The Team House - From Delta Force Operator to Professional Mercenary | Dale Comstock (throwback episode)

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Original Airdate 6/24/22Dale Comstock was the youngest operator in Delta Force when he joined from the 82nd Airborne and was the master breacher on the military's first successful hostage rescue missi...on, Operation Acid Gambit which rescued Kurt Muse from the clutches of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Comstock's adventures didn't end when he retired from the Army just before 9/11. He went on the serve as a paramilitary contractor in Afghanistan and then went on to become a mercenary in places like Yemen. On this episode we're going to focus on Dale's post Army life as a security contractor, mercenary, and bodyguard.Support the show here:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse01:55    Transition to Dale's post-service military career as a paramilitary contractor.02:20    Detailed stories about the contracting mission at Barja Matal, Afghanistan.15:52    Recounting the moment a Mi-17 helicopter was shot down into the compound's landing zone.25:04    Concluding the discussion about the Afghan partners killed after the U.S. withdrawal.31:40    The transition to Hollywood and how Dale became a stunt coordinator and met his wife.42:00    Detailed discussion of Operation Acid Gambit (The Kurt Muse hostage rescue in Panama).1:03:19    Shift to his mercenary in Yemen and the Red Sea.1:18:07    The story of being detained and questioned while working in Hong Kong.1:30:17    Discussion of his work coaching executives and CEOs and his comparison to the warrior mindset.2:15:00    Discussing his overarching philosophy on "The Physics of Success" and his new book.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 The Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 151 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park, D, over in that direction, producing. We're very excited here to be with our guest, Dale Comstock. Dale is somebody who has done a little bit of everything, kind of done it all in life. Dave, Dale has served in the 82nd Airborne in Special Forces, served as a Delta operator. I believe, Dale, you were the youngest operator in the unit at the time when you graduated selection.
Starting point is 00:00:44 This guy participated in Operation Acid Gambit, the Kurt Mews hostage rescue mission in Panama. That was the first successful military hostage rescue operation historically that our country's ever done. Dale served in the Gulf War, served as a team sergeant, and then he retired and went on to become a paramilitary contractor, had further adventures over in Afghanistan, which we're going to talk about a little bit in a moment. And then, you know, Dale, he wrote a memoir called American Badass. He thought this was kind of his sunset book. He was going to fade away into the ether after he finished this book. But instead, crazy things kept happening. him in places like Yemen, Hong Kong, Singapore, and even in Hollywood. So we're going to talk a lot
Starting point is 00:01:35 about Dale's sort of post-service military career. There's a lot more to Dale. I think you should go read American Badass if you want to hear more about his military career. We're going to kind of talk about his post-service, post-military career and get into some of the things that he's doing today and some of the books he's working on. So Dale, thank you so much for joining us from Bali tonight. Yeah, man, thanks for having me. It's pleasure. Yeah, absolutely, man. So sticking with that theme, that little intro that I went off on, I was wondering if you could start off telling us some stories about Barja Matal in Afghanistan. I believe you were part of a very small group of people that got sent up into, I mean,
Starting point is 00:02:17 that was really bad guy country and the terrain just vicious up in that part of Afghanistan. Yeah, so there were. actually three fobs up there and each fob I believe had a roughly about a Patoon plus element occupying this fob earlier a couple months earlier one of the fobs had been overrun and one of the encampments had been overrun and I think there was a total of nine casualties nine Americans were killed a lot of Afghanis of course Taliban and so the decision was made to pull out the other The other two outposts that were up there.
Starting point is 00:02:58 One of them was, you know, Barge Batal. And the way I can discuss, so we were asked by U.S. Mill If we could bring our guys in to help support their withdrawal. So what they were going to do is rip, like literally in the course of three days, they were going to literally take everything out of this camp and extract it. So the camp was in a valley with nothing by high ground all the way around it. And it was, as you point out, it was some really rugged terrain. It kind of reminded me, I remember landing at night one time thinking, man, this feels like the jungles of Panama.
Starting point is 00:03:35 You know, very wooded, very humid, very, you know, rough terrain. But they were sitting right down in this little, in this little tiny valley, man. And the camp was probably 150 meters square maybe. It was very small. It had one little HLZ in the middle that could support one helicopter landing on it. That was it. And this platoon had been there for at least a year already, and they got no break, man. They were literally every day in gun fights.
Starting point is 00:04:08 They couldn't even leave the wire to go patrol, and they were constantly on defense. They were getting hammered down there. And so the decision was made to we've got to pull them out. But they couldn't just bring in helicopters. The guys would load up everything and fly away because as soon as the helicopters were coming, in, they would, you know, they would be in contact. So, so the plan was, uh, for us, me and my guys to fly in, um, we, they actually, they brought us in. We flew in on, uh, some in my 17th. And we had two lifts. We went in. I think it was probably a total of about 30 of us,
Starting point is 00:04:43 me and two other Americans and then the rest of Afghans. And we flew in the middle of the night, roughly around 10, 11 o'clock at night, um, got out, met with the commander. And basically he explained to us what the mission was. Basically, what they wanted us to do was go outside the wire and patrol the area around the base camp. And basically just keep the bad guys back, keep them engaged so that the soldiers within the camp could load their gear. They were going to bring in some helicopters. They were going to load up. They actually had a Humvee there too.
Starting point is 00:05:19 I don't know how they got that there, why they were used to it. But they had Humvee, they were going to take that out. They were just going to load up these aircraft for the course of three days. It just kept lifting everything else, lifting everything else out of the camp and hopefully within 72 hours the camp will be evacuated.
Starting point is 00:05:34 In the meantime, our job was to just go out there and make contact with the bad guys and keep them back so this operation could take place. Well, I remember that night we arrived, we met with the captain, told them what we're going to go do. We refitted and then we went out the wire and we had our mission was to go up the road about maybe four or five kilometers
Starting point is 00:05:56 there was a madrasa up there and the Taliban used that as a staging face basically they would link up there you know get on their war paint and shit and then you know they would launch their assaults from there so we were just going to meet on there at the madrasa and get it on so as we leave the wire we're walking at the road it's relatively dark and and then all of a sudden the first CH-47 is flying in, it's going to land and they're going to load it and then it's going to take off with its supply.
Starting point is 00:06:30 Well, as the helicopter was coming in to a very slow and low hover, there was a Taliban on the other side of the wire with an RPG and guess what he does? You shoot it down and it crashes into the fucking camp. And so, yeah, onto the
Starting point is 00:06:46 only HLZ they got, right? So bam, it slams into the deck The round went through the floor of the helicopter. It actually took off the leg of one of the crew chiefs. So now we got a disabled helicopter sitting inside the camp. They can't get it out. They can't do anything with it. They can't bring in more helicopters.
Starting point is 00:07:05 Can't medevac the guys out. And then the firefight started. So we turned around and you could just see green tracers coming down from the high ground. Red tracers going up, you know, and there's a full on firefight, man. And so we're standing there going, okay, well, what do we do? do we try to go back and support them. But then we knew that would be a problem because trying to reenter friendly forward lines, you know, we're going to get caught in a crossfire.
Starting point is 00:07:31 There's going to be a, there's going to be drama with that, right? So we realize, okay, there's nothing we can do out here. Let the, let the army, let the military, you know, deal with those guys. And then we're going to continue mission. So we go up the road. We make it to the madrasa and it's a dry hole. There's nothing there. So we're like, okay, let's move it on up, push up,
Starting point is 00:07:50 about another four kilometers there's another village up there again we know this is a this is all Taliban country and so we go up there as we're crossing the bridge we get uh word that we got squatters going out the other side of the uh of the village so anyway they they clear the village they get away nothing happened uh we come back that morning on the fire fight's over and uh you know we refit regroup and wow we got this issue with this helicopter sitting in the camp Now what are we going to do? So what was really interesting was, and I didn't know this, but apparently the Army, they have pilots that are specially trained to fly crippled aircraft. Right.
Starting point is 00:08:34 So what they did is they brought us to one badass pilot, man, and they roped them in, a fast rope. And his job was to go down there and start that aircraft and fly it out of there. Wow. You know, broken hall, man. Yeah, I didn't know that. You know, I was like, damn, this guy's got some balls, man. One guy, man, that's his job, right? And so when they brought him in, they roped him in,
Starting point is 00:08:57 and then they brought a bunch of fast movers came flying in and basically was strafing the hillsides to keep the bad guys down while this guy was, you know, turning knobs and pulling the levers and cranking this thing up. He actually got it out of there. He actually flew this broken helicopter out of that HLZ. He cleared it up for us. So we decide, okay, the next.
Starting point is 00:09:19 night, we'll continue mission. And we decided, okay, let's go. I forget the direction, but I think it was west. We said we're going to go west. There's a village about six kilometers away. We know Taliban stages out of there also. And so we're just going to go down there and, you know, set up an ambush, knowing they're going to come and hit the camp that night and we're just going to ambush them. So we take off. And I remember we're walking around this, this ridgeline. It's really steep, man. I mean, really steep. And we're walking on a go trail. that was maybe 18 inches, 24 inches wide. It was real muddy and slippery.
Starting point is 00:09:53 There's a lot of water running down. And we'll wear night vision goggles. It's pitch black. There's a lot of trees. And we're cruising along, cruising along. And then all of a sudden I hear my interpreter behind me fall off the cliff, right? And he falls like maybe, I don't know, 20, 25, 30 feet down the side of this cliff, right? And he lands on the little ledge down there.
Starting point is 00:10:17 And I could hear him, you know, make it. and you know, hoofing the puffing sounds and stuff. And I turn out, I look down, I see him, and I see what looks like, just his whole face is like black. And the black was actually blood. I would wear nine vision goggles. So it looked, you know, it was dark black, but it was all blood. And he knocked his teeth out. His teeth were sticking out through his lips, through his gums and stuff.
Starting point is 00:10:37 And, uh, and I looked at, his name was HD. We call him HD for Harley Davidson, right? He loved Harley Davidson, even though he'll never own one. That was his thing, you know, so we always call him HD. I go, HD, you okay? Yes, sir. I'm okay. Yes, sir.
Starting point is 00:10:52 Yes, sir. I'm like, you don't look good. And so we finally, we pull him up and I'm looking at him. And I'm looking at him. Oh, holy shit, dude, you're a mess. And then he begins to explain to me how that was the first night he ever wore night night vision goggles. I said, are you kidding me?
Starting point is 00:11:10 This is the first time you've been out on operation and you're wearing MVGs on a goat trail. And I'm like, holy, shit, man. What were you thinking, dude? And so anyways, you know, he fell off the cliff because he couldn't see because he didn't know how to use night vision goggles properly. And so we're sitting there and we had a Navy medic with us and bring him back, Corman, and he's kind of patching up, you know, HD. And then while we're sitting there, we're looking with the thermals, we could see. So we're on this ridge line. We can see directly across to another ridge line about 250, 300 meters across from us. And we notice
Starting point is 00:11:49 a small fire burning. And so hold on for a second. Hey. I got my maid in here. She's cleaning and talking to my employees. So anyway, so we see this fire burning and we're looking and look and look and go,
Starting point is 00:12:11 okay, that looks really suspicious, man. Well, it turns out it was 12 Taliban. And what they were doing, they were one terrain feature away from the camp. So what they were doing is staging there. What they were going to do is get all spun up and they come around and hit the camp that night from that position. So that was their MSS basically, the support site. And so anyways, so we call for close air support. And there happens to be, I think it was the F-15 on station.
Starting point is 00:12:45 He had a couple of J-Dams with him. And he was quite a ways out. You could even hear the aircraft. So we said, hey, you, this is us. You know, we think we identified Taliban location. We gave him the location. He's looking, using his optics. And like I said, he was so far out, you could even hear the guy.
Starting point is 00:13:04 You had no idea he was on station. But he could actually see. And he's actually counting. He goes, yeah, you got 12 guys armed AK-47, weapons systems, blah, blah, blah. And he's in detail describing it. guys are like, holy shit. So we're like, all right, well, send him to Allah, man. And so the guy released a thousand pound J-dam and the time of flight was 45 seconds. And when he released it, he said, yeah, it's in round. We actually laid the target for him. And you never heard the aircraft.
Starting point is 00:13:33 You never even heard the J-dam until it went off and when it went off. All you saw was pieces and parts flying through the air, arms and legs, make a 847. We kept it all all on infrared video. And we kind of watched it the next day. It reveled over it. But so, so we did that. And so we're like, okay, a mission accomplished. We don't need to go all the way to the village. We go back.
Starting point is 00:13:54 And then the next day, these guys got the ass, I guess, decided it was time for some payback. So they come rolling around there again, some more of them. And it happened to be an O-P-O-P-O-P up on the high ground and a bunch of privates up there with M-240, 2-49, and edges unleashed. He killed another 12. Killed another 12 in broad daylight coming around there. So we smoked quite a few guys in a couple days we were there. And we ended up getting everybody out, every last man out, get all the equipment out and was able to withdraw within the 72 hours anyways,
Starting point is 00:14:26 in spite of a shot down helicopter in the compound. So, but it was really, you know, looking back at that, it's like, man, these guys were living hardcore. Yeah. A little poncho hoot just for a year, sleeping in the mud. They had no Wi-Fi, no TV. They had nothing, man. they were living in really rough field conditions for a year and they're fighting it out every day.
Starting point is 00:14:51 I'm like, man, that's, you know, that's some hardcore shit there. But glad to get them out there because, man, they were taking a beating and they were pretty much combat ineffective. They couldn't leave the wire. They're just sitting ducks, you know, and getting pock shots at them. But that was an interesting mission. It was a lot of fun. We went pretty fast. And, but, you know, we got her down and got everybody out there.
Starting point is 00:15:13 So unfortunately, the other camp, we didn't deal with the other camp, but the first camp, they took some serious casualties up there. I remember when that firefight happened, it was a big deal. And these three FOVs were the northernmost U.S. mill camps in Afghanistan. There was nothing else up there. I mean, they were way out there, too. I mean, really tough terrain to get to. You know, like I said, the helicopter is the only way you get in and out of there. And they shot down the one helicopter to the HLSA.
Starting point is 00:15:43 been worse, man. Yeah. I could just imagine it had this thing, you know, disintegrated in the compound, you know, maybe you know, kill a bunch of men or something, you know, and hit fuel dumps. You know, it could have been a disaster, man. But it all worked out. Like I said, I was really impressed with the pilot.
Starting point is 00:15:59 I didn't know they had guys like that. It's like that. It's like that guy's got a pair of balls like a bull, man. Yeah. You're going to come in there and you're going to rope him in at night. And he's going to get, he's going to get a cockpit and start pushing button to pull the levers. And, you know, praying to God, just thing flicking fly.
Starting point is 00:16:13 lies out of there, you know, and he did it, man. He actually did it. So pretty cool. You know, Dale, that's actually, you know, you mentioned these FOBs and that's something, and for those of you don't know, it's just a forward operating base. It's, you know, a little camp out in the middle of nowhere generally. But, you know, we've talked about how
Starting point is 00:16:30 special ops is really, you know, everybody loves the sexy mission of special ops. But these conventional forces were out there, like at these remote places or on these lawn patrols mixing it up. all the time and they really don't get the credit that they deserve. No, that's true, man.
Starting point is 00:16:49 That's true. I was up in the Coringal also. So you had a bunch of FOBs in that area. Same thing. Those guys were getting pounded every day, man. Coringall was probably, it was regarded as most dangerous place on the planet at that time. And it wasn't if you're going to get in contact. It was winning how bad.
Starting point is 00:17:08 But if you go up into Coringal, you're going to get smacked, you know? And there were guys up there every day, you know, those slinging lead with each other with the bad guys, you know. So, yeah, you're right, man. They're out there. They're doing it, you know, and they're living in some hardcore conditions, you know. And it sucks. But on one hand, you know, I mean, I kind of live for that, man. Yeah, right, right.
Starting point is 00:17:36 Of course you do. Dale, as I recall, I mean, you retired from the Army, like, just before 9-11. And, I mean, I don't think there was any way that a dude like you was going to miss the war on terror. You did find a way, of course, obviously to deal your way into the action. I remember you once telling me that you actually went out on ops by yourself a few times with the engage, which I thought was pretty cool. I mean, what was this experience like, I guess we're going to say, OGA, what was that like by comparison to your military? experience. It was, I want to say it was better because, um, one, I was entrusted with a lot of men and a lot
Starting point is 00:18:19 of money, um, and mission, right? So, you know, I mean, I was literally downrange. I, I only can describe it like Colonel Kurtz up the river in apocalypse now, you know. There were, there were times I was up the river at a camp with me, maybe one or two other Americans, maybe, and, you know, with anywhere from 50 to 500, you know, Afghan mercenaries. And especially in the beginning of the war, you know, I had a lot of latitude just to get the job done, you know, I can remember walking into the camp, to the base, um, Austin, talking to the chief there, going, hey, man, I'm going to take the guys out tonight.
Starting point is 00:19:01 Um, we go down the road. I'm going to hit that target back tomorrow morning. And he was like, okay. And he's out there. He's painting and shit. You know, he's doing, he's like doing some weird jobs, you know. It's like, yeah, okay, yeah, just don't get nobody hurt, you know, let me know what happens tomorrow morning.
