Green berets. no offense the rangers

come get their own right and i remembered from vietnam you know you always had mic forces you always had some quick reaction hatchet forces so i said hey fellas we're going to be the quick reaction force and nobody told

us to do this so we created a quick reaction force and we went out and trained which shot you know got our stuff together and i just told the uh the head quarters. I said, like, hey, you've got a quick reaction for us now. It's AOB 570 with these A teams. And then, and then on December 5th, we in Kandahar, we dropped, we had a

friendly fire incident where we dropped the J-Dam on our own position, Dan Pettitory, J.D. Davis, Cody Prosser killed, ODA 574, Ammarine, Jason Amorin's the team leader. He's with Karzai's forces pushing on Kandahar to the south. Bogram's already taken, kind of cobbles, I think cobbels already taking. Jason is pushing with Karzai's forces into Kandahar. Hank Smith's coming in with Shurzai from the south. We're doing this pincer movement on the Kandahar,

and we have this devastating friendly fire incident. A team's destroyed. And I'm sitting there that morning. And I had been mission fishing. You know what that is? I was like, we've got to get into this thing. I would write every day, I would go and I would write a concept for the utilization of the B team and the A teams. And every day, the commander would be like, shut up, shut up, get lost, stop it.

because I was really, really worried about this in the war. I mean, really worried. Like, here it goes again, Story of Miller's life. And it sounds selfish, I know, but I was looking out for the... We all were there to get the job done, right? No, I think that was very common for people who, you know, like you said, like the first desert storm was so fast. And then you had these other events, you know, you had Somalia, you had... If Special Forces soldiers didn't want to get into the war, I'd be worried.

If you have a good point, we had been, we had been sensitized to, like, the war is going to be over very quick. Right, right, right. Nobody thought it was going to go 20 years. Yeah, none of it's. Right. You thought it should be like, that's another subject. You'd be like, it was, it's going to be a, you know, a 10-day off or a three-month-off, a six-month-off. But the whole time you're sitting there worried that you're not going to get in it.

That's it, Dave. I'm just like, we're going to miss it. So you did get in there December 2001, responding to the friendly fire incident. The thing I wanted to ask you about actually, because I remember... That's goodly. This is good. I remember seeing it on CNN when I was a kid is the hospital mission. Oh, my Lord.

And you were kind of in charge of that whole thing. I would love to hear it from the man himself. Absolute debacle. I'm responsible. On CNN, it looked really good, though. So there are three Al-Qaeda, I think there might have been four. I used to know this like the back of my hand. There's a hospital in Kandahar.

On the 7th of December, we landed the December 5th. We made the move on Kandahar and quote unquote, I call it captured Kandahar in the 7th of December. I think it was 7th or 8th. I could check my notes. We just drove into Kandahar because nobody was fighting at that point. And we just went to Mula Omar's place. So you're driving in there and you're seeing where Delta had come in and you'd blown the place to shit. It was really, like, it was kind of, you know, surrealistic, right?

So we took Mullah Omar's place and made that our headquarters. And then we moved downtown to the palace, which stayed that way as a base forever. It was the, I think it was like the provincial headquarters province right across in that. Blue Mosque where they had like the shroud of turn it wasn't the shrouded turn like they had some like oh you know the prophet Muhammad you know slept here or something you know you're like what I don't think he came through here but yeah I know just go with it yeah just go with it right okay it's very very sacred spot right across the street so we get in there we set up shop you know first Americans in there quote unquote war's over right and

The night after, I know this now. At the time, I didn't. And Gary tells some great stories, too, but this is the one that got away where you're like, man, I screwed that up really badly. I was so, the battalion commander, I was a third battalion guy, going in with second battalion, Dave Fox,

who I, he was a battalion commander. And if there was one person I would, didn't like in group, it was Dave Fox. and I'm like, oh shit, I'm going to work for Day Fox. Dave Fox was this very tacit-turn, quiet guy. I had this great, at this time, this great white beard, very handsome. He played, I think he played lineback or defensive back for University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

And then, like, legendary, like, tried out for the Dallas Cowboys, but decided to become a green brain instead or some shit. Dave Fox ended up being, like, one of my heroes, one of the best commanders leaders I've ever, worked for which is the point being like oh first impressions uh so i'm with dave fox and uh gary tells us gary harrington tells a story in his podcast about when bin laden scrammed remember and he said that he suspects that like the tal that the anti-taliban forces that we were working with had a kind of an agreement to let me slide out well the same thing happened uh with the taliban leadership in kandahar i didn't know it at the time i found out the next morning when you play it back you're like those sons of bitches so one of the a team says we need to cut the road from kandahar to spin is it spin

bull not what's the border crossing in pakistan afghanistan i'm not sure oh it all doesn't make it there's the long road and i was wrong hank smith was right said cut the road because they're going to exfiel tonight all the remaining taliban Al-Qaeda people are going to haul ass to Pakistan tonight. So I was like, we were just like, I went to Shurzai. I went to Dave Fox. Dave's like, Chris, we got to maintain rapport. We can't, there's a limit to how far we can push these people right now.

Gulag of Shurzai is the guy in control the lion of Kandahar, son of the lion or something. Amazing guy. Still alive. survivor. And we go, hey, should we cut the road tonight? He goes, mish, mish, Kila, no problem. It's all good.

And that was the night they, they e&E'd out. And they just had this. And I think the Air Force reported, they had the planes up. They can look at MTI, MTI, moving target target indicator. They're like, 200 vehicles just left Kandahar on their way to Pakistan. there were three individuals that didn't get the word. They were in the hospital, no, it's four, in the hospital in Kandahar. And I guess they didn't get the email.

Like, tonight's night to E&E. So we're like, whatever. But eventually you've got to deal with this problem. So the first plan was to use a ruse. And the A team went in and did a parlay with them talking to him. and the al-Qaeda guys are like if you swear on the koran that you will not kill us we will surrender so i love messing with the lawyers the judge advocate generals i was like hold on i call back to karshi khanabod i said i need a legal ruling can can we you know agree that if we

swear on the Quran. Because I'm sure they woke the lawyer up in the middle of the night. This is like 2.30 in the morning. I'm just laughing the whole time. Like, this is great. Get a ruling back. Yeah, you can do that. So the 18 does this.

The Al-Qaeda guys are like, okay, we're done. And then they walk out and they see like all these Afghan, the Afghan partner force. And they're like, oh, shit. Run back in, barricade themselves. I'm like, that great idea clearly isn't going to, didn't work so we're going to dig him out we're going to go dig him out at this point now remember this time we didn't realize al-Qaeda that they were going to fight to the death we actually thought there would be kind of this like oh you're going to see you're surrounded and you'll give up right

right so we have our partner force we select like 12 of the best dudes and the a team gives them special training and two special forces a team they had that target claw I don't know where they got it. They make buildings and they teach them out to do close quarter battles, right? We're like, we're just teaching you for, you know, whatever comes up. You're the special people.

And then the night before, it's like, oh, by the way, tomorrow we're going to go dig these guys out of the hospital. Good lesson learned on this one, Green Beret. Shouldn't have told them number one that night because of the 12, six of them haul ass. Take all their kit, dude. Yeah. All their, like, wow.

I guess we lost a couple M4s on that one. They're gone. So now we have our assault forces, six dudes in the morning. And we go to the hospital. I was a trained demolitionist, right? There's a wall, brick wall. The wing had six rooms, three on each side where these Al-Qaeda holdouts were barricaded in there. The plan was brilliant.

I wrote the plan. It was brilliant. I said, we're going to do this. We're going to be in and out in 10 minutes. I timed it like a counterterrorism thing. And one of the team leaders, I said, your only job is we're going to come in the backside of the hospital where they can't see us. And then we'll just like blow to roll down, go grab them, be done. We'll be out.

Now guess who's in a guest house directly across the street? You brought up CNN. CNN had their guest house across the street from the hospital. I knew this, right? I said, we'll be done before this ever hit. What I wanted to do is to blow down the wall right at morning prayers, right? Because I knew they'd be in the hallway and we'll blow that wall down and, you know, this will work fine. The team, so I tell the team later, I'm like, hey, you good with the rap?

Sorry, I got this. a tool, a technique I used to use back in the day was I'd mark the route with infrared chem lights, you know, glow sticks, put them on so I know where to turn so I don't get confused, because in the middle of the night, I don't need that, sir. You know, kind of looking down his nose, I'm like, oh, you're a cheater. The fireworm goes out. You know where this is going. I see the turn that we don't take, and we drive.

right in front of the wing of the hospital they're in. I literally see the lights flip on. You see the El Cated dudes looking up the window. I literally like just waving at him. We'll see in a few minutes. So we lost the element of surprise at that point. Breach charge goes off. We talked to the engineer who had built the wall.

I said, is there any rebar in here? No, rebar. No, just bricks. engineer the demo guys i was like double the charge like sir we don't need a double charge i was like double the charge okay whatever stacks in they're around the corner charge goes off gab bam there's a pain of glass like it's an old school hospital right you know with the pains of glass it says you know surgery you know hadn't thought this one through the explosion takes that pain of of glass and drops it like a guillotine.

Everybody's like, it's on YouTube somewhere because we weren't supposed to film, but somebody filmed this. Charge goes off. There's rebar, of course, but it doesn't matter because we double the charge. Fellas go in, first room on the left, we're

like, we're going to clear with grenades first. We didn't train them well enough, like, throw the grenade in, wait for it to go off. You know where this is going. you. Grenades go in. You know, that crack of a grenade.

And then there's just quiet. And then I hear screaming. They followed them in. Our assault, our indigenous assault force followed their grenades in. And the six assaulters, done. They evac them out. I'm like, all right, what do we do now? This is clearly going to be.

longer than 10 minutes. Yeah. At this point, CNN, you're seeing, I'm watching. I'm like right across the street from him. I have my command post. Lights going on, cameras coming out. I was like, a long day. So, yeah, we get done with the operation for the day.

It goes on. It becomes like, it becomes a comedy routine at a point, right? The Afghans are all like, you know, they were crying. I was like, I had the doc look at it. And I like, they're fine. you know, they'd been injured and all, but we weren't going to evac them right away. But that's neither here or there. And ultimately, we tried to burn them out.

That didn't work. It just got sillier by the moment. Finally, because my orders were to make sure that the Afghans did the mission, not in the U.S. Finally, two warrant officers, like, sure, we'll take care of it from here. and they led the assault and they they they threw in satchel charges and we we ended we ended it got it got even crazier than that but i could go on all day i i just i remember seeing the report on cnn and it's sort of like discombobulated special forces guy with like a beard on television which was probably you it was me and he's like well uh or are you know host nation partner

force has handled the situation extremely well and you know they took it from top to bottom and And I was looking at, and I mean, I was like 18 at the time, and I was like, this sounds like bullshit. Special Forces, doing special forces stuff. So awesome. These guys are so awesome. That was me. Now I get to hear the little story behind it. We had our beards and we were wearing our ball caps.

And the thing gets done. And I get a call from Dave Fox. It's like, you got to go talk to the reporters. I'm like, we don't do that. Special Forces, but, you know, salute and execute. I was that guy. And I was like, I had always avoided me. training and all I was like I'm never going to talk to the press I'd avoided it my whole life and now I'm on like camera right bullshit and like you were saying you wanted to the funny you hit all the good bullet points though I mean I made it up as I went like this is a testament the power of the Afghan security forces our coalition is undefeated my daughters are we had three kids at the time they were young and they were sitting at the dinner table and yelled mommy

It's daddy. I think it was on, I think it was an ABC. The news was on, and my wife's like, what are you talking about? She goes out and that's me doing the tap dance. And, yeah, that was my first big combat mission. Complete abomination. But you know what we learned on that one? You know, like we had this idea that al-Qaeda was a, I don't want to say rational,

but that they were going to use Western standards of warfare, where, like, they're going to see it's all over. put their hands in the air and come out with a white flag. That's where we were though, cognitively at that point of the war. And of course, after that event, I'm like, oh, why didn't we just kill them right up front? Right. Why don't we just drive up, hit that room with a doggone not drag? And what was the...

I wonder if part of it, too, is that they are thinking from their point of view that all soldiers are like, you know, Russians, that you're just going to execute them the second time. I'm sure they did. But they're also, I mean, it's also a Q, so they're jihadists. Like there's martyrdom and heaven, paradise. It's glorious. At the end of it for them. I didn't, we didn't realize it at the time. Right.

