The Team House - Interrogator and counterintelligence agent Elana Duffy, Ep. 73

Episode Date: December 19, 2020

After graduating from Cornell University with undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, Elana Duffy worked in civil and logic engineering briefly before deciding to enlist for active duty Army service in 2003. As both an interrogator and counterintelligence agent, she conducted multiple hostage rescue and strategic level intelligence operations, and eventually assessed into an elite clandestine unit. Unfortunately, her career was cut short when she was injured in a roadside bomb attack in Iraq. Ms. Duffy was awarded the Purple Heart medal and returned to her home in New York City upon medical retirement in December 2012. Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse NEW! Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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Okay, inshallah, we are live here. This is episode 73 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy, over here on the other side of the table, co-host David Park. And live in studio, Alana Duffy, a former counterintelligence agent in the United States Army. You guys also serve as interrogators overseas. We'll get into all that. but hey I just want to say first off Alana thank you so much for coming

in studio this is the first time we've had an in studio guest since Michael Ames way back when it seems like forever ago and that was right when like COVID was really starting to hit yeah that was before the subway incident oh yeah

it was long before that yeah so yeah it feels like it's been forever and it is just so nice to have somebody in studio the premise behind the show is like almost all the episodes were going to be in studio. And then when COVID happened, all of our guests,

like Tracy Walder and Sam Faddis and all they all had to, not cancel, but they had to go remote. And we went remote. So it just threw a monkey wrench into everything. So I'm just glad you're here. We were like six feet. We got a little.

Close. Close. I'm not going to take a tape manager out. And, hey, I'm not like, are you trying to get us, are you trying to get us fined?

Are you going to like dime us out there? Yeah, de Blasio, yeah. Yeah. Poh, yeah. Hashtag, thanks to Blasio. So, yeah. So, thanks for having me. Cheers, cheers.

Yeah. Gentlemen. So, yeah. It's great to finally have somebody here in studio, and how are you doing? I am doing just lovely. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, a weird year for, you know, it's actually, well, it's been a weird couple of years, but in particular a weird year.

So, yeah. Weird couple years. We can't wait to her about that. You know, life is, life is always throwing weird, weird monkey wrenches, duck, dodge. Dive. Dodge. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. O'Malley. Ditt. We got a dip. So, Alana, one of the things, So Jack and I are huge comic book geeks, as you can probably tell. And every superhero has an origin story. And we would like to hear your origin story.

Tell us as much as little as you want to. Sort of about your childhood. When did you start thinking about the military? What led you to it? Or the people in your family? All of it. I do have, there is military history in my family, but I am actually the first one to go to a combat zone.

My father was, for those who have seen Good Morning Vietnam, he was a stateside version of Adrian Kronauer during Vietnam, during the wartime era. But my grandfathers were both World War II era, but just didn't get sent over. So, yeah, I was, I was it. They thought they had lucked out. And then I was like, you know what, I'm bored.

I'm going to join the army. Actually, I grew up wanting to be an astronaut. And, you know, Space Force was nothing yet. You mean the guardians? Which the only thing that I can come up with is that, that it's because of the galaxy. So it's Guardians of the Galaxy. And that's the only reason that I can come up with it.

They're calling them the Guardians. But I think that it's actually guardians of the solar system. They're not, they don't have their sights at that height. They're like, can we get to the moon? Not even sure about that yet, but baby steps, guys. Right now they're like guardians of a place that, like, under a mountain in the Rockies. But the, so I wanted to be an astronaut.

I looked into things like the military academies, then realized that I didn't want to go to boot camp for four years. It's smarter to just go for nine weeks. And pulled all my applications back, went to college to be an engineer, thought I was just going to do the civilian route, and then became an engineer, and realized that blueprints are really,

boring. Yeah. And so I walked into my boss's office one day because he had a window and I didn't. And I was like, well, I'm checking to see if it's going to rain. And if I need to bring an umbrella to lunch and P.S. I'm calling a recruiter this afternoon and I'm just going to go join the army. And he laughed at me and that made me do it because me being bored or being like doubted in any way is a surefire way to get me to do something.

So I joined in, I signed my contract in 2002, and I, that's 2002 for those who want to make age jokes, you're probably. So this is, this is fresh after 9-11 then. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, and I just said, you know what, I'm going to do active duty and quit my engineering job, went active and decided to not do anything related to engineering. Did the recruiters try to get you to go that direction? Did they not care because of their clothes? They just wanted, yeah. You weren't enlisted even though you had your degree.

Oh, I had a, I had a master's. degree in the engineering um yeah my my dad was thrilled yeah uh I believe

actually somebody on somebody last week was like you know what what is a nice Jewish girl in the in from New Jersey doing in the army I was like yeah I got that I got that a lot

um and then I was like well I'm not that nice but um the so I ended up going counterintelligence because at the time it was, first of all, you could go straight into CI, and then we were more of the ground pounders than the, at the time it was the 97 echoes or now 35 mics, interrogator, human collector, whatever's. but we got cross-trained.

So I actually held both MOS, both job descriptions. Did they send you to language training with that? They actually stopped language training for even the interrogators at the time because they were, we were on such a heavy deployment rotation. I showed up with my unit at Fort Braggistan. They were already, they were like, well, we're leaving in like, two-ish months. So. So did you know what counterintelligence was before, like, before you went into the recruiter?

I knew what the recruiter told me. And what did the recruiter tell me? Wow, it was such a cool job. It's so cool. There was actually one of the recruiters in the recruiting station had been, been a 97 Bravo and he was like, oh yeah, like you get to do real cool investigations and stuff. And I was like, but he really didn't talk too much about the job itself. It's more that women couldn't, unless you wanted to do like MP.

I want to slide like six inches this way. There you go. Thank you for not using left and right because I was already, I already had my left and right. And I'm already fucked up anyway. Yeah. Okay, no, I'm sorry. Continue. Yeah.

So, yeah, so women couldn't do anything except like MP or it's kind of it, really. Tactical, you mean? Yeah. Okay. And that's what you wanted to do was something tactical. Yeah. I need something tangible to do. That's why I got bored with engineering.

I was sitting there looking at Blueprints. I wasn't actually building anything. So I ended up going in and then deploying two months later. And then when we came back, we had like four months in between Afghanistan and Iraq. And then heading back out there. What was your counterintelligence training like? Did you enjoy it? Was it challenging?

I thought it was hilarious. But I thought most of the army was hilarious. much to the dismay of most of my commanders. But the, I thought it was, I thought it was great. I mean, we, the, what they don't tell you is that, I mean, it's like 90% report writing, but the 10% that isn't is a lot of fun and really cool and stuff like that. I mean, we were especially deployed or out,

were essentially attached to infantry or whoever's out on the road because we need to get places and we need to talk to people and do things. And I picked up parts of the Arabic language that, I mean, I can tell you exactly what, you know, three men, red Toyota, average heights all with AKs and ski masks so I can tell you I would probably be able to still understand that in Arabic yeah at this point because it's always the same and I decided that if I ever found who in Baghdad was selling ski masks I was gonna break this whole thing wide open we're gonna just decimate the entire insurgency you could just stake out the ski mask store yeah Let's take a hot second here just to unpack for the squares out there who don't know.

What is counterintelligence? Counterintelligence is supposed to be the, well, we are really one of the Blue Falcon MOSs, but we are, we're looking for the high crime. So espionage, sedition, subversion, We are, we do a lot of the investigate your own kind of like CID or in the Air Force, like some of the OSI folks do it. NCIS for. Navy. Yeah, Navy, Marines, whatever.

And we, but we also do all other forms of human intelligence collection. So anything that involves talking to a human, turning them into a source or some sort of informant and figuring out how to get them to trust you enough. It's the same concept of interrogation. Yelling at somebody never works. You have to get them to trust you. So it's a lot of motivation, examining someone's motivation, figuring out, what makes them tick and then how to work that to your advantage. So it's a lot of fun.

It's a very difficult job to do well. And some of the people who do well at it, you don't necessarily want to be friends with for too long. Because they're good at it? Yeah, yeah. what were some of the things, you know, we've had, you know, people from the intelligence community in here before, and they've sort of told us about, like, you know, their training of the farm or whatever.

Like, what was some of the training that you went through? Were there any particular moments during your training that you just thought this was really cool or also? No, we definitely caused a lot of. I mean, we, so because I went through in early to mid-2003, the system hadn't completely caught up yet to where we were. So we were still doing a lot of, it's like they would take like a Cold War scenario

and then just kind of drop it into, oh, but this is actually happening in the desert. And you're like, and meanwhile we're like, I mean, you're in Arizona, you're in southern Arizona, but like you're still kind of in the mountains like you're you're it's like kind of high high desert so it's not quite the same right um but actually the the class after this and and when you do have

I don't it might not have been his class but there was a class right after us who actually were wandering around with like dummy weapons on their little patrol during our, because we do have a field exercise. And it's a major drug trafficking route that cuts right past the base up to Tucson. And they actually caught some drug runners with their little like dummy rifles. Some privates were just out there doing their fake patrol. And came across some like gun, some like drug runners who like. They probably thought they were part of the scenario until they found like the bales of metal.

right oh shit right they're they're all like cosplay right they put it up and the drug owners don't know they're not real weapons yeah they like they like chuck their like pistol they chucked like a handgun and we're like oh and they were like oh I guess one of us should go get a drill sergeant like somebody who actually knows what to do with this we thought we need to go with this keep going so um yeah that

was but most of the time I mean it's it's a lot of like schoolhouse learning there's when I went back for some of the more advanced like there's a debriefing course and a joint debriefing course there I went back for a joint like interrogation certification course and some of the other advanced training some of that is is really cool you get you end up getting advanced drivers training and surveillance training and all of this other stuff because i ended up going into a one of our our elite units later on um that you have to assess into and they uh they they they get to go to all the fun schools yeah but um tragically when i when i volunteered to deploy that's when they were like wait what do you still

doing in the army you're supposed to be I don't know nobody told me to go home um so uh because I actually was hit by an IED in Iraq and ended up getting brain surgery two years later when they figured it out

uh yeah it was my army career was a mess of fun and excitement and joy and hell yeah the adventure never ends oh yeah it's not just a job it's an event We do more before 6 a.m.

The most people do all day. Yeah. Yeah. We can quote commercials all day long. All day. I was definitely being more than I could be. Which is, I think when I went in, it was still the tail end. When I actually was getting ready to sign my paperwork,

is still the end of kind of the be-all-you-can-be. Before rolling to Army of One. I'll see that's really nice. My friend Caleb used to say about me, who was on the show also a few episodes back, he said the harder the armies squeeze their fists on you, the easier it is for you to slip between the cracks and their fingers. It's like, that's right, Caleb. That is some E4 Mafia.

Yeah. There's no such thing as the E4 Mafia. It doesn't exist. You can't smoke. Me, I'm already smoked. The E4 Mafia is a myth. Don't believe Jay Edgar Ugar and his boys. So, speaking which, because you had a master's, did you go in as an E4?

I did. I was E4 Mafia for, like, my, like, they tried to, they actually tried to, they were like, you know what, you haven't been a private? Would you like to be one? Because you're on the way. Yeah, it turns out that some of my commanders didn't necessarily appreciate when I would be like, why are we doing, I have a degree in, like, logic engineering. like and I am in the most illogical place

known to man because you're asking me to cut a lawn with scissors on a Friday because the sergeant major is unhappy like this is not smart so I would say things like why are we doing it this way and inevitably whoever had made that decision was standing right behind me and all of my little blue falcon buddies would be staring at me being like,

we're behind you, just real far behind you and very much anonymously. Yeah. If you don't step forward, we'll step back. Yeah, yeah. It's like a bunch of mere cats, you know, when one of them's getting eaten by the alligator, all the others are their wives. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's him I, right there. Yeah. Now, CI, though, are you badge? Are you credentials? I actually have my retired bees and Cs sitting like framed up on my wall at a... Because you're an actual agent, right? So you have a badge and a gun?

Yeah, we actually have to flash the badge and stuff like that. We actually, there, I was just talking to a buddy of mine who stayed in, who I went to AIT to advance training with, but he, and he said that they're actually going back now and they are making all the CI folks in. 1811 series, which is like the police series. Yeah, so that they'll actually be able to carry gun and have arrest authority. Because if we needed to make an arrest, we actually have to go with CID or something like that. So you do not have an arrest authority.

Yeah, we have a badge and we can ask anybody anything. Like you are still compelled to answer our questions. but you if you tell us something we can get real mad we'll write you a stern letter yeah I'm going to put that in your file

so if for the people who did internal investigations sort of like the not really internal affairs because it's more about intelligence but for the people who did the internal like army investigations if did they also need an MP with them if they were going to arrest somebody who is in the army? I'm I think they're investigators.

I think their investigators come from like CID. So I think that they do have arrest authority. Interesting. But I'm actually I'm not positive. I think some of them are civilians. So yeah. But we are we in and that's actually what. is different in the army from both Air Force and Navy is because NCIS and

um, uh, uh, uh, OSI, there we go, are both, uh, they both are dual. They're 1811 series also, so they do have that arrest authority. They're investigating agents for all kinds of crimes. We are only for these specific crimes of espionage and so forth so does that as far as you know did that did i mean do they have to go through the full MP course then if they have to learn all they're going to have to and they're going to all have to go back to yeah they're going to have to go uh all the existing ones i think are going to end up having to go back uh and to either Quantico or somewhere and get credentialed or to

God help him for it, Leonard Wood and so then what is the difference if there is any of this job field between what you guys do state side and when you get deployed?

So it depends on, it really depends on the unit, but so state side in a tactical unit. So when I was at Fort Bragg. We were, it's a tactical unit. We have no investigative authority. You can't do anything on U.S. soil.

We are only there to essentially train to deploy. And we, so we are on heavy rotation. That's why we, I was actually deployed more, for more time when I was stationed at Fort Bragg than I was actually in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which worked to my advantage because, yeah, yeah. Vietnam is not a lovely place. I was like, hey, I think I'm safer in Afghanistan.