Starting point is 00:19:13 Like, yeah, Roger that. And I'd go do my thing, you know, and there was no, you know, there was no oversight. People just trusted me, you know, and they knew that, you know, I was able to do the right thing to fight the war on terror and to beat the bad guys, whatever it took. And which is really cool, man, to have that kind of giving that kind of response and had that kind of trust to go do that. And there were times, you're right. As the war went on, I worked with some of the same guys a lot.
Starting point is 00:19:46 And, you know, they trusted me. I took care of them. You know, I, I mean, I treated, they were my soldiers, but I treated them with respect, with dignity. You know, I cared about them in their lives as well as their families. And so, you know, I did what I thought a leader's supposed to do. You know, unfortunately, you know, this is going to, I'm going to say it, but a lot of guys don't get it,
Starting point is 00:20:09 particularly, you know, in the Navy. You know, they're working with the Indich, and I say the Navy, I'm talking about particularly the Seals. You know, they don't have that background of working with indigenous people. And Green Berets, as you know, you know, Jack, both you guys, you know, that was our mission, man, is the Winheart's of Mines,
Starting point is 00:20:28 train the indigenous to basically stand up on our own armies and to go fight war. And that requires that we took care of our guys and we treat them with dignity with respect. We didn't treat them like dogs. We didn't talk shit to them. We didn't abuse them because that will come back and haunt you. That will end you somewhere on the battlefield by your own men if you do that wrong. And so these other guys didn't get that.
Starting point is 00:20:55 And I got countless stories about that. But anyways, that was my mission, was, you know, always do the right things by my soldiers. And so I, look, I had the paper. You know, I had to checkbook. And, you know, the guys did a really good job. It's like, you know, here you go. Here's a bonus. And take the day off.
Starting point is 00:21:11 Take two days off, in fact, you know. You know, I took care of my guys that way because I knew that would, you know, the return would be huge on that down the road when I needed it. And I was right. So I had a platoon of guys that, 42, in fact, that, you know, these guys, I would literally go out on operations by myself with them. Now, I know I'm breaking, you know, I was breaking protocol and all kinds of rules, two-man rule, you know, as American, you got to go out with another American.
Starting point is 00:21:37 But I got to the point with these guys that I trusted them so much. We've been out downrange so many times that, and I mean, I remember them telling me, you know, I remember one time they had a little formation and they're like, Mr. Dale, you know, we will never let anything happen to you. We will build a human wall around you. We will protect you with our lives. And I believe that, man, because I saw it, you know. And so I could go out downrange for two, three days at a time.
Starting point is 00:22:03 Nobody knew where the hell I was at. You know, I was everywhere in Afghanistan, out in the freaking middle of nowhere, you know. And we're going out and hitting targets and stuff, you know, and they could have easily, they could have easily let the air out of me out there somewhere and buried me. And we don't know where he went, you know,
Starting point is 00:22:18 but that never happened. And, you know, maybe I got lucky. I don't know, but I don't think so. I became very good friends with a lot of these guys, and particularly one of them. He was one of the commanders, young guy, but definitely a go-getter. man. The whole platoon was, this particular platoon, was very, was very different from your typical Afghan.
Starting point is 00:22:41 They were more Western-oriented. Their mindset, their personalities, you know, you could tell they love the West. They love the American way. And so they were different in that regard. But the commander had been around for a while, although he was young. His, you know, his family had fought the Mujahideen. He had lost, you know, family members. And this guy was on the hit list, you know, Taliban wanted this guy because of who he was and what he was in charge of. And I was always afraid that, you know, when we pull out as American, this guy is going to get smoked. You're going to kill him, man, you know, him and his family. And so one day I just never showed back up. I'd been going to the same camp for about almost 18 months.
Starting point is 00:23:26 And then I got reassigned because there was a problem at another camp. and it had to do with, you know, the American, Afghan interaction, you know, poor leadership, blah, blah, blah. And I kind of got sent out there to try to, you know, fix this situation. So I never got to go back and see, you know, the commander. And never saw him after that. And then long after I got out, I always wondered what happened to him. You know, I'm like, man, I'm afraid that, you know, he's going to get killed one day.
Starting point is 00:23:57 And so lo and behold, I get a message on Facebook. So I was always operating under, you know, a fake name, fake everything. You know, nobody knew my real name. And this guy had found me on Facebook. And he's messaging me. And he's like, hey, man, he goes, me and my family are now in the United States. You know, he had five boys and a daughter, I think. And his wife, they all made it to the States, made the Virginia, got a job.
Starting point is 00:24:25 You know, people took care of them, you know. But they got him a special beast that got him out of there because they recognized that this guy is going to get, He's going to get killed, man. No doubt. He's going to get killed when Americans left. And you know, look, look what happened, man. I mean, let's look at what happened last August, right? Here we go.
Starting point is 00:24:38 How many people got killed, you know, no matter how many people are still getting killed, you know? I guarantee you he would have been one of those guys, man. In fact, some of my guys were killed. Some of my guys, they basically, I think it was a total of 13. It was the last stand for them, man. They literally fought to the last bullet and they got killed, you know, trying to keep the Taliban wave back. So I know it's, I know what it happened and it was going to happen to him. He'd beat the odds and got out of there. He lived in the United States. I actually just saw him about two years ago, which was really
Starting point is 00:25:11 cool. But, but, yeah, this, you know, I would go out with these guys, you know, on a regular basis by myself, you know, and I trusted them. And it is what it is, you know. We got the job done. And I kind of had a different perspective, you know. I remember the guy that shot down a Turban 3-3, okay. He was a young guy, in fact. And we got intel one day that he had arrived at one of the local villages. And we knew he was there. And I'm like, great, let's go get this guy.
Starting point is 00:25:46 But my unit, the Afghans had been, basically they've been stood down, right? Because of this issue I mentioned earlier with seals and there was a rift is what happened. And it wasn't the Afghans fault. It was what I found out later on. So anyways, but nonetheless, they were told to stand down for six months. We trained this, blah, blah, blah. Now we got this guy, you know, shot down serving 3-3, right down like two kilometers away. And I'm like, man, let me take the boys.
Starting point is 00:26:13 Let's go get this guy. This guy was on the top of HVT list. He was right up there. Everybody wanted this guy. And I remember I was told no because the guys aren't, they're not operational. And I go, the hell they're not operation. I'm running these guys. I'm telling you they're operational.
Starting point is 00:26:30 This is easy. Roll on a row, we get the guy we come back. Right. And they just, they just said no, kept saying no. And I'm like, look, you hired me as a contractor. All right, I got all these skills. I said, then I'll go. You pay me a lot of money.
Starting point is 00:26:43 Let me just go. If I don't come back, I don't come back, you know. But it was me, man. You know, I was mission oriented. These guys were risk averse. And it got that way, you know, as you know, later on in the war, you know, everybody became risk ofverse. Nobody was interested to win in the war.
Starting point is 00:27:01 It just became, you know, it became. Check the block. Check the block, right? So I remember at some of the camps I'm at, we've got literally, we've got these case officers, these logistics officers, you know, from Paris Embassy, from Europe. And we call them combat tourists, as you know, right? They're there, check the block. You know, I was in combat when they never left the damn wire.
Starting point is 00:27:26 And they didn't even have a damn firearm on them, you know. it just turned into a total bullshit. That war should have been over a long time ago, but it just turned into a self-looking ice cream for a lot of people, you know. And sadly, it is what it is. But that's why I left in 2011. I just had enough. And I thought, Jesus Christ, you know, I'm going to get killed for what?
Starting point is 00:27:45 For nothing. And I was right. I was right. Look what happened, man. Look what happened. All these men are dead. Women are dead for nothing. Nothing happened.
Starting point is 00:27:55 You know, nothing. We kill UBL a long time. ago. Why we were still there then? You know, so bullshit. Dale, you said, you left in 2011 from as far as contracting for our government. You kind of thought you were going to, I mean, you did go into television a little bit, started making some inroads on Hollywood. You thought kind of like your soldiering days were behind you from some of the things you've said. But then in the sequence of events, I mean, what was it the Hong Kong gig that came first? So, yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:31 So what happened was I literally got discovered by Discovery Channel, right? It's kind of weird. And so they, you know, they said, you know, we'd like for your tryout. There was a TV show called One Man Army. And I thought, what could that be kind of cool, do that, be kind of like closing the chapter to my military, paramilitary career, you know. and I thought it'd be kind of a cool way to go out, do a little TV show. And so I did, and I got selected. And so I did, I guess I did pretty well on that show.
Starting point is 00:29:01 And then I got a call about six months later from NBC, said, hey, we liked what we saw on Discovery. Would you be interested in trying out for this TV show, which was Stars and Stripes? As I understand it, there were about 10,000 applicants that tried out for that show. I was one of eight, along with Chris Kyle. and a couple of other guys are on the show to actually get selected. It was a pretty long process.
Starting point is 00:29:24 It was a lot of interviews. I'd actually fly out to Universal Studios and do an on-site interview in front of the cameras, you know. Again, I did pretty well. And so I got selected, and there I was. Now I'm doing the Hollywood thing. And then that turned into other people started noticing me. Wanted to them meet with me. In fact, I went out with, so I became really good friends with Terry Cruz.
Starting point is 00:29:50 to this day. And Eva Torres, the WWE wrestler, she invited me to come out to an event. So I went out there while I was out there, I got approached by some people that knew of me. Actually, one of them was a former student of mine and said, we'd like to talk to you. And so, okay, we do. And it's a production company. They're pretty right wing out of Dallas. And I said, we need a poster boy. We want to make a conservative production company. We want to invite veterans to come out and participate in Hollywood events things like that we want to be more we want to do more right leading stuff than left leading stuff and we need I you the poster boy so I was all in and started networking going to a lot of
Starting point is 00:30:36 producers you know I just started getting around in Hollywood is what was happening and they were trying to pitch some TV shows for me I ended up on a few shows you know so this whole thing was starting to get some grow some legs and And a couple years out into it, there's some other weird stuff that happened. I'm not, yeah, I probably shouldn't share it today, but there's some other really weird stuff started happening, right? A little bit that I know that not only am I a poster boy, but I'm actually a prop for a bigger, for government agency. Let's put that way. So there's a very huge Chinese and Russian presence in Hollywood.
Starting point is 00:31:13 They own everything. So I'll let you put it all together. Next thing I know, I'm like, why are you guys giving me all this cash? and I'm not signing for anything, you know, and on a regular basis. And what am I doing here again? You know, just do your thing, you know, be the Hollywood guy, you know, networking. Okay, and I didn't ask you any questions. But we got really weird, really weird after a while.
Starting point is 00:31:37 And then I realized, holy shit, man, I'm in another spy versus spy fucking movie and don't even know it yet. And so anyways, after a couple of years, I was asked to move to Hollywood to live out there. I was told I could be the next Danny Treo. I could be on all kinds of TV shows. And I had to do a little thinking, man. I was like, man, is this who I really am? Is this me?
Starting point is 00:32:02 You know, because I don't like these people, man, for the most part. You know, they're different culture, different mindset. You know, I'm used to actually be an action guy and not pretending to be an action guy, you know? And so, so that kind of ended up. up moving to Hong Kong. And I was working over there, running a security detail for a multibillionaire investment banker, which is okay. It's kind of cool.
Starting point is 00:32:28 I was living downtown, Wanchai, Hong Kong. Dale, can I interrupt for one second for a sponsor a quick live read here? And we'll jump right back into your story. I'm sorry. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it. But you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do.
Starting point is 00:32:50 this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the Teamhouse. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the Team House ad-free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, Mick Mulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free. And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it. the Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business, survive, especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys.
Starting point is 00:33:37 There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page. And there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers and we also have patches and I should mention if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month we will mail you this patch as well so we really appreciate that but they're also for sale on the merch shop and additionally they got t-shirts up there water bottles a tote bag coffee mugs all that good stuff so please go and check them out and support the show we really appreciate it guys. Thank you. All right. So Dale, back to you. You were working for an investment banker in Hong Kong.
Starting point is 00:34:22 That was the deal. Yeah. So I was protecting it. I was running a security detail. I was one of the guys on the security detail. So, you know, I ended up falling into that. A couple things happened that plumped. Besides the Hollywood thing, not, you know, I wasn't interested in. Start losing interest in it. The other thing that happened was I had sold another one of my company. So I've owned several companies I've sold them to G4S Wack and HUD. I sold this other company in 2011 to another company. I was running this company out of my office at home for about two years, making rid off of $23,000 a month just sitting in my office. And anyways, that went south. It didn't go south because I was sitting in my office. It went south because the investors were doing their
Starting point is 00:35:07 job. But nonetheless, I decided to pull pitch and get out of there. Ended up in Hong Kong. And then that's actually where I met my wife. She's Indonesian and she went back to Indonesia. I went back to the States and then eventually I went to Indonesia, you know, chasing drawers. That's what we do, right? And so I went over and meet her and started looking around and started realizing there's business opportunity. So I'm actually talking to you right now from Bali. That's why my office is in Bali, Indonesia.
Starting point is 00:35:37 But we decided, you know, hey, there's some business opportunities here relative to security. community, canines, blah, blah, blah. And my wife has started our business here. And we've been in Bali. I've lived in Indonesia now almost seven years, I think. And I've been in Bali over four and a half years. And we're running explosive detector dogs, patrol attack dogs, narcotic detector dogs for like all the Marriottes properties and the local venues here.
Starting point is 00:36:03 So it's pretty cool gig. You know, I get to play with my dogs and make money off of them too, you know. And, you know, we did really. really well here right up until COVID, you know, took our legs out from under us like everybody else. Wasn't really COVID. It was all the freaking crooks that capitalized on it. But nonetheless, we're back and we're back in business and just signed another contract, signed two contracts. So, you know, we're back in business here. So that's why that's how I ended up in Bali. I live here. I have a home in Florida as well. I also actually have another home in the Philippines.
Starting point is 00:36:42 So I kind of like live out of a suitcase. So with all that said, you would think that, okay, after the Hong Kong field, that was kind of a cool gig. Kind of. Everybody thinks that being a bodyguard is like really, you know, really cool. I got to tell you, man, it sucks. All right. On one hand, you know, living in Hong Kong, that was the cool part, living in Hong Kong, okay? One of my favorite cities until the Chinese took back over.
Starting point is 00:37:08 But it's a really cool place. but be it the work of a body card is it sucks and I keep saying that but it actually sucks it's a good job for it's a good job for young guys um you know but you know for guys like me it's like insulting in a lot of ways you know I so the pay was okay actually the pay has been really well I got paid very well um and I'll share the story with you about LA here in a minute but going back to the Hong Kong deal so here I'm invest um you know, providing security for this really wealthy Chinese guy in his mid-50s, late 50s, married to a 32-year-old Mexican model, big old boobs on her, you know, good looking. Beautiful on the inside, but the ugliest person you'll ever meet on the inside.
Starting point is 00:37:57 Oh, my God, man. She was horrible, man. And, you know, we all know what that was about. But anyways, it was a difficult job in that, you know, dealing with the client. They're just rich people suck. Okay? That's the number of people suck. And, you know, there's a reason they're rich,
Starting point is 00:38:16 and it's because they're really good at walking over a lot of other people, man, to get there. And that's a fact. I've got a lot of rich business partners, rich friends, rich clients. I got one guy. He's a billionaire. Ours me $450,000. Yeah, he's a billionaire. And he screwed me out of $450,000, man.
Starting point is 00:38:32 So I left a bad taste in my mouth with these people. And the lesson learned out of that is be your own boss, be your own success story. Don't count on none of these other people, man, because everybody will take from you. So I said earlier before the interview, you know, how mean and vile and nasty people really are. I got another story on that one, too. So anyways, I did this for a while. You know, like I said, it's kind of a thankless job. You get paid, but you're treated like shit, you know.
Starting point is 00:39:01 Here I am a guy with a Ph.D., you know. And I got another friend of mine, ready for you. this he's a seal commander lawyer for Blackwater and he's a bodyguard with me and we got this 32 year old client right you know with one fucking live brain shell talking down to us like we're little freaking kids like what the hell you know so that's what I mean by that but uh so I ended up doing all that and then other things started happening um I had an opportunity to go to Yemen um we've you know we've kind of talked about that in another episode but basically while I was here um So the same company I was working for in Hong Kong,
Starting point is 00:39:40 they're friends of mine. I worked for them in South Africa, Mexico. You know, I did a lot of stuff for them contracting as a consultant, security consultant, bodyguard, et cetera. So here's the story. So I'll go right in this one. This was kind of cool. So one night I'm in South Africa sitting around the pool with a guy,
Starting point is 00:40:02 the owner, his name will call him AG. And AG is a pretty freaking hard. core, no shit kind of guy, man. He either likes you or he don't. If he don't like you, he'll let you know about it too. And so luckily, I was, you know, I was a good friend with the guy and got a little just fine with him. So we're in South Africa sitting around the pool one night. And he's like, Dale, he goes, he goes, how come you do all these other things?
Starting point is 00:40:30 You know, why don't you just focus on security? And, you know, you could be really good at that and make a lot of money, you know. Why do you do this and do that? Because at the time, I was, like, teaching as a professor for Henley Putnam University. I'm a journeyman. I just travel around and do a weird job, right? Like going to Singapore, trading dogs. And I told him, I said, well, you know, I said, you know, I said, I got a lot of ex-wives out there need to get paid, you know.
Starting point is 00:40:54 Fucking parasites, man, you know. I've got to pay them off all the time, you know. I got a lot of kids and shit, you know. And so I say, I go where the work is. I make my money. I said, I'm pretty happy because I get to travel. I get to do different things. I wear a different hat every day.