And of course, by the time we got Iraq, right, Mulholland would have this great question. He was like, who's the enemy? And I'd roll my eyes. Like, it's like Fedian or whatever. But he had a key point because if it's al-Qaeda, they're going to fight to the death. So we're going to take a different approach with them. Why do anything, you know, why do anything sophisticated? just go in there and kill him.

Right. I mean, like, don't, don't overthink this. Sure, sure. I mean, that's kind of what the war became, like, in the later years was you would go up, you'd do a call out.

They would send, they would say, we're not coming out, they'd send out their wives and kids. Right. So you know that they were, like, in it to win it. And then you just hopefully be able to back off and call in an airstrike

because you know what it's going to come down to. So take, yeah. Take us into Iraq. 2003, you play into like a pretty big office. operation, taking the boys out on kind of a long-range desert patrol mission kind of. It sounded pretty interesting when I read about it in your book.

Well, you know, so we did unconventional warfare, very small footprint, very light, you know, total special ops war. So I got to see that, you know. We'd never done that. We had never done unconventional warfare in the history of the regiment. So we got to do that. and then I left company command and became the operations officer for third battalion. And we get home.

Gary says he was the last one home. I sure felt like the last one. I'm sure it was Gary. But got home, Gary got to take leave. I got home and the next day showed up and started planning the war in Iraq. And man, that was surrealistic, dude. But we went from small footprint to that was like big, war. This is American

way of war. Yeah. Tanks, M-1s, combined arms. Dude, it was like ridiculous. And now the fifth special forces group, remember a Desert Storm where Saddam Hussein was launching his missiles

into Israel. They thought he'd do them again. They were called Scud. I don't know. What's good? Whatever. He was going to launch missiles into Israel again. So his fifth special forces group this time was tasked with gaining control of the western desert where they launched them last time so that was a strategic mission like that's like a good green beret mission yeah like it was rap patrol

the whole scud hunter thing right yeah yeah and it was legit yeah uh so first battalion gets that they're the glory boys this is the big deal right and it was it was it was precisely what special forces was created for, you know, to handle that thing, right? Second Battalion was handling the South and raising insurgents, or not raising, but, you know, doing kind of behind enemy line stuff in the South and doing some special reconnaissance. And then third battalion, we were the reserve. We had no mission. I don't know about you.

But I didn't join the Army to be the damn reserve. Right, right. I mean, I don't know. Right. I was like, reserve. That's bullshit. So I came up, I decided the mission would be, I changed the mission to we would be the main effort for the takedown in Baghdad. And we set up at Najif, the Najib, Karbala Gap was the battle handover.

Second Battalion had it up to there, and then we would pick it up from there. And so we'd have these briefbacks, right, with Colonel Mulholland and leadership. And First Battalion, like it'd be all day, it'd be eight hours. First Battalion would take about six hours. Second Battalion, because they love the talk, would take an hour and 45 minutes, hour of 50 minutes. I, third battalion, would get like all of 10 minutes to brief it. At this point, everybody's like, just make it end. Right.

So I'm like, I don't have to prepare any slides. So they didn't want very successful operation in the Western Desert. Like strategically, it was the largest landmass ever controlled by special forces. It was huge. Wow. Oh, yeah, it was a really big deal. Yeah. But of course, we get to Baghdad, right?

and things cluged at that point. So we flew in at that point with 3rd Battalion and got there right. Thunder Run or you guys track and were 3rd Infantry Division. Colonel Perkins. Like one of the greatest warriors this country has ever produced.

I mean, that guy, dude, that brigade of the 3rd infantry division, that whole division. Yeah. Rock of the more, man. I'm literally, man. I see those cats. I'm like,

up. I'm like, thank you so much. I'm like the old guy with the white hair. Just go up with these young kids. I'm like, you're part of the best division in the history of the army. And we got there for the second thunder run where they took the city. You know, they went downtown and stayed there. So we rolled in and became, we just started doing HVT hunting because we had no mission at this point because we thought that there was going to be like this long Stalingrad thing, right? where we're going to like and the whole plan was we're going to lock down the city and then my genius idea which got roundly criticized i got like so much shit from leadership on this solder city shia enclave and the sunni dominated city i like we're going to solder city and we're going to turn that in to an enclave and we'll fight out of it higher headquarters thought that was a stupid really stupid idea and we didn't have to do it ultimately so then we didn't have a mission. I was like, you know, it's board green berets. The Deca 52. Yeah. It's out there. Board green berets.

Deck a card. You called it. Yeah. So battalion commander, Tim Williams, he let me, you know, run ops. I said, here's your mission. Go grab these. Yeah. That was the easiest op order I've ever written, gave him a deck of cards and said, and they're like, yeah. And hey, Jack, I learned, like, the power of the special forces regiment. Like, that's all they needed to know. They didn't need detailed instructions like, here. And they made magic happen.

Commander, Commander's intent and let it go. It was stupid. Yep. It was stupid. I'm very proud of that in a very kind of weird way. like the best operation order I ever wrote and issued was, here's a deck of cards, have a nice day, go bring as many of these people in. And we turned it into a competition, obviously.

Yeah. It's greener rights. Yeah. What? No, I mean, it's amazing. And, you know, you came back, you write, though, I mean, through all this incredible experience, though, about when you got home from the war and just having like these profound reservations about what you guys had done. And you actually read the book, Jack. Yeah.

That's your job. I know. That's how we roll. Dave, I know that's how you guys roll. You know, I mean, I think you wrote about like actually like weeping when you got home. Yeah, man. I had a break down. An unjust war, as you called it.

Was this sort of sort of a change in. Yeah. It had started before then because remember we'd always been trained to that our superiors knew what was going on and they were smarter than we were. And there was a grand plan and like get in line. And there were just so many instances where you're like, damn, I don't think they know what they're doing. And yeah, when... You were high enough up there to see it.

Yeah. And it was kind of the scales falling from your eyes. You know, where you're like almost a Wizard of Oz moment, you know, where you're like, damn, that's who's running this whole thing. I was told, I was absolutely, I was smoke, dude. I had, I was just... You said you worked like that. 657 days. It was no joke, man. I'm waiting for somebody to call me out on that. I'm waiting for

some Twitter feed to call me out. I'll hit you up tomorrow. Yeah, I do, man. And I had been a battalion, I'd been elevated from battalion, six, 18A teams to the fifth special forces group operations officer. So three battalions, what is that, 54A teams. And we had this real It wasn't me. It was Kurt Sontag was like, this war is going to last a long time. And we need to get our shit together. So Chris, you need to go home now and start preparing the group for sustained long-term operations. And I was like, yeah, whatever. I just want to go home. And so Kurt was the, I think it was the executive office second in command of the group. Hector Beghan was our group commander.

And I said, can I leave? He goes, leave. And I went down to the airfield that night and said, what's the first thing smoking out of here? And they're like, tomorrow morning, C-17. It's like, I'll be here. Great Greenberry story. I won't bore you with it. Hilarious.

Got on the plane. Hook and crook. it had a MH 40 a Chinook helicopter that was shot up and the crew was on with the helicopter and they were turning I didn't know where they were going so we have this huge plane

I'm on it with the crew that's all that's on it fly into Ramstein no it was the other place it was the old one that's no longer there in Frankfurt what was the name of that Air Force base? Was it?

Did it start with a no? No. Got a legendary place that no longer has been closed and landed. And I thought... No, that's a hospital. That's that hospital. Yeah. And got off the plane and went in to the, what do they call that,

space available terminal, the Air Force thing. It's like, you know, they have the flights up there. And they had one going to the C-17 place in Savannah. It's Charleston. I was like, hey, can I get on that? And I see there's also one going to Fort Campbell, but I don't, like, I'm not factoring it in. Here's this point of the story. Don't you love Afe's snack bars?

It was the old, you know, the orange, you know, where you could go and get. get a hot dog. Yeah. Remember. Orange Julius, right? And they would have like, the corn dog? Crappy pizza.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I'm a little hungry. I go up there. There's a kid from the 100 first flying out. And he's trying to get money out of the ATM machine and it's not working. And I, dude, you always carry your ATM card.

You never know. Like in combat. Might need your credit card, right? I was like, hey man, how's it going? He said, I need some money. Put my shit in. Got 100 bucks out, gave him 50 bucks, man. I said, good luck, man.

I just remember that, you know. And the kid, you know, just being able to pass it on, you know, because I just experienced that. And I'm thinking, like, there was a thing up there about Fort Campbell. Same plane. I didn't realize. I got home to Fort Campbell, dude. You cannot get a charter flight quicker. I went from Iraq to Fort Campbell, Kentucky in 12 hours or something.

Yeah. Land. Yeah, and then won't bore you to tears, but got home and I was alone. My family had left for July 4th weekend, and I was alone. And, yeah, man, I was like, what did we just do? What did we just do, man? Yeah. Like, we just invaded.

It was a hoot. Like, let's be, I know the death and destruction is horrible, but as a professional soldier to be able to have an unconventional warfare thing and then to see the power. Dude, we landed planes on interstate highways. Yeah. Like what kind of, there's no other country in the world that can do this. Yeah. Like they would set up forward, they would set up gas stations on the interstates and we just land.

I mean, it was just amazing. Well, that was also, that was like, because I think it was thunder run, right? where like the minister of information was like on the TV saying there are no Americans in Baghdad while there are tanks like moving behind him you know it was epic yeah yeah yeah how are you guys enjoying the monochristos those are nice I'm still smoking I really like it yeah and it was it's not too harsh right I was worried because I figured I would be so hallucinating yeah no no no that I wouldn't be able to speak that's the little old ones he has in there that have the little crystals on the outside.

You like get Nick. The ones that come from Japs, the special ones. Yeah. Yeah. Where you get nicotine or whatever, poison. And how about, you know, I just want to talk. I know we're running kind of late, but space A flights are honestly one of the biggest secrets of the military. Space available, like, where you just show up at an air terminal and say, hey, I want to go somewhere, where you, even in peacetime, where are you going?

You hear those stories of people that are like, I just go. I end up in Diego. Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Yeah. I just go wherever. I did that. I ended up in Lonestool, or not Lancho, but in Romsstein, I think, or wherever the airspace was, and then took a little like $100 flight to Morocco from there, you know. So, Chris, yeah, this is the point of the interview where I have to ask you, do you want to go home

or do you want us to finish the interview? It is 10.0. And are you fit, come on, man. I can pester you to come back another time. What do you want to do? It's up to you. I'm fine. I mean, look, we've covered.

I've been talking too much. No, you have. I'm sorry. You guys are evil. You do this to me. We're interviewing you. We are talking most of them. We still got, we still got Operation Red Wings, ASD, Solick, NSC, and then your time is sec deaf.

Does anybody care about any of this? Yes. I read your damn book and you were going to talk about it on this interview. Yes, sir. But so you did give us like a two hour hard stop. We're happy to go longer. Let's go. All right. Okay. So 2005.

listeners right now are like, no, they love this shit. No, they do. And you got great listeners, two, 2005. We have the best audience. You're back in Afghanistan. And dare I say, you had this sort of weird commander position. Was this a CTPTs that you were with? Okay. That was the best job I ever had. It sounded in the military. And you painted the picture in your book. We've talked to like Nicholas Moore and Tony Brooks and Alan Mack and all these guys who were involved in Operation Red Wings. Quite a great bunch of dudes. Your book kind of backfilled some of the gaps.

There's still a lot there for me. That story, I wish, you know, every time you, it's still a thing. There's a little bit more that comes out every time you talk about it. You'll be sitting at the bar or you'll be at a meeting and you'll talk to somebody in their life. And you learn something new every time about Red Wings. Tell us about your experience. I don't think you guys can handle it. You're getting another cigarette.

Wait, hold on. Let's just do this and then we can handle it. There's a little bit more of that. You're there. I'm running CTPT, which was an Afghan mercenary force for all practical purposes that we trained. It's an interagency function, as you know, CIA, Green Beret, Navy SEALs, a whole kit and caboodle back to Bosnia, right? We just kind of took, they called them cross-functional teams.

It was all together. So, yeah, there were three of us running 200-man mercenary force. Three SF guys? I was the only SF guy. There were two agency guys. Cool. Cool. Oh, it was really cool.

And people would rotate out and a lot of the time, I'd be the only one there. So, yeah, you've got your, I mean, that's like. like the ultimate green beret mission that's what i joined i don't know about you man what'd you join s f for i joined s f to do that yeah exactly like have indage mercenaries yeah go throw back to you know mac v saug working with montane yards and yeah chinese mercenaries it was mike force yeah that's what it was i get to do that you know it and you're alone and so you get you do all the functions You're the sergeant major, you're the commander, you're the personnel officer, intel officer, all that stuff. And we're running them.