Yeah. So it was, so we actually don't have, we have no authority there, but if we are stationed in Korea or, Germany, chances are you are assigned to a unit that does have investigative authority. So like in Germany, I would mostly work with the Politi and the Bundespolice, the state police and so forth, to look into counterterrorism or look into and also because you have NATO requirements that, you know, oh, the, you know, the Russians are just going to drop by because they have authority under whatever statute to come and inspect our hangers with 24 hours notice. And so we had to go and make sure that, you know, the Apache systems that were secured were conveniently up in the air for being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their children.

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Basically the entire period. And so and then when we are deployed, we are just essentially ground pounders. We are wandering around looking for bad guys with the bombs. theoretically before the bombs go off. And basically just, and there are different assignments overseas too. So are you the primary human collectors then? Yeah. So we are the, that's back then, they were still called

tactical human intelligence teams or THTs. for the army and then the Marines called started calling them HETs human exploitation teams which doesn't sound good and then oh yeah and then the Fets yeah yeah yeah I'm not making that yeah no that's real um and so most of the time like I would and I mean I would go with out with the infantry all the time and So therefore I am the only person who can talk to any of the women or any of the children. So about half of my time, they were like, oh, we also have to run a checkpoint today. So can you do that for six hours with us too? Oh, you're an attachment.

So yeah, you're getting drug around on everything. But what they loved is that because I was going with them, I could put in to just, you know, be like, oh, do we have to swing by Bakker Village? Because there's that guy who sells the good kebab sandwiches there and, like, ends. So then, like, I would be like, fine, I will find something to do. And we will, you know, change the mission plan, swing over there. So, like, one of the guys, because I was with Samoans, mostly, and they were just, they would come back with, like, whole chicken. Like roast chickens and I was like I don't even know where you found those and he was and he was like

This is the best day of my life. So you would basically generate intelligence requirements so that So he could come back with chickens. Hey, you know what? Do what you got to do just survive over there. Yeah Yeah, you got to pass the time somehow. Yeah, oh man. So when you graduated from Wachuka from the CI course what was the first you were assigned to and did you know anything about it? We were excited about it. Did you not care?

I was supposed, I was originally actually got orders to go straight to Germany which would have changed everything. But instead I went to good old Fort Bragg because my now ex-husband at the time my boyfriend wrote me a letter from his, he was at one station unit training for the infantry and said, and on orders to, he was, he had airborne and brag in his contract. So he said, oh, my drill sergeant said, if we don't get married, then I'll never see you again. And I was like, is that a proposal? And you know what, the romance just never ended.

Right, right. Yeah. Now it started for all the right reasons. You know, it's great. Whatever, man. The BAH was fine. So I, so I, we, he ended up coming out to Arizona after airborne school and in between airborne school and reporting to Fort Bragg and we got married and so my orders got changed

to Fort Bragg, at which point we really never saw each other anyway because of we were on opposite deployments. But, um, because I got to Forebragg in like December and we were gone by, we were gone in February to Afghanistan, uh, did a six month, did six months in Afghanistan, uh, came back and our in brief was, uh, don't unpack because the brigade's leaving for Iraq in, uh, like three months and you guys are going to. So what, what was it like going to Afghanistan? And like when you first got there, was it?

It was actually, like, we landed, we were one of the few, like, daytime landings. And I remember the, the, the tail of the, it was a 17, it was a C-17 comes down. and it was that was the only time in my entire military career where it was like oh this is like a movie because like it's like the Hindu cushes over there

yeah and you're like oh this is this is exactly what I expected and then everything else went to shit but that like what if it was a daytime landing they probably went in pretty hot didn't they because they had to spiral down into the pool

did you land in or in a bogging? We went we went landed in Bogram, I don't remember being that awful. Okay. But, I mean,

most of, I mean, I was actually one of the few people, one of the few legs, one of the few non-airborne, because there wasn't enough time for me to go to airport school, uh, in between. So, uh, which turned out to be

the theme of my career. But, um, we, so, we yeah I mean we we came in they dropped us off they shot our palettes out the back with all of our gear and

and then they they got out of there because the Air Force wanted kind of nothing to do with Afghanistan proper they were going to head back to Uzbekistan where it was nice right turns out also turns out it was also like depleted your

but whatever. But it was nicer, like they had air-conditioned tents and stuff. Right. But... And beer. Yeah. Yeah.

It was actually pretty nice up there. So we... Yeah, it was... That was... It was... Like, you're walking... And you walk down and, like, you know, you got two files coming down the sides of the ramp and just...

staring out at essentially just dust, tarmac, and then the mountains, and you're like, okay, no, this is, this is, this is like what I signed up for. This is like the poster. Yeah. And then they started doing things like yelling at you to get your bags and, like, chaos ensues. It started arming out. Yeah, it just started making an army thing out of it. Now, were you primarily based in Bogram or did you?

I, um, we were on teams. So we, half of our company, uh, ran the, uh, main interrogation facility, which at, in 2004 was really that there was, there was like nothing in the country, really. Uh, um, like, you know, you'll, you'll hear all about how somebody today told me that they're there, by the time that he had gotten there, there was a, there was a, Sinebon in friggin Bogrum I was like yeah when we left they were pulling in like a Burger King trailer

and there was like a line and that was the day we left so none of us got any of that but thank you what time frame were you went out to understand January February of 04

I think it was February of 04 to like July Yeah, that makes sense. But when I got there, the Cineabon was there, the green bean was there, the burger came. There was a green beans. That was the only thing. There's always a green bean. There's always a green bean.

They move that in. Green bean, whoever it is, they have the, I don't know if they still do it. They got the contract. They had the contract. And it was a coffee shop. Yeah. And so green bean was the coffee shop that you would find in all the Pieter or all the, the bases. The bases.

We sit here and get all nostalgic. Remember the grain bean and salsa? It was not very good. It really, it was. It was not, but it was all we had. In Afghanistan, you always started to get down to Kandahar so that you could go to the Tim Hortons that the Canadians brought in. That was the deal. I heard about that.

I only went to Kandahar for like two hours once. And we were like, you guys have boardwalks. Like there's, it's, you've stuff. Like, it's a nice boardwalk. built up. Yeah. People were like, I was in restaurants.

I was in Candahore. And I was like, no, I have been there. You had it so nice. So where did you get shipped off to from Bagram? So we ended up out in Harat, all the way out west.

And lovely city. What was left of it was a lovely city. And by what was left, I don't mean that we did anything. I mean that that has been in disrepair, like the Russians and so forth, it all sacked it. But it's like the gateway to the Silk Road, and it's got this lovely history. I learned to drive a manual shift on an old Russian minefield that had not been fully demined, but nothing will make you actually get that car moving up a hill from a hill from a

dead stop with the knowledge like if I roll too far back I'm gonna roll into the actual minefield so and at that point I mean this is before there was a fob at an operating base at shindan it was before there was an operating base at Farrah it was so we were responsible for four provinces and we were a team of four people we had a special forces team with us. A civil affairs team was out there because they had to be at the provincial reconstruction teams, the PRTs.

And like half, it was like maybe a couple platoons, I think, of field artillery were there to just provide base fob security. I remember because the

army has to do army things and at some point my team leader was like the company commander wants us to do a PT test here and it took it took some ridiculous

number of laps around this tiny little like we had to do like little figure eights like 14 laps around it was and to do like the two mile run and you're running like these little tiny like tight figure eights to try and get the space in. And, but, and then we would just go on convoys for like three days because it took

hours and hours to get up to any other, any, any other town because it was just, the ring road wasn't finished. I don't even know if it ever really, I mean, is it ever really done when they keep blowing it up? But the, there was nothing, it was just dirt roads all the way through these. canyons all the way up to, you know, Bodgis province and periodically dozed him, a warlord who ran the Masary Sharif area, the Mez, where, and actually the British were running, were the main people in charge of the Mez of Masary Sharif at the time, and our local warlord, Ishmael Khan,

was him and Dostom never really got along so periodically like we were just get a call on the radio from from the Brits being like Dostom's massing his guys on the border with your provinces again so I assume Khan's going to move his own army up there

because they all had their own little armies and so we'd be like fine we'll talk him down this time but like next time it's your turn um but because you know they all at that point it's still the factions still vying for all of the power and um the poor the poor guys in civil affairs were like uh we're really just here to dig wells so um or not even dig the wells but give these guys the money to theoretically dig a well so everything kind of just fell on us and on sometimes on the special forces team but how

how long did it take you to learn because i mean like in america we don't have any concept of at all of tribalism and tribal politics and oh yeah well that's a loaded question yeah ready for civil war too here we go um here we go boys be playing the indie or something but but the idea I'm still waiting on my Google I'm on my calendar invite for that by the way

if nobody puts it on my calendar it is not happen right right they need to send yeah they need to send out the Gmail invites yeah like you need to put it on my you need to put it on my Google calendar so you fit it in tell me are we doing shirts versus skins

I don't even know So how long did it take you to like To kind of grasp The politics the family politics The tribal politics You know how it all ran out there Well Luckily for me

Well my My teammates Actually I think of my teammates No one had gone on because we had actually been on such heavy rotations that some of the people in my company had already been through a rotation in Afghanistan. So we got the down and dirty and we were because we had actually set it up that our company would replace the other human intelligence company from Bragg. So we were on this little rotation setup. And so we had gotten kind of the back reef.

And I mean, I am a nerd if the engineering degree wanting to be an astronaut, the fact that right now I'm wearing Star Trek socks, like. You word it here first. Yeah, yeah, I am. They also say, Trek yourself before you wreck yourself and has Spock throwing Vulcan gang signs.

But... You're here for these details, Spok. That's what's happening right now. So, the... But, so I had, like, you know, I had read up on it.

I, if anybody is, like, really, likes the older history of that area, like the book, The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk is like phenomenal. And it's written really well. It's like narrative style. But so I knew that there was a lot of tribal issues and a lot of that comes into play because it is no kidding all the time. You know, my, that guy's grandfather stole my grandfather's goat and we have had a blood feud for years and like so I will tell you anything you want to hear about that family right um and sometimes I mean like you quickly learn how to use that to your advantage but you have to just take everything with a grain of salt yeah so it gets hard because all the intelligence is sort of a tarnished or or

or corrupted by these grudges. Oh, yeah. You know. Yeah. You shot at the helicopter last night. Oh, is them on the other side of the river. Yeah. Yeah, I love that when you go and hit a house somewhere,

and the guy, same story every time, I'm not a bad guy, but I know what I know that guy is. Yeah. Yeah. This guy down the street, I'll take you right there right now. Yeah. See, one of the advantages to being a woman is you could talk to

the wives. And by wives, I mean of the same guy, because wife number one and wife number two, they will, they, oh, like my husband, who you seem to be after, oh, no, he is fine. He is wonderful. He is lovely. Oh, he happens to be in Baghdad right now. He's always in Baghdad. It's really weird. But let me tell you about her cousin. I will tell you where he lives, all the bombs he's making, where he's making them. Like, they will, they will tell you everything about the other wives' families. Yeah, I think that a lot of people here in the state civilians don't realize how important it was to have female intelligence collectors out with med caps, you know, medical. What does cap present?

Yeah, yeah. But medcaps with the different PRTs, with things like that. Because when you roll into a village, the guys, they all have their story locked down. And no American man can speak to an Afghani woman. Right. But the women, a lot of them are waiting for a chance to. Yeah, I definitely like to hear some, like some of those experiences you had. Because, I mean, this is not even, the armed.

is obviously jive to this but you know my perception of it going in was women don't have any power in the society at all like what what do they fucking know why would you even talk to them yeah what was what was watch everything yeah because oh and then don't even like consider them so right speak openly yeah yeah yeah and so and one thing that you just learn is even if you're after her husband even if he like if her Her husband could have been, you know, bin Laden. And I would have been like, oh, no, I'm sure. I'm sure it's all just a bad rap.

Right. I'm sure. So why don't you tell me who he comes and talks to? And she's like, oh, well, let me tell you. Like, because they just want someone to talk to. It's like going down the street to, like, the, like, if you've, I, I love doing this, too. because I guess it's I kind of fell naturally into this job of saying oh well you know like going into the store and like talking to the to the clerks or like the people that nobody ever

wants to talk to yeah because they just sit there and they hear everything and they know everything those houses they're made of like mud and hope like nothing is stopping the sound right so And there's not a lot of holding that together at this point either. And I mean, it's a small village. Like, everybody is related somehow, and everybody knows everybody's business. Yeah. Now, did you have a female interpreter or a male interpreter? I had a male interpreter.

And in Iraq in particular, my interpreter was freaking, he was hilarious. He had grown up. He was Assyrian. He was in Assyrian Iraqi. And the Assyrians suffered quite a bit under Saddam as well as, you know, kind of everybody. And so he had no love. So he had been born in Baghdad, born and raised his early childhood in Baghdad. And then his family moved to the U.S.

and he had grown up in like Chicago, owned a liquor store on the north side of Chicago for a long time. The war breaks out, he shudders his store, his liquor store and becomes an interpreter because he's like, I can help both of my countries. And so he was hilarious because he hates everyone. And I was like, oh, me and you were going to get along. Just great.

And so he was. would sit there and he would like always do things like he would always position himself between like me and like the shake of a village because he's like no i don't trust him you can't sit next to him because i don't trust and i was like i'm supposed to sit next to him and he was like no he probably has ringworm okay he was like you see him scratching his face like iraq is a a little more egalitarian and sectarian. How was it working with a male interpreter in Afghanistan? Afghanistan, it like was very, very, because we didn't even,

it's so segregated in Afghanistan, and it's so, especially out west and in the smaller towns and the smaller villages, her rot was fine. Herat was like because Harat is the second largest city next to Kabul and so it was just like They they they kind of adapted they ebb and flow and But once you left the city limits I would sit there and I'd be like where are the women like the way and even the the the children Once they were above about age like seven The girls were like sequester.

Yeah, just home. And so we would have to go and seek them out to just check in like and we would. Just check in like and we would, uh, working with the civil affairs guys, which some civil affairs don't really like working with CI because they don't want it to seem like a, with pro quo type of situation.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on.

on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. We would kind of help them out, especially if they hadn't sent women with them. Either I or actually my team leader was also a woman, and so we would have to kind of go in because we couldn't go into the girls schools without a woman. We couldn't go to talk to any of the...