Starting point is 00:41:07 And so it's not so bad. And he looks at me, he goes, man, he goes, what if I gave you $50,000 cash? He goes, would that help you? And I thought about it. Yeah, of course it would help me, but I'm not taking it. And he wanted to give me $50,000 cash because he thought it would relieve some pressure, right? And so that I could focus on just, you know, security, for example. And I said, no, I said, you know what?
Starting point is 00:41:31 I can't accept your money. I said, I don't take money. I don't earn. And so we kind of got an argument over the swimming pool, around the swimming pool. And he's like, well, he goes, tell me, Dale. He goes, you've done so much in your life. What's next? What are you going to do next?
Starting point is 00:41:44 And I looked at him. I go, I'm going to be like you. He looked at me like, I go, what? And I go, yeah, I want to be like you. I want to be some rich guy sitting around a fucking pool asking people what are they going to do with their lives. You know, giving them $50,000. So, you know, so we ended up part in ways that night, went to our rooms. And the next morning, his partner calls me to the office.
Starting point is 00:42:04 And he goes, hey, AG left this morning, went back home. But, you know, he just put $50,000 in your bank account. And I was like, what the hell, man? And so he goes, you can't give it back. We're not taking it back. We don't want it back. He goes, listen, he goes, other people have helped us. Other veterans have come up and helped us when we needed it.
Starting point is 00:42:24 And he goes, we want to do the same thing, you know. And I said, well, I appreciate all that. But I said, I don't work for free. So I said, count this as paying. pages forward. So next time you have a project, I said, you call me, I'll drop what I'm doing, I'll come here, wherever, and go to work for you, right? You get your money back. So that wasn't even enough, man. Then he put me on a $7,000 a month retainer for the next six months. Like, damn. So I'm making, I'm doing all right. And, and so then I leave and I end up going back
Starting point is 00:42:56 to Indonesia, start my security business here. My wife and I are not married yet, but we start this enterprise. And then one day I fly it back to the US and I get a text message from AG. He goes, hey man, I need to talk to you about some security related stuff. This was over a year later, a year and a half later. And I thought, man, you know, I got my own security business, this conflict of interest. I really wasn't interested at this point. I was excited about start my own company here. So I get to the state, he texts me again, goes, I really, really need to talk to you, but I can't talk to you over the phone. And I'm like, I don't know, you know, AG, you know, I'm him and a ha. He goes, okay, listen. You go, I'm going to buy your
Starting point is 00:43:32 plane ticket to San Diego. He goes, when you get here, I'm going to pay you $6,000 for three hours of your time. I got to, you got to listen to me. Oh, shit, okay. It must be important. So, I fly out there. He's leaning up against this badass freaking portion at the airport. I show up, he hands me an envelope
Starting point is 00:43:48 with $6,000 cash. He says, get in, bitch. We take off, right? And we end up in his neighborhood, which was pretty amazing. I mean, he literally lived next door to Bill Gates and a whole bunch of other people. Holy shit. This guy's rolling in dough and he was um so that evening we had a you know we sat down we had dinner and
Starting point is 00:44:09 he and his partner told me what the plan was right and so basically it was they had a contract with the emerates and uh basically to take out their HPTs right they need a special force capability they didn't have it um AG promised them that we could deliver this and so you know okay yeah Roger that sounds like a good idea pretty cool but you know I'm going back to Indonesia in three days and uh I really didn't want to go and so he already threw $40,000 cash on the table in front of me he goes that's yours right and I'm like look dude I go I said you do the first one I said I'll come in for the fall on a evolution I just got to go home you know see my my girl and kind of you know I'm not
Starting point is 00:44:55 wasn't ready for this shit you know and he goes no if I don't if I can't have you for the first one I don't need you for the other ones and so I'm like damn okay I said all right okay okay I'm in right so I fly home I said I got to go to Indonesia first though so I literally the next morning I fly to Indonesia I see my wife my girl I lie to her I said look I'm going to go to the Middle East I'm doing some consulting you know security consulting work you know make a little bit of money be right back no danger problem be right back oh okay so they tell me don't bring any equipment. You don't need it. It's already provided for you, right? Oh, okay. So I fly
Starting point is 00:45:35 from Jakarta all the way to New York, LaGuardia. I check into a hotel, as I'm supposed to. I'm waiting around downstairs in the lounge area, restaurant area, having a beer, and I noticed there's a bunch of French dudes walking around. They all look pretty fit, you know, but they're French, and so I get a little suspicious. And then I had to be up in a hotel room around 10.30 that night. We all had to meet there. Okay, we all were given instruction at this time to meet this room. So I show up in there and there's all these French dudes are standing there. There's 11 of us total.
Starting point is 00:46:10 You know, A.G. His partner, a seal, me and then the other, the French, their French foreign legionnaires is what they are. And so we're all standing or looking at you. They're like, who's who, you know, like the movie Ronan. And then AG's like, all right, guys, here's the mission. Here's the plan. He goes, this is what we're going to go do. He goes, if you're not interested.
Starting point is 00:46:29 He goes, you can keep the $20,000 I gave you and just leave right now and no questions to ask. Go back home. Like, fuck, man. So everybody got 20 grand except for me. I had 40 grand. I had to tell nobody. Well, there was a reason I got 40 grand. And I was about to find that out in a second.
Starting point is 00:46:45 So nobody quit. He goes, okay, good. He was just welcome aboard. He goes, so, and then he points at me. And he tells everybody in the room. He goes, that guy's in charge of everything. He's the boss. Whatever he says goes.
Starting point is 00:46:55 You do what he tells you do. Everything. I like, what? me. So, you know, I don't even know what the hell's going on here right now. And I'm in charge, right, all of everything and literally everything. And, uh, all right. So the next day, um, we have to meet downstairs, uh, in the evening. We get on a bus, um, a bunch of bands. And we go to Teterboro, uh, at the private airport, uh, airport up there. And, uh, it tells us to make sure we're wearing all our tactical gear of uniforms. That's kind of weird. It's a business fucking
Starting point is 00:47:27 airport, everybody's wearing suits and we show up wearing camouflage and beards and shit, right? But he had a reason for it. Okay, he had a reason for it. And the reason was he knew people were watching us. People very high up were watching us. Okay. And so he wasn't, he didn't want to hide anything. He didn't want to give the illusion that we're not up to something. He wanted to make it really clear that yeah, we're doing this and I'm not going to hide it. So we show up the airport that night a G5 shows up. We loaded with food and water, our gear, no weapons. And we take off and we fly.
Starting point is 00:48:04 I think we did our first fuel stop in Hungary. And then we continued on. And so the pilots and the flight attendants, they had no idea where we're going, right? They got their initial grid coordinates. And then in flight from Hungary, we gave him a change, changed the flight plan on,
Starting point is 00:48:21 said, okay, this is your coordinates. This is where you put an airplane down, which was in the desert on a dirt air strip, completely remote, not even on a map. Like, right here's an air strip on this great corner. Just put your airplane there. And I'm like, what? It said, just do it.
Starting point is 00:48:34 Yes, sir, be back. They didn't even question it, man. So they're like, whatever you guys want, man, you know, we're doing it. So we end up landing in the middle of an airfield. There was, if you want to call it, it's just a strip, just a dirt strip. There was nothing there, nothing, except one C-130 sitting there with the ramp down engines running. That was the only thing that was sitting there. So we land at G5.
Starting point is 00:48:56 We unload our shit. We walk over to the ramp. There's a colonel waiting for us as an intel officer. And the Emirati military? Yeah, Emirati, right? So he's checking the block as we're getting on. You know, we're loading all our shit in the back. And then we take off.
Starting point is 00:49:14 And we fly about another four hours to Djibouti. We land, get off, and there's a CH-47 and 286 helicopters sitting there. engines running waiting for us. So we transload in those things, take off fly about another hour. We end up in aid in the game at one of their fobs out there. And so we know at this point it's like two o'clock
Starting point is 00:49:35 at the morning, 2 a.m. And I asked the intel officer, I go, hey where's all our gear, all the weapons, all the shit that's supposed to be waiting for us. Because it's on the way. And so they had set up a couple of GP mediums in a contumment area within the fob.
Starting point is 00:49:51 Nobody knew we was there. They intentionally try to make sure we were hidden, you know. And so he said, he'll be here shortly, right? So this shows up all these pickup trucks full of garbage, literally fucking garbage, you know, like pieces and parts of weapon systems. Just shit, man. I mean, like, what the hell? So they're unloading all this crap, you know.
Starting point is 00:50:11 And we got DSHK with no, no tripods. We've got, you know, we've got no magazines for the AK-47s. We got no links for the PKMs, you know. And oh, by the way, we're supposed to. supposed to be getting all U.S. milk equipment, brand new. And they're giving us this 30-year-old Chikom rusty bullshit, right? And I'm inventorying it and I'm looking at it. And I realized, ain't nothing we can do with this.
Starting point is 00:50:37 Nothing functional. Nothing's operational. So I walked up to him, the colonel, I go, hey, sir, I said, this ain't going to work. I said, we're missing everything, right? We're missing all pieces and parts. He hated the fact that we were coming in to fight his war. He hated the fact that they didn't have the capability, right? He despised us.
Starting point is 00:50:57 And I said, sir, I said, well, this is not, you know, this is not going to get it. And he looks at me with his hands on his hips. He goes, so what you're telling me is you can't do the mission. I'm like, no. I didn't say I couldn't do the mission. I kill the guys with a damn spoon, but I can do the mission. I would really like to have some weapons, though, you know, where I can shoot from a distance, you know.
Starting point is 00:51:17 And so I gave him a little, you know, piece of my mind. I confronted him. And he's like, okay, okay. I said, by the way, where's all my American weapons that that we're supposed to get? Right. I know what he did.
Starting point is 00:51:27 He took that money and put in his freaking pocket. Right, right. Yeah, that's what he did, right? Little son of bitch. And he went down to the local bazaar and bought us all this crap, right? And so, anyways,
Starting point is 00:51:39 kind of gave him the stink guy. He got the message. He came, and I gave him the shortage list. He came back with the pieces and parts we were missed. And basically we were just cobbling weapons together and, you know, improvising. everything. There were no uniforms. Um, nothing, man. So I'm, I'm literally got, you know, a pair of 5-11s on from desert boots. Um, I had on a, a tank top for the gym. I actually had weight
Starting point is 00:52:03 training gloves. Those are my tactical gloves, you know. I was, we're making it up as we go, man. We're literally like making our own freaking, you know, vests and stuff for ammo and stuff, you know, you're knitting and shit. You know, I was like, are you kidding me? So we literally improvised everything we had to go do these operations. Um, Because we got no tactical gear. They just didn't give it to us. And I think it was because he wanted us to fail what it was. Right.
Starting point is 00:52:29 But we weren't having that. So the next question was, okay, talk. Go ahead. How old were you at this point, Dale? So this was 2015, 2016, 2016. So you basically, what, six years ago, I'm 59. So I was about 53. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:52:48 Yes. It's nice to know, though, that a tiger doesn't change it stripes. I find that comforting about you. No, man, actually I was leaving in charge, man. I was a good shape as anybody there or better. You know, and there was a reason I was in charge because I learned that lesson later on too. It was like, okay, now I know why I'm here. But so anyways, we got the target list. It was long, over 40 people on the list spread across three countries. So we were going to be doing some globe trotting to go take these guys out.
Starting point is 00:53:20 but they were all HVTs. It was not a capture mission. It was a kill mission. That was it. These guys had to go. They're all bad guys. They're all terrorists. They're all associated or affiliated with al-Qaeda,
Starting point is 00:53:32 particularly al-Qaeda, Arabic Peninsula, ACAP, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, Houthis. There were a lot of bad guys there. Which three countries? I can't say the other two countries. They were on the African continent. So did, what? So because you're saying like AQ Arab Peninsula, did the UAE, which is a fairly, I mean, in terms of Arabic countries, it's like a fairly liberal country.
Starting point is 00:54:06 And I don't mean liberal politically. I just mean liberal in terms of like religion, whatnot. Do they have a different HVT set than say the United States does and that their concerns, even though these people are AQ or ISIS, but their concerns are different because these. these high value targets, the HVTs, are operating directly against like the Emirates in places like that? Yeah, so exactly. They got their own, their target list may be different from our target list, some of them, not all of them. And they had their own agenda. In fact, the reason we got hired by the MOD, because he's the guy that hired us, was actually a Palestinian.
Starting point is 00:54:46 And a very prominent guy, not even Emirati, but because of a friend of a friend of a friend, he got put into an MOD position. And so there's actually a very interesting story about this guy. His name is Mohamed Dahlin. You can look him up on the internet. Very interesting guy. Very cool guy, actually, but very interesting. And he was not what you would expect.
Starting point is 00:55:13 But so anyways, you know, target list was long. It's been over three countries. We needed to get this one. They wanted this one guy in particular right off the back. He's number target number one and we're like okay What's the deal with this guy and you know and they explained to us you know why he's a threat Okay, he's a he's a shady character He's he was actually from India. He was not Arabic. He was India, but he was Muslim and he was a pedophile
Starting point is 00:55:44 And he's almost sexual. Yeah, kind of weird shit going on too, but he was very well trained and trade craft and streetcraft So he never put his head down the same place twice He had his own security detail. He was being financed, as I understand it, by the Muslim Brotherhood and others. He was using al-Qaeda as an action arm. Just a lot of weird things going on, right? So suppose this guy won the Nobel Prize, blah, blah, blah, it's all bullshit, okay? Because one of the things I made sure of that I insisted on was any targets that we take out,
Starting point is 00:56:17 I got to be convinced this guy's a bad guy, and it's just not some little personal agenda, right? Right. This has got to be a legit target. So we did our due diligence, you know, and we investigated closely. It's like, okay, this guy's the real deal. So we greenlighted him. But it was interesting was as we're going through this target list, we're developing
Starting point is 00:56:39 the first target. It took us a couple weeks, which actually was pretty fast. Consider we had no human, human sources. We had nothing to work with. I mean, we're gleaning information off the internet. You know, we're bribing the information. Maraudis to give us some Intel. They were trying to what's the word I'm looking for. They were trying to remain hands off. They want to have plausible. Compartmentalized.
Starting point is 00:57:00 Right. Yeah, right. And so we're like, hey, dude, we're never going to get this done if you're not helping us, you know. So they ended up getting us some sources. Um, you know, we ended up paying them a bunch of money, you know, makes a bunch of promises and stuff like that. But, uh, in this process, we realized on the list was a guy who was the, uh, the mastermind behind the USS coal bombing. and he was running a madrasa in Aden. And he was running a pipeline for ISIS fighters. This guy was a shithead still. And he was there. And we're like, oh, this is number one. We're going after that guy first, you know. And he's right down the road.
Starting point is 00:57:38 And he's really got no security. His house is across the corner of caddy quarter to his madrasa where he's running this pipeline, you know, for ISIS fighters and stuff. And so we really wanted that guy. Okay. He's the USS coal bomb. you know, mastermind. We were told no, said no.
Starting point is 00:57:55 No, you work for us. This is number one right here. This guy here, and you guys didn't have him later on. Like, fuck, man. We really wanted this guy. He would have been an easy target too, but we didn't get the shot at him that we wanted.
Starting point is 00:58:07 So, so long story short, my job was besides, you know, planning, execution, I realized really quickly that the guys that were with me didn't know what the hell they were doing. So they had no idea about explosives.
Starting point is 00:58:24 They didn't know how to use explosives. In fact, I had to show, actually I had to show one of the guys was a seal, literally how to put an AK-47 in action. He had no idea how to load it and charge it. Like, fuck, dude, you know? And so this was a seal, too. But he was a good guy. I'm not going to take nothing from him.
Starting point is 00:58:42 He just didn't know what he was doing. But he turned out to be actually one of the better guys out of the bunch because his head was in the right place. The other seal was a total turd though, complete turd. So now I'm training these guys on how to basically set headspace and timing on a 50 caliber machine gun, run PKK machine guns, you know, all the weapon systems we have. And then the mission came down. I was like, we might have to hit this guy on the way to the airport. There's only one flight a day leaving Aden. And we had intel that this guy might try to get on that airplane on one of these particular days.
Starting point is 00:59:17 And so what we were going to do is ambush him at the airport. Now, what was interesting is the Emirati military occupied the airport. But all the access roads, all the gates going into the airport were manned by al-Qaeda. Right. So they controlled the gates. And so we would literally have to drive to the gates, wave at Mr. Al-Qaeda, you know, and then go inside into the compound. But they had one flight a day, and we thought this guy's going to get on one of these flights. So we just started planning, okay, we got to hit them.
Starting point is 00:59:45 We picked out the checkpoint location where we were going to smack them. And they thought, well, what if he doesn't come this way? What if he goes that away? And then we thought, okay, let's ambush him in the vehicle. He's running a small motorcade, didn't skin trucks. Then the question was, can we can ride a motorcycle? I'd be damn, I'm the only guy to ride a motorcycle. I said, are you kidding me?
Starting point is 01:00:06 I'm the only guy who can ride a goddamn motorcycle. So now I'm, you know, I'm doing it all, man. I'm like, why are you guys even here? I said, I might as well just do everything, you know. I got to ride the motorcycle. I got to build the IED. You know, I got AG on the back of the motorcycle. He's going to hang my IAD off the mirror of this truck while we're driving and then vaporized vehicle with the guy in it.