And usually you go for 60 or 90 days and you'd rotate and we're in the Sadaabad. And dude, I'm on my way home, which is beautiful. All my kits packed up. I'm sitting on the porch and the Sadaabad of our house. We have rocking chairs. Like, you know, Charlotte Airport, you know, the rocking chair. I don't know how we got the rocking chairs. I'm sitting there in the rocking chair, and I'm like, I'm going home.

This is great. Family had this huge vacation plan to go to France. My mother had just gotten through a bout of cancer. We were going to have this beautiful family thing. And I'm like, you know, I'm checked out, right, man? I'm done. Shit's loaded, ready to go home. All I'm waiting to do is to get on the helicopter that night, fly back to where are we?

We were in Afghanistan? Stan's down. Flying back to Kabul, right? Yeah. And then flying home. And I see there's a special forces A team across the street from us that we were was running another force like I forgot what they called. Kandak. Yeah, one of one of those things. And I knew the team leader and I just see this frantic activity going on. This is probably like four, four o'clock trying to get four clock in the afternoon. And I go down there and I talk to the team leader, Christian Sessam's like, what's going on? Of course I can't tell you.

Southern guy, great guy. It's like, no problem. If you need anything, let me know. Because something bad really happened. It's like, we're here for you. Go back and sit down and I'm just watching. Finally, I can't stand it anymore. So I just walked over and went into their team room and realized that special reconnaissance team

that the Navy SEALs put in had been compromised. The reaction force had been shot down. I think they lost one helicopter, had crashed, and nobody knows what's going on. And I was like, oh, shit, okay. You know, selfish voice is like, I really want to go home.

That's one of those kind of, that's kind of one of those weird ones. And I'm just a normal dude. to so don't like take this like egotistical but i had to do some thinking on that one because we talk about like should i go or should i not go like no one left behind right like we have an obligation if there's an american soldier or american service member in need like you don't bail on it but i got to tell you i might have thought about it like right because i know how this ends you know in the movie how's the movie end the guy who's on his way home right goes on one

final mission. Right. Yeah. You know how it ends. It's a recovery. It's not a rescue. Well, yeah, but the thing is, it's like the cop who is on his last day before he retires or the who answers the call. The soldier who just had a baby. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. Because I have a hyperactive imagination, man. I'm like, this is like this is, I know how this ends. And I walk back and I tell the head Afghan that was my partner. I said, get everybody up, get everything out in the street, get all our trucks lined up, get ready, we're going to move out on an operation.

I can't tell you what it is. You know, what they do, they're getting paid. Else Mr. Chris. Yes, Mr. Chris. Fucking shit gets wired. Yeah. Man, what a great bunch of people, you know. this trucks we had were just so oh my god i went in and um this was i'm finally now older and mature

and had a lot a lot of lessons learned a lot of scar tissue from doing things wrong and that a team is doing the best they can but i can just see that it's disjointed and i said it's frantic and so i just said, I didn't say anything. I pulled out a butcher block board. Because you know where I'm going with this. Let's just do mission planning the way we've been trained. Right. So I just put that butcher block up and I said, let's do mission analysis. Step one is what's the, you know, enemy situation. And everybody just snapped in at that point. I was like, my job here is done, you know. I'm not, I'm being a little facetious. And then the biggest thing, we talked about escape and evasion earlier.

And the warrant officer is always in charge of escape and invasion planning. And I don't know about, Jack, you're better than I'm. You probably paid attention. I hated that shit. Like, chief would be like, eh, you know, like, eh, we got to do this, this, this. You'd like, leave it alone. And they would always talk about command and control. And I would just, like, Chief, leave it alone.

We don't give a, we don't care. The problem was it was, it was, the Navy SEALs were in there. Seventh group was in charge of special forces, special operations. They were being ripped. They were being relief in place. By third group was coming in. It was the worst possible moment. Anything could ever happen.

So who's in charge? Right. who's in charge. And we finally get that worked out. And let's be on counterterrorism task force took over. J.Sach just said, we got this. But that took a long, long time. And so we decide they put in a restricted, what's a RAS?

Restricted airspace where they shut down the airspace. Yeah. I forgot didn't it. Where you can't fly anything because they thought that the end, the Taliban, they weren't Taliban. but the insurgents, the enemy had shot down the helicopter with serfs to airmen. You've had some of those guys you've had on, there's a lot more coming out about this. So we couldn't fly in. Like the most powerful military in the world, all this extra high-end equipment, and you know what we're going to do?

We're going to walk our ass up there. And you've been to Colorado Springs. You look up at Pike's Peak? Yep, yeah. It was like that. You're like, holy shit. We got to get up there. But this isn't Pike's Peak, like, very,

there's trails and roads built into it. So we all move out that morning, and we just, like, anybody that wants to show up, be at the vehicle drop-off point at the base of this mountain. And, dude, you're just looking up there. We're like, we can see the crest, but they're not there. They're behind it.

and it's like what I remember most was the sun came up really, really early. Like I could swear it was like five o'clock sun's out. Dude, it's like I'd like to look at the weather. It seemed like it was 80 degrees Fahrenheit at the time and just going up, no clouds. And have you ever seen those pictures of like World War II in going over the hump? Or you'd see people going where they're walking. up these hills and we had these switchbacks like that that's what we're doing yeah and um and it's a combined force it's c t pts special forces and you guys had an r rd team with you rr d shows up i didn't even know

what r rd was man those are the toughest dudes i have ever met in my life the most professional soldiers i was so in awe we had a ranger platoon so you got this like first lieutenant he was great with his 40 rangers you guys can appreciate you guys can appreciate you guys appreciate this. You got RRD. Then the Navy SEALs, like anybody that could get there showed up. We had two Special Forces A teams. We had a Special Forces B team, a company headquarters.

And then I got 50. I didn't take all of our force. I just took 50 of our counterterrorism pursuit team, our mercenary force. It's like, here's the plan. Movement to contact, which we all know is not, all the technology. Why would you ever do a movement to contact?

Movement to contact for those that don't know this is, like you just walk until you run into the end. They start shooting at you. You're like, we found them. Yeah, right. I was like, oh, man, this is going to suck. This is going to suck so bad. It's funny because I think it was Tony Brooks who said,

like, they were the guys that roped in from the 47s, the Rangers. That night. And he was like, we ran into an RRD team up in the mountains. And it was just like one of the mystique around them. He was like, how did you guys get up here? You want to know how that got there? Yeah.

So we walk our ass up there. People are falling out. Like Green Berets, because they're wearing 140 pounds. You know what I took? An LCE, basically load of ammunition. Yeah. Rangers were great. You'll love this.

You two Rangers. I was leaving, so I forgot to take money. Thank goodness there was a Green Beret that had money, and they rented, like, every donkey or you can find and the Carl Gustav gunner from the Rangers how much is that thing weighed it's a big fucking it's like uh that's my first job I think it's like 27 pounds yeah plus the rounds the rounds are yeah he's got that thing and I'm like hey I didn't call him son that would have been like you know I felt like son I said hey man why didn't you put your Carl

Gustav on the donkey and he's like because his platoon sorry squad leader he's like he's like You'll never be beyond one step. Right. And it was so cute, right? I was like, oh, man, poor guy. By the time we got going, that thing was on the donkey. Here's what happens. It's so hot the donkeys quit.

I didn't know they're allowed to quit. Like when they're done, they're done. They're not, we're not done for the day. Yeah, and they're not. I was like, like, like there's a reason they say stubborn as a mule, right? I couldn't believe that. Yeah. I didn't even know.

I didn't even know that happened, you know? So now we're just walking. And we walk up, we run out of water right away. It goes from bad to worse. We're just combat ineffective. And the decision is made to put together what's called a flying column of the Ranger RRD, because these guys are, these are like, this isn't even, this is easier than PT. Yeah. And the indage who grew up there and don't, yeah, right?

RRD and a couple stellar Green Berets, Kent Solheim and some other people decide pool all the water. We're going to give all our water to like these 20 dudes and they're going to haul ass And can I talk about me a second? Yeah, I saw I'm doing. Indeed. I was like I so want to be part of that like I've been training for this moment all my life a desperate mission Right. You know where it is success, cataclysmic success or cataclysmic failure and I was like

I am the leader of the mercenary force. I have to stay with them and do my job. Were they doing all right? Or were they falling out? Indge is doing fine because we didn't carry body armor. Yeah, yeah. Everybody else is wearing body armor. I was like, we're all dead.

So they got the clash over their shoulder by the barrel. Yeah. Running shoes. Mm-hmm. And basic load. Yeah. And that's it. And then, so we, they take off.

The flying column takes off. I was like, envious tears. I was with them. We keep moving for the night. The indige, out of nowhere, there's a village, and they like, blah, blah, la, and we get all this food and shit comes up to us. And that's, at that night is when the Rangers fast-ropped in. And the reason I know this is, because we're on this, like, Knife's Edge, you know, the classic Knife's Edge Ridge, you know, the classic Knife Edge Ridge, I knew that we were, quite expendable when the Green Beret major said, Chris, he didn't know I was a lieutenant colonel.

He found out later, but I was just Chris at the time. And I was trying to be helpful. Because his show, he's the, he's the officer in charge, the ground force commander. He goes, why don't you take the Afghans out and, you know, pull security closest to the enemy? I was like, oh, I know how this is going to work. We're just cannon fodder. I'm like, fine, whatever. Yeah.

And that was, I made a. mental decision that if the Rangers got in to the crash site successfully, we would, I would take the mercenary force out because I knew we were, like, we were beyond fourth class citizens. Like, Rangers still were like,

we got Afghans with us. We ought to kill them all. You know Rangers. That changed later in the war, but at this point, it's still that way. And I just remember, trying to sleep

and it was so humid your clothes wouldn't dry but you know how it is at elevation it plummeted the temperature I'm just lying there freezing and I hear

we needed water resupply so when the MH47's brought in the Rangers they brought in a resupply bird and started kicking five gallon cans and MRE boxes off the back because the good idea of air dropping stuff didn't work long story won't bore you with that what the fuck were they thinking about uh and there's the surrealistic moment of the mh 47 hovering directly over me lying there in the fetal

position in some sort of like feverish dream and five gallon water cans and m r boxes start like landing around me i'm like this is ironic that I'm going to be killed by my own side with five gallon kids dropping on me. Rangers got in that night, fast-roped in, patrolled in, got to the crash site. At this point, I'm like, the major comes up with this great idea that we're going to leap frog forces forward, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh, we're going to be the last move. Oh, yes, you are. It's like, I have an idea.

We're going to reposition. the reaction force, the mercenary force I was in charge of, back to Assadabad, so we can more rapidly respond. You could just see him like, oh, thank God. But now I'm concerned because I'm abandoning Americans, right? Right. So I try to call back. I get on satcom, doesn't work. I get on uh, iridium to call back to base to my higher headquarters to get permission. Can't talk to anybody. So that's another one of those moments where you're like,

okay, here we go. Back to the indage. They were absolutely smoked by the end of this. Yeah. There's this legend like, oh my God, they can walk in the mountain forever. No, they can't.

They got done and they were absolutely gasped. It was hilarious. It was hilarious. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So at that point, Rangers secured a crash site, start leaping forward. Marcus Littrell's on the run.

We don't know this. Now remember, this area was the most, all of our intelligence assets from satellites on down were focused on that piece of terrain. And it wasn't that big. And we had no idea where Marcus Littrell was. Anybody that says differently is fully shit. Yeah. And that was another eye opener, Jack, where I'm like, oh, God. we've been promised all this stuff and this comes down to hard,

yeah, controlling people physically fit that are willing to close with and engage the enemy and won't quit. And that was like one of those eye-opening moments. It's so, it's so like, no duh, you know,

it's so obvious, but we had been trained to think that we're going to have all these assets available. Like, but it just came down to being really, really tough. That was my takeaway. And then, you know, you know the rest of the story. Mark, I was on the other end when Marcus was recovered, but we don't want to bore everybody with that.

There's a great story that hasn't been told about that. Okay. Well, you can... 20-year Ranger. You can slide into my inbox with that story. Okay. And we'll work on that. So, fast-forwarding a little bit from Red Wings, 2010, thereabouts,

John Mahalind asks you to take over ASD Solic. And it sounded in the book like you were even a little bit like, what the hell is my doing? What's this all about? Could you tell us what that was about? It was to be, it wasn't a takeover, Solic, was to be, I'd been promoted to colonel. I'd gone to the farm during a fellowship.