And these are the schools that are being targeted, but the women teachers really couldn't talk to another woman. But the interpreter that we had there, he was very... He knew it. He had been there for a minute. He knew what he was getting into. and he

he would always kind of stand behind. He would do he was the only interpreter who ever did what they taught you in the schoolhouse which was that the interpreter should be standing kind of behind you so that you're talking to the

person and they're really talking to you and just kind of this voice is repeating what you're saying. I didn't pick up it was mostly Farsi, like a, well, Dari, which is the dialect, but like a Persian Farsi out west. And so he, and he knew that, and he also knew Pashtun, but I, because of all of the different dialects, I didn't pick that up nearly as quickly as I started picking up Arabic.

but these women they were still they were just relieved to have a female face and because we were there and we were directing the conversation

it was okay to have him in the room so he was basically kind of transparent they didn't they didn't even really consider him as being there yeah that was a good interpreter if they're able to do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we really lucked out. I know that some of the teams had really struggled with that because the interpreter would either get too close or do something. Yeah. Now, were you guys working with Indigent interpreters or did you have like Cat 1, Cat 2s from the U.S.? We had U.S. interpreters because we need to have them to have clearance. So we either work with a cat two or a cat three.

Yeah, the cat twos can hold a secret clearance, and cat threes can hold a top secret clearance. So we worked almost exclusively with them. It was mostly the cat ones, the not cleared or locals, were mostly with MPs and with the other patrols. that would go out so we would only use them like like when when when the bomb hit like our convoy and like everybody needs something at once you know I'll grab whoever speaks Arabic right but or so I'm told because I so how different was the job in Afghanistan

to what you learned in the school was it like Did anything that you learned in the school applied since they had really kind of taken these Cold War scenarios? I mean, did you have to learn on the go? Oh, man. I'm just, I'm starting to recall our FTX scenario and how amazing it was. Oh, old A-O-Red. Because they come up with the best names, the most creative names. the, uh, it was the reports are about the same.

That's, that's, that's about it. Um, I mean, really from, from the school, from the schoolhouse and then getting dropped into Afghanistan like two months later, but I don't think that there was much that anyone could have done to really set that up or prepare that. I'm sure it's way better now. because people are teaching the courses who have actually been there. Right. But, and I mean, the scenario immaterial humans are humans,

but being able to start factoring in things like, oh, you know, they're allowed to have up to three wives. And like all of these like little cultural things that if you know them, you can actually use them to your advantage. We really didn't get any of that in the schoolhouse. And then that's just stuff that you either have to pick up on the fly, pick up from somebody else, or if you have a good cat two or cat three interpreter,

they can be like, oh, I should tell you before we go in here, like during the Russian war, like this happened and this happened, and that's why these guys don't get along and, you know. So, but there was, it would have been helpful. Yeah. You know, like the little CIA books that they give you the little CIA fact book, really. Didn't cover it? Didn't even really get the weather right.

Like, I mean, yeah. Let's then segue into Iraq. And how was that different as an operational environment from what you had just been in Afghanistan? Well, Afghanistan especially, like, I mean, it was where we were was the Wild West. I mean, it was, there was like, it was fewer than 100 Americans for within a day's flight of, like, anything. We couldn't drive to the closest bases. So we, so we were like, we were out there. I mean, it took us, at one point there was like a two month lag for us to like get mail or get like a food drop off or anything because thanks

Air Force. There was weather in the mountains. Right. Yeah, it's sunny. I know the game is on, but could you do me a favor because we're hungry? Um, But the, and I mean, it's more educated in, well, I mean, Afghanistan, when we were in Harat, at that point, the little fob, our little, like, 18 lap or whatever, fob was right in the middle of the city. at one point there was actually a fighting broke out between some of the factions

within the city and they were shooting over our compound I was like it's not that big you can just go around but we're like they were shooting around like all us and like all these NATO compounds and so we get a call from like the Germans

and they were like it's coming through the plastic Like the AK rounds are coming through the plaster on the walls. Could you come get us? We're like, yeah, we don't have any armored vehicles, but like, sure, we'll come and pick you up in these Toyota high luxes. So in Iraq, like everything like the bases are built up because they're old. I mean, I spent my first three months doing election, election detail. and then, because this is early 2005 now,

so it's elections, the first Iraqi election, and then hostage rescue, and that's where all my stories about the seals and some of our 18 series come in from. Uh-oh, not only throwing shades on naval infantry, desire to no more intensify, but on the green French hat guys, too. Beret.

God, what a dumb idea that was to adopt from everybody. It doesn't even keep the sun out of your eyes. But it looks smart. Does it, though? I don't know. A properly molded beret. A properly molded beret. It's part of our unique and colorful history and highest reed decor.

Thank you for that blue book. Yeah, right. Yeah. And then you have the people who don't bother to shave it down first, and so it ends up looking like a poofy chef's hat. That's why you don't give it to everybody. Yeah, yeah. General Shinsaki.

Shinski made everybody elite. Yeah, yeah. Everybody gets a black one. I don't know. So now you're in Iraq with all of these supposedly high-speed dudes. What was that all like? Yeah. Now, was this, were you part of the same unit still?

I was part of the same unit from Fort Bragg. At this point, I, in Baghdad, we were, like, we were, like, attached to an attachment to an attachment. Like, it was, it was, that was straight up army madness. But, and I don't even remember how I got myself into trouble. enough trouble to get myself moved. But I'm sure it'll come to me. How is the marriage going at this point? I think that everybody wants to know.

Oh, yeah. Well, bless his heart. He is doing very well for himself, I'm sure, by now. I don't know. I still talk to his brothers. I don't really talk to him anymore. But that's because he married someone 13 years, his junior, who doesn't want him talking.

to his ex ever again I understand he has a little bit of an affair problem something something I don't know I was like he was in the 82nd

like they have a reputation he just already had it by the time we got there he just fit right in these unfounded accusations about the airborne infantry I can't believe this Dave

so weird so weird so weird So weird. I have seen so many of them. Allegedly. I have seen so many of them naked in my bathtub in the middle of my hallway like just his friends

would just and I was like seriously put pants on before you pass out. Like I don't even I don't know what to do with this. You go clean this up. Well you I think you have a permanent marker sharpies around your house and you draw dicks on there for him. Usually I was late

to PT so I would just kick them. But, um, I think what she's trying to say is that true love is blind. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be like, what? What is Jeff doing on the floor again? You guys have to be a PT before I do because 15 minutes early to the 15 minutes early to the 15 minutes early. You guys have another 15 minutes. So yeah. And I outrank all of you. So. Oh, so you were not E4 at this point in time. I was still an E-4. Okay. He just wasn't.

Okay. He wasn't a Cornell grad. Because that's how I chose to waste my college education. Did the Army at least pay for that? Some. Okay. They pay back. I did loan repayment, but they only pay back federal loans.

They don't pay back any private loans. And so they paid back. I had gone. on a scholarship and then a partial like a half tuition scholarship and then the army paid back maybe like another half of the loans so i mean we're now only 100 grand a year with what you were left with yeah ish nice it's paid now because i'm 40 um you know um so uh yeah bless his art I think I don't remember where he was at this point. He might have been in Afghanistan.

Were you guys still together at that point? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And when I say together, I mean. Yeah, I'm married. Yeah. Yeah, we were married. Yeah, no, there used to be a topless bar that I'm pretty sure was off limits within walking distance to the place where we lived.

The firehouse. Anybody who had ever been to the firehouse. Firehouse. At Fiaton? In Vietnam? There's a firehouse at Colmage, Georgia. Well, I'm sure there was. And that was on the lawful on this list. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was at Bragg, too.

They like to keep that pretty well structured. I was going to say, like, I mean, just from what I've heard from friends, I feel like I would know the name of these gentlemen clubs around the state. North Carolina. Well, this is not to be mistaken for secrets or any of the other places. The Sharkeys. Yeah, Sharkey's. Was, like, across from secrets, and, like, I think that the strippers would do battle. I'm not positive.

Pure titanium down the street. Right. What was the one, though, that had the 9-9-Hat Girls and one ugly one? Oh, I don't know. They were everywhere, too. That was their motto. Yeah. But here's the thing.

If you're going to open a strip club, then open a chain of them and open them in Army towns because that's what Army towns are. strip clubs, pawn shops use car dealerships. Yeah. So shops. And paid it. Oh, so shops are great. So shops are kind of new though. You can just throw a patrol cap up into the air in one of those military towns and like a Korean woman snatches up that air

soes it up for you. Let me tell you, there was a guy right on my corner. He would start, this is back when we had like the BDU so he would starch him shine your boots, 10 bucks, and you go pick it up. And it's like I can see myself in my boots. Yeah.

Like, I, like, make sounds when I walk, like, I'm wearing corduroise, but no, that's just all the starch. You know, it's interesting because Tim Ferriss is known as the, you know, sort of the guru of life hacks, but Army Joe's were lifehack. Way before Tim Ferriss ever did. Like, I didn't even know what a life hack was. And I was just like, no, the dude on the corner. Right. Yeah. Drop it off on my way.

We just called it skating. Yeah. Getting over. Getting over. We called it the sham shield. The specialist sham shield. Before we got onto the gentlemen's clubs in Fayetteville that we all know and loved. I got stories about secrets. A wreck.

Yeah. Yes. You get sucked up into working with... I thought we weren't talking about the shit. Never mind. With all these bros. And you assured us you have stories about... these operations.

Yeah. Yeah, so how did you get there? You got to Iraq. So we got to Iraq, and in, actually for my second deployment in a row, they were like, oh, we want to send you

to place X, but we might send you to place Y. So why don't you just sit tight and we'll figure it out? Because that's kind of, I think, how the Army actually makes decisions. Yeah.

not to give away trade secrets, but, uh... There's a magic coin they flip. Yeah. But they have to flip it a hundred times. Yeah. So, um, we, we show up and they were like,

oh, they need a... I don't even remember where I was supposed to go at the time. I think I was supposed to go to like, uh, to like, uh, to like, uh, mosell to, to,

I don't, I have no idea. I don't remember now. Needless to say, I never got there. No, it must have been because I ended up going up north for like a week. And then they were like, oh, no, we're actually going to send you to Baghdad because they need a female on the team down in the green zone. Green zone best assignment. Civilian clothes assignment. It was frigging great.

Except that when I had been at AIT at Fort Wachuka, the army decided to reshoot their 97 Bravo join counterintelligence commercial while we were on our field exercise so they were like interviewing some people like

what's it like to be a 97 Bravo and I was like I don't know why don't you ask someone who is one because weren't our training exercise but and I am in that commercial apparently. I've actually never seen it. So if somebody can find it somewhere,

and it's not on the YouTube. It's not on the YouTube's. It's not on the YouTube's. I have looked. This commercial started airing, like, January of 2005 when we showed up in

to, and like I'm showing up to this plain-close assignment at the embassy, at the stand-up U.S. embassy in Baghdad and, you know, I have to meet with like generals and all of these people and all of a sudden, the

ambassador is passing me in the hallway of the embassy and was like, I just saw you on the AFN commercial and I was like, well, glad to see that's airing finally. Good to see you too, sir, thanks. So for those of you don't know,

AFN is the Armed Forces Network and it is what is piped into military bases everywhere overseas It's like being in some Orwellian science fiction film that everywhere you go and you hear

the voice of your leader In 2009 it was Obama Back then it was Bush And like everywhere you go You just hear their voice It was just terrible commercials And everything is Don't kill yourself

Yeah Please don't kill yourself Everything is Third-rate acting just these amazingly bad interviews like it's

I'm sure your commercial was great though I can't imagine it was but I hope you have an IMDB page for it we will definitely set that

so they shoot you down the Baghdad and because they needed a they needed a lady face on the teams down there and

um I probably, I don't know, maybe I wasn't supposed to be there at all. I was superfluous, whatever. They were like, you, you're going there. So I end up on this team that is doing strategic embassy relations and liaison work. And then, like, also what's going on in the green zone? Who's plotting things against the green zone? and the green zone being the huge international area

where the different embassies were and it was supposed to be this secured area that, and so we were there for the first selections and I mean everybody's pretty much just on patrols and we're sitting there telling all of our sources, like don't line up by, you know, this entrance because, like, there's definitely going to be snipers. And, you know, like, so it was, um, but what I ended up doing because I

talked to everyone like I'm supposed to is I started falling in with, like, the hostage working groups that were down there or, and primarily the one at the embassy that was, uh, this liaison point for all of, in early 2005, especially, there were a lot of kidnappings, a lot of, I mean, Sergeant Keith Malpin had already been missing at that point for quite a while. And so we were still looking for to recover his remains. we were like so it was anything that was into all related to hostages and they did not have a dedicated intelligence asset. So having found this out, I was like, well, what am I doing after like 7 o'clock in the evening when like the gates closed and like nobody can get in or out of the green zone or whatever? and the

FBI has closed their bar for unknown reasons because God knows they're probably still drinking anyway. But because, fun fact, they built their own bar

at the back of their compound and they would get their liquor from an Assyrian who had opened a liquor store brilliantly inside the Greensome limits. God bless the entrepreneurs.

Yeah, he was so smart. He made a killing off of like all the international, all the civilians. And so. All the officers. Yeah, yeah. So, so we, so we end up, so I ended up basically moonlighting with the hostage working group. And that's how I started following. into all of the Squirrely forces folks that were that were floating around.

Actually, one of the seal commanders was super nice guy. There's like one or two that are great people. They didn't write a book. but oh wait what no you're good yeah no it's it's

it's come up before it's yeah no it's it's it's it's it may not be all of them but it's enough of them that it's a real thing yes yeah um so we

uh and then one of uh one of the best experiences was uh the night that one of my sources called and said, oh, I happened at this point. So it's still early

2005. And one of my sources calls, my interpreter would take control of the cell phone at night because being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. I'm not great at Arabic yet. And calls and says, I know where AMZ is at Zarqawi, who at the time was number three, I think, on the high value target list, something like that. He was up there. He's definitely top five. and so he was like, I know where he is.