Starting point is 01:00:28 So we got all these contingency plans. And I'm starting to realize really quickly that I'm the only guy who knows what the hell is going on. I'm the only guy who's got a tactical experience to execute this thing, you know. And going back to Discovery Channel, I guess I am a one-man army. So anyways, so we had all these contingency points. man. And there's, you know, we were to do all kinds of stuff, man. It kept changing every day because the guy never slept in the same place twice. So we had to keep adjusting the mission profile, right? Okay, now we're doing motorcycles, we're in helicopters. Okay, we're not doing helicopters. Now we're walking, you know. And so, so finally we, we, we finally got some good intel one night and we had about an hour and a half to spin up because the guy was staying downtown in an office and he wasn't going to come out. We had eyes on. He was. watching the guy reporting back to us. We had a drone helicopter up, you know, video on the office.
Starting point is 01:01:25 We know he was in there. He went in there with his bodyguards and his assistant when he had come out. So we were staged, already ready to go. And that's when we went in. And it was actually five of us that went in out of the team. And out of the five of us, one of them was Arab. He's one of their majors in the military. And he was just the driver.
Starting point is 01:01:48 It's like, look, you just drive, you don't touch guns, don't play with the fucking radio, just drive. That's all you got to do, right? And so, and me and the AG, the two seals were in the back of this up-armored land cruiser. And the job was to literally pull up to the office. I was going to get out, put an IED on the building, and bring it down on top of this guy's head. And so that was the basic plan. And so we roll in. I think it was about 9.30 at night, very dark.
Starting point is 01:02:18 very dark. You had people on the streets drinking chai, you know, very narrow roads, very congested. And so we go rolling in at about three miles an hour. That was top speed. You know, I literally got as a car comes to a stop, I've got Al-Qaeda looking in the window trying to see who's inside the window and I'm putting a muzzle in his face getting ready to let the air out of them. And so finally we get in front of the office and like go. doors come open. The first guy shot is the driver. The only guy without a weapon. He gets shot in a fucking leg. Um, and then the rest of it was bail out. I grabbed my charge and I run across the street, run in front of the office door. And I tried to open the door first. I got my, I was going to
Starting point is 01:03:04 try to open the door, throw a couple of hand grenades in there and then just go in and shoot everybody. But they had locked the door from the inside because the body guards, usually they sat out on front, but at night they would roll inside. They would lock the doors up and they would sit right behind the the doors, these big steel doors. So I couldn't get the door open. So I knew they were in there. They locked it. And so I thought, okay, the only other choice I have now is the place this IED that I
Starting point is 01:03:29 built in front of the door. So the charge was, I filled an ammo can with C4, and I filled it up with armor plating from an MRAP. So I basically made it the mother of all Claymores. And, you know, added some extra honor for the P factor. So I had a little nuclear weapon is what I had. It was all directional. And so I placed the charge.
Starting point is 01:03:53 There's a raging gunfight going on right now. And I'm by myself. So for whatever reason, I don't know why, but AG ran up the fucking road like with his hair on fire. And he's shooting it out with people up the street. And he's actually supposed to be with me at the door pool, security pool because I got my hands full. And same thing with the other guy, the other seal.
Starting point is 01:04:13 He doesn't follow me to the door either. He stays at the vehicle. his excuse was his weapon kept malfunctioning but he had a spare right next to him he didn't grab that one so he didn't follow me over so I'm basically out there by myself and wind flapping you know and anyways a place to charge I could not run back to my ex-field vehicle because you know the engagement was just too close down I would have run right into an ambush and so I decided okay I'm going to run out the street to another vehicle waiting down the road and but the vehicle that we infilled in was an up-armored land cruiser, a $300,000 car.
Starting point is 01:04:52 And so I'd already placed an IED in the back of it, an incendiary device. I built it, put it back there. And what I was going to do is running back to my original vehicle. I was going to stop, pull the firing system, and we were going to destroy that land cruiser. I don't know why they wanted to destroy it, but they didn't want to bring it out the target. Our instructions were to leave it there and destroy it. So that's what they want. That's what they get.
Starting point is 01:05:16 That's what they're paying for. So anyway, I could not get to the charge. So the other seal, he knew that contingency plan was if I don't make it back, he was to run up and fire the system. And he did. And it's all on video. And the first charge goes off and just wrecks the building. Apparently vaporizes the body guards behind the doors.
Starting point is 01:05:38 And then he pulls the other system and then it goes off. And it literally blew that car up. up and literally burned it to the ground. I mean, there was nothing left of it. I was, I was actually in awe that it actually worked as well as it did because it was literally improvised explosive. I never built one like this before. I didn't know I just kind of made it up as I went. It was kind of cool. I used, uh, right for this, I used net. I used Ness cafe coffee grounds in a jar, uh, half a, half a liter, half a bottle of gasoline and a quarter block of C4. I cobble this freaking thing together, put it over the gas tank. And I'll be
Starting point is 01:06:14 Damn, the word, man. We can burn that thing to a crispy critter. But so we get out. We get out of the mission. And then, and so all of us were given rank. So the question is, okay, you know, for everybody out there's listening, oh, my God, being a mercenary is illegal. I've heard all the bullshit. All right, just shut up.
Starting point is 01:06:33 All right, let me just explain what happened here. All right. First of all, it is not illegal to work as a mercenary. Okay. You go to State Department website. You as an American citizen can work for foreign countries. Okay, a foreign government, as long as that government, their policies are in alignment with U.S. policy. Okay.
Starting point is 01:06:51 The Emirates are friends of Americans. Okay, we're fighting the same global war on terrorism. Boom. All right. There it is. Two, you can join their military, and guess what? They assigned us ranks. They gave us all rank.
Starting point is 01:07:05 Guess who the leading, the rank of his guy there was AG made him a full bird colonel. He's in charge of the entire Arab forward operating base. He's in charge of the Arab. And he's, and he's, he's Jewish. Yeah, guy's Jewish. He's a Jewish colonel in their military, giving them orders. So we get back to the compound and, you know, fucking, you know, plugging holes and stuff. And, and A.G. comes back a few minutes later.
Starting point is 01:07:31 He's got a thumb drive. He went to the drone pilot. He goes, I'm the colonel. Give me a copy of that drone village. And he got it. And the reason he got it is for insurance. So it can never be said that we're out there's a bunch of renegades on our own, you know, doing this kind of shit. You got proof right here, it came out of your helicopter.
Starting point is 01:07:47 You know, here's the footage, right? So it was a smart move, man. You know, like I said, it was insurance. So then what happens is basically, okay, we're not sure if we got the target or not because the next day on the news, the local news, his assistant was all wrapped up, you know, and he's on the news going, hi, nan, nannaboo, you didn't get us, you know, but he's all fucked up. And the other guys are vaporized.
Starting point is 01:08:13 And so we don't know what happened to the principal. And we were told he did get away and he went back to Saudi Arabia, which I kind of doubt that because the Saudis wanted him dead too. So why would you come back to Saudi Arabia, right? So he basically dropped off the map. We're not sure what happened. Maybe he went into hiding. You know, maybe I scared the shit out, you know, and he decided he wants some more part of it. I don't know.
Starting point is 01:08:37 But so we go back to, we end up in Abu Dhabi. We meet with the client and basically we're doing an AAR after action report. This is what happened. Blah, blah, blah. And he was happy. And so the contract, if I remember right, the contract was worth $880 million. Okay. The first mission was $800,000.
Starting point is 01:09:02 Okay, the first mission was a vetting mission. If we were successful, we would get the rest of the contract. And that's why it was important that I was on the first mission. Right. it had we had to go right i tell you right now had i not been there they would have fucked up the charges they didn't know how to build them it wouldn't have been effective at all they wouldn't have known how to use half the weapon system you know they would have to go to the MRIs goes hey can you show us how to you know work this gun you know that's what i'm paying you for so none of that
Starting point is 01:09:32 was going to work so that's why i realized okay there's my value right that's why they had to have me right so you know we got you know worded the rest of the contract track and then and then we had you know the follow one fall on missions after that so um anyways that happened and then uh finally ended up uh i ended up walking out of the desert me and one of the seals had enough because the one seal that's in charge i'm not even going to mention his name he's all fucked up and uh ag had to go do something i said no i ain't staying out here this this is bullshit there's a lot of leadership issues that uh there were you know there were very pronounced man that really wreck the whole project. Poor leadership, zero leadership. And I give an example one day,
Starting point is 01:10:19 you know, so I'm getting paid all this money as a special advisor. And I noticed that one of the seals, the bosses is laying in the back of the pickup truck sunbathing with no clothes on every day. And he's telling the guys to fetch his coffee and do this and do that, you know. And these are all grown men, right, with families, their soldiers, their veterans. And he's telling them to go fetch coffee and then I realized he's actually he's hiding cases of red bull in his hooch, fruit, all kinds of fresh stuff. He's had, he's
Starting point is 01:10:47 hoard it for himself, not even sharing it with the team. Right. I found out about that when I had to go in and to get something. I'm like, what the fuck. So I walked up to the truck one day while he's back there and I go, hey man, I said, you guys have paid me a lot of money to be your special advisor. So I'm going to go ahead and earn my money right now and give you some advice. And they're looking at me
Starting point is 01:11:06 and I'm going to ready for this? Lead by example. and they're like, and I go, yeah, lead by example. So you think this is leading by example? I said, this ain't leading shit. I said, all that red bull in your room, that's not leading by example. I said, these guys here, I said, they could give two shits about your bottom line. When we're out there in a firefighter in the street, I said, nobody cares about your bottom line, your corporation.
Starting point is 01:11:30 All they care about is getting back home. And they're going to remember who took care of them and who didn't. I said, and right now, you fetch making them fetch coffee while your son bathes and And they're working their ass off ain't holding the water. And you know what? He disagreed with me. He's all, I got to disagree. It is a business.
Starting point is 01:11:48 You're freaking moron. I said, you know what? When we get out there, I said, when it shit hits the fan, and they got to make a decision, either save me or save you, by by you, because they're not saving your ass. I'm the guy taking care of them. I'm the guy running interference from constantly, you know. And that's my job.
Starting point is 01:12:05 I said, but you're paying the paycheck, man. I said, you need to do your part, you know. So there was stuff like that that was going on out there that just, I said, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be a part of this anymore. And I actually left, ended up planes, trains, and automobiles through Dubai, Abu Dhabi. I think I went back to the U.S. and finally went back to Indonesia or Indonesia than the U.S. camera. I was all over the day going to place. But, you know, I just decided that I'm done with that part of it. Dale, how many of that list of 40 names, like how many HVTs down did you get during that contract?
Starting point is 01:12:39 Just a couple. What's kind of funny is we had one guy that was the ISIS bomb maker, a very prominent guy, and he was definitely going to get it, man. But we had it all lined up. I built this freaking mega, freaking IED for him special. And he was going out every day. And after we were watching with the drone, and the afternoon he would go out on the street and he had a couch on the street, right? And he would sit there and sell drugs, cack, right?
Starting point is 01:13:07 Guys would come by, and he was a drug dealer, too, on top of the drone. everything else. And then on the end of his compound, he had a garage called the Monster Garage, and he was building metal doors, but actually he was building IEDs in there. He had all kinds sealing tanks and stuff like that. And so my job was going to be to blow up this entire monster shop one night, and then we're going to go up to his compound and shoot him in his freaking face. Just then we're getting ready to do this, he went out to sell some drugs on a street, you know, a guy drives by, and he was with the Yemeni's resistance. And boom, but kills him right there, man.
Starting point is 01:13:43 He does a job for us. Like, shit, you know. But it's probably a good thing because it would have been really hard to get in and get back out of there. They had that place locked down pretty good between ISIS and al-Qaeda and the Houthis. He was pretty secure, and we were definitely going to be, you know, we were definitely going to be hanging out there trying to get to him. But we made down a list a little bit and not very far. I walked away. I don't know what they did after that.
Starting point is 01:14:08 Actually know that one of the guys, they ended up in Serbia, and one of the guys on the team got rolled up. Ended up in jail for almost two years on weapons charges. They were kind of doing the same thing against with doing Yemen. I didn't have any part of that walked away. But he got out of jail because somebody killed his attorney at the doorstep of the courtyard. So it lost everything. you know, the entire case against him. And he's actually pretty famous seal.
Starting point is 01:14:41 I don't know, I'm not going to say his name, but he's a pretty famous seal. But he fucked up. And he got rolled up and he spent a couple of years in serving jail because of that. So anyways, yeah, going back to, so, you know, round and round, everything starts happening. I ended up up from there in Los Angeles, running. So I was protecting a multi-millionaire as a scarlet in Hollywood. So what happened was out on the TV show SWAT, right? And I was invited to be on that show, so I'm out there on the set.
Starting point is 01:15:18 I get a call from my friend who's a pretty good guy, man. He's a country Western singer. He's like, hey, dude, he goes, he's got a problem. He goes, I got a friend. She's in big trouble. Some guy stole over a million dollars with the diamonds from her. They want to kill her because she wants to go to the police. that, that, that. She's very wealthy. She's 31 years old. Um, beautiful, never been
Starting point is 01:15:40 married. No kids. She's every man's dream, dude. I'm telling you right now. Right. So, and I don't even know this. I don't know all this about her yet. I just know she's in trouble. And I'm the only guy he'll recommend. And so apparently she already done the Google search and all this shit. He goes, call her and work out the price. So I call her up, but hey you, this is me. What's going on? What do you need? Okay, here's my price. And, my price was $2,000 a day plus pass through cost. I said, you want me to protect you? Two grand plus pay for all my expenses.
Starting point is 01:16:12 See that bad at I. Like, really? And so I almost kind of said that because I really didn't want to do the job. Right. I know bodyguard work sucks. Right. So I figured if I'm going to do it, it better be worth it. Right.
Starting point is 01:16:25 So I said, two grand. And then and then she's like, okay, no problem. Really? I said, well, I said, you know, I said, I'm on a Hollywood set. So I didn't bring any soon. and clothes is for this either, you know. I'm not really prepared for this. She goes, don't worry, you don't need any clothes.
Starting point is 01:16:40 Oh, okay. Little did I know. She actually met I didn't need any clothes. I just needed to show up butt naked. She was good with that, right? So apparently she's done all the Google search, watched all my movies 10 times over, you know. I didn't know any of this, right? I don't know.
Starting point is 01:16:54 Okay. All right. And then she asked me what my clothes size were, shoes size. I gave it to her. I ended up flying to L.A. And so I had somebody else with me. had a female with me that I had met young girl. And I go, hey, by the way, I got a friend with me.
Starting point is 01:17:10 You know, I said, you know, can I bring it with me? She's like, oh, yeah, of course, you know, bring it with you. I said, okay, cool. I can use it for like counter surveillance surveillance type of stuff, right? It can't make this shit up. So I show up and at the airport, she's got a limousine waiting for us. We go to her where she lived, very upscale. the apartments in this particular building she was living in the low end was $15,000 a month,
Starting point is 01:17:38 the high end was $70,000 a month. It was all the rich of famous people living there, right? So we show up, she's waiting for me, all giddy and everything. And then so, you know, we get settled in. I got my own apartment. She gives me an apartment for $15,000 a month, fully stocked with everything. Not only that, she bought all my clothes for me. I didn't know that. All my underarm. armor, everything's laid out for me, you know, slippers and hiking shoes and some fash and a t-shirt. I'm like, damn, man, you know. And, uh, and so I said, okay. So I told the gal I was with. I said, listen, I'm going to be really busy for a while. I said, so, you know, she was actually, she was from, not from the United States. And I said, look,
Starting point is 01:18:21 I said, since you're here, enjoy the vacation, go hang out in Hollywood, just see the site, you know, no mind me. I'm doing my thing. And, uh, so she was good. And, And so I end up, you know, telling the clients to listen, all right, I'm here to protect you. I'm going to go over some security stuff, protocols, dues and don't, patterns of life, blah, blah, blah. You know, we'll even do some defensive tactics, you know. And so it goes pretty good, right? And little do I know, she's like falling in love with me. I didn't know that.
Starting point is 01:18:53 And so it kind of started getting really weird. Like we would go out for dinner every night and she would spend $1,500. every night on dinner. She ordered everything on the menu times 10. She's like, whatever you want, times 10. You know, like, what? And then I was like, no, I'm going to go stand over here by the door and pull the security. She said, oh, no, you're not.
Starting point is 01:19:13 She's going to sit right here next to me. I said, yes, ma'am, you're paying the bills. All right? So it turned into that. And then it turned into, like, her sitting on my lap. You got really unprofessional after a while. And I'm trying to keep my professional distance. She's making it really, really, really, really hard.
Starting point is 01:19:31 You know? And so then I meet all her friends that live in this building. They're all billionaires. They're just, they're just hardcore liberals, right? So every day, she never worked. She owned a company. Now and then we drive to the company, you know, and she'd check on things, okay.
Starting point is 01:19:51 And then we go back to where she stayed. But everybody would hang out on the bottom floor. It had the swimming pool, the bar, and it's the lounge area. And that's where we hung out every day, all day long for months. And she would order tons of food and pizza and this and that and all those guests, the residents would come down and we'd all be talking. No, they would be talking. I couldn't stand these assholes, right?
Starting point is 01:20:16 You know, it was always a Trump bashing session, right? It was always a Trump bashing session. I'm like, get the hell out of here. And then they're like, you mean you were an army? You were a veteran? Yeah, that's what they look like? Wow. You know, it's like I'm like a puppy.