And I was planning to go do something else. but Colonel Malha, then General O'Holland called and said, hey, I need you to go to Solick. I didn't even know what that was. I literally had no idea. Remember in the Q-Course where they would train you about how they give you a class about like how the Pentagon works? I didn't pay any attention to that because I was like, I'm never

going to Pentagon. I don't give a shit. So he goes, I need you to go be the colonel at ASD, Solick, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, Low Intensity Conflict, the civilian element that oversees all special operations forces, United States Special Operations Command. I literally, fortunately we had Google by then. So I said, okay, hung up, and I had to Google.

I was mowing my lawn. I was supposed to be at work. Don't tell Colonel Mahal and General Mahal and that. I was completely shaman. And I thought I was going to be a secretary. Like an actual secretary. Yeah, like taking shorthand. I thought I was going to.

the minutes. Yeah, I thought I was going to be a secretary. It's like, and then I found out, okay, I learned more about that. So it went there as a colonel with the, with the intention of then retiring. And so that was my first tour at the Pentagon, you know, learning how all that works. Yeah. And the big thing we did there was a regular warfare because, you know, the Department of Defense does not really give a crap about counterfeit. insurgency. They like big, they like tanks and planes and, you know, aircraft carriers and special operations. This regular warfare, you know, most powerful weapon systems between your ears. But ASD Solic, I mean, is it fair to say it represents special ops in the Pentagon?

Yeah. That you guys write the policy or write some of the policy. Budget, all that crap. All this stuff nobody wants to do. I got to do that. It was great. So do you have to, do you have to, like, sell a lot? Do you have to, like, educate people as to what your mission capabilities are how you're a force multiplier which is so yes that Dave you just described that man that's exactly what you're doing you're like I thought everybody knew about us they don't know they so yeah who hasn't seen John Wayne in the Green Beret right a lot of people haven't I guess yeah it was just like weird so that was my experience at the penit my first experience at the Pentagon you know seeing how that's a different world you know yeah you know you're a field guy and now you're in there yeah

You're working with civilians and you talked about bureaucracy. It was like, damn. Yeah. You talked about how, like, the first year you were kind of lost, but then in the next couple of years, you kind of, like, became engrossed in it, almost too much more than you wanted to, right? Green Berets, you know, you're, you're, we always love to learn new environments. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, and it was a different culture. And, yeah, and then we figure things out. Yeah. You know, and then I figured it out by the end, but as I said in the book, The problem is that can become counterproductive because once you figure out how they play the game in Washington, D.C., you kind of start becoming corrupt. Right. You start playing.

You know, when I say corrupt, I don't mean like, oh, I'm getting money on the side. Right. It's just you start thinking like a bureaucrat. As opposed, right. Does that make sense? Yeah, it absolutely does. Yeah. It absolutely.

And I imagine, like, the budgets you guys were asking for was, like, nothing compared to, like, fielding a battalion. of tanks or aircraft. Amen. You know, at the time, I think it was like 12 to 13 billion B. Now, bear in mind, most militaries in the world have a smaller budget than Socom does. But in terms of the United States, at the time, I think the Department of Defense budget was $600 billion. We're getting $13 billion.

And let's be, like, I get yelled at for this, but we're fighting the war. Right. Like, that's not a takeaway from the Marine Corps, the infantry, the army, all this stuff. But it's the lion's share of. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I'm learning how all that works, whether I like to or not.

And then 2000, again, jumping forward a little bit, 2018, you took this NSC position being a counterterrorism advisor. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you went from ASD Solick to retired. number one retired made the decision to leave the service had this kind of fundamental crisis of do I accept the next promotion the next job right um and did you know what that was going to be at the time or did you just yeah yeah I you know the you want to be in command I was selected for a kernel level command and it kept switching it wasn't a special forces group i was supposed to go initially they were changing things and they i would have been one of the commanders in afghanistan for special forces and then it got switched to pakistan because

we were doing this really really big push to increase support there but you know that it's the it's the it's the end-all be-all you know making command but here was the thing um i needed a year off because my kid was uh i made a vow to myself that when my kid was a senior in high school I would stay at home that year. And the kid didn't care because they, like, have a life. But I wanted to do that. And that was the year I was supposed to take command. So I begged.

I was like, hey, I'll go anywhere in the world the next year. If you can just get me out of this right now. And that was not accepted as a course of action. So they're like, well, you know, no. Yeah. So I declined command, which when you decline command, and the Army is the kid, like you end your career at that point.

So I did that knowingly, and I, you know, and realized it was time to transition out of the Army. I took one more job. There was an opportunity. They were setting up at Fort, well, you went to Fourth Battalion. That whole thing, they set up an office,

the Office of Special Warfare, OSW, which was this very innovative thing that General Cleveland, General Mulholland had got going. I was going to go do that. that things went sideways, so I went back to the special mission unit. And I always make fun, there's one officer that I always make fun of in every unit, and it's called the deputy commanding officer. Like, that's the worst job because you just get all the crappy jobs.

Guess who's the DCO? You're looking at them. Which I thought was perfect symmetry to my military career to end up in the job that I, always made fun of like I would go out of my way to make fun of the deputy commanding officer like so it's just it was just so like perfect to go end my career as the deputy commanding officer and the special shuffling shit yeah it was hilarious and then retired in 2014 and wife was absolutely like hey we're not moving you can go wherever you want if you're government town what do you do going to government yeah so I went back in to and worked at the Pentagon. And then I was working at the Pentagon

and my buddy, Chris Costa, a legendary figure in the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force, all this stuff. He's at the National Security Council, which is you advise the president on all things. He was in charge of counterterrorism at the National Security Council. He was leaving.

He eventually called through his list and I think I was the last one. And I said, sure, I'll interview and got the job. And so I'm a government employee, Pentagon employee, loaned to the White House to do counterterrorism and transnational threats. That's how I ended up. To directly advise the president on all counterterrorism operations. Yeah. And threats? Yeah. So how would that work for you? Were you taking like information given directly from like the DNI were they collating all the information and passing it to you great great question so that was the first time in my career that you know you have access to the presidential daily brief and all the counterterrorism intelligence is fed

into you so every morning you show up at work and i was the first one at work and seven o'clock this briefer shows up from the, in this case, from the DNI, the director of national intelligence, and they just start running through every single threat, all that stuff. And, you know, here's the one. I was like, hey, who gets, if there's an attack in the United States that's catastrophic, like, who's responsible for that? You would think it would be like director of the CIA, but they had established after September 11th. They had all, they created

Homeland Security, they created the DNI, the National Counterterrorism Center, all these things, which I realized just diffused responsibility. And I asked like all these people that are like way higher ranking than I am, right? I'm like, hey, who gets fired

if there's like a, if we fail? They're like you. I was like, oh, damn. So I'd ask that question, it's probably you. You're right, man. And I'm just like, what that? Like, I'm the most junior guy here, and I'm the fall guy. Yeah, that's how it works.

It's not a complaint, but it just shows how our bureaucracy works. Oh, all the people that should be responsible, he created entire architecture so they're not responsible. Right, right. Yeah. I was wondering if you could tell us about the day of the Baghdaddy raid. And you said that in the book that you had to develop your own sources of information because bureaucrats try to hide things from one another. It's like a turf battle.

CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command had compartmented that and decided that, you know, it's the right answer in terms of compartmentation and not having a lot of access. But I'm the advisor to the president and they cut me out. Right. And let me tell you what. That kind of asked you up. Oh, just a little bit. Yeah.

And they didn't know because, you know, we had a. our own network of friends, co-workers, buddies that we knew that were, are reporting out to us real-time what's going on. So I wasn't quote, unquote, on the bigot list and read on to the operation, but I knew

exactly what was going on. And so it's a Saturday afternoon. I'm at home. And my buddy calls, goes, hey, it's on. It's like, thanks, click. Drive into the

drive into the White House, go to the Situation Room. There's General Millie, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He's got two comms guys. Can you imagine? They're trying to get the predator feed, the ISR feeds. You know how that

is. They're like, dang. That's like a real work. So they're frantically like, oh my gosh, the feed's not working. It's really fun to watch them work. And I'm sitting, I just set down at the head table, man. So I come here.

Invited yourself. I invited myself. And the National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien, comes in. What are you doing here, Chris? It's like, boss, come on. And was there for that operation, which was absolutely, like, you know,

it was the most unbelievable special operations mission. It bothers me because it went so flawlessly. But remember, you know, what's funny. Like for the Bin Laden hit, they had a specialty trained task force. Think about Sante in Vietnam.

Where they had a special trained task force. Think about Desert the Iranian Hastage Rescue where they had a specially trained unit. You know what they did this time? Like, hey, we got commandos in theater. Just let them do it. I thought, didn't they bring in Delta Squadron for that? Did they? I believe.

I thought they used I thought they used in-country forces. There were guys in country also involved, sure. Well, that's a good question. But it was just like another day at the office for those cats. They knew what they were doing. Yeah. And it just went like flawlessly.

How do you feel about, you know, you say that like Millie was, you know, he was the dude at the time. But obviously he wasn't on the ground for planning. And a lot of these generals have been the benefactors of success underneath. because of the people conducting the operations. But they do get the credit, right? They get the credit for whatever happens underneath them when it goes really right. Do you feel as though they're deserving? You're triggering me, Dave.

What did I do wrong? Oh, man, I'm sorry. I'm such a neophyte. Thank God I'm learning again. You're at the team house. You're triggering. me because, you know, is a commander you're responsible for everything that does or doesn't happen, right? Right.

When you're in charge. Yeah. And so props to them, if it goes well, but then, you know, we have tragedies happen or failures happen. And they're like, not here. So that's like, that's the incongruity. Yeah. That's the purpose of my book. Yeah.

Yeah, that bothers me with especially Congress when they play the like, new phone, who does? Yeah. It's like, well, hold out a second, buddy. You were ready to that too. But yeah, we talk about Afghanistan and not a single, like, general level officer has been held accountable for 20 years of war with no real rule. We lost. And nobody's been held. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. What's wrong with somebody stepping forward and saying, and I own it, man? Like, like a company commander will get relieved because of a drunk driving accident that one that Private Joe Snuffy had over the weekend. But once you get to that general level. level right like it's almost like you're immune to bugs that's poor purse of my book yeah accountability yeah that's the way we were raised yeah why does it change if you become a four star general yeah and that's i think that's the inconsistency that you know what was that thing do as i say

not as i do yeah you're at that's bullshit that's not the way we were raised right yeah so like come on man yeah those are your boys you take responsibility for it right yeah yeah yeah where are you Jack. You just, you're, you're going the middle route on this? On, on, on what? The war? Accountability. No, no. Jack, Jack, Jock rail against, like, the officer class in general. Right. I think so. I have multiple rants. Yeah. Prepared at any given moment. Yeah. No, but it really is. You're ready to go home. You just want to wrap this. No, I don't. I have, I just, I just have you, man. I just have my bullet points to get through. Okay, yeah, go ahead, man.

So, the president walks into the situation room for the raid. Uh, what, what happens? He was golfing and they were using that as like nothing to see here. Right. So he just kept to his schedule and he rolled in. The vice president was there at the start. Like, I think they went wheels up 6.30 p.m. Washington, D.C. time. It was when the assault force went wheels up from the launch site in north, whatever, Syria. the vice president was there at the time

and I think I tell you in the book you know I didn't I didn't know the vice president from Adam and I'd read like Rolling Stone articles about him and all this like he's bad shit you know I mean honestly and he came in and it was really interesting he has I think his son-in-law is in the service he knows about the service and he asked if we call we could he could say a prayer and i got to tell you

kind of rolled my eyes like oh man you know uh and he gave a blessing about you know the families like pray for success it was just the most appropriate thing you know it was like perfect timing and so appropriate and I really you know changed my mind a great deal about the vice president at that point and he so he was there we go wheels up

we I mean I'm not doing anything I'm sitting in a conference room for heaven's sakes I mean like we but isn't that cool though like you know America you know that's why I say we I had no skin in the game right and I can't remember how many

aircraft went in the air at that point and remember in the desert the enemy the syrians and the russian radar this is not rocket science to see that a major american effort is underway and uh general milly off the cuff says like well this could be the start of world war three and i was like I was like, and then I kind of was like, you know, I'm kind of like a jocular guy. I try to keep it light. But that got, that was, I thought about it. I was like, yeah, I mean, if they shoot down our aircraft, like, it's going to be bad.