I know he's going to be there for at least an hour, probably to, he's at a funeral. And my, so my, it was 10 or 11 at night, my interpreter, I'm banging on my little trailer door and was like, I don't know what to do with this. And I was like, okay, let's go find somebody who can actually respond to this because me and you were not super useful right now. So went and I actually found that particular, I found, I went into one of the embassy areas and the seal commander happened to be working late and told, and told, him and he was like, okay, my guys are gone, so we'll bring you over to the old 18 series compound. So he calls them, tells them that we are coming. We go over there and they, and, you know, we roll in. I get it.

It's late. Put your pants on. Like, I don't need. to see you in your silky's and your and your giant beards put a shirt on and they're tidy whiteies and showing up at the gate seriously like like i get like you love your ranger panties that's wonderful sweetheart like ranger panties are amazing they are and they're super comfortable no problem i have some too you knew we were coming put put a shirt on i don't i don't need to see that boys see if they knew you were coming that's probably why they did it they probably changed

into it they probably did they're probably in like their onesies yeah they're cozy they're snuggies yeah all tucked in for their night yeah they got they they're snuggies they were like oh we're not on a mission tonight yeah you can get all snugly um so we show up and uh shirtless bro one uh because god knows i never knew their names uh sits down um at the head of their little conference room table and was like, I hear you. You know where he's at? And I was like, he's at a funeral for one of his buddies.

Yes, my source is reliable. Do you want to check? Well, we're not going to move until we have some sigant on this. And I was like, hold on. Let me make him make a phone call. What do you want for me? He's 20 minutes away. Do you want to take a ride?

they tried to get they had me drag my source out to like into the green zone onto their compound so that they could talk to him at which point he was like

I will never talk to you guys again and then they still were like no humans too unreliable and I was like you're just comfy and I got one of them lady faces and you don't like lady faces because you don't trust us.

And that was pretty apparent. It was it was very much a hey little lady. I hear you. The next day turns out the funeral had been a real thing everyone who was anyone who had been there. Wow. And the two people apologized to me directly and that was the seal who had brought me there in the first place. He was like, sorry about that.

Actually, probably, though. My bad, bro. Yeah, my bad. And he was like, in all honesty, you probably would have gotten the same treatment from my guys. And actually, their commander was like, turns out that funeral was a real thing. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I know.

Oh, well, y'all could have gotten a good bag there. And how long was this before we ultimately smoked him up? Well, this was 05. It was, it was a minute. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just want to go back to this idea that he was still teaching General McChrystal all of his life lessons.

I guess at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, man. They had a hostage working group for how long before you got there? maybe

maybe a year and they had no intelligence assets what what did they do they just sat around and watched real housewise on AFN yeah I mean isn't hostage rescue supposed to be like J-Sox's

like whole purpose for existence originally well it wasn't J-Socc though it was it was so it was like this weird uh like secret room on the fourth floor type of thing. It couldn't have been J-Ssock, though, because

if it was like a hostage working group was probably State Department, right? It was. Yeah. Yeah, it couldn't have been, it wasn't J-Soc, though, because they would have taken you to one of the Tier 1 units, not to an S-F team. Yep. Yeah, so, yeah, and I mean, like, it was in, they didn't, like, he didn't even put out

the word, like, nobody else knew about this. He, like, kept it in-house and and tried to farm it out to them. Yeah, well, um, I mean, it was actually, it was lucky that I had even run into him because, like, everybody had pretty much, like, knocked off for the night. It's 05. Like, who's, I don't know, who's working at the embassy? Right.

But, because everything, at that point, everything happens in, like, this one, like, area of the embassy where, like, all of the different, um, uh, special force. horses type elements all have their own little area and office and I mean like I had knocked on like all of the offices down the row yeah until I got to the um office with us and he was like a the the seal guy he was like a comms officer or something um I actually don't know how they do their little designations I'm sure they're sure they're adorable but uh I mean because seals are so cute they do their clabs and they balance the ball and nice um but the uh um and and uh like everybody had pretty much like knocked off for the night or something and he said his team had been out somewhere else or they were otherwise occupied and that's why he had brought me over

to the to the delta guys and they were just like meh i don't know the delta guys or the suff guys Oh, they were Delta, they were, they were, they were on their squirrelly own little compound. Okay, the Delta guys. The unit. You have to look over your shoulder. So it must have been J-Saw. Okay. The unit.

Well, I was going to say, like, SF is supposedly a human-based organization. Yeah. So them saying, like, oh, we're waiting on SIG-int would be kind of surprising. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, they were like, no, unless we have Siggint. And I was like, uh, fine. And probably also some of it probably wasn't. They didn't trust you that you would just walk through the door and like, uh,

what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I mean, I am at this point, 24.

And like I've like a little baby face. And I was like, no, guys, you know what I understand. I know how he is. I don't know he is. Yeah.

Um, so, uh, And I was like, yeah, well, at least I put pants on. But, and the source that I had, like, he was very reliable, and he did come in, and he did, and we did get him into their compound. And then he was like, I don't like bearded men yelling at me. Like, this reminds me, because he had been held prisoner by Saddam. Yeah.

Like, in his, like, a couple years prior. and he was like, you know what this reminds me? Because they were... Yeah, he was like, I don't like, like, strange bearded men shouting at me, shouting questions at me. And he was like, this makes me really, like, I'm having fun. And I was like, I understand.

Hey, guys, could you, could tone it down a little bit? Yeah. You don't know what you're talking about, girl. You already 10? Well, let's take it to a 5. Yeah. 10? Yeah.

And they were like, oh, that. Yeah, right. Well, like the reckey guys were probably, or they're human guys to be able to handle that. But all the like operators, yeah, they're always the best dude to handle that kind of thing. If you're going to call yourself an operator, you better act like one. So. I speak 5,56. Oh, God.

So. Yeah, well, I'm having flashbacks. Aside from that whole incident, I mean, there are. Any other interesting operations during the time frame? Oh, there were so many. There are so many. I mean, like, so, and I loved working with, like, I mean, that whole time in Baghdad was actually pretty great. I mean, we had, I did have a similar incident with actually being able to know where Malpin's body was, but I couldn't get corroborating evidence.

but turned out he was, the body was buried there. Either way. So, tell us a little bit about that. You got information and you tried to pass it on and they wouldn't accept it

because it was a single source? So what's super fun about Hume and is that it is notoriously unreliable, especially in an area with a lot of tribal issues or sectarian issues or anything like that.

So whenever and especially after Abu Ghraib, nobody really wanted to, for a year or two after people were still kind of stepping themselves back from a lot of human. And because they were like, well, we can't hold anybody for too late. Or we can't, we can't do anything. Actually, we had been when we were,

In Afghanistan is when Abu Ghraib broke. The story broke. And when we had landed in the winter, because Abu Ghraib broke in like April-ish. So in the winter, I mean, you went into the detention facility and it was quiet. And everybody was on their own individual little mats. They had these large cages set up, but like they had, they all had sleeping mats. They all like had their prayer mats. They all had their own individual stuff, but they weren't, they, the detainees weren't

allowed to talk to each other. They weren't allowed to do all these things. And the interrogators, which had kind of like a catwalk up above it on this kind of two-level warehouse type of facility, could do things like they could play off of each other. they could say like, hey, do you have like this person so that they could, um, uh, try to throw like, you know, oh, maybe I have corroborating evidence or something like that. And, um, so after when, uh, we went when we were getting ready to leave and I went into the facility after this is now summer. And so a couple months later, they had,

changed all of the rules that, you know, like the, if the detainees asked for it, they could get it. If they were sitting on, they were still like, you know, sitting on their mess, but they're like sitting there playing cards. They're shouting at each other. They're yelling through the gates. And if the interrogators, the interrogators were told for a while, they couldn't even look over into, like down into the cells.

Um, because they were told, oh, that's invading the, the privacy of the detainees. And I was like, they, like, they're in prison. Yeah. Yeah. They just blew people up. Right. Can we like, like, can we, can we, can we, can we all acknowledge this? Um, but, uh, so it was like, it was such a crazy and different world.

And that ultimately leads to, you know, the escape from. from Bagram prison, but that was not under our watch, at least. But the, so in, by the time we get to Iraq, they've changed all of the rules of even when you're allowed to detain somebody. We needed three independent pieces of corroborating evidence to be able to hold somebody longer than 24 hours. You could bring them in, but you could. You couldn't hold them longer than even a couple of hours unless you had multiple pieces of corroborating evidence.

And you had like all of these different things. These different pieces had to line up before you could even hold them to transfer them to a main facility. And it makes sense because, again, your grandfather stole my grandfather's goat, so I'm going to get you arrested. We were able to filter out a lot of those by not being able to get corroborating evidence unless we talked like your brother and that doesn't count But But when sometimes when you have things like Zarkhowie's at a funeral or like you know a body is located here and it's somewhere that we haven't checked Would it kill anybody to really send a team out there to go and look? You know, you know, it's located here and it's somewhere that we haven't checked? I'm would it kill anybody to really send a team out there to go look?

And you know, in those rules, I mean, it's one thing when you get a walk-in or you encounter somebody who wants to report on something. It's something completely different, though, when you have a trusted asset, somebody who has reported accurately in the past, telling you this. I mean, we fell into this hole both in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we're no one of our fighting a world.

we were conducting like a police action with evidentiary standards and chain of custody stuff. Yeah. And all this stuff, which soldiers often can't do. And, you know, they talk about human not being reliable. But Sagan often wasn't reliable either. They would do these phone chains and these link charts and go, okay, this, you know, this phone is connected to this guy who's connected to this guy. So we should hit this phone. It was like 50% accurate.

at best. Yeah, at best. You know, and then, but then you get in and there are nine guys in there, and they've all, like, they all throw their phones the first thing so you don't know whose phone belongs to whom. And it's like, well, we don't know who the bad guy is. Yeah. All we're going off is, you know, a phone number, a sim card, whatever. Yeah. Or you raid a place at 2 a.m.

Nobody's got their phone on them. Right. So, who is the bad guy? Right. Well, I guess we're going to play that game. And I can assure you that any unit that you talk to that turned down the Zarqawi, you know, information based on, oh, it's only single source, had done hundreds of raids on single source information. Yeah. Yeah. It's just somehow we fell into this trap where SIGM was so much more. And SIGN, for those of you who don't know, is signals intelligence is generally based off, you know, technology.

technology phones radios but generally cell phone interceptions for the most part cell phone stuff and and human is human intelligence when somebody actually tells you something and we you know we kind of did the same thing that carter did right with the NSA like oh this is the future yeah and he got the CIA and built up the NSA and all the sudden we're behind the world in intelligence operations because we our CIA was nothing at that point and and we fell into the same sort of trap in Iraq and Afghanistan where we put, we policed all our faith in technology and none in the human resources, the human assets. Yeah. Oh, it was, it was, and what's interesting is, um, uh, and, uh, I can actually go into a bit more. I think, I think

most of the trials are done at this point, but, um, the, uh, Julianna Cigrina, uh, kidnapping, uh, when the Italian reporter had been kidnapped. And we didn't necessarily know where she was, but then the Italians were so intent on getting her back

that they were willing to talk to anybody. They were willing to move on single source and they were willing to do anything. It was the same when they were trying to get him out of ISIS land. in Syria. Yeah. Yeah. And, but they

and they did pay they definitely paid a ransom when they got Sagina back and then but they didn't they were so it ended up burning everybody because they didn't

they didn't want to tell the Americans that they had moved on single source and paid a ransom. And so then they tried to blow an American checkpoint. And that's how they got their vehicle shot up and killed one of her bodyguards. And she got shot in the arms, recovered. And there was this whole huge trial.

And they were like, oh, we told you. And I was like, I was there. You definitely did. You could have called, even like as you were picking her up. Yeah. Yeah. Like, hey, we're coming. Tell the checkpoint.

Don't friggin. Don't shoot the first vehicle. You can go after anybody behind us. The way the Italian intelligence functions from what I understand in these situations is they start off. They have nothing, right? They know nobody. So they go to the guy who sells kebabs on the streets. They say, who do you know?

They'll give them 500 bucks or whatever, take you to the next level. up. They give that guy 500 bucks and then it escalates, escalates. And then if they hit a dead end, well then it gets backtrack start at the beginning, start handing out bribes up, up, up, and try to make that connection to eventually paying that bribe

to secure the release of their hostage. Obviously, a small country like Italy, they do have a counterterrorism unit. Obviously they don't have all the assets that J-Soc has, that they can't bring all that to bear, but that's clearly a case of, you know, pork coordinations, you know, it was avoidable.

Yeah. And the thing is, though, years into this, the, the, the, a lot of the bad guys had become savvy. You know, whether it was like a guy on a motorcycle who would turn his phone off, have his phone off, turn it on in front of a, you know, a target house, the house he wanted to hit, make his calls, turn it back off, go. And then, you know, after watching this pattern over and over and over and go, okay, he's in that house. Yeah.

Right. Or I remember in Afghanistan, they had these charms on their phones that change color. That would flash. They would flash. They were like, you know, LED charms or light charms or whatever. That would flash whenever their phone was being pinged. There were stickers, too. So they would know that they would know that their phone was compromised.

And so after a while, the signals intelligence just became every bit, if not, sometimes more unreliable. Very similar to, if you guys have ever seen the TV show The Wire. Yes. Where it's like the gangsters realize their comms are compromised, so they start taking all these countermeasures, and then we try to counteract that. Yeah.

It just goes on and on. Yeah, it's actually, like I was telling somebody, the best spy series to actually watch is either A, the Wire or the Americans. Oh, I thought for sure you were going to tell me that, like, you were basically Denzel in Training Day. Oh, yeah, well, obviously. But. Obviously. Making your source thing they hit a meth and then pulling a revolver on.