Starting point is 01:20:28 Like, what? That's what veterans look at? Because I never met one before. Right? And then they want to ask me some questions about the military. And I'd start to answer them. And then it just cut me off. And then they start talking about, there's only four things they could talk about. Wine, hotels, food, and other women's dress.
Starting point is 01:20:49 How they dress. That was it. That was the four topics. That's all these people can talk about because that's all they know. Well, Dale, if any of your attractive, billionaire female, friends are interested in a veteran male consubon. You feel free to pass them my digits. I mean,
Starting point is 01:21:04 I'm here and I'm ready to work. I'm ready to work. And he lives in Brooklyn and he went to Columbia, so he can like, he can like fit into that, that sort of liberal I got a foot in both worlds, man. I can do it. Yeah, well, I tell you what, man.
Starting point is 01:21:20 It was really frustrating because they couldn't talk about anything else because they didn't know anything else. literally like the first veteran they ever met. I might as well been a puppy, you know. Like, wow, it was a cute little. That's what they look like, you know?
Starting point is 01:21:35 And I was like, what the fuck, man? So, and I was like, what the fuck, man? So, you know, and I would tell my client, you know, like, look, you know, she would ask me a question in front of everybody. And I said, look, I don't talk politics. I'm not talking religion. Oh, no, no, it's okay. It's okay.
Starting point is 01:21:50 And I remember they asked me this question one time about homosexuals with the military. And I had an experience back in 82 when I first went in in 1982. with a gay guy that it was literally, everybody got drunk one night. He went into his one dude's room and gave him a blow job while he was sleeping. The guy wakes up, loses his shit, you know. And we ended up with a big battalion, you know, hand-to-hand combat session. Everybody was fighting because we were the recon guys and they were, you know, now we're the gay recon guys.
Starting point is 01:22:17 You know, it just got really crazy, right? And so I'm starting to explain to her what the problem was, you know, with, you know, with homosexuals, especially in a rank of infantry guys, with something like this happens. And I told her how we were literally combat effective, ineffective for over a month. And people were getting Article 15, all because of one guy.
Starting point is 01:22:38 He literally pulls this guy's underwear down while he's sleeping, he's drunk, and he wakes up, and he's getting a blowjob from this guy. And so they were like, oh, everybody said to go, oh, my God, that's so uncomfortable. I got to go. I go, because you don't want to hear the damp tooth, you know. It was always that kind of stuff, you know.
Starting point is 01:22:56 And these people just started making me sick. And then I kept asking my client, I go, listen, how much long do you need me for? Because, you know, we was tracking down the jewelry. There was some gangs out of Chicago that were involved in this. It's going to be, when I write the story, it's pretty interesting who characters were. Some of them were very famous. Like, damn. One of them was a billionaire, a British guy from London, who's a billionaire, he sat on a bunch of boards.
Starting point is 01:23:22 He was actually banging this hooker, this black chick, a high-end call group. girl. She ended up working her way into this building, passing the background checks, and ended up stealing all my client's jewelry based on a lie, which was tied to this billionaire. Basically, I go from being a bodyguard to the fixer now, to the investigator. You know, so I'm now sitting, you know, I'm calling this guy up, go, hey, I need you to meet me at Starbucks tomorrow more at 0.7, you know, across town, L.A. He meets me, and I'm waiting for the guy, and I'm playing, you know, like Jeff with him. And I'm like, hey, listen, my client's really, really angry.
Starting point is 01:24:00 We know that, you know, your girlfriend, no, no, I'm going to go. Yeah, you were banging her. So it doesn't matter. She's your girlfriend. She used your name, stole all his jewelry. And my client's getting mad because she can't get it back. The police won't help her. So she's going to go to L.A. time and tell the story, which is going to include your name, right?
Starting point is 01:24:16 And you're sitting on this big ass board, right? Because I already know this from talking to some other very wealthy people. I said, this ain't going to go well for you, you know? And he was really uncomfortable. I said, now if I was you, what I would do is I would probably just give her the money and sign an disclosure agreement and be done with this bullshit because you're married. You had two kids in the England. And I had I'm really squirming his seat, you know.
Starting point is 01:24:39 And so he agreed. He's like, no, you know what? You're right. You're right. You're right. Let me talk to my lawyer. I go, and that's the smart thing to do, sir. So he leaves.
Starting point is 01:24:46 By the time I get back to my client's apartment, he already talked to his lawyer who talked to her lawyer. Basically, they painted this picture that I was a thug. You take your thunds over, bap, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I go, good, that's exactly what I want to think. I'm a stud, right? So it actually worked, right? And so they wanted to settle for $250,000. And I knew she was not going to go for that.
Starting point is 01:25:08 And she's like, no, not no, but hell no. I said, you probably ought to take the $250 because you're not going to get the million. I said, this guy is going to jump on the next thing, smoke, and he's going to be gone. You're not going to get him. They're a billionaire. He didn't even steal it. But I said, you lost all your ability to leverage all this shit, you know? And she was stubborn, right?
Starting point is 01:25:27 So she was worth millions and millions and millions of dollars. But this jewelry she had on, she was wearing it for a jewelry, basically advertising. Right. So anytime the jewelry leaves the jewelry store, it's no longer insured off the property. So it was stolen off the property. So guess who's liable? Right. She's got a shit a million dollars for diamonds.
Starting point is 01:25:48 Right. And so that was the problem. She didn't want to, you know, and then there's all this other stuff was involved with a trust fund and her family and how that's going to bode and this and that, you know. And so, um, so finally, you know, we get, we'll get through most of all of this, right. I realized nothing's going to happen. There was more, it had to do with Floyd Mayweather, had to do with Las Vegas fights and all kinds of crazy stuff happened there.
Starting point is 01:26:11 This girl shows up in Las Vegas wearing all the diamonds on top of that. I've got the FBI engaged, the CIA. I got the, I got everybody, the marshals from California to Chicago to Los Angeles. Vegas engaged to run this chick down, man. And she was really cagey, man, really good. And beating the system, man. All the traps that I laid for. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:26:35 Circumbenated him, got away from it all. But finally, I just told the client, I said, listen, man, how much long you need me for, you know? And she said, I need you forever. I go, ha, ha, ha, ha, no, really, how long you need me? She said, no, I need you forever. And I realized, ah, shit. You know, this is happening, man. And they got really nuts to Zorro, you know.
Starting point is 01:26:51 Hey, I need you up in my room at 2 o'clock tomorrow. I need to talk about something. Yes, ma'am, on the way. Where you at? I'm right here in the bed, no clothes on. I need to see it right here. I got to talk about something. I'm like, oh, God, no.
Starting point is 01:27:01 This is not, you know, I'm thinking I'm not going to get paid if I keep doing this, you know. Finally, finally one day I just said, listen, I got to go. I said, I got to move on. I said, she wanted to get married. She fell in love with me. I'll be honest with you, any other guy, you know, would have been a millionaire overnight. And she was really attractive, beautiful, man. Very smart, very personal.
Starting point is 01:27:22 She had everything going. for everything, man. And I guess with maturity and with age, you know, you get a little bit smarter. And I start thinking with his head and not the other head. And I realized that, you know, I got other things I want to do with my life. And I don't want to mooch off anybody else. I don't want her money. I don't want to be around her friends.
Starting point is 01:27:42 I told her, I said, three months will kill each other. I said, that's just how it is. I said, it's all cool now. But three months, I said, won't stand me. I won't stand you because you're friends. I said, so I'm going to leave tomorrow morning. And so in the morning I show up to her apartment and say goodbye. She got the limo waiting for me.
Starting point is 01:27:59 And she begs me one more time. She goes, please go with me to, she wanted me to go to, God damn it. It's a resort out in the desert. She goes, go with me, stay with me for the day and for the night. Tomorrow I'll put you on a private jet and fly home and, you know, end the story. And I'm like, for what? I said, we're going to go there and we're going to do it like rabbits. And I said, tomorrow and morning, I'm still getting on the airplane.
Starting point is 01:28:23 Nothing's going to change, you know. And I did. I walked away right there and I never looked back. And I have no regrets, you know, whatsoever. But I got to tell you, any other guy would have jumped all over it. And maybe 10 years ago or 15 years ago, I'd have jumped all over it too, different circumstances. But, you know, sometimes you realize what's more important in life and it's not always money.
Starting point is 01:28:49 It's not other people's money. It's not even a beautiful woman. sometimes, you know, your own sovereignty, man, your own, you know, you that is all that matters. Your happiness, you know, and how you achieve that is your, you know, to you. Dale, I think what you're telling us is you will never take the easy way regardless of, like, you know. I could have and I didn't. I could have and I didn't, man. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 01:29:12 And she, you know what she gave me? So she's like, look, she goes, I need you here for another 30 days. Here's my BMW 750 L.I. She gives me a brand new BMW 750 L. L.I. And she turns around and buys a black one. She gives me the white one. She knows I like them, you know? Yeah. It's this yours. And I'm like, oh my God, man. So she just gives me this brand new BMW 750 LI. She's throwing it all at me, you know, $1,500 dinner every night, you know, $15,000, you know, apartment, you know, it was amazing. I'll say this. She was a good girl.
Starting point is 01:29:47 You know, she just got caught up in something. You know, she's lived her whole. whole life, a life of, you know, the rich and famous. Right. Right. So she hasn't been exposed to street thugs. You know, she hasn't been exposed to this kind of crime. And suddenly she became victimized by it. And then all of a sudden, she meets the guy like me, you know, that comes along that, you know, I got, on this. And she's used to, you know, the skinny guy jeans, you know, skinny gene guy, you know, and these, you know, beta males. And all of a sudden I come along. Right. And I'm actually not even interested other than doing my job and that probably drove even crazier you know and so right so that's how this whole thing started just spinning out of control so so the bodyguard if I had that was probably only
Starting point is 01:30:34 bodyguard work actually enjoyed had a lot of fringe benefits obviously um and it wasn't really like it was real and it was serious I mean I was I was packing um I brought armor I talked to people in the Intel services. They all agreed. They said, listen, whatever that guy says, believe it, he will do it. This guy has no joke. He's a felon many times over. He was a gang leader.
Starting point is 01:30:58 He got out and became a life coach, which was kind of funny, right? Because I'm actually a life coach. Now, he's calling himself a life coach, you know, but he's actually a thug. Yeah. He's going to be a life coach, right? Yeah. I mean, that's something that isn't really being reported on a lot in the news, But, like, that's a massive problem in L.A. right now is that wealthy people are, like, they're being targeted coming out of stores.
Starting point is 01:31:27 Like, it's a serious problem in L.A. right now that's not really being reported on. Yeah, no. And, you know, I was living with her. It was just for her, it was just, you know, make driving her crazy, man. She didn't know how to deal with any of this stuff, you know. And she's looking at me like, help. Yeah. I'm like, shit, you know, what am I going to do? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:31:50 I can't even find these guys, you know. But the bodyguard work, you know, that's another story. It's coming out in my book, more detail. And I have to protect the innocent. Of course, you know, I'm not going to mention her name or locations and things like that. But I'll tell the story. It'll be pretty cool. I get a lot of guys that contact me that are interested in doing bodyguard work.
Starting point is 01:32:14 And they want to know what it's like to get to that world. rule how to get to that world. And it looks sexy. You know, the movie, the bodyguard with Kevin Koster and Whitney Houston. I did it,
Starting point is 01:32:25 but 10x. Yeah. But it's, that's Hollywood, man. And that's not the real world. The real world, it sucks.
Starting point is 01:32:31 Yeah. People are dicks. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, especially when you're coming from a special operations background,
Starting point is 01:32:37 like you're looked down upon, your judgment isn't trusted. You have to pretend your clients are funny, whether or not, they're smart, whether they're dumb. I've talked to guys
Starting point is 01:32:45 who've done like EP, jobs for like Gulf State, you know, millionaires, kids, billionaires, kids, like horror stories. I've done that, too. And my advice is never, never seek to be a bodyguard, seek to be a person who needs bodyguards. Like being a bodyguard is, is like being, it's like, it's like being a bathroom attendant, basically. You, you know. I'll tell you a quick story. This is horrible to be in Paris.
Starting point is 01:33:14 So I'm with this woman, right? her and her husband, she's the Mexican chick. She's got this, I mean, she's just very eccentric, man. She had a pink, a peptole, bismol, pink phantom, Rose Royce, right? This thing was insane. 100-carid diamond rings coming out of fucking, you know, the hood ornament, shit, you know, like, damn. But we were, we were in Paris, and she and I, so she wanted to go shopping.
Starting point is 01:33:40 So all her friends were gay guys, right? She hardly had, I never saw around any women. I don't know, maybe the gay guys is threatening her. But anyways, we're always shopping, you know, and they're eating lunch and they're doing this. And I'm standing at the bar. Oh, Jesus Christ, can we leave now? And so I remember one day we're on the street corner, and I called for the limousine. And she's facing the street on the sidewalk, facing the street.
Starting point is 01:34:04 I'm standing behind her about 10 feet, facing her, watching her back, looking for the vehicles coming. And I kind of just got a, you know, a tactical position there. And I noticed this guy's walking past me. He looked like he was maybe from Libya or something like that. And he's smoking a little cigarette. He's got these little beady eyes like a little rat, you know. And he's looking back. And he's eyeballing her purse.
Starting point is 01:34:27 He had this big, pink Louis Vuitton purse, right? Big ass thing, man. And so she's holding it. And she's wearing a fur. She got diamonds all over. She's worth like $10 million just standing there, right? And so, and he's sizing her up. He's smoking a cigarette.
Starting point is 01:34:40 He's walking back. It doesn't seem he's standing in the back. Right. I'm kind of standing in watching, and he's going back and forth, back and forth. And finally, I see he finally gets the nerve up. He's going to rob her, right? And he throws a cigarette down. He starts to make the move, and then I step forward, and he sees me, and I look at him,
Starting point is 01:34:56 I go, don't do it, right? And he looks at me, he goes, oh, you know, like this. And he walks away, right? And I don't say nothing to the client. She has no idea this is going down, right? I just saved her ass, right? And the limousine shows up. We get in a vehicle.
Starting point is 01:35:14 We drive back to the four seasons and get out. And there's like six French dudes standing on the corner, right? You know, they're all standing in the four seasons. You know, you can tell they're, you know, guys got money and stuff. They're wearing their trench coach and they're talking to French. Boom, boom, boom, and they're talking about where they're going to go party or, you know, whatever. We're going to do, right? And they're shooting the shit.
Starting point is 01:35:33 The door opens up. She gets out. She's got legs to kill. She's wearing as many skirt, you know, big as boobs. You know, and it's like, she gets out. And they were like, whoa, I did all, I'm dialing in on it. And I'm trying to get out of the vehicle on the other side. And so I'm coming around the corner.
Starting point is 01:35:48 They don't see me yet. And they're looking at her. And I can tell they're getting ready to say something to her, right? Come on to her. And here I go again, around the back of the car. I'm like, don't fucking do it. Man, you're going to get me in trouble. Don't do it.
Starting point is 01:36:01 And they look at me like, okay, okay. Like, who. And we go inside and she stops me. She goes, did you see those men? Did you see the way they're looking at me? She's pissing and moaning me because they're checking her out. I'm like, yeah, ma'am. I said, yeah, but they didn't say nothing to you.
Starting point is 01:36:17 Right. They didn't threaten you. Right. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't do anything, right? They didn't check you out, right? So she goes up to the room. I go to my room.
Starting point is 01:36:25 I get a phone call from the old man. Don't ever let anybody disrespect my wife like that again. I'm like, what? You know, what am I supposed to do? Right. Beat the shit out of these dudes. Checking her out, you know? Right.
Starting point is 01:36:36 You know, tell her to wear a burka next time. I go look at her, you know? Right. Right. But it was that, it was always that kind of stuff. Right. Always that kind of. This guy literally expected me to just beat the fuck out of people.
Starting point is 01:36:50 Right. They're looking at his wife, right? And, and I was actually the smallest of the bodyguards. I was six foot, about 220, you know. I was pretty yoke, man. I was about 5% body fat. And I was the smallest guy. All the guys were bigger than me.
Starting point is 01:37:05 I hired them all. All big dudes have bald heads. They were tail phones. You know, just different. colors and different nationalities. Yeah. And, but he really wanted that.
Starting point is 01:37:14 He, everywhere we went, he wanted us to be flexured because we weren't, we weren't carrying weapons. And, and every time we would go to, like,
Starting point is 01:37:21 he would, his wife always wanted to go dancing, right? He's an old dude. He didn't want to go dancing, but, you know, he had to keep her happy. If you wanted to get those doors,
Starting point is 01:37:27 he better keep her happy. So we'd go to a bar, and she'd be out of the dance floor, dancing. I'd have to stand on the dance floor next to her while she's freaking dance, to be keeping all the guys away from them, because they all want to rub on her and shit,
Starting point is 01:37:37 you know and then they go over and harass the old man because they're the little chinese guy you know then i got to go over there and you know interfere get back you know you know leave the bops along you know it's like all nine long you're doing this kind of weird shit you know yeah it's the worst man it's it's yeah it's it's it's it's really bad when like they want to start shit with other people and you have to like intervene because they're talking smack she did that all the time man she would actually start trouble with other women and men and look at you like do something. Like your pit bull.