Yeah, yeah. And, uh, salt force is going towards the border. And we're just, I mean, you know, holding your breath, you know, you hear that. I don't know if I was holding my breath. I was still breathing. But it was really like, really. tense. How does this go down? Yeah. And then they see

the Syrian and Russian radar they can you know. They stop tracking. They stop tracking. And you can see that. And you know, they're like, and then there was a the Russians had I think a MiG-29 or something up

doing combat air patrol. And over the flight path and that plane shots out. Did you guys have at any point like on the red line with the Russians. I wasn't tracking anything. I don't think.

We just lead Roy Jenkins in there and hoped for the best. I do not think. I do not think that anyone contacted the Russians prior and said, or even during, like, hey, we're. Not during. I know that. Yeah. And so when then that mid-29 shot South going down on top,

the garrison in South, freeing up the airspace. And it was like, it was like, okay. game on. Was that, I mean, was that plan? Was that part of a, like, known sort of, like, patrol scheduling? Or? I didn't, I didn't think so.

I'd be interesting to find somebody that was on the ground that was battle track and what they would say. I don't know. Yeah. So the boys go in there. I think it's been pretty well reported, like the actions on the objective. Dave, they did a callout. So the president now is there. in presidents like what's going on and you know how when you're seeing the isr feed it's all

grainy and crap you know it's not like mission impossible where it's you know yeah and color and hands it's like yeah and you're like what's going on you see puffs and like hey sir they're shooting at the aircraft oh they are uh president's asking good questions i had never seen the president uh in his commander-in-chief role before i'd been in meetings with him but that's different than in the commander chief role, right? And he's asking good questions and he's, you know, he's a businessman. So he doesn't, things that are obvious to us. Like, oh, yeah, ISR is looking at the village because there could be a quick reaction force coming out of there. Like, he doesn't know that. Like, why are they looking at that village? And Millie and his assistant head in special operations, Marcus Evans, would inform the

president. And they land and they put in that court on and they did the call out and just like you described all the women and children come out like 20 25 of them and the guys in the ground are like who's in there they're like bag daddy's in there and he's got a suicide vest on and he's got three of his wives are yikes yeah and it's like okay here we go and they do the call out pull the children out and then they send in i think they send in the robot and they're like, oh yeah, his ass is in there. He's barricaded in the back. They're women.

Then it's like back to the basics. Like somebody's got to go in there and Salt Force went through and killed him. And there's this interesting anecdote you have in the story that the first lady comes into the situation room. You tell us about, you know, her comments. Yeah. So that was a little disconcerting. Obviously, the first lady comes in. and Marcus Evans, who was running special operations at the Pentagon, I don't know where he is now.

He's like some senior general. I don't know where he is. Marcus had done probably hundreds, if not a thousand raids in his career. He's a ranger and had been in the business from the start. And he had given overview briefings to the vice president, the president, insanely professional. right like insanely professional first lady comes in there and uh like general evans please and brief the first lady and poor marcus just got tongue tied i don't know why but and he just could he was stumbling and finally it was like thank you very much general evans they just saved him it was

it was just hilarious you know um and i go on and tell you I had, that was the first time I, I'd probably seen her, but I'd never really seen her in action. People I get made fun of like, oh my gosh, you're such a fan. She asked really good questions and she, she helped with how the rollout would go to the public announcement in a very professional way. She had kind of a, I mean, I know it's also controversial, but I mean, she did have sort of an, effective, uh, PR idea in her mind about using the working dog.

Oh yeah. To roll out this, this big raid saying people love dogs. Well, let's get the dog. Hey, it was legit. Made sense.

I mean, it was effective. I can't, I can't argue against that. I mean, people went crazy about that dog for like several new cycles. That dog is a bane of my existence, man.

Why? Because as soon as they're like, the dog, The working dog went in. The got some booze that after they blew up, you know, they fragged the thing. What's his face?

Baghdaddy blows himself up. That's good. And so, you know, you've been in those buildings where all the electrical wires are hanging and there's water and everything. And the dog got electrocuted. Oh, really? Oh, you didn't know that? No, I didn't. Yeah.

So the casualty report comes in one assaulter had stepped on a nail uh and then the dog was had its bell wrong because it got electrocuted and they're like dog electrocuted and yeah they were like this is a story the american people should hear and they're like get the dog back they turned to me i'm like oh man why me yeah and the president was like i want that dog's ass here now and you know so you You send out like, hey, can you tell us about the dog? Dog does not want her. The dog has returned to duty.

I forgot the name of the dog. Conan. Conan has returned to duty and prefers to stay with his element. Yeah. And you're kind of like, I know, I know. Can you get the dog back? Conan would feel like he's AWOL. Yeah. Finally, you're like, get the dog back.

I remember hearing from the J-Soc guys, the time that they're a little pissed about all that i knew they were too well that's that weird it's because the the dog is socialized with the in the dog yeah and i was going to say like the the the the belgian the malmars or whatever they're like they're not socialized they are working like they're attack dogs yeah they're not like they're not it's not like lassy right that you can parade out and say hey is timmy in the well and you know like like they're they're working dogs they want to be working and they're only comfortable with the people I totally felt like I was the guy that I used to make fun of from higher headquarters.

Making the same ideas. Coming up with stupid ideas. I completely got the irony up. Yeah. And then you're kind of, you're trying to rationalize it. Remember World War II where they would bring people back for public relations efforts, you know? You're like, finally get the dog back. So I knew it was going to, I knew the guys in the field were just, like, livid.

So, 2020. Mark Esper's on his way out. Chris Miller's in. How did that transition happen? How do I answer that? So, Secretary Esper had lost, you know, it was the worst kept secret in Washington, D.C. That Esper was on the outs with the president, right?

The election happens. The president's defeated. There was talk all through the summer that the president was going to clean house. and Esper was target one. You know, everybody knew it. There were only three of us, like to take on a cabinet position like that, constitutionally and legally you have to be presidentially,

you have to be in a position that's presidentially appointed Senate confirmed, meaning you have to go to the Senate and get wire brushed by them and then you're selected for a cabinet position. I had done that because I was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center that was the Senate-confirmed position. So that's a very, it's a relatively low cap, it's not a cabinet position. It's a relatively lower position. It's like, I think, protocol-wise, it's like an undersecretary of a cabinet. There were only three of us that had any military background that were eligible to be the Secretary of Defense, the acting Secretary of Defense.

And I was one of them just because I was Senate confirmed. I do not know how the decision process went, but when they decided, when the president decided to fire Mark Esper, I get a call. Well, real quick, I was at the National Counterterrorism Center. We were going after Al-Qaeda. I had this crazy idea of defeating Al-Qaeda. Has that bad shit?

Has anyone ever thought of that in D.C. before? Has anyone come up with this notion? It didn't seem like it because when I floated it, everybody's like, you, that's crazy. I was like, no, we're here to win. And I did my mission analysis and my net assessment and determined that based on talking to young analysts and some old analysts that had been following this a while,

said, what's the status of al-Qaeda? They said, there are seven senior leaders left. I said, what happens if we kill all seven? They're like, Al-Qaeda will be adrift and will be defeated. I was like, thank you. So I take that to the senior leadership, and they're like, that's crazy. You're stupid. You can't defeat terrorism.

I said, we're not going to defeat terrorism. That's a verb. But this group are being defunct. We're going to defeat al-Qaeda noun. Oh, I said defeat, been in the military. Can be a temporary state, but the enemy can no longer impose their will. on you. I said, so that was the big idea. And so I'm at the National Counterterrorism Center thinking that I can get some work done on that when the phone rings. One COVID is set in,

like nobody's at work except me. And I get to work early. And it was, I was, it was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I thought I'd be able to transition administrations because you never fire the head of the National Counterterrorism Center because if something bad happens, you know, I can get a couple more months. I can get a second retirement. This is going to work great. I decided that day that we were going to transition the National Counterterrorism Center into a more collegial modern environment because you've got a lot of young people there. I said, we're going to go to business casual, which is a big deal in Washington, D.C. You don't have to wear a tie anymore. So I show up. I'm going to lead by example. I'm wearing khakis, open-collared shirt. Fortunately, I threw a blue blazer in my wife's car, which is sitting

out here right now, probably on blocks. Maybe. Maybe. It's Brooklyn. Hopefully. And the phone rings that morning, I think it was, I forgot the day, January 9th. And the phone rings, because the election's over. They haven't fired S for. I'm like, great. Not going to be any major changes. The phone rings and it rings and rings and rings finally i realized somebody answers you know the cleaning crew answers they're like christmeller there's a call from the white house pick up the phone i'm like chris meller like get to the white house right now i was like no they're like yes it's happening and i'm wearing khakis an open-collar shirt i don't have a tie. I borrow a tie. I'm wearing crappy shoes because I can't afford good clothes because I'm a

government employee. I'm like, there's one thing I know about President Trump. He pays attention to how you're dressed. Go park, go into the office next to the Oval Office, and the head of presidential personnel is there. And they obviously are going to ask you, like, you're not going to go see the president if you're going to turn the job down. It's like, hey, you know, president's going to ask you to be the replace Esper. Are you going to do it? How do you respond? I guess so. How were we raised? Roger? Yeah. How were we raised? Like, you serve, this is the thing that kills me, man. If I could just go political for a minute, I served in uniform. I served as a government employee for 34 years. I served whatever president.

Left, right, in between, don't give a shit. You know, it didn't matter because we're, you just served the president. So when the president asked you to do something, the way I was raised is you do it, right? Go in there, president comes in. I'm sitting there trying to hide my crappy shoes. I'm wearing a borrowed tie, wearing, you know, tattered khakis. And the president goes, I'm going to get red asper, your next man up. And I said, Roger that, sir.

he goes okay get to work just like that yep and my men you know world change my life changed my family's life change and all that stuff right there you're getting read into nuclear codes

and all kinds of insane shit yeah yeah yeah how long did the process of getting read into everything going on how long did that take biggest mistake I made was not getting rid into UFOs but I should like literally like we would have you back

Like tomorrow and I had you in right into UFOs. I know. What was I thinking? I had a lot going on. So you literally wanted to be respectful to Secretary Esper. My guy that was helping me called in and said, hey, we have the acting secretary ready to show up. When should he show up? they're like I think I don't think they knew that he was that Esper was on his way out

they're like we don't know what's going on can you show up in 90 minutes we're like absolutely so we pull in and normally into that parking area you know they shoot anybody that gets within like 20 feet pull in and they're like wave us in and I get out at that entrance to the pentagon and start walking stumbled which was hilarious which was caught on tape which was very you know iconic at least it wasn't when you're doing your e and e i know dubai though right yeah yeah having the better better in front of the pentagon police shooting over my head that would have been that would have been one for the ages you go in uh take an elevator up and you're in the secretary's outer office and you walk in there

I'd been in there once on a visit. You know, my buddy was the military assistant. He let us walk around one time. But now you're like, well, it's my new office. And immediately, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is there with a two or three star general. And they're like, come with us. And I know what's happening. You know, like, I've watched enough movies.

I mean, I'm like, oh, I got this. They take you back to the, like, secure briefing room. They've got stacks of books and shows. and stuff. And, like, Mr. Secretary,

at this time, we're going to brief you on, you know, operation, you know, whatever, and nuclear code stuff.

And I was like, yeah. Well, not to get any details. Yeah. But were you briefed on anything that just like blew your mind

that was just so eye-opening? No. No. There was one thing, a weapon system that I thought we had more further developed. And I asked about that and they're like,

oh, no, we stopped doing that like 10 years ago. I was like, I thought that was a deception plan. You mean we don't have this shit ready to go? That was like, oh, damn. Yeah, there's times where you realize we're a little bit further back than you thought we may have been. Yeah. They're like, ooh.

Yeah, but nothing that was like, that's why I should have got the UFO briefing. Yeah. Totally should have. You could have built a little cottage career off of that, man. That's how it works. I know. Didn't do it, man.

I don't know. I had too much on my mind. Yeah. I understand. Yeah, there's a lot happening at that moment right there. Yeah, right. It's busy time. So now you are acting Secretary of Defense. You're in charge of the machine. In some ways, you've become the person that you never wanted to be. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, but you were not groomed for that position.