Yeah. You were doing stuff like that every day, right? That's what it's like. Cruiser around the green zone. Yeah. So you fell into this working group in Baghdad. You fell into this working group in Baghdad. But what was your, like, your day?

day-to-day job. Well, my day-to-day job in the green zone especially was, I mean, like, we would take some walk-ins. Actually, that's, there was a one of the major kidnapping rings that was operating mostly out of Soder City

got reported to me just from a walk-in and she just, and it was a woman, and so they were like, oh, this is why we got one of them ladies down here. So get carted on in. And she just dumped this whole thing. It was the 1920 Revolutionary Brigade.

And then they had been operating mostly out of Sauter City at the time. And they had been kidnapping internationals. They had been kidnapping locals. They've been doing anything they could. And she just dumped. like a ton of like she had she had written like a dissertation about like who knows who and how they're linked and where they're kept and all their safe and I was like the crown rules yeah can I give you a hug yeah um and she and she was like the smartest person and she was just like I know you can't necessarily

verify most of this stuff let me tell you like this is where I got all the information from um she had wanted, I think her, like someone she knew had been detained and she was like, I just want to like a visit or something. And I was like, what do you need? Because if any of this pans out, like, you're my, you're my hero. So, and so a lot of my day was basically like running down. She was legit. She was 1,000.

but we broke up the entire operation off of her information. And was she like a lover scorned or like what was the backstory on that? Yeah. A one scorned. Yeah. She was like, basically like my bitch ass husband. Ain't paying the bills. Yeah.

And like I think it was like her brother had. like her husband had like gotten her brother incarcerated and for the stuff that he had been doing and she was like ready to drop the home she was like oh hell no you aren't going to do that in my town she's like let me go tell some people some stuff um yeah how did uh how did the whole because in the green zone and the green zone is this sequestered zone basically um how did a walk-in happen And, you know, there was you, there was the DIA, there was other, you know, there were all these intelligence organizations. How did they determine which person got which walk in? Sort of luck of the draw, but also at the time, bless their hearts, like the agency, the CIA was on lockdown.

because I think they had gotten shut up in the circle outside of outside of Sutter City one too many times and I was like well maybe if you didn't have a $300,000 uparmored like... Escalade. Yeah, like no, they were like G500s or whatever, the Mercedes. Oh, the up armored bends? Yes. Yeah.

Like, what are you doing? Like, oh, this is our, this is our disgruntled. visibility vehicles. Yeah. These are just, we're being super discreet. No, honey. Honey.

Where I guess the DIA was going out in, unarmored, like, totally indige. Yeah. So a lot of the DIA, D.H folks, they were, they were kind of rolling their own game, but they actually,

they weren't taking any walk-ins because they were running their own operations. The agency is not used to taking walk-ins and so it's kind of beneath them. So they didn't really want to. So they really wouldn't. So they were

just sitting on their thumbs the entire time because they weren't allowed to go out because they kept getting shot up every time they did. And so really a lot of the and

nobody really knows what the Bureau was doing there in the first place. Right. Just unloaded on this brigade. And actually, because I had been working with the hostage working group, somebody was like, she says she knows something about, like, some hostages. So could you go and talk to her? And so that's how I ended up going to speak to her.

And because, again, like, nobody had, nobody had bothered to, to, give them a dedicated Intel app. That's actually what got me kicked out of Baghdad is petitioning to get them a dedicated reset. Well, here's a story. That's what it was. Hold on a second, guys.

It's our stupid internet and it's totally our fault. Oh, bless the internet. Yeah. Technology saves. I'm still streaming. It's going, okay, okay. I think it's just you. No, no, it's a buffering. issue. It's our

so anyway, continue. So here's this story about you getting booted out of bed. Before we start to stream, unfortunately. You need to get. That's spectrum. There's nothing I can do about that really except try to upgrade. No, I think a tech can come in and

figure out what's going on. Because sometimes when there's a lot of, I think Okay. So I think we should be back and I apologize, guys, that the internet is going in and out. So you want to get to some questions save. It shows me that we're lagging again. Okay.

So, thank you, Gordon. Gordon says the Australian Army Intel had to serve in another Corps first. Do you think it would have been beneficial serving in another big army capacity prior to going to CI? Now they actually do. But you can't go in

as CI. So, and part of that reason is, is for, is for that experience and for kind of that maturity. And, uh, uh, wow. Yeah, no, I, I know some people who definitely should not have gone directly into CI. Yeah, they, I, I definitely agree with that. Yeah. Um, theory. I think we're still

It's Dave, when the video completes, people will be able to watch it in full even if it's buffering as it's live streaming, so let's just go through the questions. Okay, great, great. Okay, I'll make myself another drink. Hammer Nails, thank you very much for the donation.

Gordon, again. Nolan's question, did you work with any Brit units? And if you did, what did you think of them? I, first of all, love working with the Brits. And even just having worked peripherally with them while they were up in Masary Sharif and we were in Harat and we had to Afghan election security operations. And these guys, they, because when you work for the UN, they were retired and so they were civilians, they were not.

not allowed to carry weapons because they're UN and one of them had been senior enlisted with the British special forces and I was like so how's that working for you having to go to you know like for raw they were very sympathetic also to the plight of the Americans that we like weren't allowed to drink I was going to say they weren't under general order number one so I'm sure that I'm sure that they were an asset. They were lovely to work with. Yeah.

Cheers to all of them. And then again thank you Gordon. Fun question. Smoking any smoke any sheesh and best brag Boulevard stories. We'll get to brag

Boulevard. It's better than the Merck though. Merchison is most of the strip was off limits. But that's the, hold on facing south. That was on the east side of Bragg. Most of it was off limits.

Brigh Boulevard kind of came right down, right down the center. Other than that, no, I didn't smoke the cheese. my, I do have a hookah that has never been used because I wanted to be an astronaut growing up. I am one of the very few people who honestly could answer

all of my polygraphs with no, I have parts of the 82nd was doing a long Bragg Boulevard as in prostituting themselves. Oh, you're talking about the gay porn ring? Yeah. Well, no, no, no. So before the gay porn ring, same guy, not same guys, but same regiment. What are they?

Division. No, because it's division. Yeah. At that point, they were still brigades because then they, like, they switched into, like, some sort of weird form. Because it was the 50, 504, 505. And then it was, like, the three, two, two. two, five or three something, yeah. And those guys,

then they're paying 24% APR to get that. Yeah. Yeah. To get that terrible, terrible car deal. No, also I would, because most of, because I lived off post because I was married

and most of my friends lived in the barracks, I would frequently get called to come and pick them up at the strip club if I hadn't gone with them because the, I mean the humor was early 2000s like all my seats were still upholstered so it's like this felt material

that's never coming out you could back I'd be still finding it now if I still had that car God. Moving along. So, wait, if you could still find it now, that means that there was glitter in your car at one point in timer. I will neither confirm or deny.

The body glitter. The body glitter that ended up in my car because I believe that particular person who I'm pretty sure was making his way through every stripper secrets. He was He knew all of them Probably biblically By the real name

Yeah yeah Yeah Maybe not their last name But probably their real name He He is now I'm happily married With children

I may have been invited to his wedding And I was like Oh I'm not gonna say nothing It's a story as old as time But his wife, from secrets? No. Surprisingly not. Sharkies.

No, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he shut down the strip clubs in many places. I, yeah. It's one of those, I mean, it's one of those, it's like, I mean, they're still wearing a mask. Yeah, it's like liquor. It's one of those, it's one of those businesses that will do well no matter what the economy is. Yeah.

Um, again, uh, thank you, Gordon. Uh, so you got to play smack a rodent with Iranians in two countries? Actually, uh, I've, I've seen Iran from both sides, uh, both borders. actually. Yeah. God damn, if Cheney had his way, you would have gotten to see it a third way. Yeah, you know? I know.

Yeah, no, actually. You feel cheated, right? I think I have a, well, I definitely have a photo of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the mind DMZ between Afghanistan and, and Iran. that we definitely, we definitely, but don't try to prove it, wandered into enough that the sat phone would say that you are now in Iran. And then my team sergeant may or may not have taken a dump on Iranian soil. That's always the hallmark of those.

soldier is that walking across the border and leaving something behind leaving something behind in a country that we're right let's get more than footprints questions here because we got some other important stuff we have some very important stuff and

Jerry thank you very much did you ever interact with ISI while in Afghanistan I don't think so not not much not in not in 04 yeah I don't know that ISI ran open.

I mean, obviously they were in Afghanistan, but I don't know if they ever ran openly. Thank you, Joey. Joey wants to know, was Alana Ayasang? Secret Squirrel. I was in a... I was in an off-books unit. But they are...

It's, there's several. Black helicopters? What are we talking about here? Lizard people. Whatever conspiracy long chem trails. Did you have your own ski mask distributor? I, you know what? Tragically, because of that

because of that pesky med board, I never got to the ski mask level. But no, we did, we did run clandestine operations. so thank you adam uh adam just said rock on we love you guys we love you too adam and uh uh

uh DJ thank you very much favorite course uh besides CAC and Sierra Vista what in the sorry V would you not love um do you

do you want to tell us about CAC and Sierra Vista I uh Sierra Vista is like Fayetteville in which is

I mean so for people who have not had the pleasure of being to Vietnam it is it's north of the South Carolina border by I believe from the south of the border signs

that run all the way down Route 95 all the way through from Virginia all the way to South Carolina. It's about 60 miles north of South Carolina, but it's also still about an hour south of Raleigh. There's nothing around Fayetteville. Sierra Vista is that times like a million

because there is just nothing. And Sierra Vista is where Wachuk is, basically. Yes. Okay. It is essentially. Sierra Vista, Arizona. Yeah. Sierra Vista, Arizona is the town that happened to pop up

because there's a military base there. And it's the two closest, like, towns are Bisbee, which is weirdly like a very artsy, hippie town. It's lovely. I actually did get married there. Congratulations. Thank you. I did not get divorced there.

That happened in Jersey. The, but, and Tombstone, Tombstone, which is exactly like the movie, except they paved the streets. And I love Tombstone, and we spent nearly every week while we were at the while we were at the AIT course at our advanced training nearly every weekend once we hit phase which is

every so often you would be able to phase so you would be able to like oh you can get a day pass to go out into town or you can get a day pass for X number of miles you get more privileges basically yeah and then you could get more once you got overnight privileges so that you didn't have to get like inspected to make sure that you're in your, like in your room by 10 or 11 or whatever it was at night,

we would overnight in Tombstone about once a week and we became regulars at the Crystal Palace Saloon in Tombstone, in Tombstone where I learned to dance the Arizona one step with a guy dressed in full Barney Fife outfit. Every week without fail, he was dressed like Barney Fife.

And I was like Barney Fife was definitely not in Tombstone. Didn't matter to this guy. But all the reenactors would come out after hours still in costume and hang out and like dance at

Because Crystal Pallas would always have, like, live fans and hilarious place to hang out. Anyway, aside from all of that, that is also where I definitely did a boot and rally off of terrible bottom shelf whiskey, which is one of the reasons why I drink rum now. Oh, it was like turpentine. Old Crow bourbon whiskey. You can't even really find it anywhere. It's so bad. Well, next time you come in, we will have some. That is.

We'll see if we get another boot and rally live on. That was, oh man. I don't have a puke bucket. There is a photo of me because I was, I became, I was convinced that my friend, who I am still, I was actually just texting with her the other day, would come back for me because I, I, I, I became, I was convinced that my friend, who I am still, I was actually, I was actually just texting with her the other day, uh, would come back for me because I, because I, took a giant group photo because it was our last weekend. And when we had walked into the Crystal Palace, by that point we were such regulars, the bartender knew our drinks.

By the time we got up to the bar, he would have a shot of Old Crow, and for me, it was a rum and Coke, waiting for us at the bar. And we were like, we're going to do a shot every hour on the end. hour, but I thought we had gotten there on the hour.

My friend thought that we had gotten there on the half hour. And so he would walk over with another drink about every half and I had another shot about every half an hour. And meanwhile, I'm also drinking rum, like rum. And we also decided that we were going to do a shot with people who, because people were coming in from our class in groups. and it did not take very long for us to plow through a bottle or two of like he didn't even it wasn't bottom shelf it was like he had to like go he had to like

right it was like seller yeah he's the cellar take through yeah he's like I gotta lift up the panels of the floorboards what do you have under your well yeah that's what we want And so I we take this group photo and I turned to my friend Vanessa and I was like, I'm going to go throw up now. And she was like, would you like me to come and hold your hair back? And I was like, please, would you come along? This is actually how we still talk. She's a New York City local as well. And she came in, she was like, you good now?

And I was like, I think so. and she was like, okay, and she left, and I thought she was coming back. Apparently, I was sitting on the floor waiting for her for about half an hour. No idea. Passage of time, gone. And then one of the reclass,

he was actually an infantry, he was in, he was one of the group guys. He was like, he was fifth, fifth group at the time. time, he was reclassing into our jaw. He was reclassifying because he had gotten injured, and so he was reclassifying. And we weren't supposed to be hanging out in the first place,

but he comes knocking, like, all of a sudden you just hear like this tiny little tap on the ladies' room door. And he's like, hey, you bluffy you in here? because it was a mix of my maiden name and my married name. And he was like, you're in here. He was so scared to knock on the door, bless him. And I pull open the stall door and I'm just like sitting there like on the floor. Like, hey!

And four people come around with cameras take photos. So there's definitely a photo of me sitting next to the toilet on the floor of the Crystal Palace saloon. Memories. Bathroom. I'm so glad that the girls have these quintessential army stories. as well. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And he was like, oh, okay, you're alive. And I was like, yes, Vanessa coming. He was like, no, she's been out here for like half an hour. And I was like, well, I thought she was coming back. Come on. Let me get you a drink. She's been Arizona one, Stefan. Yeah, she's been dancing with Barney. Yeah. Like what? So, uh, John Dorsch says, upgrade your internet. Okay, I will, John. I'll show you. Um, Pam, thank you so much. Ian. I'm falling behind because of the buffering guys who ask early, what does Alana feel that a giraffe would sell for on the black market?

It's a standard question. All the guests get this one. On the black market, you're going to get a markup. So, I mean, I'd say at least three camels and a herd of sheep. In like a barter economy. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's, sorry. What about straight, straight catch?