Starting point is 01:38:11 Get in there. Yeah. Yeah, we were driving to the office one day and she was in her pink phantom, right? And she was in front of me. I was in the fall of car. The road was really congested. Her office was about 100 meters down to the right. And so being the kind of the way she is, right? She just
Starting point is 01:38:27 if I can get out of the car, grabs the purse and starts walking down the sidewalk. And I'm like, fuck. So I jump out of the car. I'm trying to keep up with her. And there's a guy leaning against a light post, right? He's kind of lead up against him, looking at his phone. And she walks right up to him and karate chops his arm.
Starting point is 01:38:44 Chagooom! And he fucking falls over. And she just walks right past him. And he's like looking at her like, what the fuck? And I come walking him behind and go, hey, I just, yeah, right, right. Hey, crazy, bitch. And he looked at me like, okay. I said, thank you, thank you.
Starting point is 01:38:59 Because I don't want to be out there to street fighting a guy because that's kind of shit she's doing all the time, you know? I've done a lot of bodyguard work. always, it's always, an adventure, you know, it requires maturity.
Starting point is 01:39:13 Can you tell us the, the Singapore story? Yeah, okay. So I'm writing a bunch of books, right? So, as I mentioned earlier,
Starting point is 01:39:22 after I wrote American badass, you know, I thought that was it, you know, the sun was setting on my life, you know, all the cool stuff
Starting point is 01:39:30 was over. But it actually just started, man, you know, we talked about Yemen already, L.A., Hong Kong.
Starting point is 01:39:35 So then what happened was, so here in Indonesia, my wife and I own a security company, as I mentioned earlier, providing explosive detector dogs, control attack dogs for all the venues and stuff around here. And so I ended up going to Singapore to meet another guy, a friend. And he goes, hey, I want you to meet this guy. So I meet this guy. This guy is a, he's in the shipping business, right? Very wealthy guy, very wealthy.
Starting point is 01:40:05 He's 40s. You know, he's from India, but you'd never know it. You would think he's American. Everything about him said American, right? Everything. So he's like, hey, man, I got this big-ass German Shepherd. You know, I bought it for my kids, you know. And he goes, I like to have him trained.
Starting point is 01:40:23 Where are you trained dogs? Would you be willing to come over here and train my dog for me? I said, okay, you're playing, you know, or you're paying on playing. So I ended up flying back and forth going to Singapore to train a guy. damn dog for him. He lived in Sintosa Island, which is like Hollywood. Guy was very wealthy, Rolls Royce, Lamborghinis, you know, married two kids and the dog. And so he wanted me come over and train the dog for him. So I'd go over there for like at a week at a time, hang out, you know, in Singapore, go to his house two, three times a day, spend about 10 minutes training the dog.
Starting point is 01:40:58 And then I was off on my own in Singapore hanging out. How cool is that shit? And I did that quite a bit. Kept coming back and forth, kept coming back and forth. So one day, I'm walking with him and his son. His son's like nine years old. His daughter's about 12. His wife is Iranian. I thought she was actually Russian, but she turned out she was Iranian.
Starting point is 01:41:22 And so he and I are walking and we're walking with the dog. We're going down to the harbor. And he goes, hey, man. He goes, you still doing security stuff? I say, yeah. He goes, I might need some help. Okay, what you need. So he tells me this story, right?
Starting point is 01:41:40 So he's got this Instagram account. And he loves watches, right? So he's always showing off all his watches on Instagram, you know, millions of dollars with the watches. And so one day, apparently this hot chick on Instagram, you know, starts chatting him up. He starts chatting her up, you know. She's in another country.
Starting point is 01:42:02 And, but nonetheless, you know, they're chatting each other up. I'm sure there were dick picks and stuff floating around, but it kind of escalated in this thing, you know. And so it turns out over time, this chick on the other end is actually a dude, right, which is probably part of a syndicate. And this was a setup. And so now they've got, you know, all these compromising text messages, pictures, things like that, you know. And so then they can't reach out to his wife and go, hey, you this is us. You're, you know, your wife's, your husband's with this woman on Instagram, you know, getting pretty out of hand, blah, blah, blah.
Starting point is 01:42:45 We have more information. We got an entire portfolio if you want to see it. But, you know, you got to buy plane tickets. We got to come to you. We got to hand it to you. You got to pay us. This is what the cost is going to be. You good?
Starting point is 01:42:56 So, you know, she's thinking, oh, yeah, my rich husband's cheating. on me, you know, and I'm going to get his ass. So, um, so she buys this guy's ticket, one guy. Um, she meets him at the airport. The guy goes to get his baggage out of baggage claim. He's got a knife in the bag. He pulls a knife out, puts in his pants, comes out in baggage plane. He meets her, puts the knife on her side, takes her over to ATM machine. She cleans out the ATM machine. She's wearing a multi-million dollar cardi A, with all kinds of diamonds on it. He said, I'll take that too and all the money. And I'll take your cell phone. And basically just robs her right there, right?
Starting point is 01:43:32 So he leaves. She thinks he left, but he didn't. He actually stayed overnight in a hotel. Well, guess what? She didn't put a passcode on her phone. Didn't put a passcode on the phone. Come on. Really?
Starting point is 01:43:47 So he goes back to the room. He goes through her phone. He's got all the kids' phone number, husband's phone number, husband's contacts, phone numbers, clients' phone numbers, her phone numbers, alternate phone number. He's got everything, everything on this phone.
Starting point is 01:44:00 And he shoots a text message says tomorrow morning, meet me at this corner on this ATM machine. Don't be late and be alone. She shows up again. Here we go again. Same old rodeo. A knife in the side. Go to the ATM machine. I'm teasing it out.
Starting point is 01:44:14 Takes wherever else he can take it off for her and he disappears. So she still hasn't told anybody. You know, and so he goes, the other guy goes back. He's actually, so he's Iranian, but he lives in Turkey. Okay, with a network in Russia a lot. All right. So, and I know all this for a reason. So he goes back.
Starting point is 01:44:41 He starts messaging the kids, send them video. He's holding a gun. He's holding a knife. You know, he's going to do this. I'm going to do that, you know. He's threatening the kids. All right. And basically the old man goes, what's going on?
Starting point is 01:44:53 And finally the wife says, hey, this is what happened. They go to the police. They check the camera. Sure. It's all true. right but they can't get this guy because he's in another country they can't extra guide him so when he comes back we can arrest him otherwise no show and I said you know I said you know what's happening right I said this guy's threatening your kids
Starting point is 01:45:11 threatening you he's gonna call your clients he's got compromising pictures he said this is not over I said he'll never come back because he knows a warrant out for his arrest but he's going to send somebody else in his stead right you won't know who it is right until it's too late they're going to threat you We're going to want money. And if you don't do it, they're going to hurt you or your kids. And so you're fucked. And he knew it, right?
Starting point is 01:45:35 And I knew it. I knew the play. And so he's like, can you help me? Yeah. Of course. Money, though, but, you know, I ain't doing this shit for free, you know. And so that turned into, okay, a phased approach. You got to be careful what I said.
Starting point is 01:45:58 safe, but it turned into a phased approach. I contacted a guy. He's a German. He's a private investigator. He's got military background. Good dude. I've actually been working with him since then on some other projects. And he was very well connected, very well connected. I told him what the problem was, told him, gave him an idea who the guy was. We had that information off the Instagram. We had some other sources I was able to tap into. We knew who the guy was. we knew where he was. So now what we had to do is tap in the local resources to PIDM, track him down.
Starting point is 01:46:36 We had them, we literally had cameras from streetlight cameras of this guy in his car with his Mercedes license plates to include he's wearing a damn watch he stole from the wife. Cardier, he's got it. You know, it's like, damn, you can't, you know, wow. And so anyway, so the mission was, all right, first of all right, first of all, proof of concept. I'll show you that we can find them and we can get to them.
Starting point is 01:47:04 But then, you know, then there's the next part of this thing. You've got to pay for everything. Right. You know, but the first one's just proof that we did it. We can do it. Second part is, you know, the deployment phase and then the employment phase, execution. Did I say execution? No, employment phase.
Starting point is 01:47:25 I got to watch what I say, right? So anyways, that was, it was a phase approach, right? So basically it required, the only way you're going to get to this guy is you got to get to this guy. And you got to get this guy with all the stuff, get it back and make sure that he never does anything like this again. Because to start figuring out, he belonged to a bigger syndicate. There's a syndicate out there. There's lots of amounts that this is what they do. Right.
Starting point is 01:47:53 Internet scams. And they don't fuck around, man. they look they will fly around the world to to complete their mission man and they they don't care man so anyways uh all that happened uh the details will be in the book um i want to say too much because it could be misinterpreted what actually happened what didn't happen but it's construed those are kind of yeah and these are the kind of things that have happened to me you know that here i am mine in my business train a guy's dog it's Singapore and next So you know, I'm like, what?
Starting point is 01:48:26 Going head to head with fucking Iranians. So, you know, it's like, wow. So anyways, yeah, it never ends, man. It never ends. You know, I mentioned a story earlier as well. It happened to me here in Bali when I came back with the military and people trying to arrest me and ISIS. There was an ISIS cell here.
Starting point is 01:48:49 You know, they were, I believe they were targeting me and my business partner. But it's like. it never ends. I told you my friend, right, earlier before the show. Dean, he's making a movie in a, not a movie, a TV series in the Philippines. I think this is year number three. Call me about five days ago. Ask me if I could come to the Philippines. One, help him with security. It feels threatened. But two, you want to be to have a major role on the show with him. And the story is called, it's called something in paradise. I think it's almost Almost paradise Yeah that's it With D-Cain Yeah
Starting point is 01:49:29 Oh not Christian Cain I mean Christian Cain And so He's a DEA agent You know He's medically You know Discharged
Starting point is 01:49:38 He decides I'm going to live in the Philippines In Paradise Just live on the beach Chasing Chasing women Having a good time And all of a sudden
Starting point is 01:49:46 He finds himself Rolled up With the mob And the syndicate And all this crime shit And I'm like You know what That sounds like my damn story
Starting point is 01:49:52 You know it's like It's the same damn story, you know, except mine's in Bali, man. This is in the Philippines, you know. But I don't look for this stuff. It just happens. You know, it just shows up. There was another story I didn't really delve into,
Starting point is 01:50:08 and that was Dubai. I was approached by an American who lost his visa. So what happened, like in the Middle East, is if you owe money to anybody there, banks, the government, you're in any kind of death. what they will do is take your visas, strip you of your passport so you can't leave the country.
Starting point is 01:50:28 They call it a velvet cage. You can't do anything. You can't work, you can't leave. You get there until you pay your debt back. You know, how you gotta pay your debt back if you can't work, you can't leave? That's up to you to figure out. Otherwise, you're not going nowhere.
Starting point is 01:50:42 You're gonna live in a hot box for rest your life, that's what it takes. So I had a guy approached me, American, interesting fella, former infantry guy, the black guy, and he just one day just said, I'm going to move to Dubai and open up an H-FAC company and a deep drilling company. And 11 Bravo infantry guy, and he does it. I'm damn. And he was worth a million, right?
Starting point is 01:51:09 And he was very successful. And then he had some medical issues with one of his kids. He owned a hospital out of money. And then 2010 is when, you know, they had to bust in the Middle East. Everything went under financially, right? So suddenly he found himself owing lots of money and he ain't got it. And they stripped him of his passport. His wife and kids got out of country.
Starting point is 01:51:29 He didn't make it out. So he'd already been there for like five years when he met me one day in a bar. I was going to get something to eat. And I walk in. I'm wearing my yellow python cowboy boots. And he noticed he recognized the boots. He recognizes me from social media. Comes over to me.
Starting point is 01:51:46 He goes, hey, are you, you know, Dale Koppstock, you know. and I'm always like, why? He wants to know. You know, okay, finger full. Okay, friend. So he's like, you know, hey, he'll follow you in the boots, blah, blah, blah. You got to talk.
Starting point is 01:51:58 But he didn't tell me his dilemma yet, right? And he exchanged phone numbers. I go back to Indonesia. A couple months later, he texted me. He said, hey, man, are you coming back? I said, yeah, I'm going to be back here soon. You know, he said, I like to meet. So we meet.
Starting point is 01:52:10 And he tells me a story, right? He's been living there for five years. Can't get out? He's like, can you get me out? So like get me out of country. The problem is all the neighboring countries have laws of reciprocity like Cutter, you know, they'll turn you back in,
Starting point is 01:52:27 right? You can't get out. So there's only really one way out. You can do the long walk through the desert and hope to God you never get compromised, but you still got to go somewhere or you go via the ocean somewhere. And so I told him I could help him, but you know, it's going to cost money, you know.
Starting point is 01:52:45 I'm doing this on my pocket. And so there was a lot of issues with getting a guy out over the ocean. So I would need to be able to take them by boat at least 500 miles. That means I need a big goddamn boat that can hold a lot of fuel, right, which costs a lot of money. So it gets worse and worse and worse, right? But I said, so I finally convinced him, you got any buddies that need to get out too? I don't care. Four nationals, you know, you got four or five guys.
Starting point is 01:53:16 You know, guys, you all chip in, and it'll be a lot easier to get out. I had a pretty good plan, too, man. It was a really good plan. I had to do a lot of secret scroll stuff because one thing about the Emirates, if you go to Dubai or Abu Dhabi, anywhere over there, you'll never see a cop. You'll never see a cop. They don't need cops. You know why?
Starting point is 01:53:35 Because they got one hell of an informant system and it got CCTV camera everywhere. Right? Everybody's an informant. Everybody gets a blue chip if they write you out and everything's on camera. So it's pretty damn secure over there. It's real secure. And you know, somebody's watching. They're always watching.
Starting point is 01:53:52 I show up one night. I go to this bar and I'm there with a bunch of chicks and they're, you know, and I got my book. And all of a sudden about 30 minutes late, this dude shows up, sits down next to me. He goes, hey, how you doing, Dale? Who the hell are you? He goes, well, you know, I'm with immigration. I'm with this and that and that and that. And he goes, how about tomorrow you and I meet for lunch?
Starting point is 01:54:11 Okay. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, I was like, hey, dude, I'm just trying to get some doors and sell on my book, you know. It's like, we'll talk tomorrow. I'll see you. I'll see you there. You know, of course, I remember when saw them, but they're good, man. They're really good.
Starting point is 01:54:25 So everything I had to do over there had to be under the radar, you know, and I'm always got to be super, super careful. So anyways, that turned into, you know, safe houses, rat lines. You got issues with international waters, passports, leaving the, leaving the, leaving the, Docs, you know. I had a good plan, though. I had a really good plan. It involved jet skis. So, but anyways, that was another one of my little adventures.
Starting point is 01:54:53 Again, here I am just minding my business in the bar, trying to get a drink, maybe for some nookies somewhere. And this guy wants to freaking help me escape from the country. And I talked to my lawyer. I go, hey, I said, what do you think about this? He goes, what would you call this if I did this? He goes, human trafficking. I said, okay, got it. Forget I said anything, right?
Starting point is 01:55:17 So I kept them out of the conversation after that. I was like, I'm not having this conversation. Human trafficking. What? So, yeah, but I guess he's right. I guess that would be human trafficking. Let's hit up some user questions here, Dave. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:55:30 For people who are watching, Dale, if they want to contact you to procure your services. As a security consultant or a concubine or whatever the case may be, I won't say human trafficker. Where can they find you? So I'm mostly on Instagram now, official American badass, Dale Comstock. I'm getting really getting far away from Facebook. I'm still on there.
Starting point is 01:55:59 I actually got banned. I got banned from LinkedIn and from Twitter. You know, for stating an opinion that, of course, you know how that all works. So they didn't like it because it's me. but they actually gave me my Twitter account it back yesterday. And LinkedIn, I'm still working on that. And I only use those.
Starting point is 01:56:19 Anyways, that's another story. So you can find me on Twitter now. Maybe LinkedIn. You try to get a real estate of today, but for sure, Instagram, Facebook. I have a website, Dale Comstock.com. You can go through that. You can reach out, email me through there. My email address is American Badass at Dalecomstock.com.
Starting point is 01:56:37 Pretty easy. Remember, American Baddack, Dalecomstock. com. They can reach me there as well. Those are the main ways to catch us. I'm not hard to find. And people can, like you're, like you, I know you're working on numerous books right now. And honestly, thank God you're immortal because, you know, it'll take time to write all those
Starting point is 01:56:57 stories. But, but for your first book, people can, they can read American Badass. It's available on Amazon. It's available anywhere people buy books. Amazon.com, yep. And it's interesting because, you know, you talk about building these improvised explosive devices for, you know, when you're working with UAE. And, you know, what a lot of people don't understand who haven't been in the military or haven't been in that situation is that explosives and breaching is it's its own very specific field. And when you're in Delta, you were the breacher in Panama for the American hostage cruise.
Starting point is 01:57:36 like you breached the cell there, which, you know, after years and years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq and whatever, like, Panama is such a forgotten event. But at a point in time, it was one of the primary combat events that had happened in U.S., you know, in U.S. history of that time. Yeah. No, and you're right. It's, you know, it was well executed. well planned well executed um you know we didn't take any casualties um of the of the assault
Starting point is 01:58:14 team that went in i think it's 23 or 26 of a total um we had to we had w i aes we got helicopters get shot down but nobody was k i and we complete the mission we you know we saved kurt mews um we plucked them out of their jaws of death man literally and it's an amazing story when you read it you know it's we when you know all the details that went into that. Things that could have went bad, you know, like my little, my little foe paw there at the door. You know, I fixed it, though. And he's alive, so it's all worked out.