No, I wasn't. People like, I'm not, people like me are never supposed to be in that position. Right, right, yeah. But you were there. And you were kind of a, I mean, mean from the outside looking in sort of an unconventional secretary of defense yeah like actually say what's on your mind as a person like talk like this and not saying anything you made some statements to the press that were pretty blunt and candid and you know those are my favorite ones where they said the acting secretary of defense is all out of f blank blank blank c s yeah i thought that was i thought that was my favorite interview yeah and what did i you know your wife had consternations about you in this in this position right oh

unbelievably so right yeah my wife is like the only thing we have is our repute our reputation and you know you're putting all that at risk yeah and uh that's kind of like that's kind of like oh damn because i was raised my father public servant we serve that's what we do that's that's what our family does that's our family brand and uh yeah that was the only time so i between I leave the White House and I know I have to put on a suit. So I scream home. And I don't think I've ever been home during the duty day

at my house ever. And I, you know, fling open the door and kind of like fall into the house. I was like, I got to take a shower and put on a suit. And my wife's sitting there. And my daughter is working from home that day. And they just. look at me and they're like no

they're like it's tell us because I'd give them a heads up like some things could happen here I just got to reach it on and we and it was a moment in the house where it was we were it was getting out of control

it was like you feel like you're in over your head your family's in over their head I didn't feel like I was in over my head well no I didn't So what's going on with your family? What are they feeling? They know that their lives are going to change dramatically.

I'm working for a very polarizing. Polarizing figure that they don't support. Just to be perfectly clear. And now, you know, our entire lives are about to change because I've accepted this job. And it was the only time where I've like raised my voice because it was getting out of control. I felt like I was back in the team house. a little shout out we gotta do an ad oh no you know we're good we got a ad and then uh i just said i said stop raise my voice i said our family we serve it doesn't matter who like this is what

we do and i couldn't believe it because i thought i'd get heckled and have stuff thrown at me and i i cognitively disassociated them long enough for them to go okay and I brought that down but yeah it was because your whole life changes man like like got you're into the microscope and also your your your your clap that like security shows up and locks down your house yeah and you can't go anywhere anymore yeah all of a sudden I live in a middle class housing area yeah and they shut down the whole neighborhood the neighbors love it they're like this is the coolest thing that's happened in like ever since we've been in the development Yeah.

But, you know, like, you know it's not going to be a pretty 73 days, Ranger's school. Yeah. I got this. I got this. And the thing is, like, like, I understand where your family has come from from the point of, like, President Trump was so vilified by certain elements that anybody who worked for him. Yeah. Was essentially put on, put on a list of this person is a traitor of the country where. like you say you still have to serve like the president of the United States is still the president

and you're serving the United States regardless of what you know people of any political spectrum believe Dave Coveller me stupid that's the way I was raised I know and I understand how you got in that position but you are now a civilian political appointee of the entire defense department like it's not it's not an April political position that you're in. Right. Oh yeah. Totally good. I'm with you Jack. I'm with you. You're now in the political arena. I got that. Yeah. But, you know, I think you were kind of hinting at. I was like, I'm not just going to call this one in. Right. I would be in. You want to do your 80 days at least there. Because I'd be a fraud otherwise. Right. You got to do your job. Because I was now representing

all the people that were without a voice that were always complaining about like how higher headquarters doesn't understand. I'm the guy now, right? Right. And so, uh, actually had a few things we wanted to get done and I completely supported the president. I went back that night. He goes, come back tonight and I'll give you your marching orders. And I go in there thinking I'm going to get all these orders. He goes, you know, get us out of Afghanistan, uh, Iraq and Somalia. And I was completely in accordance with that. I was like, Roger, that's or that pretty good guidance. Mulholland gives me like, get us in the war. president says get us out of these wars and I'm like and I talked to so many of our generation that

had served and I was really really concerned about families that had lost loved ones yeah and I was really concerned uh about how that was going to go but I'll tell you what across the board of all the people I talked to they're like time time time to wind it down yeah so I was very comfortable it you know it almost feels like I mean I you probably I don't know if you guys ever seen the movie Dave but you know dude I thought about that all the time but but but but what it is, right? You weren't groomed. You didn't grow up through like the pipeline to lead you to that position. You weren't groomed for it. And so you're not playing to that tune that you're somebody coming in with real, real world experience, who is saying these are the real world issues. These are my marching orders. This is what the families you're going through. This is what the troops are going through. You're not removed. You're not removed. moved from it. And I feel as though in those

type of high level positions we need people like you. We need people like you who've been on the ground. Who've been on the ground who and not just on the ground like sitting in a jock like making the decisions

but on the ground and understanding what the troops are going through and what the reality of the situation is. I felt strongly the same way when you walk down that hallway and you see all the portraits of the previous Secretary's Defense. I'm not one of them because I'm

acting, but Chuck Hagel served in Vietnam as a combat infantryman. I think Esper has a combat infantry badge from Desert Storm, but I think he was in a headquarters assignment. So I really felt like I was representing our generation

that had actually fought in the G-Y. Right. I took that seriously. I really did. So during your time in Secretary defense. I mean, those 80 days, I mean, a lot happened, a lot transpired. Can you tell us a little bit about the Nigeria hostage rescue operation that SEAL Team 6 did? Yeah, I wasn't sec-death then. I was at the National Counterterrorism Center.

Oh, really? Yeah. Hey, I know we got to move on. That was the most frustrating. If you're an American and you're jammed up and you have a blue passport, I don't know, man. I was raised that we're going to come get you. And that was one of the most frustrating things for me was, and we learned a lesson. There was a guy named Jeffrey Woodke who fortunately was recovered recently. He'd been held hostage by Al-Qaeda in Africa and Mali for years and years and years.

And the lesson we learned on that one was you got to move fast. Because when he was taken hostage and he was being moved through the network, once you're in the heart of darkness, like it's going to be a long, long time. So when the kid got taken hostage by what appeared to be a criminal element, and we had good intel on him because they hunker down, but the way this works is we knew that he was going to get sold to Al Qaeda.

So, you know, we created this thing called J-Socq, specifically for what is hostage rescue, right? And, you know, you always have an element that's on call to go any place in the world. We're like, this is what we created J-Soc for, let's go.

And there was some political resistance to that operation. But a gentleman, Cash Patel, pushed it to the president and bypassed a lot of the bureaucracy. And what did the president say? American, yeah, let's go get him if you can get them. That was a heck of an operation. Like that one, you know, we talked about Baghdadi, but that one, like, that is the most

amazing display of American military capability where they flew by C-17s and then they landed and they got on CV-20, MV-22 Osprey and flew into the absolute edge of the universe. for all practical purposes. Have you ever seen the videos? No, I haven't. The seals free-falled in. The seals free-falled in. And retrolled in.

Yeah. And yeah, it was amazing. And that's what I thought we spent all our money on that type of operation. Yeah, that's what we have them for, right? Not to derail the bullet points, but, like, how do you feel as though, like, we're handling, like, the Sudan situation? Like, there are a lot of Americans left in Sudan right now, right? You know what upsets me about that? This is like, well, you know, they're dual citizens.

So they're not really American citizens. No, if you have a blue passport, if you're a U.S. persons legally, we have a, I think we have a, oops, sorry, we have a responsibility to go do that. And that's, I personally am, I see Afghanistan happening all over again. And I see this constant, like, triangulation. well, we're going to give ISR. Risk mitigation. And you know what? I don't know where the American public is,

but, you know, I'm fine going in and locking that place down for 48 hours and doing a massive non-combatant evacuation operation. I'm good with that. So to get into the stuff that, you know, is probably the most controversial in your book is the 6th January stuff, never heard of it, which is about 10 pages in your book. it's not the bulk of your career but it's in there

and to start off that I'd like to hear you lay out in your book what you feel is the appropriate use of the Department of Defense, Conis. You lay out a little bit and what's the appropriate use of the military and you want to talk about like either legally or philosophically

Continental United States in the country. Legally or philosophically your views on that. Part of the book was the realization that so much the American public we're so blessed that only 7% of our population are veterans, right? That's a great problem to have. But with that goes a lack of familiarity with a lot of the American public about the correct use of their military.

And my takeaway from the use of the United States military domestically in the continental United States for domestic law enforcement is the United States should only be used as a last resort. that means that civil order has completely broken down. That's what we have police in this country. We have emergency management. And here's the ish. Every time the United States military, well, I shouldn't say every time. But the vast majority of the time, the United States military, when used for domestic law enforcement, let's use Vietnam as example, where the U.S. military started to get involved in domestic intelligence. they started running because they were worried about riots and whatnot.

They started to collect the first database, computer database, was created by the United States military at Fort Richie, Baltimore. And we do not know how many files of American citizens were in this database of potential threats. That is not the role of the military. That's not what people join the military for. It's a recipe for doggone wholesale violations of American civil liberties. So that's the point I was trying to make. My going in position was we will provide National Guard, I'm a huge fan of, will provide any support requested by the governor.

In this case, it's the mayor of Washington, D.C. That's exactly what we did. And people, there's this narrative. narrative that, you know, the military, the National Guard was slow to respond and all this stuff. And I felt guilty at first, but as I've looked back on it, I am so glad that we did not have American servicemen out there in the Capitol fighting their fellow citizens. That's what the police are for. It's what the police are for. There was a conversation.

Come on, Jack. No, no. I'm going to ask you about what you wrote about in your book, that you had a conversation with President Trump, like maybe a week or two prior to it. And you said the mayor of D.C. is requested like 240 people. We're going to give what's been requested. And the president looked back at you and said,

you're going to need $10,000. He did say that. Why do you think he said that? I don't know. I think it was based on his experience in, was it, June or July. Yeah, it was the number before. With the Black Lives Matter protests and demonstrations,

where the number that came up then was we need 10,000 military people in the city. And there were moves to do, though. The 82nd Airborne came down at Belvoir. That was a dicey proposition as you talked about. So, you know, people ask me that all the time. Why did he say that? I don't know. You'd have to ask him.

I, you know, had my red lines in place. And I was, if, I'll tell you what, if Mayor Bowser had to ask for 10,000 troops, I would have fulfilled the request. Yeah, National Guard, right? That's what we have in the National Guard for. Right, right. Gladly. But remember, you know, there was this whole thing about the federal law enforcement and federal troops are really, really heavy-handed.

Remember how the D.C. National Guard flew helicopter. helicopters over the crowds. There's just a lawsuit about that that got settled. I was like, I was like, we're not doing that again. Right. There were, in fairness, there were a lot of questions about, I mean, I think you and I would have very real like legal and constitutional questions, but even in the press, there's a lot of questions about quote unquote optics and how that looks. I never thought about the optics, but I know that comes up often. Right. Right. I wasn't worried about the optics I was worried about was to make sure the Constitution was abided by and that we weren't in a position where we're going to violate people's civil liberties and the use of the military and domestic law enforcement.

As I said, and I will say it to my dying breath, and I hope people listen and understand this, that's not the correct use of the military. That's what we have police for. Now, when civil society breaks down, absolute, right? That's what we have. Hurricane Katrina is an example. That's not domestic law enforcement so much. That's support to civil authorities. But yeah, they had law enforcement purposes there.

But that's a great example. That's an example where New Orleans is completely bereft of all civil functions. That's the role of the military at that point. Wholeheartedly agree. Then people go, well, hey, don't you think civil society broke down? Capitol Hill that day. I'm like, yeah, but there were 10,000 cops on the street that day. 10,000, as you guys know, is a light infantry division. We used the light infantry division to overthrow Manuel Noriega in Panama. Like, that's a lot of combat power. The fact that they

weren't at the right place, now that's a different issue that needs to be resolved. I don't think it's been successfully, like, determined. Right. And so the day of, you talk about, you pack your overnight bag when you go to work. Like, you had some inkling in the back of your mind that, like, this is going to be a long day. Yeah. You know how we are. We can sense the potential. Yeah.

I didn't. I was shocked when I saw that happen on the news that day. Yeah. Well, I mean, you could tell that the intel reports kept changing from domestic law enforcement. They're going to be 3,000. They finally said they're going to be 3,000. be 32,038. I can't remember demonstrators. And that unknown, like, you know when the intel keeps changing, you're like, we don't really know what's happening. So that kind of was like, all right,

this could be a long day. So talk us through what did happen that day, from your perspective. At the end of the day, no offense to the law enforcement, but they got their ass handed to them that day and they weren't positioned correctly and they had a leadership failure and how to respond. I don't, you know, like the people that were out in the front lines, I'm not criticizing them, but it seems very clear to me that their leadership did not properly prepare for what could have happened that day. And, you know, we're the military, right? And we're involved in some of the coordination that's going on. And the police had pretty much kind of like we got this.

Like, hey, military people, we're doing. So units on your left and right in the military, you kind of have to trust that the units on the left and right are going to do their job. In our, when we were in the military, you don't go to the unit on your left to say, I don't trust you. Like, there's a expectation. I don't think you're like reading this, you know, intelligence. Yeah. And General Millie, on one of the calls, because we had templated all the demonstration locations, because you have to put in a request to get approval. And one of the demonstration sites was on Capitol Hill. And General Millie, to his credit, goes, are you sure, like, are you really want protesters that close to the Capitol? And we got this very kind of, like, brusque, like, you knuckle-draggers,

don't understand freedom of speech. And Millie just straight up goes, you should cancel that permit. We can't do that. And Bowser was ultimately in charge of those permits? No, I think the Interior Department is because it's federal property. Okay. That's where it gets really weird, right?