I'm just saying because that's where my brain goes. to you because that's what I got traded for on multiple occasions. Yeah, I've been traded for several camels, which is actually quite nice because camels are very expensive. Heards of sheep, herds of goats, three Iraqi wives. He offered all three of his wives if he could take me home instead. Offered them to whom?

Like, who, who is your agent? To, like, my partner. So, um, he essentially figured that he he was authorized to trade me. Right. And, uh...

And was your partner ever tempted by these, by these lucrative offers? He was definitely, and he was like, three, really? Can I get three and a half? Yeah, he was like, all three. He was like all three for this one. And I was like, and I was like,

I want to see how this plays out. You go ahead. You bring three women home with you. Go ahead, bud. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't think it all the way through.

No. No. It seemed, it was one of those ideas, like so many in the military, that seemed really good from the outset. He was like, one for the kitchen,

one for the kitchen, one for the bedroom and all. It's like, I was like, mm-hmm, and what are you going to do when they all get together? And they're not in their assigned places. Right. And in the U.S., he doesn't, you know, that's three alimonys, which we'll break them in. I guess I got some stories about multiple wives in West Africa. I'm going to, I'll have to save that time.

Brandon asked, what advice would you give to someone looking to go into counterintelligence and counterterrorism field? Love the show. Hope you guys get better internet soon. Me too. Thank you, Brandon. Aw. That was sweet. He doesn't know that the building's condemned, right? Sorry, before we went on to the building.

What would you recommend somebody going into counterintelligence or counterterrorism? Would you recommend the military? Would you recommend a civilian route, college? I would recommend a yeah well first of all I would recommend getting out of your bubble before you go into it so whether that means like going to going to college and getting it the best interrogators and the best CI and the best CT people that I know had did something for a minute even a brief minute like I did before going into the field because because you have to get out of that bubble. You have to be out of,

you have to know that there's other people out there, there's other situations out there, there's other stuff. Because it just makes you more willing to put yourself, you have to be able to put yourself completely into somebody else's shoes. I've sat across the interrogation table from someone who, the day before had tried to kill me. I've sat across the table from someone who,

two days before had killed one of my friends like, and you just have to understand and like not just fake but be able to actually

understand there's a reason that you did what you did there's a like you didn't just wake up one morning and they're like, I'm gonna put a bomb in the ground I'm just go do that like there was a whole thing that led up to it

that made sense to you. Right. Why? And that's what's so actually fascinating to me about it and because they could justify murder. Sure. And killing somebody because of, and it's not all like, you know, like love of religion. it's like you know I've met people who are like

they offered me $10 to dig a hole and drop something in it like that's very common like in Afghanistan where people are I mean they're substance farming they're getting up at 4 in the morning farming dirt hoping to feed their family and somebody offers them $10

is like that'll feed them for a month. Yeah. Like, and, and I mean, the, the whole reasoning behind why people do things. And if you have just stayed in the same place for your whole life, and that's all you know, right? You know, like, I'll send you the Google invite for the Civil War because I know which side you're going to be on. like that's it's it's it's amazing to be able to sit there and talk to these people and not like i felt no hatred towards them i was like as soon as i could process it i was like no i get you i know why you did what you did right i don't agree with it right clearly because you were trying to kill me but like I get it.

Right. And being able to process the I get it from that anger is something that you're not going to get unless you are experienced enough in life. And you've dealt with enough people that are in crappy-ass situations to be able to deal with. And I don't know if it's being friends with all those drug dealers. but something was able to where I was just able to be like

oh okay I see why you did that yeah it's understanding that somebody else's subjective reality is is every bit as much to them justified as as ours is to us right exactly you know and saying I don't get it I don't understand it I don't agree with it yeah but I get that you do yeah I mean like watch friggin red dawn the original not the remake never watched the remake ever ever ever

that I do not understand and I don't understand why they redid it but but in terms of the original it's a mystery it's a but you know like in the in the when what would you do if someone came into your country and like you had nothing to do with this you had no reason to be like You're like, I don't know, I'm going to high school. Oh, look, the Russians are here. The Cubans are here. This is weird. Why are they?

Yeah. And all of a sudden, they're, like, you know, arresting your family. Hey, give me a shovel. I'll dig a hole and I'll drop a bomb in it. Right. So it's that perception and that being able to understand. So I don't think that people should go directly out of college. I don't like there's no real path but it's whatever is going to get you to that point of being able to see other people in that situation

prior to having to talk to people and understand people that's going to give you that perspective. So, uh, thank you, Brad. Appreciate it. And, uh, I think maybe we'll save the Baghdad story for the bonus segment. um because i do we're like kind of like i know i'm taking up a lot of your time tonight um and i do want to um talk about how you got injured in iraq and what led up to you know this whole deal coming back and recovering from all of that on the back side of it you want to

see my yeah let's see let's do it yeah this this sweet piece of metal let's see if we might have to bring it more central to there you go there we go there we go This is what my PT, like this is what I do at physical therapy. She's like, you know, we need to keep your flexibility up. Yeah. So what is that? What's the whole deal with rocking the, rocking the, rocking the fake, rocking the faking, the bolcies over here.

So, and what's super cool is that it actually comes straight out of the skin here. Yeah, so that's actually your leg there. That's not like a piece of plastic. Yeah. And there's a metal shank coming out. So is that, is it like grafted into the bone? It is. Yeah, it actually, well, it's, it's not, it's, uh, it goes straight through the middle.

Okay. Um, which is super cool. Uh, they basically, um, bless them, I got, uh, the, I got the pictures from it. The, um, where there's like, the surgeon is actually just like hammering metal into the bone. I was like, that is awesome. Um. But so about like two weeks before I got blowed up for real, I was in another area. So after Baghdad, I ended up going up to Blod to work with some tactical folks

because, you know, I got in some trouble for, you know, going above my little specialist rank. causing some problems and getting mouthy. And I ended... Uppity women. Uppity lady folk. Talking out their station. We, so I ended up, that's how I ended up working with the infantry

and the giant Samoan guys who would come back with chickens. We, I was out on another mission, actually shortly after, I had just gotten yelled at by my command for doing it again. But for being like, none of this makes sense. We should be doing something else. And we were on the road.

We had gotten actually just in a car, in a MBA, in a motor vehicle accident in up armored but not well Humvee and my for those who have never ridden in as a passenger in the back of a Humvee there are these things called M16 holders nobody knows why they're there because nobody in their right mind would put an M16 in them but at the bottom of the passenger side and the passenger side seats which are metal steel at the bottom there are these little platforms that would hold the buttstock of an M16 and then there's a like a clip up at the top that would hold the barrel and so if you ever wanted to point your M16 at the ceiling for no good reason you

you could put it there. I've never seen anyone use it, but they are welded to the back of these things. And so when we hit a vehicle, we thought it was actually a V-Bid, one of the vehicle-borne IDs, but luckily it wasn't, but we hit it.

And because I am relatively small, I bounce forward, and my boot lace gets caught on the back of this metal. I end up tearing several tendons as my foot wraps around this thing. Nobody knows at the time. Take some Motrin, drink some water, you know, take a knee if you have to. Rub some dirt on it while you got. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll be fine.

And so basically, and I chipped a piece of the bone. Nobody knows what that went. And so, whatever. But there was no, because we show up at this like other tiny little fob after we got towed there because our vehicle was completely like it was annihilated by this impact. I mean, people were killed during this. It was not a small accident. And we show up and they were like, well, we don't have, we don't have imagery. have an x-ray we don't have anything so i'm sure it's just a sprain because you were wearing your

boots how bad could it be um several months later after i'd gotten back to fort brag and they actually did like a bone scan they were like oh oh you've done you don't mess yourself up there that's going to hurt for a minute um but so uh two two weeks after that is when i was in the iED ID blew me backwards. Again, it was in, this is, I mean, like, we're not in an MRAP. We don't have, right, the protection. Anything. Like, it's, it was the 1114, so it was actual, like, real armor, but I still, there was a gap in the armor, so I still get blown backwards.

We are close enough that I get blown backwards by the concussive blast, and there's a metal plate right behind my head, slam my head on the metal plate. So end up having a brain hemorrhage affects all the nerves because everything's all connected. There's a song about it that you learn when you're like five. About all the bones at least. And then so the nerves never heal properly.

So the bone never heals properly. So nothing ever works right again. And 14 years later, after limping for you know, over a decade and so forth. And I would step off of a curb at, you know, Madison Square Park, and all of a sudden my leg would just crumple, and I would have torn two mortal ligaments in my, in my legion. And so I was just constantly going back.

Hurting yourself over. Yeah. I mean, were they looking at this? Were they doing the imagery on it? They were. They were like, they were like, oh, you're. you're done you're done toward again um and uh they just thought it was weak and a recurring injury that the the only thing that they could propose uh so uh the year prior so last year i i had the

amputation done but the year before i had my left foot uh because of limping for uh you know 12 13 years my whole left foot had collapsed right right like all the strength structure was just done, so they ended up basically rebuilding that, so I've got metal and all that stuff. If the robot revolution happens soon, like, I am on team robot. Like,

transhumanism is happening. Yeah, yeah. This is like straight up cyborg. But the, so, and then in my recovery from that, I go on vacation and I go on a boat and as I am stepping over

onto like a onto you know like one of the little drain holes or whatever I don't I don't I'm gonna call it a drain hole because I was in the army not in the Navy so and the

boat hits a swell and my foot just buckles like it does and I was like oh that's fine I hardly feel those anymore and And then it started swelling up like a, like to the size of like, I don't know, maybe a cassaba melon. And I was like, oh, no, I don't mess it up this time.

24, it would happen to be the last day of vacation. The next day I roll in, when we flew home and get to the, I roll into the VA emergency room because my, my. boyfriend at the time. It's okay. He's a Marine. He can handle it. Just give him some crayons. Not if I want him back.

But the, he was like, oh no, that's, like, did you break something? And I was like, nah, it's not broken. It's fine. Because that's the attitude that you get after a while. I went in and I was like, I don't know, I'm told that I should come in. And they were like, how are you walking?

Like, there's like nothing connecting your foot anymore. The VA just wanted to do the same thing that they had done on the left, which is basically rebuild it out of metal, and then shorten all of the tendons. So maybe I didn't mess it up. But they were like, but the nerves are still screwed up. you'll just do it again you'll end up re-tearing all of those

ligaments over time and and I went for a second opinion and they said the same thing and I went for a third opinion because I was like this just doesn't seem right like there's got to be something I can do and he was like

well there is but you're not going to like it because it's basically cut it off and he was like so you know bless him he was like uh he was like well it's kind of like you know getting divorced like or something like like you know if the marriage isn't you know good anymore and bringing you happiness and i was like oh no i've i've been through this we can go on shut up please you're speaking my language yeah um i was like i'm not married to this foot anymore

Like we can we can do something about this And and he happens to be one of the few people In the country who is doing this type of Because actually if it had been a socket like a traditional I probably wouldn't have done it at all because I know enough I have enough friends who are amputees Who have struggled with the socket or have had a repeat surgeries after that right But this it's I know

I mean, I get biofeedback. Like, I can feel like when my foot's on the ground, I can feel it. Because the metal is in the bone. You feel the pressure. Yeah. Right. So. So I can actually flex that frigging calf muscle, which is super weird because I think I'm pointing my foot.

Yeah. Yeah. So when, so a lot of this happened because of the brain. injury and and it wasn't so it wasn't healing it wasn't in the right signals and yeah what the damage was was degrading instead of healing when did they figure out the whole brain issue and the surgery for that no and the surgery for that 2005 nobody was looking at traumatic brain injuries right yeah um they didn't understand they still don't really understand them yeah you know and um and you know what like more power to them they uh as they're

catching up they are doing they are doing the best they can I do not fault the army I don't fault I don't fault the VA but by the time so in 2000 either late 2007

or early 2008 I think I went in I was actually my first sergeant at this point I'm stationed in Germany and my first surgeon at this point I'm stationed in Germany and my first sergeant at this point I'm stationed in Germany and my first sergeant at the the time was like, hey, you're, you're on the commander's red list, like the non-deployable, um, uh, go get your shit done list for, um, your post-deployment health reassessment.

He was like, once the last time you got one of those done? And I was like, uh, never. Um, and he was like, well, that means that you are two years over. do. And so the commander said that you need to do that yesterday. It turned out that my, the, the PA, who was my primary care person at the time, had just within the last week gotten an email from someone at LaunchDule who was studying concussive blast injuries and traumatic brain injuries and had sent like basically a list of symptoms like if they have this one or this one or this one or this one send them for an evaluation and he was like so you don't have

or or or you have all of them and like just like I had been losing my vision I had like migraines that I had never had before, balance issues, all these things. I just thought I was going bananas. And so did the Army, because they would continually send me to Syke when I was like, I don't know, I'm seeing like shadows?

Oh, no, that's just you losing your peripheral vision. No problem. Yeah. I'm sure you're just... Happens to everybody. You're just crazy. You're someotra. Yeah.

Here's some Motrin. I don't know. Take a nap when you can. So I go see a neurologist. She finally diagnoses it. So I got hit by the ID October of 2005. I had neurosurgery. They sent me to Walter Reed for old Walter Reed, where they still have the asbestos.

It was lovely. It smelled great. In June of 08, I finally had brain surgery because they realized that I had during that, during the IED, I had actually had a brain apoplexy, which is like a hemorrhage. I had had a brain hemorrhage at the time. And, you know, I'd just been sitting there coagulating and forming this mass around my, like, carotid artery. So the blood was still present? Oh, yeah. Yeah, this giant mass in the center of my brain, it was, it's, they still have it in the

cavernous sinus on the left because the surgeon was like, there's a lot of stuff going through that area, like, including your carotid artery, that I don't feel comfortable. And I was like, if you're not comfortable, right. I'm good. You leave whatever you need to leave. And they didn't even do like the panel removal, which was somewhat disappointing. Because I was like of all the things that could make me a cyborg. Right.