Starting point is 01:58:49 But, yeah, you know, I look at, you know, I look at that. I look at my whole military career. So, you know, I started out in the 82nd Airborne Division, infantry, long-range scout. The four-year mark had to made the decision. Do I want to stay in? Do I want to get out? Decide to go for the gusto. I'm going to try out for Delta.
Starting point is 01:59:06 which was almost statistically impossible for me to succeed. But I did at the age of 23, the youngest guy ever, average age 33. Next thing you know, I'm there for 10 years. I go to the Q Corps while I'm there. I've become a light and heavy weapons guy. And I'm going on a third special forces group, became a team sergeant. I had seen combat. Every combat event since 1980, me grenade, right up to the presence, in fact.
Starting point is 01:59:32 I've been to all of them with the exception of Bosnia. that's the only one I didn't participate in because I was in that transition retiring out of the military but I don't feel like I really missed anything either but I've been in every conflict since that time up to the very present to include Yemen but I went from you know I thought okay going to Delta that's you know I remember guys should say that's the final frontier in the military
Starting point is 01:59:57 that is the pinnacle you know everybody look seals Delta forces is trying to be a seal but we've got seals they're trying to to be Delta. You know, everybody wants to be at the pinnacle. That's Delta. And so I thought, you know, man, I reached the pinnacle at the age of 23. Then I get out and then I get recruited by the alphabet company. And, you know, as you know, Dave, it's not easy right to do all that. The vetting process, you know, the polygraph testing, the background checks. There's a lot that goes into that super high attrition rate probably higher than the unit and so but here we are right made it and so then i thought well does it i thought delta was a final frontier okay i guess
Starting point is 02:00:48 this is the final frontier right or is it and then i get approached with this whole other thing is mercenary work and then i realized no that's actually the final frontier because now i'm going down range with the same weapons al qaeda has i'm I'm literally sewing, like a grandma, I'm still on my freaking equipment trying to make shit to fight with. Right. I'm improvising everything I got. And I'm going to go in a street fight with that bad guys, no better equipped than they are. Right.
Starting point is 02:01:16 And the only that's going to win the day is my skills of self versus their skill set. Right. And so to me, that was the ultimate, that's the ultimate warrior right there. When you can go to combat and you don't have big army behind you and support you, you don't have close air support. You don't have a medic to drag your ass off the battlefield. It's just you and them. And it comes really comes down to your training and your mindset and your warrior spirit. When it comes to that and you walk away and you still got your arms and legs, you know, it's a win.
Starting point is 02:01:50 And to me, that was the ultimate. So I feel like I've gone the entire gamut, you know, the entire spectrum of warfare as a warrior, you know, from, you know, basic infantry guy to mercenary and everything in between. between. And it's never enough. It's never enough. So I sit here and I ask myself, if somebody were to come here right now and go, I've got an opportunity for you. Be interested. There's a pretty good chance. I'll say two things. How much? And when do I leave? Right. You know, that's the truth. You know, it's in the blood, man. Once it's in there, it's in there. You can't, you know, you always go back for another drink at the well until you
Starting point is 02:02:29 fall in the well and can't get back out, you know. Well, it's, Funny, too, and this is getting to the questions that people ask, but somebody sent us an email earlier and on our Patreon and join our Patreon if you're not a member, why aren't you? But somebody's writing D. And, you know, you're talking about, you know, always reaching that top and then going out and, you know, sort of being this consummate warrior, even when you're fighting without all the U.S. support, without the aircraft, without all this. And somebody wrote Dian said,
Starting point is 02:03:06 there's an old team house episode where a viewer asked the guys, they asked Jack and I for the 12 people they would want on their ODA or their team in combat. And Dave said he would take himself in Leavendale Comstocks. You know, and...
Starting point is 02:03:22 I better start reproducing, damn it. But, but, you know, like we've known each other for a long time and you've always been that. You know, you have been that, you know, sort of Koska, Eternal Warrior, the guy that was, that was bred for war. And, you know, we interview a lot of, you know, we interviewed people who were like Mac V. Saug and then went to Rhodesia.
Starting point is 02:03:43 And like, that is you. You're the modern equivalent of guys still getting after it as they're pushing 70. You know, we know some of those dudes, you know. You know, the man bred for war. Yeah. You know, you're right. And I do know some of those guys who probably know the same guys were talking about, you know, that they're actually also my inspiration.
Starting point is 02:04:03 When I see these guys like Jesus, you're 78 years old and you're still out there kicking ass, you know, what they have done is they've broken paradigms for me because we all believe, we all are inculcated as mindset. You know, we only have so much,
Starting point is 02:04:21 so much utility, so much shelf life, you know. When in fact we can fight, look, man, some of the best warriors are the oldest warriors in the planet, man, you know. You know, you got everything. You got experience, you're onry, you know.
Starting point is 02:04:34 You're freaking don't take a lot of shit no more. And you've gotten past all the fear and stuff, you know. And it's always been a part of who I am growing up. You know, my dad was in the Army for 20 years. I grew up mostly in Germany at the bases over there. And I remember the all we did is the boys, you know, we would go out with our BB guns and our dad's army equipment and helmets and K-pot and low-bearing equipment and play Army every day and shoot each other with BB guns and shit, you know, and hand-to-hand combat.
Starting point is 02:05:05 We played war, and that's what I was brought up in. It was playing war. I was in the Oggi already when I was a little kid, man, you know. And it just seemed like a natural fit because when my dad retired, you know, we retired out of Fort Huachuca, Arizona. We moved to San Francisco. We moved to San Francisco. I mean, how cruel is that, right? And I go to San Francisco, and I'm like a fish out of water and go, holy shit.
Starting point is 02:05:29 you know, these kids are not like the people I'm growing up around. You know, it's a totally different culture. And I couldn't wait to go back. I couldn't wait until I was of age. And I was able to go to a recruiter. And so as soon as I was old enough, I went down and signed the papers and put me in, coach. I couldn't wait to go back because the military culture is like no culture in the world. Unfortunately, we live in a society now where they're trying to dilute it. They're trying to water it down. There's all this political correctness crap is setting in. It's a different army. I'm starting to see it.
Starting point is 02:06:03 You know, and it's not the one I grew up in. And we'll see how that works out for us in the future, but something's something to help it ain't going to work out well. But that's the mindset I was raised in. You know, I was always a warrior. I was always a fighter. Even my parents, you know, my parents were like, turn the other cheek and walk away.
Starting point is 02:06:21 They're like, kick his ass. If you don't kick his ass, if you'll kick his ass. You know, that was my parents, man. You know, they were warriors too. My mom and my dad. pit bulls and expected me to fight and if you got hurt tough shit you come home or hurt you again you know you know whimp and so that's how i was raised and guess what i'm not a bad guy i have no criminal record zero you can check it out said nothing i've never been nothing long i don't even have speeding ticket okay i'm a good dude but i do what i do is i do for for righteousness
Starting point is 02:06:50 right i think is right you know i stand for i stand to fight for the week i stand for fighting for people that are the innocent, you know. That's what I'm here for. And the world needs guys like me, especially our country. They need us. Yeah. You know, they need us, you know. And whether they like it or not, they need us, you know.
Starting point is 02:07:08 And so I'm proud of that. And I have no regrets. It's made me who I am. I've learned a lot of lessons. I'm not perfect. Made a lot of mistakes. But I continue to grow, continue to evolve. And even though I said earlier I'm 59 years old, I don't feel like I'm 59.
Starting point is 02:07:24 I'll stomp the shit out of any 29-year-old out there, man. all day long. Yeah. You know, I can still shoot, I can still fight, I can still do everything I did before because I choose to think that way. Right. You know, I choose to think that way. And I'll always be a warrior.
Starting point is 02:07:40 I kind of like paradise right now, but you know what? Like I said, if I walk your door, go take confidence, I got to deal for you. How much and when do we leave? Let's roll into some viewer questions. So, Podia 1, thank you very much. Can you talk about the funniest experience? and lesson learned from Gary O'Neill. Repeat that again, the funnest experience?
Starting point is 02:08:06 The funniest, yeah, the funniest experience. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I met Gary O'Neill in 1982 out of Camp McCall. Now, back then he was a stud, black hair, you know. The guy was a freaking machine, man. And he still is, man. I love Gary, man.
Starting point is 02:08:25 He's a good dude. Didn't know anything about him. My whole platoon, I learned. Patoon went out to Camp McCall to the Sear course and it was cold I remember it was like November and we went in a bear pit every morning to do hand-to-hand combat right so you remember you know sawdust pit you know especially when it's cold and it's wet it's like freaking concrete right so but we're out there and we're standing a circle and our patrol caps stuff you know young guys and then Gary comes out and he's the instructor
Starting point is 02:08:51 for the combative sports we don't know anything about this guy and then we start hearing the stories right guys walk through 77 ambushes you know, Vietnam, Lurp, this, that, that, that, that's down to take out, you know, he's the expert with the knife, and he's been taking dudes out all his life, you know, like, whoa, what the fuck, right? And then, and then he starts going into the mind over matter stuff, right? And, like, okay, so he has a bucket of water out there, a couple of buckets of water with a rope tied to it, and he's got bicycle spokes.
Starting point is 02:09:22 And he starts with taking one of the bicycle spokes, and he pulls the skin out of his neck, and he jabs a bicycle spoke through his neck. right and then he picks up the rope in the bucket of water loops it around the thing and he lifts it up and his neck's all stretched out and he's going around circles to spin the bucket and we're like holy shit right then he stops he puts
Starting point is 02:09:39 spokes through his arm right and he lifts up the buckets again and he's swinging him around right and I'm like we're like this is some masteristic shit right here right then he lays down and he has a dude drive over with a quarter
Starting point is 02:09:53 ton jeep over his belly and he gets up and goes see, I don't mind. It don't matter. Right. It's like, Jesus Christ, right? Because I'm going to teach you how to fight and how to win and how to kill, you know. And I was in awe, man. I was like, wow, wow. This guy is like a real life superhero, man.
Starting point is 02:10:12 You know, I just saw it. And so right then and there, Gary O'Neill became my military mentor for the rest of my life. I have modeled myself as a soldier after him. No shit. I read the books, right? I'm like, this dude, that's what I want to be like. I want to be that guy, you know? And so I followed Gary over the years, you know, got out, he started bouncing.
Starting point is 02:10:35 I've heard all the stories, you know. He was hanging around Jim West, Smokey. He was a good friend of mine. You know, and then it was a Chinas and all those guys, you know. I heard all the stories and stuff. I thought, man, that's why I want to be a soldier to guys like that. That's the kind of, I want to be that guy, you know. It reminds me when I went to third group one time,
Starting point is 02:10:55 the Sartner Major, command sergeant major calls me his office. He just met him. And he's like, Comstock, let me ask you questions. He goes, what's wrong with Rambo? Is it? He goes, yeah, what's wrong with Rambo? I thought about it. And I go, I don't know.
Starting point is 02:11:09 Nothing. You know, that's right. There's nothing wrong with Rambo. He goes, why can't we feel more like Rambo? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, sir, yeah. You know, that's what I'm talking about. You know, why are we going to be these little gentlemen warriors, right? And let's be fucking Rambo.
Starting point is 02:11:24 He goes, there's nothing wrong with Rambo. He goes, I want you to train all my ODAs in combat, hand combat. And I were right on. So I did. I started running all the hand-to-hand training for a third special forces crew. I was running a team through my training every two weeks, another team. Every morning on my own time, 0500 to 700 in the morning. I was going on my own time training ODAs and combative.
Starting point is 02:11:48 You know, I wrote the manual all that shit. But so I look at Gary O'Neill, right, and it's always been my mentor. you know, we've crossed paths here and there. We've done some interviews together. And what was interesting is when I wrote my book, American Badass, I did not know that he was actually writing American Warrior at the same time. At the same time, American Warrior, American Badass. I go, man, that is so cool.
Starting point is 02:12:14 He's my mentor. He is the American Warrior. You know, I'm just a dumbass, badass, badass, you know, follow him, you know. And so I'm American Bass. He's American Warrior. and I just thought that was really kind of cool that, you know, my mentor is writing the book also, you know, and I'm able to write a book because of his mentorship
Starting point is 02:12:33 of what he showed me only in the life, you know. He molded me as a warrior, as a soldier. Now, I've got a lot of mentors. My father was my mentor, big time, my number one mentor, my grandfather. You know, Jim Smokey West was actually one of my mentors for martial arts. I mean, this guy is, this guy taught me how to really fight. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:12:56 You know, you guys know. Yeah, we've had him on. And smoke, yeah. Yeah. He's actually one of my mentors as well, right? And then Gary O'Neill. So I've got different mentors for different parts of my life. But I'm the amalgamation of all of those guys, the good and the bad.
Starting point is 02:13:12 And that's who I am. And so, you know, hopefully now, you know, I am now a mentor for many out there. I do have a lot of young men that follow me. I have a lot of coaching clients that come to me and go, hey, I want to learn, man. You know, I want to learn the mindset, you know. And so I teach them how to think, not what to think, how to think. Right. And that's what made all the difference is, you know, this way of thinking that Gary has, you know, and Jim has.
Starting point is 02:13:38 And, you know, my father has and my grandfather has. There are certain people in this world that has shaped the way I think. And because of that, I am who I am today. Chris Wilson, thank you very much. Dale, do you think you would have whipped 10 Cismancti had that fight not been shut down? Yeah, hell yeah. All day long, man.
Starting point is 02:14:04 Funny said that, bring that up because not too many people know about that. So it was 19, I'm going to say like 1988, 88, 89, something like that. I can't remember now. So, though, I fought the first. first Valle Tudor match in the United States in Richmond, Virginia. Valli Tuto is Portuguese for anything goes. UFC was just coming out.
Starting point is 02:14:26 I got, you know, I had an opportunity to fight this Valle Tudor match. So I went to Richmond. It was three, five minute rounds. There's a Sanction Street fight. There were no rules. I broke both my hands, jacked up the other guy, put him in a sea collar. And then I ended up in Richmond, Virginia, and I was invited to go up there. I think it was Frank Cucci.
Starting point is 02:14:44 He had a school up there. He hosts this fight. I was invited to come up and fight Shimansky, who was at the time one of the blue team commanders, right? And apparently he was the collegiate level wrestler, you know, all-American, blah, blah, blah. And they wanted me to fight him.
Starting point is 02:15:02 So they wanted, you know, they freight couched as, you know, Navy SEAL versus Delta Force Battle of the Elite, right? So I go up there. Actually, the unit Sergeant Major went up there also to watch the fight because we are already had some beer bets going because up to this point, I don't know if you've ever heard of the CT Olympics, but it's an event that happened, usually like in Austria, they invite all the, all the SWAT teams,
Starting point is 02:15:27 counterterrorist teams to come and compete, right? And it's usually 7,500 teams. We would feel the team every year. We actually had to try out for this team. It was five guys and two spares. You know, Dev Group was sent their team and we would beat everybody's ass, even the seals in the water. We out swam on outshot them. We always took the top five positions, always, right? And so their sergeant major would have to keep giving my sergeant major a keg of beer. There's always a beer fed of some shit like that. So they're like, okay, let these two guys fight battle a elite, you know, fight for another keg of beer. So I'm going to go win another keg of beer for my sergeant major. And so we show up in the morning and, you know, get all the work up with the doctor, the pre-checks. I think I'm good to go.
Starting point is 02:16:10 We'll come back that night. I'm going to kick his ass. This is on my agenda. And so when I get, I show up, They're like, hey, the shield got DQed. And I'm like, why? He got herpes. I go, what does that mean? He goes, well, you know, if he squirts some herpes juice, your eyeball, you go blind and sue everybody. I'm like, really? What?
Starting point is 02:16:29 Okay. So, okay. And so they had me fight the West Virginia tough man champion. And I made short work of that guy, we can took him out pretty fast. So I never got a chance to fight him. But could I have beat him? Hell yeah. I'm a fighter, man.
Starting point is 02:16:42 I'm pretty damn good. One thing I got that most guys don't have is, I got heart, man. I got big lungs. I got a lot of endurance, man. You beat the shit out of me for hours. Eventually, you're going to wear yourself out, and I'm just going to beat you up, you know?
Starting point is 02:16:55 Yeah. But I think I could have beat him. No doubt, I could have beat him. I know I could have beat him. You know, I could have beat him. You know, to me guys, he kicked my ass, man. Only guy keeps my ass is Jim West. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:17:03 Oh, that guy scares me, man. Yeah. I've been thrown across the room by him a few times. I'm going to test. Yeah. I mean, I don't think, you know, like, I don't think the people who, you know, who don't know Smokey understand.
Starting point is 02:17:16 just what and not even just like how tough he is but what a skilled fighter he is like they don't understand what that actually means he's a skilled fighter i'd go further than that i've told him this before he is a skilled instructor he's one of the best instructors i've ever met in my life and and that's where he's real like yes he can kick your ass we all know that but his real strength i think is an instruction i mean he's phenomenally good yeah absolutely absolutely Absolutely, man. First time I went to him. So my son, God, man, he's 34 now, but when he was four, he was all into Ninja Turtles, right? He was out doing karate chop to the front yard. And I said, James said, you want to learn karate like the ninja turtles? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I ended up taking up to YMCA. Okay, that was a joke. Right. And I was daycare. And we're not getting nothing out of this. I get on the phone with a friend of mine, Bart, Bart Wiggins. He's friends with Smokey. Oh, yeah. I go, dude. I said, dude, you got any recommendations. He goes, man, he goes, you need to go see him. this guy's smoky. Here's his address.