The D.C. police are responsible for, like, the streets. Anything else is, like, interior department. Capitol Hill Police has a certain perimeter. and then federal law enforcement controls federal buildings out to the sidewalk. I mean, it gets really. Yeah. And just something I would point out that, and I mean no disrespect to the Capitol Police, but after all of this, our politicians like lauded them as like our heroes and this and that.

Prior to this, the Capitol Police were treated like rent-a-cops. I mean, they were treated like trash. They were underfunded. They were under-trained. They were not prepared for what we saw that. day and um you know that that's that's that's a failure not necessarily on the police but at least on the leadership side that they yeah the capital police are just people trying to do their cops on this yeah they were just you know we were told used in a we were told about the the

the uh the barricades around and you know yeah here's where like i'm thinking okay barricades that's a good idea they've got the the fence lines in no they were dog on uh bike racks yeah yeah yeah like oh man yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah So as things transpire, things really start to go sideways that day. You talk about some of the phone calls that you start fielding from. And actually, I wanted to ask you about this because you're on the phone with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. I am. And how does that work?

Because as Secretary of Defense, as I understand it, you work for the commander in chief, not Congress. Thank you for bringing that up, Jack. And that's something that matters. obviously I'm going to take any call from an elected official that's how it works as a matter of diligence yeah and so what upsets me right now and I think history will prove me right the one six committee did their work and they put together kind of this highlight reel and they have uh Speaker Pelosi and Schumer and all those people, you know, making this call to someone at the Department of Defense, it's me.

Right. I'm the one that's on the phone. I listen to it. Yeah. And here's my point. And I start the book, you know, with provocative statement about the, on that video that they show where you kind of see them like relaxed and all. Yes.

I think that, I don't think that was the first call. I think they've cut and past it in the second. call. I think when historians actually look at that newsreel or that whole thing and time stamp it, and if I'm wrong, I will gladly say I was wrong and I misinterpreted. But the first call I got was it was a very impassioned, desperate phone call from that. You describe it as like they're going nuclear, like they're panicked. That is the way. Well, when I watched the video, it did not look panicked. That's why you're saying there's something. thing we haven't seen there were three calls and that's why and I'm not a conspiracist or anything

but Nancy Pelosi's daughter was filming that we didn't know that at the time I thought that was kind of weird that you know you can tape phone calls of other people and they're like yes there's one person can one party consent I'm like yeah what because we're just trying to do our job that yeah right and I didn't realize that everything I wouldn't have changed anything by the way like this isn't like oh I wish I wouldn't have said that right but that to me kind of bothered me in some ways that that this was being videotaped and recorded when we're in like one of a really serious crisis right now and someone thought it was appropriate for what and maybe that's just how politicians work well i don't know because her daughter is a documentary maker and she just

happened to be there filming that time like it again not to be a conspiracy theorist But it also is like, why is this being filmed? Well, I'm not surprised that it's filmed. I mean, considering what's happening that time. But what I would like to see is the entire sequence. So that you, like that call, was that the first call or the second call? So you're saying your assertion is that there's something we haven't seen yet. Yeah.

That's my assertion. And I might be wrong, but that's not the way I remembered. I remember that first phone call versus. the one six highlight reel at the very end where they show a call and I'm like I think the timestamps

wrong on that. That was the second call where each call rightfully so and hey I'm not I want to be clear man I'm not disparaging them they're going through the most difficult traumatic event many of them I would not

fault people for being in a panicked state perhaps But I do want to see all the footage. That's all I'm asking. I would want to see what else is out there. Yes. That's all I'm asking because the way it's portrayed in that video is this very heroic, controlled thing. And that's not the way I remember the initial call at whatever time it was that I referred to at the start of the book.

What was that initial call? They were asking you for more military support? Was that the nature of it? No, it was more like what's going on help? help help and I'm all about helping final point I'll be on I sound pedantic I know but here's something that people have to understand you know from high school civics legislative branch Capitol Hill they own that executive branch Department of Defense law and federal law enforcement you do not go onto property that is controlled by the legislative branch

without being requested. To do something different than that is called a military coup. And I say this again and again, if I would have sent troops up there that morning, what do you think would have? Without a formal request. Right. What they would have said a coup starting.

Right. Right. They would have arrested you. Yeah. And rightfully so. And actually rightfully so. Yeah. Right.

Right. So then, well, this is this sounds really bureaucratic. Like you were slow rolling. No. you don't send federal troops from the executive branch to Capitol Hill, the legislative branch, without some sort of, you know, formal request. And I'm not saying like it has to be intrepublicate, you know, we need it signed by everybody, but there has to be, this has to be a thoughtful thing.

Right. And so all these frantic calls are coming in. Like, we need help. We need help. What do you need? What do you need? We finally get that kind of, I, I forgot the time, about 2.30, 2.30, 245.

Finally, there's a consensus on, okay, this is what we need. Legislative branch is asked. That request is processed through the joint staff, the uniform side, is brought to me at 3 o'clock, 1,500. So it took about 20 minutes to get everything, you know, the get everything packaged, a package, but get everything formalized. The request is brought to me at 3 p.m. at 304, the order goes out from me to mobilize the National Guard additionally and have all D.C. National Guard move to the Capitol to support local law enforcement.

So there's also that narrative like, oh, you slow-rolled this. Miller didn't know what he was doing. I don't care, you know, but the facts don't hold up. Why are your response for the National Guard? Bowser isn't responsible for the national guard. Because in D.C., unlike the state, because D.C. is not a state. The mayor, the person that's responsible for the District of Columbia National Guard is the president, because it's not a state. I see. The president delegates responsibility and authority to the Secretary of Defense. That's why I'm in the chain. I further delegate down to the Secretary of the Army. Okay. The Secretary of Army is essentially the approval authority.

if you will for National Guard utilization in the district. So Bowser can't just activate the National Guard then in D.C. Legally, she can't. Okay. Do we have questions for Chris? We do. And Chris, we'll put you up somewhere here tonight because it's too late.

We've kept you way too late. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, man. I've talked to you. Don't be sorry. I was the one. I was the one that kept you here and wanted to go through all of this because I think it's super important and it's a very interesting book. So thanks. Thanks for having me. You guys are, it's history, man. It is.

And it's fascinating stuff. Speaking of which, buy this book. If you don't buy this book, you're dead to us forever. Soldier's secretary by the eminent Christopher Miller. Let's see. What do the folks have for Chris? Let's see. Give me all the angry ones.

I love those. It's not that angry. I love the angry ones. All right. Artemis, 2002 U.S., thank you very much. I like Secretary Miller's willingness to tell power what it needs to hear, not what it wants to hear. Artemis, isn't that the way we were trained? Like, how can you change?

Like, wouldn't that be the ultimate in, like, moral corruption if all of a sudden the way we were raised, you just change it? because now you're like, well, man, I mean, if you tell the truth, then, you know, your story doesn't, you don't have to worry about it. Your story straight. It's always going to stay the same if it's true. I haven't changed my story. Yeah. But I'm willing to change if I've learned something new. Sure. Nick T.S. Thank you, Ratch. Oh, my question is for Jack. Yeah, Jack. I noticed you were on front line a few months ago. How was the experience and is there a place to watch the full interview? It was good. I mean, it was on front line. and so you can watch it on PBS.

Is it really? It's a great show, man. I was happy with how it came out. I mean, it was about General Flynn. I don't know General Flynn. I don't know anything about him. But I was on there to speak about, you know, the sort of Iraq experience and what came out of that. So I was happy with it.

Don't you think Frontline, I think that's one of the most credible long form? They're very good. That's why podcasts are great, where I, as opposed to where you get your, It's not sound bites, right? No, I did this one. Like, I do some of these things. I don't do them anymore where, you know, they'll interview for four hours and then they use like 30 seconds. Yeah.

No, this is all going out. One six. I'm like six, eight hours, you know, get in question. And what do they use, like, 35 seconds? Yeah. That's pretty easy. The cherry pick all the stupid stuff I said. Yeah.

Yeah. Brad Oreck, thank you very much. Where do you see SF going doing in the situation? situation with Chinese globally moving forward and the SMU you were a part of. Easy. I just wish our

special operations leadership would go to the policymakers and the joint staff and go let us handle all the periphery. We'll handle Africa. We're going to compete in Africa. We're going to compete in Latin America.

You guys worry about like Tibet. Shinshang. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, we'll do all that stuff. Yeah.

You guys just focus on the Taiwan Strait. You guys just focus on like aircraft carriers at 35s. You're good at that. Let us, we'll, they don't want to do it. That was what we did in the Cold War. We competed everywhere else around the war. Not asking you to be a prognisticator, prognostician, whatever it is. But, but do you see us entering?

a situation similar to the Cold War with China, where it's proxy competition on a global sort of scale? I wish we would compete. Yeah, proxies to a point, but I think we can compete economically. And I think green berets and special operators need to have another couple weeks of the Q course, and maybe some specialized training where they learn a little bit more because, you know, the guys I talk to, men and women in the field right now, all go, wow, I'm in Africa,

and if I had $10,000 to distribute in microloans, I could completely clean house on this Chinese company that's setting up here right now. And finally, we got to go back to the Office of Strategic Services. Let's go ahead and create a new organization that people can come into, get direct commission or

become an E6 or E7 right off the bat that have specialty skills in cyber, in economics, in information operations, and all those things, and let them kind of get after it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

KGM, thank you very much. Tell us what wild experience story as SACDF do you absolutely cannot tell us, but hypothetically speaking, heard about. This part will be edited out, of course. And it probably won't be edited out. So is there a...

Well, when we... The space shuttle still exists. It has not been deactivated. So the greatest experience was getting to free fall in off the space shuttle into Miramar. No. But it would be cool if that happened. So do you tell us that you haven't been read onto the aliens because you have been read on? Of course.

read onto UFOs because you have been read onto UFOs and you just don't want to go public with it. This sounds like a Joseph Heller chapter. I wish. Deep Blue Dude. Thank you very much. Good show. Enjoyed it guys. And DC Photo.

Thank you very much for the donation. I don't think there was a question with that. What do we have from Patreon, Dee? We have one from Isaac. Isaac, we know we have like nine from you. Everybody went to sleep, Matt. But we can only like. No.

We can only do like one for me, well? Do the AI one from Isaac and there's a couple more on me. Will you do the AI? Do you have it up? No. Warbot 1.0.

You read that book yet? No. No. It's kind of almost a self-publish. You know how Fort Bragg. They've got like a publisher down there. That book describes how AI is going to be used in the first war. I forgot the guy's name. Warbot? Warbot 1.0, I think. Look it up. I look it up. I look for it. It's a fiction. Kind of like a... Like, you know Ghost Fleet from Singer? Yes, and they wrote another book called Burning. That's very good about robotics and AI. Yeah, we did. We interviewed them on the show. Yeah.

Yeah. Say again? Yeah. Mitchell Knight, thank you very much. Thanks for being a Patreon subscriber. How many times do we think people mixed up with Chris Miller and Austin Miller? Oh, how many times do people get? Never. Scotty Miller is so much better looking in a better shape.

General Miller is absolutely, you know, in the book, I'm really critical of our senior leadership because I feel like we've been failed by their failure to take responsibility and accountability, except General Miller is absolutely, if you guys worked with him before? I don't know. Scotty Miller. I've heard people speak highly. He's the best of the best. And, you know, man, glad to know him. It's interesting, too, how your, I'll say for me, like personally, how my perceptions as a general officer as a warfighter changed as they moved into the more political realm.

Or when you realized that them as a warfighter wasn't necessarily what, like, what you thought they were as a warfighter, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Their narratives get created. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. The ones about General Miller are all legit, man. That guy is, he's the real deal.

You know, he, he, I admire the fact that, you know, they pulled him out of Afghanistan early. And Frank McKinsey, General McKinsey took command and control of that thing. And General Miller has never gone public because he's like, he didn't like the plan. He's the quintessential. professional military officer. He's my idol. Marcelo Falcon, thank you. A question for the show.