Like no, they went through the face. They went right through my nose. As my friend Vanessa, same person, who held my hair back and then disappeared. as she said at the time like the Egyptians they just like this you take a hook twirl around your brain

yeah that's high tech though yeah pretty high tech shit it's amazing take a little hook and pop that thing out did that happen at the VA

here in New York no that was at old school Walter Reed that's right old school Walter Reed yeah you know the asbestos

as character the advantage that's the magic happens the advantage of both Walter Reed as a military household and And, well, Walter Reed has always been sort of cutting edge in a lot of ways because that's where all the combat traumas go initially.

And they have great docs there. And then also the VA in New York, barring all the issues with the administration aspect of the VA, which sucks, the doctors in New York are amazing because all the hospitals or most of the hospitals, they're part of the Bellevue system and NYU system. So all these doctors, all these surgeons rotate through the VA. So you're getting world-class care there if you can get an appointment. Yeah, yeah. You know, if you don't die waiting for an appointment. Once you get in to see a doctor, the doctor's... The doctors are phenomenal.

Yeah. Which is not the case with every VA because in a lot of other smaller areas, the doctors aren't quite as up to date. But here they really are. And I was like I have never had an issue with with VA care like the the VA has actually been very good to me. I mean, again, like administrative issues. They have like they have backlogs. Like nobody's frigging business.

You can take you 30 days to see a primary care. Yeah. Like if it's an emergency, don't call for an appointment. Just go. Yeah. But, yeah, so, um, so they did, they did the surgery in 08. And then, uh, again, like, I just kind of, I hung around. Did, did you know, like, did the surgery make, like, an immediate difference?

Or did, what did it help? It, uh, it's, it definitely stopped the progression. Like, I still have issues with peripheral vision. I still have issues with double vision. Um, I have been through. vision therapy, cognitive therapy, speech therapy, like all, like, and then

obviously physical therapy, but like all of the therapies, and then, you know, mental health, but that actually came surprisingly much later. But the so I went through all of that stuff, but it definitely stopped the progression. I still get migraines because

I still have all the stuff in the caverns. sinus and so when like the pressure drops there's nowhere for any of the pressure to go um so i i'll get a migraine and i'm like i am the worst superhero in the world because i'm like it's gonna it's definitely going to rain in the next 24 to 48 hours and i am more accurate than post of the weathermen so superman had kryptonite i mean everybody that doesn't make you a bad I understand. It's just kind of a lame superpower. I'm like, the pressure is going, the pressure is dropping. It will rain. That's your superpower that you know. I know when it will rain in the next 24 to 48 hours. Jordan, he's saying he got shot through the ankle 16 years ago tomorrow and I'm looking at a fusion or an amputation.

And he wants to know if you have any advice for someone looking at a possible imputation. I never say that amputation is for everyone, just like I will never say that either college nor the military is for everyone. However, having had actually both of them, one on the left, one on the right, I have less pain

in my amputation side than I do on my on the fusion side. My sister, who is actually a neuropysical therapist, would be very upset to hear that. That being said,

Also, because I have ascio integration, which is the whole metal into the bone thing, it's a very different experience for me as it is for people who have the socket. So people who have the socket have all kinds of other issues. Like blistering issues and skin issues and infection and whatever else. And again, like if I had been... not gotten if he had not been able to offer this particular type of surgery with the bone fusion um asio integration then i would not have done it there there are a lot of cases i mean even going back as far as like carl brochure is the first uh black navy diver who you know had damaged like

who had damage to his late like there are times when having the amputation gets you back into the game. Whereas if you had fusion or something like that, you'd still have your limb, but it would not function to any high degree. Yeah. Yeah. One of the main reasons, like,

if there's nerve damage, if there's stuff like that, stuff that's not going to be fixed, I did not want repeat surgeries. Right. I am, yeah. Like, I am a, I am a one-and-done type of,

I mean, my ex-husband, he was like, once your mind's made up. And I was like, yeah, no, so those papers. Is osteofusion pretty common now? Or is that just cutting edge? It's still new here. So the Brits, it's actually the Australians, the Swedes, the Brits. Actually, I heard about it from a British Blessum.

He had been part of their EOD, their ordinance disposal units, their bomb guys. And it's funny because there were four or five of them in the group and all of them were missing at least one limb and they had all been. And I was like, so you weren't very good at them. And they were like, well, the bomb did get to,

Oost. But one of them had both legs above the knee Osseointigration for So the

Above the knee And so actually he would like sit down in a chair And then he would push like a little button And it would just like Click down Which was Which was fun But he was like

He had gone He had the sock for a long time and he was like, he was like, this, he was like, this was life changing. And he was like, I'm so happy that I did this particular type. And

so when I knew that either I was going to get like repeat surgeries which still would never get rid of all of the pain or or amputate and because I had met this guy

I contacted a friend and I was like is anybody doing below the knee osteo integration because he happened to work in prosthetics somewhere else he did his homework and he was like there's actually somebody in New York City who does it so he had actually given me the

contact information for that particular surgeon at the hospital for special surgery so and because i have um and i have tri care so i can because i was i'm medically retired so uh and he knows how to work the system so you went outside the VA system for that then yeah but the VA is doing all of my care after post surgery so uh because uh dealing with health insurance is a nightmare right so um i mean like i saw the bills for what this would have cost and it's a lot of money.

So, but the VA is just not, but the VA is authorized to do, they're studying osteo integration above the knee because the femur is such a large bone that it's FDA approved. Below the

knee, it's much harder to do. So the VA is not really doing below the knee, osteo integration yet it's very interesting because you know I I like busted up my arm and uh they basically had to put it together but because I don't because of how it's all put back together at some point they'll do a prosthetic and a shoulder replacement where they'll give me a new shoulder joint and then a new upper like half the upper arm so it sounds like they're starting they're doing

the osteo integration yeah yeah With this, because they'll attach the metal or plastic or whatever it is, inside the arm actually to what's left of the humorous. That's super cool. Yeah. And then it's just a reverse instead of like the ball and joint. This actually becomes the ball and this becomes the joint. What?

What? It's supposed to eliminate all the arthritis and everything like that. That's super cool. So, but it's interesting because it sounds similar to what you've had in a way that they're going to insert that in the body. They do it. And also, VIA's, I know, looked at upper arm. Yeah. But they can't really do it yet, I think, lower.

These are really small bones. Yeah. Okay, I understand. So it's really the size of the bone that... Yeah, because it goes right through the center. Right. And they just hammer it on up in there. And then I just, like, screw on my little attachments down at the bottom.

have like a little Alan wrench that I usually carry with me. Oh, what kind of attachments do you have? Now, see, this is the superhero stuff. No, uh, so... This is like a bat belt, a utility belt. I, uh, p.s, I do have a 3D printer, so I am 1,000% open to, uh, experimenting with this. But the, um... You guys heard it here for...

I, um, it's an old and crappy 3D printer that I have had to remanufacture like 40 times. You can't retract that statement. Oh, no. no, what I really want to do, and tragically I didn't have it in time for this snowstorm. I'm going to like make a casing for my foot that's like in the shape of like a dinosaur claw. And then I'm going to go up to Central Park and walk around. And walk around with like one dinosaur foot and one human foot and just with the tourists, just 1,000%. If you did a snow shovel, you could make some money walking up and down the streets like where people

are trying to do their cars out. You like, I mean, I don't think if you could work out. There's potential here. Yeah. I'll give you a cut. It's fine. Nice. Yeah.

So back to the original question, I would recommend looking into the options further. Because, again, like talking to friends. who have regular socket, especially below the knee. Like, I mean, my calf muscle has atrophied so much. And I've had the nerves reattached so that I can actually flex that muscle. But, like, so many of my friends have had so many issues here and there. And then, whereas I don't have to worry about it because it's... Right.

It's like a friend of mine was... We were sitting at a bar back when you... could do that. And, uh, he was like poking at this and he was like, oh, what is this? Like, what is this? Like, what is this metal? And I was, and another friend of mine is like, that's her bone. Like, you're touching her, but like, don't do that. That's super weird. And I was like, eh, I mean. Stain with steel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, oh, titanium. Oh, titanium. Yeah. Because it, because it's non-magnetic. The only thing that's magnetic, as I found out when I went in for another MRI is this and so I actually have to detach.

Hold that up there in front of the camera so people can see all that. Hold on. Now, I can actually take the old boot off because I can't, I can't wear it. I can't get socks over it. So my truck yourself before you wreck yourself socks, it's only on the other side. A pair of socks last you twice as long. That's nice. Does Dot Martin know that you are?

actually Vans has sent me stuff not Doc Martin but all right so hold this bad boy P.S. I paint my toes Oh God. People should be able to see that now. So now

I have questions. I have questions specifically specifically have questions about the leg warmer. Now Okay I had to explain this This is somebody earlier. So, yes, because of course I have leg warmers.

She's a mania. Because I was like it's 1988. Right. Turn to like your 12 o'clock here. There you go. There we go. There we go. So the leg warmer is because it is below freezing outside.

But, but the, so I have actually. cut most of my pants to be caprice because the manpreys at that point beach comers yeah as I believe

my friend who lived in New Zealand for a while short pants because actually when I'm when I went to physical therapy this morning and I was wearing like

full-length pants. And when it hits like the bottom, like right where that, like right where that piece is, right where it intersects, it just feels really weird. And just like if you're walking, just over and over, it just like feels really weird.

So I've cut most of my pants. And then, but the leg warmers are because, I mean, otherwise my little stumpy gets cold. Uh, and the other side would get very cold because that's just a regular. Otherwise, otherwise,

otherwise you see, otherwise normal. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Otherwise you see my, my full Spocked. Nice.

That's baller. Yeah, right? So you could, like he's flashing gang signs right there. Scott's got fucking gang signs. Live long and prosper, yo.

Right? Nice. Got to do it. So. just out of curiosity is it just the symmetry and why do you cut the leg off the other pants

because of the one yeah it's symmetry yeah yeah so I'm still an engineer yeah and I am still an engineer at heart and I'm like oh no my just kicking in like this is weird this is so interesting you know as a science fiction you know cyberpunk geek

myself is that you are the living embodiment of the fusion between human being and machine in a sense. I am Borg, assimilator. I mean, other, you know, amputations. You will be assimilated. In the past have been, yeah,

you're a-fixing something that's sculpted onto your nub there. This is something that's actually a part of your body. I mean, it's there for good. I sleep with this bad boy on, like, as for my attachments, I have a rock climbing foot. I was rock climbing five months.

Was that already on the market or did you create them? No, they actually, so the company that makes my climbing shoes actually also happens to have a prosthetic foot that normally they would put on a regular prosthetic leg, but the VA was able to adapt the foot itself to my, to like this build. That's amazing. What about heels? So there, I have a foot.

that has like a little button on the side, and you can point it down, and it will keep that shape, and so that will stay on the heel. Similarly, a swimming foot, or I use it for scuba diving, which has a little button flips all the way down. It only has two positions that are a lot. in and so it points down you put the fin on it and then you can kick so oh I would have just made the fin I know but walking would be very difficult

aster yeah so Alana talk to me then about you know where you're at today in you know you're in the city what are you up to and I want to hear about the pathfinder this group that you founded so I will talk to you as I was like as I put my shoe back on, because I have been known to walk back outside without, yeah, yeah. And then all of a sudden I'm like, why does everything sound weird? Oh, oh. I'm just walking outside with only one shoe on.

So I, when I got out of the service, because I had been med-boarded and I didn't want to be, kind of as evidenced by the fact that it happened because I tried to deploy. It was, I was not pleased with my situation, and so I didn't plan very well for it. And when I came back to the area, I basically ripped off the Band-Aid. I filed for divorce, sold our house that. we had bought when he got out of the service, which had been several years before. And then I, and I was like, no, I'm going like into the city proper because he was not a city person.

So he was not city folk. And I was like, I'm going to go into New York City. And so basically lost my job, lost my house, lost my husband, lost my husband. and was like, screw all y'all. I'm going, I'm going to go make a life for myself in the big city. It's a country song. Yeah, I know, right?

It's an amazing country song. Yeah. We got somebody who looks sleepy. I have a question. Yes, I am. I did. My legs name is Peggy. Sounds like a penguin.

Yeah, it does. It probably would make up a good penguin name, But Peggy, because it is essentially a peg. And I am big on puns. But yes. So, but we decided that we needed a name for it because when I was rock climbing, when you go rock climbing, the person who is on belay standing on the ground will sometimes tell you like, oh, put your hands here or put your feet here. and she was yelling like put the little foot because the rock climbing foot is like half the size of a regular foot

and she was like put the little one up there and so we decided we needed a name for it and so we came up with Peggy but so Peggy goes to that foot and yeah yes see if you're in studio you could ask questions directly too wouldn't have to type them in.

Right? You wouldn't have to type the men. Nepotism and action. Yep. Yep. So you... So I got out and I didn't know what I wanted to quite do with myself. I went through basically the same military transition that everybody goes through

where we're just like, oh, cool. I just did this whole thing. And I have been doing it for at that point a decade. and I was all of a sudden out. I had an engineering degree, but nobody was using the same types of technology that I had learned 10 years before. And that was a rude awakening.

Similar to an infantry soldier, I imagine that CI qualifications really accounted for almost nothing. They don't transfer well. I was like, I can negotiate. But apparently, by the way, way business, the business folk don't like it when you're like, oh, and negotiations, it's just like an interrogation. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no.

It's not like on TV. Oh, well. I just lost that job. Yeah. But so, and I hopped. That's a pun. from from job to job

um like even opportunity opportunity like I had no idea what was going on and I went from organization to organization like who where is the right fit for me and how am I going to figure this stuff out and um I started kind of working my way up through the ranks

of some of the nonprofits and just volunteering and trying to get myself out there. And the more I started coming into contact with other people, the more I realized, like, oh, some people don't try again. In fact, a lot of people don't try again. Like, especially with something that's important to them, especially mental health. Yeah.

Like, you go in and you have a bad experience, you're never going again. Yeah. You're like, nope, that's it. I guess mental health in general, not good for me. Yeah. I'm not the right fit or whatever. And that made me realize, like, there's, first of all, we have this series of tubes called the Internet these days in some places apparently better than others.

How far they can run the tubes, I think. Yeah, that's true. They don't come as far out in Brooklyn. It's the size of the tubes. It's important. Apparently, we have very small tubes here. Yeah. At the team house.