Starting point is 02:18:18 Go there right now, right? He said, you won't regret it. It's okay. So I go over there with my kid. I walk in and there's all these boys out of my mom's age and they got these padded baseball bats. You're not to beat the shit out of his guy. They're going for it.
Starting point is 02:18:31 You know, like a fucking ball. And so Jim's like, hey, welcome in. He goes, hey, go out there and fight. And my son goes out there, grabs one. He's getting it on. You know, he's smiling. He's happy. You know, my kid comes out and you like that.
Starting point is 02:18:44 He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's how we actually got started. And I told my son, I said, listen, man, I said, here's the deal. I said, if you start, you have to finish. What is finishing me means you got to have a black belt. You got to win a black belt.
Starting point is 02:18:58 You can't quit. You agree? Yes. And I thought, well, hell, why don't I just do it with him, right? Somebody here. So that's when I got involved, right? So now it's me and James, my son, fighting with Smokey, right? Training with him.
Starting point is 02:19:09 And there was one of the girl named Susan, Mayran. And Julie, I mean, Julie Mayeran. She was pretty badass, man. And she stayed in there. She was one of his other black belts and she would take a beating. It just kept coming back for more. She was amazing. But, you know, so we trained with Jim.
Starting point is 02:19:25 And by the time my kid was 70, he got his first three black belts in Jim. And Jim, look, you don't do caratas and quarters and forms for your black belt. You know, ha, ha, kia, good boy, here's your belt. No, what we were doing is we were literally going to karate clubs, like in Virginia, closing the doors with their master and his students that he wanted to promote and we go in the back room in the sanction street fight me my son and my daughter back there's kicking ass like a real street fight no sparring this is a fight you know and whoever wins gets their belt you know and we did that all day long which was like cool watching my son who's seven watching my daughter who's
Starting point is 02:20:08 nine-a-half they're out there freaking throwing stubs man beating the shit shit out of each other, man. Frikin fair enough. It was rolling around. You know, and they're in their belt. And I go, that's what I signed up for. And nobody that I know of did that except for Jim West. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:20:25 You know, and so I learned from him, you know, the guy has taught me a lot. Can't take nothing from him. I've got a lot of experience, you know, because of him, even my own experiences now. But, yeah, if you want to learn how to fight, Jim West is the guy to go to, man. Keep going through these questions here. Alex Bennett, thank you. Dale, you started up quite a few successful security companies. What are the processes starting a successful security company
Starting point is 02:20:55 and keeping it good without a race to the bottom outfit? Yeah, so my first company I started was right after 9-11. Actually, prior to 9-11, seven-month prior to 9-11. I started coming to global security consultant. I started getting a nuclear security. Didn't know anything about nuclear security. no idea what I was doing. But I went to a security conference for the NRC. I said, hey, you guys, it's me. I'm here for nuclear security. If you ever need some help, call me, right?
Starting point is 02:21:25 They all were scared of me and my partner. We look for you scary. We had to lure them over to our table with little shiny things. So, hey, I give us a little nice. Come over here and talk to you, you know, and give me your business this part. Well, the 9-11 happened. And that's when this call started. Hey, we need to talk to you, blah, blah, blah. And that's how I got into the business. It was very successful. 2004, we sold our company as G-C. 4S Wack and Huck. Now, what does it take? So I made a mistake.
Starting point is 02:21:51 We made the mistake of selling the company 2004. Why? Because we thought it's going to die off. Security's going to end. You know, it's always overhead. Man, we couldn't have been more wrong ever. Triple Canopy was started after my company. There's a long story behind that.
Starting point is 02:22:06 But basically, one of the guys, the owner played right on my website. I met the guy. I know the guy personally. He was in B-squater. And then all of a sudden, boom, you know, I got a competitor. but they still couldn't get in the nuclear industry. Blackwater was competing with my company. They were just getting started.
Starting point is 02:22:21 Again, I was keeping them outside of the nuclear security industry. I owned all that. And then I sold the company thinking I got to get rid of it, you know, make money, and then it never went away. So I ended up reincorporating again, a company called Risk Control Institute. I sold that in 2011. And then I've been doing that ever since, you know,
Starting point is 02:22:39 I've got my company here, strategic outcomes Indonesia. I have a company called Strategic Outcomes, Florida. I have two or one performance. performance coaching. So these are small enterprises. You know, some of them are dealing with security. What's important is, and this is where everybody makes the mistake, they become discouraged. You've got to have a dream. You've got to have, you have to imagine what you want, what it looks like. Every nuance about a company, you have to sense it here and now. And that sounds kind of crazy. but it actually ties into what I teach,
Starting point is 02:23:14 which is autogenic conditioning and future pacing. So this company I have here in Bali, I imagined it a long time ago. And I saw, okay, I knew, I'm the only guy to know anything about training canine. The only guy. So suddenly, my wife, who doesn't know how to turn our computer, didn't know how to turn our computer five years ago,
Starting point is 02:23:31 now I run to MacBook Prove because I trained her. I taught her how to use Excel sheet. I taught her about HR. I taught her, okay, we need licensing. Okay, what do we got to do? Let her manage that. Oh, we need people. Okay, we need to train people.
Starting point is 02:23:44 We need to find dogs. We've got to train dogs. So what I did is the train-to-trainer program. I started with my wife. Then I hired a field supervisor. And then I hired trainers. And I trained the trainers. And I trained the trainers and train the handers,
Starting point is 02:23:56 and train dogs. And this thing started to grow and verge and blossom to the point where I don't do anything. My wife runs the entire company, every aspect of it. Licensing, payroll, HR, training. She trains the dog. She trains the handler. She does, you know, a lot of the business interactions and networking, things like that. So it has, but it started with a dream.
Starting point is 02:24:19 The dream was I would love to live in Bali, Paradise, right, where I have my own business. And I get to take my dogs that I love, my pets, and make money off of them and to train them. How cool is that? It's not really a job. And so I imagined everything I have and it became a reality because, Because Albert Einstein said, not just Albert Einstein, but Nikola Tesla and many other physicists, success is based on frequency. It's not philosophy.
Starting point is 02:24:50 It's physics. It's physics. And this is the key. It's not about willpower. It has shit to do with willpower, has shit to do with philosophy. It's only going to get you so far. What gets you over the finish line is imagining where you want to be and the life that you want to live. I'm actually living that life.
Starting point is 02:25:08 No, I'm not rich. I don't want to be rich. That's not my objective. My objective is be happy and experience all the things I want to experience. And I live in Bali. And I live in the Philippines. And I live in Florida. How cool is that?
Starting point is 02:25:21 And I make my own hours. Here I am. I come in at 7 o'clock this morning. Do a call with you guys, you know. It's the dream. It's the imagination. And it's physics. It's literally physics.
Starting point is 02:25:32 It's always physics. That's another area. I can't go into that now. But it has to do with. frequency. It has to do with your nervous system. It has to do with metaphysics. There's a lot more that goes into this, but all my success is everything I've ever done in my life had nothing to do with willpower. It had everything to do with imagination. Right. If you want to start a security company, start with the dream. What's it going to look like? What do you want to look like? What do you
Starting point is 02:26:01 want it to feel like? How do you want to live it? You start with that. Then you invoke the next thing is called the law of action. You have to do something. Start doing the research, as I did. Start training the trainers. I'm training my wife. Start a building. All of a sudden, I'm a one man.
Starting point is 02:26:16 I'm a one-man army. And I got 65 employees. I got 45 trained canines. I got a corporation here with a lot of assets. And it'll kick an ass. Right. It started with a dream. Right.
Starting point is 02:26:32 All right. Alej, thank you very much. Same question I asked Paul How. What do you think is the best and most effective piece of protective equipment and kit a team guy can wear? And why is it the mustache? Thanks for coming on, mate. This has got 303 kills, my friends. That's right.
Starting point is 02:26:56 R2D, thank. Oh, did you want to respond to that? Yeah, actually, actually, I do have an answer to that. Body armor. So when I was in the unit, all we wore was, all we wore was. All we wore was body armor with no plates, level 3-8, right? And everybody just wore the vest, except for me. I actually wore the collar.
Starting point is 02:27:16 I wore the plates, and I wore the groin protection all the time. And people thought I was being a pussy. I go, no. And I had a conversation with Pete Blaber, who was my troop commander at the time. He wrote the book, Mission, Men, and Me. Yeah. We were having this conversation about body armor, and his attitude was, look, I want to be light, you know, and be able to move fast.
Starting point is 02:27:35 And I'm like, yeah, I want to be able to take a lot of hits and just keep on moving nice and slow methodically and take them out. So it was, you know, opposing, you know, opposing positions on body armor. Most guys didn't want to even have to wear it, but they had to wear it. So they wore as little as they needed. Right. So then Mogadishu happens, right? And freaking dudes are getting killed, like the pro tech helmet. Okay, I always wore the Kevlar helmet.
Starting point is 02:28:01 I got pictures of me in the whole unit. Everybody wearing Protech except me. I'm wearing Kevlar. Right? Everybody thought I was just a pussy. Tell Mogadish you have. Then they couldn't find enough Kevlar helmet. They couldn't scrap on enough armor.
Starting point is 02:28:13 They couldn't reinforce their body armor. They couldn't. They didn't have it. I'm good. Right. Put me in. I'll fight the war by myself. Right.
Starting point is 02:28:21 And so to me, that's always, and I watched it go down in Afghanistan, right? So guys are going out humping the mountains and stuff and all the carrier is a plate carrier, right? They're going light, just the pellets the plate carrier. And like, why? Well, he doesn't wait. And I'm like, well, dude, everybody, every FOP's got a gym now. Get your ass in there and go to work. Keep working out until you can carry all that weight and it doesn't affect you.
Starting point is 02:28:45 I always wore full armor, full plate, full protection. Always. Always. I don't care how high up the mountain I'm going to go. I always wore it. And if I was a weakling, I made sure I got into that gym and kept working out until I can maintain it. And I always carried armor. To me, it's the most important thing you can carry besides the weapons.
Starting point is 02:29:05 is your armor. I know a lot of guys are alive today because they were wearing armor. They were taking hits right into the plate through their vest, you know, and they were surviving it. So to me, that's the most important equipment you can carry is body armor. Give yourself a chance. You know, if it's too heavy, get your ass in the gym, all right, work out, all right, build up to it. That body armor eventually will become a part of your body. You won't even know you're wearing it. You won't. You know, it's like my backpack. I carry a backpack around 35 pounds every day it's my man person been carrying it forever and i get used to it it doesn't even bother me the weight it carried all day long you know everybody else would be
Starting point is 02:29:43 sniveling about it but you know if you do something long enough your body will adapt to it yeah my answer is armor wear your armor where your armor okay so don't take no shortcut just like you don't take a shortcut with your weapon and where those plates right yeah yeah absolutely dude the plates stop they stop the 762 man yeah uh otherwise than i don't do doing any good. R2D, thank you very much. Thank you, Team House, love your work. Another phenomenal interview.
Starting point is 02:30:13 Well, that's because we have a phenomenal guest. Thanks. Alejandro, thanks again. With all these things you've done in the private sector, how much you think a giraffe would sell for on the open market? When he says open market, I think it means black market. And he says, hope you can come back. And definitely when your next book pops, Dale, we want to.
Starting point is 02:30:35 Yeah, yeah. The giraffe is a bit of an inside joke. But if you had to wager what a giraffe goes for on the black market, what do you think, Dale? I don't know. A giraffe. Yeah. Yeah, you got me on that way. I have no one.
Starting point is 02:30:50 If you have porn. Well, Dale, like, what, what, if you showed up to one of your clients and they said, Hey, you know, I'm trying to get rid of this illegal zoo. The last thing I has is this a giraffe. Full-grown giraffe. You live in Bali. Would you buy it? How much would you pay for a giraffe?
Starting point is 02:31:14 Shit. What am I going to do with a giraffe, man? Hey, they do have zoos here, and they actually do have, right here in Bali, you have the Bali zoo. And they have all kinds of elephants and tigers and shit like that. Stuff you would find Indonesia. I don't know if you can find a giraffe here, but, you know, we can probably add a giraffe for a couple bucks.
Starting point is 02:31:33 I think it was J.T. Patton, who had that conundrum. It was, yeah. And I think he said it was like $36,000 or something. I can't remember, but yeah. Sporman Group LLC. That's Clint. Clint. Clint.
Starting point is 02:32:03 where we all met Clint. He was a big World War II OSS Fairbarns. Yeah, yeah. We'll have to introduce Dale to Clint the next time. Yeah, for sure. Into the city. Jungle Jim Scott, thank you very much for your donation. We deeply appreciate it.
Starting point is 02:32:18 And that's it, man. Dale, thank you so much for doing this interview, waking up early out there in Indonesia to do this. This has been phenomenal, man. It's really fun to catch up with you again. Talk some more about some of these wild adventures that you get in to. And I'm looking forward to the books. You said that the tentative title for the next book about your adventures and misadventure adventures is running the Razors Edge. You're still working
Starting point is 02:32:46 on it, though, working on a few other projects as well. Yeah, when you get some of these to publication, let us know. We'd love to talk some more. Yeah, what I'm going to do is I've thought about what I'm going to do is make them all e-books. It's easier to copyright it and, and send it out, right? And then if there's somebody that wants a hard copy, then I have a source I can go to that can actually print, right, for someone that wants a hard copy. But I'm going to kind of, because I actually sell mostly e-books on Amazon, even my book, most people just over, you know, PDF copies of itself. Kind of the way everybody's going now in these days. So, but for those that want it for nostalgia purposes or in an autograph, I'll make hard copies as well. But it's been on
Starting point is 02:33:30 my agenda. It just seems like every day I get ready to start writing again, something pops up, you know, another to-do thing. It's all good, though. It's all in the right direction, but I'll have it soon. I'm excited about getting it out. I'm excited about getting all the books out. I think that once I'm finished with the details and I think I think some of them have potential to maybe be a movie, you know, or could go down that road.
Starting point is 02:33:56 Absolutely, Dale. Yeah, Dale, I recently, someone was talking about how this could make a great movie. And I recently, I volunteered myself to play a young Dale Comstock, acid gambit era. We need to get him a suit, though. No, no, no. Back in 89, like Dale was kind of like not quite my size, but he wasn't quite Dale's size today either. So I think like 89, 89 era, I could jump into that role.
Starting point is 02:34:27 Dale, so you're doing coaching now for, for. or either young people who are seeking success in whatever arena they, or even executives, where can they find you for their coaching if they want to hire you? I would recommend either go through my website, Dalecomstock.com, or just directly email me, American badass at Dalecomstock.com. And do you do group coaching? Like if there were a bunch of like military hopefuls that wanted to like get together in a group, Do you do things like that?
Starting point is 02:35:02 Yeah. Yeah, I do group sessions. It's less expensive as well for them, you know. It's more interactive. And then I do a lot of mostly private coaching. Most of the guys and girls that come to me. My primary demographic is men between 45 and 59 and women. I call them the old man clan.
Starting point is 02:35:21 They're the ones that put the kids to college. The wife won't talk to them anymore. They're fat and pregnant. And they're like, you know, I want to recapture to recover my life. So I get those guys and then I get men between 33 and 37. These are mostly business entrepreneurs. Some are veterans. Some are not.
Starting point is 02:35:38 They're looking at how can I expand and build my business and do more. And then the other group is men from 19 to 26. They're either veterans or they want to go in the military and they want to go into special force and special operations. And I have a unique program just for those guys to get them, get them ready for it to include a training program. In fact, I just signed a guy up last night. He's actually a police officer, SWAT, and he went to try out for DEA selection, and he contacted me. So I'm going to kind of put him in that 1926-year-old category of training, fair and for that. So, yeah, I do that.
Starting point is 02:36:15 I do that quite often. I have a pretty full load. I can only take so many people at a time because the program is normally eight weeks long. It's two hours, two plus hours a week on a zoo. call like this. It's recordable. It's it's it's it's goes in stages but basically what I teach people really what I teach people is how to think. I'm not what to think. I teach you how to think and that's the key to this thing. I mentioned physics earlier success is based on physics. It is. And I teach the science behind success. Yeah. It's amazing how it works. But I do coach,
Starting point is 02:36:53 I've coached millionaires. I've coached people who all walks of life. I mean, You name it, photographers, police officers, soldiers, you name it. I've coached them. Coaches, I've coached international coaches. Can Jack sign up to be coached on how to hook up with a 31-year-old starlet? Put me in the game, coach. Put me in the game. It's really easy.
Starting point is 02:37:17 Start with shaving the head and doing the mustache. All right, I'll work on it. I'll work on it. The hair is going anyway. So, yeah, might as well just cut to the chair. Guys, go check out Dale's book American Badass that's out today. Please check out our Patreon down the description if you haven't already. You get access to these episodes ad free and some bonus episodes and shit like that.
Starting point is 02:37:41 It's cool. Next week, we're going to have Jim Morris on the show. He served in Special Forces in Vietnam. He is the author of War Story, the devil's secret name. And his latest book is called The Dreaming Circus. I'm really excited to talk to him. He's a phenomenal dude. so we will be back next Friday with Jim Morris.
Starting point is 02:38:00 Dale, again, thank you. We love you, man. Really appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me. We'll see everyone next Friday.

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