What does the former secretary think about the claims that the U.S. military has become too woke? Hey, man. It's a representation of America, and people will say that I'm not like, I don't understand my privilege, but at the end of the day, it's like just

I have not met a single person that joined the military for like social responsibility issues they join because they want to serve, they want some adventure go down every, my dad said this great once he goes

as many people as there are in the army there's many reasons why they join the army but I don't think anybody joins because they want to want some sort of special treatment they join because it's the final I think well maybe not the final but it's like the ultimate meritocracy where if you work hard you do your job now there have been problems we all know that we've lived those problems

right I would argue typically when those are identified unfortunately usually has to happen by an outside agency if it's congress so uh I think we just need to get back to focusing on war fight and I know where you guys are that sounds probably like a cop out no but I think I I agree with you Like war fighting is the primary concern. Like anything else beyond that, it's like, I can understand the issues, both sides. But at the end of the day, they have to be prepared to fight, able to fight, willing to fight. That's it. What's Isaac's AI question?

You guys are a good team. I like watching you guys. Yeah, I ramble. He, like, keeps on track. This is great. Yeah. what do you think AI should be used for in the military in military defense and the intel world is AI being used for anything at all in our national defense geez I don't know I think we're inning one maybe inning two with let's quick anecdote quick I know buddy contractor butts in seats guy contract for several hundred analysts my buddies really, really smart and wants to do the right thing. He says, we can do everything they've asked

in this contract proposal with 40 people utilizing machine learning artificial intelligence. And of course, his team goes, are you insane? They asked for several hundred people. We're going to give them several hundred people. So I think we are not even, we haven't even scratched the surface yet. I think we're still in discovery now i would be interested in what you guys had to say because i would man i think you can i think it's pretty probably easy to mess up the models oh we're gonna get in this are you're poisoning the data set yeah we're going to get in this like we're going to get in this reaction counter reaction yeah it it we're we're seeing that with some of the AI out there now is that it is already being poisoned if you were to like a

a certain political, you know, sort of model where you ask it one question with one data set and then the same question with a different data set. It'll give you two completely different answers. Like, I'm an AI. I can't answer this question. Or, yeah, these are the facts about this like data set. I think it's interesting that a lot of people sort of on the cutting edge of technology have come forward and said, we need to slow our role with AI.

That's weird. That's not how we usually deal with technology as Americans. But I feel as though these people... Not that they're wrong, but... And that's the thing, is that they might be like chicken little. Like, they might be like the sky is falling, but they might also have something that you're creating this thing that we don't know if we can keep it from breaking its shelf.

Right. But face, but social media was such a great success and freed people to make, you know, where I'm going. Yeah. Hey, um, Ender's game, man. I think it would be cool. Like, you're like, all right, we're fixing. No more movement of contact. Yeah. You're like, okay, I need every historical parallel to this and like, and then I think that would be a very good decision support tool where you're like, oh, right, right. Right. Right. That was a bad. idea and we're seeing that like when you when you get outside of like the philosophical like political spectrum and you're just dealing with sort of like medicine or law or whatever like AI is being utilized extremely well with these hard hard skill type things but it's like you say like you know the poisoning of AI when it comes to and then it goes into like as moms iRobot and things like this is like, well, can I AI take control of the human race in order to protect it from itself? We have to brace ourselves for the reality where there's a left wing AI and a right wing

AI, each controlled by a separate billionaire. And people are going to choose allegiances to the other. Jack, I love you, man. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. And it's like the church of the machine God at that point. It's going to be scary.

Yeah. Maybe we'll figure it out. I hope. But so we're, but. But aren't we just going to go back at the end of the day? All the satellites are going to go down. What's that effect where they all start in the EMP? No, that effect where you knock out a couple of them.

Well, they've already, I think there was just something recently. Yeah, EMP is going to be part of it. Yeah, EMPs would change everything. So aren't we just going to be back to like, hey, do you remember this is called a compass? Right, right. Oh, damn. Yeah. Yeah.

Don't you think we're going to get back. This is how you, this is how you kill a chicken so you can eat. So I want to Virtue. Yeah. I want to ask, you know, last question for real, where's Chris Miller today? What has it been like Post Secretary of Defense, getting

back with your family, finding is there another, a second career or a third career really in the works? What's going on? That's such a heavy question. Yeah, it is. Yeah. You got to leave that one out there, man. Where I get weepy. No, I'm not going to get weepy.

So really complained about the military industrial complex and how we've got the incentives wrong for the future. And we're almost the Soviet model of our defense establishment where it's very slow and very cumbersome and realized it's fun to talk shit. So went into business and our truck. So I'm a businessman now. You can laugh. doing drones and counter UAS and trying to do trying to recognize that, you know, there's so much talent and there's so much energy and innovation that's getting, is not incentivized to work in national security.

So trying to do something about that. That sounds so lame. But let's a final shot at. At the end of the day, veterans issues, the Karshi Khanabad, poison. stuff, those people that have been left behind. My friend's brother was a CIA officer at Karsikana Bad who died. Prematurely, they think, because of what he's exposed to. So you can't forget that.

So I'll, you know, I'm trying to, like, this is my last big public thing. I told you that. I'm going to go dark because, but I'll co-public for a couple of things. One is supporting Afghans left behind and here. Karshi Kahnibod poisoning a shame that really gratified that John Stewart got legislation passed but also a shame that it took

John Stewart to shame Congress into doing the right thing Yeah Veteran suicide I'm with a thing called Chekivet which is a warrant officer Did you know Michael Carmichael from Second Battalion? That name rings a bell but I didn't know him personally Chief is set up really bootstrapped

thing helping him out to do suicide prevention suicide awareness for veterans and the other thing is oh I'm in you're not in Special Operations Association of America if you can that is a really interesting is that separate from SOA yeah it is it's a new organization that got stood up to help special operations how's this different than all these other groups Lobby Capitol Hill. Get legislation passed. The biggest thing we were active on last year was the helping with alternative therapy for those suffering from TBI as well as PTSD.

Farms, you know. Yeah. So that's been a great success. I'm like, yeah. It's crazy. The VA is the slowest moving organization out there for alternative therapy. Did you know it usually takes 20 years from a therapy to be identified to being accepted by the VA? We're using, they have put forth legislation.

It's going a lot faster. It could happen in a year or two. My idea is if it helps a veteran with stangular block. Yeah, the stellar ganglia block. Yeah, I get it all wrong. So active in that. The final thing is Havana syndrome, the people that were attacked by high energy weapons by whoever, Russians, Chinese, you pick it.

Yeah. Making sure that they're not forgotten because the bureaucracy is desperate just to move beyond that. So that's what I'm doing. And you guys, like, thanks for giving a crap. It's so fun to, like, be part of, like, no, it's really cool to be able to talk. What you guys are doing, I think, is laying down the first kind of first version of history, which is really, really important because, you know, in this day and age, people

don't write. People don't, you know, everything's in PowerPoint presentation. So what you guys are doing by having dumbasses like me come in and like ramble for quite a while, I, I really applaud you, man. It's, you know, if we could go back and like be able to interview people from like the OSS or, you know, or the Revolutionary War, like, it's important, right? Because it's important to capture history when we have the technology to do it. Well, just think about it. Yeah. And this is a different venue where you you're hitting up right episode two what 505 205 like probably how many memoirs were done from vietnam war you probably couple hundred yeah but uh you guys are hitting this great cross section i think it's really really important thanks man and you get hey man i told you my buddies

were like oh my gosh so thanks for having well you know i also appreciate your patience and like going way late with us tonight in order to go through yeah the entire book we went an hour past we have two more questions that came up. So Dan Deppin, thank you very much. What would happen if you told the truth about getting the alien briefing, the UFO briefing? I wouldn't make it home. MIBs would get them. Yeah, exactly. Hey, up here in Brooklyn, there's a lot of stuff going on. You know that my bees are out here. It's late and it's a five-hour drive for you. So who knows that. A lot could happen. Like, wow, this vehicle disappeared. You saw him. going over the Delaware Memorial Bridge.

Yeah. Yeah. Ian Hutchinson, thanks, buddy. What does Chris think a giraffe sells for on the black market? That's an inside joke. Take a guess. A giraffe on the black market. If you were going to buy a giraffe.

Give me, I got to get on Chad, GBT. Where's my phone? The official word I got was $36,000. Was that what JP Pattonels? Yeah. Was it 33? Oh, for real? Yeah.

Oh, I thought. this was like some riddle and I suck at riddles man no no no no it was some fraud investigation it was a fraud investigation a friend of mine got involved they yeah they they they like rolled up this dude i think texas who had like a private farm and then had to sell off his assets a private zoo and had to sell off his assets and so a giraffe was like 36000 or something like that wow thank you so much is this a secretary of defense coin i ordered i ordered i ordered a to give away on my last day. And, uh, you know, you know when they got delivered? Four months later. Thank you, Chris. And I was like, what am I going to do with these now? I'm going to be the

old guy like, oh, here's a coin, but I got to get rid of 300 of them. This is it. We got to get those like one of those. A minute. One of those wooden pyramid things that you put all the coins in. The shadow box. What I tell everybody is if you can sell it for $3.50 on eBay, do it. Yeah, I would never do that. You can see, hey, I got Bill Belichick in there in the arena. You know, that's not Bill Belichick. That's Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But Bill Belichick, do your job. Thank you. Yeah, I know. It's lame, but, you know, little something for you guys. Sell them. Again, man, thank you for your patience with us and going through all this for like. I hope I didn't let you down. No, it was awesome.

It was like, Dee, did I let him down? It was like four hours. We covered it all, man. I mean, really, we covered the wavetops of it, but we covered all of the wave tops. We could talk for another four hours. Yeah. So guys, next, what is it, Monday, May 1st, Gary Nostner, FBI hostage negotiator will be on the show.

Man, that's going to be awesome. We got that coming up. And that's it, man. Hey, final thing. So my family doesn't care about anything I do. And your graphic, when I said, hey, I got to go to New York City unexpectedly. And my wife's like, what? And I showed her the graphic.

She's like, this is so cool. That's, is that you? That's D. All right, man. And my wife's like, get out of here. Get up there and talk to the fellas. So really good work. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for doing it, man. That's deep. Thank you, Chris. Honestly, it's been amazing. And I feel like we could do a whole other four-hour show with you. Like nobody can put up with me. Any time. Anytime.

time. Absolutely. Yeah. And if you have something new, you want to plug a new venture, let us know we'll plug it for you. We're on your side. I'm sober, man. We are just really lucky to live in this great country. And I got, man, it gets, it gets dark at times, you know. Yeah, yeah. You're like, oh, man. And I'll tell you what, you know, you talk, you kind of like, why would you basically do such a stupid job?

And that job was horrendous. but when you got but when you got out dude when you got out and you saw the people that are serving this country man it was just so motivating you're like this is why we take on these tough jobs because we are so fortunate still that we have people that are willing to

volunteer and serve man and you guys did it so I got a lot of hope in this next generation we got to clean out some dead wood my friends but I do too like I So when I was in Ranger Battalion, this pre-GY, and I don't remember if I was at Range School or where, but we had some news group come out, like, talk to us, and they're like, do you think this generation, Gen X, right? Do you think Gen X, the greatest, you know, compared to the greatest generation?

I'm like, yeah, I think Gen X can live up to, like, you just have to put it in front of them. I feel the same way about Gen Z. You know, people talk shit about millennials all the time, but millennials, like, carried the bulk of the GW. Yeah. Like, there will always be people to answer that call, I think. True. I'm with you. True. I'm with you. Thanks, man. Sorry, I just, I'm like, thank you, Chris. It's like, you guys motivated me. I needed it, you know, because you do kind of like, get, sometimes you just watch the news and you just see the social media and you're like, man.

Yeah. You get a little down at times. And then, but man, when you get out there and see those, you see those people and you're like, they don't give a crap about any of that woke stuff. It's just so amazing and they're just, they're like, they're going to do their absolute there. They're in it. Yeah. So many good, good folks out there. And that's the thing is like social media and stuff.

Like, it amplifies the voice like the, the, the extremes, right? But it doesn't cover that like most Americans aren't on Twitter. They're not. They're not using it. That's why I'm glad we can do this show where, you know, we interview all these people who did like amazing things, but like people get to see them as like a person. Yeah. It's an actual person.

behind all. I can't believe I'm on your show. And you're a person to do an amazing thing. Shut up, man. Just doing my job, man. Come on, man. Just doing... But that's what everybody did. Everybody just did it. Whether they're MacB. Saug or you know, or, you know, an analyst in Olivia,

like, everybody just did their job. But that's where history happens is with people doing the job. D's giving us the hook. Yeah. D's like, man, I got to work again tomorrow. And you guys just keep... No, you've been very generous with your time. Chris. So we'll wrap it up.

We'll wrap it up here. We'll call it a night. Thank you everyone for watching the show and we will