Tiny tubes. It's not the size of the tubes. It's how you use them. It's the amount of information that can go through them at one time. Anyway. We know how to use our tubes at the team house. No matter what their size. Oh.

So it. occurred to me that if we have this wonderful network that I hear Al Gore invented, then you can ultimately put all of this information on there. Like all of the, why is it so friggin hard to figure out, like, what is available? Why is it so hard to figure out, like, what's open to me

or what's open to everybody or what's open to my spouse or what's open to whatever. It's an interesting idea. It's not used for the internet, aside from just cat videos and cron. I do like the cat videos, though. When I was looking at it and when I think back to my own experience getting out of the military also, there are so many charities and their veterans affairs and there are all these services out there. And a lot of them are very good and very, like, people who are very well-meaning trying to help. There's actually so many of them that you don't know where to fucking start.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like there are over, well, sadly at this point, after the old COVID's probably fewer, but there's over 40,000 nonprofits probably fewer. But there's over 40,000 nonprofits that have some attachment to military and veteran services. That's amazing. And then there are all of your state, federal, and even like local municipal services. And then there's the companies that have like a support network or whatever.

And like there's so much out there. And we we have like thousands listed, but like across the country. But like there's so many. So on, so we decided to start not only. localizing them and then figuring out like, okay, so if you were out of the military and you did this particular job and you were, you know, you served in this service era, so if you're a Vietnam vet or if you're a post-9-11 veteran, or if you never served in combat, you qualify for totally different things. If you have honorable discharger or

other than honorable or somewhere in between, something completely different. And so we started filtering that. And then we started looking at artificial intelligence because I'm a super nerd and, again, robot revolution on the side of the robots. So the whole artificial intelligence thing factors in. I have it right back here, actually, now that we imagine it. There it is. my deus x uh

statue you guys can feast your eyes on that of m adam jensen and all of his augmentations here I would just like to point out that as soon as uh uh COVID hit and they decided that New York was going into lockdown

I didn't go that far but I did I did go into I changed my avatar on like half of my little profiles like my Slack profile like my slack profiles, my work profiles to Snake Pliskin of Escape from New York.

Uh-oh, we have another question from the audience. Just to know, how do you take a shower with your fake leg? Okay, good question. Because it is actually something that has not yet been perfected in the prosthetics industry. I installed

a like a shower seat when I was getting the surgery and so I was able to so now I put my I just like put my foot up on it because I'm lazy most people

most people that I know and what has been recommended to me by the prosthetics people is to actually take the foot off because there is a like there is like a a cloth

like sock type of thing that's in there that gets super gross and your friction or I don't know I don't know it's magic

yeah it's magic yeah medical science is not a real science so it's like a tag on a mattress nobody knows exactly so to answer that question

I just keep it Try to keep it out of the water, mostly. But most people will take it off and then have something to balance on. Well, that's kind of dangerous if you take it off because it can't slip. Oh, yeah, no, it's super dangerous. There was a period of time where I had a little stool that I, like one of those, like a little step stool, and then I put silicone on top of it to make it non-slip because I was trying to think ahead.

and then I put the metal piece on top of that. The problem is that it was a folding stool, and the metal peg, hence Peggy, slipped through the hole that was the handle at the time, and then got stuck because when you put your weight on, it slides to plastic. So you had a stool as a foot. So I basically had a stool as a foot.

um it bled a lot uh but also i i was i didn't know how to get it back off so i uh almost resigned myself to living out the rest of my life with a stool attached to the bottom of my leg they should have meant like this thing like a fake leg but like on the bottom it's like those mats like for like the bath i have said this yeah i have said this exact same thing wait say what Where you just, I was going to actually 3D print something, but the materials that you can 3D print with are not quite appropriate for it. And they're apparently not, like they're not weight-bearing, whatever. Hasn't stopped me yet.

You're going to print a map? Why don't you just glue it to the bottom of your shoe? I know. I just can't believe that, yeah. Matt says, Jack's daughter and her friend are going to start their own podcast. webcast, great questions. I've been getting trolled by my daughter and her friend in the comments section

for like the last hour. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're all over. So that's the problem is that you're not asking their questions, so she has to ask them a lot from the live studio audience. I feel like this is one of those things where like your parents say like, I hope you have a kid that grows up to me.

And they're hearing. The curse of everybody. I'm like the internet guy. My daughter like just trolling the shit out of me in the comments section. Boy, you need to answer the question. Or else you're not getting that much views. She's got a point.

No, you need to answer more, Daddy. Talking about printing, Ian Hutchinson, thank you very much, said, can you all pass my contact info onto Alana? I have access to CNC machinery. If she has models, I can get made in whatever. And he said this before we even brought this topic up.

Excellent. Because all I have is really shit. I told me an eight-year-old printer. I can facilitate. Okay. Sounds good. Cool, because I have an eight-year-old crappy-ass printer and old filament. And so far I have printed out a go-figure Starship Enterprise that I have converted into a menorah for the holidays.

Just want to put that out there. Like, this is what I do on Friday nights because who needs that, right? That's got to have a market. I mean, maybe not a big market. COVID, like, I don't, I don't, like, I don't need to date, bitches. I have a 3D printer. Like, I don't, I'm good. And the Starship Enterprise.

Right? So. I'm good on Fridays. Yeah, we bring this back home. Bring this back home. We want to bring this back to you. Pass-fire. So you.

You started, you started an organizational website. So it started a company that not only lists the stuff on. Wow, how did we get over there? So I did start a company that not only aggregates all of that stuff on the internet, but also we use artificial intelligence to essentially as people write, comprehensive so that's a direct target

towards some people who are just right this organization is good as fuck like that helps nobody but who actually tells somebody something useful about their experience

and what they can expect walking into the room and so forth we can break it down using various artificial intelligence techniques that keep your identity completely private, but is able to look at certain personality dynamics that say someone who is just like you in terms of like their general level of assertiveness

and their general level of melancholy or cheerfulness or whatever, they're doing really well at this mental health organization, versus this mental health organization, you're going to want to look at these guys because they know how to handle people like you or they deal really well with people like you. And because the more people I was talking to,

they would walk in and if they had a really terrible experience, they would be like, you know, like, that's it, I'm out, and I'm not going back. And those are the folks that, because they're not getting the treatment that they need would just. So is the majority of your business, is it dealing with mental health or is it dealing with transitioning period moving into careers? Everything. Everything.

Like all aspects? Like, you know, we're trying to get some participation from some of these companies that have mentor groups within the company. So some of them, like, some of the bigger, because we're in New York, you know, some of the bigger financial institutions have, like, a specific thing. Like, once you come on board, we also have an internal veterans organization. Or even, like, you know, like NBC has one, like a lot of the production companies. Seals course has an amazing one. Yeah.

And free training for vets. Yeah. So, like, they have, like, all this stuff. And then the folks that have internal programs, we're able to say like, hey, vets who go there, they're not going there and then leaving after six months. Right. Because they have this great support organization.

They have like really good support and they have really good help. So it's really useful to them to know. And so it's really useful to people who are looking at it. I mean, it's basically the same thing as like a Yelp or even like Google reviews or the Facebook reviews. You look at it and you're like, oh now i get why like people who are like me people who were in the navy or who were in the army or whatever they see it and they're like i trust you i get it right and where can people go and find this go and find pathfinder and like dip their foot into it so uh so to speak um

there it is you notice he said foot not feet so there is Anytime there's an excuse for a pun, I will take it. But Pathfinder.Vet That's VET, not net. I don't even know where that goes. Or Pathfinderlabs.com. And we have yet another audience question.

I'm just giving you the warning. Oh, well, finish your pitch. Finish your pitch, please. Otherwise we're doing for a good. But, yeah, so pathfinder. Dot or Pathfinderlabs.com gets you straight to us. And so you can search and you can let us know what you want to see on the website or if there's something that we're missing. There's a lot that we're still missing.

And we are constantly updating the site and anything that goes into the contact. on our page pretty much goes straight to me because I'm really the only one that gets those emails anyway. If I go on this website and I'm like, yo, Alana, I'm all fucked up. I need some help here. What's going to happen? If you go to our contact page and you send us an email, I will chances are respond to you and spend a lot of my time that I'm probably supposed to be doing some sort of stupid quarterly report that I don't want to do anyway, responding to your message and trying to help you out in whatever area you are and helping you figure out what's what's what.

And if you are able to navigate through and find something that is useful in your area, we have every, we definitely have every VA loke. We have all the VA, because a VA is not the same as, their other centers. So if you, and I believe that they're called the same things elsewhere, but if you go to a vet center somewhere, they're mostly mental health, and they don't talk to VA, Maine, so you can actually go to a vet center and keep it out of your main medical record. Oh, really? Yeah.

The vet centers are they're part of the VA system, but their records are kept independent of VA Maine. So anything that you say at a vet center does not automatically end up in your VA record. And vet centers are everywhere. All of the clinics, all of the hospitals, all of the VBAs. We even listed all of the cemeteries just for fun because I really want to see if somebody's going to give a review of like, well, I got this plot. But

so far nobody has done it, which I think is a lack of creativity. But and then we have a lot of the organizations, a lot of the big names, some of like the mom and pop, like we do

like, you know, 12 service dogs a year. It's just as we hear about stuff, we get it listed. And how are you guys funded? We are actually a C-Corp, moving over to a B-Corp, which is just because we're a social enterprise, but we are not a nonprofit. Oh, you're not a nonprofit? We are a for-profit company, and so we do analytics where we anonymize, everything is

anonymous anyway and then we basically take all of the information and we're able to actually tell the organizations or or the VA or whatever whoever our clients are we're able to say hey overall you know you have like 40 people who are willing to contribute feedback we want to say you've got feedback for these 40 people overall your program would do better if you implemented some sort of reward type of system, like give somebody a Velcro patch because for some reason, all the veterans seem to like Velcro patches. It's weird with veterans and Velcro.

550 cord bracelets. Yes, paracord bracelets are baller. Yeah. So. Beard oil. High fashion. Yeah. Beer to oil.

Yes. ball caps too. Yeah. All right. And look, she's wearing my bro cap right now. This is the last question, all right, little girl.

We have two questions. Oh. All right. It's a two-part of her. Go. Okay. Our boy Gordon. See, she's doing your job now.

She's better at it than I am. Okay. O.J. Star Trek or J.J. Averhaar Star Trek. Oh, no. J.J. I have comments about J.J. I don't know.

Grievances the air. You're fine. No, I have issues with JJ. We can almost leave it at that. I understand what he's trying to do for the franchise. Great. Leave it at that. It's a totally different thing and not worth my time.

How about the Orwell? I love it. Yeah. I'm super excited because they just started filming the next season. And then red shirts. I actually I was just saying this to somebody that I actually do have a T-shirt

that is a Stormtrooper versus a red shirt where the Stormtrooper misses and the red shirt is dead anyway. But yeah. Second question, second question. Okay, next one

is from my best friend, Allison. Hello, Allison. On your leg when you walk. Not terribly. No. It's amazing how much you rely on your ankle, which I don't have. So not very, but that is why I'm still in physical therapy and probably will be for quite some time. But that's actually fine with me because they force me to stay in shape even during COVID. Okay, everybody, good next Friday. This is the beauty of doing things live, is that nothing is edited and all the hiccups and the beauty of live streaming. Well, you know what?

Rian through Gordon's questions, too. So, everybody, thank you for joining us live tonight. We had like a 165 or so people watching this thing live and many more will over the week. Alana, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you for having me. Everybody, please like, share, and subscribe the video, or subscribe to the podcast. Wherever you listen to this, we're on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, pretty much wherever you go for podcasts. We're out there.

And on YouTube, please make sure you subscribe, like the video. Give us a thumbs up or the thumbs down. And we have some comments down there. Tell us if we suck or not. And, oh, and there's also a link down the description to our Patreon page if you want to support the stream and get out. access to the bonus segments. And if you join tonight, it's only a dollar, a dollar a month, you get to hear Alana's story about why she did, why did she get kicked out a bag down?

Inquiring minds running out? All right. Mysteries. Hold on, hold that thought. Hold that thought. And Alana, if people want to find Pathfinder, where do they go again? Pathfinder. vet, v-et, or

Pathfinderlabs.com. So if you're a veteran, definitely check out this resource. And even if you're not, please blast this out, like, let people know it's here because I think one of the biggest challenges with veterans is finding those resources. It is finding the resources.

And if you point them towards pathfinder. That Victor Echo tango or Pathfinderlabs.com, they'll have all the resources listed. They won't have to go out and find them all. And if they are not, let me know, and I will get it listed.

In just a little PSA, so next episode is actually, I believe, Christmas Eve. So we're not doing the show live, but we're going to have a pre-recorded episode. We're going to premiere that night. So we're so dedicated to this show. We will have something for you. It's going to be a good one. We have Greg Corker coming on, who was a Little Bird Pilot in 160th. And I believe it's Monday.

we're recording the show and then we'll schedule it to premiere on Christmas Oh it is Monday? What time are we... 21st? What time are we going to do that? No, no.

No, we'll figure it out. Do you want me to do the questions? We're all done with questions. No, it's for like on Christmas Eve. Oh, for the one, the show with Gray? Yeah. Maybe, maybe. Well, we're not going to ask questions.

That's not any of questions. Yeah, no one's live. Yeah, it'll be recorded. No questions, Alice, for that one. I'm just going to go on the chat and then I'm going to answer everybody's questions. Yes. Yes.

These kids today, they're grown in a vat for this whole world. I am on board with answering people's questions with random answers. And it just freaks me out. When she was like five, I took her on a little road trip and we're staying in a hotel

and we're watching YouTube videos in bed before she goes to sleep and she turns to me this is like a five-year-old kid and she's like, Daddy, I want to have fans and subscribers and I'm like, what the fuck? What the hell do you?

I only have myself to blame for all this. So anyway, guys, thank you for joining us tonight and thanks to everyone who's listening to this in the subsequent weeks and months. And thank you, Alana, for coming in studio yeah that was a great time and we will do it again so see you guys next time and uh okay that is it and